#this post was written for uhhhh 2 people?

[goldyluna]

I got inspired by @rosehippiefield's post about Shin's advice on how to deal with Midori and his own behavior towards Sara (that you can find here!). It made me want to analyze more his reasons behind all of his cruel acts. And how some other people from our main cast were affected because of the death game. So.

People can act very differently in different situations. Their emotions and behaviors are always connected to something they go through. No matter if we understand why and how.

So people that are aggressive, cruel, judgmental, rude, miserable, or every other negative adjective usually have a reason for being the way they are. Knowing the reason is really important for understanding others behavior. Of course understanding the reason doesn’t automatically mean we should like this person or forgive them!

Aggression can happen as a natural response to stress, fear, or a sense of losing control. People also react harshly and negatively when they feel like they are mistreated, people don't listen to them, or they are just frustrated. Fear is a really important factor in how we act too.

In Your Turn To Die we have a really specific situation. A few unsuspecting people got kidnapped and put in an unknown place to fight for their lives.

Death itself is a really strong stressor. So adding to it that basically everything is unknown is really not helping with the pressure.

Like was said before, people can behave differently even in similar situations. Really important are the personality, previous experience and predispositions.

Our main cast experiences different things, and because of that, their perspective and way of going through their current situation can be even more different.

Each of them will react differently because of the trauma and reactions of the body to the situation. Some of them even had traumas before landing in the Death Game by Majority.

There, of course, will be feelings connected with experienced trauma (during and afterwards). There are some that we can also see in the game:

Anger

Numbness or difficulty feeling any strong emotions

Lost

Fear or panic

Grief

Worried

Irritation

Confusion

Restless

Hypervigilance

Shock or horror

Shame

People may be affected by trauma in many different ways. There may be problems with looking after yourself, not being able to have a stable job, being distrustful, forgetting things or they can struggle with low self-esteem. People like that can experience flashbacks, panic attacks, dissociation or suicidal thoughts.

After this long introduction, let's take a closer look at some of our characters!

NAO Nao lost someone very dear to her. She even went a little crazy for a moment. But she is so strong mentally she moved past the death, she didn't give up.

A lot can be said about Nao. That she is rational, really smart, selfless and she is not afraid of making sacrifices for a greater goal. That's why it was her that pushed fake Reko down the pit, saving Sara from making the decision.

She doesn't hold a grudge against Shin. She really pays attention to details, so she notices Reko behaves differently. But she still hits Shin because she got scared (Kai's making) and, more importantly, we get the Massacre Ending.

It is not the greater good, this is not selfless. It is selfish and only for her (and Sara), so she can live. Because it is not fair for anyone to be destined to die.

KANNA Kanna was searching for comfort from Sara. She viewed her as someone safe and trustworthy. Someone she can look up to as a big sister.

I am not saying she was replacing Kugie, but at that moment she needed a sisterly figure and Sara suited this role so well. She gave her support and spent time with her. Sara was the one that was there for Kanna and was from the very beginning.

We see Kanna as someone cowardly, shy and innocent. Maybe a little too trusting. The death she experienced at the beginning didn't help and only made the whole experience worse. But she was with people that she trusted and wanted to help. That she was so brave in the second Main Game, making her death a choice. And even if she lived, her demeanor changed. At least a little. She wants to live for those that died for her and it is making her stronger.

Kanna will always be Kanna, but thanks to all the people that support her, she could show her real self. The prettiest flower in the game.

Q-TARO Q-taro is someone who changed his ways. He could escape with the tokens he got (and did), he could leave Gin for dead. But he wants what he thinks is the best. Being alive was the best he could think of at the beginning.

He is an easygoing and friendly giant with high levels of anxiety and selfishness. He has his moments of doubt, like with the tokens.

When we give him enough tokens, he escapes. Even when Rio tells him that, if he inserts all tokens, everyone else will die. Even when he is offered his tokens back. He just apologizes and turns away from Sara.

When we won't do the trade with him, he can't go with his plan. When his doll talks during the coffin roulette, he admits he wanted to abandon them all even if it meant killing someone. And when he talked with Mai after she woke up, he said that he would do the same as her, but he didn't have the opportunity.

He trusted Mai and didn't blame her for the stabbing because he understood. He made the whole plan of saving others by dying himself. Sacrifice from a guy wanting to live hits so hard.

KEIJI The thing with Keiji is complicated. He is a liar, a murderer and a skiver. But he also is so full of guilt and anger. He is still grieving. Years passed, but he still feels guilty about the death of Mr. Policeman.

He is angry, desperate, lost in the dark thoughts. And he acts on them during his First Trial. But Megumi was his friend once, someone really important to him. They drank together, worked together, spent a lot of time together. So he had another's blood on his hands and the whole death game on his head.

He isn't trusting anyone because he knows he himself has something to hide. But he suppresses all the emotions and hides behind humor and fake flirting. He lies about being a policeman because he thinks that would be the way for others to not think he did anything horrible.

He doesn't feel like someone who can do anything about his situation, let alone theirs all. It is easier to give responsibility to another person, even if she is only 17 years old.

He acts how he believes is the best. He acts without telling the person that is supposed to trust him the most his plans. For the best or for the worst.

The death game isn't really a good supplement for therapy.

SARA Sara is very strong-minded, very befitting for a leader. She is our main character, so it is obvious a lot will revolve around her. But even this is too much. There is just so much on her shoulders.

She is only in high school but she almost died a few times (and she did, probably, as we are the players, so the GAME OVER screen isn't strange for us) in a very short time. She got people she can trust and those that hate her and make her life harder. She became a leader for all of them and they look up to her.

"Are you going to be our goddess of victory... or our angel of death?”

A lot of pressure is put on her. She will be the reason everyone will survive or die. Isn't that comforting, Keiji?

But okay, some may say that she is a born leader anyway, but she holds onto Keiji really hard. He is her anchor after Joe. It is also a way to destroy her if she will ever lose him. Because while Sara is she's extremely competent, she makes mistakes. But we know she will always get up.

Sara is also even more interesting, because we know her rate of survival is 15.5% (and the % of our participants is really curious in itself and deserves its own post). We saw a lot of faces of Sara thanks to simulations. She could be merciless, manipulative and ready to do anything to survive. She is obsessed and selfish, not caring for anyone else, just herself.

And we can't blame her, she wants to live. When we are desperate, we do things that aren't good. Those horrible situations, life-threatening ones, make us different people.

Have you ever heard about the Johari Window?

The Johari Window is a quadrant diagram that is used to show how we know ourselves and how others perceive us. It can be a tool to understand ourselves—how we behave, our character traits, skills, attitudes, knowledge and reactions.

Like the name suggests, there are four parts to this model.

Open Part - there are things that are known to you and others. If you know you are shy and you act shy towards other people, all of you know that you are shy. We know Nao is an artist. She knows that and tells others she went to study art. She was completely Open with that.

Hidden Part - is when there are aspects only known to you. You keep them hidden from others so others won't know those things about you. For example, you can be very opinionated, but you don't show it to others. Then they can't know that your opinions may be different than theirs because they can't hear your thoughts.

Blind Spot - it is the complete opposite of the previous part. There are things that others know about you, but you are not aware of them. Kanna is really clever. She figured out the password to Kai's laptop when Shin had a problem with it and she knew that Shin tampered with her sister's message. But she still thinks of herself as not smart (she says that in chapter 2 part 2).

Unknown Part - this one is really interesting, because about this part neither you nor others know about yet. Mostly it stays a secret, but sometimes, where there is a really unpredictable situation that can, for example be life-threatening, that Part may come to light.

We never can know how we will behave during those situations that we never lived through. We don't know if we will fight, flight, freeze, flop or fawn.

Q-taro and Sara are perfect examples of the Unknown Part of the Johari Window.

Q-taro's high level of stress pushed him to do some horrible things. When he had to actively choose if it was him or Gin that would die, he didn't do anything. He let Gin get hit because he was afraid to die, even if the poison would work slower on him. Some shame him for this, but if we were in his place, would we do differently? Click a button that could kill us. We don't know and we hopefully won't.

We may say we would do or not do some things, but until the situation happens to us, we won't be sure.

Similar with Sara and her behavior. All the things she did, all the thoughts, emotions, relationships and ways of doing things we see are a result of some really important factor. She changes after the logic route, why?

Because of Joe. He is her tranquilizer, her anchor, her morality. He was the person that made Sara care during the death game.

Her whole behavior switched only because of one person.

When we pick Kanna to live, Sara is how we know her. Compassionate, strong, mature. But when Shin lives, Joe dies again, but this time in her memories. It makes the situation similar to those in simulations.

Even Sara is terrified by what she is doing.

SHIN (+ Midori)

And that's why Shin is so suspicious of Sara all the time! But let's start at the beginning with him.

Shin is, like every character in YTTD, a very complex character. We know him as an annoying, scary and cruel man for most of the game. Some of us hate him still and some took him as their favorite.

What he did and his reasons aren't forgettable. But it is nice to see a reason behind his behavior.

Midori is sadistic and really cruel. He torments others for his own amusement and loves to watch them break. He loves to make others be afraid of him—and that's why he always tries to be intimidating by holding eye contact and saying unsettling things. He is mean and childish, but he also is really good at reading people. He uses that for his own use, to push the limits of others, control them and let them fall in desperation.

