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conejitomareador · 2 months ago

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what made you wanna write the story for bitchless?

this question is so important to me... so i'll do my best to answer in full detail okay !!

i've been on and off in the south park fandom since i was in grade school, posting art on deviantart, alright? i love south park and i consume a lot of fan content. it's the autism, definitely. i got diagnosed during my second year of art school.

but i think that if art school gives you a specific mindset it's one of questioning visual art in all its forms. so, after my last comeback to these spaces in february 2022 i came to the conclusion that i don't like a few things that i see in fanart:

(this is not me saying that you shouldn't. if you or anyone reading this like them it's totally cool!! tropes and ships are popular for a reason, you know?)

1- i don't like stan's characterization. cishet (and in denial), popular, jock stan was a very common headcanon/trope that i grew up with, especially during the last decade. it made a lot of sense when the show started, but as we watch the current seasons, we see stan evolve into this nerdy kid who is obsessed with board games, quotes anime and enjoys metal music. we see him pay little to no attention to his girlfriend and growing more and more fixated towards his male best friend, he's always been curious about gender to the point of imitating big gay al. we see him literally question his own gender in bathroom doors. we barely see him play sports at this point? i don't think that the stan we currently have is headed to the direction the fandom had pointed towards him. so i started drawing him like a nerd. moving on.

2- i don't like how weirdly protective people are about canon ships (a.k.a. if someone made me date my grade school boyfriend right now i would hate it so much). stendy, creek and tolchole (to a lesser degree) are often kind of treated like a monolith- they're unquestionable and unmovable and always there, "because it's canon". i know how important was for creek to become canon, i was there. but after watching post-covid... man. does it give me a weird aftertaste that these two ten year olds who were forced into a relationship ended up married and these other two ten year olds who have lived in the same town for decades are now in a weird situationship. they should date other people at least for a little bit, develop emotional maturity and decide if they wanna stick together at least lol. and with stendy, i'd stay first love should be a first love and that's it (i was talking with pom about that!!), making it endgame after such a long time of seeing that stan barely cares makes me feel weird. people being super weird about creek or style to the degree of calling themselves purists and DNI'ing whoever ships other things threw me off immensely as well. i'm sorry. this is just a me thing probably.

3- this is very similar, but i like to see different dynamics and how they play out!! after almost 30 years of existing, south park fan content often falls in the same common places. nothing wrong with that of course!! but i wanna see things playing out in ways i don't see often.

4- this is just a pet peeve of mine and it's not as common nowadays but why are we giving older designs of characters a big version of their childhood outfits. i don't know a single person who still wears or even keeps the winter hat they wore as a kid. the characters should be recognizable through their outfits!! there's so many possibilities, we should make it fun you know!!

edit: i believe it’s important to add that i really enjoy not only being a contrarian and venting about not liking these things, but i also wanted to make this sort of essay about loneliness experienced in different ways and how it affects your personal relationships. for stan it’s realizing when depression takes over and you’re missing out on everything your loved ones are doing— the world is moving, time is passing and you’ve been in bed the whole time. for everyone else? well, we’ll see.

i started out just drawing these guys, but i felt like making a full story would be more compelling. i love doujinshi and fancomics and i believe that we should always question the quality of the content we consume- and if we don't like it we should just make our own interpretations and stories. that's the beauty of fan content!! reflection and creation, not just mindless consumption. canon is not a guarantee that things are good!! so many things don't even make it to the final cut, the original content gets digested by networks and companies and sponsors and political interests before we even get to see it!! making a comic is rough (and i've spent three years of my life creating this material about characters i don't even own legally), but a start is a start and well. i like this, i've always liked graphic novels and i always wanted to make one. i kind of owed it to myself too.

in conclusion, i just wanted to make something that i found fun and new and i could share with my south park fandom friends after my autism diagnosis (it was rough, but i was medically cringe and thus i felt very justified to be obsessed with my childhood special interest)!! i'm very lucky to be able to complement and elaborate on some of my choices with theory about art and media analysis that i get at uni, and i'm even luckier that so many people have taken a liking to it as well!!

so thank you for enjoying my comic so far <3 and thank you for showing interest in it. thank you so much!!

#ask #ask conejito #shroomerr #im getting emotional it might be my cold medicine #omg un conejo que habla #marco teorico #i dont wanna sound like a pretentious dick im just ramblin #if you do the things that i dont like in fanart ur still super awesome #in the end of the day its only south park

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marsmarvel02 · 2 months ago

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Dive Olly Dive incorrect quotes: Compilation edition

Dr. Kate: If anyone has a question, they can ask now. Soak: Is the S or the C silent in Scent? Dr. Kate: If anyone has a question related to our expedition today, they can ask now.

Dirk, being forced to apologize to Olly and Beth: I want to apologize for the awful true things I've said constantly.

Olly: Would you please stop staring dramatically off into the distance while I'm talking to you? Soak: [staring dramatically off into the distance] I don't know what you're talking about.

Dr. Kate, going over Soak's resume: Okay, so right here, it states that you're creative. Soak: Yes! Dr. Kate: Okay! May I know what you create? Olly, swimming by: Problems.

[Olly's first meeting with the Glaken] Olly: Everyone thought you were a myth. Glaken: Well, you were myth-taken.

Soak: ‘Tis but a scratch. Olly: A scratch? Your arm’s off! Soak: No, it isn’t. Olly: Well, what’s that, then? *points to Soak’s metal arm lying on the seabed* Soak: I’ve had worse. Olly, not wanting to find out if the last part is true or not: Come on, let's get you to Shankley.

Soak: Why does everyone always assume I’m going to do something stupid? Beth, under her breath: It saves time.

Soak, to himself: What if mayonaise came in cans? Soak, to himself: That would suck, because cans aren’t microwaveable.

Olly: Stop setting things on fire because you’re curious about what will happen. what will happen is fire. Soak: but what if, something else happen. just this 1 time Olly: *double take* Wait, how did you do that? We're underwater!

Dr. Kate (after giving the subs a lecture): Does anyone have any questions- BIOLOGY RELATED QUESTIONS? Soak: What kind of animal is the Pink Panther again?

Soak: I just spontaneously learned how to embroider at three in the morning. Soak: I also almost burned the house down in the process. Don't ask me how, it's a long story.

Beth: Let me show you a picture from last night that really upset me. Soak: Okay, but in my defense, Skid bet me five bucks that I couldn’t drink all that shampoo. Beth: That's not what I--? Beth: YOU DRANK SHAMPOO!?

Soak: What if I pour coffee in my cereal instead of milk? Beth: *taking the coffee pot as she walks by* What if you don't?

Soak: The bottle said ‘caution extremely flammable’ so that was my motivation.

UMA: Do you want some advice? Olly: No. UMA: Kind of makes me want to give it to you even more.

Soak: If no one comes from the future to stop me from doing it, then how bad of a decision can it really be?

Ranger: Why did the can-crusher quit his job? Olly: Why? Ranger: Because it was ‘soda’ depressing! Olly: Soak, whispering: Is he always like this? Olly, whispering: Yes.

Soak: Maybe if I... Beth: Careful, Soak! Remember the last time you "maybe if I'd? They had to call in the Coast Guard. Soak: I know! I got to hold a grenade launcher!

Soak: I'm the kind of guy that likes to think things through. Beth: Since when? I once saw you eat a marshmallow that was still on fire.

Soak's philosophy: Trial and error, but mostly error. Like a cargo-ship-load of error.

Soak: There are three ways to do things: the right way, the wrong way, and the Soak way. Olly: Isn’t that the wrong way? Soak: Yeah, but faster!

Soak: So I can either bake these cookies at 400 degrees for 10 minutes or 4,000 degrees for 1 minute. Beth: Soak that’s NOT how you bake cookies! Soak: FLOOR IT? Beth: NO Soak: HOW ABOUT 4,000,000 DEGREES FOR 1 SECOND Beth: SOAK YOU ARE GOING TO BURN THE HOUSE DOWN Soak: I’M GOING TO HARNESS THE SUN TO MAKE COOKIES

Soak: Don’t panic, I’m in charge here. Everyone: THAT’S WHY WE’RE PANICKING!

Soak: You know what would be a great idea? Olly: The opposite of whatever you're about to say?

Soak: Why am I not a banana? Olly, with a waterproof biology book: Because your genetic code dictates that you are a submarine. However, it should please you to know that you share 50-60% of your DNA with a banana. Soak: Thanks, Olly. Soak: Are you telling me that some people are 10% more banana than other people? Beth, shouting from the distance: We're machines, we don't have DNA!

(As always, Soak belongs tp @kylievershion)

#dive olly dive #dive olly dive!#dive olly dive incorrect quotes #incorrect quotes

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golbrocklovely · 10 months ago

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I myself am trying to catch up on this corey stuff. I'm so lost

okay, i'm gonna give the quickest of rundowns on this whole thing.

aka i watched elton's video so everyone doesn't have to lol

so to give the slightest bit of backstory, corey left tfil/overnight/haunted homies a couple months back. he then came out with a video in april saying that the reason he left is bc he wants to pursue other ventures, in particular sketch comedy bc that's so timely. but he also said he would still be doing ghost hunting, just not with elton. around this time he also unfollowed elton, and devyn on her secret twitter was shitting on elton in some way (but idk what she said bc it's private). him and devyn have also started back up their old channel where they ghost hunt. and corey... i think... has posted some vlogs or whatever here and there on his main channel. but idk for certain since i don't watch him.

now, for some reason, elton has decided to clear the air on what happened with him and corey bc his leaving was very abrupt and confused a lot of fans.

imma just bullet point this list as best i can bc wow does that man love to talk and say almost nothing for over an hour.

THIS IS ALL ALLEGED, I'M JUST QUOTING WHAT ELTON SAID

elton alluded to corey possibly being the reason why the beef with snc lasted so long; mostly bc corey loves talking shit on ppl he's collabed with in the past. and full on would tell elton not to recollab with certain paranormal ppl bc. in particular, exploring with josh (who was also surprised to find out corey shit talked him since he commented "what" on elton's video)

the main portion of the video was solely to explain that while corey allegedly claims to be broke or not have made much money off of the overnight channel/tfil, elton very much begs to fucking differ

corey would get paid roughly $10k A WEEK during investigations, trips, whatever. elton also stated that he would pay anyone that would go on trips with them, roughly $2500 for the day, but that would fluctuate depending on the circumstances.

corey technically made over half a mil a year for the past couple years bc of elton paying him to be on the channel. elton also stated that corey makes more than elton on the channel bc elton basically pays for everything while corey has no stake in the claim.

corey did literally no work bts whatsoever. never suggested any places to go to, never paid for anything (not the hotel, driving, booking of spots, ect), and then on top of it never did any work like editing, getting ghost equipment, research. elton did everything, but would pay corey 50% since he was the other person on the channel mainly.

corey would flake out of a lot of things last minute for unknown reasons. or when they would discuss things to do/places to go, he would just not do it or go. and sometimes this would play out on camera, and to elton's justification, is why he would seem to "force" corey to do things. basically bc it was agreed on beforehand, only for corey to not do it once they got there.

during a charity livestream that was supposed to last for about a week (if not longer), corey claimed to feel ill, did nothing to help himself, and then left the charity livestream early.

then the fans that donated the most during that stream were supposed to fly out and meet elton and corey (all expenses paid by elton himself). corey decided last minute not to meet fans. elton then had to give refunds to some ppl who had wanted to meet corey.

corey would get a cut of the shares when it came to merch as well. even tho he wouldn't design it, be the one paying to ship it out, nothing. they created the haunted bundles that they did on the tfil site just so corey could make more money.

elton got rid of some of his staff just so corey could make more money/be paid more

the haunted homies tour that they did, elton planned all of it and created it bc corey wanted to do more funny bits instead of all of the haunted stuff. bc… it was corey's dream to eventually end up on snl. no, i am not joking. that is something elton actually claims corey wants lol

the second haunted homies tour, the one with matt rife, corey was contractually obligated to post about it/tell their editor in time what clips he would want to repost on his accounts. corey never did that/would take too long to get back to them on what he wanted, and then would later ask for certain clips to be removed from the vids long after the video was already up.

