#it becomes relevant later on in the story

[lej222]

Supernatural Involvement and Ominous Signs in ASLFUA

For a while, many readers have theorized that there is some kind of a higher power/higher being in ASLFUA, and looking at the latest episodes it seems to have been confirmed. With this post, I've tried to gather every instance of the higher power's implied presence and all the ominous scenes in the story. I also included foreshadowing scenes that could have made Miae aware of certain things if she had paid attention because coincidences are important in the story, and certain moments that were defining in the plot.

Episode 2 :

Miae is reading a book in the library about how the last day of 1999 will be the end of the world: "'1999, a terrifying overlord is coming...the end of the human race.." -> this might be a reference to the famous prophecy of Nostradamus in which in the 7th month of 1999 a great king of terror would descend from the skies (which makes me think...is it July in the story right now?)

The Hwang family's phone stops working

Miae's dresser breaks and therefore she has to take out the trash, where she sees Cheol crying

"This boy is about to be this girl's most special person, someone whom she will never be able to forget."

Episode 3

Miae and her mother visit the Buddha statue and Miae's wish is not to be in the same class with Cheol - it doesn't come true.

Miae, Cheol and Jisu all become classmates in their last year. Miae and Cheol become deskmates by coincidence.

Episode 4

Cheol's furniture becomes Miae's, along with the contents of his dresser, something only he knows about

Episode 5

Yunhui calls Miae on their new cordless phone, the line is interrupted by another conversation, "Did you get the present I sent you?" - it sounds like a message to Miae from the higher power about Cheol

Episode 8

Miae ruins her bangs, her mother says she should do something about her hair - the first time we are told Miae should go to a hairdresser to fix it

Hwanggeum Academy uses corporal punishment - might be relevant later on?

Miae has to go to karaoke so she gives up on going to the hair salon (this foreshadowing is super crazy btw)

Episode 9

Cheol is compared to the protagonist of the comic Miae reads, 'My First Love Next Door Is Number 1' - gets into trouble and transfers, fights the school bully and wins, nicknamed Lucifer, has a facial scar, lives next door

As Miae is thinking about Cheol, her thoughts are interrupted by a cockroach in the classroom

Episode 11

Miae notes how strange it is that she keeps seeing Cheol while they didn't bump into each other the previous year (just like how Jisu later keeps commenting how strange he keeps meeting Miae) - Miae acknowledges the higher power

Yunhui's pager says "between friends goodbye"

Episode 12

Miae has a weird feeling when she's talking to Cheol's shoe as if it understands what she's saying

Episode 15

In her dream, Miae remembers Cheol crying and her making a wish with a stone tower about how she wants to be his friend. The phone suddenly rings, the TV becomes static and there's a storm outside despite the weather forecast not saying anything about it. The other end of the phone is silent and the lights go out.

Episode 17

Cheol's shoe gets smudged with ink so Miae cannot give it back to him. She cannot concentrate on her practice test, foreshadowing her involvement with Cheol's academy.

Episode 21

Miae again remembers some memories about Cheol saying he doesn't want to be her friend while she's sleeping

Side note: while Soonkki is a great writer, there's some inconsistency about Jisu's seating arrangement. I think she always meant him to sit in Block 1, that's why we got limited panels of that area of the classroom, but his position kept changing until his official introduction. Here, he should have been sitting in front of Seonghan, but there's another boy in that seat. In episode 23, we get a panel of Block1 again, and there's a boy who looks like Jisu from behind in that.

She again remembers her time with Cheol while sleeping on the bus

Episode 24

Daebak Academy notebook says "The teacher is spoon-feeding you, so why can't you pass" -> the higher power is giving hints to Miae, why can't she understand them?

Episode 29

Miae thinks about how she doesn't bump into Cheol as much as before, we get a close-up of the shoe and the Daebak Academy notebook

Episode 37

Miae falls on Cheol while playing soccer

Episode 39

Miae and Cheol are arguing but still bump into each other because of their parents

While Miae thinks about how Cheol should smile at people, she almost gets hit by a ball but Cheol saves her.

Episode 40

Cheol goes to Miae's house to do their homework. Miae's mother says she wonders if it will rain before she leaves. Cheol tries to change the lightbulb in Miae's room, but the lights go out because of the storm. Miae thinks "again?" and they fall on each other. She tells Cheol they should be friends.

Episode 41

Cheol agrees to be Miae's friend and we see a flashback of young Miae wishing they would be friends. While they are doing their homework the rain stops. Miae says planes even fly in the rain and Cheol replies that airplanes fly above the clouds.

Episode 42

Miae answers their phone and the line is interrupted again. Someone thanks their boss for the present and says they will do well on their own from now. -> is it a sign Miae should do well on her own after the hints?

Interesting to note that every time Miae might be involved with the higher power, certain objects in her room are highlighted - Cheol's shoe, the lamp, the notebooks. They all give signs to Miae that she keeps ignoring.

Episode 43

Cheol and Yonghui point out that Miae should get a haircut. Miae ends up cutting it herself instead of going to a salon.

Episode 45

Miae wishes upon a star instead of a plane so that the presentation in class will go okay. This actually comes true, as also noted by the narrator in ep 46.

Episode 46

Daebak Academy booklet says "nothing comes easy"

Episode 47

Something I've noticed is that throughout the story Miae keeps thinking she forgot something, and there's usually a situation that seems like the answer to it. Here, it turns out she forgot about Jinseop's homework. And Taekwang's song is about how someone cannot do both things at the same time. It was the same when she forgot about her homework while playing soccer. Forgetting about things is a recurring plot point for Miae, which culminates in the Jisu subplot where we learn Miae completely forgot about his existence even though she didn't have many friends who were boys.

Episode 50

Cheol's father wants to take a picture of Cheol and Miae, but Cheol refuses

Episode 51

Miae again cuts her own hair and wonders if she cut it too straight

Episode 55

Cheol kicks Miae's pencil into Jisu's chair (side note: you can see here again how Jisu's seating arrangement was inconsistent, he should have been closer to the window)

Episode 56

Miae gets sent out to the corridor with Jisu

Miae's friends talk about handsome boys and someone mentions the number1 student (Jisu)

Episode 60

Jisu becomes Miae's folk dance partner - the first time Cheol and Miae are not doing something together

Episode 61

Hwanggeum Academy booklet says "there's nothing you can't do if you put the work in, do not expect a miracle" when Miae is struggling with the dance

Episode 65

Cheol's father takes a picture of Cheol and Miae after the sports festival

Episode 66

In Miae's dream, Cheol's sister says for a while means 5-6 yrs, Miae counts she will be in middle school by then. There's also a memory of Miae running after Cheol, saying "wait for me".

