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heraldofcrow · 7 months

Note

Okay, now it is YOUR turn to talk about what your Laurence's (eventual?) vices/flaws are! There is a general theme of Laurence having good intentions but growing corrupt, but at the same time something's always unique and all. I reckon yours is an impulsive and arrogant asshole of sorts, but what else / how can it be elaborated?

OH INDEED.

Fucking Kotya lmao

Ok, so…I drew this pic literally to answer these asks, because I figured a portrait of young Laurence looking all ✨ambitious✨ would suit the whole thing, so here.

Free art for u

I am now recieving reports that he looks like Light Yagami from Deathnote even though I have only seen a few pictures of Light in my life and I also totally drew inspiration for this design from a totally different character but ANYWAY

Lol. Ok, now for the headcanons!

My Laurence is pretty straightforward. He has rich kid with a chronic illness syndrome. That’s it. Bam. (I’m kdding. Kind of).

In all seriousness, from day one I saw Laurence as someone that was born into wealth and into a different lifestyle from most people. That’s why the “he’s from Cainhurst” thing was perfect for me, because yeah, of course he is. He comes off like that. (I’ll get to the chronic illness thing).

I’m not just going on some “billionaires can be careless individuals that wreck people’s lives because they can’t fathom being poor or desperate or barred from certain privileges” rant…but I am acknowledging what I see as one of Laurence’s biggest issues, and that’s…well…he’s too reckless with human life. I don’t even think it’s entirely sinister or intentional, but he simply doesn’t get it. He thinks he can treat the world like a lab experiment and everything will be just fine.

(This is also why I think Micolash was more deprived as a child, because he’s sacrificial with human life in a more deliberate way. He’s desperate as hell and is willing to brutalize countless people to reach the top. That urge and drive to even reach a higher plane just screams “lack” to me. Micolash wanted to claw his way out of the slums, but I won’t go into that now and if anyone dares suggest I am saying that less privileged people are more cutthroat, I am NOT. This applies to a very specific type of bastard ffs 💀).

Oh and, since we are not just going over flaws in light of me answering both your asks, I will give more detail on my headcanons for Laurie’s background. After all, it also ties into the flaws discussion.

—

Bakckground 🔱

So. For some background context, I headcanon that Laurence’s father was, in fact, That Guy we always point out (Beltran) on the portraits and for the same reasons you do.

Credit to you for the reference obviously, but that pendant…the Cainhurst/Yharnam/Healing Church links…well, yeah. We know.

Anyway, so Beltran was a pretty famous Cainhurst academic professor and research expert on the Pthumerian genetics of the Cains in particular. (When I say I think Cainhurst was full of experimental scholars around the time Byrgenwerth was founded, I am dead serious. I SWEAR IT MAKES SENSE. Byrgenwerth and Cainhurst. Two sides of the same coin, my friend.)

Anyway, Beltran was married to a non-royal but wealthy lady from Hemwick that descended from a Loranite family that happened to be full of priests and seers. Yippeee!

This couple’s only child was Laurence, and he was raised in their oh-so-fancy rich lifestyle where the father was constantly being invited to snobby scholarly events and the mother was holding tea-centered socials in their lavish mansion parlors. Like ya do.

I picture Laurence growing up trying to fit in with his parents’ lifestyle like this:

Lmao, so long story short…it wasn’t his thing. He didn’t quite vibe with the snobby richies he grew up with.

In fact, I like the idea that he absolutely hated his parents’ high class world and felt that they expected too much from him. He was too restricted and stifled. They expected him to be them. His mother was strict, disapproving and nagging; his father was absent-minded and a bit too focused on his life’s work, which, when he wasn’t lost in, was the only thing he tried to connect with Laurence on.

“You should be a great scholar too, Laurence!! Uh hur hur.”

This is where Laurence started to rebel and go his own route, while also developing plenty of complexes along the way (of course). He would be a better academic, better influential figure, better leader, better plutocratic socialite, etc., oh yes. His parents would see.

He had all the makings of these things too, because despite bucking against his childhood influences, he was ,quite frankly, obsessed with enriching study, scientific pursuit, old mythologies and religions, etc.. He loved the world of academia. He was fond of the ancient tales of glorious heroes and scholars that changed the world for the better, and he often fancied himself one of those “types.”

I even like the idea that he discovered the (Bloodborne equivalent) tale of of Saint Laurence the Martyr and saw it as a sign that he was destined for greatness. He tended to reference lofty epics and historical novels in everyday discussion to add a sense of meaning and grandeur to everything. He didn’t want to live a common, mundane life. He wanted to live a glorious one.

And one of the key contributing factors to this mindset Laurence had was his own chronic illness.

Now, this is my favorite thing to headcanon actually because it fits so well??

As a child, Laurence developed early on what I consider to be Cystic Fibrosis, and had horrible lung issues for most of his life. When he was young, the doctors told him and his parents that his life expectancy was likely to be about 30 years. (In the real world, this was actually the life expectancy not too long ago).

Knowing this, and being disappointed in his doctors for not providing any sort of cure, was the catalyst for half of Laurence’s ambitions. He only had so much time to live life, and he was determined to leave his mark on the world…and maybe also find a cure. Yasss bestie!!

—

Byrgenwerth 🍎

Laurence’s parents sent him off to Byrgenwerth at 16 to gain an intense and long-term education from Yharnam’s leading scholars. He went with Ludwig, a childhood friend.

A bit on my Laurence/Ludwig headcanon to add context:

The two had both grown up somewhere near Hemwick, and while Laurence lived in a more isolated, wealthy world, Ludwig was a sturdy farm boy that had helped to keep his family’s ranch afloat after losing their larger fortune. While they had come from Cainhurst in previous generations, family chains of bad habits and broken ties led to a lower class lifestyle for Ludwig’s parents.

Laurence personally knew that Ludwig was a primary caretaker for his parents and many siblings. He was a good, loyal kid, and it was through him that Laurence learned empathy for people with less fortune than himself. I mean, Ludwig would drag Laurence around to visit neighbors and even donate to those that were struggling with money like it was nothing, and I think this is where Laurence started to “feel” for the rest of the world.

Unfortunately, his arrogant streak also tainted it with a sense of, “See! Look how good of a person I am!”

(I think Ludwig did have an impact on him though, so it was always a mix of self-righteousness and a genuine desire to help others. He would have also admired Ludwig and secretly envied his…dead-honest heart for those in need).

Ok. Going back to the storyline, and considering this bond that Laurence and Ludwig shared, here we have them at Byrgenwerth. Laurence was already planning his great ascension into glory and sleepy Ludwig is just happy to be there with his friend and to have been lucky enough to even attend by the graces of a family friend. Yipeee!

My Laurence was at his most fiery and impetuous at Byrgenwerth as a young teen/young adult. He was passionate, talkative, charismatic, fierce, etc., and he made quick work of getting to know everyone in the school right away. They couldn’t escape him. To Laurence, every other student was a potential ally and “part” in the epic tale of his life.

(This was also when Laurence and Ludwig met Gehrman, who was basically Byrgenwerth’s most well-known “security guard” when it came to warding off beasts or general supernatural weirdness. Gehrman was this odd, older kid in his 20s with an insane skillset. He was already an infamous hunter and Laurence greatly admired his bravery. He and Ludwig sought out the antisocial weirdo that was always hiding in the woods and adopted him into their friend group. Aaaand that’s where all the trouble began lol).

Soon, everyone in Byrgenwerth held some kind of connection to Laurence. Rom, Micolash, Maria, Caryll, Damian, Yurie, etc., and they all had their own thoughts and feelings on the brash auburn scholar. He was a handful to be sure. In a way, Ludwig was the only one that could ever “hold Laurence back” a bit, but only in a very brotherly, good-natured manner.

That’s the thing too; people liked Laurence a lot. He was popular, but they could also hate him or grow tired of him. He knew how to be charming and how to talk others up by pointing out their strengths, but then he could turn around and be so arrogant, self-centered, and envious that it would irk his audience.

They wanted to be apart of the grand tale he was telling them that he planned to weave, but they also wanted him to just shut up sometimes; if that makes sense. He was a bit of an endearing, irritating, egoist with a lot of outward appeal and an inward intrigue.

His true friends also knew that he was secretly very insecure around people he didn’t trust or know, and would be vulnerable on occasion with those he did trust. That bit of heart he could show is what proved to his friends that he wasn’t actually a total impulsive snob. He cared. He just also wanted to prove himself to the world and literally everyone in it.

“I swear, you guys don’t realize how important I am to the modern age yet!!”

After years of studying and researching his beloved histories and mythologies, he began to take an interest in medical science, archeology, and the mysterious history Yharnam had with Pthumerians.

His illness also grew worse as his thirties approached. He began to study directly under Provost Willem, and that’s when the board was set with all the right pieces.

—

The Church and Research Hall 💉

Ah, here we go.

I think, for obvious reasons at this point, Laurence’s interest in the ancient records of the Pthumerians and their superhuman traits was to be expected. It was exactly what he was looking for.

Divine blood? A link between gods and men? Ascension? It all seemed like the earth-shattering discoveries he had dreamt of all his life; it seemed like the dream of changing the world for the better, making an impact, and even the subtle hope of finding a cure for chronic illness. Needless to say, Laurence was fixated. Willem was right there with him.

Laurence was an assistant professor to Willem by that point and they began to experiment with all of our lovely blood and eyes in the Research Hall. I love the thought you have expressed before about testing antidotes during that stage as well; something Laurence would have been interested in.

Laurence, with all his bright ideas, was the one to suggest a Church as a way to distribute and test their research. Willem agreed, and that’s where our beta Healing Church began. Laurence wasn’t really a religious person himself, but Yharnam thrived on it and he was smart enough to know that religious authority was absolutely an asset, one that he could peacefully utilize to spread his influence and agendas.

He knew Yharnam had always believed in the Great Ones, and discovering a holy medium to use as proof of their interference was everything they needed.

Now, moving on with the lore implications that we have discovered about Byrgenwerth and the Church having been united at one point, AND the subsequent schism having been more of an internal divergence within that union rather than the precedent to a direct, dramatic academic/religious split…let’s jump ahead a bit…

Post-Fishing Hamlet and Byrgenwerth schism Laurence was someone a little more cold and cutthroat. He was still impulsive, but his spitfire characteristics were tamer, more subdued…he had taken up the authority of the Healing Church, reluctantly separated from Willem, and dealt with the aftermath of the Fishing Hamlet—something he absolutely felt guilt over, but was too afraid to acknowledge. He hid everything. All that mattered was what the blood could give him.

There was also a new burning drive in his heart upon reaching his thirties, which he had never expected to see. The blood had seemingly lessened the effects of his Fibrosis and acted as a temporary cure. It was his salvation and the salvation of Yharnam. Totally. 100%

Nothing will go wrong.

—

Yharnam’s Downfall 🩸

We know how things went down from here, but Laurence by this point was, I guess you could say, at his lowest and worst. The mistakes he had made in his earlier years with the Hamlet, the Schism, and the Research Hall were catching up to him, and as Yharnam began to gradually grow worse under the blood ministration, Laurence grew worse with it.

In the public eye, he was a gracious and holy figure that distributed alms and medicines to those in need, who endlessly made promises he probably wouldn’t keep, but everyone that believed him would be dead before they even understood that. Behind closed doors, things were different.

He was harsher with his colleagues, heavily depressed, and more desperate than ever. His illness was like a reoccurring nightmare; something that reared its ugly head in the worst moments and sent him into darker, more hellish states of mind. He suppressed it every time, taking more and more blood to heal himself, but he wasn’t stupid. (I think?)

He knew that the blood wasn’t working the way he thought it was supposed to. It was temporary, brief, fleeting…and if anything, it affected his pscyhe for the worse. He was becoming more paranoid, more withdrawn and bitter. Like a solitary beast. (Omg foreshadowing!)

Most of his old friends either left him, betrayed him directly, or simply tolerated him from that point on. Gehrman was too miserable in those days to draw close to anyone, and Ludwig himself was sinking deeper into self-loathing and disillusionment. Willem was gone, Rom was doing Rom things, Yurie and Caryll were gone…Micolash had become somewhat of a monster, and Maria was strongly opposed to most of what Laurence stood for.

He had lost most of the old ties that had saturated his Byrgenwerth days, and needless to say, it took its toll. This is when Brador came into the picture, but you remember that whole headcanon I’m sure ;)

This is when all bets were off. Laurence was angry, grieved, condemned, and vengeful. Bro went ballistic.

He ordered the Cainhurst massacre, he allowed more unethical experiments in the Church walls, he tolerated the mistreatment of certain people groups in Yharnam, and eventually he oversaw the burning of Old Yharnam. He hid most of his sins too, hiring assassins and spies to take care of any prying eyes.

This was the ruthless, cruel Laurence that the fandom loves, but I don’t personally see him as having been gloating or laughing through it. I think he was giving himself to hatred and self-hatred, abusing his public image to allow a certain amount of “justified” mercilessness. I also can absolutely see him being paranoid out of his mind.

His former desires to appear as a heroic figure were twisted into these evil decisions as Vicar, but there was also a side to his determination that was fueled by the notion of “If this world is going to be so unfair and unkind, I’ll wrest order from it, I’ll bring us to glory if it kills us.”

This was his true downfall. BAD LAURENCE. BAD.

The End 🔥

Yharnam was ruined.

Broken down, defeated, and heartsick…Laurence had lost everything. Cainhurst was gone, Hemwick lay in ruins, Old Yharnam’s people were given to the plague, and every old friend Laurence had known had fallen into darkness. Ludwig was dead, Maria was dead, Willem was in a vegetative state, Rom had ascended, Caryll was dead, and Micolash had lost his mind in Yahar’gul.

I also have this theory that not long before the time of his transformation, Laurence discovered that his mother had been living in Cainhurst when the massacre had taken place. His father had died years earlier, and he had not exactly been devastated considering he barely knew the man, but Laurence’s mother, for all of her cold-heartedness, had been a relevant presence in his life. Knowing that he had been the cause of her death threw him into despair and even further regret.

His sickness also finally came through despite all the blood consumption. Blood itself was something Laurence began to regularly cough up as his lungs ruptured. He was going to die soon and he knew it. He was also possibly on the verge of something worse. The bestial taints of his flesh were omens he could not ignore.

That’s when Laurence finally shattered and accepted his fate. He had achieved…a lot. None of it good. Brador pitilessly remarked that nobody would consider him a good man even after his death, and Laurence lamented the dream he once had of dying in a sacrificial, heroic death in flames like the ancient Saint Laurence had done.

The greatest sacrifice he could make was to die, and spare the world from any further ruin, Brador said. He would never be a saint, but he could still die a martyr’s death. An ironic, perverse variation of one.

Laurence’s final action was to summon the Moon in a last-ditch effort to gain Flora’s help, to help the heart-broken Gehrman bring Maria back, to plead for mercy and freedom from the curse of beasts. Laurence promised Gehrman that they would fix everything, that it would all be made well if the Hunt continued. Gehrman believed in Laurence and the promise, but the latter did not. He knew it was over.

The Moon descended, Gehrman vanished into the Dream, Old Yharnam burned, and Laurence turned at last, accepting his demise. Brador finished him off with fire and blood, beheading him afterwards and wearing his scalp as a twisted symbol forever after. Laurence was in his fifties and had truly died a grand martyr’s death. He got everything he wanted. Yipeee!

—

THERE I DID IT! Damn, I am glad you made me do this, because even though I always really liked Laurence, I never quite loved him. I hadn’t done the character deep-dive yet, but this?? This did it.

I love the reckless, spitfire teen/young adult Laurence of Byrgenwerth, the kid that wanted so badly to prove himself to the world and change things for the better, who wanted to trump his own lifelong illness, and who wanted to be better than the people that raised him. He was arrogant yes, but he was admirable to others in his sheer force of will to succeed and conquer life. I love the idea that he wanted his life to be like an epic, full of heroism and sacrifice.

