#others i have created whole novel backstories for :')

[grimalkinmessor]

A List of My Fandom OCs By Vague Description ✨

Danny Phantom:

Orphan Esther but with a light alignment

Dead ex-villain rainbow gay

Earth and sky lovechild

Semi-sentient television

"Normal" adopted kid

Small blue arsonist

Angry sun fox

Happy moon bunny

Doesn't exist but is somehow still fucking things up anyway

BNHA:

Government lesbian

Literally horny but questionably moral

"Hell Hath No Fury Like Me" Quirkless edition

Dead old cat lady

Sexy double agent on the wrong side on purpose

They do a lil' dancey dance

Invader Zim:

Small gay scientist who is also insane and evil

Traumatized and petty seamster

Alien obsessed with the American 20s and hellbent on revenge

Accidental AU goop lovechild

Well-dressed one-eyed bird

Big mute alien who craves violence

Mr. Dwicky but somehow worse

Harry Potter:

Sexy Slytherin BFF

First year with strong Protecc vibes

"Hitting The Bong With Hufflepuffs™"

The obligatory Gryffindon't

RoTG:

Victorian angel and Dionysus lovechild

Sentient coal ember

D R A G O N

Okay now you go :3

[2soulscollide]

Write your book STEP BY STEP

hello hello, it's me again!

today i'm bringing you a step-by-step / checklist to finally get your book done. i know it can be a bit complicated to put everything together to make your idea come to life (you're definitely not alone!)

that's why i compiled some tips and made this post, in hopes to help some author out there :D

let's get started.

PREMISE

assuming you already have a good idea in mind, you should start by writing a premise. to help you with that, try to answer these questions:

who is the main character?

what are their goals?

which troubles will they face / what's stopping them from achieving their goals?

do they have an opponent? if so, who?

now that you know the answers to these questions, it's time to write the premise. the premise consists in a sentence that summarizes your whole idea.

PLOT OUTLINE

there are infinite ways to plot your story. you can do it by writing down ideas and linking them together, following a scheme, or any other method.

the most common plot outlines are these:

synopsis outline: one to two pages, where you hit all the major beats of the story

in-depth outline: outline each chapter/scene

snowflake method: develop the premise into a bigger paragraph, and that paragraph into a page (etc.) until you have the whole outline of your story

booken method: plot the start and end of the story, and the main characters

the novel factory created plot sheets for free, and you can choose from eight different templates. you might want to check it out!

KNOW YOUR CHARACTERS

having your outline defined, you should start developing your characters now. the main character's profile might be more detailed than the others, however, it's up to you. there are many character sheets out there on the internet that will help you create flawless characters.

i have a post with resources that might be helpful when creating a character, check it out!

and here you have some prompts and sheets to create a character:

Quick Character Creator - EA Deverell

Extremely detailed character sheet template - @hawkasss

The Best Character Template Ever - Dabble

Character Twenty Questions Worksheet - The Writers Circle

at this point, you should also define the narrator's voice, tone, etc, as well as the pace of your novel.

LOCATIONS

define the principal locations of your story, the settings, and where the story is taking place. it's important to know how the environment looks, and how your characters feel about it.

for this part, you might find it useful to do some research about some locations, if you're not familiar with them. find inspiration on Pinterest, Tumblr, or even on books, paintings, and art. everything is valid.

if your story takes place in a fantasy environment, you might need to fill out a template to create it or write down the way you imagine it to be. try to get as many details as possible, so there are no holes when developing the novel.

SUBPLOTS

you might want to give more depth to your novel by developing a subplot (or more than one). make sure it doesn't get too confusing or that doesn't take the focus away from the main action.

the subplot can be a romance, another character's relationship, a character's arc, a backstory, etc. this will make your story more real and 3D, more realistic.

develop it as a side story and mix it with the principal plot but don't make it as important as the main story, otherwise, none of the plots will make an impact.

SYNOPSIS

write a synopsis as long as you wish, covering every important part of the story. this will help you to really know your idea, and have a solid structure for it. it can range from 500 to 2,500 words, but you don't have to restrict yourself to a number.

things the synopsis should cover:

the status quo

the complication

initial challenges

midpoint

further challenges

the low point

the climax

the resolution

DRAFT

and we get to the best part which is writing! now that you know everything about your story, characters, locations, and scenes, all you have to do is to put all that together in words. don't feel pressured to make everything look perfect already, just write what comes to your mind. if you have a new idea for the plot, good, write it down! if this character doesn't make sense anymore, okay, get rid of them. just go with the flow, following the structure you've planned, and everything starts to come to life.

i know it's so tempting to go back, read what you wrote, and start editing and polishing, but trust me, don't do that! it's a waste of time, and you will take so much more time to finish your first draft. in fact, i've given up on so many stories because of that...

just when you finish the first draft, you will re-read everything and start editing, fixing plot holes, changing what doesn't fit well, etc. but for now, just write, get the first draft done. enjoy the process, don't rush.

thanks for reading!

i hope this post was helpful!

also, you might be interested in this free workbook with over 90 pages and many exercises! check it out here: THE WRITER'S WORKBOOK

resources for this post:

How to Choose a Plot Outline Method: 4 Techniques for Outlining Novels

How to Write a Novel: A Step-by-Step Guide

[crymeariveronceagain]

hey i don't know what writer needs to hear this today but you can have characters in your work who exist only to move the plot forward. you can create an oc for a fanfic who exists to ask a question at the right time and is never seen again. you can create a novel and have random characters that exist to move the story. characters are elements of narrative. not every single one has to have a whole backstory and a life fleshed out. sometimes they can just be there for a scene and then never be involved again. isn't that how life works? don't we meet people and then they vanish? aren't our lives simply moments spent to drive forward the plots of others? your character can be pointless. you character can exist in a moment. your character can take up space. your character can exist, even if you don't know their birthday and their mother's favorite song.

characters are not people. you do not have to make them into people unless you want to. you owe them nothing. use characters however you want in your story. develop them as is relevant. otherwise, it literally does not matter.

[perpetual-stories]

How to Write Compelling Character Backstories: Step-by-Step Guide

Hello, everyone! Happy Day! Hopefully everyone is ready for the weekend!

I don’t have much of an intro so, let’s get to it.

What Is a Character Backstory?

A backstory is a comprehensive overview of a character’s history that extends beyond the story in which the character appears.

Devising backstories is a crucial part of character creation since a character’s background will inform the action of the main narrative.

Writing character backstories can be part of the worldbuilding process. It’s a way to create fully formed characters who resemble real people with nuanced personality traits.

How to Write Compelling Backstories for Your Characters

Backstories are essential to creating memorable, authentic characters in your writing. Here are some tips to help you write compelling backstories:

Build a timeline of your character’s life events. Plotting out the key events in your character’s past can help you better understand your character’s personality and point of view. What were they like at a young age? What was their high school experience like? Did they have a best friend? When was the first time they fell in love? Continue plotting out these key events until you reach the present day. Not only will this exercise help you better understand your character’s thoughts, personality, and quirks, it will also give you a bird’s eye view of the formative events in your character’s life.

Make sure backstory details are relevant. When writing backstory for a new character, it can be tempting to include every bit of personal history that seems funny or interesting. However, focus on backstory that directly informs the plot points and conflicts that your character experiences in the main story. For example, if your main character’s best friend dies in your novel or short story, backstory that explains the depth of their friendship will deepen the emotional stakes. On the other hand, backstory that explores your character’s favorite food or an adventuring trip they took with their parents will feel like a waste of time, since it does not connect to your character’s present emotional reality.

Draw inspiration from real life. Writing a believable character backstory can be difficult. That’s why it’s helpful to draw inspiration from real life. Think about the way you recount formative events in your own life. Pay attention to the way your friends and loved ones tell stories. Read biographies of celebrities, politicians, or historical figures to understand the important episodes that shaped their lives. Taking note of real peoples’ backstories will make your character’s backstory seem all the more authentic and genuine.

Show, don’t tell. When weaving details from your character’s backstory into the text of your novel or short story, it’s important to avoid info-dumps. Too much backstory at once can cause the reader to become bored, which is why it’s important to vary the way in which a character’s past is revealed. Show, don’t tell is a writing technique in which a character’s personal history is revealed through actions, sensory details, or emotions. In other words, the author attempts to “show you” what happened rather than simply telling you what happened. Revealing your main character’s past life through tangible details and flashbacks can help the reader gain insight into the character’s background without relying on info-dumping.

