#I'd just have to like... rewrite a chunk of it? Because some of it is a mess and would make more sense with an update

[clit-eastwood-spicy]

What if a God was dethroned by being killed and then its soul / powers were released from the body holding them and then went back to its temple of origin and people made a pilgrimage there to gain its power and potentially become the new God by proving yourself worthy before it within its hallowed halls?

This was a theme in my Pokemon / Naruto crossover fic I made when I was like 14. Dude my shit went so hard lmao.

[fstbmp-a]

I only remember the canon I threw out /hj

[sausage-rolll]

I think it's pretty clear that season 2 of Ncuti's era was rewritten at some point and that a big chunk of the original story was lost.

So I thought I'd write up what I believe the original plan was, or at least what I think would have worked better than what we got.

First of all, I think Ruby was planned to still be the companion in this season. Belinda is depressingly underutilised and somehow less relevant to the ongoing plot than Ruby is, despite the fact that she’s the one actually traveling with the doctor. So unfortunately I think she was not a part of the original plan for the story. So in the version I plan to lay out now, she isn’t going to be present.

Now, I just want to stress that me writing Belinda out of this version of the story isn’t because I do not like her or that I don’t want her in the show. It is because I genuinely believe she wasn’t planned to be a part of it until something happened midway through season 1 that led to Ruby’s role in the story being cut down. In my perfect version of the show Belinda would still be a part of it, she would just be a part of a 3rd season (and beyond) alongside Ncuti where she can be actually plot relevant.

Now, with that cleared up, let me quickly lay the groundwork for this alternate version of the story, then we can really get into the meat of potatoes of things. 

It’s quite simple really, only two major things are different.

Ruby is still traveling with the Doctor during season 2 but frequently takes breaks from the TARDIS in order to live her normal life and spend time with family (this allows the events of Lucky day and Joy to the world to happen basically unchanged.) 

The mystery of Ruby’s past and her mysterious and elusive mother is not solved in ‘Empire of Death’ and Ruby is still silently craving answers about everything.

Now let's finally begin.

The Doctor and Ruby, after another adventure in time and space attempt to return to Earth on the 24th of May so Ruby can spend time at home for a while, only to find that… They bounce right off of it? That’s strange… that’s certainly never happened before. The doctor is silently concerned about the implications of this, but makes sure to keep an upbeat and carefree attitude to hide his worries from Ruby. Ruby isn’t necessarily happy about being unable to return home at the time, but just assumes that it’s another quirky “timey-wimey” thing that the doctor can figure out. Overall she’s slightly annoyed but not worried.

The doctor whips out the vindicator and explains that it can be used to triangulate the coordinates to get them back home. Things continue relatively identical to the original version for now. They go to Earth 1952 where they face off against Lux. During the 3-dimensional part, the doctor confides in Ruby that he is terrified he won’t be able to get her home safely, that he’s worried he’ll never be able to save Rogue. And one other thing… something that (I believe) he’s never admitted to Ruby before. He isn’t just a timelord. He’s the last of the timelords. The soul survivor of his species. This pops him back into full 3D. From here the episode continues as normal.

The well happens essentially unchanged.

Lucky day also happens unchanged but is an episode set slightly in the past during a time Ruby isn’t travelling with the Doctor. However young Conrad sees Ruby and the Doctor together in the opening segment with the vindicator which is part of the reason he tries so hard to get close to her during the events of lucky day. He recognises her from his childhood and it drives him mad because that isn’t possible.

The story and the engine once again happens mainly unchanged, however Poppy does not appear this time. (I can’t think of a way for her to fit into this rewrite)

The interstellar song contest occurs, once again, almost unchanged. They finally have enough vindicator juice to force their way back to May 24th and rush into the TARDIS without saying goodbye after hearing Earth's history and how it ceased to be on that very day. Miss Flood Bigenerates and all the cards are set as she, using her own TARDIS (The Doctor doesn’t have the only one, fuck you) uses the vindicator coordinates to also get back to earth. Well after a quick pit stop to pick up one more thing. Flood is dropped off in modern day to break Conrad out of prison while Rani goes to the past to find their trump card. Desiderium the god of wishes.

-

Wish World

John Smith (The Doctor) wakes up in his house. He’s alone as he starts his day. No partner, no pets, just him in an empty house going about his morning routine. It’s not that he didn’t crave companionship, he did. He deeply did. But he was never particularly interested in women and… well there certainly wasn’t any other options. Not in this world.

Not in this world. This perfect little world.

John realises he’s running late for work and rushes out the door, only to be greeted by an unfamiliar face. A girl. Young, short and blonde. She asks John if he was… The doctor? No, of course not. He’s just an ordinary office worker, but if the young woman needed help he’d be happy to call someone, it’d have to be quick though since he was running late for work.

The girl quickly apologizes and mumbles something about her being mistaken before running off… How strange.

How strange indeed. Desiderium’s power… it doesn’t seem to work too well on Ruby. yet another oddity to add to the list. Her oddness was what drew Ms. Flood to her in the first place, not that Ruby would know this . She wanted to understand what made her tick, she needed to understand what made reality bend around her. 

Now from here things continue as normal. John Smith goes to work and Ruby stews in her confusion and false memories.

After work the doctor sits down in front of his TV and watches Conrad's channel. The only channel. But… then something else fizzled into the picture. The stark white background was drowned out in a deep red and Conrad was replaced by someone else. Seeing him made the Doctor’s heart drop. There was something about the man on the TV. He liked him. He really liked him.

He listens to his advice and slowly begins to snap out of his delusions, but before he can, Miss Flood arrives and takes him to the tower.

From here Rani's plan is revealed and the doctor is plunged into a decaying London.

-

Reality wars

From here, things once again happen almost identically to the original, however without Belinda there is no need for the stasis cube.

The doctor and Ruby free Unit from the Wish, confront Miss Flood and Rani and make the plan to infiltrate their tower, take Desiderium and stop the Rani from freeing Omega.

The doctor encounters Rani, keeping them distracted as Ruby goes after Conrad.

Omega appears, killing Rani and Miss Flood escapes.

The doctor forces Omega back into the underverse and Ruby defeats Conrad and returns the world normal.

Everyone meets back up at Unit and celebrates defeating the Rani and the Wish world. The doctor walks over to Ruby who is still holding Desiderium, a nagging feeling eating away at him as he approaches. The two of them talk for a short while and the doctor neutralises Desiderium powers with a wish.

It isn’t foolproof mind you. There’s no knowing what their life is going to be like. Their powers could reawaken at any moment, and even if they didn’t it could still bend reality around it just by existing. But to the doctor it was worth the risk.

Then why was he so scared?

Ruby sees The Doctor’s concern and offers for him to hold the baby. He agrees.

The doctor picks up Desiderium from Ruby’s arms and looks down at the baby.

And his heart stops.

He’d seen this baby before. He’d held this baby before! But where?!

His mind raced trying to grasp what gave him such a suffocating sense of deja vu.

And then it clicks.

Then it finally made sense.

Everything finally made sense.

The Doctor looks up at Ruby and thanks her.

He shouts out into the Unit headquarters that he knows exactly what to do with Desiderium. They would be safe, happy and loved, he would make sure of it.

He runs into the tardis clicking buttons and pulling levers, all the while never letting go of small Desiderium.

He knew exactly where he was going.

He puts Desiderium down for just a second, just long enough to throw on a long, hooded cloak from his wardrobe. He picked it so the young baby wouldn’t get cold. It had a built-in heat regulator that would stop the small thing from freezing. Ironic that it also covered The Doctor’s body head to toe.

He picks Desiderium up and steps out of the Tardis into a cold, dark alleyway.

He would have parked closer but he knew what was about to happen. He couldn’t risk being spotted by anyone lest the timeline unravel itself at the seams, and he’d had quite enough of reality breaking for one day.

As he walked through the dark street looking down at Desiderium, he thought about his time with this face. It was all so nostalgic. 

His mind wandered to Ruby. He thought about how snow and soft tunes of Christmas hymns followed her everywhere she went. How no technology in the universe could track down her past. How Mistro was terrified of her. How Sutekh was curious about her. How Desiderium’s power failed to keep its grasp on her.

She had defeated the very gods. And now he finally knew how.

After a short walk through the snowy streets he finally found his destination. A small, simple church. Snow falling heavily all around him and the sound of singing getting ever so closer.

He gave the small child a light kiss on the head and set her down on the front step of the church before turning around and walking away.

Away from Desiderium. He didn’t even look back. Afterall, he knew she was in safe hands here. 

He knew she would be safe, at the church on ruby road.

