#when i start finishing my projects the world will explode

[oufkrysa]

dk if i ever gonna finish it :(

[blueskittlesart]

i kinda really wanna see a big ol vent/rant from you about genshin now lol. I would read an essay

I'm not sure you understand the insanity you just unlocked in me but ok

genshin impact is probably the clearest modern example i can think of of capitalism absolutely eviscerating a creative project. For context, I started playing genshin in 2021, just after the 1.4 update. it was venti's first rerun/the first windblume festival if that means something to you. and I really genuinely thought that it might have had something special. It was a gacha that didn't FEEL like a gacha, which was a huge feat to me.

it began with a very simple story pitch--you, the protagonist, are one of a set of twin siblings traveling through space. you come upon a seemingly unassuming world and your attempts to continue your journey are suddenly stopped by a mysterious, all-powerful figure. you are separated from your sibling and wake up alone on the shores of this planet you were attempting to leave together. throughout that opening cutscene and scattered through the world and your character's dialog there are implications that all is not as it seems, that your character is something unique to this world and that they possess powers and abilities that you've yet to unlock. You are told that you must travel the seven nations of this world in order to find your sibling, which is great--a simple, zelda-like objective which drives the player to explore the secondary narratives of the world. none of this is bad on the surface. in fact i'd argue it's pretty good. there's a ton that can be done with these story bones. even at launch the map and combat system were full of potential as well.

Note: for ease of reading, i'm going to label the different storylines of the game now. A-plot refers to the central objective of the entire game; the find-your-sibling plot and everything that encompasses, including the abyss order/dain, the heavenly principles, the fake sky, etc. B-plot refers to the secondary objective present in each new nation, usually meeting the archon and/or solving a problem for the archon. (A and B-plots will occasionally intersect.) C-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which remains in permanent gameplay but which isn't directly related to the A or B-plots, such as dragonspine, the chasm, enkanomiya, etc. D-plot refers to any story, location, or background information which is confined to limited-time events and does NOT remain in permanent gameplay, regardless of its connection or lack thereof to the A and B-plots, such as the golden apple archipelago, the infamous albedo/dragonspine event, the infamous kaeya/diluc event, etc. Lore as i will refer to it in this post refers to any information which is present in permanent gameplay but which is not directly told to the player within the A or B-plot story quests and objectives, including books, weapon, artifact, and item descriptions, world quest dialog and puzzles, etc.

So now we're in mid-2021, there are two nations' worth of B-plot story quests released in full, and we've run into our first problem, which is that the game isn't finished yet. I don't have any actual information about how the game was/is written, but based on what i've observed over the past few years, my best guess is that the A-plot has been fully written since the beginning, at least in some form. there were very early-game events and information pertaining to the A-plot that would take years to see any actual payoff in the main story quests (kaeya's origin story, the 1.3 scaramouche fake-sky drop, the flowers in lumine's hair, etc.) but those kinds of A-plot story easter eggs very quickly dropped off when the game absolutely EXPLODED during the pandemic.

this sudden burst in popularity was the true beginning of the end for genshin, i think, because suddenly they had a HUGE fanbase that desperately wanted more content faster than they could pump out new A-plot or even B-plot story quests. one of the most pervasive complaints about the game when I began playing in 2021 was that there was nothing to do between story quests. update 1.4 (which was the update I started playing at) was important in that it was the first time since genshin's release over a year before that players recieved any new A-plot, in the form of the archon quest We Will Be Reunited, also known as the quest with the most fucking misleading name of all time. you'll never guess what doesn't fucking happen during this quest. anyways. we were a year into gameplay, two nations out of seven released and a third on the not-so-distant horizon, and it seemed obvious that players were owed some sort of A-plot payoff. and that's very much what WWBR was advertised as, from the quest's name to the banners full of art of the twins staring wistfully at each other. The thing is, what i'm describing as A-plot payoff was actually. not really A-plot payoff at all. WWBR was the reveal that the protagonist's sibling was working with the abyss order, and that the abyss order was connected somehow to Khaenri'ah, which at this point casual players would only have known about from THAT QUEST and MAYBE kaeya's character descriptions if they were diligent enough to get him to friendship level 10 (which, btw there is no indication that you should do to get important context about the story of the game, because kaeya is a 4-star starter character and the only character in the entire game that actually has genuinely important story hidden in his character descriptions.) So what I'm calling A-plot payoff felt at the time a lot less like A-plot payoff than it did like an abyss sibling cameo in an attempt to satiate everyone who was begging for more story. We actually gained almost net 0 information. this is very quickly going to become a pattern.

As I've already alluded to, the motives behind this writing decision are transparently obvious. Genshin is a free gacha game which relies on a consistently active and engaged userbase to make its money. With fans getting restless about the lack of engaging story at the time and a new, very ambitious B-plot quest gearing up for release that would require major support from that fan base in order to remain profitable, the writers were backed into a corner. they HAD to throw the fans some sort of bone in order to keep them engaged with the A-plot, since it was originally pitched as the driving force for the story as a whole, but they were also clearly not at a stage of the writing process where it was prudent to give the player any REAL information about the A-plot. This is how we ended up with a 10-second abyss sibling cameo and an offhanded mention of Khaenri'ah, a nation whose plot-relevance was at that point still basically unknown.

The real problem is, WWBR worked. at least, it worked as intended at the time. It satiated story-focused fans in the interlude between B-plot nations, as hyv was gearing up to release inazuma, which required a lot of time in preparation. WWBR was followed almost immediately by the C-plot golden apple archipelago in 1.6, widely regarded as one of the better events of version 1. GAA was memorable especially because it was the first event that involved an entirely new, limited-time-only map, meaning the event had much more longevity than the standard events players were used to. This is, imo, most likely the update combination that led to the standard formula which hyv uses for its quests and events nowadays. the back-to-back release of WWBR and GAA satisfied both fans who wanted A-plot story AND silenced criticisms about the game lacking endgame playability, which at the time must have seemed like a goldmine to writers desperate for a solution to their content-to-fanbase ratio problem.

From here, genshin started following a standard method of release for their next three nations--inazuma, sumeru, and fontaine. the formula generally went as follows: one major version update (usually version x.0) containing a major map update which included all B-plot relevant locations in the new nation, and the first chapter of the B-plot story quest relevant to that nation. this would then be followed by 2-3 version updates which would each contain the next chapter in the nation's B-plot story quest, sequentially. After the nation's B-plot quest ended, during the downtime in which the next nation's story and map would be finalized, subsequent updates would be largely C-plot, and would contain minor expansions of the map to increase endgame playability via exploration and world quests. This is how we ended up with updates like the chasm, the several extra islands in inazuma, and the quite frankly ridiculously large sumeru map, as well as the offloaded maps like enkanomiya and the sea of bygone eras. with the possible exception of the chasm, none of these areas are A OR B-plot relevant. hyv has realized that artificially inflating the map makes their game technically more engaging during the downtime between nations. However, this comes at a price. While the scenery and set design of the game remains consistently beautiful, the actual, mechanical gameplay that populates that scenery very quickly became mind-numbingly boring if not borderline unplayable. While the 1.0 questlines were not perfect, there was at least an emphasis on the player actually DOING things. 1.0 B-plot quests would have you going to mini-dungeon temples and completing challenges which would acclimate you to the combat system while also serving narrative purpose. There were quests that required you to navigate open-world dungeons. Because your characters were lower-level, combat challenges that arose during these quests were CHALLENGES, rather than two-second buttonmashing segments. By the time we get to sumeru, though, both B-plot AND C-plot quests have become little more than moving your character from location to location and tapping through (usually unvoiced) dialog. there's no GAMEPLAY in the quests anymore, because gameplay isn't what makes money. What DOES make money is giving players 300 hidden chests to find in an open-world map segment, each of which gives them 1/80th of a gacha pull. And so the story suffers and the map gets bigger.

Along with the map expansions, downtime between nations usually also nets us one A-plot quest, usually involving the character dainslief, who was the driver of the initial WWBR quest. This is the second half of hyv's magical formula for keeping fans happy between major releases. the A-plot quests will, as a general rule, give players either very little new information or no new information at all, but will dress up the delivery in such a way that it ALMOST feels as though the protagonist has moved forward somehow. the most recent example of this writing style, the 4.7 quest bedtime story, amounts to about an hour and a half of gameplay and, while it DOES contain a segment in which the protagonist finally actually has a conversation with their sibling, that conversation literally begins with the line "I have so many questions, but for some reason I don't want to ask them right now," ensuring that the sibling will not actually be required to give away any plot-relevant information whatsoever, and the quest ends with the protagonist FORGETTING THAT THE CONVERSATION EVER HAPPENED IN THE FIRST PLACE.

As I think I mentioned before, the cardinal problem of genshin impact's writing is that fans want answers faster than the writers are prepared to give them. I don't doubt that there's a game bible or relevant equivalent somewhere within hyv which contains the explanations we are currently lacking in regards to the A-plot. the game is consistent enough in its storytelling for me to believe that this isn't all just being made up as we go along. But I'm also certain that a lot of the late-game A and B-plot that is planned (especially if the Khaenri'ah is truly planned to be the 8th nation of the game) hinges on the player knowing very little about the A-plot. this would be fine if genshin was a standard single-release video game that players could work through at their own pace, but it isn't. it's unfinished, and each nation in the game releases months to years after the last, leaving the writers to scramble to fill in the gameplay gaps and players struggling to remember plot-relevant information when it's brought up literal years after they last heard it mentioned. Not only does the time between updates leave players frustrated about the lack of A-plot, it makes the A-plot harder to understand when it is brought up, because the writers are required to throw in so much dense C and D-plot just to keep engagement high enough to make the game profitable in its downtime. we joke about the insane convolution of genshin's lore, but that is first and foremost a byproduct of its financial model. the game requires engaement to be profitable, and adding lore for players to look into drives up engagement. The fact that having so much story with so little plot relevance muddies the waters and makes the A and B-plot stories considerably harder to understand doesn't matter as long as money is being made.

I want to take a quick detour here to talk about the release of sumeru specifically, because this is when I really began to clock the fact that genshin was declining. on paper, racial sensitivity issues aside (Not that they're not important, but i'm doing this deep dive from a storytelling and game design point of view, nothing else. that's a whole can of worms i don't have time to get into here) sumeru was a really promising addition to the game. The new B-plot quest which was set to drop in 3.0 was highly anticipated for several reasons. Two fan-favorite characters (kaeya and scaramouche) were expected to play major roles, because of earlier C and B-plot quests, and much of the nation's scenery that was teased in trailers and promotional content appeared to tie into the A-plot. the most exciting draw about sumeru and version 3.0, though, was the major update to the combat system.

Arguably genshin impact's most interesting feature upon release was its combat system. The map was basically a botw clone at that point, and the story quests, while decently engaging, were rough around the edges to say the least. What genshin DID have going for it was a unique real-time combat system that rewarded strategy and quick thinking.

Genshin's combat system is elemental, and on release there were 6 elemental affiliations: anemo (wind), cryo (ice), pyro (fire), hydro (water), geo (rock), and electro (electricity.) in a sort of pokemon-like system, certain elements were weak to other ones, but more importantly, certain combinations of elements could drastically boost combat stats. Players got to construct four-slot teams of characters, each with an elemental affiliation and certain "skills" which would match their element, and you were encouraged to use the interactions of these elements to build teams. very quickly, a huge community formed dedicated to optimizing teams and tiering characters. People would even make a game out of building teams specifically to do high-level damage with "bad" characters or characters who weren't designed to be damage drivers (my 100k jean burst was an incredible moment fr.) this was, of course, also a picture-perfect driver for the gacha aspect of the game, which was how players obtained new characters.

Pre-3.0, combat was... well i won't say it was balanced, but there was no elemental reaction that had any MAJOR advantage over the others. when you actually ran the numbers, i believe vaporize was the best reaction in terms of damage output, with the best team being raiden national with kazuha for EM buffs. but a well-built freeze or melt team could do similar numbers, or even better numbers depending on your artifact rolls. (ayaka permafreeze you will always be my #1.) Despite a steady stream of new characters with each update, characters from the earliest version of the game like xingqiu and xiangling were still topping the charts in terms of usefulness and versatility in teambuilding. However, as early as 1.0, players had been teased that a major update to the combat system was planned. There was a seventh element, dendro (plants) which pre-3.0 only existed as an elemental affiliation for menial enemies. there were no playable dendro characters, and the only elemental reaction that existed relating to it was very low-level and not particularly useful in combat.

