#puppetmaster talks

[puppetmasteronastring]

Bojan "hearteyes" Cvjetićanin

[puppetmasterer]

just caught the jere and joker out insta live, any ideas for a finland tour fic? that was...something 😀

HAHAHAHA do i?

DO I?!?!?

do fuck off, my love♡

(of course i do. some in "Afterglow", some separate oneshots. some filthy, some angsty, some both)

((help the live melted the rest of my braincells))

[puppetmasteronastring]

this is GORGEOUS

I really liked this Kaivohuone photo.

[shytulipghost]

My abandoned story ideas - Part 2 (Final)

Part 1

This is the continuation of my previous post. Most of the stories I'm about to mention here are ideas I had when I was 14.

Warning: it's gonna be as long as the first part.

6. The murderous painter story

The story took place in Victorian England and was about a woman who, for some reason, visited a private art gallery late at night and discovered a horrible secret: behind the paintings were the corpses of people who had disappeared lately.

(A "dramatic" recreation of the scene.)

The murderer, who was a famous painter, spotted her and decided to lock her up in her house instead of killing her (Why? I don't remember). Most of the main plot was going to focus on the protagonist's experience being trapped there while the subplot focused on two detectives, who were brothers, trying to investigate the disappearances (they were going to have a "good cop and bad cop" dynamic, as they were based on the classic detective and the noir detective).

I mainly remember details about the murderer: she was dressed in red, had brown hair, would ocassionally bring a fan with hidden knives and had a butler as her partner in crime. She would kill her victims by inviting them to her home and giving them poisoned food or water. If someone tried to run away, she would then use the hidden knives. Once the victim was dead, she would hide the body in a big chest until she had new space in the art gallery to put it in. Finally, she would make a painting to cover the big hole in the wall. As you can see, 14-year old me didn't consider how illogical and unrealistic that idea was. Visitors would have quickly noticed a very horrible smell coming from the paintings.

Anyways, later on in the story, we would be given her backstory. One night, two robbers came to her house and she killed them in self-defense. Since she didn't have a place to dig them, she hid their bodies in a dark room. However, days later, someone came to her house because they were suspicious of her, so she invited him to talk over lunch and secretly poisoned him. That's when she discovered she liked killing and decided to build an art gallery specifically to hide her victims. As I said in the previous paragraph, 14-year-old me was very dumb (and edgy).

Near the climax, the butler would feel bad for the female protagonist, so he would decide to help her escape and expose the painter. In the next art exhibition, they quickly removed the paintings and revealed the truth to everyone, including the two detectives, who happened to be there. The painter immediately went on an rampage as the detectives went after her. The story would end with her getting arrested or her dying while trying to escape.

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I later thought of an alternative version of the story, where the new protagonist was the butler, who had snuck into the art gallery to steal a painting, discovered the truth and was forced to cooperate with the murderer. Most of the plot was going to be the same.

A few weeks later, I lost interest in the idea (THANK GOODNESS! THIS STORY WAS SO CRINGY IN HINDSIGHT!).

I don't know how I came up with it, but Creepypastas might have had a role in that. The serial killer genre wasn't my favourite (I even knew at the time that "Jeff the Killer" and similar stories were bad), but it was the most popular one, so the influence was unavoidable. I probably got the idea of victims being hidden inside paintings from either "Five Nights at Freddy's" (the dead children are inside the animatronics) or the Luigi's Mansion games (Mario always gets trapped in a painting).

7. The puppetmaster story

Thankfully, this story isn't as edgy as the previous one.

It was about of a group of young talented performers who were invited to do a show in a famous hotel. But on the day they were supposed to perform, they got trapped inside and the building got filled with different types of life-sized puppets (sock puppets, marionettes, shadow puppets, etc.) The main villain was the puppetmaster, who dressed like this:

(The character had nothing to do with duality. I just thought it looked cool.)

The plot focused on the characters trying to survive and finding objects they could use to defend themselves (for example, they would defeat the marionettes by cutting their strings with scissors). However, throughout the novel, some of them would get killed by the puppets in unique ways. For instance, the shadow puppets would injure their victim's shadow and the finger puppets, who were in the swimming pool, would grab someone and drag them underwater.

At some point in the story, the protagonist ran up to the villain to unmask him, revealing that the one behind all of this was one of his peers, the guy that was talented in puppeteering.

There was going to be a flashback that showed that the puppeteer used to be a good person; but on the day the main cast had arrived at the hotel (they stayed there for 4 or 5 days before the show), he and another performer found a small model of the hotel in the basement that contained normal-sized puppets. Curious, the puppeteer decided to play with said puppets and noticed that whatever he did with them would affect his surrounding environment and any part of the hotel. And so every day, he would come to the basement with his friend to do silly things with the puppets. At first, he did it for fun, but as days passed, the power these puppets had slowly corrupted him. On the night before the performance, the friend realized the puppeteer's behaviour changed, so she persuaded him to stop what he was doing and never come back to the basement. They got into a fight and, before the friend was able to warn the others, the puppeteer killed her using his new "henchmen".

In the climax, the surviving characters confronted the puppeteer and his minions, resulting in them destroying the hotel. I don't remember exactly how the villain died, but it was a karmic/ironic death, with him accidentally causing his own death with a puppet version of himself.

-------------------------------------------

I think anime was the biggest influence for this story, since most of the horror anime I had watched consisted of teenagers being put in deadly situations (but least my characters didn't die in gory ways). I specifically remember that I got the idea of making the main cast a group of talented people from "Danganronpa" (I only watched the anime to get a summary of the plot because I was not willing to watch a long playthrough).

