#oops sorry this took so long to get to

[eurydicees]

oh dont apologise i loved your essay 😭 and i 100% agree with everything. Theres such a innate theme of choices and consequences in wicked the musical and its so fascinating to me how choices made by all the characters have such profound consequences at the end. And fiyero’s choices are no different in the way they alter the trajectory of multiple characters.

He is really the only one i can think of who sacrifices everything for elphaba and does it all willingly. How do you like elphaba and then dislike the one character who was ready to give up his whole life and everything that came with it for her 😭

Twitter is very binary in that regard honestly, and its such a shame that they miss out on some pretty interesting character analysis about their favourite characters bc they decide to be so rigid and weird about other characters who had an impact on their faves. Couldnt be me lol, making multiple threads about a character you hate. I also think something else is at play here but dont wanna say it publicly lol but given your other responses i think you’d probably agree.

And yes totally agree about dividing the film in two parts - i can only hope the film watchers stick around for part 2 and see fiyero’s whole arc

thanks for the ask! also i wrote another fiyero ted talk. if i were like charles dickens or whoever and i was getting paid by the word to write about fiyero, i could be so goddamn rich btw.

anyways, choices and consequences!!!!! like that's the whole thing!!!!!!! and the way our choices affect and change other people!!!! fiyero isn't an exception to any of that!!!!

you're so right that fiyero is truly the one who makes the ultimate sacrifices for elphaba. like glinda loves elphaba, she absolutely does. but she isn't able to take on the work and life that elphaba chooses in defying gravity.

when it comes to the things that are most important to her, glinda prioritizes comfort and reputation over, like, morality and principle. and the thing about glinda is that she actively makes this choice. she chooses not to go with elphaba. she wants elphaba to succeed, but she's not brave enough to join her. in order for glinda to find the bravery to take up the work elphaba starts, she has to lose everything that actually matters. and she has to be complicit in her own losing of those things.

fiyero loves elphaba to the point of sacrificing all of those things that glinda can't resist. the day with the lion cub, and elphaba's general influence on him, changes fiyero profoundly in a similar way that she affects glinda, but fiyero finds the bravery to act on all of that. the difference is that he doesn't get the choice to go with her until mid-act 2 after wonderful.

in thank goodness, there's that one exchange between fiyero and glinda where they say smth like "you just can't resist all of this" "well who could?" "you know who could, and who has." and he's talking about elphaba, he's talking about how she had all the love she ever wanted at the tip of her fingers when she met the wizard, and she chose to let it go because she saw the ugly parts of the wizard's world. and this exchange is so clearly boiling it down to "elphaba resisted the temptation of being universally/publically loved and glinda did not." which tbh is something so in character for a person who has never had that, and a person who has always had that and thus doesn't want to leave it behind.

ok i was going somewhere with this but i don't remember where. just. fiyero isn't a perfect character. and for SURE the choice to erase gelphie's romantic subtext from the book when adapting it for broadway was an act of homophobia. but if we're just looking at musical canon, fiyero is brave enough to give up everything first to save elphaba, then to go with her, and then to protect her. and so-called elphaba stans don't think that's good enough. which is CRAZY to me.

also like. he's literally not the comphet love interest. sorry you didn't mention that but i keep seeing people throw those words around and like that's not what's happening here guys. elphaba loves him. she sings a whole song about it. multiple, even.

comphet implies that she mistakenly thinks she loves him because society has molded her into believing that's how she should be (fyi if anyone's experiencing that, it's glinda but i digress). elphaba, who notably has never been able to comply to the mold society makes for women, because she's never been pretty white woman enough to be afforded a place in that society? you mean that elphaba?

guys elphaba just...loves him. that's all there is to it. she loves him when she realizes he's more than he thinks he is, more than the airs he puts off. she loves him when she feared he might have changed, she loves him when he proves he did change--for the better. she loves him when he sticks by her, when he chooses her. she loves him when he's a fucking SCARECROW. ("go ahead, touch, i don't mind" "you're still beautiful" lives in my head rent fucking free).

when she has her breakthrough "okay. fuck this world that has never been good to me, if you want me to be wicked, i'll be wicked" moment, it's because she loses fiyero. she gets betrayed by nessa, and she fails dillamond, and she loses fiyero--and it's then that she loses sight of what good she had begun fighting for. it's a love for fiyero that drives most of no good deed (broadway songs of all time btw). like sorry but you dont sing someone's name like that if you don't love them. that's just musical theatre rules. trust me i was a theatre major.

anyways. sorry for that detour. back to the point. twitter treats everything as so black and white which is crazy because this is a revisionist musical about how evil isn't black and white. like?????? whatever. imagine being so bitter about a character you dislike that you want to change fundamental pieces of your favorite character so that he isn't relevant.

look. gelphie is great doomed yuri and i support that so hard. but dont try to tell me fiyero isn't deeply important to elphaba and to understanding elphaba's character. tbh the love triangle here isn't fiyero choosing between glinda and elphaba. it's more like elphaba choosing between glinda and fiyero and what either of them represent to her (glinda and working within the system, or fiyero, and abandoning it).

and hot take maybe but like ultimately--as someone who has never been conventionally accepted, as someone who has been hunted down to be murdered, as someone who has been the victim of a smear campaign and propaganda against her character/intentions, all of which was in part driven by glinda--she was always going to choose fiyero.

i respect gelphie shippers, i do. in another world, maybe one without the wizard, they could've been so happy together. i'm with y'all. but given canon, even if all others fall, i will be the last fiyero defender standing. god i hope movie-only fans watch part 2 and at least learn to RESPECT him. at the bare minimum. please. please. please.

[lcs-scar]

PLEAS PLEAS PLLEEEEAASSSS

Can you draw some pete content?? 🙌🙌🙏🙏🙏🙇🙇🙇

THAK YOU IF ITS YES

sure!!

