Neverafter is absolutely eating my entire soul and has just fully reawakened my passion for fairy tales and so now im actually drawing and writing again to make a Neverafter OC based on Bluebeard’s wife
hi!!!! thank you @summercampghostie @im-the-son-of-rage-and-lov3 and @biromanticboba for the tag! i'm making a new thread so i could respond to everyone at once. i love this picrew so it was really fun to do again with the changes in my look hehe
it's supposed to be what you look like vs what you would want to look like, but if i'm being completely honest, i've just been really happy with how i look lately so i only did that version :))))
EDITING TO ADD THE LINK LMAO HERE YOU GO
np tags 🪄 @spectral-mycoblin @starry-eyed-darling @trips-around-the-sun @mack-anthology-mp3 and ofc anyone else who wants to join!! love you all <3
FUCK what I said about the majority of significant changes to dialogue in Re:CoM being to adjust Axel's characterization, the most egregious change is actually this
(GBA CoM)
(Re:CoM)
if I had to guess, the reason for this change was because in GBA CoM, The Superior was a spooky, unknown being at the head of this Organization we had very little knowledge on, and for Vexen, the guy who runs his mouth constantly about how much better he is than the others, to be terrified of him, he must be some pretty scary dude. But then after kh2 we know him, it's Xemnas, he's very dramatic, he likes to talk to the moon, and the effect of your mind filling in the gaps about what "The Superior" must be like is gone. So it wasn't really necessary anymore, right?
(rest under cut because it's long)
Except... the way they changed it is so weird. In the GBA version, what's happening is pretty clear:
Marluxia tells Vexen that his project is a failure
Vexen demonstrates that he does not give a shit about Marluxia's opinion
he does care very much about The Superior's opinion, though, and Marluxia uses this to blackmail him into eliminating Sora- an action which is nonsensical, as the entire point of what they're doing needs Sora alive, making it clear to everyone in the room that he is deliberately sending Vexen to die
and then after that, when Vexen shows up to fight Sora, he goes "if you want to fight me for real you've gotta do it in the memories from the other side of your heart lol bye" and Sora goes "huh? other side?" and then it cuts to a scene on the top floor:
and then this gets more into subtext but here, Vexen has realized he's totally fucked and his only hope is to mess directly with Marluxia's plans (well, they were the Organization's plans, but it's pretty obvious by now Marluxia's abusing his power for his own purposes) by giving Sora more information than he should know. This does get the traitor gang worried enough to send Axel to go kill him (as opposed to just letting Sora take care of him, which was presumably the original plan)- he very specifically cuts Vexen off to keep him from saying too much (this is retained between the original and the remake)
Anyway, what happens in Re:CoM sort of follows the same order of events, but everything is changed slightly in a way that just makes things more confusing.
Marluxia tells Vexen his project is a failure and Vexen demonstrates that he doesn't give a shit about Marluxia's opinion, as before
Marluxia threatens Vexen with a weapon, rather than threatening to tell the Superior
this, notably, does not seem to faze Vexen very much. he continues to run his mouth while having the scythe pointed at him.
Xemnas is still leveraged- Marluxia points out it was the Superior who entrusted him with the castle
...even though reasonably Vexen would already be aware of this, and has still demonstrated that he has zero respect for Marluxia despite it
the lines about betraying the Organization being a capital crime are retained, probably because it's super relevant later, but then that line of thinking is abandoned in favor of Marluxia and Larxene just taunting Vexen instead
The part where Marluxia says "do it. you won't" could be seen as a sort of threat... if not for Axel's line: "You give a challenge like that to Vexen and he'll seriously want to eliminate Sora." It frames it all as though Vexen went to fight Sora out of some sort of pride.
And look, Vexen may have a temper and a superiority complex, but he's not stupid. They're obviously baiting him. Plus, what happened to him seeing himself as above the others and countering things he doesn't like with "well actually I'm higher ranked than you and also you're an idiot"? Is he that insecure in his fighting capabilities? I could deal with characterization changes doing him dirty if it didn't also make no sense in the context of the plot.
So now we have Vexen going to try to kill Sora, something that really makes no sense to do, out of pride. What was the purpose of sending Sora to Twilight Town? Also pride, over the fact that he managed to get that information? Giving the writing the benefit of the doubt, I could say that these nonsensical actions can be explained as evidence that Nobodies can have hearts and people with hearts do strange and rash things, but that just feels like a reach, which is bad because what they had in GBA CoM worked perfectly fine and made sense without any reaching for the "idk emotions make you do strange things" explanation.
