#sorry it took so long to get out tho

[machinepilled]

AND QUITE SUDDENLY I REMEMBERED / I HAD BEEN HERE BEFORE

I’D STOOD ON THIS SAME HILL / I KNEW THE VALLEY OF WHICH I LOOKED

[toxintouch]

hii!! I just read cold spots and it was AMAZING!!! Im not sure if you wanted to continue the fic, but if you don’t mind could you continue with Veres part? I don’t know what you would write about but I just feel like that fic has so much potential to be a little 3 part series or something 🙏

<- Cold Spots TYSM ANON!! I put the Vere End at the beginning for ease of reading. For the sake of folks who would like to read this as a stand-alone... I think u can? With the knowledge that the premise of Cold Spots is that Mhin and MC/Sparrow went ghost hunting. Vere is said to have been responsible for a handful of local ghost stories, so…of course he makes some mischief.🦊 Also MC needs some Winter wear, stat.  A very light Possessive Vere warning in this btw, though perhaps in a roundabout way.  Plausible deniability is so important to him.

You putter around in your room at the Wet Wick as you go about your nightly routine. The occasional cheer or thud from below only accentuates your nervous energy, punctuating your reluctance to settle down and get into bed. You smooth the covers with your bandaged hands and fluff the pillow before extinguishing the lamplight. You tug the bedding up above your shoulders, fighting to get comfortable. As your eyelids finally start to droop, the flicker of a shadow catches your attention.   It dances and sways and bends and grows until suddenly it is right in front of you.  On top of you. Silken, blood red drips down onto your face, a knife gleam smile too close for comfort.  You breathe in a gasp, wondering if you should scream. “Vere, what–” “Shhh,” he coos, pressing a finger lightly to your lips.  His breath is hot against your skin. “I only came to keep you warm, pet.”

Heat Signature

“Poor thing.” Vere purrs.  “Your lips are so cold.”  He leans ever closer, his mouth hot over yours–hovering.  His other hand reaches for your face as well, nails trailing against your cheek in a teasing caress.

You feel even the thought of being cold leave your body, replaced instead by the unusual thrill he commands, that strange enthralling sway.

That heat you’ve come to associate with Vere; sweet tendrils of want that nestle in your bloodstream.

You squirm a little, though you can’t move much with him looming over you.

(You should probably do more to protest his intrusion into your room, you think to yourself, though, the majority of you is–curious, daresay even far too eager to–)

���Whatever trouble did you get up to that left you in such a state?”

At this you scoff, tilting your head back into the pillow and effectively knocking Vere’s finger from your lips.  

“As if you don’t know,” you accuse.

Vere looks entirely unperturbed by you shaking him off, his lithe fingers traveling freely along the newly displayed skin of your throat, making your pulse jump.

Vere chuckles at that, dark and silky.

“Being tight lipped about your adventures, hm?”  He angles your face just so, ensuring you meet his sharp eyes, his nose brushing up against yours.  “Not that it matters.  It so happens I do know what you’ve been up to.  Trespassing in places that don’t belong to you.”

“...It was an abandoned building.  I don’t think it really belonged to anyone.”

“And that’s where you’d be wrong,” Vere says, “everything in this city belongs to someone, darling.  You just don’t know what belongs to who yet.”  He peers down at you with laughter in his expression, though there's a distinct edge to it that you can't quite place.

“So, you're here because that building belongs to you...?”

“Hmm, amongst other things.  However shall I make you apologize to me for this most egregious offense?”  He asks airily, shifting until he’s beside you rather than perched over you, resting his cheek in his hand and letting his eyes slip closed. He's the absolute picture of unbothered leisure.  

(You’re not fooled–he’s simply waiting for you to let your guard down before he pounces.)

You open your mouth to deny any debts on your part (though, if your ghost hunting spot was indeed Vere’s hideout, you really do feel guilty) but Vere cuts you off before you can speak.

“Alas, I suppose it’s not mine anymore.  Within a week it will reek of wet dogs and cheap booze. It's a lost cause now that those drooling reprobates know it's inhabitable.  A pity.  By Eridia's standards it really was divine in its heyday.  Good wine, music, dancing.  There was this portrait artist who would paint the performances…”

His tone remains light as he reminisces.  But the look he pins you with is dangerous: his eyes gleaming bright, his canines bared in an irreverent grin.

“I had such hopes and dreams of reviving the place myself.  Some of the dances were very scandalous.  You never did share with me your stance on dancing, did you?”

You stumble out an approximate answer.  It’s…harmless information to give, isn’t it?

Though, judging by how pleased Vere looks, you wonder if you should have refused to say.  He looks positively wicked as he ponders your answer aloud.  “Oh, I’m sure you’ve got plenty of talents to share.  In another life, perhaps I'd have put you on stage.  Though, I admit.  I find myself partial to a private show.”

And–as expected–the moment you let your guard down, he's in your space again, crowding you.  Heat and proximity and the softest brush of his lips against yours, light enough to send a thrill down your spine, curiosity and a want so deep it surprises you.

“Well?”  He purrs.  “Care to audition?”

You can't hide behind the excuse of supernatural sway or charm or the thrall of hypnotic sunglo eyes.  It's not Vere's power that controls you. It's your own gnawing desire; starvation and longing that draws you to him despite all sense.

Kissing Vere is heady.  Dizzying.  

Kissing Vere is like being in conversation with Vere–a constant of giving and taking, being chased after and running to keep up.  It’s enticing and alluring and decadent and never quite enough, over too soon even as you feel yourself losing air, the rush of blood and sensation threatening to overwhelm you.

He gives a parting nip to your bottom lip as he pulls away.

Then another one, playful, to your jaw.

When he presses his face into the side of your neck, you expect him to bite again.

What you don’t expect is for him to nuzzle into you, inhaling deeply before heaving a great sigh, his tail flopping lazily to land across you with a thump.

He’s officious as he rearranges the covers, ensuring your arms are tucked carefully away from him before he’s willing to fully settle into the bedding, pulling the blankets up around the both of you like a den.  He hums something low in his chest as he tucks himself up alongside you, long tail curled around your waist. 

It’s rhythmic–

purring.

And it’s…soothing, actually.

The weight of him, the warmth.  The incessant lamplight of the Amaryllis District, shining ever present through your window, is dim–tolerable, even, courtesy of Vere's magnificent shadow manipulations and the blankets sheltering you. 

The constant noise seems to fade away as well, obscured by the sound of purring. “Falling asleep when you have me in your bed, pet?  You really do try your luck…”

[fleouriarts]

got bored living in the middle of nowhere so i made another hivemind animatic. kinda got tired of this one while i was working on it but oh well... hopefully you can all at least enjoy it ^__^

(link to it on youtube as well)

TRANSCRIPT UNDER THE CUT for anyone who needs it:

[groovy intro music]

D: When is McDonald’s gonna do the McGay for, uhh, the LGBTQ+ community month?

R: Wha-

D: They have a gay awareness month, right?

R: Pride month, it’s June-

D: Pride month, yeah, it’s June.

R: Yeah.

D: For pride month, McDonald’s should do a McGay!

R: [laughing] I don’t- I don’t think that’s-

D: And it’s like a cunty little McChicken, or something.

R: Nooooo, don’t say-

D: What?

R: Don’t SAY stuff like that!

D: A McGay, that’d be awesome!

R: A McGay is fine, just, the other part-

D: Think of how many people would order that!

R: I mean, of course-

D: “You guys wanna get some McGays for lunch?”

D: Me and the boys are going down to get McGays, for pride month, because WE ARE ALLIES.

R: I think it’d be good for allies-

D: Yeah.

R: - homosexual people, people of the LGBTQIA+ community-

D: Thank you.

R: - AND homophobes, I think would go get the McGay.

D: Yeah, and they’d like, give it to their friends, like with a Smirnoff Ice.

R: [laughs]

D: “Hey bro, I got you a snack” and they’re like “AUGH he McGay’d me, I gotta eat it now!”

R: “I gotta eat it off my friend’s ass!”

D: “I gotta divorce my wife, I’ve been living a lie!”

R: It’s gotta be a rainbow bun, right?

D: Something, yeah, I was trying to think.

R: Rainbow fries, maybe?

D: Yeah, I don’t know, cus gay people don’t really have a cuisine of their own.

R: Maybe it’s like- ooh! Lady Gaga Oreo McFlurry!

D: Sure.

R: That’s definitely good for the McGay Month.

D: Yeah, that’s alright with me.

R: [laughs] With you?

D: Approved.

R: What does that have to do with- what the hell?

D: I approve it. Any other ideas? … Declined. Don’t like that one.

R: I didn’t say one, so-

D: Yeah, you did. DING!

[groovy outro music]

[atopvisenyashill]

connections between naerys and sansa?

There’s plenty! She’s very much in a Naerys/Aegon scenario in ASOS & ACOK, where she has no ability to leave the capital, no one doing anything meaningful to protect her, and a King that is obsessed with sexually humiliating her. There’s a lot of romanticism and chivalry surrounding her character and how other people react to her character, the same as Naerys.

But also, Sansa makes the comparisons to Naerys herself, and she does it before she realizes what kind of person Joffrey is! In fact, it starts with her very first chapter where she compares Joffrey interrupting Ilyn Payne & Sandor Clegane to Aemon demanding a trial by combat against Ser Morgil:

A whole day with her prince! She gazed at Joffrey worshipfully. He was so gallant, she thought. The way he had rescued her from Ser Ilyn and the Hound, why, it was almost like the songs, like the time Serwyn of the Mirror Shield saved the Princess Daeryssa from the giants, or Prince Aemon the Dragonknight championing Queen Naerys's honor against evil Ser Morgil's slanders.

She will compare Joffrey to Aemon and herself to Naerys again later, to Ned:

"Father, I only just now remembered, I can't go away, I'm to marry Prince Joffrey." She tried to smile bravely for him. "I love him, Father, I truly truly do, I love him as much as Queen Naerys loved Prince Aemon the Dragonknight, as much as Jonquil loved Ser Florian. I want to be his queen and have his babies."

(lowkey she’s so fucking funny for that “i only just now remembered” comment, idk how ned kept a straight face for it)

She then uses Aemon (and the Cargyll twins) to make Tommen feel better and dunk on Joffrey:

Prince Tommen sobbed. "You mew like a suckling babe," his brother hissed at him. "Princes aren't supposed to cry." "Prince Aemon the Dragonknight cried the day Princess Naerys wed his brother Aegon," Sansa Stark said, "and the twins Ser Arryk and Ser Erryk died with tears on their cheeks after each had given the other a mortal wound." "Be quiet, or I'll have Ser Meryn give you a mortal wound," Joffrey told his betrothed.

Again, there’s a focus on Aemon’s romantic relationship with Naerys because that's what appeals to Sansa. But when people say "Sansa sees the world through stories" it's not just about how she romanticizes or idolizes knighthood, nobility, and chivalry - she thinks through information by comparing it with similar historical events or stories and analyzing it. She clearly sees the problem with Loras protecting Margaery from Joffrey by comparing him to the Toynes instead of Aemon, and Joffrey (once again) to Aegon the Unworthy:

She is so brave, Sansa thought, galloping after her . . . and yet, her doubts still gnawed at her. Ser Loras was a great knight, all agreed. But Joffrey had other Kingsguard, and gold cloaks and red cloaks besides, and when he was older he would command armies of his own. Aegon the Unworthy had never harmed Queen Naerys, perhaps for fear of their brother the Dragonknight . . . but when another of his Kingsguard fell in love with one of his mistresses, the king had taken both their heads. Ser Loras is a Tyrell, Sansa reminded herself. That other knight was only a Toyne. His brothers had no armies, no way to avenge him but with swords. Yet the more she thought about it all, the more she wondered. Joff might restrain himself for a few turns, perhaps as long as a year, but soon or late he will show his claws, and when he does . . . The realm might have a second Kingslayer, and there would be war inside the city, as the men of the lion and the men of the rose made the gutters run red.

