#the way ar tells its story is very interesting

[tobiasdrake]

How would you write Majin Boo and Yamcha in the Tournament of Power, instead of Roshi and 17?

Honestly, Buu would be pretty game-breaking. I can't really conceive of any reason why Buu wouldn't absorb Jiren and anticlimactically waste everybody else fighting in the tournament.

As the be-all end-all final villain of Dragon Ball, Buu's ability to just eat whoever's stronger than him and gain their power for himself is completely busted. It makes it very difficult to write him into scenarios where he is a struggling underdog trying to compete with a superior foe.

Which is probably why Super snubs him so much. This is a character who has near limitless regeneration on top of the ability to turn every single fighter in the tournament into candy and he can just absorb everybody who's stronger than him whenever he runs into a brick wall. That's great for an overpowered villain that we need to find some way to beat, but terrible for a protagonist who needs to be challenged.

Like. It cannot be understated how devastating Buu's Candy Beam would be here. He can spread it over a wide area. He could literally step out onto that stage and Gobstopper every fighter from every universe simultaneously.

And sure, some of them would be able to Universe's Strongest Jawbreaker that shit. But it's still kind of purpose-defeating if like 80% of the assembled fighters are KO'd in the first three seconds. Buu just waves his antenna and erases anyone who isn't Power Levels enough to compete with Vegetto? Okay, man. There go all the fun fights for the weaker characters. Buh-bye.

Even then, if they aren't allowed to fly, like... how are they supposed to fight now? Is Gobstopper Jiren just supposed to spend the rest of the arc rolling into other gobstoppers super hard to ping them off the field?

Actually, that sounds amazing. XD

But in an AU capacity, not in a "This is seriously the plot of the show" capacity.

I don't think Toriyama would have kept Buu around if he wasn't planning on closing the book on Dragon Ball shortly after. Buu joining the supporting cast is very much a "Fuck it, we're done anyway" decision that the series is now paying for, and its solution is to just... find ways to conveniently kick him out of the cast over and over again.

Going into the Tournament of Power... Like, right from the get-go, Buu is going to be nerfed by the rules of the tournament. He can't eat people. That would probably be how you get around the "Buu just deletes half the tournament roster" problem.

He's just. He's not allowed to use his powers. Sorry. Buu has to fight with one hand behind his back. Dem's the rules.

I don't know if he would actually abide by that rule. He might just end up disqualified after eating Toppo. Buu is a selfish, impulsive hedonist who reflexively lashes out at authority. He's just gonna do whatever he wants and let the chips fall where they may.

But if Mr. Satan tells him not to eat anyone, he... probably won't eat anyone? Might still Candy Beam them though. Turning them all into marbles and rolling them off the stage would technically be within the terms of a "NO EATING PEOPLE" restriction.

Buu's crowd control options are bad for the narrative integrity of a battle royale. Even right now, I'm trying to figure out how he could be involved and still having to write around his powerset rather than being able to incorporate and challenge it to its fullest.

I don't know. It's honestly difficult to incorporate him in a way that would be respectful and utilize him in interesting ways without letting him dominate and break the plot.

I think he could work as the villain of another universe's story. Have Buu take the field as the threat that's gonna carry us to victory until fighters from another universe find a way to team up and take him down.

But for the life of me, I can't get around, "Why doesn't he just Candy Beam the entire arena?"

...

As for Yamcha, I probably wouldn't write him into the Tournament of Power. Yamcha quit during the Cell arc and I'm entirely happy to let him. If I was writing Yamcha in Super, probably the only thing I'd do with him is properly introduce his new girlfriend from the end of the Cell Games.

Put an actual name and a face to her, so the fandom can stop ignoring her existence when they complain that Bulma condemned Yamcha to die alone and unloved.

I mean, I'd pick Yamcha over Roshi, to be sure. I feel like the series has forgotten that the Muten-Roshi isn't Goku's "One True Master" or anything like that. Goku has a lot of respect for the man who set him on his path, and he wears the Kame-senryu dogi out of that respect. But he learned everything Roshi had to teach him and left him in the dust long ago, a fact that made Roshi proud.

That story is over. The Muten-Roshi is a 300-year-old man who just wants to enjoy his retirement. Stop trying to make him relevant again! And also just. In general. Stop trying to make "Goku the wide-eyed pupil" happen again. It's done. He's a master now. Let him be a master.

Lotta beefs with DBS.

But yeah, while I agree with the criticism of "Why Roshi and not Yamcha", it's only to the extent that going with Yamcha is still kicking the can down the road. I cannot conceive of a single way that Yamcha's character or the story would be enriched by the Tournament of Power, that wouldn't just feel like hollow fanservice.

"Yamcha got to WIN A FIGHT AGAINST SOMEONE. This one's for you, Yamcha stans! Okay, he's done, someone punt this dipshit off the stage."

Which. To be fair. A lot of the ToP is hollow fanservice. I... did not like that arc very much. Or DBS as a whole, for that matter. So I'm probably not the guy to figure out the best way to utilize characters in it.

But for me, I'd be more interested in a proper Yamcha epilogue that closes out his character on a satisfying note and sends him off, than in desperately trying to drag Yamcha back into the game and shackling him into a status quo he already respectfully bowed out of.

[ungodlysaltyinfrastructure]

Tripping and falling

ep 18

Siiiiogghhhhhhhh. I just woke up to this, and the only thing I gotta say, is Alux is so autistic about that firebird.

I was right in saying that he loves fantasy creatures >:]

But everything else is just character and world building. Nice and cozy, like the tavern. But story progression wise, it doesn't give us *a lot*. It does give us some things, like adding character to deer and rocky (because they've been pretty neglected since introduction), and there is that one snippet of the Wisp and petro at the beginning. But like, the title of the episode seems off. Like the presentation first hand, and then the actual content don't line up, so I can only assume that the title and thumbnail are meant to foreshadow something bigger in ep 19 or 20.

My best prediction is that 19 is going to be Petro centric. And 20 is going to be the season finale with the honeybee festival, and some goes horribly wrong because of some sort of butterfly affect by Petro, kicking off season 2 with Alux having to now find out what's going on in cozen. (And of course the gang going along with him.)

[felikatze]

ISAT and Ludonarrative Harmony: Combat is a Storytelling Tool

Or: How Siffrin is stuck in the endgame grind, forever

Please Note: This is primarily aimed at an audience that already played In Stars and Time, because I am bad at explaining things, and it's good to already know what the fuck I'm talking about. I tend to only bring up game elements as I want to talk about them.

Spoilers for.... all of ISAT! Especially Act 5!

(image to show how i feel posting this and as an attention grabber over my wall of text)

To pull a definition of ludonarrative harmony out of a hat, game writer Lauryn Ash defines it as follows:

Ludonarrative harmony is when gameplay and story work together to create a meaningful and immersive experience. From a design implementation perspective, it is the synchronized interactions between in-game actions (mechanics) and in-world context (story).

It is, generally speaking, how well game mechanics work hand in hand with the story. I, personally, think ISAT is an absolute masterclass of it, so I want to take a look at how ISAT specifically uses its battle system to emphasize Siffrin's character arc and create organic story moments. I want you to keep this in mind when I talk here.

So, skills, right? If you've played any turn-based RPG, you know your Fire spells, your "BACKSLASH! AIRSLASH! BACKSLASH!" and the many ways to style those.

Well, what does casting "Fire" say about your character? Not all that much, does it? Perhaps you'll have typical divisions. The smart one is the mage, the big brawny one is your tank, the petite one's the healer. And that's the barebones of ISAT's main party, but it's much more than that.

Every character's style of combat tells you something about them. Odile, the Researcher, is the most well-travelled and knowledgable of the bunch. She's the one with the expertise to keep a cool head and analyze the enemy, yet also able to use all three of the Rock-Paper-Scissors craft types.

To reflect her analytical view of things, all her skill names are just descriptive, the closest to your most bog-standard RPG. "Slow IV" or "Paper III" serve well to describe their purpose. The high number of the skills gives the impression there were three other Slow skills beforehand - fitting, considering the party starts at level 45, about to head into the final dungeon. She's also the oldest, so she's the slowest of the bunch.

Isabea, the Fighter, has all his skills in exclamation points. "YOUR TURN!!!" "SO WEAK!!!" "SMASH!!!" they're straightforward, but excited. He's a purposefully cheerfull guy, so his skills revolve around cheering on his allies. He's absolutely pumped to be here, and you see that from his skill names alone.

Mirabelle, the Housemaiden, is an interesting case. She's by all means the true protagonist of this tale - She's the one "Chosen by the Change God," the only one who survived the King's first attack, the only one immune to his ability to freeze time, the only dual-craft type of the game - just a lot of things. And her skill names reflect that facade she puts on herself - she can do this, she can win! She has to believe it, or else she starts doubting. This is how you get "Jolly Round Rondo" and "Mega Sparkle Heal" or "Adorable Moving Cure." She's styled every bit a sailor scout shojo heroine, and her moveset replicates the naming conventions of "In the name of the moon, I'll punish you!"

Even Bonnie, the Kid, who can't be controlled in combat, has named craft skills. And they very much reflect that Bonnie is, well, a kid. "Wolf Speed Technique" or "Thousand Blows Technique" are very much the phrasings of a child who learned one complicated word and now wants to use it in everything to seem cooler than they are, which is none, because they're twelve.

Siffrin's skills are all puns.

You have an IMMEDIATE feel for personality here. Between "Knife to Meet You!" and "Too Cleaver by Half," you know Siffrin's the type to always crack a joke no matter the situation, slinging witticisms around to put Sonic the Hedgehog to shame. It's just such a clever way to establish character using a game mechanic as old as the entire history of RPGs.

This is only the baseline of the way the combat system feeds into the story, though.

The timeloop, of course, feeds into it. Siffrin is the only character who retains experience upon looping, whereas all other characters are reset to their base level and skills. And it sucks (affectionate).

You're extremely likely to battle more often the earlier in the game you are - after all, you need the experience (for now.) Every party member contributes, and Siffrin isn't all that strong on their own, since they focus on raw scissor type damage with the addition of one speed buff. (Of course it's a speed buff. They're a speedy fucker. Just look at him).

At first, the difference in level between Siffrin and the rest of the group is rather negligible. Just a level or two. Just a bit more speed and attack. And then Siffrin grows further and further apart. Siffrin keeps learning new skills. He gets a healing skill that doubles as an attack boost, taking away from both Mirabelle's and Isabeau's usefullness. He gets Craft skills of every type that even give you two jackpot points instead of one - thus obliterating Odile's niche. Siffrin turns into a one-person army capable of clearing most encounters all on their own.

Siffrin's combat progression is an exact mirror of story progression - as their experience inside the loops grows, they also grow further and further away from their party. The party seems... weaker, slower, clumsier. Always back at their starting point, just as all of their character arcs are reset each loop. Never advancing, always stagnant. And you have Siffrin as the comparison post right next to them.

I also want to point out here a change from Act 2 to Act 3 - Siffrin's battle portrait. He stops smiling.

Battles keep getting easier. This is true both for the reason that Siffrin keeps growing stronger even when all enemies stay the same, but also for the reason that you, the player, learn more about the battle system and the various encounters, until you've learned perfect boss clear strategies just from repetition. Have you ever watched a speedrunner play Pokemon? They've played this game so many times, they could do it blindfolded and sleeping. Your own knowledge and Siffrin's new strength work in tandem to trivialize the game's entire combat system as the game progresses.

(Is it still fun? Playing it over, and over, and over again? Is it?)

You and Siffrin are in sync, your experience making everything trivial.

As time goes on, Siffrin grows to care less and less about performing right for their party and more and more about going fast. A huge moment in his character is marked by the end of Act 3; because of story events I won't delve too deeply into, Siffrin has grown afraid of trying something new. And his options of escape are closing in. They need an answer, and they need it fast. He doesn't have the time or patience to dumb himself down, so you unlock one new skill.

It doesn't occur with level up, or with a quest, or anything at all. At the start of Act 4, it simply appears in Siffrin's Craft skills.

(Just attack.)

No pun. No joke. Just attack. Once you notice, the effect is immediate - here you have it, a clear sign of how jaded Siffrin has become, right at every encounter. And it's a damn good attack, too! The only available attack in the game that deals "massive" damage against all enemies. Because it doesn't add any jackpot points (at least, it's not supposed to), you set up a combo with everybody else, but Siffrin simply tears away at the enemy with wild abandon. Seperated from the rest of the party by the virtue of no longer needing to contribute to team attacks (most of the time. It's still useful if they do, though).

Once again, an aspect of the battle system enhances the degree of separation between Siffrin and the static characters of his play. You're incentivized to separate him, even.

Additionally, there are two more skills to learn. They're the only skills that replace previous skills. You only get them at extremely high levels, the latter of which I didn't even reach on both of my playthroughs.

The first, somewhere in the level 70 range, Rose Printed Glasses, a paper type craft skill, is replaced by Tear You Apart. It's still a pun about paper, but remarkedly more vicious.

The second is even more on the nose. At level 80, In A While, Rockodile!, a rock type craft skill, is replaced by the more powerful Rock Bottom.

I didn't get to level 80. If you do, you pretty much have to do it on purpose. You have to keep going much longer than necessary, as Siffrin is just done. And the last skill he learns is literally called Rock Bottom.

What do I even need to say, really.

Your party doesn't stay static forever, though.

By doing their hangout quests, side quests throughout the loops that result in Siffrin and the character having a heart to heart, all of them unlock what I'd call an "ultimate" skill. You know the type - the character achieved self-fulfillment, hit rank 10 on their confidant, maxed out their skill tree, and received a reward for their trouble.

