#*makes my characters as obtuse and difficult to interact with as possible*

[sundogcrystalvaporeon]

(Asktheeclipseon) Eclipse: Well, I used to watch over kids, so I can take care of them...

@asktheeclipseon

I mean good luck with that

[willowser]

what do you think would make bakugou's feelings change from a stranger to a lover, if their interactions were small and few in between? what do you think would make bakugou sad?

oh, wow — what questions !! thank you for asking, and buckle up LOL

i want to, of course, preface this all by saying these are my own interpretations and opinions based on how i choose to view bakugou's character:

personally, i have a really difficult time writing strangers to lovers for bkg (personally; i've read certain fics before and had no issues accepting the course of the relationship !) bc i think — and i'm assuming we're talking about adult man bkg, considering this is a romantic situation — at some point in time, he is going to completely understand how others see him, why they see him the way they do. a very large portion of his personality stems from how he was raised, the way he was treated as a child, and even if he eventually knows he's a little obtuse, i think that by then that's just bakugou. it's not going anywhere. it might soften and grow, but he'll never have a different baseline.

and so i view katsuki, in that regard, to be very careful about who he reveals himself to. he knows how he is, how people see him, and he's been met with either hesitation or fear or fury from, like, everyone, and so i find it difficult to imagine him going from strangers to lovers with someone in that regard, because i think he would need trust more than anything in order to feel comfortable exploring any romantic aspect of himself. i view bakugou as someone very nervous and unsure about affection, and so in order to allow himself to show that and receive that from someone, it would take time with him. i think bakugou is a quiet, slooooow burn kind of guy, who would move on from friends to lovers ultimately.

!! BUT !!

i also think it can heavily depend on where bakugou is at in his life at the time this meeting and such interactions take place. again, bc i think bakugou would have to feel comfortable enough to try to engage in a more-than-friendly relationship, it would have to be entirely something he is choosing willingly. he would have to go in eyes wide open and say, this is something that i want to pursue, this is something i am choosing to trust and let myself fall into, and i think it's entirely possible that he could have that desire as an adult.

i actually have a little drabble thing stored away in my drafts that's like, bakugou as someone that actively tries to date and find a partner, and it's the funniest thing to me LOL bc the first image that comes to mind is him in a tie at some speed dating thing and he's just — so uncomfortable lmao and i do not think he would ever do something like that, it's just funny to picture. but — on that note — i don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that one day katsuki decides that he wants to find someone, and so i think if he walked into it willingly, and found someone that seemed trustworthy and understanding, he could definitely tell himself, i don't care, i'm not afraid to do this shit, even if he very much is so.

of course, i also think that certain circumstances can always bring strangers together and i think there's something beautiful in even like the little things; the person who always sits across from you on the bus or is always walking their dog on sunday mornings or who lives in your apartment complex and always comments about the weather whenever you meet in the mail room. i could just be clingy LOL but i like the familiarity of a consistent stranger, if that makes sense, and moving out of that bubble to expand that relationship is like a choice you can't take back. and you have your life or death situations, as well. again, maybe i'm clingy, but — assuming we're talking about pro-hero bakugou here — i would never be able to look at the man that saved my life the same again. i would see him on tv and just associate safety with him, or something. section him off into a different category of stranger that i would trust with my life, bc he's saved it already.

anyway. back to bakugou LOL all this to say: i think it depends on what bakugou wants and what he'll allow in a short amount of time, first and foremost, and i think it depends on the weight given to those small interactions. say, katsuki is checked over by the same paramedic after every fight, and he finds comfort in the fact that this person cares about his well-being, or he runs into the same person at the meat market when he's preparing to cook a large meal, and they can always discuss different marinades or choice cuts. i think he would have to see something in them that would make him want to trust that person, in those far and few interactions, before offering himself up for the taking.

and — whew boy, sad bakugou ? i'll admit, it's a little hard for me to imagine things that might make him sad and sad alone bc, obviously, i imagine bakugou runs everything through an angry blender before he can swallow it down to process any other way.

i think there are very simple things that make him sad, like his heroes aging and getting old — all might, aizawa, his dad, jeanist — losing his friends or the few people he's ever felt close to. people in his life as a pro-hero that he couldn't save. i think he'll always hold guilt about what happened at kamino with all might, how he treated people when he was younger, how he treated izuku; i think reflecting on all these things would make him sad because they are almost all things out of his control. he can't go back and be a nicer kid, he can't go back and not get dynamight-napped by the league, he can't make his heroes any younger, and someone like katsuki is always making the things he wants a reality, that's just what he does, and this isn't something he can attain. so i think that would upset him. consistently. every time he thinks about it, even.

idk if you were going this route at all, but from a romantic perspective — oh, lord, i will sit on this hill until i die: not having a partner would slowly break his heart. every night he'll come home to his nice house and his material things and maybe even his number one ranking and the lights will be off and it will be empty, and as someone that strives to be the best in everything, he would see his lack of a love life as a giant failure. he's not good enough, not patient enough, not kind enough. i have a lot of opinions about katsuki being insecure in this particular regard; not about — again — things he can physically attain or work towards or hold in his hands, no, he's sure of himself there, completely confident, but these softer things. he can't make someone love him, no matter how strong or fast or good he is, that's something they have to choose to do (which reroutes back to my earlier point, about him needing to have that trust that they will choose him again and again), and i think the longer he goes without someone or the more he tries and it doesn't work out, it would really weigh on him as a person.

this is another twisted kind of road, but i think he would obviously have a lot of trauma about all that he's had to go through in his life. let's just — ignore the manga right now LOL bc that's a whole different can of worms — but i think, you know, again, kamino, getting kidnapped, even the sludge villain in the beginning, and just everything else that he has to endure as a child fucking soldier. it's more fear than just explicit sadness, but obviously these things can lead towards depression and the like, so i include those things as well.

gosh, i said so much and feel like i said nothing at all LOL i hope this was somewhat coherent bc i am so tired and it's 1 am anfbska and i hope this was helpful or insightful or whatever you were looking for !! thank you so much for asking, i enjoyed blabbing my mouth like usual 🤗💕🌿 would love to hear your thoughts as well, friend !!

[fursasaida]

re: music. please do tell

(for everyone else: this is about my commenting in some tags that the idea that music is "how we decorate time" vs architecture decorating space, or music as something that is pure time or happens purely in time, is bullshit)

there are two ways to look at this. one is practical (and snotty) and one is theoretical.

practical: the production of music depends at least as much on the manipulation of space as it does the manipulation of time (rhythm, pacing, etc). your larynx and vocal chords, string instruments, wind instruments, drums all depend on resonance chambers and distances (length of the string, pipe, vocal cord, etc; dimensions of the drum, shape you make with your mouth, etc). that musical sound of the tinkling brook has to do with the volume of water, size of the stones, length of the drops, etc. this is because music is sound, sound requires vibration, vibration has physical properties that vary with various attributes of extension that are undeniably spatial. even digitally recorded and manipulated music relies heavily on tools for simulating spatial conditions of production--different kinds of reverb, for example. not to mention: you can hear any of it because of your god damn ear, which is another kind of resonance chamber. not to mention: how could anybody make music without any space to move in. even slapping your knee requires fucking up and down. AND HAVE WE CONSIDERED ACOUSTICS.

theoretical: ok ok so we don't have to take this so literally. it can be kind of poetic--or, as in some philosophy etc., illustrative/theoretical. my charge here is that treating music as "pure time" is bad poetics and does not help us explain anything theoretically either. theoretically: space and time aren't separate. i do not blame some random twitter user for not getting this. i do blame somebody like henri cursed-be-his-name bergson. just because it can be useful for certain purposes to think of them separately (like, say, graphing something's speed) does not make it valuable to talk about a pursuit like music in only one dimension or the other. like, the cubists were inspired by bergson; they show you bodies from more than one angle because they're trying to give a sense of duration--the ways you would see it at multiple moments as you move. this is supposed to be full of time instead of static and timeless like perspective. this is also horseshit. there is nothing less spatial about this! it has to do with the fact that the body you're looking at looks different from different angles, i.e. it has shape and directions! perspectival painting shows you actions and processes all the time! arguably it is more timeless to collapse multiple perspectives and moments into a single image! i'm not anti-cubism particularly, it's fine, i'm just saying, like: did anyone think this through actually.