Miae's mother tells her to get a haircut but Miae replies she needs a bigger allowance for it.

The narrator says Miae should watch where she's walking after she bumps into Cheol.

Episode 67

Miae loses her name tag and Jisu finds it

Episode 70

Miae wonders how her wishes never come true, but remembers she also made one with the stone tower as a kid, but cannot recall what it was about.

Episode 71

Miae's mom notes their phone keeps ringing since yesterday. The day before Miae wanted to tease Cheol with how she heard him saying he "loved her" in the shop and she saw him shirtless the same night.

Miae doesn't realize it was Jisu who called her a pervert

Episode 72

Miae notices someone wearing her name tag (Jisu), but doesn't find the culprit

Episode 75

Cheol wants to ask Miae something, but the homeroom teacher interrupts. Miae and Jisu get called to the teachers' room and have to do cleaning duty together for a week.

Episode 76

We see Miae's mom at a hair salon - could the lady in orange be Jisu's mother? who knows

Episode 77

Cheol stands up for Miae, but when Honggyu asks if they are dating, they both vehemently deny it. It suddenly starts raining.

Episode 78

Miae and cheol promise to be friends for real, forever. The narration comments, "But will they end up regretting their promise?". The rain stops. "1999, the final year of the century is half over" -> Miae's story is half over at this point. I have pointed out this before, but the series seems to be about the transition period between childhood and young adulthood, symbolized by the last year before the new millennium. Hence the title, 'green apple academy'

In her dream, Miae remembers asking Cheol if they are friends. She is awoken by their phone. the Daebak Academy notebook says "you are in danger if you are relaxed" and we see a girl talking to Cheol.

Episode 81

Cheol and Miae fall on each other and almost kiss, but the phone rings. Later, they do end up in the same position with an accidental kiss.

Episode 82

Miae wants to confront Cheol about the kiss and gets embarrassed, but her actions are interrupted when the trash bag she gave Jisu splits open, spilling its contents. Miae runs to him to collect it.

Episode 83

While Miae talks to her friends, she thinks back on her memories with Cheol and the narration says "I always liked.." and Miae looks surprised by it.

Episode 86

Interesting detail that Cheol doesn't know why Miae keeps looking at airplanes. If we assume she has a reason for doing it from the past, it's likely not related to Cheol.

Episode 87

Miae uses the trashbag as an excuse to run away from Cheol, repeating how she has to throw it out. All of a sudden, Jisu appears and takes it out of her hand, giving her a chance to run. It's just my personal theory that the trashbag here symbolizes Miae's vulnerability and reluctance to face her feelings, and Jisu takes it from her hand. It makes sense when we remember how his words made her think about her actions when she wanted to interrupt the confession. It's a great early foreshadowing that Jisu might play an important role in Miae's growth story as her voice of reason.

Episode 89

Cheol and Miae take photos together in a photo booth, first with Jinseop and Song-I, then the two of them alone. We don't know if Miae still has her pictures, but we can assume she somehow lost them during running around from the bullies because we never see them again. Cheol gives her a new name tag in the next episode.

Episode 95

Cheol gifts Miae an airplane model for her birthday. I personally believe this episode marks the end of the first part of the story and it's a turning point, but more about this under ep96.

Episode 96

The series has had 2 symbolic illustrations at the end of 2 episodes. The first one was at the end of ep2, when Cheol and Miae's story started in the present:

Miae is offering a green apple to Cheol - a biblical allusion, here, the green apple probably signifies how Miae helps Cheol in the first part of the story to mature and grow as a person with her own knowledge.

This illustration comes at the end of ep96. Like I mentioned, I believe this marks the start of the second half of the story which focuses on Miae's growth as a person. Space is an important concept in the series, Miae also has planet stickers on the wall of her room,has a charm on her bag, etc.

"16 years old. An age much like the universe." "16 years old. An age where it's like you're thrown into space." - highlights the narration.

But why is it compared to space? We have the illustration right after Jisu splashes water on Miae's face and Cheol wakes up from his dream. In my opinion, it's because this is where these kids' limited worlds start to expand. In part 1, Cheol and Miae were mainly together, but as you grow up you start to feel like you're just one insignificant part of a greater whole. You might feel like you're the center of the universe when you're a teenager, and that the world is ending when you experience negative emotions, but as the illustration shows us, it's not just Miae and Cheol standing alone in the universe. There are other people, facing different directions, but they are all interconnected by an invisible force. Miae is looking at Cheol, but Jisu is standing in her shadow- because even though she was not aware of him, Jisu had his own life happening parallel to what we saw in part1, and this is where he starts to have an intersection with Miae. If there is a higher power in the story, it is aware of all these connections and talks about youth in a nostalgic way. The sense that these moments are fleeting is always present in the story, however, connections formed between individuals will always have a lasting impact, just like how the universe will continue to exist. Being thrown into space might feel like losing your footing, but here it's the personal relationships that ground these teenagers and make them stay close to Earth.

Episode 98

The teacher tells Miae to cut her hair after Jisu takes the blame for ruining the plant.

Cheol is acting strange because of his dream, and while Jisu looks at Miae the narration box says: "16 years old. An age riddled with the unknown, just like the universe."

Episode 99

Miae's hair gets stuck in the zipper of Cheol's bag and he pulls it out, ruining her bangs in the process. They go to the infirmary after Miae gets scratched by the zipper.

Episode 100

At the countryside, while Miae picked a flower she thought how nice it would be if Cheol came to her school - and it became true. She thinks how it was so strange -> Miae again unknowingly acknowledges the higher power when it comes to Cheol

Episode 101

It's raining and the TV is not working in Cheol's home. He remembers taking a picture with Miae in the countryside. He asks his father about the picture on the sports day -> the data was lost. Miae gets grounded by her mother and she wants her to quit the academy.

