#its too long to fit it in screenshots but its like the very first chapter I think

[phagodyke]

erection monologue also ^ important context hes doing this in front of a bathroom mirror after stumbling home high from his dad's nurses flat

what ppl who hate murakami fail to understand is that he's actually fucking hilarious and reading all his work in complete sincerity means u miss all the humour he lines his narration with lmaoo

[its-cartooncrazy]

Okay i finished my dunmeshi reread where I was trying to predict which chapters will go into which episodes for season 2 (assuming 24 episodes)

I made some questionable splits towards the end tbh but I ended up with 24 without pushing too hard so. I guess I'll write down my thoughts here mostly so when season 2 comes I can compare them

So I'm gonna add my screenshots from my notes page so I'll explain that the yellow numbers was me guessing from chapter titles and my poor memory, and the pink is from my reread and focusing on content.

I started by looking at season 1 and how they split stuff up. Every episode was two chapters, save for a few that either didn't need full episodes, or were a lot of action which takes up more space in comics. (I don't know where exactly the dragon chapters split, but the 7 dragon chapters + good medicine were 3 episodes, so that makes 2 episodes of 3 chapters there.) They also preferred to keep 2 part chapters in one episode, but also didn't shy away from doing it either.

Theres only enough chapters left for 22.5 episodes at a rate of 2 chapters per episode, so we actually never have to group three chapters into a single episode again!

That being said...

On Floor One features would be a banger season opener. It features a couple of fight scenes, so it shouldn't be too long. I wouldn't want to split it into two episodes anyway because for a season opener, I wouldn't want to be away from the main cast for too long.

(It also, oddly enough, cuts back to our cast and gives them little name badges, which is a joke about the changelings, but also its very fitting to reintroduce our characters in their first appearance in season 2)

Bicorn / Stewed Head go together very easily, as do Succubus 1 + 2

Jumping ahead a little, roasted walking mushroom and 6 days would fit together nicely, especially with the Winged Lion taking place during the Succubus chapters, but. I don't wanna squeeze that in with them...

I think if trigger do their thing, 6 days could be an episode all on its own (and it could be one of the best episodes, too) And hey, if they need more content then there's a couple of monster tidbits extras that take place here that they could add!

Confit was the problem child. I wanted Rabbit and Curry to get their own episodes, but I also wanted 6 days to stay alone, which left confit alone. It features a fair bit of important stuff: reaching thistles house, cleaning up, finding the book (and opening it I think), and eating the phoenix, so I wouldn't feel right cramming it with something else.

So I ignored it for the time being, to see if Rabbit and Curry could be split in half.

Confit would lead well into rabbit 1, with them arriving at the house and having a meal, and then rabbit 1 takes place shortly after the meal. Rabbit 1 ends with laios getting got by a rabbit. That seems like a pretty fun cliffhanger to be honest. Rabbit 2 ends with them comforting marcille, and then curry 1 cuts away to several scenes viewed through the eyes of the mage, ending with them showing up at the house. And then...

Grouping curry 2 and thistle 1 together is kinda evil actually. Sibling flashback scene, that fight, and then thistle backstory?? Yikes. I love it actually. So yeah I'll go with that.

Thistle 2 and 3 feature the dragon fight (placing the teaser at a predicted episode 9) and then thistle 4 and 5 include the chat with laios, the lion eating thistles desires, and then the wrap up meal. I'm pretty satisfied with that if a little disappointed we don't end an episode with laios in the plant

Bavarois and whatchamacallit are both the canaries' interrogation so thats easy, ending with a cliffhanger of sorts where the lion is fully released by marcille.

Lord of the Dungeon 1 and 2 are both pretty full chapters. It continues the fight with the canaries, which unfortunately features a lot of talking still, and then the aftermath with our group waking up to a room of unconscious canaries and spider guts like that one community gif.

Dungeon 1 is actually a shorter chapter. Putting these two together would possibly make for a kinda sparse episode. So, we have a full episode and an empty episode. Can we borrow a scene from lord of the dungeon to even it out? No! Because almost all of Lord of the Dungeon 2 is kabrus epic fumble, which isn't a scene that can be cut up neatly. Let's set those aside for a bit and see if the solution comes from the next few.

We have three single chapters before our next grouping, which doesn't split nicely into 2s like I want it to. Unfortunately, none of these are particularly short, and we're past the point in the series where we can skimp on the details. Parasites starts with a shortish scene with marcille and frozen falin, so I wondered about giving that to dungeon, if I could group the three together with slightly less content, but I think there's still probably too much content to get through with those three chapters even without that scene. (Not to mention, I don't think season one ever split any part of a chapter between episodes, so I'm reluctant)

Honestly, I thought for a long time about how to arrange these chapters and never came to a conclusion, so I just moved on for a bit, to see if answers were in the next section. (Spoiler alert: they were!)

Marcille 1 is kind of a misnomer (if I know what that word means) since it doesn't actually focus on marcille at all, and instead shows people around the world reacting to the dungeons opening. I don't feel as bad separating it from the rest of marcille in that case. (It's also a short chapter but local cuisine has a fair bit in it so I think that won't matter)

So to sum up the last section before we move fully into the marcilles, we have Lord of the Dungeon, Dungeon, Parasites/Food Chain and Local Cuisine/Marcille 1. Phew, that was a lot of effort just to end up splitting them into pairs of chapters. (Dungeon may still borrow from parasites, but that's up to them. Yknow, if they were still looking at how to split them up in this stage of production or whatever XD)

Marcille 4 ends with the group hug and, as sad as I am to not get a week to sit with that scene, it wouldn't work as well as an episode ending during the big finale battle segment, so pairing it with Winged Lion 1 (mostly chatting up on that tower, concluding with them getting gobbled up by the monster pile lion) works pretty well and gives a good cliffhanger.

Winged Lion 2 and 3 gives us Lion backstory, and then laios becoming dungeon master, ending with him plopping his head back on like its nothing. Lmao I can't wait to see what the outtro is for this episode.

Winged Lion 4 is short, actually, and with the action of Winged Lion 5, that episode might be a bit sparse. But, well. Iunno I figured it's fine? Look, I started to give up and make weird decisions around this point. Winged Lion 5 ends with everyone freezing and then laios picking up "laios".

Winged Lion 6 I gave its own episode. It doesn't have enough content for that, to be honest, but I gotta put some single chapter episodes in here somewhere and where better than laios eating laios and laios and laios and laios and then the winged Lions desire to eat desires. Idk I said I gave up, didn't I?

Starting here, I start to worry about momentum. How long can you keep people interested after the Big Bad has been defeated? Def-eat-ed lol

The Island I also gave its own episode, just 'cause, I guess. It features the action packed escape from the dungeon, everyone washing up safe and sound, and then searching for laios, ending with a nice hug. I didnt seem to take my own advice tbh, that ending doesn't really force you to keep watching. Hm.

Falin 1 and 2 gives us everyone pitching in to prepare to eat laios sister, and also mithrun 🥺, but much like the last episode, doesn't end on too captivating a note (although it is a very good scene, it just doesn't lead in to the next episode so much) so I guess I really didn't take my own advice much. I swear I took this into consideration while I was reading but I guess I gave up lol

Falin 3 is the izutsumi show, where she asks everyone what they're gonna do now (not cooking, I mean in life!!) and ive put this one by itself because there are plenty of scenes that could be expanded upon, and also izu deserves a whole episode to think about her character development because she is the best and I love her.

This also lets us group falin 4 and dungeon meshi for the season finale. Another reason I wanted falin 4 to go in this arrangement is that this is where laios becomes king, which really just screams "finale" for me. We also get falin waking up, and a sweet epilogue of laios' fantastic reign, plus him being good with kids <3

So uhhh. Yeah. That's how I would split up the chapters. Quick recap/summary to make it clear hopefully:

1: 53,54,55

2: 56,57

3: 58,59

4: 60,61

5: 62

6: 63,64

7: 65,66

8: 67,68

9: 69,70

10: 71,72

11: 73,74

12: 75,76

13: 77,78

14: 79,80

15: 81,82

16: 83,84

17: 85,86

18: 87,88

19: 89,90

20: 91

21: 92

22: 93,94

23: 95

24: 96,97

That was a lot of waffling to end up with mostly just two chapters per episode tbh. If you've made it all the way, I hope you don't consider your time wasted lol. Looking forward to seeing how trigger does it!

[boltedfruit]

How I Outline/Plot: Including Author Resources for Developing Characters and Self Publishing

First and foremost, everything I’ve included in this doc that references resources (such as the plot outline below), is also available for free on the authors’ respective websites. I just wanted to recreate the template Scrivener file I use when starting a new project as I’ve collected everything in one master file.

MASTER TEMPLATE GOOGLE DOC: https://tinyurl.com/boltemp

I recently posted the chapter count for my upcoming Mafia MM romance I'm writing for NaNoWriMo this year and was asked how I plot by @duckyreads

Below, I've included screenshots of the first couple beats of my process and how much detail I usually include when outlining. The template I'm working from is an edited one of Romancing the Beat by Gwen Hayes, who offers her beat sheet for free on her site and in a Scrivener Template.

Using Romancing the Beat, I first went through and made a separate page for each story beat for my protagonist, Zac. I can't do just normal three act structure as it's too vague for me. I need Too Much to work with, then I can whittle it down later. I then did the same for the love interest and Mafia boss, Joe. (name might be changed idk yet.)

The colored dots represent which act of the story I'm in. Light pink= Act 1: Set Up, Dark Pink= Act 2: Falling, Blue= Act 3: Retreating, and Purple= Act 4: Shake it Off.

I also want to note that even though the epilogue is written in for both characters' POV, I'm only writing it once, from Zac's POV. So not every single beat necessarily translates directly into its own chapter. A few from Joe's POV are definitely combined more than once.

So Chapter 1, Scene 1: Zac's sister Riley has made him a dating profile and set him up on a date with who will soon be revealed as a crime lord.

I'm repetitive, because I've gone back in at different points and added little notes here and there. But my basic points I want to convey right off the bat: Zac is a hot mess who drinks to excess at times, has a sister who loves him but he is always putting her in a hard position, and has issues with money and violence from his childhood.

I also like to include some dialogue or rough snippets for scenes because it helps make the scene feel more concrete to me. I don't always do this though.

This is Chapter 1, Scene 2. Very short and to the point. (This was something I originally started writing as a fic btw.)

This is Chapter 2, Scene 1 and is the first from Joe's perspective.

It's plotty compared to the first chapter. I haven't done any nitty gritty location research yet so I put stuff I don't know yet in asterisks or brackets or in something like "XXX", because XXX is easy to find and change with ctrl+f > replace.

This is from Chapter 3, Scene 1. Just vibes.

This is from Chapter 4, Scene 2, from Joe's POV after the date.

This is what I ended up with. I'm sure as I work through it, the chapter count will go down. I don't really want my romance book to be so long, but I saw recently that 50 Shades is apparently over 500 pgs, which is wild to me. I'm also doing alternating POV, so it'll be switching between my protag and the love interest.

My outlining/plotting steps:

Decide on genre and type of story structure I want to use.

Decide on my protagonist and lay out a new page/note for every story beat of whatever structure I'm using.

Go in order or jump around and write a little per beat based on how I want a scene to go. For me, feeling is more important than knowing exactly what's going to happen. I'm not naturally a plotter, so I still like to not be constrained when I'm actually writing. (ie I'm not adhering to some rigid word count per chapter.) And if I changed something or added a thing while writing, I go back to the outline after and add it in so it all lines up and I don't forget something I did.

If a beat doesn't fit its own chapter, I make it a scene. It's also okay for multiple beats to happen in one chapter too.

Do the same for any other POVs involved in the story. Try to make each character have their own arc as well, no matter how small.

Really my main advice is go with your gut first because you can always add on or retract later. Write what you want (with some awareness of genre tropes/audience wants if you're trying to write to market to some extent). All book publishing is fickle and mean a lot of the time. And honestly unless you're one of the few who gets picked up by traditional publishers and offered an amazing deal, you'll be expected to pay for all the things you'd be paying for with self publishing, except with fewer rights to your own work. I'd rather pay and manage my own website, ads, and ARC readers and retain total rights to my own creations than give my rights to a publisher who might hold my book up for years, and still expect me to fund my own advertising, book tours etc.

And besides, if you self publish, there is no rule you can't have another book (and then even your backlog) traditionally published later on. You can have both.

[creylune]

i just finished the story of pokemon scarlet.... bro that last chapter is no joke........ i’m in shambles....

it feels very conflicting though because on one hand i don’t think a pokemon game has made me feel this way since black/white and that is saying a LOT, black was one of my first pokemon games that i played during summer break as a 14 year old and it changed my life. altered the trajectory of my life if you will.

with previous more “recent” titles like sun/moon, oras, sword/shield, of course i got caught up in them and enjoyed them, but i didn’t get super emotionally attached to any characters. lillie is an exception but in comparison to what b/w made me feel, s/m was only like, 60% the way there, and sw/sh would be like 20% (as fun as the game was, it was over fast and i didn’t feel like i was savoring it as much). also i don’t knock on sw/sh for its length, as short as it is, pokemon chiefly is a kids’ video game and usually the bulk of the hours you put in is for completing the dex lol. but yeah, the writing in sw/sh didn’t feel that memorable nor did it have much emotional impact on me.

spoilers for scarvio below

with scarlet, aside from nemona (lol, but i do like her), the subplots for the rivals really tugged at my heartstrings... i didn’t really care for team star when i started their missions, after all i don’t care about getting LP or extra TMs when my team is already good, but as i continued with it i was like... ah... bonds of friendship is the true power... *tear running down my face*.

AND THEN ARVEN. HOO BOY.

i cannot believe game freak has managed to make me feel for a boy what i did for n. this is saying so much if you know me and how insane i can be about n. game freak said here is a boy you will react to in a way that parallels how you reacted to n a full 10 years ago. both the 🥰 and 😭 emotions. THE ABANDONMENT ISSUES... AND THEN HE’S DEDICATING HIMSELF TO HELPING HIS DOG RECOVER?????!!! i was specifically targeted...

i also lost my childhood dog at the beginning of 2022, who in a way mirrors what mabosstiff is to arven for me... my dog was the only one in the house i could feel understood and loved by while i dealt with childhood trauma. so you know of course that would do me in emotionally T_T

there is also the whole gap moe and kinda grumpy but sincere senpai but he’s relying on you thing that makes me *clenches fist* but that’s besides the point

i was already enjoying myself taking my time with the gyms, team star, titans, exploring everywhere to get pokeballs/items, trying to complete the pokedex, shiny hunting and what not, so the final chapter really took me by surprise since i didn’t fully know what to expect...? i already liked the main cast but i didn’t feel a deep connection to all of them as a group because the subplots are all standalone/focused on each individual character. i did see all my friends sobbing over the last chapter (censored for spoilers obv) but man... they were right... i was surprised by how in-depth the section was. i’d say if you don’t explore too much (which is what i did on foot regrettably, takes 10x longer) the chapter is maybe 3ish hours long? which isn’t super long, but the dialogue sprinkled in really fleshes out the characters and establishes a bond between them that feels incredibly real and believable, even in the context of just a pokemon game. that’s what really took me by surprise.

i’m gonna be honest for the majority of the chapter my mouth was just open and i was like

and that’s even WITH seeing vague spoilers/hints and some screenshots out of context. so i had some vague idea about what was going on but i was STILL surprised by the turn of events and how ... like... everything fit together in a very believable way. and another thing, with most pokemon games all stakes depend on you as the player for whatever plot there is (stopping team aqua/magma, saving the world, stopping some capitalist dude, etc.) but the stakes in scarvio felt so much higher. obviously you know you’re going to save the day etc. but in the midst of it i was like 😳 hello???? bruh?

i joked to a friend last week about this being game freak’s answer to botw (he hasn’t played scarvio) but i’m ngl this takes it beyond what botw did for me... botw’s magic lies in the beauty of its world and fucking around, and maybe some of the npcs (like, yeah, i did get very into the bits of lore and link characterization of it, i won’t downplay that) but i feel like the plot and characters in scarvio are just so... polished? of course the games are different and have different purposes. but it managed to make me experience a hint of the youthful wonder and hope i felt as a 14 year old playing emerald and b/w all day and night long during summer vacation again... it’s that essence that really stands out. IT’S THE FOUND FAMILY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! THE ESSENCE OF YOUTH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! FINDING YOUR TREASURE/WHAT YOU CHERISH MOST IN LIFE AND HOLDING ON TO THAT AS YOU FACE THE FUTURE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

but all this just makes me incredibly sad because you know this game was rushed to hell to meet a deadline. and that’s disrespectful to the amount of love and thought put into this game’s worldbuilding, characters, and story. they deserved the time needed to ship the game in its best form, not the buggy state it’s in. all the fantastic aspects of the game are marred by bugs, glitches, and the fact that the switch is constantly struggling to run the game--my game crashed at least two times, and i feel like that’s lower than others’ experiences (luckily i didn’t lose any significant progress both times, but the fear of the game crashing did hang over me anytime i ran around or even talked to the pokemon center person 😭). even the credits lagged for me and i was like ... this doesn’t ruin the immersion but i’m smiling wryly to myself rn.

i 100% don’t regret buying and playing the game but i do wish i’d been able to buy and play the game in better circumstances... i was vehemently in the “i refuse to buy it right now in the state it’s in and contribute to the message to the pokemon company that this speed of putting out subpar quality games for faster buck is ok” but i caved because i saw my friend playing it (she caved because her boyfriend got it). 😔

anyways expect arven fanart eventually lol

[brushstrokesapocalyptic]

it’s time for the “overanalyzing one-off lines” show!

so the very first thing magnus says when he sees pit in chapter 2 of kid icarus: uprising is as follows:

“Well, I didn’t expect to see an angel here. Hope this doesn’t mean I’ve kicked the bucket.”

now, i’m not sure if you’re aware, but that’s a really weird thing for someone to say, and it’s even more weird that no one comments on it. pit and palutena go on talking about unrelated things, as if that’s a totally normal and expected thing for magnus to say.

now, if you’re like me, you probably also didn’t really react to this line the first few times you saw it. it’s the second chapter, kiu has a lot of slightly-odd lines which turn out to be foreshadowing. me, personally? my first thought was “oh, i guess angels are probably associated with escorting the dead to the afterlife,“ and then i moved on.

they’re not, though. that’s what reapers do. and there’s no way humans have these two races mixed up. just fucking look at them.

do they look anything alike to you??? no. they don’t. which raises the question of why, exactly, magnus said that.

now, we don’t know a lot about angels as a whole. pit (and by extension dark pit) is emphatically not the gold standard of angeldom. we can assume he looks fairly ordinary for an angel, seeing as no one has trouble identifying him as such. beyond that, though, a lot of what we know about angels comes from what pit isn’t. for starters, he can’t fly. and there’s something else, too, but i’ll get to that later.

before that, though, i’m gonna go through the various unsubstantiated comments made by people with a dubious level of authority on the subject. (incidentally, i sourced these screenshots from the wiki— much more convenient than trying to dig through youtube for every single random conversation.)

without any further ado! let’s get into it!

Angels as Messengers

Gaol: Aw, Palutena’s little messenger boy. And Magnus, it’s always a pleasure. (src)

in the specific context of overanalyzing magnus’s first line, this is an important sentence to pick out. magnus and gaol are both humans, both with presumably a fairly similar history as mercenaries up until gaol got stuffed in a suit of armor. but while magnus makes a weird comment about death, gaol calls pit a messenger.

and pit agrees with her!

Viridi: I wish I had an angel to do my bidding. It’s like having an intern.

Pit: I’m not an intern. I’m a messenger of the gods!

Viridi: Poor Pit. Don't you know that the definition of angel is "errand spirit"? (src)

this particular conversation is the most insight we get into angels as a whole, i think. viridi thinks of angels as like divine interns, there to do little tasks for gods, and palutena doesn’t exactly disagree with her. pit says they’re specifically messengers, which lines up with biblical mythology. i could see the traditional role of angels in the world of KI being exactly that, showing up to tell the humans what the gods have to say because the gods themselves are too busy being petty jerks to do it themselves.

The Angel’s Code of Conduct

Magnus: You go in fully dressed? Don't you at least want to change into a...swimming tunic or something?

