#twisted to a fault

[kokii-omii]

some silly doodles of leo and the twins

[disgracefulthings]

Anything goes wrong in SVSSS

Shen Yuan:

[kenchann]

if i see them-

[bloodysparklez]

1. i'm rereading the main story to prepare for the chapters that weren't released the last time i played twst and 2. i lost my stylus until today and couldn't draw anything for prev chapters, so here's some early-book 5 doodles <3

i'm a really big fan of vil's weird overdependent relationship with siri. it is SOOO funny that we keep getting asides of vil dramatically speaking into his phone and just getting absolutely destroyed by his google search results. mira's not even sentient!! just choose a different search query!! i bet you fucking anything that if you just say "handsome" or smth neige isn't anywhere NEAR you.

shoutout to the jamil, kalim, and idia crumbs that this chapter gives me also. love those guys

[harryinramshackle]

Me when my self-esteem is lower than the Underworld but then this fucking ball of sunshine comes into my life and proves me wrong

They're not even dating here, I think

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tag list: @ramshacklerumble @thehollowwriter @summerspook @scint1llat3 @skriblee-ksk

@cyanide-latte @twistedwonderlandshenanigans @oya-oya-okay @viperbunnies @jadelover69

@twsted-void @lallopsyou (lmk/dm if you wanna be added)

[novelconcepts]

One of the most fundamentally interesting things to me about YJ and writing fic, specifically, is how the blame changes hands depending on the story. On whose perspective you're writing from. On whose story it is at a given moment. The very thing I dislike about viewers missing the point becomes so fascinating to me from within the narrative. Who are these characters when seen through the eyes of their peers?

Who does Jackie become? If you're Shauna, she's the love of your life, and your greatest rival, and the other half of your soul, and the person you blame for your dead dreams. If you're Van, she's the respected captain who earns none of your respect in the woods, the one who left you to die without blinking, the easiest target for teenage malice. If you're Natalie, she's competition for affection, the blabbermouth who can't leave well enough alone, the hands putting themselves to no good use. If you're Jackie? You're just a girl. You're so tired. You're so scared. You're losing face a little more every day, and you're made of despair, and you can't even trust your best friend. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

Who does Lottie become? If you're Natalie, she's your direct foil, the splinter under the edge of your thumbnail, the smart mouth to match your own, the confusing amalgamation of normal friend and mad ritual. If you're Misty, she's the first shred of obvious power in months, a leader who might need to be nudged back into line, a fascinating exercise in hitching your wagon to the right star early on. If you're Taissa, she's flat-nuts and endlessly frustrating, she's got your girlfriend's full attention, she's incredibly dangerous. If you're Lottie? You're just a girl. You're so tired. You're so scared. You've built a pedestal you can't keep your balance on, and you're not sure if you're right or going crazy, and you didn't want this. It's not your fault. It's not your fault. It's not your fault.

From outside the narrative, there is no bad guy. There is no blame. It is no one's fault. It is Man v. Nature, they are doing the best they can with an impossible situation. They're all trying to contribute what they can to the story, for better or worse.

From inside the narrative, you are a teenager trapped in a society constructed entirely of bare-bones-survival with the wildest assortment of girls. From inside the narrative, to stay human, you have to love and fight, respect and judge. Every story changes the game. Every story shifts the blame. A hero in one has the bloodiest hands in the next. And that, to me, is such a thrilling sandbox to play in.

[kirkwallguy]

extremely funny coming from writers whose characters return and play major roles in more than one game. yeah sorry guys we couldnt do anything interesting with the game because we had to protect our fans from the conflict we would write if we did <3

[suntails]

the weight of family and the pull of gravity

[maiarayavt]

I was replaying some parts of Book 7 and I got to this part:

And I got sad because throughout the game, Silver seems to have convinced himself that he "needs" to earn love (particularly his father's, imo) to a certain degree.

Granted, his lines here are rooted from a very complicated past but Silver does have a chip on his shoulder when it comes to his familial relationships (or seems to).