elton gifted $10k to corey bc he claimed to need more money… even after all of this shit played out

they had to make less content last year bc of how often corey would just not do projects with him/would flake out last minute

at the beginning of this year, elton had a bunch of tfil trips planned, with overnight videos in between also being filmed. basically had it laid out that they would only have to film for the first couple months, and then pick up filming again in october. so almost the entire year was planned out. he was just waiting for corey to sign off on it.

elton travels to some place (i'm blanking on it now) and then gets a single text from corey that says "hey man, i've wanted to bring this up for a while, but this year i'm gonna pull back from overnight and just focus on myself" with no explanation or conversation. and since that text, he has basically ghosted elton irl and online. but has apparently been saying things to friends in common that old roommates (like elton and whoever else all lived with them these past couple years) has stole shit from him, ect. and in general, he has been talking shit on elton bts.

i think that's everything i can remember off the top of my head that elton alleged. if i remember anything else, i'll add it. but this was pretty much a good chunk of the vid.

basically, the general gist is corey had one job: show up and make money. and he couldn't even do that lol

#ask #personal #elton castee #corey scherer #corey/elton drama

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iris-writesx · 2 years ago

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gallivich fandom intro post 🎉

first of all i just wanted to say how lovely of an idea it is that @callivich made an intro post and tag for everyone to use, i think it’s super nice :) i’ve been lurking on ao3 in the ian and mickey fics for a while and thought it was time to finally come to tumblr and post some writing of my own! but i’d love love love to make friends in the fandom too, so here i am lol

Name — iris (or amber if you come from my old account @heytherejulietx , all follows or likes will come from there as it’s still technically my main i just won’t use it as much lol)

Age — 18+ (not too comfy saying my actual age online but i am over 18 akdjwjd)

What made you fall in love with Gallavich? i’ve been binging the show for a while now and i’ve always just loved the more complicated characters i guess. both ian and mickey’s stories really tugged at my heartstrings, and to see them be able to fall in love with each other throughout the show is really kind of beautiful. i’m such a sucker for ships where they both end up healing each other.

How long have you been a fan? i’ve been watching the show for a good few months and lurking on ao3 for a couple of those, and i’ve read so many fics that my brainrot for them has completely skyrocketed. i haven’t even finished the show yet (i’m on s8 and i know what happens for the most part) but i just wanted to join the fandom now i’m impatient akdjwkd

Favourite Gallavich moment/scene — like i said i haven’t finished the show yet, but i think the ones that really are heartwarming and show just how strong their bond is has to be when mickey is helping ian through his bipolar (as much as s5 hurts), i also adored the scene where mickey came out to everyone in the bar so that he didn’t lose ian :( though i’m excited for domestic gallavich in s10 and 11 so that’ll probably change akdnwdk

Favourite Shameless character apart from Ian and Mickey? honestly i am completely in love with kev, i think he’s funny as fuck and i just adore him so so so much

Do you write or draw or make edits? i write! so far i have literally only written one drabble but more are going to be posted soon. i’d love love love to get some requests :)

Favourite type of Gallavich fics? i’ve always been a sucker for hurt-comfort, though i also adore domestic, sometimes even dad!gallvich fics

Favourite Gallavich quote? my favourite genuine quote is probably “ian, what you and i have makes me free” because :((((( but other than that, literally anything that mickey says in his pimp era is sooooo fucking funny

Anything else you’d like to share about yourself? i took a long long break from my old tumblr account (i’m staring fresh here with a new fandom <3) and i can’t wait to get back into writing again. i’d honestly just love to make friends in the fandom and get some requests and interest going for fics. everyone i’ve seen here is super super lovely so far and the fandom seems like such a lovely place i really can’t wait to get into it on here :)

please feel free to dm or fill up my ask box or literally anything loves <3

#gallavichintro #gallavich #ian gallagher x mickey milkovich

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anymal28 · 1 year ago

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@bonesby I probably did this wrong, but here ya go

🎱 - 0, I literally have no finished works to even post

🍓 - I have not posted any works yet. But basically no one was writing the stories I was looking for. I also have great ideas and suck at making characters for said ideas.

🌵 - Might be my own👀 https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0OueUGpDtDuRAFljBrZJtn?si=Moy5y7aRSguNXYxFoQpDaA&pi=u-JFkaI__xQo2Y

🕯 - Friends works: 9/10. I like helping them out and being one of the first to read their works, plus they're both stupid good at writing

My Works: 2/10, I'm my own worst enemy. I recently went back to edit a wip and am very close to deleting the whole thing and rewriting it.

🛼 - 🔫🗡��🥷💣

🥑 - @bonesby & @louisapennyfeather2021

🥤- 0KKULTiC : We Would Be Savage series on ao3

inexperiencedandconfused8 on ao3

GoAwayOlivia : Jason Todd: The Not-So-Outlaw on ao3

I have many suggestions

💌 - 0 actually

🌻 - Literally anyone who follows me

🐇 - If yall ever catch me writing reader inserts, just know I did it as a joke and Hell must've froze over

🧃 - I am asthmatic

🎲 - Lack of motivation

🍄 - NOT A SHIP, but Dick Grayson 100% eats cheerios by picking them up with his tongue and Jason hardcore judges him for it even tho Jason does the same thing with chips cause he refuses to get his fingers cheesy.

🧸 - Talk to me and dont stop talking to me no matter how awkward things get. I'm very bad at keeping up communications.

🪐 - One of my goats finally had her babies, I finally get to bring my other goat home from the hospital, I dont have to bottle feed anything yet.

📚 - This prompt

🍬 - I'm not educated enough for this

🔪 - The explicit details on the different sections of the human spine and how all of them function and which parts of the body would be affected depedning on which part of the spine was damaged. Also retail store security tags.

🦷 - You can only heat something up twice before it starts to make you sick

❄️ - Literally anything found family, I'm such a sucker for that. Anyone could write it good honestly.

🌿 - Change the space you're writing in. If you're writing in your bedroom, go to a different room. Change up the environment.

🥐 - "crazy, I was crazy once..."

🏜 - Have not received any cause have not posted any

🍦 - I GUESS he is loyal, he got better at communicating, and hes not AS horrible as before

🥝 - Not really, its more of a waste of breath to lie a lot. I did lie to my Grandpa about my goat's vet bill

🦋 - The fucking quote of "Farming teaches you how to be totally responsible and completely useless"

🦴 - Literally anything found family. Im a sucker for that

🍅 - The character's responses and reactions need to change and be more thought out for the scene. It doesn't match who they are. The entire situation is written okay, but definitely not the best and can be improved.

🐚 - In story writing, surprises are great. Irl, no.

🪲 - [ Hiding and watching in the shadows of the setting sun, he could make Alchemy, Arachne, and Wendigo. With the sight of them came another pang of worry. Who would help heal them when they got injured on patrol? Granted all of them were very careful, but slip ups happen. There were one or two other vigilantes and allies that could help, but he worried they wouldn’t be able to do much when it came to the bigger, more serious stuff. And Arachne? He hoped she wouldn’t do anything stupid. Maybe Alchemy could keep a close eye on her. ]

☁️ - Literally the name I've had since the dawn of time. Its just a play on the word "animal".

🐝 - @bonesby : the bestest person someone could have in their life. Literally you have not won anything if you dont have someone like them.

@louisapennyfeather2021 : Everyone needs someone like them in their corner. They're like the devil on my shoulder except they're constantly trying to keep me from doing dumb shit.

🌸 - Too many. Pics below. In order: Dakota, Charlie, Octavian, Augustus, Tommy, Dillion, Ponk, Maverick, Nora, Oakapi. I have more goats if anyone's interested💀

🎨 - I dont even have any rn, I wouldn't be able to find the ones I used to love, but I know it was Percy Jackson.

🧩 - A lot. Specifically certain smut tags. Porn without plot. Too many smut tags. Incest. There's a lot, and I usually dont know until I see it

Writers Truth & Dare Ask Game

🎱 ⇢ post your AO3 total stats 🍓 ⇢ how did you get into writing fanfiction? 🌵 ⇢ share the link to a playlist you love 🕯️ ⇢ on a scale from 1 to 10, how much do you enjoy editing? why is that? 🛼 ⇢ describe your latest wip with five emojis 🥑 ⇢ you accidentally killed somebody, which mutual(s) do you text for help? 🥤 ⇢ recommend an author or fanfic you love 💌 ⇢ how many unread emails do you have right now? 🌻 ⇢ tag someone you appreciate but don't talk to on a regular basis 🐇 ⇢ do you prefer writing original characters, reader inserts, or a mix of both? 🧃 ⇢ share some personal lore you never posted about before 🎲 ⇢ what stops you from writing more in your free time? 🍄 ⇢ share a head canon for one of your favourite ships or pairings 🧸 ⇢ what's the fastest way to become your mutual? 🪐 ⇢ name three good things going on in your life right now 📚 ⇢ what's the last thing you wrote down in your notes app? 🍬 ⇢ post an unpopular opinion about a popular fandom character 🔪 ⇢ what's the weirdest topic you researched for a writing project? 🦷 ⇢ share some personal wisdom or a life hack you swear on ❄️ ⇢ what's your dream theme/plot for a fic, and who would write it best? 🌿 ⇢ give some advice on writer's block and low creativity 🥐 ⇢ name one internet reference that will always make you laugh 🏜️ ⇢ what's your favourite type of comment to receive on your work? 🍦 ⇢ name three good things about a character you hate 🥝 ⇢ do you lie a lot? what's the most recent lie you told? 🦋 ⇢ share something that has been on your heart and mind lately 🦴 ⇢ is there a piece of media that inspires your writing? 🍅 ⇢ give yourself some constructive criticism on your own writing 🐚 ⇢ do you like or dislike surprises? 🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here ☁️ ⇢ what made you choose your username? 🐝 ⇢ tag your biggest supporter(s) and say one nice thing about them 🌸 ⇢ do you have any pets? if you do, post some pictures of them 🎨 ⇢ link your favourite piece of fanart and explain why you like it 🧩 ⇢ what will make you click away from a fanfiction immediately?

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mikheelm · 4 months ago

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I. Pre-Planning

I call this process the Pre-Planning. It is when you basically lay out your idea and try to process exactly what you have. This will generally take me 3 weeks to a month or two. It has 4 steps.

1. 🅸︎🅳︎🅴︎🅰︎

One day I will be going about my business and then BAM an idea pops up. Or rather the concept of an idea.

Usually it's a scene or just straight up vibes. That's when I take the idea and sit with it. Put it in my mind and think about it for a few days. This is done unconsciously for the most part for most of us. Me included.

How my ideas came is that I imagined a scene between Louis and Daniel meeting over a coffee bar. [I realised this was from what happened in the show and is canon in how they met.]

For a few more days I realised I wanted a human AU. No supernatural. That's all I had at the time.

For the most part sitting with your idea for a few days or weeks helps in getting what exactly you want to tell. You come up with scenes and you have time to see the vibes and overall planning of the fic.

This is three weeks in, a few days after starting documenting. I realised I don't want a completely full human AU. And I want to dabble in Omegaverse.

That's all I have. And it is enough for me. For now. You have to understand that we have to let the idea marinate. Give yourself time to day-dream about it. Mine took weeks before I decided that this was the idea I was going with.

2. 🆂︎🅺︎🅴︎🅻︎🅴︎🆃︎🅾︎🅽︎ 🅿︎🅻︎🅰︎🅽︎🅸︎🅽︎🅶︎

The second thing I did was make it a 'draft' in AO3. This helps to summarise what I want. Especially the use of tags just feels like a neat summary already. Though I know it will change in the future it's a good way to lay a foundation of what I want.

The tagging system shows things like which ship I want to focus on. What type of AU it is and what I want from it. While doing this process I usually take about half an hour.

This will change as I go on of course. Some tags might be added, some will be removed. The M/M tag might be joined with M/F if I want Daniel to explore his sexuality on page. It's not the final and that is why you go and save it as a draft after you are done.

This works as a great way to summarise your fic because the start of every story needs a way to explain your work to others. This would later help write your blurb/summary for your fanfic on AO3.

