how about that uhhhhh Fantasy Julie. she gets her sword <3 no one can take it from her <3
rambles:
SIKE you get an extra, lower quality doodle
SIKE AGAIN here's the rambles
yeah... i caved and gave her a tail... I'm Not Sorry! it's cute! i wanted to stick with her sorta flower motif - it's stronger in her princess look, since I imagine that when she was part of the royals she was very blatantly flower power based. it was her Thing!
but a Julie free of her noble shackles... she deserves her big sword. like yeah, she has flower magic, but who needs it when she has a Giant Blade??? on the royalty vein, and if we're classifying "rainbow monster" as a species, i feel like horn size/curve would be a status symbol of some kind. maybe Julie would have kept her horns filed short. but if she ran away from that life... longer horns! i like to imagine that they'll keep growing until she has a pair of Extra Weapons attached to her head! curved forward like mammoth tusks maybe!
i imagine that like Frank, she goes with minimal armor - range of movement over protection, yk? some scale mail over her front, a thick leather flower over her chest w/ scalloped leather pauldrons, wrist armor and metal knuckles! i'd think that the faux-suspenders include a back sheath for her sword... i wish i'd thought of that Before i finished the little ref! i don't feel like going back and editing!
i imagine that she was forced to cut her hair when it got caught in something (a gelatinous cube, mayhaps). it didn't look good! don't let anime and Mulan fool you! cutting your own hair with a blade will not look nice! but someone - Eddie, probably, he's good with scissors i'd assume - cleaned it up for her. and hey, it didn't look bad! plus, Julie probably liked being able to just tuck up her long strands into her hat when she's feeling a bit more like a Julius than a Julie!
it's been a fun challenge transforming their canon outfits into a similar variation with fantasy flavoring and twists! i want them to suit the setting but still maintain Themselves! Julie's was tough i gotta admit. i was messing around with the princess look and the fighter look side-by-side. it worked better when i sat back and thought "fighter Julie is Julie unrestrained. that version would be more aligned with her canon look"
i wanted her princess form to look Restrained! she has to be a ~delicate flower~, a noble woman, pristine and poised and very much a princess. soft colors, poofy clothing, bright white gloves that are not to be sullied. carefully bundled up hair! jewelry! that dress must be Heavy and hard to move in! her tail must be so cramped under there!
but Julie Unleashed? violent pinks! rose gold accents! short skirt so that she can sprint and Kick! fun boots that she can be active in and delight in watching them get dirty! her hair is free to whip in the wind and get caught in things! fun straps and Deadly Accessories! a sword that she stole from the royal armory on her way out the window! she has forearm wraps both to match Frank and to support her wrists!
So when a ghost becomes injured, they have a last ditch defense where they retreat into their core. And I mean, injured badly where their body is rip apart to the point they can’t hold a solid form anymore. And they basically go into a hibernation state until they are strong enough to form again.
Ellie, Danny, and Dan are all injured in a final battle against the GIW. The organization was destroyed and the ghosts were safe but the halfas ended up being so injured that they reverted to core form and then went to sleep for a bit. When they woke up, they were still weak but at least recovered enough to gain consciousness. And realize…they are in some kind of auction…in the middle of a heist. It appeared that two furries (one in a bat costume and one in a cat costume) were ducking it out. And they…they were a necklace. All three of them had been turned into a necklace with their cores as gems accompanied by sapphires, pearls, and opals. And frankly gorgeous craftsmanship as the metal was crafted around their cores as if to cradle them and the other gems.
Unfortunately, they were too weak to take a form properly, they could still feel the strain on their bodies. But at least they could still communicate through their auras. Then the cat lady punched a hole in the glass container surrounding them and grabbed their necklace.
However, the bat grabbed the other end and it resulted in a sort of tug-a-war. Meanwhile, Danny, Ellie, and Dan were having a back and form commentary on the situation and what they should do. Completely unheard by the other party.
