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hopeshoodie · 3 years

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Ok so in light of the Independent article (see my tag #fusebox layoffs for more info), I’ve been trying to piece together the sequence of events that lead to FB Going to Shit™.

All of the below is based on articles, tweets from the staff, and dates from screenshots. Especially with the Matchmaker stuff, I’m using the dates I personally accessed the stories- that might not be accurate to when they were actually released to an international audience, just when my phone updated the app. In hindsight, I’m not a great person to do this because I have a shit memory and don’t keep receipts, so if you have any corrections PLEASE lmk either in the dms or replies.

In sum, the timeline appears to be:

1. Key players left Fusebox in early 2020.

The one that people are probably most familiar with is David Gallopim, one of the artists who helped define the S2’s distinct style, leaving sometime before March 2020. He seemed to indicate that there was conflict over the new art style of S3, and released assets he’d designed of Harry in his own style (notably way prettier than Harry looks in-game).

But probably more important to the direction of the company, Michael Othen, one of the co-founders and former CEO, left in July of 2020 (I had thought it was earlier in the year but according to LinkedIn it was July). It’s much more unclear why he left, but it’s notable because he was a huge force in making the game inclusive of LGBTQ characters.

So all in all, not a great sign when employees who had a huge hand in creating the content and direction of a game that defined its success jump ship. Especially after the game was seemingly hitting its stride, with the host of Love Island (the TV show) doing a sponsored Let’s Play of S3 and projects in the works like Boat Party and CMM.

2. It seems like Fusebox‘s CEO/executives hired new management, either in 2020 or early 2021. Employees complain that the executives don’t understand what it takes to make a game and are pulling the studio in the wrong direction. It’s unclear if the newly hired execs had experience.

Wil Stephens, the CEO/founder, has been with FB since its inception but also appears to have only founded game distribution ventures and not worked in any development or employment capacity. If that’s the case, maybe the complaints about lack of experience/knowledge about the mechanics of making games work are about him. If not, then some of the newly hired execs would likely be to blame.

Paul Virapen, COO, was brought on in November of 2020. He’s worked with Disney’s gaming division, Big Pixel studios, Wooga. The quality of that experience is dubious since he headed up the ‘let’s make apps for Apple watches, it’ll be the next big thing’ department… Lol. Notably also, all of his roles had been in the executive/managerial realm, not the development teams, so the complains might have been about him. THIS IS SPECULATION, but I’m willing to bet that Virapen was a if not THE driving force in switching Fusebox’s focus entirely to matchmaker. All the studios he’s worked with have primarily produced and promoted Match 3 games, and he has a background working with big studios that produce games for large international audiences, not small studios making narrative games for limited audiences.

A new Manager of Finances, Ruth Erskine, was brought on in December of 2020

Rob Goddard, a new producer, was brought in January of 2021

Several key operations positions were filled by existing employees being promoted to management- 2 as far as I can tell. But as a whole it seems like December 2020 was a huge shift in leadership for the upper management while a lot of the other teams expanded but kept their old players as well.

3. At some point in late 2020- mid 2021, the executive team made the decision to switch LITG’s focus from a narrative pass-based game to a Match 3 incorporating romance narrative cut scenes. In early 2021, Fusebox teased more content to come while releasing S3 (seemingly referring to Matchmaker and not S4). In the interim between S3 endings and Boat Party’s release they put out an interview confirming the new game will be Match 3 but did seem to indicate that the plan at that time was for Matchmaker to be a side project with a different development team and not replace the main game. Notably, the LITG writers and artists were reassured that their roles will continue to exist (according to the independent article) as they’re working on S4.

3. In September of 2020, Matchmaker became briefly available in the US. That’s when I first downloaded it, at least. It would be added/removed from the google play store multiple times before having a unilateral release in July of 2021.

Throughout 2020, Matchmaker is available to Asian audiences solely with LITG S1 getting rolled out in incremental updates.

Eventually, Beanie Quinn is released (March 2021)

LA Noir is released (May 2021)

Seduction Games is released (late May or June 2021- I got the update and played it June 3rd, but hadn’t opened the app for a month or so. It might have come out before then, which is unfortunate for this timeline since it’s so inextricably linked to the open letter and layoff dates)

LITG S2 is released (only like 20 levels of it) the same month- June 19th for me. Notably, all of these stories are only released to an international audience, with the UK and USA still not having access to the app.

4. At the same time, Fusebox’s internal affairs are pretty quiet from 2020-2021, at least on social media.

S3 comes out in 2020, Boat Party comes out later in the year and finishes in 2021. Post S3 in October of 2021, a survey goes out gauging player interest in new art styles and representation, which was pretty in keeping with past actions and seemed promising for S4.

Boat Party features a promising cross promotion implementing irl brands into the game. It’s unclear if enough money was made from this on FB or the sponsor’s end to make that strategy viable, but that might’ve impacted management’s outlook for the profitability of LITG.

Fusebox teases more content for the summer on Instagram, and then follows up and confirms it’ll be a proper season.

5. More key players leave in early 2021

Ed Sibley is still listed as Narrative Direction on LinkedIn, but he’s not credited as a writer on Season 4 (he was on 3,2,and 1) and started work with NetSpeak games in May of 2021, so we can assume he left around then or at least transitioned away from Fusebox then.

Fred Francis, another writer who had been on the team since S1, turns in his resignation ‘weeks’ before the layoffs were announced in late June. So we can assume he made his exit sometime early June or late May.

6. Prior to the release of Seduction games in May/June, staff expressed concern about the biphobia in Seduction Games. No sources have given a specific time when this took place. They were reassured that the problem would be corrected prior to release, but then the story was released as is to an international audience in June. The article released by the Independent is unclear- there might have been discussion prior to the open letter where staff expressed concerns and then were reassured before the game going live. OR the open letter might have been the first expression of concern by the staff. I tend to think the former, and the open letter was a response to Matchmaker going live with Seduction Games anyways, but I have no proof for that. On May 24th, 31 employees sent an open letter of concern regarding the problematic content in Matchmaker. This letter isn’t public, so we don’t know the scope of the employees' concerns or who the employees were.

7. To resolve the situation, a meeting between the staff and at least the COO (likely more than just him though) was held sometime after May 24th. Allegedly, Virapen was disrespectful to the employees who had questions, refused to answer, and ended the meeting early before any resolution was had by closing his laptop and leaving the room. At least 4 HR complaints were made in the wake of that meeting, we do not know the nature of those complaints.

8. Some time mid-July (maybe July 26th? A writer tweeted about their job ending soon on that date), employees were made aware that the LITG app would move into ‘sunset mode’. It’s unclear what was communicated, but it seems as though S4 will be heavily delayed or cancelled altogether and no future seasons would be made. Writers begin to post about looking for work on Twitter

9. June 30th- The majority of Fusebox writing staff announce on twitter they’re out of work. In addition to the entire writing staff, unity engineers and producers are also let go.

10. July 5th - Fusebox executives respond to an article by MCVUK with a statement asserting they were “consulting with [their] employees on a proposed change to its business model” that would focus on producing Matchmaker content. They also expounded that the move was to secure “cash injections and and continued support from respected investors across the media and gaming industry”

11. July 6th- Fusebox announces that S4 will be delayed from the summer release date and that there is no fixed release date.

12. August 2nd- three jobs are posted to Fusebox’s careers page on their website, one being Head of Narrative Content. In the job listing, it specifies that they’ll be maintaining existing properties as well as new ones, and that because of the co-development model (re:fusebox outsourcing Matchmaker to another studio) the new Narrative Lead must collaborate with external content creators.

Hopefully posting this timeline gives players a better understanding of how radically Fusebox has changed in the course of 2021 (and how royally they screwed over the people who made LITG what it is). Again, please let me know if you have receipts showing dates are different or things to add.

#fusebox layoffs #fusebox games

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fountainpenguin · 3 years

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It’s an Update

Hello, Riddle here! I know I’ve been pretty quiet on Tumblr lately. Here’s an update on my situation:

I will definitely post more fanfic updates soon. I’ve picked at drafts, but haven’t posted anything lately. Here are the reasons why:

I got a new IRL job. It’s a good fit for me, but I have less free time than I used to, of course. It’s a job that involves writing lots of articles on a variety of topics, and I enjoy how every day is a little different

Most of my free time for the last year has gone towards my mod work at the Creature-Crossing ARPG, and to my personal CC writing. I’ve been working on new activities over there (my recent favorite being our seasonal familiar shows... I won first place in the summer show!) and I have a lot of plot plans that are coming together now. If you ever want to see my original characters and read my CC writing, you can find my character directory HERE and my Table of Contents HERE.

Once November 1st hits, I won’t be preparing for the release of any more CC activities or events. All future activity or event releases will be overseen by the other mods, and I’ll simply be someone they can ask for extra help if needed. This is a big change for a mod who spent the last 12 months working on new releases, and will give me back some of the free time my IRL job will eat

The Creature-Crossing admin (my boss) greenlit my request to bring an assistant on the mod team who will specifically help me with a lot of my behind-the-scenes work, such as data entry and organization. I’ve never had another mod who specifically helps me with the back end duties before, so that will be awesome. I will need to spend some time training them, but once they are official, that will take some of my workload off and allow me more free time for this blog and personal writing time.

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Fanfic updates you can expect to see soon:

- Reedfilter Rules

- Frayed Knots

- Origin of the Pixies

- Debut of Factor It In, my Kid Math-centric “WordGirl” fanfic (Subtitled “Tales of a third-grade superhero in training”)... Yes I am still in love with this idiot boy, expect lots of doodle pages soon

- The 130 Prompts project is on a slow-burn writing schedule... I’ll write for it when I want to, but I mostly want to focus on Origin and Knots this year.

Further info below the cut. There is more info about non-Fairly OddParents ‘fics in here too (under “non-FOP fanfics”), so if you’re looking forward to Mario World or “WordGirl” ‘fics from me, give this a click so you know what’s coming!

So, what does this update mean for your fanfics?

They’ll be active again soon! I’ve been picking at them behind the scenes, trying to build up a buffer. In an ideal world, I would love to release a new chapter for SOMETHING every Friday. I doubt this will be possible, but it’s something I would love to work towards in the future. Realistically, you can probably expect some kind of fanfic update once every two Fridays (two updates per month).

There might be some Fridays where posting an update is not possible. Instead, I’ll make a post about what progress I made instead. In the past, I often overworked myself to get a chapter out in time for my old deadline. I will not be doing that anymore, but will instead hold myself to a goal of “Make progress on something every week.”

In the best ideal world, I would love to post one FOP fanfic update per week and one non-FOP fanfic update per week. This is not likely to happen for a long, long time, but that would be the dream.

Here are the things I most likely worked on if there is no fanfic update:

- A fanfic chapter draft that needs more time

- A sideblog profile

- A Toyhouse profile for personal characters

- IRL work or mod work may have kept me busy this week

- Creature-Crossing writing... I will try to prioritize my fanfics more, but my CC writing is still important to me and I will be working on it in a lot of my free time too. At the moment, I have a hard deadline of December 14th that I need to meet if I want to release huge plot drama on the day that it happens in canon. I’ve been building up to this for a long time, so I’m really excited about that.

I currently have summer or autumn 2022 planned as the “finale” for the majority of my plot to explode. I will be hosting a member-run event in Creature-Crossing that will last for two months, so a lot of my time from January until the event’s release will be spent doing event prep. Once the event ends, my story content will mostly be a “return to slice of life.” Stories will be more casual one-offs as characters grow, live their lives, and start their own families. Hitting seasonal deadlines for plot will no longer be so important. I’ll be giving Creature-Crossing work less attention after that, and much more attention to my fanfics.

- I may not have a fanfic chapter out each week, but I WILL post a note every Friday to let you know what I have been doing with my time. You’ll see me around. Feel free to send Asks and talk!

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What non-FOP fanfics would you like to work on?

For literal years, I’ve been claiming I want to post Mario World fanfics. This is still something I want to do. I tag Mario World posts as “mushrooms and more.” I’ve already done a lot of worldbuilding, I have thousands of words of content written for this fandom... I just haven’t posted any of it. I hope to do this soon.

- “WordGirl” fanfics are prioritized over Mario World fanfics. After I finish my first “WordGirl” multi-chapter, I will probably be ready to post my Mario World ‘fics. I may possibly post some Mario World one-shots in between other fanfic updates. Might take another year or more before I touch Mario stuff unless there’s high interest in seeing it sooner?

I also really want to write some WordGirl ‘fics and get more involved with the fandom community. I’ve been building headcanons and lore for this show ever since I was a kid, and I have multiple ‘fics for this fandom that I want to write.

- “AlgoRhythm” is a ‘fic I have already posted on FFN and AO3, about WordGirl introducing Kid Math to the villains in town

- 28 Cities is a ‘fic I started about Rhyme and Reason before they arrived in Fair City. I put it on hiatus since it didn’t seem like anyone was interested, but I’m willing to post more for it if there is interest in it now that years have passed and I’ve gotten more followers who like WordGirl. I have a lot of worldbuilding and plot I never shared for it

- Factor It In is a ‘fic I’ve been working for a while that parallels the official show from the moment Kid Math arrives in town. It focuses on Rex’s struggle to adjust to this world as a child coming into his superpowers for the first time (Y’know, the whole “superheroes don’t have powers when they’re on their home planets” thing), his struggle to adapt to the social world of a non-logical planet, and Becky’s struggle to help him become accustomed to Earth and learn to share it with her as well. If the episode “Kid Math” was a full-length novel about Rex’s arrival and character development, that’s what this story is. This is the highest priority of all my non-FOP ‘fics... I’ve had a cover image made for 6 months and even though I tried setting it aside, I’ve always been super inspired to write for it. If I felt like it would be a good idea to commit to weekly updates alongside my FOP updates, I would, haha.

- I have two one-shot WIPs called “Squishy Feelings” and “A Little Ambiguity”, one of them focusing on Becky and Rex talking about the events of “Rhyme and Reason” and what it means for Rex’s secret identity, and the latter being a future ‘fic showing WordGirl and Kid Math dealing with life 10 to 15 years down the road. I’ll probably post the latter, not sure yet on the former.