However, I don't remember why I decided to make puppets the main focus of the story. I never actually had an interest in them. But I do remember having fun while looking up different types of puppets on Wikipedia.

8. "The Kingdom of the Four"

I got this idea after writing a poem about winter in class:

(Left image: Original poem - Right image: Rough translation. Please zoom in if you want to read the original version.)

The idea of the book, which was going to be a long narrative poem, was to portray the change of seasons as four people ruling the same kingdom (either taking the throne legitimately or by force). The seasons were represented as humans.

For context, I'm from South America, so it's summer at the beginning of the year.

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The story started with Summer ruling his kingdom happily and spreading the sun's warmth everywhere. The habitants loved him because he gave them a lot of time to relax, so most of them went to the beach or their swimming pools.

But in late March, a sudden gust of wind destroyed Summer's home, which was a sandcastle, and sent him far away. Autumn had taken over the throne.

Now that he was in charge, Autumn decided to completely change the kingdom by painting it with orange and similar colours, and by making the place a bit colder with his wind powers. As a result, some of the plants started dying and some birds, who didn't like these changes, decided to migrate. But then, in late June, someone came to replace Autumn.

Now here is where the story deviated from the original poem. While the poem explained that Autumn handed over the throne because he was tired, in the story, he tried to fight the invader, but Winter immediately froze him with his ice powers and crowned himself as king.

Winter was the villain of this story because he was portrayed as a dictator who made his people suffer. Since he hated warmth so much, he made the nights longer and spread his power all across the land. Most of the vegetation was lost, some animals fell into a deep slumber and humans had to rely on warm clothes to protect themselves.

Meanwhile, the birds that had migrated decided to find someone who could save the kingdom and, eventually, they did. Spring arrived at the kingdom in late September and, as she walked, flowers blossomed and warmth slowly returned to the land. Winter was forced to abdicate because the warm temperature was weakening him. While waiting for Summer to come back, Spring decided to stay and help restore the kingdom.

Summer finally returned in late December and Spring gave back the throne to him. And so, the story ended the same way it began, with Summer happily ruling his kingdom.

However, the end was going to hint that the ice that had trapped Autumn inside finally melted, meaning that the whole cycle was going to repeat again.

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I wanted to each season to have at least ten poems, so my plan was to make notes throughout the whole year listing all the changes I noticed besides the obvious ones. But I never did because I forgot about it and thought my other ideas were far more interesting.

Fun fact, the poem I had written in class made me realize that I had set the demon invasion story in winter (the demons invade the kingdom in June), which was perfect because winter and hell sound very similar in Spanish: invierno - infierno. That detail inspired me to use the weather to symbolically represent the mood and tone (I haven't written the demon invasion story yet, but it's something I intend to include. By the way, I promise to reveal the actual name of the story someday. I already have it in mind).

9. The story about aliens recreating Earth

It was about a population of aliens who decided to invade Earth, but when they finally got there, they discovered that the whole world had been destroyed and there was no sign of life left (in the novel, it was never explained how the world ended).

As they explored the remains of the planet, they found the ghost of Nature (not the same character from the weird hero story mentioned in Part 1), who asked them to recreate Earth from scratch. They accepted to do it and divided into different groups: the aliens who were assigned to recreate all the animals, the ones who had to recreate all the plants, the ones who had to decontaminate all of the planet's water and a few others I don't remember. To do this, they used all the information they had gathered throughout the years from visiting Earth and secretly observing its habitants.

The protagonist, if we can call him that, was an alien that wore a tunic and always stayed by Nature's side. He would talk to her about anything and treat her like a goddess.

At one point in the story, a few aliens decided to rebel and abandon their tasks, with their reason being "Why should we help someone who ocassionally hurt their own creations?" (in reference to natural disasters, illnesses, etc.). The protagonist would convince the other aliens that despite Nature's flaws and horrible actions, they still had to help her restore the planet.

At the end of the novel, a few years had passed and the aliens finally finished their tasks. The protagonist was with Nature inside a large tent and she would thank him for everything. He would then ask her: "Can I finally see your face?" (Nature spent most of the novel with her face hidden under a hood). She would leave the tent and tell him: "Come out and see me". He would obey her and the novel would conclude with a detailed description of the rebuilt Earth.

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Although the idea was interesting, I abandoned it because I didn't how to develop the plot (Would the plot consist of the protagonist coming to inspect each group and helping them out, the groups trying to solve their own problems before he arrived or something else? What was stopping them from reaching their goal aside from the rebellious aliens in that one chapter? What difficulties would they face throughout the whole story?).

As I'm writing this, I realized that this idea was too ambitious not only because of the plot, but also because it would have required a lot of worldbuilding, way more than the other stories ("what does alien technology look like?", "how different is it from human technology?", "how are the aliens going to replicate living cells?" and many more questions).

Unlike all the abandoned stories here, I have no idea what could have inspired me to come up with this story. I hadn't watched a lot of movies about aliens. Maybe I wanted to portray them as good guys. Who knows.

10. The illusion story

I got this idea after writing a short story in class. I don't want to translate the whole thing (it's seven paragraphs long and some sentences are too cringy), so here's the summary:

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It was about a kingdom that lived happily, but had two particular things about it: there were no mirrors at all and everyone had purple eyes.

