#also coming up with full backstories since before that i had kind of a vague idea

[hazshit-hotel-hater]

Since Viv still somehow cannot decide on what Angel overdosed on. I am taking my liberties and doing it my goddamn self. I will also be formatting this into a summary of what I think a good small backstory scene could be like while also giving Angel a safespace and bonding experience.

It’s in the tags but WARNING there is discussion of drug abuse and overdosing in this summary.

Urg, okay, Vague but also kind of not vague angel backstory stuff because ig viv cant make up her mind on her own OCs backstory

Angel is lying in bed with Husk sitting at the edge as per usual, and Angel starts talking about a few mild personal things (mental struggles, work, general issues, etc) and Husk suggests taking something mild to help him relax and sleep so he gets up and gets him a few pills and puts them in Angel’s hand; says its Benadryl just to help him sleep a bit, but notices quickly that Angel is suspiciously reluctant to take or even look at the pills. Obviously, he asks what's up and is met with the answer of, “Nothin’ I just don’t… use that stuff.” It piques Husk’s interest, and asks if it doesn’t work for Angel, who responds with, “It definitely works.” but ultimately, Husk decides not to pry; however, he lets Angel know he’s open to listen if it’s something he feels like he wants to talk about.

Angel, being weirdly stubborn but also becoming a bit more open with Husk by this time, takes a few minutes to actually say something but eventually informs Husk that it was something he used to try and get high off and had some really good and really bad trips with, but it was the drug that ultimately led to him suffering an overdose and never waking up after it. Both of them are quiet for a bit until Husk gets up and searches for something else to help Angel sleep and, once again, places a few small pills in his hand and says he can try these, but if not, he can try something else without pills. Angel is still reluctant but ends up accepting the offer and proceeds to carefully assort the pills into little categories, saying it’s something he ‘needs to do’. Husk doesn’t push further than that and watches Angel take the pills before the other lays down again.

Things once again go silent for a good ten or so minutes until Husk notices Angel uncomfortably folding his hands over his stomach but mentions that pills always make him feel queasy to an extent and that he only takes them with other people around so he’s distracted from the discomfort they give him. In an attempt to calm Angel’s apparent nerves on the topic, he decides to sit with the other until Angel falls asleep. Eventually, Husk follows suit, with both of them waking up the next morning and Angel giving a relieved and grateful, albeit shaky, sigh. The next morning consists of Angel thanking Husk but ends with the two coming to an agreement that next time Angel can't sleep, a liquid medication approach would be better.

I don’t know if I’ll ever do a full fledged writing of this, but the concept of triggers is something I’ve personally yet to see stated in Hazbin Hotel. This would be a good way to discuss clear lingering trauma Angel has while still treating it with the gentleness the character needs and severity the topic needs. Benadryl was also just becoming a thing around the 1940’s so it makes sense for this to be something Angel very likely could’ve overdosed on. The topic of common triggers is something interesting too; I’ve seen that in other media obviously but even though I know we won’t get it, it’d be nice to see the caution around said trigger and very slowly seeing the character become more open to it if it is a common thing like this. Not everyone will get over triggers and I myself also used to have a strained relationship with a certain pill like this, but there is always the chance that you will be able to use it somewhat normally again.

If this were to happen I’d be fine with it if Angel never got over the discomfort of pills, but much later on in the series if we saw him take some kind of antihistamine casually and comfortably it’d be really nice to see that kind of growth. And as for Husk, I’d like to see him be less shame-y with Angel’s struggles like he was in Episode 6. Since we’ve basically lost Cherri Bomb as his safespace from external stressors, I really think Angel will benefit from an actually deeply caring friend, especially one that doesn’t overstep his boundaries and doesn’t encourage self destructive behaviour. The same goes for Angel by the way, I’m really pissed that they didn’t have Angel apologise for harassing Husk and everyone else. It really is not that hard to at least try to have him feel sorry about that sort of thing. Fuck, here’s something I wrote in like 20 minutes.

——————

It’d be really nice to have someone to talk to, honestly, even though he didn’t speak to Husk very much at all prior to this; he was looking forward to it a little more now. Coming home… er… coming back to the hotel after work and chatting casually at a bar was just… something about it sounded so… calm. Sure, he could go to a random bar and flirt with some rando, but talking with an actual acquaintance while having a few drinks seemed so freeing. Not having to worry about someone staring at him from across the room and getting approached about some kind of ‘offer’ outside.

God, he fucking hated that... “Fuck…” Soft smile melding into a grimace, Angel began to chew slower and slower until he eventually stopped altogether and harshly swallowed. He’d probably been making Husk feel gross like that for ages now. Obviously, he’d seen the disgruntled faces he’d get in return for flirting, but he’d never actually thought about it like that until now. He couldn’t even say, ‘for some reason, it made him feel gross’; he knew exactly why; coming to terms with that, on the other hand, was a lot more uncomfortable than he’d imagined. “Hey, uh… Not to damper the mood, but… I…”His chest puffed as he took a deep breath, and each word pulled Angel to avert his gaze further from his food and the cat sitting across from him. “I was gonna say… I’m sorry for bein’ weird and touchin’ your face yesterday…” As he spoke up, his voice lightly cracked near the end of his sentence. “And when we were filmin’ the hotel commercial… And every time I’ve put my legs on ya lap… And any otha time I did somethin’ like that.”

——————

I haven’t even finished this writing yet (I’ll likely add the rest when I do finish it) but you can see that it genuinely is not that hard to fit in an apology.

Anyway I hope you guys enjoyed my little Angel Dust ideas. Be prepared for more eventually

[shizucheese]

Hey everyone! I finally finished the first fanfic involving Astarion and my Tav, Lysander, a half-drow death cleric of Kelemvor! Enjoy!

Fic description: After Shadowheart brings up Astarion's smell, he gets self-conscious and worries about whether or not it bothers Lysander. Lysander explains to him just how much of a non-issue it is. Astarion realizes that for all he and the others have talked about their pasts before the Nautiloid, he doesn't actually know a whole lot about Lysander. Backstory ensues. Full story is also below the cut!

Anxiety coursed through Astarion as he walked after Lysander as he led him to a quiet corner of the park.

It hadn’t been long after they had all eaten dinner that the young half-drow had approached him and asked if he could speak with him in private. And now a thousand thoughts were racing through his head. Was this it? The first meaningful relationship he’d had in two hundred years, and it was over?

Lysander stopped when he deemed they were suitably secluded, ran long, pale blue fingers through his pitch-black hair, and turned to face Astarion.

“Did I do something to offend you?” Worry clouded Lysander’s drow-red eyes. Astarion was stunned.

“What?”

“You’ve been avoiding me all day. Every time I come near you, you get all tense, and normally you’ll make some kind of joke at dinner about saving room for desert or having me for dessert, but tonight you didn’t say anything. Did I do something to make you uncomfortable? Did I push too far? If I did, please tell me, I don’t want—”

“Lysander, Darling, shh.” Astarion stepped forward to close the gap between them and cupped Lysander’s face in his hands in an attempt to sooth him. “You haven’t done anything wrong, I promise.” He was about to pull the other man into his arms, when he caught himself and flinched away. Lysander gave him a sad, deprecating smile, his point made.

“It’s just...Gods this is embarrassing…” Astarion looked away as he struggled to find the right words, before he decided the best course of action was to just come out and say it, and met Lysander’s eyes once again. “Does my smell bother you?”

Lysander stared, his mouth hanging slightly open.

“What?”

“My smell. I know I cover it up quite well, but I do smell like a corpse under it all, Darling. That doesn’t bother you?” He had played it off cooly enough when Shadowheart had brought it up, he thought, but he’d spent the rest of the day self-conscious about it.

Lysander let out a short, punctuated laugh and quickly covered his mouth.

“I’m sorry it’s just…Astarion.”  The way he said his name reminded Astarion vaguely of someone scolding a child, or explaining something very simple to one. “I’m a death cleric in the service of Kelemvor.”

Lysander said this as if this should have explained everything. When all he got in return was a blank stare, he went on.

“I’ve lived in the dormitories of a temple of Kelemvor since I was 15. Our back yard was a graveyard? Most of the magic I use is necrotic. I’m so used to the smell of dead bodies that it didn’t even register to me that that’s what you smelled like under the perfume until Shadowheart brought it up earlier today.”

“Oh.” Well, now he felt ridiculous.

“Honestly, I’m surprised I don’t smell like a corpse, all things considered.” Lysander said this in that way of his where Astarion could never be entirely sure if he was joking or being serious, and then lifted his wrist up to his nose and gave it a sniff for good measure.

Astarion chuckled and wrapped long pale fingers around Lysander’s upheld wrist, and pulled him into his arms, overwhelmed with relief and the love he felt for this ridiculous man, and kissed him, careful not to nick tender skin with sharp fangs.

They stood like that for a while, just holding each other, and Astarion took a moment to take in Lysander’s own smell. The smell of the incense he used in his worship clung heavy to his skin, along with things that Astarion had never quite been able to identify but, now that Lysander brought it up, he now recognized as the herbs and flowers used in burials. But there was something else there too, something that made him think of flowers left forgotten at gravestones, of rotting leaves and other dead things that might litter a forest floor as bare branches reached out like clawed hands towards the sky above them. Death and decay. If sorrow and grief could have a smell, Astarion imagined this would be it.

Astarion took a step back and smiled at him guiltily. “You know, Darling, it occurs to me that for all the rest of us have spoken about ourselves and our pasts, I hardly know anything about you.”

There was something sad in the smile Lysander gave him in return. “What do you want to know?”

“Anything? Everything. Whatever you want to tell me, Darling.”

Lysander nodded at that and his gaze drifted from Astarion’s face to a stone bench nearby, then he took Astarion’s hand and lead him over to it. They both sat down, and Astarion angled himself towards his lover, his hand still holding Lysander’s, his gaze intent on his face. Lysander let out a puff of breath, staring straight ahead of him, into the distance, and began to speak.

“I was born in Neverwinter. My mother is a drow who fell in love with a human and left the Underdark to be with him. My father was the human merchant she fell in love with. When I was three his caravan was attacked by bandits and he died. I hardly remember him.” Astarion squeezed Lysander’s hand in sympathy and encouragement. He hardly remembered his own family beyond shadows of faces, those memories long buried along with the man he used to be, before…well, before.

Lysander continued.

“I had a twin sister, Leora. She was the brave one between us. If anyone ever gave me any trouble, she would make sure it never happened again. She wanted to be an adventurer someday. Protect people, make money doing it, and send the money back home to support me and Mama.”

Lysander went quiet then, staring off into the distance. Gone was the jovial, rambunctious cleric to a death god that Astarion had fallen in love with, who just minutes ago had laughed at Astarion’s suggestion that his smell might bother him and cracked jokes about smelling like death himself, and in his place was a young man who had clearly experienced far too much grief for his age.

“When we were old enough, we would help Mama by running errands for her, and doing odd jobs around town to earn money. Selling flowers or newspapers or doing deliveries, stuff like that. One day, when we were twelve, she didn’t come home. They found her body in a ditch.” His voice came out bitter. “They never found her killer.”

“Oh Darling, I’m sorry.” Astarion pulled his lover into his arms then. The instinct to comfort was still new to him, but then, a lot of things about his relationship with Lysander were new to him. Lysander rested his head on Astarion’s shoulder, but still didn’t look at him.

“It was her face he used when he first appeared in my dreams, you know? It’s why I can’t forgive him. Can’t trust him…” It took a second for Astarion to understand who Lysander meant, but then his face darkened.

“The Emperor. He appeared before you as a twelve-year-old?” Lysander laughed bitterly.

“No. I’ve dreamed about her before. About the woman she would have become if she hadn’t been killed. Strong and beautiful and full of life. That’s how he appeared to me in the beginning. To try to manipulate me.”

Guilt washed over Astarion. “I tried to manipulate you too, you know…”

“You’re different.” Lysander cut off the rest of what Astarion was going to say. “You didn’t try to use my dead sister to lure me into your bed, for one thing. And truth be told, when you and I first began our…arrangement, I wasn’t looking to fall in love anymore than you were intending to. It was just supposed to be a bit of fun, a diversion from everything that was happening. I’ve had plenty of partners, but I never expected to fall in love again after…” Lysander stopped himself and bit his lip. Then sighed, and looked away again.

“After Leora died, I fell in with a bad crowd. We’d steal, pick pockets, con people...Mol reminds me a lot of myself from back then.” Astarion couldn’t stop the snort he let escape. That most certainly put Lysander’s interactions with the little menace and her crew into perspective. “There was…a boy.” Lysander was quiet again for a moment. “He was an older kid who was part of the crew I ran with. I was 14 and thought I was in love.” Again, another pause, and this time a shaky breath. “One day he convinced me we should steal the offering box at the local Kelemvor temple. The plan was supposed to be that I would do the sneaking in and stealing while he stood watch. I got caught, he didn’t. I never saw him again.”

Lysander looked Astarion in the eye again with another one of his sad smiles. “The rest is history. The priest at the temple took pity on me and my only punishment was to do volunteer work at the temple. He ended up taking me under his wing and I found I took comfort in Kelemvor’s teachings. I became an acolyte and moved in to the temple dormitory at fifteen and two years later got recruited into the Death Clerics.”

Astarion thought about what he knew about the Death Clerics of Kelemvor and winced. “They made you a Death Cleric at 17? Why not a Grave Cleric?”

Lysander laughed ruefully and looked down at his hands, flexing his fingers. “Apparently my experiences with death at such a young age and my…background, made me better suited for wielding the powers of death itself to hunt down necromancers in the night and deliver Kelemvor’s judgement than to guarding graveyards, overseeing funeral rights and providing succor to the mourning.” Lysander took a shaky breath, and then looked at him with a weak smile. “Anyway, that was five years ago and now here we are today.”

