#not really half the fandom but you get it

[cassylost-inspace]

The object show community has honestly become so unsafe and toxic. I’ve only been in the community for a year and a half ,but the difference between now and then is honestly drastic. People don’t even enjoy the media anymore, all everyone does is criticise. While criticizing is fine, I don't think a community should be based on that. I have barely seen ANY positive posts about the ii movie, everyone treats it like it's meant to be God tier and I get that everyone thinks they should get what they deserve, but holy shit you guys have nothing good to say. Shipping has also become such a difficult point of discussion in the community, considering that everyone believes that their ship and their ship ONLY is good. Most of the shipping stuff wasn't relevant to me, because I'm a multi-shipper but the fandom takes ship wars to an extreme,honesty speaking. Another point is the fact that people are mad at ii for making canon ships,, again this doesn't bother me,because I have always liked all of the popular ships but it's honestly not that deep. I think I've seen like a million posts about the payjay scene from ii 18,, and people got SO mad over fan service despite the fact that it was like 3 minutes long 😭 Another thing is, I haven't talked about c2bc on here b4, but Cole getting cancelled proved how fast the fandom is willing to act immediately on a show's downfall. "I never really liked the show" that's really not the point here. I feel like people should take the situation of cole being racist more seriously instead of just taking this as a chance to bash the show. Moving on,, I remember seeing a post of someone saying "how could you even cry to object shows,, they're so unserious" why do you care? Genuinely WHO is it hurting.Moreover people saying stuff like only "12 year olds watch object shows" is dumb; because have you ever been in a fandom before??Teenagers literally keep fandoms alive, also who DO you want to be in this community. My last point is how almost everyone acts like object shows are meant to be "amazing works of art",, like they literally started off as terrible. These shows are indie and run by an even amount of people, stop treating the shows like Hollywood. Reminder that these people can do WHATEVER they want with their characters. Animationepic is one of the most listening teams out there, they sacrifice a lot for their fans and I personally think that they're allowed to do anything they want with their characters especially since they put so much effort into what the fans want. As someone who uses object shows and animation in general as a way to escape reality,, it is evident that most of you do the same. So I don't understand why there is just SO MUCH negativity coming from the community,, when os fans are so clearly talented and instead of putting effort into being hateful they can use this energy to make art, amvs, maps and animation memes and help uplift the community and it's overall impact on others.

Ik I normally don't post stuff like this, but the osc is REALLY important to me and I feel like this should be brought to more people's attention.

-Cassy

[tremsing82]

If I ever get the chance to ask SJM questions it would probably solely be centered around this:

Does she SJM truly believe Lucien abandoned Feyre in spring court after UTM? Why did she write Feyre saying that to Lucien? Why did she have to make half this fandom accuse Lucien of being an abuse enabler or apologist?!?!? Like why did she have Feyre make Lucien feel guilty for shit he could not control? This man is apologizing for a made up narrative in this narcissistic girls head.

Like I would really like to know if SJM meant to write Feyre as a lying gaslighter in her narrative. And yeah maybe Feyre being the self center brat she is just thought all the shit Lucien did for her was not enough and proved he abandoned her, but fucken grow up Feyre and apologize to your fucken friend who you obviously missed labeled, misjudged, and ruined the reputation of to your IC of friends.

[justallihere]

chapter 30 - ????

idk i was stressed i stopped taking notes somewhere in there i’m going to bed and i’ll read chapter 46 to the end tomorrow!

I think it’s unfair they’re visiting all these places and Andarna doesn’t get to sample the local delicacies

Xaden has almost bitten Garrick’s head off SEVERAL times for trying to question or disagree with Vi and I find it sexier than I should. For all that he’s a leader, when she’s around he’s really just her weapon

The hair?? I don’t have the energy to try to figure it out

Sure everyone gets to fight! Why not! We love a good fight around here!

Oh of course that was the Queen

And of course we’re going to leave without asking about the HAIR

Mom? Mom. Of course mom. Why fucking not

Oh and he has half siblings of course too

She. The word Riorgail is in the book. Forever

Fuck you Talia

Not Garrick 😭

I almost had a full on breakdown over Ridoc there for a second you don’t understand

I hope he gets his fucking patch though. He deserves it

Cam continues to save this book

Love that he doesn’t want Dain to feel unimportant 🥰

Drake got. A kitten

NOT TRAGER 😭😭😭😭😭😭

The kitten’s name is Broccoli. Mira is holding it. She and Drake are already married as far as I’m concerned

Is Rebecca stalking all the fandom spaces and putting all these popular fan theories in on purpose orrrrr??? Because why are Ridoc and Aotrom having a prank war

FUCK the irids bro

[dangermousie]

The best cdrama you probably haven't watched - Tribes and Empires Storm of Prophecy

Most of my airing cdramas are ending within the week and unless we get a lot of other good replacements, it means time to rewatch a favorite.

And this favorite? The sprawling, epic fantasy Tribes and Empires Storm of Prophecy. Tribes has a huge cast (one of criticisms I've seen leveled at it - but that is why I love it; it's epic in every sense of the world), but it centers around three very different men - Shaofeng Heye (Zhou Yiwei), a son of a murdered barbarian chief who will eventually lead the rebellion that tries to topple the empire, Muyun Sheng (Huang Xuan), a disregarded prince who is half-fae and whose mother was supposedly the emperor's great love who he mourns (the truth is so much darker and more complicated) and Muru Hanjiang (Shawn Dou), the cursed son of the chief general who was abandoned to live on the street due to prophecy. Sometimes they are allies, sometimes enemies, sometimes both at once.

Despite the huge budget, it was not a hit either in China or internationally - people complained about the slow pace, the large cast and the lack of ending (the drama is 70+ eps and tells only half the story.) I loved every second of it. I grew up reading Russian novels which were also sprawling, with a huge cast, deliberate pace and often lack of resolution at the end. Perhaps that is why the one audience where I think it was a hit was the Russian-speaking cdrama fandom (all the MVs I can find, btw, are made by Russian speakers.)

(The above is a gorgeous general MV)

Why do I love it? Other than the amazing visuals (it's directed by Cao Dun, all of whose dramas are genuinely stunning looking), there is the fact that it really feels like a window in a whole other world - epic and a little alien, complex, full of horror and beauty.

And there are the characters and the narrative. Because this drama does not hurry, it's not only the mains who get fleshed out - secondary and even tertiary characters are fully-fledged. Two of my favorite characters are emperor and empress - two intense monsters locked in an emotional cage with each other, clawing at others and themselves, as bystanders die.

