#kind of got long lol but i guess the super tl;dr answer is like... i have some reasons but then also random feelings that are like

[zelandiangelo]

🦈 🏷️💌 for the fic ask game!! (o^▽^o) <3 

hiiiiiiiii! <333 thank you for asking hehe \o/ hope you're doing well!!

🦈 Which character is the toughest to write?

You know it's funny that you ask because getting into a character's head is actually one of my favorite things about writing! I usually don't have an awful lot of trouble with it unless I've started with an idea that I'm not as interested in as I thought.

So, there's probably been other times that I struggled but the one that I remember the best is Kaeya from Genshin LOL. I was never so super into Gempact but for a while I was playing it w my friends bc it was a Group Activity so I ended up writing a fair bit of fic just because I was so plugged into it. I stalled out on a fic from Kaeya POV that I was writing that I ended up wrapping up at what felt like it Could Be a stopping point and just posting what I had. The trouble with him, I think, is that he has this mysterious backstory that informs his character that's alluded to in events, objects around the world, etc, but I hadn't really gotten an understanding of that backstory. (I could have looked at the wiki I guess but I prefer to use the wiki to confirm stuff that I already knew or look up little bits of trivia; it doesn't feel right to learn everything about a character in a wiki review that might leave out important story or emotional context.)

THIS GOT LONG LOL tl;dr I was writing a lot of genshin fic even though i'm not really built to be a Gacha Lore Understander so i had some trouble with Kaeya!

🏷️ Is there a tag you like to search for when looking for fanfics to read?

>///<

i like sickfic hahaha;;;;;; if I'm being so real unless I get really extremely into something (eg. KNB or Yugioh) sickfic is the ONLY kind of fic I'll even read LOL. I've also written a lot of it myself, when I first got into fic writing I wrote it pretty much exclusively.

I didn't think this was gonna be a long answer but now i wanna talk about it LOL. I just think that when a character is ill (or injured tbh) the Vulnerability that it forces them into can be a really interesting trigger for changed character dynamics. You can have a standoffish or antagonistic character unwillingly in this position be treated gently, with kindness, and soften some of their relationships; alternatively, you can have their soft side come out if they're confronted with someone ELSE being vulnerable. You can have a character who tries to do Everything have to ask for help, you can have just plain fluff between characters with an established good relationship... it's even ok if characters act a bit out of character bc you can blame it on delirium LOL.

Essentially, unless you're getting really funky with it (which you can and it's fun!) a lot of sickfics follow a similar structure/set-up (character gets sick, character deals with being sick, other characters find out character is sick, they are now also dealing with it). Plot and structure is something that I still struggle with even now that I've stepped outside of writing sickfic exclusively, so at the time that I started writing, sickfic offered something of a baseline for me to write what I was really interested in (character dynamics) without having to think too much about the structure! Also it's fun haha >_< even though I've branched out I definitely still favor them quite a bit LOL

sorry for writing u a sickfic essay i am really Normal about it

💌 Is there a favorite trope you like to write?

OMG I WROTE ALL THAT ABOVE AND NOW IM LIKE WHAT DO I SAYYYYYYY I THINK THE ANSWERS ARE THE SAME LOL

let's see. Sickfic Good for the reasons outlined above. I enjoy writing polyamory quite a bit too (character dynamics are so fun!!) but I don't write it as frequently as I'd like bc not all characters are built for it and it can get a bit complex besides.

OH. OH OH OH. teachers/mentor figures. my favorite fic that i've ever written is shockingly not a sickfic: it's called I Accidentally Fell In Love With My Childhood Friend The King And Now My Students Are Also My Sons!? and it's for one of my most favorite animes ever, Oushitsu Kyoushi Haine (The Royal Tutor). (I thought the silly light novel title was funny LOL)

The entire premise of the show is just This Guy Is An Extremely Good Teacher For These Four Misunderstood Students which like. Is lab-grown to be like catnip to me RAAAAAHHHHHHH i've watched the show twice through and cried at the end both times. Anyway. The fic I wrote is technically a ship fic between the royal tutor himself (Heine) and the king (Viktor) who hired him to teach his sons (they get married in this fic hehe >w<), but the focus is really on Heine's relationships with his students, and how they handle their favorite (only) teacher getting married to their father.

I feel like these descriptions don't do the anime or my fic justice LOL all I can really say is that as someone who works with children the anime really touched me and it felt so permeated with genuine love and care for students who are left behind and for teachers who see those students and put in the work to help them. and as for my fic well. now that you've reminded me of it i think i will reread it SKJKDFJSDKFJ

I HOPE THESE PARAGRAPHS ARE OKAY THANK YOU FOR ASKING ME QUESTIONS I REALLY LIKED THESE! YOU ARE VERY COOL!

[dmclemblems]

I’m curious , why do dislike Sylvain /Claude; is it because of hopes /GW ?

oh nope! they were already a NOTP of mine for quite some time. it’s kind of one of those things where you’re like nah I don’t rly like this, but then over time the more you see it that feeling just grows? I don’t really consider them compatible and that was my initial feeling on it, but then I saw it get more and more popular and it was more and more frequently on my Twitter tl so I was exposed to more of it which had me thinking more often about why I wasn’t into it.

it’s kinda like, the more you see something and feel like you can’t avoid it, the more you dislike it when you already didn’t like it? I wouldn’t say it was literally shoved in my face since it was on my tl, it’s just kind of that vibe and it makes you like something less and less.

my original thoughts on it were that they wouldn’t work because Sylvain flirts and gets with people completely unattached. while it’s usually a thing with women, he drags that concern into his conversations with other people, like Felix, who take large issue with it and get upset/offended by it (and you could even argue that Felix has feelings for him, thus gets upset/offended when Sylvain won’t stop talking about picking up girls in front of him, thus leading him to become confrontational toward Sylvain so often).

I see Claude as someone who needs someone attached and who isn’t so loose toward relationships. to me he needs someone committed to him but also someone who can respect his boundaries that are caused by literal grown up with trauma. it’s pretty canon-set that Sylvain is only particularly loyal to his group of friends (not even really his own family, by which I mean father, mother, brother all, and ironically seems most sympathetic toward Miklan over the other two even in Houses), and he’s more interested in flings outside of his group of friends..

that’s not to say I think Sylvain is scum for that behavior because I do understand it and I understand why he behaves that way. I just don’t think his behavior would work with someone who needs a deeper connection and needs  relationship with security outside of his immediate friend group (i.e. he provides that for those people but not really anyone else). I’m sure there are fic writers who will write it that way for their own fics and that’s fine! when I start to like or dislike ships it’s just usually based on canon material and goes from there, with a few exceptions that start as crackships or discussions on possibilities through their canon selves, but the latter two I admit to when I express enjoyment of those ships.

if nothing else I feel like Hopes just kinda cemented it for me in seeing how much hatred Sylvain had for what was happening, because to me it says a lot that he feels that way. Sreng invades basically on the regular but he’s trying desperately to form peace with them and has no general hatred for them. he’s even on mutually joking terms with the commander we fight against in AG, but he expresses such a deep hatred for Claude/the Alliance (and I specify Claude bc it was essentially caused by his ideas, which were frequently met with disagreement and distaste by people in his immediate friend group and throughout his army, so the bulk of the issue falls to Claude). he’s not really on aggressive terms with Sreng. at the point we see, it looks more like Sylvain and Sreng, or at least the commander, are nearly identical to Holst and Nader. they fight over and over because their countries are always fighting, but they’re so used to each other that it almost feels like it’s just them sparring because the mood is too light to seem like an invasion. Sylvain has very little if any ill will toward Sreng, and yet... when it comes to the events in GW, it sounds to me like he might never, and probably won’t tbh, ever forgive what happened.

for me they seem so fundamentally incompatible. in GW, they basically turn up Claude’s “any means necessary” to eleven. basically, he’s willing to do shady things to do what he wants even if it makes him uncomfortable or he doesn’t really want to do it. Sylvain on the other hand is much more chivalrous (haha a whole Faerghus surprise right there, chivalry) and literally deathly loyal to his friends and will very literally die for them. Claude wouldn’t, in this timeline (or early into Houses) die for another person. again referencing Felix and Sylvain’s supports bc apparently Felix is good fodder to describe this lol, Felix gets angry that Sylvain does this regularly and carelessly. He hates that he doesn’t value his own life, but also that he’s prepared to die for others at all times and then just not be there anymore. I don’t think Sylvain could tolerate being with someone that would choose themselves over the people most important to them, which at a point in his life, Claude would have (maybe not late VW, say, but earlier on he would have, especially out of even just pure instinct from his childhood).

I don’t think under normal circumstances like in Houses that they’d outright hate each other, but I just don’t think they’re people who could find romance and stick with it. I don’t feel like their personalities would enable them to feel like they have a secure love or relationship.

for some reason there’s also just kind of this ick factor in it for me and idk why/what causes that. aside from the aspects of why I can’t really ship them myself, it’s kinda like, there’s that but also this weird feeling of “I really don’t like this when I see it” kind of thing? sort of like something you never liked but never totally knew why? in this case I know why I don’t like it, but I don’t know exactly where that ick feeling comes from that brings it into dislike territory. tbh I’ve always found it rly weird myself that I have such a strong dislike toward it. maybe there’s something within my reasons for not liking it that I fundamentally disagree with that makes the reaction negative. 

okay this might sound hella weird but hear me out

you ever looked at someone back in your school days if you’re no longer in school, or if you’re still in school have you ever looked at someone and just went “i do not like that person” THAT’S KINDA WHAT’S HAPPENING HERE NOW JFKSHGJGS like aside my actual reasons for “I can’t see this working”, I totally feel that in a passive way when I see the ship? it’s... a wild thing. I get where people are generally coming from who do ship it, but I guess it’s not my thing?

im sorry this was so long shfjsghjk

[waynedunlaptheorgandonor]

hey so “find me” dropped on premiere and i just watched it, so you know what that means??

it’s review time!

(super rambly as usual) spoilers under the cut

before i say anything, let me say, IT’S FINE, Y’ALL. as predicted. people are gonna be dramatic bc there are daryl/leah scenes, but like...we been knew? and some of them were rly important caryl-wise. (tbh, the episode was kind of boring and just a set-up for other stuff, lmfao)

okay, review:

opening credits, which i think most of us have already seen, were cute. obvi there was some weird tension with daryl that leads to the coming-to-a-head thing at the end, but their banter is still cute af

they went fishing and daryl’s reaction to carol was adorable, and there’s an important parallel later on, so bookmark this

similarly, there’s an important parallel to carol’s “the dead catch up to us eventually”/daryl’s “i ain’t gonna let it”, so bookmark that, too

dog is the instigator for the flashbacks, so if you wanna blame anyone, blame him. he races to the cabin, which for some reason daryl, who spent five years in this forest, seemed surprised to see? didn’t you literally map out that whole area, my dude? whatever

cue flashback!

i might have the scene order mixed up, but i think it starts with daryl being all sad by himself, and then dog as a puppy shows up and he’s like “!!! a dog!!!” which is v cute, and then he runs back off. we don’t meet leah yet

we see carol and daryl having a conversation while standing on opposite sides of a river for no reason except to probably symbolize distance or maybe covid, lol. the conversation basically goes:

carol: things are different

daryl: yeah

carol: how long are you gonna be out here?

daryl: -shrug emoji-

carol: i get why you’re out here, and i’d join you if things weren’t...

daryl: different

carol: yeah

daryl: yeah. anyway, it’s gonna rain, and also i’m having emotions, so ttyl

the end

at some point we see daryl sitting with an extremely unhappy face while it pours rain on him in the dark, and i want that as a reaction gif IMMEDIATELY 

also the rain destroys his “where in the world is rick grimes?” map, which makes him v upset and scream-y, and we get the idea that he might be going a bit bonkers being all alone looking for a dead (or, ig, kidnapped by helicopter) man

in present day carol finds the note, and is like “oh dunk, she lived here??” so she knew about leah, and daryl’s like, “i already told you everything,” and carol’s like, “no you didn’t,” so we go back to flashbacks (but i’m still not sure what parts carol didn’t already know?? whatever, it’s not that important)

i’m just gonna hit the highlights of the flashbacks bc they were not that thrilling:

first time daryl meets leah the dog leads him to her cabin, and leah ties him to a chair and holds a gun to his head being like, “what are you doing on my land?” bc apparently you can claim whole forests during the apocalypse, and daryl says very little, and eventually she lets him go

next time dog finds daryl and he brings her back and leah is like, “the dog likes you” and they’re kinda flirty, and then daryl says very little and leaves

next time daryl is surrounded by walkers and leah shows up and helps and they hide in a tree and are awkwardly close to each other and daryl cannot handle the close physical contact so when the walkers pass he says very little except to tell her to never come back again, lmfao

the next flashback is my favorite bc daryl just fucking

goes to leah’s cabin and throws a fish at the door???

i laughed for ten years

he throws a fucking fish and then stands there for a minute like “is she gonna notice that i gave her a fish??” like, no, dumbass, you didn’t even knock, you just threw a fucking fish at her fucking door, what is wrong with you??

no wonder it’s taken him and carol so long if he thinks throwing fish at people is a smooth move. boy has NO fucking game

anyway, leah gets him back by finding him and throwing the fish at his head, being like, “wtf, don’t throw fish on my porch?” which, fair, leah

IMPORTANT CARYL PARALLEL (from here on out known as “caryllels”) #1: so earlier i mentioned the carol fish thing, and apparently the same thing happened with leah, where she speared a fish on her first try and daryl was like “tf?” v blatant “we are supposed to be thinking about carol and daryl’s relationship during this scene” sort of thing

leah’s backstory is bland. had a family, they got eaten or disappeared or something. she, her adopted son, and dog’s mom got away, but the kid was bit, and died the same day dog was born, bc ig when god closes one door, he replaces your dead son with a puppy, or however the idiom goes

