#but i might throw in some comic arcs i like

[skyllion-uwu]

Truly appreciate how autistic you are about Batman

Bwaaaa thank you!! I always worry I'm a bit annoying about it but it makes me happy and that's what matters the most I think :3

[thewertsearch]

@manorinthewoods asked: Vriska and Eridan have now killed one person each. Tavros and Feferi's respective moons have been destroyed; as such, they cannot be revived via dream selves or the moon-crypt slabs. What do you think will happen now? ~LOSS (18/5/24) @manorinthewoods asked: Welcome to Murderstuck, aka Homestuck's version of Canaan House. Who do you think's going to survive this? ~LOSS (22/5/24) Anonymous asked: tavros and feferi are D----EAD! do you think they'll stay dead? you've already stated your opinion that there are death flags like crazy all over vriska, so do you think anyone else will die? if so, who? Anonymous asked: Now that the bodies have started to hit the floor, what's your prediction for who's gonna survive to meet the humans?

I'm actually doing to do something a little different this time, and analyze the situation primarily from an author's perspective, rather than an in-universe one. I had a lot of fun doing that with yesterday's Kanaya post, so I want to try it again.

Let's enumerate the remaining trolls, in ascending order of how likely I think they are to kick the bucket (😳) during Murderstuck.

There's no chance whatsoever that Sollux will die. His Doom prophecy is fulfilled, and if he were to die a third time, it would break his long-established duality theme. Plus, he'd have predicted it, and would have been complaining about it since Hivebent. He's fine.

Death flag score: 0/10.

We just got Aradia back. She's not even involved in Murderstuck, seemingly travelling to the Furthest Ring after being resurrected, so none of the murderers can touch her anyway.

Aradia is a powerful time manipulator who can freeze even the most dangerous enemies. It would take a lot more than Eridan and Gamzee to defeat someone who can stalemate Perfect Jack, and I predict that she'll survive the rest of the Act with ease.

Plus, killing her again so soon would feel really cheap. Been there, done that.

Death flag score = 0.5/10

Karkat and Terezi are too important to die.

This doesn't always guarantee a character's survival - A Song of Ice and Fire comes to mind - but ASOIAF kind of proves my point, doesn't it? Martin can throw all the Red Weddings he likes at us, but everyone still kind of knows that the really important characters aren't going to die until their arcs are complete. If A Dream of Spring ever actually comes out, Daenerys will still be around, and you can take that to the bank.

So no, I don't think Karkat and Terezi will be going anywhere. Now that Kanaya appears to be dead, they're undeniably the most important trolls remaining, alongside Vriska. And we'll get to Vriska.

Death flag score: 1/10.

I know it's weird to predict that an already deceased character won't die, but I wrote an entire post last night about why I believe this to be the case.

tl;dr: it doesn't make narrative sense for Kanaya to stay dead.

Death flag score: 2/10.

Now, we're onto the characters who I think might actually die.

Gamzee's still alive at the end of the countdown, so he'll at least survive the next couple of hours.

Certainly, his position seems rather precarious. His stated intent to wipe out the entire Veil will make him a lot of enemies very quickly - and based on the image above, he clearly gets into some sort of trouble. That scratch almost looks like it could be the work of Jack's sword.

However, I have a hard time believing the Most Important Character In Homestuck is going to die less than halfway through Homestuck. He's been saying all sorts of cryptic nonsense lately, and he strikes me as someone whose role in the story will expand even more than it already has. Gamzee is the one character on this list we know will stay relevant for the entire comic.

I don't think he's going to achieve his murder mission, of course. I think he'll probably be 'defeated' somehow, and expelled from the Veil by the surviving trolls, only to pop up again sometime later. There's still a chance that he'll be killed - but if he is, I'm 100% sure that he'll return in some form. Gamzeesprite would be even worse than Calsprite, in my opinion.

Death flag score: 3/10.

Yes, I still believe Vriska will die - but I don't know if she'll die in Murderstuck.

Scratch positioned her as someone who will perpetuate a monumental, large-scale mistake, and I don't think there's anything she could do on the Veil that fits the bill.

However, Vriska is more imaginative than I am. She could easily pull a trick out from up her sleeve that I didn't see coming - some terrible, horrible idea that earns all of Scratch's foreshadowing in one fell swoop. Vriska is known for her Incidents, and you never know when the next one is on the horizon.

Death flag score: 4/10.

There's not a lot tying Equius and Nepeta to the Veil, is there?

They don't have strong relationships any of the remaining trolls, and even among the B-team, they've barely had any prominence since we've left Alternia. Killing one or both of them would up the stakes of Murderstuck without introducing the narrative issues that, say, a dead Karkat would cause.

Plus, if one of them dies, then the other would immediately gain an incredibly strong motivation, and become a more prominent character overnight. I already like Nepeta - but a heartbroken, vengeful Nepeta hunting Eridan down across time and space? That's a fucking arc.

They could also both die, and return to the story from another direction. It hasn't escaped my notice that almost all the 'important' trolls are Prospit Dreamers, and the two Furthest Ring explorers are Derse girls. I've been wondering for a while now if the solution to the Veil's bloated cast is to split the trolls back into the Red and Blue Teams, with the Red Team joining the kids outside the session, and the Blue Team joining Aradia in the Ring for some secondary mission. I guess that implies Tavros will be resurrected, but there do seem to be hints that that might happen.

I don't want either of these two to die, but... well, killing them would raise a lot of interesting possibilities.

Death flag score (both of them together): 6/10

Death flag score (one of them) : 7.5/10.

Eridan is screwed.

Neither the story nor the trolls can allow him to ally with Jack and lead him to the Veil, and they'll do anything they can to stop him. I don't think anyone's inclined to show him mercy, either - Kanaya and Feferi were very popular.

I don't really see any way out for him. He has no allies, he can't Hopesplode everyone at once, and he's never shown himself to be particularly resourceful. I think if there's one troll practically guaranteed to be Murderstucked, it's him.

Death flag score: 9/10.

[artist-issues]

On the Percy Jackson series, now that the season has concluded, do you have any thoughts on it, whether standalone or as an adaptation, about what worked and didn't work in it? I ask partly because I want to analyse it as its own thing but I can't stop getting hung up on the changes and I'm not completely sure why.

Of all things, Gabe is the big one for me. They turned him from a repulsive abuser to a pathetic manchild who lacks the power dynamic of his book counterpart and was so consistently treated as comic relief that I actually pitied him. The fact that he shares the fate of his book counterpart actually kind of angers me and it's hard for me to look past that. It left a mean-spirited taste in my mouth.

I don’t think I’ve talked enough about what did work, and I do think there’s a place for talking about that, so I’m glad you asked!

I think Walker Scobell could play a really excellent Percy Jackson. And I think Leah Jeffries and Aryan Simhadri are both very endearing in their roles.

I’m not going to throw shade on 14 year-old actors and actresses. There’s no shade to throw. Acting is vulnerability combined with introspection and understanding. No teenager is going to have the same level of vulnerability, understanding, and introspection, expressed with the same skill, as we’re used to seeing in adults, period. And the show doesn’t do them any favors by giving them very adult lines and very adult-behaving characters to play.

Which segues nicely into—the character’s “arcs” are completely different in the show, but they feel more like…”alternate universe” characters than “out-of-character-rewrites.” For the most part.

I already touched on how Grover is a completely different Grover in the TV show. His fear is both too serious and not extreme enough. He’s not comedic. Instead, he is a voice of reason, and he does have a maturity the other two don’t have. He’s written to talk to the other adults differently than Percy and Annabeth are—more like equals, less like teen-vs-adults. You can easily believe that Grover is a 24 year-old in a kid’s body during those scenes, like the ones with Ares.

But there’s a reason he’s not like that in the Percy Jackson books; he’s comedic, and he’s Percy’s best friend. Percy’s only 12 when they meet; it’s weird for a 12 year-old to be best friends with a 24 year-old—who BEHAVES like a 35 year-old, with all the gravity, and maturity, etc. But if the 24 year-old is a magical creature who, for his species, is still pretty young, and has a comedically immature personality, then the chemistry works much better. Anyway. Not my point.

My point is, Grover might not be Grover, but you can still see trace elements of Grover in him. Like how you can see echoes of Spider-Man in Spider-Gwen’s story. It’s an alternate-universe, not a do-over.

Grover still wants to be a seeker.

Grover still feels guilty about not taking better care of Thalia.

Grover still gets the most outraged and cares the most deeply about nature and crimes against nature.

Grover is still a peace-lover at heart, so he’s the most gentle in relational interactions.

‘That kind of stuff is still there. It’s just re-contextualized and…made less fun. That’s all. More serious. More grit.

Same thing with Annabeth:

Annabeth still wants to prove she’s the best of the best.

Annabeth’s still given up on her normal family and is most comfortable in life-or-death strategizing.

Annabeth’s still smart, but specifically wise enough to notice Percy’s heart of gold while everyone else is busy being afraid of or disappointed in him.

Same thing with Percy:

Percy still has the stubborn rebelliousness we all know and love.

Percy’s still a guy who goes with his gut first and foremost.

Percy’s still willing to sacrifice the future for the present, if the present means saving the people he loves.

Percy still makes wise-cracks at wildly inappropriate times.

And I think some of the show is really well written. Some of it. Two parts in particular stand out. The first is when Annabeth and Percy have the post-killing Medusa conversation, and they have that, “she tried to get me to betray you. What did you say? I killed her sister. What did you say? I cut off her head.” exchange. That’s great. The point of that conversation is “you can trust me because no matter how I might be tempted, this is the line I won’t cross.” But they don’t come out and say that. They have the characters say it without saying it, if that makes sense.