This is a dark dark world - made before the censorship tightening up, there is none of that "tireless emperor ceaselessly working for the people" nonsense or even other character spouting about working for the greater good. The emperor and most of the imperial family are monsters, grasping for power, lives of people as ants to them. Some characters do have ideals but they are not glib or easy or fit within modern parameters. This is a narrative that starts with Shaofeng Heye's entire tribe being wiped out because of an act of kindness by a boy (and his tribe and other tribes are locked into a life death struggle for resources perpetually.) Blind loyalty to the crown is not viewed as a virtue - Muru Hanjiang's father is a monster for throwing his infant to die due to a prophecy that states he's a threat to the throne.

(another general MV)

Also, me being me, there are ships. There are a bunch, but my favorite is Muru Hanjiang x Su Yuning. She's a minor noblewoman picked to be a crown princess because her horoscope says that whoever she marries will be the ruler (interestingly, MHJ's prophecy that upended his life is that he will end the rule of the Muyun dynasty - clearly they are meant to marry at some point, heh) and she has no choice about it. Their love is glorious and largely unspoken and kinda doomed; the way the drama ends with her ditching literally EVERYTHING and following him and his clan to horrifying exile that might result in death (and even as he still tries to drive her away to protect her, she knows what he's doing and vows to wait for him) is glorious.

This MV for them is amazing:

I also loved Shaofeng Heye and Princess Muyun Yan Shuang. Not functional in the least but so hot!

(The third main OTP of the prince x spirit, I liked but not as much as these two.)

Anyway, this is my next rewatch.

[phantom-playdough]

Macaque x GN!Stressed Reader: Fluffy Cuddles

It's been a while since I've written a fic, much less completed one. Especially for the LMK fandom because I've kinda fallen out of the fandom. But I miss writing fics for this show and have been needing a bit of an outlet. And what's more comforting than shadow monkey cuddles? Nothing. That's what I thought lol

Also posted on my AO3: My_inner_phantom

Things have been really exhausting lately. So many things have been pulling at you, demanding your attention that you've hardly had time for yourself. Much less your clingy boyfriend, Macaque. But every time things seem to finally be settling down, something happens that gets in the way of you being able to spend time with him. Needless to say, you're exhausted.

He's been trying his best to be understanding, and he's done a good job so far. Especially by his standards. So, when he finishes training one day, he decides he's sick of sitting around in his hut and doing nothing without you there. It doesn't feel right without you beside him, especially for this long. It's not your fault that you've been so busy, and it's hard for him to be mad at you for long, anyway.

But he misses you.

You've been working so hard lately and have been under so much stress practically every day that it's a miracle you're still holding it together. Heck, if he had to deal with everything you've been coping with, he surely would be doing way worse. But he's sick of being patient when it feels like the universe just keeps throwing things at you. And he'll be damned if he's going to let the universe keep you away from him like this, especially when you both need each other's company.

He lets out a dramatic sigh before dropping into a portal and landing on your couch in your apartment. He can tell you're not home yet, so he decides to lounge on your couch for a bit until you get back. Your scent in the room helps soothe his nerves just slightly, but it also just makes him miss you more. However, he plays it cool when he hears your footsteps enter the building and walk up to your door.

Opening his eye, he peeks over to see you walk inside and kick off your shoes. You don't even seem surprised when you see him on your couch. If anything, you seem relieved.

It's only a moment before you make it over to the couch and face plant into his chest, to which he responds by loosely wrapping an arm around your waist while the other stays behind his head. Despite his casual expression, the way his tail wraps more firmly around your leg is a clear indicator of how much he's missed you.

"Rough day?" You nod into his chest. "Need me to beat anybody up for ya?" He gently offers, which earns a small laugh from you. "Maybe later." You half-joke. His arm and tail tighten around you just slightly, showing clear restraint from pushing you for details or going on a hunt. You appreciate the effort and reward him with a kiss on the cheek, which surprises him a bit.

He'll probably never get used to your affection, and he secretly likes it that way. Every peck on the cheek from you feels like the first, and it reminds him that there's still some good left in this world. In his world.

He smiles after a moment, leaving a small kiss on your forehead in response. If there's one thing you know, it's that he's not going to let you get up for a while.

[dtilmnh]

Alright, let's be fucking for real here. The only reason that Peter gets as much hate as he does is because he's not conventionally attractive. He's ragged on constantly, belittled, made fun of, and hated on by everyone. And don't get me wrong, I hate Peter for what he did too, but the way the fandom treats Peter is not only so over the top and ridiculous, but also so hypocritical.

Like y'all are gushing over fucking Barty Crouch Jr who tortured Neville's parents to insanity, was as much a part of rebirthing Voldemort as Peter was, and was literally fucking 𝘰𝘣𝘴𝘦𝘴𝘴𝘦𝘥 with the racist, genocidal maniac. But no, he's just "misunderstood", don't you know he has daddy issues? And Peter? Oh, Peter's the devil in rat form.

Peter is ostracised, ignored, and bullied by the authors and the other characters in almost every fanfiction. Half of the time he's just straight up ignored, he's barely mentioned in passing, and he's excluded from the fanarts. If he's included, he's hated on or dismissed in all the fanfictions, and in fanart he's almost always in rat form curled up somewhere where he can be easily ignored and people can focus on the other, far more attractive Marauders (and non-Marauders).

Peter is just a weak, stupid, irritating person that no-one actually wants around but puts up with for... reasons. He was never a "real" Marauder anyways, he was just in the background and out of frame while the others starred. The Marauders? That's James, Sirius, Remus, Regulus, Lily, and a slew of other characters that never even show up in the books. Oh look, and there's Peter tagging along too! That's the fandom portrayal of him anyways.

This could not be further from the truth. He was their friend. Do you really see James or Sirius choosing to hang around someone whose company they don't truly enjoy? Do you really think they're the types to keep someone around out of pity? Peter was their friend, their brother, their trusted. Hell, Sirius literally trusted him more than he trusted Remus (the Wolfstar shippers won't like that, will they?).

My point is that this wouldn't be his portrayal is he 𝘸𝘢𝘴 conventionally attractive. Fans would probably take him down the "morally grey characters" pipeline, give him a tragic backstory, characterise him as someone talented, cunning, and calculating (which he was). Now, would their attempts at providing complexity to his character fall as flat as every fanon version of every Marauders character and end up completely unrecognisable and ooc? Probably, yes. But let's be honest, that's happening to him anyways.

Peter Pettigrew is an extremely hateable character, because he's a bad person. Considering the number of straight up evil characters the fandom manages to feel sympathy for, Peter's treatment is blatant hypocrisy. He's not hated for betraying James and Lily, for framing Sirius, for 𝘬𝘪𝘭𝘭𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘧𝘰𝘶𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘦𝘯 𝘱𝘦𝘰𝘱𝘭𝘦 (the twelve Muggles, Bertha Jorkins, and Cedric Diggory). He's hated for the crime of being "ugly".

