#I don’t usually visualize characters unless I’ve seen drawings of them.. and I’m not sure that I’ve ever seen anyone draw Darnell??

[cha1cedony]

Just mouthed ‘aww’ to myself while writing about a grown ass man snoring. Mortifying. I need to explode

[365days365movies]

March 7, 2021: Wolfwalkers (Review)

Well, it’s not a 98%. Close enough, though...

Because this film is...fantastic. It’s amazing! Come on, it’s such a good movie, what else were you expecting? This one was a corker, it was just a good time. And I’m definitely watching this one again, I promise you that.

But here’s the real question: is it my favorite Cartoon Saloon film? Well...

Yeah, sorry, Song of the Sea still takes that role for me. And to be honest, The Breadwinner gives it a run for its money, too. Definitely better than The Secret of Kells, although...not that much better. I’ll elaborate, I promise. But this is still a great movie! ALL of Cartoon Saloon’s films are great movies, come on!

But, since it’s not a straight-up 100%, I’ll break it down, as well as my very unimportant issues with it. So, let’s get into it. Check out Part One and Part Two of the Recap for more, if you’d like!

Review

Cast and Acting: 10/10

Yeah, if this movie has one thing over the Ghibli films, it’s the voice acting. And yeah, I realize that I’m judging this English-language film vs. the dubbed Ghibli films, and that’s unfair. But even without the Ghibli films factored in...this movie’s got some fantastic voice acting. I can say quite honestly that there isn’t a weak performance in the bunch. Worst ones are probably the two farmers, and they’re completely fine. Climbing on up, we’ve first got Tommy Tiernan (as Sean, and he’s pretty great) and Simon McBurney (as Oliver Cromwell, and he does a fantastic job). Then, Sean Bean and Maria Doyle Kennedy as the concerned parents, and hot damn, they’re great. Kennedy barely gets time to shine, but is great when she does. And Bean? Holy shit, Sean Bean is fucking AMAZING in here!

But no...no, they’re all outright bad compared to the stars of the film, and some of the best young voice actors I’ve ever heard. Don’t know what it is about Cartoon Saloon, but they always get great kids for their films, and Honor Kneafsey and Eva Whittaker might be their best! These two are powerhouses of the film, and their voices inhabited those characters perfectly. I mean it when I say that these two were perfect. Bravo!

Plot and Writing: 8/10

Here’s where the film is a touch weaker than the other Cartoon Saloon films for me, because while this was a good story by Tomm Moore and Ross Stewart, with great writing by Will Collins, it wasn’t their most impactful for me. It’s also, to be honest, quite predictable. Which, no, isn’t a bad thing for a kids’ movie, but it was noticeable. Here’s the thing: Song of the Sea wasn’t super predictable. I was touched and surprised by the ending, and it’s still my favorite of the Saloon films. The Breadwinner...oof, yeah, I had no idea how that one would end. And Kells wasn’t as unpredictable, but it also had some major surprises in store that kept me on my toes. But Wolfwalkers? Didn’t feel it. Knew that Moll would be OK at the end, and that was the main crux of the tension of the story. Now, that said...there were still definitely things that surprised me, like Bill getting bitten, and the two retaining their status as Wolfwalkers in the end. That did surprise me, and it definitely isn’t like the story was bad, even a little bit. Just was basically what I expected.

...Except for Cromwell dying. WHAT THE FUCK. The Cartoon Saloon universe has a REALLY interesting alternate history, I tell you what! Goddamn, I hope they do one that takes place in the USA with some of our folklore and mythology. Like...OOH, I GOT ONE. Paul Bunyan story! Do something with Bunyan and the Ox. Or OOH, EVEN BETTER, Pecos Bill! Actually, maybe not Pecos Bill. John Henry? Eeeeeh, that might be complicated. I dunno, but there’s something there, Cartoon Saloon! There is something there.

Directing and Cinematography: 10/10

I mean...it’s Cartoon Saloon. It’s amazing. Tomm Moore is great again, joined this time by writing partner Ross Stewart. Looks like Nora Twomey is working on another film called My Father’s Dragon, and I am READY for that shit. But yeah, I mean...come on. It’s funny, because this movie’s production and release were heavily affected by COVID-19, and it doesn’t show. There is a single criticism that I can give to it, but it doesn’t belong in this section. Because the directing and cinematography are typically amazing. Goddamn beautiful. As for the one potential flaw...

Production and Art Design: 9/10

Understand: this is a nitpick. Bu if I had to pick on anything here, it’s simply the animation cells showing the sketches lying underneath. Now, Disney ended up doing this with an era of films in the 1960s and ‘70s (The Many Adventures of Winne-the-Pooh, Robin Hood, The Jungle Book, the Aristocats all did this), but it’s still a little distracting here. And that’s it. Character design is goddamn amazing, and actually made me want to start drawing a bit. The artistry of the backgrounds and set-pieces is stellar, and the stylized designs of Cartoon Saloon somehow never get old to me! It’s just...amazing. Like I said: the underlying sketch thing really is a nitpick, and I don’t even mind it, personally. It’s honestly good to see the work behind a 2-D animated movie, you know? So, yeah, just the one point.

Music and Editing: 10/10

Bruno Coulais and Kila knock this music out of the park all-around, and I have nothing negative to say about it. I’m not sure which track is going in my playlist, but one of them is. Maybe “Running with the Wolves”, and I’m only a little ashamed to admit that. OK, what about the editing by Richie Cody, Darren Holmes, and Darragh Byrne? I mean...yeah, it’s amazing, WHAT DO YOU WANT FROM ME? Animated films rarely have poor visual editing (unless they’re REALLY bad), and the sound editing usually takes the hit. However, no such problem here. Again, sound editing is fantastic in this movie, from voice mixing to sound effects to overall balance. It’s all pretty goddamn great. No complaints here.

Yeah, 94%. I mean, of course, right?

Sure, it’s not Ghibli-levels of profound, but it is fantastic all the same. Who cares about profundity, anyway? It’s just a good goddamn movie! And like I said in the beginning, I’ll be watching this again very soon. Beautiful.

But I think it’s time to start wrapping up the animated portion of this month with something closer to home. Now, I’d love to do Disney, and I was actually going to see Raya and the Last Dragon in theaters this week (yeah, really, not kidding), but other stuff got in the way. And I’ve seen all Disney films other than that. So, what’s another fully American studio who’s produced a movie that I somehow haven’t seen? And, that movie has to be fantasy? Well...

March 7, 2021: Onward (2020)

[kaypeace21]

i’m a survivor too, and i found that certain scenes/stuff will said just really struck me as ‘csa-survivor’-like? i felt a bit uncomfortable about headcanoning it happening to someone else, especially for a fandom as wild as this one, but your metas have really been a comfort to me because they’ve been able to pick out and explain things that i couldn’t necessarily find the words for myself.

and yeah, i would love to have a character like me that is powerful and who finds love and who gets a happy ending. the people who call the theory disgusting always kinda hit wrong with me because although csa is a difficult subject, we shouldn’t be ashamed about sharing it. they sound like they’re trying to say that it’s a bad topic to talk about and implying that it can’t happen to kids, which uhhhhh-

(i’m sure that’s not what they mean, precisely, but it’s still what they sound like, and i wish that they would stop implying that we can’t exist, especially in popular media. we do, and i’m not gonna pretend we don’t, and if they feel uncomfortable with the topic they can just use the block button. we deserve to have some well written representation just as much as anyone else. also, i really really hope that will gets a happy ending.)

anywayyyy i love your theories and i can see your post in the tag so i think you’re fine?? have a good day ❤️❤️❤️

SORRY, this ask took so long to respond to. It always warms my heart to hear other survivors speak and say they found comfort in my theory.

Yes, I think I and a lot of c*a/r*pe victims (subconscious or otherwise) were triggered by some of the symbolism/visuals in s1-3. And s3 made it hard for most of us to ignore the past imagery- since s3 wasn’t as subtle.

I get why people have reservations about the theory. But the debates to the contrary are usually just plain offensive. Or people trying to be respectful but being the opposite. There’s the obvious bad-apples . I got many anons after part 1 of my DID theory saying it “ruined/tainted byler”, and “if that happened to Will i’ll stop shipping byler” , or that it  “ruins the best gay character” ,  and to “remove the post immediately”. And this was when I was open about being a gay c*a victim. I obviously blocked them. Many survivors don’t come forward because they’re afraid people will see them as “tainted”, “ruined”, “ just their trauma”, or blame them for what happened. So yeah, it pisses me off when people say similar stuff about Will (and thus other c*a victims). Not even diving into the messed up psychology about byler/mileven shippers (knowing i was a lesbian c*a victim) but purposely spreading bs rumors about me being a p*do that was into Will/Noah-all because of the theory. -_-

Then there’s the people who try to be “respectful” but literally do the opposite.

I’ve heard numerous times it’s somehow “less offensive” to just use r*pe imagery to make monsters scary. Rather than have  the monsters have that imagery cause Will created the monsters from his memory/imagination-and st is a story of Will healing from that trauma. SORRY- I disagree. Using the worst experiences of peoples’ lives (and triggering their trauma) for no real purpose- except to make their monsters scarier to the normal/general audience who haven’t gone through it so won’t be triggered like us - is MORE OFFENSIVE to victims! NOT LESS! At least to me.

Then there’s the people who say “c*a should never be talked about (in stories).” Which I disagree with. V*ctims have already been told by ab*ser’s  and enablers of the ab*ser- to never talk about what happened to us  . So it rubs A LOT of us the wrong way when people say this.  Because (subconscious or not) you remind some of us of the people who used to hurt/silence us. People say this -simply for their convenience (like ab*sers) and cause deep down they’re uncomfortable with our existence and equate the despicable act to us the innocent v*ctim ...or just want to deny the horrible reality of the situation (like many enablers who deny the truth and hurt us because they don’t want to accept reality) . And 1) It brings us back to a time where they told us to NEVER talk about it- and makes us feel like we did something wrong when we didn’t! 2) Every psych professional says with-holding/keeping the ab*se a secret is detrimental to our mental health.

Plus, there’s a HUGE difference between sugarcoating/minimizing trauma or WORSE glamorizing, condoning, or romanticizing C*A in stories (ex: pretty little liars) VS showing how the action is wrong, causes trauma, but showing recovery and happiness is still possible for v*ctims.  if the story shows how accurately traumatizing it is (instead of minimizing/glamorizing it)- it’s incredibly rare for that character to get a happy ending. Having a story about recovering from that type of trauma and finding happiness despite such hardships would be amazing for US survivors! We rarely get stories with a happy ending-  it’s more harmful to us survivors to never see ourselves get happy endings in tv/film/books. How can some survivors (in a dark place) think there’s a light at the end of the tunnel- if it’s never shown?Also if Will has DID too- it’s good mental health rep, along with queer rep (and survivor’s rep.) All 3 groups rarely are treated well or get happy endings in media. A lot of people may feel more heard, seen, and a bit more hopeful for the future - If Will (and other characters) get a happy ending.

And even though st has many themes- like say homophobia. To try and hand-wave all the disturbing  r*pe imagery away  as ‘Will is just gay so the monsters are like that”. IS SOOOOOO offensive. Trigger warning for examples. I’m sorry what part of Max saying when Billy had c*nsensual s*x it’s “good screams” but when possessed by the mf he causes Heather to do “bad screams” read as gay???! Having the possessed ch*ke/dr*g people before throwing them in trunks (like it’s implied Lonnie did to Will -since Jonathan checked Lonnie’s trunk for Will in s1)?Tying their arms and legs up/ g*ging  them and  getting on top of them and saying “stay VERY still it’ll all be over soon”-before a monster shoves it’s tentacle into someone’s mouth and inserts a goo - just gay??? Similar to the sentient vine/shadow monster forcing itself down Will’s throat. Let alone Will saying things like “he made me do it”, “i felt it everywhere”, or being tied to a bed and screaming “help! stop! it hurts! let me go!” While Jonathan is the only one who’s visibly triggered by this and has to literally turn away and hug someone . Or barb, billy, and El spiting up a white liquid from their mouth (similar to will spitting up a slug and lying to his mother about it ).El/billy touching a suspicious looking slime with their hand and looking at the substance confused . El drawing Papa with 3 legs (the middle one being shorter) ,  trying to undress in front of the boys , and Benny saying “I think she’s been ab*sed or something”.The theme of ab*sive dads- brenner , Lonnie, and Neil . Even when the demogorgan (called in d&d the “deep father”/ in the show “a man without a face”) attacked Barb it’s chopped up with scenes of Nancy having c*nsensual sex (the monsters are doing the opposite symbolically). There’s way more examples but NO- to try and hand wave /equate ALL OF THIS to just “gay imagery” or an “a*ds metaphor” is WAY more problematic. And just offensive (specifically to gay people) than just admitting what it may actually represent. R*pe imagery and gay imagery is NOT THE SAME THING!

Also ST has never been a kid show- maybe rewatch the show and see the rating of tv-14 . Goodness sake- s1 has a st*ged su*icde, k*dnappings, m*rder, discussions of physics, h*mophobia, and s*x (with stancy in s1 & jancy in s2-s3). S2/3 discuss at their finalies recovering from tra*ma . S2 had gra*ic de*ths,  a man causing a women br*in damage/ and faking her m*scarriage, and a gang of vigalantes k*lling criminals. s3 had critiques on capitalism /media/s*xism, many d*eaths, and questionable imagery like the prior seasons. The Duffers constantly reference  movies & events from the 80s (capitalizing on 80s nostalgia /subverting 80s motifs that middle age people  from that time remember)! Those people were their intended age demographic . Most 80s centric refs go over most kids’ heads (heck a lot went over my head too since I wasn’t alive in the 80s XD).The Duffers even said in the book “worlds turned upsidedown”  “it’s not a kid’s show despite having kids”. And maybe it’s a coincidence but when Lucas in s3 hands Will the “devil’s baby” firework (a hint about Lonnie) he says “18 and over only.” Which idk is a weird/random af line unless it’s foreshadowing that the show will get darker about various themes- and maybe even change ratings.

I get people wishing nothing bad ever happened to Will or Jonathan. And being apprehensive and not trusting the Duffers to do such a story justice (cause it’s difficult to do). But personally i trust them to do so tastefully with tact and not be exp*itative, (overly gr*fic) or offensive to v*ctims. You can disagree and think the show is about something else (or not trust the Duffers)- but it’d be great if people could stop using these other messed up talking points. While trying to appear ‘(fake) woke’ and like they care for victims- cause we see through it that you really don’t.

Have a lovely day anon ❤️ ❤️ ❤️

Update- I just really agreed with and appreciate the tags in this reblog

[ask-artsy-oncie]

So I’m kinda in a meh/apathetic headspace in regards to my mental health right now. Maybe it would be best to just let some thoughts out. 

Firstly, I do want to apologize for making stupid, borderline inflammatory posts and throwing them out there onto tumblr dot com, I know that’s never the best course of action. However, I really, really do not appreciate anons sending vague “are you okay”s at me. If you’re not close enough to me where you can’t PM me (relatively) face-to-face, then I really wouldn’t like random inquiries about my mental health from you. Maybe it’s just because I don’t 100% trust anons (I’ve been here for a decade, I’ve seen some shit, can you really blame me?) but I think I ought to make myself clear on that. Are we clear on that? cool. 

I don’t know... I’ve felt so lost and tired recently, moreso than usual.