He returned to the present with a grand smile on his face, stepping towards Ruby and pulling her into a hug. They had a lot to discuss.

[miraculouslbcnreactions]

So, controversial topic. taking in count that in a month, the webcomic "scarlet lady" is gonna end ¿what are your feelings about it?

I know that there's people out there that don't like it for the chloe salt, but i have to admit that the damnation that chloe went through, at least for me, gave her more agency than canon, for the fact that it wasn't manipulated by outside forces like canon did, it gave her the right to choose to be better or worse.

Another great element is that it does what canon refused to do: five back Adrian his agency by letting him vent his frustrations AND let him realize that his father is a bastard.

If you don't agree, that's more than excellent, i want to know your take in this topic, that being positive or negative 😄👍

My friend, you are talking to a big Scarlet Lady fan, so I'm happy to give my thoughts! Get ready for some gushing and in-depth discussion of the adaptation process. That's really what all fanfiction is, but Scarlet Lady is more of an adaptation than most since it's a true canon rewrite that often requires you to know canon to fully appreciate its jokes and meta commentary.

Before we get into it, I want to give a link to the comic for those who haven't read it. The artist/writer is @zoe-oneesama and this is page one of the comic. I'd follow the comic link if you haven't read it as the comic is nearing its end, so going straight to Zoe's page will spoil you on elements of ending.

General Thoughts on Adaptation

Adaptation is an art, not a science. There are things that are objective elements of a story. Things you really cannot change if you want people to feel like you're telling an adaptation of a given tale. But there are also plenty of elements that are more subjective. Things some people might consider vital, but that aren't truly necessary to stay true to the story's core. (Yes, the character core thing applies to stories too!)

For example, to be a Cinderella adaptation, you need to have some sort of big reveal moment where "the prince" finds Cinderella, but that moment doesn't need to involve a slipper and the prince doesn't need to be an actual prince. My favorite modern Cinderella adaptation is A Cinderella Story: Once Upon a Song and it twists both of those elements while keeping the major story beats in place, making it fully deserving of the Cinderella label while also being its own unique story that isn't a straight retelling, it's an adaptation.

I bring all this up because, as readers of this blog may have already guessed, Scarlet Lady does a lot of things that I personally would not do when adapting Miraculous. A big one being that I prefer a more complex take on Gabriel, but that's simply a matter of preference. A complex Gabriel is not a requirement for adapting Miraculous. Complex Gabriel vs comedic villain Gabriel is just a choice you have to make when it comes to adapting canon because canon is such a mess that both options have straight up backing in the source text. Even if they didn't, Gabriel's core role - villain - is one that leaves you a lot of room for interpretation based on other factors that we'll talk about in a second.

I'll close off this section with this: having read all of Scarlet Lady, I'll be so bold as to say that Zoe and I almost perfectly align when it comes to identifying the flaws in Miraculous because I've agreed with pretty much every change she's made. She did a fantastic job staying true to the core of canon while also telling the story she wanted to tell. It's not the way I'd redo canon, but it doesn't need to be for me to call it a fantastic story. Plus a lot of the different choices I'd make come down to narrative style and tone.

Narrative Style and Tone

I'm a novelist at heart, which means that I favor serialized storytelling. For those who don't know that word, it means stories that are one coherent whole just broken into chunks. Stories where the order matters. You can't start watching at a random episode, you have to start at the beginning. And skipping an episode usually means that you'll have no idea what's going on.

Miraculous is not a serialized show. It's primarily an episodic show, a word that means that episode order doesn't matter. Every installment stands alone.

Obviously Miraculous isn't completely episodic, but that's fine. Purely episodic narratives are rare these days. Most stories have at least minor serialized elements even if those elements are often ignored for multiple episodes at a time. This is where both Miraculous and Scarlet Lady fall. They're mostly episodic stories with serialized elements popping up every now and then.

Miraculous does this element poorly because it acts like it's a purely episodic show and then takes that to an absurd extreme. Rules, characters, and lore can never be counted on to stay the same from episode to episode even though that's not actually how episodic stories work. Scarlet Lady doesn't make this mistake. It understands that episodic narratives should have STORIES that stand alone, but that the WORLD the stories take place in must stay consistent.

Now that we've gone over the basic format stuff, let's talk about tone.

Generally speaking, tone is the vibe of your story. It can be serious, silly, dramatic, and so on. One of Miraculous' biggest flaws is that its tone is all over the place. It's a silly romcom that brings in serious topics in serious ways and then handles them with all the grace of a hippo performing ballet in a china shop because of course it does! Those topics are horribly suited to the show's overall tone so it has no way to properly address them.

This is one of the many things I love about Scarlet Lady. It takes the show's absurdist tone and honors it. That's why Zoe's version of Gabriel works so well! He's a silly cartoony villain in a silly cartoony comic as he should be. It's also why my versions of Gabriel tend to be more complex. More serious serialized narratives are where more serious complex villains thrive. Neither option is better than the other, it all comes down to how you're adapting the original work. Zoe's choices are perfect for her version's style and tone. If mine are even close to that good for my preferred style and tone, then I'll be a happy author.

Narrative Weight & The Chloe Thing

This is getting long, so I'll end with a note on Chloe since you brought her up as it's another great example of the fact that there are very few choices that are inherently right or wrong when it comes to adaptation.

I don't know if I'd say that I'm a Chloe fan, but I certainly don't hate her. I also love what Zoe did with the character! It's a prime example of a thing that I've talked about before: the issue with Chloe is not a lack of redemption. The issue is that Chloe was given too much narrative weight to be what canon made her.

Quick definition: narrative weight is the importance a narrative places on a person, event, thing, etc. The more time you dedicate to an element of your narrative, the more weight that element has in the eyes of your audience. The more they expect the element to matter. The way that you develop the element will also shape audience expectations.

In the context of canon, Chloe has more development than almost any other side character. We know more about her family, her childhood, her personality, and so on. This was an absurd choice for canon to make because Chloe is not actually important to the story they told. You could pull her out of canon and almost nothing would change. Gabriel can make akumas do whatever he wants so, lore wise, he didn't need Miracle Queen. In fact, he arguably shouldn't have made Miracle Queen. He could have just taken the miracle box and jumped right into the plot of season five. Similarly, Chloe being mayor was an absurd one-note moment that's easily replaced with something more logical.

Because of this, there are a lot of things you can do when adapting Chloe. Everything from turning her back into a one-dimensional mean girl to redeeming her to what Zoe did: take Chloe's narrative weight and petty brat behavior and lean into both to make Chloe a main antagonist while also acknowledging the fact that Chloe is a messed up teenage girl who needs some serious help. I'm super excited to see the end of Chloe's arc in Scarlet Lady as I think it's going to be one of my favorites in the fandom. That is admittedly not a high bar as I'm very picky when it comes to Chloe content. I think most of it falls flat because most of it fails to let Chloe hit some sort of rock bottom when she absolutely needs to if you want to do anything interesting with her. She's not the kind of person who will easily change or see the error of her ways.

Conclusion

Scarlet Lady is a fantastic adaption of Miraculous and Zoe is a fantastic and funny adapter. The comic might not be to your tastes - and that's fine, nothing has universal appeal - but it's still a great example of how to honor source material while doing your own thing with it, which is a true skill. One of the problems with many modern retellings and reboots is that the people running the show don't understand how to adapt a narrative. They take far too much creative freedom and end up with something that doesn't feel anything like the source.

If I found out that Zoe somehow got hired to adapt something I love, then I wouldn't have any concerns. I'd have no idea what she'd do with it, but I'd be confident that it wouldn't spit in the face of the thing I love. I'd personally read a hundred Miraculous re-imaginings with her at the helm.

[chaifootsteps]

I'm honestly so curious about who made the call to rewrite ghostfuckers

given how long animation takes and that they were already at the board stage and how similar the antagonist and setting is to the episode proper, I'm not entirely sure I believe Viv's 'it was a different episode that we shelved' thing.

they can barely seem to do second drafts given all the continuity errors but for this one episode they basically started over??