I don’t think he ever initially used people, and I don’t think he lacked empathy. He had learned it from his friends and from simply observing the world. Yes, he was insecure and envious of others that seemed better than him, but he also vocally expressed genuine support and encouragement on their behalf. They were characters in the story too! They had valuable parts to play! (Oh the irony).

Yes, he was careless with human life. He was simply ignorant as a youth because of his upbringing wherein the “elite” were the ones that decided the fate of others. That carelessness turned sinister only in his later years when he began to lose sympathy for the world. Yes, he made a grave mistake in that.

But there was always remorse. Laurence’s heart was not buried. He regretted every needless death, every failed experiment. He may not have admitted it until just before his death, but he was never entirely without shame. Guilt wasn’t something the heroes in his favorite tales were supposed to feel.

I love all of the symbolism that can permeate his character as well. Blood in health and illness, the forbidden fruit that is dangled to lure men into beasthood, the antlers he carries as a beast, which are symbolic of a glorious crown in most interpretations, etc..

Just how he burns with hellfire, wearing this ironic crown, a sign of his perfectly orchestrated downfall. It’s beautiful.

I love him. You made me love him by writing about him. Congrats lol. Hope this answered all your questions about his flaws and the headcanons!!

Au revoir!

#I DID IT FINALLYYYYY #WOOHOO!!#this felt great #i love this character now like officially #it took a while to click but i see it now…i get it fandom #i wish things were…a little different in the neighborhood and everyone could share without feeling judged but anyway i won’t go into that #hope you like it Katy and that it was worth the wait!!#:D #laurence the first vicar #bloodborne #bloodborne headcanons #CrowSketch #long post #gif warning #asks

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akai-anna · 3 months

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HEY THERE MY LOVELY MUTUAL <3 <3 (I love when you reblog and queue my posts ur actually amazing ily so much I love reading your tags hugs hugs hugs <3 <3 <3 im in love, giggling kicking my feet everyday)

SAW THE CHARACTERS OPINION BINGO U REBLOGGED 👍 I GOTCHU

TAKAGI. BABY BOI OF DCMK (I remember seeing a poll rolling around somewhere about the most dcmk baby girl and Takagi won)

I will also have to have to ask you about Kaito HAHAH (my fav blorbo i will admit)

ok the thing is im from australia. choose an australian animal of your choice bc i am Intrigued. im not too sure how the bingo would translate though hahahah I don't think it would work very well

(feel free to also ask me anything or talk to me and about this bingo too >v0 b)

wait you know what i forgot LOL WE GOTTA HAVE THE PROTAGONIST DUO SHIN/CONE AS WELL. PLS

*LIGHTS UP LIKE A CHRISTMAS TREE* MY DEAR MUTUAL, HI CYN, HELLO!!!!

Firstly: WE'VE NEVER TALKED BEFORE BUT LET ME TELL YOU, I WAS (still am) SMILING LIKE AN IDIOT WHEN I SAW YOU SEND IN AN ASK! Yes, I keep track and i'm always happy to see you in my activity and my dash! (I'm also really happy to see we mutually share that feeling; I relate to the giggling kicking feet sentiment a lot.) I'm happy to have this chance to interact with you, in a sense, face to face! Bless you, darling, and I'm sending hugs right back at you.

Secondly: YOU HAVE EXCELLENT TASTE AND YOU HAVE MY ETERNAL ADORATION ESPECIALLY FOR ONE TAKAGI WATARU, he always needs more love, I FREAKING ADORE THAT MAN.

Thirdly: warning notes apply, as stated in previous asks:

I tend to interpret things liberally: only my own rules apply, which means ->

I check everything that makes sense to me, even if they might seem contradictory

The Character Opinion Bingo in question

Prepare for endless ranting. And as a certain someone says: さあショーの始まりだわ!

I. Takagi Wataru

The Babygirl and Malewife of My Heart Personal Special Tag: #takagi is a good man

Points that I feel need a little elaboration:

I am so normal about them: I use the word "normal" as a synonym for "utterly obsessed with" and "absolutely love and adore". (I don't like the word in itself, hence, the only context I use it in, is this. But that is another story.)

*puts them in a salad spinner*: as in, the salad spinner is my brain, and he keeps rotating in it at high centrifugal force.

Canon isn't real if I don't look at it and That's a solid design right there: Detco Canon is... As much as I love it, I think we can agree it has its shortcomings/issues, and one of them is coming up. These two points go hand in hand at this moment because LOOK AT HIM!!! LOOK AT HIM!!! THIS MAN IS A BABY!!! LOOK AT HIM, HE'S PERFECT!!! THE SPIKY HAIR!!! THE SHAPES!!! THE COLOUR PALETTE!!! HE'S SO CUTE!!

I resonate with this particular video: his new design in the anime (partly thanks to the general Square-and-Pointy-fication) is just... THEY HAD THE PERFECT MAN. IT'S A CRIME. Bless that he is at least still cute in the manga, even if not the same way as in the early anime. The sharp cheekbones and soft looking hair have their charm.

My point is: THIS!!!! MAN!!! IS!!! A BABY!!!!

Literally I would kiss them and I want to BITE them: he makes me go FERAL with LOVE, and makes me feel like I want to gnaw on something or eat a whole fridge or scream endlessly into a pillow. I wouldn't do it to HIM (I'll leave that to Satou Miwako), but generally, the feeling is there. (Okay, I'll be honest, I would totally give him forehead, cheek, or hair kisses.)

To close his section, have one of my favourite bits about this Baby Of A Man. That poll was absolutely right about him, THE ULTIMATE BABYGIRL (and Malewife TM).

⊱✿⊰

II. Kuroba Kaito/Kaitou KID

The Local Mischief and Chaos Bringer Personal Special Tag: #the magical agent of chaos

LOL I DIDN'T EXPECT TO GET A BINGO, EVEN WITH THE FREE SPACE HAHA

Some points are the same as for Takagi, but here is elaboration on the ones that don't match:

Bastard, A Beast Unleashed and They didn't get bullied enough: let's be real. He's an Absolute Menace. And I sort of love that about him. Highly competent (competency makes me go weak), and if that is not scary (and hot) I don't know what. And sometimes he also goes too far (lifting skirts is not okay at all, Kaito) and needs someone to put a leash on him (or kick a soccer ball at him/chase him in a classroom). I feel that sometimes he needs a bit of bullying a challenge, to think about things. And again, honesty: I love seeing him suffer a bit, I love his Panic Moments LOL. Not in a mean way. But I also love how kind he is; the baseball chapter in the MK manga has my heart, and the Clock Tower Heist, and the Red Tear chapter... Not to mention the Nightmare arc. He cares about people and making others happy. I feel I went on a tangent here. Onto the bastard bit: he CAN BE SUCH A BASTARD AND I LOVE THAT ABOUT HIM TOO. Two of my favourite bits of Bastardry from him include 1) HOW HE DISGUISED AS RAN AND HOW HE BAITED SHINICHI AT THE VERY END OF THAT ENCOUNTER and 2) THE WAY HE SENDS SHINICHI CAREENING IN THE SIDECAR LIKE IT'S NOTHING (but also Shinichi getting right back at him and setting fire to the fckin fuel.) Pure Bastard Energy.

I want their gender: I love the way he is just so free-spirited about how he dresses/disguises. And I love the thought of him and Aoko doing outfit swaps (I blame that competition in MK for these. Also look at these delightful posts on the topic).

Canon isn't real if I don't look at it: I have... issues, with canon, you could say. Like the way he has no support system, especially bothers me. I would like to see his character treated with more care (be it MK or DetCo). I live for good character development, and I crave that for him.

To close this section, have one of my favourite conversations between these two menaces of nature.

⊱✿⊰

III. Australian Animal of Choice: Koala

Fun fact: I've been in love with koalas ever since I got a keyholder plushie from relatives in Australia when I was like... in kindergarten? Or early elementary? Also don't worry, *puts on sunglasses* I wouldn't have mentioned animals, if I thought I couldn't work with them.

Elaboration is needed here I feel.

I am so normal about them: I'm not as obsessed as I used to be but I'm eternally fond of koalas. Did you know their fingerprints are so similar to us they could be mistaken for human fingerprints? Or how they spend most of their time sleeping because the eucalyptus they consume is toxic? Or how they can actually swim well? Or how they are literally surviving by being Dumb As Shit because Being Dumb Saves Energy? Yeah, I'm totally normal about them.

*projects onto them like a mf* and I want their gender: Oh to be a koala, just existing, sleeping, sometimes waking up to eat some eucalyptus, then going right back to sleep. I want that.

That's a solid design right there: HAVE YOU SEEN THEM? SO FLUFFY LOOKING!!! WITH BIG CLAWS!!! THE BIG NOSE!!! SO SHAPED!!! NOT TO MENTION THE EARS!!!

They are so silly and They Sure Do Exist: how did this animal even come into existence? Weird lil creatures. THEY ARE JUST SO SILLY. THE NOISES THE MAKE. Like oh my god.

Literally I would kiss them: THEY JUST LOOK SO SOFT, HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME NOT TO BURY MY FACE IN THE FUR?

⊱✿⊰

IV. Kudou Shinichi/Edogawa Conan

*Prof Agasa voice* He has many nicknames, like Gremlin Child, Absolute Menace, Ultimate Baby, Lil Nerd, Walking Encyclopedia Son, or Disaster Child. I think I call him as many names as I do my dear Rosie, so that is quite telling LMAO Personal Special Tag: #the detective gremlin

HDSBSKDB DOUBLE BINGO (AND ALMOST 4 BC HE'S ALSO DET'S FAV, SO ALMOST CROSSED OUT PROXY TOO KSJNVKSVNJS OK, my love for him is showing, I guess)

EDIT: FCKIN TRIPLE BINGO AS @vampirecatsw POINTED OUT oh my god, I'm blind

Again, some thoughts on relevant bits.

*projects onto them like a mf*: THIS CHILD IS SO FCKIN NEURODIVERGENT, AND I FCKIN RELATE, ALSO HE LOVES AND CARES SO DEEPLY IT HURTS AND I RELATE SO HARD.

A Beast Unleashed: another MENACE OF NATURE. You cannot let him roam free, he finds trouble like it's Breathing. Also love it when he goes ballistic. Or when he shows how competent he is. Like GOD. HE'S AMAZING, and he's a danger to criminals and himself, mostly.

Everyone else if wrong about them: not EVERYONE, just... some people. We agreed with a friend that some of our issues in portrayal lies with the fandom sort assigning him traits that Hakuba has, but not Shinichi (Hakubification). Of course, people can have their fun with it, but it's not for me and have my own opinions on the matter.

Canon isn't real if I don't look at it: again, DetCo has issues. Like the lack of continuity/ erased character development, or not bringing up issues ever again, and the like. Early DetCo was GOOD at these, and I miss those times.

That's a solid design right there and I fuck with this aesthetic so hard: HE IS!!!! SO SHAPED!!!!! SO ROUND!!! (or at least used to be) THE GENTLE CURVES OF HIS FACE!!! THE SILLY HAIR!!!! NOT TO MENTION HIS FCKIN WARDROBE!!!! I'M OBSESSED WITH HIM!!! Also, I have a huge thing for blue eyes and dark hair combination, not to mention the glasses... I'm fckin weak for glasses... god. He just hits all the right spots in my heart and brain. (Not to mention his personality, I WANT TO CRY I LOVE HIM SO MUCH-)

They didn't get bullied enough: I live for others teasing Gremlin Child. It's not quite bullying (never HURT HIM FOR REAL, I'LL CRY), but he needs to be TEASED MORE FOR SURE. I guess Bastardry also fits into this, that's good too.

SQUEAK: sometimes he is just so DUMB I want to SQUISH HIM HARD OR SHAKE HIM. I LOVE HIM, I SO DO, even if he is an idiot at times. God. I love him.

Literally I would kiss them and I want to BITE them: HIS CHEEKS ARE SO PERFECTLY ROUND I WANT TO CHOMP ON THEM. ALSO ALL THE KISSES TO HIM!!!!! BABY BOY!!!! GIVE HIM ALL THE KISSES!!!! AND HUGS TOO!!!

Bastard: the way he FCKS WITH SOME CRIMINALS. OH MY GOD. THE WAY HE IS SOMETIMES A MENACE ON PURPOSE. THE WAY HE SOMETIMES GETS SO ANNOYED HE JUST GOES FOR HIS WATCH. Also the way he is an absolute bastard to KID. His attitude is just so. *chef kiss* Love a menace of a child, HE'S AMAZING. HIS RAZOR SHARP SMIRK, THE MISCHIEVOUS CHILD FACE.

I have way too many favourite bits related to this boi. So. Have these random screencaps from my DCMK folder.

I hope you have fun reading this madness, Cyn! I HAD AN ABSOLUTE BLAST, YOU HAVE MY ETERNAL LOVE, may you have an absolutely blessed day, dear.

#detective conan #magic kaito #la junk talks #detco posting #asks #vampirecatsw #did i make shinichi be the 4th bc of a pun? totally #i've been infected with sillypunnitis #you literally went and asked about my favourites you are the best #(tho. that is not hard to do bc i adore so many characters in detco fkvjnfdvkjfnk i'm obsessed TM)#may you have fun reading this word vomit hahahah #god can you tell i love talking about them? gosh bc i do #also me thinking about what it tells about me that i would not SQUEAK takagi #but i would shinichi ksjfndfjvndfk #takagi wataru: too good to be squeaked

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chococolte · 1 year

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Hey, Sophie!!! Are there any tips you have for writing or starting a new blog? You really inspired me to start a writing blog <33

i'm so happy i inspired you!!!! 💗 below the read more are just what came to mind, but if u have any other questions pls let me know!

blog wise 🧾 —

one: stylization. choose a theme and/or color palette (2-3 colors) and stick to it. stylize your [writing] posts to look nice and pleasing to the eye. aesthetic is important. you want people to want to click on your writing. if your post is just the title, warnings, and then the writing, with no header or divider (esp with no read more), you're likely to get less interaction. if you're the kind to get quickly bored of a theme, then stylize your posts in a way which will look good with any palette.

two: fandom. be aware of what fandom you're writing in. if you're writing for a smaller fandom, then the audience your going to reach is smaller, and vice versa. if you want to get popular/for your writing to reach a bigger audience, i recommend writing for a popular fandom. you can reach out to smaller stuff once you have a sizable amount of people that will read whatever you put out. of course, it's all up to you— write whatever you like, and for whatever you like! don't be disheartened by lack of interaction. what's most important is that you're happy with your work.

three: navigation. making your blog easy to navigate is important. tag the writing with a writing tag, tag your misc text posts, tag readers gender, tag reblogs, tag discourse (though i recommend keeping discourse entirely separate from your writing blog, as fanfic is mostly used as an escape), everything— this is important for your blogs navigability. i only tagged my text posts in the beginning and now i have to go back and add tags to my older posts so people can have an easier time going through my writing. it sucks. so much so that i've been putting it off and only have like, 10 writing posts tagged properly rn. save yourself the trouble and do it from the start!

writing wise ✒️ —

one: readability. you do not want your work to be hard to read or to understand. it's important to be concise, and to simplify sentences when they become too jumbled. note: i am not saying to dumb down your writing, but accessibility is necessary if you want your work to reach a bigger audience. just keep this in mind when rereading your work. i elaborate further on what i mean by 'readability' below.

two: word-usage. it's important to note that there's a fine line between showcasing your vocabulary, and using words you don't fully understand to impress an audience that truly does not care for it. call it black, not stygian. say it was dark out, not "the tenebrous clouds loomed over the crepuscular sky".

i'm not saying to completely remove words that may challenge your readers vocabulary. no, most people actually like learning new words. but it's important to know the distinction between learning a new word, and being overwhelmed by them to the point you can't fully understand what's being described.

there is a time and place. there will be a time where calling the color black stygian or pale green glaucous feels right. that is not going to be when you just learned of the words existence. these moments should feel and be natural, not forced.

three: word-choice. you can tell a lot of things just be using a specific word. if a character is meant to be seen as strong and mighty, you can paint how weak the reader makes them (this is under the assumption u want to write fanfic but this applies everywhere dsbxjdbd) by calling their blushing 'delicate' or 'fragile' in direct juxtaposition to their persona. readers r gonna understand the subtext.

four: familiar phrasing. familiar phrasing are phrases, or certain words strung together, that are familiar to the reader— to a detriment. phrases such as "a shiver ran down his spine", or describing a storm as "raging", are all familiar phrasing. They aren't unique descriptions, and while every sentence doesn't need to be perfect, this is still something you can work on on your own pace.

what's most important is what you're invoking for the reader. you could describe a sun's reflection on the sea as just that, the sun's reflection— or you could describe it as a second sun dipping beneath the horizon, gold and glittery, honey dipped in water... whether those descriptions resonant with the reader is unknown, but at least they evoke something that is unfamiliar. they paint a picture that is distinct from simply a sun's reflection. keep it in mind! ^^ i think that's all i have to say for now... sorry if my wording was a little wonky in places, it's 1 am for me rn... but i still hope this helps nonnie, and feel free to msg me again if u want me to elaborate further on any of these or if u want my advice/tips on something more specific..!!! <3

#[🦇] — sophie's musings #this is a little long #but i hope it helps!!#sorry it took me a moment to write this all up!#once u make ur blog pls tell me it <3

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laplacemail · 2 years

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Hmmm.