The second bit of good writing that comes into my brain was Luke’s conversation with Percy about being small and scary. It was such a good way to introduce the important concept of why gods need demigods/why gods fear demigods, while also lore-dropping things like “Annabeth is afraid of spiders” and “this fantasy world does have rules.” And on top of those boxes getting checked, you can also see the conversation from Luke’s point of view—he’s bitter about being thought of as a small thing to the gods, but now he’s starting to embrace the scariness part.

So some moments are good, writing-wise. Especially if you tilt your head and say “this is an alternate universe.” I just think they’re not always the right moments for Percy Jackson.

[kcrabb88]

I've been thinking a lot lately about fandom's penchant to take male characters who are funny and/or chaotic, or perhaps might be known for throwing a good punch, and then create fanon in which said character is stupid/constantly does stupid stuff. I'm particularly thinking currently about Quinlan Vos, but this is by no means unique to Star Wars fandom. There was a period there in Les Mis fandom during which the Broification of Bahorel was a thing. It happened to Caleb Brewster in TURN fandom. Sometimes Zeb in Rebels fandom (which, Star Wars again, but different part of the fandom). It happens A LOT. And like, just because a character is funny, chaotic, or has a penchant for a brawl, it doesn't mean that they're stupid?? I don't understand why this is such a trend.

Back to Quinlan, specifically. I follow the Quinlan tag. I follow the QuinObi tag and the things I have to see where Quinlan is just?? Dumb?? All the time??? Extremely not sure what about his sarcastic sense of humor and chaotic plans (that work! He has a plan in the new comic that is objectively hilarious and also EFFECTIVE) gave anyone the impression that he was stupid, but I see?? So much of it?? He's?? A spy?? A Jedi Master?? He's a really GOOD spy, as a matter of fact. He goes undercover a lot. He IS funny and he IS chaotic but that doesn't mean he isn't smart! Sometimes characters like this also might use humor as a shield, which can be a super intriguing thing! Quinlan in the comics definitely (in my opinion at least) does this, and he does it in Dark Disciple too. His psychometry can be a traumatic kind of power, and he has to get closer to temptations around the dark side a lot more than other Jedi, and that is something he struggles with while being such a good person even when he falls and has to get back up again.

Anyway, Quinlan is a really compelling character with a lot of facets to his personality. He IS funny (I am often writing him being funny!) but he's not JUST there to be comic relief. He has his own things and his own arcs. There is some truly great Quin fanwork out there! Maybe it's the incorrect quotes getting to me, but I hope the trend of making him stupid will end, because he deserves better.

[moony-2001]

How I would’ve constructed the 10 year time skip

✨Brought to you by my deep loathing for Lore Olympus✨

•warnings: super long post (I’m not joking), death, kidnapping, violence•

What The Fuck Happened

There was so much potential for the punishment arc. We could’ve seen a lot of character development, fleshed out storylines, reconciliation between certain people. We could’ve seen both Hades and Persephone going to therapy instead of claiming that one therapy session has fixed all their problems and then never going again.

Instead we got horny Persephone, pretty much no clue about what happened to Demeter OR Persephone during that time, and an easy plot device (sorry Cerberus) for Persephone to be like “I’m a big girl now harrumph harrumph, time for me to go reunite with my crusty ass bf who I’ve only know for a month”.

I hate the way she reunited with Ares. Ares is just a bonafide creep throughout the whole comic (although I liked when he attacked Zeus lol). I guess what I mostly hate about Ares and Persephone’s interaction is, yet again, it’s another example of every guy in the comic going AWOOGA over Persephone. Also Athena’s design is so fugly. I guess Rachel is completely incapable of drawing masculine presenting women as actual women.

The whole Kronos plot line is stupid. I hate it so much. Imo the whole “the titans are trying to escape so they can rule Olympus again” is overdone and not particularly done well. The fight between Kronos and Persephone is lame as shit. Like what, she gets big for all of 20 minutes, burps out a bunch of bees (which aren’t even aggressive creatures), and then does her version of the Wuxi Finger Hold from Kung Fu Panda and has Tartarus spirit Kronos away, magically fixing all of their problems (except it doesn’t and nothing is actually fixed).

Also I might get a lot of flack for this, but I don’t think the addition of Morpheus’ character was necessary. I like Morpheus. I think she’s cute. But she’s a) slowly turning into another version of Hecate and b) not really vital to the narrative imo. We already have so many other characters and plot lines that take away from the central “romance” the story is SUPPOSED to be focused on. I just don’t think we need ANOTHER character whose arc is probably not going to go anywhere.

So yeah, overall very L writing, L plot, and L characters.

What I would do differently

The first thing I would change is that the whole punishment arc would be an entire season unto itself. You’ll see why it has to be a separate season.

The second thing is (and this literally pains me to say) in order for me to rewrite this portion of LO without rewriting the entire comic, I kinda sorta have to throw the entire timeline of Greece out the window. If I try to follow a timeline based on the history of Greece, the entire timeline of LO has to shift massively. I’m already getting a migraine trying to think about how I could possibly make it work.

I do know this: Instead of 10 years I’d do somewhere between 1,000-3,000 years. 10 years is a joke. When you’re a god, 10 years is a trip to the time out corner

For now, let’s just say (assuming LO takes place in the Ancient Greece era) and Ancient Greece spanned ~1500 years, Persephone’s punishment would’ve needed to have been established near the very end of the collapse of the Late Bronze Age, spanned the entirety of Ancient Greece as we know it today, and ended some time in the very early Byzantine era. So like what, 1500-2000 years? Fine. I can work with this.

The Famine

You know how the first 400 years of Ancient Greece was deemed the “Dark Ages” and it was a time of war, famine, and loss? I want to start the punishment there. It would make sense for what we know about the characters thus far:

Demeter has had complete control over the growth of the flora and fauna on earth. She’s the goddess of the harvest after all. But we also find out that while Persephone has been in Olympus, Demeter has also been carrying out her duties as the goddess of spring. Plus Demeter has been around for forever and a day. She knows what she’s doing

Persephone doesn’t (at this point in the comic) really have control over her powers. Even in her fits of rage, she ends up doing more harm than good (i.e. her act of wrath, turning Minthe into a plant, etc.). In comparison with everyone around her, she is a literal infant. I mean shit, she’s only been alive for 20 years compared to the fact that everyone else has most likely been around for a minimum of 500 years.

If Demeter is stripped of her status as a goddess (and thus her powers) it would make sense that there would be a lot of death and famine and war over territory/food. Persephone would be left with nothing: no guidebook, no how-to. Of course a lot of people would die while she’s trying to figure her shit out. It could also be a very interesting tactic for psychological warfare on Zeus’ part. Zeus KNOWS Persephone doesn’t know what she’s doing. He knows people will die. And he knows that since life is precious to Persephone (or at least that’s what she claims), it would punish her further.

We can see episodes of Persephone struggling to provide for humanity. We could have real world examples of the affect of famine and depopulation. We would see her struggling with her powers, her mental health. We could get an episode that explains how her hands got destroyed from trying to mimic her mother’s powers. We can see what the fuck happened to Demeter in Attica.

Now obviously things will eventually go on the up and up for Persephone and her compatriots. The whole 1500-2000 years isn’t just going to be one big clusterfuck. As time progresses and chapters pass, we could see real character growth for Persephone not just mentally, but in almost every aspect. Since she will have been alive at that point for over 1000 years, the readers would be able to see her newfound maturity. We could also see her build strong female support systems and strengthen her friendships, something we NEVER saw in the OG comic (or at least they never happened without Hades somehow being involved). You get the point.

What’s Old Man Hades up to?

I have big plans for Hades and none of them involve him going into a 1000+ year coma or getting possessed by his creepy-ass dad. He is an asshole though. I kinda wanted to portray him in this the way he is in the original myths (which for those who don’t know or haven’t read it, it’s not good).

So in Greek mythology, Hades actually had a wife before he even met Persephone or Minthe. Can you take a wild guess as to who?

Bingo! It’s Leuce. Contrary to popular belief, Leuce is actually NOT a home-wrecking POC version of Persephone (don’t @ me we all know the nymphs represent the lower class and POC). In mythology, Leuce was Hades’ first wife/lover and she died sometime long ago and I believe was turned into a white poplar tree. No she is not a cousin of Thetis and Amphitrite. She is not even remotely related to them. And Thetis and Amphitrite are sisters, not cousins. Do your fucking research Rachel.

Unfortunately, Greek Mythology doesn’t really mention all that much about Leuce outside of the fact that she was a daughter of Oceanus, she was kidnapped by Hades, and when she died (for unspecified reasons) she turned into a tree. Which means I’m going to be taking a lot of creative liberties for this portion of the post. Sorry to all you diehard fans of Greek myths out there. I shall try to do her justice.

In my head-cannon Hades and Leuce had been in an arranged marriage for thousands of years. Leuce was offered by Oceanus as a peace offering after the War and Hades, not really having any other viable options for a wife, agreed to take her to the underworld (much to her dismay). Over time, they grew to have a mutually loving/caring relationship. Unlike LO Persephone, Leuce was a good queen and she worked hard to make sure the denizens of the underworld respected her and that they were well cared for. Unfortunately, they got divorced because Hades starting having an affair with Minthe. Even though she loved her kingdom and the people of the underworld, she divorced Hades because she couldn’t stand to be around him, which, y’know. Fair.

A few notes: in my head-cannon, Leuce is still around leading up the the trial and punishment. Her portrait would still be up, we would see signs that Hades and Leuce still interact (more in terms of business, not romance), etc.