She’s also not wrong in her assessment here because the Tyrells (my guess is Garlan and Olenna) are so worried about this outcome they just murder Joffrey and install Tommen; like Bethany Bracken, Margaery is groomed (with all the implications that are included in such a loaded term) to be sexually available to the King because her father wants power and doesn't care if his daughter is sexually abused to get it. Like Terrance Toyne, Loras is considered attractive, skilled, and has several brothers more than willing to start a war to avenge his death. I think it's incredibly intuitive that Sansa ultimately comes to the same conclusion as two seasoned political players like (presumably) Olenna and Garlan come to, and she makes this judgement call very quickly!

And Sansa also hits on a lot of (correct) similarities when she makes these comparisons between Joffrey's court and Aegon the Unworthy's court; Aegon and Joffrey both have wild, violent temperaments while being notoriously difficult to control. It’s not just Naerys that attempts to get Aegon to stop marital raping her; Aemon’s useless tears aside, Viserys does do the bare minimum here in sending Aegon away so Naerys can heal from her miscarriages, Daeron got shitty with the Brackens about being tacky over Naerys' marital rape and ill health, Baelor fasts himself to death over Naerys’ miscarriages, etc etc. All of the “authority figures” around Aegon think his behavior is wrong but Aegon proves stubbornly difficult to control or kill. Joffrey falls along these same lines - Cersei, Robert, Tyrion, Tywin, and even Varys all struggle to get some control over Joffrey but like Aegon, he knows once he’s of age and has that crown he doesn’t have to answer for SHIT and stubbornly resists every attempt to curb his behavior. Joffrey is a hell scenario waiting to happen because like Aegon, he’s petty and petulant enough to pull the stunts Aegon pulls like pitting his true born kids against his bastard born ones and causing another violent succession crisis. I say this as like, the ultimate Joffrey Apologist here, lmaooo, he has reasons for being a nasty piece of shit but the Tyrells are right to look at him and go “oh that’s trouble” because he is a ticking time bomb. And the crazy thing is, it’s not just Sansa who compares Joffrey to Aegon the Unworthy:

"A king can have other women. Whores. My father did. One of the Aegons did too. The third one, or the fourth. He had lots of whores and lots of bastards." As they whirled to the music, Joff gave her a moist kiss. "My uncle will bring you to my bed whenever I command it." Sansa shook her head. "He won't." "He will, or I'll have his head. That King Aegon, he had any woman he wanted, whether they were married or no."

Joffrey makes the comparison himself. He's a piece of work just like his hero and he is directly threatening to rape Sansa the same way Aegon raped Naerys and poor Bethany Bracken. He is directly admitting he is "unworthy" and practically daring all of KL to overthrow him for it because he thinks they'll blink before he does (and he is unfortunately deadly wrong in this assumption).

And when you extrapolate out from there, you can see other, similar patterns between Naerys' life and Sansa's, beyond the Joffrey-Aegon, Margaery-Bethany, Loras-Terrance, and Sansa-Naerys parallels. Tyrion himself aspires to be a sort of Viserys II type player (see: "It should have been called the Lives of Five Kings" rant he gives to Oberyn); a power behind the throne directing his crazy family to do what's right or smart or proper. There's an interesting echo in Viserys taking direct action in sending Aegon away from Naerys and Tyrion stopping Joffrey in his assault of Sansa - like Viserys, he can see the monster in the king he is raising, makes an attempt to stop it, but fails because he underestimates just how dangerous and erratic his little king has become. Like Viserys, Tyrion is suspected of poisoning his own nephew in an attempt to get closer to power and the throne (and Viserys, like Tyrion, is probably innocent - the sort of fasting that Baelor was doing regularly is hard on the body!).

I don't think any of this is coincidental or accidental either, because of that haunting scene where Joffrey destroys the gift Tyrion got him. Here's the scene, excuse the wall of text, but it's important:

He plays the gracious king today. Joffrey could be gallant when it suited him, Sansa knew, but it seemed to suit him less and less. Indeed, all his courtesy vanished at once when Tyrion presented him with their own gift: a huge old book called Lives of Four Kings, bound in leather and gorgeously illuminated. The king leafed through it with no interest. "And what is this, Uncle?" A book. Sansa wondered if Joffrey moved those fat wormy lips of his when he read. "Grand Maester Kaeth's history of the reigns of Daeron the Young Dragon, Baelor the Blessed, Aegon the Unworthy, and Daeron the Good," her small husband answered. "A book every king should read, Your Grace," said Ser Kevan. “My father had no time for books.” Joffrey shoved the tome across the table. “If you read less, Uncle Imp, perhaps Lady Sansa would have a baby in her belly by now.” He laughed … and when the king laughs, the court laughs with him. “Don’t be sad, Sansa, once I’ve gotten Queen Margaery with child I’ll visit your bedchamber and show my little uncle how it’s done.” Sansa reddened. She glanced nervously at Tyrion, afraid of what he might say. This could turn as nasty as the bedding had at their own feast. But for once the dwarf filled his mouth with wine instead of words... [Joffrey gets a Valyrian sword and figures out a name for it, Widow's Wail, it's a few pages, it's not relevant here] Joffrey brought Widow’s Wail down in a savage two-handed slice, onto the book that Tyrion had given him. The heavy leather cover parted at a stroke. “Sharp! I told you, I am no stranger to Valyrian steel.” It took him half a dozen further cuts to hack the thick tome apart, and the boy was breathless by the time he was done. Sansa could feel her husband struggling with his fury as Ser Osmund Kettleblack shouted, “I pray you never turn that wicked edge on me, sire.” “See that you never give me cause, ser.” Joffrey flicked a chunk of Lives of Four Kings off the table at swordpoint, then slid Widow’s Wail back into its scabbard. “Your Grace,” Ser Garlan Tyrell said. “Perhaps you did not know. In all of Westeros there were but four copies of that book illuminated in Kaeth’s own hand.” “Now there are three.” Joffrey undid his old swordbelt to don his new one. “You and Lady Sansa owe me a better present, Uncle Imp. This one is all chopped to pieces.”

God I love that passage so much. There's a lot there but what's relevant is a) both Oberyn and Garlan are trying to get a measure of who Joffrey is, and have some child murdering plans potentially in the works during this scene. Watching Joffrey destroy a priceless tome of history given as a well thought, well meant, incredibly generous (and pointed) gift from his uncle is more than enough proof for either man to decide Joffrey is not worth the headache, and please note Garlan is the only person to call Joffrey out to his face, and Oberyn is a few pages later the only person to acknowledge this was a fantastic and kind gift from Tyrion that Joffrey reacted absolutely deranged towards for no reason. and b) Tyrion is almost literally saying to Joffrey "I can be your Viserys, I can make it so you're remembered as a great king the way Daeron II or Baelor are, or a great warrior like Daeron I, but you have to understand the reason why I'm worried about your behavior" and Joffrey does the most destructive, unworthy thing he can possibly do - he quite literally destroys priceless, useful historical knowledge and wisdom with his bare hands, in favor of senseless, petulant violence. As Catelyn would say, Joffrey's real bride is not Margaery, but the war he's fighting and the crown on his head.

All of this to say - there's a lot of parallels between Sansa's situation in KL and Naery's life and these parallels are drawn not only by Sansa herself, but also by several people around her. However, I hope for better things for Sansa than what poor Naerys got - I hope for an Aemon the Dragonknight that will do more than just cry while she's raped, but actually step into that room and defend her, or else give her the power to defend herself. Despite the long wait for The Winds of Winter, I also think it's likely we will get some sort of Dragonknight, devoted sworn sword for Sansa and this person will help protect her, and Sansa will have agency that Naerys could only ever dream of.

[lucabyte]

Your gender thought type essays have made me curious about what your oc creation/development process is like! It seems to be something you put a lot of thought into and that’s very interesting (especially cause my circles don’t often go into detail in that area)

I'm delighted to hear you're curious!! I'll give as thorough an answer as I can manage, though it'll likely be a bit disorganised. Okay, so... I'm gonna use a couple examples for this, and since you specified gender stuff I'm gonna go for some where gender/sexuality are integral, even if in seemingly counterproducive ways (but that'll be the last few...)

So. The first character that comes to mind here for me in terms of like... A lot of thought going into their gender is Lavender.

So going all the way back... Lavender was made in 2015.

Spreadsheet puts her at the 13th character in the setting, creation-date ways! So she's Been around a while.

Part 1: A Core Idea

Now, why was Lavender made? This is the first step of character creation. Well, she was made to tick a bit of a box. I realised my only girls at the time were all tomboyish so I needed a cute girl. And this was 2015, so she arose in the form of a Waifu Joke. She was intended to be a side-character with no real plot ties, so I just designed a character as cute as possible, named her simply (Lavender Wafeu == literally Colour and Waifu) and was basically done? 7 months later I would make Mafioso to slightly further the joke, in that giving Lavender a girlfriend makes her unpursuable* as a waifu. This also gave me a stark butch/femme pair, and I recall around this era there was a joke going around on tumblr of 'Indestructable Lesbians' as opposed to buried gays. This kinda became their thing. Two lesbians the plot wouldn't touch and they wouldn't be endangered.

.... And then that was kinda it. She was a cute girl who was fun to draw, shy, and reserved in nature. An opposition to Mafioso's brash (but secretly a little nervous) demeanor. I would literally just liken this to flutterdash outright. I was basically just doing flutterdash in terms of their personalities.

SO: This is the first step to all my characters. Find a core concept, or more likely, a core joke. Lavender's core joke is a very rough and (frankly unfunny) "your waifu isn't going to fuck you" joke. But you can see how she was built out of it. And we'll get to how that building happened next.

(^ Weird 2015 era lavender with her total lack of emotive range and flat characterisation)

Part 2: Dormancy

Lavender stayed unchanged for quite a while, in this flat state. She picked up a few things, mostly little 'twists' to her character. ie. she could hold her own in a fight, is surprisingly quick to jump to (cartoonish) violence, and likes a good steak. All very basic little things, obvious "oh bet you didn't expect That" contradictions.

She didn't recieve much attention during this time despite me really liking her design still. Mafioso languished even worse in this era, with her mother Omerta picking up most of the development instead. Overall, these two were very, very boring. No amount of little superficial additions could save them from this.

But it... hints at something, right? It hints that maybe there's a facade somewhere, that maybe the perfect-cute-girl thing might actually take a little bit of effort to upkeep...? Hrm...

Part 3: A Fresh Perspective

So, sometime in 2020, I was finally remaking my 2016-era spreadsheet of all my characters from the ground up, since I needed to remove a lot of ms excel specific formatting it had in it.