In the corner of their eye, the three halfas finally noticed a third contender. Some kind of clown who was…hold on…holding a gun?! And it was pointed straight at the two fighting furies who had yet to notice him. The ghosts’ protective instincts went into overdrive and they frantically tried to shout, yell, move. Just do something to warn the two but their cries fell on deaf ears. All they succeeded in doing was faintly glow which immediatly caught the attention of the fighting duo. The two turned to look at the strange necklace but right at that moment, the clown fired and a gunshot rang throughout the auction room. Having no other options, Danny and the others poured every ounce of ectoplasm they had to try and phaseshift, making the two furries intangible as the bullets passed right through them, but in their shock, the two jumped away in opposite directions and accidentally ripped the necklace apart. Gems and pearls went flying and the three cores bounced along the ground.
Luckily, the two finally noticed the clown and went to deal with him and his minions who had appeared. Seemingly putting their fight on hold and forming a temporary truce. The three halfas could only watch as the battle finally wound down, ending with the cops barging into the place and arresting the clown and his grunts, the cat managing to escape with half the scattered gems and pearls from the broken necklace along with a few other jewelry pieces (none of their cores though) and the bat leaving through a skylight.
The auction continued and in the end, despite being broken, their necklace seemed to have caught someone’s interest. A man named Bruce Wayne bought up every piece of the shattered jewelry wear. The auctioneers appeared relived that the item managed to sell in the end and gratefully gave it to him.
Bruce had no idea what happened at the auction, but he could have sworn that some of the gems faintly glowed right before he and Selina were shot. If the necklace was some sort of magical item, then he needed to understand exactly what has been brought to Gotham. It was unfortunate that Selena had taken some parts of the necklace but he utilized his vast wealth to make sure all the other parts ended in his possession. Now he would take them back to the mansion for examination.
!!! FLASHING LIGHTS WARNING!!! [IM NOT FUCKIN AROUND!!]
REACHED THE CUSP OF 'THIS MAY NEVER BE ABSOLUTELY FINISHED N IF I DONT SHOW IT NOW, IT WILL NEVER SEE THE LIGHT OF DAY.' SO HERE, A PROJECT IVE BEEN ORBITING AROUND UHH SINCE 2021 OR SO.
It was worse, when I was a kid. I remember the time you caught me telling her 'I love you'. And I can't even remember what you said, but I remember that I had you on your back -- I put you straight on the fucking ground. I was always so much bigger and so much stronger. I got on top of you and choked you 'til your eyes bugged out. I told you that my mother had probably loved me a lot more than yours loved you. . . . Were you ten, Harrow? Was I eleven? Was that the day you decided you wanted to die?
You remember how the fuck-off great aunts always used to say, 'Suffer and learn'? If they were right, Nonagesimus, how much more can we take until you and me achieve omniscience?
I'm never not thinking about this part of harrow the ninth. what a fucking perfectly distilled microcosm of gideon's and harrow's childhood. two children clawing at and choking the life out of each other over the entirely fictional premise that either of their mothers ever loved them.
I wanna know ur Fontaine msq criticisms 👁️👁️👂I’m all ears
I'm not sure if you wanted me to talk about this secretly or publicly but! Here I go!
The TLDR: Fontaine MSQ aestheticised prison, poverty, child abuse, the justice system/court and didn't properly address any of it.
More:
Focalors/Furina has way too much of a sympathetic angle for a dictator who's lets people drown with her inaction.
Neuvillette feels Bad for sentencing some people to death/prison, but that's it. He's one of the most powerful people in Fontaine. If he felt like there are systemic injustices, I.E sending an abused Child to prison, he should be the first person to DO something about it, not just cry and be sad so the audience can be like aw, that's complex character writing isn't it? No it's not! And guilt doesn't absolve you!!!!!!! (These are stuff we deal with in OTCOJ read my fic now /j)
Meropide has children in it, both Sentenced there (Wriothesley) and BORN THERE (Lanoire), and this is just a quirk of the place. Not only that, Meropide accepts prisoners of all genders and crimes. There are abusers and abuse victims in one place. Do you know how bad that is? How much potential for crimes to happen in a place like that— oh wait, Meropide isn't under Fontaine's jurisdiction. If you are assaulted as an inmate it literally means nothing to the court.