- If desired, I may make a WordGirl specific sideblog where I post lore, answer Asks, post character profiles [smaller than my FOP sideblog ones], and mention fanfic updates. If you would be interested in this, feel free to send me an Ask requesting I do this. If there’s not interest, I’ll just keep my WordGirl stuff on the main blog.

- I’d like to get more involved in the WordGirl community, so I’ll probably post more content and reblog more art and headcanons

I also have a handful of miscellaneous ideas I might follow through with. I’d like to write at least one “TUFF Puppy” fanfic so I can say I did. In a perfect world I would like to finish the two “Danny Phantom” and “Bunsen Is a Beast” fanfics I started because... I just kind of want to dip my toe in each of the Hartman shows once since I already went through all the effort of worldbuilding for them to make them canon in a single Hartman show universe. “ChalkZone” is another show I adore and might touch someday (You may recall I have a full outline planned for an FOP/ChalkZone crossover ‘fic called “Dust to Dust”).

Will I write all of these things? Maybe not. I have no idea if I want to spend the next 10+ years writing fanfics, or if I’ll simply be done with all misc. fanfics immediately once I decide to be done with my main ‘fics. I definitely intend to write for a few more years and finish my main ‘fics, but I might not go through with some less popular side ‘fics if life is getting busy for me.

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What is the posting schedule for FOP ‘fics?

Reedfilter Rules, Frayed Knots, Origin of the Pixies, the 130 Prompts project, and “Come What May” are all high priority FOP writings. I will swap between them depending on my mood that week.

Here are some other ‘fics I want to work on.

- If you like, you can send me Asks requesting I work on a specific story above the rest. I will try to prioritize whichever stories interest you guys most.

Snips and Snails is a ‘fic I started and posted the first chapter for years ago. I’m not sure when I will get back to it, as I ran into some writer’s block. It’s still on tentative hiatus for now..... Possibly forever, though I hope it isn’t forever since it’s only supposed to be, like, five more chapters.

Pink and Gray is on official hiatus. I actually have a lot written for it, but I know it’s a little weird to put so much time and energy into Gary and Betty content when... well, let’s be honest: they’re my niche favorites and most of you probably don’t care. So, I am lifting my usual “no spoilers” policy from my Ask Box. If you would like to ask about my Gary and Betty backstory headcanons, feel free. I will tag my replies as “ridwriting spoilers” for anyone who wants to blacklist the tag, and spoilers will be hidden under a Read More line.

I’d like to return to this story someday because there are tons of things I like about it (ranging from Betty’s secret tattoos to Gary’s plot drama with his mom to the background drama between Talon and Anti-Cosmo, but I always feel immense pressure to make it extra cool to make up for the fact these are weird side characters, so... it’s officially at the bottom of the priority pile. Once Talon shows up in Frayed Knots and readers understand who he is and why he exists, I’ll consider coming back to it.

Identity Theft is a story about Foop and his time in the alternate dimension he was flung into following the episode “Playdate of Doom.” To put it short, Foop was abused by alternate versions of his parents in this dimension and he witnessed some pretty intense stuff, including the death of the alt version of himself who existed in that reality. The trauma he experienced resulted in his alternate personality, Hiccup. Foop himself has very few memories of what happened, as Hiccup has all of those memories. This story is canon in my works, and it is regularly referred to during the 130 Prompts as part of Foop’s backstory. It’s my highest priority side story to work on.

Along the Cherry Lane is a 20-chapter work focusing on the lives of the main human cast from age 11 to age 30, with one chapter showing a snippet of their lives each year. You see Timmy raising Tommy and Tammy in this ‘fic, and it ends with them receiving godparents. Since the 130 Prompts don’t give humans much attention, this ‘fic does. You’ll probably see it debut two years from now, closer to when the 130 Prompts is ready to talk more about humans.

If this becomes a popular ‘fic of mine, I’ll probably write a sequel or continue it past Chapter 30 and write about Tammy and Tommy living with fairies, but I won’t if there’s no interest in that.

Little Imperfections is a Pixie AU ‘fic of mine about what life would be like in a universe where the Fairies are even more like insects than I play them as during my main works (where I already play them as semi-similar to insects). In this world, the Head Pixie is a figurehead whose duty is to reproduce for the sake of the colony and do nothing else, and he’s bored out of his mind until he befriends Sanderson, who introduces him to music. It’s extremely self-indulgent and silly because I like Pixies.

Francis is a multi-chapter ‘fic about bully Francis’s life getting yet another fairy godparent in a long string of memory wipes and godparents. It takes place during the canon series, and when you see an “orange fairy” mentioned in some of my writings, it’s usually referring to this fairy. His name is Rover and I occasionally post art of him. I feel like I can’t truly call myself an FOP fanfic writer until I actually write about a godkid and their godparents, haha...

Hawthorn Haven is a side ‘fic that will be posted towards the end of the 130 Prompts, as it veers off from the prompts in its own self-contained multi-chapter story. It will be approximately the length of “Baby, You’re a Rich Man.”

Acacia Arcadia is a far-past ‘fic detailing the fall of the ancient fae, the imprisonment of the nature spirits, the rise and fall of the chimera nation, the fall of the Martian genies, and the early days of the cloudlands. This is close to the bottom of the priority pile... It’s something I spend time on for personal reference to ensure accuracy in my other ‘fics, but it’s probably not what you guys came here to read.

AA has a bunch of characters in it that you might vaguely recognize, such as Ezekiel Whimsifinado, Evadne, Ione, Two Feathers, Rho, and Sablewood (If you’re astute, you might recall cloudland legends and landmarks in modern day that refer back to these characters). There are also a lot of characters who were reincarnated as Anti-Fairies, in accordance to traditional Anti-Fairy beliefs; Foop for example exists as a main character in one of his past lives, and you’ll see a hint dropped about each of his lives in the first chapter of Identity Theft. My tentative plan is to use Foop’s past lives as my central characters, following the events of each part of the timeline until he gets killed and reincarnates at a later point of the timeline.

I also keep some one-shots in a file I call Mixed Nuts and I may possibly post them someday (they’re mostly just one-shots of main cast characters I do to get a feel for their personalities, I have some Wanda and Cupid in here). @zachbrightside and I are also working on a collab ‘fic called Like a House On Fire that shows more of Timmy and Chloe’s lives during Season 10 (especially around the time of “Which Is Wish?”) No news on a release date for that yet.

As I’ve said before, once all my other FOP works are complete, I will write Devil’s Backbone, which is my far-future ‘fic and the finale of my FOP writing. I do not plan to write any more FOP content after that story is finished, as I expect to have all other FOP projects done by then.

- Devil’s Backbone is a finale 'fic, so all worldbuilding from all stories is fair game to blend together, and it’s highly recommended you read everything else first. This story has been outlined since 2016, and it might not be published for another 10 years... Who knows! But it’s something I always work towards as a concrete endgame goal.

- If something serious comes up in my life and I officially decide I don’t want to write this story, I will post the outline for it. The link to this draft is included with all the other Google Docs links I have in a far-future queued post unveiling my WIPs in case I unexpectedly die and you still want to know how my stories would have gone, so you’ll get access to this story eventually even if I die young. Yes, share access is turned on for them all and I do take extra careful measures to be sure that post doesn’t get posted early skldfj

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What is the plan for the main blog?

Every Friday, I will post either a fanfic chapter or a progress update. You can blacklist the tag “ridlife” if you do not want to see the progress updates on your dashboard. Fanfic updates will not have the “ridlife” tag, so you will not be blocking them.

During the rest of the week, I might post doodles, reblogs, or general comments. Basically... you’ll see the blog become active again. Feel free to send in Asks about my worldbuilding and thoughts on fanfic characters.

@fountainpenguin is my personal blog, so you will see non-fandom things on here sometimes

@riddledeep is my FOP-exclusive sideblog. It contains all my lore notes and goes into a ton of depth, more than my fanfics give in one breath

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What does this mean for the Riddledeep sideblog?

I really want to go back and edit those character profiles that were posted early by mistake. The reason they were queued is because if I turned them into drafts, they would have been buried all the way at the beginning of my draft collection, and I have many, many drafts saved. There are no page numbers to navigate quickly through the draft collection, so I would have to click through each page one by one if I ever wanted to look at them. I hated doing this, which is why I kept my posts queued.

I was regularly updating the queue deadlines, trying to keep things in the order I wanted to post them in, but Tumblr made a change to the way drafts are dated and it kept throwing off my system. My inability to remember when my queued things would post combined with my busy schedule led to some profiles being posted early and incomplete. I want to fix these.

Over a year ago, my good friend Vulpix150 helped me finalize my designs for the Aos Sí and Daoine Sith. I’ve been sitting on that art in secret for a while, and at some point I plan to post it on the sideblog and talk more about that lore.

Updating fanfics is my higher priority (and it was the priority my followers voted for when I asked you to send votes to my Ask Box a while back). So, I will usually spend my free time working on fanfics unless I need a break from them and want to work on sideblog profiles instead. Thank you for your patience!

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TL;DR

I’m posting fanfics again soon. I’m going to take a more relaxed approach to posting them. I’m going to post more of what I want to post and what I feel motivated to post, not always a main ‘fic update. If I’m not “feeling it” when working on a draft, then I’ll set it aside for a while unless I know my followers and readers have high interest in the next chapter of that story. I always write for me first, but if I know there are other people who care a lot about a story, then of course I want to write it for you too!

I’m going to embrace my decade-long love for WordGirl and post more ‘fics and art or this fandom. I’ve always been a little shy about doing this, but I’m ready to make it an official fandom on my main blog (unless there are lots of requests for WordGirl things to be contained in their own sideblog). I will be posting the first chapter for a ‘fic called Factor It In very soon. Love my easily frustrated alien kiddos having a long day.

I am working on Creature-Crossing stuff too, and will be especially busy in November and December. Updates will be slow for a few months, but I hope to find my groove and a good pace soon.

Each Friday, I will post either a fanfic update or a mention of what I am working on. I will be checking in on Tumblr regularly. Feel free to talk! I much prefer you send messages to my Ask Box, not my private messenger, please <3

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Is there a specific story of mine you like and want more updates for?

Asks and reviews help me know which ‘fics people are enjoying. I plan to keep writing ‘fics no matter what, but I definitely give more time to the ‘fics that get more attention (and I have been spending so much time writing for Creature-Crossing because that’s where the attention was coming from)

It’s easy to stay motivated and get the next part of a story out soon if I know that people like it. It’s always harder if you feel like people are silently judging you and ignoring your posts. So, let me know what you’re interested in. And if you only leave Likes or Favorites instead of asks and reviews, that’s okay too! Thank you for interacting anyway and enjoying my work.

Thanks for reading!

#WordGirl #Factor It In #Kid Math #FAIRIES!#ridlife #riddleverse mention #ridwriting #Mushrooms and more #Satirical vocab alien child show #Frayed Knots #130 Prompts #Origin of the Pixies #Pink and Gray #Acacia Arcadia #Devil's Backbone #Hawthorn Haven #Along the Cherry Lane

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lumilasi · 3 years

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I saw this in my feed and since I was pretty bored and FINALLY free from the said boredom, figured I could do this one. I generally enjoy question based tags, especially if they relate to art/writing/fandom/are some general things about favorite colors, music, foods, things about your home country etc.

(basically, you can tag me in stuff similar to listed above things and I’ll probably do them if I see them/have time lmao)

Fic Writer Questions!

How many works do you have on AO3?

44 total. I used to have more but I’ve deleted an old Bleach one I knew I’d never continue to write, and two bnha ones for the same reason (those two were also at the very beginning stages so nobody missed a lot anyway)

What's your total AO3 wordcount?

4 269 068......wow. It’s even MORE than I even imagined. Over 4 million words.

....Someone take my writing tools away from me lmao

How many fandoms have you written for and what are they?

Three. I started with MCU, moved on to Bleach and now I’ve done most ofr BNHA

What are your top 5 fics by kudos?

Crossroads - 3069

Family Secrets - 3015

Reanimate - 1534

The neighbor - 809

Espada and Fraccion - 782

.....Admittedly this list surprised me. Not the first three but the last two. The fifth is an one shot for Bleach that I wrote AGES ago. I also for some reason expected this list to match the bookmark list more lmao

Do you respond to comments, why or why not?

I always try to respond to every comment I get, but often times when it’s just one word or a heart emoji I don’t really know what to say, so I might not reply to those. I do appreciate every comment I get, and read every single one, even if I don’t respond

What's the fic you've written with the angstiest ending?

I don’t do angst endings typically, but Family Secrets is probs the most obvious choice, given what happens at the end.

- and its not even the real end, because I couldn’t help myself and made two more stories for the AU that was like “hey! this character I made you all love so much actually DIDN’T die, he just had unfinished business back home” lmao

Do you write crossovers? If so what is the craziest one you've ever written?

Rarely, typically they’re between my own fics (the story that crosses the paths of Crossroads and Family Secrets AU’s, literally titled Crossover, creative name I know OTL I was out of ideas)

Or between me and other people’s fics. Currently there’s two, both with Crossroads: one with Theteapotofdoom’s fic Something Good, and another with leontheneon’s fic Here with you. Both stories are basically a two part series that is non canon to actual Crossroads. The first story is finished, second one has two chapters left...that...I uh...struggle to write it seems OTL

(not tagging either person into this because Tea is very busy IRL right now so I don’t want to bother her, and Leon hasn’t been around in ages, IDK if they even use tumblr anymore)

Have you ever received hate on a fic?

Not really no? I can only remember one time with somebody kind of demanding me to completely rewrite one fic in the past. It wasn’t really hate, more just...kinda unreasonable in my eyes? This was years ago by now.

While I did understand their side and the particular struggle they had (once they actually explained it, the first comment at the time came off pretty rude and demanding), I still feel them wanting me to re-write an entire multi-chapter fic just for them is a bit unreasonable, like said.