similarly, if you want to use music to talk about the way time passes, how it's always going but does seem to have a present-duration--the present moment is not knife-edge thin--you can use literally any process that happens at a perceptible speed to do this. and you do not need to ignore that whatever it is also has spatial qualities. how would you even perceive time without motion or change in space? music is supposed to be one way. but i'm sorry! a) for practical reasons it simply is not without such motion/change (not even as a digital recording), and b) since time and space manifestly are united in perception, what help is it to try to separate them if you are a phenomenologist (bergson) rather than a (classical) physicist or engineer? henri what the fuck. this has always struck me as mainly a way to completely fail to appreciate music while also being obtuse about time. to speak of music as time only, no space, means divorcing it from the physical process of its production. this means it requires believing in absolute time--something that would pass and would happen even without anything to happen in it. which is just as wild as absolute space (space with a priori locations that would exist whether there was any matter to fill it or not). not even isaac newton, who invented both of them, thought this was something you could perceive or measure empirically. absolute space and time was to him a purely theological-mathematical idea, something that had to exist for the sake of certain premises but could never be experienced as such. your measurements will always be relative, not absolute. so absolute space and time are both bad for theorizing how anything affects us or is experienced--you know, like phenomenology? also fwiw the fact that absolute time can't capture the sensation of duration is still, like, a big problem in physics.

going back to that reblog where i explained that not everybody has always even had the concept of "space" like we do now, there is no empirical reason to believe absolute time or space exists. duration and extension are properties of physical processes (at varying levels of materiality). and many of those physical processes are not better explained but rather impoverished by trying to make them "happen in space and time" rather than things that give rise to spaces and timings. this is why the idea of music as pure time or purely in time leads to such absurd questions as "how can you slap your knee without up and down." it's stupid! it's snotty! but that's because the premise is bonkers!

so. whether theoretically or poetically, music is much more suited to discussion in terms of place. places have or are both space and time. in fact it is to some degree wrong to talk about place as "space and time" at all; rather we get the two separate concepts more by extrapolating from place, in which they are so fundamentally unified that not even a word like "spacetime" really captures it. that is partly what makes place difficult to theorize: places are too much like bodies, or like people, or like communities; you can't pull them apart into axes like "space" vs "time" and not lose what it is you're trying to theorize. (you can, e.g., track and analyze traffic patterns quite well this way, and that can be worth doing! but does that capture the place? does it explain what a place is? probably not. it's a different purpose.)

why were european cathedrals designed to have great acoustics? because those were places for the glorification of ~the divine, which was to be accomplished through both light and sound; both its spatial form (extension, hardness, size) and its nature as a ritual site (repetition, endurance); these qualities or capacities could not be separated. did the music not "decorate" the place just as much as the paintings, sculptures, architecture, stained glass? of course it did. we've all seen videos of somebody stopping in an archway or a big bathroom or whatever and singing; the place is further beautified by that because it is an interaction with the place, its spatiality, its acoustics, its textures, the way it looks, the fact that it invited the singer to sing--whether congruously (maybe a church) or incongruously (the aforementioned bathroom). just like your neighborhood has a distinct soundscape; just like a city has refrains. just like i remember stopping dead in the middle of the old city of damascus because three different calls to prayer had, intentionally or otherwise, overlapped to form a perfect major triad for a moment. i will remember that forever. and i will remember where i was when it happened too. (souq al hamidiyya.) that is part of the place. it happened because of the number of mosques and where they were located. and similarly what kind of sounds, or what kind of music, happens in which places has to do with the normative character of places. some sounds, some musics, "belong" some places and not others, because some actions are held to be appropriate there or not, or because they are or are not held to be characteristic. i'm not saying that's a good thing in itself. it's just the way it is. (and there are some places whose function is specifically to be open to all kinds of music, of course.) but i'm saying it leads to much more interesting questions with much more explanatory possibility. for example we could ask about characteristic rhythms or speeds of sounds in different places and what that means. or look at conflicts over what sounds "belong" or don't and to what degree that is justified in terms of time (time of day, pace of life, epochal ideas like what is or isn't "modern," etc).

tl; dr: explain to me the concept of an echo (which we use as a metaphor for having a strong experience of time quite a lot) using time and no space. explain to me how putting it in terms of time alone, even if you could, captures something that including space, or better, a simple narrative set in a place, does not. now explain to me why you would want to do either of those things.

[commander-coppercogg]

Ok. Ok! So I had several people ask me about my point of view on Trahearne and now that I’ve played the first portion of the sylvari play though I feel like I have enough information to go on. And I have some thoughts I really wanna share! So even though I’m kinda nervous about this, I’m gonna do all that below a read more. Because 1) this got really long and 2) I wanna give people the option to not interact if they’re not interested. Everything that follows is my own personal opinion and point of view. I’m not trying to post hate, or bash anyone’s favorite character or anything like that. Alright, here we go:

I really tried to go in to the sylvari storyline with an open mind about Trahearne I did I swear. But it almost immediately went off the rails and back fired. If anything I dislike Trahearne even more now than I did before. But the good news is that I think I can now articulate why, which I was struggling to do before.

So basically my biggest issue with Trahearne can be summed up with a small piece of dialogue he shares with Caithe if you choose the All Things Have a Right to Grow option during character creation.

Now I will be the first to admit I wasn’t a big fan of Caithe for a good while. I found her frustratingly obtuse and difficult to read and get along with. I’m a straightforward person and don’t like when people beat around the bush. However after reading this short story (https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Requiem:_Caithe) and the Destiny’s Edge book, I realized two things that drastically changed my mind.

1.) Caithe has been going through intimate partner abuse for years, quite possibly her entire life. I don’t know why it took so long for me to realize that but once I did, everything about Caithe’s behavior makes sense and I began to see her in a new light. She is constantly wary and on edge and watching everyone around her because she is expecting the abuse to begin again. She is traumatized and struggling to deal with the world around her. Faolain still has contact and access to her and she doesn’t have a support system that could help her escape that.

2.) Snaff was the closest thing Caithe (and the rest of Destiny’s Edge to be quite honest) had to a father. He parents the hell out everyone else in the guild. I plan to make a more in depth post of the book as a whole at some point but there’s one bit in particular I want to mention. At one point Caithe has a run in with Faolain, her abuser, at a party. They talk, Faolain leaves and Caithe starts to cry. Snaff, who is in the middle of an important conversation with several high ranking racial representatives, drops everything mid sentence to walk away and gently ask Caithe what’s wrong and why she’s crying. This and other scenes show that Snaff cared about Caithe in a way no one else in her life ever has. And then he died in an extremely traumatic way.

Now, knowing all that, take a look at this dialogue again.

Trahearne is saying, point blank, to an abuse victim that recently lost one of the only people who gave her unconditional support that it’s about time she moved on with her life and got over it. And Caithe makes it extremely clear that this is not the first time Trahearne has said something like this and how upset it makes her. At best, this is a staggeringly inappropriate thing to say. It shows a blatant disregard and misunderstanding of Caithe’s emotional and mental well-being. To a neurodivergent player (such as myself), it reads very similarly to telling someone with depression to just try yoga and thinking positively. At worst, it it outright malicious. But here’s the thing: I don’t think Trahearne said this with the intent to cause harm. I think he just legitimately never stopped to consider Caithe’s point of view or the consequences of what he said.

And that’s my main issue with Trahearne. He comes off as incredibly privileged. He’s a Firstborn, he’s the first of the Firstborn. Yes he’s been given an incredibly difficult Wyld Hunt but so has Caithe and so has the sylvari player character. And the Pale Tree lavishes him with advantages that you and Caithe never get. Trahearne’s the one given the super important vision quest (you the player character are just along for ride, which makes absolutely no sense if you’re any race other than sylvari), Trahearne’s the one given the super important sword (after you the sylvari player character do all the work of finding and retrieving it and even using it only for the Pale Tree to take it away and give it to Trahearne), and Trahearne is the one who gets to have all these super cool interactions with characters that he’s apparently known for years who all really really like him. To the point that multiple characters repeatedly fall over themselves to tell Trahearne how smart he is and how lucky that are to have him leading them. Even when those character also mention how weird it is to have a scholar with little relevant experience leading them. It’s this weird back and forth disconnect that I don’t understand. (Also Trahearne just apparently know a largos, one of the most mysterious and standoffish races in the entire world, well enough for her to just yknow do him a big favor. No questions asked. Or explanation given.)

And then later in the same instance:

It just feels like he’s given all this attention and praise and, as a gay trans autistic person, I feel little to no connection with someone who’s been given all of that and then talks like that to a traumatized person.

Furthermore, in terms of not thinking about consequences, how about the ending scene of Living World Season 2? Y’know this one?

Where Trahearne, the Marshall of the Pact, aka the person in charge of the logistical side of things and NOT ACTIVE COMBAT, decides to y’know just carpet bomb an entire section of forest. Without scouting it. A section of forest that turns out to be inhabited! By multiple races and cultures, i.e. the Jaka Itzel, the Teku Nuhoch and the Quetzal Tengu. And like yeah you could blame Mordremoth’s influence, but it’s made pretty clear that Trahearne isn’t affected by Mordremoth the way other sylvari are. It’s never once questioned that the player character will rescue Trahearne, while every other sylvari around you is suspected to the point of being put in prison camps or even outright slaughtered. But Trahearne is absolutely 100% not corrupted guys we just have to help him out a bit. If Trahearne could keep his mind together at the heart of Mordremoth’s power, then it stands to reason that he was in full possession of his mental faculties many miles away when he made the decision to open fire. And he chose to carpet bomb the area anyway, endangering countless innocent civilian lives. Like wow…

Also whoever voices Trahearne pronounces Caladbolg incredibly incorrectly. If you’re going to take inspiration from languages such as Welsh or Gaelic, languages that people are struggling to preserve in the face of continuing imperialistic and colonialist movements, the least you can do it pronounce the words right. There is no hard B sound in Caladbolg. Whoever voices the Pale Tree is on the right track with pronunciation. Please do right by the cultures you pull from.

