#Mainstream adoption

[crimeronan]

also important to me that sol has never wavered or regretted getting 8,000 abortions. i'm so over characters who are like "well, i never meant to get pregnant and have never wanted children, but now i'm imagining being a mommy and think babies are cute so this is my little miracle!! 😊" BOOOOOOO!! ENOUGH HAPPY PREGNANCY PROPAGANDA!! YOU CAN'T GET ME SHINZO ABE. KILL THAT THANG.

[gammija]

look what my adopted son made

[markiafc]

it still shocks me, even now. that a mainstream drama from the most (?) sanitized and bastardized age of c-dramas would be this real, true exploration of mahayana buddhism. of the pure land buddhist school 净土宗 specifically. my school of buddhism i was raised on, in real life! that in chinese buddhism, different schools are formed around sutras of choice. sanlun & the 3 treatise, tiantai & the lotus sutra, etc. and at the core of pure land buddhism is the heart sutra. which we explicitly see in the show when lxy needs guidance most, lxy renaming himself in reference to it and to the recitation mantra - recitation/chanting 念佛 being the primary practice pure land buddhism revolves around. it goes through all the main concepts with authenticity. it is truly unreal that this show exists and hits so close to home.

[marinerainbow]

A while ago, when I got into the NiGHTS fandom, I offered my own take on Selph- or as I called them, Mirrage. However, that was while I was still new to posting about my own headcannons, storytelling and character design (not that I'm an expert now). Looking back, I don't like how I made the post or described Mirrage's design too much. So here is my reprised post about;

Selph Mirrage the Forgotten

Story

As we all know, Wizeman was not from the world of dreams. A human with an evil heart trapped in a world where creation is life, it was only inevitable what he'd choose to do. However, as a human who didn't hold any one of the ideya, Wizeman needed to find a way to gain more power. Enough to overthrow the guardians and the firsts and create his own empire. The only thing he could do was to use his own black heart to create a whole new entity. One that would obey his command alone, and could deliver him the essence of the people of the night dimension.

That was the cycle that Mirrage was born. The first false nightmaren.

Mirrage was as cunning and cruel as Wizeman himself was. Perhaps even more so. Being created from greed for power and an insatiable lust, the porcelain nightmaren used their power of reflection and their various abilities to destroy all that were obstacles in their masters path. They had to start little by little, feasting on little pixies and beasts before they were strong enough to destroy a guardian. Every defeat, they would give Wizeman the essence of the fallen, and he would grow more unrecognizable and twisted. Though it never seemed to bother Mirrage, and they continued to do as they were told. Until, one fateful cycle, Wizeman became the tyrant we all know, and was able to take control of half of the night dimension; Nightmare.

Mirrage was meant to be his right and left hand. His sword and shield. When Wizeman took the throne, he made Mirrage his second in command, and even general to his growing army, giving Mirrage the luxury of a true first-class nightmaren. Though not out of respect. He knew Mirrage had to have the same desires he held, being born from his own heart. So this was meant to placate the mirror 'maren, until he could find a way to either break Mirrage down or destroy them.

His suspicions were correct, as Mirrage had never been truly loyal to the tyrant. Not even at the beginning. Every celestial and lunar they killed, they took some of the guardians' power for themselves, which prompted them to believe that not only Wizeman wasn't as powerful as he thought, but they could overthrow him themselves and take what they believed was rightfully theirs. After so long of playing the thankless servant, they were ready to face their creator.

However, they had vastly underestimated Wizeman. Not only had he beat them down, but he had prepared their prison for them by now, too; trapping them in the very mirror labyrinth they had created to lure in and confuse their victims- visitor and dream being alike. Stripped of their status and slowly being forgotten in the night dimension, Wizeman believed that Mirrage would never be an issue for him again... Though there was one thing that Mirrage never told him about their little nightmare.

They had found a way to connect their labyrinth with the reflection realm. They were able to travel throughout all of the night dimension, but only through looking glasses, bodies of water, polished metal, and anything else that held a reflective surface. They were not a part of Nightmare or Nightopia; they could only peer into the world that they once called their land, watching time and people pass by and experience everything they took for granted. While they were cursed to only watch.

And all it did was fuel their rage and vendetta against their prisoner. The cycle that they break free will be the cycle that everyone will be reminded of why they are the greatest nightmare to have ever lived.

Character Design

Mirrages appearance hasn't changed much. This is more or less redoing their suit, as well as a few touches.

