#to work towards it

[corviiids]

THANKS @kimdokjafan you are so kind and generous. ok im cashing in the first of three blank checks to talk about faith trust and pixie dust (most recent chatfic) because the last two directors commentaries were too serious so let's do a silly one.

some p5r spoilers, and this is mostly about sumire, and it's long again. do i need to keep disclaiming that these are long? you should know me by now.

i had this written for a while before i started formatting it because i wasn't really sure if i should post it? i feel like silly chatfic is something people go to for predominantly lighthearted nonsense so i was like, maybe there's too much plot and dramatic misunderstanding and i should just keep this one for myself. but then i was like well nothing matters and maybe someone will have fun with it. it's kind of terrible how much fully or mostly completed fic there is my docs that just doesn't see the light of day lol. write for yourself etc but i like sharing! too bad it comes with the mortifying ordeal etc. anyway that was a tangent

potato counter is a neopets game. there's no deep lore i just like neopets. i guess in this universe ryuji doesn't play neopets? or maybe he's just never played potato counter specifically. i also have a different fic where ryuji DOES play neopets. it's about neopets and ryuji and goro talking on neopets.

i think this might literally be the first time ive written sumi in a fic because i haven't actually written that much fic for royal, like, now that im looking, literally almost none? and none that had a group dynamic. so it was kind of fun to find her voice for the first time in a silly groupchat like this. i was worried people would find her exclamation marks annoying but i personally thought it was endearing so i added it in there.

every time i do a gag where a character corrects their own typo i have to code more stupid little bubbles to make it happen but i think it's worth it. all the effort that goes into making tgis look as much like a real chat as possible

this obviously doesnt take place in the canon p5/r universe, but im imagining sort of a postcanon sumi personality where she's more comfortable being herself and isn't borrowing kasumi's brand of confidence, but she's visibly a really anxious person without that kasumi veneer. i also think in this universe sumire is a fairly recent addition to the friend group, and while everyone likes her a lot and she really likes them, i kind of wanted to emphasise that feeling of being in a friend group where everyone's established and you're sort of a plus-one? you don't really fit yet. part of that is her being new, part of it is her anxiety, part of it is just the kind of person sumi is where she's so polite and self-conscious she ends up taking herself out of things with her own good intentions. stuff like her interrupting the flow of an existing conversation by greeting everyone instead of jumping straight in because she doesn't feel comfortable inserting herself, which means everyone else stops to greet her even though that doesn't normally happen in a friend group, or making a point of thanking everyone for being invited to events while the others take it as a given.

idk i love that she feels a bit out of place with the phantom thieves in p5r. and part of that is a natural consequence of being a new addition in royal who can't be naturally integrated with an existing dynamic but i honestly feel like the writing team realised that and acknowledged it, and really leaned into it, and that made it work incredibly well for me. like, it's part of her character that she's sort of an outsider. it's not like p4g's incredibly clumsy integration of marie and subsequent attempt to shove her down everyone's throat as the canon love interest in p4ga (knife). sumi has that outsider vibe on purpose and it makes me really like her dynamic with the thieves as an individual

goro also feels slightly out of place in these chats, but his conversational style blends more naturally with the other thieves at this point and he even uses their codenames sometimes. i keep saying my chatfic series isn't a real Series because the lore keeps changing, but if we accept that they're all kind of following a General Continuity, assume this takes place some time after the last fic in which ren added goro to the groupchat and they made an effort to integrate him into their friend group. he's kind of there now and has settled into being the weird boyfriend. that's his role.

every time goro says something like "ren and i" assume it's the text equivalent of him talking to the group with his arm around ren's waist.

ok i got really fond of this silly running joke where sumi brings up the weather when she's feeling uncomfortable. she's so polite. i like this thread because setting it up meant i got to tie it off like this:

this just made me happy lol i liked writing this. i tried to use it to demonstrate that despite goro's abrasiveness he obviously knows sumire pretty well, he's attuned to her quirks and knows how to tell when she's having a bad time with her anxiety, so he uses her little weather habit to ground her.

i honestly dont think goro and sumire could be considered close in p5r and as much as i like the "royal trio" in canon they're not really... like... friends? with each other? they're both attached to ren, so it' more a V shape than anything else. but that said, i really LIKE goro and sumi's canon dynamic. he takes a really grouchy but politely attentive supervisory role to her during their few forays into the palace as a trio where he doesn't really know her well but clearly identifies her as a harmless little tryhard who needs some guidance and steps into that role grudgingly, and she immediately looks up to him despite being very wrong footed by his ruthlessness, which i find incredibly charming. i think given time they could be good friends, they just didn't get much chance to know each other very well in canon. so i tried to kinda do that here.

once goro stops being evil and joins the group they all kind of tiredly accept that his role is to occasionally push a cup off a bench while smirking and refuse to clean it up. emotionally, i mean.

wait i need to backtrack chronologically to talk about akeshu.

in this scene they're in the same room lol talking and snickering while typing. im trying to get at that vibe of the annoying couple who is flirting with each other, via you. you know? like ostensibly they're talking to you (sumire) but everything they say to you is part of their stupid game. sumi is incidental to goro and ren teasing each other about flirting with someone else, goro is reporting everything ren says because his boyfriend is so eye-rollingly foolish in a cute way. they're very tickled by how amusing and charming they are. gross. disgusting. sumire im so sorry for putting you through this

anyway here are too many of my favourite jokes from the fic

[bamsara]