These skills are massively useful. My favorite is Odile's - it makes one enemy weak to all Craft types for several turns, which basically allows you to invalidate the first and third boss, as well as just clown on the King, especially once Siffrin starts racking up damage.

But the thing is. In Act 3, when you first get them, yeah, they're useful. But... do you need them? After all, they're such a hassle to get. You need to do the whole character quest again, you can't loop forward in the House or you'll lose them. If you want to take these skills to the King, you need to commit. Go the full nine-yards and be nice to your friends and not die and not skip forward or skip back. Which is annoying, right?

Well, I sure did think so during Act 4. After all, a base level party can still defeat the King, just with a few more tricky pieces involved. Siffrin can oneshot almost all basic enemies by the time of Act 4. It's this exact evalutation that you, the player, go through everytime you return to Dormont. Do I want this skill, still? Would it not be faster to go on without it? I'm repeating myself, but that's the thing! That's what Siffrin is thinking, too!

I also want to take a quick moment to note, here - all skills gained from hangouts have art associated with them, which no other skills do. This feature, the nifty art, hammers home these as "special" skills, besides just how they're unlocked.

Siffrin also has one skill with associated art.

Yeah, you guessed it, it's (Just attack.)

At first, helping the characters is tied to a hefty in-game reward, but that reward loses its value, and in return devalues helping Siffrin's friends every loop. It's too tedious for a skill that'll make a boss go by one turn faster. You, the player, grow jaded with the battle system. Grinding experience isn't worth it, everybody's highest levels are already recorded. Fighting bosses isn't worth it, it's much faster to loop forward.

Isn't this what all endgame in video games looks like? You already beat the final boss, and now... what challenge is left? Is there a point to keep playing? Most games will have some post-game content. A superboss to test your skills against, but ISAT doesn't have any of that. You're forever left chasing to the post-game. That's the whole point - to escape the game.

As most games get more difficult as time passes, ISAT only gets easier. The game becomes disinterested in expanding its own mechanics just as I ran out of new things to fight after 100%-ing Kingdom Hearts 3. Every encounter becomes a simple game of "press button to win."

The final boss just takes that one up a notch.

Spoilers for Act 5 ahead boys!

In Act 5, Siffrin utterly loses it. His last possible hope for escape failed him, told him there's nothing she can do, and Siffrin is trapped for eternity. So of course, they go insane and run up the entire House without their party.

This just proves what you already knew - you dont need the party to proceed. Siffrin alone is strong enough. And here, Siffrin has entirely shed the facade of the jokester they used to be. Every single skill now follows the (Just attack.) naming conventions. Your skills are: (Paper.) (Rock.) (Scissors.) (Breathe.)

To the point. Not a moment wasted, because Siffrin can't take a moment longer of any of this. Additionally, his level is set to 99 and his equipment becomes fixed. You can't even pick up items anymore! Not that you needed them at this point anyway, right? Honestly, I never used any items besides the Salty Broth since Act 2, so I stopped picking items up a long time ago. Now you just literally can't.

Something I've not talked about until now - one of the main equipment types in this game are Memories, gained for completing subquests or specific interactions and events. They all by and large have little effects - make Odile's tonics heal more, or have Mirabelle cast a shield at the start of combat. For the hangout events, you also gain an associated memory that boosts the characters' stats by 30. It lets them keep up with Siffrin again! A fresh wind! Finally, your party members feel on par with you again!

...For a time. And just like that, they're irrelevant again, just as helping them gave Siffrin a brief moment of hope that the power of friendship could fix everything.

In Act 5, your memory is set to "Memory of Emptiness." It allows you to loop back in the middle of combat. You literally can't die anymore. Not that Siffrin could've died by this point in the first place, unless you forgot about the King's instant-kill attack. This one memory takes away the false pretense that combat ever had any stakes. Siffrin's level being set to 99 means even the scant exp you get is completely wasted on them. All stakes and benefits from combat have been removed. It has become utterly pointless.

Frustrating, right? It's an artistic frustration, though. It traps you right here in Siffrin's shoes, because he hates that all these blinding Sadnesses are still walking around just as much. It all inspires just a tiny fraction of that deep rolling anger Siffrin experiences here in the player.

And listen, it was cathartic, that one time Siffrin snapped and stabbed the tutorial Sadness, wasn't it? Because who enjoys sitting through the tutorial that often? Siffrin doesn't. I don't, either.

So, since combat is an useless obstacle now meant to inspire frustration, what do you do for a boss? You can't well make it a gameplay challenge now, no. The bosses of Act 5 are an emotional challenge: a painful wait.

First, Siffrin fights the King, alone. This is already nervewracking because of one factor - in every other run, you need Mirabelle's shield skill, or else you're scripted to die. You're actually forced to fight the King multiple times in Act 3, and have to do it at least once in Act 4, though you'll likely do it more. Point is: you know how this fight works.

You know Siffrin's fight is doomed from the outset, but all you can do is keep slinging attacks. Siffrin is enough of a powerhouse to take the King's HP down, what with the healing and buff skills they have now, not to even mention you can just go all in on damage and then loop back.

(And no matter which way you play it, whether you just loop or use strategically, it reflects on Siffrin, too. Has he grown callous enough not even death will stop their mission? Or does he still avoid pain, as much as he can?)

This fight still allows you the artifice of even that much choice, not that it matters. The other shoe drops eventually - Siffrin becomes slower, and slower. Unsettling, considering this game works on an Action Gauge system. You barely get turns anymore. The screen gets darker, and darker. Until Siffrin is frozen in time, just as you knew he had to be, because you know how this encounter works, know it can't be cleared without Mirabelle.

And, then, a void.

Siffrin awakens to nothingness. The only way to tell you've hit a wall is if Siffrin has no walking animation to match your button inputs. You walk, and walk, until you're approached by.... you. The next enemy encounter of the game, and Siffrin's absolute lowest point: Mal Du Pays.

Or, "Homesickness," in english. If you know the game, you know why it's named this, but that's not the point at the moment.

Thing is, where you could damage the King and are damaged in turn, giving you at least a proper combat experience, even if its doomed to fail, Mal Du Pays has no such thing.

You can attack. You can defend. But it is immune to all attacks. And in return, it does nothing. It's common, at least, for undefeatable enemies to be a "survive" challenge, but nope. The entire fight is "press button and wait." Except, remember the previous fight against the King? The entire time, you were waiting for the big instant death attack to drop. That feeling, at least for me, carried forward. I was incredibly on edge just waiting for the other shoe to drop. And, as is a pattern, Siffrin is, too. As Siffrin's attacks fail to connect, they start talking to Mal Du Pays.

But he gets no response, as you get no attacks to strategize around. The wait for anything to happen is utterly agonizing. You and Siffrin are both waiting for something to happen. This isn't a fight. It just pretends to be. It's an utter rugpull, because Siffrin was so undefeatable for most of Act 4 and all of Act 5 so far. It's kind of terrifying!

and it does. It finally does something. Ma Du Pays speaks, in the voice of Siffrin's friends, listing out their deepest fears. I think it's honestly fantastic. You're forced to just sit here and listen to Siffrin's deepest doubts, things you know the characters could not say because it references the timeloops they're all utterly unaware of. This is all Siffrin, talking to himself. And all you, all Siffrin, can do, is keep wailing away on the enemy to no effect whatsoever.

So of course this ends with Siffrin giving up. What else can you do?

And then Siffrin's friends show up and unfreeze them and it's all very cool yay. The pure narrative scenes aren't really the main focus but I want to point out here:

A) Mirabelle is in the first party slot here, referencing how she's the de facto protagonist, and Bonnie fills in the fourth slot left empty, which shows all characters uniting to save Siffrin

B) this is the only instance of the other party members having act specific battle icons: they're all smiling brightly, further pushed by the upbeat music

C) the reflecting shield Mirabelle uses to freeze the King uses a variation of her hangout skill cut in, marking it as her true "final" skill and giving the whole fight a more climatic feeling.

It's also a short gameplay sequence with Siffrin utterly uninvolved in the battle. You can't even see them onscreen. But... it feels warm, doesn't it? Everybody coming together. Siffrin doesn't have to fight anymore.

At last, the King is defeated. Siffrin and co. make for the Head Housemaiden, to have her look at Siffrin's sudden illness. Siffrin is utterly exhausted, famished, running a fever. And this isn't unexpected - after all, their skills in Act 5 had no cooldown. For context, instead of featuring any sort of MP system, all skills work on a cooldown basis, where a character can't use it for a certain number of turns. The lowest cooldown is actually Siffrin's Knife to Meet You, which has a cooldown of 1. In universe, this is reasoned as the characters needing a break from spamming craft in order to not exhaust themselves.

Siffrin's skills in Act 5 having no cooldown/being infinitely spammable isn't a sign of their strength - it's a sign that he refuses to let himself rest in order to rush through as fast as possible.

Moving on, Siffrin panics when seeing the Head Housemaiden, because seeing her means one thing: the end. Prior to this in the game, every single time you beat the King, the loop ends when you talk to the Head Housemaiden.

Reality breaks down, the whole shebang. It's here that Siffrin realizes - they don't want the loops to end, because the end of their journey means their family will leave, and he'll be alone again. The happiest time of his life will be over.

Siffrin goes totally ballistic, to say the least.

As it turns out (and was heavily foreshadowed narratively), Siffrin has been using Wish Craft to subconciously cause the timeloop because of their abandonment issues. It's rather predictable if you paid attention to literally anything, but it's extremely notable how heavily Siffrin is paralleled to the King, the antagonist they swore to kill by themself at the start of Act 5. The King wants to freeze Vaugarde in time because it is, in his mind, "perfect," for accepting him after he lost his home - a backstory he shares with Siffrin.

Siffrin has become the exact antagonist he swore to kill, and it's shown by how the next fight utterly flips everything on its head.

Siffrin is the final boss.

In a towering form made of stars, Siffrin looks down at their friends. His face is terrified, because of his internal conflict; he can't hurt his friends, but he can't let them go, either. The combat prompt is simply changed to "END IT!"

This fight is similar to the previous, in that you just need to wait a certain number of turns until its over. However, this time, it's not dreadful suspense. It's... confusion, and hesitance.

You have two options for combat: Attack your friends, or attack yourself.

And... you don't really want to do either, I think. I certainly don't. But what else can you do? It's Siffrin's desires clashing in full force. Attack your friends, and force them to stay? Or attack yourself, and let them go safely without you?

Worth noting, here - when you attack Siffrin's friends, you can't harm them. Isabeau will shield all attacks. And when you attack yourself, Mirabelle will heal you back to full. And the friends don't... do anything, either. How could they? Occasionally, Mirabelle heals you and Isabeau shouts words of motivation, but the main thing is...

(Your friends don't know what to do.)

None of them want to harm Siffrin. Both sides simply stare at each other, resolute in their conviction but unwilling to end it with violence. It's of note that this loop, the last one, is the only loop where the King isn't killed. Just frozen. And now here is Siffrin, clamoring for the same eternity the King was. Of course everything ends in a tearfilled conversation as Siffrin sees their friends won't leave him, even after the journey ends, but I still have to appreciate this moment.

Siffrin is directly put in the position with their friends as his enemies, forced to physically reckon that keeping them in this loop is an act of violence, against both their friends, and against himself.

It's a happy ending. But... what does it mean?

Of course, ISAT is obviously about the fear of change. Siffrin is afraid of the journey ending, and of being alone. However, ISAT is also a game about games. Siffrin is playing the same game, over and over, because it's comforting. It's familiar. It's nice, to know exactly what happens next. These characters might just be predictable lines of dialogue, but... they feel like friends. Have you ever played a game, loved it, put countless hours into it, but you never finished it? Because you just couldn't bear to see it end? For the characters to leave your life, for there to be a void in your heart where the game used to be?

After all, maybe it became part of your routine! You play the game every day, slowly chipping away at it for weeks at a time. For me, I beat ISAT in four days. It utterly consumed me during this time. I had 36 hours of playtime by the end. Yeah, in that week, I did not do much more than play ISAT.

And once i beat it, i beat it, again. I restarted the game to see the few scenes I missed, most specifically the secret boss I won't talk about here. I... couldn't let go of the game yet. I wanted to see every scrap I could. I still do. I'm writing this, in part because I still do. It's scary to let go.

Ever heard the joke term of "Postgame Depression?" It's when you just beat a game, and you're suddenly sad. Maybe because the ending affected you emotionally and you need to process the feelings it invoked, or you search for something that can now fill your time with it gone.

The game ends, for real this time, the last time you talk to the Head Housemaiden. But Siffrin gets... scared. What if everything loops back again? And so, his family offers to hold his hand. They face the end, together.

For all loops, including the ending, you never see what happens after. After they leave the loop for good. Because the loop is the game itself. It's asking you to trust that life goes on for these characters, and it holds your hand as it asks you to let go. There's a reason for Siffrin's theater metaphors. He is the actor, and the director, asking everyone to do it over one more time. He's a character within the game, and its player.

There's a reason I talked about endgame content. This, the way it all repeats, there's nothing new, difficulty and stakes bleed away as you snap the game over your knee - it's my copy of White 2 with two hundred hours in it. It's me playing Fire Emblem Awakening in under 3 hours while skipping every cutscene. Are you playing for the sake of play, for the sake of indulging in your memories, because you're afraid of the hole it'll leave when you stop?