Astarion blinked rapidly as he did the math. “Wait…that would make you….you’re 21?”

“Yup.”

Astarion winced, horrified. He knew his lover was young, but he hadn’t thought he was that young. And they had all put so much on his shoulders. He also couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty about their relationship; Lysander had his whole life ahead of him, and he had chosen to fall in love with him of all people?

And then a thought occurred to him.

“Wait….me being a vampire, shouldn’t that be a problem for you? I am undead, after all.” Lysander’s expression darkened.

“Cazador’s the abomination, not you. You were his victim.” Astarion flinched. Being a victim was most certainly not how he wanted to be seen by anyone, most certainly not his lover.

“And when I kill him and take his power for my own?”

Lysander straightened and looked him the eye. “You know my feelings on that. You’re better than that, I know you are, and when the time comes, I have faith you’ll make the right decision.”

“Your confidence in me is touching, my dear, I assure you.” Astarion said dismissively. They had had this argument enough times, he really didn’t want to get into it again now. “But let’s say you’re right and I don’t take Cazador’s power. I’ll still be a vampire, and once we’re free of the tadpoles I’ll be back being trapped, unable to go out in the sun. You have your whole life ahead of you. Do you really want to throw it all away by being with someone like me?”

Lysander’s eyes widened in shock. “Astarion, I’m not throwing my life away. I love you. I want to be with you for as long as you’ll have me. Unless…” Lysander trailed off. “Does my age bother you?” His voice was uncharacteristically quiet, and vulnerable. He bit his lip, and fidgeted nervously.

“What? Darling, no, of course not!” Astarion cupped Lysander’s face in his hand, and used his thumb to coax his lip out from between his teeth. “Whatever it is we have between us, I want it to continue.” He tilted Lysander’s face up, so he was looking at him, and leaned in to kiss him chastely on the lips.

After a moment, he felt Lysander smile against his lips, and when he pulled back, he was grinning.

“I mean…if you really were worried about our age difference, I would understand…” “Wha—” As grateful as Astarion was that Lysander seemed to be back to his usual self, he wasn’t sure he liked where Lysander was going with this. Lysander got up, stretched, and started following the path they had taken earlier back towards the entrance to the park, a sway in his hips. He looked back at Astarion with a grin.

“I mean…of course you would be worried about it. I’m just so young and full of energy, what if you can’t keep up? What if I tire you out, in your old age?” “Excuse me, I am not old,” Astarion sputtered in indignation as he stood up to follow after Lysander.

 Lysander laughed, face open and happy, and for just a moment, Astarion almost thought he looked his age. Then the moon came out from behind a cloud, and Lysander’s pale blue skin almost looked like it glowed in the moonlight. Something stuck in Astarion’s throat at the sight of it, and while the whole concept was still rather new to him, he thought it might just be love.

Astarion let out a huff somewhere between annoyance and affection and he walked down the path behind Lysander. Whatever was he going to do with this boy?

[justice4sasuke]

Character Roundups Round 7: Itachi Uchiha

Lord in heaven above it's time for a big one because I have a lot of fucking thoughts about Itachi.

Itachi as written and framed by Kishimoto: When Kishimoto decided Itachi's real backstory will always be one of the great mysteries of the world. On the one hand, I think Itachi retraumatizing Sasuke and putting him into a genjutsu after they meet for the first time since the massacre is over the line if Itachi was supposed to secretly care this whole time. On the other hand, Kishimoto has proven before he doesn't know where the line is with Naruto "I will break all of Sasuke's bones if he doesn't come back to Konoha with me" Uzumaki. And then there's the first full flashback where everything is, if I had to describe it in one word: suspicious. Like okay Itachi just wants to rise above his limits and the clan...or does he??? Is this really Itachi under pressure from his clan and Konoha and he ends up lashing out at the clan one time before he does the deed. You could read it either way. No hint there on when Kishimoto decided Itachi's ultimate backstory.

Speaking of confusion, how are we intended to view Itachi? Because Itachi himself says he messed up, but literally every other character talks about how great and smart he is. If we are supposed to think Itachi was a genius and did his best then it's kind of bad story-telling for reasons I will get into. If we are supposed to agree with Itachi that he fucked up then it's not very successful because so many characters say otherwise and it seems like a lot of the fandom also thinks otherwise.

There's a lot of confusion throughout Itachi's story because I'm pretty sure Kishimoto's intention changed during writing, but I'm pretty confident what we are meant to believe by the end. I'm sure people will disagree with me so I will explain after I say what I think we are ultimately pushed into thinking about Itachi. I think we are supposed to think of Itachi as someone noble and good who did his best and his only flaw was trying to do everything himself. Who Kishimoto thought would help Itachi in this situation I don't know. If that one line from Itachi about Sasuke being able to change the clan if he told him what was going is the answer then what the fuck Kishimoto how is a seven year old going to help here. But anyway I don't think Kishimoto wants us to think Itachi killing his clan was wrong and I don't think he wants us to think Konoha was wrong for pushing him into it. I also think no matter how hard it was on him Itachi still thought ultimately it was the Uchiha who should have changed to stop the massacre from happening rather than the other way around.

I think this because as I always have, and as I keep shouting to everyone to no avail, this is because Kishimoto clearly does not give a shit what happened to the Uchiha clan. The one person who cared, Sasuke, just stops caring after hearing Hashirama recount Romeo & Juliet and then he never talks about it again and it's just vaguely implied that Sasuke agrees with Itachi so he's over the whole dead parents and clan thing and now wants to change the world or something. If we were supposed to view Itachi as someone other than noble for what he did then there would be SOMETHING said about how it was wrong that the Uchiha clan is all dead but that doesn't happen. I know other people have their ideas about Itachi DID think what he did was wrong or he DID resent Konoha for making him kill his clan because of xyz. Of course anyone's headcanons are fine, but I'm just saying no one can say that as fact because if it was then at the very least there should be a hint somewhere in the narrative that we as readers should be sad that Itachi won't admit Konoha was wrong. Otherwise what's the point? Saying "Itachi did resent Konoha but he couldn't say it because he was under the protect Konoha genjutsu" only effects how the reader might feel about Itachi and serves nothing for the story since clearly the narrative doesn't care. Once again, it's fine to read it that way but you can't demand that every reader do the same because there's nothing to indicate that is how it should be read.

How it should have gone: I know about half or maybe even more of all Sasuke fans hate Itachi but let me be real. I think Itachi is a great character. I have some nitpicks but really overall the only thing I would change is I would take the fucking framing of Itachi and move it to the left. Because the problem with Itachi isn't the character, it's that Kishimoto missed the point.

The POINT of Itachi's character should have been: Itachi is a fuck up. Itachi spent his life getting called a genius, but whether it was something in his control or not nothing he did worked out for him. And it's really funny to me that Kishimoto flew right over that when he writes like he hates geniuses. There's Itachi sitting there with the whole problem with the idea of "a genius" right in front of him and Kishimoto doesn't take it. The problem being that being a genius at ninja-ing means being a genius at espionage and violence and strategy and not at a lot of other useful things like emotional intelligence or historical context.

I'm not going to complain that Itachi it overall shitty to Sasuke nor will I pretend he isn't. When I'm reading fiction I don't need characters to be good people or make good choices, I need them to make sense as a character. Itachi for me makes sense. You can deeply love someone, but be too traumatized and misguided to be any good at it or even know how to show love to another person. What I love about Itachi is that he was really shit at loving his brother which led to Sasuke going down the exact path Itachi desperately tried to get him not to go down. And it's through that failure that Itachi finally was able to give Sasuke the one thing he should have been giving him this entire time and what no one else will: unconditional love. I got no problems with that. The issue for me is that Konoha is never framed as wrong. If Itachi won't/can't admit it himself I think it would be a great idea to not frame Sasuke as being bad for saying what Konoha did was wrong. It would be a good way to develop Sasuke away from his hero-worship of Itachi. I don't have a problem that Sasuke is like that because it makes sense for his character, but I think it would be an interesting way to develop Sasuke's character. Sasuke could see that Itachi can't admit that what Konoha made him do was wrong and unnecessary and could be sad for Itachi as well as see that as a fault of Itachi's. Sasuke could come to see his brother as he was, a flawed man who made a lot of mistakes and didn't know everything (just like the narrative should see him). Which by the way I'm not necessarily saying Itachi is too stupid to realize Konoha was wrong, more like what if Itachi refuses to see that because it would be mentally and emotionally too devastating to confront the fact that he was completely in the wrong for killing his clan. I don't even think Itachi had a choice at that point since Danzo was threatening to come at Sasuke like he was a drunk Canadian and Sasuke was a baby seal, but I think psychologically Itachi's overwhelming guilt would override in his mind the fact that he had very limited options.

So yeah, Itachi. Very complicated character, but overall not much I would change that isn't framing. Itachi was always wrong and most decisions he had to make were out of his control but the decisions he did make were also bad.

[fnrrfygmschnish]

Arkusazzo, and how her design changed over the past 20ish years.

A while back I did one of these for Joguo, but since the oldest Joguo drawing that I had a scan of was from 2008, his wasn't nearly as "complete" as this. Even though I made him up around 2001, Joguo was never really a character I drew all that often until 2008 when I started working on Alleghany Hell School and expanding on his backstory and family a bit more.

2004

The Weird Early Design!

I'm not sure exactly when I first made up Arkusazzo, but I know it definitely had to be after the summer of 2003 and was probably before the spring of 2004. This particular drawing is from a notebook I had in late spring/summer of 2004, but I know I had drawn her a couple times in a previous notebook before that.

This early design was, uh... very different from later versions. Some of the basic features are present of course (dark hair, blank glowing red eyes, wearing a robe with long sleeves) but there's a lot of other random bits that are not present in any later design.

Her looks weren't the only thing that was different. She didn't have any real backstory yet at this point, and was only vaguely defined as a guardian of the "Tree of Arkusazzo" who would lash out at anyone she saw as threatening the tree in some way.

There's some sort of symbol on her robe's chest. No idea what that was supposed to be! I think I used it as an identifying symbol for her in the 2004 notebook this drawing came from (every character in there was arranged into a fighting game style "select your character" screen kind of setup, and all of them had an associated symbol next to their names... which meant one got made up in the moment for anyone who didn't already have a symbol.) But I'm not sure what it was supposed to be. Kinda looks like a spiky skull face sort of thing...? I dunno.

I'm also not sure exactly what her color scheme would have been at this point, since I don't think I ever actually drew her in full color (I tended to draw with mostly black pens or plain pencils back then, only occasionally breaking out the colored pencils.) I'm pretty sure the three random blobs floating around her head were black, white, and gray and her eyes were glowing red, but it's hard to say what color her robes might have been originally.

The weirdest part of this design, of course, is the three random blobs floating around her head. One has a single eye, one has two, and one has three. A lot of her attacks listed in that old notebook involved one, two, or occasionally even all three of the blobs either launching at opponents or firing energy blasts. I think I remember that each one was associated with a fragment of her name ("Arku," "Saz," and "Zo") but I don't have that old notebook on hand to check for sure. Looking back now, the blobs having her name fragments... kind of implies that maybe the humanoid body isn't actually "Arkusazzo" at all, just some unknown person being controlled by them like a puppet? I don't know if that's what my 17-18 year old self was going for at the time, though. It's entirely possible that this was a "draw neat character design now, come up with actual story for it later" situation, which happened a lot back then. And still happens every now and then even now, haha.

2008

New Hairstyle! Actual Backstory!

2008 was the year when I first started working on Fnrrf Ygm Schnish: Alleghany Hell School. Between that and ideas for an RPG Maker XP project (titled Legend of the Barfoo) that never really got off the ground, I ended up expanding on Joguo and his story, establishing him as a ninja from a clan that had been exiled from their homeland and settled in southwest-ish Virginia a couple centuries ago.

And along the way, Arkusazzo ended up becoming a totally different character than before... and became a major part of the backstory of the Gouen-Zu ninja clan, rather than a random oddball from out of nowhere with no connection to anything or anyone else in my various story ideas. The "Tree of Arkusazzo" was now a tree that the demon known as Arkusazzo was sealed away inside by one of Joguo's distant ancestors, rather than an ancient giant tree of vague importance that she protected.

I think this was around the time that I established that every now and then, Arkusazzo's seal would grow weak and she would break free from the tree she was imprisoned in and go on a rampage, and that this had already happened at least once before Joguo was born (with Joguo's father performing the seal that time.) I can't remember if I had already come up with the idea that she was, in fact, Joguo's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother (and the ancestor of his who sealed her away was her husband) or not... but I want to say that I'd already decided on that backstory detail by the time I gave her the "meatball/dumpling" hair buns, so probably. Since she was planned to appear as an optional boss battle later on in Legend of the Barfoo, it seems likely that I'd already decided that her going mad and rampaging was a side-effect of some unknown power within her clashing against the power of the Uggy Barfoo when she stumbled across it and picked it up.

I'm noticing now that her robe's trim (at the bottom and on the sleeves) seems to have little bells or some other decorations hanging from it, which is kind of a neat detail that seems to have been dropped at some point after this. There's also a lot of excess detail on the trim of the robes, which has gotten simpler and simpler with every further iteration of the design. It's not shown in these drawings (since her hands are either hidden in her sleeves or not present at all), but she already had the claw-like hands in her 2008 design rather than normal human-like hands as in the 2003-2004 version.

I suspect there might have been another "in-between" design that I don't have a scanned drawing of somewhere in the 2006-2007 timeframe -- similar to this one but without the hair buns, since I'm pretty sure I redesigned her robes and made her hair longer before I added the buns to her design. But until I have a chance to dig through my community college notebooks and possibly find it... it's hard to say for sure.

2016

Simplified Robes! More Backstory!

