MIDNIGHT HOUR can now be read on Webtoons and Tapas!
Rooftops and juice boxes. A skyline drenched in summer. A slice of tranquility between two young women.
MIDNIGHT HOUR is a moment plucked from an upcoming sci-fi fantasy epic of victory, sacrifice, and the race against a dying world… But this is not that story yet. For them, this is just one night.
This webcomic is our first work of many. It has been such wild year creating this. Thanks for supporting our journey! 🫶
I rebranded to astaralys now that I'm shifting into original projects but I'm very much still the same snow sisters supporter. I've just levelled up with an interest in game dev and picked up pixel art as well, so you'll be seeing less frozen content and more me content
you can find me on these places:
twitter (listen I am not calling it X): https://twitter.com/astaralys
bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/astaralys.bsky.social
ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/astaralys
I'm part of a studio! have you read our webcomic oneshot, Midnight Hour?: https://www.webtoons.com/en/canvas/midnight-hour/list?title_no=872088
But what's happening with TNU, you ask? I admit I have much less time for fic now but still very much enjoy TNU and hope to see it to completion. It's something that sporadically crosses my mind, and when I reread what I've written, I fall in love with the story all over again. So I pick at it during my commute and lunch breaks. We'll get there slowly!
in the meantime, please enjoy this wip chapter 23 scene join me in my struggle to remember what happened in ch 22, it's been 84 years
As always, thank you so much for following my journey and reading my stories. I really want to finish writing TNU for us, and hope you wouldn't mind sticking around for my foray into original stories beyond that. I've been writing fanfic for over a decade (oof my back ached typing that) and knowing every word I've written has been read and enjoyed by at least one person has made me the writer I am today. Thank you for finding my words!
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There was nothing quite like the slipperiness of blood. A slickness that smeared and clung to everything and anything, as if it already knew there was no way to return to the veins from which it had gushed. Its new purpose was to stain and horrify. If it could, with its sheer, crimson volume, petrify those that had evicted it from its rightful body, then its existence had purpose. A river, it would become.
“Your Highness! Are you hurt?” Ronny. A familiar face. An anchor.
“I… y-yes. I mean, no. The… the blood’s not mine.” Kristoff made to get up and slipped. Instead of hitting the marble floor, though, his knee crunched into unmoving flesh. It was a small blessing he hadn’t speared himself on one of the dozen crossbow bolts protruding from the man’s torso like a pincushion.
Herman dragged him upwards and back, none too gently. “We’ll guard the prince! Make sure these bastards are really dead.”
“Wait—” Bile overtook words. Kristoff dropped to all fours and retched.
Scattered words swirled around him as his guards waded through the bodies. “—that big talk about their military. These idiots fought like lumps of wood!”
“Any news from the general? Did we manage to intercept their fleet?”
“Still can’t see a thing out there; the fjord’s completely covered in mist after the wall fell. How did they break Princess Elsa’s magic—”
“Forget that! The queen and princess are missing—we need a search party—”
“With what men? We’re already stretched thin as ice—”
Ice. If he’d kept his head down and continued hacking at the frozen tundra and going home to his family of trolls, he wouldn’t be here, crouched in a lake of dark red. Staring at a canopy of death spattered across the hallway like the reaper itself had danced with a conductor’s wand. How easily could he have been one of those bodies splayed out across the same floor Anna always slid down in her socks, laughing and crashing into his arms? Where was Anna? What if she was lying in a ditch somewhere, just like—
“Oi! Got a live one here!”
“You telling me this runt was the commander of this freak show? What, did you use your own soldiers as meat shields? You cowardly little—”
Kristoff looked up to see his men crowded around a huddled figure. If these southerners hadn’t brought swords and bloodlust to Arendelle… if they hadn’t spilled mortality in these sunny halls…
Don’t be pathetic, Bjorgman.
“Let me talk to him,” Kristoff rasped.
“Sir, this scum tried to kill you—”
“Trust me, I’ve noticed.”
