#marikorawralton

[marikorawralton]

Y'know, all these internet famous people having their pasts dredged up and ending up being harshly criticized for things they did when they were younger and dumber had me thinking...

Maybe I should pre-emptively mention my past wrong doings, just in case something I do accidentally gets me famous. After all, I wouldn't wanna end up losing my job or getting forced into destitution over Internet drama, but that's the kind of world we live in now.

Anyway, I probably did some fucked up things as a teen online.

I won't tell you what, though. Honestly, I can barely remember anyway, thanks to years of my brain slowly failing. I can tell you with 100% certainty that someone will remind me if I ever do start, like, a Patreon or something.

So if you hear any rumors about that famous writer, MarikoRawralton, years down the line... They're all true. Yes, I'm such a horrible person. I'm sorry for doing things that sucked.

[doorstuck]

You're a g-genuine dick sucker.

tch, its not like i like you or anything, door chan!

[osean-kitty]

airplen

[pyramidhead]

I have to ask, what's the amazing song that plays with dancing Pyramidhead?

my adidas by run dmc. unfortunately the remix used was from a soundcloud user who deleted

[your-yandere-gf]

marikorawralton mentioned you on a post

@me-and-my-railgun it's a bot

yes but the template is submitted by a human

[marikorawralton]

https://www.tumblr.com/marikorawralton/761046945679785984/i-think-a-big-problem-is-also-that-people-will

Probably because online culture is heavily pro-judgment and "morally justified cruelty". Actually being consistently kind and trying to help people be better and helping yourself be a good person is much harder than being a judgmental asshole who hides behind the pretense of being "moral". Most people might not be Christian, but by gods does ultra-Christian hyper judgmental "Thou art a sinner now and forever if you don't believe exactly what I believe" thinking permeate online culture.

A lot of it feels self-inflicted, which makes me worried that this shit is gonna get a whole lot worse as people struggle to deal with their own moral failings.

I know a few people who've openly admitted to me that they feel ashamed of who they are, and have warned me against doing the things they're ashamed of doing. I've been advised to hide parts of my own personality and what I enjoy to protect myself.

And I know that a lot of that is fear of judgment, but when the fear is so strong that it's making people suppress their personality in private, that's terrifying.

I don't blame them cuz people online have developed a disgusting, almost cannibalistic craving for targets to harass. They'll look for any excuse, which is why worthless accusations get thrown around so much these days.

It's why people are so miserable. They're actively hoping to run into "evil" to brigade. People are fetishizing crime and hatred and abuse because it gives them an excuse to feel "active". People are starting to enjoy bad news, they want to create bad news.

[helshades]

Oi! Don't dis the Picasso, it's an excellent family car and so, so roomy! So really not appropriate for anything dubbed 'Picasso', though.

I do think @marikorawralton made a salient point about the nature of work and inheritance. We all know some people are professional heirs whose sole purposeful activity in life consists in capitalising over the money made by relatives who were the ones struck by inspiration...

P.-S.: you don't have to pay for Victor Hugo's works, though. Nothing will prevent you from printing his entire production (the Gods forbid, you'll be responsible for the drying out of many an unfortunate printer) at home without asking Mr. Flammarion for permission, will it?

Sir - have you any opinions on the current Berne Convention copyright length?

It’s too long. 70 years after death feels wrong. I’m good with 50 years, though.

[marikorawralton]

Tsukiko's Bisexuality.

Or how my writing avoided the topic of sexuality and identity for years until I realized it's importance.

During the early days of work on The Knights Himura, the protagonst, Tsukiko was a heterosexual woman.

There was no deep or specific reason for it. It was just what I considered "default", and I'd intended to write a male love interest. I suppose this... "uniformity" was inspired by the anime and manga that inspired the story itself.

However, I'd ended up writing a scene where Tsukiko's friend, Fumiko, kisses her. It was never intended to really mean anything romantic and positive. In fact, in initial drafts, this was meant to be a manipulative action.