Originally, dendro was projected to be added to the combat system somewhere in version 2, but its release was delayed substantially, meaning it came out along with its affiliated nation, sumeru. And as soon as it came out, it basically broke the combat system. I assume that the scaling they ended up going with may have been out of fear that players would be hesitant to integrate a new element into their pre-established team builds, and thus they may have been worried about sales on their dendro character banners, and i assume that the fact that 3 elements are required to get the highest-level reaction was an attempt to make the meta more balanced in the face of that scaling, but, well... it didn't work. At this point, the genshin impact combat meta is basically "if you're not using hyperbloom what the fuck are you doing." there's basically no reaction in the game that comes close to it in terms of both damage and ease of use. you are not going to beat a hyperbloom team with anything other than a better-built hyperbloom team. combat is now very heavily skewed in the direction of dendro, meaning that if you DON'T want to use a dendro team, you're going to be doing significantly lower numbers. And since enemies are added with each update, post-3.0 combat becomes difficult and annoying if you don't have a hyperbloom team on-hand.

The major gripe i have with dendro isn't even the scaling, though. I mentioned offhand earlier that the 1.0 B-plot questline had a section which taught you the basics of the combat system via mini-dungeons. These mini-dungeons, of course, taught you the version of the system that existed pre-3.0, so there's no tutorial for dendro reactions. Rather than integrating the tutorial into the story and world like they did in their early quests, upon playing 3.0 for the first time players were given a popup that explained, very wordily, how dendro reactions worked. there was no opportunity to test these reactions in an environment without consequences--if you wanted to try them you'd have to remember the relevant information, build yourself a team, find an enemy to try them on, and just hope you got it right. This lack of integration is something i began to notice more and more with genshin as it progressed, especially in sumeru. where in mondstadt and liyue open-world puzzles would be explained to you by an npc or via environmental context clues, in sumeru you'd be stopped while exploring every two seconds by a popup explaining some puzzle or another which, of course, you wouldn't read, because you didn't want to do the puzzle right that minute anyway, and then by the time you DID want to do that puzzle you'd have no in-game way of figuring out how to do it. The puzzle popups may seem like a small thing, but it's one of the clearest examples in the game to me of the fact that the player experience is so clearly not being prioritized here. the game doesn't even TRY to be immersive anymore. they have no qualms about pulling you out of the story to read a paragraph about how the puzzle works. they don't care how your character, in-universe, is supposed to have acquired that information. they don't care why your character, in-universe, is doing the puzzle in the first place. because they know the reason YOU are doing the puzzle, which is to unlock a hidden chest that gives you 1/80th of a gacha pull.

That was not "a quick detour" was it lmfao. ok anyways. back to the story. Now i want to talk about D-plot, meaning limited event stories, and lore as i defined it earlier, meaning contextual details not present in quests or playable story. This is where i think genshin's story becomes completely inaccessible.

Already, we've covered the fact that in order to consume the very basic story, players have to be willing to wait years between A and B-plot quest releases, punctuated by irrelevant map expansions and interlude quests. I mentioned before that genshin's incompleteness is one of the major problems of its story. the fact that players have to wait years, remembering plot-relevant information that they have no way of knowing will even BE plot-relevant, for the payoff of these narratives is frustrating at best and actively malicious at worst. But in theory, there should be an obvious way to circumvent this. One could just wait until the game IS completely finished to play the whole thing. Sort of like buying a game in early access but waiting until it's actually finished to play it all the way through. that's theoretically possible. but, as i have been hammering home this whole time, genshin is a free game, and therefore genshin relies entirely on a consistently engaging fanbase in order to remain profitable. if genshin does not have a base of players who are willing to log in every day, or at the very least once every update, the game's financial model collapses on itself. therefore, genshin puts on limited-time events. this is a standard in gacha games, as a way to keep the fans consistently engaging. What is not standard, however, is the way that genshin uses these events as vessels for its story. about 19 out of 20 limited events in genshin impact will be useless menial bullshit with no effect on the story or really even the player aside from maybe making you fucking angry. 1 out of those 20, though, will be innocuously named, with nothing in the banner or event description to indicate that it's special in any way, but it will contain serious A or B-plot relevant information that exists nowhere else in the game. My personal favorite example is the infamous 1.3 scaramouche appearance, in which he showed up, told the protagonist that the sky was fake, and then immediately fucked off again. Scaramouche did not show up again until at least 2.0, and the fake sky wasn't so much as MENTIONED again until 3.2, almost TWO YEARS LATER. but there are others, such as the (almost equally infamous) albedo doppelganger event in which a major character's loyalties are called into question, or the event where major biographical information is revealed about kaeya, the only playable character with major known connections to the A-plot and Khaenri'ah. With all of these events, once the event period ends, the information contained within them vanishes from the game completely. there's no way to replay old events that you've missed, even sans rewards, so if you miss a plot-relevant event the ONLY way to catch up on that story is through word of mouth. again, this is a transparent way to keep genshin's userbase engaged during downtime between B-plot quests; if you don't log in and play every event, how will you know if you've missed something important? You might not be able to fully understand the future story if you miss out on the D-plot now!

The D-plot problem is something that I think could, in theory, be circumvented by dedicated record-keeping. if the wiki had anything resembling an easily accessible event database that marked story-relevant events and contained summaries or gameplay videos, at the very least you wouldn't have to fear being completely lost on the off chance that a random throwaway line in an event from fucking 1.3 becomes plot-relevant. but hyv obviously doesn't want that, because it undermines their financial model, and the sheer number of events and the amount of rerunning of irrelevant events they do makes the task of recording and categorizing them all daunting if not impossible.

Then, of course, there's lore. this is arguably what genshin is infamous for in certain circles of the internet. You know that unraveled video where bdg reads every book in skyrim? if you tried to do that with genshin the video would probably be about 10 hours long. and it's not just books; genshin hides (potentially) plot-relevant information in weapon and artifact descriptions, in random hidden world quests, in character bios... the list goes on. and 9 times out of 10, the information is essentially written in code. Plot-relevant characters will have multiple names, or the relevant information will refer to them as vaguely as possible, presumably to further the "mystery" and encourage theorizing among fans. but the sheer amount of information like this that exists within the game makes it all but impossible to determine what is plot-relevant and what isn't. For a topical example, the most recent A-plot quest bedtime story mentions the name Rhinedottir in connection with events in Khaenri'ah, suddenly making that name A-plot relevant. Rhinedottir is an alternate name for the character Gold, whose existence you would only have known of before this point if you'd unlocked and read the character Albedo's character bios. (Albedo is a limited-run character who hasn't been available since november 2022, btw.) the only other information about Rhinedottir permanently available in the game comes from the description of the weapon Festering Desire, which was only obtainable from a limited event back in 2020, anyway. So basically, if you wanted ANY context for that remark, you'd have to have been playing the game since AT LEAST 2022, AND you'd have to have taken the time to go over your weapon and character descriptions with a fine-toothed comb. keep in mind that as of right now (june 2024) there are 85 playable characters in this game, each with 10 unique unlockable character bio sections, and over 150 weapons, each with their own unique descriptions, not to mention over 50 artifact sets, each with 5 unique artifacts, which all have their own unique descriptions as well. there are also 51 different collections of books which contain written lore as well. the idea that any player could keep up with all this, or that anyone could even sift through it all to pick out the important things that they NEED to keep up with, is insane, especially when the game makes a point of withholding crucial plot information from its players within the A and B-plot quests. this amount of written lore only exists, again, to drive up engagement in the hopes of subsequently driving up profit. Even if the average player isn't reading and absorbing all this information, the fact that it's there coupled with the fact that the writers consistently refuse to reveal anything beyond surface-level A-plot information means that there's basically ENDLESS theory fodder. and THAT means that people will be posting their theories and talking with each other and getting into arguments. it means "genshin impact" trends on twitter. it means engagement, and engagement means money.

basically what it comes back to is that everything is so transparently money over player experience with this game. I think what we're witnessing with genshin is what i would call an end-stage gacha game--a gacha game that's gone on a little too long and gotten a little too popular, and so the veil has started to slip a little more than usual. Gachas work primarily because they operate by toeing the line between what is fun to play and what is a predatory mechanic. As long as the actual gameplay remains engaging and rewarding, players can ignore the unsavory business practices underneath. At this point, genshin has swerved too hard into the money-hungriness and is still hoping that they can use their old tried-and-true engagement farming methods to remain popular regardless. currently, it seems like those methods are still working, unfortunately. Like I said in the post that prompted this, i really can't wait for the hyv writer NDAs to expire 10 or so years down the line, because I can only imagine what an insane shitshow writing for this game must be. I want to see the tell-all articles. I want carnage.

That being said, I played genshin impact religiously from 2020 to 2023. I loved the game. Despite myself, I am still really, REALLY interested in the A-plot. I want to know what's going on with the protagonist and their sibling; where they came from, what happened to them, what the heavenly principles are, what role celestia plays in all of this. I want to know Kaeya's full backstory, what role Khaenri'ah plays in the overarching story, and what happened to it in the past. but I don't really have any faith that I ever will, because I know that as long as keeping their fans in the dark and stringing them along remains profitable, that's what hyv will continue to do.

Do I think genshin impact is unsalvagable? in its current state, yes. If I was given the ability to turn back time and convince a bunch of executives of the profitability of this venture, I would change almost nothing about the story of genshin and completely rework the mechanics of its release. I would make it a series of single-release self-contained games rather than a constantly-updating gacha. Each game would be one B-plot quest, or one nation, eight games in all, preferably released once every year. Removing the gacha mechanic, players would be given access to a certain pool of characters to build teams at the start of each game, and then periodically unlock new characters as the story progressed. for example, if you were playing the inazuma game, you'd start out with only your protag, and after progressing to a certain point in the story you'd get a pool of inazuma 4-stars to teambuild with freely. Then, as the story progressed and you met plot-relevant inazuman 5-stars you'd add them to your pool. I'd change basically nothing about the combat system except for a properly integrated introduction of dendro when it makes its appearance in sumeru. Once you completed the story in that nation, you could move onto the next game in the series if it was out, or if it wasn't, you could continue to explore the open world while waiting for the next release. Would this be as profitable as the gacha model? probably not, but what it WOULD do is allow for much more consistent pacing and writing, with the added bonus of not making your userbase feel like you'd shoot them in the head for their pocket change.

[miviaceleste]

A Blackrock Story: A Boy with Turquoise Eyes

Happy 12th Anniversary to Blackrock Chronicle!

This comic ended up being 47 pages long (when I first sketched it, it was only 20 pages long). Since I can only upload 30 images in a post, I had to combine 2 pages into 1 image so hopefully it's still visually fine and not annoying to scroll through!

I wrote this mini-story more than 10 years ago, so I figured it was time to finally make it into a comic (after editing the writing a lot because I became a much better writer since lol).

Be aware of the TWs, and I hope you enjoy this comic!

TW: Violence || Blood || Injuries/Scars/Burn Marks || Kidnapping || (Temporary) Death || Loss of Limb / Amputation

Thank you all for reading one of my most insane projects ever!

Now, here’s another long story:

About 8 years ago, my life became so busy that to stay on top of my studies and activities, I stopped watching a lot of YouTubers, including the Yogscast.

I’ve grown up throughout the years. I had to stop acting like a kid to figure out what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I’m still an artist today, but I haven’t drawn in this way for about 3 years to pursue my real passion. I love to draw, but I didn’t have the time or inspiration to make something grand.

About 3 months ago, I suddenly got curious about how all those YouTubers I stopped watching were doing, so I checked out their channels and watched a video or two before moving on. When I got to the Yogscast channel, on the other hand, I quickly fell in love with the new content and with everyone again.

It was insane to see how immediately my love for them came back. In 3 months, I’ve watched so many videos and streams/VODs. It’s all so comforting, funny, and uplifting. Clearly, I missed so much content in the past 8 years, but at least I don’t have to worry about running out of things to watch for a while.

What made me most happy was that despite changing a lot, I never stopped being that kid who laughed at the Yogscast’s shenanigans. It just goes to show that no matter how much the world tries to push you around, you never lose that sense of joy you had as a child.

Now, about Rythian:

Since I started watching the Yogscast in 2011, Rythian has always been my favorite. I loved his series so much, especially with how he got into character to give us an immersive experience. It was an escape for me as a kid. When difficult moments were thrown at me, I watched Rythian’s series to find a sense of comfort.

So when I started watching his and Zoey’s Blackrock series, my mind was blown. The storytelling, acting, humor, and drama of the series were so immersive and touching that my creativity exploded.