The queen, who was an enchantress and had recently won a war against another kingdom, warned her subjects about another enchantress who wandered through the forest at night. This made the citizens afraid to go outside once the sun set.

One day, the queen ordered the protagonist, a knight, to kill the ugly enchantress, so the kingdom could finally be at peace. He accepted the task and went to face the monster that night.

When he finally met her, he was prepared to attack, but she was not interested in fighting. Instead, she showed him a mirror and, in the reflection, he saw that the nearby houses were destroyed and that his face was bruised. She then took a pair of green eyes and offered them to him. Fearing that they might be cursed, he rejected them. In response, the enchantress used her long nails to rip out his eyes.

When he got his vision back, he left the forest and was horrified to see that the whole kingdom was in ruins. Angrily, he ran back to the enchantress and demanded her to give him back his eyes. However, the short story ended with her revealing that the queen had actually lost the war and replaced her people's eyes with fake ones to give them the illusion that she had managed to protect them.

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I wanted to expand on the story, so I thought about making it into a novel. Here's the continuation:

The enchantress revealed that she and the queen used to be friends and ruled the kingdom together; but when they lost the war, they disagreed on what to do.

The enchantress wanted the citizens to know the truth, but the queen didn't want them to lose hope, so she thought it was better to put a spell on them and make them believe nothing bad had happened. The enchantress criticized her for this, so her former friend gave her a hideous appearance, sent her into exile and spread propaganda against her. Although the queen implanted magical eyes in the citizens, the mirrors still reflected reality, so she got rid of them all.

The plot would then focus on the knight and the enchantress working together to fight against the queen and free everyone from the illusion. I didn't develop this part of the story (it seems that this was the recurring problem with all my abandoned ideas), so let's skip to the ending.

They somehow defeated the queen and the enchantress tried to convince her once more that lying to her people wasn't the right thing to do and they deserved to know the truth. In tears, the queen would apologize, saying that she did it because she wanted her subjects to be happy. They forgave her and she proceeded to give everyone's eyes back. The novel ended with everyone working together to repair the whole place.

-------------- Retrospective -------------------

I don't remember if I watched the first Matrix movie before or after I wrote the original short story, but I eventually noticed the similarities and thought: "Oh cool, it's like The Matrix but in a fantasy setting".

The main thing that survived from this abandoned story is the premise: main character discovers that the world they live in is not as they imagined it to be and said discovery causes them to rebel against the powerful being who created that fake world. That is basically the plot of Ms. Orange.

Speaking of Ms. Orange, the name of the main character originated from the short story I wrote in class, since I used that name as a pseudonym for a writing contest (yeah, I've always been weird). I'll talk about it more in a short post with the "fun facts about the novel" tag.

11. Family goes to a house that is definitely not filled with horror characters

I was 15 when I came up with this idea. It was going to be a parody that made fun of horror tropes.

The story was about a family going on vacation and staying in a huge mansion with peculiar people. The main character was the mother, who was a big horror movie fan and, therefore, suspected the house was haunted and the other residents were monsters. She was basically Don Quixote if he had watched lots of horror movies instead of reading chivalry books.

The story began with the family arriving at their temporary home right when a storm was about to begin. Seeing that the mansion was very old, had a gothic aesthetic and was located in the middle of the countryside (and that lightning just struck nearby), the mother suggested staying somewhere else, but the husband insisted that there was nothing wrong. They went inside and were greeted by the owner, who was definitely not a serial killer. The family met the rest of the residents that night, who were definitely not a vampire, a ghost, a demon, a mad scientist and two or three "monsters" I don't remember.

The whole book consisted of the mother assuming that she and her family were in random horror scenarios, but it was just the residents living their normal lives and being themselves. For example, on the first night, she saw a shadow holding a knife and thought the house owner was going to kill her, but he actually came to her room to tell her that dinner was ready. Another example I remember was that she assumed that one of the residents was a vampire because he never went outside during the daytime, but he was actually just an introverted guy who spent most of the time playing videogames.

There were two versions of the ending. In the first one, the mother finally acknowledged that they were normal people and apologized for misjudging them the whole time. In the second one, the mother became so paranoid that her husband told her to leave, but once she was on a bus, she would get a urgent phone call from him, leaving the ending ambiguous.

Although I had many comedic scenes in mind, I didn't actually have a plot for this book, so that's why I abandoned it later that year. But to be honest, I think it's better that way because it wouldn't have been nice to read a book that portrayed judging others as a good thing.

-------------- Retrospective -------------

The main thing that survived from this story was the idea of making fun of common tropes/cliches and integrating that into the plot. Ms. Orange mainly parodies narrative tropes like the chosen one story, the MacGuffin, the love triangle and a few others. However, the reason why the novel didn't die like this abandoned idea was because I was able to include themes and give a deeper meaning to the story. Metaphorically, Ms. Orange is a story about growing up and trying to find beautiful things in an imperfect world.

12. Artists vs robot society

How fitting that this is the last story idea I'll talk about. Two things to know beforehand:

It was 2019, three years before ChatGPT and other popular AI services emerged.

I was in my angsty teen phase, so I would sometimes get sad and cry for no reason. Other times, I would purposefully look for sad music to make myself cry. I don't know why it started, but the reason I was still stuck in that phase when I turned 17 was because of the frustration of probably not being able to study an artistic career and having to find a more "traditional/realistic" career that would make me feel the least angry.