Like it wasn’t just couple of grammatical errors that was their issue, we’re talking weeks and even months long process of completely reworking multi-chapter story, because the grammar wasn’t tip top perfect. (I’m not a native speaker so there’s bound to be some mistakes; pointing out small occasional things is one thing - asking me to rewrite an entire multi-chapter story is another)

You can imagine that is not exactly high on my priorities list with IRL responsibilities and being more focused on the actual content of what I write, the ongoing stories I’m updating. This fic isn’t even finished yet either, so...yeah. Like after they explained their side of the story I was a bit more understanding, but its still....a bit ridiculous and unreasonable in my eyes to ask somebody to do such a massive overhaul when the story isn’t even finished yet?? Like maybe once its done and I have time I can go and edit it, but not when I haven’t even finished it lmao

Do you write smut? If so what kind?

Nah. I don’t care about smut a whole lot personally. I much more enjoy writing emotional scenes, character interactions and mystery. Plot over porn basically lmao

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

I don’t...do people actually do this? It feels like such a weird and pointless thing to do. It’s fanfic. stuff you write for fun and for free, for people to read for free. I’d also imagine its pretty easy to get caught given AO3 shows when you first posted your story.

Have you ever had a fic translated?

Yes, a couple of times. In Russian and I think other one was Chinese?

Have you ever co-written a fic before?

Writing the crossovers was kinda that? Like I asked feedback from Tea and Leon on how to write them. there was also actually third crossover story that was supposed to happen (only I wasn’t going to be the one to write it) but this project has been shelved as the other person had to drop majority of online activity due to some IRL health related things. (I’m just glad they recently contacted me to inform they were doing better)

What’s your all time favorite ship?

Right now it’s..probably pretty obvious its Shigadabi, but I can never really say any ship is my all time fave, as it always changes depending on the fandom lmao.

I guess my favorite character x proper sleep/emotional stability/happiness will always be the OTP

What’s a WIP that you want to finish but don’t think you ever will?

Oof. I always try to finish every single one, and if I absolutely know I won’t, I tend to just delete them. Thankfully I’ve only done it thrice. Which I guess is still a lot, but compared to how much I write, in context not really?

What are your writing strengths?

From what I’ve gathered of feedback, its typically emotional moments/character dialogue and interaction/character arcs and so. Mystery plots too. Or maybe that last one is just me lmao

What are your writing weakness?

Personally, while I tend to get positive feedback on both, sometimes I feel like I struggle to choose a good pacing for a fic, and fight scenes are always a pain. Namely, I might struggle with making the pace too long-winded and slow sometimes. Ironically, my IRL update pacing is probs a bit too fast in turn. (To add another layer of irony, I got an update ready for Unravel that I’ll post after making this tag)

Also writing shorter stories. I’ve been trying to write one-shots more (like the Spinaraki series thing) to kinda try and get myself to pack up my stories better and not let them always spiral out of control haha

What are your thoughts on writing dialogue in other languages in a fic?

I did try to do that once with a fic I deleted, I had a native speaker help me with the canadian french bits. This person is no longer active on tumblr, and I deleted that fic because I realized I’d never finish it.

Technically tho, as a non-native English speaker, EVERY word is in other language to me lmao. I could only add Finnish as an extra one easily, and it rarely makes sense to do so anyway.

What was the first fandom you ever wrote for?

MCU. It’s what I originally made my AO3 for, as I felt brave enough to post things. I also can’t remember writing fandom related stuff before that, it was typically more oc related. Writing fics has helped me learn a lot about world-building, character consistency and all that stuff, without having to make everything from scratch (tho I do enjoy doing that as well of course). I feel like my original work writing has improved too thanks to my fic writing shenanigans in a way lmao. Tho that might just be me, IDK

What’s your favorite fic you’ve written?

Oooof. This changes a lot depending on the time. I can never really pick just one either: my current favorites are Stringmaster, The neighbor and Family Secrets

Stringmaster because I love building the Steampunk AU, and Tomura’s relationship with Dabi and his Sensei, The neighbor because I personally think the romance build up in that one is probably one of the best I’ve done so far (the character dialogue in that is among my favorites I’ve written as well) and FS, because it taught me a lot about character building through writing a character like Hisashi.

Plus I just really like Hisashi.

And baby Izuku and little Tenko are super adorable.

And Inko is the best mum.

Also the fact the whole story is so ironic in a sense its still kinda funny to me.

The only writer I know that might be around rn is @nightlilly0110 soo...I guess I’ll tag them if they want to do this! Anybody who’s a writer can snatch this too of course ;)

#tag game #writer tag #fic writing

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mystech-master · 3 years

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F/GO High School/Modern AU BS

Me and @rex101111 have been talking about a modern/HS AU ft. as many Chaldean servants as possible. Here are the ideas we came up with (I am pretty much cut and pasting our message convo, so this is a mixture of both me and Rex's ideas):

Gil is the douchbag Senior everyone hates but his dad owns the school or whatever so he can do whatever he wants. The only decent person who willingly hangs out with him is his childhood friend Enkidu who's hoping he can un-douch his bro. He has kid Gil as his little brother and Caster Gil as his older bro who both agree that he sucks (Gil is the loser middle child of the family), Caster Gil wonders what Enkidu sees in his shit head brother. "He's too good for you." "Blow it out your ass." "One day he's going to wise up, see how much of a shit you are, and when you're all alone don't come crying to me." Caster Gil is in college studying political science, Kid Gil goes to a fancy boarding school. Archer Gil goofs off and throws parties

Scathach is a swimming class teacher, mainly b/c I recall underwater training being a part of Cu's regiment under her tutelage. People were jealous of the Cus for like two seconds when they find out the swim teacher is their mom, then they see her having them do an extra twenty laps and ignoring when OG Cu starts floating in the water. "CU DIED!" "YOU'RE NOT HUMAN!" while Scathach is like "you have two seconds to stop playing around before I ACTUALLY drown you" and he's back to doing laps.

Yeah with 4-5 Cus (if you count Setanta from Arcade) that is like 5 brothers.

Nightingale as school nurse, she is friends with Asclepius who works at a hospital associated with the school (strictly professional, but the students think otherwise).

Side note, keep in mind you can have multiple servants be the same type of teacher, just for different classes/grades.

King Hassan is the old Religious History teacher. Every one thinks he's older then the rock is the school is made out of. He has a scary face and a scarier voice but most students consider him the most fair and patient teacher in the whole school. He always gets a lot of food gifts before Ramadan form the students. (A few students, such as the Guda twins and Mash, call him gramps.) The other Hassans are his grandkids, like actual grandkids. He's super strict with them because he expects a lot from them. He always praises them when they do well though. He made sure they ALL got into his class and they've been living in fear ever since. They love their grandpa but by Allah they know not to disappoint him. The only one to ever get out of anything is kid Hassan (one of the hundred face). Cursed Arm is oldest, then Asako (the main hundred face), then Serenity.

"I am very disappointed in ALL of you, have you all lost your heads? I swear I-*to kid Hassan*-ah no Habibi not you you're fine here have a candy-*back to the rest*-I KNOW you're better than this!"

VERY traditional guy, Cursed Arm mutters "Oh for God's sake" while doing a pop quiz and King Hassan looms over him and growls, "No Blaspheming In This Class Room"

For the various Artoria/Arturias, I imagined Lancer and Lancer Alter being sisters, so Saber Alter is a cousin. That leaves everyone else to just be sisters with one brother. Mother Lartoria owns a casino and gas her own yacht in reference to the summer event where she became a Ruler. If you want MHX could be a part of the family as a massive fucking Star Wars nerd. MHXX and MHX Alter are her mom and sister (so MHXX is a third sister for the two Lancer Artorias)

For Irisviel, I remember in one of the Nero Fest things that she was called Therapist Iri. Maybe she starts to get into that b/c she wants to help her adoptive son Shirou (instead of a big fire like in Zero it can be an orphanage fire thing, similar situation but a much smaller scale) , so she is the school therapist/psychiatrist. Like Maruki in P5 Royal.

Iskandar died in his 30s, Waver is around his 30s as Lord El Melloi II. The two are old college friends who still hang out and Alexander is Iskandar’s kid.

If you guys want you can see this as the two being gay dads since I know that ship is popular.

Fran had an abusive father before Babbage and Moriarty got involved. In the og story, Frankenstien has a scientific mindset like his creator, here Fran has a talent in the field, but she also hates it b/c it reminds her of him. Like imagine being talented at the thing your abusive parent was good at/known for. Moriarty tried to get it into her that SHE'S the one with the talent, not her college dropout bum of a father, "From you tell me of him Victor couldn't engineer his way out of an argument with a cat, you have a magnificent mind my dear, not letting it flourish to spite him would be a horrible waste...it's your talent, your skill. Not his." He smiles that smile she loves that scares every one but she knows he only smiles like that when he is absolutely convinced of something, "and you can out perform him without breaking a sweat."

Moriarty teaches Fran sign language while Babbage teaches her some engineering.

Jekyll is going for a major in medicine with a minor in law (in the actual irl story Dr. Jekyll was a doctor in medicine and law).

For science associated servants, you got da Vinci, Babbage, Edison, and Tesla as possible science teachers.

The Jeanne sisters. Without the Avenger BS, the reason Jalter (or Joan as one series of fics calls her) could hate her here is just inferiority complex and being compared to her perfect saint big sister all her life. Joan does have her talents, based on the summer event an, but again she doesn't acknowledge her own talent b/c of her always being compared to her older sister., in the 7 counterfeit events she is a really good artist. And it is the typical thing of Jeanne actually being scared out of her wits of being less than perfect because of all the expectations thrust on her. She gets one A- and runs to the bathroom crying and Joan has to swallow her pride and actually have a conversation with her sister for the first time in years. Jeanne Alter lily puts up Christmas decorations super early, much to Jeanne Alter/Joan's displeasure.

"IT JUST TURNED NOVEMBER CHILL TF OUT!"

"CHRISTMAS!"

Martha is Jeanne's BF since middle school and has this HUGE dog that scares everyone and growls at anyone expect Martha and Jeanne. She calls him Terry.

Rex loves Penthesilea. and we talked at length about the situation between her and Achilles. Can you not tell that he likes a woman who can kick his ass *gestures to all of his Baiken posts*

Rex's idea: I think they had a fight when they were little and Achilles, being a little shit back then, made fun of her for being a girl, and Penth has been sore about it ever since. She keeps running into big misogynistic meatheads that reminded her of that and she just got angrier over the years. She's a wrestler and can knock out just about every dude in school by herself. Achilles is very regretful about back then and wants to apologize but Penth ain't having any of it.

My idea: I thought they were on opposing HS sports teams and when Achilles handed her ass to her he forgot to drink his respect women juice and then Penth got all pissed.

In this AU, Penth and Hippolyta's dad was a general who taught them how to kick the ass of men twice their size since they were seven or something.

Penth surprises everyone when a festival comes up and she gets picked to be the one to organize everything...and does a spectacular job. Another surprise is that she plans on being a business major when she goes to college (Obligatory Amazoness CEO jokes)

Bedivere is the Arturia Pendragon family butler with a prosthetic arm. He's also the security guard, last guy that tried to steal something or cause trouble got slapped right out of the window he sneaked in from.

Francis Drake and Artoria Alter Lancer are work friends (referencing them both being associated with the Wild Hunt in F/GO's lore).

Beni-Enma is the short and shorter tempered lunch lady, last kid who mouthed off at her during lunch got smacked upside the head with her spoon. She's sweet, but if you're in detention and have to help her in the kitchen she's a mini Gorden Ramsey, "IT'S RAW DECHI!!!" She can also come into the home EC class where Shirou is her best student. Also her roasting of the other girls like in her quest. Getting Fs in Beni's class is the worst, because it isn't just an F, it's a meticulous dressing down of exactly why letting into a kitchen should be considered a war crime, dechi.

The three Avenger Nobus are three different people. 1st Ascension is basically Archer Nobu, then you got Oda Kipposhi, and then the mom is Ascension 3 with Demon King Nobunaga. The youngest Ascension 1 Nobu is a musician. Demon King Nobu is one of those "super scary but also super polite people that only makes them scarier" type, basically a female koei Nobunaga from samurai warriors (check out some cutscenes form the games with him, he's a treat).

Imagine Demon King Nobu mom in a business suit.

Suzuka Gozen and Sei Shonagon are the textaholics who always talk in slang to the point of it sounding like they speak a different language. Murasaki is the librarian but Sei is like that ONE student who just makes her job so much harder.

Every week it's "No phones in the library Miss Shonagon." while Sei rolls her eyes and types out twitter post like "fugly ol librarian at my school needs a life lol"

Oui Katsushika is a gifted art student, and her dad (not a floating little octopus), is just a normal dude with a squid/octopus like beard. She's the teacher's pet in De Vinci's art class.

Eresh and Ishtar come from a rich family, Ereshkigal is the older sister so she had a shit load of responsibility to take over the family business while Ishtar basically gets to party her life away. Rin is the cousin they each try and swing their way. Eresh wants Rin to keep up her studies and get into a good university, Ishtar wants Rin to loosen the fuck up and admit that she likes that scrawny Emiya kid already.

BB is the host of a talk show downtown so she is kind of an absentee mom. Meltryllis has prosthetic legs that she specifically asked to be made into stilts b/c she wanted to be taller, and Passonlip has a massive rack that makes life difficult (either people staring, people assuming she's gonna be a home wrecker b/c said staring must be intentional, etc.), and of course he also has prosthetic arms to match her canon claws, obviously not as massive.

Hijikata is a very serious police officer but his wife Carmilla just uses this to have fun in the bedroom. They have two Dobermans. Hijikata's route has him patrolling near the school so most of the kids know as that scary police dude that has a picture of his wife in his pocket. One day a famous Idol called Eli-chan~ (yes spelled with the ~) is about to perform in the town and the kids can't stop talking about her, so Hijikata overhears. But, being the serious dude he is he shrugs it off until he sees a picture of this "Eli-chan~" and realizes it's his sister-in-law that came to visit and suddenly the influx of parasitic paparazzi near his house start making sense.

