#nelvana rambles

Kris who is wrapped up with Carol likely trying to bring Dess back. Dess, whose disappearance marks all the big change, when things stopped being "normal." If Kris can go with the flow, give up their body and SOUL so things can be better. Because Dess was better.

Asgore who became so obsessed with this idea of this ideal life that he drove away his family trying to prove himself as the protector. Who neglected his children and pressured his wife to get things back to "normal". He only considers that he might not actually be helping his kids when he sees Kris beat up by Flowery. He only considers that Toriel might not like his actions because Flowery does similar things to him.

Which I suppose, speaking of Flowery... The way he deviates from the nostalgia by hating the past. He is of the opinion that Asgore would be happier if he abandoned his family to live in this Dark World today. Speaking of moving on to a better future, when he really aims to keep Asgore in stagnancy. Learn nothing from the past, just move on and live for yourself! But that doesn't work because all this has already been selfish. Asgore got here because he wanted to prove himself for the sake of himself! He talks about parading the body of whoever created this fountain around town, not as an act of keeping everyone safe, but to prove he was right. And Flowery, in following in these footsteps of centering everything around Asgore, sets everyone up for tragedy; even if the fountain remained, him and the other flowers would die, setting Asgore up to lose yet another family. How does that help anyone? It doesn't, but that dream of a family for however long keeps him going regardless. His own idea of "normal."

Even Tenna, who wants to go back to the good old days so bad. Scarred by all the fighting and family changes by The Incident and subsequent divorce. In his helplessness as a TV he desperately hopes for some sort of control, some sort of way to help. If he had been better, the family wouldn't have fallen apart, right?

We haven't met Asriel in Deltarune yet, but we did know him as Flowey. I love all the depictions of Asriel in Deltarune where he gets to be messy like everyone else. That comic where he expresses concern to Kris for "getting in with the wrong crowd" because he heard the rumors about Susie. Basically all of @acaciapines stories with Asriel striving for being the golden boy and that normalcy, wanting Kris to just be human, for KnightDess to just be Dess. Because all he knows is that fitting in the mold is to be successful. Because he can't bear the idea of change because big change is when he lost his best friend and childhood crush.

Now, to be fair, what if Asriel takes after Toriel? Toriel is an outlier in actually trying to move forward. Remembering the past, both fondly and otherwise, acknowledging it but also focusing on the present. Being happy that Kris is friends with Susie even if that's "different". But I don't see that as Asriel-

Back at it again with another pokemon playthrough, this time going all the way back to gen 1 and playing yellow! I had been playing this on and off again for a few years now, but finally wrapped things up a couple months ago. Those old sprites are fascinating. Similarly, I thought it would be fun to shake up the usual team drawing doing this in the original Game Boy colors!

Team stats and general gameplay info under the cut:

I was thinking about symbolism in storytelling, particularly about rain. I think when asked to remember a scene in a story that had rain, many people first mention funeral scenes. The heavy downpour that reflects a heavy heart.

But I like to think of balance in symbolism, so when considering this I tried to think of the flip side, of positive rain symbolism.

I thought of scenes where a character runs out smiling in to the rain and the story says "this is a new beginning, they're finally happy". I think of at the end of the Lion King where it begins to rain during the big climatic battle at the end, and continues to rain as Simba steps up to roar and reclaim the throne.

What those all have in common is the idea of change, of rebirth, in a sense. Rain represents change, for better or for worse to the characters. It rains when a character slowly trudges home after an argument with a close friend. It rains as two acquaintances run under a shared jacket for shelter and laugh together as they learn to understand each other more. Rain washes in the old and awaits the new. Characters are scared of change, characters embrace the change, characters are washed away with it.

Back in October 2020, my good friend @tikki-tok (i.e @tikki-makes-art ) decided to start a Platinum playthrough together! We got into the Hall of Frame on March 12th, 2021, and after exploring some of the post game, we decided to follow my long standing tradition of drawing my team after beating a pokemon game, by collaborating on the art piece together. I did the sketch, Tikki did the lineart, I did the coloring, and then Tikki finished it off with the background and lighting effects!

