#mom guesses characters based on character creation

[whatchuwaitinfor]

My Mom Guesses the Personality of the Twisted Wonderland Characters

Part 1/8:

(8 is final thoughts)

~ Heartslabyul ~

First: Riddle Rosehearts

(The pictures about the texts are what I sent her to go off of).

“He looks like a playing card on steroids! He wants to be seen.”

(The image wouldn’t fit the limit)

Second: Trey Clover

Third: Cater Diamond

Fourth: Deuce Spades

Fifth: Ace Trappola

My mom is still working on the rest of Diasomnia but for a bit, I’ll post the others later!

[linkspooky]

Hey, since you said it was fine to send asks, and it will take me a while to comment the recent chapters, I'm taking this as my chance to proclaim my love for Li. Like go off lil' one, act as an abused child lashing out instead of the miniature saint your sibling described.

Jokes aside, I guess she's based on the popular fanon interpretation of Azula as a 'psychopath'? After seeing your post about Lio, I'm really curious about what went in her creation, and can't wait to see how she is in present day and how she will interact with Azula and the Gang. If she's still alive. Especially because I don't really take Azula's visions as gospel truth, but neither Lio's tales so I really want to see if the real Li swings more on one side or the other or if both versions are true at the same time.

Kudos for making such interesting OCs and intricate plots!

Thank you so much for the ask! Your comments gives me so much motivation to write.

I'm glad you like Li, here's some concept art from @oakyvii of the siblings Li and Lio. You are one hundred percent correct that Li is just fandom Azula.

Specifically the tendency of people to try to armchair diagnose Azula with some form of aspd or sociopathy in order to invalidate the abuse she faced as a child and how it played a role in shaping who she is. The popular "Azula sets turtleducks on fire" headcanon that's not substantiated in the show whatsoever.

The way that these bad faith interpretations want to use Azula's mental illness as a sign of some sort of internal wrongness in her. Proof she was always bad from the beginning, because as a child she was a little bit off-putting and demonstrated low empathy.

One of my biggest objectives with this blog is deconstructing "Good Victim / Bad Victim." I believe the origin is a lot of those armchair diagnosis of Azula is that people want to downplay Azula's victimhood in comparison to Zuko's. Instead of making Azula and Zuko both victims who react differently to the same abuse because they are different people, and there's no right way to react to the abuse Azula was just a psychopath all along. People want to make Azula into a mini-ozai who was like that from the beginning.

It sort of runs contrary to the whole idea of Zuko's redemption arc, because instead of Zuko having to work hard to be a better person every day of his life. To make this narrative that Zuko was innately good all along, just misguided and Azula was a sociopath who lit turlteducks on fire at the age of eight. Zu

Good and Bad Victim is bad because it assigns moral values for how people react to trauma, and usually the people who are assigning that value are people who've never been under the same trauma. Therefore it creates this expectation that people have to endure pain with saintlike in patience. If you're a victim the moral thing to do is to shut up and take it, and definitely do not make a fuss for any one else. Good victims can only express their victimhood is socially acceptable and easy to understand waysTM otherwise they're not worthy of human empathy.

This rant is pertinent to Zuko and Azula, because while Zuko does sometimes react to his trauma in ugly and violent ways he's still pretty easy for the audience to empathize with. In the first season he's incredibly incompetent at being evil. Even in season one when he's a straight up antagonist he's part of a charming comedy duo with Uncle Iroh. Zuko can be angry and violent and treat his Uncle and crew poorly, but he never like kicks puppies onscreen or anything. He's marked as the brooding, byronic character, but he's no Heathcliff. He's not even really Spike or Sasuke, he doesn't hurt a beloved character. He never does permanent irreversible harm to a named character. Even Catra from SPOP helps kills Glimmer's mom.

Compare to Azula who in her second episode burns the net underneath Ty Lee tight rope for daring to say no. Ty Lee is someone who both the audience considers a friend and the audience likes, so Azula's treatment of her is incredibly hard to swallow.

Even if you look at the way Zuko is when he's young, in Zuko alone he's made out to be a classic underdog, a soft, put-upon young boy who's desperate to impress his father. Whereas in the same episode people diagnose Azula as a born sociopath because she at eight years old, is already acting like daddy's little child soldier. Nevermind that Zuko, Azula and Ursa all laugh at the burning of Ba Sing Se together. It's easy to empathize with Zuko being a sad, underdog who wants his father's love. It's a bit harder to wrap your head around Azula's disturbing unchildlike behavior even if she's a product of her environment too.

That's actually what I liked about Toya's character in MHA. That Toya is the bad victim of the Todoroki family. That he's incredibly unlikable. He's not a big brother who secretly cares about his younger siblings all along. He's a selfish monster that demands his father's love and will do anything to get it. He was considered the problem maker in his house as a kid, he made a fuss and made things worse even though everyone was telling him to shut up. He yelled at his mother and didn't sympathize with her as much as Shoto did. He was in too much pain to notice everyone else in the house was suffering too.

(That's actually what I like about the Zuko and Azula sibling dynamic too, that Zuko isn't a magically forgiving big brother, that he holds a grudge about Ozai and Azula's treatment, that it's messy on his end even post character development).

This is why I introduced Li into the story, to make a character out of "Fandom Azula" or the way people want to characterize Azula as a sociopath so they don't have to acknowledge her victimhood.

There's one more character Li is based off of, or two more characters really. You could say that Li is based off of fandom Katara. That the fandom has a tendency to simplify women into either wholesome or toxic, nurturing figures or poisonous women. Li is partially based off of that heartbreaking line where Sokka says (I'm paraphrasing) "I can't even remember what my mom's face looks like, I just remember Katara."

Or rather, my idea for Li came from the concept of what if someone was forced into the role of playing mother to take care of the emotional needs of someone else and they got sick of it. What if the emotional labor of having to care for your brother, when you're still a child yourself exhausted you, took everything from you until there was nothing left. Like the darkest possible interpretation for Katara having to step up and parent her brother when their mother died and Bato left for the war.

The reason why Lio is so overprotective and emotinoally dependent on Li, is that Li is practically the one who raised Lio in the place of their missing mother. Li is a parentified child, and all of her problems stem from being a first born daughter expected to be a mother to a brother who's only two years younger than her. Li is also much worse off than Lio since she's illegitimate in court, but she's always had to suppress her own feelings and push her feelings aside in order to take care of her brother's feelings first.

Lio and Li's relationship is a direct mirror for Zuko and Azula's. Both Zuko and Lio don't see their sisters as people. Zuko swings wildly between demonizing his sister as the bad one because she's always had Ozai's favor and he sees Azula as an extension of Ozai's abuse and also putting her on a pedestal for her talent and envying her for it. Whereas Lio pedestalizes their sister as well, by making her out to be a perfect saint. Lio seems to love their sister more, but neither of them seem to see their sisters as fully realized human beings separate from themselves. Lio doesn't even mention Li's name when they're ranting at Zuko, they just call Li "my sister" because that's all they see Li as. An extension of themself.

Li is based off of one more character and that's Tsumiki Fushiguro from Jujutsu Kaisen. If you haven't read Tsumiki is the big sister of one of the main characters. Despite protecting her being Megumi Fushiguro's main motivation, she literally never appears onscreen once, she only ever appears in her brother's flashbacks, and then is brutally butchered by the main villain and fridged for Megumi's character development.

I thought Tsumiki was a missed opportunity because we never got to learn who she was. Megumi put her on such a massive pedestal as his ideal of what a good person was, the person he lived to protect, but in the end she was just a sleeping beauty figure. It didn't matter who she was as a person to Megumi, she just needed to lay there in bed and be helpless so Megumi could continue to play fairytale knight.