Also, unlike Persephone, Leuce would not take her anger out on Minthe or turn her into a plant or destroy her apartment. She would simply wish her good luck. She would be mad at Hades for cheating and for taking advantage of Minthe while she’s at her lowest. But I’m going to be straight up: even though Leuce is meant to be the better Persephone, she still has her flaws. She’s not going to feel inclined to help Minthe in any way. Would you want to help out the person who your partner is cheating on you with? The answer is no and if you say yes, you’re lying.

Anyways, during the Punishment, Hades and Leuce reconnect and Hades finds out Leuce is dying. He tries to convince her to leave the underworld and return to her father, but she insists that she is going to stay, even if it means she dies away from everyone she loved. She won’t abandon her kingdom, her people, or her ex-husband (although that’s much better than he deserves). They move in together and Hades begins to take care of her, even as she begins to deteriorate. They also begin to rekindle their past relationship and (with the help of a therapist) work through some of their past problems together.

Note: their relationship rekindles a couple hundred years into the punishment so by the time the punishment ends, they’ve been back together for a minimum of 1200 years

The aftermath and the Rape of Persephone

Before any of you go gaga over me for the title used above, the original title used for the myth is The Rape of Persephone (or if you want to be really original, The Rape of Proserpina). In the context of the title, the term “rape” means to be taken/kidnapped rather than having sexual violence inflicted upon you. Rape stemmed from the traditional Latin word “raptus” which means “to be seized” or “carried off”. Okay? Okay.

So after the Punishment ends and Persephone feels like she has thoroughly improved herself, she goes to find Hades and talk with him about their relationship. Mainly that she feels they rushed into it, and even though she does like him she wants to take things really slow (kind of like how she wanted before getting married 3 episodes later).

Upon arriving to the underworld/Hades house, her worst fears are realized: not only has Hades (seemingly) moved on, he has found someone else. Or rather, he got back together with his ex-wife.

Persephone freaks out (“who is she?”/“I’m his wife!”)

Persephone, throughly upset for getting her hopes up, flees back to mortal realm. Hades goes to leave Leuce, but not before she tells him that if he leaves her for Persephone, she will never forgive him. Hades leaves anyways, much to the absolute despair of Leuce, who is left wailing as he runs off.

Persephone returns home and finds Demeter and they hug. Demeter is initially horrified to see what happened to her hands, but is proud of the work she did during the punishment. Persephone cries to her mother about Hades, and Demeter tries to comfort her but it inadvertently comes off more as “I told you so” rather than “I’m sorry you had to experience that” (although Demeter is sorry that Persephone’s heart is broken). Persephone, already feeling incredibly emotionally distressed, lashes out at Demeter and they start to argue. This is when Hades arrives.

Hades sees Demeter and Persephone arguing and inserts himself into the situation. Persephone becomes more upset after seeing him and Hades (assuming that Persephone is upset about the fact that Demeter is getting in the way of their “relationship” and not the fact that Persephone discovered Hades went back to his ex-wife after saying he loved her) whips out the the “one personal question, no exceptions” card and proposes to Persephone. He insists that he loves her and only her and that they should spend the rest of their immortal lives together.

Persephone says no.

Hades, not taking no for an answer and not wanting to leave the mortal realm empty handed, kidnaps Persephone, much to the dismay of Demeter, Artemis, and the nymphs. Hades returns with a traumatized Persephone to the underworld to find that Leuce has died and turned into a white poplar tree. While Persephone is sobbing on the floor, Hades weaves a mock crown from the branches and leaves of the tree, places it upon Persephone’s head, and tells her she better get used to their life together.

Thus ends the season and the punishment arc.

Afterthoughts

Thank you for sitting through my ramblings. I officially joined the anti-LO community about the time the trial happened and had been wanting to make a post like this for a reaaaaally long time. Besides the fact that the trial in of itself was completely unethical (@genericpuff made a whole post about that) the punishment arc just really pissed me off. Like go girl, give us nothing!

Anyways, I may or may not do a whole timeline reconstruction of LO depending on how much I feel like offing my sanity with the amount of research that would have to go into that. Until then, I hope you like this post and look out for other anti LO posts coming your way :)

[cupcakeslushie]

@beeisblue Huginn and Muninn try to spoil Three when they can in their own pathetically middle of the road—thanks for trying way. But more often than not, they’re on babysitting duty to make sure Three doesn’t blow up his own lab—which can be pretty dangerous so they’d much rather keep their distance, but they do feel bad about not doing more to help. They’ll make a little appearance along with Shelldon in Donnie’s interlude, which is coming up next, after we conclude Mikey’s rescue arc!

That is definitely not sanctioned, but yes—Draxum is just too exhausted with Three’s antics at this point. The child used to be at least respectful out of fear, but it seems like ever since a few years back when Three hit some kind of mental, pain threshold, Draxum has had a hard time controlling and understanding his thought process.

The boys do change things up by way of casual clothes around the lair, just wearing whatever’s comfortable—pretty close to the show with Mikey and Donnie probably wearing more sweaters and joggers and hoodies than say Leo or Raph. As for missions I might change my mind if I can come up with something else fun for them to wear, but as for now…most of them change pretty quickly to their movie look as soon as they each unlock their ninpo. I’ve put Leo in 2012!Leo’s white vision quest hoodie until his finally moves on to his black and blue ninpo gear just because he’ll struggle with it the most so he’s kind of the only one who takes a while to switch over to his finale look. But I might throw them in something extra if I change my mind!

@artoflittleowlbird Just a little song I made up! 😅 I really struggled with whether I wanted a real song or if I wanted to just make something from scratch. It’ll play a role later on so I hope I didn’t make it too weird sounding! I wanted it to have a non-rhyming feel like it’s something old which Splinter might’ve sung them.

Leo does meet Hueso eventually. He’s super polite when Raph, Mikey, and April first bring him to Run of the Mill, but there’s something so tired in his expression that Hueso can’t put his phalanges on. It makes the man wanna feed him, wrap him in a blanket and plop him on a comfy sofa where he can’t get hurt.

@sskurwysyn I’m sorry I’m so bad at this part. All the names I’m thinking of sound so stupid 🫣 If anyone else has one they’d like to suggest I’m all ears 🤣. And Mikey swapped out his nunchucks once or twice, but would always go back to them as soon as he could. I do like the idea of him wielding a comically huge kanabo like it’s nothing. Little man does not skip arm day.

@little-banjo-frog Leo is a little too high up in the ranking for them to be close friends, but he has gone on missions with her as part of her training. She respects him much like she does Foot Lieutenant and Brute in the show, but once she really meets Raph, Mikey, and April and hears their story and connects the dots of their missing brother being Leo, her conscience takes over and she can’t help but see how screwed up Leo is from what Shredder’s done to him. BUT THAT’S OKAY—cause you can’t get any cooler than being a double agent!! She just needs to find the perfect time to get Leo to meet his brothers, and they can both leave the foot clan behind! Plus once she’d started sneaking out of the compound at night to play vigilante with Raph, she was done for—way too much fun! Good thing she’s so good at being quiet…be a shame if she were followed…..

Aside from accidentally blowing up a Chee-Z ball factory in one of his first times out, Donnie’s gotten away with: taking apart half the tech in the lair and leaving the parts strewn all over for someone to trip on, snapping at his brothers and saying things even he knew at the time he’d regret saying, being an absolute shit to April when he first met her, testing a stimulant on himself and scaring the bejesus out of everyone when he had a tiny case of cardiac arrest…And probably the most glaringly obvious time Splinter was mad at him, but held his tongue—when Donnie needed the wiring in the projector tv and tore the whole thing apart so they were all left without any entertainment for two days while he built them a new one from scratch. Yes, they got something much nicer out of it, but he could’ve at least warned them! Raph thought Splinter’s fur was gonna be dyed perma-red from how much he looked like a tea kettle about to explode.

Raph has to get a handle on Savage Raph pretty soon after Leo and Mikey get taken, just out of necessity, but he doesn’t get rid of the fear of being alone completely. Meeting April helps even more, but once they’re all back together it does become a bigger struggle for him to not panic when they leave his eye-line. It’s not even something that registers as an issue at first cause as long as one of them is with him, he can stay pretty calm, but eventually they do all have to split up for some reason or other, and he goes full Savage Raph for the first time in YEARS. It’s only top-side though, he’s fine being alone in the Hidden City and the sewers. April is always their best bet for calming him down though. They make a joke out of it later like maybe next time she should say something like “Sun’s going down big guy!” But it’s the simple fact that a part of Raph might be scared to lose his brothers again, but April has always been his biggest source of comfort and safety—she’s his big sister.

100% yes April and Raph can totally mind meld 🤣 i love it.

[arceespinkgun]

I'd love to hear your opinions on IDW Rodimus. I personally thought he was one of the better characters in that comic, but I have not read the Marvel comics so I have no point of comparison.

Just to clarify: I hate this character as he is in MTMTE and Lost Light. Not Rodimus as he appeared in IDW before those series. I'm not familiar with all his appearances, but his origin story seemed pretty strong to me. What I'm about to say isn't the fault of the character, it's the fault of the writer, James Roberts, who I resent for throwing out all the characterization that came from other writers before him in this and many other instances.

I don't really know what to say. Rodimus is a monster. I can't recount every horrible thing he did, there's too many. A few egregious ones are:

Punishing Rewind for having a snuff film collection, but then telling him to project a record of Fortress Maximus being tortured onto a wall to trigger Maximus during a hostage situation, then telling Swerve to shoot Fortress Maximus after Swerve repeatedly protested. Swerve said he was a bad shot, that Maximus was too close to Rung, that Maximus was already calm... Rodimus had so many chances to reconsider.

When Red Alert attempted suicide, Rodimus lied to Rung about it. You know, Red Alert's therapist? And not only did he lie about that, but he called this person who'd just tried to take his own life a bunch of ableist slurs. And Rodimus smeared him like this to cover his own ass and hide what Red Alert had found.