And while going through, I was being helped by @samhainian, who I had befriended in the years between. And they remarked that I didn't have enough directly trans characters in the cast, to which I agreed. I had a handful of tokens at the time (Adder and Angel spring to mind?) but not many more, so we literally just went down the list with suggestions. And when Sam suggested Lavender, I reacted with confusion. Because... Wait. Is she not trans? But she's so feminine? All of my characters lean extremely gender-neutral in presentation unless they're trying to do gender on purpose...?

And this just, unlocked her whole character like a skeleton key.

I was making her do her gender on purpose. The reason she had those contradictions is because she's putting in the effort to appear like this perfect, girl-next-door, waifu type. Something that doesn't really work if she doesn't have girlhood to prove.

From here, her coy 'maybe she has more to her than cute girl' hints were instantly recontextualised as a thing She was Doing. And instead of being random superficial tidbits, they were Depth. And her cartoonish 'extremely mild-mannered and polite persona' suddenly became a very human facade.

So, she had a new core to build around. And her lack of anything going on before in terms of backstory suddenly felt contextual? She's clearly fresh new to this. She had already had the backstory of being a very young (about 19~21) person who had moved to a new town to live on her own-- Suddenly that makes sense. She's forging a whole new identity. Her polite 'never really talking about herself because she's an object for the audience to desire' quietness becomes intentional evasion. She doesn't have a backstory, because she doesn't want it to be any of your business.

And ironically, this immediately Gave Her the backstory she had been missing. Her wiles and hidden 'smarter than she looks' becomes so relevant as to be real character traits...

I already somewhat went over this (and a number of other gender thoughts, including my thoughts on my myriad 'cis but not' or 'nb in a specific direction') in a thing I wrote, woof, 2 years ago: (LINK) which was a ramble about a lot of my character's genders... In that I summarised Lavender's gender as such:

Part 4: In practice

Okay so it's all well and good that I realised Lavender is Trans Gemder. But that's not where it ends, because she finally became refined and polished to the point of um. Quadrupling her image count on toyhouse. because of Purrgatorio.

See, the other reason I was getting my spreadsheets in order was for Purrgatorio (the original flavour of it, the visual novel) and I needed to just do some general housekeeping.

Lavender, Mafioso and Ess shared a route in VN!Purrgatorio, being that I saw them as a triad of characters. While this characterisation of her basically did nothing interesting, aside from showing her fiery side, this would later become the basis for her being one of the first characters met in actual purrgatorio, where she, being polite and nice, and established back in 2016ish to be one of the few characters Chrome isn't a total asshole to--- She gets to meet Ali.

Now this is where I would say a lot of the real development happened. Right there, in action, in putting her to the test of real writing. All of her characterisation stops being hypothetical, and instead something I have to portray. And I found as I wrote, she grew more deep simply by giving her such an odd situation to be in. And of note, by having Ali be intimidated by talking to cute girls, it gave her the upper hand in the dynamic-- Really allowing me to show off her ability to lead a conversation, and her quiet confidence in herself-- as well as hinting at the thing she isn't quite so confident with.

It's also allowed me to start thinking about her sexuality, too. This is another thing that goes back to her flimsy core concept. The Waifu is generally a sexless being in their own right, having sexuality projected onto them by the narrative or audience. In fact, a lot of shounen girls don't get to be romantically forward-- both because it risks alienating the intended selfshipper-audience, and also because showing too much confidence and autonomy in their sexuality can be too threatening for the chuunibyo audience, who aren't yet comfortable with their own sexuality and-- wait! Look at that! Another part of the core concept I can toy with! Wouldn't it make sense, if she's meant to be a deconstruction of The Waifu Archetype, for her to have that confidence and autonomy? This is what 2015-me was clumsily trying to grasp with the whole lesbian thing... So why not just re-angle that into her being confident and forward. It fits with her new personality, so it works!

*oh hey there's that asterisk. I also realised she had chemistry with Ali! Given the way she is level-headed and rather logical deep down, her curiosity drives this. She's not going to pass up a chance to know a literal Alien... But it also further illustrates how badly Mafioso has been left in the dust by her. (She's been quietly tinkered with behind the scenes ready for her reintrodcution, but for a while, I was really struggling!! Like, considering overhauling her character levels of struggling!! But, we managed, I think. She's yet to be introduced and put into practice yet, but it's upcoming.) To the point where I've broken them up! At least for now. Mafioso needs to prove herself I think, since now she can't rely on Lavender being waifish and easily won over.

TO SUMMARISE THE MAJOR POINTS THERE:

Any joke/idea can be a suitable core, even if flimsy, you just need to find which parts are interesting to either double down on or deconstruct

It's okay for characters to take a long time to form! If you don't feel connected to a character they might need a shake up, but also YOU might need a shake up. Lavender needed a new perspective from someone with a different approach to gender as me, and for I myself to become more comfortable with Real Sexuality (ive literally just aged nearly 10 years itll happen) before she could really shine.

Following on from the above you basically never need to throw a character out completely. You should try and find what it is you like about them, or consider core, and perhaps try and reframe or refract those elements. A character might get demoted to non-main status sometimes, but why throw away that depth? They can hang out on the sidelines if that's better for them.

Sometimes a character won't feel done until you write them! You can do this with RP if you have the ability, but I wrote Purrgatorio instead, which is intentionally low-stakes and non-canon so I don't get too freaked out about writing it. It's a playground for testing characterisaton, and putting characters in weird pairings they otherwise wouldn't to see if something interesting arises.

SOME OTHER EXAMPLES FROM MY BACK CATALOGUE:

Lavender is a bit of a daunting pick, given that she's spent nearly 10 years slowly rotating in my brain, only to finally become realised in the last 3-4 or so. But I do have some more recent quick examples, as well as another giant thing you can read if you want to.

GIANT THING TO READ IF YOU WANT IT: I've posted abt this before way ages ago but I wrote up a whole gigantic thing on my probably 2 most in depth characters. It can be found here (LINK) and also has a longass diatribe about their genders, sexualities, and the core thing they were originally riffing on. (Which was like. a specific type of anime boy ship i was a sucker for, that I eventually realised I was making way more interesting than most anime i was into was bothered to do)

It's a very thorough look into my thought process, including ANOTHER diatribe on purrgatorio granting me some good boons of character.

OTHER EXAMPLE 1: ALI

Okay Ali is too complicated to get into thoroughly here, but they're another good example of a core idea spiralling out.

Core idea: Blank slate visual novel protagonist, so gender neutral and a bit of a flimsy everyman. No real name, only a default name if you left the entry blank. (Ali, a shortening of the canon surname). #FFFFFF skin to keep the jokey ambiguity and pink hair to reference Dante's silly red hat.

Twists: Canon assigned surname of Alighieri, implying them to be some descendent of The Real Dante. And they're in a VN so there's a spooky easter egg where you can roll a death screen that shows them as an ominous demonic Thing instead of a regular human.

The, VN!Purrgatorio got shelved, and because they were human instead of a furry they got shuffled into other projects. A furry version of them showed up in a different project riffing on the demon thing, making them a child-friendly antichrist with 2 siblings based on the tragicomedy masks. Then that furry version's stuff got shoved onto the human version who was just a half-demon kid in Creature Feature. THEN we decided they'd be half-succubus to keep the ability to shift between the sexes (referencing the blank slate gender ambiguity of the VN). THEN that became 'nerd who is freaked out by being a sex demon and doesn't like the ethical implications of their existance but is still kinda miffed that they arent Getting Any' who STILL HAD the antichrist stuff from the furry version....

(^ technically a completely seperate ali ive not done anything with in years lol)

Like you get it. It's a giant katamari of STUFF from all different settings. This is what I mean by 'you never really need to scrap a character'. Because after all this shoving them around into different projects and them accruing things (the 'guy who is really concerned with informed consent is a succubus/incubus' angle really informed them here, as well as deciding that they're apathetic about the magic sex characteristic changes.) we threw them right back into the original setting of Purrgatorio and it went WAY BETTER once they actually had some character traits!

But that core idea still stands a little. Not in them being an everyman, but in prompting them to become an altersex character when fleshed out, and in the way that they're distinctly still tied to that second-person-narration that VNs have, and the eventual 4th wall break they got in the VN informed their powerset as 'narrative manipulator'.

also as a note here: DON'T BE AFRAID TO PLAY WHILE YOUR SETTING ISN'T DONE!

VN!Purrgatorio got shelved because I redid a bunch of MYMK's setting when I was finishing it up. But It was worth it even unfinished.

Ali themselves when in Current!Purrgatorio has spent, up until very recently, their whole time with their home setting (Creature Feature) in a state of being deeply unfinished and in need of a reshake. It's finally getting that now, but it was still fine for me to reference what I knew likely wouldn't be changing! They were able to function just fine without their home setting being solid for upwards of 2-3 years. Obviously this shouldn't be done for *finished* works, but when you're just playing, like I am with Purrgatorio, it's okay to keep things fluid and effectively quietly retcon things later.

OTHER EXAMPLE 2: PEACH TRACY

Peach tracy is an actually recent character, and is under @samhainian's purview, as with the rest of Moraine. Now, she was made with a very distinct gender/sexuality in mind, unlike a lot of my characters who stumble ass-backwards into one.

Peach is the 'token girl' of her group (the other two being Red, a closeted and unaware transfem, and Toyon a he/him butch.) and well, her gender is basically "tik tok girlie", as is her core concept. She only works if she's a pampered cisgender straight girl from a rich background. She's nice! But she's privileged.

Her twist however, is that she is wracked by the guilt of her and her group letting a friend take the fall for an Illegal Youtube Prank to save their own skin, and as such her entire character unravels from there.

Because she has all this guilt, it stands that her Girliepop Persona must be somewhat constructed. She's leaning in to the femininity as a shield and a deflector. She's, y'know, a white girl.

So her gender ends up being overperformed, and she's petrified of expressing her sexuality due to it being tied up in this image of purity. She's the exact type of person to psyche herself out into believing those 'having a crush on your friend is problematic' tumblr posts.

But none of this would really work if she did not start as a (white) girl, able to use that shield. If she were a dude or nonwhite-coded she would not have the ability to react to her situation that way. Ergo, she is actually built out of her identity this way.

(As for her sexuality, she is unhealthily self-flagellating about it, so it ends up just being unpleasant. This was a genuine surprise to myself and @samhainian when we were discussing it. We hadn't thought about it prior to starting some lighthearted riffing about assigning characters kinks literally bc we were bored when we had the horrifying realisation that Peach would not be safe about this shit AT ALL due to a lack of self preservation and way more ambient suicidality than we realised she had until we dug here. We quickly resurfaced from the joke conversation into an actual deconstruction of how she's internalised a lot of blame and decided to go distinctly carceral with it for herself. so there's another tip: Even if you aren't making nsfw content, poking around a character's sexuality will sometimes reveal raw truths that come from sexuality being very vulnerable by default.)

Peach is overall an interesting contrast to Lavender, since they're both Girls Being Feminine On Purpose, but one is transfem and one is. Well god idk what peach will end up but she'll need to unpack it.

(I note that peach is white also, since while I rarely intentionally racially code my characters, sometimes i SUPER do.)

OTHER EXAMPLE 3: VIRGIL MALACODA

Okay because I've talked about a number of girls so far lets be brief about a fuckin Dude.

Virgil is like, some real toxic masculinity shit. He would probably be fucked up in some different way if he were born a girl, but he's distinctly falling into a lot of traps due to his upbringing as "A dude who was promised he'd get power when he grew up".