[generallypo]

“I heard your voice, so I came... Aoba-san.”

Hooo-boy, if that doesn’t get me emotional every single time. Call it my bias for eccentric bundles of sunshine and softness, or my crippling weakness for the secretly-handsome-and-devastatingly-earnest type, but you can’t change my mind: Clear is, hands down, DMMD’s best love interest. Character development-wise, thematically, romantically, he nails every trial thrown at him, gets his man,  and proceeds to break your heart in the tenderest, sincerest way possible. I am hopping with Huge Fan Energy, so this post is gonna be unapologetically long and self-indulgent and grossly enthusiastic. Yeeeee.

———— 

Look, DMMD meta analysis has been done to death, I get it. This game is old. But I think it stands as testament to its excellent production that it’s still a game worth revisiting years later — especially during these times when social contact is so hard pressed to come by and we all rabidly devour digital media like a horde of screeching feral gremlins. (Have you seen Netflix’s stock value now? The exploding MMO server populations? Astonishing.) It’s pure, simple human nature to want to connect, to cling to members of our network out of biological imperative and our psychological dependency on each other. As cold and primitive at that sounds, social contact also fulfills us on a higher level: the community is always stronger than the individual; genuine trust begets a mutually supportive relationship of exchange and evolution. People learn from each other, and grow into stronger, wiser, better versions of themselves.

Yeah, I’m being deliberately obtuse about this. Of course I’m talking about Clear. Clear, who is a robot. Clear, who is nearly childlike in his insatiable curiosity regarding the human condition.

And it’s a classic literary tactic, using non-human entities to question the intangible constructs of a concept like ‘humanity’ — think Frankenstein, or Tokyo Ghoul, or Detroit: Become Human, among so, so many works in various media — all tackling that question from countless angles, all with varying measures of success. What does it mean to be human? To be good? Who are we, and where do we stand in the grand scheme of things? Is there even a scheme to follow? … Wait, what?

Jokes aside, there are so many ways that the whole approaching-human-yet-not-quite-there schtick can be abused into edgy, joyless existential griping. Nothing wrong with that if it’s what you’re looking for, except that we’re talking about a boys’ love game here. But DMMD neatly, sweetly side steps that particular wrinkle, giving us a wonderfully grounded character to work with as a result. 

Character Design — a see-through secret

Let’s start small: Clear’s design and premise. Unlike so many other lost, clueless robo-lambs across media, Clear does have a small guiding presence early on in his life. It takes the form of his grandfather, who teaches Clear about the world while also sheltering him from his origins. It means he learns enough to blend sufficiently into society; it also means that Clear has even more questions that sprout from his limited understanding of the world.

Told that he must never remove his mask lest he expose his identity as a non-human, Clear’s perpetual fear of rejection for what he is drives much of his eccentricity and challenges him throughout much of his route. As for the player, the mystery of what lies underneath his mask is a carrot that the writers get to dangle until the peak moment of emotional payoff. Even if it’s not hard to guess that there’s probably a hottie of legendary proportions stuck under there, there’s still significance in waiting for that good moment to happen. And when it does, it feels great.

His upbringing contextualizes and affirms his odd choice of fashion: deliberately generic, bashfully covered from the public eye, and colored nearly in pure white - the quintessential signal of a blank slate, of innocence. Contrasted with the rest of DMMD’s flashy, colorful crew, Clear is probably the most difficult to read on a superficial scale, not falling into the fiery, bare-chest sex appeal of a womanizer, or the techno-nerd rebel aesthetic that Noiz somehow rocks. Goofy weirdo? Possibly a serial killer? Honestly, both seem plausible at the start.

And that’s the funny thing, because as damn hard as he tries to physically cover himself up from society, Clear is irrepressibly true to his name: transparent to a fault. He’s a walking, talking contradiction, and it’s not hard to realize that this mysterious, masked stranger… is really just an open book. By far the most effusive and straightforward of the entire cast, his actions are wildly unconventional and sometimes wholly inexplicable. But given time to explain himself, he is always, always sincere in his intentions — and unlike the rest of the love interests, naturally inclined to offer bits of himself to Aoba. It doesn’t take the entire character arc to figure out his big, bad secret — our main character gets an inkling about halfway through his route — and what’s even better is that he embraces it, understanding that his abilities also allow him to protect what he cherishes: Aoba. 

So what if he doesn’t fit into an easily recognizable box of daydream boyfriend material? He’s contradictory, and contradiction is interesting. Dons a gas mask, but isn’t an edgelord. Blandly dressed, but ridiculously charming. Unreadable and modestly intimidating — until he opens his mouth. Even without the benefit of traversing his route, there’s already so much good stuff to work with, and sure as hell, you’re kept guessing all the way to the end.

Character Development — from reckless devotion into complaisant subservience, complaisant subservience into mutual understanding. And then, of course: free will, and true love. 

At its core, DMMD is about a dude with magic mind-melding powers and his merry band of attractive men with — surprise! — crippling emotional baggage. Each route follows the same pattern, simply remixing the individual character interactions and the pace of the program: Aoba finds himself isolated with the love interest, faces various communication issues varying on the scale of frustrating to downright dangerous, wanders into a sketchy section of Platinum Jail, bonds with the love interest over shared duress, breaks into the Oval Tower, faces mental assault by the big bad — and finally, finally, destroys those internal demons plaguing the love interest, releasing the couple onto the path of a real heart-to-heart conversation. And then, you know, the lovey-dovey stuff. 

Here’s the thing: as far as romantic progression goes, it’s really not a bad structure. There’s room to bump heads, but also to bond. The Scrap scene is a thematically cohesive and clever way to squeeze in the full breadth of character backstory while simultaneously advancing the plot. In this part, Aoba must become the hero to each of his love interests and save them from themselves. Having become privy to each other’s deepest thoughts and reaching a mutual understanding of each other, their feelings afterwards slide much more naturally into romantic territory. They break free of Oval Tower, make their way home, and have hot, emotionally fulfilling sex or otherwise some variation on the last few steps. The end. 

That is, except for Clear. 

Clear’s route is refreshing in that he needs none of these things — the climax of his emotional arc actually comes a little after the halfway point of his route. When Clear’s true origins are revealed, he comes entirely clean to Aoba, fighting against his fear of rejection but also trusting that Aoba will listen. It’s a quiet, vulnerable moment, rather than the action-packed tension we normally experience during a Scrap scene. 

That doesn’t mean it’s prematurely written in — it simply means that he reaches his potential faster than the other characters. Because of that, he’s free to pursue the next level of his route’s development much, much sooner in the timeline: he overcomes his fears of his appearance, he confesses his love to Aoba, he leaves the confines of a largely dubious master-servant relationship and allows himself to be Aoba’s equal. Clear’s sprite art mirrors his emotional transformation all the way through, exposing him to the literal bone — and Aoba’s affection for him doesn’t change a single bit. Beautiful.

The whammy of incredible moments doesn’t just stop there, though. I don’t exactly recall the order the routes DMMD is ideally meant to be played in, but I believe Clear’s is meant to be last. And if you do, I can guarantee that it becomes a hugely delightful gameplay experience — in order to achieve his good ending, you must do absolutely nothing with Scrap. It doesn’t just subvert our player expectations of proactively clicking and interacting with our love interests; it grabs the story by its thematic reins and yanks it all back to the forefront of our scene. 

In every route besides Clear’s, Scrap is a tool used to insert Aoba’s influence into and interfere with his target’s mind. Using his powers of destruction, Aoba is able to prune whatever maligned thoughts are harming his target; in any conventional situation, using Scrap is the right choice. 

But one of the central problems in Clear’s route is his conflict between the impulses of his conditioning and his desire to live freely as a human would. Breaking free of Toue’s programming is what initially made him unique; growing beyond the rules imposed by his grandfather is what makes him human. In the final conflict scene, Clear’s decision to destroy his key-lock is an action of true autonomy, made with perfect understanding of the consequences and a sincere, selflessly selfish desire to protect someone he loves. In order to receive his good end, you have to respect his decision. It doesn’t matter which option you pick — by using Scrap, Aoba turns his back on every positive choice he made with Clear and attempts to exert his authority over him. This is Aoba becoming Toue; this is Aoba trying to reinstate himself as ‘Master’ right as he approved Clear as his equal. That’s blatant hypocrisy, and it doesn’t matter if Aoba is trying to do it for Clear’s ‘own good’ — that’s not Aoba’s call to make. If you truly wish to respect Clear’s free will, you will stand by. This is the truth of the moment: Clear has no emotional blockages that Aoba needs to fix. Believe in him, just as he believed in you.

