thevulpinehero1 - Tumblr blog

[thevulpinehero1]

All my commission slots are full, so time to go to work!

[thevulpinehero1]

Opening Commissions for a bit.

Only 3 slots for now.

If you want samples of my writing, check out my Ao3 account. In terms of professional credentials, I also wrote the official DLC campaign for the 100% Orange Juice - Waruda Prison Break pack. I don't open comms too often, so if you're wanting a story written, hit me up. I specialise in 100% OJ content, plus Touhou I guess, but enquire for other things or original settings.

[thevulpinehero1]

Two new chapter updates (which I lumped together into one post because posting on social media somehow takes more energy than writing thousands of words).

Art by Riloyoy

First, we have Perfect Recipe Chapter 23, where Saki sits Reika down after rescuing her from a certain car-chucking, stealth enabled child, and finally reveals her nature as an altered human. It definitely doesn't lead to Reika developing any more weird conspiracy theories. Definitely. Story link:

Art by @kinoglossia

And in chapter 12 of Girls and [X], we rejoin Aya Shameimaru, who wonders what to do when your new assistant doesn't want to be there and, in fact, hates the living shit out of you, but is too principled to not turn up to work in the morning. Bread is consumed.

Story link:

[thevulpinehero1]

Perfect Recipe Chapter 22

The Perfect Recipe update spree continues, and we actually go back to the plot this time. Reika has gotten herself into hot water with a familiar face, and they're just a little bit above her weight class.

[thevulpinehero1]

Perfect Recipe Chapters 20 and 21

It's been a little while since I updated Perfect Recipe, mostly because I was doing NaNoWriMo and then a little bit of background work and then cooling off so my brain doesn't dribble out of my ears. But we now have Perfect Recipe Chapter 20, wherein Reika is ensnared by the mystery of the disappearing croissant!

And, because you can't have a Perfect Recipe chapter without a Cuddle Puddle chaser, we have chapter 21, where Sham asks one of the great questions of our time and, unfortunately, receives an answer.

[thevulpinehero1]

Sorry for going quiet over the past couple months, October was kind of an accident but I didn't write any fanfic in November because I was doing NaNoWriMo!

I managed a full 50k of Mao being a tiny lesbian gremlin and I am super jazzed about it. Got some behind the scenes stuff coming up in December and I'll need a little time to cool off from WriMo, but I'm intending to get some fic done soon.

[thevulpinehero1]

someone: hey I noticed this thing you did in your writing!

me, kicking my feet up flirtatiously: oh??? do you want to hear my thoughts on why I did that? do you want a play-by-play of the language choices in every related sentence? do you want an exhaustive breakdown of The Themes???

[thevulpinehero1]

Not sure where to put this, but I recently decided to transcribe the entire unhinged yandere rant from Adachi and Shimamura after rereading the series, so here's 1.5k words of a likeable if emotionally unstable character in a mostly fluffy slice of life romcom doing a double backflip off the deep end.

 “Adachi, slow down –”

“I don’t want you having fun without me! Or holding hands with some other girl – just me! I want you to be with me! I wanted to take you to a festival myself! I wanted to be there while you were smiling and having fun! That’s what I wanted! My head hurts so much because

I’ve been thinking about you nonstop and losing my mind and… I was waiting for you to call! Why don’t you ever call me or start a conversation? Why does it always have to be me? Don’t you… don’t you care about me even a little? Nothing? Not even a bit? Just friends? Just regular friends? I don’t want to be regular friends – just one step above that! That’s all I want… Shimamura, what do you want me to do? Well? Shimamura, are you listening? Really listen. How do you feel when you hear my voice? Do you feel something? I want you to feel something, anything, even just comfort. That’s what I want. Is that so wrong, Shimamura?! Because it’s you! You’re the one I want! I don’t want anyone else or need anyone else – I only need you! Is it really so selfish to want one measly step? Just one! I don’t care about anyone else – I don’t want them around – so why do you? Just come find me and be with me and stay with me and don’t leave! I don’t want anyone being with you except me. I want to be there with you, so just let me!