Shin spent a lot of time with Midori. He was his only friend in school and he was so scared of him. Midori did everything to make Shin uncomfortable, but also unable to leave him.

But thanks to that, he knows a lot about him. Shin knows Midori loves control, so taking it away from him is lethal. He knows that Midori is so afraid of death (even if Midori thinks nobody will ever kill him), he is a coward that cares only about himself.

When Shin gives Sara advice, it is so ironic. He tells Sara she should act how he acts towards her. To try to intimidate Midori, make him scared, take away his control.

The advice is important, because only thanks to that can we see how Shin sees Sara and his situation.

Sara is so similar to Midori. Shin can see in her all those cruel acts that never happened. She is in so much control because she is the leader and makes a lot of final decisions. She can be so intimidating. She has sometimes emotional outbursts (that are entirely justified). Additionally, she has a really high % of survival that automatically makes her the most dangerous enemy.

Of course Sara isn't like Midori. Their reasons are different and Sara is genuinely a really good person. But Shin has problems with distinguishing them.

Shin definitely got traumatized during his "friendship time" with Midori. It affected him so much, he is searching for danger in anything remotly similar to what he already knows. His defence mechanism and heuristic try to save him, but it does more harm than good.

He got hurt by someone close to him, so he is extra careful. He doesn't want to be too close to people, prefers to be distant and mean. He prefers to act as someone he hates and is scared of, why?

Because he is afraid. In his own eyes, he is weak and easy to get rid of if he is useless. He thinks the way to survive is to act as the only person that made him feel the worst.

Intimidation, cruelty, cunning, manipulation, lies. Those are the keys to survival in the world where it is kill or be killed. If he is those things, he may live longer than if he were himself.

But as we know, Shin also isn't like Midori. He cares—for Kanna, Gin, even for Keiji and Sara. And he wants them all to escape, despite everything. But going back to old Shin isn't an option anymore. Too much has happened.

Fear is infinitely connected with anger. Anger makes people mean and impulsive. That's why after Kanna's death, he made the worst Joe experience for Sara. That's why he was so mean to Kanna when it turned out that she isn't the Sacrifice and is ready to die for him.

That's why he hates Sara. He is so, so afraid it hurts.

He wants to destroy any possibility that could hurt him and the only way, in his opinion, for that to happen is to hit first. And that's how they should fight with Midori.

Fight fire with fire.

But if anyone knows how extinguishing fire with fire works, then they know that at the end both fire dies and the forest will still be burnt. There will always be victims, no matter if they are main or side characters.

Fire destroys. Midori is so widespread that he can't be stopped by using only water. Sara is a small fire that Shin wants to nip in the bud before it is greater than the forest itself.

But we are heading towards the end slowly. There are fewer and fewer people. Relations will always be strained but also deeper, on another level. Let's see how they will act in the final chapter!

THE END

Finally, I just want to say: there always will be choices to choose, decisions to decide and fires to fight. We can hate, love or like anyone for any reason, but it is important to understand the other person.

Sometimes life is so unpredictable. We won't know what will happen and what we will do. We don't know ourselves as well as we think we do.

But let's be kind to ourselves and others. We don't know what they went through and what will happen to us.

[hyobros]

Cheritz's changes in staff over the lifetime of The Ssum

I wanted to write a post about this because it was the nail in the coffin convincing me that The Ssum won't get better. I really want to be optimistic, I was for the first year of the game's release. But with how hard they're fumbling June's route, and having some context by seeing the dramatic changes that happen behind the scenes, I don't have any hope for the game's future in its original concept.

So here's a big fat list of credits, comparison of them, and my own stupid commentary.

A comparison of the beta OPs credits (2018) vs the new OP credits (April 2022)

Project Directed by-

Sujin Ri (this stays constant)

Project Managed by-

Heinrich Dortmann (this stays constant during the time periods I'm comparing- we'll come back to this later)

Character Model by-

Yuseung An (this credit never appears again so uhhhh)

Game Designed by-

Yoonji Shin, Haeyoung Go (this credit also never appears again)

Project Assisted by-

2018:

Youngtak Lee, Heetae Lee, Yeonwoo Jung, Kyungha Kim, Kyungho Kim, Jihyun Jang, Hyejin Hong, Daniel Hong, Seungiim(?) Hwang, Dakyoung Lee

April 2022:

Heetae Lee, Junghee Choi

Art illustrated by-

2018:

Ilbo Sim, Jinhee Lee, Jihyeon Choi, Hyunju Na, Juhul Kim, Jaehee Hwang, Mirae Kang

April 2022:

Ilbo Sim, Jihyeon Choi, Minji Kim, Mirae Kang, Youngjoo You, Yura Lee

Programmed by-

2018:

Mansu Park, Marcos Arroyo, Rachel Tay, Soonyong Hong, Seungjin Lee, Myungjun Choi

April 2022:

Gunsoo Lee, Kukhwa Park, Moonhyuk Jang, Myungjun Choi, Seungjin Lee, Wonbok Lee, Youngkwon Jeon

Scenario Written by-

2018:

Jinseo Park, Minjeong Kim, E Hyun Kim, Eunchong Jang

April 2022:

Jinseo Park, Lilly Hwang, Minjung Kim, Saerom Shin, Summer Yoon, Youngran Moon

Language Localized by-

2018:

Sunhee Moon, Minkyung Chi, Sungjae Choi, Junhee Kim

April 2022:

Minkyung Chi, Pilhwa Hong, Saenanseul Kim, Sorim Byeon

Sound Resourced by-

2018:

(N/A)

April 2022:

Songhee Kim

Customer Service/Communication with Users by-

2018:

Sunkyeong Yun, Hyeseon Yang

April 2022:

Donghee Yoon, Joyce Hong, Sanghee An, Subin Kim

Credits from 2019

These are in the lyric booklet included in the Teo Love Bundle. Strangely enough, I'm already seeing differences between the 2018 credits and 2019. Uh oh?

As of release + a few months

These screenshots don't feature all the credits, unfortunately. I'm relying on screenshots someone else took because I'm not proactive but hindsight is 20/20.

Changes: Project is no longer managed by Heinrich Dortmann, instead by Juho Woo. Scenario team cut down to 2 people, one of which is a new name (Jooyoung Lim). Art team also cut down to 2 people. Sound is no longer resourced by Songhee Kim, but Jaeryeon Park and ROGIA. All new team of directing assistants as well, it expanded to 4 people but they're all new names. 2 fewer programmers, only one of the listed names was already working.

October 2023 (June's release)

Here's where it somehow gets worse lol.

Changes: A lot. Directing assisted by 1 person. They were not a part of the team credited in the OP. Down to 3 programmers, only 1 being in the OP. Entirely new art team! It's up to 4 people, but all of them are new, even compared to only a few months prior. Down to 1 scenario writer pobrecita (but we're coming back to that). Since I don't have screenshots of the project assistant credits from launch, can't say anything for that, except that Gui Zhenghao is new compared to the OP but the number of staff there remained the same. Flaming Heart is gone for the BGM! He's been working with Cheritz for forever but is gone now. One person from the communication team left, so they're down to 2. That would explain why emails have been slower since October. Only 1 translator, though Cheritz is now looking to recruit new ones.

Important note:

According to Cheritz's post acknowledging their use of gAI, Sujin Ri was not involved in writing season 1 of the game, but IS the main writer for season 2. I won't make a rant about how much I hate what she's writing cuz this isn't the post for that, but it explains why season 2 is so vastly different.

The fact that only a few people (like, in the lower single digits) remain even from 2019/early 2022, let alone who's still around from 2018, is really frustrating for the game. The game started with one vision, but now it's being turned into something completely different. Even the app's functions are inconsistant between season 1 and 2 (and a little so between Harry and Teo). According to an email I got from Cheritz, season 2 takes place a few years before season 1. Just sit with that knowledge for a bit :P. It's like the current people in charge of The Ssum (*cough Sujiin Ri*) couldn't be bothered to keep the original concept in mind, let alone how the timeline would work.

This post was a long time coming, I was caught up in just how bizarre this all is and finding tons of stuff that I haven't even included in the post. Writing this has taken about 3 hours (including the time I spent on a post ONLY FOR TUMBLR TO NOT WANNA WORK PROPERLY WHEN I TRIED TO POST IT SO IT GOT DELETED) and uhhh yeah. Now I gotta wait a few years to ask former staff if their NDAs are expired yet LOL

[nightfall-1409]

Oops so that was a while!

Nightfall Update ahead of the holidays! (and a push for myself to, blog again). some details under the cut but tl;dr it's been a while but im back here and trying to be back here! with new stuff! And updates to certain things too damn!