[remxedmoon]

(you worked yourself to death.)

yeah i wasn’t kidding when i said these would be coming soon. <- haha funny joke marshall. so!! remember when i said that this post would be coming out last weekend? guess whose tablet broke a few days after saying that! so sorry for the delay!! this is long overdue. here’s a link to the drive, as always! everything in this part of the update should be in the miscellaneous folder (outside of the menu icons, which are in the menu folder. wauaua).

unedited versions below the cut, plus some notes. fair warning 90% of this is just ui stuff lol

so! all of this was already done by the time i posted the enemies. the delay isn’t *entirely* because of the tablet issues, i just managed to get distracted by making: even more redraws! i’d say new update soon but after what happened last time i shouldn’t jinx myself. but! almost All of the art for the initial mod release is done!!!! exciting!!!!!!

please be nice to me (silly) this is my first time doing frame by frame animation in… give or take 5 years? i followed the original animations pretty closely, so they don’t look Awful but i am Aware of the jank. i’m not an animator!!! they’re Good Enough for my purposes.

hey did you know that the original teleport map is slightly off center. did you know that. that’s not the case for the redraw for the record but it did make things a little harder. despite that, i think you can tell i was having fun with the dormont part of the map. i would’ve put more detail into the house, but we never really get a more detailed look at it??? and i didn’t want to make assumptions. so that part’s just traced from the original 👍. anyways shoutout to the clocktower being Curved for whatever reason

outside of those, all of the added art is actually just spritework. i didn’t know this at first, but there’s a TON of copies of sprites from the icon set. Basically Everywhere. so those are added now! and should work properly! also added a few sprites that were Missing from my original batch. not going to put them all here, but a few Important ones (which i actually had to make new art for) are the rock paper scissors cheatsheet, the Larger versions of the craft signs (used in the calamité fight and. probably somewhere else idk), and the craft signs for the tutorial kid fight!

aaaand i think that’s it! for stuff from this update. yeah no there’s more coming buddy. my tablet already broke one time this week there’s no way it’s happening twice. i’m not working on portraits Just Yet (though the temptation has been There), but i’ve got the title screens, a few backgrounds, and the ending cgs done! along with a few other assorted cgs sketched out. because im out of my fucking mind. so, uh, see you soon!! enjoy!!

[intotheelliwoods]

Poptart to Poptart to Poptart to Poptart communication.

[cherrirui-official]

Friendlocke Violet Gijinkas (Part 4/7)

Hell yeah we're over halfway done! Isn't that crazy? I don't have too much to say here sooooooo onto the usual stuff

I plan on posting them in order by groups of three, so there's gonna be seven parts in total, all of which I'll be linking here when done vvv

(Part One) (Part Two) (Part Three) (Part Five) (Part Six) (Part Seven)

!! These will contain personal headcanons I have for the cast, little fun facts, and also spoilers for Friendlocke Violet (for both the edited vids and the streams) !!

@saltydkart-reblogs

Designs under the cut!

VRISKA:

Vriska has an extra set of arms that they can retract and extract whenever they please. However, they usually keep those arms hidden.

The long needle she's holding is her trusty sword that she's used since her pirate days. She doesn't use it as much as she used too, but it's good to keep it on her for self defense in case of an emergency.

The marks on thier neck and shoulders aren't tattoos, they're birthmarks.

Good at sewing, as she often would have to fix her coat after getting into epic pirate sword fights. Sara and Vriska are sewing buddies!

It is unknown why they're unable to sleep, but while the rest of the team sleeps they often find themselves wandering around and doing whatever they want.

Artist's note: I based Vriska's design off the fact that I wanted to make her look like a bootleg version of the og Vriska. As in "Hey that's Vriska" but also "That's not VRISKA" if you get what I mean

MALL BINGO:

Trained herself to become resistant to poison (and by "trained" I mean she just ate a bunch of poison until her body became almost immune to it... please don't try this at home.)

Often goes scavenging for items when she's doesn't feel like robbing someone. If she's lucky enough she'll find some good items scattered around because "stupid trainers often leave good shit on the ground for some reason" (due to all the items you can pick up from the ground ingame lmao)

Mal lost her leg in one of her first heists, after she and another pawmi tried stealing from the wrong person at the worst possible time.

The gun she keeps with her wasn't originally hers, it belongs to someone else.

On a more positive note, Mal has plenty of stories and tall tales to share. She learned them from the eldest in her little pawmi group, as they would often tell her stories before going to sleep. Mal will often share those same stories with Peppy Jr and Mykyie Jr.

Can and will bite you. You won't be expecting it. Be warned.

GRUNPILO:

Due to his abundantly long hair, Grunpilo often lets Mal play around with it and style it however she wants.

It is unknown how or why he picked up on puppetry specifically, but it makes him happy so who are we to judge?

Speaking of which, he creates his own puppets by hand, from simple sock puppets to marionettes on strings. The two hand puppets shown are his favorite ones though.

Sometimes he'll be found speaking to them as if they're real.

Not good in social situations or confrontation, so Mal will sometimes have to speak for him. ("EXCUSE ME! He asked for no pickles!" /ref)

EXTREMELY light, very easy to pick up.

And that's all! Only three more batches left woo, hopefully I can finish them by the end of the year lol.

[righteous-r0de0]

Vincent and Lovely’s House

they have a smaller, modern house. they’ve downsized since leaving the house, but vincent has an afterlife’s worth of savings for their home’s upkeep. it’s a couple miles outside of dahlia, 3 bed/2 bath

the master bedroom is very big, with the sleeping area secluded from windows (like the first picture)(just in case) and a sitting area that leads to a balcony for stargazing and other activities (a la freelancer and gav). they both have a penchant for the finer things in life including expensive furniture and the nicest bedding and mattress that money can buy

do they have guests? no. not very often. but do they have enough seating to host a small army? yes. and a reading nook. they’re both avid readers

the entryway with the baby grand piano (vincent is in the process of teaching lovely how to play) off in a nook to the right

rain shower. need i elaborate?

they don’t cook much but they sure do love slow dancing in the kitchen together sorry sorry sorry

color palette

pinterest board and taglist below the cut!