Pit: Oh, no no no! The angel's code of conduct says that we must always be ready for duty.

Magnus: I guess you wouldn't be an angel if you didn't do things by the book. (src)

Pit: Hey! You know the angel's code of conduct! I need to be prepared at all times! (src)

another random little thing is the angel’s code of conduct. without a larger sample size, we can’t know if it’s a real thing or just an excuse to save on laundry, but apparently it’s against the rules to not be on call at all times. in pit’s case, the duty he has to be ready for is doing palutena’s dirty work, but it can easily mean just about anything— including, of course, being a messenger.

No Warrior

Chariot Master: But you are no warrior, angel. Tell me, why do you fight?

Pit: I fight for Lady Palutena. And I fight for the people under her protection!

Chariot Master: That's not reason enough for an angel. (src)

remember how i said there was something else weird about pit? the chariot master seems to think angels aren’t very prone to battle— or perhaps even that they’re actively opposed to it. this lines up well with the idea that they’re supposed to be messengers, peaceful go-betweens for gods and mortals. this does not line up well with pit, the adorable weapon of mass destruction.

and it also does absolutely nothing to explain the question driving the whole existence of this post.

you know what does kinda lean towards an explanation?

No Other Angels

Pit: Do all gods have their own angels, like you have me?

Palutena: No, I don't think that's necessarily the case. (src)

i said before that the Intern Pit conversation had the most illuminating information on angels. this is what i was actually referring to. on its own, it’s pretty innocuous, but it’s just as weird as the magnus line. shouldn’t pit know about other angels, seeing as he is one himself? but he doesn’t know if there are other angels.

the only angels we ever see are him and his clone. no one ever directly references the existence of other angels, they only make general statements about what angels as a whole are like— statements which clearly don’t apply to pit, meaning they’re not just extrapolating based on the one angel that definitely does exist.

the one time someone does comment on the hypothetical existence of other angels, palutena gives a vague answer to the tune of “no,” the topic is changed, and no one brings it up again.

let’s go over everything i’ve established about angels up to this point. they can fly, they’re peaceful messengers of the gods, and pit is the only one that seems to exist as of the start of KIU.

it should be pretty obvious at this point what answer i’m dancing around, if it wasn’t obvious from the start. pit is the only angel around because all the other ones are dead. the reason why magnus said what he did is that his thought process went something like this:

See an angel.

Think “Aren’t angels extinct? Is that a ghost? Am I a ghost? I sure hope not.“

Make a quip about that.

Move on with his life, because he isn’t dead and evidently neither is this guy.

i’m not gonna pretend i went into this post with the intent of any other conclusion to that mystery. anyone who’s bothered glancing over a plot summary for the original kid icarus can draw that conclusion. it’s certainly what i did, reinforced by fics by people who had the same thought!

the truth, however, is that this was all a trick to get you to read my analysis of the theoretical nature of angels as a race. now that you’re invested, i’m going to dramatically throw aside my cape and reveal my TRUE FORM: telling people that fandom consensus is wrong, and my ideas are cooler and better than everyone else’s and you should all throw roses at my feet and bow before your king.

(or just, y’know, take it as the subjective analysis that it is. whatever floats your boat.)

Hot Takes

the original kid icarus does not actually tell you about angels going extinct. here’s the wiki article with the full text of the backstory, just for convenience, so you know what i’m on about for the rest of this post.

so, the part of the story that i think gets misinterpreted is this part about palutena’s army.

Medusa led a surprise attack on Palutena's army which could barely fend off the attack. Palutena's army suffered major losses and was heavily defeated in the final battle.

specifically, i think a lot of people interpret said army as having been made up at least partly of angels. sure, in the actual game it consists entirely of centurions, but you have to take old NES games with a grain of salt. i know i don’t buy for a second that pit was part of palutena’s guard before the original game (he was just too goddamn young), there’s nothing wrong with reinterpreting things.

recall everything i established about angels already, though. this is the hot official lore, from the game everyone knows and loves. angels are messengers, and if the chariot master is to be believed, never warriors. pit is an outlier. palutena’s army consists of centurions, not angels. if medusa wiped them out, it wasn’t because they were fighting for palutena.

(and honestly, i don’t think angels are necessarily associated with palutena exclusively. sure, she’s got the wing imagery, and she’s got the one known surviving angel working for her, at least up until pittoo is born. but angels are messengers of the gods, not messengers of palutena. again, pit is an outlier.)

which all brings us to the real question of this post.

what the FUCK happened to all the other angels? why is there only pit? why does magnus act surprised to see a messenger of the gods, and make a quip about being dead, if not because angels are otherwise extinct?! WHO KILLED THEM, AND WHY?!

thus concludes the “over analyzing one-off lines“ show. see you next, uh, maybe at some point if i feel like it!

(also another thought i had but couldn’t find room to fit it in properly: the gods don’t really act like angels are all extinct, but i feel like that can be explained through the sheer scale of a god’s lifespan. if we assume they were wiped out sometime around the original kid icarus (even if not as palutena’s army) then that’s a whole twenty-five years. that’s a long time for us humans, but for a god, that might as well be last tuesday. “yeah, i know what angels are like. sure wish i could have one. too bad palutena’s got a monopoly on the one single angel that medusa didn’t manage to wreck.”)

[digital-dhampirs]

vnc episode 12 thoughts

The thrilling conclusion to the Vanitas no Carte anime’s first cour is out, and I have thoughts! I’m still considering doing a full season/ fill cour review, but I have a Lot of episode 12- specific opinions, so this review / breakdown / thing will focus around e12!

A warning before we begin— review will contain spoilers for events that take place in the vnc manga and not in the anime, and will most likely spoil some sections of the anime’s next cour. With that, let’s get started!

Episode 12 of the VnC anime covers chapters 19, 21, 22, and 23 of the manga.

To begin this review in a brutally honest way, this episode was… in my opinion as a manga reader… bad. It did have some ok moments, but generally devoted a lot of its time to a plotline that (while adorable) isn’t actually super important compared to what was left on the wayside. Vanitas and Noé’s fight over blood drinking is fine, I guess, but why’d we get that minute long flashback compilation and not Dante’s conversation with Dominique, or Roland and Olivier’s complete conversation, or Astolfo’s excitement to hunt vampires, or Mikhail?

I really truly wish the show had taken some of the money and time that went into the Vanitas and Noé fight from chapter 23 and put it into the arguably much more important and interesting parts of this episode. Ruthven drinking Noé’s blood, Roland’s threat, and Chloé and Astolfo’s introductions all had some very janky stills and animations. It truly irked me to see that time and effort went into making Noé’s mouth move while he’s mentally monologuing about wanting to drink Vanitas’s blood, while Roland’s fantastic threat from Chapter 22 got… this. click on image for worse quality

The episode also decided to continue E11’s habit of chopping scenes up and mashing them together. In E11 this was a very not great decision, but was ultimately somewhat forgiveable from a tone point of view. In E12, meanwhile, it’s just all out chaos as the anime tries to string five completely separate scenes into something coherent (Noé and Vanitas in the hotel, Ruthven and Jeanne in the street, Domi and Dante on the stairs, Roland and Olivier in the chasseur compound, and a flashback to complete the Ruthven and Noé encounter from E11). Suffice it to say the anime does not succeed in this endeavor.

What really irritates me about this is that the manga already provided a framework for the anime to work these scenes together into. A frantic Vanitas reunites with Noé, Ruthven meets Jeanne in the street, Roland and Olivier speak about the beast, we see a mysterious flashback of Chloé calling for Jeanne as they talk, cut to Jeanne in the present as Dante and Ruthven’s attendants simultaneously tell Ruthven and Vanitas about the beast’s return.

I really wish the anime could’ve just given us the conclusion to the Ruthven scene at the start of the episode, done the OP, and then followed this series of events to a T. But it didn’t, and the result is a bit of a mess.

The anime’s choice to omit half of Roland and Olivier’s conversation means Dante’s announcement about the beast being back has no meaning or weight; Vanitas running to the hotel before we know what actually happened to Noé at the cafe ruins the drama and irony of the scene; Noé’s lack of memory of what happened at the cafe is muddled by the weirdly placed cafe flashback right afterwards; the anime putting Olivier’s “what that man believes in isn’t god” line seconds before the reveal of Roland’s intelligent and scheming nature doesn’t give the line enough room to breathe and stew; and the transition scene with Domi and Dante just doesn’t fit. I can honestly say I would have preferred Dante just teleporting from the streets of Paris to Vani and Noé’s windowsill than have that scene smack dab in the middle of what’s already a confusing mishmash of way too many unconnected events.

Wow. That was a long, critical paragraph. one might even say it was just as chaotic and disorganized as the episode itself. I feel like I’m really living up to my fullest potential as a bitter manga simp. So! Let’s turn things around and talk about some of the good parts of this episode!!

First and foremost I want to compliment this episode’s music..! The soundtrack of VnC is just all round fantastic no matter what— whether it’s playing during a goofy scene or a fight, it’s is bound to be fantastic. I think my favorite pieces are the ones that play at quiet, ominous moments— the music during Vanitas and Dante’s conversation about the beast is excellent, adding something truly incredible to the atmosphere created by the illustrations of the beast and the eerie green light of the scene. The way the music lines up with Olivier’s “what that man believes in…” line during that one flashback is similarly awesome.

This episode also has very nice voice acting..! Despite all of its struggles in the visual and plot department, pretty much everything to do with the VnC anime’s audio is stellar. I’ve become a big fan of Jeanne, Roland, and Olivier’s voices (I can’t wait to see how Olivier’s VA works with all his screaming in the Gévaudan arc); Astolfo’s voice is perfect for him (I am similarly excited to see his clipped, polite tone take a turn for the insane as the Gévaudan arc moves forwards); and as always our protagonists’ voices are great.

My one singular problem with the voice acting this episode is Chloé. I don’t know why, but she sounds like a catgirl from a fantasy anime rather than a multiple- centuries- old vampire. I don’t know what I was expecting from her voice, but this wasn’t it. I really hope Chloé’s voice will grow on me like Roland’s did, but there’s just something about it that feels off to me.

However! That one detriment doesn’t detract from the fact that this episode does have some very beautiful moments, especially during that one last scene with Chloé at the end. Visually, Chloé is absolutely spot on— I only hope the show has the budget to keep giving her pretty, pretty scenes like this. The scene where Vanitas and Dante discuss the beast is also very very nice to look at. The monochromatic red section of Ruthven and Noé’s scene is excellent. And, while I’m still annoyed that this scene got so much love put into it and others did not, Noé’s spotlight-lit monologue is aesthetically pleasing as well.

With that, we’ve covered all of my main thoughts on the final episode of the vnc anime’s first cour! My feelings towards this episode’s plot and pacing are overwhelmingly critical, and the episode’s visuals are a toss up (leaning on the side of bad, @/ that Roland screenshot), b u t the episode’s music and voice acting are both fantastic. And honestly? That’s kinda how I feel about this whole cour of the anime.

Episode 12 might not have been “good”, but I believe it’s a very neat representation of the best and worst of what Vanitas no Carte as an anime has to offer.

Despite all my critiques I am still legally obligated to love this anime, and can’t wait to see the Gévaudan arc in the next cour!

Fun Fact

The weirdly technological background when Noé realizes he’s hungry makes absolutely no sense for an anime set in 1889, but for some reason that just makes this scene funnier to me

[ahwait-no-yes]

Let’s talk about if Saihara hated Ouma

So lately I’ve actually seen a bit more comments on how Saihara doesn’t actually like Ouma and people have gone as far as saying he hates him and idk why people genuinely believe it so here I am about to refute that (I’ve been waiting ages to make this post just so you know so this came out as a horribly unstructured ramble more than anything oops)

some notes beforehand:

I have an obvious bias as I do ship saiouma. although i’ll try to be neutral on what I say here, I can’t hide my bias. I have tried to include what people that hate this ship believe to counter them though, also if you ship other things that’s totally fine?? don’t think of any of this as an attack at your ship and I’m not saying Saihara loved Ouma, I’m just tired of people saying Saihara hated him.

You’re allowed to respectfully disagree as long as you don’t berate me or say I don’t know the game when the majority of the screenshots in this are from my own gameplay, lmao. 

and massive whole-game spoilers! Don’t read this if you’ve not finished DRV3!

Glad to know you made it under the cut! now I can begin with where I think people got this idea that Saihara hates him from- the infamous “You’re alone Kokichi and you always will be” line.

I admit this was very cold and still breaks my fragile saiou heart, but to base Saihara’s entire perspective of Ouma on this one line he said while he wasn’t thinking straight is just.. no.. It’s unrealistic. we’ve seen how Saihara is able to adapt his views and grow (I’ll come back to this later), he’s not stubborn in this regard like Momota or even Ouma is, so even if he did mean it 100% (which I doubt because when *anybody* is angry they will say or do things they may regret had they been calmer), it’s not like his view on Ouma from chapter 4 was his final view on him. And that’s what people fail to realise. 

So, how does Saihara view Ouma then?

well, I’d say he’s been interested in Ouma as a detective from the moment he met him with his curiosity piqued at Ouma’s claims of leading a secret organisation.

and he remains curious about Ouma throughout, always questioning why Ouma says certain things, what Ouma is lying for, he just wants to figure him out- and this doesn’t just apply to free time events either

I think you get my point there, now, I think if I didn’t ship saiou and read this, I’d argue these are all pre-chapter 5 and before the breaking line so he may have been curious before but not after- that then brings me to my next point

Saihara was confident- dare I say believed- in Ouma, especially after Chapter 5.

how bold of me to say ikr, but this ties in to Saihara’s ability to adapt his views. He’s sort of like a mixture of both Kaito and Ouma honestly, because naturally as a detective he has to be suspicious and think logically as Ouma does, while at the same time Kaito taught him to believe in his friends which has also helped him to advance in trials. I think he might have extended this belief to Ouma, because he trusts that Ouma is doing what he does for a reason.

In fact, I’d argue he’s the only one of the remaining group who wouldn’t readily accept pinning Ouma down as a villain. If anything, it’s the opposite- Saihara fought to clear Ouma’s name, and never stopped trying to understand whether or not his intentions were true or false

i’ll just drop this screenshot here (that i named THIS MAKES ME SO HAPPY.png in case you were wondering)

this is what I mean when I say he wouldn’t accept it as fast as the others and would second-guess it, bear in mind this is the moment Ouma “admitted” to being the mastermind. and it’s not like this doubt was sudden or anything, cause I can recall this moment (that I actually didn’t catch on to on my first playthrough)

which gives me the idea that hadn’t Ouma purposefully messed with everyone and built up his bad reputation, it would’ve been so much easier for Saihara to disprove him being the mastermind at the point he said it. 

Anyway, going back to my point- excluding Kaito (cause Ouma directly told him), Saihara is the first to bring up Ouma’s innocence, and this is what I mean when I say Saihara believed in Ouma

note that I say believed in. believing Ouma and believing in Ouma are different, it’s like how loving someone and being in love with someone are two different things, so don’t argue that by saying “he didn’t trust him” because ik that and that’s not what I’m trying to say.

but he did believe that Ouma had his reasons, and he tried to discover and understand them. I mean, take this for example

he’s already on board lool look at him go, but no really look at the confidence

he’s both confident in himself and in Ouma not lying here, then goes back to being curious about his intentions

oh and let’s not forget who it was that searched Ouma’s lab to find clues to prove he is a remnant of despair. Why do you need to search for evidence for something you (and the others even more) think is irrefutably true? the answer is obvious- he was doubtful of it from the start, and needed evidence to convince himself it was true, but then as he found nothing to prove it (and even evidence against it), he had to convince the others of it too- and prove Ouma’s innocence

(the last screenshot was from Hikkie’s playthrough on Youtube) 

But as you can see, he’s clearing Ouma’s name as the leader of the Remnants of Despair. 

Now, I bet someone would argue that this only proves Saihara was determined to find the truth in general, because he’s mister detective, so I’ll raise you the fact that Saihara didn’t need to try figuring why Ouma does the things he does- he could leave it at just knowing the truth and if he really didn’t like Ouma like people say then there’s not much merit to it. 

“So what if I know this now? I didn’t care about him, it’s pointless” he could’ve thought something like that, but no

(I also think the “you’re lying again kokichi, there’s a method to your madness” moment fits here too)

Not only this, but there’s also how Saihara learnt from him.

honestly im still kinda mindblown from this ever since I first realised it, but when you think about it, Ouma hinted to Saihara in his FTEs how to win the game.

(those 3 screenshots are from justonegamr’s kokichi’s FTE video; random fun fact this was the playthrough that i watched while first getting into drv3)

But if you think about it, Ouma tried this again in his own trial in his attempt at ending the killing game and then Saihara also used this to actually end it

Not only that (which personally i think is pretty powerful in itself), but Saihara also tries to take Ouma seriously and picks up hints he leaves and uses them later

as well as

et

(and generally just)

generally, Ouma will hint and then Saihara will pick it up. it’s been like that for the whole game- why should Saihara give any extra thought to what Ouma hints if he dislikes him?? really, he could’ve just ignored him the same way he did at the end of chapter 4- but again, he didn’t “”hate”” Ouma enough to keep ignoring him, he considered him a friend in the end anyway.

and the end is what I’ll talk about now, too.

first- can we just acknowledge this?

he doesn’t ignore Ouma at all here. even though he didn’t trust him, he was sad to have lost him. 

Not to mention the way he thinks about lying at the end of Chapter 6. (like, please this is just-  *chefs kiss*)

IMAGINE Ouma was alive to hear him say that omg but Saihara could (and probably would) extend what he says here to Ouma himself- y’know, the ‘embodiment of lies’

by thinking about lies in a different angle instead of at face value like this, he gets a more neutral view on them rather than just thinking “they’re bad!!”, why wouldn’t he be able to do the same for Ouma? especially now that he knows Ouma was innocent and actually hated the game as much as they all did. I mean hey, even after chapter 5′s trial he sort of already thinks about lies differently

and throughout this post, I’ve tried to avoid talking about his free time events or his salmon mode ending because people always say “well they’re not canon” and to that I say not canon to the plot, yes, but still canon to the characters. so yeah, I don’t disregard any of them.

from this point onwards these all technically happen before chapter 5, so it’s not entirely relevant to my point that saihara still liked ouma even after the end of chapter 4, but it’s still something that shows he liked him beforehand at least. I mainly just wanna ramble though haha

one thing I’ve always thought was interesting was how Saihara easily lashed out at Kaito in his own free time event

and Kaito is undeniably Saihara’s best friend who he holds in high regard. If Saihara having backbone means he doesn’t like someone then damn bye bye momota have a nice trip in space

in terms of ouma and saihara though 

how about the fact that Saihara willingly sat there and played rock paper scissors (janken pon!) with Ouma 100 times?? bruh I got bored playing that with my brother after 8 rounds yesterday how would Saihara manage 100?? would you really have the patience for that when you don’t even like the person you’re playing with?

how about his third free time event too?

