#the way i literally read his sprite and the way i draw him are kind of different but i still try to keep that rectangular element

[cozylittleartblog]

so many people complimented rouxls' boots on the last deltarune post, i forgot i basically never post full body doodles so you've never been able to get a good look at him. so here he is ✨

#deltarune #rouxls kaard #doodles #art #deltarune chapter 1 #just a simple leetol post today. i would like to post more. i keep saying that but i mean it this time. #i think i used to draw the pants untucked from the boots but i liked the little chains that matched his coat #i've always read his uniform as an actual playing card? a lot of people see that the ropes on the front look like writing #like an actual rules card but i read it like his uniform *is* actually very boxy shaped and pulled at the waist #the way i literally read his sprite and the way i draw him are kind of different but i still try to keep that rectangular element #thats why i liked the dumb 80s shoulderpads because it doesn't break up that shape as much as these do #but that's why his coat has the front and back skirts with the slit on either side. its like two playing cards sandwiched together #and that only very loosely translates from my head into the way i draw him but. yeah #i definitely lean more into how he's depicted in merch rather than in game whjbdfghbjfdg

[gamebunny-advance]

Ya Know What’s Kinda Weird

Almost every NPC in NSR has a fairly dynamic pose for their talk sprite, but Kliff distinctly doesn’t. It’s not the simplicity of the pose that’s weird, a couple of NPCs just kinda “stand with style”. What makes it weird is that he DOES a unique dynamic pose when you first meet him, and then he literally jumps into is talk sprite pose.

(Video Source)

All NPCs do that, twirl into their talksprite, but I think Kliff is the only one who twirls into a different pose and then does a second animation into his talksprite. For all other NPCs, their talk sprite is the endpoint of their twirl.

(Gigi for comparison.)

But, he’s also the only NPC that only transitions from model to sprite *once, so maybe they just wanted to add emphasis to it since this is the only time we get to see Kliff do it. But I still don’t get why this pose isn’t used for his talk sprite.

I guess personality-wise, his scarf fluttering in the wind and coyly adjusting his glasses doesn’t “fit” him as much as him just standing there staring blankly through your soul as he plots domination over the city, but that just begs the question, “Why does he do that pose at all?”

Is the point that it’s just another way to telegraph that he’s a little “off”? Like he knows he’s supposed to do some kind of over the top pose, but he just can’t bring himself to commit to it? Could be. Before meeting with Kliff, you can talk to a handful of other NPCs who do this animation. Even if you were to skip every possible NPC, Gigi is a forced interaction, so no matter how you play this game, the twirl to talk sprite animation is established as a “rule” in this world, so drawing attention to how Kliff breaks the rule might be an intentional, among the many other red flags he gives off.

*Zam also potentially only gets to do his animation once since you only have to talk to him once before he leaves the overworld to join you in the sewer, but Zam doesn’t get any extra emphasis in his intro. Actually, Zam’s talk sprite is never used again after he joins you due to the framing of his radio show. Same with Gigi, due to him not having any more dialogue after he joins you. Kliff is the only Sewer NPC who uses his talk sprite while in the sewer.

With that in mind, this could be a case of them trying to have their cake and eat it too: since Kliff has A LOT of dialogue where there’s a screen with information that cannot be blocked while he’s speaking with B2J, his current talk sprite may have been posed more conservatively, so he doesn’t take up as much space.

(Talk sprite use in the sewers.)

Even the models in the scene are positioned almost exactly how the talk sprites are. In Kliff’s case, his idle pose is nearly identical to his talk sprite, but I dunno which would have come first: is his talk sprite modeled after his briefing pose, or is his briefing pose modeled after his talk sprite?

(Silhouette comparison)

Edit: I’ve been thinking this a while, but I’m starting to realize that maybe the reason his talk sprite is so static is that it doubles as his sprite for his phone calls. Mayday’s phone is shown in portrait view, so a more vertical pose where his limbs are closer to his body would read better in this instance than having his outstretched limbs/scarf cutoff by the margins.

#nsr #no straight roads #nsr kliff #kliff #gif #so remember how i made a kliff goat for goatlings? #i really just needed to make a post to post that gif to so i could add it to the goat's profile code #that is the sole reason this post exists #but i wound up writing a whole article about it #i mean i don't think it's really that deep #but dissecting all the dominoes that fell to get us to this point #is my bread and butter

[onebizarrekai]

v3′s art is comically terrible for a professionally distributed game in a series: a compilation

in this not-essay I will list all of the mistakes and problems I have spotted in v3′s art. don’t worry, it’s entirely for fun and I’m doing this on a whim, so please feel free to not take this seriously but also it’s hilarious and embarrassing how ridiculous this is like what happened did they speedrun the whole production or what

see, there are some things you can take as meta like “they made it bad on purpose to allude to the downfall of tv shows that have been on air for much too long” but I have a very strong feeling this is not the case due to the nature of some of these errors

disclaimer, the more I study this art, the more I fear that the artists were underpaid and underslept, so if this is in fact the case, I am so sorry to all of them but also I’m going to make fun of the art anyway

anyway let’s get started!

if you study this image for longer than 5 seconds, you will see that kaede is the only one fully shaded and keebo is literally just his normal sprite pasted into the image. every other character is just an ordinary ref, hence most of them facing the exact same direction with neutral expressions on their faces. it looks like a bad edit, and is probably one of the worst pieces of art in the game. it kind of gets better from here on, but my roasting will not.

with that out of the way, here’s the problem that officially bothers me the most and clarifies my viewpoint of “this is not meta and an actual lack of company communication”

this freaking cg, which seems normal at a glance, but some wiseass was like “oh, kaede is a girl, so obviously she’s going to be shorter than the Male Protagonist™” ah, that’s funny. because if you look at the character bios, kaede is, in fact, one inch taller than shuichi and not like 6 inches shorter as she is shown here.

also shuichi’s shoulder is disproportionate and horrendous and he looks vaguely like a jojo character, but I wasn’t even thinking about that until right now.

thanks guys, 50% of the fandom who has never bothered to check these bios thinks that kaede is like 5′3 (did the developers really put so little thought into her to the point where drawing her correctly in the game didn’t even matter??)

also I would like to point out that, even though this isn’t related to the art itself, yes, a character kaede’s size being only 117 lbs is unfeasible, but this applies to literally every character in danganronpa ever and it’s not new news that it’s unrealistic

update: someone in the tags informed me that in versions of the game that use centimeters, like the japanese version, kaede is actually shorter than shuichi, which just adds another thing to the list of weird decisions the localization team made for no reason. that said, after confirming this, kaede is 167 cm in the original, while shuichi is 171 cm, which are approximately 5′6 and 5′7 respectively, but one inch is still nowhere near as drastic as it is depicted above. (in spite of this, I would rather depict kaede as slightly taller, so I’m probably going to keep doing that.)

the journey continues!

bro if you want kaede to have shoulder length hair then stick to it to begin with

you can pretend this is at an angle all you want but they definitely committed the shorter kaede sin a second time

wait a goddamn second.

DO YOU SEE THIS

no………… it wasn’t kaede who shrank. it was shuichi who got taller

speaking of which, can we talk about how shady the perspective is in this elevator pic? look at shuichi and kokichi in comparison to kaede. kokichi, who is canonically 7 inches (edit: or 5, if you’re loyal to the original) shorter than kaede, looks taller than kaede. he’s growing too. what steroids are these gays taking

running into the room, electric boogaloo: I don’t think tsumugi is supposed to be the same height as kokichi

gonta… gonta you’re lookin a bit like a jojo character there

I love how kaito’s head looks kind of like it was pasted onto his body. why is he the same size as shuichi? shouldn’t he be high school bully size or something? his torso is teensy

ah yes, white angie.

I love this cg but why is shuichi’s right hand so much bigger than his left hand

I also love how this cg looks like they literally took pictures of trees and pasted them into the background, especially on the left. the shadows are so weird, especially closer to the ceiling, it’s difficult for me to believe they didn’t do exactly that.

return of Enlarged shuichi

puberty update: kokichi is now taller than shuichi in spite of shuichi never missing leg day. what crimes will he commit

I have to mention it, guys. this has to be one of the worst danganronpa cgs. kokichi’s facial proportions look atrocious. look at the way his face sticks out like his jaw is in the wrong place. his scarf is a pasted texture. that’s it. this moment was so iconic but the cg just looks so… so… off. like something is terribly wrong, but you can’t put your finger on it.

you know what? let’s get into that ‘pasted texture’ thing.

let’s imagine you’re an artist working on a professional game. you’re assigned to draw cgs of kokichi ouma, who has a checkered scarf from hell. sure, it will be terrible to draw, but you only have to draw it once at a time! plus, perspective is pretty important, right? can you be bothered? nah, actually. let’s just copy paste a checkered pattern into the cg, because I’m sure nobody will notice. it’ll blend right in with the other cgs that someone actually put effort into drawing his scarf in, right?

no. the answer is no and I very much noticed. this genuinely looks terrible and I would understand taking a shortcut like that in fanart or even an indie game but this is a full price pc and console distributed game

(an addition: look at kokichi’s TINY HANDS in that last one)

meanwhile, they straight up forgot to color in kokichi’s scarf in this cg.

dude. I forgot about whatever the hell this cg was. anyway look at keebo please just look at him

lovin kaito’s baby arms

real talk, maybe you could argue that he’s missing muscle because he’s deathly sick, but most of his cgs don’t line up with this, and his arms just look disproportionate to his torso size (granted this is a consistent problem across all danganronpa games and a lot of characters have this weird problem, like hajime, but also kaito is bigger than hajime so I kind of have higher expectations of him) maybe it’s his stupid goatee and the way he reminds me of yasuhiro?? it creates this illusion that he’s older than he is and so I keep expecting him to look more like an adult

oh, also rantaro is missing some of his accessories in that video he made–you know the one–but I don’t wanna go back and screenshot it

also you may have noticed that I’m skipping all of the monokub cgs because I literally do not care about them and I’m not even bothering to check and see if they have artistic mistakes in them

JIMMY NEUTRON???

hey um uh kaito you seem to be missing your neck

hey guys do you like my pregame fanart

so, that done, the sprites are also pretty terrible at times. they’re not as interesting to go through, however, and downloading the full sprite sets for every character and studying every single one of them will drive me insane, so I’ll just sum some of the ones I noticed up. I made things for kaede and shuichi before deciding I wasn’t going to get into it, so here are these.

that said, other mistakes include kokichi missing his purple highlights in all of the sprites encompassing a specific pose, stray pixels all over the place on everyone, and everyone also has heavily inconsistent shading, but literally all I think about is how pregame shuichi is unshaded and two of kaede’s pregame sprites have glaring outfit change mistakes in them

anyway, thank you for taking the time to read my ridiculous ramble. in all seriousness, there’s this looming presence of some lack of communication in the development team, like with all the art and design inconsistencies, pieces and sprites that look rushed, stray pixels, and missing basic proportional stuff. these are the kinds of things that you supposedly have to pretty much have in the bag in order to get jobs in professional businesses, so it’s really weird to me that this game suffers from so many of these problems. it’s like they tried to make the art so much more crisp than the other games, but it fell on its face as they realized it was going to take longer to draw everything and they started to rush. it’s weird, because the coloring itself looks normal–it’s just sloppily drawn, and the proportions are a mess once put into the context of perspective. many of the cgs look like they were drawn by different people, and I’m still not over the fact that half of kokichi’s cgs have his scarf pasted in as a texture.

the moral of the story is that if you’re selling a game at full price that also happens to be in a series that has had 3 very good games in it already the stakes should probably be higher than this. v3 has been out for more than 3 years and it’s still $40 (did it cost more than that before? I sure hope not), and the overarching quality of the game is just not as high as the other games. I’m not saying that the other games don’t have any problems with their art at all, they’re just not as glaringly obvious and every artistic choice in those games feels intentional.

regardless, I had a blast roasting the art at 2am, so maybe you got a kick out of all this chaos.

#god I keep telling myself I'm gonna stop rambling about v3 #v3 spoilers #drv3 spoilers #ndrv3 #random stuff #but making this… it sounded so fun #danganronpa

[gojospetd0g]

The accidental meet-up

Megumi Fushiguro x reader

Just some wholesome fluff about running into your childhood friend you never talked to since junior high.

“Can you please go to the store for me, y/n?” Asked mom from her office room.

“Sure.” I walked there and popped my head in “What do we need?”

“There’s the list honey, thank you so much.” She handed me the note and smiled at me with a usual tired face.

“You have enough to do mom, and i wanted to get some fresh air anyway.”

“Be careful on your way. Should i call someone to go with you?”

“It’s fine the store is not that far y’know!”

“Just making sure. Then, take care sweetie, hurry before it gets late. There’s some extra money on the fridge, buy something for yourself.”

“Thanks, i’ll be back soon!”

I went back to my room and got ready. Mom was a jujutsu sorcerer back in the day but after an incident in which she experienced a huge loss, she retired. She was a teacher in Tokyo Jujutsu High but now she’s an undercover in there. Looking for curses and informing the school, the heads of the sorceres and things like that. However, she’s considering going back because a certain boy ate a finger of Sukuna’s. She tells me stuff you know, she spills everytime i massage her shoulders or make her coffee to have a break.

In my case, i can’t see curses nor do i hold the power sorcerers have. But it’s fine, mom said it’s better this way. Her stories are fun tho, i wish i could have some connection with this whole thing, my life is really boring this way. Anyways, as i left the house i put my earplugs in, closing off the noises of the outside world. On my way i thought of getting some snacks for later tonight. I was planning on catchcing up with some shows.

After minutes of walking i was getting closer to the store. But i couldn’t believe my eyes, there was someone really familiar going to the same building. I took one earplug out and squinted my eyes. Is that.. If that’s not him i can just pretend i’m having a phone call or sum.

“Megumi?” He looked my way, a suprised expression on his face. He didn’t change one bit; hair messy, face expressionless as always.

“Y/N? What are you doing here?”

“I could ask the same! What happened to your face? The guy who always beat others got beaten up? How is that possible.”

He laughed a little, looking at the ground “Well.. stuff happened.”

“Sure did, oh-“ i looked at his clothes and asked “Are you a jujutsu sorcerer?”

“How do you know about this? Sorry I mean-”

“See you never believed me when i told about my mom beating evil curses!”

“Jesus y/n that was ages ago! How was i supposed to believe that?”

“Hmph, so disrespectful.”

“If your mom is a sorcerer why aren’t you-

“I can’t see shit, i have absolutly nothing to do with this whole thing. Sooo good luck i guess, be strong.”

“That’s...unfortunate.”

“All good.”

“Do you want to catch up? I.. missed you. I guess.”

“Aww, did you really?? I don’t even know why you stopped talking to me suddenly so yeah! I have some things to buy let’s go in ol’ friend!”

Even when we were little we were on good terms with Megumi. He stayed over at our place a lot but i was never at his, we were classmates throughout elementary and junior high school every year and there was nothing more than great friendship. He beat guys up who hurt me in any way, took me out sometimes and overall he was a really good friend. Best friend as you call it. But some days after junior high he stopped answering my calls, texting me back and everything. I was feeling really under the rock at the time, i doubted myself every day: ‘did i do something wrong?’ ‘what happened to him?’ ‘where did he go?’ ‘is he okay?’ Until one day i got a message from an unknown number saying ‘I’m sorry i’ll explain one day-Bedhair’ And i knew it was him. I was never really the type to keep grudges and i moved on since then, deep down waiting for that day. And the day came. Unexpectedly. Accidentally.

“So did you make any friends?” I asked opening the ice cream i just bought. He opened his can on Sprite, nodding.

“I guess you can call them friends. Shit, there are only three first years including me. And we live in a hostel. Kinda fancy tho. My upperclassmate is a literal panda, and the other one is communicating with sushi ingredients. Don’t get me started with our teacher, he took pics of me when i first got beaten up.”

“Bruh, damn. That’s deep.” I laughed and he smiled at that. “Sounds fun.”

“Did you make any friends?”

“Yeah, i have a few. Not as cool as your friends but they’re fun to hang out with too.” He nodded as he sipped on his soda.

“You don’t know how glad i am to see you.”

“Aw, things have been rough or sumthing?”

“Yeah. I don’t know if i’m allowed to tell you this tho.”

“Please, my mom always tells me everything. She even draws me how the curses look sometimes.”

He looked me dead in the eyes then smiled with a sigh. “So i was sent to this school to—“

And he told me. He told me how that ‘idiot’ ate Sukuna’s finger, how he met his other classmate, a full of potential but loud girl, how his said friend died in front of him and how he came back. How the fight went against the other school and other small things that happened in his daily life. He asked about me too. And i told him. I told him everything that i’ve been throught and he didn’t judge me for them being just average teenage things, he was interested in the new game i was playing, the new mangas i’ve been reading, how i started cooking ect. I’ve always loved the way he listened and the way he talked. I felt understood and at peace next to him.

“But i understand why you decided to distance yourself from me. I’m not mad don’t worry.”

“You do?”

“Yeah, mom told me how i could be in serious danger if i was in some kind of relation with anyone in this field. She’s kinda unknown now so i’m okay, but if she goes back to work seriously i might have to move.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It’s okay, my rich aunt, swag unle and gay cousin live not that far from here. They’re even closer to my school! I’m prepared bestie.”

“Thank god. I don’t even have to explain then.”

“What is that supposed to mean!”

I pushed him hard but he didn’t even budge.

“Holy-!”

“Know who you’re messing with weakling.”

“If you keep this act up i’m going to leave.”

“Ok sorry.” He laughed and made our knees touch. Back in middle school we’d always connect our knees for no reason so it just felt quite nostalgic.

“I missed you too Megumi.”

“Happy to know that.” He smiled gently.

But as he was about to say something we heard agressive running and a “Fushiguro-kyun!”

A puder pink haired guy and a short brown haired girl clung into him asking “Who is this woman??”

“Have you forgotten the night you toasted to my eyes? Was it all a lie when you said your time with me was the most enjoyable of all? That night, that night!”

They must be the said friends, i just laughed at what they were saying. He really found good people to be around and i’m glad.

Another voice was heard “Could you not touch him so casually please?” A rather handsome man stood a few steps from us. Is he the teacher? “You homewreckers?! Megumi-chan has violin practice with me now.”

“Do you play the violin?” I asked him, not paying attention anymore. I wiped my eyes from the laughing while he just stayed unbothered and done with all of them.

“No i don’t.”

“Let’s go home, Megumi-chan.” Finished his speech the beautiful eyed man.

“Don’t mind them please. Are you done?” He said to all of them, pushing the girl away and punching the guy next to him.

I took my bags and bowed a little “Hi i’m y/n, i’m an old friend. Nice to meet you all.”

“Oh you’re y/n! I’m Itadori Yuuji.” The pink haired guy smiled at me and i tilted my head, averting my eyes to Megumi. But he looked away immediatelly “Fushiguro told me about you.”

“Did he really?? Dang, Megumi.”

“First name phasis huh? I’m Gojou Satoru. Their teacher.” He showed a rather questionable face but it was funny, the girl and i laughed. I looked at her and she turned away with a blush.

“Nobara.. Kugisaki.”

“That’s a cute name it suits you!” Her blush deepened as she flipped her hair, sticking her tounge at Itadori with the lines of ‘they didn’t compliment you but they did me!’

“Gojou-san stop staring at me.” Said Megumi “We’ve known each other since we were little we just bumped into each other.”

Then my phone rang. “It’s mom, i should go. I’ve been out longer than expected.”

“I’ll walk you home.” Suggested Megumi but i declined.

“It’s okay, i’ll be fine. It was a pleasure to meet you all. Take care of Megumi for me, be safe guys!” I said walking away.

“Tell your mom i said hi.” Said Gojou with a wink which made me shiver and gag, that sounded so wrong. “N-not in that way i just know her!”

With a laugh i answered the phone call. I was a bit far from them already as they went the opposite way as well, then i sighed.

“Thank god i was worried. Everything’s fine honey?”

“Yeah.” My voice came out weaker than expected. I really missed Megumi. And now i do again. “I missed him so much mom.” A tear slid down my face, but my smile never faded.

“I know honey. I know. Hurry home, i’m making cookies. We can talk about it when you arrive.”

“Thanks. I’ll be there soon.” With a sob i put the earplugs in, treasuring todays happening. Who knows when we’ll be able to see each other again.

I woke up and chose wholesome but make it sad at the end :D

Hope you guys enjoyed, have a nice day/night! <3

#megumi x reader #megumi #yuuji #nobara #jjk #jujutsu kaisen #wholesome #imagine #oneshot #short #megumi x y/n #megumi x you #gojou #megumi fushiguro #itadori yuuji #nobara kugisaki #nobara supremacy #gojou satoru

[vampiresuns]

Aelius Anatole Radošević De Silva

Anatole has changed a bit as a character since i was around the first time, so he’s getting re introduced. His open to make friends.

art by @elizastarkart​

Name: Aelius Anatole Radoševic De Silva. He has two surnames because his mother is latina. He is a mixed Latine-Slav, with family that is all latine, vesuvian, and slavic. People he’s friend’s with call him Anatole (russian/greek pronunciation, he doesn’t acknowledge the French one). Only people he has a strictly professional relationship with, and his uncle call him Aelius.

‘Aelius’ means sun, while ‘Anatole’ means sunrise. He’s fully aware of this, he chose his name himself.

His nicknames are:

‘Nana’ is the most common nickname, and the one most people use.

His mother calls him Lilito, Nana, Nanito, Toly, Tolito, Tortolito.

His father calls him Lily or Lilu.

Toly, Tolytoly or Tolito are nicknames used by his maternal grandmother, his aunt, and his Vesuvian family.

He will not mind if you want to call him Toly, but you cannot call him Lily/Lilu if you’re not his father.

Asra came up with Nanatole, which he doesn’t like but lets Asra call him anyway. Asra also came up with Nana Banana and that is absolutely forbidden.

Family: on his father’s side both the Radošević, who are slavic (yugoslavic, specifically), and the Cassano, a prominent Vesuvian family who has had a hold of the Consulship for years.

On his mother side, the De Silva.

His father’s name is Vladislav, but everyone calls him Vlad, he’s an alchemist, a polymath, and works in what is most similar to biochemical engineering. He has one bother, named Valeriy, who you, however, might now as Valerius. Vlad’s biggest personality trait is being head over heels in love with his wife, and adoring his son more than he thought it was humanly possible to care about someone.

His mother’s name is Louisa De Silva (if you want to add her mother’s surname, it’s Lascal). The L-o-u spelling was a registry mistake she never changed. She moved half across the world while her native country suffer a military-civilian dictatorship to study Medicine. She swore never to go back as long as vestiges of said dictatorship remained in the country. She has two sisters: Paris, who lives in Vesuvia, and Alma, who remained with her parents out of her own choosing. Her medical experience include having been a volunteer war doctor. She didn’t change her surname when she got married.

The Radošević (pronounced Radozheveech) and the Cassano have been entangled families by friendship for generations upon generations, with some marriages between them. Notoriously: Vlad and Val’s father married a Cassano, Matilda, and his bother Mircea, Anatole’s great uncle, also married a Cassano: Florentino. Mircea’s brother and Matilda Cassano died when Vlad and Val were children still, so him and Florentino brought them up.

The Radošević are an overall eccentric family (think the european Addams family), whom are noted for: one, their self-sufficiency/self-preservation, which comes out in a very ‘eccentric people of the world unite’ manner. They appreciate people with character. Two, their leanings towards trades/professions, they do not conceive not doing anything (work hard to play hard). The Cassano, while sharing the quirk, they add the zest for life. It’s like they grabbed the Radošević and told them “you have forgotten how to live and we will remind you how.” Both of them are ridden with racially ambiguous bastard you cannot kill in any way that matters. They simply refuse to. Someone (either the courtiers or Lucio) compared them to roaches, they took it as a compliment.

This will tell you a lot about Anatole’s character.

On a last note, Anatole’s an only child. He has a good relationship with his parents, albeit marked by a sense of distance, solely because he was privately tutored from age 15 and on, which required him to travel a fair share. He was an argumentative teenager, but always cherished whenever he could see his parents. The older he gets, the closer they all become.

Favourite Food: Cake

Favourite drink: Coffee, in general.

Favourite Flower: Iris

Birthday: Nov 1st

Age: 29 (I calculate his age as if he had been born in 1991)

Zodiac:

Sun: Scorpio

Moon: Virgo

Rising: Libra

Mercury & Mars: Scorpio

Venus: Virgo

Patron arcana: Strength & Ace of Swords

Strength

Upright: inner strength, bravery, compassion, focus, Reversed: self doubt, weakness, insecurity      

Ace of Swords

Upright: breakthrough, clarity, sharp mind, Reversed: confusion, brutality, chaos

MBTI Type: INTJ-A

Gender: Transmasculine, but Nonbinary. Uses He/Him pronouns only

Orientation: Identifies as NBLM.

LIs: Julian, Muriel, @ilyamatic​‘s Andrico, @thelazaretmakesmesad​‘s Vishal.

“The sun-like strategist with a solution for everything, and a whole lot of hope in the future.”

More details under the cut!

Physical appearance:

art by @lesbianarcana​

5′4. As you can see in the sprite down below, while he’s slim but with muscle, out of doing a moderate to high level of physical activity. The man has a nice waist and inherited his mother’s hips, which he’s very proud of. He likes his legs and his butt the most about himself

Dark brown eyes, long eyelashes. His hair is naturally black, but he dyes it blond.

Has a mole over his right eyebrow, on the left side of the bridge of his nose, and on his left jaw. He has freckles.

An horizontal scar on his nose, which he got by getting hit with a wooden scaffold square in the face. His nose wasn’t broken out of sheer dumb luck. He has a smaller cut on his cheekbone, which was done by a fencing sabre which lacked the proper tip protection/button. It was done onto him by someone else.

The nose scar is how he met Julian before the plague, as he was the doctor which cured his face.

He has several tattoos:

Right arm: A rapier on his inner forearm. Over his elbow he has a black work band, and over it the words ‘THE SUN IS MY UNDOING’ in all caps, circling his arm.

Left arm: a snake wrapped around his forearm, near to the wrist. The Odyssey quote ‘let’s have a toast to the incompetence of our enemies’ under the inner crook of his elbow, and a floral half sleeve.

Chest and Torso: AMOR OMNIA VINCIT over where his heart is supposed to be. He has laurel leaves on the base of his waist.

