#whenever i get a new character i know what they are as a baseline. this character is kind. this character is smug. this character sucks

[arcaneyouth]

people have semi regularly begun asking me for writing advice and it's so hard because like. BITCH I DON'T KNOW!! yes my special interest is how stories are put together and narrative cohesiveness. no i don't fucking know how to tell you how to do it. "how do you make your characters so interesting" i make a guy, i give them a role, and then they do everything in their power to leave that role while i'm standing there going What The FUck How Are You Doing That. "how do you do world building" the 2 most thorough stories i have in terms of worldbuilding are modern earth but there's magic and monsters i'm not even trying man. i can't give you writing advice you should be asking my characters, they know more than me about how to write a story at this point

[soleminisanction]

If you ever have the time/interest, would you break down the canon surrounding Stephanie’s economic circumstances/home life? It seems like a lot of people have chosen to take it a specific way so I’d love to see your reasoning

Sure. Thanks for asking, it's honestly a fun topic.

Y’know it’s funny—I actually happen to own something that I think most people, even most Steph fans, haven’t seen: Steph’s first appearance. Not her Robin first appearance, her Detective Comics first appearance, her actual introduction. I happened to pick them up by accident at a con a few years ago because they’re also some of Tim’s first cover appearances. 

Other people might disagree with me on this, but I like to go back to the characters’ origins whenever I can to find the baseline of what they were originally intended to be and try to bring later interpretations in line with that. I like to think of retcons as new revelations, new plot twists in an ongoing story, and not a way to reset aspects of the past just to fit your story. It works especially well for this because Steph’s socio-economic status doesn’t actually change, there’s just kind of a game of telephone that happens across the decades that leads people to misunderstand. 

One thing worth noting in these early issues is just how much Steph, a 16-year-old girl, has at her disposal before she ever even glimpses Batman and Robin. Literally the first shot we ever see of the Spoiler is this: 

And because I am, in fact, that kind of nerd, I have gone in a couple of times and dug out old era-appropriate electronics magazines to figure out what that piece of equipment would cost you in 1992. Baseline for a parabolic microphone is $600, and that price is for much larger, more delicate pieces of equipment meant to be used for like, outdoor nature shoots, which wouldn’t be able to hear through glass. Steph probably dropped $1,000 on that microphone alone. 

Remember also that her costume is homemade—she doesn’t have any other way of getting it. She’s also shown using some pretty elaborate climbing and painting gear, with no indication that they were stolen or borrowed or anything, and you can see that she’s got a pretty well-stocked utility belt there.

Again, for some reason people tend to forget or overlook this but, right up until she demanded Bruce make her Robin, Steph operated as Spoiler with zero Bat support. She got some hand-to-hand training from Cass late in the game and tagged along on some of Tim’s assignments, but was otherwise being actively discouraged from vigilantism for most of her career. She made her own costume, bought her own equipment, and maintained her own motorcycle, all without the financial support of either Batman or her parents. 

So right off the bat we know she’s a teenage girl with a not-insignificant amount of personal disposable income, the only hinted source of which is the implication she works a part-time job somewhere—which I don’t think is ever brought up again when she reappears in Robin. 

We all know minimum wage went further in 1992 than it does now, but it didn’t go that much further. So it’s reasonable to assume that Steph has access to at least some money from her parents to support her vigilante habit, whether that’s in the form of an allowance, gifts that she carefully manages between Christmas and birthdays, or money that she’s able to just, take from Crystal without her noticing. 

But this page is more important to our current interests because it’s also when we see Steph’s neighborhood for the first time. We’re told here that Steph and her mother (who is called Mrs. Agnes Bellinger in this comic, although it’s possible she was using a fake name to visit her ex in prison) live in what is described as “115 South Holden Street, in Manchester.” 

Now keep in mind, the Gotham City map can be extremely fluid and tends to change depending on the needs of the story. But there have been attempts to map it, and “Manchester” has never been on any of those maps, so we have to do some extrapolation. At the very least, we can tell the neighborhood is clearly not in the city, given the very deliberate angle there in the first panel to show that they’re well away from the crowded downtown Gotham skyline.

This implies that Manchester is intended to be one of the mainland suburbs that feeds the island city of Gotham, similar to Bristol Township where the Wayne and Drake Manors are located. It’s not nearly as nice a neighborhood as Bristol—note the fenced-in front lawns, the broken shutters on the neighboring houses, and the vaguely racist lawn ornament on the Brown’s property—but it’s also not some rundown slum. People aren’t afraid to let kids play in their front yards or leave their garage doors standing open. And you'll note those aren't trailers, either, they're decently-sized suburban homes.

Also worth noting: Crystal seems to keep this house perfectly fine on her own as a single mother. Arthur doesn’t live with them; when he’s shown having residences it tends to be apartments in the city by himself, and it’s not like he could support them from prison or with his ill-gotten criminal gains. And yet, we don’t see Steph or Crystal worrying at all about bills or mortgages or anything like that throughout any of their appearances. We see the interior of their house on several occasions and, while it’s often messy, it’s not in disrepair or neglect.

This is a constant portrayal throughout all of Steph's appearances, from Robin through even her run as Batgirl. So, with that in mind, where does the idea that Steph is poor come from? Well, I’ve got a couple of theories.

One is the usual comics fandom problem: canon is huge, nobody can keep up with all of it, and some people go out of their way to be assholes about it, so misinformation gets spread like wildfire, in no small part because Steph is a character that a lot of people use as a self-insert and therefore she must be the misunderstood underdog in all things.

But on the more-interesting-to-talk-about front… I don’t think it’s controversial to say that Steph’s first big storyline was her pregnancy. Yeah? Like, it’s the first story involving her that really started getting critical attention. Whether it deserves that attention is more open to debate—personally, since reading Icon & Rocket for the first time, I’ve come to view it as Dixon pulling the comic book equivalent of white guys repackaging black music and watering it down—but the important thing right now is that it’s the first time people would’ve been specifically reading the Robin comics for Stephanie Brown. And in those comics, Steph’s house is shown as visibly run-down, covered in cracks and disrepair.

Thing is, there’s a context that people miss if you’re reading for the baby storyline and nothing else: this storyline plays out over the last days of “Aftershock” and early months of “No Man’s Land,” the storyline where Gotham is racked by a destructive earthquake that nearly levels the city and is abandoned by the federal government.

Again, we get the reinforced confirmation that Steph’s house isn’t actually in Gotham because it’s not destroyed in the quake—the neighborhood is damaged and briefly evacuated due to a gas line rupture in the immediate aftermath, but once that’s cleared up they’re free to return home, and their suburb is not part of the federal government's evacuation. Nearly every building in Gotham is shown with similar damage during this time, including Drake Manor. 

This storyline also plays into, I think, the stereotypes that people jump on when it comes to Steph’s socioeconomic status. Like I’ve mentioned before: Arthur is a criminal, Crystal is a drug addict, and Steph is a teen mom. Therefore, they must be poor, right? Because good middle class families supposedly don’t have those kinds of problems.

But, as I’ve mentioned before, that’s an inaccurate stereotype that ignores reality: plenty of drug addicts, criminals and teen moms live in the suburbs. And the Browns’ specific circumstances are distinctly atypical of the stereotype—Arthur’s not some down-on-his-luck thief pushed to crime by economic hardship, he’s an arrogant former gameshow host who thinks he’s smarter than everyone else and resents the world for not handing him the success he feels entitled to. Crystal’s not some crack addict, she’s a working nurse who used to get her doctor friends to write her scripts for prescription painkillers. And Steph is just a teenage girl who slept with a boy and got pregnant, with the costs of prenatal care and/or childrearing never seeming to be a factor in her decision to bring the child to term and give it up for adoption. 

I could go on but that’s pretty much the long and short of it: Steph is simply not shown as being poor in the comics. Ever. She’s not rich, she does clearly rely on her fists much more than any gadgets or fancy gear and lives with her mother rather than moving out on her own for college, but she’s also never shown worrying about student loans and can apparently pay for all her classes with some government assistance and a part-time job alone.

People just assume that she’s poor because they’re misinformed, or they’re projecting, or they’ve got biases they haven’t examined, or they need her to be an underdog to justify their argument against one of the other characters, or they really want her to be buddy-buds with Jason for some reason. 

Or, y’know, they just don’t want to acknowledge that they’re rooting for a middle-class white girl from the suburbs who commutes into the inner city to pick fights for fun. 

[veetri-bitcrush]

Yo your rigging skills are immaculate! Where did you learn such dark magics, I'm still learning modeling as a baseline. But I figured I might aswell ask then post it for others!

Helloo! Thanks for your compliment 🥹 I'm glad the stuff I do looks cool enough to make you say that.

Part 1st - The Inception

When it comes to 3D I still consider myself more on the hobbyist side than the professional one.

I have a weird past in self-taught 3D modeling and game development at the same time so the logic for topology, weights, constraints and such seems to have a dedicated core in my brain that developed through sheer trial, error, tutorials and some actual studying. But I don't think I can exactly pinpoint a linear path that has taught me all of this.

Part 2nd - The Ruse

On the other hand, low poly models are much more manageable than modern high fidelity stuff. That certainly works in favour of hiding my weak spots hahaha.

Part 3rd - The Rigs

When it comes to the rigs I use in my videos, I've been testing different approaches. Thankfully, the extraction tools do preserve the original weights for the most part, but I have had to do weight necromancy to recover missing information sometimes, I made a script to recover missing weights whenever that happens.

My older MGS animations use just some basic IKs and Drivers on top of the deform bones (I should get fined for those crimes) because they were a ton of characters, I wanted to save time and the extraction workflow was pretty new to me and I didn't know what to expect next.

For the newer ones, I started adding more complex control rigs until I hit a limit where it was not scalable.

To speed things up, I now have a custom set of tools to quickly name bones and then I map them to a Rigify uh... rig. That's how I rigged The Boss for a recent video.

Part 4th - The Craftpersonship

I do continue to make new rigs for original characters from scratch because I like to learn and improve in that front rather than just rely on tools to make them for me whenever I have the time for that.

[raven-at-the-writing-desk]

Hi hi, could you do the character bingo for Silver and/or Ortho please?

Ortho Character Opinion Bingo here!

***Standard disclaimer: These are just my personal opinions of the character(s); regardless of what I may think of them, sharing my thoughts is NOT meant to offend or to shame anyone that thinks differently.***

If Twisted Wonderland had been released a few years earlier, Silver might have been my favorite character. Before butlers/bodyguards, I had a thing for prince/knight types of characters 😂 and well… just look at Silver and tell me he DOESN’T look like one or that he doesn’t give off princely/knightly vibes??? … Exactly, you can’t. Unfortunately Silver just doesn’t catch my interest, and it’s not purely because of my shift in tastes.

He’s kind of in a similar situation as Trey where his baseline personality is subdued to the point where it doesn’t stand out against some of the louder and more colorful personalities of his peers. Silver definitely has personality, but it is easily overshadowed by everyone else (particularly those in his dorm, who all boast very powerful presences). Meanwhile, Silver’s over here falling asleep while standing??? And he’s so pure and trusting in the goodness of others… even when it’s Jamil cringing at the idea of getting emotional with Kalim or Jade suggesting they coerce fairies into making translation bells for them 😂 I guess that’s cute in its own way? It just doesn’t help him make a strong and lasting impression other than making me chuckle a little at how naive and oblivious he can be. Again, if I were younger I know this absolutely would have made me swoon BUT HEY I GUESS I JUST PREFER RAT BASTARDS NOW 😔

Because of his calmer character, it often feels like even when Silver is present on screen that he actually isn’t. Like, I cannot recall a single memorable line from Silver in the recent Fairy Gala: What If event even though the whole point of Silver being present was to act as a mediator between them and the fairies. He did smooth things over between the two sides and yet I don’t recall the specifics of that speech. Mmm… I just hope that episode 7 will give Silver more of an important presence.