It feels like it can only be in response to the leaks - or rather the backlash to the leaks

and that's curious to me because whenever there's been backlash before Viv's response is usually to double down and just start liking tweets of people defending her writing, regardless of how bad their points or or how unprofessional it makes her look

she must have seen all the convos around Stol1tz in the lead up to full moon dropping but that didn't get a rewrite. it got delayed to basically the last second but I still don't know why - there's nothing noticeably higher quality about that ep and they didn't do the bare minimum of rewriting or recording that sad little 'I didn't know you think so low of me' to be nails on a chalkboard awful

she's basically committed the entire back half of the season to blaming Blitzo for daring to stand up for himself and not immediately be at Stolas' beck and call and large chunks of the fandom - even those who still believe Stolas will realize that he's in the wrong (or equally in the wrong, I guess is what some are going with). if the audience isn't into that the show is dead in the water

and yet backlash over driving Millie to suicide was enough to make her trash a whole episode? given Brandon eventually rewrote by himself the real version it makes me wonder if other people in the studio pressured her into redoing it and she made Brandon do it solo as a 'fine if we have to do a rewrite you do it' sort of attitude. even then she has script supervising credits, probably because she didn't trust him not to have someone point out the Stolas thing is completely wild

it's kinda sad because it felt like Brandon was trying to right the ship by giving Millie a backstory and something resembling a character dynamic with Blitzo. it's not a great episode but it's leagues better than the unpleasant shitshow of the last two Viv written outings with Stolas in them and the group is once again in the forefront (funny how that happens whenever Viv isn't the one writing the script)

bu even that wasn't enough, because the views are showing HB is increasingly dead in the water. if they even make it to s4 we might be looking at something totally outsourced getting only 5M views tops, if not lower

"I'm not entirely sure I believe Viv's 'it was a different episode that we shelved' thing."

Nor should you. Viv's a notorious liar, and not a particularly good one, and I'd be willing to stake real money on the episode being rewritten solely because of the leaks. It couldn't have been easy on the animators, going back to the drawing board, but when has Viv ever cared about her animators before?

[chrysanthemumgames]

Could you share a little more about your writing process? Do you outline? I’m struggling with keeping the amount of choices down in my game but also keeping it customizable

I may not be the best person to ask about this, as I'm honestly still quite an amateur, but I'll share some of what I do, and maybe it'll help.

I do think some amount of outlining is pretty necessary for writing an interactive fiction. Flying by the seat of your pants (that is, just writing until you're done, then going back to rewrite everything into coherence) isn't really sustainable practice for a (long) choice game. You really want to know at least where all the major branches of your game are going, and where they can meet back up again.

Those meeting places are called chokepoints, and they're vital.

For example, in Chapter Four of FoA, the player has three different routes of investigation they can take. They can go talk to Lethe and try to help heal her, they can go into the city to see if the spirits know anything, or they can go to the riverbank to try and pinpoint the source and nature of whatever is ailing the river Lethe. This results in three distinct scenes, each with their own choices, and if I'd wanted to, all of them could have further branched in some big way that would affect the plot, and so on, and so forth.

The thing is, that's not really doable. There needs to be some place the branches meet up again so the story can continue, at least as early in the game as Chapter Four! In this example, it was literally a meeting where everyone talked about their findings, but of course it doesn't have to be. The point is, it brought the branches back together again and allowed the story to continue. You should probably at least have a sense of when the bigger branches are going to occur, and what's going to bring them together again. That alone will help you control the number of choices and branches you offer. If you know they all have to eventually get the player to the clock tower at midnight or something, then you know how to steer things within each branch.

My outlines tend to be a little more detailed than that. I start with a beat chart for the game (or, in the case of BotL, a beat chart for each subplot, because it's basically several subplots stacked together wearing a trenchcoat), and from there I put them in the right order and make a beat chart for the whole thing.

A 'beat chart' here is just a list of the big things that happen like 'PC meets Iasion' or 'Trial of Pirithous and Theseus.' Once you have a really general outline like that, you can stop outlining if you want. You have a roadmap, and if you're more of an improvisor, that should still be enough to help you steer yourself towards the necessary chokepoints. If you prefer to plan more, like me, you can break your outline into chunks and add levels of detail. I will do a chapter-by-chapter outline with a list of scenes for each, and then when I come to the specific chapter I will actually outline the scenes with code before writing my way through them. Sometimes all at once, sometimes in the form of outline, scene, outline, scene.

Finding the process that works for you is a big part of succeeding at finishing an IF, I think. Yours might not (probably won't) be the same as mine; the important thing is that it keeps you moving forward (and not just laterally, into more and more branches). Branches are great, but you have to prune them back sometimes for the healthiest plant. IF. You get what I mean, I hope.

[pennyblossom-meta]

I want to start your story because I love your meta but I'm scared because of the major character death tag 😭 I can't have L die like in canon, don't hurt me

anon is referring to The Ides of April

Hello and welcome, dear anon! I'll try not to give you spoilers but I will say that, for now, you're in the clear for any major characters dying.

But what is a major character? There's certainly Anna and L, the main characters for TIoA series --- but then there's also Watari, Light, Misa, Rufus, Millicent and the Task Force. I'd consider them major characters as well, even if they're presented as secondary for chunks of the storyline. Millicent is a driving force even from a distance, acting as Anna's conscience when she falters or is unsure of what to do. Anna does ignore a lot of Millicent's advice, but no matter :p

So, the concept of a 'major character' is not so set in stone. The more time you spend with them throughout the story, the more connected you feel. It's all a matter of perspective and immersiveness.

That being said, the story is a Death Note x Harry Potter crossover and quite niche, so it may not be to most people's tastes. The writing itself is so-so and I'm always tempted to rewrite past chapters. I hope you'll enjoy it if you do decide to read it and would love to know your thoughts on the plot so far, but the heavy world building might be a turn off for some people. For some reason, I just can't seem to write without indulging in a mammoth of context around the characters.

Have a wonderful weekend! Feel free to ask questions here or in AO3, I'll try to reply as soon as I'm able.

[lynxfrost13]

LYNXXXXXX for the ask game..... 1 for sonderbar and 3, 6 and 14 for pebble 🥹🥹? I heart him fuckkk also. 20 for voel pretty please.....

RENEEEE TY FOR THE ASKKK

Sonderbar

What was the original thought that led to the creation of this character?

I wish I could say more, but I just went "what if a replika thought they were a different unit" and from there I thought going from a really low ranking/common unit to one of AEON's top dogs would be really fun to explore!

3. How long was the process before the character reached its final version? (or a version that would be clearly recognizable as the character?)

OKAY I actually have the exact time and date of her conception for you: July 22nd in the year of our lord 2024

^ This was the original thought that led to her, but I didn't make her intro post until August 3rd, which is definitely when she became the Sonderbar we know today, I remember spending a solid chunk of time trying to name her and work out some of the more fun details about her that night, like her arm defect! Also I think I have mentioned it before but she was originally very different character wise, she was a lot more of a real threat and not at sierpinski, and even had gotten a destabilized adler unit to be by her side in that version of her which I did think was a really neat idea!! However I am very happy with the beautiful girl I have today, idk something about her being much less able to become a falke in the setting she's in really gets me and feels more realistic to the setting of sierpinski/signalis to me.

Pebble

3. What was the first thing you decided on, the character's name, appearance, personality or their role in the story?

Appearance! And he's changed a bit since then! I went through and dug up his first ever art pieces for you for fun! The first pic was his birth into the world... 4 years ago... shortly shortly followed by his first ref... looking at my old art of him is wilddd but here's his progression from 2021 -> 2022 -> 2024

6. What was the thought process behind their appearance? Did you go mostly for the aesthetic or are there other reasons they look the way they do?

Tbh he was just made for the aesthetic at first, I originally tried to make him look more like many types of river rocks but settled on the stone and moss look. He's also originally from wings of fire so I also took into account what type of dragon he'd be: a mud/sea hybrid! He gets his fins and glow spots from the seawing side, and his chunky solid build from the mud :)

14. Do you have any quotes tied to the character, either from the story itself or from another source that fit them?

Idk if song lyrics count but I'm counting them, Karma by AJR is THE Pebble song and if I had the skill and patience the animatic I'd make would be legendary... these lines especially I think are really defining for his character:

Time, I know we're out of time But what if sad thoughts come and I can't stop it Bye, I don't wanna say bye If only I could keep you in my pocket...

^ I say it's very character defining mostly because although he's sort of in sotry/lore limbo right now (the amount of retcons and rewrites he's gotten... I might yap abt those one day) Pebble's always managed to have this core theme of moving on from grief funnily enough. He does lose someone important to him (again kind of old lore, originally he lost a partner -> changed to child -> partner again -> in limbo again but I think it might become a loss of a best friend and/or partner. This is up in the air rn mostly because at the time I wasn't happy with how those other versions of the character existed solely around Pebble and weren't really characters in their own right. Perhaps this is hell). I really have to work on my wof worldbuilding and Pebb's story again tbh, he deserves it and now you've got me thinking about him again... I actually also might put him into Voel so that leads into a nice transition lmao!!