Legs: ‘o serpent heart hid with a flowering face‘ in his upper, inner thigh, like really up his left inner thigh. A floral anklet on his right ankle.

Languages Spoken: Too many. He speaks nine languages.

Magic Specialities: His magic is connected to both light and languages (it is a play on words with ‘logos’) so he is both adept in photokinesis — he is able to create and manipulate sources of light — and language related magic — which includes incantation and language manipulation. He learns languages as a faster rate than most people, and while he cannot speak or literally understand a language unless he learns it, his magic allows him to intuitively grasp the meaning of words that are being spoken to him.

This capacity also makes him very good at recognising hidden intentions in people. This is not an ability that he broadcasts having, and when he later succeeds Valerius as the Consul, it is something which aids his diplomatic work but he keeps private.

His words tend to carry more weight sometimes because of his magic, something which he can’t always control — it depends on many factors — so he tries to choose his words carefully and with consideration.

His familiar is a Raccoon, named Antu.

Occupation: While he did study magic and is in touch with his magic, he studied politics, diplomacy and international relations. By trade, and out of will to help people, he is a political analyst and, later in life, a Statesman.

Personality/Trivia:

Willpower or Stubbornness? Depends how you look at it. Passionate, generally devoted, hopeful, independent and sometimes defiant. He is a people-oriented introvert. Competitive, but not aggressively so.

Smarter than he gives himself credit for. Overall charming, even debonair.

Curious by nature, hates having his decisions taken for him.

He is proper, sometimes even distinguished, but he is feral. A firm believer in being kind and compassionate with people, until you cross him one too many times, then nothing will make him taint his vindictive wrath.

Is he humble? For the most part. His humbleness comes from knowing his own limits and knowing he’s not infallible. He does have, however, a good deal of pride in himself and trust in what he can do, and he doesn’t like being underestimated.

He’s not particularly loud, though when the chatterbox is on, then it is on, specially if he’s nervous. He is often never still. 

He’s known he has ADHD since he was seventeen.

Likes dancing.

He fences, almost every Radošević fences/sword fights, and he will let you know at the slightest chance. Which can be either him simply being hyper-fixated in fencing, him flirting, or him letting you know that if the occasion rises, he’s armed.

Friend shaped, lover shaped if you’re daring enough.

He wrinkles his nose when he doesn’t like something.

Speaking of which: he doesn’t like abuse of power, the Court, injustice, supremacists of any kind, unkind, hurtful and selfish people in general; he doesn’t like red meat (he says it tastes like metal or dirt), narrow minded people, incompetence, specially when displayed by people in positions of power, and purposeful apathy.

A mastermind archetype, but he draws his power from connection. He does not conceive a life not lived with others.

A bit of a bastard, he enjoys a good laugh.

He plays the piano and the harp, he sings, he cannot draw, he’s a lightweight when it comes to alcohol (which doesn’t really stop him), he likes the opera because he likes watching other people’s drama without being dragged into it, and his favourite season is winter. Also likes playing chess, reading, coffee, flowers, a well tailored outfit, learning, languages, the sea, mysteries, winter, a well laid argument, collecting quills, music, winning, knowing he loves and is loved in return.

When he was 7 he bribed his dad for more dessert, and he ate so much he vomited. His sweet tooth hasn’t gone anywhere, it is alive and well.

Perceptive little bastard, will knife cat you for the sake of it. He has a way more present sense of humour than what he comes across.

Would call himself a ‘trans masculine Mary Poppins’.

He is closest to his parents, his uncle, my other ocs Leonore, Medea and Sabine, his cousins Amparo Cassano and Milenko Radošević, Natiqa, Asra, Portia and Nadia.

If he liked women, he would be paired with Nadia. The possibility both terrifies and fascinates me.

@ilyamatic​, @viviae​, @gaybirdwrites​, @arcanaprentiss​ @apprenticeofcups​

#the arcana oc #the arcana mc #aelius anatole

[realityshiftingandblogging]

Explaining My DR

⚠️ Before you read, please keep in mind my DR is based from a lot of mythology. Please do not feel offended (I mean you can feel offended but I mean please don't feel like I'm purposely trying to offend you) if your group is not mentioned (such as magic users) or if they are misinterpreted. It's a DR based from the past and from old mythology and lore. It isn't going to be the same as the present. We are also using old terms and meanings. It's also based from an anime too. ⚠️

⚠️I'll also be updating this from time to time if I find more information I want to place. So if you ever get bored, just head on back and see if anything is new! ⚠️

Click read more to see~

What is my reality based from?

Mine is heavily referenced from an anime called "The Ancient Magus Bride." The anime itself is beautiful, and based off of many legends and mythology and it somehow blends together beautifully.

My reality is going to be somewhere in the 1700's (but without slavery and a few wars) because I am sharing my DR with my online friends (and those I classify as my online "Family") and we decided we wanted to see how much history we could change.

So far, we have decided to save Marie Antoinette.

The reality itself has "fae" who don't like to be called "Fairies" and would rather be called "neighbors." They are friendly, in their own way, though some can be aggressive but we have decided that we are safe from those and won't fight them. But here's a catch - you can't see them unless you have "The Sight." Some people do have the sight such as mages (a rare form of magic user in our reality) or "Sleigh Beggy" otherwise known as "Slay Vega."

Slay Vega's have the ability to see and attract fae. As Wiki put it:

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Sleigh Beggies are a type of human who have a natural affinity towards the fae and other supernatural entities, drawing their kind towards them unintentionally. Because their bodies naturally absorb magic but they typically lack the means of controlling it, they die fairly young. This is why, despite the fact that there are more Sleigh Beggy than natural-born mages, their numbers are few and far between. Sleigh Beggy are highly prized by both other sorcerers and fae. The former because their organs naturally absorb magic and so they can be used as batteries for magic and the latter because they are naturally drawn to them as they view Sleigh Beggy as being closer to their kind. This often brings them misfortune as well, because the fae drawn to them will act against their wishes, more so for those who are not gifted with the Sight and cannot see the fae. The fae's goodwill does not always result in the happiness and, when left to their own interpretation, their love and loyalty manifests into both luck and ill fortune. Sleigh Beggy unconsciously absorb a lot of magical energy, but lack the means of expressing it unless they are trained in magic or other methods. As a Sleigh Beggy draws attention from Fae, they will have little difficulty becoming mages if they find a mentor to train them and be capable of powerful magic.

--------

I will be a Sleigh Vega/Beggy but I will also have immortality, so I won't be hurt by this magic absorption; because of this the fae will be attracted to me and I can help my s/o with his magic too.

Other than Sleigh Beggys, what are there?

Well there are many magic types. For my DR we have

Sleigh Beggy: The rarest of all the types, even to the point they are even unheard of. They have the abilities of both a mage and sorcerer. They passively absorb and exude magic energy. Almost unlimited. However, their bodies are still human and they will eventually have pain from the constant strain. Fae are attracted to this type but their friendship isn't always beneficial to Sleigh Beggies. A Sleigh Beggy without a mentor or teacher may feel cursed being around them as they can't understand the world around them or why the Fae behave as they do.

Mages: Are magic users who absorb magic and cast spells using it or they borrow magic from Fae. However, this is draining for the caster.

Sorcerers: They are different from other magic users. They turn their own energy into magic to perform sorcery. Unlike the Mages, they don't contort or use the Natural Laws by breaking them, instead they study these laws and manipulate said laws.

Witches: Are magical users similar to mages, but the difference is they dive into more forbidden arts and choose to gather in groups known as covens.

The History Of Magic:

In the new age of mankind, some humans could perform what we know as "miracles.' They could see beings known as fae. Or live fairly longer than others. As time went on, these people passed on techniques, knowledge, skills and shared with each other what is now known as "Magic." Those who could possess it were known as "Mages."

But as time went on, less and less humans were born with this ability and due to the "Great War" many magical users died. Ever since then, it was unusual, rare, and strange to find humans with this ability. Eventually, this was hidden from the world to ensure the safety of the magic users.

Overview Of Magic

Magic is a result of using the energy inside your body or using the energy of the world around you. This is a process that is referred to as "Magic" or a "Miracle." While magic users can use the worlds natural laws or the use of magical beings they can also use magic with chants or wands.

For some sorcerers, they have a magical core that can "act" as an internal organ which generates magical energy. It can pass on through generations genetically. Sometimes there are some born with non-magical parents.

Magic can be used in many ways. The results vary depending on the use such as shape, form, or requirements needed. It can be used for teleportation, purification, and giving life to inanimate objects. It can also be used for attacks like summoning spikes, thorns, using shadows or light, or breathing fire.

Magic can also be used by Artificers, like Angelica, who makes magic tools such as rings or wands.

What Are Fae?

Fae, or Neighbors, are a race of magical beings who can use, conjure, or absorb magic for themselves or other beings. They can be found everywhere around the world, but they are most commonly found in Tir Na nÓg which is ruled by Titiana and Oberon.

This silly couple:

There are many different types such as Ariels, Banshees, Church Grims, Brownies, Changelings, Elfs, Fire Sprites, Muryans, Selkies, and Vodyanoi!

Each fae is capable of something different and some are friendly, and some are aggressive. Similar to humans XD.

Random Things About My DR

➭ Even though it's set in the 1700s we have plumbing and pipes for baths, phones we can use to contact eachother and see media from Jean's reality (a very close friend of mine), and we plan to make some technology early. Because why not???

➭ We plan to mess up history a bit because we want to see how much we can change. And before you say "that's forcibly changing lives" technically no. It's not like the CR. Period. It's the 1700s where magic exists. We're not forcing a change in anyone's life. We're just going to mess with historical events that were bound to happen one way or another. #and they literally could've changed with or without us.

➭ There's a magic library where fae can exist alongside humans without any issue. No one can harm eachother within the library. It's also a rest good place to nap and it's really cozy.

➭ We live in a small cottage away from the village, it has a small pond and a garden. And just along the path in the back there's a forest. Keeping going down the path and you'll find a passage to Tir na nÓg.

➭ What's Tir na nÓg? It's an old legend of a place where you never age, that is, if you can get there. It's a place full of fae and where the king and queen of fae live. The plants never wither or die and it's always lively.

➭ My DR backstory is that I'm born as a king's daughter. I have a brother and a sister. That's all. Father and brother are Castelios which is a family that was given powers by the demons or fae from the Great War. They tend to scare everyone, due to their aura, except close family. Not even close friends are used to the aura. Though my sister and I didn't develop this, which is rare. I'll shift around the time I first meet my dad and brother after my mother left me and my sister with them. (No it won't be traumatizing, it's just my choice.) I'll grow up within the castle walls and learning magic from my brother and sword fighting from my sister. I'll eventually convince my dad to let me go outside the walls, to which he agrees, where I'll try to mess around with history a bit. On my 16th birthday I'll meet Elias Ainsworth in the greenhouse outside the walls when I snuck away at night. A huge chunk of years later I plan to already be a mage under his mentoring and be married by then, and the cottage is just our choice despite having an estate somewhere else. I only have until age 18 scripted so far but if you ask in like.... a week from now I might have something fjsbdjsnskssm

➭ There's a hunting event where any knight (male or female) can enter and so can royalty. A person from their familiy (or really anyone) can give them their handkerchief and whoever's handkerchief they had will recieve all that they hunted. It's a way to symbolize popularity, typically you'd want the biggest game or the most. For example if I have my s/o my handkerchief then whatever he hunted will go to me. Similarly if he gave me his then whatever I hunted will go to him. The more admired a person is, the more handkerchiefs a person has to give out and they have more game.

(If you're anti-hunting I am very sorry if this just offended you so please don't @me djeanjss please.)

➭ We have a room in the library that has many windows leading to different DRs. There's a wall full of keys that open the windows because the windows can't be broken or opened without a key, phew. When you look through each window it has a different scenery because each is a different DR. They are usually labeled and if you want to enter that reality you have to open the window and to right through. That's how Jean and I get to eachothers realities and also contact eachother. We decided to connect our DRs in a way.

My Desired Reality Members:

First, my DR husband!

Elias Ainsworth!

He is a mage who is both fae and human, though no one knows why he was this way and it was hinted that he was cursed. He also my mentor who will teach me magic.

Appearance

He's taller than most humans, reaching around 6'7". Because of the curse, he doesn't look human though will take a human form using magic. He likes to decorate his horns with gold string that holds a red cloth to cover his face.

A Mood board of him:

Personality

He's very kind and polite (to most) but he's... not antisocial but not social either. He has a hard time relating to people (big mood) but he's like that because he has no understanding of the emotions he feels nor does he remember anything of his life before. Because of this, he's extremely fascinated with emotions. He decided to adopt a "gentleman" mannerism to seem more friendly. He closely studies others but finds it a bit hard to follow their example. He doesn't tend to lie - but if he doesn't know you or knows you slightly then he leaves out any bit of information and tries to hide things. Once you get to know him, he's not so secretive and more child-like. But despite that, he's very willing to make up for, amend, and apologize for any childish behavior that was out of line.

Jeans comment on Elias: "Elias: nice, tall, protective and sweet from what I know, lowkey shy and is trying to understand humans and in the anime is learning emotions AND AJJSJDJSJD thats so SWEET, has lots of money-"

His Magic Abilities

He can manipulate the shadows and he leans toward destructive magic. He can hide in the shadows and create thorns. This gave him the name, given by the fae, "Child of Thorn" or simply "Thorn" as well as "Pilum Murialis." He can also shapeshift and remove memories.

Myself! Online, I go by a few names but in any DR it's Estelle.

Appearance

I'll have waist length black hair, styled in either a braid or simply let down. I have pale skin, blue eyes, and a small birthmark on my collarbones.

Mood board of myself:

Personality

I'll have the same as I do here but I felt really weird typing it out so I'm going to use how my friend described me!

Jeans opinion on Estelle: "Estelle - very soft and caring, maternal I’d say, great listener, really fun to talk to, shy and introverted but SJDJJDKFODOSOSOD when she comes out of her shell, has lots of nice memes, overall a good person to talk to about problems or just to have fun with and MEME, video game and reading nerd HAJDJDJSJKS, sympathetic and empathetic, smart, understanding"

Skills

Mental link: An ability shared with Ruth. We have a shared mind and memory.

Shapeshifting: I can shapeshift into a Pheonix which I'll mainly only use for fun.

Healing: I can heal, either by a chant or with the help of fae or tools

Light manipulation: I can manipulate light and use it against or for people

{Before I get onto the subject about my kids. Yes, I do know them in the CR. I have raised Adam and Asher despite us being close in age, I've always been the more "motherly" figure in my friends and relatives lives. (And I have recently became a mother figure for Nutmeg for about three years now.) I've organized the appointments, cook, cleaned, been there emotionally and so on. I am Asher and Adams aunt as well, so before you ask "Isn't that weird?" In my opinion, no. There are many people I've met who are the same and just straight up become the mother figure in someone's life. I am young, but I've been doing this job for years and a few comments aren't going to stop me from my job.}

Artificer: I have artificer abilities that I typically use to make a creature called a "Maker." They simply like making things. They're smart but really emotional and made from fabric similar to a doll. They like to swear masks and they basically look like a fabric version of a Korok.

Nutmeg

Nutmeg will be my daughter in the future. She is also a person from this reality who sees me as a mother figure and I see her as a daughter. So we agreed this is something we wanted to do. How it will work is she will try shift to the future of my DR after i've been married for a few years. (And before you say "That's not possible!" or "That won't work!" Let me make it clear I said "try." We are going to try this and we have a code to and we scripted that if this isn't possible, the other us wouldn't know the code.) Nutmeg is the youngest of all of my kids.

Appearance

Nutmeg has hazel eyes with a yellowish color and freckles scattered across her nose and cheeks. She likes styling her brown and reddish hair into pig tails and she's typically seen in yellow.

Mood board of her:

Personality

She is very kind and doting, especially towards her siblings. She's not big into typical school but wants to go to the magic college for magic users. She likes baking and flower picking! She's very sweet towards fae and tries her best 100% of the time. A hugger and also someone who would bONK you if you upset her brothers or really anyone she cared about.

Jean's comment on Nutmeg: "Nutmeg - I’ve not talked to her much BUT SHES THE CUTEST WITTLE ANGEL BEAN, she’s super nice, worries/panics a lot for people from what I know, extremely caring, big gay and we love it (i once said to Estelle nutmeg can be a cottagecore lesbian and I just JSKSKSJDJDJ), loving towards y’all and it just makes me JSKDKDKDMDMMFJF"

Her skills

She has more celestial and healing magic that she got from my side. She can manipulate light, heal others, and manipulate the stars or use them as guides.

"Hey sweetie can you please not move that..."

Asher, Adam, and Her who secretly plotted to move the stars to prank astrologists with Jean's kids:

Adam

Another person who's shifting with us. He's the oldest of the siblings and he's a person I've actually raised in the CR from an early age.

Mood board of him:

Appearance

He has red eyes, taking after Elias and black hair that takes after me. He's the tallest of all the kids and typically has the more "mature" fashion by wanting to wear suits or formal attire.

Personality

He's typically the type to be stern and distant but once you know him he's more open and kind. He doesn't like people who judge and he's usually the type to do stuff he most certainly shouldn't jump into it. Adam to Asher in our Discord server: "Hey so LETS INVENT BOMBS."

Jean's comment on Adam: "Adam - smart, literally what the fuck, he’s really nice and a big home dog,,, literally like a big brother like I feel like he’ll be there when you need him, SMART DID I MENTION SMART, has an exterior shell but thats why you have to take things with him at a pace, super fcking sweet like with his stupid ex but god dammit that was sweet"

Skills

He can destroy things like Elias, summon fire, and can summon thorns. He can teleport and he has his artificer abilities that were taught by Angelica and I.

Asher

Asher is the middle child and also someone I've raised. Asher and Adam are related to me and each other in the CR as well.

Appearance

Asher has white hair, pale skin, and blue eyes. He likes the color blue and green so he typically uses it in any piece of clothing he owns. He mentioned he will wear blue more often to compliment his eyes and make his darker horns more apparent.

Mood board of him:

Personality

He's really sweet, caring, and attentive. You tell him once you like one small thing and he will remember it for years. He's really hyper and full of energy unlike his other siblings who are much more calm than him.

Jean's comment on Asher: "Asher - chaos, chaos, chaos okay anyway tbh really funny, has funny ass memes and random ass thoughts that are funny, loves affection, caring as well since I see how you care for nutmeg especially, loving and sweet, smart and retains random info like JFJDKEKDKDK-, space boy and religion boy, meme, sarcastic, 10/10 humor, energetic and extremely fun, someone you’d want at a small party with friends to hype everything up, loves kids and animals"

Skills

Asher can manipulate fire and electricity. He has super speed and super hearing, along with enhanced strength.

Silver Lady!

Also known as Silky or Silver! She was a former Banshee before being transformed by Spriggan (Titiana's bodyguard sort of speak.) She's our housekeeper.

Appearance

Silver likes to wear a, pink, Victorian dress with a matching shawl and bonnet. Her hair is blonde and short and her eyes are a shiny pink.

Mood board of her:

Personality

She doesn't chat much and often has a stoic or deadpan facial expression. But despite that, once knowing her you learn and are exposed to her emotions. She tends to dote on guests that she likes but will simply ignore those she doesn't trust. If someone she doesn't like enters the house for business, she will hover over me or the other residents and simply ignore the guest. Silver also has a sense of humor and enjoys playing pranks every now and then. She likes sewing hearts into clothes where we won't notice. Silver tends to only stay within the house or near the house, due to her past home being ruined she fears that if she leaves she will be forgotten or left behind.

Her Skills:

Silky/Silver is able to do housekeeping magic. She can change details of the house, including wallpaper or the floorboards using a simple spell.

Ruth, A Church Grim

Ruth is my familiar who can shapeshift between being a Church Grim and Human.

Appearance

Ruth can shapeshift between his two forms. A Church Grim, which is a large black dog which reaches to my rib cage in height. In this form, he has red eyes. In a human form however, his eyes appear brown or somewhat red. With he has light brownish skin and black hair. He likes to sweat striped shirts :D

Mood board of Ruth:

Personality

Ruth is very doting and diligent. He uses our mental link which causes a shared memory, feeling, and lifespan, to tell others how I'm feeling if I can't put it into words. He's also protective and won't hesitate to b0nK someone across the head. He's more of a big brother to those he's close with.

Skills

Familiar skills: He shares a lifespan with me, can share dreams, and be summoned from long distances through a mind link.

Shadow: He can hide in my shadow if needed.

Angelica Barley

Angelica is a mage and artificer. She owns her own magic shop that is hidden behind her book shop.

Appearance

Angelica has sharp features, and typically braids her hair up to show them off. She's commonly seen wearing sleeves when working because of the crystals that were embedded in her arms from an accident.

Mood board of her:

Personality

She's kind but stern. Typically, to new mages she acts as a distant mentor. She takes pride in her work but she's also cautious due to her accident. She's possibly one of the only people that can tell Elias off, and she won't hesitate to do it.

Skills

Angelica has the sight similar to that the mages possess. Just like mages, she can borrow magic from fae and she's quite knowledgeable about it too. As an artificer, she embeds magic within tools or makes them with the purpose of magic. She had a Vodanoi named Hugo who is bound to her, he's a prankster but sweet nonetheless. Hugo and Angelica have longevity. This means that they both have increased life spans and she hasn't aged much at all.

Lindel

Lindel is a mage and the current care taker of the Dragons. He was both Elias and Adolf's first master.

Appearance

Lindel is a human and despite being a thousand years old, he looks to be in his 20s. He has pale skin and blonde hair that be ties or braids that frame his face and blue eyes. He typically wears a hood and robe with odd designs on the hood and back piece.

Mood board of Lindel

Personality

Before he became a Mage and Keeper Of Dragons, he hated fae. The fae caused him many problems which caused him to isolate himself. But now, he is calm and playful and he takes pride in his job as the dragon keeper. Despite his usual demeanor, when it comes to the dragons he isn't so kind to poachers.

There are many other people I'll be getting to later such as my dad, my brother, my sister, my friend and her kids and s/o, other important people, etc. But for now I'm tired ainjsndjwsn

#shifting reality #loa #realities #reality shifting #subliminals #shifting realities #shiftblr #manifestation #motivation #reality #shifting #shifting community #ideal reality #current reality

[make-it-mavis]

Homesick (Entry #41 - Finale)

02/03/88   11:53 PM

Hey.

...Hey.

I’m… really not sure where to begin. To be perfectly honest, part of me feels strange writing this at all. Not to say that filling this notebook has always made total sense to me, but today is different. Today is, well… today. This long-winded bedtime story has finally caught up to me. For the first time since I started, all I have to write about is what happened today.

I’ve never been quite so stuck on the fence between calling these entries ‘letters’ or ‘journals.’ I don’t know where I stand in this game of pretend I’ve been playing with myself for the past couple of months. Pretending I’m writing to you, pretending you’ll ever read all this. I don’t know. I guess I want to believe I don’t need to do this anymore, at least not today. Because with any luck, you saw everything that happened today, and heard everything that was said. What’s the point of telling someone about an event they attended?

But I’ll tell you about it anyway, because I want to record and remember every detail. It was overwhelming, and it somehow went by so fast, and I’m worried that I’ll forget something. My heart’s still kind of pounding. I feel a bit light-headed. I can still smell burning paper, and it’s making me a little sick, but it’s… well, it’s complicated.

Today was, of course, your funeral.

I’m not sure what I expected your funeral to be like. I’d never been to one. I’d certainly never prepared one. I wasn’t even sure a gathering of three could be called a funeral at all. But I did my best to make sure each of us would pay respects to you that were not given at the arcade-wide memorial.

I really had only one major request for Felix and Ralph. I wanted each of us, including myself, to write a letter to you. I could tell that they weren’t thrilled by the idea, but they didn’t fight me on it. I tried to make it as easy and open-ended as possible. I told them to just say whatever they would say to you if they had one more chance to do so, to be genuine about it, no matter what that might look like, and write it in the form of a letter. I didn’t tell them why that last part was so significant, and they didn’t ask. But it just felt right to me.

Once we fully settled on a plan together, it looked like this:

One hour after the arcade closed, we would meet behind Niceland. No articles of blue clothing would be allowed, and I would provide red color edits as needed, including on the flowers that Felix was tasked to bring. I would bring the picture frame with our drawings, and your scarf and goggles, to be placed on a table with the flowers. Each of us would read out our letters, and then fold them into paper boats, light them on fire, and send them down the river while I played a song I wrote for the occasion.

I was still working on the song by the time the evening came.

I was in Felix’s apartment when the arcade closed. I had spent most of the day in my den so that I could hear my own music over the sound of Niceland being pounded to bits, but eventually snuck into the building, picture frame and your belongings in hand, so that Felix would not have to come looking for me. When I heard ‘Quittin’ time’ announced and the wrecking stopped for good, I just tried my best to ignore it and keep plucking away on my guitar.

It was not long before I heard approaching thumps rising up the side of the building and, from the corner of my eye, saw Ralph’s face appear in one of the apartment’s windows. I was startled by the sound of glass breaking, and looked to see him still holding up the finger that he had tried to gently tap the window with. 

“D’oh, darn it,” he grunted, before smiling at me sheepishly. “Hey, Mavis. Sorry.”

I set my guitar aside and walked over, kind of annoyed that my heart rate had not fallen since the startle. “Hey, don’t be sorry,” I said with a bit of a sigh, “I hate that window, too.”

He laughed briefly and awkwardly before scratching the back of his head with his free hand. “So… I’ll get out of your hair in a sec, I just wanted to make sure we’re still… Y’know, that this is still--”

“Yup. Still on in an hour.”

“Okay,” he nodded, pretty clearly nervous. “Okay, I’ll go get ready, then.”

He almost dropped, but I called him back with a short whistle. “Hold on,” I told him, pulling out my brush. He watched me quizzically, but held still long enough for me to reach through the window and touch the color red into the otherwise aqua undershirt peeking up under his collar. “There. Now you’re set.”

“Oh,” he tugged his clothes away from his chest to inspect the change. “Right, right. Okay. At least the rest of me is pretty red already, huh?”

“Well, you’re better off than Felix,” I said, cracking a small smile.

We said a couple strained, awkward goodbyes, and he disappeared back down the side of the building almost the second Felix walked in the front door.

