#or is it just infodumping and rambling

[emo-crowgirl]

do you have any tips for writing the glitch techs characters? i want to get back into fanfic writing but idk how to write them

I have a few things. Not entirely sure how much it would help because Im also kind of new to writing and have no idea what counts as advice and what’s just obvious here, but here’s some things I do:

General speech stuff:

The biggest thing I do to write any character is rewatch episodes of the show to try to get their speaking style and voice locked down in my brain. I rewatch a few episodes of Glitch Techs whenever I come back from a long pause in writing or if I’m trying to get a specific character’s personality down. A general rule for me is if I can’t read a bit of dialogue and hear it in the character’s voice, I rewrite it until I can.

(Also: I cheat a little. The reason my main fic right now (HTSBD) is primarily a Chatfic is because I’m bad at writing tone and struggle with writing movement. It’s a lot easier to write how a character would write something or speak in a vacuum than write how a character would physically say something or how they’d move.)

Anyways, watching episodes and really paying attention to the character’s speaking style helps a lot for me, and also helped me see a couple of verbal tics and quirks that I never really noticed before. Like I know how “Oh Nerds” or just “Nerds” is used as a kind of in-universe swear, and I know Mitch’s usage of “Noobs” and “Blueberries” to describe Five and Miko, but I never picked up on stuff like how often Five says “Holy Smokes” or how Miko tends to refer to people as “Dudes” for example until a rewatch.

Speaking of in-universe swears: I personally swear like a “written by vivziepop” meme, which gets in the way of writing dialogue because I’d keep putting swears in places where they don’t belong. To counter this, i literally made one of those “will they say fuck” meme charts and arranged all of the characters on it by how likely they are to swear at something and how likely they are to use more mild substitutes like “damn”, “heck” or the in-universe “Nerds”, and somehow this helped me write better. So what I’m saying is those meme charts can be surprisingly useful when trying to nail down specific character stuff and keeping it consistent if you take them seriously and don’t just use them for memes.

Below the cut is a very, very long post on each of the specific characters. I have no idea if it’s usable as writing advice or if it’s just me overanalyzing and incoherent rambling.

Specific characters:

Ok so this very quickly turned into me overanalyzing and rambling about my interpretations of the characters in extreme detail. I have no idea if any of this is even remotely helpful but I seriously enjoyed writing it.

Five:

I got this from another writing tip post made by someone else on this site, but Five is petty. He’s held on to a single ruined birthday for years and as pointed out by that post I mentioned he STILL hasn’t told Miko that they have actually met before because she kept beating him in various games. Five can and will hold grudges for a very long time.

At the same time though, he’s not usually the type to hold that grudge over someone’s head or bring it up around them all that often. Depending on the context he either keeps that sort of thing to himself and essentially bottles it all up or is willing to forgive, but very unwilling to forget.

The only major exception to this is Mitch. Five gives him plenty of leeway and is usually quick to forgive a good chunk of Mitch’s assholery, or at least doesn’t usually hold much of a grudge after the fact. I’ve always kinda personally seen this as a bit of hero worship. Mitch and especially Mitch’s old streams and videos mean A LOT to Five, he credits them for basically teaching him all of his gaming knowledge and they may have even been what got him as into gaming as he is now, and he holds onto that positive stuff just like how he holds onto grudges and pettier things.

That being said, Five does have a boiling point, for both holding onto grudges and how many times he’s willing to give Mitch the benefit of the doubt, and as seen in B.U.D.S, when Five does eventually hit that point he goes straight for the kill, shutting down Mitch and leaving him without any kind of response, which is saying something because it’s Mitch “Always has the last word” Williams. He seems willing to push things to the side and forgive later in the day, but again, Mitch is an outlier and gets a lot more leeway than anyone else.

In terms of his family (more specifically just his Dad), it’s complicated. Five loves his dad, but his arrest is a very sore subject and Five will do basically anything to avoid the topic, from just dodging the topic in conversations whenever possible to literally avoiding a family friend’s entire store for years. Five just doesn’t like dwelling on things that.

And that’s outside of Hinobi. Within Hinobi, it’s complicated but in a different way. Because the store that Five works at is 100% the exact same store that his Dad worked at. There’s no way it isn’t. And then you need to remember that in-universe, his dad made some of the earliest video games that were ESSENTIAL to the development of modern games, without even acknowledging that there’s a very high chance his Dad worked on or even invented the in-universe equivalent to PONG. Making Emilio Nieves most likely the literal inventor of video games as we know it. There are definitely people currently in the Bailley store that knew him. That worked with him. Phil probably knew him at least in passing and at most personally. There’s weight here, along with some MASSIVE shoes to fill, and Five knows it, but absolutely refuses to acknowledge it. He just wants to ignore it and pretend it isn’t there.

Kinda connecting to that, Five overthinks things a lot. He stresses over the smaller things, and is more than capable of sending himself into a spiral if he’s not careful, and if something is bothering him, it’s going to keep bothering him for a long time. So maybe that’s part why he tries to avoid anything to do with his dad. Because he knows that if he actually starts putting too much thought into it it’ll be hard for him to ever stop thinking about it.

Come to think of it, we see that he’s been friends with Casino since long before his Dad’s arrest, and yet Casino mentions that it’s been a very long time since the two of them have seen each other. Maybe Five trying his best to avoid anything to do with his dad and probably kinda just.. withdrawing from everything to avoid the topic has something to do with that.

In terms of his skills as a Glitch Tech and a Gamer, Five has a very good mind and planning ability, but lacks the raw, innate skill that some others have.

Like he can outthink his opponents, plan things out extremely well, figure out puzzles and strategies extremely quickly and he’s very quick to learn the ins and outs of a game, but he doesn’t have the insane reflexes, reaction times or that general raw, natural ability that someone like Mitch or Miko has. Give him a chance to think things through for even a moment and he can easily figure out what he NEEDS to do, but he could lack the raw, unlearnable ability to actually DO it. Luckily as a Glitch Tech, that’s typically where buffs come in to bridge that gap, and he’s typically more than willing to practice and retry games until he gets the hang of something, helped by the fact that Five is a very quick learner.

Like take my view on why he couldn’t beat Castlestein. He kept every weapon on him just in case it would be useful in the future and looted literally everything, and he definitely knew exactly what he NEEDED to do, but he just couldn’t do it. If he made it to Nogrog the upside down castle puzzle and Nogrog’s final battle would have been figured out in seconds, but he didn’t make it. The enemies were too fast, the timing windows for everything too small and Five simply lacked the reflexes and raw power to get through it until eventually he was worn down to the point of giving up.

Five isn’t weaker than Miko or necessarily worse than her at games, his skills are just in a different place and it’s hard to compare the two of them. Miko has the raw power and reflexes, but he’s better at planning and strategizing. In any competitive game between them could probably read Miko like a book, easily outmaneuver or flank her or just outsmart her completely, but he needs a even a small moment to think or do a tiny bit a of setup in order to do that effectively, and Miko excels in rushing down opponents before they’re able to react. If Miko can successfully rush Five and both start and end the fight quickly (in either a game or real life), she wins easily, but if it starts being dragged out a even a little bit longer and Five is able to actually think of a plan, it’s a lot more evenly matched, getting more favoured towards Five the more time passes and the more he’s able to think.

Also (just for pure, headcanoned fun) as for Five’s place on my “swear chart”: I have him marked down as one of the least likely characters to swear, but one of the most likely to use a substitute like Nerds, Damn or Heck.

Miko:

I have a lot to say about Miko because she’s one of my favourite characters.

Four letters: A.D.H.D. If you want to write Miko and aren’t diagnosed with ADHD, I suggest doing research on ADHD. The hyperactivity, the impulsiveness, the struggles with focusing on things, the hyperfixating on her interests, her “Boredom Dance��� possibly being an example of stimming while being understimulated, she’s so ADHD coded it’s insane. Whether she’s aware of this or not is up to you.

Miko hyperfixates on things. That claim about beating all the games she owns says less about her skill than it does about her sheer determination to complete any game that interests her. If Miko starts something and she’s even slightly interested in it, she NEEDS to complete it. Once she’s gotten going on something it’s very hard to stop her.

However, this can go in reverse. If something does manage to stop Miko, like hitting some metaphorical wall that she just can’t get past, or anything else that finally gets her to give up, or if she’s not interested in whatever she’s supposed to do in the first place, it’s hard to get her going again, especially just on her own without any outside force or person to give her a push.

Also, Miko can’t stand being stuck in one place for too long. She needs to MOVE, She needs to DO SOMETHING, she needs stimulation. A Miko with nothing to do or a Miko forced to do things she finds boring (for two examples: Reading and Tutorials) is an unhappy Miko.

Kinda fitting with both of those above points, Miko is very competitive. She literally tracks down the kid who beat her Rock-Em-Sockers score to challenge him personally. She’s also this competitive against herself, which is another reason why she refuses to leave a game unbeaten. If she doesn’t beat the game, the game has won. (Just look at her brief crisis upon learning that she didn’t beat Castlestien).

Miko may be impulsive, she may not think everything through before doing it, and she may be easily distracted, but she’s not dumb. Far from it. She’s very smart, especially in areas that interest her (she literally sneaks around Joystick Jr’s and fixes the arcade machines in there and she probably had to have taught herself how to do that on her own), but she’s held back by, again, that impulsivity and inability to focus on stuff isn’t an active interest of hers. Again, ADHD.

Also worth noting, as seen in Ralphie Bear is Back, Miko probably has Automatonophobia. That’s the the fear of “human-like figures”. It’s usually the fear of something like mannequins, ventriloquist dummies, or wax figures but it’s also a kind of umbrella-term-phobia that covers a bunch of stuff all at once like the fear of robots, statues, dolls, animatronics and other things that kind of lean towards the uncanny valley. From what we’ve seen Miko’s fear might just extend to animatronics, but then again we’ve never seen her in the same room as a mannequin or a wax figure so who knows.

While we’re on the subject of Miko’s mind, her reset immunity. Have fun with it. It’s implied somewhat in BUDS with the actions of her clone that her immunity extends to things like Mind Reading too and there’s probably a good chance that her mind can’t be controlled or easily altered either, so feel free to go wild on what else Miko could be immune to.