His dude-ness is a very flat fact to me in that way, and he's similar to Tabitha in that regard since it's one of the ways they're meant to reflect each other. Dudes who's place as patriarch-to-be saved them from being pawned off as a wife, but is still responsible for a lot of their misery. Certainly the better of the two options, but could still be better!

Virgil's themes of masculinity being a simultaneous shield and blinder is a simple one but I go back to it a lot because it can be true a lot of the time in antiquated social situations like, say, the upper class. So, being a villain, he does end up being a condemnation of the structures that disincentivise healthy masculinity. He's necessarily amab because he is the result of how particularly regressive views of masculinity can shape a child into a repressed and miserable adult.

Whether or not virgil stays a dude or not if he ever figures out his way of viewing power structures was Fucked Up and Bad is anybody's guess. It's not really Masculinity that was hurting him, so much as a rich asshole's narrow view of it. So there's no real reason for him to reject a healthier version of it outright, it's just whether he'll ever get there...

CLOSING REMARKS:

Okay writing in the tumblr post editor is starting to scare me with errors so I should probably close this out. But yeah this is a little bit of a run down of where my head is usually at when making characters. A lot of it is just batting jokes back and forth until they become something more solid, which I don't know that I really got across here.

Like, a lot a lot of my characters are built around a core joke. Usually what-ifs like.

"What if a shounen-type card game anime protagonist was just as brash and head-full-of-air as the rest of the, but a girl"

"What if Ed Sheeran had a cheating scandal with two tboys and it made the radio fucking horrible to listen to"

"What if a wrestler was really, really wide and also clearly into rubber"

"What if somebody took the 'blonde anime boy who barely shows emotion' trope seriously because that kind of repression can't be good"

"What if a guy was specifically interested in becoming a Soil Scientist from like, age 4, and never gave up that dream"

^ If you can figure out who's who then you win a prize (a kiss)

But yeah. Jokes upon jokes upon jokes. Assign them classpects and pokemon and put them into speed/power/fly formation and just joke for as long as you possibly can until you hit on something. And if a joke feels really right, or completely off the mark, try and dig in and find why.

Like. I joke about the sexuality thing but it does help since it's so disarming and immediately a bit childishly funny often. Sometimes you'll end up with say, something as serious as "Despite being friends with The Fence, Selene probably shouldn't be left unsupurvised in kink spaces because she ABSOLUTELY does not have the ability to restrain herself and not take her anger issues out on strangers" and sometimes its as silly as "even outside of being asexual, ess is never jackin that shit because if he got caught in any kind of mildly embarrasing scenario it'd ruin his whole year so the cost/benefit analysis of that really doesn't work out"

Because like. both tell you about the characters, and you can also read them more broadly now. Selene ruins relationships by letting anger at unrelated things get in the way, Ess keeps himself from doing even utterly harmless things out of deep social anxiety.

Like yeah, i got to them via goofing about sex but it's still character analysis at the end of the day so long as you put The Reading first*

*DISCLAIMER: im asexual im only ever doing stuff for the read lol . it might be more difficult if youre allosexual . or maybe itll be easier. i dont know just dont get too lost in the sauce. think with ur brain not ur other parts

ALSO gender and sexualty often end up linked so it makes sense to end up at one from the other a lot of the time. It happens.

And as an addendum if you wonder where i tend to literally Design characters? Like visually? It's usually at some point between the first few jokes and before naming them. Though sometimes names come first.

OVERALL: A character should have a core concept to them to start with. This core concept CAN SUCK and be flimsy, or a joke, or even a joke you no longer find funny. But you can always refer back to it when building a character up. If you want to capture the concept, work toward it, if you want to deconstruct or mock the concept, then do that instead. If you sour on a joke, maybe find a way to satirise or deconstruct what you're no longer finding funny.

Sometimes this core concept is steeped in a specific cultural thing, be it race, gender, sexuality, ect, and those necessitate thinking about. Sometimes it's not and those things can practically be an afterthought, but once you lock it in it's likely to begin informing the later choices as it becomes part of the scaffolding.

(To hop back to why you even asked this Q: I so thoroughly read Siffrin as amab BECAUSE they had so many themes about Not Having Changed and clinging to what they knew, and so working backwards from that it only made sense to me that they mustn't've done a big overhaul YET or made any big decisions about that YET by the time we see them in game, because that's what gels best with their themes of being Too Afraid To Change and being a contrast to Isa who has changed a bunch, and a comfort to Mira who hasn't changed at all in their gender. Then it was a case of looking through the game for more evidence either for or against this reading, and I found a lot of evidence for it, in my opinion. But I did so Because I noticed that the themes were Stronger if read this way, and because I conceptualise characters as themes and concepts FIRST it made sense to try and work back to those themes.)

But yeah. TL;DR:

Ground yourself with a Hook for the character, sometimes making it sillier makes it easier to think about.

Try and think about how they would be formed by the world around them, or what their behaviour says about how they must've been formed

Don't worry about things taking a long time. Sometimes a character needs someone else to make a suggestion, or for you to grow and change a little before they click

Putting it into action helps a lot, even if its just roleplay or short snippets. If you can't 'feel out' what a character would do in a situation, that's when it's time to think about their goals for how they want to be seen as a person (including, if they don't want to be seen at all...!) and what hard boundaries they have say, morally.

I am by no means a like. Expert on any of this. I'm fumbling through it all just as much as the next guy (AND... I'M ACTUALLY SOMEWHAT OF A HYPOCRITE. I THINK CHARACTERS ARE BEST SEEN AS 'NARRATIVE CONSTRUCTS' RATHER THAN 'PEOPLE', SO ALL THIS ADVICE BEING SO CHARACTER FOCUSED RATHER THAN NARRATIVE FOCUSED IS MISSING THE FOREST FOR THE TREES LOL....) but apparently people do Like my characters? So, what do I know i suppose LMAO

[pomellon]

do you have any tips on drawing dragons and cats with variety? yours manage to look so distinct, even with markings and colors aside, and there's a constant rounded feeling of weight to bodies and limbs. sidenote that your soft coloring and shading makes literally all your art so comfy to look at for lack of a better way to explain it. always a treat to see posted!

Thank you so much anon <3

My biggest tip to getting characters looking distinct is to draw them next to, or on top of each other. Start with one character that is kind of average to have a baseline, and build other characters with different builds and shapes from there. Play a lot with shapes, try to make some character rounder while making others shaper or more streamlined. Here's some of my recent gen cats as an example:

How long/short and broad/narrow you make the muzzle of both dragons and cats also help to create a lot of distinction. Sapnap and Punz both have sharp brows ridges and round/broad muzzles:

And of course similar fur, eye shapes, ears and markings to distinguish them as brothers!

George on the other hand has a more sloping brow, rounder eyes, and a narrow almost heart shaped muzzle:

Even when working with the same fur type you can play around with different styles and options:

Dragon especially have whole bunch of design options since there is no right or wrong way to draw em! Most of my dragon anatomy is still based on cats and I often use lions for references, but you can honestly pick any animal that you like to draw and transfer that over to dragon designs and poses.

A lot of the time when making dragon characters I like to take some mixed traits from other animals. Basim in my AC saurian/dragon au is based of a python, both for the shape of his head which is pretty flat, and his pattern and colorations. Hytham is lightly based on a deer, giving him a taller brow ridge, large ears, and horns inspired by roe deer antlers, while his pattern and coloration is based on a ringed seal:

I hope that could be of some help anon, but don't be afraid to ask if you want some more tips :D

[somegrumpynerd]

You talked about what you think what Pokemon different Sanses would have, but what Pokemon do you usually have in your team? Are there a few that you default to or do you like to switch it up depending on where you are in a game?

Oooo now that's a good question :oc

I usually try to have a different team when I start a new game but I definitely have favourites, like if I can have a raichu on my team I always want one cause he's my favourite little guy, but I also just love all the regional pikachus anyway so I'm happy with pretty much any of them (<-electric type and rodent lover lol).

There are a couple that I usually kinda default to, like if I'm playing through a gen 4 game I usually end up with staraptor or luxray on my team because they're so cool, and if I get an eevee I usually want sylveon

It's been a while since I played tbh because skeletons keep happening to me lol but here's my team from scarlet c:

[whumble-beeee]

The First Day of the Rest of Your Life pt. 2

The (Un)Official Guide to Hero-Keeping

Cont'd from Part 1

CW: disabled whumpee, flashbacks (ptsd), past captivity references, tied up, knives, gun

* * * * * * * *

[First impressions are extremely important when taking a hero hostage, whether you're nemeses who have fought countless times, or whether this is your first time formally meeting the hero. These first impressions will set the mood for the entirety of your and your captive's time together, so make sure to think long and hard about what initial impression you want to give off to the hero; do you want to be suave, cool, and calculating? Silly, coy, and unpredictable? Or maybe violent and dangerous, one not to be crossed or trifled with. The choice is up to you, you dastardly villain, you!

And if you're having trouble crafting a persona that will strike fear and invite obedience in the heart of your captive, just remember that above all else, you are the one in control. Have confidence in yourself and project that to your hostage, and the rest will follow suit!]

* * * * * * * *

All air left the room.

“I, a-ah–...” Stan couldn’t take his eyes off the blade cradled in the mercenary’s hand. His breath fell ragged as he forced his eyes away from the knife and into the gaze of the man holding it. And smiled. Hopefully, it didn’t look too much like a grimace. “I don’t like kni-ives…”

“Really…” 

The mercenary slowly ambled up until he literally blocked out the light coming from the center of the room, and gently pushed the sharp end of the knife up under Stan’s chin. 

The world went blurry for a moment as Stan tilted his chin up to accommodate, and the blade just went up with it, until Stan’s vision tunneled directly into the man’s eyes. He couldn't move.

He knew those eyes.

Staring down at him over the barrel of a revolver.

The bounty hunter glanced him up and down, before meeting his stupefied gaze again with an almost pitying grin. “This is gonna suck for you then.”

He whiffed the knife out and flipped it around in his hand as he circled behind the chair, barely nicking Stan’s chin with the razor-edge as it slid out from its place under his throat. The small sting of the cut was enough to bring the world crashing back to him.

Stan blinked. “Hey! Hey–... don’t do– Where– where, uh… Where are you going?”

“Behind you.”

“No– no shit, really?” he retorted, voice still embarrassingly shaky. The bounty hunter disappeared from his line of sight. “I meant– I mean what’re you–”

Stan gasped as the ropes tightened around his stomach. 

“Hey, hey! Stop! what’re you doing?!”

He immediately balled up his fists and tried to thrash away unsuccessfully for what felt like the thousandth time since he woke up, all the while attempting to twist around enough to see what was going on behind him.

“Cálmate, chiquito.” The ropes vibrated lightly. “I'm just cuttin’ the ropes.”

Stan stopped dead in his tracks. “What? Why?”

The bounty hunter’s voice took on that playful lilt Stan was already getting tired of. “I mean, I was just gonna put you on a leash in the corner, so you can actually move around a bit, but if you want to stay tied to the chair for some ungodly amount of time…”

Stan’s mind completely skipped over the leash part. He had to get out of this chair. “No, no, I don’t!”

“Really? Not sure I’m convinced, you seemed super panicked just now–”

“I wasn’t panicking!”

“Nah? Then I’m sure you’ll stay just as calm when I do this…”

The bounty hunter snatched his hand and strained it up against the twine. Stan instinctively flinched.