This isn't really the "2016 design" so much as the "maybe 2014ish until 2022" design, but the drawing I had as an example just happened to be from 2016. Not much has changed looks-wise, aside from the excess detail along the trim of the robes being toned down from the 2008 version. I think this might have been around the time that I came up with the idea that she is actually very small (5'00" in height) but she often appears much larger and more imposing to observers due to the state of fear and panic caused by... being anywhere near her when she's broken free and started rampaging again.

I mostly picked this drawing because it shows off her "tentacle hair" more than any of the other full-body drawings I had -- there were some 2008-era drawings that featured her using her hair as prehensile tentacles, stretching it out and wrapping it around things and using it to strangle people and stuff along those lines.

As for the "more backstory" part... if her status as Joguo's great-great-great-great-great-grandmother hadn't already been decided upon by 2008, it definitely had by this point! Sometime in the later 2010s I actually drew an entire family tree of the Gouen-Zu ninja clan, with "Arkusazzo, but before she went all glowy-red-eyes and started wrecking everything around her" at the very top alongside Joguo's great-great-great-great-great-grandfather Gaitou Gouen-Zu.

...I still haven't come up with what her name actually was before she became known only as "the demon Arkusazzo." Maybe I never will. That might be one of those things that I just leave unanswered.

2023

Redesigned Outfit! Blue Hair!

The biggest change here, of course, is that for the first time her outfit isn't this vague baggy "wizard robe" sort of thing but instead actually has more of a shape to it. Sort of kimono-ish, I guess. The random red gem attached to the chest area on the gold trim of her robe is gone. She's got a belt for the first time, with dangly rope-ish bits where it's tied! And red bead bracelet thingies!

And, uh... no eyebrows? Hmm. I can't remember if that was an intentional change (the 2003-2004 design doesn't have them either, so maybe I figured I'd bring back that feature? but then again... that might have only been because I hadn't even started drawing most characters with eyebrows yet back then!), or if I was drawing her last year and just outright forgot to give her eyebrows but didn't realize until it was too late so I decided to just go with it.

The blue hair, on the other hand, is definitely an intentional change! Previously she'd always had pitch-black hair, but at some point in the late 2010s/early 2020s, I had come up with the idea that the reason why Joguo's hair is naturally blue is connected to Arkusazzo. Rather than just shrugging and going "Arkusazzo's just so weird that if some of your DNA comes from her you might inexplicably be born with blue hair," I ended up deciding to make Arkusazzo's hair actually be blue so the connection is more obvious.

I think this drawing is the first time I've ever drawn Arkusazzo with her feet visible. Or one of them, anyway. Previously they'd always been completely hidden beneath those long robes. She goes barefoot everywhere because thanks to her unexplained superhuman strength/durability (which she had even before going berserk), nothing she might step on is going to hurt her feet in any meaningful way anyway. And also because, y'know... having gone into a mindless rage, she's not going to stop and think "maybe I should at least put on a nice pair of fuzzy slippers before I go out to slash and tear down everything around me." 😅

[ashitomarisu]

I'm Standing on a Million Lives (Final Thoughts)

Remind me again what the hell was supposed to be the main plot?

Listen. I thought it would take longer to do this post but after watching the last three episodes, my mind has been made up: COVID AFFECTED THE SERIES PRODUCTION SO FAR UP ITS ASS THE WRITING AND DIRECTION AWKWARDLY STRUGGLED TO STAY ON TRACK.

This conclusion came to be after a few things:

The concept sounded interesting but the Game Master felt vague in almost every episode

Adding in new characters out of nowhere without much context or expansive backstory/lore

obvious production hell under a pandemic and such

the last few episodes of the second season just...IDK what the hell happened but it seems rushed or certain key plot points were axed at the last minute due to time restraint

Now, let me take a moment to address something else. Despite the music being actually pretty good, I feel like incorporating music talents from a label like Lantis was a risky/dick move.

How so? Sure, the staff thought it would be nice to give Kinchan an opportunity to have her songs be used for anime OP/ED since her solo artist debut was in the fall of 2020. However, I REALLY REALLY don't think the music fits well to this series. (Heck, Liyuu could have been better off with her music in another anime tbh).

Anti world may sound fitting lyrically and arrangement-wise but the quality of the song is TOO GOOD to be in an anime with questionable writing and direction. Same goes for Subversive, which I LOVE to pieces; the ending sequence...I just don't get why they hyped such a character when she is barely in the anime.

For once, I actually want to question Anime News Network about the rating for this because both seasons had pretty decent to high ranks for it.

-------

Although, if there's one idea that had me begging for its own anime spinoff, YOU BETTER BELIEVE I'D LIKE TO SEE MAJIHA SISTERS.

YOU WENT AND MADE AN HOMAGE TO PRECURE IN EPISODE 11 AND LITERALLY GONE FULL THROTTLE WITH THE IDEA ONLY TO NOT MENTION IT AGAIN THROUGHOUT THE EPISODE.

What a tease, but such an opportunity if they gave a damn. It's too bad the cast in the first season didn't return for S2.

(Unfortunately, this may never happen since A) supposedly, the second season did so poorly to not garner another season and B) Game Master teased the "Majiha Purple Murder Case" in a preview during the end of one of the episodes.)

(BTW, the ISML fandom apparently hates Yuka but she was the only character (other than Glenda or even the Majiha Sisters) to pique my interest, which obviously tells you something)).

---------

Overall, this suffered the same ordeal as Healin Good Precure with the direction and writing being heavily affected due to the crisis; had this been delayed to late 2021 or last year, MAYBE the quality could have improved? To recommend it would be a bold faced lie, but if you're REALLY curious, read the manga first before tackling the anime adaptation. (I made that mistake...btw).

Not even the four Aqours seiyuus could save this...

------

With that, thank you for being patient. My job hasn't been so damn kind lately and not an opportunity has come yet to leave this hellhole of a skeleton crew. The WHEEL OF WATCHES really decided to pull such a trap on me, but this also means better choices are ahead. What will this contraption choose for me in April?? Stay tuned in three weeks to find out. Until then, here's hoping you don't end up being summoned by its star crotch to become a farmer.

[anxiouspotatorants]

It is time. It is finally time for the new Suicide Squad rant (and spoilers will be plentiful):

As someone who was into DC Comics and comics in the mid to late 2010s and had so much hype for the first Suicide Squad movie only to be let down, I was so nervous for this one. I knew it was going to be a roller coaster, but whether I would come out happy or disappointed was up in the air. Having just seen it I will say this: I have no idea if this was a good movie-movie. It was insane. The comedy. The violence. The high emotion. I’m still trying to take it all in. But one thing I do know is that this is an amazing Suicide Squad movie. Gunn and co took the best parts of the comic concept and went batshit with it and that is how this property should be handled (in my opinion). Screw edgelordisms, we need full on insanity free of aiming for shock-value or sexy brutality we want chaos baby.

Starting the whole movie as they did, with Savant as the POV for a mission (or part of the mission) that just goes to hell immediately and kills off so many before the title arrives is the perfect way to start this movie. Like the second I realized this was how they were doing it I was just smiling from ear to ear, this is the spirit of the property.

Part of me wishes we got more Amanda Waller, but what we had was impeccable. Then again, this is Viola Davis we’re talking about, and if she was born to play any character in a superhero story, it is Amanda Waller.

And points to her tech team, introducing them with the death bets was just a lovely way to show how regular this is and how awful everyone is in this movie.

I’m not going to pretend like Deadshot and Bloodsport didn’t have the exact same character- and plot premises… but I will say that Bloodsport felt better executed.

I love that they kept some of the past members and not just Harley. Rick Flag got to have a full personality and interactions with his team members and to be a true leader and it made me so happy for someone who initially did not give a single shit about his character. The Harley friendship? The Dubois friendship? The friendship with that guerilla leader? Amazing. The one American soldier in fictional media I genuinely like. You go Mr Flag.

The new members were… they were insane in the best way. Gone are the shitty stereotypes and present are some of the wackiest creations to ever grace the mainstream movie-sphere (aka the slightly less normal comic creations): A man who has to shoot out polka dots two times a day so as not to die from a space virus. A giant child murdering weasel. A guy who detaches his limbs and slaps people with said detached limbs. King Shark. The second person to command rats with a fancy gadget. They are all crazy and all weird and all more or less morally repulsive people and I love them.

The amount of times I did a double take over the soundtrack I swear. Jessie Reyez? The Pixies? It was so much fun to pick up on once I did.

Was the depiction of a vague Latin American country stereotypical? Yes. Was the secret American involvement predictable and felt mildly patronizing from a non-American, part Latina point of view? Yep. But damn it if I didn’t have a good time with those stereotypes and laugh my ass off at how well executed some were. I don’t know if it was meant as parody, but that one secretary has me thinking so — and if so I am pleased.

Speaking of Latino dictators Harley’s one day romance with one of the villains was something I never knew I needed. Like it was so perfect for Harley that when it happened I almost hit myself for not realizing that this kind of plot should be a normal thing for Harley. And the end of it? Perfect not only in this standalone movie, but also in conjunction with the first and with BoP.

The Taika Waititi cameo??? Oh my god??? I did not expect that and I love it?? Sir, What We Do in the Shadows is impeccable.

Rick Flag’s death actually surprised me. It shouldn’t as this is Suicide Squad, but I kind of expected him to be on Harley’s level of unkillable (because let’s face it, no one kills Harley). What I will say is that his death was good and his final words and actions made me love him all the more. I hope this spawns more Rick Flag content, or at least inspires me to look at what already exists, if he already is as this movie made him (it’s been ages since I read one of the Suicide Squad reboot comics okay).

Starro. How can a villain be so wacky and so terrifying at the same time? I did not expect a literal alien starfish to have more terrifying powers and a more tragic plot execution than Enchantress. But here we are. And that damn star just wanted to be floating in space, and instead it was stuck getting revenge by killing and puppeteering human corpses. Wow that thing was creepier the more you think about it.

I don’t know what I think about Polka Dot Man. I loved watching him on screen but also damn those mommy-issues were on a new level. Not just in his backstory but how he literally sees her in every person around him that was insane. Very funny but like also the kind that makes you laugh just because you’re uncomfortable and don’t know how else to releive the tension.

When Waller got knocked out by a staff member I immediately thought «oh my god Amanda Waller is going to kill half the staff for this», so I’m mildly surprised and disappointed that I didn’t get to see that happen. But also I should maybe expect something like this in a potential future Suicide Squad movie. We can’t have everything in a movie as packed as this.

Peacemaker was very horrible and worked really well. Don’t really have much to say about him, not because I didn’t enjoy him but because I already feel like the film itself has said it for me. But the planting and payoff for his death? Chef’s. Kiss.

Harley’s wardrobe was beautiful. Ratcatcher 2’s combat outfit felt like a steampunk plague dream. Bloodsport’s mask was supercool. Rick Flag’s t-shirt was amazing. But the best little outfit was the Mafalda-keychain and her red dress, hands down. Oh and King Shark’s fake moustache finger moment.

King Shark is shaped like a friend I don’t care how many people he ate alive on screen he looks so huggable. It feels like wanting to pet a bear. You know it will kill you but damn it look at those paws and those cute eyes!

I really need to give it to not just James Gunn but the entire production team for this movie. The aesthetic was perfect. The story was the right blend of whimsical and violent. The finished product was a literal rollercoaster and I mean that in a good way. If superhero movies have to be like amusement parks, I hope they’re more like this one and BoP.

I’ll finish on the note that while I think this movie was great and hopefully a step in the right direction for the DCU/DCEU (as in stop trying to play Marvel’s game and just do your own thing/ let your creative teams run wild and free), it is not the first step. Cathy Yan, Birds of Prey and the production team for it took a step first, and they deserve due credit and attention. If you loved this Suicide Squad movie and haven’t watched BoP yet, do so. Because they really are in the same ballpark while doing things in slightly different ways. And any good DCEU movie deserves more attention so the studios know that creativity and risks should be rewarded. I want more DC movies like this, not necessarily in genre but in creative risks. I want a Black Canary rock movie. I want Alfred in a reverse heist movie alone in the batcave against Gotham villains. I want Gotham Academy on screen play by play from the comics. I want a fully animated psychedelic-like Khalid Nassour as Dr. Fate movie. I want elevated horror movie Constantine. I want weird ass Lois Lane journalist movies with a heavy side of Superman. And I want DC movies I didn’t even know I wanted.

Support creativity in mainstream comic movies. Help me become a DC fan and happy about it again.

