my very serious writing advice for people who are trying to write more morally complex characters is to stop caring about their morality and focus instead on their individual motivations

it’s hard to articulate exactly what I mean, but the essence of it is basically: when a character does a murder, not only do I not care about whether they’re justified in doing so, it’s straight-up irrelevant. a character’s moral standing from some nebulous universal standard has no bearing on the plot or their interactions with other characters and has no use in the story for me as a writer. what does matter is why the character thought they were justified and then if it comes up to other characters, what they think about it.

you can obviously think about your characters’ morality but it’s not your job as a writer to interpret your stories for your readers and tell them how to judge your characters. your readers can see the evidence for themselves and draw their own conclusions. your job is just to understand why a character is motivated to act in a certain way and have it make sense

focusing on character motivations is a much more versatile framework than trying to give them specific personality traits or moral alignments, and frankly more useful to understand why a character would do a certain thing instead of just what they do. that way when something fucked up happens and your character starts acting differently, there’s an actual logical reason for it that isn’t you forcing characters to do things because it’s what’s required to make the plot go

when you write your characters with the understanding that people are not static and they act differently under different circumstances, complexity in character and morality follows naturally.

LR Characters Retrospective: Pegasus Lance, the Frank Grimes of Saint Seiya

I’ve decided to start a series of posts talking about some of the most important characters in LR. I figured it was a good way to have something to post on my Tumblr account while at the same time giving myself a break from writing LR and maybe do a bit of self-analyzis on characterisation, which I feel is a big weakness of mine, or at least something I struggle with.

I might not make complete blog posts about any given character all at once because, well, I might realise things about my own writing in the future that I don’t right now, so this could be the whole summary of what I have to say about a character, or it may just be the first post and a year from now I might remember something important to add to it.

What better character to start with than my main character, then?

----------------------------------- So, if there’s anything that defines the protagonist of Saint Seiya LR, is that Pegasus Lance, the titular character of Lance’s Role, is an angry little brat with a chip on his shoulder about pretty much everything he runs into, especially if it involves Sanctuary’s obnoxious passivity towards its problems, who thinks he’s experienced the worst the world has to offer and has all the answers. Usually at the tip of his fists, rather than his mouth.

But also, in the words of my friend Zeb, “he gets better”.

So who the fuck is he, anyway? And why should anyone care? Especially Saint Seiya fans?

1. Who the hell is was Lance?

In a strict sense, Lance is the Pegasus Saint operating in Sanctuary just before Seiya. No, I don’t mean in the previous Holy War. That’s Tenma. I mean just before Seiya. Like, by 15 years. Think Chapter Zero times. And Lance is pretty different from both Seiya and Tenma in a number of ways we’re gonna get into later, but first, a bit of history on him

Okay, sigh, this little first part of the post is just me confronting, really quickly, something that haunts me about my main character, so if you don’t want to read a bunch of how much of a bad character Lance used to be, just skip to point 2.

I don’t really get the chance to talk to my readers too often, even my reviewers, but I would venture to guess that, in their minds, the establishing moment of characterisation for Lance (at least discounting the Death Queen Island Side Story that goes deeper into his first month in Sanctuary, depending on whether you’re reading my story on FF.net or AO3) is him returning from his Training Ground in Mount Olympus and beating the crap out of the Master who abandoned him there after two weeks, Kerberos Kastiel, in front of everyone. I don’t even count the first two chapters of LR as establishment moments cause frankly I don’t think they do a good job at showing who Lance is, more so at setting the context.

And what that fight with Kastiel at the beginning of the story establishes is mostly a series of Lance’s flaws:

Is prone to anger;

Takes himself a bit too seriously;

Struggles with social inadequacy (Kastiel calls him out on it, even);

Dislikes authority (he doesn’t even recognise how he’s shooting himself in the foot by this);

Dislikes Kastiel’s dogs, probably because he feels Kastiel paid more attention to them than he did to him (which is kind of true);

Wow, what a hero. An angry, resentful shounen narrative main character with authority problems who solves situations primarily by punching? I know, fucking groundbreaking. Boo-hoo. I get it. Guess what, I wasn’t a creative genius starting out, okay? I was like 18 years old ._. Leave me alone.

I would be lying if I don’t resent my early writings of Pegasus Lance as something heavily affected by my sheltered upbringing. At the late stage of my highschool years, when I started writing, I really didn’t understand the world at large and I sort of resented that fact, because I felt largely it wasn’t my fault that I was an introvert who was never taught how to build his social circles properly. I felt increasingly sidelined in college, both academically and socially, and, like a lot of edgelords-in-the-making, I blamed everyone else for the isolation I self-reinforced.

But really the bigger problem is that Lance’s wasn’t very fun to follow around, at least in the beginning, just as I wasn’t very fun to follow around online and IRL. I didn’t know how to weaponise his character to interesting situations and interactions and the story suffered because of it. It’s something I struggled with for a very long time and I feel it has haunted the appeal of LR to this day.

So I’m not gonna pretend there was some kind of secret purpose to his characterisation that would make sense overtime. No, early-2010s Lance was just a bad main character.

However, this doesn’t mean I haven’t succeeded in making something of him after all these years. In fact, he’s improved so much he can hardly be said to be the same character, and that’s the part I wanna focus on in this blog post.

2. Who the hell IS Lance Frank Grimes, then?

Lance, or rather modern Lance, is the Pegasus Saint right before Seiya. He’s also, as the title of this post says, the Frank Grimes of Saint Seiya.

For anyone who hasn’t seen the countless Youtube breakdowns of “The Simpsons”, or even the hundreds of them dedicated to the famous episode “Homer’s Enemy”, Frank Grimes was a one-episode character voiced by Hank Azaria, a down-on-his-luck hard worker who had to struggle for everything in his life, had comically bad luck and seemed to have an allergy to the insanity of Springfield and its characters. The showrunners described Frank Grimes as “what would happen if one of us in the real world woke up in the world of the Simpsons” and the results are appropriately catastrophic.

Frank Grimes, in a lot of ways, has fascinated a lot of Simpson fans for various reasons. Some people empathise with him, others find his confrontations with the world of the Simpsons hilarious and some just love how singularly dark the episode he stars in is. There’s like a million online essays talking about this episode and IIRC its even been ranked the best-written Simpsons episode of all time.

Personally, I think the reason Frank Grimes is so interesting is because we all, in some way, resent the world of the Simpsons, even if we don’t realise it. Yeah, it’s a comedic cartoon well past its prime, and you’re not supposed to take it seriously, but when you’re as long-running and culturally entrenched as the Simpsons are, you kind of can’t help but feel like it transcends its cartoonish format into something that should get scrutinised for what it’s saying. There’s only so many jokes a jester can toss at the king about his clothes before the king starts thinking that maybe they’re a bit more revealing of what the jester truly thinks of him than he lets on.

Also, I think when we grow up a lot of us just start resenting the worlds of cartoons in general on a deep level, especially satirical ones like the Simpsons, with its cast of immortal, colorful character archetypes that just go on and on about how society is so flawed and people are so dumb, when the reality of a lot of us is that we are just tired adults that don’t have the time and strength to be perfect.

Frank Grimes, in my opinion, therefore represents to a lot of people a sort of “take that” at the Simpsons; a perspective grounded in reality and the stakes of everyday life that resents the impunity of Homer’s bufoonery and the casual excitement of Bart’s life. To some, Frank Grimes is just a humours comparison, but I think to others, Frank Grimes is a catharsis. Just to cement how normal he is compared to these characters, how much he’s supposed to be like us and not Homer, Frank Grimes even dies. And he dies in an attempt to replicate Homer’s behaviour.

By contrast, “Principal and the Pauper”, the episode many point to be the turning point in the Simpsons’ popularity, is an episode entirely devoted to exposing how the world of the Simpsons lacks any consequences to what it does. More interestingly, I remember listening to director commentary about the episode and the developers being baffled that the episode was so poorly received. It’s like the people who tell these stories, and the ones who listen to them, don’t understand the importance of events and trials having consequences to the characters.

“Principal and the Pauper”, in my opinion, wasn’t fabricated by Fox any differently from “Homer’s Enemy”. There’s not any consequences to Frank Grimes’ death to the characters, only to Frank Grimes himself. Homer and his friends even laugh at his funeral. It’s just that the former pulled the curtain on the Simpsons’ episodic formula to the fans’ eyes, because it operated on a character that was part of the show’s main cast, Principal Skinner, who was expected to be part of the episodic formula.

Frank Grimes was always meant to go away. Skinner was not.

3. Saint Seiya  & The Importance of Story Consequences

So, like, what is going on here? Do we really think these cartoon characters are supposed to be real? Should Homer suffer the same consequences Frank Grimes does when he screws up?

Well, no, it’s just that when we invest hundreds of hours into a story, we don’t want that time to not matter.

Lance’s Role is a really long fic. At the time of this writing, it has 1,840,000 words published on FF.net, and there’s 58,000 more currently being betaread by my beta-readers Zeb and Elly to be published over the next month. It takes many, many, many hours of your time to give LR any reading worth of being called ‘complete’.

Now imagine if I wrote all of that and I designed LR to, just like the Simpsons, adopt a total market-capture philosophy about everything and reject the concept of continuity for the sake of being digestible to anyone who might pick any random chapter as their first LR experience? Yeah, sure, for people diving in for the first time, that would be great, and that’s why animated adult cartoons like Bob’s Burgers and the Simpsons were so successful. You don’t need to watch 29 seasons of Homer Simpson to understand and enjoy a season 30 episode.

Conversely, that also means that you can stand to watch 30 seasons of the Simpsons over the course of multiple decades and not have any kind of accumulated common experience in the story between the existing audience, the newcomers and the people writing the episodes.

This is why long-running shows tend to contradict themselves a lot; it’s not that they are poorly written, it’s just that any previous episode of the show might as well not have existed, in the mindset of the people writing them. Past episodes and events are pretty much just reference points for call-back jokes and little else. This is true even to long-running IPs that can count on having fans with long memories, hence something like “Principal and the Pauper” being made. The people who wrote that episode were 100% confident that just pretending Skinner is really Skinner and not a greaser impersonating him, or that Martin has been an adult this whole time, or that the current Fat Tony is really his cousin Thin Tony who replaced him, would be a trivial matter to swallow for the fans.

Hanging out with Saint Seiya fans, I’ve always gotten the feeling many of us have similar, undertoned frustrations to the story that Simpson fans do. Yes, Saint Seiya isn’t satirical comedy with a cast repeatedly operating their shenanigans off the same address in sleepy America. It’s a gritty power rangers action show where people get their ears chopped off and their friends locked inside refrigerators which you then gotta revive with the power of yaoi your body warmth.

But that doesn’t mean Saint Seiya doesn’t suffer the same problems of having a lack of consequences and overtime I definitely start seeing this trend of “things happening but not happening” more and more.

I could write entire lists of examples of this, but that would take forever. Instead, I’m going to name three things which I think exemplify how Saint Seiya mimics the problems of formulaic shows like Bob’s Burgers or even the average Power Rangers’ show.

Example Numero Um!

So, Shun is the vessel of Hades, right? By this point we should all know that? Right? And Shun goes through this whole thing of being possessed by him, and Ikki coming in and trying to save him and failing (cause Ikki fails at everything in his life), and then Saori rescuing him (cause she’s the truly useful character out of the two).

So how come the comfrontation of the Bronze Saints with Hades later in Elysium is all about the relationship between Hades and SEIYA? ￣へ￣

I want you stop here and really think about this for a good minute; the Hades Arc makes you watch 25 episodes, plus 6 OVA episodes, talking a whole deal about how Hades wants to kill Athena, how Shun is his vessel, how there’s all this drama over the Yours Ever pendant, Pandora, the Specters, etc...

And the final confrontation is Seiya yapping about how pretty Hades’ eyes are and some mythical fight the two had in the Myth Era. And what is Shun doing? After helping defeat Hypnos, he gets summarily taken out by Hades and later takes an equal part in a final attack against the god.

Shun doesn’t have any kind of personal resolution about being possessed. He doesn’t even share a line with Hades as far as I can remember. No trauma, no after effects, no self doubt, no curiosity from either Shun or Hades about eachother, it’s like the whole damn thing didn’t even happen to either of them.

Just to drive this even deeper into the dunghole, we are currently in ND, which started as yet another Holy War with Hades, and Shun is still having no apparent consequence to having been the vessel of Hades other than a brief commentary about Alone or something.

Example Numero Dois!

So,... is Seiya ever gonna, like, have a talk with Shaina about what’s been happening lately? You know, between the two of them?

The poor goddamn girl has basically confessed her heart out to this 13 year old kid three or four times, usually by doing something risky like taking arrow shots or standing in the way of a very angry Leo Gold Saint, and every fucking time Seiya takes it all in, nods, and then f***ks right off to go do something else.

I’m not asking for there to be some kind of romantic resolution, cause I know Kurumada and SS in general aren’t any good at those, but I don’t know how these characters keep running into eachother after these moments and not feel all awkward or that at least they have something to settle. Seiya, if you don’t like Shaina back and just wanna go run off after Saori, then tell her! lol Don’t just let things hang in the air so you can count on her throwing herself between you and some rampanging god when you most need a human shield.

I feel so bad for Shaina as a character cause she’s basically a victim of gaslighting. She grew up thinking she had to be this proud genderless warrior, had the object analogous to her virginity shattered on episode one by this dumb kid she despises, has tried to settle the matter ever since often risking her life, has confronted Seiya multiple times about how important it is that he gives her some kind of resolution so she can move the fuck on with her life, and the most Seiya can do is give her a little nod, mutter “Shaina-san” and go back into fighting.

It’s like Shaina’s emotions don’t even matter lol They’re just a joke, a plot device to get minor dramatic sprinkles into a story about punching arrogant aristocrat gods in the teeth.

Seriously, it’s like watching Selma Bouvier try and fail at finding love over and over again. She can never get what she wants from the story, because her status quo as a broken-hearted loner archetype is far more useful to the show’s entertainment formula than actually advancing her character. But from what I hear, at least Selma got Moe at some point? Shaina, on the other hand, is delving into Omega and still a loner picking up Seiya’s slack. Poor fucking girl.

Example Numero Tres!

Last one, and it’s so important it almost got its own topic in this post.

There’s an important arc in the story of Saint Seiya, I feel, that definitively puts it in the same category as a fangless Isekai pandering to you; the Poseidon Arc. Now, Poseidon Arc is notable for one reason; it feels like a filler arc, even though it’s canon. Pretty much nothing of what happens in this arc is of any consequence to the characters, other than Shiryu being blinded again and Hyoga losing his eye, and honestly even these have played so little of consequence in Hades and Next Dimension, that they can hardly be said to have happened at all. There’s also nothing of consequence to the story; Poseidon’s resealing doesn’t affect his interference in Hades’ plans, and the Gold Cloths he sends to help Seiya and his buddies, which could have been sent via some other plot device, get immediately destroyed by Thanatos. Moreover, the anime keeps showing this footage of cities like Paris and New York getting utterly flooded all the way to the neck of the Statue of Liberty while the Saints are fighting in Atlantis? They show tidal waves crashing through skyscrapers and crap, and after the arc ends, these global catastrophes just... don’t mean anything for the world? Like, at least the Greatest Eclypse is just an astrological oddity. You can reason that humans can go “well, that was a weird eclipse” and move on with their lives, but fucking New York being flooded? I mean, talk about the illusion of consequences. Now, lots of people have pointed out to me that Kurumada didnt initially intend to make the Poseidon Arc, that he was going to straight to Hades and Poseidon was sort of a studio-mandated thing. After all, if Seiya is gonna fight the pantheon of Olympus, Poseidon has to come before the dreaded Hades, right? Regardless of the truth, there’s.... motives to think that the Poseidon Arc isn’t that important to define the identity of Kurumada’s storytelling, that he shouldn’t be judged based on its failings, almost in the same way George Lucas shouldn’t be judged for having been pushed to direct Return of the Jedi and put a bunch of teddy bears in it, just cause Spielberg and David Lynch said ‘no’ to directing it. And I agree, leave Grampa Kuru alone, by all means. He just wants to draw teenage boys in spandex wrestling eachother. That’s.... sort of innocent. Moreover, people might point out that maybe the flooding didnt happen in the manga? But honestly, fuck you, cause if that’s what you think, then you’re missing the point of what I’m getting at. And what I’m getting at is that Poseidon Arc codified the modern reality of Saint Seiya; that you can just have repeatable “Holy Wars”, basically 20-episode versions of the four movies, where Seiya and his friends get attacked at Sanctuary, retaliate, beat up a bunch of dudes wearing metal armor and Heavy Metal haircuts, kill/seal some God, pose to a picture with Saori and fade out at the end.

