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🎶 Optional Ending Theme: 🎶
NO MORE COMPLAINING ABOUT EVERYTHING THAT KEEPS ME FROM WRITING HERE! It’s getting repetitive, even for me, and I got other things to say!
I have something I must confess: I do not actually like Van Halen or Thin Lizzy that much.
Given the particular choices for having things made in reference to music references though... My compulsion towards referencing them though got me to rewatch Diamond Is Unbreakable, and WOW, am I glad I did. I haven’t revisited Jojo in ages, it was worth it. Sorry in advance if anything I write later on sounds like I'm riffing on Araki’s writing style-- I think it’s pretty apparent here even though I already had a good chunk of this chapter written before giving it a rewatch.
I kinda steamrolled through it after school, so when my parents would tune in with me they were just beyond confused at what they were witnessing. I watched the first half of Emesis Blue with my dad and the second half with my mom, so I hope at this rate they’re just realized that when it comes to the things I like they’re never going to understand them. And I guess that’s saying a lot, because my Mom is the reason why I like campy shit, and my dad is the reason why I like weird experimental shit. EMESIS BLUE IS ABSOLUTELY FUCKING WONDERFUL BY THE WAY. INCREDIBLE RIDE FROM BEGINNING TO END. I CANNOT EMPHASIZE THAT ENOUGH. I cannot decide what my favorite scene is, but if I had to choose it might be the Elevator Scene, the Piano Scene or the Funeral Scene. Even if you’re not familiar with TF2, I implore you to watch it.
Just ignore the fact that they have VHS tapes in 1968 LOL.
I think this may be the year where I formally revisit Jojo, since I never finished the Part 5 anime and I haven’t taken a proper look at Part 6 adaptation. Rewatching Jojo when you’re older and able to appreciate it more hits different. I still love Part 4, but now a lot of its flaws are so much more apparent and easier to describe verbally. I really wish that the same attention that went into Rohan went to Yukako too... Can you imagine a world where her development with Koichi was much slower, and included her actually becoming friends with Josuke and Okusayu on-screen? Can you imagine a world where she actually had to work to get their trust? Can you imagine a world where we actually got to learn more about Yukako beyond her relationship to Koichi?
I know people like to say that Part 4 is lighthearted and that you’re not supposed to take Jojo too seriously, but first of all, we’re talking about a girl who showed the kind of behavior people get domestic abuse charges for, and second of all... Part 4 has a lot of writing issues where a lot of characters didn’t get enough exploration, but I think that was a side-effect of the medium and going back to fix chapters just not being a thing for Araki. If there were some spinoffs a la CDDH (which I am LOVING by the way) or even just a great fanfic, I’m sure this would be easily mended, but oh well. I can dream. Let me know if Reasonable Yukako AU exists please.
Hey, what do y’all think about the new Bedman/Delilah DLC for Guilty Gear Strive, eh?
Anyways, about the chapter I wrote!
A few of these beginning chapters tended to be pretty relationship-focused, which I didn’t notice until I was well into starting to write them. At some point this was just a Hastings chapter, and then it was a Melbourne-Hastings chapter, and then it ended up as a Rubyhastings chapter-- they need a better ship name, don’t they? DarkStuff actually joked to me that ‘Rubytopher’ sounds like an alcoholic drink, and I gotta agree. Besides, there’s another ship that I've given a cute nickname to, and now I feel bad depriving other pairings from having them.
I can’t say I’ve been happy with the way some characters, like the Williamses, have been depicted. I finally got around to reading the S&C Canon Primer that Ihp posted on SCPDeclassified almost 3 years ago, I think around the time I actually formally got into the canon, and suffice to say: I DID NOT LIKE IT. WOW. I REALLY HATED IT. I’m sure if I go back my anger will be much more diluted, but suffice to say I was not happy with how it chose to introduce the canon to those not familiar with it. Even the information that I didn’t already know wasn’t helpful, and didn’t give me anything to build off of or recontextualize the characters in any way.
And... you now... It would’ve been nice to know that Ruby and Blake had ranks beyond ‘Agent’ ahead of time.... Especially considering that some characters have a consistent title and some don’t even get one.... and I really hate the fact that I had to find an old reddit post to get these thoughts that I thought were otherwise unheard to actually be acknowledged.... I already have to do enough homework for really basic character consistency tracking, got me out here like that gif of charlie day in always sunny except i'm five times as homicidal about it thinking about that stupid thing
I liveblogged my descent into insanity to poor cerulean warbler and then immediately cried to yachiekitcho and harrymasonfan53 about it the next morning. and. yeah. I’m really not kidding about my reaction. They can all confirm it. I really don’t like that Primer. I made the mistake of reading it at like midnight and I was so angry about it that I don’t think I fell asleep until 3am. It was a Monday night. I never want to read “[February is] the first explicitly African-American character I wrote for S&C Plastics” or “[Pike] is a woman who has blonde hair, teeth that are uneven and fang-like and psychological issues” ever again.
I rewrote it a while after discovering it, but it’s highly unfinished and it only covers the basic introduction, not any of the other bits. Also, I don’t think anybody’s going to take me seriously right now despite the fact I’m the only person who has tried to patch things together in S&C to this extent. It’s a mess y’all, I’m gonna be honest. I’m making do as best as I can.
