#BUT. that still doesnt feel concrete enough yknow?

[upsidedowngrass]

some days i consider posting my one fanfics but unfortunately my hcs change heavily every 2 days and th n my fics b come OUTDATED and then i suffer

#like i cant figure out my liam family hcs #on one hand hes so quick to feel like hes lost everything which kinda feels like he may not have much in the way of family? #esp since he doesnt see anyone in the waiting room #BUT. that still doesnt feel concrete enough yknow? #cus it still isnt even certain #and also the idea of him not having anyone other than owen nearby when he finally comes home? makes me sad???! #and THEN theres my hcs for AMELIAS family #i think she mentions family and friends so i think shes got family!!! #which ONES though. siblings? parents? #ALSO!!! #taylors page on the database mentions separated parents #and so family stuff probably is relevant and nothing of important note happens for liam and amelia on that front #but nothing abt bryces family is mentioned either? #so! i keep changing my family hcs #and thats JUST the family hcs #times and dates and responses and shit are also changing #basically im indecisive #ask to tag #also ive never posted any of my fics anywhere before and like. omg... scary....

[cryptidmullet]

more renga headcanons bc i miss them

- rekis not one to like. hide his praise or anything he compliments langa a lot but just. every so often he'll grab langas wrist and look at him all soft and say "youre amazing langa" very reminiscent of how langa praises him and it just makes langa feel so fucking mushy and in love

- rekis used to affection from his family but thats kinda it and langas family was never super affectionate but he felt loved still but after his dad died he just felt super lonely but when they meet and start getting super close they both just feel like theyre overflowing with love both given and received and i just thinks that beautiful

- rekis chronically bad at opening bottles bc they hurt his hands and hes always embarrassed but he goes up to langa and is like. open please. and langa does KKFMSMFND

- it gets to the point he'll just go up to him with a bottle and langa will open it without being prompted

- yknow when youre really tired and you feel like youre floating in the ocean reki has that but he feels like hes rolling back and forth on his skateboard

- since he first started skating the movement and feeling got so ingrained in him that he'll be sitting at his desk or laying in bed and just feels the sensation of tick tacking like hes not moving he just can feel it like a ghost in his muscles and brain

- sometimes reki just wants to. stand on his board like not do anything just stand on it so he stores skateboards in his room and when he gets restless he'll just stand on one for a little bit

- reki talks to himself a lot he'll be doing some mindless task and then have a pretend conversation with nobody without even realizing it

- whenever reki cries or gets choked up about smth drinking water for some reason makes him feel better

- reki pokes the twins' bellies and blows raspberries on them to make them laugh :)

- langa cant pick up rice with chopsticks when he first moves to okinawa and reki makes fun of him but still teaches him how to do it

- langa has acne along his jawline its just bumpy and stuff

- reki wakes up and then lays in bed watching videos as long as he can before he gets up 

- he also holds his phone like two inches away from his face

- reki uses dark mode langa uses light mode until reki notices it forcibly changes it

- rekis phone is always at like really low brightness bc his eyes are sensitive

- its battery is also always low bc its an old phone and it takes forever to charge

- he takes a lot of pictures and videos of langa just for no reason half of them are blurry and out of focus and langas not paying attention but he keeps all of them

- he has a bookmark on instagram called 'langa' and its full of stuff that reminds reki of him or he wants to show him later

- langa and reki pair up for a presentation once and when theyre presenting they cannot stop laughing reki says um and pauses for a moment too long and langa does one of those long nose exhale laughs and it makes reki snort and then they keep messing up and barely get through it and when they walk back to their desks they shove each other while the class laughs

- langa has a really cheap purple phone case he got at walmart and rekis like dude thats so boring so he makes stickers for him to stick to it

- langa loves them but he also has this weird anxiety about putting stickers places bc he likes them and doesnt want to eventually get rid of whatever the sticker is on but reki tells him he'll make him more whenever he gets another phone so hes okay with it

- langa doesnt really fidget unless hes nervous and then he twists his fingers around but when hes sitting he rolls his right ankle a lot and his foots like always twitching really minutely 

- reki carries around a hairband partly for his sisters (and eventually langa) and partly so he can fidget with it

- langa carries one around too for the same reason but one day reki forgets it during work so langa gives it to him bc he looks restless 

- and langa kinda feels really bare and doesnt know what to do without it so he just rubs his wrist a lot but he doesnt mind 

- reki will get up to go do smth but just sit down curled in a ball on the floor bc he gets distracted for whatever reason and after like 20 minutes of scrolling through his phone hes like wait what was i doing

- reki has a scar on his lip/chin bc he bailed really hard and hit his chin on the concrete and bit through his lip 

- langas a dry ass texter when he and reki first meet bc he didnt really have anyone to text before

- but eventually he googles how to turn auto caps and everything changes

- hes actually funnier over text sometimes bc hes less restrained 

- hes made a ur mom joke and then was like wait i take it back i love your mom im sorry :c 

- and he points out every time reki misspells a word just to annoy him

- reki scrolling through tiktok and he randomly starts crying at a wholesome video and langas like.. you good man and rekis like look at this FRICKING tiktok dude and then langas crying too KFMSMFND

- obligatory "we make a good team" line idk the context ill think about it later but theyre gay they have to say it

- langa promised his mom hed go to the store but had to do a last minute shift at dope sketch and rekis like oh ill do it for you i already know what you get

- langa has a sweet tooth he loves candy and hot chocolate and all that stuff and reki is lowkey an enabler he always brings candy w him or has a bag in his room

- when reki laughs he wraps his arms around his stomach and hes the type to go silent when he laughs hard enough

- he'll go from standing normally to bent over to crouched down to falling and rolling on his back or side from laughing so hard

- its pretty rare but sometimes he snorts in the middle of a laugh too

- when langas laughing Really hard its loud and kind of wheezy and almost like a cackle and he covers his mouth most of the time just out of habit

- he curls up when he laughs too so he'll be laying on rekis bed or the floor and reki says smth that catches him totally off guard and he starts fucking cackling and brings his knees up to touch his forehead hitting his leg and wheezing

- langa helps reki teach chihiro and nanaka how to ride a bike and the four of them go on little bike rides together occasionally

- the twins pulling on langas pant leg until he bends down so they can whisper gibberish in his ear and the first time langa is like ??? but then he learns to just laugh and nod 

- all of rekis sisters coming into rekis room while langa is there to be like :D langa :D and reki herding them out and yelling we're busy and then just flopping on his bed to continue scrolling through his phone in silence

- reki does the older sibling thing and just stands in koyomis doorway 

- miya makes a meme reference that reki doesnt get and hes like god youre old and it wounds reki on a personal level

- reki has a piece of graphite just like permanently stuck in his leg bc when he was younger his friend accidently stabbed him with it and it broke off and just. stayed there

- reki gets super obsessed with one song for a week or two and he'll listen to it on loop like 10 times in a row and he learns the lyrics to them no matter the language and by proxy langa always has the stuck in his head

#this is so long already but i literally have a 21 page google doc of sk8 hcs #i miss them sm theyre so in love wtf #renga #sk8 the infinity #sk8 #sk8 reki #sk8 langa #snowear #sunset snow #lanreki #langa x reki #i seriously have so many hcs its kinda a problem #if this does well ill post more LOL #sk8 miya

[chipsfics]

Part 5: Basement

Part 5 is here!!