ONLY PART THAT GOT ME LEGIT EMOTIONAL: 

leah asked daryl who he lost, and he says, “my brother”

asklfdjaslfdjskl

god i miss rick

i hated rick for so long and now i miss him so much

but i digress

IMPORTANT CARYLLEL #2: leah and daryl have the same “the dead get you eventually”/”i ain’t gonna let it” conversation as caryl had earlier, only daryl is playing the role of carol in this scenario, so again we’re supposed to be comparing the two relationships. lemme get through the rest of the summary and then i’ll tell you my opinion on what that means

fuck what even happens next?

i have these out of order bc they were all the fucking same, but the two of them get closer, and there is the vaguest suggestion of sex ever. you literally only see daryl’s hand

then jump-cut to them sitting at the table being emo, ig bc daryl was gonna go back to look for rick for a bit, and leah is like “who do you belong with? your brother you won’t stop looking for? your family that you left? [side note: that seemed rather pointed, like, “hey hoe, you abandoned your family, that was kind of a dick move”] or me?” and he says he doesn’t know, and she’s like “yeah you do, now choose”

jump-cut to caryl scene where carol finds him at the river and says that she won’t be visiting as much, and daryl’s like “k” and they have a brief argument where daryl’s all snippy, like, “what? do you want my permission for you to move on with your life? i’m not still emo about the fact that you’re moving on with your life, and i also don’t think it’s contextually significant that every time you show up in my flashbacks you explicitly mention that you’re married and have a kid,” and carol is like, “bro, you need to Get Your Shit Together and come home”

jump-cut to daryl having what i’m assuming is an epiphany that carol/fam have all moved on while he was out being emo, and so he decides to go be with leah, except, plot twist! she’s gone. the picture of her and her son is gone, but dog is still there. daryl leaves the note, which says, “i belong with you, find me”

for those freaking out about the wording about the note, may i remind you that she specifically asked, “do you belong x, x, or with me?” so he was just answering the question

aaaaaand back to present day

carol is like, “what do you think happened to her?” and daryl is all -shrug emoji-, and then she’s like, “...do you think she might have just...you know...left?” and daryl gets rull offended, which was kind of funny

(she probably just left, bud)

carol tells daryl to stop thinking that when people leave it’s bc of him, and connie’s name gets thrown into the mix, and daryl gets a “oh here we fucking go” look on his face, and it sets him off

he said basically what we were already spoiled for. “you just want to run, you don’t know when to stop, i shouldn’t have taken you off the boat bc you still just want to run” etc

and carol looks fucking HEARTBROKEN, which hurt me, and she goes into the other room and we end the episode with daryl staring forlornly out of the window 

the end

okay

so quick analysis

i think the significance of this episode is supposed to be so we have an understanding of why daryl is suddenly so !teamfamily, and !teamfuture, and how badly he wants carol to be there with him. at one point, one of them even says, “this isn’t about leah, or connie,” or anyone but the two of them. the title “find me” feels significant, bc the whole episode is daryl grappling with where he’s supposed to go, and what his purpose is, and by the end, he says to carol, “i know where i belong,” (implying, with her and the fam), pulling us full-circle. in the first flashback onward he is lost, but by the end he is found -cue amazing grace-

daryl and leah were flirty, but to me it felt very much like something that was just being used as daryl character development. we barely got anything that juicy between the two of them (except the fish throwing thing, that was amazing), and i still don’t think that it would make any sense, regardless of the showrunner, to pair daryl up with some rando after having so many other choices that people would have preferred. i don’t think we’re meant to #endgame ship it, so much as we are supposed to be like, “oh, ok, daryl learned the power of family and stability and leveled up, -you know what that is? growth gif-” as a result, i literally have no idea what leah’s role is gonna be in s11, but i don’t think it’ll be a huge plot point

so now we firmly know where daryl stands. he is all about moving forward, not looking back, and doing the best he can, and he’s frustrated bc when he took carol off the boat he wanted her to be in the same place as him so that they could grow together, but she wasn’t and isn’t there yet

so my guess is that what’s next for carol’s storyline is her reaching that same zen-level daryl’s at

once they’re both there, then they get to ride off into the sunset and make passionate love under the moon casting shadows over the vast desert wasteland 

whew

anyway

tl;dr: idk, episode was fine, if not kinda boring. lots of caryllels. can i go back to writing my vietnam war au now? 

the end

(stay hype, stan kang, and get daryl to call carol sweetheart 2k21),

-diz

[danieyells]

Yo Danie, I wonder if you've got any ideas on this; in TAS, transients either get summoned to Tokyo because the app reaches out and makes pacts on people's behalfs with willing familiars, or they get summoned by having, like, a wish of some kind and they end up stumbling through a portal to Tokyo to see that wish fulfilled, right? And then they either get unsummoned, or stick around for whatever reason?

Here's the thing; when they get unsummoned, do they go home? The Red Oni in chapter 1 seems pretty convinced that he's going to die unless you make a Summoning pact with him, but Salomon says later that Shiro's familiar whose connection you cut will just end up going home. Further to that, Macan says about Oniwaka when he's vanishing into light that he's going back to his home world, and then when his strength recovers he'll pop right back in.

The thing is though, that there's a remark early on that Stray Transients, who are Transients without a Summoning bond by the game's definition if I'm remembering right, can only maintain themselves for a while by sustaining themselves on the land's energy. Even further, the actual Housamo wiki says that they'll be unsummoned from the game if they don't find a way to sustain themselves, usually by getting into a pact. Guilds I believe are also noted to be one way around this. Does that mean that if you just wait outside of a Pact, you'll go home? Or would you pop back in again after a bit, essentially trapped in Tokyo?

ALSO ALSO, Bathym says that, though this only applies to "his hella demonic self", demons need tons of emotional energy directed at them to survive, and a pact is the most efficient way to get energy.

But we don't see Sitri in a Guild or a Pact (unless you Pact him, but I'm pretty sure that's non-canon), and Sitri also has a family. They're all demons one would presume, so why does he not seem to need anything like Bathym does? We can derive from this that Bathym was either speaking about himself, and only himself, lying to try and get the Protagonist to make a pact with him, or that Sitri has a Pact he isn't chatting to anybody about, right?

HOWEVER. In chapter 4, we see that the Aoyama guild provides supplies for the enormous number of Stray Transients who have nothing and no prospects, but that those strays are unlikely to be guild members. Further to that, she mentions that the ninjas and many other strays are like, literally treated as the dregs of society. So, how come they're still around? Surely the Stray Transient population should be either dwindling all the time, or in constant flux? But I'm pretty sure there's a notable overpopulation issue in canon because of the sheer number of Transients! Not to mention, if they're treated like dirt and killed and traded, you'd think they'd just...WANT to leave, right? So they could just wait until their connection ran out.

AND ALSO, it's noted in the backstory that Transients started pouring through the gates one day in history, and that this generation has never lived in a Tokyo without walls, but the previous generation therefore presumably did; that means like, it's been at least 2 decades, possibly 3. How long could those Transients have stuck around without a pact going by the lore?

Lastly, the Protagonist has the power to rend Transients connections to Tokyo, canonically. How then, do those Transients come back if they've had their connection severed? And shouldn't the Protagonist offer to go to the slums and ask if anybody would like to go back to their homeworld if that were the case? Or will everyone literally just rebound to Tokyo completely?

Further to that, when people fulfil their wish, do they go home? When they've played their Role out completely, is that the end of their tenure in Tokyo?

Basically, I think the whole system is a little underexplained and I've seen you post thoughts here on stuff, so I was wondering as to what you'd make of it all! Am I missing something?

. . .holy shit anon this is an essay innit lol not that i'm complaining, I just was not expecting it when I saw the notification after I woke up. For the record I saw this at. . .7am or so. It is now 11:55 when I'm finishing it. HYPERFOCUS GO BRRRRRRRRR. OKAY LET'S SEE IF I'VE GOT SOME THOUGHTS FOR YOU.

DISCLAIMER: I'VE BEEN PLAYING THIS GAME FOR LITTLE OVER A MONTH AND I FEEL LIKE I HAVE FAR FROM ALL OF THE DETAILS. I haven't read three of the translated past events yet and I haven't read most of the untranslated content(including Chapter 11 although I'm super tempted you don't even know.) These are just my understandings of things, I suppose.

ALSO IDK HOW FAR YOU ARE IN THE STORY. . .I mean you mention them being sold so you're probably up to Chapter 10 at least since that's where we learn about Daikoku selling transients because it gets him off I guess, although they also could have mentioned it some other time and I just forgot lol BUT. YEAH PROBABLY GONNA MENTION SPOILERS.

TL;DR:

Red Oni: summoned to Tokyo without a pact. When rended from the land would disappear, possibly die. Likely this is because of whatever conditions are happening where they came from or having had already been dead when summoned. Possibly also just a false belief because they didn't know well what was going on to begin with. Possibly also just part of the game plan originally but retconned by the devs then never rewritten.

D-Evils: Shiro's Rule is Ressurection which causes an exception when clashing with Rending. The world of the Old Ones is gone, the D-Evils are familiars created by/living in Shiro's book. Entities, abilities, and artifacts from Old Ones are able to be used outside of the app/battle zones, so D-Evils can exist if Shiro just summons them. D-Evils don't go away when rended because they're part of Old Ones and Old Ones is gone--if they go away they return to Shiro's artifact where they came from. They also donct go away because rending them causes an Exception.

Oniwaka; Zabaniyya; Ophion: rended from EXCEPTIONS not from the world. Were likely sent back in order to resolve the exception after being rended and to recover the energy that sustained their physical forms in the first place, not because they had no means of being sustained in Tokyo. Returned due to pacts with MC, positions in Guild, unfulfilled pact, etc once their energy to maintain physical form returned.

Stray Transients: likely have outstanding pacts and thus do not disappear over time. However, some don't and those proper strays will likely return home after an amount of time, but we don't know how long. Alp has been in Tokyo for a few months but isn't disappearing despite arriving because he wanted to be loved/popular. So unattached transients stay around longer than a few months. They may also be attached to the school they were initially meant to go to to be monitored, or someone who works there. They may not want to go home due to poor conditions, being dead, lacking a home or people to return to, etc. Remember, even in real life people immigrate to places that treat them poorly--but that's because even that and the potential in those places is likely better to them than whatever they're running away from. If the transient arrived in distress it's because they wanted to be away from wherever they started out or because they desperately needed something. This new opportunity may be what they need--to find someone they lost, to find an answer, to simply start life over fresh. Even if they're being abused, looked down on, they may simply be happy to be alive. If they want to go home, they hopefully just have to wait--but you have to live if you wanna get home, don't you? Best to survive as well as you can.

Stray Transient Population: constantly increasing to sustain/grow the Game for the World Representatives. The overpopulation is deliberate. They do not care about the wellbeing of these people, they only want to create a stadium to fight in, and for that they need more transients and app users than humans not using the app in Tokyo.

Sitri: Aside from forming a pact with him, Sitri's Sacred Artifact is his wings/are his feathers, which cause people to fall in love with someone who touched them after the feathers that had been touched are attached to a second party. Sitri feeds off of the love directed to him. This is troublesome for him more often than not, but I'm pretty sure that's how he gets the emotions he needs to eat if not via pact.

Being around from the start?: The gates appeared in 1999--it's been at least 20 years, assuming the game takes place anywhere near the present year. Off the top of my head we don't know if any stray transients have stuck around for extended periods. How long someone's been in Tokyo rarely comes up. We know Yule has been in Tokyo for a few years because he went to middle(elementary? Idr) school with Ryota. Sitri is similar with Kengo. As such, given Sitri and Yule aren't in guilds as far as we're aware, assuming being attached to a school doesn't make one connected to Tokyo, we can assume they're stray transients. This means that they'd been here for years, as strays. Given we know stray transients disappear eventually, it's safe to assume that there have been stray transients who disappeared and went home. Assuming it isn't different per individual, stray transients can stay in Tokyo for several months to several years, but to my awareness there's no set number.

Going Home: in order to go home a transient who's been summoned must fulfil their summoner/pacted humancs desire. Surtr, Azathoth, and Babalon all disappear after fulfilling Arc's desire for them to be their family, leaving behind their sacred artifacts which contain their memories until they disappeared. So, yes, fulfilling the desire entrusted to a transient/playing out their role will cause them to fulfil the conditions of their pact, causing them to disappear. However, we don't know what happens when they do. Thus far, those three haven't come back despite the reset occurring. Arc was able to summon their artifacts but otherwise could not reach them. Their artifacts were taken by Breke who was able to channel the memories within and allow Arc to communicate with Azathoth's memories.

SLIGHTLY MORE FULL VERSION WITH A COUPLE SCREENSHOTS

(read the tl;dr anyway because I probably remembered things while Inwas writing it that I didn't remember to put in the 'full' version lol I WROTE MOST OF THE LONG ONE, WROTE OUT THE TL;DR, THEN FINISHED THE LONG ONE SO. PROBABLY WANNA READ BOTH.)

Transients arrive in Tokyo either by being summoned, by being summoned ACCIDENTALLY(someone wishes to have friends/meet someone new, etc), by being pulled in by the Rainbow Of Transient Light randomly(?) sucking them up when they're in distress/have a wish to fulfil, or some combination of those.

In Macan's character quest, MC and Macan learn that the one who technically summoned Macan was MC. The same thing happens in I think Xolotl's. They end up going to the collided past--or a collided memory?--and when past!Macan is in distress over being alone, MC approaches him and says they're there for him, however past!Macan can only hear them, not see them. He calms down and asks if they're searching for him and says he's going to find them--which causes him to disappear and be summoned to Tokyo in search of this person who wanted to be by his side. Macan realizes that's exactly what happened to him--he heard a voice saying that they were with him and, in his desire to no longer be alone, the transient light came along and took him.

(it's written as 'Magan' in Japanese hence why it's written that way here--this was likely translated before his English name was given.) (Such a request, perhaps, means that he's with MC until he's dismissed by them specifically.)

Xolotl was running from being sacrificed to Tezcatlipoca and MC and future!Xolotl protected him. Seeing himself be weak and seeing himself be strong enough to try and protect MC and seeing MC who refused to leave him and hearing what they had to say, he desired the strength to live with the people he loves and for there to not be sacrifices again. He may not have gone to Tokyo if he hadn't realized that desire through meeting himself and MC. In fact, he may not have survived at all(though maybe Quetzalcoatl would've protected him if not collided MC and present!Xolotl.)

