#he's perfectly capable of living with the barest essentials and has been forced to do that (and worse) at varying times

[befuddled-calico-whump]

Watch alert 🚨weewoo weewoo🚨 watch spotted in your Vic piece

Marking the third watch we've seen with him! I wonder how many he has in total. And if there's any sentimental reasons behind his snobbery over them.

-⌚anon (ps the art looks awesome as ways, and your riot kings redraw really shows how much you've developed!! idk any better way to describe it than the characters interact with each other in a more natural way? Regardless, what a way to celebrate three years! Congrats again!)

Yeah! :D

he probably has about half a dozen? It's not a huge collection, but he likes a good watch, especially in older styles. There's some sentimentality to the watches, but it's mostly just because it's something nice and shiny he allows himself to collect. Even with the huge compound he could store things at, Vic is kind of a minimalist. Still, he likes to dress nice when he's not in the field

And thank you!! :D it's super fun to do redraws and compare them with old art 🥰🥰

[thegeminisage]

what do you do when you need to figure out a bit of your story but nothing makes sense no matter how much you turn it around? i've tried walking away from it, pitching ideas to other people to sound it out and writing around it, but it's a p big part in this fic and i can't move on without it.

ANON UR BACK :D i hope that’s you at least, sorry if this is a totally new anon. ok anyway

if this is a logistics issue (and they usually are) the thing i do ultimately is be like matt damon from the mars movie and work👏 the👏 problem👏, by which i mean boil my big complicated mess down to the barest possible essentials, so i can see it clearly (this is why i am so fond of outlining, it a nice way to zoom out and see the forest instead of the trees), and solve one issue at a time. the very big important question is what do i NEED this scene/plot device to do? why can’t it do that? “because of x thing or fact” - well fortunately, i’m the writer, so i can wiggle around the universe and characters to suit my needs rather than forcing my plots to suit the universe (yes even in fanfic)

that does not make a whole ton of sense so i’m gonna use an example (my own fic again, sorry)

ok, so in the thing i’m currently working on (for merlin), magic is reviled and outlawed but EVERYBODY IN CAMELOT has suddenly been cursed to have it. the whole point of the fic is for everyone to spend time living with magic, but practically speaking, merlin would be extremely motivated to reverse this curse and once he figured out what to do he’d go about seeing it done at once

the big problem with this was: originally, all merlin has to do to figure out the spell/how to counter it is 1. speak to a dragon 2. dragon tells him what the spell is because that’s what the dragon does in canon 3. merlin goes to some janked up island in the boonies and destroys a cursed knife to break it. 

that does NOT take long, and there’s no good reason that once he’s done one of these things he cannot immediately move on to the rest (and it would be out of character for him to idle in this task when there was definable action he could take, and push the suspension of disbelief). that’s REAL BAD for me because that leaves me NO time for all the hijinks and navel gazing i wanted to write about, which was the whole purpose of this fic anyway

so the basic thing i NEEDED, if i could only boil it down to ONE thing, was: i need this task to take more time.

there are a few ways i came at it:

make the task more difficult - instead of the dragon knowing EXACTLY what the spell was and how to break it, i decided to have him give merlin less information. i could have had him do this out of spite (the two of them aren’t on the best terms) but it was also perfectly within the realm of believably that being chained up in an underground cave he just didn’t actually know what happened. i had him give merlin an educated guess about WHERE the spell was cast, and left the rest of up to merlin to figure out. in order to check out the spell’s location, the island, merlin needs to physically go there. so i made it winter, and made the mountain pass unpassable. now he has to use a scrying spell to check it out from a distance unless he wants a two-week round trip in the snow. that’s no problem, he’s an accomplished magician! but he’s also very clumsy, so i had him knock over a cabinet full of vital ingredients needed for a scrying spell - ingredients that are very difficult to replace during the winter. now i can have him be replacing the stuff in the background while i’m writing my hijinks and navel gazing. and once he DOES do the scrying spell, he’s going to have to go BACK to the dragon to tell him what he saw and ask how to reverse the curse. turns out you have to destroy a cursed knife, but oops! the knife is indestructible…