I’ve always had a massive complex about annoying people, being too self-indulgent, not having good ideas or opinions or what-have-you. People who have known me for a while almost definitely know that. I don’t think it all necessarily exists in a vacuum, either I have a genuinely hard time coming up with objectively good ideas. Sometimes I’m just straight-up “head empty” mode. I’m also often really opinionated and sometimes intend to die on hills that people aren’t really meant to die on (or are even necessarily worth dying on). I can get way too wrapped up on meaningless things because my brain is too hyperfocused on this one thing, or maybe something I rely too heavily on for comfort is... I don’t know how to put it.... put at risk? Challenged? I have a lot of mental issues and real life issues, though I’m not claiming to be massively oppressed or anything, but I tend to cling to comforts a little too desperately. And I’m not just talking about like. Media. Just comforts in general. Sometimes I’ll spend too much of the day laying in bed. Sometimes I cling to old relationships or old forms of relationships or I constantly worry about the day I’ll inevitably no longer have the same relationships I have now. 

I’ve known I needed therapy for a while now. I’m waitlisted and everything, but I need to go about actually choosing a therapist to see and I’ve been dragging my feet on that so I guess that’s my bad. I’ll get to it. Shit’s overwhelming, yknow? 

Anyways I know I have a lot of these flaws and problems and I think my horrible anxieties about being too annoying and whatnot is just a really extreme form of self-reflection. Maybe. Not entirely sure. Maybe a therapist could tell me.

I get way too passionate, way too easily, and it’s almost always followed by a super intense period of shame, like, to the point where I’m desperate to isolate myself and destroy my relationships with other people, because then at least I’m actually trying to destroy a relationship by being a bad person, rather than someone leaving me for... I don’t know, being too happy? Caring too much? Talking too much? Just. Shit I have less control over. 

I’ve tried putting a cap on it, suppressing everything. Trying not to indulge too much, trying not to be so happy and talkative, straight-up deleting messages I think might be too annoying the second I send them. Trying to be inoffensive through being unnoticeable. I’m trying to do that now, honestly. It’s why I joked about deleting my blog. All it does is hurt and make me go fucking nuts because I’m bottling up a lot in doing that, I know. I’m just not fully convinced I don’t just deserve to feel that way.

There are a lot of points in my life where I’m convinced that my best course of action in succeeding or keeping people from being put-off by me is to just sit down and shut up and draw what I’m told to draw. To just completely lose my agency in drawing. It makes sense, when you feel like you don’t have any good ideas of your own, you just illustrate others’. And there are many, many points where I have done this out of a place of love. Fuck, most of what I’ve drawn for Lolly’s writing has come out of a place of genuine love, not just for her work, but for her. A lot of what I’ve drawn for Bethany (for any REAL long-time followers reading this) has been like that, too. But there are also points where it honestly just feels like my only purpose is to be a tool through which others may visualize their whims. That if I dare inject too much of myself into things, they’ll be permanently ruined. And then there’s the shame I feel in having wanted to impart a piece of myself into a work - a demerit for being too selfish or self-important to deem my whims anywhere near good or important enough to be included. 

I have so many ideas. So many opinions and thoughts and feelings and genuine insight that I’ve suppressed or deleted because I either feel like that’s what’s expected of me, or I’m straight-up told that my thoughts and opinions are bad and wrong. Like. Fuck me for having opinions on animated media levels of being shut-down. And you know, I’ve noticed something in the past decade of being an insufferable opinionated prick about things like that - that it’s actually easier for me to enjoy media when I’m allowed to be negative and critical of it. When I am allowed to just share my thoughts. And I don’t mean like, without being disagreed with, I mean like, in an environment where I’m made to feel like I actually can share these thoughts. When I can pinpoint and analyze what I didn’t like or what made me upset, it can be a lot easier for me to then move on and be able to focus on aspects that I genuinely do like. Like, holy fuck, it is SO much easier for me to pick-and-choose aspects of a certain sequel film that I actually like and feel comfortable saying I like than it was for me to do with the original, because I no longer have an incredibly toxic person in my life (or at least, in my life as much).

But that doesn’t mean I haven’t had this kind of experience since then, like. There are STILL things I struggle to move past because I have been made to feel like I just can’t fucking talk about them without being insufferable (sorry if I’m overusing that word - it just feels like the best word the feeling I’m trying to describe) or just straight-up ruining something for someone I care about. Keeping shit like this in does crazy shit to me, for real, and there’s still a large part of me that tells me “Fuck you. Suck it up. None of this shit matters.” Y’know? Because in the grand scheme of things, I know it doesn’t. And then there’s the shame that comes from having cared so much in the first place. It’s a fucking cycle. There’s some shit that’s just irreparable ruined for me because of this and that SUCKS.

I don’t like losing comforts. Fuck, I hate it, really. And I’m not talking about new comforts coming along and catching my attention as an old comfort begins to wane, I’m talking like. Destroying relationships, feeling SO MUCH shame surrounding a comfort media that it’s too difficult to enjoy it no matter how hard I try, or having too hard of a time disassociating a comfort with a horrible event or person. And it’s feeling like at LEAST one of these is starting to happen to me again and Good Gods it’s just. It’s so terrifying. 

But who do I tell? When my primary worry is annoying or offending or hurting people? Y’know? I can’t just vent to one single person to this all the time, that isn’t fair. But it gets to a point where my brain tells me “No, you can’t talk to ANYONE about this because that’s rude and wrong and a true friend wouldn’t do that. There’s a reason why you can make any number of concerning posts, messages, private ramblings, whatever, and the people you’re closest to won’t ask you what’s wrong.” 

And, yeah, honestly, I do think it’s true that the people I consider my closest friends won’t read this. I actually don’t believe the average person will read this, or at least get this far. I genuinely do just talk too much and it’s a lot for most people to deal with. Otherwise, I talk too little, and probably enter the “you should be able to read my MIND” level of expectations, which, of course, isn’t far. I understand, I swear I do, it just takes some time to come to terms with every time I get wrapped up in my stupid mental stuff. And I also promise that I try to give these people the same kind of response I want, y’know? I try to look out for any worrying behavior and try to offer an ear and help in any way that I can. I don’t think expecting the same in return is fair, I just worry about any of them being like me, and I’m willing to play to that if it’s necessary. I’ll break quiet streaks for that shit, y’know?

Honestly, these stupid quiet streaks are probably more unbearable for me than they are even noticeable for most people. It sucks. I just wish my mind was normal so I A) wouldn’t have these insecurities to begin with, because B) I would never end up exhibiting the behavior to warrant such insecurities.

There’s so much shit I want to talk about, to analyze, or explore, that I want to share with the world, or at least with people I love, that I probably never will because my stupid brain has already decided that all this stupid shit is better kept to myself where it can rot and be forgotten eventually. Which is fine, in the grand scheme of things, I guess, because I functionally have never really been the guy who comes up with ideas (at least, good ideas) I’m just the pencil, the one who I guess makes things visual? I can’t even bring myself to say “I bring the ideas to life” because that’s pretentious and untrue. These ideas are already alive because they come from brilliant minds. 

I don’t even think it’s fair for me to call myself a character designer unless the characters are my own. Otherwise, I’m just following the directions of a much more competent conceptualizer (there’s a reason my characters barely have any... well, character). That’s the reason why I removed my unearned credit as the character designer for Ty from Swindle’s description, because I really don’t deserve that kind of credit. It’s why the asks about the designing process of Ty have been left unanswered, because, fuck, what do I even say? “I just did what Lolly told me to do, just like I did with all of Swindle. Please don’t give me that kind of credit, I know I falsely ascribed it to myself earlier, and I want to rectify that”? I guess I could have, actually, now that I’m typing this. But people always get fucking upset with me when I try not to take credit, even when it’s shit that isn’t mine!! So I don’t know what to do!! I don’t know what to fucking do!!! Because I just don���t fucking want to make people upset or unhappy!!!!!!!

I’m sorry, this post is too long and I’ve worked myself up and I’m no longer apathetic. I’m gonna go cry myself to sleep so big win for my complexion, honestly. 

Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I guess getting this shit out of my system is probably best to do in a big tumblr post no one will read. 

I don’t want anons about this. If I can just ask one thing. Please.

[goodshipsherlollipop]

Self-interview (but not really)

When I heard about @sherlollyappreciationweek hosting a self-interview event, I thought it would be fun to participate, so people could get to know me better as an author.  But, instead of doing a self-interview, I approached some of my readers and asked them to pose questions for me to answer.

I’m not aiming at making this about me personally.  It’s all about me as an author.  If you want to know about who I really am outside of my writing, feel free to chat with me privately.

The name of the person asking the questions will precede each section. As this interview is rather long, I will do it in two parts.

MossRose10

Q: What personal experiences or skills (in broad strokes), besides your faith, have influenced what you write about for your characters?

A: I know I see Molly differently than most people, in a more wholesome way.  When I look at her character on the show, she doesn't seem the type to have a long sexual history, but instead, seems to be someone who has devoted her life to becoming the best pathologist she can be.  I adore her character, and to be honest, I put a lot of my own traits into her - including her love of singing and faith.  My post TFP Sherlock has had his true nature restored by the events of Sherrinford.  Thus, he is emotionally stable and able to love Molly deeply. I can write him that way because I happen to have a romantic, loving husband (lucky me!). A lot of times in my married stories, I draw on experiences I've had that I have fictionalized for the characters.  I usually refer to these in author’s notes.  I also love writing about their children, and put a lot of thought and personal experience into writing for them from watching my own daughters grow.

As for the other characters, I just write them the way I feel reflects their personalities best from what I’ve observed in the show, working on fleshing out their characters more as I’ve continued 3 years worth of storyline beyond TFP. For example, my version of Mycroft has mellowed a lot and married Lady Smallwodd, and John has also become a Christian and is remarried with a son.

Q: What kinds of characters do you find most challenging to write, and what strategies do you use to write them?

A: I don’t think I necessarily have a lot of issues in writing the canon characters because I have watched the show so many times I feel I know them personally.  Probably the most challenging thing is writing for OC’s or peripheral characters I may have brought into a story that we haven't seen a lot of (like Billy Wiggins or Philip Anderson).  I must admit, I have written very little about Moriarty, because most of my stories take place after his death.

dmollyc

Q: What character is hardest to write?

A:  I kind of  addressed this one in the above answer, but I do think I'd find it difficult to write for Moriarty because I'm not sure how well I could get into the psyche of a deranged madman!

Q: Do you get any nasty reviews?

A: Thankfully, not many. Most of the negative ones are people reacting to a story out of context.  They will read a story in the middle of my chronological timeline and then complain that the characters are OOC.  When I write my continuing stories, I assume that people are familiar with the characters as I’ve written them already, so this can cause confusion.

Because of the Christian themes, I have lost readers who object to the theology I present through my characters. Obviously, I will not please everybody.

But generally speaking, people are very kind about my work when they review it, and I especially love the reviewers who immerse themselves into my world of Sherlock and Molly and embrace my post-TFP version of them.

Q: What do you like best about your stories?

A: Probably what I like best is that I've found a unique niche in the fandom in creating a whole Christian theme, and writing a lot of different stories with the same theme.  I've not seen anyone else doing that (although I'd love to see it done by others).

I enjoy writing my own continuing post-TFP happy ending for Sherlock and Molly, expanding their universe and that of the other characters from Sherlock as well.

Also, I enjoy showing Molly as someone with a belief in saving herself for marriage.  It's not going to be a popular idea for the general population, but I know many Christians can relate to that desire to keep sex for that special someone rather than experimenting with every boyfriend they date.  

I also think I do a pretty good job in writing love scenes that are steamy, but still clean, although I’m aware that some readers are more sensitive who find them too steamy.  I write using my own inner guide for how far to take things in the bedroom.  Some stories are definitely steamier than others, but there are certain graphic terms I will never use in my writing because I feel they cross the line of my own comfort zone.

Chelseamh98

Q: How have you overcome the challenges of your vision impairment?

A: This is definitely an ongoing process for me.  When I began writing, my proofreading would just consist of looking over the chapter a couple times to try to errors. I have issues when typing on my iPad because of the flat keyboard surface.  That means I often type a word incorrectly.  To help compensate for that, I have hundreds of words in my “text replacement” section, so that certain words I often mis-type automatically correct to the right word.  I have a bad tendency to hit the M instead of N or vice versa, for example.  A few months after I began publishing, someone suggested I use a text-to-speech app to help me identify incorrectly spelled words.  That did help.  I copy a chapter into the text-to-speech app and watch my chapter in a split screen as I listen to the words.  That has been a big help.  Then, this year, I discovered a free website called prowritingaid, which I now use as another editing tool, and it identifies even more spelling and grammar errors.  So now I find myself writing, proofreading as I go along several times as I write.  When the chapter is finished and I am ready to publish, I do another visual read.  Then I use the prowritingaid site as another editing step. After that, I use the text-to-speech app and listen as I read.  Finally, I copy the whole thing into Google Docs, add italics and bold type and glance through the chapter again to see if Google Docs has discovered any more errors.  It's a very long process, believe me, and it takes so much longer to do the editing and proofreading than to write! For me, the writing part is easy!

Q: Does it (visual impairment) affect the way you write?

A:  Physically, yes.  I cannot use a computer, because I need to be inches away from the screen to see what I am doing.  Sometimes I will sit at a table and write, but usually, I put three cushions on my lap and sit my iPad on top.  Over time, that method has caused me to have pretty severe tendonitis, but I have no other way to write, and it's worth the pain to keep writing! Currently, I am also dealing with frozen shoulder as part of the physical issues.

Also, I have to enlarge my text to write.  I use the Colored Note app for my chapters, set to the maximum size of 36, and when I go into Google Docs, I set the size to 25 so I can read it.

Q: What part about writing do you find the most challenging? What’s the easiest?

A:  As I mentioned above, the most difficult part is definitely the editing/proofreading process because I have to work so much harder than a normally sighted person, and it takes up a huge chunk of time.

Also, I am very particular in trying to write realistic fiction whenever possible.  That means a ton of research. For example, in my story where Molly was shot, Confronting Evil and the Truth, I researched a lot about gunshot wounds and how to care for them.  In A Honeymoon Journey, my characters went to Stratford-upon-Avon, and I researched that location thoroughly for many of the chapters.  In my latest COVID-19 series, I have followed the pandemic closely in the UK and have added many real situations that have happened there.  Research, research, research!

The easiest part is definitely writing the story itself, especially dialogue.  I can hear the characters in my head telling me what to write.  I rarely suffer from writer’s block, unless I am trying to think about how to write a mystery or crime and how to resolve it.

Aslan's Princess

Q: Where do you find inspiration? Is it something specific? Or multiple things?

A: I find inspiration mainly in two areas.  First, from watching episodes over and over and analyzing them. Second, I also find inspiration in my own life, in bringing in real experiences I am familiar with (such as pregnancy and childbirth).  Occasionally I will read a story or a review where someone tells me something that sparks my imagination. My current WIP, The Good Book, was actually inspired by a gif-set one of my readers, Penelope Chestnut showed me.  It got me wondering what would happen if Sherlock suddenly discovered the Bible (shown in TBB) in his bookcase and decided he wanted some answers about the meaning of life.

Justwritebritt

Q: What drives you to keep writing?

