u/Herebia_Garcia

I hope this got you.

Hello everyone! For the past month or so, I've consumed a lot of Until Then Media (youtube videos, playthroughs, and fanfiction) and one standout piece of fan work for me is Until Then - Unwind.

Written by: Grasseson13

Link: https://archiveofourown.org/works/59805850/chapters/152552215

I'm making this post, as a way to promote said fan fiction, post my art work, and as a way for me to leave my honest thoughts on it.

Self Made Synopsis/Summary of the Hook:

In some other place, in some other time — meet Mark Aucena, a troubled delinquent attending Gaviola Integrated School, who always gets into fist fights, much to the chagrin of his class president, Louise Bagcal. He one day saves a girl named Catherine Yya Lopez from a literal train, who then coincidentally transfers into his class.

During their school's intramural events, he gets entangled in a dramatic encounter involving a hotshot student film director, John Ridel Absalon and a visiting Karate competitor from a neighboring school, Jade Nicole Domingo. After the incident, Mark then joins Cathy and Ridel in the Film Club as the trio and a bunch of colorful cast of classmates join them to make that student film possible. Along the way, Mark continues to navigate his life, his destiny, and his memories that seem to flicker and fade randomly.

General thoughts/Review:

As you can probably tell from the summary I provided, this is a fanfiction that is essentially an Alternate Universe or an AU. The Author weaves in some canon here and there but it's only around 50% similar or so. As for how it's connected to the main game, the Author positioned this fic as a probable timeline in one of those 100's of resets.

The writing early on is rougher but it gets better as the chapters go on. I found that the middle chapters seemed to lull a bit since Mark Aucena is a much more troubled child and regresses into his self destructive tendencies more than our Mark Borja. Basically, he gets better but some things happen and he regresses back to step 1, for multiple times. The character moments are very good though and you can understand why some characters act the way they act. Surprisingly, the fic can be labelled as an action genre because a lot of these chapters contained high energy events (fistfights, sparring, basketball, etc.) It's very fun and the writing conveys the adrenaline clearly.

The author provides some illustrations done by other artists at the early parts of the fic to highlight character moments and sometimes they also add in playable music so that you can play them as you read (I recommend that you do it because it makes the experience 100x better).

Another thing is, this might be a pro or a con depending on you, but Grasseson13 is clearly filipino. He knows the setting and it shows. The main con is, the filipinoness bleeds into the work sometimes. There will be some words (like Kuya) or phrases in tagalog which might hamper some readers that don't know about the language.

Romance Plot:

Okay, it can't be an Until Then fic without the romance, right? The romance is well done, a bit of a slow burn at times, but sometimes it ramps up quite fast. Sometimes though, character ideology clash regresses the romance back, which can be frustrating, but it's how it is in real life too. For Mark's pairing, I think anyone that loves Nicole, Louise, and, Jessica will find moments in this fic that they'll love. For the final pairing, that will be a spoiler so... yeah. This isn't for the Cathfia lovers though since Sofia doesn't exist in this AU... for now. Who knows, she might be introduced in the upcoming chapters.

Length/Technicalities:

It's 320k words long already with 66 chapters out of 80 chapters posted. A standard novel book is around 100k words, so this fan fic is already 3 books in if you consider it like that. That's 16 or so hours worth of content. The author, Grasseson13, updates roughly every 2 weeks or so.

Disclaimer:

This is not a paid promotion and this is also not a comissioned art work. This is just me making a fanart for a fanfiction that I happened to read and like. I basically read 3 books worth of peak fan fiction and was compelled to give the author something as an appreciation.

(Time: 4 Hours)

Been tryna transition to digital art and looking for a style that is easy to draw and produce fast while still a bit 'charming'. Ultimately, I want to shit out comics in a consistent basis even if I am only a hobbyist. Made this fanart of my favorite couple of the century as a tribute to this amazing game. Game really helped me get through a major part of my life and maybe that's why I'm obsessed.

Second piece. Just wanted to see If I can do males too (I like drawing females more, they have... a lot more interesting things going on). The reason why I picked up pixel art is because I was inspired by Until Then and wanted to create self insert OC's in its artstyle. Obviously this doesn't look like its artstyle but I wanted to make what I felt is right first before diving into emulation. I haven't really used the medium for its unique aspects yet and I'm more so just treating it as a pixelated form of traditional art. I think having to restrict my palette would be one way to do that, but for now, I like how these pieces keep coming out. I suck at backgrounds, which, I would have to improve one day. 128x128, larger canvas was actually kinda easier since my previous 64x64 piece meant I had to make my pixels more intentional. This piece took shorter than the first one since I got more hang to the app.

[Here's my First Stab at it.]

Finger drawn at a free android app (shout out to ReSprite). My fundamentals still need a lot of work, but I'm happy with what I was able to make for my first piece. 64x64 since I thought the bigger sizes are still too much for my own abilities. I drew before, but it was years ago and I soon fell out of practice. Still adjusting on how just a few pixels can change the facial expression so much.