Back to Topic

And I don’t know about y’all, but this atmosphere of nothing ever mattering in a story is intensely frustrating to me, especially because some people can’t imagine why modern audiences just “don’t get into SS”.

Well it’s because the freaking show doesn’t respect its own damn story. Would you enjoy being told to watch 72 episodes of the Sanctuary Arc, and then being told that past that point, nothing of real consequence ever happens to its characters? That Shiryu is going to be blinded again because the author thinks he looks cooler that way and that all time spent wondering if Marin was Seika, Seika was actually hanging out at Rodario with Amnesia?

Would you stick around to watch that? Or would you wish Frank Grimes would show up and slap Hades right in the face?

4. Wait, wasn’t this post about Pegasus Lance?

So how is Pegasus Lance the Frank Grimes of Saint Seiya? How does that manifest and drive the story? Frankly, I don’t dislike the modern Lance. No, seriously. Nowadays, I would venture to say I actually kind of like him. I mean, I would fucking have to, considering the ten years I’ve spent trying to fix this stupid character, but I do feel like I’ve arrived at a somewhat comfortable spot where I can count on readers to somewhat root for him, even if he still does the awkward thing every now and then. Hell, my betareader @jennydevic​ even said that the last chapter I wrote had her cheering for him, even.

So, what changed? How did Lance go from a pity project Gary Stu to a workable main character?

Well, Lance did something I probably should so at some point in my life; he got friends. And a better backstory. And he’s gone through some hardening experiences other than getting dumped by his teacher in a mountain that made him reprioritise some things. They call that character development.

Case in point, Lance learning other people have problems of their own.

I don’t really think one sole thing rescued Lance from the scrap head; it wasn’t singularly telling the backstory with Noah, Death Queen Island or going through the False Holy War or even being nice to Shinta that saved him as a character. Rather, it was the collective complexity of all of that that showed that Lance was capable of a whole new list of traits not obvious from his fight with Kastiel.

Namely, the story reveals the character Lance’s strengths, which I’ll number based on how often they drew compliments from beta-readers over the years:

Has a sense of priorities: Which is different from fairness, that’s more Atlae’s thing (though at the time I can’t discuss Atlae too much because the chapters going into him haven’t been released yet). Lance may not like Sanctuary aristocrats like Gigas or Cetus, but he understands there are bigger threats taking precedence, like the False Specters, without forgetting he has to confront the former problems eventually;

Has a sense of directed idealism: while Lance can be mean to Shinta’s pacifist tendencies, he does not disagree with its objectives, just its methods, and Lance in a way is just as idealistic as Shinta is, even more so for the fact Lance tends to pursue more delineated causes than just the vague notion of protecting humanity (ex: his current personal quest to destroy the Underworld Palaces has nothing to do with the overall conflict between Hades and Athena, but more so with his individual desire to create positive change in Sanctuary);

Secretly cares about integrating well into Sanctuary: for all his whining, Lance does wish he could befriend other Saints, and frequently cites meeting Shinta, Cynthia, Olivia, Dohko and Suisho as important experiences that reshaped his views;

Is extremely supportive of his friends: If Lance understands ceding protagonism to a friend is the key to victory in a crisis, he will do it without hesitation, which is kind of what makes him a natural leader even if he doesn’t acknowledge it

Has a sense of tactical pragmatism: having had to become a Saint without a Master, Lance did not adopt a lot of Saint traditionalism. He has no qualms about employing weapons in combat if the situation is dire enough and will even use numeric advantage if he has to (especially against overwhelming characters like Daemon Lucifer);

Why are these elements important? Well, because they are Lance’s Frank-Grimesisms against Saint Seiya. They are the tension he feels with the world he lives in. People in real life, even knights of old, don’t relinquish using weapons or the strength of numbers when a situation is grave enough. They also don’t just forget about the fact a girl confessed their feelings towards them, even if they are not corresponded, and they definitely wouldn’t forget a little thing like being born the vessel of a God when confronted with that God face to face.

You might say, though, that these are the things that make Saint Seiya Saint Seiya, just as Homer’s bufoonery makes the Simpsons the Simpsons.

If that’s the case, why are you even reading fanfiction? Fuck off and go back to complaining about how Saint Seiya isn’t liked by Americans because a dub was bad or something.

The way these characteristics drive Lance’s Role is that, ultimately, LR is a story about the flexibility of the world of Saint Seiya. I’ve mentioned in a previous post how fanfiction is about expressing perceived potential in an IP and I very much think lance is a useful character for that.

Why? Well because he isn’t stuck in the SS format the way Seiya is.

If you permit me going on another slight rant, Seiya is such an incurious character. He’s part of an old era of shounen storytelling where you could get away with having an unquestioning imp as a lead that never let anything around him affect his life.

The thing is, at least Goku had the excuse of being born in the boondocks of his world. He was a rural character primarily interested in jovial adventure and martial arts. He didn’t care that the world king was a dog man and his primary beef with Picollo Senior was that he murdered Krillin and Roshi, and not necessarily that he took over the King’s castle. The world was almost incidental to him.

But now we live in an era where people want lead characters to ask more questions about themselves and the world around them, or, at the very least, for characters close to the lead to do that, because our curiosity about these worlds has grown so much. Much like with the Simpsons, we have grown attached enough to want to find out more and for events to have lasting impacts in the characters’ lives.

Worse yet, Saint Seiya has the audacity to claim it takes place in our world, in our time, so we can’t even pretend there’s a membrane between ourselves and Seiya’s reality, even a satirical one. The only thing stopping us from knowing more about Seiya’s world, and for those things to be consistent, is that Seiya just isn’t asking those questions for us.

This is because the format doesn’t allow him to. Seiya can’t acknowledge Shaina’s feelings either negatively or positively, because that would remove her as a source of tension in the story. He also can’t find Seika or reconnect with her meaningfully without something getting in the way (like a wheelchair), cause that would rob him of his formulaic motivation.

Lance doesn’t have such restrictions. He is free to form his own opinion on Seiya’s world and make choices that reflect his desires and experiences.

5. Lance’s Tally-Up & Why I love torturing my main character

My beta reader Jenny has often mentioned that sometimes I deny Lance happiness too much. I do things like make him lose a lot of fights, give him a lot of low moments and in the few high moments I give him, I either undercut them or don’t have Lance express a lot of triumphant joy over it. This isn’t me being a “uwu I love torturing my leads” writer type, cause I kinda think that if you feel the need to do that, you’re writing just to show off, especially if you’re going around the web mentioning this.

However, it IS undeniable I do put Lance through a lot. That’s not because I like torturing my characters, it’s just that I believe wholeheartedly that Lance, as a character, stands more to gain with his defeats than his victories. And because this is a shounen fic, that defeat is usually a fight defeat.

While I don’t believe in Versus bullshit, let’s do a quick tally-up of Lance’s ‘record’ over the fic:

Lance vs Bellerophon : Defeat Lance vs Kastiel : Victory Lance vs Ray : Victory Lance vs Bennu Yakos : Defeat Lance vs Bennu Yakos Rematch : Stalemate Lance vs Basilisk Maia : Defeat Lance vs Herakles Aguilon : Defeat Lance vs Elisa : Victory Lance vs CG : Victory Lance vs Cetus : Defeat Lance vs Ghost T : Multiple Defeats Lance vs Alraune Lemon : Stalemate Lance vs Daemon Lucifer : Defeat Lance & Shinta vs Papillion Ainsel : Stalemate Lance vs Dullahan Hedron : Victory Lance & Gold Saints vs Daemon Lucifer : Stalemate Lance vs Alraune Queen: Victory Lance vs Perseus Acrisius: Victory Lance vs Atlae: Ongoing

That’s six defeats, four stalemates and seven victories. This means I’ve denied Lance a victory ten times, but denied him a defeat only four.  And you know what? Some of those defeats were pretty humiliating. Cetus all but flicks Lance away. And this not to mention all the sparring defeats Lance goes through with Dohko. Lance didn’t even get to completely defeat Yakos. He had to get saved by a Gold Saint. That’s not even mentioning the DQI Side Story which was a big L for Lance altogether. If you looked at this through a win loss ratio alone, Lance would have a 45% win ratio. He’d be close to the last guy you bet on in a boxing match.

However, if you read the fic and then look closely at that list, you’ll realise that’s not all that there’s to it, and that a lot of these defeats were actually more valuable to Lance’s growth than the victories. Yes, Lance lost against Bellerophon, but got the Pegasus Cloth. He lost against Aguilon, but unlocked the 7th sense. He lost all those times against Ghost T, but unlocked a new element, same for his fight against Yakos.

And some of the defeats developed his character; Ghost T taught Lance that his connection with the Pegasus Cloth was more important than he realised. Cetus taught him that just because he had the 7th sense, it didn’t mean Lance was at the end of his road. And Basilisk Maia (indirectly) taught him to respect Shinta and how much Lance could still be surprised by people.

Inversely, some of Lance’s victories brought him nothing but misery. The Elisa incident pretty much ruined Lance’s enthusiasm for his role as the Cancer Gold Saint. Daemon Lucifer’s crusade frightened Lance to the point he now genuinely believes the world might end on the whim of a particularly resentful cosmos user, even with Sanctuary around. And this not to mention the rift that his fight with CG (not to be spoiled) eventually caused between him and his best friend.

This is because triumphs, as good as they feel, only really celebrate the strength you already have. What makes the strength develop in the first place, is your defeats. So it never even crossed my mind to have Lance jump in the air over beating the crap out of Perseus Acrisius, because honestly, to Lance, that’s just Lance doing his job. And if Lance was strong enough to defeat Phoenix Guilty, if only barely, but still couldn’t stop his tragedy... doesn’t that make it all the more painful than if Guilty just killed him?

What I’m getting at is that there is a direct line of correlation between the setbacks Lance suffers, and the two steps he then makes after. Seiya only ever wins, even against unsurmountable odds, so the character has no reason to feel he’s doing something wrong. Lance, on the other hand, is the picture of insecurity.

The fact that the Saint who brought him to Sanctuary wasnt allowed to raise him over transphobia, the fact that the Saint that was assigned to raised him didn’t and the fact circunstances conspired to have Lance not be well integrated into Shion’s system of Sanctuary, but not disassociated from it either, made it so that he is in a unique position to challenge everything around him. To question everything, including himself.

So I guess we can conclude I love torturing Lance because that’s the avenue I found to help him grow. He works as a character now because he suffers from the dynamics of SS the same way a normal, relatable person would. Lance can’t ignore the amazon mask rule because it very directly affects people he cares about and he can’t act outside of Sanctuary’s world because countless encounters with Black Saints and Specters made him understand what happens when there isn’t a framework present to deal with danger of using Cosmos and this, ironically, makes him more capable of changing things, of bending the rules, than Seiya is.

In a way, doesn’t that make him more human? How did this happen? How did I go from writing Lance like he’s Sasuke to writing him like this?

6. What sparked this change & The Magic of One Piece

Mangas have been fundamental to influencing my story telling in LR, and none more so than the Big 3 of the 2000s; Bleach, Naruto and One Piece. Of these three, the only one I still like and recommend is One Piece, though. One Piece is a manga that, once you read it, you take all your other mangas and burn them in a trashfire, ashamed you’d ever professed joy for them. This isn’t just because One Piece is that great, but also because of problems in manga storytelling. Unlike a lot of edgelord fans of Naruto who tended to gravitate to characters like Itachi....I actually didn’t like him all that much, and felt apathetic to Sasuke. I didn’t dislike them, per say, but I got quickly bored by how they seemed to dwell in their deluded little worlds, always sinking deeper and deeper and paradoxically expecting things to improve if they just brood hard enough. It doesn’t take a lot of brain power to point out that, for all their abilities to cast illusions on others, the Uchiha characters were the most self-deluded characters in the manga. Rather, the depressed characters I gravitated more to was Naruto and Shikamaru, not because they were sad about the bad things that happened in their lives, but because of how they responded to it. I felt a special attraction to the writing of Naruto’s character pre-Shippuden because Kishimoto was very skilled at, basically, beating the crap out of Naruto and having him power himself back up. Boy, does that sound familiar?

Eventually, my journey through bad mangas like Beelzebub and Bleach, which were for all intents and purposes made to glorify teenage sentiments, led me to good mangas like Berserk and Hajime no Ippo, which were made with intelligence, care and maturity. There’s an argument to be made how ‘mature’ a comic book can really be, but I think that when George Morikawa is willing to have his shounen protagonist Ippo become sidelined from the fighting for over 400 chapters, it shows that, as an owner of his own gym, he really does respect the gravity of a boxer going “punch drunk” over the casual power fantasies of being a shounen main character. That means something to me. And it puts things into perspective as far as storytelling goes in mangas. Maybe Ichigo having a issy-fit over not being able to defeat some emo-batboy who stole his girl IS immature. Maybe Sasuke IS whiny if he abandons his village simply because Naruto blew up a water container harder than he did. And you know what? Maybe Seiya looks completely fucking ridiculous in Tenkai Hen, walking around like a Zombie, moaning “Saori-san, Saori-saaaan”, sounding like a balding middle-aged man who just walked into his wife fucking the milkman and is having a mental breakdown over it. The manga I’ve landed on in this journey through Japanese comic book IPs eventually was One Piece. One Piece might be, I think, the most influential story I’ve ever read? Pretty much everything I write nowadays is somewhat touched by it. This is because Eichiro Oda basically taught me through his art and world-building that simple shounen narrative doesn’t have to be as superficial and dumb and taking itself seriously as I was led to believe to literally drive me to tears. One Piece maintains to this day the honor of being the only anime that has legitimately made me cry at moments.

And this is coming from a guy who laughed during Elfen Lied, who thinks Nina is the least tragic thing in Full Metal Alchemist and who thought Gon was being a little bit overly upset during the Chimera Ant arc. Yeah. One Piece made this guy shed a tear. But why? There are multiple reasons why One Piece, once I got past my initial resistence to its length and art, captured my imagination so viciously. I won’t deny that there’s some cultural appeal, as everyone in my country is raised with stories of exploration and sealaning, but Eichiro’s art was also influenced by Vicky the Viking, a cartoon whose style is very familiar to me. Mangas (and Manwhas) that make all of its characters look like goddamn eastern Kingdom princes are actually quite boring to me, while Oda has a unique talent to integrate his wacky cartoony manga art in the way he expresses his characters emotions and abilities. I think the critical thing that silenced me in Nami’s knife scene in the Arlong Arc, or Brook singing Bink’s Sake when he joins the Straw Hats, or the finale of Ennies Lobby, was that all of these moments came from a kind of writing packed with raw humanity. Nami hasn’t had much to do past the Arlong Arc, being primarily a navigator obsessed with treasure, but that one scene of her renouncing Arlong’s crew just captured the pain of an innocent person’s mind being broken after years of abuse so perfectly, that frankly it kind of overshadows an important element of it; what Luffy, the protagonist was doing during all of it. So, what was Luffy doing while Nami’s mind was slowly breaking down, building up to the ‘knife scene’? Well, he was keeping his nose out of it. It really wasn’t his business and he respected that. Cause Nami told him so. He asked if she wanted help when they met on the island and she said “butt off”. And he did!