I was thinking about remaking, but that won’t lead me anywhere. What I might do is clean up my blog a little bit/check who still wants to do something? I want to write here but I honestly don’t know who wants to continue what/if people want to continue threads or talking altogether.

But one of the big changes that I will make here is that I will make this blog primarily OC focused. As in, I will remove all my canon muses and shove them in my bonus page that you can ask me if we are really good friends. It’s nothing against RPing canon muses, I just spend way more time (and money!) on my OCs and I’d like them to have more of the spotlight. Which means I’ll be revamping my muse page and finally sitting down to write the OCs that I want to bring forward at least a small bio page.

I admire people who do graphics and very elaborate stuff a lot, but I am Very Disabled (tm) and busy (I’m married, ADHD, executive dysfunction, like thirty other things going on, taking care of my husband and our silly apartment, not things u need to know but I feel like sometimes I need to explain why everything about me is so sporadic and activity is so spread out) and I either have energy to make things fancy or to write. Sometimes I don’t even have the energy to write. So I might go back to simple gdocs pages for all of them, to make it easier on myself. I already gave up on smalltext because even that made me agonize about writing.

I know I dropped the ball on a lot of people re: plotting (and I am so so so so sorry for that), but I really prefer plotting + talking about our characters instead of doing 90 small threads like... people usually do. It’s legit easier on my brain when I know what I need to focus on instead of constantly trying new things. Of course this does not apply to memes I send people, it’s easy to do that and I love doing that. Plus I don’t like using icons most of the time and I feel like doing small/impromptu stuff - that is not my forte - without it makes my blog look very clogged/weird. Again, this is mostly me. I prefer doing longterm things that I know I will get a cool story out of + someone to talk about said story. It was my reason to start writing to begin with, I like creating stories with other people.

But yeah tl;dr I’m not going to move blogs, but I might clean my follower list up real bad, throw most of my Canon muses in a locker and slap very simple things on my blog from now on. If we have a thread or you want to continue something please let me know. I’ll also be cleaning my inbox and just considering most of my threads (except for the few people that I already rp with and they know my very on-off-mostly-off schedule or if we have already good established relationships in-character) dropped.

So with that said if you’re not ok with it for whatever reason you can feel free to unfollow me! I’m having way less time to write these days and I kind of want to focus on things that people actually want to write with me <:3c

#it's not negative it's me just talking about this blog #...well maybe it's kinda negative!? who knows #(as i keep writing this) its equally introspective and negative #negative cw

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hibiscuslynx · 11 months

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i (plural they/them pronouns) know literally nothing abt any sport at all, and i’ve been wanting to get into hockey, but we don’t actually know how someone becomes a sport fan?? like, how do you pick who to root for? do you just start watching games until you pick a favourite? /genq

the thing abt hockey is that its very interesting and captivating, to me at least, no matter what team u r watching (unless theyre horrifically bad). it’s easier to be invested ofc when its a team you root for, but hockey is such a fast-paced something’s-always-happening sport that if you even look away for a few seconds something big will have happened. as im typing this im watching a game and trying (but failing) to multitask. (SOMEONE JUST SCORED AAAAA) but ANYWAY …

i only started rooting for the new jersey devils because of , well, wttt new jersey!! assuming yall r into wttt, you can always pick the team(s) of ur fav character(s)!

or if ur from the u.s./canada, you can pick the team thats closest to your hometown (or the one in your state/province)!!

you can also just look around for players that seem interesting and start watching their team. for example, there was this one rookie who i found his story/background really interesting, and his style of play as well, so i started watching his team, and i ended up getting attached to a lot of the other players on the team!

if you’re anything like me, and friendships/duos on a team r the quickest way for a team to get to your heart, you could look around for the fun friendships/duos (or ask me) and just start watching! i will warn you though that at the end of the day hockey is a business and those duos could end up being broken up (i was a witness to this happening for another team and it made me so sad and i dont even go there).

i must also warn you that (men’s) hockey (the pro league is National Hockey League, or NHL) is not always as accepting as you would like it to be and there are so many issues within the NHL (and by extension, other men’s leagues and organizations as well), which i will not elaborate too deeply on here, but given the polarized debate over lgbt+ ppl in the united states (i do not know if its the same in canada), i must warn it has bled over into hockey (and sports in general). there are a good bunch of female and lgbt+ fans, though!! especially here on tumblr, but over on twitter as well. we’ve carved out a space for ourselves and we’re here to stay

women’s hockey (the pro league is the Premier Hockey Federation, or PHF) is very fun and much more accepting as well!!! there’s only seven professional teams, and regretfully i havent picked a team yet (but i did watch some of the playoffs), but i think the same suggestions apply to the PHF too (except for the hometeam/location-based if you dont live in eastern canada/the northeastern U.S.) :3

OH one more suggestion: there’s an international tournament going on right now* (IIHF) and some NHL players are playing in it! you can always pick your home country (if theyre playing) there and see what players play on what teams so you can keep up w them outside of the tournament !

*like. right now. at the time of me posting this, there are two games happening at this very moment

and also, hockey is a very contact-heavy sport (less-so in the PHF? im not sure, though, but i think some of the rules are a little different). just mentioning this because i come from a soccer background and for the first month i kept flinching at the big hits. i was def not used to it !

as a last note: wikipedia and youtube are your best friends and will explain rules/gameplay to you if you need it!!!

oh and fuck the chicago blackhawks ^_^

if that was too much information all at once im sorry but i could talk about this sport for AGES

#lynx hockeyposts

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shanhelingmoving · 3 years

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laundry list of grievances of cdrama and/or danmei fandom

lets start with the obvious. the sheer amount of babying going on with characters, especially male characters. no theyre grown adults they arent your baby or your cinnamon roll or your son or smth. there's literally such a history of infantilizing chinese people to dehumanize them and yet all of you keep feeding into that.

also usually in tandem with that - the excessive horniness/oversexualisation of characters. it's genuinely like some of you haven't found a chinese person attractive before and suddenly need to prove that you're not racist because you're attracted to them, leading to the horniest tags on content. i promise i don't need to see that. doubly worse if its done in the same breath as calling them a baby.

the white lens that's applied to these works. whether its comparing cultivators to nobles/ aristocracy or calling cdrama characters elves because of what? historical clothing choices? long hair? sorry to break it to you tolkien didn't invent that. also the misinterpretation of culture and cultural norms and/or deciding to strip away context for your own (usually very white) interpretation. notable examples: modern aus where they've clearly never spoken to a chinese person in their life or the take where jin guangyao an honourary girlboss or saying huaisang is gnc

the forcing of gender roles onto mlm (calling one of them 'the woman/wife') and by extension forcing them into 'tops' or 'bottoms' based on that...like the more `feminized' one is the `bottom:.. and refusing to criticize the source material when it does that and continuing to feed into it

ive mentioned this before but the way theres literally such awful takes on censorship. yes there's something to say about how cdramas being censored means the most egregious fetishy stuff can't make it in, but saying stuff 'censorship fixed it' just shows you've forgotten Why censorship is there. in addition to that, the amount of jokes on 'can't believe this made it past censorship haha' why are you making light of homophobia.

a point brought up by an anon: "being convinced that criticism towards the heteronormativity/hypersexulisation in danmei is a "western" take, therefore it can't be criticised because its chinese media and somehow it makes the issues okay" I want to further comment on this with like...people saying that you're racist for criticizing authors like mxtx or priest because you're `refusing to engage with an asian author's text' please for the love of god give us more credit give asian people more credit it's so incredibly rude to say that asian people don't criticize awful parts of these works.

in addition to that, whenever the texts are criticized in general the defence of 'people are allowed to write unpleasant things/characters' is constantly brought up. however. when these characters are meant to be the main pairing/love interest that the reader is supposed to root for can it truly be said that they're just 'exploring the dynamic'. like pls this is clearly a genre that fetishizes mlm in particular already

when white people designate me (or my friends) as the Token Person Of Colour and like ask permission to do things. hello i (nor any other person) am not able to tell you if you can call an easian man 'a baby' i cannot decide that for you. furthermore i cannot decide that on behalf of every single chinese person

this post. fuck you.

fine i'll elaborate why is there 1k notes why would u rb a self-flagellating 1.5k word essay comparing white people and racism to bronies lol

in conclusion i hate it here and you all should pay me. thank you.

#mdzs #cql #shan he ling #word of honor #the untamed #cdrama #danmei #mxtx #shl #how do i tag this...........this is all just. stuff ive in places i guess </3 which is why im putting it there #long post

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the-great-lightwood-bane · 2 years

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alec for the ask game!

ahhh thank u for the ask!

This is mostly based on show!Alec as he's got a lot more screen time, but there'll be some book!Alec as well.

Alec is my absolute favourite character, tied with Magnus.

(this is based on aesthetic attraction, not sexual, bc, yk, I'm aroace.)

hogwarts house: gryffindor | slytherin | ravenclaw | hufflepuff

ALEC IS ALL THE HOUSES U CAN'T CHANGE MY MIND— but here's some gratuitous reasoning behind each of them:

gryffindor: Alec's obviously brave, definitely self-sacrificing. Most of the time, he's admittedly less prone to recklessness than most gryffindors, but when around Magnus his recklessness is through the roof (remember the deal with asmodeus??? and edom??? and the whole simon-turn-me-into-a-vampire thing???) so it evens out.

slytherin: He's good at politics. He's willing to do anything to protect those he loves, including not-so-nice things. He's ambitious — he's youngest ever Inquisitor (in the show) and Consul (in the books), after all. I also believe that all the best leaders are slytherins, and Alec's definitely a good leader.

ravenclaw: He's smart, he likes to plan ahead. I think his choice of the bow and arrow is about this, too — mostly it's attributed to wanting to protect his siblings (a hufflepuff trait I'll get to later) but it also puts him above the fray, in a position where he can plan things out, think ahead, etc. My personal headcanon is that he's an absolute nerd, which ties in with this.

hufflepuff: He's loyal (to a fault) — to his family name, his siblings, his ideals. He's fair. He's protective of his siblings (remember the bow & arrows). He's self-sacrificing, which is also kinda a gryffindor trait, but I think it applies here too.

so yeah. Alec is all the Houses.

best quality: his willingness to sacrifice everything for those he loves

Alec will do anything to protect his loved ones. (Deal with Asmodeus, marrying Lydia, etc. Do I really need to list all of the examples of this?)

worst quality: his willingness to sacrifice everything for those he loves

yes, this is also his best quality. It can be both.

Allow me to elaborate: Alec places his own worth far, far below that of anyone he loves — even below that of anyone he doesn't know. (Alec would totally throw himself in front of a demon to protect a random mundane/Downworlder.) This is obviously frustrating, and one could argue that it's unhealthy, too, but it's also admirable — most people have the opposite problem, imo.

ship them with: Magnus

this is pretty obvious skdjfhskjdfhksdhf

side note, though: I very strongly do not ship Alec with anyone but Magnus. Specifically, not Jace — it's too close to incest, and it feels really... off, to me. Alec pined after Jace for years, but he wasn't properly in love with him, and it's really hard for me to see a healthy relationship growing from that? like if you like it, I won't judge, but it's just not my favourite thing.

brotp them with: Clary, Lydia, Lily & Maia.

(shush, I'm definitely allowed to pick more than one)

Clary: the I-hate-you to I-tolerate-you-because-you're-dating-Jace to I-actually-like-you-but-I-will-never-admit-it thing that Clary & Alec have going on is TOP-TIER. Them going out for tacos in the books is my favourite thing skdjfhskdjh

Lydia: we were ROBBED of a proper Lydia & Alec brotp. They could work together so well!!! I love the idea of them running the Institute together — it's normally done by a couple, so it's really a job for two people, and Alec deserves to have somebody who can take over the Institute and let him catch a break. (Also, I NEED Lydia teasing Alec for walking out on her, all the ex-fiancée jokes, Lydia telling Magnus about the "quite magical" scene — the comedic potential is PURE GOLD).

Lily & Maia: Gonna put these two as one brotp (is it a brot3 now?) because tbh it's the three of them together that I really like. It mostly happens in the book (since Lily doesn't exist in the show 🙄), but what we get of them is just... really good. Like, the three of them working together with the Downworlder-Shadowhunter Alliance? or making fun of ppl & bitching about the Clave? or Lily & Maia teaming up to tease Alec about Magnus? SIGN ME UP

needs to stay away from: Camille

There's just... so much bad stuff with Camille. She's incredibly good at making Alec feel insecure — imo, she's the one most capable of hurting Alec, be it book (page 511, anyone? ik Magnus & Alec could both have dealt with it better, but it was mostly HER FAULT) or show ("40 years from male pattern baldness" or w/e she said).

misc. thoughts: I hc him as grey- or demiromantic, which is possibly just projecting but here's my reasoning (combining hc and canon): Alec's crush on Jace was, imo, because he was the only guy Alec really knew — I don't think he was ever really interested in anyone else. He's never hooked up with anyone, although both Jace and Izzy have. He doesn't get why Jace is doing all this insane stuff for Clary, because he just met her — he only starts doing insane stuff for Magnus after they've known each other for a while. I also hc him as asexual, but that's definitely just me projecting 😂😂😂 (also, read Let in the Rain by @cuubism for more about this... and, if you'll excuse the self-promo, learning to love by yours truly.)

anyway thank u again for the ask!!!

#tsc #tmi #magnus bane #alec lightwood #magnus x alec #alec lightwood bane #malec #alec x magnus #magnus lightwood bane #clary fray #clary fairchild #clary & alec #lydia & alec #lily & maia & alec #camille belcourt #ask game

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yukipri · 3 years

Note

Hey! I’m in love with your art style and has been a fan since YOI. When I first your Yuri on ice fanart, I started learning to draw(I’m not anywhere near good) and I want to learn digital art. If you are ok, can you give some tips on how you learn anatomy and how you draw faces? It’s always blows me away on the fact that despite the different kind of art styles, I can always tell what character is that!Also thank you for recommending all types of shows like one piece and Star Wars, I wouldn’t have started watching them until I saw your fanarts❤️ sorry for rambling lol

Hey there! Thanks so much for liking my art, and for sticking around my blog for so long! I'm so glad you checked out One Piece and Star Wars, I kinda feel bad for shoving my fandoms in people's faces, but it makes me so happy to know people are checking out fandoms I love!