I thought about what kind of effect would having your own brother put you on such a big pedestal have on you? What would Tsumiki think about her brother objectifying her? About her brother making the entire reason for his existence protecting her, but not really caring about who she is as a person?

So I decided it would be interesting if Tsumiki wasn't actually that good of a person at all. She never was, that was just Megumi's projection of her. What if he jsut wanted to make her into some like Madonna-like figure, or some pure princess in need of protecting? What if Tsumiki strangled cats when no one was looking? How lonely would it be for Tsumiki if she knew her brother loved her very deeply but the person he loved, wasn't her?

That's basically where the original concept of Li came from. That eventually morphed into making Li into Fandom Azula. She sets turtleducks on fire and strangles cats when nobody's looking. Not only is she a joke about fandom Azula, but she also in story foils Azula by being the monster that everyone thinks Azula is.

Azula tries so hard to deny her own humanity, but Li is just that way naturally. Azula can't go all the way into making herself a weapon, because she isn't Li. She's torn up and broken on the inside because she does feel guilt and know on some level she was wrong. She probably wouldn't have had her mental breakdown if she wasn't capable of feeling guilt like she is. Ursa in confronting Azula in the mirror also points out Azula knows that the way she treated Mai and Ty Lee by trying to control them with fear was wrong, Azula just wont' admit it.

Other people see Azula as Li. Azula tries to be cold and unfeeling like Li, but when faced with the real deal she finds Li to be incredibly disturbing. o the point where eight year old Azula, who was a little bully and good at getting her friends and her brother to do anything she wanted doesn't know what to do with Li. Li's just too offputting to her once she reveals her true nature, she's an unfeeling, dead, thing and Azula doesn't want to be like that.

So yes, Li is fandom Azula. She's just genuinely a sociopath. Now the challenge is to make you guys like her even if she's just a flat sociopath, and I hope I succeed!

[scarabjewels]

Jack and the Cuckoo-clock heart: Let's talk about it, one last time.

This is my last installment of Malzieu's bizarre creation, following the two previous ones.

PART 3: THINGS THAT ARENT TALKED ABOUT ENOUGH

The ambiguous description and depiction of Acacia’s complexion

I read on an random article of the movie that Mathias Malzieu, the author of the book and the vocalist of Dionysus ( a French rock band that contributed heavily on the films soundtrack), who also voices Jack in the French Version of the film, based his character Jack of himself and Acacia as Olivia Ruiz (who.also voices the character) , his ex-partner of 7 years.

I do not remember ever encountering the exact skin tone of Acacia in the book but I felt like she was white washed in the movie. In the music video,Tais-toi mon Coeur (performed by Mathias Malzieu and Olivia Ruiz), she was depicted similar to Olivia herself: a little more tan. However, in the cover art of the book, Acacia would be light skinned.

Only her dark brown eyes, hair, red dress, small nose and small stature was descriptive of her appearance. All of Acacia’s features, apart from the comically tiny nose (I think Mathias wanted to create a pixie character therefore that feature) including being myopic, are literally OLIVIA. I have no idea why exactly but I found it odd that she wasn't..tan in depiction all throughout , especially when the muse was literally…the voice actress. So why not make her tan? I dunno, HAHA.

EDIT: So I did look up pictures of Olivia, I don't know if it's tge lighting but I think her skintone would be either lightly tanned or warmly fair. I guess her character's skin being ambiguous just might be understandable just for that. Maybe I was just noticing the undertone of Acacia’s skin in the movie and book cover: cool fair. I wished it was warmer.

The resemblance of the 2 of main women of Jack's life

Mathias recalled that Olivia had a disturbing resemblance to his late mother, which shocked his family. I noticed that in the movie, his biological mother and Acacia had similar features.

I wanted to say as well that it was just the same face syndrome that happens in stylistic animations however I observed other characters and they were all unique. Different noses, lips, expressions, height, body.

But these two women were oddly similar.

Probably their most similar features were youthful features (petite stature, small noses, wide spaced doll eyes), their hair, and this is rather by association, but the color red.

In a way, I think Jack had some Freudian thing. He was attracted to someone who eerily resembles his mother, and in the book, he describes her perfectly by detail. Just from the first chapter, his mother seemed to be a very young mother, at best , a teen.

The Snow and the Red Coats

Speaking of his mom and Acacia, notice how the scenes of his biological mother climbing up the hill in a red coat Mirrored Acacia also in a red coat,climbing up to save Jack.

His mother’s warmth, probably visually symbolized by her red coat and warm tones, tried to keep him in her womb just in time to be delivered. Madeleine ultimately saved him, and his mother (movie), with a heavy heart but a made up mind, left her in the care of Madeleine.

In my opinion, it mirrors heavily with Jack's death too. Acacia coming to save him, though Jack already made up his mind, gave him enough warmth to keep him alive. Here, he takes the opportunity to succeed in his dream to be with her and share their first and last kiss. Jack dies, and in my mind, reunited with Madeleine again up in heaven.

There are more mirroring here beside those, such as both of the women cried frozen droplets of tears, pain and anguish (Jack's mother in labor and Acacia losing Jack), I discussed this above but both of them are almost uncanny (the bun, the hair, the lips, the face too), and running out of time.

Madeleine and Jack were tethered.

Madeleine's influence was heavy in both adaptations, especially in the book. He would think about her a lot, imagine that her and Acacia would get along, and …even when he was with Acacia, he would think of her (the book had a scene that probably inspired that weird flashes of Madeleine when he tried to kiss Acacia). The book’s plot showed this relationship to be a classic relationship of parental attachment, where Jack would find it hard to make choices on his own, even forming a substantially fulfilling romantic relationship. I am glad that the book ended with him (though ambiguous) having a chance to grow up without her. But, I still prefer the movie.

In the movie, his heart was really taken very seriously because it WAS serious (I still have a grudge against the book about it being a placebo attachment) and while Jack already did whatever he wanted, her influence does affect a lot of his choices. Still, he was able to form new bonds and even his relationship with Acacia was okay (significantly in the movie). Breaking the three rules gave him the freedom to choose but he wasn't exactly equipped to deal with his emotions. Yes, he was well off on his own, but didn't have much guidance as his handicap was unique.

The gut punch of Madeleine dying was more than just a loved one or a savior dying, it was the ultimate death to what she left behind to keep him alive, his mechanical heart. I like that the film portrayed it like that. Acacia may have been his north star, but Madeleine was his home, now she was gone.

On Madeleine's part, a lot of her love as mother came from broken dreams and genuine love altogether. As a mother who suffered miscarriage and was told that she can never bear any children again, Jack was God's gift to her and of course, she would want him protected at all costs. She already lost her first and second chance of motherhood. Jack was everything to her and her death in prison may have been devastating to her own self too. Maybe it was true what Joe said in the film, she really might have died from a broken heart. Madeleine was said to be arrested before and for sure, she could've survived but I think her fear got the absolute best of her. I have been told before that any mother who loves her child would go crazy wondering if they're alright, even if they stepped out the door to go to school. Jack was Madeleine's greatest dream come true.

It's very sad but poetically beautiful. I like to think that Madeleine was Jack's heart all along and Jack was hers. Yeah. Cry about it.

The Warm and The Cold

Jack was born on the coldest day on Earth, raised in Edinburgh, a cold town, and most of his childhood on screen had a colder and even harsher contrast atmosphere. In Granada, Spain, it was warm and maybe for more contrast, The Extraordinarium was set as a circus by the desert, and Acacia's colors were stark red, contrasting Edinburgh’s bluish tones and blending well with the warm tinted atmosphere in Spain.