Not to mention, according to fans he's weak and stupid but also somehow a master manipulator and evil since the day he was born. He entered Hogwarts with the Dark Mark already on his wrist and got close to the others for the sole purpose of betraying them later (this is an exaggeration, but you get my point).

Make Peter a complex, morally grey character, with real feelings and emotions. Give him relationships, and dreams, and goals, and motivations. Give him hobbies and interests, give him character traits, give him skills. For the love of God, Merlin, or whatever ineffable deity you pray to, can you please just give Peter Pettigrew a fucking personality, and stop excluding him from every fanfiction, fanart, or other headcanon you make.

[spectrum-core]

Fuck

Well, I saw this coming from miles away becaude of course the gacha game will throw any semblance of artistic integrity through the window if they can make cheap fanservice, hence why I made the og post in advance, I didn't want to elaborate more on it when it happened because whatever, people were already dicks about me making the initial post anyway lol

But a guy began bugging me about how the comparison made sense, actually, and I felt the need to elaborate with a final point about why I feel the comparison absolutely misses the point of what full stop is and represents and everything that made them special to me.

Ok, so this guy has been analyzing limbus ids for a while and trying to figure out common themes among them, his conclusion for sinclair ids was, simply put, these are people who are either extremely good at what they do but cant fully see it or arent proud of it (blade lineage, cinq), or people who are slow and trailing behind compared to their peers while also having the potential to be absurdly good at their line of work if they were given the proper support (molar office).

According to him, stephan would be the second case, a guy who is very bad at what he does but could be amazing at it with the proper motivation. The issue is that… if you look at stephan and i mean you really look at him instead of forcing him in a haha funny meme fandom archetype or mold him into whatever can fit the power fantasy of the month that'd be a limbus character, he's really not that.

That's not to say stephan lacks any talent at all, his pessimist and cautious personality makes me imagine he is probably a great planner, coming up with escape plans or alternatives if the team gets cornered or overwhelmed in any non color-fixer-chasing-them-with-killing-intent situation, his physical strength is also there, and i think he'd be at least half decent at unarmed one on one combat because of it, and i feel he appreciates this and the people around him do as well, he has talents and they are in plain sight, and he makes full use of them when the situation requires him to.

But the thing is… everything from his dice ranges to his card names to his passive name are very clear in one thing: he's fucking terrible at aiming and firing a gun, the very thing he's supposed to do and excel at if he doesn't want to lose money. Maybe he's nearsighted, maybe he has astigmatism, maybe he pulls the trigger too fast before being sure he's even aiming at a target, maybe his anxiety is so bad he's shaking and sweating constantly and his fine motor skills are shit because of that, maybe even all of these at the same time.

And it's not just stephan who has this going on either, liwei's keypage wouldn't be talking about "this is what people normally think and what i know i'm supposed to want but i simply can't see the point of all of it" (<- this is autism coding if you're delusional like me but i digress) if he was a "proper fixer", tamaki wouldn't be losing her cool regularly every time stephan begins to complain if she was a "proper fixer", everyone here is notoriously bad at their job one way or another due to things that are quite directly part of who they are so there's no "actually stephan would be a shi section 1 fixer if he wore glasses" or "liwei could become a color if he got rid of his gun and started fighting with a sword instead" for any of them, not without them losing who they are in the way as opposed to the character growth that represents sinclair.

For me these are average people, with average talents which can only take them so far, in a world where most people in their line of work has superhuman skills, and to make matters worse they're focusing their strengths in the wrong things, these aren't the people who will wake up one day and awaken whatever specialest boy ever superpower project moon comes up with next time and become the strongest people who ever lived in the city. Even if they decided to drop everything suddenly and start with something else, there's absolutely nothing they'd excel at.

And that's precisely the thing, they won't just drop everything and suddenly do something they are better at, because the sunk cost fallacy is a fucking bitch when you're risking bankrupcy with every job you take, and that's why the full stop office is to me, the tragedy of people who invested too much and worked for too long in the wrong thing and now they don't have the resources, time or evergy to reinvent themselves anymore even if it'd be better for them in the long run.

I wanted to write a cool conclusion or something but i dont have the energy so just take this instead

STEPHCLAIR IS BAD AND YOU SHOULD FEEL BAD

Alternative title: a very angry (and tired) Full Stop fan's thesis.

ok, so me being the stephan/sinclair comparison's strongest hater is a bit i really like to lean into, but for the sake of keeping things semi-serious i will try to keep the actual essay content as free of me ranting my frustrations as humanly possible (which i mean commitement to the bit aside this will be hard bc it is frustrating to see people calling them both the same character, at best it shows a very surface level understanding of either character and at worst it shows just reducing them to cookie cutter meme fandom archetypes neither character actually fits into, so bear with me if i slip up and make unserious comments from time to time)

so before i start the actual essay let me say this: this essay doesnt even scratch the surface of how much i hate this comparison you guys cant even possibly fucking imagine ive been obssessed and i mean OBSSESSED with the full stop office since 2021 and im glad i wasnt in the limbus prerelease fanbase because if i had to see people comparing my beautiful boy and beloved best friend to a guy we had no info about other than "hes based of the guy from demian" i would have turned into the joker this is not even about saving my own mental health this is about sparing the entire pjm fandom of the monster i would have turned into

spoilers for ruina and limbus, universe terminology heavy and surface level references and interpretations of demian by herman hesse because imma keep it real with you guys the first and only time i read that book i was still in high school and i barely remember shit.

Table of contents:

Stephan - a summary

Sinclair - a summary 2.1. Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919) 2.2. Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

Addressing common arguments

1.- Stephan - a summary

And of course I will start with Stephan, because I love him very much, just like Liwei he's one of my favorite pjm characters (yeah i like him more than your favorite popular character don't ask) so it's not surprising that i have A Lot to say about him, right?

And of course, I do.

As I said in the serrated duo post, a core part of my perception of the Full Stop office depends on the fact that they are poor. Mentions of money are common all across many factions in the game, yes, but the Full Stops are extremely constant about money, how taking a wrong turn means losing more than they can afford, how they can't afford to drop their weapons because they were too expensive, how even getting the permissions to be able to buy and wield these weapons was ridiculously expensive and so on. Of course, Stephan is the one talking about this the most (something I will elaborate on later), but Liwei and Tamaki also make a few ocassional mentions to it in their dialogue and keypages and considering this is a shared business it just makes sense that this is something that affects all of them.