Another note: Miko cannot drive for the life of her. I wouldn’t be surprised if Five at least has a beginner’s license. His grandparents either don’t have a car and just use the food truck, which hasn’t driven in years according to Five, or have like one car used mostly to pick up groceries and supplies for said food truck. Either way Five probably either has a beginner’s license with no logical way of getting a full one of his grandparents don’t have a car, or just has a driver’s license outright if they do. I refuse to believe Miko has been to any form of driving practice, and there is a good reason Five is almost always the person driving the van. The few times we’ve seen her get behind the wheel it’s been some kind of disaster and god help you if she uses the van’s portal gun because she’s either going to miss the destination by a little, miss the destination by a lot, or arrive on location perfectly, only to open the exit portal 10 feet above the ground.

On a less pleasant note: Miko is lonely. It’s kind of implied the timeline of events with her family’s arrival went Rock ‘Em Sockers -> The Ralphie Bear Incident, with Miko originally being lonely when her family first moved to Bailey, then getting herself noticed by getting really good at the arcade games at Joystick Jr’s, especially Rock ‘Em Sockers, only for everything to come crashing down because of that birthday party, and prior to meeting Five Miko really doesn’t have any friends. Sure it’s mentioned by the creators that she knows a couple of people online but in real life she’s was pretty much on her own until meeting Five, and Miko is aware of this.

She’s also a bit of a black sheep in her own family. Her family is large and as the second oldest child, Miko falls right into that middle-child area where her parents tend to be more focused on her older sister and younger siblings. Not to mention that Miko’s interest in gaming is pretty much limited to her within her family. Sure her siblings are willing to play with her occasionally, but the rest of her family just doesn’t GET her interest in video games the same way she does. Her parents and siblings still love her, and she loves them, but there’s a disconnect between her and the rest of her family, and Miko is, again, aware of this.

Also also, it’s kinda implied that Miko isn’t very well socialized, with things like her lack of friends but also things like her not knowing about Mitch being a former streamer and having a channel or her older sister telling her about social aspects of high school despite Miko being 16 and therefore a high schooler. That last point originally made me headcanon that Miko was or still is homeschooled, and although it’s just a headcanon, I like to stick with it. I think it fits with everything else about her.

Miko is terrified of being othered. Of being viewed as the weird kid and losing the friends that she’s pretty much just gained recently. Her greatest tangible fear may be animatronics but her greatest intangible fear is going back to being friendless, and that sort of thing shows.

I’ve made a whole post on it before but I’ll paraphrase it again, but in The Glitch Modder, Mitch’s comments about Miko being weird, everyone else being unnerved by her reset immunity and ESPECIALLY Miko finding out that Five, her current best friend, also sees her immunity as weird sets her off for the whole day because of that. She’s terrified of being viewed as not normal and pushing people away from her, so it’s a massive pain point for her. That sort of thing is also why she panics more than anyone else does when Mitch accuses her of being a glitch in Find The Glitch.

Also kinda connecting to that, Miko will often try to put the wellbeing and feelings of her closer friends before her own, mostly because she doesn’t want to do anything that has even the slightest chance of pushing someone away from her. Like letting Five call her Meeks. She hates the nickname, but doesn’t want to disagree with it for fear of pushing Five away.

Miko doesn’t exactly care about her own wellbeing in combat either. Her main strategy in most things is to charge straight in and start doing damage with very little defensive options, not caring about her own injuries, damage to her equipment or collateral damage, and she’s more than willing to take the hit for Five, Ally, or anyone else she’s working with (although Mitch kinda depends on context), she’s also definitely the type to ignore her own injuries or insist that she’s fine when she’s really not.

Whether you’re writing Miko with the intention of her being a human (canon), a glitch (not canon but there’s a lot of potential) or wanting to leave it ambiguous (The funny option), one thing you have to acknowledge is that Miko’s reflexes and reactions times are canonically insane. Literally called out as inhuman by Mitch. Miko has the reflexes of someone using a TAS in real life and a physical reaction time so good she may as well be seeing the future (as long as she’s focused on the right thing).

This can be seen in her choice of games. The games Miko is shown to be best at are the in-universe equivalent to games like Guitar Hero and DDR, games that primarily require fast reflexes and good reaction times. Even the unnamed game she and Five are playing at the beginning of Castlestien appears to be a fast paced racing or maybe obstacle dodging game of some kind, and what do you know, Miko’s beaten it multiple times.

This borderline superhuman raw skill comes at the cost of puzzles, tutorials and really any moment where Miko is required to sit and think becoming her greatest weakness. Again Miko’s not dumb, but a mix of being unable to focus on the right things, being easily bored and that constant need for stimulation and to actually DO something makes puzzles difficult at best and unbearable at worst for her. Can Miko solve a puzzle on her own? Yes. But she’s just not made for it, doesn’t like doing it and WILL attempt to brute force it if possible. So Miko tends to be unable or more often unwilling to do these sorts of things.

I still think my headcanon about Castlestien’s fake wall is the best example of what I’m trying to say: My headcanon is that the Blade Demon of Truth CAN be beaten, but he’s a puzzle boss that can’t be beaten through normal combat. Miko’s fake wall is a speedrunning glitch that Miko stumbled across by accident because she would rather brute force a seemingly impossible fight until literally finding a way to clip through a wall and skip the fight entirely than try to figure out whatever puzzle needs to be solved to beat the fight legitimately. Could Miko have figured out the intended solution on her own? Eventually sure. But Miko’s sheer determination and unwillingness to do something she hates was simply too strong.

I’ve already compared Five and Miko’s skills, but Miko and Mitch is a whole different story. I want to get into their relationship and how they interact once I start talking about Mitch next, but i think it’s important to get this out of the way now.

Miko has better “raw skill” than Mitch, or at the very least is equally matched or close to equally matched. Her reflexes are better, her reaction times are better, she’s faster than him, Mitch literally calls Miko’s skills inhuman by his own standards, but they’re still evenly matched in a 1 on 1 competition between both of them, possibly slanted in Mitch’s favour. Both of them THINK they’re better than the other, but in reality any straight competition between them will probably end in either a draw or inconclusive.

This is because sure, Miko has more raw skill, but Mitch, just like Five, is very good at strategizing and planning. He can read people, he knows how to get into people’s heads, he knows how to prepare and plan his next moves. And Miko’s patented strategy of rushing down the opponent before they can react doesn’t work very well against him because Mitch still has the raw skill and ability to hold his own against Miko.

Miko relies on rushing her opponent down and trying to take them out before they can think of a strategy or begin preparing for anything, and even if someone does manage to outsmart her, she’s so fast that a lot of the time even if someone can predict what she’s going to next, they might not be able to physically react fast enough to stop her, at least not without some kind of pre-existing strategy or setup or something to give them an advantage. The longer an opponent lasts against Miko, the longer they’re able to think and strategize ways to get past her, and the more her “rush opponent and don’t let them think or set anything up” strategy starts to fall apart. Mitch, even running with the most Miko-Favoured estimate of their skill differences, is still more than good enough to go against Miko without a proper plan and can either drag out an encounter long enough to strategize and figure out ways to tip the balance in his favour, or just win against her outright. This kind of balances the two to the point where it’s kind of a coin toss as to who wins in a fight (in-game or otherwise) between them.

In my own headcanons, no one in-universe really knows who would win in a completely fair 1v1. Miko and Mitch both think THEY would win, obviously, but ask anyone else and they wouldn’t be able to give you a concrete answer.

Mitch:

One of the first things I feel should be said about Mitch is that his ego may be massive, but it isn’t misplaced. It’s not a case where the huge ego is a cover for even larger insecurities or the trope where someone constantly talks big only to be unable to back up what they say. Mitch really is (more or less) as strong as he claims, and that status as the highest ranked Glitch Tech in Bailey is something he earned legitimately fighting the toughest glitches he could find on his radar. The glitches he steals from other techs barely make a dent in the total amount of xp he brings in and if Mitch says he can take out a glitch, he usually isn’t lying.

That being said, this ego does mean that if Mitch does get in over his head, either fighting a glitch or doing something in a game, it will be a cold day in hell when he admits it and backs down, at least without someone else stepping in for him. He’d never directly admit that he’s been beaten, and it can take something short of a miracle to get him to admit that he’s wrong, but he can find ways to indirectly say it, keeping his ego intact when possible.

Using my own work as an example because it’s the best one I can think of right now, in HTSBD, Mitch never directly calls for backup, even when he knows that he can’t do something himself. Instead, he always waits for someone ELSE around him to bring up the idea of calling for backup and then supports their idea. Instead of him basically saying “i need backup, I can’t win this”, it’s someone else’s idea. Mitch isn’t calling for backup because he’s in trouble, someone else is calling for backup because THEY’RE in over their head, and Mitch just so happened to support THEIR Idea.

Also, I kind of view Mitch like a fusion of Five and Miko, with a dash of assholery mixed in for taste. He has Five’s mind and planning ability an Miko’s raw talent, but he also has Five’s pettiness and Miko’s competitiveness and stubbornness. If someone wrongs Mitch, he’ll remember, he’ll hold a grudge and he’ll ruminate on it for a long time.

When it comes to fighting glitches (and probably other situations as well), Mitch is strange yet perfect balance of “Pure Speedrunning Effectiveness” and “The Flashiest Show Off You’ve Ever Seen”

What I mean by this is that I’d argue Mitch fits the description of the “Combat Pragmatist” trope. He does whatever he needs to do to win quickly and effectively, screw the rules or typical etiquette, and he does things with brutal efficiency. He doesn’t care about the rules or morals of it (For an example, in Age Of Hinobi: “You’re Mitch Williams!” “And you’re not.” *Kicks kid off a cliff*) and he doesn’t care if something is overkill or bending the rules or not intended to be used a certain way (like overclocking his gauntlet), he just wants to win.

But at the same time, Mitch is an egotistical show off. He wants to win as effectively as possible, but he also wants to show off how much he’s winning. So what you get is stuff like his initial fight against the Copycat Glitch in BUDS, with Mitch stylishly dodging and trash talking as much as possible (even with no one else to see it), mixed with Mitch overclocking his gauntlet and hitting the glitch with a point blank gauntlet beam that’s about as large as the glitch itself, regardless of how much overkill that is or the risks with overclocking (which as mentioned by Mitch, Hinobi really doesn’t like its employees doing in the first place).

Also, Mitch is a massive workaholic. As said by him in Age Of Hinobi, this job is everything to him. In many ways it’s all he really has going for him, and a part of him is terrified of the prospect of losing that. Besides just being extremely competitive, that’s part of why he’s so determined to keep himself at the top of the leaderboard whenever possible. I’m his mind, that score is everything to him, and although there’s very little that can actually challenge that score to be honest (Ignoring the second highest score held by Bergy and his level 1 glitch farming, which Mitch refuses to see as a threat), a part of him is extremely defensive of it whenever something even remotely threatens to come close.