A: Certainly, one of the most motivating factors is hearing from readers who enjoy my work.  Readers generally have no clue what kind of power they possess when it comes to encouraging a writer to keep going.  A pat on the back is always a good thing. I wish more people could understand that.

Aside from that, though, I feel a calling from God to keep writing. I like sharing my faith through Molly (and Sherlock). My hope is that people will find my stories inspiring and encouraging.

Q: What/Who can you absolutely not write without?

A:  I cannot write without my iPad.  I use it not only to write, but to research and to watch Sherlock on Netflix.  it's my all-in-one resource!

Q: What is your favorite story you've published so far?

A: I will always love A Journey to Love, Faith and Marriage, because it is the “mothership” from which all my other stories spring, but my writing technique was not great at the beginning; there’s an obvious improvement in later chapters.  But, I am also very fond of Sherlock’s Dream of What Might Have Been.  That one tells a story of Sherlock and Molly meeting in uni, and then jumps to the canon, inserting a secret relationship (and child) throughout the series canon. I put a lot of thought into filling in Season 4 backstory as well.

Q: What (in vague terms) story are you looking forward to telling next?

A: I have a few stories in the pipeline that I am looking forward to sharing.  One that steps away from the overt Christian themes is a Pretty Woman AU.  I haven't seen anyone attempt an AU for that movie, and I look forward to sharing it.  Perhaps it will spark interest with a few more readers because it isn't heavily weighted on the Christian theme scale, but is merely one of my more whimsical, creative story ideas. It is the first story I have written that combines elements from both a movie and the Sherlock narrative.

I also have a couple of one-shots that I will publish in the timeline of my WIP Journey to a New Home, one,that deals with the topic of divorce using a Biblical perspective, plus one that sheds light on the subject of depression.

End of Padt 1.

[ryuichirou]

Omg... 😳

So I am not the only who thinks about an Au with Outlast or even Ju-on: the grudge, Dreadout or Ib, it would be amazing in your style and for sure nothing boring! :D

Anyway, what type of videogames do you like and what things do you first notice in it (like graphic style, gameplay mechanics, the plot, characters and something like that).

Crossover AUs with horror videogames are the best thing!! I love it when Katsu gives me ideas for them… Thank you for enjoying this type of content!

Since Katsu is the one who plays the games and knows this stuff, I’ll pass the mic over...

I’m sorry, you’ll have to bear with me with this reply since it’s usually me who plays/watches let’s plays and then brings them to Ryu if I plan to use them in an AU or a crossover. Outlast is one of the games I actually played (including dlc and the second one), so we both remember it quite well, and Ryu drew the outlast prompt without me, which is cool.

Ju-on (not really the games though, but the Japanese franchise) is gorgeous and very fun, and we might draw a crossover/au with it, but the possibility is very low – unfortunately, it doesn’t really have much visuals to make it truly stand out in terms of a couple of drawings, as much as I love it. Tbh, I don’t even remember if Ryu watched the movies, but we definitely saw the game... 7 years ago or so :“D

Dreadout, on the other hand, is a really wonderful game to go with au/crossover stuff!! I don’t remember the game very well, but we both saw it, and it has cool ghosts, monsters, and overall Indonesian folklore there is such a joy... they have a giant pig in the game, ffs. I’ll think about it in the future, but you probably noticed that our promises rarely come to life because we don’t have much time for everything we want to do with snk lol This game has a lot of character, so it would make a crossover a relatively easy thing to pull off, so who knows!

Ib is the saddest case with us, because we both know about its existence, but never actually played/watched it. I have it downloaded, but I don’t like going blind in horror games, and all the letsplayers I watch played this game so many years ago that their videos are somewhat unwatchable. We will fix this in the future, but I’m not sure we’ll still be in the SNK... You never know with us, though.

Sorry, I felt the need to comment all the games because we really like it when someone knows what we refer to... horror is so much less popular than we anticipated, it feels weird to us.

Now to the actual question lol I rarely play games because I’m bad at them and I don’t trust myself, esp when it’s horror games, but I throw videos at Ryu if I like something and I feel the need that Ryu needs to see it too. Right now I’m really into PS-styled indie horror games, we both feel nostalgia from them, even though I’ve never had a PS prior to 2017, and Ryu doesn’t even play games. Indie genre is the only place to get horror games because AAA horror games rarely come out, plus they’re usually extremely creative and can create an atmosphere which is the most important thing for me (don’t know about Ryu). When something has ~an atmosphere~, it’s easy to get inspired and make up something of your own. A fuckton of my AUs are just a bunch of indie horror games mashed together.

I think any graphic works with a horror game, be it realistic or extremely stylized, or mimicking an old game with a pixilated filter over it... It all depends on what the author wants, and I’ve never felt dissonance between graphic style and the game itself (from ones that I’ve seen), but a certain style can definitely highlight the game. I can recommend games to Ryu just because of a certain visual in a game, or just give a time stamp to the thing that I like most if the game doesn’t deserve more attention, in my opinion.

The plot comes second important after the atmosphere, the ideas with horrors can be either creative on their own, or some simple ideas can be delivered in such a way that they’re more enjoyable. It’s more ideas to get inspired by lol  

Gameplay mechanics is a thing that’s difficult to judge because it’s a different experience when you watch the game or play it by yourself, but if the game looks complicated, I probably won’t buy it or will be too scared to play it lol (it happened with White Day with us). Playing games leaves much more impact on both of us, though, but the fear of getting frustrated by the game is stronger. I still find gameplay mechanics important, because I understand all the boredom of walking around collecting notes and getting jumpscared from time to time, but it all depends on a game. I do appreciate cool features though!

Characters are usually the weakest point in horror games because very few of them actually have characters... Unless it’s a visual novel or something. So I guess we don’t really pay attention to them if there’s nothing special about characters or they’re not even there. This is why I usually shove my faves into the game world and see how it works lmao This is why poor Levi is always terrorized by some fucked up version of Eren. It’s so much fun.

Thank you for your question!

[jeremys-blogs]

Gravity Falls: Disney’s Perfect Show

Now, the number of people who have loved, enjoyed and praised this programme are legion, and it's worth stating up front that I am no professional reviewer by a long stretch. As such it's unlikely that anything I come up with here will be anything that hasn't been said a thousand times before by people far more qualified to talk about this stuff than me. Even so, it's still a show I'd like to talk about, so instead of some amateur attempt to some across like some highbrow writer, I'll just discuss my personal feelings as they pop into my head as I'm writing. And apologies in advance if this makes the whole thing seem like a jumbled mess.

Now, the first thing to really get across here is that I've been watching Disney shows for a very long time, for as far back as I can remember. I recall the days when my brother and I would watch and enjoy the likes of the original DuckTales or the forever-awesome Gargoyles, and even though my feelings towards Disney TV has fluctuated a lot over the decades, there's always been something to enjoy about them. When it comes to Gravity Falls, something that just immediately popped into my head as I was watching it was just the general tone and feel of it. Many of the earlier Disney shows I'd see tended to fit into one of two categories. There were the darker and more serious stories (like the aforementioned Gargoyles), and then there were the lighter and more zany outings, like the early seasons of Star Vs the Forces of Evil. Both of these are varieties I enjoy, but Gravity Falls somehow managed to feel like it's an ideal blend of the two sides. A show that gave a great deal of humour and smile-inducing moments while also showcasing its fair share of heavier themes. Usually, whenever I see shows try to put both together, they either eventually descend into one side at the expense of the other, or they simply feel confused and unsure of what they want to be. So Gravity Falls gets praise from me straight away just for the skill needed to walk that razor's edge.

But saying that a show has great tone and atmosphere is all well and good, but unless its story is decent then it'll all be in service of nothing. And thankfully, Gravity Falls has one heck of a story to its name. Now, I'm not going to risk spoiling things for those who haven't seen it, but suffice to say there is an overall arc that takes place over the course of the show's forty episodes, but it still has more than a few episodic tales to keep it from going completely serialised. It's another one of those things that makes it feel well-balanced. Go too far in the direction of serialisation, and the show would have the notorious downside of making you wait until the very end before you can decide if you enjoyed it or not. Adding various problem-of-the-week scenarios helps to keep it from straying too far, yet always manages to make each individual story all contribute to the greater whole. That greater whole being, of course, the bizarre happenings of the titular town and its citizens. This is a story about a very weird locale, yet allows itself to show not only the weirdness at its most blatant, but also at its smallest. The day-to-day oddities that come about as a result of the grander strangeness brewing in the background.

The characters are, of course, a massive draw of this show for me, as every single one of the main cast is some degree of entertaining, interesting or likeable. We have Dipper, thirsty for knowledge and answers about the town and its mysteries. We have Mabel, the bright-eyed optimist who always brings a smile to my face. We have Stan, the grouchy old-timer with a knack for scams and getting cash. And we have Wendy and Soos, the sort-of side-characters who prove to be just as good to have around as our main trio. But what I love about each of these people is how they all prove to have depth beyond what they all first appear to be. Dipper's a smart kid, yet he's capable of doing incredibly dumb and short-sighted things. Mabel's a sweetheart, but she also manages to have a bit of a selfish streak. Stan is gruff and standoffish, but when push comes to shove he's utterly devoted to his family and their well-being. Wendy and Soos come off as the cool girl and doofus respectively, yet were more than able to have traits like sentimentality and unexpected intelligence to offset those first impressions. There's nuance to this cast, making them seem far more believable as the kinds of people you might actually know in real life, rather than just cartoon cutouts.

In the time before I started watching this show, I often heard people describe it as "X-Files for kids", and while I can certainly understand the comparison, I think there's plenty of differences to the two, most notably the greater emphasis on comedy over seriousness. But don't let that lead you to think this show pulls its punches, because it can definitely go to some dark places. I won't say there's anything here that's inappropriate for children, but there are times when it definitely goes into full-on nightmare fuel territory. Still, those moments do show off a great deal of imagination and enjoyably creepy weirdness when it comes to just the general design of things. If you have kids who have the constitution for some scary monsters here and there, this is something that'll probably enrapture them. And it certainly helps that, as I said before, there's a good deal of humour here. Whenever things looked like they were going to get too intense or terrifying for kids, there was always something goofy or funny to help lighten the mood. So yeah, I'd definitely call this an all-ages programme, and if you were the kind of person who grew up on old 80s movies and TV shows, chances are you'll see Gravity Falls as fitting in nicely with that crowd.

But despite all the big visuals and big scares, Gravity Falls gets surprisingly small and intimate when it comes to the main idea and theme of the whole thing. And that idea is the difficulty of growing up. Without going into too much detail, the main two characters, Dipper and Mabel, go through some pretty serious growing pains over the course of the series, and there's always this sense of looming worry when you watch it, that the good times won't last forever. It's a very personable and relatable worry that, to one degree or another, every single one of us has felt at some point. And that fear of the future is reflected pretty effectively in another pair of characters who, in many ways, serve to heighten the worries the children feel about their own road ahead by giving them a potential "what if". It's pretty heavy, yet Gravity Falls, as ever, has a light at the end of the tunnel. It acknowledges that growing up can be difficult, but unlike so many other stories that might tackle such a theme, it shows too that the future can be just as happy as our nostalgic past. That greater age doesn't mean giving up the things, or more importantly the people we care about. It's a sweet and hopeful message that gives the show a real beating heart.

I think it's safe to say that anyone who chose to click on this and read it will already be a fan of this show themselves, but I hope this has helped to show why I enjoyed it myself. The show simply had everything going for it, from its characters, to its art, to its music, to the way every episode managed to be its own thing while also managing to fit together perfectly like the pieces of a jigsaw, and of course that phenomenal, heartbreaking and heartwarming finale. Right from the start Gravity Falls sprinkles in clues and foreshadowing that you don't recognise on your first watch but provide a mountain of "oh yeah" feelings when you go back to watch and re-watch it however many times you want. Are there some episodes I like more than others? Sure, but I'd still be happy no matter which episode was shown to me, and it's rare that I get to say that about anything on TV. Disney has produced a lot of things I like, both in the past and in the present, and they'll likely continue to do so into the future. But Gravity Falls was truly something special, and Disney's future shows will have to do a lot to meet this high bar they've now set for themselves

[gwentoryfics]

so you wanna start a writeblr...

i’m no pro, but here are some tips i have for anyone who’s interested in posting written content on tumblr! this is primarily relevant to kpop fanfic blogs, but some of the more general tips could certainly apply to other writers.

Pick Your URL

if you don’t have an account yet, making one is the first step! think hard about what you want your url to be. as you can see, mine includes the word ‘fics’ to make it clear that this is a fanfic blog, but that’s not a very common tactic. if you’re writing about a particular fandom, i’d recommend tailoring your url to that fandom. and i also recommend sticking with your url once you’ve picked it - i personally always forget who people are when they change their urls. it’s confusing for your followers so unless you have a really good reason to change it, just don’t.

Find a Theme

honestly, this is one thing i still struggle with lol. i think a lot of people probably access tumblr on their phones instead of computers, in which case this step isn’t really that important, but it’s always good to have a desktop layout that looks nice! you can poke around through the free themes that tumblr offers, or search for your own. personally, i just check out the blogs of people i follow from time to time. if they have a theme that i like, there’s usually a link somewhere on the page back to the theme creator’s blog, and then i’ll scroll through that blog looking for something that might work for me. probably the most important thing is to make sure your theme is text post friendly. you want your text posts to take up a lot of space on your screen so that they’re more easily readable - that means any theme that has more than one column is a no-go.

Build Your Bio

your bio should share some very basic info about you, such as your name (or a penname/persona), pronouns (if you’re comfortable sharing that info), and a link to your masterlist. if you don’t know how to add links in your bio, check out these steps. you might also want to include a “most recent” link so that your followers can easily locate the most recent thing you’ve written. and of course, feel free to include anything else that you want to be easily findable for your readers.

Post When Tumblr is Active

this might vary a little bit for everyone, and you’ll get more of a sense for this the more active you are on tumblr, but i’ve found that tumblr is usually most active around 7pm/8pm in my time zone (CST). that could totally be different for you. but try to get a feel for when people seem to be most active on tumblr, and take advantage of that by posting during the high times.

Format Your Posts

there are a few things you can do to make your posts look nice. one thing i highly recommend is creating a custom header image for your fic. canva is an easy and free resource that i like to use - just make a free account and then use their free templates and stock images to throw something together. if you choose to use something created by someone else, like a gif of an idol, make sure that you credit that person.

after your header image, definitely include info about what the reader should expect from this fic. this info helps readers decide if they’re actually going to read your work, so it’s very important that you’re clear. definitely feel free to steal my formatting - i always include genre, character pairing, word count, summary, warnings, links to other parts of the fic, an author’s note, and tags. although my summary is usually a full-fic summary, my warnings are specific to the part they’re posted in. you can indent this info to keep it separate from the body of the fic.

please, for the love of god, use a Keep reading break if your fic is more than a few hundred words. if you don’t use a Keep reading break, then everyone will have to scroll through the thousands of words you’ve written, and that’s SUPER annoying to people who aren’t actually interested in reading it (even if they plan on returning to it later). i’ve very intentionally decided to avoid someone’s writing because they didn’t use a Keep reading break, and having to scroll through it was such an inconvenience to me that i deemed their fics not worth reading. be considerate and use the break - bonus points if you keep all smutty content after the break!

last thing: figure out how you want to break between scenes. tumblr used to have a really simple line that you could insert between scenes to create a visual break between scenes, but it didn’t hide content the way the Keep reading break does. unfortunately, they took it away, so now we have to get creative. i’ve seen some writers just use a single asterisk (*) between scenes. i ended up creating my own scene break image in canva and i just insert it after every scene. this is what mine looks like:

whatever you end up using, just make sure it’s simple so it doesn’t draw too much attention.

