#and also he might be in it. i might borrow his character model for this fic too

[tellthatbrokebitch]

pairings so far for the zombie au are: byler, hopclair (i think that's el and lucas' shipname???), eventual elumax bc ofc, ronance, vee poly with jargyle and stonathan, jopper, possibly dustin with an oc but almost might just leave him single but also that feels exclusionary but also they don't all NEED to be paired off but also-

[tumblingxelian]

If I may ask with an open enough mind, might I hear out your thoughts on the character of Chloe Bourgeois? I don't expect an answer right out the gate so don't rush on my account. I'm merely trying to collect varying perspectives over what's become a uniquely controversial character.

Oh my that is a doozy of a question, I've debated no less than three separate videos on the topic and multiple essays to boot. Still, she's on my mind and the thing I am working on is obstructing me from modelling or writing but quires breaks to let stuff load so I have time for a longer ask:

So, what are my thoughts on Chloe Bourgeois?

Exactly where to start is rather tricky, so forgive any digressions or rambles.

Chloe is thematically the everyday reality of an Akumatized person.

What I mean by this is that Akuma victims are people in states of emotional distress, tribulation or trouble. Who thanks to the enabling of a power greater than themselves are both encouraged and enabled to lash out at others with borrowed power.

These people are meant to be sympathetic, their emotional tribulation taken advantage of, their situation, methods and thought process untenable. But they do need to be stopped from doing harm, and then healing needs to begin, with some effort made to redress the issue that led to them lashing out in the first place.

Akuma victims are the supernatural theme, Chloe is the reality.

Of course, some might claim she has no reason to have issues but...

Her mother is negligent and largely absent. The time they spent together prior to Queen Wasp, consisted of Chloe praising, giving gifts and trying to please Audrey. Only to be torn down, ignored, rejected or have her efforts disparaged. The woman doesn't even get her name right and the only means by which she earned even a scrap of approval was through being cruel. Something explicitly encouraged by the show's main character which is ???. 

Though it seems Audrey got bored with her fairly quickly regardless.

Audrey is unrelentingly hostile, selfish and cruel and encourages these traits in others and only avoids turning them on a person if they are sufficiently useful, or a match for her in viciousness. You are either her victim, her tool, or a conspirator. This is a hilariously awful parent, the damage she can do limited only by her sheer lack of interest.

Andre is somehow worse.

I am going to ignore the reading undertones of subtext into things but suffice to say that ratchets him up from just a bad parent to kill him with fire parent.

What we see with Andre is a man who explicitly taught Chloe to lie, cheat, intimidate, extort and bribe people to get what she wants. She is fourteen, and has been doing this since before she was in double digits. She's not bad because there's something innately wrong with her, she behaves badly because she's been explicitly taught that was the proper way to conduct herself.

We know full well Andre is capable of reigning Chloe in, be it gently in the Christa episode or with disciplinary action in Kung Food. However he only does this when it suits him, or her actions might cause him problems. For all his alleged affection for her, or her alleged influence on him, Chloe's always on the end of a leash Andre can and will tug back on the moment he feels like it.

This isn't just bad because it's so blatantly hypocritical and self serving. It's bad, because it means he enables Chloe's most self destructive and harmful traits so long as they don't impact 'him'. Given also that he is the one who, to put it charitably, raised her, that means the consequences and fallout of her actions should fall on him.

The fact he is presumably the one who encouraged Chloe to impersonate his wife, given Audrey didn't start rewarding that behavior until Queen Wasp, is also bad parenting. Like even if you ignore the disgust factor, its just fucking awful parenting and like everything else he taught her. It contributed to the fact Chloe is a social pariah hated by most people she has to spend time around.

Because let's get to the next stage, subversions!

In most shows like ML, Chloe as "The mean girl" would be popular, or at least feared, able to pose a threat in a social context, and is usually insulated from the more magical issues.

None of this applies to Chloe.

Even if we don't treat Origins as the shows starting point, she's already only tangentially involved in class stuff. Her fathers hotels own doorman outright says she has no friends, extremely out of pocket of him. & Origins sees one of the first things said to him being that Chloe is a brat and he halfway ditches her before 24 hours are up, and keeps her at nominal arms length for the rest of the series.

We can talk about how there's reasons for this, sure, but the thing that's interesting here is the subversion.

Chloe's mean-ness has not won her friends or influence as it does other mean girls in fiction, such as Heathers or Mean Girls.

Instead, it's made her barely tolerated by her peers and this only grows worse for her as the show goes on leading to her ensuing isolation which only worsens her condition and attitude. This is something Chloe is even varying shades of aware of, as she tearfully confessed to Ladybug when hiding from her Akumatized father. She knows something is wrong, but doing things differently goes against everything her parents taught her or exemplified, so it's not a shock she struggles.

Similarly, compare how Bonnie from Kim Possible could actually out-compete Kim for the role of cheer captain. 

Can Chloe beat Marinette in anything?

No, not really, or least the narrative never lets her do so even when she does have the skills for it, such as 8 years of ballet losing to nice vibes.

This is much less interesting than the previous point because it's basically just the writers using Chloe as a speed bump which gets boring after a while.

Then consider how Totally Spies own Mean Girl, Mandy is rarely tied to the actual adventures save maybe in a way other civilians are; leaving altercations with Clover as civilian affairs.

Does this apply to Chloe?

Fuck no XD

Chloe's frequently targeted by AKuma, even when she either shouldn't be singled out, (Ivan, everyone was scared) or for comparatively minor transgressions (Nathanial, his teacher screamed at, insulted & shook him) or outright targeted by the main villain of the show. (One who has known her since she was an infant!) 

Even before she had a Miraculous, Chloe was a frequent target of violent murder attempts. But this is largely treated as neutral, or even as comeuppance for bad behaviour. The issue is, the sheer scale of what she's being targeted with is so completely disportionate to what she did, assuming she even did things wrong, that it comes off as more unfair than anything else, & liable to give trauma. 

Especially as the show has double standards at times.

I think often-times the writers neglected to actually think through their karmic punishments for Chloe.

Take Pixelator, 

Chloe is the one who recognized Jagged, helped her father, and actually did her fucking job, but is the only student not rewarded with a concert ticket despite having done nothing to piss Jagged off.

Or how when her locker was broken into she's largely dismissed and needs to threaten the principal with her father to get a response. One might say this is abusing her power, but A, it's her dads power and B, we see with Lila later that the principle will basically just bow to whoever can make the bigger fuss. This isn't a Chloe issue it's a Damocles issue and I think being upset people broke into her locker isn't exactly unfair.

Similarly, I noted above how Chloe loses to Marinette even when she shouldn't logically do so. 

A bigger example of the narrative short hand delivered is the fact we see other characters do stuff Chloe does and get free rides.

IE, Kagami can dramatically strut into a fencing hall talking the most boastful shit, actually lose more or less legitimately, Akumatize and still be treated with sympathy and become a hero.

Chloe boastfully auditions to be Ladybug for a music video, but actually is the best audition scene, but loses out to positive vibes, gets angry & through her father lashes out, gets punished & no one gives a shit about her side of the story. 

To be clear, I like Kagami, I find this comparison interesting, I just don't think the show realized that it did this or does stuff like this a lot. 

That whole episode also demonstrates what I said at the start, about Chloe embodying the thematic of Akuma, IE, anger or distress, powerful sponsor, lashing out, ETC. 

So the double standard in how she's framed and treated VS Kagami is framed and treated becomes a weakness of the writing and show. 

We also see this with stuff like her & Marinette sabotaging Kagami, but Marinette largely getting portrayed sympathetically for doing so while Chloe isn't. 

This creates the impression the problem isn't Chloe's bad behavior, it's with her mere existence.

IE, she's the audience and writer's punching bag/designated target, so it feels like the writers just kind of don't bother a lot of the time actually making her wrong or thinking through the implications of their story beats with her, or other characters' behaviour. 

This stuff is present in Season 1, much more overt in season 2 and basically caps off season 3 which is where I stopped watching.

Cos like, the villain who's known her since forever has been actively trying to utilize her through the seasons, who explicitly aimed to puther in a state of severe emotional distress, ambushed her in her own home & had her parents in his grasp.

Right after the show's hero blatantly walked back a previous ruling that kept Chloe from being Queen Bee, (& did so for selfish and if one considered HK targeting known heroes, incredibly callous reasons)

But we're meant to hate the 14 year old for responding badly?

I would also argue stuff like this is a large part of what makes Chloe such an ensemble dark horde to the fandom. Not just because one can read into things about her history and character, but because the author's hand is so heavy it actively hurts and hinders its own narrative in order to harm Chloe and so feels unfair.

Some final notes I couldn't place elsewhere:

Akuma don't usually harm their loved one's. Chloe's mother tried to kill her on sight & then kept looking for excuses to do so & finally did. Andre turned the powerful & willful Audrey into a simpering hanger on and wanted to do the same with Chloe, which again, yikes.

When fused together they declared her incapable of loving anyone but herself. A fact blatantly disproven already but even in the episode itself with her demanding their release in exchange for helping Hawk Moth. & then tried to fucking EAT HER.

Her butler, school friend and teacher seemingly love her more than her own parents.

As an aside, Sabrina's explicitly encouraged to work for Chloe by her father as it makes her "Useful" which has loads of implications. But at least one can't blame Chloe for Sabrina's character.

Madame Bustier, when Akumatized uses having "Taken care" of her father as a lure to try and get Chloe to come to her. So again, yikes if one wants to read into it as it means even as an Akuma who was upset by Chloe, Bustier perceives Andre as the threat/problem to her.

Chloe by all accounts seems to live alone in a hotel suite, not even one of the fancier, super suites but like... The walls are 50% glass with no curtains, that lead to publicly exposed areas (as we see interviews with Jagged being conducted in them) and there's almost nothing to identify it as a space she lives in. Hell, the pictures on the wall are often blank and it seems she's lived here alone since she was a toddler.

That would have calamitous impacts on a Child's psyche & development! 

Despite her portrayal, Chloe was shown to be extremely good at being Queen Bee in many respects.

She almost soloed Mayura.

She is the first person shown able to resist Akuma, got civilians out of an Akuma infested train cart & protected Sabrina during the second red Akuma swarm.

She was able to quickly and easily keep up with Ladybug on the roof tops and using a similar weapon & travel style creates a visual parallel between the two which carries implications of them being counterparts. 

But most especially Chloe proved herself a skilled and heroic combatant during Heroes Day; covering for the other heroes without orders, doing so easily & needing to be targeted by multiple villains all with personal ties to her to be brought down, while protecting other heroes.

But that never really gets acknowledged.

So much like with "Nearly being brutally murdered for being kind of a dick" this sense of narrative imbalance engendered sympathy from those who notice.

I also find it fascinating that Chloe is, despite spending her life surrounded by abusers and enablers both, that she, without any real guidance, managed to soften their behaviors on her own.

Yes she buys Sabrina presents in luew of saying sorry, but she also spends time with her and does fun stuff, Andre just buys her off. She wants Adrien at her side and the like, but she doesn't actually try to stop him from befriending people she hates, Gabriel tries to keep him locked up. She doesn't like losing, but compares her relatively mild huffiness or brief theatrics to Audrey's violent response to merely being snubbed.

She's already doing better than all of them despite explicitly being taught or demonstrated, or victimized with all the wrong lessons and is fourteen.

Chloe also obviously has a deeply unhealthy understanding of relationships as seenin in how she recreates her parents awful dynamic with everyone around her. 