I mainly use art to express myself and my interests because I struggle to talk about it. But funny enough, Blackrock was the only interest of mine that got me to not draw, but to write. I wrote a lot of short stories about the series—even how I envisioned the series would end. I was so inspired to create all the time from this series.

And what’s crazy is that at the beginning of this summer, I found all of those written drafts and notes from when I was a kid. I kept them all for 10+ years and found a very loose (and not that good) draft of this comic and I felt really inspired to finish it.

It was roughly when I was first watching Blackrock too when I realized that I can be creative in the future. The Yogscast helped me understand that I can do whatever I want for the rest of my life. If they could do it, then why can’t I?

What’s also wonderful is that even after so many years, Rythian never stopped being my favorite. When I started watching the main channel again a few months ago, I immediately found myself rooting for him whenever he was in the group videos. I just remembered how much happiness he brought me when I was younger and it makes me so happy that I still get so much joy whenever I hear his voice.

While working on this comic, I watched all of Kirbycraft and caught up on Kirby Farm. I can’t help but smile the whole time Rythian, Briony, and Kirsty interact with one another. The dynamic of these three brings me so much laughter and comfort. A part of me is upset that I didn’t get back to watching everyone when Kirbycraft was still live, but better late than never, right?

I also originally started this comic without the intention of posting it. But then I figured, Hey, it’d be great to share it with everyone who’s also been impacted by this series and the Yogscast in general, so I made this blog to post it here. Honestly, I’m not sure when the next time I’ll be able to draw is (who knew building a career takes away a lot of your energy and time?). But I think that’s what’s so wonderful about my love for Yogscast and particularly Blackrock: I didn’t make this comic for the likes or views. It was just because I wanted to, and I’m so happy to see there are so many people on here who feel the same love for them as I do.

This series and the people who made it, along with the people who supported it and loved it and continued to love it, impacted me for the better. I learned so many years ago that I can be creative for a living, and have been working hard towards doing that since.

Happy 12th Anniversary to the Blackrock Chronicle. To Rythian and Zoey who put a smile on this kid’s face even during the toughest of times.

And to the Yogscast, thank you for being there for me when I needed you all the most and for still being here when I came back. Your ability to inspire me and make me laugh never disappeared throughout the years I was gone, and I’m ready to laugh some more.

[marisol-holme]

The retired good girls guide for writing

I haven’t always been able to understand myself. 

I never felt like I was able to clock pure basic needs. Couldn’t tell if I was hungry or thirsty. I finished my meals early, preferring to always feel full, in a silent critic of my mother and father’s controlling rule over my life. A few bites of fuck you always left on the plate. I liked to see how far I could push it. How little I could drink, sleep, or eat, and still function. A true desert island scenario would see me lasting years; I had inadvertently trained myself for it. Except my desert island was more devoid of emotional fulfilment and attention. 

I had to get creative. I developed some interesting tendencies, sure. But mostly I just wanted to escape. Now my parents never went out, and my internal world was already tumultuous at best, so I did what anyone would do and read. I read voraciously. The ability to turn off my hunger had seeped into all areas of my life. A fugue state dissociation through most of my early years through to adolescence. But I was able to come alive when I was reading. When I read, it was like my first breath. Hungry. I could imagine these worlds and built them up easily, colourfully within my mind’s eye. I'd picture the strong female characters that I admired. I’d taste food, hear music. It was the only time I was ever able to really live, before I had to go downstairs and pretend to eat.

Unwittingly, my upbringing fostered just the correct environment for me to develop a writer’s hunger. Because a writer is always a reader before they grow mad to write. I grew mad fast. I had to. I had to create worlds for me to escape into, away from all the shouting and fighting. Alchemise what I’d read into something new and original. It helped that I was an avid daydreamer, although a psychiatrist might call me a maladaptive daydreamer, but it only ever occurred to me when I was bored. Parallel to this, I grew into shame, so what I wrote I would throw away. I sadly have none of my early works. They are long decomposed into sub-atomic and absorbable waste, probably seeped into a water system somewhere and live inside all of you. Yuck. Not even my best work. 

Then I grew up and I had no dreams because I was not hungry. I hadn’t picked up a book in a long time. I dabbled with things that made me feel warm. Partying and shallow conversations. Grotty pubs and sticky clubs. Good friends made me feel a good kind of warm. But it took me a long time to find my way back to literature. Through a work stint as a Nursery Practitioner, I found my way back into writing. You see, at the nursery we had to send updates to parents all about what their children were getting up to. I enjoyed this task and wrote the children’s days like stories. Descriptive and alive. I’d got the bug and the bug had bit me. I didn’t last long once I had started writing again and I quickly found myself working at the Ideas Foundation. 

Through my new employer, I was encouraged to trial as much as possible to find out what I enjoyed doing. I was also very privileged to have access to several creative professionals who genuinely wanted to help and mentor those younger than them. Mentors can see all your ducks and help you to get them in a row. My ducks were all over the place and needed very graceful guidance. You push my ducks too much and, well, they explode. Poof!

Speaking to seasoned professional copywriters, I was able to glean their persistent journey into the profession. The confusion I once had around my goals has seemed to have dissipated. The ability to feel hungry for life and understand myself has only grown. My spark is back. 

The excitement and giddiness I feel when I think about myself as a writer is immense. The energy can fuel me for days. I look to the bottom left of my documents and the number of words that can pour out onto a page grows and grows with each project I set myself. The possibilities as a writer seem endless from this perspective. 

I understand that there is a lot more to these dreams that simple want. I must be focused. Persistent. Take up the offers of guidance from those around me. Accepting critic and moving towards goals. But the potential is there. I understand myself a little better. I value my work a little more. Hopefully, one day in the not-so-distant future a book of mine might get thrown away and end up decomposing in the damp soil into tiny fragments that find their way into us. At least that work will be better and born of something other than the child’s will to survive and create. That would make me feel okay. 

[wnbnny]

happiness looks good on you- lee felix

summary: you love felix, but he doesn't love you back.

warnings: sad ending, angst!

author's notes: hi everyone<3 this is my first fic, kinda wrote this at like 3am on a whim instead of sleeping but like😭 idk why i made this so sad (is this a sign im depressed or something) but hope u enjoy!! please to comment ur user if u want to be tagged in this or my future posts<3

"happiness looks good on you."

raging storms and unshed tears.

"happiness looks good on you."

heartbreak and rainy days.

"hurry up lix, we're going to be late," you complained, brow furrowed as you stuck your bottom lip out in a pout.

"if you really want to go to school that early just walk there yourself." felix taunted, knowing you were scared to walk alone. he was your long-term best friend, inseparable since kindergarten 'til today.

the two of you argued and bickered on the way to school, throwing insults at each other. by the time the both of you had gotten to school, you were both given a scolding and told to sit down. you glared at him as you were being scolded while he just snickered.

the audacity of this man, honestly . 

by the time class had finished, you had cooled down, just like felix knew you would. otherwise, he could just stick out his bottom lip while you huffed and pretended to be mad. 

"y/n!" he gasped, clutching at your arm, "areum just looked at me!"

he squealed, like a little kid at the toy shop, over his long time crush.

if only you looked at me in that way.

because i do.

"nah, she probably was just looking at someone else." you lied through your teeth, feeling your heart sink.

"hey, stop being mean!! she clearly looked at me," he pouted.

you sighed.

i've loved you for years and you've never noticed.

"well just confess to her already then."

it was painful watching your own crush and best friend fall for someone else, someone that wasn't you. 

you wished, rather selfishly, that areum would reject him. then you could be the shoulder he would cry on. not her. but honestly, you couldn't bring yourself to hate her. what was to hate? she was pretty, got good marks, and was friendly and easygoing. not to say you yourself weren't pretty, but you just weren't as pretty and hardworking as her. 

and you weren't the one he wanted. 

maybe the pain would end if they just ended up together and you were out of the picture. it was obvious she liked him too. 

"you really think i should? but what if i get rejected..."

you're so blind but i still love you.

"yes, how many times do i have to say this, she likes you. it's obvious." you rolled your eyes.

"should i just confess tomorrow? better late than never..." he trailed off, worrying at his bottom lip with his teeth.

gods you look so cute when you do that.

"yeah. get her some flowers and write her a note."

why were you breaking your own heart? you didn't know why. maybe you just wanted to end your own heartbreak. 

"good luck with that, anyways i need to go to s house for a project." you actually didn't, but you would do anything to just escape from this.

"why~~are you really just going to leave me alone to plan my big confession by myself," he whined.

"sorry lix, but you'll figure it out." ruffling his hair, you walked out the classroom.

you did, in fact, go home. then sat on your bed and cried until you couldn't  physically squeeze any more tears out of you.  so this was what heartbreak felt like. you had known him since the both of you were ten. you had have multiple crushes here and there, but they were just passing, fleeting moments, nothing of importance. until him.

you didn't know when you had first started to like him. maybe it was that time in the library where he was helping the librarian stack books. maybe it was that time in the rain where he danced in it for hours. 

maybe it was one summer day where your world just exploded in colours. 

and now it felt like it was fading back to grey.

the next day, felix came bouncing up to you.

"i got her peonies, do you think she'll like it? i told her to meet me in the garden."

"yeah, she'll definitely like it. i would've too... " you muttered the last part all to yourself, turning away and blinking rapidly as tears threatened to prick your eyes. you offered him a smile of encouragement. 

"good luck."

when lunch came, you watched as the nervous australian carried the peonies and went to the garden.

then you watched as they walked in ten minutes later, smiling bashfully and holding hands like schoolchildren in love. 

because they were.

you went home, not even bothering to call in sick. you just grabbed your bag and went home. you would deal with the consequences later. 

your heart hurt.

you were numb.

you were hollow.

you were crying.

you hated everything.

the next few days were spent at home. you called in sick. felix texted you countless times but you ignored him.

lixie&lt;3

y/nie?

where r u?

she accepted!!!

im so happy>.<

read at 2:03 a.m.

yeah, right. good for you. but what about me?

lixie&lt;3

...hello?

y/n?

can u please respond...

im worried...

what happened???

why didn't you come to school today??

read at 3:46 p.m.

you turned off your phone then turned over and cried again. you hated this. why did you have to fall for him in the first place?

finally, after four days of missed calls, texts, and school, you had to go back. its not like you had a choice anyways. you missed your parents. they lived overseas though, so you lived alone. but you really couldn't continue living like this for the rest of your life, even if you wanted to.

"y/nie!!!" felix exclaimed, running up to you. "why didn't you respond to my texts? are you okay? it's unlike you..."

"im sorry lix, i was just under the weather. im ok." you offered him a tight lipped smile. "congrats by the way." you closed your locker door and rushed off before he could ask you anything more.

"huh? thats unlike her... why is she acting so weird lately?" 

and so you avoided him, as much as you could. you kept your conversations short and brief, not talking to him as much as possible, and even switching seats to sit far away from him. you watched his hurt face the day he walked in and saw you sitting somewhere else, but then cheering up as areum sat next to him. you watched as he laughed and held hands, ate tteokbokki and ramen with her in the cafeteria. that should've been me.

but honestly, it did nothing to fill the felix-sized hole in your heart.

you drifted apart. he barely texted you now, barely said hi to you, barely even saw you in the hallways anymore. 

then exams were finished, and graduation started to roll around. 

you watched as they attended prom and twirled around on the dance floor giggling.

you watched as they broke up on the doorstep of his dorms, watching as felix's face fell when she dumped him for another guy.

you didn't have the heart to tell him i told you so.

so you busied yourself in your exams, earning a scholarship to your dream university. felix tried reaching out to you several times to rekindle your old friendship, but you would always politely decline, preferring to be detached instead of going through more heartbreak.

you still loved him, but the once burning passion had now been reduced to a soft flicker every now and then, sparking ever so slightly whenever you saw him in the corridors. your own felix-shaped hole in your heart hadn't decreased over the years, but your heart became bigger, expanding so that other people could fit in it. the hole would always be there, but at least there was space for healing.

you turned around in the backseat of your friends' car to see the campus you had once called home fading away into the distance and felix along with it.

goodbye, the wind whispered.

"happiness looks good on you, lix. i hope you make the best of it."