Who even is she? I don’t know her. I don’t want you to turn into someone I don’t know! I want to know everything about you; I don’t want you to keep anything from me. I hate not knowing because it hurts! It hurts so much, Shimamura… I’d ask you to hang out, but I wanted to take you to a festival. I wanted to go with you, but you went with her! Are you hanging out with her? Where are you right now? Are you with her, Shimamura? Shimamura, are you listening? It’s like I’ve been talking to a brick wall this whole time. Normally you talk a lot more. Why? What’s different? Am I different? Yeah, I must be. I can tell. But I want to know… I want to know about you so bad, it’s messing me up. I don’t want to be apart from you… I want to be with you all the time… I don’t care where we are as long as we’re together… But I haven’t seen you and I miss you but if we met up right now I think I’d cry… I’m already crying… I keep wondering who she is and what she is to you… Are you still listening? Would you rather be with her than with me? Am I not good enough? What part of me isn’t good enough? I’ll work on it, so just tell me… I’ll fix it, I swear, so please just tell me… I want to know… You’re really special to me, you know that? Even if someone else was exactly like you in every way – but they’re not, so it doesn’t matter! Just forget all that! It has to be you! I want us to get along, but it’s just… I want to talk about more than just this, but I can’t stop thinking about it… I mean, you were smiling! I don’t want you smiling at anyone who isn’t me! It sucks, you know? Don’t you ever feel like that? Have you ever had a crush? Do you have feelings for someone? Or anyone at all? Do you know what love is? Sometimes I get scared, wondering why you stay with me. I mean, we’re friends, aren’t we? I think we’re at least friends. Do you think we’re friends? Does it… Hhhnn… Shimamura, say something. Let me hear your voice. Talk about me… I want you to understand me better than… better than anyone. I want to know you, and I want you to know me. I want you to be my number one, and I want to be yours… but… whenever something bad happens, I feel like I’m gonna break down… because it never feels like… I don’t know… like you cherish me? ‘Cherish’ is a weird word, but… but I want you to cherish me! I want to be cherished! Don’t treat me the same as everyone else – just a tiny bit special is all! Do you ever even think about me? We haven’t seen each other all summer, but… have you thought about me at least once? Because I’ve been thinking about you the whole time! Just you! Nothing but you! So I want you to… think about me, too… Not that we’re the same… I know I’m different… but I still keep hoping… I try to stop it, but… even when you… betray me like this… I still want to talk to you on the phone… But now look at how it’s turned out… and there’s nothing I can do… I don’t know what to do, Shimamura. Shimamura? The call’s still connected, right?

We’re still connected? But you’re so far away, and I miss you. I want to see you in person, and see you smile… I want you to stroke my hair and tell me it’ll be okay… Where are you right now? Where? Are you with someone? Is it her? Who is she? I keep asking you – is it that big of a secret? Are you close with her? Closer than me and you? I don’t want that! I don’t want anyone to be closer than me! I don’t want that… Tell me I’m wrong! I need to hear it! Because I think about you all the time! Is that not enough? Not good enough? If you need more than this, then what do I have to do? I don’t know the answer! I keep thinking about it, but I only ever screw up, so just tell me what you want me to be and I’ll try my best, I promise. Truth is, I don’t really care about the other girl. The real problem is that I miss you and I need to make a change, Shimamura. I get that, really… Hey, Shimamura, what are you thinking right now? Am I being weird? Acting crazy? Tell me about you. Talk to me. Chase me. I’m the one who always has to do the work! Me, me, me! This is what happens when the friendship is a one-way street! I’m falling apart, so I need you to meet me in the middle. Do you hate me now? You don’t hate me, do you? Please don’t hate me. I don’t want that. I don’t want you to hate me. I want – I want you to love me. Someone please love me… but I want it to be you… Do you hate me? Like my mom does? Are you going to stop talking to me now? Pretend I’m invisible? What do you want me to say? How do I get you to notice me? Grow wings and fly? Jump up and down? Hold your hand? Even if I tried, nothing ever seems to work… so what was I supposed to do all this time? How do I make it so nobody… Shimamura, please, I want to hear your voice… Say something… Reassure me… I just don’t want you to smile at anyone else. Smile at me! ME! My head hurts… and my stomach hurts… I’ve been agonising over this for so long – why didn’t you ever call me? Why didn’t you tell me? I want to know… I want to know about you… My feelings are all jumbled up now and I keep talking in circles, but I can’t help it. I mean, you’re all I ever think about, Shimamura… You’re all I’ve ever cared about and you’re all I ever will care about. I cherish you… I want to cherish you. I can’t not cherish you… so please just notice that I exist, okay?! I need you to notice me, Shimamura… I don’t want you thinking about other girls. I don’t want that… Are you going to hang out with her again? Where will you go with her? Downtown? To somewhere I’ve already been with you?! Don’t do that! Don’t replace me! Don’t replace our memories together! Will it be any different if you go with her? Will you see different things? No, no, NO! I don’t want that either! You have to be with me, and we have to share the same things… Feel the same things… You’re acting so weird! No, I know. I’m the one being weird.