Carmilla: "Now you see why I hate them?", Hijikata: "No you cannot send the dogs after them honey."

She almost ran one of them over in her, very expensive, car and when that reporter says she should be locked up Hijikata corrects that would only happen if she had hit him...and she would be fined. For littering.

Okita Alter being Hijikata's partner, while Okita is her younger sister who's looked up to Hijikata since she was a little kid but she has asthma and such so she's afraid she might not get accepted.

Sigurd owns a metalworks shop (referencing his myth where he was raised by the dwarf Reginn), he met his wife Brynhildr when she was disowned by her overly controlling father.

Ozymandias, Nitocris, and Cleopatra are all the high board members of a company. Nitocris specifically got wind of Scheherazade's abusive husband situation and after getting said husband arrested, she offered Scheherazade a job.

Atalanta is a college student/TA who worked with Achilles' dad who ends up at their HS for a program or something, Achilles' dad has told him a lot about her.

Amakusa Shirou is an uncle married to the CEO of Babylon Gardens Pharmaceuticals, Semiramis. Semiramis herself is kinda chill if REALLY scary. She had to be pretty cutthroat to get to her position in the company, but Amakusa Shirou helped her mellow out, but she is still a massive tsundere.

"You know you COULD poison their lunch." "Semi, dear, I'm not going to poison my coworker's sandwich for being an ass." "It wouldn't kill them! Just a bit in their peanut better and they'll be stuck on the toilet for a week, no harm no foul."

Rex initially said Taiga would be an overly enthusiastic gym teacher but then I remembered that she was a homeroom/English teacher in Fate canon, but either or can do if you wanna be unique.

For Quetzalcoatl, Wrestling club supervisor when she isn't the senior year gym teacher. Some of the male students laughed that they didn't think a woman would know anything about wrestling. Two piledrives later, the students have earned a new appreciation for the importance on how not to be two pieces of shit. She's big on Lucha as in canon and during Halloween she gets JAGUARMAN to have an exhibition fight with her. They make a show of it but later on Taiga admits that Quatz could have CRUSHED her if they were actually fighting. She takes the wrestling club out for homemade Mexican food after tournaments

For Siduri, there's a bunch of rumors she's dating Caster Gil but it's strictly professional, Caster respects her too much to consider that. Archer Gil hits on her relentlessly, she manages to wound his ego more severely then anyone else simply by being unfailingly polite in her rejections and treating him like what he is, a teenage punk jumping higher than he can handle to land.

Ibaraki is Shuten's adoptive little sister after she was taken from an abusive mother, hence why Ibaraki looks up to her. Ibuki is either Shuten's big sister who had to take on a guardian role, or just her mom. Shuten and Ibuki have a bit of a strained relationship because Shuten saw the way Ibuki acted as they grew up, taking more and more responsibilities onto herself and refusing any distractions. And she decided that her biggest nightmare is to wake up one morning and realize she's turned into Ibuki so she tries to do everything to avoid that, hence their relationship not being the best. Ibaraki is kinda stuck in the middle because she wants to side with Shuten but she sees where Ibuki is coming from. Messy.

Caren is still Kotomine’s daughter, but he isn’t a good dad and in rebellion she sleeps around despite being a woman of god. Including sleeping with local punk Angra Mainyu. Angra Mainyu seems like a bad guy but he has a shit load of issues due to being blamed for everything going wrong in his old town, eventually coming to believe them and thinking he will cause nothing but problems. Caren banging him gives him a type of closeness he’s never felt, but under very warped circumstances.

For the Tamamo family, Vitch totally fucked her way up a corporate ladder or something, imagined Tamamo Cat working at a Cat Cafe if she were a Student. Tamamo no Mae accidentally fed her prev BF a food he was allergic too, and that kind of haunted her and scared her rep. IDK basically she seriously fucked up a previous relationship, either on purpose or accidentally, and that kind of hurts her deeply so she wants to start over with Hakuno.

Nero and Tamamo no Mae are rivals over this one guy.

Kiichi Hougen is the adoptive mom, Benkei is the family friend/uncle, Taira is Ushiwaka's older sister. Taira isn't on the best of terms with her family, some drama way back caused a rift and nowadays Ushi is the only one who's willing to talk to her and visit. Benkei never lets her go alone because he doesn't trust Taira one bit. Taira and Ushiwaka are Kintoki and Tomoe's cousins (I say Tomoe b/c apparently her husband and Ushiwaka were half cousins, with their grandpa having kids with their grandmas. I tried to make a whole family tree out of a few servants).

These are the ideas we had the most to talk about, if you guys have any suggestions for your fav servants in this AU, let either me or Rex know. Or just reblog and say them here. Who knows maybe you have a much better idea for a Servant we already mentioned.

#fgo #fate series #fate grand order #high school/modern au #high school au #f/go #fate/grand order

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delicatecy · 4 years

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20 questions ✨

I got tagged by @xuseokgyu (thank you belle 🧡)

1: What do you prefer to be called name-wise?

Deli or Célia is fine, some call me cece (or cc like my ig acc) but I don’t really mind

2: When is your Birthday?

April 3rd ♈️

3: Where do you live?

France !

4: Three things you are doing right now?

Lately, it’s been work work work... trying to be creative and sleep in between lol

5: Four fandoms that have peaked your interest.

I’ve never been such a big fandom lover but there are a few I enjoy seeing, especially on my tumblr dash. I have been following some cc blogs about teen wolf, the 100 and the vampire diaries and, growing up with these shows, I have a soft spot for them! ALSO, another small one I’m dying to see more on my dash is sense8 ✨

6: How has the pandemic been treating you?

Work has been hectic since the pandemic started, and I’m not complaining. I know many people lost their jobs, my father owns a restaurant and the situation hasn’t been so good on this kind of business here, to put it lightly. So, speaking for myself, it hasn’t been so bad I guess, as I never really stopped working. But I miss my friends like crazy, we had plans on travelling together, going back to London for christmas and such so everything has been put on hold. I feel like we’re waiting for something without knowing if or when it will come. The uncertainty of it all makes it stressfull. I feel like I’ve been wasting so much time and I hate that feeling. We’re not gonna talk about the anxiety rising like crazy and the lack of sleep. Beside all that, girl is t h r i v i n g.

7: A song you can’t stop listening to right now?

Sweet melody by Little Mix, I’m obsessed with this one. Also Dream of you by Chungha 🌙

8: Recommend a movie.

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless mind (predictable?)

9: How old are you?

10: School, university, occupation, other?

I graduated from university a few years ago now. I have a bachelor degree in applied foreign languages (international trade) and I started a master degree in marketing and management but only graduated from the first year (out of two) cause girl got ✨ h i r e d ✨ in between after an internship. So my current occupation is commercial and marketing assistant!

11: Do you prefer heat or cold?

Heat, I can’t stand the cold, but a nice warm breeze is fine 👀

12: Name one fact others may not know about you.

I’ll stay in the theme and say I used to write, back in the days 👀 but not ff! I was on several hq rpg forums and met some amazing people there, some of them have become real friends I still talk to regularly 🧡

13: Are you shy?

Honestly I could have copied the answer from Belle lmao pretty much same, I will hardly make the first move in a social situation but will gladly interact if someone comes to me first!

14: Preferred pronouns?

she/her

15: Biggest Pet Peeves?

Close-minded people

16: What is your favorite “dere” type?

I honestly have no idea

17: Rate your life from 1-10, 1 being crappy and 10 being the best it could be.

7 - there are a few things I’d like to improve but again, I feel lucky enough right now, my family is safe, so am I, I have a stable job, I’m independant and I love my friends so we’re good

18: What’s your main blog?

@teempeste

19: List your side blogs and what they’re used for.

I’m currently trying my best helping out @heartgyus with @gyunetwork (and suffer each time I have to reblog a set of the giant pup). Also, @underratedkpopgfxnet which is on hiatus for now but will hopefully comeback soon 🧡

20: Is there something people need to know about you before becoming friends?

Don’t be afraid and come talk to me 👀 I have been told I can be pretty intimidating at first irl (thanks cap rising) but guess what, we’re not irl on this hellsite so go ahead and hit me up, I pinky promise I don’t bite 👌🏻

tagging : @heartgyus @gotseventeens @dk-s @art-hao @1of1orbit @kyeomshine @jonghan @coupsnim @coupshi

#this was fun!#thank you again belle #tag game #mentions #moots #belle ✨

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disslve · 4 years

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𝐲𝐞𝐞𝐡𝐚𝐰 & 𝐡𝐨𝐰𝐝𝐲 ! this is nai and my cowboy ass is here to throw roxy @ u and also tell u bad jokes and cry over life is strange 2 because i’m still not over this game and I NEED TO TALK ABOUT IT. just a heads up, i came up with roxy on a whim because this rp just looked so good, so if it seems like i don’t know what i’m talking about ... it’s most likely the case whoops . ( this is an excuse for me bringing shitty muses ). anyway, my fake cowboy ass loves to ramble so if you’re interested in plotting feel free to LIKE this post or hmu. i forgot to mention that i’m also a fake grandma so idk anything about discord at all and i still need to set it up which will happen in the next few days dsdnsdsdn.

ps: wanted connections/plots can be find in my wanted tag ( a link is on my blog ) and i’ll also list some below !

EDIT: discord name is nai #7158

* [ kristine froseth + cis-female + she/her ] —— have you met roxanne ‘roxy’ bailey ? they are a twenty-two year old junior currently studying romance languages and literatures. they live on decker house and word around campus is that this scorpio is compassionate + dedicated, as well as impatient + dishonest. i wonder if they’ll make it out alive.

basics.

full name: roxanne elise bailey

nicknames: roxy, rox

sexual orientation: bisexual

birth place: valencia, spain ( but only lived there for five years )

history.

one could say that roxy had lived an easy life, though her parents weren’t distinguished by their social status, it didn’t mean they lacked money which was enough to support their daughter in whatever she wanted to do.

truth to be told, roxy was indeed a little spoiled, the type of kids who would try all kind of things on the expenses of their parents only to quit a new ‘hobby’ again. she could barely stick to anything. she was some twisted kind of golden child, good at many things but never had the patience to continue something for long enough to cultivate it.

skipping over the part where she almost tried everything from arts, music etc. she finally found her passion ( and even roxy herself was surprised ). figure skating. she didn’t know what drew her in, she couldn’t explain it, she tried it and it felt right. roxy always describes the feeling as finding a soulmate if she feels extra dramatic that day.

unsurprisingly, she was good at it. not that kind of good at something she was at all the other things she tried before, but that being good at which stemmed from genuine interest. maybe, that is why she managed to get so far. and it didn’t take too long that people even started to call her a figure skating prodigy.

at this point at her life, she had it all, spinning the stars on her fingertips ( or warning bad pun ahead: spinning on the ice ). until, well, her parents company was in some crisis and they had to cut corners in the meantime. also oh so ‘conveniently’ roxy lived at the arse end of nowhere and getting to her practices was now even more difficult because as mentioned before they had to save their money for more necessary things. of course, there were more things , small and big, which totally threw her off ( which i am too lazy to list rn).

roxy tried to work part time, but a) the money wasn’t enough b) she didn’t want to cut more hours of training she managed to get. AND well, here comes the turning point and roxy thinking she was oh-so-smart without realizing that it would cost her career. oh-so-smart roxy came up with the idea to , well, just steal some stuff. after all, she trained with many other wealthy peers and she could just sell off their stuff or something.

at the beginning she only did it to afford certain things she needed, but soon it somehow became an addiction. she felt in control when everyone else in her life was an utter mess. however, the more she took things away from others the more she felt comfortable, doing it more often and sometimes taking things which weren’t even worth that much. it was only a matter of time until she was caught. and as if she was lucky for too long, the person who caught her pressured her into either giving them a hefty sum of money (which she didn’t have) or to quit figure skating. she decided for the latter.

well, here she was and her sudden departure was quite a shock. but she had no choice and stated it was for personal reasons.

skipping over her being devastated over it, etc. her parents managed to save their company (whatever this company is) but at this point it was already too late and roxy was accepted into holloway.

right now she actually wants to pick up her figure skating career again, however, she’s too afraid that the blackmailer is going to expose her and also she doesn’t really know who they are (lets pretend they wrote her letters, txt messages >??) and also she’s kind of afraid due to the lack of practice she had .

personality.

okay i’ll keep this short bcs i wrote way too much for her background story. but to sum it up, roxy kind of has that perfect girl facade. considering how many friends roxy has and how social she appears to be it is odd that no one seems to be able to describe her. roxy doesn’t want people to know who she truly is, and she keeps her distance as she actively avoids conflicts that might cause her to say something wrong and exposes herself.

she shields her feelings by only presenting polished version of herself, the facade of the perfect girl: kind, hard-working and polite. someone whose life is easy and someone who looks like she doesn’t have any worries. it doesn’t mean she isn’t anything of that, but it’s not as if her kindness has no bounds or that she doesn’t need to put effort into the things she does. nevertheless, she believes that she must be perfect in order to make people like her. and while, she is pretty good at masking her emotions and smile along, as soon as someone threatens to see past the illusion, she will become defensive and won’t hesitate to lie in order to preserve it.

plots.

best friends: although roxy pretty much keeps her distance from everyone else, this person had always stood by her side. maybe they knew about roxy’s sudden wannabe-thief phase ( which she is still in ) and well tried to talk her out of it ( which obviously didn’t work ). also adding some drama here and maybe they had a big argument over it and distanced from each othr because of it. however, my angst ass doesn’t want to ruin it and they’ll rekindle their friendship. they might meet again at holloway and it’s awkward at first, maybe they even have some arguments but they’ll get over it because everyone loves a good rekindled friendship story.

annoyance: someone who gets under roxy’s skin.seeing past the perfect girl face and constantly calling her out on it. maybe they just have fun annoying her and want to see what she really likes or they just don’t like roxy , thinking that beneath all of this act, she is a really unpleasant person. perhaps, they’re even doing it with good intentions and want to show her that she doesn’t need to hide who she is. whatever it is, they’re determined to expose to the world who she really is.