Don’t overload your first chapter with backstory. When writing the first draft of a novel, it can be tempting to try to get all of your character’s backstory out of the way at the beginning. However, frontloading your novel with backstory and exposition will likely cause the reader to get bored since backstory often gets in the way of plotting, conflict, and organic character development. Try to spread out your backstory over the course of the whole story, deploying information as it becomes relevant to that character’s current situation.

There you have it folks, a quick and short post! Have a wonderful day everyone!

Please like, comment, reblog and follow!

[linabirb]

how to write characters, voice dramas and mvs for your ocgram! (kind of? sort of? i'm not an expert?)

do you want to make an ocgram? do you have no idea where to start? maybe you don't know how to come up with characters for your ocgram? voice dramas are way too hard to write? how the hell are you even supposed to write mvs??

well hello there! i hope this guide can help you with doing just that!

as someone who has an ocgram (@linagram hi) and is currently trying to get everything prepared for season 3, i also was struggling. a lot. i'm kinda getting better at organizing everything now, but still, all the work you need or supposed to do for ocgram can be overwhelming, especially if you don't really have much prepared at the moment and you're just getting started.

before we proceed, if you're able to make art, edits or any other visuals for your ocgram, i recommend checking out this guide by @tsuwmya, it has a lot of useful info, references and resources. if you can't do any of that, that's fine too! you having fun with creating is more important and if you don't have the ability to create visuals, that's perfectly understandable. this guide is more about the writing part anyway, haha.

let's get started!

(warning for some spoilers for the milgram novels (at least the first one) just in case!)

this guide will be separated into parts so that it's easier to understand and you can find the part that you think is the most difficult one for you.

worldbuilding.

before we start working on characters and voice dramas, let's say you're just starting out. you want to make an ocgram, but you don't even know where to begin!

now, this is probably going to sound a little scary, but what i recommend doing before writing characters, vds and mvs is some worldbuilding. no, no, i'm not telling you to figure out everything about your ocgram lore (but if you want to, feel free to do so! i actually think it's gonna help you a lot in the future), but try to answer these questions first.

"when does your ocgram take place?"

it can be as specific as a certain date or it can be as vague as "some time before/after canongram". canongram lore doesn't really give us much info to work with so you can go wild. but figuring out even something as simple as whether your ocgram takes place before canongram or after can actually help you a lot!

"is your ocgram closer to canongram or novelgram?"

the music project and the novels' settings have their differences and both settings have their strengths. you don't have to write mvs for the novels-like ocgram, though you will still have to write the memory scenes. also, for a novel-like ocgram your characters are expected to be named after some sort of adjective that could describe their personality or be a reference to their crime/backstory (example: "nervous", "gentle", "two-side"), but their names are still supposed to be revealed closer to the end. meanwhile canongram uses the voice dramas, timeline convos and mvs (and apparently earbuds voicelines) to tell you more about the characters. figuring out the "format" of your ocgram like that can help you a lot too.

now, you have figured out these details. great! if you're feeling like writing more about how your ocgram works, let's think about these parts more.

is your ocgram just like the milgram project you've chosen as a "base"? maybe it even has the same jackalope? is the guard still named "es"? maybe there's more than one guard and more or less than ten (or five in case of novelgram, if i remember correctly) prisoners? does the prison still look exactly the same? maybe something has changed over the months or years? all of this depends on your own preferences and what you decide to do with the story. you can make your ocgram as different from canongram or as similar as you like.

again, we don't know much about canongram at the moment, so don't be afraid of coming up with the whole backstory for the prison.

when you feel like your world is ready, it's time to fill it with characters!

characters.

oh boy, the fun begins. i'm not your mom, so you can do anything you want with your ocs, but if you don't have any character concepts in mind and you don't know what to do, here are some tips!

(we're going with the canongram formula here, but you can adjust it as needed)

as you probably already know, the canongram prisoner pairs have some sort of theme. both haruka and yuno's crimes have something to do with children. both fuuta and muu's crimes have something to do with bullying. you see what i mean. figuring out themes for your prisoners could be a nice start if you don't really have any characters in mind. pick themes that sound interesting to you and that you would like to explore more.

let's go with the theme of "luck" for example. how can two (or one, or three, or any number, really) prisoners share the same theme? how can you show that? maybe one of them is really lucky and the other one is extremely unlucky?

okay, but here's the fun part. how can you apply this theme to murder? maybe one of them was able to successfully get away with murder, meanwhile the other one accidentally killed someone because of their bad luck? and this way you can come up with really cool characters even if you didn't have any ideas in mind before that!

okay, so the milgram's whole thing is that all characters are morally gray in some way. and the character's moral "grayness" is a spectrum. for example, it can go from "eh, they shouldn't be here, honestly" white to "okay this one is kinda fucked up" gray to "JAIL. NOW. OH WAIT YOU ALREADY ARE THERE" black. but again, even the sweetest and kindest characters should have their questionable moments and even the scariest and most dangerous ones should have moments that make you feel sorry for them.

let's take some canongram prisoners as an example. we have haruka. an adorable squishy blorbo, everyone's skrunkly, the guy who everybody kins. don't you feel sorry for him? don't you want to give him a hug? oh, he kills animals, by the way. he also killed a young girl. just so you know.

now, we have muu. a spoiled teenage girl who always get the things she wants and is proud of it. a girl who literally said she's okay with haruka killing himself for her. literally has a song called "it's not my fault". cries every time a minor inconvenience happens and whenever someone suggests something to her, she just goes "i don't wanna..". her father is a landlord. except she also got bullied by her own friends, doesn't understand how real friendships and human connections work, still brings haruka food and checks up on him when nobody else does and it's heavily implied she actually does feel guilty for killing rei. yeah.

my own personal formula goes like this: i come up with a character. i write some things about them and then i take a look at their crime and personality and if i feel like they're a bit too sympathetic, i add a little bit of spice so that it isn't so easy to forgive them.

let's take my oc aimi for example!

she's such a cutie, isn't she? she's also a victim of bullying too.. oh, also she has the biggest number of victims out of all my prisoners. she also seems to be very obsessed with the concept of friendship and if you refuse to be her friend, she will not take it well. she will most likely try to kill all other prisoners in season 3 or at least hurt them in some way because she doesn't see them as friends anymore. she's been voted innocent twice. she has way too much power in her hands at the moment.

okay! now, let's take my oc kei!

a pretty guy! seems like the flirty type. oh, by the way, he takes photos of people being tortured and that's how he makes money (not counting his job as. well. a normal photographer). "oh, well, maybe he didn't have a choice-" he did. he literally does it because he wants to. he likes it. he enjoys it more than his boss. he likes seeing people in pain and believes that hurting someone means showing you love them. he physically and emotionally abused his own little brother for years and the poor guy still can't walk and move properly because of it. he has five victims.

but for some reason, he also has these huge scars on his back. he also was shown crying in his second mv. he was shown as someone helpless and someone who ended up in a very dangerous situation because of his victims. so.. is he the real victim here? or is he just trying to look more pitiful?

i think you're already starting to understand what i mean. of course, you have all the freedom to do anything you want with your characters. make them as dangerous or as cute as you like. but if you want them to have this "milgram vibe", i suggest you try to find "balance" between their traits that make them look forgivable and the ones that make them look unforgivable!

we can't forget about the guards though! does your guard have all their memories intact? do they remember their name, their past, etc? maybe they're just like the canon es and they don't remember anything at all? do they have their own jackalope or maybe they do their job without a fluffy little bunny around? what is their role here? are they more of a "self-insert"/"audience surrogate" or are they their own character with a backstory and everything? maybe they're an active type who has very deep relationship dynamics with the prisoners and talks to them a lot even when they're not interrogating them? or maybe they're just a creacher? maybe they just do their job and don't really talk to them? they're just standing there.. menacingly.. all of this is up to you to decide!

