#okay I think I have officially written for everyone in the main cast now

[amusingmusie]

lingering on the thought of nel being in the hazbin hotel with alastor for more than five seconds tickles me so much because all i can think about is just How she got there

because it does seem to me she has no interest in being there so the conclusion my head comes to is that right after the pilot alastor immediately just rockets across the whole city at mac 20 to drag a Very Disoriented Nel back to the hotel

all the while yapping her ear off about some Fascinating New Project he has so Graciously lent his Services to.

None of which actually registers in poor nel's mind at first because it just so happened that she got whisked away while she was in the middle of giving her lunch order to a particularly hard of hearing waiter

the prospect just tickles me so much theyr so silly

THIS IS FOR FUN ONLY AND NOT CANON TO YOURS TRULY

Strained Introductions

It’s going to be so amusing to watch this ridiculous hotel go up in flames. 

Alastor smiles smugly to himself, tapping his claws along the head of his trusty microphone as he studies the chaos surrounding him. After a sound lunch of his mother’s classic jambalaya, he’s content to sit back and watch the others face the aftermath of today’s immense excitement. 

The princess and her little attack dog are exchanging shushed words in the corner of the lobby, foolishly believing that he can’t hear a word about their argument concerning his freshly established presence in the building. Husker has already drunk himself under the bar much to the disappointment of that rather womanly spider who’s been adjusting his pectoral floof and preparing for incessant flirtations. Niffty, darling Niffty, is the only one doing anything slightly useful; she’s been speedily scooping debris and rubble into a trash bag for easy disposal.

A trash bag. 

Of course- oh, he’s forgotten something terribly important! How could he be so foolish? With a crackle of static that draws all eyes to him, Alastor adjusts his bowtie and pats down his hair to ensure it’s perfect as always. A quick twirl of his staff and he taps over to the front door, giving a quick, parting bow.

“Excuse me, but I have an errand of utmost importance to run- I’ll return shortly!”

The royal guard, Vaggie as she insists on being called, glares at him. “No vuelvas, pendejo.”

“How sweet.” A faded, crackling laugh track punctuates his statement. “Try your best not to miss me while I’m gone. Ta-ta, chums!” 

Shadows encircle him and swallow his spindly form whole, leaving no trace of the Radio Demon behind.

////

“I said cherry.”

“This is cherry.”

“No, it’s not.” Nel pinches the bridge of her nose and sighs deeply in exasperation. “I’ve been telling you for ten minutes that it’s fucking strawberry, and I do not want the strawberry. I’m asking for cherry.”

“Whatever, Karen.”

“What? What the fuck does that mean?” she snaps at the exhausted worker, only barely keeping her temper in check. 

When he flips her off and disappears from behind the bakery counter into a backroom, she clenches her fists with a pissy growl, not giving two shits if her talons threaten to slice into her palms. Nel promptly decides fuck it, stomps around the counter, and snatches up a slice of cherry pie for herself.

She still throws a few bills down on the counter, though. Old habits die hard.

The buzzing begins first. Nel’s skin crawls as the sensation of pinpricks washes over her, an unfortunately familiar fuzzy hum growing louder and louder in her ears shortly afterwards. The flashing smiles come next, along with distant whispers, full body chills, and a tug on her heart.

Goddammit.

She glares at the bakery door right as Alastor manifests in front of it with an accompanying audience cheer.

“Hello, sweetheart!” He wastes no time in snatching her up around her waist and squishing her dangerously near his less than fresh smelling armpit. “We must be off! I have the most hilarious, pathetic thing to show you!”

“Your picture?”

The loud boo doesn’t deter her from smirking. The shadowy tendril that snatches up her pie does.

“No, my gangrenous toe, the Hazbin Hotel! We have front row seats to its inevitable demise. Think of all the failures we’ll get to witness! The struggling souls clinging to the foolhardy idea of redemption, their inevitable fall back into the pit of despair- ah, it’ll be great fun!”

“Wait, Alastor, did you get your ass involved with that goddamn, idiotic scam? You just came back-”

“Ah ah, we are involved!”

“What? WHAT? No the hell we are not-!”

The bakery is ripped away and replaced by fading carpet, peeling wallpaper, and five idiots staring at the swirl of shadows occupying the center of the hotel lobby. Once the darkness fades, Alastor stands alone with a giddy grin on his gray face. There’s a beat, and then Nel falls in from the fleeting shadows, landing flat on her face with her wings awkwardly flattened around her. 

Angel Dust peeks over, mutters, “Eh, it’s a chick. Fat ass though,” then returns to scrolling on his phone. 

“Alastor, who the fuck is this?” Vaggie doesn’t waste a moment on beginning her tirade, temper flaring now that another uninvited addition to the hotel has appeared. 

“Nobody who is overly important! Sweetheart, mind your manners and say hello.”

Nel grunts and picks her head up off of the floor. “Shut your ugly mouth.”

That less than kind response has Vaggie starting up again as Charlie desperately tries to calm her down. Nel doesn’t interrupt; for all she cares, this girl can bite Alastor’s head off and she won’t stop her. The blonde one- the princess, she remembers- tries to say something to her, but chooses to play damage control instead when a spear is held to Al’s throat.

A little skitter reaches Nel’s attention, and she sits up, turning to the side to face Niffty.

“Hiya, Nelly! Killed any good bugs lately?”

“No.”

“Aw.” Her red eye expands eerily and her smile grows. “Read any real good steamy stories lately?”

“...Come find me later, Niff. We’ll bump gums.”

“‘Kay!” Niffty skitters off as Nel chooses to continue to block out the ranting at her side. Well, if Alastor has Niffty running around this dump, then that means one of his other favorite unfortunates to torment can’t be too far away. 

“Husk?”

A single clawed middle finger raises from over the top of the bar.

“Yeah, fuck you too, asshole.”

Finally, finally, Princess Charlotte manages to extend a hand out to her. Apprehensively, Nel takes it, not quite able to remain as pissy as usual in the face of this obvious kindness. 

“Welcome to the Happy- uh, Hazbin Hotel!” she chirps, beaming widely and so genuinely that it has Nel’s anger withering even further. “We are so excited to have you join us and begin your path to redemption! Okay, so, right now we only have Angel Dust staying as a resident here, so we have a ton of empty rooms, fully customizable-!” 

Nel holds up a hand, and sighs. “Sorry, but I’m not interested in checking in.”

“Oh, well, um, if you’re a worker of Alastor’s, then we can-”

“Worker? Please, he wishes.” 

“Then what are you-?”

“Don’t fret about it!” Alastor interrupts, butting in by physically shoving himself between the two women as Vaggie settles next to her girlfriend. “Nelly is here with me under my protection, and that is that! She’ll stay by my side, and handle my business.”

Talk about her personal circle of Hell.

“Ah, I almost forgot!” Alastor snaps his fingers, and the abandoned piece of pie lands neatly on Nel’s curly head, splattering her with red filling. “There we are.”

Nel reaches up, sticks her finger into the pie, then brings it to her nose to smell. Strawberry. 

What a great start to her waking nightmare.

[linkspooky]

Hey friend, beautiful metas, you are great at this. I would like to hear your opinion on the one who is the second best antagonist in Bleach for me, Yhwach. It's my favorite manga and I would like to hear the opinion of someone who could understand the message of his character and the final arc of TYBW which for me is also the best of the manga.

Yhwach's philosophy about a world without the fear of death has great value in the work for me and one of the things that makes it so interesting is how he somehow contrasts with Aizen in the arc of the arrancars. Both of them were wrong in their ideologies, and only realized it when they achieved exactly what they wanted. Aizen becoming an infinite existence, and Yhwach becoming a stagnant existence.

So, fun fact Ywach is my second favorite Bleach Antagonist now (not counting Ulquiorra because he's just a precious misunderstood little baby) but when I first read TYBW I didn't like him at all. It really took the anime for me to understand how plot important Ywach is to the story. I usually don't like saying this, but if you think Ywach is a badly written antagonist then you really just don't get him.

The thing is everyone says they want to have nuanced villains but it's okay to have antagonists who are just symbolic forces of nature. The true antagonists in Bleach aren't the bad guys, it's the inability of the ensemble casts to overcome their personal issues, or work together as a team. Bleach has really strong character conflict, it really feels like every character who gets screentime is on a journey that's symbolized by the progression of their powers, whether they be quincy, fullbringer, or Shinigami.l

Therefore it is okay for Ywach not to be a character with a backstory as deep and human as Shigaraki, because he's symbolic of the force of FATE that the main characters are fighting against. Which is why the best way to understand Ywach is by comparing him to Aizen, Bleach's best antagonist. More on that under the cut.

The Fraud vs. The Real Deal

So ironically just like the best way to understand Aizen is also by comparing him to Ywach. Everything Aizen tries to be, a force of fate, the controlling force in the narrative, the one who has everyone dancing on the palms of his hands Ywach just naturally is. Aizen tries to become divine through schemes and plots, Ywach was literally born divine. He doesn't need to call himself a god, everyone already calls him a god. The quincy gave him the name "Ywach."

Before we get deeper into their comparisons, I'm going to give an example of just how Aizen is a fraud. The reveal of Misaki's backstory in thousand year blood war really did salvage Aizen's character for me after I started to dislike him towards the end of Arrancar Arc.

There's a fine line to walk with mastermind characters. You have to ask yourself is the character genuinely smart, or is the author just moving things around in the plot and letting the villain have plot armor and plot convenience in order to make them appear smarter than they already are.

Aizen claimed that he'd had everything in the palm of his hand since Ichigo was born, and that was what made me officially call bullshit. Then, the Misaki backstory reveals that Aizen was in fact just bullshitting the entire time.

Aizen didn't actually engineer Ichigo's birth as he claimed. One of his experiments just happened to attack Ichigo's mom, and Aizen decided to stay back and observe the situation. Then he kept monitoring Ichigo to see if he would be useful later. Which is what Aizen does in general, he puts his fingers in a lot of people's pies and then is clever enough to push situations into his favor.

He claims to be an omniscient planner, but he's really just clever and good at improvising when random things like White attacking Ichigo's mother happen so he can turn those situations into his advantage. When Aizen claims "I had everything planned from the beginning" it's just another illusion he's using to try to control you, and characters who buy that are easy to manipulate.

Because Aizen is a fraud. That is literally his zanpakuto, making illusions that control the senses. Everything down to his zanpakuto the literal reflection of his soul is fraudulent. Aizen makes claims at godhood but he doesn't even believe what he's saying.

Aizen yells at Ulquiorra that people shouldn't accept the way the world is, that they should try to be gods if they have the ability to while at the same time Ichigo called him out that his true desire was to be just another soul reaper.

However, in the world of Bleach godhood isn't all it's cracked up to be. The closest thing to a god, the Reio, the lynchpin of the unvierse is a limbless being, sealed in a crystal, that was not only betrayed and backstabbed and brutally massacred by the shinigami who supposedly worshipped them he's also like completely helpless.

He's eternal and all powerful and the very being that holds the world together, and also all he can do is passively observe reality. Destroying the soul king is a mercy because it releases him from his eternal suffering.

This is where we finally reach Ywach, who is what everything Aizen pretended to be. Aizen had to rely on the Hogyoku entirely to give other people power, whereas Ywach naturally can gift the quincy with his power. Aizen wanted to become the soul king he was a mortal who tried to ascend to divinity.

Ywach is heavily implied to be the soul king's literal son. Unlike Aizen he can actually claim to be a divine being, and he's worshipped as one taking the name of the christian god.

Aizen claims to be behind Ichigo's every fight in the manga, while Ywach actually is behind Ichigo's every fight because he's been there all along, pretending to be Ichigo's zanpakuto spirit. Ywach as Zangetsu even admits this, he was limiting Ichigo from his true power while also convincing Ichigo he was an ally because he never wanted Ichigo to become a full fledged sorcerer since he's not only a fragment of Ywach but the embodiment of his quincy powers.

Ywach is responsible for ichigo's desire to protect others, because his decision to terminate all impure quincy killed Ichigo's mother. Ywach has been with Ichigo since birth, since all quincies carry a fragment of Ywach's power in them. When Ywach calls Ichigo his son, he's not bullshitting either, because Old Man Zangetsu the fragment of Ywach inside Ichigo was in a sense a mentor and a father figure to him.

Ywach is a force of nature, in this case he's fate. The same fate that Ichigo wanted to shatter with his sword. Unlike Aizen's claims to be in control he can actually back this up. He controls Ichigo to slay the soul king, and his literal ability "The Almighty" is to rewrite the future to bring whatever future he wants into being. He can peer into every possible future and see millions of possible variations fo the future like grains of sand and then just make the one he wants happen. He literally, creates fate.

However, as I said it's not actually a good thing to be god in Bleach. Ywach because he is divine, can't live in the world with everyone else because of his fear of death. He's terrified of death probably for two reasons, one because he existed in a world without death, he watched his own father get butchered in the worst way possible, and he was basically stillborn. He fears returning to the state he was at birth unable to itneract with the world. A state ironically that was much like his father when he was sealed in the soul palace.

He's also experienced the deaths of every quincy he gave his power to over and over again. So Ywach is the force of fate itself, but just like fate which cannot be controlled, Ywach is an entirely stagnant entity.

The exact opposite of Aizen who was someone who wanted to be just like every other soul reaper. It's why even though Aizen's a fraud, between the two of them Aizen is the ideological victor in the end.

Since Aizen was saved by Ichigo in a way. By giving him the worthy opponent that he always craved, Aizen was knocked back down by the pedestal he always stood on. He became just another soul reaper as he always wanted to be. That's why he was able to believe in humans in the end and give up his notions of becoming a god.

[localsharkcryptid]

I'd love to hear about it :D

Okay so! Admittedly this entire 'Good Ending' AU is a lot of concepts and ideas so imma just put down a bunch of the main and favorite notes I have so far with it!

If I ever do anything with this it'll probably be a fair amount of one-shots or short stories, and I do wanna hammer home that EVERYONE in this AU gets a good ending - no exclusions, full DSMP cast, if I don't write things on certain characters it's generally due to me just not knowing their lore well enough to give specifics on what they'd be doing or just not having set ideas atm.

Mostly for Context Notes:

- I won't say the canon ending is retconned but more so it doesn't happen the same way due to some changes! The Eggpire ending is important though and still plays out mostly the same. Which leads into The Egg becoming this bigger force that everyone has to work together against - thus leading to a final server wide 'truce' in a way that allows for things to finally settle. (Generally going with a concept that the Egg originally surfaced due to all the previous wars, the death drawing it out so it could be found, therefore people figure this out and it becomes a sort of for the greater good situation)

- Additionally the server doesn't reset again due to XD making a very specific deal with George, in an attempt to finally be free of the Admin's influence/all the dream coma bullshittery, George effectively tricks XD into becoming mortal and giving up his status as Admin - officially freeing the server from the loop.

- After the truce, the idea of countries kinda dissolves, while the locations all remain they become more so cities/towns all apart of the same thing again! Also with the server being "freed" the SMP starts gaining citizens after a bit! So actual populations for everywhere!!! Also totally not an excuse for me to make OCs, definitely not (I say like a liar)

- This is a good ending but also I will note it takes a while for a lot of people to become comfortable again with each other, and honestly I don't think there's a lot of forgiveness either, it's more so people choosing to move on from the past. So a lot of my ideas for shenanigans/light hearted stuff are written with the idea of it being like 2-3 years post 'ending'

Other Notes! Just some more miscellaneous thoughts honestly.

- Dream ends up as part of a syndicate as one would assume, Punz is considered an honorary member and of all people, Purpled also joins the ranks, he gets picked up by someone some time after the Las Nevadas finale and that leads to him joining them, whereas the other two show up later on.

- Pandora's Vault ends up being entirely renovated, it being pretty damn difficult now to tell what it was and turned into a proper home, it's a long process mostly headed by Sam in his long list of things he's done to "apologize" after having his world view shattered (he learns that the staged finale was, well, staged and has a mental crisis for like 3 weeks over that and realizing he is, in fact, the bad guy) also his plot goes slightly differently, being based on a roleplay I have going rn! Generally Sam returns to the Vault initially to hide out from people/so they'll 'get over' him being a shit person and it leads into him eventually siding with and eventually ending up with Dream (Awesamdrunz is a dynamic that is borderline crack to me and yes it's going in here) - this is the main factor that changes stuff with the nuke part of the og ending, as Tommy and Tubbo get effectively curb stomped by Sam when they attempt to kill Dream the first time around and don't really try it again.