pen pal ??: muse a and roxy had been friends for a very long time, yet the funny thing is that they’ve never met each other nor do they know what the other look like. all they know is their name ( or maybe they only know each other by their usernames ) and their deepest secrets. maybe they already have crossed paths many times and perhaps even know each other but don’t like each other irl. or they never had noticed the other.

blackmailer: BECAUSE WHY NOT??? the person who forced roxy to give up on figure skating. maybe, they were a rival or just didn’t like her, or any other reason. they might as well, have noticed that roxy is secretly training again and might be back at their shit again.

exes: GIVE ME THE ANGST, maybe muse a and roxy used to be in a serious relationship and as naive they were back then both of them thought this love would last forever. however, at some point roxy started to distance herself from muse a, constantly cancelling their dates because of their busy schedule. at first muse a tried to be understanding towards her, but as time passed things only got worse. roxy hating any kind of conflict just decided to ignore the problem instead about talking about it and eventually stopped replying to muse a messages. muse a never really got to know the real reason behind their break up and was left with unanswered questions. but anything works

unrequited love: (this is just me throwing in my favourite way to make myself suffer) It doesn’t matter who is the one with the the one sided love because i just want some good angst.a) muse a has a crush on roxy, yet they never told her about it. yet, muse a can’t hide it and it doesn’t take too long until roxy notices it. but instead of trying to talk to muse a about it, roxy just ignores it acting as she usually does and perhaps even give them false hope that she might like them back. maybe muse a even confessed to her and because roxy didn’t want to hurt them she told muse a she’d think about it.

b) roxy has a crush on muse a but doesn’t admit it. she doesn’t want to show their vunerable side and just plays it down. maybe they’re friends and roxy doesn’t want to lose another friend. but one day she confesses to muse a on accident, making everything awkward between them.

someone she stole from: idk i thought this would be fun ? maybe she confessed to them about it or maybe they caught her but decided to not confront her about it.

fan: someone who used to watch her perfomances on their tv and is still not over the fact that she quit.

i also have a connection page on my blog if these are too specific or none of these work

i’m too tired to come up with more dsdsdnjsd but gimme everything !! THE ANGST, FLUFF, DRAMA PLS!!!

#did i use a special font just to highlight the yeehaw ?? yes #holloway.intro #this got so long djssdsdn

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gentlethorns · 4 years

Note

1-31

JKJFLKJGDKLS did you mean. 1 through 31?? like. all of them?? LMFAOOOOOO okay but i’m sticking them under a readmore bc that is gonna be SO long

1. what is a genre you love reading but will probably never write? mysteries/crime. i love the technique and expertise it takes to expertly lay out and set up a plot twist, but i don’t think i could ever do it aptly myself.

2. which writer has had the greatest stylistic influence on your writing? probably stephen king, if we’re talking fiction, but even then i don’t think he’s influenced me a ton - my writing voice is pretty distinctive (or so i’ve been told). as far as poetry, i think reading @candiedspit‘s work has really caused me to stretch my expectations of where words can go and what they can do.

3. has a specific song/lyric ever inspired a work of art for you? absolutely! i’m super inspired by music, bc music is really important to me as a means of emotional expression. back in sophomore year of high school i was working on a story where all the chapters were inspired by songs from folie a deux by fall out boy. it didn’t pan out and i never finished it, but i still think the concept was neat.

4. a writer whose personal lifestyle really speaks to you? lmfao not to talk about him again, but stephen king’s lifestyle really appeals to me. his writing is widely known and renowned, but he just chills at home and watches the red sox games and takes pictures of his corgi and keeps turning out stories. that literally sounds like paradise to me.

5. do you write both prose and poetry? which do you prefer? i do write both! and i can’t say i honestly prefer one over the other - my interest bounces between them and waxes and wanes, but i don’t consistently indulge one more than the other, i don’t think. last year i went through a huge fiction phase in october and cranked out eight or nine different short stories/flash pieces, and then in november/december i went through a poetry phase and wrote multiple poems a day for a long stretch of time. it just depends on my mood and my mindset and what i need from writing (a kind of escape vs. emotional expression/release).

6. do you read both prose and poetry? which do you prefer? i do read both, and again, i don’t think i have a preference. i definitely read fiction more, i think, but like writing, it kind of depends what i need at the time.

7. which language do you write in? which do you want to write in someday? i write in english, since it’s the only language i know. i’d like to learn spanish at some point, but i don’t know if i could ever write in spanish - i’m so firmly married to english grammar and structure that i don’t know if i could ever exercise the same control and mastery over spanish that i could english.

8. share a quote or verse that has been on your mind lately. “you said i killed you - haunt me, then!” from wuthering heights.

9. a writer/poet whose life you find interesting. *sigh*. stephen king. i’ve read his memoir/writing workshop book (”on writing”) and his success story always fascinates me. i just can’t imagine living in a shitty one-bedroom apartment with your wife and two kids and working days at an industrial laundromat and spending nights writing on a shitty wobbly desk in the laundry room, and you get your first manuscript accepted for publication, and eventually the paperback rights go up and you think you might get $60,000 if you’re really lucky, and then one day while your wife and kids are visiting the in-laws you get a call from your agent telling you that the paperback rights for your book sold for $400,000 and 200K of it is yours. that’s just literally. unfathomable to me lmfao.

10. what do you feel about the idea of someone unearthing your unseen or discarded drafts someday, long after your death? what about your personal journal? it’s really hard for me to imagine that happening, i think bc i tend to see myself as really like. insignificant or unimportant in the grand scheme of things, so i can’t imagine any part of me lasting beyond my life. also, it’s very hard for me to imagine someone i don’t know personally reading my work, probably because my work (especially a personal journal) is a window into me, and i have a hard time even letting people i trust see into that window sometimes, much less a stranger.

11. do you prefer to write in silence or listen to something? what do you listen to? i definitely prefer music in the background, although i can work in silence. i tend to gravitate to music that goes with the scene i’m writing, if i’m writing fiction (often i work music into my fiction, so if there’s a song playing in the scene, i’ll listen to that song), and if i’m writing poetry i tend to just listen to laid-back music (unless i’m writing from a place of grief or sadness, in which case i listen to sad music lmfao). i do also love writing when it’s storming outside and just listening to the rain and the thunder as i write.

12. has an image ever impacted your artistic lens/inspired your work? absolutely! less often than music, but visuals can inspire me on occasion. i once wrote a poem based on this image. i just couldn’t get it out of my head, so i decided to figure out what it was saying to me.

13. how would you describe the experience of writing itself? as in putting the words to paper, not planning or moodboards etc. do you agree with the common idea that the satisfaction lies in reading your work after you are done with it, rather than the process of writing itself? i think the process can be arduous sometimes, and other times it can be incredible. sometimes i write very slowly and haltingly, sometimes i write at a normal pace and it feels like the work it is (bc i am trying to write professionally), but sometimes the magic tap in the mind turns on and it starts flowing. that being said, i don’t necessarily agree that the satisfaction lies only in reading your work rather than also in the process. there’s a certain fulfillment in watching everything come together and knowing it’s going to be good.

14. how often do you write? it varies. i would like to write more often than i do, now that i have a full-time school schedule and work part time friday-sunday, but i think i still get a decent amount of writing done, when i can actually sit down and motivate myself to get the words out.

15. how disciplined are you about your writing? not very, in the creative sense - as discussed above, i don’t write as often as i should/would like to, and don’t hold myself to much of a schedule. however, as far as the business side of it (submitting to magazines/contests), i’m pretty disciplined, and i’m usually pretty good about keeping all my “good” pieces in circulation at a couple of places at a time.

16. what was your last long-lasting spurt of motivation? maybe last night? i worked on a couple of pieces and then submitted a few groups of poems to some magazines. i also did some decent work on thursday while i was in my campus starbucks waiting for my zoom class to start.

17. have you ever been professionally published? are you trying to be? i have been professionally published! i got my first acceptance back in 2018, and now i’ve had poetry published multiple times and fiction published twice. i’m still trying to publish more of my work, but i think i’ve had a decent start.

18. do you read literary magazines? not regularly, although i entered a fiction contest for into the void last year, and since it came with a year-long subscription, i’ve been browsing the fiction there periodically. into the void tends to publish good short/flash fiction, so anytime i feel like reading some new stories, i head there.

19. a lesser known writer you adore? idk if she’s necessarily “lesser-known,” but i loved ally carter’s gallagher girl series when i was younger. the first four books were immaculate (although i do remember that the last two books seemed almost unnecessary, and the ultimate end of the series was anticlimactic).

20. do you write short stories? do you read them? i write and read them! up until october of last year i could never figure out how to write a short story and effectively resolve a conflict in 5000 words or less, but then suddenly (like. literally overnight), a switch flipped in my head and i could do it. as far as reading them, i don’t read a ton anymore bc of my busy schedule ( :( ), so sometimes if i’m in the mood to read i’ll opt for a short story online or a book of short stories instead of a full-length novel.

21. do you prefer to involve yourself with literary history and movements or are you more focused on the writing itself? any favourite literary movements? i’m typically more focused on the writing itself, although i do love to learn about the horror boom from the 50s-80s (if that counts as a literary movement lmfao). i also do particularly love work from the era of deconstructionism, which i think took place in like. the 40s-60s, if i’m not mistaken. i enjoy that era bc of its symbolism and abstract nature - a lot of the work leaves the reader to draw their own conclusions.

22. are you working on anything right now? not particularly? i have a few works in progress that i tinker with now and then, but i’m not seriously working on anything in particular.

23. how did you get started with writing? i honestly don’t even remember. i remember the first time i realized that i really liked writing and had fun doing it (in fourth grade, for a school competition), but i know that even before then i was writing stories and poems.

24. do you have any “writer friends”? most of my mutuals are writer friends! but i don’t have any irl. i almost made one in my math class last semester, but we lost contact when our university shut down in march.

25. what is your earliest work you can remember? the earliest work i can remember is when i was really young (maybe like. five or six?). it was about our dog being pregnant (which she was at the time) and able to talk (which she was not).

26. have you found your writer’s voice yet? does your work have a distinct tone? absolutely. i’m very confident in my style and the distinctiveness of my voice - it’s been there pretty much since i first started writing. i’ve improved since then, honed my voice and made it more sophisticated and effective, but at the core, it’s still me, like it always has been.

27. do your works share themes/are commonly about certain topics? or are your subjects all over the place? in poetry, i think i tend to write about grief or loss of some sort or another often, bc it’s something i tend to feel often - either that or a false bravado (but ig that’s more of a tonal device). as far as fiction, i like to write about religion gone wrong (false religion, religion as a front for personal gain and corruption, religion gone too deep into obsession and mania, etc.), and i like smart underdog-type characters that fight and have a lot of grit to them.

28. what does writing mean to you? to me, writing is catharsis, a bloodletting. this particularly applies to poetry, but it also applies to fiction. poetry shows you the things you’re regurgitating up-front, but fiction does it slyly, in a mirror or through a distorting lens. regardless, both stand to offer release and healing.

29. in an alternate universe, imagine you had not found writing. what do you think would be your fixation otherwise? honestly, i’m not sure. probably acting or theater. something creative, for sure.

30. do you feel defined by your work? maybe a little, but not to a large or limiting extent. like, in a new class, my interesting fact about myself will probably always be “i’m a writer and i’ve been published a few times,” but i think that i’m a well-rounded person and that once people get to know me, my writing is just a part of me, not my whole identity.

31. have you ever written/considered writing under a pen name? if you would be okay saying, why? no, i don’t think i have. while a pen name can be a good tool, depending on your goals and what you’re writing, i have a Thing about getting credit where i’m due credit lmfao. i don’t think i’ll ever use a pen name bc if i know something i do is good, i want my name on it.

#asks #anon #thirty-one asks for writers #JAKFJDLJDALKJ this was so long thank you for asking

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ngame989 · 5 years

Text

“Brew” - TGG SVTFOE Fanfic Collection Ch. 6

Writing: @ngame989

Art: @toxicpsychox

Editing: @toxicpsychox, @seddm, an IRL friend

Alternate fic links - FFnet, AO3

Summary: After close to a year on Earthni, Tom's been dragged back into the princely life, and it's a lot less exciting than he'd expected. With Star and Marco away on urgent business, can Janna help him turn a boring errand into a fun adventure?

Comic Page

Masterpost

This one’s a nice change of pace from the last two chapters, I think. TGG’s still a Starco-focused work, expect these to be the exception not the norm, but I think it’s important to strike a balance. See below for the text, hope you enjoy!

“No results.” Huh? Three eyes narrowed at the screen in frustration. Maybe a different search term? “No results.” Alright Tom, no big deal, man. Maybe you just spelled something wrong. Annnnnd… there. “No results.” How could there be nothing?

Tom leaned back in the chair and sighed, exercising restraint over the little anger demons inside him as he’d trained himself to do. In the past he’d needed a physical bunny to pet if he wanted even a hope of keeping his cool, but at this point suppressing the urge was such reflex that most would think he just had a regular Mewman quick temper and nothing more in all but the most extreme of conditions, but he was getting pretty close to that point now. Grandpa Relicor’s study had everything, or so he thought, but this was the first time he could ever remember being here where it come up short. He’d checked every shelf, everything he could think in the computer, had even fireblasted a few of the shelves just to see if there were any hidden switches or anything. Even Relicor had been at a loss and had been screeching in distress on the floor for long enough that Tom’s brain had graciously tuned it out. What could be so important about this book his mom needed? He hadn’t even had time to change his casual graphic tee from a cartoon he liked, simply tossing his maroon jacket over it before heading out at his mother’s behest. He wasn’t one to say no to her, but it had been hours since he’d shown up here and he was no closer to figuring this out than he had been this morning.

Suddenly his phone buzzed, displaying the familiar beaming face of his ex-girlfriend close up to the camera. A toothy grin erupted as he picked it up, holding the phone up for a video feed. “Heya, Starship.”