And this is further shown near the start of Mal's overblot, where Silver and his big bro are talking:

Silver shows immense gratitude and love for his father, but also is burdened with some kind of huge responsibility towards Lilia:

And tho Malleus tries to comfort him in a gentle way:

Silver feels like he's far from the model son he thinks his father deserves.

(I could be reaching also but it's just my opinion)

It makes me sad that Silver feels this way when he's been loved correctly his entire life...

By his father, who gave him his first blessing and fusses over him incessantly lmao:

By his big bro (though with how old Malleus is, he's technically everyone's big bro)

(context: Idia here saved them from fire lotuses using a handkerchief imbued with magic that he respecc'd to be 100x stronger.

He got the idea from Silver, who bought the handkerchief as a souvenir for Lilia. Malleus assumes Idia reworked the hanky for Silver that's why he looks so happy here- and scowls when Idia says no lmao):

And last, but def. not the least, by his friend who braved through the darkness to find him, jolted him awake with what I assume is hundreds of volts of electricity (lol) and gave him this gem of a wake-up call:

idk where I was going with this but I hope in the succeeding books we get to see more of Diafam's dynamics, especially Silver's healing.

You are loved, Silver 💜 happy birthday!

[papicup]

The clock goes tic toc tic toc tic tok

Blink gone.

( will i ever finish this? I hope so. Do i have more things to do ?yes i do . I'll prob delete this later )

Edit ( while we're still on alnst topic) :

LUKA YOU DON'T HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE THIS GORGEOUS AND PSYCHO

I wish they never got to you ....

[egophiliac]

hiii im sure you’ve answered this before but in regards to your twst x Pokémon, how do you choose which Pokémon go give to the cast?? really curious since your choices are unique :O

unique in a good way, I hope? 😅 (jk jk I haven't come across too many pokemon AUs, so I was going in without preconceptions, I guess!) I was sorta aiming somewhere between doing, like, a full AU with internal consistency and everything, and just picking entirely based on theme/character, so maybe that's why! basically I just set some arbitrary rules (no legendaries/no repeats/evo stages based on year) and then went on ~vibes~. a couple were also suggestions (thank you guys!) and last-minute decisions, so it was a bit of a delightful mess of ideas!

my one regret is that I should have given Riddle a Togedemaru after all. ...you know what, he can have one now, why not

[thegrinningghost]

“ . . . ”

“ . . . et tu, Brute?”

— The Tragedy of Julius Caesar, Shakespeare

[nieisan]

I really love Kalim as a character and I think he is so interesting.His personality goes around a strange selfishness that at first glance seems to be him being kind to others. He is a really selfish character because even when he acts ina way that can seem selfless (giving gifts, etc), most of the time it does not come from him. He would do things for others if he didn't have the resources he has now, that I'm sure of. But he does have them, so he uses them. "Them" in mainly Jamil who does everything for him (look at Silver School Uniform personal story to see it).

For example, the personal story when he tries to bring Idia to eat with him and more people are coming (Rook, Cater...) he makes the invitation, but he doesn't work. Also, in his dorm story, you can see that in the maximum level of that. We can see clearly in Book 4 that Jamil is giving in to this dynamic because he cannot really safely break it (I think in the EN translation this is a little bit lost, but in the JP direct one I have seen it seems implied that Kalim father anger could put Jamil's family in real danger). And then the whole Book 4 plot happens and you can see a change. Kalim doesn't want to see the real dynamic they share, but he is forced to acknowledge it.

Even then, I personally find it really hard to empathize with him. I understand why he acts like he does, but the unfairness of it all just makes my blood boil. The fact that Jamil servant title is like that makes everything worse. (the Viper's family servitude can be interpreted as a legal slavery thing, not because they don't get paid, but because they are born into it with no apparent way out)

And don't get me wrong, Kalim is a beautifully written character that doesn't have control over his life. Just look at the poison implications, he is someone whose life has more value than others (look at Leona's SSR Birthday Jacket personal story when he talks about who he would take to a desert island, for example). But even if that's true, he does NOT value his life as more than others, it actually seems to value himself as less. And that makes everything about him so interesting. That's one of the reason why I really love the fight with him and Jamil in Book 7 and how Kalim puts himself first and fight Jamil.