- While it takes a bit, DTeam do reunite, it's shaky at first (especially with Dream's chosen partners, Punz is pretty neutral as always - he's good at keeping his opinions to himself even if he tends to clash with Sap a lot. As for Sam, well, it's more so that Sapnap and George rightfully hate his fucking guts for awhile) but they have bi-weekly if not more meet-ups to hang out and do things like they used to. They end up eventually building another community house somewhere between Kinoko and the main SMP, this one being more so just a designated hang out.

- Bad ends up taking over looking after a lot of the main server, especially with new arrivals. He's kinda a one-man welcome committee and does a pretty good job. He also tries to host little get togethers now and again (mostly for DTeam/The Manhunt Crew and whoever they wanna bring along) also you cannot tell me that he wouldn't have like weekend bake sales as the SMP gains a proper population. Someone needs to enjoy the muffins.

- Wilbur & Tommy end up making their own book club to rival the syndicate cause both of them aren't allowed in Techno's fancy book club (they think it's an actual book club, so yeah). Sam gets roped into it one day when he shows up to pick up Dream & Punz, Tubbo inevitably gets roped in as well. It's a time and they insist on using Phil's living room for meetings. Phil hates this - also Sam's 8ft ass can barely fit in the room, it's very cramped for him.

---

I've got more but those will be going to the other ask I've got :)

[artbyblastweave]

Gideon the Ninth Liveread, Chapter 11

We are now on Day three at Canaan house. This work does interesting things with time. Sometimes you get a chapter like chapter 6 that’s basically the equivalent of a training montage taking place over months; sometimes you get a three or four chapter run covering like an hour; here you get a chapter that officially begins to stretch out and volumize the total amount of time that the cast have canonically spent at Canaan house without much happening. I’m harping on this because of my ongoing conspiracy theory that this was a book written to maximize opportunities for fandom engagement; around the ring distribution scene in chapter 8, when I realized that this was like a very weird boarding school plot, I developed the theory that Muir was going to do some time jumps, leaving broad holes in the timeline where canon-adjacent stuff can be crammed in. This isn’t as drastic as what I was thinking of, but it fills a similar role; the rest of this chapter shows that while Gideon was sequestering herself, the tertiary cast spent two days getting at least somewhat acquainted with each other. 

Also; as much as Gideon is ragging on Harrow for her chronic truancy (and I’ve read a couple of chapters ahead so I know her complaints are grounded) Gideon is, from the perspective of everyone else at Canaan house, exactly as opaque and inaccessible as Harrow.

“It was in this abandoned state....“ Okay, Gideon, as much as I ragged on Dulcinea for objectifying you in the last chapter, I assess your current state as more than slightly self-inflicted. Dulcinea wants you around. Harrow- the main functional constraint on your behavior, or at least the one you blame everything on- has no leverage here because she isn’t around. This whole dueling sequence indicates your ability to carve out a niche fairly easily. And really, you aren’t adequately questioning the idea that sticking like glue to Harrow’s charade is the only way out of your situation on the ninth. You could cheat! There are people around who might help you cheat! To the degree that you’re abandoned and without prospects, it’s because you’re hiding away! 

....As I write from my lightless bedroom. Hmm.

Okay, enter Coronabeth. Alright. Listen. Somebody must have at least floated the idea of a Canaan-house dating sim, right? I can’t be the only one whose mind went here at this point, with the knuckle-kissing.

Jokes aside, I get the impression that Gideon is astoundingly attracted to Coronabeth and extremely susceptible to her charisma, but it’s unclear to me if she actually likes Coronabeth. The descriptor “an expression like an artillery shell mid-flight” indicates a level of discomfort; Gideon feels less in love and more ensnared, off-balance, following Coronabeth because she succumbed to Coronabeth. Coronabeth is in general treated by the narration of having a gravity that makes everyone defer to her like this.

I’ve decided that I like Magnus, at least in part because Gideon clearly does. This sequence is full of a lot of little signifiers that he’s actually a decent guy; he’s the only person in the room actively friendly to Gideon when she walks in, he’s fiercely but deftly protective of the fourthlings when Naberius is being a dick, he’s humble, he’s a wife-guy, he’s a fun-uncle, he cracks puns and immediately endears himself to Gideon by doing so. I think I called the Hammerlock thing; he’s like the empty, goofy, sanitized signifier of Empire, the fun aesthetic parts, the nobility and sportsmanship, but at a distance from any of the genocidal sausage that goes hand-in-hand with the real-life version. He’s very pointedly not good at being a cavalier- a teen with three months of training thrashes a grown man who self-identifies as the boy toy of the competent person in his dyad. He’s never seen real combat. My read is that he’s either going to die ineffectually (thus removing a voice of reason from play) or be secretly evil, but in the increasingly unlikely scenario that this turns out to be a takedown of his archetype, I am gonna say that he feels believably likable in the way such a person would need to be to have the social power associated with the gentleman adventurer role.

Also, to briefly revisit the AU logic from earlier- I’ve got this guy pegged as the “cool teacher.”

“Three Moves, Magnus!“ I love these little assholes. I love how these little pesterings are structured as intrusive asides rather than as part of the ebb and flow of the dialogue.

Alright, if Gideon’s implicit.... thing with Dulcinea is rooted in an aesthetic fascination and acts of service, Gideon’s impending.... thing with Coronabeth is rooted in the fact that Coronabeth is apparently aroused by Gideon’s massive capacity for violence. Nobody on the rock is capable of desiring Gideon for hinged reasons or being at all normal about it. 

Can’t tell if Magnus’s “Am I getting old? Should Abigail and I divorce?” is a good-natured face-recoupment bit, or if the Fifth actually does have a “divorce your spouse if they’re inadequately martially competent” norm. Or if it is a joke, but a joke contextualized by that norm. And where is Abigail, anyway?

Also: Interesting that Gideon clearly has some residual affection and respect for Aiglamene. Heart growing fonder, et al, et al.

Okay, the whole Babs sequence adheres like glue to a lot of. A lot of high school and sports movie tropes. Scrappy underdog on the back foot until she breaks protocol, and then being lauded for being the more practical combatant even if her well-bred opponent is more skilled within the rules as defined. Preps vs… Goth-nerds? Gerds? Spiced up, however, by whatever deranged under-the-hood dynamics the thirds have going on. Is Naberius, like, a sibling to the twins, a boyfriend, an unholy fusion...? Also interesting is that Coronabeth seems interested in defusing Naberius rather than providing solidarity to him; her approach to the aftermath of the fight is definitely based around keeping in both Babs and Gideon’s good graces. 

Also; Naberius is suspicious of Gideon. He knows enough about the Ninth’s MO that Gideon actually being good at Cavaliering is not usually how the ninth plays things. And he’s right- Ortus, martially incompetent Bone Donkey, should be there in Gideon’s place. This is another example of the dynamic present his introductory scene in chapter 9; he’s vastly more insightful and observant than the elitist prep snob archetype normally is, but he deploys that insightfulness basically purely in service of playing his archetype to the hilt by being a classist, self-absorbed dick. 

And we leave off on the reveal that Harrow saw everything, after three chapters of total non-presence. Dollars to donuts that she’s gonna be pissy about Gideon doing things rather than politely tucking herself away like a piece of unused equipment while Harrow was AWOL. This is, incidentally, close to what I was predicting would happen as a result of Harrow siloing herself off from Gideon.

I should probably say something about the second cav, Dyas (first name unremembered) whose job in the story is basically to provide the above-validation that Gideon is the more practical fighter. I strongly suspect, given how little I’ve seen her name come up, and the fact her uniform is a literal red jacket, that she isn’t long for the narrative. I’ve seen chatter about the 2nd house necro, though. I wonder what she’s up to.

And, to round out, This chapter features the second or third time that Nonius, ninth-house founder, is referred to as some particularly-badass badass, anomalous in comparison to his descendants. I’m curious to see why said particularly badass badass set up his house in the middle of nowhere....

[findingjoynweirdstuff]

Dream SMP Recap (August 4/2021) - Unhealthy Competition

Ranboo and Wilbur visit Las Nevadas to talk with Quackity about their new business. They discover that Quackity’s hired a new employee for the competing restaurant.

---

VOD LINKS:

Wilbur Soot

Tubbo

Captain Puffy

Michaelmcchill

Foolish

---

- Wilbur and Ranboo are in the Ranvan making burgers. They try them, and Wilbur says it’s the best burger he’s ever had, but they have to do even better

Wilbur: “We’re taking down an entire nation just out of this burger van, you know -- sorry, competing! Peacefully, with an entire nation, just out of this burger van.”

- Wilbur notices that Ranboo’s taken a side. Ranboo looked back after Wilbur’s talks about L’manburg, and he realized that he’s been involved in things, but he hasn’t really done anything

- Wilbur tells Ranboo he doesn’t have to build something to matter. It’s cool that he’s taking this direction, but he shouldn’t have to blow up walls just to make something

- Wilbur notices that Quackity is online and wants to see the fruits of their labor

- The two go into Las Nevadas with Quackity’s horse and Wilbur tries to get Quackity’s attention, spamming so much he gets kicked from the server. Quackity is nowhere to be seen

- Wilbur asks Ranboo a bit about the cookie outpost

- Quackity finally comes walking down the road to see them. Quackity tells them that’s not his horse

- Wilbur announces he’s been building a burger van. Quackity is amused that this is what he’s been doing all this time

- They give Quackity a burger to try. He’s not hungry

- Wilbur brings up Quackity’s restaurant and Quackity leads them over to show them. Wilbur and Ranboo left Quackity a bit of a gift. Quackity thanks them for the destruction, because he realized the non-tinted glass wasn’t as good. He even installed a fishtank full of salmon!

- Quackity even hired some new help!

Tubbo!

- This is his new job. Quackity and Tubbo had a little talk, and he found that Tubbo has aspirations in life and wanted to offer him a good job in Las Nevadas. He’s not just an employee -- he’s managing the restaurant, also making NFT Tubburgers!

- Tubbo sees it as healthy competition, good for the consumer. This is like L’manburg all over again, with Tubbo and Quackity leading together

May the best burgers win.

- Wilbur is allowed in Las Nevadas to try the burgers anytime he likes. After all, what kind of person would Quackity be if he didn’t allow someone into his country?

- Wilbur and Ranboo return to the van to talk with each other

Wilbur: “I feel alive, Ranboo! I feel alive! Someone’s looking at me and -- and talking to me! I’m alive, I’m alive! This is great!”

- Ranboo is still getting used to the competition. Wilbur doesn’t get why Ranboo would mind going up against Quackity and Tubbo

- Ranboo shows him over to the strip club with his secret hole in the floor. Wilbur suggests they build a tunnel underground, do some espionage

Wilbur: “We’re the good guys here, you know, we’re--”

Ranboo: “You sure?”

Wilbur: “Yeah, I mean, we haven’t done anything wrong, you know. We’re the good guys, and Quackity’s done a few things wrong.”

- They go back outside. In case of an emergency, when they’re head-to-head with Tubbo and Quackity, Wilbur needs to know they can save the innocent people in the city like Tubbo and Fundy

- Wilbur discusses a plan with Ranboo to rig the underground of the city with TNT connected up to a button. In most cases, it would never see the light of day

- Wilbur leaves Ranboo to the TNT

- Tubbo and Quackity talk in the restaurant. Quackity thinks Tubbo is the best choice of employee for the place, and Tubbo needed a new purpose

- Quackity doesn’t want to ruin the moment, but they have to discuss their brief conflict. They go over to the outpost

- Quackity asks what it was really for. Tubbo just wanted to see what everyone was up to. Quackity feels a little uneasy about it still

- Quackity suggests they integrate this land as a part of Las Nevadas. Tubbo is onboard with the idea, and Quackity wants to make it official with a document

- They go up to the top of the Needle to review the contract: 

---

TUBBO COOKIE OUTPOST PROPERTY IS NOW PART OF LAS NEVADAS LAND AND IS UNDER ITS RULES AND CONSTITUION.

COORDS:

[TO BE INSERTED]

Signed: - Tubbo_

---

- Tubbo’s been missing L’manburg now that it’s the time of its anniversary, and he admires what Quackity’s done here

- Tubbo wants to scope out Wilbur and Ranboo’s burger shop alone. He leaves Quackity at the Needle

- Tubbo arrives at the Ranvan and Ranboo is there. Tubbo asks him why he trusts Wilbur. Ranboo doesn’t trust trust him yet

- Ranboo thinks that in thirteen years, Wilbur must have changed, and if he can redeem himself, Ranboo can be there to see it

- Tubbo understands, but he doesn’t want to put his life in Wilbur’s hands again. Ranboo asks if he’s okay with all this, and he says he is

- Foolish logs on

- Tubbo noticed that Ranboo hasn’t told Wilbur about the marriage. Ranboo heard enough about Wilbur of thirteen years ago using things against people, and so he doesn’t trust him enough yet to tell him. Ranboo avoids eye contact while they talk

- Ranboo asks how Tubbo managed to bury the hatchet with Quackity over the Festival. Tubbo thinks he was going to die that day no matter what happened anyway

- They talked a lot about L’manburg. L’manburg was amazing, and Ranboo’s only heard about the bad bits. They came to an agreement about the cookie outpost

- Ranboo learns that Tubbo gave up the cookie outpost to become property of Las Nevadas. Tubbo insists it’s not like that and he still owns it

- Ranboo changes the subject and goes to throw stale bread into the river. He tells Tubbo he’ll talk to him later and says goodbye

- Tubbo walks away on his own. Now he’ll come up with some good burger recipes

- He runs right into Quackity. Tubbo is late for work at the burger shop

- Quackity starts ranting

Quackity: “When Wilbur sees this, because I know he’s gonna be fuckin’ like, spying around, when Wilbur sees this shit? He’s gonna freak out, he’s gonna finally realize--”

Tubbo: “--Why do you care so much about what Wilbur's doing?”

Quackity: “--He’s an idiot, he’s an idiot for doing whatever it is he decided to do!”

- Quackity builds a Tubburger sign out front for the restaurant

- They go inside and Quackity wants Tubbo to try Wilbur’s burgers

- They do need competition at the end of the day. Tubbo meets Quackity in the kitchen to discuss his three-step program. They can use smokers to make smoked burgers. They need better grain supplies

- Quackity shows Tubbo the farms. They also need to clean the kitchen of gunk. Quackity had a friend living there for a while

- They return to the kitchen to come up with more burger names

- One of the salmon dies. They go silent for a moment, then Quackity eats it raw

- Tubbo shows Quackity the book on the lectern. Quackity is annoyed by it, assuming that it was written by Wilbur

- They mention the explosion. They’re going to be bigger and better, and they won’t resort to sabotage

- Quackity’s going to go up to his office for his lunch break, count his money, and then he’ll come back down and tell everyone to help with the farms

- Quackity leaves with stomach issues from the fish as Sam logs on

- Tubbo goes back to the kitchen to come up with recipes, happy to have a job

- Puffy goes back to the main area to work on the Pokemon center and discovers Foolish’s bamboo prank, cleaning it up

- She then works on building the Pokemon center

- Michael logs on for a birthday stream! 

- Foolish logs on as well, aiming to expand the Las Nevadas highways some more

- Foolish meets up with Michael and drops him some Netherite ingots as a birthday present

- Foolish returns to Las Nevadas. He’s been thinking about how Quackity told him not to break Dream out, but he’s pondering coming up with something prepared as a backup anyways, as it’s always good to have other plans

- He keeps working on the highways

---

Upcoming Events:

- Wilbur’s 9 planned streams

- Egg Finale Stream [maybe soon...maybe...]

- Tales From the SMP: “Space Race”

- Ponk’s prequel stream

- Ponk’s current-day lore with Sam

- Puffy’s Lore Cast

- Sapnap’s lore

- Dream’s lore video

- Quackity’s casino opening

- Captain Puffy’s lore stream

[avinaccia]

A Completely Objective and Logical Ranking of Every Hetalia Character Song

New character songs are dropping,  I have too much time on my hands, let’s go. 

Also here’s a Youtube playlist for the ~✨nostalgia✨~

Bring it on in the tags 

71. Ah Legendary Class⭐The Awesome Me Highway [Prussia]: Absolutely tearing it up on the drums and on the vocal cords alike (I pray for Atsushi Kousaka). Great for the memes. 

70.  Happy Thoughts Museum [???]: This is listed as an official song but I had literally never heard of the title. Then I listened to it and BAM! Smack back to 2013 watching the teasers for the show on Funimation. Not sure I’d count it as a character song though...

69. (Nice)  My Song that is written by me for me [Prussia]: Deafened me but I can appreciate the industrial grind.