I came up with the idea when I was 16 and I had to write a story for a writing contest (it was the last one my classmates and I were allowed to participate in). I thought about making a story that was set in a dystopian city where the citizens were brainwashed in some symbolic way. Then, I had an idea for the plot:

It was about four imaginative young teens who wanted to have creative jobs when they grew up: the first one wanted to be a filmmaker; the second one, an artist; the third one, a musician; and the fourth one, a writer. They promised to support each other once they got their dream jobs and were hopeful for the future.

Cut to four years later, when robots have taken over the world and subjected humans to go through a process called "robotization", which consisted of replacing all their body parts with robotic ones, including their brains.

The four protagonists were the only ones in their class who hadn't been fully roboticized yet because they still had their human brains. They openly expressed their passions, but the others would discourage them saying that art was useless, didn't have the same value as other professions and was very financially unstable. By the end of the short story, the writer character was the only one left and, in a last attempt to defend his dream, claimed that art was what separated humans from robots (I naively thought back then that robots would never be able to replace artists because they didn't have creativity, imagination, thoughts and feelings. I still believe they don't actually have any of those things. They may replicate feelings and create art, but those aren't actually things that came from their own mind. They are just imitating and repeating things they have seen and stored in their database without any deep thought).

The story... no, actually, it wasn't a story. It was a narrative vent as I only wanted to materialize my frustrations and the only way I knew how to was through writing (for me, it has always been easier to express myself through text than orally). I was so frustrated I intentionally gave the characters a sad ending. I wrote the whole thing because I wanted my language teacher (she was central in me finding out my love for writing) to read it and tell me: "Hey, there is a solution". But nothing happened. She probably thought it was just a normal dystopian story.

Two years later, now in college, I remembered the story and wanted to give the main characters a happy ending. The plot I came up with was them trying to escape the robot society to live alone in nature, but I didn't know what interesting obstacles to give them besides robots chasing them, so I quickly discarded the idea.

----------- Retrospective -----------

Well, reality unfortunately ended up proving my 16-year-old self wrong. Art actually became one of the first victims of AI. But, in a way, I guess we're living this story in real time. We continue to create art despite the rise of AI. There's no way to know what's going to happen, but let's hope we do get a happy ending.

Okay, let's change to a less depressing subject:

I wrote the short story in September, 2019, three months before I started writing Ms. Orange (I actually wrote a bit earlier that year, but it was in December when I finally decided to take it seriously). Since the novel takes place in a futuristic city filled with robots, the short story served as inspiration for the worldbuilding and something that happens in a specific chapter. I don't want to spoil anything, so I won't give more details.

However, while the robot society in my abandoned story is horrifying and clearly a dystopia, the one in Ms. Orange is meant to be the opposite, as humans and robots have managed to live together in harmony (in fact, the city is literally called Utopia). But the novel has a neutral point of view on robots because it shows the machines being used both for good and evil.

Conclusion

So what did we learn from all this? Well, that I used to have a crazy imagination and that the subconscious works in mysterious ways, but seems to perceive/understand things the conscious self doesn't until years later.

The general lesson I can give here is that your story ideas are a remix of everything you have ever watched, read, listened to and experienced. Some of your inspirations will be very obvious, but others will require a lot more introspection and analysis. The best analogy I can think of to explain what I mean is the way Daft Punk used old songs to make their own music. Sometimes it's obvious which parts of the songs they sampled (for example, in the case of "Robot Rock"), but other times you need to have very good hearing to pinpoint where each sound comes from (for example, "Face to Face").

I hope this was interesting to read and that some segments made you laugh. If anything I said in both parts inspired you in a way, good for you. We all end up inspiring each other.

[everythingsinred]

Family and the Institution of Alice Academy

Was thinking about this ever since someone (I forgot specifically who, sorry) posed a question like this in the GA discord, asking about (I think) Natsume's extended family or something like that. It was a really interesting concept that I've been thinking a lot about since it was brought up, so here are the thoughts I've accumulated. I'll try to be concise but I have a LOT of thoughts and my brain is messy.

My general opinion at the end of all this thinking I did is that I don't think Academy students typically have very close familial ties after graduating.

I think the most apparent reason for that would be that students are expected to graduate when they are twenty years old. Our main four are exceptions to the rule, coming to the Academy pretty late in life. Most children are taken early, as toddlers or even babies. Natsume, Ruka, and Hotaru's families did all they could to avoid Academy scouting. Mikan was entirely accidental--if she had never met Hotaru, she might have never even found out she was an Alice to begin with. That being said, most kids were separated from their families at a very young age, only to be allowed to reunite with them once they're already adults. For many students, they've been away from their parents for close to two decades.

On top of that, the Academy doesn't allow visitations or phone calls and severely restricts letter communications. Only one child from each class is allowed to return home for one week each year, and that one week does not do much to make up for all the time spent at school.

My point is that by the time students are allowed to see their families again, that familial bond has already been severed, for all intents and purposes. That feeling of closeness and protection no longer exists. Students will feel more closeness and connection to their classmates and even to their teachers than to their parents or siblings, and as a result, I can imagine many graduates not even bothering to visit their families.

While I was pondering this, I made the connection between Academy students and the real life example of a similar situation with Janissaries from the Ottoman Empire. Basically, Janissaries were children stolen from the subjugated people under Ottoman rule. They were taken for the purpose of a "child levy", also known as a "blood tax." Some children were even willingly given by their families due to the possibility of socially advancing, and because the children were promised first class status (sound familiar?). Essentially the children were taken, forced to comply with Ottoman standards and traditions (including forced conversions and circumcisions), and then trained for military service. These soldiers would actually end up being incredibly loyal and efficient, despite likely never seeing their families again.