These are just some few of the callbacks to money that Stephan alone does in his dialogue, without focusing in keypage text or what Liwei and Tamaki have to say about it.

And idk man, at least to me the difference between social classes is an important aspect for their characterization, specially because of how constant the concern with money is for Stephan. From this point alone comparing them feels like erasing a core aspect of Stephan's characterization, a lot about Stephan (and the Full Stop office as a whole, let's be real here) starts making more sense once you read the office as lower-middle class (and I'm saying lower middle class because they can afford some place to live and their weapons, but to me these guys are the types who precisely because of their need to keep bullets at all times can't pay for water or electricity all the time and sometimes they simply can't afford food or if they do they can spend a week straight eating nothing but unsalted pasta).

Now, going back to Stephan being the most outward about his complaints with money, he is in general the most outward about all problems the office is facing, to the point in which he doesn't mind inconveniencing everyone else with his rants, being one of the few guests who interrupt Angela's introductory speech and getting into Tamaki's nerves (something he's well aware he's doing, as these two know each other) at least two times through the course of their pre-battle cutscene, even Roland comments after the reception on how he wishes he would always have been as open about his problems as Stephan was.

However, it's worth nothing that he doesn't spend the entire cutscene crying about his miseries, and he only starts losing hope at three key moments: when they can't kill Eileen inmediately (making them waste more bullets than needed), when Argalia shows up (forcing them to retreat and making them fail their mission, meaning they won't get paid for this after they already lost a ton of money, as well as turning the situation into something much more dangerous than what they had signed up for) and once they enter the Library (an Urban Plague grade threat they have little to no information about, when him and Tamaki are almost out of bullets so Liwei is essentially the only fixer with some chance of putting up a fight and, you know, making it out alive).

Now, while it's true that Stephan is someone who dislikes danger, he isn't someone who isn't used to seeing gruesome events, his instinctive reaction to seeing a guy getting his head put into a meat grinder was cracking jokes and calling the concept of thought gears "a load of horseshit", which is something that falls in line with him being a somewhat experienced Fixer (sure, grade 5 isn't amazing but we can assume it's still either in the higher side of average or barely above average, and for someone specialized in firearms, which are far from the best weapon in the city, getting that high means he must have some experience and skill, right? more so considering he's been at this for 5 years at most) who has seen a fair share of horrid shit and can be unfazed by (most of) it as long as his own safety isn't on the line.

Another point is... he dislikes danger and is always wary about money and expenses, to the point in which he enjoys checking his bank account (or at least he believes so, if we go for the theory of the artbook profiles being more a mix of what the characters perceive themseves as/would describe themselves as to others, which is a theory i go by, I see him as someone who's convinced he does that for fun instead as out of desperation), but this seems to be more a generalized feeling of impending doom at everything rather than something that can be traced back to a particular traumatic event (anything can be dangerous, anything can cost him money), dude's from the backstreets after all, he's seen shit and he's used to assuming the worst. How I see Stephan, he's a guy who already expects bad things to happen but once things go wrong he starts freaking out about how this time They're Screwed For Real, but he never really tricks himself into believing "maybe things will turn out just fine this time?" or who thinks "well, we've done this before, surely we can handle it again."

This is not very related to Stephan as a character in terms of personality but I think it's still an important point to make as it is particularly related to body mods, his physical condition and his body shape.

So we can easily say that Stephan is a strong dude, at least if compared to real world standards without the fancy and insane body mods we see people in the city have access to. He carries that huge rifle around with his bare hands, something that Tamaki doesn't do and that not even Stephan himself in earlier iterations of his dessign did, and his main talent (which based of my theories is something that can be assumed as "something he's proud enough of to consider it the thing he does best") is physical labor.

Pictured, Tamaki's talksprite, carrying a rifle almost as long as she is tall with a strap supporting the weight on her shoulders, like a normal person.

Also pictured, an earlier iteration of Stephan's dessign, carrying the same rifle his current version does, but also holding it with the help of a similar strap supporting the weight on his shoulders.

And finally, Stephan's current dessign, holding that shit with his bare fucking hands in an exhibition of his brute animal strength, what the fuck is wrong with this man (affectionate)

And Stephan's artbook profile, the important part here is his speciality being physical labor, not only he's strong but he aknowledges this.

However, I made a point about the Full Stop office being poor, right? Even Roland says that "giving a whole office augmentation procedures is cheaper than keeping a decent supply of bullets in stock" (not the exact phrasing).

At least personally, I see this as Roland essentially saying "it would be cheaper (and more efficient) to get body mods for everyone in the office and buy another (cheaper) type of weaponry instead", but as things stand, the Full Stops can afford to either buy more ammunition and maintain their weapons, OR to get body mods, and since their whole deal is firearms... well, they can't really Stop investing in them, meaning they have no body mods At All and they got their grades purely out of their own physical strength.

Similarly, Stephan makes a similar point about how body augmentations are required for people to be able to run while carrying their weapons around (specifically talking about the rifles he and Tamaki use).

And... you know, the whole point is that they couldn't run carrying their weapons because they were too heavy, Argalia mocked them for that, Liwei urged them to drop their weapons, something they refused to do because of the prices.

Lastly on this point, while it's true that Ruina talksprites have a very bad case of Long Anime Legs (to the point in which how Roland's legs take about 2/3 of his height is a common joke), if we focus only on his head and torso, Stephan looks pretty Wide, and not only because he's wearing thick, fluffy and multilayered clothing, as other characters wearing similar clothing styles still look thinner than him.

This is all to say: I don't think this guy is a twink, or thin at all. He's a prime example of the strongman build to me and this is yet another hill I'm willing to die on watch project moon turn him into a beanpole once he inevitably shows up in limbus and me turning into the first real world distortion as a consequence.

Finally, Stephan is very notoriously the most informal member of the office, not only being the only one who doesn't wear any sort of formal clothing fully prioritizing comfort and practicality over looks but also completely disregarding formalities with his attitude at work (again, he interrupts Angela's introductory monologue, and again, his first two lines when being introduced are him cracking jokes), being the only member of the office to swear on screen and using several informal expressions and metaphors through both the reception dialogue and his keypage story.

And for good measure, he's a compilation of Stephan being the creature he is.

The literal introduction of the characters, also known as the moment in which Stephan became one of my favorite characters because he's Just Like Me Fr

Very normal behavior for someone who hates blood and violence and isn't used to seeing it. This man is more than capable (and willing, assuming money is involved) to murder kill.

Which, I mean, this attitude is very different from what we see from Sinclair.