@froggytimemachineinternet @zimix-whispers @int3rtwiningh3artstrings @milogreersleftdresssock @aghostswhisper @wilted-rose-posts @starvin-darlin

[justkillingthyme]

Hi do you have thoughts on Leon Bronev i saw the video you made of him on tiktok and i wanna know what you found

I want to crunch him.

I’ve been having a lot of thoughts about him in relation to Emmy. About how he acts to her and how it differs from how he treats Theo and Hershel

I haven’t looked back to the end of MM and AL in a while so I’m just gonna ramble about early Bronev rather than totally brainwashed Bronev.

I think he was a good father to Hershel and Theodore. If a little strict, he cared. He loved his family, and tried to raise them the best he could. I haven’t thought much about his family, but I think he was Literally Just Some Guy.

In one of my fics I detail Rachel’s death and a bit about them together. My personal hc revolves more on the side of her being immunocompromised and they were a bit anxious about having children lest they inherit her immune system. But Hershel was healthy and Theo was too (eventually).

Nest Era Bronev was just kinda trying to get by. Eventually he succumbed to the whole Targent System of abuse and had his morals bend little by little. It was a years long I’m in a cult thing for him.

Emmy is a decade or so younger than Hershel, so depending on how old you place Theo (I now place him closer to 7), Emmy was born 3 years after the Bronevs were snatched. I hc he started mentoring her around the time she was 7-10. So by the time started with her he was already 10 years into the system.

Writing the targent Hershel fic and canary shifted a lot of my perspective on how intense Targent is about obedience and how far they will push a person. It’s kill or be killed. Cognitive dissonance on his part, but we know by the time he’s been there for 30 years he truly believes he’s in the right.

Emmy cannot be a daughter for him. He already has two sons. Around the time he takes in Emmy he starts looking for Hershel (and finds Theo instead/learns about the swap. That’s a whole other thing for me to talk about). He’s still sentimentally attached to his family, and having attachments Can And Will be used against you.

Especially once he gets into a position of power. If Emmy is seen as an attachment, it could be used against him. I hc bronev took power when there was a vacuum.

Even if he wants to love her, he can’t. Not traditionally at least. It would be dangerous for the both of them. And at some point he might believe that the way he treats her isn’t anything wrong. Either that it’ll help toughen her up, or that she’s a subordinate and that’s all she is. He can’t let himself see her familiarly, or as anything more than a weapon amongst many. She cannot be special.

[dio-the-thot-exterminator]

silly request for @aggressively-crying arsonist Sari!!!!!

[smellpelt]

[Smellpelt receives a letter]

"Hi, cool otherworld painter. I learned that you know a very awesome strong wolf lady and I would be pleased to to meet her. please. - P. Snow H. (Hunter) not the other 1"

Hi friend! can my oc play with your oc is Bubbles in a good mood and available to bench press my stupid man? Once will do.

She's onto it but I can't guarantee his safety after that 🫡

[moeblob]

I named the plot "guess I'll marry the demon lord?" and I realized if I wanted a lengthier title it could be "I could conquer the world if I had ADHD medicine but I don't so I became a trophy husband instead". And then as I'm giving him various background traits I realized one little piece of information would make everything make sense. He's from Florida.

[ourskiesaboveus]

Hi (: tell me about gods play

okay! it's the project with paya's blessing / the curse

the bulk of the lore was done three years ago and was recorded on a video that now has no audio, so. i'm only going over what i actually solidly have (this is going to be long oops)

there's a world called peripetasmata. kind of. most call it mata, more pious or older folk call it magnam stravi tapetibus pictis (but that's a mouthful and a half). it's a universe that contains countless dimensions within itself, but there are four main dimensions.

simplex timor - basically the tutorial level where everyone starts out. all powers are limited. once you reach a certain level of power, you can leave, but it's harder to return the more powerful you are. even finding it from the outside is difficult, but there have been a few people who have gotten lost who ended up in simplex. it's not actually an independent dimension (it's a part of a larger one), but it's separate and significant enough to be considered one of the main four. there are natural sources of food and water here, but they are scarce.

naturae timor - the larger dimension that simplex is a part of. it's the most populated one, as the people there usually either don't want to bother with leaving or can't navigate between dimensions. it looks like another overgrown Earth, but all naturally growing plants are poisonous. there are ruins of a vague ancient civilization covered in vines. there are patches of fertile land and many pocket realms that hold blessed lands, but it’s a whole dimension so they’re hard to find and often claimed.

ars timor - basically just hell. the dimension with the least people, with a thriving population of firebrands (more on that later) and wild animals with various deadly modifications. most of the dimension is made up of scorched wasteland or glass, with various seemingly man-made structures fused into the ground at an angle. there are settlements and false groves that have sources of food and water.

abyssi timor - a dimension that consists of many floating islands. it is sky and sea in one-- if you fall enough, the air turns thick and cold, and if you swim up enough, the water lightens and warms. it is the most bountiful of the four dimensions, but there are consequently deadlier things that inhabit it. monstrous guardians patrol the void and guard particularly choice islands. there are many temples and religious-looking structures that seem to have been abandoned millennia ago-- many groups end up inhabiting these for the convenience.

so in mata there are powers and magic and all that fancy stuff. the origin of all that are the "gods" of the universe. i am saying "gods" in quotation marks because they are... complicated. not all of them are quite the same thing.

they are called "patrons". why? well, because they grant power to "protégés" in order to increase their own powers. a combination of faith, story, and literal fuel (physical or magical) keeps them running and growing. the proportions vary based on the patron.

there are quite a few, but i'll go over some more plot-relevant or interesting ones

patriarch yaamin / "paya" - a humanoid patron that vaguely resembles an angel, if angels had no eyes and were fully covered in golden ring-like marks.

