#i did not realize. this other hw included all of this 😭😭😭

[bitterpngs]

i am notttt strong enough for all of this today

[wutheringmights]

I NEED THE WRITER'S COMMENTARY FOR THE LATEST CHAPTER BECAUSE OH MY GOD 😭😭😭 SO MUCH HAPPENED

Finally had time to do some writer's commentary. Thanks for waiting :)

This also includes some info about the rest of the story at the very end.

This is fraught with spoilers, so beware!

Welcome to The Chapter! As many are aware, this is the chapter I was dying to get to partly because of it's many twists and partly because it's the reason why CTB is the way it is.

To take it back to two years ago: I'm kicking the idea for this fic around in my brain when I get a very vivid image of the scene where Spirit returns. I knew I wanted the audience to immediately know exactly why this was such a big deal, but that would mean the audience would have to understand the scope of everything that happened in the past by this point

At this time, I had been imagining the past only being referenced by Warriors. I was kicking around the idea of doing flashbacks when I realized that I could pair up a flashback showing the child's departure with Spirit's return for a single thematically cohesive chapter. But for a flashback to not feel out of place, they would have to be frequent-- say, every chapter.

Thus, the entire structure of CTB was born, with the syncing point of the two timelines being this chapter! So if you hate the pacing, you can blame it on my need to make sure these two events happen at once

That being said, I feel like I could have had another chapter between the engineer's curse and this one just with stuff involving their apprehension towards each other, but there was no room

The two most iconic moments from the Temple of Souls level of HW is the battle with Dark Link and the room filled with portraits of Link. I had ideas for both, but I only had room for one. I went with the Dark Link fight since I figured more people would be upset if I cut it. I might be able to squeeze in something with the portraits later in the present day timeline

Originally, right after killing the shadow, the engineer was going to say "wow, that felt really good" and Link was going to be so offended

Originally, we were going to see this chapter that the engineer really doesn't like Midna exclusively because she's a dark spirit. I cut this since I really do not need to add another case of fantasy prejudice to my list of things I need to worry about.

(Plus, it makes the engineer really unsympathetic and we're supposed to be rooting for him)

The scene where the engineer begs Lana to let them go was originally going to go differently, and I had written a lot of it before I redid it all. But I don't think I kept that draft and for the life of me, I cannot remember what I wrote

I refuse to freak out about the kiss on the cheek moment the way I did about the neck scene since I can just point to that part in the bible where Judas betrays Jesus with a kiss and say "see! you can't get mad! bros betray each other with kisses all the time!"

Okay let's talk the engineer's plan

My original plan for how the engineer got the child to leave is way different from what happened in story

Originally, the engineer was going to realize that there was the opportunity for one person to run away from Link and jump through the gate. But instead of saving himself, he picked up the child and threw him through-- ensuring the child was safe while damning himself

This was meant to illustrate that despite everything, the engineer was still more morally upright than Link

However, I changed this for two reasons: 1) this was from a version of the story where it would be way ambiguous as to how much the engineer was corrupted by Link, and 2) it would be more satisfying if the engineer won by finally being able to outsmart Link

I realized this about a year ago and committed to the change, but I didn't know at the time what the engineer would do, especially since the engineer's dynamic with Link involves the engineer being unable to keep up with Link's schemes

Only a couple of months ago did I realized how exactly the engineer was going to win-- that being, weaponizing Link's obsession with him. The moment I figured this out was a huge relief cause, again, I spent a whole year not knowing how this was going to go down

So anyone who tells you this story is well thought out is a liar lol

Okay, moving onto the present--

Linkle is the true MVP of this chapter. She was working to keep Warriors together and we love and appreciate her for it

Unlike the flashback where a lot of things got overhauled, the present day went about the way I had always been planning. This may be due to me practically writing the whole thing in the span of 72 hours and not having enough time to overthink any of it

In chapter 19, Cia warns Wild that the next time he made eggs he would burn them. And this chapter, he finally did. Kinda silly set-up and pay off, but it's the small details that matter

Warriors was going to have a big argument with Cia about her not warning him about any of this, but it was a repeat of things he just said to Lana so it felt unnecessary

Ah, Wind. I feel bad for what I did to him. I had a fun time looking up all the things brain damage can cause, so look forward to more about Wind's condition

Sky was always going to be the one who came up with the idea to grab Spirit, and it's been kinda fun up until this point trying to steer his character in the direction to someone who would come up with that idea

Time and Warriors's conversation was fun, though looking now I see I didn't make it clear that Warriors was just about to figure out who Time was before the medicine kicked in and distracted him

Also, I finally got to do the pay off for Warriors's ability to identify poison by taste-- this time, with the inversion of him being fooled

Speaking of pay off, Wind's wind waker plan was so fun to write, though I had initially planned for Wind to not be immobile during it so that there would be way more of him dodging attacks being thrown at him in between him taking temporary control of everyone else-- all of it coming together to look like a dance

I also had an alternate plan where Wind's development went in a different direction and he instead idolized Spirit so much that he desperately wanted him back; for this version, Warriors would have had to outsmart the command melody

I almost didn't have the train pop out of the portal despite it being a part of my plan because I was so sleepy when I finally got to that scene that I wanted to start cutting corners; I'm glad I kept it though!

Ah, Spirit's return.