Imagine that. A main character respecting a side character’s choices. He didn’t punch his way in, he didn’t force her to accept his help, he didn’t yell, he didn’t give one big speech about being her friend, nothing. He didn’t run after her as she collected the money for Arlong, he didn’t say it was “his duty as a saint pirate to save her”, he didn’t storm Arlong’s fortress to fix her problems himself and he didn’t yell to Zoro about how, as a hero, he HAD to interfere in this unjust situation. He just respected her decision as an adult. Well, sort of adult. Cause he knew it was a bigger insult to Nami to force her to accept his help than letting her try it her own way first. In a way, Luffy was letting her be the protagonist of her story and refused to disrespect that right of hers. It was only when Nami finally asked him for help, when she ran out of options and was at the brink of despair and desperately wanted to save her family, that Luffy indeed do all of these things. And when it was done, the first thing he did was ask Nami to join his crew to give her the chance to follow up on her dreams. Can you fucking imagine Seiya or Goku doing this? Or do you picture them just waving off their friends while they run to go win some dumb tournament or save Saori again? This is actually one of the most important things about One Piece’s cast and why the story works so well; despite him being the captain, the straw hat crew members’ lives don’t rotate around what Luffy is doing. They’re not his posse like Ichigo’s friends are. They’re not second fiddle to his ambition like Naruto’s classmates and they’re not disposable companions hopelessly trapped in ‘catch up’ like the Z-Fighters. Zoro, Sanji, Nami, Franky, Robin, Chopper, Brook and especially Usopp (the weakest and most cowardly of the crew), all have important things to do and say about whats going on in each of Luffy’s adventure arcs. And this speaks to the nature of ‘protagonism’ in One Piece and why it’s such an important manga for everyone to read if they are passionate about Shounen; Luffy’s friends have dreams of their own distinct from Luffy. They all, in their own ways, want to be the Hokages of their own villages and seek out things just as virtuous and ambitions as Luffy’s, just adapted to their personalities. Think about it; Nami’s quest in life, to map the entire world, is actually HARDER than Luffy becoming King of the Pirates, because it requires her to basically reach the One Piece as well PLUS all the other unique, dangerous places in the world that Luffy has no interest in. The Straw Hats’ personal ambitions, simultaneously, are distinct from Luffy’s, intersect it and complement it in various ways, which is why they all make natural allies and friends. Which... kind of makes them all protagonists of their own right, sort of, right? Or rather the entire Straw Hat crew group is the protagonist and Luffy just happens to be the face? So when the “Going Merry” crisis happens and Usopp threatens to leave the crew, you truly believe that what this cowardly character is feeling is VERY genuine, which sets you up perfectly to the moment later on in the Ennies Lobby arc that will make you feel the very human loss the Straw Hats suffer that day. One Piece WILL make you cry at that point, If you’re not a superficial psycho, anyway, because Usopp is treated with the same respect a protagonist would, so you learn to empathise with the collective loss the characters suffer. This is where I feel that mangas with similar aspirations like Dr. Stone fail? The author of Dr. Stone tries very hard to distribute protagonism throughout the story, but for as long as the premise is about the RPG-esque importance of dumping all your stats into Science, then everything will always rotate around Senku.  Senku doesn’t need his friends; he can find other workers to do what Taiji does and he’s a big fan of proving that all of Gen’s social skills can be replaced with his gadgets. One Piece, however, makes it clear that, while Luffy’s Gum-Gum Fruit is useful and Luffy himself is a strong and desceptively sharp captain, he is comically helpless without Nami’s maps, Sanji’s cooking, Chopper’s medical abilities and even Brook’s music. Luffy truly needs his friends and what’s to share their his triumphs and glories with theirs. But more importantly, Luffy is kind of a selfish asshole too, and I kind of admire that honesty, lol He’s not interested in being a hero, he’s interested in getting the One Piece. He makes that clear many times and sometimes just tells people to solve their own damn problems. It just so happens that all these villains and evil island overlords in his journey keep fucking with those who support him. It confers a degree of authenticity to what he says and does when most protagonists seem to act nice because it’s their role, not their character. So really, returning to the topic of SS, compared to all of this Seiya himself can’t help but be anything but the blandest, boringest, least offensive and least aspirational protagonist IMAGINABLE, because he’s basically become the leading man of what’s pretty much a formulaic story product to be sold on shelves, over and over. If you’re wondering why his storyline with finding his sister won’t evolve, this is why. If you’re wondering why he’s stringing along Shaina and never responding to her love confessions, this is why. If you’re wondering why he isn’t respected in the pantheon of anime protagonists on the same level as Luffy or Ippo or even Guts, THIS IS WHY. He’s Homer Simpson. He can never change or get promoted or become a better father, because that would ruin the product’s formula and put a profitable business at risk. And honestly I think that on a subconscious level, this has always bothered me about this show. Even as a child, Seiya was the Bronze Saint that least impressed me. I always gravitated much more strongly to Shiryu and Hyoga. Years after having forgotten what SS was, who Seiya was, I had vague memories of the Dragon and Cygnus Saints because they were so driven and cool. Which is tragic because, just as I laid out in my last blog post, Saint Seiya is rife with potential. That’s why I write in its world. So my frustration with Seiya kind of has driven who Lance IS.

7. Conclusion on Lance and what I aspire with him

As the Frank Grimes of Saint Seiya, Lance is just the opposite of Seiya, and that’s all he can be. For now. While Seiya is extroverted, Lance is introverted. While Seiya is loyal to Athena and the idea of Sanctuary, Lance is skepting and questioning of them. While Seiya is boyish and joyful, Lance is focused, self-serious and bitter. While Seiya is instinctive, Lance tends to question himself more and tends to think of what his teacher, Dohko, would think of his choices. Even their fighting styles are opposites. Seiya relies on rapid fire techniques and wrestling, like the Meteor Fist and Rolling Crush, while Lance relies on single-strike moves and street fighting, like the Charge Fist and Blade. Seiya has a steamrolling attitude about fighting, where he applies the same moves over and over until they work, relying on sheer heroism to carry him. Lance, on the other hand, is reliant on tactics, switching up techniques between punching, slicing or using the fire element to prey on the opponents’ ability disadvantages. More importantly, while Seiya is quick to accept friendship and comrades, Lance is highly skeptical of them. It took Lance being forced by the Pope to pair up with Shinta for him to get his best friend and his relationship with Olivia evolved almost by accident. This all, because Lance had such a bad experience with Guifi Taitano, Kerberos Kastiel and the Maidens of Sanctuary. However, unlike Seiya, Lance heavily involves the few people he cares about in his triumphs and affairs, because it’s that much harder for him than it is to Seiya to accept people. He will be very quick to congratulate Shinta for the impressive things he does and you will never find him just ignoring someone’s love confession and moving on, because Lance values those connections that much more than a character like Seiya does.Also, he will be the one jumping in to shield Olivia from arrows, not the other way around, cause he actually values the miracle it is to have someone you connect with.

I’m not saying this necessarily makes him a better character. What it does, however, is set him up for consequences, which is what we’ve been talking all along about as well. Lance has something to lose other than just a dumb Holy War. And that’s a good starting point for what I eventually want him to be.

Cause see, I don’t want him to be just Frank Grimes. I want him to match up to protagonists that have genuinely inspired me, like Aragorn, Ippo, Guts, Luffy, V (at least the version of her I played) and others. I want him, if possible, to be better than them Maybe Saint Seiya is too small for that kind of ambition, or my skill to limited. I often feel that way. That’s no reason not to try, though (～￣▽￣)～

The one reason why I liked Euphoria

Even though it's been a while since the show aired, I think it's important to talk about this at any time. Euphoria's not perfect. It sure has it's flaws, especially the S2. But that's not what this post is about (I'll get to that some other time, don't worry). What I wanna get into is one of the things I liked about it and the number one reason why I feel like it's important to watch.

All the characters you go through the story with are flawed, that much is obvious. Rue has mental issues and grieves her father's death, both of which she deals with by taking opioids. Jules has mental problems and a very complicated relationship with her own body. Cassie has dependence issues. Maddy has a toxic image of herself in her mind she wants desperately to achieve. Lexi is ignored and not appreciated and uses her bitterness to make the infamous musical. Kat has her internalized misandry. Cal has personality problems and a hidden regret for not being ever able to explore his relationship with Derek. Nate has the toxicity of Cal's views of the world to fight with and is scared to explore his own sexuality because of it. Fez can't escape the net of drug dealing he was caught up in as a young boy. Ali became an addict as violent as his father - the one thing he swore he'd never be.

What's the interesting part - what makes this show so fucking significant - is the fact that there is a great effort to tell us precisely why the characters are the way they are. What made them struggle and be imperfect. They've taken care of that by making every episode's prologue into a summary of each character's backstory. Now I'll admit - they aren't all 100% equal in quantity, some characters are given more space than others, especially in the overall story arch. But it's close enough to equal (in the S1 at least) for everyone to be able to get a good picture of them all.

This aspect of the show is by my standards the most fundamental part of it. I believe in determinism (and incompatible free will, I'll get to that in a moment), which is a term that gets misunderstood a lot, so let me explain it really quickly. Determinism states that all events are determined by the previously existing causes. That means everything that happens did so because of something. A person builds a house because his previous one got blown off by a tornado, for example. Now, determinism applied to people's actions (and there it gets to my own personal understanding of the term) means that everybody is not only heavily influenced by their surroundings, but actually our surroundings ARE what makes us. Everything we are, everything we do in life, is based on something or someone else. Every decision we make is acting upon our belief system that was created from our life experience - what our parents tought us (conciously or unconciously), what we learned at school, what people influenced us. Every time you decide to do something, the 'free will', as we call it, is actually just a bunch of patches of your life experience and knowledge and all of that is created by the context of your past. Taken to the extreme, I don't think we have any free will at all. This is of course highly philosophical and in real life people couldn't act upon this (by which I mean act like nobody has a free will and thus can't be responsible for their actions), because we wouldn't be able to function as a society. But that doesn't mean it's not true. For example every murderer, every rapist, every person deemed by society as 'pure evil' did what they did because something drove them to do it and they weren't able to decide otherwise because of their life experience. What they did was bad and it should be dealt with in some way, and although I firmly believe that punishment is not the answer, it is true that we should react to a bad behaviour. And we should do it with as full as possible context in our minds.

That's what I love about Euphoria. They tell you about the characters' actions, whether they be good or bad, and let you base your decision of what to think about them on what they've been through and on the real reasons behind what they're doing. That's also what made me actually like all the characters, not just have my favourites. Even though we might not like what they're doing throughout the show, their actions can be neatly traced back to their backstories, and yeah, I know this should be a standard in writing, but it sadly isn't, so I'm really glad to be able to experience it in the show.

Hiiiii if you have time could I please request a HC on how bakugou studies and works out? I was down for a few days so I wanted to read about bakugou but there aren't any really. I don't wanna force this on you byyy love you❤️❤️😀

Heyyy, I am super late to seeing this (I’m literally going through hundreds and hundreds of asks right now scouring for prompts and trying to do a little spring cleaning) and I came across this and it makes me so happy to talk about Blasty McGonnaHaveAStroke that I just really wanted to answer it - I hope that’s okay!

My perception of Bakugou Katsuki is ever changing because he’s developing so quickly in so many different areas of his personality (honestly, such a well written character, I’m really enjoying watching him morph and grow over the past few seasons) and I feel like I grow to know him more and more with each fic / drabble I write where I can really delve into his mannerisms and way of being and so I have a lot of ideas for these little nuances in particular!

Studying:

We all know that Bakugou is high key suffering from Former Gifted-Child Syndrome (or whatever the popular term for it is on this site). He’s naturally talented and intelligent - but he’s also incredibly hard working, especially once he’s come to the realization that he’s become a Former Gifted-Child.

There’s a quote I saw circulating a while ago from Bakugou, something about “I came to this school not to find out what I can do, but to find out what I can’t do.” or something similar to that sentiment. Because Bakugou is already perceptive and smart, he recognizes all of the things he can do and all of the things he’s good at, what he needs to learn is how to better handle the things that he’s not good at and how he can work on himself to barrel forward on his path to become the best.

So I think that even though Bakugou is already smart and doesn’t have any trouble keeping one of the top spots in his entire class, I feel like he would also spend a good portion of his free time studying and doing homework. It’s one thing to be intelligent, but to keep such a high position like the 3rd spot or whatever he is, that means that he’s completing and handing in assignments regularly, receiving top marks in most likely all of his classes, and that requires a certain level of dedication.

But again, he’s also already highly intelligent. So he probably gets bored really easily. (I know I’ve mentioned it before but it’s kind of one of my favorite ‘little obscure details’ to note that there are several panels where Bakugou is depicted as not fully paying attention during lessons - gazing out the window or playing with his pencil and even closing his eyes and completely tuning Present Mic out with the internal monologue that English was super boring or something like that).

This is all a long-winded way to back up the fact that I feel like his notes would be quick and sloppy and probably wouldn’t have a lot of context clues so someone like Kirishima just reading over his notes probably wouldn’t understand half of the concepts just because they’re things Bakugou already knows so he didn’t deem them important enough to write down.

Someone else posted a bunch of screenshots of Bakugou Katsuki’s actual notebook or something (fuck, I wish I could find the original post but it’s lost in time and space at this point), and his handwriting isn’t messy per-say but I definitely imagine that they were just lazy, bored strokes maybe pressed down with a little more force than is actually needed, and if he wants to highlight something important to remember later, he probably does that thing where he circles it multiple times or boldly underlines and things like that instead of actually using any highlighters or colored tabs like Midoriya probably uses!

Working Out:

You know, I feel like not a lot of attention gets brought to how Bakugou would work out! Like, in all the fics where they mention him working out or whatever, he’s usually just sparring with someone or they mention that he’s pumping iron (lifting weights), but that’s about as in depth as it goes.

I spend too much of my time at the gym and personally I believe that Bakugou is that one dude that I would constantly pick on for “always skipping leg day” - in the fact that he probably focuses very heavily on core work outs and arms/shoulders, since those are the muscles that are most directly impacted by his quirk!

He probably does a ton of crunches, pull-ups, free weights, push-ups; anything that works his triceps, biceps, abs, core balance, etc. He also probably runs /A LOT/ because he isn’t too bulky, he’s actually got a very slender build considering the muscle mass he carries in his upper half, which means that he’s running cardio on the DAILY. If I were a gambling woman, I’d put money on the treadmill, the stepper, and a jump rope being his most important pieces of equipment for cardio training.

We also have to take into account his dietary habits. Like I said before, this boy is incredibly slender for someone with such broad shoulders and who carries a lot of his muscle mass in his shoulders/back, and it’s commonly accepted at this point that Bakugou is a good chef (judging by the way his parents made him take music lessons growing up, I can assume that it was probably their idea as well for him to learn how to cook - whether that be through cooking classes or home-taught, it doesn’t really matter).

Mitsuki and Masaru are also canonly involved in the fashion industry - and we all know how, ahm... flawed the views in the fashion industry can be depending on location, culture, and societal beauty standards.

Katsuki probably has an immaculate diet. Protein, carbs, fresh fruit, calcium; he probably has a perfectly balanced palate and I can only ever dream cause ya girl just has sushi and LUNCHABLES as my only meal of the day today so, yaknow...

ANYWAYS.

All of that into consideration, I headcanon that Bakugou probably has a rotating shift for his work outs; cardio every day for ~30 minutes (most likely a warm up with the jump ropes or a jog/sprint alternating between low intensity and high intensity settings on the treadmill or stair stepper), then he probably has a circuit. So say for arms, he’d probably use free weights (curls, pumps, etc), then pull-ups/push-ups, I could see him throwing in some shoulder stretches and a very light yoga routine to help keep himself flexible and adaptive.

I totally see him as a man to get hooked on focusing solely on arms/shoulders because it’s very easy to see improvement and quick results, plus the after swell of muscles when you’ve done a proper workout is like the world’s most authentic confidence boost you can ever experience, and I could picture Bakugou being addicted to a feeling like that.

However, as previously mentioned, he’s incredibly intelligent and perceptive, and he’s just kind of a no-bullshit, no-excuses kind of guy? He might WANT to just do arms/shoulders for the rest of eternity, but he knows that won’t make him GREAT, so he forces himself to cycle. Arms/shoulders, Core, Legs, Exclusive Yoga, repeat - all with cardio warm-ups and cool-downs.

I’d gander that on top of his school work and course studies, he’d have to keep his gym time somewhere between 2-3 hours daily, but he probably only realistically hits the gym about 2-3 times a week at most, since all of their other training exercises and other hero activities no doubt work his entire body, and with such a strenuous, active lifestyle, there wouldn’t be much need for him to go any more than that unless he really wanted to aggressively bulk up or something crazy, but with his body type he’ll most likely fill out naturally as well (another thing that’ll come all on its own that he won’t even have to work for; lucky fucking bastard).

-

Okay, I’ll shut up now about it :D Hope that was somewhat entertaining to read? Are headcanons fun to read about? They must be if people are asking but I always get so nervous like, dude literally nobody cares that you psychoanalyzed Bakugou Katsuki to the point where you’ve probably got his entire work week mapped out, and you know what?