Voel

20. Bonus question: share any additional thoughts, art, favourite scenes, anything you've been waiting for a chance to ramble about

aw fuck this is gonna be such a long post I don't think I've done a true yap sesh abt Voel yet... I'm gonna try to keep it to the bare bones but THERES SO MUCH I WANNA YAP ABT AND WORK OUTTT AUGHHH a lot of this text is copied from random discord places where I've already done some talking so I'll put that stuff in quotes

Also just for fun but I think it does better at giving the vibes for everything is my eternally in progress pinterest board for Voel + the lands and races here

"So the background for how this world was formed into what u see on the map is that originally, the world was a barren and dry wasteland inhabited by one single being, Arvellis (names are being workshopped rn). They only knew the world they were born into but fell in love with it despite it being incredibly harsh to live in. They spent their entire life exploring the wasteland hoping to find someone, anyone to share it with, but eventually they realized and accepted that they were completely alone. Their heart couldn’t take the grief, and they died (rip lonely guy 😔). Their body was full of a lot of potent magic though, and so as it rotted and as its blood seeped into the ground, it became the catalyst for life on Voel! There was also a small explosion of that potent magic caused by the heart upon dying, which is why there’s the lake where it is. Arvellis was HUGE so parts of their body are still easily recognizable as landmarks present day, notable the ribs in the desert, and south Quara's islands are made up of skull fragments"

Okay so that's how everything is created and from there I've got those 4 main regions with their respective races:

Thros is the primarily rocky desert region (formerly grassy plains, scrapped that though). The Throsians inhabit it, they're inspired by a mix of real life animals (long distance running plain mammals, wasps, pangolins, etc) as well as buggy type aliens and the draenei race from warcraft. Here's some old ass sketches from when I finally solidified a lot of their features, I think the bottom headshot and the headshot next to the big YES are the most accurate to what they look like. Originally I considered making them mammals but idk about that... I might still keep them mammalian but get rid of the small sexual dimorphisms they had. They've got weird ass sturdy feet that are built for both running on rocky and rough desert terrain, and along with their long legs they're also very long jumpers. These guys can run for ages at a steady pace because of gill-like structures on their torsos that help them take in more air as they're in motion, and they've also got their tails for balance!

Culturally I'm still figuring a LOT out for these guys but Throsian cities are kind of cool in that they're inspired by paper and potter wasps in terms of how organic they look. This was a super rough sketch from a while ago kinda showing that. All Throsian cities apart from their "capitol" one (which is essentially just the crossroads city so it's big bc there's a lot of Throsian commerce happening as well as travel) are nestled into the ribs of Arvellis. Yeah the dead giant guy. His ribs over time turned into stone and fragments + whole bits are scattered across the entire desert. The cities being nestled in and on there is also practical since it keeps them in a cool location with less sun beating down on them. Also it's cool as fuck to live right on the bones of a dead god.

Quara is a little weird in that it's kind of spread out, and the Quarans as a people are also generally split into three groups based on their region + regional culture divides. They're essentially fish folk/mermaids with legs lmao. Here's some ancient ass brainstorming from early last year, they were originally ALL called Tideborn before I swapped to the general name of Quaran for the race so sorry if it's a bit confusing.

"For a long time the tideborn as we know them today were united under one leader and they were a very strong unified nation across Voel, with lots of underwater highways of a sort connecting the different islands. Slowly over time though cultural and physical differences grew and they sort of just naturally drifted apart into individual little groups. The southern tideborn and northern tideborn are often in disagreement over how to best worship the tidemother and tend to not get along present day as a whole in terms of culture (there are lots of individual exceptions of course, and city dwellers intermingle much more). It’s not a hostile relationship, they keep up a business relationship and trade often, but each thinks the other has the wrong idea. Southern tideborn really stick to the idea of the tidemother as a wanderer first and then protector. And they tend to have much smaller but more frequent villages, with many of them passing through the villages and acting like wanderer knights of a sort (I love knights. Fish knights. Let me have this)

Whereas the tropical tideborn think more along the lines of, protector over wanderer. They have strong, large fortified cities that are connected to each other and from there they protect people much more locally (and if needed they can send their people in huge groups to assist during like. Natural disasters, disease spreading, etc on a more global scale)

The temperate water Tideborn are kind of a weird middle ground? They’re not wanderers in the sense that their southern cousins are, but they tend to be traveling merchants and entertainers and such instead (they see that as a way of helping people too. Not just saving them from danger but providing goods and stories) and their influence on both of their brother groups has led to this odd little coalition that serves as a loosely united leadership for the tideborn as a whole."

This is all hella old and some things have changed but most of it is still true. The Tidemother is the deity that all of the Quaran cultures revere regardless of their differences!! Also I made it a lil confusing but Northern Quarans are the tropical fish variant, Southern are the arctic fish variant, and the temperate Quarans are a mix of tropical, arctic, and freshwater/river fish variant. Northern Quarans tend to physically be shorter,more slender and naturally have lots of bright colors and patterns, Southern Quarans on the other hand tend to be very large size wise. They're both taller and usually more heavyset since their bodies adapted to storing more fat for the colder enviroment. Again the temperate Quarans aren't as fleshed out but they have a lot more variety in terms of body shape, but color wise they're never as eye catching as their northern cousins.

Culture wise something that has changed is Southern Quarans do also have a few small fortress type cities, nowhere near the scale of the north though. I really struggled figuring out the general architecture style for both south and north Quara, but I think these rough sketches do a decent job of showing what I want. Sorry abt my handwriting but yeah! Northern Quarans tend to have very organic and round strucutres with lots of open space due to the tropical climate. A lot of their structures are inspired by conch shells and underwater organics, and their cities also tend to be very busy visually, with a lot of buildings intertwined/ stacked which can almost make it feel like the city is crawling on itself. Although the building layout is super busy, Northern cities do always have a clear and wide main highway going in and through. Southern Cities on the other hand are very bare bones at first glance. They can come off as very cold and rigid and that's bc Southern Quarans love their inorganic structures. They use a lot of hard straight edges for their structures, with really tall ceilings and neat square or rectangle layouts. It's not that they don't like incorporating organics, but they like them contained and orderly. If you go up to any South Quaran city wall it's guaranteed to be intricately carved, either with artistic depictions of historic figures, animals, etc or just patterns.

OH also fun detail since I will be talking about the skeleton of a magic system that I have rn, but Southern Tideborn have a tradition of getting magical tattoos as a sort of coming of age ritual.

So next up is Dekthros and its draconic citizens, the Dekthrians! I'm currently in the process of reworking them to try and make them fit a little better into the world/not be just generic dragons/dragonfolk because I worry that they are (Ultimately I'm creating all of this for myself BUT that's exactly why I want to change things). So the fun thing about the Dekthrians is that they all mostly live in the mountain region of Voel, but they live underground since that region has a lot of naturally sprawling caverns. Think of like how expansive and huge the new minecraft cave enviroments are and how sometimes they don't even feel closed in, that's basically what it's like. The big thing the Dekthrians have going for them is that they're generally known for their skill when it comes to crafting and forging weapons, armor, and jewelry, and their cities aren't called Forge Cities for nothing. At the center of each city is a giant forge and crafting center, inspired by Ironforge and dwarf architecture from warcraft (all of their aesthetic is generally warcraft dwarf inspired. There is a theme here of me taking a lot of inspo from warcraft aesthetics lmao). Another thing I think is really awesome is that the Forge Cities aren't isolated, but there's a lot of different smaller settlements in pockets of the underground all connected by major underground tunnels. An easy and safe way to travel through the otherwise very harsh mountain range is by just traveling the cave system, it's well lit and easy to go on foot or via other transportation modes, and there's plenty of points where someone could stop and spend a night resting. I've done almost no art when it comes to Dekthros or its inhabitants but here's a really fast concept scribble I did a while ago for a tunnel/forge city. They tend to have a lot of bridges built across for accessibility, and Dekthrians tend to layer their homes vertically since the caves allow for that. They literally just dig into that rock and live there!

Physically I don't have too much to say about the Dekthrians other than they're mostly built like the typical western dragon... but I'm planning on fleshing them out at somepoint to allow for variation from their chunky bulky builds (I have to work it out, but I'm planning on potentially a variant that lives on the coast, mostly as an excuse to put Pebble into Voel lol, but also a more serpentine/cloud serpent inspired high altitude variant...). The cool things that I do have about them though are some of their cultural bits, mostly their visage crafting and their funerals. The visage crafting is partially in limbo right now as well due to figuring out what the limitations should be and if it should even exist as it is right now, but essentially a coming of age thing that most Dekthrians participate in is designing and crafting their own tool/weapon/accessory of choice that the also enchant to give them a smaller form more similar to the size of the other Voelian races as a way to integrate better (Dekthrians are the largest of all the main races, with Quarans and Throsians being in a similar range and Teelans varying more... I'll get to them later tho). Again I do have to workshop it but I really like the idea of it being a big deal in their society to spend a long time designing something that's just right for you!! Whatever a Dekthrian makes/chooses is pretty permanent in that making another visage is incredibly difficult due to the magic system I'm also still working on!!

