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xverzuszofficial · 3 months ago

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Chapter III - The Temptress - by XverzuszOfficial, for Dazelvel!

(FINALLY FINISHED!)

(So I got my friend @dazelvel into Slay the Princess aswell to the point where she is now head over heels for The Long Quiet, and has designed a self-insert/custom Princess for herself - and it got me in the headspace to write a custom route for her! I dubbed her The Temptress! Dazel if you come across this (which you undoubtedly will cause Imma share this to you as soon as Im finished with it: hiiiiiii :D))

[Follow instructions in square brackets after texts for the interactive experience!]

(CW for: - Described gore, mild suggestive themes)

Chapter III - "The Temptress"

The Narrator: You're on a path in the - .

Voice of the Smitten: You foul beasts, all of you! How dare you deny us our happy ending?!

The Narrator: Excuse me?

Voice of the Hero: He's being mad about last time.

Voice of the Smitten: We were just about to grasp the beginning of our beautiful life together, and you - you wretched, evil, dark hearted monsters - took it away from us! She trusted us wholely, and you stabbed her at the gates to freedom!

Voie of the Hero: The whole situation sounded fishy, don't you think? Or is your mind so hazed by your own desire for love that you can't see? No one just falls in love with you that easily. And especially after murdering us.

The Narrator: 'Murdering us' ? 'Stabbing her at the gates to freedom' - what are you two talking about?

Voice of the Hero: This isn't our first time back here.

The Narrator: Great, just what I feared ... (Sigh) How many times has it been?

Voice of the Hero: This is number three.

Voice of the Stubborn: What does it matter how many times we've been here before? If we are back, then she is back too - that means we've lost to her. We have to get to her now and settle this once and for all!

Voice of the Smitten: Yes, take us to her post haste! We have an appology to deliver!

Voice of the Stubborn: The hell we need to appologize for? Finally getting her and letting her kick the bucket on the cold, stone floor?

Voice of the Smitten: The brutal death of our dearly beloved by our wretched, cold hands! Oh, I can't even imagine the way she feels right now. The memories of our betrayal must still linger on within her mind...

Voice of the Hero: It appears to me that those two are going to be our main source of pain before she potentially stabs us again.

The Narrator: Alright, okay, I am not going to bother with the beginning of everything - it seems like you already get the jist of things, so let's get a move on.

---CHOICE---

[Explore] Everything feels ... off. [go to: 100]

[Explore] Stabbing her so close to freedom really did feel awful. [go to: 120]

[Silently proceed towards the cabbin.] [go to: 130]

---

[130] --- The Narrator: Your familiarity with the cabin is shifted. A sturdy, wooden bridge, cast above a rapid river is what leads you to the mountain that the cabin resides ontop of.

Voice of the Hero: You ... weren't kidding about the mountain part, were you?

The Narrator: Do I still need to let you know, after two cycles, that the things I describe to you are facts?

Voice of the Hero: (Sigh) Do we really have to climb all the way up? I can't see anything apart from the roof of the thing!

Voice of the Stubborn: And? A little bit of warming up never hurt anybody! And it's not like it'll hurt us! Let's get a move on!

Voice of the Smitten: If I could, I'd fly up those rocky cliffs in the blink of an eye to get her, but our love is worth all the pain those sharp rocks and - !

Voice of the Stubborn: Ugh, just cut it out already, will you?

Voice of the Smitten: How dare you! I was - !

Voice of the Stubborn: Shut up already! You don't - no - you REFUSE to get it, do you? No matter how much you try, no matter how many cycles we live through, no matter how many versions of 'oUR DeaRlY beLoVeD' we meet - it all ends the same! Either we beat her, or she beats us! I don't know how long it'll take for you to get it into your thick skull, but it's time for you to snap out of it!

Voice of the Hero: ... Holy shit ...

Voice of the Smitten: ... Your words, my friend, hurt worse than anything she could've ever done to us. Why must you dismiss my feelings for her like that?

Voice of the Stubborn: Oh you'll live, let's just get this done with already!

The Narrator: Okay, your mind is becoming a lot more heated and cluttered by now and I am starting to get scared with how easily you'll be able to get to a rational decision, so just please hurry up!

---CHOICE---

[Climb up the mountain to the cabin.] [go to 131]

---

[120] --- Voice of the Smitten: Yes, and now is the perfect time to show our deepest regrets to her. Maybe, just maybe, she still finds it within her heart to forgive us, and move on from our disastorous mistake!

Voice of the Hero: I can sort of get behind that. Imagine how we would've felt if we got stabbed in the back right as our hand was on the door.

The Narrator: If the worst monster you've ever seen in your entire life would pass by next to you and you had to kill it - would you feel bad?

Voice of the Hero: Depends.

The Narrator: Well it shouldn't 'depend' in this situation. She's a murderous, world destroying monster who you've already killed once! In this situation tho, the monster has already ended you - twice - before you could've gotten rid of her completely.

Voice of the Stubborn: Are you going to give us another one of your lazy, badly written metaphors or are you going to let us go now?

The Narrator: I'll keep them to myself then.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] Everything feels ... off. [go to: 100]

[Silently proceed towards the cabin.] [go to: 130]

---

[100] --- Voice of the Hero: Yeah ... it's almost like the whole forest was burned up. And I can't see a damn thing either.

Voice of the Stubborn: The scary aesthetic never stopped us before, because we keep on persevering! Just push through it and get this done!

Voice of the Smitten: Not even a chance to pick a rose for her. Oh, the beauty you have ripped us away from...

The Narrator: As you stumble your way across the path, blinded by darkness and holding onto the charcoal trees for support, your foot lands right before something that sends an icy chill up your spine. Your foot touches something sharp and metallic.

Voice of the Hero: What is this thing? A beartrap?

Voice of the Stubborn: There isn't just one either, they are scattered all over the place. They're even hung up on the trees. Looks like the lady doesn't want us running into her anytime soon.

Voice of the Smitten: Or perhaps, she's keeping herself safe, and trusts us to find our way through this maze of traps, so that none may get to her but us!

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] Stabbing her so close to freedom really did feel awful. [go to: 120]

[Silently proceed towards the cabin.] [go to: 130]

---

[131] --- The Narrator: You begin your ascent up the mountain, following a dangerous, narrow path up the first couple of miles, which slowly become narrower and narrower. Eventually, you find no more path to lay your foot on, and you are forced to scale the mountainside. Your hands and claws, digging into the sharp edges of rocks and cliffs, pull you upwards, as you feel every muscle within your body both aching and burning in pain. It is an agonizing, yet rewarding feeling climb, as every successful push, every successful pull, and every successful step feels like an achievement before you realize, you cannot see the ground anymore.

Voice of the Stubborn: Yes! This is pure, unfiltered ecstassy right here! I can feel every fibre within us pushing its limits! This is what living feels like! This is the taste of victory!

Voice of the Hero: That's ... quite the way up ... (Sigh) Don't get dizzy. Just don't get dizzy. Don't get dizzy ...

The Narrator: You're doing just fine, you are almost at the top.

Voice of the Stubborn: Come on boys, just a little more!

---CHOICE---

[Push your way up the mountain.] [go to: 132]

---

[132] --- The Narrator: You finally make it up to the cabin, entering its iron gates and stepping inside. The confines of the cabin smell of fragrance and elegance, but - wether because of your exhausted mind, or your past cycles - the beauty of it all strikes you as faux. The ground is covered in the patles of roses, and a red capet leads you down to the basement. The only furniture of note is a marble table with golden edges. Perched on it is the pristine blade you've learned how to wield.

Voice of the Hero: Suffering through all of that and being met with this is actually really, really nice!

Voice of the Smitten: She laid out all of this for us. To see our strength. To see if we can be gifted her forgiveness. We made it up here - .

Voice of the Stubborn: What did I say about snapping out of it? Keep your head in the game. And you, the one who describes stuff, don't bother with any other option - we are taking the blade!

The Narrator: Well I was hoping you would do that in the first place so you are just helping me save ink.

---CHOICE---

[Explore] The carpet just leads to a mirror. [go to: 140]

[Head down to the basement.] [go to: 141]

---

[140] --- Voice of the Hero: The mirror is back again, yeah.

Voice of the Smitten: Perhaps to let us take a final look at ourselves and see if our face is full of shame and desire to be forgiven, or to make sure we don't disappoint her with our looks.

Voice of the Stubborn: Who cares? Just kick it away already and get going!

---CHOICE---

[Head down to the basement.] [go to: 141]

---

[141] --- The Narrator: You walk up to the stone arch entrance of the basement and stop right before the stairs. Do you really think there's a mirror there?

Voice of the Hero: Yeah, it's all grimey and gross though. Maybe we could wipe it clean?

The Narrator: I can't even begin to fathom what those past cycles must've done to you to make you start seeing things, but right now is not the time!

Voice of the Smitten: One last chance before our fate with our beloved is decided.

Voice of the Stubborn: I will, actually, end you if you keep this up. Just kick it down the stairs and get moving!

---CHOICE---

[Wipe the mirror clean.] [go to 143]

[Kick the mirror down the basement.] [go to 144]

---

[144] --- The Narrator: You raise your foot above your waist, bending your knee upwards as you attempt to kick away whatever obstacle was projected ahead of you by your mind, but your foot doesn't connect with anything. Instead, you fall forwards, the velocity of your kick carrying your unbalanced body ontop of the hard, stone stairs, tumbling down to the bottom. Each bump, each flip, each hit feels like something bruises or bends within you.

Voice of the Hero: Nice going on the warpath.

The Princess: "I see you've made quite the journey down my steps, my pretty little bird."

The Narrator: Her voice, coated in a layer of gentleness and passion, graces your ears.

Voice of the Smitten: Just her voice alone is enough to ease all my pains...

---CHOICE---

[Face the Princess] [go to 150]

---

[143] --- The Narrator: You reach forward and extend your hand outwards into the air.

Voice of the Hero: Why am I not surprised?

The Narrator: You descend from the top of the stairs, the rose patels and red carpetting guiding you along and covering your feet from the cold marble steps. Your descent is lit by candles, hung up from above and dripping wax onto golden trays. The air downstairs creeps up, carrying warmth and damptness, like a humid day. If the Princess really lives here, slaying her might be doing her a favour! Her voice, coated in a layer of gentleness and passion, graces your ears as it carries up the stairs.

The Princess: "My pretty little bird, I can hear your feet thumping against my steps, and it makes me feel warm to know you've returned to me."

Voice of the Hero: I ... I don't know how to feel about this. She sounds ... too good to be true.

Voice of the Smitten: Our argous journey up this mountain was not in vain, my friend, you see. She missed us dearly!

---

[150] --- The Narrator: As you raise your head, your eyes meet the Princess' across the room. Your eyes glide along her long hair covering her neck and shoulders, and seemingly flowing into her giant red dress, with her arm still in a shackled chain that you can't quite make out where it goes.

Voice of the Smitten: She is absolute beauty herself! Just looking at her is enough to make me want to jump out of this form and leave you four horrible beings to your lonesomes without her!

Voice of the Hero: I ... woah ...

Voice of the Stubborn: Now ain't that a dress too big? It's like she thinks that by creating a silken barrier around herself, she can escape our confrontation! I wouldn't mind staining it, if you catch my drift.

The Princess: "Welcome, my pretty little bird! I hope your journey wasn't so grueling. Please, come and rest with me, you look beaten."

---CHOICE---

[Explore] "Hold on, this is going a bit too fast!" [go to: 160]

[Explore] "I'd rather have you come and rest with me instead." [go to: 161]

[Explore] [Make bird noises.] [go to: 162]

[Explore] Fellas, I don't know what to do - [go to: 163]

[Approach the Princess.] [go to: 164]

[Slay the Princess.] [go to: 170]

---

[160] --- The Princess: "Oh, is it? Why do you think so? Is it perhaps the guilt you feel from last time, keeping you away from me? When you stabbed me in the back before our happy ending? Or perhaps the time before that, where you helped me escape, and how that felt? My pretty little bird, your heart aches so badly from the past that's already so far behind us. Just let it go already, would you? Let go of those past mistakes and embrace the me in the now."

Voice of the Smitten: So she has forgiven us! Thank you, my love! If you can forgive me wholeheartedly, I can forgive myself, too!

Voice of the Hero: Does that mean you also forgive us, or are we still the 'wretched, evil, horrible monstrocities' like you said?

Voice of the Smitten: My heart is maybe patched for you, my heroic friend, but you, bloodthirsty hound, get no such treatment!

Voice of the Stubborn: Like I give a shit about your forgiveness.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "I'd rather have you come and rest with me instead." [go to: 161]

(if you haven't ready already) [Explore] [Make bird noises.] [go to: 162]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] Fellas, I don't know what to do - [go to: 163]

[Approach the Princess.] [go to: 164]

[Slay the Princess.] [go to: 170]

---

[161] --- The Princess: [Chuckling] "Oh you would absolutely love that, wouldn't you? Feel me lay down on your feathery body and allow you to take control? But sadly, I'd have to say no to your offer. My heart might have forgiven you, and it may have forgotten your past mistakes, but my mind hasn't."

The Narrator: She raises a hand to her mouth, covering it as she laughs at your suggestion at closing the distance between you two.

Voice of the Hero: That's reasonable, I suppose? We did kill her, and if I look at it through her lens, then yeah - I wouldn't want to approach someone who I know has backstabbed me once already.

Voice of the Stubborn: Oh, I see. If she doesn't want to come to us, then we have to go to her. Fine by me. I'll show her what's good.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Hold on, this is going a bit too fast!" [go to: 160]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] [Make bird noises.] [go to: 162]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] Fellas, I don't know what to do - [go to: 163]

[Approach the Princess.] [go to: 164]

[Slay the Princess.] [go to: 170]

---

[162] --- The Narrator: What?

Voice of the Hero: Huh?

Voice of the Stubborn: THIS IS HUMILIATING!

Voice of the Smitten: Hear our song, my beloved! Our heart reeks of sorrow, and so our song is sad, but your love can make it all happy again!

The Princess: [Happy chuckle] "You really are my pretty little bird, aren't you? Singing out your little heart to me like that makes me just want you more. Please come back to me, pretty little bird."

Voice of the Hero: Can we make a pact to never, NEVER do that again?

Voice of the Stubborn: I second this.

The Narrator: I agree. Let's forget this has ever happened.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Hold on, this is going a bit too fast!" [go to: 160]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "I'd rather have you come and rest with me instead." [go to: 161]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] Fellas, I don't know what to do - [go to: 163]

[Approach the Princess.] [go to: 164]

[Slay the Princess.] [go to: 170]

---

[163] --- The Narrator: In that case, here's a good idea: actually end her! You don't have to listen to any of the vaguely seductive nonsense she's spewing to try and get to you. Hell, it's making me uncomfortable with how she's calling you her "pretty little bird".

Voice of the Hero: I guess it felt kind of cute at first when she said it, but now I think about it and just feel like - "no".

Voice of the Smitten: It is simply a cute nickname she has given us! Why must you all dismiss her attempts?

Voice of the Stubborn: It's humiliating and debilitating. I don't like being babied like this. It's like she sees us as nothing but a pet she could stuff into a cage.

Voice of the Smitten: If being in a cage is what it takes to make both of us happy, then we might aswell crawl to her!

Voice of the Hero: What?! No! Absolutely no! Just, no!

The Narrator: Oh my goodness this is actually going to go horribly wrong. Quick, pick a decision and do it now!

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Hold on, this is going a bit too fast!" [go to: 160]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "I'd rather have you come and rest with me instead." [go to: 161]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] [Make bird noises.] [go to: 162]

[Approach the Princess.] [go to: 164]

[Slay the Princess.] [go to: 170]

---

[164] --- The Narrator: You step forward, your eyes still on her form as she also moves in. She ... shouldn't be able to move around this much.

Voice of the Hero: Do you know how long her chain is suppsoed to be?

The Narrator: Yes, it should be tying her to the basement's far wall, but she's currently face to face with you and you only walked a couple of steps away from the basement entrance.

Voice of the Stubborn: Maybe she already broke free, she's just not telling us.

The Narrator: There's no way. She's bound to the wall. End of story.

The Princess: "There we go. And now that you are back with me, I've gotta say ... I missed you so, so much, my pretty little bird."

---CHOICE---

[Explore] "Please stop calling me that" [go to: 600]

[Explore] "You are getting far too close to my liking. Are you still chained up?" [go to: 610]

"I missed you too." [go to: 620]

[Explore] "Can I still just pull you out of those chains, or do I have to cut you out again like the time before that?" [go to: 630]

[Explore] "You are acting far too nice considering what I did last time. Wouldn't you be scared that I'll do it again?" [go to: 640]

[Save the Princess] [go to: 700]

[Slay the Princess] [go to: 170]

---

[620] --- The Narrator: The Princes then leans in, caressing your face as she guides it down towards hers in a ... I am not - I refuse to describe this to you!

Voice of the Hero: What? What is it?

Voice of the Stubborn: I think he's jealous that she's kissing us right now.

Voice of the Smitten: As expected from a dastardly, unforgiving villain such as the Narrator himself! He can't simply process the passion, the emotions, the feelings that carry into a deep kiss as ours right now - !

The Narrator: However, your perfect little smooching time is interrupted by the feeling of your blade slipping out of your hand.