of course, the relationship dynamics between the characters are very important! first of all, look at your overall cast, when you're done with them. what kind of relationship do you imagine them having? maybe you see them as a found family? maybe all of them are friends? maybe all of them are kissing passionately in the moonlight? maybe all of them hate each other? maybe they even don't care about each other at all! again, it's all your choice and it depends on what kind of characters you're working with.

if you're stuck and you're not sure where to begin, i think a good start would be taking a look at your prisoner pairs and try to figure out the dynamic between the prisoners from each pair. what are their parallels like? how similar are they? how different? do they like each other because of their similarities/differences or they hate each other because of them?

okay, so when you're done with characters, a much scarier part appears.

plot.

so, what do you write first? is it the voice dramas? maybe mvs?

i think it really depends on a person and what you personally find most comfortable, but from my own experience i actually would advise you to work on the vds and mvs first before writing and posting a character's profile.

you see, it's possible that while you're in the process of writing the voice drama, you will notice that the character's personality is much different from what you had written in their profile and originally had in mind for them. of course, it doesn't mean that it will definitely happen to you, but this happened to a lot of my ocs, haha.

so that this doesn't happen but you also have an idea of how your character is supposed to act, try writing down or simply making a mental note about your oc's main personality traits. maybe they're the most extroverted one? maybe they get tired easily? maybe they flirt with everyone they meet? keep those traits in mind, but also give yourself the freedom to explore their character and make them more deep in the process. maybe while you write the most extroverted prisoner's voice drama, you will realize that they actually don't like other prisoners that much or while you write the sleepy prisoner's voice drama, you will get an idea about them not wanting to face their reality and use sleeping as a method of escapism.

if it helps, i personally work on my ocgram in this order: voice dramas > music videos > character profiles, but of course, you can adjust it to your preference.

i think it should be obvious that you should work on the characters' crimes and backstories before you actually start writing the voice dramas and posting stuff about them. sure, you can make it up as you go, if you're confident enough, but i strongly recommend you have a plan or at least a concept of what your character's crime is supposed to be. it will make everything much easier for you!

about backstories: you don't have to, i don't know, come up with names for every single member of your character's family, but i recommend thinking about your oc's backstory outside of their crime. what was their childhood like? what about their teenage years? do they have any friends? what's their relationship with their family like? all these details can help you understand your character's motives, personality, crime and other stuff. also it's simply fun!

so, let's start with the voice dramas.

voice dramas.

(i've also answered a vd-related question here!)

voice dramas can be very hard to write, so let's think about what makes them hard for you first.

maybe you just don't have any ideas? maybe you don't know what the characters are supposed to talk about?

what personally helps me when i start writing the voice dramas is asking myself this question:

"why are these guys even here?"

probably sounds weird, but if you think about it, it actually makes everything a little easier to understand.

why is the guard here? most likely to interrogate the prisoner.

why is the prisoner here? most likely to answer the guard's questions.

okay, we're getting somewhere.

now, how would your guard interrogate the prisoner? of course, it really depends on your guard's personality. maybe they would try to make the prisoner feel more comfortable? or would they rather threaten them and scare them?

now, let's add the prisoner's personality to this equation. what is your prisoner like? how would they react to the guard's questions? what do they think about the guard? are they scared of them? maybe they want to be friends with them? what do they think about milgram in general?

let's put these personalities in one room now and give them a moment. how will they interact? what will they think about each other?

if you're not sure what your guard is supposed to ask about, you can always use the canon voice dramas for reference, but my personal method is simply thinking about what my guard is most concerned about or interested in. and yes, this goes for the guards who don't care about anything too!

maybe your guard wants to make sure the prisoners are doing okay? in this case, they'd probably want to ask about how they're feeling first. or maybe your guard is more focused on the prisoner's crime. then they'd probably start asking about that right away.

okay, your guard has asked a question! how will the prisoner answer?

depending on your prisoner's crime, personality and backstory, they may be okay with revealing some things, but would never want to talk about something else. maybe they're okay with talking about their murder method, their victim and all, but they will never tell you what their motive is. if you're only getting started with the first season, try to reveal something they're okay with first! then you can talk about the other things in later seasons.

what helps me a lot is separating my prisoners' crimes into parts and sort of.. figuring out which parts should be revealed very early and which ones should be saved for later.

for example, maybe we can reveal the prisoner's murder weapon and method in the first season, their victim's identity in the second one and their motive in the third one.

what also helps me with writing the voice dramas is simply "visualizing" everything and imagining how it would go in a visual novel, anime, actual voice drama, etc. also remember that since it's a voice drama, you're kinda supposed to tell everything through sounds and, well, voices! so for example, if you want to tell the reader that the prisoner is nervous, maybe you can make the guard say "you look nervous" or simply make the prisoner say "i'm kinda nervous".

music videos.

mvs are something everyone does a bit differently. maybe you can actually draw/animate your prisoners' mvs. maybe you can write song lyrics for them. maybe you can simply write their mvs' descriptions. it all depends on your skills and what you're working with. so here i will simply talk about how to come up with an idea for a music video.

firstly, what are you supposed to reveal in your prisoner's mv? is it their murder method? is it their victim's identity? maybe something else? keep that in mind so that it's easier for you to drop hints to that thing.

now, what can we do for the visual part? is there anything you associate with the prisoner? a certain theme, aesthetic, etc? even simple objects can help, think about how many canongram prisoners have an object as their "theme": yuno has balloons, muu has an hourglass, kazui has an apple, etc. now, try to think how you can reveal something about the prisoner through this theme. for example, in yuno's case, balloons are a reference to her pregnancy. milgram loves symbolism, so take advantage of that, haha.

what also helps me a lot is simply listening to music that i associate with that prisoner and kinda coming up with music videos in the process. watching actual music videos can also help when you're looking for inspiration.

also, don't forget that everyone's music videos literally come from their brains. what does your prisoner think about their crime? what do they remember about it? how do they feel about it? do they feel guilty? do they feel like they've done nothing wrong? do they wish to forget it? do they see it as their biggest achievement? it can also help with writing song lyrics, if you're doing that.

if you're writing a mv description and you're not drawing/animating a music video, i would advise you to try to describe as many things as possible, as long as it's important. yes, we all love noticing small details while rewatching the milgram mvs, we all love the tiny things that are important for understanding the character's crime, but sadly, if we can't see it, how else are we supposed to know about it? so yeah, if the color of the curtains is important in your story, you should describe it too.

anddddd i think that's all for now! this is mostly done for people who haven't gotten to the second/third seasons of their ocgrams yet, so stuff like the prisoners' reactions to their verdicts, their punishments, etc, is not here. but you can ask me about it (and if you have any other questions, you can also ask me)!

hopefully this helps someone <3

[dearwriters]

Okay, So, I have this character, his name is Ciel. Ciel is a nervous 14 y/o trans boy who was conditioned to always act cheerful and full of energy, to act with the eccentrics of a circus performer(which he was)

Now here's the thing, he's my main character's best friend, but also has a plotline of his own. The main character is a toxic person w/ a hero complex and narrates the story(they are very unreliable and try and make Ciel seem like the toxic one)

The main character(13y/o girl) twists things to make themself seem better, how can I show that Ciel is morally grey while still having the unreliable MC villianize him?

How to write an Unreliable Narrator

Hi! Thank you for your question. What you describe is a great example for an unreliable narrator. Here are a few thought on how to create such a narrative voice:

It's all about the twist

The big thing for most stories told by an unreliable narrator is having the reader at first side with them before the relevation of their true nature. This creates the big conflict the reader is confronted by. It's not about straight up lying to the reader, it's about exploiting their natural willingness to side with the main character, since they are closest to their thoughts, reasonings and emotions. While the voice of the narrator leads them down the wrong path, foreshadowing the truth behind their narrative is essential. It's like placing clues for a mystery, so the reader can look back on the text and realize all the ways they have been led astray, while the truth was there the whole time. So think about this story as a mystery story with the crime to uncover being the obscuring of truth.

Give them a motive

Like in any crime story, the criminal needs a motive. "Being toxic" can be a character trait but in itself it doesn't add up to a motivation. If their motivation is to paint themselves as a hero, it might be crucial to explore their personality and their backstory for how this desire was produced and what their ultimate goal is.