In hindsight, the symbolism of contrasting elements could suggest Jack's circumstances, Edinburgh kept him locked up in the dark and Granada set him free into the light.

But there is also one more contrast. In Jack's eyes, the people in his life, especially Madeleine and Acacia, are also seen in different lighting. I noticed that even when Madeleine has gray muted tones, her scenes would show her in warmer light, signifying her comforting nurturing aura as Jack's mother (albeit adoptive). Joe would be shown as dark and blue, even with warm light. Acacia is shown in warm lighting in his imagination, or whenever they are getting close but interestingly, she has scenes where she would blend well in cold blue tones, like when she was floating thinking about her first love. It might be because Jack sees her like a shooting star or a spark, who belongs in the dark blue sky to shine, far away from his grasp. Even by the end, her red coat, though it stood out, felt cold. Speaking of the ending, the transition from the bright cold snow that suddenly invited warm, almost twinkling, rays of sun as he died was beautiful. In a way, it goes to show that his freedom from life was way warmer than his only pursuit of finding Acacia.

The use of bizarre animation for metaphorical senses

The book is a figure of speech vomit, everything is fantastically and overtly expressed with metaphors, imaginative similes and personifications and a whole lot more literary devices I could not list down here. It would make sense that it should be adapted in animated form. Out of all the visual metaphors, I loved the floating to indicate the feeling of being in love and the use of thorns for Acacia's defensive nature. The most iconic use is the paper cut out scenes, describing the excitement of adventure, Acacia’s pixie depictions and her infamous Malaguena performance, and the use of the harmonica train

The use of birds

If Coraline used bugs, Jack and the Cuckoo-clock heart used birds, this is much more apparent in the book and dialogues instead of the visual.

Such as:

●Jack was described as a little white bird by Madeleine on the day he was born.

● Acacia was associated with a sprite. Joe was compared to a raven.

●Brigitte Heim is apparently an evil ostrich, according to Jack.

●His heart is specifically a cuckoo clock heart

●In the book, a carrier pigeon was given to Jack before he escaped the police, of which he used to write letters to his family in Edinburgh.

●Arthur's gift to Jack, which are eggs that remind him of his ex wife.

There are a lot of bird elements, literally the intro of the movie is a red bird that froze and landed on the bun of Jack's mother while she was climbing up the hill.

In some way, I think birds are a way to symbolize Jack's yearning for freedom, to be able to choose according to his wants. Book Jack was basically handicapped and babied by his adoptive mother, suffered bullying and torment by Joe and even his relationship with Acacia, he was trapped and complied to her wishes and neglecting his own wants. It wasn't until the end where he was able to break free from these chains, his heart was replaced and his mother’s death set him free to make his own choices without fear, his love for Acacia gave him the motivation however their relationship was not meant to be, but that gave him a chance to live authentically.

In the movie, his actions did set him free and was able to truly live authentically with his own choices, even with such harsh hindrances and fears. I really think the movie did him a lot more justice when it came to his freedom of will, he faced life head on with fears that didn't hold him back. He was much more sympathetic in the film, making me cheer him on despite the sad ending I knew he’ll get. The book made me want him to leave Acacia, and live for himself, he was really in a toxic relationship, like a bird who was set free from a cage then caged again the minute it found a new owner.

[kicksnscribs]

I saw your question about when Hal being jewish happened so here's a answer: hal has always kinda been jewish, he's based off a jewish actor named Paul Newman since creation as well as the green lantern genre as a whole borrowing a lot from jewish culture. It was implied in 1989 and explicitly stated in the 2001 spectre run but it was "set in stone" in 2015 that he is jewish/ethnically jewish from a one shot where he states his mom is jewish and his dad was catholic

Wow! Its been so long since ive drawn for JL but i do know that i base a lot of my Hal Jordan art on Paul Newman bc of that one little detail. i guess it just never clicked that they used his jewish heritage as part of the character as well!

Also bc i dont read the comics (money is tight so its either jl or transformers and you already know who wins that battle if youve seen my blog) i can see how that would have easily been missed on my account

Gonna have to work on some things now lol thank you for the explanation!

[cyndalyssa]

What inspired the idea, story and characters of the Super Rodent Squad?

A lot of things, actually... though, keep in mind, I may have forgotten some things, as I was eight when I had the original ideas that would eventually become this. And this saga spanned years...

The two main shows I have to credit for getting this ball rolling are The Powerpuff Girls and Hamtaro. The former sparked an interest in superheroes while the latter sparked an interest in rodents--mainly hamsters, but me and my siblings did get interested enough to have some of those pocket pets as kids--dwarf hamsters, mice, and gerbils were our picks.

Anyway, Apple was the first made, after I watched an episode of Dexter's Lab called "Mom and Jerry"... simply because I thought the mouse design was cute.

I'm not sure what possessed me to give him butterfly wings, though the design is based on a Halloween costume my sister wore the year before. He did have an apple on his head at first, but I swapped it for antennae later. For years I imagined him with a voice and personality like Bubbles, but since a few years ago, I wanted to emphasize that he's a boy. He's still the most sensitive of the boys, but that's because he's six.

Bita was inspired by a pink toy rabbit my sister @knighta3 had and was originally the "Blossom" of the group--though her personality changed over time to be the older teenage sister of the group, and the interest and talent in rock music is relatively recent. I basically gave her to my sister as an imaginary friend, given that it was her toy rabbit that was the base, but it didn't really last.

Fireball was inspired by my brother's pet hamster and Buttercup from PPG, though I have no idea where the fire powers came from. I guess I just thought "angry = fire". My brother had stewardship over him for a bit until he decided to make his own character...

(Early art of the squad, with my original three and my brother's first character for this thing; pretty sure Bro drew this)

Big Bro created two hamster characters that were inspired by Fireball, but with ice and lightning--Iceball and Electroball. The former had a "cool" personality, while the latter was a goofball. Big bro also coined the name of the team (good thing too, because my original idea was The Furry Group... given the implications these days, I'm glad we went with his idea), created Iceball's brother... Darkball... and basically planted the seeds of what eventually became the story of these kids, like how they're orphans--save Apple, who has his mom and his younger twin siblings, Tootie and Bootie.

(They were also supposed to have "real names", but that never stuck. As a nod to that, Iceham's middle name is Joel and Apple's middle name is Joseph.)

Through our games with them, we've tried pitching characters--a pair of mouse brothers named Rocko and Roscoe (one with earth powers and the other with super intelligence), Eartha (rabbit with earth powers), a ferret with elasticity, an otter with water powers... none really stuck, aside from a couple villain ideas--an evil counterpart to Apple named Licorice, a ninja bunny, and the ghost sister of Fireball. Still, I didn't really flesh those out.

My friend did pitch in with creating a squirrel character named Woodchucker, who flew a plane and gnawed on wood really fast to create weapons, and was Apple's best friend (and still is, though I've made a few tweaks just to make him a normal kid with interests in planes and woodworking... and just named Woody).

Anyway, eventually my brother lost interest, and I gained custody of his characters. A3 did eventually pitch a character that did stick--Copy Katie, a hamster with the power of mimicry. And to add another girl character (since Bita was the only one up until Katie's creation), I created a little psychic mouse named Destiny.

However, as a teen, I was doing fandom things and making fan characters more often, though on occasion, I'd return to my rodents with a funny idea or two. Still, there was a bit of stagnation in how I handled the team...

However, in 2019, of all things, Darkwing Duck managed to get the SRS ball rolling again. Sure, I was doing fan art and stuff for DWD, but it did inspire me to take a good look at the Super Rodent Squad, and do a revamp on the idea to make it more interesting. Give it a new artstyle, flesh out the characters, give them a better villain roster, give them supporting characters, expand the world, etc.