I just think the dynamics are so interesting and being genuine, I think Kalim is one of the most interesting characters to look at just because what he is and who he is supposed to be is so different.

[poisoned-pearls]

Hehehehe… @mello-bee im gonna make this a separate post of organizational reasons BUT-

Cut underdeath for general alien stage spoilers and cw for mentioned forms of sa and abuse (very brief and not graphic, nor directed towards azula or Jami)

Azula’s “guardian” is a very eccentric and wealthy alien. He’s had an obsession with humans to an unhealthy degree since forever. He owns many humans, and unlike Shine (mizis alien) in canon, he sees them as expendable.

He ended up having a special interest in Azula’s mom specifically, and eventually assaulted her, which lead to Azula.

she was born with a MYRIAD of health conditions because of this. The species of alien her father is not compatible with human genetics in the slightest, and she’s had vision problems, blood issues, heart problems, you name it. Her mother also resented her because of what she represented, so she was given to the garden for care in place of her mother’s care.

her father also firmly believes that humans are below, less genetically evolved then aliens. Because of this, he’s told her over and over again that she is better than everyone else, because she’s not human, and the reasons she’s so sick is because she’s human. Humans are inferior, so that’s why her health is bad.

the moment she showed any talent in music is when her fate on the stage was locked in.

in the garden is where she met Jami- and their meeting is what changed her path. Now she’s got this head strong human in front of her, and she’s so amazing she doesn’t understand how she could be considered below her. Jami and Najma become her only friends, and shes rarely ever apart from them.

(eventually, her justification becomes that this human isn’t below her. They’re friends until their late teens, so slowly even that gets chipped away at, but at least in the beginning, she simply made an exception for her, and Najma, by extension)

the incident with Najma happens much differently for them. For one, they’re older, about 15 when Najma dies, and two, Azula didn’t kill him directly.

They’d been bickering like siblings over something as Jami couldn’t help but laugh at their interactions. Azula’s father was out observing them, both keeping an eye on Azula and looking for new potential humans to add to his collection (he really enjoys musical ones, you see.)

And then Azula dives at Najma, fake wrestling for the sheet music in his hands. And Najma starts to win.

and all of a sudden her father is disgusted by a human touching her, rolling all over her, and he is furious. He barely tosses a bag of money at the other alien showing him around before stomping over and ripping Najma off of her, tossing the kid to the ground and letting his head hit the floor.

Both azula and Jami are staring in horror as this happens, and he snatches Azula by the wrist and drags her away before either of them can say anything.

He pulls her out fully at age sixteen, where she belatedly makes a last night run to say goodbye to Jami. She’s barely getting out her apologies for everything (they’d been pretending like nothing had happened, even though Jami never acted the same towards her again in those last few months) when she’d said she’d be put in the stage soon enough.

this is also when Jami realized what happens at the loss of these games, and began to fudge her scores so badly she’d seemed to crash and burn overnight. But that’s for her story later-

azula then spends the next 6 years under strict tutoring and surgeries, all completed isolated from any other humans. You see, she may be better than them, but she is still a part human. She looks the part, and she will always be punished for that. She’s both “above” humans, but below aliens. Starved on connection, told she deserves better but never more- never freedom, never the same privileges as the aliens she’s surrounded by. Her room may be golden and fancy, but it’s still her cage. Her nice, pretty, spacious cage.

When she’s deemed ready at age 22, she’s tossed into her first alien stage. She gets through with her talent alone, and with her newfound fame and love, she gets a taste of what’s been dangled in front of her her whole life- acceptance. Aliens were fans of her, her father would bring her to events and people would fawn over her, treat her as equals.

(And her father made a lot of money.)

so she was put into the next round. And then the next.

And when she entered her third alien stage, she saw a familiar face on the board.

Jami.

[sillyfull-jua]

Weird ahh cat

[samdeanjohn]

we know john would use dean as sexy monster bait meaning he at the very least was able to not only sexualize his own kid but dangle him like a piece of meat for other predators to sniff and bite at. the shadow of incestuous desire (consummated or otherwise) always hung over their relationship, so whether dean longed for john to touch him or not he was indirectly displayed for john's pleasure to begin with.