The path to his heart is, and always has been, clear. Scrap was never needed from the start.

While Aoba might be the main character, Clear is undeniably a hero in his own route just as much. Tirelessly earnest and always curious, he leaps headlong into the unknown and emerges with his newfound enlightenment. He’s unafraid of weathering trials, even to the point of accepting death, and returns anew from oblivion to a sweet, cathartic ending. That’s about as textbook hero’s journey as it gets — if that doesn’t make him unquestionably, certifiably, unconditionally human, then I will scream.

And only finally… there is the free end. The final CG is like a throwback to our first impression of him: indistinct, purposefully obscured from proper view. But this time, we know better — and so does Aoba. Looks were never what mattered in Clear’s route. If you were patient, and you were open-minded, and you listened… well, what we realize now is that Clear was doing the exact same thing for you, too.

From a carefree, aimless robot-man with only the gimmick of “eccentric ditz” to carry him forward, we get a supremely more interesting character by the end: a man who has graduated from the well-intentioned but claustrophobic conditioning of his childhood; a weapon who has defied the imperatives placed on him by his creator’s programming; a wanderer who has, through unconditional patience and empathy, discovered love, and striven to become a better person for it. Who was it that ever doubted Clear’s character? He’s the goddamn goodest boy that ever wanted to be a real boy. Of course Clear is human. And in fact, he does it better than every single one of the actually human love interests. You can’t change my mind.

The Romance — kindness is really fucking attractive, okay.

Like I’ve said earlier, I have my Big Fan Blinds stuck on pretty tight. I might be conjuring sparks from thin air. But I think every choice was a deliberate creative decision on the writers’ part, and they deserve all the kudos for it — I’m just the lucky player who gets to enjoy it. But aside from Noiz (who I also think is a perfect darling as well — I could go on and on about him), Clear’s route is a model example for consent and healthy relationships in VN storytelling. This is reciprocated on both sides: never does Aoba infringe on Clear’s boundaries, and neither does Clear. They’re sensitive to each other’s needs and concerns; they ask for permission and stop when it isn’t granted (and when it is, boy do they get frisky — I’m not complaining!) I don’t need to say much more, because I think that consent is both fantastic and yes, incredibly hot (the scene in DMMD is tons more sad, go play Re:connect!). Good writing shows off the massive erotic potential enthusiastic consent puts into intimacy, and Aoba’s and Clear’s relationship is honestly a dream playground. The point is, I think Aoba and Clear genuinely do find equal balance in their relationship by the end of his route (and certainly through Re:connect). If you follow through Re:connect’s storyline, there’s even more thematic richness that comes through in the form of Clear’s greatest asset: communication. The couple get to discuss the long-term implications of them being together; they both offer concerns, points, and assurances to the other, and it’s just a soft, honest moment not so unlike the worries of a real relationship. Hearing is kind of Clear’s motif sense, but it’s really great to see that Aoba also subtly picks it up, really flexes his own communication skills to better engage with Clear. 

Point is, Clear’s route spoke to me on a lot of little levels. Design-wise, he’s already got a ton going for him, and his story builds upon it rather than against it, enriching his development and grounding him a little more solidly in the DMMD universe (and in my heart). His route, aside from being emotionally ruinous, carries a pretty solid chunk of world-building (only beaten out by Mink’s and Ren’s, probably), and the romance feels organic, healthy, and realistic. He’s not the only one with an excellent route, but he’s my favorite. If you read through all of this, you’re a real trooper and I’m extremely impressed. Thanks for tuning in. Peace.

[zdbztumble]

GUNDAM WING review

For how much of it appears on this blog, Pokemon is more “comfort food” entertainment than a great passion of mine, and the same was true when I was a child. Back in my late grade school days, the two shows that dominated my thought, my viewing schedule, my play and my early writing were Dragon Ball Z and Gundam Wing. Like a lot of kids, I can thank Toonami for that. But while I’ve checked in on Dragon Ball, off and on, since those days, I haven’t seriously revisited Gundam Wing since it left Toonami years ago. Sharing OPs with a friend on Discord led to the Wing openings coming up, however, and with the series being free to view on Crunchyroll, I thought I’d give it a rewatch.

There’s no subtle way to put this - Gundam Wing does not hold up to my childhood memories. It’s a mess of a show that frequently falls short of its own ambition. But it remains an enjoyable - even admirable - mess.

The single biggest reason that Gundam Wing is such a mess - the single biggest reason for nearly all of its flaws - is that it’s too short. At 49 episodes (two of which are given over to a clip show recap halfway through), the show isn’t long enough to contain all the story it wants to tell. By way of demonstration, and for those who don’t know/remember the series, I tried to summarize the basic plot of the series in just a few paragraphs here.

Look at that. Look at all that text in a basic outline. That was me paring away all but the most essential details needed to understand what happens in the series. Now imagine trying to fit all of that into 47 episodes while also including character interaction and development, action sequences, aesthetic elements, and a good chunk of essential information being revealed via backstory and vague insinuations only fleshed out in the OVA and manga series.

Things start out promisingly enough, with the action beginning on Operation Meteor and the initial conflict emerging gradually. But it doesn’t take long for the brevity of the series to work against the intrigues happening within it. To say that the show falls into “tell, don’t show” would suggest that it gets across more information than it actually does. Narration opens most episodes with some degree of recap, and occasionally within episodes, but this device is established from the first episode and is usually effectively used in the context of ongoing action. The problem spots are where the show neglects to tell or show almost anything.

Because the series is so short, and because all screentime is spent with either the series leads or the major supporting characters, there’s never an opportunity to showcase the state of world and colonial affairs, and little opportunity taken to describe them outside of the opening narration. Consequently, any feeling of oppression, subjugation, or desperation for the colonies - and thus, a sense of what the Gundams are fighting for - isn’t present at the beginning of the series, and doesn’t ever really emerge. There is some sense of danger towards the end of the series, but it results from the various conflicts that happen within the show, not the state of affairs from the initial premise. Earth’s condition is similarly underdeveloped; if anything is showcased on Earth, it’s beauty. Characters will occasionally talk about the desperate straits of the Gundam pilots, and the pilots themselves will take developments like the targeting of the colonies or their betrayal to heart. The VAs and the animation are strong enough to sell such developments, but the lack of world-building to support them does hurt the series.

But it’s the developments around the Sanc Kingdom and Relena’s relevance to the story suffer the most from the show’s failure to show or tell. After Zechs liberates the kingdom, Relena’s installation as its ruler is set up but never depicted. Relena’s outreach to other nations, and her building up support for total pacifism, is also never shown, and barely discussed. She and Zechs are never even seen to have a conversation until near the very end of the series. There’s plenty of discussion of how inspiring and charismatic Relena is, and why she should be heeded and protected, but with none of the work behind that charisma shown and little of it discussed in detail, there’s little emotional resonance to be had here. Relena’s efforts as queen of the world are slightly more fleshed out, but when Zech’s declaration of war against Earth happens in the same episode - happens, if memory serves, less than a second after Relena makes significant inroads - the notion of Relena as an effective spokeswoman for pacifism is severely undercut by the series’ own haste.

Beyond the plot, all of this naturally damages Relena’s character. Relena begins the series as a somewhat bratty, somewhat depressed girl often neglected by her family due to her stepfather’s job, who finds Heero’s sudden presence in her life a vicarious if dangerous thrill. The murder of her stepfather and the revelation of her true identity further shake her out of teenage ennui and move her to take part in the great events of her time. Like the show itself, it’s a promising beginning, but because Relena’s greatest achievements are glossed over - and because, being a pacifist and a diplomat, she can’t be involved at the point of action - Relena ends up spending a lot of time on the sidelines, looking grim or worried. Worse, when the final conflict between Treize and White Fang emerges, Relena is completely ineffectual at trying for peace with Zechs, and any opportunity for her to use the soft power of her (brief) reign as ceremonial monarch to further the cause of peace isn’t taken, leaving her largely irrelevant to the finale. Relena is less a full-fledged character in Gundam Wing than a solid concept for a character that couldn’t grow to fruition in the time allotted.