You right - lmfao!

my ask didnt send i am going to murder. anyway BEEP CLASSPECTING... now im thinking abt that and aimsey. from the top of my head/only briefly thinking, beep as rage or void vibes with me? (obvs not the typical rage player you see, more like the nuance we were discussing). and aimsey as a life player?

oooo void beep would be suuper cool :oc rage too, he is very fucking stubborn and does have outbursts rather often (also rage players in canon usually have connections to magic, and then the homestuck rage players all had religious themes so, god stuff). meanwhile void fits beeps heavy "this is all irrelevant and you could never understand any of this", and his own belief that even what he does just doesnt matter. personality under a veil (not necessarily a facade), fundamental inability to understand and truly perceive it all.

id say he doesnt fit rage enough, if only because rage players are fundamentally about survival instinct, and, well. beeps already dead, and he seems to be perfectly fine with the fact that one day he just wont exist at all. hes not scared, though he is easily pissed off, but in the end he just sort of likes messing with shit and being in control. lil dickhead (affectionate)

honestly, since he almost fits rage but not quite, he.. almost acts like a prince of hope (unfortunate eridan kinnie). destroying beliefs and asserting his reality as the Absolute Truth, dragging others like aimsey into his delusions and being in a situation where aimseys putting her faith into him even though hes not a good person because she feels the need to believe in him and connect with him, because she genuinely feels like hes the only friend they have left, and because aimsey wants desperately to believe in what beep is trying to show her, desperately wants to understand. he shuts down things he believes to be false, to the point where he can make them false by simply destroying the problem.

hes a force of outward destruction, destroying what he believes to be flaws in others. theyre heavily defensive, putting everyone beneath them, believing hes the one thats doing it Right, and ultimately, he believes its his right to control things. he doesnt trust anyone, he reacts to any fear he may have with anger, lashes out, and the "TELL. NO ONE" scene almost showcases beep shattering and hurting aimsey before he steps back and give a quick "sorry!". his arc seems to be leading up to him realizing he can care about aimsey, that he can trust her to believe him and in him, and he seems to be dealing with the concept of trusting aimsey with his beliefs

hes definitely not a general hope player, but specifically prince of hope could fit. onto possible void class combos, with, first, the notable fact that we dont know what kind of person beep may have been in the past, other than that he was destructive. we know about some events in his past, and how he feels about them (kinda), but generally, this means hes very versatile and has many class possibilities, depending on how we want to interpret what we do know.

for example, he could be a maid whose now in the apeshit stage, stubborn and repressive. its entirely possible he got so tired of listening to the other spirits that he got to the unhealthy stage, exploded, and now without anything stopping him, hes doing whatever the fuck he wants, because hes decided none of it matters, that its all irrelevant and he doesnt have to care because its his fucking universe and no one can stop him from playing god. he spends his time doing menial things, because to him, its all equally unimportant, so why not waste time? he cuts down unnecessary tasks, weeds out what he finds useless, etc etc. basically, he should still be independent, but he needs to be brought back down to earth (metaphorically), because hes kind of burnt himself out and is now fucking with things because he feels none of it matters anyways

sylph of void sort of works too, mainly his meddling and tendency to shut down anything that could reveal something he doesnt want revealed, as well as shutting down others viewpoints and he covers up shit whenever he wants. his motivations are, really, mostly unknown to us, other than that he seems to think this is fun. otherwise, he also has a tendency to try and fix things he thinks needs fixing (like getting rid of fairies and space creatures), and will often try to fix mistakes he sees in mortals. however, slyphs are ultimately healers, and beep just. is not a healer, and he doesnt necessarily invite creation of void in any way, since void isnt really destruction of anything, and what he does invite is destruction of things. hes also just too active to be a slyph

so, with the previous prince assession, theres also the possibility of him being a prince of light, which would mean he would act more like a void player. hed destroy light with light, destroy the importance of information with information. they strip away the importance of things, uses plain fact to force the perception that nothings really important. he dismisses the importance of things, purposefully acts ignorant to draw away from what he knows, destroys knowledge itself from a power standpoint (wiping aimseys memory), and in extreme cases, can physically destroy anything in his way, or assert over and over that what he said/did isnt real, that nothings true or important other than what hes saying. again, little shit. if i had to make up my mind, i think prince of light fits the most

as for aimsey, i think life does fit him really well, shes definitely got the similar "girl next door" kind of vibes, while still being really interesting in her own right. she definitely starts out as a typical fictional life player, enthusiastic, energetic, genuine, wanting to effect the world. shes a normal girl (and this isnt an insult, rather, her being so normal ties the magical themes of the bear smp together really well, and its a perfect way to use a life player, make them be a catalyst for both the normal life player and eccentric others to shine). however, as she struggles with losing trust in bear and not being treated well, not having anyone that cares about them specifically, the energy starts to falter, but comes back when they feel the need to be rebellious. notably, while aspects arent super literal, she contrasts beep so much in just how alive she is, which fits her being a life player rather well. except, as i said, aspects arent literal, which means aimsey being a life player translates to her showing what life means in a metaphorical sense.

life is about agency. its about what you do, your ability to do so, its about asserting your will. not what drives you, but simply you doing at all. interesting enough, life players can be hard to pin down because life is about desire and agency, while the players class defines their ideology. life players can become obsessed with an idea that they need to do something, that they need to change how systems work, and often can cloak their want to fulfill their individual desires as altruistic want to fulfill others needs and desires (i.e., aimsey wants a friend and someone who pays attention to her and is genuine towards her, she feels like shes found that in beep, and as such starts to cloak her want to be his friend as aimsey wanting to help beep rather than aimsey themself).

as for said class.. this was, hard. because of how heavily influenced life is by the class its paired with, and because aimseys arc right now is trying to deal with feeling like shes too much and unneeded, it means that i have to really consider how that connects with which classes struggles. so, i ended up with sylph. aimsey is a creator, and she tries to heal as well. "allowing creation/healing of life or inviting creation/healing through life". from a literal standpoint, she tries to help bear heal by trying to get him to open up, to live, to make friends and interact with people. this could almost seem like a blood player move, but while a lot of aimseys arc is about bonds and relationships, shes not really a strong connecter or leader, shes just good at inspiring others to be, to her own detriment.

also notably, unhealthy sylphs crave, whether craving more of their own aspect, or craving another aspect when they feel theirs is not enough. aimsey talks a lot about how she grew up doing things by her lonesome, and now that she feels like people are moving on without her, she may be craving blood (that sounds so awful out of context). she wants attachments, wants to be the person that brings everyone together, but.. she isnt, not in a way thats appreciated. and due to her insecurities, she sees this as a flaw within himself, and as something to fix. so, she latches onto beep, and desperately tries to have as much of an effect on their life as they do on hers. like life players in general, sylphs try to solve their problems under the guise of helping someone else with theirs. currently, aimsey seems to be trying to find what she needs to do, because when she tried to do what she thought she needed to do, she (from her perspective) failed, so now shes trying to make up for her perceived failure within herself by trying to help herself through helping beep. i would think into it even more but i think its probably best to just leave it here KEKW

tua s1 brought something that was very unique to the superhero scene. it marketed itself as a show about people who had super powers but were very far from being heroes. they were all deeply flawed and heavily marred by their upbringing which seemed cruel, cold, and devoid of affection from their patriarch and this resulted in damaged, bitter, imperfect but also very human characters. what was even better was how different each sibling was in general but also specifically in how they responded to their horrible upbringing and the consequences they faced because of this. their differences allowed for a wider appeal. we're all a little fucked up because of our childhoods but we all respond to that in different ways and having seven different characters who all had their unique responses meant that even if you don't really connect with one sibling's response, it is likely that you might connect with another's. and imo, this is what made the show work. the plot is....frankly it's weak. there are plot holes big enough to fit Five's inflated ego through. but the weaknesses in plot were more forgivable because even when it was at its weakest, the investment in the characters meant you still cared what happened because it was happening to characters you cared about.

s2 completely threw this to the wind. they spent a lot of time kind of....smoothing out the siblings. one thing I noticed was that the sibs all talked far more like each other. and I have siblings so I know that this is something that actually happens in families but in this case, I don't think it added to the story and actually took away from characterization. a lot of the character arcs from s1 aren't continued or built upon but rather they are either retcon-ed, ignored, or rehashed. instead, all of the siblings are smoothed out. their jagged edges are sanded away unt they are more "likable" (which is pretty wild when you consider how much smoothing out they did when transferring the characters from the comics).

why did they do this? well....it's what the fan base, or at the very least the most vocal part of the fan base, asked for. I will say that in a way, the characters are far more palatable now. take diego for instance. in s1, he was possibly the most volatile of the siblings, even Five, the time traveling assassin, takes issue with his level of violence at one point. and we understand that diego's violence comes from a place of hurt and his hurt largely comes from a place of rejection. he is rejected by his father, by his siblings, by the world around him and this manifests as a hyper-violent nature despite the fact that diego is actually quite soft hearted as we see through flashbacks and key moments in the present. he is angry because he cares. most of this is shown to us instead of told. no one ever says in s1, "diego uses violence to cope with his pain."

so in comparison, why is diego the way he is in s2? and how are we told this? most of the time, we are told what diego is feeling and what his motivations through various mouthpieces even if these explanations don't quite make sense. why is he attached to the jfk assassination? a therapist tells us why as well as lila often operating as a mouth piece for diego's internality. five sometimes explains to us who diego is as well. and while there's nothing necessarily wrong with any of these things in isolation, all together and in context to one another, illustrates an issue with how the writers decided to construct their characters this season.

another example, vanya. this whole "characters being dictated to the audience via mouthpiece" device that the writers decided to use constantly this season is a lot more obvious with her because its pretty much built into her amnesia arc. vanya can't tell us who she is because she doesn't know so other characters will tell us instead. take the dialogue between sissy, vanya, and carl at the beginning of the season when vanya says something along the lines of how she isn't the kind of girl that people would miss and sissy disagrees but....why? how does the story tells us this or not tell us this? do any of the siblings, all of whom, save for five, have been in the 1960s longer than she's been there have not spent one bit of time it seems looking for her. even in her relationship with the family she's staying with, we have no context for sissy's statement. who vanya is told to us. never really shown. who is vanya to sissy and harlan and carl? who is she to her siblings? why is she important to any of these people? is that shown to us effectively or is it just told to us?

and I'm not talking about this to shame or bash on ppl who enjoyed the season. I'm not here to say that you are bad for liking the way the siblings are written this season better than last season. I get it. they are far more palatable now that their mean, bitter, jagged parts have been shaved down. but... palatable is not "better" or "good". I think the same goes for writing that is "gritty" or whatever. it all depends on whether or not it works within the context of everything else going on in the narrative. I think the messier versions of the siblings worked better for the story. It provided a grounding and human element to the story, some much needed levity. I don't think the new characterizations work as well and renders much of the "stakes" of the show a lot less meaningful and worthy of investment and while it was clear that the show had a higher budget and was hell-bent on using it to make the show more action packed and flashy but without strong character writing, the resulting product came off as very empty.

Edvard's Supernatural Rewatch & Review: 1x05 Bloody Mary

In this review, I’ll be discussing suicide, survivor’s guilt, and bad dialogue.

1x05 Bloody Mary enjoys a rating of 8.4 on IMDB. It’s a strong, atmospheric episode embodying the horror-show vibe the show was intended to evoke. It was originally conceived as being episode two or three of the show, and would have made a better episode two than 1x02 Wendigo due to its themes of guilt and bereavement linking into Jess’s death and Sam’s role in it.

Mirrors are one of the defining symbols of this episode, something made painfully obvious by the incredible number of mirrors the family owns. They are both the means whereby Mary kills her victims and the means whereby characters reflect on themselves. Sam’s info-dumpage that ‛mirrors reflect our soul’ should make it explicit to viewers paying attention that Mary is a metaphor for guilt. This guilt, however, is not necessarily the guilt that comes of commission of a crime or a moral evil, but the feeling of guilt borne of not being able to save somebody, or survivor’s guilt. A person burdened by such guilt looking in the metaphorical mirror must face a metaphorical Bloody Mary waiting to pass judgement.

Quite rightly, this judgement is not just, as indeed feelings of guilt, self-blame and survivor’s guilt are unjust. A discussion of the subject on Supernatural Therapy podcast raised the topic of self-blame when in fact one is not to blame: blaming ourselves is an attempt to feel in control of something and to understand it a little better. The deaths which the ill-fated father and Charlie blame themselves for are incomprehensible.

I can say from my own experience that losing a friend or loved one to suicide is impossible to understand. Grandparents dying of age is natural, and older relatives dying of long-term illness is understandable, though unjust. But when our driving instinct is supposed to be to stay alive, a friend’s or family member’s commission of self-murder undermines completely our comprehension of the world and our reality. It’s traumatic, and the mind seeks to understand and cope with something it simply can’t handle.

Returning to Supernatural Therapy, our feelings of guilt are misplaced attempts to control and understand, but they are more negative than positive. Thus Bloody Mary is an apt villain to don the role of avenging spirit in this episode, as she attacks people who feel guilty, regardless of whether or not they truly are responsible for a death.

This episode ties itself into the Sam’s character particularly closely, as Sam feels himself to blame for Jessica’s death. At first, his guilt is depicted as completely natural: he watched his possibly-pregnant girlfriend burn to death on his ceiling and was utterly unable to help her. Anybody in that situation would be dealing with guilt on top of bereavement and trauma, so he is naturally somebody Bloody Mary would go after. However, the revelation that he had ‛dreams’ (read: premonitions) about Jess’s death for days before it happened add another layer to his guilt.

That layer, of course, being his actual guilt in taking no measures whatsoever to ensure Jess’s safety. Sam is not a blue-eyed baby in 1x01: he is a man with deep knowledge of the supernatural world and was reckless to ignore them. It is never made explicit – unless something has slipped my mind – whether Sam had any experience or knowledge of humans with psychic powers, but it is clear that he knows about the paranormal. Any Muggle would be disturbed by having exactly the same dream of a loved one dying night after night, but would likely pass it off as stress, anxiety or some such. Sam’s no Muggle, and knows better. Was having a ‛normal’ life so important to him that he dismissed and ignored warning signs that the abnormal was coming for his lady? Is Sam partially responsible for Jess’s death here?

Knowing what I know of the circumstances surrounding Jess’s death, he likely couldn’t have stopped it, even had he called Dean and John for help. But he should have called them, and chose not to. If he had done so, she might have been saved. This is death by negligence.

What makes it worse is that he is aware that keeping his visions a secret got Jess killed, but at the end of the episode acts as though he is perfectly justified in retaining his secrets from Dean. Dangerous secrets overtly related to their mother’s death and the demon responsible for killing her, information which would be very useful to Dean and John if shared, but a danger if kept quiet. He learnt that not divulging his secret is dangerous for people around him, and elected to continue not divulging said secret to Dean. Please, dear viewer, bear this in mind in series 7, 8, 9, 15 and every other time Sam gets pissy at Dean for keeping things secret from him.

He even knows in this episode that keeping his secrets almost got Dean killed by Bloody Mary, but ‛just because we’re brothers, doesn’t mean I have to tell you everything’. Sam is supposed to be the hero of this piece...

Yes, some people are genuinely like that, but that doesn’t mean I have to like them, and I sure as Hell don’t like Sam. In the first five episodes, Dean is established as a flawed, contradictory hero who actually brings something to the table. Sam’s an entitled, spoilt prick who treats his brother like a joke and an embarrassment.

Returning to the theme of suicide and guilt, one thing that is not addressed in the episode is the dad’s own relationship to the mother’s death. That she overdosed on sleeping tablets heavily implies suicide, but for about half of the run time the viewer is expected to believe the father was somehow involved in her death, i.e. that he killed her, especially as the second victim was guilty of a hit and run where a boy died. What is never addressed, however, is that his guilt and the reason Bloody Mary targeted him is that he blamed himself for not being able to prevent his wife’s suicide. Charlie is allowed the catharsis of expressing her grief to Dean and Sam, but the father is not afforded the same opportunity.

Apropos Charlie, her precise meaning when she said her ex-boyfriend got ‛scary’ is left occult. He clearly suffered serious mental health problems, something which a lot of people simply aren’t equipped to handle, especially when the one suffering is a close friend or partner. Young male victims of suicide also tend to have been very good at wearing a mask to hide: did he try taking the mask off for her, and she didn’t like what she saw? From what little information she gives us, the implication is that he threatened her with violence or that he used hard drugs or something, but the viewer is at no point privy to what she means by ‛scary’ or to the man’s side of things.

Whether or not the young man intended to frighten and manipulate Charlie by threatening her with his suicide is also unclear. ‛If you walk out that door, I’ll kill myself’ can mean different things depending on tone and context, ranging from a desperate plea for help against an overwhelming mental illness to abusive, sadistic mind games. Having lost more than one man to suicide, the idea that someone would use it as a weapon is inconceivable, but without further information I simply can’t say.

From what little information we have, the man’s suicide was not Charlie’s fault. If we assume he was threatening her to keep her with him, she was right to run. Nobody should be mistreated or burdened like that, and no relationship should be built on a foundation of such abuse. She is important, too. Even if it weren’t a threat, the situation was intensely unhealthy for everybody involved and she was very justified in distancing herself. It wasn’t her fault, and I just wish Dean had told her that in the motel room, rather than simply talking about it to Sam in the car afterwards.