Of note: the narrative never condemns Siffrin for unwittingly causing their own suffering. He's a victim of circumstance. It's seen as endearing, even, that Siffrin loves their friends to the point of rather seeing the world destroyed than them gone. But Siffrin is also told: we'll stay with you for now, but we'll part ways eventually. And one day, you'll have to be okay with it.

Stop draining the things you love of every ounce of enjoyment just because you're afraid of what happens next. I'm not saying to never play your favorite games again. Playing ISAT a second time, I still had a lot of fun! I saw so many new things I didn't before, and I enjoyed myself immensely, reading the same dialogue over and over. But... it makes me look at other games I love and still play, and makes me ask... is this still fun? Do I still need to play this game to enjoy it? Even writing this is an afterimage of my enjoyment, but it's a new way to interact with the game, to analyze it through this lens. Fuck, man, I write fanfiction. Look at me.

All of this, fanart, fanfic, analysis, is a way to prolong that enjoyment without making yourself suffer for it. Without just going through the motions of enjoyment without actually experiencing any. But one day, the thing you love won't be fun to talk and write and draw about. And it's okay. You'll have new things to love. I promise.

In the end.... I'm certain I'll replay ISAT one day. Between great writing, art, puzzles and unresolved mysteries, it's my shoe-in for game of the year.

But I won't replay it for quite some time. I've had enough, for now, so I let my love take other forms.

Siffrin is never condemned, because love is no evil. Be it love for another person, or for a game. And please, if you're overempathetic - it's still a game, at the end of the day. The great thing about games is that you can always boot them up again, no matter how long its been.

A circle within a circle indeed.

To summarize:

The repetitiveness of ISAT's combat, lack of new enemies, and Siffrin's ever increasing strength eventually allows you to snap the combat over your knee, rendering it irrelevant and boring. Though this may seem counterproductive at first, it perfectly mirrors how Siffrin has also grown bored with these repeated encounters and views them only as an obstacle to get past. The reflection of Siffrin's own tiredness with the player's annoyance increases the compassion the player has for Siffrin as a character.

Additionally, the endgame state of the combat system serves as commentary on the state of a favorite game played too often, much like how Siffrin has unwittingly trapped themself in the loop. Despite the game having no more challenge or content left to over, a player might return to their favorite game anyway, solely to try and recreate the early experience of actually having fun with it. This ties into ISAT's metanarrative about the fear of change and refusal to let go of comfort even when the object (here, your favorite video game) offering that comfort has become utterly bereft of any substance to actually engage with. Playing for the sake of playing, with no actual investment to keep going besides your own memories.

Later on, stripping away even the pretense of strategy for a "press button and wait" format of final bosses highlights the lack of options at Siffrin's disposal and truly forces the player into their shoes. Truly, the only way to win is to stop playing.

[e-vay]

Hi! If you have the time, could tell me a little about Love and Deep Space? I originally played a ton of Dress Up! Time Princess, as obsessed, and even occasionally threw a little money at it, but ditched it once the UI became too cluttered, they added a ton of things that used up massive resources, and almost all events were P2W. I keep eying LaDS but am worried it might have the same issue? Also, does it have a lot of customization/personalization options? That'd be a big selling point for me.

Oh my gosh, where do I even start! Listen I'm not a saleswoman but I'll do my best to explain. I'll put it below the cut so that people who aren't interested don't have to read. Oh and also (not that you are, but I just want to make this clear for everyone) Love and Deepspace is NOT a game for children. So don't download it for your kids lol

I haven't played any other game like LADS before so I don't know what to compare it to. It is just this very rare game that happens to check every single box of all my niches! It's a romance, it's a sci-fi/fantasy, it's got action and fighting as well as really cute mini games, its got steamy audio stories that'll make ya go WOOF, the writing is superb and the animations are STUNNING!!!! I am not kidding when I tell you the story is so well written; it makes me cry, it makes me laugh, it makes me sweat 🥵 (in a good way haha), the writers really know what they’re doing! Here are just some samples of the different things you can do in the game:

RPG Battles - Multiple fighting styles, including your choice between guns, sword, wand/staff and claymore.

Main Story - This includes written stories, animated cutscenes, character interactions and battles.

Special Events - Variations of the above ^ But limited to a small window of time so you can only participate and get rare items during that window

Lottery ("Wishes") - This is how you obtain 'memories' which you use for battling. Think of them like Pokemon cards. Some of them are extra special and will unlock dates/stories/animations for you to enjoy.

"Date Minigames" - These are cutesy things to do with your love interest like playing cards or claw machine. You can even choose whether you play the claw machine or your date does (hint: some of the guys are good at some of the machines, while others are not)

Photobooth - You can take cutesy snapshots with stock poses or you use the studio mode and make a lot of adjustments to capture the scene you want. They also have an AR mode where YOU can take a photo with him, haha!

Interact with your love interest(s) - The stronger your affinity with him, the more you can do together. This ranges from cute, animated interactions to having "conversations" with him. He'll also text and call you. You can romance all of the love interests if you want and it doesn't negatively impact your affinity with the others.

Audio stories - These are steamy vignettes starring you and your love interest. This one is for all the “Booktok girlies”!!! 🥵 Listen with headphones! 🙈

Anecdotes and other Side stories - The lore in this game is ENDLESS! If you enjoy reading, there are plenty of written stories within the game. If you don't like it, you can just skip through it to gain your reward and move on.

Dress up (limited) - As you play you'll earn different outfits, but there are also outfits you can buy. You can use real currency or in-game currency, it just depends on the outfit. You can't completely create your own ensemble but you can pair different outfits with different accessories to use in the photobooth. You can also decide what your love interest(s) wear or have him decide what he wants to wear.

LADS is free to play and doesn't have any ads. However, if you're prone to FOMO, you'll have better luck receiving items during their special events if you do make purchases. But again, you absolutely do not have to spend any money on it to play.

There is a little bit of a learning curve when it comes to the navigation of the game because there is so much to do within it, but you get the hang of it really fast. I feel like the UI is actually quite clean and organized. I’ve put a screenshot below:

The most confusing thing is the story mode; it kind of jumps around out of order because characters were added after the game's story had already started. But I personally didn't find that a dealbreaker and you can go back into the story and replay it in order any time.

The amount of storage the game will take up on your phone/tablet is a lot, but that's because the game is GORGEOUS. All the characters are fully rendered in 3D and the animations will blow your mind. I can't tell you how many times I'm playing it and I can't believe it's a mobile game. I play on "medium" resolution so my phone doesn't explode on me, but even then the quality is so good.

Customization is where the game unfortunately falls short. Though you do get to customize your protagonist, there are limitations. You can change her face, makeup, hair and voice, but during in-game fighting, dialog and cutscenes, MC will always default to a woman with long dark hair. Some players have found ways to glitch the game so that your customizations like hair style and color will appear in the “kindled” animations (you’ll know what that means when you play it), but it's not a long-term solution. We're all crossing our fingers that they'll update the game one day so the animations reflect our choices better!

There are other customizations in-game that are fun. You have a banner that you can change the appearance of and change your title. As you build a stronger connection with each of the guys, you can have them call you by unique nicknames and they'll refer to you as that moving forward (though you can change it every day). There are also elements of the game that involve you sending and receiving text messages, phone calls, and social media posts and you can customize how those look to an extent as well.

As far as the unique experience you have as a protagonist, when it comes to dialog/action choices there are only so many options you can choose from. The writers have an overall plan for MC so sometimes she'll say things that I would never want her to say, but I didn't write her so 🤷‍♀️ We still get more control than some games offer so I can't complain!

Personally, I do wish it was a little more inclusive than some other games out there. Right now you can only play as a woman and you can only romance the male characters. But that's what other games are for, I guess.

I don't know if this game will be your cup of tea and I know for a fact it's not for everyone, but DANG if this game wasn't made for me in every way! If you do end up playing it, I hope you enjoy it! And you can add me! My hunter’s number is: 82001322820

[crooked-wasteland]

Helluva Boss and its Cancerous Structure: Skipping to the "Good Stuff"

Vivienne Madrano has the dreaded affliction of having too many characters, followed by too many ideas. And the logical narrative to link everything together to actually tell a story doesn't seem to be a high priority for her.

For starters, the main plot of the story is supposed to be the relationship between Stolas and Blitz, but every decision that has been made throughout the show has worked to decrease the interest in this plot and relationship. Let's just start at the beginning. The major interest was Blitz being an Imp while Stolas is a prince of the Ars Goetia.

The status discrepancy and how these two individuals came to be in contact was a long-standing source of intrigue that the show seemed very aware of. The first episode (actually the pilot) established a hostile relationship between the two, mainly on Blitz's side, as he was the one who obviously had the weaker position in the deal. If he refuses to sleep with Stolas, he loses the book. He loses the book. He loses his entire business. The pilot also estaished that the business was Blitz's chosen family and thus was an emotional point for his character.

Regardless of the problematic blackmail-ish pretense to the whole thing, it's a good launch pad. It would be interesting watching Stolas fall into true feelings for Blitz, or for Blitz to become aware of his own soft power within the dynamic and how much control he actually has over Stolas through his emotions. However, we never see Stolas fall in love. From LooLoo Land to Ozzie's, the relationship just is changed every time we see it. Even with the suggestions made in the bad trip sequence of Truth Seekers, we never have any actual understanding of how Blitz feels on the relationship. Is he afraid? Trapped? Does he ever realize his own strength in the dynamic? Is he resentful? It never actually settles in what the relationship actually is.

Instead, Madrano does what I think has to be the worst form of storytelling I have ever seen. Rather than watching the characters grow and become more complex, we are sent back in time to justify the relationship by contrivance. Somehow, being friends for a day over two decades prior is all the justification we need. It rewrites the earlier dynamic of Stolas using Blitz because he can to having it be that Blitz was Stolas' childhood crush. That this crush was so strong it persevered through deception, distance, and time for Stolas to immediately beg Blitz to have his way with him at his wedding anniversary party.

The complexity and intrigue on how this relationship was supposed to work was stripped of all depth and relevance. There is no journey for this relationship to take actually because they got along so well that one day, a quarter of a century ago, that their compatibility is all but assured to the viewers. There is nowhere for the relationship to actually go now, making it unnecessary to the plot while also being the primary focus of the plot.

It is a beyond fascinating faux pas that hasn't just derailed the main plot, but appears repeatedly as microcosms of everything wrong with the shows past, present, and future.

The upcoming episode has been rather highly anticipated on Twitter. However, there is an inevitable looming disappointment that hangs over the episode and thus the show at large. As it has yet to be released, this is solely speculation, but I am fairly confident in this assessment due to the trends thus far.

To be frank, this episode exists on the foundation of misunderstanding the narrative purpose of a character, namely Fizzarolli. Madrano suffers from the amateur affliction of over-creation mixed with under-exploration. While not every character needs an explicit purpose outside of expanding the world, a character to closely entwined with your main lead needs a very clear reason to being involved with the plot.

And that's where I feel this episode will crash and burn. There is no purpose to the existence of Fizzarolli. He did not need to exist for Blitz to have an unsuccessful performance career or his resentment to those who have success and fame. It adds nothing to the main character or their life.

Narratively speaking, it would make sense if Fizzarolli existed as a former or slighted love interest to Blitz who then can be used, not as a foil, but as a mirror for Blitz to be forced to contend. Because the point would then be to have Fizzarolli be the living embodiment of all of Blitz's past mistakes that he must reconcile before he and Stolas can be happy and grow their relationship.

Except, as previously mentioned, that is not a factor in the plot. The childhood friends trope between Blitz and Stolas makes this narrative unnecessary. Blitz and Stolas just are, and their conflicts are external threats (Octavia, Stella, Striker), not internal reflections of their worst tendencies. They are not at odds within themselves so much as they just seem to level up and change after every major emotional beat.

Less an MMO where you need to work for that next number through time and dedication to the world and character and more akin to those click bait ads where the most mundane change can completely alter their present self. It's unfulfilled.

Additionally, instead of focusing on the main cast, Madrano insists on reaching above her ability. To treat a minor side character as a main character is an event that is earned by first proving you understand your main characters, which has not been achieved. So, instead of experiencing the same story from the alternative perspective, it feels like a wholly new beginning unrelated to the previous concept. It feels unfinished on a narrative standpoint because the question remains, why is this story important to tell.

That's a very lean way of structuring any story, but lean is worlds better than what we are currently being fed. Bones and fat do not a hearty meal make. Learn to stand before we walk. Madrano hasn't learned quite how to crawl narratively speaking.

In Seeing Stars, the conflict between Stolas and Octavia is identical to Season 1's LooLoo Land. The one way it attempts to make up for the spiritual rerun is by trying to add a parallel secondary plot between Blitz and Loona. However, the problem between Stolas and Octavia is resolved with a simple "Whoops, I forgot" while Blitz and Loona never share a word about their problems. Rather, the episode justifies Loona's abuse of Blitz and misbehavior in general by basically saying "She's had a hard childhood". Showing a brief glimpse into said childhood for Blitz to feel guilty for attempting to set any kind of boundary and claim ownership of being the problem when, in reality he isn't the one in the wrong.

Loona is never given the opportunity to talk about herself either. Instead, she is the preaching mouthpiece for Madrano and Co to talk about how great these characters are without actually seeing any of them do those great things. Loona never speaks on herself and how insecure she feels or how she can't help but need to push Blitz's envelope constantly to feel any kind of security, waiting for him to abandon her like everyone else.

None of this is explored, instead implying that this understanding of the characters should be derived from engaging with their pasts rather than their present selves. We are not encouraged to want our characters to actively change, but to instead "remember the good times." We are not challenged to grow and adapt with age and experience, but instead should be allowed to remain the same and not be responsible for how our actions affect others.