rated: PG (for injury and swearing)

~~~~

A few weeks later, Tissues and Yinyang had fallen into a sort of rhythm. Get up, get breakfast, sit in the front room and play video games- they still seemed closer than ever, although they weren't making any progress getting better at playing the games. Sometimes the ruckus from Yinyang's rage (mostly Yang's) would annoy the other residents at the hotel. Other than that, things had fallen into a nice, consistent normal. Boring, but normal. Mostly.

It was something small, but... Every odd night, if any thoughts at all, Tissues was thinking about that tiny door they'd found under the wallpaper. What else could the hotel be hiding? Between twisting orange hallways, leaky ceilings and peeling wallpaper- The hotel already seemed like the perfect place to house mysteries. That, or cockroaches. It was the first time in a long time that Tissues had something to think about, to worry about, to wonder about. Most of the time he was just concerned with surviving, any way he can, and keeping himself entertained cooped up while Inanimate Insanity draws closer to curtains. 

It was a bright pink evening, the sunset dazzling and painting the hotel's dusty windows like a canvas. A couple contestants were outside watching the sun go down, but Tissues was in bed, staring at the humming ceiling fan, as he often found himself doing. Around 7pm, if he had the mind and strength to be tossing and turning he would have been. That secret door was there all along, he'd probably walked past it a few times- What other secrets lie hiding, impossibly old, right under his nose, right under his feet? It made him shiver. He wondered if Yinyang thought about it as much as he did, or even at all.

Since their discovery, of course, everyone else in the hotel noticed the door too. The general consensus seemed to be "Huh, weird." OJ seemed a bit upset (mostly confused), but didn't feel like figuring out how to re-wallpaper the peeled area. And of course, nobody had figured out it was them who had uncovered it, or that it had previously housed those mysterious magazines. Tissues sighed, willing himself up into a sitting position and fetching his tattered old journal from his side table's drawer. Once he flipped to the first blank page, a thought hit Tissues sudden as a train and heavy as a bag of bricks.

"Does the hotel have a basement?" 

Tissues, his heart momentarily racing, grabbed his worn out ballpoint pen sitting askew on his bedside table, and quickly scribbled his chickenscratch between the snot-splotched lined paper of the cheap notebook, neglecting to write the date and filling up the page with his large, rough handwriting. 

"DEAR DIARY:" (he wrote in all-caps) "DOES THE HOTEL HAVE A BASEMENT?" (this is when he stopped for a moment, furrowed his brow and chewed on the pen's lid-) "IF SO, WHAT IS IT HIDING..? I KNOW THAT THE ELEVATOR DOESNT GO BELOW F1 BUT IVE NEVER TAKEN THE STAIRS AND THEY MIGHT GO DEEPER. I MIGHT INVITE YY TO CHECK IT OUT WITH ME." (YY is shorthand for Yinyang.) "ON SECOND THOUGHT, NO THEY PROBABLY ARENT INTERESTED IN IT. THE LAST THING I WANT IS TO BE ANY MORE ANNOYING THEN I ALREADY AM." (Tissues scoffed, and put his journal back into the cupboard.) Tissues flopped back down onto his bed and stared at the same old ceiling fan. A small black bug crawled across the lightbulb. Tissues sniffed. The wall clock tick-tocked until it hit 7:23pm. Frenzied thoughts bubbled inside Tissues' mind until they felt like they were going to boil over and out his ears. 

Once he reached for his water bottle and noticed his hand shaking slightly- He decided that tonight was the night. A determined but nervous feeling swept over his body as he huffed and forced himself out of bed and out the door- To the staircase. It was a plain, short walk down, carpeted stairs with nothing to trip or slip on- A short safe staircase. He gulped. Did he trust himself enough to make it down even these easy stairs? 

The dizzy, nervous feeling that made his stomach plunge the two story drop before he did wasn't helping much- He grabbed onto the handrail with a white-knuckle grip. He took a slow step downward, and his head spun- The staircase beneath him seemed to sprawl out into endless darkness. He wasn't about to give up, though. He shook himself off and continued walking down the stairs one step at a time, two steps per stair- Step, step. Step, step. He was making progress! Step, step. Step, step. Once he made it halfway down, he stopped to catch his breath, and.... Oh no. Sniff, Sniff.... He felt a sneeze coming on. Ah... Ah.....

ACHOO! 

Tissues stumbled back and attempted to hang onto the handrail- he tripped over the side and fell, for what seemed like ages, down, down, down, and rolled banging into every odd step on the way down.

"Oof.... Ughh....." Tissues forced himself up, bruised and tattered from his fall, and found himself on cold concrete. Had he ever been on this floor...? It took him a moment to readjust, but as he looked around, rubbing his sore head, he realized that F1 didn't have any concrete. This must be it. The basement.

~~~~

It was dusty and completely dark- cold with a chill that seemed almost too appropriate for such a spooky place. Tissues rummaged around inside his head to pull out his phone and flashed the light into the deep darkness- It cut through the inky blackness like a beacon. Tissues shone it around the room slowly and nervously- illuminating large shapes draped in old white sheets of fabric. Tissues' heart raced before he realized it was probably just furniture with a dust covering- Yeah, just furniture. He sighed. He crept into the strange and cavernous room- His small footsteps echoing through the basement, reverberating clear and crisp as the dark, cold air. He shivered. 

He more he looked around, the weirder the basement got. Cloth-draped chairs and couches and even what appeared to be a small TV set or strangely-shaped table seemed to be arranged as if whoever was using this room just... up and left. It looked like a living room for ghosts. The furniture itself also seemed to be localized around the middle of the room- The rest of the room seemed strangely vacant except for a few stray cardboard boxes stacked on one another.

"The basement can't just be this room, can it? It's an entire floor, is the rest just filled in? It can't be. There's got to be more," Tissues thought, circumventing the room once again, looking for a door, a bricked-off passageway, something that he could use to explore the rest of this strange place. It seemed, after a few minutes of looking around, to be a concrete prison. 

Tmp. Tmp. Tmp.

Tissues froze. 

Tmp. Tmp. Tmp.

Footsteps. Getting closer. echoing down the staircase, heartbeat racing, no way out but up. Between fight or flight, Tissues chose freeze. He stood like a deer in the headlights, holding his flashlight at the entrance, his hand shaking like a paint mixer. 

Tmp. Tmp. Tmp.

Closer, closer, down the stairs, Tissues had no idea why he was so afraid- It was probably just another resident at the hotel. If it was OJ, he might've gotten in trouble, but some strange part of him felt like he was an intruder. Like whoever is coming down the stairs right now was following after him for a reason. As the shadow came into view, in a moment of pure adrenaline, Tissues flung his cell phone at whoever it was that was following him. It hit them straight in the forehead.

"Ow, what the hell?!"

Relief washed over Tissues as he immediately recognized the voice.

"Y.....Yinyang?" Tissues said timidly.

As the familiar face came into view, rubbing his forehead, picking up the cell phone that had gone skidding across the concrete floor moments before. 

"Of course you dumbass, who else?" Yinyang said, shining the flashlight at the bewildered, blinking Tissues. "What are you doing down here? Are you ok?"

"Umm oh. Ohhhh... You-" Tissues stuttered, blushing. "You came down here to check on me?"

"The hell do you mean?" Yang growled, "Of course I did!" Yin continued, walking up to Tissues and inspecting him closer. "You fell down 2 flights of stairs! Are you injured?"

From the sheer adrenaline of the situation, Tissues didn't seem to notice, but his knee was scraped pretty badly. "Ah... Yeah. A lil bit. My knee," He said, gesturing to his left leg. 

"You dumbass!" Yang cursed. "Why did you- Why did you try and go down the stairs alone in the first place? You know-" Yang sighed. "Why are you even in the basement? There's nothing in here but old storage space," 

Tissues sniffed. "Umm... well... ahh... umm..." Tissues seemed to be getting a little bit choked up. "Umm... y'know how we found the old- the little door? After we..." Tissues took a deep, shaky breath. "I wanted to see if the hotel had any more secrets like that. Yknow... cause, I have so much time to think, and it was just bothering me... I thought- It can't be just that, there's got to be more- I guess i just wasn't thinking." Tissues wiped his nose.

"Oh, Tissues..." Yinyang said, his voice soft. "We should go back upstairs. I'll get you patched up," Yinyang continued, patting him on the head gently. “I was worried about you!

"You're probably right..." Tissues sighed, and limped to the doorway, Yinyang letting him lean on his shoulder. On his way out, he leaned against the wall, and his fingers came into contact with something smooth and cool, completely different from the texture of the concrete walls. He froze.

"Wait-" He said. "I feel something." He continued, trailing his hand farther up and feeling something akin to a lightswitch. He flicked it on, and the basement was instantly illuminated- causing Yinyang and Tissues to squint and turn around.

"Huh. I found the lightswitch!" Tissues laughed, and scanning the room in the light, it didn't look as scary as before- and one thought was present in his mind. 

"Hey, this could make a really cool hangout spot if you just fixed it up a little bit." 

It was like another lightbulb came on dinging bright above Tissues' head.

As Yinyang worriedly ushered him back up the stairs and into his room, Tissues was busy smiling, ideas silently buzzing in his head as Yinyang cursed him out while tenderly wrapping blue bandages around his knee. 