One great example is the novel Gone Girl (spoilers, obviously): We learn about Amys story through her diary entries that paint her husband as violent, before the twist of the story reveals that she manufactured the diary to frame her husband for murder.

Another famous example is the novel Lolita, in which the narrator Humbert Humbert obviously twists the events of the novel in a way that paints him as the "victim" of the "seduction" of the 12 year old Dolores, to justify the sexual abuse he imparted upon her. The point of the novel is for the reader to be horrified and disgusted by his thoughts and reasonings, while being captivated by the hauntingly beautiful prose.

The next famous example would be The Tell-Tale heart. The fragmented prose of the text illustrates the narrators madness to the reader, thus marking him as unreliable.

Some ways to foreshadow the unreliable narrator

It can be quite tricky to place to clues that point to the narrator being unreliable. Here are some ways that can help with that:

a) Using other characters/POVs as a sounding board: A story using multiple POVs might be the easiest way to show the different narrators various reliability. The characters filter the events through their specific lenses and thus give the reader a way to piece together the truth.

b) Using the narration itself to instill doubt: this can be used by planting contradictions, by showing in real time the thought-process of the character twisting the truth, by establishing intentional "plot holes" that are later revealed to be part of the twist, by framgenting the narration in a way that indicated the narrators instability or by having the narrator justify events/acts/thoughts that are obviously twisted. Things can start out seeming very truthfull and reliable and then proceed to unravel as the narrator struggles to keep up appearances.

I hope this helped a bit.

Have fun writing!

[lapsusophobia]

POTO fandom presents

Dream Girl Evil: A Luciana Appreciation Week (July 21st—July 28th 2024)

Hello everyone and welcome to a new & fresh out the slammer event in our Phandom! I am excited to announce the first (and hopefully) annual edition of Dream Girl Evil: A Luciana Appreciation Week, dedicated to one of the most overlooked (and overhated) character in the Phantom of the Opera-verse. This year’s event is taking place from July 21st to July 28, a week where you can show your love for Luciana and create something amazing focused on her! The event takes place here, on Tumblr, and on AO3 since these are my only POTO associated socials.

In this post, I gathered all the necessary information & some rules you’ll have to stick to in order to participate. Please carefully go through all of them.

Now. . .

WHO IS LUCIANA?

Luciana is a secondary character from Susan Kay’s 1990 novel Phantom. Phantom is a historical-fiction novel which follows the life of Erik, the infamous Opera Ghost, from his early years to his miserable childhood, his teenage years spent travelling the world, adulthood and finally his deathbed, keeping various elements from the original 1910 novel. She appears in the fourth chapter of the book and is described through her father’s perspective, Giovanni, as a 13 years old girl & his fourth and youngest daughter. She is contoured as rather impulsive, having anger issues and over all being a ‘spoiled brat’.

WHY A WEEK DEDICATED TO LUCIANA?

I believe that Luciana has potential to be more than a secondary character/ a tool designed to just fill some pages and then perish into oblivion. I want to give this character the spotlight she deserves & try to stop (at least a little) the hate she continues to receive. I am a firm believer that Luciana deserves her own moment of glory and we as artists & fans should try and acknowledge her more.

RULES & MENTIONS:

— your piece can include any other characters of your liking from the POTOverse (in fact, I highly encourage that!!), but keep it focused on Luciana and don’t make her a background character!

— any ship/ lack of ship is welcome (side note that inc€st/ pr0shipping will not be tolerated unless handled in the right manner: showing how a character has overcome such a traumatic experience or being portrayed in the rightful light, not encouraging; if otherwise it will not be taken into account)

— all forms of art are welcome (fics/one-shots, moodboards, headcannons, drawings & illustrations, comics, poems etc.) AI will not be tolerated and therefore the entry will not be taken into account

— the work/ post must be tagged with #DGE POTO 2024 here and/or on AO3 otherwise it won’t be added to this event’s tag

— dark/heavy subjects and topics are welcome with the condition of being rightfully portrayed

— smut is very welcomed with the condition of being adequately tagged

— you do not have to stick to the ‘cannon’ portrayal in Kay’s novel. feel free to develop your own version of Luciana, build her an elaborate backstory etc.; the whole point, after all, is to have fun!

— you are more than welcome to mix her cannon with any other POTO existent universe (ex: the OG Leroux novel, Yeston & Kopit’s, ALW etc.)

— if you are gonna post your writing entry on here or/and on AO3, keep in mind to properly tag your work with the adequate tags (eg: if your piece approaches sensitive topics such, please tag them properly and mention their pressence)

PROMPTS & LAST WORDS

Here are the prompts I have made (you are not obligated to follow them!! once again, the whole point of this event is to have fun and give this character the spotlight it deserves — you can do as many/less as you want or even none):

Day 1: Persuasion

Day 2: Crossdressing

Day 3: Modern AU

Day 4: Womanhood

Day 5: Insomnia

Day 6: Garden

Day 7: FREE DAY

Or you can just post a work/illustration etc. with no prompt at all! Either way, I hope everybody is going to have fun!! <3

A master post of all the entries while be done by the end of the event (two days after 28th of July), and a collection will be created on AO3 where I will gather all the writings.

That’s it, folks! Remember to use the #DGE POTO 2024 when you post your entry, otherwise it won’t be seen/taken into account!

Until next time!

xx

[doukeshi-kun]

what was the creative process behind the inspiration that took you to write stalker!nikolai? you’ve mentioned getting inspiration from haunting adeline, but how did you come up with the rest? it’s extremely well written and the plot is published book worthy 🫶🏻

ooh interesting question! but first of all, thank you sm for the compliment! published book oh my lorddd i really appreciate it! 10 year-old keshi who wanted to be a writer/novelist is very happy🥹🫶

i will admit that i don't open the haunting adeline novel at all while writing part two and three. i barely open it when i'm writing the first part either. mainly because the very scene i was inspired with is just a couple scenes from the whole book (mainly, the mirror maze).

well, as i write the first part of the fic, i never intended it to be a series or trilogy... but people loved it and when i read back that fic, i got some sparkles of idea, you could say...

now, thing is, those ideas aren't definitive. i changed many things. but some themes that i definitely want to keep in the series are the stalking and the chasing or running away part. so that's why, in the first fic, we have nikolai chasing after reader. in the second fic, we have reader chasing after nikolai to stop him from murdering alex. in the last fic, we have both of them running away from the authorities. other important themes also include: nikolai's freedom and all those conversations about morality.

from those themes, i tried to form a plot that could surround them and of course, i make use of the settings i have created in the first fic (circus, funhouse, reader's house, reader's personality and little backstory). i also like to talk and discuss nikolai's personality and his ideal/mindset/way of thinking through my fics. however, i don't intend to have any moral value to be gained from my fics lmao

so yes, to conclude, i came up with the plots based on the first fic, the themes i wanted to keep and the settings i have established from the beginning. i jotted down a rough plotline and what scenes i have in mind. and then i started the first draft and see if i can go somewhere. if good, go on. if bad, delete and redo. also, while i was writing the drafts, i also got ideas to change or add new things—thus the plotline will be edited again and again

wordcount is not one of my concern tbh. i'll finish up my drafts, and just then i total up all the word count and listed all content warnings that i could gather while proofreading it.

but lol, while i was writing the first and second part, i have the word count right at the right bottom. i actually get quite nervous when a scene that's supposed to be mildly short has gained like... fuckin 3k words BECAUSE IT'S A PAIN IN THE ASS TO CHECK IT WITH GRAMMARLY 😭😭😭 so yes that's like one of my not-so-fun moment when writing long fics.

thank you for this question! i actually like it :3

[antagames]

Dear Anta, I hope today is your happy day. This is the first time I write something like this for my favorite artist, I was quite shy and it took me a few days before decided to send this but I know I want to. ( Also, I'm not really good at English so I hope you don't mind :( )

The first thing I want to say is that I really love your art work and games. In my opinion, I find your games are really good, with both interface and story. I also like how you create a charater, each char have their own story and a special personality, which gives them an attraction to me.

The second it's about one of your games: 'Trapped with Jester'. I'm a big fan of visual novel games and when I first saw this on itch io I was very curious. After experiencing the game, I felt extremely curious about the story after that and also wanted to know more about the Jester. Since I start playing visual novel games, I realize Jester is always my number one yandere bias. I love him so so much <3.