(Also, one of the DWD villains was one of the inspirations for one of the SRS villains, which also led to a love of guinea pigs.)

For variety's sake, there were species and name changes--Iceball became Iceham, Electroball became a gerbil named Electrex, Destiny became a rat, Katie became a shapeshifting chipmunk. Tootie and Bootie were now Tootsie and Boots, Apple's mom actually got a name (Anna Merrimouser). We added another girl to the team--the light manipulating squirrel Lucia. Fireball's ghost sister became a water ghost to contrast Fireball's powers--and somehow became a more interesting character in the process. Ninja bunny--Terepoto--now has a motive; eradicate the supercritters with his magic sword. Licorice was given a backstory that made him the biggest menace of their world, though Darkhall (I only changed one letter of his name, haha) is still a pretty big menace himself.

(Also, the boogie monster is a cat and is just a troll to these kids.)

If you want to see the difference between the old version and the new version...

It's been a wild ride over the years, and these guys just get more and more fun to tinker with. I do get distracted with other ideas from time to time (got a cartoon city and a world of birds that I'm also dabbling in, though neither world has gotten the fleshing out that this has quite yet), but they're always a delight to return to.

Pffft, you ask for inspirations, and I give you the whole story. XD

[donnerpartyofone]

This morning I left a long comment on a Facebook post by my dead friend's mom where she said she isn't ready to arrange a life celebration yet, and she urges people to keep sharing her daughter's memory. I had been meaning to do this for a month, but I often find Facebook too annoying to use just in UI/UX terms, and I had developed some sort of ridiculous paranoia that people would find out that I might have been the last person to speak to my friend, and that I was standing outside her apartment expecting her to let me in while she was dying. I fantasized that I would have to account for that somehow, to comb through details that I'm sure wouldn't be useful to anyone, and explain why I didn't do more when she strangely didn't come to the door or answer my texts. I still don't know what happened to her.

I reached out to the only acquaintance we shared in common, who was one of her roommates when we were neighbors. He regarded her as his best friend and has been completely shattered by this, especially as it came a year after the death of his ex-girlfriend, who who acted as their kind-of third musketeer. Privately I got a pretty good impression that he drove my dead friend nuts, but I wouldn't know if that was just a part of their "old married couple" dynamic or if they had a truly one-sided relationship. I guess you just don't always get to know how your dearest loved ones really think of you, and in fact maybe you shouldn't. He was the person I had asked to check up on her the day that she died, and he was the only person I could think to ask what happened to her, although I was afraid to. He texted me a detailed download of all the sad things that have happened to him since she died in September, and then he said he would have to wait until his day off to answer my question. I haven't heard from him and I don't think I'm going to. I'm sort of sorry I asked.

Tangentially: It struck me recently that cause of death has become the final frontier of privacy. This is fascinating to me, considering the constant state of overexposure in which most of us live. I've had several experiences in the past few years of someone dying--a casual acquaintance, a friend more than 3 degrees of separation away, a minor celebrity with a cult following in which I participate--and I just had no way of finding out what happened. These have been rare cases in which Google had nothing, not even a rumor; in the present case I was able to unearth the record of an arrest I had never heard about, but nothing about the death. Obviously if you're Michael Jackson or Prince or something then all bets are off, but below that line, if the bereaved don't choose to broadcast the cause or manner of death, then you'll just never find out what those things could have been. I'm thinking right now of another friend of mine who, we all tended to agree, had committed suicide, which was absolutely in-character for her as far as I was concerned...but at the same time, there were compounding factors that made her true level of deliberation ambiguous. I sometimes wish I could talk to someone about it, but I'm afraid it would just hurt her survivors pointlessly to hash it out. In her case, I just have to choose what I want to believe.

Anyway.

My plan that day had been to get a quick haircut before I went to London to record a commentary track for a new release of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR, based on my research into the creation of its mythology. This opportunity had come by way of a strange coincidence, and it seemed to justify the grueling self-directed project I had made out of it for the past several years. As I was preparing for my trip, which felt like the climax of a long journey with this subject, I started to feel silly about never having gone to Amityville to see the house. It's not an easy thing to justify; I'd basically be traveling for a total of 5 hours just to stand in front of the house long enough to annoy whoever lives there. But it felt like something I ought to do, as part of my devotion to the topic, so my plan was to see my friend for a quick trim, get on the Long Island Rail Road to do the thing, then return as fast as possible to pack in time to leave the house at 4am the following day. When my friend didn't let me in, only an hour and a half after we'd texted, and I waited around for 25 minutes in the boiling heat in case she had stepped out for coffee or something, before finally coming to terms with the fact that she flaked on me while I was preparing for a stressful international trip, I got all agitated and couldn't bring myself to do the rest of my plan. I've still never seen the Amityville house.

But later, after I found out what had happened, I was glad I didn't go. I imagined the alternative timeline: I went to my friend's apartment for a trim, couldn't make contact with her, went to see the legendary house where six people were brutally murdered and where, according to countless books and movies and podcasts etc, demonic possession took hold--and then I came home to discover that my friend had suddenly and mysteriously died. It would have been impossible for me not to connect these things. Not that I'm so eager to believe in curses; in fact my work has mostly focused on why belief in the supernatural has been easier to achieve than the availability of help for sufferers of mental illness, drug addiction, and domestic violence. But I'm not a hardcore skeptic either, which is exactly why this story has been so meaningful to me. We can't identify true mysteries if we don't train ourselves to analyze real-world events, and the reasons why certain events attract certain monstrous interpretations. For me this kind of training is urgently important, because I'm given to certain strains of magical thinking and I have to be vigilantly aware of what motivates my behavior and convictions. The circumstantial connection between my friend's unexpected death, and my plans for that day, could have proven irresistible to me.

Even now, obviously, I am connecting my plan to visit the cursed house at 112 Ocean Avenue to my friend's abrupt passing. The connection isn't as corrupting as it would be if I had put my feet on Amityville soil that day, but the experience I am currently having tells me exactly how potent this influence could have been at maximum. All my work has been about belief, where beliefs come from, what they do to us personally, even neurologically. I'm haunted by things I used to believe and where those beliefs came from, why I was so vulnerable to them, to the point of complicity in my own destruction. I'm sympathetic to people who believe in things that seem dicey, or in things that offer a seductive reward that outstrips the need to weigh evidence and consequences. But I believe that in many, perhaps most cases, skepticism is just as much of a belief system as faith. Hard evidence always looks that way as long as hard evidence is what you're looking for, an impression that seduces you away from noticing what personal choices you are making in the curation of your worldview. And at the risk of being overly cryptic, I have come to believe that people are only capable of perceiving that which they already believe in, whatever that might consist of. In any case, if you are really paying attention, you begin to notice that you find true proof of things less often than you simply have to prejudicially choose what you believe. These days I have tried to make agnosticism into a discipline, but at the moment I am consciously choosing to believe that my friend did not die in connection with a curse. And I am consciously acknowledging the fact that if that day of my life had gone as originally planned, it could have had a much graver impact on my experience of the death.

[lmk-aus-galore]

Cinema Sins/Wins Rip off of Lego Monkie Kid

‘Duplicatnation’

Inspired by @satansaidmyturnintheh3llscape

Rules:

-I won’t be counting Animation Mistakes, because Idk how to do that, and I myself am a beginner animator (more like incredibly amateur, to the point I’m asking my sister for help) Unless of course the Animation is obviously and clearly having a mistake for me to watch. (Or it is said in the wiki) The other reason is because I don’t want to keep repeating a scene just to check for an animation mistake.

-I also won’t be counting flashbacks as ‘mistakes’ because most of them are based on bias.