[riversandwinds]

kiss it better?

a/n: hi hi hi! this is my very first fic, I’ve never written anything before so we’ll see how this goes. please be nice, tell me if you hate it xx ! also I got fed up with autocorrect changing y/n to yen so I just gave her a name 😭

──⭒─⭑─⭒────⭒─⭑─⭒──

summary: Being an art student, Amara’s life gets so stressful around finals week. When everything starts to go downhill, Chris is there to fight with her, and maybe even kiss it better afterwards.

warnings: swearing, angst (happy ending), kissing, not really anything else except for female rage lmfao, no use of y/n

word count: 1.7k-ish

Not proofread 🤓

lots of love ~ Rivvie

What better way to start your day off than with a whole lot of chaos. Amara was jolted awake by the alarm clock’s incessant beeping slicing through her and Chris’s quiet room. Sitting up, her face paled as she saw the time, seeing that she slept through her morning lecture. Panic surged through her, immediately throwing the covers off and shooting up out of bed (much to Chris’s very audible disappointment). She grabbed random pieces of her closet off the floor in a frantic rush, barely managing to get out the door fully clothed with a “Byeloveyousomuchpleasecleanthehouse!”. (She forgot her glasses, then her phone, then her bag, making her run back to their room 3 more times.)

Shouting her final goodbye to Chris, she could feel her phone all but explode in her pocket. She was too disoriented to focus on the messages, so she ignored it, figuring it was just a random group chat. She sprinted through the commons, finally checking her phone after deciding she didn’t care enough to make it to the lecture hall.

lindsey manager (🫥)

sarah no-showed. need you to fill in today asap.

???

amara hello

Of-fucking-course, Amara thought to herself. With a huff, she turned on her heel, making her way to the campus coffee shop. I don’t even have my work clothes, God hates me.

At work, the hours dragged by as she endured her manager’s endless complaints. “You’re late, Amara, hurry up.”, “Where the hell is your uniform?”, “No, you’re not doing it right-“

The poor girl was on edge, to say the least. Her late start didn’t help, either, as she didn’t have any time to grab food from their dorm. She was barely able to handle her hunger as she worked through her shift, her empty stomach cramping by the time her shift was done. She clocked out, silently cursing Lindsey, the shop, and every customer who walked in during her shift.

As exhausted as she was, she called her professor as she was walking out, booking the ceramics room for a few hours. Finals were quickly approaching, and her clay tea set was only partially finished. She headed to the studio, hoping to make at least a little progress on her project and make up for lost time.

Her day only continued to spiral. She’d been in the studio for all but 20 minutes before she wanted to destroy the Earth entirely. As she was leaving the kiln room, tray full of breakables in hand, the door next to her flung open, slamming into her. Not only did it: A) Slam her glasses into the bridge if her nose, cutting her face, but it B) sent her entire tea set to the ground, shattering into thousands of tiny clay shards. Amara’s world collapsed in that moment. Tears streamed down her face as she stared at the wreckage, unable to muster the strength to pick up the fragments. With a choked sob, she grabbed her bag and fled the studio, feeling the weight of her disastrous day press down on her.

Stumbling into her apartment, she hoped for just a semblance of order. But the sight of the messy living room—pizza boxes, crumpled papers, clothes everywhere—made her heart sink even lower. She dropped her bag and collapsed to her knees, her body shaking with a mix of exhaustion and frustration.

“A-are you kidding me?” Amara’s voice cracked as she shouted, her frustration pouring out uncontrollably. “I’ve had the worst day- oh god… I missed my lecture, got screamed at at work, my project is destroyed, and now this mess? I can’t do this-”

Chris, complete with an Xbox controller and a headset, emerged from their room with wide eyes. He froze, his mouth slightly open in surprise as he took in his girlfriend’s state. “Baby, woah, what’s going on?” He set the controller aside and stood next to Amara, honestly a little confused. “Why the meltdown?”

Wrong choice of words, clearly, as her red, tear-filled eyes snapped to his, going wide.

“Why the meltdown?” Amara exploded, her voice rising in volume as she began to frantically clean up the mess. “Because today has been a fucking wreck! I asked you to pick up a little, just a little, Chris! A-and you couldn’t even manage that! I come home to- to this after the worst day of my life, and you’re just sitting here playing games!”

Chris blinked, taken aback by her outburst. “Mar, calm down. It’s not that big of a deal. I was going to clean up, but I got sidetracked. It’s not like—” he bends down to pull Amara off the floor, but retracts when she spits out her response.

“It’s not like what?” she snapped, angry tears streaming down her face. “It’s not like it matters to you? You think I can just handle everything on my own while you sit at home and do nothing? I’m at my breaking point, and all I wanted was the trash off the floor!”

Chris’s eyes widened, his initial nonchalance giving way to frustration. “Hey, I didn’t make your day go bad. I get that you’re upset, but yelling at me isn’t going to fix anything. I’m just trying to understand here!”

Amara’s anger reached its peak. She stood up, maniacally grabbing all of the dirty cups and pieces of trash, stomping to the kitchen to deal with it. “You think I’m yelling just for fun? You have no idea what my day was like! I’ve been on the edge all day, and instead of coming home to something decent, our house is a disaster and you don’t even seem to care!” Throwing her now empty hands up, she lets out a choked cry, pushing past Chris to enter their bedroom.

After seeing Amara sobbing and slamming the door to their room, Chris’s demeanor shifted dramatically. He stood in the living room, the weight of her words sinking in. With a deep sigh, he started cleaning up the mess with a quiet guilt, his movements deliberate and focused. He managed to tidy up the living room, stopping to order Amara’s favorite takeout. He grabbed the blankets from the closet, setting up the couch and scrolling Amazon Prime for a movie to rent. (He eventually settled on Barbie Princess Charm School, figuring it would appease Amara.)

Around 30 minutes later, when Amara emerged from the room, she was met with a surprisingly clean space and the comforting aroma of her favorite food. Chris looked up from arranging the food on the coffee table, his face softening as he saw her. “Look, sweetheart, I’m really sorry. I didn’t realize the house was this bad,” he said, his tone earnest. “I thought I could fix it.”

Amara’s anger dissipated as she took in the scene. “Chris, I—” she started, her voice wobbling with her bottom lip. “I didn’t mean to lash out like that. I was just... overwhelmed.”

Chris walked over and pulled her into his chest, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. “I get it now. I’m sorry you had such an awful day, Ma.” She shrugged, pressing a kiss to his chest.

Spontaneously-DoorDashed desert arrived around ten minutes later, to which Amara all but inhaled while she focused on the movie in front of her. After almost dosing off for the third time, Chris paused the movie, brushing hair out of Amara’s exhausted face.

“Time for bed, baby. Let’s get you cleaned up, huh?” Chris said, pulling a whiny Amara up from the couch, leading her to their room.

He first took care of the little cut on her nose, placing a small kiss over it when he was done. After she was undressed and her hair was brushed, he helped her into the shower, his touch gentle as he guided her through the calming process. While she was in the shower, Chris busied himself tidying up the rest of the apartment, clearing up their dinner and putting up the clean dishes in the kitchen.

When Amara emerged from the bathroom wrapped in a towel, refreshed and feeling a bit more centered, she found Chris remaking their bed, having switched out their sheets for clean ones. The room was now a haven of comfort, with soft lighting and the faint sound of the unpaused Barbie movie playing in the background. The big lights were off, the room illuminated by the soft string lights on the wall.

“God, Chris,” Amara said, her voice filled with appreciation. “This looks amazing. Thank you for cleaning, baby. I’m sorry I yelled at you over it…” she pouted slightly.

Chris smiled softly. “I know I messed up, and I’m sorry for being kinda useless. I figured this might help some more.”

He reached out and grabbed her in a bear hug, resting his chin on her head. “It’s okay, sweetheart. We all have rough days, and I should have been more understanding. I’m just glad we can talk things out and make them better.” He pulled back to kiss between her eyebrows, the tip of her nose, and a soft peck on her lips, smoothing her hair down with his hands.

He helped her get dressed, slipping a sleep shirt over her head and sliding her underwear and shorts up her legs, kissing her knee with a grin. Amara appreciated his efforts, feeling the weight of her stress lift with each passing moment.

After a few minutes, and a few yawns from both parties, Chris turned off the string lights and the tv, declaring it was bedtime. They climbed into their newly-made bed, snuggling up under the comforter. Chris wrapped his arms around Amara, pulling her close as she rested her head on his shoulder, feeling the warmth of his embrace and the comfort of being understood.

“I really do love you, you know,” Amara said softly, her sincere voice filling the dark room. “Thank you for kissing it better, Chris.”

Chris kissed her forehead gently. “Always, and I love you too, pretty girl. I’ll do better next time, pinky promise.”

As the sleepy mumbling played on, they remained in each other’s arms, the earlier turmoil of the day replaced by a sense of peace and safety.

Finally settling into a comfortable silence, Amara felt her eyelids get heavy. She yawned, pressing into Chris who kissed her forehead with a hum. She relaxed into Chris’s embrace, feeling like a precious stone in the hands of a jeweler. They drifted off, Chris’s immediate snoring lulling Amara to sleep with a lovesick grin on her lips.

──⭒─⭑─⭒────⭒─⭑─⭒──

tags: @her-favorite (u the only one bb 🌝)

[harleychick91]

The Final Tape (Rated M for adult language)

Summary: After seeing all of Myxy’s outcomes, Kara has to make a choice. Call Lena a villain and have nothing but pain or help her succeed? Either option will change the outcome of everyone’s future.

https://archiveofourown.org/works/58318237

The Final Tape

After watching the last tape Myxy left, I knew what I had to do. Changing into my suit, I flew towards Lena’s. Landing, I noticed the glass door open as she made her nightly cup of tea. Guarded eyes flashed towards me. “Let me guess, you're here to once again tell me I should forgive you or maybe I shouldn't work with my brother.”

“No,” I shook my head. “Not this time.”

“Then why are you here?”

“To tell you the truth. Everything. No matter the outcome, you need to know the truth.” Lena’s brow creased. Tentatively, I stepped across the threshold and into the condo, a weight lifting from my shoulders. “I choose you.”

“What?”

“I choose you. Don’t work with Lex. Work with me. Let me help you finish whatever you’re planning.”

“What changed?” Folding her arms, Lena studied me. “You’ve always done the right thing. Never once have you stepped into the darkness even if it’s for the greater good.”

“Watching you die every time we’re not side by side.” Lena’s mask slipped. “Tonight, I saw multiple scenarios where I told you who I was in different stages of our friendship,” I swallowed over the painful lump that formed in my throat. “You died in every single one except the one where I tell you everything.”

“I seem to remember someone not understanding quantum entanglement, let alone the effect of Q-Waves on the brain. How could you help me?”

"Because unlike Lex, I actually can complete your project.” Curiosity gleamed in the woman’s eyes. “As is, Non Nocere is doomed to fail because the brain will always evolve to protect itself. Q-Waves alone aren't enough.”

“How can you possibly know this?” Lena scoffed.

“Before Krypton exploded, I was set to be the youngest inductee into Krypton's elite Science Guild. I also studied Myriad extensively after taking it from my aunt. You may be the only person in the world who knows as much about this as I do.” Lena’s brow twitched. “Another lie, I know. Currently, time is influx but decisions made tonight will make this become a fixed point.”

“So, you’re choosing for me?” Lena smirked.

“No. I’ve made my choice to come here and tell you how I feel. It’s your choice to turn me away or not.”

Debating her choices, Lena studied me. “You really do understand theoretical physics and quantum mechanics,” she murmured. “Was anything you said real?”

“Everything as Kara Danvers was, besides not understanding science. When you mentioned that, Rao, I wanted to talk. Tell you everything about Krypton but I didn’t have the courage to tell you I was Supergirl.”

“And you're willing to help me accomplish my goal? Even if it crosses your moral ethics code?"

“After seeing you die every time we’re apart, I’ll do anything to keep you safe.”

Slowly, the walls Lena had rebuilt started to come down. “You’re serious about this?”

“I won’t stand by and watch you endanger yourself by working with Lex.” I took a deep breath to ground myself. “If given the choice between you and watching the world burn, I would choose you every time without hesitation.”

“Why?”

“Because I love you and there is no line in the universe I wouldn't cross to keep you safe.”

Recognition flashed across the brunette’s face. “How…”

“I always listen to you. But unlike James, I am okay with love at that level,” I paused. “I always had the feeling that’s how I felt, especially when you told me to drop you and save the chemicals.” I shook my head. “I could never. If it means being by your side, I'll help you with whatever it is. The pain of being away from you hurts too much.”

“Then we should talk. Come sit.” Lena motioned to a barstool. Sitting, she placed her mug of tea before me and poured herself another. “I refused to help Lex, he's been helping me. But if you are offering to help me, then I'm done pretending this is anything other than what it truly is. The world destroys itself and smiles as it burns. I want to fix it, my way. But if you are serious, we can make it our way.”

Holding the mug towards Lena, I spoke, “I'm serious. I’ve never been more serious about anything.”