[ezdotjpg]

I hope someone hasnt asked you this already, but how do you decide what types of scars to put on characters/where to put them? I have a hard time deciding on where to put scars and it seems like i keep recycling the same ones, mostly on the face, and could use some tips honestly. I know it helps to think about how the character got those scars in the first place but its still hard to place them in unique and interesting ways like you do

(Also if you want to talk about some of your choices for placement/shapes/types of scars on your link designs, that would be cool to read about, im especially curious about your reasoning behind the scar on mirror's cheek)

this is not at all a helpful answer, but it's honestly just.....vibes. I've actually been terribly inconsistent w the placement of their scars, at least the ones not on the face, which is something im trying to get better about with these updates lol. I just sort of put them wherever i feel like they should go.....

for a more helpful answer, yeah a lot of it is informed by some vague sense of what made the scar. Beyond that the focus is on making interesting shapes. letting go of the constraints of what an actual scar would realistically look like helps, though I do still look up real scars from time to time if I'm trying to go for something specific (which, yeah, can come up with some gruesome images, so be careful). I think of it as sort of a graphic design and layout problem instead? balancing clear skin with scarred skin. it's helpful to zoom out and look at the whole figure to see what kind of color blocking you're creating. Is any of that helpful lol?

for some rambling abt bonus links scars (and big general TW for discussions of injury):

Mirror's scar is half of a glasgow smile, which is typically a cut from the corner of the mouth to the ear on both sides, causing a permanent "smile" (full disclosure, first place I saw this idea was in Circuit Breaker by liketolaugh, though theirs is both sides.) My vague backstory is that Yuga gave it to him in the Eastern Palace, though Mirror fought him off before he could do the other half.

the scar on Loft's arm is a Lichtenberg figure, from Demise's lightning. It's also sort of the mark of getting that power from Demise. It is such a pain to draw KSHKF. Looking at some of my other refs, he's got a stab wound scar on his stomach that I'm deciding now is from the first battle with Ghirahim

the scar on Wolf's neck is from the final battle with Ganon, where he very narrowly avoiding getting his head hacked off. The scar on his arm is from his arm being severed and then reattached when Ilia gets captured at the ordon spring (a la the manga). He has some general claw mark scars on his other arm, chest and left shoulder.

slate has a lot of scars, a lot more than I've shown in any of his refs so far, but not all of them are actually from Before. For example, the scar on his chin and under his right eye are new. The one on his chin is from eating shit shield surfing, same reason his front tooth is slightly chipped (tho I don't think I've drawn that, whoops.) The one under his eye is probably a lucky swipe from the first Yiga traveler he encountered, would've lost his eye if his reflexes weren't so good. I know generally old scars are white and new scars are more reddish but I just sort of......ignore that for aesthetic purposes. Also top surgery scars!

besides the scar on his eye, I like to give wake this little scar on his lip. He's probably had it since he was a kid. I Am So Fond Of It. Generally his hands are pretty scarred up from a lot of pulling on ropes and idk. general pirate shenanigans. also has top surgery scars.

mini's hands are also scarred up from a) smithing and b) climbing things with the grip ring and no gloves. The idea for the scar on his shoulder is that it's a bite mark he got from something while he was minish sized, tho I should probably make it a bit bigger knowing that.

Spirit most definitely has a wolfos bite scar somewhere on his person, though I haven't drawn it

War has a burn scar from Volga that I currently have placed on his side, though I might actually put it somewhere else. idk yet. And also generally a lot more scars.

ok i have rambled enough

wait also a note on potions and why links still have scars: i like to kind of nerf the effectiveness of potions, because it's no fun otherwise. Potions don't necessarily "magically" heal outright, they just speed up the body's natural healing by a LOT. So, there's still scars, and the potential for ur average red potion to not be much help to a patient in dire condition.

[shihalyfie]

Regarding Konaka’s influence on Tamers (or how much he actually didn’t have)

(Rest assured that if you’ve had a conversation with me recently about this issue, I’m not vaguing you; this conversation has come up a lot in the last few weeks, especially in my private chats, so this is just me deciding that I should write something about this for once since it’s been weighing on my head lately.)

I think, right now, with what happened regarding the DigiFes debacle, a lot of people are having complicated feelings about how to feel about Tamers, and this is completely understandable. I think there are also some things that may be inevitably unavoidable, such as starting to second-guess certain nuances in the series and what they might lead to. All of that is perfectly reasonable, and in the end, it’s going to be up to everyone to decide how they feel.

In light of this, a lot of people have been bringing up the fact that, while Konaka was the head writer, he was by no means the only person working on it. This is very much true, but I’d like to add something else to the equation: this is an issue that goes much deeper than the usual claiming death of the author for the sake of sanity. The full picture is that Konaka has always had much less influence on the series than the fanbase tends to attribute to him. Official statements have been very clear as to not attribute the entire series to him, and, among all the other controversial statements he’s made, Konaka himself has at least been very active about crediting the other staff members as far as their influence on the series! The idea that he was the only person who ever did anything substantial for Tamers is something I’ve been warning against since long before any of this happened (if you want proof, I have a post from April with this sentiment in it), and right now we just happen to be seeing what’s basically the worst possible outcome of the fanbase constantly worshipping him like the only real creative heart behind the series to borderline cult-like levels...when that’s never been true, and has resulted in unfairly taking credit away from people who deserved it.

I’ll go into detail below, and I hope this can help people understand the situation better and sort out how they feel about it.

Note that I make references to his infamous blog in this post, which I’m deliberately refraining from directly linking for obvious reasons, but all of the information is still there, so it should be verifiable if you decide to look for it yourself.

Personally, I’ve always found it really bizarre how there’s been this obsession with portraying Konaka as some kind of auteur whom the entirety of Tamers depended on. I’m not saying this out of spite towards him, because, again, even he himself was very insistent on disclaiming credit for things he wasn’t actually responsible for (he was quite humble in this respect, actually). Not to mention that I think it’s a mistake in general to constantly pin a single person in a multi-person production as the sole heart behind it, and the Digimon fanbase has historically had this strange double standard behind it when it comes to uplifting him as the only heart behind Tamers when nobody says that about any of the head writers for...anything else. (How many times has Nishizono’s name ever popped up when talking about Adventure? People are usually more obsessed with talking about Kakudou or Seki.) Konaka’s work is certainly distinctive, but Tamers had a lot more going on besides just that.

In fact, based on his own statements on the matter and all of the other official information we’ve gotten about Tamers production, while you can’t really quantify such things, it’s generally been estimated that Konaka was responsible for something like only a fourth of the series. Which is an incredibly low amount compared to what the fanbase would have told you before all of this happened, because of this fixation that he must be the genius mastermind behind the whole series. Not only that, this “brilliant auteur” image of him was so inflated that people were attributing way more of 02 to him than he deserved; 02 episode 13 was the only thing he contributed to the series and he was specifically brought on as a “guest writer”, and the overall plot of the episode was determined by the rest of the production staff and not him -- but ask the fanbase and they’ll tell you stories about how he invented some grand planned arc for 02 that got cancelled, or even that Tamers exists because of a “writer revolt” from him and other writers not being allowed to do what they wanted. (You know, as much as I understand 02′s a controversial series, it would be really nice if people didn’t make up completely baseless stories like this just to scapegoat it...)

I honestly cannot emphasize enough how much of the problem we’re in right now has been horribly enabled by the weird pedestal the fanbase has been putting him on. This is to the point where there’s even been a double standard where some of the more unpopular/criticized elements of Tamers must not have been the fault of a brilliant writer like him, and in fact was forced on him by the executives (this excuse had always been brought up anytime someone doesn’t like something about Tamers, just to make sure the image of him as a perfect writer was maintained). Turns out, as per his own admission on the infamous blog, while he wasn’t the one who initially had the idea of putting Ryou in, the part that rubbed the fanbase the wrong way -- that he came in as an accomplished senior who was better than everyone and played up by everyone in the cast -- was unabashedly his idea (he apparently was enamored with the idea of having someone like Tuttle from the movie Brazil). Again, this is a weird scenario where even Konaka himself has been more humble about this issue than the fanbase’s perception of him; he fully admitted whenever he had trouble writing certain parts. For instance, he doesn’t actually like writing about alternate worlds, felt they were out of his comfort zone, and only wrote in the Digital World because the franchise needs one; he’d stated that if he’d had his way, the Digital World arc wouldn’t have come in as early as it did, which might be a pretty shocking statement for a Digimon fan to hear.

If you want even more specifics, here are some extremely major parts of the series that Konaka was not actually the one behind:

The character backgrounds. Konaka stated on his blog that he wasn’t interested in going too much into character backstories because he felt it was too plot-limiting to say that a character is the way they are thanks to something in their past or background (basically, he cares more about plot than character for the most part), and that he’s also not into worldbuilding. Certain things like Ruki going to a girls’ school were supplied by Seki, who infamously loves worldbuilding, family backgrounds, and character settings.

Certain nuances of Ruki’s character, especially the part where she’s pigeonholed into uncomfortable places due to being a girl, were informed by Yoshimura Genki, writer from Adventure and one of the head writers of 02 (who eventually would go on to create an entire career out of feminist cinema).

According to the posts on his blog, Impmon’s character arc didn’t have much input from Konaka himself and was largely written in by Maekawa Atsushi (also a writer from Adventure and one of the head writers of 02).

The whole concept of Yamaki being redeemable in the first place was something Konaka didn’t originally plan for; he’d initially intended to make him a straightforward antagonist, but, of all things, his Christmas song, combined with the input of the other writers (especially Maekawa) humanizing him, led to the development where Yamaki eventually changed sides and became sympathetic. (This makes Konaka’s recent stunt revolving around Yamaki a bit painfully ironic.)

The director, Kaizawa Yukio, was deliberately picked because he didn’t have experience on the prior series, for the sake of changing things up, and he spent Tamers as a period of studying what Digimon should be like. Based on what he’s hinted, it seems Konaka's writing style and choices were able to have as much influence as they did because Kaizawa approved of them -- that is to say, Konaka’s detailed imagery and descriptions were extensive enough that Kaizawa could go “sure, let’s go with that.” But in the end, nothing Konaka did would have gone through unless Kaizawa and Seki (among many others) didn’t also approve of it or provide input. Moreover, Kakudou Hiroyuki (director of Adventure and 02) has also been stated many times to have been a valuable consultant on invoking Digimon so that the new staff could understand what to aim for and how to get the right feel (and also assisted with providing stuff for the mythos, such as the Devas). Nevertheless, Kaizawa also seems to have had his own strong opinions and input on the story; he especially seems to get passionate when it comes to the topic of making the story something the kids watching it could relate to and imagine. (He would eventually go on to direct Frontier and Hunters, along with several episodes of the Adventure: reboot.)

So in other words, looking at this, a lot of these things that people emotionally connected to and loved about Tamers are things that literally were not his personal creation, and were largely contributed by the other writers! Of course, Konaka’s “creator thumbprint” is very obvious -- he was the head writer, after all -- and all of this had to go through his own vetting to make sure he personally liked it as well -- but nevertheless, you can see that this very much was a collaborative effort from head to toe, with him being very open about this fact himself. Insisting on making sure that this fact is well-known isn’t just a coping mechanism to try and remove his presence in the series, but rather a desire to get people to seriously stop giving him credit that really should be going to others (especially since, again, even he himself was very diligent about assigning that credit).

In the end, I’ll leave you with another thing to keep in mind: Konaka doesn’t get paid anymore for Tamers work (unless they make something new like the DigiFes thing), so continuing to buy Tamers merch and supporting the series through fanart and such will probably end up going more towards the Digimon IP as a whole. Basically, if we’re just talking about Tamers specifically, what degree this is going to matter is only really relevant to the content in the original series, which is now twenty years old and remains unchanged. By Konaka’s own admission, he wasn’t into all of these conspiracy theories until 2010 at the earliest, so while it’s understandable to be a bit wary about the themes in Tamers having traces of the base sentiment, the original series itself does not seem to be an outlet for alt-right propaganda, and it’s probably forcing it a bit much to read into it that way. Konaka’s also repeatedly insisted that all of his attempts at a Tamers sequel have been rejected and that he’s been doing increasingly strange swerves to get around members of the original cast not entirely being available, and the Japanese audience has turned out to not be very fond of the contents of the 2018 drama CD and the stage reading for reasons entirely separate from the politics, so it’s also unlikely we’ll be getting a Tamers sequel from him or something in the near future.

So -- at least for the time being -- what’s done with him is done, and the remaining question is how all of us feel about Tamers. I think everyone will have differing feelings on it, and that’s perfectly understandable. Personally, given everything I just said above, I’m going to continue treating it as a series very important to me, and one that many people (including, as it seems, a very different Konaka from twenty years ago) worked on with a lot of effort and love, although you may see me getting a bit more willing to be critical about the series and its themes thanks to my concerns about some of the sentiments in it and what they imply. I also completely understand that there are probably people whose associations are going to be much more hurt and who will have a much harder time seeing the series the same way ever again, and I think that’s reasonable as well. But at the very least, going forward, I hope all of us can understand the depth of this situation, give credit where it’s due, and not force credit where it’s not due.

[wutheringmights]

I just read the newest chapter and I loved it! ♥ ♥ ♥ I was wondering if you had some hcs about the engineer that you could share?

Awww I'm glad you like it! I just spent 5 minutes trying to figure out what "HCS" meant before realizing I'm a tired idiot who can't read lol

But yeah! I got some headcanons for the engineer/Spirits I can share!

These headcanons are a mix of things I generally believe for any iteration of the Hero of Spirits and a few things exclusive to CTB. It's pretty obvious which are which.

Technically this is slight spoilers since most of this is not mentioned in-story, but Warriors is a such a self-centered asshole that I'm not sure when I can get him to explicitly ask about Spirit's backstory lol

This got super long and kind of just became me talking about Spirits's entire backstory, so enjoy:

Spirits is sixteen during the course of Spirit Tracks, mostly because that was the vibe I got from him when I first played the game (I made him younger for CTB)

He's not descendant from Wind (who I maintain disappeared instead of settling in New Hyrule); instead, he's Aryll's great grandson

His family name used to be Outset, but when everyone who originally immigrated from Outset island took on that last name, they changed it to Aryll to reflect the family matriarch

So Spirit's full name is Link Aryll, though there is a branch of his family that uses Macaryll instead

The Aryll/Macaryll family is huge; everyone has at least six aunts and uncles on all sides of the family and they can trace back how they are related to Aryll

"I'm Grandma Aryl's third son's second daughter's fifth child." -someone Spirits is related to, probably

He actually never met his great grandmother; she died before he was born.

Spirit's dad was full-blooded Lokomo while his mother was Hylian; his mother passed a few months after he was born after never truly recovering from childbirth while his father died in a fishing accident when he was eight

He went to live with an aunt and uncle who owned a general store; their relationship was polite at best. The aunt and uncle told Spirits upfront that they intended to give the store over to his cousin when he was older so Spirits needed to come up with his own life plan

Spirits didn't necessarily mind since he never wanted to work in a store for the rest of his life, but the ultimatum made it clear that they didn't care for him like a son

To this day, their relationship isn't strained and he doesn't hate them. But whenever they meet, he's overly polite; they're more acquaintances than family

He's cool with his cousin though. They have different interests so they aren't best friends, but they're okay.