-I’ll be formatting it like this

-Neutral

-Sin

-Win

-Most of this is Commentary, so there won’t be a last sentence nor win or sin counter.

-This is mostly for fun, no need to get offended.

Alright I’ll be placing the rules every single time, without further ado, let’s get into the episode

———————————————————————————

-Intro

-._.

-Already we’re having a good start to the episode, having a look at our dear boy’s daily life.

-And already we see the side effects of being a people pleaser…

-And already we can see the negative effects it’s having on MK-

-I do wonder if that paint’s gonna last in the water…heck what does the water look like with all the painting he’s doing?

-So is it normal for people to go at the arcade every night?

-Stress in a TV show, this is why kids, you don’t overbook and you can always say no.

-‘Wow MK, you look like hot garbage’ that line always throws me off for some reason, Tang was brutally honest here-

-Also he’s here again, so he just comes there everyday…I feel worried for his stomach-

-That bowl of noodles is obviously MK’s breakfast, no way in hell is Pigsy gonna let him eat that.

-I always wonder, if the place is so busy, then why is the shop always empty?

-‘You’re pushing yourself too hard MK, working all day, partying all night, painting boats?’ And this my friend is the reason you’re not a dad, you’re a mom.

-But in all seriousness does anyone not notice that for MK or…?

-‘I don’t wanna let my friends down y’know’ establishing the character development right away.

-I’m still wondering why Mei is partying every night at the arcade.

-It’s specifically the arcade even- like they don’t even go anywhere else-like seriously girl how are you not bored yet?

-MK forgetting Wukong’s abilities makes him more life-like cause damn even I don’t know all his abilities, like, we know the main ones are in the show, but in the original JTTW he’s confirmed to have the ability to revive the dead-

-‘One of Monkey King’s 72 transformations’ wait, is that true? Or is this a mistake? Does this even count as a transformation?

-The animation is so beautiful :3

-Glad they changed it to blow, in one translation, Wukong had to chew on his own hair and turn it into a hair ball before making it into a monkey, that would have been unsanitary to be honest-

-I’m also guessing they changed it to blow as in ‘Blow life unto it’ Idk, I’ve seen a lot of legends in Asia that tell about the creation of people and how Gods literally have to ‘Blow air into them’ to bring them to life.

-Foreshadowing

-Tiny little detail that not everything about the animation is copy and pasted.

-Love how Tang slowly gets concerned over time- perhaps this is how he just becomes that other parental figure in his life?

-Another tiny detail, both MK’s don’t leave at the same time.

-Man, Tang’s really chill compared to his past life-

-So…when delivery MK was made…was the reason he ate all that food was because this MK was skipping breakfast? Because he’s taking those orders surprisingly fast…

-I LOVE Party MK

-Again, Tang why are you still here?! That amount of noodles can’t be good for your stomach.

-Notable detail, Pigsy squeals when scared.

-I know some people will call this out as fat shaming, but they may be trying to do the old 2015-2019 format of cartoons. Still this might be offensive to some people.

-See this is why you shouldn’t constantly work someone to perfection.

-Also Porty MK got a point Mei, no one parties this much- So kinda miscommunication there?

-Haha

-Ok that is a concerning amount of hair loss…

-Although Delivery MK is pretty adorable, he acts like a baby :3

-‘I don’t know.’ PFFT HAHAAH- it’s funny cause it’s never really said in the book how Wukong got rid of his clones.

-Delivery MK confirms that even the clones can lift the staff.

-The fact the only wavy kung fu MK knew was that one move Wukong taught him last episode.

-Hairball

-I kinda feel bad for these clones tbh.

-‘OG MK in the House Yo!’ ‘I don’t even know what that means!’ Implies that MK would have learned ‘90’s’ or ‘party slang’ if he kept partying with Mei.

-You know, MK being evil is terrifying tbh.

-‘You’re really bad at making clones by the way’ Sorry Mei- but uhm, I think the clones are him, just in a much deeper level than you’d expect.

-Why did you need that many clones?!

-Ok, first off how was this legal? Secondly, did Porty MK bribe the owner or something? Thirdly, How the hell did you even make this?!

-Oof, played yerself.

-The fact the hair just…sticks.

-‘Did you learn your lesson?’ Yeah, it’s MK learn to say no, and Everyone, ask someone else, he isn’t the only person in the world. Seriously guys, from what I see you only overwork him.

Yeah! Sorry this came late-

[themightyhumanbroom]

So what exactly was going through your mind when you wrote the villain of your newest oneshot? (no offense)

So will there be a sequel continuing your oneshot?

No offense at all! It's an understandable question seeing how until now the AU has only lightly touched upon horror (the imposter duo’s circumstance and Surge’s currently increasing bouts of cerebral horror). So the addition of a cannibalistic serial killer who successfully devoured nearly her entire family in my new fic Possibly in Mobius is completely out of left field. That's why I’m going to take the time to explain the creative process that brought Annabelle the Cannibal to fruition.

My IRL job is pest control, there's a reason Jerry is specifically a deer mouse, and an animal I sometimes have to deal with are shrews. They are primarily an outdoor pest and will normally only enter a home for one reason: they are following a mouse. Shrews hunt mice and are vicious little things. I recalled my coworker who has been in the field for a long time telling me that if a mouse gets stuck inside a catch and release trap, a shrew will just follow them inside and rip them apart. That's when I decided that my first OC villain would be a shrew. 

I have a soft spot for animals that are small but mighty and kill the same pests I deal with at work. Psssst this is a hint at what the other villains are gonna be!

I love horror as a genre and I wanted to take a crack at writing some. 

While I dont regret at all getting rid of Mimic via spine breaking in the events of Cage Fighter, I did know I got rid of one of the few villains IDW had so I knew I would have to make some of my own 

I'm going to be honest, I don’t know when or why I decided that they were gonna be cannibal. I guess it felt like a natural choice given what I knew about them from my job. When you see as many dead rodents as I do you just get numb to it I guess. What I can tell you is that the choice was cemented when after further research I discovered that some shrews have paralytic venom. After that I decided to go all in on the horror aspect. 

I couldn't just throw them into the setting all willy nilly. I thought about how to put her in the AU properly when I remembered something: Jerry the Deer Mouse. Having Annabelle the Cannibal be his mom let me construct a horrifying backstory for both of them, explain why Jerry would work for Clutch, and retroactively explain why Jerry was squatting in the Restoration HQ before getting hired. 

You can't just talk about how deadly and scary a character is, you have to show it. Hence the creation of Jerry’s horrifying story and poor Paul the Parrot who had the misfortune to meet her. I’ve found horror works best when you care about or relate to the people in a work of horror. Make them as much of a person as you can to make their fate all the more horrifying. 

Annabelle also serves as a symbol of how different the danger was before Eggman showed up. And how their return is a portent of doom, that the dangers of the old days are going to combine with the dangers of Eggman. 

I partly based their mannerisms off of Rose the Spider Splicer from Bioshock. 

I hoped this answered your questions! Also I won’t make another chapter of Possibly in Mobius but Annabelle will appear later in the AU

[once-and-future-alaskan]

A Thought on Remixing A Particular Piece of Otherwise Traditionally Uninteresting, Conventional Abrahamic Mythology in An Interesting Way.

Or: That title is way too long and poorly phrased.

While listening to Ben Caplans Plough the Shit, i realized there’s a common trend in media that bases itself on biblical stories or wildly misunderstanding christian cosmology. In these stories, the story of Adam and Eden is typically a throwaway piece of information that’s taken at face value and largely just there to introduce Lilith because apparently everyone decided she’s real I guess.