Be Smart About Tags

figure out what tags are used for your fandom, and be sure to use them every time you post! i think the first five tags are the most important - i’m pretty sure those are the ones that your post can appear in when someone searches that tag. 

for example, my main fic is a smutty fic that features a few members of the kpop group pentagon. so depending on what happens in the part i’m posting, i’ll usually include tags such as: hongseok smut, wooseok smut, kino angst, hyunggu angst, hongseok scenario, hongseok fic, wooseok scenario, wooseok fic, kino scenario, kino fic, hyunggu scenario, hyunggu fic. 

Join a Network

this tip is a bit more kpop fanfic specific - i’m not sure what kinds of networks are out there for other writers.

networks are a great way to share your works with a wider audience, and they’re also a great way to meet other writers that are interested in the same things you are!

one of the best networks that i’ve joined is @ksmutclub. they have a big following, and they do a really good job of staying on top of reblogs. keep an eye on their blog to see when applications are open. i should also mention that, because it’s a smut network, they’ll only reblog smutty content. this network is also open to all kpop fandoms!

there are also other networks, like @uni-network​, which don’t actually require an application. if you create content for pentagon, tag it with #uninet and it’ll get reblogged. the only caveat is that they don’t reblog smutty content because they want the blog to be open to all ages. you are still welcome to use the tag, though - just keep your smut under the cut!

i’m also a member of @universenet​, but i don’t think they’re active anymore...

Follow Other Writers

this one might be hard to do depending on the size of your fandom, but if you can find other content creators, give them a follow! and if you enjoy their work, reblog it! your blog will benefit from you sharing content that’s not your own (as long as you’re reblogging, not reposting. you always want to give credit to the original creator). plus, you want people to interact with your blog, so do your part and interact with others, too!

that’s all i’ve got for right now, but i’ll add to this post again if i think of anything else! and of course, please feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions about starting a writeblr! i’m happy to help.

[marithlizard]

Thoughts on RWBY v7 finale, “The Enemy of Trust”

Okay, finale, it's you and me.   I've heard some eyebrow-raising things.    Let's see what you've got.  

Neo vs JNRO!   My money's on umbrella girl, even at four to one.

Oscar's really getting along with this team.   I won't be surprised if sometime next volume they officially invite him to be the P(ine) in the reborn JNPR.

Yep, short and sweet.  She had a bit of fun there, and she was never in any danger.

I'm really appreciating the option to watch the fights at half-speed on the RT site and actually catch some of the clever moves.

Cinder's fighting style is quite different here than it was in all previous volumes. Remember the bow, the telekinetically controlled black glass shards,  the Maiden fire and the giant sword?   Right now she's leaping about acrobatically in melee with two short swords. If the face was different everyone would take this as an entirely new character.   I get that it's cool to try new things, writers, but I miss the consistency.

So she specifically despises the privileged elite of Atlas. Can't blame her for that.

Okay, consistency or not I have to admit the aerial combat is visually fantastic. Winter's gryphon and Penny charging Cinder from opposite sides, followed by  fire and ice colliding, wow.

Background music also doing its usual stellar job.

Penny says "I...disagree"  in exactly the same tone of voice Adam used, and for exactly the opposite reason.  That's a cool parallel and I'm sure it was intentional.

Oscar lagging behind out of breath. He's smaller and younger and is years behind everyone except Jaune on training, it makes sense.  Also probably not using Aura to recharge stamina like the others. 

Oooh, I knew it wasn't Nora instantly by the body language. Neo moves very distinctively, it's great.  

And she's had lots of practice in imitating the person you love at the right instant to make you hesitate. Poor Ren.

You don't normally yell "Drop your weapons!" and simultaneously open fire unless you are intending to kill rather than capture. I guess the soldiers are assuming that Huntsmen will survive any kind of damage a normal person can dish out. ��Which is...not a safe assumption for Oscar I don't think.  Ugh Ironwood your stormtroopers are dumb.

Ren is crying oh no

Annnnd Neo just toddles off with the lamp. I love that short officer with short ponytail look on her.

FRIA WAKES

and she is  AWESOME

(Her eyes are the same blue as Ironwood's,  it does make you wonder. We never learned her last name. )

Ren with an understandable lack of perspective. He's thought of Huntsmen as the pinnacle of combat badassery all his life, when really it's just a benchmark  of competence along the path.   I suspect there aren't many people alive who could defeat Neo, outnumbered or not, and most of the people who can are god-tier.

Maria's kept a low profile all volume because she has no patience for the high-level strategy and arguments and politics,  she sure as hell isn't going to run grunt missions, and she'd last ten minutes in a room with the General before smacking him in the knees or possibly the nuts.  But she was ready to charge in with the logistical support the instant that arrest order went out on the net.   I just...love her.  She is the best.  

"I was supposed to protect the power of the Maiden until I was ready.  I worry I may have lost track of time...but you can tell James that I'm ready, now."    People were worried that Ironwood was holding Fria prisoner, forcing her into a sacrificial death. But the way she says that makes it very clear that she wasn't pressured.  He specifically told her when you're ready.   And he waited as long as he could.  

Ironwood apologizing to Winter with so much regret in his voice.   Look, you may hate him,  but the writers don't, that's abundantly clear.  And I don't either.  This is a classical Greek-style tragedy unfolding before us, a good person being destroyed as their inherent fatal flaw meets the worst possible circumstances for it.  

Oscar descending in the elevator, standing just like Ozpin.  That is an eerie sight.   He's going to imitate Oz as much as he can because Ironwood has been asking for Oz all along.   ...and it's going to backfire as a strategy, isn't it.

"And....whom do I have the pleasure of speaking with?"  "Still just me."  But you're leaning on your cane as you walk just like Ozpin did.

Someone suggested applying Blake's "embodiment of a word"  idea to all the characters, and the word I thought of at first for Oscar was innocence....but it's not, is it.  Oscar is the embodiment of sincerity.  He means every word of his offer to reconcile.  How could anyone resist?

...Apparently Ironwood can.   And I see it, I do.   If this is a chess game, then protecting the king - the relics - is ultimately the only thing that matters.  All the other pieces are expendable. Oz and Oscar and Ruby represent the opposite approach:  every piece matters, and what's most important is not to win the game but to preserve the board, to keep it all going.    

(If they'd told Ironwood all the way back in ch2 that as far as they know Salem can't be killed, would he have adjusted his perspective?   I believe he would have,  but not all the way.  There's a fundamental difference in mindset.   Lois Bujold talked in one of her books (Brothers in Arms I think) about how people are drawn to the romance of the hard choices. If you've believed all your life that hardship and painful sacrifice are necessary and inevitable, you get proudly attached to them in a way, and you tend to be skeptical, at best, of anyone who claims they can be avoided.  I've been thinking about that a lot this volume.)

Uh.

WHAT.

You were having an argument,  a heated but peaceful one.  Why would you suddenly draw your weapon and shoot a teenager off the edge of a cliff?   One who was offering no physical threat to you at all and who you could certainly have overpowered and arrested?   You arrested Watts, who was trying to kill you, nearly destroyed your kingdom, and made you nearly tear your own arm off.   Why would you murder Oscar?

You wouldn't.  This makes no sense, just like Clover and Qrow fighting each other instead of teaming up against Tyrian makes no sense.  I was hoping there'd be context in this case but there just isn't. The RWBY writers wanted dramatic scenes here and they didn't think the fans would care about anything else as long as it looked cool.

And this is new in v7, IMO.  While I've certainly had some quibbles with the writing in past volumes, I don't remember anything remotely like this.  Nothing so huge that I can't handwave or rationalize or say that it's a minor story element.   I'm a Watsonian, not a Doylist; I hate having to say that something is just plain bad writing.  

Ugh. Okay. Moving on.

That's a fast-regrowing Grimm arm.

I was expecting Penny to say "No, it's not me, it's supposed to be Winter," but she's really hesitating.  After the conversations they've had she's not sure the power should go to Winter.    There's nothing personal about it, no ambition.  Penny has been acting exactly as a Maiden should from the moment Fria first saw her, her every instinct to protect and help.

Uh, y'know, Winter, you could SHOOT CINDER during the many seconds she's writhing in helpless agony there.   You don't have to stand there and wait till she's ready to fight again.  Sigh.

That said, the sequence of Oscar falling,  power building in him and Penny,  the silver eyes etc is stunning.

(that little twirl Oscar does, like a shoujo magical girl.  cute)

holy carp there are still ten minutes left.

I don't think you're correct about fear being the common denominator, Oz, but I'll shut up and enjoy your very fine speech.

Winter makes her choice...and she's not surprised that Penny chooses differently.    Opposed to the heroes or not, I do think it's a good thing for her to stay at Ironwood's side.  Somebody sane needs to be ready to take over there sooner or later.  

Penny getting support from Ruby and Weiss,  yay.

This can't be easy for Pietro.  He's loyally helped Ironwood for decades, and he's not exactly in good shape to live the outlaw life.

Cinder, continuing to piss off her only ally.  Despite being the antagonist in a boss fight she felt...weirdly irrelevant at the end of it.  So much so that she just quietly left when no one was looking. 

"It's gone."  Well, now that's an interestingly vague way to put things, Winter.  Are you protecting Penny?   Withholding information from your boss is, as we've seen, not something he reacts well to.

Watts has an implausibly nice cell with a beautiful view.  

I think that's a quarry Oscar has fallen into, or perhaps the outskirts of a mine.  He and Oz have a LOT to talk about and I would really love to actually see the conversation next volume, writers.  For a change. 

ooooookay yep that's a flying murder behemoth whale.   I was expecting to be reminded of FFX's Sin, but it's got a vibe more like the whale from Pinocchio.  My vote for a name is therefore Monstro.   

Someone's dressed to impress her ex.

....Hmmmmm.  You know, I didn't see an actual army of flying monkeys.  Is there one? Is it inside the whale, or in that black cloud?  Or does Salem have something else in mind?  

"Fear" does seem like a song from Oz's point of view, but I don't feel it expresses his - or their - personality.  It's not the image song I'm still waiting for.  But then, quite a  few characters still haven't gotten theirs.  

Well. I'm on board for volume 8,  hopeful the writers will make better choices, and curious to see how we're going to START a volume with an ultimate boss encounter.  That's not a thing I've seen a story do before.

[unpredictably-raichu]

An ask blog needs asks to generate content but can't do that without asks... so how would a new (or recently revived) ask blog get the people's attention?

Oh, oh, yes! Advice time! :D I’ve been in the ask community for a little while now, so here are some things I’ve gathered over time for when you’re getting started (I’ll be assuming yours is a Pokémon ask blog, since you’re asking this to one).

Keep in mind this is long af and a bit detailed (though it’s only the first part that is long). If you’re interested in a in-detail guide, click ‘read more’ (which I would be very thankful for, I wrote all this shit for you after all, fam).

Here’s a little summarized version as a TL;DR for everyone else:

#1: keep your blog clean. If it’s about Pokémon, it’s about Pokémon; if it’s about Sonic, it’s about Sonic; if it’s about trees, it’s about goddamn trees, so no rebloging random puppy pictures or funny videos here, leave that for your personal blog, not your ask blog. Also try to keep all the out of character crap to a minimum.

#2: Have reference pages for your characters available. That’s actually a minimum requirement. An ask hints page would be useful too, but that’s optional.

#3: Have a tagging system to make everything easier to navigate.

#4 [OPTIONAL]: Give your blog a theme. Make it pretty, make it yours, and for the love of God, deactivate the god damn infinite scrolling.

#5: Tags are your friends. Tag your first post with “signal boost”, “first post”, and/or “intro post”. Tag every Pokémon that appears in your posts, including that one barely visible Caterpie in the background. Tag all your posts as “Pokémon ask blog” or “Pokeaskblog”. Tag. Tag everything. Tags are your friends if you want to be seen. Tags. Tags are. Your. Friends.

#6: Interact with other blogs. Like crazy. You are sure to be noticed when you’re freaking everywhere. Don’t forget to be nice tho. And don’t bully or harass people, for fuck’s sake.

#7: Take a chair, sit over there, get comfortable and be Patient. Like really freaking patient. Wait for months if necessary, but asks will come eventually.

#8: Have fun. That’s the whole point. Talk to people, make some shitposts, engage in silliness, and draw those magical pocket monsters that can shoot lasers out of their asses and we all love. It’s fun.

And that’s it. There’s not much else I can say, so I hope this is helpful! :D

Here’s the detailed thing:

Step #1: Organize your blog

It doesn’t seem like something that important, but believe me, it really is. Nothing turns me away from a blog faster than it being messy af and full of random, unrelated stuff. In order to keep your blog all tidy and pretty you can:

a) Refrain from reblogging anything unrelated. (If your blog is a sideblog, skip this one): You can reblog that video of that one adorable otter in your personal blog, but if your ask blog is about, say, Pokémon, don’t reblog anything that isn’t Pokémon related. If you want to go even further than that, only reblog things that are directly related to your blog, like mentions, fanart, or rp responses, instead of some random Squirtle GIF.

b) Have info pages/references of your characters available: By this I mean having specific pages containing information about your characters, including a visual reference, if possible. Reference pages are very important, since they allow people to quickly get to know a character and make interaction easier. They can contain information as simple and basic as their name, species, moves, etc. to more elaborated things, like occupation (if they have one), personality, or a brief summary of their past story/origin (unless you want that to be revealed as the story progresses in your blog or through an ask).

If you don’t know how to make a page, >here’s an easy tutorial.

      b.2) Having an “ask hints” helps a lot when trying to receive asks, since it’ll help people who want to interact but aren’t sure of what they should ask. You can have general hints or individual hints for all the characters.

c) Have a tagging system: Having your posts clearly labeled makes it a lot easier for anyone who wanters through your blog to find the specific content they’re looking for. Here are three basic tags that make your blog easier to look through:

#OOC: “out of character”, for everything happening, well, out of character. Maybe an announcement, a shitpost, a question directed a the mod, etc. Try to keep ooc things to a minimum.

#IC: “In character”, exactly what it says on the tin. Use this for answered asks towards the characters, plot posts, rp interactions and responses, ect.

#[Character’ name]: Tag the characters that appear in a post, for anyone who wants to look through asks with one specific character in them.

Tags help a lot for getting your blog noticed. We will talk more about this ahead.

d) [OPTIONAL] Have a nice theme: This isn’t obligatory, but giving your blog a theme will make it look better and more ‘professional’. Here are some blogs that give really good, free themes/codes for Tumblr:

https://glenthemes.tumblr.com/

https://yukoki.tumblr.com/

https://zuvia.tumblr.com/thms

https://strawberryjeon.tumblr.com/tagged/themes

https://felinum.tumblr.com/tagged/theme

http://hellolittlered.org/themes/type/tumblr/

https://magnusthemes.tumblr.com/mythemes

http://dianthus-s.tumblr.com/themes

https://raiidens.tumblr.com/tagged/themesbyraiidens

https://yeolithm.com/portfolio

These are just some, but there are many, many others out there. Look for a theme that fits your tastes or your blog’s atmosphere, and customize it! You can even use this blog’s theme! However, make sure to not use overly saturated colors that make it painful to look at, it- kind of defeats the point. You can Google ‘color palletes’ if you need help with that.