But I can’t help it… I can’t get you out of my head… You’re always there, Shimamura… Shimamura… Shima...mura… Hhhnn...nnn...hic… Shimamura… Shimamura… Hhh...ghhck...nng… Shimamura? I want… Shimamura… Shimamura… Shimamura… All I want is you… That’s all I want… so please… I’m begging you, Shimamura… Please, just… Shimamura…”

(I actually had to add a paragraph spacers there because of Tumblr's formatting rules, but originally it was a full rant, uninterrupted by paragraphs)

[thevulpinehero1]

Whoops, ended up taking an unplanned social media break because I was writing private requests for friends. Also I slipped into reading mode and ended up shotgunning 30+ books in roughly two and a half weeks

[thevulpinehero1]

[thevulpinehero1]

purge of 2002? of 2012? what ARE those?

Oh, how quickly the past is forgotten. 

They are part of the reason A03 is a thing now. Not the whole reason, but part of it. 

The Great Purges of 2002 and 2012 are when ff.net got a wild hair up their ass about THINK OF THE CHILDREN and nuked any fic posted on there that was explicit. Thousands upon thousands of nc-17 smutfics were lost.

It’s what led to the creation of alternate hosting sites for smutty fic…AdultFanfiction was the one I went to…but thousands of fics would never be recovered. 

[thevulpinehero1]

Ahhhhhhhhhh... Had some health issues over the last few days that have stopped me from being able to really focus on anything. ;.; I hate losing writing time like that... Hopefully nothing like that crops up during NaNoWriMo

[thevulpinehero1]

Gwatch: Mobile Suit Gundam '79 Ep 3

Time for episode three. Warning, spoilers within!

The Gundam and its two little brothers

In the first half of this episode, we're treated to some slower scenes as the cast settle into their new positions on the ship, giving rations to the rescued civilians and generally taking care of business. Fraw Bow confirms that Amuro is indeed smelly and brings him fresh clothes, Amuro lets Bright live rent-free inside his head, and Sayla Mass talks smack to Bright because she apparently just talks smack to everybody. We are introduced to some worrying news: Bright, acting captain of the spaceship that goes through space and is currently in space at this moment in time, has never been in space before. Great. Wonderful. Bodes well for the future.

We are introduced to an interesting concept, though: when she learns that Bright grew up on Earth, Sayla sarcastically(?) calls him 'one of the elite'. A running theme of almost every Gundam series is a conflict between people living on Earth and people living in space colonies, but the reason tends to differ between series, and I get mixed up between them. Maybe she's hinting at the idea that folks on Earth are surrounded by Earth's bounty of natural resources, and thus are more affluent -- or the idea that being spaceborn (or a 'spacenoid' as it's sometimes called in the series) is a social stigma of some kind.

