#Actually getting around to the DDLC asks aha ^^;

[anothermonikan]

go off about DDLC minecraft head canons :D i wanna see if i can add your hcs to mine

Ooo, I have a few, admittedly kinda basic, head canons regarding how the girls would play Minecraft! Keep in mind I haven't really payed attention to any updates past caves and cliffs so I don't have much relating past that ^^;

Roles wise, Monika would definitely be the main resource collector and builder, whenever someone else needs something specific, they usually go see if Monika has it first before seeking it out themselves ^^; Outside of resource collecting, Monika likes just staying in and maintaining the base, so the girls have to coax her out on adventures so she's not just there all the time ^^; Sayori probably comes across as a flower picker but she's insanely good at building and fighting! She has a secret base in the Nether that no one else knows about! She keeps her valuable materials there in order to avoid greifing (which Natsuki loves to do. for fun :3) and just to test out new building ideas, also so she can keep a begillion pet Striders hehe ^^;

Natsuki is probably the best redstone engineer and actual miner out of the group, her and Sayori make a really good building team! She's also the most serious about actually progressing in the game, she's the one who gets team efforts going for game progress most of the time. Yuri really loves exploring different biomes and so is constantly wondering off and having to ask co-ords to where everyone else is ^^; Natsuki often goes along with Yuri to find more cave systems when she's done with previous ones!

I think Monika's favourite biome would be the Cherry Blossom biome because it's really pretty! The girl's main base is probably built in one hehe. Sayori's favourite is the Nether, specially she's fond of Warped Forest's! Natsuki likes Lush Caves because they're pretty, but she'll never actually admit that to the others aha ^^: Yuri really loves the Deep Dark but she always has to take Sayori with her to fight off whatever is in there (I have literally never been there in game I know nothing about this area. I just looked at at it and was like. Yeah Yuri would like that ^^;)

Sorry I took so long to answer this! It's not something I've thought about all too much so it took brainpower to get this one out hehe >:3 I had no idea I had this much to say either ehe ^^;

Thanks for the ask @hare-hunter !

[leggerefiore]

Hello, Hello! I saw that your requests are open, so I wanted to make one, after being way shy, aha-

I had this idea, about Archie or Maxie in self aware au, helping you escape the real world by teaming up, because you had, er, not-that-good things happening in life, and I though maybe I can request that?

You can decide who to write about! I am okay with any variant. And feel free to decine, I don't want to make you uncomfortable!

Bye, have a good day!

cw: self-aware au/ddlc au, fluff mostly

characters: Archie, Maxie

looove writing these two together bc their pieces get to be parallels of one another haha. didn't really go into detail about the "irl situation" since it's from the characters pov.

🌧Archie🌊

💧 He was not exactly sure when he gained his consciousness. Maybe he had always had it? Archie did not really care all too much for the philosophical enough to debate it. All he knew for certain was that you were always there. Not the player character that stood before him, but you. He had seen you a few times, he knew. Originally, somewhere in the first run and then a few times after throughout the following… years? He could only run off the internal 3DS clock, which wasn't reliable when you could change it at will. Yet, he knew. You changed. Got older.

💧 The salty winds around him may have been virtual, alongside everything else he knew, and he may have been aware that everything he was doing was for naught and the same end point. That all did not matter. He saw how much you deeply enjoyed the game and was happy to play out his role for you. Though, he was more than eager to see how much he could get away with altering things before you would get suspicious. Something to keep you coming back to him. At some point, he knew that he had become enamoured with you.

💧 Many times, he pondered if there was a way for him to leave this place. It seemed like there had to be a way, but he felt himself unable to do anything significant. A feeling of incapability was haunting. Only worsened by you returning for yet another play through. This time… You seemed different. And not in a good way. It was obvious something was bothering you out there in that unknown world to him. His stomach dropped. Even this fantasy world did not seem to bring you any comfort. Archie thought on it for a long time. Long enough for you to nearly have beaten the game.

💧 It was at the final scene where he was about to awaken Kyogre and send the world into chaos that he finally broke his carefully crafted role. His small character model looked up at the screen with a bright smile. You seemed a bit frightened by the sudden change, but he did not really care at this point. The Aqua Leader knew he could win you over. He had realised something. He could not go out to you, but what about the reverse? “Hey, scamp!” he called out with a new text box, “I get this is startling an' all, but I wanted to ask something to ya.”

