Drawing whatever I want for the Willion standee
The new princess peach game is giving me magical girl vibes haha 💖
THE ALTER GILGAMESH FIGURE ARRIVED!!
He's so beautiful I LOVE MY KING SO MUCH!!! 😭😭😭🥹🥹🥹❤️❤️❤️❤️
Some cool artwork of all the [dot] hack// heroes (made as Anniversary art!).
parallels of Gilgamesh as a savior
You know, Gil actually has a huge amount of parallels with Saber, Castoria, and Morgan, it's just that we only ever see him once his journey is complete so it doesn't feel as tragic. Not exactly the same of course, and Gil ends up better in the end than the others, however the origins are surprisingly similar, or at the very least mirror each other.
Destined saviors born with a purpose too great for any one person, so much pressure the majority of people couldn't handle it.
Like Castoria, Gil had no choice in becoming the wedge of heaven, his destiny was instilled upon him by the gods before he was born, and he was given the power of clairvoyant sight which showed him endless timelines in possibilities, many of them filled with destruction. Endless information, enough that according to Sheba's interlude, he had to learn how to suppress it. He sees the deaths of his loved ones before they come, as shown by how he nearly panicked when Siduri was about to go to her death in Babylonia.
However, like Morgan, Gilgamesh rejected his destiny, while simultaneously accepting it. The gods wanted him to crush humans under his heel, to prevent them from creating and discovering so humans would remain reliant on the gods forever. But Gil grew to love humans so much he decided to take their side instead, preventing the gods from holding onto their already slipping control. He decided he would become a guardian of humanity, the sole decider and protector of its fate. To do this, he could not grow close to humans, he had to cut himself off emotionally in order to be impartial. As mentioned in CCC, the only reason he was able to grow close to Enkidu and love them is because they were neither human nor god. At last, Gilgamesh had an equal he was able to relax around, someone who understood what it was like to be all alone in the world, the only creature of his kind. When Enkidu died, even after Gilgamesh went on his journey and became wise, his decision to never become close to anyone else remains firm. He is eternally isolated, unable to let himself let his guard down around anyone. Even when he grows attached to a human, like Hakuno, he cannot see them as an equal and be vulnerable around them, because he will always be the wedge of heaven.
Saber, meanwhile, willingly chose to be a savior. She had a choice, took it upon herself to give up companionship in order to take up the sword. She gained everything, then lost it and regretted it, cared for but still distant and not understood by anyone. It was only in her afterlife (or rather in an eternity of a split second right before her death), that she was able to find peace and companionship.
Gilgamesh had no choice in becoming the wedge of heaven, and was born completely alone and isolated. He gained love and companionship in his life, but lost that love. His country did not fall to ruin, and he remained proud. But he returned to being alone, and continued to be alone for all of time, even in his afterlife.
some mini collections of tips for writers
(based on things that yours truly notices as a freelance editor. This list is in no way complete, and will probably be added to as I continue to find repeated mistakes)
Dialogue
- Use beats in your dialogue to break it up. Even “said” can make a very effective beat between lines.
- (No beats: “It’s not lethal. Just highly dangerous with a good chance of being mutilated.” // Beats: “It’s not lethal,” he said. “Just highly dangerous with a good chance of being mutilated.”)
- Note how the break allows a bit of a pause for ~dramatic effect
- thinking of dialogue, use punctuation and distinct speech patterns! “Life, uh, finds a way.” is an iconic line anyway, but Jeff Goldblum’s signature verbal tic gives it character.
- It’s okay if characters stutter. Don’t let the condemnation of stuttering characters as “cringey” in fanfic put you off. (and on that note, fuck cringe culture. Seriously. It saps all the fun out of creativity and fun is important.)
- Start! A! New! Line! Whenever! Someone! New! Speaks!!
- DO NOT FEAR THE WORD “SAID”
Setting & Blocking
- Use the landscape and settings around your character, and always, always remember a scene’s blocking. Where is everything in relation to your characters? Have you left someone holding a coffee cup for the last three scenes? Did you lose a character somewhere along the way?
- using the contents of a scene is also great for fight sequences.
- Similarly, large character casts are hard to keep track of so don’t be afraid to break them up. Sending someone off somewhere else can create some nifty little subplots.
- Keep a personal note of how time passes. Trust me, it’s incredibly helpful to you as a writer and also for future readers.
Characters
- Character growth does not have to be positive. Sometimes characters fail or suffer or get their motivations twisted up, and they finish the book as a villain rather than a hero.
- All that matters is that a character changes throughout the plot in a way that readers can see; the sort of change they go through is entirely up to you.
- scrap the idea that someone has to deserve a redemption arc. They probably don’t deserve it, which is the whole point. So don’t be afraid to make your villains seem completely irredeemable.