“Hey, what–!”

A prick on the top of his hand. Stan froze. Another prick. His heart rate spiked. The cool metal of the knife broke the skin a third time, longer, deeper this time, gliding through the skin barrier, stinging. His vision tunneled. Cool metallic threads shot through the top of his mouth, and he could swear he could feel the blood rushing from his brain and pooling down, down, down.

“Stop, STOP, PLEASE!!” He tried to break free, wiggle away from the knife and kick out and fight back against the man who was holding him hostage and tormenting him for no reason other than his own sick pleasure, but everything was starting to go dark and fuzzy and everything felt so hot, he was sweating, he was burning, he needed to get out now–

Stan's chair suddenly lifted and the entire thing spun around and landed hard back onto the floor with a clatter, accompanied by a fearful yelp. The bounty hunter’s hand moved from the top of the chair to the scruff of Stan’s neck, forcing Stan forward as he planted his knee on the seat of the chair between Stan’s legs and leaned on the unused armrests of the chair. Their faces were only inches apart. Stan strained to lean away, but just like the last million times, there wasn’t anywhere he could go. He sucked in a stilted breath.

“Y’know,” the hunter whispered as if he were sharing a damning secret between just the two of them. “If you’re gonna be all hysterical about it, I could just leave you right here…” 

Stan’s breath stuttered. The world was just the two of them. Focus on the now. Don’t pass out. “I– I kno-ow. Please don’t. Please.”

He pushed his little sister Chloe further behind his back and stood his ground. His sister pressed her face into his side.

He glared at those eyes before, snarled at them.

He felt dizzy, he couldn’t breathe, and more than anything he wanted to spit in the bounty hunter's face. He found that the best he could do was stare up at the bounty hunter with a stunned, blurry gaze as he tried to fight off the cotton that blanketed his mind.

“People get tied to the chair because they’re panicky and I don’t want them to hurt themselves, because they’re my responsibility. Like you were doing when you woke up. You were screaming and thrashing around, did you know that?”

“N-no…”

“I know you didn’t know.” His eyes dark brown eyes almost seemed to glitter red. Stan felt a visceral terror snaking up his gut for reasons he couldn’t explain. “That’s why you were tied to the chair. I’ll gladly keep you here if you keep struggling and being difficult, do you want that?”

The crackle of the walkie-talkie, the distorted voices.

“I think I found them.” The voice sealed his fate. “Uh… just– just one of them.”

The rope itched against his wrists. “No, pl-please don’t– Let me go.”

“I’m not sure I’m feeling so charitable anymore Stan, I gotta be honest. I think you should ask really nicely if you want me to untie you from this chair.”

He took a gasping breath, one he didn’t realize his body was screaming for. When had he stopped breathing? Where was he?

“Please un– uh, untie me from the chair”

The hunter nodded. “Alright, and?”

“I, uh... I would be so, so grateful?…” Stan tapered off with a squeak as his captor rolled his eyes at him and shook his head.

“No, no, look.” The hunter prompted. He squeezed the back of Stan’s neck. “You’re not going to…” 

Why couldn’t he just pass out? 

“I’m uh, I’m not going to… be panicky or, or difficult?…”

“Mhm, and?”

And?! He was already begging! What else did this guy want?!

Stan’s befuddlement must have shown on his face, because the hunter gave another hint with only the slightest annoyed groan: “What’re we gonna do instead?”

“Put me on a– a leash…” Stan felt his face burning red. He wanted to curl up into a little ball and rock himself until everything went away. He felt so small. He could never hide. “... in the corner…”

“And that’s a privilege because?”

“... you could just leave me in the chair. Captured.”

The hunter leaned back a bit and smiled. “There you go, you got there. Repeat it all back now.”

Stan squeezed his eyes shut and sucked in a shaky breath, and breathed out some of the clouds dimming his mind. He forced his eyes to focus.

“Please untie me from the chair, I won’t be panicky or difficult and I know it’s a– a privilege–” The words almost caught in his throat. “– to be on a le-leash in the corner instead. Because you could just leave me in the chair. If you wanted. And you’re not… I– I– um, thank you…”

The hunter’s hand slid up from the neck of his shaking captive and ruffled his hair.

“Attaboy, that was good. Good job.”

Stan hated how much he relaxed at the praise. At how much effort it took to even jerk away from the petting.

Right up until the very large pocket knife entered his field of vision, heading straight for his stomach. 

He screamed, wrenching his eyes shut and throwing himself as far back as possible, hoping he would just phase through the chair entirely and fall through the floor and be away from the horror show of agony that was sure to be his stomach now, away from this entire humiliating and hopeless situation, away from the flashbacks and the terror and the ropes and the captivity and the experiments and the pain–

Eventually, a realization broke through the frenzy that he wasn’t in screaming agony.

He wasn’t dying.

He was still here.

In fact, his restraints felt noticeably looser.

He tentatively opened his eyes to find a few of the ropes from his front now lay cleanly cut in his lap or hanging at his sides.

The bounty hunter chuckled into his hand, trying to hold it together. Then when he noticed his captive staring at him, he practically doubled over in a fit of laughter.

“Not gonna–” He had to look away, covering his mouth as a fit of giggles overtook his ability to speak. “Not gonna panic or be– be difficult, huh? No panic at all?”

Stan sputtered, ears red. How could he be laughing? “I– I– you– didn’t…! I– AUGH!”

His yell echoed through the room. He wanted to scream at the man, or at least run for the door now that he was technically free. But lashing out would get him nowhere, not here, not now.

He gave up on trying to speak and instead seethed while he worked at shaking off the rest of the ropes.

About half the tendril twisting around his stomach were still intact, so it took much more struggling than his dignity would have preferred to squirm out. He even tried to use his good knee to help nudge the ropes aside, since his wrists were still securely tied behind the back of the chair and useless. That didn’t really help.

But he managed, same as always.

“It's really not that funny.” Stan deadpanned as he finished working on the bindings and carefully lifted his bound wrists above the back lip of the chair.

The bounty hunter still hadn’t finished his giggle fit.

“Y'know, you're– you're really good at the whole, uh, submissive thing,” the mercenary snickered. “Suits you.”

A heavy ball knotted in the pit of his stomach. “What.”

“I mean, as soon as I got up in your face, you just stopped dead in your tracks and immediately got all cute and scared and agreeable.”

Stan clenched his teeth. He should cut through the twine tying his wrists right now and strangle this guy with how horrible–... 

Wait… Did the mercenary even know Stan could still use his powers without his cane? He mentioned earlier that it was a shame Stan couldn’t use his powers without it, but he could.

Not very well. But it was better than nothing.

“I wouldn't have done that,” he growled. “If you hadn't decided it'd be fun to fuck with me and set off my fight or flight!”

 “That wasn't fight or flight, bud, that was fawn.” The mercenary gave a condescending tilt of the head before holding his hands up in mock surrender.

“I’m just saying you'll probably do just fine as a prisoner. It is gonna be the rest of your life, all the better that it suits you well.”

“I don't–! It doesn't suit me, I-I'm not–” The bounty hunter nodded at him with false interest, patiently waiting for him to go on. Stan cried out in rage.

“Whatever! You're abusing your power over me for no reason!”

A pause. Both men stopped breathing for just a moment.

The mercenary’s gaze suddenly turned barely narrower and icy cold.

“I'm abusing my power?” He stepped forward, barely out of arms reach and absolutely towering over his captive.

“I could show you a real abuse of power, chiquito.”

Stan shot up to his feet with a loud stomp to finally match the mercenary. He was still a solid foot shorter than the man, but it still got the point across. 

He hoped.

The movement also served another purpose: he’d slammed his feet down hard enough to feel the reverberations throughout his body, just hard enough to create enough force to transfer up through his fingers into a very small point. A point just fine enough to slice through the bindings of his wrists.

He was finally, finally unbound. 

He still held his arms behind his back.

“How dare you.”

The mercenary hummed in surprise, curious where this outburst would lead. He nodded for Stan to go on. 

As if Stan needed his permission to go on. He took a step forward, and the man actually stepped back in turn.

“I don't know who you think you are, but if you can think you can just hold me captive like this and talk to me like this and expect me not to fight back, you’ve got an entire ‘nother thing coming!” Stan yelled.

“I’m not gonna just sit back and let you mess with me because you think it’s funny! I’m not going to sit there and let you do whatever you want to me, and I’m not going to let you, or whoever you work for, or anyone else for that matter, keep me captive for the rest of my life! Not gonna happen! I’m going to escape, and then I’ll find you and everyone you work for, and make every single one of you wish you had never been born. Got that?”

And for a moment, everything was still. 

Stan’s labored breathing echoed throughout the room. He’d backed up the mercenary several steps in his tirade, much to the screeching protests of his bad knee. More surprisingly, the mercenary no longer looked down on him with that condescending smile. 

Instead, his eyes quickly shot up and down Stan’s body, before meeting Stan’s scowling gaze with his own challenging stare. 

Right before he took one more step back and slid his hands comfortably into his pockets.

��Well, if you’re going to try to run, now would probably be the best time.”

Stan gawked at the man. Then shook his head out. He must have been hearing things. 

“What?”

“You said you were going to escape, yeah? You’re not gonna let me hold you captive, you’re gonna escape and take revenge?”

Stan had to suppress the urge to go back on his own words. “Yes.”

“Well, I’m about to put a manacle on your ankle and you'll be chained to the corner over there,” he nodded over his shoulder, to the corner of the room farthest away from the door.

“You’re more or less free right now. Now would be the best time. You wanna try your luck?”

“But– you– you’re standing right here! You could just reach out and grab me!” 

“That’s how it’ll always be, runt.”

A chill bolted from his head all the way down his spine.

“Uh…” his voice shook again. He hadn’t prepared for this. What was the endgame here? “Aren’t you gonna be mad?”

“Oh, I’ll be furious.” His dark eyes glittered the smallest sparkles of crimson, a light smile tugging at the corners of his lips.

“And when I catch you and bring you back, you’ll have to deal with the consequences of that. Can’t say it’ll be pretty either. So you gonna try your luck, or nah?” 

Stan turned to look at the door. Then back to the mercenary. His heart pounded against his ribcage, and he could already feel the quick in and out of his breaths making his brain feel buzzy and light. 

He looked to the door again. How far could he even get without his cane? Certainly not as far as someone who didn’t have a dud for a knee.

He looked to the mercenary. Could he even fight him off with such limited use of his magic? Did it even matter that he had already cut his wrists free?

His eyes shifted once more to the holster on the man’s belt. What about that? Was he willing to risk a gunshot wound in an escape attempt that had almost no chance of working? 

The cold metal barrel of the gun bit into his windpipe.

He never felt so frozen before.

A rough hand grabbed him, shoved him forward.

He screamed for help.

No one came.

His jaw clenched so hard it may as well have shattered. His eyes burned. He just wanted to go home.

“No.”

The hunter raised his eyebrow. “Come again?”

“I ca-an’t–” his voice cracked. He wished he could hide the way his chest heaved and his face contorted to try and hold back the tears. He wished he could hug himself as some sort of self-comfort. But he kept his hands firmly clasped behind his back. “I can’t.”

The mercenary nodded lightly with a small hum. At least that stupid grin hadn’t made a reappearance. 

“All right then, come here. You uh, need help walking?”