“To a new partnership,” Lena tapped her mug against mine. “I’m assuming no one knows about this change of heart?”

“No. I literally just finished watching the final tape.” I sipped the steamy liquid.

”What are these tapes you keep talking about? Did whoever leave them with you?”

“He only left two. However, he said I couldn’t let you watch them yet. I would know the time when you were ready. Currently, if you tried to watch them, it would just show a fuzzy black and white screen.”

”Of course,” Lena huffed. “To keep everyone off our trail, I’ll have Andrea send you on a deep assignment. One that you didn’t know about and couldn’t tell anyone.” I stared at the brunette, dumbfounded. “What?”

“It always amazes me how quickly your mind works.” Something just went through her mind. Something softer like before when her arms fell.

“Since we’ll be working closely together, you’ll be staying in the guest room for the foreseeable future. Go home and pack all of the clothing that’s more like mine and any personal items you want to bring.” Noticing the change in my demeanor, Lena frowned. “Having second thoughts already?”

“No, no. You said personal things. After crisis, I’ve been stumbling across things that this version of us didn’t have. Like the L-Corp swag you gave me or the pictures we took over the years. Obviously, I understand why there isn’t L-Corp swag but the zip up jacket was so soft and comfortable.”

“I’ve noticed that too,” Lena’s voice was soft. “I’ll give you an image inducer and you’ll become my personal assistant in the lab and otherwise.”

“Alright.” Finishing my tea, I got to my feet. “I’ll be back shortly with my things.”

Pulling out her phone, Lena put in her passcode. “I’ll take care of Andrea.”

Flying into my loft, I pulled out my luggage set. Filtering through my closet and drawers, I packed the clothing that matched Lena’s wardrobe the best. Obviously, I can’t dress like myself even with the image inducer. Thankfully, I can still keep my lounge wear and other, more intimate, articles of clothing. Moving to the bathroom, I packed my toiletries in a separate bag.

The final task was my kitchen. I disposed of the items that would expire in the next few months. Anything I wanted to bring with me, I packed in the smallest suitcase. Lena will be stocked on tea for sure. This world’s Kara kept a few boxes of it like I did. While they weren’t friends, apparently Kara liked the tea as well. Zipping the suitcase, I thought about the brunette. She must have known I’d choose her on some level. Or hoped I would. Lena didn’t bat an eye when I told her I loved her.

Glancing over my loft, I sighed. I’m saying goodbye to this life. I made my choice and I don’t regret it but I know Alex won’t understand. Maybe she will one day. Anything Supergirl or D.E.O. related, I left on my bed. This way, I can’t be tracked. I tied the two suitcases and the bag together to make them easier to transport. locking up, I flew out the window.

Landing back on Lena’s balcony, I saw her reading over something on her tablet. Noticing my suitcases, her brow rose. “You came prepared.”

“I told you, I’m willing to help you no matter how long it takes.” I started towards the guest room.

“I see this,” Lena followed. She leaned against the doorframe as I began to unpack. “I cleared you some space in the bathroom and a cabinet in the kitchen. I figured you’d bring food and toiletries.”

Stepping into the closet, I hung the dress clothes. “You always did know me better than anyone.” I can feel her eyes burning into me. She doesn’t trust me yet. Not fully. She will in time.

“Andrea will be reassigning your work at CatCo tomorrow.”

“Good. I left everything Supergirl or D.E.O. related back at the loft to make it seem like I was sent away on assignment. Also, I didn’t want to be tracked.”

“Yes, having someone bust down my door would be very inconvenient. I’ll leave you to it. We will start bright and early tomorrow morning.”

“Goodnight, Lena.”

Hesitating for a moment, Lena responded, “Goodnight.”

Finish reading on AO3

[pocket-sized-nightmare]

here’s my entry for day 2 of @gem-pearl-week 2024! today’s prompt is “soar”

Pearl is very bad at realizing she’s tired.

It’s something she’s known for years, but it rarely seems to matter to her. She’s practically nocturnal, so no one questions it if she goes to bed late and sleeps for a few extra hours. She doesn’t stay up late all the time, anyway – just when she has a project to finish or some materials to gather.

It’s a materials-gathering day for Pearl, though, and she isn’t quite ready to stop. Her inventory is full of wood and stone for her next build. If the pocket dimension wasn’t weightless, she’d think her inventory was weighing her down – she can feel her wings growing heavier as she flutters around to pick up another stack of stone. She adds torches to her mine as the world around her becomes harder to see.

Harder to see? Wait.

Pearl looks up and discovers that the sun has completely set. She’s been mining for hours. “Oh. Well, then. Seems about time to head back, doesn’t it?”

She gets a running start and takes off, ignoring the tired ache in her back where the roots of her wings meet skin. She’ll have a grounded day tomorrow. It’ll be fine.

Gem’s base comes into view below Pearl, and she smiles. Pearl half-considers landing and saying hello to her partner, but she quickly decides against it – she’d rather not let Gem see her in this tired state. She needs to go home and get some sleep.

Pearl flies a tick faster, determined to reach home before anyone notices. Her mind is a bit blurry, but there’s no need to worry about it. She’s just got to get back to her base, and then she can go to sleep. She’s just got to–

Ooh, a shiny thing!

Her moth instincts take over, and she changes direction towards the bright light ahead of her. It lures her in like a beacon, guiding her to her next stop.

Pearl drifts towards it, letting the light wash over her, until–

She slams directly into Gem’s lighthouse.

Pearl’s totem of undying explodes into a shower of sparkles as she crashes to the ground, dazed and worn out. The grass beneath her is soft, and it’s suddenly tempting to lie down and rest right there.

There’s the sudden sound of footsteps behind her, followed by a laughing voice. “Pearl, what in the world did you do?”

————

Gem is half-asleep when she hears a thud from somewhere in her base, followed by a tiny explosion and a soft shriek. “What the heck?”

She drags herself out of bed and over to the window. Most of her base looks fine, but the two fish floating around her lighthouse have broken their path to stare downwards in confusion. That’s the place, then.

Gem grabs a torch, slips on her boots, and heads outside to see what’s invaded her base. The streets of her area are more creepy at night than she expects, and she can’t help but chuckle at the ominous appearance of her anglerfish from the distance. Maybe it is a little bit cursed.

The lighthouse comes into view, and there’s a small shape on the ground in front of it. As Gem walks closer, she can make out the shape of a person, then the moth wings on their back, and then– “Pearl, what in the world did you do?”

“Mmm,” Pearl mutters.

“Did you crash into my lighthouse?”

“Mhm.”

“Why?”

“It was bright…”

Gem bursts out laughing. “Pearl, you sound half-asleep right now. Are you alright?”

“Buildin’ all day,” Pearl murmurs. “Goin’ home now. Need to sleep…”

Gem helps Pearl to her feet. “Well, considering you just crashed into my lighthouse, I don’t think you’re gonna make it all the way back.” She yawns. “And I was about to go to bed, too. C’mon, let’s go inside.”

Pearl doesn’t protest. Gem leads Pearl back to her house, and Pearl climbs into bed next to her. “G’night, Gem.”

“Good night, Pearl,” Gem says. She kisses Pearl gently on the forehead, then drifts off to sleep alongside her.

[crackinglamb]

AO3 Year End Roundup, 2024

Tagged by @pikapeppa and @theluckywizard. Thank you both! 🥰

Tagging @lilbittymonster, @anneapocalypse, @espressocomfort, @gefionne and anyone who wants to do it who hasn't been tagged yet. Consider this an open invite. Tag me so I can see!

Words posted: 308,473

Additional Words Written: ~145K

Grand total of words: ~453K

Fandoms: 5. I wrote for Doctor Who, Southern Vampire Mysteries/True Blood, Dragon Age, Fallout 4 (and the tiniest bit of 3) and Fallout TV

Works: 17, 16 of them new.

Highest Kudos: Different Animals, at 325. Cooper Howard|The Ghoul/Lucy MacLean (FOTV). Rated E, 9528 words.

Highest Hit Oneshot: Different Animals, at 2565 as of this post.

New Things I Tried: May-June of this year saw me fall down the rabbithole that was Fallout TV’s first season. In quick succession I wrote 7 fics for Ghoulcy before the Muse ran dry.

I also went back to my first published fandom (FO4), but with a twist: Modern Girl In the Commonwealth. And the Days Go By, F!SoSu/Hancock, rated E, 65K words, complete. I actually just finished posting it two weeks ago.

Fic I Spent the Most Time On: Driftwood, my Bullmance series. I finally finished writing The Turning Tide (Iron Bull/OFC (DA), rated E, 42K words, WIP), and started posting it before DAV dropped. It’s currently the only work being updated. But it is totally written, and there will be no gaps in posting it through to completion next year.

Fic I Spent the Least Time On: Well Developed Personality, Cooper Howard|The Ghoul/Lucy MacLean (FOTV), rated E, 1696 words. It’s the shortest thing I wrote (and the filthiest, ‘ware the tags), and I managed it in about a sitting.

Favorite Thing I Wrote: This is always tough for me, because I hop around fandoms so much, and each one brings its own set of joys to the table. So in no particular order, the top three:

Destiny Is Just In the Timing, Female Cadash/Varric Tethras (DA), rated E, 52K words, complete. In the way of procrastination projects, Destiny began its life as something else to work on when I was stuck on T3. Varric is my first DA love, and I will always return to him. I got to thinking about his canon DA2 Carta contacts, and how a Cadash Inq is from the Carta and...boom. Instant ship, just add pining. Half the fic covers DA2 from an outsider POV, the other half is the events of DA:I. Guaranteed happy ending. [side-eyes BW]

Different Animals. Ya know, I didn’t plan to get as deep into Ghoulcy as I did. Then again, I never anticipate how deep I’ll fall into a ship. Before I’d even finished watching the show, I was writing this long oneshot. There is just something about the vibe of it that ticks all my boxes, and it’s probably the thing I’ve reread the most this year of my own work.

And the Days Go By. Modern Character In [Setting] is a favorite trope of mine, as anyone who’s read my DA longfics knows. I took that premise and put it into my favorite comfort game. Voila! Jack Nunn was born. I had so much fun figuring out what parts of the game mechanics I’d keep in the story as plot devices and how much a woman from our world would struggle to cope in the Fallout universe. It started out as crack treated seriously, then I grew to love her so much I kinda forgot that part.

Favorite Thing I Read: Again, tough decision. I’m a multitasker. And that’s true of my reading habits too. So, also in no particular order, the top three:

Kiss Me Moonstruck, by LuckyWizard (@theluckywizard). Female Trevelyan/Male Hawke (DA), rated E, WIP. Sometimes you just need a fantasy romcom. This indisputably fits the bill. It’s a light-hearted and highly entertaining matchmaker AU, and it sizzles with the palpable chemistry between Rose and Garrett. I love every word, and Lucky is a delight I’m happy to call a friend.

A Distinct Lack of Exploding, by gotfanfiction. Cooper Howard|The Ghoul/Lucy MacLean, (FOTV), rated E, WIP (with one chapter left according to the count, but the author has stated that shouldn’t be taken as gospel). This is a romp of pure ridiculous fun. Hot fun. Read the tags and you’ll get an idea of what you’re in for. And the author delivers on every word. I’ve read it at least three times so far in its entirety.

A Thing Called Hunger, by Syrina. Female Rook/Lucanis Dellamorte (DAV), rated E, WIP. In order to keep things spoiler free for Veilguard, I can’t talk about this one too much. Other than to say it’s witty and clever, the spice is excellent and the characters are wonderful. I get excited with every new update.

Something I Finished: The Turning Tide. It took 18 months, but I finished it (shortly after I began posting it, bending my own rule about publishing before completing the principle wording). And even though I said no more epics – being defined as anything over 100K words – guess what? It is. Mirabull in the Inquisition, ho!

Miscellaneous Highlights: I bounced around a lot this year. And a fair amount of my work didn’t get any mentions here. So I’ll compile some of them now.

Not a Bad Life?, Rose Tyler/Ninth Doctor (Doctor Who), rated E, 33K words. Written for Fluff-uary 2024. Among the WIP’s that were written but never posted was the next arc in Rose’s life with the Doctor. Ultimately, I’m glad the series leaves off here, because honestly I lost steam with it, and I don’t know when I’ll get back to it. But considering there are two years between She’s My Plus One and this fic, eh, who knows? Not I. I am but a drifting fan of many things, floating around from ship to ship.