68.  My House is...Quiet. ~With the Trolls~ [Norway]: I have never heard this song, nor can I find any version of it online. By default it goes here and I am so sorry Norge.

67.  Make a Wish to Santa♪ [Sealand]: The discordant notes and childish exuberance only serve to make this sound like a demonic plea to Santa to eliminate the singer’s enemies.

66.  Heaven and Hell on Earth [Rome]: Rome sounds like he’s been in the corner of a restroom. Extra points for the metal version, minus points for the fact that the beach scene was replayed like 1764 times.

65. Canada Complete Introduction [Canada]: Quiet af until Kumacheerio shows up and blows out your speakers. they did you dirty my darling 😔

64.  It’s Easy!!! [America]: I don't think any video of this has ever stayed up for more than 20 seconds. Sounds cool, but like I was listening to 20 different genres at once, someone make him calm down.

63.  Bù Zàiyì the Small Stuff ☆ [China]: I cannot for the life of me find the complete song anywhere, clips have a cool beat though

62.  Let's Boil Hot Water♪ [Italy]: Exactly what it says on the tin..though a bit too close to elevator music for my tastes.

61.  The Fragrance of Early Summer [Japan]: Very ‘from the books’ Japan-esque song

60.  Peace Sounds Nice…[Baltic Trio]: All well and good until the radio demon shows up

59.  W●D●C ~World Dancing~ [America]: How a song can sound like it’s from 4 different decades at once is beyond me

58.  Overflowing Passion [BFT]: This is just drunken karaoke and I have 0 clue what’s going on #iconicforallthewrongreasons

57. Ren●Ren●Renaissance♪ [Rome+Chibitalia]: Wholesome Grandpa with Grandson content - barring the fact that Italy sounds on the verge of a nervous breakdown and Rome has had too much wine.

56.  Roma Antiqua [Rome]: Similar energy to any one of China’s songs - there’s a part of the song where it sounds like he’s singing in the shower, and I will never not laugh at [CENSORED]

55.  Country From Where the Sun Rises, Zipangu [Japan]: Very chill, very Japan, but just meh for me.

54.  Moon Over Emei Shan [China]: Good message, okay song.

53.  My Friend [England]: What a mind palace you must have Mr. Kirkland

52.  With Love, from Iceland [Iceland]: Three words: Heavy. Metal. Puffin.

51.  Having Friends is Nice...♫ [Russia]: Russia is the cutest thing ever

50.  Mm. [Sweden]: Smooth transition from WWE Smackdown to shopping at IKEA.

49.  Why don’t you come over? ~Beyond the Northern Lights~ [Iceland]: I don’t want to be mean but...this does sound like the second closing theme to an anime whose first closing was much more popular (à la Soul Eater)

48. Gakuen☆Festa [Germany, Italy, Japan]: Sounds like a 60s song of the summer but oh dear their voices do not go together. Hella cute though.

47.  Wa! Wa!! World Ondo [Main Cast]: One time I travelled 10 hours in a coach bus with a bunch of teenagers to a city of note in my country, and the only souvenir I bought was the fucking PAINT IT WHITE DVD. Perfectly chaotic, UN ĐĕùX~~

46.  In the Bluebell Woods [England]: In the album cover for this song he’s holding a guitar but this is not a rock song. Still has ‘running through the hills’ levels of dramatism though.

45.  Poi Poi Poi♪ [Taiwan]: You’re telling me that Taiwan, someone whose has *ONE LINE* in Beautiful World (which is criminal tbh what kind of representation-) managed to get an eNTIRE CHARACTER SONG???????

44.  White Flame [Russia]: There’s something to be said for a song that is 3x the length of any Hetalia episode

43.  Ich liebe… [Germany]: Baking cakes for your friends has never been so wholesome.

42.  We Wish you a Merry Christmas [America, China, England, France, Russia]: Nice to see they’ve gotten their shit together since United Nations Sta-hmm.

41.  Ah, Worldwide à la mode [France]: Sounds like a Disney Princess song, hard not to picture France frolicking in a field of flowers.

40.  Che Bello! ~My House is the Greatest!⭐~ [Italy]: Would not be out of place in an advertisement for Sea World.

39.  May You Smile Today [Japan]: THE feel good song of the summer

38.  Let’s Look Behind the Rainbow [Italy]: I will protect you.

37.  I'm your HERO☆ [America]: “Anyone who’s sad or sullen will be arrested” did NOT age well.

36.  Mein Gott! [Prussia]: Alternating headphone effect at the beginning is cool, so is the confidence...the actual singing on the other hand...

35. Nihao⭐China [China]: Listen, all of China’s character songs are great, I just can’t vibe with this one like some of the others.

34.  Pechka ~Light My Heart~ [Russia]: I’m still having difficulty wrapping my head around the fact that this and Winter were released at the same time.

33.  Pukapuka⭐Vacation [Germany, Italy, Japan]: Seems just a bit too much like they’re running on a treadmill that’s picking up speed and trying to sing at the same time. Peppy.

32.  Santa Claus is Coming to Town [Germany, Italy, Japan]: This is unironically the best song sung by this trio; can only vibe with for two months out of the year though.

31.  Excuse Me, I Am Sorry [Japan]: Japan’s character traits speedrun. Gives me barbershop quartet vibes for some reason but is catchy as hell.

30.  The Story of Snow and Dreams [Russia]: A superhero anime opening in the making

29. England’s Evil Demon Summoning Song [England]: Sir that is not how you roast a marshmallow, don’t cut yourself on that edge.

28.  Moi Moi Sauna♪ [Finland]: Exactly the type of song you’d expect and it’s wonderful

27.  United Nations Star⭐ [America, China, England, France, Russia]: This isn’t as much of a song as it is a four minute struggle for everyone to sing without America yelling every 5 seconds...Like a particularly musical episode of Hetalia.

26.  Paris is Indeed Splendid [France]: Paris-pa-pa-pa-paris

25.  Absolutely Invincible British Gentleman [England]: Poppy, rocky, polka-dotty

24.  Vorwärts Marsch! [Germany]: To quote the comment section: “This sounds like a German version of I’ll Make a Man out of you.” There’s some truth to that.

23.  Hamburger Street [America]: The product of America’s rapper phase. 8/10 because he’s trying so hard and because I can unironically sing along to all of this.

22.  Hoi Sam☆Nice Guy [Hong Kong]: A song that would absolutely destroy the ankles of anyone in DDR.

21.  I Am German-Made [Germany]: There was once a version that had Germany and Prussia singing at the same time and it sounded positively demonic and Broadway could never

20.  La pasión no se detiene ~Unstoppable Passion~ [Spain]: Talented, brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping...

19.  Fall in Love, Mademoiselle [France]: Sounds like it should be in Mozart Opera Rock, I have kiss kiss falled in love.

18. Embrace the Très Bien Moi [France]: This is the definition of SELF LOVE PEOPLE. 

17. Carrot and Stick [Belarus&Ukraine]: Absolutely DRIPPING in 2000s power ballad energy. The type of song that plays on repeat in the mind of the widow whose millionaire husband ‘mysteriously disappeared’ (and the only legit character song ever acknowledged by the anime)

16. C.B.C (Cowboyz Boot Camp) Vol. 1 [America]: AH MAH GAWWDDD

15. Winter [Russia]: Heavy metal fever dream and the perfect song for an angst-ridden teenager

14.  Seychelles Here ⭐ Vacation Island [Seychelles]: UN👏DER👏RA👏TED SONG👏OF 👏THE 👏SUM👏MER👏

13.  Nah, it will settle itself somehow [Romano]: One day I aspire to reach this level of chill

12.  Let’s Enjoy Today [England]: I will never not feel happy when listening to this.

11.  Einsamkeit [Germany]: Ludwig manages to air every single one of his worries about not being good enough compared to his friends and always being perceived as mean or uptight when he’s actually just a softie and now my heart hurts. 💔

10.  Aiyaa Four Thousand Years [China]: A very poignant and beautiful song about the passage of time and the inevitability of its passing; comparable to an ancient ballad complete with explosive crescendos and meaningful lyrics.

9.  Bon Bon Bon❤️C’est Bon C’est Bon! [France]: Peppy, cheerful, adorable, groundbreaking; has been my alarm tone for six years and I’ve yet to tire of it. 9/10 The moaning interspersed throughout has been an interesting wake-up call.

8.  Let’s Enjoy! Let’s Get Excited! Cheers! [Denmark]: This is on par with Everytime we Touch by Cascada in terms of rage potential unlocked (the good kind)

7.  Dream Journey [Japan]: Whoever’s playing the shakuhachi is absolutely KILLING IT. Dramatic, wonderful, great metaphors.

6.  Gourmet’s Heart Beginner Level [China]: Absolute banger, I’m a vegetarian but this would inspire me to eat shumai.

5.  Always with you...Nordic Five! [Nordic FIVVVVVEEEE]: Everyone harmonizes beautifully except for Denmark. Extremely catchy, number placement seemed appropriate. 

4.  Pub and GO! [England]: I love this trash man

3. Maji Kandou⭐Hong Kong Night [Hong Kong]: If you thought Denmark’s song was a banger JUST YOU WAIT. I WILL BLOW OUT MY SPEAKERS LISTENING TO LO-HA-SU.

2. Steady Rhythmus [Germany]: THIS SONG IS METAL AF. Seriously, if it can be classified as ‘hardcore’ by my father and his group of 50-somethings who have decided to single-handedly gatekeep the metal and hardrock genres, it can do anything.

1.  The Delicious Tomato Song 🍅 [Romano]: Beautiful, absolutely awe-inspiring, poignant, catchy lyrics with an extremely deep meaning that only years of meticulous research and analysis can unlock, Romano I love you.

BONUS: Closing Songs

5. Hatafutte Parade (World Series) 

4. Hetalian⭐Jet (The World Twinkle): The song is good, the dancing is cursed 

3. Chikyuu Marugoto Hug Shitainda (World⭐Stars)

2. Marukaite Chikyuu (Hetalia: Axis Powers): nE NE PaPA

1. Mawaru Chikyuu Rondo (The Beautiful World)

[darlingpetao3]

Thank You For Ruining My Life: An Homage to Tom Cavanagh

“You’ve ruined all my future expectations of men.”

The costume-clad woman had the courage of steel to say this to the then 53-year-old actor, Tom Cavanagh of The Flash, in front of a ballroom filled with a couple hundred people. This brave utterance was spoken during the 2016 Fan Expo Vancouver convention during a Flash question and answer period with actors Tom Cavanagh and Candice Patton. In its third season, the show was undoubtedly still hitting its stride in popularity, and the room was packed to hear these two speak.

The brave woman whose turn it was at the microphone was referring to Tom’s role as Ed Stevens on the NBC 2000 hit, Ed. I had not known of this show previously, but having now heard such a proclamation intrigued me. “You’ve ruined all my future expectations of men.” That was a tempting notion, and as I continued to listen to this disarmingly charming and wittingly funny man steal the stage, Tom intrigued me even more. I’d watched him play three different versions of Harrison Wells on The Flash since the show’s premiere date, yet I hadn’t truly noticed him in a “life-ruining” way before.

Little did I know that Tom Cavanagh would not only eventually ruin my expectations for men as well, but he would change my life in other ways, too.

After the Q&A, I had this urge to buy a S.T.A.R. Labs T-shirt from one of the vendors at the convention. In my head, I thought I would purchase something so that I could have an excuse to talk to Mr. Cavanagh at his signing booth. Again, he intrigued me, and I wanted to experience more of his incredibly likeable personality. So, I dragged my friend with me to wait for what was maybe ten minutes in a queue. Shortly, I was paying the assistant for my autograph I would soon acquire. They wrote my name on a sticky note so that Tom would know how to sign a personalized message to me. And then, it was my turn.

His eyes sparkled when he turned his attention to me. I instantly had a feeling this was just the way he was naturally. Oh yeah, and I swear to God I’d never seen eyes that blue in my entire life. It genuinely stunned me.

“Hi!” he greeted me.

“Hi!” I responded, equally as thrilled. Tom admired the T-shirt I had brought and took note of my name on the piece of paper. I remember us joking together about the extremely lax security in and around S.T.A.R. Labs on the show, which prompted his message to me on the heather-grey cotton. He wrote my name, [followed by a heart!] and a very welcoming, ‘Come on by, just walk right in!’

I had official clearance from Harrison Wells himself.

I thanked him very much, leaving with my treasure folded over my arms. My friend and I walked towards the hall’s exit, and I couldn’t shake this feeling inside me. It felt strange—I couldn’t name it for the life of me. It felt like an odd fluttering with a simultaneous yet contradictory slightness of breath. My head was confused and would continue to be so for the rest of that weekend.

As I waited at my gate in the airport on that Sunday evening to head home, all I knew was that the moments at the con featuring Tom were the highlights of the weekend for me.

And that I was going to begin watching more of the other films and television shows he’d been in. What was the show the brave cosplaying woman had said ruined her expectations of men? Oh yeah, Ed.

Maybe I’ll start there…

***

Feliz Navidad, Feliz Navidad…

In my house, it’s never really Christmastime until Michael Bublé croons through the speakers of the wooden stereo system in the living room. It felt especially festive as it was now Christmas Eve—a month and some change since the con. It was late, possibly ten o’clock. I was lying on the floor in front of the Christmas tree with my trusty laptop, a word document open. I was writing three holiday-song short stories featuring the new muse in my life, Harrison Wells. I wanted to be able to post them the next day, so my fingers were taptaptapping away.

I had written a handful of things before 2017, most of which had been Marvel-related, under my second, ‘rebirth’ pen name online. I was a little fish among all the grand and fabulous writers on Archive of Our Own, and in many ways, I still feel like that little fish. I was only just learning and feeling out the psyche of the Wells characters. Each one is so different. In my rewatch of the previous seasons of The Flash, I’d taken diligent notes, and as I’d later learn with each following rewatch, I would know them all—what they think, how they talk and behave—like the back of my hand. It was fun to suss out these guys, and I found that I was growing to love the act of writing even more.

One month later, in January, I would post all the stories I’d written thus far on Tumblr. I’d just created an account and, who knows? Maybe I’d get a wider range of readers on here, too.

Might as well give it a shot, right?

***

Wild horses couldn’t keep me from attending Fan Expo Vancouver 2017, especially when the big news dropped. Not only would Tom Cavanagh be attending again, but so would Carlos Valdes, Danielle Panabaker, Candice Patton, and the convention-elusive star of the show himself, Grant Gustin.

Before the moderator for the Flash cast’s Q&A panel could utter the final thanks to the actors at the end of the session, I bounded from my seat and sped down to the photo op booth where the cast would be taking “Team Up” photos with fans. ‘Sped down’ has to be the most appropriate couple of words because I indeed felt like a true Speedster dressed head to toe as the small screen’s adaptation of Jesse Quick, the angsty and brilliant daughter to Harrison Wells turned superhero.

After waiting in a queue that felt like ages, I was next to stand with Team Flash. As I took a step forward, all of the actors’ and actresses’ eyes—the people I spend time with every Tuesday evening—were on me. I heard a familiar voice approve of my costume. It was Danielle.

“Tremendous.”

Grant even joked that he thought for a second Violett Beane, the actress who plays Jesse Quick, had shown up to surprise them. “I was like, what’s Violett doing here?” he said.

I stood in the back row, happily sandwiched between Tom and Carlos. I dared to let my hands rest on their backs, and I couldn’t contain my joy. Shortly after, when I received my near-instant physical photograph of the moment, I saw Tom had pointed at me. In my mind, it felt as if in his gesture, he meant, hey, look at this cool person. Haha. I couldn’t be further from it.

I would go on to further be uncool in public as I later found myself virtually shaking and almost hyperventilating in line for a one-on-one photo op with Tom. The guy dressed as Kid Flash behind me gave me a few encouragements of the “it’ll be okay” variety. As my turn finally arrived, the lovely man of the hour greeted me with a bright smile in recognition of my Reverse Flash T-shirt (I had done a quick change before this photo op because I had worn a Flash T-shirt for a photo with Grant).

“Great shirt!”

The internet comes up with many hilarious and fitting words, but none such so than the term “Cavanarms.” One of the said Cavanarms found its way around my shoulder in such a casual way. My hand rested on his back, and I have told anyone who will listen about how soft his sweater was. What was approximately a five-second interaction will stay with me forever. And to this day, I will always regret how I’m standing beside him in the picture—there’s a distinguishable gap between us. I could have been closer—should have been!—but I like to use the fact that I felt as if I’d combust into flames if I were any closer to the man.