SO. If you recall correctly, MC is implied to be a transient as well. There's also the possibility that they're not, and simply are some poor sob the Game shoved 23+ memories in at once, broke the memories of the host in the proccess, and thus we have MC coming to in a park confused about everything but their own name(of course if that were the case surely someone in Tokyo would recognize them beyond their being the trophy/exile from their home world, so it's not likely.) Lil Salomon says that as a summoned transient they can only go home if they find and fulfil the wishes of their summoner. However they neither know who or where their summoner is.

Transients can appear simply due to someone's desire for companionship. But they don't necessarily appear atop that person, hence not knowing their summoner. They just hear a voice, may not even hear exactly what's being said or asked for, and the light picks them up and drops them off with no further info or ceremony. So if someone is pulled into Tokyo this way they have a summoner even if they don't know it--even if the summoner themself doesn't know. So they won't just disappear over time unless that person unwills what willed them there or they die or something. Plus we don't know how long stray transients stick around if they have no pact/summoner--we just know that they disappear eventually. It's more than a few months, because Alp showed up a few months ago and hasn't disappeared yet.

Several characters are attached to guilds which may keep them from being Strays. However some, to our awareness, have neither summoner/master nor guild. At most they may be attached to schools. Sitri, as you mentioned, is one of them, as is Yule--whom Shiro refers to as a stray transient he sees every year without being corrected(although the situation wasn't exactly a good time to clarify that lol.)

Both of them have been in Tokyo for years without disappearing--and the app is a kind of but not super recent creation, so guilds likely didn't sustain them this whole time. Neither have disappeared. Of course someone may have summoned them or they may be part of guilds without it being stated or perhaps being in a school has the same effect as being in a guild. But we don't know that for sure, either.

(Japanese middle school is from 12-15 years old. Kengo's a second year High School student now, so 16-17 years old. Sitri was a first year while Kengo was a third year, so there's two grades between them. Sitri's been in Tokyo at least 2 years. I believe he mentions seeing Lucifuge in a magazine in Ghenna so he hasn't been here his whole life either. So a few years, but not 15.)

Transients that disappear don't have pacts but transients that come back probably do/have formed pacts/attachments to the world. Remember, Oniwaka, Zabaniyya, and Ophion say to call on them if you need them. They're attached to the player now, perhaps having formed a pact incidentally, assuming the situation that brought them there in the first place isn't still in effect(or they're not still bound by, say, their guild.)

Also, much like in real life, sometimes whatever is home is worse than the horrific things you deal with wherever you immigrate to. Or perhaps you've formed attachments somewhere you've arrived and are willing to endure suffering for them. It's rarely as simple as "we're suffering, we wanna go back to where we came from." Especially since transients likely arrived due to distress or wanting to be anywhere else but home. Some of their worlds don't exist anymore(Old Ones) or are collapsing(Yggdrasil; El Dorado.) Some people have no one and nothing back home and this is a new start for them, even if the start is bad. Also they could be waiting until they go home automatically, but what're you gonna do while you wait? Probably live your life as best you can. If you're gojna be stuck somewherefor a few months you may as well make yourself at home.

So why doesn't MC go around rending people themself?

Well, for starters, they're made to be a high school student most of the day. Where would they find the time lol. Second they're a bit busy trying to save the world and all. . .and if some teenager wandered up to you and said they could get you home if you had an app battle with them, would you really believe that when you've been told your best bet is to either find your summoner or wait out your incidental connection to the world? Sounds like a kid trying to stir up trouble, and not all transients have the app anyway. I mean really would you expect the local homeless population to have smartphones? Probably not.

Furthermore. Spoiler alert

This system of the game, the gates, the transients, it's no accident. It's intentional. Tokyo is the setting for this inter-world competition to prove which world is strongest or something to that effect--and the winner gets MC, the host of the exiles and perhaps some kind of powerful system. Of course what they do with MC is up to them. The Warmongers want to keep the game going so they can fight the powerful MV over and over again forever. We don't know what the Invaders want yet afaik but based on the name I'd assume they want to use MC as a super soldier to conquer other worlds. And the Rule Makers want to use MC to support one of their own worlds as its System. /smacks MC on the back) this baby can hold SO MANY rules and roles! Hold up a whole damn world apparently!!

So think of it this way. . .they could go around rending everyone until the transient light returns them home or to the deaths they desire. . .but would the World Representatives really allow that? They'd just keep bringing in transients. They need to fill Tokyo with them--until transients and app users outnumber the humans naturally belonging to Tokyo--so they can have their little contest.

MC alone would never be able to pull off sending everyone home as long as the Game is running. The worlds would not allow their contest to be ruined.

As for who goes where and does what when unsummoned. The Red Oni hadn't been there long. And perhaps wasn't summoned in the first place, nor had anyone likely explained much to them for that arrival. Also if you felt yourself disappearing, felt your connection to this world just torn off and uprooted and fading away, even if you knew better you'd probably think you're dying. That'd be scary. You'd want to avoid it.

Of course it's also possible the oni was dead or dying to begin with and their connection being severed would send them back to death--like Shino, who'd died long ago in the Land of Wa and when he died in Tokyo he went back to being dead.

The D-Evils don't have anywhere to go back to besides Shiro's book. The world of the Old Ones is gone. As such "home" for them is back with Shiro--and remember, their rules clash anyway. Rending and Ressurection don't mix. MC couldn't rend the D-Evils from Shiro properly because it causes an Exception. At best rending them will send them back to the book until Shiro summons them again. Plus, entities from Old Ones can use their powers without the use of the app--including those with Old Ones artifacts. Shiro can summon the D-Evils at any time, even outside of an app battle--so to send them 'home' doesn't really send them anywhere but back to Shiro since they both have no home to return to and were summoned to exist in Tokyo.

Demons needing to recieve emotions seems to be more of a feeding thing than a transient connection one afair. Like Alp eating dreams--he'll die if he doesn't. It's like "I need to external feelings or I'll starve" not "I need external feelings or I go back to Ghenna." Sitri likely survived thanks to his feathers--his sacred artifact which cause people they attach to to fall in love with whoever touched them previously--causing a constant stream of love towards him as he needs it. As such he doesn't need to have a pact to live, he only needs to make people fall for him to absorb that feeling and then take his feathers back to stop eating.

The canon-ness of MC making pacts with everyone is perhaps debateable. However events, character quests, special quests, etc have characters refer to Mc as Master or Summoner. And the story can sometimes reference events and such(see: meeting characters in events before they're part of the main story, meeting them in the main story, and being able to go "didn't I meet you in [season/holiday]?" And they go "yeah, we did! It's nice to see you again!" So technically events and the like are as canon as you make them. Also having a pact doesn't mean that person can't be your enemy or can't hurt you or is fully at your command, which means that it doesn't necessarily not make sense that characters can be in pacts with/summoned by the player while still being against them. MC likely has the ability to form pacts easily/unconsciously.

This is likely(and this part is speculation!) because of MC's role as the Wanderer--as the host of the Exiles of the many worlds, they're a system in and of themself(or they'e able to be one.) As such attachments to them are like individuals having 'faith' in them, the way Systems sustain worlds. Especially those who had some relationship with or attachment to an Exile they host. This may also cause a pseudo pact with people they meet and get attached to(and are attached to them in turn, not necessarily in a positive way)--like people believing in a faith. The attachment to them, love for them, hate of them, fear of them, is a sort of belief that causes them to be able to stay in Tokyo longer because they are now unwittingly part of MC's system. After all MC is a transient and transients, as far as I recall/understand, don't summon other transients to Tokyo, they only summon artifacts because bringing a whole person and their memories requires a strong means to bind them. Transients' connections are already dependent on someone/something else--which is already taxing as a pregnancy--and that'd be hard for them unless they were born into Tokyo.

In cases like Oniwaka and Zabaniyya and Ophion, they likely needed to disappear temporarily in order to resolve the Exception on top of regaining energy to sustain physical forms in another world. Think of it like closing a program on your computer. If the program clashed with another and an exception occurs you close the one of lesser importance. You can then maybe open it again once things have cooled down with your proccesser and it can handle them at the same time--thus, they come back to Tokyo even after being dismissed by fixing the exception.

So they pop back in because they're still bound to Tokyo. MC only rended them from the exception, not from the world itself. But transients who truly have no connection will go back and stay until summoned again. . . .

(Now that I think about it when someone fulfils the reason they were summoned to Tokyo they disappear and seem to disappear for good. We don't know if they die or what. They've been eliminated from the game. This happens with Surtr, Babalon, and Azathoth. After they successfully, properly became like Arc's family and that desire was considered fulfilled the pact was complete and they disappeared, leaving behind their artifacts.

Red Oni may have been summoned to be a tutorial for the player. But also a tutorial for the player character. Red Oni thus would go away completely after fulfilling that desire of whoever summoned them, thus giving them their fear they'd die because they'd served their purpose.

I just happened to remember/consider that lol ANYWAY.)

Basically it's a bit underexplained I agree.

But that's because you, as the player, as the MC, aren't supposed to know everything that's going on. You're supposed to learn as you go while also being denied information by the Powers That Be. You don't have your memories, you don't know what's going on here until you see/experience/hear about it. It's part of the immersive understanding/storytelling proccess. The characters don't tell you how things work because they only barely understand it themselves--and then when they learn 'this isn't just a game, this isn't just coincidence, there's something greater happening here' everything they know gets thrown into question. The people who do understand it aren't going to tell you much because they don't want you to ruin their game. You're just the final boss and the trophy to be won--and possibly the system upon which the game resides, resetting every time you die so you can struggle to be won someday.

You "can't win."

So you don't need to know how it works.

That doesn't stop you or anyone else from trying to find out, though, nor does it stop you from trying to change it.

. . .I hope that helped a bit! 8'D I don't think you missed much, really. You're right in that it's underexplained but That's Storytelling, Baby!

[maniacalmagician]

EVERHOOD: Pinocchio in Psychedelic Purgatory: the Rock Opera Adventure. OR: I walked backwards into hell, and felt euphoria as I became privvy to the Divine Truths

Hello tumblr people. I’ve been Away. I played a game recently and I wanted to talk about it.   damnit i really wanted to put pictures into this mini essay. ive been away from this garbage site for too long, i dont know how to do it lol.  ok anyway    First, I want to say to the developers and anyone else that this has quickly become one of my all time favorite games. Currently writing I have personally never felt a greater emotional attachment to an experience with a piece of software. Perhaps it is the extreme idiosyncratic nature of it, perhaps it is the deeply intriguing storyline, mostly however it is a combination of those in addition to some of the most outstanding psychedelic visuals I have ever seen, particularly in the finale sequence, and a killer soundtrack that combines many genres but focuses mostly to being as bangers as possible. I will be upfront and say this game comes with a boatload of trigger warnings, and thus the aforementioned idiosyncratic nature of it may not appeal to everyone, however I feel it necessary to indicate potential content warnings here as I would hate for people to be triggered: epilepsy is the big one, I myself have mild stutter based epilepsy and it didn't cause health problems or anything but my case is not universal. Anyway. That is a hard warning on epilepsy. I do it because The Incredibles 2 did not, lmao (that's an example of the kind of visuals that trigger me personally. An aside ) Other things include (spoilers): arachnophobia, misophonia (screeches, unsettling sounds), themes of death, immortality, suicide. Some game mechanics are not immediately intuitive and puzzles require some pretty clever but sometimes obtuse solutions. Direction is not always super clear either. People have complained of performance issues but I am leaving this review after playing the switch port, which played smoothly other than some awkwardly long loading times here and there. What I have played of PC so far runs smooth but as of writing, performance for me was fine (my pc is a lowend budget build). There is a difficulty to it. Even playing on easier modes, it can be quite unforgiving. If you're a fan of hard games (I am but I suck at them) and rhythm games (this is, uh, Not? That? Almost functions as half walking sim, half rhythm Game, dodgy shoot em up kinda feels. Truly unique gameplay I think. Constantly switches things up, too. But yes I also adore rhythm games, and yes i also do suck at those too.), half of it is that. The devs troll you with puzzles. It's truly a wild experience as it advertises, one of a kind. And yet, however.... This game wears, much like its heart,, its references, on its sleeve. If you are not into that kind of thing, you will probably be annoyed by this game. It also loves to delv into meta, as many puzzles and interactions are references to the UI of the game itself. Personally, I'm not wild about meta but I appreciate the ernestness here, so I'm willing to roll with whatever this game throws at me because every turn feels unexpected, fresh, funky, somber, and wildly intelligent, with boldly sincere ludonarrative choices, script and art direction. If you like Geno from super Mario Brothers, which, guess what, narrator here LOVES Geno from Super Mario Brothers, this is functionally the game you've always wanted that Nintendo could never make because Square has held Geno hostage in some kind of underground torture facility since 1995. Turns out they were rather right to do so, because when that puppet is out serving a higher authroity, he can be quite dangerous. Narrarively it borrows much from its sources but I would argue there's proof the writers have spent time thinking about the implications of their source materials worlds, and that reflection casts itself back to create this, experience that is wholly unique even if we know Red is Geno and "Gaster" (who was based on Uboa from Yume Nikki or princess mononokes forest spirits), and some kind of disco Marceline character who changes their identity frequently, skeleton brothers- well undead brothers, really - We have to remember in the creation and consumption of media sometimes, influences and archetypes are ever present and Everhood almost itself is a realm that would indulge in the idea of self referential material. It makes for this very Jungian experience of friendly archetypes we're familiar with, which works well with this setting of an immortal realm. Thats not to say the personalities we do meet aren't expounded upon - they are, heavily, and become uniquely their own. (Spoiler) if my theory is to be believed this world is a purgatory where people have made their own artificial vessels and as time has made them bored (though some seem to be having a good time) while typical strains of the Pinocchio myth are thrown in about questions of identity and death - and probably even more so towards Timothy Learys concept of the Ego Death, or the return to the collective soup of unconcious being. Undertale will probably always be a reccomendation even by its own reference to it so comparisons to it will be littered through here. It feels like the developers were emboldened by Toby Foxs spirit in game development (his creative energy is rather infectious) and shared many similar ideas, but this feels far more aimed towards a maturer audience (references to the things I mentioned in the trigger warning list) and focused on achieving this feeling that its predecesors have as well. Yume nikki. Lisa. Earthbound. Toby's games. super Mario rpg in its humor, Cat Soup in its psychedellic depressive vibes, all this cool indie cult classicy kinda mash up soup.  bizarre antics and then these characters who have surprising depth the further you go. It has been 6 years since Undertale came out, and the developers for Everhood have called a lot of the "what ifs" that fans of that game ask, an answer in their own game. (What if No Mercy was forced, for example? What if going against destiny is the wrong thing to do? Why is Death such a Bad Thing? etc!) And the further along you progress, the smarter the story gets, the more complex the narrative threads and characters. This game knows how to write compelling literature and that wasn't an element I expecting but god am I so glad for it. Literally my pea brain saw Red's design flipping around some frets on a streamers videocapture (shoutout to based fellow tampa native Charles White, thank you for being witty and having good taste and your Floridian comisery.) one night and went "oh i like." But the experience I got in exchange was, so, so much more than that (but the tetris effect won't let that image disappear from my eyelids quite yet haha.) I hear there are multiple endings and one requires a 3 hour long trek. I'm not done with the game at the time of reviewing. You bet your sweet ass I am going to find out the Ultimate Truth. I found a way to deal with some of the bullshit in other games, I may not be great at games but I want to see whatever imagery these guys put on screen so it compels me to seek out all the alternative routes. I am going to be following these developers projects very closely. If this is their debut, their next project will be ... ... I would hate to force expectations, like if you just made a magnum opus like this it'd be perfectly alright to retire, but I just once again want to say thank you to the developers for putting your heart on display for the world to see. I see it. I have dealt with struggles similar to the ones in the stories this game articulates about anxiety and depression, existentialism and dread, dissociation and all the heavy themes that were risky to include narratively - I'm certaintly glad you took the risks you did. May update this review as I get further along the story but yeah. Tl;dr: haha pinocchio myth done well make brain go brrr. 9.99999999999998/10. I am taking an infitisimal fraction of a point off because of the ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ spider in the monster maze. that thing was abhorrent, but I won't let it deter anyone else who wants to play.