(Edit: forced circumcisions are particularly heinous when you consider that the children were typically at least 10 years old at the time they were taken.... so.... uh.... not pleasant.... But also interesting that the Janissaries were typically much older than the Alice children at the time of being taken.)

That level of separation doesn't endear ties; it severs them. These Janissaries--very often forcefully taken from their families--ended up growing up with very little connection to their parents or siblings. The feeling of belonging to their previous communities was gone. Absence does not always make the heart grow fonder. This was done as a means of creating a strong military force but also to disillusion subjugated communities and tear away their hope. Their children could always be taken; their communities could always be crushed, even without the use of physical force. It's a very effective tool to oppress a group of people.

(There's actually a lot of similarities between Academy children and Janissaries beside the separation of children from their families. They were also paid for their service and were high ranking; the Academy students are given an allowance and many of them, despite being stolen from their families, have a sense of superiority over non-Alices. They feel like they are treasures, and are of higher value and rank. Additionally, Academy students, especially in the DA class, are highly trained and efficient child soldiers, much like the Janissaries. Janissaries are actually a super interesting historical topic and are worth looking into!)

We can even see the effect of this distance when Yuka escapes the Academy and runs away to her family. Yuka was essentially sold to the Academy, with her parents trading her in exchange for money and status. She was very young, far too young to really understand that her parents had abandoned her. As a result, she romanticized her bond with them, and the longer she was separated from them, the more that bond became fantastical. She made many attempts to escape the school to reunite with her parents and she fantasized about seeing them again. When she finally is able to, it's nothing like she imagined. They're cold, and unfamiliar. They don't recognize her. She doesn't know her brothers. They're related, but there's no real connection.

"I shouldn't have come here."

Yuka's is an extreme example, but I'm sure she's not an exception. For most Academy students, the almost 20 years of separation from their parents would be too much to ignore. They would not recognize each other, or be close. I'm sure many parents did not sell their children like Yuka's family did, but the bond between child and family had not been nurtured the way it should have been, resulting in coldness and distance.

Because of that, I doubt most students even bother seeking their families out, or even if they do, it's to visit a few times before starting a new life with a career. That familial bond, now broken, is difficult to repair. The connections people often feel with their families or hometowns is something Academy students instead feel with each other. They are all Alices, all in the same boat together. That feeling of superiority that many kids feel means they view each other as on the same level, and I'm sure that could interfere with family connection as well.

Thus, I don't think there's many multigenerational Alice families out there with close bonds. I don't think families like Natsume's have strong ties with grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins. Even the sibling bonds at the Academy are stunted, with the Imai and Shouda siblings being the prime examples of that.

The Imai siblings have a significant age difference, yes, but additionally the Imai parents had a very different approach to Hotaru after seeing what happened with Subaru. They refused to hand her over as easily, wanting to show her important things in life and build happy memories for as long as they could. Even when Hotaru does enter the school, it's more than six months before she even comes across her brother, since the high school and elementary school are not integrated with each other and they do not belong to the same ability class. Similarly, the Shouda siblings are in different ability classes but they have a much smaller age gap. Despite this, Sumire refers to her brother very respectfully, indicating that there isn't a particular closeness.

The Imais fight against this divide, and put in genuine effort into rebuilding their relationship, but it's a difficult process, and one they struggle to admit to for a long time and for various reasons. Familial closeness is not encouraged, not even within the Academy.

(Though Natsume's bond with Aoi is exploited and the school does rely on him caring for her to take advantage of him, but ultimately he is kept from seeing her. Thus, that bond is also severed despite being exploited.)

Additionally, it would make sense to me if many Alice graduates decided to, upon having children, avoid scouting, like Natsume's parents did, and thus ended up moving around a lot to escape Academy notice. Moving around like that and laying low means that you're not going to be hosting huge family reunions or inviting relatives over often, even if all the other points were moot.

Finally, I think all this creates further obstacles for Yuka's wish to "have a family." At some point she says that, for normal people, the desire to settle down with someone and start a family is a pretty modest goal, but for Alices it's almost impossible. Escaping from the school, or even graduating, is a struggle. And you can have a kid, but it's likely that child will be taken from you, just as you were taken, and by the time the child graduates, they will have no connection with you. Wanting to be a potential grandparent, for example, might seem like a definite impossibility, since being a real parent is impossible.

It's even more proof that the Academy exists as an institution to subjugate and undermine Alices, as children and then as parents. Ultimately, an Alice never has control, not as a child and not even as an adult. The pain doesn't end once you've graduated; in fact, it never does.

[puppetmasteronastring]

it was a ✨look✨ for sure

went to joker out tampere with @puppetmasteronastring and the LOOK i gave when bojan said something about being a good boy to jure 💀💀

[puppetmasteronastring]

I will never recover but have this

[puppetmasterer]

Hi, for the fic ask game, in the midsummer universe :

14, 21 and a very self indulgent 27

Thank you, I loooooove your writing!

14.Who does fashion shows after a mall trip and who watches and compliments them?

Bojan does fashion shows and Jere stares with heart eyes. Bojan is also the one that sends a million pictures of their new stage fits and for someone with a pretty limited ability with the english language, Jere sure does come up with a LOT of compliments.

21.Which of their friends/family pokes fun at them for them getting flustered/affectionate?