Anyway the other thing I think is really neat about them is their funerals because they go all out. Some more copied text coming up

"it ties into the idea of their primary god being The Mourner... The Dekthrians build off of this and their traditional funerals are basically these very beautiful parties. Everyone is invited regardless of whether they knew the person that died, because this is a chance to get to know them now. The entire thing lasts several days, with the first day being the cremation (burial also happens but is less common. Each family member contributes to the lighting of the fire in cremation) and families tend to have a place where their visage tool is stored afterwards. Not much else happens the first day apart from a quiet moment for personal mourning. The next day is when festivities are expected to start, and these differ from group to group on length and what they do during them. Some parties last a couple days, some last up to a month (tends to happen with popular figures or leaders). The common things in all of them are stories, incredible food, and lots of games. Most Dekthrians try to do activities that the dead person would’ve enjoyed, so maybe poetry reading would happen at one, or there would be a concert at another, etc. It’s a lot of fun and they do a really good job of not just partying but also remembering that person. The last day, whenever it is, usually has a big send off to the deceased, where everyone gathers and a nighttime fire display with lots of colors (magical fireworks basically) marks the end of the ceremony."

Theyr'e the only race whose funeral/death rites I've fleshed out, I do want to get around to everyone else eventually.

Okay last of the races are my favorite children, the Teelans! Aesthetically they're heavily inspired by both the brokers from warcraft and a lot of cool pottery and mesoamerican art and architecture! Here are the brokers for fun because I think they deserve more love (#1 broker fan here they were the best thing to come from shadowlands and I'm dying on that hill)

Teelans are a funny race in that they are technically constructs (animated beings that are usually crafted/sculpted/grown etc) but they're fully sentient and intelligent, where true constructs might have some personality they're ultimately made for a purpose and aren't sentient. The super fun thing about the Teelans is that they're essentially living clay dolls, and a huge part of their culture is self expression and body modification. The variety you can get in size and shape in these guys is one of my favorite things about them, here's some old arts of them.

The blue "flame" is what separates them from true constructs and it's kinda like their soul/consciousness. They're really hard to fully kill because of that, you'd have to completely pulverize their body and leave it unsalvageable. Also a fun thing is that the way Teelans are "born" is via an enchanted mud pit that they emerge out of all goopy -> they then dry out into a very basic humanoid shape and from there they start making adjustments and modifications themselves as they progress through life. They also can't die from old age! I feel like I don't have as much I want to say about them but another thing I think is neat and that transitions semi nicely into other stuff is that Teelan homes are true constructs. Teelan cities technically CAN just get up and move anywhere anytime because most buildings are animated constructs!!

I also don't have a lot to say about constructs apart from what I've already said, but I do want to point out a notable one called the City Colossus. No one really knows who animated it or why they did it (it's theorized that it woke up/was "born" due to a high saturation of god blood in that region...) but the Colossus is always traveling around Voel, and it's become a weird mobile trade hub of sorts. There's again, still a lot I'm working out like whether all of the races inahbit the city -> or if I want to make someone new OR I have considered leaving it abandoned and I do like that a lot. Anyway, the Colossus is completely harmless and just completes its route every year and I love it a lot.

The last thing I really wanna talk about is the magic system which is undergoing some serious reworking, what I can definitely say about it is that everything in this world does have magical properties of varying degrees, with organic creatures having more typically (an exception is the Teelans but they're weird). There's two primary types of magic that can be performed, enchantments and wards. Enchantments are usually assumed to be "temporary magic" and while that is true a lot of the time, the main difference between an enchantment and a ward is where the magic comes from. Wards come from a magic user drawing on their own magic, which is a lot more taxing and typically reserved for bigger permanent spells (for example, Quaran tattoos or Dekthrian weapons) where enchantments make use of other magic sources (so this would be like using animal and mineral ingredients or potion brewing to give temporary effects usually). It's mostly undergoing some reworking because I like it when magic is a little more grounded and has hard set rules, and I felt like earlier on Voel didn't have that! I'm currently trying to figure out the consequences of someone overusing ward magic, it's probably gonna involve just dying from being so drained buttt I'm also playing around with the concept of draining yourself of magic leading to something worse... idk as you can tell a lot of this is still very much being developed!!! That's basically all the big stuff but for fun and as a treat if you made it to the bottom of this, here's some different rough creature concepts for this silly world

[27spoons]

yapping to you about that insane act 2 of crush and telling you about my favorite lines because i am a mutual supporter.... n e ways

"You had to fucking grip it like that?" As you continue your work, Nat snarls— or attempts to, but she really isn't that scary right now.

THIS HAD ME HOWLING and also it's so painfully nat... like i heard soapy t in my head dude.. superb dialogue all around you write her speaking patterns sooooo well.

also, this might be niche (and kinda my own freak) but the way you describe injuries really scratches (no pun intended) an itch. i love the wording you use

"I didn't even start doing shit until late sophomore year. Denny and his gang move dope, and I've always had a hard time saying no. So, when it was offered…" She shrugs, "I did some lines. But it's not something I do often."

SHE SAID THE THING!!! literally pointed at my screen like THE LINE... THE LINE...... yes....

It takes you a second to catch up and understand what's happening, but you kiss her back this time despite the tachycardia causing your chest to feel tight. 

TACHYCARDIA????? oh your wording... YOUR WORDING... ate so hard with that line i'm sorry

"Oh," Nat pulls back slightly, using her hands on your shoulders to keep you from moving back in to continue the kiss. "Yeah, I think we're a little too dressed for that."

and also

"You make it sound like we're assembling IKEA furniture," you deadpan, but the corners of your mouth twitch into a smile. "Some assembly required," she quips back, closing the distance and kissing you again.

giggled. chuckled even. you write true to canon silly nat so well

not gonna quote anything from The Action because... i'd quote the entire thing you knocked it out of the fucking PARK my friend it ATE (no pun intended) like oouguhhhh you can write sex but can you write intimacy is always the question and the answer is yes. you killed it. wonderful 10/10 no notes

final review: SO GOOD. YALL BETTER CLAP FOR THIS INCREDIBLE FUCKING WRITER RIGHT HERE !!!! and also i'm terrified for everything to go downhill but i also can't wait to see it happen because i know you're gonna make that shit HURT...

anyways thank you for entertaining this ask. 5 stars 10/10 would (and will) read again

THANK YOU FOR THIS MESSAGE IT'S GENUINELY SO NICE TO SEE PEOPLE BREAKING DOWN THE WORK AND SEEING THE REFERENCES

when i read my own works back to myself, in my head, if i cant hear sophie t's nat........... it's getting rewritten. when i was reading the first chunk of it back to soph she pointed out phrases that didn't sound right and i was like........ damn ur right.......... rewriting this

as for the injuries and technical stuff............. i have medical training so i was like "teehee i'm gonna make this descriptive"

ANYWAYS!!!!!!!!!! thank you for the nice comments 🥺🥺🥺🥺 i promise I'll only make the pain kinda painful in the upcoming chapter

i was looking for the first gif but after posting the answer to 🍓's ask i realise that these gifs r the same thing just in different fonts

[yarameijer]

Hi, I've been reading accidental reversal and I really like your 'what if' scenarios with tenma and the gang, and I've had a fic idea I've been considering for a while that I'd appreciate your input on

I've really gotten attached to the idea of a Deaf Tenma, making the decision not to go to a Deaf School (The only Deaf school in Japan that I can find is Meisei Gakuen, which is located in tokyo, which is extremely close to if not the same city where Raimon is) so that he can play for the soccer team that inspired him, only to find the whole fifth sector mess going on.

naturally, he starts the whole revolution, because hes putting the quality of his education on the line to play for raimon, and he isn't about to let that sacrifice for nothing.

tsurugi notices straight away, and when he goes home he immediately starts learning JSL, because first of all he is Not ableist (for obvious reasons), and second is because if he's going to be monologuing at this kid, he's going to make sure he can be understood (he ends up being to go to interpreter when aoi/shinsuke isn't there)

shunsuke asks aoi to teach him and they bond

endou is surprisingly good at JSL when he picks it up (good with his hands + has a very expressive face), kidou, not so much (obscured face, not very expressive anyways)

due to the tension among the team in the first few games, it takes a good chunk of raimon an embarrassingly long time to realize that he isn't just wearing earbuds, and that he doesn't just have an odd accent, and that him looking directly at peoples mouths isn't just a quirk (shindou/kirino/sangoku being like 'How did you not realize? it's so obvious, we've just been learning independently')

also because I've noticed a trend in the show that these kids sure do like to monologue on the soccer field, and I think it's funny if they keep getting interrupted by a kid that just, does not seem to care (its difficult to lip read from a distance, they won't always be facing him, and it seems like a bad idea to wear hearing aids while playing a sport where kids can whip up fire tornadoes, because the average cost of a pair of hearing aids is approximately $4000, or ¥592,560)

anyways it's just an idea I've been considering

Whoa, I love that idea? It sounds so great! I’m a huge fan of rewriting the old story with just enough of a spin to give it a new flavor, and this one’s super interesting. Kinda reminds me of an idea I had at some point in which Tenma is mute and uses sign language. Also lmao Tenma pulling the revolution because ‘’I did NOT sacrifice my education just to get stuck with this crap’’ sounds like such a Tenma move, ngl.