Bringing Overlord onto the ship because his ego is so fragile it couldn't handle Prowl calling him a wimp, then lying repeatedly about it, including during Overlord rampaging around killing the crew.

When Ultra Magnus is presumed dead and Drift is exiled by Rodimus, one issue after they're gone, Rodimus goes to Rung and Cyclonus and is basically like, you two are the new Ultra Magnus and Drift, really showing how disposable everyone is to him.

Rodimus's treatment of Drift in general was especially gross. Please keep in-mind that Rodimus is the captain, so he had direct power over him. Rodimus got possessive and impatient any time Drift was doing anything other than attending directly to Rodimus, including calling him some horrible, undisclosed thing, and threatening to have the law changed specifically in order to punish Drift for his Decepticon past (this is during peace time). He claimed to Thunderclash that he'd "rehabilitated" Drift. He had Drift take the blame for Overlord, kicked Drift out of the Autobots, and didn't intervene when Drift was assaulted for this. And we learn that Drift only hadn't told the crew the truth about Overlord in the first place because he'd felt "beholden" to Rodimus. The way Rodimus treated Drift almost felt to me like Drift was his courtesan or something, along with the racist tropes that implies... it's really bad. EDIT: oh, and it was even worse because Rodimus exiled Drift right after Drift had his legs torn off by Overlord, and because when Rodimus eventually did confess to bringing Overlord on board, he didn't look for Drift or even send him a message.

Now I know what fans might say. But he came clean/apologized/grew so it's an arc! But that's not the case. As I've reread most of MTMTE just now, I saw that this character is basically written as a complete monster until about issue 18, and then suddenly starts behaving heroically and saying the right things after no growth at all. It's not an arc, it reads like JRo just reconsidered this guy's entire characterization, but you can't do that! You have to commit! Plus, I do not really care that Rodimus did better eventually, because "making amends" should have included stepping down as the first act. No, there absolutely should not have been a vote over his captaincy. He should have been removed or better yet, removed himself. (Also, what kind of a sadistic choice was that vote? Because if Rodimus had been voted out, that would have meant Megatron would've been sole captain of the Lost Light, and there was no vote over that! That was just unilaterally decided by Optimus Prime!)

A really great example of how Rodimus doesn't really grow or change genuinely is issue #36. In that issue, he and other crew members go back in time, and Rodimus keeps trying to find a way to prevent Trailbreaker's death. He shows a lot of concern for him. But this comes out of nowhere. As I've just reread a large chunk of MTMTE, I can tell you that Rodimus and Trailbreaker had no connection whatsoever before this. And again, none of this is the character's fault. This is the writer's fault. Because Rodimus doesn't actually grow, I wouldn't blame people from being like, "Well, I prefer to think of Rodimus as the version who behaves better and says the right things." But that would be the reader's choice, not something the writer or series should be credited for.

When it comes to Rodimus in the Marvel comics, what sort of things did he do that made him a flawed, complex character? Hiring a bounty hunter to take out Galvatron, which went poorly, but the intention was to try and keep people safe. Giving in to being goaded by Galvatron and losing his cool, but he gets talked down by Arcee. As Hot Rod, he was especially impulsive, and make mistakes like getting bored and going for a drive when he was supposed to be keeping watch at a diplomatic summit, which gave the Decepticons an opportunity to attack... but he then tried to redeem himself as soon as possible by immediately going one-on-one with their leader and putting himself at great risk. This basically applies to any of Rodimus's or Hot Rod's errors in judgment. He always tried to address them ASAP, and often they were made with good intentions (in one of the annuals, he disobeyed orders because he thought Kup was being hurt, for example), not to cover his own ass or spite people.

I also want to mention Rodimus from the 80s cartoon as well. He is known for saying absolutely deranged things and being so depressed, he took any opportunity to be rid of the mantle of leadership.

But the thing about this is that his actual actions were still almost always for others' benefit. I think that's the other biggest thing that JRo ignored.

[co-mixed]

Why Boom Still Can’t Get Buffy Right

My love for the Buffyverse is concrete but it has its limits. Yesterday I had a very unpleasant experience finishing yet another unimpressive Buffy run, courtesy of Boom Comics. It’s always disappointing to me because Buffyverse has so much potential and untold stories. It’s a goldmine that is constantly held back and simply can’t find its footing in the comics medium. Why is that? 

Boom’s been rather relentless in trying to make Buffy work. Several years and runs later, there’s still no big WOW story that can attract readers and viewers alike. Not just that, but even seasoned buffy fans don’t seem very interested in continuous attempts at rebooting the Slayer tale. You can blame the word reboot (it does tend to scare people) but the real reason is still Boom’s inability to deliver a good captivating story.

Boom had tried reinventing Buffy, sending her back to school, developing alternate realities and futures. But in every iteration, Buffy and the Scooby Gang were plagued with the same mistakes over and over again. 

Hey, I’m not sure what I am, so bear with me here 

The characters from Buffy are some of the most well-developed characters out there. Each one has a point of origin, a story, and a final form. We love them because we know them. And we know them extremely well. 

Let’s take the fan-favorite, Spike. We’ve seen his whole afterlife and even bits of his life. We know how he became William the Bloody, then Spike, a neutered vampire, and finally, an ensouled champion. We know how, and more importantly, we know why. 

I’d hate to throw in one more why but there is a reason Spike exists in the show, and we know it. 

When you read Boom comics, it feels like writers stick him into every arc just because they like him. He brings nothing to the story, he has no soul or chip yet chooses to join the scoobies. That does not look like the Spike we know. That guy was in s2-s4, not s5-s7. That’s the guy from School Hard or the one who got the Gem of Amara and happily marched to kill Buffy. 

But there’s nothing stronger than the author’s desire to make things ‘right’. Hence this spike lookalike joining the team every time. 

The funny part is, I can very well imagine a soulless chipless Spike who’s not a monster. If Dru sires him and never sees him again, if she never introduces him to Angelus, if he keeps on writing his bloody awful poetry only forever. He probably would’ve turned out like that poor librarian guy whose glasses Dru broke or like Harmony who still tried to be decent. But it’s the writer’s job to explain it, to write it into the story, not just throw a character into a book and see whether they swim or go down. They will always go down. 

Spike is only one of the issues here. In the show, both Kendra and Faith exist to show us the perfect (according to the council) and the fallen slayer. Two possible realities for Buffy. They have their own arcs (well, Faith does) but the show is strong because supporting characters serve a purpose. Just like the people we meet in real life always serve a purpose for us. You might believe that one character pushing the development of another is cruel, but that’s still how good stories are made. That’s still why Buffy is popular 20 years after the show’s finale. 

Kendra and Faith did that for Buffy in the show. In the Boom comics they just exist. They show up for no reason and they just hang around. You can take them out of the story and nothing will change. At one point in the initial reboot there were three slayers at the same time, and that felt more like a fix-it fanfic than a quality comic book. Unfortunately, some slayers have to die and some have to turn evil. Besides, without her rebellious personality, Faith is meaningless.

I have one more bone to pick. I know that Buffy and Angel (still the OTP of the show!) are a complicated matter to many modern writers. And readers, and viewers. There’s no place to hide from the creep factor and even though I will defend this ship till the day everyone finally agrees with me, I can’t deny its presence. But that doesn’t mean you get to discard this ship and separate Buffy and Angel into different books. One doesn’t exist or grow without the other. There is no Buffy in love with a vampire without Angel. There is only Vampire. Slayer. Dead vampire. 

Without Buffy, Angel is not in LA helping the helpless. He’s in New York eating low rats. Before trying to launch two separate books, how about Boom launches one good one, that provides background, even if revised and adapted to the modern days? 

I always worried what would happen when that b*tch got some funding

All this chaotic mess with the characters determines the stories Boom puts out. They tend to have an interesting start but by the time issue 3 comes out, it’s either Camazotz flying around Sunnydale, a giant crab taking over the main street, or whatever the hell Silas was (a soul eater?) Didn’t care for him much. Not even when we were evil. 

More often than not Boom writers suffer from the same disease that plagued Dark Horse comics – scale. Just because you can do anything doesn’t mean you should. Comics allow you to draw literally any kind of baddie but you are playing within a specific world, and suspense of disbelief only goes so far. Besides, in the show, it all grows gradually. You go from the Master to the First evil. In the comics… seriously, what the hell was Silas? 

From what I’ve read so far, Boom knows how to ask interesting questions: 

What if Buffy went to school today?

What if Willow took over as the slayer? 

What if Buffy was older? 

Those are all good what ifs but Boom has a problem following through. They don’t know the answer to this question and it feels like they’re making it up as they go along. If I’m being honest, it even feels like they wrote random ideas on pieces of paper, through them in a hat, and started pulling each time they hit a wall. 

Characters show up for now reason (hi, Tara from the latest run), they don’t feel like themselves, and the saddest part – none of it feels like you are getting your favorite show back. 

These characters deserve better than that. 

And there’s not a one who can say this ended well

At this point, I don’t know if Boom wants Buffy comics to succeed. I don’t mean to be this dramatic but every time someone mentions comics, fans think Dark Horse. Not because they are still considered canon, but because they had a connection to the beloved show. Boom comics don’t give you that, so you can’t look the other way when writers don’t deliver. It’s just how it works. 

I keep thinking what Boom can do to get out of this vicious circle. And I do believe there If they want to successfully play in the Buffyverse, they have to seriously up their game. It’s not impossible either. I mean, Something is Killing the Children is being released by the same studio. And what is that if not a more gruesome version of Buffy? So it’s not exactly magic. It’s doable. 