his followers (who call themselves "the living") view him as a god. this is strange, as no other faction views patrons as true gods-- most are split between seeing them as spirits or as particularly advanced creatures, still as mortal as the rest. the only other patron with a following that views him as god-like intentionally cultivates his image to be so, and even then he can't achieve the level of piety that paya invokes. it's a combination of his gold and white angel imagery along with the fact that he really doesn't interact with humans much

also his didn't cultivate his following on purpose. reverie (another patron, not relevant) did it on a whim, partially as a favor. he could not care less about the living, but he won't actively do anything about them, as they do help him out through their faith.

his protégés don't get any higher level of regard either. in fact, he doesn't even choose them. instead, he plants "shrines" around mata that designate the first person to encounter them as his protégé.

here are the requirements to be paya's protégé:

not already a protégé or sought after by someone else

see above

the reason that this method works out for him is because of his unorthodox way of granting powers to his protégés. while most other patrons see their patronage as some sort of investment in the person, paya doesn't care about the people he grants power to because they aren't supposed to be particularly long lived.

instead of indirectly granting powers via something like a contract, he directly fuses a fragment of his essence with his protégés. this leads to stronger magic overall, but the human body isn't meant to contain that type of power. it takes time to fully process the fragment and completely realize your potential. however, that comes with drawbacks. since paya is obviously stronger than a normal human, as you gain more access to his power, his power gains access to you. your body morphs to become more like his-- gold rings spread across your body starting from your left or right hand (it depends on what you used to touch the shrine, doesn't necessarily need to be the hand) and your eyes lose function and twist. as the process goes on, you experience personality changes, memory loss, decline of finer motor skills. eventually, you become fully taken over and become a mindless beast. they're referred to as "blessed spirits" by the living and "golden" by most other people. they're basically wandering boss monsters that attack anything that doesn't hold part of paya's power and that doesn't visibly outclass them. their presence warps the world, spreading paya's influence and infecting plants and animals with his golden rings. when they die, paya gets that bit of essence back and starts the process over again. paya benefits twofold from this-- he siphons energy from the souls they release and he gains power from his infection being spread.

how powerful the golden are depends on their compatibility with paya's essence. their behaviour depends on mostly the mental strength/state of the person who was infected. they can range to completely bestial and mindless to humanoid with some memories and free will. being golden only means that you've fully adapted to paya's essence-- you're at the peak of your power. the state is variable to an extent. if you keep your mind when you turn golden, you can still lose everything if you stop fighting. you can't get better, only maintain your state or worsen.

paya's protégés often try to isolate themselves from others for obvious reasons, especially later on. there is, however, one group of late-stage protégés (the sunmarked) that band together to protect themselves and others. there are two measures they take to do so.

there is a certain kind of gemstone-- "oryxian gems"-- that delay the adaptation process. (they're part of the influence of another patron.) without them, the process takes about a month to complete, but with them, the process can be slowed by up to five years, depending on when they're first used.

they've developed a technology that kills people as soon as they fully turn golden. there are collars that the sunmarked wear in their final weeks that siphon paya's essence from them and converts it to usable form as soon as it's fully expressed. this kills them, as at this point in the process, their soul and body are too connected to the essence to survive without it. typically, sunmarked go out with a bang by fulfilling a particularly hard task with the enormous amount of power they have before they die

the sunmarked are lead by darren annin, a sunmarked perpetually frozen at the final stage of development. he claims that he found a particular flower that saved him from falling. (in reality, he's completely golden, just with enough mental strength and an anchor to keep his free will. he doesn't tell anyone else because he doesn't want to risk others trying to save themselves and fail-- few people are aware that golden can keep any part of their minds at all)

the angel's blessing (paya's patronage) grants the afflicted with a great variety of powers that increase as time goes on. varying levels of invulnerability, night vision, holy and nature magic, and more!

RIOT - a demon-esque patron that kind of looks like hoopla? like the pokémon? he's made up of several floating parts-- a one-eyed, horned head, many limbs, and a screen in the place of a torso. each of his limbs has an eye on them

RIOT is not an infection like paya-- he feeds off of strong negative emotions. things like shock, fear, anger, et cetera.

he is the patron that interacts with humans the most. while other patrons inhabit their own locked dimensions and mostly descend in incarnations or visions, RIOT mostly hangs out in ars timor and often ventures out into the other three main dimensions to wreak havoc. people try their best to avoid him.

RIOT usually sets up elaborate spectacles in order to horrify people. if you see a random circus or theatre where there hadn't been one before, probably don't go there! he delights in specialized torment served to a wide audience, like one of those death games with your personal secrets up for grabs. he's a riot.

his relationship with his protégés is more standard-- a contract signed. he grants them magic and the ability to feed as he does in exchange for a certain amount of power a month. it's like they're renting

if they can't pay up, he takes the payment directly from them. if it ends up being a reoccurring thing, he destroys the contract and his former protégé.

his protégés are called "firebrands" (see, it did come back up) and usually work alone. particularly successful firebrands can become almost as powerful as the sunmarked! his only standards for decision are "look fun", but to be fair, he eliminates everyone who doesn't meet his expectations, so he doesn't need to be that discerning with the process.

firebrands get: extra limbs (optional), limited tracking (enhanced awareness of emotion around you), dark and illusion magic, limited mind reading

the untitled - just humanoid. this man is a normal guy. there are times when he looks like a biblical seraphim, but that's just a guise to intimidate

he goes by the untitled and doesn't reveal his name under normal circumstances but i'm not going to write it out every time sorry. his name is heun. (he thinks it is, anyway.)

heun is a transmigrator, a sad victim of truck-kun. he was an ordinary office worker who read trash webnovels before getting distracted in the road and getting run over by a truck. fortunately, mata's creator understood how tropes work and shuttled him over to mata with a system like the ones in the webnovels he read!

he's the weakest of the patrons and the others mostly look down on him, but his system protects him enough that no one outright tries to get rid of him.

his protégés are the strongest. no question. though they start out relatively weak, he keeps a personal eye on them and they're able to grow pretty quickly. he only invests in one protégé at a time, and always a low number (i'll get into that later), so though he's the weakest, he's able to put everything he's got into his heroes.