Also, Mitch may be a bully, but he draws the line at physical stuff. Mitch gets into people’s heads, he manipulates and makes fun of people, and he steals glitches, but he refuses to physically hurt anyone. Closest thing we have to that is Mitch constant upping the power of his resets against Miko until threatening to “wipe her clean” (which.. fair. I’d be the same if all of a sudden I encountered something that resets didn’t work against when that shouldn’t even be possible), a low-power, seemingly harmless gauntlet shot to knock Miko over, and Mitch trying to shoot Miko with his van’s portal gun to get her off his van. There’s also Mitch and Miko’s brief game of chicken in Smashozaurs where Mitch very clearly panics when he realizes that Miko isn’t backing down and he’s about to hit her with the van (Notice how all of these include Miko). Mitch just avoids physically hurting people. A deleted scene even points out that the massive gun Mitch pulled on Casino should have just harmed the possessor and would have (probably) left Casino unharmed.

Every character kinda has their own way of dealing with Mitch.

I’ve already gone over how Five tends to give Mitch a pass or the benefit of the doubt when possible, and otherwise he mostly just deals with it.

Zahra also mostly puts up with him, but won’t hesitate to respond with her own comments, sarcasm or just snark back at him. It doesn’t typically do much because it’s Mitch Williams, but it’s something.

We see that Bergy just kind of takes orders from anyone who outranks him without questioning.

I say that Haneesh just tries to ignore him, but the two of them don’t interact much on screen so feel free to come up with your own dynamic there.

Nix

And then Miko pushes back against everything Mitch has ever and will ever say and/or do.

Miko and Mitch do NOT mix. Peak “Siblings that hate each other” vibes. It’s like oil and water unless they have someone else (typically Five) acting as a mediator.

The dynamics are peak. They both have a large amount of siblings, they’re both extremely competitive, I view their skills as basically equal at least to the point where you can’t really predict who’s going to win, Mitch is an asshole who is very annoyed having to deal with “the new techs” and Miko is one of said new techs. They’ve been rivals at best and enemies at worst since the moment they met.

On that note, god help us all if Miko and Mitch learn about each other’s skills in DDR-like games. Because we’ve seen Miko’s skill for ourselves in Setting The Score and an unused animatic for season 3 shows that Mitch ALSO has some insane DDR-like (technically an in-universe Just Dance equivalent but close enough) skills. If those two ever end up going against each other in DDR or Just Dance it’s going to go on until they both collapse from exhaustion or a glitch crawls out of the screen, at which point they’d probably start fighting over who can capture it first.

Also worth noting that for most characters, they’re able to point at at least one redeeming quality about Mitch. Like sure he’s a jerk but you have admit that he’s a really effective tech or good at games, or that he was a good streamer prior to joining Hinobi, or even that he’s a decent leader when he’s not trying to screw everyone else over. Miko’s competitive nature and her already being against Mitch as a concept means that she either refuses to acknowledge Mitch’s skill or just views it as competition, she refuses to listen to a word he says if he’s the leader and she had no idea about Mitch’s past until very recently, with her first impression of the guy being the Hinobi Smash Competition, followed by Mitch wiping her new friend’s brain. She views him as stuck up asshole who keeps stealing her kills and messing with her, and it usually takes a third person (usually Five) being present in some way to stop the two of them from at the very least arguing.

Also contributing a lot to that dynamic, they bounce off each other uniquely too. Usually, if Mitch messes with someone, like I mentioned before everyone has their own way of dealing with him, and a lot of that ends up being trying to ignore him or just just going along with him, sometimes calling him out on his bullshit if it’s a particular problem or if Mitch genuinely crosses a line. Miko though. If Mitch messes with Miko, basically every single time without fail, she will have some kind of response. Like sure Zahra might snark back at him occasionally, Mitch probably doesn’t WANT Five to snap at him again and everyone has a breaking point eventually, but Miko actively tries to go against him in every way imaginable to her. She’ll disobey orders, mock him right back, use her own gauntlet equipment against him, figure out exactly what he’s trying to do just so she can get in his way, even get others to do the same sometimes. To Mitch, Miko seemingly runs on pure spite against him, and vice versa to be honest.

However, this status of Miko and Mitch being enemies can vary greatly, and everything I just said about Miko and Mitch’s dynamic only really applies on days where they’re outright enemies. It actually depends almost entirely on how much of a dick Mitch has been recently. Because the more of a jerk Mitch is, especially to Five and Miko, the harder Miko pushes and fights back, and if Mitch isn’t currently being a jerk or does something actually nice for a change, his dynamic with Miko cools down a whole lot, going from enemies to something more like friendly rivals or even outright friends of a sort. They’re still incredibly competitive and won’t hesitate to mess with or snark at each other in a much more minor, more casual way, but they’re not actively arguing or fighting and will get along mostly fine, albeit while still annoying each other. Miko has basically unintentionally become a karma meter of sorts for Mitch. The more of a self-centered jerk he is, the harder Miko swings back at him.

Also I kind of headcanon that Miko scares Mitch just a little bit. Not in a “They’ll overtake my rank as a Tech” way, although that is a small fear of his when it comes to Miko and Five working as a team, but like in a physical way. Because from Mitch’s perspective, Miko has superhuman reflexes, never seems to tire herself out and has a habit of just ignoring setbacks and injuries and refusing to say down, along with a complete refusal to obey any form of orders and a single minded, almost machine-like determination when it comes to certain tasks, who almost seems to have made it her mission to ruin his day specifically. Not to mention that she also has a never before seen complete immunity to resets, aka one of the few tools techs have access to that are meant for use on humans, and it’s implied that that’s just scratching the surface of what she’s immune to. And did I mention that she has red eyes and purple hair like some kind of anime character? I’m not necessarily saying that Mitch still believes Miko is a glitch or has always believed that, regardless of if you’re writing with the intention of that being true or not, but I am saying that in Find The Glitch, he DEFINITELY at least convinced himself for a brief moment.

Moving to Five, Mitch definitely prefers him over Miko, but he still views him as one of the noobs or one of blueberries in his own words. Five doesn’t actively go against Mitch at every opportunity like Miko (although he is often an accomplice to her), but Five’s literal presence has some weight to it that Mitch doesn’t want to acknowledge, but kind of has to.

Five is a massive fan of Mitch’s old content. He credits Mitch’s old stuff for teaching him everything he knows, and there’s a good chance that Mitch’s gaming content or tournament appearances were what got Five into gaming in the first place, or at least played a big part of it, and I already mentioned in Five’s section that Mitch tends to get a pass in Five’s book even when he tends to hold grudges with everything else. The man’s STILL holding onto Miko constantly winning against him and and refusing to mention that they have actually met before and Miko and Five are practically inseparable, and yet he continues to give Mitch passes and second chances.

Point is, Five looks up to him. A lot. And Mitch wasn’t always a complete asshole. Sure I’m willing to put money on those traits still being there to some degree when Mitch was streaming pre-Hinobi, but as mentioned in canon, he’s changed a lot since becoming a Glitch Tech. BUDS made a point of that.

Also, with a headcanon I have blatantly stolen from Rose Tinted, the old streaming and tutorials Mitch leaks out occasionally. He’ll give someone tips on a game or say something extremely helpful one moment, sometimes not even realizing he’s doing it, and then go right back to being a prick. The old Mitch is still there, just buried deep down.

Despite what Mitch says and how he can act, he does care about his teammates, all of them. Sure he’s a dick but if he sees any of the rest of the techs in danger, even Five and Miko for as annoyed as he can get with them, he’s very quick to go “Oh wait those are MY idiots” before dropping whatever he’s doing to go save them. He doesn’t like to show it often, but he’s a good person deep down, and he does care.

And on that note, in my mind there’s no way he can’t see how much his old stuff means to Five. How much HE means to Five. Even if he refuses to admit it out loud, he knows that Five looks up to him, and there’s no way in hell he doesn’t at least feel slightly bad about being a dick to him. Messing with everyone else, that’s one thing, but Five was and still is a fan of his, Five thinks and expects him to be better than this, there’s a connection that no one else really has with Mitch, and constantly messing with him, constantly disappointing him with every prank and every haze and every stolen kill has a lot more weight to it than Mitch is used to and honestly comfortable with.

And this feeling builds up for the entire series in my interpretation of everything. Five yelling that he “doesn’t even know who Mitch is anymore” in Age Of Hinobi maybe stings a little, but to Mitch at the end of the day, he doesn’t know Five. To him, Five is just like that one kid in the tournament who stopped in awe only for Mitch to kick them off a cliff. Maybe it has some more impact because it’s real life but still. Five finally snapping at Mitch in BUDS though. That one hurt. That was the culmination of probably countless instances of Mitch being a jerk, messing with Five, and Five forgiving but not quite forgetting until finally boiling over, and by now Mitch knows Five much more. He’s not just that Hinobi Smash Kid anymore to Mitch, he’s a coworker, a fellow tech, someone who he’s (been forced to) work with several times now, and like mentioned before Mitch does care about the people he’s close to. He knows Five as a person, he knows that Five looks up to him, and disappointing him yet again only for Five to finally call him on his bullshit HURTS. I think that’s a good part of why Mitch doesn’t have a response.

At the point where the show was canceled, Mitch is just starting to go through some major character development. Mainly being less of an asshole, and in my own opinion Five and Miko are the main things driving that change. Five is, whether he’s aware of it or not, essentially guiding Mitch towards niceness. He’s shown himself to have WAY more patience with Mitch than he honestly deserves, he’s one of the only people who doesn’t immediately write Mitch off as an asshole in most scenarios and like I said before, he has that connection to Mitch that makes disappointing him repeatedly really sting after a while. Actively or not, Five is essentially holding out a hand and nudging Mitch towards being a better person, a more social and less asshole-ish person, more like his original, pre-Hinobi self that still sometimes shows itself only for the current, egotistical asshole Mitch to bury it again. And whether she’s aware of it or not, Miko is forcibly shoving Mitch away from being an asshole by effectively being karmic punishment for Mitch’s assholery and making it much harder for him to slip into his old habits, lest he’s forced back into conflict with Miko. Five somewhat unintentionally directs him to being a better person and Miko somewhat unintentionally directs him away from getting worse.

However, that’s just my interpretation. With how the show got cancelled basically any part of Mitch’s character development/redemption arc is up to interpretation. What causes him to change, how much he changes and if he’s even aware that he’s changing at all is entirely up to you to do whatever you want with it.