Episode 102

I've mentioned symbolic objects in the story, but this one was noted by other readers as well: in ep 101, Miae accidentally drops the chalkboard eraser out of the window and Jisu fails to catch it - but Cheol does. However, in this episode Miae tosses it back to Jisu before saying she hopes they'll never see each other again (it's the first, but not the last time she declares it).

Cheol fails to convince Miae's mom about the academy -> Miae's mom points out Miae's grades have been dropping since last year. She makes her stance clear - she wants Miae to study.

Episode 103

It's raining and Miae cannot open Cheol's drawer in her room.

She tries to cut her hair, but the phone rings. On the other line, Miae hears someone saying "I only did what I did because you wanted it so bad, but you screwed up that chance! You don't deserve that project, I'm going to hand it to someone else." -> the first time the higher power tries to directly say Miae is late

Miae's mom cuts her hair instead of sending her to a salon...

Miae loses the name tag Cheol gave her

Episode 104

Jisu says "see you again" to Miae (and will keep saying for a while lol). Miae points out she never wanted to see him again.

Episode 106

After the teacher discovers their conversations in class, Miae and Cheol get separated and Miae becomes Jisu's deskmate. Miae and Cheol are not allowed to interact until the final exams are over.

Hwanggeum Academy's notebook remarks "Do you regret it now?"

Episode 107

Miae dreams about the flower from the countryside and a voice says she should hurry up and do what she wants about her wish if she remembers. She doesn't remember and the voice gets angry, Cheol appears and crushes the flower, telling her if she doesn't remember she should just forget it. The voice remarks Cheol is angry because Miae is late.

Episode 111

Jisu, who has also become aware of the coincidences, tells Cheol he's not the only one having something special with Miae.

When Miae calls Jisu her friend from the same class and tells him he should learn for himself, Jisu tries to say something, but he is interrupted by Cheol.

Episode 112

Miae thinks about their bet and how she should ask something serious, something more than friends do from Cheol, and we get a bunch of error messages. Cheol's dream is all fuzzy.

Jisu wins the bet, but we never get to know his wish because Miae gets angry at him.

Episode 115

The narration points out Cheol has changed and matured a lot, is it Miae's turn?

Episode 116

We see some posters about a summer festival, the forest in Midsummer Night's Dream and how everything is the product of coincidence. The forest in Shakespeare's play is dominated by the supernatural - what we have in common with this story is the forest Miae and Cheol played together as kids, and obviously the involvement of a higher power. The coincidences poster is possibly a reference to Carl Jung's Synchronicity, a concept that states that seemingly meaningful coincidences have a deeper meaning, they don't have a rational explanation - almost like destiny, a deeper order in the universe. It's a connection between one's psyche and the material world. Jung used this to argue for the existence of the paranormal. For example, if you cannot decide something, you might come across a book on the topic. What a coincidence, right? In this interpretation, everything is interconnected in the universe, and we are a part of this web of connections. So those coincidences...were actually not coincidences. -> Hmmmmm.....I wonder.....meaningful coincidences, the universe, connections...why do they sound familiar??? BECAUSE OUR STORY IS EXACTLY ABOUT THIS NOTION! Who notices these coincidences? Miae about Cheol, Jisu about Miae....Soonkki, you deserve my applause! Because it was exactly what I said about the art at the end of ep 96 and the placement of the characters. Mind? Blown!

Miae thinks that she feels something is wrong

Yunhui's pager says friends goodbye

Jisu gets involved in the Yonghui-Yunhui storyline by coincidence

Episode 117

We see all the coincidences from Jisu's perspective and how he became aware of them. And what does he say about them? That they are fascinating and kind of funny! My boy Jisu got the synchronicity message.

This is the 3rd time Miae and Jisu didn't hold hands. The first time Miae pretended to help him up, only for him to fall back. Then Jisu held out his hand after the exam, but she didn't take it. Here, he again reaches out and Miae doesn't take his hand. Remember this later!

Episode 118

Someone steps on Cheol's bag, and he's worried it might be Taeuk

Jisu wants to join in another bet in exchange for his help

Episode 119

Jisu gets involved in the Shim storyline, and as we know from later he picks up the cigarettes to get revenge on him

Episode 122

Miae learns that Cheol rejected Seonyeong and the lights flicker in her room

She cannot remember her dream. The narration says that she should have realized that something changed.

Episode 123

Miae notes that she experienced the kiss in the comic book with Cheol

Jisu almost catches her, but Cheol pushes him away

Episode 126

The parents are having dinner together at a pig feet restaurant and toast for the future of their children. The TV is not working, and a boy who looks like Jisu tries to fix it.

Miae kisses Cheol

Episode 127

Miae has a dream again in the white dress. As she realizes she might like Cheol, the voice says she's too late and there's no use regretting it.

Episode 129

Miae remembers that they took a picture in the countryside together and wants to take one now. She makes a wish to an airplane about how she just wants one photo, and remarks that the planes never granted her wish before. Spoiler, they won't this time, either.

Miae chooses to take the picture with Cheol. The narration box says "she's always done whatever she sets her mind to. That has always been one of her better attributes. But Mi-ae, it seems as though you keep forgetting something. I told you, you're too late."

The pager's message means idiot, cancelled and it suddenly starts raining. Maie and Cheol cannot take their photo and Cheol cannot give her back the hairpin she dropped a few eps ago.

Episode 132

Graduation photos were postponed until the second semester

In Miae's dream, the voice says she's all over the place and cannot decide what she wants from Cheol. In her memory, Miae wishes at the stone tower that Cheol would like her back. The voice angrily remarks how it must not mean much to her.

Episode 133

While Cheol and Miae are looking at each other, Miae is smacked in the face by a flyer. Later while they are riding the bike, Cheol almost says she looks pretty but he is hit in the face with a flyer that belonged to Jisu.

Episode 134

Miae takes the cigarettes from Jisu and puts them in her backpack

While Jisu and Miae look at each other, the narration box says "Well. this is what we would call fate. What do you think?" Miae can sense the voice and dismisses it.

Jisu again says "see you later" and Miae answers let's not, but Jisu replies they never know and it would be fun.