Personally, I still hold out hope that someone would dare explore the terrifying bloody past of the Whirlwind. Wouldn’t that be fun and gory? I’d like to see deep well-thought-through stories of past slayers. I’d happily read a well-illustrated comic run based on In Every Generation. And if we have to go back to Buffy variants, why not reinvent her story? But before we get to that, we’d have to work through every step of every character. Get them to where we want them, and start with a story that we want to tell, from start to finish. From her first day as a slayer to her last one (she didn’t have to empower the potentials after all).

That, of course, requires a lot of work. And if Boom isn’t ready to put in that kinda effort, they could just move from season 5, introduce a new slayer, and watch how her adventures unravel.  

Buffyverse is a hell of a property and there are too many stories waiting to be written. I’m probably still gonna give it a shot whenever Boom comes up with something new. I just hope I won’t have to write yet another long read complaining about it. 

[yourlocalboxhead]

WOAH HEY HI. UPDATE: NO DECISIONS ARE BEING MADE AT THIS TIME!

TAOCC is not going to be evaporated anytime soon. It's okay. We're collecting our thoughts, and we are going to address people's concerns.

People! Stuff is going on!

I'll just throw in my two cents since that's what a lot of ppl are doing: I only have the one (main) oc: Nuffle. He's my little guy, and I have a few plans for him that mostly depend on other's interactions with him. The comics are only his backstory, which won't change with a system reboot/soft reset/whichever gets decided. Before and After are mostly context for how he ended up in the circus. Again is the circus.

I wouldn't be opposed to a reboot, but I would suggest we exercise caution, as this is a pretty huge decision to make. Since there are a lot of ocs, it might be good to cut down on just... the number of characters you use? Have a main circus member and a possible side character, but not more than those?

And in terms of a reboot itself, that's erasing character growth which would be... something... Prime example: Bob. I can't speak for Bob's mod, but to revert back to a ghost seems like a lot...

SO! I propose a soft reset: keep core character arcs (physical changes, personality changes, etc.) and keep 1-2 main ocs. It would cut down on character volume and your favorite arcs would be preserved. Though that's just my opinion. Tagging ppl: @the-moth-from-elsewhere @theautumnalcat @star-on-a-beach @sh4tt3rg1rl @silhouette-anon @feiar @lightthepathwithalantern @bob-the-cemetery-ghost @yourlocalboxhead @starbies-hellhole @andy-aka-lilcsca @tailsbot98761 @master-dealmaker @anartistwithamask

There's also the option that we make some sort of group chat and rp in that because! Those are fun and... somewhat neater than Tumblr,,, atleast for individual rps,,,,,, but it wouldn't be public and.. aaaaaaa

[potatoeofwisdom]

I’m so dogshit at art and writing but if I was better I would draw a comic of an au of Danny phantom where instead of the portal incident turning Danny into phantom, it gives him an affinity for the supernatural which leads him and his friends ghost (and supernatural adjacent) hunting because of sam’s egging on for them to bank on this opportunity.

But slowly, as the plot progresses, they realise that Danny didn’t just get kinda spookier and better at attracting spooky things. That he might be More Changed then they realised and it could even culminate into a big reveal thing where Sam realises that she’s actually responsible for permanently irreversibly changing her friend by making him get into that portal that day. Think of it as a kind of character arc for Sam kinda. Learning that her actions have consequences, especially since she’s a rich kid and she may still need to learn this lesson. And what better way to learn it then to literally kill your best friend lmao

Also this could lead to more level power sets between the trio and giving them all chances to shine on equal grounds, at least until Danny realises he’s less alive then he thought.

The accident would’ve hospitalised Danny but other then his heart stopping then restarting and various other spooky things he comes out the other side (seemingly) unscathed, which means Sam doesn’t feel as bad when she realises Danny can attract the paranormal now and therefore attempts to drag him and tucker ghost hunting with her.

Danny doesn’t get a transformation until much later on in the plot and the only physical indicators of his accident are maybe some white hair and occasional green eye flashes. Maybe slight bioluminescence in the dark, as a treat.

I love ectoplasm being spooky juice that can tear u apart from the inside so after the accident sometimes danny would have times where he would throw up ectoplasm and blood and stuff and see flashes of things he doesn’t understand. (Body horror woohoo!!)

Danny keeps a lot of the more gory stuff from his friends and doesn’t tell them about his ‘episodes’ or his weird hallucinations or anything.

The Fenton’s are just as Insane to everyone else as ever because ghosts are a little less in your face and only a pinch more subtle and spooky. I think the fentons would be slightly less intense tho, not too much because I love their insanity, but enough so it makes their threat to Danny as he slowly realises hes less human much more menacing and less slapstick.

In this the ghost fights would be less catastrophic and more spooky. There would be far less property damage but the risks instead would now be genuine horror movie possession, mysterious deaths, being tripped out of windows and stairs, blood on the walls, spontaneous heart attacks among many others. I’m not sure how to best explain the vibes i have in my head rn but the threat would still very much be there but it would be less solve-able through flashy fist-fights in the sky. Hell I’ve got an image of a house mysteriously being set ablaze.

Their methods for removing the ghosts would be far less sci-fi too and more like trying to solve murders to stop angry murderous ghosts and demon banishing with salt and jazz. Maybe Sam uses her occult knowledge and gets really into a type of witchcraft, maybe there’s an arc where she somehow learns more about her ancestors and the founders of the town. I dunno¯\_(ツ)_/¯ (not to say there’s no sci-fi at all- that’s a pretty fundamental part of danny phantom me thinks, I think it’d be more along the lines of ghostbusters logic tho maybe)

another cool idea: Danny sees flashes of a ghosts life when he enters their haunt or gets near them, and the ‘visions’ eventually show him their death. This can fuck him up or just be mildly traumatic whichever best fits.

I feel like even after getting his ‘ghost’ form there should still be several drawbacks. Maybe he’s less physical? Maybe he coughs up blood? Maybe he just doesn’t like being dead? Maybe he loses himself a little? Who knows! I don’t

A lot of thoughts about this but I’m not sure how to word it, so have at thee tumblr if anyone sees this

[super-paper]

what context did bnha mean by "fantasy becomes reality?" how is it used in the story

Hmm?  This question is kinda broad, so I'm not really sure how to go about answering it, but.............

I do talk a bit about how MVA plays with the idea of fantasy vs reality + how the league all noticeably use "masks/villain identities" and "fantasy" as a coping mechanism in this post, and I talk a whole lot about how MHA itself plays w/ these concepts in this post.

Other than that-- There are like, three or four BIG lines in the first chapter that firmly establish what the core ideas of the series are, and the "fantasy became reality" line is one of them:

“Fantasy Became Reality!” <- The "establishing line" of the series. Izuku uses this line to establish what sort of world they live in (a world that has become "just like a comic book"), and he later repeats this line when All Might becomes the first person to validate his "fantasy" about becoming a hero while offering to make that fantasy into a reality. It sets the tone for the type of series MHA is. AFO later repeats this line during Izuku's OFAFO dream, where he witnesses AFO forcing a quirk/"role" on Yoichi-- The entire scene depicts AFO acting as a dark echo to both Izuku and chapter one of the series, taking the idea of "fantasy becoming reality" it to its darkest possible conclusion and showing us how people ACTUALLY reacted to this concept. This is the chapter that cements why AFO is the main villain of mha, with AFO using MHA's establishing line to instead ask the readers: If reality is now fantasy, and a fantasy is something that's written.... then who gets to be the author of that story? :) (he then proceeded to write the worst, most self indulgent Captain Hero x Demon Lord self-insert fanfic the world has ever seen. boo this man.)

"You looked like you needed saving." <- The heart of the series.

“You CAN become a hero.” <- The point of the series.

And I'll throw the opening line in as a bonus:   4. “People are not born equal—that's the hard lesson I learned at age four. But that was my first and last set back.” (<- i'm including this one bc so many people cite the first part of this line as evidence that the series is about how “life isn’t fair + some people are just dealt a bad hand and there's nothing you can do about it + you can’t save everyone, actually”..... while completely omitting the second part, which establishes that the first part of the line is just that: a setback that can be overcome, not an ironclad rule that chains people in one place. Like sorry, but MHA is all about PLUS ULTRA + GO BEYOND + BELIEVE IN THE U THAT BELIEVES IN URSELF + ETC. It is NOT a fatalistic, nihilistic, pessimistic series. )

Back on topic!

There is smthing wrong with him ❤ (part 538 of ???)

MHA's relationship with fiction as a concept or w/e is baked into the story on practically every level-- it's both a love letter to and a deconstruction of the art of telling stories, of comic books, and of the conventional expectations people have of "fiction" and "hero/villain" stories. MHA understands the value of fantasy in saving/inspiring others while also exploring what drives people to use fantasy as an escape from reality. Understanding how MHA plays with these ideas is fairly integral to understanding what's going on with Tomura/AFO.

Like, there's really no way to summarize it briefly, but here are some of the other ways MHA utilizes these concepts:

The idea of "Heroes" and "Villains" being exaggerated alter egos or "roles" that might not be a 1:1 reflection of who that person truly is. Tomura, Endeavor, All Might, and AFO are all big examples of this.

The concept of defying fate (i.e. the narrative/author) and breaking free from the villain/hero/mentor archetypes also plays heavily into Tomura, Izuku, and Toshinori's respective arcs. "The mentor dies once he completes his role so his protege can take up his mantle" isn't anything unique, ya'll-- it's a classic and wildly popular trope. Toshi's arc is about breaking free from the constraints of "the mentor role" and expectations of that particular narrative, and shaping his own fate while wrenching his story away from a particularly malicious author (i.e. AFO). side note: AFO getting curb-stomped by a "character" he helped create and having them basically call his writing shit right to his face will never not be funny btw-- let's go three for three, Tomura.......!!!!!!!!!

