#r5h

[humming-fly]

The last of my commissions from 2019!

1. OC’s Iris, Jo, and Rin for @alagaesia-overlord

2. OC Mani for @r5h​ from @hecallsmehischild​

3. DnD Sorcerer OC for @winter-spades

4. Envy for @bionelly2

Thanks for commissioning me everyone, these were a lot of fun!

[pixlokita]

Haven’t watched the show but the art style is cute so I tried!! @r5h

[animebw]

"-So... what exactly was going on with Tao sort of being Angela’s half-brother by artificial cloning? Because that whole thread completely lost me." IDK about you, but I absolutely thought (and hoped) that Angela's "who am I" plotline was going in the direction of her being another Earth refugee like Carole, which would have actually tied things together pretty well. As it stands, it's not a satisfying conclusion to her story for her to... randomly be related to Tao, I guess?

Yeah, that whole deal just... didn’t make sense for me. Not logically, not emotionally, not thematically, nothing. Angela’s identity issues would have worked perfectly fine without her being a test tube baby or whatever. Hell, imo it would have been better if she was just Dhalia’s biological kid, because it would give more weight to her struggle to stake out an identity of her own and reinforce the idea that the people who raise us need not be the people who define us.

[hecallsmehischild]

Uh... Star emoji.

R5h since narrowed it down into a couple questions: Have you ever successfully gotten a character to do what you want when, as you put it, the character wants something else, and if so, was it the right choice?

This is gonna be a short answer because I have never successfully gotten a character to do something other than what they already want, or would already have naturally done. The one time I tried and published that chapter, the first two readers to leave reviews COULD TELL. It was the only time I recall taking down a whole chapter I had already published and rewriting the entire scenario. I’ve learned over time that it is just better to go with them. Yeah, you have a general end game you nudge them toward, but I have to listen to them or it shows in my story that their decision doesn’t make sense. Listening to the character is always the right choice, even if it upsets my own plans.

Talk about your clashes with canon.

Oh gosh. Okay. So for Mystery Skulls, ya’ll know that canon information was leaked out to us a little bit at a time, so here are the places where I found I clashed majorly with canon.

Last names. Arthur Rebbs. Vivi Kimura. I didn’t institute “Kingsmen” until Just Legends came around because it wasn’t until partway through the Thicker Than Water series that we were treated to what Arthur’s real last name is. Occasionally I will catch some flak for that.

Whose dog is Mystery? Originally because of his proximity to Arthur, I assumed Mystery was his dog, and so the whole Thicker Than Water series catered to that idea. Toward the end I found out whose dog Mystery really was, so that was reflected in Just Legends.

Portrayal of Shiro Mori. First, before we knew for sure the name Shiro Mori, there was a possibility that her name was going to be Inari Okami (based on profile clues and connections with Kitsunes) so I went with Inari Okami for Thicker Than Water. Inari Okami I portrayed as a fairly calm goddess with an eye for extreme justice. We haven’t quite gotten to the Shiro Mori portrayal in Just Legends, but suffice it to say that underneath the crazy (which I did figure out how to incorporate) there is a much more rational and even caring figure than Hellbent showed us.

The chicken or the egg? While we’re on the topic, I always figured that Shiro Mori created Mystery, but Hellbent implies that actually it’s the other way around. No way I can incorporate that concept at this point in Just Legends, I’ve built up too much around the idea that she created the kitsunes.

Arthur doesn’t remember. In both of my fics I run with the idea that Arthur absolutely remembers every detail of killing Lewis. That has been debunked since Freaking Out, but I started Just Legends before Freaking Out was released, so nothing I could do about that.