The entire approach to character growth and complexity is antithetical to the mere definition of "Maturity".

[rainspicestudios]

Happy 2025! [RainSpice Studios plans & updates for the new year]

Hey everyone! Happy 2025 from RainSpice Studios. I hope this year will be kind to everyone and that many good things will be coming your way.

And speaking of good things, I'm cooking some projects that are just itching to be released and available for download. But before we get into that, let us talk a little about the games that were released in 2024.

This won't be a lengthy recap of 2024, as the games speak for themselves, but I am still proud of myself for releasing a full game, a chapter one, and a demo, during a very stressful year both in terms of world events and my personal life (I graduated college, I'm moving, all of that good stuff).

Stardust★Arcadis was my first ever release, and a game I struggled to finish. I lost all of my progress because of PC issues, I rewrote the story a few times, and I released it after working on it since 2019 (2022 if the moment when my PC broke doesn't count). However I love the characters, I love the setting, and despite the many hardships of game development, I had a fun time working on it.

I'm planning to release more games in this universe in the future, including a remastered version of St★Ar.

The Code of Crystals started as a novel collaboration with my best friend. Said collaboration never got finished, and I had a lot of inspiration for stories I could tell with these characters, most of these darker than the original project. Thus I used the characters I made for this former collaboration and started crafting this narrative, and the release of Stardust★Arcadis AND the 2024 edition of Phantasia Jam was a perfect opportunity to get started!

Chapter one will be re-release this January and Chapter two will be released in either late 2025 or early 2026. Stay tuned for more info!

Enter the Eternity, oddly enough, also started as a collaboration, but the idea of a dating simulator with magical girls was too good to let it collect dust and never get finished, especially since its inspiration board kept drawing me in.

With my best friend's blessing, I could re-use the idea, so I created a new cast of characters and got to work, and had to do even more work after I found out that the backgrounds I bought from someone on itch.io were made with an AI image generator, which disgusted me so much it powered me to redraw every single background by hand and I will keep doing so for the entire game. While it is more work to do on my part, RainSpice Studios will never endorse AI generation in any shape or form.

At first I worked on it while I worked on Stardust★Arcadis, which explains why the demo was done on such a short notice, but it has now became my primary project for 2025 and I am aiming to release it around November/December at best.

What's the plan for 2025 then?

My primary goal is to release Enter the Eternity and my secondary goal is to release The Code of Crystals chapter 2.

I aim to finish all first dates for Enter the Eternity AND re-release chapter 1 of The Code of Crystals in January. The dates are already written and coded in the script files, so my focus is to add in all the sprite expressions, draw CGs and backgrounds, and add all the necessary music. As for TCOC, I wanted to remake its menus and add a scene with Eranis that I did not have time to add before the end of the game jam. While the UI code I bought doesn't work, its images are pretty, and I am happy with the result.

2025 will be another busy year for me as I try to find a full-time job to sustain myself, launch some new projects more-or-less related to video games, move out again, among some other irl things. But here at RainSpice Studios, I love making games, and will keep making them for the foreseeable future.

If you read down to here, thank you so much!

There's a lot to do so I'm going back to work 💪 I'll update you guys when I reach a milestone or I find something interesting to share.

So stay tuned! And as said, I wish you guys a kind, good, exciting, fun, and game-filled 2025. Thank you for your continued support and here's to more projects this year 🥂

============================

[RainSpice Studios itch.io] [Stardust★Arcadis] [The Code of Crystals] [Enter The Eternity]

[marley-manson]

Honestly I think the scene in Paradise Found where Xena hallucinates herself snapping Gabrielle's wrist is one of my favourite moments of the show.

Like first of all the aesthetics and vibes of like 4/5ths of this episode (let's not speak of those painfully bad fiveish minutes) are immaculate, and that scene is beautiful, in an incredible and effective contrast to the horrific action on screen and Xena's deteriorating mental state.

But mostly I just love the unabashedly, disturbingly dark depiction of Xena. The sequence is framed as what Xena wants in that moment. "I'll show you what I want," is what she says. She wants to lash out, she wants to cause pain. There's the whole magical aura causing her dark side to like, gain strength of course. This isn't her average day-to-day state of mind, certainly not with Gabrielle. But the episode begins with Gabrielle pointing out that Xena enjoyed her latest fight, and wondering what's more important to her - the good she's fighting for, or the fight itself? And like, the whole point of this episode is to depict Xena's "dark" sadistic side as the most significant part of her, the core of her being, essentially. It's extra heightened here, but it's still ever-present elsewhere.

There is a significant part of Xena, a dominant part, even a driving part, that wants to hurt people. She harnesses that part of her to do good, but the show is sometimes wonderfully stark in its depiction of her darkness, and what it could lead her to do without Gabrielle's, and her own, tempering judgement.

Like, it's such a harsh little scene. It's sudden and intense and scary. And it's just so fucking gratifying to watch a show with a female protagonist who's allowed to be genuinely frightening, without even needing to change. Where the moral of the story is that yes, part of you is frightening, and potentially dangerous to those around you, but that part is still important.

The part of her deep, deep down that wants to hurt Gabrielle when Gabrielle mildly annoys her is necessary. One assumes that without a magical influence drawing it out, it would be a fleeting, easily dismissed wisp of a thought, rather than an overwhelming, hallucinatory urge. A moment of dumb, irrational emotion channeled into a later battle for good, or a workout, or hell, sex, maybe. But the seed is there, and the show revels in it, sans moral judgement. I mean, even in this very episode Xena's darkness is what saves the day. The show tells us that this is what makes Xena a hero. Her sadism doesn't need to be conquered, it needs to be harnessed and thrust in the right direction. And even more than that, it's something we're meant to enjoy about Xena, part of the core of what makes the show entertaining.

And it's great when it comes out in lighter scenes too, like a cupid's-arrow-influenced Xena sparring with Draco and full on backhanding him as foreplay, or telling Ares she likes the look of him impaled on her sword, or just when she grins as she improvises an entertaining way of fighting 10 mooks; and it's great when it comes out in dark but still action-oriented scenes, like her command of the Athenians in The Price, or her assault on the village in Ties That Bind, or even the Gab-drag.

But when that sadism comes out in a genuinely shocking, grotesque scene of disturbing, abusive, petty violence edited like a moment from a horror movie... well there's something a little extra delightful about that, to me lol. Even if it didn't actually happen, that image of Xena is so powerfully illustrative and interesting and, as far as I'm aware, virtually unique to female heroes in the way the urge behind it is still ultimately framed positively, and I adore it to pieces.

[kerubimcrepin]

Live-read: Dofus Heroes - Kerubim Tome 1 (part 1)

You can find this comic's physical version on Ankama's site, webtoon version on Allskreen, and Free Scans on various file-hosting websites that shall not be named.

Quick disclaimer: While I will be including french screenshots here, because it is a language that uses the latin alphabet, and everyone has that on their keyboards, all ready to type up in DeepL and Google translators — what I will actually be reading is a new fan translation in my native language, which does not use latin alphabet.

Time to quickly switch between two tabs because nobody has translated this comic into English. Yaay...

This comic has, as my fellow crepinjurgenology studies colleague @dullard put it, "thin god Ecaflip jumpscare"

Ecaflip looks a lot like Ush here, and I think it's way too malevolent. Part of the fun of him to me, is that he is an Evil Fucking Cat that looks like a cute cat. It makes his despicable actions more funny & interesting.

...Anyway, this comic came out during the run of the show, in 2013, and its sheer existence, — including its negative portrayal of ecaflip, its inclusion of blood and Kerubim's 20 mental illnesses, — is a direct confirmation of the show being an unreliable narrator story. (Though, we've been knew.)

This comic's most important function for this blog is that it will provide us with a well-needed glimpse at what Kerubim's adventures are like when he isn't retelling them to a 7-year-old child whose respect and approval he desperately craves.

The second Kerubim is fatally wounded, he gives up. Yet, Ecaflip saves him, without using one of his nine lives, just as he did in the Wheel of Destiny article.

I suppose it's one of his trump cards, isn't it?

But I am more interested in how at peace Kerubim is with death... It does make sense for Kerubim to hide some rather morbid feelings about his life behind his cheery facade, doesn't it?

It must be tiring. Losing your family, being a god's plaything, losing your brother, feeling like you have to constantly play the role of the cool womanizing warrior, and never unpacking your emotions about any of it. Death would feel like a relief from such weight.

Which makes Ecaflip's grip on his life feel more malicious.

I know, chances are, this comic, as well as most of the show, were made well before Kerubim's demigod status was thought of as a plot-point.

But even in terms of him being a demigod... I think that death would seem relaxing, despite its temporary nature, wouldn't it?

One of the main things of this whole comic is that Kerubim gets amnesia.

Harry Du Bois-ass character. Not only is he mentally ill, divorced, and has 20 layers of sad backstory, but also he got amnesia. God bless.

Yeah, this comic is more realistic and gritty than the show, but the cartoon shenanigans are still real. Thank god.

There's a reason why I think that a big part of Kerubim's character is his experiences with loneliness and isolation, and the way it makes him crave being loved and cared for, as well as how it makes him act out to get attention and popularity.

It's telling that while completely amnesiac, he identifies immediately with a small kitten, whom he immediately assumes is a "he" and "an orphan", and wants to take care of it.

It may seem like an innocuous moment at first, but "he is all alone" will become a reoccurring motif for Kerubim's mental state and subconscious in this comic, and it is the comic where we get the Orphan Kerubim reveal.

I already discussed the fact that I think Kerubim kept and adopted Joris due to Atcham-related guilt earlier on the blog, but I will take this moment to voice 2 other reasons:

Kerubim identifies with orphans and children easily. He would never leave Joris alone after looking at him and thinking "You're all alone. Like I was."

The idea of having a child would be very pleasant to someone as lonely as him. He struggles a lot with wanting to act in a way that will make people like him, and children are, by nature, inclined to like their parents even if they're complete losers.

Btw, if you follow my main, @joris-jurgen , you probably know that I headcanon Kerubim as having comorbid HPD and BPD. Because it fits. And because personality disorders are usually the result of insane levels of childhood trauma. And... my experience running this blog has so far not swayed me from this opinion in any way. This little paragraph was your Armchair Fictional Psychology Corner. This man can fit a lot of sadness and wanting to be loved in him.

Ecaflips confirmed to, just like real cats, have very good night vision.

...Aaand now I'm thinking about cute scenarios of Kerubim, Atcham, and Joris travelling at night, or navigating their home in the darkness.

(Because Joris doesn't have human eyes, as we've seen from the movie. And considering the way Grougaloragran's eyes reflect light in the Oropo ova, chances are, dragon eyes glow in the dark, the same way cats do. Which brings me to the point that, Joris's dragon-ish eyes would probably glow in the dark. Like a cat. Yeah, I am very sane, and should not be sedated in any way, readers.)

Crocosec has always wanted to have a butcher's shop and feed people with delicious food...

Ah, I don't know why, but my silly little detail-noticing from the first eps, where I pointed out that he has a meat shop, paying off? It makes me feel fuzzy. It's nice to know that the person who wrote this comic cared enough, and that it's something that was put in here with intent.

Anyway, I am about to be very normal about the next few pages.

*jumpscaring you by including a screenshot from the high-quality scanlation I am reading. Because this moment would be too blurry if I didn't.

He isn't even playing with any other kids... This is going to kill me, and not in a fun way.

The translation I am reading interprets the last line as "I would return to..." but it seems a bit wrong to me, especially considering my own research on language sentence-comparing sites.

What Kerubim pretty much says here, is that, he'd like to become a huppermage, and use magic to bring back his parents, sisters, and brothers.

While one could interpret that as Kerubim being lonely while being raised in an orphanage all his life without a family, I have a couple of counterpoints:

He calls the kitten "orphaned" specifically, which implies that there were parents, and that they aren't there anymore.

If it were just a family he wanted, he wouldn't be as specific as to say "sisters and brothers," besides just "parents," which leads me to assume that Kerubim means specific people he used to know (before they died).

3. Atcham is a Crepin too, as was revealed in the Dofus Movie. Logically speaking, if they were both given to the temple after being born, (and as we know, Atcham was at the temple, because Bashi knew him, according to Wheel of Destiny #8) they probably wouldn't have surnames, especially the same one.

4. Kerubim's unfunny joke about being the last in his family.

5. Wakfu: One More Gate's shopkeep being an ancestor of the Crepin family implies that Crepins are a real family that existed, and that, perhaps, Kerubim's affinity for selling stuff has to do with his early upbringing, before he was orphaned.

6. In the Dofus manga, Atcham says that a sword he owned, which was stolen from him, has been "passed in his family for generations", which yet again, points to them having a family to begin with.

All of this to say... What I think happened was far more devastating.

He had sisters and brothers, and two parents — it doesn't matter if the Crepin family was an adoptive one, or if it was made up of their biological mother, her husband, and half-siblings. Because they're all dead, and that's just... horrible.

A whole family, at the very least 6 people (if we assume that by "sisters and brothers", he means just two sisters and two brothers), wiped out.

...Oh, and one last thing.

7. I think that, as an adult, Kerubim did put some research into dark magic, with a hope of bringing his family back.

Just as he said he would.

....Though, as always, that might just be me reading too much into things. ╮(￣ ▽ ￣)╭

These aren't the tears of an orphan who wishes he had a family. These are tears of grief of a child who used to have one.

And Ecaflip, his biological father and God, is taunting him about it.