Regarding art tips, there's only so much I can say in a single ask response, but first lemme link you some past responses I've typed up on this topic:

Anatomy, gestures, style

Proportions, posing, faces, hair

Beginner tips

More beginner tips

(yeah some are old, and they're repetitive, I don't really have much new to add when someone asks me the same question ^ ^;;)

A few additional things to add/elaborate on:

Anatomy - This is probably terrible advice from an actual art perspective, but since you're asking me--don't worry about it if you struggle with a whole body. Whole bodies are hard, there are a lot of parts, and that much more you have to worry about regarding proportions and individual parts and posing and everything. It takes me 5-10 times longer to draw a full body than it does a bust.

So if you're just starting out and feeling frustrated about that...just focus on busts. That is, head/neck, shoulders if you want, maybe chest, but don't worry about anything else. So many artists just draw this, and for a reason, it's so much easier to manage. Faces and heads are challenging enough by themselves without worrying about shoulder width and arms and clothing and all that. It's totally fine to get comfy baking cookies, before baking a whole wedding cake, if u know what i mean.

Faces - I think some of my other responses above mention trying to see what you like about other people's art styles, but I'll get more in depth here. Say you really like someone's art, and want to draw like them. I personally don't find "copying the entire face" very helpful, because it doesn't let you analyze what it is you like, and doesn't help you develop anything of your own, and can come dangerously close to straight out copying them. So, it helps to be specific.

So say you like how this person draws eyes. What part of the eyes? The shape of the eyelashes? The pupil-to-iris ratio? The details of the irises, how they do light (or lack thereof) reflected in them? Inner corners, outer corners? Are these things they do for all of their characters, or are they ways that they emphasize traits in specific characters?

Another example: noses. How 3D vs 2D are they (many manga-inspired styles have very simplified noses, sometimes just a line or dot). Which angles do you like, how are they different? Do they draw the nostrils, or the line defining the outside of the nostrils? Does the way they draw noses differ between characters, and if so how?

I find that having awareness of these things, and thinking about them, helps you figure out which things you want to try to draw yourself!

Also, I know you said digital art specifically, but these all apply to non-digital as well. Digital is just another medium, but drawing is drawing!

I'm not sure if these answered your questions, but it's what I got at the moment, so I hope they helped! ^ ^;

❀ ❀ Send YukiPri an Ask! ❀ ❀

#YukiPri replies #Anonymous #art #art tips #please note that i have never taken art classes and have no idea what i'm talking about #this is just stuff that works for me personally ^ ^;

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lanshappycorner · 2 years

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I feel like rambling so here is my hot take (tm) abt twst and maybe it's just me griping but feel free to read it or dont

To preface this I wanna say that I love the fact that we are getting a novel and a manga and everything BUT.....I kinda wish they focused more on the game 💔 twst has a lot of mechanics and stuff so it understandably takes a long time to put out content, so I feel like that's understandable, but that's not what im referencing. What I'm referring to is !! The amount of new content regarding chapters we've already played in game!!

Like for example with the manga and the novel AND the game we've already gotten three depictions of chapter 1 and that would've been great and all if all of them were Exactly The Same, but they're not. With each depiction, more lore comes into light and that's cool if not for that for the fact that 2/3 medias above are paid content....like. they're not accessible to everyone.

Of course twst in general is for a jp audience and we as en speakers are lucky to even have translators so I can't be complaining much abt accessibility in language but I think this would apply to jp fans who cannot afford to spend on the novel/manga either. Just in general the fact that its paid and includes new content about a chapter that we Already Read u know?? Like I would understand if it's like the anthology where theres new content in general being put out so it's not free, but it's about a chapter that we already played and to keep adding new content to it is ??? Very Hm

LIKE IDK....I just think that it's a tad bit sad that the game, the original, is only given so much content. Like I know theres only so much u can do in game format but at the same time.....for example, delinquent deuce's appearance was revealed in the manga. The twst fanbase has hyped this up for ages, but when the time came for the reveal, it wasn't even through the game, it was through the manga that not everyone had purchased. There are so many ways they could've gone about this like?? Idk making an event dedicated to NRC students' pasts and giving us a card for that instead of like ??? The 1939594 masterchefs?

Also the fact that in the novel too, theres more elaboration on Trey's relationship with Riddle and LIKE.... I love that for them, but I would've liked to see that in game!! I understand that theres only so much u can put into a game before it becomes Too Much, but also if ur adding Important information regarding a character's major relationships I think it's worth putting in the original source. That's just my opinion as a player, if u dont agree that's fine I'm just rambling 💔

I would like to end this by saying that although I don't like the way twst is including new content abt chapters we already read in paid content, I DO think that the novel and manga should be paid because of the amount of effort and work put into it. Even if I think that some of the newer contents should've already been revealed in game instead of in a media that not everyone may have purchased, at the end of the day it is their game so they have all rights to make whatever they want paid and I in no way think they should make it free lol making manga and writing a novel is hard work, but all of that is just my criticism as a game player. Objectively I think they put a lot of hard work into all the medias they make and I hope they get the recognition for it😔✌

#mayhaps delete later #just in a rambling mood feel free to ignore me

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zenonaa · 3 years

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'The conglomerate taught him a dozen languages and how to play as many instruments. They trained him to operate multiple types of aircrafts, earn billions of dollars and not bat an eyelid as a rival company begged for mercy... However, when it came to developing feelings, that was treated in the same way as stabbing a fork into a plug socket, or offering to wash the dishes instead of letting the servants attend to them. It was common sense not to do those things.'

Fandom: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, Dangan Ronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc, Dangan Ronpa 3: The End of 希望ヶ峰学園 | The End of Kibougamine Gakuen | End of Hope's Peak High School Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Fukawa Touko/Togami Byakuya Characters: Fukawa Touko, Togami Byakuya, Naegi Makoto Additional Tags: Togafuka Week Summary: Togami tries to prepare himself for his reunion with Fukawa.

Comments: Day 3 for TogaFuka Week! Fantasy/Kiss.

💗 Please like, share and comment if you enjoyed it! 💗

***

As the helicopter soars above the city, Byakuya visualises skyscrapers reaching toward the sky as if wanting to claim the blue expanse for itself, like that’s its God-given right. The buildings wouldn’t look out of place in a boss battle in a light gun video game. Makoto once compared them to the final level in an old zombie shooter that he played a few times at his local arcade.

Byakuya imagines the futuristic city, teeming with electricity and life, but the image lingers only for a couple of seconds before rusting, wilting, collapsing. In reality, Towa City is an industrial wasteland. Its railroad halo dips and splinters throughout, as if made from thorns, and the ghost of a bullet train explodes into dust that rains down on the city. Buildings have been amputated, leaving only stumps if nothing at all. Squinting, he discerns a car park that is now a graveyard, with graves instead of cars.

They land the helicopter in the concrete clearing behind a rundown hotel, the loud wailing of the rotorcraft’s blades slowing into pops before falling silent. No red carpet awaits them. A staircase unfolds from the helicopter’s doorway to the scarred ground. The sky is a red lipstick stain that fades into purple like a bruise.

And a short distance away from Byakuya stands Touko Fukawa.

Touko bounds toward him. “Byakuya-sama!”

Yes, he thinks, she would still call him that. Her wild mane of aubergine hair writhes with every step. Meanwhile, he glides over. His feet make no sound.

“I’ve missed you so much,” she says, stopping in front of him. She breathes in, filling her lungs with air. He brings a finger to her lips.

“Let me speak first.” Byakuya can feel her lips vibrate as words bubble in her mouth. After he lifts his finger off, her mouth hangs ajar but she stays quiet. Now it’s his turn to inhale deeply. “We have been on quite a journey. Before we met, I held the weight of the conglomerate and all the pressures involved, while you...”

The light against her lenses flashes warningly as her brow dips into a furrow.

“... had, and still have, your own,” he finishes. His teeth scrape against his lips. “When I entrusted you with Towa City, do you remember what I said?”

“No matter the distance, I will not feel a thing,” she recites.

“That’s right. You must understand that my creation was a business investment.” He swishes a hand through the air, maintaining eye contact. “Romance goes against my existence. At that time, though I had started opening up to the idea of relying on others, and letting others rely on me... I was not interested in... in romance.”

Her silence provides a clear sky that his voice fills with grey clouds. He coughs into his knuckles.

“Part of me rejected the idea of romance... And yet, to my surprise, during our time apart, where we could only speak in video calls, my heart grew fonder for you.”

Touko’s puzzled squint blooms into a wide-eyed stare. Its intensity burns his cheeks. Still, she doesn’t say a word. What if after she had drawn close enough, without the gleam on the computer screen on his face, she realised he is as cold as a monitor? Is that what is happening now? Aoi sometimes remarked that Touko was too good for him, and when Aoi became annoyed enough with something he did or said, she would add that Touko deserved better.

He used to never doubt himself, but for the first time in his life, he wonders if he is good enough.

It feels like he has taken his first step somewhere damp and mouldy, where the floorboards could give way at any moment. Without moving, his stomach drops as if he’s already falling. Byakuya’s tongue squirms in his mouth, as if trying to reverse the words that it already unleashed, but he can’t take them back.

Instead of trying to articulate his feelings, he decides to demonstrate them to her. He grabs her waist. Her head jolts back in surprise and a moment later, their lips bump together. For several long seconds, they stand stiffly, Byakuya’s hands on her body, Touko’s hands cupping air, until he needs to peel himself away to breathe.

She gazes at him, brow wrinkled, not smiling. Then she opens her mouth and asks, “Are you okay, Togami-kun?”

The voice does not belong to her. Byakuya blinks, fracturing the concrete, the sky, her body, revealing his true surroundings. Opposite him sits Makoto, the two of them seated in a helicopter.

“You zoned out there for a good few minutes,” says Makoto.

Byakuya responds with a grimace.

To bat away the encroaching silence, Makoto chirps, “I can’t believe in an hour, we’ll finally be reunited with Komaru and Fukawa-san.”

In response, Byakuya gives a solitary hum. Makoto’s smile wanes.

“Are you motion sick?” he asks Byakuya.

“No,” Byakuya says more harshly than intended, the syllable cracking the still air like a whip and making Makoto tense. He flattens his tone and adds, “I’m in thought. That’s all.”

“About the reunion?”

Byakuya nods.

“It’ll be fine,” Makoto assures him with conviction that puts Byakuya on the defensive.

“What am I supposed to say to her?”

‘Her’ being Touko, of course. The conglomerate taught him a dozen languages and how to play as many instruments. They trained him to operate multiple types of aircrafts, earn billions of dollars and not bat an eyelid as a rival company begged for mercy. With the matter of future heirs, they instructed him on what to look out for on female applicants’ forms while choosing potential mothers. However, when it came to developing feelings, that was treated in the same way as stabbing a fork into a plug socket, or offering to wash the dishes instead of letting the servants attend to them. It was common sense not to do those things.

And yet here Byakuya was, spending the journey to Towa City mentally rehearsing how he was going to confess to a woman who had gained the power to make his heart swell too big for his chest. The conglomerate could not have prepared him for such a woman. Such an intelligent woman. Such an empathetic woman. Such a loyal woman.

Most of all, a woman who drew strength from what the conglomerate called weakness. Love.

“I mean... you can say hello?” suggests Makoto.

Byakuya’s steely gaze clenches Makoto. “Then what?”

“Like... ‘How are you?’”

“I can’t treat this like a regular meeting, as if we had only last seen each other at the end of work the previous day,” says Byakuya.

“Why not?”

“This one is different.”

As Makoto’s eyes flicker, he drinks in the tension in Byakuya’s shoulders, the tightness in his fists, and says, “Ah. I see.”

Though Makoto must have known for some time now. He and the others had started alluding to Byakuya’s feelings for Touko before Byakuya was even in denial about them, back when Byakuya didn’t know what he was experiencing, or what was making his stomach flutter.

Evening has dyed the sky orange, darkness creeping in at the edges. Byakuya stares at it through the window. His unsmiling reflection leaves a faint imprint on the glass. Silence swirls around them, hanging over their heads like the rotating blades of the helicopter.

“Are you going to tell her?” asks Makoto, and he doesn’t need to elaborate.

“I should,” Byakuya replies.

“You can try a pick-up line.” Without having to look at him, Byakuya can hear the grin seeping into Makoto’s tone. “For example... Do you like raisins? How would you feel about a date?”

Byakuya’s reflection glares as Makoto carries on.

“If I could rearrange the alphabet, I’d put ‘U’ and ‘I’ together. Or - ”

“That’s enough,” Byakuya says with a shudder, raising a hand. “I aim for my demeanour to be calm and composed. I do not intend to act like a fool, throwing out hackneyed lines.”

“Sorry, sorry. But if you don’t mind me saying, you’re overthinking it, Togami-kun.”

This earns Makoto a look from Byakuya. The curve of Makoto’s lips is slimmer now, but still holding on.

“In these sorts of situations, it’s best not to use your brain...” Makoto taps himself on the head. “... but to follow your heart.” His hand shifts to his heart and pats there next.

Byakuya tightens his lips and returns his gaze to the window.

“Easy for you to say,” he mutters.

The helicopter lands by the hotel that Touko and Komaru have been living in. If not for the lit windows and neon sign, the dark column would have blended in with the night. Steel bars cage the building, mostly unbent. Byakuya’s attention fixes longest on the sign that flashes ‘TOWA HOTEL’, ‘TOWA HOTEL’, pulsing like his heartbeat, reminding him over and over where he is.

He balls his sweaty hands into fists. He can do this. ‘Follow your heart,’ Makoto had said, and his heart has been caged for so long. It’s time that he freed it.

As in his imagined scenarios, Touko runs over, her arms spread as if about to take. Byakuya tenses, for a moment thinking that he has to catch her before she flies away again.

Fortunately, she stops in front of him, her feet rooted to the ground. “Byakuya-sama!”

Byakuya swears he feels the spray of her spit, but it might just be his sweat. Makoto digs him gently in the ribs, quirks his lips, then walks toward Komaru. At no point does Touko’s eyes stray from Byakuya, who lifts his chin and adjusts his tie. Low laughter simmers in Touko’s mouth.

“I can finally smell you...” She hugs herself. “It has been so long.”

In the past, he would have told her to shut up after saying something like that, but that doesn’t seem appropriate now. Such a comment used to come across as vulgar, and maybe it still does, slightly, but he has grown accustomed to the vines that her existence has curled around him. His tongue feels thick in his mouth as he tries to think of a response.

“Well, I can smell you,” he says.

This prompts Touko to shrink back and worry her lip with her teeth. “D-Do I...? I showered earlier today. Argh, did Komaru swap my shampoo for dog p-?”

Touko cuts herself off with a groan and shakes her head. Byakuya reaches a hand toward her.

“I mean you smell good.” He immediately cringes. Good. He said, ‘good.’ Her brow creases, whether it be from confusion or from hearing such a lame adjective, and he adds quickly, “You smell like...”

Byakuya breathes in but finds himself unable to smell her, so he leans toward her so he can. She gasps. He straightens sharply.

Time ticks as Byakuya mentally flips through the scripts he had rehearsed on the helicopter.

“Romance goes against my existence,” he says.

No, wait. He hadn’t meant to say it like that.

“Went against,” he clarifies. “Remember when I said ‘No matter the distance, I will not feel a thing’?”

Touko nods slowly, frowning. His head fills with steam, rendering it practically useless, which leaves him one other organ to depend on. His heart.

“Do you like raisins?” he says. “I’d put ‘U’ and ‘I’ together.”

Her troubled expression gives way to concern. “Byakuya-sama...?”

Byakuya lets out a frustrated groan and slaps himself on the forehead. “What I want to say is...”

She springs onto tiptoe and pecks his lips.

In that moment of contact, time stops. No more than a second could have passed, but by the time she returns her heels to the ground, he feels like he has been flung up into the sky before crashing back down again, his head spinning.

While he stands frozen, she wraps her arms around him.

“I understand,” she says muffled into his chest.