3. 🆃︎🅷︎🅴︎🅼︎🅴︎ 🅴︎🆇︎🅿︎🅻︎🅾︎🆁︎🅸︎🅽︎🅶︎

Now after all that I take everything that inspired this idea. Songs/pins/scenes/quotes and see what core themes I want to tell in the story. This will also change slightly or grow.

As I edit this I'd like to note I have a whole new pin board for this specific story after the fifth page of this plan. Your themes will somewhat stay the same but they will grow more intricate.

Exploring themes helps writing tone and atmosphere and emotional impact in scenes. Here is the rough inspiration I see as important and I want as my core themes. I've written it on my notebook and then explained them below the picture. [You should do this too. This might take an hour or two depending how much you've thought about it]

★ Helen of troy

The fandom has a trend of calling Louis Helen of Troy. Because of his tendency to attract everyone around him without even trying. Though it's sort of a joke I want to explore it. I am a geek for greek mythology and Helen's story – I've realised – is not really told. It's always about the men around her.

Which is kind of a parallel to Louis whose story never gets told again in his point of view and about the other vampires around him later in the books. And how they work around him or judge him.

Louis having the first day of his own story and then be overlooked later when the men who loved him have a say makes it so tragic because he had what Helen never had but still he is overlooked and given all the blame.

So that's what I want to explore in this fanfic. I do not know how but I plan to do so. I have this video to thank for the idea of making it it's own theme. And this video on how to explore Helen's story into Louis' own story.

★ Pining trope

From Fanlore in Wiki Pining is described to be when one other character is in love with another character in secret and does not tell the object of their affection. [Visit page for a more in-depth explanation]

I want Daniel to be the pine-er in this fic. And I plan for them not to get together in the first part/book of the series. And therefore it will be a slow burn. It's gonna be the main part of the story a lot. The longing of pining etc. This is mainly from how Daniel never forgot about Louis and walked through life carrying him. I think it's so beautiful and sad.

★ Journalist Aesthetic

Honestly because Daniel is a journalist and I find I can incorporate that in my fanfic in a way that can cause a lot of potential drama especially if Lestat is a rockstar already in this fic. Which goes into the angst. Drama = angst most of the time.

★ Hades Town: Hades as a husband

This was mainly a passing idea and inspiration.

Hades in Hades Town was always such an interesting character to me especially comparing to other remakes and re-tellings of any story about Hades and Persephone. In these other retellings Hades is mostly seen as loving and not the villain. Hades always treats Persephone as a Queen. In Hades town it felt like domestic horror and Hades is seen as a workaholic. Like an unhappy marriage that Persephone cannot escape. At least not for too long. Her love for him is a tragedy.

I wanted to apply that to Louis and Lestat's dynamic here. Louis as Persephone and Lestat as Hades. But also in the future as I will be following canon closely, I want to incorporate Armand as Hades too in their dynamic but maybe a different version of him.

Break down & understanding

Now after taking all my main inspirations I break them down to themes.

The obvious themes without looking too much into it is: Angst, Romance, Love, Pining, Family.

The other that comes after some thoughts I want to explore is: Miscarriage and the journey of it.

The pain and hurt coming from that is a great plot point and an opportunity to enhance the stakes and is an opportunity to create an emotional connection between characters.

My reasoning for including it is because of personal reasons.

[My mother not being able to carry children and struggles. The need for her to have a big family but only being able to have two children. And her womb being a place of danger for her children. Both times she has me and my sister we were premature and in risk of death. Me more than my little sister. Fanfics can be a way to explore trauma and though my mom's miscarriage are my mom's trauma it still hit me really deep and makes me prepare for my own future if I have kids. And that I might face the same struggles in the future. Also ties with motherhood.]

Abuse: A theme in the series. And more importantly a theme I have experienced not from my main family (at least not physically) but from living with my extended family.

Infidelity is another theme I want to explore. Not only because of the canon content given to us but also I want to use it to heal and explore Louis as a character and his own upbringing in how he views it.

Other themes will come in and motifs. But it's important to tag most themes. Not only because it is a good summary and it's AO3 etiquette but some themes are triggers for other people. Always tag appropriately.

4. 🆃︎🅸︎🆃︎🅻︎🅴︎

Now this feels optional for some people but my titles often help in how I want my story to go. Usually, like in the show, titles link to the story and become relevant to the story at some point.

This title was inspired by the quote:

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

And then mix it with the question: What does it mean to be the beholder of beauty.

Then I added 'thesis' because a thesis is a study. And the core of the story is that Daniel studies Louis and focuses on him so solely that he becomes a project then he becomes his muse then becomes his beloved.

And that's how I understand the story better. And make sure to never lose focus of the goal of the story.

1. 🆄︎🅽︎🅸︎🆅︎🅴︎🆁︎🆂︎🅴︎ 🆃︎🆈︎🅿︎🅴︎

The next question to ask: What type of AU is it?

I play close to canon in this story. Though I do not have the name yet for what type of AU I'm writing it is sort of a play of Human AU/Omegaverse AU with a mix of Modern AU. Along with using Grey Canon.

For simplicity sake I tag it AU as an umbrella term.

I will be following the shipping arc of the story. Meaning that Louis will be with Lestat then Armand then be single before he gets with Daniel.

Or at least that is what I plan. It might change. Until then I'm playing closely to home.

1. 🅿︎🆁︎🅴︎🅼︎🅸︎🆂︎🅴︎

In the end I take all of this and I put it through a one-liner synopsis that is a summary of my book. This is the work/book's premise.

There are many formats out there. But a few I use just to have a better format when writing my final summary of my work are:

1) In a World where Inciting Incident and Stakes, Character takes Action against Problem to get Goal.

2) When Inciting Incident, Character joins World to take Action despite Problem in order to Goal before Stakes.

3) Character of Problem World takes Action to achieve Goal and Stakes to prevent Inciting Incident.

Now don't concentrate too much on the fancy words such as inciting incident. It's basically what changes for the story begin. What makes the characters life go from 'my normal life' to 'this whole new world'.

Now I take my planning and put through these sweet tings:

1) In a omegaverse-centric world Daniel meets Louis and must keep his crush a secret, Daniel goes to interview him to keep a professional distance so that he doesn't fall deeper for him and to finally score the story that will get him a quality portfolio as a Journalist.

2) When Daniel meets Louis he is immediately drawn to him, Daniel joins his world of stars and money by interviewinh him despite falling for Louis in order to score a story that will get him the best start to his Journalistic portfolio before anyone finds out about his crush on Louis.

3) Daniel, a college student in journalism, is falling for Louis who belongs to the rockstar and rich world goes onto interview Louis so that he can have the best portfolio and stop anyone from finding out his massive crush on Louis so that he doesn't blow his chance at a good story and good friendship.

As you can see the stakes and the inciting incident differ from each structure. Which also dictates the tone of the story. This is why I put it through different synopsis. I'm just Happy that the story stays somewhat the same.

An extra impulsive decision during my creativity is I created a blurb.for the fanfic now that I can see the feeling and vibe in a new perspective:

The summary/synopsis is to help you, the writer, write the story. Having that as a blurb would be fine but will spoil the story at the end. The impulsive blur will help write the story but will change most likely.

No reader will see my synopsis.

[Part 2/? : Pre-Planning]

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therealvinelle · 4 years ago

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Hello! Why do you think Carlisle likes Aro? (Love your meta btw!)

This blog lasted 25 days before becoming an Aro/Carlisle blog. The sanity was nice while it lasted, I suppose.

Oh well, I embrace my trash ship.

(Anon is referring to this post)

(This one is also relevant)

So, while on Aro’s end it was a case of “did the gods just give me my very own Enkidu?”, for Carlisle we must look at the circumstances. The Carlisle Cullen who walked into Volterra is not the Carlisle Cullen who works at Forks General.

Carlisle was a demon-hunting priest who brought his religion into his new life. Having no idea what he’d just become, apart from the obvious things like “I desperately want to kill people for their blood” and “I sparkle?!”, many of the things that are obvious to us would not be at all obvious to him. His only experience with other demons was the slum-dweller that killed him. It was brutal, and three other people from his parish were murdered as well. He’d been able to track the vampire down, something I can only take that to mean that the vampire used his parish for hunting grounds. He’s so horrified by what he’s become that he tries to destroy himself. This fails, and instead he finds a way out that lets him live without having to kill, and with that comes to the realization that vampires retain their souls (which is for another post).

My point being, Carlisle wakes up as a demon, and has no way of knowing how any of this works, nor of how to explain the fact that he is able to retain his soul. It’s telling that even after centuries of being a vampire he still thought something might be fundamentally different about him, as he chose to turn Edward by simulating his own transformation, even though it meant more pain for Edward. In other words, Carlisle was not guaranteed that his experience was universal. By the time we meet him in canon he’s wonderfully friendly to everybody regardless of what they eat, but I strongly doubt he got from point “Demons are monsters and I’ll rally a mob to lynch them!” to “Vampires are people who sadly eat other people.” right away.

So, you have freshly immortal Carlisle Cullen wandering around Europe with no way of knowing that other vampires are as (for lack of a better word) human as he is. How can they be, when they choose to eat people? (My personal headcanon is that he went by a Persephone theory, and figured that by resisting human blood he’d remained a man.)

It was this Carlisle who met Aro and the other Volturi. According to Edward (I unfortunately don’t have Twilight with me so I can’t quote his exact words), they were the ones who showed him that vampires can in fact be sophisticated.

Sophisticated. Not just as in Aro, Marcus, and Caius eat their virgins with some fava beans and a nice chianti, but as in they’re civilized and intelligent beings. Carlisle was no longer a one lone freak who somehow retained his soul while everyone else went full Buffy vampire, or any other such theory. I can’t even imagine the impact that must have had on a young Carlisle who would have been even lonelier than the Carlisle who found Edward in Chicago. That Carlisle at least had friends, this younger version had absolutely nobody.

Aro changed that.

More than being sophisticated, Aro turned out to be a kindred spirit, an absolutely brilliant mind and a generous host. Carlisle chose to live with him for decades, leaving only because of their dietary differences. And even if people disagree with me with all of the above, I don’t think anyone can argue that this one isn’t huge.

Of all the people Carlisle knows in canon, Aro is the only one he stayed with just for Aro’s own sake. Carlisle loves the Cullens dearly, but the cornerstone holding them together is their shared diet, and the fact that Carlisle turned four of them, the other two joined. He did not happen upon them and then like them so much that he decided to move in. As for his other friends, he cares for them all, but he didn’t share decades of his life with them.

Regardless of how we’re interpreting their relationship (as in, platonic, UST, or raging homosexual affair), I don’t think anyone can dispute that Carlisle and Aro are each other’s best friends.

But beyond proving that vampires aren’t all sewer-dwelling, priest-eating rascals, what exactly made Aro so special?

I’ll just list his qualities in no particular order.

Sophistication This guy is a lover of the arts and of knowledge. His gallery and library must have been the most extensive and diverse in the world, and it probably still is. I can’t even begin to imagine the wealth of knowledge and treasures that Aro must have collected over the years. If the Holy Grail exists within the world of Twilight, Aro has it. Where I’m headed with this, is that not only would Aro’s collection be the coolest thing ever to Carlisle, but also that this was a time when the number of books and an art collection was a sign of high class, of intellectualism, of all things fine and noble that was considered virtuous. Aro acts very much like wealthy European nobility, he even lives in Italy, the cultural epicenter of the Western world of old. He physically could not have been more impressive to Carlisle.

Kind of a continuation of the previous point: Aro is from Ancient Greece (well, he’s Myceanaean, but same difference to a “You predate Homer?!” starstruck Carlisle). Ancient Greece was the ultimate, perfect, civilization to Europe, and Carlisle got to Volterra just ahead of the Enlightenment. This alone would have made him so unbelievably cool to Carlisle.

Nerd I think this one speaks for itself. Carlisle is an unbelievable nerd, an inquisitive mind who’ll study anything and everything, and in Aro he found someone who also has an inquisitive mind and will study anything and everything. They’re both very intelligent. Carlisle went from being that sad whale that sings on a frequency no other whales can hear, to having someone who just got it.