Whenever I think of Silver interacting with others, my brain defaults to him telling Sebek to lower his voice or being teased by Lilia. Actually, that’s when I think Silver works best: in that found family dynamic of Diasomnia. What I find to be the most compelling and interesting thing about Silver is how he engages with the rest of Diasomnia. He isn’t related to any of them by blood, and he doesn’t always agree with what they do and say… yet his interactions with them make them all feel like that of a real family. For example, Silver’s always intervening when Sebek gets out of hand, but he’ll also stand by and let Sebek show off because he knows it makes him happy. It’s like watching an older brother indulge his younger one in a hobby or letting the younger one win in a video game. Silver and Lilia are also just great; it’s nice to see such a positive relationship between a non-blood related father and son for a change, and it’s amazingly raw and realistic for Silver to reveal to us that he didn’t take the initial news that he was adopted well. Honestly, that fact alone was more interesting to me than 98% of the rest of his appearances 😂

There’s so many fan theories swirling around about Silver, and I find those infinitely more exciting than what we know of him in canon. Man, imagine if Silver was a prince stolen from a kingdom on the cusp of war (or one that had a rocky relationship) with the Briar Valley??? Or if Silver’s parents accuse Lilia of kidnapping their one and only son and declare war to reclaim him, thinking that Lilia has somehow brainwashed him with fairy magic or something??? Ooh, or those theories about how Silver will have to point his blade at OB Malleus and take him out??? Silver being a dream walker?? Or heck, even the oldest theory about Silver being from the same world as MC? I personally don’t agree with all of those theories, but they’re still very interesting concepts to explore regardless.

***CONTENT WARNING: mentions of depression and discussion of mental health below!***

I’m going to get this out of the way now: Cater’s design doesn’t do it for me. His Kim Possible coloration (orange hair, green eyes) is fine, but I don’t understand what’s going on with his hair?? The slanted downward shape of his eyes is cool—it kind of reminds me of Floyd, making them both look laidback and yet somehow also sly. On Cater though, it also distinctly gives him vague… uh, basic fuckboi energy 😭 which I’m NOT here for.

There are two main “faces” to Cater, and I feel completely differently about them. I’m not fond of the superficial side of Cater (but I realize its importance in adding to the complexity of his character). I don’t have anything against peppy, easygoing, or sociable characters, but what really grinds my gears about Cater is his fixation on social media. I’m aware that this likely exists as a coping mechanism and to distract from his true nature, but it still makes him come off as shallow and attention-seeking (and even moreso if Cater is only viewed as he is presented in the main story). The fact that he’s an influencer also doesn’t help him (I’ve mentioned in my Vil Character Opinion Bingo that I don’t like “celebrity” characters because they tend to be in the spotlight). At least Vil is more graceful about his celebrity status; Cater is more of an “attention hog”, consistently seeking selfies and whatever will garner him the most clicks and likes. I think this can make him a good commentary on people in real life rely on social media to feel validated, but that still doesn’t make it less irritating to me when Cater stops a whole scene just to grab a pic with someone. 

I have a bone to pick with the way he speaks. I’m not saying it DOESN’T make sense for someone that’s terminally online to have a looser way of speaking, but I think it sometimes goes way too overboard. This problem is especially magnified in TWST EN, which is littered with much more of the colloquialisms and memes than were ever in the original. Cater is ALWAYS spouting random hashtags, even in the moments that are meant to be emotional, and that completely ruins those scenes for me. Why is Cater unnecessarily saying “#wow” when his dorm leader is having a mental breakdown right in front of him? The original just had Cater expressing shock that Riddle is crying, and that conveyed much more emotional intelligence and empathy than his “#wow” ever did.

The overabundance of misplaced memes and slang is also somewhat contradictory to his true nature. People so often forget that Cater is a lot smarter than he lets on. His familiarity with social media gives him an edge over his peers (do you know how much personal information you can glean on social media profiles????), that’s why Cater goes along with MC and co in episode 2--because he knows who in the student body are most suspicious and who they should investigate. Cater also uses his social intelligence to manipulate others into doing things he doesn’t want to do (such as his Unbirthday Party duties in Heartslabyul). He is extremely intuitive and knows how to navigate social situations so that they play out in his favor. Saying random hashtags in dire scenes does NOT demonstrate any kind of social awareness at all; it only hampers his character and sells Cater as being dumb and unable to read the room. Because of this, JP Cater is far superior to EN Cater in my eyes.

To me, it’s just very clear that Cater was designed to appeal to the younger crowd (especially seeing as what they did with him in the localization), which isn’t necessarily bad, but I think this caused the fandom to focus on the most vapid parts of Cater in their depictions and their views of him. They see Cater and they think “LMAO HE’S JUST LIKE ME FR FR” 😔 but he’s actually a lot deeper than he seems... The more complex aspects of Cater are what I enjoy the most about him, so it’s really a shame that it gets overlooked so much.

I find that even when people acknowledge that Cater is actually lonely and depressed, that acknowledgement is on a superficial level. “Cater’s secretly sad” is the full extent of a lot of what I see about him. I don’t see a lot of people really going in on why that is. Of course, mental health is a very complicated topic and there is never really one true “cause” of a condition like Cater’s, but rather the cumulative effects of many factors. I just wish people would not make it out to be quite so simple. There’s a method to that madness, there’s a reason why Cater is so social media obsessed, there’s an explanation for why he’s so cheery. BUT AT THE SAME TIME, I CAN’T BLAME ANYONE FOR NOT SEEING BEYOND THAT FACADE, because Cater hides his sadness so well and intentionally wants to be perceived as shallow so no one bothers looking deeper and seeing his true self. That’s such a nuanced take on this type of a character, IT’S JUST SO GOOD HHNNNNGNGGHGHHGHHHH... It’s really too bad that we only get to see that shallow persona of his most of the time he’s on-screen, because I think actually exploring Cater’s cover-up behavior would be so interesting.

[gimblestank-the-goblin]

WoT Hot Take: I like the romances

              A lot of people talk about romance being the weakest part of the Wheel of Time, and I can definitely see where they are coming from. A lot of it happens of screen or through implication, and pride/fear of embarrassment means nobody ever actually says what they feel until they are sure their feelings are reciprocated. Tie this in with our PoV being tied into that of extremely oblivious protagonists and it can be easy to think that the romance comes out of nowhere. On a first read, it can feel like characters went from feeling nothing to declaring their undying love with nothing actually happening to change those feelings.

              But to me, that’s why I love it. It feels true to life that these teenagers are dancing around the issue sending subtle signals until they are sure the other party likes them and the subtle nature of the interactions means that “discovering” the romance is extremely satisfying on rereads.

              And I can already hear people typing that actually I am reading too much into things and there isn’t any “secret, subtle romance” going on. So I should probably lay out my proof that this is actually happening. Which, you know, fair. So I’d like to examine a particular scene – Rand’s first meeting with Egwene in The Eye of the World - and use it as a baseline for how RJ writes romances.* 

Fair warning, the excerpts will be pretty long and so will this post.

“The Wisdom so held his attention that at first Rand failed to see she was not alone. When he realized his mistake, he began to think about leaving no matter what Nynaeve would say or do later.

Egwene stood a few paces behind the Wisdom, watching intently. Of a height with Nynaeve, and with the same dark coloring, she could at that moment have been a reflection of Nynaeve's mood, arms crossed beneath her breasts, mouth tight with disapproval. The hood of her soft gray cloak shaded her face, and her big brown eyes held no laughter now.

If there was any fairness, he thought that being two years older than her should give him some advantage, but that was not the way of it. At the best of times he was never very nimble with his tongue when talking to any of the village girls, not like Perrin, but whenever Egwene gave him that intent look, with her eyes as wide as they would go, as if every last ounce of her attention was on him, he just could not seem to make the words go where he wanted. Perhaps he could get away as soon as Nynaeve finished. But he knew he would not, even if he did not understand why.

"If you are done staring like a moonstruck lamb, Rand al'Thor," Nynaeve said, "perhaps you can tell me why you were talking about something even you three great bull calves ought to have sense enough to keep out of your mouths."

Rand gave a start and pulled his eyes away from Egwene; she had grown a disconcerting smile when the Wisdom began speaking. Nynaeve's voice was tart, but she had the beginnings of a knowing smile on her face, too until Mat laughed aloud. The Wisdom's smile vanished, and the look she gave Mat cut his laughter off in a strangled croak.

"Well, Rand?" Nynaeve said.

Out of the corner of his eye he saw Egwene still smiling. What does she think is so funny? "It was natural enough to talk of it, Wisdom," he said hurriedly. "The peddler—Padan Fain ... ah ... Master Fain—brought news of a false Dragon in Ghealdan, and a war, and Aes Sedai. The Council thought it was important enough to talk to him. What else would we be talking about?"

Nynaeve shook her head. "So that's why the peddler's wagon stands abandoned. I heard people rushing to meet it, but I couldn't leave Mistress Ayellin till her fever broke. The Council is questioning the peddler about what's happening in Ghealdan, are they? If I know them, they're asking all the wrong questions and none of the right ones. It will take the Women's Circle to find out anything useful." Settling her cloak firmly on her shoulders she disappeared into the inn.

Egwene did not follow the Wisdom. As the inn door closed behind Nynaeve, the younger woman came to stand in front of Rand. The frowns were gone from her face, but her unblinking stare made him uneasy. He looked to his friends, but they moved away, grinning broadly as they abandoned him.

"You shouldn't let Mat get you mixed up in his foolishness, Rand," Egwene said, as solemn as a Wisdom herself, then abruptly she giggled. "I haven't seen you look like that since Cenn Buie caught you and Mat up in his apple trees when you were ten."

He shifted his feet and glanced at his friends. They stood not far away, Mat gesturing excitedly as he talked.

"Will you dance with me tomorrow?" That was not what he had meant to say. He did want to dance with her, but at the same time he wanted nothing so little as the uncomfortable way he was sure to feel while he was with her. The way he felt right then.

The corners of her mouth quirked up in a small smile. "In the afternoon," she said. "I will be busy in the morning."

From the others came Perrin's exclamation. "A gleeman!"

Egwene turned toward them, but Rand put a hand on her arm. "Busy? How?"

Despite the chill she pushed back the hood of her cloak and with apparent casualness pulled her hair forward over her shoulder. The last time he had seen her, her hair had hung in dark waves below her shoulders, with only a red ribbon keeping it back from her face; now it was worked into a long braid.

He stared at that braid as if it were a viper, then stole a glance at the Spring Pole, standing alone on the Green now, ready for tomorrow. In the morning unmarried women of marriageable age would dance the Pole. He swallowed hard. Somehow, it had never occurred to him that she would reach marriageable age at the same time that he did.

"Just because someone is old enough to marry," he muttered, "doesn't mean they should. Not right away."

"Of course not. Or ever, for that matter.

Rand blinked. "Ever?"

"A Wisdom almost never marries. Nynaeve has been teaching me, you know. She says I have a talent, that I can learn to listen to the wind. Nynaeve says not all Wisdoms can, even if they say they do."

"Wisdom!" he hooted. He failed to notice the dangerous glint in her eye. "Nynaeve will be Wisdom here for another fifty years at least. Probably more. Are you going to spend the rest of your life as her apprentice?"

"There are other villages," she replied heatedly. "Nynaeve says the villages north of the Taren always choose a Wisdom from away. They think it stops her from having favorites among the village folk."

His amusement melted as fast as it had come. "Outside the Two Rivers? I'd never see you again."

"And you wouldn't like that? You have not given any sign lately that you'd care one way or another."

"No one ever leaves the Two Rivers," he went on. "Maybe somebody from Taren Ferry, but they're all strange anyway. Hardly like Two Rivers folk at all. "

Egwene gave an exasperated sigh. "Well, maybe I'm strange, too. Maybe I want to see some of the places I hear about in the stories. Have you ever thought of that?"

"Of course I have. I daydream sometimes, but I know the difference between daydreams and what's real."

"And I do not?" she said furiously, and promptly turned her back on him.

"That wasn't what I meant. I was talking about me. Egwene?"