[kinetic-elaboration]

100 Days of Writing: Day Eighty

Only took a couple days off this time, not two weeks--pretty good!

This project is courtesy of @the-wip-project and I’m also tagging my fellow participants @she-who-the-river-could-not-hold, @hopskipaway, @thelittlefanpire, @easilydistractedbyfanfic, @dylanobrienisbatman, and @fontainebleau22. 

Day 78: Fanfic or original, which fandoms/genres do you like to write?

I think I’m pretty diverse in my genre preferences, at least in terms of “fanfic genres.” I’ve written fluff, angst, canon-verse, modern AU (adult/college/high school). I’ve written horror. The nature of the fandoms I’ve been in means that I’ve written sci fi. I’ve tried a little bit of adventure-type stories (at least if you define ‘adventure’ broadly enough lol) and some supernatural-type stories, also. I even wrote a Western (thanks Troped), which was a lot of fun!

I have been trying to expand myself more the last couple years. I’ve been in my current fandom for a LONG time, and I’ve written a lot of fairly typical romance-centric stories within it. That was starting to bore me. Funnily enough, my creative goal for 2020 was “be weirder”—but then…everything happened… and I could barely write at all, so the goal switched to ‘write whatever you can and whatever feels good.’ Then at some point I adjusted course to wanting to finish my WIPs and old projects, not specifically with an intent to settle my accounts before leaving the fandom but… just for the clarity of it. That goal aside, though, I am trying to push myself to write things I haven’t written before and to make more unusual and bolder choices.

I know that the total number of genres out there is way greater than the number of genres I’ve even dabbled in. But I think I’m pretty varied, again, as far as the styles/genres/plot-types that tend to be common in fandom spaces go.

(The way I answered this makes Day 79 impossible to answer, so I’ll just be skipping that one. Also if you haven’t noticed I’ve been skipping all the ‘homework’ questions. My to-do list is long enough already!)

*

Day 80: How do you feel about your old works? And bonus homework: say something nice about past-writer-you.

I feel pretty good about them! Roughly speaking, I’m generally proudest of my recent works, or at least my recent faves, and also proud of my older work, the stories I don’t feel much attachment to anymore. About those I can at least say ‘wow, this is really good for someone X age,’ and even sometimes ‘yeah, this is just really nice!’ without any qualifiers. The works that fall in between those two categories I am harsher on. By that I mean, those stories that were written long enough ago that I can see how I’ve improved, but not so long ago that I don’t feel attached to that person anymore, where I still feel responsible, as it were, for the errors or rough spots in them. I’m especially harsh on stories that USED to be my favorites, for whatever reason. Even then, I’m talking about being more nitpicky, not about despising the stories or wishing I hadn’t written them or wanting to take them down.

All of this is just the general pattern of my thoughts. I have specific works that I think are bad, or at least kind of embarrassing or silly, works I can’t personally stand to re-read. But it’s a question of scale. I’ve been posting online since 2006 and have over 200 works on AO3. About the ones I don’t personally like, I think, ‘well if someone else reads it and likes it, it’s worth the story existing and existing in public.’

Plus the super-SUPER embarrassing stuff, the late elementary/early middle school original novellas, the early fandom stuff, almost everything I wrote in high school even (I’m the class of ’07) is only on my computer and on various back up drives.

I guess the tl;dr of it is that I’m proud of my writing overall, even if my exact opinions about specific stories, fandom experiences, or eras might vary. I think I’ve always had some kinda talent! It’s good that I’ve changed and grown, and hopefully improved, but I still feel fondness for my early writing experiences.

*

A Writing Update

Since I haven’t done one of these in a while…

I’ve finished my Troped fic, which took over my brain for longer than intended, and done a first editing read-through. There’s one scene with some VERY rough bits that will need to be worked on more, and since some of my read-through was a bit… quick, because I just got excited to read ahead and didn’t think as critically as I should, I think I should do another full start-to-finish read. I don’t want to forecast too specifically when it might be up, which would just make it even LESS anonymous, but I can say pretty confidently that it WILL be eligible for the competition.

So I’m pretty excited for that. I’m not sure what I’ll turn to next. What I probably should do is switch to autumn mode—I have a pretty big list of stuff I want to write this fall, although so far I’m not inspired at all because it’s still way too hot! So I think my first task this weekend is going to be to figure out where my focus should turn next.

[untold--stories]

WIP Questions!

@nintendonianrose​ Made a list, which I’ll reblog as soon as I’ve answeren them :D I’m gonna roll a die to decide which WIP to talk about. (1 for FM, 2 for Rainbow, 3 for Changes, 4 for my shifter gals whose ‘verse will get a name someday.)

When did you first come up with the idea for your story? Die says: 4, Shifter Gals. Well, I stumbled upon the Bloodlust Anthology, a WLW Shapeshifter zine; I applied, got in, and wrote them as my piece. And since I love them dearly, I want to make more stories with them.

Did anything inspire it? Die says: 2, Rainbow. Hm... Soulmate AUs, I guess? I’d seen a bunch of posts on Tumblr about it, with stuff like “Soulmate AU where everyone has a black spot where their soulmate touches them for the first time, and when they do, the spot turns rainbow.” And then I kinda just. Expanded on it.

Is there anyone who inspires you right now? It can be authors, other writeblrs etc Specifically for writing? Hm, not really, I think? If it’s just in general rather than for writing, Adrienn Flores from Pokémon Reborn, a (very dark, very hard) Pokémon Fangame, for reasons that’d be game spoilers if I mentioned them here.

Why are you telling this story? Die says: 1, Finding Magic (Which is good bc idk if I’d have an answer for the others). The whole Tales of Two Worlds, and tbh much of my writing, is kinda because I want to show people new worlds. I’ve made this one, and I want to share it with others; I want them to see the dragons flying overhead as clearly as I can, picture a unicorn napping by a campfire, see wondrous magic alongside the main characters. Show folks things they couldn’t see otherwise because they don’t exist. (TL;DR: Bc I like Escapism)

Why do you think people should read your story? 4, Shifter Gals. Well, there’s a lesbian couple, one of them is trans, and they’re very much in love with each other, which I’d say is a nice starting point. The zine in particular also because the proceeds go to a charity for endangered animals, so buying it nets you awesome content by a variety of artists and authors as well as helping save animal species.

Who is the character you’re most comfortable writing for? 2, Rainbow. Good question; judging by the amount I’ve written for them so far, I guess Quinn the werewolf, though idk why. One would think it’d be Sláine, the slightly socially awkward agender fairy author considering how much ze and I have in common, but surprisingly, he’s one of the hardest to write.

What are your main characters goals and what spurs them on to achieve their goal? 4, Shifter Gals. In the zine fic? Ira wants to free Lupita from hunters. Lupita wants to not be captured by hunters anymore. That bit is... Fairly straightforward. On a bigger scale, I’d say Ira very, very much wants to protect Lupita (for the record: Lupita is a werejaguar, very tall, and super strong. Ira is a weredegu - Still way stronger than a human in her battle form, but absolutely no match for Lupita), both bc they’re in love and because Ira’s past hasn’t exactly been nice to her loved ones, and she’s scared of losing Lupita, too. Lupita, meanwhile, wants to uncover mysteries because she’s a very curious person, and to make the world a kinder place.

How have your characters changed from when you first started writing them, to how you write them now? 2, Rainbow. Hm... Oskar was way more shy when I started writing him, before I realized that I’d rather have him a bit more Bubbly, since at the start, I’ve projected a bit too much about myself onto him.

If your characters could take anything with them to a deserted island, just one item, what would they take and why? 2, Rainbow again! Ofc the one with the most MCs lol. Nyx - A long, sharp knife; who knows what kind of animals are gonna be there? Not to mention it’d be useful as a tool. Sláine - A notebook and pen, in case ze gets any new story ideas. Sláine, priorities! Tiernay - A huge waterproof bag (He’d prefer several, tbh). Since he’s a merman, he won’t have too much trouble getting back home, but hey, a whole new place to explore, he’s GOT to take some stuff with him to show everyone else! Phoenix - A survival guide book, most likely; she’s pretty confident in her abilities to make the stuff she needs as long as she knows how. Oskar - Does his pet unicorn Thor count? If it’s just objects, his first thought would go towards his bracelet; it’s made of Thor’s mane hair, so it’s already precious to him just because of that, and as a bonus, he uses it to stim. If he has time to think about it, he’d probably opt for a knife because it’d be a useful tool to have. Quinn - Does her older brother count? A camping multitool, those things with a knife and a small axe etc etc. Really, if you can get stranded on a deserted island with someone of your choosing, grab Quinn. She’d the most likely to survive.

What are you learning from the story of your WIP? 3, Changes. Tbh I don’t know, especially not considering how long ago I started it and how long it’s been since I last worked on it.

How are you different than your characters? 4, Shifter Gals. Ignoring the obvious parts about shapeshifting, I’m nowhere near as self-confident (Well, overconfident in her case tbh) as Ira; girl would look at a huge, muscular werebear and still challenge him to a duel (and then be dragged away by Lupita, probably). Lupita and I are more similar, though she’s definitely more patient and better at calming angry weredegus people down.

Who is the most important character? Why? 3, Changes. This spot would be shared by Lyka, Fia, and Genevieve. Genevieve because she’s the one who put Ly, Fia, and the other characters into the situation in the first place; Ly, for daring to escape and inspiring the others to rebel; and Fia, because Fia is the reason Ly came back, and if she hadn’t, who knows whether the others would’ve had enough confidence?

What character is the nicest? Why? 2, Rainbow. Hm... At first glance you’d guess Tiernay, but I’d say Quinn. She can be kinda sassy, sarcastic, snarky, or standoffish, but she’s actually super compassionate, she’s just... Kinda bad at showing it at times.

What character is the bravest? Why? 2, Rainbow (This die likes Rainbow, huh?). Phoenix. Xe has mastered the “Idgaf what you think”-attitude. Phoenix is here, and Phoenix is who xe is (Nonbinary, Lunarian to be exact) and wears what xe wears (Long fancy dresses, usually), and other people can either accept that or leave. Oh, and xe wants to work with dragons eventually, which needs quite a bit of courage, too.

Which character taught you the most? Why? 3, Changes. I want to say Taka, but I have no idea why.

Which characters don’t change? 1, Finding Magic. Laith’s grandfather, probably; not even just over the course of the story (That would be hard, anyway, considering he’s not a main character by a long shot), but even looking at the rest of his life. He does change in general, of course, everyone does, but he’s notably stubborn and changes fairly little. Runa is also up there; there are some changes to her character over the course of her journey, but it’s mostly smaller changes.

[nighttimepixels]

Heyhey Night! I have a buncha questions after seeing all your animations and they're just so cool so! I hope this is ok!! Can u animate normally too, or only pixel? Not that that's bad, just wondering! What's ur preferred kinda animation? Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs? What's the hardest part of the animation process?? What's ur favorite?? Any part u don't like? What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into? Do u have a fave animation u've done? Thank u btw for all ur art!!

Oh stars, okay, yeah- I’m happy to answer all these!! I’ll break them up so it’s easier to read X) And awww geez thank you so much for your support, sweet anon! It really makes my day when people say they like anything I’ve made, and stars knows it’s all the more true with the sweet sweet time sink that is animation   (´•̥̥̥\\ヮ\\•̥̥̥` )

I’ll also put this under a cut since it gets a bit long :)

Can u animate normally too, or only pixel?

This one cracks me up a little, don’t worry about it XD I totally can! In fact I enjoy it a lot - and... gods, animation software is a nightmare and a half, to be honest. That’s the biggest hurdle.