His gift So you’re all gonna have to stay with me on this one. Aro’s gift is one most people would find very invasive, which as I touched upon in one of the posts linked above must be very isolating. And yet we know from canon that Carlisle has no problem at all with Edward reading his mind all the time, and more, if Aro reading his mind was a problem then Aro and Marcus would both have known, and I doubt their friendship would have worked out. So, I think that Carlisle not only didn’t mind having his every thought read, but that this was an actively good thing. Because what is less lonely than the company of one who knows you as intimately as you know yourself? To be friends with Aro is to be truly understood, known more deeply than anyone else can ever know you. And to someone who seeks companionship as much as Carlisle does, I imagine this is an extremely attractive feature.

Offer of friendship Carlisle would have been hopelessly lonely when he met Aro. And as no one else is mentioned as being close to him, Jane hadn’t even met him which I find pretty telling of how he interacted (or didn’t interact) with the Guard, and he wouldn’t yet have any of his other friends that he later made, he only had Aro.

He enforcers a law that keeps the known world from descending into chaos Human civilization wouldn’t last a day without the Volturi. There would be nothing stopping vampires from taking out entire villages in one go, immortal children would be everywhere, and the newborn armies would spread like wildfire. In the world of Twilight, the Volturi are a necessary evil. And Aro is their leader. The fact that he not only keeps the world together, an ungrateful task with no end in sight, but had the idea to create a law in the first place would make him all the more amazing to Carlisle.

And I’m sure there’s more that is currently slipping my mind.

Just, Aro is on every level the most impressive, awe-inspiring, and dare I say dazzling, that anyone can be to Carlisle. And he came into Carlisle’s life at the best possible moment. If he’d agreed to do the animal diet, Carlisle would have stayed. If he wanted to seduce Carlisle, I think he’d succeed. I also think that their time together was far more formative for the person Carlisle became than anyone gives Aro credit for.

(And if Carlisle had never found anyone who’d share the diet, he would eventually have returned. I imagine Aro thought the same, but that’s for another post.)

Oh, and last bit - in Breaking Dawn we get this beautiful moment where Carlisle learns that Aro robbed the British royal family, and he just goes, “yup, that’s my guy”. Even after Eclipse, he remains fond of Aro. I mean, there’s also the fact that he’s been lugging around this giant painting for centuries, even at a time when he didn’t have a house and I can only speculate as to where he was keeping it.

Of course, over the course of Eclipse and Breaking Dawn everything goes to hell, but that’s for another post.

TL;DR, Carlisle went from a priest’s son to living with an evil vampire overlord for decades because he’s just that great, in the present he keeps a giant painting of him in his office. I feel it’s safe to assume he likes the man.

(Edited on the 13th of April to fix some phrasing and add a link)

#this is... not my most eloquent production #OH WELL #the last time i thought as much was the bella is doomed post and that one took off so maybe that's a good thing #carlisle cullen #aro #aro/carlisle #twilight #twilight renaissance #twilight meta #my glorious ship #i just don't know what to make of people who want to insist it's one-sided and carlisle ran away screaming from that evil aro #you guys have to bend canon far more than i do to arrive at that conclusion #is it because he's a threat to carlisle/esme?#Anonymous #ask #long post

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handsmotif · 4 years ago

Text

The Queercoding of Pinky and the Brain

This originally was just me infodumping to my friends on discord, but I decided it might be interesting to some people on here, so I polished it up and made it an actual essay lmao

To start, we’re going to break this into 2 sections -- the relationship between the mice, and Pinky’s relationship with gender, because queercoding doesn’t just mean gay!

For a 90′s show, Pinky and the Brain (and its mother show, Animaniacs) was very progressive for its time! But there were still lots of things that they couldn’t slip by censors, and thus, that’s where we have to read between the lines. And that is something I wanted to clarify here before we dive in, the actual meaning of queercoding. It’s NOT the same as queerbaiting. Queerbaiting is when the people producing certain media purposefully dangle the possibility of queer representation to lure in audiences (most prominent examples are BBC Sherlock, Riverdale, and Supernatural I GUESS? who knows abt that last one anymore), but never follow through, purely for profit. Queercoding is when media producers WANT to write in queer representation, but can’t, usually because the censors won’t let them. So, they must resort to subtext. (example: the policemen from Gravity Falls) It could also be unintentional, simply assigning certain characteristics associated with the LGBT community to characters. (example: Bugs Bunny, many Disney villains) Either way, it heavily relies on the audience picking up subtext, but whether it’s malicious or not varies, depending on the media. Bugs Bunny is an example of positive accidental queercoding, while a lot of Disney villains are negative examples.

Now, to actually discuss the gay little mice! Pinky and the Brain, whether it be intentional or not (based off comments from Maurice LaMarche, Rob Paulsen, and Tom Ruegger, signs strongly point to intentional, but it’s never been explicitly confirmed), is an example of positive queercoding.

There are many moments that I could pick out to discuss here, but we’ll start with some VERY on the nose gay metaphors.

Remember Romy? If you don’t, that’s their actual biological son! Romy came about due to a cloning accident, where their DNA got combined and spat him out.

There’s SO many things I could say about Romy. Every appearance he makes has an overarching gay metaphor as the plot. His first appearance in the episode Brinky (yeah it’s literally titled their ship name), it deals with his dads (WHICH I ALSO WANT TO POINT OUT, he DOES call them both dad, and they do both call him their son) disapproving of the fact that he wants to leave home and not follow in their footsteps of taking over the world. Brain even goes as far as disowning him whenever he tells him, which is certainly something a lot of queer people can unfortunately relate to. Also seen a lot in this episode is Pinky and Brain arguing even more than a married couple than usual, which pushes Romy away even further. Later, when Romy eventually does leave, and Brain starts to regret chasing him away, he tries desperately to reach out to him, but Romy doesn’t want anything to do with him. They end up tracking him down to an apartment building, where Romy is now living with his human girlfriend. When questioned about their relationship, the girlfriend, named Bunny, goes off on a tangent about how people shouldn’t judge others based on labels or relationships (hello?), and that Brain needs to be more tolerant. Brain apologizes and Romy forgives him. Happy ending.

Romy’s only other appearance is in the comics. Essentially, the plot of this one is that Brain wants to become the president of the local high school’s PTA, but he needs Romy’s help to make it look like he has a normal home life. He also enlists the help of Billie, the obligatory Woman introduced to make sure Brain doesn’t look as gay as he actually is, that he has a crush on. She pretends to be his girlfriend, and Pinky pretends to be Romy’s uncle, while they make up the story that Romy’s actual mother was lost at sea. Because if the organization found out that Brain has a son with a MAN??? THINK of the controversy! Anyway, the plan works, and Brain actually manages to get elected as president. Throughout this though, Pinky gets WEIRDLY jealous that Brain keeps brushing him aside for Billie. To the point where during Brain’s inauguration, Pinky actually dresses up as the wife/mother lost at sea and storms into the room.

[ID: Comic panels of Pinky, Brain, and Romy on stage at the inauguration ceremony. Pinky busts into room wearing drag, saying, “Yoo hoo! I’m back from years lost at sea to be with my son and ungrateful husband! Narf!” He then hugs Romy, while glaring at Brain. He goes on to say, “I’ll stand by your side, even though you left me behind!” The people in the audience begin to question this, saying, “Oh great fuzzy bangs!”, “What’d she say?!”, “He deserted her to be with that other woman!”, “What kind of monster is he?!”. Brain then rips off Pinky’s wig and says, “This isn’t my wife! This isn’t even a woman! It’s my roommate, Pinky.” Pinky replies, “Well, yes... But Romy really is my son! Poit!” And Brain responds, “N-Nonsense! He’s my son!” More people in the audience angrily speak up, saying, “What’s that?”, “He lives with a guy who likes to dress up in women’s clothing and the both claim to be that kid’s father!”, “Grumble! Mutter!” /END ID]

Needless to say, this doesn��t end well for them. What we can conclude from this is that homophobia exists in the Pinky and the Brain universe, and our characters are directly affected by it.

Moving on, And-There-Was-Only-One-Bed is a pretty common occurrence with these two. Their cage is big, they have plenty of room for two beds, but? They choose to sleep together? Even in some times where this has been inconsistent and they DO have separate beds, they’re always RIGHT next to each other. (what if we put our minecraft beds together ❤😳)

I would like to mention the episode, You’ll Never Eat Food Pellets In This Town Again! This episode is interesting to say the least. Deals with a lot of the meta of the show. Anyway. In this episode, Brain has a nightmare that he’s in a loveless marriage with Billie. You know, the woman he’s supposed to have a crush on. In the end, he wakes up from the nightmare in the same bed as Pinky.

Speaking of female love interests, Pinky is seen having multiple relationships with characters of different species. Any time this is brought up by Brain, Pinky counters with Brain being too intolerant. An honorable mention with this is in Wakko’s Wish, when Pinky is with Pharfignewton, and Brain’s constant pestering about their relationship could be read as jealousy. Pinky needs a mousy date, after all!

Something else I would like to mention is in one episode (I forget what it’s called, I’ll try to look it up later and edit this), Brain is applying for a job. The employer asks Brain if he’s married, and Brain hesitates before saying he “has a roommate,” but that he’s occupied with his own things, which then cuts to a shot of Pinky applying lipstick.

Leading into part two of this essay, Pinky’s relationship with gender! Pinky has always been very gender nonconforming, and loves to wear dresses, do his makeup, and make himself look pretty. For the most part, this is played pretty straight, and not as a gag, like a lot of shows tend to do! It’s just a casual fact about him that he likes to present femininely sometimes.

This does play into their taking over the world plans pretty often, where Pinky wears drag, usually either to sneak into somewhere. Like in one of their earliest appearances on Animaniacs, Noah’s Lark, where they pose as a couple to board Noah’s, and I quote, “love boat.” After boarding, Noah says to himself, “Who am I to judge?” Okay. Yeah. Alright. Anyway.

I actually had less to say on this than I thought I did, but I wanted to make sure to emphasize that Pinky at the very least is coded as being Not Quite Cis, and that he’s played a key part in helping a lot of people watching the show figure out that they’re also Not Quite Cis.

Wrapping this up because I’m hungry, but I want to throw in some more honorable mentions that I really do not see any type of cishet explanations for:

They literally go on a romantic date at a very fancy restaurant in Brain’s Night Off. This is played extremely casually, and the only remark from anyone that they receive is that they are “much smaller than the usual clients.”

Pinky, on at least one occasion, daydreams about him and Brain being a married couple, and wanting to be a housewife (the original malewife ❤)

There’s an issue in the comics where Pinky has a crush on another male mouse, and when Brain gets annoyed, Pinky reassures him that he thinks Brain is cute and quite the catch too

Brain attempting to kiss Pinky in the reboot??????

Brain actually did conquer the world once in the Halloween special, because Pinky made a deal with the devil for it, and thus Pinky got sent to hell! Brain actually went to hell and gave up the world to bring him back

Brain was extremely close to conquering the world once more in the Christmas special, but after reading what Pinky’s feelings for him were (nothing romantic, just Pinky basically just praising Brain for being so hardworking and an amazing mouse, and lamenting that he never gets anything for it), he gets so emotional that he sabotages himself and wishes everyone a Merry Christmas instead

TLDR; these mice are very queer and need therapy, and are probably the most heavily queercoded characters that I can think of in children’s media.

#animaniacs #pinky and the brain #patb #brinky #FLOPS ON THE FLOOR this took a long time to write

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thevictorianghost · 4 years ago

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You said in your finnrey/zutara post that studio meddling was involved for both. I knew that this was the case for finnrey because of racist cowards. But I never knew that was the case for zutara? Tbh I just assumed from the get-go that aang and katara were the main ship and I thought it was cute for them to end up together in the end. Though it is really interesting to learn that zuko and katara could’ve also been a serious thing and I think they could also work together rather nicely. What happened behind the scenes that caused it not to happen? Was aang originally gonna be set up with toph or have no love interest?

Oh hello! Hi! My first anon. Welcome :)

Before we start: I’m going to write Kat/aang, A/ang and Bry/ke like that so it doesn’t appear in the tags and I’ll bold some sections for emphasis.

I don’t think the writers even considered Toph as a love interest for A/ang. It was always about Kat/aang vs Zutara.