Moving onto something lighter, despite no longer being a streamer himself, Mitch does keep up with what’s going on in the streaming world. He definitely watches the Furious Four (although that’s kind of a given) and I think there’s a very solid chance that the anime character he was watching on his gauntlet in Tutorial Mode was an in-universe Vtuber.

Also, Mitch likes cats. We know this because not only does he own one (or at least owned one, as we’ve only seen her in a video from several years ago just before he got hired as a tech and don’t know his cat’s exact age), a grumpy old asshole of a cat named Miss Boosh (which actually raises the question of what came first, the Cat or his Catchphrase), who Mitch loves, and also because of how he mentions that Mobile Cat Collecting game in The Real Glitch Techs and his attempts to 100% it. He even seems to have spent money on it based on his “it was free to play… at first” line.

As for what games he likes, canonically it’s anything with a competitive scene. Basically any game that lets him go against other players and show off his skills, especially shooters and fighting games. He also canonically is a fan of and really good at the in-universe equivalent of Just Dance, as mentioned before, and I’m willing to bet he’d probably be a fan of DDR or Rock’Em Sockers even if we’ve never seen him play them on screen.

And as for games he canonically doesn’t like: Retro games. The simplistic and dated graphics, the janky controls, the insane difficulties and the fact that most of them are singleplayer or very simple co-op, he just doesn’t vibe with them.

This actually has a kinda funny headcanon attached to it for me because ive theorized and headcanoned that Glitch Techs takes place in the very late 90s or the very early 2000s, more specifically the year 1998. It just has a bunch of more advanced technology than our 1998 because of Hinobi’s existence as a tech company and the invention of Plixels.

The thing is, Chomp Kitty canonically came out in 1993. Five years before Glitch Techs takes place according to my theories, and Mitch considers Chomp Kitty a retro game. This means that at least in my own fics, Mitch’s definition of a retro game is kind of strange and heavily vibe based. Yes, chomp kitty came out five years ago, but to Mitch, it has the same pixelated and old style of a retro game, has the same janky controls and difficulty of a retro game, is singleplayer apart from a basic scoreboard, and was originally made for arcade machines. Ergo, it is a retro game to him, even if it isn’t technically retro in an age sense.

This kind of has its own comedy with Five because not only is Chomp Kitty mentioned to be one of Five’s favourite games, but Five has a pretty deep connection to retro games as a whole on account of being the son of the guy who fucking invented them. It’s a dumb little headcanon I have, but Mitch writing off Chomp Kitty as a retro game is probably one of the only things that can cause a genuine argument between the two of them that and it’s probably the only grudge that Five would ever actually hold against Mitch for a long period of time.

Zahra:

From this point onwards, my rambling gets a lot less detailed and shorter because I struggle to write the characters more. It doesn’t help that Zahra, Haneesh and Bergy all have a lot less screen time than Five, Miko and Mitch. So a lot of details are more surface level stuff, headcanons and just listing off canonical information from the show and the Show Bible that the creators released.

This is probably kind of a given, but research muslim stuff. Cultural things, religious practices, important terms, all of that. Ask people with knowledge and do research on how to write Muslim characters well. I made a short list in my fic notes of things to remember (mainly things regarding Hijabs because I originally kept forgetting details about them and honestly how to spell the word at times) kind of late into writing chapters and even if it hasn’t come directly into play while writing yet, I still think it’s helpful to have on hand.

Zahra is pretty chill. Cool, typically calm under pressure, pretty cut and dry and sarcastic at times. She’s pretty no-nonsense and has a tendency to just be blunt and say what everyone else is thinking or what’s on her mind. The show bible also mentions that’s she’s a quick study of people and tends to hold people to high standards too.

However, there’s a hard limit to that cool and calm persona in my mind.

This is kind of a headcanon, but in my view Zahra acts very calm under pressure, just look at her sniping or scouting things out on missions, but once something does get her to crack and she actually starts getting stressed over something, she tends to swing hard and fast in the other direction. I mostly tend to focus on stuff like her snapping at Mitch in The Real Glitch Techs (“Why don’t you try to hack something FROM THE BACK OF A MOVING VAN”) and her crushing on Five in BUDS. Despite how she appears and presents herself, Zahra actually feels emotions very strongly, but it takes some outside force or unforeseen event giving her a good push and breaking past that emotional armour of hers to see that side of her, and even then it doesn’t tend to last long.

Her own weapon loadout accidentally serves as a kind of metaphor for it. Her main weapon of choice is a sniper rifle. Something that requires calm, focus and the ability to remain steady under pressure. But once something gets close the first thing Zahra reaches for is a massive greatsword and a minigun, two weapons made to blindly obliterate anything in front of her without much calm or control at all, with Zahra attempting to delete whatever threat came close to her with as much firepower as possible before she goes right back to sniping.

Also this is pretty much pure headcanon, but I like to think that Zahra is very good under physical pressure, but completely folds under more personal social pressure. Sniping, taking out glitches and providing support and healing while under fire? Zahra’s Cool, Calm and Collected. More stressful social interactions or god forbid a dealing with a crush? Zahra’s trying her best to keep up appearances while internally screaming.

Surprisingly enough, Zahra really doesn’t have much canonical information about her, not helped by a focus episode on her being a part of the cancelled season 3 that will never see the light of day. We don’t know anything about her family, her living situation, anything. Even in the released parts of the show Bible, Zahra is the only person that not only doesn’t have a listed game preference, but also doesn’t have the reason Hinobi picked them mentioned anywhere in or out of canon. Even Nix with his exactly 4 appearances in the entire series has his game preferences and reason for hiring listed, but Zahra is pretty much a blank slate here.

So in general, if you can get her personality and/or speaking style right (my main recommendation is to rewatch episodes with her in it until you can picture her voice pretty clearly), you can do pretty much whatever you want with her. She’s not quite a blank slate, she has a pretty defined personality, but her lore and any potential deeper depths of her personality could be whatever you want it to be as long as it sounds close enough to be canon.

As for her abilities as a tech, I have a few headcanons on that.

Mainly, i think Zahra is amazing at long range, but sucks at close range. My rationale for this is her weapons. Zahra is a solid 20/10 when it comes to sniping. Her aim is literally insane enough to shoot several moving projectiles out of the air in extremely quick succession. But like mentioned before, her close range weapons are a greatsword and minigun. Two weapons that are made to deal as much damage as possible, quickly as possible, with very little actual aiming required. The sword is large enough that basically anything near her WILL be hit by it, and the minigun is a minigun. In other words, i think she’s compensating for a lack of skill or at the very least a lack of aim up close.

At range Zahra devastates anything unlucky enough to come into view of her scope, but if something gets close Zahra tries to reduce it to a fine pixelated mist as quickly as possible with either a one shot from that sword or by laying down fire with a minigun because she knows she won’t last long in a prolonged fight up close. Kinda helping with my headcanon here is that one of the support options she keeps on hand is a smoke bomb and glitch-bait hologram, which would let her get away from close combat and get back to a range she’s more comfortable with. Even her minigun helps with this because it lets her lay down cover fire and then back up to a better range.

Speaking of her support options. She’s the go-to support and essentially field medic of the team. Everyone else has some buffs (especially Mitch), but Zahra has WAY more, and her buffs tend to be stronger and last longer compared to what everyone else has. Speed Boosts, Strength boosts, those hologram-escape-options I mentioned before, she has them all.

When it comes to medical stuff, i headcanon that along with those support options, Zahra is the only member of the techs with full access to healing equipment, either because she’s spent time maxing out that part of the tech tree or because she’s the only one who’s fully certified and licensed to be able to use the advanced stuff, the same way Nix mentions needing a “Plixelcraft License” and/or special training to be allowed to use the advanced plixelcraft stuff.

Sure everyone else probably has some basic healing supplies, the older techs are probably taught first aid for obvious reasons and glitch items can be used as a temporary fix (human body isn’t exactly made of plixels, so the benefits from a plixel based healing item from a game won’t last too long, just like powerups), and Zahra definitely isn’t bringing anyone back from the brink of death or fixing life threatening injuries, but she’s still the one that’ll keep you in the fight and fix any mild to moderate injuries sustained during a fight, or at least speed up your recovery so you can get back on patrol tomorrow instead of two weeks from now. For any truly serious life threatening stuff she isn’t fixing you there and now, but would be able to keep you stable and minimize any further injury until you can be brought to HQ’s medical wing with actual doctors or a hospital. She’s a teenage field medic, not a real medical doctor.

Haneesh:

I struggle to write Haneesh more than anyone else. I don’t know why. He’s just really hard to write for some reason and I have no idea why that is. My main tip that I’ve been using for myself is just rewatching to get his voice down. After that as far as I know I’m writing him completely OOC by the seat of my pants because Haneesh confuses me.

Actual lore-wise, Haneesh is a former esports gamer. He’s apparently been some kind of prodigy since he was 6 according to the show Bible, before eventually getting some extreme burnout due to the pressure of it all that led him to quit professional esports altogether, with Hinobi seeking him out and recruiting him as a tech not long after. The show bible also mentions that he’s kind of laid back and given that, his past in esports and whatever noodle incident happened the last time he was in charge of a squad of techs, I’m willing to bet he doesn’t like being under pressure too much.

He also has a heavy interest in the more technical aspects of being a tech, think hacking, plixelcraft and how glitches actually work going off of his knowledge in Alpha Leader.

As for how i write him, i mostly lean into that interest in the technical stuff. I don’t write him explicitly as “the smart one”, I do whatever I can to try to avoid generalizing characters like that, but I do view Haneesh as one of the more knowledgeable people in the group. If you ask him a question about glitches, hacking or anything in that general range of topics , he’ll either have the information you’re looking for or know where you could get it. Like sure Mitch and Nix in my fics have plenty of experience and have picked up quite a few things over their time as techs, but they’re more street smart in my view while Haneesh is more book smart.

Mitch and Nix go “aim for this specific spot on a glitch, it’s their weak point” because they’ve figured out over the last few years of glitch fighting that hitting a glitch in that specific spot does more damage like 90% of the time. They may not know for certain WHY it works, just that it does and they probably aren’t going to question it.

Haneesh goes “aim for this specific spot on a glitch, it’s their weak point” because he’s done his research and knows that that specific spot is more exposed or has less Plixel density or is closer to the root form or whatever the actual reason is. He knows that it SHOULD work and knows WHY it should work, but might not have ever actually tested it before himself.