Also yes, Raimon is located in Inazuma Town which is somewhere in Tokyo, it’s on the wiki if you want to check it out!

Okay so I’m not sure what exactly you wanted my input on, so I’m just gonna ramble! Feel free to send me another ask or comment if you wanted something more specific. Anyway, some things that immediately come to mind when I think about this:

1) One of the reasons Tsurugi takes his JSL lessons so seriously could be because Tenma reminds him of his brother. It’s not the same situation but in a way they’re both dealing with disabilities and Tsurugi has seen firsthand how hard it can be for Yuuichi, so he’s a bit softer towards Tenma because of that.

2) Depending on how much of a little shit you want Tenma to be: imagine him turning off his hearing aids at comedic moments, like when someone starts gushing about Fifth Sector’s goals. Tenma just nope’s straight out of that one. Or, although this might be a bit later when he’s more comfortable with the team, him turning off his hearing aids when someone starts scolding him. Absolute power move. They don’t even need to know he does it, maybe someone eventually finds out, cue comedic moment.

3) Since you mentioned accents… Tenma’s from Okinawa and as far as I could find, Okinawans have at least a bit of an accent. Deaf people are also known to learn how to speak by copying the lip movements of the people around them… so if Tenma grew up on Okinawa, it could be assumed he’s grown up speaking Okinawan Japanese and has the accent to match. I imagine non-deaf Tenma would have worked out most of his accent after he moved to Okinawa town so as to not stand out, but deaf Tenma would have had a harder time doing so/might not have even realized he had an accent in the first place. (There is a difference between Okinawan Japanese, which is a Japanese dialect, and the Okinawan language, which is a whole other language altogether and only a few people speak it (mostly the elderly) because it stems from a period before Okinawa was Japanese territory, so if you make use of this idea, maybe look into that a bit. It’s a bit of a complicated situation but I think it could really add something to the characters). This does depend a little on whether Tenma was born deaf or not, I think (that would also influence his lip reading/sign language skills - was he born deaf or has he only been deaf for a few years?)

4) Find subtle ways to mention it throughout the story instead of using full paragraphs. I like comparing it to writing someone who wears glasses. Small details are glasses getting fogged up when going from the outside cold into a warm room, or when drinking tea. Smudges on glasses that annoy the character. Pushing them up when they slip down their nose. These are all small, subtle actions that add a lot to the story and ‘remind’ readers of this detail without putting too much focus on it - you could try and do the same thing with Tenma’s deafness: lip reading is really difficult so Tenma might misunderstand or ask for clarification, or little habits he has (like you mentioned, watching people’s mouths rather than their eyes).

Anyway, I’d definitely recommend doing research on writing deaf characters because it’s very easy to accidentally make a mistake and come off as disrespectful. I’ve read a story or two in which there was so much focus on a character being deaf that it seemed to be their only character trait, and not only does that take away from the story, but it’s also not a good representation. Being deaf is not a defining character trait; it’s just part of their character, like wearing glasses or having asthma. An important thing that should be acknowledged but not constantly mentioned/made to be the center of their life and character.

Some questions that immediately popped into my head:

1. Was Tenma born deaf or did he lose his hearing?

2. Does he shout or say the name of hissatsu techniques? Would he even bother with that?

3. In fact would he even bother trying to learn the names of hissatsu techniques (since they can be super weird + it’s during a match and he’s not wearing hearing aids, so these both make it hard to lip read) and instead just come up with names for them himself? Imagine him referring to Sangoku’s Fence of Gaia as ‘’the rock thing’’ or Kami no Takuto as ‘’Shindou-senpai’s lightshow’’.

4. Does the entire team learn sign language (and how good are they at it), or does Tenma speak and lip read more with certain members of the team and use sign language with others?

Of course the amount of detail you put into it all depends on how long you want the story to be! I hope this is sort of what you wanted, and again, feel free to ask something else if this isn’t what you hoped for.

And in case you decide to write the story, best of luck!

[woodchipp]

You have a lot of thoughts about the topic, so what ideas/suggestions/other input (if any) do you have for an Omori rewrite?

Ideas? I have way too many. I've outlined some of them here and here (in a very disorganized manner), but I've thought up a lot of new ideas since then. I recommend to check the linked posts first, but I'll try my best to recap some of the ideas from the posts I've linked in this post, if you don't mind!

Long and most likely incoherent rant incoming.

1) Make Mari actually kill herself, of course. I really did like the game's initial premise of this young kid and his friends trying to deal with the loss of a beloved relative/friend before The Twist, so I'd cut The Twist and try to keep the story straightforward in that aspect. Perhaps that could've made Sunny a bit more sympathetic since he'd get to be the victim of circumstance the game evidently wanted people to see him as and allowed the story to explore Mari as a full character instead of reducing her to the typical saint for everyone to revere and cry over.

One could try to make the suicide itself the plot twist, though. Maybe the sight of Mari's hanged corpse could've been so incomprehensible to the 12-year-old Sunny he'd just pretend to have never seen it in the first place (his mind would block it out) and instead convince himself that Mari happily left for college with Hero. Maybe Sunny mentioning her to Hero or asking him about her after he comes back would make the latter pause and then change the subject of the conversation in a neat little bit of foreshadowing. Besides, a good chunk of the original game's foreshadowing for its twist already pointed to suicide, so why reinvent the wheel?

I insist on this idea in particular because it's tragic, it's horrifying and, most importantly, it's realistic - it's everything the game strove to be. Realism-induced horror is one of my favorite "genres" of horror, and I think OMORI could've had a great shot at exploiting said trope to its benefit were it not for The Twist.

The biggest problem with that sort of plotline, I think, would be Basil. His importance to the game's story relies on The Twist; without it, he has no reason to be there. I woudn't want to cut him altogether, but I can't think of an organic way to insert him into the "Mari kills herself" plotline either, so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

2) Make Sunny and Mari's home life horrible lmao. I've already talked about it here and in the first linked post, but I'll reiterate myself - you don't grow up into a strict perfectionist or with self-esteem as low as Sunny's (the game very clearly implies Sunny had self-esteem issues even before he killed Mari) by partying at your besties' birthdays and hugging plushies together. Problems like that tend to be caused by a dysfunctional home.

Yes, the "abusive parents" trope is rather overused nowadays, but I'd still consider it somewhat of an improvement over the complete lack of information about Sunny's family pre-Mari's death. I also think it'd have been quite interesting if the game explored how the toxic home environment the two were born into would inform their personalities. That way, the recital argument would be less "why is Mari so mean 2 me 💔" and more the result of their issues boiling over.

Tying into this idea is the next one.

3) Make Black Space a recollection of Sunny's backstory a la Time's Arrow. Long story short, Time's Arrow is an episode of a show called Bojack Horseman that stands out to me due to the way the featured character's trauma is subtly conveyed without sacrificing story - the flashbacks are mostly coherent, but filtered through the character's emotional perception of the events at the time. The best example of this is a formative memory from the character's childhood, in which she sees her father callously throw her beloved toy into the fireplace before warning her to keep her emotions in check and telling her not to cry. The fear she felt at the moment infuenced her memory of the event, represented by the aforementioned fireplace becoming a wall of hellfire.

I think such an approach would've been a great fit for Black Space as well. Not only would this allow the player to get some real insight into what made Sunny the way he is, his memories being filtered through his emotions would allow the game to characterize him (e.g. the sash bars on his house's windows could be made to look like the bars of a prison cell to imply he felt trapped in his own home). This could even allow the game to show us the big argument itself!