We had tons of fun playing the game and coming up with this drawing, so now without further ado, some team info and playthrough commentary under the cut!

I propose that evidence of a possible motivation can be seen all the way back in the first time we get to see a basilisk in the show, back when it attacks Hexside. There we see that witches using only one kind of magic cannot stand a chance against a basilisk, however a witch using even just one other kind of magic causes the basilisk to struggle.

Belos has all witches divided into covens where they are limited to only one kind of magic, aside from his own coven, which can use any kind.

You can probably see where I’m going with this.

By Belos having his own mini army of basilisks, any time a witch in a coven tries stepping out of line, he can have a basilisk eat all their magic, eliminating the problem. Of course there’s still the Emperor’s Coven itself and wild witches, but the former he can keep a closer eye on anyway and the latter are the minority and constantly being hunted down even before basilisks are taken into the equation.

Emperor Belos has brought back the basilisks to use as a weapon against other witches, because they can’t fight back against basilisks with only one kind of magic.

Except that the genie isn’t actually malicious, and is hurt that the human distrusts them so much. They’re really just a friendly genie who likes helping people! They don’t want the human to feel so worried about them, so they start trying to learn non-wish ways to help out a bit and show that they’re friendly.

Cue awhile of the genie learning new human customs, while the human themself is just confused, wondering at first if the genie is just trying to get their guard down, but eventually realizing that the genie really is just trying to be kind.

3. should hollyleaf have had a power?

Yes!! The fact that the only reason she never got one is because the Erins could not think of one at the time is such a rip off. I think it could have been neat to explore a dynamic where one sibling doesn’t have a power but the others do, kind of like what happened with Dovewing and Ivypool, but that didn’t happen at all with Hollyleaf, they just wrote her out completely and it’s very disappointing.

The “Hollyleaf should have had a power” argument has been made a lot and there’s a lot better explanations as to why online elsewhere that anyone could probably find, but I will put my vote in that the fan idea of Hollyleaf’s power having to do with making people speak the truth is very cool.

However, I will add to the argument that regardless of whatever Hollyleaf’s power could have been, it would have been better than Dovewing having a power. Nothing against Dovewing as a character, but she is too many “kins” estranged from the “kin of your kin” part of the prophecy to fit. “But the specific number doesn’t matter!” you may say, but everything else suggests that it matters a lot! So many times whenever the prophecy is mentioned it specifies how the three will be related to Firestar. Cloudtail is actually the other relative of Firestar that fits “kin of your kin” (Cloudtail is Princess’s kin who is Firestar’s kin), not Dovewing (Dovewing is Whitewing’s kin who is Cloudtail’s kin who is Princess’s kin who is Firestar’s kin).

Firestar has siblings but Princess is only interacted with a bit during the first series and no one else, Brambleclaw only really talked to Hawkfrost and didn't (still doesn't) do much with either of his sisters, Squirrelflight and Leafpool are just the both of them, Leafpool only had a litter of three, Ivypool and Dovewing don't have any other siblings, Alderheart just has Sparkpelt, etc etc you get the idea.

Realistically, cats can have more kits, and sure asking for realism is warriors is a bit silly, and I can see why they never give characters large litters since we already have so many characters as it is, but I think it could be really interesting for the story to have a protag with like five siblings or something.

Protag feels like they need to stand out because they have so many siblings and it's hard to be noticed as an individual, maybe one of the parents unintentionally favors one kit over the the rest and protag feels left out, you could even have moments where protag feels like they don't really know their siblings much at all and feels guilty about it.

Also, a lot of people (rightfully) complain about how families never seem to care about each other or other clanmates and really interact like a community, so this could be a way to explore that idea where the protag finds it hard to talk to anyone and gets mistaken for one of their siblings a bunch and whatnot.

Maybe if the Erins wanted to cut down the characters afterwards, you could have something happen and all of protags siblings are killed, leaving the protag with some internal conflict about maybe secretly feeling happy to be the only child but feeling guilty about thinking that way, and/or they have trouble adjusting to not having such a large family anymore where camp feels just a little bit quieter and they wish they had spent more time getting to know their siblings.