For Bojan, all of Joker Out. There are different flavors, but they all find great fun in the way Bojan gets flustered so easily(especially when Jere's around). Jere is also fully aware of this and doesn't mind when his boyfriend blushes like a schoolgirl. Kris is, however, Bojan's #1 bully[affectionate]

Jere himself embraces it when someone tries to poke fun at him when he's being affectionate. His default answer is "yes i kiss and cuddle my boyfriend. and?" which takes a lot of the fun out of it for the (loving) bullies. Thus Elina moves on to bully Bojan because his reactions are more fun.

Mikke will groan and roll his eyes whenever he sees too much PDA, but it gets less and less serious as time passes.

27.Who would propose? What would their wedding be like? 

Now this one os a headache of mine. Because I know for sure they'd both plan on it, it's more about who manages to do it first(probably Jere because Bojan is a little ball of anxiety and would take too long to try and think of every possible outcome, while Jere's more like "it's a yes or yes question we WILL get married")

I feel like their wedding would be quite small and intimate. The closest of family and friends. Not a "rustic romantic" type of barnwedding but something a bit more modern. They'll leave the tull and jute cord details and lantern centerpieces to someone else.

But it would be in two parts. The "official" one in Finland, and then a second party in Slovenia. Mainly because not everyone can make the trip between the two countries.

Thanks for the ask!

[mishkakagehishka]

Rip Nietzsche you would have loved enstars

[review-anon]

Also! I know I'm late to the party but i was busy when people were talking about mean girls character development in storyblogs here and i just wanted to say if there's one think I'm really happy with how I've been going with -2+2 is writing Kizuna's character in a way were you can tell she's changing and that she's trying to do better but at the same time her personality hasn't changed completely into some kind of saint. Something i see other writters fall into at times when it comes to her is either making her way too nice from the get go or way too awful even for canon standards, so one thing i always tell myself while working on chapters is that Kizuna is nicer and not just "nice now".

So while she is turning a new leaf, she's still Kizuna so at the end of the day she's still going to be teasing and kinda mean and react impulsively at times because that's just part of her core personality.

//Yeah making a mean girl suddenly all nice all the sudden is too much of a leap in logic, so its much better to do it gradiually.

//In a way this is how Kizuna is being treated here when she's not in full mean girl mode. She's kinder then canon but she's still got some of her canon traits in her, as the way she talked to Arei was a bit of a indication of that.

//As Kizuna wasn't like "Stop being mean." She was more like "If you are gonna be mean, don't be stupid and self-destructive about it." She didn't condemn Arei for her bitchy behaviour, she condemned the fact it screwed ovet the girl's' basketball match.

//Of course it varies from varient to varient as the beauty of the Voidship is that I can make some characters good and some bad depending where we are in the alignment chart.

[tadc-harlequin-au]

New Puppet Unlocked: Pomni, the Last Harlequin!

Pomni's character description:

"Pomni" is the most recent, and last model of the Combat Harlequin series; P-1210. A Harlequin puppet who doesn't have a sense of purpose due to a broken string of commands, and thus, acts loosely based on what remains of it.

After hunting down The Puppetmaster and a duel ensues between the two, it ends with the Harlequin and The Puppetmaster forming an alliance in order to fix the destroyed City; or at least, the remaining "residents" that have succumbed to Madness. The Puppetmaster now has an ally to help him in his mission, and she gets a purpose that relates to her commands. What more could one want?

Now, Pomni spends her time sparring, sharpening her sword, bantering with the Puppetmaster, hunting down bosses and eliminating manic Marionettes. The list becomes bigger as the story progresses, and Pomni unlocks more and more secrets about herself.

Fun facts about Pomni:

She likes sandwiches. Specifically, salmon.

She REALLY hates it when someone eats it. (It's Bubble)

She finds some things annoying in other Puppets, and will be blunt about it.

But that doesn't mean she doesn't care. In fact, far from it.

Pomni may come off as cold and jerkish due to her hot-temper, but in reality, her emotions simply have ahold on her more than anyone would ever really think.

Caine thinks that a therapist would benefit her. (honestly though)

She hasn't explored any hobbies outside from anything involving combat. (yet.)

Pomni occasionally gets glimpses of visions when she dies; she is unaware of what they mean.

Pomni rarely gets drunk; she'll only indulge in alcohol when there's an occasion. Aside from that, she tends to limit Caine's alcohol intake (reasoning that he smells like booze), much to the Puppetmaster's dismay.

She shuts down any form of philosophical advices, thinking they're "typical" and "unnecessary".

She tends to be careless and rude in battle.

When push comes to shove, Pomni can and WILL use her sharp teeth to her advantage.

Pomni initially disliked Ragatha. She found the doll's positive demeanor eerie, and even uncanny, borderline inhuman. Thankfully, a few interactions and heart-heart conversations later, she's changed her mind since.

Bubble usually accompanies her when she's out on missions, a condition she had to agree on just so Caine would let her fight overburdened Puppets. Even though she hates the blimp's nonsense, she knows that his presence is out of necessity, since Bubble is the only way keeping in touch can be possible.

She initially started off rarely ever apologizing. In fact, Caine would've been lucky to have a simple acknowledgement from her.

She once stole Caine's cane to try and figure out how his attacks work. She immediately lost interest once she found out it's just a plain, and boring metal cane.

She unlocks the first stage of enlightenment after the fifth boss.

Quotes:

"Yeah, yeah, shut up."

"I didn't come here just for you to act like a wuss!"

"You. Me. This sword. In your head."

"That was pretty stupid of you to do."