make merlin less capable of doing the task - …without arthur’s help specifically, so now merlin has to involve arthur (someone very important to him, and also someone who upholds the law) in this whole curse-breaking business without revealing that he’s been breaking into the castle dungeons (illegal), that he’s buddies with the dragon they have trapped there (super illegal), or that he has magic (SO illegal it’s punishable by death). not only does all of this make things take longer, it also gives us the sense that the protags actually ARE trying to solve their own problems instead of just lazing around for no reason other than “the author wanted them to” while camelot falls to pieces around them

place restrictions on when the curse can be broken - this one is a little more specific, but maybe worth a mention…originally i had the idea that since the spell was cast on the solstice, it could only be broken on the solstice, but 6 months was longer than i wanted to deal with. i did like you and pitched it to a friend and she came up with the idea of using the moon, so now my spell is from one new moon to the next (thanks cathy!). your specific situation will also have its own little ins and outs, so if you can use one of those to ur advantage, all the better

make merlin less motivated to do the task - maybe he likes everyone having magic? maybe he was lonely and finally feels understood? i ultimately ditched this idea because i couldn’t really see him digging magic being FORCED on anyone; he has way more integrity than that. but that doesn’t mean you can’t tweak how characters would react if you can find a good reason. if i really wanted merlin to act in a way that i thought was against his nature, i would give him consequences for doing what he would normally do - if he breaks the curse someone will get hurt or die, if he breaks the curse someone will find out he has magic (which is punishable by death), if he breaks the curse his own magic will also be taken away (which would be devastating to him on a personal level and for his own life goals), stuff like that. if your problem is “but that character would NEVER do this thing,” then come at it from the angle of “WHAT WOULD MAKE that character do this thing and still be believable?” this has the added bonus of creating CONFLICT which adds SUSPENSE to ur story

this isn’t the best example because my problem ultimately had a pretty easy solution (even if it didn’t feel like it at the time) but i hope it sort of makes what i was talking about understandable - if the problem is merlin would solve things too quickly, merlin isn’t this rigid immovable plot problem to write around, he can be tweaked and manipulated - he can be slower because he wants to be, or because things are getting in his way, etc. 

it works the same in a lot of situations - if you need a character to leave on a monday and arrive on a wednesday when travel time is only 1 day, then have them forget their keys, have them forget something and double back - if that character isn’t forgetful have their car break down, fuck with the weather, give them a family emergency, etc. if you need a character to NOT immediately call 911 when they realize there’s a killer clown in the house, have them mention earlier in the story that their phone is always on the fritz, break the phone, have them forget the phone, etc. if you need a character to want something they wouldn’t normally want or do something they wouldn’t normally do, come up with a good reason for them to act out of character. if you need a character to be missing from a scene find a reason to waylay them; if you need them be present where they wouldn’t normally then come up with a coincidence to bring them along…you get the idea

the point is there is no element in any story that is so immutable it can’t be played with, even if it seems that way. it’s about bending the universe and characters to suit your purposes, and if in accomplishing that you create more problems (plot holes, people being ooc, etc), then you just tweak more stuff to solve THOSE problems, and so on and so on until you have ironed out your mess! 

lol easier said than done, i know - but once you get used to thinking of all the pieces of your story as moving parts (instead of immovable obstacles you have to write around), it becomes a lot easier to attack plot problems from a lot of different angles and turn them into DUST which is what i really hope you wind up doing with ur WIP someday!! (pls feel free to keep me updated, i’d love to know how it goes!)

[fic advice masterpost]

[makeste]

the good, the bad, and the basement

so @caliginouscarpacian asked me a while back if I could post my thoughts about the strengths and weaknesses of the Overhaul/Yakuza/Internship Arc once I finished up. so this is my post about that, now that I’ve had a little bit of time to reflect. I decided to do one of those alternating good/bad list things, so we’ll see how that goes.

this is quite a long post, so it’s under a cut. and just to be clear, this post is chock full of spoilers up through the end of the Internship Arc (chapter 161).

