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Shun.

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Well, it's one of these days where I find myself thinking about ARR and kinda regretting I didn't follow the wave and played the JP version. I should reinstall it still (not to play) , kinda want to read back the Dawn Faction Books. For now, I feel the need to vent a bit about various thoughts in no specific order.

Aoi, I miss you ~ I remember with fondness how I used to read about his struggle with his art and relate to it, and now that's I'm working on my own academic stuff (aka my bloody master's thesis), I relate even more. Art and literature aren't the same, but i really want to pour my soul into my work and for other people to see what I want them to see, and Aoi's determination and struggles are reminding me of my own insecurities. Aoi, let's support each other!

It also makes me want to write all the one shots and fanfiction I had in mind two years ago, before the Fateful Announcement was made... Should I procrastinate my thesis and write fluff instead? God, there was this modern high school au I, the Futaba/Aoi one shots, the OC story...

Kuro, send your haircare! I want fluffy hair! None of the ARR guys really has curly hair like I do, but Kuro's long hair seem so fluffy and pretty... I'm not really into skincare and haircare that much, but I can imagine Futaba and Kuro sharing tips on how to care for one's skin. This'll go in another fanfic. One day. One day...

It always surprises me how I started the game for Yura, thinking I would be so head over heels for him I wouldn't even notice the other characters, and yet! Aoi ! Kuro! My beloved!

I still like Yura, but I read his story mostly for the plot, not for the romance (but like, didn't we all? This book lacks romance so bad, at least the yura event stories are fun). Maybe it's the fact he's a 1,000 years old? I'm not really into the whole modern ordeal of age gap and what is and is not healthy (I'm reasonable, but people on Twitter are kinda scaring me at times), but like... Yura... Why do you need to me so flirtatious with Futaba when you look like a middle schooler but are older than Charlemagnes...

He's still very funny and a very dear character to me, the only OC I ever created for ARR was directly related to Yura and Gaku's backstory. Hopefully I'll find the time to talk about it in more details someday (and clear some old fanart).

... Well damn. I really miss this bloody game, don't I? I miss the gameplay, it was so easy and nice to do while commuting. The artstyle was the best, the voices were so good, it was great (the lack of sleep to play the events to the fullest wasn't though)... Oddly enough, each time me and my family talk about what we'd do if we won the lottery, I only think about three things : buying myself an apartment (loaning is expensive here ...), funding the second movie of the Kotz live action and funding the Eng version of ARR. It's such a nerd thing lol, shouldn't I want to buy old books and a car? But I don't have a driving license, and I miss playing ARR.

I'm currently starting Genshin Impact, although everyone is already so far in the story (I'm still learning how to fly in Mondstadt). Hopefully this game'll fill the void ARR left. I've been searching for a good substitute for two years now, so I'm kinda desperate...

On a side note, each time I get a notification from Voltages' YouTube page, I get soooo angry and curse them in my head. Why do I still follow them? Just for spite lol.

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Response to a Reddit Post: Is the fanfiction portion of the fandom dying?

I'm currently working on a series of Tumblr posts about my characters, starting with my main, but I realised I had more work on my hands than I thought so I kind of put that project on pause.

In the meantime, in the interest of keep my Tumblr account active, I've decided to start sharing some Reddit responses I make to certain topics, since many times they tend to be as big as blog posts in their own right. I'm not gonna go back and repost here everything I've ever written on Reddit, I'm just gonna repost stuff I do from now one cause it's a shame to let all that typing go to waste.

Starting with my response to this Reddit Post:

https://www.reddit.com/r/SaintSeiya/comments/13dbofy/is_the_fanfiction_portion_of_the_fandom_dying/ ------------------------------ I can't speak for other fanfiction sites since I've only as of last Summer been posting outside FF.net, but I would say that while the fanfiction portion of the fandom is not dying, it is definitely going through a bit of a drought. There's just not much to write about right now.