“Hey, Tom!” Star beamed into the camera. “How’s it hanging? Long time no see. So,” she rambled out in one breath, “I may have a teensie weensie wittle problem.” She backed up to reveal her hair in complete disarray, sans horns, and black marks all over her light blue dress. Before Tom could even ask the question, her other hand held up charred fragments of her headband. “Someone still hasn’t learned how to use an Earth oven properly!” she forced out through gritted teeth.

“Look, gurl, I said I was like, so sorry! All the Cloud Kingdom kitchens are powered by glitter and horn blasts, like that’s just how ovens are supposed to be, that is all I am saying here,” Ponyhead’s indignant voice chimed in from behind, punctuated by a snort.

“Anyway, we just finished putting out the fires and I need a new headband and their website says they’re almost out of stock and I’ve wanted to show Marco around the Underworld for a while and- wait, is that screeching in the background? Where are you?”

Tom shuffled away from the elder demon still writhing on the floor and cleared his throat. “Just in Grandpa’s study trying to find something for my mom, she really wants it today. I don’t know if I can go- but I can still send the carriage for you guys, if you want.”

“Do you need help with that?” Marco inquired as he peeked his head into the frame, casually wrapping an arm around Star.

“Naaaah, no big deal,” Tom shrugged. “You two should go, though! I can just fly over whenever I finish this.”

Star and Marco looked at each other hesitantly. “Alright,” she said. “Carriage to our house in maybe five minutes?” A fire alarm went off behind her followed by a scream from Ponyhead and an even girlier one from Marco. “Maybe ten,” Star sighed, burying her face in her free hand.

“You got it,” Tom chuckled.

“OK, bye!” Star said with relief before hanging up. He rolled his shoulders from inside his jacket and ran his hands through his hair before stepping into the main foyer, taking advantage of the space to summon the carriage and its horses, the incantations coming effortlessly to him. Demons had been fortunate enough to retain their powers on Earthni, but the location underground and the relative lack of portaling methods available left them even more isolated than previously. While most of the other kingdoms had dissolved or integrated into a loose coalition of government covering all of the Echo Creek area, the Underworld had been content to stay completely under the banner of Lord and Lady Lucitor, and Tom found himself pitching in more and more in his role as Prince. In truth, he would have appreciated the company his friends were offering, but he knew how much it had meant to Star to be able to give this life up, and he didn’t want to drag her - either of them, really, considering Marco had earned an official title on Mewni himself - back into the boring thick of regal errands. Was Prince Thomas Draconius Lucitor really going to let some stuffy old book collection get the best of him? Hah, as if.

With a flick of his wrist, the half-demon shuttled the carriage to the surface in a pillar of flame, barely looking and instead pulling out his new phone. He was still getting the hang of the new and improved Reflectacorp’s Earth tech integration, but he’d at least learned how to open yesterday’s text conversation thread from its new message notification.

Janna: anti-gravity potion attempt 4 failed. affected bottle glass itself and launched into sky. note to self: work under roof. star and marco’s suggestions didnt work either. not all bad though, it went towards cloud kingdom lol

Tom: careful, don’t hit pony’s ego and make it fly even higher ·;) btw pony + starco are going shopping in underworld soon. im stuck working for mom though.

Janna: stores r lame. even in underworld. and srsly dude u gotta stop using starfans dumb name for them. otoh it bugs them so actually nvm go 4 it

Tom: it was mine first >·:( it saves letters when they’re together!

Janna: which is always

Tom: exactly. speaking of which, they’re here ttyl

Star stepped out of the carriage in a nice white polka dotted green dress, quickly followed by Marco, the pair’s fingers remaining intertwined until they gave him a hello hug, and Tom honestly wasn’t sure they’d stopped holding hands even then. Ponyhead burst out a moment later with her phone floating in front of her pointed at herself, and she was in the middle of a monologue to no one in particular.

“-so yeah anyway as you all can see we have now arrived in the Underwoooorld. So yeah this is, like, basically the best place on all of Earthni to go shopping as I’ll be showing you today. Oh yeah, I guess some demon boys live here too. Oh my goodness, say hello you guuuys,” she rolled her eyes as she butted in between Star and Tom, side-eyeing him for a split second before grinning back into the camera. After all this time Pony still hadn’t dropped the passive aggression over his and Star’s messy history; Tom had to admit it was a bit understandable, but did she really have to keep it up in such an annoying way? He rolled his eyes - it was Ponyhead he was thinking about here. “OK, the Ponyhead Experience will be taking a short break. Tune back in soon! Love y’all, buhbye!” She snapped the phone shut and caught it with her tongue. “Ugh, why do all of my vlogs with you dorks get like ten times as many viewers? Tom, you were in the shot for like three seconds and do you know what happened? 2000 more people tuned in! What the heck! It’s like, just because I have one less horn and one less eye I’m not exciting to you? But I can’t stay mad at my adooooring fans.”

“Must be the Lucitor charm.” He flashed a toothy smile and a pair of finger guns at her, accidentally flinging his phone across the room in the process. “Totally planned,” he blurted out with a much less authentic grin. Marco chuckled and picked it up, handing it back and patting him mock-sympathetically on the shoulder while holding back a smirk.

Star giggled but tapped her foot impatiently, looking around the room nervously. “OK, great catching up, but on the way here I checked the website and the headband shop is almost out of stock! We have to go, now! Let’s move it, people! Tom, can we borrow the carriage for the day?”

He shrugged nonchalantly. “Fine by me.”

“Thankyouthankyouthankyou, you’re the best!”

“You sure you don’t need anything?” Marco inquired again.

“You heard the girl, Marco, my audience wants to see us get our shop on!”

Tom blew a raspberry, pushing them towards the carriage. “Relax, it’s nothing. I’m practically done already! Tooootally almost done!”

Marco finally relented, nodding his assent. Star was bouncing up and down so much that she looked ready to launch around the room. He giggled as she wrapped both her arms around his middle and kissed his cheek before hauling him the rest of the way into the carriage. “C’mon boo, mama needs a new pair of horns. Plus we can get whatever you need, too! I saw a few things in the catalog that would look preeeetty good on you,” she sing-songed, walking two fingers up his chest to boop his nose after they plopped down onto the seat together. Ponyhead mimed vomiting at Tom, who silently laughed in response; they were so engrossed with each other that Tom was fairly certain they wouldn’t have noticed even if he’d shouted his laughter, though. He blankly stared at the spot the carriage had been for a few seconds after it exited in a blaze.

“Pretty gross, right?” Tom started and launched a fireball in the direction of the voice, hovering away from the intruder. A split second after, his vision caught up with his instincts and saw Janna in her usual green shirt and beanie and yellow skirt, sans jacket, nonchalantly sidestep the flame. “You do the same thing every time, you really need to work on that,” she chided with her arms crossed and a devious smirk on her face.

He rubbed his temple and gestured at her in sullen disbelief. “How did you-”

“Roof of the carriage.”

“Huh.” An eyebrow up in surprise, studying her expression. “You never usually, you know, answer that.”

She shrugged, kicking a boot into the hard stone floor. “Whatever, guess I’m just bored. Besides, half the reason I do that is to get a rise out of Marco,” she slyly snickered, and Tom couldn’t help but join in. “Alright, demon boy, what adventure are we going on today?”

Tom crossed his arms apprehensively. “Just trying to find a book for my mom, not really much of an adventure.”

“Like I said, dude, I’m bored and shopping is dumb. I don’t mind hanging out here for a study session or whatever, your family’s got great taste in decor.” She picked a skull off the ground and tossed it back and forth between her hands. He grinned back at her, grateful for the company. “So what kind of creepy curses are in this book?”

The pair started walking back into the study as their conversation continued. “Don’t think there are any. It’s called ‘Historia Homewnum’, according to my mom, so it’s probably a history book but that’s all I know.”

“Darn. Demon history’s bound to be pretty cool, though.”

“You’d be surprised how little actually happens down here, it’s just a lot of maintenance. Last month the most important thing I did was a ribbon-cutting ceremony at a new boba cornshake shop, it’s really caught on here since the Cleaving. But man is it good! Marco was right, the little pearls are just so tasty, I like the creamed corn version best.”

“What is it with you and corn, seriously...” Janna shuddered.

“Don’t knock it ‘till you try it.” He knew he’d gotten distracted thinking about the delicious creamy beverage, but that didn’t seem like an adequate reason to look so horrified, especially coming from Janna. Not able to figure out any other reason she might be disgusted by his comments, he got his thoughts back on track. “Really don’t know why she wants this thing so much. Anyway, I already checked the entire study for it, and the search archives don’t have anything either. Oh well, what can you do, might as well just give up and-”

“Found something,” Janna piped up, somehow already in the computer chair with her feet on the desk.

“Really? How?” he asked incredulously, throwing his hands in the air for emphasis.

“OK, I didn’t actually find the book, but maybe we should check this place out.” He leaned into the screen to see a Mewgle search for ‘how to find weird book in underworld’ on the screen.

“I already tried that, Janna!”

“Yeah, but your antivirus was blocking this link to some place called the ‘Librarinth’.”

Tom slammed his palm into his forehead. “Of course, the Librarinth! How could I not think to look there, that’s where all the oldest books are. Why was it getting blocked?”

She clicked on the link and both recoiled at the sight: an abhorrent patterned background with almost unreadable randomly colored text and low quality cartoon images scattered all around the page. “Yeah, it’s awful,” she said in response to his obvious horror. “Seriously, whoever must made this website must be, like, a thousand years old.”

“Probably , yeah, but why does that have anything to do with-” His eyes widened in realization as he clapped his hands together in contemplation. “Right, humans and their lifespans. Go on.”

“Look.”

She scrolled past the despondent, blurry faces of demons of all shapes and sizes in the staff section until she arrived at the catalog, folding her arms triumphantly. Tom excitedly butted in, typing into the search box and being greeted with a loading wheel. “Uh, Janna? It’s not working.”

“Pfft, yeah, I might actually be dead by the time the search finishes. But that doesn’t matter because they have our book. It’s the header image for the whole catalog.” He squinted and brought his face closer to the monitor, and to his surprise the title was clear as day on the cover of the book, although all the other information was too difficult to make out. “Alright, let’s go. Main page says the Librarinth is on Floor 216.”

With a snap of his fingers, the demon elevator was summoned into a bookshelf much as it had been the day they had dealt with the Blood Moon. Relicor’s shrieking, which had slowed to a whimper since they’d left, resumed in full; fortunately they began descending, which quickly put them out of earshot. Tom awkwardly stretched his arms, unsure what exactly to say. She was his friend, yes, but he was never the best at small talk, and Janna being Janna didn’t make that any easier. After long, messy years of broken hearts and misguided feelings, he finally felt comfortable forging friendships, but even though they got along quite well there was something about Janna that made that vibe a lot less effortless than with Marco or even Star. Thoughts of his other friends reminded him of something. “Uh, by the way… how did you even know about the carriage earlier?”

“A girl’s gotta keep some secrets.”

“Pony was posting about it every 15 seconds,” he guessed, calling Janna’s bluff.

“Touché. Every 10, though,” she coolly responded. “Ha, now she’s just flipping out because Star and Marco have way more likes than her selfies.”

“Figured you’d have him bugged or something,” Tom chuckled as he scooted over to get a look at Janna’s screen, and sure enough there was a picture collage of Star sitting in Marco’s lap with tens of thousands of likes and comments already. They were laughing their butts off at themselves in a mirror in front of them with novelty sunglasses, fake mustaches, goofy props, and even a few absurd full-body costumes; Ponyhead joined the fun for a few but just as often butt in trying to take over the mirror by herself.

“Ew, no, I disabled it all months ago. Boyfriend Tom was already too cutesy for me, and you two just had a little flirty fling. Do you think I’d really want to see or hear whatever Star and Marco have going on? They’re, like, deeply in love, or whatever, and it’s gotten even worse in the last few weeks.”

He murmured in tacit agreement. Now that he thought about it, they had seemed even more affectionate than usual, but he wasn’t too keen on uncovering why that might be. The ding of the elevator saved him from any further speculation, and he and Janna stepped out of the elevator into the lobby, which was empty with cobwebs coating most of the weathered stone walls. Janna looked at him with a quizzical expression. “Anyway, so the Librarinth is basically a combination of a library and a labyrinth-”

“Right, I got that,” she curtly retorted.

“The legends say that some ancient librarian demons wanted to challenge any who sought knowledge, so they hid all the books in a giant maze that only the worthy could navigate. But everyone who made it still decided to organize it thoroughly for some reason, and you still had to check out the books and bring them back and all that.”

She ran a finger over the dust on the front counter, and the surface of the desk sizzled in response, causing her to pull her hand back before poking the bubbles that formed with a curious smile. “So why is it completely empty?”

Tom rubbed the back of his neck. “Weeeeeeell, after a few people went missing or insane, everyone realized it really wasn’t a great way to, you know, run a library. Grandpa actually started collecting books to try and get them away from this place. No one really knows what goes on in there, but as far as I know it’s still maintained even though no one uses it. The kingdom stopped staffing the lobby but they could never just shut it down because anyone who tried, well-”

“Went missing or insane. Sounds cool, I’m in.”

“You sure?”

“Dude, you brought me to a wicked hell maze filled with psychotic demon nerds. Maybe there’ll be bottomless pits or a wicked dungeon boss. If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you’re flirting with me, Mr. Lucitor,” she purred, running a finger up his chest and flicking his nose.

“Haha, very funny. And it’s Prince Lucitor,” he sarcastically chided, poking her arm in response before crossing the room with her following, but he couldn’t help but hide that he was flustered. Seeing Star and Marco’s relationship in the past year had reinforced his already-firm convictions about romance: he wanted someone with whom he could be life partners in all ways, not just handholding and rooftop picnics. Otherwise, what would be the point? He’d made that mistake enough times, and even just a light jab at the notion of him casually flirting struck made him feel self-conscious about that past. Finally his reflection was halted when he found what he sought: a large wrought iron door furnished with ornate demonic symbols and various carvings of mythological creatures dwarfed them both. With a soft, steady flame for light, he brought his hand up and ran it over the rusty engravings. He jumped back with a gasp as the fire spread into the lines of the door, lighting up the patterns on it and causing it to creak as it slowly opened.