The soldiers quietened. A few stepped away from their quarry, blinking like they had snapped out of a trance. Kristoff knew them all by name, but when they had come to his rescue in a flurry of unforgiving steel, he momentarily couldn’t recognise them. But he recognised himself in their sudden cruelty. They weren’t baying for blood— they were afraid for themselves, their families, their homes. They needed a leader, and Mattias was out the fjord.
Come on, Lord Regent, he could hear Anna teasing. You’re in charge when I’m gone, remember?
But you’re not gone, Kristoff thought. You’re safe with Elsa somewhere, and you’ll come back to me.
He rose to his feet. He’d kept his balance on cliffsides and frozen lakes; he could stomach standing on solid ground, nauseatingly slippery as it was. He stopped before the only survivor of the Isles’ ambush party.
“Let’s hear what the crown prince of the Southern Isles has to say. That’s you, right? Jesper Westergaard?”
Spindly shoulders jerked. Bitter memories of another sneering, auburn-haired prince made Kristoff’s fists and jaw tighten.
“Your father sent you into our tunnels to secure the castle, didn’t he? Bet he didn’t expect us to be waiting for you. He’s probably sitting on the fjord in his big ship, waiting for you to open the gates for him.”
The prince’s sword tinkered on the floor. Herman pushed Kristoff behind him, but Jesper made no move to attack. He only kept his head bowed and rocked slightly on his heels, clenching and unclenching his hand on his sword. Staring down at him, Kristoff realised their adversary was more boy than man.
What would Anna do?
Giving Herman the standby signal, Kristoff knelt down in front of Jesper. “Calm down. Work with us, and no one else needs to get hurt.”
Jesper’s glazed stare remained unerringly fixed on his shoes. Kristoff saw pale lips moving, though. He cautiously leaned in.
“Hurry up hurry up hurry up…”
Kristoff waved a hand in front of the prince’s face. “Hey. Can you hear me?”
“… up hurry up hurry—” The frenetic whispering halted abruptly as Jesper’s head snapped up. Dilated pupils locked on Kristoff’s, swimming in fear and adrenaline and… triumph?
A shiver slithered up Kristoff’s spine.
Freshly spilled blood could melt snow. Yet it only struck him now, as his soldiers let out shocked cries and whipped out their swords for the second time, that the blood he had been kneeling in was icy enough to chill him to the bone.
Jesper finally met Kristoff’s eyes. He wiped his nose on his sleeve, a wicked smile spreading on his face. “Be a good sport and remember to scream, yeah?”
Okay so I have a lot of thoughts about the whole thing of the Gerudo being a race of entirely women, with the only exception being one man born every hundred years, and that man automatically being their king. Now this worldbuilding comes from Ocarina of Time, and there's obviously a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications there, because it was 1998. And it seems that Tears of the Kingdom is sticking with the lore of Gerudo men being extremely rare and becoming the King of their people, which once again has a metric fuckton of unfortunate implications because it's 2023 and Nintendo has somehow gotten even worse about this shit.
But let's set aside the whole... everything, and look at this from just the in-universe perspective. How does it work? I mean, it's pretty clear that there is no overlap between the kings; the old ones are normally long gone by the time a new one is born, but the Gerudo manage to take care of themselves during the hangtime. So they must have an established system of government and leadership that doesn't involve a king, and somehow that system is set up in a way that does a smooth transfer of power once a new king is born and old enough to take the throne. But why bother always declaring a random guy to be your King when you already have a perfectly functional system in place?
I mean again, the whole thing has a lot of sexist implications, but we're not looking at this from a real world context, we're examining it in-universe. And we could just go the lazy route and say that their king is in charge just because he's the only man, but I don't like that. I mean come on, the Gerudo are a race of entirely women, and most of their outside problems come from Hylian men being creepy about it. They are entirely a matriarchy; there is literally no reason for their culture to have an inherent respect for men, even if the man in question is one of them. And they're desert people; they live in an extremely harsh and dangerous landscape, if they don't have their shit together, they will die. By sheer necessity, their culture needs to put a lot of value in being practical, because if they're stupid about things, people die. They really can't afford to have a shitty leader take over, and just letting some guy take the wheel doesn't really fit with the way their culture must otherwise work.