The Knights Himura was originally a much darker story, in which Tsukiko was punished for her vigilante activity. At this point, the story had no title.

Despite being depressed, I couldn't make myself write something so miserable. Quickly, the tone changed, and with that came new inspiration.

So, a decision was made to make Fumiko a romantic interest.

But not just any romantic interest. Fumiko and Tsukiko had an established romantic connection. This served as a sort of... personal attack against the typical "will-they won't-they" stories so common in Japanese media.

I suppose The Knights Himura isn't very Japanese...

However, this presented a problem. Tsukiko was now technically an LGBT protagonist, something far beyong my skill set, and a topic that requires immense care and respect.

I felt intimidated. I was a seventeen year old male with almost no real expertise or experience in that sort of thing. The majority of my friends were heterosexual, or at least they presented themselves as such.

My solution was to simply do my best to make the relationship work as any relationship would. At no point in the story is Tsukiko's sexuality brought up or discussed.

My second, more cowardly decision, was too never refer to Fumiko as Tsukiko's girlfriend. This was a less... tactful approach. In doing so, I set a certain ball rolling that eventually caught up with me.

I was afraid of referring to the story or Tsukiko as "LGBT" because I feared being a part of something I didn't understand. I didn't want to be defined as an author by writing something I didn't have a connection to. I didn't want Tsukiko to become "an LGBT character" and be reduced to that level.

So, no material refers to her sexuality. Fumiko was just a "friend". Fumiko was a friend who kissed her, had sex with her, trusted her deeply, helped her in her darkest moments, shared life long experiences with, etc.

But then, what was Tsukiko's sexuality? Just because she's dating a woman doesn't necessarily mean she's strictly a lesbian. After much discussion with friends and editors, I decided that she would be canonically bisexual.

I was greatly inspired by the game VA-11 HALL-A by Sukeban Games. Jill Stingray was the first bisexual character I'd ever seen in a video game, and I played through that game nearly ten times before I started work on TKH. I was sort of compelled to emulate it.

Immediately, however, another problem presented itself. Bisexuality is probably the most complicated sexualities to discuss and write in a broad sense.

It isn't the easiest thing to write or make obvious through direct writing.

A bisexual woman dating a man will be told she's heterosexual. A bisexual woman dating a woman will be told she's a lesbian.

Tsukiko isn't exactly the kind of person to openly pursue people or to show attraction easily. There wouldn't be some easy "silver bullet" solution, like making her hit on a man or something.

That, and that's a harmful bisexual stereotype. There are many who genuinely believe that bisexual people are just nymphomaniacs who seek pleasure from both sexes.

I did not want to portray Fumiko and Tsukiko's relationship as unfaithful or untrue. The entire catalyst of the story was Fumiko being stabbed and Tsukiko vowing to become stronger and to find the man responsible.

Their relationship was the lynchpin of the story, whether I'd intended it or not.

In having these doubts and thoughts, I had stumbled upon the feelings bisexual people themselves had been facing for decades. This confusion and aversion to commitment had led to the inevitable: erasure of Tsukiko's sexual identity.

Then it hit me.

Tsukiko had always been bisexual, from as early as Chapter 5, way back when I first wrote it.

By avoiding labels and avoiding making Tsukiko's relationship official, I'd unintentionally presented her sexuality as an unanswered question.

My own doubts became Tsukiko's doubts, which showed through the way she gets nervous or blushes when discussing her relationship. My own fears of Tsukiko being defined by her sexuality became hers.

Erasure of bisexuality is common. People like convenient, defined binaries, as much as they hate to admit it. Our views on sexuality are still in their infancy, and we still define it in very specific and broad ways.

It's often more convenient for bisexual people to identify as one or the other, to avoid these problems. However, this indeterminate, fluctuating mask can end up doing much more internal harm than good.

But that's no way to live, is it? You can't exactly hide who you are forever. We all wear masks in day to day life, but they have to come off around the people we care for the most.

I am no longer afraid of Tsukiko's bisexuality.