For example, He knows that Multiplayer Glitches are able to respawn and how they do it, but he might not have actually seen it happen before in person and might be missing some information that you could only really know if you’ve personally dealt with a multiplayer glitch yourself.

His knowledge also isn’t infinite. He has more than a couple limits where he just has to go “yeah I have no idea”. A lot of things are just too complex, especially when talking about glitches. Hinobi literally has its own team of scientists and specialists analyzing and researching these things and they’re STILL kind of unknowable and strange. Same goes for hacking, plixelcraft, Hinobi stuff and anything else he’s spent time learning. He may be good at hacking and programming, but there’s plenty of things that are just out of the scope of his understanding and knowledge. He may be more book smart than the other techs, but he’s still a 16 year old patrol tech, not a Hinobi scientist.

Gear and physical activity-wise, I mostly try to contrast him with Zahra. From what I’ve seen and kind of headcanoned, each pair of techs either compliment each other and add to each other’s strengths, or contrast each other to cover each other’s weaknesses. Like how Five is good at planning things out but struggles raw-skill-wise and therefore might struggle to actually go through with what he’s planned out, while Miko is completely insane with raw skill and physical ability but cannot plan or think ahead for the life of her. Together, they make up for each other’s weaknesses.

So I’ve headcanoned that Haneesh is primarily focused on Melee Combat, contrasting Zahra’s focus on sniping and attacking at range, and Debuffs, both to contrast Zahra’s buffs and support options and because of Haneesh’s interest in coding.

So in combat. Haneesh and Zahra work very well together. Haneesh fights at close range, drawing aggro away from Zahra and debuffing anything near him, while Zahra picks off threats from afar and absolutely SHREDS anything that Haneesh debuffs. Hell, I wouldn’t be surprised if Zahra was capable of supplying buffs from long range using her sniper as well.

Also, we see in Alpha Leader and it’s mentioned in the show bible that Haneesh has an interest in Plixelcraft, making platforms and simple structures out of plixels. This also works well with Zahra because it means that Haneesh can make platforms and cover for Zahra to snipe from, giving her better angles and keeping her further out of reach from glitches. Hell, we even see them do something like that in Alpha Leader.

But again, all of this could be out of character because I have no idea what I’m doing with this guy. I am pretty confident with the headcanons for his loadout though.

Bergy:

I also kind of struggle with writing Bergy.

The way I see him, Bergy’s kind of the last thing you’d expect a glitch tech to be. But he also fills a very unique role in the glitch “ecosystem” in Bailley

Because all things considered, Bergy ain’t exactly peak glitch tech material to put it lightly. He’s a nervous wreck, he has a tendency to panic when dealing with any mildly aggressive glitch and his aim with a gauntlet sucks, especially when he’s panicking, which again, tends to happen when he sees any glitch above like level 3. Mitch doesn’t even really bother giving him orders because honestly, what’s he going to do against any truly dangerous glitch?

Speaking of orders, we see that Bergy just kind of takes orders from anyone above him without questioning it. Mitch could tell him to jump and he’d ask how high, not because he likes Mitch, but because he just likes taking orders I guess.

Also curiously, the show bible mentions why Bergy was chosen and I have some conspiracies about it. I’ve already made some post about it somewhere, but Bergy was chosen by Hinobi for being overly positive on Hinobi message boards and just generally being a pretty good, social person. He’s a big outlier among the rest of the techs because they all have reasons for being hired that make a bit more sense for techs. Mitch is a gaming prodigy and has been a regular tournament winner since he was a kid, Haneesh is a former semi-pro or possibly even professional esports player, Miko and Five took out an entire arcade of glitches with no training, plus Miko’s reset immunity, even Nix with basically no information about him was brought in for “completion of achievements” and going by the standards of everyone else those had to be some impressive achievements.

But Bergy was hired in for reasons that don’t necessarily line up with what Hinobi usually looks for in a tech. So it makes me kind of theorize if he was even meant to be a glitch tech in the first place. Maybe he was originally hired to work at the store’s front desk or even as non-monster-hunting, genuine tech support. Those jobs match up way more with his reason for hiring. Only for Bergy to become a glitch tech a bit later. Maybe he found it way better than whatever he was originally hired to do. I’m sure Phil wouldn’t mind the extra tech on patrol.

Anyways, about that unique role he fills, Bergy is essentially a scavenger in the glitch food chain of Bailley. A garbage man almost. He goes out and hunts all of the low level glitches that the other techs avoid in favour of the stronger stuff that gives more XP and is more fun and flashy to fight. And because everyone else avoids doing it and because low level glitches are so easy to take out (Miko proved you don’t even need a tech gauntlet some of the time), Bergy can capture a TON of them over the course of a shift and rakes in a metric TON of XP. I headcanon that he’s actually the second highest on the leaderboard behind Mitch because of this. It isn’t flashy, but Bergy is essential just because of how he hunts all the stuff that no one else wants to. Without Bergy on patrol the town would be overrun by a massive amount of level 1-2 glitches. The job sucks, but someone has to do it, so it may as well be the one guy in Bailey that enjoys going after the weaker glitches and doesn’t WANT to go after anything stronger.

Also just working off that and the kind of logical step that a lot of low level glitches would be harmless companion pets or items and weapons that can’t do anything unless a human is actively using them, i headcanon that Bergy is just sitting on a massive stockpile of weapons and items from various video games that he’s quite literally just found lying around somewhere. You need a healing potion? He has it. You need a sword? Bergy will hand you the master sword, a halo energy sword and the blades of chaos. You need some specific item to beat a glitch? Give Bergy some time to sift through his gauntlet’s inventory and he might just have a replacement.

Equipment wise, i headcanon that Bergy brings in a ton of XP, so he’s actually a very high level with a massive amount of the tech tree unlocked, although he only uses a small amount of it, mostly since he only fights very weak glitches. I kind of headcanon that he uses a lot of scouting equipment. Locating and Tracking Glitches, some stealth stuff to sneak up on them, maybe some stuff to trap glitches in place or slow them down, that sort of thing. He TECHNICALLY has a lot of really powerful stuff, but he doesn’t need to use it because he only hunts the low level stuff, and doesn’t WANT to use it most of the time because he’s just not made for combat.

In a team setting, I say that Bergy probably provides support through the two things he specializes in. The first thing is Scouting. He can track glitches from long distances, ping their locations and keep everyone else informed.

As for the second thing, Bergy may be bad at combat. His physical ability is lacking and his aim sucks, but Bergy is also sitting on a massive stockpile of various weapons and items, and he knows a couple of people that have much better aim than he does. If Bergy has access to some kind of Mitch-Level Glitch Oneshot Beam, he probably doesn’t have the aim or physical ability to effectively use it. But he’d happily hand it to someone that can. And that’s ignoring the potential of the powerups he has on him. Invincibility, extremely powerful healing, straight up extra lives that won’t bring someone back from the dead (glitches have limits), but will block or negate some massive hits to create the same effect, stuff that Hinobi’s gauntlets might struggle with or just might not be powerful enough to recreate. Sure it’s either one use only or has a massive cooldown time since they’re glitch items, but who cares, Bergy’s just gonna find more the next time he goes on patrol. Sure he’s limited by whatever random items he has on him, but he’s also ONLY limited by whatever items he has on him.

On another note, despite Bergy’s tendency to panic and bad aim, in B.U.D.S we see that Bergy is actually pretty good with a bow and is cool and calm while fighting the horrific monstrosity of the episode, and there’s a few possibilities with that.

Bergy is capable of being very competent, but not as himself. He used his DND persona as some kind of alterego and it boosted his confidence a whole lot. (Kinda unlikely considering that he got nervous and wanted to leave before being replaced by a glitch)

Bergy is just really good with a bow for some unknown reason.

If Bergy is in a situation that’s just stressful enough, his panic somehow loops back around to being calm and collected. Like put this man in a life or death scenario and he just pulls some genuinely insane competence out of his ass with “Zahra sniping” levels of calm and focus, beats the glitch and then goes back to his regular self afterwards. Or at least he appears calm to outside observers. Inside Bergy is 100% panicking so much he barely knows what’s going on.

I think option 3 is the best one, but I’m not sleeping on Bergy having some genuine skill with a bow. I’m willing to give that to him as a signature weapon like Zahra’s sniper or Miko and that sledgehammer.

Also: Bergy’s name is canonically Cecil Bergoch.

Nix:

Nix is a blank slate, and you can do whatever you want with him.

I’m serious.

This man has like four appearances total.

He is as close as you can get to a canonical OC in this fandom.

Also his name is canonically Adam Michael Nix.

As for how I personally write him, this is going to be one big ramble about Nix in my own fic and pure headcanons about him because again, he’s basically a blank slate. All you have to do is watch any of the like 5 scenes he appears in and congrats, you’ve seen his entire canon character.

Nix is kind of an enigma in my eyes. He’s kind of on the outskirts of the friend group and his main connection into the group is Bergy and Mitch. In canon, it’s only really Bergy that’s arguably close to him and him and Mitch don’t interact much, but that’s my view.

No one really knows much about him. No one knows any details about his personal life, no one but Bergy really ends up working with him for long enough to get to know him and the only people who know that his name is actually Adam and Nix is actually his last name are Bergy and Mitch.

(A detail from my fic: Bergy just casually goes “oh yeah i already knew that” on the topic of Nix’s name. Meanwhile Mitch mutes the group chat just before Nix’s name is revealed and doesn’t react when it’s brought up. Mainly because he muted the chat. Then a few chapters later he talks to Nix in private and isn’t surprised by his name, and also calls him by his name later despite again, having muted the chat and missing Nix’s name reveal. He already knew.)

The fact that Nix works two jobs, one job at Hinobi and one job at Joystick JR’s, doesn’t help with that degree of separation between him and the others. It also explains why he barely appears in the show. He works multiple jobs and physically can’t be around as much.

For minor personality stuff: I gave this man a fixation on video game secrets, achievements and collectibles. Mainly because it’s mentioned in the show bible that he was hired due to “competition of achievements” and I’m willing to bet he got some insanely hard ones to get hired by Hinobi. This man knows a lot of video game secrets, and enjoys achievement hunting.

Also in canon: Nix is mentioned to be very studious and favourite games are tactical and strategy games.

In my mind Nix, despite not working as much as the other techs, is still surprisingly knowledgeable and street smart when it comes to fighting glitches. Like I said before, he’d probably go “aim for this spot, it’s a weak point” because he somehow picked up that shooting a glitch there does more damage like 80% of the time. He may not know exactly WHY it works, but he knows that it does. But at the same time, he will get right to researching things if he has a question. Like if he started questioning WHY that weak spot only works 80% of the time, he would start looking things up until he knows EVERYTHING. It just takes a push to get him going.