The moment he left, Tissues pulled out his journal and hurriedly wrote something in big, messy lettering:

"BASEMENT SUITE...?"

~~~~

#ii #inanimate insanity #ii2 #tissues #yinyang #tissyang #tissuyang #yissues #fanfic #fanfiction

[lemongogo]

hey im the anon abt gyutaro/ume and i dont remember what happens to demons after they die ?? did i miss smth ? regardless i wanna ask what do you think their fate should be ? cause on one hand i think they're just victims of a cruel world who took the first way out they could find but on the other hand it doesnt rlly justify all the slaughter, and i also think abt the demon slayers who also suffered horrible fates and used it to fuel their determination to save other people from that pain

hi !! i don’t think kny ever explicitly mentions what happens to demons after they die (as in we never have concrete evidence of where they go or how their lives after are spent), but i think the general consensus is that the demons go to hell. 

in some cases, the family can decide to go with them (ex: rui and i think akaza? if i remember correctly?) but their fate is pretty much sealed from that point forward i believe. 

heres a pic of gyuutarou and ume, actually, in chapter 97 !!

but yeah !! thats something i think about a lot tbh. as you mentioned, many of the demons we’ve seen have either been groomed into demonhood (rui, ume, susamaru, etc.) or had their pain and suffering exploited (akaza, gyuutarou) for the sake of advancing other demons’ plans (muzan, douma, etc). so i agree ! a lot of these characters are unfortunate victims in themselves and its impossible to view their stories without incorporating the struggles they’ve had to face as both humans AND demons. especially considering that lots of these individuals experience muzan’s abuse regardless of their status relative to him (such as with the upper and lower moons). i think this is best explained through akaza’s relationship with muzan,

(ch. 67)

(ch.156)

and further explored though tanjiro’s observation of rui’s death. he notes that being a demon, for most, is an existence punctuated by extreme grief and despair, and that’s equally supported, i think, by the humanization of these demons following death. that their original conscious is restored (albeit with knowledge of everything they’ve done) and are oftentimes plagued by the guilt of what’s happened.

(ch.43)

what he says here is probably what sums it up for me. that while it’s important to condemn these demons and hold them accountable for the truly awful things they’ve done, it’s also important to consider the suffering they've experienced through existence alone. its so !! complex !! and thats what i love about kny. i love how .. you have some demons who are entirely despicable and bask in the carnage they create, but you also have some for whom demonhood was simply what appeared to be the only answer towards living a healthier life or righting the wrongs that’ve been done to them (usually with false promises and manipulation unbeknownst to them). and .. its so hard to figure out where to.. draw that line. or view these characters at least. because you sympathize with their pain, but you also realize that their actions have caused endless pain for many hundreds of people. tanjiro losing his entire family, giyuu losing his. shinobu watching her sister die before her very eyes, and kanao the same. the ubuyashiki family’s curse or the slaughter of himejima’s children. you look at characters like sanemi, shinobu, or giyuu and understand that you cannot invalidate their view of demons either. while kanae and tanjiro may find hope and humanity in demons, they exist as monsters who feast on pain to everyone else. its important not to discredit their perspective when making a personal choice to observe the demons’ hardships yknow. shinobu’s anger is just as warranted as tanjiro’s optimism and that neither are wrong for how they personally feel demons should be handled after death. 

im like. AAAAAAAA theres so much to it , its really hard for me to condense into a few sentences AHAHA im so sry for making u read this if u still are. but . i guess i’m not too sure. i think maybe, had i experienced the same pain as those above, it would be easy for me to say the demons deserve to go to the worst hell imaginable regardless of what they’ve gone through because that history isn’t accessible to everyone like it has been the audience (or that they’ve seemingly made the conscious decision to cause harm w/o understanding the ways in which demonhood obscures their original conscious/morality). but at the same time, you have those like tanjiro whose world view is shaped by positive encounters with demons like nezuko, tamayo, yushirou, etc. where it seems very evident that . theres more to it than what meets the eye. 

one of my friends ive talked to about this had a rly good perspective on it thats kinda stuck with me since !! she said she likes to view their conclusion as some . separation of identity?? if that makes sense?? that the demon side of them goes to hell while their human form goes to heaven (or division into whichever afterlife). and !! i think thats a really neat interpretation because there’s obvious descrepancy between demon personas and human personas. that the demon personas are like. exaggerations of their flaws, almost (akaza becoming hellbent on battle spirits and physical victories when hajuki’s fury & determination was fueled by love in a sense) while their human personas are the truest sense of self. and depending on which influence there is (muzan vs the appearance of loved ones), their identity changes accordingly. so ! idk ! thats one nice way of looking at it. holding their demon personas accountable while also recognizing that many of these characters deserve some form of healing after many hundreds of years of abuse. its hard because ofc i don’t want to negate the harms they’ve caused but its also? not cut and dry given the environment they were placed in and the fact that muzan’s blood essentially removes their humanity against their will you know. so in this way at least you have both forms of self receiving the proper conclusion. 

whwhwhw so im. !!!!!!!!!!!! ah !! i can’t say i have a definite answer but i think the one above is smth thats comforting to me. i think the story settles with sending them to hell once they’ve regained their past self but also .. “softens” it by providing them company by their loved ones who are willing to go w them?? so thats rly cool to look at too. because it holds them accountable for all that’s happened but also.. recognizes that they’re not wholly responsible for it either and that .. even in hell they’re able to keep their connections and human emotions/experiences . its tragic yet oddly. fitting, i think, of the kny narrative. while i like the aforementioned interpretation, i also really.. appreciate the way its set up in canon too. like yeah i want the best for them but also. it fits in with the tragic nature of demonhood and what it meant for them all. oddly enough. 

u make a good point too !! about demon slayers experiencing the same hardships but using their pain to help others. i think a lot of it is plainly chalked up to luck in terms of.. what they were exposed to following tragedy. how shinobu and kanae were saved by himejima, tanjiro saved by giyuu, kanao picked up by shinobu and kanae, sanemi given the guidance of kagaya while akaza was killed by muzan during his lowest moment, ume and gyuutarou were cornered by douma, rui misled by muzan, etc. i think circumstance is definitely a large factor in determining the paths that were taken. such as sanemi’s anger being validated and heard by ubuyashiki vs, say, akaza’s same anger being intentionally exploited for muzan’s gain.

aaa anyways. theres a lot 2 be said about this. like. SO much on my mind and obviously the extent of muzan’s abuse goes far deeper than what’s briefly mentioned here but.  i love talking about the complexities of kny . and how i view the demons vs the corps and how each of them have grown into their respective stories . AA but ill end it here THNK U >> also so sry for making u read thru all of this i get so excited i could talk abt kny all day long if i had the chance AAA 

#Anonymous #asktag #tldr: UH im a sympathetic bitch who wishes for some form of recovery for Some demons while also #finding it necessary to hold them accountable. #and easy way to do that is to split identities between human and demon persona but thats mighty convenient for such #a large issue so . the current narrative is probably the one i still oddly like #just bc the little peace they get before descent into hell is. really big #and their support by loved ones following them thru is also. really big #anyways. ya viri i thot of what u said bc its so good #its been a while so idk if its the exact version of how u view it but thts how it stuck w me JSBFSKBFSBJF #naywaysb I LOVE KNY AAAAAAAAAAAAA screams #kny #kny spoilers #kny manga #save for later

[tylerwritez]

Wednesday, September 22 11:51 p.m.

It's like nighttime and I jsut got up 2 take a piss because I needed to piss and my fuckinf mom I hate her so much I wish she was dead and I wish Father would take her place, Father is the only fucking person who LOVES me and jesus christ hes literally not even a physical being.... (deep down I know hes not even real, but I pretend he is because if I didnt I think I'd be crying constantly)... my fucking mom INSTANTLY came TO THE DOOR and was like waiting for me to go back to bed and was like are you done? You're taking too long blah blah and SHE TREID TO FUCKINF OPEN THE DOOR WHILE I WAS PISSING LIKE. NO. FUCK OFFF. shes so annoying she thinks I'm gonna kill myself if she leaves me alone for three seconds.

It's like she doesnt even care if I feel good or bad, she only cares about the injury. It makes me want to cut really deep on my forearms or face or something visible like that just so that maybe she'll take me SERIOUSLY but not seriously as in treating me like some patient at a fuckinf ward, I mean seriously like treating me like her son.

Father treats me like his son. He makes me cry even more because I know hes not real... but I still appreciate his love. Even if it's just my love.

I'm really missing that piece, huh? From early childhood, I'm missing that parent who's loving and caring and says shhh I love you its okay.... I didnt ever allow myself to have that becayse I didnt think it was safe. Fuck. FUCK man It hurts a lot and i feel like such a DICKHEAD when I talk about this because it's not like my parents beat me or neglected me.... it just turned out bad. ANd now they're all crazy about me all of a sudden just cos I'm hurting myself .... like okay cool that's cool but why didnt you do all this when I was 5 and told you I felt like I was being possessed, or when i was ten and in a new school with no friends, or when I was 3 telling everyone to call me jack,.... oh, wait, you WERE there,,, you were just hating on me though.