(from justonegamr’s kokichi fte video)

Saihara wanted to spend some time with Ouma, that’s- its literally written there I don’t know what you want from me the guy wanted a nice time with someone he supposedly doesnt like

what I love about this is how “reaching out” could be taken both literally and figuratively. Wanting to understand someone and trying to find a way to but them being too unwilling to trust anyone.. damn 😔👊 also shuuichi either wanted to handshake or hold hands, what else do you do when you reach for someone’s hand come on

oh yes and how about that he’s content with the refusal because it allowed him to figure out a small thing about Ouma? understanding that Ouma has a different way of being reached out to? mhm please think about that for a bit

that parallel in the salmon ending too...

he considered how it’ll be like with him after they get out and how he’ll learn about him, then ultimately decided when ouma reached out to him that he does want this, and even comments on the warmth of his hand... afhskfdlj

his blush when ouma mentions how his lies didn’t bore saihara was also a very cute moment

ooh and what about the love hotel???

there’s that one line “I know i’m meant to be Kokichi’s ideal in this fantasy but when he tells me he loves me I feel like he means the opposite” or something like that- i’d argue it’s because he’s cautious of Ouma for one but also am I getting something wrong here or is he talking about how he, Shuuichi, thinks Ouma doesn’t like him?  because I see people argue this is proof saihara doesn’t like ouma but all he’s really doing is just doubting ouma loves him

well in any case

WHY would he want him to stay in a love hotel of all places if he disliked him?! I know I’m just a broken record at this point but I can’t think of anything logical for it. they didnt even need to include that line in the scene at all but they did like they could’ve easily said something to do with realising where he was instead but nah. even after the event’s over, he says to himself

doesn’t he sound disappointed by it? and the fact that he even questions if it was a dream- okay  

ooh, something i’ve realised while writing this as well: it kind of seems like Saihara might not want to like him but does anyway; he quickly ‘smothered the thought’ of staying with Kokichi, didn’t want to admit that Ouma’s lies never bored him, and I also thought about how in one of Kaito’s free time events he says to himself “I shouldn’t be talking about another boy like that”- well, maybe it’s similar for how he thinks of ouma? it’s not like Saihara didn’t care for the others’ opinion on him (probably the opposite ngl if you mess up in class trials he says something along the lines of“Ah I screwed up! They probably think I’m a fraud”) and considering nobody else liked ouma (except for maybe gonta) I wouldn’t be surprised if he felt shame for liking him, thus repressing that feeling (especially around the others, there’s that part in trial 4 where he’s trying to convince kaito he isn’t siding with ouma cause he knows by doing that could damage his friendship with his bro)

I mean this is something I only thought of just now, but it could be plausible (i hope?)

One last thing- I find it incredibly funny how in chapter 2 when ouma is literally on top of saihara he doesn’t freak out or scream and everyone else in the room is also completely chill with it and unquestioning. no really they’re just standing there.. and how long was ouma even in that position for??

Now, I think that’s all. So to finish off, I’ll just say

People get the idea that saiouma is bad because some don’t realise Saihara can still like a person without idolising or putting them on a pedestal. Idk if this is gonna sound controversial or not, but I honestly do think he did exactly that to Kaito and Kaede- which doesn’t make what they have with him toxic or bad at all, I just think his view on Ouma is a lot more realistic and less clouded. Heck, if Saihara canonically liked Ouma as much as he does with the other two I don’t know if I’d ship saiouma as hard as I do (it is fun to imagine though).

If you actually read through this then.. wow? I’m surprised you got through this unstructured mess? I hope you can agree with me for some of my points at least but I’m not here to convince you or anything, this has just been on my mind for weeks now I needed to get it out somehow.

I said it at the start and i’ll say it again now too- i didn’t intend on attacking or comparing saiou to any other ships so I do apologise if I seem like it, i’m just terrible with my wording (lmk if something genuinely offended you, i’ll probably change it) but you’re free to ship whatever you like cause at the end of the day it’s just a bit of fun. that being said, I don’t want to actually argue on this so please don’t haha, i’ve contemplated just deleting this but I’ve put a lot of effort into this post even though i cant analyse for 💩

I hope you can enjoy the rest of your day!

have the kokichi gaygun as a farewell present

[felassan]

Insights into DAI’s development from Blood, Sweat, and Pixels

The book is by game industry journalist Jason Schreier (it’s an interesting read and well-written, I recommend it). This is the cliff notes version of the DAI chapter. This info isn’t new as the book is from 2017 (I finally got around to buying it). Some insight into DAO, DA2 and cancelled DA projects is also given. Cut for length.

BW hoped that DA would become the LotR of video games. DAO’s development was “a hellish seven-year slog”

The DAI team are compared to a chaotic “pirate ship”, which is what they called themselves internally. “It’ll get where it needs to go, but it’s going to go all over the place. Sail over here. Drink some rum. Go over here. Do something else. That’s how Mark Darrah likes to run his team.” An alternative take from someone else who worked on the game: “It was compared to a pirate ship because it was chaotic and the loudest voice in the room usually set the direction. I think they smartly adopted the name and morphed it into something better.”

A game about the Inquisition and the large-scale political conflicts it solves across Thedas, where the PC was the Inquisitor, was originally the vision for ‘DA2′. Plans had to change when SW:TOR’s development kept stalling and slipping. Frustrated EA execs wanted a new product from BW to bolster quarterly sales targets, and decided that DA would have to fill the gap. BW agreed to deliver DA2 within 16 months. “Basically, DA2 exists to fill that hole. That was the inception. It was always intended to be a game made to fit in that”

BW wanted to call it DA: Exodus, but EA’s marketing execs insisted on DA2, no matter what that name implied

DAO’s scope (Origin stories, that amount of big areas, variables, reactivity) was just not doable in a year, even if everyone worked overtime. To solve this problem, BW shelved the Inquisition idea and made a risky call: DA2 would be set in one city over time, allowing locations to be recycled and months to be shaved off dev time. They also axed DAO features like customizing party members’ equipment. These were the best calls they were able to make on a tight line

Many at BW are still proud of DA2. Those that worked on it grew closer from all being in it together

In certain dark accounting corners of EA, despite fan response to DA2 and its lower sales compared to DAO, DA2 is considered a wild success

By summer 2011 BW decided to cancel DA2′s expansion Exalted March in favor of a totally new game. They needed to get away from the stigma of DA2, reboot the franchise and show they could make triple-A quality good games. 

DAI was going to be the most ambitious game BW had ever made and had a lot to prove (that BW could return to form, that EA wasn’t crippling the studio, that BW could make an ‘open-world’ RPG with big environments). There was a bit of a tone around the industry that there were essentially 2 tiers of BW, the ME team and then everyone else, and the DA team had a scrappy desire to fight back against that

DAI was behind schedule early on due to unfamiliar new technology; the new engine Frostbite was very technically challenging and required more work than anyone had expected. Even before finishing DA2 BW were looking for a new engine for the next game. Eclipse was creaky, obsolete, not fully-featured, graphically lacking. The ME team used Unreal, which made inter-team collab difficult. “Our tech strategy was just a mess. Every time we’d start a new game, people would say, ‘Oh, we should just pick a new engine’.”

After meeting with an EA exec BW decided on Frostbite. Nobody had ever used it to make an RPG, but EA owned FB dev studio DICE, and the engine was powerful and had good graphic capabilities & visual effects. If BW started making all its games on FB, it could share tech with sister studios and borrow tools when they learned cool new tricks. 

For a while they worked on a prototype called Blackfoot, to get a feel for FB and to make a free-to-play DA MP game. It fizzled as the team was too small, which doesn’t lend itself well to working with FB, and was cancelled

BW resurfaced the old Inquisition idea. What might a DA3 look like on FB? Their plan by 2012 was to make an open-world RPG heavily inspired by Skyrim that hit all the beats DA2 couldn’t. “My secret mission was to shock and awe the players with the massive amounts of content.” People complained there wasn’t enough in DA2. “At the end of DAI, I actually want people to go, ‘Oh god, not [another] level’.”

It was originally called Dragon Age 3: Inquisition

BW wanted to launch on next-gen consoles only but EA’s profit forecasters were caught up in the rise of iPad and iPhone gaming and were worried the next-gen consoles wouldn’t sell well. As a safeguard EA insist it also ship on current-gen. Most games at that time followed this strategy. Shipping on 5 platforms at once would be a first for BW

Ambitions were piling up. This was to be BW’s first 3D open-world game, and their first game on Frostbite, an engine that had never been used to make RPGs. It needed to be made in roughly two years, it needed to ship on 5 platforms, and, oh yeah, it needed to restore the reputation of a studio that had been beaten up pretty badly. “Basically we had to do new consoles, a new engine, new gameplay, build the hugest game that we’ve ever made, and build it to a higher standard than we ever did. With tools that don’t exist.”

FB didn’t have RPG stats, a visible PC, spells, save systems, a party of 4 people, the same kind of cutscenes etc and couldn’t create any of those things. BW had to create these on top of it. BW initially underestimated how much work this would be. BW were the FB guinea pigs. Early on in DAI’s development, even the most basic tasks were excruciating, and this impacted even fundamental aspects of game design and dev. When FB’s tools did function they were finicky and difficult. DICE’s team supported them but had limited resources and were 8 hours ahead. Since creating new content in FB was so difficult, trying to evaluate its quality became impossible. FB engine updates made things even more challenging. After every one, BW had to manually merge and test it; this was debilitating, and there were times when the build didn’t work for a month or was really unstable.

Meanwhile the art department were having a blast. FB was great for big beautiful environments. For months they made as much as possible, taking educated guesses when they didn’t know yet what the designers needed. “For a long time there was a joke on the project that we’d made a fantastic-looking screenshot generator, because you could walk around these levels with nothing to do. You could take great pictures.”

The concept of DAI as open-world was stymying the story/writers and gameplay/designers teams. What were players going to do in these big landscapes? How could BW ensure exploring remained fun after many hours? Their teams didn’t have time for system designers to envision, iterate and test a good “core gameplay loop” (quests, encounters, activities etc). FB wouldn’t allow it. Designers couldn’t test new ideas or answer questions because basic features were missing or didn’t exist yet. 

EA’s CEO told BW they should have the ability to ride dragons and that this would make DAI sell 10 million copies. BW didn’t take this idea very seriously

BW had an abstract idea that the player would roam the world solving problems and building up power or influence they could use. But how would that look/work like in-game? This could have used refinement and testing but instead they decided to build some levels and hope they could figure it out as they went.

One day in late 2012, after a year of strained development on DAI, Mark Darrah asked Mike Laidlaw to go to lunch. “We’re walking out to his car,” Laidlaw said, “and I think he might have had a bit of a script in his head. [Darrah] said, ‘All right, I don’t actually know how to approach this, so I’m just going to say it. On a scale of one to apocalyptic... how upset would you be if I said [the player] could be, I dunno, a Qunari Inquisitor?’” 

Laidlaw was baffled. They’d decided that the player could be only a human in DAI. Adding other playable races like Darrah was asking for would mean they’d need to quadruple their budget for animation, voice acting, and scripting.

“I went, ‘I think we could make that work’,” Laidlaw said, asking Darrah if he could have more budget for dialogue. 

Darrah answered that if Laidlaw could make playable races happen, he couldn’t just have more dialogue. He could have an entire year of production.

Laidlaw was thrilled. “Fuck yeah, OK,” he recalled saying.

MD had actually already realized at this point it’d be impossible to finish DAI in 2013. They needed at least a year’s delay and adding the other playable races was part of a plan/planned pitch to secure this. He was in the process of putting together a pitch to EA: let BW delay the game, and in exchange it’d be bigger and better that anyone at EA had envisioned. These new marketing points included playable races, mounts and a new tactical camera. If EA wouldn’t let them delay, they would have had to cut things. Going into that BW were confident but nervous, especially in the wake of EA’s recent turmoil where they’d just parted ways with their CEO and had recruited a new board member while they hunted for a new one. They didn’t know how the new board member would react, and the delay would affect EA’s projections for that fiscal year. Maybe it was the convincing pitch, or the exec turmoil, or the specter of DA2, or maybe EA didn’t like being called “The Worst Company in America”. Winning that award 2 years in a row had had a tangible impact on the execs and led to feisty internal meetings on how to repair EA’s image. Whatever the reasons, EA greenlit the delay.

The PAX Crestwood demo was beautiful but almost entirely fake. By fall 2013, BW had implemented many of FB’s ‘parts’, but still didn’t know what kind of ‘car’ they were making. ML and team scripted the PAX demo by hand, entirely based on what BW thought would be in the game. The level & art assets were real but the gameplay wasn’t. “Part of what we had to do is go out early and try to be transparent because of DA2. And just say, ‘Look, here, it’s the game, it’s running live, it’s at PAX.’ Because we wanted to make that statement that we’re here for fans.”

DA2 hung on the team like a shadow. There was insecurity, uncertainty, they had trouble sticking to one vision. Which DA2 things were due to the short dev time and which were bad calls? What stuff should they reinvent? There were debates over combat (DAO-style vs DA2-style) and arguments over how to populate the wilderness.

In the months after that demo, BW cut much of what they’d shown in it. Even small features went through many permutations. DAI had no proper preproduction phase (important for testing and discarding things), so leads were stretched thin and had to make impulsive decisions.

By the end of 2013, DAI had 200+ people working on it, and dozens of additional outsourced artists in Russia and China. Coordinating all the work across various departments was challenging and a full-time job for several people. At this sheer scale of game dev, there are many complexities and inter-dependencies. Work finally became significantly less tedious and more doable when BW and DICE added more features to FB. Time was running out though, and another delay was a no.

The team spent many hours in November and December piecing together a “narrative playable” version of the game to be the holiday period’s game build for BW staff to test that year. Feedback on the demo was bad. There were big complaints on story, that it didn’t make sense and was illogical. Originally the PC became Inquisitor and sealed the breach in the prologue, which removed a sense of urgency. In response the writers embarked on Operation Sledgehammer (breaking a bone to set it right), radically revising the entire first act.

The other big piece of negative feedback was that battles weren’t fun. Daniel Kading, who had recently joined BW and brought with him a rigorous new method for testing combat in games, went to BW leadership with a proposal: give him authority to open his own little lab with the other designers and call up the entire team for mandatory play sessions for test purposes. They agreed and he used this experiment to get test feedback and specifically pinpoint where problems were. Morale took a turn for the better that week, DK’s team made several tweaks, and through these sessions feedback ratings went from 1.2 to 8.8 four weeks later.

Many on the team wished they didn’t have to ship for old consoles (clunky, less powerful). BW leadership decided not to add features to the next-gen versions that wouldn’t be possible on the older ones, so that both versions of the game played the same. This limited things and meant the team had to find creative solutions. “I probably should’ve tried harder to kill [the last-gen] version of the game”, said Aaryn Flynn. In the end the next-gen consoles sold very well and only 10% of DAI sales were on last-gen.

“A lot of what we do is well-intentioned fakery,” said Patrick Weekes, pointing to a late quest called “Here Lies The Abyss”. “When you assault the fortress, you have a big cut scene that has a lot of Inquisition soldiers and a lot of Grey Wardens on the walls. And then anyone paying attention or looking for it as you’re fighting through the fortress will go, ‘Wow, I’m only actually fighting three to four guys at a time.’ Because in order for that to work [on old gen], you couldn’t have too many different character types on screen.”

Parts of DAI were still way behind schedule because it was so big and complex, and because some tools hadn’t started functioning until late on. Some basic features weren’t able to be implemented til the last minute (they were 8 months from ship before they could get all party members in the squad. At one point PW was playtesting to check if Iron Bull’s banter was firing, and realized there was no way to even recruit IB) and some flaws couldn’t be identified til the last few months. Trying to determine flow and pacing was rough.

They couldn’t disappoint fans again. They needed to take the time to revise and polish every aspect of DAI. “I think DAI is a direct response to DA2,” said Cameron Lee. “DAI was bigger than it needed to be. It had everything but the kitchen sink in it, to the point that we went too far... I think that having to deal with DA2 and the negative feedback we got on some parts of that was driving the team to want to put everything in and try to address every little problem or perceived problem.”

At this point they had 2 options: settle for an incomplete game, which would disappoint fans especially post-DA2, or crunch. They opted to crunch. It was the worst period of extended overtime in DAI’s development yet and was really rough: late nights, weekends, lost family time, 12-14 hour days, stress, mental health impacts.

During 2014′s crunch, they finally finished off features they wished they’d nailed down in year 1. They completed the Power (influence) system and added side quests, hidden treasures and puzzles. Things that weren’t working like destructible environments were promptly removed. The writers rewrote the prologue at least 6 times, but didn’t have enough time to pay such attention to the ending. Just a few months before launch pivotal features like jumping were added.

By summer BW had bumped back release by another 6 weeks for polish. DAI had about 99,000 bugs in it (qualitative and quantitative; things like “I was bored here” are a bug). “The number of bugs on an open-world game, I’ve never seen anything like it. But they’re all so easy to fix, so keep filing these bugs and we’ll keep fixing them.” For BW it was harder to discover them, and the QA team had to do creative experimentation and spend endless late nights testing things. PW would take builds home to let their 9 year old son play around. Their son was obsessed with mounting and dismounting the horse and accidentally discovered a bug where if you dismounted in the wrong place, all your companions’ gear would vanish. “It was because my son liked the horse so much more than anyone else ever had or will ever like the horse.”

MD had a knack for prioritizing which bugs should be fixed, like the one where you could get to inaccessible areas by jumping on Varric’s head. “Muscle memory is incredibly influential at this point. Through the hellfire which is game development, we’re forged into a unit, in that we know what everyone’s thinking and we understand everyone’s expectations.”

At launch they still didn’t have all their tools working, they only had their tools working enough.

DAI became the best-selling DA game, beating EA’s sales expectations in just a few weeks. If you look closely you can see the lingering remnants of its chaotic development, like the “garbage quests” in the Hinterlands. Some players didn’t realize they could leave the area and others got caught in a “weird, compulsive gratification loop”. Internet commentators rushed to blame “those damn lazy devs” but really, these were the natural consequences of DAI’s struggles. Maybe things would have been different if they’d miraculously received another year of dev time, or if they’d had years before starting development to build FB’s tools first.

“The challenge of the Hinterlands and what it represented to the opening 10 hours of DAI is exactly the struggle of learning to build open-world gameplay and mechanisms when you are a linear narrative story studio,” said Aaryn Flynn.

“DA2 was the product of a remarkable time-line challenge,” said Mike Laidlaw, “DAI was the product of a remarkable technical challenge. But it had enough time to cook, and as a result it was a much better game.”

Read the chapter for full details of course!

[tsukidrama]

so glad i’ve found other people who agree annie is a lesbian, it’s been a headcanon of mine since i started the show and finding out she ends up with a man (nevertheless one of my least favourite characters) is very upsetting

...except they don't. there's literally no evidence that a romantic relationship between them is canon. i don't understand why people seem to assume this. because she's looking at him? because she's talking to him? if that's all it takes to "get together" with someone then i guess i've been cheating on my wife for a while now (sarcasm, if you couldn't tell). don't try and drag me into the delusion lads.

this post has been a long time coming, and i know it's salty as fuck. but i've never voiced these opinions before and i've gotten an increasing number of asks concerning my opinion of Annie and a certain popular ship involving her.

so... if you ship Annie with Armin, this is your warning: you're not gonna like what i have to say and you should keep scrolling. if you choose to read anyway and get mad then don't argue on my post or i'll block you.

first and foremost: i agree with you all the way. that ship is sacrilege beyond words, and armin is also my least favorite character. by a lot honestly, but everyone always wants to talk about him like he's wittle uwu baby so i just keep my mouth shut most of the time. but i could make a whole post about it. he does some really dark shit, and especially post-Shiganshina.

i've never liked him but my hate solidified and festered during the scene where Armin tells Bertholdt and Reiner that Annie is awake and being tortured (lies, but still). how can you watch him graphically describe her suffering with a grin and then turn around and be like like "well he's just so gentle and sweet to her" ...lmao are y'all good? get help.

aight now i'm gonna talk about the scene in 131. at the time of its release it was the harbinger of my misery and the worst thing that's ever happened to me.

but it always felt kind of off to me. he's so distracted, and much less empathetic than usual. which is ?? seeing as anyone who is into Annie would know that she rarely opens up like that. until 139 i thought i was in denial and just looking for things to pick apart, but then we got the reveal that this conversation took place directly after Armin talked to Eren for the last time.

and it makes the scene feel different. go back and read the 131 scene after you read the one in 139. Eren's words are too fresh in his mind for Armin to even focus, and you'll see how much his conversation with Annie has to do with him coming to terms with Eren's death.