She jerked her cloak around her, a wall to shut him off, and stiffly walked a few paces away. He rubbed his head in frustration. How to explain? This was not the first time she had squeezed meanings from his words that he never knew was in them. In her present mood, a misstep would only make matters worse, and he was fairly sure that nearly anything he said would be a misstep.”

Breakdown of the scene:

Rand’s reaction to Egwene. One of the first things we learn about Egwene is that she makes Rand nervous and that he has trouble saying the right words when he is around her. Egwene gives Rand a chronic case of “foot in mouth syndrome”. This is later proven in the interaction, but its important to set that baseline.

Notably, Rand feels nervous like this around all the girls of the village but he feels it moreso around Egwene. This is not, in and of itself, proof of attraction. But getting nervous around the girl (or boy) you like and fumbling your words is a very common sign of attraction in both real life and fiction.

PoV: For a good portion of this scene, Nynaeve is the natural focus of the PoV. She is the one talking to Rand. Not only that, she’s berating him. And she’s a figure of authority which he both fears and respects. Despite that, the PoV keeps sliding back to Egwene. In an omniscient 3rd PoV this would not make sense. But RJ writes limited 3rd person. What the “camera” focuses on is what the viewpoint character is focusing on. The fact that the “camera” keeps focusing on Egwene means that Rand is focusing on her. He can’t keep his eyes off her.

Between these two points, I think we can conclude that Rand has feelings for Egwene. We know that he’ll fall out of love with her later and that these feelings are in part driven by societal expectations but that doesn’t make these feelings any less real. From the first interaction between the two we are setting up that there is a mutual attraction between the two. 

Societal Expectations: Speaking of societal expectations, its important to note what courtship and marriage looks like in the Two Rivers. We don’t actually learn this until book 2, chapter 35. In response to Lolial’s musing on his own betrothal Rand thinks the following:

“Rand frowned, remembering how Egwene had begun following him around when they were both little. It was then that Mistress al’Vere had begun taking a special interest in him, more than any of the other boys. Later, some girls would dance with him on feastdays and some would not, and those who would were always Egwene’s friends, while those who would not were girls Egwene did not like. He also seemed to remember Mistress al’Vere taking Tam aside - And she was muttering about Tam not having a wife for her to talk to! - and after that, Tam and everyone else acted as if he and Egwene were promised, even though they had not knelt before the Women’s Circle to say the words.”

From this it is made clear that the Two Rivers practices a sort of informal matchmaking between families. It is also made clear that Rand and Egwene are already de facto betrothed at the start of the story. And while it is clear Rand does not think of that consciously the conversation between him and Egwene makes it clear that he is aware of it subconsciously.

Egwene’s Braid: And Rand’s focus makes it very clear that he is aware of this. Just like how his earlier focus on Egwene tells us that he is attracted to her, his current focus on her braid – and what about it he focuses on – tells us a lot about Rand is thinking. The braid makes Rand nervous. He can’t help but think of it in conjunction with both the fact that she will be dancing around the maypole (a social custom which indicates she is “on the market” so to speak) and she is coming of marriable age at the same time as him. Clearly, he is aware that he is expected to propose to her soon and that fact is making him nervous. Which makes the next part of their interaction make a lot of sense.

Now we get to their actual conversation. Which you can find in the text above, but I’ve summarized it before. Next to each line of dialogue I’ve included the underlying emotional meaning in parantheses.

 Rand: Will you dance with me at Beltine (Showing romantic interest)

Egwene: In the evening, I’m busy in the morning.  (Trying not to appear to eager).

Rand: Just because someone is old enough to be married, doesn’t mean they should be. (Rand getting cold feet as he realizes that Egwene is old enough to marry him and that he is expected to marry her soon.)

Egwene: Or ever. Wisdom’s rarely marry. (Egwene is upset. Rand all but said he didn’t want to marry her after showing interest. Now she’s pulling back to make him desperate and reminding him he is not her only prospect.)

Rand: Wisdom! You’ll be 50 before you’re wisdom! (Rand, not picking up on the subtext points out how ridiculous that is.)

Egwene: Not if I leave. (Egwene is getting angrier her. Now he’s trampled on her pride by saying she doesn’t have any other prospects. So she’s doubling down and saying she’d leave the village in an attempt to get him to reverse course. At this point, she wants Rand to tell her not to leave because he would be sad, thereby showing interest in her.)

Rand: No one leaves the village. (Through a combination of missing the subtext and not wanting to admit it, Rand puts his foot in his mouth again.)

Now, you could say this is all a bunch of unhealthy nonsense and that these people should just talk to each other. And you’d be right. But they are also teenagers and this reads very true to my own experience as a teenager. It is scary to put yourself out there, and rejection hurts. So you do a little dance and express interest only in ways that give you plausible deniability.

*At some point need to do a similar post about Rand’s accidental courtship of Aviendha.

[studentofetherium]

After some amount of thinking, these are the characters or factions that I think would work best for IS seasons or future manhwa— the latter to the latter and the former to be former, as multiple characters can better support a manhwa while single characters work better as motifs

manhwa

Mr. Lee's Detective Agency — i think the Detective Agency would work really well as a serialized story. mostly episodic mysteries plus an overarching story seems like a great setup for a self-contained story in the world of Arknights

Op Reserve A6 — similarly to the A1 manhwa, this is a group who meaningfully lack screentime, yet have become fan favorites due to their low star ubiquity. this could play very similarly to the A1 manhwa, showing how the characters got started together and came to be at RI together

Op A4 — this would be a bit different. while the 3* ops are mostly new recruits and trainees, the 2*s are older ops with more experience. thus, a manhwa showing their past exploits would be really interesting, both as a means of exploring these underutilized characters and to show the world that's existed around them

ABC gang — Siracusa's gangs are their own whole big thing capable of carrying one or more big events on their own, but with the ABC gang, i think the three of them would have a small and personal enough narrative that i think it would work as a manhwa rather than an event or an oprec. once again, show their history, show how they met, etc

Penguin Logistics — for how overexposed people claim they are to Penguin Logistics, they have remarkably little lore. a single event, some oprecs, and a second event which focuses on a couple characters from the group. the reason why i think PL would work well for a manhwa is they in general, they're too goofy for the main game. Arknights can play itself for comedy sometimes, but it's never as silly and over the top as PL's baseline, which is why a lot of people dislike Arknights' best event, Code of Brawl. so give them a manhwa instead and let the company be sequestered to their own little space. they could use more screentime, tho, as outside of their one event, Penguin Logistics characters haven't gotten screentime as Penguin Logistics characters— whenever Mostima and Exusiai are relevant, it's to Lateranian stuff, Croissant showed up in the Gavial event on her own, and Texas and Sora both lack much screentime at all. this would be a good opportunity to shine light on the group dynamics

IS season

for IS seasons, i think an important factor is that the character not lend themself to simple straightforward stories, as IS is an opportunity to explore more alinear and less direct characters

Deepcolor — Deepcolor is inexplicable. she's one of the few launch characters to still lack anything, be it story appearances, an oprec, or even a skin. the holes in her backstory can be filled in with other Aegir lore that's come out, but she still needs more. for IS in particular, I think painting as a motif would make for a good topic, like Gothic opera music does for Crimson Solitaire. only strike against this is that it seems Mizuki is about to get an IS, but this could happen a while later to not be too fishy

Iris — Iris and Bena and whatever the fuck else is happening in their castle in Victoria would make a great setting for an IS. there's some vague stuff about what's going on there, but from what we know, a dreamlike Alice in Wonderland aesthetic would fit the abstract nature of IS

Surtr — an IS delving through Surtr's fragmented memories would make for a very abstract setting, but would also give Surtr much needed lore, as like with Deepcolor, she's quite lacking, with the holes being made up for elsewhere, which ultimately only leads to speculation

Conviction — Arknights takes itself serious, as previously mentioned, but IS would be a good home for Mx. Conviction the April Fool's character. it's a place for sillier stories that don't necessarily need to be canon, so if it ever gets too weird, they can just write it off

just some idle thoughts! i think all of these should happen, personally

[insert-witty-user-name-here]

Unconventional writer ask game: my answers

Thanks to @knuckleslove for this fun game. Thank you @queen-of-meows @dewdropreader @starport-seven-five and @lgwilt for the tag! I feel so honored to be thought of by amazing authors such as yourselves! Here are my answers. (and I hope you all tag me in your answers so I can read about your writing process)

How long have you been writing fanfiction?

Honestly as long as I can remember I’ve been writing drabbles and outlines. But last year was the first time I ever completed and published anything. 

Do you have a favorite word? (One that you love. Doesn’t necessarily have to be one you use all the time.)

Hm… I know my favorite themes are those surrounding love and hope.

Share a favorite run-on sentence that you’ve written.

Lol idk about a favorite. Run-on sentences are my baseline though. Here's one from Between the Golden Arches. I definitely cheat grammatically by adding in periods when technically I shouldn't.

Loki had seen and been with many men in his lifetime. Men in various states of dress, in various positions. But for reasons beyond his immortal comprehension, this man, in his ill-fitting suit, boring blue dress shirt, and only slightly above mediocre forearms, was going to be the death of him.

Share a bit of a scene that you’ve written that still gives you FEELS.

As much as I want Lokius to be canon, I think if I were to choose any scene from one of my fics to be in Season 2 it would be the scene where Loki meets Sylvie’s younger self, Princess Loki who has no fear transforming into her Jotun form.

Loki did a lot of changing and growing in the Loki series but an area still left unexplored is his deeply internalized hatred of his Jotun heritage. I’d like to see that addressed next season.

Passage at the end of this post (I couldn't cut it down- I love it too much). This scene is from the end of Rising From the Ashes.

What is your favorite kind of character interaction to write?

I really love writing inside jokes or light banter between characters. I also really love when you can see one character taking on traits or habits of another character, showing their impact on one another.

Do you have a hyper-specific genre?/ Any personal or frequently used tags?

"Slow Burn" specifically "slowest of burns because lots of individual character growth needed" and "Idiots in Love"

Share a joke or funny moment that you’ve written that still makes you laugh.

I do enjoy how I wrote Thor and Sylvie meeting in Here.

“Lady Loki-” “It’s Sylvie,” Sylvie corrected. “Oh, of course, Lady Sylvie.” “No. It’s Sylvie. Just Sylvie.” “My apologies.” Thor grabbed Sylvie by the shoulders and looked deep into her eyes. “Sylvie the Just, it is indeed a great honor to meet you.”

Best editing tip?

Read your own stuff as a reader. Once I get my fics to a place where I’m not actively cringing I like to put the editing pen away and read as a reader. Purely reading allows me to notice frequently used words, pacing issues, repeated sentence structure, etc. I don't notice those things if I'm solely focused on editing individual sentences.

What drives you to write?

My favorite stories are the ones where I learn (or am reminded of) something about myself as I watch the character struggle to overcome their internal hurdles. 

I strive to do the same in my stories. To tell a story that’s deeply resonate and reminds us all about the importance of hope, love, and growth. 

Where do you draw inspiration?

Music. I listen to a lot of music. 

What is your biggest challenge in writing?

Not giving up during that first round of editing. No matter how many times I’ve written something that ends up being something I’m proud of whenever I read a first draft of a new story I get that ugly voice that says “ah-ha so I am a fraud. I knew it. All those other stories were lucky coincidences. I actually can’t write and this is terrible.” Which just isn’t true lol.

Luckily, I know this and move past it. All part of the writing ✨ process ✨ 

What is your immediate reaction when you receive a new comment on a fic?

Happiness EXPLOSION in my brain. And then I’m smiling about those kind words all day. I want to print each one out and put it on my wall.

1-2 sentence preview from your current WIP?? (Only if you are willing.)

From the final chapter of Becoming His Mobius (posting Sunday)

A horn from a commuter train sounded outside the window. Mobius glanced at the clock beside Loki’s bed. It was later than when he normally woke up, mid-morning instead of the crack of dawn. He shifted and rolled his shoulder slightly. It was mostly healed but there was still a bit of lingering pain. He must have slept on it wrong. Loki sleeping atop him probably didn’t help but Mobius didn’t mind. He could handle a little pain. Loki stirred slightly at Mobius’ movement.  “Mobius,” the god grumbled, tightening his arms around the TVA agent, “for once in your life please sleep in. We almost died last night. Surely that has earned us a bit of a respite.” 