NOTE: If you don’t know how to install a Tumblr theme, >here’s a simple tutorial

NOTE#2: Sometimes Tumblr might not let you install a specific theme and shows you an error message that says that it can’t be installed because it is “making a reference to non- https directions” or something like that, which didn’t use to happen before. >Here’s a tutorial on how to fix it, it’s quite simple, actually.

NOTE#3: For an ask/rp blog, I recommend a theme with one column, and that shows tags and captions, like the one in this blog.

If you’ve got any question about installing or customizing a theme, you can ask me, and I’ll see how I can help!

Step #2: Tags help you to be found

Be sure to use tags in your favor. Here are some things that have helped me a lot:

a) If you’re starting a Pokémon blog, tag every Pokémon that appears in your posts; that way, people looking through the tag of that specific Pokémon will be able to see your posts.

b) Again, if it’s a Pokémon blog, tag your posts as “Pokémon ask blog” or “Pokeaskblog” (or both), people looking for pokeaskblogs to follow usually look though these tags regularly.

c) Tag your first post/posts or intro as “Signal boost” and “First post”. There are blogs in the Pokémon community that look for posts tagged like this and reblog them to give them a ‘boost’, which helps a lot when you want to be seen. I’m not sure how many of these are still active, though, but you won’t lose anything from trying.

Step #3: Interact with other blogs like a madman

Send lots of asks! Interact with other blogs! Follow even more blogs! Send fanart and nice messages! Reblog/Like those posts of people looking for new blogs to follow! Some people will find you through someone else’s answered ask, some people will notice you’re following and will check you out, some people will see you in a like or a reblog, and overall there are higher chances of being seen when you are everywhere and interact with everyone (also, it’s really fun to just interact with other nice people over here).

Just make sure to be nice.

Step #4: Be patient. P a t i e n t. I’m serious.

If you think you’ll get lots of followers in a matter of a couple days then start forgetting about it. It took me two weeks to get my first ask at asktheweirdpichu, and a week and a half to get one here. And they were both spam. I cried. Two years later (holy heck has it really been that long?) I’ve got so many asks accumulated that I’m starting to think I should just fake my death and end my suffering (I’m joking, I love every single ask I get and get excited every time I get a new one).

It will take a while, but you’ll see that after enough time you’ll get noticed more and more, so don’t give up, you’ll get there.

Step #5: Don’t forget to have fun.

Make some friends, have some silly interactions, make some shitposts at 3 am, draw someone’s character and watch them shoot effusive love at you, enjoy your favorite blogs. That’s what all this is about.

And that is all! I hope it was useful! :D

[gwaciechang]

King and Quinn (2/3)

Trigger warnings for: references to a stabbing death and gun violence, and past child abuse.

@wackiekebab @sunflowergrlpwr @danilanidingdong @scratching-wingless-thing @farewellfelidae @whatevermonkey @the-winter-witcher @supportingcats @platinum-meadow33 @toboldlynerd @acreepychan (also if you only wanted to be tagged in the Bobby stories, let me know)

It’s been a while, hasn’t it? Remember this? Yeah, me neither, so there’s a refresher at the beginning.

You fall asleep at some point, because when the officer who had spoken to the flogger calls out for, “Shelley King,” something bony shifts under your cheek. You blink the last of the sleep out of your eyes just in time to hear your own name being called. An old man with kinder eyes than you’d expect to see on a cop clears his throat, and you move your head off Shelley’s shoulder.

“See you when I get out,” you say as you stand, but it either comes out garbled because you’re tired, or he’s not listening, because he doesn’t look at you before you’re both whisked inside your respective interrogation rooms.

“Quinn,” the cop says as he pushes a pile of clean clothes at you, “my name’s Harry Clayton, you can call me Harry.”

“Mr. Clayton,” you just barely nod. You don’t take the clothes, because fuck cops, seriously.

The corners of his mouth twitches up, but all he says is, “Can you tell me how you and Mr. King know each other?”

“He was a customer. He ordered some drinks, and then he defended me when the gunman demanded information about my coworker.” You don’t know what story he’s hoping to hear, but you’re going to defend Shelley until you leave.

“What’s your coworker's name?”

“Robin Choi.”

That makes him pause for entirely too long. You feel a pang of worry for Robin. You don’t know much about their history, but anything that makes the police remember your name can only be bad.

You lean forward. “Are they okay?”

“I’ll try to keep them that way,” Harry says. “So, the man threatened you, and then what happened?”

“Shelley stood up and told him to back off, only because he could tell I was scared.”

“Mr. King engaged him in a fight?”

“First, he motioned for everyone at his table to leave, and then everybody in the bar left. I got stuck behind the bar because I was shaking too hard to open the side latch. The gunman threatened me, and then Sh-Mr. King started to fight him.”

“So, when you picked up the broken glass to stab the gunman, it was to defend Mr. King?”

“Yes, and as soon as Mr. King pushed him off, we ran to the door.”

“And this is when, according to multiple eye-witnesses, an American tourist took a knife out of their purse, stabbed the gunman in the throat and walked away.”

You nod. “Pretty much.”

“And you didn’t know this tourist?”

“I think I served them at the bar, but I’m not sure. I think they got involved because they know what a gunshot sounds like. You know how America is.”

“That I most unfortunately do,” Harry sighs. “Well, you’re free to go. I’ll call you if I need any more information. Do you have any questions for me?”

“Am I or Robin in danger?”

“Not if I have anything to do about it,” there’s a look in his eyes that you would call anger if you hadn’t seen it on Shelley’s face earlier.

“That's not a no,” you point out.

“No, it isn’t,” Harry sighs as he out a card from his pocket. He puts it on top of the clothes that he pushes closer to you before standing. “If you or Robin run into any more men with guns, give me a call. And for god’s sake, when someone tells you to run away from a man making threats, listen to him!”

You shoot Harry a look. “I don’t leave people behind to get hurt.”

“God save me from idiots,” Harry mutters as he closes the door behind him.

You change into the clothes he gave you, which fit just as poorly as you expected. But the oversized green shirt and the undersized jean shorts aren’t soaked in blood, even if you do have to leave the latter unbuttoned. You leave your work clothes in the evidence bag, exit the interrogation room, and walk toward the one Shelley had been in. It’s empty, he didn’t wait for you.

You barely know him, he’s just some guy, you shouldn’t be panicking like this just because you don’t know where he is. You just dropped your bloody clothes off at the police station, so there’s no blood on the back of your shirt, there’s no one yelling at you, you’re looking at the phone you pulled out of your pocket

You take out your phone to call for a ride, but no sooner have you walked out the station door than you see him sitting in his car, moving a pile of books off the passenger seat and onto the floor. You get in

“You mind dropping me off at a coffee shop before we go home?” you ask when he starts the engine.

“The last few hours not exciting enough to keep you up?” Shelley quips.

It’s a pretty funny joke, but you don’t feel like laughing. “I’m not going there for coffee, but chamomile tea will get me pretty close.”

“There’s a brunch bar at the foot of Panda Hill with good bagels,” you say the first place that comes to mind, then you wince when you remember how far away it is.

Strangely enough, this actually brings a smile to Shelley’s face. “I love Panda Hill,” he says as he starts his car. “I’ve always wanted to go stargazing there, ever since I was a kid.”

Now you’re interested, too. “So you know all the constellations?”

Shelley laughs a little. “No,” he gets a faraway look on his face, “I’d draw lines between the stars and pretend they were the characters in whatever story I was reading at the time.”

You look at the stack of books by your feet, which run the gamut from ancient Egyptian mythology to a comic book at the topic, and you’re a little ashamed at how surprised you are. You hadn’t expected a man with a beard like Shelley’s to be so well-read. Bookish, after all, wasn’t actually a visual term.

“Only if you want,” Shelley says awkwardly.

Oh shit, you hadn’t been talking. “I would love to,” you say quickly.

The smile he gives you is almost pathetically grateful. There’s something behind his love for stargazing, but you don’t want to ask. Either he’ll tell you, or he won’t.

“I pretty much only read comic books as a kid,” you confess. “I don’t know a lot about actual stories.”

“Comic books are real stories,” it’s nice of him to pretend you’re not an idiot. “And good stories at that, or there wouldn’t be so many people who read them.”

“You sound like my grandmother,” you smile at him. “She used to defend me when my parents tried to throw my comics away.” You swear you can feel wizened hands stroking your hair, telling you, “Heroes are just the stories that find you at the right time.”

“You could make an argument that comic book heroes are just mythological gods adapted for the modern age,” Shelley’s voice draws you out of your nostalgia. “The old gods weren’t perfect, they had all the trappings of humanity, including flaws. They just also happened to have earth-shattering, mind-bending powers.”

You snicker. “I actually learned the Greek gods from Wonder Woman comics.”

“Oh?” he smiles at you, increasing the temperature inside the car. “Tell me, is Wonder Woman more like Hera, or Artemis?”

“Hera,” you say confidently, “there’s already a Wonder Woman character named Artemis.”

“Huh, I guess I should read the comics.”

“I can lend you some, my parents didn’t manage to throw all my comics out.”

He freezes for a second in the middle of turning his engine off.

“Ah, jeez,” you give him a hug, more to avoid seeing his sad eyes than because you need one. Not that the feeling of his arms around you isn’t very, very pleasant. “I’m fine, really. It was a long time ago.”

“That just means you were treated badly when you were younger,” he says into your shoulder.

“It’s fine,” you wiggle a little, and he lets go immediately. “Please don’t let it bother you. It doesn’t bother me.”

He makes a sound that you decide to take as acquiescence, and the two of you walk into the brunch bar. When he’s done ordering, he steps aside and nods for you to order. You consider shaking your head, but you remember how hurt he looked back in the car. Maybe helping you get some food will soothe him.

As soon as you’re done ordering, you sit down in a seat next to Shelley, and wake up with a drool-covered hand, with your bagel and tea in front of you. Shelley grins and moves his half-finished plate with a single egg, pancake, and two slices of bacon, in front of you.

“Nah,” you motion to your bagel, “this is enough.”

He frowns. “I don’t want you to be hungry.”

You open your mouth to tell him that you can’t eat when you’re hungry, but the growl of your stomach interrupts you, and you realize that you’re not actually stressed at all. Not since you left the police station have you actually thought about the events of just a few hours ago.

“Ha,” Shelley say smugly, nudging the plate until it hits the end of your nose.

“I’ll finish the eggs, but I’ve got a bagel, so you eat the rest,” you say, smearing the runny yolk on your bagel. “I’m very particular about my pancakes and bacon, so I usually don’t eat them unless I know the cook is very good.”

“Remind me to make you some,” Shelley says before shoving a forkful of syrup-soaked pancake in his mouth.

Your first instinct is to tell him he doesn’t have to, but despite only having met earlier that night, you know him well enough to know he would only insist. “You like cooking, then?” you say instead.

“I love it.” Shelley chews the rest of his food without speaking, like he’s lost in thought. “It makes me feel like I’m taking care of people,” he says slowly, “when I feed them.”

You want to say something about people with savior complexes, so you stick the last of the bagel in your mouth until the urge passes. “Come on, let’s go up the hill and look at the stars. You can tell me all about those constellations you made up.”

[sailor-cresselia]

The Great Ex-Aid Rewatch: Ex-Aid & Ghost, Part One

:grabs the popcorn:

This is gonna be hard, because I wanted to try and do this without in-movie spoilers. I mean, I’ve seen the entire show at this point, and if you’re reading my liveblogs, I’m basically assuming that so have you, so not touching on plot points is a little impossible, especially with my overbearing love for going into meta and theories.

Also, it’s going to be in multiple parts. This first post covers about twenty minutes of run-time over the course of several hours of real-time, and nine pages.

Whoops.

(links to the other parts will go here)

–––

Okay, so. In the first two minutes, we have Dr. Pac-man’s three assistants start shooting up the GenmCorp lobby, and I’m pretty sure that the muscle guy broke a guards neck. And then they go after Kuroto, with a very… glitchy Dr. Pac-Man alongside.

We’re talking ‘pre-bugvisor Graphite’ visual glitching, here. As though he doesn’t quite have enough… I dunno, cohesion to stay intact on his own.

Thing is, Kuroto seems genuinely… if not scared, then at least shocked to see him. The dude’s supposed to be very dead, after all.

And seriously, why do people keep jamming proto-gashats into their bodies?! No! Don’t do that! Stop it! I don’t care if you’re a bugster or not, it doesn’t actually help you at all, it’s just going to make you physically unstable!

–––

And here we have Tougo, victim of the day. I have to say, I’ve never liked him much. He’s… annoying. Also, I’m aware that the choice of color for his school uniform is most likely ‘because Pac-Man’, but that doesn’t change the fact that’s it’s ugly. The girls jacket is a nice dark tan, but the boys have this gaim-awful mustard.

And then the Pac-Viruses attack.

–––

Emu’s such a good guy, helping one of his young patients out in both work and as a sort of mentor-friend. Pity we’re still very early in Ex-Aid, and he’s still a horrible klutz. There’s no time to be tripping over your feet, Emu! We’ve got people to save!

–––

…oh no… It never quite clicked before, but I think Takeru had to repeat a year! He was clearly planning on going to university, if only because he and Akari are/were in the same year of school, and she’d never let him live it down if he didn’t. And here? His teacher, who’s practically mocking him for being six months behind, is asking whether he’s serious about his entry exams or not.

So. Since it’s December now, and it was early April when he came back, Takeru missed the entire last half of what was supposed to be his senior year of high school. So here, he’s probably about three months into what he missed before.

Akari, Onari, please don’t disrupt the class like this, they probably all think Takeru’s weird enough as is without him getting called out for superhero business.

–––

You know, Akari reminding Takeru to be careful, because he’s got a regular body now, implies that he hasn’t been careful. Maybe not as Ghost, but… you know, in regular exertion stuff. (And as Ghost, because there’s probably a number of times he’s had to help Alain with. Like. Less-than-satisfied court members or something over in the Ganma world.)

So, both teams are here at the outbreak site. Team Ghost, consisting of Takeru, Akari, and Onari, and team Ex-Aid, consisting of Emu and Asuna. Both of the lads put on their drivers, and simultaneously notice the other one there.

They didn’t meet outside of the suits in Ghost’s final episode, which was an epilogue to his story and a Bonus Sneak Preview Of The New Challenger, so it makes sense that the drivers – both of which are very distinct – would be how they recognize each other.

–––

Of course, that gets us into the slight issue of ‘when does Ghost ep 50 take place.’

See, it’s implied in-show that it’s not long after Takeru comes back to life, which puts it in early to mid-April. He has a line about ‘are we really going to celebrate my birthday twice from now on?’, to which the answer was a definitive yes, so it makes logical sense for it to not be on his original birthday in October.

Except for how Emu couldn’t show up for his Big Damn Heroes moment if it were in April, because he didn’t put on the Gamer Driver until October.

So, when Emu comes to try and get the Shakariki Sports gashat from Ayumu, it isn’t quite chronologically possible… unless you take into account who Ayumu is.

He’s Takeru’s son. From the future. Meaning he time-traveled to get there.