Rough year for me! Probably for many people really :(

good stuff first

uhhh biggest news is that through all the bullshit i was able to participate in the clone bang. The last 6 weeks of my life have been so stressful bc I had to write like 80% of the damn fic. It's a 125k monster of a fic that i feel quite proud of, the last 45k of it was written in literally the last two weekends. upcoming details in a promo post as soon as I hear back from my last artist <3

With that, though, my creative writing juices thoroughly uh. revitalized. to recovene followers: ezra chapter is coming soon :) that was a mean cliffhanger, i did not expect for my brain to literally commit mutiny :( sorry

I hope to have that done before bang posting starts (December baby here we come)

uhhhh only other thing is I am attending sanfrancisco expo ! lookin forward 2 that as well.

some generalized health stuff. the heat stroke i suffered last year was apparently maybe not a heat stroke (noted by the fact I was consistently worsening) and that sentence is still terrifying to me bc as i recall i couldnt fuckin read or turn around without wanting to fall over for like a month and a half there. But. whatever. It was a slow decline for a while, I was still getting some stuff out, but eventually, the amt of pain i was in overwhelmed me in june n it consumed me whole from july - august with slow improvement happening from then on.

it took me. quite a long time to see a specialist (and it was originally going to be longer! haha!) , but i've been seen. and am on treatment. and it sucks bc flashing lights still kill me (including literally shadows of the setting sun through a line of trees and a CEILING FAN are you KIDDING ME) and migraines r like. my best most toxic friend <3 it's so overrrr. We do not know what happened beyond my facial nerves just deciding to go balling insane. L. or what started that. L. But its finally getting better!! yay. we're so back.

to the ppl who've reached out 2 me / tagged me / putstuff in my inbox in ao3 or thought about me ;w; bro.. thank you !!! it killed me all the time bc it was like. I wanted to participate!! I want to have fun!! but the amt of energy things took. insane. but it was nice to be thought abt regardless. I want to be back now and have fun again. have a lovely night <3

[phneltwrites]

12 and 28 🥰

hi hi! 💜

12. [how many wips do you have] on the one hand i have a million ideas but actually i mostly focus on one thing at a time and then the rest of the ideas fight it out thunderdome style until their turn comes. I've for sure got 2 (wlw wilmon, space whump simon) but odds are good something else will emerge from the ooze and clobber those other two and then idk you'll end up with mob affiliated micke and accidental kidnapping wilmon in Spain. it's tough to predict

28. [fave fic written this year] oh no my children. uhhhh ahhhh?? Probably Wolf Comes Home (futurefic where August leaking the video is revealed and it's a big scandal) because I think it came closest to doing the thing I wanted it to. I'm always trying to communicate something and sometimes the fic falls far short of that and this one I think I mostly said what I wanted to say. Though I do feel bad for all of the readers who didn't know how anti-monarchy I am and were surprised by the ending. idk if i should tag for that or what.

I really like how angry Young Royals as a show is. The way it doesn't let the things that grieve the characters go by. It's that anger that comes from deep humanism, every character in the show is so believable and real. the system, it's the system, and it forces the viewer to look at what these theoretically privileged existences do to the people in them. no babies with jobs 2k25!!! That only by being genuinely honest and coming to terms with the burdens of the legacy can the characters be good to each other. anyway big feelings! wrote that fic angry posted it happy had a great time

[crimetimesteadicam]

ok @morporkian-cryptid tagged me to do this fic author interview so here we go...

if you would like to do this, i am officially tagging you, yes you, right now. tag me back so i can see your answers

1 How many works do you have on AO3?

i got 40

2. What’s your total AO3 word count?

1,044,749

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

sorry like none of these are lupin iii. a blight on my lupin iii blog

Wabisabi (991 kudos) - Spirited Away. idk it's short and cute, read it

BONES OF BLACK MARROW (952 kudos) - Homestuck. the infamous cyoa cannibalism sex fic. scrolling through the things people say about it in the bookmarks is always so funny

Cum mortuis in lingua mortua (925 kudos) - Homestuck. no clue why it has so many kudos lol it was like the first long thing i've ever wrote (a whole decade ago??? jesus). it's a d&d/discworld joke

Vanitas vanitatum (914 kudos) - Homestuck. the same d&d/discworld joke except the LI is turbo depressed. notable for being the only fic i ever outlined and edited and that's why it whips

Supermassive Retinol Overdose! (677 kudos) - hey look, a lupin fic made it on here!

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

i do when i have something meaningful to say besides "thank you!" i don't have a lot of thoughts about my own work so therefore i tend to not respond if there's not a direct question :( my head is empty. i always respond to every single comment on the last chapter of longfics though because i'm always impressed people read that far lol. genuinely, from the bottom of my heart, thank you for reading all that

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

idk uhhhh i wrote a series once where two of the main couples break up at the end, but it wasn't really angsty

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

they all end pretty happily

7. Do you write crossovers?

if i did it was so long ago i don't remember it

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

no but people used to send passive aggressive hate about my art in fics once in a while. hasn't happened in like 2+ years

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

yes. every kind. EVERY KIND

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

a bot will sometimes scrape my high kudos homestuck fics and plant them on a junk ebook site

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

yeah i think like 7 of them got translated into russian and do numbers on ficbook.net

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

in the past me and my friend would sit around a laptop and scream laugh write our way through crack fics

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

right now it's jiglup and fujilup

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

i finish almost all my WIPs because i'm a freak. if i don't finish a WIP it's because some dramatic life event happened. this has only occurred two times

15. What are your writing strengths?

im a funny binch

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

i don't outline or edit or re-read any of my fanfic. i just type it and then eyeball it for typos and then post it. i COULD outline and such to really make the narrative nice and tight, but i don't find it very fun to do (for fanfic) and this is like, my relaxing wind down hobby. i just wanna have fun haha. the only reason my fics like, make sense, is because i write at least one ending scene first thing and always aim for that, and also i write out of order so i kinda know the route of the story

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

it's fine if it makes sense to do it there as a narrative device

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

h-hetalia crack fic.....

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

once i figure out how to draw zenigata it's over for you bitches. luzeni hours on da clock

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

for lupin iii fic, i like Lightkeepers the best

[emocl0wnpp]

The hyperfixation is getting worse soooo

Time for a terribly written infopost about my creepypasta oc Claws :D

☆Basic infos☆

Before "shit went down" infos(the red head and the purple ghost pics basically):

Name before death: Nicolas Marshall Rhodes Nicole M. Rhodes

Date of birth: 29th of October, 1978

Age before death: 27

Pronouns: He/Him She/her

Gender: MtF transgender

Sexuality: questioning everything

Nationality: Hungarian,British

Height: 195cm/ 6"3

Personality: naive,anxious, shy, nervous, smart, quiet, people-pleaser, workaholic, overworked, tired, reserved, introverted, a bit loud around friends

Other stuff idk how to categorize-

She lived in Hungary until she was 6, after that her family moved to Britain(specifically Liverpool)

She had 2 older brothers(they were twins), and a younger sister(she's on the picture with Claws before her death-)

Her dad was Hungarian and her mom was british

HUUUUUUGEEE horror fan, ESPECIALLY a BIG BIG fan of IT and Pennywise in general-

Owns every exsisting piece of merch of Pennywise

Wanted to become a detective

She studied at Oxford University and got her diploma there too :3

(The plush doll on the picture of her as a human will later on become her body)

Picked up the habit of smoking and drinking out of stress

Ended up in hell as a purple ghost/soul like being (i will talk abt this more i promise--)

Cause of death:

Stabbed by her ex 15 times on her back (i will make a post/edit this one with her backstory I PROMISE😭😭)

Date of death: 25th of December,2005

☆After death info :D☆

Name: Claws

Age: doesn't really matter anymore cuz yk she's dead

Pronouns: still She/her

Sexuality: demisexual,panromantic

Species: now a plush ragdoll

Height: 300cm/ 9"8

Personality now: sarcastic, smart, cautious, observant, still workaholic, honest, loyal, obedient, competitive, sharp-tongued, secretive, serious, stubborn, sometimes violent, rather cold hearted (though she's a real sweetheart under those sharp claws and teeth)

Uhhhh random fun facts cuz im terrible at writing bios-

Still a huge IT and Pennywise fan

Best friends,later on dating with Laughing Jack(ironic considering how much of a Pennywise fan she is)

Best friends with Laughing Jill

Works as Zalgo's proxy (not by choice tho-)

Literally no bones or internal organs,just plush stuffing

She's hella flexible too

She doesn't need to eat or drink but still does for the taste

Still smoking and drinking at times

Zalgo makes her do all sorts of jobs, not only is she an assassin,she's also his secretary and the babysitter for his kids-

..cannibal-

She's a shapeshifter :D

A playlist for her:

I'll probably edit the post when more stuff comes to my mind lol

Thought i'd add this here too-

[daka-d3monb0y]

1- What's the name of your AU if there is one? If no official name what would you call it?

Time Variant Authority/ Time Travel AU

2- What is the most prominent differing factor between your AU and the original source Material?

Time travel was discovered by The Creator, though he deemed it too powerful and catastrophic to use. Eclipse got his grubby little hands on it and just had it. Monty discovers it and is the first to use it.

3- What is your favorite character in the source material and who's your favorite character within your AU?

In canon I Miku is my favorite character xD, I just like the chaos she brings. In this AU my favorite character in this is Eclipse. He's more of an evil Solar actually and that's what's interesting to me.

4- Are any of the characters in a relationship (QPR, Romantic, Emotional, ect.)? If so what are the most defined ones you've built so far, and within the universe how did their bond come along?

There are canon romantic relationships. But I go into Eclipse's relationship with Puppet a lot, we see how they fell apart by his actions when he's time travelling. Monty and Moon's relationship is vital to the story, Moon is a kind of key character to the universe itself.

5-What 'fanfic tropes/fanfic tags' does your AU use?

Uhhhhhh I have no clue.

6-Do any characters within your AU have any disabilities (mental or physical)?

Monty has ADHD, Sun has anxiety and OCD, Moon is "eccentric", Eclipse is a sociopath, and Puppet has PTSD. Uhh idk what else.