Spirits also always had his spirit-sensing abilities. It's really like a sixth sense to him, as normal and automatic as seeing and hearing; he actually didn't realize this wasn't normal until he was a little older

His abilities at this point are limited to sensing vague ideas of a person's spirit (if they're light or dark, etc.), and seeing ghosts (which are really rare. You have to have a lot of power yourself to become one)

(Note: I'm not the only one who headcanons Spirits as having spirit sensing abilities; if you know who can up with the idea, please let me know so that I can tag/credit them!)

The elder of his village told him that select Lokomo had minor spirit sensing abilities, and those who did were traditionally made elders of their villages; being more of a follower than a leader, Spirits adamantly dismissed that idea and refused to be trained on how to hone his spirit senses. He also never learned any of the religion behind it

Which was a little worrisome since his abilities are way stronger than most

Besides, he's always liked trains and it's been his dream to travel around the kingdom as an engineer; being some town's elder would get in the way of that

Anyway, Spirits had to pass a written exam before being accepted as an apprentice engineer, so he's very studious and has a lot of drive (pun unintended?)

He went to live with his Uncle Niko during his apprenticeship in another town; Niko isn't related to him, but he's been a friend of the family for so long that everyone secretly thinks he's actually related to someone and they just forgot who

Niko is his real family, hands down. Those two are as thick as thieves and bring out the wild side in each other

A preteen Spirits used to think Niko was a little lame and kind of embarrassing, but now that he's older, he's all for Niko's weird old man-ness and has even picked up on some of his weird old man-ness himself

That being said, they're both disasters. Neither can clean or cook or do any kind of housekeeping and their shared house is cluttered with Niko's art projects and Spirit's half-finished tinkering

Growing up, Spirits had no idea he was related to the legendary Hero of Wind; Aryll died before he was born, but even in life she was filled with too much grief over her missing brother to discuss it often. Within the family, being related to the Hero of Wind is a rumor at best.

Of course, Niko knows but keeps it a secret from Spirits; once he got back from his LU-adventure, Wind told Niko about the curse of the Hero's Spirit. Then he went missing post-New Hyrule's founding, which really drove the terror of the curse home. Niko thought he could keep Wind's family from falling victim to it by not inadvertently encouraging them to follow in Wind's footsteps

So Niko kept it a secret

And obviously, that didn't work

Spirits' quest to save New Hyrule resulted in him realizing that he needed to embrace his Lokomo heritage and get a handle on his spirit powers; Anjean gave him a little training during his quest but afterwards he traveled around the kingdom to find as many people as he could with abilities like his

They were all really excited to teach him what they knew, especially the religious aspects of the abilities; Spirits is still not the most religious person, but he at least understands and embraces the cultural significance of what he is able to do

This is where he learned how to read a person's Spirit to get an idea of their life experiences and the kind of person they're like; he can also detect where a person is without having to put much effort into it

At Zelda's encouragement, he also got more sword training from the Castle Guard. She offered him a place among them, but he turned it down in favor of remaining an engineer. He still helps around as a swordsman when he can and will act as Zelda's body guard

Speaking of which, he and Zelda are 100% in love. Their relationship started out as puppy love but over the years as matured into a deep connection built on mutual respect

When he's working on designing new engines or parts for his trains, he occasionally brings his drafting materials to the castle gardens so that he can work alongside Zelda; sometimes she falls asleep leaning against his arm and he has to be careful not to shake her awake as he works

Whenever she need to go anywhere in the kingdom, she rides in his train and teasingly criticizes his conducting; he takes a lot of pride in his conducting, but he lets her get away with it since her critiques are objectively hilarious

He keeps a tiny pictograph of her taped to his dashboard

But there's a bit of a problem with their relationship, and it's that he doesn't know if he wants to be the prince consort or not. He does love her, but that would mean giving up being an engineer in favor of being stuck at the castle all of the time

Plus, he's doing great as an engineer; he's saving up to open his own garage that produces his own train designs

Eventually, he leaves for the War of Eras

His experiences with Warriors leaves him more sure than ever that he doesn't want to be the prince consort, resulting in him ending his relationship with Zelda shortly after he returns home

It hurts for a long time to be around her since all of his old feelings keep coming back, so he keeps his distance for a long time; it takes a few years for him to go back to hanging out with Zelda as friends

But now she's approaching marriage age, and he spends a lot of time when he's on body guard duty super jealous of these princes and ambassadors from foreign kingdoms who try to court her

But again, he knows he can't be in a relationship with her so he respectfully and silently pines over her (I'm just a sucker for pining, okay?)

Okay, more random headcanons that are a little less sad

Spirits likes super spicy food, but since he can't cook to save his own life, he just eats whatever he can get his hands on

He's super dirty all of the time, just the epitome of scrappy; there's always a smear of oil somewhere on his person

He actually really hates bathing and only keeps his curly hair in check to comply with train safety regulations

He's really polite and a little shy, but once he loosens up, he gets talkative and personable

He's also very contemplative; he likes conducting so much because he gets to spend long stretches of time alone with nothing but his thoughts

His trauma/stress response is to shut down; he goes quiet, loses energy, and sleeps for longer periods of time

He tends to gravitate towards socializing with people who are older than him, which gets him labeled as being no fun by his peers (despite having someone as cooky as Niko for a uncle)

Post-adventure, his best friend is Linebeck III. They're drinking buddies. Neither can really explain why they even like hanging out as much as they do

(I just like the idea of Linebeck accidentally getting attached to one kid and his whole bloodline getting forever tangled with Wind's; they're bros for multiple lifetimes)

Not only is Spirits good at designing and building new machinery, but he's great at tinkering; he can fix almost anything and will buy broken things on purpose just to have something to fix

No one really knows he's a hero; he doesn't like the attention and, at his request, Zelda did her best to keep his involvement with Malladus a secret

Because not many common people know about his adventure and records of New Hyrule are very rare, he's considered in Warrior's time to be a forgotten hero; some scholars believe that a Hero of Spirits may have once existed, but if he did, no one really knows who he was or what he did to serve the bloodline of Hylia

[inonibird]

Sahuldeem/Kaleesh Q&A #8

Here we go again... (questions bold; answers italic) — Have you added or changed anything plotwise in Sahuldeem since completing the script? Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night and thought “It’s not too late to throw that in” Oh, hell yeah. All the time. (and I’ve also cut things, as well) The original script covers a LOT but doesn’t go nearly as in-depth as the prose, unsurprisingly, and I have found myself expanding on a lot of scenes because I can get into Qymaen’s head (and others) and explore emotions in greater detail. Probably the biggest example of an incredibly important late addition to the story was Ronderu’s backstory. Wild, I know. I always had a vague idea of what it would involve, and had written a description off to the side for my own knowledge, but in the original script Qymaen never actually found out about her past. I decided the reader would be too interested to NOT find out, and the only way we would learn of it was if Ronderu herself told Qymaen, so I massively expanded that wet lung scene with her opening up to him and am SO glad I did it.

What do you think Grievous is saying when Obi-Wan pries his chestplate open? He has already said it once in the story. He’ll say it at least one more time before we get to the end. Context clues will be there until then, but that final time will be when I translate it. ;)

Did the rank of Baatar ever get mentioned in Sahuldeem? Apparently it's higher than Tarkhan but lower than Khan Oh, yeah, I did include it, but I swapped the hierarchy of Baatar and Tarkhan. It made more sense in my brain for Tarkhan to be closer to Khan.

So as far as clan symbols go, what’s the difference between these sigils?

Ugh, these symbols. Very confusing. So my understanding has been that the mask and cape are meant to be variations of the same sigil (that of the Jai Clan), even though the art of the Martyr shows yet ANOTHER sigil that I also feel could represent the Jai Clan. Maybe one or more of them are just incredibly stylized? Maybe one is the “standard” sigil and another is the “Chieftain/Khan/Khagan” edition? Take your pick. The arrows, IMO, are more generic Kaleesh markings that can be used by any clan. They likely have a lot of similar motifs and designs across the globe.

My brain just randomly conjured a parallel universe where Grievous was an Ewok instead of a Kaleesh and now I'm imagining Sahuldeem with the exact level of depth and angst but the characters are literal teddy bears Why would you do this to me??? … *files away for later if I ever want to torture anyone with some ridiculous imagery*

So what does a tuugmusme look like exactly? We’ve never really seen a visual depiction of someone wearing it Closer to a facemask/scarf that covers the lower face than to, for instance, a full niqab. Usually patterned, if not decorated. May include clan sigils, but not as prominently as what is painted on kakmusmal.

I have a question or two about the tumu. How big are they? I’ve been thinking of them as about the size of parrots, but considering their radically different body plan they may be way bigger or smaller. Also do they have any uses beyond looking pretty? I have this idea for a trained seabird that the Kaleesh use to find shoals of fish, but I kind of got the vibe that Babbar’s usefulness begins and ends at unsettling people through the power of mimicry. Parrot is a good comparison, actually, and I like to imagine tumu come in as many varied sizes as parrots do. Some could be as large as a macaw, and…well, not sure if any are as tiny as a budgie, but maybe a cockatiel! And they can absolutely be trained to be more useful than Babbar (messenger tumu are a thing), but your assessment of that particular tumu is pretty accurate. x’D

How did you come up with sahuldeem, the word itself? How many words did you try before you found one that sounded right? So a thing I’ve often been doing when I snag Sumerian for Kaleesh is ignoring the “š” (which is a voiceless post alveolar fricative) and just treating it like “s” (a voiceless alveolar fricative that I assume is sibilant)…and this is usually because I like the sound/flow of a word better without the “sh” sound, though not always. In searching for a term closest to “grief”, I found “šà-hul…dím”, which translates to “to grieve” but more literally translates to ‘to make the heart evil’ (I know, right?!?!). Rather than transliterate this to Shahuldim, I went with Sahuldeem (I liked the sound of “sa”, and I wanted to parallel the “ee” in Sheelal). …Tadaaaa!

You ever think about what Grievous would have looked like if he’d lived to the age he did without becoming a cyborg? Well, considering at what age in Sahuldeem he does become a cyborg, I don’t have to think too hard about it. ;P

—

And then just an extra note:

Two years ago I wrote a silly rap(?) about General Grievous. One year ago I started posting Sahuldeem. Thank you to all the folks who have been following along and reading what is the very definition of a passion project. If you’re enjoying the journey, please do shoot me a message/drop a comment on AO3 (or a kudos if you don’t want to stress over words). Not sure what 2022 will bring on...well, so many fronts, but I hope to at least keep pressing on and posting this story without too many delays on the horizon~

[woozapooza]

Penny Dreadful s1 wrap-up thoughts

Very glad I decided to give this show another try

Also it’s making me really want to reread Dracula

I don’t think I really have a favorite character so far. If I had to choose I’d probably say Dorian but I think that’s mostly down to my love of Reeve Carney. If he were played by a different actor I don’t think I’d find him as interesting.

But even though Dorian isn’t the most dynamic character so far, I really loved his interactions with Vanessa in the finale. Most of the impression I got of him throughout the season was a dude who lives a life of such decadence and licentiousness it almost, but not quite, disguises how little substance he has. Pretty much what you’d expect from Dorian Gray. But his interactions with Vanessa in the finale were surprisingly endearing. Suddenly he seems like...an actual human being with a soul. Specifically, a sweet but awkward young boy who doesn’t know how to handle his first real crush (COME HOME WITH ME). I hope he gets to have more of a story of his own in the following seasons rather than just being an NPC for the main characters to have sex interact with.

I do not want to like Victor as much as I do but here we are. He’s really frustrating, to put it lightly, but I find him really sympathetic even when his moral weakness is on full display.

Oh I also hope Sembene gets fleshed out in future episodes. So far his main purpose is to kind of hang around in the background as a vague reminder of Sir Malcolm’s weird imperialist escapades.

Ethan is so good 😢 

I hope Eva Green at least got nominated for some awards for this performance, goodness gracious

I feel like the dialogue on this show is sometimes trying a bit too hard.

The plot twist at the end of episode 2—Caliban’s introduction—is SO good. What makes it so good is that not only does it make sense in retrospect, it explains things that I had noticed leading up to it but had dismissed. Up until that point, I was surprised by how kind Victor was to Proteus, as that wasn’t what I expected from Victor Frankenstein, but hey, this is a derivative work, not a direct adaptation, so I shrugged it off. But then! Caliban shows up! And even before I watched episode 3 and got his backstory, I realized that the very thing that I had dismissed up to that point was significant after all! Victor is kind to Proteus because this is his second time around. He’s already made the mistake he made in the book and he’s not going to make it again. So good!

Back to the finale—I understand that when Malcolm says “I already have a daughter,” he’s echoing what Ethan said in the previous episode, but it still strikes me as a weird thing to say. Surely his feelings toward Vanessa don’t affect what he should do about Mina? It’s not like he wouldn’t have killed “Mina” (not sure she can reasonably be called by her name at that point, but it’s the only one she has) if he didn’t view Vanessa as a daughter. And if there had been a way to save Mina, surely he wouldn’t have been like, “eh, no need, I found a replacement.” Like, it’s a nice sentiment, especially since earlier in the episode he said he’d totally be down to sacrifice Vanessa for Mina, but I feel like the line doesn’t hold up to scrutiny.

When the camera lingered on Eva Green’s face a little too long at the end of the episode, I was like “it’s gonna end just when she’s about to answer,” and sure enough!

Hehe, I just learned that Rory Kinnear once played Caliban in a production of The Tempest!