At first, he said “Oh, Mavy,” in pleasant surprise, but when he saw the broken window, he repeated in a less happy tone, “Oh, Mavy.”

“Hey, for once it wasn’t me,” I shrugged. “Take it up with the Bad Guy.”

Felix mended the broken window as quickly as ever, and from there, we more or less carried on like we would have any other evening. Felix brewed some tea, we sat at the table, and he told me about his day, as usual. I pretended to listen just enough to seem like I wasn’t snubbing him while I continued to work on the song. I just kept my notepad in my lap and darted my eyes down to it whenever he broke eye contact. Eventually, he couldn’t carry the conversation on his own anymore.

“You haven’t touched your tea,” he pointed out gently. “Can I get you more sugar?”

“No, thanks,” I mumbled absent-mindedly, eyes down, and reached to take a sip of the tea to placate him. Once the cold, minty drink was in my mouth, however, I found it hard to swallow. It tasted fine, but my throat felt almost too tense to allow it. I tried to subtly spit it back into the cup, but I know he saw.

“Are you… alright?” he asked gingerly, like he knew how stupid the question was, today of all days.

“I’m fine,” I sighed, drumming my pen against the paper, still not looking up. “I’m just working on the song I said I’d write. I’ve got the melody, but the words just aren’t coming together.”

“Oh,” I heard him take a slow, thoughtful sip. “Maybe it doesn’t need words. I’m sure it’s lovely anyway.”

I paused to consider that, accepted it, scratched out all my attempts at lyrics and tossed the notepad and pen over my shoulder. “Yeah,” I sighed sharply, planting my elbows on the table and rubbing my brow. “Screw it.”

Felix was quiet for a while. I just kept my eyes closed, trying to escape the headache I’d been fighting all day.

“You know, Mavy,” he said slowly, “we don’t have to do this today. If you need more time, that’s alright.”

“No, no,” I sighed again, folding my arms and staring down at my tea. “I want to do it today.”

“That’s fine, too,” he said. “Just… you know, there’s no rush.”

“Yeah, there is,” I muttered. “For me, there is. I know that a couple of days is not a long time to plan anything, but… I’ve wanted this for way more than a couple of days. I just… I’ve had a lot going on. I haven’t exactly had the mental space to realize just how… how mad I’ve been this whole time. Mad about…” I lifted my fingers, “everything. And I know I’ve been pissy as hell in general, but there’s just been this shade of it that I… I haven’t been able to see.”

I finally glanced up at Felix. He was just listening, cupping his empty mug on the table. There was no pain in his eyes, only a desire to understand. So I continued.

“In counselling, I learned about the stages of grief. Anger is the first. It had been long enough, and I had done enough work on myself, I thought I had moved past it. But there’s been this… underlying resentment that’s gone unaddressed. I know what it is now. It clicked when Ralph gave me that picture frame. I was hit by the fact that it was the first real gesture of respect for Turbo’s memory that I had seen since he died. Yeah, I’m not angry at Turbo anymore. But Devs, I’m angry for him.

“Angry that the arcade-wide memorial only served to vilify him. Angry that I was assaulted before even getting the chance to start mourning, and I’ve spent all this time dealing with what’s happened to me and ignoring what happened to him. Angry that other sprites in counselling get to talk about their grief and loss without a single judging look. Angry that I feel like I have to apologize any time I bring up Turbo in counselling. Angry that sprites out there are literally changing the meaning of his name to mean the act that killed him.”

I took a second to breathe. Felix waited patiently, and I continued once I found a calmer tone to speak in.

“I remember the night before he died. I remember the shape he was in. If anyone else had seen what I did, they wouldn’t be talking like they are. They would know he didn’t deserve to die. I can’t stand being the only sprite in the arcade who seems to understand that. And now I finally have time and energy to do something about it. Even if it’s just me, you, and Ralph. Ideally, Tapper would be there, too. Ideally, the whole arcade would care enough to be there. But I’m doing the best I can with what I’ve got.” 

I shook my head. “I just can’t carry this anger a single step further. It has to be today.”

Felix smiled in a sad sort of way and nodded just a bit. “Okay,” he breathed. “Then we’ll do it today.”

The conversation ended after that, and shortly after, Felix excused himself to go gather the flowers he was tasked to bring, leaving me alone in the apartment for a while. It was enough time for me to practice the song a couple more times and try not to obsess over it. I felt like you deserved something better. Something grand. Something you would be happy to assign your name to while you were here. But I couldn’t manage it. I couldn’t even manage to write lyrics for the short, simple melody I came up with.

I guess missing you just doesn’t make me feel very musical.

After I was as satisfied as I was going to get with the song, I set to work coloring my clothes red, leaving only the already white parts unpainted. I was staring into the bathroom mirror, debating coloring the blue out of my eyes when Felix returned, arms full of flowers. I gave the flowers the same red-and-white treatment I gave myself, and eliminated every shade of blue from Felix’s outfit. He looks a bit weird in red, but I just couldn’t allow anything resembling Devout attire at your funeral. Nevermind blue being your least favorite color.

Once about an hour had passed since the arcade closed, we were all ready to go. There wasn’t a shade of blue on us. Felix held the color-coded flowers, and I held the picture frame and your belongings under an arm. Both of us had our respective letters we wrote to you in our pockets. I had my guitar slung over my back, tuned to perfection. Everything on the proverbial checklist was ticked. 

But still, I stood there at the front door, one hand on the knob, finding it hard to make myself turn it.

“It’s okay, Mavy,” Felix said softly from behind me. “Take your time.”

I sighed through my nose, closing my eyes and trying to fight the quivering in my stomach. The gravity of what I was about to do had been squeezing me tighter and tighter as the evening went on. 

“Hun,” Felix prompted gently, “I know you’re angry. But are you sure you want to do this in anger?”

I considered that, took a deep breath, and stood a bit straighter. “Yes, actually,” I looked back over my shoulder at him, speaking calmly despite my nerves. “I do. Waiting won’t help. I think I can safely say that delaying this is what made me angry in the first place. And... for once, I’d like to use my anger for something good,” I gave half a smile. “I won’t blow anything up this time. Don’t worry.”

Felix gave a quiet huff of a laugh, paused, and shook his head with a warm smile. “I’m not worried.”

I raised a brow.

He put one hand up a bit. “I know, I know how ridiculous that sounds. I know I’m the king of all worrywarts. But I mean it. I’m not worried.”

“Explain.”

Felix shrugged contentedly. “I trust you.”

I just stared at him, unsure if he had ever uttered those words to me before. I didn’t know what to say, so he continued.

“I trust you to do what’s best for you… and for Turbo. You’re the only one in the arcade who could,” he sighed, a bit of glassiness showing in his eyes. “And I’m proud of you. I know he would be, too.”

A bit blindsided in my already emotionally vulnerable state, I swallowed hard. Suddenly, my face felt much too hot. I nodded a bit, letting my eyes wander as the words sank in. I hoped he was right, but I tried not to think too deeply about that lest I turn into an emotional wreck before even making it downstairs.

So I just glanced at him and muttered, “Thanks, cuz.”

“Of course,” he smiled wider. “I know you’ll be alright. I’ve never been so sure of that.”

I allowed my own smile to show. “Yeah. I’ll make it.”

He chuckled. “It’s what you do.”

At that point, I finally found the resolve to open the door and walk down the hall to the elevator. We rode down in silence, and I managed to steady my breathing enough to gain confidence that I could keep it together through our modest little service. Once we reached the ground floor and stepped out into the hallway, however, Felix stopped me before the back doors of Niceland.

“Mavy,” he said, “a word before we go out.”

“What?”

“Well… I hope you don’t mind, but I took a couple... liberties with the service.”

I blinked. “Okay. What’d you do?”

“Just…” he stepped back, pushing open one of the double doors and nodding towards the outside, “...have a look.”

I had no idea what to expect -- Felix’s ideas of surprises are usually extremely underwhelming. But when I obliged him, and took a single step out of the building, what I saw stopped me in my tracks.

There was a crowd.

I saw the Nicelanders first. Behind them, I saw Tapper. And Peter Pepper. And Paperboy, two Joust knights, Mario, and Clyde. And Ralph, towering above them in the back. They were arranged in rows in front of one of the prepared tables, watching me, waiting for me in a reverent hush.

I felt, for just a moment, that I could pass out.

“Mavy… you okay?” Felix whispered.

I looked at him. Then back to the crowd. Then to him. I hadn’t the slightest clue what to say. My thoughts were struggling to keep up with my feelings. I was overwhelmed, equally on the verge of crying, yelling, and running away. But, somehow, all the same… my heart was swelling with gratitude.

“You did this?” I mouthed to Felix.

“I may have spread the word a little bit,” he replied, looking almost smug, in a very nervous way. “I just… I knew you wished he could have a bigger send off, and I knew you thought no one would even come, but… I wanted to prove you wrong. It’s not the whole arcade, but it’s something.”

I stared at him.

“Oh, Mavy,” he frowned, “I’m sorry. Did I do wrong?”

“No,” I whispered, looking back at the crowd. “Absolutely not.”

Finally, we both stepped fully out of Niceland. We crossed to the table in front of the crowd and found that a couple rows of bricks had been placed on it, almost like an altar to put the frame on. I did so, along with your scarf and goggles, and Felix laid out the flowers. After that, he clarified whether I was okay one more time, before stepping in line along the front row of the crowd, leaving me in the spotlight.

I looked at everyone. They looked at me. I silently thanked counselling for getting me accustomed to a certain level of vulnerability in a group setting, and I spoke.

“Wow… I’m almost speechless,” I told them, my voice faltering a bit. “I don’t know what to say, other than…”

At that point, my eyes landed on Gene.

I immediately snapped, “Gene, what the hell are you doing here? Get out.”

He threw his hands up, exclaimed, “THANK YOU,” and broke away from the crowd to return to Niceland. I watched him go, and waited until the door shut behind him to continue.

“Anyway,” I addressed the crowd with a bit more confidence, as Ralph struggled to stifle a laugh in the back, “it means a lot that the rest of you are here. Thank you for…” I sighed, “joining me in remembering Turbo properly. I… obviously have a few things to say, but I’ll hold off for now. Felix and Ralph have prepared remarks, and, uh… after that, if anyone else has something they’d like to say, you’re welcome to do so. I’ll take it from there after that. So…”

I met Felix’s gaze expectantly, and he gasped a little bit before nodding and switching places with me. I set my guitar down on a separate table, and then I stood by the crowd and watched him pull a folded piece of paper out of his chest pocket, clear his throat, and take a moment. The reverent silence from before settled over everyone once more as Felix found his voice.

“Turbo…” he began, “I’m afraid you’ll have to forgive me. This letter isn’t exactly the poetry you’d expect to be read aloud at a… gathering of this nature. Truthfully, writing this at all has been, well… a lot harder than I thought. I’ve written my fair share of letters on my own time. Boy, I even sent you one or two before, when you were still here to receive them. Whether you read them or just turned them into paper airplanes, I never really knew. But this one… I hope, wherever you are, you’re listening. Even if you don’t want to hear from me, there are things I need to say to you. More things than I realized.”

Felix paused to take a steadying breath before attempting the rest. “Turbo, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that it took me this long to truly think about you and how I feel. How I feel about losing you. I’ve been so preoccupied looking after the sprites who depend on me, I just… somehow, forgot to mourn. And once I did, once I started writing, I… Well, I cried. I know I’m a big crier, but even for me… I cried so much. Because golly, I… I didn’t realize just how much I’m going to miss you.

“It feels so strange to say it, because, well, you did drive me up the wall most days. You’d burst into my apartment in the wee hours of the morning, tracking in dirt on my carpet, raiding my fridge without so much as a ‘Hello.’ You’d show up uninvited to parties and be rude to the guests. On more than one occasion, you drove your car into our game and left tire tracks that tore up our lovely grass and flowers. But I miss it all, just the same. I miss feeling guilty for laughing at your... crass jokes. I miss being angry at you, angry enough that all my other problems felt like a breeze, comparatively. I miss seeing you in passing in Game Central and hearing every new, mean... frankly annoyingly clever nickname you chose to greet me with. I miss your laugh, your smile, your face… I miss seeing you at all. It’s strange, but I miss all the complicated emotions you brought into my life. You did drive me crazy. But I loved it. I’m just sorry it took losing you to make me realize that.”

At this point, he was pausing at the end of every sentence to wipe away tears from under his eyes, and as he went on, I could feel my own starting to sting a bit. “I wish you could have understood how loved you were. In the way that matters. I wish that you could have seen that you had nothing to be jealous of. You were one in a million, Turbo. No one will ever replace you. No one will ever forget you.”

Just for a moment, he glanced at me. “And I’ll never forget the happiness you brought to my family.” Then, sniffling, he closed out with, “Goodbye, Turbo. Goodbye, my friend.”

After that, he wandered over to join me next to the crowd and pulled out a handkerchief to blow his nose into. I watched him, eventually deciding to rub his back. Touching him is still a challenge, but… I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know if I could even say it right. 

I had expected his letter to be almost entirely about your relationship with me and how it made him feel. I expected to be the bridge between the two of you, like I always seemed to be before you died. But, seemingly out of nowhere, he pulled out these deeply personal feelings about you. He himself felt guilt over not mourning you properly, just as I did. It made me think about the conversation we had shared about an hour beforehand, and how he must have been angry, too. In his own Felix sort of way. And how that might have inspired him, in part, to invite all the extra guests.

It just meant a lot to me, knowing you meant something to him.

After a couple moments of clumsily comforting Felix, I saw no movement, so I looked back over the crowd at Ralph. He seemed to be doing his best to disappear all nine feet of himself, but once we locked eyes, he surrendered and trudged to the front of the crowd. He seemed kind of nervous, fumbling as he pulled out his letter and unfolded it.

“Turbo, uh…” he began, pausing to stare out at his audience one last time before shifting his feet and clearing his throat. “Okay. Look. I'll be honest with you. When Mavis asked me to write you a letter, I was kind of confused. The letters are a nice idea, but… me? I was never your friend. We never got along. In fact, the very first time I met you, I very clearly remember you saying--” and at this point, he poorly mimicked your accent, “--’Don't tell me. You're a Bad Guy. I can smell a professional loser from across the arcade, even without the help a’ your severe body odor. Take a shower, ya might like it.’”

I didn’t hide my chuckle. I even heard one or two behind me. Ralph noticed, and seemed unsure if he was being laughed at or with. Either way, he took on a bit more of a solid tone.

“Yeah, you were a jerk. You didn't like me, and I didn't like you. But I'm still… I don’t know. Somehow, part of me is still sad you're gone. And not just because things have been so messed up since you left. I think there was just one thing about you that I might have, possibly, maybe, sort of liked.

“You were a Good Guy, but… you didn’t really act like one. A lot of Good Guys are jerks who pretend to be nice, but you never pretended. You never hid how mean you were. It’s weird to think of that as a good thing. I don't know. I'm not sure I get why that sticks out to me in my memories of you, but it does, so... I guess I will miss you, Turbo. Even though you were basically a second Mavis most of the time.”

That one got a bigger laugh, especially from me. Ralph seemed very pleased with himself. He had to clear his throat to snap himself out of a poorly timed smile. Frowning appropriately, he said, “Goodbye, Turbo. Rest in peace.”

He then walked back to his spot in the rear of the crowd, and a blanket of silence settled softly over us all once again. 

By this point, I was feeling pretty sick. Somehow, I wasn’t crying yet, but I was incredibly anxious. The longer the service went on, the more I began to wonder if I was making a mistake, after all. Hearing the other two talk about you the way they did… It scared me for a lot of reasons. Not the least of which being I was probably going to have to read my letter in a moment, and it was a lot longer and a lot more personal than what they wrote. I knew that would be the case from the beginning, but when the moment finally came, I was not prepared for it.

And as the silence carried on, I only felt sicker. If no one else wanted to speak, then it would have to be my turn. I just stood there, fighting myself on whether I should wait longer or get it over with, until I heard the blessed sound of footsteps.

Tapper stepped out in front of the crowd.

Seeing him standing there alone, rescuing me from my anxiety for just a couple more minutes, I was finally able to process how happy I was to see him. Knowing that he must have closed the bar down to come support you and me, even after I nearly got his game unplugged… I mean, I could hardly believe it. A week ago, I thought he would never want to see me again. But he was there. He left his blue vest at home, out of respect for the dress code. He was responsible for the precious frame propped up on the table behind him. 

And he had something to say to you. 

“Turbo…” he began, sighing, “first, let me piss you off by talking about myself at your funeral. It won't take long. After all, I'm a pretty simple guy. I sell root beer, and that's about it. I barely ever even leave my game. But the truth is, I don't have to. I can go anywhere I want without ever stepping outside. I open my doors… and the arcade is brought to me. Everyone brings in little bits of their lives, whether they know it or not, and I get all the travel I need just from good conversation. But lately, well… I ain't been traveling so far. For the first time ever, my game isn't big enough for me. Not since my road to Turbo Time disappeared.”

He paused thoughtfully, eyes down for a moment. “I may not have ever physically set foot in there. Most of us didn't. But I know we all miss it. Some more than others, sure. And yeah, maybe it wasn't the center of the universe like someone would have liked us to believe. But Turbo Time was more than just a game. Turbo Time was a fact. Constant, stable, since the opening of the very arcade itself. I don't think any of us realized just how comforting it was, the idea that at least one thing in this strange, unpredictable world could remain unchanged -- Turbo Time's place in the spotlight. 

“Now... it's gone. And I'm sure there's not a sprite in the arcade who doesn't miss it. Who doesn't miss that stability. Doesn't miss the things we could still believe when Turbo Time was here. So I speak for everyone, and I mean everyone, when I say: Turbo, you will be missed. And thank you for the years you gave us. Goodbye, old friend.”

Tapper gave me one short, meaningful glance, and the corner of his moustache tipped up just a bit in the hint of a smile. He walked away, but not before flashing just a flicker of a wink at me. It took a couple of minutes to understand what he meant to convey with that, but knowing Tapper, I figured it out. And it just made me even more grateful that he came. 

I think that everyone else’s refusal to speak did not sit right with him. He knew everyone had something to say, so he said it for them. Because it was your freakin’ funeral, and it would be damn disrespectful to snub you like that.

Tapper’s the best.

Once he rejoined the crowd, I went back to waiting for a while. Deep down, I knew no one else would step up. I knew I was just prolonging my own suffering, but I felt rooted to the spot. I just stood there, staring at the point on the ground where I would have to stand. It was only a few steps away. It should have been easy. But everyone was waiting for me. I could feel more than one pair of eyes watching me expectantly. And in a moment, I would have to broadcast some very, very personal feelings to them. For a few moments, I wondered if I should have been mad at Felix for inviting everyone without permission, after all.

But then I thought back again to the conversation we had earlier. How I said, in a perfect world, the whole arcade would come to pay respects to you. In a perfect world, the arcade-wide memorial would have a complete do-over. The handful of sprites I stood next to was the best you were going to get. At that thought, I felt the same anger that inspired me to host the funeral in the first place. 

I pulled the letter I wrote to you out of my pocket and looked it over for just a moment, contemplating. It was everything I would say to you, if I could turn back time. But I asked myself whether, given this opportunity, I wanted to speak to you or to them.

I folded up the letter and put it back in my pocket. I told Felix earlier that anger could be used for good, and I figured it was time to practice what I preached.

I stepped out in front of everyone. I deliberately made them wait just a minute longer while I counted every gaze pointed my way. Every single sprite was watching me, listening, which was no longer off-putting.

It was perfect.

“Let me start by thanking you all for coming, once again, and thank Felix for inviting everyone,” I said clearly and calmly. “This… event is long overdue, and undersized. So, what few guests you may be, know that your appearance here means a lot. A special thank you in particular to the Devout here who skipped the blue clothing, as requested. You see, Turbo was not Devout. He never was. Yet, somehow, a Devout preacher was the only sprite given the authority to speak about him at the memorial after his death. That’s why we’re here today.”

I paused, letting that point sink in, and picking my next words carefully. I was angry, but I had to stay level-headed. I had to use that anger effectively, or the very important message I was about to deliver would not land. Once I felt confident in my emotional balance, I continued.

“The preacher never knew him. No one who spoke that day knew him. Admittedly, he was a tough sprite to know. I could easily count on one hand how many sprites actually did. But no one knew him like I did. By rights, it should have been me who spoke that day. It’s a bit late for that now, but I can tell you what I would have said. 

“I’d have told you what most people knew Turbo as. Arrogant, narcissistic, loud, belligerent, relentlessly competitive. You could get him to do pretty much anything just by suggesting he couldn’t. And no matter how badly he failed, he would always challenge you to do better.”

I heard a quiet chuckle or two from that, and smiled as I went on.

“Yeah, nothing, not even his game’s lofty track record, was ever so famous about Turbo as his ego. But he was also clever. And witty, and resourceful, and inventive. His garage was always cluttered with work-in-progress gizmos and sheets of... wildly intricate blueprints I never learned how to read. Framed on the table behind me is proof that we would draw together sometimes, and I always thought his art style was cooler than I let on. Sometimes we would sing, or even write music together, and it’ll likely surprise you to hear, but his voice and his poetry weren’t half-bad. Yeah. That guy was full of surprises, way more than anyone would have believed. And probably the hardest to believe of them all, was… he was afraid.”

I took another pause, figuring out how to continue without betraying your privacy too much. I needed to make everyone understand, but I still wanted to be respectful to you. Eventually, I continued carefully, a light tremor of emotion in my voice.

“He had the fame, the fortune, the status, the gamers’ full attention… but like anyone else in this arcade, he was… scared. He wanted to be loved. To be remembered. He wanted something real to hold onto. Some meaning that could hold its own against the universal fear of this life, the fear that someday our games will be unplugged and wheeled out that door to nowhere. Now, I know how I’ll remember him. I’ll remember him as the greatest racer this arcade’s ever seen. I’ll remember him as an artist, an inventor, a singer, a comedian. I’ll remember him as a person. Because that’s what he was. No matter how hard that preacher tried to twist his life into nothing but a cautionary tale, he was just as much a person as she is. As any of us are. Ignoring that goes far beyond disrespect. Ignoring that is outright dangerous. Because Turbo, no matter what connotations his name carries now, was not a monster. He was only ever one of us. We lost one of our own, and until we stop hiding and face the truth of his death, we will lose more the same way. What can kill one of us can kill more of us.”

I could see a few frowns in the audience. I knew my words were getting a bit scary, but that was good. It said to me that they were starting to get it. So I didn’t let up. I let my tone sharpen.

“Disobeying the program is not what killed him. Seeing no meaning outside of the program killed him. And yet, there was the preacher saying we ought to do the exact same thing. Place all our meaning on our code. She said that Turbo had a virus, that he was corrupted, that following the program will protect us from his fate. The program keeps your game alive, this much we can’t change. But it can’t protect us from everything. You can do everything right and still end up quarterless. New games are plugged in, gamers move on, for reasons we will probably never understand. That’s just life here. Life here is hard, and it’s confusing, and for the most part, our roles are the only things we can actually make sense of. But there has to be more. You have to find more. Your role is what you do, but it can’t be who you are. Because if that’s taken away, who are you? Why are you?”

I stopped. The silence that was once reverent had turned tense. I let my breathing slow as I took a good, long look at the crowd. I felt very little sympathy for the uncomfortable faces at first. Felix was just holding his hat in front of his belly, eyes wide, lips parted. Tapper’s gaze was steady on me, but his brow was furrowed in an almost pained sort of way. Ralph wasn’t looking at me at all. His eyes were low, staring at nothing in particular, squeezing his fingers anxiously.

I took in a deep breath, held it, and let a long sigh wash the anger and adrenaline out of me. That was enough. I could let them off the hook.

“Anyway,” I said lowly, sadly, “that’s my sermon for the day. Moving on... Well, speaking of roles... my role doesn't offer a whole lot in the first place. Some say Easter Eggs are good luck, but being one sure isn’t. You can go weeks without a second of gameplay. It’s hard to feel like you really belong anywhere, sometimes. You live in your game, sure, but… it’s hard to call it ‘home’ when you’re barely needed. It’s easy to feel like the least important sprite in the whole arcade. So, imagine my surprise when, four years ago, I found myself goofing off with the king of the arcade,” I smiled a bit at the memory. “It was so weird to me, hanging out with a guy so obsessed with status when I had basically none of my own. I thought it would have bothered him. But… that was one of the instances where his narcissism sort of… canceled itself out and made him a better person, I think. He was too concerned with himself to care. I asked him what he thought about me being an Easter Egg once, and he just shrugged and said, ‘The hell should I care?’ Like I’d asked him what I should have for dinner, or something. Not saying there weren’t things about me he didn’t like, and hey, he wasn’t perfect either. But there was trust there, I guess. Weird, snarky trust.

“So, I ended up spending a whole lot of time with him, and that was great, because being an Easter Egg frankly gives me more free time than I always know what to do with. Eventually, goofing off with him was one of the few things that made sense in my life. Even if it didn’t make sense to anyone else. I mean, not that everyone didn’t see why we got along so well. We were often told how similar we were, usually not in a good way. But why we did the things we did, I don't think many understood. And I wouldn't expect them to, because our fun usually came at everyone else's expense. Like the time we poured puddles of oil around game central just to watch everyone slip. Or when we'd play music in Ghosts n' Goblins so loud it literally woke the dead. Everyone here probably has their own story to tell…”

I made eye contact and managed a smile for each sprite I mentioned, “Like Mary, whose cake we ruined by switching her sugar and salt. Deanna, we were the reason the whole arcade started calling you ‘Dana’. Tapper could keep us up all night with his own tales of our misdeeds, and so could Gene for that matter, if he were allowed to speak. And Don, yes, any time one of your model boats went missing, it was nicked by us. We used to take them into Frogger and set them on fire, and watch them drift away down the river.”

Don in particular looked shocked, confused, and a bit scandalized, but resigned quickly with a small sigh.

“It all sounds… petty,” I continued, nodding. “Meaningless, shallow, self-indulgent wastes of time by two arrogant sprites who didn't give a damn about anything or anyone. And that's how I preferred to think of it too, most of the time. But I tell you… once, while we were watching one of Don's boats burn away as it floated along, Turbo asked me, ‘Where do you think it goes… after it's deleted for good? After the fire eats it all away?’ He wasn't looking at me, but I could tell… he wasn't smiling. I told him the only thing that made sense to me… ‘Anywhere but here.’ And… honestly, I think the idea of that was some kind of comfort. The idea that there was anything outside of what we knew. Many would say he only ever knew a perfect, privileged life. That he had everything he could have wanted. But, still… all we ever did was look for a way out.”