7- Do any characters have familial bond amongst eachother? If so how strong are their bonds, and how did they come about?

The family bond is very important to this story. Eclipse is Lunar's father in this so their relationship is important. As the AU progresses Eclipse becomes addicted to time travel and the power he has being able to change time itself, he ends up isolating himself from Lunar and the rest of his family.

Sun and Moon were made by Creator, separating made Eclipse, he made Lunar, Earth is made by Creator. Bloodmoon and KC were never made/born, instead Moon, Eclipse, and Lunar have parts of the homicide code.

8- What are the ages of the characters in your au? Or are the ageless/immortal?

Robots (for the main variant of this AU). Everyone is adults except Lunar.

9- what's the general world like? Is it futuristic, modern, apocalyptic, post-apocalyptic, does it take place mainly in a coffee shop or something of the sort?

Starts out in the Pizzaplex, they're just doing their jobs. Moon dies actually, Monty time travels Eclipse follows him. Eclipse keeps doing it, changing the dimension as he pleases.

[Moon never invented portal travel, or doesn't until later. So nobody knew there were other dimensions, it was kinda just a theory Moon had.]

10 - are you working on any fanworks (fanfic, askblogs, rp blogs, animation, comics, ect.) about this au? If so link them!

I'd like to make a comic-type thing for this, but it will mostly be written out and released on Wattpad and AO3.

11 - What is the worst thing(s) that happened to a character(s)? Did they have a tough life, a loss, or anything of the sort? If so what? How did it affect them?

It starts out "happy". In the way of there isn't the craziness and adventures the canon has. There's just the Pizzaplex. I'll explain later in the story how the homicide code was an important thing earlier but is no longer as much anymore. Moon never fully trusts Eclipse, especially around people.

12 - what's the best thing(s) that happened to a character(s)? How did it affect them?

Uhhhh July 16th never happened. So yay. Maybe I'll add an adult Evelien. Creator doesn't appear as bad as he is in canon.

13 - Did you take any unique design choices for any of the characters? If so describe or show them off!

I plan to draw but for now have Gacha designs (the designs can/ might change)

14 - What character(s) in the AU have been worked on and built up the most and what are they like?

Eclipse is the main character, and kind of the villain in the story. I go into Lunar a lot too.

15 - What is your least favorite character in the source material, and what's your least favorite character in your au?

Vegeta. I love him, but I hate him. He's so cringe. Probably in the AU too, because I need some chaos.

16- Is there any major personality changes you made to the characters?

Lunar mostly. He's considered a kid but he matures a lot throughout the story. He's a lot more like his dad than he should be.

17 - What is the most 'out of character' thing in your AU?

Idk I try to keep them pretty close to the original scouse material?

18 - How long have you been working on this AU?

A few days tbh xD.

19 - Is there any OC's or self-inserts? If so what are they like and how do they affect the story?

I don't use OCs in fanfiction media.

20 - What inspired this AU?

There's somewhere in an Astral Spiff video (I think in a few) where he explains when doing tasks out of order in SB you have to be careful to not skip one of Moon's segments or he jumpscares you. That's been called TVA Moon, and the inspiration for this AU.

21 - Has your AU steered off of your original plan for it at all? If so do you like how its changed? If it stayed the same what's the base idea for it exactly?

I accidentally started writing it as a Human AU variant, so throughout the story you see two parallel dimensions. Both the Eclipses will technically meet.

22 - Do you have any variations of this specific AU? If you do how do they differ amongst eachother?

Oh. Well, yeah, the human variant. And later when you're at the TVA you see hundreds of people time travelling.

23 - Does this AU bring you comfort/was it made for comfort?

No. It's very angst heavy. It starts with Moon's death, there is nothing comforting about this.

24 - Is this your only TSBS AU or do you have any other ones? If other ones is this one your favorite?

I have a bunch. I mostly write for my Main Human AU. I enjoyed working on it.

25 - What parts of the AU are you proudest of?

The reveal of TVA Moon. He just throws Eclipse on the ground and drags him through a portal. It's really funny, and the whole AU has always been about him even tho we follow Eclipse.

26 - Do you keep this AU mostly private to yourself? If so why?

No. I just have only been working on this for a few days lol.

27 - would you consider this AU to be dark, light, fluffy, or what would it fall under and why?

Dark probably. It's got angst, Eclipse destroying his life and dimension, hurting his family. Yeah :P

[firebugging]

MUTUAL APPRECIATION POST!!!!!

Hope everyone's year has been good so far, I've wanted to do this for a while, so here's my little ramble!!

I wanted to do as many people as possible but I am a COWARD and just went until I feel like I wrote too much, everything is utc :3

ALRIGHTTTTT, STARTING OFF WITH @eslover. I remember our first interaction the best tbh... (milgram tree, kotorb!!) you're the person that made really want to try and branch out to talk to other people within the milgramblr community (I still get a bit embarrassed though). You're super nice and I'm really grateful that we're mutuals! Truly the McMido acc ever !!

Next up, @tsuwmya! You were my first mutual here and I think you're super cool!! I really admire you, even if I don't interact with you a-lot, your ocgram is SOSO WELL DONE AND ALL THE CHARACTERS ARE SO CHEWYYY (it made me begin work on my own ocgram again actually). Your analysis posts are always such a pleasure to read and there is something about your art that makes me want to eat it like a sandwich /pos

@dearmahiru YOUUU. You're the person that made me like 0610 and MY GOD, DOOMED YURI!! They're one of my favourite ships now hehe. BUT ANYWAYS, ANOTHER PERSON WHO MAKES WONDERFULLY WRITTEN ANALYSIS POSTS, they're always such good reads and you can tell how well researched they are! In my head you're THE Mahiru mutual and I await the Kotoko final girl post!

LINA @linabirb. Uhmm... fun fact, when I initially got into Milgram, your edit blog was the first thing I really checked out in terms of fan work. I believe I was the anon that asked for heart shaped miko icons one time (I loved them btw. I ended up using them for one of my rentry pages WITH CREDIT OFC). You're really friendly and soso approachable 10/10 MUTUAL!!!

@narumimii YOU'RE LIKE A CELEBRITY 2 ME... so cool. I lovelove you edits and will probably spam like them later out of respect because photopea SUCKS and trying to understand it made me admire you for putting up with it's confusingness. Also... yurigram real I LOVE YOUR ART OK BYE

@rainbowghostcat @seariii @heynowisavedyouright and @roseofcards90 I WAS GONNA WRITE STUFF FOR YOU GUYS TOO BUT GOT EMBARRASSED AND DELETED IT I'M SO SORRY </3 BUTTT I THINK YOU'RE ALL SUPER COOL AND I AM SENDING YOU A MILGRAM CHIBI OF YOUR CHOICE...

@art-stuff-by-goose You're one of my irls and also not on milgramblr but you are my qp WIFE so I would like to thank your for putting up with me for all these years! I can be cringefail boyflop girlloser around you without worry and you also introduced SSOOSOOSO many cool games to me YOU WILL BE NUKED!! Overall you are very cool and I am gonna give you one of my silly dinosaurs :3

TO EVERYONE WHO ISN'T ON HERE!! Just know that even if we're not close, I really appreciate you! Everyone who I've interacted with here (no matter how much or how little) has really made my fandom experience so much more enjoyable, this is actually the first time I've really tried to interact with others in the community and it's been soso wonderful thus far. So thank you! I hope that you all have a wonderful 2024!! <3

Also uhmmm, I suck at interacting first so if you'd like to get closer, maybe send an ask? OK THAT'S ALL THIS WAS UHMMMMM VERY UHHHH THIS WAS A POST!!!!!!

[thana-topsy]

Fic Writer Interview

Tagged by @mongoose-bite ! Thanks so much, crunchy. :)

I'm tagging whoever else wants to chime in! I lose track of who all on here I should be tagging lol. Or who might actually want to participate in such a thing.

----

How many works do you have on AO3?

38

2. What’s your total AO3 word count? 643,096 words Mostly written within the last 5 years!

3. What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Breathing Water - My flagship fic for the longest time. It still holds up 4 years later! And I'm still simping for Neloth.

Halfway to the Sky - Coming in with only about 30 kudos less than BW, I'm always tickled and humbled and just so honored that so many people like this story.

The Shadow Over Solstheim - This one had the most kudos for the longest time just because it's my oldest multi-chapter fic. Baby's first foray into something more than a smutty one-shot! My writing is unpolished and my lore knowledge is amateurish at best, but it's just so full of verve.

Hollow Men - A fic I honestly didn't expect many people to read due to the subject matter, but one that's near and dear to my heart.

Invictus - The bonkers, off-the-rails sequel to Shadow Over Solstheim in which Topsy discovers TES Lore in real time as they write. I don't think I could ever write something this free again even if I wanted to. I'm too burdened by knowledge (much like Teldryn).

4. Do you respond to comments? Why or why not?

I try to respond to almost every comment, but sometimes I get stuck with Comment Paralysis and they just pile up in my inbox until I'm thoroughly overwhelmed. I read every single comment and blush and kick my feet excitedly, though.

5. What’s the fic you’ve written with the angstiest ending?

Hmmm... I don't really do angsty endings. I like pleasant, contented endings, sometimes bittersweet, sometimes open-ended. But I guess Dreamers, my Hadvar/Ralof fic as it currently stands, has the angstiest ending. At least until I manage to finish the final chapter...