Speaking of said conversation in the car, Dean’s heart was in the right place as he tried to get Sam to stop blaming himself, but he perhaps revealed his own lack of coping tools whilst doing so. Dean is intelligent and empathetic, and far more caring than people give him credit for, but he was raised in an environment where he was not allowed to talk about his fears and anxieties. Nor was he provided any tools whatsoever to facilitate understanding and processing his traumas and illnesses; John wanted him as an emotionally-dead weapon to use in his war against Mary’s killer.

Dean feels, but with no healthy tools nor anybody to acknowledge and help in processing his issues, he bottles things up and pushes them aside as best he can. Of course, the best he can is not all that best, wherefore the drinks and the sex and the gallows humour. This is John’s echo in Dean: John silenced him, and Dean therefore is not best equipped to process his own trauma at the beginning of series 1, much less counsel somebody else (though this changes as the years go by and he learns how to act without John stymieing him).

He meant well in telling Sam he can’t carry on blaming himself for Jess’s death, but the problem is Sam can’t stop blaming himself. Nobody in Sam’s situation can stop themselves feeling what s/he’s feeling, and has to simply feel it. I knew my friend’s suicide wasn’t my fault, but grief, bereavement, and survivor’s guilt are not rational and can’t be controlled by the cognitive mind. The feeling mind is the one in control, all the cognitive mind can do is make suggestions and hope for the best.

Regarding grief and Sam’s situation, Sam’s nightmare and his conversation with Dean at the beginning of the episode are about as explicit as Sam’s grief for Jess gets int eh show, and it’s not much at all. They were together for maybe two years, she was possibly pregnant with his child and died on the ceiling above him, but he doesn’t do any actual mourning or grieving most of the time. That itself is okay as some peolel take years before they’re ready to process grief and bereavement, but Sam behaves like a slightly disgruntled, moody teenager which we’re supposed to interpret as him grieving Jess’s death, but we see next to no actual grief, trauma or expression of loss.

His discussion with Dean is supposed to give us the idea that this is a recurrent event, but it is very, very far from sufficient to genuinely make us believe that Sam is anything other than a little bit sad for Jess.

We have, however, already established that Sam is partially responsible for Jess’s death, but Dean doesn’t know that. In spite of it not being the most productive thing Dean could have said, it was valid. Grieving is natural and uncontrollable, but how we react to it is at least partially within the jurisdiction of the cognitive mind. We can’t resist grief, as even denying it acknowledges its presence, but rather we have to accept it as a natural part of life to be endured and felt, but not be controlled by it.

Similarly, Mary is herself a victim of trauma, having been murdered by her lover. Understandably, her mentis is significantly non compos after the experience, and killing people she deems to be guilty is perhaps her way of trying to process what happened to her. Referring once again to Supernatural Therapy podcast, Jovanna Burke (who played Mary in this episode) states she believed Mary saw herself as a vigilante trying to get restitution for people wronged by killing their murderers, but her world-view became so skewed and she lost all concept of a grey area. For her, things were black or white: guilty or not guilty. Dean as good as says that there is only guilty or not guilty for Mary: if somebody thinks their actions or lack thereof got somebody killed, that person’s guilty. Sam, after all, didn’t kill Jess, Charlie didn’t kill her ex-boyfriend and I don’t believe the father had a part in the mother’s death.

I would add to this that such thinking sounds like a trauma victim’s survival mechanism. If things are easily understood as either / or, good / bad, safe / dangerous, the risk of danger is theoretically reduced. Think wild animals assuming humans are going to kill them: it’s safest to assume and run away.

This has been quite the lengthy discourse on mirrors, but it’s time to switch from the metaphorical and symbolical to the more practical, that being the exact nature of how the magic works. Mary was bound to the mirror she died in front of, but as long as that mirror remained intact, she was free to wonder the mirror world when summoned. In the climax of the episode, Dean and Sam summon her to her mirror in the antique shop, smash it, then face her manifest form in the real world. Dean defeats her by showing her her own reflection in another mirror, whereupon her own reflection deems her guilty of multiple homicides and kills her.

Hawk-eyed readers will have noticed already, but if Mary’s power was bound to her mirror, how then could her own reflection have killed her when the mirror binding her was smashed? Was the source of her power in her, then, rather than the mirror? If so, then how would her seeing her own reflection killed her? A ghost in Supernatural doesn’t have the power to destroy itself like that: it simply can’t. A ghost has refused the Reaper’s invitation to pass on, and can’t therefore pass on, yet Mary does. I can’t make this make sense.

One more thing about that scene is that Dean’s eyes began bleeding, implying he is also hiding a secret where somebody died. Fans made a big number out of this at the time, and Kripke promised us we would find out in due course… but we never did. This is the first instance of one of Dean’s storylines getting dropped by the show, and it’s far from being the last one.

Kripke didn't like Dean. Dean was supposed to be the dumb, womanising popular guy who always gets the women but 'treats them badly' in comparison to Sam's sensitive nice guy act. Sam was Kripke's insert, and Dean was just a character the audience wasn't supposed to like either, so he didn't bother giving Dean his own storylines. Even series 3 is more about Sam's anger and 'grief' than it is Dean's.

Now that the main points are out of the way, there are more minor points in the episode to comment on. One is the lovely cinematography, especially during the cold open / prologue. I began this review by stating that mirrors are important in this episode, and the camerawork in the beginning really drive that home. Moreover, seeing Mary reflected in so many mirrors – and indeed seeing so many reflections – blurs the line between the real world and the mirror world.

The children’s sleepover is also pleasantly lit, with very dark shadows and lots of candlelight evoking the feel of a ghost story. The shot in the library with the rays of light shining on the boys also looked wonderful, and the visual storytelling in the antique shop at the end was impressive. Said visual storytelling refers to the close up shot of a blinking red light, followed shortly after by the headlights of the police cars drifting across the wall. This is intelligent storytelling that expects the viewer to be paying attention, and it’s definitely appreciated.

In spite of my apathy for Jess as a character, the final shot of Sam seeing her on the pavement was fantastic cinematography: as with the flashing lights, it told us a story without needing to tell us anything. Sam saw her, and then she disappeared. Coming at the end of an episode about Sam’s guilt, and roughly a minute after his advice to Charlie about not blaming herself, this strongly suggests something has changed in Sam: the guilt that he was holding on to has begun to ease, or even vanish. It is, however, just a suggestion, and Sam giving Charlie a therapy session he sorely needs doesn’t mean he’s going to follow his own advice.

I wish, however, that more had been revealed about the kind of pills the father was taking in the cold open.

Speaking of the library – which we weren’t –do you remember when Wi-Fi didn’t exist? I remember. Currently I’m sitting about two metres away from my computer which is tethered to my mobile phone, typing on a wireless keyboard, using a wireless mouse in a room with no working ethernet cable or modem, listening to sounds of an oil rig on Bluetooth headphones, but in 2005 none of that was possible. There’s almost as much time between now and then as there was between my birth and ABBA winning Eurovision in Brighton in 1974.

Which is a nice segue into the soundtrack of the episode. The music in the opening is effective, being both reminiscent of the prologue of 1x01 with its minimalistic, slow piano track building tension and unease, but with an underlying hollow, howling wind sound that I can only liken to the dementors in Harry Potter.

Less impressive, however, was Mary’s dialogue, showing a complete lack of effort put into it. ‛You killed them, you’re guilty’, ‛you did it, you killed that boy’.

I rewatched this episode for the first time in 12 years in December 2020, by myself in a silent flat very late at night. I was 29, and this episode still creeped me out, making me hesitant to look at the window in case my reflection moved. Whilst it’s not my favourite episode, it’s certainly a solid effort with a memorable – if dated – antagonist in a self-contained MOTW story. Like the pilot, it showcased Kripke’s initial conception of the show as being about American folklore (although Bloody Mary is very much a British thing, too), and boasts a very atmospheric miniature horror show. It also offers character development and growth, even thought Sam’s claim that he would die for Dean is laughable in retrospect.

After once more exploring folk tales in 1x05, in next week's analysis of episode 1x06 Skin I'll be looking at how the show expands its daemonology by introducing a series staple.

This has been a long time coming as I see some people in this fandom not realize the connections and rooted messages within the watchmen comics.

note: I apologize if there’s any grammar/spelling errors English is not my first language.

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For context: This rant is based on the graphic novels not the HBO show. I heavily dislike what they did with the cult as I see Walter being heavily against it.

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Here is something that I often seen, people calling Rorschach a ‘bad’ person. Which is ironic seeing as Rorschach himself has this extremely black and white mindset. Here is only bad and good in his eyes. It’s very clear that he is set in this mindset and is clearly seen throughout the comic his actions and mentality towards the ‘evil’ of this world. He is violent towards criminals and merciless. He deeply sex repulsed and has a guarded demeanor towards women. I see people state that he is homophobic due though (as a sex repulsed gay man) would say he dislikes any relationship that would involve physical touch and obviously sex. It’s CLEAR he despises even the idea of sex that he gets uncomfortable around Laurie who has a revealing outfit.

To any one of us we would see Rorschach as a person who is cruel and frankly ‘bad’.

Though personally I detest this type of thinking. We are thinking black and white.

The man behind the mask Walter Kovacs is deeply interesting to me. His motives are explained in probably one of the best chapters. Chapter 6.

We see Walter as a young child who is experiencing heavy mental and physical abuse from the hands of his mother and is exposed to a very inappropriate environment. His mother is a prostitute. Though of course being a sex worker isn’t bad, it’s when you inflict that life style onto a literal child who is unable to consent to it or even understand what’s going on. Walter seeing this and having to be around an environment he did not consent to is very dangerous and absurd to me.

I am a sexual child abuse survivor, I was inflicted in a situation like Walter. And I can see myself a lot in this character though not to those extremes of course.

Trauma is fickle and can cause an individual to act rash, emotionally distant and even at times aggressive. Everyone is different and the affects of abuse can cause a lot of debilitating behaviors in a person. It’s very clear Walter is closed off and displays a defensive behavior towards older women and sex due to what he experienced.

Tip on trauma: A known adverse effect child abuse can have on an adult is generalization. Whether it be a group of people or a topic/action.

Walter generalizes adult women for a clear reason, he feels unsafe around them. Though this doesn’t excuse the fact this is unhealthy for many reasons.

From personal experience having your fight or flight flicked on during an event that doesn’t require it can lead to very strange and defensive/hostile/fearful reactions. Rorschach avoids the topic, tells Dan to not trust Laurie, is suspicious of the allegations towards the comedian, etc. He’s repulsed by sex, thinks sexual relationships are disgusting and describes it like a beast- ‘foaming at the mouth’.

To me this screams that someone hurt him as a child and left him with this grim view. It’s clear who it was and this doesn’t excuse the fact what Walter is doing is extremely unhealthy and life damaging.

Yet of course this further leads into my other point.

He is soft to children and female victims.

Walter is oddly protective of them and his motives are fueled by the case of Kitty Genovese. I find it contradictory that despite his defensive feelings towards women, Kitty’s death and rape is one of the factors that led him to become Rorschach.

Not to mention the infamous scene where Walter confronts the murderer of a child and literally butchered her corpse.

I find his motives for investigating very interesting, he distinctly state he thought about the child being abused and scared. Stating more so that he didn’t like it for personal reasons. It’s obvious why.

The panel being bathed in red when he finds out what occurred to the child is a clear indication of the moment Rorschach was born. In that moment Walter ‘died’, Rorschach was born and he no longer saw grey, only black and white.

That said despite this his actions do not deem Rorschach as a ‘bad’ person.

There is no bad people. There’s only people who choose to do bad or good things. Depending on whether you believe his actions are bad or good is up to you. Rorschach is an extremely morally Grey character (again so ironic that a grey character has a black and white view this doesn’t seem coincidental) he is flawed and realistic to what trauma can do if left untreated, constantly fueled by more adverse events, unhealthy coping mechanisms and behaviors.

In that moment where he chooses death rather than letting the innocent die (where he takes off his mask to reveal tears, emotion, something he has closed off for years) this is an indication Walter is still in there.

And despite his feelings towards humanity he rather die than let the innocent suffer.

Is he a hero? No. There is no such thing as a pure individual. A heroic soul doesn’t exist. Yet it’s our choice to recover properly from our past and go against those who harm others for the sake of their own benefit. Never compromise even in the face of Armageddon.

background and personality for miss lyra ❤❤❤❤❤

thank you so much, lovely! sorry this took an eternity and a half xx

PERSONALITY

what’s their alignment?

d&d alignments are not her friend!

having said that, she leans towards neutral or chaotic ( very rarely lawful ); neutral in that she does not attempt to disrupt order for the sake of it and does not prioritize personal freedoms over the general ( what she believes to be ) good, chaotic in that she’s willing to do whatever it takes to meet her goals regardless of legality or acceptability and thinks little of the laws and values of society; she considers herself above the law insofar as she does not respect the law or believes it to be fundamentally flawed, but does not opposite the concept of order on principle ( while, on the contrary, she is an enforcer of order and principles within the context of the project; no one is above the judgement of god, herself included ). her loyalty and unconditional love where she gives it earns her high points in the morality category in traditional d&d quizzes, as does her commitment to her cause ( whether that’s with the project or in her life before, conning or murdering corrupt or vile members of society in retaliation ). practically speaking, though, her methods align her with the evil sector, particularly in regards to the lengths she’s willing to go to; she also gets personal enjoyment out of inflicting suffering on those she deems unworthy, derives pleasure from the atrocities she commits. she is driven by passion more than anything else, and is consumed by rage and loathing, meaning she is never truly neutral; because she gets personal satisfaction from her work as the judge, it can’t be said that she’s acting selflessly in the pure interest of upholding the values of the project, so the merit of her devotion in and of itself isn’t without ambiguity. she believes herself to be a monster, but believes her cause is righteous – it takes evil to know it, judge it, and exterminate it – but she has never once in her life done something #fortheevils or in the interest of promoting ( what she believes to be ) evil for the sake of it; for that reason she’s difficult to categorize based on the traditional understanding of the alignments.

tl; dr: given that she truly is driven by rage & passion and very much wants the world to burn ( at least at a certain critical point in her arc ), and given the depravity she’ll resort to in order to reach her end goals, she’s probably best aligned as chaotic to neutral evil ( though she believes herself to be doing right ).

which one of the 16 personality types do they fit into?

enfp-a; the campaigner.

what are their hobbies and interests? do they have any particular “favorites” (food, books, and so on)?

setting sinners free, anna karenina, fleetwood mac, driving with the windows down, sinner roasts bonfires in the summer & autumn, watching the sun rise.

favorites are answered here ( x ),  activities and interests here ( x )

what are they bad at?

bar games & team sports (anything she can’t cheat at, really).

what kind of things do they dislike/hate?

apathy, willful ignorance, obstinate self-deceit, the song oh john.

do they have any vices/addictions/mental illnesses?

she turns to risky behaviors, inflicting pain on herself ( via the provocation of others/combat ) or others ( whom she feels are deserving ). she has flirted with most forms of substance abuse in the past, but never crossed the line into full chemical dependency with anything but tobacco ( more because of using nothing specific habitually than out of moderation ).

what are their goals and motivations?

to do right even if she was born wrong ( she might be a monster, but she’s a monster for a cause, and surely that means something ); to keep what she has ( her family, john ); to fulfill her purpose as the judge of eden’s gate; to cast out the unworthy; to get her family safely to new eden. after the collapse, she simply wants to lead and protect the only family she has left — the faithful — until the shepherd joseph promised arrives and releases her from her duty.

what are their manners like? any habits?

full rundown on her mannerisms here. extremely extroverted, open body language, usually smoking; draws herself up to her full height even when seated. often holding a cigarette, talks with her hands. very animated, but graceful and deliberate. uses eye contact and physical touch to either intimidate or establish intimacy; disregards personal space for the same reason.

what are they most afraid of?

answered here.

becoming her mother. losing john. losing herself to her wrath, to an extent, but she would rather burn herself alive than become isabela. ( that was always more something that she would go to any lengths to avoid than a fate she truly feared, at least before john’s death and the collapse; that was the first time she was actually tempted to numb herself and embrace oblivion, but she never did ).

BACKGROUND

where were they born? what was their childhood like?

lyra was born in the hamptons, but she spent most of her childhood (that she can remember) on nantucket island; early childhood she spent out ruling it herself, on beaches, frolicking with the summer people, still trying to get her parents’ attention, then, still wanting what she saw other families have; not perfect, perhaps, but something.

what’s their family like?