My eyes fell for a moment. I stared at the ground as I clenched my jaw, struggling to string together the heartache I felt into words. My emotions were finally starting to bubble over, and as much as I tried to fight it, my vision started to blur with tears. Almost at a loss, I just forced myself to start talking, my voice weak and quivering as I looked out at the crowd again.

“...Sprites said a lot of things about us. About… us. Some would call him my partner in crime, which wasn't the whole truth. Some called him my best friend, which... wasn’t the whole truth, either. A whole lot more called him my boyfriend, which, despite evidence to the contrary, he was not. Even I was never sure what to call him, or what he really was to me. But I think I understand, now that he's gone. Because I didn't just lose a friend... or a partner. I lost a place at his side… the first place I ever felt like I belonged. Turbo… he was my home. I... don’t know where the fire leads. I don’t know if it leads anywhere. I don’t know if he’s listening. I don’t know if he exists at all anymore. Out of all those, I don’t even know what I want to believe. Right now, all I know is… no matter how many games I see, no matter how many sprites I meet, no matter how many years I live… I’ll always be homesick. Always.”

I closed my eyes, unable to keep a few tears from falling. Trembling from the awful heat deep in my chest, I knew I was done. I couldn’t say another word on the matter. So, after a long, hushed moment, I turned my eyes to Felix and tipped my head in request for him to take my place. He obliged without question, wiping away the wetness on his own red cheeks. I wandered over to sling my guitar over my shoulder once again as he informed the crowd that it was time to take their paper boats over to the river.

Almost everyone started making their way over to the water, but a few stayed behind to exchange passing words with me or Felix, even though I was mostly staying quiet in an attempt to keep the tears reined in.

Mary approached me first, making an awkward, but genuine offer to bake me a cake when I was finished with my counselling. Even suggested that a small party be arranged. I wasn’t opposed to the idea, but I just thanked her and told her I would think about it. I wasn’t in any shape to be making decisions, and she seemed to get that.

Clyde didn’t get too close. He just put himself in my line of vision and offered a supportive, almost proud smile. I just smiled back and nodded, and that was enough for him. He floated away. I’m glad he was there -- I’m sure my grand display of vulnerability earned me some counselling points.

Peter Pepper, Mario, Paperboy, and the Joust knights came one after the other, all saying more or less the same thing. They had some fond memories of you and me, they wanted to show their support, and they were sorry for my loss. I didn’t know how to respond to most of it beyond muttered thanks. 

Then Tapper approached me. There was a whole lot of pride in his eyes, too, as he smiled at me. He reached out to do our patented air-handshake, but I fully clasped his hand and shook it gratefully. He seemed shocked for a second, but laughed a little in pleasant surprise. At that point, I began falling over myself a bit in some attempt to come up with an apology even a fraction as big as he deserved, but was quickly stopped short. He told me that me getting help was the best apology I could give him, and that when I’m done, I should come find him to continue our drawing business, since his walls are still pretty bare.

Again, Tapper is the best. 

Once all the conversations ended, Felix and I proceeded to fold our letters into boats, and I helped Ralph with his, since his fingers are so huge and clumsy. He thanked me, but he also seemed sadder and quieter than I expected him to be. Maybe someday I’ll talk to him about it, but I didn’t today. I just grabbed the picture frame, your scarf and goggles, and we all walked over to the river in silence.

I stepped up to the edge of the water, brush in hand. One by one, every guest approached me and gave me their boat, which I touched a shade of fire to with my paint, and gently placed them into the stream. As the process went along, I wondered what all of the letters might have said. I expected most of them to be blank, but a good portion of them had handwriting poking out under the folds. The thought of it put a terribly painful gratitude in my chest.

I sent Ralph’s down the water, and then Felix’s. And last of all came mine.

I held it and stared at it for a minute. It contained everything I wish I could say to you. Everything you should have known before leaving this world. Somehow, it seemed hard to let it go, to do any harm to it. But with all the faith I could possibly muster, I blessed it with a prayer, and sent it floating away in flames, like all the others.

I sat, set my guitar in my lap, and with the heaviest heart I carried in my life, I played your song.

Felix sat beside me, and Ralph followed a moment after, but everyone else remained standing for the soft, mournful serenade. I may not have found the right words to sing, but I hummed along gently anyway, quiet tears falling from my cheeks. I watched the little lights sail away, watched the paper blacken and curl, and the little embers escape into the air. I don’t need to tell you what it reminded me of. But, as painful as it was to relive even a moment of your passing, I knew that this was, maybe, the only way my prayer would be answered.

‘Wherever the fire took him, let it take these, too.’

My song ended before long, and I could barely see through the tears in my eyes, but we all watched until the very last flame burnt out, and only flecks of charred paper remained, carried away by the current. I sat there for a while, sniffing, wiping my eyes, keeping as tight a grip on my composure as possible. Felix pat my back very lightly until I was ready to stand up.

Once I did… it was over.

Everyone said their goodbyes, gave their thanks, gave their sympathies, but ultimately, had to go. Tapper and Peter Pepper had to reopen their games, after all. As the visitors made their way across the bridge and to the cord train to leave, Felix checked in on me. He asked if I wanted to come have dinner with what was left of the group, and just spend the rest of the night in each other’s company.

I declined. I told him that I needed some time alone, and that I was very tired. I haven’t slept much, the past couple days, and I told him so.

He understood, of course, and like a good friend, told me that he’ll be there whenever I need him. Ralph, finally speaking up, seconded the notion, saying that his ‘door’ was always open.

Felix almost went for a hug, but stopped himself, still unsure of my boundaries. On another night, I might have obliged him. Instead, I just clapped a hand on his shoulder and squeezed. Eyes glassy, with a loving smile, he did the same to me.

Then we went our separate ways. Felix, to Niceland. Ralph, to the dump. Me, to my den.

Where I fell to pieces and cried my heart out.

All the tears I had been holding back all night just… erupted out of me. I know I could have cried sooner. I know I would have been met with support. Felix and Ralph have been there for me in meaningful ways I won’t soon forget. But, today, I just… I need you. It’s physically painful how badly I need you. No one else will give me what I need tonight, and I can’t expect them to.

So, I guess that’s why I’m here, writing to you again. I can’t visit you any other way, now. I can’t believe how important this notebook has become. I started this ‘story’ in such a terrible, anxious, spiteful place. I was so angry at you for leaving me, and I wanted to tell you just how badly you’ve hurt me. But I’m not angry at you anymore. I almost wish that I was. Because now that it comes down to it, this notebook just feels like the only line to you I have left. There will be no more buff-fueled journeys into my memories, no more hallucinations taking the shape of you. And that’s all well and good, because buffs never filled the space you left behind like I hoped they would. Booze and buffs never kept me warm. Never listened. Never held me. 

I don’t want them anymore.

All I want is you.

Once upon a time, this would be too sappy to say, but… Devs, I just want to fall into your arms. I want to vent out everything I kept inside today. Everything I’ve kept inside since starting counselling. Everything I’ve been fighting to keep contained so I can stay strong.

I am strong. Staying strong is going to be worth it. But sometimes, I need to be weak. I’m sure ‘weak’ isn’t what the sprites at counselling would want me to use, but… tonight, I want to be weak. I don’t want to need to be strong. For a while, I want you to be strong for me, and just… let me feel the hurt without endangering myself or anyone else, for once.

Let me play pretend for a little while longer, and tell you everything that’s on my mind.

Maybe some of it will make sense once it’s on paper.

You know… I’m just remembering a moment in counselling, when a sprite talked about how his worst fear came true, but knowing he had lived through it was freeing. I think I mentioned it to Felix last week, but as time goes on, I just… I’m realizing how true it is.

So many horrible things have happened. So much has changed. Sometimes, I still have trouble recognizing my life, and the anxiety surrounding that is suffocating. But every time I come out the other side and calm down, I find that reality is as steady as ever. Slowly, I’m getting used to the new normal. Even the painful parts. I feel… safe. Which, given everything I’ve written here, is kind of amazing.

And, with that safety, I’m given a bit of room to actually look at the good changes that are underway.

One of the biggest sources of pain in my life, and indeed, one of the biggest fuels for my addictive habits, has been the idea that I’m trapped. Trapped in my role by the Devs. Trapped in the grief of losing you. Trapped in my addictions themselves, even. All I’ve ever wanted was a way to escape. Yet, somehow, being locked up in cabinet arrest, being forced to attend stupid, boring counselling… I don’t feel so confined anymore. The arcade feels like it’s getting bigger.

I’m still too big for the life I was made for. That much hasn’t changed. But I’m beginning to think that I don’t need to cut off pieces of myself to fit into it. I think I can just… make my life bigger. I’m not entirely sure how, but I have to believe it’s possible. I mean, I did just preach the idea at your funeral. I have to find more. I have to make more. You managed to show me that. Somehow, through all the loss, suffering, and mistakes, you’ve left me with the knowledge of how important it is to look for more than you’re given.

It’s hard to feel grateful for that.

Truthfully, letting anything good come of this whole nightmare has been incredibly difficult. It still is. There’s some horrible guilt to it. Why do I get to be the one to survive? Why am I the one with a chance to turn my life around? Why couldn’t I have learned all this without having to lose you first?

But, you know… falling apart didn’t bring you back. It was no honor to your memory. It just caused needless pain, almost to the point of total disaster.

I learn from all this because I have to. I joined counselling because I had to make a change. I have to believe you’d be happy for me. Especially because… I can feel big changes happening, deep down.

I feel like I’m on my way to finding what ‘good’ feels like again.

I once told Felix that the search for ‘good’ had never felt so daunting before. I had so many fears holding me back. I was afraid to feel much of anything at all. Afraid to put down roots of any kind. Afraid to have anything real out of belief that I would break it. Afraid to be loved because I didn’t know how to accept it.

Accepting love is still hard, but I’m starting to see that it’s not a decision you can make for anyone else.

Even things about yourself you’ve deemed completely unforgivable will, somehow, still be forgiven. It’s a tough thing to wrap your head around, but hating yourself will not make others hate you, too. I mean… I still can’t manage to hate you, even after all the pain you put me through. Devs know I’ve caused a lot of pain to sprites who care about me, even before all this happened.

But, somehow… I’m not alone. I was never doomed to be alone. It’s taken me five years to realize that.

Along with it, I’ve realized that your mind can really become a world you’ve created around yourself. It feels like absolute truth and reality. But when you manage to look outside of that world, you realize how small your mind really is. The real world is a whole lot bigger than how you perceive it. Everyone has their own perception, too, probably very different from yours.

Everyone’s got their own colors. I have to remember that I can choose mine.

I choose to heal. I’m already on my way.

Even the funeral, scary as it was, felt like a big step.

I was afraid of how I would feel after. I was scared of the finality of it. I once believed all this to be a prank or a dream, and while I wanted to believe I'd abandoned those delusions… I think, even today, some small part of me still wanted to believe that you would spring out of hiding and relieve me of this cruel joke. Or that I could still wake up next to you and forget this whole nightmare by the end of breakfast. I was afraid that the funeral would feel like giving up hope, and in the process, I'd lose you even more than I already have.

It didn't feel like that, exactly. At least, not yet. For now, I feel… relieved. But exhausted. Like a huge weight has been lifted off my back, and after carrying it for so long, all I want to do is collapse into bed and rest. I am in bed as I write this, and I'm admittedly having trouble keeping my eyes open.

But I can’t seem to stop writing.

I know I should. I know I’m just pretending. I know I should get some sleep, because there is still so much more work ahead of me. Work that’s far more real and important than writing letters to a ghost. I’ve had an ache in my wrist for about a week, I keep having to shake this pen to get any ink out of it, and there are only a couple pages left in this notebook.

I’m just… afraid to stop. I’m afraid that it will mean this bedtime story is over. I’m afraid it will mean that it’s time to move on, and I’m not ready.

I’m not ready.

I’m glad I was able to give you some manner of send-off. I’m glad I was able to defend your memory. I feel relief from dealing with the anger I had been carrying on your behalf, and from the knowledge that I don’t have to mourn you alone anymore. I do not regret the funeral, not in the slightest. But that doesn’t mean it didn’t terrify me. You see, as the service went on, I noticed a pattern that just kept stabbing pins into my heart. Felix, Ralph, and Tapper’s letters all had a certain word in common, one that I neither wrote nor spoke.

‘Goodbye.’

As I wrote your letter, as I attempted to write lyrics for your song, as I improvised that speech about you, that word never crossed my mind. I did not arrange a funeral for the purpose of letting you go. I’m starting to see that I arranged it for the purpose of holding you tighter.

Through the whole service, I just couldn’t stop thinking about that moment in Felix’s apartment, when I was helping him clean up the ashes after my… explosive incident. When I was scrubbing the black off of his wall, and it struck me how time was moving forward without you. That feeling managed to be so healing and so devastating all at once. I accepted that I could never go back to our days together, but I refused to accept that I had to leave you behind entirely.

I can’t say goodbye. I knew you for four years, and I barely feel like I said hello. It feels like our story didn’t even end, it just trailed off into nothing. We began a new chapter the last night we were together, and then we just… stopped.

I just want to go back to that night. That moment when I realized how I really felt about you, and the few precious hours I was able to spend with you after. If I could do it all over again, I would have stayed up all night telling you everything I was too cowardly to say at the time. And the morning would never come to steal you away from me.

That must be part of why it’s so hard to move on. You were stolen. We promised to stay together forever. We had a future. For me, that’s everything. I came into this world already lost, with barely a role, barely any context. I could only ever see the day to day. The future was just this dark fog I ran into blindly. But then you came along. And you told me that no matter my future, you would be in it. You didn’t blow the fog away. You weren’t my destination. But you were a light. You were my star. 

Then the sun came up, and took you away. 

It’s so hard to accept that I can’t win you back. I can’t accept that my promise to you is out of my hands. I have to find a way to move on, and I will. But I can’t let you go. I won’t.

Listen, T… I said I was afraid the funeral would feel like giving up hope. It didn’t. I’m scared, but I’m more hopeful now than I’ve been since you left. I may have lost your light, but I have a clear direction to move in. I’m going to finish counselling and stay sober. I’m going to be free to roam the arcade again. I’m going to repair the relationships I nearly broke. I’m going to regain full color in my brush and take to the skies again very soon. It’s going to be hard. I know that. But I also know that I’ll be okay. I hope Felix is right, and you’re proud of me. I’m getting there myself.

But I swear… I can, and will, do it all without letting you go.

Forever. That’s what we promised. You being out of reach makes it harder, but I’ll find a way. 

And… this is my most wishful thinking of all, but… I hope you’re keeping your promise, too.

Maybe it’s just the lack of sleep, but… I swear I can feel your eyes on me. I swear you’re curled up behind me, right now. My bed is never this warm when I’m alone. I know the illusion will be broken if I roll over, so for now… 

If you really are reading over my shoulder… if the act of writing this feels like holding your hand for a reason… if I’m not just a lonely, heartbroken fool with an overactive imagination… 

Keep your promise. Don’t let me go.

Rest here with me.

If there’s anything at all you can do for me, have it be this. Just stay by my side when I lie down at night. I’m so tired, Turbo. I am. I’ve dodged death more than once since you left. I’ve fought so hard to keep my head above water. I haven’t had a minute to just lay down my burdens and feel safe. But feeling you here, even in the small way I do now… I feel like I can breathe. I feel like our last night together never ended.

And it never will, because in Fix-it Felix Jr., the sun never rises. I’ve had many complicated emotions regarding the stars that glitter in the endless sky of my game, but tonight, I’m giving them a meaning better than any they’ve had before.

As long as I can see the stars, I’ll know you haven’t left me.

There’s never going to be a goodbye between us, Turbo. I promise you that. I’ll just say ‘goodnight.’ And I’ll say it again tomorrow. 

And a thousand times more.

Forever isn’t over yet.

#fanfiction #fanfic #wreck it ralph #make it mavis #fix it felix #turbo #tapper #original character #homesick #epilogue coming tomorrow!!

[autumnblogs]

Day 18: Engineering our own misfortune

https://homestuck.com/story/2939

It never occurred to me until now that being betrayed by Jack Noir, the first person to accept him for who he is in a sense, is probably a signifcant part of the reason why Karkat is so angry. It’s probably ironic that the Blood Player’s relationships all have a tendency to disintegrate. Poor guy.

All but one of Karkat’s coplayers will either die, betray him, abandon him, or break up with him before the adventure is over.

More after the break. CW: This one has some suicide mentions in it.

https://homestuck.com/story/2950

WV and the other Carapacians may have some instinctive level of awareness of the players’ classes and aspects - while their legend is ensconced in Carapacian Lore, WV instantly senses the narrative presence of the Thief of Light.

https://homestuck.com/story/2960

Now here is something interesting. I just picked up on it, even though it has actually been present all throughout - when the Narrative addresses WV, it addresses him with information he almost certainly could not know - in a call and response fashion! While he’s jumping from one thought to another in terms of John’s different correspondents, the way that he phrases his dialogue suggests that he is aware of what the Narrative is addressing him.

https://homestuck.com/story/2962

And by all accounts, what he is viewing here is not the literal material events as they unfold, he’s literally looking at the same panels we are.

https://homestuck.com/story/2974

Vriska’s gloating here has always given me chills. It’s in moments like these that she really shines as not just a bully but an authentic diabolical mastermind who is, at least at this point in the story, utterly indifferent to the lives of other people.

https://homestuck.com/story/2975

Vriska’s external locus of control excuses her of feeling guilty about creating Bec Noir. While she is 100% responsible for it, that doesn’t mean, in her mind, that she should suffer any consequences for it (although she’s perfectly happy to take the credit for creating him, it seems.)

https://homestuck.com/story/2992

I’ve always thought that the Dream Bubbles were an extremely cool plot contrivance - semantically linking memories together with dreams and death is a really cool bit of linking.

https://homestuck.com/story/3008

Just as Jade has had effectively no parent to help her find her way in life, she will now have to suffer a sprite who cannot give her advice either. She remains alone.

https://homestuck.com/story/3010

Bec, to a greater degree than perhaps even the Seers, is directly cognizant of interruptions by Command Prompts.

https://homestuck.com/story/3017

I’m starting to be able to actually pick up the themes of the whole Exile plotline.

It seems, in general, to be a parable on power and authority, with each of the Exiles representing one kind or another. You’ve got WV who aspires to be first among equals, democratically elected, a community leader and organizer.

You’ve got the White Queen, who fits classical tropes related to the Good Monarch, a symbolic authority.

You’ve got the Peregrine Mendicant, whose take on governmental duty is more that of a functionary - her self-concept is as someone who does what is needed.

And then you’ve got the Aimless Renegade, who, as a Mad Max Type wasteland cop, could be read as either a playful parody of eighties and nineties copaganda, or as a criticism of copaganda, or both - government as the State, an enforcer of constructed order.

Of all of them, it’s clear that WV and PM’s takes on power are the most useful. The White King and Queen are quickly slaughtered once Jack arrives, because without their magical mcguffins, they remain little more than walking talking symbols.

AR is an interesting case though, because his defining character moment is that he hesitates to follow his orders, and while it could be argued that everything that ensues is his fault for not being stone cold enough to do what needs to be done, I’d argue that his hesitation is admirable - Jack escapes to live another day, and the Mayor survives. The Mayor’s infectious compassion ultimately saves his own life through the AR’s refusal to let him die by destroying the command stations in Cascade, because AR is not willing to trade lives.

https://homestuck.com/story/3040

I’ve never been entirely clear on whether the Dark Gods should be considered evil or simply incomprehensible, morally uncategorizable - in any case, the unique nature of the Kids’ session seems to preclude an ordinary relationship with them. By all accounts they also seem perfectly happy to help Rose create the Green Sun as well, sowing the seeds that will grow into Lord English, their own murderer.

Whatever they’re up to is extremely unclear, and they mostly seem to be a wildcard. I’ll have to see if any of my Homestuck chums have thoughts about the Horrorterrors. With the exception of the Dream Bubbles and their ability to facilitate interaction between the living and the Dead, talking to the Horrorterrors seems to be at best an exercise in facilitating inevitable misfortune - they seem to be all but completely useless.

I suppose learning how to navigate the furthest ring comes in handy exactly once, since it enables the kids to fly to the Alpha’s universe.

https://homestuck.com/story/3043

Rose’s pessimistic dissatisfaction manifests in two ways during this conversation - the first is her contemplation of self-destruction. Along with her suicide mission, one of the very first things she mentions about Doc Scratch is that he wants to die - which clearly fascinates her. The other thing is that, suspicious of the version of truth that Skaia presents, and lacking an anchor, she is very easily swayed by characters who offer her an alternative truth.

https://homestuck.com/story/3045

It has just occurred to me that while Rose doesn’t do anything directly to harm her co-players the way that Vriska does, the main actual thing that they have in common, that I was having a hard time putting my finger on, is actually another parallel between the two of them and Aradia - by allowing themselves to be manipulated by forces of evil beyond human comprehension - Doc Scratch in particular - Rose and Vriska both make manifest all sorts of misfortune. In Aradia’s case, it’s her continuous manipulation by the voices of the dead.

Both of them create nearly all of their own problems, and while they’re at it, create immense amounts of suffering from other people who happen to be in the vicinity. And, according to the rules of the Alpha Timeline, both of them therefore give their assent to their misfortune. The Alpha Timeline is, of course, the same as the Glub Glub trap - if you refuse to participate, you are destroyed, but participation is horrible.

https://homestuck.com/story/3055

Couple things.

The first and most obvious is;

Monkey see, Monkey do.

We’re starting to see the fallout of Vriska’s attempts to acculturate Tavros - she’s tried to force a square peg into a round hole, and has had no luck. Tavros doesn’t fit her vision of an ideal troll, and he never will; that’s not the kind of person that he is.

The use of the word hero is what’s important here. Notice especially the way that he draws a line from physical fitness and personal worth - the ability to do important things that you want to do has become Tavros’ idea of how to self-actualize. He has internalized Vriska’s toxic ideas.

The other thing is that while Grandpa may not have literally committed suicide, but he is clearly emotionally checked out of life - playing Indiana Jones when he’s away from home, and interacting with fantasy women at his tea party, instead of engaging with his real life granddaughter.

Suicide’s a touchy subject, one which Homestuck touches on. As I’ve already said, I’m not going to touch on the Epilogues or HS^2, both of which also touch on the subject. It’s not a central theme, I don’t think, although either killing themselves or waiting around to die recur multiple times as possibilities in the minds of different characters, particularly the Lalondes and Striders. I’ll have more to say about each individual instance, but in both the insincere threat of suicide Rose uses in her early strife, and here in Act 5, the act of self-destruction is not motivated by despair, but by spite - for Rose, self-destruction would be an act to spite someone else who wants her to exist.

Grandpa Harley’s complete emotional absence from the life of his loved ones might be called a bit of emotional suicide. Checked out of personal reality completely to pursue a life of fantasy (and to facilitate Sburb), Grandpa Harley may as well have been dead from Jade’s perspective, even before he died.

https://homestuck.com/story/3056

The link between being a Hero Coolguy and Romantic (Reproductive) Success is drawn very neatly by Tavros, but because the premise is false, the conclusion is also false.

https://homestuck.com/story/3059

Vriska immediately calls attention to the way Tavros is parroting her behavior because of her influence - without all of the chest-beating and saber-rattling that Vriska does, the skillfully executed showmanship of being aloof and confident, there’s not that much difference between what Tavros tried to pull just now, and what Vriska has always done - even repeating her romantic faux-pas.

https://homestuck.com/story/3078

And we’ll pause here, before I get to another walkaround, which I will do tomorrow.

Not a lot that inspired me to talk in the 150 or so pages I got today. Lots of action in Act 5, but less emotional meat to dig into.

For now, it’s Cam signing off, alive but not alone.

#liveblogging #commentary

[terramythos]

TerraMythos' 2020 Reading Challenge - Book 29 of 26

Title: The House in the Cerulean Sea (2020)

Author: TJ Klune

Genre/Tags: Fantasy, Comedy, Romance, Found Family, LGBT Protagonist, Third-Person 

Rating: 10/10

Date Began: 10/13/2020

Date Finished: 10/18/2020

Linus Baker, a forty-year-old caseworker for the Department in Charge of Magical Youth (DICOMY), lives a solitary and mundane life. But when he’s summoned by Extremely Upper Management and given a top-secret case, everything changes. Linus is sent to the classified Marsyas Island and tasked with investigating an orphanage housing six dangerous magical children-- including the Antichrist. He is to live among the residents for one month, record his observations, and report back to the organization. No more, no less. 

The master of the house, Arthur Parnassus, is a mysterious and enigmatic man. But Linus soon learns that Arthur will do anything to protect his wards. As Linus grows closer to Arthur and the children, a secret from the past and prejudice of the present threaten to destroy the orphanage and their way of life. Linus must decide if he can abandon the world he knows in order to help the ones that need it the most. 

"Fire and ash!” Lucy bellowed as he paced back and forth. “Death and destruction! I, the harbinger of calamity will bring pestilence and plague to the people of this world. The blood of the innocents will sustain me, and you will all fall to your knees in benediction as I am your god.” 

He bowed. 

The children and Mr. Parnassus clapped politely. Theodore chirped and spun in a circle. 

Linus gaped. 

“That was a lovely story, Lucy,” Mr. Parnassus said. “I especially liked your use of metaphors. Keep in mind that pestilence and plague are technically the same thing, so it did get a little repetitious at the end, but other than that, quite impressive. Well done.” 

Minor spoilers and content warning(s) under the cut. 

Content warnings for the book: Semi-detailed discussions of child abuse and trauma. Internalized fatphobia (challenged). Structural discrimination, and hatred/prejudice associated with that, some of it internalized. 