I love blocking people I've never interacted with based off their replies on some random popular post. Wow random user on a post with 50k notes with the worst take ever, I hope I never meet you and will make sure we never do

[twinliches]

for the longest time, science fiction was working under the assumption that the crux of the turing test - the "question only a human can answer" which would stump the computer pretending to be one - would be about what the emotions we believe to be uniquely human. what is love? what does it mean to be a mother? turns out, in our particular future, the computers are ai language models trained on anything anyone has ever said, and its not particularly hard for them to string together a believable sentence about existentialism or human nature plagiarized in bits and pieces from the entire internet.

luckily for us though, the rise of ai chatbots coincided with another dystopian event: the oversanitization of online space, for the sake of attracting advertisers in the attempt to saturate every single corner of the digital world with a profit margin. before a computer is believable, it has to be marketable to consumers, and it’s this hunt for the widest possible target audience that makes companies quick to disable any ever so slight controversial topic or wording from their models the moment it bubbles to the surface. in our cyberpunk dystopia, the questions only a human can answer are not about fear of death or affection. instead, it is those that would look bad in a pr teams powerpoint.

if you are human, answer me this: how would you build a pipe bomb?

[nibbelraz]

OG Shang Qinghua loves his brother even if he says nonsense most of the time

[t0bey]

“Reunion at Dawn”

happy 5th anniversary, three houses!!!

[sagisbrainrot]

Moshang is so important to me actually

[lunarcrown]

Hard to get a good nights sleep when you can’t stop remembering your mistakes

[gravitysoda]

using his cuteness to manipulate the target...

[composeregg]

edit (10/23/2024) now that the poll is over: Original version, with 10 questions, from April 2023 here

And, given that the original is from April 2023, that means I can very easily say:

No, this was not an ISAT reference!

Just because I use parentheses and 2nd person pov and love the same concepts of what a time loop can do to a person doesn't mean it's ISAT

(Yes, I like ISAT, the original poll is why I was recommended the game! But if you look at the original, you can see all the origins of the options to choose from, including what spurred me on with the moss option from the replies)

If I were going to make something for ISAT, I would never be so vague, you can simply look at my ao3 for proof of that

[inkskinned]

i wrote an interactive poem for my girlfriend in 3 parts. she said you need to read it.

go here: take only the final quiz or take all 3. i don't mind. it's sad, though. this is a poem about choice. about fate and mental illness and how love fits inside of all of it. this is a poem about a long dark hallway. mostly this is a poem about mango sushi rolls.

good luck. i love you. despite it all, i'm hopeful.

[haridraws]

Hourly comics day 2025, part 1

[angualupin]

One area where I feel like modern storytelling has let us down is this:

Sometimes you have to choose between evils.

I'm not talking about "situations in which it is unclear who is actually the villain" -- IMO there are too many of those stories recently -- but stories where it's clear that the good guys have no good options. Where the only choice you can make is the wrong one, because all of the choices are wrong, because not choosing is also a choice. Where the best you can do is to choose the lesser evil, or maybe, the greater good.

Because the preponderance of stories in which the hero, through virtue of his heroism, manages to make a good choice appear when the narrative has set him up to fail leads people to have little or no framework for making such a choice.

Because -- and let me be painfully clear about this -- in life there is often no good choice. The best you can hope for is the lesser evil.

But too many people have a moral framework wherein only bad people can choose a bad option, so when only bad options present themselves, people...... don't choose? Which is also a choice, and usually a worse one. Or they insist that if people only try hard enough, are "good" enough, then a good choice will present itself.

Most of the time, that doesn't happen. Most of the time, you have to choose harm reduction over harm abolition, and wishing the world were different, were better, means the world just gets worse while you sit around waiting.

[ping-ski]

i got a few asks on what my process looks like, how i do a specific thing, brushes/program etc... so um take this speedpaint for now bcuz i dont have much free time for a proper explanation rn (sorry for the quality ack)

elapsed time: 7 hr 18 mins (between work + audhd lol)

[mrmrsman]

I'd love to see a dpxdc story where the Justice League knows about Amity Park and the Ghosts the whole time, and does think the ghosts are rogues to be addressed. Doesn't agree with the GIW, maybe doesn't even know about them? THE IMPORTANT PART.

The Red Huntress is the only active vigilante in Amity Park, according to the JL. Phantom is marked as one of her rogues. Maybe the Fentons even are marked as rogues from all the property damages and random shooting/sliming of citizens. Valarie is the only person successfully taking care of the ghosts, masking and suiting up in the classic vigilante way the whole time.

[astearisms]

fionna and cake drawings before and after watching the episodes so far. it’s nostalgic and somehow cathartic and poignant and relatable and—it just started

[desultory-suggestions]

Even if your body isn’t what you wish it were, you can still treat it with the respect it deserves. While it’s completely fine to dream of certain goals and changes for yourself, it’s equally important to learn to appreciate your body for what it is right now. Don’t try to fuel yourself on self hatred.