heun mostly subsists off of the legends of his heroes past and rewards from his system when his current hero achieves certain goals.

he has a decent following that see him as a sort of god-- they await his prophecies and follow his hero whenever they are designated. though they view him as god-like, they see the other patrons as nothing more than spirits, in contrast to the living who see all other patrons as gods, though fallen ones.

his following is cultivated by his system. to be perfectly honest, he'd be nothing without it, but where's the fun in that?

he's extremely lax with his protégés. he's like a dad who strives to be your best friend above all else

his heroes can eventually get partial invulnerability, any magic affinity, summoning abilities, flight, shapeshifting, the works. he's experimented with martial arts and standard wuxia leveling as well.

alright this is getting too long. i only got through the men i'm so sorry women and cool guys i'll get you next time. paya why do i have so much on you i even omitted some stuff for time reasons.

okay! more about the actual story itself and related tidbits

alright so what was i talking about with the low number thing? well, mata, believe it or not, has a rather high death rate. and it has a rather small population of humans, as least for the space they have. and mata never came with humans pre-stocked, as it were.

enter the sacrifices !!

100 of them a year are imported directly to mata in groups of 10. (1000 in the first year.) the reason why they are sacrificed is. complicated but long story short they're from a post-apocalyptic world and it's part of an agreement to sustain their communities.

each person in a group of ten gets a number from 1-10. this number is pretty much random, and everyone gets their own number. numbers obviously repeat across groups, but that doesn't matter.

this number shows the order you will die in. 10 is the first to go, 1 is the last. this is why heun chooses low numbers for his chosen ones.

the count in one group does not affect others-- it isn't the case that all 10s must go before 9s can die.

obviously, knowing the order in which you die is helpful. in the early stages, groups protect their higher numbers and sent out lower numbers to do riskier jobs. the person designated with the number 10 is not often allowed to do much. it doesn't guarantee safety, as you could easily be stuck in a near-death state, waiting for all higher numbers to die before you are released from your suffering, but it's better than nothing.

there are a couple cases where higher numbers are captured and forcibly kept alive in order to preserve a lower number from their group, but those cases are pretty rare.

numbers cannot be fully concealed using things like gloves or long sleeves. they must be open enough to be recognizable as their numeral and no other. if they are not, the number can and will show through clothing.

you cannot tell when higher numbers in your group die, so it's common for numbers close to each other to stay in contact even if they split up. it's just polite. of course, as time goes by, fewer people remember to do so, as they blend into new communities and become detached from their original group. who cares if you can die or not? you should live the same either way, and the end will catch up eventually, so keep the mystery as you would in the original world.

no force can counteract the numbers. it's just not done. there have been patrons that have tried, but to no avail.

y'know what this is too long. i'll keep this post to just these bits of worldbuilding and maybe have another post with story and the actual characters in the story. oops

[lcs-scar]

Same anon as before! Thank you for responding!! I would love to see your doodles for these boys I can’t wait!! But I have a request in mind!

Do you think you could draw The Eltingville Club in certain sketches or just them meeting their past and/or future selves?

Thank you for responding and have an amazing day/night!!! 💗💓💞💕💖💖💘🩷

Aaaaah!! Sweet anon from before!! Hi hello!! :D💕💕

This request took me a bit since I wasn't sure how I'd make them interact with their epilogue self (I only have one joke idea, maybe drawing that soon), but I then remembered the "past" selves bit, and immediately thought of the drawing idea I did here for Jerry, and then everything came naturally.

It was quite fun to think and come up with their design, it's also sweet to think about what could have been...

[kateis-cakeis]

people are really so weird and so fatphobic huh

(and oops most of my commentary is in the tags XD)

[seyaryminamoto]

I'm gonna join the little crowd of canon Zuko dislikers who believe he becomes a lot more likeable character in Gladiator. He's not scarcely developed like he is in canon. I can notice how he grows from his anger issues that could lead to dangerous outbursts into someone who knows how to keep calm and in control. From self-centered to considerate of others. From entitled to responsible. From having a confused moral compass that depends greatly on Iroh to a man who knows how to make his own decisions enough to even call Iroh out on his mistakes (removing Iroh from Zuko's growth journey was something that greatly benefited him since Iroh burdening Zuko with expectations and plans for his life, with Zuko simply shifting from following a parental figure to another, at least according to my reading of canon).

Most Zuko stories I read are either focused on milking extra sympathy for him or washing the flaws down the drain into awkward turtleduck, and both of these narratives are cringeworthy, with the comics doing him no favors either but doubling down on these flaws.

So his characterizations in Gladiator was a breath of fresh air. That one line when Guru Pathik told him "He damaged your willingness to open yourself to others… to let someone else look after you, out of fear of being vulnerable, I expect." was moving and even relatable.

Ah, damn, thank you very much for saying so! You know all too well that I have plenty of gripes with Zuko's canon writing, so I'm really glad that you feel this way about my portrayal of him in Gladiator... I have to say, I think a lot of my issues with canon Zuko became clearer precisely because I was writing him from scratch in this story. I struggled to understand many things about him back when I watched the show, without my full awareness initially, and I genuinely realized what those things were once I started writing him in Gladiator.

My inability to grasp Zuko properly is one of the reasons why I chose to rewrite Zuko's entire journey. Not only did it make sense to do so in this setting, but the truth is that I hoped it would help me get a better handle of his character: I'd written post-canon content already and the one character I wasn't sure I was writing correctly was Zuko. People would tell me that I shouldn't write him being so moody anymore, that he had become more mature, that he had become basically a perfectly decent person, that he would be a better brother to Azula than how I depicted him, and that I had to work on that. I'd hear all that criticism and then I'd take a look at canon Zuko... and I'd wonder if I was missing episodes or something, since there were many instances, post-redemption, where Zuko made displays of many flaws (be it his temper, be it his narrow mind, be it selfishness, you name it) that a lot of people were constantly pretending he had relinquished completely as soon as he joined the Gaang.