He hesitates, then hugs her back, and presses his lips against the top of her head. She smells like strawberries.

#togafuka #togafukaweek #touko fukawa #byakuya togami #danganronpa #dr3 #fanfiction #one shot #makoto naegi

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zevzevarainai · 2 years

Note

(AND, just so i'm not copying every question u send to me each time,) do u have any unpopular opinions about a video game (or video games in general) u've wanted to talk about but haven't had the opportunity to yet? i really enjoyed ur explanation of why u dislike yakuza 5 (since it's an argument i personally agree with) so i'm curious to hear more. totally ok if nothing comes to mind tho hghhghg

well lets see the first two that come to mind are why haruka's writing in y6 was not bad and then this one is less unpopular but about how sera in dai is an amazing character that was handled horribly in terms of interacting with her

I'm assuming you wanted me to elaborate so i will briefly touch on Haruka in y6:

The biggest issue that I've seen people having with her in that game is that she is reduced to a teen mom whose character focuses entirely on a baby, which is a valid concern. There are a lot of ways they could have gone with her character and what they did wouldnt necessarily be my first choice, but you gotta consider a lot of other factors (obviously yakuza 5 and 6 spoilers below the cut):

Going into my dislike of yakuza 5, the writers were tasked with having to continue off of the absolute train wreck that was haruka's writing in y5. (this is my post on park and if i did another one i can't find it) Haruka was already traumatized from a very young age and then they were like. Let's make her an idol that will surely aid her mental well being... And now in y6, she has been in the spotlight of the media and she is terrified of it having a negative effect on her family. (which, in my opinion, was why she never should have gone for the idol thing at all since she was hurting kiryu and the orphans, but this is about cleaning up y5's mess)

This poor girl is completely lost and has no idea what to do with her life. The only person she feels she could really talk to is in jail. She thinks it is best to reinvent herself in a new town. Whether this is the right decision or not doesn't matter this girl needs a therapist

She finally finds someone she connects with in Yuta. Yuta doesn't care about her past which is something she needs. She makes a mistake getting pregnant, very likely an accident. This is where people start getting angry.

She doesn't get an abortion like people are telling her to. She's very young to have a child but she still does have a right to the choice. I am unsure whether the anger comes from this, or her getting pregnant in the first place. Either way, it's kind of misogynistic. Accidentally getting pregnant and keeping Haruto does not make her any less tough or brave. I think a lot of people see her character here as being reduced to "women make babies and that's where her worth is," which is a very real problem in media, but i don't think it applies to Haruka.

If you think about it, Haruka had to be tough as hell to carry a baby for 9 months with no support from her family and friends, save her new boss. It's so sad to think about no one going through her pregnancy with her, not even Yuta.

Haruka finds purpose again in being Haruto's mother. She is not dismissed after his birth. I'm not even counting the whole coma deal because it was tragic but it was never a case of "welp, Haruto is more important anyway" when it very well could have been. Kiryu was constantly worried about her even if he did wear a brave face the whole time. The Hirose family cared about her and wanted to help. Akiyama had good intentions and wanted to look out for Haruka. When she woke up, it was a big deal.

The girl literally got hit by a car and went into a coma to protect her son. If you don't think Kiryu wouldn't have done the same thing, I don't know if we played the same game. Then after getting kidnapped, her main priority was still protect her family. She was able to remain calm legit until her father was shot and bleeding out. After that father was proclaimed dead, she still found the strength to go on for the orphanage and for Haruto.

Haruka is an amazing mother and that does not make her any less of an empowered woman!! God dammit!! Would I have liked to see her learn to fight and beat the shit out of people? Yes, but y5 could have done that too when they made her playable. Yakuza needs to include women in the combat, which they made a big step with Yakuza 7 though far from perfect. But that doesn't mean all the women are badly written, necessarily. For example, Makoto is a very deep character that is waved off as weak and fragile when in reality she's extremely strong based on the absolute hell shes been through. (this post goes a little bit into it but it is her and majima focused)

Also Haruto is a blessing have you looked at him? he's so damn cute and we get to see Grandpa Kiryu. why are you complaining

I don't know if any of that made sense but the main take away is Haruka's writing in y6 could have been a lot better but she should not be scrutinized for getting pregnant and keeping the child because it does not make her weak.

thank you for coming to my ted talk.

#i dont feel as strongly about this one as i do my hatred for y5 but ya know.#ask #miss-shydeer #someone take away my internet privileges

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op-sheepy · 3 years

Note

ok so I'm particularly interested in

Bellamy Law

Law and Bible stuff

Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

shichibukai applications

reverse hanahaki disease (?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

if you feel like elaborating on any of these!

This is gonna get long and I actually contemplated posting them separately but would that have been more work? Yeah, that felt like more work so for anyone interested, check under the cut. :D

---------------------------------o

Bellamy Law

Hm… This would be an attempt to explore the parallels and contrasts between Bellamy and Law. I've always found it fascinating that the former was a foil to the latter.

They both come from well-off towns in the North Blue.

Bellamy left because of boredom. Law had no choice because Flevance.

Both ended up seeking Doflamingo because of his notoriety as a pirate. Both admired him initially

Doffy favored one over the other though. Bellamy always sought his approval but was never really part of the inner circle Doflamingo cared about.

Law got the dubious privilege of being part of the family despite being absent for so long. Even offered one of the highest seats by Doffy's side for seemingly nothing.

Law had no trouble turning his back on Doffy once he realized the man's nature. Bellamy tried to stick to his principles until the end despite admitting that he new he was wrong.

Bellamy can (and did) quit piracy after his ordeal with Doflamingo. Having the option to live peacefully, perhaps a return to his previous life (the one he considered boring). Law can't do that quite as easily what with his Devil fruit and his reputation.

I thought it would be interesting trying to explore what Bellamy was thinking. Did he hear the Donquixote Pirates talk about their missing 'family'? Did he get to see Doffy be amused at Law's rise as a Supernova while he kept being reminded of his own status? Did Law save Bellamy partially because he also saw what he could have been had Corazon not saved him?

On principle, Bellamy should have hated Trafalgar Law. Does. Bastard even saved him without him wanting it. But there was something about the shadows haunting those eyes and Bellamy started to wonder.

He had heard the family talk about Law before. The child personally taught by Doflamingo, chosen to be his right hand. Never was he compared to the man because Law was just obviously better. Smarter. Stronger. Bellamy was ever just an uncouth thug.

He was allowed to 'borrow' Doflamingo's symbol while Law had an empty seat waiting for his return–a seat Bellamy had wanted enough to risk everything for.

Maybe he had resented, Trafalgar Law for carelessly rejecting the things he had that Bellamy had always desired. In the end too, Trafalgar Law did prove to be better. He'd done as a child what Bellamy had trouble doing even as he was now.

But having been given the chance to observe the other man as they all recovered, he wondered, perhaps for the first time, whether despite Law being better than Bellamy, Bellamy had had it better–barring the poor life choices.

---------------------------------o

Law and Bible stuff

This is just me wanting to know how many biblical parallels and themes I can draw from Law, the Donquixote brothers, the characters associated with them, and his backstory. Honestly not sure whether this would become a fic and in what style or I'm gonna give up and just make it a post.

Not gonna elaborate on them much but here are the ideas in more bullet points (yay):

Law gets familiar with all four horsemen of the apocalypse: conquest, war, famine, and death. He even survives them.

Law is like the son in the parable of the prodigal son to the Donquixote pirates. Except the themes are inverted.

Doflamingo and Rocinante -> Cain and Abel

Ope Ope no Mi -> Granting eternal life by sacrificing one's own life

Gods descending or living among humans. Also, Homing and his family being prosecuted for other people's sins.

That scene where they were hanged by their arms outstretched looks like a crucifixion. Also, Rocinante was on the right while Doflamingo was on the left. Similar to how the penitent thief was on the right and the unrepentant one to the left.

Flevance being considered a paradise with walls/fences/gates and somewhere Law cannot return to.

In the panel where the Donquixote pirates are seated at the table, there were thirteen of them with Doffy at the center. Same as The Last Supper

There are a lot more of these (David and Goliath, Solomon, Jonah, Job, etc.) but I kinda lost the notes and some are more visual so I can't really explain it too well. This would is a drabble series to emphasize or highlight the parallels so no proper snippet for this one.

---------------------------------o

Law is a substitute kindergarten teacher

Originally an idea to get around most of the Heart Pirates being nameless but evolved to include other characters as kids. Chopper is a kindergarten teacher and he convinces Law to take over his class for a week because somehow Law has the qualifications to and free time. Naturally, he wasn't able to say no.

Unfortunately, despite not being terrible at handling children, Chopper's class is filled with menaces. Also, despite not being terrible, Law can still be awkward so...

"Mr. Trofao–fargar—"

"Trafalgar."

The kid—which one was this one again? Shit, he should really get them name plates or something—scrunched up his face and tried harder, "Tar-pal—"

"Law. Just call me Law."

"Mr. Low"—eh, close enough—"can I go to the bathroom?" Wide imploring eyes stared up at him.

"Sure, go ahead." Law gestured towards the exit of the classroom with his head.

The kid just stared expectantly at him and he tried to suppress the need to narrow his eyes.

"Is there… anything else?"

"Mr. Chopper always comes with me to hold my hand."

Really?

"Mr. Chopper isn't here. You should practice doing it on your own now." He said after a deep inhale.

"But the monsters might get me…"

"No, they won't."

"You don't know that."

"I do." Before the kid could open his mouth again to argue, he added, "Besides, children taste terrible so you're safe."

The kid looked stricken and took a step back from him. Uh oh. Glistening eyes, wobbling lower lip… "Alright! I'll go with you." The kid did not look reassured. In fact he looked like going alone with Law was the last thing he wanted to do. Guess, he kinda implied that he ate children didn't he? Oops.

Well, the kid needs to go and he's not going to be cleaning up after him if he wets himself.

Law glanced at the rest of the children. It was Arts and Craft time and they seemed preoccupied enough. Still, Law doubted Chopper ever left these kids alone–already he could see some of them glancing up at him, waiting for him to leave no doubt to cause trouble. That Monkey kid in particular looked extremely suspicious.

He stood up from his crouch and clapped twice to get everyone's attention.

"Alright. Fall in line. Single file."

There was some grumbling and questioning directed at him. "What's going on?"

Law shrugged. "You're all going to the bathroom."

---------------------------------o

Shichibukai Application Forms

Crackfic where the World Government and relevant parties review various Shichbukai Applications. Most submitted by the pirates applying themselves, some produced by their own staff. They discuss and debate. As well as judge pirate resumes.

She scanned the document. Terrible format, really. If you fail to impress within the first page, you've failed entirely. There just wasn't anyone promising enough in this batch of applications or any of the other ones before. The last one had been that clown. "Apprentice to the Pirate King," was a pretty hefty credential.

"Oh, how about this one? Three years experience pillaging, and they even listed all the towns they looted." One of the newly transferred administrative staff said.

"None of these are worth considering at all. You know, when Mihawk was asked to submit his application, he hadn't bothered with all of this. He just sent us a card with his name on it and the title "World's Strongest Swordsman," underneath."

The staff perked up. "Oh, there was an application like that." There was scramble and some shuffling before a plain white card was produced. "Here."

"'From Trafalgar Law'. What does this even mean?"

"Well, it did come with a big box..."

---------------------------------o

Reverse Hanahaki Disease

(?? do u spit out flowers when your nemesis walks by?)

Haha. At first it was going to be that way (because it is hilarious) but the inflicted would probably choke to death too soon. Or if both enemies had it, they'd end up just coughing flowers at each other until they stopped being enemies.

The version I ended up going with was that this variant of Hanahaki, instead of afflicting those with unrequited love, affected those in denial instead. The reverse part comes from the original idea that this would usually happen if you somehow fell in love with your nemesis (someone you originally hated). So it's not the thought that the other person can't love you, it's that you can't accept that you love that other person. You get cured by confessing to the person sincerely.

This is actually another KidLaw (surprise!). And the flower coughed up directly represents the person they're in love with (I went with Oda's flower representation for them because I found it funny for plot)

So the idea is that, you get sick but you don't automatically know (maybe) who it is because that's part of being in denial. Kid and Law have many enemies after all. In this story they both get it though not exactly at the same time and not known to the other.

He survived Amber Lead Syndrome only to be killed off by a stupid flower disease that apparently knows more about his own feelings than he does.

He glared at the petals. Tulips. Red.

An image of a cocky grin and a shock of red hair flashed through his mind and—nope. That's not right.

He coughed harder, tears stinging his eyes with the effort. More flowers. Now he has enough for a bouquet.

Alright, he was a doctor. He could do this. Differential time.

First, which variant does he have. He doesn't particularly feel unloved or hopeless. There wasn't anyone he wanted in particular to love him. Ok, nothing. It was maybe safe to say he had that other variant.

Which was stupid because Law had many enemies and he hated all of them.

And cue the racking coughs. More red. He was very familiar with that particular shade.

New theory. This was a new variant that somehow makes you sick when you think of the person you hated the most.

Yes, that had to be it. He thought as he all but collapsed on the floor from the sudden paroxysm.

I knew this was gonna get long. :) Oh well...

Thank you for playing. :D

#One Piece #One piece fanfiction #wip game #trafalgar law #donquixote brothers #donquixote doflamingo #donquixote roci #donquixote homing #donquixote pirates #one piece bellamy #bellamy the hyena #eustass kid #kidlaw #trafalgar d water law

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gold-kobold · 4 years

Note

So how come you're so quick to give Angor Rot a pass for his villainy because of his abuse, but you hesitate to do so when it comes to Morgana even though they were both victims of the same thing pretty much? 🤔

(so i just finished typing this all up, and i’m so sorry anon, my answer became really REALLY long and all over the place, i hope what i’m trying to say makes enough sense jghgfgdgfj)

that’s a fair question! i’ll answer as best i can, but first i just wanna say it’s totally fine if you disagree with any of my reasons here, morgana stans are valid af and i don’t want anybody to think i’m trying to say otherwise or anything, these are just my personal views and interpretations on the characters/scenes and why i have a much easier time absolving angor than i do morgana ;u; (i had a lot of thoughts on this, i hope my rambling won’t be too long or boring or confusing ghjfgdgfjhg)

so first off, i just wanna say that i totally agree that they were both victims of awful things, and neither character should’ve been treated as horribly as they both were. however, i wouldn’t say they’re victims of the same thing, exactly? like, they suffered through some similar things, but their overall situations were drastically different. arthur was hella emotionally abusive towards morgana, manipulative at times too, i think. (”kill this innocent troll or else you’re not loyal to me and you hate me and we can’t be family anymore!!! >:U”) he put her in an awful position, and then literally yeeted her off a cliff all from not wanting to hurt some random troll kid. i think we can all agree that was completely horrible. the arcane order screwed her up a lot later on, too. her situation with the arcane order is more similar to what went down with angor, but i’m pretty sure the majority of her trauma stems from arthur? (which the arcane order also used against her)

h o w e v e r

morgana, up until she was revived in the present day, had the ability to choose her own actions. when the arcane order revived her the first time, she chose to support them right away. she chose to side with gunmar, she chose to hurt people, and these choices lasted for literal centuries.

one of her most prominent victims? angor rot.

angor rot was like morgana at first too; he wanted to help people. he acted out of desperation, and he sought out magic power, again, for the sole purpose of helping people. but morgana took advantage of him, and forced him to hurt people. he never consciously chose the path he ended up on. morgana saw someone who was completely innocent, hurting, and vulnerable, and immediately decided to use him for her own sadistic revenge scheme. angor was used for EVERYTHING he stood against for CENTURIES, and it got to him so bad that he eventually gave up on resisting, succumbing to the horrible thing morgana made him become (somebody did a really good post about learned helplessness and how it really strongly applies to angor’s case, so i’d recommend checking that out too for further elaboration on this!)