6. What’s the fic you’ve written with the happiest ending?

Uhhhh... They're all pretty happy, from my perspective at least. Maybe Finding Mara takes home the gold for happiest ending. (Erandur takes home the gold, too -snerk-)

7. Do you write crossovers?

I have written exactly one crossover and it's the oldest fic on my AO3 (from 2014). Otherwise, they're fun to think about, but nah. Not really.

8. Have you ever received hate on a fic?

If you count an entire series of callout posts, years of harassment, and people jumping to conclusions over a fic they never even read, then the answer is yes.

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yes. All kinds, but generally smut with a purpose. "Porn with plot" as they say. I write smut that zooms into the characters' heads, prys open their wants and desires and fears and insecurities. I write smut that can get a little hyper-realistic, to the point of sometimes being kind of gross. I write smut as a form of raw expression, people at their most vulnerable, literally stripped bare. It's one of my favorite things to write because it is an endless exercise in character study, in boundaries, in what it means to consent, and how the lines between who we think we are and what others perceive us to be get so easily blurred.

10. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

If I have, they've gotten away with it.

11. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, once! Someone asked if they could translate the first chapter of Halfway to the Sky into Russian.

12. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Yes, back when I first joined the TES fandom. Two of my fandom bests at the time co-wrote a couple of stories with me. One is posted to AO3 (Ceasefire), and the other was a horny, whirlwind, feverdream of a fic that the other author and I mutually agreed we would probably never share with the greater world lol. We are still bests to this day and I often revisit that fic in awe and bafflement of our energy.

13. What’s your all-time favorite ship?

It's so tough to choose, honestly, but I gotta go with Neloth/Teldryn, because it just took me by surprise and spun out into something so wild and wonderful.

14. What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

I never say never with my WIPs. If I've learned anything over the past 5 years in this fandom, it's that I'll pick an old WIP up on a whim. I do wanna get back to my Arvel the Swift WIP at some point. I also started working on a Dark Brotherhood-centric fic last year, too. And so help me Talos I am going to finish Dreamers.

15. What are your writing strengths?

Dialogue. People talk in my head and I just write it down. It usually ends up sounding pretty natural. And pacing. I feel like I manage pacing pretty well and can make good calls as to when a scene is dragging or we need to skip forward in time a bit.

16. What are your writing weaknesses?

Wordiness. Relying too much on "feeling" words. Telling instead of showing more than I need to. Repetitive sentence structure. My goal in 2024 is to become more direct and succinct with my writing style.

17. What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

Eh... I've done it before. I threw in a lot of Dunmeris and Ta'agra back in the day when I was first writing TES fic, but I'd say just use italics and translate what's being said. Or, alternatively, if the POV character can't understand what's being said, don't even use dialogue, just mention that it's being spoken. It's all gobbledygook to them anyways.

18. What was the first fandom you wrote for?

Yu Yu Hakusho (in 2004)

19. What’s a fandom/ship you haven’t written for yet but want to?

I'm monogamous with my fandom currently, so I'd really love to write something with Cicero, because it's been a long time coming.

20. What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

That's really hard to choose. They're all my favorite when I'm writing them. Each fic is its own little relationship for me. I don't write things unless I'm absolutely in love with what I'm writing. So they're all my favorite, in that sense.

[forest-hashira]

Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you've written, then pass on to at least five other writers (except me because obvs I have done it). Spread the self-love ❤

AHHH LIN!!! ok ok uhhhh. this is cheating a little bit bc two of these are series but they really are so special to me, i can't possibly pick just one chapter/installment from either of them. anyways, here are five of my favorites, not necessarily in order (edit: why the FUCK was this so hard???):

Noble Blood - stsg x gn reader; jjk dragon rider au. by word count, this is the longest multichap fic i've ever posted. it's really niche, since it's 1.) a reader insert, 2.) a poly ship, & 3.) a high fantasy AU, but it one of my favorite things i've ever written in my life, and i've been writing (fic & original writing) for over half my life.

Transfem Gojo - trans woman gojo satoru x gn reader. i've always loved playing around with characters' genders and sexualities, which like... there's definitely some projection happening there, but we don't need to talk about that. i also didn't expect the concept to turn into a whole series, but it has, and honestly i couldn't be happier about it, especially when it brought one of my favorite people into my life ( @dr-runs-with-scissors ily) and when i see how much other people love her, even if it's a very small group. again, a very niche concept, but i love it.

Too Much - kocho shinobu x gn autistic reader; shinobu helps reader through a meltdown. this fic was a gift for red ( @redlikerozez), actually! i really like this one bc, as someone who is autistic, it fulfilled a very specific hole in the reader insert space (at least in my experience). it was also nice to write for a character i hadn't yet written for, who is also a female characters and a character that generally has less fic written about her!

Lucky Shot - outlaw geto suguru & fem reader; platonic w/ open ending; gun violence, blood/injury, minor character death. i really liked all the entries i did for riley's collab, but this one is probably my favorite of the three! it was also my first geto fic that didn't include gojo.

Day Off - maki & gn reader; you spend the day at the arcade. this fic is the only one i've ever written based on a request (for @/yuutito), but it was so much fun to write! maki deserves more fics and writing something platonic is always nice.

honorable mention goes to my selkie shoko x gn reader fic Lost & Found.

[skyeqt]

I wrote a quine, without strings, in a calculator

Okay so I should probably clarify some things, the calculator in question (dc) is more of a "calculating tool", it is built into most linux distributions, and it is a command line tool. I should also clarify "without strings", because dc itself does support strings, and I do actually use strings, however, I do not use string literals (I'll explain that more later), and I only use strings that are 1 character long at most.

So first of all, why did I decide to do this, well, this all started when I found a neat quine for dc:

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

If you're curious about how this works, and what I turned it into, it'll be under the cut, for more technical people, you can skip or skim the first text block, after that is when it gets interesting.

So first of all, what is a quine, a quine is a computer program that outputs its own source code, this is easier said than done, the major problem is one of information, the process of executing source code normally means a lot of code, for a little output, but for a quine you want the exact same amount of code and output. First of all, let's explain dc "code" itself, and then this example. Dc uses reverse polish notation, and is stack-based and arbitrary precision. Now for the nerds reading this, you already understand this, for everybody else's benefit, let's start at the beginning, reverse polish notation means what you'd write as 1+1 normally (infix notation), would instead be written as 1 1 +, this seems weird, but for computers, makes a lot of sense, you need to tell it the numbers first, and then what you want to do with them. Arbitrary precision is quite easy to explain, this means it can handle numbers as big, or as small, or with as many decimal points as you want, it will just get slower the more complex it gets, most calculators are fixed precision, have you ever done a calculation so large you get "Infinity" out the other end? That just means it can't handle a bigger number, and wants to tell you that in an easy to understand way, big number=infinity. Now as for stack based, you can think of a stack a bit pile a pile of stuff, if you take something off, you're probably taking it off the top, and if you put something on, you're probably also putting it ontop. So here you can imagine a tower of numbers, when I write 1 1 +, what I'm actually doing is throwing 1 onto the tower, twice, and then the + symbol says "hey take 2 numbers of the top, add them, and throw the result back on", and so the stack will look like: 1 then 1, 1, then during the add it has nothing, then it has a 2. I'm going to start speeding up a bit here, most of dc works this way: you have commands that deal with the stack itself, commands that do maths, and commands that do "side things". Most* of these are 1 letter long, for example, what if I want to write the 1+1 example a little differently, I could do 1d+, this puts 1 on the stack (the pile of numbers), then duplicates it, so you have two 1s now, and then adds those, simple enough. Lets move onto something a little more complex, let's multiply, what if I take 10 10 * well I get 100 on the stack, like you may expect, but this isn't output yet, we can print it with p, and sure enough we see the 100, I can print the entire stack with f, which is just 100 too for now, I can print it slightly differently with n, I'll get into that later, or I can print with P which uhhhh "d", what happened there? Well you see d is character 100 in ASCII, what exactly ASCII is, if you don't know, don't worry, just think of it as a big list of letters, with corresponding numbers. And final piece of knowledge here will be, what is a string, well it's basically just some text, like this post! Although normally a lot shorter, and without all the fancy formatting. Now with all that out of the way, how does the quine I started with actually work?

From here it's going to get more technical, if you're lost, don't worry, it will get even more technical later :). So in dc, you make a string with [text], so if we look at the example again, pasted here for your convenience

[91Pn[dx]93Pn]dx

it makes one long string at the start, this string goes onto the stack, and then gets duplicated, so it's on the stack twice, then it's executed as a macro. In technical language, this is just an eval really, in less technical language, it just means take that text, and treat it like more commands, so you may see, it starts with 91P, 91 is the ASCII character code for [, which then gets printed out, not coincidentally, this is the start of the program itself. Now the "n" that comes afterwards, as I said earlier, this is a special type of print, this means print without newline (P doesn't use newlines either), which means we can keep printing without having to worry about everything being on separate lines, now what is it printing? Well what's on top of the stack, oh look, it's the copy of the entire string, which once again not coincidentally, is the entire inside of the brackets, so now we've already printed out the majority of the program, now dx is thrown on the stack, which as you may notice is the ending of the program, but we won't print it yet, we'll first print 93 as a character, which is "]", and then print dx, and this completes the quine, the output is now exactly the same as the input. Now, I found this some time ago, and uncovered it again in my command history, it's interesting, sure, but you may notice it's not very... complicated, the majority of the program is just stored as a string, so it already has access to 90% of itself from the start, and just has to do some extra odd jobs to become a full quine, I wanted to make this worse. I started modifying it, doing some odd things, which I won't go into, I wanted to remove the numbers, replacing it entirely with calculations from numbers I already have access to, like the length of a string, this wasn't so hard, but then I hit on what this post is about "can I make this without using string literals"

Can I make this without using string literals?