...I would speak on my deeplore conspiracy theory that perhaps Ecaflip himself is to blame for whatever happened to Kerubim and Atcham's family, — to get Kerubim, or both of them, isolated, and under his thumb, — but perhaps it's just me being actually clinically insane.

[anncanta]

Rise and Go: The Gate and the Sun

Suddenly, an idea occurred to me. In the beginning, when Dracula takes Jonathan to the guest bedroom, he tells Harker to be careful at the castle, because it is a labyrinth that Petruvio built in memory of his dead wife. And Dracula uses an interesting phrase: ‘a prison without locks.’

Obviously, a castle with many stairs, secret passages, and rooms, without a map, is a prison. But a prison for whom?

Castles are not built as prisons unless they were originally intended to be prisons. No, many aristocrats in the Middle Ages and later were imprisoned in their own castles, and there is nothing special about that. The point is different. As far as we can judge from Dracula's story, his castle was built precisely as a house. And at the same time, the architect made it so that it would be difficult or even impossible to get out of it. And, as we will see later, he hid from Dracula the map on which he did put the building's plan.

The question is: who did Petruvio want to imprison?

The answer is also obvious. Probably, it was Dracula.

But then the next question arises, or rather, two. The first is why did the architect succeed and the second – why did he do it?

I suppose that the answers to both questions lie not in the plot, but on a symbolic level.

So, let's start with the first question, and to understand how to answer it, let's ask ourselves: who is Petruvio?

And here's where it gets interesting. When I thought about this character, who remained in all senses behind the scenes, the first thing that came to my mind was Blake's Great Architect. This version is confirmed by Petruvio's appearance (an old man with a gray beard), the color scheme of the portrait, and the entire scene where Dracula shows Jonathan images of the architect and his wife, which coincides with the color scheme of Blake's engraving.

But I suspect that it is not so simple. This meaning is probably there, but there is something else. Again, the most obvious is the name of the architect. Petruvio is the Italian version of the name Peter, referring simultaneously to the apostle Peter (according to Western Christian mythology, the guardian of the gates of heaven), to the stone and the rock-solid faith, the Masonic metaphor of the cornerstone, and all this, as Agatha says, is not three things, but one, only more fundamental.

From a plot point of view, everything is quite clear – the name Petruvio recalls Shakespeare's comedy, in which a collision occurs between the hero and the obstinate bride, in the end of which the girl becomes a loving wife and the characters act out a dialogue in which the sun and the moon are mentioned.

By the way, the castle-labyrinth does exist – the neo-Gothic Bran Castle, built at the end of the 13th century, known as Dracula's Castle. Moreover, the ruler Vlad the Impaler either spent the night there once or was captured by the Turks, who tortured him.

But let's get back to Petruvio. As far as I can tell, there were no real prototypes for this character, and this is important, especially in the context of the existence of Bran Castle. The comparison of the real castle and the character of the story – the architect – leads to a completely logical thought, which suggests itself given the Italian form of the name.

Petruvio, Pierrot, even Pedrolino. All these are characters of the commedia dell'arte, who at different times and in different countries took different forms. The peculiarity of the character of the commedia dell'arte is that he or she is not a real person, with a biography, history, and identity. They are masks. Embodiments of this or that idea or way of behavior.

Let's return to our very first question – how did the architect manage to imprison Dracula – and its derivative: who is Petruvio?

Petruvio is a mask, a thought, an idea. In a sense, he is indeed Blake's Great Architect – as a metaphor for the engineering mind, not so much creating as giving form to existence.

Here it is. Long ago, in an article about the imagery in Dracula, I said that Jonathan is an image of a soul trapped in oppressive, dark physical matter. However, it is important to remember that Jonathan in this story is the icon of Christ who descended into the world and further into hell to save people.

I think the authors use Petruvio as a way to show the idea of ​​the soul being ‘clothed’ in any calloused, rough, petrified, even if outwardly majestic, form. That's why the prison has no locks – because the architect in this case works to order. And yes, he leaves a network of corridors and exits, finding which, you can get where? First – down and then – to the roof. And do you remember what the exit to the roof looks like when Dracula opens the door?

It looks like an opening filled with light. And if you remember that Transylvania is an Orthodox country, it becomes obvious that these are the royal doors.

The royal doors are part of the iconostasis in an Orthodox church, symbolizing the gates of Paradise and the gates of salvation that opened for humans when Christ came to earth.

So, the architect was able to lock Dracula in the castle because it was not he who locked the Count. Dracula did. He locked himself inside his body and mind. Dracula's story about Petruvio in this context represents a description of what happened not so much to Jonathan but to Count himself. He like many people, who have done this, thinks that someone else did it. Most often – fate. Which is no more a real idea than the mask of Petruvio, Pedrolino, Pierrot.

And then it becomes clear why Dracula did this. Because some things that happen to people have consequences. And here it is important to remember the other part of this story.

Let's move on to the third episode of the film and talk a little about shame.

Of course, I understand everything, and I do not want to justify Dracula in any way. He did terrible things. But when Agatha talks about shame at the end, she (and this is another proof that we are dealing with Agatha, a woman from the 19th century) does not realize what she is saying. She guessed the reason why Dracula is afraid of the cross, the sun, and looking in the mirror. But the source of this reason is not death. Or, at least, not only death.

Here again, fan fiction comes to the rescue. When I began to write about Dracula and Agatha, practically the first thing I encountered when I began to work on the texts ‘from the side’ of Dracula was a shame. And it was shame, not guilt. Guilt appeared later. First, there was shame. And very quickly, exploring the motives and emotional experiences of the hero, I came to where this shame could come from.

It's very simple. Dracula wasn't born a vampire. Someone made him one. Someone turned him. It was a specific member of the vampire family and a specific act. An act of violence. Does that ring a bell?

Exactly. So when Agatha talks about Dracula feeling shame, she's absolutely right. What she doesn't understand is that it's the shame of a rape victim who blames themselves for what happened.

All three of Dracula's phobias speak of his disgust with himself. Basic, global disgust. By the way, if the fear of the cross or going out in the sun can still be ‘tailored’ to the fear of death and shame for it, then the fear of looking in the mirror cannot. It is too complicated. We are talking about instinctive reactions, and they do not affect higher functions, only actions like ‘fight or flight’. Dracula feels disgusted with himself because he considers himself spoiled (probably also because he has done a bunch of disgusting things, but this is a more adult reaction that comes later; first comes the deafening, physical shame), defiled and dirty. Like any victim of violence.

It doesn't even occur to Agatha. With the charming confidence of a Victorian lady, she accuses Dracula of being ashamed and thinks she has won. She, however, cannot be blamed – she is a child of her time. But this conflict makes the final scene even more complex and voluminous, allowing us to see the meaning of the whole story. Because, ultimately, it is not about who won, but about whether you can, having stepped over your pain and trauma, reach out to another. Whether you can become yourself in all the fullness of your gifts and what has been given to you from above.

As we have seen, Dracula can.

In the first episode, the gates opened for him. But this is not enough. For rebirth and an exit beyond one's prejudices and fears to occur, towards the light, one must enter these gates. And in the finale, Dracula enters.

‘Petruvio's wife was the sunlight, and he stood guard at the door.’

[multi-fandomdisaster]

Today's theme park ramble: The Battle for Cedar Point

The Battle for Cedar Point is a mobile app launched in 2017 by Cedar Fair (alongside a sister app, The Battle for Kings Dominion) that hasn't been updated since 2019. It's primarily centered in augmented reality games, interactive areas, and park trivia, and was a (successful) attempt at making some of the long waits a bit less boring. As of now, all of the AR interactions are no longer functional throughout the park, and it's effectively useless beyond trivia games and ride logging, but it's still an utterly fascinating app to me. Why?

Its story.

(NOTE: This is technically a Cedar Point lore post, and it's also VERY long under the cut :3)

As the resident theme park lore guy, it makes sense that a story surrounding technically-canon roller coaster gajinkas would peak my interest. In the actual game itself, there's not much story to be gathered beyond "roller coasters are having a turf war". It's in the advertisements and character/alliance videos where a bit more story can be deciphered.

There are 6 Cedar Point coasters that are represented in The Battle for Cedar Point: Valravn, Maverick, Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster, GateKeeper, and Steel Vengeance. Their characters are shown below (photos all screenshots of the app itself) (enlarge for full images).

When the app was launched, only 5 of these coasters were present in the game, as Steel Vengeance didn't exist yet. Cedar Point only made videos for these 5 coasters, detailing each alliance's motivations and ideals. Here are the official Cedar Point videos:

Valravn -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2FhOf5z_7uE

Maverick -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eyvJG0yM_Sg

Millennium Force -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=gCNMAEEG6fU

Top Thrill Dragster -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=FGYP5FMdvFs

GateKeeper -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=2w_5ew3O2bE

Additional videos were made going a bit deeper into the background of each alliance, which give us that dip into a potentially larger story. Most of these videos have been seemingly deleted by Cedar Point's main YouTube account, but luckily they were all archived and reuploaded by a Cedar Point archive YouTube account. Those videos are as follows:

Valravn -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kvlTLOrg_Sc

Maverick -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jIk2kIgsOcY

Millennium Force -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DNYRlMFrpXA

Top Thrill Dragster -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=_RUOwYmbM9k

GateKeeper -> https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=aIyuRgfG3Ks

What particularly stands out to me here is that in multiple videos, Valravn is either directly or indirectly referenced. In fact, all of them but Top Thrill Dragster references Valravn in some way, shape, or form.

Valravn refers to the clan as "a threat the likes of which the kingdom has never seen before" whilst making it clear that their motivation is conquest.

Maverick references it as a "terrible threat on the horizon" with a visual of shadows creeping in.

Millennium Force refers to it as a "terrible shadow looming" and then gives us this absolutely BANGER image of Millennium Force standing before the looming shadowed silhouette of Valravn:

Top Thrill Dragster's just doing its own thing. They're living fast, free, and fearless, and I gotta respect them for that lol

And then GateKeeper directly shows us Valravn in the stained glass alongside the words "But now, a new enemy stands at the gates, bringing nothing but conflict."

Additionally, in Battle For Cedar Point park merchandise, the silhouette of Valravn was oftentimes depicted looming in the background, with the Valravn character in the middle/in front of the 5 characters. Here's an example:

Putting all the pieces together...something tells me that Valravn might just be the "villain" of this story...

Here's what my idea of the story is:

For years, the Kingdom of Cedar Point - made up of 4 distinct clans (Maverick, Millennium Force, Top Thrill Dragster, and GateKeeper) who resided in different sections of the kingdom - all lived in peace and harmony, defended and protected by the GateKeeper clan and kept under the order of the Millennium Force clan. Suddenly, a new clan emerges - the Valravn clan - which seems dead set on conquering the Kingdom of Cedar Point for itself. Clad in black armor and casting a dark looming shadow over wherever it goes, the Valravn clan begins its mission for conquest. Naturally, the other 5 clans are NOT okay with this new threat and what it could mean both just for the Kingdom itself, but for its way of life. And then that fear towards destabilization of their societies leads towards them turning against each other as well as Valravn. Some clans (Millennium Force and GateKeeper) fight and defend to protect the Kingdom itself. The Dragster clan is likely using the opportunity to expand its territory as well. The Mavericks...? It's really up in the air on it they're defending the Kingdom or just trying to get more for themselves. And then obviously Valravn is at the root of it all, aiming to take over the Kingdom entirely.

"But Joey!" I hear you asking, "What about Steel Vengeance! There's 6 total clans now! How does Steel Vengeance fit into the story of The Battle for Cedar Point?"

What an excellent question, person whom I'm assuming is asking this! Why don't I give you an answer?

When Steel Vengeance joined the Cedar Point roster in 2018 and was subsequently added to The Battle for Cedar Point, it didn't get any kind of fun hype video for the app like the other 5 did. As far as I know, they just added SteVe to an update without warning. Steel Vengeance isn't even mentioned on the Battle for Cedar Point page on Cedar Point's website. My guess is that they just figured it was a cool and popular enough ride to add to the game, and they already had the character design made for Blackjack, so it wasn't like they'd have to create a whole new character (similarly to how they use the BFCP Maverick character design for Beauregard "Mackerick" Chamberlain, the Maverick character in the Steel Vengeance/Frontier Town lore). It was an easy addition. And territory-wise, they just carved out the entire top half of the Maverick clan's territory.

Not even joking, that's what they did. You see all of the red section on top of the orange in the second image? That's all Steel Vengeance clan territory. That all used to be Maverick clan territory. (I'm sure the Mavericks weren't too happy about that XD)

Additionally, from this point, instead of Valravn looming in the background of merchandise/on the main game character logo, the Steel Vengeance trio (Blackjack, Chess, and Digger) would be there. (I'd put in an image, but I've unfortunately hit the image limit on mobile :/)

So what does this mean for the story?

In my mind, with the addition of Steel Vengeance into The Battle for Cedar Point brought the story established in the at-the-time new theming around Frontier Town, meaning that alongside the original clan turf wars of the pre-SteVe days, we now also have the world's pettiest sibling rivalry storyline of Steel Vengeance and Maverick (which I will TOTALLY write a ramble on at some point; the in-universe story of Steel Vengeance is so interesting to me).

Additionally, considering that Valravn was implied to previously have been the overarching antagonist, putting Steel Vengeance in the spot where Valravn was before may imply that it's Steel Vengeance that's now the main threat to the Kingdom.

Except there's something that doesn't sit completely right with me for the "Steel Vengeance is the main bad guy" explanation, and that's the Clan's motto.