Voice of the Stubborn: There ... is no ... way.

The Narrator: She shoves you away, saliva leaving your mouth as your lips part from hers rapidly. Your blade is now in her grasp, and you have fallen on the floor.

The Princess: "I am sorry, but like I said, just because my heart has forgiven you and your mistakes, my mind hasn't. I am so, so sorry for what's going to come next, my pretty little bird - but if backstabbing is all you know, then it is all you will get!"

---PROCEED TO SAME CHOICES AS AT: 170---

---

[700] --- The Narrator: Yeah? Well how are you going to do that?

Voice of the Smitten: Easily! We'll take her hand and guide her out, like true gentlemen!

The Narrator: Well I am not going to describe it to you then, and since I only describe facts, then it doesn't happen! Too bad!

Voice of the Smitten: Hey.

Voice of the Smitten: Yes, you brute?

Voice of the Stubborn: Make it count.

The Narrator: Stop it! What are you doing? Get your hands off of me you morron!

Voice of the Smitten: This cursed blade is of no use to us! It's simply decoration! Or worse, an ill temptation! Cast it into the shadowey corners! Away with you!

The Princess: "I am so glad you're finally tossing that knife away from us. You look way better without it."

Voice of the Hero: I guess your plans for "not describing anything" to us really went well, didn't it?

The Narrator: [Groan] If you want to doom all of us, then fine. Have it your way, you lovebird maniacs. You take The Princess' hand and gently guide her to the basement stairs. Her, dragging her long, red dress behind herself as she follows you excitedly. And oh damn, no door either to lock you two morons in there either! How peachy for me and all of humanity! You finally pass the final step of the stairs, and end up on the ground floor of the cabin.

The Princess: "Wait ... before we get out of here, I wanted to give something to you. I ... really didn't think it would just happen so easily. I really thought that you're going to pull a fast one on me back there and stab me in the back once again. But I'm glad you didn't. So, take this as a thank you, my gratitude!"

The Narrator: And then, like she was back in her younger, less eldritch, less disgusting days, she raises on her tippy-toes, and kisses your cheek... Ew.

Voice of the Hero: Aw!

Voice of the Smitten: Your jealousy shows that you have never felt the true warmth of a pair of lips coliding with yours, laying on your face. Perhaps you could partake in our feeling, and finally, just for one moment, allow yourself to feel how kind she is.

The Narrator: Just shut up, okay? I need to open this bottle of gin.

The Princess: "Now, come on! The gate is open for us!"

The Narrator: She eagerly pushes you forward, getting the two of you closer and closer to the edge of the cabin's gate before she leaps into your arms, pushing both of you off the same cliff you climbed not so long ago......

Voice of the Stubborn: Hey! Don't just dip out on us! We're going to die if you don't give us any options on what happens next!

Voice of the Hero: You know she's been calling us her "pretty little bird" this whole time, right? We are one, we could fly out of here ... so why the hell we never did that before?!

The Princess: "Thank you! Thank you so much! I - I can't describe how finally being with you feels! It's .... colder than I expected. But it's probably just the wind! Fly, my pretty little bird! Fly! ......"

[But you do not get the chance to fly away with her, nor do you get the chance to respond. Something has taken her and left something in her place instead.]

[THE END - 6/6 - "Lovebirds" - Soar away with your love in your arms.]

(Don't like this ending? Go back to previous choices and see what you end up with!)

---

[630] --- The Princess: "Don't worry about the chains. They are long gone. The only thing keeping me down here is my want to keep waiting for you."

The Narrator: She isn't lying, as she raises her wrist, pulling the chains upwards and pulling with her other hand, piling and piling up more and more iron into her hand, before she reached a broken knot.

Voice of the Hero: Atleast she's honest.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Please stop calling me that" [go to: 600]

"I missed you too." [go to: 620]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "You are acting far too nice considering what I did last time. Wouldn't you be scared that I'll do it again?" [go to: 640]

[Save the Princess] [go to: 700]

[Slay the Princess] [go to: 170]

---

[600] --- The Princess: [Giggling] "Why? It's just a silly little nickname. It's cute, isn't it? Calling someone who clearly towers over in both height and strength something so cute?"

Voice of the Hero: NNNNNo. It's weird, I don't like it.

Voice of the Stubborn: It's embarassing.

Voice of the Smitten: Well -

The Narrator: I am vetoing whatever you were going to say.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "You are getting far too close to my liking. Are you still chained up?" [go to: 610]

"I missed you too." [go to: 620]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Can I still just pull you out of those chains, or do I have to cut you out again like the time before that?" [go to: 630]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "You are acting far too nice considering what I did last time. Wouldn't you be scared that I'll do it again?" [go to: 640]

[Save the Princess] [go to: 700]

[Slay the Princess] [go to: 170]

---

[640] --- The Princess: "Oh, you are still hung up on the past, aren't you? Can I not change since then? Do we have to keep this cycle going? I'd rather not. Let's just be happy together, you and me - no bad past to think back to."

The Narrator: And by that she means letting her escape into the world and destroy everything.

Voice of the Smitten: Oh please, she's just telling us that we shouldn't be eating away at ourselves by thinking of our past actions. It's the past! It's gone! If she can move past it and see us for who we are in the current moment - then she deserves our honest love back!

Voice of the Hero: It does feel kind of reassuring that she actually doesn't want any bad blood between us. Maybe she did forgive and forget.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Please stop calling me that" [go to: 600]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "You are getting far too close to my liking. Are you still chained up?" [go to: 610]

"I missed you too." [go to: 620]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Can I still just pull you out of those chains, or do I have to cut you out again like the time before that?" [go to: 630]

[Save the Princess] [go to: 700]

[Slay the Princess] [go to: 170]

---

[610] --- The Princess: "Oh? These rusty things? No, they have nothing over me now. The only thing that kept me here was the thought that, one day, you'll come back to me, my pretty little bird. And look at you, right in front of me, wielding the same blade you cut into my back with - but now holding it not to hurt me, but to protect me."

Voice of the Hero: Atleast she's honest.

---CHOICE---

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "Please stop calling me that" [go to: 600]

"I missed you too." [go to: 620]

(if you haven't read already) [Explore] "You are acting far too nice considering what I did last time. Wouldn't you be scared that I'll do it again?" [go to: 640]

[Save the Princess] [go to: 700]

[Slay the Princess] [go to: 170]

---

[170] --- The Narrator: You grip onto the blade, springing forwards, your eyes locking with hers, as her face shifts from an inviting, seductive smile, into a look of disbelief and anger.

The Princess: "Are you serious?!"

The Narrator: Before you can do so much as lunge yourself at her, she whips her chained arm around, hitting you right in the face with its thick, heavy, iron knots. You are sent onto the floor, your teeth barely clinging onto the gums of your mouth where she had hit you, and your jaw feeling fractured.

Voice of the Hero: Why?! Why does it have to hurt so bad every single time?!

Voice of the Stubborn: Pfft, who needs teeth? We have the blade, we have the claws, we have the hands, the feet, to do everything to finish the job! And now, we have a new reason to hit her back! And now, you lovesick freak, can see that she does not love us! This is how it should've gone since the beginning!

Voice of the Smitten: I don't believe you! I refuse to! There can still be a way to make things right! She said - she said she's forgiven us! We have to appeal to her heart!

The Narrator: That's going to be difficult with how little teeth you'll probably have left by the end.

The Princess: "You knew I wanted to leave! And you knew I wanted to leave with only you! It was all that I've ever wanted, and it's still all that I want now! Why must you keep hurting me?! Why must you keep trying to fight?! Just be happy together with me, please!"

---CHOICE---

[Stand back up and keep fighting.] [go to: 172]

[Stand up and drop the blade.] [go to: 180]

[Stay on the ground and say nothing.] [go to: 190]

---

[172] --- The Narrator: But you don't let neither the pain nor her words get to you as you rise back up to you feet, pushing yourself up and standing in front of her. Your vision is hazed, however; - the whip from the chain seemingly also having damaged one of your eyes.

The Princess: "You are forcing me to do this! I love you, you know I do! Just stop fighting me already and love me back!"

Voice of the Hero: That's hard to believe when we have a handful of teeth missing because of her.

Voice of the Smitten: She isn't lying! She loves us! I can feel it, you just have to let go of your skepticism and see her for who she is! Accept her!

The Narrator: But you push the thought of forgivness aside, raising the blade once more and jumping her. Your blade sinks deep into her shoulder, causing her to scream out in pain. But in return comes her fist, blowing your face away from her view and knocking you off of her. You feel your neck strain from the power of the impact.

The Princess: "I'll beat it into you if I have to!"

The Narrator: She then begins the humiliating process of whipping your back with her chain, each blow either dislocating or breaking a tiny piece of cartilige in your spine, unfathomable pain spreading across your back, leaving you not a single second to even register what is being done to you.

Voice of the Smitten: This is what you deserve! Our punishments weren't enough yet it seems. We'll learn to love her now!

Voice of the Stubborn: You say one more word from now on and I will break your neck.

The Narrator: The pain becomes too much for your mind to comprehend. You slip into a numb, mindless state of confusion, agony, and silence. You are unresponsive, but you are not dead. Blood pools onto the marble floor of the basement underneath you. Your spine is broken in so many places, it would be impossible to count all the fractured bits. The Princess grabs your unresponsive body, dragging you up the stairs you came down from, and taking you out through the cabin's door.

Voice of the Hero: How can she do that? She wasn't able to leave the cabin before.

Voice of the Stubborn: She needs us to escape, so she's parading our corpse around as her key to salvation.

The Narrator: The Princess steps outside the cabin, facing out into the wast emptiness before her ontop of the mountain before looking down at you.......

Voice of the Hero: ... Yeah?

Voice of the Smitten: He's gone. Quick, pull whatever strength we have left together and grab her hand! At least let us have this one final moment before we depart!

The Princess: "We could've left so easily together, see?! Why did you make me do this?! ... But, I suppose it doesn't matter now. I am finally outside, and with you. But I - I didn't want it to be like this. I love you still ... It's so cold without you, all the time ......"

[But you do not get the chance to take her hand, nor do you get the chance to respond. Something has taken her and left something in her place instead.]

[THE END - Ending 1/? : "An Abusive Relationship" - Challenge the strength of your love's desires.]

[Don't like this ending? Go back to previous choices and see what you find!]

---

[180] --- The Narrator: (Sigh) Damn it. As you stand back up, your grip loosens around the blade, the weapon dropping loudly onto the floor as you and the Princess lock eyes with eachother. Her face seems to show regret.

The Princess: "I-I see that finally knocked some sense into you, it seems... [Sob] Why does it always have to be like this? Why must we hurt eachother to love eachother? WHY?! Is this fun for you? Because it's not for me!"

Voice of the Hero: She's right. Do we really need to keep this going? Constantly murdering eachother over and over again?

The Narrator: Only until you slay her for the final time.

Voice of the Stubborn: And when is that? When is the "final time"? Do you have any idea how long this is goin to take us? You're the one who seems to know every single thing around here, you just refuse to tell us anything.

The Narrator: I have a duty to keep information as scarce for you as possible. Giving away more and more information will just ruin your chances at keeping a clear mind of your objective. The more I talk, the more you know, the more you question things. I don't like questions, I like actions. My life, my world depends on you being uninformed enough to make a decision right then and there, no thoughts.

Voice of the Stubborn: So you tricked us into being nothing more than a puppet so that you can save yourself.

Voice of the Smitten: I've told you before! He's a wretched, lying monster who wants to keep us locked into this violent cycle with our beloved, only to save himself! He needs us so that he'll live - we are nothing but a tool!

Voice of the Hero: I just never liked you thinking that we were always dumb or stupid or delusional.

The Narrator: Fine! You want to see me take action? Fine then. You kick The Princess away from you and scoop the blade back up from the floor.

Voice of the Hero: No! No you are not doing this again!

Voice of the Stubborn: Again?

Voice of the Hero: Yes! We tried to save her the first cycle and he just took over our body and got us killed!

Voice of the Stubborn: I hate cheaters. Hey, help me get a good grip on him. Don't let him move an inch.

The Narrator: Get your wretched hands off of me you two!

Voice of the Smitten: He's restrained, we have to act now. Quick, before it's too late! Do what's right for us!

---CHOICE---

[Warn her.] [go to: 400]

[Slay her.] [go to: 500]

---

[400] --- The Princess: "What? I- Is this not you doing this again? Is something coming over you? I want to believe that but I can't trust you. I - "

Voice of the Stubborn: Damn it!

The Narrator: NO - ! [Groan] But ... before I could take control and let you finish this once and for all and save everyone in the world INCLUDING yourself - you swiftly swipe the blade away and slump forwards, your weapon darting across the marble floor and crashing into the wall with a clang.

Voice of the Hero: Phew ... That was way too close.

The Narrator: Did you do that?

Voice of the Hero: It's not just you who knows how to control him.

Voice of the Smitten: Consider your plans foiled, villain! The truth of our desires persevere, while your selfish desires for self-preservation fails. I hope it sinks deep into your heart, you filthy thing!

The Narrator: ... What's done is done. I can't do anything to stop her now. Whatever. The Princess, gasping at the sight of you flicking the blade away, rushes to aid you back up on you feet.

The Princess: "You - you meant it! I am so sorry! I'm so sorry! I hit you so hard while this entire time, this hasn't been you. It's somethign else controlling you. But now that's gone, right? You are you again."

The Narrator: She clutches your hand with hers, looking into your eyes with genuine concern.

Voice of the Smitten: We have an opportunity! Quick, kiss her! Prove her that our love was no mere illusion! Prove to her that we are ourself!

---CHOICE---

[Kiss her.] [go to: 510]

[Hug her.] [go to: 520]

---

[500] --- Voice of the Hero: Damn it!

The Narrator: You ignore The Princess' yelp in pain, quickly dashing towards her staggerng form, and driving your blade into her neck, blood flowing out in a waterfall as it pierces and cuts into her arteries. Finally.

The Princess: " ... I see ... Okay ... I see how it is ... "

Voice of the Smitten: No! No! This can't be! Why would you let him escape, you fools?

The Narrator: It was foolish enough to think that there was ever a way where you can rescue her! This isn't about rescuing some helpless captive, or the love of your life, or an equal - NO - this was about saving the world, and the price you all would've paid........

Voice of the Stubborn: .... What? Speak up!

Voice of the Hero: He's gone, again.

The Princess: "If this is how we are meant to be then, fine ... you win, I guess ... ... Do you always have to be so cold?"

[But you do not get the chance to respond, nor will you ever. Something has taken her and left something in her place instead.]

[THE END - Ending 3/? : "A Rightful Cause" - Don't let your inner voices keep you away from your destiny.]

(Don't like this ending? Go back to previous choices and see what you end up with!)

---

[520] --- The Narrator: Eugh ... You reach forwards and wrap your arms around The Princess, the two of you embracing eachother warmly after fighting eachother, both of your bodies bruised and beaten - I hate you, I hate you all and I hate that you are making me describe this!

Voice of the Hero: Come on, we could've asked you to describe far worse things! This is tame.

Voice of the Smitten: Her embrace is like being swallowed by the graceful ocean itself. The calmest thing in the world. Pure bliss!

Voice of the Stubborn: Yeah yeah, it's nice ... can we get out now?

The Princess: "Thank you, I - .. no .. we needed that. It's so good to know that no one's trying to backstab me this time. Thank you! ... Quick, let's get out of here!"

[proceed to: 511!]

---

[510] --- The Narrator: You hold me down while I'm trying to save all of you and myself and my world, and now you force me to describe this?! What kind of torture is this?!

Voice of the Hero: ... Well?

Voice of the Smitten: Narrator, we choose to, finally, smooch our beloved!

The Narrator: [Sigh] You hold The Princess' cheek, lifting it up slightly and you kiss her, the two of you sharing this selfish, idiotic, and stupid moment - but atleast it's the two of you, together.... Bleghh...

Voice of the Hero: That wasn't so hard now, was it?

The Narrator: I hate you all. I hate all of you so, so much.

The Princess: "M-My ... I guess, that's a way to prove that it is you now, huh? ... That felt nice. Thank you. We've gotta get out of here before either of us collapses, or gets any other bad ideas."

---

[511] --- The Narrator: You and The Princess, grasping eachother's hands together, rush up the carpet covered marble stairs, rushing to doom the world.

Voice of the Stubborn: I'm just happy I finally got to get some payback on our real enemy.

Voice of the Smitten: You have finally turned yourself around and saw what was really worth fighting for! Not for some vague idea of a world ending, but for a new one starting! Our world! With her!

Voice of the Hero: I doubt the world will end, actually. From what I saw, we are both pretty easily killable. We don't seem to be able to really hurt anything but eachother - and even then - we don't want to.

The Narrator: I can't believe I really thought I could trust you four. I am ... so stupid. But it doesn't matter anymore, does it? I can nag all I want. The world is about to end, isn't it? I have all the right to be upset!

Voice of the Stubborn: Just cheer up, will you? It's over. You can finally relax at least after this.

The Narrator: And once you and The Princess reach the top of the marble stairs, the two of you rush out the metal gate that once lead you inside, returning to......

Voice of the Hero: ... To what? Are you going to finish?

Voice of the Stubborn: He's gone. Finally.