With Nix and Bergy, the only canon connection he has, I’m confident that they’re friends. They’re seen on missions together, the show bible mentions that they’re frequently paired up because “their loadouts and skills compliment each other” and Castle Crashers is one of the few times when we Nix interact with ANYONE.

As for their dynamic, it is my full belief that whenever Nix and Bergy are offscreen and not a part of the current episode, they’re halfway across town going on a completely separate adventure that could easily be its own episode, plot and character arcs included. Like at any point during The Glitch Modder you could suddenly switch the perspective to Nix and Bergy and it would be like changing channels to another show that’s already in progress.

(A gag I really wanted to do in HTSBD for a while was someone getting stuck with Bergy and Nix on patrol at the beginning of a chapter and then by the end of the chapter they show up after being absent with Bergy and Nix the whole time having gone through some completely unseen adventure and character arc.)

Also, in canon Nix is 17, the same age as Bergy, and probably joined around the same time as them. My version of Nix is 18, the same age as Mitch, and joined Hinobi around the same time as everybody’s favourite asshole. This is because I headcanoned everyone’s ages way before I got my hands on the show bible so everyone’s ages are just ever so slightly different. My version of Nix is 18, my version of Zahra is 16 but right on the cusp of turning 17 when in canon she’s 17, my version of Five is 16 when in canon he’s 15 (but probably very close to turning 16), tiny changes that are almost entirely because I wrote the characters with certain ages in mind before actually learning how old they are. My version of Bergy is still 17 though. That sounds incredibly wrong to me for some reason but that’s his canon age.

As for Nix’s loadout, all we have for canon details is that according to the show bible Nix and Bergy’s skillsets complement each other and Nix getting into Plixelcraft in Im Mitch Williams. So it could be whatever you want.

I mostly headcanon his loadout as a kind of “trapper” loadout. Restricting movement, preventing glitches from escaping, plixelcraft walls and barriers, that sort of thing going with Bergy’s “scouting” loadout. Bergy can find and track glitches, and Nix can keep them in a certain area or lock them down once Bergy finds them.

I also like focusing on plixelcraft with Nix. Mainly because of what he mentions about needing certification to be able to use it. My own headcanon for it is that basically all techs have access to plixelcraft. Haneesh makes plixelcraft barriers and platforms for Zahra, Miko’s hammer is plixelcraft, Zahra’s minigun is plixelcraft, the axe Five briefly uses in Ralphie Bear is Back is plixelcraft, basically any of those untextured, one-solid-colour objects the gauntlet makes is plixelcraft, but that’s just the basic stuff. A bunch of preset options the gauntlet makes automatically. Haneesh can make a platform or wall, but he can only use a couple of preset shapes that he unlocked from the tech tree. The stuff that needs training and certification is the advanced stuff, where you can make whatever you want, with whatever code or purpose you want. That’s why it needs training and special certification.

Haneesh can make plixelcraft walls and barriers, but ONLY those walls and barriers with preset options, and the only real offensive value Haneesh could really get from his plixelcraft would be something like making a big block of plixel mid-air and hoping it falls on a glitch. Meanwhile Nix is limited only by his own creativity, programming ability and the obvious limitation that he has to make new stuff beforehand. Can’t exactly create and program an entirely new plixelcraft object while being attacked by an Elden Ring Boss.

Also kinda connecting to that whole “Nix has two jobs and can’t work as a tech as much” thing, i headcanon that despite working as a tech for as long as Mitch, Nix isn’t a very high level and doesn’t have too many things unlocked. He’s not a bad tech, he’s pretty knowledgeable about tech stuff, no slouch in combat and he’s definitely the muscle/bodyguard whenever him and Bergy are paired up to go after anything higher than Bergy’s usual weight class, but that second job combined with a few other factors means he’s a lower level than he probably should be for this time as a tech and his options for gear are somewhat limited compared to a tech like Zahra or Haneesh.

That’s another reason I say he uses a lot of plixelcraft. It lets him get around the limitation of his low level and use whatever he wants. Nix isn’t a high enough level to get a minigun? He’ll use plixelcraft to make his own custom one. Maybe even make it float around and attack things automatically if he can figure out how to code that.

I also think this pairs with Bergy for another reason: Bergy has a massive stockpile of glitch items on him and can provide support by just handing another tech whatever they might need, as long as he actually has it on him. Meanwhile Nix’s plixelcraft means that he can MAKE any item or weapon that someone might need at the moment, as long as he’s worked on it beforehand and has the file for it on his gauntlet. Basically these two together are a walking Swiss Army Knife. If you need a specific tool, Either Bergy has an item for it or Nix can make it.

And again, Bergy and Nix’s skillsets and loadouts mesh well together. Bergy has an extremely high level and access to a ton of extremely powerful tools and weapons from grinding a metric fuckton of low level glitches every day, but lacks the skill and ability to properly use most of them. Meanwhile Nix is fully capable, but has a lower level than he honestly should due to him not being able to work as much (and when he does work, he usually doesn’t get to fight glitches that are very strong) and because of that doesn’t have access to as many tools. So they fit together perfectly.

Overall, Nix is really malleable, and you could honestly do whatever the hell you want with him. He can be bent incredibly out of shape before starting to sound OOC, so have fun!

[lara-cairncross]

take so good im posting it here too

[remxedmoon]

HAPPY (kinda late oops) BIRTHDAY MIWA!!!!!!!! ignore the other two LOOK AT HER!!!! IT’S MIRABELLE MSUNDAY!!!!

greyscale versions + my very normal color ramblings below!

ok full disclosure i already had this post drafted before realizing that mira’s birthday was coming up. i kinda debated just posting the mira doodles on their own but!!! i want to talk about my craft/general color headcanons still. and the mira art is part of that!! so be warned. also, this is going to reference my post about my craft headcanons a lot so like. read that if you so desire.

i personally think that mira’s healing craft is some form of creative craft, since the game describes her holding her palms up when she uses it (iirc anyways). this doesn’t really have an effect on anything, but it’s why i decided to color it yellow!

(also i ended up making mira’s scissors craft a lot more orange than i initially planned but that’s ok!!! i think both of her crafts would be pretty Orange. just thought i’d mention that since it’s a bit different from my first post)

i already explained sif’s craft in my last post so now i get to talk about the change god!!!!!! this is like. probably the most out there in terms of my color headcanons? but i have a reason for that. since the change god is, well, a deity, i thought it would be fitting for their design to match the colors of the 3 craft types (red, blue, and yellow)! this was a little hard to work around given that i also try to give my vaugarde designs warmer color palettes, but i think it worked out!

i also gave them a few slightly different palettes, since i think it’ll make sense for the change god’s colors to be variable. they never look the same, so why would their palette look the same? + i’m indecisive and liked all of these palettes lol

sorry for the ramble! i really like talking about character design and i’m not. very succinct. thanks for reading all this (if you did, perfectly fine if you didn’t!), here’s the greyscale versions as promised!!!

[dizzybizz]

"this is regrettably the best kiss of your life, you understand?"

[calamarispiderart]

magical girls, generally, have something they fight against. this holds true in hms mg:ljga!.

heart, mind and soul fight 'Shadows', abstracted manifestations of consciousness and circumstance that have a tendency to mirror (or 'shadow') their individual and group situations. they often carry repetitive motifs or themes, functioning as tangible metaphors that must be 'resolved', much like any conflict.

the way in which a shadow is resolved varies. itd be wrong to say that there is ever one true or 'correct' resolution. rather, its a matter of what the group (or the individual,) sees as a proper ending to the matter. often, they default to violence.

it works well (or well enough...) for most shadows, as far as they can tell. its certainly easier than trying to talk it out...

[scarapanna]

Many Virtuous advice PV thoughts + some rough redesign ideas since I'm not 100% satisfied with his design and want to make improvements

Mkay so now for a yapping session some more context on all these doodles:

Something something the Knowledge duo has the ability to look into anyone's "past" since baking to work more efficiently.

As the representative of Truth PV uses this and looks into Freedom/DE to understand what caused her to "shatter" (Aka. Return as someone entirely different from who she used to be). He finds out about the banquet, being as loyal to his witches as he was the guy's in shock, and goes into isolation for decates to figure out what to do and protect cookies from the reality he has withnessed.

He ends up spiraling during this long, long time avoiding everything and everyone, developing this insane apocalyptic hypothesis on the witches and their true motives. Peepaw starts thinking that, to protect cookie kind from the imminent threat posed by it's own creators, he must become stronger or just as strong as them.

Soon, he reaches the conclusion that by cracking open his souljam, he might essentially "unlock" his full potential.

It doesn't work, instead de-stabilizing his power, and said unstable power corrupting him into the Avatar Of Destiny

Due to both the damage done to his souljam and "corruption", he goes into a dormant state for centuries. Eventually he'll wake up, though he's not a very destructive entity as the Avatar, instead being quite shy and reclusive.

Aaand this is all I got so far! Thanks for coming to my TED-talk/j

Also here's the Avatar scaled to an everyday cookie as a bonus, it didn't fit in frame first so we had to ask it to crouch down a tad bit.

[wholesome-cryptid]

i am far from the best when it comes to typing out well thought out media analysis but, one of the most engaging parts of pokémon for me that i rarely see discussed in the larger fandom as a while is the franchises recurring themes of duality. You can spot it just about everywhere if you know where to look for it and i don't just mean each mainline game releasing as a pair. there's this recurring theme of yin and yang, opposites that complete eachother. (with Ho-oh and Lugia taking inspiration from the Phoenix and Dragon that represent the idea of yin and yang.) The games especially have this recurring themes of balance and coexistence, Team Magma and Team Aqua having to work together, the Diamond and Pearl clans having to learn to accept eachother it's all over the games. The Unova games and its themes of truth and ideals and how you shouldn't chose one over the other and instead embrace both of them. The idea that in order to have a bright future humans must learn to respect and bind with pokémon and nature. You can really do some many different analyses of the franchise exploring that theme and it's a shame i don't see more people talk about it.