"I still want to believe there's a world we don't know about yet out there beyond the walls."

it says a lot to me that Armin's face while talking to Annie looks the way it does, meanwhile just minutes ago he was looking at Eren like this with stars in his eyes:

this turned more pro-eremin than i meant for it to but regardless of the nature of that relationship, it's canon that Eren is more important to Armin in every capacity. from the way he looks at him, to the way he speaks to him.

we've seen how Isayama addresses canon relationships. attack on titan is one of those shows that has very, very few romantic relationships. and the ones that are canon, are pretty fuckin explicitly stated.

like sorry but "i did it because i wanted to see you" doesn't even come close to "marry me when all of this is over" or "i'll wrap [the scarf] around you as many times as you want"

i'm not putting the screenshots or i may vomit but i suppose it's understandable why people interpreted the blushing in a flirty way. but the fact that they DON'T get together by the end of the series combined with the fact that he's thinking about Eren the whole time during the "confession scene" leads me to think uh, not so much.

and even with the blushing shit. there's that one scene in chapter 108, on the railroad car where they're all arguing about who will inherit the attack titan and everyone was blushing because they loved each other. yet i don't see anyone jumping to say that all the 104th graduates were in a 6-way romantic relationship.

people are allowed to have love for their friends, and Annie does like him. first he told her that she could have agency by choosing to be a good person, and he did talk to her in the crystal. later they bond over feeling like they were forced to become monsters. they have the same shared trauma that all the titan shifters have.

i've been watching attack on titan for a very long time, and in all my years when the question "is Annie a lesbian?" has been posed, everybody who has met a gay person in real life has said "um, duh."

my point: it's out of character for Annie to date a man. it really is, and we all know it. she and Armin are both gay as fuck and that's why they're close. in my opinion/experience anyone that thinks otherwise is either heteronormative at best and homophobic at worst.

other than having really bad taste, over the years i've noticed that everyone who ships aruani can fit into one of the following categories: 1) thinks Ymir and Historia are "close friends" 2) painfully heterosexual OR 3) unable to accept the fact that they're gay and backed so far into the closet that it's actually sad.

and to respond to the point of this ask! which is that if you think Annie is a lesbian then you're in the right place. i adore that woman and i definitely have a lot planned for her with my writing ♡♡♡

[cathyparrlyn]

The truth behind the politics-notmything drama

TLDR: Charley’s explanation has been proven to be false through clear evidence, her contracting statements with what was found from original authors, and too many coincidental or suspicious points.

There are too many screenshots to all fit in this one post, so we ended up putting only a few on here. For the full post, here is a link to the google doc, you can also read this instead:

As many of you may already know, I have recently made a callout post against Charley (@politics-notmything) for being a plagiarist. She, however, has made an explanation of her side of the story. After lots of careful investigating, I can honestly confirm that Charley is in fact a plagiarist and lied about certain points of the situation.

To start off, I waited to make this post until I was basically 100% sure on whether her explanation was the truth or not. There was much evidence against her. However, a friend of mine decided to check the IP addresses of each of the tumblr blogs she had mentioned (I did not ask them to by the way, they just sent them to me thinking it would help.) They sent me them and it showed that Charley's main account politics-notmything had the same IP address as both the fake wolf1ez account that she claimed to trick her and the fake Nikole account she blamed. I will not, however, be posting her IP address as proof as I personally consider posting that publicly without her consent as doxxing, and I do not wish to harm Charley like that. I never even considered looking at her IP address as I am not comfortable with that nor technologically competent to even remember IP addresses are a thing you can look at. However, I can’t ignore that what my friend showed me is very blatant proof that confirms that Charley has been lying, so I shall mention it, but I refuse to send it to anyone and I have told them to do the same. Please respect that decision.

Some of you may just take my word for it on that. However, for those of you who don’t, here is all the other evidence stacking up against Charley’s story.

First things first, let’s say I didn’t know Charley’s explanation was false. Her explanation was that she plagiarized a friend instead who had plagiarized fics. Charley, in the end, had deceived people and accepted praise from those who were misled to believe that writing was true. Because of that and if her story was true, then she gave a platform to terf (later knowing they were one and continuing to post their work) and her followers had unintentionally supported a terf and plagiarist because of her deception. Now, she may have received credit, but she could've easily said at any point that the fics weren’t actually written by her but by someone else who was anonymous. AO3 even has some features to properly credit others.

The definition of plagiarism is the practice of taking someone else's work or ideas and passing them off as one's own. With this in mind, Charley had plagiarized no matter what, and the fact that she never once told anyone about this co owner and has held conversations with me about how she came up with, wrote, and edited She Used to Be Mine, a plagiarized fic, all by herself is very suspicious.

The proof Charley has been sending is also on invalid sites where you can easily create your own evidence. Everyone already knows and understands the unreliability of google docs with handling fake emails and stuff I presume. As for Snapchat, you can very well change the date. It’s the exact same thing as time traveling in animal crossing, and it’s actually decently known among people. Here is a link to an example of someone altering time on snap chat, followed by the results.

(Results are on the google doc.)

Now some might wonder why would she go through all the trouble of doing that? Well, to create evidence to clear herself. The fact that it was posted quite a bit later, and that she had told people prior to this that she deleted all the messages and proof of information that could blatantly defend herself is very sketchy. Not to mention, the account she @ed as “Nikole” was fake and confirmed to be nonexistent by a friend of mine.

Moreover, the tumblr account that she claimed was Nikoles was recently changed between the two days. When Charley first mentioned the account, me and my friends all investigated it and found a post saying she had another account. However, since then it was altered to say the account Charley @ed and the account had a new bio saying her snap chat is the one Charley @ed. But the account was nonexistent the day before?

Is this simply just a coincidence? Well, let’s see what else is a coincidence.

Charley has recently been writing smut and this blamed blog is an NSFW blog. Coincidence? Maybe. But she also claimed to have cut the person out of her life last year. The blog however is more recently made in late 2020. Why would Charley still be in contact with her accounts? Is this another coincidence? Also, if they did cut things off, why continue to still post her work? And why would two of the fics be things that were made this year if she ended their friendship in 2019? How would she have gotten that from “Nikole” if they were cut off? We even asked the original author of one of the fics about the situation and they confirmed that they gave no permission for someone to copy their fic.

Are these all coincidences too? Not to mention, Charley didn’t say just one person she never mentioned before had tricked her into plagiarism, but two. Charley claimed to be good friends with the author of the original Luck be a Lady and have received permission from them, however, they never spoke to Charley before nor gave permission to anyone to use their fic.

When it was found that the original author of the fic that Luck Be a Lady plagiarized was not friends with Charley nor gave her permission like she had said they did, Charley claimed another account that was fake had tricked her.

Again? How likely is that to even happen once, let alone twice? Or for someone with no post on an account that could have easily been made had even interacted with Charley? Or that the texting style in the evidence she posted is similar to her own and could be edited? And also the conversation itself is way too sketchy and convenient?

(Check google doc or Charley’s post for the conversation.)

Charley also just happened to request help with the title in a group chat l was in with her, but she requested help 3 weeks after the conversation she claims to have happened above.

( @all-my-love-cathy by the way was the one who named it, her name was censored because its her personal account with her name real)

Maybe it's just me, but 3 weeks seems like a bit of a long time to wait to name a fic that already had a storyline and pre-written chapters.

Moreover, the fake Wolf1ez also just so coincidentally happened to recently have copied the Twitter pfp of the account that Charley had seen but not their actual tumblr account? And that this blog that doesn’t make posts decided to tell Charley to use a fic they didn’t write?

How did they even find her blog? And why wouldn’t Charley at least double check the situation here since the person is very suspicious in the conversation they had, had no posts and she doesn’t know them? This is the "close friend" they claimed to have co authored with?

Also, Charley claimed to have commented on the AO3 fic and then deleted it. However, the original author never got an email for this. Whether it’s anonymous or not, they would have seen that a comment was deleted, yet they didn’t have one and all the other comments were fine.

The author even had a note written at latest in January 2020 telling their readers to talk to them on Twitter instead of Tumblr.

Their A/N^

(more screenshots are on the google docs)

Why would she discuss it with them on tumblr then if the author didn’t like tumblr, and Charley does in fact have a Twitter, so why not talk to them there? That’s pretty sketchy.

Also speaking of coincidences, how about the fact that the most recent fic she updated that was confirmed to be plagiarized happened to be the very last fic on the supposed list she claimed to have been given by “Nikole”? Or how she later contradicts herself by saying she won’t upload anymore of her fics? What left did she have to upload if they were all used?

Furthermore, the fic just so happened to also be a Rent fic. Wow, right after Hope Mill Theater released Rent with Millie and Maiya both starring in roles, something Charley had seen and recently expressed great interest in. What a coincidence that it was the one she posted that day. Or how about the other fics that were all copied also being her interests? So many coincidences.

Now I hope it is understood that all of these together just don’t add up. Those are way too many “coincidences” for her explanation to be true. The original authors contacted had never spoken to Charley or given her permission to use their fics, and the accounts she used made no sense with how they were presented. Her explanation feels somewhat of an excuse, and the fact that there is definite proof that she has lied in her explanation and is connected to the accounts is unsettling. Blaming a makeup blog is already messed up, but calling them a terf?

I’m sorry if this post is upsetting to anyone? I know a lot of people have been openly angry or devastated at the news of what has been done. Plagiarism is not okay, neither is deception. To see such a big blog that you might have once admired lie to you and steal from others isn’t easy, especially since she has such a big following that others are dreaming to have. Not to mention, this definitely looks bad for fic writers, especially shippers as she was one of the major faces of Parrlyn. I think it’s important to recognize that we can’t encourage or simply overlook issues like these, nor is it fair to many fans. Please make sure to recognize this issue and become aware about it.

What Charley has done isn’t right, however, that doesn’t deny the fact that she is a human being just like every single one of us. She is very young and did something dumb, but she does not deserve to be sent any hate so please refrain from doing that if you so desired to. I know my blog is known for having issues with her in the past, but I genuinely mean it when I say I hope she learns from this and I don’t want her to be attacked. Nobody deserves to be sent hate, and as a fandom we should strive to be bigger and better people each day and only share positivity and kindness with each other.

Please, once again, give the original fic writers credit if you liked fics that were plagiarized. If you could spare a second to give them a kudos/like and possibly comment something simple like “I love this”, I’m sure it would mean a bunch to them. Hearing your fics were stolen is not easy, speaking from experience here as someone who was also plagiarized this year. They could use a bit of love, so please do consider it if you are comfortable with that.

Once again, I spent the past two days since I read Charley's explanation investigating the situation with a group of people. I just wanted to share the truth, maybe it’s the inner journalist in me. This is what I found with them and what I stand by. Believe what you want, I can’t force ideas onto anyone and I know some are bound to disagree with this, but it’s what I found.

For anyone upset over the incident and needs a place to rant or vent, my dms are open and so is my inbox. If you follow me on insta or are a friend on discord I would recommend those as I am a bit more active there. I’ll try to be on as much as I can the next few days in case anyone needs someone to talk to.

[hongism]

oh caly. i finally FINALLY read moc 40! literally seconds ago i just finished it!! i have so much to say but also nothing to say im so speechless??????? im sorry its taken me so long to read and send an ask i miss you dearly but life has again been busy and crazy rn and i honestly havent even been on tumblr much which is saying a lot bc im usually here 24/7 lol but anywaysss lets get into huh~

hi solar bestie im finally here eEEEEE sorry it took me so long but i’ve got some time today so im getting shit DONE!!!! but pLS never feel obliged to send asks, life comes first, life is more important, pls take care of yourself first and foremost!!!! okay ilysm bestie 👹💞💓

lord lets start with my feelings bc from the very beginning of the chapter my adrenaline was going, sis was on EDGE like i couldnt make my eyes move fast enough to read and let the break in take place!!! i legit was like clutching my pearls waiting for all hell to break loose!! the conversations y/n has with hongjoong are probably one of my fav parts of this whole story bc it just gets so raw like i love his character SO much hes honestly like top 3 fav characters in mists fr but like everything that comes out of his mouth i have like a guttural reaction to and its the best ugh!! okay so i took a few screenshots of moments i wanted to scream about and the first one was when joong pressed up against y/n to get her to phase through the door to unlock it idk man but that whole scene was fantastic and i liveddd!! just the entire break in up until her dream was just so fucking good like the writing sis!! ILL SAY IT AGAIN YOU MF QUEEN OF FANTASY AND SCIFI!!! no ones doing it like you!!!!!

feelings ! okay ! im GLAD THAT U WERE ON EDGE BUT IM ALSO SORRY!!! eeee it makes me happy to hear the emotions were written well enough for you to feel them like that aaaaa but hello omg one of your fave parts??? 🥺🥺 im so glad thank u :(( i too have an absolute guttural and visceral reaction to anything hongjoong does and says in mists too HAHHAHAH but fr that phase scene with them pressed up against each other mmmmmm yeah mhm self indulgent v needed eeeeee

okay now onto san. bc up until the past few chapters we all know ive been a hard hwa x yn shipper but ohohoho that has changed bc the reunion!!!!!!!! FUCK it hurt so good it actually had me crying like yeah i got tear drops on my phone!!!! also the heated convo with hwa after they got to the clinic yeah i FELT that it was so good

OHOHOHO another conversion to the moc san x yn ship :3 i’m guilty of actively trying to get more people to jump aboard the san x yn ship i’ll admit ✋😔 but TEARDROPS ON THE POHNE IM SORRY 😭😭😭😭 im so glad it was good tho thank u T-T

i screenshotted when yn went to se san after hwajoong left and when san was flirting with yn it was chefs kiss like mf could have been paralyzed and he was like ayeee shawty time for mouth to mouth?? just kidding…. unless🤪

HAHAHHAHAHAHHA PLS yeah i had to break it up in there u know me i love me some random humor 😌 you’ll be happy in the next chapter i guarantee 😏

oh and when san said “yn… my darling, come here” yeah i levitated. simple astral projected and screamed. that killed me in the best way

levitated. astral projected. SCREAMED! i love it that’s exactly what i was going for :3

AND THE LOVE CONFESSION??? ARE WE JOKING!,!,!,!!. I LIVED I LOVED IT WAS THE BEST LIKE I THINK IT WAS PERFECT! PERFECT TIMING PERFECT PLACE IT WAS ALL PERFECT AND I SOBBED I REALLY SOBBED!!!!!! ugh caly can you like, idk, stop one upping yourself with these chapters bc somehow they always end up being better and better i just. good lord thank you for your brain 😤

eHEHEHHEHE THE LOVE CONFESSION! i was SO worried about it being ???? im not sure, i was just worried that it wouldn’t fit or feel right in the mood or context but when i started writing it it just came out of me and just yeeted out there idek what came over me at ALL

as always, i love you so much!!!! oh and ill be sending a long ask soon about drag race bc i finally caught up on that too!!! - solar🌙

💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕💕

i LOVE YOU SOSO MUCH !! pls remember to drink lots of water oki and don’t forget to eat heh i’m curious to know what you thought of the recent drag race eps!!!

[whats-rambled-rambled]

Stuck in reverse - playlist

You can find it on Spotify here. 

Okay, let’s talk about it! 

Sam Smith – Fix you

I remember crying to the original song (by Coldplay) back in 2005. Whoo boy, lots of teenage feelings!

I’m not the biggest fan of Sam Smith’s music, but one day I was just driving home from work and this song began playing on the radio and by the end of it I could barely see the road.

// When you try your best, but you don’t succeed When you get what you want, but not what you need When you feel so tired, but you can’t sleep Stuck in reverse And the tears come streaming down your face When you lose something you can’t replace When you love someone, but it goes to waste Could it be worse? //

That one line – stuck in reverse – felt just so perfect for a story set in the universe where people invert themselves back and forth.

It became one of the three main songs that inspired me to write the whole damn thing, and also the only title in the story that is not a title of a song as well.

Chapter 1: Ben Platt – Ease my mind 

This is one of the songs I have on my daily playlist, I just love it, and the lyrics are so fitting:

//Most days I wake up with a pit in my chest There are thoughts that I can’t put to rest There’s a worry that I can’t place

Most nights, I am restless and quiet won’t come So I lay there and wait for the sun There’s a trouble that won’t show its face

You came out of nowhere and you cut through all the noise I make sense to the madness when I listen to your voice//

We learn more about the nightmares in the next chapters, but it all starts here. That melancholic vibe stuck with me for the rest of the story I guess.

Bonus song: Lewis Capaldi - Before you go

The combat scene in one song, or at least what I imagined was going through Reader’s mind at that point.

//I fell by the wayside like everyone else I hate you, I hate you, I hate you but I was just kidding myself Our every moment, I start to replace ‘Cause now that they’re gone, all I hear are the words that I needed to say When you hurt under the surface Like troubled water running cold Well, time can heal but this won’t//

Have you ever felt that way? Trying to hide your broken heart under anger? I don’t know, it just resonated deeply.

The second part of the song kinda seeped into the next chapter:

//Was there something I could’ve said To make your heart beat better? If only I’d have known you had a storm to weather

//Would we be better off by now If I’d have let my walls come down? Maybe, I guess we’ll never know//

Chapter 2: Kaleo - I can’t go on without you

Another song from my daily playlists (side note – I saw Kaleo once live on a music festival and they were mind-blowing, you should really check out more of their work).

It worked with the story because of its desperate and painful mood.

Bonus: Calum Scott - Dancing on my own

Holy shit, I FELT this one. (Been there, done that). Of course I had to write it into Reader’s past. Actually, I wrote it first and then found the song, but it doesn’t matter, that’s the flashback scene right here:

//Somebody said you got a new friend Does she love you better than I can? And there’s a big black sky over my town I know where you’re at, I bet she’s around And yeah, I know it’s stupid But I just gotta see it for myself I’m in the corner, watching you kiss her, I’m right over here, why can’t you see me? And I’m giving it my all //

Chapter 3: Billie Eilish – Bad guy

No feels, pure bop. This song is so BADASS, I really needed to get that vibe into the undercover mission, I didn’t want Reader to be an emotional mess and nothing else, you know?

Bonus: Tones and I – Dance Monkey

I shit you not, I’ve had that one on repeat for the dance scene. There is something incredibly seductive in that beat, I just couldn’t get it out of my head.

Bonus: Kings of Leon – Closer

It just makes my heart clench and leaves me breathless.

Chapter 4: Ben Platt – Bad habit

Ah, that was the moment when I cursed at myself for using Ease my mind for chapter 1, but we already talked about it.

Even though this song is very emotional, it’s not that heartbreaking, you can hear a faint smile here and there and it just makes my heart sing.

And oh my god, those lyrics:

//You always said that I’d come back to you again ‘Cause everybody needs a friend, it’s true Someone to quiet the voices in my head Make ‘em sing to me instead, it’s you Hate to say that I love you Hate to say that I need you Hate to say that I want you But I do Bad habit, I know But I’m needin’ you right now Can you help me out? Can I lean on you? Been one of those days Sun don’t wanna come out Can you help me out? Can I lean on you?//

They just work with that plot, you know?

Bonus: Dodie – Sick of losing soulmates

Another song that just resonates with the story.

//What a strange being you are, God knows where I would be If you hadn’t found me, sitting all alone in the dark A dumb screenshot of youth Watch how a cold broken teen Will desperately lean on a superglued human of proof

What the hell would I be, without you (what the hell would I be) Brave face talk so lightly, hide the truth (hide the truth)

'Cause I’m sick of losing soulmates, so where do we begin I can finally see, you’re as fucked up as me So how do we win?//

Chapter 5: Adele – Someone like you

The whole damn sunset scene + this song on repeat = feels

The pain in her voice? God, it just reduces me to a puddle of tears.

Reader could just sing it at some point to Neil almost word for word.

Bonus: Passenger – Let her go

Okay, the case of that one is quite funny, because I kinda needed to figure out how to get from point A to point B of the chapter, and I was browsing Spotify looking for „campfire songs” or something like that. Of course I’ve heard this one before, but I’ve never actually focused on the lyrics.

And oh boy, suddenly it all became clear.

Headcanon time – in my head, Wheeler and Neil are close friends, she treats him a bit like a younger brother, I just can imagine they know each other very well at that point. Of course she knows hows about his past. Of course she heard about Reader. And she thinks they are both silly babies and they should just kiss, right? That’s why she chooses that song.

Those lyrics – they fit Neil’s backstory so damn well.

//Only know you love her when you let her go

And you let her go//

And he was stupid enough to let her go. Because his timing was off.

Those lyrics are also perfect to make Reader think about his ex-girlfriend, because of course that is what you’re gonna it’s all about.

Bonus: Del Amitri – Tell her this

Ahh, there it is – the second out of three main songs for Stuck in Reverse.

I remember the moment I found out that Rob Pattinson sings and writes music, then I listened to some of the songs and my heart went whoooosh. So I just had to make Neil play a guitar, I just needed to find out what song would be The One.

Do you remember that flashback about them both watching a tv show on his couch? Here, you’re welcome. 