Which is weird since if you look at the bible, the story of the Garden and Adam are really not super straight forward and there’s a lot of opportunity for open interpretation of the vague and broad language. From a writers perspective, the story of the first man leaves a lot of room to question how much, if any of it,is true after so long. Also i swear to both G-d and the One Eyed Wanderer that if i see one more story with Lilith I’ll- look. She’s biblical fanfiction that combines two completely unrelated parts of the text from two seperate books and the actual reason for the double creation part of Genesis is much more interesting than some demon mother.

So anyway the actual reason I bring this up is my proposals for making Adam an interesting character, or threat, in biblically inspired fiction. I took inspiration from a loose interpretation of this specific lyric from Plough the Shit. As well as the fact that I actually quite like things like the Cainite origin of vampires in media like World of Darkness.

At last, the Supreme Maker decreed that this creature, to whom he could give nothing wholly his own, should have a share in the particular endowment of every other creature. Taking man, therefore, this creature of indeterminate image, he set him in the middle of the world and thus spoke to him: "We have given you, O Adam, no visage proper to yourself, no endowment properly your own, in order that whatever place, whatever form, whatever gifts you may, with premeditation, select, these same may you have and possess through your own judgement and decision. We have made you a creature neither of heaven nor of Earth! Neither mortal nor immortal! In order that you may, as the free and proud shaper of your own being, fashion yourself in the form you may prefer. It will be in your power to descend to the lower, brutish forms of life. You will be able, through your own judgement and decision, to rise again to the superior orders whose life is divine!"

Ok so my proposal is thusly: G-d, a being beyond human comprehension and physical form creates Adam, a physical living thing, in their image. Adam as a result is quite frankly eldritch in nature, lacking anything in the way of true gender or sexual characteristics and exists in an ever shifting, unknowable body. In this blank template state he goes on to father humanity Asexually, there is no Eve and the idea of Eve is just a failed attempt at understanding it’s origins.

From there a story could do a lot with an eldritch Adam, a silent observer of humanity. A shadow in history. The Man Who Sold The World. etc.

Alternatively you could take a much more Dark Souls approach with a concept like this, a furtive pygmy. Maybe except it becomes a horrible nightmare boss or something idk i’m not your mom. 

[readerofoddities]

I have some old guys who I have been gnawing at the bars of my enclosure to redesign and I've finally gotten around to some of them

So, prepare to be amazed!

My first ever original characters! Ever!

Like, they're really old, I've had them since I was a kid!

Are you ready?

Time to meet... MY LEGO NINJAGO RIP-OFF CHARACTERS!

Now, they don't look like they were Ninjago rip-offs, but that's because I dipped them in my secret sauce

Ramblings about these three and my thought processes below the cut :)

Jackie

My girl Jackie was THE main character. She had a dramatic backstory and super cool powers AND she was the only one who's hair didn't match her color scheme. So you know she was special

Basically, Jay from Ninjago was my favorite character at the time and I wanted him to be the main character instead of Kai and Lloyd so I made her to cope. She had lightning powers and was the first one to be "collected" by the teacher character (who I'm debating on redesigning... I'm worried that I'll completely destroy her and she becomes new, lol)

Now to get into details

I really wanted to make Jackie look more... normal, I guess? She was the mom friend and the leader, so she needed to look calm, cool and collected

She's got a lot of sharp angles in her hair and powers, so to contrast that, I gave her round eyelashes, a round face and a round nose

I also gave her a lightning bolt earring to reference her powers

I gave her warm clothes because she's like me and is always freezing. It also gives me another place to put a lightning bolt :)

Julie

What is there to say about Julie that isn't mean? Well, she was originally meant to be the mean girl that I saw in all of the media I watched. I made her pink because pink is a girl color and girls who are girly are mean, right? I mean, that's how it made sense in my head lol

She wasn't based off of anybody in Ninjago, except for maybe the one time Zane had a pink suit in that one episode. I don't remember

When I first redesigned her a few years ago, I changed her to be nicer and more friendly. She's also in a happy, healthy relationship with a girl who does not appear in the main cast. I grew past my misogyny lol

Now for major changes

I gave her a fantasy look because at least a year or two back i was trying to shove these guys into a fantasy story I've been working on since 5th grade. So now she gets horns and a tail

I gave her more Asian features in order to keep with the sharp theme i was going for with her

I also gave her an earring and matching choker that had her symbol i came up with when I was a kid. What does it represent? I forget

Here's a close-up of her tail cuz I think it's cool

Jenny

Can you tell I used to like J names? Jenny used to be a blank slate, just a background character to fill in a slot in the color wheel and to just exist

But when I first redesigned them, I made Jenny more fun and excitable. She's an artist now (based off of her "creation" powers) and is generally a bubbly and nice girl

Now for big changes

I made her a fish

This is because of the aforementioned "trying to fit them into my fantasy story" thing and she was a fish person. Kind of like the sea monsters from Monster High

She's based off of a yellow tang, btw

I gave her a t-shirt with her question mark symbol on it and big baggy clothes because she screams "i wanna be comfortable" at me when I see her

More OCs from this group to come later, promise

[whatchuwaitinfor]

My Mom Guesses the Personality of the Twisted Wonderland Characters

Part 7/8:

(8 is final thoughts)

~ Diasomnia ~

First: Malleus Draconia

(The pictures above the texts are what I sent her to go off of).

“I just mean he’s scary” “lol I know”

Second: Silver Vanrouge

Third: Sebek Zigvolt

Fourth: Lilia Vanrouge

[summonerluna]

For the fanfic writer ask, I'll go with my date of birthday: 2, 11, 80 🥰

2. Talk about a notable time a narrative or character has looked you dead in the eyes and said "fuck your plan, here's what we're actually doing."

Fifteen Minutes Old. It was supposed to be about Squall trying to learn more about sorceresses and learning that he didn't need all the answers to be supportive, and the pregnancy scare thing was going to be a brief note that just led to more research. I had zero interest in ever writing them as being parents and it wasn't what I saw for my post-game headcanon. Instead Rinoa decided she was GOING to be a mom, dammit, no matter how hard the journey to get there was, and it led to a follow up longfic and the creation of two characters who went on to live in an original novel because they just demanded to exist.

11. What's something neat you've learned while doing research for something you were writing? Also, how much do you worry about doing research in general?

On the "I promise I'm a writer and not Planning Crimes" line of things, I did a lot of research into neurotoxins while working on The Successor, specifically tetrodotoxin. I don't remember all the science about it anymore but it was cool to learn. Same with drowning and hypothermia and what the human body can actually survive. Recently I've learned more about the actual process of knighthood; who even would typically be considered, the training (having to run/ride/climb/SWIM in full armor was part of it), education, and social status. LoZ plays VERY fast and loose with the actual history of knighthood, if anyone was wondering.

I care VERY much about research while writing. I have had to train myself to leave placeholders while writing with a note of what to come back and research later, or else I will end up in a rabbit hole with absolutely zero words written but I'll know a lot more about George Washington's favorite bible verses. (True, recent story.) While working on The Successor I kept a tab open for moon phases and tide tables. I'm not going to promise I didn't miss something, or swap a scene around in editing and forget to correct for it, but for the most part the moon phases should correspond exactly to the passage of time, and the tides should line up to whatever month I decided to base things on (October, I think), based on the Bogue Banks tide chart. I'm a nerd, I love this shit.