I think that in order to have the kind of thriving fanfiction you're probably picturing with this question, you need a number of things:

-Creative Appeal: the premise (in this case Saint Seiya) needs to be experience a surge of widespread media fascination. This doesn't mean commercial success, it means people need to see something in the premise that stimulates their creative interest and that they can easily get other people to care about their writing by appealing to the common interest in the premise;

-Demographic Appeal: fanfiction writing is something that, unfortunately, it is still very demographically driven, being considered a hobby of teenagers, minorities and adult women for the most part (in other words, people whose viewpoint is usually absent or misrepresented in mainstream media, encouraging them to seek alternative or amateur storytelling).

-Sexual Emotion Appeal: Fanfiction is also a space for experimental and restricted forms of writing to bloom. People get attached to a property or franchise, notice that it has romantic tension that goes unfulfilled, and write about it to make it happen;

-Experimental Storytelling Appeal: A franchise good for fanfiction writing is one that makes itself open to different types of storytelling. The MCU is great for this because it has made clear to its fans that it has no qualms in mixing Hulk stories with Dr. Strange, and time travel and parallel universes.

So in a lot of ways you could say fanfiction-fertile environments are environments with a lot of 'untapped potential, at least from the perspective of the fans.

When you look at the landscape of Saint Seiya, you'll see the last big surge of fanfiction was in the late 2000s and early 2010s, when Lost Canvas was coming out. Whether you like Lost Canvas or not, it is undeniably an ideal manga to spur fanfic sentiment in Saint Seiya, with its cast of well drawn characters, heavy enphasis on the emotional aspect of the fighting (rather than action) and even its (spoilers) reveal at the end that the whole story is largely a construct by Mephistopheles Youma, indicating that this universe is open to things like alternate timelines and viewpoints.

This fertility is further enphasized by the fact that a lot of the LC Gold Saints are... kind of selfish assholes. Many of them pop up late in the story when they could have been helping from the beginning, many of them seem to have people in their lives they value more than their duty and many act outright more interested in the battling in and of itself rather than the grander purpose of the Holy War. Sasha is almost a circunstancial element in their lives and that's kind of what makes them more human and liable to have stories written about them.

But classic Saint Seiya is a rather straightforward story, especially after Sanctuary. The characters' drives are very strongly centered around the main conflict and they very rarely allow themselves self-interested moments. We are so starved of characterisation on the Gold Saints that to this day people still ship Mu and Aldebaran together because they had ONE conversation early in Sanctuary Arc about what they thought of Pope Arles.

This all ironically in SPITE of ND, which has a rather colorful bunch of Gold Saints and even time travel, because the very rigidness of the SS format and Kurumada's slow storytelling pace are discouraging a sense that there's any real character consequences for what happens in the story, even when he tries to have it. I mean, how many people have absorbed into themselves that Shiryu is now more or less officially rid of his Shoryuha's heart weakness after his most recent power up?

The big exception is Shun; Shun has a lot of fanfiction written about him, or written with him, or written about characters interested in him (like Ikki or the Specters). You would think that, in the typical fanfiction manner, it's because of his mixed gender role in the series, but I would disagree, because another big fanfic appeal in SS is Hyoga, of all people.

I think Shun and Hyoga appeals to fanfiction writing because of all the characters, these two seem to act like they have a wisdom separate of the main conflict going on. Shun is always the one reminding everyone else that they shouldn't be violent just because they're fighting a war, and Hyoga is always the one talking about having loved ones beyond the Bronze Saints (namely his teachers and his mother) as a consistent part of his characterisation (and not a pretend motivation like Seiya with Seika). Shun is also the one among the Bronzes to have been made a vessel of a God, Hades of all people, which contributes to the sense he has somewhere to go to other than being another Power Ranger in Seiya's team.

There is a direct relationship between characters with selfish dimensions to them and fans wanting to write fanfiction about them.

So why the drought?

As we move further in time away from stories like Lost Canvas, naturally it's relevance diminishes. New generations of saint seiya fans are not going to know who the hell Kardia is and they won't care. Instead, they have stories like Omega (which was experimental with Saint Seiya, if anything) and Saintia Sho (an all female story).

While Saintia Sho is great, the problem, fanficiton-wise, is that Chimaki is very direct about her characters' interests. There's no need for Sho fanfiction of her pairing up with Kyoko because Chimaki does it herself in her own manga, so if you're interested in Sho, you almost could say you are too satisfied. It's potential is already tapped. Sho kind of destroys its own fanfiction potential by embracing its sexual tension. We've basically stopped short of having Shoko and Kyoko kiss in the series.