I recently started rewatching Scrubs and when I got to that episode – ding, ding, ding!

This is the ultimate “hey, I fucked up, I shouldn’t have let you go, I’m an idiot and I love you.”

Chapter 6: Imagine Dragons – Next to me

I adore that song. It warms my heart. I think it fits Neil and Reader’s relationship.

And I needed all the fluffy feelings to switch the tone of the story to something lighter.

Bonus: Michelle Branch – Everywhere

This one is a silly bop, and it always puts me in a good mood. A nice song to listen to when you are happy, in love, and you are making breakfast.

Bonus: Ashlee Simpson – Pieces of me

This one (same as the one before) came to me from Zach Braff’s workout playlist, haha. I mean I almost forgot about it, but it makes me smile every time I hear it, and the lyrics work nicely:

//On a Monday I am waiting Tuesday I am fading And By Wednesday I can’t sleep Then the phone rings I hear you And the darkness is a clear view Cause you’ve come to rescue me

Fall, with you I fall so fast I can hardly catch my breath I hope it lasts

It seems like I can finally Rest my head on something real I like the way that feels It’s as if you know me better Than I ever knew myself I love how you can tell All the pieces, pieces, pieces of me//

Bonus: Kaleo – I want more

Is there such a thing as a warm melancholy? Because that is a vibe I get from that song.

//Turn back, leave all you had Forgive, I’ll forget 'Cause what we need is what we once had Time won’t stand still Just say you will 'Cause I need you there and now

If you leap, I’ll come falling too Running deep 'til that rivers through I don’t mind what you have to do 'Cause I won’t think less, less of you

Yes, I want more, more Looking for more I want more, more 'Cause I want more

Old grounds Feels like the weight has been lifted away So don’t you leave me there wanting more//

Chapter 7: Ben Platt – In case you don’t live forever

I mean it’s not my fault that Ben’s songs make me FEEL things, damn it.

The whole damn song = utter heartbreak when you think about Neil coming back to Reader before he goes back to Stalsk-12 to open that damn lock.

//I, I’ve carried this song in my mind Listen, it’s echoing in me But I haven’t helped you to hear it We, we’ve only got so much time I’m pretty sure it would kill me If you didn’t know the pieces of me are pieces of you

I’ve waited way too long to say Everything you mean to me

In case you don’t live forever, let me tell you now I love you more than you’ll ever wrap your head around In case you don’t live forever, let me tell you the truth I’m everything that I am because of you//

Bonus: Charlene Soraia – Wherever you will go

Why am I doing this to you? Because we all like pain.

This one is for the scene on the deck:

//So lately, been wondering Who will be there to take my place When I’m gone you’ll need love to light the shadows on your face If a great wave shall fall and fall upon us all Then between the sand and stone, could you make it on your own

If I could, then I would I’ll go wherever you will go Way up high or down low, I’ll go wherever you will go

And maybe, I’ll find out A way to make it back someday To watch you, to guide you through the darkest of your days If a great wave shall fall and fall upon us all Then I hope there’s someone out there who can bring me back to you//

Bonus: Rhys Lewis – No right to love you

No light, only pain and suffering.

//'Cause I have no right to love you When I chose to walk away I have no right to miss you When I didn’t wanna stay And I have no right to need you And I knew what my heart was gonna lose I have no right to love you But I do, I still do Yeah, I still do//

Bonus: Knox Brown x Gallant – Reignite

This song is just so incredible, it makes my palms sweat and my mind going places. Yep, it was on repeat.

Oh you know which scene this one is for.

Bonus: Freya Ridings – Lost without you

The last dialogue. On repeat. Because this song breaks my heart and leaves me a sobbing mess.

//Strangers rushin’ past Just tryna get home But you were the only Safehaven that I’ve known Hits me at full speed Feel like I can’t breathe And nobody knows This pain inside me My world is crumbling I should never Let you go I think I’m lost without you//

(OI, SPOILERS) 

Chapter 8: Florence + The Machine – Never let me go

I have only one thing to say:

Fuck you, Nolan.

Third out of three.

//And it’s over and I’m going under

But I’m not giving up I’m just giving in

Oh, slipping underneath So cold and so sweet

In the arms of the ocean, so sweet and so cold And all this devotion, well, I never knew at all And the questions I have for a sinner released In the arms of the ocean deliver me

(Never let me go, never let me go Never let me go, never let me go)//

Bonus: Sasha Sloan - Dancing with your ghost

Suffer with me.

//Yelling at the sky Screaming at the world Baby, why’d you go away? I’m still your girl Holding on too tight Head up in the clouds Heaven only knows Where you are now

How do I love How do I love again? How do I trust How do I trust again?

I stay up all night Tell myself I’m alright Baby, you’re just harder to see than most I put the record on Wait 'til I hear our song Every night I’m dancing with your ghost Every night I’m dancing with your ghost//

[lizzybeth1986]

Quick Thoughts on The White People Waambulance, Chapters 18 and 19

• Sorry this QT is coming out so late, guys. I regret to say my heart wasn't really in this one...and it hasn't been with regards to my QTs for a while. This one might be my last, unless we count me finishing them off for the (not rewritten) Book 1. It's been two years since I began, and the last two books made the process honestly really exhausting.

• I clubbed the two finale chapters together because I really couldn't be bothered to do separate ones for both.

• In fact...I won't be doing any of what I have been doing for my QTs so far. I'll be honest to you: I usually do multiple replays, the last few in tandem with the other routes on YouTube. I go through the scenes one by one. I keep note of differences and variations and carefully choose screenshots that will reflect the gist of the scenes.

But I couldn't be bothered to do any of that this time. I pressed the "continue" and then the "end book" buttons as soon as I finished my first run of those chapters. I'm drained, guys. And I don't think I'll be coming back to the TRH series at least, not even for Liam or Hana or Kiara. Maybe my mind will change by the time the second book comes out (update from present-day Lizzy: no it didn't) but I'm not counting on it. And you'll probably know why by the time this QT ends.

• TW: Discussions on racism, both fandom racism and from within the narrative. The last section of this QT is going to be...pretty heavy, guys.

There's also going to be a lot of anti-Drake, anti-Olivia, anti-Madeleine and anti-Penelope content here, so if you like any of those characters...well, you've been warned.

The ensuing post is going to be LONG, and I know a lot of you have good reasons not to deal with long posts, so here's a tldr:

1. The TRR writing team stick to their weird obsession for jobless whiny white men.

2. Read this book once and you'll feel like you're drowning in an ocean of white tears.

3. WOC continue to get scraps from the writing team, even as they boast of being diverse and inclusive. In fact, they're regularly treated as mere tokens, exotic eye-candy or non-entities, while their behaviour is measured on standards that are very different from their white counterparts (this happens in other books as well).

...okay I wasn't expecting for the tldr to be long too 😅

• Me @ my QTs then:

Me @ my QTs now:

• I'll probably be finishing off my TRR Book 1 QT series when I'm a little less burnt out, but for now this is where it ends, I guess.

• So...here is to summarize the last two chapters: Accident happens. LIs mad. Paparazzi sad (but largely get away scot-free). MC and baby safe. At the Council meeting Kiara slam dunks the murderer of Liam's mother with the style and elegance this fandom still refuses to acknowledge her for. The MC is nice to her for like half a second. Last Apple Ball. New clothes for everyone as if they had a Diwali bumper sale the week before or something. Godfrey is somehow responsible for the security (who thought this was a good idea) and seeing the Auvernese Royal Guard outside our doors is SO not-creepy.

We get to see if we impressed our Auvernese and Monterriso allies enough. Bradshaw compliments Kiara for like half a second. Olivia sees the dude from the Q&A session (Jin) at the Ball and (if you pay) you get to see her catch, interrogate and lowkey flirt with him.

Leona and Bianca make it to the ball (where is Bartie Sr. Where are Xinghai and Lorelei. Where is Regina) and this time the narrative makes sure to shoehorn a plot element into their presence here: Leona is there so we can do something about the reveal that she constantly ratted us out to the press for money. ("oh look! Walker Ranch was plot related after all! We have a reason (albeit a flimsy, paper-thin one) to set 9 whole chapters in Texas. Even though we had to literally come up with this bit in the last minute, because really - all we wanted to do as a writing team was nut collectively over Drake Walker")

(I also can't believe that between the time I wrote this line and the time this QT finally came out - they literally found a way to re-fucking-write Book 1 so they could nut collectively over Drake Walker earlier)

• Why were we required to dress down in Texas for these assholes when they couldn't even bother to dig up their Sunday best for this ball??? Oh right, they're Walkers. Hypocrisy runs in the family.

• Good thing is you can choose to banish Leona if you want. She's angry about it for a second then accepts it and leaves. But like what is the point of banishing her when she hardly even bothers to come there in the first place? She's not going to be bawling her eyeballs out saying "boohoo, they threw me out of this country that I spent like five minutes in and never even wanted to visit in the first place".

• Bianca is present at the end of Chapter 18 mainly to deliver to us a plot point at the very last minute: a clue about where we could find proof about Queen Eleanor's murder. Bianca mentions conversations Jackson had with her, and a secret room somewhere. Her leaving the palace and abandoning her children is addressed, and the MC gets to berate her. It's...short.

• Why this important piece of information was given to Bianca when idk LEO could have pitched in and spoken about it, no one knows. Oh wait. I keep forgetting. Bianca is Drake's mother. That's why.

• Okay so Amalas valiantly found out about Leona's involvement in this and gave us tangible proof via photographs. But we're kiiiinda forgetting that the scrutiny and privacy invasions were happening even before we hauled ass to Walker Ranch? Who was responsible for those? Who was the "source" that the Chapter 17 paparazzo was referring to, the one that mentioned they would triple the price for more photos of the Queen/Mother of the Heir (Coz like why would she do that. She's already broke)? How did Amalas come by this information so easily and why was she really that invested? Why is no one asking these questions? Why isn't the group asking these questions? Why are they stupid. Jesus, they're all so stupid. HOW ARE YOU SO STUPID, SQUAD.

• Shortly after they get rid of Leona and Bianca, the rest of the group give the happy couple a choice of toys for the nursery - and that's our final nursery purchase. You can either go for the corgi - which is on brand for the series by now I think - or the lion, which is seen as very Cordonian.

• More party shenanigans. We're nice to Kiara for another half-second. Kiara arranges a photoshoot for us. The team can't pretend to give a fuck anymore about its fans so they will ask us to pay for an edit that I've seen millions of edit-creators in the fandom do wayyyy better. Like let's be honest - compare the engagement shoot pics (messy as they were) to the shoots we eventually got this book. You can see the difference. You can tell which one required more work.

• Anyway, if you choose this scene you wind up going back to the ballroom, dance with your spouse, aaaaand it's time for another diamond option. This time your spouse gives you something you've been craving (mousse parfait for the Liam MC, chocolate chip cookies for the Hana MC, handmade chocolates for the Maxwell MC and a choice between bacon and a veg version of it for the Drake MC. Damn, team TRR. Your favouritism is showing). The couple also writes a letter to the baby that the child can read growing up, in a bit of a parallel to Eleanor's letter to Liam that we see at the end of the chapter.

• After this, Liam reveals he has been pondering over what Bianca said, and wants to find out where they could find that secret room. Cue Liam's own flashback scene for free. Godfrey bringing to Queen the same goblet that the RoE MC found in a flea market in Book 2 for Regina (or perhaps just a similarish one). Liam and Eleanor reciting a rhyme that turns out to have clues for the secret room.

• To give the team credit, they seem to have (finally) put some thought into this. Like this actually feels like Liam's scene. Not one that delivers information about his family but is really about another character. They seem to incorporate all the things Eleanor seemed to be known for - things that were hardly addressed in the books when it came to talk of her. She is shown with a love for books given that books and poetry form an important part of the clues she leaves for Liam. One of the books is about foraging, which is unsurprising considering her love for gardens that was established in Book 1 of TRR.

• So...like...nice job but why was practically everything about Eleanor (including the way she'd stand up to Constantine, her displeasure at the sound of Godfrey and Bartie's names, her nature that Liam not only inherited but also learned) left only for your finale? Why no buildup? Why was I seeing you lot constantly pandering to Drake's family the entire time? Why do I know way, way more about Jackson than I do about Eleanor whose story this WAS? Why is she and her son suddenly getting this burst of attention at the tail end??

• They still manage to push young!Drake into a scene focusing on Liam and Eleanor, so we can see how Eleanor's teaching of how to be a responsible royal began to make inroads into Liam's way of thinking. It's the ultimate irony, that Liam took his mother's advice so much to heart that he lets Drake stay in his home, eat his food, and complain about those dastardly nobles to his heart's content for free.

Poor Eleanor in her grave is like

• Very fitting, how Constantine's proposal to Eleanor happens in the hedge maze, very much like Liam's first declaration of love in Book 1.

• If you're married to Liam, you get an extra letter that's addressed to Liam's future wife. She clearly knew her days were to be numbered by the time she gave birth to that second child at least.

• Lmao @ how the team somehow managed to remember that Eleanor would have been Leo's stepmother too. He's mentioned a couple of times. They didn't have enough time to develop a sprite for young!Leo but somehow had all the time and resources to make one for young!Savannah who had literally no purpose in Drake's flashback scene? Hmm. Hmm.

• They somehow manage to find the twin to the RoE MC's gifted goblet that Godfrey gave Eleanor the night she died, and Liam reveals that he's been obsessed with poisons enough to know that it wasn't the drink that was poisoned, it was the cup itself. Everyone is shook.

• Love that extra little detail about Liam's obsession with learning about poisons and how it's a sign of how deeply Eleanor's death affected him. But tell me honestly if you remember this plot point coming up even once before in any significant way. Even during the one time a person is poisoned in the previous book (by the laws of karma, the victim in this instance is Godfrey's only daughter) Liam shows very few signs of this "obsession". At a time when he has also lost a father. Convenient how something that could have added more depth to Liam is kept aside until there's a scene where his knowledge is required. Convenient indeed.

• I kind of understand why Liam acts on impulse, okay. The man just discovered who murdered his mum, at least some amount of irrationality is allowed (esp considering he hardly got to express ANYTHING when his goddamn father died). But you'd think Liam's friends would hold him back and help him think this through? Convince him that there are more effective ways to confront and get a confession out of Godfrey who after is in charge of security at the moment? You seriously think charging into the ballroom and suddenly stripping this man of his titles is going to actually work??? You couldn't figure out how to make him vulnerable instead so that he wouldn't be able to escape???

• I mean like, sure, one could always rationalize it all as "well see Lizzy, they needed a dramatic end to this story and they needed to wrap this mystery up quick". But there were other ways they could have spread it out than make it all sound so...so random. And you bet we all know why the narrative had to scramble around last minute to solve this. It's because we spend half the damn book in a dilapidated ranch with a shit family!

• Anyway, Godfrey escapes...and the MC tells her spouse that she's going into labour after...two contractions? Um. Okay.

• So. That ends Book 1 of this new series. And with it my QTs, for this series at least. My QTs for Book 1 (the OG, not the rewrite) might continue, but I'd need to repeat my failplay again because I lost most of those screenshots 😭

General Thoughts on the Book:

• So far, this is what I can see as happening in the next book:

- The birth, obviously

- Any extra perks from our purchases (ie. the nursery and the garden)

- Subplots involving the LIs' conflicts regarding parenthood and their own childhoods

- The mystery behind Eleanor's death isn't quite over yet, nor is the truth behind the constant paparazzi presence in TRH. Leona was the scapegoat this time around, but how did Amalas get all this information so quickly?

- Where is Eleanor's other child? Olivia's investigations may or may not lead to that answer. I'm pretty sure Jin might be involved as well.

- Another possibility is that Madeleine may give us important information since she was potentially aware that Eleanor was pregnant at the time.

- The mystery behind Jackson's death and what he knew regarding Eleanor's condition.

- What part did Bartie Sr have to play in all this? How involved was Constantine in the murder (if in fact he was)? What more dark secrets will we learn about Constantine, Godfrey and Bartie Sr during this time? What ultimately caused the breakdown in Constantine and Jackson's relationship, since Drake mentions Jackson being around when Regina was Queen as well?

- Speaking of Regina, how involved was she in any of this? We know she was Godfrey's cousin-in-law and Bartie Sr made a comment on her during the announcement about the heir, and that she married Constantine a couple years after Eleanor's death, but was she aware of any of this or was she largely out of the major plot and brought in later to cement Godfrey's position and power?

- I'd mention the possibility that Lorelai could know something, but they didn't really give anyone connected to Hana any time at all, so I have my doubts.

- Operation Swan, and possibly a visit to Monterisso. Liam's younger sibling must be in one of these places but my guess is on Monterisso.

- I'm guessing the team will write a nice wedding for Penelope and Ezekiel next book, while Kiara continues to get scraps from the same team.

- Drake and Olivia will continue to eat into the plot. Madeleine will join this unholy trinity as well because they've set the stage for her to have plenty of angst.

With that over, these were my thoughts once this book was finished:

WHERE ARE THE DUCHESSES?

Remember how, back in Book 3, we all marvelled at the number of women in this country who were in positions of power? Adeleide and Emmeline were powerful duchesses while their husbands were secondary figures, and Joelle though married into a noble family is an influential artist and - according to Liam - the embodiment of King Fabian's values. It seemed like, despite the underlying sexism and racism in the story, women were at least at the forefront of Cordonian politics.

This is virtually gone in TRH1. Godfrey (who wasn't even interested in Krona in the first place, much less Cordonia) and Landon (whose only concern seemed to be Penelope, leaving Emmeline to manage the duchy) have a seat in the Council. In fact we never even see either of these woman in the book. I can maybe understand the logic behind not appointing Adeleide, but the fact that Emmeline is passed over for her far-less -qualified husband is a mystery to me!

Also, has anyone noticed how white-male-centered the whole Eleanor story is? Notice how we never see Eleanor's friends, besides Jackson? We never see any of the courtly ladies of that era? She's the Queen. She'd have her own court. I find it impossible that Eleanor would have no interactions of importance among her own goddamned court, that Joelle, Emmeline or Adeleide wouldn't even be mentioned in her story thus far. It's fascinating that forget being part of her story - these women are largely forgotten in the book itself.

(Note: It's also important to add that none of Kiara's family - besides Zeke - makes an appearance this book. At all. One member of Penelope's family and one member of Madeleine's family is in the council, but we never really see or hear anything from Kiara's, even though Hakim was Constantine's old friend and Joelle could have easily been connected to Eleanor, given that Eleanor was exactly the kind of ruler Joelle would have loved and respected.

While we're on that subject, Lorelai could have been connected to Eleanor as well - considering that we know next to nothing about her years in Shanghai. There were ways Hana's story could have been tied into the overall plot as well that were largely ignored. The fact that both the main and secondary WOCs presented opportunities for better plot and story, and despite that they were largely ignored in the books...I think that says a lot. But I will get into more of that in detail in a different section).

LI SPACE AND STORY

• Now...as we all know, The TRR/TRH series is primarily a romance-focused book first, with an underlying plot about royalty and politics. So it makes sense to evaluate the book based on what it gives its love interests. That includes the number of scenes they get, and the kind of focus their story is given. So...here's the rundown of how that goes in TRH Book 1:

Liam: Overall, not too bad. He gets one individual scene, a free and paywalled childhood scene (though the free one is essential for the group's realization of who killed Eleanor). The letter his mother writes to Liam includes an extra section towards the end, meant for the MC who marries him. However, we must note that a lot of this "attention" was thrust into the very final chapter of this book, and 99% of the same book didn't exactly make an attempt to explore his inner thoughts on anything - his mother's death, the dealings with the foreign countries, his political activities. Eleanor being pregnant came from a scene that made Olivia the center of attention, the MC had the opportunity to ask him how he was feeling only once or twice, and most of the time the narrative relegated it all to "the matter is still being investigated". It's a slight improvement from the absolute lack of concern the MC and the narrative showed about Liam's emotional state post his father's death in Book 3, but not much.