It continues. After Vexen gives Sora the Twilight Town card in Re:CoM and Sora wonders about what the "other side" means, this is that version of the conversation the top floor members have:
...what? "If Sora disappears, that would mess up the Organization's plans"? what are you worried about? the only reason Sora would disappear is if Vexen killed him. there's no way they think Vexen being in Twilight Town would give him an advantage, right? they know he's a pathetic fighter. "Vexen has clearly committed a treasonous act against the Organization" HOW? HOW IS IT CLEAR? they don't express any worry about Sora learning too much, up until Axel says "I came to stop you from talking too much" when killing Vexen- and that being there makes it seem like they were worried about Sora learning to much, but if that's the case, why would they replace the perfectly serviceable lines in the above scene? it's just... baffling that they would want to lean into the narrative that Vexen going to kill Sora (which he'd been goaded into doing) is the problem here, because it just makes so little sense compared to what it was originally.
once again giving them the benefit of the doubt: Marluxia's real plan was to take over the Organization, and he saw an easy way to pick off one of the members, so he took it. the motive for stopping Vexen doesn't actually matter.
buuuuut it's the same as with Vexen earlier. Marluxia may be too self-absorbed and power-hungry to notice Axel is scheming against him, but he, too, is an intelligent man. he's plotted for a while, getting into Xemnas's good graces in order to be put in charge of the Castle. this is incredibly sloppy for him. I guess it could be said that getting so close to his goal would make him sloppy, but again, if they'd just left things the way they were in GBA CoM, I wouldn't even have to be saying this
in conclusion: GBA Chain of Memories' intra-Organization strife subplot is so tightly woven with calculated moves on all sides that Re:CoM changing certain things without taking into consideration the consequences makes certain parts of the plot fall flat and become far more confusing than in the original story
keep thinking abt hoshina and mina GOD.. (spoilers for manga and kn8 bside)
given what hoshina said about his previous division treating him like a burden/parasite just because he can’t handle firearms and specializes in his swords… how tiring must it have been to have to work with those people each mission despite having a common goal?
and how tiring must it have been to be constantly told off by his own father for wanting to continue his family’s tradition, or to be told to give up on being part of the jakdf by his own teacher -
before mina, a high ranking commander personally reached out to him, to recruit him into her team?
the fact that she didn’t see him during joint trainings and think: why bother with that? why bother with blades when bigger kaiju will appear? when she personally deals with bigger kaiju herself.
but she instead saw him and thought: he can help me, he can cover my weaknesses (mina not being able to handle a vegetable peeler is hilarious) and he’s someone i can trust
she sees potential in him, she sees how he can excel within her division, she saw hoshina and as captain - has probably heard everyone talk shit about him but she was still certain that he’d be one of her division’s greatest asset
(and even when platoon leader ebina refused to let hoshina help out, mina stood firm on her decision and her claim that hoshina would be useful. when she asked him if he could take down the big kaiju, and he could only promise saving the child within it - she believed him, took his word for it and waited until he carried out his promise.)
and now hoshina is the vice captain, putting faith in a new recruit whom most people wouldn’t have believed in… full fucking cycle..
tldr: it makes me rly fucking emotional to think about how hoshina was given a reason to continue improving with his swords after being told to give up all this time… and how mina had never once thought his abilities were useless 👍
also makes me crazy how protective he is of his position as vice captain, as the person who stands by captain ashiro’s side…
if you draw enough monster ocs, when you go back to drawing a human character, it feels like "sameface syndrome" everytime, by virtue of their face being. human.
TotK has solidified my belief that the objectively correct way to engage with the Zelda timeline is to Not, outside of whatever immediately affects the game you're currently playing
remember when it was the norm on here that if someone said they wanted to kill themselves, people would try to convince them not to and anything other than doing that was seen as fucked and wrong by default no matter what?
i saw you’re updating your 5+1 soon, yes? i’m so excited!!
It is in the works...I've had trouble siting down and putting my mind to anything for awhile but I am determined to lock in for this chapter...which is set during lockdown (haha, see what I did there?)
Well this is what you might call the pitch..or the write up, basically close to final form really:
No, I'm kidding. I do not remember writing the Covid makes you gay thing lol but it will be set in the early months of the Pandemic and kinda filling in the gap from the beginning of the lockdown to before the Election stuff covered in 2020:AYIR. I find that canon dynamic switch insanely interesting, and since this fic is trying to stay close to canon with the addition of *they've been fucking the entire goddamn time* it seems only logical to make those gay wannabe pop star cowboys get drunk on tequila and fuck it out.
I'm glad there are fans of this one out there! It's a lot of fun for me to try and write out their canon dynamic in this way and I've really been jonesing to write my own lockdown fic for awhile now, so as the ideas are bouncing around in my brain I will spew them out onto paper for anyone who's interested in reading