"Between you and me, I prefer still having my head on my shoulders."

"This is getting annoying!"

"I've had it with you idiots!"

"I'm gonna celebrate with a Puppet head kebab once I'm done."

"I like the sounds of a sword slashing, and heads bashed in."

"Keep (talking/screaming), and I'll crack your skull open."

"Ah! What the fuck!"

"You're gonna pay for that!"

"Eye for an eye, motherfucker!"

"I normally wouldn't mind... Actually, I always mind."

"When I'm done, you're gonna be unrecognizable."

"Fucking marionettes!"

"Useless scrap!"

"I really, really, REALLY wanna hurt you right about now."

"Ohohoho, you're picking the WRONG fight, BUDDY."

"Asshat!"

"Who do you think you are!?"

"Are you sure this is even safe?"

"DO THAT AGAIN AND I SWEAR I'LL KICK YOUR ASS ALL ACROSS THIS DAMNED CITY"

"HA! IN YOUR STUPID LITTLE BLIMP FACE!"

“You can’t be serious. Me? Tone it down? I’m a Puppet DESIGNED to fight. My entire purpose IS to fight. I don’t tone down anything, for anyone. Don’t forget, we might be familiar with each other now, but we’re still only getting along because you’re giving me targets.”

[puppetmasteronastring]

EYO I GOT MERCH

hello all filthy animals who enjoy @puppetmasteronastring 's fics, especially the midsummer madness series! we collabed! on a bracelet! we worked together to create a fun lil bracelet for my etsy shop that has all the summer vibes, even the strawberry popsicle from chapter 3

i also have other joker out / käärijä bracelets in my shop if you wanna check it out 🥰💚❤️

[khazzman]

Vi, the Undercity rebel who thinks with her fists, who hates the Enforcers for what they have done to Zaun and its people. Vi who falls in love with an Enforcer, Vi who joins them, because above all she desires a "family" again, but then after everything is said and done, an Enforcer is all she has left. Until she doesn't. Then what does she have?

Jinx, the crazed killer, who talks to herself more than she speaks with others, who doesn't just kill strangers but those closest to her. Especially those closest to her. Jinx the revolutionary, who in a single act, shakes the pillars of power and oppression in Zaun. Jinx who will be a rallying cry for for the oppressed and a symbol of revolt against the powerful. All without her desire or intention to be one.

Caitlyn, the idealist, who shuns the comfort of her family's wealth to serve her city. Who runs toward danger instead of away from it. Who sees a "good heart" in Vi and the dangers of "a government who doesn't give a shit". Caitlyn the Enforcer, who sees her mother die at the hands of her love interest's sister. Caitlyn who suddenly has the weight of her House on her shoulders and all its responsibilities. Who sees the attacks on Piltover not as the defense of the oppressed but as the lashing out of "animals". Who twists her mother's philanthropy to become a boogeyman of Zaun, and then dictator of her own home. Who throws away love for vengeance.

Mel, the manipulator, the puppetmaster. She plays politicians like a fiddle and revels in the games of corruption and intrigue. Who takes a tool originally built to improve the lives of the many and ensures it stays in the hands of the rich. Who asks that weapons be made, against the wishes of its creators. Mel, the pacifist, who has seen all too closely the cost of war and the spilling of blood. Who is also quick to limit the use of the very weapons she requested. Who pushes back against her mother at every turn because she knows deep down, she refuses to ever be "the wolf".

And these are just some of the complicated characters in Arcane! I could go on about Silco the Crime Lord and Silco the Father. Jayce the Golden Boy and Jayce the Mad Scientist. Viktor the Dying and Viktor the Savior. Sevika the Stooge and Sevika the Kingmaker.

The characters of Arcane possess multitudes and THAT is what makes it a good show. Because they are walking contradictions but at the same time, make complete sense. They are so... so... human.

[turtle-paced]

what would’ve happened if an adult Joffrey dismissed Tywin from his service? Assuming WOT5K managed to go Lannister favour or Joffrey was 16. Was there anything Tywin would’ve done?

Anon, cont: I just meant could Tywin just refuse because of the power he has over Joffrey even if Joffrey was of age?

Complicated. We've got this quote from Tyrion:

Tyrion could hear the commons shouting out King Joffrey's name. In three years that cruel boy will be a man, ruling in his own right . . . and every dwarf with half his wits will be a long way from King's Landing. Tyrion VIII, ASoS

Cut for length.

Consider, however, who this is coming from and why. Tyrion is the least favourite of his family, no backup from Tywin, limited political support in King's Landing, the object of a lot of ableism and hatred. Nobody's going to stick their neck out for Tyrion. If Joffrey wanted to use Tyrion as a kickball instead of dealing with the problems of the realm, Tywin would likely let it happen without an ounce of regret. Tyrion would be smart to get clear of King's Landing before Joffrey hit majority. This is Tyrion's (almost certainly accurate) perspective on his own situation, not a universally applicable truth.

It does not follow that Joffrey reaching majority -> he can effect Tywin's dismissal at will.