“Nice,” Janna muttered in awe before strolling inside, with Tom hesitantly following. She was the most eager of their little group to dive headfirst into the unknown, even more than Star most of the time, but he trusted her gut.

They started walking down the long, cramped hallways, hearing only the sound of their own footsteps on the cold floor. Janna peeked her head into a small doorway that appeared to their left, earning herself an explosive blast to the face and getting knocked onto her butt. Tom slammed the door shut and leaned in to read an inscription next to it. “Incinerator for any books too damaged or damaging for further use. Probably not the right place.”

Janna huffed, brushing herself off and finding scraps of paper among the char. “I can see that. Seriously, what kind of labyrinth labels its doors?”

“Maybe one run by book nerds,” Tom offered, gripping her hand to help her up.

“So it’s just as bad at being a labyrinth as it is a library. Neat. Great adventure.”

Tom pressed on, keeping his focus ahead of them. “Hey, I’m just here to help my mom. You’re the one that said you were fine with anything.”

“Fine, fine. Just saying, I could be working on my potions or something.” She pulled a glass bottle full of purple liquid from her skirt pocket and casually tossed it at a wall. Janna snickered at Tom’s yelp when it shattered, but found herself joining him in backing away when a chunk of stone quickly deteriorated and slammed into the ground at incredible speed. She went over and carefully kicked a pebble, finding it impossible to even budge. “See, this was just a stupid pro-gravity potion. Worthless.”

He leaned against the stable wall opposite the hole, sighing. “I’m sure there has to be something interesting here. What if we, I dunno, make it a competition or something?” His frustration with both the situation and Janna were there, yes, but he still wanted to try and get something fun out of the day.

“Go on,” Janna said, eyes flickering up from the bottle that she was tossing between her hands nonchalantly.

OK, maybe he should have thought further ahead. His arms flailed as he scrambled to come up with an idea. “OK, so, uh, whoever finds the weirdest thing in this place in the next hour wins. Just call them out if you think you found something. Or whoever finds the book, whichever comes first, yeah. Mom still needs it.”

“Momma’s boy. I respect that. You’re on, Tom.” Janna cocked an eyebrow, staring at him for a second before pushing off the wall into a sprint, opening the first door she could find. “Empty. Another empty. Three empties, dammit.”

Tom used his flight to travel more smoothly from door to door on his side of the corridor, but still found himself losing ground as he took the time to read the sign posted by each threshold. The ‘Demonic Studies’ room had a very ornately ghoulish aesthetic, with macabre skeletal models throughout. Definitely something to show Janna on the way out just for the aesthetic, and it’d have been weird for most humans, but it wasn’t any more abnormal than what the two of them were used to as a daily routine. Another room for astronomy had an exquisite planetarium dome, but it turned out to be rather useless as the Underworld did not, in fact, contain any stars since it was underground. There was, however, a plentiful selection of guides to stalactites stocked on the shelves. The next four whole sections were devoted to anger management self-help books, which only made him waste precious seconds cringing at old memories.

His pace picked up as he kept going from door to door finding nothing but normal library fare, although he had to admit it was certainly well-maintained. On any other day he might actually enjoy some of the things here, but today he was on a mission to get out of here so they could actually have fun elsewhere.

‘Bookworms’... now that had potential. What sorts of hybrid creatures could lurk behind the inches of wood? “I think I might have found something!” he shouted, throwing open the door only to receive a harsh shushing. Within were only elderly demons in cozy sweaters reading by candlelight, all now glaring at him with an intensity that reminded him of his mom’s own rare reprimands. “Never mind,” he loud-whispered back out into the hall as he gently closed the door and found Janna in a nearby corridor. “Ugh, why is there nothing interesting here?” Sparks trailed behind him from his mounting anger as he paced.

“Tell me about it, even ‘Wormbooks’ was just a bunch of regular novels, somehow,” she sighed. “I was hoping for a big long chain of open books slithering around on the ground, now there’s a party.” She slumped down against the wall next to the streak of flame he’d left on the ground, idly stamping it out with her boot until Tom sat down beside her.

“Wouldn’t a wormbook be the opposite? A big fat worm in the shape of a book?”

“Nah, it’d totally be a book made of a bunch of little flatworms all working together, duh. Still pretty lame.”

OK, now he knew something was up with her. “Janna, is- is something wrong?”

Her body slouched further down until she was almost horizontal on the cold floor, staring ahead of her like a zombie. “Being weird has just felt so pointless lately. Everything’s weird now, all the time! I’m wasting all my time trying to brew potions when there’s a shop that sells them on every corner. I got so bored that I even passed that same dumb test Marco did and now I’m done with high school, like, for real this time.”

“Hey, don’t be so hard on yourself, that’s pretty impressive.”

“It’s easy if you know who to blackmail.” Tom blinked a few times, not sure why he’d expected anything different. “Everyone else is moving on with their lives, but I’m still feeding the same old possums and picking up the same old tennis balls. The whole point of my routine is that it’s different, it’s me, it’s my Jannanigans or whatever Star calls it, but it’s just not the same. I’m still into all that stuff, and Earthni’s actually really cool, but… ugh.” With that, her head fully sunk to the ground.

Tom brought his palms together over her head, opening and shutting his hands while wiggling his fingers around. “It’s a wormbook,” he said hesitantly, not really sure what he was doing. It was silly amusement, but perhaps that was just what she needed right now. Janna frowned and rolled her eyes, so he snapped at her arm with his hand puppet wormbook a few times.

“Alright, I get it,” she barked out, but her sullen demeanor slowly cracked under the onslaught of frivolity as she sat back up with an unusually ponderous look at him.

“Remember that time you took me bootsledding?” She nodded. “You told me that I needed to find a life outside of Star, and- and it was really great advice. Didn’t mean I still couldn’t like spending time with Star or anything, heck, I still do! But I just needed to get out of that rut of depending on it. Maybe you just need to do that, too. If doing your weirdness by yourself is normal, then adding something normal might be kinda weird.”

“That’s it.” Janna leapt to her feet, looking very suddenly invigorated. “That’s it!”

“Well, uh, glad you liked it. It was nothing, really, just trying to be a good pal-”

“Yeah, yeah, that too,” she waved dismissively, and he couldn’t help but feel a bit scorned. “If weird is normal then normal is weird. We were looking for the craziest things we could find here, but everything that should have been weird was normal, so we should be looking for the most painfully boring room here!” All three of Tom’s eyes blinked a few times as her words sunk in. Could it be…? “Tom, over here!” He hustled over to a particularly plain wooden door. Janna pointed at the plaque on the wall, which was far more faded than the others had been. “Look. ‘Government Records’.”

A burst of energy coursed through Tom’s blood, sparking life in him once more, and he could see the same reflected in Janna’s determined brown eyes. “And the book Mom wanted has something to do with history. Maybe it’s political history! Janna, you might be a genius!”

“Pfft, ‘might’. Now we just gotta…” She grabbed his arm, aiming it at the door, and he looked at her incredulously. “C’mon, dude, who knows what’s behind there. We’re gonna bust in with a demon blast, duh. Pew-pew!”

He rolled his eyes, but the corner of his lip turning up in a begrudging smile gave away his agreement. The pair aimed at the door and blew it off its hinges before charging in through the smoke.

“I see you two have finally solved the grand riddle of the Librarinth!” A deep, booming voice greeted them from the smoke. “Janna Ordonia, Thomas Lucitor, you certainly took your time. I expected you to book it here much more quickly. No matter, for this room shall be your tome!”

“How do you know my-” Janna stammered.

“Uh, don’t you mean tomb-” Tom started at the same time before realizing the wordplay and groaning in misery. Wait a second… Epic threats, an obvious personality quirk…

“Dungeon boss!” the teens cheered together, glancing back and forth between each other and the remainder of the room in front of them obscured by shadow.

“It is I, the bookkeeper of this place. I guard the most sacred treasure of all… knowledge!” Paper rustled loudly, echoed throughout the cavernous space, far taller and wider than Tom had noticed when they first entered with a massive array of bookshelves many times taller than him in a single row near the back wall. The ground beneath them began to shake and Tom tossed a puff of light in front of him, exposing the wide chasm that had just opened up in the ground, swallowing all the shelving in the room. Neither were prepared for the sight that greeted them: a coiled mass unfurled from the abyss and slithering with purpose along the ground, finally raising itself up to stand at fifteen feet tall, swaying back and forth with enough force to create an artificial wind within the space. A closer look showed that the body was made of some peculiar segments of… books, of all shapes and sizes. The volume at the top of the chain was much larger and far more ornately embossed than the others, and on the blood red surface of the cover Tom could make out a set of eyes. As the picture became more and more clear, he could finally see what they were up against. Now THIS is a bookworm.

“Aren’t libraries supposed to be, like, public and free?” Janna blithely inquired.

“You are correct, child, but perhaps try reporting that to your friend there! The Lucitor family is the sworn enemy of this great Librarinth! That fiend Relicor pilfered our collection for his own use for millennia, and the rest tried to shut this place down for good. But worst of all, in the most egregious display of contempt I have witnessed since the dawn of writing itself… Prince Lucitor and his ilk have amassed twenty-six dollars in unpaid fees!”

The tension in the room nearly evaporated in a heartbeat as Tom and Janna paused momentarily before bursting out into raucous laughter.

“Seriously, dude? I could just, like, repay it.” He fumbled in his pockets for his wallet for a moment before being interrupted once more.

“Do not condescend to me, children! It is far too late to make up for these sins with mere currency. Revenge is my fee most overdue, now prepare to meet… Overdoom! I shall harness the power of the written word to spell your demise!”

Books were hurled from the depths of the crevice en masse. Tom stepped in front of Janna to blast them away, but they had taken on a life of their own and homed in on him, covers flapping in the air like wings. Behind Tom, Janna snatched one out of the air to thwart a flank attack. She grabbed his left arm and pointed it up, tapping his elbow frantically. He spared a glance and saw the paper tornado coalescing, and understood her intention. Demon flames surged out of both hands with Janna calling the shots for the left side and Tom focusing on his right. They used the opportunity to back up to a wall, letting them cover every attack vector but creating a stalemate they were sure to lose in time as the seemingly endless offense droned on. Overdoom for the time being simply floated out of the abyss, glaring harshly at them as more and more papers kept emerging.

“Wait, Tom, look…” Still using his hand, she pointed to a shelf that had fallen at an odd angle and hadn’t collapsed into the abyss. There was a large, torn-up poster on which he could barely make out the word “Historia”.

“That might be it,” he breathed out, starting to feel the burn from minutes of nonstop vigilant defensive demon blasts. Oddly, none of the books in that corner were joining the assault. Almost as if...

“It’s making them magical in the chasm.” Tom’s heart leapt up in his chest at the revelation, hope and adrenaline mixing in his veins to keep him fully alert. But charging in was a suicide mission and they clearly couldn’t win on raw firepower.

“Have you had enough? Are you children yet ready to come scrawling on your hands and knees to a-tome for the sins of your forefathers?” the imposing figure growled, bristling impatiently.

“Did it seriously just use the tome pun again?” Janna griped, running her hands past her eyes and down her cheeks in disgust. “For a word nerd, that’s just awful.”

“Yeah…” Tom absent-mindedly responded. He knew she was right, though. Book, tome, scrawl… even if the creature’s summoning powers were off the charts, and it wielded them with calculated ease, its cocky wordplay taunts left something to be desired. It struck him then: what if they’d been approaching this all wrong? If the battle couldn’t be won by blows, then they had to find another option, and Tom was ready to put his plan into action.

He quickly shook off Janna’s rather tight grip on his arm and stepped forward, mustering up a confident expression masking any fears he still had left. “Nice try, Overdoom. Your words aren’t scaring us. Learn to read the room!”

Its “body” immediately began wiggling violently in the air as it crawled a bit forward towards them. Tom paid careful attention to its back end, which had climbed a few feet out of the ground in the move. “How dare you! Petulant brats!” Literary fire and brimstone rained down upon them with more fury than ever, and the two backed up into a corner which was the best they could do in a room largely devoid of any cover.

“What the hell-” Janna whispered through gritted teeth. Tom wriggled his tail out and waved it in front of Janna’s face momentarily. “Now is not the time to-” She was cut off when a barrage of index cards launched at them with enough force to somehow chip the stone behind them on impact. Tom forcefully nodded his head towards the worm’s tail, waggling his own once again. Her eyes lit up much like his had and she nodded in understanding.

“Come on, is that the best you got? I’ve heard them all before, at least give us something novel!”

Janna stood beside him, and her grimace even managed to spook Tom a bit. “I’d alphabet you couldn’t do better even if you tried!” Not what he would’ve gone with, but hey, if it helped tick Overdoom off then who was he to say no?

“You can talk up a storm all you want, but no matter what volume of air you blow, all I feel is a not-so-rough draft!”

“ENOUGH!” Overdoom’s tail launched out of the chasm faster than either could follow, crossing the room in a heartbeat. Tom shoved Janna out of the way before it wrapped itself around him, dragging him much more slowly towards the abyss. His jacket and jeans mercifully protected the paper edges pressing into him, but it was still a painfully tight squeeze that left him gasping for air. His arms were uselessly pinned inside the embrace as he was dragged headfirst, but their hypothesis had been proven correct as all the books around them had dropped to the ground lifeless.