and angor had WAY more empathy for others than morgana did. morgana obviously had empathy, yes! especially for magical creatures, and she never outright hated humans before the first shitshow with arthur, i don’t think? she liked claire well enough at the start, even if that might only be because of her magic... but her “care” for other people is something she just turns off constantly, even for the magical creatures she claims to want to defend. like, let’s take the gumm-gumm soldiers, for example... let’s see how morgana reacts to them being killed

she gave gunmar a tool that literally could only be used for manipulating and hurting people. and she doesn’t even bat an eye when he cruelly uses another living creature to test it out on, that’s a troll death that she directly caused. and can i just point out, she hasn’t been locked in the heartstone or 'gone mad’ yet. she is doing this just out of her personal anger and betrayal. (which, again, i get her being angry!! she totally should be! but taking out your anger like THIS is NOT the way to go)

she might believe she’s doing the right thing for trollkind, but she is directly hurting trolls, giving a freakin’ warlord that everyone’s TERRIFIED of that much power. most trolls live in total fear of gunmar, and yet she chose this troll to “help the cause”. i can’t see any way in which this could be seen as a beneficial move...? she gave him a tool to strip away people’s free will, for gosh’s sake. she’s directly encouraging and enabling gunmar to hurt EVERYBODY

anyways, about the “killing the soldiers” thing. you could say that the soldiers don’t really “matter”, or count as living beings, since they’re basically just hypnotized soldiers for gunmar, but like... they do have feelings. we’ve seen them cry in sadness after the death of an animal they raised:

we’ve seen them show fear and literally beg for their lives:

like, i get that they’re not saveable, they’ll always be gumm-gumm pawns now, but they’re still living trolls who deserve some sympathy after all the tragedy they’ve been put through, y’know??

now let’s look at angor’s reaction to the soldiers’ deaths when morgana starts shooting them:

you can tell from his face and what he says that he did NOT expect her to do this. like, he legit looks kinda scared on their behalf. (and i mean, yeah, he’s in the range of fire too, but he literally moves forward through all the magic shots to try and plead with her to stop) and he wasn’t a target, morgana wouldn’t have killed him because everyone still needs him at this point. he’s literally just trying to get her to stop killing the soldiers.

and when we see them in the aftermath:

he just stands there, in shock, throughout the rest of the scene, watches her leave without a care, and the way he says “You’ve killed them” is just hhhHHHH LIKE whyyyy must you hurt my heart like this, he sounds so surprised and upset-

me and q have also had conversations discussing that this reaction might have something to do with how he’s helplessly watched his own village get torn up before

angor had empathy for practically-soulless gumm-gumm warriors. heck, in the past, he took a human girl’s body out of the water and even said a prayer for her. with tensions running as high as they were between trolls and humans at the time, that says a LOT about how much he cares (or cared) for other living things

and i’m not saying he was never a dick, absolutely not!! like heck, he went WAY overboard on the revenge spree when he lost his soul, like angor my dude you are choosing to torment literal children now, please calm down-

like, i can see why you might think i’d only see him as this 100% Unproblematic Boi Who Did Nothing Wrong, because i generally only post positive stuff about him, but i promise, i DO recognize that he did bad shit that can’t all be excused away, either

even though he had very little choice, he had no qualms about killing a kid when strickler told him to. he’s literally just like “human kid??? ok i’ll kill him lol but i’ma do it MY way” and that kinda speaks towards how much of his old self was just lost at this point. (i’m not sure if troll customs on kids are different? because blinky never batted an eye at throwing kids on the battlefield or whatever, and angor also refers to them as warriors a few times, so i think maybe the age at which trolls think it’s “acceptable” for kids to be on the battlefield, but idk, that’s neither here nor there. point is, they’re still just kids lmao)

he literally stuck jim in a stasis trap and just taunted him about how he was going to take his time killing him and all that stuff, he did a LOT of unnecessarily cruel things, but strickler was still the main catalyst of that. he was a dick about it, but he still didn’t have much of a choice in attacking the children at that point, because strickler forced him to.

and when the inferna copula breaks, while i can understand he’s coming from a place of massive trauma and, like, literally getting his soul destroyed, i still can’t excuse him for his resulting rampage because he was literally just out to hurt scared people who’d been trying to defend themselves this whole time. he had nothing controlling him at that point, he just flew right off the handle. he seems to be a lot more unhinged when his soul got yeeted, so it really just kinda strikes me as his breaking point? like, he’d lost EVERYTHING then, that was the last scrap of himself left in that world, and it just vanished right in front of him, so it’s really hard to blame him for losing his shit there, imo? but he wrongfully placed all the blame on jim

but then he gets brought back to life a second time. he gets his soul back. all is well.

but morgana threatens him.

she still uses him, views him as a tool, manipulates tf out of him. he has the ability to choose his own path now, yeah, but he’s so emotionally fucked up at this point that he doesn’t even realize he can choose fighting for what’s right until jim spells it out for him. and look at his face when he does realize!!!

he is regretful. he just got hit with the MASSIVE realization that he’s been fighting with the wrong side all this time, and he’s IMMEDIATELY conflicted by it. then, the next time we see him, he saves jim!!!

AND THEN HE LEGIT HOLDS HER IN PLACE AT THE COST OF HIS OWN LIFE SO JIM CAN SHANK HER

it didn’t turn out how they wanted, but still, he went right back to wholeheartedly fighting the good fight the second he realized that he could.

this is NOT something i see anywhere near to the same extent in morgana. she dies fighting on the good guy side too, this is true, and i can appreciate that! they needed her strength, and she delivered, finishing off arthur as she died.

but she constantly flip-flopped throughout “Wizards” between enjoying hurting people to “no, violence is bad :(” and someone who switches their morals that extremely depending on how they’re feeling at the time is NOT the type of person i have an easy time trusting, y’know? it just makes everything they say feel disingenuous after a while. especially considering how extremely hateful she was in “Trollhunters”, it just doesn’t balance out. we don’t see this type of constant flip-flopping from angor. he’s good, then he’s forced to be bad, then he’s ACTUALLY bad, but he eventually makes his way back to good again, through a LOT of emotional struggle

when it comes to what morgana’s done in “Trollhunters”, y’all could say ‘but she went mad because of everything that happened to her! you can’t judge her based on what she did when she wasn’t in her right mind or thinking clearly.” well, to that i’d say, she kinda... was thinking clearly. she was acting out of anger, yes, but her moves were calculated,

but what REALLY solidified that point for me and turned me off from morgana’s redemption arc as a whole was this scene right here:

morgana TRAUMATIZED claire. she took control of her body, hurt her sibling and tried to kill her boyfriend while she could only helplessly watch, barely even able to fight back at first. she caused nightmares and paranoia and sickness in claire that CANNOT be taken back. and what does she say when claire brings this up with her?

“We had fun.”

not even an apology. not even a HINT of regret in her expression as she says it. in fact, she fucking smiles. i know this was probably just meant as a “harmless joke”, but this short interaction only solidified for me that morgana doesn’t treat the horrible things she did to people with the level of seriousness it deserves. she shows very little remorse for how she’s hurt people, and proven by this scene, she’s fully aware of the horrible shit she put the kids through, and claire sounded very obviously upset about it here. claire DID NOT have fun, she was horrified and furious about what was done to her. despite all that, morgana just smiles and acts like it was all no big deal. people who do that after horribly hurting someone make my blood boil tbh.

i get that “Wizards” had a lot of time constraints, and the writers didn’t get to be as in-depth as they probably would’ve liked with everyone’s character arcs, but i just... with everything canon has given us being kept in mind, i just would not be able to forgive morgana’s actions in the same way that i can angor’s.

but again, those are all just my subjective thoughts on it all! if you disagree, that’s totally fine by me! if you like morgana more than angor, then heck, more power to ya, she’s an interesting character! i’m just hoping this didn’t come off as rude or anything, i was trying to be as clear as possible with my answer, but i rambled a LOT and i feel like i might’ve worded things a little harshly at some points, so idk if any of this came off kinda weird or preachy?? ;u;

but anyway, that’s my whole breakdown on the reasons i’m way easier on angor’s faults. i think the main reason for me really boils down to what these characters do with the choices that they CAN make. (i feel like there are other moments i’ve probably missed, so if i think of anything else, i’ll prob just edit this post to add to it?)

#tldr: both characters are complex and valid i just like angor more for a variety of different reasons lol #toawizards #trollhunters #angor rot #morgana #text post #goldie post #Anonymous #long

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charmedseoull · 3 years

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Interview with sugamins about her work House of Cards (Ao3′s second most hit English work and most hit BTS work)

Before You Read the Interview

Archive of Our Own Transcript

Reddit Transcript Part 1 / Part 2

House of Cards is documented within the Top 50 Most Hit BTS Works on Archive of Our Own Project, otherwise known as T50BTS, by Charmedseoul. It is the second most hit English work on the Archive of Our Own platform, most hit BTS work, and 16th most hit work overall. It centers around the internationally popular K-Pop idol group BTS (Bangtan Sonyeondan) with the main characters being Park Jimin, Kim Taehyung, and Jeon Jungkook. This work is being documented for historical purposes for the Fanlore website with its own page. Charmedseoul is a BTS-focused anonymous historian who plans to eventually document each of the top 50 most hit BTS work on Ao3 as in depth as this one. If you are in contact with any of the authors of these works, please contact her on Twitter @charmedseoul or on Tumblr @charmedseoull.

Parts of this interview have been edited with links to Fanlore and Wikipedia pages for understanding. Any information in [brackets] serves for further clarity for readers and elaboration of information.

Disclaimers: This interview contains spoilers for the BTS Archive of Our Own work House of Cards. The story’s Archive of Our Own tags contain violence and gangster activity, along with discussion of prostitution and drug use. The full tag list is:

Alternate Universe - Gangsters

Gang Violence

Violence

Drugs

Drug Use

Explicit Sexual Content

Explicit Language

Blood and Gore

Blood and Torture

Gambling

Gunplay

Undercover

Disturbing Themes

Homophobic Language

Attempted Rape/Non-Con

Xenophobia

Dom/sub

Threesome - M/M/M

Drug Addiction

Dubious Consent

This interview discusses an 18+ mature work and Not Safe for Work topics. Please read this interview at your own discretion. You are responsible for the content you consume.

House of Cards by sugamins is a multi-chapter Archive of Our Own fanfiction that follows police officer Kim Taehyung’s undercover operation into the gangster world of Haedogje Pa. Jeon Jungkook, shrouded in an air of mystery and dubbed “The Boy,” is the heir to this crime empire. Park Jimin lives with him, acting as a lover of sorts in a high, pristine penthouse apartment. The story follows the three and their complicated relationship where sex, violence, and drugs surround them. Kim Taehyung tries to take down the empire as his moral lines of black and white begin blurring into gray. In this crime-ridden alternate reality to Seoul, everything from the structure of the gangster world to the trust between three lovers is as fragile as a house of cards.

Now presenting the interview with sugamins, author of Archive of Our Own’s second most hit English work and most hit BTS work, House of Cards:

How did you start writing?

How did you get into fanfiction?

How much writing experience did you have prior to House of Cards?

Do you have any literary or artistic inspirations? Any other authors or works that have inspired you to create anytime before or after House of Cards?

How did you become an ARMY [ARMY stands for Adorable Representative MC for the Youth. It is the fandom name for fans of BTS, otherwise known as Bangtan Sonyeondan]?

I started writing fanfiction in 2012. But before then, I used to enjoy writing stories as a child and young teenager. I used to write and illustrate my own stories. I even had a sketchbook filled with my own comic book, which was terrible! But I've always been creative. It started with art and then I moved onto writing when I discovered I was able to be much more creative with my words rather than my pencil.

I first got into fanfiction through my years spent on Tumblr. I had always known that it had existed, but I had never really gone looking for it because I hadn't belonged to a fandom at that point in my life. It was back in 2012 when I stumbled upon an EXO fanfic that a lot of people were talking about (Arbitrage, you can find it on Livejournal.) I read it and then thought...wow, so this is fanfiction! From that point, I started reading more and more, mostly Infinite fanfiction. And then I decided to start writing with the encouragement of an old online friend, and here I am!

In terms of writing experience, I have never formally received education. I stopped studying English Language and Literature when I was 16, instead focusing on Art, History, and Religious Education (purely because I wanted to learn about philosophy and quantum mechanics) for my final two years at high-school. The only experience I have is through writing fanfiction. I started back in 2012, and I've developed a lot since then. I started off small, writing horror short stories and little collections. Brotherhood was the first 'long fic' I created. I was shocked that it managed to get so big because I had never created a story of that size before. Writing helped me gain experience and figure out what worked and what didn't work, what I was good at writing, and where I was lacking and needed to learn. I don't think you can really experience an art form until you start doing it. You can learn all about the techniques and the conventions, but until you pick up a pen and start writing or drawing, you won't ever know what it means to create.

My literary inspiration has always been Stephen King. Which is funny, as he has described himself as 'having diarrhea of the typewriter.' I think that applies to me sometimes. I am a bit of a wordy writer, though I've started honing it down for certain stories. Sometimes, a story needs to be floral and descriptive, sometimes, it needs to be punchy and direct. So, King was my major inspiration, especially with horror. I also enjoy the works of Poe and Lovecraft (I acknowledge the problematic themes in the work of Lovercraft and seek not to praise him as a person. He was a terrible person for sure, but sadly, he had a way with cosmic horror that is hard to find.) I also enjoy Chuck Palahniuk and the dark, seedy and overall zany stories that he has created. I like his style a lot!

In terms of inspirations for House of Cards, I was obviously inspired by the films Infernal Affairs/The Departed. American Gangster and Training Day were also major inspirations (and also because I love Denzel Washington's performances in both films. I mean, who doesn't love him?) But I also drew inspiration from other sources that were less focused on gangs, more focused on the dark, nihilistic state of the world around us. I couldn't recommend the TV series True Detective hard enough. It is one of the best series I have ever watched. It handles dark and disturbing content so well, and its fractured, unreliable story-telling and philosophical musing is some of the best I've ever seen on screen. I highly recommend checking it out, but be sure to check the content warning and triggers because it certainly isn't suitable for younger audiences and those with triggers. In terms of real-life content, I think Ross Kemps' docu-series are very good. Particularly Extreme World and On Gangs. His docu-series show the dark and disturbing side of criminal activity, the drug trade and more.

I became a fan of BTS [Bangtan Sonyeondan] back in 2013. I had already been a fan of K-Pop for some time by then, as I had started listening to various K-Pop and K-Rock artists back in 2009. I knew of their debut, but I had seen hundreds of new acts debut by the time that they broke into the scene, and so I didn't pay much heed. Someone I followed on Tumblr at the time kept posting about how much she loved them, especially Taehyung [BTS V/Kim Taehyung]. One day, I stumbled upon a gifset of Yoongi [BTS Suga/Min Yoongi] being sarcastic in one of their first interviews. I thought he was funny, so I decided to check them out. At the time, they had recently released We Are Bulletproof Pt. 2 [BTS’s second music video release with their debut album 2 Kool 4 Skool]. I followed them from that point, and their first comeback [A “comeback” refers to when a K-Pop idol group releases new music, usually done twice a year.] was also my first comeback. I liked their music [BTS released Boy In Luv and Just One Day in 2014, both music videos of songs from their Skool Luv Affair EP.], but I liked them even more as individuals. I loved watching their shows [Here is a link to BTS’s schedule during 2014 when they had their first comeback. You can find the shows and interviews they were on there.], even though they are incredibly embarrassing to look back on now. They just had so much energy and looked to be having so much fun that I was having fun just watching them. I was a fan, I liked a lot of their songs and followed their activities. But it wasn't until they released HYYH Part One [Hwa Yang Yeon Hwa Part 1 (Korean) = The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 1 (This is the title in English), released with the I Need U and Dope music videos.] that I really became a fan of their music. I had already created a couple of small horror stories for the fandom at that point. HYYH Part One [The Most Beautiful Moment in Life Pt. 1] inspired me so much that I created Brotherhood, my first 'long fic.' I joined AO3 [Archive of Our Own] and started posting there. I received so much support from fellow fans that I carried on writing, and the rest is history!