In practice, Tywin has way more force of personality than Joffrey, and a lot more support from various cronies. When they come to conflict in ASoS, this is what happens:

He wrenched free of her. "Why should I? Everyone knows it's true. My father won all the battles. He killed Prince Rhaegar and took the crown, while your father was hiding under Casterly Rock." The boy gave his grandfather a defiant look. "A strong king acts boldly, he doesn't just talk." "Thank you for that wisdom, Your Grace," Lord Tywin said, with a courtesy so cold it was like to freeze their ears off. "Ser Kevan, I can see the king is tired. Please see him safely back to his bedchamber. Pycelle, perhaps some gentle potion to help His Grace sleep restfully?" Tyrion VI, ASoS

Joffrey's thirteen at this point. Already way too old to be sent to bed and given drugs to keep him out of the way. The fact that this tactic still works for Tywin says a lot about the dominance Tywin has over Joffrey's court. If Joffrey tried to dismiss Tywin, I think the reaction from a lot of people would be "perhaps you should take a day or two and rethink it, your grace?"

However. This can't last forever either. Tywin's getting older, for one. His career time is not unlimited. ASoS also shows us that Tywin is steadily running through all his political favours, reaching the limits of what he can accomplish.

Counterpoint to this in turn is the fact that the Tyrells were already so dead set against Joffrey they'd arranged for his assassination. If Tywin has limits to what he can accomplish because he's a monster, so too does Joffrey. It's a race to the knife.

Should both somehow stumble their way through assassination attempts and revolts for a few years, I do think it would be practically difficult for Joffrey to just up and sack Tywin the day Joffrey turned sixteen. Less difficult the more time went on, but fundamentally the issue is that Joffrey is not especially strong-willed (just spoiled), he's not intelligent, he's not educated, he's not accomplished, he's not disciplined. What he's got going for him is his title, not any real force of personality or record of achievement. To know Joffrey is not to respect him. This would likely leave him perpetually vulnerable to being a puppet king, minority or majority... and Tywin's the nearest puppetmaster at hand.

[thethiefandtheairbender]

as a lifelong ATLA fan who narrowly had ATLA dethroned as my top show by The Dragon Prince steadily over the past 5 years, the similarities between the two have very little to do with the surface level parallels that get regularly drawn between them.

Like ATLA, TDP has Books for seasons and chapters for episodes, but unlike ATLA, which only touched on storytelling sparingly as a theme, TDP is obsessed with interrogating storytelling and history and the presence of unreliable, biased narrators throughout many of its episodes (most notably 2x05, 2x06, 3x06, 4x04, and 4x07 among them). Half of what you learn in the 1x01 intro ends up being a lie once you reach S3, with more being steadily deciphered.

Yes, TDP has different magics with people living under those umbrella terms... for the elves. Humans are coming culturally at things from a completely different angle, and the elves' connection to their primal sources are discussed philosophically in detail, informing their practices and their culture first hand, including the way they chafe against humans, who are arcanum-less. Many animals in the world are also connected to magic, which influences both their design and which ones get hunted for humans' more 'clever' solution in dark magic, including each other.

The core issue of the Puppetmaster, down to being a coercive magic formed by someone deeply resentful of their imprisonment? Said puppetmaster is the main endgame antagonist of the entire show with all of S4 onwards being exploring the ethics of controlling people against their will in various methods, and the entire show itself being a thematic battleground of fate (imprisonment) vs free will for virtually every single character.

Where ATLA mostly concerns itself timeline wise with ending the war, very little thought is shown by any of the characters as to what they'll do after the war. This isn't a problem (as it reflects the sheer domineering scope of the conflict) but even Zuko being firelord is only ever really addressed with 2.5 episodes left till the finale. TDP, meanwhile, ends its 'war' in s3 and s4 opens up with dealing with the old wounds festering between people with centuries of history, the struggles that come when people aren't able to let go and believe they're safe or mourn in a healthy manner, and the religious/cultural clashes that may occur when trying to integrate different groups of people.

TDP also has an evil father with a devoted daughter and a brother who eventually defects, but it explores the reality of an abusive parent who loves/will sacrifice for you and your right to leave regardless, even if that means leaving the sibling you truly deeply love and who loves you in turn. Which means that when you and your sibling are on opposite sides of a deep ideological conflict, it actually really fucking hurts bc we've seen first hand just how much they love each other and also how and why everything fell apart not in spite of that love necessarily, but also because of it.

Is this to say that TDP is a 1:1 with ATLA or that it's better? No, not at all, and the latter is subjective. I prefer TDP, but I think they're about on equal ground when you look at each show currently as a whole (although TDP has two seasons left to go).

But TDP takes a lot of what ATLA was doing thematically with some of its most interesting beats and then builds or expands upon them further. It talks further and more consistently about the cycles of violence; in many ways, Jack De Sena's character, Callum, begins the series largely where Sokka had ended (and he's not the most like Sokka anyway; very much his own thing); we get Faustian bargains and centuries' long grief and fucked up people who are trying both succeeding and failing at not doing fucked up things. There are antagonists, but it is very hard to actually label anyone at this point a straight up villain. Moral greyness is where the show starts, and it just continues from there.

That's not to say the show is nothing but dark and depressing - like ATLA, there's a steady thread of hope and humour even as the show gets steadily closer and closer to its 11th hour point - but the show is usually emotionally heavier. There's more blood and potentially disturbing imagery with body horror and on screen death. There's so much foreshadowing you basically can't go more than 5 minutes into any episode without having something that's going to come back around or be referenced again like 3-5 seasons later.

Just to be clear - TDP is like ATLA, but it's like ATLA in interesting ways beyond the more shallow surface level that usually gets attributed to it, while still very much being its own show and its own thing. And that is why I tend to recommend it to people who like ATLA.

Thank you and goodnight

(Also, the fandom doesn't have any ship wars, and the show is queer as fuck)

[puppetmasteronastring]

i was looking very disrespectfully all night