He turned around to walk to the corner of the room, motioning for Stan to follow.

Stan didn’t follow.

He ran.

* * * * * * * *

Next

Taglist: @flowersarefreetherapy

[dangans-ur-ronpas]

Chapter 17

continuation of byakuya's no good very bad worst shit ass day of his life (so far)(!!!)

SEE HERE FOR GENERAL WARNINGS AND FIC SUMMARY

Some pre-chapter notes:

this chapter went a little different from how i originally planned bc I was going to make byakuya much more stupid. but. he needs to fly off the handle several times later so. we can't let loose all at once

to be very fair to makoto he did not want to do that. and yet. here we are

the king of kings!! @digitaldollsworld

Content warning tags: ableist language from various characters, Byakuya's panic spiral, mild self-harm reference

< previous - from start - next >

Time seems to grind to a halt. His breath is still caught in his throat, halfway through a relieved sigh as he had been waiting - expecting - for Makoto to help him. To pull up some vague, hidden piece of evidence to clear him of any suspicion, to cleverly point out some irrefutable proof that had previously lay unseen.

But instead - his heartbeats feel too heavy. His breathing feels too light, deprived of any real oxygen. His head pounds in the same way it did when he was struck earlier, with a dull, pulsing ring that washes out everything around him.

He prided himself, once, on being able to read a person’s intent. To judge just when and why they might choose to abandon him, to cross him, to try and use him for their own intents. For that reason, he supposes, is why this sickly, sticky feeling of dread is so new to him. He’s never known real betrayal before.

His eyes dart around the room, but the others don’t seem to believe Makoto just yet. Even Owada seems taken aback, stock still and quiet. Only Kirigiri seems unsurprised - or maybe, he was only imagining it, the tranquil quality of her silence. As if she were merely observing it all, far out of their reach.

“Seriously??” Syo’s voice is a grating jeer. “You’re telling me this whole time he had no idea what I looked like? No wonder he didn’t fall for me at first sight!”

“I…don’t think that’s the reason why,” Hagakure says, though he seems utterly bewildered. “But, that can’t be right, right? I’ve seen him reading loads of times. And he practically lives in the library, y’know?”

“Yeah, and he can do things just fine for himself.” Asahina says in agreement. “I mean, he does his own laundry and stuff, and he knows this place way better than me at least. I didn’t even know where the A/V room was during the first motive, I just sorta followed him.”

“Yes, this is sort of…” For the first time, Celeste sounds genuinely surprised, her usually unphased demeanor wavering, her accent slipping for a moment. “Ahem. While I did note that he sometimes seemed a bit…eccentric, so to speak, nothing of his actions suggested that he was impaired.”

Their skepticism is a small relief. He nods jerkily, unable to unstick his tongue from the roof of his mouth to verbalize his agreement. But it’s a small, pathetic movement that goes unnoticed, hardly amounting to anything in this large courtroom.

And their disbelief only goes so far. Ogami speaks up now, for the first time since the trial began, her low voice immediately silencing the whispers.

“I performed a concussion test on him earlier,” She says, gruffly. “As Kyoko had asked me to. He was lucid when answering my questions, and he didn’t seem to exhibit any symptoms that couldn’t be attributed to other reasons.” There’s a slight creak of wood, as she shifts her weight on the stand. “However, I did notice that his pupils were…strange.”

“My- what?” He sputters now, too suddenly, too loudly. He reaches up to touch slightly-trembling fingers to a closed eye, feeling the smooth bump of the cornea twitching beneath the thin skin of his eyelid as if he might be able to identify the damage that way. Why hadn’t she mentioned this earlier? Why bring it up now? “What do you mean, ‘strange’?!”

There’s a slight, panicked edge to his voice that he hopes no one catches, but this was the first time he heard that there could be physical evidence to his affliction. “It was a bit hard to test without the proper tools, but I noticed that they do not react much to changes in light.” Ogami explains. “The shape is also slightly…off. If I had to describe it, I would say that there is…a warping around the edges.”

“And you didn’t think to mention it?!”

“I assumed it was either due to the head injury, or, it was genetic.” There’s an apologetic note to her words. “Given your usual behavior, I…didn’t think it was important.”

Not important. As if she could know what was important here.

“I. Am not. Blind.” He snarls stiffly. “Obviously, I have never taken a close enough look at my own pupils to notice that deformation, but it has never affected my daily life. I am not disabled, nor have I ever been.”

“I find it hard to believe that you have never been aware of it.” Kyoko remarks, tone clipped. “I can’t imagine someone of your status being ignorant of anything concerning your physical health.”

“Then you can rest easy knowing that I am perfectly healthy.” He snaps back, venom flying off his words.

Distantly, he knows that he is digging a pit for himself. That admitting to this would help clear him of any suspicion at all. But he doesn’t care; he would rather die than suffer such indignity. That was what he’s always known, taught by his butler, and then reinforced by all his surroundings afterwards, his siblings, his father - better to perish and let your enemies cry with relief and count themselves lucky, than let them mock you as you dig your own grave.

“You should just admit it already. You are drawing this out to be unnecessarily long, or would you rather doom us all?”

“I don’t see why I should cooperate with someone who has been making mindless accusations at me all this while.”

There’s a tense, snappish tension between him and Kirigiri. A livewire current. A piece of elastic stretched taut. He glares, and to him, her blurred form looks like that of a reared snake.

“Um…” Asahina speaks up, her hand tentatively raised. “If Byakuya’s really blind, can’t we just test it?”

“Excuse me?”

“I-I mean! Not saying that you are blind, or anything,” She says this quickly, carefully, like soothing a spooked horse. “But, we’re not going to get anywhere if you two just keep arguing back and forth, and it’ll be really quick! Like, Sakura, can you hold up a few fingers?” She complies silently, one arm remaining crossed across her chest, the other raised to her side. “How many is she holding up?”

He tries not to squint, but he has no idea. Two? Three? It's nothing more that a blurred, brown shape. “You can’t be serious.” He almost laughs, but the sound he makes is derisive and bitter.

“Y-yes, this is-! Unfair!” Now it’s Yamada, speaking up again. “In case no one else has noticed, Mister Togami is lacking his spectacles! Asking such a thing of him…it’s akin to bullying!”

He’s oddly assertive about this, and Byakuya watches as he pushes his own glasses a little higher. For some reason, being considered something of an equal by Yamada irritates him further. “Shut up.” Who asked for his help.

“Yes, be still please,” Celeste sighs dismissively. “We are playing a game with our lives. This is hardly the time to be discussing moralistic issues.” There’s a slight metallic tap as she raps her silver finger guards against her rings. “But you do make a point. Byakuya does not have his glasses at the moment. It would be difficult to try and confirm anything without them.”

Thank goodness for those with common sense. He doesn’t look to his side, where she was standing, but he swears that he can see her eyes glancing at him, the unnatural red of her pupils bright on her pale face. “Yes,” he agrees, seizing upon it. “And they were broken earlier, thanks to Owada. Nearsightedness runs on my mother’s side, and the former Togami head was farsighted. I will admit that much, is that what you wanted? Kyoko?”

He’s rambling. He’s aware of it. But there are a few nods exchanged, and Asahina scratches at the back of her head awkwardly, as if embarrassed. Kirigiri, however, is still unmoved.

“No. When I say you are blind, I do not mean without your glasses. Or there wouldn’t have been a point in bringing it up in the first place.” Kirigiri shifts her weight slightly, the sway of her stance accompanied by the creak of wood. “Even without your glasses, you cannot do tasks such as reading. I imagine you’ve managed everything else by means of careful practice, but this is the one thing you can’t manage on your own.”

“Hey, Kyoko-” Makoto looks nervous, unsure whether to face him or her. “That-”

“And how do you plan to prove this?” Byakuya snarls. He feels a small flare of triumph, even despite everything, the looming threat of death. “As we found before, I don’t have my glasses. Did you happen to pick those up as well? Did you repair them for me while you were at it?”

Instead of offering a retort, or any sort of reply, she sighs. A soft, tired sound.

“Makoto.” She isn’t facing the other boy, but her tone is firm as she addresses him, and a little exasperated. She doesn’t say anything more, but Makoto seems to understand, and his hands drop to his sides.

“There is a way to prove it.” His voice is quiet. Quiet, and…sad, somehow. Defeated. “Byakuya…please show us your handbook.”

The realization sets in slowly. He’s already been betrayed by Makoto twice now, but still, he finds himself stunned, slack-jawed. This one was the worst by far - not only was he actively helping Kirigiri, he was betraying Chihiro as well, risking revealing everything to that accursed bear. And after all the lengths Byakuya had gone through to protect this secret.

“What are you saying,” He says, and his voice has a humiliating tremor that matches how his hands shake, clutching at the rail. Surely, he’s heard wrong. Surely, Makoto would correct himself, take it back-

“Your handbook. Chihiro, he…he put a program on it that lets you be able to do stuff like tell the time. It also reads stuff aloud. And he did it after the motives got revealed, that night when Celeste saw you guys leaving the bathhouse.” He sounds so somber, so sad and grieving. He won’t meet Byakuya’s eyes. “He did it in exchange for you teaching him how to be strong, and self-confident - which you did, by telling him to go around talking to everyone else today.”

Without really thinking about it, his hand goes to his inner jacket pocket, where his handbook sits. His fingers close around the little device, the hard edges of plastic and metal pressing into the creases of his palm. He feels a little like he’s been shot.

But he doesn’t bring it out. He glares instead, furiously, hatefully, at the boy standing just meters away. He - and Kirigiri too, most likely, Byakuya suspected that Makoto had already revealed everything that that woman - knew perfectly well the importance of Alter Ego, and why it could not, under any circumstances, be revealed. And they knew Byakuya was aware of this too, and they were holding this fact hostage, over his head.

(I could, some sore, beaten part of him thinks with poisonous intent, try and claim responsibility for Chihiro’s murder. I could say that they’re wrong. That I lured Chihiro to the bathhouse with the intent of making him less wary, easier to isolate. That he was so weak and trusting and stupid that killing him was a simple manner. That I mimicked Syo’s modus operandi to throw suspicion off of me.)

The mere thought was shameful, but it was his pride, wounded and bitter, that was seriously considering it, if only for some semblance of control. The barest reassurance that he had any real weight at all in this trial. And all he would need to do is open his mouth and say the words.

But instead, he bites down on his inner cheek, hard enough for blood to trickle out the corner of his mouth, hard enough for the pain to rival the buzzing in his temples. And tightens his grip momentarily, just enough to feel the faint, humming warmth of the handbook against his sweating palm, and exhales slowly.

“...Fine. Fine.” He spits, angry, defeated, exhausted. He’s sick of this. He just wants it to be over. “Yes. I’m blind. I have been so since we first woke up in this school. Are you happy now?”

Makoto looks down, his face shadowed by his hair. Kirigiri tilts her head slightly, a motion that’s not quite a nod but more of a bow.

“Wait, so then-” Asahina’s voice, confused and a little hesitant, pipes up. “If you’ve been…y’know, this whole time, but only after we got to this school…does that mean the Mastermind did this to you, somehow?”

“That’s what I would like to know, myself.” He turns to look at Monokuma, and finds the bear lounging across its throne, a bucket of popcorn resting precariously on the armrest. The repugnant toy giggles, and swings itself upright, spilling a handful of white puffs all over.