And in that case, I want to ask you about Jester backstory, his favorite things, favorite food and everything about him. I was really curious about the story behind that smile.

And that is all I want to say, I'm waiting everyday to see more of your games, especially the games that have Jester in it ;), I will always support you with your product.

Aww thanks! Don't worry about your English, I really appreciate it when you all try to communicate with me despite the language barrier. As for Jester's backstory... unfortunately, I can't talk about that. The day I just drop his whole lore in text without any accompanying media (be it game, comic, MV, etc.) is the day that I've completely given up on making any other content about him, if you get what I mean? If I just drop his entire lore, then there'd be little to no more future content. I can answer more trivial questions though! For his favorite things... I think I've posted about it on my Twitter account before (but it's really hard to dig up-), it is hinted in the game itself as well, and outright mentioned in the Art+Lore Book, including his 'favorite food' (mentioned as food he's fond of). If you want to know more about him, I've posted some lore on my devlog if you haven't seen that yet. I've also made a few lore drops on my Twitter, but again, you'll have to dig it up... and I'm not sure if I've properly tagged them all.

[lazuliquetzal]

Tell me your thoughts about gameplay and story integration in video games :3

(THANKS ILY TOO!)

Video games are a super interesting medium because it's all about leveraging player behavior and choice. A lot of game design fundamentals are about giving the player freedom, or the illusion of freedom. The game maker sets the rules, and the player organically develops behaviors and strategies within those rules. If you want the player to act a certain way, you have to encourage them to act in that way. (Watch one of the bazillion analysis videos on Super Mario Bros. World 1-1 sometime.)

In games there are ways to punish a player (death, losing progress, jumpscares, etc) and there are ways to reward a player (score go up, unlock new thing, get more power, etc). Story can be part of that, and it can go beyond "play well = good end, play poorly = bad end."

I think, if you're going to use a video game to tell your story, you should really take advantage of it, you know? Flex the medium. Leverage the inherent immersion that comes with the player Interacting With The Game. Inscryption and Undertale are So Video Game that you can't adapt it to a different medium without significant rework. They are video games because they have to be video games. That doesn't make them automatically good, but a good storyteller would choose the medium that works best with their story and that confidence just oozes out, in a good way.

You don't even have to get all 4th wall meta with your video game plot. In Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time, the main Gimmick is that you have a time-traveling dagger. You can use it to make combat sequences easier, you can use it to solve puzzles, but it's also integral to the entire experience. The time travel sets up the framed narrative, which pays homage to the literature that serves as the game's inspiration. The central conflict is resolved with the time travel mechanic. In gameplay, you make mistakes, experience consequences in battle, learn and do things correctly the next time around, which is the Prince's entire character arc. Even basic game mechanics are part of the story -- when you save, you get "tips and tricks!" in the form of visions that will help you solve puzzles, but some of those visions are plot-relevant. The menu itself has flavor dialogue that is part of the narrative frame and is also hilarious.

Some other examples: Papers, Please! explores bureaucracy as a tool of dehumanization under authoritarian governements, and the gameplay is all fine print and form-filling and menus. In GOW 2018, there are enemies that have elemental weaknesses, so you end up having to switch weapons. (This is a really common thing to do: new area w/ new enemies requires new weapon.) You unlock the Blades of Chaos so that you can enter Helheim. The Blades also have a backstory, and using them means something in Kratos's character arc, it's a whole Thing. In metroidvanias, you unlock new abilities so you can access new parts of the story and find things you missed the first time around -- really good for worldbuilding and creating a sense of depth to a location (the world of Blasphemous comes to mind). Majora's Mask gives you anxiety.

A buddy once asked if I thought a good plot could carry a crappy game, and my answer is no. You can't absorb the story if the primary mode of interacting with the story is unplayable. If the gameplay is detracting from the story, then you should make a movie or write a novel. Video games are experiences: gameplay should serve story, story should serve gameplay. *Tetris: Effect Voice* it's all connected!

I just enjoy it when stories are told in mediums that suit them best. It's satisfying! It's fun! Makes my brain go :D

[hexhomos]

so do i have to play league to keep up with lore?

Not at all!!! League is the opposite of a story-based game. Champions are meant to represent an archetype in the rift and shout some cool catchphrases. MOST are self contained, a few have interwoven plotlines that can span years. Some character stories get updated over time in the form of short fiction / comics / event based visual novels but most of that content can be looked up online.

In the case of jayce/viktor, to make ref easier for all: HERE’S THE JAYVIK LEAGUE LORE CHEAT SHEET.

League of Legends

Viktor's bio v.1 | Jayce's bio v.1 | Blitzcrank's bio v.1

Viktor's bio v.2 | Jayce's bio v.2 | Blitzcrank's bio v.2

Viktor’s short story | Jayce’s short story | Blitz’ alt bio

“v.1″ refers to their original release bios, “v.2″ to post runeterra universe reboot bios. Worth noting that some of these changes were... contentious; blitzcrank’s new origin story as something viktor did not create but simply mod is mostly ignored by fans, who still refer to original events in a vague manner. The omission of stanwick in jayce / blitz’ updated bios is a big questionmark. To get in the spirit of the thing I just go all in the ‘Unreliable Narrator’ aspect of their whole shebang and cobble together my own interpretation of events.

[update nov.22]: Blitzcrank’s alt bio has been added! this 1.5 version contains a somewhat different account of events that I kind of prefer, compared to 2.0

EVEN MORE STUFF:

Read info on ALL Canon AU universes, find HD splash art, Skinline details, 3D Models & more on the Vikjayce Codex!

CONVERGENCE: A LEAGUE OF LEGENDS STORY

'CONVERGENCE' is an Ekko-led platformer game that released in 2023. An accompanying free-to-download comic miniseries was made to supplement the game's story, and it focuses on Jayce, Viktor, Ekko himself & his family -- and how they are all interwoven as the 'struggling genius' archetype in a very flawed system.

[Read here!!]

This series features a retelling of J/V's backstories through the lens of an outsider, and a bit of an update on where they are now. Surprising absolutely no one: they are still very attached to each other. (This comic is standalone, and not part of the Arcane universe.)

Legends of Runeterra vikjayce content:

[ Jayce’s Deck / related cards ]  |  [ Viktor’s Deck / related cards ]

Jayce's Path of Champions Comic (Voiced/Viktor is in it)

Jayce voice interactions | Viktor voice interactions (he shares this vid w other champions, pops back from time to time)

*They both keep extensive research/life notes addressing themselves. It’s very undying highschool girl cute. LoR is sometimes referred to as its own continuity; their cards are both a progression of their story and a what-if scenario.

Arcane universe limited content:

[ Jayce Talis’ journal ] was available to read in the league client while the show was airing. “Far From Home” “Progress Day” “A Powerful Partnership” are all diary entries; the layout is a bit finicky but click on chapter numbers to progress, the image on the side changes to match!

Wild Rift limited content:

[ Jayce got a champion release webtoon ] that never made it to NA servers. It quickly summarizes his deal and vaguely hints Viktor is in the update horizon.

There is a tentative translation offered by blessed twitter user crossedfires, highlight being the jayce/viktor panel wherein he remarks: 

“Genius is always lonely, I know this truth very well. Until Viktor appeared – I admit it – he is the only gear comparable to me.” (uses the verb xiāngdāng (comparable) that means match, balance, correspond to). One of my mandarin-speaking friends has also pointed out the wordplay lends itself to double meaning; “He is the only gear to match/that matches mine.”

MISC / OFF CANON:

Jayce & Viktor animated stickers

Punches&Plants 2 - Altcanon comedy, various champs living in an urbanized fantasy version of runeterra. Jayce and Viktor retire from a life of rivalry to dedicate themselves to new hobbies. Viktor is a dollmaker, Jayce is a weeb. Blitzcrank has an unfortunate job.

League’s Germany twitter promo - Viktor gets his ‘man of progress’ mug.

Wild Rift holidays promo - Jayce leaves a gift for ‘V’ under the tree.