80. Do you try to put themes, motifs, messages, morals, etc... in your writing? if so, how do you go about it?

Yes, but not intentionally. At least not at first. When I start a new project I get an idea and see where it takes me. If you look across my writing in general, there are a lot of themes of grief, loneliness, and motherhood, and there's no real reason for that other than they are extremely personal subjects for me so it makes sense I explore my own feelings about them in writing. If I notice I have unintentionally started adding something though I will pay more attention to it, start doing research, and make notes so when I am editing I can look for consistency. The zelink longfic I'm working on right now for instance, I realized I multiple times referenced birdsong as background noise so I started paying more attention to when, and looking up what the birds I had mentioned symbolized and looking for other ways I could maybe incorporate birds. A friend did point out to me once that I am constantly coming back to the idea of choice in my writing, which I didn't even realize I did. So I guess in terms of themes or morals I do place a lot of value on my characters having freedom to make their own choices--or trying to gain that freedom if they don't already have it. I also mention the moon a LOT, so that's a motif I suppose. I use it to denote the passing of time, and probably lean a lot into the moon as having yin energy since a lot of my storytelling is more internal and about the place and characters, than it is the yang energy of plot and action.

These are REALLY thoughtful asks! I would love to get more, and to see more of y'all reblog that post so I can see your answers!

[nerodreamblog]

I slept so incredibly hard and had some absolutely buck wild dreams.

In one I was running around the mall. It was like the one from my hometown. I got a call from the gay blonde guy from Modern Family (IDK what his name was I didn't watch the show). Turns out my dad had remarried him and the blonde guy was trying to get to know me better. I was very open about accepting him and even jokingly called him "Mom." Unfortunately the call kept cutting out randomly so he would sometimes react delayed or something, but I remember being really open to him being my second dad. (I guess my mom wasn't in the picture in this dream.)

I eventually decided to settle on calling him "Pop."

I remember going through the women's clothing section and went "ugh I hate women's fashion," and being nervous about telling Blonde Dad I was non-binary.

--

In the next dream, I was still a kid and my brothers and I moved into a new home. I got a new room next to my youngest brother's, though it was only divided by a thin wall that had a gap under it for some reason?

I had to work or something so I wasn't able to finish with unpacking. I had to make a meal for myself in my room using one of those travel stoves. It took forever to warm up and I don't think I ended up making my meal.

I realized that it was 8 in the morning and I had stayed up all night so I wasn't going to get good sleep, so I decided I would help unpack instead. I went into the closets and discovered all the outfits belonged to my brothers.

Mom came in and asked if he hung up my clothes like she asked and he was on the bed looking sour.

I only had a small closet in my room. It didn't even have a door, just a curtain. Mom promised she'd get me plenty of shelves and drawers.

But now I didn't know where my clothes were and I was upset and panicked.

--

// Suicide

The last dream was the most interesting to me.

While I was in the room in the previous dream, I started watching a movie. It had two words. "Cartoon" was the first but I don't remember the last.

It was based on a graphic novel and novel written in the 1980s with the comic coming out in the early 1990s.

It starred a bunch of prevalent cartoon characters, one of them being Bart Simpson.

It started off interesting: basically an adult comedy with cartoons swearing.

But eventually, the mystery revealed itself. There was some kind of underground mob boss who was making the cartoons' lives a living hell. They were being killed for not following the rules and it was up to the protagonists to find them and take them down.

||At some point, Bart Simpson ran up a tall building and began to build scaffolding on the roof. The protagonists only arrived just as they realized what he was doing. They tried to stop him, but couldn't reach him as Bart climbed the top of his creation. He said something about finding the mob boss, then jumped off. The protagonists watched in horror. One in particular was devastated because Bart was his best friend.||

After that the tone changed and became much darker, the clock ticking to find the mob boss.

I became so fascinated by this movie that I went to the book store to find the graphic novel because I had seen in a review that the art was phenomenal. Unfortunately I could only find the novel.

[donuts4evry1]

lets ramble abot my first jellyfish oc(s)

Since I'm not planning on making this idea into an actual game anymore, all lore is fair rambling game :)

Their full names are as follows:

Aurealis Aurita Vita (15) and Chrestos Chironex Vita (11)

they are brothers :)

I'll ramble under the cut, hehe

Aurealis Vita was born to Pleione Vita and Chryos Vita, two prominent figures in the noble society. He hails from a kingdom of human-marine animal hybrids, operating under a monarchy of crown jellyfish.

Aurealis themself was a hybrid with moon jellyfish (Aurelia labiata, to be exact) as well as his mother, while his father was a hybrid of a black sea nettle. As a sort of hybrid species, their hair acts like jellyfish tentacles. This fact will be important later.

Chryos was... not the best father, but his mother was loving and warm, so his early years were great.

Then came Chiro.

Aurealis was only 4 years old when Chiro was born and his mother died.

All the odds were against her with the birth. Coming from a long line of box jellyfish hybrids, there was a small chance that she could give birth to one.

Even then, newly born box jellyfish hybrids usually don't have venom potent enough to kill, but Chiro was different. His venom was unusually strong, and Pleione died in childbirth.

Everything changed then. Chryos upgraded from a not good father to an absolutely terrible father- often showing preferential treatment to Chiro and berating Aurealis for not meeting his standards. Sometimes verbally, other times physically. Sorry :(

Chiro himself was a precocious child, showing more interest in books than others. He quickly grew to be more smarter and competent than Aurealis, and stronger too. He often injured Aurealis on accident on account of his deadly hair, which would grow longer or shorter depending on his emotional state.

He still was not happy, however. He longed for affection and validation that didn't come from his father- which only came when he did something destructive.

The servants obviously feared him, and no matter how nice he was, he couldn't help but feel self conscious about their nervous demeanor around him.

Aurealis loathed Chiro, and she would bully him to make themselves feel better. He took the bullying- even internalizing it, because he felt as if his own existence were the cause of all the problems. Admist all that, he gained an interest in nematocytes, and spent much of his time studying them, and finding cures and uses for them.

Eventually, Aurealis had enough of life at home, and ran far, far away, to a whole other place full of different people and different... Everything, really. Leaving Chiro alone. Leaving everything they knew behind.

Honestly, their story came out of a desire for me to write something wholly dramatic and emotional, and I really liked it. I could develop it so much.

I latched onto Aurealis in particular, because her story involved heavy themes of self-hatred and the different ways to cope with it. They belittled others, they acted the opposite of the way they actually felt in a "fake it til you make it" sort of way (ie. ore-sama like). Of course, I give him a redemption arc, but they eventually have to deal with the fallout of their actions and I think that's great :).

Chiro, on the other hand, dealt a lot with gifted kid burnout and a different sort of self-hatred. He feels immense guilt for events that he had no control over, and seeks to fix them. He doesn't feel worthy if he doesn't have anything of worth to offer anyone, and his story is just. Incredibly sad.

Especially since terrible things could happen to him (I haven't decided yet tbh). Which I will ramble about in a different post. All I will say is that I named his theme is named "Lethe" for a narrative reason, hehe.

So anyways. They're the perfect comfort characters.

Recently I've been super into writing the brothers as adults (hence the florist Aurealis) and... Ugh. I've been missing them more and more lately, especially since I still need to write and design for Ite!

[doverstar]

Based on the similarities between Eddie and your husband, do you see any of yourself in Chrissy? From the little we see of her character, do find help in characterizing her from yourself? I'm curious because I think its so funny how these two characters who have such little screen time have such a hold and impact on people(or maybe just my circle of the internet). For me personally, I think for the smidgeon of screen time these characters' have(particularly Chrissy because Eddie has a complete storyline) I wish we could have enjoyed more of them and see how their interactions and story may have unfolded together. What reasons do you find yourself drawn to Eddie/Chrissy?