“Gosh, I wonder?” The thing taps at its chin, voice taking on a wondering tone. “Of course, I want this game to be fair and give you all a level playing field. I believe in equality after all! …Though this has made for so many entertaining developments, so…I figured I’d leave it as is. Besides, you’ve adapted quite well, haven’t you Mister Togami?” It cackles, paws clutching at its belly. “GIven how well you did hiding it from everyone, I think it’s fine if we leave it like this, don’t you think?”

He wants to cross the courtroom and throttle the stupid thing this instant. All he can do is glare murderously, lips twisted into a snarl.

There’s a sharp clap that has most people jumping. The source of the sound is Kirigiri, whose hands are raised, and pressed together. “Let’s move on.” Her voice is firm, with no room for arguing. “All we’ve done so far is clear one person’s innocence. We still need to identify the real killer.”

And that was it. The most disgusting moment of his life, over just like that, ended by her words. He knows that there’s bound to be some kind of punishment in store for those who interrupt trials, but he briefly wonders if he can get his hands around her neck before Monokuma can react.

Owada jerks at Kirigiri’s words, startled out of his own stunned silence. “W-wait,” He sounds panicked now, and of course he would be. His scapegoat is gone. “Then, if it’s not Byakuya, then who…?”

“Let’s consider what we know. Given how it’s not clear where the murder took place, it would have to be someone who had access to cleaning supplies or water, and has no alibi that can be verified when the murder occurred. For the most part, everyone here has an alibi that can be supported by at least one other person, but there are some that do not.” Kirigiri lists these calmly, and Byakuya imagines her cold gaze, flitting between each person in the room. “Mondo. Do you care to explain what you were doing prior to the body’s discovery?”

The effect is immediate. The other boy rears up, instantly furious. “The fuck are you trying to say? That I’m a murderer?!” He thunders. “Like I said earlier, I was taking care of my bro. You know that. Everyone knows that!”

“As you said earlier, Taka is currently compromised. He can’t give a testimony.” She shoots back without hesitation. “Your alibi is flawed.”

“Yeah? Well - well so’s yours!” He sputters. “Like- Syo might’ve been the one to find you in the bathroom, but that was just before Chihiro was found. Toko can’t say that you weren’t there the whole time, a-and even if you were, maybe the bathroom was where Chihiro died anyways!”

Owada may be stupid, but credit where credit was due, he was surprisingly quick to retort and pick at Kirigiri’s excuse. “I could not have cleaned up a murder scene in the bathroom so spotlessly in the time between Chihiro’s last sighting and the body discovery. As Makoto described earlier, the sinks of the bathroom were all dry-”

“There was that sheet, you could’ve used that before smashing Chihiro’s head over it. And there’s water in the toilets, right? And the girl’s bathroom was right next door!”

“...I’ll commend you for recognizing my perseverance. But I did not kill Chihiro.” She shakes her head. “If the only thing that will clear me is secondhand support to my alibi, then the only thing that needs to be done is to ask a witness. Toko?”

And she addresses Syo now, who just cocks her head for a moment, and shrugs. “I keep sayin’ to you guys, it’s lights out up there. There’s no telling when she’ll be back!”

Byakuya has had enough.

“Toko,” He says first, his voice low and hissing. Then, louder, building into a shout: “TOKO. Come out, NOW!”

“I don’t think it works like tha-” Syo’s words are cut off suddenly, and she collapses where she stands, like a puppet with her strings cut.

< previous - from start - next >

[chimachapterbooks]

Worriz’s Challenge

Eris perched on a rock and gazed down at the ground far below, her brow knitted with concern.

Just as she had for the last six days, she could see Wolves prowling at the base of the cliffs that the Eagles called home. Now and then, one of the Wolves would look up at her, flash a savage grin, and give a short howl. She did her best to ignore the taunts. But this was becoming a concern.

Ever since the battle for CHI had begun among the tribes, the Wolves had been encroaching on Eagle teritory.

Normally, the Wolf pack was constantly on the move. But this pack was acting like they were here to stay. They were noisy, messy, and threw loud parties late into the night so that none of the Eagles could sleep.

It might have just been a little inconvenience, except for two things: One, the Eagles needed to be able to fly down to the ground to find food, and the Wolves were making that dangerous to do. And two, it was almost time for the Eagles to get their monthly share of the powerful CHi from the Lions, and Eris was sure the Wolves were here to prevent that from happening.

if only we could find some way to make them go away, she thought. But how?

Just then, Eglor flew by. He was very excited, and kept shouting, "I've done it! 've done it!" All the Wolves looked up to see what the commotion was about.

"Shhhh!" warned Eris. "What have you done?"

But Eglor was too excited to speak quietly. "I've perfected a machine that can hurl an Eagle all the way from one end of the forest to the other, faster than any beast that runs or flies. From now on, instead of flap, flap, flap to get from one place to another, it will be zip, zip, zip!"

"Zip, zip, zip?" said one of the Wolves, laughing.

"Sounds more like flop, flop, flop to me!"

Eglor wheeled in the air and looked down at the Wolf.

"Ha! With my machine, any Eagle could outrace a Wolf by twice the speed. That's just scientific fact. There's not even the teeniest, tiniest, most microscopic room for doubt."

"Want to bet?" growled Worriz. The pack leader had wandered over to see what the rest of the Wolves were so interested in. Now he eyed Eglor with a mocking smile.

"Eglor, don't." Eris tried to hold her friend back.

"No good can come from arguing with the Wolves."

But Eglor's pride as an inventor was at stake now.

"Yes, I do want to bet!" he announced loudly.

"All right, then," said Worriz. "I'll bet you I can make it to the far end of the woods faster than any Eagle launched from your machine. If I win, you Eagles give up your share of CHI to us this month."

"And if you lose," said

Eglor, "you go away and leave our nesting area alone!"

Eris slapped a wing against her forehead. What had Eglor just gotten them into?

"Deal," said Worriz. "We race tomorrow ... That is, if you can find someone foolish enough to challenge me."

"Tomorrow?" stammered Eglor. He suddenly sounded a bit nervous. "Now, see here, the machine works— know it does—but it hasn't been fully tested yet, and there are still a few things—"

The Wolves howled with laughter. One of them said,

"You know what they say about Eagles—all flash and feathers."

"If you want to back down, bird," Worriz sneered,

"then I guess-"

"'ll do it!" Eris interrupted him. "I'll race you!"

After she had said it, she could hardly believe the words had come out of her beak. But the Wolves were getting under her feathers with all their insults, and maybe this was the one way to get them to leave their nesting grounds for good. Besides, Eglor was a great inventor. If he said his machine could make her go zip, zip, zip, then it could.

"All right then," Worriz snarled. "Tomorrow. Dawn.

Be here."

The Wolves turned to talk amongst themselves.

Suddenly, Worriz looked sharply back up at Eris. "Oh, and one more rule," he snapped. "No help from the Lions, right, Eagle? For this challenge, you fly solo."

All the Wolves laughed.

—————

"It doesn't work," said Eglor sadly. "I don't know what happened, but it's not working."

"What do you mean?" asked Eris, in shock. "You told the Wolves there wasn't the teeniest, tiniest room for doubt."

It was the middle of the night. Eglor had taken Eris to see his machine, which consisted of a catapult with a bowl at the end attached to a much bigger metal apparatus by tightly wound springs. When Eglor triggered the contraption, the bowl would be propelled forward and anything inside it would go flying... at least, in theory.

But now the inventor Eagle didn't look so sure.

"When I tested it this afternoon, it worked fine," Eglor explained. "But then I started practicing tonight with things actually in the bowl, like bunches of apples, and . .. well, look for yourself."

Eris looked. There were smashed apples splattered all over the floor of Eglor's workshop. The machine just hurled them straight down at the ground.

"So if I get in this thing tomorrow morning. . . no zip?" she asked.

"More like splat," said Eglor. "We'll have to call off the bet."

"We can't," insisted Eris. "We'll lose our CHI to the Wolves, which will hurt the balance in Chima, and the Wolves will stay down there forever! I have to win the race... somehow. I just have to."

——————

"Did you do it?" whispered Worriz.

Wilhurt, another Wolf in the pack, nodded. "It was easy. I used a bellow plant to float up the mountain and then tied it down. I got to Eglor's workshop, and broke off part of his machine. Then let the air out of the bellow plant little by little so I could float back down. That Eagle won't be zipping anywhere, boss."

"Good," Worriz said with a wicked grin. "All that Eagle CHI is practically ours. Hey, maybe we'll challenge the Bears and the Gorillas to races, too. Let the Crocs fight battles we'll get all the CHI we want the old-fashioned way: We'll cheat."

——————

By dawn, Eris had a plan ... sort of. It started with not telling Worriz the machine didn't work. The second part involved getting some help from someone she would normally stay far away from.

Skinnit the Skunk was actually a very nice animal who didn't have an enemy in the world. But no one really wanted to spend any time around him because ... well, he smelled really bad. It wasn't his fault. But no one wanted to risk keeping him company and maybe winding up smelling terribly, too. Still, Eris had always made an effort to be polite to him.

"Skinnit, can you do me a favor?" she asked, talking to him from high up in a tree.

"Me? Really? You want me to do you a favor?" Skinnit replied eagerly. No one ever asked him to do anything other than go away.

"That's right," said Eris. "It's nothing hard. I just want you to do ... that thing you do at a certain place and a certain time."

Skinnit frowned. "You mean you want me to make a stink?" he asked. That was what he did best, but it always made other animals run away. Why would Eris want him to do that?

"Just trust me," Eris reassured him. "You'll be doing something nice for all the Eagles."

"If you say so," Skinnit answered, smiling. "But you had better hold your beak—it's going to get smelly around here!"

Eris grinned. "Thanks, Skinnit," she said. "I knew I could count on you." With that, she flew off. She had a few more non-rule-breaking favors to ask of some old friends.

———————

After making a few more stops, Eris was ready for the start of the race. She perched in Eglor's lab, waiting for the signal to start. Down below, Worriz was crouched down, ready to run.

"You might as well hand over that CHI now, bird,"

Worriz called up. "It's as good as ours!"

"We'll just see about that," Eris shouted back down.

She glanced over at Eglor, and gave him a wink. The inventor Eagle looked very nervous, but he nodded back.

One of the Wolves stood at the base of the rock spire, holding a palm leaf to start the race. A moment later, he waved the leaf high in the air, and the race was on!

Eris leaped out from Eglor's lab, flying as fast as she could, so anyone looking from below would think she had been rocketed out into the sky. Worriz was running at top speed, too, hoping to put some distance between himself and the Eagle.

As she soared above the canopy of trees, Eris did her best to keep an eye on Worriz, even if she could only see him for a few seconds now and then. She knew the Wolf would would take the fastest path through the forest. In fact, she was counting on it.

In the woods, Worriz was feeling confident. The pack had blazed a new trail through the forest lately, one that made getting from one end to the other a snap. All he had to do was follow the scent the vehicles had left and he couldn't go wrong. He put his nose to the ground, took a big sniff...

... and he almost fell over! His nose was full of an incredibly horrible smell, so bad it made his eyes water.

He shook his head, trying to make the odor go away. But it didn't. It was so overpowering that now he couldn't smell anything else. Worriz knew there was only one animal in the forest who could make a smell that bad.

"Skinnit!" he howled.

Off to the side of the path, the little skunk ran away, disappearing into the trees.