Voice of the Smitten: Well, fellas, we did it! Our bickering can finally be put to the grave along with that horrid traitor! Our beloved and us are finally together, just like how it was told by the stars!

The Princess: "It's been so long since I came out here. It felt like an eternity down there without you. But we are now here, together ... even if it's so cold ...... "

[But you do not get the chance to leave with her, nor do you get the chance to respond. Something has taken her and left something in her place instead.]

[THE END - 2/? - "Self-Control" - Cut the strings tying you to your "destiny".]

(Don't like this ending? Go back to previous choices and see what you end up with!)

---

[190] --- The Narrator: The whiplash from both the heavy chain and your head hitting the ground seem to knock out your senses, making you plant your bleeding and bruised face onto the marble floor. It feels cooling, allowing you a moment of peace before you feel the Princess rip your blade out from your limp hand.

The Princess: "I just want us to be happy!"

The Narrator: She raises your blade, ready to strike.

Voice of the Stubborn: Roll already! Roll anywhere that isn't right beneath her!

The Princess: "NO!"

The Narrator: As she sees you trying to roll away, she grabs your arm and pins it down. You are now laying on your back. As you look up, you see her face, tears and ruined mascara flowing down her cheeks as she raises the blade above you.

Voice of the Hero: She doesn't behave like this normally. This isn't like how she was in the first cycle.

Voice of the Stubborn: I am just hoping her technique is as bad as back then. We might still have a chance at pushing through this then.

Voice of the Smitten: My love, look at what they made you do. I embrace whatever death you cast upon me. If it means I'll be able to see you on the other side, I'll wait for you forever.

---CHOICE---

[Give up and let her finish you off.] [go to: 200]

[Catch the blade with your hand.] [go to: 210]

[Reach out to her.] [go to: 300]

---

[300] --- The Narrator: But before she could dig the blade into your chest, your arm weakly reaches out to her. Your hand caresses her face, wiping away the ruined mascara on her face, which now shows regret and concern.

The Princess: "Y-You know I don't want to do this, right? I don't want .. this .. to keep going. I want to be happy with you, together - but you just have a side to you that you can't let go of. It makes you violent, it hurts me ... I don't want to kill you."

Voice of the Hero: I don't want it to continue either. It's all the same. She realises that it isn't us, we show her that we've changed, and then we stab her in the back. Over, and over again. It's just ... sad.

Voice of the Stubborn: But that sadness is a force driving us forwards!

Voice of the Hero: That's a very negative way of looking at things. Maybe you could just, I don't know, let it go?

Voice of the Stubborn: ...

The Narrator: You know why all of you are here, little voice.

Voice of the Stubborn: Don't call me "little".

The Narrator: Your body rises up, The Princess' weight shifting backwards as she allows you to sit. You then take the blade from her hand and - t-toss it away? What? No no no - that's not - WHY?! She is right in front of you! What on Earth are you doing?!

Voice of the Stubborn: I guess, I let it go? Pushing on and on without any reason besides keeping your emotions at bay doesn't really sit well with me. Or atleast, not anymore. I'm done, with you, with all of you, and all of this. Let's just get this done with already. I ... I'll need to think.

Voice of the Hero: Are you being serious?

Voice of the Stubborn: When was I not?

The Princess: "Are you ... being serious? You ... you haven't said much this entire time. Are you really willing to put that side behind? Really?"

---CHOICE---

[Explore] "I promise." [go to: 310]

[Explore] "I don't know, but I know that my mind is clear looking at you." [go to: 320]

[Explore] [Nod silently] [go to: 310]

---

[310] --- The Narrator: A smile spreads across her once sadened visage, as she flings her upper body towards you, enveloping you in a joyful embrace. You two beautiful maniacs.

The Princess: "Thank you! Thank you! I knew there was still something within you that wanted to make things right!"

Voice of the Smitten: This embrace after all the struggle blesses all my pains away! My once sorrowful heart now can finally throb with her love once again!

[311] --- The Narrator: You and The Princess, grasping eachother's hands together, rush up the carpet covered marble stairs, rushing to doom the world.

Voice of the Stubborn: It's not the end of the world.

The Narrator: It is.

Voice of the Hero: No, he's right. This isn't an ending. Endings aren't really - THE end. You gotta change your mind and see things in a different way. This is just letting go.

Voice of the Hero: Have you tried not being like that? If he could change his mind then maybe you could, too?

The Narrator: I am not talking to you anymore. And finally, once you and The Princess reach the top of the marble stairs, the two of you rush out the metal gate that once lead you inside, returning to......

Voice of the Smitten: .... Yes? Hello?

Voice of the Stubborn: He's gone.

The Princess: "Neither of us had to die down there to experience this. I'm so glad that I can actually walk out of there with you. It really means the world to me that you let go of whatever feud we've had between us .... Even if it's cold out here, I know it's nowhere near as cold it would've been without you ......"

[But you do not get the chance to leave with her, nor do you get the chance to respond. Something has taken her and left something in her place instead.]

[THE END - 4/? - "The Past Isn't You" - Let go of your violent side for your love.]

(Don't like this ending? Go back to previous choices and see what you end up with!)

---

[320] --- The Princess: "Then, I guess we both know what we want, right?"

The Narrator: She then takes her hands and squeezes them around yours, smiling.

The Princess: "Let's leave! Together!"

Voice of the Smitten: We never wanted anything more! Come, let us leave this prison behind, and let you see our new dawn!

The Narrator: While you do that, I'm going to open myself a bottle of gin. Have fun destroying the world, and all of us. I'd rather not do this sober.

---

[Proceed to: 311]

---

[200] --- The Narrator: But your hands are too slow, and her body weighs you down, allowing you not a single chance at escaping as she strikes the blade into your heart.

Voice of the Hero: Huh ... I guess she did learn.

Voice of the Stubborn: Good for her, I suppose.

The Princess: "Your blood pooling around you shows either that you are dumb enough to rather let me kill you out of stubbornness - or because you finally gave up trying to fight me. I am done. We are done."

The Narrator: Then, she rips the blade out of your heart and slits her wrist with it.

Voice of the Smitten: My love! No! What are you doing?! Are you ... Are you giving up your life like how we gave up ours after you were gone? Do we mean so much to you that there's nothing left to move on to after we're gone? Then come with us, my love - we shall see the pearly gates together!

Voice of the Hero: ... Hey? Hello? Where is he gone to?

The Princess: "This is quite a cold finish, isn't it......?"

[But you do not get the chance to die with her, nor do you get the chance to respond. Something has taken her and left something in her place instead.]

[THE END - 5/? - "Equal Exchange" - She had nothing left but you.]

(Don't like this ending? Go back to previous choices and see what you end up with!)

---

[210] --- The Narrator: You quickly raise a hand in her way, blocking the blade before i could strike into you, its metal slicing into your hand with a wet slash - it feels numbing at first, but then its like a wasp sting.

The Princess: "If you want me to kill you, then let me kill you! I'll die with you if I have to, if that means we can escape together! But if you don't want that - resist and finally let go of this! Just finally be happy with me! For once!"

The Narrator: But before she could push the blade further down, your other arm weakly reaches out to her. Your hand caresses her face, wiping away the ruined mascara on her face, which now shows regret and concern. She sobs looking down at you.

Voice of the Hero: I don't want this to continue. It's all the same. We die, she dies, we live again, she lives again. We kill her. She kills us. Over, and over again. It's just ... sad.

Voice of the Stubborn: But that sadness is a force driving us forwards!

Voice of the Hero: That's a very negative way of looking at things. Maybe you could just, I don't know, let it go?

Voice of the Stubborn: ...

The Narrator: You know why all of you are here, little voice.

Voice of the Stubborn: Don't call me "little".

The Narrator: Your body rises up, The Princess' weight shifting backwards as she allows you to sit. You then rip the blade out from your hand and - t-toss it away? What? No no no - that's not - WHY?! She is right in front of you! What on Earth are you doing?!

Voice of the Hero: Are you being serious?

Voice of the Stubborn: When was I not?

The Princess: "Are you ... being serious? You ... you haven't said much this entire time. Are you really willing to put that side behind? Really?"

---PROCEED TO SAME CHOICES AS AT: 300---

---

THIS IS THE END OF THE POST! IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR FURTHER OPTIONS, SCROLL UP!

Holy hell this took a while to get done, 5 days on and off writing! 18 pages in word, almost 7000 words. If you legit read through this and got an ending, or heck, ALL of the endings - I genuinely hope you enjoyed it!

Let me know what yall think, and again, thank you for reading :)

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kanerallels · 2 months ago

Note

RebelCaptain "and they lived" au? And/or "had a special but forgotten meeting as children" au (is that a thing xD) 🥺 Happy Star Wars Day!

OHHHHH FRIEND. That is DEFINITELY a thing and it happens to be a thing I DEEPLY LOVE so I hope you enjoy this:

“Our contact is on Pantora.”

“Pantora?” Jyn sounded taken aback, and Cassian glanced at her.

“You know it?”

She nodded, slowly. “My—I’ve been there before. When I was little. I only remember parts of it.”

When she was little. So with her parents, Cassian guessed, and didn’t press the issue. “Well, you’re about to go there again. Should be a quick in and out mission. The contact will leave the intel at a dead drop spot, and we’ll pick it up. Got it?”

Jyn nodded, her expression going serious, the way it always did before a mission. “Got it.”

They came out of hyperspace above Pantora minutes later, and had landed within half an hour. It was odd, Cassian reflected, how a place came back to you, even if you’d only been there once or twice, far younger.

He’d been to Pantora on a few runs with Maarva and Clem, when he wasn’t much older than seventeen, to sell what they’d scavenged. Apparently they’d had a good buyer there, because it hadn’t been near Ferrix. But whoever had bought from them paid well enough that they’d returned quite a few times.

Now, he wondered who it was. If they’d been connected to the contact they were following up with, or if it was just a coincidence. Less and less seemed that way these days—but despite Chirrut’s best attempts, Cassian usually wasn’t one to believe in fate, or the will of the Force. Not most days, anyways.

As they moved through the streets, he saw Jyn looking around, studying the sturdy but beautiful buildings around them. Pantora wasn’t Naboo or Alderaan in its natural beauty, and it certainly wasn’t Coruscant, but there was still something about it. Or maybe it was just the memories Cassian saw in so many of the street corners.

“See anything you remember?” he asked as Jyn paused, studying a tea shop thoughtfully.

“I think…we stopped there,” she said, voice distant. “I didn’t like the tea I got, so Papa drank it for me, and promised to get me another treat. Mama said he’d spoil me, but…I remember her smiling.” She shook her head, glancing at Cassian as if waiting for a reprimand, a reminder that they should focus.

He didn’t want to offer one. He wanted to say that they could stop on the way back, have tea, and spend a little time looking for more memories of the family she’d lost far too young. He understood what that was like.

But he also knew they had a contact to meet and an Empire to avoid, and with Skywalker’s destruction of the Death Star things were more dangerous than ever.

So he met her gaze, let her see that he wasn’t impatient or judgemental, then quietly said, “This way. We’ll cut through the square.”

She nodded, the smallest hint of a smile turning up the corner of her mouth, and they kept going.

The square was another one of those uniquely beautiful places on Pantora. For one thing, it was an actual square—a wide expanse in the middle of all the buildings and shops of bricks, bracketed in by flowering trees and lined with benches, a fountain in the middle. The bricks that made up the pavement were brightly colored, and asymmetrical in shape, like each one had been handcrafted by someone different. It was a patchwork of colors, and Cassian remembered Maarva had loved it.

He felt himself slow a little as he crossed it, almost coming to a stop by the fountain where he’d tossed pebbles—credits were too scarce to waste in water, and pebbles were common enough—just to see the water stir.

As he moved level with the fountain, he sensed the absence of someone at his side. Turning, he saw Jyn had stopped between two of the flowering trees, staring at the brickwork.

Moving back to her side in a few strides, Cassian said, “Hey. Everything good?”

“I…remember this place,” she said in a slow, wondering voice. “I stopped to look at the bricks because they were so pretty, and when I looked up…Mama and Papa were gone.” She looked up at him, brown eyes meeting his, and said, “And then…a boy found me. And helped me.”

For a moment, Cassian didn’t know what she was saying, and then it hit him. Because he remembered this, too.

He was waiting for Maarva and Clem to get back from their meeting, tossing pebbles into the fountain aimlessly. The sunlight was warm on his back, and he’d only been keeping half an eye out for stormtroopers when he saw it.

Or rather, her. A little girl, on her tiptoes, picking flowers from the trees. A brilliant smile lit up her face, like she had no other care in the world. Like the sun above them could never cast a shadow.

It had reminded Cassian of his little sister, who he’d lost, and he’d watched just a heartbeat longer than he usually would have.

Which had turned out to be a good thing. Because the next thing he knew, an Imperial patrol was marching into the square. Everyone else knew to move, to keep their heads down. But the little girl didn’t move. Her head held high, she kept about her business, and Cassian had known it was only a matter of time.

Sure enough, one of the passing troopers pushed roughly past her, and she felt with a cry, the flowers she held scattering to the wind. Cassian had been on his feet before he knew what he was doing. Closing the distance between them, he’d pulled the girl to her feet and out of sight behind the fountain, away from the Imperials.

She wasn’t crying, even though the heels of her hands were scraped, and there were tears in her eyes. She looked angry, more than anything else. “You okay?” Cassian asked her, kneeling in front of her, and she nodded in a little jerk.

“They made me drop my flowers,” she said, her crisp Core World accent sharp in every syllable, and Cassian wondered who this girl was, what she was doing here. Where her parents were.

“I know,” he said. “But you can still see them in the trees.”

“It’s not fair,” she muttered, blinking hard.

“They never are.”

“They should be.”

Cassian had to smile at her vehemence. “They should. Maybe the only way to make things fair is to do it yourself.”

She nodded, ever so serious as she blinked away the tears, and Cassian asked, “Do you know where your parents are?”

She shook her head. “They were walking ahead, and I wanted to look at the trees. So I stayed here.”

Not a hint of fear in her voice, and Cassian couldn’t help but admire it a little. “Let’s go find them,” he said, and she took his hand without prompting.

Maarva and Clem had been furiously worried when he got back. But it was worth it to see the little girl’s delight when she saw her parents. None of her emotions seemed mild—all bright and crackling like lightning. And her parents were equally relieved to see her, her father sweeping her into his arms.

He’d left them like that, remembering the little girl’s bravery and ferocity. But only for a little while. Soon the memory faded away. Until then.

Cassian stared at Jyn, seeing the echo of the little girl she’d been in her eyes. Still fierce, still brave. “That was you,” he said slowly.

A breeze caught a few of the petals and tangled them in her hair as she nodded. “It was. I remember telling my papa how nice you were…” she trailed off, and Cassian could see a hundred unspoken thoughts in her eyes. “You came for me, even then.”

“I always will.” The words slipped out, simple and true as all the other things he’d never said, but always meant. There seemed to be far too many, and he couldn’t carry them all forever.

A smile crossed her face. “I know.”

Another heartbeat passed, and then Jyn spoke, her tone back to normal. “We should keep moving.” Before Cassian could even move, she had, stepping past him and sweeping her hair back behind her ears, sending the loose petals scattering to the ground.

Cassian caught one as it fell, and tucked it into his pocket.

#thanks for the ask!!#rebelcaptain #may the fourth asks #rogue one #jyn erso #cassian andor #i REALLY liked this one not gonna lie. turned out pretty well

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suitov · 6 months ago

Text

The anti-Komahina copypasta of all time pt 1/4

(aka: "toxic submissive homoerotic flirting", "he is a homosexual who curses men hearts. It's my psychological analysis", "no matter how many semens he fills his stomach with. It's not possible!", "it's seriously getting on my nerves how he needs to homofy everything")

This piece was not authored by me and is posted here for archival purposes only, because I can't bear the despair-inducing despair of xitter potentially going down and demolishing mrpoopoofart's masterwork. Please refer to the attribution links throughout.

Seriously, not by me. I enjoy a little recreational Hinanami as much as the next gay but you'll quickly see that this thread reaches heights to which not even an Ultimate Hope could aspire. Not even if he had a snowboard.

[Square brackets (source links and video descriptions) are my only additions. Typos in the rest of the text are directly from the original.]

Goku Nr.1hater (@mrpoopoofart)

Nagito Komaeda influences Hajime Hinata into homosexual activities accompanied with his feminine aura he spreads through his toxic submissive homoerotic flirting. (A thread)

10:31 PM · Oct 31, 2023 [src]

Let's begin with a little introducton. So we all know that Nagito and Hajime are meant to be rivals throughout the game, even though apparently Nagito developed a supposed "crush" on Hajime,which is according to the media confirmed by the creator + [src]

But our (hetero) MC Hajime, doesn't feel the same way about him and despises him to death. [src]

1. Here is a theory of mine. Take your time and try to understand this complex comprehension analysis, even if it's difficult for you to understand at first sight. Take your time and read it carefully. [src]

2.Hajime having enough of Nagito Komaeda Every player knows that Hajime hates Komaeda's guts right? You can see how much hatred he holds for that psycho. The reasons are: his manipulation, crimes and the homoerotic submissive flirting he does when he's all alone with Hajime. [src]

3.Nagito's seduction trap In Chapter 2, when the vicious Nagito was tied up, you could notice how his voice sounded like he was moaning. Moaning mostly is a feminine sexual arousal to seduce men. (Straight men would never do this because they are not female). [src]

[Video: original here. Clip is of Nagito tied up on the floor of the old building, being offered breakfast by Hajime and remarking "Huh? You're not going to feed me?"]