Stardust, Rose Tyler/The Doctor (DW), rated G, 4220 words. Speaking of Doctor Who, this oneshot was written after the 14th Doctor’s stint during the holiday mini-series. I just wanted Rose to come back home and for Fourteen to get a happy ending, okay? And with it, The Spaces Between Our Atoms, rated T, 3174 words. A sort of sequel, written to commemorate the passing of Bernard Cribbins (Wilf).

Set to Repeat, Subject to Change, F!SoSu/Hancock, (FO4), rated E, 76K words, complete. I published (and completed) this fic back in 2018. I always wanted to write a sequel for it, but never did. Burnout’s a bitch, and I don’t have the mental energy to do All That. But I did write an epilogue, six years late. Incidentally, the final chapter was posted on the anniversary of the fic’s first chapter, which ticks the ‘coming full circle’ box for me. It’s the little things, ya know?

Writing Goals for 2025: [noncommittal noises] As of right now, I’m attempting to put together some ideas for continuing Wicked Things. With DAV now here, I have some work ahead of me to make it reconcile with where I was going with WG. But frankly, I’m uninspired. Part of that could be lingering burnout, but part of that is also some...ambivalence over what we got as the next entry to Dragon Age. I haven’t actually played it yet (although anyone who’s read any of my work knows that has zero bearing on me creating something), but I’ve watched some playthroughs and have all the spoilers. Whatever I manage to write for next for Imogen, it will most definitely YEET the canon. More than likely a lot of it, honestly.

And of course, there will be another Fluff-uary. I'm not sure who will get the nod next year for pairing(s). But I'll come up with something, I always do.

Final Thoughts: As much as I’ve talked about burnout and writing less...I managed a lot this year. I was honestly shocked at that wordcount total. And I’m sure I missed some of the WIP’s that got started and never went anywhere in the ‘additional words’ section. I just counted the things that were close to done or had a significant amount written that I could find in my document files. One of them is a full, completed fic. I’m just not ready to carry on with that series and don’t want to leave it on a cliffhanger for however long it would take me to get back to it. Another is nearly complete, but I got stuck on the ending and then moved on to other things and have been considering a rewrite from the ground up. And a third is a oneshot that’s ready for posting but has zero context for it yet. [sigh] But that’s always the way, isn’t it?

I fully expect next year will be a bit slower for me in terms of creativity. Life being what it is, and my circumstances what they are, I won’t have as much time. And I feel like I say that every year, but this time I think it’s going to actually happen. I’m currently in the longest stretch of writing nothing at all that I’ve had since I began writing fanfiction in 2017. And I have very few ideas percolating in the back of my mind. And you know what? I’m okay with that. I keep saying I’m going to take a break and then never do. Maybe I’ll actually do it this time.

If you’ve read this far, cheers. See you on the flipside. 💕

[pynkhues]

https://x.com/lestatdelioncat/status/1858608673855336516?t=KsAra9iHb3aUiMDx21TF2w&s=19 I dont understand what Jacob meant by this and I definitely would argue that Louis isn't the most vampire but that Claudia is

Mmm, yeah. My interpretation of what Jacob’s saying there is that Louis has an enormous capacity for self-indulgence, and its because he has that, that he has to restrain himself so fully. That makes sense to me, I think we see that in 2.05 in particular between all the boys and the drugs, but I think we also see it in how he bottles things up until they explode out of him and he does things like murder the Alderman Fenwick in a pretty gory and performative way, and, y’know, swims the Mississippi to get at Lestat (in more ways than one!)

Does that make him more vampiric? I don’t know if I think that does, but it begs the question of what you think determines a vampire’s core characteristics? It’s an ever-evolving archetype, and has definitely gone through a lot of iterations in the last twenty years in particular, but I think if you’re looking at the origins in traditional gothic literature, Louis is in many ways the quintessential vampire.

So! Let's have a look at that.

The origins of the vampire

The concept of a vampire in literature was actually created in the same summer retreat that Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in, which is a delightful little slice of history. You can read more about it here if you’re interested, but the nuts and bolts of it is that a freshly-divorced Lord Byron, his doctor, Dr. Polidori, as well as Percy and Mary Shelly, and Mary’s stepsister, Claire Clairmont (who was pregnant with Byron’s child, a child he really didn’t want), went on a summer retreat to Switzerland together, and basically just spent months reading each other ghost stories which ultimately culminated in Byron suggesting they have a competition to see who could write the best one.

Hilariously, none of them really wrote a ghost story – Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein, and Byron actually wrote two things, although he only finished one – a poem called The Darkness which is effectively a dystopian poem about the end of the world – and his unfinished project was a novel about a dying man who swears he’ll be resurrected to visit his friend after he dies.

It's this that’s actually taken up by Byron’s doctor, Dr. Polidori, who turns it into the 1819 short story, The Vampyre, with the lead character being heavily based on Byron himself.

In Polidori’s story, it features a man, Aubrey, observing his rich, sexy male friend, Lord Ruthven, who has superhuman strength and can’t be killed by bullets, and who seems to keep seducing women important to Aubrey right before they mysteriously die. Basically Aubrey slowly realizes through mounting dread that Lord Ruthven survives by drinking the blood of innocent women.

I’ve talked a lot about the Byronic Hero (and how I think Louis embodies the trope), so I won’t go too much into it here, but my point is that the original concept of a vampire is inherently built on those romantic ideas of class and wealth (which is important for reasons I’ll get into shortly), sophistication and intelligence, hiding in plain sight and seduction, and is generally understood to have queer subtext which many read into the relationship between Aubrey and Lord Ruthven (Ruthven literally seduces and murders Aubrey’s lover and his sister, isolating him to his companionship). He’s also inherently Byronic, being first started by him, and later based on him – Byron truly isthe I-don’t-know-if-I-want-to-be-him-or-be-with-him guy of literary history, haha.

Building on the origins and evolving the metaphor

It was the late 1800s though when some of the most genre-defining stories were published. The two biggest being Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1871) and, of course, Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). The genre had evolved already at this point, but the archetype actually didn’t change all that much. In fact, the vampire as someone who is rich, predatory and seductive became character traits that became metaphors in and of themselves, namely as a class metaphor. This was started with Lord Ruthven in The Vampyre, but it’s really expanded here, particularly in Dracula, who’s understood in the context of the 1890s to represent the solitary nature of monopoly capital that sucks the life from the labouring classes. He hoards his wealth through land and gold, and preys on the working class.

There’s been a lot written on this, so I won’t labour the point, but the understanding of vampires as symbols of aristocracy and capitalism has always existed, and I know that we joke about Louis being the first vampire capitalist, but it’s actually not true. Capitalism has always been a vital part of the genre, because class has always been a central tenet of classic gothic fiction, for better and for worse.

Wealth and class is also central to Carmilla. It’s set in the 1800s in Austria while the wealth gap between the rich and poor is increasing, and Carmilla comes from an aristocratic, old money family. She benefits from being rich, and she uses her social power as a rich aristocrat in order to seduce and prey on people in the lower classes. Again, the entwining of wealth and class is really prevalent, but interestingly too, Carmilla’s the most explicitly queer of all of these early vampire stories, with the lesbian relationship woven through it effectively textual, but Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu also posits two means of being turned into a vampire, which is kind of uniquely interesting to me.

One is the way we know – vampires turn vampires, but the second is that vampires are people who’ve been rejected by God, whether due to suicide, as explicitly stated in the book, or excommunication from the church for a sinful life. While this hasn’t literally carried forward much in the genre, I do actually think its still there. The elements of sin and quote-unquote ‘corruption’ are still threaded through most vampire fiction even today, and while hedonism is more common in modern vampires, there are elements of misery that feel pervasive. The idea that vampires are born either through being turned, corrupted or dying by their own hand is just one that I find really interesting, and I think also speaks a bit to elements of the Byronic Hero that the vampire is inherently steeped in as an archetype.

…And evolving some more

It was actually Anne’s books in the 70s that relaunched vampires into the stratosphere popularity-wise, and they did evolve in theme and metaphor as a result. Vampires are understood to be manifestations of current anxieties, which yes, in the 1800s was the rise of monopolistic capitalism, female sexuality and homosexuality, and in the 70s through 80s became metaphors for anxieties around STIs, the AIDS crisis, and addiction in particular, but these themes of class and misery never left the genre.

That said, the Vampire as an archetype in and of itself was also informed in this period really by the Milton’s Satan archetype which has gone on to form the modern concept of the anti-hero. I talked a lot about the Milton’s Satan archetype here in terms of Lestat, but the important thing to note is that it holds to the idea of a protagonist as a fallen angel who becomes a hero-villain, hedonistic, vain, proud and horribly, terribly human.

So, do I think Louis’ the most vampiric of the vampires?

Yeah, actually. In a lot of ways, Louis marries all the foundations of the traditional vampire. He’s as wealthy, intelligent, and seductive as Lord Ruthven was, but he really feeds into the late 1800s vampire as a symbol of the parasitic nature of monopolistic capitalism and landed wealth. He chooses to be solitary and rejects community, he’s using women’s bodies to keep his family in wealth, he’s hoarding and commodifying art and wishing death on artists to increase profit, he’s gentrifying San Francisco, he’s turned in a church on a night he likely would’ve commit suicide, tying back into Le Fanu’s idea of alternate ways of vampires being turned, hell, he’s even doing drugs with addicts in the sprawl of the seventies, using his social power over Daniel by flaunting his wealth to get him into a room with him.

And he’s a Byronic Hero. So he’s miserable while he does it, haha.

That joy in the hunt that Claudia has to me is more like Lestat’s, which I do think as I said in the Milton’s Satan / Fallen Angel archetype post is more tied up in the demonic than the vampiric, traditionally speaking. There’s definitely crossover though, especially as Milton’s Satan has informed the modern anti hero, and vampires are generally always anti heroes in modern fiction. I don’t think Claudia necessarily is a Milton’s Satan either – I’ve said it before, but I think she’s a true Gothic Heroine – but she definitely has some of those attributes of a fallen angel, particularly in the sense of hedonism and perversion of form and family.

In a lot of ways, it’s part of the fun with Claudia – she gets these elements of both Louis and Lestat, and gets to be her own thing too. Her vampirism is its own unique monstrousness, but I don’t think she plays as cleanly into the traditional vampire as Louis does.

I'll leave it there, because this is way more than you asked for, anon, haha, sorry. Hopefully it's interesting.

[oursistheday]

You know that feeling, when the first idea of your story lands?

Best feeling ever. You fly on the clouds like a little bird, while at the same time there's lava boiling under your skin. You have a vision of Voldemort playing a sadistic game with Severus Snape:

"I don't trust you, you grimy dungeon bat."

"My Lord, I am your loyal servant."

"Prove it to me."

"I'll do anything for your dark majesty."

"Seduce Harry Potter's mudblood pet."

And then darling Sev is like "NO, I WILL NOT DO IT. YOU CANNOT FORCE ME, DUMBLEDORE, I HAVE A RIGHT NOT TO DO THIS!"

And Albus is popping a lemon drop into his mouth. "Put out the flame under your cauldron and stop heralding the end of the world, Severus. It's not like we ask you to gut out a thousand rats. You have both your masters' blessing to take a young and pretty virgin to your bed, and instead of thanking us, you moan and grumble about how unfair it all is and how Lily would disapprove if she was still alive."

And then your brain explodes, because you need need need need to put this into writing. But the thing is, you have two more stories half-posted and waiting patiently to be finished, while behind your back, one of your shortfics has birthed a whole sequel about destroying Horcruxes. How can you refuse an Albus/OFC story where they destroy horcruxes, I mean, come on.

And yet, your first Snamione beckons you invitingly.... You cannot refuse, not when you are finally writing something that people other than you seem to find interesting :''3

You've never written Snamione before, and now you have a somewhat interesting premise. You've posted the first chapter, you get lots of positive feedback, Severus and Hermione get stuck in your mind, dancing a frenzy waltz all over your synapses.

You have a plot for the Snamione now. It's a tight plot; it feels like a good plot. You play with it for a while, as if you're letting the characters decide. You say, if one of them feels they don't want to proceed with this, I will not write a second chapter. I will leave the one I posted as it is, to remain forever a lonely little one-shot, a spinster on the figurative shelf, the poor dear.

I started writing fics to help me cope with my anxiety. I thought it would be soothing, relaxing, not unlike a mother's embrace that always shelters you from the evils of the world.

Three years later, relaxed is NOT how I feel.

Come join me in Ao3, to read all about Severus' latest ordeal!! How will he proceed with this peculiar task? And how about Hermione, his intended victim? What has she to say for herself?

[zodiacdragon334]

Crimson Sun AU Introduction!