Wriothesley had no qualifications when he took over. Depending on how long he lived on the streets, how old he was when he killed his parents, how old he was when he was first taken in by the orphanage, etc, the man might never have more than 4–5 years of formal education. Sigewinne probably had to teach him how to write reports. And do Meropide's spreadsheets. Edit because I forgot to elaborate on this one: This isn't a point brought up anywhere, which is bad, because when poverty and incarceration robs you of a proper education (and the rights to vote in many places too, too, by the way), it reduces your prospects for jobs, reduces many people's ability to get a home etc etc. Wriothesley was just, narratively, Given his position.
Meropide is an industrialized prison, and they portray this as a good thing. Prisoners are paid in coupons for their labour, and this is also portrayed as a good thing.
The One-Meal-A-Day reform was something Paimon gushed about being so great of a perk, that people might want to go to jail for food (could be interesting and reflective of systemic poverty if MHY had brains, but they don't, so I was just Pissed because essentially all Paimon wanted to say was "Prison isn't so bad, but still don't go to prison guys! Prison labour is really hard!"). By the way, in most real-world prisons they are obligated to feed you three meals a day. Because that's how much food a human needs. MHY went with one meal just so they can say "if you want to eat more, you have to work." And then the welfare meal is a goddamn gacha. So imagine you're a starving child who's too weak to work in the fucking robot assembly line, and you wander up for your first meal in 24 hours, only to luck in with a shit one. I'd kill myself.
They wrote Wriothesley, who's a victim of the system, into a guy who's say shit like "I'm the Duke I can do whatever I want" for a cool moment where he choke-slams an inmate (I know he was a bad guy. But also, in copaganda when cops are violent/disregarding protocols, they are always only portrayed to do that against bad guys, so what does our critical thinking tells us about this one?) They wrote Wriothesley, who was an inmate of a prison so bad, so notorious that it is the literal boogeyman of Fontaine, that has a legal (???) fighting pit, with an administrator who abuses his position to be unreasonable, to willingly stay in the place and become an Administrator who would choke-slam an inmate while saying a cool line about how he has the power to do whatever he wants. They wrote him, the guy who had to be fed on the streets by melusines, to think one-meal-a-day was a good enough reform (while he spends god-knows how much on his boat). This wasn't a victim-turns-into-abuser narrative either, they want all this to be seen as positive character growth.
And then, the final kicker is, they gloss over his entire abuse. You can only read about these shit in his profile, which most people don't because they don't Have Him or doesn't care to unlock it/read it online, and they jammed his entire backstory into a flaccid info-dump at the end of his character story quest. This man isn't Allowed to feel abused and neglected and show any reaction to it within the narrative of Fontaine itself, because if they actually Gave Weight to what happened to him, they'd have to confront THE FUCKING JUSTICE SYSTEM they had NO PLANS on criticising. I don't think they ever explicitly said the fucking Crime-Theatre nonsense was Bad either.
I could go on, but this is already so long. But yeah, I hope this gave you an idea.
hi can i just say that while I haven't been there to read your HK fanfiction, seeing you update nailmaster's folly after so long makes me... hopeful? In the 'I also have wips I haven't touched in years but there might still be space for them one day if I get the gumption' sort of way? so, while I'm not really going to be reading it as I know nothing about HK: thanks for updating nailmaster's folly, so cool to see it.
Hey you're very welcome! I'm very stoked it's giving you hope for your future projects. That's a hope you deserve to have.
Honestly, one of the most important things about art that I wish everyone would, at some point, absorb into their creative process, is that everything is allowed to rest. Sometimes the only thing that will "fix" a problem piece is time and distance, and that time and distance is allowed to be long. You're allowed to drop something for 4 years and randomly decide it's worth your time again, and you should be able to have that process without guilt or judgement.
Not to get on the "internet culture is evil" soapbox, but, the idea of the "grind", that every project must be done at once, from start to finish, in a logical order that others can consume and follow from point A to point Z, is untenable for individual creators, especially creators that are doing it just for fun. You aren't a machine. You aren't a writing board churning out a podcast, movie, tv series, comic book set, etc. You're a person finding joy in making art about something you love. The process can be messy. It can make no sense. It can involve long breaks, or deciding you're done with something entirely. Without guilt or malice, you are allowed to wash your hands of something and then decide to get them dirty with it again when you can stand the texture.