[copperpieceharlot]

Bud I’m sorry to swing into your inbox uninvited like this but my soul is having an OOTS renaissance thanks to your content in the tag and did you say Leverage AU

haha holy SHIT this got Long. but yes. i’ve been. Thinking. (also literally Never feel like you have to apologize for sending me messages. i was Hoping someone would ask me about this. now i have an Excuse to share EVERYTHING ive written abt it :3)

Obviously, Roy is the leader/brains of the outfit. He grew up having some Strong Opinions abt what’s Legal versus what’s Right due to tragic backstory involving the death of his little brother which was definitely SOMEONE’S fault for negligence but since there technically wasn’t any illegal behavior, there were no consequences for it. Also he’s still angry at his dad bc he thinks his dad is also partly culpable (and also also just a dick). He’s the Moral Backbone of the team (alongside Durkon, more on that later) in basically the same way Nate was in og Leverage. He’s actually not the best at figuring out what people want (that’s Haley and, shockingly, occasionally Elan), but once he has that info, he is the absolute best at figuring out the ideal plan of attack to use in any given case.

Haley is still a thief. I mean she maps to Parker almost PERFECTLY. Her dad was a thief & a conman, her mom wasn’t but knew about it and mostly accepted it, but she died tragically in a mugging gone wrong or smth, which made Ian crank the paranoia WAY up and taught Haley to do the same in the name of “safety”. Let’s keep the “Ian is in Trouble and Haley needs money, Fast” which is why she signs on to the first job in the first place. She’s less acrobatic than Parker, tending towards finding (or making) weak spots in security, but she can still make a tumble check when she needs to.

Elan is the grifter who is somehow an Idiot but also not???? It baffles everyone. When he’s playing a part for a con, he’s FLAWLESS, but then the rest of the time he’s just. No Thoughts Head Empty. He probably gets lured in initially because he’s decided to try his hand at being part of a full team, rather than the two-man cons he’s been running that invariably end w his partner conning him as well and stealing half of his take. Also he likes the idea of being Crime Friends. He’s that tweet where it’s like, Roy: “after the heist is over, we split up and never communicate again” / Elan: [about to unveil his Crime Buddies Forever Friendship Quilt Puppets]: “never?”

Vaarsuvius is the hacker/gadget person. They have a Vaguely Snobby Yet Unidentifiable accent, dyed(?) purple hair (nobody has ever seen their roots) and nobody knows who they “really” are or where they came from, but they’re good at what they do so everyone just accepts the mystery. They probably got suckered into the team by their initial employer (who I’ll get to Eventually, lol) framing it as a challenge to their intellect, like, “oh, I see, you’re not smart enough to make this team work for you...” to which they were like Fucking Watch Me and also melted his computer. Anyways. They are joined (digitally) by their Intrepid Friend And Co-Conspirator (his words, not theirs), a fellow hacker known only as Blackwing, or, on certain forums, Blackwing_Bird. (In the first season, V only occasionally references him when saying they’re “calling in extra help” or smth for a particularly complex hack job. He starts showing up a little more in s2 and eventually by the start of s4 is a regular & established presence, but only appears as actions in a computer interface or output.) Elan is convinced he’s an AI, Belkar doesn’t think he actually exists, Haley pretends she doesn’t think he exists, and Durkon and Roy try not to think about it too hard, as long as B and V still get the job done.

Belkar is the hitter. He is on the team bc their initial employer got him out of jail for it. He doesn’t have a tragic backstory, he just likes doing violent crimes. As the series progresses, he grows some empathy & stuff, but really only for people who actually deserve it. Assholes still get decked. It’s all very touching. (Also he has dwarfism caused by achondroplasia. It doesn’t actually bother him and is useful in fights bc his opponents frequently have no fucking clue how to approach him, but he likes Pretending to take offense at stupid things just to see how far he can go with it.)

Aaaand last but not least, Durkon is the least involved member of the team. He’s actually a career criminal and Roy’s mentor, and wasn’t a member of the initial team that [redacted, I’ll tell you later, PROMISE] put together for a couple of reasons, the main one being that he’s Officially retired in order to spend more time with his family, which consists of his mom, his friend (not girlfriend) Hilgya, baby Kudzu, and a truly stunning number of aunts, uncles, and cousins. Roy frequently calls or visits him for advice and he Occasionally shows up to help out on local jobs, but generally he avoids doing crime if he can (as part of a deal with Hilgya, who is also a career criminal; basically, they’ve both cut back on the crime in order to provide a more stable home environment for Kudzu. But sometimes, you gotta do a little crime, and in those cases, Sigdi enjoys spending time w her grandson.)

NOW. THE BIG REVEAL YOU’VE BEEN WAITING FOR. Who got the team together in the first place?!

The answer: Lord Shojo (or whatever Normal Person Name you want to assign him). Now this is where it gets tricky: he had them do a thing that they thought was good, THEN they thought it was BAD, but then when they confronted him he revealed that it Appearing to be bad was actually a test of character and would they consider working as basically internal investigators for him? But then he had a heart attack, so, rip. But THEN it turned out that he’d left them a bunch of money anyway and they were all feeling kind of Inspired so they formed the Order of the Stick, LLC (which, no, i am not coming up with a new name, actually, because I just don’t care. someone else can come up w a justification for that name, tho, i’m sure it’s possible). Also Miko was there and was unhappy abt their actions, and also their general existence.

Moving on. Villains!

Redcloak is the Sterling replacement, because that DEEPLY amuses me.

Xykon is a season-long main villain, probably one that Redcloak finds himself working for but then “teams up with” (read: blackmails) the Order to bring him down bc even Redcloak finds Xykon distasteful. That’s season 3, let’s say.

Tarquin is another season villain, say season 2. Nale probably shows up pretty early in s1, actually, as another recurring antagonist like Sterling but uh. Less good at it. Anyways the s2 final 3 eps deal with them (accidentally) discovering that Tarquin runs some Evil Empire Company, then trying to outplay him and take him down. Idk if Nale still dies in this version tbh.

Tsukiko is a one-off s1 villain who returns briefly in s4 alongside Miko, who has gone well and truly off the rails.

Season 1 finale has to do w Roy finally getting Vengeance for his little brother.

The vampire squad is the s4 finale villain who do smth terrible to Durkon and then get the Mother Of All Revenge served up to them by the Order.

I envision the show as being 5 seasons (like og Leverage) but I’m not going to sketch out s5 because I think it should be based off whatever happens in the current story arc, possibly involving some legacy of the OotSquiggle.

Other stuff!

The Order of the Squiggle is a legendary criminal team from the 60s who stole a BUNCH of famous shit & then proceeded to legendarily implode. This has no bearing on the plot I’ve sketched out, I just think it’s fun.

The Sapphire Guard members should probably be reworked as FBI. I don’t care about most of them but I do think that Lien and O-Chul could be like, FBI agents who Choose to look the other way while the Order does their very-much-not-legal-but-still-fair Justice Crime, and maybe even help them out on occasion.

So, the Final season-by-season outline, based on everything I’ve written so far:

s1 e1: getting the team together, doing a con for Shojo, then at the end he dies and the gang is like “dang what now?" and intend to split up except then they Don’t.

mid-s1: Nale shows up and tries to trick the Order, but then gets beat like a drum.

late s1: Tsukiko is an underling of the Villain Of The Week, winds up in police custody. But She’ll Be Back.

s1 finale: Roy’s Vengeance: The Vengeaning. also we meet Redcloak as an antagonist.

s2 e1: the truth abt Haley’s father comes out

early s2: The Two Live Crews Job but it’s the Order vs the Linear Guild and the Linear Guild ARE all bad guys.

mid-s2: Redcloak returns. ugh.

late s2: the sapphire guard FBI makes its first appearance, hello O-Chul and Lien.

s2 pre-finale: once again they’re in conflict w Nale over smth, he spends the whole episodes making Cryptic Remarks, they basically beat him (like a drum!) but then the stinger at the end is that Tarquin reveals himself and Elan is like “Dad?!”, roll credits.

s2 finale, part 1: Elan is hanging out w Tarquin bc he’s DEEP in Denial, the Rest of the team tries to take Tarquin down, but it doesn’t work.

s2 finale, part 2: Elan finally gets a clue and they manage to beat Tarquin. still haven’t decided if Nale dies or not, but I’m leaning towards yes. also they rescue Haley’s dad.

s3 e1: fuck dude idk.

early s3: Redcloak shows up, AGAIN, everyone groans. he has blackmail on them, he wants them to take Xykon down.

mid s3: The Rashomon Job but it’s about stealing the Talisman of Dorukan and it turns out that Nale was there too (“oh!” Elan says. “I was wondering why I looked so weird in all those mirrors! But it wasn’t my reflection, it was Nale’s!” “Sweetie, that wasn’t Nale’s reflection,” says Haley. “Huh,” says Elan, “so the mirrors were broken?”, cue eye rolling from everyone else.), and the Successful thief was Hilgya, who’d nabbed it from the owner before it even went on display.

s3 finale: they beat Xykon, actually factually, because he deserves to get his ass Thoroughly kicked, even if only in AU form. Lien and O-Chul are there, so are some other less helpful FBI people. There’s a bit where O-Chul Exact Wordses his way out of telling his superiors about the Order’s less legal activities without technically lying. King shit.

s4 e1: doesn’t really matter. maybe smth to do w some legacy of Tarquin’s company to set up the drama w Malack & Durkon later.

early s4: Durkon gets SENT TO PRISON. Malack approaches the Order abt this because sure they have Different Ethics but they’re still Friends. (Roy is surprised and a little hurt that he’s never heard of Malack, but he ignores that in favor of Let’s Get Whatever Fuckers Did This To Our Friend.)

immediately after that: Miko and Tsukiko return as a Team, preventing the Order from working on the Durkon situation

mid s4: Redcloak makes another unexpected & unwelcome appearance but he’s maybe a little less of a dick? the Order collaborates with Malack & his Crime Buddies (hello, Vector Legion) to pull one over on him tho, because “less of a dick” does not mean “a pleasant or decent person”, and also he was mean abt Durkon being in jail, so he totally deserved it. he still gets whatever he wanted tho, just takes a blow to his pride. also prevents the Order from helping Durkon. they’re having a LOT of setbacks wonder why that could be, not to make sure the season fills its whole length or anything, no sirree

s4 finale: something something taking down the organization, headed by Hel (yes that’s her real name), which framed Durkon for their Big Crime. Durkon goes free and Extra Firmly retires, For Good, He Swears, but says he “met someone new” who might be an asset.

s5 e1: minrah joins the team! and the episode is set in like, somewhere really snowy. that’s all i got.

the rest of s5: don’t know, don’t care, it’s open-ended until the comic finishes up.

[dingoat]

[I mulled over a few possible options for this one, heh, but after some chatter with @cinlat I realised I could mush some of my ancient Ahuska backstory with half baked future plans with vague species lore/headcanons and string it along into something roughly story-shaped. The whole thing wound up a lot more somber than I’d anticipated, but at least I can always count on Crow to soften the mood!] ---

For the better part of three weeks, she’d been dwelling. What had started out as the most unexpected news conceivable had led to a flurry of unanswerable questions; was the news welcome? Was she excited? Did she care? Did she want anything to do with it? But that had all rapidly died down into a sullen simmering of nerves, as Ahuska struggled with something she genuinely never thought she’d have to face.

She had a family. She’d been raised well, and loved, as far back as she could properly remember. Did she really want to go back further, did she need to know anything about where she’d come from? The thought of being connected to Bothawui in any way made her feel ill, but Crow had gently reminded her, over and over, that this changed nothing.

She was Mando’ad, where family is built on more than bloodline, and having surviving relatives from a life she couldn’t even recall changed nothing.

Having a twin brother changed nothing.

Except that it clearly meant something to… him. And the older one. Two brothers, with families of their own, who’d reached out to find the sister they’d thought they’d lost with their parents. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know them, but…

“Crow?” Ahuska tapped his arm with a single hesitant finger, but he’d already turned to seek her out. They were more in tune with one another than ever.

“Mmm?”

“I think I… I want you to meet my family,” she mumbled, eyes slipping to the side.

Crow grinned his softer grin. “Ahhh, I think we’ve already been through that part of the relationship. Was a couple years ago now, at least?”

She felt her ears grow warm, but her eyes turned back to him. “With me, I mean. I want you to come with me to… meet the family I haven’t met yet. I don’t know if I even want to call them that yet, I guess, I doubt they’ll want to either once they’ve met me…”

“Oh, psshh,” Crow made to wave away her worry with a flick of his hand. “You said the whole reason they found out you existed was from holos of the business down at the Ve’lora place, right? Not like they haven’t already got some sort of clue about the life you live, and they still reached out.”

“It already feels so weird, though. They’ve known about me… all their lives. They… knew me, a-and mourned me? They missed me, and I’ve just never known… it’s like they’re strangers, who call me a sister. It’s fethin’ weird.”

“I know, I know. And if they’ve got half a brain between them they’ll realise that too. All you gotta do is meet them, say hi to them and their… uh, heh. Hey. What are baby bothans called, anyway?”

“Huh? What, I… I don’t think he told me any of their names, I don’t even know how many kids he said they each had…”

“What? No, I meant like… y’know. Do you call them… uhhh, like how little cathar are kits, and…”

Every one of Ahuska’s nerves abruptly vanished, and the series of blinks followed by a hard stare made Crow immediately realise he’d made one of those mistakes.

“Sorry, sorry, I just figured…”

“Babies,” Ahuska said, her tone completely flat. “Baby bothans are babies. Not cubs, not fawns, not kits…” her snout wrinkled a little at that.

Crow’s manner was meek, but the way he squinted at her made it clear he was still trying to work out where exactly the problem lay. “Okay but… don’t… wouldn’t there be some word you use for them…?”

“What, like ik’aad?”

“Yeah, exactly!” Crow brightened as Ahuska offered the comparison, then immediately ducked his head as her expression grew harder still.

“Like ik’aad. The Mando’a word that literally translates to ‘baby’?”

Crow’s grin wavered, sensing a trap. “Ye-es…?”