It’s not even unprecedented for the season – Takeru’s father opened the portals that brought Takeru and Shinnosuke back and forth from 2005 in the Ghost & Drive movie, after all. So, it stands to reason that the portal ability, which Ayumu also shows, is a familial power.

What I’m positing is that Emu traveled back in time, and probably didn’t even know it.

He goes to the game worlds and battle stages fairly often, and since suddenly being in a different location isn’t exactly new to him… it would only makes sense for him to not realize that he’s in a different month, too. Especially when one of the stages looks just like the forest behind Daitenkuu Temple, and he has all sorts of flashy light effects going on all the time. An eye-shaped portal could totally just be another one of the standard special effects.

Yup, nothing unusual here.

–––

Okay, that aside, nobody actually gets to transform just yet, because the whole group is swarmed by Pac-Viruses before either of them can activate their drivers, with the viruses quickly singling Takeru out and chewing into him.

He doesn’t get hit with the literal fever that everyone else they’ve done this to are suffering from. No, in Takeru’s case… the Ghost Driver disappears. He pulls out his eyecon to try again… and it clicks uselessly.

Onari suspects it might be because he ‘hasn’t transformed lately’, adding more credence to his and Emu’s encounter being more than two months ago.

Since nobody else here can… time for Ex-Aid to make an appearance.

In level one.

Cue Opening Credits.

–––

So, Emu can’t so much as dent the Pac-Viruses, and then two of Zaizen’s lackeys show up. The man, apparently named Kazushige Ryuzaki, uses the Drago Knight Hunter Z proto-gashat to turn into… (quick search of the wiki) the Doral Bugster. Since I don’t feel like typing out his name, and it’s never said in show anyway, I’m just gonna be calling him Doral from here on. Similarly with the woman, Ageha Takeda, who uses Giri Giri Chambara to become the Giril Bugster.

So, you know, of course the one with a sword is the one Takeru faces off against. Why not? Not like he’s probably got some incredibly justified trauma relating to them. Not like it’s not actually incredibly ironic that his first heroic Eyecon arms him with a sword. Why not re-open some old less-than-metaphorical wounds right off the bat?

Doral basically corners Emu into the parking garage that Takeru and the others tried to bring Tougo through. Oh, yeah, they were trying to get that guy out of the area when he collapsed. I didn’t mention it because he’s not a good character, and exists primarily to guilt-trip Emu. So, yeah. Doral and Giril knock both our heroes down, breaking Emu’s level two transformation in the process, and here comes Dr. Pac-Man, being all ominous and glitchy, saying that he’s doing this for ‘revenge on humanity’.

Suuuure, that’s how you wanna spin it. Humanity in general. It’s totally not against a few very specific humans, one of whom you’ve recently had held at machine-gun point, and the other who has no idea what’s going on.

–––

They use the scene of bringing Tougo into CR for a brief exposition dump – which is fair, both in-universe and out. Takeru’s team wouldn’t know what’s going on, and it helps just in case the parents in the audience haven’t been following what their kids have been watching. It just gives us that little bit of elaboration on the bugster virus, enough so that people aren’t completely lost.

Tougo’s – oh, wow, his ‘infection ratio’ is already at 63%. Usually when they get someone in here, they’re only in the 30% range. But, of course, there isn’t any data to define what’s going on, because this isn’t one of the normal bugsters. There’d be no reason for Pac-Man to be programmed into a Genm Corp system.

(Which actually raises the question of how they were able to see an icon for Burgermon in episode 17, since he wasn’t supposed to be a Bugster, either. Then again, he is from a game Genm Corp was developing. But I digress.)

Anyway, Emu’s justifiably confused as to why Takeru doesn’t seem to be having any of the usual symptoms of an infection. Oh, sweetie, if you only knew- :ahem: sorry, distracted.

Takeru says that no, he’s not feeling any sort of fever, he’s doing fine.

Onari reminds him that ‘he’ll only get hurt if he pushes himself’, and Akari feels his forehead to make sure he’s telling the truth.

Once again, we’re getting the implication that Takeru has developed a habit of going too far.

–––

upstairs, we’ve got a conference call with Secretary Hinata, the Official CR team, and the Ghost team. Onari bursts out laughing at Poppy’s last name – and freaks out when she hops out of the arcade cabinet.

Both of these are understandable reactions, but maybe don’t immediately declare this a supernatural phenomenon? You know, since a government official was the one to first address her.

I will always be frustrated at the reverb effect they gave Poppy’s voice in this movie. There was no reason for Toei to do that, it’s just excessive, and it’s not like they did it in any of the promo materials or shorts, to say nothing of the show itself. Actually…

–––

I wonder if some parts of this movie draw from early planning stages of Ex-Aid? Like, there’s no explaining the voice thing otherwise, and Emu was pretty close to freezing up for a long time in here… despite the setting for it being explicitly between episodes 10 and 11, at which point they’ve already faced an approaching pandemic, with what Graphite pulled in episodes 9 and 10. So, either the team just didn’t think of that, or there were aspects that got… left over.

I mean, it’s not nearly as inexplicably different as the entirety of the OOO section of OOO & W, but it’s not exactly fitting with where Emu would be even just in the first few episodes.

And yes, I’m aware that OOO & W was made when they had one whole episode of OOO to go off of, but that’s why I think there might be artifact plot elements in here.

–––

Okay, back to the film itself. Again. Emu – Genius Gamer M – uses his genre savvy to realize why he couldn’t damage the Pac-Viruses. If, like some of the other bugsters, they’re operating on the logic of their game, then the only weakness they would have would be ghosts. AKA, instead of infecting Takeru, they burned out his ability to transform into Ghost, thus removing their biggest threat.

I mean, only some bugsters use their games that heavily. Motors, for one, the bugster from Bakusou Bike, is ‘prone’ to racing, and technically speaking, Emu and Kiriya cleared the game before destroying him, by beating him in a race. And the Doremifa Beat Collabos bugster was using music just like it would have been in the game itself – if you miss the notes, you get punished. In game, that’d just be a bad score. In the real world… painful explosions. Poppy, the actual bugster from Doremifa Beat, can’t sing without a backing track. And then there’s Burgermon, who was cleared in the same method as beating a level in his game – making a burger for him.

So, yeah, the Pac-Viruses might be in that class of bugster.

Anyway, enter Dan Kuroto and Hanaya Taiga.

Taiga’s all “No, I’m totally not here to help you guys, I’m just not letting these freaks run loose.”

Kuroto tells the ensemble that they stole the ‘heavily guarded’ proto gashats.

If by ‘heavily guarded’ you mean you were clearly reading their data out in the open, in your office. Again. And by ‘stole’ you mean “They had two machine guns pointed at me, and a sword, and I’m not immortal just yet! What was I supposed to do?! Just not hand them over?!”

…Yeah, he may be an evil bastard, but he didn’t exactly have a choice even if he wasn’t trying to keep up his ‘benevolent CEO’ facade.

Taiga’s comment of ‘those gashats are very dangerous’ is not only an understatement, but also… it’s foreshadowing. We know that Kuroto’s been using Proto Mighty Action X, and that it’s slowly wearing him down – Parad told us as much in episode 8 or 9. We know that Drago Knight was actually hurting Graphite, and he’s from there.

And, although we haven’t seen it yet, Taiga also has experience using them. Proto Bang Bang Shooting is what he originally used as Snipe, back in 2011. But we don’t know that even outside of the show just yet.

This movie came out in theaters in December 2016. We found out that the proto-gashats were involved during the Snipe Episode ZERO specials… the first of which wasn’t released until April 2017.

So… here, have some foreshadowing, I guess!

Emu asks if Kuroto has any idea who the culprits could be… and Kuroto pauses before saying he doesn’t. There’s a… not a scare chord, but a ‘you should be really, really suspicious right now’ sound effect when he says that.

I can’t tell if Emu looks disappointed or suspicious.

…Disappointed. He didn’t believe Kuroto could be evil until he revealed himself, so… yeah.

–––

At the totally not sketchy base, Dr. Pac-Man and his lackies are planning something. They’re waiting for Tougo’s symptoms to break out – he was the one they were targeting, after all. I think the Pac-Viruses went after Takeru on their own. They’re also working on something called the ‘genome graph’.

Complete with a diagram of a human gene… that starts off normal, and then becomes blocky… pixellated, almost.

So that’s not sketchy at all.

–––

…oh what the heck. The next scene is the next day. How can I tell? Everyone is in different outfits. It’s not just how Takeru is noticeably no longer in his school uniform, and back to his normal wardrobe. Akari and Onari are in different outfits, too, and Emu was wearing his yellow binary shirt, but now he’s on one of his dark blue ones.

How long does this movie take place over?

(No wonder Haruto was able to show up out of the blue! It’s been at least a day, so he’s had time to find out about this!)

Anyway, Tougo (finally) wakes up, and Emu and Takeru both start questioning him as to why the people in white were after him. Well, Emu’s telling him to go lay back down, because he can barely stand for more than a few seconds without wobbling, and Takeru’s asking questions.

Tougo cares not for your platitudes and worrying about his health, he’s got school and game development to do! Both Emu and Takeru take incredibly personal offense to this attitude.

Casual reminder, both of them were 18, the same age as Tougo, when things went wrong. Well, went wrong a second time in Emu’s case, when he went and decided that he needed to focus on his studies after… well, as we find out later, doing almost exactly what Tougo’s doing. Neglecting his own well being in order to do what he loves – games.

…ohhh no Emu is same hatting really hard with this guy.

(Listen, Tougo, as long as you don’t start identifying with the primary game designer in this show, we’re set. Just accept the fanmail gracefully, and everything will go much smoother.)

But, as Hiiro points out, they technically can’t force treatment on him. But also… well. There are some pretty nasty folks after Tougo.

–––

On the roof, Takeru and Emu have a little chat. They’re both basically going ‘how on earth are you handling the Rider thing?’ to each other’s situations.

Pulling out the Ex-Aid Eyecon, Takeru says that he couldn’t have imagined that the rider that gave it to him is a doctor. He was just so incredibly neon. But the fact that ‘Doctor Emu’ is saving lives as both a doctor and as a Kamen Rider… that really impresses him.

(Please note that Takeru consistently uses “Emu-sensei” to refer to Emu both here, and in HeiGen Final. No, there’s no hero worship going on here, what are you talking about? That’s silly!)

Similarly, Emu’s incredibly impressed by Takeru’s resolve to have kept fighting after dying, and speaking as a doctor, can’t even begin to imagine what that takes.

And then here comes Kuroto, asking to see Takeru’s Ghost Eyecon to analyze it, so they can make something that will effect the Pac-Viruses.

Since Takeru agrees, it means that he’s not tied to it the way he was in the series. It’s probably a different Eyecon completely – seeing as in-show, the Ore eyecon was literally him. Technically, the Takeru we saw was almost a projection – his tangibility depended heavily on his emotional state.

(There’s a reason I occasionally joke about Ghost’s Eyecons being ‘Soul Gem Two: Spooky Boogaloo.’)

(Also, Yurusen shares a VA with Madoka, and that just drove the joke home. Turns out Meduka Meguca is the cat, after all!)

–––

Hatesate Puzzle is an Android game – you can tell, because the list of files includes four different .apk files. Also, it’s up to version 7.21.

But the programming screen? Uses the same stupid block of text that all of the programming screens use in this show. Like, it’s even more egregious this time, because it’s shown very clearly, in decent lighting, unlike in Kuroto’s assorted lairs. Also, it talks about game physics such as collision detection for the ground.

This is a match three game.

Anyway, turns out Hiiro’s idea was to allow Tougo to leave the hospital, as long as he was still being observed. There’s a hundred thousand people infected right now, and the people who did it want him. So… Tougo is bait.

Needs of the many, blah blah blah you could have at least run this by someone, Hiiro. I get not telling Emu. But Asuna should have been informed, at least.

Almost immediately after Hiiro takes his leave, letting Emu take over, we hear static as Tougo staggers backward in his seat and passes out.

–––

We come to a busy office – a busy police barracks. Team Ghost waits anxiously on a visitors couch.

“I’m glad to see you’re back.”

Enter Officer Tomari Shinnosuke: Tokyo Metropolitan Police Department (active duty); Kamen Rider Drive (inactive).

Takeru and co had called in a favor, and Shinnosuke was only all to willing to help cover this case. Not only is it rider business now, but they’re threatening the city. Not to mention the police squad they destroyed yesterday – handily confirming that a day has, in fact, gone by – means Shinnosuke really wants in.

Turns out the three they’ve seen the faces of were all researchers into genetic therapy with the Next Genome Institute. Doctor Pac-Man is ‘most likely’ their boss, Zaizen Michihiko. Unfortunately…

They’re all supposed to be very, very dead. They died six years ago, as a matter of fact.

Most of the institute’s data was destroyed when the facility was sealed, but there’s a bit of closed circuit footage remaining of the event. Only a few seconds, but it’s enough to show them standing over an operating table, as orange lights encase and dissolve them, squares of light patterning the floor and walls.

Squares of light eerily similar to what they just say the other day, when people were activating Gashats.

Bugster work isn’t the only sketchy thing they’ve done – there were rumors of the institute working with cloning, creating mutants… basically, as Akari says, mad scientists.

(Anyone want to place odds on them being funded by Foundation X? No? Just me? Okay then.)

–––

Emu and Asuna are with Tougo as he wakes on a bench. THey’d moved him somewhere out of the sun, and he’s… An asshole about it. He never asked for their help, and he’ll die when it’s time, anyway, so why are they bothering?

Doctor Pac-Man, still very glitchy, strolls up. “He’s right. None of you are needed here. Why not just hand him over?”

Running time!

–––

Back at the precinct, Shinnosuke promises that he’ll let team Ghost know as soon as they find where the Next Genome researchers are hiding.

Y’know, except for that part where he’s too late, and they’re already going after Tougo, and by extension, Emu.

Shinnsouke’s fired up and ready to go after them.

Y’know, except for the part where Krim locked all of the Drive tech in his depression garage the Drive Pit at the end of the season, and Shinnosuke can’t transform, which Takeru points out, saying that it’s too dangerous for Officer Tomari to go.

Of course, Onari, logically, tries to point out that Takeru’s in the same boat right now, to which Takeru hurriedly shushes him.

Takeru and his team run off to deal with the situation.

Sad music plays as Shinnosuke laments his lack of belt.

–––

And here’s where I decided I had to cut the liveblog for now! Because again, twenty-some minutes, and nine pages of text. This is going to take a while.

See you next game

[dixxymouri]

Dixxy vs One Piece Chapter 902: End Roll

IT’S TIME.

First, some ground rules. Where possible I’m going to use the official ViZ translation for chapters. That means we’ll probably get to revisit this whole affair on Monday when the chapter officially drops. Stephen Paul has been THE most trusted source for One Piece translations going back to well before he was officially working with ViZ so where comparison is available, that’s the translation I’m going with. Also, like, if he really needs to I believe he actually does have a contact at Japanese Shonen Jump if there’s something he doesn’t know how to translate in emergency situations. So in regards to dialog in 902 I’m going to take everything with a grain of salt until the official release. 

So I’m going to focus largely on THAT subject and ignore most of the rest of it for now. If y’all are good and get me lots of likes and reblogs maybe I’ll do a deeper dive into the rest of the chapter but yeah let’s talk about SanPu.