What story or scene are you most proud of?

Rising From the Ashes. I've been writing my entire life but this was the first story I have ever seen through to the end. Writing it allowed me to prove to myself that I could write and finish something I was comfortable sharing with the world. It will always have the most special place in my heart.

Thanks again for the tags! Also tagging my dear Lokius friends @mimisempai @loki-is-my-kink-awakening. It's been a joy to see some of your answers and reminisce about your beautiful stories and hope to read about your answers too @rins-love-wins

Share a bit of a scene that you’ve written that still gives you FEELS cont: Loki meeting Princess Loki

The young Sylvie looked at her older self again and let out an exasperated sigh before she changed right before Loki’s eyes. They told me I was adopted. The princess’ pale skin transformed to the bright blue of the Jotun, white markings etched across her face and arms. Her red Frost Giant eyes found Loki’s and she smiled cheekily. Those eyes. Loki couldn’t suppress a small gasp. Loki had always been silently grateful his body was an illusion he hadn’t figured out how to break. Loki didn’t want to look down and see that blue skin tainting his own, those red eyes staring back at him in the mirror. Loki hated this form, his true self. This form showed him what he had always believed to be true. He was the monster parents told their children about at night. Every child of Asgard lived in fear of seeing those bright red Frost Giant eyes descend upon them in the dark. They were the eyes of demons, angry and evil. And yet, looking into Princess Loki’s red Frost Giant eyes, Loki saw none of that. He saw a cheerful, intelligent, kind, if a bit mischievous child. Loki was struck once again by how similar those eyes were to Sylvie’s, how similar they were to his own. In this child’s eyes, he saw the eyes of a hero, of a warrior. He saw eyes worthy of a Princess of Asgard.

[little-leaf-man]

Ok sorry I’m still thinking about it. Right so we know League of Legends has such a toxic playerbase (I know this very well as I have the personality flaw of being a league of legends player) which kinda means that if riot were to push their MMO, there’s the possibility of some of the more toxic people playing the MMO.

The toxicity in game comes from the fact it’s pushed as a competitive game, with riot pushing the esports angle more and more each yeah + not really doing a whole lot for casual play. To Git Gud™️ means you gotta invest time to get used to a champion to do well, which means playing actual games. And players on average are not very forgiving of new players. (last game i played I was trying out a new champ and I got told to stop feeding and stop being terrible. Side note people generally don’t know how to reply if you just answer ‘a kissaroo from me to you’)

So what would stop that kind of attitude in an MMO? Once again I think riot should look to GW2. If we just take a look at PvE, we can see two stand-out things imo;

1. There’s a reward for reviving players. You get some exp, and it can go toward an achievement. There’s no con to just helping a downed player out.

2. There’s no kill-stealing! You don’t lose exp for helping a stranger out, in fact it pays off more to kill something together. And because higher-level character’s are reduced in lower level zones, you can’t grief other players by just obliterating enemies.

There’s way more of an incentive to help each other out than grief, which I think makes a huge impact on the community. You get more toxic attitudes in WvW and PvP, but by making those completely different modes to enter whenever you want (And if you want) that reduces the toxic mindset. As well as this, there’s no forced fractals/dungeons/raids etc in the baseline story, which means you don’t get strangers raging at you in chat for not understanding mechanics. Anyway thanks for reading my essay

[ansicred]

BLOG CHECK-IN UPDATE!!

Right so, I've been doing a lot of posting since the last update and I think it's time to have another check-in post. First up: a periodical reminder for people to pay close attention to the ratings and warnings in my one-shots posts and their tags -- they're there for a reason and if you go into a one-shot thinking I won't be graphic or explicit about certain subjects (yes, including the ones that are sex-related), you'd be very wrong and I'm not going to wrap anyone in cotton wool about anything I write.

Second: as you'll no doubt have noticed, I've posted a new character whose name is Neil and he's my third Alan FC werewolf. His universe isn't something that I've necessarily put much thought into but I do wanna do some figuring out with him and post anything I do with him and his universe here -- this blog is a kind of weird writing-based sketchbook for me, after all. His universe is set in late 1969, hence his birthdate being in 1919, and due to the nature of the ideas for it in my head, and what Neil goes through, I'm giving any one-shots featuring him a baseline lowest rating of twelve (12) unless it's something really, really milquetoast and fluffy (eg: anything involving Neil and his youngest daughter, Christine). You can find him here.

Third: I do have plans to finish Jonah (WATD Verse)'s character sheet and he'll be up as soon as I've done that, as well as a one-shot featuring him and Nina I've had in my head for quite some time now (but I can't really write and post it without having first finished Jonah's sheet or I'll break my brain), so look out for those!

Fourth: I've started a newer version of a screenplay/TV script version of the Odd Foxes story that I plan to go into and work on on occasion so if I disappear off this blog for long strings of time, that's probably why. That said, I will continue to write Odd Foxes related one-shots and post them here because I love those silly fox bois and they're fun to write.

Fifth: Damaged Goods will have a slight direction shift, I've decided, wherein Felix and Azz interact more often and their individual stories become one. How I'll write that and in what format, I don't know yet but I'll still be doing one-shots for DG whenever I get the urge to do so.

Sixth: WATD I'm in the sketch-plan phase for a book/novel version of Bleddyn's story, so the one-shots will be more frequent as I figure out exactly what I'm doing with that idea and what sort of vibe I want/need for the book.

Seventh: I'll be making more OC graphics as well at some point, likely when I'm hit by inspiration. Plus, I'll have more mini lore dumps scattered about -- most likely Odd Foxes, WATD, and DG related, but I might also include MRC and Tide Down, depends on how I'm feeling.

Finally: My mam is going to Ireland for a few days next week, so I'll be babysitting my youngest sisters at her house while she's away. I'll be taking my laptop so I can do some one-shots & things, so I won't be away away, but I'll be far less frequent in posting compared to how I've been lately, especially when my sisters get home from school. In the meantime, like I say, I've got some stuff in the pipeline and they'll be up as and when I get to/finish them, so be on the look out!

For now though, you can leave me questions/comments/whathaveyou (including anonymously) in my inbox and I'll get back to you ASAP!

See you at the next update!! 🦊7

[aeternaluminanoctis]

I can’t sleep. Sooo….

My brain is just filled with what I used to look like.. Maybe I should draw what I looked like since there’s slight “canon divergences” with each of my past lives. I want to be able to look at art and know that it’s me rather than someone else’s interpretation of me, y’know? I’ve also been having vocal dysphoria which is a first. I’ve always been okay with my voice because I have a big range for singing even if my speaking tone is more feminine but now… I miss the genuine tenor that my voice had without having to be forced. Just… a lot of thoughts regarding myself while my kinshift has subsided slightly.

That’s another thing. For the past two days I’ve been basically having a consistent Omori (that. Is.. so weird getting used to saying in 3rd PoV now) shift but ever so often I’ll shift to Vanitas for short periods of time but I don’t process it until it’s already over. Like there’s a certain level of passion, sass, and anger that lingers whenever I shift to Vanitas but I don’t end up recognizing it as a shift until I’m at either my baseline or the neutrality and guilt of an Omori shift… It’s hard to describe. I also am realizing taking about myself in the 3rd person, while helpful, feels wrong. That’s also not to say that the frequent shifting is bad! It’s actually kind of helpful, especially with dealing with issues at work. Maybe it’s just the fact that it’s all still fresh???

I mean… I’ve known about fictionkin since I was about 16. It’s not like the concept itself is new to me. But coming to terms with it (I hate cringe culture.) took forever! It took me completely ignoring my (what I know now to be) Ramuda shifts for YEARS to the point where I can’t even look at the source without feeling weird and panicking over my guilt to the point it forced me to realize that Stranger and Basil weren’t just characters I felt got unfair treatment in a game to finally realize. And even then with realizing I am Omori and Ramuda, Vanitas is the outlier because I can’t even bring myself to watch the source yet. I’ve been attached to “him”since I first heard “his” theme. I’m not even sure how I’m going to react when I finally watch it… What happens when I finally remember my Ventus? Just thinking of his name has my body yearning for him to be back by my side. And that’s with the barest knowledge of what happens in the source. I just wish I had looked into fictionkin more seriously when I was younger. It would have made getting used to and learning everything easier.

[liapher]

Map of the World by @seperis

[Click on the pictures for better resolution.]

I read Map for the first time last year, and a couple months later decided to already reread it. The first time around, you're dropped into this story without knowing what's going on in terms of either the character dynamics or the setting, and it's like a puzzle you get to try to figure out. It's delightful! The second time around, you start out with a lot more puzzle pieces at hand (but absolutely not all of them yet!) and you manage to connect so many more dots. (I swore to myself to not go overboard and still ended up with a ten-way colour-coding system with stickers and writing margin notes. More recently, I decided to read all the comments on the Map AO3 pages, and they are so much fun to read! So many readers have shared really insightful observations, and the author has written a lot of very interesting replies as well. But having to switch back and forth between the story and the comment section is a bit of a bother, and I sensed an interesting typographical challenge, and that's how I found myself typesetting the fic again while adding foot- and margin notes to my heart's content. The book ended up being so long though that I decided to split it into two parts :-)

As for the cover of the first half: Each of the DTA fics introduces you---and the main characters---to a new, larger part of the world. In Map, the focus lies on Cas's cabin as the foundation for the relationship between the two main characters is laid, so Dean and the reader have to open the bead curtain together to get to that part of the story. If I ever get around to giving a similar treatment to the other fics in the series, the cover design would continue correspondingly: opening the gate to Chitaqua for Stars, entering Ichabod's main square for Lights, and stepping through one of the paintings in the white room for Game.

[Typesetting and crafting notes under the cut]

⁂

Typesetting

Okay so the thing is I love very involved typesetting. It's neat to look at, fun to plan (or as a reader, try to reverse engineer the typesetter's decisions), allows you to be a bit of a control freak about all details etc etc. The point of this typesetting project was to include lots and lots of commentary, so my priorities were:

maintain a clear visual distinction between the text and the comments

make the comments easy to read

keep the comments close to the lines they refer to

I used a combination of footnotes and margin notes to make the most of the available space. Margin notes are used whenever a comment is short enough; footnotes otherwise. Fortunately, I was able to typeset the text in such a way that there's no more than one new footnote per page, so I got away with just reusing the degree symbol ° to introduce footnotes and didn't have to work with a numbering system. Most margin notes refer to specific lines as well and here I got to add my favourite little typesetting detail: a manicule :) I based its design on this hand-drawn one.

Other notes: The longest comment is nearly 5 full pages long and is a comment thread about Dean not realizing how laundry works at Chitaqua lol.

I also wanted to prioritize reading comfort, so the margins are rather generous and based on the canons of page construction, and the leading is relatively generous: the body text is set in 11/14 and the comments in 8/12. The drawback is that this means I ended up with a lot more pages than planned (over six hundred). I also don't love that the baselines of the body text and the comments only line up every 6/7 lines, but every other leading option I tried out ended up making the text harder to read---can't have everything at once I guess.

I decided to not include any headers and footers since I think they'd only have made the page appear more crammed without actually adding a lot of useful information. Instead, the page numbers are in the margins, sharing a baseline with the topmost line of text. The beginning of each chapter and/or day is still easy to find since those black tab-like day number indicators extend all the way to the fore-edge:

2. The text block

I wanted these books to have a nice 2:3 (14 cm × 21 cm) page ratio, which meant I needed to trim the fore edge. I had a bit of a paper trimming disaster with another book last week, but for these books I found a method that worked better for me: Use the blade of the cutter to line up the end of the ruler with the spine of the signature at the head of the page, use the cutter to make a tiny cut at the 14 cm mark, repeat at the bottom of the page, and then use the marks you made as a guideline for where to place the ruler to actually cut away the edge.