the good: the villains

okay, I’m starting with this one because truthfully, it’s my favorite thing about the whole arc. the League of Villains finally came into their own, and it was everything I could have hoped for. they are competent but not too overpowered. they are smart and willing to be patient and bide their time for the sake of cool plot twists. THERE’S A FUCKING CAR CHASE. there is character development! these guys actually care about each other! holy shit. there’s actual chemistry between them. they trust one another and they trust Tomura, and he shows for the first time that he might just actually be worthy of that trust. unlike some other villains I can name. anyways. these guys are amazing, and if this arc did nothing else, it firmly established them as serious, in-it-for-the-long-haul adversaries who are cool and interesting and can hold their own on-screen and whose lives and relationships I’m actually invested in. and like, they’re still evil. just to be clear. but they’re also cool and compelling and a genuine delight whenever they make an appearance, and I can’t wait to see what shenanigans they get up to next.

the bad: the villains

hahaha. okay, so I’m not even gonna talk about Overhaul yet -- he gets his own little mini-rant all to himself. but let’s talk about the Eight Precepts for a moment. I was so let down by these guys it’s not even funny. YOU ASSHOLES WERE SUPPOSED TO BE COOL. you’re the fucking yakuza for fuck’s sake! but instead they’re just boring. not one of them felt even remotely threatening, and it was just obnoxious to watch the good guys struggling against some of them. none of them had interesting personalities or backstories. a few of them did have interesting quirks (thinking specifically of the Thief quirk and the truth serum confession quirk), but they go to waste since they’re used in decidedly uninteresting ways. (seriously though, that is such a mind-blowing waste of a truth serum quirk that it’s painful to think about. it could have been used for character development, interrogations... any number of plot uses. and what does this asshole do instead? HE TRIES TO MAKE MIRIO SAD. come the fuck on.)

and arguably worse than that is the fact that they all wear the same mask. that was such a bad move on Horikoshi’s part. it means there’s no way for any of them to stand out. if their quirks or personalities weren’t going to cut it, their appearances were the only thing left, and he goes and designs them all to essentially have the same fucking face. why would you do that. as if they didn’t all blend together enough to start with.

and lastly, the blind, ferocious loyalty they all have to Overhaul is completely absurd and makes no fucking sense. like, several of them were literally like, “oh I was treated like shit all my life, and then this guy came along who also treats me like shit, but ~with him I have a place~.” the truth serum guy IIRC liked Overhaul simply because he was honest. at least Chance the Rappa had a decent reason for liking him which was that he was freakishly strong and he just wanted to defeat him. meanwhile his monk friend supposedly doesn’t like violence, and yet here he is loyally serving a man who offs his own subordinates at the drop of a hat, and whose master plan hinges on the perpetual torture of a kindergartner.

just. they all suck so much.

 the good: Sir Nighteye

Nighteye had such a great arc. I’m not the biggest fan of how it ended, because that was a perfectly good heart of mine that they ripped out and stomped all over, but aside from that, yeah. he starts out as this cold, disdainful pencil of a man, only for it to gradually be revealed that he’s really just a broken shell of himself, afraid to use his own quirk because he’s scared of whatever horrors he might see that he’ll be helpless to do anything about. he supports Mirio over Deku because he loves Mirio and genuinely thinks he’ll be the better successor, and because he loves All Might, and he’s desperate to stop his premonition from six years ago from actually coming true. it didn’t really surprise me that he became a more likable character in the end, but the degree to which it happened really caught me off guard. I was not expecting to end up loving him so much. and also I just really love the idea of the foresight quirk being as mentally damaging as it turns out to be, because it makes perfect sense, and it’s the perfect way to put such a potentially overpowered quirk in check. just, well done on every aspect of Nighteye’s character and his story arc.

the bad: Overhaul

Overhaul started out with so much potential and it all just went to shit. I’ll start with the good stuff first: his quirk is cool and terrifying, I like his character design, and I like the little touch with him being a germaphobe, even if they didn’t really do much with it in the end.

now the bad. I think my main complaint about Overhaul is that as a rule of thumb, I think that good villains should be written as though they genuinely believe they’re the heroes of their own story. this goes for all types of villains. even sociopaths take pride in being smart enough to take advantage of what they view as the stupidity and weakness of others. meanwhile, righteous villains justify their heinous acts as being for the sake of the greater good. and those villains who are in-between may feel some guilt about some of the things they’ve done, but they justify those acts as being something they had to do, or something the victim deserved, or something they themselves deserved after all of their own pain and suffering. (Tomura is a good example of this type of villain.) then you’ve got anarchist villains who are just in it for the lulz and figure there’s no real purpose to life, so they might as well enjoy themselves. all of these are valid villain personalities and motivations.