So, if you’re part of shipping culture in the online One Piece fandom and you just got back from being under a rock or on the moon for the last two months or so, here’s a quick visual representation of what the whole Luffy Nami Sanji Pudding ship war discourse looks like right now:

To recap the last few chapters, Pudding made some sort of last request of Sanji that we, the readers, didn’t get to see until 902 leaked online early this morning or late last night or whatever time it was in your particular time zone. In short? This:

Yup. A SanPu kiss happened. 

So on the one hand there’s probably some concerned Sanji x Nami shippers out there and there are definitely some Luffy x Nami shippers who are acting like total fucking assholes.

“Hurray! People who have never done any wrong to me or my loved ones are potentially really upset and unable to enjoy something that brought them a lot of happiness! This is a great day for me!”

(I mean, look, I get that schadenfreude is a thing for a reason but this isn’t it. If this is you, fuck off, you’re not some champion of your OTP, you’re a fucking asshole). 

So let’s break this down.

Is SaNa sunk/SanPu canon?

Short answer? No and no...maybe. 

While it’s very clear that Pudding still has feelings for Sanji, I don’t think Sanji returns them. Okay, yes, he’s gone all heart-eyes for her but, well, this is Sanji we’re talking about, of course he did that when a pretty girl kissed him, it’d be like asking Luffy to not stuff his face at a Meat Buffet that’s just not where his character is right now. But let’s take a look at him from a few chapters ago in 896:

Sanji’s pretty ready to part ways with her here. And once Pudding snips out the memory of said kiss:

He’s confused as to why Pudding ran away but he’s not chasing after her and there’s really nothing in the chapter showing him upset over not being with her right now. The only one who’s upset is Pudding.

This can be read a couple of ways - it leaves the door open for SanPu later if she comes back into the fold (more on that in a bit), or this was a bittersweet ending for their story. This, by the way, is one of the things I REALLY want to see the ViZ translation for, because the “song” going through the chapter seems to have multiple interpretations floating around with varying degrees of finality to this situation, which leaves things in even more flux.

Here’s the thing: SanPu hasn’t become canon (which means that, no, SaNa didn’t sink). That doesn’t mean it won’t later on, but at the moment it just isn’t. Sanji doesn’t have feelings for Pudding and doesn’t remember the kiss, nor was his reaction particularly strong. Pudding is distraught right now, sure, but we really don’t know what’s next for her. Is she going to try and leave the island and follow in Lola’s footsteps? Is Big Mom going to try and use her for another wedding plot? Is she going to get on a bus, go to the big city, and try to make it in show business? I don’t know and neither do you. 

“Sanji and Pudding kissed that means they’re married now!”

No it doesn’t.

“But they kissed! They’re man and wife now!”

...no, no they really aren’t. 

A wedding ceremony and a marriage are technically two different things. A wedding is a ceremony, whereas a marriage is a legal contract. Marriage doesn’t actually take place until both parties sign a contract and it’s officiated by someone with the legal authority to do so, usually a religious leader like a priest, a rabbi, or an imam, or a non-religious affiliated justice of the peace.

But that’s the real world and probably not something Oda put thought into for the manga. All right, I’ll give you that, but it still doesn’t matter. Let’s say that in the One Piece world all that matters is the ceremony.

Well, the ceremony was never actually finished and the kiss took place long after the wedding party disbanded. I’m not even sure the priest is still alive. Whether you like it or not or whether you think it helps your ship or not, the alley was not a wedding and no marriage has taken place. 

That being said this feels like something that might come up in an SBS but I’m guessing Oda is going to say “no”. 

Conflicting Ships - Luffy x Nami vs Sanji x Nami vs Sanji

This is one I think we all have feet of clay in regards to, but if your ship relies on the instability of another ship that’s not really a sign you have a lot of confidence in your ship and you can’t enjoy it unless it has at least a CHANCE of becoming canon. This is why I’m skeptical of Sanji x Pudding fans - I really do think a lot of them (not all of them, mind you) are just Luffy x Nami fans eager to get their biggest threat out of the picture without killing him. I’m sure there are plenty of Luffy x Hancock “fans” who want them same thing, except they’re actually Sanji x Nami or Zoro x Nami fans. Guys, that’s probably not a healthy attitude to have when it comes to shipping.

“So you’re trying to say that your reasons for not liking Sanji x Pudding have nothing to do with Sanji x Nami?” What part of “I think we all have feet of clay” did you not understand? Yeah, it’s one of the reasons I’m not big on Sanji x Pudding - I find it difficult to ship characters together if one or more characters in the pairing have a canon partner. I don’t know that I NEED Sanji x Nami to be canon but I’d be pretty sad if a conflicting pairing actually happened, with varying degrees of being okay or angry depending on the execution and characters involved. I mean I’d even be mad if Sanji and Nami happened and it was done really, really badly. 

This is why I think the best case scenario for all parties involved is One Piece ending without any of the big ships becoming canon, probably excluding Usopp x Kaya (which, while it’s KIND OF a forgone conclusion isn’t very heavily shipped) and possibly excluding Robin and Franky (who seem to have moved onto Dorky Middle Aged Married Couple Who Like to Embarrass Their Kids while no one was looking). Why? Because unless one of the pertinent parties is dead, that leaves everyone free to draw whatever conclusion they want.

Like, do you have any idea how much happier the Bleach and Naruto fandoms would be if Kubo and Kishimoto didn’t canonize any pairings? A LOT. Yeah some fans would be salty they didn’t get confirmation, sure, but they’d be free to think whatever they wanted happened after end of series. 

Imagine if One Piece ends with something like Luffy, now the Pirate King, is on the ship with the other Straw Hats (now all having achieved their dreams) and he’s sitting on his special seat and he points to the horizon and he’s like “okay guys let’s go that way and have another adventure!” and everyone else is like “YEAH!” and then they coup de burst into the sunset and the words “The End” appear on that very last page. Luffy and Nami fans are free to think that their king and queen got together. Sanji and Nami fans are free to think the cook will continue to dote on his angel. Sanji and Pudding fans are free to think that Sanji returned to Pudding to marry her for real this time. Etc, etc.

Unfinished Business

That’s another thing about this chapter and this arc as a whole - I can’t think of another arc that has THIS many obvious dangling plot threads that really feel like they should have been answered before the arc ended. Like, yes, there are other arcs that have dangling plot threads but many of those really feel like things that were blatantly meant to come up in future arcs, like the threads from Fishman Island. But for THIS arc? 

- What’s the deal with the Three Eye Tribe and will Pudding’s third eye have its true awakening? - What’s the backstory behind Germa 66 and that story Judge was talking about? - Speaking of Judge, what’s the deal with his eyebrows? - Speaking of Judge AGAIN, what went down between him and Vegapunk? - Why did that one homie recognize Pedro? - Is anything going to happen to all those people/creatures in the prison library? - Why doesn’t Lola realize Big Mom wants her dead? - Why didn’t Pudding ever get an Oda box? Yeah, that NEVER happened but we got them for like, Smoothie’s underlings and those decutuplets. The fuck, Oda? - What went down between Snack and Urogue and how did he escape? - Did Chiffon and Bege get away? - What the fuck happened to Casear Clown? - What’s going to happen when Big Mom finds out about the Tamatebako box?

...and probably more I’m not thinking of. Thing is, that’s a LOT of dangling plot threads for one arc, a lot of which feel like they could or should have been addressed here. Thing is, they probably will be addressed because you may have noticed there’s one big plot thread I didn’t list above:

- Big Mom and Elbaf

I’ve been on this particular bus for a while but it occurs to me a lot of my fellow fans didn’t think that was going to happen or at least didn’t want it to happen. But when you look at everyone that happened between Big Mom and Elbaf and how much of it we’ve seen ON PANEL, it would be REALLY WEIRD for her to not make an appearance on Elbaf. Let’s do another list:

- Murdered one of the two elder giant heroes - ATE Mother Carmel and a bunch of innocent orphans - Hey look a bunch of the giant kids from Big Mom’s flashback are part of Harudin’s crew now I bet that’s important - Whatever the hell happened between Lola and Loki

The only other option I can think of if a return to Fishman Island since, well, we kind of need to go back there at some point (Luffy’s gotta destroy it somehow, remember?) and thanks to the Sun Pirates and Praline I wouldn’t be surprised if she decides to take out some of her anger there. Plus everything with Big Mom actually STARTED back in Fishman Island. That’s the first time Luffy crossed her, it’s where we met some of her people (including Pudding...kind of), and yeah that would probably a believable scenario for the island to be destroyed, I guess.

Oda is Still Drawing Sanji Showing Affection for Nami

Okay, granted, we haven’t seen a Sanji “love cook” moment with Nami since he got back on the ship, but there still is stuff Oda’s drawn very recently that would be REALLY WEIRD if the intention was to make SanPu canon.

If 902 is the start of canon Sanji x Pudding, then this is a REALLY weird thing for Oda to draw, even if it’s not canon. Like, REALLY weird. 

Oda DIDN’T Draw Pudding’s Interior Thoughts When Nami Was Around

So we saw a bunch of Pudding’s thoughts during key scenes during the arc, including some between her and Sanji,

But something that was kind of weirdly absent? Anything involving Nami. Such as the bridal carry, which we saw Pudding react to, and when Sanji returned to the Sunny the first time and freaked out when Nami hugged him.

If Pudding has feelings for Sanji, she should have reacted to these incidents but we don’t know how she reacted to them. That feels intentionally left out. Now, granted, it’s probably Pudding (correctly) assuming that Sanji has feelings for Nami, but I think this was intentionally left alone. 

Why?

Because having Pudding point these things out would strongly hint at Sanji x Nami as end game, which Oda doesn’t want to do at this stage of the game for one of two reasons. Either that isn’t his intention or it’s way to early to show his hand. Both are valid reasons to not do that, by the way.

Are we sure Oda even likes Pudding all that much?

Here’s an SBS question and answer from volume 87.

I’m not sure Oda would say something like that about a character he plans to pair up with one of his main characters. Again, weird choice if that’s the case.

Okay I’m sure I’ll get some responses to this and I’d love to clarify/discuss in the responses and reblogs. But for the moment...

Conclusion

Blech these are never easy to write.

The short answer to this whole thing is that I don’t think Sanji x Nami fans have reason to throw in the towel, nor do I think Sanji x Pudding fans (and by extension Luffy x Nami fans) really have anything to “celebrate”. Right now it feels like an ending, but since a lot of the Big Mom stuff is unresolved the door on Pudding isn’t closed...but I’m not really sure what would be on the other side.

[sarcastic-pasta-games]

Any motivation or advice for one man team developers? Sorry if this has been asked already

Hey! I’ve been working on a solo fangame project for too long almost 3 years, while working on The BOSS & Glitch In The System. I have no clue if this’ll help or if this is the type of advice you wanted, but here you go. The things written here can apply to non-fangame projects, too! 

(Warning: lots of text ahead - and take this with a grain of salt; I’m not an expert.)

General: 

You are going to have to plan in advance and organize absolutely every single thing about your project. Don’t just make an outline for your story. Create concept art for your characters, figure out what makes your game story unique, figure out the mapping and game mechanics early.

Make sure you know your options. If you’re really good at one thing (writing,art,music,code) and everything else is a bit new to you, there are free and paid resources out there. Don’t feel bad for using them. 

If you’re a perfectionist, make sure the tools you use are quick. Do not spend a week on one room design, or a month on one song. You will never finish your game, even if it’s super short. 

Kinda joykill advice, but I don’t recommend making your dream project first unless you fully KNOW how to start making your project on your own (which even then, you’ll need to organize everything for it to work). Make something silly, or try joining game jams. 

External feedback is even more important when working on your game. Get playtesters or people willing to help give feedback to you early on, or midway through development. 

Figure out how much energy you can devote to your project. If you want to be ambitious, that’s great! But overworking yourself is a horrible idea. 

If you want to change something fairly major about your game, you should probably only do it if you’re below the 30-40% mark. Otherwise you’ll forever drive yourself insane by changing anything when you’ve made that much progress on your project. You can always improve on certain aspects for future games. 

Especially for fangames: don’t take everything you make seriously. 

Games can still be considered solo projects, even if the developers got help for stuff like art, music, and code. You don’t have to do every single thing by yourself. But if you’re stubborn like me about this and still want to do everything, that’s cool too.

Back up your game or forever suffer in developer hell. Yes, I’m serious. I’ve seen projects get cancelled because they couldn’t afford to get a backup drive (or even a USB key) and it’s miserable.

Don’t act like you’re above other game developers. This applies for anyone, really. Support the other people around you, too! 

Visuals:

If you have absolutely no passion or desire to do your own art assets, premade resources are your friends. However, you need to really focus on your other game aspects in other for your games to stand out. To The Moon used a lot of pre-made RPG Maker XP resources but had a phenomenal soundtrack and used that + its visuals to make the game feel more cinematic than most RPG Maker games.

If you feel like you suck at art or don’t have money for expensive drawing tools, but want to make all of the game assets, then do it! Even with simple/free-to-use tools, your can make game art that’ll be unique and memorable. example / example / example 

Keep backups of every single one of your original art asset files.

If you want to do pixel art for your game, 1: Always avoid coloring with pure black. Your game will look disgusting. 2: Programs like Asesprite are useful for animations. 3: Make sure it’s proper pixel art. Using AA brushes, the blur tool (etc) will completely ruin that.

Video cutscenes aren’t 100% necessary. Certain game devs make it a goal to never include cutscenes to create a certain atmosphere, or for the game to feel more interactive for the player. (ex: Night In The Woods)

Pretend the player can’t listen to game audio while playing. Keep the visuals interesting and make your game feel alive! Whether it’s through tiny animations, window animations, etc. 

For 3D Games: motion blur =/= super cool polished game. >:(

It depends on your game’s style, of course, but usually it’s not a good sign if you can tell your project is made by someone with default assets and doesn’t try to work beyond that (for any engine, 2D or 3D). 

If you want to do regular art for your game: make sure you know what resolution your game is going to be at its absolute highest, and always work with bigger than that. 

Keep your visuals consistent! If an early area looks unpolished/different from the final maps, then fix it. 

I’m going to skip music advice because I 100% suck at composing and don’t know what I’m doing yet. Just make sure your audio files are lossless, even if it adds a bit to your game’s file size. 

Audio: 

Use the same logic like in one of the points for visuals: Pretend like the player can’t see any of your cool visuals or fancy animations, and is just left with blocks for character sprites and very shapes for maps. Make your game convey emotion through audio, even if it’s through tiny sounds, or really quiet environment sounds. 

Voice acting: Don’t even bother if you can’t find people who have good microphones or can’t afford/know how to properly remove background noise. You’ll just be left with really bad quality audio that won’t help immerse the player at all. 

There can be a theme to your audio, much like there can be a theme to your visuals. Whether or not you decide to contrast the visuals with your audio or pair them up is up to you. It can give the game a whole new tone, depending on how you approach sound design.

Audio cues are good for puzzles, but again, don’t just rely on that only to indicate to the player that an objective has been completed. If they have the game on mute, they’re just going to be left wandering around.

Binaural audio can be cool, if you want to try doing that. 

Writing: 

Don’t write game dialogue at 4 am. It never works. 

Game writing is VERY different from what you might be used to. Keep in mind that for the most part players want to interact with an environment, not just only hear what characters have to say about a certain event or area. Forcing them to go through giant dialogue cutscenes every time is not a smart move to make. (Obviously, visual novels and text adventure games are an exception to this)

Not that you only need to have 4 words in your entire game! But there is a chance someone will download your game and just not enjoy the writing. Think ahead of time if you really feel like every game puzzle, every important cutscene needs to happen after giant walls of text.