BIRTH FAMILY

lyra maintains, for the most part, that the problem was never with her parents, but with her; she told joseph at one point that the difference between the rest of them is that they might not have been born monsters, but she was; nothing made her that way. the reality, of course, is different; because of the fact that lyra’s abuse was tied primarily to neglect as a young girl and later the emotional abuse, exploitation and manipulation by her father, she does not feel entitled to the trauma she carries from it matched against some of the horrors she’s witnessed. ( of her father’s business associates and the men she would target later in life, lawrence was never the worst of them, and for that, she considers herself fortunate ). she’s very aware of the fact that she had the best education money could buy ( provided it also got her as far away from them as possible ), that she was not beaten or, truthfully, reprimanded; her father never touched her, but that was a universally true statement — the most physical contact or affection he displayed towards his daughter was a hand on her shoulder at galas, steering her towards an associate she was meant to beguile, or lifting her hair to fasten his latest bribe around her neck.

she never, in her entire life, felt more like a whore, not even when she was fucking men she met along the road to rob them.

her mother, isabela, was not inherently malicious; she was extremely depressed and jaded and, as a result, heavily self-medicated; she did not turn a blind eye to her husband’s affairs, or to the way he slowly made lyra her replacement, but she smothered it with drugs. she did not hate lyra, and never expressed open animosity towards her and that, to lyra, was the worst of it; she would attempt to provoke her often, would scream, fight, threaten, sob, but isabela was unmovable entirely. she was dead to the world.

the opposite of love, to lyra, was never hatred, it was indifference, and isabela was completely indifferent to her.

it’s the only thing lyra could never forgive.

she ran away often throughout her childhood, and as her sixteenth birthday neared, she finally left for good; she ensured she wasn’t found. they disinherited her within the year upon receiving notice from the family of one of her highschool girlfriends that she was visiting them ( an unintentional betrayal, but one that prevented her from making the mistake of contacting anyone from her old life again ). they sent her an official letter forbidding her from contacting them or returning home, swearing her off and stating that they did not recognize her as their daughter ( though, since she was a minor at the time, the only legal aspect was her removal from their will ).

lawrence would tell his colleagues and friends years later that he did what was necessary because he was afraid of her, that he truly believed she had the capacity to kill him for the inheritance. it was a ludicrous claim; for all of his insistence that she was like him, scheming, manipulative, opportunistic, incapable of feeling, all she ever wanted was to be loved and accepted by her family. she did not want to be a monster, she was simply told she was one all her life. she began to believe it, and, ultimately, she chose to become it.

still, she would have forgiven lawrence everything, in the end, if he’d ever cared to ask. she loved her parents, and later she hated them, but she could never be indifferent. she could never be like them. that, perhaps, was why they never loved her.

THE SEEDS

she loves her chosen family desperately. faith is her best friend and the sister she never had, and though their form of enmeshment makes them occasionally toxic, they truly do love each other; jacob is her mentor and trainer in her role as the judge, they’re quite close; joseph she has perhaps the most tumultuous relationship with because of his concerns about her intemperance and the way she and john indulge each other, but she respects him and understands him in a way john does not — she does not personally seek his approval or fear his rejection, so she views him more objectively. later, of course, they’re all that’s left, and while john will always be the person closest to her heart and the most important part of her life, joseph is the second.

she does make overtures to befriend ethan, but she is only an amplifier of his feelings of isolation and resentment towards his father; no matter what he does, the loyalty of both the flock and his father will always lie with lyra, and that is difficult for him to accept. despite joseph leaving new eden in his hands, ethan is under no illusions about the fact that lyra stayed behind to watch him, and her presence undermines him at every turn, regardless of her intent — she is the de facto leader, for reasons he will never fully understand, and he resents her for it.

john is her whole heart. he’s her soulmate. having him, however briefly, makes everything worth it to her in the end; she can’t ever regret it, no matter what it cost her; she tells poppy that “god gave him to me, and for that, i forgive [god] all the rest.”

what factions or organizations are they a part of? What ranks and titles do they hold?

prior to hope county, none; lyra is her own contractor and the center of her own networks.

with the project, lyra serves as the judge; she serves as a sorter, an intel gatherer, a judge of the worthy and unworthy, oversees the realm of the damned; she shows those who are submitted to her judgement their true selves and allows their choices and actions to speak to their character and determine the fate. after all, who is she to judge?

post-collapse, she leads new eden in practice, though not in title, in joseph’s absence.

how do they fit into their “story”?

lyra is the judge of eden’s gate and a seed by marriage. she’s a career serial serial killer and conartist come to hope county seeking refuge after a murder gone wrong; she is a damned woman, and the project is her last resort. she’s the sealbreaker, the lamb, and the wrath of god. in terms of far cry 5 canon, she replaces the deputy as the prophesized hell that followed, though she never has any allegiance but to the project; hers is a cautionary tale in that, in their attempts to avoid the fate joseph foresaw for them, the seeds ultimately bring ruin upon themselves. there’s no junior deputy in her canon; they called in sick the morning of the arrest.

where do they currently live? what’s their place like?

before hope county, lyra was perpetually on the move seeking targets, as her lifestyle demanded; after joining the project, she lives at the seed ranch with her husband.

post-collapse she lives in new eden until the arrival of the highwaymen brings joseph back to oversee it. she retakes prosperity and lives in what’s left of her old home until her death.

how do they eventually die?

she and john get hopped up on rads!bliss on their 70th wedding anniversary and put each other into mutual cardiac arrest. yeah, they fucked to death, what about it. this is the only way either of them ever die. shaggy finds them in a final insult to him.

lyra dies at forty-three — seventeen years later than she’d have liked — after taking a knife between the ribs via her nephew. while that’s the wound that technically does her in, the reality is that it was probably survivable; lyra had been dying for a long time, physically and emotionally broken by the holy war, though she put on a convincing front for the sake of joseph and the flock. she kept herself going until she had done her duty by new eden and fulfilled her purpose, bringing the shepherdess that was promised to the flock; she tells poppy that she’s her sacrifice, and she’s finally free to go back to the grave where she belongs. she does, happily; letting go is a relief.

Perfect Memento in Strict Sense: Pages 151-155 - Monologue

I first began compiling the Gensokyo Chronicles around the time I turned 18 as Aichi, which was over a thousand years ago.

Literacy was not as widespread in those days, so the Gensokyo Chronicles were more something to be left for later generations than something that was to be read by my contemporaries.

It's difficult even for me to read the writing of the Chronicles from that era, so it didn't serve much use as a reference for this compilation.

Since then, I've reincarnated as Ani, Ami and so on, and am now in my ninth incarnation.

Normally, the process of reincarnation results in an almost total loss of memory, but the ability of Gumonji that my ancestor Are possessed has been preserved, that is, the power to not to forget anything that has been seen.

Of course, as Akyuu, I have this power as well, and it has been extremely useful in compiling the references for this book.

Somehow I know about things that happened during my life as Aichi and even as Are, but unfortunately my memories of Gensokyo in ancient times are not very clear.

Just like a normal person, I have to read about the past to know much about it.

Still, it's quite obvious that Gensokyo has changed drastically over the past hundred years or so.

The days where humans live in terror of youkai or desperately exterminate them have passed, and the world has become a place where youkai come to the human village to play and humans are invited into the houses of devils.

This edition of the Gensokyo Chronicles is the first of these books to be written in the new Gensokyo.

Nowadays, youkai almost never eat humans.

As a result, I spent a lot of time worrying what to write about, and the usual warnings about youkai and descriptions of how to protect yourself from them followed as a result, but I spent some time arranging them a bit (*1) to try to provide a new youkai-centric viewpoint.

I even tried picking out specific youkai and delving a bit into their personal lives, as I wanted to help create new relationships between humans and youkai.

In addition, I received a great number of requests from youkai (*2), so what started out as a guide to help humans defend themselves from youkai became, before I knew it, a manual for youkai to help others learn about them.

In fact, a number of the youkai threat levels have been inflated somewhat in this volume.

This probably isn't cause for too much concern, as humans are almost never kidnapped and eaten by youkai in today's Gensokyo.

At this rate, I may have to completely rethink the audience of the Gensokyo Chronicles and the purpose of their existence.

If I don't, the purpose of my continued reincarnation would fade away.

Once this edition of the Gensokyo Chronicles is finished, I should have as many people read it as possible and ask them if my continued reincarnation is necessary.

Still, the fact that we've entered an age where there is practically no more use for the Gensokyo Chronicles means that this is a new, ideal era for both humans and youkai.

There are few threats to the humans' lives, and they can have peaceful duels whenever they please.

Youkai extermination continues in name only, and abductions are only carried out for show.

These peaceful yet stimulating times are surely a golden age for humans and youkai alike.

There's no doubt that Gensokyo has become the way it is thanks to the isolation brought about by the Great Hakurei Barrier.

Around the time humans outside began to become more powerful and deny the existence of youkai, Gensokyo was already in danger of destruction (*3).

The solution endorsed by the youkai sages was to isolate Gensokyo using a great barrier.

This barrier is the so-called barrier of common sense.

This barrier kept the outside world's common sense outside, leaving what lacked common sense inside, in Gensokyo.

It created a world which embraced the youkai and the world of the night that the outside world denied — a world in which matter and forces flowed as they were denied by the outside world.

It was a passive yet truly ground-breaking innovation (*4).

Of course, the construction of the Great Barrier is almost an implicit statement by the youkai that they're no longer a necessary part of human society, isn't it?

It's just the same as if they'd said, "Fine, we'll do as we please in here."

One could say this desperate last resort was a smashing success.

Or, perhaps it was the best possible plan and not a simple act of desperation.

However, there was a flaw in this plan, as well.

That flaw was that the youkai's inability to attack humans began to weaken their powers.

That meant that if a new and powerful youkai ever ceased to exist in the outside and passed into Gensokyo, the denizens would be unable to resist if it decided to subjugate them.

In this light, the Great Barrier can also be seen as a harbinger of Gensokyo's end.

Of course, there was a plan to avoid this happening, as well.

That plan was to have humans and youkai continue to battle each other in mock duels (*5).

This is how today's pattern, where youkai create disturbances every so often and incident resolution specialists resolve them, was born.

Following that intention, this edition of the Gensokyo Chronicles also establishes emphasis on the fact that youkai are those who attack humans.

Youkai attack humans, and humans eliminate them. If even the appearance of this natural order were to vanish, Gensokyo's future would surely become a dark one.

From my perspective, the power of today's youkai has not weakened; on the contrary, it's too much for the small area that is Gensokyo.

It's probably evidence of the outside world forgetting about youkai one after another.

However, no youkai ever try to invade the outside world.

Why is this?

I believe it's because youkai have no reason to attack the humans of the outside world.

To that extent, the outside world has become the world of humans.

Youkai are only mentioned in the context of tales in the outside world, and even in tales they only exist to be vanquished (*6).

Thus, even though Gensokyo is as small as it is, no youkai would ever leave it to go on a rampage.

Being satisfied with the current state of affairs is the only path to happiness, but it is also probably the most difficult, and this isn't just true for youkai.

Certainly, expressing dissatisfaction is related to self-improvement and can be a good thing.

However, it can also be a sign of greed, and avaricious souls only walk the path to their own destruction.

Enlightenment is knowing that one has enough and finding satisfaction in one's circumstances.

The youkai have finally reached that point in their existence.

This is the impression I get from today's Gensokyo.

I would like Gensokyo to continue to be the unselfish and happy, if cramped, place that it is. (*7)

Still, the humans called the Children of Miare -- to make a long story short, we are not able to live for very long.

I don't know whether this is because the reincarnation is imperfect or because we simply know too much, but I probably will not live until thirty.

Furthermore, my preparations for the ritual of reincarnation must begin several years in advance of that.

As a result, I likely will not have much of a chance to experience life as a normal human being.

This is my one regret, especially as it is much easier to enjoy an easy-going, pleasant life in Gensokyo now than in the past.

The ritual of reincarnation involves petitioning the Yama for permission during my lifetime; then, for over a hundred years during which my body for the next reincarnation is prepared, I work for the Yama in Hell.

So, even though it's become much easier to travel between Gensokyo and the Netherworld now, I won't be able to see how the conditions are in Gensokyo.

The hardest thing about reincarnation has always been having all of my interpersonal relationships reset.

This time though, I think that things may change somewhat.

This is because youkai and humans have become closer, so even I have youkai acquaintances.

It's not unusual for youkai to live for several hundred years.

Even if I spend over a hundred years in hell, although all the humans I know will be gone, the youkai will probably all look the same as ever.

So, the current state of Gensokyo has helped assuage the fear and loneliness I feel due to my reincarnation.

I wonder what the world will be like in the time of the tenth Child of Miare?

Contemporary Gensokyo has been preserved as a perfect world thanks to clever youkai.

In the current state of affairs, Gensokyo could continue to exist unchanged for quite some time.

Today's Gensokyo is heavily dependent on the outside world.

This follows fairly obviously from the fact that the Great Barrier is a boundary of common sense, but it is certainly frightening to think that there are things that cannot be done with just powers existing in Gensokyo.

If the outside world were to be destroyed, I wonder what sort of action the youkai sages would take.

I suspect they would immediately dissolve the Great Barrier and begin their domination over the outside world.

Since the world of the night is the youkai's world, this could mean the world would once again regress to being a place of darkness.

For some reason, I can't imagine that happening.

Looking at the youkai of today's Gensokyo, I can only imagine the future of the youkai being a bright one.

It was the youkai who took action and quickly came up with a plan to create such a fantastic world, not the humans of the outside, and not the humans who exterminate youkai for a living.

I can't think that those same youkai would do something so foolish.

We, the humans of the village, will continue our mock battles with the youkai in order to ensure the stability of their existence.

This is not the end of the current edition of the Gensokyo Chronicles.

I will probably continue collecting material for it until I must begin the preparations for my reincarnation.

Until then, I would like to continue enjoying the black tea I (*8) love so much as I listen to Yougakudan songs.

Hieda no Akyuu, the Ninth Are Maiden

*1: Like writing horizontally, Western-style, and adding drawings.

*2: Such as, "Make me sound stronger," or "What do you think of this power?"

*3: In the time of Aya, the eighth Are Maiden, the power of the youkai of Gensokyo was weakening, and humans outside began to deny their existence, so they were already on the brink of collapse.

*4: Though, we humans of the village who already lived in Gensokyo were unfortunate enough to get drawn into this plan.

*5: These duels also involve mock kidnappings and youkai extermination expeditions.

*6: Nowadays, there are many stories where youkai are simply small fry, and the real enemies are humans.

*7: Oh, but is that a form of selfishness? I suppose I'm still a ways away from enlightenment.

*8: A taste I've acquired since becoming Akyuu.

What are your five rules to new authors about world building? I struggle with this, as a minimalist author. And I would love suggestions on how to build a world in as few words as possible, while the description is still efficient and powerful.

Constablewrites:

Teach us about the world through the characters interacting with it. If your characters never interact with it, is it really relevant to your story?

Culture and society all ultimately derives from people--what they know about the world around them, how they survive in their particular environment, how they ensure the survival of future generations, and so on.

Conflict and tension come from limitations. Infinite and/or ill-defined power kills a reader’s emotional investment.

Don’t answer a question we haven’t asked. Context first, then explanation only if necessary.

Your reader will comprehend your world based on what they know of ours.

Personally, I think minimalism can be a good thing! New authors tend to err on the side of waaaaaay too much world building and explanation thereof. The best way to figure out the balance is to read closely. If you’re reading something that makes you feel really present in the scene, pay close attention to how they do that: the details the author chooses, the things they merely suggest or infer, the senses being evoked, and so on. And remember that contemporary literature has to world build just as much as genre stuff does; I’ve spent just as much time on a ranch as I have on Mars, so while I might be bringing more knowledge/assumptions to the table I’m still relying on the writer to make the world come alive.

Brainstormed:

Do you enjoy what you’re making? If not, let the idea lie fallow to be recycled, and ask yourself what would make you enjoy the worldbuilding again. Even if what you’re doing will never show up in your story, it’s still worldbuilding and therefore great. Just prioritize plot-relevant details, and make sure to have fun.

How different would the plot and/or characters be if this detail was changed? This question allows you to figure out the really vital parts of your world and its natural consequences in your story. The details that don’t affect much of your plot/characters are still good, as they add depth, but okay to parse down for a more minimalist perspective.