I can't claim to understand the feelings of bisexual people, since I myself am a man attracted to the feminine. I do think, however, that I've come to understand some of the issues they have to deal with.

These are only my thoughts. Maybe I'm crazy, and maybe I did a terrible job writing Tsukiko's relationship and sexuality out. Maybe my thoughts are stupid.

I am simply writing this here to collect my ideas and understanding of things. I cannot claim I know or have learned, just that I have a newfound interest in this topic.

I feel a new sort of... respect toward members of the bisexual community who had to fight feelings of doubt, erasure, and misunderstanding.

[marikorawralton]

Color Theory (or my loose grasp of it)

AKA Color Theory and its connections to the themes of Lily's Story.

This one's going to take a bit of explanation and a lot of Lily's Story lore before I can actively explain what the hell I'm talking about, so expect a lot of words. Sorry.

In The Knights Himura, there is a scene in which Aurelia, a tailor, explains to the protagonist the meaning behind the colors used in the making of the jacket.

At the time, I didn't look into it much, other than a super super broad thing, It was one of those moments where I wrote before I researched, so the scene doesn't have much impact. It's kept intentionally vague, because I didn't wanna dig too deep into it or end up making something bigger than it needed to be.

Truth be told, I didn't research it enough to feel confident. I didn't feel confident enough to make it something bigger or a more important part of the story.

Now comes Lily's Story, a piece I've been working on for over three years at this point.

I remember looking into the Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy: A trilogy of films by the director Edgar Wright that includes Shaun of the Dead, Hot Fuzz and At World's End.

This was, of course, followed by a good hour or so of Wikipedia scrolling. You know how people death scroll on Instagram? I used to do that a lot on Wikipedia before they made the site basically unreadable and painful on the eyes.

It was during this binge that I discovered director Krzysztof Kieślowski's Three Colors trilogy. This trilogy of films included Blue, White, and Red. Each film represented a color of the French tricolore.

It isn't universally accepted, but it's partially believed that the three colors of the Tricolore, or the French flag, represent the three words of the modern French motto.

Liberté is represented by the color blue.

Egalité is commonly believed to be represented by the color white.

Fraternité is believed to be represented by the color red.

So, what does this have to do with Lily's Story?

Lily's Story takes place in a land known as "Argentelle", which is based on a post Revolution France with a heavy emphasis on personal liberties. The people of Argentelle basically live in an idealized version of early American and Revolutionist French belief.

The story takes place in the modern day, but they were founded by stranded European revolutionaries, so their technology is more primitive, settling around diesel age (1880s to 1920s).

Lily herself is from this place, brought to our world by her family and raised by the Knights Himura after the death of her parents. I wanted her to represent these three ideals, as well as having them appear within the story over time.

Being a child, Lily believes deeply in equality. It's the way children don't judge those that look differently than them, since they have no hatred to bear.

White. Lily wears white. A white dress, white boots, white tights, etc.

She has no cross to bear or anger in her heart quite yet. She's still a child.

White is also seen, almost universally, as the color of innocence, and that which has not been stained. Innocence and equality come hand in hand. When we assume the whole world is innocent, or when we all allow ourselves to be naive, then everything is equal.

How easy it is to stain the color white also shows how easy it is to damage this naive mindset. It doesn't take much to harbor hate, but it is exceedingly difficult to find the balance of equality.

Blue. The first thing Lily sees when she leaves for the city of Yonahbourg early in the story is the blue sky. It's vast, spanning what feels like hundreds of miles with huge white clouds marked across it like a painting.

Blue is also the color of the Argentelle Rose

The blue of the rose not only represents freedom, but also the manufactured and that which is not natural. Blue roses are impossible in nature. Argentelle Roses are cultivated through magical means and human borne crossbreeding.

In this way, the color blue represents the impact humans can have on their world. We are all born with freedom in our hearts, to make our own decisions to carve our own paths. Of course, these paths leave marks and carvings in the forests and plains we all inevitably cross, metaphorically or not.