I'm going to have a hard time reviewing this book, because it was so goddamn good I don’t think I’ll do it justice in a few short paragraphs. So here’s the fast version: The House in the Cerulean Sea was a fucking delight to read from the first page. It’s full of genuine humor, magic, and charm, while being just this side of heart-wrenching. Though geared toward adults, it’s the first novel I’ve read in a long time that captures that childlike enthusiasm I used to have when reading a good fantasy book. It takes place in a world with magic (obviously), but it’s 98% character-driven. Both the main plot and the (queer!) romantic subplot are woven together so well that neither feel tacked on or lacking. The found family hit me in the emotions again and again and again. I read books out loud, and I spent the last third of this book struggling because I kept fucking crying and having to take regular breaks before continuing. And then I went through the whole book to find a good quote for this review and ended up fucking crying again. So yeah. 

Ok. Got that off my chest. Usually in these reviews I talk about what I liked and then what didn't work for me or confused me. The good news (?) is I have zero complaints or critiques on this one. So you just get to hear me gushing about it for a while.  

Since this is a character-driven book that’s where I’ll start. Linus Baker, the protagonist, is great. Let me just say I love speculative fiction books starring older characters. At forty, Linus isn’t old, but it feels like the majority of spec fic stars people under thirty. Linus is also a conspicuously ordinary guy; prim and proper to a fault, no magic, oblivious in many ways (including to his own loneliness), but with a hidden sense of justice and protectiveness for people that comes out more and more. His development over the course of the novel and how much he grows to love and care for the other characters is just so good. The writing draws attention to this through repeated phrases and jokes one doesn’t expect to make a comeback (more on that later). Seeing him come out of his shell and stand up for what’s right is cathartic as hell. As a side note, it’s also nice to have a fat protagonist who struggles with his self-image but gets warm affirmation and support from his family and love interest. 

Arthur Parnassus, the deuteragonist and said love interest, is more of an enigma. A lot of his motivation and behavior makes sense once you get his Tragic Backstory (TM), and I think this will be a fun book to reread based on that. I picked up on some of it before the reveal, but not everything. But without spoiling it, I do love seeing an older (mid-forties) father figure who would do literally anything to make sure the children on the island have the care and love they need. Seeing his patient love and acceptance of them tugs my heartstrings. Maybe I’m a bit of a sap. Linus and Arthur’s obvious mutual crush on each other is also really cute, okay. There’s something about older queer people finding love that makes me smile. 

And the children are great too, of course. I really liked each of them and thought they were all unique and interesting. My favorites are probably Lucy the six-year-old Antichrist, Sal the were-Pomeranian (his arc just really hit home for me), and Talia the gnome. They all have such distinct and fun personalities, and seeing them interact is great and often hilarious. I’m not very paternal, but I love seeing children with sad/abusive pasts blossom into their best selves with love, guidance, and support. It’s uh, a little personal. I’d be remiss not to mention Zoe, the resident island sprite, who brings a whole lot of personality and rounds off the group. 

When I say the story is character-driven, I mean it. While a fantasy novel, there’s not any significant violence or action in the story (except for maybe one scene if you squint). The House in the Cerulean Sea is carried by its characters, interactions, and worldbuilding. The humor and inherent charm helps too -- and manages to do so without ever feeling trite. I can’t help but admire that. I was never bored; I honestly enjoyed every page because I liked the characters so much. Not to say there isn’t an overarching conflict with the whole DICOMY thing, but most of the focus is Linus struggling and coming to terms with his discoveries-- about the others and himself, and how he can make a difference on a grand scale. To me that kind of stuff is captivating. And boy does seeing someone find the place they belong get me. As I said, found family is a big thing in this book. 

Aside from that, the writing is just super; it literally had me laughing from the first page. I can’t believe the fucking lemur joke came back at the end, too. But on that subject, I love that this book utilizes recurring jokes and phrases to show Linus’ character development. In particular, “see something, say something” and “don’t you wish you were here?” have VERY specific meanings to Linus at the beginning of the story, and over time transform into the polar opposite. I’m  holding myself back because I don’t want to spoil shit, but if you read it you’ll see what I mean. There’s also a lot of meaningful callbacks to certain dialogue earlier in the story and I eat that kind of stuff up. But even small details, like the early quip about Linus forgetting his umbrella, come back to deliver an emotional gutpunch near the end. So thanks for that, Mr. Klune. 

The book really takes a turn in the second half of the story, which is a tad darker. Avoiding the Actual Spoilers, this is where prejudice and hatred of the outside world become a bigger part of the story. We learn what’s really at stake, and that this wonderful found family in the first half is threatened by a world that hates and fears them. Boy does that shit get emotional REAL quick. Yes the allegory is obvious. No, that’s not a bad thing. Ultimately, The House in the Cerulean Sea becomes a story about love, hope, and change; and boy does that shit strike my gay little heart right where it hurts. 

If you’re looking for a (literal) magical pick-me-up (ignore my comment about crying a whole lot) with INTENSE found family vibes and a side helping of queer mlm romance, dear God read The House in the Cerulean Sea. I don’t think I did it justice in this review; just trust me, it’s real good. My only complaint is that it ends; I want more, damn it! 

#taylor reads #2020 reading challenge #BONUS ROUND #10/10 #i added content warnings right under the cut. idk if i will do that consistently but why not #anyway this book wrecked me

[underthedekutree]

Young Link might have PTSD - Part 2: Termina is NOT a Parallel World, Technically

This is a continuation of my last post so if you’re seeing this and haven’t read it, go here.

This is the part where I somewhat smoothly segue into Majora’s Mask. Link, lonely and filled with unprocessed trauma, leaves Hyrule in search of Navi. According to most sources (which take from Hyrule Historia probably? don’t quote me on it), Link falls down a hole into Termina, a parallel world to Hyrule, that contains many familiar looking denizens of Hyrule, but playing different roles. And well, if you probably guessed by the title, I have a rather different interpretation.

Okay, so in a nutshell my theory is that Termina is in fact all a dream, kind of like Koholint Island. Except the one dreaming up this world isn’t some deity like the Giants or Skull Kid or the Moon. It’s Link.

(big explainey hoo hah below)

Evidence 1: Link begins the game sleeping. Yes, I know literally every Zelda game begins this way and it’s a whole tradition thing. I am beginning with the weakest points first and working my way up to the strong ones. We’ll get there.

Evidence 2: The reuse of character and environment models from Ocarina of Time. The literal IRL reason for this is of course the game famously being given only one year of production time, which meant that the most practical method was to reuse as much material from MM’s predecessor as possible (eg. Romani Ranch sign is the Kakariko Village sign, and still says Kakariko Village on it). It seems like a rather offhand afterthought for Nintendo to chalk it all up to “oh its just a parallel world like Link to the Past or something. But think of it like this; when we dream, we often see familiar people from throughout our lives put in strange and unexpected situations, like that irritable old farmhand you hated so much is now a depressed circus master for some reason. Dreams don’t make sense. Things you know will mix with other strange inexplicable things, fleeting thoughts in your mind, all roughly tied together by whatever emotions you had been feeling when you went to bed. Malon is split into two people, Romani and Cremia, her older and younger self. This might reflect how Link feels about Malon, that she changed so much in those 7 years that she’s like a different person entirely, that it’s hard for him to process that they are the same, because the change was so shockingly sudden for him.

Evidence 3: Gorons in the snow, Gerudo by the sea. Yes, I know that sounds a lot like good evidence for a parallel world (that’s why the idea is widely accepted in the first place, it has merit), but it also works in as dream world evidence too. As a child, my family was obsessed with skiing. We would go to the same mountain every winter, and we would stay at the same lodge. It almost became like a second home for me. So much so, that one night I dreamed that my house had been replaced by the lodge, so it wasn’t on a snow-capped mountain, but in a bushy Australian suburb. Okay that kinda got off subject but I’m bad at conclusions so in summary Dreams Just Be Like That (tm). You get what I’m saying right? No? Sorry, let’s just move on.

Evidence 4: The Milk Bar. AKA my favourite location in the game! It’s often overlooked as the “haha funny they couldn’t put alcohol in kids game so its kiddy milk hee hee”, but it is actually a strong thematic pillar of Majora’s Mask. As I mentioned in Part 1, if you put a 9 year old in a 16 year old’s body and call him an adult before ripping that all away is probably going to leave the kid with an identity crisis. What is a mature place open at late hours when children are sleeping? A bar. What is a drink associated with the young, being produced for the purpose of helping children grow? Milk. No please don’t go I swear there’s more to this, stay with me. In order to gain access to the bar, Link must prove he is mature enough by wearing a mask, a disguise, like Adult Link is to Young Link. Being adult isn’t earned through years of natural living experience and mental development, it’s a thing you are given by adults to just BE when they deem you worthy, at least from how Link sees it. So that is the amalgamation of dream thoughts that is the Milk Bar. Is it mature? Is it childish? What is the line between the two? Is there one? It’s the culmination of his anxieties and confusions that he doesn’t know how to express. Another, smaller expression of this anxiety is the Clock Town Guards. When Link is a Deku, the guards say they don’t allow children outside the gates. When Link turns back however, the guard goes to stop him because he looks too young, but sees that he has a sword, and lets him pass. Why the sword? Well, in one way this is a callback to Kokiri Forest, where Mido doesn’t let Link see the Deku Tree until he has a sword. But also, what is the item that lets Link travel through time and become an adult in OOT? The Master Sword. Link seems to believe that adulthood is measured by the things you have, physical markers of maturity, which is how lots of children see adulthood. You’re an adult if you can drink, if you’re tall, if you’re married, if you have a house, a car etc. But in reality this isn’t how it works. Heck, I’m technically an adult but I sure as hell don’t feel like one, because I know I still have things to learn about responsibility, patience and all the other things, that can only come with time, which is the moral conclusion of OOT, but clearly Link missed the memo. Don’t get me wrong, there are some indicators to show he’s grown a bit. He can ride Epona, use the bow, do flips like some kind of acrobat etc. But those strange and confused feelings linger, and manifest in the young boy’s dreams.

Evidence 5: The four transformation masks. The four masks represent different aspects of Link’s self, and the way he grew and changed in OOT. Deku Scrub the Innocent, Goron the Confident, Zora the Mature and Fierce Deity the Hero. Link began only knowing the Kokiri Forest, and nothing of the world outside. As he set out on his journey, he grew more confident in his skills and defeated greater foes. When evil took over, he learned from his fatal mistake and worked to right it. And when it was finally time to face the greatest threat, he was ready, with all the heart pieces, bottles full of fairies, Biggoron Sword in hand. At that moment he struck the final blow he probably felt like the strong and unstoppable hero everyone in Hyrule told him he needed to be. And that feeling of pure uncompromising strength, with the whole world behind him, manifested in the Fierce Deity. Fierce Deity is much taller than Adult Link, and packs so much of a punch that he can beat Majora without batting an eye, like some overpowered Super Saiyan. It reminds me a lot of Undertale, with young Asriel becoming what he imagines to be an all-powerful godlike being, like something you’d see as a children’s drawing. Fierce Deity gives off those vibes, like “he has a HUGE SWORD that SHOOTS BEAMS OF LIGHT and he’s 8 FOOT TALL and CAN KILL ENEMIES IN A SINGLE BLOW!!” Before the final battle on the moon, when Majora gives you the mask, he childishly asks if you want to play a game of good guys and bad guys. And the good guy always wins, no matter what. Fierce Deity makes the final boss a cakewalk, but its supposed to.

Evidence 6: Anju and Kafei. Short one, because it falls a lot into everything else I’ve said regarding childhood vs adulthood. Kafei is effectively a switcheroo of what happened to Link in OOT. An adult shrunk back to childhood, uncomfortable in his new body and looking for a way to fix everything. He’s a reflection of how Link now kinda feels like an adult in a child’s body, because he had started to be used to being called an adult.

Evidence 7: The Moon. I haven’t super touched on the main meat of the game yet, so here it is. The moon and the 3 day mechanic is an allegory for constant mounting pressure, that builds and builds, never ceasing, because the world is in danger, and there’s only one person who has been chosen to save it. I’ve always been interested in the Chosen One narrative, and how different media explore the idea of the world’s very existence being pushed onto one person. How at the end of it all, they can never be the same again after all they’ve gone through. When you’re somehow expected to hold up the Moon itself single-handed, and your life and everything you care about suffers because you’re putting everyone else before yourself. That feeling of complete loneliness under a crushing weight, and although other characters may come to help you, in the end its still all down to you, and you never had a choice in any of it, as all the decisions were made by someone else. You must do what they tell you. Believe in yourself, believe...

Evidence 8: Skull Kid. The story goes that long ago in Termina, the Skull Kid and the Giants played together, until one day, the Giants left, leaving the Skull Kid alone and heartbroken, with nobody to turn to. As life moves on, things may change, and people always come and go from your life. Your friend might move overseas, or stop texting you, or you might fall out of friendship after an awkward event from which you could never recover (no, these have totally not all happened to me, shut up i’m fine), or your fairy companion might just disappear without so much as a goodbye after their task is complete. And it feels like you didn’t matter at all. That they never really cared about you, and you’re as easy to drop and move on from as a child’s toy. You might get angry, and want to shut them out, and give them a taste of their own medicine. Majora’s Mask teaches you that this isn’t the case. Life is ever changing, but you will always have the memories of times with your friends, and a chance to make more with new friends, like a sassy talkative fairy sprite and her shy brother or a child made of wood who wants to destroy the world. Friends come from unlikely places, so accept that change will happen and hope that wherever the people you knew are, they’re okay. You’re thinking about them, so they might be thinking about you too. And who knows? Life is unpredictable. They might just come back one day, and it’ll be like they were never gone.

Evidence 9 (the final one, I promise): The Song of Healing. At the end of all things, after losing ones you love, connections to family and friends, memories of things long past... you need time to heal. Link’s journey through Termina is a constant gauntlet of running into his own past traumas, forced to relive them again, and again, and again. But sometimes you should take a deep breath, gather your thoughts, and take time to heal. Although it can be important to confront your fears and learn to surpass them, it is exhausting, and you can end up more emotionally broken than when you started. The three masks all had regrets of powerlessness; unable to protect your community, your loved ones, or even yourself. Troubles you’ve gone through that keep plaguing your mind, and you’re wondering if you’ve done enough, seeking answers where none can be found. And the best thing you can do... is accept and move on. Be kind to yourself, and give yourself time to heal. Link’s way of processing his grief and trauma is to create an entire hellscape world in his own head, but not everyone processes it the same way. Sometimes you feel like you need to busy yourself, or listen to soothing music, or talk to people you trust, or spend copious amounts of money, or make some angst art, or cuddle your plush toys until their stuffing squeezes out. Sometimes life hits you in the face and you want to blame yourself for standing in the firing line, but it’s not your fault. It’s okay to feel however you feel, whether you’re drenched in a pool of tears or you just feel numb, it’s okay and natural. You’re okay. You’re here.

Okay so it got kinda personal at the end there but I hope it was informative, and made you think a little bit differently about Majora’s Mask and Ocarina of Time. You probably want to go back and play them now. Me too.

So was this all just an excuse for me to gush about how cool Majora’s Mask is? Hell fucking yes it was. Congratulations for making it through my monstrous ramblings, you get the secret prize of looking at my weird art on my DA. Here you go. Have a nice day, Zelda Nerds.

#long post #legend of zelda #majoras mask #young link #fierce deity #zelda theory #wow i cant believe i never realised i wrote fuckig outset island instead of koholint im dumby af

[nabrizoya]

TLH; theories, expectations and hopes.

Kinda want to talk about downworlder appearances here. A little more than a long post. 

» 2. Downworld Denizens.

note: to all those who haven’t yet read TDA, GOTSM etc. (because ik a few who haven’t read them yet) this post is not for you. 

TL;DR this post talks about the proportion (no math here) of downworlder appearances in each of the series and novellas we have read. The Bane Chronicles not included.

For understanding’s sake, I’ll divide the downworld as the shadow market does. Into four major segments: warlocks, faeries (with sub-divisions), vampires and werewolves. While we do see other groups of non-shadowhunters and mundanes like the irfits, the djinns, the kelpies, sprites and wights, the mermaids, witches etc. we haven’t seen much of them be a major part of the plot as the above mentioned four do. 

That being cleared, let’s start series wise. 

▸ In The Mortal Instruments, we saw all the four interact. More than interact, actually. Every one of them played a major role in turning the series around. 

Vampires, we know what Simon Lewis, Raphael and Lily did. What antagonists Camille Belcourt and Maureen did and how they shaped the series. 

Werewolf packs, there were revolutions and the emergence of newer and stronger packs.

Warlocks, Magnus Bane, of course, but Ragnor played a part in the first trilogy and we saw Catarina’s abilities in the later half. Tessa was briefly mentioned and the timeline added up by the time COHF ended. 

In TMI, the Seelie Court entirely turned the tables while TDA picked up the thread from its counterpart, the Unseelie Court. Mark was taken away by the wild hunt which sets the precedent to TDA.

And, The End. 

[It’s been two years since I’ve read TMI and I barely remember things from it. All those I do remember is from vague readings that I did from wikia or see Dani’s rereading posts. There are inaccuracies here, but the jist remains the same.]

▸ Walk over to The Infernal Devices. 

Magnus Bane was a crucial character in the series, with a random appearance from Ragnor Fell. We saw Mortmain’s parents too, the warlocks whose deaths Mortmain wanted to avenge. Tessa is not a major warlock character. She’s the protag.

The Dark Sisters, a pair of witches, who unethically and literally shaped Tessa because she possessed the ability to shape-shift. 

Vampires, Alexie deQuincy, the guy in association with the Pandemonium, the club that Mortmain ran. Camille orchestrated the attack on him besides being a side character. 

Werewolves; we saw them both attack and defend Will Herondale on his way to Cadair Idris. Woolsey Scott was the head.

And that’s pretty much where downworlder appearance subsides. No mention of faeries. 

▸ On to The Dark Artifices now. 

Faeries played a MAJOR role in the events of TDA, which makes sense because the Cold Peace greatly influenced the beginning of the series. 

Mark’s return and the eventual discovery of the alliance that Malcolm had with that dude, [for real, I actually forgot his name and I can’t remember or be bothered enough to look it up], who used Mark and Kieran as their pawns to get what they wanted. 

The Unseelie King is dead, the Seelie Queen yeed her last haw and we saw the whole business with the first heir, that took its origins from Ghosts of the Shadow Market. 

Oh, not to forget the ruthless Riders of Mannan. 

And Thule, but we don’t talk about that here. 

Vampires, well, only Nightshade and his drugs. 

Werewolves, nope. None at all. 

Warlocks, yesss, what with the warlock fever and such. The major warlocks we noted are Magnus, Shade Fell, Tessa and, of course, Malcolm Fade. 

Hypatia Vex and Barnabas Hale also were instrumental to the plot since they detailed the tensions of the market. There’s sourness that we saw between Magnus and Hypatia, which should hint towards something. 

▸ Going forth with the Novellas, in Tales From the Shadowhunter Academy, we saw each one of them be mentioned to connect the dots between TMI and TDA and then draw the strings from TID. 

We noted the Uprising and the news of Lucian’s turning in the werewolf part. 

Vampires, I don’t think there was any mention of them at all. 

Warlocks, we saw our little Max Bluebell, Magnus and Alec as a family. Tessa is a warlock who has settled with her and our long lost love, Jem Carstairs. 

Faeries, now, aah, Helen’s inhumane exile, Andrew and Arthur’s torture in the Land Under the Hill, Lady Nerissa, the brief Wild Hunt stunt when Simon got imprisoned and Mark Blackthorn *sob* etc. 

▸ Ghosts of the Shadow Market:

Faeries, yet again, who, out of their spite, destroyed Matthew Fairchild’s life and we don’t how much more detrimental it is going to be ahaha pain my old fren, they harmed Jem too along with Rosemary Herondale, almost killed Tessa etc. 

Vampires, still none. But we did get to see Raphael and Lily’s interactions (The Son of Dawn) and Lily’s past (The Land I Lost). 

Warlocks, yes Tessa! Malcolm Fade and the weird book he was looking for in Every Exquisite Thing. (👀) Catarina Loss and her excellent healing prowess. Leopolda and her stains. Yeah, nothing more.

Werewolves, oh yes Mr. Scott, who helped end Leopolda Stain’s plans. And oh, the smuggling of yin-fen ofc in The Son of Dawn, and the kind werewolves who helped Alec, Lily, Tessa and Jem in The Land I Lost. 

That’s pretty much it. 

The real requirement that the post will satisfy is to see how each of them will make an appearance in The Last Hours.

Warlocks: 

Magnus will not play a major role (nor do I want him to which I will explain in a further post).

Tessa is minimally using her warlock magic. You know, for the smallest of things like some healing powers, lighting a candle with magic. The small stuff. She will, also, play a major role in defeating Belial because she is Belial’s daughter though currently, she is choosing to not use her demonic powers. 

Hypatia Vex is rumoured to be Magnus’ girlfriend? But I’d also like to see her as the authority of Hell Ruelle. Let’s not reduce her to being a simple love interest please.

Malcolm Fade.

I’d also like to see Catarina please Miss Clare, make it happen. 🥺

Land Under the Hill: 

Faeries shall certainly make an appearance. But most of all, they’ll be more inclined to destroy the Herondale lineage. The same happened with Matthew (as we found out in The Land I Lost from Auraline’s guardian): to end the Herondales.

There is a snippet in COI wikia where Cordelia freezes when a faerie tells her not to marry a man who does not love her. I’m ready to believe this is Mother Hawthorn, Auraline’s guardian.

There are also theories that Grace is Nene. Which is a possibility, and if it is true, we can see another faerie plotline.

I’m grasping at straws at this point but,,, Jesse speaking about the Land Under the Hill when he first meets Lucie will probably mean something? This is not my strongest bet, because in Chapter 3, the idea is diminished. Jesse tells Lucie that shadowhunters know about faerie traps too. But, just in case, some food for thought. 

Vampires & Werewolves: 

Vampires and Werewolves WILL play an important role in shaping the series here. With little to no involvement of theirs in TID (and TDA), it is a heavy possibility. 

The series took off with Elias’ punishment for being the person responsible for the deaths of werewolves in Idris. This will come back and bite the families, I’m sure. 

There are theories Matthew might be stripped of his marks to either become a vampire or a werewolf. Strong bets, but I hope not. (is this how werewolves will take their revenge? who knows).

Woolsey Scott and Camille Belcourt are set to make an appearance and we do not know why. 

Pandemonium is coming back too, lads and ladies and everybody else. 

Lily Chen is already present and she is set to become friends, or at least acquaintances, with Camille because they spend the 1920s together. 

Cordelia is going to save Lily and I cannot wait for it. 🥺

And, the end. 

This will also lead more towards the building up of The Wicked Powers too. 

. . .

One last warlock to talk more about is Malcolm Fade. 

Around the timeline of TLH, he has a connection with the Blackthorns and for the most part, is trusted by Magnus and Ragnor as a good and virtuous man. I should believe he was, until the truth is dug out, either in 1903/04, or sometime before 1936 when Jem inquires with Sister Emilia about Annabel Blackthorn. 

As per the information from TDA, Malcolm already was associated with the Unseelie King in the early 1800s, before the Accords that granted peace between downworlders and shadowhunters. He took the Black Volume of the Dead, though he is not possession of it. Yet.

Let me give you map of MF connections (mf connections lmao): 

Blackthorns 

Necromancy 

Black Volume of the Dead 

Warlock Magic aka Portals and Death Magic 

Cornwall Gardens and Institute

Avenging to vengeance 

Shadow Markets 

Sisterhood 

... This will then lead us to more interesting theories. Cassie did mention in one of her asks/answers that Malcolm is going to be a major character in this series. And you bet I’m making a theory about this too. 

That concludes the post. That’s it. If you’ve managed to read this entirety, you’re either too excellent or you’re just as jobless as me. Either way, here’s your reward for bearing with me. Trust me, you won’t regret opening it.

#malcolm fade #magnus bane #tessa gray #jem carstairs #will herondale #the mortal instruments #the infernal devices #the dark artifices #the last hours #tales from the shadowhunter academy #ghosts of the shadow market #tsc #q #theories #tlh theories

[mmmmalo]

This is a (meandering, non-exhaustive) overview of Homestuck’s use of

by which I do not mean examples of psychological realism in a character’s words and deeds, but rather the various means by which characters’ psyches are expressed outside of themselves. I wish to elaborate on how thoughts, feelings, and desires may find expression in the environment, in the medium of the story itself, and in the form of other characters.

That’s perhaps a little vague, so here’s a ready example of what I mean: brainghost!Dirk. He talks with Jake, but since he is a construct of Jake’s mind, Jake is essentially talking to himself. Brainghost!Dirk is an alienated medium for voicing Jake’s own thoughts, irretrievably distorted through its intermingling with what Jake thinks/wishes Dirk would say (not unlike a puppet). I am claiming that this mode of characterization is not a unique to Jake; the blurring of inner and outer voices is omnipresent throughout the story.

Or, rephrased: what I hope to show is that a great deal of Homestuck is haunted with brain-ghosts, of one kind or other.

An early example of this kind of storytelling in science fiction would be the film Forbidden Planet (1956). The film contains a pair of conflicts which eventually reveal themselves to be one: the scientist Morbius wants some space explorers to get off his planet, and an immense monster (pictured above) appears during the night to attack the explorers. Morbius, it turns out, has been experimenting with a machine capable of turning thought into reality. So when Morbius sleeps, his dream of driving off the trespassers materializes in the form of beast that forcefully enacts the wish.

The beast is declared a “monster from the id”, the “id” being a concept borrowed from Freudian psychology, indicating the part of the mind responsible for the unfiltered generation of impulses, of urges. In the film, this passing mention of psychoanalysis precedes the revelation of Morbius’s link to the beast.

Homestuck hints towards its own mixing of thought and reality with a device similar to Morbius’s dream machine: Sburb.

A snapshot of Dave’s Sburb client (1519) shows that the final subprograms launched during the games installation make reference to terminology associated with Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud. The terms suggest that Sburb interacts with the ideas in the kids’ subconscious minds (archetypes) and brings symbolic representations of these ideas into conscious reality (manifests the ideas). The game alters the means by which reality is constructed. As with Forbidden Planet, a major result of this is id monsters.

When John slips on a staircase, he flips out (left, 560). And when he nearly launches himself into the abyss with the Pogo Hammer, he has to take a nap before he has calmed down enough to continue (center, 637). Immediately following both moments of vertigo, massive ogres appear. The eventual fight with the ogres begins after John looks over the edge of the platform above his house, into the abyss (right, 662).