Maybe I’d have another chance to combust later again that day because, believe it or not, this fan hadn’t had enough of seeing Mr. Cavanagh in person. And since he was appearing at the con for this day only, there was no way I was going to squander any opportunities. Besides, there was still one final thing left on my convention docket: the autograph. In my mind, going to get his autograph was an excuse to get to talk to him and simply be in his presence for longer than five seconds. Here, take my money. I’m a sucker, and I’m proud of it. I saved all year for this kind of thing, and Fan Expo has always been my ultimate nerdy Treat Yoself Day.

Plus, this year I came equipped with a question for Tom (something for which I may have prepared a little too far in advance).

“Which of your characters would win in a lawyering battle: Ed or Miles?”

Miles was Tom’s latest character from his newly released project Darrow & Darrow, a fellow lawyer as Ed Stevens (remember, the man who ruins women’s expectations of men?), whom he portrayed almost two decades prior. What I loved about Tom when I got to ask him this was that he was silent for a moment following the question. He was genuinely putting thought into my question. As he pondered, Tom continued to autograph the photo of us together taken mere hours ago.

“Ed. He would wipe the floor with that other guy. Like, Miles is great, but Ed has a rapier-sharp mind, you know?”

I wholeheartedly agreed with his answer and felt relieved inside for some reason. We thanked each other (as politely as two Canadians can) before I left him to pay attention to the next lucky soul in line. I made the mistake of casting my eyes downward at the signed photo.

Tom had signed two little hearts over the I’s in my name. He really needed to stop adding hearts to my things, or I was just going to melt to the floor. In fact, I started to make these strange noises as I tried not to completely maul everyone in front of me while exiting. My friend ushered me as fast as physically possible on our way out of the main hall. One man took one look at me and asked, “Are you okay?”

No.

“Yep!”

The second I made it out of the herd, I broke out into open space. First came the minor hyperventilating. Then came the squealing followed by laughter. Top it off with various fangirlish comments of, “He’s so beautiful!”, “His eyes are so blue!” and “I love him!” and I was probably quite the sight to see (but at a convention, that’s considered normal!). My friend smiled on as she let me express everything that I had to keep inside until I had the right time to expel my emotions. I was on cloud nine. Ten, if at all possible.

The next day would be the con’s final day, which I would attend alone. My friend needed to catch the ferry in order to prepare for her courses the day after. I did a scan of the convention hall one final time in case there was something I missed purchasing. Afterwards, I sat on the cold hard flooring of the convention centre hallway for a bit of a break. I was wiped out. With my phone in hand, I smiled at the messages from this one Tumblr blogger who had been following my posted adventures at the con. I had seen and replied to many of her comments on my stories I’d written thus far, and I enjoyed her matching enthusiasm for Tom and The Flash in general. I felt her to be a kindred spirit. I had no idea then that I was chatting with one of my future best friends, L.

***

I spotted her.

She was wearing an identical shirt to the one I had on—a light grey T-shirt with a sequinned Spider-Man mask in the corner, which around it read, We met on the Web. A giddy me couldn’t wait for the short escalator ride to end. Her back was to me and facing the baggage claim, so here was my chance to surprise her instead.

I towered over my friend, E, and donned a low, authoritative voice.

“Excuse me, Miss, can you come with me?”

She squealed a greeting to me and I returned it as we hugged for the very first time after two and a half years of online friendship. We would still have about two hours to kill until our mutual Tumblr best friend, L, touched down at Chicago’s O’Hare Airport from across the Pond.

Something I noticed was that E and I carried on talking during our wait like it was second nature, that we hung out like this all the time. Whereas when I met L in person for the first time the year previously, our first meeting was that of quiet, delighted shock, unknowing how to react to one another’s physical presence. It almost felt like a fantasy. The closest thing we’d ever gotten to this was visiting over video chats! I’m not sure what each of these different reactions in these separate meetings meant, but what I do know is that I’ve never had such strong female friendships such as these—so full of uplifting support and love for one another. They are the greatest ladies I’ve ever had the pleasure of knowing.

And as a searching L eventually turned the corner to meet us in the Arrivals terminal, I caught sight of her Tom & Grant bandana tied around the handle to her carry-on bag. It was an item she had received in return for helping fund the short film produced in 2018 (I’d bought the ringtone). Seeing the accessory jolted me to remember that the former of the titular short was the reason for this long-awaited get-together holiday in the Windy City in the first place. Tom Cavanagh, unbeknownst to him, had just officially united three online friends, each from a different country, to spend six full days of in-person bonding and a whole lot of fun.

***

I should have been shelving books.

I should have been doing a lot of library-related tasks, but my head was elsewhere. Anywhere other than the small-town public library where I work. Instead, I sat on the carpeted floor of the Junior/Young Adult section with my phone in hand and a dreadful article title staring back at me.

“The Flash: Carlos Valdes and Tom Cavanagh to Exit after 7 Seasons.”

My world felt like it was falling apart.

Tom was leaving? There had been rumours and wonderings spreading around the fandom regarding whether he was leaving the show. With a storyline ending with a monumental sacrifice and a time-travelling man saying his farewells, it all seemed to point to the fact. I should have known… I could have rivalled Supergirl as being the Paragon of Hope after all the optimism I doled out to my followers and friends who would come to me worried Tom would exit the show. I would always give reasons to deny such a thing could happen, claiming that I’d believe when I saw it.

Well, there it was, and I definitely saw it.

One could feel the ripple effect over the internet of the shards of broken and riled-up hearts around the world.

Tom’s exit was on his terms, having not felt challenged by his character’s plotlines, as mentioned in a recent Entertainment Weekly article. As a viewer—and I am a viewer (Mike and Tom Eat Snacks, anyone?), it has been increasingly difficult to look past the missed shots made by story editors and showrunner, so understandably, the actor would want to seek something more exciting and meatier. That said, Tom has always shone on-screen and taken what he’s been given in stride. He turns unearthed material into diamonds and indeed shines on screen. Steals it, even! Tom easily makes the episodes he’s in better, and when he’s missing, you feel the loss. The few episodes of Season 7 without him only give us a tiny hint at how the show will be without him going forward. It much resembles when you might bring out your favourite jigsaw puzzle, only to find that the one piece you need to complete it isn’t there.

***

On a personal note, as I write this, I am roughly 20 followers away from reaching a milestone of 2,000. I have written well over 200 stories for The Flash alone (whether they be short or long, one-shots or chaptered), and goodness knows how many words I’ve generated altogether over the course of these many years with inspiration from the show and my favourite character. I’ve written and co-written novel-length stories, one monumental Wellsian story of which was done alongside L and E (almost solely done through alternating text messaging in the app, Line) that reached over 108,000 words and consisted of 42 chapters. And when I’m not writing for my blog, I’m also working on trying to accomplish my dream of becoming a published author. Just as I thought before I launched my Tumblr blog, I think again now: Might as well give it a shot, right?

***

I have watched virtually everything Tom has been in that I could get my hands on, both physically and electronically. Sure, a few titles are out of my reach and probably lost to the very early 90's forever, but from what I've seen through Tom's filmography is enough to know that he can do anything. He can play the romantic leading man that will make you fall head over heels for him or a deranged killer that will have you genuinely scared of him. That is talent. Tom always brings something new to the table from each role to the next, and (when he's not playing those psycho killers) you can't help but admire his craft.

Not only is his acting stellar, but from what we as fans have gathered on the man, Tom has got to be one of the kindest men in the business. His humour and sheer ridiculousness could get anyone through a tough time (we’ve seen plenty of bloopers and behind-the-scenes videos to prove this!). He has clearly bottled and stored an endless supply of Fountain of Youth™ and each year continues to wow us with his handsomeness. Tom is charming, dedicated, and yes, arguably holds the world record for Bluest Eyes.

In my eyes, Tom Cavanagh gave me the two best friends I could have ever asked for, as well as plenty more lovely friends I’ve continued to make online. (One day, I hope to meet him again so that I can tell him in person how because of him, I’ve met such very important people in my life). Through Tom, I have truly found my passion for writing, and in doing so, segued me to dare to dream of becoming a published novelist. I wholeheartedly believe all of this would not have happened if it weren’t for those first series of events that led me to meet Tom and love and admire him immensely. He is indisputable proof that there are indeed men like him out there. Indeed, he did ruin all of my future expectations of men. He ruined my life in the absolute best way and I am eternally grateful.

I am very much looking forward to what Tom will do next. I think it’s rather needless to say that I will follow him in his career, as he has gained a devoted fan for life. He represents so much to me and so much of it I have gained since meeting him that fateful day, when I thought to myself, Maybe I should buy this T-shirt and get this guy to sign it. Wherever Tom goes in life, I’ll be here to cheer him on.

I have a pretty good feeling plenty of others will, too.

[milf-harrington]

okay bc i love tay @babydotcom and also bc i love talking about my original work im gonna talk about my books!!

so at the moment, im writing 2 of them! one of them is Nobodies Hero, a fantasy tale that is mostly narrated by a grouchy side-character and i have a sideblog that's basically a collection of my world building from the past 5 years and any posts i see that fit the characters or the world (@nobodieshero-lore)

the other is much newer (started maybe a month and a half ago) and is more of an urban fantasy called Arson: and other crimes which is basically going to follow the main cast through all the supernatural shenanigans and self growth they go through.

at the moment Arson is more of a concept? i have yet to figure out an actual plot, i've actually been trying a new approach to writing where i build all the characters first! most of my notes for Arson are just short scene snippets and dialogue, such as:

Time seemed to slow as the siren exploded from the flaming water, droplets of fire raining down around her as she reached out her webbed claws and exposed those horrifying needle-like teeth in a shrill scream of rage. It was awesome and terrifying, and Jai was forced to admit that maybe this time they wouldn’t be so lucky, maybe this time he was going down in a blaze of fish-scented glory. And then the scream was cut off as, with a sudden hollow sounding thwack, the siren’s head snapped to the side, the rest of her body thrown off course as she veered to the left and landed with a wet smack against the cement, a trail of slimy fire left in her wake. Kauri was standing in front of him with a thick metal pipe held tightly in their hands, hair a mess of thorns and ash as their shoulders heaved with each angry breath. Flickering orange light danced across their skin, the flames reflected in the dryads furious eyes as a new vine of thorns curled past their cheek. If someone had put a gun to his head, Jai may have been able to admit that he'd fallen in love right then, but there was no gun and no questioning so Jai shoved that shit deep down where he'd never find it.

There are currently 8 characters official characters, but i intend to make more bc 2 out of the 8 are mostly side characters/helpers.

uh we've got:

Jai, who is the quiet but stern researcher teaching himself magic; he mostly communicates through facial expressions and single sentences but if you get him started on whatever he's researching he can go on for ages (trans + gay)

Kauri, who is a dryad with a short temper. they're loud and passionate and also end up naked a lot because the concept of clothing makes no sense to them. my favourite thing about kauri is honestly their hair bc they've got vines that also grow from their scalp, and they grow/bloom/wild/grow thorns depending on their mood (as shown in the above snippet) (nonbinary)

Orli, who's a member of a werewolf pack. not everyone gets the lycanthrope gene, but she's just as snarly and protective as the rest of them. she works as a barista in her families cafe and she's got killer first aid skills. (asexual + lesbian)

Vince, who is Orli's older brother and did get the lycanthrope gene. he's just neat, i love him. he's usually the get away driver, or he'll bring them snacks and shit when they're on big research binges because he cares about them. he's basically a big ol' puppy (trans + bi)

[UNNAMED], who is a telepath with a weird name. her parents gave her up when she was young due to her being a "difficult and creepy child" and she kinda floated through different foster homes before she was tracked down and adopted by her uncle. She's funny and calculating, and in most situations will watch other people to figure out the best outcome for herself. she's almost always wearing a pair of headphones her uncle gave her that are warded against outside sound, so she can listen to music and block out everyone's thoughts. (lesbian)

Seftan, who's unnamed's weird but cool uncle. he's slept his way through half a bestiary and so is generally unphased by most things. he has 2 dogs and lives in a cute little 2-storey apartment/flat thing. he's either magic or knows a magic user bc he's got a lot of interesting books and wards set up and he also squints at Jai a lot. he calls unnamed a series of nicknames which are: nosy-nancy, no-name nancy, miss no-name, or just 'nancy' (inspired by nancy drew) (an opportunist)

Beau, who is a ghost from a circus! he died in the 1890's after getting stabbed to death in an argument with a sword-swallower, and is now stuck on the mortal plane bc he never got to finish his contortionist act. he's tied to a music box and gets handed around to different antique and thrift shops which is how he ends up w the rest of them.

Milo, who is possessed by an Ancient Creature and is therefore unable to stay dead. he has pretty yellow eyes, a hankering for roadkill and a whole other form that he can shift into. he's loyal as hell and genuinely doesn't see what's wrong with dying for someone he cares about, he's also mentally ill bc i think anyone would be if they were possessed and also kept dying. (demi + bi)

i think my favourite thing about Arson is that it's gonna be kind-of-not-really written like a survival guide or a diary? i don't know how to explain it properly but, like, there's gonna be random pages with tips for 'those in danger of kidnapping' or first aid or an info page on the monster/threat they're facing etc

but there's also gonna be other stuff like unnamed's playlists or what Kauri's moods are depending on their vines, or a steadily updated list of weird places Jai has been found sleeping.

uhh that's all i've really got so far without just slapping all my notes into a post so yeah! if you have any questions (or ideas?) please feel free to ask/share bc it can help with my creative process.

[kitkatopinions]

(Rabbithole Anon) Y'know, I was going to send in an ask about just they could have made a compelling way to show how some people may have become hunters through pressure rather than an age excuse if they wanted to say some people weren't ready (joining to protect a friend who wanted to be one, wanting to travel for a variety of reasons, it being a general expectation but the person being hesitant) but it led to me wondering wait, would certain careers require a hunting lisence?

Okay, I love this rabbit hole. XD It illustrates a couple of RWBY problems here and it's the fact that they often are lacking in the character development/character journey department, and that they're often lacking in the world building department.

We actually have plenty of characters that can serve as examples for people who maybe should've thought twice about entering the Academy (when they did.) There are people who entered the Academy for the wrong reasons/not noble reasons, people who entered the Academy during a time they might not have been ready, and people who would be full on dangerous with a Hunter badge, and most of our mains fall under one of these categories (though mostly the first two.)

Ruby - Two years below the standard age of her class. Whether or not she was at the skill level of a first year (she was,) and whether or not she'd received special training from Qrow (she had,) Ruby was still essentially a kid, and her mind and body both hadn't developed completely. Ruby should have been traumatized after the Fall of Beacon and been allowed to show that more as a character, she should've had straight up PTSD, she should've been allowed to have emotion in Volume 4 than Jaune's sidekick who makes sad eyes when she sees him grieving. Weiss - Her main motivation for joining Beacon was to reclaim her family legacy. Yes, her desire was to reclaim it and use it for good, but it was still arguably more about personal and familial glory. On top of that, Weiss has been blatantly anti Faunus and has never so much as addressed that. Weiss's character journey should have reflected more personal growth, and either her unlearning much of her Faunus racism and clearly changing priorities from her name and family legacy and onto the actual people in need, or her flaws should've led her into being more of a morally gray character who displays her selfishness and pride (in a way that's actually addressed and treated like a flaw.) Yang - She expresses admiration for people like Ruby who want to help people and be kind, but her main point in becoming a Huntress was getting thrills and going where the wind takes her. She didn't join Beacon for any sort of serious purpose, and even when she rejoined Team RWBY in volume five, it was to be with her sister and not because of her own morals (not that I think she's lacking in morals, just that her main motive was different.) This could lead to her having to figure out a lot of what she actually wants, being unsatisfied with being a Huntress in Atlas, being in over her head when things get serious, being more mentally exhausted than the others after long days, etc. Jaune - Wasn't ready to enter Beacon. Idk if he just wasn't allowed to go to a lesser combat school like Signal or if he flunked out, but he wasn't up to scratch to get into Beacon and cheated his way in. On top of that, he lacked in the emotional maturity department as well when he entered. Jaune was a little more invested in his own appearance than Ruby was, but still seemed to have similar good reasons for wanting to be a Hunter. And he did grow a lot. But he was much less prepared, skilled, or equipped to deal with the training or the career and it's a miracle he didn't die in the initiation. Granted, Jaune was handled arguably better than anyone else, since a lot of this was addressed, but these days it feels like it isn't actually playing a part in his character anymore that he's way below the people around him, and I feel like it should still be impacting him. Penny: Honestly, Penny seemed very newly born during the Beacon Arc. She might have been combat ready, but she also started spilling secrets to the first person who was a little bit nice to her, and was clearly naïve and childlike. Imagine if it had been Emerald that had befriended Penny instead of Ruby. Penny dying and then getting resurrected should've been deeply traumatizing for her and it should've made her undergo some major changes and been treated with importance in the show. Qrow: Literally wanted to be a Hunter in the first place to try and learn how to murder Huntsmen. He might have changed later and it’s not exactly relevant, but he arguably shouldn't have joined when he did either. Meanwhile, Nora's just one big mystery, because we don't know why she joined, and Ren likely joined for good reasons, but neither of them have ever actually talked about their motivations. The only character we can safely say joined for noble reasons and who was up to scratch and ready when she entered is Blake, who also had good reason to not fully trust the system she was working with, so there could've been complications and character interest there as well.