Jayce and Viktor also have plenty of AU ingame skins with their own micro bios. Not linking these here since itd be too much info/ u can easily google; they share the Battlecast universe (ppl like this one) and the Heavy Metal universe (ppl dislike this one for various reasons, namely retconning Viktor’s full machine skin from ‘his last stage of mechanization’ into a very unfortunate stereotype.) They were meant to be an annoying player and an annoyed dungeon master in the Riftquest universe but riot scrapped Viktor’s skin. RIP

if anything else cool happens or I remember a missed spot I’ll update this!

[sweetfirebird]

unorganized thoughts I was working out the other night with vashti-lives about why so much of published romance does not spark in my brain the way that original fic, generally written by fanfic authors, does. and it's not an insult to romance authors. it's a genre with conventions, and people love those conventions, and authors following them are doing what they should be doing to please their audience and find success in the genre. (whatever value of success they are going for).

and there are obviously several differences between the two groups but the one that i think fails to ignite anything in my brain is that fanfiction is about *very specific characters* and the emphasis on characterization is the priority. and when original fic comes from authors used to doing that, they generally feel the need to build an entire world around their original characters to provide the subtext and backstory that normally fanfiction would provide for them. like, if you are writing like... what's a popular fandom? star wars? (i almost typed a star war like lucille bluth lol) you don't need to set up the space stuff and the rebellion and the background, the audience knows it. so it remains present even when unspoken, and it provides weight and history and meaning to interactions. And when authors are used to that and want to do something original, then tend to end up wanting that same level of subtext and history and involvement. even if the backstory does not show up in the story itself, it affects interactions between the characters. the very specific characters created for this world/this world has been created around.

i am not sure i am expressing this well. because it isn't that i don't think published romance writers don't also create worlds for their characters... it's that that is not the point of most romance novels. romance novels are vehicles for fantasies and are intended for more general audiences. you know what i mean? many of them are meant to have fun/nice/relatable characters going through it for the sake of a wider audience. one of the characters, usually the main viewpoint character, is often meant to be someone the reader can easily slip into the head of, so they can live out a dark romance fantasy or the fun escapism, or the hot smut, etc. which is awesome. but to appeal to a wider audience, these characters have to necessarily less specific. (i think this is also a part of why "fanfiction with the serial numbers filed off" is obvious to readers a lot of the time. the specificness has not gone away.-- i could say specificity but what is this, Inception?)

ostensibly, it's the same thing from the authors of 'original works' or published m/m: creating characters and then building a world around those characters to put them in situations. and yet it feels different? i can't quite articulate why i feel more from original works than from most published romances.

all this of course inspired by me reading an original work that is, when broken down to its essentials, a historical fantasy romance with a mystery that needs to be solved by a pair that are going to end up in love. which is an existing and very popular m/m romance subgenre! and yet, i forget a lot of the published m/m versions the instant i am done reading them. this story i am mildly obsessed with and annoyed it's not finished yet. and i remember the characters' names, which... quite frankly, i don't when reading romances a lot of the time.

(i could also get into it regarding m/m romance and fanfic and things that feel more queer to me personally, but that is like a whole other mess of thoughts.)

[myths-tournaments]

Awful Characters Round 2 Part 2 (8/8)

Propaganda under the cut!

SHATTERBIRD

She exploded all the glass and sand in Dubai, killing thousands upon thousands, and then eventually joined a group of merciless serial killers and repeated this with every single city she visited because she craved the attention and fear and respect that she got from doing this. She quite possibly has a kill count higher than any other human on the planet considering thousands die from their windows, watches, phones, glasses, cars, or other glass objects impaling them with shards whenever she performs her city-shattering scream, and she's done this dozens of times. Beyond the mass murdering, she's also just a generally unpleasantly haughty and overly proud person, seeing many others as below her and quoting literature like a pretentious asshole. I like her because her power of silicon control is really damn cool, her outfit is pretty, she's hot, and also because her backstory is rather interesting because so much of what set her on the path to becoming the worst person ever is out of her control. I've also been called a bad person online for saying that her background was out of her control, if that counts for something. Anyway yeah she's fucking awful I love her.

ZHOU ZISHU

He's got that "villain of another story" swag, he's dating a fellow villain, and their clown shenanigans and body count have captivated me. That said, he's done some shit, though which of his crimes are The Worst is something me and the ppl-who'd-call-you-bad-person-for-liking-him disagree on. I personally think that creating an above-the-law organization that does assassination and spying for the government is objectively the worst, like if this was real world this would impact generations of people, and this setup just asks for abuse of power - basically, this is 100 times worse than any harm he's ever done to individual people. But thankfully he's fictional and thats why I can be like 'secret police assassin man hot' without a problem. (cw rape, sexual slavery, drugging for the next paragraph) The twitter-brained population however likes to forgo this in favor of focusing on that one time he kidnapped a teenager, drugged him, and sold him into sexual slavery - all to implicate a political opponent (who was the one buying teenage sex slaves, tbc). Which I mean for sure is bad but like, this harmed several individuals, not created an instrument of oppression that would harm countless people for years to come. And if you are rolling with the second thing because hes fictional, why do you draw the line on the other, objectively less impactful atrocity?.. He also has other crimes like war crimes (organized public execution of foreign diplomats during war time), and that time he murdered a 4yo kid he previously not only knew but like looked after and played with, along with her whole family, which got slightly less oomph compared to previous two but I'm adding them for completion's sake. As for ppl calling u bad person for liking the character: so this novel has gotten a live-action series adaptation a couple years ago, which heavily edited the worst of Zhou Zishu's crimes (and also replaced his whole personality, and made him be somehow both less of an asshole AND more awful to his bf). And then some people went to read the novel(s) and found out about The Crimes and u can imagine how it went. Someone tried to make a whole hashtag #NotMyAXu (A-Xu is his nickname) about how they rejected the novel version! So yeah this is one of the reasons for a schism between novel fans and show fans in this fandom. They cant handle our awful fictional bastard.

[littleeyesofpallas]

How do you feel about Ikomikidomoe and hikone? I personally think they’re nice additions to the world but I’ve barely seen anyone else talk about them 

I think I did a post on that at some point actually, but I'm not in a position to go digging thru my archive on mobile. (found it, but it's mostly just poking at kanji in names rather than really commenting on the characters themselves, so I guess I can do more of that here.)

Broadly speaking I'm not really big on the LNs, least of all Narita Ryogo's. I know he is kind of the most beloved of the ancillary creators for actually addressing many of Kubo's obnoxious loose ends, my main beef with him is that even though he ties a lot of them off he never ties them off satisfactorily, and seemingly just for the sake of saying he did it; there's generally no thematic meat to any of it, all his hooksjust kinda amount to shuffling around Kubo's left overs. And granted, maybe that's a little harsh or unfair of an assessment, but I'm also not a big fan of light novels as a gimmicky genre/format to begin with, so take all that with a grain of salt.

Anyway. Of all the things he did over course of three books in Can't Fear Your Own World, I do think Hikone was a really neat idea. I like the general idea of exploring artificial souls and synthetic life forms and the hybrid spirits and how that all relates to the nature of the soulking as a lynchpin of reality, I'm just not super about the specific plot he built around it all.

I'm not especially in love with Ikomikidomoe specifically, I feel like it either needed more or just different lore or that it could have been done without entirely. I really think Hikone being an artificial god candidate and the nature of what that means and as an excuse to explore how the other canonical attempts to replace god could/would have gone was enough to center a story around. In particular I was already not super fond of some of the late throw away lore additions about zanpakutou that exist independent of a singular individual. (ala Nanao's family sword, and Oh-etsu's harem). I feel like it raised a lot of questions that got immediately swept under the rug and added nothing of value to the lore at large. I don't implicitly hate the idea of a zanpakutou that embodies a different kind of identity apart from that of an individual wielder, but that idea feels like it requires a LOT of additional explaining that we never got. So the fact that Tsunayashiro has an ancestral sword for no particularly meaningful reason, and that Ikomikidomoe has its whole convoluted backstory always kind of annoyed me.