So again, why the fuck do they bother having a King?
I think it's mainly just a ceremonial position. Yes, if the guy is a good leader he'll be in charge, but if he isn't good at being a King or isn't interested in the job... fuck it, they've already got a functional government system that's been leading their people the whole time, why fix what isn't broken? The title of Gerudo King isn't about leadership or power. I think it's more about belonging. Because the Gerudo are a culture where every single one of them can be defined in the same way... and there is exactly one exception once a century. Men are considered to be inherently outsiders at the best of times, and more often they're enemies. A man born into this culture is a natural outsider; he is completely unique, and that means he doesn't really fit into his community. And well... when someone is fundamentally different from the rest of their community, they tend to be ostracized.
So I think that's why the position of Gerudo King exists. It isn't about them needing or even wanting a man to lead them. The title of King doesn't need to involve any leadership at all. It's about giving the man born every century a place in their society. It's a way of saying yes, you are one of us, you are a Gerudo, you belong here, you are wanted and you are loved.
The Gerudo know that every hundred years, one of their children will be fundamentally different from all of his peers. And so their society is built to ensure that a child who is completely different from them will still be loved and accepted. He will always have a place in their society. He doesn't need to earn their love, he has it just for existing. These are his people.
The title of Gerudo King isn't an inherent position of authority. It's a promise of acceptance.
Link is so hyper-competent at solving everyone’s problems that you have to wonder why Hyrule hasn’t made much reconstruction progress in the years since BOTW.
My theory is that his crippling ADHD prevents him from getting anything done EXCEPT when he has to rescue Zelda, at which point he will procrastinate by cleaning his room the house all of Hyrule until he has literally no other options left.
Our webcomic oneshot is almost ready for launch!! As in, maybe ready next week!!!
Rooftops and juice boxes. A skyline drenched in summer. A slice of tranquility between two young women.
MIDNIGHT HOUR is a moment plucked from an upcoming sci-fi fantasy epic of victory, sacrifice, and the race against a dying world… But this is not that story yet. For them, this is just one night.
STUDIO POINT9: twitter | youtube | instagram: @ studio.point9
Our webcomic oneshot is almost ready for launch!! As in, maybe ready next week!!!
Rooftops and juice boxes. A skyline drenched in summer. A slice of tranquility between two young women.
MIDNIGHT HOUR is a moment plucked from an upcoming sci-fi fantasy epic of victory, sacrifice, and the race against a dying world… But this is not that story yet. For them, this is just one night.
STUDIO POINT9: twitter | youtube | instagram: @ studio.point9
See, the first time I grew parsnips, I fucked it up good. I hadn't seen parsnips sprouting before, right, and in my eagerness I was keeping a close eye on the row. And every time I saw some intruding grass coming up, I twitched it right out, and went back to anticipating the germination of my parsnips.
But it turns out parsnips take a bit longer than anything else I'd ever grown to distinguish themselves visually. It's just the two little split leaves, almost identical to a newly seeded bit of kentucky bluegrass when they first come up, and they take a good bit to establish themselves and spread out flat before the main stem with its first distinctive scallopy leaf gets going.
I didn't get any parsnips, not that year, because I'd weeded them all out as soon as they showed their faces, with my 'ugh no that's grass' twitchy horticulture finger.
The next year, having in retrospect come to suspect what had happened, I left the row alone and didn't weed anything until all the sprouts coming up had all had a bit to set in and show their colors, and I've grown lots of parsnips since. They're kind of a slow crop, not a huge return, but I like them and watching them grow and digging them up, and their papery little seeds in the second year, if you don't harvest one either on purpose or because you misjudged the frost, so it's worth it.
Anyway, whenever I see someone stuck and struggling with their writing who's gotten into that frustration loop of typing a few words, rejecting them, backspacing, and starting again, I find myself thinking, you gotta stop weeding your parsnips, man.