There was a part of me that was really scared to do this despite this always being the plan. For everything I set up, I always worry that the pay off won't be good enough. And I knew that if this was not well-received, this would destroy a lot of people's interest in CTB

Older Spirit was going to wear his hair in a low pony tail, but I changed it to a man bun so that he would be OSHA compliant lol

In the event I had way less material than I thought and CTB wouldn't be long enough to accommodate Spirit's return, I had an alternate version planned where Time went through the gate to bring Spirit back himself and Warriors followed to stop him

This would result in a scene where Warriors finds Spirit at a house party, and is trying to hide when Spirit goes outside onto the porch and has a short conversation with Warriors. They wouldn't be able to see each other, and Warriors wouldn't say anything himself, but Spirit would reiterate that he wouldn't "do this again" and that he had time to heal from his experiences. We would then leave Spirit in the New Hyrule where he is happy

But luckily, I have plenty of material so the Spirit we have in-story now has capital-I-Issues we get to explore!

I always knew that Time would never tell Warriors the truth, which meant that it was always going to be Spirit who would spill the beans

On one hand, this makes for a two-punch plot twist, but I also can see how including both Spirit's return and Time's reveal in the same chapter would distract one from the other (goodness knows that both distract from the child's departure, which is one of the best scenes I have ever written rip)

But I justified it to myself with this: the reader expects Time to confess and can feel it coming. They can only forget about it when the anticipation for Spirit's return begins. So now when the reveal comes up, it catches the reader off guard despite them knowing it's coming

So yeah, now that our brother's are reunited, the reason this fic is named "Call Them Brothers" makes more sense. It has always been about the brothers.

Finally, let's end on important shop talk concerning the rest of CTB.

We are 2/3rds of the way through my planned plot for CTB, with this last third focusing on the drama between the brothers and stopping the war. I don't have an estimated chapter count as I have yet to figure out the pacing.

Yeah, so two years ago I divvied up the plot points into chapters up until this one and then told myself I would go back later and finish the outline. And I just... never did. Ooops!

That may have worked out in my favor. A lot of things have changed in the past two years. While the general plot hasn't really changed, I have a better understanding of what I am writing. Plus, I really do not want to spend another 2 years on this story, so I would like to take some time to figure out if there are any areas I can trim or condense.

I want to be careful with what I write next, as it's way too easy to fall into cheap, philosophical pitfalls. I don't want someone to read CTB and think that the story is about how everyone deserves forgiveness or that a terrible person is irredeemable. There's a lot of nuance in the difficult questions I want to explore, which I need some more time to figure out for myself.

All together, the small hiatus Tears of the Kingdom is enforcing will be good for me and CTB. I'll get some time to figure out the pacing and make sure that the last of CTB is the story I want to tell.

Thank you in advance for your patience! 💛

[helladventurers]

WOL outfits throughout my run of the game

I've been working on this character based on Zooey from granblue fantasy, and all of her outfits so far have been based on her ^o^ or well, at least the main ones anyway (also big shout outs to @dewpriism for the help in making most of them)

Tags:

Gui plays ffxiv (every post regarding the game, including opinions and reactions and anything in between)

Daughter of Dravania (WoL specific tag, including glamor, gpose pics and lore posts)

WoLtfits (glamor posts, once again with most glamour being inspired by zooey gbf)

Original outfit (slight recreation because I can't remember which gloves or skirt I was using at the time, the skirt used to fit a lot better with the top but I've since been unable to find it on my glamour dresser)

This one was the very first one I made, when I was still playing paladin in ARR, and for how limited my knowledge of the game was (and for how ugly a lot of the pieces in ARR are), I'm still proud and found of this one, even tho it's been since retired and it's not quite as good as the later ones

Dark knight outfit

This one was after I started getting more used to the game (and realized that gatherer/crafter items could be used by any class in the game), it's a bit darker than I wanted it to be, but it still looks cute imo (and fits a dark knight :V), the only part I didn't really like were the leg guard things, but I liked the shoes too much to put on greaves or boots, and sadly this game is extremely limited when it comes to skirts 😭

this also has the distinction of being the set I used the most of since I played through HW with it and used through the vast majority of my stay in free trial, only switching to the next one when I decided to play bard

Bard/gunbreaker outfit

Now THIS is the one that I feel like has been the most quintessential outfit so far ✨ it's the closest one I've had to Zooey's actual outfit (with the only downside being the fact it has sleeves), my friend did an amazing with the boots especially, since despite the fact they're made out of leather, the colors still makes it look like they're greaves without looking super clunky and heavy like in my first outfit

It's both by far the best one I've had thus far and extremely faithful to what Zooey outfits I had in mind when I started playing, while still having its own personality

Red mage outfit

This one is by far the most out of the rails one so far lol red mage doesn't really fit Zooey's aesthetic, but it's an aesthetic I, as the player, really liked, so I asked my friend to see if they could at least make a color scheme that would fit Zooey, and they knocked it out of the park once again, and once again doing a banger job of making leather boots look metalic~

While this originally was just the pvp version of the level 70 red mage set, I ended up adding the skirt once I realized how well it went with the rest of the set.

And that's it for now ^o^ overall I'm proud of these, and really happy with the results, despite none of them being 1-1 to Zooey's outfit, I still really like them, and the small differences that detract from the likeness to gbf Zooey ends up giving the outfits a bit more personality while still being reasonably close to what I perceive as her aesthetic. This is far from finished as each new expansion opens up more possibilities and chances to try out other outfits based on the new pieces I come across