The Pepper Sisters. This is the thing that I truly, truly hope future readers do not judge me for. When I designed Cayenne (Kay), Aji, and Dulcie Pepper, the ONLY thing we knew is that Mr. and Mrs. Pepper had three daughters. We didn’t know that they were all (what appears to be) under ten. We didn’t know what they looked like. We didn’t know at what age Lewis came to live with them. In Thicker Than Water series, I originally wanted to pair Arthur with Callie somehow, thinking it would be fitting if the heir to King Arthur fell for the Lady of the Lake. However Callie informed me, in no uncertain terms, that while she was very fond and protective of Arthur, she was actually interested in Mystery. While I didn’t exactly delve into a romantic development, I left it open ended leaning in that direction. So in Just Legends I was really interested in trying to find a romantic match for Arthur, so I formulated the idea that maybe the rift between Arthur and Lewis started because Arthur was dating Lewis’ sister. And why would that be a problem, Lewis? What secrets are you keeping, Lewis? Oh… oh….. OH…. and the rest is history. I worked out the sisters’ designs and abilities by mix and matching characteristics from their parents designs and distributing as evenly as I could, from hair shape to hair color to skin tone and, of course my own addition, siren or non-siren ability.

Families. In Thicker Than Water I have Vivi as being raised by a single mother, and then a single possessed mother. Lewis ran off from an abusive home (still possible) but made his own way and didn’t have the Peppers. They just didn’t exist in that story. And Arthur just didn’t really hang with his parents, preferring to connect with his uncle. In Just Legends I have Vivi as an orphan, and then they dropped the family photo on us.

Galaham. Guys... here’s the deal. I didn’t know about Galaham in time to add him to Thicker Than Water, and by the time I started Just Legends there wasn’t any room on the rather large cast sheet for me to even consider adding him in. Not with a herd of unicorns, a kitsune, and a family of sirens to deal with, not to mention the Greek gods. I have just never yet found a place for Galaham.

And I know people will hand wave it off and say you can do whatever you want in fanfiction, and it is absolutely true. But my favorite thing to do in fanfiction is build my story out of a base of canon details, so that even if I go in an entirely different direction it’s believable that this could conceivably have happened in the same universe as canon. Offshoots of canon are my favorite thing to work with, or alternate explanations of canon. So each of these has been a bit of a blow when I found them out because there’s no way to revise most of these details, they’re integrated into the plot too thoroughly. Still, I wouldn’t trade the canon blows. Every time we get a new video I feel like a kid on Christmas, or a teen shrieker at a concert. When Hellbent dropped I was capslocking for three hours straight with this absolutely manic grin on my face and groaning, “IT HURTS” over and over sympathetically with people. That is one heck of an experience. This whole ride is fun, and I look forward to continuing as more information drops, bit by bit.

[ectoimp]

Some common, all-purpose writing advice: read it out loud. That can catch awkward dialog pretty well. (It helps to wait a little while after you write it, so you get out of the headspace that gave you the stilted dialog in the first place.)

True, though I always wonder about this advice. Im not much of a writer but personally...I would never ever take this advice because it would make me way way to nervous that someone would overhear me.

[xehanortsreport]

This is a little out of nowhere, but... I absolutely love the way you draw Yoshikage Kira (IE, as a horrific demon from the most terrifying bowels of the underworld). You put so much demented energy into his expressions and poses, and they're absolute pleasures to look at. Have a great night/day/whatever time it is for you!

:000!! oh hot damn! im glad you feel that way (because drawing those sorts of expressions is a blast for me to do) thank you!

[animebw]

Hi! I enjoyed your LWA commentary: thanks for doing it! And since the button on this page says "Ask", I guess I have a question: if you could do something differently about LWA, what one thing would you change, and how?

Ooh dear, that’s a good question. There are definitely aspects I think could’ve been handled better; giving Croix more of an active role in the narrative before her big reveal would’ve made her an even better character. But in terms of changes that would take this from a 9/10 to a 10/10 for me, there’s only one real option: make Diakko canon. There are few things that can elevate a show for me better than a well-written romance, and that final episode proved, in no uncertain terms, that Diana and Akko could absolutely handle being a couple, both in the in-universe sense of them having a lot to offer each other and the out-universe sense of it being a dramatically satisfying conclusion to their arc. If they had taken that route, I would’ve been completely confident in ranking LWA among my top anime of all time.

[hecallsmehischild]

r5h replied to your post: I want, so badly, to write something today. I...

Don’t wait for permission. Write a paragraph of something!

... I think I can write this today... as;dlfkjasl;dfkjald I need to go clean but I WILL BE BACK TO DO MORE OF THIS. I FEEL THE WORDS. THE WORDS ARE BACK. I’m so bloody happy the words are back that I’m almost choking up.