Izuku is trying to break free from the narrative of "the hero killing the villain at the end of the story" and outright rejects AFO's idea of a "happy ending" (that is, an ending where Tomura disappears and AFO gets to keep wearing his skin as a cool villain costume).

Meanwhile, Tomura is trying to force the whole story to perma end 😬. Which is like, fair enough, bc he's the character who has been hurt by "fantasy" more than anyone else and he's completely over it at this point-- but destroying that fantasy means losing himself in the fantasy of being "Shigaraki Tomura", which implies that he is going to destroy himself in the process of tearing the story apart. Not a good thing. Treat him gently, Izuku.

Also, here are some choice panels/excerpts that I feel emphasize MHA's relationship with fantasy and the above bulletpoints:

the absolute state of the mha fandom lmfaoooooo

iirc the anime also has a neat scene where they include a sort of "television suddenly being turned off" effect to emphasize when AFO completely takes over Tomura's body during the PLW-- you can see part of it in this video, around the 8:36 mark. I gotta give Bones credit where it's due-- it's a really fuckin' cool way of emphasizing what exactly AFO is doing to Tomura + how AFO is treating Tomura as more of a fictional construct than an actual person:

Tomura: sensei you don't get to be a voice in my head you lost to all might like a punk bitch and I'M gonna be the one to surpass YOU 😤

AFO:

tbf if i had the power to permanently mute the mouthy little teenager who keeps bringing up my Ex and our embarrassing break up, I would also abuse tf outta it. That and the boyish appreciation for eldritch body horror is where I draw the line at relating to AFO, tho.

----- Anyway!

MHA's premise basically asks: “wow, what if fantasy suddenly became reality? what if we started treating reality like it's a comic book? what if.... we started treating actual people like they were comic book characters? what if we implemented a system of justice that's ripped straight from the pages of a comic book WHILE treating actual people like they're comic characters?? :D wouldn't that be wild ha ha”-- and after that question has been popped in the most deceptively flippant way possible, Hori spends the rest of the story holding his readers in place with a white-knuckled grip while fixing them with an unblinking stare as the entire concept just gets more and more (VERY INTENTIONALLY) uncomfortable lmfao.

At any rate, sorry if this doesn't answer much-- but like I said, the topic is a broad one bc the way MHA plays with the concept of fiction/fantasy is baked so deeply into every aspect of its narrative that like....... it's impossible for someone like me to summarize it succinctly. It's just one of the foundational aspects of the story!👍

[ms-cartoon]

a

Seen the few sneak peaks of some upcoming episodes of HB. We might meet Moxxie’s family (mainly his father). Sorry if I’m being nitpicky, but I was kinda expecting his father to be a little bit different from his son, as well as have a different voice. It’s like he’s a literal clone of Moxxie but slightly taller with a deeper and cunning tone in his voice. And from what I’ve heard, he’s supposed to be a mobster or just apart of some kind of dangerous gang (correct me if I’m wrong). So yeah, I think his appearance should be a little bit different, more tough if anything.

Blitzo stays an a**hole to his co-workers I see. Even after that DeEp and HeArTwArMiNg conversation, he had with Moxxie back in season 1 ep 6 (Which didn’t hit deep at all). You think that after he humiliated himself in episode 7, he’d dial it back with his behavior. But I guess Viv can’t have a comedy without someone unnecessarily being a jerk.

We finally get to hear Andre’s voice. He actually sounded exactly how I imagined; almost deep and haughty. I guess it’s made clear that he and Stella have a good relationship. I’ve seen some comics that show that Andre was possibly very mean to Stella during her childhood which probably would explain her behavior and why she acts so cynically. 

He and Stella are having a discussion with Stolas, and Andre brings up that Stella deserves something since Stolas cheated on her?? Which makes no sense to me?? Cuz, yes, Stolas did cheat, but why would Stella even care?!! The show already made it clear that she never even liked Stolas from the start. She didn’t even like being married to him and was only throwing fits and getting him killed simply because she was petty and liked tormenting him. What exactly does Andre and Stella hope to gain from this anyway? Neither of these two even out-rank Stolas. And what exactly has the divorce done that caused any harm to the Goetia’s. When Stella confronted Stolas, she made it seem like the divorce was gonna be a huge issue, but as far as I know... it did nothing. And they already had Octavia who’s in her late-teens, so what’s the threat here??

If they’re gonna keep bringing up the cheating, then maybe they shouldn’t have retconned Stella as a character and kept it to where she is only pissed about the affair. Maybe not have her be an evil b*tch since birth and hate Stolas for whatever reason?

Idk man!! Make it make sense!!!

We also finally get to see Barbie, Blitzo’s sister. I thought those two had a decent sibling relationship as most of us did, but it turns out... those two had a falling out as well. Barbie says, and I quote “Come on, Blitzo! Haven’t you f*cked up my life enough already??”

Jeezus!! Another one?? 

First, it was Fizz, then Verosika, and now his own sister!!? I mean, it’s expected, cuz Blitzo is an a** and he definitely deserves it, but is he seriously that much of a bad influence he screwed up his own sister’s life? Like, is she just over-exaggerating it?? What did he do that was so screwed up, she started to despise him? Hopefully, she won’t be like Verosika or even Stella; just straight-up petty and b*tchy for no reason. I know I’m wrong though.

Also, I see that she and Moxxie are fighting... wonder what that’s about. Probably something dumb.

And I also see that Blitzo and Fizz are having a talk. Not sure what it’s about. It was only a few seconds of Fizz talking. But from what I can assume, they might be discussing their relationship as friends (or ex-friends), maybe having a slight argument? Don’t know if those two are ever gonna reconcile in the end. All I know is that this kind of arc should’ve been explored way before we got into Stolas’s backstory with Blitzo (which we clearly don’t give the slightest sh*t about.) What happened with Fizz and Blitzo that caused the two to split up seems way more interesting than how Stolas and Blitzo met.

Here’s another thing that caught my eye (and y’all this one’s my favorite to laugh at). Stolas is shown being kidnapped by Striker, tied up n all, and even stabbed with a dagger!?

.......

I’m sorry, but are we just gonna forget that Stolas is a POWERFUL FREAKIN’ DEMON??? The same guy that can do this -

And this -

And even turn into THIS -

..... Like, are we sure he’s more powerful than Alastor??? What’s the point of him being a powerful demon prince if all he’s useful for is being a damsel in distress??? Less than 3 times Stolas is shown to be powerful when the plot says so, which is almost NEVER!!! It’s irritating!

Ugh! I just know I’m gonna go through hell watching this (no pun intended). And I’ve already seen the last few recent leaks to these episodes. This just adds on to the ridiculous bull.

[blackstarchanx3new]

Creations AU FNAF 4, But I obnoxiously over explain it 2

Pages 30-59

The sad story of Cody and his miserable life.

I know for a fact some of these pages were lined don't remember if they colored any by @akdrawsandwrites thanks AK. ^w^

More NPC dialogue.

In FNAF 4 game: There's an oddity with the NPC with a green shirt and brown hair, he has a STRIKING appearance to one of the "bullies" older brother's friends. But the one in the green shirt in the game has blonde hair. Idk if they're meant to be the same character and the sprite was just bonked up or what. FNAF color pallets being consistent is NOT something this series is known for lmfao.

I made these two characters brothers and modified his dialogue to suit that he knows Cody by "Josh's brother". Either way this character should know this kid's name lmfao.

The party coming up is apparently Cody's. The last NPC is debated to be the character "Susie" from the games....I color picked and this girl looks black to me. (Susie is white with styled blonde hair) Like they both have bows and wear pink so MAYBE it was meant to be her but idk. This was the design I went with. Retconning design and inconsistent colors in FNAF again: Is not new.

Susie is used as a character in another place in Creations anyway and it wouldn't line up timeline wise. (This makes an animatic with her as the Chica we meet in Mike's story outdated and incorrect but there's LOTS of ideas in the animatics that were abandoned going over all of them would take hours lmfao.)

Exposure therapy, I say as a joke.

You might have noticed an itty bitty detail of Josh getting set off every time Cody starts shouting. Bro does not handle that shit well.

Yeet the child again, damn it Josh you gotta kick that habit.

Josh's main response to dealing with Cody: Lock him somewhere where he doesn't have to deal wit him.

Oh dear. This looks familiar.

Creations readers and FNAF players alike know where this shit is going.

HI MIKE! ❤️ Yes that's Mike without his dyed hair lol.

Reasonably avoiding confrontation but uh, to the determent of others oof.

Dude proceeds to never stop throwing himself in danger later so I guess he decided to slam to the other side of the two extremes lmao.

HAH.

Well that explains Cody's creepy ass stalker crush on Mike.

He didn't really SPECIFY he recognized Mike verbally when talking to him in the main comic but here we get conformation he for sure did.

Again Cody/Golden Freddy doesn't consider himself a 1 to 1 with the original Cody. Rather just a robot with the kid's memories/soul.

They don't feel like his memories.

Lol. Cody and his Para-social relationship with Mike Schmidt.

We can tell this genuinely amuses him as his eyes aren't red.

Hah he says something to the same affect in thee FNAF 1 Arc...with a lot more body horror involved.

"It was just a prank bro"

Daddy's gonna make it all better.

Cody stop that. We've talked about how the faces you make are unsightly.

Also Puppet. She's here.

People didn't really GET Cody's reality bending abilities: So he explains it pretty plainly here.

He's powerful as hell. X'D

Basically the most OP character in Creations much like the cannon Golden Freddy.

So I'll give ya some writing advice: If you're gonna make an OP character, just make them lazy as fuck.