Well, I'm sick, jet lagged, and it's 6 am and I can't sleep. So, no better time to actually do this. This is a new AU project I've been cooking up for about a month now I'd say, give or take. And it's very, very fun! In my opinion anyways.

(And yes, I'll be finishing Dragon's Blood before I start posting this one, don't worry)

So this AU was born from a combination of three things in the cauldron of my brain.

1. I wanted to write Gunpowder Boys.

2. I wanted to write Impulse.

3. I happened to be watching a friend play Deltarune at the time.

SO.

Crimson Sun (the first part anyway) is a crossover AU between Hermitcraft Season 8 and an apocalyptic timeline of Empires Season 1, which is inspired by the premise of Deltarune! It's not a crossover with Deltarune, there's only going to be MCYT characters, but it's inspired by the whole structure and concept of the game. This first iteration is very loosely based on Chapter 1, but if I get to it and am still inspired, I do intend to write other stories based on other Deltarune chapters.

This first one is going to be from Impulse's POV with a heavy focus on him, Pixlriffs, and fWhip.

So it's the end of Hermitcraft Season 8. The moon is crashing, the world is ending, and the members of Boatem are getting ready to leave. Except, Mumbo and Pearl are nowhere to be found, the rocket is falling apart, and there's something very, very weird going on with the Boatem Hole. Strange, pulsing darkness that very much looks nothing like the familiar void. Time's running out. Impulse, Grian, and Scar eventually find Mumbo tangled up in wires and debris with Pearl trying to help him, but they can't get him out in time and he falls into the Boatem Hole.

And disappears. With no death message or anything. He's just gone.

And they can't leave their friend. So the rest of Boatem follows him. And they all land in a strange world of ash, ruins, towering crimson tentacles, a fungal infestation, and corrupted monsters roaming the lands. With the members of Boatem scattered across the land and transformed by the world, Impulse is suddenly alone with unfamiliar powers and a sharp object pressed into his back by two survivors who really don't like the look of him for some reason.

So that's where the Deltarune inspiration comes in! This timeline of Empires is the dark world, and there's the whole physical transformation thing that happens with Kris and Susie in the game. And Impulse and the rest of Boatem are trapped here until they can find a way back to Hermitcraft. Namely, by doing an equivalent to sealing the dark fountain, which is in this case, sealing Xornoth.

I'm going off the members of Boatem being more or less human in Hermitcraft, but showing a lot more of the typical fanon hybrid traits in this 'dark world.' So we've got Demon Impulse, Watcher Grian (he was an avian in HC), Vex Wizard Scar, Moth Pearl, and Shapeshifter/Cryptid Mumbo.

Now, a bit from the other side:

This timeline of Empires very, very far from canon events. It's a Xornoth wins AU. An apocalypse AU. After the death of the Ender Dragon, years before the members of Boatem land in their world, Xornoth wasted no time in their plans for world domination. Corruption flooded over the land, over every empire, corrupting the rulers into the demon's puppets. It leaves ruins and devastation in its wake, and reacts particularly poorly with what lurks underneath one particular empire, seemingly sealing the fate of the world.

Because there's massive veins of deepslate redstone ore underneath the Grimlands. And what happens when that mixes with corruption? It explodes. And that sets off the Rapture early, covering an already corrupted and inhospitable world in ash.

But there are survivors.

Pixlriffs, in his guilt over the Dragon's death, leaves Pixandria behind for exile. But soon enough, word reaches him in a distant village of the destruction he left behind, and despite what he feels about himself, he can't ignore the problem and returns to look for survivors. What he returns to is the shattered remains of Pixandria and the Vigil in pieces, rendering respawn itself unstable and unreliable. He finds the oceans drained, Mezalea silent and covered in ash, the Overgrown, Gilded Helianthia, the Undergrove, and the Crystal Cliffs either eternally aflame, or already nothing but burnt out husks. Mythland, the Lost Empire, and Rivendell, all seas of corruption. And the Grimlands nothing but a smoking crater.

And in the rubble, barely alive and clinging to life, he finds fWhip.

He survives, despite the odds. And they find themselves at an impasse. fWhip has lost absolutely everything, and has no reason to stay anymore, presuming Gem and Sausage and Pearl to be dead. But Pix, now that he's returned and fully sees the consequences of his compliance in the Dragon's death, can't bring himself to turn his back again. And fWhip can't leave his only friend behind.

So they do what they do best. They raid Pixandria's ghast farm, which was far enough away to escape the corruption, collect all the gunpowder, and spend the next five or so years being absolute nuisances to Xornoth by exploding things. They're the only reason why Xornoth has not finished their fortress after years. But still, Xornoth never manages to catch them.

After living in this world for five years, locked in a stalemate with their adversary and running out of places to hide, they've seen full well the power of a demon. Pix pushes forward, never letting go of his guilt and insisting to himself that it's his duty to stay and make things right. fWhip grows cynical and jaded with nothing left to live for.

Now just imagine how they feel with another demon falls out of the sky one day. Except this one is lost and confused, with no idea where he is, where his friends are, and keeps talking about something called a Boatem and the moon crashing. And he doesn't even seem to know that he is a demon either.

fWhip doesn't trust Impulse in the slightest, convinced that he's just another minion of Xornoth sent to lure him and Pix to their deaths. But Pix can't help but think of a book of prophecies he has stashed away, basically all he has left of Lizzie, with words written long ago speaking of hope, brought by fugitives of the moon wearing the appearance of the enemy. And maybe, just maybe, this could be the opening they need against Xornoth. Or Impulse could be the final nail in the coffin for an already doomed world.

One more quick note about Pearl specifically. Because she's got a False Symmetry kind of situation going on. Yes, there's two Pearls! And yes, that's as confusing for Impulse, Pix, and fWhip as you think it is. Empires Pearl and Hermit Pearl are both here as separate people, and both have their own distinct roles in the story.

So that's the premise of Crimson Sun! I do intend to make a masterpost for this and have this intro, some other posts, and the eventual fic linked to it. I think it's a very cool premise at least, and I'm looking forward to writing it once I'm done with Dragon's Blood. Feel free to send me asks about it if you've made it this far and are interested in knowing more!

Oh, and yes, I do intend to have more fics part of this AU based on the remaining chapters of Deltarune. I don't have any plot ideas for Chapter 2 yet, but I have decided that fic will feature Impulse, Skizz, Bdubs, and Martyn (because of the datastream defender thing), and the dark world will be in Impulse's season 10 cyberpunk city. But that's all I've decided so far. And one thing at a time. Got to finish the first one.

[vexwerewolf]

Hi! I'm working on a TTRPG by the name of Starburn: Asclepias (I'd be honored if you checked out my post about it, but no pressure, this isnt a self promo thing). What I was wondering is, once I finish the damn thing, what next? Should I go find a publisher, or just drop it on itchio? Should I run a kickstarter? How do I get people to hear about it??? I'm sending this ask to a couple people, so it may not be 100% your field, but I'd love to hear any thoughts/suggestions!

So the problem about giving advice is that the things that worked for me were quite specific to me. I had a very strong presence on Twitter and Tumblr prior to launching my Kickstarter, was well known in the Lancer community as the Lancer Ransom Note Meme Guy, and was well known in the furry fandom. I was well-connected and that meant that my Kickstarter got a lot of exposure and support.

My advice based on that would be:

Work out a succinct description by which your product can be easily explained: IGF is Borderlands But In Space With Mechs. Of course there's way more to it than that, but this makes it easy to explain to people. With that description, most people who hear it will understand right away whether or not it's for them.

Do NOT be generic. Establish a very distinct and specific brand for your product and take that shit as far as it will go. For me, IGF has consistently performed better the weirder I make it. It is, as I have described it, "a serious story told in a fundamentally unserious world" and the more goofy off-the-wall shit I add to it, the more people seem to enjoy it. In these times, the indie RPG scene is consistently churning out totally bizarre power fantasies like INFINITE REVOLUTION where you are a superhero with a nuclear turbine for a heart and you can love humanity so much you explode. That game knows precisely what it wants to be. Do NOT need to water down your creative vision for the sake of mass-market appeal because You Will Never Outsell D&D But You Also Don't Have To. Make the game you want to make. Make it as weird and specific and idiosyncratic as you want. I guarantee you someone out there is going to be into it and they will be more attracted to a game that is bizarre but unashamedly authentic than a compromise version of the idea that looks a bit like everything else.

Build an online presence.

Promote your game as part of a complete social media presence. It shouldn't be the only thing you talk about, but you should talk about it, consistently and frequently. Project confidence - assume that people will want to hear about your ideas. If you seem confident that your ideas are worth hearing, it's more likely that others will as well!

When drawing up a Kickstarter budget, work out how much everything that needs to be in the final release will cost, and then add about 20%, because Kickstarter is going to take about that much off of what you make.

Ideally, your Kickstarter should start on a Tuesday at between 12 noon - 5PM Eastern Standard Time, run for 30 days and neither its first or last 72 hours should overlap any major holidays. Promote it consistently and respectfully, especially during its first and last 24 hours, which are the times in which you will make the most money.

If you're going to distribute on itch.io, get your itch.io mass mailer authorization WAY in advance, WAY WAY WAY in advance, like at least a week to two weeks off your release date. It takes a while.

There are probably more things I could give advice on but I have COVID right now so I hope this suffices.

[barclaysangel]

A Siren’s Embrace; Chapter 5: Connection of the Sea

Here's chapter 5, y'all! Aaaand the last chapter for now because I haven't finished chapter 6. My brain is all over the place, doing homework, starting my masters program in less than 3 weeks, AND got a new sapphic story idea that involves witches. So...yeah. I'm a mess. Buuuuut, hopefully you guys like this chapter. It's more angsty than the other chapters and once again, I projected so much of myself and my family life into Nika and her family. So things that are said near the end are things that happened in my real life. It's fine, I'll live. But please comment, comments make me feel happy and I hope to one day get back into this story because I do have ideas for further chapters, I just can't figure out a proper ending. I still hope y'all like this story though.

Thank you and enjoy :)

Word count: 2K

Tags: @streets-in-paradise @king-of-wicked

Nika’s world was falling apart. 

At least that’s what it felt like to her. 

Her world felt like it was slowly dissipating, crumbling, going to turn to dust and vanish at any given moment. She knew her parents loved her, wanted the best for her and all. But if she had to hear about how she needed to get her shit together and figure out what she wanted to do in life one more time, she’s going to explode. 

Whether that be in rage or depression was unclear and would end up being a surprise to Nika and everyone around her. 

She knew she should figure out what the hell she wanted to do. But for fuck’s sake, she just graduated high school. Nika’s going to a community college close by to figure out what she wanted to major in, what she felt connected to because high school certainly didn’t create any connections. But she knows her father would prefer it if she figured it out now and went straight into a university. 

But…she couldn’t. Nika didn’t know what she wanted to do yet, she was barely 18 years old. She just needed some time to figure it out before condemning herself to a path where she would feel complacent or self-loathing. 

Is that really too much to ask? 

“Nika?” Pearl said her name, snapping the human out of her thoughts, a small look of concern in her sea green eyes. “Okay? You are quiet. Sad. Why are you quiet and sad?” 

Nika put on a smile and shook her head. “Sorry, I’m just distracted. I’m okay, you don’t need to worry. I’m not sad.” 

“Yes you are,” Pearl replied quickly as she stared so deeply at Nika, “I can feel it. Your sadness. It is strong. I feel your sadness.”

Is it possible for mermaids to just feel what you’re feeling? She wondered silently. Maybe. There was still so much that Nika didn’t know about humans yet, she wouldn’t entirely be surprised. Sometimes it felt like Pearl was staring so deep into the human’s soul, discovering all of her deepest and darkest secrets. 

It must be an effect that the mermaid has on her, that’s all. 

Nika didn’t say anything for a moment, her mouth opening and then closing before just shaking her head as she looked away. “I’ll be okay. Really. It’s…hard to explain anyway, you really don’t need to worry about it.” 

“I worry,” Pearl said, once again without any hesitation, “you are sad. You are in pain. In here,” She pressed a wet finger to Nika’s chest, right where her heart is, “and in here.” Her finger moved to the center of the human’s forehead. 

She didn’t really know what to say at first, looking away again until the mermaid rested her hand on her shoulder. “Speak to me…please?” 

Something about Pearl was truly persuasive, even when there was no siren song used. There was something gentle about her touch, the look in her eyes, that felt like maybe, just maybe, she could understand. 

“It’s…hard. To talk about. To explain. No one else really understands except my friends but…it’s not fair to burden them with these problems. My parents…they’re tough. Sometimes too tough. I’m their only child and they want the best for me but…it’s too much. It feels like I can’t breathe around them. It…it feels like I’m drowning.” 