Please don't get me wrong, that doesn't mean I don't think the others should've been in school, I love that they were! I just think the writers should've explored the various ways they might've been not fully ready, not completely well suited to the job they took. The characters are allowed to be flawed and to flounder and it'd make them more full, nuanced characters imo.

On top of that, we have other Hunters to look to as well, outside of our main cast. Cardin, for example, was a terrible person, still in school and already abusing what little power he had to target a member of an oppressed minority group and blackmail other kids into doing his bidding, while plotting revenge on someone for correcting him on his anti-Faunus answer to a question. People like him should not be Hunters, and he was arguably our first sign (of many signs) that the position of Hunter can and will be taken advantage of and misused by bad people. And although the After the Fall/Before the Dawn books aren't canon, while reading BTD (I haven't finished it yet,) Coco and all her team members but Velvet also struck me as people I wouldn't want to be Hunters and wouldn't want to wield any sort of power. Coco is proudly described by one of her friends as sadistic, lets her unfounded opinions of people cloud her judgement, shows respect and admiration towards criminals, and enjoys her classmates being afraid of her. Fox is self-described as sadistic as well and is a bully who tried to use a classmate's phobia against them in a brute-like interrogation. And Yatsuhashi is leagues above the two of them, but also bullied Neptune despite saying the words 'I don't want to be a bully' and threatened him.

There are so many ways the writers could've explored people who went to Beacon too soon, weren't ready, or entered for the wrong reasons. Instead, outside of one conversation in season two about the girls’ motivations and Ren exploding that Jaune cheated his way into Beacon all the way in season eight, it seems like the only take away we're supposed to get is 'all these kids are officially the thing they wanted to be in the beginning and they're all amazing at it, woo!' No acknowledgement of the fact that they could use higher education still, that some of them are still immature or naïve, that some of them are still below the combat level they should be in, that some of them kinda haven't done super well since they left Beacon (cough Ruby cough.) It's all just... Flat, lackluster. And meanwhile, characters like Cardin were written out of the show easily. We've had plenty of examples of corruption in the Hunter business, but the show hasn't paid any attention to that and still is treating being a Hunter like the only true noble goal and the only good and non-corruptible way to defend people, despite the fact that it clearly isn’t. Being a Huntress is not better or safer or more noble in-universe than being an Atlas soldier/Ace Op/Atlas hunter. I’m not saying that all of this needed to be featured, but exploring the differences in motivation and how the Hunter lifestyle affected the various mains could really flesh out their characters. Instead, by the time everyone is heading to Atlas in volume six, they all pretty much have the same reactions to everything and the same motivations and the same beliefs. The rare deviation - like Ren in volume seven and eight - is treated as bad and a mistake that must be rectified, rather than... A natural consequence of the group being full of different people with different upbringings and different motivations that result in different opinions. That sort of thing is only ever explored as a problem that makes someone lacking, and it’s really weird and it makes the show feel... Juvenile, and lacking in nuance or depth when it comes to the characters, which is a really big shame, since the characters have a huge amount of potential and exploring the differences between them and their reactions to being in way over their heads would be - I think - the natural place to take their characters? Especially because so far their storyline has been... Not the highlight of the show.

But, as for how semblances and Hunters should impact the world building, there’s a lot to say about that! They don’t explore a lot in RWBY outside of what’s relevant to the mains, leaving the world building feeling flat and like the world itself doesn’t matter much. RWBY often feels more like a video game world than anything else, which I believe @why-i-hate-rwby-now has pointed out, so credit to them for helping me realize it. There’s one large location per continent and a couple small villages where they only really talk to a town leader and village blacksmith, or encounter a fight, relevant NPCs and characters only going to certain locations that can further the plot, characters only mattering through the ways they interact with the protagonists and seemingly getting benched with nothing to do if they aren’t currently plot relevant, health bars that can be monitored over scrolls, every weapon and semblance has a name even if that name isn’t ever mentioned in show or might not really make a lot of sense, frequently encountered enemies of various threat levels who the characters can plow down without remorse because they’re not sentient or don’t have souls... The list goes on. But one of the ways that it feels very video gamey is that the magical powers actually don’t seem to impact the world.

We know people can have auras even if they don’t have semblances (Mercury, Torchwick, Watts,) and we know lots of even grown people don’t have auras (the citizens of Mantle in danger of dying of cold while our aura having mains aren’t,) but also that auras can be unlocked, by well trained seventeen year olds (Pyrrha,) and we also know that semblances can be unlocked from a very young age due to trauma (Ren, Neptune in EU) but some people are born with their semblances (Qrow and notably Blake use language suggesting they were born with their semblances,) and some semblances are passed down or hereditary (the Schnees.) Semblances can be passive (Qrow, Clover, Ironwood in word of author,) and uncontrollable, or active (almost everyone else,) and some semblances have carried personal negative effects like in the case of Qrow who was even named for being bad luck and Robyn who said people were on edge with her because she can sus out the truth via skin contact when she wants to. Also Mercury’s father was able to somehow take away his semblance.

That’s... Pretty much the extent of our knowledge and it doesn’t tell us much. What RWBY does is give each character abilities that make them iconic and different from each other as fighters, with a shield function that wears down slowly to explain how they can take certain hits and keep going while also allowing them to eventually suffer higher damage when that shield wears down. They had a character get this shield ability unlocked to explain the existence and function of it, and featured some characters who didn’t have the super powered abilities like Roman, an early enemy meant to herald in new, harder enemies who are more plot relevant, and Mercury, who makes up for it by having higher speed and functions exclusive to him through his prosthetics. And then they seemingly built a regular world unaffected by these powers. It sounds like a video game. Civilians just don’t have this power or the shield because they act as non-playable characters. In a way, it almost makes sense to me in conception, because when RWBY was originally created, it was high on visual appeal, fight choreography, and character design. The plot elements were small and the character stories seemed to be pretty simple, the only real complication to this being the White Fang plot, which has always been a major blight in RWBY. But one of the reasons why this video-game feel kinda worked at the start of RWBY was because the story and characters weren’t meant to be the focus of the story, so although the world building at the start was definitely lacking, the audience knew that things like auras and semblances were meant to hype up and add interest to the main highlights of the show: Design and fight choreography. At least that’s what I assume. But in volume three, they started to lay the groundwork for more, bigger plots, more focus on the story, the characters journeying to the outside world, undergoing personal arcs, and that’s what V4 and onward started focusing on.

To be clear, I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing. I started really liking RWBY for its potential and concepts after getting through the first couple episodes of V1, but I actually really enjoyed quite a bit of V4 and V5 even though the design drastically changed and the fighting had gone way down in quality because I found some of the new focus on characters and the plot to be compelling, interesting, or to also have a lot of potential (though I was let down over and over in regards to pay off later.) However, with the new focus on the characters and storyline rather than design and fight choreography, they really needed to do some legwork on fixing the aura and semblance systems and paying attention to world building and making sure the world felt well put together, nuanced, and real. And I don’t feel like they ever did that.

Why is Pyrrha able to unlock auras? Well, because the writers wanted to explain the concept of auras and used Jaune - the unprepared - to do it. But now, auras are actually an important part of the story - for example, the people of Mantle don’t have unlocked auras, so will die of cold, but it doesn’t affect our heroes because they do have unlocked auras. So who can unlock auras? Is it a learned skill or is it hereditary? If it’s a learned skill, why isn’t everyone eager to learn it especially in places where it’s life or death if they don’t like in Atlas? If it’s a hereditary skill, why aren’t the people who have that skill put on a pedestal and being pressured into using that skill to save civilians in places where having an aura is the difference between life and death? In either case, why aren’t there people who professionally unlock auras? Why aren’t they on the pay roll in Atlas and Mantle? If it’s a skill that all powerful hunters have, why aren’t our heroes (who we’re supposed to think are now more powerful than Atlas’s best) unlocking auras for dying children in Mantle? Why don’t specialists and longtime fighters with Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James have this ability if it comes with skill, time, or talent?

Why are semblances unlocking or morphing in times of trauma so rare? Why didn’t the Fall of Beacon unlock loads of new semblances and new semblance abilities? Why didn’t Ruby get a new semblance upgrade when she saw Weiss getting stabbed? Why didn’t Weiss unlock a new semblance ability when her plane was crashing? Why didn’t Pilot Boi unlock his semblance during the same occasion? Why is it that Jaune didn’t get a semblance upgrade when the light bridges were disappearing? Why didn’t Blake get a semblance upgrade when Yang fell into the void? Why did Ren get a semblance upgrade because he was upset while with the Ace Ops after Oscar got captured, but Nora doesn’t get an upgrade while she’s electrocuting herself? If semblances sometimes unlock in times of truama, why is it that some characters like Oscar and Torchwick and Jaune pre-V5 who we know have encountered lots of trauma just still don’t get semblances? If you can train your semblance into upgrading, why is it that we don’t see long time hunters and fighters unlock more semblance abilities, like Qrow, Winter, Robyn, Maria, or James? It just doesn’t make any sense! And I get that stories always have things happening just because the writers want it, but in RWBY, the hand of the creator is so obvious that it’s ridiculous.

And then there are other questions. Do people avoid bad labor practices out of fear of causing a semblance awakening? Well, from what we see of the SDC, the answer is no. So why not? Why weren’t they worried about an uprising? Work rights becomes a lot trickier when you have to add in tons of qualifiers. Maybe it’s illegal to use a semblance at work, but the SDC also has a history of child workers like Adam who can’t always control it (like Neptune couldn’t control his,) so are there laws protecting child laborers? Perhaps not, since you know, they were already child laborers, so were already suffering unchecked. Are there laws forbidding the use of semblances in government buildings, non-combat driven schools, or parks and libraries? And meanwhile, how would any of this apply to people with a passive semblance? How do you figure out that someone has a passive semblance? How do people know if they’re born with a semblance? Are there people that spend their whole lives having semblances that never get discovered? Do people have semblance detection... Semblances, that they get paid to use or do so out of charity? Did the Schnees rise to power due to their powerful and hereditary semblance, perhaps? Are people discriminated against if they don’t have semblances or pressured to become Hunters if they discover they do have semblances? Shouldn’t civilians in Mantle and Atlas be joining combat schools in droves in the hopes of unlocking an aura so they can better survive? And shouldn’t there be discrimination against people with certain semblances? Outside of Robyn saying she’s personally experienced mistrust, and Qrow’s self-hatred, we don’t see any real prejudice against certain semblance types, or for that matter, any praise or extra significance pointed to certain other semblance types. It would go a long ways towards world building if there were things like people having to divulge their semblance or lack thereof before entering Beacon, or for people to have to register a semblance evolution, or for Emerald to have lied about her semblance because “everyone knows illusion semblances automatically draw suspicion,” or for Qrow to comment that he’d never seen Clover in a Vytal Tournament, only for Clover to say his semblance was deemed ‘cheating’ back when he was in school so he hadn’t qualified. And on the flip side, you could have things like semblances being judged as better and more powerful based on how useful it might be, Pyrrha keeping her semblance on the DL because it’ll just bring more unwanted admiration on her, Sun keeping his own semblance on the DL too because it always make people put a lot of expectations on him, while Neptune’s semblance leaks and he deals with people treating him like he’s selfish and cruel for not wanting to use his own “gift of a semblance.” And people like Jaune could be bullied extra because he doesn’t have his semblance yet, and people in the stands at the Vytal Tournament could be chatting about “when are they gonna pull out their semblances?” and get annoyed and pouty when people don’t. To be fair, we do get things like Mercury’s father having declared his semblance a crutch, but... Still. why isn’t there more of this?

And we see the need for Hunter protection in villages like Kuroyuri and the village that Team RNJR stops to help on the way to Mistral. Small villages outside of the four kingdoms fall to Grimm, or are in danger of falling to Grimm. Ships get attacked by large and dangerous Grimm, we see (corrupt) Hunters on the train to Argus, accompanying for safety, and we see that with a rise of Grimm activity in Mantle, Hunters are dispatched to help kids travel to school. In a world like RWBY, fighting is essential for survival outside of the Kingdoms, and became very essential in the kingdoms as well once schools started going down. You’d assume there should be Hunters accompanying everyone traveling outside of the Kingdoms, resident Hunters living in villages outside the Kingdoms as their on-hand protectors (and more than one Hunters seems to be needed.) Hunters also could be extra protection for anything that’s definitely going to increase negativity, like hiring Hunters to bodyguard funerals seems like something that could be normal in the world of Remnant, and for visiting graveyards (we see Ruby get attacked by tons of Grimm when she visited Summer’s grave in the red trailer.) On top of that, celebrities and rich people hiring Hunters seems like it’d become pretty common. But all that we see outside of Dee and Dudley are traveling Hunters stopping to help people out of the goodness of their heart while they go place to place, and Kingdom Hunters who are assigned to things like border control, clearing out Grimm near or in the Kingdoms, and things like that. What we see is a Kingdom-centered morality complex our protagonists are one hundred percent invested in, Hunters are Kingdom driven and anything outside of that is a kindness, a job they can take or leave in passing. And on top of that, it seems like there aren’t a lot of people in the Hunter profession, and I feel like there should definitely be more. There are people like Jaune who didn’t make the cut but accepted that, we can only assume that there are drop outs too, so like... How many kids are there actually in a year at Beacon? I mean, look at where the Relics were found in the forest during initiation at Beacon.

This gives us a rough idea of how many people are in each year at Beacon. Assuming everyone graduates school and there’s no drop outs and no deaths, that’s a graduating class of twenty. That’s a very small number, comparatively. The job of a Hunter is dangerous. We know of Hunters that died (Summer, Pyrrha, Amber.) We know a lot of Hunters that have other jobs that take a lot of their time (Glynda, Ozpin, Robyn,) and lots of people who quit being Hunters too (Maria, Tai, Raven,) and Hunters who aren’t always on the field like Qrow who was a teacher for a stretch and acted as Ozpin’s spy, the Ace Ops who became part of Ironwood’s inner circle and therefore had a bigger picture, and even all of Team RWBYJNR, who got their Hunter licenses but are also more concerned with bigger picture stuff (if you don’t believe me just look at volume eight where JRY stopped defending Mantle to go rescue Oscar, and Team RWBN + Penny, who were involved in big picture stuff like launching Amity and then saving Penny the Maiden/their friend.) So out of a class of twenty, how many of them are even staying on the field? For a show pushing the narrative that Hunters are the ultimate saviors who are the only true good defense for the world, that condemns even the notion of an army... Like they villainized sending Team FNKI onto the battlefield while also treating it like proof of Ironwood’s evil when he didn’t want to stay and fight when Team RWBY said to, and also made Ironwood’s desire to move into having a robotic army to get soldiers off of the battlefield part of his... Over reliance on machinery, which is full on suspicious considering their ableism towards Ironwood and the fact that he literally has to rely on machinery, but that’s a topic for a different post and this one is already so long. But yeah, my point is that we’re meant to see the army as bad. So if we’re meant to see Hunters as the only true and pure form of defense (which is already off because we know it’s corrupted,) there ought to be way more people in the Hunter field.

As for the schools, we only know of a couple of schools that exist outside of RWBY as combat schools that seem to act as basic training before people go to Beacon. We know of Signal, the school Ruby and Yang went to that Qrow was a teacher at for awhile (I have lots of teacher Qrow headcanons, but sadly Qrow being a teacher wasn’t very well explored,) and we also know of Sanctum in Mistral and (in the EU) Oscuro in Vacuo, presumably one of these existing in Atlas as well. I personally headcanon that there are a lot of these smaller combat schools littering the whole of Remnant (but then again, I also headcanon that the Kingdoms of Remnant are bigger than just one very large city, lol) and that a lot of people attend these schools even if they don’t go on to join one of the Hunter Academies, but this isn’t necessarily supported by canon, I think. But as for other schools...I think it’s fair to assume that there are at least elementary schools, since everyone can read, write, and presumably do basic math, and what we do know is that Ilia went to a prep school in Atlas (which was info dropped in Blake’s pre-V5 trailer, not even stated in the show proper,) so we can probably safely say that people who don’t go to the Huntsman academies go to some form of high school, but you’re right that we don’t see this actually in action. I personally always headcanon that Whitley had a tutor, since Jacques wanted to avoid too much outside influence.