As the nation of Argentelle practically worships the concept of freedom, it's no mistake that their official seals and documents and motifs are all blue.

Blue in this case not only represents freedom, but royalty and class. It represents the struggle the leaders of the nation have balancing nobility and class with the needs and rights of the ordinary man.

Red. In Argentelle, red is seen as the color of the people of the "Austral Plains" to the south of the capital of "Asclebourg".

The people of the Austral Plains and "Santa Cereplata" are generally poor agrarian people, robbed of their opportunity by geographic and political divide ages ago.

Red also represents the blood lost by those who fought in a brutal civil war there only a few years before Lily arrives.

The people of the south speak their own flavor of language, leaning between the standard "Argentellois French" and the Mexican Spanish inspired "Austral Spanish".

This linguistic, cultural, financial and physical divide has created a tight knit, albeit somewhat private world for the people of the south. They are very connected, with huge families being the norm.

Lily's own sword is made of a deep crimson metal known as "Irokane", inspired by the Hihi'irokane myth and trope common in Japanese media.

Irokane metal is mixed with ordinary steel, creating an alloy known as "Chemadeaux Steel". The underlying red metal manifests itself through an incredible durability, rust and corrosion resistance and a disturbing bloodstained appearance.

Red is a strong color, and in many ways, a color without morality. It represents passion, trust and intimacy, but also war, death and anger. In the meaning of the story, however, it means fraternity.

Fraternity is neither good, nor bad, just as Equality and Freedom are not inherently good things by their base existence.

Freedom without order is Chaos.

Equality without balance is Inequality.

Fraternity without openness is Solitude.

We can strive to free every man, but without order and some rules, the world would fall apart and become a chaotic mess.

A man who has all he owns stolen from him or his livelihood lost in the collapse is no longer free to do as he pleases, only forced to survive.

We can try to treat everyone the same, but we will never be able to lift those beneath us without doing everything in our power to help them up.

A man oppressed by his weaknesses, circumstances and by poverty is no freer than an injured slave, forced to rot away as his usefulness left him long ago.

We can want to be together, but it's just as easy to create our own walled off tribe as it is to allow anyone into our hearts.

A man who leaves society to hold those closest to him is not free, for he is tethered by his own fears and irrational thoughts.

[busydrinkingdrnut]

“Nothing happened ever” shut the fuck up marikorawralton.

was in TSA this morning and the agent asked me "do you have anything in your pockets or any small devices in your bags" and i was really tired and i ended up saying "all that i am has already been laid bare" and i felt like i was from the bible for a second

[marikorawralton]

Sharing Writing Ideas

So, from now on, I want to be able to share some of the stuff I've been thinking about / working on on my Tumblr blog.

I know that's kind of annoying and dumb, but I really wanna share my ideas and have them written down somewhere cohesive and easy to update. That, and I don't wanna feel like I'm keeping ideas in my head and forgetting them later on.

As such, I'll start using the hashtags "the knights himura" and "lily's story" to label story specific ideas, as well as "marikowriting" and "marikorawralton" to denote when I'm talking about writing shit in general.

A couple of personal friends follow me and my writing, so this is more targeted toward them, though everyone is invited to look in and comment / give criticism.

Don't try to contribute, though. I don't wanna take anyone else's ideas and end up getting sued or something down the line.

I'm also using a private / obscure tag cuz I don't wanna step on anyone else's toes and keep it mostly together on this blog, while also keeping it pretty easy to find down the line.

EDIT: I will continue to post my usual bullshit, so don't get worried about that. I just feel like I should at least reclaim this account for something useful. As much as I'd like to run away from the stupid shit I used to post on here, I also feel like I can do this to move past it and grow.

Or something like that.

[marikorawralton]

Clothing in The Knights Himura

Since someone kindly asked for me to continue my little writing pieces, I've decided to blow off some steam and talk about how I've decided clothing for characters in The Knights Himura.

Clothing is an absolute nightmare to get right. I have spent days workshopping character designs and have delayed the release of chapters in the past to get things just right on a character's design.