IE,

Andre fawns on Audrey, who is domineering, never satisfied and harsh at best. Chloe acts accordingly with Sabrina, while fawning on her mother and Ladybug who are much the same though  for different reasons. She's internalized this deeply unhealthy dynamic and applies it to herself as much as she does to anyone else.

This is just one element of the fact she honestly seems deeply troubled on a social level. I mentioned earlier that Chloe seems to know "Something" is wrong with everyone hating her & is clearly unhappy about it. But also seems unsure how to fix it, or what the source of the problem is.

The fact she often doesn't seem to get social cues, even from people she's treating like a peer, such as Ala or Adrien, gives off the sense that her problems go deeper than just "Being a brat".

This is further emphasized by the fact that so much of her daily persona seen is her doing an impression of her mother. Or otherwise putting on a show to try and get her dad or Kim, or the principle ETC, to do something.

Because when she's "upset" it's all theatrical prancing and squeals of daddy and then it's over.

But when she's actually upset, like panicking over losing Adrien upset, or breaking down cos Ladybug chose another hero with a known identity over her (Said by Kagami in the episode so we can't pretend it's not true). Chloe usually builds up to a brief explosion followed by a collapse, or just collapses outright into a panicked, curled up state. One that in one instance seemed to be intentionally drawing comparisons to an infant, but again give what we know that says less about her & more about Andre.

Basically, Chloe's life is a performance, we rarely see the real her, because she's always trying to play a role she thinks she's meant to, in order to be liked and successful & is confused, hurt and lonely because it's not working the way her family promises or demonstrated it would.

I also think it's interesting how Marinette & Kagami both firmly instruct her to stop bothering about seating arrangements. Like, we see he react to insults and anger with anger back, but those firm instructions seemed to make her actually inclined to listen, or at least intimidate rather than rile her up.

Also on the insults front, I think it's notable with the pariah angle that Chloe did basically become an open target. No, she doesn't do herself any favors, but her efforts to do video assignments, or participate in art class getting naught but degrading insults. Or her simply not participating in Madame Bustier's birthday causing the class to collectively tear into her says a lot.

Also much like with Damocles, Chloe getting away with mean-ness is not a Chloe thing, the other students get away with it too. At most getting a mild "Well that was kind of mean" which gets shrugged off.

So again we are back into one rule for Chloe another rule for everyone else, which engenders sympathy or frustration in many of the audience. 

Also I find her & Adrien's friendship conceptually fascinating. because like... Adrien outright admits that he totally understands sabotaging a train to try and win a parents love. Meaning he both can likely imagine himself doing the same and also does not grasp how fucked up it is to think one has to go to such insane lengths for someone who treats them like trash.

Am I speaking about Audrey or Gabriel?

Trick question, it's both!

As a sort of final cap off, I quite enjoy the fact that Chloe's so aggressively defiant. Yes she can get scared & panic, but like. She spent 95% of her Stoneheart kidnapping oscillating between bored, pissed off and irritated.

One can say it's a fight based trauma response and I agree, but it's also just a fun dynamic to have for a character who'd normally be relegated solely to screaming damsel.

So yeah, I think she's a fascinating character in concept and at times execution. Who subverts, twists and breaks expected tropes tied to her archetype in fascinating ways but who's handling leaves me wanting, I hope this was useful! 

@princess-of-the-corner @generalluxun @maestro04yayyy you might like this post too!

MAJOR EDIT!

I can't believe I went through Chloe's entire persona section & neglected to mention the fact that her efforts to flirt with guys always come off as so awkward and in-genuine compared to her enthusiastic adoration of Ladybug.

[literatureismyentirepersonality]

Is Heathcliff Byronic in your opinion?

I'm not a great fan of the term in all honesty. It tends to be slapped on all Gothic and Romantic heroes willy nilly and while it's a useful social and literary context, 90% of the time it becomes reductive. A Byronic character is ultimately a celebrity insert, which Heathcliff is absolutely not.

He does, however, have some character elements which are evolved from the basic Byronic hero model that the Brontës engaged with furiously in their juvenilia. Emily and Anne's juvenilia is largely lost, but we know that their world was relatively similar in shape (the geography and characters were nearly identical, but all the siblings had their own canon, which they fought to establish over each others') to Charlotte and Branwell's.

Angria, Charlotte and Branwell's principal play world, featured heavy politics and war in a world full of extreme Byronic figures. There were multiple different characters who were modelled on Byron, but they borrowed also from the Duke of Wellington and other heroes. Drinking, affairs, charismatic cruelty, brooding and cheerful destruction are all prominent traits of their favourites. Charlotte would eventually begin to bring romance into this world, which Branwell seemed to chafe against by reactively making the Byronic figures even worse.

Gondal must have contained these figures to some extent, but was more female focused. Stories of love predominated, as well as Romantic tales of imprisonment and isolation. Emily and Anne may have been whump girlies. The majority of this work is lost though so we don't have much idea of the extent to which they might have engaged with their siblings more political Byronic figures, but it's safe to assume that Emily read stories that contained Byronic heroes and was immersed in the culture producing them.

Heathcliff contains several obvious Byronic influences: his charisma through cruelty, his laughing wickedness, his broodiness, his drama BUT he is not a simplistic Byronic hero. His Byronic broodiness is not the product of the usual Romantic drama of affairs or deep and sudden tragedy. Byronic heroes tend to have suffered unlikely and shocking things— married to madwomen, dramatic and gothic illnesses, etc. What is striking about Heathcliff is the realism and natural progression of circumstances that produces him. Economic disadvantage and racial discrimination place him as the ultimate and obvious punching bag in a dysfunctional family where he suffers the effects of paternal distance, alcoholism and Cathy's struggle against misogynistic societal expectations. Not only is Heathcliff a natural product of his environment; the people around him are too. Part of Emily Brontë's genius in creating Heathcliff is that she grounds him competely without losing the drama of his more Byronic cousins.

I think he has Byronic element and his relationship with the Byronic archetype is interesting— but I still hesitate to call him or any sophisticatedly constructed character Byronic. (Even Rochester!)

[salamiimommy]

Im_Sorry_Buddy’s description for as many of the designs in FTFO as I can find rn bc I need to keep them all together in one place for reference so I might as well share it for anyone else

Any edits I make to the original text will be shown in [these] yes I have been updating it, last combed around chapter 5 while also updating with the latest chapters. Buddy has confirmed this post is accurate !!

[MAJOR DESIGN SPOILERS MENTIONED. marked with **. it’s organized by character with their first outfit on top and changes after in order to how they appear. pls be careful looking through if you’re new.]

[Ink is first and he has. a Lot of outfits so there’s a HUGE chunk of text to scroll past to get to everyone else LOL. Broomie is second]

First, some heights. The tallest Gang member is Horror (4ft 10 inches), then Nightmare (4ft 9in, though his tentacles make him seem larger than Horror), then Cross, Killer, and Dust (4ft 7in), then Ink is the shortest (at about 3ft 8.5 inches). Of the Sanses, only Outertale Sans is shorter than Ink (at 3 ft 5inches).

Error is a couple inches shorter than Cross, Dust, and Killer at 4ft 04in (because Error 404 joke). Dream is approximately 4ft 3in (my headcanon is he’d get taller than that if the Multiverse wasn’t so negative. Plus Nightmare has 500 years on him). Blue is 4ft 7in. Red is 4ft 6.5 inches just to make him mad that Blue is a little taller than him. Core Frisk… is 4ft. (Yes, they are actually taller than Ink. Yes, I did a double take when I realized that. The fandom has lied to me.)

[The Papyri] average around 6.8 to 7.2 ft. Edge looks even taller than he actually is because of the heels on his boots. I will say that Toriels are taller than the Papyri at maybe about 7.5 to 8ft. Other than that, I don't have exact numbers in mind, heh.

[the website I used made the Sanses all child models bc they’re so short wHEEEEEEEZE also like it states the Paps n Tori heights are the averages, different AUs are different heights. also also the rectangle in the back is Broomie's height]

Ink:

Ink sleeps in pajamas that are a lighter shade of brown. It’s a standard long sleeve button up pajama shirt and pants.

Ink's soul has the appearance like broken pottery. There are visible gouges where he dug his fingers into his soul.

Ink has had a couple different outfits. His former "hanging around the Castle" outfit was a too big brown long sleeve and loose brown pants (that did resemble the pants the Comyet Ink used to wear except they were completely brown and went all the way down to his feet). Those clothes were destroyed when Error grabbed him in chapter 6 (where Ink spent chapter 7 wearing Killer's too-big coat) so [then] Ink [was] borrowing one of Cross's black long sleeves and another pair of brown pants (these have more of the "pleated" design of Comyet Ink's new pants and also go down to his feet) .

[CH 12 HT!Toriel visit] “He was happy to choose a cyan hoodie and dark blue joggers. Well, he was happy except when it came to choosing the shoes.”

[CH 26 Ccino visit] “His black turtleneck, pants, and green vest” [from his Arc outfit.]

[CH 27 onwards was a black long sleeve shirt, pleated brown pants, and his scarf with the hood.]

[CH 32] “[…] wear his brown scarf and hood, along with his loose brown pants. […] Aster had apparently brought along a black tank top for him. The tank top fit well enough and the collar was high enough that it lay under the collar of his scarf but it obviously did not cover his arms, […]Doctor Toriel stepped out before returning with a pair of long fingerless brown gloves.”

[CH 44] “[…] a light green long sleeve, his hooded scarf, and a pair of dark brown pants from the drawer right beside him.”

[CH 45] “[…] his hooded scarf, a comfortable black long sleeve, his light green [cargo] pants, and a brown satchel with a long strap. He hung the satchel cross-body over his shoulder”

[CH 46 around the castle] “[…] a pair of rather short brown shorts, leaving […] much of his femur uncovered”

[CH 46 Ccino visit] “[…] a turtleneck that matched the light green interior of his hooded scarf and brown pants”

[CH 46 Sciencetale visit] “[…] his comfortable black long sleeve and the detachable light green pants-to-shorts he preferred.”

[SHIELD OUTFIT] A long purple cloak with a hood that, when up, almost covers his face (meaning his eye lights can glow from beneath the shadow of the hood). It's more off of his face when he's curious and excited, but falls further over his face when he's scared or uncomfortable. The purple cloak has a silver clasp in the shape of the Delta Rune. Underneath the cloak he wears a silver tunic, black belt, and purple leggings. His boots are black and go up just to his “calves”. When Ink is Shield, he covers the ink splotch on his face with white paint.

[Ch 26 he added]”[…H]is scarf (minus the hood, which was tucked into his satchel) around his neck. Its ends were folded in so they did not hang out of the bottom of his brown coat.”

[ARC OUTFIT:] Whenever Ink needs to publicly work for Nightmare, he wears an outfit with a bit of a steampunk aesthetic (as “encouraged” by Nightmare so that when people look at Ink, they don’t think “medic” or “healer”). Nightmare wants Ink to keep his identity (and the fact that he’s the Gang's medic) a secret so he wears a mask outside of the castle. The mask appears to be made from brass and copper metal that’s been painted black (with the exception of a few accents). It covers his face while his hood covers the rest of his skull.