And Saint Seiya fans hate Omega because it tried to appeal to its most anti-fanfic demographic, shounen fans. So it's a mute point.

This leaves Dark Wing (which is basically a Isekai fanfiction of its own right) and Episode G.

Episode G just sucks for inspiring fanfiction. It's ugly, it has bad photography, it has the emotional tension of a teenage graffiti on the principal's hall and it has pretty dull Holy Wars that exist pretty much as excuses to draw Gold Saints looking mean and shooting shiny beams at weirdos in black armor. I challenge anyone to think of an interesting fanfiction to write about it. You can't. And no one has. In my 13 years of following the fanfic communities, of all the SS spin offs, Episode G has barely, if ever, had stories written about it by fans, much less popular ones.

This not to mention that the the people who DO like Episode G are the type that will more likely express it by going on Versus Forums and argue with strangers about math than talk about why it's characters resonate with them. Which is rather revealing, if you ask me.

As for Dark Wing, I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with it, but in general people don't like writing fanfiction about other people's fanfiction. I also think the fandom understanding of that manga is the least developed and the story is kind of flying under everyone's radars, so people feel both a lack of supply and demand for stories set in it.

So there's really not a whole lot of reason to get into SS fanfic writing as of 2023 because, well, frankly it's not that easy as just opening up Microsoft Word or Google Docs and type about how pretty your favorite Silver Saint looks, and people don't reward it with feedback and views.

As for classic Saint Seiya, most fanfictions, especially the ones that keep going, have either been SS rewrites or attempts to continue unto the Heaven Arc. This reflects the main demographic of fans feeling unsatisfied with Saint Seiya, in other words its "untapped potential". Rather than being character oriented, the fanfic appeal seems to be plot oriented.

Which is just fucking sad cause no one wants to read someone other than Kurumada finish HIS story. :| Especially when he's still alive and trying to do it.

So are there fewer fanfictions? Well, to reiterate, yes and no. If you pull up official numbers, it's probably the same as always, like people are saying here.

There IS, however, definitely less gems and definitely less interest from the fans in reading them, which creates a feedback loop that makes the landscape feel abandoned or biased against. The only thing that can really fix this is either a change in attitude about what we should expect of amateur fan writing OR another Lost Canvas type manga. And this is both Saint Seiya's fault and our own.

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milgram nation how are we feeling

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As a Kazui simp, I won’t stand for this disrespect

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Happy New Year, hope your holidays went well !! I just come back from a pretty difficult day, so I'd love to ask for some winter themed maybe Shiryu/Ikki ? Thank you, have a nice day ! ❤️

Happy New Year! Sorry for the long wait💦 Is it still cold there? I hope it warms you up a little. Please accept this. Wishing you a happy new year 😌✨

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Not really a headline and not really in english this time... désolée fallait être plus drôle que nos twittos (les meilleurs vraiment)

En vrai j'ai vu quelques français dans mes likes/reblogs sur ce compte c grâce à vous que ce post existe (ça peut être positif ou négatif vs me dites)

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@mari-does-stuff

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Okokok I don't know why but I'm suddenly starting to feel a lot better (must be the Iced tea I drank lololol) and I'm sooo motivated to write all my fanfictions! The writing process will be hard (I have my exams, my job) but at least I'll be doing something productive!

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I need to talk but I don't know how, or about what. I feel so empty right now, since I've read the game announcement I'm acting like a robot. My outfit doesn't make sense lol, I guess no one cares so it's not a big deal (but that's a waste of a good hair day lololol). I just remembered that I had a pastry in my bag for breakfast, so I just ate it (it's not even lunch anymore lolololol).

I had a hard time focusing in class, when I tried to speak my voice sounded much deeper that usual, which was embarrassing, and I was shaking so hard I could even hear my heartbeat beating in my ears. Didn't take notes for the end of the class, I was looking at a white dot on the board.

I don't like this feeling.

I want to write but I don't have the words. It's annoying.

I don't like complaining, it's annoying for me and for those listening to me. My throat aches.