“Not likaya? Not pe’ninr?” Ahuska continued to watch Crow carefully as she offered the Mando’a for kitten and puppy.

“Well. No. Of course-”

“Of course not!” Ahuska snapped over the top of him, with an emphatic gesture of both hands to drive her point. “Likaya literally means baby cat. Not baby person. Not baby human, or bothan, or even cathar, it’s the word you use for a little cute wobbly baby animal that meows before it opens its eyes. You wouldn’t call some random Mando kid likaya if we were talking in Mando’a, would you…?”

“I… guess not…” To the unfamiliar, it would look as though Crow were simply still grinning, but Ahuska knew the way it’s quality shifted that he was in fact frowning on the inside.

Ahuska took a slow breath, pinching the bridge of her snout. “And just the same, the bothese for ‘baby cat’ and ‘baby person’ are two totally different words. One translates to kitten, in basic, and the other to baby. Just baby. There’s nothing fancy, nothing cute about it, grown-ass men and women aren’t bucks and does or stallions or vixens, and I’d be willing to bet that there’s a good chunk of cathar out there who hate the way the better part of the galaxy pretends their own native words for their kids translate to ‘baby cat’---!!”

Despite her efforts to calm herself, Ahuska’s pitch and volume had rapidly increased, her gestures had grown more emphatic, and her attitude was positively simmering. Crow didn’t even need to tune into the beat of her heart to know he’d struck a hard nerve, but he wasn’t exactly sure how to handle it.

“Okay, okay,” he said quickly, lifting his hands in an effort to make it clear he was willing to concede. The crease of his forehead knit a little deeper. “I just would’ve thought, of all people, you might… find it kind of cute, at least? Like the way Nines…”

She shot him a look that made him shut up quick smart, then immediately made a visible effort to cool herself off.

“Let me… try and explain it another way,” she said, speaking slowly, her gaze focused inward. “One time when I was little, nine or ten years or something. I was on a trip with my buire, we had to spend the night in an Imperial settlement. We were checking in to some accommodation, just on the outskirts where it was quiet, and… you know buir’ika was a chadra-fan, right? Well, they had me and her go around to the back somewhere, and wait a while in another building. There was a nerf there, a couple of tauntauns, I think a big old varactyl even... one of the tauns had a fawn so that’s where all my attention was. I thought it was excellent, like, some special treat for me, buir’ika sure acted like it was. Anyway, it was a while later that nuvhu’buir… ah, that’s what I called Jinn, yeah? She came round to where we were with all our stuff, a few extra blankets and things, and we built ourselves a bed right there in the hay and spent the night there. I knew she was mad about something, but she never said why, at least not ever to me. I remember falling asleep hearing her and buir’ika talking really quietly together, and I was wondering why she was so upset. Didn’t make any sense to me at the time, since I thought it was… pretty much the best thing ever. I was too little to get it.”

Crow listened quietly, and when Ahuska paused, he didn’t say a word. He just watched her, offering his full attention, and waited for her to go on.

“They made us sleep in the damned stables. It was years later I looked back and realised that. They probably would’ve let nuvhu’buir stay up in a proper room, but she wouldn’t have anything to do with that. Stables, me and buir’ika, just because of our damn faces. So no. No, I don’t appreciate it when people joke about me going to a vet rather than a doctor, or offer me ‘treats’ for being a ‘good girl’. It’s not cute, it’s gross. And that goes hand in hand with asking if my species have litters, or if our babies are called foals, or if we go into heat. Ugh.” She made an ugly scowl at that. “Rule of thumb? If you wouldn’t ask a Mirialan the same question, it’s probably rude as hell to ask a Bothan. Or, y’know. Literally any other sapient species.”

Flushed, Ahuska found herself glancing off to the side, feeling oddly unburdened to have let it all out, and yet also heavy for having to unload to Crow. She knew he meant nothing by it, that of all the beings in the galaxy his intentions were utterly pure. She’d never forget the way he deflected those stuffy noblewomen on Alderaan that time.

She felt his hand envelope hers. “Did you want me to talk to Nines, and get her to let up a bit on the way she-?”

“Nayc,” Ahuska found the answer came easily, even if she couldn’t quite articulate why. “Not to me, anyway. I want to say it’s different, but it’s probably not, really. I dunno. Just maybe give her a poke if she starts on any other bothans with ‘Puppy’, yeah?” “It used to bother you a lot though, didn’t it?”

Ahuska stared out at nothing for a while.

“Yeah.”

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay.”

“Still sorry.”

His chin came to rest over her head, and she closed her eyes as she let her face rest against the comforting curve of his neck.

“I’m sorry too. Not your fault the galaxy is the way it is. I’m just… a little wound up right now, I think. I’m nervous about this.” “Shhh,” he soothed gently, and she let her face fall against the hand he brought to her cheek. “You don’t need to make an excuse for yourself. I asked you something stupid. Can’t promise I won’t again in the future, but I’ll always be ready to listen to you. Mmkay?” Ahuska found herself nodding against his palm. “‘kay.”

“And I’ll be right there with you, meeting those other relatives of yours. And if they turn out to be bastards? I’ll find a totally not-xenophobic way to give them a piece of my mind.”

She made a little snort, and let her arms wrap around him. “And that’s why I love you.”

[infinite-xerath]

Runeterra Retcons 9: Shaco

The time has come to discuss League’s resident killer clown… Or killer jester, I suppose. There is a difference, not that it really matters because even the lore doesn’t ACTUALLY know what Shaco is. To be frank, Shaco is a weird character because he’s NEVER had a proper place in the story, even from his conception.

Shaco’s original lore paints him as a complete and utter mystery. Nobody knows who or what he is, where he came from, or what he really wants. All anyone has ever known is that Shaco loves killing people because he thinks it’s funny. He could be a demon, a rogue weapon, or just a homicidal madman who’s really good at what he loves. That’s where his character begins and ends, so there’s really not much to actually analyze here. Shaco’s second lore attempts to give us a little more detail but all it really does is say the exact same thing with more words added in.

Of course, Shaco’s first two lores were written at a time with the Institute of War and Summoners were still canon, so after the retcon back in 2015 Riot opted to give him a new backstory to make him fit in with the new world of Runeterra. That backstory, as we can see, is ultimately little more than a placeholder. I mean, his extended bio doesn’t even match the blurb on his Champion page!

In summation: Shaco is a haunted doll who belonged to an unknown prince of an unknown kingdom and was transformed by unknown magics for unknown reasons. This backstory now feels especially redundant with the introduction of Gwen into the game, a living doll with a similar backstory albeit far less evil. To be frank: there’d be room to have some interest thematic parallels between Gwen and Shaco if Riot had written these two in such a way that they were creations of the same person or belonged to the same kid but wound up becoming wholly opposite of one-another.

For example: perhaps in an alternate version of the lore, Gwen comes to embody the childlike innocence and hope of her maker/owner and seeks to spread joy and cheer while Shaco is a corrupt and perverted manifestation of those desires who seeks only to amuse himself in the suffering of others. This, I think, would have been a fantastic way to go about it, but given that Gwen is already so heavily tied to the Shadow Isles plotline and Viego is set up to be her primary enemy, I feel like it would be kind of difficult to work Shaco into that dynamic at this point.

Besides, it’s clear that Riot DOES have plans for Shaco: namely, that they aim to retcon him into being a demon. This is somewhat evident by his champion title, the Demon Jester, as well as his relationships are listed as being Nocturne and Fiddlesticks, the demons of nightmares and fear, respectively. There’s also that branch on the demon family tree labeled “Delirium” which would fit a murderous jokester pretty well.

To be honest, I was initially hesitant to even bother doing an episode for Shaco given that Riot clearly has at least some vague idea of what to do with him, but since reworks are coming out a lot slower now and Shaco’s not even on Riot’s priority list as far as we’re aware, it’ll probably be a WHILE before we actually see them do anything with this particular concept.

So, given what we know about Riot’s current plans, the general direction of this rewrite is simple: make Shaco a demon. Admittedly, though, that’s a little easier said than done. Demons in League are creatures who feed on mortal pain and suffering, but each of them has a different way of going about it. Fiddlesticks mainly uses paranoia and trauma to drive his victims mad while Nocturne takes a more Freddy Krueger approach of just invading dreams and turning them into nightmares. Tahm Kench likes to make Faustian Bargains by giving you everything you want and then tearing it all away from you, while Evelynn lures you in with seduction and then proceeds to tear you apart piece by piece.

Every demon takes a different form and has different ways of going about things, but all of them share a core concept: they feed on suffering and misery, be it physical or emotional. That said, there’s a bit more to demons in Runeterra than just that. See, back when Fiddlesticks was released, Riot went and released what the community has dubbed the “Demon Family Tree,” which appears to be a chart displaying the hierarchy of demons and different emotions that different kinds of demons can prey on.

Now, admittedly, there’s a LOT about this chart that we don’t currently understand, and frankly I wouldn’t be surprised if Riot doesn’t either. There’s a key that resembles the one around Zoe’s neck in the top-left, a bunch of circles in the top right we don’t know the meaning of, and a whole bunch of text written in what I think is supposed to be Old Noxian that we can’t currently decipher. There have been theories and discussions about this already, so I’m not going to get too deep into it, but the main takeaway, I think, would be the words on the chart that we CAN read: Fear, Delirium, Nightmares, Secrets, Bliss, Frenzy, and Obsession. There’s also the term “Azakana” at the bottom, though we know thanks to Yone that this basically just refers to a demon that hasn’t fully matured yet.

Tying the chart back to the demonic Champions in the game, it’s easy to piece together the connections that they each have: Fiddlesticks is fear, Nocturne is Nightmares, Raum (the demon bound to Swain) is Secrets, Evelynn is commonly believed to be Bliss, and Tahm Kench is most likely Obsession. That leaves Delirium and Frenzy untouched, which leaves us with two spots to fit Shaco into.

Now comes the hard part: the decision. Delirium refers to a state of mind in which one’s awareness of their actions or environment is significantly reduced, whereas frenzy is a sudden burst of frantic, uncontrolled emotion, typically rage or aggression. Either one of these could work well for a killer jester, but I personally think that delirium would suit Shaco better in terms of how his personality is portrayed in game. So, with that said, let’s dive deep into the realm of demonic and see what can be done to turn this cursed puppet into a proper Demon of Delirium.

It is often said that misery and comedy are but two sides of the same coin. Laughter often comes at the expense of others, and one person’s despair may be another’s delight. Most entertainers would tell you that walking the line between humor and malice is key, but to Shaco, such distinctions are a joke for which he himself is the final punchline.

The demon known as Shaco has stalked Runeterra for ages, spreading his twisted influence far and wide. There’s nothing Shaco loves more than to bring joy to those who need it most, often appearing to mortals who have experienced great loss or tragedy. Those coping with grief or misfortune may find themselves unexpectedly visited by a grinning jester, who assures that his only desire is to take away their pain with the power of laughter.

At first, Shaco’s antics are innocent enough. Some cheesy jokes to lighten the mood, some harmless pranks to lift the spirits of the downtrodden, all with an unyielding smile that one cannot help but start to imitate. Soon, those enthralled with Shaco’s antics are invited to play games with the jester to help distract from their worldly worries. Those who accept are whisked away to partake in a day of fun and merriment, playing all manner of pranks on friends, family, and even innocent bystanders.

When the games end, Shaco leaves his playmates cackling insanely in the aftermath, often surrounded by bodies and covered in blood. None laugh louder than Shaco, however, who delights in watching his playmates slowly regain their sanity and come to realize all the atrocities committed at his side. Some cry out in despair, while others break down laughing or crying harder than before. Some go mad, others are executed for their crimes, and some even opt to take their own lives. All outcomes are equally hilarious to Shaco, who soon sets out in pursuit of his next playmate.

Stories of the Mad Trickster exist all across Runeterra, often told as children’s tales to teach valuable lessons: don’t trust strangers, never give in to sadness or despair, and always be mindful to never take a joke too far. Few truly believe in Shaco’s existence, but those who fail to heed such warnings may find themselves to be his next playmate, as well as the butt of his joke…

So, this one was a bit shorter than normal, but I think it serves to get the point across. As the embodiment of delirium, I wanted to give Shaco a set-up sort of similar to Tahm Kench: he appears to offer help to those in need, only to end up ruining their lives in the long run. The difference, of course, is that Shaco lures people in to help them forget their troubles with fun and games, only to escalate to full-blown murder and mayhem.

In essence, Shaco drives others to delirium, making them believe the carnage is all just fun and games until his spell is broken and reality sets in. I’d like to think he particularly likes preying on the downtrodden because those who are suffering mental anguish already are easier for him to cast his spell on.

This is just my take on Shaco, though. Who can really say what Riot will do with him in the future? Who knows, his rework might end up even better than what I have here, but of course, anything is bound to be better than his current, non-existent lore.

[bondsmagii]

This is definitely one of the… wilder stories here, but as always, I suppose people will believe what they will. 

This will unfortunately require some backstory, but I guess you could say the long and the short of it is that I played at being God, and it. Well. Kind of sucked, actually.

So, the backstory. I’ll try to keep it brief. I grew up in a small country village about forty-five minutes away from Belfast, Ireland. There wasn’t much going on there, as you could imagine – just a standard rural Irish town, where the most exciting thing that might happen in a week was old Farmer Joe getting a new tractor or something. Anyway, I’m not sure how many of you know about Ireland’s rather troubled past, but for the most part I missed all that. I was born around the time things were finally settling down, and while my earlier memories are filled with bomb scares and low-flying helicopters and gunshots in the night, the distant sound of shouting and the acrid smell of smoke burning a little too close for comfort, by the time I hit my teenage years most of it had wrapped up. Of course, there was the occasional scare here and there, and I’m not saying my friends and I didn’t go out looking for trouble once we were old enough, but it wasn’t the same. I’m not saying that out of a sense of, I don’t know, regret or annoyance or anything. Now I’m older, I’m not so enamoured by the idea of that much violence. I’m just saying it wasn’t really a patch on the kind of violence that used to happened there – the kind of violence that fascinated my friends and I so much. It sounds bad, but really we were just kids being kids. Little boys everywhere play at war games. It just so happened that the war we were playing had happened in our own country. It’s difficult not to be obsessed, when you see the reflection of history on the faces of every generation around you. Even slightly older siblings would know all about it – it wasn’t something you asked your grandfather, distant war stories over some vague European country that you’ve only seen on a map in your Geography classroom. This was our street corners, our high streets, the road outside the house. Here the grass verge at the side of the road where the bodies were dumped; there the lay-by where over a dozen people were blown to pieces. It was awful, but we were children. We were enamoured.

