#this gets dumped into the main tag because i'm proud of it and y'all should see it

[tangledinink]

Heya! First off I’m around halfway through teenage mutant what now and it is the funniest fic I have ever read - Beautifully written and overall brilliant but the jokes get me every time

And second, is it okay if I reference a pose from one of your gemini artworks for my own work? I’ll credit the inspiration if I post it anywhere ^^

whew we're overdue for an ask dump,,, OKAY ALRIGHT.

THANK YOU ; w ; I'm really glad you like it hehehehe. also yeah sure feel free! I don't mind! ^^

HEHEHE THIS MAKES ME VERY HAPPY THANK YOU

oh he DEFINITELY freaked out at first. there was a lot of panicking and confusion and "how could this even happen?!" ("you think i'd genetically engineer a creature that's not capable of reproducing? all of you should be genetically compatible with practically any yokai," draxum said. "AND YOU DIDN'T THINK TO, I DUNNO, TELL US THAT?!" donnie said.) but eventually, he did calm down, and he and his partner talked about it (a bunch, multiple times), and eventually some of the panic gave way to... curiosity, first of all... and then maybe kind of excitement? and some fondness? i mean, he was still pretty scared, and sure, he doesn't really consider himself a 'kid' person, but it's not like he never thought about EVENTUALLY having kids, just maybe... not so soon? but. i mean.

well. if they're already cooking...

THANK YOU ; w ; i'm glad you like them! @kiwi-smug-silvalina

oh gosh, that's a good question. i'm not entirely sure... uhmmm... i would say perhaps... details about how gemini!donnie's witchcraft looks and acts, VS how venus's witchcraft looks and acts...

it is very shiny. i like that people call it "the bean" instead of its actual title coz it pisses anish kapoor off.

ah ; w ; THANK YOU SO MUCH,,, thats so sweet and this made me very happy,,, <3 im glad you liked it!!!! @allegedllama

HEHEHE thank you. yes im aware that i am deranged.

omg same hat!!! i was a lifeguard and it was.... uh.... INTERESTING to say the least... (sometimes lovely, sometimes AWFUL...) @datfearlesschick

if by games you mean 'messed up deals that she can manipulate to her own advantage,' then yes! @frogonamelon

@beannary @spectralsleuth @heckitall @livsinpjs and the sep council as a whole!!! y'all's support has definitely meant so much and there's no way i'd have gotten as far with any of my projects as i have without them... or without literally ANY of the people who take the time to do things like reblog with tags, leave commentary in the tags, send in asks about my stories, etc etc etc! that's definitely one of my main motivators to create more!!! <3 thank y'all!

EEEE this made me smile, hehehehe. thank you :3c @thejavavoid

AAAAAA THANK YOU THIS GENUINELY MADE ME SO HAPPY COZ I WAS SO GODDAMN PROUD OF THOSE HANDS AND HOW THEY CAME OUT ; w ; THANK YOU @onejellyfishplease

thank you!!! u w u @fanrulerjynx

THANK YOU ; w ; I REALLY APPRECIATE THIS,,, it made me very very very happy and HEHEHE IM GLAD YOU LIKE YASSIFIED DRAXUM,,, i just think he DESERVES it, y'know? also thats just my favorite way to draw characters lmao I think it's fun so I decided for this comic I just get to indulge...

not necessarily-- this was mostly just a coincidence! @breezehurricane

oh gosh. i'm not sure, but i know it definitely WILL affect their parenting... i think at first donnie will find himself just... deferring to his partner a LOT in almost any situation because he's afraid that he'll fuck it up, because he DOESN'T feel like he understands proper boundaries or what parenting is supposed to look like, etc etc etc, and he's afraid he'll mess up. he probably reads a TON of parenting books as well because RESEARCH and will often try to pull directly from them in any situation he can, and is confused when things don't go exactly the way they were described in the text... leo i think kind of tends to flounder between being overprotective and feeling the desire to protect his son from everything and anything and wanting to overcorrect this tendency by pulling back and trying to give him as much freedom and space as possible, which sometimes leads to some... inconsistencies. there's definitely a learning curve for both of them, but they both get the hang of it eventually. they both have lovely partners and a very loving and supportive family to help them and they'll figure it out with a bit of practice.

ahhh thank you! :D im so delighted that my silly stories actually inspired something for you!!! hell yeah!!! MAKING THINGS IS GREAT!!! THANK YOU!!! @can-elope

i like to imagine them all staying very close, especially coz i'm loosely planning on them all going through the kraang-apocalypse together (and then coming through to the other side!) so i can't imagine them ever drifting too far from each other, emotionally or geographically. there's a bit of a rocky start for a lot of them, but all of the siblings end up a very tight-knit bunch.

[reflectionsofacreator]

The first thing that really stuck out to me is the subtle difference of the Animus between Ezio and Altair. Altair’s Animus is a brown tint, whereas Ezio’s is blue. It’s a tiny thing, but when you get down to the intimacy of the confession screen, and the fact that we’re inside an Animus inside an Animus, it’s an interesting layer of character. 