So... it became clear that I just couldn't write him the way they wanted me to X'D it wasn't natural for me, the character they were asking me to write didn't feel like Zuko to me at all, and I honestly didn't understand why right away. And so, as Gladiator's idea crystallized, I realized I'd have a clear shot at writing Zuko's character arc from scratch, I'd get to develop him on my terms, and I'd be the one to decide which traits and flaws he'd preserve throughout his growth process. Doing this helped in a lot of ways, of course, as in changing his journey, I started to realize just what were the elements of his canon storyline that I wasn't 100% pleased with.

Even from the start, I've had readers who felt very sorry for Gladiator's Zuko (especially because Mai married someone else when he was hoping she would have been waiting for him) since he definitely was starting out in a very bad place and a lot of people were immediately emotionally attached to him because they already were in canon. Still, I think part of why he resonated with readers in a different way than canon Zuko was that the challenges I was giving him were different from the ones canon did. For one thing, I let him go home without having captured the Avatar: he knew that he wouldn't have the "approval" of his father from the start. Instead of using Mai as a manner of compensation for him, or as his only true bond in the Fire Nation, Mai was actually another source of anguish simply because she moved on with her life, something Zuko never anticipated she would do. Iroh's sudden interest in the Gladiator League, his sister being up to her own business and becoming a hugely popular public figure while he was mostly sorting out how to live life again... Zuko had a lot on his plate for sure from the very beginning.

Instead of simply making these inconveniences go away, though, instead of featuring every character validating him at every turn and grieving along with him over how unfair his life was, Gladiator's Zuko had to learn how to live with all those things that changed while he was gone. He learned to let go of so many things he couldn't control. He started developing his own interests, connecting with new people, and he tried to figure out how he wanted to live his life, above all else. If he was never going to reclaim his role as Ozai's heir because Ozai wouldn't let him? Zuko would have to decide what to make of himself beyond the idealized future on the throne that he used to cling to... and he did just that.

At this point, back in Part 1, I realized that a lot of what I was doing with Zuko had never really happened in canon. His personal worldview wasn't defied: his father's worldview, which he had adopted, but that he apparently didn't believe all that faithfully, was what he changed his mind about, and he wound up adopting Iroh's belief system instead. It's not Zuko's own beliefs that are contested and challenged: one example of that is his belief in canon that his sister was born lucky, that she didn't work for anything, that he was the one who had to struggle and that was why he was ultimately stronger than her: at no point does the story make him look at his sister any differently. At no point does he conclude that maybe it's fine if she's a stronger fighter because his convictions are the right ones, because his bonds with people are truer, because maybe the true worth of a person isn't how skilled they are at combat. He was never confronted with any of this, never had to think on it at all, and so, the story concludes by as good as rewarding him with a fight where he's beating up his sister and proving himself superior to her. How was his belief defied? It wasn't. It was only reinforced, confirmed, reiterated, and he got away with his dream scenario in which he "put Azula in her place". As in, chains and an asylum. How much of a challenge was this, in terms of conviction, for Zuko? It wasn't one whatsoever.

Along with that belief, he also believed the throne was his birthright (... and I reiterate that I don't understand why he treated it that way, considering that he spent many years of his life believing Iroh and Lu Ten would be Fire Lord and Crown Prince respectively, far more years than he spent being banished or being Crown Prince for Ozai...), but by the end of the story, he becomes Fire Lord indeed, so what he was chasing for happened anyhow: Zuko is rewarded, yet again, by the confirmation of the beliefs he held all along. Yes, he had a hard time throughout the show, but that doesn't change that when the story wraps up, he's exactly where he always envisioned he would be. So, as much as he may have changed and grown, ultimately his two primary beliefs ("Azula needs to go down", "I will be Fire Lord"), at the very core of his character, were never put into question.

This is without going into all those times where his behavior leaves much to be desired, where he acts irresponsibly, where he even withholds vital information from his new friends for reasons that don't make sense, and he gets away with all of it without even a slap on the wrist. There's no pushback, all be it so he can have, again, exactly what he wants: a group of friends who cherish him deeply, so much that he can do completely senseless things like attack them over their inaction due to their lack of information, which he didn't bother disclosing to them because "it was obvious" (it wasn't), and nobody finds that alarming or worrisome, anything he says or does is 100% fine because it's him and everyone must love him, of course.

All this flies against some of my fundamental passions as a storyteller. I've always enjoyed doing something that is, honestly, a really simple way to build a character arc: give a character something they want, and then take them on a journey of existential crisis that will eventually make them question whether or not that's really what they want anymore x'D I've been doing it since well before I got into ATLA, and it's 100% what I've done with a LOT of characters in Gladiator. There was nothing quite as distressing for someone like Azula than falling in love with the defiant Water Tribe warrior who refuses to bow down to the Fire Nation's alleged superiority, all of which leads her to question her beliefs, her assumptions about life -- is the Fire Nation truly superior? Is Sokka right to defy it and rebel as often as he does? Her father, obviously, doesn't want her to marry anyone outside Fire Nation nobility -- is he right to want that, though? Isn't it up to her to decide what she should do in life? If she chooses to be with Sokka, does it mean she's rebelling against her father? Is that wrong or right? After over twenty years of following Ozai's ideology, does she have the courage to turn her back on him and open her heart to a different way of living?

It's particularly easy to see it in Azula, but it really has happened with basically every important character in the story (save for the more villainous ones, I guess), and Zuko is no exception. The goals he sought, the people he idealized and idolized, have changed a lot in his eyes as he grows and changes too. And by specifically choosing every element of his growth, and how they impact him, I've also pushed his development all the way to the point where, like you mentioned, he meets Guru Pathik and, upon opening his fire chakra, Zuko is basically set free. Everything he went through up until that moment has been adding up to a conclusion he hadn't quite unlocked... until he did that day. It was difficult, it wasn't intuitive for him, but it's as if he had opened his eyes to the world fully for the first time, and he could see things so much more clearly because he finally knows how to do so. And it doesn't mean that he will be at all merciful with Ozai, just as it doesn't mean that he will condemn Iroh to hell for the horrors he's responsible for... but it means that he's ready to stand on his own, and to not let other people choose his identity for him, particularly these two.