the problem with Overhaul is that he acts like a sociopath, and yet supposedly he’s doing all of this in order to somehow pay back his boss for his kindness. and that just doesn’t track. he has not demonstrated himself to be even remotely capable of empathy, so that level of loyalty from him feels forced and entirely unbelievable. I would have much preferred if instead he’d just gone full sociopath. maybe even have it turn out that he was making a power play all along and that he in fact was the one who caused the previous boss’s medical issues in order to seize power. that would have at least made sense with his level of evilness. but instead we have a guy who does shit without remorse that no one with even the barest hint of a functional empathy switch should be able to consider. his boss even tells him on multiple occasions, “hey that’s fucked up, don’t do that.” and he completely fucking ignores him, and we’re supposed to believe that in the end this is his way of trying to show his gratitude? there’s just no internal logic to it at all, and it makes me completely unable to take Overhaul seriously as a character, and so in the end he’s just annoying. 

the good: Kirishima

Kirishima is definitely a highlight of this arc. having sneaked up on everyone to become the surprise 5th most popular character, I guess Horikoshi took that as a sign that it was time to give him more development. and it’s such good development. it’s so unexpected to see middle school Kirishima -- brave, sturdy, loyal-to-a-fault Kirishima -- freezing up in the face of danger and panicking and not being able to do anything when others are in peril. and then we learn that he actually has massive self-esteem issues and has no real confidence in his own “boring” quirk, and despite his dream, he finds it difficult to see himself as worthy of being a hero. and yet he managed to overcome that and become the Kirishima we know today, who’s determined to become the manly hero he’s always wanted to be, even if he has to fake it till he makes it. it’s just good stuff, and it was great to see him get the spotlight.

the bad: Kirishima

lol. but having said that, I’m going to be real here: as much as I love him, there’s just no denying the fact that Kiri, when you get down to it, Only Does One Thing. he makes his body harder. that’s it. yes, it’s a very strong and powerful quirk, and he’s absolutely worthy of being in U.A. and will make a great hero one day for sure. but that said, one-on-one Kirishima fights are just not that interesting to watch. Horikoshi has yet to find a way to mix things up and do anything remotely surprising with his quirk. Kiri just makes himself as hard as possible and tries to hold out against whoever he’s fighting until he can either knock them out, or they tire themselves out, or he gets backup, or he loses. so I’ll go ahead and say this here: there was absolutely no fucking reason to give him two multi-chapter fights in this arc. it makes no sense. just combine the two. or at the very least shorten one of them if you absolutely must have him fight twice for whatever reason. but just. I don’t know why we had to sit through so many chapters of him just standing there getting hit by bad guys. jesus christ. and meanwhile neither Ochako or Tsuyu ended up seeing any onscreen action at all, which is fucking ridiculous. they’re both just as deserving of fight time as Kiri is, and Tsuyu in particular has never had her own one-on-one fight and it would have kicked ass. you can’t tell me it wouldn’t have. so yeah. this was definitely a misstep IMO.

the good: the overall dark mood of the arc

this arc was craaaaaaazy dark. like yikes!dark. guns. drugs. the fucking mob. child abuse. depression. anxiety. prophecies of death. lost powers. dead mentors. just, holy shit. it does what it set out to do, which IMO was to introduce the dark side of the hero world, and all the horrors that the job can lead to. this is what you guys are signing up for. this is the reality of what you’ll be facing at times. it’s brutal, but it sure is realistic.

the bad: apparently there is such a thing as too much angst

yeah. who knew? and look, okay, I fucking love angst. love it. but at some point it just gets to be too much. this isn’t fucking Breaking Bad. you’ve gotta throw us a bone here every so often. we need some humor sprinkled here and there, and the occasional moment of triumph and hope. you know it’s bad when somehow we end up having to rely on the villains for both of those things. and yet that’s what happened here, and Toga and Twice basically saved the arc when it was reaching its most frustrating point, and injected some much-needed life back into it.