In addition, Nagito seems to be very hungry and forces poor Hajime to feed him, even though he refuses to.But as he already asks with a moan, (theory)he thinks of wanting to eat Hajime's wiener in order to suck him dry. Like a needy prostitute! [src]

Hajime is stunned and feels anxious when he realizes what the antagonist actually meant by "feeding" him. Devestated, he leaves as quickly as he can. [src]

[order of images is as in original thread]

4.Nagito starving for Hajime's Pee pee. Apparently Nagito hasn't eaten any proper food for days, right, when he was tied up in the old building. Theory: What if the scoundrel wanted to only eat toast and milk to make room for Hajime's fluid? [src]

+That's honestly unacceptable for a freak like him, if my theory would turn out to be true. [src]

5. Nagito's attempt to make Hajime feel pity for him We players all know Nagito is just faking his backstory and his allegend disease. Even Nagito later on admits he read something like that in a book. He shouldn't wonder why he has no friends if he acts the way he does. [src]

+The untrustable antagonist is telling Hajime in this scene, he has stage 3 lymphoma and frontotemporal dementia and has allegedly 6 months to a year of life span. This guy really believes Hajime would forgive him for all his evil deeds. [src]

6. Nagito's terrifying eyes and grin Hajime already feels creeped out, when noticing the antagonist's swirling eyes, which causes Hajime to panic. Swirling eyes symoblise excitement, determination, rage or insanity. [src]

+But maybe, just maybe there was a spark of manipulation/influence behind those malicious eyes, to make Hajime aware who he's dealing with [src]

+ [src]

7. Shoe Licking In this scene Nagito tells Hajime he'd give him the clues, if he'd drop on his knees and lick his shoes. Now, that's a very strange and evil way to make a deal. However, Nagito then later on admits he's just joking, but not even the protagonist believes it was. [src]

+This might have been a way, to show off his dominance and inapropriate behavior towards men. [src]

8. Official art analysis So in this official art we can view those two sitting back to back. They represent the contrast of each other. The homosexuality and heterosexuality. The colors of Hajime's clothes express strong masculity, the way the Pyjama matches his hairstyle. [src]

+Also, Hajime is obviously smiling a lot more than Nagito does, because Nagito isn't exactly copying the same postion Hajime is in, otherwise their hands would have touched, which would honestly gross the MC out. [src]

9. Inapropriate Body reveal In one of Nagito's freetime events Hajime demands Nagito to take off his clothes to go swimming, but Nagito seems to "misunderstand" the question and believes Hajime wants to see him naked to enjoy his body. And many of you stan a delulu guy like him? [src]

[Video: original here. Clip is of a Nagito free time event on the beach. Hajime: "Let's take our clothes off." Nagito: "Does that mean... you want to go in the ocean with me? That's a bad idea. There are lots of ways that could be dangerous. But I don't mind if you just want to see me naked." Hajime: (You don't mind...?)]

7. Izuru controlling Hajime's mind Nagito has allegedly shown interest in Hajime before the killing game happened. When Hajime was Izuru at that time. Izuru sensed Nagito's homosexuality and unintentionally grabbed his waist, as an maneuver to shoot him. [src]

*10 [src]

+ Nagito however, got turned on and dropped to the floor breathing heavily with a red face. [src]

11. Love Nest Curse Nagito leads Hajime to "their" (actually his) love nest in one of his fte. Theory: The malicious boy planned something evil. I'm sure Nagito wants Hajime to act all lovely dovely with him and give him all those coochie coochie coos.Bro, that's a hetero MAN! [src]

+ Leave him the hell alone [src]

12. Cookie Monster In this magazine cutout Hajime and Nagito are once again taking the spotlight. The scoundrel on the right, is happily handing a scared Hajime a pair of cookies. I can't read any japanese so I let Google translate for me.+

Apparently one phrase says "Take a bite of him". I strongly believe that this sentence has 2 meanings. Meaning 1: Nagito biting into the Adam's apple (which is cruely erotic) but Meaning 2 convinced me more. Meaning 2: It's a metaphor and means they are playing Cookie Monster. [src]

Explanation: Cookie Monster is a silly children game where you try to "eat" the person. You have to run and try not being cought by your enemy. [src]

Nagito's character song analysis Someone sent me 2 character songs of Nagito to analyse for my thread and of course I analysed some of the lyrics as logical as I could. The songs do provide a connection to the game and mostly the anime. But I only decided to analyse one song. [src]

13. Zettai Kibou Birthday As much as I know, this song is dedicated to Hajime's birthday. The first of january. In this diabolic song, the antagonist sings about wanting a sexual affair with the protagonist, who was known as Izuru Kamukura at that time according to media sources. [src]

Furthermore, he seems to be the one "taking" it, which is already terrifying to think about it. Now, it makes so much sense how Nagito manipulates men. It's hidden in his feminine aura he spreads when seducing men. [src]

+Since the song is pretty much telling us about oral and anal sex, there is a possibility that Nagito has experience with diabolic homosexual activities and maybe tells us, he had many affairs with other men before meeting Hajime. [src]

+This makes Nagito even more of a awful human being, who could have done better in life, if he took the right path. But he didn't. [src]

14 .Nagito abusing Hope for his homosexual desires I'm a Christian guy aka God's second beloved Child and I need to get this off my chest quickly. If Nagito Komaeda was real, he'd land in hell for committing one of the most awful sins close to murder. [src]

+Him utilizing hope for forbidden love,is concidered a crime. Explaination: Discrimination against God and Eve (God's first creation).An unforgiveable crime, exactly. Because Hope should be used for future goals and expetations from God and not the opposite. [src]

15. Hajime's forever longlasting unforgettable love for Chiaki Hajime 100% fell inlove with Chiaki when they met for the first time. See how he's looking at her. The eyes are telling me "She's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen" [src]

[Video: original here. Clip is of Hajime meeting Chiaki. Chiaki: "First, like, ever! It's a classic, don't you agree? there's nothing else like it in the whole genre!" Hajime, strained: "Yeah, classic... I new-game-plussed it five times in a row once..." Chiaki: "Are you serious?" Hajime: "Yes! Cross my heart!" Chiaki: "I know how tough that is. I did ten in a row once." Hajime: "That blows mine out of the water." Chiaki: "It's just... I've never met anybody who can play games as much as me before. Some day, I wanna see your very best run, all right?" Hajime, cut off by end of clip: "Su--" Notably, their faces are generic anime faces throughout with no special effects applied to the eyes, but ya boy knows that destined hetship just hits different.]

+compared to Nagito his eyes are filled with negativity, telling "He's the most awful human being". So don't come at me for being an expert for noticing love at first sight unlike you Yaoi shippers. [src]

Theory: Furthermore, since Hajime posses all talents now, he definitely would turn Chiaki into an Ai again, so that she keep remaining being his true waifu. [src]

[Oh no! Image limit reached? Never fear; it's onward to.......]

[Part 2/4]

#by others #komahina #hajime hinata #nagito komaeda #hinanami

88 notes · View notes

mozillavulpix · 25 days ago

Text

Okay let's go

The Wonderful Precure Complete Book interviews, vaguely written out by me using Google Translate on the japanese text

anything in [square brackets] is personal commentary so don't take it too seriously

If anyone actually knows Japanese and wants to translate this properly, go ahead, I can give you the raw text. I just don't know if anyone else is insane enough to do it. it's pretty long

Masanori Sato (Series Director) x Maki Tahakashi (Series Producer) x Yoshimi Narita (Series Composition)

[Composition as in 'head writer' not music]

Q: Please, tell us about the beginning of the production of "Wonderful Precure" (Hereafter refered to as "Wanpuri"). First of all, how did you gather the production staff?

Takahashi: Actually, due to various circumstances, the production of Wanpuri started much later than the previous series "Hirogaru Sky Precure" (hereafter "Hiropuri"). However, the broadcast date had been decided, so we needed to quickly gather staff who knew the basics of Precure production and could also work quickly. It was around that time that we heard that the script for "Otona Precure" had been completed, so we asked Narita to join. Sato had been in charge of directing the movie "All Stars Memories", so we thought that he could create a new Precure that wasn't bound by the assumptions of a TV series, so we consulted him. We had little time to spend on planning discussions for Wanpuri, so it was a prerequisite that they could understand and accept the outline of the story we had prepared. It was an extremely heavy order with a tight time frame, but both Sato and Narita accepted it without hesitation and brought a breath of fresh air to the project. I am very greatful.

[People are speculating these 'various circumstances' might be related to the 2022 ransomware attack on Toei Animation, but we don't know for sure.]

Narita: It was decided dogs and cats would appear as main characters, and the dog would be the protagonist.

Sato: When they approached me, Narita was already in charge of series composition, and it had already been decided that the theme would be animals, and a love story would be included in the story. Character designs had already been ordered, and I recall the main character was a Papillon called Cure Wonderful/Komugi Inukai. The colours of the Pretty Cure characters had also been decided.

Narita: The Series Director decision was made much later than usual, so I kept thinking to myself, "Has the director been decided yet?" (laughs)

Takahashi: There were a lot of different circumstances that came together, and it took a long time to make the decision. Sato also had a lot of things going on. Since the decision came late, we wanted to fulfil as many of the things he said he wanted to do in the main story as possible.

Q: "Wanpuri" is the first Precure series to have an animal as the main character. How did you feel when you heard about this theme?

Narita: At first, I couldn't quite accept that the main character was a dog. How would a dog act as the main character? Considering the setting, I thought Cure Friendy/Iroha Inukai would be more suitable as the main character. However, when I actually wrote the scenario, it surprisingly suited me. As I continued writing, it started to make more sense to me, and from then on I was able to write the scenario smoothly and enjoyably.

Sato: On the other hand, I was able to accept that the main character was an animal. It didn't feel strange at all. However, since the main character would be active in three forms - an animal, a human, and a Precure - I had to think about how to balance them. Also, another theme was "Precure that don't fight", so I thought if I did that, it would be difficult to create a showy action scene. Instead of fighting, there would be a "chase". When I heard that they would be incorporating what is known as "chase action", I began to think about what to do with the climax of each episode.

Narita: The purpose of Precure was to save the animals that had turned into Garugaru, so the fact that Precure didn't fight wasn't a problem for the drama. However, I thought that it would be quite difficult to make the action scenes exciting without them fighting.

Sato: Come to think of it, initially there was an idea of them having to work to free captive animals.

Takahashi: Yes, there was. There was also a bit of discussion of whether the story should have a 'good vs evil/morality' theme.

Narita: It was decided this route wouldn't fit well with the direction and characters of Wanpuri, so it was switched to the current route at a very early stage.

Q: Detailed characters of the four Precure. Who came up with the setting?

Narita: It was me. When I was approached about the job, it was already decided that Precure would be made up of four girls, so I started to create the characters from there. Cure Wonderful was something that was very easy for me, as I originally had a dog. As for Cure Nyammy/Yuki Nekoyashiki, I spoke with people who kept cats and read books about them to reflect the 'tsundere' nature of cats in the character. Friendy/Iroha is a bright girl who wants to be friends with everyone...things went smoothly with her, but Cure Lillian/Mayu Nekoyashiki was a challenge. To be honest, when I first started writing the scenario, I hadn't envisioned Mayu's high-tension behaviour, and I had imagined her to be a much quieter character. But as I was writing the scenario, she became more and more lively (laughs) , and the direction of the story further enhanced that, resulting in the cute and fun Mayu we know today.

Q: Each of the four Precure has their own unique personality, but what was it like animating them, Sato?

Sato: I drew the storyboard for Episode 1, but at that point I hadn't fully grasped the character's personalities. So I started with Friendy/Iroha who is sociable, cheerful and a bit clumsy, and in a sense the easiest to understand. After that, I animated Wonderful/Komugi, who is full of emotion and says "I love you, Iroha!" and she came out looking like a dog very smoothly. (laughs). So it was relatively easy to solidify the image of the movements of the "dog group". For Nyammy/Yuki and Lillian/Mayu, the storyboards expanded the possibilities for the pair. By playing around with their movements and expressions, the characters moved better than I had imagined, and I think they became a really fun pair.

Q: Until the middle of the story, Nyammy stubbornly refuses to say "Wonderful Precure" and says "Nyanderful Precure". Was that Narita's idea?

Narita: That's right. After Nyammy became a Precure, I asked for her to say "Nyanderful" for a while.

Takahashi: Considering Nyammy's personality, this was a reasonable course of action, so I think I immediately gave an OK to the suggestion.

Q: How did you decide on the names of the Precure after they transform?

Takahashi: Since it was a four-person group, we initially discussed naming them after the four seasons. However, various things came up and the idea was scrapped. As we thought the idea from scratch, we first decided on the name "Cure Wonderful", and the name of her partner Precure was decided on as "Cure Friendy", but then we got stuck again. In contrast to how smooth the dog group was, we had a lot of trouble naming the cat group.

Sato: Even as production was progressing, we still hadn't decided on the names for Nyammy and Lillian after they transform. The name of Lillian hadn't even been decided at the time of the casting auditions.

Takahashi: I struggled with naming Lillian, but I also really struggled with naming Nyammy. Wonderful was decided on so easily - dog -> wan -> wonderful - and since she was a cat, I decided on 'nyan', and...then what? I was stuck.

Narita: I was hoping for a name that had the nuance of a cat's meow, like "nyao", but I couldn't think of a definitive name.

Takahashi: So after much deliberation, we decided on the completely coined word "Nyammy".

Q: By the way, does "Wonderful" have any meaning besides the "wan" of a dog barking?

Narita: Yes. In fact, it comes from Iroha's catchphrase. I started writing the scenario for Episode 1 before Cure Wonderful's name was decided, and Iroha's catchphrase was "Wonderful" at that point.

Takahashi: The catchphrase was already in place at the plot stage.

Narita: That's right. That's why she became "Cure Wonderful". Story-wise, it went that "Komugi, who is always with Iroha, remembered her catchphrase and said it when she transformed."

Q: I heard that the Precure cast was decided through auditions. Can you tell us how that was done?

Sato: The first one to be decided was Lillian/Mayu.

Takahashi: The Lillian played by (Reina) Ueda was just like how we imagined it.

Sato: In the audition for Lillian/Mayu, I asked them to act out her shyness and her excitement when she calls the cat Yuki cute, and I was surprised that everything about Ueda's performance, from the tone of her voice to the way she portrayed the difference in her emotions, was exactly as I imagined.

Takahashi: We all unanimously decided on Ueda. I remember that the moment we heard her voice, we all burst into a commotion, saying "It's just like Mayu!"

Sato: The next one to be decided was Friendy/Iroha.

Takahashi: Wonderful/Komugi and Friendy/Iroha were decided around the same time.

Sato: (Atsumi) Tanezaki is known for playing a lot of characters before her audition, and all her acting was really well done. That's why I really wanted her to participate in Wanpuri as a main character.

[This sentence isn't translating well, but I assume Sato is referring to the fact Tanezaki has played a lot of very well-known, well-received and diverse characters, such as Anya in "Spy X Family", Dai in "Dragon Quest: The Adventures of Dai", and Frieren in "Frieren: Beyond Journey's End".]

Takahashi: We had pretty much decided on Maria Naganawa for Wonderful/Komugi, but we were a little worried about the voice of the main character. But Sato said with confidence, "If it's Naganawa, it'll be fine. Komugi is Naganawa-san." So we got the push we needed and decided on Naganawa.

Sato: I'd heard Naganawa's acting in other anime before. She has a wide variety of acting skills, and I knew she had a cute voice and a wide range of acting, so I thought it would be fine to leave the role of the main character, Komugi, to her.

Takahashi: The one that remained undecided until the very end was Nyammy/Yuki.

Sato: It was really undecided. But as I was struggling with the decision, Takahashi, and (Takashi) Washio, the executive producer of the Precure series, suggested to me, "Perhaps Satsumi Matsuda would be good for the role."

Takahashi: Matsuda is a voice actor who excels at playing boy roles, but she had participated in the previous year's Hiropuri as a female character called Berriberri, and I knew she was also great at playing 'older sister' characters. I thought with Matsuda's acting ability, she could surely play an older sister character with a different flavour, so I recommended her to Sato.

Q: In this work, the climax of each episode is purifying the Garugaru and returning them to their original animal state. How did you come up with the purification method?

Takahashi: The idea of hugging Garugaru to purify them was Narita's idea, and that setting was there from the plot stage.

Narita: Yes, I remember going through that pretty smoothly.

Takashi: At first, there was an idea to wrap the Garugaru in a swaddling cloth when purifying it, like how a baby feels safe when hugged.

Sato: Based on that, we came up with the Friend Liberale design, where the Garugaru is wrapped in a ribbon.

Takahashi: Originally, we were aiming to create something that wouldn't harm animals, and the ribbon was the result of our constant search for different ways to express ourselves.

Sato: Things like locking them in a cage or tying them up with rope wasn't allowed.

Takahashi: We lifted the ban a little in the second half, but in the beginning of the story, especially in the first cour, we didn't want to include any such images. We also wanted to make it clear that this is a story about the bond between people and animals.