This is the first time I sewed a book on tapes. I didn't have bona fide bookbinding tape and just used some leftover non-stretchy woven cotton tape (width: 1.5 cm) I had lying around. I followed the video tutorial by DAS. I don't have a sewing frame, but the tape was fairly stiff, so just letting about 2 cm of the tape protrude at the top worked like a charm.

3. Headbands

I followed the two-colour headband instructions by DAS and used a leather band with a diameter of ~1.5 mm as well as some three-ply thread that I got by separating a six-ply embroidery thread. This worked pretty well---the stiff leather band was easier to work with than the shoelace I used last time (mostly because of its even circumference). The slightly tricky thing about the embroidery thread is that the different strands sometimes try to bunch up on top of one another instead of lying flat, but I'm happy with the results. Per headband, the ideal length to work with for this kind of thread and a text block spine width of 23--25 mm was ~30 cm for the green one and ~55 cm for the blue one.

After finishing the headbands, I glued some (80 GSM) paper to the spine---but only between the tapes, to sliightly even out that difference.

4. The case

I followed DAS's video on the square back bradel binding.

The straightforward case:

Front & back: 216 mm x 140 mm

Spine: 23 mm (text block) / 26 mm (case)

Hinge: 7 mm

For the cloth-to-paper ratio of the half binding, I just picked what looked good rather than following the general ratio recommendations. Before gluing on the paper, I used a blue pen to make a couple subtle marks on the bookcloth, which helped a lot while trying to quickly place the paper.

To case in the book, I found it easiest to add a little glue to the spine edge of the back cover, put in the text block and do some quick readjustments, shut the book, let it dry for a few minutes, and then paste down the rest of the back endpaper (maybe in two or three more goes---add glue to the next couple cm, go wild with the bonefolder, repeat). Add glue to all of the front endpaper, shut the book, open it again, go wild with the bonefolder to smooth everything out, done.

For the wrap-around case, I ended up just winging it. It's mostly a square back bradel binding though.

Front, left: 216 mm × 102 mm (at the top)

Back: 216 mm × 145 mm

Spine: 25 mm (text block) / 28 mm (case)

Fore-edge piece: 19 mm

Front, right: 42 mm

The fore-edge piece is thinner than the spine piece since, unlike the latter, it's directly wedged between two pieces of bookboard, and the text block is thicker at the spine than at the fore-edge. I had initially tried making the spine and the wrap-around section level, but that looked a bit silly since you could see the gap between the text block and the right part of the cover.

For the wrap-around part, I glued the back, the fore-edge piece, and the right part of the front cover to a piece of paper (80 GSM), with one board width (2 mm) in between. In retrospect, I should've maybe added 0.5 mm to the hinge between the fore-edge piece and the front so it shuts more easily.

To secure the leather straps with the clasp, I cut two grooves into the bookboard: (Ignore that I obviously only thought of that after I'd already glued the bookcloth to the board, and also ignore the remnants of some paper that are glued to the right edge of the back cover...)

I cut out a couple small bookcloth triangles and used them to fill in the gaps along the back of the curved edge.

I painted on the cover design with some acrylic paint---super fiddly and it took forever, and unfortunately I only did it after casing in the book---before would've been easier. Oh well! I used a pencil to draw guide lines; fortunately it can just be erased from the cloth without leaving a mark or damaging the (dried) paint. (I tried this out on a scrap piece of bookcloth beforehand.)

⁂

In conclusion:

DTA, my beloved

Comments, my beloved

Involved typesetting and crafting projects, my beloved

[eponymous-rose]

A Critical Role Campaign 2 Mechanics Primer

Got a request from a new Critical Role viewer for some clarification re: rules and characters, and dang, yes, there’s so much stuff to deal with as a new viewer at the moment. So here’s an attempt at clarifying some stuff!

How does D&D work?

Fundamentally, one person (the DM) sets the scene and the players riff off that scene by acting out what their characters would do in response. Whenever a player’s actions would lead to an uncertain result, the DM can call for them to roll a die and try to hit a predetermined target number to see if they succeed. The players’ individual characters have abilities that boost certain categories of rolls and penalize others; a very strong character is more likely than a scrawny one to be able to open a jammed door, but they could still have an unlucky roll. It’s the DM’s job to incorporate the sometimes-absurd results of those die rolls into a coherent story.

Combat is the most “gamey” D&D gets, where everyone has a turn set aside to act (with an order determined by the “initiative” roll that starts combat). This is where character classes come in handy: magic-users cast spells, fighters jump in with their weapons of choice, and so forth. Each character has a set of hit points, and once those reach zero, the character is unconscious and possibly dying. But combat ain’t just hack-and-slash: there can be conversation, strategy, manipulation, collaboration, and all sorts of weird subtleties going on. Fundamentally, players’ actions are limited only by their imaginations.

It can be super weird getting into a D&D show even if you have played a bit because everyone plays the game a bit differently. Critical Role’s gameplay leans hard into roleplaying and character beats (there are episodes with basically no dice rolls) but also leans hard enough into the rules that a random bad or good roll can completely derail the story; rolls aren’t fudged or handwaved for the sake of a predetermined narrative, which means nobody playing (including the DM) knows how things are going to end up. This makes for a viewing experience that is a cross between dramedy improv and live sports; the cast plays out long scenes of conversation, but their characters could also permanently die at any time, adding to the high stakes. It’s also totally unedited, which accounts for the absurdly long runtime. 

If any of that isn’t for you, there are a lot of great D&D podcasts out there (often labeled “actual play”) that run the gamut from silly with minimal rules to mechanically involved but edited down. It’s a cool time to get into D&D!

Okay, so how exactly do these characters do their thing?

One of the more confusing aspects for new viewers of the second campaign of Critical Role is that they’re using a fair amount of content that’s not in the baseline ruleset - some character races and classes are coming from expansion content, and some are from Matt Mercer (the DM’s) homebrew. Here’s a quick summary of what each character has going on at the start of the campaign, moving from left to right in the first episode’s seating arrangement.

Fjord (played by Travis Willingham)

If you’re watching the show in video form, Travis is the big guy who looks like he could throw a football real far. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice has a Texas twang.

Fjord is a half-orc warlock. A half-orc typically has green skin and tusks but otherwise looks fairly close to a garden-variety human. Warlocks are magic-users who gained their abilities from a bargain with a mysterious (generally somewhat malevolent) being of great power. Mechanically, they rely a lot on what are called cantrips (spells that can be cast an unlimited number of times a day) since the number of more powerful spells at their disposal is very limited. However, unlike most other casters that have to get a full night’s sleep to regain their stronger spells, warlocks just have to rest for an hour or so and they’re good to go. More specifically, Fjord is a hexblade warlock. Hexblades are warlocks who have a particularly strong bond with their weapon of choice and can summon it from nothing.

Beauregard (played by Marisha Ray)

If you’re watching the show in video form, Marisha is the woman who often perches on her chair like she’s about to take flight. If you’re listening to the podcast, her character voice is a bit gruff with a sarcastic drawl.

Beau is a human monk. Both humans in this campaign use a variant version of human that allows them to pick a feat at the start of the campaign: Beau has some extra expertise in investigative and athletic abilities. Monks are preternaturally powerful martial artists; what some classes do with magic, they do with unarmed combat. Mechanically, they rely on an ability called ki points, which are a stockpile of points that can be used for extra-powerful abilities such as being able to hit extra times on an attack or being able to stun an enemy. More specifically, Beau is a Way of the Cobalt Soul monk, which is a homebrew from Matt and means she’s essentially a warrior-monk-librarian whose key abilities center around rooting out useful information.

Caleb (played by Liam O’Brien)

If you’re watching the show in video form, Liam is the guy who perpetually looks like he’s about to launch into a Shakespearean monologue. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice is soft with a German accent.

Caleb is a human wizard. His variant human feat gives him an eidetic memory and the ability to always know what time it is. Wizards are magic-users who got to where they are with careful study; Caleb has to keep track of his spells by transcribing them into a spellbook. He also has a familiar in the form of the cat Frumpkin, although Frumpkin can also change forms. Mechanically, wizards can pick up spells from a lot of different sources to learn them, but again, the cost in time and materials of transcribing them into a spellbook can be substantial. More specifically, Caleb is a transmutation wizard, which means his wizardry focuses around the act of transforming one thing into another.

Nott (played by Sam Riegel)

If you’re watching the show in video form, Sam is the guy with an alarmingly big smile and a comically oversized flask. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice is high-pitched with varying levels of Cockney accent.

Nott is a goblin rogue. Goblins are small and quick, and may or may not be well-received depending on the location. Rogues are sneaky individuals who do best when striking from the shadows or scouting ahead to investigate potential traps and unlock doors. Mechanically, they get a huge bonus in combat if they attack when unseen or when an opponent is distracted by an ally. They’re also very good at avoiding attacks and at hiding from view. More specifically, Nott is an arcane trickster rogue, which means she also dabbles in magic related to illusions and enchantment.

Jester (played by Laura Bailey)

If you’re watching the show in video form, Laura is the one who may or may not be instigating every round of giggles at accidental innuendo. If you’re listening to the podcast, her character voice is bubbly with an Eastern European accent.

Jester is a tiefling cleric. Tieflings essentially look like brightly-colored humans (Jester has blue skin) with horns and a tail; they’re the result of infernal ancestry and also may or may not be well-received. Clerics are magic-users who derive their power from the blessing of a deity or other extremely powerful entity. Jester’s divine patron is the Traveler, a mysterious trickster with an affinity for phallic graffiti. Mechanically, clerics have a massive stable of spells from which they can choose a subset every morning; their abilities range from healing wounds to causing devastating harm. More specifically, Jester is a trickery domain cleric, which means her spells have a strong focus on illusions and pranks.

Mollymauk (played by Taliesin Jaffe)

If you’re watching the show in video form, Taliesin is the one who looks like he may be some sort of ancient fey creature who’s come to our realm to play D&D. If you’re listening to the podcast, his character voice has an Irish accent of varying intensity.

Molly is a tiefling blood hunter with purple skin. Blood hunters are a custom class Matt created that can use their own blood (in a process called hemocraft) to augment their combat abilities. Mechanically, blood hunters are high-risk high-reward; they can perform devastatingly brutal attacks, but often only at the cost of shedding some of their own blood to do so. More specifically, Molly is an Order of the Ghostslayer blood hunter, which means he’s got an affinity for things relating to the moment of death.

Yasha (played by Ashley Johnson)

If you’re watching the show in video form, Ashley is the one who isn’t around for a little bit (she was splitting her time with a TV show on the opposite coast) and then SHE’S BACK AND I’M STILL SO HAPPY ABOUT THAT. If you’re listening to the podcast, her character voice is soft with a faint Scandinavian accent.

Yasha is an aasimar barbarian. Aasimar are the semi-divine counterpart to tieflings, although Yasha is a fallen aasimar with a fairly different aesthetic. Barbarians use their rage to enhance their already fierce battle prowess. Mechanically, barbarians in a rage take less damage and deal more damage, and also embrace a high-risk high-reward playstyle as tanks in the middle of the fray. More specifically, Yasha is a Path of the Zealot barbarian, which means her battle rages are fueled by the influence of a divine being.

Interested in watching from the start of campaign 2? The show has a YouTube channel with each episode posted in its entirety, and all episodes are also available in podcast form (they did jump channels partway through, but you can usually find a playlist that has them all). If you want to delve into campaign 1, I highly recommend it, but be aware that they’re still figuring out tech stuff and you’re also jumping in partway through the game they started years earlier at home. Campaign 2 starts 20 years after campaign 1 on a different continent of the same world, and is intended to be an appropriate jumping-on point for new viewers.

Interested in catching up faster so you can watch live with friends? Search Critical Recap for a series of recap videos on YouTube, which then becomes a series of written summaries on the CritRole website after episode 88. There are also great summaries on the Wiki, and many people have put together catch-up guides for new viewers. 