2.- Sinclair, a summary

In retrospect I probably should have made this one first because I'm gonna be honest with you, Sinclair is one of the sinners I care about the least (I still like him and think he's pretty cool mind you I just don't vibe too much with most of the tropes making up the character) so what I have to say about him is less me grasping for straws and subtext because I don't care enough about him to be bothered with a super serious and in depth analysis like I did with Stephan and more things we can explicitly see about him in game and things that happen in the novel Demian.

And if I can have a small parenthesis here, people saying that one of my favorite pjm guys Ever is in any way similar to a guy who despite being pretty cool is just Not the type of character I fully vibe with... really, it gets annoying fast. Anyway back to the serious analysis now.

2.1- Emil Sinclair in Demian (1919)

To be able to understand Sinclair as he is depicted in Limbus Company, it is important to first be familiar with the source material of the original iteration of the character, that's it we're doing your high school homework by compiling several literary analysis of a symbolic psychological early 20th century autobiographical novel i hope you guys signed up for this (and if you didn't, though luck! i will do this anyway, I love literary analysis).

In the novel, young Emil finds himself torn between the worlds of light (which can be equated to the Garden of Eden, but it's more tangible meaning for our protagonist is his childhood home and family, a serene and well structure/organized space where he can be innocent, untainted by the evils of the outside world) and darkness (basically all the scary shit that goes on outside, where people do evil things for the sake of it), he finds himself tempted by the violence of the outside world, particularly through the actions of his classmate Franz Kromer, which eventually leads him to consider that due to being exposed to this tainted world of evil he no longer can return to the world of good and innocence.

Here, the character of Demian acts as a guide, someone who helps Sinclair to trascend this binary perception of good vs evil and to see himself as someone worthy of happiness because him witnessing the world of evil didn't taint him as a person but rather merely showed him another face of the world, Demian here mentions the Mark of Cain as a symbol of mental strenght and freedom, considering that bearers of this mark are capable of making their own choices and should be able to go beyond their assigned roles, being able to embody aspects of both worlds. This is to say that Demian's view is less focused on good vs evil, instead taking a more order vs chaos approach (without giving an explicit moral character to either).

In the book, the symbol of a bird breaking out of the egg is frequently used to represent Emil's personal growth, the egg represents safety and innocence, but a bird must eventually leave the egg or it will die, and getting out of the egg is a process than can be seen as violent, as a bird must fight to get out of the egg, and getting out of the egg represents birth but also an irreversible change, it can be seen as breaking out of the world of light and getting permanently in the world of darkness since a broken shell can't be fixed, but it can also mean achieving the enlightment and personal balance to not feel permanently bound to a condition, place or state of being and therefore growing as a person by learning to see himself as a whole human instead of supressing his "evil side" by only forcing the "good side" to surface.

Max Demian is here to show this second meaning of growth/self improvement (while also explaining that Sinclair is permamently growing and must always keep this balance between all the parts conforming the whole being that is himself rather that trying to make parts of himself antagonize each other). This idea of personal growth being one of the core themes of the book.

2.2- Emil Sinclair in Limbus Company (2023)

With Sinclair's source media analyzed (at a very surface level, mind you), we now can start talking about the depiction of Sinclair in Limbus Company, how it parallels the book, why the book symbolism is important for this instance of Sinclair and so on.

When we are first introduced to Sinclair in the game he's clearly nervous, he doesn't know what he's supposed to do as he hasn't worked for a similar company before and he isn't used to the gruesome sight of the bus eating people, this does fit inmediately in the motif of a naive person with limited experience about the world (well, to be fair to him most people won't be seeing man-eating buses at a regular basis, but the average backstreets dweller would be familiar with equally violent situations).

With this said, despite Sinclair's obviously nervous behavior... he isn't really a pessimist like Stephan was, in fact, almost every chapter (counting cantos, intervallos and the short mini chapters such as the Dante's notes update episode) have at least one key moment with him trying to rationalize horrible stuff as something much less violent, or simply going "but I thought this thing didn't work like this..." when confronted with the more horrible realities in the city. He thought the G corp veterans were really going to let them pass without a fight, he thought the people being controlled by headhens were just actors wearing mascot costumes, he thought mermaids were the beautiful half-woman half-fish creatures he heard about in fairy tales, and there's more examples but I don't really feel like looking for The Entire Fucking Plot Because This Guy Is An Actual Protagonist Instead Of A Background Guy Like Stephan Was to make my point clearer than it already is. And it's only when he realizes that the real world doesn't fit his expectations that he panics.

Well, there is one exception to this pattern: his own canto. Here, he panics inmediately as soon as K corp's nest is mentioned and spends the first half of the chapter pleading to turn back while saying that they are going to get killed. So what is different here with the rest of the plot?

Obviously, the fact that is related to his very own very personal very specific trauma. That is to say, unlike Stephan who is wary of anything that can put him on danger or cost him more money than it should, Sinclair has a very specific traumatic event that makes him act Like That (sure, he gets scared and nervous outside that, but these are more normal "I'm unfamiliar with this and I don't fully know how to react, this is normal behavior in a human being" reactions than outright "I am Actually Terrified due to being reminded of an actual traumatic event, this reaction is a textbook definition of post-traumatic stress disorder").

HOWEVER, Sinclair being someone who's deeply traumatized and kind of a scaredy cat when it comes to violence and unfamiliar situations... it doesn't mean that he's incompetent or a bad fighter. Almost all of his identities are terrifyingly good fighters (at least in their lore), Los Mariachis fear jefe Sinclair, Cinq director Sinclair is someone most association members are terrified to duel even during training, Blade Lineage Sinclair is considered a talented killer (it's also worth noting that save maybe for the mariachi one, in none of these mirror worlds Sinclair is precisely happy of being recognized as "the guy who's very scary when he fights people", unlike Stephan who I don't think he particularly likes killing but has a more "as long as I get paid..." mentality about it), the only "not very good at this" Sinclair id I can think of is the molar boatworks id where he's more a mechanic than a fighter so he fears he's lagging behind in that aspect. Hell, even the Canon Timeline so to speak (which is to say: his base identity) has him carrying that huge halberd, going on a frenzy attacking some already mutilated inquisitor's corpse, piercing through Guido's armor and dealing a fatal blow that finally killed him for real. To compare, Stephan is good at physical work, but we don't know about his close combat capacities other than the fact that he dislikes it, for Sinclair however we know he's terrifyingly good at physical combat.

Now, I've seen a lot of people call Sinclair a twink and while it's one of these words that nobody agrees on what it means, let's give it the benefit of doubt and say "alright, for the duration of this analysis let's settle on a twink being a young looking (regardless of actual age), thin man with almost no facial/body hair".