It's a shame too because Narita seems to ever so slightly brush up against an idea that Kubo himself danced around in world building --that the identity manifested in one's inner world as a sword spirit, and the mask a hollow forms from its heart are the same thing, and thus a Menos accumulating myriad hollows within itself to consolidate into one uniform identity is basically the same process as what Oh-etsu describes is behind creating an Asauchi. So the idea of a powerful hollow becoming a zanpakutou or something similar has precedent, but the weird convoluted choice to make Ikomikidomoe specifically a product of Ichibee and Oh-etsu's intervention, rather than a natural consequence of a Menos ascending toward Vastolorde doesn't sit well with me.

On a side note, it bugs me that Kubo just casually threw in the idea that Asauchi are made of, what, hundreds if not thousands of shinigami souls(?) and then just NEVER addressed this weird implication that Soul Society, and Oh-etsu personally, have just, like, institutionally and systematically been committing mass genocides on the regular for all of recorded history? Huge huge mess of a world building flub. Not that it "couldn't" be answered, but that it wasn't, and that the effort it would take to patch up the apparent plot holes it introduces would just be so much effort for the sake of nothing but maintaining the status quo of the story.

Since you've got me in this rant, it's almost the same with the Ouken thing. I'm already not fond of the awkward retcon(ish) thing Kubo did with making the keys the bones of the Royal Guard as if that somehow answered any questions, when the bigger issue had been the idea that, literal key or not, each of the royal guard members was implicitly baptized in the fire of an apparent Sodom & Gomorrah catastrophes with whole cities or other swathes of land, densely packed with living, spiritually aware people being scraped off the face of the earth, ala Aizen's unfulfilled (and frankly Kubo's seemingly half forgotten) plans for Karakura.

And in the face of that weirdness there was a fun unaddressed parallel in the Royal Guard's private "cities" floating up in the royal realm with the king's palace looking like the perfect inversion of the hypothetical hole in the ground we were shown during the Ouken explanation. Were those cities populated? By whom?? Or were they empty? I don't know which possibility is more interesting to explore; that the royal guard each had a whole cult of ascended spirits living with them, each under the domain of one guard, or that the guard just lived in the hollow shells of the sacrifice it took for them to ascend alone to nigh demi-god status.

Was it that the ouken itself was the condensed souls of thousands of people, just like the later reveal about both the asauchi and White, and they died or were otherwise sacrificed to make this object(or i guess imbue the object that is living bones into becoming it(?) god the bone keys thing was dumb...), or did the souls serve some other purpose? Could it have been that rather than melting down living souls to make the key, as was kind of implied, that to create or imbue a key with the power required to function as the ouken it simply needed the presence of those souls? Did access to the god realm require being actively worshipped as a god, by thousands of people, a united spiritual power of a singleminded cult, a city of followers united in ascending the key holder into the realm of god? Who the hell knows ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

But on that level, you'd think that's the same as the idea of a family zanpakutou, right? If the zanpkautou imprints or a person to reflect their true inner self which then grows stronger and gains power in the material world thru acknowledging and reconciling with, then implicitly the idea of a zanpakutou shared by a family would imply that its spirit is not a reflection of one person's singular traits, but those shared consistently across generations and in exchange for the lack of personal identity it confers the strength of literally multiple people's worth of power, just all reflected in a single persona.(or maybe not, i dunno, maybe the inner world of a family zanpakutou has some atlab avatar state stuff going on, who knows? Probably not Kubo.) What was the Soukyoku's giant execution blade, its destructive power conspicuously described in a measure of zanpakutou, if not a massive communal zanpakutou?(complete with its own spirit manifest as a phoenix) And what is Ichigo's inner spirit of a younger Yhwach if not the communal spirit of the Quincy bloodline? Andi n the context of these sorts of escalations of scale and power, is then the soul king actually a "human soul" in the way the cycle of human/quincy and shinigami and hollow all traffic in the same base elemental "stuff"? Or was the Soul King not that type of a "person" at all, and just a giant collective zanpakutou, a singular spirit reflecting the inner truth of humanity as a whole, and his "bankai" the wheel of reincarnation itself. Anyway that's veering too far off into speculation and potential headcanon.

Getting back to Hikone, though... I like the idea of there being various different approaches to achieving the hybrid spirit form seemingly central to god status. Ichigo was naturally synthesized that way by the circumstances of his birth, Aizen used the hougyoku and "science" to forcibly and unnaturally synthetize himself, Yhwach was seemingly born not by actively joining disparate elements together but by simply being an offshoot of something that was already a hybrid... And then there's Hikone... and while I feel like plot wise there are a lot of issues to there just having been the means to synthesize artificial life just floating around in the background, while characters like Mayuri and Urahara and even Aizen are out there actively struggling with the process, but I like the idea of a kind of middle ground where, ignoring the stupid contrivance of the Gremmy brain thing, Hikone's fundamental contraction isn't quite artificial "life" in the spiritual sense that Bleach deals in so much as it is a "body" without a brain.

But I like the implicit idea of having to draw a line around that. If you can make a thing that fulfills most of the requirements of life, then which things reserved for living personhood can it do and which can it not? If you elevate that to the level of godhood, then it's a fun question that in the grand scheme of things where apparently someone needs to be stripped of their autonomy and sit in the crystal for forever to hold the world together, then can it just be a fake person with no autonomy to lose in the first place? Where as Aizen thought being god would be cool(and was very probably wrong), and Yhwach doesn't seem to want to be god so much as remove him and replace him with ???(unconfirmed: in which it seemed like(ironically) plan A was originally Juugram, and plan B was Uryuu), Hikone is the Indiana Jones rock and the golden idol solution to the problem: Can I just swap god out for this god-shaped bag of rocks and get away with it?

I'm sorry between being at work, and googling images, and then making this silly edit now, I've totally lost my train of thought... Uh... to summarize:

I like Hikone as an idea: I like "synthetic god" as a plot hook.

I like their name having associations with silk and, like, silk worms, as if they were spun and woven like a fiber but also with cocoon imagery attached.

I also think they're a super cute design.

I'd have liked the artificial souls to have more of plot behind them: like what are Urahara and Mayrui's actual goals in making them in the first place, other than just mad science for mad science's sake

I'd have liked for Ichigo's(and Aizen's for that matter; like how was it different and/or insufficient by comparison to Ichgio, or Yhwach or Hikone) hybrid theme to have a better actual conclusion.

I'd have liked better exploration of the nature of god souls and what that requires/means

[perpetual-stories]

Writing 101: How to Write a Prologue

To help answer a question that was submitted to me, I’ll go ahead and create a whole separate post for it. I know it’s a bit different than what was asked in but I promise the answer to the question is there!

What Is a Prologue?

A prologue is a piece of writing found at the beginning of a literary work, before the first chapter and separate from the main story. The definition of prologue introduce important information—such as background details, or characters—that have some connection to the main story, but whose relevance is not immediately obvious.

Fitting the definition of prologue, the word comes from the Greek prologos, which means “before word.” The Ancient Greeks frequently used prologue in dramatic works of theater, where it functioned more like a first act to a play.

What Is the History of Prologue in Literature?

The invention of the prologue is attributed to Euripides, an influential Greek playwright and poet who predominantly produced tragedies about the darker side of human nature. Euripides’ plots often featured passion and revenge.

For a good example of how Euripides uses this literary device, consider the prologue to one of his most famous works, “Medea.” In the play, a woman takes revenge on her unfaithful husband by murdering him, his lover, and her own children. But before we get to the action, an old nurse enters the stage and tells the audience some of the facts so far:

Medea and her husband, Jason, are having marital problems

Jason has run off with someone else

Medea has been stricken by grief and has even begun to despise her own children by Jason

What Is the Purpose of Prologue in Literature?

Prologues serve an integral role in fiction writing, as well as playwriting. In modern literature, Geoffrey Chaucer started the tradition of using a prologue with his Canterbury Tales, a collection of 24 stories written from 1387-1400. Chaucer used his prologue as a kind of roadmap for the entire work, which tells the story of a group of pilgrims on their way to Canterbury.

A good prologue performs one of many functions in a story:

Foreshadowing events to come

Providing background information or backstory on the central conflict

Establishing a point of view (either the main character’s, or that of another character who is privy to the tale)

Setting the tone for the rest of the novel or play

What’s the Difference Between a Prologue and a Preface, Foreword, or Introduction?

While prefaces, forewords, and introductions serve a similar function of providing additional context for the content to come, they have some key differences from a prologue.