On the radio in Miae's room there's a voice speaking, asking if it was a success and how there is something you can't stop thinking about. "A friend? The fact that you weren't wrong? Whatever it is, I don't think it's such a bad thing to obsess over it a little bit. I hope you have no regrets about it."

Episode 135

Miae's eyebrow and bangs are so ruined she has to finally go to a hair salon. Yunhui gives her money and says there's a cheap place where she can go. It turns out Jisu's mother is a hairdresser and after realizing she is Jisu's friend, she doesn't ask for money. So if anyone ever wondered why Miae kept ruining her hair in the story, here's the answer....

The narration says "Now that I think about it, this was about the time..wait,no, it was a little bit earlier that things started to go wrong, little by little. You two were completely oblivious, though. Just you two."

Miae's mother goes to the academy. One theory I can give on this is that Miae's family might be moving. She wished for it at the start of the story, mentions it in a later episode as well. Who knows ~

Episode 138

Miae doesn't tell Cheol her feelings because of her pride as she feels like she would lose first

Miae has a feeling as if something is trying to make her look bad in front of Cheol and her gun suddenly starts working

Everybody forgot to buy the picture they took together in ep 139

Episode 140

After conveying their feelings indirectly to each other, Miae tells Cheol they cannot date right now because her mom wouldn't allow it. She plans to go to the same high school, university, everything and thinks there's no one to stop them so nothing can go wrong.

Episode 141

Cheol imagines high school together with Miae and their friends

Miae says they should not be obvious before the entrance exam and they start to think of it as a competition

Someone watches them from the street

Episode 144-145

We get everything from Cheol's POV

Cheol got his scar because he wanted to give Miae the romance book she liked before they left and he fell on the stone tower

The picture his dad took of them is about a young Cheol accidentally kneeling with flowers in his hands, the same flowers from Miae's dream, in front of Miae. This picture was in the book Cheol and his family kept.

Cheol realized the book was in his dresser that is now in Miae's room, the one she couldn't open before

Episode 146

Miae sees two flyers in the newspaper, one is about how a student still didn't give it up, the other is about changing one's car

On the street, the same car ads keep flying after her in the wind

Miae goes with Yonghui to wait in a line and the same flyers are all over the place

Episode 147

Miae wants to call Cheol, but Jisu stops her. Miae notices how often they have met during vacation, and Jisu says these coincidences are fun. Miae is standing on the car ad, they look down on it with Jisu, then she kicks it away. Jisu tells her he has a feeling they will meet again, but Miae hopes they won't.

The academy is also full of the car ads and Miae falls on them

Miae ends up with a bubble gum in her hair and goes to Jisu's house to fix it. Jisu tells her she should stay because he is bored, and there is a car ad on a stool.

Episode 148

We see some of Jisu's childhood memories and he was called a magpie by Miae which was a symbolic choice (I also made a post about it). Jisu in this story is the grateful magpie.

Miae and Jisu "touch hands" for the first time when they high-five (I wrote about how their hand hold never happened before)

After spotting some men smoking, Jisu tells Miae to go inside (one of them might be his father?)

Episode 149

Miae finally remembers Jisu

the narration boxs keeps saying how Jisu is cool and showing heart-thumping sounds and Miae is confused about these strange things

Miae not remembering Jisu was an important plot point considering she recalled everyone else from her past. As I theorized, memories and fate seem to be intertwined, the synchronicity theory also supports this. Synchronicity happens when seemingly unrelated events coincide and they become significant to you. It's easy to see why Jisu was aware of this notion, but Miae was not - because Miae had no idea about those coincidences other than meeting Jisu randomly. Him being her classmate, being the one who found her pencil, who helped her in the crowd, found her name tag, etc. - only Jisu knew about these. But right now, Miae was made aware that they knew each other in the past - a pretty big coincidence.

So now that Miae might have kickstarted her own fate, the question is whether she will be able to fight it or if there are certain things bound to happen no matter what. Is the narrator omnipotent and omniscient? So many questions that will hopefully get answered.

[plantcrazy]

Hōkū 2961135

Since watching the ending of Murder Drones I've been really inspired to work on my ending for Lost Children of the CCC.

I think I'm about done with writing the major changes. I have a solid crisis, climax and end, of which the ideas have mostly been refined down into bullet points. I think the only sad thing is my original idea, with Double Shot and co. (Universe X) won't work now >>

The good news is, now I have another AU idea :P (I still REALLY want to explore their dystopian world & characters idea. Could make a fun Bad Ending Au sort of thing >:D )

Anyway, we're here to talk about Hōkū!

I've been developing & expanding on Macbeth's past as I think part 2 will be a great place to expand on past events in the Toppat clan for later. I've already shared some of those ideas, and (yes, it's relevant. I don't just want an excuse to talk about my favourite guy :P), you guys know me, I LOVE my foreshadowing, so I thought, well, what if Hōkū isn't just a one-off character in Macbeth's past? What if he comes back later, cause the guy's got a pretty versatile ability (, he didn't become the clan's best by luck), so I'd like to think the CCC would have a field day with him. Especially a certain Doc Thomas :\

So, I made these two illustrations to explore this idea. One in 2006 when Hōkū is first captured, and another in story present day (2018). On top of this, I've got a 7-page story scene written out, but that's a bit too spoilery to share yet ;)

Speed paint below ⬇️

[epicfirestormer]

Okay so I have no idea if anyone has pointed this out before or not, but I haven't seen anyone talk about it, so I guess I'll do it.

In Chapter 944, Kid says thay Killer wears a mask because he would beat up people who made fun of his laugh and decided to hide it by wearing a mask one day. Which is like, the weirdest reason I've ever heard.

How exactly does wearing a mask meant to hide his laugh?? It's not soundproof, we know that for sure, because 1. He talks normally and doesn't sound muffled at all, and 2. We can still hear his laugh. We see this in the raid during Act 3, multiple times. So, what's the point??

Is he functioning on the logic of "if no one can see me physically laugh, they can't make fun of me for it"? Which is like, I guess makes some sense, but still feels like a stretch.

Technically speaking, covering his face has close to nothing to do with stopping his laugh. Because it doesn't. It's to hide his face.