How far am I willing to ask my readers to suspend their disbelief? Can be asked of specific parts of your world, like magic systems or physics or geographical oddities, or of your setting in general.

Is this self evident? That is, does this part of your worldbuilding become foundational to the plot and/or setting in such a way that the reader understands and extrapolates without ever requiring the dreaded infodump? Not every detail has to be self evident, and in fact I don’t think every detail should be. There’s plenty of things about the real world that I would love to absorb infodumps about, but the way the sun in the sky affects my day to day life requires no context.

Breadth vs. depth, which is more a function of your plot and cast than setting. If your plot follows your characters wandering through a great deal of varying places/cultures/times/etc or a very diverse cast of different races/beliefs/jobs/etc, you’ll need a lot of distinct and interconnected settings with just enough detail to function and stick out as unique in the reader’s mind. Buckling down on a single world/culture/nation/etc to flesh out its complexities and variants will get far deeper into the why’s and how’s of your plot and/or characters, just be careful not to turn it into an encyclopedia instead of a story. (of course, you could do like me and create a lot of breadth and then murder yourself by trying to achieve depth with all of it)

Saphira:

Worldbuilding itself, and setting up the world, comes before the writing in my book. I find that chronic descriptors fall into two categories:

Those who know their world so well that they want to tell EVERYTHING. These I affectionately call the Gushers.

Those who are discovering their world as they write. The world is a mystery to them until the written word tells the writer where they are. These I affectionately call the Explorers.

I suspect you are concerned about being the former. In my gut, however, I suspect you may be the latter. Now there are different rules for each method.

FOR GUSHERS: Use Constablewrite's rules. Those rules underline what's important.

Worried you're still overboard? Count your paragraphs. How many has it been since something happened?

FOR EXPLORERS: Write as normal. Then go over it and look for the things Brainstorm mentions! Highlight them, or copy the stuff on another document.

When you get to rewriting your work, look at your notes and see what you feel is important! You've already explored, so now you can filter.

Worldbuilding in the scale that we know it is relatively new to novel-writing. (Thanks to Sci-Fi and Fantasy authors in the 1950's? Ish? Research it. Cool stuff.) That being said we're already getting really good at it. We've seen the wild phenomenon of cultural diving that Lord of the Rings, Star Trek and Harry Potter have had, and we want to give our readers the same experience!

Though I will note, what draws a reader into the world is the intrigue of the questions they can ask! If we can give our readers just enough information about the world to ask the coolest, deepest questions? We have succeeded.

Tex: I'm not a big fan of generalized advice, especially in regards to "new"... anything. I'm not aware of either your flaws or your strengths, though your use of "minimalist author" intrigues me - what do you consider minimalism? Is it descriptions, is it settings, is it dialogue? Is it something else?

I don't know whether this minimalism is the result of developing your writing voice or the result of underdevelopment in various writing skills, so I hesitate to give any concrete answers. In that respect, I would like to recommend @scriptstructure for the finer points of writing descriptions.

The others look to have covered about everything on this topic, but I would like to reiterate the idea that worldbuilding for the purpose of exposition is heavily dependent upon the plot. Whatever the focus of the plot is, and to some degree that of the characters, is the focus of your worldbuilding.

What's important to your story? Can you remove an element and still make sense? Those are consistently my two biggest guides when worldbuilding because everything outside the immediate needs of the plot are usually extraneous.

Feral: I don’t have rules so much as questions to provide some guidance for new writers getting into worldbuilding.

What quirk of character or plot stands out as being from a society different from my own, and what society would produce this? For a sense of verisimilitude in fantasy and sci-fi, it’s important that the characters not be reproductions of who you would expect to meet in the author’s own society especially when that society does not reflect the author’s own. Dragons, a post-singularity Earth, and a hundred other things that cast the story in a specific genre would create very distinct pressures that would lend themselves to different worldviews, economies, traditions, etc.

Would a particular feature of the world make my character or the plot more interesting? Would it create more problems than it would solve? I always advise against creating a feature of the world that solves your characters’ problems. Features of the world should either a) provide a lovely flavor or b) create obstacles for your characters to overcome or c) both. New writers, particularly those who don’t want too much superfluous flavor might look at Premise Brainstorming, or “In a World Where…” brainstorming to create world ideas that tie directly to the character and/or plot.

Am I avoiding describing something because it is not in my style or doesn’t fit the narrator’s voice? Or am I avoiding describing something because I can’t picture it in my mind or lack the confidence to execute it? This is me all the time. 2 decades of writing, and my first couple drafts are always a little lean on world details because I’m still wrapping my mind around what things really look like and how to take the image in my brain and translate it to the page. It’s ok to take your time getting the world rendered out; that’s what multiple drafts are for.

How have writers I admire and whose writing style matches what I want for myself handled the question of worldbuilding? If you’re not familiar with The City and the City by China Mieville, I strongly recommend checking it out. When I think of so-called minimalist world building, that is what I think of.

Do I know enough about my world to know what is important and what is not important to include? I recommend the Iceberg Principle for newer writers/builders: 90% of the world isn’t gonna make it into the story. So, that 10% better be enough and relevant.

In both canon and r&b, I suppose. Though, if you were to write a canon-divergent fic where everything was similar to the portal verse, would you still describe her as those to things?

Ok, so. Is Catra (canon, r&b, portal) impatient or temperamental. Going in order here.

Ok, first: I wouldn't describe Catra as impatient. At all. She has her moments of being impulsive, sure, but if you track those they are usually the result of someone knowingly or unknowingly jabbing at a sore spot and her reacting on pure instinct. Otherwise, she is very calculating and considers her options, which makes perfect sense: when you grow up in an abusive situation you have to weigh the pros and cons of everything you do just to keep yourself on somewhat stable ground in terms of both placating your abuser and keeping yourself alive. She does show some impatience in s4 in regards to finishing off the Rebellion, but that's not normal Catra: that's Catra running on next to no sleep and absolutely wracked with guilt.

Temperamental might be a better word to use, but it's a very tricky one: historically temperamental is a word that is often thrown around as a way to discredit or disregard people with real emotional and psychological problems. "He's just temperamental" is basically code for "Oh, he's just an asshole" regardless of whether or not this person is just a jerk or, say, grappling with bipolar disorder, ptsd from his time in the war, his mother beating him with an extension cord, literally anything. And more importantly, it carries the connotation that the changes of mood are unreasonable and irrational, which is why I don't feel it fits Catra. Yes, she does experience mood swings, sometimes in the extreme, but you can always pinpoint a trigger for them if you check. You just have to be on her wavelength.

Now, I know this typically carries more positive connotations in our current vernacular, but I would go with the original definition of the word "sensitive": quick to detect or respond to slight changes, signals, or influences. That's more Catra's speed. And being sensitive can be a good or a bad thing depending on context. You can be quick to pick up that a friend is hiding their distress and attempt to comfort them, or you can detect frustration or anger that someone else is displaying towards you and trying to suppress, and trying to tease that out of them can only make it worse. And that's not even covering the hypersensitivity to changes in mood that most abuse victims develop and that regularly causes problems later in life: they're always looking for an attack and unconsciously anticipating one even if the danger itself is long gone. And that's not something you can just turn off.

As for portal Catra... The thing about the portal verse is that it made everything better, yes, but it also scrubbed away everyone's flaws. So yeah, she probably wouldn't be as sensitive there but... Portal Catra in my opinion just isn't Catra. She's a character that (like all of us really) is so heavily molded and informed by what she's been through that when you take that away you end up with someone "normal" but also someone who is not Catra. For better or worse, the Catra we see is the normal Catra, because there never really was a Catra that didn't have to deal with those issues and chasing that unrealistic standard would actually hinder rather than help her.

1) i recently happened upon a post that argued that dvsk2 might be the 1 moment in the series where deku comes off as selfish and unheroic the reasoning being that even when he finally realizes there’s smthng wrong w how bkg sees himself and that hes the trigger he overlooks that and outright says that [quoting the post directly here cuz I have no idea what it’s supposed to mean] he’s “not enough of a nice guy” to stop him

2) and that he could’ve explained to bkg why he was wrong abt it all or could’ve cared that bkg was beating himself up over smthng that he had no reason to but didn’t and that he went along w the “meaningless fight” for selfish reasons

3) it was also argued that deku acted irresponsibly as the next ofa user. a responsibility he accepted and swore to. telling bkg abt ofa at the beginning of the school year was cited as another example of this and that it’s p plausible that he only half-spilled the secret to bkg bc he wanted for him to finally see him as an equal.

4) and this may tie into what deku wanted out of the dvsk2 fight which was to show bkg that he wasn’t weak ? he wanted bkgs acknowledgement of his potential and he planned on getting it by [to quote the post again] “punching him until bkg did”

5) which op stated to be the exact same thing bkgs been punished for time and time again since the beginning like getting targeted by the sludge villain immediately after destroying dekus hero notes and making the swan dive comment so that he wouldn’t have competition for UA

i would agree to an extent that deku has selfish moments but i think the argument in general 1) grossly misinterprets his motivations and 2) is unnecessarily harsh on him for handling things like an immature teenager

being selfish, at it’s most basic definition, means that you’re putting yourself first. this is not inherently a bad thing depending on what you’re doing, but calling a person selfish tends to have negative connotations, that you’re acting in your own self-interest at the expense of or with no regard for others. that’s what this person was arguing, that deku agrees to the fight solely in his own self-interest while disregarding bakugou’s well-being, which isn’t even remotely the case.

he could’ve explained to bkg why he was wrong abt it all or could’ve cared that bkg was beating himself up over smthng that he had no reason to but didn’t and that he went along w the “meaningless fight” for selfish reasons

deku didn’t want to fight over this and tried to deescalate the situation, but bakugou was very insistent on fighting, not talking.

he eventually went along with the fight because he cared about what bakugou was going through

deku agreed with the intent that it would help bakugou, that even though winning or losing wouldn’t solve the issue at hand, he needed this opportunity to vent the feelings he didn’t know what to do with otherwise and because of that he wasn’t going to just turn down the fight that bakugou wanted. (& all this is literally just in the text)

was this the most mature, sensible way to deal with this? of course not, future deku even states as much in retrospect, but this is an emotionally charged moment with someone he has an emotional charged and complicated relationship w/ and there’s a lot of desperation on both sides here. (plus there’s the whole shounen cliche of understanding someone better thru a fight blah blah blah)

now, once he legitimately takes part in the fight, deku states that he’s not going to hold back, that while he understands that this is bakugou’s chance to vent, he still wants to win. that’s what the “not a nice enough guy” line is referring to (also imo お人好し in this context would be better translated to something like “pushover”)

and a couple things to note: deku tends to be heavily motivated by other’s faith in him and his desire to not let them down & the initial purpose for this fight, as proposed by bakugou, was for deku to show him why all might chose him.

…prove myself!!

whether or not you perceive deku’s desire to win as something selfish in this context is up to you, but he is following the intended purpose of this fight. and regardless, bakugou doesn’t want to be coddled, he never has. that’s kind of a huge factor in the initial souring of their relationship so could you imagine how pissed he would’ve been had deku not taken this seriously?

next, deku telling bakugou about how he got his quirk because i also have a huge issue with this one

telling bkg abt ofa at the beginning of the school year was cited as another example of this and that it’s p plausible that he only half-spilled the secret to bkg bc he wanted for him to finally see him as an equal.

i really don’t understand how telling bakugou that he got his quirk from someone else would make him see deku as an equal? deku knew bakugou thought that he was tricking him by hiding that he had a quirk the whole time and wanted to clear that up as much as he could

is this an irresponsible thing to do as all might’s protege? sure, but, like i said, he’s a teen and he’s being impulsive (a bad habit of his!) because he doesn’t want bakugou to think he’s been messing with him. because he cares about him

while explaining himself he ends up essentially challenging bakugou, but it was something that spilled out in the heat of the moment, not what he came there to do.

you mentioned that the intent of the argument was to touch on how bakugou & deku’s relationship has been dysfunctional on both side, which i don’t disagree with as a concept, but not in the way this argument is suggesting. i think it takes scenes out of context in order to artificially add gray where it’s uncharacteristic and unneeded bc there’s already gray in other places (the mutual miscommunication for instance)

it’s important to keep in mind that deku is selfless to a critical fault, something he’s had to face consequences for from the beginning of the series because he needs to strike a proper balance. you can even think of it like this: deku’s penchant for self-sacrifice can, ironically enough, also come off as selfish if you factor in his loved ones concern for his well-being, how his lack of self-preservation worries and can even burden those around him depending on what he gets himself into. deku is not perfect and he handles things in flawed ways based on what he thinks is the right thing to do. he’s impulsive and reckless and throughout the story has to learn (often the hard way) to be more responsible with himself and how he goes about his duties as a hero.

at it’s core, deku’s deep admiration for bakugou and his resulting desire to not lose to him is both something that is self motivated and framed as positive in regards to deku’s growth as a hero (i’ve talked a bit more in depth about that here). like i said, he needs to strike a balance. it’s a detriment to your growth and well-being if you only think of others and never think about yourself so having this form of motivation is important for him.

there are things like the way he continued to chase after bakugou even after bakugou started pushing him away that helped fuel the complications between them (tho it’s important to note that he was a literal child) but deku never mindfully disregards bakugou’s feelings (see: the mutual miscommunication) or intends to “punch bakugou until he acknowledges him” or w/e

**ftr i switch between translations bc i like to use whichever’s closer to the original

What are you looking forward to the most from either the soundtrack or the commentary from the volume 5 dvd?

lmao this is just going to be me talking about my self-indulgent wishes.

[I’m coming back after I finished writing this to say this post got really long because of screenshots so I need to put part of it under a read more, but I like this too much to keep it hidden under the read more so it’s going to be here without any context and then it’ll appear in context later on.]

For the soundtrack, I’ve been dying for the full version of All That Matters ever since I heard it. I just want to know if it’s Bumbleby song or a team RWBY song. From what we have so far, I’m leaning heavily towards Bumbleby since Yang’s the only one who expressed doubt in Blake before deciding Blake being there now is all that matters, but it’s entirely possible that what we heard was just one verse and the other verses are about Blake from Ruby and Weiss’s perspectives. We just don’t know and I’m dying from anticipation.

I’m also looking forward to the full version of Ignite because I love all Yang songs and the “Hello there, my enemy” it starts off with in the character short gets me so hype.

And the full version of Smile. That one has a very memorable melody, and I love Ilia so.

For the commentary, does “the cast commentary existing” count? The team RWBY commentary was my favourite one in the first two volumes and I was distraught about not having it in volume 3, although having Jen and Shannon in the second half was great. And then I was even more distraught about not having a cast commentary at all in volume 4. I’m doubtful there’s going to be one, and even more doubtful that it would be a team RWBY one if we did get one, but I want to believe.

But lmao there are so many things I want to hear them talk about on the director’s commentary.

First of all, I want an explanation for this bullshit.

But I don’t really expect one because it’d probably be a weird thing for them to call attention to. I might cry if they do talk about it depending on what they say.

For stuff I actually think they might talk about, everything about Raven. Raven is a very flawed character and I’m really interested to hear how they talk about her. I love Raven, she’s the most Problematic Fave I’ve ever had, and I don’t think she’s as malicious as some people make her out to be, so I really want to hear how Miles and Kerry view her. It was great hearing Anna talk about her, and I want more of that.

Everything they have to say about the reunion. Miles in particular spends a lot of time in the commentaries gushing about how great the team RWBY girls are and I’m like, hey y’all, I’m ready to hear Miles's voice go really high and squeaky the way it does whenever he finds something really cute because he’s a wreck about how great it is to see team RWBY together again.

Fucking all of Alone Together because “What if I needed her here for me?” was one of the worst things they ever did to me and I’m curious about whether they have anything else to elaborate on that. Like, was this something they deliberately hinted at way back in volume 3? Because that’s certainly how I read it even back then.

And also the way Yang's walls immediately went up when Ruby brought up Blake. She was just gushing about how cool it was that they were in Mistral, but her attitude flips the moment Blake’s mentioned and I’ve never been more simultaneously alive and dead. Please talk about just how much of an impact Blake’s abandonment had on Yang.

And Ilia! Ilia’s such a beautifully written character and they’ve done so much with her in a relatively short time and I want to hear what they have to say about her.

They’re probably not going to talk about the first occurrence of gay staring that I mentioned, but the chances are a lot higher that they’d talk about this instance of gay staring.

This is such A Moment. It’s Blake and Yang seeing each other again for the first time since everything that happened between them and Blake immediately focused on Yang and Yang made That Face and all I want is for them to talk about it on the commentary.