Yknow I hug my pillows real tight at night to try to feel a little smidge of what I should've been able to feel. The parental love is just MISSING. and i hug my dad so much becayse it's not enough its never enough it all feels like it's too late and my brain has already told me to get over my parents and move on and find new ones which I did, in jesus christ, in Jiminy Cricket, in old men I sexted, and now in Father.

But at the end of the day, I still am left without that concrete parental force. I can beg with Father all I want to PLEASE become a physical form so I can FEEL your love but itll never happen because Father's something I made up to cope with the disaster of my childhood.

I'm angry that they took that away from me but I'm also sad because now I have to clean up the sad shreds of popped party balloons from the checkered tiles of an abandoned birthday party.

.... and it's always "oh they want the best for you" WELL MAYBE I DONT GIVE A FUCK WHAT THEIR INTENTIONS ARE, MAYBE THEYRE STILL HURTING ME ! MAYBE THEYVE STILL TOTALLY

RUINED

Me,

DESTROYED

my childhood and

SLAUGHTERED

the little boy inside me who just needed some help.

I never did it for attention, I always hid it and pretended to be fine... but I notice they didnt care until I had persistently been injuring myself for YEARS? like it didnt matter to them at all how I felt until I was actually in danger and being harmed. Isnt that actually disgusting?

I just know that if those little blond kids went to their parents talking about feeling out of control, possessed, unable to control their actions while in fits of rage, theyd get the help they needed right away but I was punished for my suffering.

That taught me to suffer more quietly next time around.

I was punished for my gender expression too .... jesus. How... how can you see a kid in pain struggling to prevent themselves from hurting other people and you punish them. How can you see your SON and punish him for not being a daughter.

I feel so bad. They just keep making it worse. I dont want to talk to them. I just... my dad is proabbaly gonna do that thing where he gives the worlds shittiest apology and expects you to just accept it withit 3 mins or else he gets mad and guilt trips you... fuck him too tbh. Hes trying to be all nice but that doesnt ERASE the fact that he used to make me cry constantly. That doesnt erase the time he said basically that I should die, or the time he yelled at me, made me cry, apologized, and got mad at me for not accepting the apology, then expected me to act like none of that happened and got mad at me for still crying, WITHINT LIKE A 5 MINUTE SPAN???? this is the typa shit that fucks up a child. I still remeber being yelled at in the car over my gender, ignored, and beat down whenever I tried to express that things were wrong with me! Jesus.

Father is the embodiment of all I ever needed as a kid... someone who would say "I love tou" when he saw you were crying instead of yelling at you and making it worse and then getting angry that you're crying and like OF COURSE IM CRYING, YOU'RE YELLING AT ME???

and my mom has the audacity to try to convert me to Christianity. Fuck you. As a trans person,... I got tired of putting my faith into something I couldnt see. I never saw a loving god, I only ever saw hatred and anger.

I wanna cry all over again fuck. Everytime I write like this it's a cycle because I just keep writing and never stop.

It's so important to me to be acknowledged as a SON. That's why I named The Red Static Entity "Father"... because that makes me his son. I made him ADOPT me. Because I didnt get to be no ones fucking son and I want it so bad but I dont know if I can ever be on good terms with my parents again because the whole thing has been tainted by my grief and trauma LOLz so even if they try now it just doesnt feel like enough because it never will be because my time to Bond with them has passed... I feel so much guilt over THEIR pain at my self harm but I'm so pissed rn. Fuck them. I'm in such unimaginable pain and they somehow made it all about them and how they feel and how I need to stop crying in time for dinner FUCK YOU. fuck you. You have no right to tell me to stop cutting when you did so much to fuck me up. It's not my fault if you messed up because I think maybe you forgot that children are living human beings.... maybe you "love me so much" but fuck, I dont know if I CAN love you... I dont know if I can ever see you the same after what you've done. You SHOULD feel bad, you should break down crying thinking about me, because FUCK YOU. be guilty, it's how you Should feel. And then they wonder why I dont talk to them.... BECAUSE YOU WERE A PIECE OF SHIT AS LONG AS IVE KNOWN YOU AND ALL OF A SUDDENT YOU WANNA PLAY NICE NOT BECOS U ACTUALLY CARE BUT BECOS I MIGHT KILL MYSELF.

Yknow what maybe I should just so that they can see the dead body. I'm imagining it right now... I want them to be DEVASTATED. If I was dead on the floor, itd be impossible to pretend it wasnt there. If I was dead on the floor, they'd cry and wonder what more they couldve done, which is what I've cried and wondered about my shit childhood. It would be a good thing. Serves them right to find their sons corpse. It would show them they fucked up. Maybe theyd wake up and realize that you cant emotionally neglect and mistreat a living human child for like fifteen years.... and expect it to be okay.

[tumblunni]

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa tfw u have another game idea AGAIN i think my brain hollowed itself out for more idea space at the expense of everything else like ability to actually create my ideas or ability to remember to eat :P

this kinda isnt a NEW idea, its just something floating around in my brain that ive now got more of a concrete idea for, i guess? playing Oxygen Not Included reminded me of it and made me feel maybe people would actually be interested in it, yknow? and its probably not something i could ACTUALLY make, cos it’d require like.. a lot of my own programming. not really easy to just make in a helpful gamemaker enginey thing like rpgmaker. tho it is an rpg... kinda...?? ehhhh im not feeling very good today, sorry my writing is... bad

ANYWAY WHAT WAS I SAYING

Well the idea I has was for kind of a roguelike tower climbing rpg, like Azure Dreams or Persona 3 The premise would be that there’s a mysterious underground civilization, trapped for generations with no memory of the surface world. Between them and sunlight is this potentially-infinate magical labyrinth that nobody has managed to make it through. (At least as far as anyone knows. Everyone wants to believe that friends who dissappeared in the labyrinth actually made it to the other side, rather than.. well.. the other side.) So the game would be about tackling this labyrinth in multiple short sessions. My favourite genre: roguelikes that actually have some form of progression in them! Even though you’re dying a lot, you retain a small amount of what you gathered each time in the form of townbuilding progressyness and ~friendship routes~ and ~ETCETERA~!

But then after playing Oxygen Not Included I kinda have a burning desire to see a game that has the good bits of that and not the... Frustration. To say its a roguelike without progression is understating it, gahhhhhhhhhh! Roguelike sim game of 8 hour game sessions that get destroyed cos of one stupid mistake and you have to be all perfect and lucky and YOURE ALWAYS STARVING and gahhhhhhhhh THIS IS MEANT TO BE MY GAME IDEA NOT VENTING ABOUT THAT GAME Anyway I was thinking how it’d be really cool if a game like that actually DID have a sense of progression. And an actual end goal. Like.. if you were actually digging towards the surface! With periodic savepoints and characters that dont die so easily and have more personality to them and you get all attatched! I already got all attatched to my dumb sim characters and then just got really upset how they kept dying and the game seemed to not give a shit :P

But yeah its not like I can just completely copy that game, lol. Even if I wanted to, I dunno how to program a simulation type engine thing from scratch! So i was thinking like.. a regular roguelike randomized dungeon generator actually IS possible in Rpgmaker, so I dunno.. I could find a way to make that work with some kind of ‘you are actually creating the dungeon’ type thing. i really like the idea of being able to dig your own path through the thing and have it permenantly etched there forever. I was thinking it could be an awesome idea if in the postgame you could come back to the now-empty labyrinth after everyone’s escaped to the surface, and be able to walk through it and have a big ol nostalgia trip. One that’d be unique to every player! And like.. maybe even be able to see changes, like it being reclaimed by nature and flowers? And you could upload a dungeon seed for your own personal dungeon, so that other players could play it, and that could be the postgame replay value~!

game name ideas i guess Catacomb Crawl Boundless Down

and I was thinking the protagonists could be two kids and be a grumpy older sibling who’s a jerk to their well-meaning-but-immature lil sib, but loves them deep down, and has to learn a lesson about becoming a more responsible sib, and etc like.. yeah.. basically inspired by over the garden wall i didnt really like that show, and i felt bad about it cos everyone was telling me it was a masterpiece. alas! :P aaanyhoo they’re not very developed yet, except older sib being a bit of a comical greedy coward type of person and lil sib actually being quite wise but always underestimated. Like, they have more common sense than their big sib even though they are a lil naive sometimes cos theyre so optimistic. Both sibs get each other into trouble pretty often, but they balance out perfectly to save each other each time! And lil sib is kind of a pushover who just obeys big sib unquestionably and can never stick up for themself when big sib is being all ‘ugh ur so immature im totally better'. They’re just like... the sort of person who’s so scared of their friends leaving them that they let anyone hurt them as much as they want as long as they stay. Very relateable to Bunni! Also they sorta try and pretend to be the dumb sidekick and class clown. Cos again theyre worried if they disagree or try and stand out too much then their sibling will hate them. Quite often their ‘dumb mistakes’ are actually the older sib’s fault, and they’re stuck like ‘AAAA I CANT TELL THEM TO STOP COS ITD BE OUT OF CHARACTER. I NEED TO BE THE CUTE BABY.’ And its all super complicated cos older sib acts like they resent them for never growing up too, its like.. cant ever win. This whole thing has kinda turned them into an anxious mess deep down. part of big sib’s whole redemption arc would involve them having to realise that their actions arent harmless, and treating such a young child this way actually has a permenant effect. And like... big sib doesnt know how to take care of little sib on their own because they’re immature themself! Being able to admit that instead of trying so hard to be all fake ultra mature and infallible, thats another big character arc. As well as aknowledging that lil sib is indeed growing up and becoming someone intelligent and independant. And realizing that the reason they keep putting them down is so they can try and deny that, and the reason they’re denying it because theyre JEALOUS! Jealous that little sib might have their emotions more alltogether than them, scared that their emotionless facade of perfect big sibness will be broken, and scared that without that they’ll have nothing left. Need to become more comfortable with trusting and relying on your lil sib, need to actually talk to them about this stuff, yo! Ideally I’m gonna try and write it in a way that doesnt make big sib seem like a completely hateable villain. Their backstory is gonna involve being from not exactly the nicest family, and both struggling to escape what they’ve been shaped into. And trying to learn how to take care of each other as a real family, when they have no real frame of reference for what real love looks like. And also climbing a bigass tower to save humanity from being entombed underground, but that’s comparatively easy, lol! But yeah the idea is that big sib kinda absorbed more of their bad parents’s ideals, and like... they love their sibling so utterly and deeply because they just did not know what family love felt like until they came along. And it really REALLY hurts them whenever they realise they’ve been subconciously being neglectful or hateful towards the lil fella, but theyre so distracted by like.. the greed of being free now. And doing anything and everything, drunk on that freedom! And not really being capable yet of caring about other people when they havent even learned how to care about themself. They keep being all decadent and delinquent and it seems like theyre egotistical but still deep down they HATE themself and this is all just like a ‘fake it til you make it’. And its so easy to get caught up and go too far to try and put on this facade, and they feel they cant really vent their real feelings to anyone. Cos they’re super cynical dont trust anyone except sibling loyalty like. Only way to survive! And like... cant talk about it with the sib either, because little kid wouldnt understand, and if they do then that means theyre not little anymore. They dont wanna ruin lil sib’s childish innocence cos like.. that innocence is their only reason to live. Innocent stupid bastion of family love, came into their life and gave them the courage to deal with those shitty parents gahhh! And part of them ‘knows’ that the only way to love anyone is to be deluded and innocent. You have to be too stupid to realise that the world is awful and everyone sucks and loving people just gets you hurt! And big sib is toooootally smart cos they know that life is meaningless. But they’re entertained by seeing a stupid person stupidly believe in optimism. Totally. Thats the only reason they wanna protect that innocence. Totally. sooooo basically imagine a very mentally ill mess of a preteen that’s curled up in the corner crying perpetually within their own mind, while on the outside they’re all HA HA I’M AMAZING, BITCHES And also imagine that bunni is able to write good enough to explain these damn characters aaaa im very tired im sorry

anyway summary: protagonist is a jerk, Character Development: The Game, you will cry for little sib whom is basically like penny from inspector gadget also I was thinking maybe this could be the one and only time I do the Amnesiac Protagonist Cliche Setup. eeeexcept not really?? well i mean I think it’d work cool if these characters were new to this setting, but I wouldnt actually do 100% amnesia thing I was thinking more like... they are the only two people who came from the outside world. And they just can’t remember how they got here, they wake up trapped in this place and everyone thinks theyre crazy for talking about being from somewhere aboveground. So you have an even more desperate motivation to escape compared to everyone else! I mean of course everyone wants to return to the surface, but its been so long that no-one remembers what it’s like, and so many attempts have failed that they’ve all given up. So you can act like a beacon of hope and lead the people even though you’re just a child. Like, this is about a morally bankrupt trash protagonist being dragged kicking and screaming into heroism, lol And of course we can have some good ‘ol mystery amnesia reveal type plot thingies! But without having to have a protagonist who’s COMPLETELY clueless, and a game beginning with no direction whatsoever. Its more like a ‘trapped in another world’ story except its the same world just a few thousand miles underground, lol. And revealing how exactly they got there and what they’ve forgotten is gonna be a plot, yes, but also there’s the bigger mystery of what on earth this doom labyrinth is and what caused these poor people to be trapped in it! And what they’ll even find when they finally reach the surface again, will it really be the sort of paradise they’re all hoping for? also many tears for sad dysfunctional tiny family of awkward childrens, ye also (hopefully) fun dungeon gameplays

so yeah bunni is tired and delirious and rambling Thoughts at you dunno if anyone was interested in any of this, but there you go!

#labyrinth sibs game

[survivekohsai]

Episode 7 - I Need To Blow Off Some Steam Anyway ~ Jackson

*cries like Big Meech* I wanted to stay in Exile!!

We reached merge and I hope this is jury as well!

I like to say that me and Jackson were the only people who attended every tribal Council. Because when we won that immunity Kelsey med Evacuated meaning that they didn't have a tribal council then next came a double tribal Council. So this means that I might be pulling a Denise Edit. Lets pray!

Exile is sad. No one picked me so thats sad. I was blindsided by the raf vote so thats sad. Im in f10 now so thats good and i still have an idol so thats good. But now im gonna have to work super hard to find connections. Need to put an end to rtp/jackson cuz i think thats a thing. Unless its like a jackson/quinlynn/akito thing which is also iconic i guess. RTP could have voted akito and then eric voted me? Idek and it sucks because its old news once i get back

i couldn't really do the challenge bcuz thxgiving. but when i was here and saw akito started it awhile ago and it goes by our time i thought that we'd be screwed.... turns out the other tribe barely worked on it so... shit. part of me wants to vote for richie and save my idol (as a risk, idk what tf everyone is doing). or just play my idol and see what tf happens. no idea what i should do. even if i talked to these people....... they'd just lie to me. cause akito, linus and quilynn are all aligned so idk what to do. maybe ill talk to richie.

okay well richie knows the other 3 are aligned. so we talked about both of us playing our idols, or only me, and voting for akito/quilynn. if it ties get quilynn out who still has her idol. and if she plays it akito goes home. idk if richie will play his idol or who they'll vote for but oh well!

Woh hey I'm actually making a move this round. Richie is idoling, Ryan might be, so if that happens Richie and I are voting akito to hopefully keep me protected, or I'm getting played and I'm going home

Hi I'm Jackson and this is my seventh confessional. I'm not going to tribal but I'm writing this cause I have to and I need to blow off some steam anyway. I'm REALLY worried about Akito at this tribal. Whether or not she survives depends on how well Quillynn can fool Richie (and how involved Ryan is in telling Richie the truth), and it sucks to not be able to have a direct impact on the vote. But before that I'll talk about last time. The Rafael blindside worked (yay!) and with the most fucked up vote tally ever - like 3-2-1-1-1? Honestly iconic. When will your faves. I know it should've been 4-2-1-1 if Trixie hadn't self voted but yknow. I'm still proud of it. Let's talk about that self vote though. Trixie can say all she wants that it was an accident, but it very well could've been strategy. If she self votes at important tribals, she can keep herself from appearing to take a concrete side, which I KNOW she would love, especially after she made herself such a huge target in Kvaloya. Either way I like her a lot but I see what an influential player she is (she got me to flip to Rafael SUPER easily) and can't let her get too much power. Also Jordan Means got voted out which is a blessing. We really had no chance of working together and also he was kind of an ass so I'm not mad. The only thing that really WRECKS me is that i learned from Linus that if Kelsey hadn't self voted and gotten medevaced at the fifth tribal, Regan and Ryan M. would've both played their idols and it would've been a messy smackdown for the ages. I'm so upset that didn't happen. Ever idol that Ryan M. doesn't play is another obstacle I have to overcome if I want to win (side eyes the Kvaloya hosts) Okay so then we had the schoolyard pick. I had to pick first, and I was going to pick Akito (because I love her) but I went for RTP instead because I knew if we lost, he would be an easy vote out (he played his idol at the Rafael tribal which made me super happy). He ended up picking Regan, she picked Trixie, and Trixie picked Eric. This put me in a decent position - so decent, in fact, that me and Trixie were ready to throw. What's a pre-merge tribal if it didn't involve a challenge thrown by me and Trixie? We would lose, protecting Quillynn/Akito/Linus on the other side, and dump RTP (probably unanimously), cementing Eric and Regan's trust in us. However, the other team proved to be so incredibly terrible that despite our best efforts to throw we were unsuccessful. I'm honestly so shocked. We only got 29 bottles which is pretty fucking bad but they got like... three? Okay werk. I think Ryan M. may've been trying to throw, which doesn't bode well for the tribal tonight (why is he so confident?), but like... Ok werk So yeah. Linus, Akito, and Quillynn (my allies) are going to tribal with Richie and Ryan M. I haven't spoken to Richie (like RTP, he doesn't respond to my messages), but if Quillynn can fool him into voting Ryan, this bodes well for them. They can split 2-2 on Ryan and Richie (with one of the votes for Ryan being from Richie himself), so that if one of the two plays an idol, Akito will still be safe (since I'm assuming Ryan will go for someone without an idol). And if Richie seems really bent on throwing a vote to Akito (an idea he has teased to Quillynn), then Quillynn will switch her vote from Ryan to Richie, which will hopefully send him packing and cause Ryan to waste his idol. The one hang up has to do with info. Akito made a huge mistake when she was on exile with Ryan M, as she told him about her majority alliance on Rayong that included me, Quillynn and Linus. If Ryan tells Richie about this, then Richie may not believe as easily that Quillynn isn't trying to make him the backup if Ryan idols. If Ryan and Richie both idol, Akito is probably toast. I would be so upset if that happened. She hasn't played a perfect game (wasting her idol, giving up info, etc) but I've really gotten close with her and I want us to be able to go deep into the game together. Okay, that's probably enough. I'm clearly very nervous which is why I'm venting in the confessional so sorry if my next few entries are not nearly as detailed haha byeeeeeee