[starry-bi-sky]

*grips your shoulders* an eight year old is not gonna act like that. put the pen down. close the laptop. stop writing for a minute. volunteer at a daycare center for a week or smth. an eight year old is typically (unless they're purposely doing it, but at that point you'll be able to tell) not going to speak in one word sentences. that is a child with a possible developmental delay and should probably get an assessment done. that is a two year old with an MLU score of 2.0 who is struggling with their present possessive verbs. look up the average heights of an eight year old because i promise they're bigger than that.

if your six year old is still doing reduplicated babbling and it's not clearly an on purpose active play decision, then they should probably (re: REALLY) undergo evaluation because one of the first signs of a developmental delay is delayed speech. children begin speaking in two word utterances as young as 18 months old. three year olds on average can hold simple conversations with adults. four year olds absoLUTELy can.

i know it's super fun to write children as being dependent and clingy to their parent for your super fluffy found family child fic but that is not a six year old that is a worryingly large two year old with a mild speech delay. you don't have to be 1:1 accurate, god knows i'm not but please at least know that children on average are capable of holding simple conversations by the time they're 4, and are usually doing the baby talk stuff to be cute or as a play thing. which isn't a bad thing but if they're talking like that unironically and ALL the time, then there is likely a problem in their development.

[logicaldelta]

Bruce: go have a nap while you're on your break

Tim, grumbling: whatever

*30 minutes later*

Dick: hey! How was your power nap? :D

Tim: I didn't sleep

Dick: ...I held out hope that you would

Tim: sorry not sorry?

[wantonlywindswept]

adopted baby Guard Din idea that I am never going to write

because it would involve logistics and quiet moments and idle life which I am very down for reading but cannot for the LIFE of me actually sit down and write

So the war ends, Palps is outed as a Sith and an asshole and dies somehow, and the Senate eventually decides that the clones do count as people and thus are allowed to leave the GAR if they want. Give the bureaucrats another few years and they might even give out backpay and citizenship, so long as you stay in the service--wait what do you mean the entire Guard is resigning. What do you mean they've already left orbit?? WHAT DO YOU MEAN THERE ARE NOW MILLIONS OF FILES ON THE HOLONET ABOUT THE SENATE'S SHADY DEALINGS???

Guard, collectively: lol cya suckers

Fox is of course one of the last ones out, and since this was all planned on the down low, everyone's been split into groups so they can take commercial flights, since they're not about to be accused of stealing ships. (They also leave their weapons and their armor behind, in a giant macabre pile in the middle of Corrie HQ. Even their helmets, their faces, they discard: it's time for a rebirth.)

He and Thorn and a few other Corries have a stopover on some tiny station, waiting a week for a delayed transport to arrive, and in the meantime they're approached by some locals who just fled the planet below. Separatist remnants attacked their homes, forcing them to leave everything and everyone behind; can the big strong clones do anything about it?

The Big Strong Clones: Oh shit we finally get to kick some Seppie ass? Sign us the FUCK up.

The eager group does not include Fox, who could not care less about the Separatists and would very much like to finally catch up on his sleep. Unfortunately that means that the group that goes down to the planet is Unsupervised.

(Thorn does not count as supervision. Thorn, bereft of Senate oversight, has finally allowed his Inner Chaos Gremlin to fully emerge. Thorn needs more supervision than the shinies.)

Thorn, three days later, waking Fox from half-hearted sleep by dropping an entire natborn child on him: Hey boss, look what we found! None of the refugees claimed him, so we called dibs. Can we keep him? Fox, staring at the child: ...

Din, staring back: ...

Fox: ...no..?

Din: *sad but understanding big brown eyes*

Fox: Nevermind this is my child now.

Din has gone from two parents to one parent and hundreds of overprotective brothers.

Eventually his group makes it to their destination, Din in tow. I am uncertain of what the destination is but it is a planet that is as far away from Coruscant that the Corries could find. I am tempted for Tatooine not because I like Tatooine (I share Anakin's loathing of sand and deserts) but because Luke's description of Tatooine in ANH was 'if there's a bright center to the universe, this is the planet the furthest from'. 

Corries, hearing that: Fuck it sounds perfect. 

Anyway they make it to Tatooine, there is probably purchasing of some shitty land/buildings that nobody wants out in the wastes bc crime, scum, villainy, etc, but it's not like they have problems taking care of anything that tries to mess with them. 

Where did they get the funds?

Shh don't ask about it.

Stone takes up moisture farming. Thire takes up farming-farming. Thorn shoots gleefully at anything that shows up unannounced within a ten-mile radius. Literally everybody dotes on Din. There are a surprising amount of peaceful days.

Eventually some dumb shiny goes: Hey don't kids need friends? Shouldn't we set up some playdates for him or something?

The shiny is not called dumb for asking the question, but they are called dumb for thinking that the question would only ever be taken rhetorically. Fox disappears for two weeks and then comes back with a black eye and a yowling hissing Boba tucked under one arm, looking stupidly pleased with himself.

(Boba is also pleased to be back with people he knows will keep him safe. Boba will not admit to this under threat of death or dismemberment. Boba is a SERIOUS SCARY ADULT BOUNTY HUNTER.)

Boba also decides he will be Mortal Enemies with Din, which after about ten minutes of meeting him morphs into If Anyone Hurts Din I Will Kill Everyone In This Room And Then Myself because all clones be the same, really.

Din has gained another brother/bestie. (Or potential future boyfriend, whichever floats your boat.)

Somehow they still end up overthrowing the Hutts.

Officially the GAR knew and knows nothing about the Guard leaving Coruscant as soon as the metaphorical paint was dry on their sentient status.

Unofficially Fox's batch harangues him every single day for photos of his new kid(s). They eventually show up unannounced, demanding time with their nephew. (They are shot at by Thorn.)

Din gains five new uncles.

The batch proudly show pics and holos to their battalions. Din gains millions of new uncles.

Fox finally gets a full night's sleep.

[idorukiss]

Heres a sorta drabble/headcanon kinda thing of how I picture MC's relationship with Zayne could develop~ I'm not much of a writer but i very much plan to do ones for the other boys as well because the brainrot has consumed me, so please enjoy~ 1,039 words || You can also read it on ao3 ‧͙⁺˚･༓･˚⁺‧͙⁺˚･༓･˚⁺‧͙⁺˚･༓･˚⁺‧͙⁺˚･༓･˚⁺‧͙⁺˚･༓･˚⁺‧͙

Xavier ・ Rafayel ・ Sylus

You are without a doubt the reason for Zayne's existence and his driving force all through school into becoming a Cardiac Surgeon. And all of that lead up to him finally becoming your personal doctor, everything he studied for is so he can finally fulfill his purpose to help you and your heart

At first, Zayne puts up a wall between you guys- trying his best to keep things as strictly professional as possible. Seeing your face in person again only brought back all the feelings he's boxed away and then some, and he was scared it would somehow come in the way of your treatment.

But he can't hold himself back for long, especially after you find yourself seeing him outside of the hospital more and more often. Going from quick hellos in passing, to checking out new Cafe menu items together, to even showing up at his place unannounced to make sure he isn't working on his day off. Somehow you've worked yourself into his daily life without any effort and everything just feels like that's how it was always meant to be

Of course your own feelings start to develop too, you aren't even sure when they first appeared. Could you have felt this way when you were both kids and didn't realize it till now? Or is it a result of getting closer and seeing so many different sides to him lately?? It all happened so naturally you almost didn't notice it at first until you sat there staring at his profile in the car one night in content silence and it clicked. You love this man with every fiber of your being

Nobody made any moves for the longest time, any plans you guys had made together were seemingly still platonic- much to the groans of those around you who were very aware about both sets of feelings. One night as he is walking you to your apartment door after spending the day together, you mention something coming up- Maybe its another Twinkle Toy's event, or even just a new movie coming out that you are dying to see. But he smiles as he listens to you excitedly talk about it, obviously deciding in that moment he was taking you to it no matter what

"So what time does it start?" "I think the site said 8pm" "Alright then, I'll pick you up at 5pm. Does that work for you?" "Why 5? We don't need to be the first ones to show up you know" He smiles at you "Well I figured it was only right to take you out to dinner first if we were going to be out that late. We don't have to if you don't want to though-" "No, dinner sounds great" you say with the biggest grin "Its a date then" he responds as he lifts up your hand pressing a gentle kiss on it before walking back to the elevator leaving you stunned

Did he just call it a date?! You spend the foreseeable future with your head in the clouds, practically floating with excitement for the date- which goes amazingly once it approaches. It's just like every other time you guys have hung out, but also nothing like it at the same time. He helps you in and out of his car and offers his arm to you while you walk side by side. Every little action he does is seen in a new light. There is no way you could ignore the flips your heart does every time you see his absolutely smitten face- not even aware of your own equally smitten look in return

And any plans from now on have all become official dates as well, with him treating you like an absolute princess the entire time. He never takes that next step forward though, only going as far as holding hands and gazing lovingly at everything you do. It looks like you have to be the one to initiate anything more at this rate

Once again he walks you to your apartment door, and he lingers just a moment before he turns back around and you grab his arm in that moment. Stammering a bit before giving a determined sigh and placing a quick kiss on his cheek. Out of sheer embarrassment you tried to enter your apartment quickly, but its your turn to get stopped. And this time its with his lips crashing onto yours. It was brief, way too brief, but absolutely electric- he apologizes and you shush him and give him the goofiest in love smile before you part ways for the night

Zayne is constantly in battle with himself as to not move too quickly or do anything that you might not be ready for. He usually lets you make the first move, or tests the waters in a way where you can take the lead in whichever direction you are most comfortable. And without a doubt, like with the first kiss you guys shared, as soon as you show him that you are okay with something he won’t hold back (of course always asking permission the next time)

Brief pecks goodnight, turn into deeper kisses in the car before you get out. He grabs your hand every chance he is able to as if its second nature to have your fingers linked between his at any given moment. You only had to invite him inside once at the end of a date before it was a given that after every subsequent date you would spend some time on the couch cuddling and making out before he went back home

Even when things started getting more intimate between you, he always made sure you were the one making the first move and continued with caution- always getting your consent before doing anything. It was touching knowing he cared so much about you, but sometimes you wished he would just stop holding back and have his way. There's nothing he could do that you would say no to at this point, you love and trust him with your entire being

You wouldn't change anything between you guys. You are Zayne's entire world, and he has easily become yours as well

[wewere-here]

tired of waiting for new just dance lore to drop?

have you tried: filling the void with an absolute fuck ton of extremely complex and detailed headcanons about each character

[fennysstuff]

BROKE: "dude I cant believe they just snapped Way to the Dawn in two and then replaced it with a dinky car key smh"

WOKE: AFTER DREAM DROP DISTANCE, RIKU HAS COME TO ACCEPT HIS DARKNESS AND EMBRACE THE STRENGTH TO PROTECT WHAT MATTERS. WAY TO DAWN BREAKING. IS THE BREAK OF DAWN. THE PATH HAS BEEN WALKED AND RIKU MADE IT. A WONDERFUL BIT OF CLOSURE TO RIKU'S STRUGGLE WITH DARKNESS, NO LONGER BEARING A KEY WHICH RESEMBLES ANSEM'S WEAPON. BEGINNING A NEW ARC, ONE OF STRENGTH TO PROTECT, HAVING EARNED THE TITLE OF BRAVEHEART.