It’s no secret at this point that Dante Basco and Mae Whitman, who voiced Zuko and Katara respectively, ship Zutara. Dante Basco is known as the “captain of the Zutara ship”. They’ve written multiple times about Zutara on Twitter and Dante Basco said in an interview that he really thought, at one point, that Zuko and Katara were going to end up together, that he thought it was going that way, and that he loved the idea of fire and water together.

As for the writers, it’s a bit more difficult to find information, since the show ended 15 years ago. But Aaron Ehasz, head writer of ATLA, has come out and said there was supposed to be a fourth season and it was dropped in favor of the movie. He said it on Twitter on April 1rst, 2019 (while also saying sorry for picking that date, it wasn’t an April Fools!). He said that M Night Shyamalan wanted them to focus on Book 4, but Bry/ke (Bryan Konietsko and Mike DiMartino) “wanted to focus on the movie”. You can find those tweets here. Not about Zutara per se, but it does show not everyone was on board with how the show was going to end behind the scenes.

Speaking of the movie, when asked about The Last Airbender, M Night Shyamalan also gave his input on the situation. He talked about how, by the time Book 3 came around, he wasn’t sure if the series was supposed to end there or if there was going to be a Book 4. He said to Bry/ke: ““Dudes, I gotta know this. This is critical! This has to end. This has to end. If it doesn’t end, I’m not on board. But if you don’t want to end it - it’s all good.” They were like “no, we saw it as three seasons for each element that he has to learn.” And I said “great.”” This is where it gets interesting, though: “At that time they hadn’t even decided where things were going to end, even like who Katara was going to end up with. All of that stuff hadn’t been figured out yet.”

It’s interesting to me how he mentions this is who Katara will end up with. Not A/ang, not Zuko. It’s always about Katara.

Someone who interned on ATLA has been quoted as saying that “If you check out the I.P. Bible then you’ll see a Kat/aang endgame was never planned from the start, it was supposed to remain a one-sided crush throughout the whole show.“ and that “The actual decision to make them a couple came about much later at Bry/ke’s request, largely because they were frustrated at the popularity of Zutara.“ Of course, not everyone in the production was full on one side or the other, as the post says some were neutral about it. “Some of the crew liked Kat/aang, I know Joaquim [Dos Santos] was a big Kat/aang supporter but more of them were neutral about it, Ehasz was not fond of Kat/aang but he didn’t mind too much since he’s a mature adult and all that.”

Avatar Extras (special events on Nicktoons where episodes of ATLA were shown with fun facts) were released where it was said that Zuko was supposed to be Katara’s love interest. It was said two times at least. I’ve only ever found screencaps of these, but I found these here on Tumblr.

When asked about these in the Avatar Extras, Bry/ke said that it was just a joke and that Kat/aang was always in the DNA of the show. But if you’re here to tell fun facts to your audience about your show, maybe put a disclaimer that says some things might not be as truthful as they think they will be?

And the intern mentioned earlier also said that “No one was having full-on ship wars in the writer’s room but we did joke about it, and we toyed with the idea of Zuko and Katara falling in love a couple of times.“ So that goes well with the Avatar Extras.

Meanwhile, other writers, like John O’Bryan, have been quoted talking against Zutara in favor of Kat/aang. EDIT: Thank you to @exhaustedhope for giving me a source for this quote! This link also has a few images for the quote, so I’ll add them here.

Thank you again! And also the use of Zutara fanart to badmouth the ship in favor of Kat/aang? Dude.

If this was the way people behind the scenes were thinking of Katara and A/ang’s and Katara and Zuko’s relationships... well that doesn’t really make me think “Kat/aang was in the DNA of the show” either, huh? Zuko was never officially her love interest, Katara never actually “went after that guy”. But the thought that she might made them uneasy.

(Btw, let’s not forget Zuko actually does care about Katara, enough to put his life on the line for her in Book 3, so that mischaracterizes Zuko.)

This comment by John O’Bryan fits with this vision of Zutara Bry/ke has, where Zuko is nothing but a broody, emo “bad boy” who doesn’t care about Katara at all. It’s shown pretty well in their dreadful “joke” made at Comic Con in 2007. You can find the video here. Here, Katara ends up with A/ang and “should have never doubted the will of Mike and Bryan!” (yuck). So Kat/aang was always the “right” way for them to end the show, right?

But then! Even Bry/ke themselves have said that Kat/aang was forced. They said it in 2014 when Korrasami became canon in Legend of Korra. On Korrasami and Kat/aang, they said this: “Originally, [Korrasami] was primarily intended to be a strong friendship. Frankly, we wanted to set most of the romance business aside for the last two seasons. Personally, at that point I didn’t want Korra to have to end up with someone at the end of series. We obviously did it in Avatar, but even that felt a bit forced to me.“

So they admitted that Kat/aang was forced. They even mention the ATLA ship wars in the post. “Either direction we went [about Korrasami or Makorra], there would inevitably be a faction that was elated and another that was devastated. Trust me, I remember Kat/aang vs. Zutara. But one of those directions is going to be the one that feels right to us, and Mike and I have always made both Avatar and Korra for us, first and foremost.”

Okay. So what’s real about the behind the scenes of ATLA and what isn’t? Was Kat/aang in the DNA of the show, or did they go back and forth between Kat/aang and Zutara like they did with Korrasami and Makorra?

There have been conflicting informations scattered across the Internet over the years. Some people say one thing and others react, saying the opposite and that the first thing was false. Some people lied, or joked, to mess with the audience and toy with Zutara - or not, or maybe, or perhaps... What I think, though, is that not everything was set in stone. Some people were for Zutara and some people were for Kat/aang. And even after all of that, the big takeaway for me was: the end result that Bryke wanted so badly was lackluster in and of itself.

#zutara #anti-bryke #anti-kataang #atla salt

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dinosaurtsukki · 4 years ago

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haikyuu!! + things they were doing on the internet when they were like... 12

a/n: is this also a call-out post for myself and a way to make fun of things i did? yes

Hinata: playing those free to play weird-ass games on y8.com when he’s not fighting over the computer with his sister

Kageyama: watching ‘top ten best sets in volleyball games with slow-motion’ again and again until his sister taught him how to use youtube

Tsukishima: writing long essays that he posts on facebook about how much twilight sucks and how much he hates it. definitely had a twilight phase

Yamaguchi: secretly writing twilight fanfiction and posting them on wattpad. he got pretty famous for them but he’ll never talk about it

Ennoshita: played Feeding Frenzy a lot. like, a Lot. this man was a literal god

Tanaka: MAKING PUNK/EMO EDITS OF HIS FAVORITE CELEBRITIES. his masterpiece was punk harry styles feat. 6 earrings and a neck tattoo

Nishinoya: watching american ninja warrior compilations but the ones with ‘eye of the tiger’ edited over them to make them extra awesome

Daichi: coming up with his own inspirational quotes that are kind of terrible like ‘even though i’ve been beaten down, i’ll always get back up’ and posting them on facebook thinking that he’ll inspire people somehow

Sugawara: watching ‘Hetalia Ep. 25 VIETSUB|SPN|ENG subtitles pt. 2/28′ on youtube. either that or ouran high school host club idk this guy had a phase

Asahi: taking a whole bunch of those ‘what your fashion says about you’ quizzes until he eventually made one himself as well as a polyvore account

Oikawa: reading and writing doctor who fanfiction before eventually getting into sherlock and supernatural. yes, he shipped destiel. yes, the destiel canon thing on november ruined him

Iwaizumi: he was really into looking up random animal videos like ‘tarantula vs. scorpion fight’ and stuff like monster bug wars from animal planet and when oikawa made fun of his search history he figured out how to delete it

Hanamaki: vibing to the Phineas and Ferb songs playlist that he made on youtube (of course the aglet song is his favorite one)

Matsukawa: a true tumblr child and was there when this hellsite was first birthed. he remembers the tumblr wars between the fandom and the hipster blogs all too well

Ushijima: didn’t know what the internet was until tendou realized he didn’t have a skype so he made an account for him. until now, ushijima’s status still says ‘hi, wakatoshi here’

Tendou: watching a whole bunch of minecraft song parodies on youtube before eventually making them himself

Semi: either learning guitar through youtube videos or looking up ‘how to play lucky by jason mraz EASY VERSION | NO BAR CHORDS’

Shirabu: he used only Google+ as his social media and wondered why he wasn’t getting any friends

Goshiki: this kid was blessed to be twelve years old when the lego movie came out so he most definitely just used the internet to listen to ‘everything is awesome’ again and again

Kuroo: definitely a fandom kid, one of those from the six major book fandoms (hp, pjo, hg). used to run a fricking roleplay group on tumblr and his oc’s always have a Dark Backstory

Kenma: youguysaregonnacomeformebut--- SONIC THE HEDGEHOG FANFICTION OKAY BYE

Yaku: playing Pet Society on facebook. is it such a coincidence to see him so decked out and rich now when his pet had the same lifestyle? nO

Lev: playing those papa louie games (papa’s pizzeria, papa’s burgeria, etc) and trying to force the game to crash by serving customers 500 chicken wings

Bokuto: as soon as he got a skype account, he’d pretty much voice call anyone and everyone he saw had an ‘active’ status on but his friends didn’t have the heart to switch their status to ‘inactive’

Akaashi: was the king of making ‘which ___ character would be into you (for girls and gays only!!!)’ quizzes that are very detailed. he’d even make a whole character profile with a ‘how you met them’ at the end

Atsumu: used to secretly watch episodes of ‘boys over flowers’ and ‘meteor garden’ on the computer when he was alone at home. eventually got into girl’s generation and super junior

Osamu: a master at playing poptropica and even had a whole gig making poptropica walkthroughs for other people. sometimes he’d play club penguin and get himself kicked out for swearing just for fun

Suna: looking up ‘demons by imagine dragons with lyrics’ on youtube and just playing it on loop. his desktop wallpaper says ‘don’t get too close, it’s dark inside’

Kita: didn’t know what the internet was until suna and aran took pity on him and helped him create a facebook account. until now, his profile pic is still a picture of his jersey number and he has 99+ unchecked notifications

Sakusa: his cousin introduced him to sims. except, sakusa doesn’t play ‘for fun’ but to vicariously live the average salaryman life through his virtual character (he named him steve)

▸ 🎕 ┈┈┈┈ 🎕 ┈┈┈┈ 🎕 ┈┈┈┈ 🎕 ┈┈┈┈ 🎕 ◂

taglist (check out my post for details on being part of my taglist):@montys-chaos @miyumtwins @strawberriimilkshake @pocubo @sugawara-sweetheart @akaashisbabydoll @laure-chan @therainroguefanfiction @atetiffdoesart @stephdaninja @oikaw-ugh @charliefredb @dramaqueenweeb1469 @tremblinghearts @applepienation @doodleniella @haikyuu-my-love @waitforitillwritemywayout @kattykurr @atsumusdomain @goodfoodxoxoxo @ah-kaashi @guardianangelswings @definitely-yours @amberalisa @whootwhoot @liz-multifandom-hotel @kac-chowsballs @procrastination-lady

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nanowrimo · 5 years ago

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When Should You Worldbuild for Your Novel?

Every year, we’re lucky to have great sponsors for our nonprofit events. World Anvil, a 2020 NaNo sponsor, is a writing software that helps you develop and organize your characters, plot and world setting. Today, World Anvil Director Janet Forbes shares some tips for worldbuilding at all stages of your novel:

As a writing and worldbuilding expert, and the director of the award-winning worldbuilding and novel writing software World Anvil, I get asked this question a lot: at which stage during the novel writing process should you be worldbuilding? Should you be worldbuilding as you plot, as you draft, or as you edit? And—I see you out there, you glorious pantsers—what if you don’t plot? When should you be worldbuilding?

A quick disclaimer & explanation:

EVERYONE IS DIFFERENT! (Isn’t it beautiful?) This post is full of suggestions. If in doubt, try things out! But not everything will work for everyone. Experiment with these ideas, and develop a novel writing process that works for you!

Some of the best worldbuilding articles are only a few sentences—just long enough to document your ideas! You’ll probably expand them a bit through the drafting process as you discover or decide more details. But don’t feel you have to write the entire “Silmarillion” for your world! Longer articles often just mean more to read through when you’re in a hurry.

When to worldbuild as a Plotter?