I guess I just need time, everyone does, but it's so weird how a simple game has such an impact on my daily life. I haven't opened the app since reading the announcement when I woke up, sorry Gaku for your birthday event but I won't need the rankings diamonds anymore I guess. I have more than enough for the last draws, in which I ain't even interested but I don't want these diamonds to go to waste.

That was a long paragraph, I don't know where to cut it. I don't want to read what I just wrote or else I'll delete everything.

Venting is nice.

I want to re-read Aoi's main story. I don't have a lot of battery tho and I still have a fem hours before going home, I'm so screwed lololol.

I'll buy myself a treat. I deserve it. I think? Let's buy a pain au chocolat and a soda. It's a lot of sugar but who cares.

Anyways lolololol

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At least we'll get some content for the 3rd anniversary? I'm not sure what the staff means by that, I hope it will be the anniversary cards but I don't know. I just don't want the game to end with nothing.

(I just don't want the game to end, period, but what else can I say? I'm so tired)

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Did I just took the wrong bus?

Will I even be able to focus in class today?

Dear god I work this afternoon, I need to

I don't know

I don't know what I need to do right know

Is there even something I can do

Oh my god....

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The more I think about it, the more I feel like my brain isn't able to comprehend what's happening right now and it's really annoying, I have a headache and my throat hurts and I feel ridiculous for caring that much but there's nothing I can do it's just a physical reaction I guess

What a shitty day

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I wanted to say something about this whole situation but I'm starting to cry and I wasn't expecting it and it's really painful

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Forgot to post it but Yura is finally here! The sticker is so cute omg, it warms my heart each time I close my laptop 😭

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so... I called Seiya a fake and a fraud the other day and...

I might have been wrong?

Recapping with the images I used in the linked post...

him do his lil dance

This is what I got when I taped some paper on my monitor and traced the path of his arm movements

This is the Pegasus constellation

chile...

yall about to watch me lose 5 years of my life for the second time in 48 hours

how special does that make YOU feel?

okay, SO-

The Pegasus constellation in real life actually appears in the sky flipped both vertically and horizontally from the picture I used in the last post. That's how the Pegasus constellation appears behind Seiya.

but here (below) is how it appears in the sky in real life

Also, while reviewing the GIF specifically, I noticed that the Pegasus constellation behind Seiya when he's channeling his cosmo has extra stars for the back legs of the Pegasus.

In both images I've posted so far of the Pegasus constellation, those stars aren't there. At first, I thought they were extra stars to make the background more "balanced" with more stars to outline Seiya's silhouette and to further frame him as the focus of the shot.

so... that was f a l s e

The extra stars for the legs in that GIF/animation are actually the Andromeda constellation.

The Pegasus constellation is made of the Great Square of (the) Pegasus and a few more stars that make the two front legs and the head of the horse.

The Pegasus and Andromeda constellations share a star in the Great Square called Alpheratz. The Andromeda constellation, while being its own thing and not actually being part of the Pegasus constellation, looks like the back legs of the Pegasus.

This explains away the extra stars in the GIF as being accurate to astrology and not just artistic choice.

All of this is very interesting and has fuckall to do with the actual point I came here to address today.

sew...

I started to play around a bit with the pathing of Seiya's arm movements and see if there was any, and I mean ANY possible way it could really be matching up with the Pegasus constellation.

and honestly???

ye, it kinda works

First, let me clean up what I traced out yesterday.

Okay, so when I clean up the path and separate the two, this is what it looks like.

This is the exact path his arms move in and I've marked every place where his arms change trajectory/curve with numbers so you can have a better idea of the order he's hitting which points since there is quite a bit of overlap.

The Pegasus constellation has 15 stars but I don't think he's hitting like... every individual star? More like tracing over where each one roughly is?

this'll make more sense in a bit...

Alright, so-

Earlier I discussed the orientation/direction of the Pegasus constellation as it appears behind Seiya and how it will appear in most images when you look it up. The head is up top and to the left with the Great Square, it's body, to the bottom right.

But again, the way it appears in the sky in real life is flipped both vertically and horizontally with its head to the bottom right and Alpheratz, the farthest out corner of the body/Great Square connected to Andromeda (the hind legs), to the top left.