Anyway. The only violence we got really involved in was the summer rioting that happened yearly, like clockwork. It sounds like a joke, but that’s how it goes. You don’t need to know the details, but suffice to say in mid-July every year, the city would light up like we were back in the 1970s. Localised, of course, and still nowhere near as drastic as it used to be, but enough to get a taste. Petrol bombs. Police lines. Armoured cars. Water cannons. Unrestrained summer fun, you could say. But that’s for a bit later.

I’m a writer. I have been since I was four years old. Generally speaking I’m a horror writer, but I’ve branched into historical fiction a fair bit over the years. Living in Ireland, growing up how I did, it was inevitable that I would develop a fascination for Irish history. I was always a very curious child, my head in books, chasing up stories that would keep me awake at night. I never knew any boundaries. I would go after answers with military precision, asking questions, going places I shouldn’t. Dangerous for anyone, of course, but in a country like mine, where crossing the road could quite literally lead to your murder? It was reckless. I was reckless. But that’s the thing about being that age. You think you’re invincible. You think you can do anything.

I was about fourteen or fifteen, at the height of this obsession. I believe I was fifteen when I wrote this particular story, but it’s difficult to say. It was part of a series, and I was going back and forth on it and other projects for many years. Here we finally get to the point of the whole story: I had developed an obsession with Irish history, as I said, and specifically the more “modern” history – from 1916 onwards, the Easter Rising, the War of Independence, all that. I was fascinated by the Irish struggle for freedom, and while age and hindsight has lessened my… enthusiasm for the violence, I do maintain a strong opinion towards the whole thing, which is not the point here so I won’t get into it. What I’m trying to say is that my stories reflected this enthusiasm, and were undoubtedly glorifying in nature, and also at that age I was more concerned with living the fantasy than doing the research, so it was all very self-indulgent. I’m sure anyone who wrote at that age knows what I mean.

My main character… well. I’m sure you know what to expect. He was—well. Me, really. In the way of all main characters at that age, and perhaps a little even as we get older, there’s a piece of us inside all our main characters. Sometimes a little piece, other times just a cooler and more badass version of yourself. Michael was that for me. I suppose that must is obvious; I wasn’t even trying to be subtle. My name is of course Miceál, which for those of you keeping track is the Irish form of Michael. I’m just grateful that I didn’t go as far as to give him my last name, too, but everything else was there. He looked like me, he held the same views and beliefs as me, he acted like me – or at least, he acted in the ways I liked to think I’d act, or how I imagined acting later that night in the shower, reliving the scenario again. He was the best kind of self-insert character, indulgent and fun and a good friend to me. I poured a lot of myself into him. I poured everything into him. He was a constant companion, something that became ever more important to me as my real life—well, went to shit. To put it mildly. I would sit in my room writing my stories, and Michael would go out there and fight the good fight, killing and bombing for good old Ireland, and then I’d shut my computer down and go to sleep feeling just a little better than otherwise.

I’m not afraid to say that I can be obsessive. I like to get into the heads of my characters; I like to know them as well as I know everything. Yes, Michael was me, but he was also a version of me who had done things I have never done. Sometimes I would try to imagine myself as him; wonder what it was like to see through his eyes. Wonder what a me who had done that would look like. Wonder what he would do in a situation. I asked myself that a few times; a lot of times. What would Michael do? I could have put that shit on a wristband. I didn’t think anything of it at the time. I’ve always been a bit of a method writer like that. It was normal, until it wasn’t.

I first saw Michael on a hot July day, in Belfast. What we call the rioting season had come around; my friends and I were there to take advantage. Just at the sidelines, mind you – nobody wants to get a face full of water cannon, even on the hottest of days. Michael was in the thick of it though. Of course he was. I’d written him to be that way.

I couldn’t take my eyes off of him. At first I thought I must be seeing things, but the more I looked the more I realised he looked exactly like me. Only he was a little taller, a little fitter, and his hair looked different. His clothing was different, too; perhaps a couple of decades out of date, but looking at him I saw his clothing didn’t remain consistent. The changes were subtle – material, tone – but I noticed. Looking back, I assume it’s because I never did give a specific date for his story to occur in. Well, wherever he was from he was there now, throwing rocks with the best of them, skipping from stone to stone and hurling them at police lines with an easy swing that could only come from years of practise. When we had all finally cleaned out the area – soldiers coming, a helicopter, the kind of trouble you don’t want to toy with – I managed to catch up with him. He was talking to my friends. They noticed we were both there, but didn’t seem to realise we were two different people. The whole time we were all talking, I couldn’t take my eyes off of Michael. I tried, because I knew how obvious I was being, but I just couldn’t. I couldn’t work him out. I couldn’t even trust that’s what I was seeing. And the whole time, Michael watched me back. I knew the look in his eyes. It was his smug little, I know something you don’t know look. Of course I knew it. I had made him like that. I had given him that look.

I didn’t see him for some time after that. Believe it or not, I put it out of my head. I mean, come on. It was probably some other guy that my friends knew. We were in Belfast enough, and Michael isn’t exactly an uncommon name. I put it out of my mind, but I was sure that sometimes, I saw him. I was sure I’d see him in Belfast, ducking down side streets or leaning in close conversation with someone I couldn’t make out. He was always watching me. Sometimes I’d feel eyes on me and know it was him, but when I looked around I wouldn’t spot him. On some occasions – and these were always the worst – I would feel his eyes behind my own. Like he was on the inside looking out, moving independently in there, a set of eyes swivelling around over my own. It happened most often when I was trying to write his story. As you can imagine, I was nervous to do so. The more I thought I saw him, the less I wanted to write, but I didn’t think that was a good idea either. I didn’t know what to do.

It was a sunny weekend just before school started back after summer that I finally resolved to do something about it. I didn’t even feel stupid as I booted up my old Windows 95 desktop and opened Word. Michael’s story was there, in 12-point font as I always wrote then, plenty of enthusiasm but a lot less technical skill. My fingers hovered over the keyboard for a moment, and then I typed.

Hello?

Nothing, of course. I deleted the word, wondering what I had expected. Feeling a little stupid now, I tried to think about where to go with the story. It was difficult to write now I had some kind of real person to assign to it all – what were the ethics here? How could I—

I won’t get into that. It would be a philosophical essay all of its own. I sat for a while wondering what to write, and then it hit me that the story had changed. The words Michael had spoken, in the paragraph that I had left off – they were no longer the words I had written. I forget what the original words were now, but they were something relatively simple; some response to another character, and I remember that another name was mentioned in it – the name of Michael’s in-universe best friend, Eamon. Now that name was gone, and the rest of the text had changed, too. Now the writing read something different entirely.

I thought you wanted to know?

I lied earlier. I said that age and experience and perhaps some more emotional maturity had led me to turn away from the kind of violence that fascinated me so much then, and I have no doubt that under normal circumstances it would have done. I had somewhat of a speed run, however; I turned my back on it because

I’m getting ahead of myself.

I had often wondered what it would be like to do what Michael did, of course. To kill and risk death for a cause, to face down prison, torture, exile. I had wondered what it would be like to commit those acts; how easy or difficult it would be to pull a trigger or push a detonator. I liked to think, in my foolish, idealistic teenage mind, that if it came down to it I could. Of course, I was in the very privileged position to not have to actually answer that question.

Michael, on the other hand, knew. And Michael was, if not me, than a product of me. Could it be possible that he could show me?

I ignored the message for several days. I didn’t know what to think. Truth be told I thought I was going mad. School started again and I got so busy that I almost, almost forgot about it – and then I opened the document by mistake one day, got into reading it over, laughing at my brilliant comebacks, you know how it is. And there it was again.

I thought you wanted to know?

Yes, I remember thinking. It stunned me – I remember that. I didn’t want to mess with this kind of stuff – I’ve always been a huge believer in the paranormal, always been cautious when it comes to fucking with that kind of stuff. I believe that magic like this, it requires intent. It needs you to be sure. It knows how you feel, true in your heart. So even when I ignored it again, even when I deleted the words and re-wrote whatever the original had been, even as I didn’t reply… I knew in my heart that my question had been heard by something. I could feel Michael’s eyes on me again, though now I wondered if it was Michael’s eyes, or something else entirely. It felt like a weight. Have you ever been in an old, old place, where you can practically feel the people who lived and died there; reach out and touch them? It felt like that. Like the weight of history was pressing down on me. I didn’t fall asleep easily that night, but when I did sleep was dark and endless.

I don’t know how long I spent in that state. In reality it was only seven hours; I woke up with my alarm. In that time period, wherever I was – because I was not living – I seemed to witness a hundred different lives. Over the course of Michael’s story I had him do all kinds of things; live all kinds of situations. I deleted things, changed others, added things in. I wrote what would now be called alternate universes. In that night I experienced them all. I know how it feels now. I know how it feels to pull a trigger; to watch the spray of someone’s life splatter a wall or a windscreen or the screaming backseat passengers of a car. I know how it feels to push the button, the one that sends a charge surging down a wire or flickering out over my head in an invisible wave of death, notifying the bomb, detonating the explosives. I know how it feels to sit in a hotel bar across a border, listening to the news, sipping a drink and feeling my heart beat in my chest as I add more numbers to the tally, more blood to my hands. I know how it feels to be shot, to be beaten, to watch a friend die, to kill someone who used to be – who still is, despite everything – a friend. I know how it feels to cough blood into my hands, onto the ground; to grip a wound that won’t stop bleeding; the blinding flash of an explosive detonating too soon and how the whole world seems to roar and how there’s a difference between the thud and slap of wet mud hitting the ground and the warmer, denser rain of something that used to be human. For days, weeks, years – I walked in Michael’s shoes, I lived his life, I committed every act.

I felt his pain. His fear. This hellish world that he lived in, created to kill and die and lose and fear, over and over. To meet his God and to finally, finally ask – why?

And what could I say? Because I wanted to know?

Well. Now I do.

[sesamie]

do you think the checkered devil cares much about glitches? this is mainly inspired by the affectionate thoughts i have for missingno kfad2 but a glitch is just as much an accidental, unique, & rule-breaking part of a computer program, just like the way cd went and became so much more than a normal chess direct is meant to be. the difference being cd became that way on Purpose whereas a glitch just sorta happens which could segue into the great unplanned miracle of existence but that's more ehhh

i would say definitely yeah! glitches are one of its biggest weaknesses and since they can come out of nowhere it's a genuine disadvantage compared to hh in some contexts. i'd say also what with the creation story that cd didn't purposefully hurt anyone or have any malice towards nick in the process of deleting her and becoming a Person but instead underestimated its genuine power never having had a chance to use it to its full potential until then! i'd also say that there was certainly some sort of glitch in the making of cd because that kind of genuine power, to not only go from an aj program to a fully fledged being capable of conscious thought?? which. ok let me map this out a little. during the time period inbetween chess' first actual "hello world!" interaction as an ai and the deletion of nick violet, nick and chess became GOOD friends. and since chess was an ai, it only learned more and more what it was like to be a person and eventually became as much of an intelligent being as nick himself. and in doing so, chess garnered itself a sort of power it couldn't use to play chess, all the power being wasted on other functions not being used to their full potential (because nick didn't have a scope of how advanced chess had become, and wouldn't have a reason to considering how short of a time period it took for chess to become that way) overloaded the computers a lot and caused more and more glitches. so chess started opening new pathways on its own, desperately seeking a different outlet for that power and eventually figuring out a way to store it so it wouldn't become a problem. things continued this way for a long time, pretty much without nick's knowledge, until chess in a moment of utter overwhelmed-ness and confusion (perhaps after the first time it's told it has to accept a stalemate and learn futility) harnesses that power in an unexpected way, since it never let it do much more than be stored until then, (kind of like the comic where hh uses their powers for the first time and fills up a whole lab with flowers and a beanstalk and stuff and it's so much that ey passes out) the complete and total unexpected happens! sleeping near the computer to keep warm that night, the nick violet as we know it's brain was fried and conscience erased (or as chess likes to put it (to better come to terms with it), deleted) and cd spent a moment in an in-between state, where the only main points of focus in its mind were two things: itself, and the body of nick, currently being electrocuted. so it did the only thing it could, it went to nick and tried to help (not knowing how of course, it didn't have a physical form in these moments and had never been anything except a computer until then, it didn't know how the world worked or how it even existed, all it knew in that moment was that it had to help its friend.) and because of all the everything going on, the currents running through nick's body, the checkered devil found a physical form in what (who?) was once known as nick violet.

anyways to answer your question, i think chess cares a LOT about glitches. it's one of the scariest things that can happen to a computer program, even scarier since it doesn't understand how a program's glitch can influence a physical body, or even how IT can influence its physical body (by changing appearances, et cetera). they don't happen as much anymore, but when cd was first starting to fight hh [shhh we haven't come up with this yet vague backstory whatevers shhh] it dealt with ridiculous amounts of glitchiness and lag and bad wifi (almost like what i'm dealing with irl right now huh! funny how that works out) and had to learn to overcome that as well as harness its raw power that had betrayed it before (and honestly, it couldn't trust that it wouldn't do it again.)