Are you a plotter? Prefer to take a run at a first draft with a solid plan? Then here are some of the best places to work worldbuilding into your novel writing method!

Worldbuild the big stuff during the plotting phase

As a plotter, a lot of the big worldbuilding ideas probably come as you plot your novel. You’ll need characters who live in settlements, and were probably educated in organizations. They may or may not adhere to certain traditions or religions. You might add magic systems, supernatural powers, and/or futuristic technology (which you’ll need to know the limitations of!). Writing down your ideas NOW means that you have them safe, and won’t lose them!

Worldbuilding your organizations, like Nations, Religions, Jedis, Police Forces and Universities, will help give them more impact, and make your world feel more dynamic and real!

Image Credit: Davina, made on World Anvil.

If your novel is an event novel—aliens invade, the Earth quakes, or a zombie virus is let loose—then write a bit about the nature of the threat. If you’re creating a character novel, make sure you have some notes on your main character’s background, mentors, relationships, education and skills.

Worldbuilding these elements of your plot—even in just a few notes—before you start the first draft will really help you down the line! You can plan all of these out using the worldbuilding templates in World Anvil. They give you the freedom to create WHATEVER you want, help you connect everything together, and make everything searchable when you need it!

Worldbuilding during Draft 1—character experience and juicy details!

So, if you’re anything like me, you’ll probably find that something magical happens during your first draft. You start to consider your world through your character’s eyes! This means adding a lot of details to your worldbuilding—both SHOWING rather than TELLING, and sensory detail.

For example, you won’t tell your readers that an organization is evil. Instead, you can show a poor man in the stocks because he couldn’t afford his tithe or tax. Add that punishment to the worldbuilding article about the evil organization, so you can remember it for later (or for book 2!).

Also, as your characters interact with places and people, they’ll feel, smell and hear (and maybe taste) details which heighten the experience. This makes your writing more evocative, and invites readers to feel they’re living in your novel, too!

Add these details—you can even copy-paste relevant paragraphs as quotes—into your worldbuilding articles. Some Plotters prefer to do this scene by scene as they write their first draft. Others (like me!) prefer to do this as a separate stage, once the first draft is done. Read through the first draft, and add quotations or details into your worldbuilding articles. Future-you will thank you!

A fantastic example of a quick character profile! Hotlinks (shown here in red) help you link everything together in your world, so you can find things easily!

Image Credit: ShyRedFox, created on World Anvil

Worldbuilding as a Panster!

If you’d rather fly by the seat of your pants than plot out each step of your novel, then congratulations—you’re a Panster! You probably love the exciting feeling of discovering your story as you write your first draft. So here are some ways you can work worldbuilding into your novel writing process!

Characters are worldbuilding too!

Most pantsers I know love to craft characters, even if they don’t know what will happen to them over the course of the story! And characters are full to the brim with worldbuilding opportunities!

For example, the places your characters were born, went to school, travelled—they are all important locations to worldbuild in a few sentences. Which country is your character from? Do they fit in and, if not, which traditions or view points do they chafe against? These are all excellent places to start your worldbuilding, even before NaNoWriMo has started. You’ll still be pantsing—just Pantsing with Purpose!

And remember, none of these ideas are set in stone - you can always change them later. It’s just a jumping off point, to give you inspiration.

Characters are worldbuilding too! Writing out a detailed character profile is a great way to discover more about your main character. World Anvil provides prompts to help you flesh out your characters even more.

Image Credit: Dhelian, created on World Anvil

Plan worldbuilding using the “Jot, Bin, Pants” method!

The Jot, Bin, Pants method (originally developed by Cassandra Lee Yieng) is a way to plan without plotting! Once you have those scenes, scan through them quickly. You’ll already spot elements you can write short worldbuilding articles about! If a scene takes place in a ship, a smart townhouse, or an abandoned castle, write a few sentences about that space. What material is it built from? What feelings does it conjure up?

Now you have a few notes on that location, you’ll be able to recapture the feeling much more quickly during crunch time, and get your words written!

Keep worldbuilding notes during Draft 1

Another helpful moment to make notes is at the end of each writing session during Draft 1. Try spending 5 minutes documenting the people, places and things you came up with. World Anvil’s tree layout can give you a lot of inspiration when you’re glancing over your setting to decide what should happen next! So if you mention a creature, a character, a location or a technology, scribble down a few notes about your ideas. You never know - it might save your character’s life!

With World Anvil’s novel writing software, you can easily reference your worldbuilding and update your series bible either AS you write, or after each writing session!

The worldbuilding review phase

Regardless of Plotterism or Pantitude, you should eventually have Draft 1 of a book! Granted, it probably needs some tweaks right now. But there’s a story there, characters, ideas, and an ending. Congratulations!

Now is a great time to take stock of your worldbuilding. As you read through your novel, build up your world bible or series bible. Make sure you have articles for each major character, for the places and things you’ve introduced - just a few sentences is fine. But as you edit and flesh out your novel, these will be great references to have, and it’ll speed up the next phase no end!

Worldbuilding and Structural Edits

During structural edits, i.e. re-editing the actual story and big ideas of your book, you’ll find that keeping an updated version of your series bible is really useful! You can do this as you edit (which is what I prefer) or at the end of each draft.

By the time you’re at line edits, you’ll be done with your worldbuilding… and ready to get on with your novel’s sequel! And I can promise you - you’ll be thanking past-you for keeping such good worldbuilding notes in your Series Bible!

If you want to keep your worldbuilding organized and instantly available in your novel writing software interface, then check out World Anvil! We’re recommended by Writer’s Digest, as well as bestselling authors like Brian McClellan, Chris Fox, Jenna Moreci, and literally a million other writers and worldbuilders! You can also pick up a 25% discount with the coupon code NANOWRIMO!

Become the ultimate writer and worldbuilder : NaNoWriMo participants get 25% off World Anvil!

Whatever you’re writing, and whenever you worldbuild, World Anvil will help to develop and organize your characters, plot and world setting, link everything together, and write your novel in our integrated novel writing software!

And right now you can bag 25% off 6 & 12 month memberships of Master Tier and above, using the coupon code NANOWRIMO on checkout!

Janet Forbes (pen name J.D. Blythe) is a published author and the Director of World Anvil, the ultimate worldbuilding and novel writing platform! This award-winning software helps you organize, store and track your worldbuilding as you’re writing your novel. Our novel writing software, accessible from anywhere, integrates stunningly with your worldbuilding. And when it’s time to publish, you can export, or publish directly on the World Anvil platform and monetize YOUR way! Check it out at World Anvil.

#nanowrimo #writing #amwriting #worldbuilding #nano prep #by nano sponsor #janet forbes

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doreamu-san · 4 years ago

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An analysis of SolKy

Hello! Thank you so much for clicking on this. A while ago, I was asked to do an essay explaining why people ship SolKy other than the whole rivals/opposites attract reason, and I got a lot of feedback stating it was useful for newcomers to the ship! As a result I’ve decided to post this on tumblr, but just on the ship’s tag as to not bother uninterested people.

A couple of disclaimers before I begin. This is firstly just my own opinion, so whilst it makes sense for me, other shippers may disagree with my points. I’m also not claiming they are canon because they are not. But I do hope it’ll give some insight into why some people like me enjoy them together.

Even once you’ve read this essay, you can still dislike SolKy. This isn’t an essay stating you have to ship them.

This will be extremely long as I basically cover every single interaction they’ve ever had with each other since I know some people sort of gloss over their dialogue, so grab yourself a drink, get comfy, and I hope you enjoy reading!

(Last edited: 09/05/2021. This will be updated again when Strive releases!)

How this all began

If we’re starting right at the beginning, it’s common knowledge that Ky and Sol weren’t exactly on great terms and often clashed most of the time due to their conflicting beliefs. Ky saw the world in terms of black and white, and had very strict rules on what constituted as right and wrong. Sol seemed to think differently and went against that, which was a stark contrast compared to the other Order members at the time.

Considering that they were in fact, in the middle of a war, you would think that generally people would be willing to put their differences aside and work together.

But Sol wasn’t like everyone else, going off and doing his own thing instead of actually listening to orders, so it’s understandable why Ky found him rather irritating.

However, Ky did grow curious of Sol. Obviously curiosity does not equate to love, but it is the basis of Ky wanting to become more friendly with and know more about Sol. There seemed to be something that Sol knew but Ky didn’t, but how was that possible..? As a result, despite how infuriating he could be, Ky sought to seek out the truth and so fought him for answers.

In regards to why exactly they fight (aside from the fact that this is a fighting game), Ishiwatari wrote something called ‘Hostility is Akin to Love’ right above a picture of them fighting:

Hostility is akin to love Thinking of your opponent’s actions to fight, Reading your opponent’s inner thoughts to fight, Planning attacks that will hit your opponent to fight, And then transmitting your thoughts with those attacks, The more you think of your own advantage, at the same time you think of your opponent, In the instant you mix with your opponent, a passionate feeling arises, and blood boils, Reality is hurt, and you wound your opponent, Hostility is akin to love. — Guilty Gear Isuka Mook

It states how fighting someone can be close to feelings of love because you have to think about what your opponent is doing, as well as how you’re going to respond to your opponent. Overtime, you start to memorise how your opponent thinks, and as a result you’ll know them on a deeper level.

So considering the above, this explains how even though they weren’t on friendly terms, they still formed a bond with one another.

Now we’ve established how exactly their relationship started, and why Ky was curious about Sol in the first place, let’s look at things from Sol’s perspective.

Sol’s attitude towards Ky

We know that Sol was also pretty annoyed by Ky, which was totally justifiable given the extreme way in which Ky thought the world worked. But Sol didn’t exactly dislike Ky.

In order to provide some evidence that Sol cares about Ky, let’s cover that infamous scene everyone likes to reference which shows Sol crying over Ky’s dead body:

Sol: "I came to pick you up." Ky: "Always coming late... you never could fix that..." Sol: "You..." Ky: "As to be expected... until the very end... I could never beat you..." Sol: "Don't say anything!" Ky: "I have... a request..." Sol: "I said shut up!" Ky: "After Commander Kliff... carry on... the Holy Order..." Sol: "Stop it... that's your job!" Ky: "Please... promise me..." Sol: "Dammit..." Ky: "If it's you... you can do..." Sol: "Hey.... what's wrong. Hey! KYYYYYY!" — Guilty Gear XX Drama CD Side Red, Battle of Rome — Deathmatch

A lot of people bring this quote up when discussing SolKy and yes, it does show Sol cares about Ky considering how Sol never really cares about anyone in general, but the fact that Ky’s death managed to make him emotional shows what an impact Ky had on him. There are however more quotes that show Sol’s feelings.

There’s this scene in the GG Xtra manga, Ky and Sol get attacked by a mountain-sized gear. In order to save them, Sol rips off his limiter and Dragon Installs. This scene is very poignant when you take into consideration what Sol said in After Story A:

Sol: "Back during the Crusades, before we met... Kliff told me this rumour about a prodigy swordsman." Sol: "If you couldn't guess, that was you. I didn't give a shit at the time..." Sol: "But then I saw you on the battlefield." Sol: "I saw someone out there who surpassed all of my expectations. Or perhaps I should say 'something.'" Sol: "No openings, no wasted movements, no carelessness, no hesitation, no embarrassment, not even any honor. No chivalry or mercy. A being unaffected by emotion." Sol: "You were a killing machine. Taking down gears with brutal efficiency." Ky: "...That was a long time ago." Sol: "I'm not done talking. I've seen the face of the 'serious' Ky." Sol: "Then one day, you challenged me." Sol: "You wanna know what I thought right then?" Ky: "..." Sol: "I was afraid. Hell, I was scared shitless." Sol: "'He figured out that I'm a Gear, and he's come to kill me.' That's what I thought." — Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, After Story A

Sol admits that he knows just how scary Ky can be. Since Ky was extremely against Gears, if Ky found out that Sol was a Gear, then Ky would have most likely attempted to kill him. But Sol knew this and was willing to die for Ky’s sake, and transformed anyway:

Ky: "Sol..." Ky: (Really... that's really..) Ky: (That's really you!?) Ky: "SOL!" Sol: "Shut it..." Sol: "I didn't do it..." Sol: "To help you out—...." — Guilty Gear Xtra, Chapter 5: Unspeakable Thoughts

Going off on a bit of a tangent from Sol’s feelings, but I just want to point out Ky’s state of mind at this point. Ky in this time period was still very anti-Gear, as it was only through this moment and his encounters with Solaria and Dizzy later that made him change his way of thinking. It took a long time for Ky to accept Gears, and he still had the remains of that mindset in him when he had Sin, as he refused to make eye contact with him because Ky was ashamed of having a Gear child. So the fact that Ky knew Sol was a Gear, believed all Gears were evil, but still decided to accept Sol into his life and wanted to support him regardless of that, is interesting.