I do just straight up love pixel art and the aesthetic I can achieve with it, but I do at times miss ‘normal’ (non pixel?) animation, heh. Especially sound-syncing! I do all my pixel art in Asesprite which imo is the best pixel art program, not to mention made by an actual pixel artist - buuuut it doesn’t have a sound file option. Which makes sense! Er, frankly, most pixel artists wouldn’t... use it to animate like I do? More for games, or for looping gifs? So I can’t complain much, it makes a lot of sense that it’s a low dev priority.

Now, when it comes to other animation programs... I’ve tried a lot. Unfortunately, the ones that are preferable for the feel I like are either way out of budget (stares at TVPaint in the distance) or... well, have too high a learning curve for my single-person workflow, really. (OpenToonz, sigh...) And a lot of the free programs are good for getting a start in animation, but once you get to a certain point you really feel the limitations (whether it’s workflow, sound import, exports, trying to make something more finished than a rough...).

Then... there’s animation programs I just don’t like, and a lot of those are angled towards bone-style animations (nothing wrong with those, they just don’t fit my style? and are too much time investment for a single artist to output more quickly...), or are, well, freakin’ Adobe Animate.

I... gods, I do not like Animate (formerly Flash). And I made a whole 2 minute+ animation in it a couple years ago! (It’s very rough and bad and doesn’t make sense, pfff, not gonna link it XD) It’s... clunky, and vector oriented, and freaking lines don’t go where I want them too, and it tries to predict too much?? It’s hard to put to words, gah. For me, my animation style would be much more... raster oriented. Flow, hand drawn inbetweens, yaddayadda. Animate’s great for... plenty of things, but not for that kind of animation. There are far better animators than I who make it work with freakin’ aplomb though! So really, it’s just my taste, haha.

.... Er, that got long! I’ll cut off more rambling about animation software and tl;dr boil it down to “I love animating period, but turnaround is something I have to keep in mind as a freelancer, as well as budget, and my current focus is pixel animations for a number of reasons.” X)

What's ur preferred kinda animation?

I’m not exactly sure what this one means! Between pixel and non-pixel? Er, they both have their pros and cons, so I couldn’t say! But if I have to break down my current animations into categories, I’d say I have cutscenes, loop environments, and the broad game-like animations...

The first would be something like this animation feat. teasing Edge, the second would be something like this one with skesgo’s Starlan and Cinnamon, and the third is... everything else! From headsprite loops to ‘small’ characters running and so on.

Honestly, they’re all a lot of fun for different reasons! Cutscenes are generally the most challenging, but they give me the chance to push my limits and try and pull off something cool, whether I’m having to conserve frames (to keep the cost of a commission down) or whether I’m going more all out (which is a pricey commission, or a fun personal project, lol).

Loop environments are their own challenge - it may not look like it, but I put a lot of thought into how to make them look as natural as possible! From timing of talking characters, to where to place a blink, to exactly how many frames it’ll take to ‘soften’ a motion (so people aren’t just snapping between major poses) and so on - it takes... a lot of time to animate even simple scenes well, so I do a lot of mental math on how I can keep things affordable when someone approaches me for a commission. And frankly, I totally undercharge;; but I do my best!

Game-like animations are just fun. They range, they’re silly, to intense (I’ve animated fight animations before for game concepts), to indulgent, and beyond! Headsprites are always a delight, especially if I get to push the expression X) and I love tiny things (I mean... I am a pixel artist...) so getting to make lil tiny babs even just walking can be fun - and also, a lot more time consuming than you might thing, esp if you wanna make it smooth, like this lil Frisk I did last month or so:

Do u prefer lipflaps or lipsyncs?

oTL

B... both??

Okay, lipsyncing basically is very time consuming. AND, I freakin’ love it. I love puzzles, and when it boils down to it, that’s what super fun & expressive lip syncing is (some Ghibli animations are the heckin’ best for this)...

and, I’m a pixel artist, without sound-syncing capabilities in her main art program oTL Yeah, I can export frames and line them up and check but... gods, it’s so time consuming. I’ve tried it out of desperation - but for even five seconds of sound (sayyyyy a lil Vine...) that’s hours upon hours of transferring back and forth just to check.

So even though I love lipsyncs, they’re too time-consuming (and ergo, if I’m being commissioned, often too expensive) to do often! Someday I’d like to get back to doing them more often, but for now, practically I stick to/’prefer’, in the loosest terms, to do lipflaps. For the layman, this is that ‘two frame’ (maybe three) open-closed style of animating mouths- however, I’m working on ways to keep that style, but make it more expressive! It depends on the project - and in commissions, I’ll pretty much always prioritize giving the client a little more body animation than mouth animation, unless it’d really fit what they’ve requested.

What's the hardest part of the animation process??

.... damn, this is a tough one! Sometimes I’d say it’s the initial concept work - but it depends on what I have to work with. Sometimes that parts a breeze - and honestly freeing, bc I can take the time to try and push what I’ll do with it!

Roughing is one of my favorite parts, tbh. It can be tricky, sure, but getting to go from keyframes to in-betweens & smears to adding the flairs of secondary motion (think hair swishing, or coats flaring, etc) is so exciting and satisfying.

From there it’s all refining, and tweaking...

Hm. Honestly, the hardest is probably the initial cleanup and lining. It’s cool to see it come together, but it feels so much slower, and it can drag - and then you find bits that actually don’t translate well from the rough stage, so you have to go back and rework, and oof it can just drag in this phase, heh. Plus, I’m always tempted to add more frames, but it’s not always realistic - I’m a perfectionist, to say the least, so I’m constantly having to leash myself back so I don’t turn a project into a half-a-year undertaking, pff.

What's ur favorite??

Probably gave myself away talking about the roughing stage X) It’s just loose and fun and free! But seeing it all come together is also damn satisfying too, so that’s not to say I don’t like the refining portions either...

Outside of that, I also really like the beginning of the color stage! .... Before having to translate shadows/highlights to each and every frame *shudders*. That gets tedious, but it’s so critical! Anyways, though, I heckin’ love colors. I always have a rough palette in mind at the start of the process, but I go ham and play with it as a little break and a true test when I get to actual slap together a full frame with full color, highlights/shadows included! It’s exciting, like a preview of the finished product, basically :D

Any part u don't like?

Heh, by the time I get to shadows/highlights, I tend to be getting impatient, I suppose. It’s not that I don’t like it - I definitely highly value it, and if it was the only thing I was working on in an animation that’d be different, but as a one-woman team I’m just raring to be done at that point; it’s very nearly the last thing I do, after all, so it’s a struggle to focus. X)

I suppose one that always gets me is more complicated backgrounds. It’s a work in progress, as I’m getting better and finding the fun in them for sure! But I’m still not where I want to be in translating ‘background concept’ to ‘finished background’ - it feels more stiff than my animations, I guess. So it’s a frustrating part... but hey, it’s part of it! And learning to embrace the challenge is a big help.

... I just always have to make sure I have a big cup of coffee and a good jam playlist going when I sit down to do ‘em, in the meantime.(=▿= ||||)

What's a thing people don't see that u put a lotta time into?

Definitely the coloring. This goes for both backgrounds and the animated characters themselves. It’s... never as simple as it looks? It’s time consuming, and while some parts of frames can be copy-pasted, I also put subtle work into the animations that mean that some pixels are off so it ends up being marginally faster to just recolor, but then there’s shadows, and working in pixels means that if I miss one then there’s a flickering pixel mid-animation, and sometimes there’s an unconnected line and then you bucket fill the whole damn thing, and gods know I’ve got colored lines so I have to be exacting with keeping the same ratios highlighted vs darker in shifting frames...

*deep breath*

... Yeah, basically the coloring is super time consuming. And balancing bg coloring with animated elements in the image itself is a whole extra challenge on top of that. For 99% of my animations, I can damn near guarantee I’ve spent at least twice as much time coloring it as I have animating it.

Do u have a fave animation u've done?

*looks at my goblin hoard of animations in horror like I’ve been asked to choose a favorite child*

... Stars above, I can’t choose! I love them all, and at this point a good portion of them are commissions- it wouldn’t feel right to choose!

*...carefully covers the hoard’s metaphorical ears*

... also, that said, I can admit a soft spot for any of them that involve humor. I tend to get to do extremely expressive faces and action there, even if I have to ration the frames, so it turns out really fun X)

And though rough and I’ve definitely done stuff I’m more proud of, I still crack up at this one I did a while back of the nonsense ‘ass’ joke between Red & Stretch... their faces were too much fun XD I’ve gotten waybetter since then though, Big Oof, I see so many things I can fix; might go back and redo it someday.

Honestly, though, I just freakin’ love animating! They all have their ups and downs andI always put a lot of love into them and find a way to have fun with it and try to push any emotion/theme (when applicable). I like to think it shows, but idk, that’s something I have to leave up to you guys X)

[bonni]

idk how this media hyperfixation ask game works, like do you answer to all questions or just the i choose? anyways for one piece: 💢 🏳‍🌈✨🎥💕

💢 what do you NOT like about your hyperfixation? is there something you would want to change about it?

oh fuck, where do i begin? i guess the most obvious is oda’s treatment of women. i don’t think it’s as terrible as people who haven’t read the series thing that it is, but it’s still not great. and actually, the art style isn’t really the part that bothers me, it’s more about misogynistic stereotypes (girls don’t fight, if they do they fight other girls/it’s not melee, girls are the babysitters/serious ones while guys are the fun ones, stuff like that), and the pervert/nosebleed jokes. the first complaint is actually one of the main reasons i love carrot so much, because she shows that oda is able to write female characters who are scrappy and tough and like to have fun, and i hope he continues to do so. i also get really happy when characters like nami and robin are allowed to be kind of dorky and fun, like nami wanting to be a ninja and robin having a ridiculously dark sense of humor. tl;dr, i have hope that oda is getting better when it comes to female characters, but up until now he definitely hasn’t handled them so well.

i also have problems with some of the story arcs, like i think wano has been really boring so far because it feels like the strawhats have been completely sidelined, and i had similar issues back in dressrosa. some arcs definitely have more problems than others, and imo skypeia through marineford is still the most engaging chunk of the series (maybe with thriller bark cut out, because i didn’t like that one too much, lol.)

🏳‍🌈 do you have any headcanons (lgbt, race, neuro, etc) that are important to you?

i’m one of the few fans who doesn’t really like any inner-crew pairings (i don’t mind all of them, but i think it’s really cool that oda wants to keep romance out of the series and i think the crew is just better as a family), so even though i do have lgbt headcanons none of them are really for the sake of shipping. but anyways, lesbian nami is so fucking important. usopp and zoro are also gay, robin and franky are bi, and aside from that i… really don’t care. i also think that most of the strawhats have ptsd, nami has ocd, luffy has adhd, and robin has bpd.

✨ what draws you towards your hyperfixation? what is interesting about it?

i’ve been reading one piece since early middle school and what’s always stood out to me about it is its ability to remain interesting and maintain a sense of direction despite its length. with series like naruto and inuyasha, it began to feel like a chore to keep reading, because the authors were so clearly just stretching out the story. one piece is long as shit, but it’s incredibly purposeful; oda is so thoughtful and it’s really evident that he’s been planning this story long-term. i’ve also always loved character driven stories, and “a group of traumatized misfits find family in each other” is like my favorite trope ever, so i love the straw hats. plus i love the fantastical settings like skypeia and whole cake island.

🎥 do you have any favorite scenes from your hyperfixation?

off the top of my head... luffy ringing the golden bell after defeating enel, usopp shooting down the world govt flag, hiriluk’s cherry blossoms, corazon telling law he loves him..... oh, the iconic vivi sendoff with The Pose (TM), and uhh... carrot drawing the strawhats as a shoujo, lmao. also i don’t watch the anime anymore but my favorite animated scene is luffy punching charlos, it’s even done by one of my favorite animators.

💕 tell us about one of your favorite characters and why you like them!

CARROT!! i fucking love carrot so much and i want her to become a straw hat so badly...... i liked her right away because uh. she’s cute. but then she quickly became my favorite character because she’s so different from all the other female characters in the series. like i said before, i love that carrot is super strong, i love that she’s a melee fighter, i love that she’s adventurous and irresponsible and a little dumb. she actually reminds me a lot of luffy, who is also one of my favorite characters. plus she gets a totally metal super saiyan form and i really hope we get to see her fight more!

[cassafra5]

Where Have I Been?

I’ve been a bit nervous to post this.

Two month or so ago, I teased at a possible announcement and something I was very excited to share with you all. I had been given the opportunity to work on a temp-to-perm basis for a comic start-up headed by Marvel alumni. I applied on a whim to be a freelance Storyboard Artist, but I was instead offered the chance of working in a full-time Editorial and Admin position with a few hours dedicated to storyboarding and participating in creative meetings each week. As someone who's always wanted to get into creative work, this was a really huge deal for me and I was excited to learn and be able to have projects to add to my portfolio.

Now, part of the reason I held off was because I wanted to make sure it was solid before I made the announcement. It was a dream come true and it seemed too good to be true ... and it was. 

Read below if you'd like to hear about how I unwittingly signed up to take care of a herd of entitled neckbeards and had to work on preventing them from literally walking into glass instead of actually storyboarding as advertised.

TL;DR of my experience:

2018 unfortunately was a pretty rough year. The good news is that I managed to push for a mutual termination of contract and should be a lot more active very soon now that I’m not as emotionally drained by an incredibly toxic environment.

Credit to @kirain for looking through this and helping to edit it when I just rage-typed all of this together lol;

I walked away from my interviews in tears after being told that my work really had potential. I told them I had been a comic fan since I was a kid and this was something I was excited about. I grew up with family trying to dissuade me from doing art and I had friends/partners who really weren't interested in my work. I am by no means a professional, so I threw up whatever I could be proud of and applied to the role on a whim. So as you can imagine, having real professionals say I had potential was something amazing to me. 

My first day, they sat me at a desk with a tablet and computer and I was super excited to start learning and was immediately approached with a Sexual Harassment plaque and told to mount it. Weird but alright. It was a start-up and I already assumed we’d all be helping out with small jobs around the office. I helped them fix their scanner and they suggested I move it to my desk. I was a bit confused but did so. I asked if they wanted me to set their computers up for it but they waved their hands at me and said we could do it later. 