Tsukiko's design and the general "Knights' Regalia" went through probably dozens of revisions and edits over the years before I finally came to what I've got.

For the uninitiated, the general "Knights' Regalia" consists of a jacket, generally double breasted, and a flat billed, flat topped hat. Each Knight the has small changes to color, design, bottoms and accessories that change based on that person's needs or "purpose".

Tsukiko's jacket is white, with red stripes. The meaning of these colors is discussed in the story, with Aurelia discussing the multiple, possible meanings of those two colors.

Aurelia says she considers them to represent "love and goodness" but also reminds Tsukiko that colors can mean many things.

White is, obviously, a very bright color. It stands out in Tokyo's concrete jungle, contrasts the color of signage, and reflects any sort of neon, practically glowing at night.

This comes through in her clothing as well. Her heels, specifically, are described at times as making a loud sound with each step. They have red-bottoms, something saved for the most exclusive of footwear.

The rest of her "Regalia" is formal. Pantyhose and a white pencil skirt. Black gloves in later stories. These are all the clothing of high class.

Tsukiko's presence is always known. She stands out. She is the "face" of the Knights, an example. A beacon that represents the best of what the Knights Himura are, for better or for worse.

A seldom mentioned detail is that Tsukiko used to have a little red ribbon tied in her hair, something that is superceded by the hat. I sort of flip-flop on whether or not it's still there.

On one hand, I think it'd add some nice complexity to her character, but on the other, it's a somewhat common trope. Either way, it's definitely something she wears when in casual clothing.

As an aside, there is a sort of grim, somewhat unintentional foreshadowing and meaning for the red on Tsukiko's jacket. During the prologue and second chapter, Tsukiko wears a white blouse, which is stained with Fumiko's blood after she's stabbed, an earlier example of white mixed with red in the story.

Midway through Tsukiko's Belonging, Aurelia decides to add a pair of black leatherine gloves to Tsukiko's "Regalia". Though the reason given is to prevent her hands from being injured, they also serve a somewhat obvious metaphorical purpose. They keep her hands clean, untainted, and separate her from the things shes involved with.

Moving onto Shizuka, she wears a black and gold jacket and hat, with a grey plaid skirt and pantyhose.

Shizuka's jacket would be the first Knights' jacket, and thus more closely replicates its original inspiration: a 1920s Japanese school uniform.

In that era, men's uniforms were usually militaristic in design, resembling a naval uniform. Students donned a black cap and a black jacket with brass buttons.

Black and gold are traditional Japanese colors. For hundreds of years, gold has been applied to dark colored laquerware to create vibrant golden art pieces. Gold has also been used as a part of the Shakudo process for hundreds of years, a method of inlaying gold into metalworks.

But beyond all that, black and gold are simply good, mature colors that go well together. Black clothing is a fashion staple that will probably last until the end of time. Gold's value monetarily is only a fraction of its cultural weight and importance.

The color of Shizuka's jacket isn't based purely on tradition, though. Of the three Knights, Shizuka's outfit is the most utilitarian.

Shizuka spent most of her time as a Knight completely alone. All of her investigations, all of her fights and all of her struggles were all done by her. Her design is practical.

Black is a less conspicuous color, blending in in almost any environment. At night, black clothing can be nigh invisible at a distance. It easily hides any sort of stain or mark, making it easier to keep "clean".

Her boots are based on the black leather and gold thread Doc Martens / Solovair work boots. Not only are these very popular with the sorts of counter culture Shizuka would be a part of, they are also legendarily sturdy and well respected boots. They also reflect her more brutal and less restrained way of fighting, always willing to kick and stomp her opponent if needed.

Haruka's design is much of the same, but her jacket is the only one that lacks a secondary color, being a simple navy blue. Hers was the first one seen by the reader and the first one ever designed.

The navy blue's purpose is obvious, as it maintains the militaristic and professional look of the Knights "Regalia". However, the lack of a secondary color comes down to two things.