Killer wasn't made fun of because of his laugh. It was because of his face- or more accurately, his third eye. In this essay I will-

[moonpaw]

Fighting DEMONS rn trying not to get invested in one piece to figure out wtf you're posting about!!!!

come here cyber.... we have this thang

‎

[forcedhesitation]

video editing is turning my brain into mush, take a wip of lae and my deep gnome druid pomona

[arolesbianism]

Some more spiraling upwards designs! Meet this lovely family, don’t ask what happens to them dw abt it

[rollercoasterwords]

did dorcas go to hogwarts too? i forget if it was mentioned

don't think it's been explicitly mentioned bc it just hasn't really come up in the story but. yeah she did!

[hitroow]

I just had the sickest idea.

[chisatowo]

Gm I forgot to take my melatonin supplements last night and as a consequence I now have deep backstory hcs for deep cut. And by that I mean for Shiver, Frye and Big man had pretty normal lives fkgndjd

[waterfall-ambience]

head in my hands i need to rewrite the entirety of perpetua arc 1 NOWWWWW

[momxian]

AU where Shen Yuan gets transmigrated as an Original Character into the Demon Realm a few years before Bingge gets there. But even though he's not SQQ, he LOOKS like a near exact copy. So he figures that if he wants to survive he needs to make himself useful. First things first, he needs to know what the hell is going on, so he starts working with lower level demons setting himself up as someone necessary, and relatively important so he can figure out when in the plot they are. It's pretty easy, there's not much in the way of organization down here and despite everything he's not that bad an actor. It helps that SQJ's face is beautiful in every setting and he will quickly create a reputation of the stubborn beauty amongst the demon realm. It's around this time he starts wearing a veil to mask his resemblance to SQJ, but really it just adds to the mysterious allure aspect.

He utilizes his plot knowledge to get things ready for Binghe's arrival, tidying up the palace, setting up good staff, getting rid of some of the smaller villains that kidnap Ning Yingying and Liu Mingyan etc later. Actually a lot of smaller villains who kidnap, harass or belittle Bingge's harem. It's like every time he's running an errand he meets another piece of cannon fodder that will inevitably lead Bingge to another papapa scene. It's fine, by the time he's done with them (thank god this body doesn't have the same limitations as his old one) they follow him around with big demon puppy eyes and scramble to do chores and tasks for him.

By the time the Endless Abyss moment is set to happen, SY has thorough knowledge of the abyss and all of the special items tucked away in various locations across it. You can't be mad and murder someone who helped you through the torture torment evil maze of plot relevant trauma, right?

He finds Bingge post fall and does his best to act callous and only vaguely helpful, leading Bingge in the right direction and away from the biggest threats. His goal is to be a helpful and forgettable NPC. Someone who, if he runs into him again, Bingge will have mercy for and be left alone. Despite his resemblance to SQJ. But what he doesn't take into account is A) in no version of this story is he capable of being that hands off and B) Bingge was just shown kindness for the first time in years by a mysterious and elusive beauty with brilliant eyes and an obvious intelligence.

Since this is Bingge and not Binghe, he doesn't immediately fall for SY, and is in fact wildly paranoid, terrified and angry about things in general. But every time something seems to go wrong in the abyss, instead of taking the hits and becoming the stallion protagonist, SY shows up to give him a magic item, or rushes in to protect him from fatal blows and on two separate occasions thoughtlessly petted Bingge's hair when he was injured, which rattled Bingge so bad that he almost died again fighting the next monster.

Shen Yuan is gone often enough that he still makes his way to the Demon Palace, collects Xin Mo and builds his harem, though it's smaller than it was originally. Mostly because SY had taken out the smaller villains and then because SY had interfered with Bingge's quests so often.

Obviously Shen Yuan has a soft spot for Bingge now but doesn't admit it. But he's satisfied he can slip away now without too much consequence, except no he can't. Bingge asks for him, to collect something for him. To ask him something about another demon. To just stare at him for a half hour with a vein about to pop in his forehead as he tried to see through the veil before huffing and sending him away again.

Since Bingge is obviously not going to let him slip away, and SY isn't sure if Bingge is going to kill him or not he desperately makes himself useful again. He takes care of Bingge's harem. That's a lot of housing and food and clothes to take care of! The girls fight often! He'll just slip into the mix and keep the peace until Bingge forgets about him. And in the meantime sometimes he tends to Bingge and he and Bingge have dinner together. And isn't it so cute how the stallion protagonist can blush when he compliments the dish? And once or twice he combs out Bingge's hair. And sometimes Bingge rubs the scowl from between Shen Yuan's brows and lets his finger outline his jaw over the silk of his veil when SY is tending to tedious business.

Yeah, I'm sure one of these days Bingge will let you slip away SY.

Anyway Bingge is just relieved that Shen Yuan has accepted that he's part of the harem now.

[writers-potion]

Let's Scare Your Readers!

Combine the techniques below with the techniques for building suspense to give your readers a palm-sweating sensation!

Darkness

If absolute darkness doesn't make sense in your story, aim for semi-darkness: dusk, a single lantern/candle, heavily curtained windows, a thick canopy of trees, etc. Flickering lights that create confusing shadows can also be effective.

Let the darkness pool gradually around your MC. Show the night or fog rolling in, the camp-fire subsiding, or the candles burn down one by one.

Examples:

The candle sputtered. The light wavered.

The lamp cast its smoky light on the brick walls.

The night was silent, but for the dry rustling of leaves as the wind whispered through the trees.

Sound

Of all the senses, the sense of hearing serves best to create excitement and fear.

the clacking of the villain's boots on the floor tiles, the ticking of the wall clock, a dog barking outside, the roaring of a distant motor, a door slamming somewhere in the house, water dripping from the ceiling, the chair squeaking, the whine of the dentist's drill, the scraping of the knife on a whetstone, a faraway siren wailing the heroine's own heartbeat thudding in her ears.

When the surroundings are dark, your MC will grow to be more aware of the surrounding noise, even if it's not relevant to the plot.

Chill

Make it uncomfortably cold for the MC, and your readers will shiver with them.

powercut cutting off the heating, nightfall naturally bringing in lower temperatures.

winter, evening, a cool breeze that chills everything, survivors running our of fuel, the ceiling fan is over-active, stone builindg/caves/sbuterranean chambers tend to be cold.