This would eventually result in me scanning every single document for every person in the office, and also measuring the office for furniture that they would randomly decide not to get. When I had a day off, I came back to piles of documents they refused to scan themselves since "that was my job". I got chastised since they wanted them in a hurry and it should have been done sooner ... i.e., the day I was off.

Alright. 

I also ended up doing the following duties:

Calling the IRS every single day because the Controller was too uppity about something that was in the mail and somehow thought they could track it...DURING THE GOVERNMENT SHUTDOWN. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

Calling Instacart at the behest of their Legal Counsel, a man who bitched on the phone for 2 hours because he didnt want to go downstairs to drop off a faulty computer part, and having to tell them that their avocados were too soft and their almond milk had too many ingredients. I was required to do this and told it was part of my job.

I had to ask for multiple vendors to provide quotes and COI and do site visits to our office for things that they, on a whim, would decide they wouldn’t want....resulting in multiple vendors getting angry at me.

I had to get what “everyone wanted for Christmas” for their luncheon...they expected me to get cakes same day from a fancy bakery, as well as LOBSTER (one of them said this was apparently a Christmas tradition of theirs?) Mind you, they repeatedly spoke about budgeting since they were working on investment money and the owner repeatedly would mention how “every day we weren’t producing was a day we died a little more.” I guess that death would have been from gout.

I had to take on dealing with all building requests. Fine ...until they started to tell me I should be reaching out to building management about the "radiation coming out of the cable box". They said it was shooting at a person given their angle and, because I'm *that person*, I mentioned it'd probably be more of a radius vs a direct shot. They started talking about it causing a mushroom cloud over the office. I laughed. Apparently it wasn’t a joke :/ They also complained about the fan making noises and being able to hear people partying and singing songs ... during the holidays ... when people normally do that sort of thing.

I also had to deal with things such as their electrical work and assistance with general interior work in the office...for some reason

They put me in charge of the Party Committee for a Housewarming Party where I was the only one actually making arrangements. This would be fine but the office was sublet and, due to their clumsiness in handling their electrical work before I got there, part of the office has no electricity and there was also a fallen over power beam in the middle of the office...but I guess that can be an accent piece.

I literally had to rename their files. Rather than renaming documents themselves, they would email me to rename them and reupload them because they couldn’t be bothered to change them themselves.

I made the mistake of telling them I had worked with DocuSign in a previous job. What resulted was them forcing me to teach it to them...but then they would argue with me about why it couldn’t mail merge or allow them to revise their documents. A Docusign rep mentioned they could just do their work outside of Docusign and import it since the whole point is to maintain the integrity of the document but they just kind of blamed me for not knowing enough about something I had only briefly used in another completely different setting.

I was literally approached by the person who should have been leading me in storyboarding and told that I needed to look into “distraction graphics” for the office because he was concerned that the two head people (WHO WORKED AT MARVEL) kept bashing their heads on the glass and he was afraid they’d go through the glass eventually. My literal reaction:

Yeah...he didn’t laugh. It was apparently serious and I had to have some very awkward talks with some window vendors. Do you know it apparently costs more than $3.5k to cover glass that you could probably avoid if you just looked up from your phones when you walked?

Frustrating, but whatever ... it wasn't a big deal and so long as I got to do some creative work, I was willing to tolerate it. 

I asked the person in charge of art and asked when we'd be able to work on creative and was told that my role was mainly in admin and to "leave the storyboarding to the storyboarders".

I guess I just imagined every single mention of that during the interview process.

I was taken aback but he assured me it was fine since I could work in production and work on other items, like cutting comics up for Webtoons. This wasn't what I wanted, but fine ... maybe I could get something out of this regardless and learn, even if I was just cutting up and processing other peoples' work. By the way, they ended up not even letting me do that.

And here’s where I get to the owner of this establishment...

I got called in to meet with him and told I would be given a special project. He wanted me to suggest a few themes that would be used for a promo project the company was working on. Okay ... this could be good. I started thinking of all my favorite genres and comics and wrote out a decent list. I asked him if it there was a limit and he said there was no limit, so I made a comprehensive list.

He brought me back in a week later and ripped my report apart.

First, he didn't want Marvel and DC included, but then he got upset when they weren't. 

Star Wars and Serenity weren't Scifi, according to him; they were "Space Opera". So that had to be done. They were set in space but apparently that wasn't scientific. Alright. 

Spongebob and Ducktales were irrelevant, but apparently The Simpsons was super relevant. 

He smiled at me and told me I needed to redo it because I obviously didn't know what I was doing. Okay ... sure. Then he kept changing his mind. We started this before the holidays and I worked on making a very sortable report in case there were anymore last minute changes.

Me and another co-worker who were avid comic book readers spent a lot of time looking at sales numbers and articles to compile what we should focus on; however, for one reason or another, the owner would dismiss everything we brought up since he "hadn't heard of it". Deathstroke apparently never existed. Teen Titans also ... totally not relevant. Although he said he was open to ideas, he'd bash every single suggestion, answer every question by asking us why we'd ask such "stupid questions", and he literally asked us to bring in articles and statistics just so he could completely dismiss them. He was completely un-open to hearing anyone else's opinions and already had a dead-set idea of what his audience wanted ... despite having told us he hated comics and that "normal people [like him] don't read comic books". He knew what these idiots wanted, and it was just a matter of making us redoing the report over and over until we happened on the right combo HE wanted. I.e., pretty much the top comics he last saw at the dawn of the early 2000's.

I literally had taken pics of a few bestseller displays I’d seen in stores (Newsbury Comics, Barnes and Nobles etc) but he literally said that that didn’t mean they would sell. What does Best Selling even mean then?

But it's cool to just completely dismiss your customer base and act like you know better, right?

I ended up having to work until 10:00pm one night in order to make all necessary changes and print covers for him to review. What started as a simple list of themes became a report that had over 600 rows in Excel. Even then, 80-90% of it ended up not being used. I was so exhausted at this point and burnt out. I loved comics ... but having to rip them apart by category, put them back together, eliminate whole categories because he didn't want them, and then having to remake them after he changed his mind was agonizing. 

I had another meeting with him and he smiled at me and simply said, "Aww I thought this would be a fun project for you, since you're a fangirl after all"

He was taunting me. This was a game to him. Of course, I should have expected this from someone who literally made a cheat sheet so "idiot comic book fans" would get his jokes. I'm not joking. It actually exists and I'm sure it's something Marvel would rather not even remember.

A couple more weeks passed and, at this point, a majority of the office depended on me to get people's food choices for their snacks, following up with building maintenance, and I barely had any creative projects whatsoever. I did get to create the party invitation the main art guy refused to make but he pushed me to make in Canva, because he thought Canva was the end all and be all to graphic design and that it should be used for all presentations for our LinkedIn. Pretty much everything Canva (something used mostly by Instagram and Twitter users) probably wasn't meant to be used on.

Keep in mind that this person was in charge of creative and was also in charge of gate-keeping me from doing the one thing I was tolerating everything for. I had literally repeatedly asked about the storyboarding during the interview process and even though they had changed the duties, they always confirmed that storyboarding would be a part of it. 

Last week, I asked the main art guy again about my job description and about how he had mentioned storyboarding being off the table entirely. He immediately got defensive and reminded me that I was an admin. I mentioned I still had the job descriptions and emails mentioning me having a hand in creative, and he accused me of talking back and said that he could tell from how I looked that I thought he was an idiot.

He also accused me of not being enthusiastic about his projects. I was confused since I was actively asking for projects and had literally been trying to find some way to take on creative assignments. He got even angrier and said I wasn't telling him how much fun I was having and how excited his work was making me.

What?

It suddenly dawned on me that every talk I'd had with this guy about how excited I was to learn from him/to work on the team gave him some sort of weird satisfaction. I mentioned that I didn't think I should have been sending him emails about that, and he asked, "Why not? You shouldn't assume I don't want them. I want you to tell me my stuff is fun and how excited you are about them!" I was ... very uncomfortable. This grown man. This grown ass man wanted me to fawn over his work and send him emails about how excited I was about his work. About HIM. What a narcissist.

He made enough commotion that the owner brought us in. He sat us down and said something about him being a bit familiar with this sort of thing, having gone to marriage counselling himself. I was already uncomfortable and that really didn’t help. 

What ended up happening was they berated me in his office and told me I was "too honest", and I was told that I didn't know my place.  I was told that at the very top were the two Marvel alumni, then underneath there was everyone else and I was right at the very bottom of everything and I should know my place.

These were the two people who had told me I had potential and who had made me so happy just a couple months prior. I was frozen in place as they grinned at me and told me that obviously there was some misunderstanding on my part. They then told to run along while they thought about what they could throw at me to make me happy. The guy who yelled at me was not chastised or told his behavior was wrong in any way, shape or form. I got dragged into a staff meeting afterwards, where the owner proudly told all of us, "This is the best company you can work for, where you can work with people you like." And in the same breath, he told everyone not to fuck up or otherwise it would be "resume time".

I felt broken the rest of the day, where I heard them blatantly laughing and insulting the creators they were going to work with. One creator was commented on as being able to "...work as a writer but you shouldn't look at her stuff unless you want your eyes to bleed.” They said worse stuff too and laughed like a bunch of entitled douchebags on DeviantArt trying to get kicks off of stuff they thought were cringey. It was insane. These were supposed to be professionals in the field. It made me uncomfortable to think what they said about my own work when they told me I had "potential". Some of these were small time Tumblr creators like me who probably thought this would be their big break too...

I thought about putting in my two days, the amount that was specified in my contract, and worried about what they'd try to do in the time I had left. I was miserable and scared and nervous.

On Friday, the owner approached me and asked me for my portfolio while smiling to himself. I was skeptical and asked why, and he firmly said, "Because I want to see it." I sent it and prepared for the worst.

He brought me in for a two minute "friendly" chat in the conference room, and once we sat down, he mused over his computer and said it was "coming back to him” I did art.

He remembered now. It had been so forgettable, after all. Aww, maybe there was something there.

With a smile, he told me I "shouldn't take it personally", and that only one artist so far had been able to get along with him and work with what they wanted. They'd thrown out 8 artists after they just simply "didn't work". They admitted that they had promised me storyboarding, but no one was working to their intended vision. That they hadn't really figured out a place for me in the company, but maybe going out on a business trip would help him clear his head and he could find something I could do. "I guess we've been letting you down a bit, haven’t we?" 

I felt like at this point he wanted me to act desperate and happy for the possibility of a chance and buy into it and take his offering with gratitude...

...but I was done with his shit. 

I told him that I had started at his company a few months ago and that if they hadn't figured out where I was supposed to be in all that time, then maybe it wasn't a good fit. He was quiet and didn't seem prepared for it. "Well ... what do you think we should do about it then?"

"If it's alright with you, I would like to terminate this contract immediately." I said it through gritted teeth. I'm not a confrontational person, but after everything that had happened, I was worried I'd lose it. I could feel myself shaking, but I just couldn't deal with it anymore. "I didn't appreciate being told I was at the bottom of the food chain and I really didn't appreciate you allowing me to be treated this way. Frankly, after that, it's taken every bit of motivation out of me and I'd like to end this. Now." I was trying to be professional and control myself, but I was quietly seething with every word. I told him I had saved all my job descriptions and had the contract if he wanted to review it, and I knew that what they had been telling me was bullshit.

He was really quiet and his eyes were wide open. I really think he expected me to be grateful and happy and willing to do more and more for the company just for that little chance. He mumbled something about not prolonging my suffering and told me to just assist in transitioning over my duties and typing things up. 

Once I did, I asked if I was free to go and he said I was and I left. It was so much of a relief not to have to come back to that office.

So this is what happened with something I thought would have been a great in to an industry I was excited about. I got used up (and not even for the skills I actually have under my belt) and kept around as an emotional punching bag, and for the dumbest things imaginable and essentially just assisted them with setting up their office after they'd sublet it.

On the plus side, I feel like it was a big deal that I could actually stand up for myself, even if it happened to be to someone like that. Even though I'm not a professional and even though some people would consider me insignificant, I feel like there's never a reason to make any person feel insignificant and like they're the lowest of the low. I hated how they spoke about other creators and I hated how they spoke to me, and there isn't any reason anyone should have to deal with people who are just bent on being condescending.

Ironically, around this time, Steven Universe released an amazing episode and the ending theme kind of hit home with me. I loved its message and I think that ep. kind of helped me in a way.

2019's off to an interesting start, I guess ... but I guess I can be proud that I'm stronger despite it. I am passionate about my art and do want to be able to work professionally but there’s no reason to ever tolerate disrespect and dishonesty in a company.

In the words of Raul Julia/Gomez Addams:

Hopefully, one day, I’ll get my break but this definitely wasn’t it. 

If any of you guys are in NYC and happen to come across a mildly shady startup toted to be headed by Marvel alumni, maybe just be a bit careful. I normally don’t post about stuff like this and honestly tend to get quiet when things happen because I have trouble opening up about personal issues but maybe it can help someone or at the very least be an interesting read.

[1358456]

Review Response, Nov 25 - Dec 1, 2018

Another week. Another response post. Here we go!

Destiny #041:

1) sugoiiiii! nice history! please continue with th next chapter onegaiiii

Thanks. And... I did continue, as the next chapter is up. Hehe.

Destiny #042:

1) FINALLY ITS DEAD! BUT WHY THE HECK DID YOU HAVE TO KILL YELLOW?!

Why did I have to kill Yellow? A few reasons which I will get to slowly and in pieces so I don’t repeat the same answer over and over.

For one, I never killed Yellow on-screen in any story. So... why not in here?!

2) Wooooo! A happy ending for nearly everyone who mattered :)

Yep! Almost all the survivors will have a happy ending, and most of the plot-important ones survived! ... I’m sure SOME readers are surprised that both Black and White made it out?