I've tried countless times to fit different images of the Pegasus constellation into the outline and while it never quite fits, I've realized that in spite of that, the path still kind of works.

sooooo . . .

I'm gonna try to get an image of the Pegasus constellation that includes the names of all the stars in it. This'll help me explain the path and how it hits/curves around or through each part of the constellation.

And then I'm going to show you what it looks like when you trace the path of each hand over the constellation.

Like I said earlier, if you draw out the path itself and then try to use a photoeditor to like, idk... 'superimpose' a stock image of the Pegasus constellation into it, it won't really fit like that. But I think I've found a way to make them align.

This is the best image I could find of the Pegasus constellation with almost all of the stars named.

Sadly, I couldn't find an image like this with the constellation facing the same way it does behind Seiya, but I'll mark the paths and do my best to explain.

ye, I think I'm about to hit the image limit

I think it's clear where Seiya's hands start. His left hand starts on the star Alpheratz and his right hand starts either on Baham or Enif, but I think it starts on Baham.

Actually, it might start at Homan.

I'll start with his left hand, though.

So, like I said earlier, Seiya's left hand starts on Alpheratz, which is way in the bottom right corner. From there it does a HUGE diagonal left upward curve to Enif. Enif is the furthest star in the upper left of the constellation, it's the Pegasus's nose.

And from Enif, it swerves really far back right again to Algenib. Algenib is the star above Alpheratz in the Great Square (the upper right corner). From Algenib it goes a little bit back left to Markab, the upper left corner of the Great Square. From Markab it goes down to Scheat, the lower left corner of the Great Square, and then upwards, diagonal and right back up to Algenib.

The final movement is a HUGE downwards crescent from Algenib that sweeps under Alpheratz to the left, through the legs of the Pegasus, and up, not quite to but very close, to Enif again.

Actually, on the first swing from Alpheratz to Enif, I think it might swing through the stars Matar and ι or Iota Pegasi which are the stars in the middle of the bottom and top leg respectively.

Alright, looked at it a little more and Seiya's right hand very likely starts at Homan. Homan is a star in the middle of the Pegasus's neck.

From Homan, Seiya's arm makes a pretty sharp crescent to the right, it doesn't go through anything, but when it comes back to the left, it passes through Baham, which is the top of the Pegasus's head. From Baham, he makes a massive, downward sweeping motion that I believe is going through the star at the tip of the top foot.

The Pegasus's feet are out in front of it with one leg positioned over the other.

I think that star is called Kappa Pegasi? In the picture, it just looks like κ which is probably supposed to be short for κ Peg. Kappa Pegasi is the second star after Sadalbari, which is the bent knee of the top leg of the Pegasus.

Both of the legs are coming out of Scheat at the lower left of the Great Square.

From there it continues to curve rightward and it goes by, quite possibly through, the tip of the bottom foot of the Pegasus. The star at the end of that leg is represented in the image as π, short for π Peg which is Pi Pegasi. From Pi Pegasi, it continues its loop and goes through Scheat where both legs start.

From Scheat it arcs up and to the left to Enif, the Pegasus's nose, and finally, from that point, it swings slightly downward and far right to the upper right corner of the Great Square, Algenib.

Actually...

Seiya might be crossing all of the major/named stars. oh wow...

The attention to detail is astounding, high key.

but bruh- I really went in on this lil boi the other day

I came for his stance. I came for his character; I deadass called him a liar at one point.

chile... I came for his eyesight

Marin was out there catchin strays-

okay, girlies. so i redid the math and the math IS mathin, but liek...

bitches cain't carry decimals

Hi there, this is your Captain bitches speaking~ We're almost off this flight ✈️🌠

chile... nah, Cause I dragged tf out that poor boi in my last post and I was wrong. Not just for draggin him and not mindin my business but because I was actually, factually wrong.

ima go on now and let him do his lil Disney Cosmo channel thang mid-fight and sit down someplace

im sorreh, mah boi...

but ye, Within 48 hours we learned net zero information in which the person that debunked me was like... future me.

Anyways...

Much love and thanks to anyone who reads this thing.

And a lil extra love and thanks to people who read the first post too~

💖 * 💖 * 💖 * 💖 * 💖

please go outside