will holding mike's face when they kiss and mike holding will's neck when they kiss. that is all

some quick episode 6 doodles while I process...you know. everything.

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this makes negative sense, but to me, "oc" takes on a completely different meaning in the context of comics than what it means out in the wild. like there's new characters and then there's writer's ocs. being a writer's original character in the literal sense doesn't automatically make them that writer's oc, and actually, they don't even have to have been created by that writer to be their oc. it's all very diachronic

How much of me is me? (Patreon)

everyday I think about him (Ippolit Terentyev)

On the next episode of Are Maleness and Sadism Interlinked or Am I Just Weird About My Masculinity and Kink

Asuka is a tragic figure, a figure of mystery, a wild card, all because the only thing she wants in life is peace and quiet for herself and to feel in control- yet her secret heritage that may be hidden from her for her own protection and the reality that life is unpredictable and will go on with or without you keep ruining that delusion, that vision of how the world is meant to work to her, and she suffers regardless of what she wants, what she does, and how little she understands anything

She was born into a family preaching peace and balance and order while being a creature of violence, and puts a dozen mental locks and excuses over this truth to justify giving into her impulse for fighting by pretending she's justice when she does it

She keeps trying to build a place of safety but she's using sand and life is a wave that destroys, yet she stubbornly persists rather than give up, not drowned to the point of self centered suicidal loathing like Jin- there's contrast, where Jin is cloaked in death Asuka stubbornly clings to life and humanity as a normal person in a terrifying world

She's not a fucking narrative clone for Jun's own purpose, Asuka's purpose must be determined by Asuka herself

why is everything (showing other people respect. being patient and kind. not flying off the handle about stupid things. emotional regulation and self-control. et cetera.) so easy when I'm not around my parents and so so so so hard when I AM around them?

ok i have a LOT of thoughts about the last post (i'm sorry this is gonna be quite the ramble):

first off i'm very curious to know like what people's takeaways were from the conversation. do we feel like erwin was in the wrong for running away from things, do we feel like frankie was in the wrong for lashing out/making it all about her, or do we feel like neither are in the wrong and it's just an unfortunate situation on all sides?

for me, all 3 kinda hold true at the same time. my main focus with this scene was establishing that they're coming at this whole situation from different places. with everything that's happened so far, frankie still feels like it's all happening to her, an inconvenience to her, and can't really acknowledge that she's had an active role in the way things have played out.

personally i feel like erwin's retreat is justified. we know from his and frankie's earlier conversation about the history of strangerville that he's aware of the more sinister happenings but is just trying to live his life in spite of them, and acknowledges that he's actually quite scared of the roswells/biosim tech. he did take frankie to the lab, which was a big step outside of his comfort zone, but getting her to the door was as far as he was willing to go. then everything happened with jill and he got so caught up in the possibility of achieving his ufology dreams that he stopped thinking about the potential consequences. so his conversation with meredith was a bit of a reality check for him.

where he could've helped himself, though, would've been to at least try and explain what happened to frankie or cahill. but also tbh frankie especially hasn't really shown him a lot of compassion so far, so i don't totally blame him. if she had been gentler in the moment and created space for him to explain his decision, he might not have shut her out.

ok but ALSO, frankie's moment of "i need your help" is also a big step for her. even though in her mind she's still "owed" erwin's help, she can't often admit that she does have to rely on other people sometimes. bittersweet tbh that she was finally able to voice that but it didn't change erwin's mind... that probably won't help her immediate character development...

if you're walking at 5mph, but your feet are on sideways, and the sky turns green at 2:53, and Keanu Reeves has been sent to Neptune, what's your favorite video game

i cant walk 5mph in the first place, im only 5'4 and i have to walk like marvin the fucking martian everywhere i go

if my feet were on sideways i would still manage to get my shoes on wrong because i cant tell my left from my right

if the sky turns green that means every single car on the road is allowed to go at the same time

keanu reeves cant be sent to neptune with an expired passport

my favorite videogame MIGHT be professor layton and the diabolical box just because ive never been able to get over the ending, but mario galaxy and deltarune also come to mind