The same could be said of the series protagonist, Heero Yuy. In his case, there is at least a bit more told; his scientist mentor describes him as a kind-hearted young man whose devotion to his mission has rendered him a dangerous assassin, Relena instinctively latches onto what kindness and idealism she can sense in him, various characters are inspired by his skills and his devotion to his mission. But there’s little to no evidence of the kind-hearted young man underneath the child soldier, at least not in the initial episodes. We only see the cold-blooded Gundam pilot, and that pilot has the worst starting luck out of any of them, from his Gundam being brought down to his attempts to destroy it failing. His willingness - even eagerness - to die for his cause comes up so often in the beginning of the series that it ends up losing its punch. But being the series lead, and getting more screentime by dint of being a Gundam pilot, Heero does ultimately get fleshed out more than Relena. His remorse over inadvertently killing the Alliance pacifists and his blunt but pragmatic advice to the other Gundam pilots do let his softer side emerge later on. His struggle to find a reason to keep going in the fight in the middle of the series - something multiple characters go through - is rather muddled (not helped by some obtuse and stilted dialogue, another major fault in the series), but he comes out of that mess resolved to protect Relena and defeat White Fang - so much so that he not only unites with the other pilots, but designates Quatre Raberba Winner as their leader instead of himself because he recognizes what’s best for the team. The series ultimately benefits from his being the main character because of developments like this, but the journey is more awkward and choppy than it needed to be, and his romance with Relena and rivalry with Zechs are never fully convincing even if their basic mutual interest in one another is.

Stilted dialogue more than absent material is what most works against series antagonists Zechs and Treize, though Zechs’s lack of scenes with his sister and an abrupt jump from Sanc Kingdom spokesman to genocidal avenger are an issue. The philosophical notions that pepper Zechs’s and Treize’s monologues and conversations - the nature of war, the value of soldiers’ sacrifice, mankind’s natural proclivities, the possibility of peace and what it would take to achieve it - are all fascinating, and I’m still amazed that a show that spent so much time on these subjects was put in an afterschool block bound to attract younger kids back in the day. But for every speech that’s thought-provoking and emotionally resonant, there are three that are a chore to sit through and a puzzle to comprehend. Granted, the Crunchyroll subtitles for this series aren’t the best, so that may partly explain and excuse this problem. But especially in the middle of the series, where allegiances shift and motivations collapse, having the principle antagonists be so difficult to understand isn’t ideal.

Then there are the plot holes - mostly characters who somehow survived apparent deaths with little to no explanation - and characters who just don’t work. One of them is unfortunately a Gundam pilot - Chang Wu Fei, an arrogant misogynist wrapped up in his own ideals of combat who resists any teamwork or even temporary alliances with his fellow Gundams until the very end of the series, and is an unreliable partner even then. None of this would make him a bad character - one hardly needs to be likable or relatable to be an effective and compelling presence in a story - but Wu Fei has virtually no chemistry with the other Gundams, or any character, when actually does interact with them, except for ex-Alliance soldier Sally Po. His standoffishness and stoicism are traits shared by Heero and Trowa Barton, making his seem redundant, and his professed ideals of combat are muddled by bad dialogue. His great rivalry with Treize is also on shaky ground; they only interact twice in the entire series. But Wu Fei is at least comprehensible; Dorothy Catalonia, a Romefeller spy who takes an almost sexual delight in war, is not only obnoxious and intrusive when she appears in the second half of the series, but her motivations seem to swing wildly, her allegiances impossible to follow, and I sorely wish she had died by the end of the series.

With all of those faults laid bare - I did say the show was enjoyable and admirable in spite of everything, and indeed it is. Wu Fei may be redundant and Heero only a partial success as a character, but the other three Gundam pilots are well-realized, so much so that I’m baffled to see various critiques of this show imply that they’re static and one-note. Duo Maxwell is essentially the same person at the end of the series as he was at the beginning, but he’s a wonderful source of levity in the series, and he does have his trials and his low points that contrast well with his typical personality; his moments of anger and despair are some of the best in the series for selling the stakes of the conflict in the absence of proper world-building. Trowa, while much less emotive, goes through a significant journey, with his sibling-esque relationship with circus performer Catherine far more emotionally satisfying than either the Peacecrafts’ bond or Heero and Relena’s romance.

And then there’s Quatre, my new favorite character from this series. I didn’t take a great deal of notice of him as a kid, but rediscovering his story has been my favorite thing about this rewatch. A bright, gentle, and friendly personality, disdainful of violence but prepared to fight for a worthy cause, driven to despair and madness by the loss of his father and the ZERO system, only to emerge as the repentant leader of the Gundams, instrumental in bringing them together as a unit and binding them to Relena’s ideals; of all the pilots, he sees the most growth and change, and all the essentials to his story actually make it on screen. He also has the allegiance of the Maganac Corps, a group that doesn’t have a great deal of importance to the series...but they do have a cool name and cooler mobile suits.

And if Relena is somewhat lacking as a female lead, Gundam Wing does have Sally Po, military doctor turned guerrilla fighter and stalwart Gundam ally, and Lucrezia Noin. For a character that could easily have just been Zech’s love interest, Noin sees a degree of growth throughout the series to rival Quatre’s, moving from OZ instructor to Sanc Kingdom defense captain to the instigator of the Gundams as a unit, working to defeat the man she loves. The show also avoids sexualizing any of its female cast, so - a point for that, I guess.

The designs of the Gundams are all unique (as are their abilities), and some are downright beautiful. The other mobile suits are varied as well and easy to identify, making combat easy to follow. The quality of the combat - and the animation in general - is hit and miss, but it’s never atrocious, and when it’s solid, the end result is some great shots and action. The series also boasts a fantastic soundtrack, with lovely instrumental themes and two great opening songs (though why “Rhythm Emotion” was brought in with only ten episodes left to go on the series still baffles me.) 

All this contributes to Gundam Wing being enjoyable, but what makes it admirable is actually the stilted dialogue and overstuffed story that bring it down. To attempt a series that ruminates on the nature of war and the various philosophical positions around its necessity or lack thereof, of the chances for real peace, for the evolution of humanity if were to move into the stars, and the interpersonal conflicts between various characters, would be a tall order for any series, and not the easiest thing to make into visually compelling animation. That Gundam Wing made the attempt at all shows ambition and aspiration on the part of its writers and staff. As I’ve said at length here, it was frustrated by its short running time and the weaknesses of story elements and characters, but an ambitious mixed bag - even a failure - that aims high is a much more admirable (and interesting to watch) affair than a success that aims low.

And, in its failures to get certain elements across, Gundam Wing shows enough of what it was trying to do that I, at least, can forgive some (not all) rough patches. Characters like Heero and conflicts like the Gundams’ basic fight for the colonies still work despite their flaws. And the final run of episodes, where White Fang and Treize clash and the Gundams work around the battle to save the day, are incredibly strong. It’s a finale that surpasses much of the content preceding it, and if it would’ve been improved by that content being better, it still works because the intent of that earlier content can still be perceived.

I’ve thoroughly enjoyed rediscovering Gundam Wing, and I’d like to check out the dub again when I’m in a position to renew my Hulu subscription. For now, though - there’s a certain waltz to attend to...

[tisne-inkwell]

🖊!!!!!

I will take those exclamation points and claim them as my own, bc you’ve just given me an excuse to scream about Rasmus!!!!! Buckle the fuckle up bc he’s one of my favorite ocs and I’m very deeply invested in him but I never get to scream about him! In large part because I initially made him for a very old and very obscure game series that is highly underappreciated imho, and nobody ever knows what the fuck I’m talking about when I talk about him. There’s a lot to unpack here, so I’m gonna stick it under a readmore, because odds are this is gonna turn into a full essay holy shit.

So first things first, I gotta preface this with some context. I played Myst as a kid at one point, realized it was way over my brain capacity, and shelved it. About a year ago, I found the whole series on sale on Steam, bought ‘em all, played Myst, actually finished it, and by the end I was so enthralled and curious that I proceeded to binge the next three games. Now, the Myst series has earned a reputation for obtusely difficult puzzles, wherein observation is key because lots of small details in the environment may seem insignificant but often end up being very important in informing you what you’re supposed to be doing. You actually have to either take several screenshots of things or keep a journal full of notes and sketches, otherwise you’re never going to be able to remember anything.

I chose the latter, and invested a decent chunk of time just sketching and writing down everything I could, in part to solve the puzzles, and in part because the worldbuilding of this series was just so fascinating to me. My brain was already working overtime trying to unravel this whole thing, and it occurred to me that while I was doing all this, it would make sense that the character I was playing as would be doing this same thing. And while I knew that the game was meant to be first-person and that the story actually encourages self-insert, I still felt more like I was playing a character rather than playing as myself in these games. And here’s where we get to Rasmus.

Rasmus developed from my personal interpretation of the player character in the Myst series, from the initial game up through Revelations, and because of the temporal settings of the later games, he’s one of the few characters I have who I actually had to develop in terms of life stages. I initially envisioned him during my play of Myst and Riven as around my own age, but I had to re-evaluate that concept once I started playing Exile and realized that a full ten years had passed since Riven, and then another ten years between the events of Exile and Revelations. So just in playing these games and developing Rasmus along that timeline, he went from being an anxiety-ridden 20-something who accidentally happened to find the Myst-linking Book, to being an experienced (albeit stressed, tired, and thoroughly done-with-Atrus’-family-drama) adventurer in his mid-40s by the time he visits Tomahna at the beginning of Revelations. And I developed how he would have been during those life stages each time.