Narita: There were quite a few other things that weren't allowed.

Takakashi: Yes, there were. There were detailed rules on how to hold a leash, and Daifuku had to be properly leashed before going outside.

Narita: Yes, I created a scenario where the leash should only be taken off in dog runs and parks, not in city areas.

Takahashi: Even when we let Komugi off the leash, we had to make sure there were no large dogs around, and we were particularly strict with these rules in the beginning. In the second half, they were relaxed a bit, because the amount of fantasy elements increased.

Q: With all these limitations, how did you plan on portraying the Gaou group that came with such open anger and hostility?

Sato: Actually, when Torame and Zakuro were introduced, we talked about allowing kick and punch motions in the action.

Takahashi: But we decided not to do that after all. We thought it would be better to be consistent and "contain" them, so we changed course.

Q: How did you go about creating events and a story structure for a year of broadcast?

Narita: I came up with the outline of how to make things more exciting, and that's what was basically adopted.

Takahashi: I had thought about the timing and content of the season, and I had organised what I wanted to do and the points I wanted to portray, so it wasn't too much of a problem, but what was unusual was that it took 30 episodes for Nyammy and Lillian to fully join the team.

Narita: It was quite a long wait. I mean, it took Nyammy that many episodes to understand Wonderful and the others and to decide they could become friends.

Takahashi: It couldn't be helped, considering the character's personality, but it still took quite a long time, so we were all quite nervous.

Narita: And then Nico-sama turned into a human. That wasn't originally the plan.

Takahashi: That's right. The original plan was for Nico to remain in her unicorn form until the very end. But we wanted her to play a part in creating excitement in autumn. Keeping interest during autumn is always a source of worry for Precure, which airs throughout the year. In the Precure series, power-up techniques often appear in autumn, and the producers are always racking their brains over how to generate excitement after that. As a result, we decided to have Nico transform into a human. The story had been going pretty well up until Episode 30, but we wanted to give it an extra boost, so we used everything we could.

Narita: I understand that feeling. When I took on this job, I wanted to include everything I thought was interesting and everything I learnt up until now. But looking back, Nico's transformation and the appearance of the wolves were in the same episode, so I worried it might have been overstuffed. But when I saw the finished product, it was really well-done, so I was glad.

Takahashi: I'm sorry I caused so much trouble for Sato.

Sato: Personally, I thought it wasn't necessary for Nico to become human. (laughs)

Narita: It was unexpected. But the power of the character designs was a great help. When I was shown the design for Nico's human form, I knew I could make it work.

Sato: The key point about Nico is the contrast between her character when she's in human form and when she's in her small unicorn form. In her human form, she's more god-like, so she doesn't move in a flashy way, but in her small unicorn form, she moves in a very flashy way. I could play around a lot with that.

Takahashi: Sato is very good at animating mascot characters. He was able to bring out Nico's cuteness, which was a great help.

Narita: Although it's the same character, I wrote the scenario to have a distinction between Nico in her unicorn form, who is a smiling character who loves to entertain everyone, and Nico in her human form, who is mysterious.

Takahashi: Kana Ueda's acting really helped a lot. Thanks to the clear distinction between Nico's human form and her mascot form, I think we were about to portray Episode 44, about saying goodbye to a pet, from a much more comprehensive perspective.

Q: Mey Mey, the butler who serves Nico. What kind of character was he created as?

Narita: Actually, at first, I was planning to make Mey Mey a more mysterious character. But I decided to make him a character that would liven things up. His character is very distinct, so after a while he started to move naturally without even thinking about it. I messed with him a lot, but I love Mey Mey!

Sato: I think it would have been nice to have more fun with him. He's a great character.

Takakashi: I felt that the directors had a lot of fun directing the episodes in which Mey Mey plays an active role. They did a great job of making it comical. In the beginning of the story, we needed someone to keep the plot moving, so I think they did a great job balancing that with his brilliant tsukkomi.

['Tsukkomi' is a japanese comedy thing, basically translates to 'the straight man'. As in, the one trying to take things seriously and pointing out all the absurdities of the situation. Also yes, google translate kept 'tsukkomi' untranslated so that's why i'm explaining this]

Q: Speaking of Mey Mey, he's known to be a big fan of the character of Satoru Toyama, but what kind of character was Satoru created to be?

Takakashi: Actually, in the planning stages, we were thinking of having a boy Precure, and Satoru was the prototype for that character. However, due to various circumstances, the idea of a boy Precure was dropped, and instead Satoru was designed as a character that would support the Precure. Satoru and Daifuku transform like Precure in the movie, and that's how it came about. Also, the original plan was to have them transform in the TV series, so instead of ending it with the movie, we decided to have them transform in Episode 49.

Sato: Actually, I wasn't told that Satoru and Daifuku would transform in the movie (laughs).

Takahashi: When Sato joined the production team, it was around the time it was decided there would be four girl Precure, so the idea of a boy Precure hadn't been communicated to begin with.

Sato: I thought their transformations would be a special event that would only happen in the movie. I was very surprised when I heard they would be transforming on TV, too.

Narita: I also didn't have an image of Satoru transforming. I thought he would always be in the role of the Precure's advisor or assistant. On the other hand, I thought Daifuku would eventually be able to speak, so I gave him an 'older brother'-like personality from the beginning. Combined with his good voice and cute looks, I was happy that he became popular. I liked his manly personality and wanted to write a TV scenario for him, so I was glad that we were able to have the two of them transform in Episode 49.

Q: Speaking of Satoru, the love story between him and Iroha became a big topic of conversation. Could you tell us how this story came to be included?

Narita: This was my suggestion. Since the characters are middle school students, I thought it would be okay to have some depiction of love. I also thought it could be a way to bring excitement to the story around autumn. I made the suggestion without much thought, but fortunately I got the go-ahead, so I decided to carefully depict the flow of how love comes to fruition, and I made it into three episodes.

Takahashi: This was the first time Precure has depicted love, so we thought very carefully about it, such as where to set the goal for love.

Narita: We decided the goal would be 'holding hands', and little by little we built up the romantic stories between Iroha and Satoru as we worked towards that goal.

Sato: Speaking of portraying the romance between the two characters, Iroha and Satoru have quite different romantic feelings. After Iroha finds out about Satoru's feelings, she becomes increasingly conscious of him, but Satoru has liked Iroha from the beginning, so his way of treating her doesn't change. He's liked Iroha since the first episode, and he's always been conscious of her in his actions. So, when depicting the romance episodes between Iroha and Satoru, I was mindful to make sure that this point wasn't mistaken. In addition, I wanted to make sure that Satoru's attitude towards supporting the Precure remained consistent. Satoru doesn't just want to help Friendy/Iroha, he wants to help all of the Precure. So I tried to make sure he never wavered on that point.

Narita: I also wanted to make sure that Iroha and Satoru's love story wasn't just about the two of them, so I got everyone around them involved. Mayu was at the forefront of this, but Yuki and Komugi were also there to support the couple. What's more, the story is set up so that the classmates are actually aware of it as well. In the original story, it wasn't planned for the classmates to be involved, but the directors for each episode had been developing the characters of the classmates up until now, so I made full use of that and created a story that would bring out the best in them.

Q: How much about the classmates had been decided at first?

Narita: When I joined, the class seating chart and surnames had already been decided. Since the story takes place in Animal Town, everyone has the kanji for an animal in their name. I wanted to reflect that in the scenario as much as possible and have everyone play an active role, but there were some kids who couldn't make it, which is a bit disappointing.

Takakashi: There were some characters that couldn't be portrayed as animals.

Narita: Yes. I was paying attention to Ryuzaki-kun (laughs). I was thinking of an episode where he keeps a seahorse, which is then turned into a Garugaru, but unfortunately, I couldn't include it. Also, I couldn't include Satoru's parents in the main story. Since the episode where Nico-sama transforms was added, I had to focus on that, and I also had to consider the length.

Takahashi: We had a few discussions about Satoru's family.

Narita: I also thought about the occupations of Satoru's parents. There were various ideas, such as influential people in Animal Town, politicians, or bigwigs at IT companies. Also, Satoru had an older brother. This is just my imagination, but his older brother is even more talented than Satoru and is studying abroard.

Takahashi: That's the first time I've heard that! (laughs)

Narita: I also thought that maybe the Toyama family was a clan that was in conflict with the wolves in the past...but it was just a fantasy.

Q: Did you come up with the setting for the Inukai family as well?

Narita: That's right. The Inukai family runs a veterinary clinic, and I wanted the parents to be a veterinarian and a groomer. When I was thinking what professions the father and mother should have, I decided to go against the general image and make the mother the veterinarian and the father the groomer.

Takakashi: I had heard that groomers do heavy physical work, especially with large dogs, so it didn't feel that strange to have the father as a groomer. I remember that character designer Yoko Uchida and costume and prop designer NaSka had a lot of fun designing Iroha's father. I was surprised that he was more muscular than I had imagined, and that he was wearing a really cute apron.

Sato: At first, there were two designs for Iroha's father's apron. I thought the design was great, so I suggested combining the two, and that's how the design came about (laughs). Also, Iroha's father has been cooking meals and taking care of Iroha since the first episode, so viewers have been saying that he might be a full-time househusband.

Narita: I wanted to make Tsuyoshi (Iroha's father) my idea man (lol). A muscular father wearing a cute apron who does all the housework and takes care of his daughter is just the best.

Q: How did you decide which animals would turn into Garugaru?

Narita: Since it had been decided the product would be linked to toys, we received around 40 original designs from the toy side and were able to choose from there. Among them were the tsuchinoko and the Tyrannosaurus, and I thought they would make the story more interesting. I remember thinking "I wonder if I can make a story like this?" Also, since the subject matter was animals, I wanted to weave in some trivia about the animals into the story. I thought it would be great if you could naturally absorb knowledge about animals after watching Precure. The writers for each episode did a lot of research and were able to incorporate that information into the script very well. Also, at the end of each story, I added some trivia notes about the animals that appeared, and other writers saw them and gradually started writing their own. Thanks to that, we were able to share our knowledge and have fun writing the story.

Takakashi: Sato was very particular about the design of Garugaru.

Sato: That's right.

Takahashi: Actually, at the beginning, there was an idea to design Garugaru as a monster. There are two-legged and four-legged animals, but if we were to use that setting in the anime, it would inevitably cost a lot to draw it.

Sato: But I didn't give in on that point. Since the story is themed after animals, I thought it would be better to consistently depict Garugaru as an animal, and since the habits of animals are the hooks of each episode, I thought it would be difficult to come up with a strategy for the chase action if the Garugaru didn't move according to those habits.

Takahashi: Looking back now, I think Sato's decision was the right one. The action was more varied and more convincing, and each episode was well worth watching.

Sato: To be honest, there were a lot of bird-like animals, so it was difficult to differentiate them (laughs).

Takahashi: The owl, duck and bat turned out really cute, so I think it was great.

Sato: Also, in the chase action with the Garugaru, we made it possible to use the power of Kirarin Animals as part of the variation.

Takahashi: During our meetings, we discussed things like "Wouldn't it be awesome if Kirarin Swan could fly using its power 'to grant them the ability to fly'?"

Narita: Actually, the most powerful thing was the Panda's power to put the opponent to sleep.

Sato: I struggled a lot with how to incorporate the power of the Panda into the action.

Narita: The episode where Kirarin Fox's power was used caused quite a stir when Wonderful transformed into a tire (laughs).

Takahashi: (laughs) and Nyammy transformed into a giant cat toy.

Narita: It was a lot of fun, and I would have liked to see the humans transform as well if possible.

Q: Gaou's true identity is Subaru, a human who once shared a heart with the wold Gaou. Was this decided on from the beginning of the project?

Narita: That's right. By having the final boss a human, I wanted to avoid a structure in which Precure and animals are enemies. Also, I thought that the emotion of an animal resenting a human is very human in of itself. At the same time, it didn't feel right for us humans to so easily write about the feelings of animals; it seemed very pushy and unnatural. For that reason, I made Subaru the final boss. But actually, at first, there was the idea that Friendy/Iroha could talk to animals.

Sato: After Iroha transformed into Precure, she would gain the ability to talk to animals.

Narita: Yes. But I quickly abandoned that idea. I felt like the ego of the human side would inevitably come into the dialogue of the animals.

Takahashi: Even if we tried to eliminate human ego as much as possible, since it is we humans who create the stories, there was always the possibility that it would show through the dialogue.

Narita: That's right. So I stopped having animals speak human language directly, and instead had Wonderful/Komugi act as an interpreter from time to time. I think that by creating that setting, Wonderful/Komugi's character became more prominent and made her feel more like the main character.

Q: While the story is generally fun and cute, there was also a serious scene that left an impression on me, where Friendy/Iroha is shocked to learn that humans had driven wolves to extinction. Please tell us why you included such a scene.

Takakashi: In drawing Precure, which has an animal theme, I felt that it was inevitable to consider the history of humans causing the extinction of many animals. However, I didn't want to convey it in a way that would hurt the children who watch the anime.

Narita: I was a little worried because the wolved that appeared in Episode 29 looked a little scary, and I wondered if it was okay for Gaou and the others to continue directing their anger at the Precure. But by this time, the four Precure had become more united and the way they embraced the Garugarus had definitely made me realise that. This gave rise to a sense of persuasiveness, so I trusted them and wrote the climax without worrying.

Sato: On the contrary, I wasn't particularly worried about depicting that part. That's because I had already decided to end the story with Gaou saying "I'm glad Subaru was there." What should have been depicted in the climax wasn't the conflict between the species, but Gaou and Subaru connecting with each other once again, so I thought that would be fine.

Takahashi: But I was quite worried about those scenes at first. A sad story can be painful for the viewers.

Narita: I think I got through that by trusting the viewers. I knew everyone was excited about Wanpuri, so I believed that even if there were some tough moments, they would still watch until the end.

Takahashi: I think that if you watched up until Episode 40, you would know that it would be okay to entrust our feelings to them.

Q: In the final episode, after Komugi and Yuki lose the ability to speak human language, they are able to talk to Iroha and the others again with Nico's power. What kinds of discussions did the staff have about whether or not they would lose the ability to converse with humans?

Takahashi: Initially, I had envisioned the ending being one in which Komugi and Yuki could no longer speak, and I supported that idea. I thought that even if Komugi and Yuki lost the ability to talk to people, they would still be able to connect with each other emotionally.

Narita: However, considering the atmosphere of the work, I thought it would be a bit odd to end the story by suddenly losing the ability to talk to Iroha, Mayu and Satoru, when they had been able to talk happily up until that point. I felt a fun and bright ending would be more suitable for Wanpuri than a lonely ending. So in the end, even though they can't become a Precure or a human, they gain the ability to talk with people and continue to live happily with Iroha and Mayu.

Takahashi: In the story, Daifuku says "Even if we can't speak, best friends are still best friends. But speaking is more wonderful." It ended up being exactly like that.

Q: After the broadcast of all 50 episodes, the "Wonderful Precure Thanksgiving" was held. At the event, character shows, live performances, and reading plays were shown, but the reading play that depicted what happened after the final episode attracted the most attention. I heard Narita wrote the script for this episode, but what was you intention in creating it?

Narita: The reading play was shown at the evening premium performance, so I wanted to show everyone that "Komugi and the others can't become humans anymore, but they're still living happily together." I wanted everyone who had been supporting us for a year to know that Komugi and the others are living happily, and that they're the same even though they don't transform. Also, Mayu played a big role in the boyfriend-girlfriend stories that were sprinkled in and out of the character show and reading play (laughs).

Q: With "Thanksgiving" over, please tell us how you feel about "Wanpuri" now that you have completely let go of it.

Narita: I was so busy during production, but I looked forward to watching the broadcast of Wanpuri every Sunday morning. I knew the story, of course, but I enjoyed the direction and the voice actors' performances. It was a really good year, both writing it and watching it was fun.

Takahashi: I was really busy during production. But I was really happy that everyone, including Sato, Narita, the writers for each episode, the cast, the many animation staff and the sales staff, came together as "Team Wanpuri" to make the series a success, and I really felt like we all made it together.

Sato: There were some hard times in creating the techniques, settings and transformation scenes, but after that it was a lot of fun. The dubbing was done by really good people, so I was able to leave it to them and have a relaxed time.

Takahashi: Everyone has a broad perspective and is very creative, so when I make a suggestion, they accept it warmly. I was also very helped by the fact that they were okay with additional suggestions as long as they were within acceptable range.

Q: I'm sure it's very difficult to choose, but which episode was your favourite or most memorable episode out of the 50?

Narita: My favourite is Episode 1. I cry every time I watch it, but it was a key point in creating the script, so it left a strong impression. Also Episode 29 and Episode 50 are memorable/

Sato: Like Narita-san, the most memorable episode to me was Episode 1, which I did the storyboard for. The story was a bit challenging, with Komugi only being able to say "wanwan", but I heard that some people cried after watching it. I was impressed not only by the script, but also by Naganawa's acting, who was able to convey her feelings to the audience with just "wanwan".

Takahashi: For me, the introduction in Episode 30 is what made the biggest impression on me. In fact, up until this episode, there were no episodes where we could have fun. Even during summer vacation, there was a lot to do, such as having to raise Nico-sama's egg. In the Precure series, it is customary to be able to play a little outside of the main story during the summer vacation episodes, but that was not possible in Wanpuri. However, it's precisely because they carefully built up the story in this way that these 30 episodes have become so popular. I am deeply moved to have received this offer.