dont strike me! jackson is the best i hope he wins

If everything goes as planned tonight then either ryan or richie will leave, I think one or both might idol though, which is dangerous. I’d rather ryan leave since he blocked everyone and completely ghosted but lbr he probably won’t be, I could even be taken out tonight, who knows

i finally feel like im in a game... my goal for this round is to get akito out and to keep my idol. i want akito out because she fucked up this immunity challenge so im annoyed but i mean we're likely only on this team bullshit for this one round so im not too worried about keeping a tribe strong to win challenges but i know that she proved herself in the nerf dart challenge that shes willing to play hard + only her and linus dont have their idols on this team and i want linus around so going for akito will ensure that the vote is on someone who cant fuck it up with an idol.... i've talked to everyone and idk whos telling the truth ryan is a mess but i want him around so that come merge him and regan battle it out and the attention is on those 2 and that will give me some time to slide by. linus told me that akito and q talked about voting for me in case of a ryan idol play, q came to me and said that we should split the votes and we talked about me voting for akito but i know now that was bullshit, ryan and i talked about him playing dead so that they vote for him tonight with the thought that he'd self vote...... i really dont want to play my idol because i want to keep it going into the merge but i know not playing it is a huuuuuuge risk... i've been planting seeds with people that i'll likely play it so that theyre afraid to vote me but i wont confirm or deny 100% that i'm playing it bc if i say that and dont play it and dont get voted out i dont want to appear sketchy like i was lying????? but idk its probably stupid of me to not just outright say HEY BINCHES i'm playing this idol dont vote for me or it will be a waste and then hoping they dont call me on the bluff???? idk who knows... i'm just going to send my vote in for akito, probably not play my idol, and hope that linus votes with me and ryan doesnt vote for me?????? idk im down to make the risk and if it doesnt pay off then i havent been playing a stellar game anyway so might as well go out on a bang

I feel great being immune this once. I feel like based on this team I was in that if we lost immunity that it would really hurt my alliance.

Ryan played his idol

Akito voted out 2-1-1-(1)

Richie, Linus voted Akito

Akito voted RIchie

Ryan voted Quillynn

Quillynn’s vote for Ryan was negated

#worthplayingfor #confessionals

[tumblunni]

Speaking of my dumb story ideas, I’ve been thinking some stuff to flesh out the Cathedral Game’s setting! RANDOM IDEAS AHOY LONG POST AHOY

* I’m thinking I need to make some concrete ideas for the villains maybe. When I first had the dream that inspired this all, it was just some sort of ambiguous ‘demon army’, kinda like a mindless zombie plague or i dunno, maybe the demons were sentient but they were all evil except for florin anyway? It was a more boring cliche kind of enemy than I usually write, with no moral grey area. Just an endless wave of foes that would justify the setting where everyone is stuck living inside a church and you have to defend it and try and turn it into a little town. And I guess if we had to have a 100% evil enemy with very little character development then it makes me less uncomfortable if theyre some sort of supernatural nonsentient plague instead of a bunch of people born evil. But then Florin existing as your sidekick was like the first part of the dream and it was never explained why he was the only non evil, completely sentient demon. Plus now I have a different zombie-themed story so mindless plagues would be samey. PLUS... welll... I need to stop being all ‘because I saw it in a dream it is somehow a cosmic message that it has to be in the story and can never be changed’. Kinda the point of being awake is that i can look at things more rationally and plug the ol plotholes, yo!

* So anyway, the idea I had was that it would... just simply be an actual army of actual villains with actual motivations and moral ambiguity. I was thinking maybe the setting could be like the perspective of civilians trapped in-between a civil war between two countries, just trying to survive and hoping that the promise of reincforcements coming to evacuate is actually true. The gamneplay of holding the fort and constantly gunning down enemies could be even more depressing when you know that not all of them are necessarily evil, they’re just soldiers doing their job. Maybe its ambiguous whether your country or their country shot first, maybe its like their country is suffering from some form of recession or illness or lack of resources and they’re only trying to conquer this other country because their families are dying at home? Maybe its some form of religious conflict, or maybe its even something with a very villainous dictator running the show but the people working underneath them are just normal citizens forcibly drafted into a war they dont believe in. There’s a whole pile of different possibilities for moral ambiguity, yo! Not sure yet which would work best, hmm...

* Might possibly be an opportunity to use a character I’ve been sitting on for a while but couldnt find a story that suited her. After I played Fe: Awakening I felt really uncomfortable about how the game treated Excellus as if he was hateable only because he was ugly and ambiguously gay/transgender. like.. he’s a horrible jerk of a villain yet the plot really overfocuses on insulting his appearance and gender rather than retaliating against the things he actually does. Made me feel sympathy for a jerk I never wanted to feel sympathy for! So I kinda ended up being inspired by the wasted potential and thinking up an idea for a similar character who actually IS sympathetic, and has the ambiguous LGBTQ aspect properly explored as a plotline. I think it could actually be powerfully sympathetic to see this villain who’s constantly degraded and misgendered by her teammates, and has a lot of reason to believe the worst of humanity. Someone who could switch sides if shown some basic decency by our heroes, maybe? And I felt it could be good if she did have a very similar personality to Excellus, just like a good version of it. She could still be a comic relief egotistical person, but not a murderous monster. And the ego could be like... sad, because she’s purposely trying to act unaffected and secure and like she loves herself, when really she’s being treated like shit and doesnt know if she deserves it or not. And I was thinking also possibly she could be a greedy merchant type character, like Anna? (also from Fe: Awakening) That could be the role she takes in the town once you recruit her, she could be a savvy businesswoman badass! Playing rune factory 4 makes me appreciate how cool a trader character can be, Arthur is so neato~! He talks about it like its the most amazing job ever, I just feel like it could be even cooler if we had that passion along with a more goofy greedy personality. Like ‘hahaha im only in it for the money’, but no, she really has this kinda cheesy cute reason why she does the job, she just really enjoys meeting new people and being able to change the world a little piece at a time. It reaffirms her faith in humanity after all she’s been through. (Tho also she’s still a total badass, since she was a former general of the villain country, after all!)

* Oh and I was thinking of a really tragic alternative route for her if you don’t recruit her. You could fight her multiple times throughout the game and then when you get to the final one and she realizes there’s no escape she suddenly drops the comic relief act and it gets really somber. I was thinking maybe she could have a mentor type character or a friend or a love interest or something? Or some other something she was trying to keep safe all along, some reason why she still had hope, some reason why she was fighting for an army she didnt believe in, just to save up enough money for... some sort of life goal? I dunno, maybe she has a sibling who’s in the hospital and she’s trying to save up for treatment, and then on the day of the final battle she gets a telegram hearing that they died and she wasnt even there to say goodbye. (And the death would somehow be directly caused by the player’s actions, thus determining whether you recruit her or not) So even though every time before she always flaked out like a coward with a comedic quip as soon as it looked like she was losing, now she just doesnt have anything else left to lose. This time she WILL NOT LET YOU redeem her, she will not let you SPARE her, she doesnt even speak a single word in the entire battle. Her difficulty spikes immensely in this fight to the death, and she only cracks a smile and gives a parting quip once you’ve dealt the final blow. And I was just imagining it could be EXTRA depressing combined with her plot of facing predjudice for being transgender! She’s spent most of this time being treated by the other commanders as ‘sir [name]’, gritting her teeth and bearing all this degredation, trying not to stand out too much. But in the end now nobody else is here to put her down, all those other ‘brave knights’ are the ones who ran away like cowards and left the ‘coward’ to take the last stand. And she doesnt care if she dies anymore. So she hangs up her armour for this fight and instead decides to go out in all her finery, wearing the dress she’s kept locked away in her trunk the whole time. Walking onto the battlefield like a bloody bride, and being one hell of a monster boss battle despite missing all of her platemail. A whirling dance of death! To go out smiling! To maybe make her family proud, and if she can meet them on the other side she could do it with the face she always wanted to wear.