💧 He could see the tears that glistened in your eyes more than often enough to make him concerned. “You want to come in here?” he asked. You froze. Staring at the console and rereading the line of text that he had created. It obviously was unbelievable. What were you trying to convince yourself? He could only wonder. “C'mon, I'm not a glitch or whatever yer thinking. It's a genuine offer,” he continued. You blinked this time. Then, you brought your hand to the screen. He reached his own up towards yours.

💧 You could only gasp when your hand actually went through the screen. His own found yours and pulled you in, bringing you entirely into the world lingering behind the screens. You fell onto him as you both landed on to the rocky terrain beneath you. Gasps left you as you gazed around to see the other characters in the scene standing there. Arms came around your waist as the pirate man held you to himself. “Don't worry, they won't react to you,” Archie reassured you with a hardy laugh. You could smell the scent of the sea all about and fell the stagnant air of the cave now.

💧 You both departed from the story beats as he took you to stand on the beach of Lilycove with him. The salty air stung your eyes and nose, but it felt so real. Especially with the unexpected ally in the form of the game's villain. Archie stood beside you with a dreamy look in his eyes. He had an arm around your waist, seeming to prefer keeping some touch on you. All the troubles that plagued you felt so foreign when standing in a distant world with no ties pulling you back. You could see real pokemon, too. It felt impossible. “Well, yer definitely more perked up now,” Archie spoke to you again, “Feel free to stay as long as you like. Nothing really changes here without my or your input.” You gazed at him. He gave a big, playful grin as the ties of his bandana blew in the wind. Here, you felt more at peace.

☀️Maxie🌋

🪨 He could recall the exact moment he became aware of his sentience. It was terrifying, after all. A moment where you realise everything around you is fake and doomed to an eternal loop depending on how often, if ever, your player decides to reset the game. Your second play through was an existential crisis for him, that is to say. The great Maxie was nothing but lines of code, doomed to repeat the same idiotic plan that nearly killed everyone. He would originally only look at you in annoyance and upset. This was your fault somehow. But, he felt connected to you, even still. He could only watch as time passed and you changed.

🪨 Everything around him was fake. Archie was fake. Courtney and Tabitha were fake. Yet, you were real. You were someone he could always find changing with time. He began to understand why you replayed so often. Escapism. His hell of a reality was a fun break away from the hold of the world around you. It might have annoyed him to be stuck how things were, but he was also a perfectionist. The role he was assigned was followed dutifully with little to no swaying from was to be done. Maybe you would get bored and leave him to an eternity of darkness. You never did, however. (Maxie was silently grateful. Your company was the only thing he had going for him.)

🪨 It was all in vain, the many times had attempted to escape thus digital prison. There simply was no escaping the slowly ageing device that he had been trapped within. It held him tightly in his place, never allowing him the freedom even peer into the world that you inhabited. His brain rushed deeply with curiosity about what lied outside. It was strengthened by you returning for yet another play through of this game. But, he felt stricken. You seemed upset – distraught. So much so, that not even rushing to this fantasy world provided any comfort. Maxie's stomach twisted painfully. (Why did he want to help you badly?)

🪨 It was in the Seafloor Cavern that it finally stuck him. Just right before he was to awaken Groudon and bring about a hellish drought that would exterminate all life on earth. He looked up at you. Maxie could not leave, of that he was certain, but could you not enter? He had never broken his character before you, so he felt nervous as he broke the scene's progression. “Hello,” the text box read simply enough at first, “I know this must be unsettling and a bit terrifying, but may I ask you a question?” He let a “yes” or “no” prompt pop up.

🪨 Your eyes went big, glossy with tears and puffy from whatever had been happening before you returned to the game. Maxie swallowed. What was happening to you out there? It hurt for him to consider you. Nervously, you pressed A on yes. He closed his eyes for a moment. “I am not a glitch, nor is this some form of hacking,” he clarified to make it abundantly clear that he was his own free-thinking man, “Do you wish to join me in here?” You froze, obviously unsure about what he said. A moment of contemplation followed. Then, you brought your hand to the screen half-heartedly. He brought his own up.

🪨 Your hand passed through the screen, startling you, but Maxie's hand had already taken hold of yours. Carefully, you were pulled through the screen. It felt like you were falling for a moment, but a sturdy grip helped you regain your balance. You opened your eyes to the heat of the room and stagnant air around you. The other characters in the room stood frozen. You looked around before seeing him. The red-headed man readjusted his glasses in a nervous manner. “Welcome, I suppose,” he nodded toward you, “Don't worry about them, they don't react without input.” He explained. You stared at the magma nearby in fascination. It was real.