Easiest way to nerf them: Make them just not care about fighting. X'D

Cody's got a mixture of laziness, apathy and fear of daddy to keep him from being helpful much in the plot.

Because if he wasn't he'd clap Afton in 2 seconds and that'd be no fun. So he's a coward lmao.

He was gonna snap that bitches neck while he slept. And not a single one of us would have blamed him. UwU

Casually hides in his brother's closet XDDD

Also I pointed it out before but Josh's room is Michael's room in main story.

Cody's cowardess is on full display: He bent to NOT killing Josh when he realized how badly Josh was coping with his brother's death.

Just like his daddy!~

Jokes aside this is my fave page in FNAF 4. It was lined by AK. I drew the sketch

I like, never draw the nightmares but the ended up so good here. Props to Ak for translating the sketches real well.

This is another instance of what I mean when I say there's no real good "Starting" place for the Creations AU.

This is smth that happens in Sister Location, but I feel Josh's character is more interesting with this context.

Buuuut this scene makes no sense. Aaaaand FNAF 4 shows more chronological events.

Agh.

Honestly whenever I get around to doing "Spring Bonnie's friends" I'd argue that is the best place to start chronologically but we'll see.

Anyway Cody saving his dumbass brother is so funny to me.

It's also really sad to think that he saved Josh because he knew how much Josh HATED the idea of dying in a springlock suit. Cody shows empathy quite often, especially towards Mike but this extends to helping Josh too.

His little "Now who's the cry baby?" is just the icing on the cake. XD

So Josh IS dead...?

Kind of?

His "remnant" is just kinda all over the place.

Will pick up in part 3 since PAGE LIMITS.

[08theverysmallhuman]

THANK GOD SOMEBODY IN THIS FUCKING FANDOM LIKES IGAGURI!!!!!!!!! OH MY GODDDD HE IS LITERALLY JUST A LITTLE GUY WHAT THE FUCK ARE HATERS SO MAD ABOUT!!!!!!! I thought the more recent scene with him and Isagi where he was given advice was incredible and I really hope we get to see more of him in future arcs still because he’s Isagi’s pal and first real rival!!! He’s silly comic relief yeah but he’s also genuinely likable and has a VERY heavy and real reason to be so driven and passionate to stick in Blue Lock! And I am SO happy seeing somebody else who likes him here FINALLY! FINALLY!!! THANK YOU

THAT MAKES WHAT. FOUR? IGAGURI ENJOYERS IVE SEEN ON HERE?? WHAT THE FUCK

FOR FUCKING REEEEAL !!!!! They're mad he's still in because it makes no sense well first of all he quite literally is established to not want to train if he doesn't have to and call him lazy and it doesn't make sense he's still in WHEN IN CANON he works hard enough to be good enough to run with the beasts blue lock is cultivating, to the point where he's actually straining his fucking body and injuring himself on equipment and throwing up???? Brother if you fall face first on a treadmill set to max you are not getting back on I don't know what to tell you. He's decided to train the thing he's good at, the same thing everyone else in the series is doing, the thing that Real Life Soccer Players accepts as an actual strategy and people are getting on his ass about it cause they can't fucking accept that he's a genuinely GOOD soccer player who's playing with actual superpowered geniuses

He's also like??? Really nice compared to some of these guys?? He talks a lot of shit but like it's comparatively tame and not really all that different from like regular team animosity? You got other people on this team saying some real out of pocket shit and you're on this guy's case about it ISAGI's ruder than this guy. He's genuinely happy for his friends when they reach a new level in their progress, he's comfortable asking them for advice and help with practice, he's literally isagi's hypeman on the field and he's cheering for every goal

It's literally just because they find him ugly there's literally no other reason. He's not even ugly he's bald but he looks fine dude he's literally living in a fucking temple what do you want from him. He might not even wanna look like this he very adamantly hates the thought of continuing to live in the temple let a man be

And yes his backstory is literally The most interesting one to me hands down I need to know what his home life is like I need to know his dad his mom his friends how he got into soccer in a reportedly strict shrine especially with his personality being like Super Not Buddhist, he prays to ask for stuff and not anywhere else, his jersey number is literally a reference to the 108 earthly desires Buddhists are meant to stay away from, that he specifically indulges in while he's away from home I wonder if he's used to being squished in a room with multiple people and that's how he finds such bizarre sleeping positions cause it's so open suddenly I need to know if he makes it out which he fucking better if he goes back I'm destroying all life on the planet let my boy go

Not even gonna get into the it shouldve kira argument I've said it a million times they only want him back because he's hot but kira was not fucking making it in blue lock . you want him to but he just fuckin wasn't maybe one day I'll get into it but you know in your heart of hearts Pretty Boy McSwaggy here was getting his fucking shit rocked

Igarashi Gurimu is a GREAT LIKEABLE AMD COMPELLING CHARACTER and just because he's not exactly bishie IT DOESNT MEAN HE'S A BAD PERSON?? Ive literally seen 'igaguri would be a pervert igaguri would be homophobic' he's literally one of the few people in blue lock who hasnt mentioned girls or romance bud. And my guy put up with shidou dude I think we're Fine

[papermonkeyism]

Remember back in last summer when I read R. A. Salvatore's Dark Elf trilogy?

I moved on to its sequels, the Icewind Dale trilogy, with its first book the Chrystal Shard. Well, technically the Icewind Dale was written first, and the Dark Elf was written afterwards as a prequel, but this one's chronologically set few years or so later. Not sure what word to use here.

Anyway!

I actually finished this one sometime around the new years, I just couldn't think of what to say about the book, but I just finished the second book of the trilogy, and that one I do have words about, and it felt weird to just skip this one.

I have a faint memory of reading in some old gaming magazine how this book was written in, like, four weeks. Which is an absolutely bonkers achievment! But also, yeah, I can see it. Few rewrites might have done the book some good.

It's... a book. It has a plot? And characters, who... do stuff? There's very little in terms of character developement or interaction, or description, or worldbuilding. The book has a habit of skipping over all the stuff that I personally like in my fiction, and focuses mostly in just telling how evil the bad guys are, how awesome the heroes are (except Regis), and how they fight or prepare to fight.

Also it was written in the eighties, so a lot of the tropes are very... well, eighties.

The book begins with the gathering of all the barbarian tribes (proud warrior human) for an attack against the Ten Towns (your basic human townspeople). This is important, because as the barbarian army gets defeated, one of their young lads, Wulfgar, gets into battle with one of the Main Characters, Bruenor the dwarf, who knocks him unconscious and basically adopts on the spot. Bruenor basically claims him as a servant for five years to teach him to value the townspeoples.

Cue five years of bonding, except we don't see any of it, because the story skips from that moment straight to the "five years have passed"-moment, where Bruenor throws Wulfgar to Drizzt, the dark elf protagonist of the prequel trilogy.

Oh, and Catti-Brie, Bruenor's adopted human daughter is also there. I think she had few speaking lines in the book. (I have a feeling Wulfgar was planned as the Young Protagonist character, and you can't have a Young Protagonist without a Love Interest. It's the eighties. Look, they even talk once! Not that there'd be any actual chemistry, that would require feelings and character interaction. But look, they are two young, conventionally attractive human characters of opposite sex and approximately same age!)

And the last member of the party is Regis, a halfling rogue, who has a stolen ruby amulet from his backstory. Regis is fat, lazy and a coward, a.k.a. the obligatory comic relief.

So there's this evil crystal shard that picks up a failure of a wizard apprentice who gets dumped by his wizard friends after said friends convince him to murder his master for them. The crystal shard then spends most of the book corrupting the wizard and giving him power, and it keeps amassing huge armies of Evil Races (tm) for him (goblins, orcs, ogres, trolls, giants and the aforementioned human barbarian tribes), and stuff.

The book's plot is basically this evil wizard working in the shadows for years, gathering an army, and said army attacking the Ten Towns, and the four protagonists (Drizzt, Wulfgar, Bruenorr and Regis. Catti-Brie is also kinda there, but doesn't really do much) being awesome and stopping them.

I don't really know what to make of this book. It doesn't feel satisfying to me much, personally. There's not much character developement, the main characters are pretty much smug badasses who whoop arse with an air of superiority. The only one with kinda internal character arc is Wulfgar, as he comes from a proud warrior people, and kinda learns to be less arrogant? I guess? I think it gets maybe a paragraph or two in the book.

None of the evil guys get really any fleshing out, maybe except the main baddie. The rest are basically as deep as their DnD stat sheets, and that's it. (And like how did a group of ogres/giants make a camp right next to the dwarves and don't get found out for a while, untill they grow arrogant and kill couple of them. Like, what are they eating? They somehow have food, and it's actually a plot point that they have flour, as Drizzt at one point steals a bag of flour as a "lucky charm", but these are ogres/giants from the frozen tundra who only steal and kill, where did they get flour?? The ogres/giants don't farm, that's explicitly not a thing, yet they have enough flour and other food to feed themselves for few weeks without raiding any farms and alerting anyone to their presence??? This is what I meant about worldbuilding, there are hoards of evil bad guys because you need bad guys to kill, but they work in video game logic of spawning and aggroing and don't actually have any logical support if you think about them too hard. Also the barbarians make no sense culturally. You can't just be all macho men battling each other to the death at every opportunity and hold your women as nothing but wives to be barely worth mentioning outside of "women and children" while supposedly living off of reindeer herda and expect me to believe they don't heroically battle each other to extinction faster than a reindeer sheds its antlers.)

And what baffled me the most in this book is how the main characters, who one would expect to be the DnD party of the story just... don't hang together much. They all have their own stuff, their own heroics that they do on their own. At most we get Wulfgar and Drizzt doing few fights together, as Drizzt teaches Wulfgar (the book skips over most of that and focuses more on their one raid to the ogre/giant camp, or the dragon battle they spent half of together), but otherwise the book seems to avoid having the characters actually interact anywhere.