There’s A LOT of content out there. Don’t let anyone make you feel bad for skimming the early stuff if you want to get in on the new episodes sooner. <3

Episodes air at 7 PM Pacific every Thursday on Critical Role’s Twitch and YouTube channels; the VOD goes up for free on YouTube the Monday after. In the last few months, the cast has been distanced at the studio (all on separate cameras) and episodes have been pre-recorded several weeks in advance; normally, the show is streamed live and everyone is around the same table.

Hope that helps! If you have any questions, let me know. This is a fun show to get into, and a great all-consuming massive body of entertainment if you have the time for it.

[renaerys]

22. for reds 🤡

This is 100% not what you asked for (yet...👀), but I give you part 1 of what we're calling the Weird King AU. I'm turning this into a proper multi-chapter High School fic because I love you and I'd jump on any bandwagon for you.

xxx

Like most young, conventionally attractive Supervillains, Brick had made a bit of a habit of failing upwards. It was pretty easy in a town full of simpering morons content to project their own narrative assumptions onto him, and who was he to crush their dreams when they made his life a little easier?

For example, dating.

“You can tell me, you know.” His cute date, Tracy, sipped her milkshake across from him.

“Tell you what?”

She softened and reached her hand across the table. “Your tragic backstory. I’ll listen without judgment, I promise.”

Brick tried to think of something tragic, but it all seemed pretty underwhelming as far as Supervillain origin stories went. “You mean like how I was born in a toilet?”

She made an oh shape with her lips. “We all have those days where we feel like we were born in a toilet, Brick.”

He’d dated Tracy for three months before she broke up with him out of the blue in tears: sorry she couldn’t fix his baggage, she just wasn’t strong enough to handle all that tortured darkness, but she wished him nothing but health and happiness. Brick deleted her number from his phone and spent twenty whole minutes staring at the toilet in his bathroom, wondering what the lesson here was.

But everything changed when Mojo got out of prison and moved Brick and his brothers back to Townsville, where he enrolled them in the local high school alongside their former arch nemeses, the Powerpuff Girls.

Suddenly, everything Brick did pre-supposed ill intent. These people remembered him as the pest who had graffitied their local monuments and blown up their cars and endangered their children. They held no love for him, and at best they feared him. This was not Citiesville, where he’d been a tall, cold glass of Voss water in a sea of recycled Dasani.

He found himself thinking about his birthing toilet again as he stepped into the cafeteria alone and the conversation quieted down as his new classmates watched him from the safety of their tables. His next moves here were critical. He was no longer at the top of the food chain, but fear and mystery surrounding his origins and character gave him a certain power over his peers.

“Yea, though I walk through the valley of social suicide, I will fear no cringe,” he said to himself.

The jocks were out. Capable though he may be, Brick was not much of a team player unless there was a blood contract involved requiring his participation on pain of satanic torture. The drama kids were also a hard pass, not because he thought drama was lame, but because they had barely noticed him walk in, and Brick did not have the energy to deal with people more self-involved than himself. Some of the unaffiliated tables could be safe, but without a good understanding of the nuanced social dynamics in the high school, he could be heading toward irreversible doom, and that was a risk he was not willing to take.

He saw his salvation just ahead. It was the only option, all else being equal. In an environment where he couldn’t be certain of his baseline status and potential for upward mobility, there was greatness to be had only by association and certainty only in the devil he knew.

Brick helped himself to the empty seat directly across from Blossom Utonium to a chorus of gasps and staring.

Blossom did not startle like her table mates had. She watched him critically behind a head full of bangs as she balanced her soup spoon in her hand. “Really.”

Brick unwrapped the burrito he’d purchased in the lunch line and brandished it before him. “Really.”

He took a bite of the burrito. It was not hot enough. The two girls to Blossom’s left whispered to each other about that bad boy and he’s hot, though.

Blossom daintily spooned soup into her mouth without spilling a single drop as she continued to watch Brick for signs of his imminent dark side transformation.

The guy next to Brick was brave enough to ask him what his next class was. Brick had a mouth full of disappointing burrito, so he passed the guy the printout of his class schedule in lieu of answering.

“Wow, all APs, huh? Hey, we’re in U.S. History together next period, nice. I’m Mike Believe, by the way. Brick Jojo, right?”

Brick didn’t answer him immediately on account of the burrito currently occupying his mouth hole, and Mike took it the wrong way.

“Oh, yeah, we all know who you are. Blossom sort of filled us in.” He winced like he’d inadvertently revealed a terrible secret.

Brick swallowed his food and washed it down with a gulp of water. “Saves me some time.”

Mike looked super relieved. “For sure! Hey, I could lend you my notes if you want to catch up. Gershwin’s giving a quiz on the Progressive Era on Friday, and she’s a hard-ass who definitely won’t care that you just transferred…”

Brick chewed on his lunch as Mike continued to talk at him about classes and other vaguely helpful, albeit uninteresting, information. But Mike seemed normal enough, a little chatty but not in an overeager sort of way. Blossom was no longer clocking his every move and seemed to be absorbed in her friend’s latest swim team cheating scandal, until Brick reached for his water bottle and she suddenly laser-focused on his wandering hand.

Her keen attention to him was honestly flattering, if expected. It was in his nature to be noticed, and in this narrow respect she was no different from anyone else whose head he turned. If she chose to feed her interest with the flames of suspicion, then it was no difference to him.

But if she was anything like him—and on a chemical level she was probably the closest to him that a person could get—he suspected it took tremendous effort to hold her full and sustained attention. The world they inhabited was as vapid and mundane as the humans that surrounded them, and even the most gracious of gods grew bored of worship. Which explained all the smiting and fucking and generational curses upon entire households in everything from Greek mythology to the Old Testament.

Brick was pretty deep into a fantasy of Blossom going full Ixion and the Wheel on the swim team when Mike tapped his shoulder. “You ready to go?”

It took him a moment to realize the bell had rung and he had a class to get to—AP U.S. History with Mike, apparently. Brick gathered his tray and his bag and followed Mike. When he looked back at the table, Blossom was already gone.

xxx

That whole first week was painfully boring. No one bullied him, or pranked him, or picked a fight with him, of course. But no one really approached him, either. His brothers were more determined to make an effort. Boomer announced he was trying out for the soccer team because there was no rule saying a Super with extremely well documented ties to active criminals and the forces of Hell couldn’t kick a ball around a field. Butch had gotten himself invited to a midnight screening of Snakes on a Plane in some rich kid’s home movie theater, but only after that same kid had accidentally spilled milk on Butch and burst into tears in front of a cafeteria full of Juniors and Seniors. Brick declined the invitation Butch extended to him. He had that AP U.S. History exam to study for on Friday, anyway.

He shared all of his classes with Blossom. Even in the classes where her assigned seat was behind his and he couldn’t see her, he could feel her lobotomizing stare at the back of his head whenever she glanced up from her notebook. And while Mike’s notes were perfectly adequate and the friendly gesture counted for more than the content (a gesture Brick would not soon forget), there was a far more efficient way to accomplish his goal of murdering the class averages while also taking the edge off his loner doldrums.

“Can I borrow your class notes?”

Blossom rose from her seat and pulled her hair tie out to re-do her extremely long ponytail. She held the elastic between her teeth as she worked. Her teeth were very straight, he noticed. Some pretty nice girl-teeth, generally speaking.

“Which class?”

“All of them.”

He watched her wind the elastic around her hair with quick, adroit fingers. “That’s a lot of notes.”

“You’re the top of every class. No point in asking anyone else.”

She moved toward the hall. He followed her out. “Why would I help you?”

A legitimate question delivered without venom. Unlike her sister Buttercup, who’d “run into” Brick after school on Monday and told him to watch his back, Blossom didn’t have to do anything but maintain a general proximity to make her superiority complex known. Which was the kind of flex he could fuck with.

“Isn’t helping people sort of your mandate?”

They had arrived at her locker, which she opened with enough force to rattle the hinges. “I help the helpless. Are you helpless, Brick?”

Brick smiled at her baiting. Had she ever actually said his name at a normal volume before? It sounded good even in her baseline bitch timbre. “Critically helpless. I’m the new student who transferred in the middle of the semester, and you’re the only person who knows me.”

A couple other students clearly trying to get to the lockers Brick was blocking hovered just out of reach. They whispered to each other, but neither of them actually worked up the courage to ask Brick to move. He ignored them.

Blossom rummaged in her locker for the binder she would need for the next class. “Make friends.”

“Working on it.”

The locker door slammed and she faced him. There was something confrontational in the way she held herself before him that kicked him in the nuts back in time thirteen years to their more uncouth days when all he wanted to do was destroy her so he’d be the only one. Now they were older and wiser and he actually did need her notes to study, so destroying her was not high on his list of priorities.

“You want to be my friend.”

“We have so much in common.”

“So do lions and hyenas.”

“Both are apex predators, so.”

She took a step closer and peered up at him. Brick did not move, although he wondered what was so interesting about his face. She probably just thought he was hot. She was probably as bored as he was. She probably—

“You have lettuce in your teeth.”

Brick pulled back and covered his mouth on instinct. God fucking damnit.

Blossom was already walking away from him by the time he’d picked the food from his teeth. “I’ll expect my notes back in mint condition before first period tomorrow morning.”

Brick pressed a fist against the lockers and quietly fumed. “Dumbass…”

“Um, sorry, but do you mind…?”

The student who’d been waiting for her locker space to clear up had her palms up as if to assuage a feral stray. Brick pushed off the lockers, but his fist left a dent where he’d unleashed some of his impotent self-pity. He looked back at the girl, and she shook her head.

“It’s fine! It, uh, it happens sometimes.” She pointed a couple lockers down to Blossom’s, which was dinged up worse than the others.

Brick stared at Blossom’s locker, and then back at the girl. Her narrow, dark eyes were wide, but not out of fear. She was waiting for something, and like an idiot it took him a moment to catch up. “You’re trying to make me feel better about fucking up your locker.”

She laughed nervously. “I mean, it’s really fine! You just looked so miserable for a second there, and I just thought…”

Great, he was moping so hard he had an audience.

The five minute warning bell rang, and a flood of students rushed past them on their way to fourth period. Brick stepped aside so the girl could get to her locker.

“Hey, you’re the new guy, right?”

The new guy, yeah. How quaint. Except, she was waiting for a response, which wasn’t the absolute worst thing that had happened to him all week.

“Brick,” he said. But of course, she already knew that, and she was just being nice.

“I’m Kim. Kim Chan.”

“Okay.” He didn’t have anything else to say to her, so he decided to get his shit and get to his next class.

“Welcome back to Townsville, Brick.”

Brick shoved his hands in his pockets and stalked off. It didn’t occur to him until later that Kim was the first and only person who had properly welcomed him back home.

[shotowoki]

PAIRING: shouto todoroki x gn!reader WARNINGS: fluff, swearing, kissing, mutual-pinning, implied nsfw, pretty much just fluffy goodness :) WORDCOUNT: 4k

SYNOPSIS: Being roommates out of sheer convenience shouldn't have been a problem. It shouldn't have been as difficult as Shouto had made it out to be. I mean, you two barely spoke, barely found time to be together in one room and barely even came in contact with one another despite living under the same roof. It really should have been a piece of cake. But the feelings Shouto had for you grew larger with every day that passed, complicating things far more than was necessary...

In an empty room, Shouto lay sprawled on his bed. The thought of you conquering his mind as he envisioned you in your entirety.

The lazy slither of moonlight that pierced his curtains left a gentle glow across his face, the sorrow in his eyes highlighted as he pondered over the same thing he did every night. Who were you?

It seemed like a stupid question on the outside, as to those who didn't know you two well, you seemed like good friends. After all, you did live together; it would be harder to know nothing about the other. But, in Shouto's case, he knew near nothing about you. So, every night he lays in his sheets, frustrated with his lack of knowledge, listing all the things he did know. As he balled the covers under him, intertwining his fingers with the cotton, he asked himself one thing: 'who were you?', once more.