And I want to know if they deliberately centered all the reunions around Yang. It’d be such a weird coincidence if they didn’t plan for each reunion to be so focused on Yang and one other member of team RWBY and that’s how every reunion was framed.

It might be Too Much to reveal this in a commentary, but I’d love it if there was some hint that Blake and Yang aren’t completely okay yet because they still have a lot they need to talk about. I doubt they’d get super blatant about it, I just... need some kind of hint.

The Adventure Zone: From Three Points of View

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Three of our contributors review The Adventure Zone, based on their familiarity (or lack thereof) with the source material

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This post is sponsored by First Second. All opinions expressed in this post are based on the writers' personal views.

The Adventure Zone series is a unique storytelling experience—a graphic novel series that began life as a game of Dungeons & Dragons played by podcasters Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy and their dad Clint, it has evolved into something much, much more. You don't have to have listened to the McElroys' podcast or to have played D&D before to enjoy this tale of adventure and intrigue.

Den of Geek reached out to three of its regular contributors—one of whom is a McElroys podcast fan, one of whom loves D&D, and one of whom is neither—to get insight into their respective experiences reading The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins and The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited!, the first two installments of The Adventure Zone series.

Here's what they had to say...

The Adventure Zone Review #1

Reviewer: Megan Crouse, a fan of The Adventure Zone podcast

You’ve probably seen the McEloy family’s influence online, even if you don’t know it. Griffin McElroy founded video game journalism site Polygon, and he and his brothers’ sense of humor has become the new voice of the internet. They’re known for games, memes, and podcasts, including The Adventure Zone.

As a Dungeons & Dragons podcast, The Adventure Zone starts out as a stock fantasy quest, albeit lead by bumbling heroes. Later arcs branch off the established format. Murder at the Rockport Limited, the second arc collected as a graphic novel, is a murder mystery on a train, and later arcs diverge even more dramatically from dungeon-crawling. My primary window into McElroy World is the most recent The Adventure Zone arc, "Amnesty." For the release of the latest graphic novel, I returned to the earlier arcs.

Some of the references, jokes, or information in the episodes is moved around in the script, and clearly a lot of work went into making them feel like a story instead of a conversation while also preserving the most well-known moments. The art varies from beautiful and easy on the eyes (the lush Rockport Limited and the lands it travels through) to humorously pinched and distorted to a Dr. Suessian degree (most of the elves). Details in the background and the funny names of places reward a close look. But some of the art was flattened by color choice—there’s a default pink hue that my eyes tended to skim over.

Like the podcast, it takes its time getting good. Unlike the podcast, the book spends less time on the stock fantasy adventuring of the first arc and zooms to the funnier, more creative stories. There’s still a hurdle to jump, because some in-jokes aren’t explained or don’t work as well without delivery. Character voices likewise don’t translate as well.

But the stories are still funny. Clever and unexpected and raunchy, the group has a charming rapport with each other. Adapting writer Clint McElroy and artist Carey Pietsch know when to sparingly drop Griffin McElroy in to break the fourth wall as the DM. The Bureau of Balance and the Rockport Limited are both unique concepts that bring new flavors to the fantasy.

Whether you like the characters will depend on your tolerance for irreverent, canonically annoying protagonists with rapid-fire jokes. There are deeper relationships in these stories, and glimmers of those show through, but most of the best and most serious character work comes later in the podcast series. The collection editions offer the delight of official art and skim over the podcast’s more tedious sections, but an established fondness for this particular brand of humor may be a requisite for reading.

The Adventure Zone Review #2

Reviewer: Alana Joli Abott, a Dungeons & Dragons fan

Reading the first two volumes of The Adventure Zone feels a lot like sitting down at a table with my high school gaming group. In some ways, that's great—it's incredibly nostalgic and definitely brought back memories of my early days in gaming.

During those early years, we worried less about world building and our characters being consistent in their fantasy knowledge and included things like Fantasy Quickie Marts where our characters could snag a pack of gum along with a healing potion. The McElroy's world is full of those kinds of jokes, and while it makes for inconsistent world building, it joyfully breaks the fourth wall with references readers are sure to appreciate. Griffin McElroy as DM is, by turns, long-suffering and cacklingly evil—as a frequent DM myself, I can identify with both aspects, and I cheered with the characters in triumph when he makes a call breaking the rules for the sake of the story.

In other ways, that echo of real game tables hit some sour notes: a lot of the familiar tropes (particularly the evil drow wizard with the ginormous spider) are overplayed, and their familiarity was irksome rather than enchanting. Despite the inclusion of some really fantastic female NPCs, the story is entirely drive by the three male main characters, whose humor has a more masculine turn ("Man, it's nothing but dick jokes with us"). That's not a problem in itself (and it makes complete sense given that the players and DM are all male), but it did frequently make me feel like I wasn't the target audience for the story, and recalled the many times where I've been the only female player at a table.

That said, the story itself, particularly starting at the end of the first volume, when the larger world context is introduced and departs from some of those more heavily trafficked D&D tropes. The second volume's combination of train-bound murder mystery with swords and sorcery felt like sitting in at a really excellent game table, particularly the inclusion of an underage detective (although a few contextual jokes about that NPC felt a little uncomfortable to me as a parent). Pietsch nails the artistic tone (especially in one cute chibi page that references another Hasbro toy line), but I'll note that the child-friendly appearance of the covers, which drew both of my kids like moths to a flame, belies the adult language inside (there's plenty of cursing, as you'd expect from a raucous game table).

Not many non-game works out there really capture the spirit of playing D&D. While I may have nit-picked about the target audience flaws, but I recognize here that the McElroys and Pietsch are doing something really cool that stands alone without my ever having listened to the podcast. The Adventure Zone doesn't quite overtake The Gamers (which has some of the same issues I mention above) as one of the best representations of D&D in other media, but I think it's a close second.

The Adventure Zone Review #3

Reviewer: Natalie Zutter, previously unfamiliar with Adventure Zone or Dungeons & Dragons

Reading The Adventure Zone graphic novels as someone who has neither listened to the McElroys’ podcasts nor played D&D (aside from listening in on my husband’s weekly games) is constantly feeling not quite in on the joke. That’s not the fault of illustrator Carey Pietsch, who remarkably translates four voices into a rich visual fantasy adventure; nor Clint McElroy, who worked with Pietsch to adapt the audio campaign in fourth-wall-punching ways, like including Griffin as a long-suffering DM providing helpful context. Regardless, something never quite clicked for me.

Strangely, what I found myself missing most was more D&D structure. Completely skipping character creation and jumping into the action—with brief stat/proficiency explainers via tongue-in-cheek cue cards—made for a very sitcom-y feel, as if these three players have always been adventuring together. But without any background, the characters felt shallow; I knew plenty about their foibles (Magnus’ poor impulse control, Taako’s self-servingness, Merle’s evangelism) but not enough of their wants. It’s also unclear how meta they’re intended to be, accepting the presence of their omniscient DM so readily that it seems as if they must be aware that it’s a game, yet treating their quests as life-or-death.

As someone who initially bounced off D&D gameplay precisely because of how dice rolls dictated every possible movement, I was surprised to see how sparingly rolls were used in the fight scenes. Instead, Magnus might get a mighty swing of his axe in, or Taako might get knocked down a peg by a more powerful wizard—but these felt like moments typical to any fantasy story, instead of being susceptible to the randomness that controls the rest of the outcomes in D&D. Another pet peeve was the constant asides: the trio ribbing NPCs instead of using conversations to learn more about quests, and especially out-of-universe references to Star Wars and Paul Blart: Mall Cop. On a podcast, it’s probably snappy and fun; on the page, it just feels like tedious wheel-turning.

These criticisms aside, the world is incredibly inviting. Once our heroes got rid of that pesky static at the end of the first volume and got to join the Bureau of Balance, it gave them some much-needed artifact-of-the-week structure combined with “these might be the good guys, but they’re not telling us everything” levels of intrigue.

I vastly preferred Rockport Limited to Gerblins because of how it sharpened the stakes: a locked-room mystery with a countdown clock; gender-stereotype-challenging NPCs; and a truly clever twist for a story set within so many constraints. Beyond the titular train murder, the scenes set at the Bureau evocatively step outside of the podcast narrative and utilize the graphic novel format: nonverbal moments where the Director ponders some undisclosed regret, and Taako considers conspiracies, lay curious groundwork as to future clashes.

Even if The Adventure Zone isn’t for me, I can’t deny the power of the McElroys’ reach—wonderfully illustrated in the fan art galleries that make up the back ends of both volumes. Each piece is imbued with the listeners’ delight in the story, and their own particular headcanons for each character reveal just how much they care about this world.

The first two installments of The Adventure Zone are now available for purchase. You can find out more about The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins and The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited! here.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Review Natalie Zutter Alana Joli Abbott Megan Crouse

Oct 3, 2019

First Second

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The City of Virginia Beach SEO: 9 SEO Trends For 2019

Whether you're operating your own SEO platform or you're working with a digital marketing team, these tips should help you prepare and capitalize in 2019. Unfortunately, some of these trends might suggest that you do a little work to adapt. That's the laborious part, but it'll feel really good when you've prepared for changes and your competition hasn't. Let's get started. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8MU_cIhL0g

1. A Shift in Indexing

It might be helpful to have a little overview of indexing before we dig into how it is changing.  Sites like Google catalog all of the online information they can by doing something called "crawling." Crawling is how Google can catalog trillions of sites on the web without having to manually enter each site.  Crawlers move through the web by following links. When one site has a link to another site, crawlers can enter into that next site and catalog all of the information they want to. Typically, that information only has to do with the search engine algorithm.  The search engine algorithm is (you probably already know) the mechanism that sifts through trillions of sites and compares them to the search terms. If you search "cute kitten video," Google will run those terms against the sites in its database and bring up those sites that it feels are most relevant to your search.  It does so by using some 200 search criteria and running those metrics through the algorithm which ranks the sites that come up. All of the information that the algorithm uses is accumulated through crawling. When a site has been crawled, it has been indexed.  What's Going to Change? Historically, Google has used desktop-first indexing which catalogs the desktop version of a website before it does the mobile version. That suits the needs of most users, as a lot of users are totally fine with the desktop version of a site. 

Even when you're searching for a site on your phone, the desktop version is good enough to read through and get the information you need. If you really need to use a site, you can download its app if it has one and operate from there.  Desktop sites are simply not as good on mobile phones as mobile sites are, however. As users are beginning to move toward a mobile-based relationship to search engines, Google is implementing a mobile-first indexing strategy. Google does not have two indexes for mobile and desktop. They use one index to catalog all of their information, so this could actually change things significantly.  You're Not Going to Lose All the Work You've Done It isn't as if all of the optimizing you've done on your current site will be lost, and your ranking will be subjected to new sites who operate entirely on mobile. Your optimization is still your optimization, and Google will see you in the same light.  The shift primarily relates to how Google indexes your site's pages. So, if you have only a desktop page, nothing will change. However, if you have a desktop page and a mobile page, Google will prioritize the mobile one.  With this in mind, it might be a good idea to start optimizing your mobile pages more heavily, as they will be the ones that stand out. Your mobile and desktop pages are both in the same race against all competitors.  If the slower horse (your desktop) is going to lose by default, give the faster horse more of your attention. Additionally, it stands to reason that the mobile trend is here to stay. If Google is making the effort to shift toward a mobile-first indexing method, who knows where they'll stop? The point is, it might be smart to start incorporating mobile into your site before mobile optimization overshadows all other forms. 

2. Speed as a Ranking Factor

Your page speed has always been a ranking factor. This falls in line with Googles desire to provide an excellent experience for its users, which entails delivering sites that load quickly and get you on your way. Interestingly enough, though, your mobile page speed wasn't a factor until this July. This also falls into the trend of Google valuing mobile experience more highly than it once did.  So, now that page speed is a ranking factor for mobile and mobile is indexed first, what does this mean? It means you have to fix any bugs your site has that prevent fast loading times and optimize for the Chrome User Experience report. Two Ranking Factors for Mobile The way your mobile page speed ranks is dependent on two factors: page speed and optimization. The speed of your mobile page is indexed based on the Chrome User Experience report, which takes down information on each user that visits your site.  Luckily, speed in terms of the Chrome report isn't a huge element in the scheme of your ranking. The real key to optimizing for the speed factor is just sticking to traditional back-end optimization.  There are a number of things that Google checks for, and they list them all out here. It's estimated that these sorts of optimization account for a great deal and the Chrome report affects your ranking very minimally at this time.  At the same time, as we mentioned in the last section, there is a definite shift toward mobile happening, so it's important to keep up and make changes before it's too late.

3. Your Reputation Matters 

Of course, your reputation has always mattered online. Now, though, Google has upped its game in response to hordes of black-hat SEO efforts to accumulate backlinks.  Before we go further, we'll give a little rundown of backlinks: Backlinks and Brand Recognition Backlinks are links to your site from other sites. The site that links to you is important, as some sites hold more weight than others. 

You can think of Google's search results as a flawed democratic election. People cast their vote by giving a link. Each link has an effect on the total outcome of the search results.  Now, a large corporation casts its vote in the way of a link, and that link has a lot more weight than the link of the average person. In the same way, getting a backlink from Ford's website will do you a lot more good than getting one from Dale's Auto down the street.  Google typically used, and still uses to a degree, backlinks as a way to measure the social worth of your site and brand. It stands to reason that the more people there are linking to you, the more likely it is that you're a site that has valuable content.  You will then rank higher than sites who don't get voted for in the way of backlinks.  How It's Changed Google's Artificial Intelligence has advanced to a point where links aren't necessary for Google to see the social value of your brand. Googlebot can take references to your brand in the context they're found to make assumptions about what people think of you.  Backlinks are still important, but you'll also get an SEO boost if you have people talking about your brand in a positive way. The only way to do this is to provide great service and make your customers happy. You could also suggest that people mention you in online forums or social media or their own websites.

4. Data Retention

Laws passed in the European Union state that requires sites to provide cookie data that has been collected on specific users.  This doesn't apply too much to American sites, but Google is an international company and has an interest in data protection. What you should do is set your data retention to expire after a small period of time like one year or less.  Do this, and you won't have to do a whole lot of work when those laws move over into the United States (if they do).

5. Branching Out from Google

As user trends shift, we're finding that people are going directly to some specific sites rather than Googling general products.  You can see this in sites like Youtube, Pinterest, Facebook, and, most importantly, Amazon. It's essential that you set aside independent work to optimize for social media, but Amazon is one that many people don't think of.  Check out our article on how to start a Facebook agency. If you sell a product online, you should be optimizing for Amazon searches. Don't, and you'll lose a significant chunk of sales. 

6. User Preferences

Users are being given such a wide range of content that they have the luxury of breezing past information that isn't pleasantly presented. Sure, one thing is pleasant to one person and abhorrent to another.  Do your users prefer video, text, imagery, interactive interfaces, or something else? It's going to be essential that you optimize for your users as well as your search engines. 

7. Site Structure

As Google shifts its indexing policies, it will begin to heavily favor those sites that are structured to be indexed. 

Site architecture has always been something that was important. Not only does a clear site design and structure make your users happy, but it also makes it easy for crawlers to gather information from your site.  It's like walking down the grocery aisle and grabbing what you need compared to crawling through a maze to find a scrap of bread. Google needs to index billions upon billions of sites, so it's naturally going to want sites that have good, simple architecture. 

8. Google Is Smarter

Think about it, Google can take random references of your name and use them to make judgment calls. That's some futuristic stuff, and it's all done by artificial intelligence.  This makes one thing clear: poorly written or created content is going to be snuffed out a lot quicker now. If  Google goes through your content and notices that it's been written by a computer, or someone who has fluffed up the articles to fill space, you will rank poorly.  We don't know exactly how artificial intelligence does it, but it's doing a good job. The point is, create great content that poses a benefit to your users. 

9. Credibility in Content

Because of the contextual clues that Google's crawlers are now privy to, the authority with which you create content will really matter.  While creating great content that's well-optimized and relevant will get you places, it's going to mean a lot more if it's written by a professional with credentials. By hiring and communicating with the best in your field, you'll get better rankings.  Users will clearly prefer this content, but we aren't even looking at that end. Google knows users will prefer that content, and its artificial intelligence is now trained to look for it.  That means when you have content from an expert, make sure you give them written credit on your page, otherwise, it won't do as much damage in the search results. 

Want to Learn More?

It's crucial that you keep up on SEO trends as well as solidify your knowledge to benefit your site. There's a lot to learn, though, and we get that.  Visit our site to learn more about small business SEO services and what search engine optimization can do for your site. Read the full article