And the way that characters, particularly Atrus, interact with the player in Exile and Revelations, gave me the impression that Rasmus wasn’t expected to have just been sitting around during those ten year intervals. Atrus is both a friend and mentor figure, who trusts the player character to help him operate delicate machinery and inventions he’s made, and to explore the Ages you travel to in a respectful and responsible way, in the spirit of learning for the sake of learning. Rasmus would’ve been travelling, exploring other Ages that Atrus and Catherine gave him access to, experiencing new things, learning and recording as much as he could. Would it have been dangerous? Absolutely. I actually decided that at some point between Exile and Revelations, there was some accident that led to the loss of his left arm, and him gaining a steampunky sort of prosthetic instead. But he’s a man who’s passionate about discovering new things and learning as much as he can about them, and whatever he could experience of the different Ages he traveled to was worth the potential danger. Especially if those Ages had people, thriving and fascinating cultures that he could learn about.

But somewhere along the line, Rasmus as a character started meaning a lot more to me than just a fun little oc for a dead and long-dispersed fandom, and I want to actually be able to do things with him. I’m in the process of reworking his backstory and divorcing it from the context that originally spawned him, in order to use him as a D&D oc, or even possibly a character in a world and story of his own. It’s a long and slow-going process trying to rewrite an entire character’s history, especially one as detailed and developed as his is, but it’s a task that I’m enjoying immensely.

[secretshinigami]

Masterlist of Demegawa-chan’s Special Prompts

A compiled list of everyone’s prompts from the exchange – thank you for letting us post them, and we hope you guys enjoy them! Prompts are organized by their submitter, so be sure to give credit if you use one.

niatsuki

Near and Light kissing

Mikami and Light in the rain sharing an umbrella

Misa in a suit

Domestic Mikalight

Matsuda confronting Near on the theory he brings up at the end of the manga

Nate and Light having an obtuse argument, but with romantic undertones

toygowther

Light wearing a crop top, high waisted jeans and fishnets, and a choker. 

L having a nice day out in the park eating ice cream with Maki and Near 

Musical!Light smiling

Misa in a cute gothic dress doing a finger heart

L and Light wearing Misa Misa merch at one of her concerts.

AU in which Light is actually a woman. The fic would follow how Misa reacts to it and if she would still want to be her girlfriend.

Role swap au. Light as Misa and Misa as Light.

Light and Misa meeting a different way and actually forming a healthy relationship. 

spaceblue

L, Naomi & B shenanigans

Naomi, Wedy and Lidner as Charlie's angels (or L's angels?)

Wammy kids as Pokemon trainers

Matt gets the rest of the Wammy kids to play Smash with him

Naomi and L after the end of LABB, after he says his name is Rue Ryuzaki 

Drama!L and drama!Raye Penber bickering 

hazblogs

your take on A's gender and sexuality, bonus points if they're not a cis man and straight

Mello and sun imagery

Beyond Birthday and his eyes

Near with Hanahaki disease (pick who it's about if you want a specific ship)

Mello and witchcraft, if possible in the canon universe

Naomi interacting with Beyond (au or canon), if possible talking about L or the Wammy kids

L/Light being soulmates, in canon or in an AU

how Matt started smoking (I am comfortable with heavy drug themes)

polyphenols

L learning to garden, paint, cook, do taxes, care for an animal, or pay for a parking ticket for the first time

All the times L has cursed Right In Front Of The Task Force (poor Soichiro)

L alone, dressed for the cold, in a cathedral during midnight hours, gazing at the altar in silent contemplation

Aiber and Wedy at an evening gala on a mission

L and Alessandro Juliani warmly shaking hands

Young Naomi in a darkened room with red string and case clippings everywhere

What chain of events led to Quillsh Wammy deciding to adopt L and care for him?

Matsuda cant swim and he’s knocked into a body of water on a case, one of the task force has to go after him

The conversation that happened between L and Rem before he walked out onto that rooftop

L traveling somewhere exotic for a case, meets celebrity of your choice and becomes unlikely friends, takes down crime circle together 

Naomi and L interact side by side as partners during a seperate case  

paralllaxes

16 year old Gevanni (normal day or family banter)

Naomi in modern clothing

the SPK in one of those cheesy family pictures.

Naomi thinking about LABB while in Japan

SPK found family stuff / domesticity

Naomi being with the SPK (with or without Raye is the author's choice)

kiranatrix

Light and L in emo/goth clothes or in an emo band

Light in a crown on a throne

Ryuk doing something funny or playing a prank while invisible

L and Light on a road trip

Misa painting Rem’s looooong nails or giving her a makeover

Death Note characters as birds! 

Sayu gets a grumpy parrot and Light doesn’t realize it can talk until after he hears it repeat some Kira plan thing, so he has to adopt it to keep it from spilling on him

L and Light talk about something important that happened to them in their childhood

L has to deal with growing amount of Light’s products in their shared shower and tries some out of curiosity with disasterous results

Light accidentally eats the last piece of cake in Kira HQ and L can’t deal at 4am

Lawlight Apocalypse AU of any variety 

Beyond breaks out of prison after LABB, where does he go?

47gaslamps

The task force with portentous umbrellas

Halle, symbolically framed between Near and Mello

Naomi kicking Light's butt after he attempts to use force

Matsuda gives Yamamoto a welcome-aboard to the former Task Force / 

AU where the drawer IS forced open

Misa has to shield Light from the paparazzi

translightyagami

Light and L in a crowded apartment, obviously lived in, playing piano next to each other

Light sewing something like his father's suit jacket or a shirt Mikami tore

Indulgent ask for my cryptid AU L and Light sitting in a graveyard having a nice time

Light having a smoke before he has to go tell his parents he's moving in with Misa

Light and Sayu having a difficult conversation where they're both saying they're gay without out loud saying it

Near goes to a Lego building event and meets a nice boy who isn't a Wammy kid

almostsane-things

Wammy's kid(s) of your choice sitting on the roof, watching the sky

Beyond Birthday and Candy Guro

DN characters in a rock band, maybe the shinigami are their mascots

Draw a less appreciated character but try something new with your style/medium. (i.e. use different brushes, incorporate a traditional art/craft like painting or cross-stitch, make a collage piece, go abstract, etc)

L in prison

Misa and Sayu becoming friends/ hanging out

The legend of Kira, how has the story of Kira changed over time in universe? Do people believe it was something supernatural, a government conspiracy, a group of vigilantes, or perhaps it's faded to nothing but a cautionary tale for misbehaving kids

A DN character enjoys that thing you really like/ find interesting to learn about, and shares that interest with someone else. (i.e. Matt plays your favorite video game with someone, Linda teaches someone about gardening, etc)

weneedtotalkaboutdeathnote

A hot double date with BBxDemegawa and LxHiguchi

B meeting L (any context is fine).

Naomi and Raye getting coffee together, having a nice time.

L can see ghosts, but he chooses to ignore them. This becomes increasingly had to do when B’s spirit shows up during the Kira investigation.

An Au where L defeated Kira, grew older, and basically disappeared. Older Mello (mid 20sish, now a detective) follows a lead that takes him to the washed up L. 

Non serial killer, "Unprivate Detective" Beyond Birthday works on a case with Naomi Misora.

pensulliwen

Misa making Valentine’s Day chocolate, perhaps while daydreaming about a fantastically unlikely result of giving them to Light.

Rem holding Misa as they fly over the city.

Meme redraws featuring Misa, Light, and L. Just go crazy. Any ridiculous meme image, shove these dorks in there instead.

Misa convincing Rem to take her flying, the feelings they both experience in the air together.

Misa and Mogi on a shopping “date” in which the unlikely pair manage to work together surprisingly well.

Light considers eliminating Misa from the equation many times, but there’s always something that stops him. Explore how he views her and the dissonance between how he views her versus how he views himself, as well as the reasoning for keeping her around longer than intended. 

izaori

Demegawa in a hot tub but instead of water its money

Mello playing soccer with the other kids (like Matt for example). 

Matsuda playing cookie clicker, because he's obsessed.

Young Demegawa when he first got his job, maybe a few months into the job.

Sayu studying for her big exam coming up so she goes to big bro Light for help.

Ryuk discovers sour green apples rather than just the red ones. Maybe Sidoh discovers dark chocolate/white chocolate at the same time.

mikami

High school age Mikami in a high school uniform.

MikaLight out on a date

anything L/Higuchi

A Sakura TV Documentary about the Kiras. 

MikaLight office romance, non-Kira AU.

Write me a fic about Demegawa. Can definitely be comedy, but please take the character somewhat seriously.

ghostoftasslehoff

L and Light playing piano together.

L with a kitty

Sayu and ‘Ryuzaki’ meeting, and hitting it off 

Matsuda recieving a present or something from a ‘secret admirer’

A day in the life of Matsuda (away from the task force)

L and B’s first meeting (can be shippy or not, whichever my Shinigami prefers)

L tries to engage in punnery with the task force, but only one person engages (preference for Light, but surprise me!)