Back to Sol, another small quote that manages to show Sol’s feelings towards Ky is this:

Sol: (Maybe I'll finish them off while I'm at it...) Sol: (But that would mean breaking my promise to Ky...) — Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R, Sol Badguy Path 2

Now, Sol doesn’t care about 99% of what other people do as long as they don’t get in his way. The fact that he intends to keep his promise with Ky suggests that he holds Ky in somewhat ‘high’ regards compared to others.

There’s also this quote that shows Sol is thinking about Ky in Overture:

The frustrations of the man wielding a giant sword were piling day by day, and a familiar face appeared in his head. What’s he up to right now? “Hmph, whatever…” With a feeling of self-contempt, Sol Badguy shook his head. What am I getting sentimental for? — Guilty Gear 2: Overture, #0 “Noise”

And when Sol encounters Raven later on after seeing Ky incapacitated, Raven points out how he can tell Sol is upset, meaning Sol’s not really doing a good job of pretending he’s still indifferent to Ky.

Raven: "You're as ruthless as ever, huh, monster?" Sol: "Look who's talking." Raven: "Can you not put down your sword and talk? I understand you're upset with Ky Kiske defeated." Sol: "I'll ask your corpse for answers." — Guilty Gear 2: Overture, #5 "Gaze of the Chronicle"

Sol’s thoughts about Ky become even clearer during his confrontation with Sin when he’s under the influence of Valentine, where Sol defends Ky’s actions and tries to make Sin understand Ky is not 100% at fault:

Sin: "Can you see it? Can you feel it? This is my real power. This is my mother's strength." Sol: "But it's light. It must be from your father." Sin: "Shut up! Don't ever mention him!" Sin: "He abandoned my mother and me using justice as an excuse!" Sin: "Who cares about the King!? Who cares about the people!? That man, and that Kingdom, not one of them can protect a damn thing!" Sol: "I don't give a damn about your family." Sol: "But you know what, Ky may be a stubborn idiot, but at least he's true to his beliefs." Sol: "A punk like you is still alive thanks to his justice." — Guilty Gear 2: Overture, #15 "Roaring Compass"

Okay, that’s the pre-Xrd era for Sol done, now to focus on Ky’s pre-Xrd’s emotions.

Ky’s attitude towards Sol

We’ve established earlier that Ky was annoyed by Sol and disliked him in the Crusades. However, afterwards it seems as if Ky saw himself as friends with Sol:

Ofc1: "All of them seem to have been destroyed by... fire?" Ofc2: "Yeah... why could that be?" Ky: "........" Ky: "Change our course!" Ky: "Head towards the Eastern United States!" Ofc1: "May I ask why, Chief Ky?" Ky: "To meet an old friend." — Guilty Gear Xtra, Chapter 4: Former Friends

We know that Ky outwardly expressed his first signs of liking Sol when Sol stole the Fuuenken and Ky chased after him, only for Sol to win in their duel, and Ky says this:

Ky: "Promise me one thing..." Sol: "..What?" Ky: "We'll meet again." Sol: "Hmph... Well, if fate brings us together..." Ky: "..That's fine." — Guilty Gear XX Accent Core Plus R, Sol Badguy Path 1

It’s pretty interesting that Ky wanted to see Sol again despite how Sol never used to listen to his orders, and how Sol never even tried to act like what the Order expected their men to act like (chivalrous, putting the people first, etc). It at least shows us that Ky saw possibly the potential of becoming friends with Sol. And Sol didn’t even say straight up ‘no’ or ‘in your dreams’ or whatever Badguy-esque notion he usually would’ve done, so we can assume he doesn’t mind seeing Ky again either.

Then they don’t speak to each other properly for 5 years until the tournament that Testament holds, though they have probably ran into each other a few times within those years.

A common misconception people have is that during those 5 years, Ky was obsessed with Sol and would constantly try to find him. Obviously, this is not true. Ky was busy with IPF stuff and Sol was hunting Gears down.

However, it’s not as if Ky completely forgot about Sol — he was just probably at the back of his mind, and Ky does admit that he has been chasing after Sol the most more than anyone else:

Ky: (Waiting outside for me when I left the ship... burning red flames. Soon, they seem to take the shape of a man... and he appears before me. Yes... it's him. The one I've been after the most... it's him.) — Guilty Gear X Drama CD, Vol. 1: Track Seven — Crater

There’s also these two other quotes:

Ky: (Sol...) Ky: (Why are you so stubborn about doing things alone?) — Guilty Gear Xtra, Chapter 5: Unspeakable Thoughts

You can interpret this in two ways: either Ky wants to help Sol out and/or he’s curious as to why Sol always does stuff alone.

And then there’s this:

Ky: "Maintaining peace, law, and order. That is my duty." Sol: "Whatever..." Ky: "You and I, we are cut from the same cloth." Ky: "How long are you going to keep that facade?" Sol: "..." Ky: "Answer me Sol!" — Guilty Gear Judgment, Sol and Ky Ending

Being ‘cut from the same cloth’ is quite a strong statement. The phrase means that Ky thought he and Sol were similar somehow, and that he shared something with Sol. Regardless, the ‘how long are you going to keep that facade’ at least shows that Ky knows Sol is intentionally acting distant/rough/etc. and that its not actually who he is.

Jumping to pre-Overture, just before Ky gives Sin to Sol, Ky is in a really depressive state due to all of the stress he’s been going through. This leads Dizzy to contact Sol. The fact that Sol is called means that Dizzy knows that Sol is possibly the only person who can help Ky at that point, which puts some emphasis on just how much Sol means to Ky or at least affects him.

Before I move onto Xrd, there’s this part where Ky gives his son to Sol. This proves he trusts Sol so much considering he was asking him to take care of Sin for a long period of time.

Ky: “Sol....I want to request something...” Sol: “...hnn?” Ky: “My son....Sin..can you take care of him for a while?” Sol: “...what did you say?” Ky: “I know it’s unreasonable but...I still want to ask...” — GG2: Overture Story, Sol's Story

The Xrd era (because it is so long, it needs its own section)

The Xrd era is extremely interesting to me, because Sol and Ky have some more in-depth conversations, and boy, do they have a lot of conversations.

Focusing on Sol first, theres a scene in REV where Sol asks Ky why he isn’t interested in his past:

Sol: "Why don't you ask me already?" Ky: "Ask you what?" Sol: "About my past." Ky: "I can ask you?" Sol: "I guarantee, it won't be interesting." Sol: "Every other word that came out of your mouth was 'Duel me,' or 'I challenge you!' You were so eager to fight and..." Ky: "........" — Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, Story Mode: Chapter 03, Sense A

Given that Ky was constantly pestering Sol about his background in the past, it makes sense why Sol is suddenly a bit confused about Ky’s sudden change in behaviour. But it also shows that Sol wants Ky to know about his past. After ~170+ years of being alive, Sol wants to finally open up to someone again, and he specifically chose Ky for this. It shows in the very least Sol trusts Ky and knows him well enough to decide to let him know about who he used to be.

And then Ky says this, which is basically him just showing Sol how much he cares and understands him:

Ky: "Sol. Of course I have an interest in your past." Ky: "But wanting to understand someone and trying to understand everything is completely different." Ky: "Right now, Sol Badguy's future matters much more to me, than Frederick's past." — Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, Story Mode: Chapter 03, Sense A

There’s also this scene in SIGN:

Ky: "I don't know your history." Ky: "I don't know if you had friends once, or if you fell in love, or why you burn with such hatred for That Man and the Gears..." Ky: "I don't even know your real name." Sol: "..." Ky: "But I do know a great deal about a man named Sol Badguy." Ky: "Blinded by vengeance, he lost sight of himself, and now he runs from the truth that frightens him." Sol: "...Say that again." Ky: "Tomorrow always comes, Sol." Sol: "..!" Ky: "If tomorrow promises to be cold and dark, I cannot stand idly by... even if I know my efforts will come to nothing." Sol: "... The self-righteous apple doesn't fall far from the tree." Ky: "I don't expect the world to change tomorrow, but I do hope that, today, perhaps my words will reach you." Ky: "Sol..." Ky: "I'll be waiting for you. We'll all be waiting for you. Sin, Dizzy..." Ky: "Once all this is over... come home." — Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, Story Mode: Chapter 04, Kaleidoscope B

Three things to take away from this:

Ky admits that he doesn’t know anything about Sol’s background, but that he knows a lot about the current Sol, and then goes on to explain how Sol acts. Which to expand on, means that although Ky used to care about Sol’s past, he doesn’t really mind about it anymore because Sol’s past won’t really change much who Sol is to Ky now. Also, the part where Ky explains how Sol was ‘blinded by vengeance,’etc. shows that Ky knows Sol’s current personality well enough in order to be able to distinguish his behaviours. Which is interesting because nobody has been around Sol long enough to be able to know him really well unlike Ky (Aria and Asuka count too, but they were around Sol when he was Frederick, and Sol seems pretty adamant on the idea that he’s a separate person from Frederick.)

‘Come home’ is pretty significant, as it implies that it’s almost like Ky is saying home is with Sin, Dizzy and the Valentines, and so when Sol is done getting revenge on That Man, instead of letting Sol just wander off alone, Ky wants Sol to be a family with them.

The fact that says Ky says ‘I’ll be waiting for you’ separate from ‘we’ll all be waiting for you’ implies that either Ky’s want to wait for Sol is somehow different from everyone else’s or it’s just for the sake of being dramatic. I interpreted this in both ways, as it seems like Ky knows that Sol treats him differently compared to others. So in a sense, by Ky emphasising that he’ll be waiting for Sol, it might make Sol more likely to ‘come home’.

There’s also a scene that shows Ky knows Sol’s personality well:

Ky: "When I look at you, Sol, I see a man who is afraid." Sol: "... What?" Ky: "It became clear when I watched you caring for Sin." Ky: "You work very hard to keep everyone at arm's length." Sol: "..." Sol: "I got Gear blood in my veins, and it ain't friendly. It's always there in the back of my head, whispering that I oughta just destroy all of this." Sol: "The only way I'm gonna get some closure is tracking down That Man and beating some answers out of him." Sol: "And if he doesn't have 'em..." Sol: "Then maybe there really isn't a good way to live." Ky: "That's why you close your heart off." — Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, Story Mode: Chapter 08, Hope A

There’s also this:

Ky: "Not all people have the strength to stand on their own." Sol: "..." Ky: "If only life were simple, and the right path was laid out before each of us..." Ky: "But even then some would leave it, and some would struggle with walking it. Such is human nature..." Ky: "The truth is that no path will ever be 'right' for all people. Each of us must find the one we are meant to walk--and sometimes that is where none exists." Ky: "That is what I learned from you." — Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, Story Mode: Chapter 08, Hope A

This just shows that Ky actually learnt something from Sol. Which I think is important because Ky is someone who always used to be very strict to his ideals. The fact that he learnt something from Sol that had an impact on his mindset means that Sol actually managed to have a great impact on Ky.

There’s this scene where Sol finds out that Aria isn’t dead when he confronts That Man, and he has somewhat of a mini mental breakdown. So Ky excuses them from the room, and goes outside to talk with Sol:

Ky: "Sol. The grudge you hold is certainly not something that can be taken lightly. And, whatever answer you think you've found, I doubt any of us will be able to stop you from seeing it through..." Ky: "But we have very little time left. Right now, we need the Gear Maker's help." Ky: "So, I'm begging you... Just for now. Why don't you stay outside with me." — Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, Story Mode: Chapter 06, Cause A

The last line that Ky says is interesting because it’s obvious that he’s just trying to calm Sol down, and Ky thinks that if he stays with Sol outside for a bit, he’ll be able to help him calm down. Furthermore, Ky thought it was more necessary to pause everything and help Sol out rather than keep listening to the plans of what their next course of action would be.