4) Make Kel, Aubrey, Basil and Hero characters instead of props for Sunny to interact with. The story should've examined their issues too. Hero and Kel have some workings of interesting conflicts (e.g. Hero's outburst and how it affected Kel, Hero struggling with relating to the friend group only as their "dad", Kel's status as the unfavorite sibling), as do Basil (his parents and the abandonment issues stemming from them, his general relationship with his grandma) and Aubrey (see the second linked post), but none of that is elaborated on by the game in favor of focusing on Sunny and his (w)angst. Delving into their issues would've been way more interesting for me than listening to them go "man I miss my wife Tails Mari ;A;" over and over again, at least.

5) Make the game's timespan longer. 5 or 10 days instead of 3 would allow the game more room to get through the other characters' arcs before shifting focus to Sunny for the finale, I think.

6) Make Faraway Town a bit larger. Make it wackier, too. There's four streets, a church, a park and a supermarket. There's nothing to do in this town at all, which isn't good since it's where the player spends a good chunk of the plot in. The NPCs and their sidequests are equally cookie-cutter - buy a grandma her medication, tutor some kids, play hide-and-seek with the twins...

It'd have been nice if the main story's subject matter was juxtaposed with the sidequests being as batshit insane as realistically possible. "Realistic" doesn't have to mean "boring", IMO. Real life can be fun!

Tying into this idea is the next one.

7) Lock the good ending behind 100% completion of all the Faraway sidequests, probably...? It's one of my weirder ideas, and I don't know whether it'd be feasible since I'm not a game developer lol. But I think the game could've tried to make some sort of point about how Sunny managed to make headway in working on his issues only because he made the effort to socialize with people who weren't his comfortable circle of friends.

I don't know what to do with Headspace. Really. The general concept of a saccharine dream world created to avoid reality is nice on paper, but it's a big tumor on the plot - it contributes next to nothing to the player's understanding of Sunny or his friends and becomes entirely irrelevant halfway through the game. I guess I'd make it shorter?

[jadevine]

More acting stuff on exactly HOW American Gods shafted Orlando Jones (and a lot of their minority actors)

I don't know how many of my followers are like... still following me, or if they're just waiting on me to start on a new hyperfixation or update my works, but regarding current events in the fantasy/writing world, the allegations against Neil Gaiman are rocking a lot of people at the moment. Honestly, I'm only SOMEWHAT less upset about it.

You know why? Because I've distanced myself from Gaiman's works/fandoms after hearing how the production team of American Gods treated Orlando Jones, and by extension, a HUGE chunk of the minority cast.

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So it is fairly well-known by now that Orlando Jones started writing parts of the American Gods scripts. The scripts he was rewriting? His character Anansi's scenes, and basically all of the minority actors' scripts.

Given the response to his work (being widely acclaimed), I have no idea if most people realize that an actor taking on SOMEONE ELSE'S WRITING is actually a very bad sign in a production. Yes, even if they're credited like Orlando was, and yes, even if the results are fantastic like Orlando's writing was.

His response to being fired really hurt my heart because he mentioned somewhere that 1) he did not want to end up writing for the show and be responsible for so much, but 2) he kept doing it because the fans (especially the Black community) loved his work.

There are two implications with "an actor taking on writing," that make a nice little "shit is happening behind the scenes" sandwich:

-The actor is taking on an extra job, because

-The writers can't do their jobs.

In one of my Discord groups, I stayed up too late and made half a ramble about why actors doubling up on writing is a bad sign, especially when a non-white actor is rewriting something conceived by white folks.

Now I'm a hopeful theater actor instead of a TV actor, so there's definitely some details I'm missing, but the basics of "what does an actor DO besides memorize the script?" should be a good briefer.

Here are my screenshots behind the "read more" button!

I don't even know how I'd tag this, so I just did "American Gods" and "Bridgerton," but it's not like Tumblr's shitty search function would help me find my own post anyway.

Also, if anyone wants to hear more about my little addition about the OPPOSITE problem, where "Bridgerton's Season 1 had a shitton of unfortunate racial undertones because the writers seem like they just swapped out characters' ethnicities and called it a day, but we know damn well that young, inexperienced, and minority actors don't have the knowledge/freedom to do anything about it," feel free to ask.

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[avatarskywalker78]

Talk Shop Tuesday (now on a Wednesday), do you have more Doctor Who fic plans?

Well there's gonna be a sequel to the beginning, the end, and the (rebirth) of all things - which was building on my 'Ruby was created by the God of Beginnings' theory - but what that will look like very much depends on what the next couple episodes are gonna do (if Rusty Davies can stick the landing, mainly). There's also my Dhawan!Master redemption fic that I'm working on which is going alright but slowly, partly due to motivation and partly due to the fact that writing a non-linear narrative is hard (also at some point I'm gonna be covering the 'Children of Earth' storyline because a key point is that O tries and fails to find a solution that isn't the canon one, which haunts him for some time, and I think I'm unconsciously putting that off.)

The main story I'm planning, though? A rewrite of The Emilie Brooke Adventures!!!! A story I have been trying to complete since 2011 and been unable to due to lack of motivation, confidence issues (the reason why a lot of my FFN fics remained unfinished because I would start doubting myself and my writing) and getting far too caught up in details...and when I updated for the first time in five years only to get zero comments whatsoever despite having seen people follow it, it took out a big chunk of the desire to write it at all...

But turns out I really do want to - I have the old version up on AO3 but I really, really want to write the first part of her story and then all the other parts as well because I love her! I love Emilie Brooke! She's one of the oldest OCs I have and I want to share her story and to finally get to talk about her properly - something I can't do until I reveal who she actually is later down the line! So far one IRL person knows and one person on here knows both have agreed to keep the secret until the time comes, but I'd love to finally tell more people!! I want to write about her travelling with the Doctor, I want to write about her going off on her own journey, I want to write her establishing herself as another person who's willing and able to help her home planet when shit goes down, I want to write her!! So there's no more excuses!! I was originally going to do a rewatch of S1, S3, S4 and S5 before S6 because I've not seen any of them for a while...but I also want to get at least a start on the story so I'm gonna rewatch that first.

So who is Emilie Brooke? She's a seventeen-year-old girl born in the 51st century, raised by her grandparents from the age of eight, highly intelligent and resourceful, someone who used to travel with the Doctor and counts several of his friends and allies (and their friends and allies) as close family, including but not limited to Sarah-Jane, Luke, Clyde, Rani, Martha, Micky, Jack, Ianto and Gwen.

Of course, time travel makes things complicated, as in April 2011, though she's been living with Sarah-Jane for two years, some of these haven't even heard of her yet, let alone met her at this point in time... but thanks to the Doctor upgrading her phone she's still able to keep in contact with the versions who do, and she's feeling good about being able to help Earth as part of her aunt's team, but still misses the Doctor a little because he doesn't often come by.

So when she gets a TARDIS blue invitation in the post, she's delighted, and more so when she realises he's invited Amy, Rory, and River along too - it's been a while since she's seen them too, even if Amy and Rory don't know her yet...but it soon becomes clear that's something's up, and what seems like just another reunion turns into tragedy when the Doctor's killed by a mysterious astronaut. Her grief's made worse when his younger self shows up with no clue as to what just happened and she's not sure how she's supposed to deal with it...

But they were invited for a reason, and when a missing child turns out to be at the centre of it (alongside a mysterious, shadowy race) she understands why - except she seems to be the only one who does, because no one seems that bothered when they're unable to find her again. The Doctor's closed off, something is going on with Amy and her not-pregnancy, River is hiding something. A conspiracy seems to be taking shape and Emilie's convinced the Doctor's the target...but why? Was the child really responsible for his death? Why does no one seems to care about her fate? Who was the distant figure she saw on the Utah beach seconds after it all went down? Is what happened truly set in stone...?

And can they actually manage to save the girl in the end?

Talk Shop Tuesday

Tagging (let me know if you want to be added or removed): @shrinkthisviolet @starstruckpurpledragon @dream-beyond-the-fantasy

[thedreamparadox]

i saw this ask someone got the other day that was like. a self rec thing. and i think you should do it. share your top five favorite fics that you wrote

Only 5? Heeeck. Uh

In no particular order, under the cut because it is LONG lmao:

Pull These Curtains Closed. Not as a standalone work (in terms of the like, actual everything in this fic I'd say it's overall middling), but as the culmination of the entire character arc plot I did not originally plan to write AT ALL when I went "oh, I have some lingering plot threads from my JoD rewrites! I should do something with that!" and then it spiraled massively out of control lmao. Reala finally tells their old man to go fuck himself and has enough backup to not get dragged back to their shitty former life and brainwashed through the power of family and using actual communication. As a finale to a series, I'm super proud of how it turned out.