There were a few vague things he knew. He knew you worked as an office assistant, finished your work off late at night in the kitchen, took around 45 minutes in the shower, you rarely ate food at home, and brought take out every other evening. Not to mention, you barely left your room and thus leading to this lack of relationship between you two.

But what did this random trivia on you do for him? Nothing. It provided him with zero useful information, nothing to work with, and it most certainly did not quench his curiosity for you.

A heavy exhale parted his lips, and he sunk deeper into his mattress. Maybe this was enough for today. The constant worrying about you wasn't doing him any good, and he knew it. At this point, his curiosity was turning into something more. Before Shouto knew it, his once frustrated wonders had turned to admiration. And this was his current situation, face feeling hot as reality hit him like a train. When did he start to like you, and more specifically, why?

That empty feeling filled him once more; the lack of answers to all these questions had him feeling beyond exhausted. He barely knew you, and yet even moments like these felt like enough. A small rush of nervousness always stopping him in his tracks whenever the sheer thought of you crossed his mind. It felt ridiculous and brought Shouto way too much humiliation. And so, he shook these feelings off. The mystery that was you was far beyond his reach, and it was time he submitted to that fact.

Fluttering his eyelids shut, he put his mind at rest, drifting off into dreamland.

The next day had arrived, Shouto's previously exhausting night already long passing him. A wet towel swung over his head; he exited the bathroom somewhat wet, and ready for a new day.

A cold shower did the job alright, waking him up and helping him forget about the endless thoughts of you that had him up late last evening. All that remained was to fill his stomach up, and he would forget the whole ordeal. Still slightly embarrassed at the realization that he had caught feeling for the stranger that lived in the room opposite his own.

Scrubbing his hair and patting his face dry with the towel on his head, he entered the kitchen. He expected it to be empty like every other regular morning. But instead, Shouto was greeted with arguably the worst and best thing. There you sat at the kitchen island, eyeing a cup of coffee, evidently zoned out.

Shouto stopped in his tracks, and his heart dropped to his stomach. If it was even achievable, the beating of his heart was more rapid than humanly possible and probably more audible than ever. Why were you home? Not that he was complaining, it was just rare to have you home this early in the morning. Did you not have work today? Did something happen? Why are you just sitting there staring at a cup? All these questions sprung up in Shouto's head as he stood dumfounded and nervous.

His cheeks lightly sprinkled in a pink blush; he just stood there awkwardly, not daring to even move an inch. To anyone but himself, he would look pretty composed, but internally he was malfunctioning. He had hoped for a moment like this to arise for a while now. But now that the opportunity had presented itself, he barely knew what to do. It didn't help the fact he was already a flustered mess over the thought of you last night, and now there you sat in front of him.

Taking one deep breath, Shouto resumed his walk to the fridge, waving off the nerves that had built up inside him.

"Good morning, y/n. It's rare to see you home at this time." Shouto attempted to break the silence in his signature monotone voice.

It remained pretty tranquil for a bit. The only noise being that of Shouto making himself breakfast and the sound of you taking a shy sip of your drink.

"Morning. I don't have work today, so I'm home."

Your voice simmered out into the atmosphere, but it remained looping in Shouto's mind. As his back faced you, he felt his ears get hot, and he knew for a fact, he was beet red now. How did just hearing your voice already throwing him off guard?

Shouto gently exhaled, feeling his adrenaline spike through him. He just needed to stay calm. But how could he when he wasn't accustomed to hearing your voice, especially when you spoke so softly? Having a crush on your roommate was most certainly an inconvenience, as Shouto struggled to keep his concentration on making a simple cup of coffee for himself.

"Oh. Did you finally get a day off?" Luckily Shouto's voice came out calm. He'd be damned if he stumbled and made himself look more like a fool than he already had.

Well, he looked like a fool to himself, at least. You barely took notice of the random pauses his whole body made or the way he would occasionally take self-soothing deep breaths. If anything, you wouldn't even know if this type of behavior was unusual for him since you saw him so rarely.

Come to think of it, you don't even have a baseline to work with when judging his overall character. That's partially due to the fact you two have never actually sat down and bonded, which led an idea to spark off in your mind.

"Yeah, it's my first day off in a while." You spoke in a slightly more upbeat tone now, excited for the proposition you were about to make. "So, since I'm home, how about we hang out and get to know each other properly." You smiled his way, tilting your head slightly as you awaited his response.

And just as the suggestion escaped your mouth, Shouto made the unfortunate mistake of turning around, his surprised expression out on display as he was yet to process what you just had said.

"Um, sure." is all Shouto was able to say. His heart thumped out of his chest, and his words knotted up in his throat.

The sudden proposition you offered him had him speechless. All these sudden coincidences being the last thing Shouto expected. Was it all too sudden, perhaps? Either way, he wasn't going to deny the opportunity at hand because who knew when you would be free again. Finally, this was his chance to answer the question that has been keeping up at night. And somewhat address these feelings that had started manifesting.

"Then, I was thinking... maybe we could have a movie night?" You chirped, leaning over the counter in excitement.

"You know, there's this movie my coworkers have been talking about, and I've really been wanting to watch."

For the first time, Shouto got to see you relish in your interests. A cute smile curling the corners of your lips as you spoke, rambling about this so-called movie. He couldn't help but smile at your bubbly nature, getting lost in the expressions you were making that he has never before seen. The way your eyes lit up and your hands waved around as you tried convincing him to watch the movie. Little did you know, you didn't need to convince him of anything, he would agree to watch anything with you. But he wasn't going to burst your joyful bubble now. He wanted to savor this moment, and so he let you speak whatever was on your mind, just burning this moment into his memory.

Dazing at your soft lips as you spoke, he realized how zoned out he had become; your speech becomes just a faint murmur in the back of his mind as all he could think about was how much more beautiful you looked up close.

"Ah, sorry! I completely went on a tangent there. I tend to do that when I get excited. I'm sorry!" You giggled while exaggeratingly facepalming yourself.

And with that, he was once more snapped back into reality. What were you just talking about? Aside from the mention of a movie night, Shouto couldn't remember much else. He couldn't have retained anything that fell from those pretty lips of yours. And down the gutter, his thoughts went once more. The overwhelming flustering feeling washed over him as he realized what ideas exactly he was having right in front of you. He needs to hurry up and respond to you rather than just standing there aimlessly staring at your lips.

"Don't worry about it. You look cute anyways when you're so excited about something." Those words left Shouto so fast he could barely believe he had said them himself. The humiliation already settling itself as he cursed himself for being such a creep.

The sudden affection from your roommate had you stuttering. You have had your eye on him ever since you moved in together. What was there not to like about him? He was good-looking, always left food out for you, and cleaned the apartment before you got back from work. The only issue was you. You were far too shy to admit to these feelings, your one solution being to lock yourself up in your room and avoid him like the plague. Today just so happened to be the exception as you felt a tad bit confident when he nonchalantly (as you perceived it) walked into the kitchen.

Now a compliment of this magnitude was the last thing you expected, and so your insides burnt hot as you shifted in your seat.

"Sorry! I didn't mean for it to come out that way." The concern in his voice was more than evident, the furrowing of his brows in frustration delivering his apology clearly.

"No-no, it fine! Really."

"What I was trying to say was that a movie night sounds great!" Shouto bopped his head down as he managed to completely fuck up this one opportunity that he had. To him, it seemed as though he had ruined everything, but if anything, he had succeeded a lot more than he gave himself credit.

You were still giddy at his subtle compliment, heart racing at the fact he called you cute. CUTE. Failure should have been the last thing on Shouto's mind as if he observed you a little more closely, he would have noticed the satisfactory grin on your face.

"Great! I'll meet you in the living room at 5 pm then." You hoped out of your chair, putting your empty cup away.

You definitely wanted to stay with him longer, but you needed to calm yourself down. The knots in your stomach tightening by the second as you felt flustered by his presence.

"Right."

Gently, you squeezed past him as you exited the kitchen, the cozy heat that radiated from his body sending goosebumps down your skin. Even with a touch so short-lived, you couldn't help but freak out. How would you manage this evening? Only future you will know the answer to that question.

As quickly as you parted ways, the evening arrived just as fast. A golden sunset burst through the living room window and drizzled the atmosphere in sweet honey. A soft breeze floated through as Shouto sat anxiously waiting for you.

His outfit was bland, but it was expected of him. Just a pair of generic grey sweatpants paired with a white tee. As stated previously, his attire was very bland. But it was comfy, to say the least.

Just on time, you finally met him at your designated period. Your heart hammered out your chest, not only from the nervous itch that was being with your crush, but the possibility of this all being awkward. It felt like meeting a stranger, only with an odd sense of familiarity attached. Maybe then calling him a stranger would be a poor analogy. Perhaps it was more like being left alone with that person your friend was trying to introduce you to. Yeah, that's a better parallel for how this all felt right now. However, it all still felt rather exciting.

"Hi! Are you ready?" You giggled as you sunk into the couch, sitting beside him.

"Definitely. What's the movie called again, y/n?" The way your name so easily fell from his lips set off the butterflies in your stomach.

It sounded so pretty coming from him, way prettier than you could have prepared yourself for. Suddenly, you found yourself speechless, mind going blank as you fished for the name of the movie you knew.

"U-um, it seems my mind has gone blank. Give me a second."

Rubbing your arm in an attempt to calm yourself, you let out your signature laugh. The golden hue of the sun stirred the color of his heterochromatic eyes as you glanced back at them, still thinking of the name of the movie you knew just a second ago. Attentively, his eyes examed you, and you managed to catch sight of this glance.

"Don't worry, take your time." With that, his eyes shot back up meeting yours. "Do you happen to be cold? You're rubbing your arm."

That explained his gaze, but it didn't happen to settle the nerves inside you. And in your flustered state, you responded with the first thing that came to mind as you swatted your hand to your side.

"Ah, yeah! It's a bit chilly with the window open in here."

Right on cue, Shouto reached for the blanket on the sofa, wrapping it snuggly over your shoulders. The way his slender fingers brushed against your skin as he positioned the fabric on you made you freeze. You could barely hear yourself think as your heart ran wild, adrenaline surging your veins. His face was so close, so close you could see how his eyelashes softly brushed his cheeks with every blink. Fast, it all happened so fast, and yet the memory replayed in slow motion in your mind. The way he just swept in and then back out.

"There. If it gets too cold I'll close the blind." He smiled at you comfortingly before reaching for the remote.

You couldn't do anything but sit there wide-eyed, your nervousness being unbearable.

"The movie... I can't remember its name." Finally, you admitted defeat, done battling your mind that was clearly not regaining composure any time soon.

"That's fine. I guess we can just watch whatever piques our interest for now. There's always next time."

There's always next time. The implication of another hang-out was soothing. Knowing that this wasn't a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity managed to quiet you down slightly as you repositioned yourself to sit more comfortably on the sofa.

"Right!" You beamed in agreement, turning your attention to the tv.

The mindless scrolling through Netflix lasted a while as you made conversation with one another. Talk of how most movies were boring filled your discussions, exchanging laughter here and there too. It all felt so reassuring, and both of you were starting to feel more relaxed. Movie after movie, it felt like you were about to hit a dead end until you eventually landed on something intriguing.

"This one! This one looks good, right?" You explained, pointed to the digital screen that gently lit up your faces.

"Right, it doesn't sound bad."

Shouto was beginning to uncover you and your character a lot better now. Seeing as you got excited about the most random things, but also the way you were so easily caught off guard. It put a soft smile on his face as he just admired you silently.

The movie began to play, the two of you settling down as the noises from the tv exclaimed through the speakers. To say that Shouto was happy was an understatement. Looking back on the evening from just last night to now was a huge shift, and a huge shift in the direction he could have hoped for. It was the start of something he had been wishing for long while now.

Hearing you laugh at the actors on screen, turning to face him as you shared the humours moments with him had him feeling all gooey inside. Lightly, your leg would occasionally brush past his, making him more than eager to pull a move on you. Fuck it, right? Apparently, Shouto couldn’t just have his cake, he wanted to eat it too.