I am so sorry that this response got so away from me and I myself got into so many rabbit holes as well. XD I just have a lot to say about the world building in RWBY (or sometimes lack thereof.) Although I admit that I’m not as into or as good at analyzing as blogs like why-i-hate-rwby-now, but yeah, this is... A very long post. Sorry!

[caffernnn]

I remember this line from the book where Achilles just cries to thetis "What good is godhead, if it cannot do this? What good are you?" when she refuses to let achilles grieve for patroclus. This was during the time Achilles was starting to regret his choices and find someone to blame for patroclus' death. Now imagine this with haru telling ryuuji that "what good is fame when he's all alone and miserable?" or something like that when he realizes he basically threw away everyone just to reach what ryuuji wants him to be- to be someone like albert, like who ryuuji always wanted to be but could never be.

Also as much as the rrelationship of meleager (the king from the legend) and achilles' stories is comparable to that of haru and ryuuji (or as the theories say), ryuuji would also make a good thetis. I mean, ryuuji is to haru that thetis is to achilles, being both the ones who tried to dictate the young ones' destiny, or so they say. I always thought rin would have been thetis, as per the events of the previous seasons, where he tries to make haru take the same steps as him, and i know i have casted him as odysseus and ajax before (ajax being the latest), i also think rin would be a good deidameia, if we only look at season 1 rin,where he forces haru to do things for him just because he thinks that haru should, similar to how deidameia tried to hold achilles to his bond to him through their unofficial marriage and unborn child. Kinjou is still pyrrha though, no one can replace that.

Also may I ask, have you already read tsoa? If not that's fine. I just found a passage in Circe, another work of Madelline Miller, where odysseus talks about how patroclus was achilles' best part of himself, and when he died, his sanity died with him. I mean, i know nao is officially my odysseus, but this also feels like something rin would say. But then again, nao managed to summarize every character's conflict in hs in what could be a single paragraph should it be written (i haven't read the novels, sorry).

Okay I knoooow I’ve rambled about this before in other convos with you, but that idea of Haru questioning his pride in the end and how much he’s willing to sacrifice in the name of “success” is just so intriguing!! Just from the little we know (or can infer) from FS spoilers, something flips in Haru to make him believe that this path of solitude is something necessary. The choice comes after denying that path multiple times, insisting he could have his cake and eat it too, and then beginning to crumble when he doesn’t think he’s strong enough or getting the results he “needs” to be getting. That’s one of the hardest parts in the aftermath of whatever mess he’s going to get into in the movies (and also in a patrochilles au, or similar stories): even if we can recognize the pressures and constraining environments that led up to his choices, and even if Haru tries in his confused grief to find somebody to blame but himself, these were still his choices. No matter how inevitable they felt at the time, Haru will start to feel guilty for the time lost and sacrifices made in his decisions. Part of the tragedy of it also lies in how Haru knows Makoto would find a way to forgive him for everything anyway, even if Haru wonders how much can/should be forgivable at this point.

I’d love to talk about Albert more at some point, because as much as I view him primarily as a omen-like mirror for Haru, he’s still someone worth exploring. His main function in the story thus far seems to be detached for a reason, that way we focus on those hard-hitting questions about sacrifice/success/isolation/etc with the characters we have more history and attachments to (Haru, Rin, Ikuya, the like). You have to wonder at some point though if Albert has ever had a moment removed enough from his current extreme routine/lifestyle to question his own motivations. How much did he have to give up to become someone who could take his connection with the water and fine-tune it into a cold weapon? Did he have much to return to or reclaim (his own bonds, his own passions) if this lifestyle started to break him? Haru’s story is one where the whole “friendship is magic” redemption storyline is expected and desirable, because we know enough about Haru by now to understand how his intimate connection with the water is interwoven with his history of creating strong bonds through swimming. It’s been a vessel for self-discovery and emotional connection throughout his life. How much time, if any, did Albert ever have to cherish his time in the water the same way before he was trained/led to weaponize it? Maybe the movies will explore more of his background, but I’m down for theories in the meantime 😌😌 (and any existing Albert lore I’m missing out on is welcome, because honestly I haven’t rewatched the show in a ~hot minute~ and haven’t paid much attention to Albert as his own person)

Nao Serizawa, you scary scary dude 🏃🏻‍♀️ he’s not necessarily an all-knowing monolith (people who talk about Nao and write fic/meta about him have all my love for capturing his complexities so well), but he’s one of the characters in that “observant/supportive/people-pleaser” category where you get more overt glimpses into how quickly he can analyze situations. Part of his edge when it comes to being in a guiding/leadership role is that Nao can take in different observations/information about the people he’s looking after and use that to start to making informed claims and decisions. The observations he makes about Haru and Makoto’s relationship come with that added layer of personal relatability that makes them a bit more direct and hard-hitting (I rambled about makoharu/natsunao parallels awhile back), but this insight extends to a lot of the people we’ve seen who look up to Nao in some capacity (baby Iwatobis, Natsuya).

[zirkkun]

Like everyone else, i must thank you for this amazing game. It is, without a doubt, one of the best undertale fan games. Somethings:

1. It is my headcannon that the True Passion Route Is The Official Undertale Ending. It just feels like an ideal Ending for undertale, and it feels like undertale. It is a undertale love letter meets the official undertale.

2. Passion, The Major Theme Of Your Game, Is Just Perfect For Undertale Fangame.

2.1/3. The Theme Of Passion Was Very Special To Me. You see, I am on the autism spectrum, and my specific interest is undertale. So, I have a healthy but Strong Passion For Undertale. Seeing a Game Like This Is Very Fullfiling.

3. I already said that I love your art in previous Asks, but you surpassed yourself in this game. From the background, atmosphere, to The characters.

4. The writing is superb, just beautiful and heartfelt.

5. I must ask, If you don't want this ask public, it's okay. But if it is because i mentioned my autism, I must say that, unless you feel uncomfortable, it's okay to post. I am proud to boast my autism.

6. You actually made me empathize with Flowey. He Actually Acts Like Us, And With The Reason of not feeling Alone and wanting to connect with this world, and not wanting to leave this world.

7. I was going to choose Asgore as Final Call, But Azzy Stole The Spot.

8. Love and Admire All Your Works. No Pressure though, Just sending positive vibes in this paragraph.

Again, thank you for everything, And Stay Safe :)

Aaaaaa this is all so nice??? fdbhsafj I can’t come up with a singular paragraph response cause I just wanna say so much, so I’m going to respond to each of these ;w;

1 & 2 - I’m really glad you think so!! I really wanted to try and capture all of the passion I felt playing the game with that route’s ending -- and the game as a whole. It’s funny you call it a love letter, because in my head, Act to Flirt has always been an apology letter for how horrifically I thought of and treated this game when it came out purely due to how much it was shoved down my throat. But after getting a chance to play it, I honestly feel nothing but silly for putting it down so much.

But, with the whole theme of “Determination” being what guides you in Undertale, I always interpretted that to be like, how the reason you do something in video games isn’t because you’re necessarily acting as you would irl. It’s because, since you have no risk of hurting yourself or anyone else actually, it’s an open space, letting you act however you want with no real-life consequence. But when the game takes this for a spin and makes you step back to really bring the game to life and put it in a perspective... it really makes you wonder a lot about your choices more so than you would in any other game.

So, this being a “sequel,” based on timeline events; to Undertale, “Passion” is supposed to encapsule the care and feelings the player still has after they played the game. My main thought process when coming up with this was to sort of “market” the game at the beginning similarly to how Determination was merely shown as a power to you -- it’s just a silly, fun game where you can do whatever you please, directed at those who still feel very close to Undertale and its characters and are constantly looking for new content about it. It’s impossible to cover the bases for every player, and yet the majority of the game is designed around a specific type of player. It’s... risky from a game design standpoint, for sure lol. I genuinely wasn’t sure if anyone would play the game at all. But I’m really glad to see it’s resonated with you so well ;w;

3 & 4 - I’m so glad you think so 😭 this really means a lot aaaa thank you so much;;

I always worry I get a bit too repetitive or weirdly paced sometimes with my writing, since I write almost purely stream-of-consciousness while putting myself directly into the emotions the character I’m writing would be feeling. I struggle writing any other way, aha;;

5 (and 2 1/3 lol) - While I don’t have autism, I do have ADHD and have also always been between various hyperfixations my whole life. I’ve actually been measuring time based on them since I was a kid, and if I didn’t have one at the time of an event, I don’t remember it at all 😅 Fictional characters have always been a very important thing for me to lean on in life -- since, at many points, I didn’t have anybody else to go to. I’ve always wanted to make something with characters that have relatable problems to those learning about them so people can have a something to lean on with a problem they might otherwise feel alone on. And, well, one “problem” that I don’t think I’ve ever really had the chance to write about before is being significantly connected to fictional characters that you can’t meet in real life. With Undertale having the whole concept of “resets” being acknowledged in one form or another by a lot of the characters, and the cast being so wonderfully designed and written already; it made UT an obvious choice for being able to discuss that. It definitely made Sans’s route really fun to write... and I actually started crying a little writing his ending fdbshafjb i’m a mess LMAO

6 & 7 - I’m really glad, honestly!!! I didn’t like Flowey when I first played Undertale (and actually killed him my first playthrough... then again I killed a lot my first playthrough cause I didn’t realize it was optional 😅😅), but after learning more about him, Asriel, and Chara, I really grew to like him! He’s one of my favorite characters now, actually. The moment Asriel was able to start talking about his struggles, I understood him almost instantaneously just because I relate to a lot that he deals with. Asriel’s ending is actually tied for Papyrus’s as my favorite (of the ones I wrote! @alch3mic wrote Undyne’s, Toriel’s, Asgore’s, and Alphys’s ^^), too. So I’m really glad how I wrote him made you like him more as a character ;w;♥

annnnnnnd for 8....... you’re too nice, thank you so much fbdshafb I’m glad you like my works so much!! I really do my best to make things that can really resonate with people, so I’m always both astounded and happy to hear when someone’s been impacted by what I’ve made ;w;/

[hollowisthyname]

Hello, Icarus! Please infodump to me about Danganronpa?

okay so! I had written out a whole thing but then tumblr deleted it! so that was fun! /s but now that I know what I'm going to write it's much easier, so that's good 😌

n e ways, I'm gonna do like a basic timeline w explanations and some other stuff that hopefully I'll remember once I start writing!! so let's go :D

a list of everything danganronpa in chronological order (not the order that you should play/watch the stuff in, I'll put that in the explanations)

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Despair Arc (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Future and Hope arcs after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). backstory for the cast of the second game.

Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc (THH) - first main game, play first. also has an anime that's basically the same as the game, but since there's not enough time to put everything from the game into the anime I definitely recommend playing the game. high school students from a prestigious school trapped in said school are forced to play a killing game, hijinks ensue.

Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls (UDG) - third game, not main. play after playing the first two games. very different game mechanics from the main three, and widely considered not cannon by the fandom. I like it though, and it introduces a lot of really interesting characters along with giving a v underdeveloped character from the first game a lot more character development. it's not necessary to play it (though one of the characters plays a pretty big part in the third anime, so that would make more sense if you already knew her), but I think it's interesting and fun. there are also robot fights.

Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair (DR2 or SDR2) - second main game, play after playing the first game. same basic premise as the first game, except it's a different class (same school though) and this time they're on an island. even more hijinks and plot twists than the first game.

Super Danganronpa 2.5: Komaeda Nagito to Sekai no Hakaimono - (I could only find the Japanese title for this one, sorry 😔) kinda also part of the second anime? watch after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want) and watching DR3. character is woken up from a coma via overdramatic and overpowered other character.

Danganronpa 3: The End of Hope's Peak High School - Future and Hope Arcs (DR3) - second anime, watch along with the Despair arc after playing the first two games (and UDG if you want to). aftermath of the first two games.

Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony (DRV3) - third main game, fourth game in total. I don't actually know when it happens bc they're v secretive about everything, so I'm just putting it last. play last. same premise as the first two, the class is trapped in a school with a courtyard and a huge sort of dome around everything. peak hijinks, too many plot twists to count.

woo!! that's the timeline as I know it, hopefully I didn't miss anything. and I have managed to remember what else I was going to say, so let's move on to section two:

the mechanics of the games

danganronpa is, at its core, a glorified visual novel. every character has a certain amount of sprites for when they talk, as well as voice lines that aren't usually the exact text on the screen but fit the vibe of whatever they're saying. and as I've said before, there's quite a lot of talking. these games have more plot than should really be possible and most or all of it is done through dialogue. cutscenes and class trials are the only parts that are reliably fully voice acted, but there are a lot of those.

as for the parts that are less visual novel-y: you can walk around, and the settings are pretty much as 3d as the 2d-ish style of the game allows. you can also click on things, and sometimes clicking on stuff will get you monocoins, the currency of the game, which means you'll be able to buy presents for the characters!!

"now why do I need presents for the characters?" you ask. well, that's because you're given a certain amount of free time each game to hang out with characters you want to get to know better! the game's ending is fixed, so you won't change the course of the game by who you do or don't hang out with, but you can learn more about characters and become closer to them! giving them presents they like makes them like you more :D

and the most exciting part of danganronpa, what a lot of people play the games for, the true lure of the game.... the class trials!!

so these characters are in a killing game, right? basically, they're faced with a sort of lose-lose predicament: stay trapped in the school forever, or kill one of your classmates to "graduate". but it's not as simple as that, because in order to graduate, you can't be caught. and how do you determine whether or not a criminal has been found out? well, a trial of course!

enter the class trials. every student (barring dead or severely wounded ones) is required to participate in a kind of mock trial- except someone's really dead, and they need to find the murderer or they'll all die too.

(right, did I forget to mention that? only one person can graduate. getting out alive insures that none of your classmates get the luxury of doing the same.)

so, yeah. the class trials are a true fight for life on both sides, because who ever loses will be executed.

and they're really, really fun.

entirely voice acted! enough minigames that the list of them is probably longer than this entire post! the joy of solving the mystery! the... execution, right in front of everyone.

hey, it's a dark game. not like they're trying to hide that. and the executions aren't actually all that gory most of the time, but they're still very much there and onscreen. also as close to fully animated as the games ever get, which is pretty cool.

so how the class trials work is this:

there's a murder. dun dun duuuun. you investigate everywhere related to the murder to get "truth bullets", which are the reason you don't immediately fail at the trials. you don't have to remember all of them, they're all written down in your e-handbook. plus, the protagonists all seem to have really good memories.

time for the actual class trial!! Monokuma (asshole bear running the killing game) introduces everything, explains the rules. and everyone starts talking.

there are a lot of different parts to the class trial, but most of it is "nonstop debates". everyone talks one after the other, and you have to find inconsistencies and shoot the right "weak spot" with the right truth bullet. you refute the lie or mistake and everyone goes back to arguing normally.

there's also hangman's gambit (weird hangman to find a key word), multiple choice things (self-explanatory), and plenty of others.

near the end of the trial (or sometimes only a little over halfway in, it varies), the killer will.... kind of become obvious. there's a specific kind of change in behavior that's the mark of the murderer in these games, but I'm not sure how to describe it exactly. a lot of times there's an accent change, and in general they start acting much more erratic. since it's a trial, though, even after this presents itself you still have to prove your case beyond reasonable doubt.

and once it's become clear to the killer that they're backed into a corner, you have to do the "bullet time battle". it goes by different names in different games, but the basic mechanics are the same: you battle against a student (usually the killer, but not always) in a rhythm-based battle where you have to click to the rhythm to refute your opponent's statements. once you've dealt enough damage, you shoot the final piece of evidence, and that's the end of it.

the murderers react differently different times. sometimes they break down and confess. sometimes they keep denying it. sometimes, they're just calm. however they act, though, the end is the same. they are caught and punished accordingly.

but before that, there's one more thing to do. the closing argument.

your final task is to explain how the murder was committed, from idea to execution (look, a pun! see I can be funny too 😌). and you have to do it... as a manga.

you don't have to draw the whole thing yourself ofc- you just have to fill in the missing panels and then watch as the protagonist narrates it to the rest of the class.

and that's all for the class trial, not counting the long talks after every execution while still in the courtroom.

wow, this is getting...... really, really long. there's only one more thing I'm gonna add, and I promise it will be much shorter than the other two bc it is late and I am officially Incredibly Fucking Tired.

with no further ado, a very short part three:

my general impression of the game. its vibes or smth, I dunno this is just what i think about it

when I first heard of danganronpa, I thought it was a horror game. I can now assure you that it is not. thriller? maybe. debatable. but definitely not horror.

and despite its extremely dark premise, this game is not all doom and gloom. there's so much stuff about hope, and overcoming despair even when it seems impossible... it's not exactly a happy game, but there's a lot more of that in there than you'd probably expect.

all in all, I love this game. so much. it means a lot to me, and I think it's a really good game. thanks for letting me talk about it so much asdhfd :D

[moonstruckbucky]

Royal Holiday (1/6)

Summary: Bucky Barnes is bored - trust him, he knows how that sounds. But being royalty, in his humble opinion, isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. Time to mix it up a bit.