If you have the ability to make visuals that can be paired with writing, you don’t really have an excuse for avoiding that. Especially if the cutscene 

Proofread every single thing, or get someone else to do it. If you can export all your game dialogue into text files, that could be helpful. 

If you’re trying to write a serious game (with lighthearted moments or not), chances are that adding that one dumb inside joke with your friends in-game could ruin the immersion for the player.

Only time I think the developer should focus more on their own opinion than the players: create as much atmosphere as you can. Figure out the things YOU like about a game world, and focus on that as much as you can. Don’t worry about making it appeal to all/certain audiences. 

Don’t act like every single player in the world will like all of your characters. Even if they’re nice, someone could absolutely despise your main characters, or find themselves liking the antagonist more.

Dumb character ticks and speech mannerisms can still work.

Not everything about a Serious Game™ has to be gritty and all that. Me and Katie wouldn’t recommend making a completely serious fangame anyway, but that’s another topic. 

You’re probably not going to ever write a game that has absolutely no tropes in it whatsoever, so give up on that. 

You can make a character dislikeable but still charming. The other way around works too. Not everything has to be clear-cut right and wrong.

Game design / Programming: 

If you ever use shortened names for certain switches, variables, etc - or have a complex system for one game feature, write down what all of it does somewhere. You don’t want to screw yourself over months after you implemented something because you forgot what one button does, or what another variable is for. 

Bite the bullet. If there’s an area you restrict access to for the player purely for the sake of not having to deal with coding it, that’s no fun.

You can never make a game with endless options/possibilities.

If there’s something buggy in your absolute basic gameplay mechanics (movement, UI) just change it and don’t focus on anything else before it’s fixed. There’s no excuse not to.

Make sure your game UI is bearable to look at. Please.

You don’t have to add 50 game options or features for your game to stand out. Unless you know it’ll encourage the player to keep playing or will help the player enjoy the game, then there’s no real use for it.

If you can ever optimize your game (frame rate, controls, etc) do that too. Having a simple 2D game running at 15fps one second and 60 the other won’t make your players happy. 

Personally, I’d rather play a working puzzle even if it’s a bit boring, over something that’s super creative but buggy as hell. 

Color puzzles aren’t going to work for colorblind players, and if you have an aesthetic (super tiny) game font, people with bad eyesight won’t be able to play. Give people options! 

“Choices in this game matter” if you know they don’t matter whatsoever for the ending or for a majority of the game, then don’t say that. This also ties into the branding section.

Making band-aid fixes for every single one of your game bugs is a really bad idea. If you can take some time to fix one bug fully rather than relying on workarounds, do that. 

Back. Up. Your. Code. Files. Especially if you’re planning on making major changes to it. It can be very useful to have old pieces of code to fall back on if your changes don’t work as planned. 

Figure out what you can and can’t do with an engine. There’s a section in The Beginner’s Guide that talks about the limitations certain engines can pose to developers, and how certain engines are just better fit for certain tasks than others. You won’t be able to include or make everything for one project. (Chances are, that wouldn’t work well anyways). 

Don’t expect the player to only behave one way to your game’s design, puzzles, or mapping. Again, give people options. There can be some fun in giving the player different results for different puzzle solutions. 

Presentation: 

You don’t have to reveal every single thing about your project online-  but on the other hand, keeping everything to only vague/abstract teaser posts isn’t very helpful to people, either. 

Social media is your friend. Twitter, tumblr, youtube, etc- Find different audiences through your games there! 

Figure out what sites you want to put your game on. There are tons of options: Itch.io is my favorite. But sites like Gamejolt, indiedb, rmn.net, Steam (more for commercial games), etc can work for you. You can always just upload it for yourself online (mediafire, google drive, dropbox) too, if you dislike all of those sites or prefer doing it through direct download links. 

Don’t self promote your game on other people’s games or accounts…

Even if someone is hoping to see something really specific in your game, your project will get out of hand if you just add in what every single person wants. Convince people that your game will be worthwhile even if a feature or a character doesn’t appear in it. 

Remaining transparent with your audience will help you a lot.

Keep things easy to access and read/look at for potential players. Make sure people can find something about the game quick. Things like FAQs, “About this game”, external links, etc are very helpful. 

Apologies in advance for any embarrassing typos that I may have missed.  

One last thing: Focus on making something that you ultimately like. It’ll be much easier to handle any sort of obstacles during/after development that way.

There is so much more I want to cover on this, but this should give you some basic things to work with. Hope this helps!

[tryinghuman]

Comic Making Tips

So I ended up writing a whole tangent about how I construct, Trying Human, these days.  SORRY.  I hope you can find the answer to your question in these ramblings.

More staging shots.  These are long shots of the characters, where they are in their environment, and in relation to each other.  I try to have at least one staging shot within a panel or two of a scene starting up.  Even if I’ve been to that location a million times *cough*Rose’s apartment*cough*, I still want the reader to know where everyone is.

Less talking heads.  This is a little unavoidable in comic largely driven by dialogue and drama, but I try to not just have yo-yo-ing back and forth between headshots of the characters.  There’s a lot of this in the old pages so a way I’ve gotten around it is by combining panels of characters talking or completely cutting out shots and having the ‘missing’ character’s dialogue come from off panel. I also add in their names so we know who’s talking to who i.e., “Longus, thanks for letting me come over” as opposed to “Thanks for letting me come over.”  It’s a quick and dirty way to let the reader know who said what if they’re off panel.

Show all hands, feet, heads, and props (if they’re in the shot at all...)  This is kind of related the last point.  I try to move everyone’s hands and arms up into the panels.  Or lower their heads.  I used to cut off a lot of body parts or just not have them moving their limbs at all.  I mean, with the Greys, I still don’t move them but that’s a part of their species.  I think it makes them seem more creepy as well if all the other characters are talking and gesticulating and they’re just standing around.

Don’t completely desaturate your colors.  I don’t know what I was thinking but when I originally shaded TH, I did so with grey for like... everything.  I feel like I must have seen something somewhere and thought it was a good idea, which is weird because a lot of my non-TH art from the time didn’t suffer from this. lol  ANYWAY, frequently I’m reusing old backgrounds on the redone pages and all I’ve done is knock the saturation way up.  They look brand new! :D

More beta-ing/spot blacking.  I’m not sure what this is called in English but Spot blacking; Thanks @randumbdaze!  In manga, the large swathes of flat black both in the background and on the characters is called beta.  There’s a lot more of that in TH. Waaay more black.  LOVE THE BLACK.  On comic pages that are just pencils this is usually marked with an ‘X’.  If you’ve ever been to my streams, you’ll see me marking my betas before filling them in later.  They just make the comic look more... Finished or fuller or complete.  I can’t really explain it, you just have to take my word for it.  In TH this is most noticeable on the inside of sleeves, collars, under characters chins, in side of mouths and on the bodies’ and in the eyes of the Greys.  I also have black from the comic gutters (the area between frames) encroach into the scenes to help give the pages rhythm and break up the staging.

Less non-western style comic book sound effects. In Japanese comics, it’s really common to see sound effects like, “Poke!”, “Grab!”, “Smiles!” (つん, ざっく, うはうは, respectively.) That’s because they have actual onomatopoeia for a lot of that stuff.  We don’t and it can come off as awkward in English unless you’re going for a really particular style to your comic. I used to use it as a crutch to get around actually drawing stuff out of my comfort zone, I think. This was like 10 years ago so bear with me.  I take out SFX that aren’t actual sounds and just try to draw my actions better.  Also, TH doesn’t really feel like a manga in visual presentation so I can’t really get away with those kind of sound effects.  Worse comes to worse, you can always add a piece of dialogue like “Don’t grab me like that!” to help the reader understand what is going on.

Less sexy when sexy doesn’t need to be there.  I’m a piece of shit and draw everyone in too sexy of poses.  Mostly the ladies because I have a prooooblem. ;A;  I’m trying to avoid that these days unless it calls for it.  Weirdly, less is more.  When I try to avoid drawing them sexy, I think they look more attractive.  I’m a fickle boop.

Here are some good comic making resources:

Comic Book FX (The Comic Book Sound Effect Database) - http://www.comicbookfx.com/ Find some dank sounds.

Blambot Comic Fonts & Lettering - http://www.blambot.com/  Check out their articles; they’re really helpful for creating a groundwork.

DesignDoll - http://terawell.net/terawell/  Step aside, PoseManiacs, DesignDoll is here to stay.  The free version doesn’t let you save, but if you just want to throw together some poses for reference, this is a great program for that.

SketchUp - https://www.sketchup.com/  Awesome for modeling props and sets.

Sculptris - http://pixologic.com/sculptris/ A free organic modeling tool; great for modeling your character’s heads for reference.

[noblecrumpet-dorkvision]

Dungeon Design: Guiding Player Movement Part II

This time I’m going to go over some factors that guide movement that are less about visual composition and more about content. I am using the same map from Part 1, a map of an icy cavern frost giants are using as a lair. An entrance to a hero’s lost tomb is located within.

Mechanical Design

Since this is not just an art piece but a living, breathing world, we also have to consider game mechanics when trying to lead our players.

Skill Checks

Anything that is going to require a skill check will either draw players to it or cause them to avoid it and seek an easier route. Generally, this is modified by risk/reward. If there is a high risk but low reward, players will avoid trying to make such a check (like leaping across a pit of acid for a gold piece on the ground on the other side). If there is low risk but high reward, players will gravitate towards it and test their luck. A locked door is a good example. There's no visible downside to trying to unlock a door unless players think it's trapped. But if there are no signs of a trap, might as well, right?

The map here shows where skill checks are required, marked in red. In the west and northeast, stealth checks are required. In the center, two easy Athletics checks are required to climb some cliff-like stairs. In the southwest is a giant boulder that would require a nearly impossible Athletics check.

Interactive Objects

Objects are something in D&D that need to be described to the players by the DM. A circle on the map could be anything: a barrel of wine, a statue, a golden bowl of gold coins, or a pillar. Putting ANYTHING in a room will cause players to investigate it unless they believe it is of no use to do so. Never assume that those objects you carefully placed as leading lines won't just cause players to stop and investigate them instead of following them. Basically, if you want to attract players use interactive objects. If you just want to use objects as leading lines, make them useless for anything but cover or trash (like a pillar or broken table)

NPCs

Non-player characters are always points of interest unless the players don't want to be seen. Players will gravitate towards NPCs to interact with them, barring them thinking it might be an illusionary setup for a trap. Players can be very neurotic given enough abuse.

Monsters

Enemies are different than NPCs in that they are sometimes points of interest and sometimes points of resistance. Players that are at full health that believe they can take on a monster or group of monsters will head towards them. Once players start to get low and use some items they start to feel more vulnerable and try to avoid combat. Knowing the status of your adventuring party in the moment will help you place monsters to guide players to where you want them to go. Players healthy? Put monsters in a line toward the goal. Players bloodied? Put monsters blocking a path you want them to avoid.

This will, of course, change mid-combat as monsters and players move. Don't worry about it too much mid-combat unless you absolutely have to. Otherwise, the first impression when players enter an area will do just fine.

The above map shows the monsters in my dungeon marked in blue, mostly Frost Giants, Hill Giants, and Ogres. The lines represent patrol paths. My players were underleveled for facing Frost Giants. They could take them down about two at a time when forced to, but otherwise they had opted for the stealth plan. Assuming a patrol path is only occupied by a monster some of the time, can you guess the path my players took? They took the northeast corridor to avoid the western feast hall and took down frost giants commando-style.

Narrative Design

There are things you can’t always see in a map that guide the movement of your players. These are purely narrative aspects that arise from your description of potential pathways. Always make sure that there is a good reason to travel one path over another or else your players will check doors at random. As far as visually guiding your players goes their decision will ultimately fall on reason. And reason is guided by the information you, as a DM, provide. I’ll go over what I intended to be the narrative influences of the three hubs in the map above: A, B, and C. I’ve bolded the path I wanted the players to take to get towards their goal.

Hub A

This area usually has 2-3 giants in it eating or talking, but after a raid or at night every chair is filled while they feast. Clockwise starting from western path:

Snoring is heard from the other side of the door. This meant there was likely going to be a stealth element. What’s behind the door is unknown. Risky players could try and sneak past this unknown number of giants, and would be rewarded with a valuable treasure I placed there. There’s no reason to go there otherwise, but I wanted to reward exploration.

This narrow path leads back to a cliff face overlooking the entryway for guard to throw javelins at intruders. The players could see the path heading back the way they came and had already dispatched the guards. Players can intuit there’s no reason to go back here.

This area has plenty of barrels and crates to hide in, but sometimes two giants can be heard conversing as they patrol this hall. There is a smell of raw salted meat which hangs from the ceiling, likely a storage area. Stealth here will be easiest and there’s the most  objects to immediately explore.

The back wall of this small room is visible. It could be used to sneak past the giants in this area, but doesn’t fit much else. There is a foul smell of entrails here. This is where they clean their stolen meat. Overall, not the best place to explore.

The last path is past (usually) several giants in an open area, and a large throne overlooks all imposingly. There’s a giant set of stairs in this path, which might require an Athletics check. This is the riskiest route and could only lead to more giants.

Hub B

Clockwise starting from the northern path:

This path is closed by a makeshift door with wide gaps between the planks. Inside, two patrolling giants can occasionally be seen/heard. Otherwise the room is well-lit and loot gleams in the barrels that are open. This must be where they store their looted objects other than food. Players will go here first if they didn’t come from here, but in all likelyhood they came from this room already.

This path has two Winter Wolves fighting over a piece of leather. There are weapons here, but not much else. There are other doors here to explore. Since there aren’t any giants here this would be a good secondary path to explore. A potential path to the next dungeon level is through this way.

Beyond two stone pillars 3-4 frost giants are wrestling or fighting. This is apparently quite common because the area has been smoothed into an icy patch that’s difficult to walk on. There is a chest on the north wall. This is likely the riskiest path to take because of the difficult terrain and number of giants. Thankfully the pillars can be used to hide.

Hub C

The frost giant jarl and a hill giant tanner patrol this area at intervals, meaning players are constantly on alert with few escape routes. Clockwise starting from the northwest path:

This path overlooks the great hall. Here, players can check on it from afar with relative safety. However, it’s still not the best path to take as it is usually backtracking.

This path leads to the aforementioned icy patch. 

This path leads to the jarl’s chamber. There is a red dragon pelt for a rug and carvings can be seen all over the walls. Although this area is safe unless the jarl is present, it still speaks to the danger that lurks when the jarl returns. A potential way to the next level of the dungeon is here.

This area has a horrific smell from a tanning area. The giants steal most of their belongs from raids, but one thing they do craft is leather. There are pelts of just about everything from owlbears to yetis. Unless the tanner is here, this area is also relatively safe and has more places to hide.

This last path is blocked by a huge boulder that usually only giants can move. There is a crack that a small character could fit through, however. Inside is a frost giant shaman writing a scroll. Within are many unusual objects to interact with, including a dragon skull covered in runes, a cabinet of potions, a chest of treasure, and other things. This area is the most difficult to get into, let alone undetected, so there’s plenty to reward players willing to go through the trouble. This alone can entice players to make this room a priority.