Sayu’s (or Sachiko’s) thoughts on Light’s new secretive actions as Kira becomes more and more active 

tzigi

(All canon-compliant)

L gets first suspicions about a string of heart attacks which may be a new murder case for him

Light’s first day at To-Oh after L’s death

Light’s first day of work at the NPA 

Near tries to pick up L’s investigation

Why did Near go back to L’s original font for the “L” logo between chapter 108 and the C-Kira oneshot? 

A non-Lawlight rendering of the first evening of Light being chained to L after everyone else has already gone to sleep (preferably in keeping with the One Day one-shot) 

Light begging Ryuk for his life

Light’s funeral

catfishmaster

The main characters (plus B) as DND characters

Older Near (like 25-30) with a bunch of cats he keeps for company

Roger bonding with Near after the Kira case.

Beyond Birthday faked his death in 2004 and now lives alone as a poor and pretty miserable theatre actor with a fake name. Oh, and also it's a Kira wins au.

Years after the Kira case has concluded, L takes on Near as an apprentice.

Matt takes Near on a tour of an afterlife-like world they both wound up in. It's more like a dreamscape than anything else but it serves as an afterlife.  

[stormdoors78476]

A Couple Of Things About Jimmy Breslin

Last Wednesday, I sat down to write a piece about the late Jimmy Breslin, the newspaper columnist whose blunt yet eloquent and crafted prose captured New York and its environs as no one has since Damon Runyon.

Jimmy died a little more than a week ago and I wanted to say a few words to note ― as so many others have — how he was an inspiration to anyone who on a regular basis has to put some thoughts together in a column for publication, often straining until tiny beads of blood pop out on their foreheads.

But there were distractions. As I started to write, news came from London of the lone wolf terrorist who barreled his SUV into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, then dashed to Parliament and stabbed to death a policeman. Five died, including the attacker, and more than 50 were injured.

Then there was California Republican Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, dashing to the White House to give to Donald Trump new info he’d received, allegedly on the surveillance of Trump associates who may have been colluding with Russia to mess with the election. None of this was shared with his fellow committee members.

I think I know what Breslin would have thought of the toadying Nunes and I know for sure what Breslin thought about Trump, because he wrote about him on at least three occasions.

The last was on June 7, 1990. Breslin was describing how easily Trump played the press for suckers, simply by returning their phone calls and bragging his way onto the front page. He was able to con financial types, too, getting them to sink more money into his grandiose real estate ventures.

Breslin wrote, “All Trump has to do is stick to the rules on which he was raised by his father in the County of Queens:

Never use your own money. Steal a good idea and say it’s your own. Do anything to get publicity. Remember that everybody can be bought.

As you can see, more than 25 years ago, he had Trump down cold. In fact, another great journalist, Pete Hamill, told the New York Daily News that Breslin saw Trump as the kind of guy who’s “all mouth and couldn’t fight his way out of an empty lot.”

In another piece, Breslin described Trump as toastmaster at a celebration of greed. This was a column about the full-page ad Trump took out in the New York newspapers in 1989, demanding the death penalty for the Central Park Five, teenagers wrongly accused of the rape and attack of a woman jogger.

That last piece of his suggests to me that had Breslin lived to give us a column last Wednesday he would not have been as distracted as I was. He would not have been writing about the London attack or weaselly congressman Nunes. Instead, he would have tracked down the family and friends of Timothy Caughman, the 66-year-old African-African man who was stabbed to death on a Manhattan street late last Monday night, allegedly by a sword-wielding, self-proclaimed white supremacist named James Harris Jackson.

Reports indicate that Jackson intended his hate crime against Caughman as a test run for a mass murder of black men in Times Square. He’s from Maryland but thought he’d get more attention by doing his worst in the media capital of the world. He turned himself in before committing more mayhem.

Some described his victim Caughman as a man rummaging though the trash for bottles and cans. But Breslin would have gone deeper, learned from acquaintances that Caughman had attended college, worked with young people, collected autographs and took selfies with celebrities; that he was cherished by the people who knew him.

It’s possible Breslin would have cited New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, son of Breslin’s friend Mario, who said, “We must continue to deny that the ideas behind this cowardly crime have any place in democratic society.” And he probably would have pointed out that while President Trump was quick to condemn the deaths in London at the hands of a British-born Muslim, he has yet to issue a peep or a tweet about the death of Timothy Caughman at the hands of a homegrown American racist.

It would have made Breslin really mad. “Rage is the only quality,” he said, “which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”

******

I was very young when I first became aware of Jimmy Breslin. It was in the days just after the death of President John F. Kennedy. One of the local newspapers in my area picked up the columns Breslin was writing about the assassination for the New York Herald Tribune.

There was the now-famous piece about Clifton Pollard, the $3.01-an-hour gravedigger who used a backhoe to dig Kennedy’s grave at Arlington Cemetery. That Pollard story was mentioned in almost every Breslin obit, but the column I especially remember was “A Death in Emergency Room One.” Much of it was about Dr. Malcolm Perry, the Dallas surgeon summoned to do what he could:

The president, Perry thought. He’s much bigger than I thought he was.

He noticed the tall, dark-haired girl in the plum dress that had her husband’s blood all over the front of the skirt. She was standing out of the way, over against the gray tile wall. Her face was tearless and it was set, and it was to stay that way because Jacqueline Kennedy, with a terrible discipline, was not going to take her eyes from her husband’s face.

Then Malcolm Perry stepped up to the aluminum hospital cart and took charge of the hopeless job of trying to keep the 35th president of the United States from death.

I read a paperback collection of Breslin’s Herald Tribune columns and then his first book, Can’t Anybody Here Play this Game? — an account of the New York Mets’ disastrous first season. They lost 120 games, still a major league baseball record. The title was a quote from Mets manager Casey Stengel, who also said, “Been in this game 100 years, but I see new ways to lose ‘em I never knew existed before.”

And yet New Yorkers loved the hapless Mets. Breslin wrote:

This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurance Rockefeller?

I wanted to write like Breslin, cracking tough and wise, just as I wanted to write like Pete Hamill and Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Molly Ivins and Chicago’s Mike Royko. After I moved to Manhattan, our paths crossed from time to time. Once I shot a television segment with Jimmy in the old Daily News city room. He talked about Sinclair Lewis’ novel Babbitt and how its portrayal of conformity and jingoism made it a perfect book for the Reagan years. On top of everything else, he was a very well-read fellow.

But our oddest encounter was in 1976, when I briefly held a job as Jimmy Breslin’s bodyguard. I am not making this up.

He was receiving an honorary degree from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and delivering the commencement address. A friend of mine who worked there called and asked me to accompany Breslin on the short plane ride to Worcester. In those days, Jimmy had a reputation for two-fisted drinking and I was charged by my friend with the task of getting Breslin to graduation sober.

It turned out to be just about the easiest job I ever had. Jimmy and I met up at LaGuardia Airport and the first words out of his mouth were, “I’ve got the worst effing hangover in my life.” The thought of a drink repulsed him.

So we safely arrived in Worcester. But the friend who had hired me thought it would be a swell idea to take Breslin to a working-class bar and have him interact with the locals. And not only that, my somewhat obtuse friend had invited the NBC affiliate to come shoot the proceedings for the 11 o’clock news.

This joint was hardcore, with picnic tables and folding chairs inside and sawdust on the wooden floor, a hangout for serious blue-collar imbibers. They valued their alcohol but even more their privacy because the second those bright TV lights went on in that dark saloon, patrons scattered, howling profane variations on, “What if my boss/wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend, etc., sees me!?”

Jimmy handled the difficult situation with aplomb and that night in his hotel room, hangover be damned, wrote a hell of a commencement speech. Two of the other degree recipients were Mother Teresa and federal judge Arthur Garrity, who two years before had ordered mandatory busing to desegregate Boston’s public schools. There was violence and Garrity received death threats. The college was honoring the jurist’s brave and difficult decision and in his speech, Breslin did, too:

As we are here this morning, men in power meet in Washington to discuss ways of getting around Arthur Garrity’s decisions. Is there, these men ask, some way to use polite meaningless words as a method of avoiding moral obligations? To Arthur Garrity the answer is clear. The answer is no.

Ceremony over and hangover forgotten, Breslin headed for the hotel bar, the rest of us in tow. At the graduation, he had run into a pal from his old neighborhood, a military officer of high rank, and by the end of that boozy afternoon, the two were on the phone long distance to Queens, shouting to a character who frequently popped up in Breslin’s columns, Fat Thomas the bookie.

It was quite a day. Somewhere I still have a copy of the Worcester newspaper from that afternoon with Breslin’s commencement speech featured as the lead story. Jimmy autographed the front page.