One, Haruka's jacket was the first introduced, so it got a very very brief description, which stuck. At that point, simply having the jacket was a point of interest in itself.

And two, Haruka herself is a somewhat secretive person. Her negative or personal emotions are rarely upfront, and she tends to bottle things until she explodes. The jacket's simply and somewhat cold exterior represents that in a way, which is why it was never "redesigned" into something more ornate.

Being the Second Knight, she's seldom talked about as well, being the awkward "middle child" between two more known people. Much of her development in the story isn't even related to her being a Knight, spending more time dwelling on her retirement, self-worth, and relationships with her family and Kazuo.

There's an obvious pun to be made here.

The only major changes made to her outfit are a pair of thigh high socks and lighter boots, whose purposes are more down to Haruka's own style. She moves around much more freely than the other Knights, and these changes allow her to be more agile. This is one of the details one of my editors suggested, so I owe them credit for this one.

I'd write more about other characters' clothes, but this post already feels absurdly long. I kind of expected to be able to cover some other characters, but scrolling down this multiple times made me realize just how much I already had to say.

Maybe if someone asks, I'll do a Part 2 and get into some of the clothing choices made in Tsukiko's Belonging, or maybe even go into more detail about Fumiko's somewhat varying outfits. That'd probably take a little longer, though, since I don't really have all of Fumi's outfits saved the memory. I could probably write an entire blogpost on just Hotaru Mori's outfit alone.

[marikorawralton]

Someone recommended some 80 dollar writing software to me a few months ago and I got so annoyed, so angry, so indignant, that I started using Notepad++ to write just to stick it to 'em.

I don't even have a goddamn spellcheck, but you'd better believe I like my nice blue background and JF Shill custom font.

I don't need some cowardly .docx or .doc export. I write raw .txt files, baby. I can edit them on Windows, MacOS, Linux, Android, probably even iOS too. Give me enough time, and I'd probably be able to edit my stories on a goddamn gameboy or something.

I can even edit HTML files on Notepad++ whenever I need to, or even CSS in case I wanna turn my book into a website or something. I can make a nice, beautiful webpage for you to read my website on and I could host it all myself online for everyone.

Can Scrivener do that? No.

Eat it, Scrivener.

[lermisv4]

Hey guys, remember when I had a reblog war with @marikorawralton over this? It’s back on my dashboard.

With all this persona fuss i wanted to remind y’all of the best protag

[marikorawralton]

I posted 127 times in 2021

47 posts created (37%)

80 posts reblogged (63%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 1.7 posts.

I added 24 tags in 2021

#marikorawralton - 4 posts

#marikowriting - 4 posts

#youtube - 3 posts

#the knights himura - 2 posts

#lily's story - 2 posts

#shitpost - 2 posts

#marikogaming - 2 posts

#gaming - 2 posts

#max payne - 2 posts

#playstation - 1 posts

Longest Tag: 22 characters

#im just fucking around

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

As a teen, I liked Chie.

As an adult, I like Rise.

But my whole life, I've loved Marie.

4 notes • Posted 2021-07-20 08:37:38 GMT

#4

Promare but instead of a kiss at the end, it's a blowjob.

4 notes • Posted 2021-09-20 10:05:36 GMT

#3

Bro how the fuck do people even manage a carrd.

I can't even fill out a Tumblr bio, there is nothing about me worth filling out an entire page with.

I am literally nobody.

5 notes • Posted 2021-08-16 04:42:04 GMT

#2

Watched a single episode of High Guardian Spice and I had to stop cuz the audio mix is legitimately atrocious.

It sounds like it's in fucking mono or something and everything is playing out of a tin can tied to a string?

Also a few of the characters very clearly hand their lines done over Zoom. It's not good.

5 notes • Posted 2021-10-30 22:41:21 GMT

#1

40 notes • Posted 2021-09-02 22:03:36 GMT

Get your Tumblr 2021 Year in Review →

[skunksauce]

again, user @marikorawralton you are a fucking idiot please go swallow glass

you still kin?

no i got vaccinated dude