How has your experience being an ARMY [Adorable Representative MCs of the Youth, BTS’s global fan base name.] been? Did you ever leave the fandom then come back? How did you interact with others when you first got into the fandom and as you grew up?

How have you been since you wrote House of Cards? What have you been working on?

Are you okay with talking about how old you are now and how old you were when you wrote House of Cards?

Before you even wrote House of Cards, what inspired it? Any TV shows? Music? Movies? Books? Ideas? It could be anything.

How did you start writing House of Cards? Did you finish the entire story then publish it or did you write it as you went? What was the writing process like?

Did you have any beta readers or editors? If you did, are you still in contact with them now? How did they feel about your work?

My experience being a fan has mostly been positive over the years. In the earlier days, back around when I first started writing for the fandom, it was certainly much more positive. I've received so much support over the years, not only in my writing but in my personal life from readers and fellow fans that being a fan of the boys [The members of BTS] really has changed my life. That's not an exaggeration. I doubt I would even be here now without those years having such a positive effect on my mental health. I've never really been the kind to interact with others and form cliques within the fandom, I just like being in my own space and interacting with everyone that comes my way, I guess?

These days, I'm not as active as a writer or in fandom spaces however. I feel like my time in the fandom has started to come up and I don't know how I feel about it just yet. I feel nostalgic for the time when I was first starting out in the fandom and I didn't really know much, but everything was fun. It doesn't feel so fun now, but I mostly contribute that to the effect that Twitter has had on shaping the fandom's growth. Twitter has never been a good place for creatives within fandoms because of issues with algorithms and such. Tumblr was always the better website for hosting artistic content for a variety of reasons. So, I think the fact that everything is on Twitter now has been partly responsible for my decline in engagement and overall enjoyment. I'm currently taking a break from Twitter. The next couple of months will be what makes me either stay or leave the fandom.

Since writing House of Cards, I've been an active writer in the fandom. Over the years, I've added quite a lot of stories to my AO3 accounts and various pseuds. My largest ongoing story is another gang story, set in the 1980s, called Valentino Summers. I actually started writing and publishing it on Ao3 just four or so months after I finished House of Cards—which is wild to think about. Finally finishing House of Cards seems like such a long time ago in my mind, and yet I'm still working on a story I created that same year! I like contributing horror stories to the fandom, especially in the Halloween period. I like publishing series in the month/upcoming weeks before Halloween—though I won't be doing so this year [2020].

When I started writing House of Cards, I would have just turned 22. It was inspired by the song 'Wires' by The Neighbourhood. I might be mistaken, but I believe that Jungkook [BTS Jungkook/Jeon Jungkook] posted a tweet with the song in it. [Jungkook did tweet about this song. Here is the English translation.] I had never heard of the band before, but my partner was a fan of their music. She sent the song to me and I was very interested in the lyrics, so I started discussing them with her. One thing led to the next, and then we had basically come up with the entire plot of the story. We just needed to create the characters. We spent a little while doing so, and then I started doing some research and started writing the story. There really isn't a grand backstory to House of Cards, it just happened so fast. We often come up with story ideas like that, and my partner is responsible for a huge amount of my stories. She has the creative visions, which I then turn into words. We make quite the team, haha~ The inspirations, I mentioned those in my previous answer regarding films and TV shows.

I published the story as I went, though I staggered the updates because I didn't want to post too frequently. I had the entire story planned out from the start——I didn't change a single aspect of the story no matter what I received in terms of feedback. I think a lot of readers assume that writers might tweak things if they sense the audience wants something to happen in terms of plot or relationships. Personally, I don't like doing that. I like sticking to my plans even if I know my vision might not be what the readers want. I think it's important for the story to be created the way I see it because my vision is what made me create it, if that makes sense.

The writing process was surprisingly smooth! You might not think it because the story is big and there are a lot of characters and plot threads to keep on top of, but it went smoothly for me. It flowed just as smoothly from start to finish as Brotherhood did. I never struggled once with writing the chapters, nor did I ever get stuck and wonder if I should change the content in order to make it easier to write. I'm surprised that I managed to complete it so easily because that's not the case with writing now! I tend to be a lot slower now, more deliberate and more open to changes in order to ease the process and the overall flow of the story. In a way, this change has been for the best. I do wonder what House of Cards would be like if I were to write it now, with my different approach to planning and writing. It would probably have a quicker flow, and the word count would either go down as a result of cuts, or go up because of additional scenes I would have likely included.

I didn't have any betas, which you can probably tell from the work. My stories are so big that I never wanted to put the burden of fixing them onto someone else. I know they are imperfect, oftentimes bloated things, but that's just what they are. I did try creating a story with another writer in the past, but it didn't go very well. She would often have conflicting opinions on things and would not have any leeway for anything I suggested, whereas I always had leeway to allow her to change things. Even to the point of completely changing the plot of the story that I had already started writing, and then allowing her to add graphic sexual content she didn't even want to be in the story. She actually stopped writing fanfiction randomly in the middle of us creating the story! She made a post about it being disgusting and nasty and then bowed out. I have no clue if she ever came back! So, my negative experience with attempting to work with someone else when creating a story kind of made me not want to have a beta. It's a wild story, I know!

House of Cards is praised for its realism and accuracy with weaponry, torture, sex, and violence. How did you research these things?

How did you come up with the gangster universe in House of Cards? How did you develop Haedogje Pa?

How did you name the original characters in House of Cards? Did any characters in particular take inspiration from existing characters in TV shows, anime, books, any type of media?

How did you decide on Vminkook as your main characters for the story? What do you see in their dynamic and them as characters?

Jimin is claimed to be one of the best written characters in the entire story. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?

Taehyung is an especially dynamic character whose morals get tested time and time again in House of Cards. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?

Jungkook is one of the characters that the readers spend the least amount of time getting a perspective from, but is incredibly well written in his character progression. What was your thought process when characterizing him and developing him?

When it came to various aspects in the story, I did do research. Most of it never really had an impact on the story itself. For example, I would be looking up gun models that are used by law enforcement agencies around the world and trying to find specs of them so I could learn how many bullets each gun held, or how much a magazine could hold. In action scenes, I didn't want my characters firing off 20+ bullets for a gun that—in reality—holds far less. That's a fact that doesn't really mean much to the average reader, but it meant something to me! I've always hated how many bullets fly through the air in action scenes in films and TV shows because I'm always wondering if it's possible with the firearms featured in the scene haha~ In terms of torture, I've come across the subject through various documentaries and TV shows about gangs, crime and serial killers. I didn't really do much additional research into the topic, beyond reading up on what I had come across to make sure it wasn't fictionalised for drama purposes. Obviously, there will be some lack of realism in my story because I couldn't possibly write a realistic portrayal of gang violence and torture when I have zero personal experience with it. My aim wasn't to give the story 'full' realism (I'll explain more about that in the next question) but to simply create a world that felt real, even if there were little aspects that had to be exaggerated for the sake of the story. Taehyung's behaviour when undercover certainly broke many procedures. The only thing working in his favour that allowed him to get away with it is that the crimes he committed couldn't be directly traced to him. But a real undercover agent would never do the things that he did on behalf of the gang. Basically, this means that the entire story is unrealistic! But of course, it wouldn't be very entertaining if Taehyung simply observed from the background and didn't dirty his hands. So, I had to bend and break the rules a little!

For the universe, I knew that I couldn't base it too much in reality. Because of basic Korean law, it would have been impossible for me to write the gang operating in the way they did in the story—especially with guns. Most Korean gangs tend to use other forms of violence and weapons in order to control their respective areas, rather than guns. My other story, Taste of Ink, has what I would consider a more realistic approach to gang activity—with the main weapons being knives, baseball bats, etc. and the main forms of violence being assault instead of flat-out murder. So, for the sake of allowing guns to appear in the story, I had to create a Neo-Seoul, so to speak. I took inspiration from Korean gangs, and mixed it with influences from other gang cultures in order to create 'Haedogje Pa.'

When it comes to naming original characters, I honestly don't put much thought into it. I like to use real names for inspiration. I often Google various Korean films I've watched and read the cast list in order to find interesting character and actor names. This is because I have a habit of reusing names sometimes. For example, readers of my stories might have come across a couple of Daesu and Goohee characters. Do you know where I got these names from? I picked Daesu from Oh Daesu - Choi Minsik's character in Oldboy. Goohee comes from the manhwa 'Let Dai' - he is the stubborn gang leader that actually has a good heart beneath his rough exterior. I ended up liking him the most by the end of the story, so his name is one that often comes to mind when I need to pick an original character name.

I never really consider real life dynamics when I'm writing because my stories are so detached from reality that it seems pointless including any inspiration from reality. I chose the three main characters simply because, at the time, they seemed to fit the character moulds the best. The other characters fit their respective characters so well (especially Namjoon [BTS RM/Kim Namjoon] and Yoongi) that I simply thought it was best to have Taehyung, Jimin [BTS Jimin/Park Jimin] and Jungkook as the three lead roles. I chose them more based on how I thought they could personally fit the characters, rather than focus on the dynamic. To use Taehyung as an example, I thought that he would fit the character of the informant in my story because in reality, he is intelligent and seemed like he would suit the role. For Jimin, I thought he would be a good choice for a character that some might think is vulnerable or even weak. He is actually very strong and the most important character for the plot progression. For Jungkook, I liked the thought of someone with such an innocent outer appearance hiding a dark secret.

I'm so glad that readers took to Jimin so positively on a whole. I know there are some that hated him, or that hated the fact I chose him for such a role (a 'negative' sex worker role). But Jimin is the most important character for the plot progression. It is through him that the entire plan finally culminates in the explosive finish. I wanted to treat him with care because I understood that his character could go very wrong if not handled correctly. It would have been easy for him to simply become nothing more than a sexual prop, should the story have focused too much on Taehyung and Jungkook as the key players. So, I decided to subvert it by giving Jimin the ultimate hand in the story and allowing him to have more control than Jungkook in the end. If Jimin had not decided to follow through with the plan, if he had decided to snitch or had simply refused to do his part in exposing the gang, the story would've ended drastically differently. But I also didn't want to write Jimin taking control of the entire situation at the end because it would've felt ingenuine. He is a character that has been deeply affected by a lifetime of trauma. I was worried that some might take my portrayal of his trauma the wrong way, and see him not as a character that has suffered immense mental damage but rather as an annoying, weak character that gets in the way of more 'interesting' dynamics. I'm sure there will be readers that think that. Mentally traumatized individuals are often seen in such negative light, be they fictional characters or real people. When writing his character, especially in the later scenes, I wanted to make sure the trauma he experienced would shape his behaviour. Writing the scene of him getting ready to leave, when he is taking his pills and he doesn't think he can do it, it was hard. It was hard getting into that headspace of feeling so powerless in the moment and knowing that freedom is in reach, but not knowing how to achieve it. He was a difficult character to write, but I think he turned out just right in the end.

Taehyung was probably the best character to write. I love characters that start off so morally upright and pristine, and by the end of the story, their backs are bending and close to breaking from the weight of their conscience and misdeeds. His character has many facets to him that made his perspectives so interesting to tackle. From his green days in the gang, where he is horrified by the violence he sees, to the changes in his psyche as he starts to become desensitized to it all. Fundamentally, Taehyung begins the story as a good man, a hero, but by the end, there is no black and white thinking. He has become grey, muddied from his time spent in the gang. Is he a hero for bringing them down? Would a hero do the things that he did in order to bring down the gang? He killed people. He tortured people. He threatened a man with a gun, a man he knew had a deepset fear of guns that would severely trigger him. I think it all depends on how the reader sees it. The hardest thing to write for his character was his troubled descent into the relationship between him, Jungkook and Jimin, and how it affects his thought processes and emotions. I didn't want House of Cards to be seen as a romantic story when I created it. If readers see it that way, they are more than entitled to their own interpretations. I cannot tell them how they can interpret my art, that is not my role as the creator. I don't know if I effectively portrayed the co-dependency between the three main characters as well as I would've liked. But I had never tackled such a story and themes before, and so it was all new to me.

I didn't know that Jungkook had the least perspective from the three main characters. Similarly, I never really put that much effort into creating and developing his character! Jungkook simply 'happened' in the moment. He would appear in the chapter, and then his character would basically take control of the scene. I never really knew what he was going to say or do beyond my rough plans for each scene. I just waited until he appeared and let the creative spirit flow through me. That's how he came to be! I've had that happen many times in the past with characters—they have a life of their own and I've no control over them. In my story, Brotherhood, Taehyung happened the same way. It was impossible to write his character in that story because he was so wild and free-spirited that it didn't feel right unless his behaviour was a total spur-of-the-moment reaction to the other characters and new plot points. But with Jungkook in House of Cards, I don't know why I didn't have him planned out like the others. It's interesting to think that he might've had a good progression when I never planned any of it in detail!

Were there any original characters you particularly liked writing or enjoyed?

When you wrote for the BTS hyung line, how did you determine their roles in the story and characterize each of them?

Is there a reason behind Namjoon saying “brother” or was it a consciously written character quirk?

When you handled more serious subject matter in House of Cards, how did you feel when writing it? Were you ever startled by your own work?

Was there any type of purposeful titling for the fanfiction chapters?

What was your reason for House of Cards’ open ending?

I liked writing Lim, the original informant that helped Taehyung join the gang. I like writing characters that come across as sleazy. In his case, the sleaze was all an act and wasn't true to his character; he was affecting it for the sake of creating a persona. But I enjoy writing absolute sleaze balls too—the kind of guys that have chest hair and wear gold chains and thick watches, who practically ooze oil. I just find them fun! Lim was a good teacher, even when he was rough around the edges. It was sad doing what I had to do to him for the sake of the plot. But I feel like Lim understood the game as well as everyone else, and so he knew he was running on borrowed time.

Of course, I loved writing Bae Goohee too! He was an absolute bastard! I loved writing this figure that is spoken about throughout the story as a frightening man, one so brutal that the readers are already wary of him before he even appears in the story. I believe that Taehyung refers to him as a 'guard dog' at some point. I think Bae is the scariest character in the story for me because he is so ruthless and willing to do any order that the Jeon clan give to him. That kind of blind and unwavering devotion is frightening!

I also enjoyed writing Sungah and Jangmi. I think they're the only female characters in the story that have dialogue? Sungah has a great backstory that I unfortunately couldn't go into too much in the story, but it shaped her character a lot. I like how frank and intelligent she is—she holds her own even in a department filled with men that receive far more praise than she does simply because she is a woman. She also allowed me to add an angle about the unfair treatment of women in jobs that have power, drawing parallels with how Taehyung faces discrimination from his fellow officers when his sexuality is abruptly revealed during the investigation. As for Jangmi, I just liked writing about the wife of a mob boss! And not one that is simply a trophy wife, but actually has a lot of power and influence across the city. I wish I had been able to feature her more, alongside her husband, Jeon himself. But I like the scenes they appear in and I enjoyed writing them.

For the rest of the members, I had Namjoon and Hoseok [BTS J-Hope/Jung Hoseok]'s characters planned right from the start. I had also created plans for Yoongi and Seokjin [BTS Jin/Kim Seokjin], but I wasn't sure how much of a role they would play in the overall story. As I started writing them, I realised that Yoongi would play an important role in both Taehyung and Jimin's character development, and so he ended up featuring a lot more than I had expected. I planned their jobs and then let them influence how I would write them. Namjoon and Hoseok's characters came naturally. Yoongi's character completely took over his job role and basic description and became a really strong character that I'm proud of. Seokjin was a little trickier because he doesn't appear in too many scenes—but the scenes he does are integral to the plot. I needed to make sure that his character said everything he needed to in his limited scenes. He has quite the bombshell to drop after all! Seokjin was also tricky because I wanted him to have an air of mystery around him. I wanted him to be the kind of guy that not even Taehyung and his police connections would be able to unearth much about; a ghost in the system. I would've also liked for him to feature more in the story, but I feel like his character appeared in the essential scenes that the story needed. He was going to feature more in the planned sequel, being one of the first characters to appear alongside Yoongi. He was going to serve an important role, so I'm disappointed that I didn't get to show those scenes to readers.