Variations wise, the team did step up on the basic ones for most of the LIs, so clearly we've moved past the days of seeing cut-paste scenes and the likes of Liam and Hana saying "I'm so dumb in love with you". However, in playthroughs where the MC is Liam's wife and Queen of Cordonia, her lack of genuine concern for her country and lack of curiosity about the place she's ruling, sticks out like a sore thumb. The fandom loves to highlight how the plot is "written for Liam" or is "easier in Liam's playthrough", but besides his own child being the heir, nothing else from Book 3 onwards seems like it was particularly written with him in mind.

Drake: Hoo boy. So 2019 was clearly the year that many people didn't believe me about Drake eating up space, and the year they had to eat their words because in TRH it was too obvious to be ignored. On an overall scale you cannot avoid the extra perks even his LI scenes got - his Valtoria scene in Chapter 4 was longer, set in a different place and he was allowed to expand on his decision to say yes to Liam's request in a way Hana and Maxwell never were. We learned way more about his familial relationships and dynamics than all the LIs combined. His childhood scene was the first to be given variants depending on whether the MC was his wife or not. His sister's wedding takes up almost half the book, leaving little to no space for either the intrigue, or even the pregnancy that was supposed to be THE most important part of the book.

An insane amount of retconning was done to emphasize strongly on the "marshmallow" part of his personality, having him state time and again that for the MC he can even "sport a tutu if you said you had a thing for the Sugar Fairy". Part of these changes could be attributed to the backlash the team got for having him call a pink cake "girly".

There is a strong possibility that Jackson might be explored further in the second book, and it's no surprise considering that he's the one parent that is most talked about in the series. The book looks like it was truly written with Drake in mind, with a heavy dose of Olivia, and everyone else was added as a bit of an afterthought.

Maxwell: Pretty awful treatment for a character that the head writer of the team claims to like. He has no individual character scenes, and one childhood scene where his older brother Bertrand is given more focus. Ironically, Maxwell was more wary of Bartie Sr in TRR Book 2 than Bertrand was, but somehow they changed this little detail so that Maxwell could be written out of his own story.

His LI scenes were also not given much effort - some were badly written, and some scenes (like the free ones) showed little to no variations between the friendly and romantic playthroughs. One that comes to mind is the baby announcement photoshoot, which was so poorly done it added nothing of value to the character or the relationship.

Like the last book, Maxwell isn't allowed much development in TRH1, and he's still forced into a largely "court jester" role in the story. This reflects very poorly on him in certain situations, such as the chapter where we finally get glimpses of his book. The aim was to be humourous and light about the events of the series, but he comes out of it sounding thoroughly insensitive towards his friends, none of whose consent he took to write this self-centered pile of garbage.

However, there is hope that they might do things a bit better for him next book, if the rewrite of him in TRR 2.0 was anything to go by. However, it would be awful if they tried to do a better job of him and then left out Hana. Speaking of which...

Hana: I'm going to begin this section with a comparison to another character, someone who should have been treated as a secondary character - Olivia.

Olivia in this book has 2 character scenes (they're very plot driven, but they also explore her outside of her friendship with the MC and dynamic with the group). The spy scene with Auvernese royalty, and the scene with Jin, the Auvernese spy. An entire chapter is spent in her duchy (by now we've seen Lythikos four times and I'm now sick of the place), and she winds up taking over Maxwell's Q&A scene as well.

So that's technically 2.5 scenes AND a childhood scene that revolves around her even though it's about Liam's mother. In addition to this, Olivia also gets her own mini-book, The Royal Holiday, that revolves (again) around her duchy and has the group clamouring to give her attention when no one else wants to.

Here are the stats for Hana, who by virtue of being an LI, is also a potential co-protagonist in the series:

Nothing.

Zilch. Zip. Zero. Nada. Nothing.

She has one childhood scene that is part of the group's scenes - a beautiful, heartbreaking one that serves as a slap in the face to anyone who'd dared to be dismissive of what she went through earlier - but none after that, and no individual scenes either. The team - in one of their most offensive choices this book - force a storyline where she has fertility issues just so the MC can be the one carrying the child, and the same MC can opt(!!) to ask about her well-being after two days. The same MC has the chance to whine about not getting pregnant soon enough in front of Hana.

There have been a few efforts made to make the MC appear more caring towards Hana: she can angrily defend Hana against Isabella's jibes, and she can make Hana relax for once during the baby shower (unlike the wedding reception where the same MC treated her like a bridesmaid). The MC even gets to tell her wife that she should never consider herself secondary or unimportant.

All of these are nice, but at the end of the day they're all scraps. I'd equate it to how we're allowed to give Kiara compliments on the final two chapters, but the white women around her still get a far bigger chunk of space, story and attention dedicated to them. The team have a pattern of adding these tiny tidbits that will temporarily satisfy stans while still maintaining the status quo, and that's precisely what's happening here. Its important for us to understand this. Underneath all this surface concern and all these scraps, Hana is still getting dust in place of actual story and characterization. And given that they made ZERO major changes to Hana's scenes in TRR 2.0, I'm not expecting that to change.

As for the book in general...I don't have to go into why this book is a mess, do I? We all know. We've all witnessed how disproportionate the writing has been and while I'm glad more and more people recognize what I've been seeing since Book 3, it's sad that it took 9 whole chapters in Walker Ranch for so many to understand exactly how much space Drake has been eating up for no good reason.

BLACK HOLES AND WHITE TEARS

I'll begin this section by talking about Drake Walker. He's the most prominent sign of the larger problem.

Drake Walker is what I call a Black Hole LI. And yes I mean black hole as in the one that exists in space (Beckett from TE also fits into this category). He is the kind of LI that sucks up everything. Love. Light. Joy. Common sense. Other characters' spaces.

He is the kind of love interest that will have Liam's traumatic experience centered around him. The kind of love interest for whose problems - largely created by his mammoth ego - we have to resolve in Shanghai, the home of the lone female LI. While that same female LI gets nothing, and then disappears in a subsequent chapter. The kind of love interest whose love confession can take precedence even over the MC's own issues (remember the Beaumont House chapter in Book 1? The one that took place the day after Tariq nonconsensually kissed the MC? 98% of the dialogue revolved around Drake's feelings. Not about the faulty lock, not the possibility that the MC's security had been tampered with - Drake's feelings). The kind of love interest that was given an entire extra wedding and artwork for his mother in Book 3 itself - none of which were given to any other LI.

A Black Hole LI is totally the kind of LI that would get 9 whole chapters in their home while we have never even visited the homes of the others since the early books of the previous series.

This wasn't something that began just this book. It's been a constant since Book 2, and you can even see signs of his story gaining way more importance in Book 1. It's also not something we can - in all honesty - blame simply on finances and fan popularity: the writers confirmed Drake to be one of their favourites, and attempts to give his scenes additional perks (eg plot elements pushed into both the Whiskey scene and the Beaumont Office scene) happened long before they could make any conclusions about his popularity. I bought the Beaumont Office scene to find out more about that family. I bought the Marshmallow scene so I could find out more about Liam and Hana's conversation post Coronation (remember - Hana was never even allowed to speak about her return to Cordonia because that scene was given to Drake). I bought the Italian Restaurant scene to learn more about Liam's assassination. The funny thing about all these three is that these were their stories to tell, yet Drake is the focus. Quite a few of Drake's initial scenes sold because the team consistently made the effort, consistently ensured that the information from his scenes would benefit us in the long run. The narrative allowed for Drake to have his own story, and additionally let aspects of his story overshadow that of the other LIs' (see the examples I've given above). Even though he has very little of value to contribute to the larger story (no job, his friendships are shallower than a wash-basin, and no genuine communication with any commoner in the story - only endless whining).

The treatment Drake gets that no other LI does, is a problem in itself, but it also is a small part of an even bigger issue. He isn't the only white character who gets this sort of attention and detail to his story.

Take Olivia, for example. Started out as a rival to the MC, before her sad sad childhood and her genuine love for Liam was revealed in the Book 1 finale. Over the course of the story, her role changed from petty rival to Warrior Duchess to reluctant bff. Over the course of the original series, Olivia became one of the most prominent characters in the story, on par with the male LIs. I'm not sure how many people realize that Lythikos is the ONLY duchy in the kingdom we've seen thrice (four times if you count Holiday). To give you an idea of how big a deal that is, here's how many times we've visited other duchies besides the capital and Applewood:

Fydelia - 2

Portavira - 1

Castelserraillian - 1

Ramsford (the home of our sponsors!) - 1

Hana's mother's home - Never.

Lythikos has a detailed familial and cultural history, and I wouldn't be lying if I said we know more about this one region than we know about the entire country of Cordonia. And honestly for me, the obsession with this one duchy has reached saturation point. Lythikos is not Cordonia. Lythikos is not all there is to Cordonia or even the only place that should matter. Yet it seems the team is more than eager to flog that horse until there's nothing of interest left.

Olivia is the only character who gets an entire mini book that revolves around comforting her and making her feel better about her background and origins. I don't think we've ever given Hana this much attention when she left her home for us. Or when she was being bullied by Madeleine. Or when she was the other bride in that grand wedding. Or when we received the news that carrying a child to term would be dangerous for her body. Or --

We were given an entire mini-book to comfort Olivia - the woman who continued to call Hana "damaged goods" and " a failure" for not marrying a man, while Hana's friend/wife stood by and watched. The woman who didn't have to think twice before making snide remarks about an equally skilled courtier who never did her any harm, only because she could get away with it. Istg when I heard that most of the court snubbed her during that first event in Holiday, this was my reaction:

Like girl I feel bad for you but at least now you know how it feels to be held responsible for shit beyond your control!

Hana, in the meantime, is forced time and again into situations that would break most people - but with very little payoff. Her arc with her parents was given a resolution that confirmed that Hana could only be considered worthy if she was useful. She was made to interact time and again with the woman who harmed her with such glee in Book 2. The MC - as a friend or as a wife - is at best neglectful of her issues and at worst someone who uses and discards Hana as she sees fit. And now...in her romantic playthrough she's given a storyline that doesn't allow her to bear children easily, and the MC spends less than two minutes to actually check on her. Hana is one of the co-protagonists, yet a side character given the treatment she should be getting. One could technically blame finances for the way she's being treated too, but keep in mind that the bad treatment goes as far back as the Applewood chapters in Book 1. Technically a time when she was bringing in money.

I get it. Olivia is a fan favourite. Many in the fandom wanted her to be an LI, the writers didn't, so they carved out this middle path where she'd have a major portion of the story anyway. But keep in mind that a lot of this attention came - and is still coming - at the cost of Hana. The team pretty much gave Olivia what they'd been refusing to give Hana all along.

On a smaller scale, you see similar patterns with the secondary characters - especially the women of the court. Madeleine and Penelope had elaborate backstories designed to make people forgive and sympathize with them, and Kiara - even though her backstory in Book 1 was inherently tragic and deserved to be handled sensitively - was given validation with great reluctance from the team, and with no consequences if we treated her cruelly. Even now, the team has only tossed Kiara a couple of scraps in the final chapter, while already setting the stage for Madeleine to get her own tragic "patriotism" arc for TRH Book 2, and a possible wedding for Penelope in the near future.

The difference here doesn't just lie in who gets attention and who doesn't. It lies in how the MC is supposed to view these women as well. A lot more sympathy and understanding is automatically extended to the white women, and the MC faces consequences if she fails to acknowledge their pain. Far less sympathy is offered by default to the black and the Asian woman - the MC may be friends with Hana but a huge chunk of their relationship is mostly about the MC benefiting from Hana's skills without giving much in return.

Even though their misdeeds are acknowledged and spoken about, both Madeleine and Penelope are written in such a way that the problems they're currently facing matter more than anything they've ever done in the past. Hana is made to sweet-talk Madeleine despite being bullied by her in a previous book. The MC herself never gets ANY opportunity to directly address what Penelope put her through in Portavira, because what the MC went through matters less than Penelope's condition.

Compare this to the relatively small scale of Kiara's "misdeed" (being honest about not continuing with an alliance - I'm surprised people think this is an actual thing to be offended about!), and the way the MC is allowed to mistreat her sans consequences afterwards. We're even allowed to call Kiara a snob in the books - which isn't at all true if you look at any of her scenes in canon - and constantly make fun of her desire to learn (in fact, if anyone in the series could be called a snob, it would be Olivia). If I were to sum up how a woman of colour is spoken about in the books, vs a white woman - this screenshot would do the trick:

(Notice how none of the options to speak about Penelope allow us to speak rudely of her, yet in Kiara's case we're allowed to make judgements on her as a person. In Hana's case, while we don't exactly drag her the way we can drag Kiara - we get precious few opportunities to actually defend or support her when others talk rubbish about her).

When you explore the series overall, it's impossible to ignore the casual racism that makes disrespecting people of a certain race/colour easier than on another. It's impossible not to see where the narrative chooses to give consequences to an MC who treats a white woman badly, and where it allows the very same MC to suspect, and then (optionally) gaslight, a woman of colour a couple chapters later. It's impossible not to see which people are meant to be respected despite their bad behaviour, and which people can still be treated badly despite their better behaviour. It's impossible not to see a pattern emerging.

This is not even a problem that plagues only the TRR series. From TCaTF to ACOR to Platinum to even MoTY, there is an ongoing pattern of discrepancies between the way white people and people of colour - particularly women - are treated. Many POC characters are placed in situations where it's easier for them to suffer/die/be shown disrespect, than it is to show them kindness or mercy. MOC are regularly either exoticized (Prince Hamid is the most glaring example of this) or placed in very traumatic situations for which the payoff isn't always going to be that great (I know this happens to Dallas, but I don't know about the payoff for Syphax).

WOC particularly suffer quite a bit in a lot of PB novels, in comparison to their white counterparts. Rowan Thorne of TCaTF, as a character, didn't deserve for her death to be made easier than her survival (in contrast to Diavolos, who was given far more opportunities AND will live simply by virtue of allying with Kenna), any more than Kiara deserved to be interrogated by the people who should have been concerned for her safety or Xanthe deserved to be shipped to slavery. All this, while a Vanessa (who is in a position of power and who plays an active role in rendering the MOTY MC financially helpless) gets a diamond scene where she "explains" her situation and a Madeleine doesn't even have to hear about her bullying from her victims.

The fandom, too, has contributed to this on a number of occasions. Speaking specifically of TRR, how many times have we seen Hana being dragged on Olivia posts? (also, if we were really measuring Olivia by the impossible standards that we held for Hana's characterization, Olivia would appear pretty damn one-note too: after all, 80% of her characterization consists of knife jokes). How many times was Hana being looked at with disdain for either her niceness or the poor writing for her, while the same fandom would regularly coo over a nice-presenting Penelope (whose characterization is one of the most inconsistent in the series)? How many times have we seen Kiara being called a creep/obsessed for merely looking at a man, while almost no one judges Olivia for kissing a man without his consent? How many times have people forgiven a traitorous Penelope and hated on a far more innocent Kiara in the same breath? How often did the fandom hate on Liam for accepting the MC's advances after she rejected him, yet not say a word when Drake did the same thing? How many times has Maxwell been loved for his humour and childlike nature while people of colour with a similar personality (Lily from Bloodbound, for example) were hated on instantly? Clearly, there have been more instances of people in the fandom sympathizing automatically with the white character, than with characters of colour. Time and again, brown and black characters - particularly women - have been required to match up to impossible standards (if they're nice they're boring. If they don't like the MC they're <insert every gendered sexist insult you can think of here>). The standards are far more relaxed for white characters, and they're often given more breathing room and to most of what they want without the constant judgement that black and brown women get. The standards set up for both are grossly different.

Racism is a beast that assumes many forms - and not all forms of racism will appear obvious to some, especially when such stereotypes are so normalized in media and popular fiction that we almost accept it at first. Almost. To get to the root of why there's such an imbalance in this series - among others - we need to first acknowledge the sexism and racism that are such a vital part of its narrative, and that its fandom regularly buys into and (sometimes unwittingly) promotes.

At this point, it's important to understand that having queer characters or characters of colour simply exist in the books isn't enough. Token rep can be found in PB's books by the dozens, but at the end of the day it means nothing if there is a constant reluctance, over and over and over, to treat those characters with the same care and sensitivity that they treat their white ones (or their "exoticized brown" ones).

• Like I mentioned earlier, I won't be playing TRH from this point forward, but I do hope to finish my TRR QTs soon. I have a LOT of thoughts! If you'd like to be tagged on those, do tell me!

[aroyami]

To give an example of what goes into my fics and why it’s so frustrating when I don’t get much feedback on them, here’s what went into the writing process for chapter 10 of wHm mswt:

I came up with the basic concept of this chapter last June. I wasn’t yet at the point in the story where it was time to include it, so I sat on it for a while until the story could progress far enough.

During this time, I thought about the details, such as what Atem’s cat would look like, whether it would be a boy or girl cat, how old it would be, what he would name it, how it would behave, etc.

Finally, it came time to actually write the chapter. I wrote slowly, being careful with my words and editing as I went. I rewrote the scene with Yugi’s dad in the car several times before finally settling on which direction to take it in. Finding the right way to convey Atem’s feelings, and figuring out how to get the flow right from point A to point B to point C, was very difficult.

Because I don’t actually own a cat, I spent a long time researching cat behavior and care to ensure I wrote Princess Dark Eradicator Warlock accurately. I researched what 5-month-old cats look and act like, cats with ear injuries, how to cat-proof a house, what you should buy when you first adopt a cat and how much this all costs (although I wound up forgetting to include the line where Dad Mutou mentions how much it costs, rip me), cat body language, the subtle differences in sounds cats make and what they mean, how much to feed your cat and when, what household items are safe for cats to play with, how a cat might react to a new house.

I watched lots of videos of people visiting animal shelters and/or bringing home new cats, to make sure the experience and the environment was depicted accurately. For the cats in the shelter, I researched the most popular cat names in Japan.

I researched cat collar types, and looked at Japanese sites to see pet collar tags in Japan and what can be engraved on them. I made sure to account for the fact that the card “Dark Eradicator Warlock” has a different name in Japanese, and therefore her full name- Spelled “Mutou Hime Kuromadou no Shikkoukan” but pronounced “Mutou Purinsesu Burakku Ekusukyuushonaa”- would be far too long to actually fit on a tag.

I researched the use and applications of copper in ancient Egypt and if Atem would be likely to know about its antimicrobial properties.

I researched the role of cats in ancient Egyptian society. In this process I wound up reading an archaeological journal published by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1923 regarding the tomb of Puyemre in Thebes, the source of the claims about a cat named “sweetie”. I double checked the illustrations and the notes to confirm that this was indeed most likely a depiction of a cat, and then I consulted a dictionary to learn more about the pronunciation and meaning of this word, as well as similar words. After I decided that I would indeed use it as a pet name, I checked several sources on grammar to make sure I modified it for the correct gender, as Princess Dark Eradicator Warlock is a girl, and ancient Egyptian was a gendered language, therefore it would need to be changed from “nDm” to “nDm-t”. Keep in mind I don’t actually speak Middle Egyptian.

I initially planned for several scenes involving Bakura and his character development, but decided to move them to next chapter for the sake of not putting too much into one chapter. I also planned out scenes with Mahaad and Mana before deciding to save those for next chapter as well.

I checked a list of cards in Yugi and Atem’s decks to decide what should happen in the scene where Princess Dark Eradicator Warlock interrupts their duel.

I double checked plot summaries and screenshots of the last several episodes of the 1993 Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA, to make sure I got the timing and commentary right in the scene where they watch it.

Finally, I waited for feedback from several friends to make sure the chapter was acceptable quality before publishing.

And here’s what I have gotten in the two weeks since I published this chapter:

6 kudos- Which might not even have anything to do with chapter 10, I don’t know, it could be new readers who are just reading the first few chapters

One comment

That’s it. All that work, and I’ve gotten almost nothing in return. And I know I shouldn’t expect people to be throwing themselves at my feet praising my writing skills all the time, and I know people have plenty of reasons why they might not comment right away or whatever, but I just... It’s really hard to feel like the effort I put in is worth it. I don’t need instant gratification and I don’t expect it, but it really is kind of crushing when I get almost no response to my work unless I actively beg people to say literally anything about it. 