The mask is fashioned after a mix of a gas mask for the bottom half and steampunk “brass goggles” for the top half. It is all one piece and the way the “metal” is crafted makes it looks like an owl’s feathery face. Ink’s eye lights are not visible through the goggles and the dark lenses (plus the shadow of the hood) makes it seem like he is constantly giving what I call the “Sans's empty socket glare”. The bottom half of the mask has two “valves” for exhalation and inhalation that are actually functional (cleansing the air he breathes), but are flatter and are symmetrical, unlike real world versions tend to be. There is a bit of metal between the valves that looks like an owl’s beak. The bottom is mostly black with some brass accents for the bottom half. He can easily remove the mask to reveal his face and replace it in a moment’s notice.

Ink wears a brown steampunk overcoat with a hood. Seven black buttons go up his chest (to the left side of his sternum) to close it. Under the last button, the fabric opens up in an upside down “v” shape, preventing the coat from covering the fronts of his legs. The hem of the “tail” of the coat falls just below the backs of his knees. The collar of the coat covers part of his neck. Around his left forearm is what looks like two black snake designs wrapped around his arm (like the snakes wrapped around the Staff of Asclepius).

Under the coat he wears a dark green vest (It was the only big bit of green that Nightmare allowed because he really doesn’t want Ink to even be associated with green magic.) Under that vest he wears a black turtleneck undershirt that nearly goes up to his chin. His pants are black, and tuck into brown boots. (Ink ditches the boots whenever he can).

Over the coat, Ink wears a thick black belt that has many pockets on it. Every pocket has a unique symbol and every one is filled with medical supplies like bandages, healing food, several antidotes, etc. Attached to his right thigh is a small satchel with more medical supplies. In the small side pocket of the satchel (this one is to the front so its easiest to reach), is [REDACTED]. On his left thigh he wears what looks like a long brown holster that goes down to his knee. Seven pockets go down it in a line. Inside are… you guessed it: more medical supplies.

Ink wears black gloves that leaves just the tips of his fingers exposed. The back of the right glove gets what looks like a bronze analog clock sewn into it. The tops of his fingers are exposed so he can more easily use his magic to heal others and [fix codes]. They’re reinforced so he can grab a blade without it cutting right into him.

[Ink now wears the scarf as well, minus the hood, with the ends folded so they do not hang out of the bottom of the coat as of Ch 27.]

[SCARF in CH 26] “The hood was attached by a few buttons that were the same shade as the rest of the fabric, letting them blend into the scarf and make it appear to be one solid piece. The outside of the hood was brown. Its interior was a light green, like the color on the pinkies and sides of Prism's gloves. It was also the color that Ink's eye lights often turned when he used green magic.

The brown scarf's tails were long enough that the ends still hung down by the bottoms of Ink’s calves after he wrapped it around his neck. The hood hung loosely around his head but stayed up even when he moved around. The green interior of the hood was clearly visible, contrasting the exterior nicely. The "collar" was loose around his neck but thick enough to easily cover the new marks that had been scrawled onto his bones.

If Ink wanted to, he could detach the hood and tuck in the ends to wear the scarf under his Shield cloak. He could even wear it hoodless with his Arc outfit if he wished.”

[INKS FINAL OUTFIT in CH 47] Ink's new brown coat was shorter than his old Arc one, with the straight hem stopping at just below his pelvis.

There were only four black buttons holding it closed instead of the previous coat's seven, though Ink found that he also liked how it looked when he left it open.

Even when fully buttoned, the coat opened up just below his collar bone, leaving a standing collar up top instead of an attached hood and revealing a bit of the light green turtleneck that safely covered the tattoo-like marks on his neck and sternum.

[…] an upright light green heart was embroidered on the shoulders of the coat, subtly indicating his profession as a Healer. Just beneath those hearts, cut-outs ran from his shoulder to above his elbows and revealed a matching green interior.

He traded his old black gloves for longer black ones with stitching designs that matched the light green of the interior of his scarf, his shirt, and the medical hearts, leaving the tips of his fingers and thumbs exposed and the black double-clock on the back of the hand. His wide, pocket-filled black belt also remained, as did the brown holster of pockets down his left thigh. His brown satchel was moved to his right hip, now hanging crossbody instead of being attached to his right thigh.

The black pants he designed had zippers hidden under small bits of overlapping fabric up around his femurs, which gave him quicker access to the area if needed. He could technically turn the pants into a pair of shorts with two unzips but Ink was hesitant. He was too uncomfortable with the idea of showing the binary code marks on his bones to consider something shorter like Prism's overalls, even with the thigh-high brown sock providing an extra layer of coverage on his left leg. Like Prism and many other Inks, he chose a design that left his heel and toes bare. Unlike Prism and many other Inks, the tight-like sock had a swirling green design down its outside.

Other than the pant leg, his prosthetic was bare, allowing a bit of the design to be seen due to his abhorrence for shoes. Maybe it was due to the presence of the colors (instead of white) but Ink was much more receptive to showing the prosthetic off than any of the marks on his bones.

Ink's Arc mask was attached to his belt and hung near his satchel, out of the way but within reach just in case.

His hooded scarf completed the outfit, with Cyan and Gold once again taking up residence at the ends of the tails. Broomie floated at his back, with the tip of their handle pointing out beyond his right shoulder while their black brush flicked close to his left ankle.

[**CH 41 Ink’s right leg has been cleanly amputated] “above his knee, halfway up his femur.”

[**PROSTHETIC in CH 46] The prosthetic resembled a skeleton monster's right leg with several notable differences. The socket was a bit wider than the bone to fit his stump and provide support. The pylon beneath the knee resembled leg armor more than a skeleton monster's individual tibia and fibula. The basic shape and outline were a similar thickness to his bone leg though.

The mechanical foot part was currently covered by the shell that went over it. Based on the images that Doctor Toriel had shown Ink, there were distinctive joint areas for the ankle, knee, and toe beneath the casing. […] the toe was one unit meant for balancing, support, and propulsion.

The base of the prosthetic was colored a medium shade of gray […] while the design on the casing was one of the simpler ones.

The prosthetic covers were the same style for the entire leg and foot. They had the appearance like jagged light green lightning or filled cracks in repaired pottery, which stood out sharply and boldly on the metallic black background. The moment Ink had seen what was labeled as a "kintsugi-inspired" design, he knew that was the one. The green not only matched his eye lights, his magic, and the interior of his scarf, but the 'filled-in' look of the pattern reminded him of his soul.

Broomie:

Cross:

Cross [used to wear] his old Royal Guard uniform from Xtale. He has his scar, and his eye lights are usually both white. They do not turn red no matter how angry or emotional he becomes. His bone and knife attacks are tinted purple.

[CH 14] “His jacket was different. It was just a couple alterations. A black X-like design on the shoulders of both white sleeves. The large white X-sash was now black. Along the bottom hem of the white jacket were simple black cross-stitches. It was little things but the decals broke up the white in his outfit.”

[CH 45 pjs:] “Cross had grabbed a plain black tank top and loose black sweatpants.”

[CH 46 Ccino visit] “[…] he changed into a black hoodie and pants instead of wearing his more recognizable outfit.”

[GUARD OUTFIT] […] a set of silver Royal Guard armor and a purple cloak. A large Delta Rune is emblazoned on the chestplate in black. The armor also comes with a silver helmet but he did not wear it on the [first] Aftertale mission. When he is acting as Guard, he either covers his scar with white or wears the helmet to hide his face.

[**CH 37] “[…] vertical cracks split the bones by his eye sockets, resembling the scars of his creator. His eye lights burned a volatile purple, their form shivering like they were struggling not to change shape. [CH 38] […] glowing purple cracks on his skull looked like a Gaster’s scars.”

[**CH 42 has healed the scars completely]

Dust:

Dust wears the standard Sans outfit but it looks like its a paler color in places because of all the monster dust. His shoes are gray for that reason. Dust always has his gray hood up unless it’s knocked off his skull. Unlike Killer and Horror (and Cross), his hood does not have fur. He wears his Papyrus’s tattered scarf. His eye lights have a blue center and a red ring around the outside. They can occasionally turn white if he’s feeling peaceful. His bone attacks are indigo, leaning more towards blue than purple.

Dust sometimes sleeps in a light blue t-shirt and dark gray pajama pants with a drawstring. Other times he forgets to change and plops into bed in his usual t-shirt and shorts.

[CH 46 Sciencetale visit] “[…] he pulled at the hood of the hoodie he was wearing. He had seemed to like the dark indigo color[…] Dust's scarf was tucked into the hoodie, leaving only a small bit of the collar visible. A pair of sunglasses covered his distinctive eye lights. Black sweatpants and sneakers completed the outfit.”

Dust Papyrus:

To Ink, Dust Papyrus looks like the barest outline of a ghostly shape of the head, scarf, and hands of a Papyrus. He’s extremely faint and blurry, with binary codes making up his outline.

[**CH 46] “[…] ghostly gloves gained a red color and an equally ghostly skull took form. Finally, [Ink] could clearly see Phantom Papyrus.”

Killer:

Killer also wears the standard Sans outfit except his undershirt is a black turtleneck and his hood has fur on the rim. His soul is usually visible in the form of a red target. When he goes Stage Three, it blurs and thick black liquid pours from his eye sockets and mouth. He never has eye lights. His knife attacks are red while his bone attacks are tinted gray. [Liquid Determination leaks constantly from his eyes.]

He tries not to sleep so he does not change into pajamas.

[CH 4 comment] Killer's Stages are inspired by something he has in Something New/"Killertale". Long story short: "Stage One": Killer is pretty much Sans. This Stage does not happen anymore. "Stage Two": Default Killer. "Stage Three": Killer is out of control and will attack anything. "Stage Four and Higher": run.

[**CH 26, Killer can now renter Stage 1, though he has not done it in yet. Liquid Determination is also not constantly leaking from his eyes. CH 27:] The black marks beneath his eye sockets were thin enough that they could be mistaken for drawn lines.

[**CH 44 showed that the liquid Determination is still affected by his emotions:] “Killer glowered at him. The black lines beneath his eye sockets thickened a little.”

Horror:

Horror has the usual Sans-style outfit. His has fur lining the hood. Horror’s jacket is a bit tattered and shows signs of being torn and sewn back together in a couple places. His left eye is not his own one, he took it from a dead guard in his AU. It’s is a glowing red iris and can go out like most skeleton eye lights. His bone attacks are tinted a faint red. [Horror has two eye lights regularly, just one of them is. big and red.]

Horror has pajama shorts and a t-shirt but he often forgets to change into them. (He’s trying to teach Ink to be better than him at it). [CH 45] “Horror was in a gray t-shirt and black shorts.”

[CH 36] “…those unsettling, mismatched eye lights.” [CH 40] “His right eye light returned with his health (and his hope)” [proof for two eye lights]

Nightmare:

Nightmare doesn’t change clothes. He is his goopy octopus self. When he is particularly angry or in a “mood”, his aura is much darker, like he’s surrounded by shadows.

[**CH 28] “His form rippled, and suddenly he did not appear to be made of black sludge. Instead it was like he was glitching darkness, his form flickering and rippling at its edges as his eye light thinned to a slit and and his fingers sharpened to claw-like points. Ink caught a glimpse of his teeth and was horrified to see they were unnaturally pointed[.]” [His eye also glows a toxic cyan and he smiles with too many teeth. And his tentacles are unmoving most of the time.]

[**CH 37] “Corrupted's grin grew wider, revealing that his jaw had indeed become unhinged like it was broken.”

[**CH 40] “The shadows that held Ink barely resembled Nightmare anymore. He had merged with the darkness, leaving only a toxic eye light visible as his presence expanded […] smoke-like tentacles […] his sharp-toothed smile, which was far too big to fit on Nightmare's face without breaking it apart, oozed with black sludge.”