Narita: Even when I was writing the script for Wanpuri, I felt like it was chock full of episodes (laughs).

Takahashi: That's true. There were only about 20 episodes between the appearance of Torame and Zakuro and the final episode. Episode 40 was a fun episode in which humans transformed into animals, but even this episode, which at first glance seemed like a playful episode, contained important information, so I thought we couldn't let our guard down.

Narita: There really wasn't a single episode that wasn't related to the core of the story or theme.

Takahashi: In Episode 26, "It's Too Hot!", just when you thought it was about them having fun playing together, they suddenly started talking about how to prevent heatstroke in animals.

Q: Finally, please give a message to the fans who have supported 'Wanpuri'.

Takahashi: Thank you for your support. Even after the 50th episode, Komugi and the others are still the same. They will continue to be wonderful in the same way. If we ever have the chance to meet again, I hope you will come and see us with a smile.

Narita: Thank you all for supporting Wanpuri. I have heard your comments and it has been very encouraging. I've been working hard on the theme of "a wonderful world that everyone loves!" and I'm glad that the viewers have come to love the show too. Thank you so much for watching the past year.

[Narita here is saying Cure Wonderful's introduction speech, "minna daisuki suteki na sekai!"]

Sato: Thank you for loving our work. The story began with Iroha and her friends going for a walk, and ended with them going for a walk. I think Komugi and Iroha will continue to find wonderful things in their daily lives. I hope that you too will continue to find wonderful things in your daily lives.

#wonderful precure #precure #unprofessional translations #complete book

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hehe-hoho-ohno · 2 months ago

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As mentioned in my earlier post, Two Car Train is officially discontinued.

However, as an extra bonus for the Tumblr crowd, I'm putting the unfinished chapter 5 beneath the cut, which you can read if you want to.

[[I will be using square brackets to fill in missing scenes.]]

Station help up a hand, motioning for Lian to stop. “Did you hear that?”

They had been heading back to the settlement, earlier than Station would normally start the trek back but he didn’t want Lian to be out here when night fell.

“You mean the Pokémon?” Lian asked. “It sounds like a fight.”

“Yes,” Station agreed grimly, then took off at a sprint. “It’s hurt.”

“Wait! Wait up!” Lian hurried after him on his much shorter legs. “What are you doing? You’re supposed to run away, not towards it!”

If anything Station only quickened his pace, hoping he would be able to finish the battle before Lian caught up so he could keep the kid out of danger. He crested the hill, and spotted a flock of rufflets harassing a small curled up form. That wouldn’t do. He slid down the slope towards them and tossed out a pokeball.

Magikarp sailed towards the gang like a frisbee, crashing right into the middle of the flock and startling them into taking fight.

“Karp!” Magikarp splashed cheerfully.

“Bravo! Well done. Thank you.” He returned her to her ball and crouched down next to the cowering machop. “Greetings! Don’t be afraid. We are here to help!”

It hesitantly uncovered it’s head and looked up at him. The rufflets had done a number on it. Station offered it an Oran berry. It didn’t take it. He placed it on the ground. “Your cab needs maintenance and I don’t have enough supplies on me to heal you completely.”

It didn’t seem to understand any of that, boggling at him in complete confusion. “The most efficient course of action would be to take you back to the settlement and heal you there.” He pulled out a pokeball and it flinched back, kicking its feet to scuttle backwards.

Station pulled back. “I won’t hurt you. It’s only a pokeball. For transport. You’ll be safer inside.”

“What. Is. Wrong with you!?” Lian panted, having finally caught up. “What are you doing?!”

“It needed help,” Station said and pointed at the machop. It almost felt too obvious to be worth mentioning but Lian had asked.

Lian threw an exasperated hand towards the sky. “Great. Now we need help.”

Station looked up. The rufflets had not dispersed and were circling above them, flying in formation in a way that reminded him of a… dance.

Shit.

“Ah,” he said, sounding much calmer than he felt. “That’s bad.”

“Indubitably,” Lian agreed.

The birds blurred together and dove towards the ground.

“We should run,” Station said.

“I concur,” Lian said, already booking it.

Station glanced down at the machop, who had curled up again in fright. “Please don’t punch me,” he muttered and scooped it up, cradling the machop to his chest. It squeaked in surprise but, fortunately, it was too startled to punch him.

He dove to the side as the giant fusion plunged down, talons raking the ground where they had been. Shit! That was too close. It beat its many wings and ascended again, preparing for another attack.

He easily caught up to Lian and soon began to outpace him. Even though his instincts screamed at him not to, he slowed down so that he lagged behind Lian. After all, it would be the slowest group member who got targeted. Should they pick him up? Lian certainly wouldn’t appreciate it, but that was the least important factor right now. But he was already carrying Machop. Carrying two passengers might be slower than travelling separately.

“Look!” Lian pointed ahead. “We’re almost home!”

Suddenly, what Station needed to do became crystal clear. He couldn’t lead the rampaging Pokémon into the settlement.

Station turned on his heel and unclipped a pokeball from his belt.

And cornobbled the fusion, knocking it out of it’s flight path and sending it crashing into the snow.

“What are you doing?!” Lian wailed.

[Station and Lian fight the fusion and win!]

——

“We have arrived at our destination.”

Machop looked up at him, confused. Station crouched down so he was at her level. “This near where we met, yes?”

She bobbed her head.

“Right. So.” Station absentmindedly rotated her pokeball between his fingers. “You are all better now. Fully operational! That is good. I understand that when you acquiesced to capture it was under duress. A temporary solution to an emergency situation. That’s over now.”

“Chop?” She cocked her head, uncomprehending.

“You can go home,” Station said. “You have the option. I will release you, if you wish.”

She warbled and stepped closer to them. She hesitantly placed her hand on his wrists, light as a butterfree. She didn’t seem to comprehend what he was offering.

“Don’t you want to go home?” Station asked. “Don’t you have things to do, places to be? You were taken quite abruptly. Isn’t there anything you want to return to? Things you left undone?”

She stared at him with a concerned sort of confusion.

“Don’t you have family? Friends? …Aren’t you loved? Isn’t there someone, anyone, who will miss you, if you do not return? Someone who will look for you if you’re not at your station?” He practically begged her. “You didn’t even get to say goodbye. So you can’t. You can’t stay. You’ll be homesick. And lost and confused and…”

She reached up to brush at his cheeks and dab under his eyelashes with a tender sort of awkwardness. He reached up to grasp her hands to keep her from poking out his eyes out by accident. Machop’s hands were wet. So was his face.

Station swallowed, suddenly aware of the lump in his throat. “Sorry. My apologies. I got off track.” He flicked her ball open, intending to snap it at the hinge. “It’s a bit of a waste, but I can’t recall a release method that doesn’t involve breaking the ball so…”

Machop let out an alarmed cry and tugged the pokeball away from them, cradling it to her chest.

Station glanced between his now empty hands and her. “You want to keep it? A little unorthodox but I don’t see why not. Be your own master… or something.”

She sat down in the snow with a huff, protectively shielding the ball from Station.

“Isn’t that cold?” he asked. She narrowed her eyes at him. “I suppose you would be used to it.”

After some hesitation, Station shuffled around so that he was sitting beside her. Yep. He was right. It was cold. And wet. A bit miserable all around. “You seem upset. Are you mad at me?”

“Mmm.” She looked at her feet and petted her pokeball, as if it were something alive that needed comforting.

“Is it because…” and he couldn’t believe he was saying this. “You would rather stay? With me?”

Machop jerkily nodded.

“…Why?” He didn’t understand. Was her previous life truly so terrible? Or maybe it was different for Pokémon. It wasn’t uncommon for Pokémon to couple themselves to promising trainers. Gligar and Magikarp had certainly been eager to join him. Still, Machop didn’t seem like the type who would like to pursue battling. What would prompt her to leave the only home she had ever known?

Machop leaned against him, pillowing her head against the crook of his arm.

The whole point of this exercise had been to give her a choice. To give her an opportunity that Station had not gotten. And she had made her decision. It was not the answer that Station had been expecting but, unfathomable as it was, it was her truth.

“I see. If that’s is truly what you want, then it would be an honour to have you with us.” He opened his hand expectantly. “Don’t worry, I won’t break it unless you change your mind.”

With some hesitancy, she retuned the ball to him. Station pulled it back before she could enter it again and she squeaked in betrayal. “Sorry, I just wanted to let you know that you can change your mind. This is a standing offer. If you ever want to be released you just need to to tell me, okay?”

“Chop,” she grumbled and vanished into the pokeball in a flash of light.

With a huff of amusement Station reattached her pokeball to his belt. He stood and shook off the snow clinging to his pants and coat.

The area around him had grown so foggy it was difficult to discern the world around him. Coupled with the snowfall covering his tracks, it was impossible to tell the way he had come from. The fog had set in so quickly and he hadn’t even noticed. It seemed… unnatural.

Slow clapping sounded from behind him and he spun to see Volo’s figure emerging from the haze, mist curling around him like drapery. His uncovered eye shone through the gloom, glacial blue.

“Oh, how sweet,” he drawled, rolling his eyes.

Station squinted at him. “You are not Volo.”

Not-Volo spluttered, mouth opening and closing rapidly. “How did you-?! No! I am Volo! What makes you say that?!”

“Volo would act more like…” Station smiled widely, leaned forward with a hand on his hip and waggled his pointer finger. “My, what a showing from my favourrrrite customer! Putting my pokeballs to good use I see! You weirdo, you!” He winked. “Have you remembered anything yet?”

Not-Volo’s lip curled. “V- I would not fucking say that.”

Station shrugged, letting his smile and the persona drop. “Maybe. Maybe not. His eyes are definitely grey though.”

Said blue-but-should-be-grey eyes widened as it’s hands (already lengthening into claws) flew to it’s face, as if it could feel the imperfections. It snarled and yanked at the illusionary bangs, tearing off the illusion like an orange peel, until frayed away into the ghostly fur of it’s real body.

“…Do I know you?” Something about it seemed familiar. He tilted his head. “Didn’t I give you berries that one time?”

It stilled from tearing at it’s mane,

[Station catches a Zoroark]

——

[Station becomes Lady Sneasler’s Warden]

[Station and Lian talk about how Lian is upset that Station was made a Warden before him]

#submas #my writing #two car train #fusion au #wip wednesday #<- not really lol but it has a smilar vibe

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hergrandplan · 5 months ago

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"He's the one"

thank you @enjoythesilentworld for this fun tag!!

Post a 1-5 paragraph excerpt of a WIP/fic idea that may never make it out of your drafts but is near and dear to your heart.

I started this so so long ago and actually looked at it a few days ago and realized that this may simply be one I can't figure out. I know what it's supposed to be (exes who are friends, and then Simon gets engaged and Wille becomes his best man) but I don't know how, and either way, I don't think this particular scene will make it in! So here it is, for your enjoyment (yes. this is longer than 1-5 paragraphs. it could have been even longer but there were too many square brackets in the final few that I couldn't figure out. but hey. More cake!)

With a loud “Wille, you’ll never believe what happened!” Simon stormed into the living room, temporarily making Wille look up from the book he was reading. A book he was enjoying.

He already regretted giving Simon the keys to his house. One of these days, he was sure, Wille was going to come home and find Simon splayed out on his couch, having raided his cupboards and eating all his snacks.

“What, Simon?” he said with feigned disinterest, while trying to finish this last paragraph.

Simon grabbed the book out of his hands before he could, and tossed to the other side of the room.

“Hey!” Wille exclaimed. [maybe this needs to be more of a description of the sound like ‘disgruntled noise’ or something but not disgruntled] “I was reading that!”

“You can read later, I have something to tell you.” Simon sat down on the couch next to him, the widest grin possible on his face and a sparkle in his eyes. “I met someone. And I’m pretty sure he’s the one.”

“You said that about the previous guy. And the guy before that. And the guy before that.”

“Yeah, but this time I’m sure of it.” Simon fell back against the couch cushions, and ran a hand through his black curls. “He’s sweet, and considerate, and incredible in bed. I mean the way he–“

“Okay, okay, I do not need to hear you go on about your sexual escapades again, please. Where did you meet him?”

Simon’s hand got stuck in his curls, and he blushed. Actually blushed, and that’s how Wille knew the answer.

“Please don’t say the club.”

Simon didn’t reply.

“Simon, we talked about this. Not every guy you fuck is the one.”

“Yeah, but this time it’s different! I mean, I met him last Saturday and we went out for dinner last night and Wille,” Simon sat up again, stared into Wille’s eyes. “I came from his place just now. I haven’t even been home yet since Saturday. He has a bed frame. A bed frame that is incredibly suitable to – ” Wille gave him a look, and Simon stopped mid-sentence. “Okay, it doesn’t matter what it’s suitable to, but c’mon.”

“Wait, but if you met him Saturday –“ Wille quickly did the math in his head. “Simon, you’ve known this guy for what, 4 days?”

“I know, I know, it’s too soon but truly, I’m telling you, he’s the one. For real this time.”

Wille rolled his eyes and get up to get his book from where Simon had flung it to heedlessly.

“Sure. Tell me again in a month when it hasn’t crashed and burned again, and maybe I’ll believe you.”

Simon’s problem, according to himself, was that he just loved too much and that they were never able to handle it. And maybe he was right, a bit – almost every guy he met was the one until he found they weren’t ready for a relationship, were still in love with their ex, or, in more than one case, had a girlfriend already.

Simon’s problem, according to Wille, was that he couldn’t see past all the raging red flags. Simon would have killed it if he were a bull fighting in the arena.

Not tagging anyone bc Idk who has been tagged already and I sadly dont have the brain capacity or the time for that rn. So if you see this and want to join in: this is your sign!

#young royals #young royals ficlet #yr ficlet #young royals fanfic #young royals fanfiction #yr fanfic #yr fanfiction #wilmon

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inchidentally · 7 months ago

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got an ask about the Lie Detector Test from last year and well this might be something that drives only me insane and is otherwise pointless - but I decided to hone in on just their hands and if you want to read smth truly unhinged !!

so like… the fact that they were still in their nervous, trying to figure each other out, finding each other cute/handsome/attractive but also intimidating (in very different ways and for different reasons) and constantly deliciously misunderstanding and fumbling bc they want to connect so so badly and when their vulnerability lines up exactly right everything is SO tingly and nice and hopeful and sweet…

and even tho we know logically Oscar is the one who showed up to F1 already on the back foot in so many ways - and had told his mum that (speaking hypothetically at that time) being Lando's teammate would be ideal bc he wouldn't have as much pressure since everyone already knew how good Lando is - he's also desperate that being a Lando fanboy since Lando's karting days won't become an obvious point of weakness (or worse, genuine ridicule). and not just a little aware that he's got to literally earn his keep and instill confidence in him by hopefully exuding confidence. however much he doesn't feel it yet.

so when he's being questioned, he brackets Lando in with his shoulders and keeps his eyes steadily fixed on Lando's face to the point where his own expression shifts minutely along and mirrors every tiny change of Lando's. and when he's doing the questioning, he leans forward with his shoulders even more and keeps his hands so close to Lando's and brushes over Lando's fingertips when he presses the button.

and maybe the fact that he's found Lando cute/funny/fascinating/impressive for so long makes it a little heady to have Lando wriggling and acting up just bc Oscar makes him that way :) maybe it brings out a streak of something in him that no one's ever seen before - that wasn't there with all his other teammates and racing friends, certainly never there in his placid gentle relationship with Lily, of course never was in the easy old comfort of being around his family. maybe it's something to do with holding Lando in the palm of his hand on his phone screen, sometimes in the intimacy of earbuds, sometimes when he's totally alone in his room - and now he has Lando contracted to be right there in front of him and so much more uncertain and vulnerable than Oscar would ever have expected. so maybe it's something not quite innocent and not perfectly normal that makes him want to hold his gaze on Lando even when it makes Lando squirm - and makes him pin Lando under a particularly loaded question of "am I a funny teammate" bc they both know everyone's comparing Oscar constantly to Carlos and Daniel - probably Lando as well - and oh, it makes Lando writhe and shriek not just a little out of genuine discomfort and confusion bc why would Oscah ask that ?? when Lando asked if he was the best teammate Oscar had ever had they both knew it would get a teasing response and Lando would pretend to fuss. softball funny question! but this is Oscar laying out something that has that raw edge to it like unexpected, dense gristle under the molars and oohhhh it wrings Lando out !! and the way Oscar desperately tries to force a frown and act offended but the teeth of his broad grin just won't hide and he can't stop himself watching every square inch of Lando twisting beneath that question like a kitten getting an itch scratched to the point of over-stimulation.

and even though everything about Lando's position and how people talk about Oscar (at that time) should make Lando feel cocky and in control and more calm than ever, he's in constant fidgety motion both when he's being questioned and doing the questioning. he darts his hands across the divide sometimes but mostly twists his fingers together to control them and keep them from betraying him. and goddd when Oscar leans in and asks if Lando's ever snuck out of his house, Lando's hand literally trembles so badly it shakes the light. and it happens again when they're talking about how big and strong Oscar's arms are. but !! Lando literally keeps his arm stretched out so that the little device is kept firmly in Oscar's territory, therefore his own hand and threat of injury being entirely within Oscar's space. it can't be fully comfortable staying at extension like that for so long but he can't move it! especially not when Oscar's fingers rest almost touching his ! and sometimes Oscar withdraws his hands and Lando can't help fidgeting and wriggling closer !

bc Oscar only means it to be playfully teasing but it comes across as overly intense. he doesn't want to weird Lando out by somehow broadcasting the hours spent watching his streams and searching up content about him on social media and fanboying over the LN4 admin interacting with him once, but instead he comes across as far too serious and silent at times when dammit, he knows how to do all of this stuff! he was funny and silly and giddy in Prema no problem!!

and it clashes against Lando normally drawing all his on camera strength from bashfully twisting his head to the side and showing his vulnerable jugular so that the Other Person can take him up in their jaws and control proceedings, hoping his tenderness disarms them enough to not hurt him. and he's never known a man who doesn't understand precisely what to do and how to bully Lando enough while teeing him up for jokes and getting "mad" at him when he misbehaves or gets too silly.

but Oscar! doesn't !! Oscar won't just play ball and do all the Usual Things! he treats every second in Lando's presence as if waiting to see Lando unfurl and fill the space like they both know he can.

and Oscar's eyes are so intense when he stares at Lando that Lando has to look at someone else or wriggle or make a silly face or hide his face completely. Oscar smiles and laughs so warmly but he won't just take charge !! he expects Lando's humor and his personality to just stand on their own while Oscar reacts and responds and !! baby doesn't do that yet !!

give them a year and Oscar's humor will have come out and Lando will have the confidence to be the leader and the superstar he truly has become… but not yet !!

so they're both fairly vibrating and flushed by the end and Lando has to do his little symbolic 'clap' to declare the challenge over bc he both doesn't want to leave the tiny temporary corner the team have made for him and Oscar - with it's rickety table and silly little reading light and cheap toy that's made them lean so close and touch fingers - but also he needs to escape Oscar who remains just as steady and still has his gaze trained on Lando as if he could watch him all day and not get tired and goDD!!!