3) Wow that yellow bit was surprising... awesome but surprising she died aswell didn’t expect that either and is zygarde really dead or are you just fucking with us again? Anyway good chapter

Yellow went super. She went absolute nuts with power overwhelming until her moment ended very abruptly. See, when a character is only about bullsh*t powers... that character doesn’t last long if the writer just does not give a f*ck about said bullsh*t powers. Imagine, if in FRLG, Yellow starts raising her Pokemon powers, and the Team Rocket admins were like: “yeah, level 80s, but we’re strong enough to put your even stronger friends in danger, so you still won’t accomplish anything.” FRLG’s scene with Yellow using her bullsh*t power is basically like a 5 year old saying “I have this power, and that too! And also this one!” and the opponent is just like “... yeah, all right, kid, whatever, I’ll just play along.”

And since there is exactly ONE chapter left for Destiny, I don’t have the time for this defeat to be fake.

4) Yellow...

Dead. As. Sh*t. Her fate was sealed the moment she climbed a step in the Preference List. As her screentime increased, she had to sacrifice her well being. And I am sick and tired of her bullsh*t powers, so... DEAD. About as dead as a Pikachu trying to fight a Zygarde!

5) Sweet chapter

Thanks!

6) Did they actually win this time? But anyway loved this chapter, can’t wait for the finale!

Oh the finale has been in the works for years now. Hehe... And yes, they actually won. Pop the champagne. GG!!!!

7) Wonder if that Zygarde will now stay down.

This is an awesome climax! Look at that, Yellow got the spotlight before dying, but that was pretty impressive, especially helping Blue escape death. I'm curious what will happen to the others and to the Mega Hunter (though I guess he doesn't have a reason to stick around anymore anyway). My favorite part was probably all three Primals annihilating Zygarde. Though I always imagined Mega Rayquaza was capable of doing it on its own, hmm...

Looking forward to the next chapter!

Yellow got her one and only moment in glory. She saved Blue’s life and then died. Like a true support cast. Save the one that’s in the spotlight.

The Primal Legendaries... well, having all three fighting Zygarde at once is overkill. Just one of them would’ve worked fine. Just Primal Rayquaza would’ve been an absolute overkill. I was going to see if I could squeeze in another death, but the moment Primal Groudon appeared, I just knew that it wasn’t going to happen. And the reason for this is because... Zygarde kind of sucks. I had to nerf the Primal offensive power just so the final attack would happen. Otherwise, the Dex Holders end up just watching from the sidelines. That’s also the reason why I had to bring back Diamond and Platinum, and the only logical excuse for bringing them back was so that Platinum could buy healing items using her endless cash so she could help the others. Which means the existing medic had to die, otherwise all that is unnecessary. So... Yellow died partly so that Platinum would have an excuse to get back into the spotlight and run into the Mega Hunter in the process.

8) RIP Yellow. Used all her screen time to save others’ screen time.

Wouldn’t it be better just to leave all the healing item with Peter since his Pokémons are stronger though?

Great work as usual.

Indeed, Yellow used up her only screentime to save the one who was pretty important for the WHOLE damn story already. HA!

I thought of it as well, but it wasn’t the logical choice. The Dex Holders know that the Mega Hunter was mind controlled. But not what he’s actually like. Who knows, he could’ve been a complete monster before the mind control, which means healing his stuff is disastrous. Platinum could have offered to share some healing items when he gave her Mega Ring back, but there is still an uncertainty about what the Mega Hunter would do after Zygarde went down for good. So in case the Mega Hunter tries anything afterwards, the Dex Holders need to be healed up first, just as a precaution.

9) Yellow went down in a blaze of glory...well...almost. Actually her death was rather sad. She finally accepted red and blue together and saved blue and learned how to awaken her power at will...only to die in a very gruesome way.

I have to admit, for an all powerful being that can destroy the world, zygarde has a body like wet tissue paper lol. I look forward to the final chapter!

Yellow’s fate in this story was kind of like Keldeo’s fate in Pokemon Movie 15. After so much bullsh*t, she finally unlocked her super unique bullsh*t power mode, only for it to do absolutely nothing and she died immediately. (The whole freaking movie is about Keldeo running away from Kyurem who only wants to finish the fight that Keldeo started, and after all that, Keldeo finally goes to finish the fight, unlocks the super unique Resolute Forme, which does literally nothing and it gets stomped)

Yellow had the most gruesome death out of all of my stories. She got a giant hole blasted into her chest, which severed her arm, and then got crushed by Zygarde like a bug. If her arm hadn’t been severed, her eyes probably would’ve popped as well as her blood burst out through her head.

Now, Zygarde... Remember that Destiny plans were made BEFORE X and Y even got to the part where Shuana got mind controlled and tried to whack Y with an incredibly blunt Honedge. Which means, the plans of “restored Zygarde” were made before the whole “10%, 50%, 100%” formes were revealed. So upon the reveal, I decided to incorporate it so the restored Zygarde would go 100% in the finale. ... And a while later, I finally saw the Complete Zygarde’s stats, and... sheesh. Especially compared to Arceus in SA and Complete Kyurem in...

I’m not going to go into a huge game-rant, but TL;DR: Complete Zygarde’s stats just suck WAY too much compared to other Legendary Pokemon. In a direct fight, Zygarde loses, every time. And compared to the planet-cracking firepower of the Primals, Zygarde’s defenses are just horrible. So it breaks apart really easily. Against non-Legendaries, like the Dex Holders, it would do great. In that regard, here’s another reason why the Latis stayed behind instead of joining the fray. Even just Latias will obliterate Complete Zygarde. So for the sake of plot, I had to leave the Latis elsewhere, and nerf the offensive capabilities of the Primals so they attack REAL slowly. And once I dragged it out enough, Zygarde immediately gets vaporized. But as long as a single cell remains...

[nagekinofigure]

AKB48 Thumbnail 2shot event 170604

At the start of June I went to Japan to participate in the 2shot events for AKB’s latest album Thumbnail. Here’s a little write up. If you want to hear about anything else I did (hint: it was all shopping) lmk and maybe I’ll write that up too.

Because I know I cannot get up in the mornings, I started my tickets from Block 2. I had 3 tickets for Sato Sumire, 3 for Muto Tomu, then 1 each for Kojima Mako, Goto Moe, Minegishi Minami, Okada Nana, Miyazaki Miho, Oya Shizuka, as well as 2 album signing tickets, that I planned to use with Tomu & Suu.

I am about to go into fangirl mode here.

Unlike HS, during 2shot you don’t get much time to talk, and for me every member spent that time calling me cute (lies) and my hair amazing (truth). (hidden myself in most of these pics cause i’m not cute and dont photo well lol especially next to idols)

Started the day with Kojimako~~ Had Mako and Tomu in 2nd block but I wanted a practice run before Tomu. She is so damn cute! Basically exactly what I was expecting (in a good way); super cute, cheerful, smiley and lovely. A fairly orthodox meeting.

Next was Tomu, the member competing with Suu for my oshimen spot lol. I know I wrote a post before about officially oshihenning to Tomu, but honestly the two are really neck-and-neck...

Compared to Kojimako, Tomu felt a little more... interested? Like asking me more questions and seeming to listen more to the answers, etc. I’m very shy and bad at speaking, so if the member starts the conversation going I am very grateful, and Tomu absolutely did.

I had Block 3 free (why?? did i do that??) and I headed out to the Cafe & Shop. Bought an AKB drink, which of course comes with a coaster, which of course attracts coaster collector/traders. The guy brave enough to approach me turned out to be a fellow Tomu oshi, and we spent 45~ mins discussing members/AKB in general/my plans in Japan etc. I was almost late for block 4 lol.

Block 4 and back to Tomu! In the queue, another fan came up to me, asking where I was from etc. The only people willing to come up and speak to me were Tomu fans lol. Tomu fans so nice and willing to speak English. Tomu did the whole ‘You’re back!’, ‘Yes, and I have more tickets!‘. Then of course my favourite Team K pose.

Then it was Moekyun! In my head Moe is still the baby draftie of Team K, but she is actually 16 and almost as tall as I am. If Tomu was impressed that I came for the UK, Moe was astounded lol.

Block 5, and back to Tomu again! This time wearing the Tomu shirt from last year, which she was pretty pleased with. 3rd time and I was finally able to tell Tomu she was my oshi. (whyyyy am i so shy why).

I had tickets for Miichan, but I went over to album signing instead, since getting my album signed by Suu was more important that meeting Mii. (sorry Miichan)

My Suu tickets were all for later so this was my first Suu meeting. It was basically a discussion about my hair again lol. (’Is it real? Is it dyed?’) lolol And so her signing message was ‘Megan-chan kawaii’ lolol

Then off to Miichan. Her queue was short but sooo slow moving, which is weird because it didn’t feel like people were getting really long meetings. Also, her queue was fuuuull of girls. About 60-80% female, far, far higher than anyone else. And they were all looping as well. Mii was... very cool and professional? Not bad or salty, but she kind of felt like she was going through the motions, quickly in, photo, out.

Block 6 was double Suu. Finally a chance to meet her. She was pretty surprised to see me again I think. But super happy. Out of everyone I met, Suu was the best. She felt the most genuine and the most interested. I felt like I could have another 20 tickets and still have fun with her. HOWEVER her staff were super fast. Not necessarily trying to push me out, but very efficient, I’d barely sat down before they were asking for a pose. I was using 2 tickets but still had basically the same length meeting. Should have looped!

Block 9 was also Tomu sign! So I’d been meeting Tomu at regular intervals over 6 hours, so it felt like I met her a lot. Compared to, say, using 4 tickets together in one block, I got more time with Tomu this was. I wonder if she would feel the same?

Block 7 and I pre-queued for Nacchan, since her line was super long. Nacchan felt the most kami. After meeting her, I completely understand her popularity and senbatsu rank. Her reaction to seeing me was ‘Angel! Angel!’ in English, which was the only time any of the members spoke English to me other than ‘thank you’ and ‘bye bye’.  unfortunately the 2shot itself is pretty bad D:

Then 4th ticket with Suu. She was amazed I was back, then after greetings, peace sign pose, I was standing up to leave and she says something like ‘Thank you for coming. Everyone thinks you’re really pretty!” And whilst I’m digesting if the members are talking about me backstage?? (sempai noticed me??) she’s like, ‘Can I?’ and reaches out to stroke my hair/head. Then squeals/laughs as though I am a small animal (lol) and the staff usher me out. But like... You are not supposed to touch the idols at all unless you are doing heart pose... And yet I got a head pat??

I basically died on the spot. #1 2shot #1 meeting #1 girl, sorry Tomu, I regret oshihen-ing etc. Literally made the whole trip worth it. Did the members notice me?! Is Suu talking about me with others??

tl;dr if you are meeting idols dye ur hair & be fashionable i guess

Final block and I had tickets for Myao and Shiichan. I fucked up my Myao meeting by being super tired and not being able to understand the super fast & long JP Myao spoke to me. Really feel bad about that because not’s not Myao’s fault that I’m incompetent, and I feel like it dissappointed her, or maybe pissed her off. Not really how I wanted my first meeting with Myao that I’ve been a fan of for so long to go. Myao is way good at posing and this is possibly the best 2shot of the day tho. (not of me, obviously, i look like a shaved baboon as usual)

I ended up using my Shiichan ticket to go see Tano Yuka instead. idek why. For me there are Suu & Tomu tier 1, then Moe, Kojimako, Naachan tier 2, then like... everyone else. And so I just has a sudden urge to meet Tanochan.

She was kind of... intimidating. I come in and she’s like ‘Wah, sugoi.’ Then she gives me this really intense look up and down like she’s inspecting me. I felt like I was in high school talking to popular girls lol like wow I’m being judged here. Tano is super pretty in real life. I’m looking at this 2shot like, that’s not even what she looked like! The camera can’t capture her ~glow~!

So basically 10/10 day, do recommend. I received 0 salt all day, even though quite a few members I saw (Suu, Mako, Myao, Tano) have a rep for being salty if tired or you speak to them wrong, I had no such interaction. Definitely going to try and go back next year, if money allows it. Go see Suu etc.

[gagged]

Do you enjoy spoilers? Why or why not?

tl;dr: i enjoy them in moderation

long answer: omg this is one of the most random things i’ve been asked BUT 

i’ve been watching for a while but this is the first season i ever got fully involved with the drag race online community in some way & i never really kept up with T pre-season 9 except super casually (aka i knew the season 7 shit like “your lash is crooked” and acid betty refusing to lipsync during season 8… aka everything that was fake lol) but either way i think this is the first season where all that business was laid out there completely accurately which gagged me 

it’s fun to learn spoilers and act cool for telling them to your friends before they hear them from anyone else and i like seeing how spoilers play out (in this case exactly as spilled). but on the other hand, i can’t help but feel like what i consider an overall underwhelming season would’ve been better if i wasn’t completely spoiled on what was going to happen :/ like eureka’s removal and #maskgate alone should’ve been one of the gaggiest moments of the season but instead of being entertained by them i was basically just mentally adding a check to the list of spoilers i already knew lol

for season 10 (+ as3?), i’ll probably avoid seeking out spoilers but i won’t complain if i happen to accidentally stumble upon a few i guess :/

(side note: now everybody thinks they’re cool for learning 2 lurk reddit and posting spoilers on places like facebook/twitter/here without any kind of warning so i’m anticipating that as long as leaks like this season’s keep happening no season of drag race will ever be spoiler-free without avoiding the internet/society tbh)

[bs-ent]

(1) Hey, I just wanna say that I just discovered your blog and I LOVE your analysis, and I love how nice you are.