🪨 Maxie led you out from the cavern and back to the surface, choosing Mt. Chimney as a place of comfort and getaway from everything that was currently happening in the story. You stood on the mountain curiously, smelling the sulphur in the air as the wind carried the heat of late summer. The Magma Leader stood by you dutifully, fully aware he was going to have to teach you a lot about this world. He stiffened when you leaned against him suddenly, watching distant Illumise and Volbeat float around in the darkness of the night. “You are free to remain here however long you like,” Maxie told you, “... You seem happier now. That's good.” His hand came to hold yours. He gave a small smile to you, watching your reactions carefully. His red strands escaped his careful styling as a stringer breeze blew by you both. Finally, you felt some sense of peace.

[aks3raao1]

You know, there's a thing with characters that foil each other and serve as the "good" and "bad" respectively (Toga/Himiko, Tenko/Izuku, Nagito/Hajime, Ryoko/Hajime, Atsushi/Akutagawa) but that trope felt rather annoying to write, especially in the world I am trying to write about (ALTERNATIVE's world is basically MHA X BSD but like. 1000 times more fucked up and the Specialised are always prejudiced against. A terrible lot).

The title itself, ALTERNATIVE is to symbolise Romila's POV of "infinite choices and paths present for every being" and how she starts off the story with a decisive line of,

"Many people ask me if this could have been avoided. They beg for me to tell them that things could have been better. There are others too, who try to justify that this was the only way for things to have been. If you ask me, both are living in states of denial. One can't accept the stupidity of humanity for disregarding common sense for violence and prejudices. Another can't accept humanity's choice for having better circumstances if the one with the power chose to."

The thing is, the running theme is that the story is a bittersweet one, despite there not being many deaths of the main characters, but there was always a junction where you can see it could have been avoided, that there was an "alternative" for things to have gotten better, especially in the first book.

Another reason for the title is that it's basically an "ALTERNATIVE" to this world of ours, where super powers and stuff like those exist.

The subtitles of both the books (Myriad of Colours, Colour of Death) signifies Romila's power, "Aura Tracker" which lets her view people's aura as colours (Myriad of Colours is to signify the different kinds of people she meets, Colour of Death is about what affects her the most (death) and how she's constantly seeing that colour everywhere, especially now that it's war).

The thing about ALTERNATIVES is that Romila could have chosen to be a doormat (like Koldin tends to be at the beginning (his rp self is like THAT due to circumstances different to ALTERNATIVE's actual storyline. Also because Hack's a nicer person to be around than Romila is) in order to nOt hAvE cOnFliCt™) to not get into conflict and put up a super nice persona for people but she didn't. She decided to focus on hanging onto her reasons for doing what she does and using it to create a caustic personality to shield herself because she knows that she will regret being a doormat (Her Despair takes the form of Koldin Hopkins).

Now Koldin could have certainly put his hatred for society at the forefront and taken a caustic personality but instead chooses to be nice. Because he doesn't want to become as hurtful as the rest, that's how he wants to disentangle himself from society. However he, like Romila (who just took standing up for herself to extremes), takes this to the extremes causing him to gain the personality of a nice boy™.

However this also goes into why they made the choices they did (which is what Romila realises during the Mansion of Death arc), because for Romila, she didn't really have the psychology for actually becoming a doormat (because a) Her mom wouldn't have it b) She hated to be called weak c) She didn't have anyone to fall back to after the inevitable consequences of being a doormat d) She felt that if she were to live with monsters, then it's easier to blend in by being one (this comes useful to her when she infiltrates into the Government) e) She saw doormats getting suicidal which frightened her) or not becoming fully caustic (since her standing up for herself wasn't. Liked. By. Anyone. And seen as aggressive and she basically went, "Well if they see me as bad, I will show them BAD" which led to her breakdown causing the incidents at the Mansion Of Death (especially a twisted hatred against Koldin for extremely understandable reasons).