Describe how the cold pinpricks the MC's skin, stunting their thinking and making them shiver.

The opposite can also be effective: turn up the temperature using a stove, an overheated motor, or the sweltering sun to make the MC sweat.

Isolation

This is a common technique: let the MC face the monster alone with no external help. It's also easier to limit the resources and escape routes available for the MC.

an abandoned factory, remote mountaintop, the depth of an unexplored cave.

It can also be more everyday locations: a construction site, the sewer, a malfunctioning bathroom.

Meet the Monster

When describing the threat, spread out your descriptions so that (1) the scene has constant action (2) you have material to build up later.

Good details to show:

hands, fingers, nails, talons, claws

the sound of the voice, growl, roar

the smile, teeth

the texture of skin, fur, scales.

Get Visceral

Never tell your readers that the MC is scared. Describe the fright using these physical effects:

the skin crawling, breath stalling, scalp pricking, clenching of the chest, stomach curling, heart thudding, sweat tricking down, clogged throat, pulse in the ears, cold sweat, chills up/down the spine, stomach knotting, breathless, etc.

The Gory Bits

Instead of describing everything, limit yourself to particular details, keeping overall description short. Non-stop gore doesn't shock - its bores.

Create a contrast: the child's mutilated corpse still clutches the doll. The brains from the baby's plt skull spill across the fluffy pink blanket.

Use similes, comparing gruesome buts to something from ordinary life. The intestines look like spaghetti in tomato sauce. The blood spilling from the mouth looks like lipstick.

─── ･ ｡ﾟ☆: *.☽ .* . ───

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[stevieschrodinger]

Eddie notices things.

He might be loud and brash, might be over the top and his mouth might run away before his brain can kick in, but he still notices things.

He likes the details. Loves a fantasy world that’s so detailed it’s believable. Loves a tiny detail in a story that becomes relevant two hundred pages later. Loves a detail in a puzzle in a DnD game. He loves the minutia of everything.

So he notices these details about people. Mostly because Eddie likes to create people. He likes to write his own stories, likes to make his DnD characters real...foibles and all. Any time Eddie is alone, or bored, or waiting, sometimes he looks around and thinks, ‘if I were writing this, how would I describe it?’ And then he does...he writes in his head about the tree he can see, what the weather is doing right now, how he would describe the quality of the sunlight or the way the rain rattles against the window. He watches complete strangers and writes out their whole life in his head. Eddie likes the details, and he likes to create characters, and he also thinks, a lot of the time, you write what you know.

So yeah, Eddie pays attention to the people around him. How they dress, how they behave, if they bite their nails or chew pen lids. If they stand straight or lounge against the nearest wall or counter. How they cradle their smoke in their hand when it’s breezy out.

All the little details he can build into characters he makes in his mind.

Steve’s calendar interests him. It probably shouldn’t, that stuff would be private if it wasn’t for the fact that it’s hanging in Steve’s kitchen where anyone can see it. Plus the fact that it is just a calendar and there for by it’s nature isn’t very interesting. Eddie thinks he finds it interesting just by the virtue that it’s to do with Steve Harrington, and therefore it immediately becomes very interesting to Eddie.

It’s got big pages, a decent amount of space to write in every day. And Steve has. Every single day.

There’s a pattern to it that Eddie deciphers pretty fast; his shift at work is on the top line; it’s in red. Next is anything to do with the kids, and it’s in green; picking the kids up or meeting them or going to a game for Lucas or basically anything like that. Then blue, and that seems to be stuff to do with Eddie himself, Robin, Nancy, if he needs to meet them, give them a ride somewhere, or just times to hang out.

The bottom line is in black, and it’s stuff like, ‘hoover’, ‘do laundry’, ‘bathroom,’ ‘kitchen’, ‘groceries,’ followed by a little note that seems to be about whatever Steve plans to have for dinner that night.

Below it is a note pad, also hanging up, with an in process grocery list on it. Eddie knows why all this is here; Steve’s forgetful.

If Steve makes plans, he immediately writes it down; Eddie’s seen it for himself.

Eddie sees it too, when Steve’s struggling to hear. If too many people speak at once, or if there’s too much background noise, Steve doesn’t stand a chance.

If he’s not looking at you when you’re speaking to him, chances are, he might not be hearing you. Which, okay, Eddie’s just kind of rolling with it.

Until they get together. No one was more surprised by this turn of events than Eddie, who was convinced that he was just going to pine after Steve forever and that would just be how things were for the rest of his life. That was right up until Steve Harrington held his hand and just sort of...seemed to forget to let go.

Eddie hasn’t pointed it out to him yet, he’s still kind of worried that if he points out the fact that they’re kind of, sort of, dating, Steve might realize and stop again. So yeah, Eddie rides the wave, not at all freaking out when Steve invites him over for dinner and a movie like that’s just a normal thing they do now. Because it is. Because they’re kind of dating.

There’s no answer, but that’s pretty normal, the front door is unlocked a lot of the time, Steve doesn’t want to hinder anyone's entry if there’s any kind of emergency going on, and it’s totally normal now for any of them to just wander into Steve’s house.

Steve is cooking; Eddie can smell it. He stands in the kitchen doorway and says Steve’s name. And predictably, Steve doesn’t react.

Eddie takes this as an opportunity to gauge this. He says Steve’s name a little louder; still nothing.

Eddie tries four times, a step closer and a little louder each time, until the last time, when Steve spins around so fast the spoon he’s holding splatters sauce on the counter top and his other hand flies to his chest, “holy shit.”

“Sorry,” Eddie rubs at Steve’s arm and shoulder as he gets his breathing under control, “you couldn’t hear me.”

Steve shrugs, “it’s fine.”

“Stevie…you could at least, you know, go get them checked, or whatever.”

Steve hums, "maybe, if you go with me," and Eddie's quick to agree, because he gets a kiss out of it.