* ....basically make it super depressing so you regret your actions and go back and see what the other option leads to. But also so badass that people wouldnt regret seeing the scene, yknow? And this might be the height of her character arc, kinda, but she’d be able to have whole new character arcs if you choose to recruit her. And you can make your own badass battles with her now! * Not sure tho whether maybe the family member/mentor/whoever might die either way though? That could fit the bittersweet found-family themes of the game, pretty much everybody’s someone who’s lost their biological relations and found new people to love in this new community. It could just be like... the choice between this person dying tragically and causing merchant-general-lady to commit suicide, or them passing away naturally due to their illness after saying goodbye to her, leading to her joining the heroes to try and prevent tragedies like this. * A possible other EVEN MORE tragic idea I had- an alternative where this person has already been dead for a long time before the start of the story, and the villain leader has been lying to merchant-general in order to keep her working as their minion. So the player choice would be like... you can reveal it to her and purposely send her into a suicidal spiral as an attempt to destabilize the enemy forces and win an important battle. Its a complete dick move, yes, but it could save the lives of all your family and friends! But then if you believe that this merchant-general is actually redeemable you could like... do the same thing but with different motives, in a different way. Reveal it in less of a sadistic, tactically-planned way, and more of a ‘no seriously this is why you cant trust your boss’ way. And she’d be likely to actually believe you if you’d been befriending her before now. * Or perhaps maybe her sibling died years ago and she heard about it but was unable to accept it, since it was her only reason to keep on going. Maybe she feels guilt that she was too busy making money to try and save them, and that meant she wasnt there to hold their hand when they passed away. So now she keeps on hoarding money for no purpose at all, except because this routine keeps her going. And she keeps writing letters to someone who’s already dead. * buuuut that might be too similar to Malachi’s plot, since he has memory problems regarding a tragic event in his past. Though it was his own death rather than a family member’s! ....actually I dunno, maybe a twist could be that he’s actually her lost sibling? That’d kinda be wrapping things up too coincidentally though. But on the other hand it could be an interesting plot to explore his relationship with his newly returned biological sibling, compared to the adoptive relationship he’s been developing with Florin. RIVALS FOR TINY BABBU’S LOVE! Buuuuuut I also liked the idea of Florin’s death being very far back in the timeline, and he’s been sleeping underneath those ruins for over a century. It could be cool to have him experiencing a lot of things for the first time, and to get a perspective on the past before the war...

* ALSO ANOTHER POTENTIAL CHARACTER IDEA * Another enemy recruit maybe! I seem to be going in twos, I made two demon characters and now two redeemy people XD The idea I had was that this could be just a random soldier that you keep as a prisoner, and have to decide whether to execute him or not. It can be hard to keep prisoners of war when you’re stuck in this seige situation and you barely even have enough food to keep your own teammates alive! Tensions could run high because you’re choosing to keep this guy alive when its making things worse for us all, plus we cant really trust him, seriously?? He surrendered but maybe its just a trap to infiltrate us! He claims a sob story of his country being forced to invade us because of famine, and being drafted against his will, but can we trust anything that comes from the mouth of one of those scum?? And then there’s the question of what exactly you’ll do with him if you think he cant be trusted! Are you able to execute him in cold blood? Do you set him free and hope this decision doesnt come back to bite you in the ass? Do you try and execute him while pretending you didnt- setting him loose in the forest to die of exposure or at the hands of his own former comrades...?? And its very annoying because the entire time he’s insistantly begging you to kill him, and generally being a huge downer! :P This is what convinces you to spare him, if you pick that option. It starts off as just ‘I’m gonna spite you, I won’t let you die if its what you want’, but eventually you realise he really never wanted to be part of this war, and he’s weighed down so much by his sins that his pleading for suicide was completely genuine. There’s no spy plots, he was just a simple farmer thrown into battle with nothing more than the clothes on his back and the sharpest pitchfork he could salvage from the wreckage of his old farm before it was torn down. The famine ruined his business and he had no way of surviving unless he sold his land to the army, to be bulldozed and turned into the site of a new weapons factory. And even after that he ended up forcibly drafted when things got even worse, losing what little livelihood he’d managed to scrape together again. He doesnt have a home to go back to, he just wanted to die on the battlefield, and by all odds he SHOULD HAVE! This is the condition of this latest round of ‘soldiers’, nobody even wastes armour on them, theyre just disposeable fodder to be mowed down as a distraction. What shitty luck, that he just happened to get captured by some bleeding-heart fools who refuse to chop his damn head off! So basically I’m imagining him like a Nanu-esque depressed grandpa who’s kinda sassy sometimes but also really really needs a hug. And like... model prisoner, to a comical degree. When he comes to terms with the fact he aint gonna get killed no matter how much he begs, he’s just like ‘dammit i cant help but help’. He’s just a normal good guy at heart, he’s not really on your side so to speak, he loved his country but he didnt agree with them wanting to wipe out your country either. he misses how his country used to be, and he doesnt know anything about your country or whether its any better, he doesnt have much hope. But when he’s stuck with nothing to do all day, he just cant help subconciously falling into kindly grandpa behaviours! Gotta clean up this cell! Hey, do you want some cookery tips, mr guard? Oh whoops, mr guard you dropped the cell keys, here have them back! Hey this bar over here has poor structural integrity, I tried to rope it back together with a braid of my own back hair! All the time he’s trying to trick you into agreeing to execute him, and being a total sycophant agreeing with everyone who says he’s evil. CMON IM TOTALLY EVIL, PLEASE STAB ME, I’LL BAKE YOU COOKIES! And then as time goes on he just becomes less of a prisoner and ends up making friends with everyone, winning the trust of even those who opposed him the most at the start. All entirely unwillingly! Agreeing with all their oppositions so hard that they stop opposing XD He ends up just pottering around doing odd jobs as a janitor/groundskeeper type guy, even ends up being the one in charge of keeping the keys to the jail he started off in. Somehow the most trustworthy man in the whole town, cos he’s the one person who will never say he’s trustworthy! His humble goodness just shines through~! And he could help out a lot cos he has inside info on the enemy army, and is able to give a sympathetic perspective of the everyday citizens’s life, and just how much dissent there is, how few people are willingly cooperating with the war and how they can find allies and destabilize this regime based entirely on fear instead of loyalty. He’s like a ray of hope that changes everyone’s perspective on this big seemingly-inpeneterable all-evil army! A grumpy suicidal ray of hope, who never shuts up about how hopeless it is! XD of course, eventually he’d be able to find new reason to live in this own, and make friends, and have hugs and joy~! But it’d be a hard journey! And a journey filled with a lot of ‘geez grandpa stop joking about suicide holy shit’ *disciplinary hugs* * Tho actually I dunno if a farmer would be a good career choice for him, I just picked it cos its the easiest to imagine him losing his livelihood in the war. His career in the town would be being this janitor kindly advice man/treasurer sort of guy, but i dunno... if he was a banker before then that makes him too similar to general lady :P ...maybe he was a janitor on someone else’s farm...? Honestly I would love an excuse to have a badass sympathetic janitor man and go on a bit of a small rant about how service work is very physically demanding and deserves a higher minimum wage yknow. RESPECT JANIGRAMP ... actually the name Jani is a good name his name is now jani it is law Jani the groundskeeper, because jani the janitor sounds dumb. SYNONYMS!

* Thinking of ideas for the fictional religion I’m gonna create for this world! Its more fun if we have a completely fictional set of traditions that’re just a general metaphor for topical questions about real life religion n stuff. And it would sidestep the problem of plots accidentally seeming like theyre ‘oh this one religion is evil and false’, when really the point i want to make is about how people of all religions are capable of perverting their faith’s peaceful teachings and using it as an excuse to wage wars. hell, athiests have done the same thing! ‘this religion is inherantly evil bwaaaah’ stuff IS athiests using their own beliefs as an excuse to hurt others. Thats the kind of athiest I never want to be! I completely respect religion and I think that we can never have an answer as to what’s true about creation or an afterlife, we can never know until we die. I don’t believe in heaven, but I dont think I have absolute proof it’s wrong, and I dont care about proving myself right or converting people. I feel inspired when I see people draw strength from their religion, even if I don’t believe in it! Lots of great things have been done in the name of different religions, just like lots of terrible things have. Human beings are great and terrible things, human beings make choices. This doesnt tar everyone with the same brush of whoever made the wrong decision, just because they believe in the same gods! ....man, sorry, I went off on a mini rant there. But yeah, what I hope to do is to have religion as a framing device and discuss some problems with certain so-called religious people, but also show the positive side of it via the protagonists. I mean, the whole point is that you’re living in a church, after all! The idea is that you’d hear a lot of horror stories of other people acting very ungodly in the name of god, both in the enemy army and in the hidden secrets of people in your own country’s government. But the goal is that you see all this hellish stuff and you still choose to be a bastion of what