I genuinely can’t tell if people are even still reading at all unless they comment, let alone if they actually like what they’re reading or not. I can’t! There’s no way for me to know! I know people say they like my fics, but when I publish a new chapter and people don’t comment... From your end it looks like you’ve got a fun new thing to read and you’re super excited, but from my end it looks like I’ve just put out months worth of hard work and maybe someone glanced at it for a few seconds, maybe they didn’t, I don’t know. All the love in the world can’t motivate me if I don’t know it’s there, so when no one says anything it feels like it’s because no one wants to say anything.

If you like my fics, tell me! Tell me what you like and what you don’t! Tell me if you enjoyed an update! Leave a comment, send me a message, post about it on your blog, whatever, just don’t stand there reading silently because I can’t see you reading and I don’t know that you’re there. Please, and this goes for any fic you like, regardless of who wrote it- If you are reading something and enjoying it, don’t wait to indicate this until the author gets desperate enough to ask. If a fic makes you smile, if a fic makes you cry, say so, because we can’t see you.

[naysaltysalmon]

I’m back!

Upon my return from China, I noticed there were a lot of things weighing me down... that I can just throw the fuck out.

I could expound upon all of these in great detail, but it really would be pointless. And I wouldn’t be able to cover it all anyway. So instead I’ve decided to make a post of every icon I’ve used for my online persona over the years.

The reason for this is... at the end of the program I attended, we had an entire week of silent meditation. We weren’t allowed to talk or communicate with anyone in any way, including gestures, eye contact, or physical touch. So, during this time I had the realization that the stories I’ve been interested in have been my main source of comfort over the years. No person, place, or thing has felt more permanent to me than this.

However, permanence is an illusion, as the Buddhists say (I stayed in a Buddhist monastery in China, in case you’re wondering). My interests have changed over the years -- from the first fandoms I got obsessed with, to my interests now. I may still adore the series that I enjoyed as a child, but definitely not in the same way.

Coming home, I realized... I no longer want to attach my identity to one character or series. That’s why I’ve decided to make this post. I want to reflect on all the egos of my past, on what they have meant to me, so that I can let them go. I’ve been clinging to a folder of them for too long.

To anyone who’s been here since the very start of my blog, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. This is an acknowledgement of my transformation from then until now.

And so:

Breadward Elric. My first Internet icon, which I had for 2 and a half years from May 2011 -- 2013. My blog was originally entirely FMAB content, created in January of 2012, and while this format didn’t last the entire time that I had this icon, Breadward saw me through the majority of my early anime and video game obsessions. He jump-started my personality on the Internet as a fanfic author, a blogger, and an artist. I will never forget him... ;~;

Comrade Führer Tamama. I had this icon for 8 months in early 2013 -- early 2014. What can I say? Tamama’s passionate personality resonated with me, especially when he was finally able to be in control (in the episode this particular screenshot is from). Gotta get those cola oceans pronto!

Yokoso waga tainai e [Welcome to my Womb ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)]. I had a phase during the summer of 2014, okay. But I still love this maniacal snake’s crusty ass, fite me. I admire KagePro immensely for the popularity and development it gave characters in song format. Of course, favorite of those characters was Kuroha, a snake whose only desire was to keep granting wishes so that he could survive. Add a touch of murderous intent and you have the complete package -- I won’t deny he appealed(appeals) to my wild side -- okay moving on.

KeroTama hugge 👀. I had this icon for about 4-6 months in 2014 before the Hunter x Hunter phase hit. God, I shipped them so hard *facepalms* It was funny though, it’s like KagePro hit me like a hurricane during this summer and then I went right back to being KeroTama trash. Amazing.

Softly Smiling Pika. I kept this icon for at least 9-10 months at the end of 2014 -- early 2015, until I found Owari no Seraph. Kurapika was definitely my bae at the start of my HxH phase -- and in many ways he still is. The current arc gives me this sense of nostalgia of being a 15-year-old again, deeply in love but too in denial to see it. Watching him as a young adult, I see how far I’ve come, how I could have ended up... since I believed myself to be most closely alike with Kurapika at the time. And now I know that’s not the case... I remember debating between many other Kurapika icons and finally choosing this one because I dearly wanted to believe I too could find my happiness in the friends around me, even if it seemed all was hopeless behind the scenes.

Yuu babe. I had this icon for 4 months in the middle of 2015, I remember. Yuichiro Hyakuya was an underappreciated dorky genius at the time, much like how Gon is in HxH now, except... Now in the series... *deep sighs* *clenches fist* I still love his piercing citrine eyes and the dynamism of this icon/pose though.

Cuties T^T (MikaYuu edition). Mmm I kept this icon for a while, something like most of 2016, at least 6-8 months, probably more like 9 or 10. Looking back, I still wonder how/why the author was a fucking coward and didn’t make MikaYuu happen. We coulda had it aaallllll...... Anyway, this is when I was writing Ebony & Ivory, my most popular fic to date, so I was reveling in the reputation I gained from that. This icon was me accepting that while I was no longer friends with my best friend from middle school to 11th grade, I would still pursue my own happiness in the perfect relationship that I saw in MikaYuu. *nods* It’s fitting.

Caught Child². I shared this and the next couple of icons with a friend that I met online, who used the Gon equivalent. I think we shared this one for about 3 months of 2016. This is when I became re-obsessed with Hunter x Hunter and realized how much I had changed between 2014 and 2016. It’s an obsession that’s more or less carried onto now, and redefined my adulthood, as I see my progression as I refer back to HxH for guidance to this day.

Content Chompy Boye. I love this icon. I kept this icon for a long time, something like 5-6 months in December 2016 -- mid-2017. The colors of the background contrast with Killua’s white hair, pale skin, and dark muscle shirt... I still used this icon on other websites until just a few days ago (when I most recently changed my icon) because I thought it looked the best backdropped against the format of other websites. I love this scene in the series, though; while (human) Palm is chattering on about her worry that Gon and Killua will be able to defeat Knuckle and Shoot in time, Killua continues to eat without a care in the world. It’s a mood I feel at least once a day, whether while eating or getting a back massage -- as if that ever happens -- 11/10.

Pizza Devil Brat. I like this icon a lot and kept it on a few websites for longer too, but with the way I edited it, the green background becomes a little too headache-inducing if you stare at it too long, so 8/10 -- okay no more out of 10 ratings, this isn’t that kind of post. I believe I kept this icon for about 3-4 months in 2017 and possibly early 2018 as well. From the same scene the previous Kurapika icon came from, this remains one of my favorite scenes in the entire series for its serious undertones over the light happiness that underlies Gon’s, Killua’s, and Kurapika’s (and Leorio’s -- but he’s not in this scene) interactions with each other throughout the series.

Grumpy Gem Gremlin. I was sharing the last three icons with that friend, including this one, with the Phos equivalent (more or less). I think we only kept it for about a month or month and a half in 2017 or beginning of 2018 before switching to the next one. Cinnabar’s desire for a purpose and closeness to others despite her poisonous nature... is definitely something I can understand and relate to.

Sad Gem Child. Damn, I think we’re all still waiting for the day Gormie realizes Aechmea’s a creepy sugar daddy and dropkicks his ass into the ocean where the Admirabilis can decompose his cloudy body like he doesn’t deserve. When will Land of the Lustrous return from the war? I’m still waiting, Ichikawa. Anyway I think we kept this icon for about a month or maybe two in 2018, not long at all.

Gay Childe™. Look, this is one of the gayest scenes in the entire series and it’s right after my favorite episode(s)/scene(s) in the entire series (so far) and it’s not even acknowledged by anyone. Just. Holy Fuck. Anyway I think I kept this icon for about 6-8 months to cap off 2018. And this is where the Big Breakup happened, where my friend decided to choose an icon that deviated from mine, but I kept this icon for a lot longer due to what this scene means to me, placed after/during my favorite episode. ;v;

And finally, BoMH (Blood on My Hands) Pika. I used this icon for 8 months from the start of 2019 until just a few days ago (approx. 8 months). This icon was originally the cover for a Kurapika fic that I started back in 2015 and ended up discontinuing because it was pretty slow-paced, and thus unpopular, which made it become difficult for me to write. But I got all the way up to 97k words before I quit, simply because of the freedom and joy I felt in creating all the OCs that I fit into Kurapika’s journey as he searched for the Kurta eyes after the Yorknew City Arc. Looking back, I’m proud of the planning and commitment that I succeeded in undertaking with this fic -- it was about halfway done by the time I stopped writing it -- and I feel I want to return to this concept one day. Even if the arcs were pretty formulaic at times and, well, boring, I wanted this icon at the start of 2019 to be a new person separate from my recent past matching icons; a representation of my ability to reconnect with my past, but to no longer be afraid of it; to be proud of it, but still recognizing the not-so-good parts, laying it to rest by no longer avoiding it.

My icon now, as I’m sure you can see... is nothing like those I’ve used thus far. I definitely have no intention of moving away from anime or my past. I simply wish to redefine who I am in relation to them, rather than being defined by them.

...I’ve discovered a lot about myself over the past 2 years since college started, more than I ever thought possible. I discovered a lot while in China, too. And I need my online persona to reflect that in every form, as I’ve done every time there was a change.

Thank you all for being with me on this journey: for following me, for reading my posts, for liking my art, for talking with me and blowing up my notifications on every platform...

I’ll be pursuing the next chapter(s) of Human, TIDU, and other works soon. ^.^

[bellsybuilds]

To re-assert his dominance in Talon’s council, Akande first had to silence that young, dumb hard light engineer who kept talking back in team meetings. Unfortunately, Akande already met his monthly allocation of throwing colleagues over the ledge. Attempting to outsource the problem, Akande ends up in Rio de Janeiro: a huge mistake he will come to regret over and over again.

Co-written by @sparrowswing.

Four months later

Sanjay Korpal had not enjoyed his week.

The development project in Dorado was stalled. Again. LumériCo were nervous to renew their contract with a company rumoured to be liquidating stock. Which was a complete fabrication, and once he found the journalist who spread that lie, they would never print another word again.

But negotiations for the projects in Jordan, Wellington, and Cairns were also sidetracked.

Someone had placed the lead architects of the Jordan plant on secondment to another project. The delay was costing them thousands by the day.  Someone would lose their job for this.

And then the wrong materials had been ordered for the load-bearing foundations in Wellington, and would not pass the city’s stringent earthquake-proof standards. An incredibly expensive, rookie mistake.

In Cairns, the indigenous population were leading protests, arguing Vishkar’s proposed cityscape had been cited for sacred ancestral land. And the protests were winning.

Didn’t Sanjay employ people to clear these obstacles for their better world order?

“Symmetra,” he summoned, for the second time in a minute.

Silence hummed back through the comms line.

Frowning, he tilted his wrist, checking the health of the connection on the device’s interface, perfectly fitted over the uniform of his forearm. All indicators were green. Why wasn’t she answering?

“Symmetra. I have work for you.”

Where was that girl?

The door hissed shut at his back and Dorado’s weak glow from the window illuminated the modest space of his temporary office in Castillo. He scowled, taking in the ramshackled city under the shroud of night: squat terracotta boxes pockmarked on the mountainside. No sequence. No order in their form. Why did people find this charming?

The LumériCo plant was the only beacon of progress on this primitive lip of the coast. Even Rio de Janeiro was a kinder sight by comparison with its steel and white pillars of Vishkar’s redevelopment.

When Sanjay removed Ogundimu from the equation all those months ago, it was with the promise his successor would keep the funds flowing. A bitter scowl twisted Sanjay’s mouth, thinking on the weasel of a man who now sat at Talon’s table representing Ogundimu Prostheses.

It wasn’t until Akande Ogundimu was gone that Sanjay could appreciate how much influence the man had wrought, even from behind a maximum security barrier. Ogundimu’s successor was a civil servant appointed by the company’s board of directors. He inspired neither fear nor awe, and without subservience or loyalty, the absence of Doomfist’s guiding presence was keenly felt in the tension unraveling the council.

Sanjay was not foolish enough to overlook cause and effect: with Doomfist’s death, the wolves descended on Sanjay’s house. Simple beasts who, with their small bites, had slowly cleaved the connective tissue from Talon’s larger tapestry. A masterpiece that required all its artisans working in shared - if uneasy - mission. It was a vision of which, not long ago, Ogundimu had shared part as a key architect.  

Had Doomfist been the only threat keeping the lurking wolves in check?

Sinking into the chair behind his desk, Sanjay slowly deflated with a weary groan and shut his eyes, brow tightly pinched.

“Long week?”

Startling upright, he whirled, heart pounding. His hand flew to the panic button under his desk.

On the low cabinets that had previously held the projection of the Wellington model, that infernal DJ kicked back in a relaxed slouch, nodding at Sanjay’s straying hand.

“Oh, that won’t work,” Lúcio chastised, tucking one of his heels up beneath him. His gloved hand gestured from corner to corner of Sanjay’s dimmed sanctuary. Muted, neon magenta leads of light trailed from his knuckles to a thick strap on his bicep. At his back, the wall pulsed in slow washes of that sickly, purple light. “We’re in our own cone of silence here. I had some help. Sonic amplifiers, dampeners… it’s kind of our thing in the family.”

Sanjay stared at the thief on his perch. His shock soured and he pushed down the instinctual question he demanded be answered. It was clear how Lúcio had infiltrated his office: those same wolves, whoever they were, prying apart his beautiful constructions from the inside. Throwing the doors wide and unwatched.

It had been long months since Sanjay last caught sight or sound of Lúcio Correia dos Santos. After Rialto, the audio medic had gone underground, disappearing from the public scene and off their intelligence networks. Not even the social media train of devoted followers could turn up a hint of their beloved DJ.

All word on Sanjay’s mark had officially gone dark. Someone was keeping him well hidden and safe. After two months passed, Sanjay’s attentions had turned elsewhere, and the situation with Lúcio downgraded to ‘monitoring’.

Clearly, Sanjay had not been the only one planning.

The engineer sat back in his chair. It swayed with the gentle spring of its ergonomic design. He threw his arms wide. “I’m sure you’ve been waiting for this day a long time.”

Lúcio’s bright gaze sharpened, his smile thinning, cold. “You have no idea.”

Sanjay returned the sneer. “Come to return the property you stole?”

A predictable scowl darkened those famously bright features. Lúcio was a child, so easy to play. Let his masses of vapid, adoring followers believe he was just a musician, just a martial artist with a cause. Vishkar’s security logs showed that Lúcio was a simple criminal.

“Can’t steal what’s already yours.”

Sanjay rolled his eyes. “Such a simpleton, that’s not how patents and corporate property work.” God, why was he the one who had to field the rabble today? “Everything your father created while in our employment was owned by the company. He knew that. It’s in the standard terms of every contract.”

Lúcio’s expression shifted, coy and smug. “Yeah, I admit I’m not one for legal stuff, but…..” He glanced down to his heel, idly thumbing the knuckles of his other hand. “I used to know a guy. Last thing he did before he died was leave me this video. It was, damn….” Lúcio shook his head in frustration, gaze faraway. “Short. You know, he’s about to die and he leaves me the name of… a dancer. And a filedrive with a lot about you. The second part made sense, but the first….” Lúcio’s expression turned incredulous. “I thought, His last moments and he wants to pad out the dancers for my tour?  I took a better look at her credentials. It started to make sense.”

Watching Lúcio slide off the cabinet to his feet, Sanjay swallowed, throat suddenly dry. If Ogundimu had truly handed over a cache of intelligence to this terrorist… the scope of what he had been privy to with his council level access could very well be damning.

But if that were true, why had Lúcio waited so long? Akande Ogundimu died months ago.

“She’d heard of me. Didn’t want anything to do with me or ‘my kind’ when I met her,” Lúcio laughed, sharp and dry. “Called me all kinds of names. And she was right: she didn’t owe me anything.”

Sanjay watched the DJ’s smile tilt into a crooked smirk. Dread sunk like a stone in his chest.

“But I showed her that drive. And, boy, she had a real bone to pick with you.”

The door to his office hissed open. In the violet and pearl of her architech uniform, the glare of his prodigy, Satya Vaswani, pinned Sanjay to his seat. Her expression was hard as stone, eyes burning like coal. He had never seen that particular look on her face. The hard line of her mouth did not bode well for him.

“Sanjay,” she greeted, voice flat.

He stole a glance to Lúcio who had not even spared a look for the newcomer, as though Satya had been expected. Could it be? Sanjay looked back at his protégé still poised over the threshold and noted with some relief that she had not brought her photon projector. Would Satya really have allied herself with this ruffian?

He slid his usual, placid smile in place.

“Satya, at last,” he rose from his seat, straightening his uniform. “We have an intruder. Please call security and inform the authorities. We’ll be relieving him of his stolen Vishkar property.”

Lúcio snorted a laugh under his breath.

Satya’s measured strides closed the distance of his office, her misdirected ire never straying from his face. Her hands folded over her front as she had countless times before, standing at attention before his desk. “I have come to remove an intruder. The role you have performed in league with terrorists insults everything this company stands for.”

Sanjay felt a deep scowl pull at his mouth. “Mind your accusations, girl. You’d do better than to trust the intelligence of a criminal.”

The hard line of Satya’s mouth turned down in her own scowl. “This intelligence is not from him, but you.” Her prosthetic hand flexed like a flower coming into bloom, and an HUD materialised in the space between them. Documents were thrown up, cascading in panels. They looked like emails and purchase orders, flying too fast for him to scrutinise.

“Fabricated.” It was easy enough to stick his standard email signature at the bottom of a few screenshots.

“Verified,” Satya corrected. A still image overlaid the documents, shimmering into motion as a video of surveillance quality. Sanjay recognised the city skyline of Rio de Janeiro in the background. They watched as the favela complex exploded in a plume of gold and black, pale reflections washing over Lúcio and Satya’s faces. Screams and car alarms rang from the video’s audio, clipping to abrupt silence. Satya glowered at him through the transparent HUD. “And you lied to me.”

She was doing a remarkable job of holding eye contact today.

“Is this the path for your better world?” Lúcio muttered.

“You’ve made me an accomplice.” Satya’s hard stare finally cracked, gazing at the frozen image, expression contrite. “And you knew. There were people in that building.”

Lúcio gestured to the array of documents. “This trail shows you ordered a survey of the prospective building site, tallying population and demographics of our people. You guys developed blueprints of the favela. You knew the right places to bring the building down. Made the whole zone unsafe. You started demolition before the job was even yours. And you used charges from one of your other projects. You Vishkar are so obnoxious you don’t trust anybody else to do the job right.”

Satya shook her head, voice firm. “This price is too high, Sanjay. You will resign your position for the honour of this company.”

A laugh escaped him before he could help himself. “Honour?  You still don’t understand why this company exists, Satya. The work you performed for us. The price of building a better world is paid in sacrifice. Reborn from the ashes! If not me, someone else would have made that same call in Rio! Your hands are not clean of this, either.”

Satya straightened and turned to Lúcio, raising an eyebrow. “I think that’s sufficient for an admission. Don’t you?”

Lúcio glanced out the window, gaze faraway. Eventually, he tapped the side of his visor like he was listening to another conversation. A slow smile spread on his lips. “Apparently. Yeah.”

Sanjay looked between them, realisation dawning as his mind spun. How foolish he had been. He snarled, but Satya did not draw back at his pointed finger. “You’re also culpable, Satya.”

Lúcio folded his arms, rocking back on his heels. “Ever heard of immunity?”

“This will never stick.”

“Oh, it will,” Satya promised in that same tone that brokered the birth of cities.

Footsteps pounded the hallway and Sanjay startled as his office filled with omnics and humans flashing badges saying  Interpol and Polícia Federal. Five they were in total, some sporting flags on their badges from Mexico and Brazil.

“Sanjay Korpal,” one of the federal officers from Brazil stepped forward, a petite woman in a navy suit with a high ponytail. “You're under arrest for the bombing of Calado Holdings in Santa Marta, Rio de Janeiro, and the deaths of 48 civilians."

///

All those months ago, when Satya finally had all the evidence before her, she had trembled in her chair of Alejandra’s bakery with the same silent rage simmering beneath Lúcio’s skin.

Lúcio had shared what Tracer implored as Lúcio had clung to her in Rialto, blind with grief. “They won’t get away with this. But we’re going to do it the right way.”

In the end, all that time and patience was worth it to watch Sanjay marched before television crews, cuffed and sputtering indignities.

“It is not justice for your father, but it is justice,” Satya apologised, once they had been excused by the authorities for the evening.