Yes, I can! And it took a whole day. I'll start by explaining what a string literal is, but this will largely be the end of my explaining, from here it's about to get so technical and I don't want to spend all day explaining things and make this post even longer than it's already going to be. A string literal is basically just the [text] you saw earlier, it's making a string by just, writing out the string. In dc there's only 1 other way to make a string, the "a" command, which converts a number, into a 1 character string, using the number as an ASCII character code. Strings in dc are immutable, you can only print, execute, and move them around with the usual stack operations, you cannot concatenate, you cannot modify in any way, the only other things you can do with a string, is grab the first character, or count the characters, but as I just explained, our only way to make strings creates a 1 character string, which cannot be extended, so the first character is just, the entire thing, and the length is always 1, so neither of these are useful to us. So, now we understand what the restriction of no string literals really is (there are more knock on restrictions I'll bring up later), let's get into the meat of it, how I did it.

So I've just discussed the way I'll be outputting the text (this quine will need text, since all the outputting commands are text!), with the "a" command and the single character strings it produces, let's now figure out some more restrictions. So any programmers reading this are going to be horrified by what I'm about to say. If I remove string literals, dc is no longer Turing Complete, I am trying to write a quine in a language (subset) that is not Turing Complete, and can only output 1 character at a time**. You can't loop in dc, but you can recurse, with macros, which are effectively just evaling a string, you can recurse, since these still operate on the main stack, registers, arrays, etc, they can't be passed or return anything, but this doesn't matter. Now I cannot do this, because if I only have 1 character strings via "a" then I can't create a macro that does useful work, and executes something, since that would require more than 1 command in it. So I am limited to only linear execution***. Now lets get into the architecture of this quine, and finally address all these asterisks, since they're finally about to be relevant, I started with a lot of ideas for how I'd architect these, I call these very creatively by their command structure, dScax/dSax, rotate-based execution, all-at-once stack flipping, or the worst of them all, LdzRz1-RSax (this one is just an extension of rotate-based execution), I won't bother explaining these, since these are all failed ideas, although if anybody is really curious, I might explain some other time, for now, I'll focus on the one that worked, K1+dk: ; ;ax, or if you really want to try to shoehorn a name, Kdkax execution, now, anybody intimately familiar with dc, will probably be going "what the fuck are you doing", and rightly so, so now, let's finally address the asterisks, and get into what Kdkax execution actually means, and how I used it.

*"Most commands are 1 character long, but there are exceptions, S, L, s, l, :, ; and comparisons, only : and ; are relevant here, so I won't bother with the rest, although some of the previous architectures used S and L as you may have seen. : and ; are the array operations, there are 256 arrays in dc, each one named after a character, if I want to store into array "a" I will write :a, a 2 character sequence, same for loading from array "a" ;a, I'll get into exactly how these work later **I can only output 1 character at a time with p, P, and n, but f can output multiple characters, the only catch being it puts a newline between each element of the stack, and because I can only put 1 character into each stack element, it's a newline between each character for me (except for numbers). I'll get into what this means exactly later ***I can do non-linear execution, and in fact, it was required to make this work, but I can only do this via single character macros, which is, quite the restriction to put it lightly

So I feel like I've been dancing around it now, what does my quine actually look like, well, I wanted to keep things similar to the original, where I write a program, I store it, then I output it verbatim, with some cleanup work. However, I can't store the program as strings, or even characters, I instead need to store it as numbers, and the easiest way to do this, is to store it as the char codes for dc commands, so if I want to execute my 1d+ example from before, I instead store it as 49 100 43, which when you convert them back to characters, and then execute them in sequence, to do the same thing, except I can store them, which means I can output them again, without needing to re-create them, this will come in handy later. So, well how do I execute them, well, ax is the sequence that really matters here, and it's something all my architectures have in common, it converts them to a character, then executes them, in that order, not so hard, except, I'm not storing them anymore, well then if you're familiar with dc, you might come across my first idea, dScax, which, for reasons you will understand later, became dSax, this comes close to working, it does store the numbers in a register, and execute them, but this didn't really end up working so well. I think the next most important thing to discuss though, is how I'm outputting, as I mentioned earlier "f" will be my best friend, this outputs the entire stack, this is basically the whole reason this quine is possible, it's my only way of outputting more characters from the program, than the program itself takes up, since I can't loop or recurse, and f is the only character that outputs more than 1 stack element at once, it is my ticket to outputting more than I'm inputting, and thereby "catching up" with all the characters "wasted" on setup work. So now, as I explained earlier, f prints a newline between each stack element, and I can only create 1 character stack elements, and because in a quine the output must equal the input, this also means the input must equal the output. And because I just discovered an outputting quirk, this means my input must also match this quirk, if I want this to be a quine, so, my input is limited to 1 character, or 1 number, per line, since this is the layout my stack will take, and therefore will be the layout of my output. So what does this actually mean, I originally thought I couldn't use arrays at all, but, this isn't true, the array operations are multiple character sequences yes, but turns out, there actually are multiple characters per line, there's also a linefeed character. And since there is an array per ASCII character, I am simply going to be storing everything in "array linefeed"! So now, with all of this in mind, what does the program actually look like.

Let's take a really simple example, even simpler than earlier, let's simply store 1 and then print it, this seems simple enough, 1p does it fine, but, lets convert it to my format, and it's going to get quite long already, in order to prevent it getting even longer, I'll use spaces instead of newlines, just keep in mind, they're newlines in the actual program

112 49 0 k K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x K 1 + d k ; a x

now, what the fuck is going on here, first of all, I took "1p" and converted both characters into their character codes "49 112" and then flipped them backwards (dw about it), then, I run them through the Kdkax architecture. What happens is I initialise the decimal points of precision to 0, then, I increment it, put it back, but keep a copy, and then run the array store, keep in mind, this is storing in array linefeed, but what and where is it storing? Its index is the copy of the decimal points of precision I just made, and the data it's storing at that index, is whatever comes before that on the stack, which, not coincidentally, is 49, the character code for the digit "1", then I do the same process again, but this time, the decimal points of precision is 1, not 0, and the stack is 1 shorter. So now, I store 112 (the character code for p), in index 2 of array linefeed, now you may notice, the array is looking the exact same as the original program I wanted to run, but, in character code form, it is effectively storing "1p", but as numbers in an array, instead of characters in a string. I then reset the precision with 0k, and start again, this time with the load command, which loads everything back out, except, now flipped, the stack originally read 49 112, since that's the order I put them on, the top is 49, the last thing I put on, but after putting them into the array, and taking them back out, now I'm putting on 112 last instead, so now the stack reads 112 49, which happens to be the exact start of the code, this will be important later. For now, the important part is, the numbers are still in the array, taking them out just makes a copy, so, this time I take them out again, but rather than just storing them, I convert them to a character, and then execute them, 49 -> 1 -> 1 on the stack, 112 -> p -> print the stack, and I get 1 printed out with the final x. Now this may not seem very significant, but this is how everything is going to be done from here on out.

So, what do I do next? Well now's time to start on the quine itself, you may have noticed in the last example, I mentioned how at one point, the stack exactly resembles the program itself, or at least the start of it, this is hopefully suspicious to you, so now you may wonder, what if my program starts with "f" to print out the entire stack? Well, I get all the numbers back, i.e. I get the start of the file printed out, and this will happen, no matter how many numbers (commands) I include, now we're getting somewhere, so if I write fc at the start of my program (converted into character codes and then newline separated) then I include enough copies of the whole Kdkax stuff to actually store, load, and execute it, then I can execute whatever I want, and I'll get back everything except the Kdkax stuff itself, awesome! So now we come onto, how do I get back the "Kdkax stuff", and more importantly, what are my limitations executing things like this, can I just do anything?

Well, put simply, no, I cannot use multicharacter sequences, and I actually can't this time, because it's being executed as a single character macro, I don't have a newline to save me, and I just get an error back, so okay that's disappointing. This multicharacter sequence rule means I also can't input numbers bigger than 1 digit, because remember, the numbers get converted into characters and then executed, and luckily, executing a number, just means throwing it on the stack, so I'm good for single digit numbers. Then in terms of math (I know, this is a post about a calculator and only now is the maths starting), I can't do anything that produces decimals, since the digits of precision is constantly being toyed with, and I also can't use the digits of precision as a storage method either, because it's in use. I can actually use the main stack though! It's thankfully left untouched (through a lot of effort), so I'm fine on that front. Other multicharacter sequences include negative numbers, strings (so I can't cheese it, even here), and conditionals.