Something I didn't mention earlier is that each Clan has a "motto" that they live by that gives a good insight into the ideologies and goals of each of them. Those mottos are as follows:

Valravn: For Victory and Conquest!

Maverick: For Freedom! For Glory! For Gold!

Millennium Force: Wisdom, Power and Order!

Top Thrill Dragster: Live free! Live Fast! Live Fearless!

GateKeeper: Protect the Realm!

Steel Vengeance: Take Back the Old West!

Steel Vengeance's only true motivation is to "take back the old west," which is only Maverick's territory. So maybe my original idea of Steel Vengeance's only contribution to this game being the addition of the Maverick/Steel Vengeance sibling rivalry was more accurate. Regardless, because Cedar Point didn't really put any effort into adding Steel Vengeance to the game, its existence doesn't make a lot of sense in the universe.

That being said...since the Frontier Town lore established by Steel Vengeance would hypothetically be canon to The Battle for Cedar Point...does that mean The Battle For Cedar Point is likewise canon to Frontier Town?

Alas, my questions will likely never be answered. The game hadn't been updated for 6 years now and all of the AR interaction points in the park have since been disabled. I highly doubt it'll make a return. But that doesn't mean that this app and its story aren't interesting to think and contemplate about!

If you managed to make it through, congratulations! This was originally only intended to be a couple of paragraphs long, but then I kept writing, and now here we are! I hope you enjoyed whatever this madness was! :3

[bluntforcefem]

2k24 writing in review: would you believe it. sauces again

author's note

doing my author's note BEFORE the main text of the thing this year, because: damn, it really is all sauces. i posted a sum total of two (2) things to ao3 this year, both for pretty niche medias, and while i'm very proud of them both (i hope we live to tell the tale is the longest thing i've written this year!!) i really hit my stride this year with original fiction, again. many characters featured in this year's writing-in-review belong to the lovely friends i play toys with - thanks to the beloveds for letting me knock around their guys for funsies, per usual!!

some fun statistics for the people at home: i wrote 52 fics for sauces that i would consider 'full-length' (or full-length adjacent) - 22 canonverse fics, 13 alternate universe fics, and 17 spectre-after-dark fics because this is the year that i got into writing erotica lmao. my sauces wordcount, not including a myriad of worldbuilding documents, comes out to about 91,237 words this year! that's fucking crazy. my total wordcount? 108,376. ALSO fucking crazy. i've already mentioned my longest fic this year, but my longest sauces piece (EVER!) was written this year: I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, written in september, which finished at 6375 words. lots of big achievements this year!!

i've been considering uploading my original fiction to my neocities page on-and-off through this whole year. a side project i've been rotating is a wikipedia-style fansite for sauces (so that we can inflict our years-long improv rp series on other people) but even without that, i'd like to start getting my favorites out into the world one way or another (and i'd like for there to be SOME place to get context for them. sauceswiki one day maybe). no idea how much interest there'd be for that, but i digress! let's get onto the monthly highlights, which i'm putting below a cut because damn! they're long.

JANUARY

“la-ast time i ca-ame i brought eli, and we ha-ad to leave the aqua-rium part ear-ly! ‘cause li-ittle bi-ird was looki-ing at the fi-ish like they do the on-nes in the ri-iver at home and they di-idn’t wanna cau-use an incident.” if evan’s hunch about briar rose is right, he’s pretty sure declan’s middle name is incident, but he sidesteps that thought easily as they walk into the first exhibit. “i’m sure eli has more self-control than that,” he says instead, torn between amusement and resignation at the thought of eli perching on one of the exhibits and sticking a whole hand in. “ba-arely. they cau-ught a sal-mon when they go-ot home and ate it who-ole!” declan gestures with both hands, a sort-of this big motion. it is, he thinks, entirely too big to fit in eli’s mouth, but they look so genuine he believes it anyway. “i thi-ink we were bo-oth just hun-gry though. let me kno-ow if you wan-na get snacks!” 

excerpted from JAWS!, a sauces season two story about evan and dec going to the aquarium together

FEBRUARY

when they can’t sleep they go out to the hangar overlook and lean against the railing in the dim warehouse light. they haven’t seen retribution in full since the day the program shut down, but when they stand still and watch the dark, they can see the shape of it twitching, shifting, moving, the synchronized patterns of partners sleeping, scattered across the continent.

excerpted from so i'll take the night shift, a sauces pacrim au fic about declan in the five years between one war and the next

MARCH

he’s not sure what he’s expecting, when eli tells him they’re ready to explain and then takes him out on a flight. even with the snow blurring the sharp slopes of it, the crater is huge, the site of a meteor strike or the pit of a volcano. deep, too; about halfway down the snow gets sparse and then vanishes, inexplicable, and declan wonders if its warmer down there or if its something else, some side effect of the murky blotch of darkness where he figures bedrock must be. eli flies in a lazy circle around the perimeter and then glides towards the middle, landing on a stretch of mostly-clear stone pocked with sturdy lichens. declan follows, stumbles a little on the landing and shoots eli a half-smile when they catch him. “a hi-ike, huh!” “a good day for it,” they answer, matching his smile with their own, gesturing with their folded-up cane. “in more ways than one- but, y’know, can’t be too careful. would’ve gotten us out here yesterday, but i figured neither of us wanted to deal with flying in a snowstorm.”

excerpted from come with me to the mad stone, a sauces season two story about eli introducing declan to the void

APRIL

but more keep coming. eli cocks their head to the side, slides on a patch of sloughed flesh and catches themself on the wall. “where’s the spawner?” close your eyes. follow. but it’s packed. you’re not going to be able to break it. “i can handle a few zombie bites,” eli snarls, but the way vee stills around their neck makes them hesitate. “a few. how packed is packed?” [...] packed is packed. there’s only a moment’s hesitation before the mass of bodies throws itself at them, green fading into black into the hints of pale blue, fabric sewn together that doesn’t match, limbs fused and flesh melting together. it doesn’t look like individual zombies at all, anymore - just some kind of amalgamation, bleeding so thickly onto the cobblestone that eli’s steps splash. eli doesn’t have a moment to doubt that the void will handle the spawner in the center, doesn’t have a moment to recognize anyone in the crowd beyond recognizing it. they clutch the hilts of their swords tighter and let the magic run its course, flesh popping and disintegrating as they work through the horde. a sturdy heap of scaled limbs gets too close, screaming in static, and eli’s head knocks into the ceiling as they launch themself up, talons tearing at the heads and shoulders of everything below them before they land too-heavy on the spawner itself. 

excerpted from the ground needs to be fed, a sauces season two fic about eli & the void handling a broken zombie spawner

MAY

the old man gives them a name. gives them declan shepherd, princess of hyrule, and echo still can’t remember a thing, doesn’t know how they’ll fight the apparent calamity, still just putting one foot in front of the other and tripping every once in a while. but it’s like muscle memory, really. they’ll get to him. they’ll get back to him.

excerpted from and i'll always believe in you, endlessly, a sauces breath of the wild au fic about echo remembering declan. author's note: i have been feeling endlessly shrimp about this one in particular lately

JUNE

“... swallow.” her voice gets quieter, almost uncertain, before she lifts her head and snaps again. “and i don’t actually have any answers for you, loser. i have no idea why your stupid number is a timer, or whatever. like i said, it doesn’t work like that anymore.” she draws out the no, waving one hand dismissively. “and it doesn’t work like that here. shouldn’t. i’m not even really a reaper. i don’t know what to tell you.” neku watches her, but she doesn’t say anything else. “okay,” he says, after a pause. swallow looks at him, squinting. “yeah, i believe you.” “idiot,” she says again, under her breath. neku snorts.

excerpted from i see it swallow my time, a post-canon interstitial infinity fic about neku from between twewy & neo on the infinity train, and also mirror shoka (<3)

JULY

“but you’re not my type.”  his first lie, though he’d honestly expect someone else if they truly were a figment—a strange facsimile of 10, perhaps, or even something like the shepherd. it makes them laugh again, at least, loud and echoing against the stone, and it lights up their whole face. very much a lie, echo thinks, looking them up and down again.  “i could be,” they retort, clearly playing up their offense. their voice is still tinged with laughter, cheeks flushed as they wave a hand at him. “is this an interrogation or a dream, your highness?”

excerpted from show me my silver lining, a sauces royalty au fic about echo and eli meeting in a dream. author's note again: july truly was the month of the weird echo/eli fics

AUGUST

time to play, then. they lean back as best they can in their chair, the very face of unconcerned. “and who do i owe my timely rescue to, then?” “just your favorite kidnapping victim,” a familiar voice chirps. rose stills, and she laughs, nudging the hench with a boot to make sure they’re out before she circles over. “i’ve gotten pretty good at keeping my ear to the ground in the warehouse department! and who else do i find but my dearly beloved rescuer?” “‘dearly beloved’? high compliments, shep. i didn’t even think i was your second favorite.” shepherd snorts. she sets her rifle aside and stalks forward, confidence rolling off her in waves. “only by technicality,” she assures them airily.

excerpted from and iii get a little bit genghis khan, a sauces season two story about shepherd repaying the favor of rescuing echo's supervillain persona from a kidnapping

SEPTEMBER

Shepherd has the same dream every night. It’s been the same dream from the moment she crash-landed on Spectre. The water rises as she climbs a spiral staircase in unbroken darkness, lapping at her heels, always a little faster than her. There’s no escape even if she manages to beat it, she knows – the wailing gets louder as she climbs, unbearable – but she keeps climbing. The void rises. It overtakes her before she can see what’s become of the sun. Tonight – a red light cuts through the murk. She reaches for it as her lungs fill and wakes settled, steady, her hand wrapped around cold iron.

excerpted from I KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, a sauces season two story about shepherd accidentally picking up an artifact that pushes her to act on her worst impulses, and trying to kill declan about it.

OCTOBER

lucille shakes her head again, taking a step back. she loosens her grip, lets her hands fall to her sides, holding the axe in just one. “this is mine now,” she tells him, “and you can’t have it back. i don’t owe you anything.” “good,” echo answers, sharp. she stares. “you don’t owe them anything, either. not anyone.” there’s a tension in his shoulders, a distance to the way he looks at her—like he’s looking through her, talking to someone else. she doesn’t know what to say, so she just nods and turns away. he doesn’t stop her when she starts to walk home, her pace deliberate, carefully controlled. his gaze on her back itches. she doesn’t look back.

excerpted from take care, take care, a sauces canon divergence fic that asks, what if echo became a single father?, among other things

NOVEMBER

the void reaches out a hand and wipes off his cheek. its thumb comes away, coated in a mix of blood and tears. you’re starting to lose yourself, it says, and it sounds like eli, now, their voice from a facsimile of his throat. he shivers. careful, now. we were made from ghosts. the world is always hungry for another memory. declan reaches up, grabs its wrist, stares up at it unblinkingly. blood drips from his temple, his heart, stains his overalls and mars the embroidery, pools on the ground and disappears. his grip tightens. “i’m no-ot goi-i-ing any-where.” slowly, it wraps its fingers back around his. lips pull back. the shadow gains too many expanse-white teeth, a skeleton grin. aren’t you? he opens his mouth and the void floods in.

excerpted from i alone will make wrongs right, a sauces season two story about declan in a bad place trying to talk to the void while eli is out of commission

DECEMBER

shepherd unearths her face from the couch and turns to him, eyes bleary and ears flat against her head. fur climbs up her neck and the sides of her face, a patch across her forehead and down the bridge of her nose. in her boxers, he can see the rest of it, grown in thick across her body, almost complete coverage. “it’s ba-ad, huh,” declan murmurs sympathetically. “where’d yo-ou even ca-atch it?” “the crossroads,” she says. when he reaches out and pets a hand across her head, she shoves her whole face into it, the fur soft under his palm. “i didn’t know they even had it here, star, it sucks. so bad! i haven’t caught it since i was–” “fifteen?” declan laughs. shepherd blinks before she snorts and smiles back, lopsided. “go-od, that di-id suck.”

excerpted from the fever pitch, a goofy sauces season two story about catpeople catching a fever that makes them grow fur like kittens do again

FINAL NOTE

if you've read this far: thanks, first of all, i appreciate it!! second of all, there's definitely a lot i'm proud of that didn't make it onto this review (or we'd be here all day). if you want to know more about my guys or sauces in general or any of the fics these are excerpted from, i'm always down to talk shop. here's to another year of writing!!

[runawayprincesslily]

Summary: Your best friend returns after a long time and maybe the time you have been away made you realise a few things about your feelings towards him. Did it do the same for him?

Warnings: My first fanfic, NOT A BOOK READER, so events and misinformation could be a lot, Swearing

Pairings – Grover Underwood x reader, Annabeth x platonic!reader, Percy Jackson x platonic!reader

PART 1

“Did you know there’s a new kid in the camp? He killed a minotaur!” You heard a group of half-bloods loudly discuss this interesting news, way too loudly.

“Wait, is it- does he have a-” I looked at Annabeth hoping it was the kid who Grover went to protect. I haven’t spoken to Grover since he left, which was a few years ago. We both became close after Thalia, Luke, and Annabeth joined the camp. He told me about everything, he knew a lot. Listening to him talk about Pan and everything nature was my favorite activity to do. He would tell me about different creatures. He would tell me about herbs and their medicinal properties. Flowers and their meanings. Gods. And him. The last one was my favorite.

“yes he has a satyr protector, yes its Grover”

“Oh.” Grover. I had been waiting for him for so long, and now that I knew he was here I didn’t know what to do. What to say to him?