I'm honestly surprised by how his development has reached the point it has. After all these years of being well-known for being ambivalent towards Zuko even at the best of times, I've honestly felt proud of this guy for the first time ever while writing Gladiator Part 3 xD it's not exactly common for me to feel that I'm in a good spot with Zuko, but it really took me breaking him down from the get-go, rewinding him to his earliest stages, with very little to no development, and taking his growth into my own hands completely. I'm sure a few people thought I was a mindless Zuko hater after everything I put him through in Part 1, and that everything I was doing to him was some manner of vendetta because he had a better outcome in canon than Azula, and I was overcompensating for that in Gladiator... well, I hope that, if any of those people are still here now, they'll actually see what the point was xD the point honestly wasn't to punish Zuko: I just needed to develop him on my own terms, and it wasn't an easy journey, but it's one I'm genuinely pleased with. His hard-gained maturity, his reliability, his strength of heart even when facing that the world isn't quite what he thought he was... all those things have led me to feel like I can actually write, at last, the characterization of Zuko that so many people thought I should have been doing since day one. But this time, I handled it myself. This time, I know this character personally, and I know that his journey adds up to the man he has become up to the newest chapters. I'm not standing on shaky grounds, confused about what I'm doing, the way I was with his character back when I was writing canon-based content primarily.

And indeed, in doing so, I've come to understand just why Zuko's canon journey didn't hit every mark I needed it to. I'm not going to pretend that I've handled him flawlessly, but I do think that I've let him be a version of himself that doesn't need to be coddled, doesn't need a second person to perpetually stand beside him, whispering in his ear what's right or wrong, doesn't need someone else to serve as his scapegoat, so he can blame all his misfortunes on them... above all else, it's a Zuko who can think properly on who he is, who he wants to be, and reflect on whether he's failing or succeeding at that endeavor. Yes, sometimes he'll feel the pull to be selfish, sometimes he'll be harsh, sometimes he'll be unsure of what path to follow, but ultimately? He will be ready to make the tough choices. He will also be ready to step out of his comfort zone to do right by the people he wants to protect. He will be responsible... he will actually learn to be a leader, and not simply for the sake of repurposing the skill for a future potential tenure as Fire Lord. That's not his ultimate motivation in this setting.

So, all of this really ended up putting in sharp focus for me that so many of these elements of growth are actually only implicit in canon, or outright non-existent. They hinge often on interpreting Zuko in the most positive light possible, in denying his flaws and in pretending the tropes he embodies are more representative of who he is than the person he actually proved to be through his actions and behavior throughout the show. In one breath, people will claim he's incredibly complex and in the next they will sweep away all such complexities to declare him exempt from all the consequences of his actions. As much as I can understand the protectiveness that comes with having a fictional character mean a lot to you, the fact that pointing out any single mistake or misbehavior by him in canon feels like such a threat to the character his fans think he is -- hence their immediate, alarming, wild arguments to defend him --, tells you that the idea of Zuko is more important than Zuko as a fictional character. It's all about what he "represents", and very little about who he actually is. In my experience, it's not common to find fic writers who actually handle Zuko correctly, and I sure love it when they do, but just as you said it, so many people bank on milking out extra sympathy for him (as if the show hadn't done a ton of that to begin with), and very little is about exploring him as a character in a deeper, more challenging way than what canon did.

As a long-time Zuko critic, I'll never stop saying that my problem with Zuko isn't who he's supposed to be, but who he actually is. It's in the writing flaws that make his growth process far more questionable in canon than it should be, and more than anything, that the fandom has taken to defending anything he chooses to do relentlessly, almost religiously. There are so many elements of his growth that could have been handled better... and as I wrote him in Gladiator, the clearer those elements became. Naturally, I'm working with an older Zuko, but similar beats could have happened in his character arc in the show and they simply didn't.

Anyway! All this is to say... thank you very much for sharing your thoughts :) I know there's been a ton of contentious arguments about these subjects lately, and I really am glad that I can write a Zuko that makes sense to those of us who are critical of him in canon. What I feel like a lot of the Zuko defenders don't understand is that we don't want him to be perfect: we want him to be treated in the same way other characters are treated, rather than getting preferential treatment where so many others, with similar traumas to his own, aren't given the same courtesy. But in my honest, sincere opinion, I wish I could love Zuko. I really wish I could enjoy his character as much as other people do. I absolutely believe I would, if the writing around him had addressed all the elements I needed it to address in order for his journey and character arc to add up successfully. And yes, it's fine by me if people love him exactly as he is: I don't have to, though. Neither do you. And if I'm writing a Zuko the two of us can genuinely enjoy, the better for us, am I right? XD

Thanks again for this ask <3

[justicefanged]

Water, Earth, Uh--*looks at smudged writing on hand* Fistfight?

Swept away by either a massive wave or a powerful gale on a clear day, you soon find yourself inside a circular arena. One of your allies stands at the far end, outfitted in strange armor and weaponry that clearly was never made for living creatures. Your “benefactor” - water that holds its form in the shape of a person - grants you a selection of accessories and armor as well, all strangely crafted, and leaves you to choose your equipment so that it can instead bicker with its opponent - a stationary tornado. You don’t understand much of what’s happening, but you do know competition when you see it: both the water and the wind elemental aim to prove that their human gladiator is the best. [Grants Heavy Armor or Gauntlets +1]

Coming to in places he didn't recognized -- while still fucking pint-sized -- really needed to stop. Sure, it'd really only happened twice, but it was sorta weird that it had happened twice, y'know? After managing their way out of those Saints forsaken tunnels, they had what felt like all of five minutes to catch their breath before some weather out of hell descended on them out of a clear blue sky and separated them.

A powerful wind had swept yanked Raven one way, while the crash of water had swept Linus off in another.