I understand there's sadness in thinking you can't finish something, in not knowing how to fix it immediately, or not being able to conjure the motivation to put to physicality something that makes so much sense in your head. Be disappointed, and grieve it, if you must. But never think it was time wasted. No one has ever walked out of their house in the morning without, at some point or another, looking at the world to see what was there. You're allowed to start a project, walk down the road with it, and realize you'd rather look around.
Your Schrodinger's brother tags re: wwx and jc. One of my favourite AUs to have fun with in my brain is WHAT IF Jiang Cheng is the bastard. As in his bio father is Wen Zhuliu. And he somehow realizes this bc mumblemumblen golden core. Very fun position to put JC in emotionally!!! (If he doesn't figure it out nothing changes from his pov so I need him to find out for him to have emotional turmoil).
This is obviously not canon but I find it fun to think about.
tragically i cannot see yzy ever cheating on jfm but this would break everything inside of jc's brain. possibly at the right time it would actually be freeing in a twisted way! there's a cosmic reason he's bad at jianging and his dad doesn't seem to like him. he can just put it all down and stop trying. of course then he had no identity and no place in the world but you know. trade offs.
i watched a compilation of other youtubers complaining about DnP, and when the complaints weren't just "the phandom is annoying," they boiled down to:
DnP are both nice but are aloof/weird/insert other trait that makes talking to them at gatherings difficult.
Phil is nice but Dan's a Bitch who Doesn't Let Phil Talk To Other People (which... Phil is a grown ass man but okay. Maybe he just doesn't want to talk to you but whatever, sure.)
DnP are nice but they queerbait (ig now they're the ultimate queerbaiters since they own a house together lmfao)
DnP are nice but Phil is nicer and Dan is hotter (which,,, I honestly don't know why these clips were included but I'm going to take it as "They're both nice but Dan is more aloof" which is funny because that's a character trait he's said he has for years and as a fellow aloof bitch its very funny to me when people complain about it lmfaooooo)
I'm ngl, the amount of people who were in the compilation just because of the Phandom, or who's complaints boiled down to "DnP are both very nice but very awkward/aloof/stick to themselves" makes me think that they're generally nice and other people just don't understand that not everyone likes talking all the time lmfao
I wish that more English Danganronpa V3 fans knew that in the original Japanese version, Gonta didn’t talk in caveman/Hulk speech. He spoke in normal polite Japanese, only struggling with the meaning of certain words from his lack of experience. He did however talk in third person but Tenko and Angie did as well. In Japanese 3rd person speech works and is used to make characters cute and childish. But in English none of this comes across and instead is just distracting. Its obvious that the NISA translators only kept Gonta in 3rd person to insert weird American humor into the series.
I especially dislike this translation because Gonta is one of the most important characters in ndrv3, especially when it comes to Kokichi’s character arc. Now, instead of being the sweet and naive entomologist who allows the audience to see beneath Kokichi’s mask, he is now seen as nothing but a joke side character.
Which not only ruins Gonta’s entire character but also makes Kokichi’s character and intentions even more confusing.
(No wonder people are confused that Kokichi and Gonta got official Anniversary wine together haha)
To make things worse, they also changed Kokichi’s character by making him more childish and aggressive.(even going as far as changing his sprites on scenes!) I’d say one of the worst mistranslations though was making his whiteboard have “trustworthy?” written below the photo of Shuichi. In Japanese it says something more along the lines of “dangerous?” or “untrustworthy?”. I really don’t know how they messed this up but it was likely because there was a translator who wanted Kokichi to be shipped with the protagonist. The translation error to me was strange because most of his interactions with Shuichi were negative so, to suddenly say that Shuichi was the only one he trusted would feel like a contradiction. It’s also frustrating because, the original whiteboard translation imo implies that Kokichi may have suspected that Shuichi was the mastermind which is SO INTERESTING and gives their dynamic so much more depth.