[**CH 40 returns him to his regular goop form.]

Dream:

Dream has his “current outfit” (the one with the yellow jacket-tunic thing). In the present he always looks tired and has shadows under his sockets.

[**CH 37] “Actual fire rippled in its wake, burning a violent gold. Four wings tore themselves free of Dream’s back, twisting and writhing like each individual feather was made of golden flames and his facial structure was lost in shuddering fire. His eye sockets filled with fire, burning away his eye lights.

[…] Although Dream’s mouth stayed visible through the flames, his teeth sharpened and his fiery grin grew so wide it froze on his face, unable to falter. The fire was such a thick covering over the remainder of his skull that an initial glance made it seem like that smile was all that was left of his face.

His clothes did not burn but they too became flames, curling and lashing in the air like they were mere moments from bursting out into a firestorm and consuming everything in sight, Dream included. Only his circlet remained solid, incandescent upon his fiery head like a halo that matched the glowing intensity of his wings. It was as though the sun itself had taken the form of a dreadful Angel.”

[**CH 39 returns him to his regular intact outfit.]

[**CH 43 sees a peek of] “…a bit of his collarbone that was blackened like it had been burned by flames,” [we don’t know the extent of the burns]

[**CH 45] “The burn scars were actually one big scar centered on his sternum, right where his soul rested. The bones of his sternum, clavicles, and frontal ribs were blackened like charred wood with a thick, circular shape in the middle. Tendrils spread out like wisps of flame, giving the scar an appearance like a black, stylized sun.”

Blue:

Blue is more “Swap” than “Blueberry”. His kerchief is a darker blue color, and he wears a black-gray Royal Guard-inspired “battle body”, blue gloves, and blue boots. His eye lights are also blue. They become blue stars if he is happy and plain white if he’s terrified. His bone attacks are tinted blue.

[**CH 38] […] the slash through the heart sealed, leaving a deep scar much like the one [Ink] himself had gotten from Horrortale Undyne's spear.

Error:

[CH 2] “[…H]is tear marks stained red-purple by the blood that ran from his sockets.”

[Ch 7] “[…] a bit of a black skull and a single haunting red eye socket was visible. A distorted, yellow-ringed blue eye light stared down at them, observing them in silence, before it shrank to a deranged pinprick.

Black, dust-covered skeletal fingers grasped the edge of the portal, not reacting as the edge cut into his hand and what looked like glitching blood dripped down his phalanges.

His black jacket was torn, with the blue ends of its sleeves splattered with monster dust and specks of brownish-red dried blood. His pants were even more discolored, more gray than black and so stained by what must be blood that they clung to the red bones of his legs. One of his shoes was gone, and the strip of fabric around his neck (which might have been a scarf once) was so tattered it resembled a bloody blue bandage more than anything else. Even with his blue-lined hood pulled up over his skull and covering his face in shadow, he was easy to identify.”

[CH 20] “Error's skull stopped melting but the damage was done. Almost half of his head was gone, leaving only his eye light and a bit of his jaw untouched on that side.”

[CH 22] “[…H]is eye lights, which glowed so brightly they almost looked poisonous.”

[CH 48] “He had also fixed and washed his clothes. […] his scarf was no longer torn.”

[**CH 22] “Most of his mandible and zygomatic arch had been repaired. The hole in his skull wasn't anywhere close to being closed but although the tangle of codes in his skull were still horribly warped, more of the bits that were Error's own were visible.”

[**CH 37] “[…] a jagged scar that went from the top of Error’s repaired eye socket, up his forehead and over the top of his skull, and back around to the front through his jaw, where it curled back up and ended at the bottom of his eye socket. It marked exactly where the damage had once been.”

Geno:

[CH 29] “Geno mostly resembled the average Sans, except for the red scarf, melting eye socket, minor glitches, and the large gash across his chest. […] A line of red dripped from Geno’s mouth.” [The glitches around Geno’s eye can come and go, either on command or due to his emotions (negative emotions adding more glitches).]

[**CH 35] “Geno's chest wound seemed a bit less severe and there wasn't a trickle of blood coming from his mouth anymore.”

[**CH 36] “[…] heal the slash across his chest. His eye socket remained melted”

Fresh:

Prism:

[CH 12] “The other Ink still wore mostly brown, but the outfit was much more elaborate than the simple brown pajamas Ink currently wore. The biggest things Ink noticed were the sash of colored vials across the other's chest and the giant paintbrush at their back. And the reflection had a lovely brown scarf.” [He writes on his scarf like og!Ink]

Solus:

[CH 21] “This Ink's outfit was similar to Prism's but with one distinct difference. Part of the "collar" and ends of his scarf were the deep blue of an integrity soul. The other Ink's sleeves and pants were also torn, revealing most of his arms and sections of his legs.

Black marks were visible all over his bones, with a few peeking up just above his scarf. They weren't simple binary codes like Ink's own marks, he realized. They were scars. Physical scars that someone had painstakingly carved into the other Ink's bones […] curling up his jaw and chin.”

[CH 24] “His brown sleeves were mostly gone, showing most of his arms, while his pleated brown pants were torn enough to reveal bits of his tibias, fibulas, and femurs. His ripped pant legs were uneven, their bottoms stained with a black liquid that could be ink or his own blood. The brown leggings Ink wore under his pants were absent from Solus, leaving the bottom parts of his legs and his feet completely bare.

[…] One of his eye lights often shifted color and shape whenever he blinked, sticking mostly to pastels or a stoic, guarded gray. The other was always the deep blue of an integrity soul no matter what emotions he felt or what shape they became.”

Other canon content for handy reference:

Cross is afraid of cows

Spaghetti is (probably) Ink’s favourite food

Ink scratched himself to the point of bleeding while stuck in his AU

[CH 24] ‘Solus’ did not speak much, instead preferring to use sign language and gestures. When his hands weren’t moving in small, careful motions, they held onto the blue edges of his stained and torn brown scarf or clung to his equally battered and scarred version of Broomie.

[CH 40 Broomie’s magic is…] black for portal creation, which would be useful if Ink's own magic was blocked off again. Brown for shielding simply because Ink liked brown, yes? Purple for enhanced durability to allies. Cyan for non-harmful entanglements. Blue for damage to moving targets. Green for Broomie's own regeneration capabilities only, unfortunately. Yellow for precise distance shots. Orange for damage to targets that were still. Red for purely corrosive splatters that could melt through flesh and bone- and Corruption. [Ink only has black and green magic.]

Broomie is referred to with they/them pronouns

Paprika loves dino egg oatmeal, like UT!Papyrus

Only Ink, Broomie, and Dust can see Phantom Paps. Only Dust can hear him.

If you have any links to other comments Buddy has made about any designs, or other quotes from the text, pls link them so I can add them ty !!!

[dyradoodles]

Hiiiiii! 💕 I was just wondering….. what are your preferences for Zack & Seph? Do you ship ‘em, is it up to circumstance, does the age matter to you/do you consider their age and their gap? Why not even throw in how you fell in love with Zack & Seph to begin with? Do you have sources?? MLA format for Zack’s fandom page???

*plops down on floor*

Details plz! ❤️

Ah yes hello person that I definitely do not know, who definitely didn't see me say I could write an essay about this very subject on discord LMFAO

I'll put the actual essay under a cut for people who don't want to scroll through my Many Feelings about these two lol As a TLDR to your questions:

Yes I ship them, but also Yes it's up to circumstance! Yes I consider their canon ages/the age gap (which most visibly manifests in me only drawing them platonically if I'm drawing Zack as a Second/with the puppy hair, or writing a fic taking place during CC)! I was actually into Aeriseph first and stumbled into ZackSeph fics, and realized it was a similar dynamic, but with someone who spent time with Seph canonically before he went bananas! All of this was before CC came out and I've been loving these characters for 20+ years!

To borrow a phrase (from crylin iirc), honestly, I like just seeing them standing next to each other, romantic or no LMAO <3

NOW, FOR THE ESSAY.

So to expand on what I said earlier, I think it's obvious from my blog and ZS server that I ship these two LMAO That said, the way I ship them is based heavily on the era of fandom before CC was a thing. I got into FF7 around 2002 (possibly earlier, I just don't have the dates on drawings that old), five years before CC came out. At the time, we knew next to nothing about Zack beyond the very short clips of him in OG. So, fandom did what fandom does best, and tried to fill in the blanks!

Some of the efforts to figure out who Zack was went all the way down to his name, because it's Zakkusu in Japanese. So you'll see him as Zax, too - There were heated debates on whether to use Zack or Zax. And no last name! Fandom had to come up with surnames themselves. We also didn't have much of a reference beyond his polygon model, which seemed to have darker skin and, (as many fics described it) violet eyes. It was also assumed that, since he was a First who worked closely with Sephiroth, he was probably around Sephiroth's age. You likely already see where I'm going with this, laying all that out lol The Zack I draw and write is very much based on that time period, and if I'm honest, that's the character I really ship with Seph. I still joke in my fics sometimes that Zack's last name might be Donovan or Darklighter, etc., which are old fandom surnames!

Now, obviously CC came out and threw all this on its head, because we finally got a whole GAME about this (important!) minor character. I have many beefs with CC's writing and Square's insistence that so many of their characters need to be child prodigies (they can't ALL be prodigies, Square!!!). With Zack going from an assumed early 20s to suddenly being 16, and all the craziness of CC's plot, the way I approached the ship changed as well.

This is where I would firmly say my stance is: I don't think Seph had any interest in Zack romantically, in CC. Because that's a kid lmao If I'm engaging with the Compilation as a whole, I definitely lean way more into the mentor/mentee relationship for the two of them. As a personal rule, I only draw them platonically if Zack's got the puppy hair, because that was the most obvious visual cue I could think of that could draw that line between Zack's teen years vs. adult. If Seph managed to not go insane, then yeah, later in life I could still see them getting together! But clearly that's already AU territory lmfao

Ultimately, what I like best about Zack & Seph is how they treat each other (while Seph is still sane lol). That goes for platonically and romantically. Zack is so genuine and kind, and treats Seph the way he always wanted to be treated - like he's human. He can joke around with Seph in a way most people simply can't. Meanwhile, Seph treats Zack's feelings with respect, even during the times he's laughing at Zack for being ridiculous. He's also honest with Zack. He answers truthfully when Zack asks what's wrong, and it's clear that it's because he knows Zack is not a threat; Zack will take Seph's feelings seriously, too. I can enjoy the drama of the trauma and heartbreak that comes with Sephiroth's descent into villainy, but my favorite stuff definitely involves a lot of Nibelheim fix-it fics lol

Despite all the changes CC made to Zack and his relationship to Sephiroth (RIP Second in Command Zax Donovan/Darklighter/Knightblade, my beloved), their actual dynamic with regard to how they treat each other stayed, miraculously, intact. That's the real reason they're still my favorite characters, and how my enjoyment of FF7 has remained as strong as it is after literal decades. Square can retcon as many things as they want in the Compilation, but they'll never stop me from making art and fic of the characters I grew up with. Unless I get a C&D for some reason LMFAO Until then, I'll keep enjoying my AUs (and if anything, I have even more reason to enjoy them now that AUs themselves are canon - you bet your ass I'll be in the AUs where ONLY OG happened and I can ignore everything else LOL)

Thank you for the questions!! It was fun to get all my thoughts written down in one huge chunk, as opposed to my typical disjointed ramblings to my friends. Hopefully it was an interesting read!