Hi there!! This is such a deep question. Thank you so much for thinking to ask! I'll try to answer your questions/statements in order! Like you said, we don't get much of Chrissy's character in the show before she dies. All we know is what other characters say about her, and what her actress, Grace Van Dien, says about her. I am also an introvert, I am also somewhere around 5'3, and I would also giggle at a boy who behaved like Eddie did in the woods scene. Actually, I did. I have. I do. I'm married now. So I guess yes, I maybe see myself in Chrissy? I'm introverted, and insecure physically, and I have blue eyes. And I'm not strawberry blonde (oh, to be strawberry blonde) but I am blonde. But again, we don't know much else about Chrissy's personality! Jason describes her as "straight as an arrow", someone who would never try to buy drugs. I am that person. All the way. Chrissy's relationship with her mom is implied to be bad. I do not have an emotionally-abusive mother; my mother is great. However, of all my family members, my mother and I have the rockiest relationship. I can relate to having at least some strain in that department, but don't get me wrong - it's not an abusive relationship by any stretch.

When I'm writing from her perspective, I do use the things I relate to when it comes to Chrissy. Maybe that's lazy? Maybe that's not creative or original enough of me? Whatever. Write what you know, and I know how that stuff feels. I know how it feels to be insecure, introverted, perceived as "straight as an arrow", and have mom issues. But yeah, a character whose personality isn't really fleshed out that much before she's brutally murdered is an easy thing to project yourself onto. Maybe that's why so many people are crazy about Eddie/Chrissy? It's the Edward Cullen thing all over again. Some people must like it simply because the idea of Eddie in love with a timid girl like that is delightful and gives them butterflies imagining being in Chrissy's place. It has to be said. It's more likely than you think, guys. It makes sense that Eddie's character has such a hold on people; he was really done excellently by all involved in his creation. As for Chrissy's character, I think every single girl ever relates to body-image issues in some fashion, and what we got of her was a scared girl who just wanted help. What little time she was given onscreen was played and written in such a way that we couldn't not feel sympathy for her. If you've got a sympathetic character, you've got an audience. But them as a couple? It's all that scene in the woods. That's why people ship it. There was so much chemistry there. It was designed to make you like Eddie, whose first scene was so firework-y you didn't know what to think of him exactly until he was sweet to Chrissy. It was designed to show you Chrissy's really struggling, because in that scene, she gets to talk about what's happening with her. So we care when she dies. We care like Eddie ends up caring, which makes "Chrissy, this is for you" matter. That scene did its job. It made you like them both as characters. And they're obviously very cute at the same time, and cute together, so most brains immediately slid into ship mode. Who doesn't love the whole bad boy/popular girl trope? Or the rockstar/princess trope? Or the freaking "he's not actually a bad boy, he's a doll" trope or the "she's not actually a preppy jerk, she's precious" trope? Mash them together? Kryptonite. At the very least, you leave the first episode sorry she's dead and worried for Eddie's safety. It's a trope because it works. It's CUTE. As for the last question: I'm drawn to Eddie/Chrissy not just because of all the reasons I just said, but because, cornily - Eddie fell backward off that picnic table bench and I was transported into summer of 2019, where my would-be-husband was throwing himself off of a similar picnic table at a church camp to keep my attention, all long curly brown hair and lanky arms and legs, and I was a big nostalgic storm of butterflies.

I have literally had a guy who looked like that do that to me, and yes, he was doing it to make me laugh, he was flirting. Instantly I wanted them to get together. I was texting my sister in a frenzy about how cute Eddie suddenly seemed to me, and how I hoped they'd get together because that seemed like where it was going. I was wrong. Thanks, Duffers. Thanks, I hate it-

[tomatograter]

How much of jakes begging dirk not to leave in meat do you think is his own true feelings vs Dirks influence?

I don't think Dirk’s influence is enough to make anybody do anything they did not already have half a mind to do. I've seen this be debated a lot, but Dirk is... not The Word Of God. That's pretty much the biggest joke about his defensive posturing. Dirk barks very loudly, and asserts himself in audience-antagonizing overseeing orange voice - but he cannot force you to do something you really don't want to do. He’s only as powerful as your urges.

He struggles, multiple times, to make characters do the simplest things that go against their base instincts. Dave definitely had romantic feelings for Karkat, but he was so sure their relationship could stay and strive as platonic that he pushes Dirk away. He wasn't Right about this, but he was sure of his position.

June is easy. June wants an adventure. June wants to not be herself. June will take any excuse to abandon everything and get to live a cool life where the most pressing issue is “which bad guy do i have to punch” again.

Terezi's arc in homestuck proper is largely about her learning to listen to HERSELF, not the alternian laws or game rules or meddling undead sylphs or doc scratches or whoever the fuck else, and she mocks Dirk's narrator voice to his face. She recognizes the alien thought the moment she has it.

Kanaya has always feared she holds Rose back. She loves her wife deeply, and respects her even more, but her penchant to being attracted to explosive girls (Remember Vriskan? You should remember Vriskan.) Also doubles as Kanaya grappling with the fact that she cannot control them. It's part of the appeal, that they are forces of nature so large and unpredictable she cannot help but be drawn to their orbit like a moth to a flame. Kanaya letting go of Rose is an unspooling of her deepest insecurities, her habit of giving others more credit than she gives herself, and how she's relented to the years peddled position of "mom friend" - kanaya the spoilsport, kanaya the grub nun, kanaya the... Quite Dreadfully Just Regular, I’m Afraid. What could she possibly claim to offer when put up against the secrets to understand an universe? (She isn't right about this, either.)

And Jake? Here's a bit from Jake's confession that i believe has gone largely unexamined:

Take a moment to really consider the positioning of other characters towards Jake in the epilogues. Then a little bit more in the direction of HS proper this time. Jake is the subject of constant degradation at the hands of the cast at large. His plight is always unsympathetic, his role troublesome, and he acquiesces to claiming the guilt for "being a problem in his friendgroup" or "for being assaulted by a friend he ignored" or "for being too useless and stupid", yet even though he cannot let go of the pesky self-flagellating habit, there's... Dirk.

This is how Dirk is represented and this is what he is primarily remembered by in the deepest recesses of Jake’s brain. It could have been anything else, but it’s this instead. Brain ghost dirk is not a dirk with his edges cut off, he’s not a pliant wifedirk, he’s not a little helpful tutorial phantom that tells jake everything he wants to hear - he’s quite harsh and sarcastic As A Dirk, but he believes in a Jake that’s more than the facade he presents as. Truly and fully. This is a Dirk that loves Jake, and not quite platonically.

I think it’s a bit ignorant to suggest Jake has legitimately no reason for loving Dirk back when their canon designation is “Best friends” and “Complicated lovers”. Jake loves Dirk for his brightest parts. Jake has expected a love confession from Dirk ever since the very beginning of the above conversation, during his 13yo birthday, where the big joke is “WELP, i guess instead of dirk telling me he’s gay and that we’ve been flirting all this time, he just says he’s from the future instead!”

Dirk’s influence is only to blame here insofar as him doing such a good fucking job of screwing himself over. It’s stellar. Dirk thinks the AR forced Jake’s feelings, dirk thinks he’s predatory and irredeemable, dirk convinces the audience Jake cannot possibly have a single reason to love him back, dirk fully drapes himself in the capes of being a Bad Guy, but this is HIS justification, when faced with the fact Jake pretty clearly has feelings on the matter buried deep down, and he’s a glaringly /unreliable/ narrator. The biggest tragedy of this bit is the confirmation that the heel turn and the spiel are wholly unnecessary, they clearly had things they could have invested on to make this work, but dirk is too caught up on his high horse to listen. 

Like with Kanaya, Dirk is responsible for exaggerating a heavy mass of preexisting feelings, not creating them. 

Creation, as it happens, is more of Jake’s wheelhouse.