I’ve always imagined the Williamses to be rather mellow considering what I’ve shaped up for their backstory and just how I have interpreted them for the longest time, so seeing Ruby get described as rather the opposite in the Canon Primer when I feel it didn’t match the way she was written (especially in the BA IV chapter featuring her and Hastings, which I would argue is a complete 180) was a gut punch, but I didn’t want to fall into the mistake of making Ruby a ‘Female Blake’ or Blake a ‘Male Ruby’.
I feel like Hastings and Ruby are characters that balance each other out. Here you have this comically paranoid man whose anxieties presumably come from just how hard it is to know anything in both the modern world and also the anomalous one and just wanting to be prepared for it, and here you have this rather relaxed woman who is conditioned to just ‘deal with’ the unexpected things in her life, who wants some kind of indulgence or release while balancing it out with work duties (more on the Williamses family dynamic in Chapter 10, I don’t want to blab about it so much so early!). Nothing is cuter than the mutually supportive short king-amazonian relationship.
I talk about this regularly with those who are familiar with S&C, but I’m so extremely pissed off about the Williamses’ telepathic capabilities not being a more prevalent part of their appearances. Like, I wouldn’t even blame people for not knowing it’s a thing, or thinking I just made it up, because as far as cerulean warbler and I could recall, it only appears in the Black Autumn chapter where Ruby and Blake go into the past in order to interrogate the Babyeaters (as I like to call them).
I know that we already hardly get to see them using it in the first place, so adding a new spin on it already is a little strange, but this isn’t the only time it’ll be coming up in IV.5. Chapter 10 is a fun chapter!
Fun Guy (and thus the entire idea behind this chapter) came to me late last year, I want to say around June or July, when I just decided to draw an adorable little mushroom guy and then started drawing him with Hastings, and then I started to question why a protagonist would keep around a critter that not only wasn’t a plant, but also resembled an organism that could cause harm. Not only is that how I learned about how mushrooms used to be studied as plants before anybody knew better, it’s also how the idea regarding the ‘spore mimics’ came along. They’re just little guys!
The spores themselve latch onto nearby organisms that fit their criteria for mimicry, and then upon some form of separation (typically from simply flying off after the spore successfully begins to copy their appearance) they become sentient mimics. Some obviously get a little luckier than others, since they’re entirely dependent on their environment and luck to survive. Since they’re so little for so many of their lives, in their homeland they’re mostly skittish pests or common prey. When they grow up to an adult size, think of them like elephants. Chill for the most part, but with plenty of destructive capability.
While I haven’t completely ironed out all their details (Hell, the ‘spore mimic’ name and the idea of them even resembling amoebas didn’t come along until I was finishing the chapter), I did try to get some of the core ideas of their species across as naturally as possible. Maybe I’ll make a UAE file on them or something, however that may look. We never really get to see how Site-87 keeps track of citizens and the UAEs... sigh.... another thing to add to the to-do list...
Bailey is a... weird character to write. I still wish that we got to see a little more of Weiss carrying out her regular duties and how difficult it was to balance out her work life with her personal one so that I could’ve gotten a better idea of how to write whoever is Site Director for 87. I’m basing Bailey’s depictions primarily on how Ihp seemed to be writing them (alongside some drafts that I’d have to hunt for, because.. God, it’s been like a year since I read the one I’m currently thinking of) alongside how I personally view him. And that means he’s sort of a foil to Robert. I need to make it clearer in my plans for later chapters to make him a much more prominent character.
I’m actually surprised that Robert and Bailey don’t really have much of an on-screen friendship, even after BA II, I really think that combined with Sinclair they make a good American ‘san baka’. Like, Bailey is Nico Yazawa, Sinclair is Honoka Kousaka, Robert is Rin Hoshizoara. They all have that fun chaotic energy to them that I wish was taken advantage of more in the series, and now with Bailey being so high in Foundation ranking, that’s going to be hard to pull off. Expect me to not let that shit go, but to certainly struggle to try to put it all together.
This took longer than intended-- I got about 50% of this chapter done within a week, and then the last half took several weeks and days to finish. It’s a thing that can happen, where I have the exact idea of what I want to write and then I just can’t do it because of other concerns or just the fact that I squeezed so much out of myself that despite the fact writing is on my mind, I can’t make any quality come out of it. I’m worried that it seems like I’m just throwing darts at random writing ideas when it comes to writing these first few chapters. But I’m just trying to write the stories I want to write. I want to make it good. But I also just want to let myself be free.
So many people have kept me sane while writing IV.5, and I do not have the strength to name them all, because it’ll be nearly as long as the list in the Chapter 3 Author Commentary. But I’d like to give a special thank you to the people who helped me read this over: rosy saturniidae, yachiekitcho, DarkStuff and cerulean warbler!
I also know what college I’m going to now, so please expect even more delays as I prep even more for the incoming storm!
Also, ugh, this isn’t relevant to anything. I just don’t like Dr. Kola’s name. What can I say, I grew up speaking Spanish.
Jesus, how does this shit reach 10k words? I thought it was only like, 6k. No wonder these take me a hot second to write.
nomoretears
3/16/2023
Last edited: 3/16/2023
October 4th is...
ADDING THIS LATER
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