"All right, I don't need my nose," Worriz

grumbled to himself. "I can remember the path .. sort of. I know there were trees ... and a big rock... and some dirt... hmm...

Worriz picked a direction that looked right and started to run again. At one point, he glanced up and spotted Eris through the trees. The Eagle was falling behind.

All he needed to do was put on an extra burst of speed and he was sure to win.

Just then, he heard an enormous rustling in the woods ahead. It sounded like a huge herd of creatures on the move. But there were no sounds of foliage tearing or ground being ripped up the way he would have expected. As he rounded a bend, he discovered why: It was a tribe of Gorillas in their massive Gorilla Machines. But instead of smashing through the jungle the way the Wolf Vehicles did, the Gorillas were being extra careful not to disturb anything as they passed.

The Gorillas' respect for nature meant that they had to move very slowly in their huge machines so they didn't accidentally trample any flowers or even weeds.

"Come on!" Worriz growled. "Hurry it up!"

Three of the Gorillas stopped right in Worriz's path.

"Hey, Wolf, why are you in such a hurry?" said the first Gorilla, looking down from the cockpit of his huge vehicle.

"Yeah, you have to savor every minute of life, the way you do a really good banana," said the second.

"Maybe you just don't see it," said the third. "You Wolves always have your noses to the ground, and you don't look up to see the sky!"

Over Worriz's protests, the Gorillas proceeded to tell him all about how much better life was when you were in tune with all of nature. Even worse, all the other Gorillas stopped to listen, nodding their heads and smiling. It felt like forever before they finally finished and moved on, their machines going even slower than before.

When the Gorillas had finally passed, Worriz ran faster than he ever had in his life. He was heading for the quick-moving river that flowed through this part of the forest. If he dove in and let the waters carry him, he could still beat Eris. Sure, he wouldn't technically be racing. But so what? The only thing that mattered to him was winning!

He was just about to dive into the river when, from behind the trees, a bunch of small figures appeared in his path. Worriz nearly skidded to a halt. He couldn't believe his eyes. Nearly two dozen teenage foxes were blocking him, all smiling and yipping and jumping up and down. Because as everyone in Chima knew, teenage foxes thought that the Wolves were the coolest animals in the forest. Especially the Wolf Pack leader, Worriz.

"Look, it's Worriz!" cried one.

"I told you he was coming!" squealed another.

"Wow, look how cool he is!"

"I just have to get his autograph! I have to!" Before Worriz knew what was happening, he was being mobbed by the teenage foxes! They were tugging at his fur, running back and forth in front of him, and begging for his signature.

"We're your biggest fans," said one of the foxes breathlessly. "You're the coolest Wolf in Chima!"

"I won," said the Eagle. "So pack up your pack and move on."

But Worriz sneered. "Ha!" he said. "That's what you think. Your Lion pals aren't here, so you can't prove you won the race. Looks like your CHI for this month is ours. Hand it over!"

Eris shook her head, a knowing grin crossing her face. She pointed up at the sky. A whole flock of sparrows was circling overhead, cheering wildly for Eris.

"I don't need the Lions to prove I beat you," she said.

"Those sparrows saw the entire race. It's over, Worriz."

Worriz smacked his head and groaned. Even with cheating, he had still lost to the Eagles! "Fine," he grumbled. "You got lucky this time. But next time, mark my words, you won't be so lucky!"

Eris chuckled. "It wasn't luck," she said as a sparrow came and landed on her hand. "Don't you know by now? I have lots of friends."

[itsahotminuteinbetween]

something something y/n carries a gun in their basket just in case

@sunnyinajar , hope you don't mind my lil assumption about your y/n's character! My bro showed me a meme and it reminded me of your au, and you said they defended themselves against BloodMoon and I kinda got a biiiit carried away...

I imagine little red reader hood has probably encountered dangers before and felt the need to defend themselves, and while I feel like a crossbow would be more appropriate for them, those aren't exactly easy to come by these days.

(ignore the fact that handguns don't fire off like that, I never claimed to be realistic...and the extremely blurred background, it was very low-effort, sorry...and the fact that their right hand is entirely non-existent...)

(small bonus that I kinda had to add:)

[candycryptids]

Quick! Your OCs are being dragged to the dancefloor by a friend - how do they react? Does the amount of people around influence that reaction? Or the kind of music played maybe?

GHFNFJDJFHB!? What a fun question omfg

Chuu has a vice grip on the sofa she’s sitting on if there’s more than 5 people at a party lmao. She’s not gettin up. N o p e. (Can sometimes be lured out onto the dance floor with a Waltzing number, but will rarely stay for longer than 2 songs before she’s found a way to slither out of being an active party participant. She’d rather chill and eat snacks and watch OTHER people look silly on the dance floor.)

Tuesday is ecstatic to be invited to the dance floor- but he only really knows how to do the stuffy Ishgardian Ball Dance when he first gets invited out to a party lmfao. The amount of people present doesn’t really impact his willingness to come out to the dance floor, but once he learns more ways to dance or even how to just, ‘feel it’ and make it up as he goes he gets much more excited about dancing to upbeat or quicker songs. He is Very good at not stepping on Toes :) (almost as if somebody didn’t want to deal with smushed toes…. 🤔)

Tangy is so zazzed to dance. She is…. Not the best at ballroom dancing or like, whatever you wanna call a couples dance, so. Watch your toes! It doesn’t matter how many people are there but being the center of attention can be kinda daunting :’> she’d rather dance to more upbeat music than slow dances so she’ll probs bow out for drinks and a snack during those to take a breather sjfjdkfs … pls also imagine her doing classic ‘dad’ dance moves or something from the Peanuts x3 [cut cos it’s Long 🫢]

….. 🤔 Ishi will gladly dance with a friend (or friends!) at smaller gatherings- and even invite others out to the floor x3 but at bigger more official events? She’s probably grateful for the excuse to step away from whatever Politically Charged Chat she’s been roped into regarding allied tribes or intercity relations. (She isn’t trained in dance, but will readily learn and follow somebody else’s lead •v•)

Mochiie is someone who’s reluctant to take an invite to the dance floor no matter how many people are present if there’s already people dancing and there’s not much space. He’s uh… conscious of his tail. (Poor guy sent a lalafellin couple sprawling once when he got tangled up in his feet, so he tries to be Overly Cautious now)

😂 Colette will indulge a friend in a dance, and relies more on being able to lift/twirl/dip her dance partner for flair - it’s an All-Eyes-On-Them situation. If Eorzean weapons didn’t have a habit of cracking under the pressure she’d probably be a tank. She prefers music with dramatic flair, to match her flashy dancing style. She laughs a lot more when it’s a Smaller group, there’s less performance pressures 🤧 (I should REALLY pose her dancing with Setsuna at some point… I’ll have to bug my partner for some files x3)

🤔🤔🤔 Levraut was the hardest for me to figure out. He’s classically trained in Ishgardian Dance? But he hates it. He thinks the whole thing looks silly, and he’s not so into huge parties (since they’re usually hosted by The Rich And Influential And Expect A Certain Class Of People yk) … he’d be a hilarious ‘sexy lamp’ for someone to dance with though… I think it would take him some time to feel comfortable dancing in the center of everything but he wouldn’t mind kinda grooving in place around the edges.

Until he’s 5 cups in. And then you have to haul him off the dance floor before he makes more of a fool of himself than he currently is, and tries to start a fight with the Violinist, because it quote ‘sounds like you’re killing the cat what made the strings all over again’ (regardless of if that’s true or not; a drunken Lev craves Rowdy Brawling and will Incite It)

… 🤨 I think that’s everyone if only because I don’t have a solid idea what the Trio would be like in a Party situation

[jazzy-a]

Based on your adventures of Destiny and his smol baby siblings...😁

How Destiny sees the Twins...

How everyone else in the omniverse sees the twins...

😅

OMG!! YES YES!

Dream: You're just going to let this go?

Destiny, flipping pages: They're only children, little brother.

Dream, in full eldritch mode while the twins "teehee" in the background: DESIRE TRIED TO KILL ME!!

Destiny, patting his head without looking up: They don't understand what they're doing, Dream.

Dream: THEY LITERALLY GOT A WOMAN PREGNANT!! IT'S RIGHT THERE IN YOUR STUPID BOOK!!

Destiny, casually using white-out: I have no idea what you're talking about...

[soranker]

Heya! Saw your cry for a distraction and honestly such a mood.

I've got a question!

What's your least favorite thing to draw/do when you make art?

I'm on my own art journey right now and kind of dread the transition from lineart to coloring.

Trying to study anatomy right now and ignore rendering but I'm curious what other artists feel is challenging or just like 'ugh, ok time for [x]'

OHHH in terms of what's challenging, for me it's definitely coloring, rendering, backgrounds, and composition HAHA (<- chronic flat colors user who only draws character art on a floating white background)

i love focusing on gesture and lines when i draw ^_^ i rely mostly on intuition for the other stuff but it really only takes u so far T_T i'll spend hours trying to fix something by trial and error when i probably couldve saved that time by putting in more conscious studying/practice lol

[wraith-caller]

i was gonna ask ❤️ but i think i know the answer already so 💛💕🖤 👁️👁️

i actually dont see ❤️ on the list. i dunno if i went blind or sth?? lol

💛: What is a popular ship you just can't get behind, and why?

m*rg*tt/any tarnished (i censored to try to avoid this ending up in ppls searches, sorry if it didn't work lol) his hatred of tarnished is pretty extreme, to the point of building a regiment of elite knights to hunt them down, and then doing so personally in game not once, but twice! it's tough imagining any one of this group he despises so thoroughly getting through to him to the point of a romance. i only chose this one bc it's literally the most written about on ao3 haha so no shade to ppl who write it, it's just a hurdle i can't quite get over.

💕: What is an unpopular ship that you like?

hmm i ran out of my mainstays so i'm having to think pretty hard on this....while nepheli/roderika is not popular, i somehow feel it's not in the spirit of the question since no one is especially against it so i won't use that haha maybe mohg/miquella? it gets hated on a lot despite being pretty blatant, to the point people often deny it's even possibly there. i think mohg's desire for love after being denied it by his own mother has taken on such a messed up shape, not just in his obsessive behavior towards miquella but in his desire to build his dynasty around "love" and "truth", all the while he has to kidnap all these people into being with him, or effectively 'drug' them with his blood. miquella is especially suitable for this horror precisely because he has always been the one to go to bat for those who were rejected and outcast. so it makes perfect sense why mohg would turn his eyes to him first(even more so when you see his other options were ranni and malenia, who could both beat his ass lol).

🖤: Which character is not as morally good as everyone else seems to think? im trying to pick characters for this who don't actually get debated over(like all the demigods), which is why i picked ken haight last time. and maybe i will be a demon again and say rya this time. before you kill me, hear me out!! the fandom has a tendency to infantaiize rya a bit, and i see her given the 'sweet cinnamon roll does no wrong' thing even though...we meet her because she's testing people to see if they're willing to fight, and even possibly kill others. and her job is to lead you back to volcano manor where you will, again, be asked to kill others. now im not saying she's evil incarnate or anything. on the scale of corrupt and cruel actions in TLB, hers aren't exactly high, and she definitely is one of the kinder people out there! BUT the question is 'who is not *as* morally good as others think', and if most people seem to think she has done absolutely no wrong then....i disagree lol

[spacephrasing]

hello sorry if this is really long and tmi but besties i need some advice