[cont.] (2) It’s especially interesting for me to observe all the BTS ships BC I’m such a new ARMY… I feel like I’ve missed out on a lot of the changes and shifts in dynamics over the years that simply can’t be fully comprehended even tho I have gone back and watched all the old content? I’m just curious bc I do know that friendships change over time… we might still be close to someone but not to the same extent as before, right? And we also form stronger bonds with other ppl too… (JIKOOK COUGHS)

(3) Sorry for the long ass ask LMAO I’m really bad at expressing myself so I’m not even sure if I got my thoughts across properly haha… but anywho, thanks so much for being such an amazing part of the fandom!!! And thanks for listening to me ramble heh~

NEVER apologize for a long ask, i love rambles ; ;

you’ve expressed yourself excellently? and this is such an interesting question; i’m a run-era child so i also have quite some looking back to do and i feel like i could probably spend a few months to answer this omg;;;; but i really want to attempt this so i went on a bts research adventure and idk how useful any of it will be, but i’m just gonna –

warning, big mess ahead 

NOTE: i think i just experienced a moment of clarity when i went back and combed through this entire set of Hanryu Pia magazine interviews (among my faves, no question). it spans 2014-15, with a bunch of 1-on-1 member segments and it really refreshed their dynamics for me (makes me want to go back and edit some of my other rambles now AH). tl;dr i’ll be referencing it a lot and it’s a good read!

back on track with a bit of background – if i could start with a very generalized way to look at their earlier dynamics (before going into how their relationships shifted), i want to address that although the members formed friendships based on interests/personality/etc., i feel like their bonds were also initially pretty affected by where they fell into certain ‘categories’/spectrums, like these:

earliest to join bts –> latest to join

hyung-line vs. maknae-line (which is very close to #1)

vocal-line vs. rap-line vs. dance-line

music-line vs. performance-line (very close to #2 and #1)

etc. etc.

…. you’re probably like, this is common sense LOL but i guess i didn’t really think about how much they had to live in these labels, how jin + jungkook, for example, were vocal-line and had a similar training schedule, and as a result got closer by hanging out after classes together. but in a broader sense the labels became identities, and also affected the way they viewed each other; like for hyung-ln as long-time trainees, they likely felt more distant from maknae-ln, who we know hadn’t experienced the same hardships and didn’t handle as much of the responsibility. jin was out there making sure everyone was alive, namjoon and yoongi were in charge of discipline and musical drive, yoonseok were taking turns accompanying each other to the hospital… i think they really felt that gap in experience up through debut, because in 2013 interviews sugamon especially were always talking about how angry/tired they were during trainee limbo. honestly i’m not sure how much of that was to market a “hard”/“hiphop” image, but they also weren’t lying about those difficulties? and there seems to be a communication gap between hyung-ln and maknae-ln as well (all ‘jin being childish’ aside). for ex., in one of the Hanryu Pia 2015 interviews, hoseok and namjoon were paired up to talk and joon admitted the maknae-ln couldn’t sense his bad moods the way the hyung-ln could. extra interesting because age seems to trump training time here –– even though jungkook and jin joined around the same time, jk was not on the same wavelength.

i guess my conclusion from this is a lot of member relationships that may have shifted started from there, and that maybe in a generalized way, some members who got closer were able to like, overcome whatever initial differences they had, including age gap, talent specialties, relationship history?

if we go into specific relationships – i apologize if any of these were already on your mind btw – i think maybe namjin had somewhat of a rocky(?) start, since they referred to each other as complete opposites and didn’t understand how the other person worked, but they clearly got closer after talking with one another and were mature enough to overcome their differences. and now they’re married! :) i also think jinmin have gotten much closer – partially based off of how jin apparently used to nitpick at them a lot like a mom lmao and jimin wasn’t a fan of it, but now jimin’s become jin’s portable laughing track and jin adores him for it and throws cheesy pick-up lines at him probably every day, so there’s that too! i’m mentioning jin a lot, but since jin didn’t start dorming with everyone until later i think it’s understandable that he took some time to get closer with the younger members.

(EDIT: i wanna mention minjoon too, who have always been kinda close bc they relate to each other about self-esteem/motivation issues, but i think they’ve probably gotten closer? they seem to talk to each other about their troubles often and that kind of intimacy builds over time)

i think some of our conceptions of who was close with who also comes from how much we knew about them debut era vs. now –– like imo jikook were always pretty close (though i agree, definitely closer now), but we just didn’t see it as much early on and it’s taken some time for their dynamics to shine through. same thing for sope, and vmon and taejin too, and hey, taejin got an onscreen indirect kiss and sope’s bringing hwaggae tango to dancing with the stars, so i’m patiently waiting for bighit to up the game @ bts_twt call me for details 

(urgh im neglecting a lot of relationships but maybe i can revisit this later… hopefully this answered your question somewhat sajdfkl) 

[tumblunni]

How do I write an autistic villain without demonizing autism by accident? ;-;

I’m not really sure why you’re messaging this to me. I’m really sorry but I’m not an expert on like.. political stuff about autism stereotyping, just because I’m autistic. And it depends on which country you live in, I know that america has a far more visible sort of cultural presence for stereotypes, due to the whole Autism $peaks controversies. I dont live in america and I’m not super smart or anything, so yeah this is a disclaimer that this is just my opinion and you should probably research answers given by other people too. And maybe ask people about the specific circumstances of what you’re writing, like the context of the setting of the story and what the villain is like, etc. I’d be happy to chat to you about that if you need help! (but again, im no expert, lol)

ANYWAY!

My opinion on the subject is that having an autistic villain is perfectly fine, as long as you’re not villainizing autism. Like...* Don’t make the autism the reason theyre a villain.* Don’t make people scared of them because of the autism, rather than because they’re a villain.* Don’t treat their autistic traits as scary or inherantly villainous.* Don’t make anyone insult them for their autism and act like its justified because they’re evil.

And similarly its bad form to do any of that stuff in regard to any sort of minority really. An example that always bugged me is how Excellus from Fire Emblem Awakening is scary and evil because he’s a murderous monster, yet everyone in the game constantly insults him for the fact he acts ambiguously gay/transgender/effeminate. Like, there’s way too many jokes about people finding him ‘disgusting’ because of some random thing he can’t change, like a sexuality, race or mental illness which plenty of non-evil people have too! It also lessens his impact as a villain because the characters barely even address the actual villainous things he does, and he doesnt seem to have any motive at all. They just ride on the whole ‘the audience will find him gross’ thing as a crutch and forgot to bother writing a good villain.

Oh, and your concerns are indeed valid, yo! Sometimes it is important to think about the context you created a character in, even if you didnt intentionally create any negative messages within your writing.It’s just that the case where a character will be seen as villainizing [minority trait] for being a villain... that’s kind of only in a very specific circumstance? its just that this specific circumstance is very very common in mass media nowadays.It’s ‘The Smurfette Principle’.If you only have one character of a minority in your cast, its easy for an uninformed audience to pick up messages that you’re saying ALL members of that minority are the same as them.If you only have one autistic character and he’s the villain, then you might accidentally be villainizing him. In a world where autistic characters being villainized for their autism is already very common, people could just assume you made them autistic for the same reason all those other writers did- because they think it’s ‘scary’. It feeds the stereotype even if you didn’t conciously intend it that way.

So a very very easy way to fix this problem is just to add multiple characters of a minority into your story, filling various roles from villain to hero to helpful npc. or anything you can think of!

Another good quick fix is to have your villain be autistic, but portray their autistic traits as sympathetic/relateable/a humanizing aspect of them. Not just portraying it as something neutral that doesnt make them scary, but going out of your way to add some scenes showing how they’re just like anybody else. Or even making it one of their redeeming traits!It doesn’t have to outright be something like ‘yo being autistic makes me inherantly good and childlike’, which is a stereotype all to itself, lol. But you could show them experiencing predjudice from another character, in a way that makes the audience sympathise. Honestly having a character attack them for being autistic instead of being a villain would be a good way to do this, as long as that character is actually shown as being wrong for what they’re doing. Or simply showing the villain having common autistic traits, facing common problems, doing common everyday things... that can be enough to portray autism positively. Have them shown doing this stuff outside of the situation of them being villainous. It makes them feel more human and less of an abstract symbol of evil. And because these small glimpses of normality are lightening the mood, they become seen as a positive aspect!

KIND OF AN OFFTOPIC TANGEANT SORRYJust my personal experience as an autistic kid experiencing this story... I personally headcanoned Cyrus from pokemon as autistic. Not because he’s ‘scary and emotionless’, but because his backstory was relateable to me as an autistic person. It’s said that his parents were emotionally abusive, and that he had nobody to turn to because everyone thought he was ‘a creepy kid’. And he was able to find solace by obsessing over repairing machines in his bedroom, and apparantly has trouble understanding people because they can’t be fixed as easily. Stuff like maths and science are kind of a stereotypical Special Interest for autistic children to be given in fiction, I guess because it makes you seem more intelligent when you obsess about that instead of video games, norse mythology, or collecting tiny novelty spoons from around the world XD (Yeah i was a weird kid.)So yeah sorry I went a little offtopic there, but the point is that it might have been by accident instead of intention but that villain has a lot of traits that read as autistic. And when i first played Diamond and Pearl I actually disliked him a lot because of that, I felt like they were villainizing someone who seemed relateable and potentially redeemable. I mean, he seemed pretty depressed too! Give that man some therapy! But when I played Platinum and got to learn his backstory I started to feel like the writers actually did want us to feel sympathetic to him, because of how all those ‘scary’ traits were presented so sympathetically. Like.. the backstory isn’t that he became evil because he was an autistic kid who did creepy things like obsess about machinery and suck at social contact. No, he became a villain because he was abused by his parents, him being ‘weird’ is just intended to make it clear here that he didnt deserve it. It makes him pitiable, it makes him relateable, it makes you feel so much more frustrated that nobody listened to him and saved him from that hell, and nobody even seems to remember him fondly, just because he was ‘weird’. And hell, even his ‘emotion is evil’ philosophy seems very relateable to me as an autistic child. It seems like he learned to seclude himself to avoid angering his parents. That’s the impression I got from his final scene in Platinum, where he finally acts angry at you for beating him, then gets angry at himself for expressing emotion and forces himself to go back to how he usually talks. I get a bit pissed off whenever I see fans of the series claim he actually IS emotionless, lol! This scene made it clear to me that this is just a guy who WISHES he was emotionless, somehow seeing it as the only way to be free of pain. Someone who struggles to deal with his own emotions, or feels like he’s disgusting when he expresses them. And this is VERY relateable specifically to an autistic kid who suffered from an abusive parent! “Quiet Hands” is a kind of common concept that autistic kids might experience, that’s the name for a popular ‘parenting technique’ that really fucks people up. Focusing on making your kid never ‘act autistic’, rather than actually helping them understand things. ‘Quiet Hands’ is specifically about slapping or smacking your kid whenever they show stimming behaviour. (Hand flapping being a common way this symptom can manifest.) We’re taught never to be too loud, and to always always have to restrain ourselves to avoid embarassing our parents. We have to try and learn how to act like ‘normal people’ and become scared of harmless parts of our own brain just because theyre ‘embarassing’, leading to even worse emotional problems as an adult. i mean seriously how is it logical to tell a kid who has troubles with social interaction that they shouldnt even practise it?? Plus its a huge mess to teach these kids to do way more emotional labour than neurotypical kids are expected to do, and then treat them like they’re below average intelligence for not being able to do twice as much as everyone else...

ANYWAY! That’s a thinG! Sorry I went rambling off there about how a particular fictional character touched my heart, lol!I just kinda wish he could be canonically autistic, or if I had similar canonically autistic characters to relate to, instead. So i think having more autistic villains can’t be bad, we’re so badly in need of more autistic characters in general! And villains have a unique perspective of being able to hit our emotions the hardest. I think its easier to cry over someone who has a sad backstory of how they became evil, compared to anything else!So yeah what I was trying to say before I went offtopic is that if the backstory is ‘became evil because autism’, then people will complain. But if the backstory is ‘became evil because someone mistreated them because autism’ then that’s a good way to make people sympathise with autism. Aaaaand I’m bad at explaining this, because autism XD Well, i mean, my personal symptoms and lack of diagnosis til I was an adult means that I’m still working on learning how to communicate correctly, I don’t mean every autistic person writes terrible tl;dr advice posts that degrade into pokemon XDOh man i feel embarassed now, you asked me such a polite question and I didnt know how to answer it very well...I just hope maybe I inspired you to go out and do more research, rather than putting you off with my nonsense!

[colorstormx]

What made you choose your fursona?

honestly this is probably going to be a more in-depth answerthan you wanted but  ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i’ll put it under a readmore for the sake of not clogging peoples’ dashes aa

i kinda have to start the story back in 2011, when i made myfursona’s first design, since i’ve never actually “changed” fursonas- ijust keep tweaking the design lol

i wasa warrior cats kid, and i loved watching the spoof videos on youtube.eventually i started watching oc videos, most notably splashkittyartist. mostpeople had an animal oc to represent themselves- a “fursona” - and afterwatching the videos, i decided i wanted to try drawing and animating too. so,of course i would need a fursona! it would be fun! ittook me like 3 years to find that.....other part of the furryfandom

so imade my design- adark gray cat with rainbows! because i loved all the colors! ihad no idea about being gay either @ life pretty heavy handed foreshadowingthere andthe dark gray would make the colors really pop which admittedly i still dolike (also, the rainbow design is where i got the name ‘Color’ from...it’sreally stuck with me lol)

so istarted drawing, made a few attempts at animation, andgradually started to improve.  at some point i added wings to the designbecause, let’s face it, wings make everything better. 

i startedto get tired of the design after a while, and started experimenting with different versions of it.  i eventually decided tochange the species from house cat (maine coon, to be exact) to something morelike a snow leopard or a jaguar. i liked the snow leopards for the fluffytails, but black jaguars had the fur color/pattern and body build i liked, so ijust kind of smushed the two species together and added wings. i declared thisnew ‘species’ to be a snowjaguar and was quite happy with it (the name certainly stuck lmao)

thatdesign stuck for a while with only minor tweaks, buteventually i decided to try dropping the rainbows just to see what it would be like. notlong after that, i decided to try giving her a more ‘monstrous’ form,which didn’t have the rainbows but had plenty of fluff and fangs to make up forit.

from there i’ve only tweakedthe base grays to have a slight blue tint and added feathers to the legs andtail. i’m still really happy with this design, so it’s probably gonna stick around !

anyway that got super long and only like.. half answered the original question so tl;dr i guess would be i chose my fursona because- i like big fluffy cats- i like dark gray and blue- wings make everything better, so do fangs- i combined the above into a design that i just really love and feel represents me pretty well

if you managed to read through all that good job i’m impressed