Sources:

Fanlore. “Zack Fair.” The Organization for Transformative Works, 2 Jan. 2023, fanlore.org/wiki/Zack_Fair.

Doodles, Dyra. "Way Too Much Fandom Lurking." Dyra's Childhood to Adulthood, Copious Amounts of Fanfiction, 3 Apr. 2024

[stellaferous]

SPOILERS FOR THE RECENT GLADION & MAGEARNA EVENT !!!

some of my fav scenes from the story 👇

all in all i really liked this event !! i'm happy that whenever DeNA writes stories with Gladion at the forefront, they end up being more fleshed out instead of the typical "shallow friendship" stories they usually make, i suppose this says a lot about gladion's character as a whole 👏

random dump on some scenes in the event:

i love when he said get lost to colress LOL i know it's part of his character to be blunt but i didn't expect that to be his response 💀

so did lear not host a party at all and lusamine just asked to borrow his manor as part of her plan??? either way she's clearly rich enough to make such a demand 💀💀

i know a lot of us were shocked to see gladion pair up with magearna of all mons, but it honestly makes PERFECT sense 😭 it's an artificial pokemon who loves to be researched upon and gladion fears it will end up being alone because of this, THIS EXACTLY PARALLELS SILVALLY 😭😭😭 his sense of justice and moral compass is so strong like this fits his character perfectly he just doesn't want magearna to suffer a similar fate

cool to see that his "sygna suit" was really just a fancy outfit he had to wear for the event and was not modelled specifically after magearna, but i guess we can headcanon that lusamine tailored that suit for him as part of her plan lol

also i honestly loved to see that gladion is capable of being formal when he has to LOL i know a lot of people object the idea of him becoming aether president but i personally dig the idea, regardless what people think happened between him and lusamine i feel like taking a job where he gets to care for pokemon and research them ethically (in a way he thinks is right) is a perfect fit for his character

^ to add a bit to this, i also like when he can just act like a rich kid with manners when he needs to, but the second someone acts against his morals he just goes back to being stubborn and brash 😭 all this fits my headcanon that sometimes he helps out his mom with aether foundation work by travelling to different regions to care for pokemon/assist pokemon professors, etc + my headcanon of him being able to speak more "proper" when needed IS NO LONGER JUST A HEADCANON 🎉🎉🎉

i LOVE when he has nice interactions with his family, especially his mom 😭 definitely a hot take but i'm perfectly fine with lusamine repairing her bond with her kids, the SM USUM timeline stuff is a bit messy but in my opinion i prefer when after she recovers from the neurotoxins shenanigans she earnestly works to fix her relationship with her kids, because i personally believe that even in SM she was supposed to be redeemable--not because "she deserves it", but because her being redeemed could strengthen the story's message about navigating a tragic family and fall from grace, ofc this depends on your interpretation on these events in the first place but i always felt like a happier ending was better suited for the aether family (i made another post abt this a while back lol... might rewrite it again)

also gladion calls her mom while lillie is more formal and says mother right??

to sum it up i love this story because everything abt gladion is true to character + his motivations for wanting to care for magearna are perfect + i love the little things they added to his character esp for confirming my headcanon + more interactions with his family + not like DeNA's typical "friendship" stories + IT FINALLY GIVES GLADION THE SCREENTIME IT DESERVES EVEN IF THIS EVENT FEELS A BIT SHORTER THAN OTHERS 😭😭😭🎉🎉🎉💗💗💗

[winterandwords]

📝 Contextual use of physical description and how it informs a character's identity

THIS IS NOT WRITING ADVICE! At its core, I guess it's about showing-not-telling, but I'm not into issuing instructions. There are no rules here.

It's an approach I take in my own writing that I've thought a lot about, refined over years, and am sharing because it might be useful or relevant to other people. I am in no way saying this is the only way or the best way or the way that will suit your story or your characters. It's the way that suits my stories and my characters. OK? OK.

I use physical descriptions very sparingly and rarely outright state someone's height, build, hair colour, or eye colour. When those traits are mentioned, it's usually from another character's perspective - what would they notice and why? I tend to refer to physical traits only when they inform a character's personality and experience in relation to the story.

This is partly because I love the idea of readers imagining my characters how they see them. Do I have a clear image in my head of every character I write? Yes. Do you have to have the same image in your head? No. It's also just a matter of preference. I don't particularly connect with straight-up physical descriptions of characters in stories. They're not bad or wrong. They're just not really something that clicks in my head as significant when presented as a list of details.

Example: Noah from November Breaks and Spin Cylinder

So what does he look like?

Noah is in his mid-forties at the beginning of November Breaks and getting closer to fifty in Spin Cylinder. He's 6ft 4 with a muscular build and broad shoulders. He has greying dark hair that's short in the flashback parts of November Breaks and longer in the later parts. He grows a beard before the present-day section of November Breaks. His eyes are dark blue. He's conventionally very attractive. Does he look like a big, built Jeffrey Dean Morgan in my head? Yes. Does he have to look like that in anyone else's head? No.

(Did I choose his height because that's my spouse's height and it's really handy to have a living human reference for height, build and physical strength so I can ask someone things like "Could you lift that?" etc? Also yes. Welcome to why that specific height and build shows up in my MCs more than once)

At no point do I outright state any of those descriptive traits (apart from his eye colour, but we'll get there in a minute). So how do I show them?

People get out of Noah's way in the street. He's accustomed to it but feels not-so-great about it sometimes, suggesting that it relates to a consistent aspect of his appearance.

He feels uncomfortable in small spaces, for example, not feeling like he fits right at tables in cafes (borrowed from my spouse's experiences and something I would never have thought about on my own because I'm 5ft 2)

He can physically overpower other adult men easily and doesn't feel intimidated or threatened by objectively threatening people or situations, even when there are weapons involved.

He can move corpses around without much effort.

Brett's first impression of him is He could really hurt me (desirable) with the observation that he looks like "someone who could throw a heavy punch" and has "shoulders that could hold up the world" and "arms that could crush the breath from my lungs and stop my mind from racing" (Brett is a very poetic masochist)

Brett also mentions "Silver like the strands interrupting the dark of your hair" when he's remembering a grounding exercise that involves counting things of a chosen colour.

Perry flirts shamelessly with him, refers to "Those big blue eyes" and asks if he used to model with "You look like an advert for everything you’re wearing" (Perry is a delightful twinky surfer who is one of the lighter elements of the books and a joy to write)

Noah is neither surprised nor flattered that someone assumes he might have been a model when he was younger, showing that he's accustomed to moving through the world as A Handsome Man rather than being perceived that way by one person who happens to find him attractive.

Growing his hair and beard is part of an attempt to distance himself from Clichéd Contract Killer Aesthetic. These traits are first referenced by Max, who has known him for years, as recent changes at the beginning of November Breaks, and Noah talks about them as aspects of his appearance that he struggles to reach decisions about or make peace with.

His mid-life crisis is also referenced at the very beginning of November Breaks, giving a suggestion of his age.

He goes to the gym. It's about routine and control, not about looking a certain way, but it still indicates what his physical build is likely to be especially when combined with Brett's descriptions of him.

Another layer of connection between his appearance and personality is that he never once describes himself as being good-looking, fit, strong etc or shows that he values those traits. Why does this matter?

Trope subversion, my beloved! Noah could easily be perceived as an aggressively no-homo big macho meathead tough guy based on his appearance and his job, but he isn't. At all. He is, in fact, 100% pro-homo, charming and polite, and has extremely refined tastes, valuing luxury not for status but for quality.

His observations of other people rarely relate to specific physical traits. Rather, he compulsively notices how people behave and how they connect with their environment and the people in it. How everyone else looks is mostly irrelevant to him. How he looks is mostly irrelevant to him too.

This isn't as much to demonstrate depth (this isn't a "not like other men" situation, I promise) as it is to show the privilege inherent in not having to care about his own looks because he's always been perceived as attractive. This exists in contrast to Brett, who is fully aware of the power of his appearance and knowingly uses it to his advantage at every available opportunity.

If you want to see any of this in action, November Breaks lives on Tumblr at @novemberbreaksbywintersimpson. Spin Cylinder's WIP info is here (correct as of August 2023) and snippets can be found in my #spin cylinder tag.

That's it for now!

I have lots of topics like this that I could happily ramble about if anyone's interested. I really don't want to come across like I'm telling other people how to write or suggesting that I know better than anyone else - I'm not and I don't. I'm just an obsessive weirdo who thinks a lot about everything.

Let me know if you'd be interested in similar posts in future about other aspects of how I build characters and stories 💜

[bunnysuitconman]

How do you feel about Glitchtrap being the mimic, To me and what I seen from posts I really don’t like it at all. Glitchtrap in help wanted was not even it character it seems and it was just mimic dressing up in a Glitchtrap suit as the mimic loves to wear suits. This means Glitchtrap never was a character it was all the mimic, you don’t got to replay to this as this is a spoiler but I needed someone who knows about the mimic that I can vent out some of my anger, I just hope Glitchtrap is in help wanted 2 or maybe it just mimic wearing a new suit.

RUIN SPOILERS

uh, straight up he ain't to me

again fnaf's storytelling can be bad, horrific even. But unless it's made way more explicit or developed more, i'm having a hard time beliving glitchtrap and the mimic are the same being because they're so dissimilar.

i've complained about this so much already AND I WILL CONTINUE just under a cut

if the mimic is spesifically trying to mimic william afton via showing us the child murders and stuffing us in the animatronic suits at the pizza party ending, why is he in a random cloth mascot suit and not in sprinbonnie, the suit he did all of his murdering in, help wanted is a VR game in universe, and glitchtrap is explicitly a digital entity, it wouldn't be very mimic like of the mimic to intentionally deviate in a massive way from the person they're mimicing. Steel wool used to have springbonnie in place of Glitchtraps model, Glitchtrap was a very intentional choice.

Also, again the whole "it's the mimic because glitchtrap is repeating vanessa" only he has like two whole lines and in help wanted is very much implied to be not all there, saying basic things such as "hello?" and "can you hear me?" isn't really enough, especially since the mimic as i know it is only able to borrow other peoples voices and glitchtraps is wholey unique, and he's implied to have extended conversations with vanessa to get her working with him when what we've been exposed to of the mimic is while more complex than i thought of before is very single minded about goals. if glitchtrap is the mimic and they want out so badly why are they focused on torture, subjicating people into compliance , i know it's scrapped but why would they care about fucking with vanessa so much they make her unknowingly order roses under a fake boyfriends name called brad and sign it off with a death threat. Thats not to mention, since when does the mimic, the thing that mimics people have powers to enter human peoples minds, possibly lock their minds away, or be able to fully possess people? thats some supernatural ghost shit! The mimic as i understand them isn't able to do this level of planning or have these abilities.

Along with the princess quest room and the heavy implication that the princess quest ending is canon we might of killed Glitchtrap at his source while severing his connection to vanessa, why would the mimic still be around if they're also Glitchtrap?

Glitchtrap and the Mimic are just so different in actions and personality that it feels like a massive reach that they're the same being. It would suck if we well and truly killed off the scraggly little bun for real in security breech but like, damn atleast william afton came back one last time to give us the run around. because so far it's straight looking like glitchtrap and burntrap where seperate entities from the mimic Again i don't really expect much from fnafs storytelling but, like, come on.