“are you not going to meet him? I thought you leave as soon as I said yes”

I laughed “I do want to meet him but he is probably tired, also he probably is going to show Percy around first”

“Percy?”

“it’s the new kid, Grover told me his name before he left.”

“Ah of course he did.”

“Do you think it could be him? I’ve seen you watching him.”

“Maybe.” Her gaze shifted to a boy standing near Chiron and Mr. D. I saw Grover run behind him. Grover. It was a little daunting to see him after this time. Like watching a movie, you loved as a kid, and were desperately hoping it was as good as it was before.

“You want to go to the woods? Or stalk him a little more?” Annabeth gave a death stare that shut me up. She was like a little sister to me. A dangerous one though.

I walked alone to the woods. There was a little canopy made by a few oak trees which I loved to sit beside. Grover helped me carve it to perfection and since his departure, it has been a space where I could feel at peace. Grover and I have been best friends, but it has almost felt like a breakup since he left. I’ve had my friends move away while I lived in the mortal world, and never see them again. This feels exactly like that. I just don’t want to feel like we are strangers, maybe this is why I’m running for him.

The bright sunlight peeks through the trees, and the wind rustles the leaves. It was a beautiful sight. I closed my eyes and took a deep breath soaking all of this in.

"Hey"

I didn't need to open my eyes to know who it was, I remember his voice well enough. "Grover. Hi."

"You still come here?" He sat down beside me.

"Of course I do, it's still my favorite place. People are so awfully loud in the camp." I looked at him, and I finally completed processing he was safe. For years I was worried something might happen to him.

"Percy killed a Minotaur."

"What?" I knew it. But I'd rather hear him tell me the whole story

"Yeah! he- I he killed a Minotaur. He lost his sword too mid-fight and he jumped on his back. Pulled off a horn on its head. I'm not even joking. I know this sounds like I'm making it up. The Ares Cabin does not believe he killed a Minotaur. Imagine telling them this story. Yeah, so he pulled off a horn, stabbed the monster, and killed it. Before that, he killed a Fury too. Like, this kid killed a Fury and a Minotaur in less than 24 hours." His eyes sparkled like they always did when he started rambling about something he enjoyed.

"Oh God, maybe this is the kid Annabeth has been waiting for. Did you keep the horn?"

"Of course I did, this doesn't happen very often now does it."

"No of course not which is why the whole camp found out about it two hours after you arrived."

"You knew about it?"

"That the kid killed a minotaur? yes, that he jumped on the monster's back and pulled off a horn and stabbed it to kill it? no"

We both looked at each other, Grover kept silent like he was hesitating to tell me something. "Tell me, Grover."

"What?"

"Whatever it is that you are thinking about."

"It's kind of deep and sad."

"Yeah, and I can only deal with rainbows and sunshine."

"Okay! So his mom, Minotaur got a hold of her and she disintegrated. You know, kind of like Furies do when they die. In no sense am I saying I have watched a mortal be killed by a Minotaur before? But it didn't seem....right. So I was thinking about it and maybe...."

"Hades."

"Yeah."

"Yeah you could be right, but it's a maybe. Just be careful whatever you do with this information." I looked at him, and I realized this was probably the first time I had looked at him since I realized I had fallen in love with him. "So you're not showing the kid around, that's like your favorite part."

"He doesn't want to see me."

"What? How's that possible, everyone loves you."

He laughed "I had to get him kicked out of the school, then his mom died cause i was getting him across."

"It was not your fault, and he will come around. If he doesn't then he is stupid."

He nodded "So what's up at camp. How's Annabeth? Luke?"

"Camp is the same, everyone's favorite part of the day is when Mr. D yells at someone. Chaos is everything. Annabeth is still on the watch for the kid that will go on the quest, which right now appears to be Percy. And Luke. Well, he found his glory, the best swordsman in camp."

"And you?"

"Me? I am spending my time switching between hobbies and talking to Annabeth. My uh siblings? I guess were helpful-"

"Siblings? Did you get claimed?"

"Oh yeah you left before that, ta-da i got claimed."

"WHAT? Who? No i want to guess! Uh- Athena?"

"Nope"

"Aphrodite?"

"Nope"

"Dionysus?"

"That was ONCE. GROVER. ONCE. I got drunk once and you are going to hold it over my head for eternity."

"But you drank a lot, A LOT. It took almost twice the amount of wine to get you drunk than what I saw Clarisse drink."

"Ugh Grover please don't- anyway back to-"

"ARTEMIS?"

"You really should stop guessing, I got claimed by Apollo"

"Wow, that makes sense."

"Your guesses were nowhere near it."

"How did you get claimed? And when?"

"She actually got claimed right here." Annabeth threw her arms around Grover.

"What? Really?" He looked from Annabeth to me.

"Actually not exactly here, but nearby. She saw it."

"She actually ran away from this spot so no one finds out about her quiet place. Well I came way too late, I saw the blinding light for half a second but she looked like she was made of gold."

"What were you doing to get claimed?"

"Nothing," Annabeth replied hastily.

"Nothing what do you mean nothing?"

"It's what she always says, she doesn't know what made Apollo claim her."

I have a fair idea of what might have made Apollo claim me, but it's far too embarrassing to even say it aloud. It was just a few months after Grover had left, and his absence had made me realize quite a few things. I realized I had fallen for him, and that maybe I might never see him again. Those few weeks were really hard on me. And Annabeth at that time was using her time to become a skillful warrior. This made me take a few skills and one of them involved guitar. It was an instrument I learned before camp and felt safe to pick up again. I would come out here every day and play a few tunes and leave I was far too scared that the children of Apollo the God of Music and Poetry might see. I felt insecure because of their talents and was content being my own audience. That day I had started humming along to a tune, unlike other days where I would stick to songs I had learned. I began to sing whatever came to mind, and as cheesy as it may sound it was Grover. I liked what I wrote and felt proud of it so I continued. As I developed further into the song, I was interrupted by Apollo who had claimed me. I immediately feared this would lure people into this quiet safe place so I bolted. I ditched my guitar behind a tree and made a run for it. People luckily only saw me quite a few miles away from the canopy. But I'm not gonna admit this to anyone. Everyone still thinks I have no capability except humming to songs very very quietly.

[zeethecatlady]

pjo tv show spoilers!!!

ahhhhh i just finished ep 8 and i have so many thoughts so be ready.

of course across the tv show there are things i love and things i dont necessary agree with but thats lofe and personal opinion so no hate from me here. cause if i too were rick and staftung reading through and adapting something i wrote about what 20 years ago i would change up plot holes and things that i thought would work better too.

i think all the actors were very talented and perfect for there roles.

i love the change of sally teaching percy mythology from a young age thats something i always thought that should of happened to begin with.

i didnt like the characterisation of gabe when watching the show if i hadnt read the books he was almost likeable i thought he was mildly funny i feel like they didnt make him cruel enough to justify the whole medusa thing.

loved the interactions between percy and grover before camp the lighting of percy in school without grover (blue toned) and percy in school with grover (warm toned) really showed how good of a friend he was. grover was so sweet and funny and had great lines cant wait to see him in a wedding dress.

loved percys interaction with mr d i thought it was totally in character and really was quite funny, mr d is just dying for that bottle of wine.

i didnt love the fact that everyone kinda avoided the topic that the gods igbored there children and arw pretty shitty for the majority of the tv show percy kept asking questions like the gods were like the average parent of anyone and no one thought to tell him 'hey percy the gods dont actually talk to their kids so thats why everyone gives you looks when you talk about there parents'.

thalia being pronounced the way it is threw me off but i knlw thats the actuall greek way of saying it so it dosent bother me (i will continue to pronounce it the way i do though)

i thought it was interesting that they had annabeth see the fates and not percy i don't have many comments on this just that it was interesting.

i loved the way they handled medusa and her story but still managed to make her a monster for percy to fight l, its a delicate line that i think they managed perfectly.

the arch i loved the way percy swapped places with annabeth great cinematic moment, i thought it was weird that they didnt have percy jump in trust of his dad xonsidering the way they have changed percys attitude towards gods as parents at the time during the show, but i thought the hand of posiedon saving him was great aswell.

also the arch being a temple of athena was a cool edition i thought they played athenas pettyness pretty good. i did like that annabeth wanted to go becuse architecture but i dont mind the change.

tunnel of love chefs kiss not more to be said really, other than hephaestus he gets it i always liked him as a god.

the way they had grover talk to ares and manipulate him into taking while also reading his emotions so cool i loved the edition so much and it really gave us an in look into both grover and ares as people.

the animal truck was nice i loved the percy and grover interactions about the animals thought it was funny. missed percy not talking to a zebra.

lotus hotel very cool loved the music choice, loved the design, cool that they know its the lotus eaters before they go in. loved the chat with hermes and grover meeting a satyr and playing his hunt the human game. the lost memorys gives a proper view into ehy people would stay there and not leave. also love the little 'bianca' and the two kids who ran past in purple shirts (romans??).

stealing hermes taxi to go to santa monica awesome, i questioned the choice of 4 pearls tp begin with cause i thought 'this will make the prophecy obsolete' but having watched it all now so good loved the choice cause of course posidon would never abandon his queen amongst mortals

the choic of them running out of time on there quest i dont understand was it necessary i dont think them having a day left still would have changed anything that still happened after show wise maybe a few conversations tweeked. (if anyone knows why let me know im curious)

crustys this was the only monster wich i didnt like the way they delt with, i think they had to do it this was as alot of this was percys thoughts in the book which they havent really been transfering to screen that well. i feel like we lost some of percts brutal fatal flaw here with him not killing him and his smarts of him convincing him to get in the bed and trap himself, thats percys thing see if annabeth has plan, persuasion, then fight.

also the underworld not being in DOA :( that was a cool idea so fun and its a pun but maybe for time issues they just resorted to crusty doesnt bother me that much but ill miss it.

percy not bartering with charon again taking away percys skill at persuasion. but not a big deal in long run (missed the drown in bath joke though)

the feilds of asphodel i thought jt was an interesting take, its described in the books as a really busy airports or station of some kind just loads of people standing everywhere. i tought ut was interesting that the souls became trees (does that mean hazel isnt a tree but just wanders amougst the trees?) the fact rhat they made it regrets aste what stick you in asphodel and turn you into a tree i didnt agree with asphodel is the place you go when your life is juat average not bad or evil and not heroic or extremely good, cause u telling me that any hero that goes to elysium dosent have regrets? also annabeth being the one with regrets weird take it should have been grover who regrets alot (thalia for example) but i get they did that cause like the books they were setting it up to look like annabeth was the traitor.

loved the inclusion story about luke hermes and may.

i loved the characterisation of hades i though he was quite accurate to how hades acts in the actual mythology and you can totally see where nico gets it from. just loved the whole interaction.

loved rhw choice of the pearls going back to manutak rather than santa monica.

the fight with ares loved kt was squeeling the entire time, ares beeing cocky and toying with percy, percy showing beast controll of the sea and finally the cut on ares ankle. but what aboutbthe curse! the curse ares puts on percys sword that bexomes relevent not onece but twice. that surely will mess up the fufillment if the prophecy for a possibel 3rd season as thats the whole reason he dosent fight atlas and takes the sky from artemis. so ill have to wait and see how they do that.

annabeth giving percy her beads 😊

calling children of the big three forbidden children its a nice edition that i like (kinda remids me of the fanfic son of seafoam)

the interaction with zeus pretty good liked it the way that zeus appears to be taking kronos somewhat seriously though, well we will se if that lasts.

posiedon stepping in and saving percy and then surrendering-- - my heart cant

pecry going back to camp and being celebrated great as he should. also live the percy luke flashbacks.

now my favourite way the show has changed the percy luke betrayal! i love the way thia changed i always thought that luke should have tried to recruit percy as he does in later books but percy dosent entertain as luke tried to kill him twice but i love that luke was all like percy we could run away and fight the gods. and thevlook on his face when annabeth throws a knife at him and the way percy sliced luke and immediately apologised because although hes angry he dosent acctually want to hurt him. and you can tell why people like luke and join him. obvs the way they have made the gods more likeable from the start means if you havent resd tbe books you probably dont understand lukes motivations as much but jes known the gods are shitty parents for much longer than percy as hed older and percy will get there one day but we all know how that ends up TLO.

percy annabeth and grover all making a promise to meet back at thalia next year so cute

percys dream about kronos really good gives information that made me jump with excitment as a book fan. sally coming to percy with a notebook to note down his dreams is telling in thats not the first time since camp that its happend. also is it his birthday i got the vibe its his birthday. percy telling his mum that kronos told him to tell her shes a good mum made me snort but its sweet that percy is trying to protect her.

over all i have many thoughts and opinions this isnt all of them and if anyone wants specific thoughts on certain things let me know.

i cant wait till s2 they just have to have a season 2!!!!!

sorry for the long post

[driftingvoid-155]

//((Ruin spoilers))//

Theory that the pizza plex, along with pizza sim, is built on top of the underground facility in sister location.

(I just let my brain run, so don’t take any of this too seriously, and did like, zero fact checking. Just a interesting theory / some connections I noticed. Also sorry if this is like, super obvious and I'm just slow on the uptake).

Was telling some friends how in Ruin it felt like once entering from Roxy's Raceway, it was going down forever until you finally reached the mimic. The stairs, the elevator, the cave, more and more stairs. Was thinking about it again tonight and realized I’ve felt that before. In the sister location game when the elevator just keeps going down and down for what must be minutes as hand unit talks. I mean, how many very deep areas with pizzerias/ facilities at the bottom can there be in this universe? Plus the sister location room in the plex?? Maybe referencing the fact that like in SL with Mike’s house, the plex sits on top of the facility?? The fact that help wanted 2 is sister location based??