A Crow Perches Atop A Skyscraper, or Perching Crow for short (not uploaded anywhere). It was definitely a pandemic stress project, and bits in the post Game chapters are a little bit [hand wiggle], but it was an excuse to use a pile of old TWEWY OCs in a fun project, so it nabs the top five with no question. For context, it's P.erson.a 5 and TWEWY crossover fic, focused almost exclusively on A.kechi and Hype-chan before we got her actual identity reveal in Neo since Neo wasn't out yet, focused on the Shinjuku district, which was one I built up with some other RPers back in the day but then we didn't really ever get around to using. Featuring my mildly gremlin OC Composer, Haku, and his eternal beef with the yakuza, me going "Hey what if Hype and G.oro were related, that'd be fun", and me throwing around all my TWEWY OCs including my gay as hell punk hedgehog guy, my colorblind live game Reaper who has so much trauma, and a few other folks. The amount of explanation needed for anything to make sense means this is never getting publicly uploaded. (Also one of those two fandoms are ones I do NOT want to poke with their reputation, like no thanks lol)

Mad Rat Twist. Another project that got massively out of control when it was just supposed to be a cute, relatively short reunion fic. Ended up spiraling into a massive project and is still my most read/hits/kudos'd work despite being from two fandoms with virtually no overlap. (Part of the reason it exists is because Perching Crow was so much fun to write and characters dying in Tokyo is free real estate as far as being a fic writer is concerned.) It's got a little of everything, plus even a little bit of Coco even if she's her gremlin Neo characterization instead of my RP blog genuinely nice genki girl take. Mad Rat Dead's canonical bittersweet ending is really good, but I am soft and want Mad Rat and Heart to be happy together, they're zucchinis your honor ;u;

I definitely gotta pick one out of the shared ficverse/rp shenaniganery that's not uploaded anywhere. Picking one is hard tho. So like, to pick a solo, probably either As a Result of Trusting or Bendy Hours 1. The first for being a fun spin on an AU but make it about breaking the cycle of abuse through the power of trust and friendship while leaning on game canon for scene ideas, the second because it's the first fic I wrote with the little gremlin demon that's been eating my braincells for over two years at this point. I cannot pick a favorite out of the collab fics in that verse, there are too many XD

And while it's still in the process of being uploaded, honestly? Ink is Thicker than Water. CHUNKS of this thing are wildly self indulgent (the amount of Sammy content, so much worldbuilding, Bendy being adorable, and the delightful amount of body horror I was able to work in as a treat) while once again doing my repeated "I see this source material, I think I can improve it" thing that just keeps popping up in my work XD (And putting another one in the repeated motif of my writing of found family/recovering family and kicking a shitty dad to the curb.) Audrey, once I figured out what the everloving HECK her deal was was honestly a delight to write. And I got to play around with horror tropes! This fic is a behemoth and I'm honestly proud of it XD

[collegeboysam]

i hope me asking doesn't come off as rude, but do you ever plan to come back to your "you may bury my body" fic?

again im not sure the correct "protocol" ?? for asking things like this but im just curious ^_^

😭😭😭 this is NOT rude at all, if anything is the sweetest and most polite way of asking so don't worry about it <3

Honestly thank you for taking enough interest in the fic to ask about an update! I know it varies from author to author of course, but I personally don't mind being asked at all 🥰

To answer your questions: YES, ABSOLUTELY! I think "you may bury my body" is in the top 3 of my favorite fics I have written. I have so much fun when I'm going over the drafted scenes, researching for them and then completely writing/completing the chaptrs! I'll never leave YMBMB incomplete, I'm committed to finishing it.

I'm hoping and have all my fingers crossed that I'll post the next part this month.

Why I havent updated it yet is a longer story and will yap about it under the cut if you want to know <3

Basically, how YMBMB is written is a little messy? I came up with an entire timeline, then started drafting the chapters by writing the main events/scenes for each one of them and leaving keypoints of secondary scenes as bulletpoints I'd to fill up/complete in the future.

You could say the fic is kind of written from start to end, but only the main scenes between Aemond and Lucerys, so all the "bones and organs" of the body of the story are in place, but all the muscles and skin (the details and seconday scenes) are missing. That's what I have to work on for each update.

So each chapter is written around a 50%-ish I'd say? From start to end.

What I do for each chapter update is: I go over the draft I have already written, then write the missing scenes I initially left as bulletpoints. Many times I make the main scenes I previously wrote longer by adding more details (details of location descriptions, make action sequences and more elaborate or conversations between the main characters longer). Then I re-read the chapter a couple times for misakes (since english is my second language I try to be extra particular about this) and then I post it.

Now, for chapter 6 I kind of backed myself into a corner 😭😭

As I started working on it I realized I wasn't sold in the main scene of the chapter, it didn't feel all that cohesive, so I deleted it and wrote it again from scratch. I kept working on the chapter and as I checked on the rest of the draft I realized by changing the scene I had previosly written I deleted an important plot point that would become very relevant later. It even msessed with the end of the fic.

So I had to go back a second time and re-write the main scene again. I liked the new version better but I needed to reincorporate some points I had deleted (because I forgot how important they were for future chapters lol).

Trying to keep the new version with some of the old version's necessary points in it fucking killed me lol. It took me months to get it right since my workload and day-to-day life didn't give me time to write as much at the end of 2024 . And when I had time I kept adding and deleting, and then adding and deleting some more, until it finally felt right again. The adhd didn't help but that's another issue entirely lmao.

I know I'm being too particular about a fic when is just for fun but asfsdfsf I love writing it so much that I became very passionate about wanting it to come out just as I imagined it.

Thankfully the past few months have not been as hectic and chaotic, which gave me time to work on the fic properly again and not by chunks every other night after work. This is why I could also update the Halloween fic.

Anyhow, I'm much MUCH more pleased with how chapter 6 looks at the moment, I'm still adding details and scenes to it, but the main structure and plotlines of the fic are once again connected and untangled and I feel pretty happy with the result of the rewrite AT LAST 🥰🥰

My goal is to post the update this month, and I'll try my damn hardest to make it so AND to not let so much time go by in between updates for the rest of the story.

Sorry I used part of your ask to bent about the problems I created for myself adnflskfnlkfn prisoner in a cage of my own making tbh. But that's also part of the fun of fic writing I guess lol

When the update comes, I hope you enjoy it <3 Let me know what you think of it when you can 🥰

Thank you again for taking an interest in the story and for coming to ask about it, you're very lovely!

[mintchocochipsposts]

Donna 7, 14, 21!! <3

Oh Donna my beloved!

7. (Including her in fic? Is that an answer?) Truly I really enjoy when fandom depicts her interacting with the other Titans, because that's her family! She's so absolutely invested in that team, to such an unhealthy degree, but that's true of pretty much almost all the Titans. I do really like when fic represents that intensity! Also when fic captures just how much she loves everyone around her! Also her relationship with Dick since those two really are two sides of the same coin; any fic that has her and Dick leaning on each other as old friends is golden :)

14. Ooh I don't know what my favorite fashion aesthetic for her is! I do like a lot of her 80's outfits! I can kind of headcannon her as wearing some boho-style stuff as a result of spending so much time with Kory and Raven and also spending such a huge chunk of canon living in the Village. But she's also a character who can and should be wearing whatever's popular in the era she's being written! Is it a cop-out to say her starry costume is my favorite favorite look for her?

21. I do really like playing with the multiple histories bit for her! The identity crises are fun to write, especially when she's usually seen as such a pillar and so stable by the other characters! When canon pulls on her insecurities and lets her actual thoughts shine through it's usually really fun to read while she's also being a complete disaster! It's also so so interesting to write about nostalgia from her point of view. She's somehow such a cipher, even to herself in canon, and it makes it really fun to play with her interiority versus everyone else's views of her. Especially when she spends such a big chunk of canon fearing she's lost that interiority. She also has so many great canon relationships with so many of my other favorite characters to draw on too!

One thing I do hate about writing her, though, is the sheer amount of cross-referencing I have to do to make sure that I'm referencing events she would actually remember depending on the point in canon I'm basing things. (I had to go back and rewrite a decent chunk of million tons of light because I reread Return of Donna Troy and realized that she did have all of her memories back by Countdown and the dialog I'd written about her not having memories didn't make sense.) Gotta love the retcons!her