He stopped drinking a decade or so later — “Whiskey betrays you when you need it most,” he said — but kept pouring out the prose, brilliant and rude and irascible, looking out for the underdog, calling out the bad guys; always to the point and a perpetual pain in the neck, usually for the right reasons.

Of his vast range of experience, good and bad, Jimmy Breslin said, “I was about 67 people in my life.” Lucky for the rest of us, all of them could write.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mMes2T

[realestate63141]

A Couple Of Things About Jimmy Breslin

Last Wednesday, I sat down to write a piece about the late Jimmy Breslin, the newspaper columnist whose blunt yet eloquent and crafted prose captured New York and its environs as no one has since Damon Runyon.

Jimmy died a little more than a week ago and I wanted to say a few words to note ― as so many others have — how he was an inspiration to anyone who on a regular basis has to put some thoughts together in a column for publication, often straining until tiny beads of blood pop out on their foreheads.

But there were distractions. As I started to write, news came from London of the lone wolf terrorist who barreled his SUV into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge, then dashed to Parliament and stabbed to death a policeman. Five died, including the attacker, and more than 50 were injured.

Then there was California Republican Devin Nunes, chair of the House Intelligence Committee, dashing to the White House to give to Donald Trump new info he’d received, allegedly on the surveillance of Trump associates who may have been colluding with Russia to mess with the election. None of this was shared with his fellow committee members.

I think I know what Breslin would have thought of the toadying Nunes and I know for sure what Breslin thought about Trump, because he wrote about him on at least three occasions.

The last was on June 7, 1990. Breslin was describing how easily Trump played the press for suckers, simply by returning their phone calls and bragging his way onto the front page. He was able to con financial types, too, getting them to sink more money into his grandiose real estate ventures.

Breslin wrote, “All Trump has to do is stick to the rules on which he was raised by his father in the County of Queens:

Never use your own money. Steal a good idea and say it’s your own. Do anything to get publicity. Remember that everybody can be bought.

As you can see, more than 25 years ago, he had Trump down cold. In fact, another great journalist, Pete Hamill, told the New York Daily News that Breslin saw Trump as the kind of guy who’s “all mouth and couldn’t fight his way out of an empty lot.”

In another piece, Breslin described Trump as toastmaster at a celebration of greed. This was a column about the full-page ad Trump took out in the New York newspapers in 1989, demanding the death penalty for the Central Park Five, teenagers wrongly accused of the rape and attack of a woman jogger.

That last piece of his suggests to me that had Breslin lived to give us a column last Wednesday he would not have been as distracted as I was. He would not have been writing about the London attack or weaselly congressman Nunes. Instead, he would have tracked down the family and friends of Timothy Caughman, the 66-year-old African-African man who was stabbed to death on a Manhattan street late last Monday night, allegedly by a sword-wielding, self-proclaimed white supremacist named James Harris Jackson.

Reports indicate that Jackson intended his hate crime against Caughman as a test run for a mass murder of black men in Times Square. He’s from Maryland but thought he’d get more attention by doing his worst in the media capital of the world. He turned himself in before committing more mayhem.

Some described his victim Caughman as a man rummaging though the trash for bottles and cans. But Breslin would have gone deeper, learned from acquaintances that Caughman had attended college, worked with young people, collected autographs and took selfies with celebrities; that he was cherished by the people who knew him.

It’s possible Breslin would have cited New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, son of Breslin’s friend Mario, who said, “We must continue to deny that the ideas behind this cowardly crime have any place in democratic society.” And he probably would have pointed out that while President Trump was quick to condemn the deaths in London at the hands of a British-born Muslim, he has yet to issue a peep or a tweet about the death of Timothy Caughman at the hands of a homegrown American racist.

It would have made Breslin really mad. “Rage is the only quality,” he said, “which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers.”

******

I was very young when I first became aware of Jimmy Breslin. It was in the days just after the death of President John F. Kennedy. One of the local newspapers in my area picked up the columns Breslin was writing about the assassination for the New York Herald Tribune.

There was the now-famous piece about Clifton Pollard, the $3.01-an-hour gravedigger who used a backhoe to dig Kennedy’s grave at Arlington Cemetery. That Pollard story was mentioned in almost every Breslin obit, but the column I especially remember was “A Death in Emergency Room One.” Much of it was about Dr. Malcolm Perry, the Dallas surgeon summoned to do what he could:

The president, Perry thought. He’s much bigger than I thought he was.

He noticed the tall, dark-haired girl in the plum dress that had her husband’s blood all over the front of the skirt. She was standing out of the way, over against the gray tile wall. Her face was tearless and it was set, and it was to stay that way because Jacqueline Kennedy, with a terrible discipline, was not going to take her eyes from her husband’s face.

Then Malcolm Perry stepped up to the aluminum hospital cart and took charge of the hopeless job of trying to keep the 35th president of the United States from death.

I read a paperback collection of Breslin’s Herald Tribune columns and then his first book, Can’t Anybody Here Play this Game? — an account of the New York Mets’ disastrous first season. They lost 120 games, still a major league baseball record. The title was a quote from Mets manager Casey Stengel, who also said, “Been in this game 100 years, but I see new ways to lose ‘em I never knew existed before.”

And yet New Yorkers loved the hapless Mets. Breslin wrote:

This is a team for the cab driver who gets held up and the guy who loses out on a promotion because he didn’t maneuver himself to lunch with the boss enough. It is the team for every guy who has to get out of bed in the morning and go to work for short money on a job he does not like. And it is the team for every woman who looks up ten years later and sees her husband eating dinner in a T-shirt and wonders how the hell she ever let this guy talk her into getting married. The Yankees? Who does well enough to root for them, Laurance Rockefeller?

I wanted to write like Breslin, cracking tough and wise, just as I wanted to write like Pete Hamill and Gay Talese, Hunter Thompson, Tom Wolfe, Molly Ivins and Chicago’s Mike Royko. After I moved to Manhattan, our paths crossed from time to time. Once I shot a television segment with Jimmy in the old Daily News city room. He talked about Sinclair Lewis’ novel Babbitt and how its portrayal of conformity and jingoism made it a perfect book for the Reagan years. On top of everything else, he was a very well-read fellow.

But our oddest encounter was in 1976, when I briefly held a job as Jimmy Breslin’s bodyguard. I am not making this up.

He was receiving an honorary degree from the College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts, and delivering the commencement address. A friend of mine who worked there called and asked me to accompany Breslin on the short plane ride to Worcester. In those days, Jimmy had a reputation for two-fisted drinking and I was charged by my friend with the task of getting Breslin to graduation sober.

It turned out to be just about the easiest job I ever had. Jimmy and I met up at LaGuardia Airport and the first words out of his mouth were, “I’ve got the worst effing hangover in my life.” The thought of a drink repulsed him.

So we safely arrived in Worcester. But the friend who had hired me thought it would be a swell idea to take Breslin to a working-class bar and have him interact with the locals. And not only that, my somewhat obtuse friend had invited the NBC affiliate to come shoot the proceedings for the 11 o’clock news.

This joint was hardcore, with picnic tables and folding chairs inside and sawdust on the wooden floor, a hangout for serious blue-collar imbibers. They valued their alcohol but even more their privacy because the second those bright TV lights went on in that dark saloon, patrons scattered, howling profane variations on, “What if my boss/wife/husband/girlfriend/boyfriend, etc., sees me!?”

Jimmy handled the difficult situation with aplomb and that night in his hotel room, hangover be damned, wrote a hell of a commencement speech. Two of the other degree recipients were Mother Teresa and federal judge Arthur Garrity, who two years before had ordered mandatory busing to desegregate Boston’s public schools. There was violence and Garrity received death threats. The college was honoring the jurist’s brave and difficult decision and in his speech, Breslin did, too:

As we are here this morning, men in power meet in Washington to discuss ways of getting around Arthur Garrity’s decisions. Is there, these men ask, some way to use polite meaningless words as a method of avoiding moral obligations? To Arthur Garrity the answer is clear. The answer is no.

Ceremony over and hangover forgotten, Breslin headed for the hotel bar, the rest of us in tow. At the graduation, he had run into a pal from his old neighborhood, a military officer of high rank, and by the end of that boozy afternoon, the two were on the phone long distance to Queens, shouting to a character who frequently popped up in Breslin’s columns, Fat Thomas the bookie.

It was quite a day. Somewhere I still have a copy of the Worcester newspaper from that afternoon with Breslin’s commencement speech featured as the lead story. Jimmy autographed the front page.

He stopped drinking a decade or so later — “Whiskey betrays you when you need it most,” he said — but kept pouring out the prose, brilliant and rude and irascible, looking out for the underdog, calling out the bad guys; always to the point and a perpetual pain in the neck, usually for the right reasons.

Of his vast range of experience, good and bad, Jimmy Breslin said, “I was about 67 people in my life.” Lucky for the rest of us, all of them could write.

-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.

from DIYS http://ift.tt/2mMes2T