#inchidentallyanessay #also inchidentallymentalillness bc lafgsalfgsajlf #idek guys

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onceuponathyme · 6 months ago

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Daisies

The daisy (etymology: day’s eye) traditionally symbolizes innocence. It is also associated with a game/ritual of plucking the petals to determine whether the person you love loves you back.

There are a lot of flowers, floral-pattern clothing, botanical ornamentation, etc. in Season 2, presumably for garden metaphor reasons. We see various meaningful flowers, but daisies and daisy-like flowers are especially significant.

Let's take a look at the daisies of Season 2.

The restaurant Marguerite’s may be covered in ivy and roses, but marguerite is the French word for daisy.

Justine’s dress at Marguerite’s has a daisy pattern.

Maggie’s episode 1 cardigan has stylized white flowers that could be read as daisies. (Note when we first see her approach Nina we also see the word "pure" in the coffee shop mural.) Maggie's episode 3 shirt has a couple large daisies with another flower, rainbow, and sun.

Marguerite is the French version of the English name Margaret. Maggie is almost always a nickname for Margaret, so presumably Maggie’s name is Margaret.

The hitchhiker has a daisy-pattern headband. When Shax morphs back into her regular face/body she continues wearing the hitchhiker-disguise clothing while in the car with Aziraphale.

A dress hanging beside Aziraphale throughout the celebration scene and then the Furfur scene in the dressing room has a floral pattern that includes daisies. The large flower head on the mirror is a cousin of a daisy.

A dress hanging beside Crowley throughout the dressing room scenes is painted with small white daisies.

At the ball, Nina’s shirt has a daisy on the back left shoulder and Mutt’s hat has white and red daisies.

The Give Me Coffee or Give Me Death mural has a daisy. I think the daisy is only visible in this one shot of Nina opening shop the morning after the ball. (The menu on the wall also looks like it has some little daisies in the flower decorations.)

I'M SORRY EXCUSE ME. ARE THOSE LIGHTNING BOLTS STRIKING THE DAISY THROUGH THE WORD LATTÉ?! Or maybe the lightning is striking the latté?

In Maggie and Nina's talk-to-him intervention, there's a little daisy pattern in the chair fabric visible by Crowley's head.

The clock's four spandrels each have a red daisy.

The names Marguerite and Margaret can be traced to a root word meaning “pearl” and the names are listed as meaning pearl in baby name books. Is there a possible connection to the seashell on the clock case door? Or to the collar of Aziraphale’s Job outfit that was missing a pearl? There are pearls in several scenes in the show including the ball and the 1941 dressing room.

Literary connections:

Skip the square-bracketed summaries to avoid spoilers for the stories.

Daisy is a main character in The Great Gatsby, one of the books on Jim’s shelf.

[Daisy is a wealthy socialite who ultimately chooses her cruel husband over her infatuated lover Gatsby. She also hit-and-runs someone in Gatsby’s 1920s yellow Rolls-Royce (which in film adaptations looks very similar to the yellowified Bentley). Her greater significance to the book is as a symbol to Gatsby, so idealized in his mind that she is his entire dream and driving force. Gatsby also associates a strange green light with Daisy although the source of the light is not actually known. (In Good Omens, strange green light is associated with Hell instead.)]

There are a couple fictional bearers of the name Marguerite who are not in books from Jim's bookshelf, but who seem highly relevant:

-Marguerite St. Juste (note that the restaurant Marguerite’s is owned by Justine), wife of the Scarlet Pimpernel.

[Unhappy in her marriage to a dull British fop, she is thrilled to figure out that he is secretly the dashing hero saving French aristocrats from the Reign of Terror, but horrified that she has accidentally betrayed him. She bravely pursues him to France, and now knowing they’ve underestimated each other their love is rekindled. There have been many film adaptations of the story, one of which is by Powell and Pressburger whose films are referenced extensively in Good Omens Season 2.]

-Marguerite, heroine of various opera and film adaptations of Faust. (Margarete, diminutive Gretchen, in Goethe’s Faust.)

[Faust seduces Marguerite with the help of the demon Mephistopheles, she winds up in prison for killing the resulting baby, Faust tries to rescue her but she refuses to go, and then a voice from Heaven announces her salvation.]

#good omens meta #good omens costumes #good omens references #good omens set design #good omens daisies #good omens Maggie #daisy symbolism #good omens marguerite's

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skyblr-hunger-games · 10 months ago

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Aaah you guys, life has been so incredibly chaotic. But I miss doing these so...

Submissions are open for the fourth Skyblr Hunger Games!

I can accept as many submissions as I receive, be it 5 or 50. You may submit up to three Sky OCs per person! All creators will be credited and their Tumblr accounts will be linked.

Applications will be open from today until Sky reset on Friday, August 23rd (12:00am PDT). Depending on the number of submissions, I might supplement the bracket using NPCs from Sky: Children of the Light.

To submit an OC to the tournament, either message @skyblr-hunger-games or send an Ask! Submissions should include:

Your OC's name

Pronouns

Their home Realm (or favorite Realm)

A picture of them

Due to the layout of the website I use, square pictures are preferred as rectangular pictures will be distorted.

Content Warnings

While the general content of this simulator is so extreme as to be comedic, there is some particularly violent content that might be disturbing to some participants. I will make an effort to add content warnings to anything particularly graphic or violent, but it is possible something will be missed. Deaths are not described in detail but include causes such as suicide, burning, suffocation, drowning, and crushing. There are also multiple events which reference characters losing their minds or stalking others. There is no shame in changing your mind about participating or in requesting a trigger be tagged.

And if you want to run your own Hunger Games with your own characters, the link can be found here:

https://brantsteele.com/hungergames/classic/reaping.php

#sky children of the light #sky cotl #skyblr #hunger games simulator #unofficial skyblr hunger games simulator #sky ocs #sky: children of the light #sky: cotl

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blakbonnet · 11 months ago

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AUTHOR OF THE WEEK: @clairegregoryau 💕

Everytime the topic of fandom kindness and community comes up, of helping each other out and fostering a quiet corner where people can be themselves, most people in our little fandom think of Claire. She's written over a million words of OFMD fic and read even more, and you can always see so so many recs over on her twitter. Incredible good vibes, and an author who truly lives to lift other authors up. She also does SO SO much for fic authors over on the OFMD Fic Club server <3 And she was incredibly kind and shared her entire writing process with me:

What's your writing process like? Do you start with the beginning or the end? Do you write in order or as the scenes come to you?

I’m a huge advance planner, which is a process that has developed for me over more than 25 years of writing original fiction. I’ll get whacked with a story idea, then I’ll sit down and set out the central kernel of that idea, and where it needs to start, where it needs to end, and what the turning points need to be to get there.

A lot of the time I use a three-act structure, largely because Jenkins has talked about OFMD using that structure (one example here). So that makes it easy for me to hold to the canon beats when I’m writing AU stories, or to mirror them in canon-era stories, which is also something I try to do most of the time. With long experience (and now 1.7 million words of OFMD fic written (!)), I find this part of the process really easy. I’ll usually do that plotting by hand-writing out my notes, because it really fires up a different part of your brain.

Because I am such an advance planner, I do tend to write in a completely linear way from start to finish (I also pretty commonly post my long-fics as I write- each chapter goes up as soon as it’s finished and has a final editing pass). Punching through it in a linear way, knowing the ending that I’m working towards and being enthusiastic to get there, really keeps me motivated.

I do all of my writing in 30-minute sprints at the OFMD Fic Club Discord, where we’ve built a lovely and LOUDLY enthusiastic writing community that anyone is welcome to hop into 24/7. For those who find the constant chat a bit overwhelming, we also have a Quiet Focus Sprints channel. Again via long practice, I’m a very fast writer, but that’s accelerated a lot more over the last couple of years, paradoxically because I couldn’t write the way I used to anymore.

I was diagnosed with an autoimmune disease that includes some fun brain impacts at times, and it’s really hit my working memory especially. I used to be able to hold all the strands of a complicated story together in my head as I wrote, but now I can’t do that as easily. So that’s why the outline is important for me, so I never lose track of the idea- I’ll also do a quick outline at the start of each chapter I’m writing that notes what needs to happen, and then I’ll write in what I call layers, getting down whatever I can first, and then doing sweeps back through it to add internals, narrative detail, sensory details and so on. I make a LOT of notes and square brackets as I go to remind myself of things to look at later.

I also use a plot matrix [Twitter thread, Example Matrix] that you may have seen floating around- I mostly use it to keep track of plot details that have already happened within a story, so that I can check it out at a glance, but I will sometimes plan certain elements in advance (as in the case of Tree Change, which covered 87 of the 93 Kinktober prompts last year across 12 carefully planned chapters). There’s always space when I’m writing for the characters to surprise me within that plot framework- as a final plotting thing, once I’m at the halfway mark I’ll often plot backwards from the planned end to make sure that I’m on course, and to see what I need to adjust.

Favourite trope or headcanon you like to explore while writing?

I really like to dig into the friends-to-lovers trope that sits at the heart of the show. The Ed and Stede relationship reminds me immensely of my own- like Rhys and Taika as friends, we’ve been yes-anding each other for over 25 years (all of my least hinged fic ideas come from bouncing thoughts back and forth with my husband), and it’s been a steady mix of constant silliness, curiosity, and care. We’re best friends first and that’s one of my favourite things about Ed and Stede, that they are, too.

What I really love about it is the vulnerability of these two people who’ve been hurt so much by others in the past, who’ve never been fully appreciated for all the things that they are, and in each other they find the one absolutely perfect person who just gets them, and it makes all the difference. It’s always fun to play with that and variations on it in fics, and it’s usually the beating heart of my stories.

Whose voice is easier to write - Ed or Stede? Why?

I want to say that I find them both equally easy depending on the story. Ed as a character speaks very much the way I think- he has that ADHD buzz, the high swear level, and a very AoNZ turn of phrase that’s also very familiar to Australians (like me). Writing Ed is like turning the inside of my head out and it always flows easily.

But I have always said that I see myself in both characters in equal parts, so I find Stede pretty easy to write as well. I feel like I pretty solidly understand him as a person, with his history of rejection and his commitment to trying anyway, and trying to be kind, and letting himself be fascinated by things, from piracy to books to moths to Ed (that one’s not hard).

Your personal favourite thing you've written that you'd like more people to read

This is a near-impossible question with 69 OFMD fics up on AO3 😅 I really do love them all, and I have a lot of smaller one-shots that haven’t been read as much, but overall I’m incredibly lucky with readership and so so grateful for everyone who enjoys my work.

But my recent Reverse Bang fic The Broken Lines is hugely important to me and I think it’s probably one of the best things I’ve ever written anywhere. It’s set in the aftermath of the First World War (my professional zone of expertise), and features a Stede who’s lost his voice, his memory, and as far as he knows, his Ed. He gradually remembers what happened with the help of the crew and another Ed, who appears in his mirror from 1719, searching for his own Stede. It was a beautiful collaboration with artist Gerlinde to begin with, but I also got to work with one of my longest-term writing friends Jill @followedmystar as my beta, and then with Boy, who made a truly transcendent podfic that I can’t yell about enough.

What is the one word that you think you use a lot?

I think the word I have to zap more than any other is “actually”, and there are still a million of them in there when I’m done. The main reason is that to stick close to canon voice, I try to incorporate a lot of the less iconic/ more ordinary turns of phrase that the characters use a lot in their speech (I’ve watched every episode of the show… way too many times), and both Ed and Stede actually use “actually” a surprising amount. I just use it an even more surprising amount 😂

(This just sent me on a QUEST to find a specific number because I am that kind of nerd- Stede says it 15 times in S1 and 12 in S2, and Ed says it 8 times in each, for totals of 27 and 16, many of them in distinctive moments; it just gives that little buzz of recognition for me. I started out screenwriting before I moved to prose, so my writing tends to lean pretty strongly on having a recognisable, almost audible voice to the dialogue, as well as a cinematic visual style for the big adventures especially).

Do you have a beta reader? Have they made you a better writer?

I quite deliberately don’t use a beta reader for most of my OFMD fics, because being in this space is an exercise in recovering from lifelong paralysing perfectionism around writing especially. I’ve spent so many years not finishing original work because it never feels like it passes the invisible bar for perfection that exists in my own head. So when I started writing OFMD fic, I set out to accept good enough as good enough, and to get back to enjoying writing as fully as I can.

Obviously this means that my work could be better, but I’m actively working on letting that thought go and loving everything I’ve made just as it is. When I have worked with beta readers on projects that require them, like the Reverse Bang, it’s been with friends who I trust and adore, who I know will listen to what I need (cheerleading, mostly), and will do their best to work with me on improving the story without letting me spiral into hating it all because it wakes the perfectionist beast back up.

That doesn’t mean I’m without regular support, or that I’m not trying to improve my writing! I read an absolutely insane amount of fic, and I’m always in awe of the talent we have on this ship, and always learning from what other people do well. In lieu of beta readers, we share snippets of work all the time in our sprints team, so I get feedback there; I also get it from readers in progress, who often give me a sense of what’s hitting the way I hoped and what needs a bit of tweaking. I also have lovely group chats and individual friends like Kerry @communionnimrod and Lis @ghostalservice and Jill who I can run to if I need an opinion on whether an idea feels right or not, which I will often ask.

I’m very very careful with my writing, but in a couple of rare instances readers have also DMd me to note spots where I’ve inadvertently included something that doesn’t reach the sensitivity standard I’m aiming for. I’m always grateful for that gentleness and bravery in reaching out and I’m always happy to change something or to add tags or notes as needed.

Why OFMD 🥹

I watched the whole show in one hit a week after the final episode aired, and I loved it immediately, but I thought I was going to be normal about it. The unravelling into complete, unrelenting obsession happened gradually as I rewatched it with my husband and teen, then again, and again, then started to read fics and hunt up art, then started joining fan spaces, and then dived into writing my first fic in two and a half decades (all original writing between The X-Files and here), thinking it would also be my last.

I’m still here, still writing constantly, and a major portion of it is the show and how distinctly it reflected all the many parts of me, some of which I’d never seen so clearly before. I had a tough childhood in a few different family respects. I didn’t understand that I was neurodivergent until I turned 40 and my own kids were heading for diagnosis, and I’d been rejected constantly throughout my life for being too much. I was a high achiever who was in the process of crumpling under pressure right when I watched it, and while I’d been figuring out my sense of my own queerness for a few years, I’d never had a community that helped me feel at home with that.

And in the end it’s the community that’s been the reason I’ve been fully sucked into fandom for the first time since my teens- the writing in this space is top-tier wonderful, and the community is such a found family, just like the Revenge. Being able to write and have people actually want to read that writing, being able to cheer others on and hype their work, being able to help set up the OFMD Fic Club Discord and make it a safe spaceship for so many people, has been incredibly fulfilling and lovely.

Please head over to @ofmdlovelyletters (who also made the header) and send your love to all your favourite authors (and authors of the week 😈 watch that blog for some special letters coming your way)

#aotw #author of the week #artist of the week #clairegregoryau #ofmd #our flag means death #writing

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freakasaurus-rex · 5 months ago

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FINALLY making an info post since so many of my mutuals have them

bright flashing lights be ahead! avast, ye sinners! this blog is not easy to look at if you are bothered by eyestrain!