[kaurwreck]

What characters/references do you hope to see in a possible Order of the clock tower arc of what do you think Agatha will be like? Based on the few appearances she has I think she’ll be a MoriDazaiFyodirSasaki type but you know.

Kafka Asagiri, by his own admission, draws inspiration for his characters from their namesakes' works and lives:

I draw inspiration not only from the author themselves, but also from their works. I like to look at particular scenes from those works of literature to then come up with the character [for my story]. For example, if we take Fyodor and look at this character, he is completely different [than the real-life author]. He has absolutely no similarities to Dostoevsky. I took inspiration from Dostoevsky's book, The Brothers Karamazov, in which there is a scene where Ivan has a conversation with the devil. I based Fyodor off of this.

I've noticed that his Western characters tend to resemble more closely their namesakes' works than their namesakes' lives. Which isn't to say the Japanese characters do not also borrow from the namesakes' works (they do, prolifically; I can cite the source material for much of Dazai's more iconic dialogue).

But in addition to Fyodor, who Asagiri acknowledged above more closely resembles a character than the author himself, Francis resembles Jay Gatsby; Louisa resembles Jo March; Steinbeck resembles Tom Joad; HP Lovecraft resembles Cthulu; Bram Stoker resembles Dracula— etc.

To some degree, the distinction isn't especially meaningful. Scott Fitzgerald, for example, clearly drew from himself and Zelda for Jay and Daisy, even using quotes from Zelda for some of Daisy's dialogue. Further, I'm sure my impression that the Japanese characters more closely resemble their authors might be related to the popularity of autobiographical fiction in modern Japan. And there are, of course, exceptions (such as Ranpo).

All of the above to say: I'm almost certain that most of Agatha Christie's personality is drawn from Judge Wargrave from And Then There Were None rather than the author herself, who preferred to project a more understated, self effacing presence. (Although, bsd!Agatha's title is a reference to Dame Agatha Christie's, and her reclusiveness could be modeled after irl!Agatha too.)

I'm not sure how familiar the fandom is with Wargrave; I studied And Then There Were None in middle school, but I don't know if it's still commonly taught or not. He's decisive, commanding, cold, calculating, and deeply sadistic. He acts as the narrative's detective, judge, jury, and executioner but only as a pretense for satisfying his own self-admitted lust to kill. He claims he only desires to murder the guilty, but he also appoints himself the moral arbiter of guilt and meters out suffering relative to the degree to which he's decided the others are guilty.

It's nakedly apparent that he is not interested in justice but in pageantry. He curates the setting and plays with the others like they're dolls, or more aptly, like he's a well-fed outdoor cat and they're the local bird population. In that sense, he isn't like any of the characters you mention above. He's a mastermind like them, sure, but he lacks Mori and Dazai's self awareness and insight, and Fyodor and Sasaki's ideological passion. There is nothing he seeks to protect, like Mori and Dazai, nor any institutions he seeks to destroy, like Fyodor. While he wants you to think he's avenging unpunished crimes like Sasaki, the justice he delivers is more arbitrary.

He just wants blood and artistry, but he also wants moral authority over those he deems beneath him even though he knows he isn't innocent. I think we've already seen that in bsd!Agatha. In Dead Apple, she sits in her ornate throne and, with serenity and pleasure, informs Ango that she will destroy Yokohama at dawn. She has her perfunctory justification (to stop the spread of Shibusawa's fog), but her eagerness, projected authority (over a foreign government, no less), imprecision (bombing the entire city rather than seeking to subdue or execute the perpetrating skill user), and method of execution (launching a convicted skill user to suicide bomb the city) speak to her bloodlust and sadism. When Shibusawa is killed and her attack is recalled, she openly pouts because she was looking forward to the destruction.

Quite frankly, I'm not convinced Agatha would make a compelling primary antagonist. She doesn't have any interest in Yokohama absent the opportunity to enact mass murder from a distance, and only if there's some national security justification, however superficial. She's modeled after a mastermind, but her position is too high, and her sights too macro to make use of Judge Wargrave's detailed pageantry.

The One Order may be enough to coax her attention, but again, her attention is too impersonal, and her sadism is too broad for the relationship-based conflicts on which bsd is built. She will not engage directly if she does engage, but by proxy. It's interesting to watch Fyodor and Dazai play their hybrid 4D chess-Go game because of their chemistry and understanding of themselves through the other. Agatha will not descend from her literal and figurative tower to meet them on any meaningful interpersonal level; Judge Wargrave certainly doesn't. Instead, she works best as a specter over Yokohama; an existential threat from a more powerful foreign power.

There are more than a few reasons to involve her more in the plot, but not on her own; there would need to be another, more intimate antagonist for bsd's structure to work. That said, I would love a secondary conflict based on foreign policy and statecraft; I thrive there, and I've been so hungry for more information about the bsd universe's distribution of powers and interests. Maybe a foreign conflict will erupt and new characters who can match Agatha's level of state power will be introduced because of the One Order; or Ango's treason; or the sudden global spread of vampirism that crippled several national governments; or the leggy calamity that was just extrajudicially released from imprisonment by a 10 y/o to whom he's now loyal; or the internationally notorious political assassin Mori is hiding in his basement; or the prior collapse of Standard Island; or Chuuya's mass murder of MANY foreign military guards in Meursault ft. his feral poses for the camera; or the destruction of what seems to be the most prominent if not only prison equipped to contain skill users given they transported Russian and Japanese nationals to its location off the coast of France; or the assassination of the general of the one world army the United Nations just formed and now can't dissolve; or that said general was assassinated within, like, a day of his appointment by someone who should not be under public scrutiny given he previously assassinated multiple Japanese leaders; or any number of recent canon events.

So, there's certainly fertile ground for a higher level conflict, and Agatha might work if set against other, similarly positioned state actors, but I'm not sure how interested in or equipped Asagiri is to write political intrigue. Or where the international community and Mushitaro should even begin re: addressing what just happened.

Notwithstanding any of the above, I do hope bsd!Agatha has a much younger trophy husband just like her namesake.

[goodqueenaly]

Having recently read Thomas Costain’s The Black Rose, I have now also finished another Costain historical fiction novel, The Moneyman. To (very) briefly summarize, The Moneyman is the story of a real-life figure, Jacques Cœur, a merchant raised to the nobility by King Charles VII of France and made the king’s chief finance minister and one of his closest advisors, only to be disgraced and exiled after a false accusation of murder is laid against him by that same king. As I mentioned in my last post, The Moneyman is supposedly GRRM’s favorite of Costain’s works, so I was very intrigued to see if GRRM would borrow any ideas or character models from The Moneyman for his Westerosi works.

Unfortunately, once again I find very little to parallel with ASOIAF. The titular Moneyman himself might be as rich as Littlefinger, but the charges of embezzlement falsely levied against Cœur would be all too accurate if laid at Littlefinger’s door. Indeed, Cœur's deep, honest, but not sycophantic loyalty to Charles VII - a willingness to tell the king the truth coupled with a desire to look out for the best interests of the kingdom - could not be more alien to Littlefinger, whose selfishness and dishonesty are central to his personality. (In fact, the closer parallel to the Moneyman might be someone like Enguerrand de Marigny of The Accursed Kings.) I suppose you could compare Cœur to say, Davos Seaworth - the honest common man raised to the nobility by a grateful king - but Cœur is, well, defined by his substantial personal fortune in a way Davos obviously is not (because he has none, of course), nor can Charles VII’s petty jealousy of Cœur's wealth (and his subsequent willingness to condemn his devoted servant on trumped-up charges) be compared to anything in the relationship between Davos and Stannis. 

Now, is it possible that GRRM took a bit of inspiration from Cœur's trial at the end of the book for Tyrion’s trial at the end of ASOS? Maybe. Just as Tyrion was falsely accused of poisoning Joffrey, Coeur is falsely accused of poisoning Lady Agnes Sorel, the beloved mistress of King Charles. In both cases, the author makes very clear that the accused was not in fact guilty of the crime by setting the reader in the accuser’s point of view at the time of the supposed poisoning, while simultaneously using circumstantial and/or outright fabricated evidence to make the case against the accused seem that much more damning. (Nor, indeed, is an explanation lacking in either case: the author makes clear many times, through Cœur as well as other characters, that Agnes Sorel is too sickly to live long, while Littlefinger explains the Joffrey poisoning plot to Sansa in pretty plain terms after the Purple Wedding.) Just as Tyrion’s physical proximity to and post-murder handling of Joffrey’s wedding cup helped sell the testimonies to his guilt at his trial, so Coeur’s administration of medicine to the dying Agnes Sorel is used by the prosecution to portray Coeur as a fiendish poisoner. Too, much as Taena Merryweather falsely testified that she had seen Tyrion pour poison into Joffrey’s cup, followed by Shae's false testimony as to Tyrion and Sansa’s allegedly conspiracy, so on the stand at Cœur's trial Jeanne de Vendôme fabricates an elaborate story of poisoning which she supposedly witnessed firsthand. Additionally, just as Pycelle (correctly) reported that Tyrion had taken poisons from his stores in order to falsely suggest that Tyrion gave poison to Joffrey, so one witness at Coeur’s trial - a doctor whom Cœur privately derides as a “great windbag … pedantic and opinionated and yet at the same time servile to all forms of authority”, not too far off the mark from Pycelle himself - seizes on Cœur's real, though harmless, mercantile association with the East to falsely link Cœur to the “Eastern poison” which supposedly killed Agnes Sorel. Cœur also offers to confess to a crime he knows he did not commit, in order to save his alleged co-conspirator (though he later rescinds this proposal); somewhat similarly, Kevan offered, in vain, to have Tyrion confess in exchange for permanent exile at the Wall (an offer that I think was genuine on Tywin’s part). 

Now, while Cœur is not allowed to offer any defense on his own part (much as Tyrion was not at his trial), Cœur, unlike Tyrion, actually gets exonerated for the poisoning allegation, thanks to the testimony of an honest doctor who identifies the flaws in the case against Cœur. (Though Cœur is convicted of what Costain asserts were equally ludicrous charges and forced into permanent exile.) Of course, Costain didn’t invent the idea of trumped-up charges and patently untrue accusations in a legal trial (and Costain himself clearly states in his introduction and epilogue that he has, so he believes, adhered as closely to the real history of Cœur's downfall as possible), so it’s not that I think GRRM is uniquely indebted to Costain for Tyrion’s trial. Rather, while I think both are borrowing the same old tropes for similar stories, I can also acknowledge that this specific usage of those tropes may have been part of the inspiration for GRRM. 

[darlingpoppet]

hi thanks for the liminal spaces update! i was wondering what sort of styles the characters are wearing?

Hey anon thanks so much for reading and thank you for your ask!!

I seriously plundered the tumblr hipster blogs circa 2013 for this story, lads, let me tell you!! I’m not sure I described very well the fashions everyone in this story is wearing lest I fall into Ebony Dark’ness Dementia Raven Way territory but these are the sorts of images I had in mind for each of the characters who have made an appearance so far (sorry in advance for the potato quality of some of these images… also just in case it needs to be said, the hair & skin colors of these clothing/hairstyle models may not necessarily reflect those of the Hadesgame versions of these characters, which are the versions I’m working with in this story):

ZAGREUS

Recently Super Groupies came out with this literal Zagreus inspired zipper jacket… it only came out this year but I can still see someone in the 2010s wearing something like it so I just described him as having this exact jacket LOL. I imagined him arranging it a bit differently than the model however, instead he wears it with black skinny jeans and colorful high top converse shoes.