All of this suggests that Sburb is reacting to John’s emotional state (fear) to produce in-game content. The game functions as a waking dream.

It should also be noted that Sburb provokes the reactions it elicits. Karkat once mentioned a nagging feeling that the game was mocking him by giving him a planet covered in the candy red blood he had spent a lifetime attempting to hide (2301). Karkat’s paranoia seems to be correct here, and moreover applicable to the cast in general -- John’s house was likely placed atop an immense spire /in order to/ bring John’s dread of falling into sharp relief. The suspicion can be substantiated with a few related motifs.

The story provides two likely origins for John’s fear of heights: his own fall from the slime pogo as a child (2626) and the death of Nanna, which John believed resulted from her falling from a ladder and being crushed by a book (52). What’s more, Sburb’s invocation of the Fall of Man (Adam and Eve being cast from the Garden of Eden) via biting into an apple hints that there is an allegorical significance to John’s more literal fear of heights. 

We can apply these patterns to other characters in an attempt to learn more about them. LOLAR being covered in ocean suggests that Rose is afraid of water, with the likely cause of Rose finding Jaspers dead and washed up on a riverbank (presumed drowned). Dave speaks openly about how his sword fights with Bro left him anxious of metal sounds (7749), meaning the grinding gears of LOHAC were a personalized hell for Dave. Jade’s first imp manifests in response to the sight of a yellow aurora (2998), inviting the reader to investigate why that image invokes a fear response.

But we won’t get to into all of that, not for now at least. Let’s take a step back.

For my reading of the imps as manifestations I’ve been leaning heavily on a piece of film theory devoted to the effects of sequential images. The sequence above constitutes two observations. One, that by this arrangement the viewer will infer the old man sees and reacts to the middle figure. Two, that the viewer’s impression of the old man will change based on the content of the central image, even if his expression is the same. Is he smiling at Nepeta or warm embrace Marvus’s armpit? The answer may influence your interpretation of the little smile.

The neat thing about montage is that the interrupting frame need not bear any obvious relation to what precedes or follows in order to be subject to a causal reading. Moments that occur sequentially can be read as triggering one another, even if what follows any particular moment appears to be a break rather than a continuation.

Example: There’s a moment where Aranea walks into Jake’s dream, and brainghost!Dirk immediately starts razzing Jake about his attraction to the alien girl and threatening to give him a boner. The scene is interrupted by Jack committing a series of gratuitous murders. We then cut back to Jake, and bg!Dirk is now teasing him about his dirty thoughts.

DIRK: You have got to be kidding. Did you seriously just think something THAT dirty? DIRK: You must be doing this on purpose to spite me now. I mean, just wow dude. That was x-rated as fuck. 

JAKE: (No no stop. See youre talking about it and now i cant help it!) JAKE: (You are psyching me into having dirty thoughts get fucking lost you interloping brain douche!!!) 

DIRK: Don't worry, I'm gone. It's like a goddamn peep show in here and I feel like a sleazy piece of shit watching this from a dark corner of your mind. DIRK: You have a graphic imagination, English. I'm kind of impressed. 

JAKE: (Shut up theyre just thoughts its not even like im trying to have them THEY DONT MEAN ANYTHING!)

The ostensible joke is that bg!Dirk is exaggerating or outright fabricating his account of Jake’s thoughts in order to hassle him. But by way of montage, one can infer that we /have/ seen Jake’s dirty thoughts, in the form of Jack’s display of overwhelming bloodlust. Violence is superimposed over the sexually explicit. 

Whether the scene literally takes place in Jake’s mind is secondary (though such a reading would explain why Jake’s brain ghost is even aware of Jack) -- the use of montage allows Jack’s actions to function as a /metaphor/ for Jake’s thought.

Another example of Jack functioning as a murderous/libidinous avatar would be the death of Mom and Dad. At their little tea party, Dad spills some wine on Mom’s clothes and declares that she must disrobe immediately (so that Dad might launder the garment). Mom calls the aromas wafting from his pipe sensuous. The two clasp hands and declare that all they need is eachother. Then they die! The joke is that while Bec Noir is ostensibly an interruption to date night, he also functions as its culmination, with murder acting as substitute for the sex act.

The link between violence and sexuality is perhaps a hard sell, but I hope to convince you that the reading holds merit. Let me emphasize that the very act of Mom and Dad holding hands was itself sexually loaded.

I owe to HS liveblogger elfstuck the insight that John’s linear 3 card sylladex is a reflection of his short attention span. Consider how John’s role as a game character means he is thrown all around his room, back and forth, as the player figures out what to make of the situation. If you ignore the fourth wall, you’re left with an extremely distracted person, who attention flows easily from one object to another. Accepting the object-in, object-out nature of John’s sylladex and the resulting shenanigans as a metaphor for this, it would follow that the sylladex in general can offer an abstract representation of thought.

In passing, I can mention how the enormity of Jake’s sylladex (it cannot even fit on the page, and contains an object that exceed most players’ size limits) would imply that despite evidence to the contrary, the boy likely has a big brain (and perhaps its being offscreen suggests Jakes own unawareness of much of his own thought). Dirk’s comment about avoiding items that are difficult to shoehorn into his mnemonic schema (4535) could be read as a difficulty maintaining information that doesn’t fit into his personal mental models. The sylladex becomes a metaphor for the mind that requires interpretation.

Under this mode of thought, the moments when Jade’s pictionary modus fails to correctly interpret her drawing become akin to a mental slip-of-the-tongue. For the Tanglebuddies to be misread as enmeshed hands implies an association, in Jade’s mind, of horny Squiddles and clasped hands. John affirms the association much later by miming Tanglebuddies as he attempts to grapple with the question of whether Jade and Davesprite are sexually compatible (5294):

JOHN: how do things even work if you marry a sprite?

JADE: what do you mean 

JOHN: i mean... JOHN: ok, he has a ghost butt, for one thing. 

JADE: uh JADE: so 

JOHN: a GHOST BUTT, jade! 

JADE: SO WHAT IF HE HAS A GHOST BUTT!!!!! 

JOHN: i'm just saying... 

JADE: WHATEVER YOURE JUST SAYING, JUST STOP SAYING IT! JADE: and whatever youre trying to gesture with your hands there, stop doing that too!

It should also be noted that before launching into her “daring dream”, waxing poetic on the miraculous union of the human and the animal with her hands clasped in wonder, Jade successfully captchalogued the Tanglebuddies (796). And more to the point, Jade’s pose in reproduced during discussions of cherub (5961) and leprechaun (6007) reproduction. Hand-holding becomes representative of an (oft-sexualized) union, underlining the euphemistic nature of Mom and Dad’s post-contact demise.

The next example of using montage to communicate thought requires a little more buildup.

There’s a gag in Rose’s introduction where the reader tells Rose to play with her writing journals, and scoots the journals under the bed and retorts that she would only do that if no one were watching (220). At first glance, the moment scans as a minor meta joke in a story filled with meta jokes -- but the trick is that Rose does not /know/ herself to be a video game character, her every movement controlled and observed. Rather, she /believes/ this to be true -- the joke about being watched establishes that Rose is paranoid, as will become apparent in the hostility she assigns to Mom’s every action.

The command prompt and narration are themselves brain ghosts of a sort: the voice deployed in them is always linked to the present point-of-view character. The insults that precede character introductions ( “Zoosmell Pooplord”, etc) become marks of anxiety, an intrusive proclamation of what the kids at times think of themselves (and/or what they think others think of them). “Nice time management skills, sweetheart!” becomes a bit of self-deprecation Rose as she procrastinates, which Rose experiences as having been voiced by some objective observer who judges her deficiencies.

A blurred line divides characters from the voice at the back of their head, belonging to the (presumed) omniscient, omnipotent author-god. This is why avatar!Hussie is dressed as Calliope when he is killed by Lord English. Both Calliope and Hussie are a voice in Caliborn’s head, and thus both present apparent obstacles to an unmediated self.

The left panel (3219) foreshadows the right (3358). Gamzee is not being declared the objectively most important character in Homestuck. Rather, Gamzee is declaring himself /to have been declared/ the most important character in the story. The line establishes that Gamzee believes himself to be in a story (with an author!) and that this author has declared him paramount. Furthermore, “fondly regarding creation” is an modus operandi of Problem Sleuth’s Godhead Pickle Inspector. Applying that turn of phrase to Gamzee’s actions further establishes that Gamzee believes himself to /be/ the god-author declaring his own importance. So it should come as no surprise that 137 pages later, Gamzee outright proclaims himself to be the god(s) he worships.

Going back to montage, it becomes interesting that this snapshot of Gamzee’s megalomania is inter-cut with the creation of Jadesprite -- the moment that dead!dream!Jade merges with Bec, forming a unity with a deity not unlike the unity Gamzee claims with his mirthful messiahs. The interweaving would suggest that Jade and/or Jadesprite experienced analogous thoughts of megalomania upon the moment of ascension.

This would be a good point to mention that not only imps and ogres, but trolls also function as manifestations for the people they impose upon. Karkat is not only an interruption here, but also a continuation. He points out that Jade’s self-loathing, that she cannot safely distance herself from the qualities of Jadesprite she finds distasteful. This is precisely why Karkat ends the conversation by telling Jade to turn off the fourth wall (which divides the self!), as well as the reason he imagines Jade making out with herself: Karkat is on every front presenting the prospect of union with oneself.

The notion of trolls as manifestations first emerges clearly when Rose and Dave receive their packages from John. As they finish reading John’s letter, each is suddenly contacted by a troll and greeted with the command “Answer.” Critically, by word alone it is ambiguous as to whether the command refers to answering the troll or the letter. And as it turns out, these answer occur simultaneously: Rose and Dave’s responses to the letters are embedded in the subsequent conversations. 

Rose receives a letter poking fun at her pretensions, claiming that her attempts to hide her affections for people are futile. In response we get Kanaya, who imperiously proclaims her disdain for Rose, only to suddenly change tact and explicitly seek Rose’s friendship, an entreaty which the oft paranoid Rose accepts. Dave receives a letter imploring him to let go of his insecurities and express himself. In response we get Tavros, the very picture of insecurity, who is fixated on the idea of making Dave shit himself (as part of an ‘emotional constipation’ motif that follows Dave). And Dave complies, in a sense, by way of the quasi-ironic gay treatise that compels Tavros to block him. Each conversation addresses the issues laid out in John’s letter.

Examples can be found throughout the comic. Equius remarking that he talks to Gamzee every day (2220) establishes that Gamzee is regularly haunted by the thoughts of domination that Equius voices -- both in the literal and metaphorical sense. Erisolsprite referring to Dirk as a rock 2oliid piiece of a22 and then calling himself 2ociiopathiic for even thinking something so callous (5516) expresses a conflict already present in Jake’s own mind, echoing the frustration with his own dirty thoughts expressed by the argument with brainghost!Dirk. Feferi’s pronounced enthusiasm for the imminent apocalypse should cause you to question Kanaya’s seemingly neutral resignation towards the end of the world, since Feferi manifests for Kanaya (2328). And so on.

The person being trolled is always being confronted with thoughts or feelings or memories already present within themself. Alien contact always doubles as a brain ghost haunting.

Another example, with some buildup: Karkat invokes the phrase “PERFORATE MY BONE BULGE WITH A CULLING FORK” to express his contempt for Vriska, and on subsequent pages we see Feferi pointing her culling fork at a cuttlefish (2181), as if to suggest that the creature symbolizes the bone bulge. Fast forward to Kanaya, who has just gotten through a conversation with Vriska and finds herself haunted by Eridan, who keeps going on about his romantic desperations and insisting (correctly) that Kanaya’s crush on Vriska is itself romantic. That his notification erupts from an image of cuttlefish held at Kanaya’s waist adds to the air of yearning, as though her own bulge is rumbling. The scene is capped off with a double entendre: “its hard and nobody understands” is playfully poignant jab at an inability to understand one’s own desires (among other things). 

And Homestuck devotes a lot of attention to desire.

It’s long been acknowledged by the fandom at large that Kanaya’s attraction to Light players functions as a joke on the proverbial moth-to-the-flame. As reconciliation with the fire destroys the moth, there’s a morbid tinge to the attraction, as though it doubles as a death wish. And the wish is granted -- when Kanaya dies in Homestuck, she dies to light, either from Eridan’s wand or the laser blasts unleashed by HIC. Even the death of Kanaya’s lusus pertains to light -- the matriorb ripped from her innards is shaped like a miniature sun, as if to establish some loose link between the notion of motherhood and the incandescence Kanaya eventually achieves.

This can be generalized into a principle wherein lusii (and the circumstances of their deaths!) can functions as analogies for the desire of the wards.

Vriska, for example, desires execution. When offering Terezi a flimsy apology for crippling Tavros and proxy-murdering Aradia, Vriska offers to slam her head against her desk in penitence. This moment should be read against Vriska’s addiction to breaking 8 balls, and leaving the broken shards lying around as though she’s inviting the “bad luck” of stepping on them. It /is/ an invitation. Vriska seeks love via violent retribution against herself. This is why in the right panel, Vriska’s blood-spattered head is juxtaposed with a broken 8 ball: the blood came from Spidermom’s execution (which characterizes Vriska’s desire), and motif of 8R8K H34DS connects the moment to Vriska’s idea of apology.

Like Kanaya, Vriska (to a degree) seems to structure her love life along these lines. In the words of @azdoine:

like ppl are actually out here writing Vriska as the top as if her entire Act 5 character arc isn’t about bratting out until Terezi has no choice but to punish her

“oh noo, I, the thief of light, stole all of your luck, and made the coin land on the scratched side! now you have to kill me! but I’m probably going to get away with everything, because you don’t have the guts to stab me with that sword of yours!!!!!!!! if only there was somebody, like you, who could prove me wrong!”

EXTREMELY SUBTLE THERE, VRISKA

Vriska’s approach to wooing Tavros also revolves around baiting execution:

The scene: Tavros leads a horde of imps and ogres into a mystery cave, the top of which is adorned with kissing lizards and an alchemical symbol. Tavros is putting a puzzle of a frog together, but Vriska has already pieced together the puzzle: making a frog universe is, in part, a cipher for personal reproduction. The Ultimate Alchemy is making a baby! And as Vriska says, “real gamers cut to the chase. They power through all the nonsense and go for the gold.” So she brings Tavros to LOMAT and makes the moves on him.

Tavros is equated to a treasure chest by the repeated use of framing and Vriska is GOING FOR THE GOLD, like a WINNER. Tavros later reaches into the same chest for his lance before heading off to attempt to kill Vriska -- affirming that the treasure Vriska seeks here is Tavros’s “lance”.

This setup was suggested by the conversation accompanying the kissing salamanders: Vriska gives Tavros a map with a big red X, saying he should take his legion of imps through the gate and go defeat his denizen. The gate actually leads to Vriska, but she isn’t lying. She is positioning herself to be Tavros’s final boss. The imps are manifestations of Tavros’s pent up rage (much of which was generated by Vriska’s harassment), and Vriska wants Tavros to take that anger out on her. Hence the later panel which uses Vriska’s boots to place a big red X directly over her groin, making explicit the implicit goal of Tavros’s trip to the windmill X-gate.

This pursuit of love through violent comeuppance may have something to do with Vriska’s bitter disappointment that ghost!Aradia did not seem to hate her.

An intermission/introduction of sorts, as we bridge from one discussion of desire to another: did you know that Michael Bay’s Armageddon (1998) structures itself in part around Freud’s Oedipus complex? I say this in total sincerity.

The plot: a meteor the size of Texas bears down upon the Earth, threatening armageddon. Luckily, a crew of rough-and-tumble oil drillers are ready to fly into space and split that mother in two. Oh HELL yeah.

Except, wait, the movie’s actually about family drama: Bruce Willis finds Ben Affleck sleeping with his daughter Liv Tyler; Willis proceeds to chase Affleck around the oil rig with a shotgun, bang bang bang. Not Allowed. The Protective-Father-Hates-Your-Boyfriend dynamic is presented as an Oedipal triad of sorts: although Tyler is not literally Affleck’s mother, she performs the mom-function of “forbidden object of desire” -- and Willis opening fire is equivalent to the castration said to await trespassers onto maternal soil.

The above reading is buttressed by jokes: Armageddon appears to function within an implicit dream machine, such that the characters’ thoughts and fears can become manifest in their environment. So when it comes to pass that whenever  Affleck climbs into a hole (heehee), a pipe breaks (hoohoo), and suddenly everything goes boom, I read that as Affleck reliving the consequences of boning Tyler, packaged in such a way that the Freudian fear of castration is more explicit. (The relevance of Oedipus to the proceedings adds some humor to Steve Buscemi declaring the entire disastrous situation a “Greek tragedy”)

At any rate, after some shenanigans, Willis comes to accept Affleck’s claim to his daughter and confers the deed, as it were. Willis gives the young couple his blessing and they get married. Hooray!

Except, wait, the movie’s actually about the perpetuation of the oil industry: the dream machine was declared at the beginning of the movie when a petty street-side argument triggered the first barrage of meteors. The meteor the size of Texas (aka Dotty) is triggered by conflicts that haunt the central cast -- namely Willis, who enters the film hitting golf balls at a Green Peace boat. On a metaphorical level, Dotty is a golf ball the size of Texas, striking directly at the Earth instead its self-declared representatives. There’s a certain irony here: the film lampshades that the men who are destroying the world have been tasked with saving it.

The family drama folds into the environmentalist angle: Liv Tyler is a symbol of the earth (which gets drilled). This is the joke when Affleck is bouncing animal crackers around on her belly like she’s host to the Savannah: she kind of is! It’s no coincidence that Willis confers ownership of the oil rig at the same moment that he offers his daughter’s hand in marriage: the motifs are being discussed simultaneously.

But enough of all of that: back to Homestuck.

Armageddon’s simultaneous casting of Liv Tyler into the roles of earth and mother offers a glimpse at the interpretive possibilities made available by Hussie’s statement that Homestuck is in a way a synonym for Earthbound (an RPG in which “homesickness” is a status ailment which can be cured by calling your mom). Stuckness or boundness can be deployed to communicate a sense of longing for “home”.

A good chunk of Homestuck is built upon feelings of nostalgia, taken to mean a sort of intense separation anxiety with the past. John speaks about this when he watches Con Air with Jade – John wants the movie to feel like it did when he watched it with his Dad long ago, but the feeling from when he was a kid is gone. This upsets him. Moreover, John’s freakout starts at the moment Cyrus puts a gun to the bunny’s head (5286): Con Air itself is partly about Nic Cage trying to return to the life he lost when he went to jail, and ‘putting the bunny back in the box’ is a metaphor for the attempt. Cyrus, in threatening the bunny, is highlighting his role as a force preventing things from going back to how they were. Thus, if we are to believe that John is responding to the movie thematically, Cyrus confronts John with his own inability to go back to a happier past – his inability to go home -- and this recognition is met with anger.

In making the leap to the psychoanalytic motifs, it helps to recall the part where baby!Dirk responds to being born by cracking open his ectotube and crawling back inside. Dirk, who aspires towards his “ultimate self”, illustrates here that he envisions his ascension as a return to the ‘essence’ of Dirk from which he (and all other iterations of himself) arose, as represented by the ectoslime. Baby!Dirk gestures at unity with his ectoslime/essence by crawling back into the place from which he was born, which I’m basically claiming is a “return to the womb” on a symbolic level, or at least that this is a useful parallel to draw. (A related motif to think about: Dirk decapitates himself by sticking his head inside a box, which as per Con Air symbolizes the place you wish to return to)

[Hella Jeff sez: “i took (my pants) off because i was banging your mom for a minute there..... AND NOW YOU ARE BANGING HER”]

Castration becomes unavoidable as you try to relate all of this to Dave, whose occasional references to banging hot moms are part of an ongoing reference to the Oedipus Complex. Critically, the complex is not /just/ about wanting to bone your mom, but also fear that your dad will chop your junk off if you do. The breaking of Dave’s sword on the rooftop is a realization of this fear (yes, we’re doing the “swords are phallic” thing). But Dave has no mom that he knows of, so what gives? 

The answer is in the way Bro inexplicably breaks the record emblem on Dave’s t-shirt, as though he has introduced a fissure into Dave’s very identity. Life with Bro has made it very difficult for Dave to be honest with himself, which is to say, Dave pictures Bro’s abuse as having divided him from an ideal “true self”, which can feel emotions without all the anxious ironic detachment. I mentioned before that seeking unity with that from which you came is a “return to the womb”. This is the sense in which the Oedipal mom attraction becomes relevant: the return to the past is sexualized. The ‘home’ Dave wishes to return to is /himself/, and in this sense Dave is his own hot mom (which is related to how often Dave compliments his own looks, as well as the above gif suggesting Dave’s boner – he is literally/metaphorically “attracted” to himself).

(Incidentally: this model of desire, in which a broken subject attempt to become whole again by seeking out its lost half, is basically the concept of the soulmate, as laid out by Plato. Cherub reproduction turns the metaphysical pursuit of one’s lost half into a plot-level objective)

John’s entry item (apple) was linked to fear embodied in a childhood trauma (the Fall), and the same can be said of Dave. Hatching from the shell that contained your primordial goop (Dirk) is analogous to being violently separated from yourself (Dave), which is why Dave’s entry item (an egg) hatching coincided with Bro slicing the meteor in half: the abuse that divided Dave from himself, his “castration” by Bro, is simultaneously the “birth” that separated Dave from his “mother” (which is also Dave).

The general idea is that birth = self-alienation = castration, insofar as all are depicted as modes of being separated from oneself.

The broad motif of ‘being separated from oneself’ can be very useful for identifying brain ghosts in unexpected places. Take for example, Roxy’s fenestrated planes: when they are introduced the narrative is quick to tell us that if someone were caught half in/out of one of the windows when the power cuts out, they would be sliced in half. By the rule of Chekhov’s gun, this introduction should mean we should eventually see someone get gorily bisected by the window, but alas we never do. 

Instead, when Gcat warped the panel away, trapping Roxy between the windows, we were shown the image of a bisected horse puppet in Dirk’s apartment, This signals that Chekhov’s gun has indeed gone off. But rather than splitting a body, it split a soul: Meenah’s introduction follows the sequence because Roxy has generated a shadow of herself, a doppelganger. This is not without precedent: an earlier portion of this post was devoted to exploring the fourth wall as a mode of self-alienation. Roxy’s panel mishap can be considered part of that pattern.

If Meenah functions as an extension of Roxy, all of her actions can be read as bearing some relations to Roxy’s own latent thoughts and desires. Prior to the epilogues, for example, Meenah imploring John not to give her the ring seemed to be yet another Fuck You to the late Chekov: the issue never comes up again. But a psychic link between Meenah and Roxy would suggest that John broke his promise to Meenah by giving the ring to Roxy, and that whatever motivations compelled Meenah to make her request in the first place would also apply to Roxy.

Decapitation is yet another mode of self-alienation, and thus can be construed as a mode of birth. Hence the image of Lil Sebastian hatching from his shell of taxidermied man meat. That’s a motif unto itself, but what I wish to call attention to is the match-cut from John’s broke body to Jake’s broken tower. The juxtaposition collapses the images into metaphor, such that Jake’s loose dome in the woods becomes a decapitated head -- an appropriate addition to the pumpkin patch it rests in, given all the Headless Horseman jokes. We can look to Dirk for for another example of a headless horse-man of the house echoing the head: for a guy who idealizes decapitation to such a degree, it is striking that Sburb aims to provoke him by reattaching his beheaded apartment to its underlying units.

Houses act as metaphors for heads, then “Homestuck” could also interpreted as “head trapped” -- like the title emphasizes confinement within one’s own mind. Such a reading offers up Failure to Launch and Arrested Development (posters on John and Jane’s walls) as alternate synonyms for Homestuck, as each satirizes (or outright mocks) potential failure states in the process of inter-personal and mental development (ie “growing up”). Like Earthbound, both lean on a sense of homesickness in characterizing despondency, as though characters are haunted by the needs that defined their childhood -- or else find themselves needing that childhood itself.

But collapsing nostalgia into infantile regression is far from the only way to approach the house/heads equation. One might read the transformation and growth of houses with Sburb as metaphors for expanding the mind. One might infer that the choreography of events within houses can map out thoughts like dancing bees. One might take the metaphor as a foothold for interpreting the significance of the Sburb logo being at once a house and a window. \I have my own thoughts about Homestuck’s brain-ghost haunted house-minds, but for now, I only hope that this document has raised some interesting questions -- and ideally, that the interpretive approaches I’ve described might be useful in seeking answers.

#homestuck #homestuck meta #this is basically the contents of the stream #movies #john #rose #dave #jade #jake #dirk #roxy #gamzee #vriska #4th wall #psychoanalysis #house as head #plato

[trolldomblog]

The Niding Pole/Nidstang

In the Viking age the most spectacular way of cursing an enemy was by the Niding Pole (the Nithstong or Scorn-Post). They were poles about nine feet (2.75 meters) long upon which insults and curses were carved in runes. Ceremonies were performed to activate the destructive magic of the pole. A horse's skull was fixed to the top of the pole, and it was stuck into the ground with the skull facing towards the house of the accursed person. The pole channeled the destructive forces of Hela, goddess of death. These forces were carried up the pole and projected through the horse skull.

The runes carved on the pole defined the character and target of the destructive forces. Among others, triple Thorn [Thurisaz] runes and triple Is [Isa] runes, were used to smite the enemy. When used maliciously, these had the effect of disempowering the accursed's will and delivering him or her to the forces of destruction. Here, the Thorn rune invokes the power of Thurs, the demonic earth-giant sometimes called Moldthurs. An example of this comes from Skírnismál, where the spell used by Skirnir against Freyr's reluctant lover, Gerdhr invokes harm using the Thorn rune. This provides the power for three other runestaves: 'I shall inscribe Thurs for you, and three runestaves: lewdness, and rage and impotence.

Magically, the Niding Pole was intended to disrupt and anger the earth sprites (Landvaettir, Land-Wights or earth spirits) inhabiting the ground where the accursed's house was. These sprites would then vent their anger upon the person, whose livelihood and life would be destroyed. Niding Poles were also used to desecrate areas of ground. This technique is called álfreka, literally the 'driving away of the elves', by which the earth sprites of a place were banished, leaving the ground spiritually dead...

On the Niding Pole, the horse skull invokes the horse rune Ehwaz, using the linking and transmissive power of the rune for the magical working. The horse is sacred to Odin, god of runes and magic..."