Pairing: Prince!Bucky Barnes x fem!Reader, modern AU

Warnings: None

Notes: Here it is, my submission for @heamarvel​‘s Hallmark Event! Hope you all enjoy! Feedback is appreciated. x

Series Masterlist / Main Masterlist

If it’s one thing Bucky hates, it’s diplomacy. Ironic, considering he’s currently neck-deep in a manifesto his father had dropped into his lap a week ago. Ironic still, considering he’s a bloody prince. Not a prince who prances around in jewels or silks, but a prince nonetheless - a prince with responsibilities and a duty to his country when the throne eventually comes to him.

It’s a mantra he’s heard his entire life, and it’s a mantra he’d really love to stop hearing before he takes a screwdriver to his eardrums.

He knows it’s unfair, knows he’s got it better than most, and he respects that - kind of. While he wants for nothing, he feels trapped, imprisoned by duty, regality, and nobility. Bowing under the weight of his future, the eventuality that he’ll be a king. He’ll need to command and rule and say goodbye to his freedom - however much of it he has.

He’s already damn tired of it.

And that’s why his unofficial-official bodyguard Sam finds him open-mouthed and snoring behind his desk in his office. The older man isn’t surprised by it really. Having been with the Royal Family for close to ten years now, he knows Bucky’s mannerisms, habits, quirks, and annoyances better than most, and while he wishes Bucky would grow up a little, he isn’t quite so strict as his Queen Mother over his behavior.

Sam purses his lips, rolls his eyes a bit, before he creeps to the desk. Reaches for the massive manifesto that sits open in front of Bucky, snaps it closed, the dark-skinned man’s gaze flits between the two for a few moments.

A little humming under his breath, he lifts the binder over his head above the desk, lets it drop with a loud slam that wakes Bucky with a jolt and a girlish yelp. He flies backwards and his weight shifting tips the chair. Trinkets and knick-knacks rattle as he and the chair hit the floor. Sam waits patiently, tipping a snowglobe on the shelf beside him, while Bucky splutters and curses him out.

“The hell was that for, Wilson?” he grouses, rubbing the back of his head where it hit the floor.

“Your mother is requesting you,” Sam responds with a pointed look, setting the snowglobe down.

Bucky feels himself scowl before he can stop it. He loves his mother, he does, but he knows what she’s going to speak to him about - it’s the same thing she always wants to talk to him about.

“Do I have to?” He knows he sounds like a petulant child, he knows, but if he’s honest, he’d rather play Baby Shark on repeat for the rest of his life than listen to his mother prattle on and on about how it’s time for him to find a wife. A suitable one, one of noble birth. One who’s proper and polite and graceful.

Bucky wants something different.

He admits he hasn’t thought much about marrying (clearly) or even falling in love, but as he gets older, grows closer to becoming a king and taking on more responsibility, the prospect of finding someone to share that with occasionally crosses his mind. He has no doubt his mother would find someone who’ll make him happy, but the idea of having his bride chosen for him, the risk of being trapped in a forced marriage, doesn’t sit well with him at all.

Sam gives him an exasperated look. Nodding sagely, he sighs and straightens his shirt, slightly wrinkled thanks to Sam. Following the older man out, he prepares himself for the conversation he’s heard a thousand times before.

She’s relentless, he decides, and he finally figures out where his stubbornness came from. She’s organizing a gala in his honor, a presentation of him as an eligible bachelor, and she’s taken the liberty of inviting every eligible heiress, princess, and everyone in between in a massive effort to get him to connect with someone.

She’s frustrated with him when he voices as much, voice growing higher with her irritation. “James Buchanan, it is your responsibility to marry. You’re nearly thirty, and you’ve yet to choose a wife! You’re not getting any younger and should you choose not to marry, your reign will be forfeited!”

Ah yes, the little wrench in the system. A decision made by the country’s parliament as a failsafe in case Bucky clutched his bachelor lifestyle to the vest. Clearly they hadn’t had much fail in him to marry and rule successfully, and a small part of him wants to shove their faces in it.

But only if it’s on his terms.

“Sounds like a dream to me,” he mutters back, just loud enough for his mother to hear him. She screeches, kind of like a hawk - or a banshee - and Bucky feels a little bad. But only a little. Gesticulating wildly, he exclaims, “What? Would it really be so bad if we just gave the crown to parliament? I’m sure Pierce would be happy to take it. After all, can’t have a thirty-year-old playboy bachelor ruling alone, can we? Bad for his family’s image, isn’t it?”

She opens her mouth to retort, offense written clearly on her face, but Bucky sweeps from the office before she can utter another word. Sam is waiting for him outside the door, and he straightens, tries to act like he hadn’t been eavesdropping on the loud exchange.

“Let’s go Sam,” Bucky orders, “I need to get out of here for a while.”

Sam doesn’t hesitate - he calls for a car and fetches Bucky’s winter coat. “Yes, sir.”

You resist the urge to slam the phone down into the cradle, opting instead to gently place it back where it belongs. But you do give it the middle finger as you scribble out the order you’d gotten halfway through before the customer decided she didn’t want to spend fifty dollars plus delivery on a floral arrangement.

Tossing the paper in the trash, you walk around the counter to straighten out the displays of vases, each holding stems of various flowers. Casting a glance out the window, you sigh at the people who walk right by your shop, despite the inviting fairy lights, the floral displays and boxwood trees in the windows, and soft Christmas music playing from the speaker system.

It’s a month until Christmas, and your orders are down - again. You’re not sure why, but there’s been a steady decline in sales for the past six months. Dejectedly, you chalk it up to people losing interest in sending flowers to people, with the exception of funeral arrangements if only because people die every day. In New York, it’s unheard of that people can’t afford flowers - most can. They just don’t send them. The classic gesture is being swept under the rug in favor of material things - new electronics, vacations, jewelry.

It saddens your heart to think it, but it’s true, and if sales don’t pick up, you’ll be forced to sell the building you left everything behind to buy. Tail tucked between your legs, you’ll plant yourself behind a desk for the next foreseeable future, working overtime to pay off the expenses from the flower shop.

Misty-eyed, you sniffle and clean the stamens from the stems of stargazer lilies. A little unusual to carry them this time of year, but they’d been a special request from someone who’d never showed to pick them up. Usually it’s easy to lose yourself in the pretty colors and scents of flowers, but now, you can’t even be bothered to make new arrangements for fear they’ll go to waste - then it’s more money down the drain.

Instead, you clean the shop from top to bottom, rearrange the displays, open the door despite the chilling air and display a boxwood tree - handmade - out in front. A couple slow in front of the shop, eyeing the boxwood tree. The woman smiles, pointing happily to it, remarks about bringing it for Christmas dinner.

To your joy, the husband agrees and they step inside to order one with red and gold decorations. It’s a steep sale - $100 plus tax - but it’s not quite enough to cover your rent for the month just yet. A few more boxwood tree sales and you’ll be covered. Surprisingly, you catch the woman taking a photo of the boxwood tree outside as the husband places the order.

“I’m going to send this to Sue! I’m sure she’ll love one for her house!”

You smile gratefully, hoping like hell this Sue woman indeed places the order with you. The couple waves pleasantly, offering their names - Jack and Michaela - and then they take their leave. A few more people trickle in, place orders for both Christmas and for Thanksgiving centerpieces, and you take a couple of phone calls - one to actually order, one for general information. It turns into a fairly successful afternoon, and as you get ready to close, you feel a little hope blooming in your chest.

Hope that you might not lose your dream.

Outside on the busy streets, Bucky is blown away. He’d insisted on getting far, far away from the royal house despite Sam’s initial reluctance. Bucky was a prince, a known prince, and both paparazzi and people could be unpredictable. Not to mention, he’s sure there would be people willing to hurt Bucky, ransom him or something to make money off his family - okay, Sam knows that particular scenario might be a stretch, but it’s what he’d been trained for.

Bucky’s like a kid in a candy store, weaving in and out of the crowd, ducking into this store and that, experiencing regular city life like he never got to. It had always been schedules and propriety and rigidness that he’s relishing a bit in the freedom to just be. He buys Sam a new winter coat, one that blends in a bit better with the public, and he settles on a peacoat, scarf, and paperboy hat for himself. He feels...normal, and on the street, no one recognizes him.

As he strolls down the sidewalk in the fading light, he catches a glimpse of fairy lights across the street. A woman stands outside the door, beige coat and burgundy hat in place. When Bucky crosses the street, he realizes she’s staring at the building, which he now notes is a florist shop. There’s a longing in her gaze, a shininess that suggests she might be on the verge of tears.

There’s a pull deep inside him, compelling him towards her. It’s like she’s pulled him into her orbit, and Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever had this kind of reaction to a woman before. He doesn’t even know her and yet he desperately wants to, needs to know her. He’s entranced by the look on her face, an expression of sheer yearning paired with sadness trapped within it. He wants to kiss it away, and his reaction should startle him.

But it doesn’t. It only forces that tug to pull harder, and he takes a few steps forward. Before Bucky can approach her, he’s swept up in a crowd and loses sight of her. When he steps out of the throng, he searches for the woman, but she’s gone.

Chapter Two

[lucifer-kane]

Finally my side of this whole KFAM debacle

I’ve never had to write something like this before, so here we go. I know that there have been other people who have said things on this topic, people who I’m very grateful towards in all of this, who have come forward in this… strange time. I feel like I finally can say something after freaking out for a few days and talking with others as well online who are on this side of it all. But I feel like I finally need to say something as…. Probably the person who really started it all, I guess? As the one who made the post saying “Me casting death of the author onto kfam” Because I was finally fed up with just everything I had learned over the last year + of talking about criticisms in the show and of the creators/writers. I spent months talking to others on at least two different servers about all of this, from learning it myself, to being here in this position of what’s currently going on.

A lot started a few months ago in the Official Server, when a graphic artist posted an edit of a character of the show in BDSM gear, which, automatically, is NSFW. Some had issues and said that it got taken down, then a few hours later uploaded it once more with a spoiler cover over it. Friday morning, it happened again, this time with a group shot, but he was still there. Now. I don’t think I would have issues with this if it was posted on a server with specific channels for 18+ members of it only. But it wasn’t, and this server is a SFW only, but apparently “canon compliant” NSFW is a-okay. Which, I think is utterly ridiculous, because minors are still in there, and that should not be allowed. If you’re going to allow that stuff, at least have designated channels where only 18+ members can opt in to see that sort of thing. You can’t have both.

Two people called this out, one directly sending an @ to the mods in said server, and it was a little bit before a response happened, then two other messages were taken down, the message with the @ left in it. Kyle had also retweeted the art on twitter, and while I don’t think that was such a bad thing, his response to at least adding a warning that it was NSFW, was pretty unprofessional. The person who asked Kyle to say as such, was bullied by both Kyle and Trent on twitter as well.

Now, onto my DotA post once more. After posting that I had a few hours of chillness, up until in the middle of a call with friends, I looked over to my discord list of servers I was in, and the Official was no longer there. I panicked, left the call, and cried for a long time about it, because despite my criticism, I loved being there! I told my friends on this server, where the criticism was most of the time, and there was a few hour period of questioning what the hell was going on. It was late at night, and everyone was confused. No one would give reasoning to what was going on. Until I was vagued to have been a problem for a long time.

Now, it may have been my bluntness when it comes to text, bc you know, autism! But I don't think I've ever done anything that would warrant people to be uncomfortable, other than criticize the show (and the server at times) on my personal tumblr (twitter on occasion). Which I can see as being upset about that, but I was way too damn scared to PM a mod to talk about what was going on, because at this point, it was very obvious they hated me. I didn’t like that they never came to talk, like a civilized person, about all this. I don't want to make people uncomfortable, that's the last goddamn thing I wanna do in this world.

Now, we’re here. A few days after everything went down, to what I feel like was a simple miscommunication, I would never wish death on someone at all, that’s disgusting behavior and I don’t like that Kyle even vagued that I did such a thing. I have never interacted with him at all, even when he would come and talk on the server. I actively tried to avoid interactions with the creators because I’m not a fan of creators being this close to their fanbase, where people have actively said it makes them uncomfortable.

I love this podcast a lot, for the first year I praised it like others did as well, but then, I read some things about Kyle, and then some of the things in the show. We all know those things, the Hellen Keller episode, how Lily is written, Jacob in his whole character, and the racism in Walt. But I started being critical on main, voicing my thoughts and concerns. Because criticism is an okay thing, it helps artists grow in the things they do. And I understand not liking criticism, I don’t like it sometimes, but sometimes it’s needed, to move your art forward. Kyle’s reaction to criticism is that of a man who doesn’t have thick skin and doesn’t wanna be proven wrong in the things he does.

As of now, because of all this, I’ve been blocked from the KFAM twitter, Kyle himself, and I think the tumblr as well (Or at least they’ve unfollowed me, I don’t care enough to check on there). And I’ve seen my friends get bullied by the creator of this show, and even members of the community. While at a lesser scale than Kyle, it’s still gross to see the fanbase act like this, especially acting like my friends and I are actively bullying them, when we just wanted one piece of art to be taken down from a space that, in all reality, has a lot of minors in it.

And finally, I just wanna talk about the server in general. I joined maybe six months after getting into the show, we were pretty far into the first hiatus at this point and I wanted more content, so, I finally beat my discord anxiety down and joined. And I had so much fun! I talked to people who I still think about, posted art, fics, did headcanons all the time. I talked in there quite a bit up until I got kicked. But the overall vibe of the discord after being there longer than a month, was not the greatest. And it took me longer than average to notice, shortly before posting public criticisms. This was when I started getting ignored more often than not, and not that everyone did that, I still had people talk to me, which was nice. But as time went on, this happened more and more, to more and more people.

People who saw my criticisms, and came to me, mostly anonymously, to say they felt the exact same way. And that’s… not a good thing. The whole “Only happy things, no negativity about the show!” attitude that is in there, is bad. You can’t criticize something you love, and if you do, you’re dogpiled onto until you shut up. This has happened to many people, not just me. There’s times where queer members of this community, will talk about themseles as some lgbt+/queer fans do. Saying things along the line of “___ is gay culture!” or “I think [x] is trans!!” and they’ll either get ignored (in the latter case) or just someone won't get the first one is a joke and get upset. Which, I can see if you’re new to a place where people say that, but don’t outright shut someone down like that, ask what it means. That goes for anything.

I enjoyed my time there, and I was super upset when I found myself kicked, distraught even. Then they started kicking more people without even a word which isn’t how you run a server, no one should get an instant ban without being talked to, and I think I would be less upset if I had been talked to, to at least tell my side. But no, I got this, and here we are. With multiple testimonies that aren’t my own, telling how horrible that server is towards some people who they don’t like, who speak out, who say “Hey maybe we should do [x].” And that’s… Not the safe environment they say they have, because I, among many others. Was also super uncomfortable when it came to some things in there.

As a queer member of this community, I, and others like me, felt ignored. Ignored in the criticism of their queer characters who were written by non-queer men, and then, as stated above. Upset at literally everything else that wasn’t good in their show. But now, we’re being painted as the villains in a way, being bullied by the creator, and others acting like nothing is going wrong. But that’s all I have to say, if prompted, I will talk more on any subject here.

I’m not angry, I never once was. At this point I find more saddened amusement in all of this, rather than anger. But. That is all, thank you for your time on this subject.