So it was somewhere around here, I started to rely on a python script I wrote for some of the earlier testing, and I modified it to this new Kdkax architecture when I was confident this was the way forwards. It converts each character into a character code, throws that at the start, and then throws as many copies of the store, load, and execute logic as I need to execute the entire thing afterwards. This allows me to input (mostly) normal dc into the input, just keeping in mind that any multicharacter sequences will be split up. So now I can start really going, and I'll speed up from here, effectively, what I need to do, is write a dc program, that can output "0 k", then "K 1 + d k :" repeated as many times as there are characters in my program, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ;" repeated just as many times, then "0 k" again, then "K 1 + d k ; a x" also repeated just as many times, without using strings, multicharacter sequences, loops, branches, recursion, any non-integer maths, with a newline instead of a space in every sequence above. Doable. The program starts with fc, like I mentioned, this prints out all the numbers at the start, and leaves us with a clean stack, I'll explain in detail how I output the "0 k" at the start, and leave the rest as an exercise to to the reader. I want to do this by printing the entire stack, so I want to put it on backwards, k first, k is character code 107 in decimal, and I can't input this directly, because I can't do anything other than single digit numbers, so maths it is, here I abuse the O command, which loads the output base, which is 10 by default, and I then write "OO*7+a", which is effectively character((10*10)+7) written in a more normal syntax, this creates "k" on the stack, and then I can move onto 0, for which I write "0", since a number just puts itself on the stack, no need to create it via a character code, I can just throw it on there, keep in mind this will all get converted to 79 79 42 55 43 97 48, but the python script handles this for me, and I don't need to think about it. The stack now reads "0 k" and I can output this with f, and clear the stack, I then do the same deal for "K 1 + d k :", the next "0 k", "K 1 + d k ;" but here I do something a little different, because I want to output "K 1 + d k ; a x" next (after the "0 k" again), I don't clear the stack after outputting "K 1 + d k ;", and instead, I put "a x" on the stack, and then use the rotate stack commands to "slot it into place" at the end, this is a neat trick that saves some extra effort, it makes printing the "0 k" in between more difficult, but I won't get into that. For now the important part, is the output of my program now looks something like this "(copy of input numbers) 0 k K 1 + d k : 0 k K 1 + d k ; 0 k K 1 + d k ; a x" this is amazing, this would be the correct output, if my program was only 1 character long at this point, now keep in mind I'm writing non-chronologically, so my program never actually looked like this, but if you're following along at home you should have this at this point:

fcOO*7+a0fcaO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**afcOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**af0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-Rf

definitely longer than 1 character, you might think at this point, it's just a matter of spamming "f" until you get there, but unfortunately, you'll never get there, every extra "f" you add, requires an extra copy of the store, load, execute block in the program, so you're outpaced 3 to 1, so what do you do about this? You print 4 at once! I want the stack to look like "K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k : K 1 + d k :" and similarly for the other steps, and then I can spam f with greater efficiency! This was somewhat trivial for the first 2, but for the ax, because I'm using the rotate to push it at the end, I need to do this 4 times too, with different rotate widths, not too hard. And now, I can finally get there, but how many times do I spam f? Until my program is exactly 3/4s printing on repeat, which makes sense if you think about it, and below, is finally the program I ended up with

fcOO*7+a0fcO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*8+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffcOO7+a0fcO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**aO5*9+aOO*7+aOO*aO4*3+aO4*9+a355**affffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff0nOanOO*7+anOanOO*2O*+aOO*3-a08-R08-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a082-R082-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a083-R083-ROO*2O*+aOO*3-a084-R084*-Rffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

I say finally, but this is actually pre-python script! The final program I actually ended up with will instead be included in a reblog, because it really needs its own cut. But anyway, this was how I wrote a quine, for a calculator, without using string literals.

[ygodmyy20]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @toastytoaster22 (finally getting to this I started this and then life happened haha)

1. How many works do you have on Ao3?

8 (i just got back into writing in July 2023!)

2. What’s your total Ao3 word count? 66,608 (it will probably double as I am deep into a long fic right now)

3. What fandoms do you write for?

I used to write Puzzleshipping YGO but I’m all in on Mob psycho 100 now.

4. What are your top five fics by kudos?

Just Breathe

Black Sweatshirt (yeaaaaah rising!)

Emotional explosion (surprised this one I thought got the least amount of reads this was my very first mp100 fic)

Float (I love how much this resonated with people)

Blackhole

5. Do you respond to comments?

Yes! It’s something I take very seriously. No judgement if someone doesn’t respond to my comment on fics! But for me it’s important to respond.

6. What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

Ah. Hm. Blackhole I guess? The ending isn’t angst though it’s just a more intense fic.

7. What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

I think Float is very happy. It makes me smile every time I read it. Also the ending of Cobalt makes me so good. I want to rewrite Cobalt though its missing something. I posted it too soon.

8. Do you get hate on fics?

Back in my YGO days I got some but I just ignored it. Usually they were just about me not finishing a fic so….yeah I get it heh

9. Do you write smut? If so, what kind?

Yep. I’m an adult. I can write and enjoy smut.

But in all seriousness I do and I encourage anyone who is hesitant to write about sex, to just do it for yourself if you ever want to. You never have to post it, you can just write what you want and delete it, or keep it for yourself. Or never write about sex at all. I'll just say, getting back into this part of myself after not writing it for years has been so beneficial for my mental health. It helps me process and work through things. And writing gives me the opportunity to do that.

10. Do you write crossovers?

Well not right now, but I do know a lot about a certain mp100xOPM AU by @sodasexual and may or may not write something in that verse one day. Already drawing fanart for it so.... fanfics are likely gonna happen one day!

11. Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Uhhhh not that I….know of? (gosh I hope none have...)

12. Have you ever had a fic translated?

Nope.

13. Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Sorta co-wrote something recently that was just for fun. Also @emeraldoodles and I def co-wrote a dragonshipping fic I think when we were in high school? Dunno if I ever posted it tho I can't remember

14. What’s your all time favorite ship?

Hm. Puzzleshipping is my origin story. But something about Terumob really hits me in a place that I can’t describe. I just adore them.

15. What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

Hmmm I have a couple one-shots I wanna write and I may not write them all.

16. What are your writing strengths?

I love writing POV descriptions of emotions. And I like to hope I’m good at it. Blackhole is this. It’s a mess of words and descriptions that I can just chew on and I love writing it. I think my recent Terumob oneshots kinda get into that space too. I like to hope that is a strength. But yeah it seems to resonate with people so I think it’s a strength?

I also think dialogue has always come easy to me. I feel like it’s the easiest thing for me to write and I hope it is realistic.

17. What are your writing weaknesses?

Ah.... I am terrible with consistency. I forget things and sometimes run off down paths. I also repeat myself a lot and like to describe every movement a character makes which can bog down scenes.

I have so written myself into a corner and had to weasel my way out of it hahaha This is why I am trying to talk about my stories more to friends so I DON'T do that again.

18. Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic?

I did this a bit but I don’t anymore. It’s just too much mental work for me.

19. First fandom you wrote for?

Yugioh.

20. Favorite fic you’ve written?

I think Black Sweatshirt, my current ageswap fic, will be my fav. It’s the most expansive writing I have done probably ever in my life. There are multiple plot lines, scenes that have already made me cry, and an ending that I just cannot wait to share with the world. I hope others enjoy it as much as I do, and I can deliver on this story.

The other one is a series called Safe Space which is a series of one-off stories touching on different emotions Shigeo has to process post-canon. Exploring the gray areas of forgiveness, confessions, grudges, anger, and love. I think I will be writing that on the side as I do other things but I love it to pieces. It means a lot to me and i hope to one day share it.

I'm always nervous to tag others so if you see this, feel free to do it!!

[anosrepasi]

Tagged by @aeide and @ainulindaelynn, thank you two!

1) How many works do you have on AO3? 22, so far.

2) What’s your total AO3 word count? 140,852

3) What fandoms do you write for? Quite a couple now! And amazingly I have even more unposted. The Hobbit, Fallout 4, The Old Guard, Supernatural, The Legend of Zelda, Full Metal Alchemist, Greedfall, BG3, Horizon: zero dawn, uhhhhh.

4) What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

1 - Lingua Franca (by a landslide)

2 - Soil and Ashes

3 - Kitsukuroi

4 - what you call a thing is seldom what it is

5 - Prima Lingua (I was surprised this wasn't higher up given that its connected to Lingua Franca)

5) Do you respond to comments? I try really hard but usually end up responding very late in bursts. If you've commented on my work and haven't received a reply... i'm working on it. I will get there eventually. This is a turtle vs hare situation.

6) What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?...This is hard cause most of my fics are unfinished as of right now but.... I think Lacuna for posted but unfinished fics and uh. two of my so far unposted BG3 fics will take the running once they get posted.

7) What’s the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? A lot of them could probably be considered the "happiest" mostly cause i usually make the characters go through the worst of it right before the resolution so comparatively they're happy. >.>

8) Do you get hate on fics? So far no, maybe the occasional pedantic comment that i just... ignore. I think LF was the only fic where I had to deal with that. Perks of being relatively small in fandoms.

9) Do you write smut? If so, what kind? Nah, not my cup of tea.

10) Do you write crossovers? What’s the craziest one you’ve written? The only one I've written I think is the Hob Gadling meets Sebastian Le Livre and become immortal drinking buddies. That's only been posted here on tumblr though.

11) Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not to my knowledge!

12) Have you ever had a fic translated? Not to my knowledge :)

13) Have you ever co-written a fic before? Nope, I'd be open to the idea of any of my writer buds want to try something low stakes for fun and giggles.

14) What’s your all time favorite ship? I'm not sure I could answer this one cause I'll immediately think of another ship the moment I try and define a favorite ship for 'all time'. Which is great cause there's so many good fandoms and ships out there, what a cool thing to never run out of.