- and you don’t need to redeem your antagonists in order to make them complex, sympathetic villains, anyway. Sometimes people get so stuck in their beliefs that they can’t see another way and it goes too far. Not everyone comes back from that.
- Also, motivations and goals can absolutely change. That’s okay. You just need to have something that drives your character so that your readers are rooting for them.
- Protagonists don’t need to be heroic. How you define the protagonists and antagonists in your story is based entirely on the morality in your story-world, NOT the moral ideas in the real world. What counts as a complex protagonist in a world torn apart by biological warfare will be very different than one living in our world.
Prose & Grammar
- simple prose is just fine and you don’t need to fluff it up for pretty quotes.
- Remember to vary your sentence structures and length. Start smaller and build it up, drawing your reader’s attention.
- “And” and “But” are very valid sentence starters that are great for communicating the tone of internal narrative. You’re allowed to tweak grammar if that’s helpful for telling the story, it just needs to be accessible. Test out what you’ve written on other people.
- Check that your tenses are consistent!!
Anonymous asked:
Thoughts on Kiyotaka/Mukuro?
Seems like a nice and interesting ship!
I do remember reading this from a manga and thinking about how well they could bond if given the chance. I can also imagine them having 'friendly fights' since they are both good at martial arts.
Sorry that I didn't have much to say, anon. I hope you accept these birbs as compensation ( ^ө^ u )
GIFTOBER 2022: DAY 20 - TIME
“What a foolish sister I was—” New sacrifices appear before her of their own accord. Joining hands, the sisters still their trembling legs, and look up at the completely disfigured monster.
“…No. What foolish sisters we were. I did not ask you to protect us. You looked like you were having so much fun, I just thought you should enjoy it while it lasted,” said the eldest sister, Stheno, in a gentle voice. Lovingly, like always, she smiles at the monster.
So one of my besties was discussing with me that we want a actual summer Morgan with dark swimsuit instead being 1/3 of Tonelico………
I absolutely love Tonelico too but uhhhhhh ……… dark swimsuit …… I want
BWOOBWOOBWOO! Serenus Couture Mami!!!!
Out december this year as a prize figure
Probably the single hardest lesson for me to internalize in writing was that you don’t design a character you design a character arc.
One reason you as a writer might end up stuck with a flat or boring character, or one that just isn’t doing the things you need to create a vibrant plot, despite working out all the details of their life for hours, is because you’ve made the mistake I always do. You’ve made a character who is a blend of all the characteristics you envision for them, rather than saving some characteristics for the end of their journey.
What do I mean by this? Maybe you envision a character who is a handsome prince, honest, brave, and true. In your plot, though, he’s going to be an antagonist for a bit but you don’t really want him to be seen as a bad guy, necessarily. But when you drop him into your story, he’s just… there. Being honest, brave, and true.
That’s because the prince has no character arc. He is a static figure, a cardboard cutout.
Let’s go a little deeper with a great example of one of the best character arcs in YA animation: Prince Zuko. He is, objectively, honest, brave, and true (to his cause of finding the Avatar) from the outset. But he’s also a dick. He’s a privileged, imperialist brat, who is rude to his uncle and vicious to our protagonists.
By the end of the series, though, Prince Zuko is still honest, brave, and true, but he’s also a good person who has learned many lessons over the course of his trials and obstacles. He has failed over and over again at his initial goal of capturing the Avatar. He has failed at winning his father’s regard. He has failed at numerous smaller goals of day to day adventures. He has learned from all of these. We have seen his journey. But, if you started your vision of how to write Zuko from who he ends up being, he’s got nowhere to go as a character.
It’s not just about what flaws he has corrected though. It’s about what lessons about life he has internalized. What flawed views of the world he has corrected and how.
Rather than saying, “The character starts out a dick and learns to be nice,” be more specific. “This character starts out believing the empire he is loyal to is morally in the right for its conquests, but over the course of working for that empire’s ruler and seeing his cruelty first hand, not to mention fighting the empire’s enemies and mingling with its civilian victims, he becomes a better person and learns the error of his ways.”
Already, right there, you have more than a cardboard character. You have a character who has an arc that molds to your plot.
Helpful Questions to Ask:
- What flaws does the character possess?
- How do these flaws influence the character’s mindset, perspective, intuition, and behavior?
- What variables emerge, in the course of the story, that expose these flaws to the reader, to the character in question, or to other characters?
- How does the character react to these inevitable conflicts? What are the consequences for how the character reacts to these conflicts or contradictions?
- What are the stakes for staying the course? What are the consequences for thinking about change? What are the consequences for actually pursuing change? What are the consequences for pursuing change and failing (or succeeding) publicly (or in secret)?
- Reassess: What flaws does the character possess?
- How has the character’s experience(s) in confronting these flaws influenced the character’s role and interaction with the primary conflict set in the story?
- How does the story change as a result?