[masterhandss]

WATCH ME RAMBLE ABOUT THE HAMEHURA SPINOFF

My Next Life as a Villainess! All Routes Lead to Doom! have officially taken over my headspace, and I really want a platform to talk about it. I’ve read the manga and novels over and over again, and I’m so happy to seeing the reactions of everyone to each anime episodes.

Though surprisingly, other than obviously the original novel, what actually piqued my interest in the series is actually the spinoff manga for hamehura, “I Reincarnated into an Otome Game as a Villainess With Only Destruction Flags... In a Dire Situation!? Verge of Destruction Arc”. Yes, it has a spinoff.

(This might be considered spoilers for the spinoff and anime, be warned!) I just want to ramble about it and give my critiques, opinions and expectations. My words might not make sense if you haven’t read the spinoff, but I think having a general gist of the events of the original anime/novel/manga is enough to read through my vents and rambles. also there’s screenshots here so there’s that. 

It’s basically the same plot as the anime, but if Katarina regained her memories of her past life during the events of Fortune Lover, within the school year, instead of when she was 8 years old like the original novel.

I don’t even really know if I’m in the right place to comment on it, considering it only has like 6 chapters (with the 7th one still being a month away) anyways and has a lot of time to expand and grow it’s concept, but gosh darn it, I want to talk about it!

I really really love the premise of the spinoff, and i think it’s much more compelling than the original novel. The novel wins by being more wholesome and heartfelt, but with the spinoff, we get to see Katarina play this “game” in hard mode” where she doesn’t have the connections that she would’ve had if she remembered sooner. There’s a sense of urgency in the plot that you don’t really have in the novel because she had already won everyone over before the game even begins. Both premises are charming, but this one really lifts up the concept of the title.

While I’d love to say that i’m excited to see this alternate version of the plot and find out how Katarina would solve herself out of her destruction, sadly the spinoff still follows the original material very religiously, preventing the spinoff as really coming out into its own (again, I could be wrong, there’s only 6 chapters so far after all but from what we have so far, it’s practically identical to the manga/novel). 

I think one of the greatest strengths of the spinoff is that it would take it’s time in the Magic School because Katarina only has one year to put the odds in her favor, instead of years, so it means we wont speed through her school life like the novel/anime/manga did. 

This is why my favorite part of the spinoff is Sienna, Katarina’s main underling when she was still the villainess of Fortune Lover. I love her because her existence provides a reason for the writer of the spinoff to find ways to insert her into the original plot, or to write new ones altogether in order to include what I imagine to be Katarina’s new best friend in this timeline.

Sienna’s existing can also be a sign of a possible future conflict regarding Katarina’s behavior post-accident. In the original novel/manga, it was okay for the snobby and spoiler Katarina to suddenly become dense and gluttonous, because she was 8 years old, and thus in the eyes of the adults, still had a lot of time to grow and develop her character. It’s still weird of course but it can be written off as such. With the event happening during the events of Fortune Lover, characters such as Maria and Geordo are obviously confused but her change of heart. Personally, I’d love to see her underlings and other students call her out on her behavior (especially since we are about to see the dynamic of Keith and Katarina in this timeline) because of how abrupt and sudden this change was. The spinoff tries to run away from this problem by writing off Mary and Alan as “not knowing much about Katarina other than rumors” but I doubt it, considering how much they would probably encounter each other in social gatherings and such. For them to not have an independent impression of her seems lazy to me to be honest, because not having an opinion on her means that she can act in any way that she wants and it can be considered as her being normal to them.

Because of how faithful this spinoff is to the original material, the banter that characters would have about Katarina feels undeserved, such as Geordo being possessive of Katarina during her interactions with Alan, despite not being interested in her until now. Bare in mind that at this point, Geordo had already met Maria (who piqued his interest during their first encounter, according to Katarina in the original novel) and only just gained interest in her fiance because of her out-of-nowhere change in personality. the banter between the twin princes doesn’t feel right when you factor in that he doesn’t care about Katarina enough (yet) to find his brother as a threat. To be honest, I wouldn’t even have this problem if the spinoff wasn’t so loyal.

This also opens up the question of how she will gain rapport with the characters in Fortune Lover. The spinoff pulled off Mary and Katarina’s friendship through their similar interests in gardening, but without the mistake of taking Alan’s in game dialogue, Mary has no reason to be attached to Katarina at all, and is definitely in love with Alan.

I mean i’d be okay if the spinoff writes off their relationship as just friends, but then again that ruins the charm that the original novel had (which is that Katarina catches love interests like she does with pokemon) which can be both a good thing and a bad thing (I don’t mind if they don’t have the harem, but maybe that makes it too far from the source material idk)

This is why I don’t want the spinoff to be religiously loyal to the source material! Keith’s introduction makes me nervous because there is absolutely no way that the spinoff can follow the original method of winning him over without making it look ridiculous, so obviously his route will have to be written from scratch. It’s not the rewrite that makes me nervous, it’s how similar it’d be from the original novel. The same would have to happen with Sophia (who has probably lived in fear and isolation without a real friend FOR YEARS), Nicol (who is intertwined with his sister), and Alan (depending on how far Maria is into the plot). From what i’ve seen from the spinoff so far, Katarina can still realistic gain the character’s of Fortune Lover as her allies, but they won’t be (or atleast might not be) as attached to her as they do in the original novel (like Mary and Sophia maybe)

My only biased exception to this is her and her maid Anne, because it’s pretty endearing to know that even the spoiled version of Katarina is still attached to Anne, so as long as they are together, she doesn’t really mind the difference. 

I would really love it if Katarina could gain allies outside of the established cast, to emphasize how different her situation is now that her circumstances are different due to the time of when her memories return. I just don’t want the spinoff to suddenly make the characters interested in Katarina, even though she’s lived her life until now as a spoiled and selfish noble.

This brings me to another concern of mine: Maria, the protagonist of Fortune Lover. So far, Katarina has already won over her friendship and has forgiven her and Sienna for their actions against her after seeing their efforts to fend off other harassers. My problem isn’t really how quickly she got won over or anything (despite this already solving her problem of being accused of orchestrating her bullying that could cause her end just before the final graduation event of the game), it’s more of what she represents.

You see, what made all the characters of Fortune Lover so attached to Katarina is that she lacks the outlook of a noble, being someone who lived as a normal school girl before being reincarnated. She is a very empathetic person who is able to sooth the worries of the characters but literally not seeing it at all (examples being Alan with his rivalry with his twin, and Mary & Sophia with their appearance). She alleviates the pain and worries of others by being what they need. In the original novel of My Next Life as a Villainess!, the readers/viewers already know that her villainess fate is already thwarted because she had already accomplished what Maria was supposed to do during the events of Fortune Lover (befriend Sophia = gain Nicol’s affections / interest Geordo = gain his affection / differentiate Alan & Geordo = gain Alan’s affections / be a first real source of comfort and company = gain Keith’s affections etc.)

I can’t really speculate on much of the plot of the game, but luckily the anime dvd box comes with the actual Fortune Lover game routes of the 4 boys so I might be able to comment on this better in the future. 

Maria is basically the same as Katarina (or Bakarina, if its less confusing); both characters are outsiders to the world of nobles and royalty, and it’s through their own personal outlook that they help and befriend the characters of the game. The spinoff would probably stick the two by the hip now that they’re friends in order to solve this problem, but it’s basically a race between the two of which of them can apply their personal quirks in getting the characters to ally with them. Again I can’t really speculate bc I don’t know the actual routes of the boys, but yeah. 

For example, Geordo has met the heroine while she was trying to climb a tree with a skirt, which he has never seen before, while her also being the pretty light-magic user commoner, and this definitely made her interesting to him (Note: this is an event that occurs canonically within the events of the game, Fortune Lover, but is not presented as something that had occurred in the manga). 

Now we have Katarina acting out of character and eating tons of sweets, while trying to salvage the dress of her peer after she spilled a drink on it, and this character change made her interesting to him as well. Katarina, considering her actual personality as time progresses in the story, is definitely much more interesting than Maria’s (I say that with biases of course) so Geordo would most likely find her to be the more unpredictable and interesting out of the two, but it looks like the only way (or what seems to already be the chosen way??) of writing the spinoff out of this mess is to make it appear like the Maria event didn’t or hasn’t happened yet, because while the original novel does state that Geordo would have fallen for Maria if he wasn’t already inlove with Katarina before they entered the Magic School, Geordo has yet to address his relationship with Maria. (yeah I get it there’s only 6 chapters yet jhgsdgfjsdg BUT STILL IT’S A LOT TO THINK ABOUT)

I don’t know what kind of dynamic Maria and Katarina would have in the spinoff, especially since you need to factor in Sienna, but in the original novel, Maria was pretty submissive to Katarina and would mostly just follow her lead. Maybe with this new friendship, Maria might not actively approach the main love interests (unless it’s by accident, since they don’t have to always save her from bullying Katarina and Sienna already try to solve that themselves) which gives time for Katarina to win them over with the quirky personality. At least, this is what I hope the spinoff goes for lol. (side note, it’s actually interesting to see what it’s like when Geordo literally only uses Katarina as a shield from other women, so when the shift from tool to romance occurs, i think it’ll be pretty nice to see)

To be honest I don’t even know what I’m rambling about, I’m sure I’ll love the spinoff regardless of what direction it takes lol. I’m just nervous because I really really love this concept an I want it to be different from the source material because it literally has the potential to be its own story (idk if this spinoff is even official at all, like I think it has the permission of Yamaguchi Satoru, but idk if its licensed)

Before I end this long ramble, I just want to note that i actual like the art style of the spinoff (illustrated by nishi) more than the original artist nami. I feel like this more simple artstyle captures the shift between Villainess Katarina and Bakarina more smoothly, while the original illustrations kinda makes it looked forced (mostly the manga tbh, the novel covers and art is fine). With nishi’s art, you can easily grasp that these two personalities are both Katarina. 

Anyways that’s it, my hands hurt lol. Might edit this in the future. 

[peanutparade]

Someone asked me what my process was, and I’m not sure I gave her a satisfying answer in the PM, so here I will attempt to explain how I make a game from start to finish.

*Please note the the drafts above are not for the same story, but for the purpose of illustration.

**Also please take this advice with a grain of salt. I’m not a published author (though I do know a bit about the publishing industry), and I’m definitely not a perfect writer. This is my process, and the things I try to keep in mind when I’m writing, and you may find this advice to be complete garbage.

Step one: Get an idea for a story. I can’t really give any tips on how to go about doing this. I tend to take inspiration from other works of media (classical literature is my favorite, though I have taken cues from more contemporary sources as well).

Step two: Consider who your characters are going to be. It’s okay if you only have one or two characters in mind at first. I’m pretty utilitarian about my characters, so most of them don’t get created until step three.

Step three: Open a word document and just start typing shit out. (I use Google Drive so I can access it from anywhere, and for another reason which I’ll get to later.) Don’t stop to think, don’t even breathe. Just type. Any idea that comes into your head goes in the document. Some of it won’t make sense with everything else, some of it will contradict other things, some of it will be vaguely defined. You will fix that later. This is the most important part (especially the way I write), because it’s where you’re going to get an idea of how your story starts and how it ends, as well as cement your cast of characters. If you need a scene where your main character goes to a lighthouse, then you know you’ll also need to come up with a lighthouse keeper (see my comment above about being utilitarian with characters. I’m no authority, so if you do things differently, that’s fine, but I don’t like making characters that don’t serve a purpose).

Step four: Annotation, annotation, annotation! (This is the other thing I use Google Drive for, as it has a comment feature that I heavily rely on.) Go through all your scribbling and make notes for yourself. Be a little hard on yourself here, because this is the part where you’re going to try to make everything you’ve written in Draft 1 cohesive. This will be a long process, as you need to think about how all of this is connected, as well as think about what sort of arcs your main characters are going to go through. I read somewhere once that ALL of your characters have to go through an arc, but that’s a bunch of wacky nonsense. Some characters are minor characters, and thus do not require depth. The only character arc that MUST be included is the main character’s arc. Remember: character arc ≠ character motivation. ALL major characters (protagonist(s), love interest(s), villain(s)) MUST have motivation for what they are doing. The motivation doesn’t have to be anything too complex, just so long as the audience understands why the characters are doing what they’re doing. (Minor characters with motivation can make the world feel more real and lived in, but they can also make the story feel bogged down. Brevity is key here, and sometimes less is more.)

Step five: Draft 2 All of that plotting you just did? Throw it away! Just kidding, don’t actually throw it away. BUT you’re going to rewrite your plot outline, tidier this time, and only refer back to Draft 1 when you get stuck. Feel free to come up with new ideas during this time; Draft 1 is not your story’s final form. If you think of scenes or quotes, feel free to include them in this draft, but you’re mostly just outlining right now. (As you may notice in the image above, Draft 2 is also subject to annotation.) Draft 2 is where you should be solidifying the themes of your story. Character arc(s) should tie into and support this theme. This is also the draft where you should be catching any plot holes (especially if you don’t have an editor/beta reader), as once you’ve begun actually writing the story, any problems here will only compound as you go.

Step six: Write the story It’s pretty straightforward. Follow Draft 2 (and any additional annotations you made on Draft 2), and go scene by scene and write. I never skip around, as it makes it hard to keep track of what characters know at what time, but I know of authors that do skip around, and they seem to do okay. You’ll have to figure out what works best for you.

Step seven: Edit, edit, edit! Aside from the obvious (typos and spelling errors), look out for:

Scenes that are too long or too short. Counterintuitively, these may be the result of the same problem: a lack of purpose. Ask yourself, “Does this need to be here?”

Long-winded info dumps. Consider the old adage, “show, don’t tell.” Whenever information can be conveyed through action or reaction, write it that way. If you can convey two things at the same time (i.e. something about a character and also something about the world--bonus if these two things are actually unrelated to each other), do it.

Information that your audience wouldn’t logically have being the key to resolving the plot. Especially in sci-fi and fantasy stories, if the conclusion of the story relies on knowing something--even if it’s something that the characters all know--you need to make sure your audience also knows this, or else they will be frustrated. Keep in mind the Rule of Threes.

And that’s the story portion done. If you’re making a visual novel/dating sim, there are other steps you need to do. (I usually do this stuff while writing the story so it doesn’t get tedious, but if you’re hiring people to do this other stuff, you should probably have the writing done ahead of time. If you’re hiring writers to help you, you should have Draft 1 done, at the least. Your writers can probably take it from there.)

NOTE: Any job you don’t do yourself is something that will cost you money. If you can find other aspiring creators to volunteer their time to your project, good for you, but please do not approach anyone directly unless you plan to offer to pay them (”for exposure” is not payment).

Step eight: Character sprites Major characters are going to need to be represented visually in your visual novel (go figure!), so... draw some people? I know some people make character design sheets, but I just jump right in, and then later, make microedits to the sprites as the mood strikes me. The design sheet thing is probably a smarter way to do it. I use photoshop, and I would strongly encourage keeping hair, clothing, and facial features on separate layers until you know exactly how you plan to code them into your game.

Step nine: Backgrounds Same as the sprites, except places instead of people. I’m bad at this, so I have no right to give anyone advice. I use a 3D interior design app to create a guide for what I want rooms to look like, and then I use that to get my vanishing points and furniture sizing right. This method is 50% tracing, 50% wishing I was dead. I do not recommend it.

Step ten: Audio If your game will have voice acting, get that together now. If you’re composing your own music, you’re more talented than I am. For my first game, I utilized royalty free options (incompetech and bensound), but now I hire a composer (I do still supplement my soundtrack with royalty free options if it’s for something inconsequential). I don’t use many sound effects, but when I do, I just look for free options online.

Step eleven: Coding I use Ren’py because it’s free and easy to learn (provided you don’t want to do anything too complicated). There are tons of resources online to teach you how to use Ren’py, both from official sources and unofficial sources. I’ve never posted in the forums myself, but the people there seem very kind and helpful if you get stuck. (If anyone wants to see how I code, specifically, I’ll do a Part Two for it, but I have to warn you that my games are the coding equivalent car repairs done with bubblegum and duct tape.)

Step twelve: Playtesting Make sure your game works. It’s pretty straightforward. You can even recruit some guinea pigs--I mean, friends to help you. (I don’t have any friends, so I do this part on my own.)

By this point, a year or so will have passed (give or take, depending how long your game is, how much time you have to work on it, and how much of the work you plan to do by yourself), and with any luck, you’ll have a game! Posting your game on itch.io is free, but putting your game on steam will cost you $100.

Like I said to the person on patreon who originally asked me about my process, making a visual novel is a lot of work, but I encourage everyone to at least try it and see if you like it.

I look forward to hearing your stories!  ♥