During the Viking Age to put a "nid" on someone was to put very powerful verbal curse upon them. The power of words was not taken lightly by these efficient warriors, so to make a curse of this kind was very serious. It was the ultimate insult, and used only in dire circumstances.

In the Saga of Egil Skallagrimsson (an Icelandic/Norwegian story from the 10th century) King Eirik Bloodaxe, wronged Egil and made him an outlaw. The feuding resulted in many dead on both sides. After a battle on the island of Herdla (near Norway), Egil raised a hazelwood pole on the top of this island, and on the top of the pole he placed a severed horse's head, aimed towards Eirik's home. On the pole he carved sacred runes, with a curse upon King Eirik. He also spoke this curse, this "nid":

"Here I place this "Nidstang" ("curse-pole"), and turneth it against King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild - turneth I this against all the gnomes and little people of the land, that they may all be lost, not finding their homes, until they drive King Eirik and Queen Gunnhild out of the country."

According to the legend, the curse soon took effect, and King Eirik and his Queen Gunnhild fled to the British Isles.

This old custom has returned, and is again in use in our modern day. This is a very powerful ancient magic ritual, a curse with a power one should not use lightly and whimsically. These "nidstangs" have been placed to to defend our symbols and traditions from neo-nazis and other crackpots who "borrow" our sacred symbols and make them their own and vile.

We cannot be silent and pretend this is not happening. When wearing a Thor's hammer means taking the risk of being looked upon as a racist, and if carrying a sun-cross, or a rune, such as the Odal-rune, can get one arrested - then it is time to say "Stop!", to draw the line. We can't let these fools steal our heritage and soil it with their abusive and stupid attitude!

This "nid", this curse you can read here, is one in a chain of digital "Nidstangs", put up on websites around the world, and it is turned against everyone who misuses and abuses our ancient sacred symbols, and soils our land with hatred and discord. At the bottom of this page you will find links to the others who put up "nidstangs" around Scandinavia.

This curse is not turned exclusively on a certain easily detected group of young men (with shaven heads and/or carrying swastikas and such), but against everyone who answers to the description in this "nid".

This curse is not unconditional. It is only meant to fall upon those who persist in their destructive behavior. Tolerance and forgiveness are important principles for any spiritually inclined person, and no innocent should indiscriminately suffer from this curse.

It is also important to remember how the three great forces of society come together, making these misled persons much more powerful than they would have been on their own: politicians, in cowardice and opportunism, and businessmen and media, in desire of sensation and profit.

I curse!

I curse all of them

who soil our glorious land

with unworthy actions.

I curse all of them

who borrow sacred symbols

Gungnir, Mjolnir and Sacred Staves -

Odin's spear, Thor's hammer

and runes, given by Odin's hand

and soil them

with unholy deeds.

I curse all of them

who in ugly costumes

and shaven heads

as well as suits

and ties

abuse the wisdom of our ancestors

our ancient ways

and our present faith.

I curse all of them

who want to silence

the mouths of others

for themselves to be heard

with their stupid bellowing.

I curse all of them

who put themselves above others

because of their paleness,

who trample on others

because of the color of their skin,

foreign language,

or a different faith.

Upon the heads of these miscreants

I call all powers!

I call upon the gnomes, and the little people

to scratch their bodies

and disturb their sleep.

I call upon the elf-smiths

to lay an iron ring

around their chests

giving little room for their spirit

little room for breath

to speak of evil.

I call upon the "rimthurses" (frost-giants)

from the depth of Niflheim

That they may freeze to their death

before they get a chance

to freeze others out.

I call Surt and his "fire-thurses"

That they may burn to their death

before others may burn

by their hands.

I call upon Loki

That he may twist their vision

so that they strike each other down

before they strike anyone else down.

I call upon Freya

So that these young men

never may share a woman's bed

and never have sons

or daughters of their own

as long as they want to hinder

others to do just that.

And I call upon Frey

That these young men

have their manhood gelded,

never being able to create anything good

for themselves,

never getting peace

or harvest,

as long as they want to hinder

others to do just that.

I call upon Thor

that he may protect us

from demonic evil

and I call upon his wrath

against the miscreants

who wants to cause pain to others.

I call upon Odin

Allfather.

He who gave spirit

to man and woman.

He who together with his brothers

Hoenir and Lodur

Gave life to man,

Body and Soul,

Ask and Embla,

Man and Woman.

I call upon Odin

and the "Norns".

Goddesses of destiny,

Urdh, Verdhandi and Skuld,

who together judge

everyone after death

that they may judge

these miscreants hard,

so that they

not even after their deaths

may escape their deeds of evil

against other sons and daughters

of Ask and Embla.

I set this "nid"

until these drooling servants

of evil and ignorance

do penance

and let each and one

stay by their land, their people

and their faith

wherever in our world

they may choose to live.

http://www.sunnyway.com/runes/nidstang.html

[reality-warp]

CM Chapter 17 “Preview”

Merry Christmas guys!

You read right, it’s a look inside the next chapter of CM! <3

I’ll be honest, I really wanted to have this chapter done for Christmas day, but realistically I’m not going to have it polished before New Year thanks to the family holiday I’ve found myself on (and trust me, this is one chapter you guys will really want me to get right.) But I still wanted to give you all a little gift this holiday, so please consider this the usual Tumblr-exclusive teaser--only slightly longer, and with much more to come. :)

Here’s hoping you enjoy the sneak-peek. And I hope you all have had a very happy Christmas and a wonderful holiday season. Much love from me and my family to yours,

Rella xx

Helm’s Deep was a monster of a fortress, though you wouldn’t know it at a glance.

Sarra had told me during our walk that over half of it was actually below ground, dug straight into the side of the mountain it was built against. But as Aragorn, Benvolio and I crested the final hill that brought the valley into view, the parts that were visible were breath stealing all on their own.

The Hornburg—the main fortress of Helm’s Deep—stood out from the sheer wall of the cliffs like the bow of a ship, its two levels and internal walls formed entirely from the same dark grey stone of the mountains. It had been built so that it was slightly raised above the valley it overlooked, the only access via a long, narrow causeway leading up to a set of heavy wooden gates.

Unless of course, you felt like scaling the enormous Deeping Wall that stretched literally from one side of the valley to the other, with only a thick steel grate at the base to let the stream flow through.

It wasn’t quite dusk yet, but the sun was hanging low enough in the sky to cast a forbidding red hue over the cliffs as we cantered past the empty trenches and ramparts.

One tiny, stupid part of me was almost reluctant to guide our Benvolio up the stone walkway towards the entrance, the intimidatingly huge walls of the citadel looming up over us like some kind of sleeping giant that would swallow you if you got too close.

But deep down, I knew exactly why I was truly reluctant to enter, and who I would face inside…

That feeling of dread quickly disappeared the moment the lookout guards began pointing and shouting all along the battlements. Eventually one had the presence of mind to bellow for the gates to be opened, and the colossal wooden doors began to swing outwards. Benvolio—who had carried us the entire way without so much as a snort of complaint—staggered inside before coming to a shaky stop only a few steps past the threshold. Tired soldiers and nervous refugees lining the walls of the first courtyard, all of them turning to watch open-mouthed as Aragorn slid off the horse (indecently spritely for someone who’d been on horseback all day, in my bruised opinion). I carefully swung my creaking legs off Benvolio’s back too, trying to ignore the clamouring, pointing people beginning to surround us, and immediately fell face as my knees gave out.

My annoyance at Aragorn’s supposed lack of exhaustion disappeared as he caught and steadied me.

“Can you stand?” He asked, no trace of judgment in his tone. He obviously knew how much the journey had taken out of me by how naturally quiet I’d been. It took a moment to properly get my feet under me, and even then they were barely steady enough.

“Yeah, just give me a second.”

He nodded, slipping an arm gently around my back. The action was partly to disguise the fact that he was still mostly holding me up from the growing crowds around us, but also to make sure I was the only one who could hear him whispering.

“Don’t say anything about what we saw. We must tell the king before anyone else.”

I nodded, trying to keep the look of dread off my face. The last thing we needed was to panic the civilians with the news of what was really coming our way.

A gale of furious shouting erupted suddenly from the back of the crowd, cutting off any reply I might have had. I couldn’t immediately see who it was coming from, but I’d have to guess. I’d have recognised that angry Dwarven baritone in a crowd of a million people all shouting at once.

“Where are they?! Get out of the way! Out of my way, I said! I’m going to bloody kill them!” Gimli was howling as he literally shoved his way through the crowd, almost kicking over a gawking young soldier when he didn’t move fast enough. Aragorn and I both just gawked as our resident dwarf appeared in the gap he’d created, his fuming, helm-less face almost as red as his beard…

And bloody hell, there were tears in his eyes.

“Gimli—?”

“You two are the stupidest,” he shouted, cutting me off and jabbing a thick finger at us with every ground-shaking step towards us, “the luckiest, canniest, and the most reckless pair of sodding lunatics I’ve ever known in all my days!”

I’d barely had time to draw air to spout some kind of fumbling apology before he drove into us, arms as strong as tree roots coming around to pull us into a hug so hard my breath left me all over again. “Bless the both of you bleeding basket cases!”

The embrace was clumsy, warm, and made every one of my bruises scream with protest, but it was by far the best thing he could have given me right then. I let my body fold over with the force of the hug, my arms automatically returning it as hard as I could.

Well, crap. Now there were tears in my eyes too.

“I’m so glad you’re ok,” I managed to mumble through the knot in my throat. Aragorn let out a soft laugh that I could hear the tired smile in, giving us both a comforting pat on the back.

“I too am glad to see you well, master dwarf,” he said softly, the weariness beginning to creep into his voice at long last. “Are the rest of you well?”

“Aye, for the most part,” Gimli answered, releasing us with some reluctance. “A few bumps, a few bruises. We all made here in one piece at least. But what by Mahal happened to you two fools?” He jabbed a finger straight at my face, his glare like stone. “And you, lass. What in the ‘byss were you doing in the middle of the bloodbath? And losing your knife, again!”

I suddenly had the unsettlingly familiar feeling of being scolded by an affection but exasperated kindergarten teacher.

“I—”

I didn’t get the chance to finish my train of thought, let alone my sentence because I suddenly felt a pair of familiar eyes on me, and turned to find an equally familiar face staring straight at me.

Though granted, not the one I was both hoping for, and dreading all at the same time.

Boromir was standing open-mouthed at the foot of the stone steps learning up to the upper battlements. He looked as if he had been awake far too long, and on his feet for even longer, and if the expression on his face was anything to go by, I either looked truly amazing or like I’d just crawled out of my own grave—probably the latter.

I felt myself give sheepish smile and an awkward little wave, and his face split into a wide, joyous smile. He pushed his way through the gap in the crowd far more gently than Gimli had, but the hug he wrapped around me was no less strong.

“We thought you both dead,” he mumbled quietly against the top of my head.

“It was a near miss,” I admitted, hugging him back as hard as my shaking arms were able before pulling back. He had a few new cuts and bruises from the warg fight but otherwise looked as healthy as I’d left him. If anything, there was a renewed spark in his eyes that I was sure I hadn’t seen before. “Are you alright?”

“Am I—?” He threw his head back and burst into a loud rumbling laugh, pulling me into another one-armed hug. “I’m quite well, you tiny madwoman. Next time, for once, worry about keeping yourself in one piece before fretting over protecting the rest of us.”

I couldn’t quite hide my surprise at the warmth of his reaction, but I also couldn’t hide the wide grin that came with it. I gave an exhausted but genuine laugh as I rested my forehead against his shoulder.

“I’ll take it under advisement.”

The Gondorian warrior released me and turned to face Aragorn with equal relief as he had shown me if a little more restrained. He clapped the ranger hard on the shoulder, the nearest battle-worn men like them ever seemed to get to an embrace, but they both looked genuinely pleased to see each other alive.

“We found the Orc who saw you go over. You have much explaining to do,” Boromir started to tell us, but Aragorn raised a hand to him.

“Later, right now we must see to Theoden, urgently.”

Both Boromir and Gimli’s faces fell at the severe tone of his voice.

“You saw something?” Gimli guessed, and Aragorn nodded, eyeing the surrounding crowds who were still shellshocked at the reappearance of two of the supposedly dead.

“On our way here. It’s imperative we’re all prepared.”

Boromir had taken one look at the expression on Aragorn’s face a nodded, immediately flagged down a couple of passing soldier. Less than a minute later Theoden’s lieutenant—who I recognised as Gamling—had appeared at the bottom of the steps leading to the second level. After a brief moment of shock at the sight of me and the ranger still alive and walking around, he started conversing in urgent, hushed tones with Aragorn and Boromir while the soldiers started dispersing the crowd and led a knackered Benvolio off toward the stables.

I couldn’t help but scan the crowd with a searching gaze as the curious soldiers and Edoras refugees started to lose interest and move away. I hadn’t intended to voice my thoughts as my eyes failed to find who I was searching for, but my mouth moved before I could stop it.

“Where’s—” I cut myself off, but Gimli saw the look on my face and knew instantly who I meant.

“He’s not here, lass,” he told me gently. My stomach dropped at the words, icy dread forcing its way past my flimsy composure.

“Oh God, he’s not—?!”

Gimli threw up his hands in a calming gesture.

“No, no, he’s alive,” he reassured, seemingly not at all surprised to see the fear on my face, “though I wouldn’t say he’s well, exactly. He’s assisting the women and children down into the caves.”

I felt my whole body sag in both tiredness and sudden relief.

He was alive, and helping. At least that meant he wasn’t injured. The weight that knowledge lifted from me was a surprise. I’d been so focused on keeping myself and Aragorn alive after our fall I hadn’t stopped to realise Boromir had been right—I had been worrying about them all. Not knowing whether they had been hurt in the fight, whether they were even alive…

I felt sudden, humiliatingly exhausted tears stinging the corners of my eyes, and I had to clench them shut to stop them falling.

Gimli cleared his throat and gave me a gruff pat on the shoulder.

“Here,” he said, reaching into his spare scabbard and withdrawing a familiar looking blade with a clumsily carved handle (now slightly stained with Orc blood). He took my hand and pressed the handle into my palm, pointing a warning finger straight into my face. “And I swear by Mahal, you lose this again and I’ll have the smithy weld it to your side.”

I hiccuped and laugh, and it was just what I needed to get myself under control again.

“I do have the worst luck with that knife,” I agreed, clutching it to my chest once before stowing it safely back in the sheath at my waist. “Thanks, Gimli.”

“Bah,” he waved me off, but I saw the smile lurking behind that beard.

Just then, a woman appeared out of the crowd still moving around us. I wouldn’t have otherwise noticed her, she blended into the other refugees so seamlessly in her dusty travelling clothes, wavy blond mane and tired look. But the moment she spotted us she made a bee-line straight for me, dark brown eyes intent.

“Pardon, m’lord and lady,” she said as soon as she was close enough, her voice holding a similar Rohirric accent to the one Sarra had. She still had her gaze fixed on me, eyes flicking occasionally up to my ears. “I don’t mean to intrude, but, you are the one called Eleanor?”

“Aye,” Gimli answered before I could even open my mouth, clapping a solid hand on my back and almost collapsing my spine. “This is she.”

The woman never looked away from me, and there was something uncannily familiar about her…

“M’lady Eleanor, my name is Etain,” she told me solemnly with a slight bow.

And suddenly I realised why I felt like I’d seen her before. Her hair might have been threaded with grey, but it was exactly the same as Eothain’s sandy blond. And her eyes mirrors of Freda’s warm brown.

“You’re Eothain and Freda’s mother,” I blurted stupidly, but she smiled, the expression weary but warm as a midsummer afternoon.

“That I am,” she confirmed. “My children tell me you are responsible for their lives.”

I fumbled for some kind of response, suddenly feeling—against all reason—truly embarrassed by the blunt statement that made me sound far more heroic that I was.

“I, well…”

She hugged me.

Crossing the small distance between us in one smooth stride, she wrapped me in an embrace so similar to my own mothers it almost floored me. I suddenly found myself fighting back the sting of tears a second time.

“Thank you,” Etain whispered, her own voice thick with her own unshed tears. “I am in your debt, m’lady. Thank you.”

I hesitated a bit before giving her a gentle pat on the back in acceptance of the hug, honestly unsure of how else I should react.

“You don’t owe me anything, Etain,” I told her gently. She released me and gave me a disbelieving look.

“Of course I do! You are the reason my son and daughter have not joined my husband in death.”

“I was… only doing my job,” I said feebly, and the overly humble reply seemed to amuse and please her because she beamed, taking both my filthy hands tightly in hers.

“Whatever your reason, should you need anything, any request I can grant, it is yours.”

“I—” I was about to try and deny that she should offer me anything, but something about the look in her eyes told me that refusing her graciousness would be deeply insulting. Or worse, ungrateful. So I swallowed the impulse, hoping I wasn’t too red-faced and ducked my head in a small bow. “Thank you, Etain. Where are Freda and Eothain anyway? Are they alright?”

“They are both well. Already safely down in the caves,” she said, a questioning glance from me to where Gimli had joined the grim conversation with Boromir, Aragorn and Gamling. “Will you be joining us, m’lady?”

I quickly promised her I would come and check on them once I’d seen to my companions. She’d just moved off towards the archways leading down to the catacombs below the keep when Aragorn appeared at my side again.

“Theoden is preparing the keep for defence. We must inform him of what we witnessed,” he said with a pointed glance at the retreating Etain and the other refugees. I blinked at him, more than a little surprised.

“You want me there too?”

Aragorn eyed me as if the answer was obvious.

“Of course. You saw them as clearly as I.”

“Likely clearer, depending on how hard you hit that river,” Gimli added dryly, to which Aragorn threw him a dirty glare. The dwarf simply smirked, clapping the ranger on the arm.

“Go. We will continue with the preparations. Come find us after,” Boromir urged.

So we left them to the refugees, making our way up towards the main hall of the keep in Gamling’s footsteps. I couldn’t help but peer back over my shoulder as we left, glancing at Boromir’s back as he assisted an elderly couple carrying their provisions towards the caves.

‘Something’s different about that one,’ Tink piped up from the back of my head, eyeing the smile the man offered his charges as they left. I made a silent noise of agreement, turning to catch up with Aragorn and Gamling.

‘How’s definitely a little closer to the old Boromir I remember.’

‘Not just that. He feels… lighter somehow. More so than even before Lothlórien,’ she told me seriously, though she didn’t sound displeased by the observation. I smiled to myself, suddenly glad to have that second voice echoing around the inside of my mind again.

‘Well, that wasn’t cryptic at all. Glad to have you back in the land of the living, Tink.’

‘Likewise, boss. Here’s a thought, let’s never do anything that again,’ she suggested in the driest tone I’d ever heard from her. I resisted the urge to chuckle aloud and give the watching refugees even more reason to stare as we passed.

‘Don’t hold your breath. We’ve still got an oncoming siege to survive, remember.’

‘Right, an army of badass monsters. It’s all coming back to me now…’

The rest of our silent conversation devolved to tension easing jokes as we moved up the keep towards the Hornburg’s main entrance.

If I’d been in any doubt before about the magnitude of the fortress from the outside, the climb up through its levels cleared it right up. The keep was laid out kind of like the tiers of a wedding cake the bottom one housing the front gate, lower courtyard, and the stables. The second was accessed via a curved set of wide stone steps that levelled out to hold the armoury, barracks, upper courtyard and entrance to the caverns. As we passed through the throngs of loitering refugees I spied what I assumed was the smaller rear gate of the keep, its door open to show the steep, winding stairway leading down to the gully behind the Deeping Wall. The final level rose up only a little higher than the second and was almost entirely devoted to the entrance to the king’s hall, the stone watch tower holding the horn of Helm Hammerhand looming up above it like a spear piercing the gap between the mountains. When we finally reached the doors to the main hall, Aragorn shoved them open onto a room the size and hight of a cathedral. Carved wooden arches and stone pillars made for a cavernous room, and at its centre, a war table had been set up—surrounded by grizzled, tired looking Rohan soldiers, and one stunned king.

The moment Theoden saw us standing in the entranceway he was out of his chair and striding around the table, passed his shocked advisors. He’d barely managed to utter a word before Aragorn started speaking over him, no time or patience left to stand on formalities.

We had one hell of a bomb to drop.

I was mostly content to stay quiet through the briefing as Aragorn filled everyone in on what was coming, only speaking up to confirm his descriptions and add in details of my own. Surviving the fall into the river, the journey to catch up with them, the army we’d seen: the king took it all in with a grim expression, the hand resting on the pommel of his sword flexing with agitation. When Aragorn finally finished telling them about the horde of sunlight resistant Uruk-hai marching with siege equipment an unsettling hush fell over the entire hall. I wasn’t even sure anyone was breathing.

“How many?” Theoden finally asked, piercing the silence.

“Ten thousand strong,” Aragorn answered.

“At least,” I added.

Theoden just stared at us, looking as if someone had just danced the foxtrot over his grave.

“Ten thousand…”

“They had the white hand of Saruman on their helms,” I told him, glancing around to see the king’s expression of shocked dread mirrored on almost all of his men. Aragorn made a sound of agreement.

“All of Isengard has emptied. They will be here by nightfall if they’ve kept their pace.”

Theoden looked as if he needed to sit down, but instead, he only hunched forward over the war table, resting heavily on his arms.

“Why?”

“It is an army raised for a single purpose;” Aragorn said without any preamble, or sugarcoating whatsoever. “Ending the race of Men.”

For what felt like minutes Theoden just stared at us across the war table, gauging the weight of Aragorn’s expressions and the consequences of the info-grenade we’d just thrown at him. Then he very obviously buried his own fear and dread, stood straight, and met the expectant looks of his men with renewed confidence.

“Then let them come. We shall be ready for them.”

The soldiers surrounding him didn’t quite appear to share in his confidence. Some of them even looked alarmed by it.

“My king, we do not have the numbers to fight that many,” one older captain with greying hair said.

“Even within the mouth of the valley we would be swarmed in minutes if we manned the ramparts,” another added.

Theoden ignored them all, leaning back over the war table to observe the map of the valley spread over it.

“We will do as we have done before. We endure the barrage from within the Hornburg as a cliff withstands the sea,” he told them, his tone brokering no argument. “We have enough supplies stored in the caverns to last us at least two weeks. This army will doubtless pillage and burn as they go. But homes can be rebuilt, crops resown. As long as we are within these walls we will withstand them.”

“Withstand them?” Aragorn repeated under his breath, and I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him truly lost for words. I was kind of stunned too. Had Theoden completely missed the part about them toting battering rams and thirty-foot scaling ladders?

“You really think an army raised and armed by a wizard will come unprepared to storm a keep?” I asked aloud before I could think better of it.

The king of Rohan looked up barely long enough to throw me the kind of look normally reserved for finding dog shite on the sole of your boot.

“I think, as King I know how to defend my own fortress from those who would see it burned to the ground, my lady,” he said, emphasising the title as if it was something beneath his concern.

I felt my temper flaring, the sudden urge to smack that expression off his face so great I was kind of glad for the sprawling table between us. Beside me, Aragorn was no better; looking as if he was about to burst a blood vessel.

“This horde does not march on us to destroy crops or building, they come with the will and means to wipe out its people,” he argued, stepping up so he was leaned over the opposite head of the war table from the king. “Your men are right. You cannot repel this threat alone. You must call for aid, my lord. Send out riders to your allies.”

Theoden fixed Aragorn with a toxic scowl.

“And who will answer us? The old Alliances are long dead, and if what you say is true, then there is no time left even if we did have the men to spare.” He shook his head, blond hair with its white streaks falling to hide the wavering confidence in his eyes. “No, we must devote all our resources to the keeps defence.”

“Gondor would answer if—” Aragorn started to argue, but was cut off as Theoden slammed a fist onto the table with a thunderous bang, making the candles flicker and several of the younger soldiers (plus me) jump in alarm.

“Gondor?!” He spat, eyes furious on the ranger. “Where was Gondor when my people cried out for aid as the Westfold burned? When our enemies closed in around us and families were murdered in their beds! Cloistered in an ivory city behind thick walls and thicker politics!”

Aragorn didn’t respond. He simply absorbed the king’s vitriol with the same stony look I’d seen him wear in combat, not contradicting of defending native people, but not backing down either. The silence hung thick in the air for a few moments before Theoden managed to reign his temper in again, breathing deeply and shaking his head. “No. I will not place a fools hope on aid that will never come. We are alone in this, Lord Aragorn. As we have ever been.”

‘Bleeding hell. This man’s pride is going to get everyone in this keep killed,’ Tink muttered from the back of my exasperated thoughts.

‘We’d better hope Gandalf makes it back in time with some kind of help then,’ I agreed.

“We will need to repel any who come close to the walls. Station archers along the battlements. I need every man and strong lad armed and ready for battle by nightfall,” Theoden was saying, directing his captains to begin putting the plans into actions. Aragorn—despite still being incensed by Theoden’s refusal to even send a raven for help—looked as if he intended to stay and at least put his strategic skills to good use. I, however, had had quite enough of everything going on in that hall. And anyway, when it came to war plans, I’d probably be as helpful as a shot of brandy to someone dying of heat exhaustion. So, with my witnessing job done, I turned for the exit, hoping to slip out and off to find Sarra unnoticed.

At least until the king’s voice stopped me.

“M’lady Eleanor.”

I halted in my tracks, feeling a dozen sets of eyes suddenly focusing on my back, preventing me from pretending like I hadn’t heard him.

‘Busted,’ Tink groaned.

I turned slowly to see Theoden frowning at me again, though with mildly less distain and more caution than before at least.

“Yes?”

The king shifted to stand a little straighter as he regarded me.

“I hear from Gamling you near smashed in the face of one of my junior soldiers before we left Edoras,” he stated in a deliberately neutral tone that didn’t match the faintly disapproving tilt to his expression. I saw the mirror of that same silent judgement reflected in several of the other captains as I looked around, and the shadow of a grimace cross Aragorn’s face out of the corner of my eye. He obviously knew the reaction that comment delivered in that tone would garner from me…

And he was right.

That anger that had sparked earlier kindled into a searing flame. In the past few hours, I’ve been attacked, shunned, dropped off a cliff, almost drowned, ridden bareback for miles with an unconscious man strapped to my back—and all in the knowledge that the person I’d grown closest to in the past few months never wanted to speak to me again.