[heilos]

Living Harmony AU relevant character sheets/info: Harmony aka the "Tree of Harmony" Stygian Somnambula Starswirl the Bearded Shadow Lock is actually an official canon character from the IDW comics No. 51-53 and I really enjoyed his mini arc introduction enough to include him as a more significant part of my "Living Harmony" MLP AU animation project. When I found out he's a direct descendant of Stygian, one of the Pillars of Equestria, I had to find a way to work him in and give him a bit of an updated design to fit more into my story setting I have planned. My good friend Ori helped vector my finalized concept redesign in the very top image. Listed below is some character and story context for these sketches provided by my myself and Ori who's been a huge help in fleshing out the world building with this cast of characters I'm using in this AU so far. Shadow Lock's main abilities and canon backstory are expanded upon and/or flavored a bit differently here as well.

Stygian’s distant descendant, the last living branch in his family tree

Lives alone in his family’s castle after they retired to the town of Somnambula

Temporary antagonist to the mane 6 that stems from a fear of the Pony of Shadows returning to plague Equestria

Believed he was descended from a monster and desperately tried to erase any mention of the Pony of Shadows from written history

Was talked down from his history erasing spree by Twilight and ends up traveling around Equestria to find more info on the Pony of Shadows, without trying to erase the knowledge this time, and prevent it from returning

The symbol on the front of Shadow Lock’s cloak is his family crest that dates back to Stygian's time period.

There’s a glamor woven into Shadow Lock’s cloak that enshrouds its wearer’s face.

Shadow Lock’s special talent is the concealment and binding of dark magic. He can effectively bind malevolent “spirits” into vessels where they’re unable to cause harm. This can also be reversed as an unbinding spell. ("spirits" in this context are more like a culmination of lingering, concentrated dark magic that takes on a will of its own)

His family castle used to be quite “haunted”. It’s quieter nowadays, but he does have a large collection of miscellaneous items that most ponies would consider “cursed…”

Always carries a healthy stack of books on his person to read and use as a weapon. His spells can pull fictional characters and monsters from stories to fight for him

Created a spell that can trap a creature into experiencing a historical event on loop by using a small amount of written text. The spell can be broken by doing something significant enough that did not occur during the looped event in history.

Shadow Lock and Stygian are extremely hesitant to meet each other at first in present time. The mane 6 and Harmony step in as mediator eventually to help them work out their issues so they can reconnect as family

Much later in the story, Shadow Lock invites Stygian to live in his castle once their family relationship is repaired, the two becoming inseparable

His original design from the comics:

[mariacallous]

“Did they really decapitate babies?” my 14-year-old daughter asked me yesterday. She was pointing to a text message on her phone from a friend. “They’re saying they found Jewish babies killed, some burnt, some decapitated.” And I froze. Not because I didn’t know what to say—though in truth I didn’t know what to say—but because for a moment I forgot what century I was in. All of the assumptions I had made as a Jewish father, even one who had grown up, as I did, with the Holocaust just a few decades past, were suddenly no longer relevant. Had I adequately prepared her for the reality of Jewish death, what every shtetl child for centuries would have known intimately? Later in the day, she asked if, for safety’s sake, she should take off the necklace she loves that her grandparents had given her and that has her name written out in Hebrew script.

The attack by Hamas on Israeli civilians last Saturday broke something in me. I had always resisted victimhood. It felt abhorrent, self-pitying to me in a world that seemed far away from the Inquisition and Babi Yar—especially in the United States, where I live and where polls repeatedly tell me that Jews are more beloved than any other religious group. I wasn’t blind to anti-Semitism and the ways it had recently become deadlier, or to the existential dread that my family in Israel felt every time terrorists blew up a bus or café—it’s a story whose sorrows have punctuated my entire life. But I refused to embrace that ironically comforting mantra, “They will always want to kill us.” I hated what this tacitly expressed, that if they always want to kill us, then we owe them, the world, nothing. I deplore the occupation for both the misery it has inflicted on generations of Palestinians and the way it corrodes Israeli society; when settlers in the West Bank have been attacked, it has pained me, but I have also felt anger that they are even there. In short, I wasn’t locked into the worldview of my survivor grandparents and I felt superior for it.

But something in me did break. As I was driving on Tuesday, I heard a long interview on the BBC with Shir Golan, a 22-year-old woman who had survived the attack at the music festival where more than 250 people were killed, her voice sounding just like one of my young Israeli cousins. She described, barely able to catch her breath, how the shooting had started and how she’d begun to run. She’d found a wooded area and tried to hide. “I got really into the ground,” she said. “I put the bushes on me.” Covered with dirt and leaves, she’d waited. A group of terrorists had shown up and called for anyone hiding to come out. From her spot under the earth, she’d seen three young people, whom she called “children,” emerge. “I didn’t go out because I was scared. But there were three children next to me who got out. And then they shot them. One after one after one. And they fell down, and that I saw. I saw the children fall down. And all that I did was pray. I prayed to my god to save me.”

I pulled my car over because my own hands were shaking as I listened. She then described waiting, hidden in the dirt under bushes for hours, until she saw the terrorists begin to light the forest on fire. “I didn’t know what to do. Because if I’m staying there, I’m just burnt to death. But if I go out they are going to kill me.” She crawled over to where she saw dead bodies and lay on top of them, but the heat soon approached, so she found more bushes to hide in until she could run again. Burnt bodies were everywhere, and Shir looked for her friends but couldn’t find them, couldn’t even see the faces of those killed because they were so badly burned. “I felt like I was in hell.” She finally escaped in a car.

Her story flung me back to my grandparents’ stories. My grandmother hid in a hole for a year in the Polish countryside, also under dirt, also scared. My grandfather spent months in Majdanek, a death camp, and saw bodies pile up in exactly this way. Stories are still emerging of families burnt alive, of children forced to watch their parents killed before their eyes, of bodies desecrated. How was this taking place last Saturday?

But these stories aren’t what broke me. What did was the distance between what was happening in my head and what was happening outside of it. The people on “my side” are supposed to care about human suffering, whether it’s in the detention camps of Xinjiang or in Darfur. They are supposed to recognize the common humanity of people in need, that a child in distress is first a child in distress regardless of country or background. But I quickly saw that many of those on the left who I thought shared these values with me could see what had happened only through established categories of colonized and colonizer, evil Israeli and righteous Palestinian—templates made of concrete. The break was caused by this enormous disconnect. I was in a world of Jewish suffering that they couldn’t see because Jewish suffering simply didn’t fit anywhere for them.