While it's not necessarily related, I'm somewhat reminded of Becky Chamber's Wayfarer series, taking place in the far future; humankind, weakest in position among the civilised races of space, were forced to abandon Earth en masse and have adapted by becoming an ultra economical species who spend their entire lives in spaceships, religiously recycling and letting no resource go to waste, even eating bugs that other sentients turn their noses up at. I do kind of like the idea of a future humanity who've learned their lesson.

Meanwhile, Char has requested reinforcements, but is dismayed to only get two Zakus instead of the three he asked for. Here we learn that Zeon is no longer overflowing with resources, and it too has been taxed by the war effort; while the Earth Federation has been and will be on the back foot for the time being, Zeon's powers are not unlimited. Even the ship delivering Char's supplies is so old he's surprised to see it still in service.

We can also infer that, despite his fearsome skills as a mobile suit operator, Char's reputation in Zeon might not be that great -- the man delivering them, Gadem, immediately jokes that he must have screwed up. Char's uncertain position in Zeon's political environment will be, let's say, a running theme.

After Mirai (in a surprising moment of bloodthirst) suggests they attack pre-emptively while Char is supplying, the White Base holds a vote. Most are in favour, but Bright tellingly waits until Amuro casts his vote in support before calling it. Of course, Amuro is the only real fighting force they have, so the vote is an essentially meaningless show of democracy if he says no; if they kill or confine him to force obedience, they have no pilot and the show cannot go on.

Thanks to Amuro teaching Ryu (trained soldier, core fighter pilot) not to attack when the sun is in his eyes and maybe position so that the enemy has to do that instead, they manage to land a few good shots on the supply ship. But it's not long before the Red Comet comes out to play.

Char Aznable, about to deliver an ass-kicking

Amuro still has absolutely no shot of beating Char in a fair fight, and gets solidly whupped. He runs out of ammo for his bazooka and even attempts the famed bazooka yeet for the very first time (one of my favourite SRW30 animations, incidentally), but to no avail; Char, having realised that the Zaku's weapons aren't really doing much, resorts to just smacking the shit out of the Gundam with punches and kicks. It's been pointed out before that this is absolutely the correct play; even if he can't damage the machine, the knocks and g-forces will eventually take out the pilot, who is currently by far the weakest link in the suit. However, the White Base's advance on the valuable supplies means he has to prioritise supporting his own mothership instead of going for the kill.

Meanwhile, the inexperience of the White Base's crew starts to show; Hayato doesn't even know how to pass a message to the bridge, Ryu can't be contacted because he forgot to turn on his comms, and that means they can't fire the main cannons at the enemy without hitting him. Even Bright gets in on the panicking action as the battle goes on. But Kai and Hayato launch in the Guntank, a shiny new toy that they both sort of know how to use.

The Guntank's first outing is a success and the supply ship is downed, but the Zakus have already been evacuated. Gadem, the supply ship captain, tries to 1v1 the Gundam in revenge; while he is indeed a superior pilot to Amuro and gets in a powerful shoulder tackle when Amuro attacks too quickly, the Gundam ultimately just tanks him, just like it's tanked everything so far. Amuro is forced to withdraw, with no weapons and no chance of handling Char; the Red Comet decides to prioritize salvaging what supplies he can, musing about his enemy. He's already sussed out that he's being beaten by the enemy weapons, and the soldiers piloting them fight like amatuers.

After some more headbutting with Bright, the episode ends as the White Base pulls closer to Luna II. But just because they're near an allied base doesn't mean Char isn't out to get them, and tensions are already beginning to heighten within the crew.

[thevulpinehero1]

Story Post: Girls & [X] Chapter 11

Art by @kinoglossia

Just a short lil chapter trying out the whole 'oilfire' dynamic people are talking about for myself.

[thevulpinehero1]

REIMARI REIMARI REIMARI

[thevulpinehero1]

I feel like it might be fun to do an oilfire story since folks have been talking about it right now, but I'm way behind on newhus and people's impressions of Sanae don't quite match mine from what I can see

[thevulpinehero1]

Gwatch: Mobile Suit Gundam 0079 Ep 2

Time for Episode 2. After a high-octane first episode, EP 2 has some minor administrative stuff to take care of in regards to laying out the situation the protagonists will be in. As before, be wary of spoilers.