The breeze washing up from Dorado's shore was cool and damp. Lúcio rubbed his arms self-consciously and tried to feel grateful.

“For a lot of people. Not just him.” He managed a weak smile. “Thank you for confronting him. We couldn't have got his admission without you.”

Satya nodded in acknowledgement, hands folded before her. Before the low stone wall, she glanced to the coastline. “Order is restored. But thanks are also due to your source. Without that drive, I would still be none the wiser.”

Lúcio's throat tightened. “Yeah. Yeah, he was… he did all right. In the end.”

When his silence stretched on, Satya bowed her head kindly. “I am sorry for your loss.”

He barked a hoarse laugh. “I.... “ He sighed, shoulders deflating. “Thanks. I'm sorry your boss turned out so bad. You should take his place.”

Satya hummed in consideration. “Possibly.” Her nose lifted imperiously, chest pushing out, long arms stretching behind her back. “I am more than qualified. I'm still deciding.”

“If you should take the job?”

“... If I should stay. Sanjay’s words are troubling. We have begun dismantling the projects we found contestable, but I doubt Sanjay was the only one in Vishkar who thought as he did.”

Lúcio hesitated, watching her wring her fingers nervously. “I've got a friend you should meet. She passed me the filedrive. You two… I think you’d have a lot to talk about.”

“More ruffians?” Satya glanced at him from the corner of her eye, mouth curved in a sharp smile. “Very well.”

///

Lena looked even worse than Lúcio remembered: skin wan, face gaunt. Her eyes were shadowed with exhaustion as she leaned her chin on her hand with a tired smile, the grey London sky at her back. Her new shock of bleached blond hair didn't help her washed out appearance on Lúcio's video call.

“I wish I coulda been there to help,” her voice cracked with a cough and she cleared her throat. “I knew you could do it.”

Lúcio nodded, feeling numb in the cold, dark quiet of his Mexico apartment. Tomorrow, he would return for Brazil to help with the prosecution of Sanjay’s case.

“It’s done,” he repeated, though it didn’t feel any more real the second time he said it, nor even for sharing it with the only other person who could appreciate the scope of what they had done.

Lena and Akande had braved time more than once to save him so he could take down Sanjay himself. It was a staggering thing to wrap his head around. They thought Lúcio had to be the one to do it, as Akande had always intended. They were wrong, of course – it had cost Akande his life.

And now, it was taking Lena’s, too.

“How are you feeling?” Lena asked gently, and Lúcio laughed, loud and abrupt.

“Awful.” He smiled, watching his friend’s face crinkle with a knowing smile like it was their private joke. “You?”

Lena nodded, coughing, low and wet in her chest. “Awful.” She pulled a tartan blanket tighter around her shoulders – one of Emily’s, Lúcio guessed. “Winston says it could be any day now. I've settled everything. Aren't too many affairs while one of us is still here. As far as the law is concerned, it’s not really death. I’m okay,” she hushed before Lúcio could apologise for the umpteenth time. Her voice was gentle and at peace, “I’m okay.”

The phone’s camera tilted and he caught sight of the pair of women chasing each other in the park beyond the picnic blanket. Emily’s flame red hair was instantly recognisable, and Lúcio was sure there could be no sound as distinct as Lena’s bright laugh.

It was still surreal seeing two Lena Oxtons.

His Lena, the one travelled and worn, cracked a smile watching the pair of them. “I’m with good people. I won’t be alone when it happens.”

Lúcio sagged, the ever-present ache swelling in his chest again. “I can never repay you.”

Lena’s eyes squinted with the depth of her smile. The tip of her tongue peeked from her lips, coaxing him to smile. “You already have. Sanjay is one less monster out there.”

It didn’t make Lúcio feel any better while he watched his friend waste away to the literal ravages of time.

“I wish I was there,” he murmured.

“And I'd give you a bi-ii-ii-ii-ig hug!” she snuggled tighter into her blanket, image shaking as she jostled the phone. Her look softened, dark eyes searching. “Do you… are you sleeping any better?”

He almost regretted telling her about his nightmares, but she was the only one who could hear he dreamed about a man who terrified the rest of the world without flinching. How he would hear a car engine backfire and abruptly find himself in Rialto, shoulder throbbing as he hit the pavement, shoved to safety.

Shrugging, he reached behind to flick on the small lamp by the bed, fumbling with the switch. “Sometimes.”

“Do you still see him when you're awake?”

Lúcio bit his tongue, squinting in the lamp’s sudden glare. “Sometimes.”

“It will get better,” she soothed. Lúcio couldn't bear to look at his phone and see the sympathy in her face. It was a relief when her voice brightened, shaking the somber air, “So, what's this about a new friend?”

Lúcio bit the inside of his cheek. “Well… I thought maybe you two could talk to Satya about some options. She’s the one who really brought Sanjay down. She’s looking for some direction.”

“She’s made a bloody good start. I'd love to meet any friends of yours, love. Oi!” Lena was leaning back, waving an arm at her company the next time Lúcio looked. “Number two! Borrow you for a minute?” As her counterpart bounded over, Lena gave him a bracing smile. “You too, you know? Whenever you’re ready… you’ll always have a place with us. If you want it.”

His smile felt thin, but he nodded anyway.

///

The clock crawled over to 4:39am.

“Lúcio….” The voice echoed in the silence of his apartment, and Lúcio cupped his hands around the phone.

He squinted at the unlikely sight of Akande and Lena crowded side-by-side and exchanging a look: her encouraging, him weary. Akande sighed, bloodshot gaze returning to the camera.

“If we succeed... go home. Please, go home. Forget about,” he glanced away, waving a hand to the beautiful sunset backdrop of Rialto, “All of… this.”

Lúcio had lost count of how many times he had watched this video. Each time, his chest tightened hearing the weight of resignation in Akande’s voice. Learning that of all the people the man compelled to rise up, Lúcio was the one exception he wanted to take cover.

Beside the giant, Lena’s expression was sympathetic, her voice firm, “You know he can't.”

Lúcio shoved the phone beneath his pillow and buried his face in his hands, expression screwed up tight. He had to stop rewatching it. Without this video, it would have been impossible to believe Lena’s crazy story – working with Doomfist, braving the whirlwind of time over and over just to save him.

Both of them, giving their lives for him. In simple math, it wasn’t worth it: two for one. Why did they have to do it? Why?

He had rewatched the video at first to convince himself Lena’s story was real. Then, to find Satya. To remind himself why he had to continue. And finally, because it was the only goodbye he would ever get.

But it didn't help him sleep.

“Lúcio….”

And he had to stop.

“If we succeed….”

His eyes squeezed shut, the muffled video looping beneath the crush of his pillow. He could almost believe Akande was just a room away as he pulled the blanket over his head.

“Go home. Please, go home.”

  ///

Rio was always calmer at the close of its last flights for the evening. Lúcio preferred flying under the cover of night, and returning to his home city was no exception.

He liked the quiet murmur of the airport compared to the harried rush of its activity during the day. As always, someone had tipped the media about his arrival, but at night they were a smaller crowd and easier to avoid.

It helped that the airport staff allowed him to use the service routes once he passed security and immigration. Slipping the paparazzi was easy, but once he emerged on the other side, the night loomed large and long ahead of him, his chest tightening from an unexpected source.

Home had too many hands waiting to pull him in close, too many who would ask after his welfare, had he eaten, and why had he stayed away so long?

“At last,” he could hear them already. “Finally, you’re home.”

Eyes slipping shut, he imagined the soft scent of his aunt’s perfume; people who loved him better than he deserved, murmuring love and pride in his ear. His eyes burned imagining his mother’s arms around him, her relief so acute his heart would break.

“It’s over,” she would praise the Lord, and the guilt would crush his heart.

Rialto had shown him it was only the beginning.

His feet led him away from the path home and steered him until sand spilled into his shoes, waves of the Atlantic hissing and foaming ahead. Dropping his duffel bag at the shallow rise of a dune, he sank to his haunches in the sand, slumping with a heavy sigh, arms stretched out on bent knees.

Small and high in the sky, the moon was a shy sliver embanked by grey of a recent storm. Lúcio watched the clouds roll and drag in the unseasonably warm summer wind. Every summer had been hotter than the last, one of the few constants he could depend on.

Despite the humidity that clung to his skin and the heat baked into the beach, it was still beautiful. Open ocean and clean sands, a novelty in this age.

Lúcio had always wanted to bring Akande here. He imagined it in the most indulgent moments: to be seen in public with someone he’d learned to care about against all reason.

Whoever said there was no harm in dreaming… how did they explain this feeling now? It hurt. Months later, it still hurt.

He would make Sanjay hurt for it, too.

“You should have killed him,” a new voice said.

Lúcio smiled, unsurprised, and shook his head. “I'm not like you.”

He was accustomed to Akande in his head, always urging him to be more selfish, more ruthless – a comfort and a torment that had followed him for months.

Soft laughter hummed in the air, tensing his shoulders. “A pity. Though I doubt the world could survive two of me for long.”

Lúcio’s laughter ground to a chuckle, bitter and watery.

The voice continued, undeterred by his silence. “I imagine my way might have made him a martyr instead, and added another warrant to your ever-growing list.”

His eyes burned with the fresh blur of tears, mind concocting the perfect shape, size and strength of Akande’s hand when it reached out in his periphery. The illusion of warmth rose at his back with a heavy sigh above him, so familiar, so --

“Lúcio….”

The hand closed firm and solid on his shoulder.

He jumped a foot in the air and the gulls squawked, taking flight at his panicked screech.

“What the -- what?” He shoved the offending hand off and whirled, almost losing his footing in the sand, wobbled, toppling backwards. He stared, numbed with shock.  “What?”

A firm grip caught his elbow, steadying him upright from his bluster.

Kneeling before him on the dune crest, the man loomed, his look searching, hands spread in uncertain question. “All right?”

The spectre was chilling; he looked like Akande. He sounded and moved like Akande, the soft frown pinching the man’s face in an expression so familiar, Lúcio’s heart constricted and shrank. Damn, that was a good simulation.

“All--?” His voice quavered behind a brittle veil of anger and lashed out, shoving the man so hard in the chest that he fell on his ass in the sand. “What are you?” Lúcio shouted, charging in to shove him again, prepared to put this imposter on his back.  “Who are you?”

The other man grunted in shock, hands raised to brace against the assault. “Stop, stop -- it’s me!” and it was pitch perfect the way he recoiled, swearing with a blended glare of concern and exasperation.

Lúcio just flew at him harder, pummeling raised arms and shoulders hunched in defence.  “Who are you?” his voice cracked in rage. He dove for the man’s throat, searching for the edges of a mask or whatever projected that illusion.  “Take off that face!”

“Stop it!”

His hands were caught and he tried to yank free, but was seized tight.

“It’s me!”

Thrashing, Lúcio was pulled in for his effort, and that stern voice gentled; insistent.

“It’s me.”

Liarliarliar--

Terror gripped him as his heart clenched, racing. He wouldn’t look. That voice was too accurate, and the hands on his wrists too careful. Lúcio couldn’t look into his face, torn between the fear of what he would or wouldn’t find.

Dragged in close against a broad, muscled chest, he stiffened. A thick arm wrapped around his back.

“I’m sorry,” the other whispered.

It was the first hint of shame Lúcio had ever heard from him. He buckled on the edge of a sob, knees folding beneath him.

“I’m sorry,” the words were buried in his locs, then his temple, against the shell of his ear, again and again. Hands cupped his face, thumbs smearing his tears, wiping them from his face. He caught the faint scent of Akande's usual aftershave, but with a tinny undertone from his cybernetic enhancements. “I’m sorry.”

“No,” Lúcio shook, throat tight. “No, you’re… no….”

You’re not alive. You died. You died.

The flesh beneath his hands was real. The cybernetic joints and augmentations were just as he remembered: chrome latches reinforcing the man’s jaw and Adam’s apple, the hands around his clicking and softly whirring as those fine joints adjusted their hold. The hood of the man’s shirt covered the bright red markers that would have glowed at his temple and shoulder like a beacon in the dark.

It felt like something had broken in Lúcio’s mind and split him right down the middle. A hand tucked behind his head and he gratefully buried his face in the cotton of their thick, muscled shoulder.

The one holding Lúcio was real, warm and alive. And more than the face he wore, he felt like-- he smelled like Akande. Lúcio clung on tightly, a mess.

“Ọkan mi. You know me.”

Pulling back, Lúcio couldn’t imagine how gross he must have looked in that moment--face flushed, wet and blubbering, but hands tipped his chin and then he was being kissed. Even that felt like an apology, the other man firmly pressed against his front, holding him tight as he trembled.

“I wanted to tell you so many times,” Akande confessed when Lúcio had finally calmed to hiccuping breaths, and was kissed again, “So many times.” He shook his head with regret. “I’m their key witness.”

Lúcio frowned. Their?

“They made me agree: until Sanjay was brought in, I was dead to the world. Even you. Your small friend told me to disappear. She showed me proof…” Akande glanced away, gaze distant and confused. “That strange phenomenon…. You did see me die,” the hand stroked Lúcio’s cheek again, as though Akande couldn’t help himself, “Actually, you saw him die. I was here first. And I lived.”

Lúcio stared, struggling to process what the other man was trying to tell him.

A key witness? Lúcio’s “small friend”?

An image flashed before his eyes: his two Lenas smiling at him from their video call. One from the present, the other many times cycled back from the future.

Oh.

Oh.

He finally lifted his eyes and met Akande’s worried gaze. He felt hands frame his face again and Akande searched him, desperate for some kind of recognition. “Ọkan mi….?”

He buried his face in the man’s neck, too overwhelmed to speak. His hands dug into Akande’s back.

He thought Akande was dead. Lúcio  knew he’d been dead.

But here he was, arms wrapped around him, secure and just as tight.

“I didn’t know if you wanted to see me,” the words fell hushed, and Lucio frowned, pulling back to look into his face. Akande sighed, looking distracted as he idly palmed the small shoulders under his hands, unable to stop touching. “I have to go back to their safehouse. I knew… I know you’d want to do this the right way, but I… I hoped you’d kill him. And if you didn’t. I didn’t want you finding out about me at the trial.”

Lúcio was livid… and numb. But maybe that was relief. All this time… and Lena had known?

Oh, someone was gonna get it.

His fingers curled hard into the larger man’s shoulderblades. “You let… I thought you died.”

The arms around him briefly squeezed, warm hand dropping to palm circles low on his back. The guilt rolled off the larger man in waves. “It was necessary.”

Lúcio scowled, eyes still wet. “I’m so fucking mad.”

Akande’s gaze fell, tense. “I understand.”

“All this time,” Lúcio growled, shaking his head. “You let me think you were dead.”

Akande moved to speak, but Lúcio cut him off, tone harsh.

“And then you just turn up. In the middle of the night. You think you can  kiss me  and it makes up for all these fucking months  --” He shoved Akande hard in the chest, and Akande flinched, pulling his hands back. Good. Good.  “I mourned for you! I even reached out to your family, but I couldn’t let-- they couldn’t know it was me.  And did you know? They’ve disowned you! I was the only one….”

Lúcio shook his head, throwing his hands up in disbelief. He stole a glance to the endless, black tides as though their surge could give him strength, clarity, any kind of handle on the situation.

Akande stared at him, expression guilty and lost.

“Do you know what that’s like?” Lúcio’s voice shook, but he persevered, holding onto the outrage. “Mourning someone... when you can't tell anyone?  I told… I told Lena, but--  she…  she knew!  And she didn’t say anything!  ”

Akande’s voice was quiet. “She couldn’t. Neither could I.”

Lúcio snarled, punching him hard in the shoulder, and Akande shrank back further down the dune. “Do you have any idea what the last few months have been like? Sanjay’s dogs I had to outrun, all the people I had to push away? I needed you!”

On his knees, Akande’s face fell, hands fisting at his sides and Lúcio’s heart broke all over again to see him upset. It was not fair.

“I needed you.”

Akande didn’t get to be upset. Lúcio was the one who had mourned, Lúcio was the one… he was not going to feel bad for Akande. Except…

He angrily swiped the fresh tears escaping. “Are you crying?”

Akande’s jaw ticked and he sniffed in a very telling way, lines of his neck tensing as he swallowed thickly. “You have every right to be angry.”

Lúcio glared because, yes. Yes, he did.

But his chest ached watching the uncharacteristic vulnerability crowd Akande’s shoulders. Completely unlike the obnoxious warlord who had dragged Lúcio across the war table in that hotel all those months ago, cloying and entitled, but even then… there’d been something uncertain about him.

It hadn’t taken Lúcio long to realise that Doomfist was more sensitive than anyone realised. And how could they? When would they have had the chance? How many people had this man let close enough to see?

Eyes raising to Lúcio’s, Akande's expression was painfully uncertain, his voice barely audible. “Do you still need me?”

There. There was the man he’d fallen in love with. It had been so long since Lúcio had seen him. His mouth twisted in an involuntary scowl at the sharp wrench within his chest. He shook his head in frustration with himself. “You make me so mad.”

Akande’s shoulders dropped and his eyes dimmed. His face fell. “I understand.”

Did he?

Lúcio’s heart skipped a beat, realising he had been misunderstood when Akande looked around, expression stony, and began to rise.

“Oof!” The larger man tumbled on his back, unable to catch himself under the weight of the one who had tackled him around the chest. Coughing at the sand stirred up, tentative hands settled on his shoulders. “Lúcio?”

“Of course,” Lúcio mumbled into the man’s shirt, breathing him in; weak with the tension that seeped from his shoulders at the familiar scent.

“... What?”

Face buried in his chest, Lúcio’s arms tightened around him. “Of course I need you.”

He felt the moment Akande understood, muscles abruptly loosening with relief. Lúcio squeaked at the strong arms that closed around him like a vice and felt Akande’s face press against the crown of his hair.

“I love you,” Akande breathed, hushed.

Lúcio stilled, tilting up to stare. “What?”

Akande held his gaze, gentle touch on his cheek. The earnesty in Akande’s eyes was intense and humbling, and Lúcio felt stripped. “I love you.”

Awed, he couldn’t break away. His breath left him in a rush, searching Akande’s face, but he didn’t find any hint of deceit and he hadn’t expected to. “Wow.”

Akande arched a skeptical eyebrow.

Lúcio blinked rapidly, mumbling in his embarrassment. “Uh, I mean--”

A finger gently pressed against his lips. “You don’t have to.”

Something soft and warm was unfolding in Lúcio’s chest, soothing the edge of the bitter ache that had taken root over the last few months. “I know,” he murmured, taking that hand in his and pressing a kiss to the long life line that arched round Akande’s thumb. He held that warm palm against his cheek. “But I do. Love you.”

Akande shuddered with a sound of relief. “Thank you,” Then almost sounding like an afterthought, said, “For Sanjay.”

Lúcio smiled, a tug at the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t do it for you.”

Not only for you.

Akande chuckled under his breath. “I’m proud of you anyway.”

That warmth bloomed in Lucio’s chest and he smiled wider. “Me, too. He’s going away for life.”

“I’m going to help,” Akande insisted, and his earlier words came rushing back.

“‘Key witness’?”

“Yes.”

Lucio nodded slowly, entangling their fingers together against his cheek. “But you’re going back to a safehouse?”

“... Yes.”

“Can you tell me where?”

“... Yes?”

And Lucio laughed, because he never thought he would live to hear that sort of conflict in the man’s voice.

“No, don’t tell me,” Lucio reassured him. “Just… when this is all over. You’re coming home with me.”

Akande’s mouth quirked in a smile. “Am I?”

“I’m not asking.”

Akande’s laughter was quiet and precious. “Can you believe that less than a year ago, you were telling me to get out of your city?”

“And you’re gonna help me,” Lucio informed him, completely ignoring the tangent.

Akande sighed, but instead of weary, the sound was soft and pleased, and Lucio tipped his face up when Akande leaned in for a final kiss; a grateful benediction, “As you wish.”

And what is the best revenge, but to live and live well.

This is the second time Bellsy has faked out on Akande's death. Third time is the charm. Brace yourself, big man.

The magenta lighting of Lúcio’s usual green or yellow crossfading ability is a reference to his Reverse Amp talent from Heroes of the Storm (slowing enemies and inflicting damage over time).