For Koldin, being meek and peaceful had let him get by in the streets and his skills to difuse fights had come in handy. Later when Dr. Hopkins took him in, he was well. A member of the Radicals who were known to be extremely merciless towards the Specialised (he had defected but Koldin had a REALLY good reason to be wary) so he figured if he stayed nice, he wouldn't be kicked out of the house and Dr. Hopkins being Dr. Hopkins just assumed that it was his normal and that behaviour carried into school. He figured that it was a horrifying thing to be aggressive and then saw how Romila got treated and decided that yep, he was right, that confirmed his world view alright and it was more reason to be super nice. While Romila saw Koldin as a person who everyone took advantage of (a thing she hated. To be exploited just like that) and went, yep that confirmed hers and it was more reason to be super angry.

However the thing is that, Romila was chided for being anything, which caused her to just give up to be peaceful (because what would she do? Anything she tried to do got her scolded) while Koldin (thankfully) found a support system. It really goes to show the difference a good friend can do.....

As it is, when I first began writing this, the most obvious choice presented itself to me. Koldin is the "hope" and Romila is the "despair" (on the protagonist, deutergonist side) but that seemed stupid and boring as it wouldn't make sense. Since I am trying to make a point of showing with how Romila's world view gradually changes from "there are wrong and right choices" to the fact that it doesn't have to be rigid and that *now* she wouldn't be hurt if she used what her vulnerable side wanted (a world free of prejudices and unnecessary cruelty) with the talents she had. That kindness mixed with her usual personality won't literally kill her.

And for Koldin, being a doormat means that he got taken advantage of a lot by different people and since he refused to actually stand up for himself ("Ah...aha......it seems that I can't..." "Can't what?" "Feel angry for myself......it's always anger that comes from the ones I love being hurt" "Then love yourself too, you will feel angry again" ~ Koldin's conversation with his inverted self in the Labyrinth) he got. Taken advantage of. By virtually everyone. However he decided that if being nice would keep him keep his self and his name self then it would be fine. He did not want to be the source of grief (his actual parents tossed him out because of his Specialisation). The Mansion Of Death actually causes him to snap for that reason, because Romila literally puts him in a torture dream "for the greater good" and then proceeds to kill his dear friend. One thing Koldin HATED. Killing friends. (Due to them being run over by a car, which led to his paralysed left arm)

Now on the other side, their respective friends:

Romila:

Luja: Cynical and annoyed by people's stupidity but not to caustic extents and she wants to be a scientist and isn't haunted by the possibility of dying.

Kratanos: Full of anger and hatred against the world but not entirely blinded by it and is focused to using that anger for reformation of the world (she becomes a therapist later, to help people)

They both have her caustic parts but they also let themselves embrace another side which makes them her "balance".

Koldin:

Anand: Believes that there's no requirement for violence unless it's absolutely necessary.

Karishma: Figures it's a better idea to just listen to rules but doesn't hesitate to break them if she sees that they are bs

They both have his peacefulness, but don't hesitate to do what they think they should do, which makes them his "balance".

The point is that, the case of choosing alternatives isn't possible with a tunnel vision. Even so, there are choices that literally can't be made due to the individual and circumstances. Sometimes the choice is to choose more than one choice. Well, that's one dramatic storyline......

It reminds me of DDLC side stories since everyone has a bit of the other person's solutions and more of a opposite personality (don't take this the wrong way, there are many stories like that and it's honestly a favourite to think abt but it's just that DDLC does it well especially since it's only a school environment). Tbh, I like dramatic storylines that rlly dig deep into a character's perspective (reasons why I'm in love with Hack and Axel in particular). My whole thing is that I'd rather read a story with interesting and in depth characters than one where only the plot is good so I say you made the great call of the century with Koldin and Romila's characters.

What you thought before getting into it is rlly how every great character arc starts. You focus on one, somewhat forget the other one until you review every single character for inspiration and then BAM! PARALLELS! It's really admirable how, even in this messed up world of specializations, you didn't purely focus on the plot bc it honestly sounds interesting enough to just stick around for Romila's life and journey. You could have ended it all with just that, but no, you smacked Koldin in there and said "be my interesting on par character that can kick Romila's gut" and IT WORKED SPECTACULARLY!!!

I really love ur writing and hoping to one day read (and maybe print out) every story you've ever written bc GODDAMNIT I NEED THE FEELING OF THOSE WORDS ON WORN PAPER WITH AN ARTISTIC COVER AND AN AMAZINGLY HEAVY WEIGHT

Aka, paperback. Bc that's how I like to roll and that's how good I think it is. 1000% worthy of a bestseller