Since Sinclair is a rich guy (not just Any Rich Guy though, we're talking of someone whose family had ties to a Wing, probably not some elite guy like Daniel or Hong Lu, but not a self perceived "mediocre" nest dweller like Samjo either), and pressumably not very experienced in combat in most mirror worlds (we know he has no prior experience in the base one where he joined Limbus, at least), let's say that he has enough body mods for him to be much stronger than he looks like despite being thin, he does look thin and young and much to my dissapointment he also has no facial hair, so yeah, under this very broad definition of the term he is a twink.

However if you start adding personality archetypes to the definition he stops being one almost inmediately, as we've been shown time after time that his "submissive" attitude is mostly a result of him not knowing too well how to impose himself and just going along with what the rest say or do, but he's starting to grow tired of that ever since Hell's Chicken (even if he clearly still isn't great at that), as it should be more than obvious for anyone who even just googled "demian herman hesse literary analysis", Sinclair is undergoing a lot of changes even now, and the game is doing a good job at portraying that.

Honestly I also think he'd be hotter with a sleeper build but really, I don't care enough about him to argue about that.

And for the last point, precisely due to his upbringing as a rich guy AND his traumatic experience with Kromer, Sinclair is not only a very polite and mild mannered guy (again, unlike resident creature Stephan), but also he tries to take as little space as possible, both literally and metaphorically, as Dante notices near the end of canto 3 when they finally comment on how Sinclair never talks about his own problems until it's too late because he doesn't want to bother the others as they probably have it worse (again, unlike Stephan "i don't mind loweing team morale and making everyone in the room uncomfortable as long as i get to vent" Full Stop office).

3.- Adressing common arguments

Alright, now that I talked about each character, let's see some of the most common arguments I've seen people use to compare them.

"They look the same!" No, they don't. The only thing they have in common is being blonde but even their hairstyles are different with Sinclair having a simple bowl-ish cut with slightly wavy hair and Stephan having curlier hair (not to mention the whole point I made about body types because I'm the sort of lunatic who cares about that stuff). I won't even bother with this argument.

"They have the same personalities!" Again, they don't. Stephan is very cynical with a lot of his attitude being clearly derivated from him coming from a poor background and having stayed there his whole life, he also doesn't care about his cynism getting in the way and bothering everyone else. On the other hand, Sinclair is someone who could almost be described as naive due to having lived a sheltered childhood and only having his experiences with Kromer and his time at Limbus as moments of realizing that the rest of the world is Not Like His Childhood House, still believing that the world is a binary of good vs evil and expecting things to turn out fine or be much better than they actually are, just to be hit with the reality of the city Not being a nice place where people are nice and polite and not trying to kill him, this is not to say he doesn't have his own issues but even Dante notices during his Canto that Sinclair makes a point to avoid bothering everyone else with his personal problems, keeping them to himself even if that makes things worse on the long run.

"Both are opposed and harmed by a lunatic!" This is an argument I've seen a lot and is incredibly filmsy at best, half of the city's population are lunatics and the other half are people who got opposed by them some way or another. Will you say that Ishmael and the rest of the Pequod crew can be compared to the Full Stop office (or really, even mention the other Full Stop fixers instead of just focusing on Stephan because he happens to be blonde and can be compared to Sinclair) because of their situations with Ahab? Or the W Corp crew who got their train targetted by Jae-heon and Elena (or, you know, the train passengers who were turned into Love townspeople or puppets)? What about the Vermillion Cross who got killed by the Reverb Ensemble? Or the Cane office fixers? or the Zwei association section 6 who got beaten to death by Gyeong-mi just because he felt like doing so? Or the Liu association section 1 who had to deal with Argalia taking Philip away? Or the Kurokumo clan members when they were attacked by Tanya? You aren't comparing them to either Stephan or Sinclair, right? Not to mention that in her weird and fucked up perception of things, Kromer was less opposed to Sinclair as she was trying to lead him to join her and her cause, even the last things she says before getting killed are her calling him to follow her.

"Both are compared to birds!" Oh, right, because I forgot that a very directed symbolic comparison to a baby bird breaking out of it's shell as a symbol of rebirth, learning about the nuances of the world and self improvement/liberation that is consistently used in the source material Sinclair comes from is exactly the same as one (1) throwaway line the big bad guy uses to mock not only Stephan but the whole Full Stop gang, right. And if you want to say "but Tamaki compares him to a bird once too", yeah she calls him a parrot because he keeps repeating the same complaints over and over, it's still not the same as a consistent metaphor.

"Both are sad blonde twinks! They're essentially the same guy." Sad? Yeah, everyone in the city is sad but their ways to be sad are polar opposites, and neither of them is the pure cinnamon roll uwu crybaby archetype people tend to lump both into, Stephan was merely having a bad day and people decided to make that his whole personality (when honestly we get more insight on his actual personality before Argalia shows up, when he's making sarcastic remarks and getting impatient because they weren't starting killing people fast enough) but he's still perfectly capable (and willing) to murder people, and Sinclair is just... someone who lacks experience about the real world and how it works and has a tendency to get nervous because of this, but he can adapt quickly to situations once he understands them. Blonde? Yeah, but I guess if that's a point to draw a comparison then we should also compare them to Don Quixote, the Tiphereths, Lenny, Yun, Lulu, Olga, every single npc, librarian, and agent who comes with blonde hair from the generator... Twinks? Stephan absolutely isn't one, Sinclair depends on how you define twink as nobody seems to get to an agreement with that, if you define it as merely "young looking thin man with almost no visible body hair" then yeah he is one, but if you go for any more specific definition than that he stops fitting into the definition almost instantly.

In conclusion: if I see anyone else comparing them I'll start blocking people liberally bc I'm sick of seeing that shit (I do that already tbh but just so you know), now scram

[ochiody]

not sorry for loving you is so funny to me because calypso got on that manipulation grindset so hard that she also won over like half the fandom

[egophiliac]

Hi it's just to let you know that the official romanization of Revaan's name is Raverne ! Also they have romanized Baul's name to Baur !

Twst coming back at us again with the least expected romanization! thank you everybody (oh god my inbox) (no it's great, I literally asked for this and the reactions have been INCREDIBLE, thank you all!)