Other connections:

Candy Cadet's story about the little boy going to the basement feeling similar to Liz going to Circus Baby in the sense that once the parent was gone, the child was lured in. By a lullaby in case of the boy and by ice cream with Elizabeth.

The scooper arm thing that comes for the mimic in one of the endings. Perhaps a revamped version of the SL one. Cassie pushing the button and watching through the glass also has a very similar feeling of when we watched Ennard do it to Mike. Plus the way the mimic wears the suits feels similar to the way Ennard wore Mike like a suit. Perhaps the mimic had seen that done before.

Connecting to that - “What is bad is always left behind,” maybe something didn’t make it out with the rest of the funtimes and has been waiting down their for its own chance to escape.

The eyes in the AR world just scream Ennard/ Ennard connections to me.

Sister location was also used as a storage as seen with both the funtimes and, according to Baby, when she tells Mike she’s put him in something from, “my old pizzeria.” In that case, if they had old/ unused springlock suits down there, then why not the mascot costumes as well? The lion, bird, and elephant? (I get the feeling the mascots might have been Will and Henry's original ideas before they scrapped them and made the springlock suits instead. Which then those are what they decided to open the first restaurant with so the mascots actually never got to see the light of day in terms of performing/ being on display).

Overall, I think it’s kind of neat to think it’s all stacked on top of each other. Items from the Fredbears Family diner (springlock suits) and stuff from before (mascots) all shoved into sister location which then has Pizza Sim built on top of it (the house before it either being renovated into sim or destroyed) and then finally the plex. Years of Freddy’s getting buried and replaced with the new yet all still stacked right on top of the other.

Also as a final thought, sister location was one of the first instances in the games where we saw evidence of experiment with AI and false life with the robot heads in the primary control module. I think it would be neat if it all this talk about AI and false life in the plex tied right back to where it started.

Again, I might be talking nonsense but it was fun to think about so hope anyone who actually read all the way down to here had just as much fun entertaining the idea for a moment as well :)

[ellieellieoxenfree]

4, 17, 36

i have been sitting on this one! finally getting around to it.

4. Do you have any OCs? Do you have a story for them?

yes! across a few different fandoms. the most notable/fleshed out i would say are:

beth (the flash tv): ah, beth. earth-2's harry wells' executive assistant, modeled after every lovely middle-aged administrative employee i have worked with. i loved beth. she, like all real executive or administrative assistants, is the real brains of the operation and the one who keeps the wheels on the bus; she knows all, remembers all, and does not give a hot fuck about senior leadership being petty, bickering, useless assholes because she knows that if she so much as hinted at leaving, the walls would start shaking and the foundation would collapse. she was kind of a mom figure to my homie hartley during his acclimation to earth-2 -- very grounding, sweet, and non-judgmental. she is widowed, but has two adult kids, one of whom she has drafted into white-collar crime via identity fraud (for a good cause). she bakes, she tours vineyards on weekends, and she has an unerring ear for gossip and when to spill which salacious details. (there are certain secrets beth will take to her grave, of course; she knows the value of being discreet and there is no torture on earth that will get her to share certain things.) her favorite revenge when her boss is being a twit is to make him the world's worst coffee and feign complete ignorance about it. this is the only way she will express her displeasure.

oat and non (That Fucking Show): minor family bodyguards assigned to protect MVP; oat specifically is a second-generation bodyguard and his father worked closely with gun. he's the older of the two, more solid and practical, a born leader. non is younger, more religious, and less settled -- he looks up to oat more for guidance. they both have seen Some Shit, and their loyalty is to the REAL minor family and not the usurper korn installed, although they both have enough self-preservation skills to know that maintaining outward loyalties to the institution is going to serve them well in the long run.

(name redacted because he hasn't been officially introduced yet but hopefully soon) (kiseki: dear to me): i have a gestating kiseki wip that i want to use to introduce a major figure from chen yi's past. i can't say a lot about him yet, though some people know a bit more about him, but he's been really fun to play with in terms of how he affected chen yi's life and how his arc continues to have ramifications in the present day. also, he's not a love interest, just to be clear. none of that. i want to formally introduce him soon :(

17. Past or present tense? Why?

i switch depending on my mood and depending on the vibe of the fic. present tense can create more of an immediacy/urgency, whereas past tense is generally easier to wrangle grammatically. it's not always true, but present tense can be more of a smoothly rolling rhythm for me, whereas past tense i think is easier to use for rapid-fire/staccato pacing.

36. How do you come up with fic titles? What's the one you're most proud of?

ima be real chief like 95% of those puppies are ripped from the split enz lyrics handbook. i cannot claim to be above the time-honored, time-tested tradition of song lyrics as titles. we all did it in the dark ages; we all do it now. i embrace my cringe life.

the one i like the best, despite the fact that i never fucking use its full name when referencing it, is 'by your response to danger it is easy to tell how you have lived and what has been done to you,' from my girl j holz. the full quote:

punches me right in the goddamn throat every time. i fucking love j holz more than anybody on the planet except ars. this is the quote that most sums up how i pick fictional faves.

[arshipweek]

AR Ship Week - Fanwork Recs in 2023

This is the second weekly post in the lead up to Alex Rider Ship Week.  Only 3 weeks to go!

This week we’ve got a selection of shippy fanwork recs submitted by members of the fandom, two years after our previous rec post in 2021.

**Please note that I haven’t listed all the details for the fics so take care to read the tags on AO3 before diving in!

Yassen/Alex

An Uncivil Contract by fredbasset Yassen and Alex are very well written in this period fic. The plot twist is great. I can’t get enough of it. 

There's Something About The Way You Are by countessrivers Very intense, twistedly hot and excellent writing. Alex's rather unusual turn ons feel spot on and Yassen indulges him perfectly 

The Boyfriend by Suzie_Shooter  An interesting view on Yassen being Helen Rider’s boyfriend with a sprinkle of canon.

Lionceau by Too_Many_Rooks This is one of the fics that really got me in this fandom and made me want to stay, I'm a big fan of reverse verses and role reversals and this one hit all the right spots. The inherent madness to Alex's character adds a dash of adrenaline while reading and I cannot wait to get back to this fic when it isn't so fresh in my mind to rediscover it entirely!

Paying the Price by Suzie_Shooter Love this sequel. The dynamic between Yassen and Alex is beautifully written.

Pillars of Sand by Nanimok This one-shot of an aged-up Alex in university is both a unique and bittersweet one; he’s not completely in dire straits or sucked into a hopeless future, yet at the same time, he hasn’t escaped MI6’s grasp, either. I adore Kyra in this, mostly because we haven’t seen much of her in fics as a side character to Yalex driven stories, but also because there’s hints of her push and pull with Alex the way I’m highly anticipating Series 3 will. I love the touches of humor, but most of all, the Yalex! Yassen gentleness, the way he wants Alex to find peace in a way he never could, the way he actually tells Alex as much instead of keeping it to himself, closed off and private. The Yassen we get to see has communication open with Alex and it’s obvious they care for one another… and this tenderness amidst all of Alex’s internal struggle was such a breath of fresh air, for both me, the reader, and for Alex whose safe place at the end of the days lies in Yassen. Nanimok captures their dynamic in this AU brilliantly and somehow makes Yassen’s brief appearances feel so impactful; I can’t help but draw parallels between what we’re experiencing from Alex’s limited POV with Alex himself because that’s what the writing in this fic invokes for me.

Run With Me by Polarnacht Alex being afraid for Yassen is just perfect. Angry car sex is a bonus!

The Call of Blood by TheOtherBlue Very hot Vamp!Yassen AU with sensual blood drinking, a little danger and sexy times.

Don't Need A Gun by BoldAsBrass A very sensual seduction of Alex.

Stalking His Dreams by Rirren A great exploration of Alex dreaming/hallucinating about Yassen after season 1 and very hot. I love the blurring of reality and fantasy/dreams and the way it makes you wonder what really happened.

Estrov Tattoo Parlour by Too_Many_Rooks I love tattoo parlor AUs and damn does this one deliver. From Yassen's complex back story to Alex's tortured life in the present day, I couldn't get enough! Especially with the detail in Yassen's tattoo at the end, a must-read!

Duty Of Care by Suzie_Shooter Goodness, Suzie’s writing is always a bullseye straight into my heart. This Yalex fic plays a lot with Yassen and Alex’s dynamic, especially in its exploration of one of my favorite tropes/conflicts for this fandom: Alex’s incredibly complex feelings about Yassen the assassin and having to come to terms with what that truly means. The way Alex ultimately chooses to lie to MI6, the large part he plays in awkwardly accompanying Yassen’s recovery from injury, the sugary sweetness of Alex’s concern conveyed through the get-well-gift-basket even though he’s no clue the first thing Yassen does or doesn’t like. On our assassin’s end, I absolutely adore the rare and arguably one in a blue moon injured/whumped!Yassen, bloodied and battered. He’s so not okay and I’m quite fond of seeing Alex as the caretaker and more competent one of the dynamic, albeit temporarily. We love to seen tens of hundreds of iterations of the two of them meeting for the first time since Yassen’s [fanfic] survival of Eagle Strike and how that conversation might go—in this fic, it was succinct, honest, and apologetic, and an extra kudos from me about Alex sounding quite amenable to the potential of working together with Yassen! There’s Suzie’s usual beats of humor weaved in between the banter that always makes the dialogue between the two amusing and highly enjoyable, and a plot that somehow makes your stomach twist and turn like a rollercoaster or as I like to think: it’s always fun to try to guess where things are going and even more fun to see Suzie’s execution of the amalgamation of action, common loved themes such as Alex feeling unmoored since Ian’s death, the most evocative emotion, and a unique flavor of Yalex that you can check out in all her other works!!

Safe Houses by fredbassett An incredibly funny series of Alex corrupting Yassen's safe houses and his heart. Their chemistry throughout each single fic is off the charts.

Perform Under Pressure by Polarnacht A great one-shot of Alex being so fixated with Yassen, his stare is enough to get him through a very usual performance. 

Striking the Chords and Blowing the Flute by countessrivers This fic is very, very hot, with some great dubious consent and power imbalance. 

Wintermute by wewillalwaysenduphere I absolutely love cyberpunk romances and the film noir aspect to this fic makes it even better. The author's sense of detail with the setting and attributes of each character, coupled with the mysterious past of both Yassen and Alex is excellent, chef's kiss!

Quietly into the Night by loony_lucifer (LoonyLucifer) This is an older fic, but very, very good. A fourteen-year-old Alex is forced to join Yassen and the criminal he's helping to escape on a road trip. There's some great tension as Alex at times doesn't seem to realise the nature of the danger he's in and fascinating Yassen/Alex scenes.

Lonesome Pines by Suzie_Shooter I like the Christmas rom-com / thriller vibe to the story, it was both very dreary plot-wise and gleeful trope-wise with the bodies coming up and Yalex bickering about it, something I look forward to reading again next Christmas!

The Fictitious Fiancée Affair by Suzie_Shooter An amazing take of fake dating with a bit of Angst, great plot and many feelings - and the ending Yassen and Alex deserve.

A pathway into his very soul by Myulalie Amazing Siberia and royal sex, that’s all you need to know.  

The Full Boyfriend Experience by BoldAsBrass Yassen captures Alex and wants him to be his boyfriend. This fic is incredibly hot and also hilarious, with some lovely descriptions and very witty dialogue.

Blowing in the wind by kelkblr Great mission fic, very immersive with a possessive Yassen and a happy ending.

To The Sea by Suzie_Shooter A wonderful roadtrip of healing and finding each other among the jumbled up pieces of their lives.

pebbles in a stream by ireliss A beautiful tragedy of misunderstandings and missed connections.

The Art of Drowning by kelkblr This is very dark but I love the older and tired versions of Yassen and Alex in here, both traumatised by their lives and finding some kind of understanding in each other.

Smut it up before September ends by Myulalie Excellent collection of short smutty one shots.

The Well of Silence by Polarnacht A great exploration of sensory deprivation trope, very sensual and warm, with just a bit of despair and humor.

Target Practice by RavenJames A beautiful, bittersweet fic with a very grey Yassen and a sexually charged atmosphere between Yassen and Alex. 

Fake It Till You Make It by Polarnacht The title pretty much sums it all up - Alex and Yassen are made to act as boyfriends until they realize the pretense isn’t in the picture anymore.

The Final Mission by OctarineTheColorofMagic Great fic about betrayal and finding a safe heaven in an unlikely place or rather with an unlikely person.

True Love's Kiss by Polarnacht An amazing one-shot of Yassen finding a way to make Alex hold on and survive by true love’s kiss.

Dancing by Polarnacht A perfect series to get sucked into Alex and Yassen story.

Other

A Matter of Time by Polarnacht This fic has such a fascinating premise, with Yassen returning to the past and being offered his past self for the night... Includes both hot sex and some great Yassen character study. Yassen/Yasha

The Darkest Places in Hell by fredbasset Dark but not between the pairings with a lot of comfort. I enjoyed the relationships between all of them, Tom/Alex, Yassen & Alex & Tom and the hints of Yassen/OC were amazing, the OC is very fleshed out and intriguing. Tom/Alex

Only Once in Paris by Zombieheroine Really wonderful thoughtful fic that explores Yassen's relationship with sex really interestingly. John/Yassen

under observation by galaxylentil The fic does a lot with a small number of words, and really fleshes out the clone's characterisation. I love the little cameo by Julius at the end. Sasha/Alex