Pearl tilted her head slightly. “You are not drowning. I saved you.”

Nika couldn’t help but to smile a little, despite how she was feeling at the moment. “Not drowning literally. Just…feeling. In here and here,” she pointed to her own chest and head, “it feels like I’m drowning and I can’t breathe. It’s too much and they just don’t get it. They don’t see it. I…I don’t think they ever will. I just…I feel so alone here…” 

The human didn’t even know why she was unloading like this in front of Pearl. The mermaid would truly never understand those pressures and there was nothing that could be done. Nothing would change, Nika had accepted it a long time ago. Didn’t make it hurt any less, but it was something she just needed to get over. 

Yet here Pearl was, frowning, looking as if she was upset on Nika’s behalf. Like she had been the one who was wronged. Finally, the mermaid spoke, “I have a gift for you. Stay, please?” The human barely had time to nod before Pearl flung herself into the ocean. 

Maybe you freaked her out. Congrats, stupid, you weirded out a mermaid with your pathetic family issues. She thought to herself and she ran both of her hands over her face and up through her hair, trying to block out the pessimistic voice. 

Nika took a few deep breaths to push back the tears that were threatening to expose themselves in her eyes before the green-eyed mermaid came back, her blue tail swishing in the water, and holding out a rather large conch shell to the human. 

This wasn’t Pearl’s first gift of seashells at all. She had given her many that now reside in Nika’s room, all of which she had claimed to her parents that she found from her recent trips to the beach. But this was certainly the largest one, barely fitting in both of the mermaid’s hands. 

Huh…receiving gifts must be Pearl’s love language.

“Oh, Pearl…it’s beautiful,” Nika said softly before carefully taking the conch shell from her, holding it in her own hands, “you didn’t need to give this to me.”

“I did.” Pearl replied before she pulled herself onto the rock, sitting right beside the human with their shoulders now touching. “Shell is strong. Shiny. Beautiful. You are strong. Shiny. Beautiful. You are my seashell.”

Nika wasn’t quite sure what Pearl meant by the last part, but either way, it made her heart flutter from the compliments. She was sure that this was the mermaid’s way to try and cheer her up and in a way, it worked. 

She really did appreciate the sentiment, even if it was a bit out of the ordinary. 

Oh, what the hell, she was friends with a fucking mermaid. It’s been out of the ordinary for a long time. 

“Thank you. Really. I…I appreciate it,” Nika said with a soft smile as she held the conch close to her, “I’m at my happiest whenever I see you. You just…make me feel better.” 

Her confession caused Pearl to smile more and got a certain glint in her eyes, as if she had decided on something. “I will see you more. I will make you happy.” 

The human didn’t have time to question her on that before she realized how late it was and that she needed to go home soon, promising Pearl that she would try and see her again tomorrow. 

Nika almost wished that she hadn’t gone home when she did arrive, because the questions on her whereabouts were thrown again. 

“I went to the beach. I wanted to get some fresh air, it’s gonna be weird not going to school for a while.” She threw out her excuse to them, thankful that having overprotective parents caused her to be pretty decent when it came to lying. 

“You’ve been going out to the beach so often, Annika” Her mother started to tell her, “you need to be more careful. Maybe you should be staying inside some more, especially with what happened to Erickson recently.” 

Nika knew exactly what her mother was referring to. Erickson was an old and irritating man, someone who often spent his time harassing preteen girls and throwing his beer bottles or other garbage into the ocean. Nika would clean up after him whenever she saw his trash and throw them away properly. She was never fond of him but since they lived close by, she just tried to steer clear from him and pay him no mind. 

It would be a lot easier now since Erickson’s body was found just a couple of days ago on the shores of the beach. Well, rather what was left of him. From what Nika had heard, he had been mauled apart. She had to sneak around to the other side of the beach to see Pearl because of all the caution tape around and trying to investigate the scene. 

“Erickson was a drunk who probably decided to go swimming in the middle of the ocean and got attacked by a shark. Or maybe some other wild animal, who knows,” She told both of her parents with a nonchalant look on her face, “I’m very careful whenever I go, okay? I don’t go too far into the ocean when I go surfing or swimming. Really, I’m not going to die.”

Let’s just forget about the part where you did drown when you went surfing and only survived because of a mermaid, they certainly didn’t need to know about that.

“That doesn’t matter, you need to be more careful. I don’t even know what you do at the beach, you should be doing more exercise so you can lose weight.” Her father told her suddenly, even pointedly staring at her stomach. 

If Nika could scream from the top of her lungs without facing any repercussions, she absolutely would at that very moment. 

If she had a dollar for every fucking time her father or both her parents mentioned her weight in a negative manner, she would’ve skipped town, left Neptune Bay in the rearview mirror, because she’d be a fucking billionare. 

Nika wasn’t skinny. If she thought hard about it, she hadn’t been skinny since she was in kindergarten. She was chubby but she tried to not let it bother her. She tried to own up to her curves and find the beauty within herself, the beauty that Jay and Lucy point out all the time. 

But then her parents’ open their mouths with their opinions and all that self-confidence goes straight down the drain. 

Don’t you see what you’re fucking doing to me? You’re killing me. You’re. Fucking. Killing. Me. I want to hurt myself because of you, don’t you understand that? Just fucking look at me and understand that you make me hate myself!

Despite her boiling emotions, Nika didn’t say a word. She forced a smile like she always did, pretending to let her father’s comments roll down her back, and walked into her room. 

Her self-hatred bubbled inside of her, wanting so badly to cry. To hurt herself. Scratch and punch her stomach like she sometimes did when the words became too much. But this time, Nika held it in. She pulled the conch shell from her bag, holding it close to her chest as if it was a teddy bear, and rocked herself slightly as she sat on her bed. 

Strong. Shiny. Beautiful. That’s what Pearl said I am. Strong. Shiny. Beautiful. Maybe she sees something in me that no one else has seen before and we’ve only known each other for a few weeks. To her, I’m strong and shiny and beautiful. Pearl makes me feel happy and special. 

Nika tried to hang onto those words that the mermaid said to her. She ate less than usual for dinner and was more quiet, faking laughs and conversations to avoid suspicion, but that was all. Just enough for her parents to not get on her case again. 

She kept it all inside until she went to bed, clutching onto her precious pearl necklace and cried her heart out. Nika let her tears soak her pillow, fully prepared to cry herself to sleep like she’s done plenty of times before. 

Although she couldn’t quite fall asleep. She woke up multiple times throughout the knife, experiencing random pains throughout her body, most prominent in the lower half. Nika’s legs twitched against her will, feeling like the inside was twisting and bending. It was worse than the typical soreness she’d feel when her father forced her to go hike with him. 

She didn’t know what the hell was going on. 

Maybe she was experiencing some psychosomatic symptoms of anxiety again, but they were surely different this time. 

Eventually, exhaustion took over and Nika finally fell asleep, hoping for a better day tomorrow. 

[b4tracha]

Bad Day (Hyunjin)

(Hyunjin x Male Reader)

Sometimes, (M/N) wondered if the world was against him. Today, unfortunately, was one of those days. Nothing seemed to go right, and every little thing made him want to snap. But out of respect for others around him and not wanting to embarrass himself in front of the whole university, he held it all in until he was at home.

The second he stepped in the door, the tears he held in all day finally poured down his face. A loud sob he didn't realize he was holding in was roared from his throat, raw and wet. He slowly took off his shoes at the door. He sluggishly scooted his way to his bedroom, his feet barely moving in front of the other before he reached the cold, empty bed.

(M/N) whimpered as he held the pillow to his chest, covering his body with the blankets to feel the warmth he desperately desired, reminiscing on the day that just occurred.

It all started when (M/N) woke up late, his phone dying in the middle of the night. He fell asleep doing a project and didn’t plug up the phone. He rushed out of his dorm in unmatched clothes, hair barely done, and was compressed in a beanie. And because he fell asleep doing the project, he got a giant 0% and which dragged his grade nearly 25 percent lower. Now he’s failing horribly. What made it worse he was called out in front of everyone for not doing it on time.

Everything he just did just seemed to make everything worse.

Now that (M/N) was home and alone, all he wanted to do was cry, sleep and maybe get cuddles from his boyfriend. He also had class today, but he wasn't so sure if he would come over today as he has a big art project to do.

They didn't live together at the moment as Hyunjin wanted to stay with his parents and save up for a bigger apartment with (M/N) after they finished their studies and got a stable job.

Click-

That must be him. Hyunjin has a spare key and usually would come over whenever he could. However, from the monotone messages he received today, he was probably worried about his boyfriend.

Without moving from the tight ball position he was in, he heard shoes hitting the floor and the creaking of the floor as Hyunjin walked closer and closer to the bedroom he was crying in.

“Hey baby, are you okay?” He opened the covers and cuddled up to him. "You weren't talking much when we were messaging earlier."

“No.” (M/N) sniffled and rubbed his eyes hard, face scrunched up as another hard sob came from him. Hyunjin frowned and pulled (M/N) into his chest as he ran his hands up and down his hips and back to calm him down. He cried into his shirt, gripping it tight enough to almost rip. Hyunjin knew he was ruining his shirt, but he just didn’t care at the moment. His baby is hurting.

“You don’t have to talk about it, baby. Just know it’s all going to be okay. You know why?” Hyunjin reassured the man. He hummed, not trusting his voice to answer the male.

“Because I’m here, my love. I’ll make sure everything is okay.” He kissed the top of her head and smiled down at him. “Do I have to fight someone? Was it Seungmin? Jeongin?”

(M/N) laughed and shook his head at the joke about their friends. After a long silence, the crying finally stopped. Hyunjin always made things better.

“How about I get up and grab the ice cream from the freezer? We can watch a drama and eat it while we cry?” Hyunjin suggested. (M/N) finally looked up at him and smiled.

“Yeah, I think my head will explode if I let out another tear. Thank you, Hyunjinnie,” He kissed his cheek, and Hyunjin's eyes creased as he smiled hard at the sentiment. That was the smile (M/N) fell in love with. "I just want to take a nap right now."

“Of course, (M/N). I love you so much” He kissed him softly and held him closer to his chest.

“I love you more than anything, Hyunjin."

[senlinyu]

Hi sen! Hope you’re doing lovely. Just wanted to ask how writing outside of fanfic is going? I’ve only ever written fanfic in long form and now I’m trying my hand at original work and it’s horrific. I worry I have no original ideas and all my characters are a ripoff of dramione. Have you felt creating new worlds and characters is hard outside of fanfic?

Haha. It's going alright. I have written original stuff sort of on and off for longer than I've been writing fanfic but just always keeping it to myself and never finishing it for a myriad of reasons. Personally I have discovered that my mind exists in liquid form and wants to run in all directions at once unless there is a container to keep it penned it. Fanfic works nicely for me because it comes with presets for character backgrounds and worldbuilding that I have to work really hard to argue with. So I tend to have lots of ideas for original projects but then I get overwhelmed by the fact that I have infinite choices and they all branch off into more choices and I try to think through all my options until my brain explodes. So my biggest issue is making creative boundaries for myself so that I actually write instead of endlessly contemplating every possibility imaginable, and part of that has been by forcing myself to focus on the specific story I actually want to tell, and using that as the initial framework for starting an outline and draft, and cutting all the infinite possibilities that don't fit. Personally I find that my creativity actually thrives within boundaries because then I have to stretch myself and subvert the rules out of spite, whereas when there are no limits I turn rather dull and boring and placid.

As for characterisations: I mean, I think if anyone knows I'm a dramione, they'll be able to tell to some degree. But I don't really think that's because I'm just ripping off dramione but more that I have a particular type of characters and relationship dynamic that I specifically like and always come back to. I've been a voracious reader most of my life, I've been in a myriad of different fandoms, but dramione is the one I always come back to because it is my favourite dynamic. I want to write really blisteringly intelligent female characters, and I enjoy antagonistic/antiheroic love interests with dubious morals. The reason I like and write dramione is because I like that dynamic and dramione has consistently been the most interesting place to write and read that, moreso than because I like dramione and that's the dynamic they happen to have. But honestly, dramione has become it's own culture at this point in how we write Draco and Hermione. I just found out that Ianthe Tridentarius is drarry-coded femme Draco, and that literally never occurred to me when I read The Locked Tomb series, even though I'm in drarry enough to immediately recognise it once I knew which fandom she was based on. Subfandoms tend to evolve their characters into really fandom specific iteration that aren't necessarily recognizable to anyone on the outside. Besides you can always change things a lot in revision.