Ky does have the habit of comforting Sol. One of the more significant moments is whenever Sol refers to himself as a monster:

Ky: "Yes, he took away some of what makes you human, but that doesn't mean he altered your mind or your soul." Sol: "So what?" Ky: "I want to believe that you'll fight for the people of this world." Sol: "Are we seriously having this conversation?" Sol: "Look, kid. I'm a monster. I'm here to do two things: Destroy That Man, and kill all the other Gears." — Guilty Gear Xrd -SIGN-, Story Mode: Chapter 04, Kaleidoscope B

To expand a little on Sol’s mindset, it’s common knowledge that Gears were generally in the past regarded as akin to monsters. Now we don’t have any solid proof Sol is referring to himself as a monster because he’s a Gear, or because he feels guilt about the whole Gear Project, etc. But we do know it’s something he’s affected by given that he constantly refers to himself as one.

So the fact that Ky constantly reassures him that he’s not one, and that Ky didn’t treat him differently after finding out he was a Gear, must be comforting to know.

Then at the end of REV, there’s the scene where Daryl is about to shoot Sol, because he (quite rightly) doesn’t trust the fate of the world to be left to Sol. And so, the kids get beamed up, but Ky asks to be left behind:

Ky: "But, if you plan on targeting Sol, then you must leave me behind, as well." Daryl: "What!?" Zappa:"60 seconds until impact..!" Sol: "What the hell are you doing?! Stay with Sin!" Ky: "I am well aware that this is a one in a million chance..." Ky: "But, if I survive at the expense of my dear friend, then there is little reason left for my ruling this world as king." — Guilty Gear Xrd -REVELATOR-, Story Mode: Final Chapter, Fireworks

This was a really odd moment because Ky’s life was never in danger at that moment. If he had been sent on board Daryl’s ship as originally planned, he would have been safe. But Ky intentionally chose to risk his life, and its kind of startling because Ky has always put his people above everything. There were times when he put the people above his own family, like when he kept his family a secret instead of coming out with the truth about them in order to remain as King to protect his people.

So Ky suddenly going ‘I would rather die with Sol than take care of my people’ is really extreme. Also Ky was willing to leave his family behind, which is even more extreme. So this just really proves how highly Ky regards Sol considering how he would rather die with him than live without him.

Some concluding notes

I think Sol and Ky’s personalities do work really well. Perhaps not in the Crusade era, but if we take a look at the Xrd era, they have shown to get along and have deep conversations with one another that they both enjoy. They know each other extremely well; they know how to support one another when life gets a bit too much and they’re also capable of telling one another when the other is wrong.

Sol teaches Ky that life isn’t as simple as it seems, and that (figuratively speaking) he shouldn’t stick exactly to the textbook. He’s able to see under that perfect image Ky puts up about him being able to cope with everything, acting as a source of stability when you consider how Sol has been the only person who’s been around Ky since the very beginning.

Throughout all of Ky’s life, he’s been under so much pressure. From being Commander in the Crusades, to becoming the Head of the International Police Force, to becoming King. In every situation, people are constantly relying on him, and his environment is changing rapidly. But despite everything, Sol has always remained the same. He looks the same, acts the same, etc. Ky can rely on Sol and trust Sol. He’s like a source of stability for Ky in those hectic times.

And Ky provides something similar to Sol too, given how often he ran into Sol time and time again. When you’ve been alive for so long, it’d feel reassuring in the very least to see a familiar face. And Sol does seem to get less annoyed each time they meet each other again, considering like how in Overture he voluntarily went to go see Ky after seeing himself on a wanted poster.

Ky also gives Sol the chance to open up to people again and form connections with them, something that Sol has been reluctant to do. Sol needs someone to care about him, and Ky proves that by constantly reassuring him and never giving up on trying to help Sol, even though he kept getting pushed away.

They may not be canon but I really do love how they work together. Yes it’s true some people may like them because they are ‘rivals’and seeing rivals get together and bicker is great, but actually I think when people focus more on how much they support and rely on each other, as well as the fact that they do get along, them being in a relationship is more convincing.

Whilst this essay focused on their canon interactions, there’s plenty of other great material out there. For instance, the Guilty Gear 4KomaKINGS manga provides plenty of great SolKy interactions (like the time Ky wanted to have a friendship diary with Sol, only to get rejected and start crying about it. Of course, take these interactions with a pinch of skepticism considering the frivolity of the source material.)

And that, was my very long SolKy essay. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading! Though you may not have agreed with everything I have said, you still continued reading, and I am grateful for that. Thank you for showing such enthusiasm and loving this franchise.

#solky

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eddiesblr · 4 years ago

Text

#showyourprocess

From planning to posting, share your process for making creative content!

To continue supporting content makers, this tag game is meant to show the entire process of making creative content: this can be for any creation.

RULES — When your work is tagged, show the process of its creation from planning to posting, then tag 5 people with a specific link to one of their creative works you’d like to see the process of. Use the tag #showyourprocess so we can find yours!

Thank you so much for tagging me @lan-xichens, I’ll try my best to explain how I made this set from start to finish hehe ♡ and also a big thank you to @suibianjie @highwarlockkareena @nyx4 @aheartfullofjolllly and you as well Kris for putting this all together! Content creators get a lot less recognition than they deserve for all the time they put into their content, so getting everyone to see the (sometimes excessive) process we all go through to put our content in our blog, I hope it creates a positive change!! 💖

1. Planning

The set in question was actually requested by someone so they could celebrate their friend’s birthday! At first I wasn’t entirely sure if I was going to be able to finish it on time (college is very hectic right now) but I was able to finish it three days before the deadline which was may 1st! ^-^

The first thing I did was decide what characters I wanted to use in the set, I first reached out to the person who requested the set if there were certain characters they wanted me to use but they said they didn’t know enough to really give me any directives outside of the quote. I decided, since the quote is applicable to the entirety of the show, that I would try to put in as many characters as possible.

Thus, of course, came the hunting for scenes. Those of you in the net discord surely know I came into the content help channel a few times to ask for certain scenes here and there, and eventually I had to download an additional 10 episodes to the back then 20 or so episodes I had in my CQL episodes folder.

As you can see I have 30 random episodes of CQL downloaded (slowly but surely getting to the point where I have all 50 episodes downloaded) and I think I ended up using scenes out of at least 20 of those episodes.

I planned out beforehand what characters I would use per gif. I knew obviously I would start out with Wangxian, them being the main characters of the show, and then would work my way down the list. The second gif consists of Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning. They’re all family pairings, two being siblings and one being a married couple. The next gifset consists of the Yi City characters, then the fourth gif consists of the juniors, and the final gif has Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen in it.

I have to admit though that when I had made the first four gifs I’d forgotten who I would put in the last gif and the when I thought about it the first time around I could only think of Lan Qiren and the very cursed Yaoyang ship 😭 it was only at dinner time that same day that I remembered I hadn’t put Jiang Cheng in my gifset yet and that’s when I thought of the other characters as well.

I had already made my first two gifs when I went to check Hanyi’s blog for layout inspo and eventually I decided I wanted to try a triangle-ish layout, which I doodled below. I eventually ended up changing the layout of the last gif in the final design. It was also the first time I would work with a triangle-ish layout so I was a bit nervous as I was scared it wasn’t going to work out...

2. Creating

I use Avisynth 2.5 and Adobe Photoshop 2021 (the paid version, unfortunately, I need it for school except I didn’t need it this year but I wanted it so I paid for it with my own money ouch) to make my gifsets! I always start out with trimming down all the scenes I’m going to use into three to five second videos and putting them through Avisynth. This time around I did it separately for each gif I made, simply because I needed so many scenes. I would include a screenshot of my “gif vids” and “temp” folders but I’ve already deleted all the videos, which is what I usually do immediately after a set is posted.

I’ll try my best explaining this gif by gif since each one had a different layout!

2.1 Wangxian

I think I had up to five different designs of this gif 😭 it started out with the gif on the left originally being more centered and the quote right smack in the center but somehow it felt a bit too... empty? I changed up the design and pulled the gif over to the right and put the two closeups on the left, the exact opposite of the gif I eventually ended up with. I switched things around one more time and saved the gif as you can see it right now, except I didn’t include the lines yet. It was only as I finished up my fourth gif that I decided this gif needed lines as well so I added them ^-^

2.2 Nie Huaisang, Nie Mingjue, Jin Zixuan, Jiang Yanli, Wen Qing, and Wen Ning

I got the inspiration for the font layout on this gif from this Wenzhou post! I hadn’t tried it before and when I did for this gif I was very happy with the way it turned out :D I wanted to portray that life is a pile of good and bad things, as the quote says, in CQL by mirroring these happy scenes side by side with the sad scenes

2.3 Yi CIty

My first time working with the triangle layout!! Putting in the lines and making sure they would line up with the second gif took me the longest of all actually 😭 I think once I got the line on the left in I just copy pasted it and flipped it horizontally so I didn’t have to fiddle around with angling it anymore :’) my original idea was to get a happy Song Lan scene and a sad A-Qing scene, but when I stumbled upon this A-Qing scene in ep38 I just had to put it in there because her smile is so precious 🥺 Xue Yang and Xiao Xingchen in the center are also supposed to be mirrored, with Xue Yang embodying the “bad things” and Xiao Xingchen the “good things” ! I also think the Yi City characters fit this part of the quote very well!!

2.4 The Juniors

Ah yes, the junior quartet!! :D I had this planned out from the very beginning, that I would include happy versus sad juniors in the “vice versa” part of the quote, and I think it worked out quite well! My first idea was to put the “vice versa” completely in the special font and have it typed out over the gifs like I did with the “vice” but as I typed out the “versa” I realized it had one letter too much to be able to do that 😭😭 it took me a while to come up with how I would position the “but” and “versa” and after some moving around I decided to just place them the way I did in the final gif! For the font, I duplicated the “vice” and added a stroke to the duplicate, then I changed the fill setting to 0% so I could slightly drag the duplicate away from the original layer to create the effect that’s in the gif — also, finding a scene in which Jin Ling smiles is really difficult.... he barely even smiles in the scene I ended up using :(

2.5 Jin Guangyao, Mianmian, Jiang Cheng, and Lan Xichen

The final gif!! I feel like this might come a little across as “I promise I didn’t forget these characters” because they’re a very odd quadruplet to put together, but they were the most important characters left to put in the set! I was thinking of putting Nie Mingjue in here together with Jin Guangyao and Lan Xichen, but I did feel he fit more with his brother up in the second gif. Mei @mylastbraincql cheered me on making this gif for which I was very grateful :D <3 the layout came to be after I googled “how to evenly split a rectangle in four” because I didn’t want a repeat layout in the set (*/∇＼*)

2.6 Coloring

For the coloring I pretty much did all of the tweaking on the first gif and then copy pasted all of it onto the second, third, fourth, and fifth gif. This is usually the way I go about my coloring, I will always edit certain gifs if necessary but I don’t think I had to change the coloring much on any of these gifs? Maybe I added in a curve layer here and there, but nothing major! This is really one of my preferred coloring styles, even though I try to step outside of my comfort zones with other sets ^-^

3. Posting

I will always upload sets into my drafts and edit the caption in there as well, clicking on “preview post” a couple times to check everything looks good on my blog as well, before I post a set. However, this time, since there was a deadline and I finished before the deadline, I put this set in the queue so it would automatically post on the 1st of may! Knowing myself, I would’ve forgotten to do so </3

Whew that was... a lot 😭 did it make any sense? Probably not, but it was fun to ramble （ ´∀｀）

I’ll tag

@blinkplnk with this set !

@wuxien with this set !

@wendashanren with this set !

@wanyinxichen with this set !

@yibobibo with this set !

@mylastbraincql with this set !

@sugarbabywenkexing with this set !

@yiling-recesses with this set !

@jiancheng with this set !

Please feel totally free to ignore this if you’ve already been tagged and don’t want to do it again!! <3

#showyourprocess #tag game #this got so long i'm sorry ;-;#very curious to see everyone else's processes!!#thank you for the tag kris <3

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