[mileymint]

I HAVE CREATED A NUZI FANKID AND HER NAME IS NORA AVDKABFKANNFKWBFKDNFJ

I put a ton of thought into her design but I'm bad with clothes, but I did add the detail that she always wants bigs sleeves. It makes her feel better about her little worker drone arms </3

CHILD‼️

( @electrozeistyking you said to @ you when I post so here it is!!! <333 )

[dizzybizz]

al lsasints steret 🥺

i lvoe alll saints stereettttrahghghhhh

[mbirnsings-71]

hey Mads

Sasha told me ya know a lot about xem's Wrong Choice au,,,,, i read the doc but he said ya know more prob and to ask ya sooo

please tell me more?

HELLO?? RJDIEEKED HI sluggy Tfw do you mean Sasha told you to come to me about the Wrong Choice AU DNDLELELEL-

That's wild cause this started as Sasha's idea. This started because Sasha went "what if Martyn didn't cut off Ren's head? And also wasn't kinda insane-" And it spiraled from there- Truly the parts I really fixate on are the Flower Ranchers and Desert Duo parts because GOOD LORD SASHA WANTED A LITTLE ANGST FOR DESERT DUO AND HURT ME IN THE PROCESS- I'm gonna put it in a keep reading break because Idk Who's gonna wanna read this besides you But I'll share everything I know/have thought about extensively for this AU and Sasha ( @pup-pee ) can correct me if Anything is wrong cause it's been a hot minute since I read over the doc fully.

So my contributions to this AU have been me writing a little fairy tale for the AU which kinda goes like this;

The Tale of the Lone soldier and the heart giver Once upon a time there was a lone soldier, one who was on the last of his hearts. His luck was not the greatest to say the least. Stabbed, drowned, burned, and shot, needless to say his lives were lost. He traveled far and wide to kingdom to kingdom, town to town, careful as one can be, as not to succumb to the finality of death. In the recent town he stopped at however, he met a girl. The girl had introduced herself as Amia, and they struck up a bond far too quick. The townspeople had opinions of her. Said she gave out love too freely, said she was on her last life due to how many lives she had given to others, anything they could say really. The rumor mills spun round and round, yet they did not deter the soldier from seeking her company at each and every oppurtunity. He was supposed to stay for but a week. A week turned to a month, then to half a year. Every day spending time in her company, and eventually becoming accepted by the town as one of their own. There was no doubt about it, he was smitten for her if he had chosen to stay for this long. They have had long conversations, and he had gotten some truths about her over drinks of wine. That yes she had been unlucky in love, men leaving her when she thought they had fallen for her just as she had done, but she was not on the last of her lives. She was on the second to last, and she would only give her heart to someone who was able to reciprocate it and was able to stay. "My heart has to be in it, and so does their's, if I'm to be reduced to my final life." She said so gently and earnestly, that it made the soldier's heart yearn so loudly. He was shocked she didn't hear how badly it yearned. It's a year when the lone soldier decided to stay in town that a horde of monsters showed up. The once lone soldier helps as best as he can, managing to help slay all the monsters, but in the process gets injured enough to where he is dying. Bleeding out on his last life, but at least the town is safe. Amia is safe. He can accept his death as long as they're safe. "You're not leaving me that easily." A gentle voice he's gotten to know over the past year says, and he swears she sounds like an angel in this moment. He's sure he's done for, that is until he feels warmth. He was expecting his final death to feel cold and unforgiving as it had been in the past, but it's warm and feels like a fresh breath of air in his lungs. He still slips from consciousness and fades from the world. He's surprised when he wakes up in his bed, with Amia sitting besides it, looking at him with teary eyes. "What happened?" The lone soldier asks, and Amia gives a smile. "I gave you my second life." "But that means..." "I am on my last yes, along with you." "Then I suppose we should stick together, to make sure neither of us loses our last life." "I would like that a lot." She smiles as she kisses the man who has decided to not leave her side. They lived their last life out together peacefully in the small town, side by side til the ends of their dying days. Happily ever after.

But I assume you already read that on the doc- I'm actually still really proud of it, because this fairy tale is supposed to be a tale of how the lives system works and how one can give one of their lives to someone they love. I think this love can be romantic, familial, or Platonic just as long as you love the person enough to be willing to give them a life. Also everyone has 5 lives, they used to have ten but the watchers figured that was too many once players started getting more crafty with how they were interacting with hostile mobs. Also Respawn Mechanics are in play so if you die and you're not on your last life you respawn where you last slept.

Also For the Desert Duo stuff (which is ofc what I hyperfixated on, I literally helped Jay figure out Scar's Deaths and how they met goddamn it), There is a bit where in one of the later acts, Scar does get decapitated just a bit- It's part of the reason why I wrote this fairy tale the way I did. BUT YEAH NO SCAR GETS DECAPITATED AND HE'S ON HIS LAST FREAKING LIFE AND GRIAN, BEING FORCED TO TAKE A LIFE FROM HIM AND STILL HAVING PRETTY MUCH ALL HIS LIVES (cause something something third life parallels, Owing Scar his first life cause he accidentally caused Scar to die one time to a creeper IT'S JUST SO-) JUST PRESSES A KISS TO SCAR'S FOREHEAD, HOLDING HIS CHEEK, TO TRANSFER A LIFE TO HIM AND THEN HAS TO CUT HIS GODDAMN HEAD OFF TO MAKE THE RED KING LET THEM TAKE MARTYN AND IT'S SOOOO- @cannimochi actually drew art of it that IDK if they want to share or not so I'll let them decide that but it is one of my favorite Desert Duo drawing of their's to date!! And so after That Grian is kinda in a haze and not sleeping because he feels guilty about decapitating Scar and Martyn is kinda concerned.

Don't worry though!! Scar comes back! Scar comes back to Monopoly mountain, Lilacs and poppies in hand, and apologizes for Putting him through that But Grian doesn't really care right now as he's Clinging to Scar so tightlyand telling him to Never have him do that again and because Scar is a menace he asks if this is about the flowers but Grian just frowns and goes “You know what I mean you big lug!”

It's then that Martyn lets the cat out of the bag that Grian hasn't been sleeping cause Martyn's a little shit and well well well can't have that! Despite his better judgement and how sore his body is from respawning and just general chronic pain of dying, He carries Grian to bed and we get these two things that I wrote:

Luckily for him Grian is light, ‘Hollow bones and all that’ the Avian had explained to him once before. Unluckily for him however, Grian is clinging to him so tightly at the moment that putting him down on the bed might be an issue. “Stay… please.” Grian quietly asks, and if he had any plans on leaving (he didn't), those are out the window now cause Grian said please. Scar can’t turn him down with that magic word.  “I wasn't planning on leaving G. I'm here.” Scar says and it seems to soothe Grian enough to loosen his grip so Scar can actually maneuver him out of his hold and onto the bed. 

Scar doesn't mean to fall asleep. Genuinely, one minute he was laid next to Grian just to make sure the other didn't freak out if he couldn't find him, and the next moment he was being woken up suddenly by a loud noise. If he had to take an educated guess, he would say it was probably TNT. He duly notes that something is over him now that does not feel like a blanket whatsoever, and that Grian is speaking. “What was that?!” He can hear clear as day, because the voice is coming from right next to him.  “Nothing! I just tried to fix one of your traps! Didn't go so well! Go back to bed, Grian!” He hears Martyn yell out, and he can hear confused squawk that Grian lets out at that. “Which one?!” “None of your concern! Go back to sleep!” “‘None of my concern’ he says! Those are my traps!”  “And they'll be there after you sleep G.” Scar says, as his arms tighten around Grian's waist. Does he know when he and Grian started cuddling while they were asleep? No, but it's not a bad thing he thinks. “But Scar-” “No buts Mister- It's sleeping time, and I don’t know about you but I’m tired.” Scar says, and is he laying it on thick? Probably, but it's not an exaggeration. He is tired, after the respawning and the long walk back to the mountain and the pain he has at the moment, he’s allowed to say he wants to go back to bed. Preferably with Grian, because those eye bags under his eyes are pretty concerning in Scar’s opinion. “...Fine.” “Good.”

They're still big wips and mainly just writing practice for myself but they are what I have- I also have what I think should be Desert Duo's first kiss in that AU but that's also just a silly one-shot of me using Jay's AU as a way to get myself to write- BUT YEAH NO APPARENTLY THEY EVENTUALLY GET ENGAGED AND/OR MARRIED WITH CURSE OF BINDING RINGS AND I THINK ABOUT IT WAY TOO MUCH- LIKE RAAAAA!!! There's also Scar and Grian actually talking about what happened but that's in Sasha's DMs so I'm not gonna go searching for those.

THERE'S ALSO FLOWER RANCHERS IN IT!! Cause I converted Sasha to the flower ranchers side. I saved Jimmy Solidarity in the AU CAUSE SASHA WAS JUST GONNA MAKE HIM DIE- Now he died via Rock to the head and woke up in Tango's ranch with Amnesia!! And Scott is searching so hard for his husband (even though they never got actually married.) and just they end up in a polycule and Jimmy is trying so hard to Court Tango and Scott's just giggling because he's already gone through this with Jimmy, oh his poor sweet boyfriend is trying so hard- JUST THEY LOVE EACH OTHER OKAY OKAY THEY GET PEACE-

Also Joel and Etho are in the AU I believe, I think Me and Jay joked about them being pen pals to each other but that might've been for another au- Also Skizz was in this au BUT SKIZZ DIED AND IT MAKES ME SAD SO SAD!!

and that's basically everything off the top of my head that you probably wouldn't have gotten from the Doc without like Spoiling possible ideas Sasha would want it to go into- again Sasha is free to reblog this and tell me any corrections he wants made because woo boy it's been a hot minute!! ANYWAYS LOVE YOU SLUGGY YOU'RE ALWAYS FREE TO COME ASK ME QUESTIONS ABOUT ANY AUS!!! I'm sure I'll be a lot more knowledgable about my own AUs than anyone else's but yeah-