But, focusing back in on the here and now, it seems they're at least in the same place again. The walls are high -- at least, at this size, they are; it'd probably look like a child's toy otherwise -- and crudely built up. It almost looked like someone had built it out of mud and left it to dry in the sun. It clearly wasn't made to look pretty; some sections weren't even with others, and even from his vantage point, it was obviously not in a completely round shape.

Letting out a growling breath, Linus scrapes to his feet and dusts himself off. Tries to. Still kind of damp. His gaze first goes to Raven, who is on the other side of this makeshift arena; he seems well enough from here, if a bit ruffled from the wind storm that had pulled him away. The redhead was already arming himself with...weapons? Sort of in the same quality as their arena, the weapons and armor left out for their obvious use weren't...fantastic. Not made by any person, that was for sure. They looked...rugged, like they shouldn't function well for movement or fall apart on impact, but these things were literally water and wind in the vague form of humans, so who knew what any of it was capable of?

Speaking of...

Linus shifted his attention to the squabbling element-shapes, eyes narrowing and face scrunching up in a snarl. Though it was hard to understand anything that was being said -- the water one burbled inside of itself, while the tornado went from wispy to howling in the same exchange -- it wasn't too hard to connect the dots. They were arguing. Over the two people they'd picked up like toys.

Like...toys....

Linus took another look around, letting himself full body slump for a moment and groan as he realized what was going on here.

This was like kids getting heated over who had found the cooler frog down by the riverbank. Only, they were the frogs in this situation, and instead of a race that ultimately ended up going nowhere because one of the frogs refused to move and the other simply hopped over the sticks used as an outline of a track, it looked like things were going to turn into a good ol' arena dust up.

Well, if they were looking for a show, maybe giving them a good one was their ticket out of this disaster. Linus completely passed up the armor -- never needed it before, why start now? -- and grabbed up what looked to be cobbled together gauntlets. They were solid, heavy -- like they'd been made out of rock, smoothed down in most places except for the knuckles which were left with some wicked looking ridges.

That'd definitely do some damage, if you get a good hit in.

Whistling to get Raven's attention across the arena -- and, hopefully, their...backers? -- Linus slammed his fists together, grinning wildly at the hefty crack of stone against stone. "Hey, hey! Hope you're ready to put on a good show, Red! I'll even let'cha get first try, since I got ya on the backfoot so fast in our last fight!"

They just had to make it look good, and then figure out how to get away from these things, right?

@peerlessscowl

[thecherrygod]

Robot hdb and mechanic/technician kim pt 2, more serious this time

@morphlingunderscore thank you for taking interest in this!!! originally i didn't have too many thoughts about it but.... Something shifted, and last night i couldn't stop thinking about it, sorry if it got a bit too long kdkdkgks i got more invested than i thought i would

Maybe he was made by Dora? As part of a prototype series of robots, i think hdb could be harrys model And maybe she even named harry just. Harry. Bc there was something about him, about how programming, that was faulty but made him special (the skills. They make him too human while not human enough) (also maybe part of his program knows he had a name but it got wiped too, and he is fixated on it, on having lost that. .... It could be kept as part of a letter in a compartment somewhere in his robotic body... Maybe even in his chest cavity... Maybe Kim finds it when having to fix something in there........ No concrete thoughts there, just a vague idea that I'm keeping here.)

At first this would be very interesting, getting herself attached to him (and i feel like it's also the thing that makes Kim so invested in him later down the line)

But. Things keep breaking, he has blackouts (maybe caused by overheating? Maybe the skills cause the overheating and/or short-circuiting?), He keeps messing up his tasks, and his system may not be fully capable of following the classic three laws of robotics all the way through. It gets exhausting, she has better projects to work on, others that can stop being prototypes, more worthy of time and resources, that will get recognition, and get her out of the place they're living in.

And so she leaves, and leaves her old lab and obsolete projects to gather dust never to be used again.

Kim, on the other hand, really just is a mechanic for the most part, but he can really work with any machine, and would know about programming and circuits and everything, having learned about this on his free time.

This interest starts properly after having moved from foster families a few times, and managing to get a mechanic to take him and teach him how it all works, getting his hands on an actual engine,tho hes always been interested even as a child, from what he could find in books.

He has his own garage now, and works on any machine you bring him, from cars to a microwave, anything that helps him pay the bills and allows him to work with things he enjoys. Also doing these kind of household appliance fixes makes him go out in search for any parts that he may need for his job, whatever's cheaper (por straight up free, of you know where to go)

I think that, like in canon, it's thanks to Kim that harry wakes up again. In this case maybe hes looking around for something and manages to shock harry in a way that his body starts right there and then? Idk too much about this kinda stuff and it's late. It could also be noise with enough vibration to make Harry's gears shift again. But as i said idk about machines I'm general nor if that makes sense/is possible)

The rest is basically this: harry helps Kim find parts, either that they can use on him or on other machines. He malfunctions more now bc both of the prevailing issues, the wipe out, and the passing of time, and Kim is willing to fix the parts he can, and understand the ones that seem to make no sense, and this, all this, new, can bring a change to Kim's monotonous life, spark something in him, also be confronted about some of his being stagnant by harry. Also the wipeout isn't a complete thing, this guy would realize Kim likes speedfreaks and would use himself as a radio to play it just to see him have a good time, for example. His skills still work with understanding humans (... Sometimes).

another way of doing this tho would be hay being made for the rcm (still Dora's creation imo). Faulty but good for all the same reasons + this robot will give you a ridiculous list of theories/keep track of evidence/of witnesses) alibis/the things that have no relation to the case you don't want him to remember but still does.

In this case one of his faults could also be in fact his memory, and it being faulty enough it had an almost full cleaning could be from people trying to delete info from it and failing. Or him doing it himself so he feels like he still has a reason for not being discarded by the rcm. And kim could still be part of the rcm but both as a mechanic and a detective, or just mechanic, or just detective on paper but with the knowledge