This got hella long, so under the cut it goes. 

So this is something that’s touched upon if you read Abbas’ database entry, but otherwise not at all. Altair’s father, Umar, was betrayed by Abbas’ father, Ahmad, and was executed. Ahmad, wracked with guilt, snuck into Altair’s room, confessed to betraying Umar, and then slit his own throat. Altair was only around ten or eleven when this happened, and it traumatized him rather deeply. Ahmad asked Altair not to tell Abbas, and Altair tried to keep it a secret, as Al Mualim had advised. Altair told Abbas, struggling under the weight of the secrets, and seeing Abbas torn up over his father’s death. Abbas said nothing, and it wasn’t until the next day that Abbas challenged Altair to a ‘practice’ duel, only using real swords. 

Abbas attacked Altair, calling him a liar, and eventually managed to get his knife under Altair’s throat, yelling loudly that Altair had lied about his father’s death to shame him. To keep his throat, Altair “admitted” he had lied, and the two were locked up in the dungeons after the commotion was heard by the instructors. Altair only spent a month in confinement, whereas Abbas had to spend an entire extra year training, per Al Mualim’s orders. 

Abbas, even now, is still consumed with grief over his father, and loathing for Altair. These two were best of friends as children, only for the weight of what Ahmad had done driving a wedge between them that sparked a hatred for Altair. Abbas is, or was, convinced that Altair was the source of all of his problems, despite himself being the perpetrator for most of them. 

Sighs. I don’t particularly ... buy it. It feels cheap somehow, in a way that I can’t really articulate very well. Perhaps I’m just not the sort of person that can hold onto hatred for a lifetime, so therefore I can’t really understand it. I also don’t have a good relationship with my father, so the idea that a character holding onto their father’s death their entire life just ... feels off. But I don’t think that’s why it feels odd to me. 

I think it’s actually more because as a concept, Abbas being Altair’s lifelong villain just ... doesn’t jive well, doesn’t have enough screen time to really justify and bring it home. The whole thing feels hollow, and more like an outline of a full story than an actual arc and narrative. There wasn’t enough time spent with Altair to make this feel like an actual problem for him, or that Abbas was just a threat, it was more of a “this sure is happening, isn’t it?” sort of thing to me. We also didn’t really get any sense of how Altair felt about Abbas, and Abbas’ hatred of him. It kinda felt as though all this stuff happened to Altair, not that he was an active participant with his own life. 

I had kinda figured that Altair’s whole sequence/concepts were kinda thought of more of as an afterthought, and I recently learned that I was sort of right, via some wiki hopping. According to Darby McDevitt, the narrative director for AC Revelations, Black Flag, Embers, and the new Valhalla, “Altair wasn't even supposed to be in Revelations until [he and Alex] decided to revive him at the last second. :)”. Admittedly that might be taken a bit out of context, considering the thread is talking about how Ezio had three games because he was “Universally well received”, and how each new character is a risk of investment vs money spent. 

Because of how late in development the decision was, I get the sense that Altair’s extremely short sequences, the lack of fleshing out of stories, and awful narrative shortcuts, were a result of that. Fuck, this is the fourth of five keys, and we haven’t heard anything about Malik, who was The major supporting character in ac1, save for a throwaway line in the 3rd key that he was executed by Abbas. It’s just... poorly executed, imo, and it doesn’t actually feel like this is Altair’s life, or the logical extension of the sort of character we saw in ac1. 

That being said, these flashbacks need to have some kind of narrative thread, a sort of overarching plot to tie them all together. Quite simply, story structure wise, it’s smart for them to create Abbas to be a lifelong villain to Altair, if only so that you can justify having a plot that spreads across his life. I’m not a fan of it, but I can see the reasons why Abbas exists, especially so late in development. But I also feel as though it’s ... well, again, it’s a narrative shortcut. 

Like... as a creator, I can see why they did this. It’s always interesting to see characters in new contexts, and when they realized they had the chance to maybe show more of Altair’s story, or have at least a small opening for it, they probably jumped on it. But as a consumer, as a writer? I don’t agree with this. It’s narratively weak, it has issues with characterization, and ultimately isn’t satisfying, at least not to me. The time spent with these Keys and characters isn’t enough to justify the emotion they’re trying to pull from the audience, there’s barely any time to really get to know these people, the situation. And like, because there isn’t enough time, they relied on shortcuts to try and elicit emotional reactions out of the players, by killing Maria, by killing Sef, by doing a bunch of shocking things instead of actually giving it some weight. 

Please don’t misunderstand, I don’t have a problem with character death. But you have to care and know about the character for that death to have any impact, and like... We didn’t even see Sef, now did we? One of Altair’s sons, the son who’s bloodline would lead to Desmond, and we don’t even know what he looked like. 

Overall though, I’m actually rather happy with this particular sequence -- the fourth key is solid from start to finish, and I feel as though it’s actually a good conclusion to this arc revolving around Abbas. I kinda felt like, warm and fuzzy, a little bit, and it was a good thing to see him inspiring so many younger assassins. 

There’s still one more key to find, so we’ll see how this works out.