you believe is good and true, you learn from these mistakes and try and make the true sanctuary that everyone was seeking when they fell into the traps of those other monsters. And also I was thinking it;d be like the protagonist’s exploration of being agnostic, after her faith was shaken from her original church being destroyed in this war. She was the only survivor, maliciously left alive by [currently unnamed main villain rival guy], who wanted her to suffer the grief of knowing she’d failed her role as protector. But instead she travelled onwards and found this other church full of defenseless people that need a new guardian, and she is FUCKING DETERMINED to never fail again! It started as just seeking revenge against that evil overlord, but instead its become about protecting these new people and regaining her faith in humanity. And that doesnt necessarily mean regaining her faith, that’s up to the player. She has a journey of realizing that some things about her former church may have actually been corrupt, and that she was just blindly following instead of making her own decisions, She has her hero worship of her dead comrades dismantled, and has to come to her own conclusions about what’s right and wrong in the scriptures she’d learned, and what she’ll do as she goes forward. Its up to the player to decide whether she regains her faith or decides to become an athiest in the end, or even remains agnostic and decides she isnt able to find an answer yet, but either way she will still be forged into a true blue hero, no matter the reasons behind it! I wanna make all options an equally good ending, its just a personal choice that changes some scenes but not necessarily the course of the story.

* Anyway, where was I? Oh yeah! Religion ideas! I was considering possibly the legend could involve something about ‘an absent god’. The traditions say that humanity failed the creator long ago, and they left us behind because of it. The direction of all religion is based around this idea that we are inherantly born sinful, and have to do certain things in order to appease our ancestors’s sins and bring the gods back. I’m thinking it would be a good idea to create multiple sects of religion that’re variants on the same original holy text, that’s something that fictional religions dont tend to do for some reason. In this case it could be different perspectives on how exactly god dissappeared, and what exactly god saw as our sin, what on earth we have to do to make up for it. And I was thinking that the idea could be that god shattered into a million pieces that were scattered across the world. This leads to territory wars over places that’ve been determined to contain remains of god buried beneath the earth, and people invading indigenous civilizations in the name of holy tasks to dig for these relics. Power struggles over how many god burial grounds your country owns at any given time, controversy every time a digging operation fails to find a crystal. Pieces of god being used practically as currency, used to power magical weaponry in these wars... lies and deceit over fake godstones that no-one can prove you don’t own... * And this way even though magic does clearly exist in this world, it leaves it ambiguous whether religion is true, and whether any of the different sects is more accurate about the true will of god. It would seem reasonable that athiests exist here even when magic exists, thats usually a problem in fictional settings, you have gods right out here in the open yet some people still dont believe in them? XD It’d be like... yes maybe all these crystals that grant magical powers are actually fragments of an absent god. Maybe they grant those magical powers because of the reasons scripture tells us. Maybe if you bring them all together you can meet god and be granted one wish, maybe you could end the war. Buuuuuuuut.... maybe there’s just a natural crystal that grows underground and grants magical powers. Maybe nothing happens when you put it all together. Maybe it’s just like how people considered electricity to be unpredictable divine punishment before we learned how to harness it for ourselves.

* And there could be like... sects of the religion who believe god chose to leave us out of shame for our sinfulness, sects who believe a certain group of humans betrayed god and shattered them, thus holy war is justified against that country. Perhaps even sects that believe that god being shattered was a positive thing, that god chose to give fragments of their power to humans so they could choose their own destiny. (This is considered as scandalous as satan-worship in-universe) And there’s a related sect that believes that humans only even came into existance after the shattering event, that shattering into pieces was how god granted sentience and free will to the angelic servants we used to be. And this has permenantly corrupted us, thus the sin that we need to undo in order to retun god is... individuality, in all its forms. I think these are the ones who had the very extreme fanatical members who ran Malachi’s former church, and committed various atrocities including his murder. (Though, again, this doesnt mean that the viewpoint is inherantly evil. Just the people who took it from ‘tranquility, enlightenment and fealty to fellow man’ to ‘LITERALLY NO INDIVIDUALITY EVER’) ....hmmm, actually the morality system could be even more complex if I nail down a set of different factions of the religion and let you choose between all of them in the end. (or choosing none of them, or choosing your own interpretation) And there’d sorta be a fanatical/critical morality bar too, which determines whether you get the good or bad ending. In this case ‘critical’ would be the good option, I mean it more like... ‘I’ve analyzed everything about this scripture and come to my own conclusions, I won’t do anything immoral out of blind belief unless I actually have reasons to agree that it’s the right choice’. Aka how any normal good person decides on a religion to follow. And the fanatical side would be leaning towards never questioning. So sometimes you would have to like... take options that would seem like ‘the bad option’. Dont just blindly agree with everything that points to a particular faction viewpoint, that’ll lead to badness! Sometimes you have to question things, take it from the perspective of a character who is discovering their own faith, rather than a player who already knows from the beginning what option they want to pick.

* Man this has got complicated lol, I’m starting to ramble!

* Anyway, i was thinking this would explain what the ‘demons’ are, in this world. Normally humans can only use magic by using godstone as a power source, demon is a universal term for all creatures that are made of magic and can use it infinately as part of their very being. They’re considered unholy and must be destroyed, because they’re ‘imprisoning’ a shard of god inside them. And its really unfair because its a complete and utter random chance if someone becomes a demon when they die, you can live your entire life thinking you’re a normal human until the godstone in your heart activates and saves your life. Your life which is now ressurected in a monsterous form and can never return to your old family. The traditions say that it only happens to people who are sinful, thus they totally deserve to be slain, of course! Oh, and I think the main evil army guys would be using demons as weapons, which is part of why the anti-demon sentiment is like... even worse than usual in the protagonist’s country. Its incredibly depressing because demons are completely sentient, and the only way they become mindless battle monsters is if they’re tortured beyond breaking point. The same way you’d reduce a human to that state. But the protagonist starts off not even knowing that demons can talk until she meets Florin, she’s only ever seen these demonic ‘soldiers’ that’re really just whipped and beaten prisoners chained together and thrown towards the enemy in the hope both parties kill each other. “Yeah but why do so many demons ally with the empire?” *florin looks into the camera like he’s on the office* And I was thinking maybe a more positive religious interpretation of the existance of demons could be that they’re actually angels instead. (Yeah, even if this religion is very different its gonna probably have a lot of similarities to protestant christianity since that’s what I was raised in. i dont feel comfortable critcising someone else’s religion that I’m not personally experienced with, yknow?) ANYWAY SORRY FOR THAT ASIDE Yeah, there could be some very rare pro-demon religious folk who believe that those who are reborn after death are actually chosen ones rather than sinful. These fragments of god blessed certain people who were pure enough in heart to earn the power to be able to enact god’s love to the world. Because even though god is in pieces, god very much wants to forgive us. These magical beings are sent as god’s messengers to help guide us on the right path to redemption. That’s why they have such great powers of creation! (though others would say its destruction...) A single plant demon like Florin could watch over and sustain an entire forest, revive it from drought and become a cornerstone to build a whole city around! Though even this faction isnt 100% correct or incorruptable, there are those who’d interpret this as demons having a DUTY to do that. There are rogue members of this faction who enslave demons just as much as the people who use them as weapons. I was thinking a plot could be that Florin almost gets suckered in by a band of these guys, he’s just so overwhelmed to find anyone who doesnt hate demons! But they want to imprison him and force him to grow their crops forever until he dies of exhaustion, because that’ll mean he’s ~happily fullfilled his purpose and rejoined god~. I mean, if he says he doesnt want to, thats just so sad! That means this pure angel has been corrupted by humanity’s sin, he doesnt know what he’s saying! * man i have so many ideas aaaaa

#cathedral tower defense #sorry long post #i need to nail down a set amount of factions for the religious war and think up names for them and stuff #and like... countries #and which countries have how much of each faction #i think the main villain army would be like a totalitarian state where one religious faction is enforced by law #but for everyone else country doesnt equal faction #i think to make the scope of this thing small enough to fit with a mostly self-contained story in a single town... #it would be best to keep it to just two countries- enemy guys and the protagonists's country #maybe mention other countries in passing to add flavour tho #like 'we were supposed to get humanitarian aid from [place]' #and maybe the protagonist is new to this country actually? maybe her entire country was taken over by the villains rather than just hometown