With Namjoon, I wanted to portray him as a mature character, but not one that was conservative and stiff. I thought about having him say things like 'man' but that seemed too casual and didn't suit his character. 'Man' made him seem more like a surfer than a police officer. But when he said 'brother' in one of the scenes, I realised the word suited him better. It was fraternal, and it allowed him to show some affection towards the other characters without having to have physical contact with them. It's not the only Namjoon I've written that says 'brother' a lot. In Valentino Summers, Namjoon has experience with hippies in the neighbourhood that he lives in, so he also refers to other characters like Jimin as 'brother.' It just seems to suit him! I guess it's because I like creating Namjoon characters that are intelligent and mature, but still have a gentle and warm presence. I could picture him saying it in real life (I'm certain he already has!)

When writing serious subject matter, I'm surprised to admit that I was never shocked by what I was writing! I guess it's because I already knew that I was going to be handling dark themes. I wouldn't have tackled such subjects had I not felt comfortable doing so. Dark content isn't for everyone, and by that I don't simply mean consuming it. Creating it can be very difficult for some writers, and can even cause distress. It's not easy diving into a world that is filled with crime, pain and fear. It's even harder putting yourself into the shoes of a character that is suffering/has suffered. I was never writing in a desensitised state though. Far from it. I'm actually very sensitive to violence in reality. In fiction, it depends on the violence—but I'm usually not too affected by it. I've been a fan of horror since I was a child, and so I've seen a lot of nasty films filled with gore and 'shocking' deaths that never really had much of an effect on me. Unrealistic violence doesn't scare me. But when it comes to personal violence, that is always frightening to me. It's far scarier writing a scene where a character feels threatened by another character and doesn't know what is going to happen to them then, say, writing a scene of a character dying a bloody, ridiculous death in a horror story. Personal violence is much more realistic, therefore it is more unsettling to write. In House of Cards, the violence is very personal. It's in your face, it's inescapable for the characters that are involved in it. But at no point did I ever feel like I needed to stop writing because I was uncomfortable or scared by the content. If I had been uncomfortable, it would have been very reckless of me to continue writing the story.

My word of advice to fellow dark content writers: it's always important to recognise your own boundaries. There's nothing wrong with removing dark content from a story if you get a bad vibe or feel strange when writing/reviewing it. Always follow your gut instincts and never put out work that you don't like.

When writing stories, I vary between titling the chapters and leaving them blank. For House of Cards, I cannot remember the exact method for naming the chapters. Sometimes, the title comes to me when I am writing the plans and I have an idea that just suits the mood of the chapter. Other times, I have finished the entire chapter and I have to spend some time reviewing the content to decide that the title will be. In some cases, I have finished most of a whole story and I'm still not certain what to title it! I feel like with House of Cards, the titles came after the chapters were finished, or at least when they were works-in-progress.

There are some titles that really stand out to me. 'Nice Teeth' for example, is a really ridiculous title. Going into the chapter, I don't think many readers would've imagined what it could mean. 'Submachine Sodomy' is even funnier. I really can't believe I chose that as a title! I'll bet a lot of readers saw it and thought, "Oh no! Not another gunplay scene!" Luckily for them, it wasn't a reference to Jungkook's predilection for firearms in bed.

In terms of chapter titles that I really like: 'Delusions of Grandeur,' 'I Own This Fucking City,' 'Sleeping Dogs Bite' and 'Carpe-fucking-Diem.' I just feel like these titles are very well suited to the contents of the chapters. They are the kind of titles that have bite to them, that hint at action or an important plot point.

As for the open ending, there are a couple of reasons. First of all, I had planned to continue the story in a sequel that would pick up after the events of House of Cards, roughly a year on after the investigation. However, I did not pursue this sequel. I wanted House of Cards to end on an open note for the sequel to continue the story. When it comes to certain stories, I just feel that closed endings aren't always necessary. I often enjoy stories with open endings. With House of Cards, it didn't seem right just closing the book and saying it was over. There was still so much that needed to be explored. Unfortunately, I decided to not continue it. But I still think that House of Cards' ending fits the story.

Were there any scenes or moments or lines in House of Cards that you were particularly proud of or want to highlight?

If you were to write the Yoomin sequel to House of Cards, how would’ve that looked like?

How were readers’ reactions to your work in the beginning?

Did any reader comments stick with you in particular?

How did you take the criticisms and hatred towards House of Cards for its serious subject matter? When did those types of comments start appearing? Also, where did the hatred come from? Twitter? Tumblr? Ao3 comments? Did people harass you at all or hurt you? How did you heal from that?

House of Cards has a lot of scenes. I'm proud of most of them and I think I did the best I could when writing them. I do not really like the sex scenes, but that is because I wanted to write them in a dirty, sleazy way. If I could, I would change them. I like the action scenes, especially the Gold Monkey Casino and police raid scenes. Action scenes are hard to write! Fight scenes in particular are so tricky. I often sit there, choreographing the fights so I can describe them! I loved writing Yoongi's introduction to the story, when he walks into the scene wearing nothing but his underpants.

One scene that I really liked writing is the scene where Namjoon and Hoseok investigate the USB stick that Taehyung sends to them. I personally love Namjoon and Hoseok's characters. I always enjoyed writing them. In this scene, I liked getting to write them in a setting that was not the police department office. A scene where they got to relax and banter with each other, even though they were still working. They discover a horrifying crime ring in the city, but they are left with no choice but to keep it secret because they do not want to risk blowing Taehyung's cover. I do not know why I really like this scene, I just do.

In the sequel, which focused primarily on Jimin and Yoongi, the plans were to have them reunite through Seokjin—who has avoided jail time through a plea deal with the SMPA. They undergo a healing process together as they try to come to terms with what happened to them. Yoongi has a lot of unhealed trauma from his childhood, much like Jimin, which I only got to briefly touch upon in House of Cards. They grow closer from bonding over their traumatic experiences, and they become happier and healthier as a result. Taehyung and Seokjin were also going to be main characters, with Jungkook, Namjoon and Hoseok making supporting appearances over the duration of the story. It was going to be drastically different from House of Cards because it would be lacking in action and violence. It would have been much more intimate, with much more scenes of characters talking and discovering things about one another.

I cannot remember early reactions to the story, I just know they were positive. There was a lot of positive support from the start. As I updated and started to get more and more into the story, I received a lot of support on tumblr too. I started posting chapter previews there, as I used to get asks [On Tumblr, users are able to ask bloggers questions through an “Ask” function. This can be done anonymously or with their own blog username associated with the question.] requesting them. I got A LOT of asks on my original Tumblr from readers that wanted to discuss the characters and certain scenes. It was really interesting seeing just how much the readers were interested in the story, so much so that they wanted to learn even more about the characters and the universe I had created.

Through House of Cards, I have received comments and messages from readers that had addictions. They told me about how they recognised their own behaviors through Taehyung, and this helped them realise what was happening to them. Those comments stuck with me for obvious reasons. I have family members with addiction issues, and knowing that I could help some stranger I have never met before come to terms with their own addictive behaviours had a massive impact on me. Funnily enough, a negative comment stuck with me. It was not a bad comment, by no means meant to cause offence. It was a comment that was left on the story when I was posting the early chapters. I recall the reader asking when the story was going to pick up the pace because it was too slow. It stuck with me because, at this point in the story, Taehyung had already trained to become an undercover agent, had enrolled in the gang, had met and interacted with Jungkook, and had murdered a man. I was surprised that this amount of development had been seen as 'slow' by a reader, as I had thought the plot had been moving very fast.

I never really had any hate posted on the story when I was updating it. I got angry reactions when I had finished it. Because the story had not ended the way some readers had wanted, I think that was what caused the negative reactions. On my original Tumblr, I even got an ask about how an anon reader was going to write their own ending because my one was bad. I told them that I did not want them to take my story and change it like that. I have no idea if they ever posted the ending anywhere. The angry reactions were mostly from shippers, who were upset with the story not ending the way they had wanted. To them, I ask: what were you expecting from the story? I thought it was always obvious that Taehyung was going to do what he had set out to do from the start, so I do not think I misled readers at all. It was a story about an undercover agent taking down a gang—and that is what I wrote.

I know there was some animosity towards me on Twitter too. Twitter is a whirlpool of negativity, I am not surprised. Writing House of Cards made me appear problematic. My partner used to follow an author a long time back, who tweeted about me being problematic—despite having never interacted with me or admittedly read my stories. It was shocking to me that people were making assumptions of who I was as a person based on a story I created. I have never created stories with the aims of hurting or upsetting others. I am a very quiet and private person, and I hate the idea of hurting others. It was strange to me that people could assume me to be this cruel or even dangerous individual, intent on hurting others, because I created a fictional story. Do they think the same of script writers for television shows? Or film directors, who create films with dark subject matter? Do they think published authors are problematic people for writing dark and disturbing content? Do they think certain genres should not exist because they do not personally like them?

I do think it is strange that fan fiction writers are placed on these ridiculously high pedestals of moral absolutism. Fan fiction was created to be a space for creative outlet for marginalised individuals, particularly queer individuals. The heavy censorship of dark and unusual content is putting this entire ethos at danger. I understand not wanting to have certain topics included in stories because there is a risk that the content can be used for grooming or can be presented in a way that can negatively affect young consumers' perceptions (like pedophilia for example.) I certainly agree that there needs to be boundaries in place to stop the community from being flooded with such illegal content. But I think there is a difference between wanting to remove dangerous content, and wanting to get rid of content you do not like. Content can be problematic to you, but that does not make it dangerous, illegal, or bad. For some readers, the content they create is their way of dealing with trauma. Maybe this is not healthy for them. But that is their decision to make, not yours.

I orphaned the story because I did not want to handle the potential backlash. To put it simply, I do not handle negative criticism well. Not because I am stuck-up and think I am perfect, but because I am a very anxious person. Just reading angry comments makes me feel very uncomfortable, often nauseous. I know that House of Cards has received overwhelmingly positive feedback from readers, and for that I am thankful. But I had to distance myself for the sake of my own mental health. Since orphaning it, it exploded in popularity. I am thankful that I orphaned it because that amount of attention would frighten me a lot, haha~

What was your reaction to the fanfiction trailer by Sappiamur?

How did you come to the decision to reveal your real name in the end note of House of Cards?

How did you feel when you finished House of Cards?

How did you come to the decision to orphan House of Cards?

Did you ever anticipate the overwhelming fan reaction to House of Cards?

How do you feel knowing that House of Cards is one of the most read fanfictions on Ao3?

What do you want House of Cards to be remembered for?

What do you hope people take away from House of Cards?

Why do you think House of Cards became so popular?

I had to go back and watch it. It's been some time since I last have, and I'm still as amazed by it now as I was back then. The trailer is insane. I cannot imagine how much work went into making it. It's so good and it fits the vibes of the story to perfection. I think the first time I watched it, I was in shock. I must have repeated it at least 10 times in a row, just to make sure it was real and I wasn't imagining it. Then I think I screamed about it on my social media accounts, haha~ If you reading this have not watched the trailer, consider doing so. I promise you won't be disappointed.

Back when I first started posting fanfics, I used to get a lot of asks wanting to know my name, my pronouns, stuff like that. I thought by adding my name at the end of the stories, it would help cut down on these requests. But I also did so because I used to get a lot of asks referring to me as 'author-nim' and I didn't like being addressed by this honorific. I'm not Korean so I have no right to receive that honorific. So, I included my real name so readers could address me with it when sending me asks and interacting with me. I don't add my name at the end of my stories now, but my name is in my Twitter bio for those that want to know.

When I finished it, I felt relieved! I was so calm in the moment! Looking back on it, I can't remember much. But I do remember finishing House of Cards without any issues. The final chapters flowed smoothly, it all clicked into place, and I had a great time writing them.

I came to the decision to orphan the story after several nights of contemplation. I was considering deleting the story, along with a few others, but my partner and some friends told me I shouldn't do so. They suggested orphaning it instead. So, I did so. I didn't want to delete it in case readers that had started it had not gotten to finish it yet. I would've felt very mean robbing them of the opportunity to finish the story like that. I don't regret orphaning it instead of deleting it. I didn't want to destroy the story, I just needed some distance between me and the story.

I didn't anticipate it, and I still don't understand it! I'm shocked that House of Cards got the reaction that it received. Do I think it's a good story? Yes, I think that I worked hard to create a story that is enjoyable to read. But did I ever think it would get the reaction it did? Not in a million years! I thought that it would be one of my more popular stories because a) the pairings and b) the content. Gang stories usually tend to get a lot of attention because it's a popular genre in fanfiction. I just didn't expect it to reach such a vast amount of hits, kudos and comments.

I'm in shock that it is one of the most read stories on AO3. I don't think I will ever be able to create another story that will garner that kind of attention and feedback. It's a once in a lifetime thing, so I'm immensely proud of myself for achieving such a feat. But really, it's all because of the readers that it achieved such a goal. I'm so thankful for every single one of them.

I just want it to be remembered for being enjoyable, I think. I don't have any grand and lofty ambitions for the story. I think so long as the readers enjoyed it, that is all that matters.

I'm not sure what I would like readers to take away from House of Cards. I guess I want them to reflect on the idea of morality and that not everything is black-and-white. Good people can do bad things, and bad things can happen to good people. It's hard to answer this question because House of Cards isn't a story that I consider to have deep messages in it? There are no messages about acceptance and love and healthy relationships and such, like some of my other stories.

Honestly? I don't know what made it get so popular. I assume it's because of the pairings or the setting of the story. I know that a lot of readers say they love the story because of how well it's written, but I can't comment on that as the creator, haha~ I can't say my story is well-written as I'm not consuming it from an outside perspective. What I can say is that I do think I created a story that has a lot of twists and turns and betrayals, which I think adds to the enjoyment factor.

How are you now in 2020? Are you writing professionally in real life at all?

How do you feel BTS fanfiction has changed over time? Since you’ve been writing for it for so long.

Do you have any messages for people who may read this interview in the future?

I'm not writing professionally. I have self-published two books via Amazon and Lulu. One was a basic re-branding of my story babes in the woods. The other was a total rewrite of Brotherhood, which I called 'Brothers,' featuring a whole new setting and roster of characters. I published them as readers showed an interest in reading original stories. I have been considering rewriting House of Cards as an original work in the future, but I can't say for certain that I will do so.

Since I started writing, I think there's been a lot of changes in the fandom—not only in fanfiction but in general. There's been popular trends that have come and gone (I was around for the explosion of social media and text-based AUs, which I personally am not a fan of) but there's also been a lot of push for more inclusive content. I'm really happy by the amount of inclusive content that I see these days. Despite some pushback from non-queer fans that sometimes have an issue with queer subject matter (for example, trans characters) I think it's wonderful that artists of all colours, genders and sexualities are now proudly creating content they want to see, and not simply just what is 'in demand' from the fandom.

The message that I would like to share with readers of this interview is: stay healthy, stay happy, and most importantly, stay you. I also want to take this moment to tell them this - if you are considering becoming a creator, but you are worried about reception to your work, or that it might not be good enough, stop right now! Stop doubting yourself and just give it a shot! I was once like you, scared that my weird and niche interests and writing would be ignored or even mocked by the fandom because no one would like it. Had I not decided to take the plunge, my life would be so drastically different. I've made so many friends, fallen in love, and completely changed my life by creating fan content. It can be scary, but once you take the leap, you will find your feet coming down on solid earth without any danger.

Thank you for reading this interview. Further below are reminders and information about this interview and Charmseoul’s Fanlore project.

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