A preface is written from the point of view of the author, not a character or narrator. It explains the origins, development, legacy, or aims of the book, and often acknowledges others who contributed. Prefaces are employed mainly in nonfiction books, but may be used in fiction as well.

A foreword is written by a critic, subject matter expert, or other public figure who is not the author. A foreword typically introduces readers to the book by connecting its content or themes to their own experience. Forewords are used in both fiction and nonfiction.

An introduction is written from the point of view of the author, and offers additional information to help the reader understand the subject of the book, including historical context. Prefaces are employed mainly in nonfiction books.

3 Famous Examples of Prologues in Literature

Romeo and Juliet,” William Shakespeare (1591-1595)

One of the most famous literary prologues of all time, this prologue takes the form of a sonnet that introduces readers to the setting and characters of the play, as well as the dire situation in which the two star-crossed lovers find themselves. The prologue begins as follows:

Two households, both alike in dignity, In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean.

Shakespeare doesn’t hold back on spoilers: the sonnet also reveals the play’s tragic ending.

Lolita,” Vladimir Nabokov (1955)

Nabokov’s prologue is designed to heighten the controversy of its subject matter. It takes the form of a fictional foreword by an academic, who has supposedly discovered the book and is warning readers of its subject matter prior to chapter one.

“These are not only vivid characters in a unique story: they warn us of dangerous trends; they point out potent evils,” it reads. “‘Lolita’ should make all of us—parents, social workers, educators—apply ourselves with still greater vigilance and vision to the task of bringing up a better generation in a safer world.”

Jurassic Park,” Michael Crichton (1990)

Crichton actually offers two prologues, each showcasing a different style. The first reads like a legal document, outlining the seriousness of an “incident” and the “remarkable events” that followed.

The second prologue is more literary: a short scene, separate to the main story, in which a man is treated for an injury by a doctor in a remote village in Costa Rica. The doctor observes that the man seems to have been mauled by an animal. While treating him, the man wakes up and says one word: “Raptor.”

How to Write a Prologue in 3 Easy Steps

Introduce the main character(s). Some twentieth-century plays have used prologues to great effect. In Tennessee Williams’s The Glass Menagerie (1944), the prologue introduces the audience to the play’s narrator, Tom Wingfield, who explains that what the audience is about to see is drawn from his own memories. Tom tells the audience: “I am the narrator of the play, and also a character in it. The other characters are my mother Amanda, my sister Laura, and a gentleman caller who appears in the final scenes.”

Drop hints. Crime fiction and thrillers often make use of prologues to hint at characters, locations, and the mystery that is to come. Sometimes, a prologue may be set centuries or miles apart from the book, and appear wholly unrelated; however, it will somehow tie back into the main plot later in the novel.

Add only relevant details. A prologue should not be an “information dump”: a good prologue enhances your story, rather than explaining it. The best way to decide what to include in a prologue is to ask yourself: what does the reader absolutely need to know before starting to read the main story?

[pinkyjulien]

🌈 Queerness in CyberPunk 2077

I wanted to make this post earlier this month but got caught up in modding shenanigans, as per usual~

BUT! It's still June, still pride, so here it is :>

▶ DISCLAIMER

All of this is my analyses, headcanons, of different characters, some of them not confirmed at all in anyway or form! I'm a queer man myself, but I do not claim to know everything about queerness and being queer, everyone experience the game and interpret the characters differently 🤲 This is only my opinions, based off canon game events, clues, hints, as well as developpers's tweets, streams, files datamining etc etc Please do not see this thread as an attack, or as something invalidating! I'm more than curious to heard what you think about my personal analyses, if you agree, if you don't, and why! If you think other characters also display hints of queerness I'd love to hear it too! 💙

This picture is an update I did in 2022 of lil collage I did back in 2021~

I posted the first version on Reddit back in 2021 and it created this whole "what do mean JOHNNY is GAY?" (because a rainbow behind a man automatically means he's Gay and nothing else right) and a lot of biphobia over his character in particular (gasp- THE rockerboy?! Biseggsual?? In my viddy game??)

▶ You can look at the thread here and have a lil laugh

SO, NATURALLY, after doing the 2022 collage, I went and uploaded it to reddit once again! Because triggering bigots and seeing them stumble over their own tongues trying to debunk everything is really funny ✨

However, I instantly muted the thread and let it rot in its own sauce for some days, weeks, only coming back to it later and Oh Boy 👀

I did a thread on Twitter last year exploring everything that was said on the thread and explaining why I put certain characters on it

Thought it'd be cool and fun to re-explore that and share my thoughts with y'all here SO LETS GET BACK TO IT 😌🤙

▶▶▶

I'll mainly paste screenshots of what I already said on my twitter thread, but I might add some things there and there!

Damn I was kinda pissed off back then HGHFHGF but yeah, this is also the reason I won't ever make any straight or super straight flags I do not headcanon Delamain as Asexual, as there isn't any confirmation anywhere that he's interest in that kind of interaction or not, but I'll come back to him later!

Goro being canonly Queer is often missed, and this surprises me, considering he's one of the popular character! He is interested (or not) equally in both Fem and Masc V, giving he's replying to them the exact same ways! This isn't something done randomly by the devs :)

As said in the tweet, there isn't any direct and clear evidence of Mitch and Scorpion being a couple! Their relationship is heavily queer coded and queer people are more easily picking up on it than non-queer peoeple (and that's normal) Gay men have called their male partner Friend, Best friend and Brother through history maaaany many time, and that's part of my interpretation of their relationship too, especially giving they're both veterans who fought in the same war. The poem Mitch wrotes during "I'll Fly Away" (heavily implied) is romantic and gay coded, the gay novel in Mitch's tent (confirmed to be on purpose) is what we call environnemental story telling, it's subtle but adds to a character's backstory and lore! As for the datamining, I found a Mitch awkwardly explaining to V that no, Saul doesn't have any say in whatever he's doing with Scorpion stuff "because.... because... eh, that's just family stuff"

Note on Delamain here because I've heard it even caused some drama here on Tumblr that I said that? He uses He/Him to describe himself, the Main Entity, but multiples of his splites entities uses She/Her, meaning he's literally Non-Binary in how his entity is formed (I find it really cool for an AI ngl ngl) However if my headcanon offended anyone, I apologize! and I'd love to hear others interpretation :3

There isn't any open and visible MLM gay couple in Cyberpunk 2077! Bouncing off ElvenBeard's amazing analyses and thoughts on Kerry's sexuality, he can be seen as Bisexual (confirmed by RTAL themselves) and Homosexual (confirmed by the devs before and after the game released) he can be Both and Both are correct depending on how you view his character and how he grew from his past relationship (Bisexual with a masc preference, Bisexual who have to heal from his marriage, Gay man who realized his sexuality later after a wonky marriage, etc)

The whole "Responsability=Wife" Takemura take angers me to no end, taking its roots in heteronormativity- We see Goro care for his job above all else, to me that's what his "responsability" is and always was; his job

Nothing more to add here- Jackie's only relationship we see in game is with Misty, this doesn't confirm nor deny anything! (However with how he react to V pushing him, lip-bitting and all regardless of gender, I can totally see him as being queer)

AND That's about it!

It was interesting to dig into that thread last year and thought I'd share that here, as a refresher that Johnny is Bi, Takemura too, and smaller characters like Mitch and Evelynn still have clear hints of queerness to them ✨

I really like how CP77 touches on queerness, it feels realistic, it doesn't feel forced; which, sadly, create this problem of "UH?? This is pure LIES" if a character's sexuality is not splattered in your face, which then create the "Ugh why does it have to be forced down our throat" complains

Something something, lesson here is that people will always complain about queerness, be it loud, be it subtle, so fuck it! Scream it, go apeshit over small details, over-analyse everything cause chances are: this is intentional!

More Characters

I later noticed that Regina have a naked lady tattooed on her forearm, and since we know nothing is done randomly in CDPR's video games, makes me think that she might be sapphic in some way ✨

Mateo is also one of my fav "potential queer", how he could be a trans man, but there isn't anything really to support that other than that one interaction with V

▶ Link to the updated collage Reddit Thread

▶ Link to my Twitter breakdown