and speaking of dark, while I was mostly speaking figuratively, I do also mean that quite literally as well. this arc was too dark. lesson learned: never set your 20-chapters-long climax in a fucking basement. chapter after chapter of drab gray settings. no background variation whatsoever. just, god. why would you fucking do that.

the good: girl power

I got so excited when I realized that for the first time ever, the arc was going to feature precisely two female and two male class 1-A students. a fucking 1:1 ratio. 50/50. and this was in addition to Hadou and Ryuukyuu (Ryuukyuu being the very first female top ten ranked hero we’d been introduced to). all in all I was fucking pumped.

the bad: ...but not really

so fucking go figure that right off the bat, they get attacked on the way in and ALL OF THE GIRL CHARACTERS STAY OUTSIDE while the guys go on to continue the arc. except for Bubble, but she gets left behind barely pages later. and then we don’t see any of the ladies again until the very fucking end. fucking travesty tbh. 

honestly, none of the girls has really gotten any spotlight action since Ochako fought Bakugou all the way back in the sports festival arc, and it’s getting tired at this point. this is probably one of the reasons why Toga has climbed so high on my favorite character list. because at least we still get to see her fighting, and it’s always entertaining. but I need more ladies kicking ass goddammit.

 anyways, this is getting quite long and my will to rant is waning, so I’ll just list the rest of the pros and cons I can think of real quick.

the good: Mirio (such a good boy); the quirk-be-gone and trigger drugs; Eri (who is so sweet and precious and I honestly love her quirk, even if it’s ridiculously overpowered. that’s why they gave it to a six-year-old lol. I don’t think we have to worry about it becoming too broken for a long time); the prophecy and all related angst; and of course, that ending which ripped my heart out and also made me cheer so hard when Overhaul got his comeuppance.

the bad: the basement (yes, I mentioned it before, but honestly it deserves another mention); Overhaul’s lack of an actual master plan (such a letdown, smdh); lack of all of our other faves for like 30 chapters. Bakugou. Todoroki. Momo. Kaminari. Mina. Iida. Sero. god but I missed them so, so much.

 final verdict: all in all, this was an excellent arc for world-building, and  it set up a few things which I think will have a lasting impact on the story (Nighteye’s premonition; Eri; the whole concept of internships; and last but not least Tomura getting hold of the quirk-erasing drug). it also gave us some decent character development on the heroes’ side, and some frankly excellent character development for nearly every last member of the League of Villains. I am very appreciative of that last in particular, and if I ever go back to reread any parts of the arc once I’m done with the recaps, it will probably be those chapters.

having said that, this arc marked the first time that the series, to me, has ever felt dragged-out and dull, and for multiple chapters in a row at that. I was seriously getting concerned at some points, because it felt nothing at all like the fast-paced series I’d grown accustomed to for the first 120 chapters, with most arcs being resolved in a dozen chapters or less, and moving right along to the next arc. I hate the feeling of having to force myself to read something, and that was the case for quite a few chapters in this arc, which sucks. and there was no reason for it, really. it was just bad writing.

probably the best example of this is coming up in just a few chapters in the recaps. I am referring to chapter 138, which is probably my least favorite chapter in the series to date. this chapter begins with the heroes gathered outside of Overhaul’s house getting ready to enter. it ends with the heroes still outside the fucking house, still having not entered. they literally spend an entire chapter, 19 full pages, trying to go inside a house. the pacing is abysmal. hardly anything interesting happens aside from that really big guy busting through the front gate, and Ryuukyuu turning into her dragon form to stop him. that’s basically it. it’s just boring as fuck. this chapter basically sums up all of the problems I have with this arc in one go.

was it an important arc for the story? yes. would I read it again? probably not, LoV antics aside. basically those are my feelings in a nutshell.

 anyways, I’m curious what everyone else’s thoughts are on this arc if anyone else feels like sharing! now that I’m finished with it, it’s a lot more fun to talk about. some things are just more enjoyable in hindsight, when you have finally moved on past them and can joke about them from a safe distance lol.