I do like Raverne though, I think it's got a nice fancy sound to it! (I had kinda suspected it was going to be an R instead of an L, so the fact that it's SO close to Laverne except for that is hilarious to me personally.) and Dragoneye Duke is honestly probably the best translation for his title, I wasn't envying the localizers that one. :') Baur instead of Baul I was NOT expecting, but in retrospect I think his name's supposed to be a reference to the Bauru crocodile, so that actually makes way more sense!

someone else also said Meleanor has become Maleanor, which is the REALLY weird one to me, because I was so surprised it was written as Mel instead of Mal in the first place?! oh god no I can't decide which one I like better. 😭 (I wonder if they might change it to Mal...they have made romanization changes before) (like I remember House of Distraction being corrected to House of Destruction in Playful Land) (I did check and she's still Mel for now, but I dunno, they might Mal her up and some point and save me from having to make a decision about which one to use) (HECK I CAN'T DECIDE)

uhhhh thank you for letting me ramble about anime names, let's just say MONOGRAMMED SWEATERS FOR EVERYONE

[plistommy]

Steve’s known to be very good at charming girls.

He’s used to making them blush and giggle at his sweet words. Used to them giving him the bedroom eyes as their delicate hands slowly moved up his arm, squeezing the muscle there while begging for him to take them to his room and fuck them.

He never left them unsatisfied.

So, it wasn’t any different when he used the same technique on Eddie.

They had been sitting on his couch, a movie playing in the background when Steve had finally made the first move after months of them tiptoeing around each other and their feelings.

He’d made the older boy laugh at his dumb jokes before he had scooted closer, slowly moving his arm to rest on the back of the couch, very close to the Eddie’s shoulder and then… he had leaned in.

And Eddie had responded so well.

He kissed Steve back with the same type of desperation, arms finding their way around Steve’s waist and Steve felt like he was buzzing with excitement as he deepened the kiss, softly caressing the back of Eddie’s neck.

”Let’s go upstairs,” He had said, voice deep and low and it had made Eddie moan.

When they got to his room, Steve was all but ready to push Eddie to his bed and make him stay there looking all pretty while Steve did all the work.

But instead, he felt Eddie pushing him towards the bed and soon he was the one laying there, big brown eyes looking up as Eddie came to lay between his spread legs with a wide grin. He grinded down on him, making their clothed dicks brush against each other and Steve let out a soft moan out of surprise.

It was a total switch up from the nervous Eddie from earlier and it had made Steve feel many, many things as the older boy started to kiss his neck.

Steve had to bite back a moan when he had licked his pulse, but Eddie wasn’t having any of that, apparently.

”C’mon, let me hear the real you, sweetheart.”

Steve hadn’t known what he had meant by that. Wasn’t this the real him?

When he has had sex before, he’d always focus on his partner and their pleasure over his as he’d try to make them as loud as possible when they cum. That’s what he does and what he loves.

But once Eddie was cock deep inside Steve’s tight heat, holding onto him and praising him of being such a good boy and the most gorgeous creature he’s ever laid his eyes on, Steve couldn’t help the way he whined.

Couldn’t help how he moaned with every thrust his lover was giving him. How he begged for more as he held onto Eddie’s shoulders and cried when Eddie answered to his pleas and fucked him harder.

How he came untouched for the very first time.

After that, when they were laying in his bed, both sweaty and panting from the sex, Steve realized he’d been so so wrong about himself and the sex he loved.

It made him a little irritated how much he had held back his own pleasure.

So, it hadn’t taken long until he was already up for a second round, riding Eddie with earnestness as he took control of the pace this time, listening to his own body and the things it liked. The things it needed.

Which was the way Eddie’s dick felt inside him. How full it made him feel and how it always hit that spot inside him that made his whole body tingle.

Yeah.

Steve was never coming back from this.

[dadrielle]

I have to assume from context that this is about the glasses question, and with all due respect, I think this is deeply unfair. I really like your work, and I have also long suspected that a lot of the resentments that have built up within fandom come in part from the way everyone vague blogs instead of talking to each other, which is why I am responding to you directly. Sorry if this is an overstep.

I think the majority of people who are deep in fandom find the Fireside chats in general kind of disappointing because we want them to have more depth. I know you and I agree that the format is not super well suited to in depth character stuff, and obviously CR has not been using it as a vehicle for that; Marisha's was half about Stardew Valley, and many of the questions that are pre-selected by Dani or whomever else are not about the characters or even the campaigns. Plus the actors in the hot seat choosing to just read whatever question they can see while the chat moves at lightning speed means that some of the stuff that gets answered is just random chance. I also don't like it, but I think that's just baked in to it being a live Q & A. The interactive component is its main unique angle for better or worse.

I also think it's fair to look at the questions that get submitted and cringe as someone deeper in fandom—there were somewhere in the realm of 50 different questions about dice, stuff that has been answered before, etc. But I do think we need to remember that as frustrating as those are, some of that is due to the fact that not everyone is In Deep, you know? Most people who watch CR are not active in fandom. We're a tiny subsection. Live chats with actors very often draw casual fans who don't know that these things are redundant or uninteresting to other people. They are just excited to get to ask their favorite something! I find it maddening too, but it is what it is, and it's not new—con audience Q & As have always been the same.

But here are the facts about the glasses question specifically:

It was not the only question Cole submitted; he also submitted some deeper character questions.

It was submitted in the pre-stream phase and was pre-selected by Dani.

It is something Laura has referenced on stream and in 4sd multiple times before without coming to a resolution so it is not completely out of left field for Laura.

The glasses have become a weird lightning rod in fandom, with people assigning moral value to whether someone likes Imogen in glasses, as if liking the idea of glasses means that you infantilize Imogen.

To the above point, it was one of only a couple questions that some people, in a departure from the standard of decorum in the chat, decided to explicitly react to with thumbs down emojis.

I am not going to address the last two points here (though I think I am going to make a post about it generally) because I don't know your feelings about them and I don't want to ascribe the feelings or behaviors of others to you. I only bring it up because I think that they color the reactions people have to this question in particular quite a bit. I think there were many people, myself included, who enjoyed that question being asked not because they have strong feelings about the glasses fanon (I am deeply ambivalent), but because it felt nice to see it be treated as something lighthearted and fun, to be reminded that all the fanwank about it is really just insular and small.

So my main reason for making this post is the rest of it. I do not think it is fair to throw shade at Cole for asking that question. He asked other questions, deeper questions, which I know that you'd only be able to know if you looked at the question thread, but needs to be said because it is directly in opposition of what you said here about not caring about the characters or campaign. And Cole is also one of the people active in fandom who interacts with the discourse the least. He is not someone who is a diehard for any particular answer regarding the glasses; sometimes he draws her with them, sometimes he doesn't—this was clearly not about getting his favored fanon proven correct because he doesn't have one. Which again, you might not know! But that's part of the problem here—there is a lot of assumption of intent and character that is just both off the mark and really ungenerous. Cole is a genuinely nice guy who is getting all kinds of splash damage over a completely innocuous question and it honestly bothers me a lot. Saying that he must not care about the characters or the story because he asked that question, that it makes him or anyone else who enjoyed the question selfish, feels to me like offloading frustrations about the format on him and he does not deserve that. I get why Dani chose it as the final question; if you divorce it from the discourse, it's lighthearted, something Laura has actually been considering back and forth all campaign, and a bit tongue in cheek. It had an inside joke component of ribbing Laura about needing the teleprompter made larger. Ending on something heavy is not the usual strategy for talk segments, and without the drama hanging off it, it looks like a quick, cute send off.