“Tom!” Janna called out. He strained his head to see she’d removed her beanie and had something purple in her hand that she lobbed at that moment. Through the haze of pain he recognized it as another of her potions. The arc was due to miss until he summoned his energy reserves and redirected it with a weak burst of flame from his boot. Though the glass was durable enough to not melt or shatter, the demonic heat changed the potion into a bubbling olive green milliseconds before it contacted a random segment of the behemoth they were fighting. All at once, its hold on Tom and the rest of its body went limp as it began floating lazily into the air before bouncing off the ceiling a few times like a balloon. Janna ran over and helped Tom up as Overdoom screamed inarticulately from many feet above. They traversed the chaotic mess towards the pile they’d spotted previous. After some digging around, he found ‘Historia Homewnum’ miraculously unscathed and protected by a large, sturdy slab of mahogany that had fallen flat on top of it. “I got it!”

“Cool, potion is wearing off. We need to go.” Janna calmly stated. Twin jets of fire erupted from his feet as he swiftly passed the book to Janna and scooped her up in his arms, carrying them across the room towards the door. After setting Janna down, he hesitated for a moment as she stood in the doorway.

“Do you think I should still pay the late fee? I feel kinda bad and-”

“TODAY MAY HAVE BEEN YOUR VICTORY, BUT TOME-ORROW WILL-”

Tom sighed in resignation with a very unimpressed expression. “OK, yeah, never mind.” And with a quick slam of the door, they were both out scot-free. They didn’t stop running until they arrived back at the elevator. Once inside, they slumped down onto the ground as they began the journey back up to the main surface of the Underworld.

“Woo!” Tom was caught off guard by Janna expressing visible joy, and it was immediately infectious. “Now that’s an adventure. Of course, demon fire is what makes the potions work. Makes a lot more sense. Stupid ink smudge, I burned all those lemons for nothing.” He belly laughed, falling over to the floor and clutching his gut as Janna kicked him in the arm.

“Sorry, sorry, couldn’t help it.”

Her foot backed off after one last good hit. “So now you just have to give that book to your mom?”

“Yeah, should only take a minute. Want to come with?”

“Dude, she’s half a story tall and cries lava. I’d be honored. Oh crud, Pony’s current stream title is ‘WHY Y’ALL CARE MORE ABOUT EARTH TURD AND B-FLY THAN ME?!?!’” Janna showed him the notification on her phone. “That can’t be good.”

Tom pulled out his phone and called to see what was up. Pony picked up after only one ring and didn’t even bother with a greeting as she screamed so loudly that he lost hearing for a moment in his right ear. Her voice carried through the elevator car even without being put on speakerphone. “Yo Tom, why do all my Pony Pals just want to watch those two idiots kiss and cuddle? What is up with that? I even gave my fanbase a stupid nickname, they eat that stuff up, so why won’t they looooove meeeeee?” Business as usual with Pony, it seemed. “An-y-way, this whole shopping spree was amaaaazing, I am all kinds of extra fabulous now. B-Fly and Earth Turd took over the stream cuz the viewers, like, wanted a Q&A sesh but I’m only giving them twenty minutes! Hmph!”

“Might as well just make a whole show about them,” Janna chimed in, rolling her eyes a few times for good measure.

“Wait, demon boy, is Janna there? What the heck have you two been getting up to? Don’t tell me you too are getting your freak on too, I could not handle that T.M.I.-”

Yeah, there was nothing more to gain from that conversation. Tom flipped his compact shut, disconnecting the call. Wait, ‘too’? Did she mean- he shuddered involuntarily. You know what, nope, just not going to think about that one.

“So glad I turned off the cameras,” Janna mumbled, curling up into a ball on the floor, clearly not wanting to touch that whole situation either.

He opted to make contact with the other group via Marco instead - why he hadn’t just done that in the first place, he’d never know - and sent a quick text. “Marco wants to get dinner at the Waterfolk Kingdom in, like, an hour and a half. Apparently Star found some earrings she wanted at the last minute, and Pony got arrested for shoplifting three seconds after I hung up.”

Janna cackled in response. “Let’s just meet them there. My jacket got ripped to shreds by the possums last week, might as well get a new one while I’m down here. Been thinking about changing it up. I kinda like that style.” She lifted up his arm and poked at a button on the sleeve of his own.

“Uh, yeah, sure, I can show you where I got it.” He stumbled over his words, still caught off guard by this new normal-person-Janna. The elevator dinged and the teens began their trek through the Lucitor castle in search of the queen. “So, the Librarinth... we’re definitely going back there at some point, right?”

“Totally, bet’s still not over. We should do this more often, you’re not so bad a friend.”

“You too, and yeah, we should.” Looking back on the day, it had honestly been one some of the most fun he’d had in a while, despite almost dying at least once. Tom still wasn’t sure what to make of this friendship brewing between them, but if it meant more days like this to look forward to? Maybe he could get used to that.

#jantom #starco #svtfoe #star vs the forces of evil #tgg svtfoe #fanfic

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fandomluver-101 · 4 years

Text

Sweet Elite Chapter 8

So I have finally finished playing the last chapter! You would think I’d hate playing a game where I’m in school when IRL college is kicking my ass, but to each their own, LOL.

Anyways, I finished playing it and though I found it enjoyable, I’m not all that sure I truly enjoyed it. I normally don’t make my own reviews of the game and just leave comments on ones posted by others, but I decided to post it because why not!

If you’re interested in a spoiler filled review, just click that “keep reading” below ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓ ↓

First off, I like to write my little fanfics for my enjoyment (I’ve never posted any of them, but I have them in existence via USB lol). I’m probably gonna reference what I’ve written for Tadashi’s arc for comparison, so don’t try looking for them!

When I play Sweet Elite, I also like to record my screen so I can keep track of my choices (and compare what happens to what I wrote). A single playthrough for the first time and this is the longest I’ve spent on a chapter, a whole 2 hours and a half! Not a bad thing of course considering it was a major arc and expected to be on the longer side. But I feel like for the length, I didn’t get much Love Interest interactions because you’re forced to spend fairly equal amount of time with everyone (I played on my Tadashi account first since I had the most AP on that one).

I shall start with things I liked about the chapter, which wasn’t much to be honest?

1 - Tadashi not knowing what the Grammy’s was is hilarious to me (and also kinda sad because that kinda shows how much of a childhood he lacked since the average person would at least know the name!). That whole interaction was nice to see since it showed TadAxel having a non-arguing conversation, but the “Granny’s” was a major highlight.

2 - Neha hinting once again that she might be a scholarship student (because mentioning that scholarship students don’t have to advertise that they’re one is a major thing to introduce and not expect me to run with). And I interpreted how she responded to Karolina supporting Tadashi despite the scandal more of her being a bit jealous because I can only imagine how she’d react if Neha actually is a scholarship student (though Tadashi becoming one himself might soften Karolina up into accepting that your parents’ money doesn’t make you almighty).

3 - Ellie just being Ellie. Lordy she’s adorably terrifying and those are the best short friends to have because they keep you on your toes (and are totally down to hunting for the obscure or raiding Area 451).

4 - Tyler basically being how I felt playing as Scholar because the whole “I’m not doing shit while everyone else is offering something major in their super-awesome ways” was easy to recognize with.

So my first complaint is the convoluted plan to get Tadashi proven innocent/uninvolved in Hiroshi’s yakuza crap. I get the whole lie to the dad to make him think he’s on his side thing since it would get him half of his money back. But what I envisioned in my head and wrote down centered around my Scholar recording the conversation between Tadashi and his dad (which Tadashi did himself, which still makes it a viable plot-point) and them using the script/email from the lawyer and the bank statements of his dad taking all of his money to show him as a victim?

The video idea wasn’t bad and was also something I wrote for my BCP Scholar fanfiction (she’s marketing and PR with her own little company managing social media accounts, so the idea and image control was her main addition to help out). So I don’t know if I’m just being my biased ass self and preferring my solution (release the proof of blackmail, show Tadashi is a victim, have Tegan hack Nakano Corp.’s CCTV/security footage to get timestamps of Tadashi not being present for mafia meetings, have him testify against his father).

None of what was shown in the video could have really proven any sort of innocence to be honest. Tadashi could’ve easily pulled whatever texts and emails he wanted, so unless he showed the one from the lawyer essentially extorting him to testify in his father’s favor, I don’t see how that on its own would have helped with anything.

Adding the recording to the beginning of the video during editing would have been something to warrant all the positive response to the video. I know the recording is used to try and force Nakahoe Senior into giving Tadashi the rest of his money, but it was also the only logical way to prove Tadashi was without a doubt a victim too (and Tegan could easily get the money back himself or there could have been something about the mom, which I’m gonna talk about later in this post).

IRL, people would point out that Tadashi could easily be lying through his teeth about not being involved. So that’s kind of a plot-hole since getting the public to see Tadashi in a positive light is important to getting the school board to let him stay (which was incredibly dumb to me because are you really gonna tell me there aren’t students at the school with openly corrupt/mafia/mob/gangster parents using dirty money to keep their children in attendance???) (yes, Jack, I’m talking about your ass).

I could understand forcing him to step down as student body president since Arlington has the position kinda Anime styled where the president is the face of the school and has an absurd amount of responsibility and power (as proven by Ellie’s story of the previous president and the fact that Tadashi can veto someone getting academic amnesty). Them removing him from office was something I expected (though my fanfic had him helping pick a replacement for the rest of the year since that’s how it was done at my old private school). But not wanting him to attend school even though his family could easily pay for his tuition was very out there to me. I suppose having someone with a negative reputation could reflect badly on a top school, but I’m pretty sure private schools need justifications to expel someone and expelling them based on their parents actions seems very illegal to me.

But anyways, the super computer plot to hack Nakahoe Senior’s information was also very weird to me. I justified it by telling myself Scholar is in a school of super rich, super intelligent teenagers, so maybe the most simple approach doesn’t come to mind (I know first hand that smart people have a tendency to overlook the simple solutions without meaning to). It makes sense to make their own computer to not be traced overall, but the purpose it was needed for didn’t make much sense in the grand scheme of things (because they didn’t really use the information they found, so what was the point of finding it other than being a hundred percent sure on Hiroshi being corrupt?).

And then while I was playing and listening to my commentary, I again was reminded about how confused I was that calling Hiroshi in jail and keeping him on the line long enough to trace the transaction was necessary? Because I don’t think that’s how that works? If it was to track his location, then maybe, but I don’t think Tegan would need Tadashi to keep Hiroshi on the line to trace a bank transaction or get into Hiroshi’s accounts (but that’s me being nitpicky I think).

Then what they found, IE the gibberish in the calendar descrambling to “Yakuza” was a major asspull while I was playing. I wondered why Nakahoe Senior, AKA the Inglorious Bastard and Chessmaster of the arc, would make it so obvious? Let alone actually put that in his planer... If there was a meeting every Friday evening, I figured introducing this would at least lead to something where Tegan finds a way to prove Tadashi wasn’t present or active even phone call wise because he could get the call logs too. Yeah, the emails are important, but wouldn’t footage or flights be better at proving he wasn’t there?

Then Tadashi’s mother, who was never truly introduced, but teased really. It was set up in a way that my fanfic had Nakahoe Senior threatening to setup Tadashi for the fall if she didn’t convince him to testify in Hiroshi’s favor because Alistair mentions how protective she normally is of Tadashi and even Tadashi says that his mom was frantic over the phone. So I don’t know, I was hoping for something with her since she was brought up.

But my major complaint about the story was that Scholar has little influence on what goes on. At first, I thought there would be options based on your Department and maybe your choices during the Department Competition (you pick your concentration during the presentation). Essentially, I was expecting to be asked to pick a task I would do best in (in this playthrough’s case, I expected to be able to help with PR because for the competition, I picked Sociology which is essential in marketing research).

I also expected something similar for others. Business would get to come up with a marketing and PR scheme, utilizing Axel, Karolina, and Neha. Performing Arts or Fine Arts would get to help edit and fine tune the video or make a smear campagne against Nakahoe Senior with Tyler and Raquel. Pure and Applied would get to code with Tegan or build with Ellie. Health Sciences (or any department because you’re Arlington’s Sweetheart) would get to work with Alistair (who knows Tadashi best) and Claire to make Tadashi’s script and showcase him to the world as a victim (which he really is in this situation).

But that didn’t happen. The only things Scholar really does is buy computer parts and talk to Claire and ask her to help Tadashi (and suggest Tadashi ask Neha for help too). Which was a major asspull because during that section before where the group is talking about who should help him write something from the heart, I was expecting (and super hyped for) Scholar to finally have the chance to be useful. They weren’t, not even for Tadashi’s campaigning since all that they did was talk to a few students (which I know is good for campaigning, but not really helpful in the grand scheme of things) (especially because by default, Scholar isn’t good at these things even if you’re in a department that’s necessary). I got really happy thinking Scholar would do anything that justifies them being involved as “human resources.”

Then being thanked for not really do anything but being the spectator and emotional support friend kinda bothered me. I’m all for that and sometimes you just need that one friend that’s good at being a support unit (AKA the mom). But even though Tadashi says that Scholar was his main inspiration to defy his parents, that’s not really helping him do that?

How was Scholar instrumental to anything going on? “Waste a couple hours finding pieces for a super computer, something anyone could search for because you can’t code or build things even if you’re in Pure and Applied,” “Go ask Claire to help Tadashi write his speech only for Tadashi to appear and ask her to himself because she would, by default, help anyways and you’re not good at writing a heartfelt speech (which Scholar technically isn’t, but should be if there were more options or at least acknowledged in this situation because why bring up the whole Arlington Sweetheart thing?),” “Get some rest, you deserve it even though you did absolutely nothing beside deliver the computer parts and suggest asking Neha to help.”

To be honest, Scholar may not be as static/pre-determined as most otome games, but Scholar doesn’t have much variety that actually impacts the story. What you’re good and bad at is already determined (like the essay and presentation; you’re automatically not good at it even if you’re Performing Arts or BCP and interested in things that, you know, require being able to give a good presentation).

I would prefer waiting longer to have more meaningful options than getting something quicker and not really being able to do much. Like during the competition where we eavesdrop on people and see the story unfold, that’s what this chapter pretty much was for me.

#Sweet Elite #SE #Sweet Elite Game #SE Game #sweet elite chapter 8 #se chapter 8 #Sweet Elite 8 #SE 8

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