And I had exactly no patience left to spare on subtlety.

‘Right, fuck this!’ I thought, anger pulsing through me. I turned away from the door so I faced them all head-on, raising my chin partly in a challenge, but also to clearly show the ring of bruises still fresh around my throat.

“I hear that same soldier of yours tried to sexually assault an unwilling young woman in an alleyway whilst drunk off his rocker, my lord,” I replied, loud enough so the entire room heard every word.

The hall went suddenly, deadly silent—enough that I could hear the roaring of my own furious heartbeat in my ears. Half the younger men visibly cringed back in shock, clearly unused to hearing some of those particular words said aloud, let alone as an accusation of one of their own. The older ones that didn’t either averted their eyes gave me genuinely looks of shame. But to my surprise, not one of them attempted to contradict me or call me a liar. Theoden himself looked faintly stunned behind his poker face.

I probably should have left it there, but my flaring temper was long gone, and my mouth just kept on going without me.

“I also heard,” I continued, holding the king’s gaze hostage, “that soldier only backed off when one of the woman’s companions heard the commotion and came to intervene. And that if he hadn’t, she would have been justified in beating your junior to a pulp to defend herself from such a violation.”

‘Drag him, girl!’ Tink was hollering at the back of my mind, but I ignored her in favour of watching the king's reaction like a hawk. I might have been counted as a guest and friend of his court, but I was acutely aware that if his pride was truly too great, he might treat this outburst as a great insult. Or worse, a threat to his authority.

Turns out the king of Rohan was many things, but someone who tried to belittle ugly truths was not one of them.

Theoden watched me for an agonisingly long moment of complete silence. Then he straightened, placed his hand to his heart and bowed low to me—a gesture I recognised as a deliberately Elven mannerism.

“I beg you to accept my humblest apologies, my lady. There is no excusing such an act. Under normal circumstances a shame of this magnitude would be met with banishment at the least, the headsman’s axe at worst,” he said, and despite the anger still beating through me, I couldn’t sense any deceit or insincerity in his voice. A look of regret with a tinge of guilt coloured his expression. “Please know he will be dealt with severely when this crisis has passed. But given our number and what we are now up against, we will need every hand we have to defend the keep, and the innocent people within.”

I stared long and hard at the king of Rohan across the table, mine and Tink’s mingled fury a silent storm beneath my skin.

What he said made perfect sense. But that didn’t mean the part of me that still raged at the injustice had to like it.

I gave a single sharp nod of acceptance, not trusting myself to keep from spitting venom a third time if I opened my mouth. I needed to get out of there before my anger got the better of me.

“Please excuse me,” I managed to get out from between clenched teeth. The king nodded.

“Of course. You are excused—”

But I was already out of the doors before he’d finished speaking.

‘Mother fu—!’ Tink was still yelling, but a second voice drowned her out before she could finish the obscenity.

“Eleanor, wait!” Aragorn called, following me out of the hall before I’d made it halfway down the steps. He caught up with me just as I reached the courtyard. The soldiers had already started hearing the last of the women and children into the caves, and the young men towards the armoury and several curious heads turned to watch us as I stopped and spun to face him.

“What you said in there—” he started, but I cut him off. I could barely deal with the idea of a lecture right then, let alone enduring one.

“Aragorn, I swear if you tell me I should have held my tongue and said nothing I’ll—”

“I was going to tell you that it was deeply brave,” he interrupted me. My outraged counter argument fizzled out along with the anger. I blinked stupidly at him.

“What?”

Aragorn gave me a lopsided smile. The fond, borderline affectionate kind I’d seen very rarely from him. It threw me off balance almost as much as his next words did.

“Not many could have said what you did to whom you did. Let alone in a room full of that boy’s brethren and friends. It was brave of you to do that.”

For a moment I couldn’t think of a damned thing to say, torn between genuine shock and crippling relief that he was on my side. Truly on my side this time.

“It… needed to be said,” I replied, at last, giving a feeble little shrug that really didn’t feel adequate. “It was me that guy went after this time, but it could have been another girl later. One who didn’t have a Maia and posse of warrior friends backing her up. I just said what they all needed to hear.”

His lip twitched in a micro-grin at the word friend, and I couldn’t help but mirror it.

“Never the less, I wished you to know,” he said, and his face fell slightly as he glanced back up at the entrance to the main hall. “It is… surprising sometimes, the lengths good men will go to avoid painful truths.”

I thought back to the king’s mask of confidence, and faces of the older soldiers inside. The ones who had said nothing to stop me, but also had turned their gazes away when I’d voiced what had been done. And also of the younger ones who had appeared shamed, but had not once condemned the actions of their fellow.

“I guess so,” I muttered, heaving a heavy sigh and turning from the hall, the last of my outrage vanishing to be replaced by weariness. I was suddenly so bloody tired. “Anyway, I thought I’d see if I can help out down in the caves. See if anyone was injured in the warg attack who still needs help.”

I imagined Sarra would be down there somewhere along with Freda and Eothain as well, all of them likely sick with worry by now.

I felt Aragorn rest a warm hand on my shoulder, substantially gentler than Gimli had.

“A good idea. Your skills will be greatly valued among the refugees,” he said, then paused, eyeing me with a suspicious raised brow. “And you plan to stay down there during the fighting?”

I chuckled, lightly batting his hand away.

“Oh, I will. I’m barely any help in a fight, let alone a siege.” I pointed a warning finger at him. “But make no mistake, I’m doing this because I know I’ll be more useful there. Not because some beardy horse king orders me to.”

“Noted,” he smiled again, but then something over my left shoulder caught his attention and the expression fell into shock. Confused, I turned to see what he was looking at…

And found Legolas standing on the other side of the courtyard, staring at us as if he’d seen a pair of ghosts.

I honestly wasn’t sure what I was expecting to find when I saw him again, but it wasn’t what I got. I remembered all too clearly the outward signs of worry I’d noticed on him after waking from healing Boromir at Amon Hen—the disarray where there had normally been composure, dark circles under grey-blue eyes…

But the person I saw staring back at me for that tiny fraction of time looked as if he had just worked from a horrendous nightmare, and wasn’t certain if he was still trapped inside his own torment. His dark gold hair was mussed and dark with dirt and blood from the warg attack as if he hadn’t even touched it since the fight. There was sill Orc blood staining his hunting leathers and hands, unwashed, and untreated cuts dotting his knuckles. The circles under his eyes were back, but they were dark restless bruises this time, exacerbated by the bloodless pallor his face had taken on.

But the worst part was the look in his eyes.

He looked haunted, disbelieving—a raw emotional wound open to the elements.

My mouth just kind of fell open. I think I meant to call out to him on instinct, but the sound caught in my throat. For that split second, I couldn’t look away from the ruin that Aragorn and my supposed deaths had left in its wake.

Was this was the effect I’d had on someone I'd grown to care for so much?

It was true I had never considered the repercussions of becoming emotionally attached to someone who quite literally would live forever unless killed in battle, what it would feel like to care so deeply for someone who would be around long after you were gone. But I also had not considered—at least until our fight at Edoras—what such a loss would mean for him. I at least had led enough of my human life to know death firsthand; what it looked like, how to deal with it, and how to shield my heart against it.

He didn’t.

And this is what that loss had done to him.

That terrified me—more than I was entirely able to understand.

The horror inside me turned to terrible sadness, guilt and panic, and it was more than I could handle…

“Mellon nín…” I heard Aragorn murmur, and the sound of his own shock only brought my own emotions down harder, crushing the air from my lungs.

I couldn’t handle this…

But my inner turmoil hurricane was abruptly cut short by the sudden sound of a familiar warhorn, along with the chaotic shouts of the watch guard cut through the air, and the moment shattered. I realised with a strangely disjointed rush that I recognised that sound of that horn—I’d heard almost every day back when we had still been in Lothlórien when the Galadrim had been running drills in the training grounds.

The crowds filing into the caves surged with sudden alarm at the noise and the clusters of shifting bodies momentarily blocked Legolas from my view, and us from his. I didn’t know if the feeling that washed over me was relief or frustration, one part of me desperate to charge through the crowd after him, the other unable to bear the thought of seeing him…

Knowing that I would break apart right now if I heard the same pain in his voice that I saw in his face…

The storm of things going on inside my head and heart was suddenly too much.

Everything was suddenly too much.

‘Boss?’ Tink’s voice brushed hesitantly against my awareness.

‘I… I can’t…’ I felt my own chaotic thoughts echo through my head in response. ‘I can’t… I can’t handle this. Not now. I can’t do it…’

‘Boss, are you ok? Your emotions are going all over the place.’

I didn’t even try to explain what was happening inside me. Instead, I took one last look back at the place where I’d last seen Legolas’ haunted form—the person I both wanted to see again more than anyone else, and yet the one I couldn’t bear to look at right then for the ruin I’d made of him…

And I turned and ran for the battlements, leaving a stunned Aragorn behind in my place.

“Eleanor?!” He called after me, but I didn’t answer, my feet barely touching the stone as I flew down the steps towards the lower courtyard.

‘You coward!’ Tink shouted, her outrage returned and firing through my head like a banshee’s howl. ‘You utter fucking coward, Eleanor Dace!’

I didn’t deny it.

I was a coward. But right then, much as I loathed myself for it, the only thing I could bear to let myself focus on was the last person I’d heard create that horn blast.

And the hope that he had brought an army that might save us with him.

More to come in the completed Compos Mentis: Chapter 17 ~ Mîr Nín

#mine #my writing #COMPOS MENTIS #ravame's bane trilogy #ravame #ravame's bane #aragorn #eleanor dace #tink #this hasn't been sent through my beta yet #so be warned #some of this might change between now and the full chapter #hope you enjoy lovelies #<3

[dokidokiliteraturegirls]

 Hello everyone! Yui here, with today’s special feature, DDLitG Behind the Scenes: What’s the deal with Ako?

In this special update we’ll talk about her character in general, design, her place in the story, and more! So get comfortable in your seat, get yourself some good snacks, and let’s delve into the background of DDLitG’s 1st-ish original character~

Who is Ako?

Ako, formerly known as “female student”, was originally one of the many NPCs used by the game’s engine to fill its world with nondescript background characters, so as to make it feel less empty. However, Sayori took a special interest in her, and decided to befriend her, following the steps of a young MC who befriended Sayori in a similar situation and ended up saving her life. This would in turn allow Ako to grow as a character beyond her 1 line of coding and get her own sprites, as well as being able to interact with the world. She would later go on to fall in love with Sayori and shenanigans ensue.

Ako was created with the purpose of telling the story of the Friendship arc.

Designing Ako.

Let me make one thing clear: I’m not a character designer. I don’t know jack about it besides the very basics. But I did try to make someone who looked mildly original and, most importantly, different from the other girls.

Originally, she was going to be the image of a shy, fragile girl who Sayori befriended out of pity, more than anything. Based on this initial idea, I made this beta Ako design on one of my copybooks when I should’ve been working:

As you can see, her very first sprite was the one where she’s shyly looking away to avoid eye contact (and to seem annoying, but more on that later). I was happy with the pose but not with her face, as it looked super unoriginal. She resembled Ochako Uraraka from My Hero Academia a bit too much, so I tried to change her hair to make her stand out more. Here is her second iteration:

This time, I felt like I cranked it up too much to the other side. Now she stood out TOO much. Her hair felt like it came more from a protagonist than someone who’s supposed to be a background character. I adopted a new philosophy after seeing this result: she had to look as bland as possible. She had to be the kind of character you see all the time in the background of an anime - those simple, unassuming designs you’d never look twice at because you’re too focused on the protagonists with candy-coloured hair. In DDLitG’s canon she’s a filler NPC brought to the forefront, and her design had to reflect that more than my desire to make her look “cool”.

With this in mind, we come to Ako v0.3

As you can see, this is much closer to her current design. But this was still a sketch (even the drawing above is very much unfinished). As you can see, I got closer to her 0.1 version with the hair, but changed the eyes to make them look more unique, giving her that more neutral, “nothing” expression. Having finally found some ground I was comfortable with, I redefined her design a little further, gave her some more details around the hair and clothes, adjusted the proportions of her body (because apparently I draw heads huge), and made her finalized design.

I was happy.

What’s with this sassy... monochrome child?

If there’s one constant to be found in the pictures above, is that she was always meant to be black and white. There are plenty of reasons, which I’ll list because, honestly, there are a lot.

1. I didn’t want to look her like the rest of the cast at fucking all. She is an OC introduced in a story with already established characters made by a much more talented writer. She’s an outsider, someone who doesn’t belong with this cast of colorful characters, and I wanted readers to be able to tell that at first glance. No, she’s not like the other girls. They don’t belong in the same place. She is not a member of the original DDLC cast, and it shows.

2. I know I can’t draw as well as Satchely, so trying to copy DDLC’s art style would just end up looking awkward and wrong. I had no choice but to do my own thing. And if I’m doing my own thing, why not take it all the way? I already gave myself artistic freedom, I might as well go crazy with it~

3. I just adore characters in a fictional universe that look different from the rest of the cast or have some strange design choice for literally no reason. Like Krillin from Dragonball, with his eyes that make him look like he belongs in an entirely different manga...

...or even Jotaro Kujo, whose hat merges with his hair because why not!

I live for dumb crap like that.

4. A huuuuuge inspiration for me while writing (besides my own uninteresting life) is music. Many times I listen to a specific track or imagine situations with specific background music to make them seem more real, and be able to better portray the feelings of a scene when writing [For example, I listened to My Chemical Romance’s Welcome to the Black Parade a lot while writing Monika’s Death].

Ako’s creation was no exception. Her appearance was partially based on the cover for not only one of my favorite Vocaloid albums of all time, but one of my favorite albums period: Wowaka’s glorious Unhappy Refrain.

I’ve been writing stuff based on this album alone for years because it’s just so damn striking to me. The picture of the faceless schoolgirl falling into the unseen abyss, the background uninterested characters that imply they are used to seeing fellow girls suffer, the distorted world they live in, the album’s way to explore teenage depression, the freaking name of the album, EVERYTHING! IT’S SUCH A GOOD EXPLORATION OF THE DIFFICULT LIFE TEENS FACE THAT OFTEN GOES UNNOTICED!! AAAAAAHHHH IT’S SO GOOD.

5. Ako was also based on a previous design I made for another character meant for an original visual novel I was writing and I’m probably never going to finish, who was also going to be monochromatic to reference this album (in that context it made more sense though cuz every character was a musical reference).

This character, in turn, was based on Monoko from Yume Nikki, which is more obvious because of her crying eye and extra arm.

So basically at this point it would’ve been weird if I hadn’t made her monochromatic.

Naming Ako

This was one of the most difficult parts, ngl.

As I mentioned, Ako was originally going to be a fragile, shy girl. Based on this, her original name during the design face was Moromi, which is one more letter than “Moroi”, which Google translate promises me means “Brittle” or “Fragile” in Japanese.

However, after the philosophy change that happened during her conceptual stage, “Fragility” was no longer at the core of her character, as it was now “Nothingness/Blandness”. Because of this, I changed her name to “Ako”.

Many people have submitted their interpretations of the name, ranging from its meaning “To teach/to learn”, and “To yearn for”, which all fit better than the original tbh.

The intended meaning is for “Ako” to be read as “A-Ko”, which is a way by which Japenese media often refers to filler characters, as it translates to “Girl A”.

Examples of this can be seen in Super Danganronpa 2, where a character in a videogame is called “A-Ko” to hide their identity...

...and in a movie called “Project A-ko”, which was a parody of the anime tropes from the time, so they gave the protagonist the most generic name ever. The antagonist and side character, by the way, are called “B-Ko” and “C-Ko” respectively. This movie is fucking awesome.

This name also made sense in the context of the story, because we already had a character named “Student A”, so this goes to show that the game just gave Ako the default name it had stored for female NPCs.

Blinded Ako, or How I Learned to Convey Emotion Through Ahegao

When I came up with Ako, she was meant to have most of her character revolving around her infatuation with Sayori. She was, after all, written in the story with the purpose of falling in love with her, and nothing else. Her character, personality, likes/dislikes, and hobbies came afterwards. As the story progressed, however, I decided that she should have a personality separate from just being in love with another character. So to separate the actions she committed under the influence of her passion, I did a little design change in the middle of the arc: Blinded Ako.

In this version, Ako has been literally blinded by love and stops being rational. This is represented by the hearts covering her eyes, and clouding her judgement. This was done not only with the purpose of representing she was past her breaking point, but also to differentiate the Ako that makes mistakes with the Ako that was introduced in the beginning of the arc. Almost so as to make them two different characters, so when she is reintroduced as a regular character after Friendship, readers could think “oh, she’s not going to do dumb stuff again, she’s not blinded by love anymore.”

Many people compared the above panel with “ahegao”, a trope in hentai manga where a character does a silly face to represent them breaking from enjoying themselves so much. This was done partially on purpose. The main idea was to represent Ako being blinded by her infatuation for Sayori, not to equate her sate of being with anything sexual. It DID end up looking more hentai-esque than I expected though, as, well, Ako is in black and white, and the heart eyes are also a trope in ahegao. And she’s sweating. And she’s saying that she’s about to break....

.....

....well at least I drove my point home.

Ako’s musical influences

Above I mentioned how music was a big part of my inspiration, and how I listened to Welcome to the Black Parade while writing Monika’s Death, so the question in no one’s mind is: what music did Yui use as inspiration for Ako’s character and the arc? 🤔

Well, hypothetical reader, the answer is that since Ako was meant to be bland and flavour-free, her original depiction is not based on a song or anything. Her desperation towards Sayori and Blinded Ako, though, are based on TRONICBOX’s 80′s style remix of Ariana Grande’s Into You. And yes, this 80′s remix in specific. Not the original song. I highly encourage you to give it a listen and pay attention to the lyrics if you want an insight into how Ako was feeling during her breaking point.

Also, as a side note, no one has asked me this, but I imagine Ako’s voice to sound like the vocals of Panty and Stocking’s ending, Fallen Angel. It’s a truly beautiful song, and once again, I highly encourage you to give it a listen and pay attention tot he lyrics if you want an insight in Ako’s current feelings towards Sayori.

Ako’s reception

This is more something personal than an explanation of the character, but it’s something I want to share nonetheless.

Remember when I said Ako was meant to be annoying? Yeah... xD

When I decided to add a new character I did so under the idea that everyone was going to hate her, because it’s a purposefully boring OC made by some insane person with the sole purpose of being added to an already interesting and loved cast of characters just to fuck everything up.

The first scene I ever wrote for Ako was the part where Monika asked if she had hurt Sayori, and she said “Not intentionally...” while looking away, which is why her first sprite ever was in that position. She was meant to make people feel frustrated over this girl just looking away from her problems and avoiding responsibility, while also telling Monika to her face that she had done something bad to Sayori. Readers were expected to hate her. That’s why in the beginning she says she doesn’t like literature, to assure you that she’s not joining the literature club. That’s why there’s a scene where she gets punched in the face. That’s why she looks so extremely out of place.

YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO DISLIKE HER!! omg I’m still surprised at how warm the reception was, you guys are just too nice for me~ ❤️

Because of the unexpected reception I had to change some parts of the arc, which were originally going to be much crueler towards her [I even questioned adding the punch at all, but it was an important part of Monika’s development so I felt it]. I also established her as a recurring character in spite of her dislike of literature, and did my best to make her less hate-able than she was originally going to be, even cutting some planned lines of dialogue that made her pretty irredeemable. Looking back, I am glad I did those changes, we ended up with a well-liked and pretty nice girl because of it~

Final thoughts

The introduction of Ako and writing Friendship in general was a very intense experience for me. It was very difficult to balance Ako as being both relevant to the story and moving the plot forward, but not make her the sole focus of everything and have her obscure everyone else, because OCs in established pieces of media tend to do that.

This arc also got a LOT of mixed reviews, some people liking it, some hating everything I did. This made me really question what I was doing and at many points even regret I was writing Friendship at all. At a certain point I lost almost 50 followers in a single update.

I also had trouble writing some parts because they were too sad. And that’s not my style! I like writing happy people being good friends, damn it, not everyone crying and hating each other.

But when all is said and done, I’m happy I wrote both Friendship and Ako into the story. I’ve received many wonderful, supportive messages telling me how much readers enjoyed it. Even some people saying they had been in a similar situation to the one depicted in the story, and were glad to see a story that showed a positive outcome.

Will I write more OCs into DDLitG?

Meh, who knows. I love writing more original stuff and expanding the world of DDLitG, but I also feel like if I introduce yet another OC, people will crucify me and hate me for flooding the story with too much stuff that’s irrelevant to the DDLC they’re used to. That being said, writing this blog is my first, and very possibly last chance to expose my stories to such a large audience. And seeing people like what you do not only because you’re riding the coattails of a recognizable brand, but because they like what you do with it, makes me pretty darn happy. Being completely honest, I’d like to add another character. But just one. And only if it’s something that will push both the story and the girls’ character arcs forward. Not just adding OCs for the sake of it.

Thanks for sticking until the end of this BTS, and I hope you found it an enjoyable read, or at the very least I made you a little bit less bored~ ❤️

Next time, in DDLitG Behind the scenes: What’s the deal with The Perfect Yuri?

#ddlitg behind the scenes #updated version!

[imnobodyuknow]

I’ll take it from here, ladies!

And now, without further Splatoon-based ado, it’s time for “big reveal” number 18!

(Just a warning -- this one’s going to get pretty emotional.)

In one of the sadder moments in Doki Doki Literature Club, Sayori asks the following questions:

“Why go to school?”

“Why eat?”

“Why make friends?”

“Why make other people put their energy and caring to waste by having them spend it on me?”

This is why.

As difficult and depressing as life can get, I believe that it’s always worth it to see where it leads you, and in many cases, it can lead you to moments as warm and bright as this one.  Here we have Sayori on the other side of one of the roughest parts of anyone’s life (the teen years, specifically), now a married woman and mother of three, letting out a loud gasp as she squats down and marvels at her middle child’s latest artistic creation.  By the way, if her husband looks familiar, that’s because he is, in fact, the protagonist of DDLC!

So, a little backstory on this -- in this headcanon of mine, Sayori finds the help and support she needs from her friends (and most likely a therapist), and graduates from high school before leaving for college in a different town, bidding her friends a tearful but fond farewell.  After earning a degree in Recreation, she struggles for awhile to find a career before running into a familiar face (not literally running into him, although that would be in character for her.  : P )

While sitting on a park bench, she is reunited with the protagonist, who, as it turns out, didn’t become a NEET -- he studied journalism and became a writer for a newspaper (we all know how good he is at writing, after all *eye roll*), and happened to visit the town Sayori lives in on a business trip.  Needless to say, their reunion was both happy and loud.  Over time, the two of them began seeing each other more often, exchanging stories, encouraging one another to keep trying new things, etc., and it wasn’t much longer before he made her the happiest woman alive, and the two became Doki Man and Doki Wife.  X }

So, why did I pick the protagonist to be her husband?  While I myself went with the Natsuki route in the game, I honestly imagined good old Say-Say as being the best choice in terms of a love interest for the protagonist, if only because of their friendship and familiarity with one another.  I don’t claim to be an expert in matters of romance, but I find it very likely that an ideal girlfriend/boyfriend is someone who already has the “friend” part well established.

Anyway, back to the present day.  As an adult woman, I imagine Sayori being practically the same, with a few small but crucial exceptions -- she's gained more self-confidence, more conviction, and (slightly) more maturity.  Other than that, she’s still the same bright-eyed, happy-go-lucky girl she’s always been on the inside, bringing sunlight with her wherever she goes.

Then there’s the question of what kind of wife and mother she would make.  I imagine her being extremely happy with and devoted to her husband (and vice versa), especially after everything they made it through together up until now.  And to say that I think she’d make a great mother is a gross understatement -- I think she has the potential to be one of the greatest mothers in history.  (I mean, let’s be honest, that’s practically what she is to the protagonist for most of the game.)

As for her career, I imagine her mostly being a stay-at-home mom (and if you me, that counts as a full-time job), but she might also pursue any number of different careers: a teacher, a counselor, a babysitter...  Heck, she’d make a perfect anchorwoman for News 39.  One thing’s for certain, though -- she’d never stop writing about her innermost thoughts and feelings.  After all, who wouldn’t want to read more from the girl who once wrote the best poem ever?

In the game, the protagonist’s name is decided by the player, but in my headcanon, his name is Haruki, and his and Sayori’s children are named, from oldest to youngest, Hiroto, Reina, and Nanako.  In this picture, Hiroto is showing his brand new Chogokin toy to his dad, who just came home...

...Reina is showing her mom her newest drawing, which is soon to join the fridge with the rest of her creations...

...and little Nanoko is quietly observing her surroundings.

Also on the fridge is a couple of photos -- one of Sayori and Haruki’s wedding, and another of a moment when they got caught in the rain...

...and around Sayori’s next, not an instrument for taking life, but a symbol of her life as it is now -- a necklace shaped like a jar with a ball of sunshine inside it.

Guess who designed it for her, by the way?

And finally, there’s no song I know of that better describes Sayori’s love life (in this headcanon, at least) than Some Hearts by Carrie Underwood.  An honorable mention goes to Follow Me by Kay Hanley, though.  I can just imagine Sayori singing both of these songs herself.

Anyway, here's the picture I used as a reference for the delighted Sayori:

Haruki’s design was, once again, inspired by the sprites made by Childish-N, while his outfit was inspired by that of Ace Attorney’s Godot.

Hiroto’s design was also inspired by those sprites, while Reina’s and Nanoko’s designs were based on that of Non Non Biyori’s Komari and Renge, respectively.

And let me just say one more thing about you, Sayori.  Even as an adult, your hair is a mess!

Whew...  That was a mouthful.  I’m sure you can understand why I had a lot say about this particular drawing, though.  If there’s one thing I hope you’ll take from it, it’s that life is full of surprises -- not all of them good, perhaps, but still worth experiencing.

Oh, and one more thing -- the kitchen in this drawing was based on the kitchen in the house where my family lives.  I should also mention that my mom’s been sticking my most recent DDLC drawings on our fridge!

Aren’t moms the best?

#doki doki literature club #sayori #protagonist #hiroto #reina #nanako #ace attorney #godot #non non biyori #komari koshigaya #renge miyauchi #pencil art #colored pencil art #proverbs 31:28