It’s actually really easy to imagine Zagreus as your typical millennial/gen Z college kid without too many alterations…

just look at these boys with their extremely Zagreus-looking hairstyles haha! The boy wearing blue in particular was the inspiration for Zag having those chunky square-cut diamond earrings… it’s cute to imagine them poking out from under one of those knitted caps!

ACHILLES

I like to imagine that the Achilles of this story has a bit of a gender-fluid/genderless approach to fashion, so I picture him wearing a lot of the things that were popular with hipsters of all genders, such as flannel, low-cut t-shirts & tank tops, long necklaces, chunky/slouchy cardigan sweaters, skinny jeans, and wide-brimmed hats. He wears his hair long or ties it up into a messy bun.

At home both he & Patroclus do a bit of the athleisure thing, so especially pretty soon he’s gonna be in crop/tank tops and sweatpants a lot (or in nothing at all haha!!!)

PATROCLUS

Idk I think I just see Pat as that sort of natural class-act who can wear a plain t-shirt or a band collar shirt with a nice pair of slacks and dressy shoes and look ultra sophisticated without even trying. Maybe he does that 2010s thing of wearing an unbuttoned vest over the shirt or he’ll borrow a pair of suspenders from the “2010s Recession Hipster Dude Starter Pack” every once in a while, but overall he doesn’t need much (but also imagine he’s holding a book wherever he is lol.)

Also of course, that full beard and man-bun look of the era is so quintessential and fits him perfectly!

THANATOS

I actually lived in Japan for all of the 2010s haha so I pictured Than more like the sort of young men I would sometimes see around Tokyo with multiple layers of long, knee/ankle-length cardigan robes/jackets, and those wide, billowing pants in perhaps a parachute or bontan style.

As for the gorget necklace… you know how sometimes you find a cool accessory in a vintage shop or whatever and you’re like “I am going to make this thing my entire personality for the next year”? hahaha yeah that’s Than here. Something gold or brass like the top picture that he wears under his black collared shirts, like the bottom picture.

I might come back to this once Meg makes an appearance, but for now that’s all I’ve got! Thanks for asking, this was fun <3

[mask131]

Fantasy read-list: B-1.5

Next in our series of articles detailing fantasy works, is one from André-François Ruaud, covering Shakespeare, his work, and his work’s great influence over the fantasy genre. Given I already talked about Shakespeare’s work proper in my main post, here I will detail the list of work influenced by or shaped thanks to Shakespeare in the fantasy world.

# We will begin with one of the most straightforward and oldest Shakespeare retellings there are: Tales from Shakespeare, by the Lamb couple (Charles and Mary). This book was actually a retelling of Shakespeare’s plays, aimed at young children (for example it removed all sexual references, omitted many subplots, removed some plays deemed too historical for kids to understand), and a massive success, still in print today. Even though today’s kids find this book a bit hard to read… Because it was written in the beginning of the 19th century, and does an effort to keep as much of Shakespeare’s quite outdated language, in an effort of faithfulness.

# Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill. In this collection of short stories, Puck (from A Midsummer Night’s Dream) summons different characters from various parts of English history so they can tell their fantastical tales to two children…

# Caliban’s Hour, by Tad Williams. 20 years after the events of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”, Miranda is imprisoned by a vengeful Caliban who wishes to kill her… but not before she hears the story of his life, the reason of his wrath, the truth behind his curse, and his true relationships to the sorcerers Prospero and Sycorax, putting the events of “The Tempest” under a new light.

# Not a book, but a movie this time: Prospero’s Book by Peter Greenaway. An avant-garde and very stylistic retelling of Shakespeare’s The Tempest as a complex story where Prospero preparing his revenge and Shakespeare preparing his play become one and the same…

# Elizabeth Willey’s A Sorcerer and a Gentleman, a fantasy novel about various fictional countries being threatened by a possible open-war, resulting of the centuries-old conflict between Avril, “usurper emperor”, and his sorcerous brother, Prospero.

# Roger Zelazny’s major fantasy series, The Chronicles of Amber, heavily reference the plays of Shakespeare, borrowing names, places and sentences from the playwright’s work (Oberon, “To sleep, perchance to dream…”, the forest of Arden, “Ill-met by moonlight”, Osric, “Good night, sweet Prince”…). Ruaud also mentions in his article Zelzany’s work “A Night in the Lonesome October”, even though to my knowledge there is no actual overtly Shakespearian theme in it? (I guess it might be a mistake due to the French title having been translated as “A Mid-october night’s dream”.

# Ruaud doesn’t talk about Macbeth’s influence over Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings (despite it being very famous – the defeat of the Witch-King and the march of the Ents both being influenced by Shakespeare’s tragedy), but he mentions how Gollum can remind one of Caliban, while Prospero was a model for the “archetypal wizard” of which Gandalf and Saruman are two prominent examples. [Personal note: From what I gathered, despite Tolkien referencing Shakespeare, he did not like his works at all, in fact most of the time Tolkien referenced Shakespeare not out of an “homage” but to “correct” what he felt was poorly used - as with how the march of the Ents is meant for Tolkien to get over his disappointment at Macbeth’s not having actual trees walking).

# Ruaud also mentions among the example of “archetypal wizards” inherited from Prospero, Belgarath, the main sorcerer of The Belgariad by the Eddings couple. From the Belgariad universe, Ruaud points out that the character of Silk is actually part of a tradition in fantasy of the “clownish member of the hero’s party”, that can date back to Touchstone from As you like it. 

# Ruaud suggests that the character of Ariel from The Tempest was an inspiration for Neil Gaiman’s Islington in Neverwhere (I cannot check this, because I know barely anything about Neverwhere, though I do plan on reading it one day).

# Ruaud, of course, also mentions Terry Pratchett’s Wyrd Sisters, a fantastical and hilarious parody of Shakespeare’s Macbeth (and additional plays) inside the humoristic fantasy universe of the Discworld series. I will personally add another book, which is actually the second sequel to Wyrd Sisters (between it and this one, there is Witches Abroad, which is a fairytale parody) – Lords and Ladies, a darkly funny deconstruction of both Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and Tolkien’s elves, inspired by traditional British fairy folklore (and which went on to influence the view of what people call “the true fae”).

# S.P. Somtow’s Riverrun Trilogy. I have to admit I forgot why Ruaud mentioned it among the Shakespearian influenced work – I didn’t take my notes when reading the article. But it is in the list, so…

# Ruaud claims that the archetype of the “fantasy inn”, actually comes from Shakespeare. The Prancing Pony from The Lord of the Rings, The Silver Eel from Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Pratchett’s The Broken (then Mended) Drum from Discworld, the inn from Beagle’s The Innkeeper’s Song… According to Ruaud all those fantasy inns are inheriting from the inn in which most of Shakespeare’s Henry V takes place. Ruaud also mentions two authors that both deconstruct the “fantasy inn” archetype: Neil Gaiman, with the Sandman’s arc Worlds’s End (see below), and before him Poul Anderson with his Shakespeare-rewriting novel A Midsummer Tempest.

# While appearing on the list of the works deconstructing the “fantasy inn” archetype, Anderson’s A Midsummer Tempest deserves its own place in the list, being a fantasy novel where all of the events of Shakespeare’s play happened simultaneously, during the era of Cromwell and Charles I – A Midsummer Night’s Dream and The Tempest unfolding simultaneously between the English Civil War and the Industrial Revolution.

# Sarah A. Hoyt’s Ill-Met by Moonlight. A fantasy story retelling William Shakespeare’s life under the influence of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Young William Shakespeare discovers his wife and daughter were taken away by elves in their fairyland, and to get them back he will have to deal himself with the descendants of the legendary fairy rulers Oberon and Titania.

# Not a book, but a literary and highly praised comic that can be read as a book – the famous Sandman series by fantasy author Neil Gaiman. The comic was heavily influenced by Shakespeare’s plays, and actively references them several times. The issue “Men of Good Fortune” has the main character, the titular Sandman, lord of dreams, sleep and nightmares, meet a young William Shakespeare and make a deal with him to provide the playwright inspiration… This sets up the next Shakespearian issue, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, an homage, deconstruction, meta-retelling of Shakespeare’s play. And to conclude it all – “The Tempest”, the very last issue of the series, which invites the reader to take a second look at the final arcs of the story under the light of Shakespeare’s play.

# To conclude this long list, let’s have one French name around here. Fabrice Colin’s work, “Or not to be”. A Shakespeare-obsessed amnesiac young man is released from a mental institution after his mother forced him there due to a suicide attempt. Attempting to rediscover and puzzle back his past, he goes on a visit of England, tracking down William Shakespeare’s own life path, through a narration oscillating between pure imagination and schizophrenic madness… Until he stumbles upon a mysterious village he saw many times in his dreams and that does not appear on any map: Fayrwood, whose surroundings seem haunted by Pan himself…  

[clove-pinks]

A Swell Time

The actor Edward Askew Sothern as 'Lord Dundreary', carte de visite c. 1876 (Flickr). There are many pictures of Sothern striking comic poses in-character as Dundreary.

Although the corseted Dandy was not extinct by any means, his place in the public eye was now taken by the Heavy Swell, for whom the character of ‘Lord Dundreary’ (in Tom Taylor’s Our American Cousin) as portrayed by E. A. Sothern, in 1861, served as the perfect model. Never before or since has an actor in a single part had such an effect on Fashions. Not only the immortal whiskers but the affected pose and manners and languid drawling lisp were borrowed from Lord Dundreary who might almost be said to have turned the Dandy into the Heavy Swell.

— Phillis Cunnington and C. Willett Cunnington, on men's fashion of the 1860s, in Handbook of English Costume in the 19th Century

The Heavy Swell is also a standard of John Leech's midcentury comics, which is how I encountered him.

Shopman. "Oh, I beg your pardon, sir—but the lady left her parasol on the counter!"

Swell. "Haw! Ya–as–no! That is, it's my umbrellaw. Thanks! By Jove! Haw!"

See also: "Good gwacious!" and even MIWACKULOUS. The character type and distinctive lisp/drawl was established in the 1850s before Lord Dundreary parodied it at its height. But how did the word swell come to describe this well-off gentleman—a real gentleman, even if he has his foibles—from its usage a few decades prior?

The 1823 edition of Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue defines a swell as, "A gentleman; but any well-dressed person is emphatically termed a swell, or a rank swell. A family man [thief] who appears to have plenty of money, and makes a genteel figure, is said, by his associates, to be in Swell-street." The well-dressed criminal swell is the model for Mr. Easthupp from Frederick Marryat's Mr. Midshipman Easy (1836), a purser's steward with a background as a pickpocket. Easthupp is called a swell, and several times he's said to be from "the swell mob," which is clearly referring to low-life society.

When Easthupp is (non-fatally) wounded in a duel, he confesses:

"Oh dear! oh dear! what a fool I was; I never was a gentleman—only a swell: I shall die; I never will pick a pocket again—never—never—God forgive me!"

Even in the late 1840s, a guide to brothels was called "The New Swell's Night Guide."

"With Numerous Spicy Engravings". Maybe John Leech's swells are less innocent than I thought?

"Barrack Life", 1851. Feat. two Heavy Swells.

[queer-advice-hotline]

Hi! Not rlly used to talking about this type of stuff - but I figured I should maybe see if anyone had ever been in a similar situation or anything.

long story btw...