I get being frustrated with what questions were asked and answered, I really do. I also desperately wish we got something juicier, even though I did ultimately enjoy the experience of watching, because Laura is very charming. But I suggest you consider that maybe taking that frustration out on other people who love the show, to say they are selfish and don't actually care about it, is unkind and disproportionate.

I shouldn't be surprised by the fireside chat being the state it was, seeing as I don't follow any CR themed blogs myself or really go into the tags because I find it frustrating but still, the bleed over of fanon is depressing and a lot of you are showing your asses in terms of how you don't actually gaf about the characters or the story the players have chosen to tell.

I love my au's, I love my headcanons, I love my not quite canon ships, but they're for me and the people who chose to enjoy them if they want to. and what makes creating those things more fulfilling is trying to really be true to the character it's about, otherwise just go play with OCs

this will be my last salty post on the matter (guess we'll see) but man, the timing? all of this crazy shit is going on, it is well established that the audience is frustrated with how little downtime we've had with these characters and getting to see those long rest bonds we got to enjoy with previous campaigns, 4SD is over, and that's what you wanna ask about? it's selfish, honestly.

[luckyartdrawer]

Hello good sir, I am sure you have well intentions! :)

I wanted to do some lighting practice for fun and now I have this sly devil. I'm pretty proud of how he turned out and how fast I was able to make this! :3

Welp. Now I kinda wanna turn him into a character. we'll see if I ever do, hehe :P

[genericpuff]

y'all have no clue how wild it is to live in my timeline, because 12 years ago i was a huge fan of these cute lil' zelda strips and at the time i found out through the grapevine that the creator apparently stopped making these comics because they had started drawing NSFW content-

and at the time i was like "oh ok that's wild but respect"

and now in the present the artist who's making the OMORI manga adaption is under fire for being a shota fetishist and it's putting the spotlight back on the OMORI creator themselves for ALSO being a shota fetishist and oh my god the omocat who made those zelda comics over a decade ago is the same omocat who went on to make OMORI holy shit-

[amtrak12]

After a conversation with a friend about this weird trend of fic readers who only want epic length fics (and also what seems to be a massive misunderstanding between parties on terms and their definitions), I went searching for the fandom sources I cut my teeth on. I don't have much bookmarked from those days anymore, but googling got me to this fiction length/terminology breakdown from a Livejournal blog. (Which also has good fandom definitions for other terms like A/N and fanon too, so if you're super new to fandom, go check that out.)

The definitions come from the publishing world (hence the page counts), but fandom and fanfic has always borrowed heavily from official publishing terminology. Flash fiction (aka, anything less than 1k words) is called a 'ficlet' within fandom. We call everything else a fic until it reaches the novella mark -- which may start at 20k words but as synecdochic breaks down on their Dreamwidth blog, there's a lot of overlap between short stories and novella word counts. Because, when you're not constrained by physical page counts, the real dividing line between short stories and novellas are the number of plots and themes you're using. (Seriously, go read their meta on this topic. It's fantastic!) Either way, once you're hitting tens of thousands of words, you're in longfic territory. And then if your fic is even longer than that -- 100k+ like shown in the screenshot above -- it's called an epic fic.

And these terms, longfic and epic, are important because they're used to differentiate these stories from the average fic. Because, at least in the 2000s up until the 2020s, the most common fic lengths you ran into were between 1k-20k words. "Fic" made the reader assume only a few thousand words at most. It's only when you changed the term to drabble or ficlet or longfic that they would realize 'oh this is going to be shorter or longer than normal'.

I don't really understand why that baseline assumption has changed amongst the newer demographics (and maybe amongst some long-running fandom members too?). I've seen a lot of theories and 'tiktokification' complaints, but I honestly don't know what's true. And I don't want to start a fight or even try to change anyone's minds if they are dead set against reading short story length fics. You can do what you want!

Just maybe shift your attitude about it a little bit? Remember that it's a personal preference the same way tropes are, and that one story length isn't better than another. Just like tropes, each story length serves its purpose. Some stories are best told in 1-2k words. Some are best told as 100 word drabbles -- or even a single sentence! And then, yes, some stories do need to be 100k+ in order to be told properly.

But that's not every story. And it shouldn't be expected of fic writers to pad a 1500 word plot into some sprawling epic just because they left it on a cliffhanger. The cliffhanger is probably the point of that fic! Short stories are an entirely separate art form to novels and as such are able to cover different topics than novels can or cover the same topics differently. And that's what makes them special!!

And look at that word count breakdown by genre! That's mainstream publishing standards! Now, go back up there to the definition of a novel and notice that the average published novel is 80k words long.

Let me repeat that:

The average length of a published novel is 80,000 words long.

Could a novel go longer? Sure! And if you're dipping into adult sci-fi or fantasy, absolutely it will be longer! But does your fic need to be longer than the average novel in order to be good? In order for you to feel satisfied when you finish reading it? Why does the length of the fic matter more to you than the content?

idk just some rambling food for thought, but I guess too long, don't read:

~✨~ Every story length is valid ~✨~

It just depends on the plot you have and the structure you want to use to tell it.

[sunlitriddle]

Have you ever been so possessed by a half-baked thought that you drew two pics just to get it out of your brain? Yeah, me neither.

These are kinda old, about a year apart. I forgot where I was going with the first pic, making a deal you can't refuse, probably... but I REALLY wanted to take some liberties with his costume on the second one. I mean, even still, I conveniently forgot his chunky white cuffs in the first one.

[theology101]

People need to accept that some times, a person is just Evil. And there can be lots of complex and nuanced reasons to be evil, but at the end of the day… they’re still evil. And just cause they’re a teenager right now doesn’t undo that, especially when every time they’ve had a chance to step away from evil, they doubled down.

Sorry you wanted her to be some manipulated little pawn but no, she’s a Mastermind. She made the choice, she murdered her friends.

Kipperlily is Evil.

If she didn’t do something in High School, she would’ve done something eventually. She’s a school shooter who slipped through the cracks and was failed by the adults around her - but end of the day she made the choice and is evil

Her best friend, the only one who ‘got it’ seemed to think that she was too far gone.