The callousness was expressed in so many ways. There were those tweets that did not hide their disregard for Jewish life—“what did y’all think decolonization meant? vibes? papers? essays? Losers”—or the one that described the rampage as a “glorious thing to wake up to.” There was the statement by more than two dozen Harvard student groups asserting, in those first hours in which we saw children and women and old people massacred, that “the Israeli regime” was “entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” And then there were the less explicit posts that nevertheless made clear through pseudo-intellectual word salads that Israel got what it deserved: “a near-century’s pulverized overtures toward ethnic realization, of groping for a medium of existential latitude—these things culminate in drastic actions in need of no apologia.” I hate to extrapolate from social media—it is a place that twists every utterance into a performance for others. But I also felt this callousness in the real world, in a Times Square celebratory protest promoted by the New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America, at which one speaker talked of supporting Palestinians using “any means necessary” to retake the land “from the river to the sea,” as a number of placards declared. There were silences as well. Institutions that had rushed to condemn the murder of George Floyd or Russia for attacking Ukraine were apparently confounded. I watched my phone to see whether friends would write to find out if my family was okay—and a few did, with genuine and thoughtful concern, but many did not.

I’m still trying to understand this feeling of abandonment. Is my own naivete to blame? Did I tip too far over into the side of universalism and forget the particularistic concerns to which I should have been attuned—the precarious state of my own tribe? Even as I write this, I don’t really want to believe that that’s true. If I can fault myself clearly for something, though, it’s not recognizing that the same ideological hardening I’d seen on the right in the past few years, the blind allegiances and contorted narratives even when reality was staring people in the face, has also happened, to a greater degree than I’d imagined, on the left, among the people whom I think of as my own. They couldn’t recognize a moral abomination when it was staring them in the face. They were so set in their categories that they couldn’t make a distinction between the Palestinian people and a genocidal cult that claimed to speak in that people’s name. And they couldn’t acknowledge hundreds and hundreds of senseless deaths because the people who were killed were Israelis and therefore the enemy.

As the days go on, the horrific details of what happened—those babies—seem to be registering more fully, if not on the ideological left, then at least among sensible liberals. But somehow I can’t shake the feeling of aloneness. Does it take murdered babies for you to recognize our humanity? I find myself thinking—a thought that feels alien to my own mind but also like the truth. Perhaps this is the Jewish condition, bracketed off for many decades and finally pulling me in.

When news broke of the Kishinev pogrom in 1903 that took 49 lives (compare that with the 1,200 we now know were killed on Saturday), it caused a sensation throughout the world. “Babes were literally torn to pieces by the frenzied and bloodthirsty mob,” The New York Times reported. “The local police made no attempt to check the reign of terror. At sunset the streets were piled with corpses and wounded. Those who could make their escape fled in terror, and the city is now practically deserted of Jews.” In response to that massacre, the emigration of hundreds of thousands of Eastern European Jews to the United States began in earnest; the call of Zionism as a solution also sounded clearly and widely for the first time.

In his famous poem about the massacre, “In the City of Slaughter,” the Hebrew writer Haim Naḥman Bialik lamented, even more than the death, the sense of helplessness (“The open mouths of such wounds, that no mending / Shall ever mend, nor healing ever heal”), the men who watched in terror from their hiding places while women were raped and blood was spilled. I can’t say I know what will happen now that this helplessness has returned—if I’m honest, I also fear that Israel’s retaliation will go too far, that acting out of a place of victimhood, as right as it may feel, will cause the country to lose its mind. Innocent lives in Gaza have been and will be destroyed as a result, and competing victimhood is obviously not the way out of the conflict; it’s the reason that it is hopelessly stuck. But in this moment, before the destruction of Gaza grabs my attention and concern alongside fear for my relatives who have been called up to the army, I don’t want to forget how alone I felt as a Jew these past few days. I have a persistent, uncomfortable need now to have my people’s suffering be felt and seen. Otherwise, history is just an endless repetition. And that’s an additional tragedy that seems too much to bear.

[absolutechaosss]

Something I've been thinking about a lot lately is how elves are shown to handle grief and trauma and how that relates to Mithruns character.

The Canaries care for Mithrun is mostly well intentioned. They legitimately like him! But it is also kind of terrible at times? Most of their care is focused on the Bare Minimum that keeps him alive and his care and comfort isn't really considered because well...to them, he's not capable of understanding it anymore.

We know this because Kabru is assigned as his care taker and Lycion comments that his hair is shinier. This means even in the stressful survival situation of the dungeon with Kabrus terrible cooking and scavenged meals, he is physically healthier than he was with the canaries.

I think it's relevant Kabru was the one to care for Mithrun this way and the one eventually realize he can be capable of new desire because Kabru is intimately familiar with how elves treat trauma. Not only was he a traumatized child but I think the most important parallel here is actually Rin.

If you haven't read her section in the Adventurers Bible, Rin is also a sole survivor of a tragic event and was taken into elven custody. She is catatonic and deeply deeply traumatized. And the elves handle it *terribly*. She's treated as goods or as an animal and she's shown to be unresponsive and not able to speak. Her recovery is directly linked to her meeting Kabru when he's brought in to help her.

Rin and Mithrun are opposites in elven society. Rin is barely a person, Mithrun isn't only an elf, but a prestigious and wealthy one. But both are survivors of horrific circumstances that hurt their ability to care for themselves and perform daily activities. And for both, it's pretty clear that it was assumed that this would become their fixed state, one where care and gentleness was pointless, because they had lost the faculties to process it.

Anyway I guess I wonder if years later when Kabru hears Mithruns story and how his condition is incurable and thus denies him personhood he thought of his. I wonder how much more quickly Mithrun may have been able to adapt to his circumstances if he wasn't told he was "broken". To me at least, Mithrun was always able to react to new things and adapt, but if everyone in the world is acting like you're basically dead and unable to ever do anything than be a weapon again yeah why wouldn't you assume that. No, I don't think Mithrun will ever be back to his former self and have all his desires back but he is able to carve out space for himself so quickly with Kabru, compared to his extensive and leas effective initial recovery with the elves. Perhaps this too is an area where their lifespans hinder them as they assume 20 years is a totally normal recovery period so why would they need to try more.