TW for mentions of homophobia ig

Okay so, for many years I was under the impression that my mother was actually completely and utterly fine with the queer community and I found out not that long ago that that was apparently not true.

For some background info to how I thought that ig - my mum often worked for very long hours and I adored all the time I could spend with her when she wasn't working. To me she was a role model and due to most likely being 'too young' I didn't get to hear a lot of her opinions about certain things (such as the queer community, but also other things) and built up an image of my mother in my mind who would always support me and constantly told myself how lucky I was bc there were so many ppl out there who didn't have the same fortune and probably never felt like they could connect with their mothers.

I however found out when I was in my first yr of highschool (yr 7 where i am) that she actually wasn't as open minded as I'd hoped.

I started hearing her talk about how she didn't believe a trans man could ever be a man/how a trans woman could never be a woman. Making comments on how ppl who were nonbinary didn't make sense/couldn't exist and how they/them pronouns were dumb and how anyone who didn't identify with either gay, straight or bi was weird. She also made comments about how she was willing to use a trans person's pronouns in front of them if they made sense (she/her or he/him only) and didn't bother when they weren't around bc she thought it didn't matter.

She also was always talking about how she didn't want people talking about this stuff all the time and how she was so annoyed by ppl constantly making children's media queer - to a point where last year she started feeling like there was a possibility that I was being exposed to too much queer media (I was trying to borrow books that had queer characters cause I grew up not all that knowing of the Lgbtqai community) and started banning me from buying/borrowing books that she thought were 'too gay' or 'too queer' and not even letting me touch the ones with trans characters - which was odd bc we'd watched movies with queer ppl in it before and she'd been fine with it! (mostly with them as background characters or not the MC e.g. Mitch and Cam + their friends in Modern Family). She then started going through my books I borrowed to make sure they weren't queer.

She seemed okay with other people being bi or gay irl but when she talked to me she often said things like 'you can be anything u want except gay or trans' and 'no bringing home a boy until ur 18 and no bringing home any girlfriends every - and nothing other either (derogative)' as well as often talking about how she wants to find me a church boy with similar ideals to my family's ones.

This has been rlly upsetting - I figured out I was aro early on, however with my mother's reactions I fear she would most likely invalidate me/try and get me a bf anyway. Also I realised that I wasn't cis (nonbinary or agender) and now I'm scared that if I ever transition too much (bc I want to get a binder and possibly one day have top surgery and I want to get masc haircuts and all that) or actually start going by a diff name in public + diff pronouns that she might just through me out or send me back to my home country to 'set me straight' bc where I'm from being queer is not common (even though we have managed to make gay marriage legal).

This is also bad not just bc of me but bc I have friends who r queer who have been huge helps and I always wanted them to feel safe around me and my family however now I'm scared to ever so much as introduce some of them to my parents in fear of them being misgendered/disrespected or her banning me from seeing them.

I always hear ppl talking about cutting off their families or learning to live without them when they're older but I'm the eldest and expected to look after my parents when they get older. Not to mention - I have a brother who is 13 yrs younger then me and though sometimes I feel as if I don't quite feel the emotional connection I should (won't be getting into that) I also don't want him to grow up without some sort of other older guidance as I feel like he is very different to me and also when I was younger my parents worked a lot with allowed me to have more perspective on the world other then theirs were-as my brother will most likely have their opinions shoved down his throat and I can't stand the thought of him growing up to be some weird 'alpha-male' type who pushes down his feelings, is homophobic/transphobic and decides that he doesn't like anyone different. This would mean that I most likely wouldn't be able to leave him until he was around 18 too and I have so much family that I genuinely don't think that I'd be able to leave them all behind + I don't want to have to be scared to enjoy my own culture (bc I am from a small island and my family has a lot of ties + is rlly big and I wouldn't be able to go far without someone mentioning my father, mother, cousins, or grandparents).

I genuinely habe no idea what to do or if there is a solution to my problems or if i'd have to one day simply come out and be prepared for my family to hate me or if i'd just have to keep a huge part of me secret until I died but I thought it'd be better to share then to bottle all this up

I seems like a pretty complicated situation, so knowing what exactly to do is tricky.

I definitely don't think you should come out to your family now. The chances of you being disowned, thrown out, or something else seems pretty high. If you decide you want to come out, I think waiting until you are living on your own or at least are independent from your family is the best and safest option.

Anyone with other advice feel free to share.

[thequeenofsodor]

Headcanon: Rosie has been on Sodor way longer than you’d think...

World War II is a notoriously glossed over time in Sodor history. On an unrelated note, Rosie is a USATC S100, a class of locomotive that was built in the USA and exported to Europe for the Allies’ war effort. Rosie’s introductory episode is one which does not feature any kind of origin story, nor is she said to be new. She just kinda shows up and is treated as if she’s been a character who’s been around this entire time... I’m sure you can see where I’m going with this... 😈

During WWII, the North Western’s roster would only consists of the first six engines, a few of the remaining pre-NWR Grouping engines, and presumably a gaggle of LMS loaners who may or may not be called back home to assist with their home region’s war effort. The prospects of this fleet pulling through in one piece don’t look that good on paper IMO. I think it’s not out of the question for FC1 to put in a call for some reinforcements, and given how the North Western was made for the WWI war effort and likely borrowed many War Department engines back then too, it’d only really be following tradition! And so, Rosie enters the picture. Definitely not in the pink she debuts in on TV, probably in some kind of austere black or gray. She definitely wouldn’t have been alone, I’d like to think there could have been an S160 on Sodor too to help with heavy goods. I am a huge proponent of Hank being an S160 instead of a PRR K4 (I’ll probably make a post about that at some point in the future), but it does have the unfortunate affect of knocking Hank’s one and only episode out of canon on a surface level not only by changing his basis but by making his arrival party impossible due to the presence of Toby and Emily, who would not be there in WWII! But again, this is better suited for another post. Let’s just leave it at “Rosie arrives in Tidmouth straight from America, along with an S160 who may-or-may-not-be Hank.”

I figure the reason she comes to admire Thomas specifically so much is because she was likely assigned to work on his branch line, and thus had a lot of proximity to him during her formative years. TK&ELR Coffee Pots 2-4 would still be around until the early 50s, but they were used sparingly after Thomas’ arrival due to their poor condition among other things. So it would make sense to send a perfectly capable, brand-new tank engine to work alongside Thomas in their place. Rosie would be personality-wise where she is in her Model Series episodes: cheerful, childish, and way too idolizing of Thomas. Admittedly I have no idea if the ongoing war would even allow her to be this way, but I suppose she may be in a similar boat to Thomas? He was built and shipped off right at the start of WWI, and yet was still relatively innocent, albeit not to the degree of Rosie... I figure they were both either sheltered from the respective Horrors of War, or it simply did not affect them as deeply as one might think. Man-made horrors beyond locomotive comprehension? I dunno for sure. I also figure Thomas would loooove the attention of his new charge at first, only to slowly get sick of her over time and end up where he is in her debut episode. Upon the end of WWII, all of the S100s and S160s (save the 10 S100s that became the SR’s USA Class) that were based in the UK were repatriated back to the USA. Given Sodor’s history of, ahem, “retaining” their wartime assistance, I don’t think they would have given them back. But since Rosie’s presence would no longer be a priority on the Ffarquhar line, I think she’d be transferred to another depot on Sodor, possibly either Vicarstown (as per her later role in the CGI Series) or Cronk (which in the RWS would be a major hub for rail on the North Western, and could use a dedicated shunter). I figure this work would keep her sufficiently occupied, which is why FC2 wouldn’t just put her back on the branch during the Knapford Harbor renovation, which otherwise in this HC would be way easier than transferring Percy and bringing in Duck to take his place at Tidmouth.

Thomas probably breathed a sigh of relief once he knew he was safe from Rosie’s potential return! Though since Sodor engines love to stray from their allocations whenever the plot demands, that doesn’t mean he’s safe forever...

And of course, as soon as the war ends and she officially becomes one of the Fat Controller’s Engines, this is when she’d get her ever-so-loved Pink livery... To be honest whenever I think of Rosie’s livery timeline I never come up with a reason why she ever chooses pink. Like, obviously she starts in a wartime livery, and then at some point chooses red over pink as a symbolic way of reinventing herself and ceasing to model herself after anyone else. But at the stage in her life where she idolizes Thomas so much, why would she pick anything that’s not NW Blue? I suppose we’ll never know. Anyway since FC1 has pretty much given up all hope of a standardized livery by this point, I’m sure he’d just accept it and resignedly tell the paint shop lads to start mixing a shade that’s never gone on a steam engine before.

I think that’s all the bases covered. The only thing it doesn’t cover is any of the development that would lead to Red Rosie, but I feel like those events would be a decade or two removed from the war and not really on topic anyway. I just thought this would be a fun way to look at Rosie, or at least an alternative to “she’s one of the 10 SR USA Tanks and came to Sodor post-Oliver”. The only real downside to this HC is that its incompatible with my former pet idea that Rosie was a follower of the Railway Series in the post-war years and her idolization was more akin to a parasocial relationship, and that doesn’t really work if she’s arrived on Sodor and stayed there before the books were even published. Oh well, at least this new Rosie HC would be a much more mentally healthy Rosie, lol.

[heldhram]

what was your inspiration to create your main oc? (pass the question on)

Thank you very much for the insightful question, Nectar! :)

Well, I think my "main OCs" are probably Marcel and Aubrey for the time being. I definitely have not posted much about these 2 characters to the same extent as I already have thought about their backstories in my head. Essentially, they are the 2 characters in this one story I have been thinking about writing that I never actually get to working on.

Marcel's named after my online crush (we used to chat the whole night until morning and play Monster Hunter together, but we barely text nowadays, a bit sad but I've kind of moved on now), whom I've never even met before but only voice-chatted with on discord. I don't know what he looks like, so Marcel's appearance is just me combining facial features of some models I found on the internet. I think he turns out ok-ish, but still I end up changing his face very frequently.

Personality-wise, Marcel is undoubtedly and inevitably a self-insertion (nothing like my crush, I really just borrowed his name). His background is very similar to mine (closeted and depressed gay guy born and raised in a religious household who is struggling to cope with internalised homophobia and suffocating loneliness), so I guess by imagining what could have happened to him paints a clearer picture of what I could have done differently or consider alternative ways to deal with things my way in real-life. It's almost as if I am looking into a mirror and reflecting on each action he might be taking.

As for Aubrey... he's the kind of an idealised partner I would love to be with. I guess I have always wanted a mature, emotionally reliable figure that you could always depend on when you need them, a very kind and compassionate person who would always offer their shoulder for you to cry on when you feel vulnerable. His calming presence is there to balance and soothe Marcel's (and by extension, my own) chaotic, anxious perception to pressure and to provide reassurance.

That does not make Aubrey perfect, however. He also has a number of flaws and insecurities as well, but he locks them very deeply inside his heart, buries and camouflages them very well to the point that it seems completely normalised to the point where he ignores these problems because "it seems fine just the way it is". He's passive and quite apathetic towards his own problems, which is also self-insertion on my part.

Name-wise, I named him after Aubrey by Bread. It would be Marcel singing about Aubrey, using the pronoun "she" even though Aubrey was a male, because he's still in the closet while singing about his same-sex crush.

I don't know what I just wrote, or if any of those made any sense, but that's what motivated me to make my OCs and to brainstorm about their stories. Maybe it's not a bad idea I haven't written the story yet, because I don't think it'll be a happy one. I haven't felt happiness for quite sometime.