You were far too cute in this moment, nudging on him softly as your laugh radiated through the air. And so, in a moment when his adrenaline spiked and clouded his judgment, he snaked an arm over you shoulder, cradling you into his chest. You gave into his invitation, resting against him.

Not to say you were all calm about the exchange, you were in fact the complete opposite. It was really happening, you were laying in Shouto’s toned arms, his fingers gently gliding up and down your forearm as he sunk down onto the couch. Laying himself down and then you on top of him.

Was Shouto calm about this, then? Definitely not. His hearts rapid beating was audible as you rested your head on his chest. Smiling hazily as you realised he was just as nervous about all this as you.

As he lay under you, you soaked in his touch, the way his toned figure felt as your hands snaked around his waist. And the way his breathing gently cascaded a chilly breeze down your neck, shivers forming along your soft skin. Ever smooth shift and touch his body made against yours was thrilling.

At this point you weren’t even concentrated on the movie, and instead on the boy under you. The movie acting more as background noise to the thing you really wanted to watch. Glancing up at his soft features, the way his plump rosy lips were slightly parted as his eyes shifted across the screen. Oh how you wanted to kiss him in this moment. What was holding you back exactly?

You could lean any minute if you just so pleased.

“Shouto?” You finally spoke up, interrupting the tranquility between you two.

His response was a simple hum, eyes falling to meet yours. The way he held eye contact, smiling at you invitingly was enough to have anyone falling for him. You felt extremely lucky to be even given the chance to be in this position with him.

“Can I?” You started, lifting yourself up slightly.

“Can you?”

He quirked a brow at you as he sat up to meet your movement. Trapped under you as your two legs straddled his lap, you gave him a sheepish smile. A short moment passed without a response, and Shouto smiled at you suspiciously, leaning in to jokingly examine your face.

“What’s on your mind?”

At his unannounced actions you glanced away, but Shouto only pulled your chin to look back at him. A smirk growing on his face before his palm came to cup your cheek; his other hand resting nonchalantly on your thigh.

And like he knew exactly what you were thinking, with a light brush of his thump against you bottom lip, he dipped in for a kiss.

His plump lips meeting yours. Soft, they felt so soft as they moulded perfectly with yours, meting against the other. The tender way his lips hovered for a second as he pulled away, licking his lips and then coming back in. Glazing you in his touch, he began to move again, taking in one of your lips at a time, relishing in your sweet taste. The way his lips massaged yours with every move he made had you pressing yourself into him.

It felt relieving in a way, finally dining the dish you’ve been craving for so long. After all these months you two have lived together, finally you both were holding each other like you have been wanting. Arms wrapped around his neck, fingers weaving throw his hair as you yearned for more.

Your plush tongue came to meet his, intertwining with the other. Happily, he ventured your mouth, taking in every inch of you. Smoothly dragging his tongue to the root of your mouth then pulling himself out, until he came back in once more to suck you back in.

The only think separating you two being the string of spit that drizzled off each other’s tongues as you caught your own breaths between each embrace. Your merciful moans he swallowed, his delicate hands travelling up your spin. They left a cold trail, fireworks erupting your stomach as the adrenaline of this all began seeping in.

You two were getting too carried away, but it just goes to show how bad you wanted one another. Shouto, however, wanted to clear things up before you continued any further.

He pulled away breathily, blinking at you with delight in his eyes.

“Y/n, I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a while now, and i’m sorry if this is sudden. But, I like you.”

That sentence alone had you more flustered than your previous touches and you smiled like a kid with candy.

Was this a dream come true? Maybe it was, which in that case, you definitely didn’t want to wake up. But, lucky for you, this was in fact reality.

“I like you too, silly” You giggled only inches away from his face, and the instant grin that sprawled across his lips was the only confirmation you needed.

Instantly, he engulfed you in a tight hug, his head cradling itself into the crook of you neck.

“Then how about we finish this off in my bedroom now that you’re all mine.” Was the last thing he said, his lips resuming their bidding on the soft skin in your neck.

[cynettic]

♡  lex talionis

summary - Inazuma was a sanctuary with vast terrain that opened itself up to you and your brother, but it was not your home. Home was with your family, and you could only look up to the one who’d torn you away from them. An eye for an eye, you’d make sure the Raiden Shogun got what she deserved.

pairing - f!reader x genshin impact

warnings - swearing, major character death in later chapters, violence/blood

a/n - i’ve been working on this one for a while, i’ve finished all the baseline chapters (8) might continue afterwards with it

taglist - @irethepotato​

“Nii-chan!”

Silken clouds of white drifted along the skies of Inazuma, trees nodding along with the breeze that swept by. Morning was brought along by the gentle coax of mother nature, leaves matting gravelled tiles and dirt roads. 

“Y/n.”

Your brother always smelt of firewood and the briefest hint of cinnamon. His arms wrapped around you tightly whenever he came home, face nuzzling in the crook of your neck. His comfort, he’d once said. You were the one he came back to.

“Why do you leave in the first place?”

Light grey hair tickled your face when you set your chin atop his head, your smile growing wider when he led you along the streets of Inazuma City. It was always like this, he would return home, scratches on his red jacket and ones you always promised to patch up. After all, even when he gingerly set you up on his shoulders, lighthearted laughter filled your ears when he recounted his experiences and encounters on his ventures…

He still left.

No matter how tightly he held you when he returned, the promises he’d whisper and comforting words he spoke were useless when he departed. Even when you sobbed into the ground, tears continuing to fall long after his leave, he wouldn't budge. Something about the wind, he’d once said. The ocean sang to him, mountains just begging to be travelled.

I beg for you too. I beg you to stay.

Crying made no difference, your brother loved you, dearly. But he loved exploring more, stepping into new terrain and staring down opponents. Feeling adrenaline pump through his body, creating new memories, losing himself somewhere he didn't know, finding his way back.

There was a reason he didn't leave Inazuma.

He’d ventured to every corner of the land, all of the islands head to toe. Even the most dangerous of places, where adventurers paused and ronin refused. Returning to tell you all his secrets, Inazuma’s secrets. You were what kept him tied to all these islands, a curse that had him rooted, watching ships depart with curious eyes. Jealousy.

He loved you, but he loathed you all the same.

You were his responsibility, parents disappearing on you both at just the right moment. He had to raise you, hold you through the steps of your life where he should've had someone's hand to hold. Growing up just to be there for you, kisses to your forehead when you did well, reprimanding when you did badly. He was a perfect caretaker, but in his mission to help you grow up, he’d lost a part of himself too.

He searched all of Inazuma for it.

He hasn't found it yet.

That's why you finally accepted when he departed, waving to his disappearing figure until it was just you and the city of Inazuma. You were not alone of course, and your brother had spent years teaching you how to get around. You were sure you’d survive even in the depths of Inazuma’s electro barriers, knowing the secret to electrogana and just how long they lasted. 

In terms of mora, you never had any issues either. Your brother brought along plenty with the treasure he found, and you always helped around the city with commissions or whatever needed to be done just for entertainment. Of course without any parental supervision, you’d escape to the meadows where ronin sat near small streams. But you were young, allowing yourself to poke at them for fun and make a game of running away.

There were times where you didn't get away.

Not quickly enough at least, but you’d learned how to take a beating long ago. Fists curled around your face as you dodged attack after attack. Most of them hit at the beginning, and they were too fast and strong to be any equal partner, but you took pride in the small fact that it was still practice.

“I’m gonna grow up to be just as strong as you Nii-chan!!”

Gently tugging stray locks of hair away from your face, your brother settled with kneeling down to your height, smiling aloof as he said. “I have no doubt you will, you’ll let me teach you a few moves won't you?”

It always ended up with you gesturing to his sword, pouting when he shook his head. He believed you to be quick on your feet, a truth when you dodged attacks from the ronin and jumped along the rocks in the stream. Able to pull yourself up on Inazuman rooftops and climb viscous looking cliffs along the sides of the cities, your brother persisted with you.

“Hand to hand combat, you don't need to learn how to use a sword.”

But you thought differently, running away from him when he attempted to pull you away for lessons. Sprinting along tiled streets and hopping from building roof to roof. No matter how much your brother travelled, he could never compare to your speed, flexibility allowing you to spin around and climb the impossible.

“Dear me… if only you listened to me Y/n. I could make you a formidable opponent.”

“Teach me how to use your sword!!”

“No way.”

You’d eventually get hold of a sword from the ronin, but with no one willing to teach you and barely having the strength to swing it around, it was impossible. It was inevitable that you were unsure how to even get started with it, and you were stuck to doing the usual, running missions and growing closer to the townsfolk. 

Until he came.

“Tomo, who’s this?”

Your brother always came back on his adventures alone, exhausted and arms only for you. It was a shock when he came along with a hand around another boy's shoulder, grin wider as he presented you to his companion.

His friend had white hair, tied back in a small ponytail and blotchy red on one side of his bangs. His eyes were unusually wide, taking in every sight he could. It reminded you of your brother when he was younger, curiosity straying him further and further away from you. His clothing was comfortable and baggy on his figure, an adorable smile adorning his face when he turned to face you. He was younger than your brother no doubt, close to your age perhaps…?

“Y/n, meet Kazuha.”

[infinitxes]

Anonymous said:

Please forgive me if this was already asked or repetitive in your ask box but i just wanna add a quick question: So regarding Gojo and the whole touch/vulnerability thing, isn't he like at the same time looking for a connection but also being afraid of it? Also i think that there are people who do sleep around to cover up the fact that they are lonely but somehow I feel like this is different for him. But issue however Is that maybe this whole thing is way too normalized into our society, i don't know how much in Japan but yeah, on the contrary whenever i try to picture Gojo sleeping around... I just... Can't? Like it doesn't go in my mind, it's like this ain't Gojo, it doesn't look like him and also how his whole thing is about being untouchable, let me add that he has a very specific standing in the story that he fights against. I think Gojo probably wouldn't want to get humans involved or be involved with them that might cause a potential threat in the future and if I'm being real, one night stands don't always leave a good aftertaste, it would leave him feeling more lonely than he already is so using that as a way to cover up loneliness is a pretty bad idea. He's also quite busy, i think he doesn't do anything without a reason. I don't know what he could have been doing between some time after Geto left but i imagine he was going on missions and being more occupied than ever which wouldn't be surprising honestly.

But yeah, he just doesn't look like a character written where sex and romance go well imto his arc, i know the author likes to troll left and right but I'm certain he's serious with the way he writes Gojo and his nuances. If you'd like to add something, I'd gladly read.

So regarding Gojo and the whole touch/vulnerability thing, isn't he like at the same time looking for a connection but also being afraid of it? 

Yup. My headcanon is that Satoru didn’t have a very affectionate childhood, and certainly didn’t have many friends growing up. This upbringing consequently leads into his lifelong trend of seeking connection and intimacy. However, his lack of experience around closeness also means that it’s all very novel to him, which explains his baseline uncertainty. Taking his experiences into account, there’s ample reason to understand why he might have every reason to be wary of getting close as well. He’s lost too many people, and he’s hyper-aware of how any vulnerability could get him killed (I’m sure this lesson was also hammered into him from a young age). 

it would leave him feeling more lonely than he already is so using that as a way to cover up loneliness is a pretty bad idea. 

Using this method to quell the desire for distraction and connection isn’t sustainable for anyone. It would definitely exacerbate one’s existing feelings of loneliness, because while meeting new people would be effective in bringing about a temporary high, it would also serve to contrast the subsequent isolation and make it all the more poignant. 

That said, I don’t think it’s entirely relevant since I just don’t see it as a ‘Satoru’ method of coping. I absolutely despise the way people characterise him as a playboy/fratboy, not going to lie! Canon shows us that while he does like to tease, he’s ultimately respectful and tactful when need be. 

If we take post-Suguru Satoru into account- if anything, I’d find it more believable that he would have isolated himself to a greater degree; as a way of keeping himself safe and protecting himself from further harm, and also as a way of self-punishment in order to cope with his rampant guilt. 

That he overworks himself is how I write him on this blog!