15) What’s a WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? I also am not a super big fan of this question cause sometime a fic needs years to crystalize into what its supposed to be and we're all doing this for fun/for free... sooooooo you get what you get, and WIPs aren't worth less to the fandom just because they're incomplete.

16) What are your writing strengths? Making people cry (hopefully)

17) What are your writing weaknesses? Anything resembling a consistent writing or posting schedule.

18) Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language in fic? You ask this as if I didn't do a ton of research and base my own knowledge of linguistics to write semi-coherent lingurian in Lingua Franca. If I feel I can pull it off to some degree and it adds to the story? oh hell yes. It's also one of my favorite literary devices in fic and in shows (I'm looking at you Shogun 2024, you beautiful beautiful tv show on the intrigue of translation)

19) First fandom you wrote for? uhhhh. Naruto on like, fanfic.net for the super old stuff. The hobbit for my modern era lmao.

20) Favorite fic you’ve written? I don't have a favorite, I think? My brain just kind of demands I make up stories and like, I am a happier person having made up stories so I do that. Each story has something I absolutely adore about it that I needed to explore but none of them are my absolute favorite above the others.

And that's all folks. I'd love to tag @ongreenergrasses, @lobstermatriarch, @green-nbean, @findusinaweek, @aevallare, @avelera, @tirsynni, @nagia-pronounced-neijia , @poppypopp and with any other writers who'd like to play :) No pressure though!!

[sluttyhenley]

twenty questions for fic writers

tagged by: @redbelles 💖

1. how many works do you have on ao3?

54

2. what's your total ao3 word count?

303,100

3. what fandoms do you write for?

recently? 911, top gun and uhhhh masters of the air... (but if you ever check out my ao3 you will see several fandoms)

4. top five fics by kudos

my heart is working over time

is forever enough

lover be good to me

a twister to blow everything down

when one plus one equals three

5. do you respond to comments?

sometimes it takes me a while but yes, i love getting comments and so i like to make sure i actually reply when someone takes the time to talk to me about my fic

6. what is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

until the shadows fall, which is uhh, one of the earlier fics i wrote and my writing has definitely . . . . evolved since writing it, but. yeah, it is the angstiest ending i've written. actually, though, i'm going to mention the sound of glass, because yeah, that one is a close runner up

7. what's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

probably put a hold on my heart. if it's not the happiest ending it's definitely the sappiest ending

8. do you get hate on fics?

i have gotten hate on two separate fics

9. do you write smut?

ha. hahahahaha. stares for a long time at like..... 3 of my top 5 fics by kudos. and two of my most recently posted fics. and my mota fic that's upcoming. yeah... . .

10. craziest crossover:

i've only written one crossover, leverage and the old guard in the immortals job (the craziest one i ever conceptualized though was prob an idea to cross over star trek and doctor who)

11. have you ever had a fic stolen?

not that i know of

12. have you ever had a fic translated?

nope!

13. have you ever co-written a fic before?

no, but i have tossed story ideas back and forth with people

14. all time favorite ship?

i refuse to (read: can't) answer this

15. what's a wip you want to finish but doubt you ever will?

i have . . . . . a few. and they're fics that i started for a source that i don't want anything to do with anymore

16. what are your writing strengths?

@redbelles has a first row seat to this but because of what i'm trying to do right now, all of my writing feels weak. but i'm trying to remind myself that as your writing evolves you feel less confident in your abilities regardless of the accuracy of that feeling. but i think i'd say ummm characterization and humor

17. what are your writing weaknesses?

me @ me: for $1 pick literally any other word/phrase/imagery device. for god's sake

18. thoughts on dialogue in another language?

i won't do it except under very specific circumstances, such as actually having a reasonable proficiency in the language. i did pepper some french phrases in a book of nile fic a while back

19. first fandom you wrote in?

the librarians is the first fandom i actually posted fic i wrote for. but i did write some doctor who fic before that i a) never finished and b) don't actually want to see the light of day

20. favorite fic you've written?

probably put a hold on my heart. i put a lot of work into that one, and handwrote the whole thing. it was my baby for the better part of a year and i'm really proud of some of the things i did there.

tagging: @reachingforaspark, @ladywaffles, @shoesplease, @sindirimba, and @natashatrace (if you want!)

[kinnbig]

My current WIPs, in the order I last looked at them and for which I have actually written something

thank you for tagging me @kimchaybrainrot I love u (also I am 👀 at all of those but especially the KenBig HI I'M LISTENING INTENTLY.)

Chart Topper chapter 7 (Arm) - I've been working on this today! I love the concept for this chapter and it's finally getting there ��

Burnout aka "phoenix fic" - ah yes. the KenBig wip that was supposed to be a lil 2-3k fic that only took a week or so to write... that is now sitting at 20k four months later and still isn't done. rip. I love it so much though, I'm so excited to be able to share this one

assorted kiss prompt ask game ficlets - whoops. TWO MONTHS AGO I did an ask game for fic prompts to try and get me out of my writer's block.. and it worked! I posted 6 kiss prompt ficlets! but uh. there are 11 more in various states of completion 💀 personal faves include some ArmTankhun, some fucked up KenBig, and some RamKing ft Ram wearing a skirt 👀

ArmKhun fake dating fic - one of my favourite fic concepts EVER that has sadly taken a backseat in my brain because of Chart Topper and Burnout. but SOON I will return to my beloved

f/f KimChay - uhhhh. this is just shameless femslash pwp because. I think they should have been lesbians.

Let Me Live in Your Mind chapters 3 & 4- this fic is not abandoned I promise I'm still working on it! I'm just. slow 🫣

Footnotes aka "the Big and Ken centric pain and sadness compilation" lmao - this was suuuuch a huge project for me that I started basically immediately after KinnPorsche ended that just. idk. it's so long. it's not abandoned but it's very much on the back-burner rn

there are also many many half-written oneshots in there that I didn't put in the list because they'll probably never get finished (RamKing fake dating au, ArmKhun fic where Khun kills Korn, a KimChay exes with benefits thing, etc etc...) I just hoard WIPs like a dragon in a cave I can't help it!

I think lots of people have already been tagged so sorry if this is a double tag! but I'm tagging @sidras-tak @giraffeter @tumsa @prismatic-witch @days-of-storm @cytharat @snickerdoodlles - but no pressure of course! 💖

[roguetelepaths]

byron + 1, 2, 5, 24,

Oh fuck yeah I was hoping someone would do this. This is going to be a massive wall of text and I'm sorry but also I'm really not. You have unleashed the infodump dragon and it's not leaving until it's run off some of its zoomies.

Why do you like or dislike this character?

You know a fun fact about me is that I was on Team Byron Disliker when I first started Season 5 just due to what I'd heard through pop culture osmosis. I even made a post to that effect after watching a couple of his episodes (deleted now because I was sick of seeing it in my notes) that got some circulation in the fandom. But the further I got into that arc and the more I thought about him, the less I saw what I expected to see when I started. Instead I saw someone who, though flawed, spent most of the time he was on screen trying to be gentle and compassionate and trying to protect his people in a situation that was hell bent on making it as hard as possible for him to do those things.

I do think he has a manipulative streak, and I do think he's the type to occasionally do very hurtful things because he believes he's doing so for the right reasons (see for example that fucking "doesn't it feel nice to be asked" scene between him and Lyta in The Paragon of Animals, even as a Lyta/Byron shipper that makes me SO ANGRY because that point could be made in LITERALLY any other way that didn't involve demeaning her and shouting at her, I get that you're pissed off at the people who did that to her but taking it out on her isn't gonna help anyone so stop) but those flaws when combined with his genuine good intentions and abundance of care are fascinating.

A big part of why I think people dislike him as a character is because those flaws are presented as an immutable Fact Of Who He Is, which, yeah, I can see why someone would find that insufferable, but I like writing character growth and he deserves some.

Tl;dr, I like him because he's complicated. I dislike the way canon never seemed to want to grapple with those complications.

Favorite canon thing about this character?

That scene with the one guy in Downbelow. You know the one. Letting someone punch you repeatedly because you want to teach them a lesson about how finding a target to beat up on isn't actually going to solve their problems is... genuinely fucking baller and I wish we'd gotten to see more of that side of him.

Also that thing with Lyta in Strange Relations that's basically a mutual "I'm not overextending myself YOU'RE overextending yourself! Please slow down and rest 🥺" is probably what made me ship them as hard as I do. Dipping out of canon and into my fic for a second, but that interaction is so different from their first interaction that I kind of have to wonder if someone talked to him about the way he treated her. (I may have written a missing scene about that but it needs some fine tuning before I feel good about posting it.)

What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

oh my god!!! so many. SO MANY. But uhhhh I can narrow it down to like four?

Runaway by The National as a general theme song

I, Carrion (Icarian) by Hozier as a soft and sad song for him and Lyta

The Deserter's Song by Radical Face as a backstory reveal song

New World Coming (any version but I like the one by Nina Simone best because. Come on. It's Nina fucking Simone how can you top that) because I'm almost certain it was one of the songs JMS pulled from when he was writing That Song For That Scene.

What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

I've been saying this from the very beginning— The Signless from Homestuck. (Yes, I'm a Homestuck enjoyer. Sorry.) I just love my pacifist resistance leaders with feral partners and tragic endings okay.