Pictured: the Captain of the White Base asking a sensible question about war machines that would later be almost exclusively piloted by people too young to legally drink

Let's talk about Zakus. People love Zakus. They're cute little cyclops guys, and they get totally manhandled basically from start to finish whenever they appear which gives them underdog points, but it's worth noting that at this point the story goes out of its way to establish that even a Zaku, the punching bag mook suit of future Gundam lore, is a huge threat.

Char reports losing two Zakus, and his superior cannot believe his ears. These are the shaky beginnings of mobile suits, and the Earth Federation doesn't really have any horses in that race yet. They're still trying to fight off Zakus with tanks and planes, and the Zakus are as far above conventional military vehicles as the Gundam is above the Zakus.

Two Zakus murdered entire crowds of people. They're stated to have wiped out almost every single military officer and engineer that was supposed to staff the White Base. They're directly responsible for the ongoing crisis that the protagonists experience throughout the series; those two random guys Amuro yolo'd in a suit he could barely get to stand up were more effective in stalling the Federation war effort than almost anything that follows.

And they sort've need to be that effective, because the audience needs to be sold on the premise of mechs as a weapon of war, subject to the logistics and concerns of the battlefield. Previous shows in the genre have been more super robot types, so they got a free pass, but the Zaku needs to show why you wouldn't just use a tank or more conventional vehicle, and that threat level has been established early on (even if it's mostly brushed over; as mecha fans will admit, the question "but why does it have to be a giant robot?" doesn't have any good practical answers outside of it being cooler. Even if you ignore things like the square-cube law and the difficulty in scaling up a humanoid body, even if you ignore how complex mecha would be in comparison to a tank loaded with the same armaments, the simple fact is that humanoid is not a particularly effective shape to be on a modern battlefield.)

Sayla Mass shortly after slapping a random civilian who has understandably elected to get himself away from an active battlefield instead of roaming around looking for survivors, then telling him he should be left behind to die instead of being evacuated. Her sweater has become part of her skin; she's a Na'vi from the neck down.

Sayla's an interesting character who basically never appears in other Gundam shows, despite the fact that she'd be pretty relevant to a couple of them and the series being quite happy to include previous major characters in later instalments. I forget why this is the case -- I think it might have had something to do with her VA? -- but either way, she's one of the few who doesn't return in any meaningful role, which means we can only enjoy her here.

Part of what makes her fun to watch is that, when she's not just randomly slapping potentially traumatised survivors of a military attack, she's generally pretty effective. Within minutes of us being told her name, she's pulled a gun on Char, who's snuck into the colony on foot to do a bit of spying (which is honestly something of a habit for him as the Gundam series goes on). He almost immediately disarms her because he's Char and also extremely effective when he wants to be, but hey.

Char Aznable playing Touhou in his off time. Seriously, this guy dodges lasers like it's going out of style.

As Char makes his escape with the valuable data, we're treated to what will become a fairly common sight: Amuro getting out the beam rifle and just kind of yeeting all of his ammunition at nothing in particular. This time, he has excuses; he's aiming at human targets in a mobile suit, and he's never really killed a human in cold blood before. He also pulls off a couple of neat shots where he hits two missiles mid-flight. But I remember the amount of times 'oh no I fired wildly with my rifle and didn't hit anything, and now I have no ammo!' became a complicating factor becoming something of a joke to me.

We're then treated to the first ever battle between Amuro Ray and Char Aznable, which ends up as more or less a stalemate. Make no mistake: Amuro gets completely manhandled by Char, who's an accomplished ace pilot with five battleship kills to his name. But the Gundam is so OP for this point in the series that, even though Amuro can't really touch him, Char can't really capitalise on the opportunity since the Gundam can tank his weapons head on. In the end, their skirmish is a mutual loss. Amuro loses to a pilot. Char loses to a suit.

But Char walks away with a head full of the Federation's military secrets and a much better understanding of the Gundam's threat level, and he has supplies and reinforcements on the way...