Oh, right, there's also a dragon. It gets first mentioned about 2/3 - 3/4 into the book. It's dead by the end of the same chapter it gets first mentioned in. Wulfgar needed to do a heroic act to get his barbarian tribes to listen to him and bail from the evil wizard's army, so the book pulls a dragon for him to heroically slay. There's no foreshadowing for it, besides like the very final paragraph of the chapter before hinting about a story Wulfgar remembers his father telling him long ago.

This book sure likes telling a lot, yet showing very little of any of it. It keeps telling me these characters are the bestest of friends, but doesn't let them actually do anything as a group at any point. Even in battles they all take part in, they all fight separately.

All bad guys are Dumb and Evil, and all the good guys are... well at least the main fou-... three are superior and awesome and very smug about it, and they're all just kinda flat.

Eh.

I think this book is meant as an introduction to the setting and characters, as things do get mentioned in the sequel. It's just. This book in particular is pretty meh, and it took me, like, few months to get through, as I kept doing it at a page or two every evening -sorta speed (while brushing teeth before bed).

Just. Eh.

[mdhwrites]

Your Grom Factory post is so right!! I felt like the last parts of it felt off but I didn't know why until I read your analysis. I wanted to like the ending and Ayzee's character so bad because Milan and Ayzee looked so cute together (even if they weren't all that interesting) but Ayzee's final depressing thoughts just ruined it for me :(

I also agree with A Little Hint of Blue being boring. I'm a Vinira shipper so I may be biased but they feel so bland in the comic. I know it's supposed to expand Skara's character but she also just comes off as annoying to me, and it's weird because she kinda reminds me of Anne (her dynamic with Boscha reminds me of Sashanne) but I like Anne and I don't care for Skara. Also the musical scene was cringe, I'm sorry, might be because it's in a comic but still. I did like how the comic kinda expanded on healing and bard magic, the fight was cool even though I think it was ooc for Viney to fall for Skara's trick by the end of it.

So like I said before, I don't want to harp too much on Mark's work without a point. Honestly, if you want to talk about Mark's work with me, my DMs are open, I've talked about him a fair bit on my Discord (in fact, it was voicing that I wasn't certain about posting the blog on Discord that got one of my followers to reassure me I wasn't just being an ass and shouldn't worry so much that led to it being posted) or you can even just ask me non-anonymously and I'll answer in private. I'm not trying to start anything.

With that said, you actually bring up a really good and interesting point in regards to Skara's character that has been digging at me for a WHILE and is useful as a more condensed version of the issues with both Hunter and Amity's arcs who share a lot of issues and I will bring up throughout this as well. A Hint of Blue is indeed meant to expand her character by saying she's a generally and genuinely good person but she has to put on a performance for others. That she is stuck between the person who she is deep down and who society wants her to be. This is effectively the same trick the show does for both Hunter and Amity so A: it is literally nothing new and B: it suffers from similar issues while its specific methodology is a NIGHTMARE to portray well. Worse yet, both of these issues render Skara's character somehow less than the blank canvas it already was.

See, and this is the big part of why I decided to respond, Skara's trick is to show someone with a pure survival response in this regard. She hasn't internalized ANYTHING that people push upon her by what her actions have shown. This means it is all an act rather than these outside forces having had a deeper personal impact. Hunter and Amity, again, suffer similar issues but they at least pay some lip service to the idea that they're not just twin personalities. There is some overlap. For Amity, it's when she is still somewhat cold after breaking the everlasting oath in Covention as even when shown kindness, she still keeps some of that distance. Or heck, just her entire first appearance honestly. For Hunter, it's the constant reinforcement of needing to please Belos. Moments that show that even when the external pressure isn't actively there, it is weighing on their mind, much like how Zuko clearly always had something stressing him out, even when all was quiet. It's part of why how easily Amity throws off her shackles, and how Hunter doesn't actually refute the morality he's clearly been taught, make their arcs and characters weaker because it implies that these pressures never actually got in.

And unfortunately for Mark, he can't seem to decide which version he has and canon supports neither option. In the very first page of the comic, Mark emphasizes A: how long Skara has been being a bully. Not just a bully but enjoying it as even her first act of monstrosity, kicking a sand castle down, is greeted with a smile while she is still very small. This implies some part of her is just cruel. But that's being actively contrasted by B: having her immediately willing to break the bitch code Boscha has in place by apologizing to Viney without any real hesitancy until Boscha speaks up, implying her instincts are to be nice. Mind you, in that first comic she does need to be pushed to destroy the sandcastle... But not to claim be wronged. She first, before the prompting, claims the playground as hers. She's not pushed to be pushy but to stand up for herself and claim what is hers. Not actually inherently unhealthy so long as you aren't a bitch about it honestly which, yes she was being.

And this sort of incongrueny gets better and worse as the story goes on, let alone with the framing of it. After all, the story is trying to frame it as her being a naturally good person who only acts up due to Boscha. This is why Viney, for no reason, is so anti-Boscha. She is meant to be the second world that Skara is being pulled between. When written REALLY POORLY, this is how you get Skara stating Boscha isn't that bad and actually cares in her own way one comic and then literally two comics later, Boscha destroys Skara's chance at romance while mimicking Dio (I know it's Jojos in general but like... Why Jojos there at all?). It's superficial to put it extremely mildly.

As a note, this would actually be the heart of the sort of stuff I would talk about, characters making choices because they fit the tropes of the story, if I decided to talk about the Hallmarks (pun intended) of boring romances. Forced character writing with zero motivation or real flavor is the normal core to that problem.

And well... When your motivations as a character are "I inherently have a heart of gold!" versus "I am the puppet of the most evil fourteen year old on my continent"... You get a really boring lamp that keeps getting passed around. It's meant to expand on Skara's personality but instead it reduces it to NOTHING. Or, it's that her personality is ENTIRELY dependent on whoever she is around and the nice version is the version that Viney gets because she believes Viney will kick her ass otherwise as that is actually the reason the first apology comes out. Or appears to with how worried Skara immediately becomes while Viney rolls up her sleeves.

And since you brought it up and they're PERFECT FOR THIS, let's contrast this with Sasha and Anne. They actually are this sort of dynamic after all. Sasha forces Anne to do things outside of her comfort zone through using their friendship and this is bad for Anne but Anne does it because what Sasha gives her is fun, it's exciting and it's from someone who at least claims to genuinely care about her. Even at her meanest, Sasha is wanting to spend time and make Anne's life better. It's part of why her character is so great. Skara gets lip service in the first comic about liking being on the top of the food chain but all her actions are independent and even the final panel goes out of its way to show Boscha leaving Skara behind, showing the actual gulf in their relationship. It's lip service that Skara will spend literally the ENTIRE rest of the comic saying she hates. She doesn't actually ever act like she ever gets anything out of this.

Then we have the second world pulling Anne: The Plantars. Suddenly, she is shown that you can be loved and cared for by other people without having to do morally dubious things... And she chaffs at it because it does mean more complicated relationships. Hop Pop and her don't understand each other. Polly isn't the gal pal she wants even though she is a gal and a pal. Even Sprig still chafes at her her habits and the like while Sasha may have more cleverly gotten to stop anything she didn't like. This is part of why Anne isn't all that great to the Plantars early on. She doesn't want the work that goes into a real relationship. She'd rather be subservient and have it be simple. It's only through seeing just how much better these people are, and how it feels to have her own autonomy, that she breaks her chains and discards Sasha, at least for a while until they're both in healthier places. As a note, THIS is why S1 of Amphibia is the way it is because this shit takes TIME, let alone while also using an entire town to reinforce these lessons.

Skara meanwhile just... likes the other world. That's really it. She just gravitates towards being nice and real connections, just like Hunter and just like Amity. As always is stated: We're TOLD that she likes being on top but why? It's never even elaborated on with words, let alone shown to us but also yes, this would have extended the arcs overall to show this. Like I said, Amphibia spends a lot of time on groundwork for a reason. Arguably more than it needed to but it still needed a large amount of time to make the payoff and journey as satisfying as it is.. Even TOH understood this with Amity as they pretend for a little longer than a single line that she has reasons to want to be on top until she just drops it all once no one is looking. -_- This attempt to make it less blatant though is part of why Amity dominates a THIRD of the entire series.

And honestly, between this and the enemies to lovers trope from the base show (and actually this too I guess if Viney didn't seem to have some deep seated hate for Boscha that we just haven't been told about yet) I really am getting tired of people seeming to think romance really is a simplistic genre. In fanworks, you get a lot of quick romances, yes, but that's fine. They're normally not trying to claim to be doing an arc or the like with it. They're just bringing two characters they like together. However, romance is an entire GENRE for a reason. You can tell whole stories just around a romance with no other elements because just two people interacting and figuring out deepening feelings is one of the most complex elements for a writer to figure out, regardless of which complex emotion you're choosing. If you don't actually figure that out though, romance tends to be the genre where characters show their narrative purpose fastest. Where you feel the hand of the author forcing the characters together the most. It's why the romantic subplot is such a despised narrative trope. It's why Amity descending into being a love interest is so sharp because capital L LU- LOVE is all she's about now.

And that is the case here too. Skara is all about Viney... Because this is a romance. That is a not deep character, that is a sexy lamp that happens to sing.

======+++++======

I didn't even hint to giving the two moments to bond and have real chemistry instead of just lecturing at each other. *screams* GEE, the romance writer has opinions on romance!? Never would have guessed. I won't even say I'm perfect at it, I'm definitely still improving myself, but it is technically my genre, even back when I was writing harem erotica.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.