Hello, welcome to my blog! I hope you have a fun time here :D

My name is Freak!

I am currently 17 years old, and my birthday is on September 5th

I am both other- and fictionkin. Talk to me about it if you want! I would lvoe to tell you about how I'm literally an ouppy

I regress sometimes. Interaction will be low at those times

I am aromantic and questioning my sexuality. I am also very much nonbinary, and usually refer to myself either as agender or genderfluid

I use neopronouns almost exclusively. You can learn more about my pronouns here and here

I regularly post bugs! I am looking to become an entomologist so they are very fascinating to me. Any posts including them will be tagged with #bugs, #insects, and the specific type of bug they are. I also consider arachnids and some shellfish to be bugs so those will be included in the #bugs tag, but they will not be tagged with #insects, obviously. Bugs and insects are different things

I rarely post art but when I do it is tagged with #art

Most fandoms are tagged but a few aren't [like pokemon and mario]

I have multiple little guys living in my askbox. Currently, we have Sneepsnorp, Jingle [and his plushie Bell], Mipmi, Brring, the computer kitty, Smrrp [and its narrator!], Peggy, Wawa, and im pretty sure we have another but i cant remember. All of them have their own tags. You will see them often

Things I enjoy!

Games: Splatoon, Minecraft, Oxenfree, Spiritfarer, Roblox [all I play is Regretevator], The Sims, The Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, Ace Attorney

Shows/Movies: Brooklyn 99, Arcane, Dungeon Meshi, Dandadan, Attack on Titan, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Howl's Moving Castle, most other Ghibli movies, Tank Girl, Chicago

Books: The Agony of Bun O'Keefe, 5 Worlds [graphic novels], Scott Pilgrim [only the comics]

Other media: Sanrio, Nevermore [webcomic], The Glass Scientists [webcomic], Blindsprings [webcomic]

General: VSynth, character design, story writing, bugs of all kinds

I have autism and ADHD. I may not understand the tone of posts or messages, but I usually do! If I don't, do not feel bad. Just LMK what you meant and we can both be on our merry way

I also might have OCD but heyyy lets not think about that for now

I frequently reblog political posts, and I do not tag them. I rarely reblog discourse, but this is 100% a space supporting of all good-faith identities. To me, this includes m-spec gays and lesbians. The split attraction model is for everyone

I occasionally reblog posts with queer slurs in them. I tag these with #f slur or similar. Whichever letter the word starts with and then "slur"

I will block you if I don't like you and I request that you do the same. It's easier to not get upset online if you just don't interact with people who piss you off. I understand it's important to see issues from all angles and to hear out varying opinions but a lot of people online are just insane

I am a frequent roleplayer but I am nowhere near cringe and free enough to talk about that. my ESC mutuals know what I mean however

I've been roleplaying online since I was literally like 10 years old. I did take like a 5-year long break but still. YK. Or maybe you don't IDK I just work here

Yes I always use the square brackets. No I don't know why I started. Yes it's muscle memory at this point

Thank you for reading! It was probably tough. My cringe. My cringeeee

#intro post #info post #pinned post

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5thcloud · 1 month ago

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Process of writing Tres Flores

(how go about and how write in doc)

trying get in habit of rambling more here , so going ramble about Tres Flores again , but this time both it and our old lobotomy corporation oc story Soul of Marine Blue , or just Marine Blue

But this more about writing process n how went about it

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So previous longest story we've ever written was our lobcorp oc story Marine Blue which we started in 2022 and was about 46k words long . it wasnt complete or posted anywhere as we prefer post stories once all fully done , think it was about 2/4 ~ 3/4 done before stopped

reason stopped was because lack of plan and hard to connect stuff (also other story stuff n didnt feel like was in good brain space to write the stuff)

see , way we prefer write is more so like pantser but with general plot timeline in mind .

every time try complex plan it not work for us , how we work is that we go ahead put pen to paper and just start write , then once get feel , we redo it with proper version and make general timeline of events

We didnt do this well enough for our Marine Blue story , so not turn out that well in it construction

In end , it was like trying to write straight ahead literal scene by next scene , which can make feel aimless or hard know what do next even if do have timeline

despite Marine Blue being about twice as long as Tres Flores (which is currently 28k n likely will reach around 30k mark when done) , Marine Blue feels like Less important or strong things happen .

it could be because Marine Blue is written in standard writing n Tres Flores is narrative poetry (so less word but more happen) , it still feels like process of writing still effected it .

so what we did with Tres Flores is Immediately solidify how many cantos / chapters there will be , which is 7 cantos ("0" as prologue , 1-3 as main cantos , and 4-6 as shorter and acting as "ending" and more focus on Dolorem and Campanella)

Not only that , we divided up majority of these cantos to have 7 clear sections , ie clear scenes that are labeled within the story that feels like parts of the canto

heres what the timeline looks like with just the planed cantos + sections division which all was done before started writing .

Mostly idea of "How many sections will each one have , sections 0 and 7 will act as opening and ending of chapter , 7 sections max"

Because we a strong pantser but always bounce around and check over , having these very clear divisions before fully write anything Really helped us , we very much wouldnt be able write Tres Flores without this slicing done before

because mean we can more easily bounce back and forth and not feel need to complete scene fully before go onto next , fill in gaps , know where the gaps are , and not feel overwhelm or overshoot the scope

Tres Flores was always planned to be very brief and very tightly woven , so help lots :]

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We feel the strongest stories , you should be able recite the scene timeline clearly , their reason and purpose . A clear "it started here , it ended here" . If open any book or comic , you can see it happen and you can physically see how long it lasts

So is feel planing out story , whether short or long , in terms of scene divisions , is feel can help lot 🐕 feel idea is pretty helpful for both planners and pantsers wawa

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other writing things we do is put square bracket into rectangle like this to mean "theres gap here , fill it later"

we do this as its very noticeable while skim and can find them if search the double bracket

And extension of that is that we directly note things inside writing doc which is also inside square bracket , can also color them to grab eye

last thing we do is that we do double dashes to show separate writings or edits of the scene . sometimes realize can write scene better , so what do is add double dash divider then rewrite scene in the section carved , then can compare and delete and do changes directly inside writing doc

we also make sure the dashes are all written same because also works with word finder , so can find every instance of this and wip brackets

Doing all this make us happy as we kind to prefer keeping everything in one place , all things about writing for story directly is right on the page and not separate file , this can also help beta readers too with understanding what supposed to happen in wip or empty spaces wawaw

everyone work different but wawuaa , hope give insight

ty for reading 🐟

#writing #oc #limbus company #limbus company oc #the tres flores express #trajno el la floroj #ramble #long post

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mathematical-cheese · 6 months ago

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Why Straws Have One Hole: An Introduction to Homology Part 2

In this post I'll discuss simplicial complexes and how we can use them to make our test for holes simpler and motivate the definitions for simplicial homology! The post is more technical but I have tried to motivate each step.

Simplicial Complexes:

A common theme in topology is to build up our spaces from smaller, simpler spaces. One way of doing this is to use simplices! These are generalisations of triangles to all dimensions:

Image is taken from here

An n-simplex has n+1 verticies and is denoted by its vertices in square brackets: <e₀,...,eₙ>. A simplicial complex is made by gluing simplices together such that the intersection of two simplices is also a simplex that is included in the complex. We also require that any n vertices can define at most one n-simplex in the complex. If some vertices e₀,...,eₙ in a simplicial complex, K, define an n-simplex <e₀,...,eₙ> that is in K, we call <e₀,...,eₙ> an n-face of K.

An example of a simplicial complex is a square where each vertex of the square is a 0 simplex and each edge is a 1-simplex. If instead we considered a solid square, we wouldn't automatically get a simplicial complex because the 2 dimensional part isn't made up of 2-simplices. We fix this by adding an addition 1-simplex bewteen one pair of diagonal points which gives us a simplical complex with four vertices, five 1-simplices and two 2-simplices:

We can construct a great number of spaces using simplices! This construction is only up to homeomorphism but that's all we care about! A simplicial complex that is homeomorphic to a space is called a triangulation of that space. Importantly we can triangulate a straw:

This is the simplest triangulation because having fewer simplices would lead to us having different simplices described by the same vertices.

Simplicial Homology

So why do we care about triangulations? The key here is to notice that the boundary of an n-simplex is a simplicial complex made up of (n-1)-simplices. For example, the boundary of a 2-simplex is a simplicial complex made of three 1-simplices. The idea is to modify our test to only involve simplices because then we only have to check finitely many things! This is where things start to get a bit more technical but I will try my best to motivate each step!

Firstly, we need to introduce a convention in the way we describe simplices. We pick an order for the vertices in our complex to be listed, e.g. for the triangulation of the straw we could pick the order a,b,c,d,e,f. Then any time we write a simplex we must list the vertices in that order. For example, with the order above, <a,b,d> is how we describe the left most 2-simplex. The reason we need this is we are about to start thinking about simplices in a more abstract way and we need a systematic way of writing them.

Now for arguably the weirdest (but most powerful) step. We want a way to talk about the boundary of a simlicial complex as one object and we want a way to say when a particular simplicial complex has no boundary. The motivation for this is we want to talk find the analogue of a loop that we can use to test for holes, that is we want a one dimensional object that doesn't have a boundary. Since we eventually want to count things, it might be prudent to somehow assign numbers to things. As mentioned above, the boundary of an n-simplex can be thought of as the union of (n-1)-simplices and unions of sets are kind of similar to a kind of sum. The idea is to talk about "sums" of simplices. It doesn't really make sense to add simplices but we can sort of just fudge it. This fudging is known as "formal sums" and this is when we say "okay, we don't know what a sum of these things actually is but we study it anyway".

We say the elements of X generate these formal sums.

We then consider the set Cₙ(K) of all the formal sums of n-simplices in a simplicial complex K and we call it the nth simplicial chain group of K and we call elements of Cₙ(K) n-chains. We say that the rank of Cₙ(K) is the number of elements of X. Note that the sum or difference of two chains is again a chain.

The rank of C₂(K) is 1 and the rank of C₁(K) and of C₀(K) is 3.

We can now also give meaning to a simplex that is written in a different order to our chosen order. Given an ordered list of vertices, we can swap two elements around to get a different ordered list. If n is the number of swaps it takes to get an ordered list of vertices into our chosen order, we say that the simplex with vertices written in a different order is equal to the element of Cₙ(K) given by (-1)ⁿ times the simplex with the vertices written in our chosen order.

Now we want to figure out how to represent the boundary as a map from Cₙ(K) to Cₙ₋₁(K) since the boundary of an n-simplex is made up of (n-1)-simplices.

The full representation of this map is a bit detailed so I will stick to the case when n is less than or equal to 2 since that's all we need. The definition of this boundary map only depends on what it does to the simplices because it comes from considering their boundaries. So we will say that the boundary map applied to a formal sum is just the formal sum of the map applied to each simplex, for example

where ∂ is denotes the boundary map. So we just need to define ∂ on simplices.

To motivate the definition, we consider a 2-simplex <x,y,z> with the order x,y,z. Starting at x, we can think of the boundary as a loop that goes from x to y, then from y to z then from z back to x:

So we could represent the boundary as the formal sum <x,y>+<y,z>+<z,x>. Then written in our chosen order, the boundary is <x,y>+<y,z>-<x,z>. That is ∂(<x,y,z>)=<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>. In the first term, we remove the first vertex, in the second term we remove the second vertex and multiply by -1, and in the third term we remove the third vertex and multiply by -1 twice. So it would seem sensible to that the pattern here is the nth term in the boundary of a k-simplex is the simplex where the nth vertex is removed and we mutlipy by (-1)ⁿ⁻¹.

So the boundary of a 1-simplex <x,y> is <y>-<x>. But the boundary of a 0-simplex is always 0 since 0-simplices are just points and have no boundary!

We also have that the boundary of the boundary of a 2-simplex is 0. This makes intuitive sense since the boundary itself has no points at the edge of it but we can show this still works in our abstraction to formal sums:

Now we have two special types of formal sums: those that have no boundary and those that are the boundary of something else. We call an n-chain that has no boundary an n-cycle and we call an n-chain that is the boundary of an (n+1)-chain an n-boundary. We can extend the first above argument to show that boundaries are always cycles, i.e. the boundary of a boundary is always 0. 1-cycles are what replace loops in our earlier test, that is we want to find 1-cycles that aren't 1-boundaries! An obvious yet important example of a boundary is 0, 0 is the boundary of 0 (we'll use this fact later). Two other important facts are the sum of n-cycles is also an n-cycle and the sum of n-boundaries is also an n-boundary. If c and c' are both cycles, then ∂(c+c')=∂c+∂c'=0+0=0 and if c=∂b anf c'=∂b', then c+c'=∂b+∂b'=∂(b+b').

Let's take a step back to summarise what we have so far. We have found a test for holes in a space but it didn't really allow for easy calculation of the number of holes in a space. So we restricted our view to simple spaces and have found a way of abstractly representing the building blocks of those spaces. This abstraction has allowed us to reframe our test for holes into a purely algebraic question!

But how can we be sure this test still works? Let's consider a circle. Using our first test, we can just take a loop around the circle. Then this loops isn't the boundary of anything since it bounds a disc of the same radius but this disc isn't part of the circle. So the circle has a hole. Now we triangulate the circle using three vertices and 3 edges, i.e. a triangle. If we label the vertices as <x>, <y> and <z> we already know an example of a cycle: <y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>. Even though this calculation was done for a 2-simplex, it only involves the 1-simplices so it is valid in this situation too! But in this case, we don't have any 2-simplices in our space so this cycle can't be the boundary of anything! Conversely, suppose we get a positive result using our simplicial hole test, i.e. we've found a cycle that isn't the boundary of anything. Then we can construct a loop in the space using this cycle and this loop wouldn't be the boundary of anything so the first test would also be positive!

The final step that actually lets us count things is to define the homology groups! What we want to do is find cycles that aren't boundaries. Algebraically, we do this by considering cycles to be "the same" if their difference is a boundary. That is, we say two n-cycles c and c' are homologous if there is some (n+1)-chain b such that c-c'=∂b. We have that all n-boundaries are homologous to each other. Say both c and c' are n-boundaries and that b and b' are (n+1)-chains such that c=∂b and c'=∂b', then c-c'=∂b-∂b'=∂(b-b'). The since b and b' are (n+1)-chains, b-b' is an (n+1)-chain so c and c' are indeed homologous. In particular, 0 is a boundary so every boundary is homologous to 0. So now suppose that c is a cycle that is homologous to 0, then there exists an (n+1)-chain b such that c-0=∂b. So c=∂b and hence c is also an n-boundary. This means that a cycle is a boundary if and only if it is homologous to 0. So now if we want to find cycles which aren't boundaries, we look for cycles which aren't homologous to 0.

We define the homology class of a cycle c to be the set of all the cycles which are homologous to c and we denote it [c]. For example, the homology class of 0, [0], is the set of all boundaries! We can also define a notion of addition of homology classes: [c]+[c']=[c+c']. That is, the sum of two homology classes of two cycles is the homology class of their sum. We call the set of all homology classes of a cycles of a simplicial complex K, the (first) homology group of K and write H₁(K). If H₁(K) only has one element, i.e. H₁(K)={[0]} every cycle must be a boundary and K would have no holes. But if K has a hole, H₁(K) would have more than one element.

We are actually now quite close to being able to count the number of holes a space has! Let's come back to the example of a circle. Intuitively, a circle has 1 hole and we've already seen that we have one cycle which isn't a boundary: <y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>. But by the way we defined the boundary, we also have that

for any integer n. So for any non-zero integer n, we can find a cycle that is not a boundary. In particular, if m doesn't equal n, then n(<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>) is not homologous to m(<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>) since their difference is (n-m)(<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>) which is not a boundary unless n-m=0, which is not the case here since n doesn't equal m. Moreover, I claim that any cycle in a circle must be of this form. Remember, this cycle represents the loop going around the triangulation of the circle once. The only way we can get loops in the circle are obtained by going around the circle a whole number of times (where going in the opposite direction gives us a "negative" loop). Any other path you try to take will end up with not having the same start and end point and so would have a boundary! So there is a homology class of the circle for each integer. Moreover, adding these cycles represents going around a loop n+m times so adding the homology classes together is somehow the same as the regular addition we know for the integers! In formal terms, we say that H₁(circle) is isomorphic to the integers. Like how homeomorphism is the notion of "the same" for topologists, isomorphism is the notion of "the same" for algebrists! The important part of this is that all of the homology classes can be expressed as an integer multiple of [<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>] just like how an integer can be thought of as an integer multiple of the number 1. In this sense, we say that [<y,z>-<x,z>+<x,y>] generates H₁(circle), i.e. H₁(circle) has 1 generator. This cycle came about as a loop around the hole in the circle so it is sensible to guess that the number of generators corresponds to the number of holes!* This is how we will go about showing that a straw has 1 hole in the next part! That is, we shall figure out what the first homology group of a straw is and find out how many generators it has!

*technically, we actually count the free generators of H₁ since the torsion elements represent something else but it won't matter for what we're doing. Alternatively, we could have defined homology over a field to get vector spaces which naturally don't have any torsion but this doesn't feel quite as natural as doing homology with integral coefficients.

#undescribed #maths #topology #algebraic topology #panda's post

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