hmm

i keep thinking about how “is this what justice means to you, answer me neuvillette”, despite having been used in a case all those hundred of years ago, was probably a question that haunted - and still haunts - neuvilette during the entire time he has been chief of justice. i keep thinking about how they highlighted his struggles through time with both carole and wriothesley's trials. how guilty and powerless neuvillette must have felt for not being able to support and save those he recognised as vulnerable and victims before a system that corrupted their fates but that he wasn't able to change despite his position. the theme of being a casualty of a system no matter if you're the victim or the perpetrator in its eyes. the way neuvillette took, in both cases, things into his own hands. even if it was too late to fix the hurting carole and those who cared for her went through, even if it was too late to save her life; even if it was impossible to change wriothesley's past, his verdict and subsequent imprisonment; neuvillette went above and beyond, making use of his influence, to allow both melusines and wriothesley the opportunity of a better future - to melusines by making sure they weren't discriminated, to wriothesley by supporting his attempt at a second chance in life. i think part of the reason he's so intriguing is our awareness that this internal conflict he's bound to have is so complex. you have a chief of justice, or a judge, that is supposed to be imparcial and follow the law stictly confronted with situations of social injustice, unable to protect those who rely on him. you have someone who understands better than anyone what it means to be an outcast, being able to relate to those who are ostracised and have their pain weaponise against them. you have, in vautrin's case, a friend who cannot even showcase his own pain and is still expected to fullfil his juridical duties despite being personally related with those involved in the case. someone who people constantly turn to but whom he feels like he has no right to turn to himself. it's about the conflict between his feelings and his duty, between what's expected of him and what he can actually do. i think that's why the end of his story quest is so emotional and why it's so heartwarming to have him realise he isn't an outcast anymore, that he has a community there for him too. because a system is a system and he will probably never be able to save everyone, because yes he isn't human, but it doesn't mean he doesn't deserve to belong or that an active demonstration of love towards individuals and people he can relate to rather than the theoretical concept of humanity isn't meaningful. in fact, i'd it's a lot about that, about finding ways to be kind and how community gives meaning to life; how personal relationships and targeted kindness can shape society, or at least i think so

so my family’s got the funeral on (they’re not royalists), and while i’m not watching the ceremony, i did catch bits of the procession to the abbey. and i just...

look. i knew it was gonna be ridiculous. but i didn’t expect it to feel unsettling on two different fronts.

first there’s the obscene wealth and pageantry of the crown. ordinary people had their funerals cancelled today, out of ~respect~, and all i can think about is how much time and money those people had to pay in the middle of a cost of living crisis, that will now have to be done again because of rescheduling. there are people who might not be able to attend those rescheduled funerals because they could only get time off work/school for the original date. all of these ordinary people having to make time for logistics in the midst of their grieving. meanwhile, one family gets to take precedence over everyone else, on an unimaginable scale.

it’s insane to me how many people there were for the queen’s procession. not people attending the funeral, just people following the coffin to the doors. and all of these servicemen looking like robots, everything in perfect sync, from their steps to the goddamn removal of their hats.

but then there’s also the frequent close-up shots of the coffin. and it’s like. don’t get me wrong. i have no sympathy for the woman who was an active participant in the colonialist horrors that this country inflicted on the rest of the world.

but there’s something deeply grotesque to me about her funeral being a televised spectacle. especially with how many close-ups there are of the crown on top of the coffin. really hammers home, quite unintentionally, how utterly unnatural it is to elevate one family over everyone else. millions of people stamped down, and the people at the top are reduced to symbolic objects. whichever way you look at it, humanity loses.

Hrmm... Revising my game and I feel like there's still sooo much writing left to do, for something that probably won't even amount to much, so.. I do want to narrow my focus more (especially given my health problems seeming to get worse/less energy the past few years), but I'm not sure how would be best to...

I currently have 5 characters as the Main ones with full planned questlines and such, with each character having 6 quests you can do for them. But I haven't really started the writing for the 5th main character. So then I was thinking, if I were going to write 6 full quests worth of content anyway... is it better to allocate that time on just doing a Complete 6 Quests for ONE single character, OR would it be better to do something like.. choose THREE side characters and do 2 quests for each of them? So that people have a wider variety to interact with and sort of sample around (of course with the idea that, once the first version of the game is released, IF people actually care about it enough to make it worth the effort, I would then add additional content to complete those 3 characters stories as well)

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SO... If you were playing an interactive fiction sort of game centered around talking to & doing quests for a cast of characters (like there's no larger plot, more it's just about interacting with people, every character kind of has a self contained story, the focus is just learning about them and the world and exploring the area) --- Which would you rather have?

(and of course it would be stated up front which characters have only partial questlines, so people don't expect them to have full quests like the others and then get disappointed, or etc. etc.)

Basically, is it better to just focus in specifically on having one fully complete questline? Or for there to be a few stories that are not complete yet, but have more initial options available?

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