Starting with their natural appearance, Mirrage is a nightmaren made out of porcelain and is as white as snow. If you touch them, they feel cool and smooth like a doll. However, their body and 'skin' move like they were made of flesh and blood; there are no visible joints connecting their limbs together. When hit, they crack and can even shatter, though they can always magically repair themselves. They're tall, around 7'9 to be exact, and have a very slim and androgynous body type. Though they can change it if so desired. I'm debating whether they have claws, or finger armor like the picture beneath. Maybe both?

Their eyes are rather unique. At least compared to the other nightmaren we've seen. They have a sapphire blue sclera and a bright yellow iris, and the white pupils are in the shape of a four pointed star. They painted their bottom lip gold and they have cat eye lashes, but that's the extent of their makeup on a normal day. They also do not possess a nose or ears like the other nightmaren, but could easily form themselves those features if desired.

Their cowl/horns extend outwardly and down the sides of their head and curve inward, as if framing their face like a mirrorframe. The cowl is midnight blue, with bright yellow stripes going down the horns and silver borders on both sides of all the stripes. I'm considering maybe a silver fleur swirl design within the yellow and connecting to the silver borders as well, though I'm not sure yet. Also, they have golden caps at the tips of their horns with tear drop shaped jewels attached, acting somewhat like earrings. What color they are, I'm currently debating with my friend Marshmallow. I'll be sure to touch up on this post later.

Their outfit I struggled the most with. I'm not the best at designing clothes, but I think I got it. I took inspiration from Balan from Balan Wonderworld and Jareth from Labyrinth. They have a seamless full body suit that is a sparkling midnight blue, with a lacey ivory cravat and frilled cuffs and chained golden buttons lining the breast. The legs of the body suit turn black in an ombre effect and connect to their sharp, black high heels with silver bottoms. The suit tail is a cut in a sharp V shape and reaches down to just a few inches below the knee. And pinned to their cravat is an oval shaped brooch with the same jewel their cowl jewelery is made of. Again, I'll come back to this later.

And finally, their voice. They technically can have any voice they want and can mimic anybody perfectly. However, they have two true voices that they like to switch between at a whim. Their feminine voice claim is Bayonetta from the game by the same name, and their masculine voice claim is the eel from Padak.

Tid-Bits

Their insides are an inky, coagulated mess. If you can strike hard enough, the black goo will drip out of the crevices. You can see a hint to what lies beneath when they open their mouth; it looks just like a black mamba, aside from their perfectly pearly white fangs- that are also porcelain.

They do have a staff. It was taken from them when they were banished, but they'll be able to summon it again once they are free. It is a gold and blue striped staff with a crystal ball balanced within a bejeweled golden hoop at the top. They can extend it long enough to walk with it, or shorten it to the length of a scepter.

Although while they're peering into the night dimension they can't touch anything, they still hold some power in their nightmare realm. If you meet them in the labyrinth, you'll find that their reflection could touch or grab yours, or any other object with you, without physically making contact.

Mirrage is a manipulative silver tongued snake, using whatever trick up their sleeve to gain the upper hand. They'll strike deals, make false promises, intimidate, anything. And they'll find a way to use your own words against you, so you better watch what you say around them.

Being created from a human heart, Mirrage is not a stranger to human desires. Not just for materialistic things, but even companionship. You could use this against them, but only if you plan your cards right. As a trickster, they can recognize a poorly thought out ploy attempting to be played on them, but they did also fail to overthrow Wizeman. Remember that. Just don't remind them that.

Being able to travel mostly unnoticed throughout the night dimension, they know many many secrets. I wouldn't recommend making your confessions near a lake or in front of your vanity if you wish for them to be unheard.

As you might have guessed, they use they/them pronouns and can easily change their appearance if they want to look more feminine or masculine. They don't know the meaning of 'cisgender'. They are whatever they like to be.

Since they aided Wizeman in the genocide of the guardians, that makes them and my OC Prism comnected... I may or may not be planning something with this.

Mirrage both respects and envies NiGHTS. They rebelled while still keeping their freedom. And Mirrage knows that that courage ideya shard must have something to do with NiGHTS turning on Wizeman. They think it might even save them from their prison. The trick however, is luring the little rapscallion into their realm in the first place.

When Wizeman finally falls and Reala takes the throne, Mirrage will present themselves to him, offering to help him become a better ruler in exchange for their status back... Though I'm certain we all know what they must be really planning by now.

Jackle... Is rather entertaining. They sometimes find their way to his guillotine and watch him do whatever he's doing at that moment. As far as they know, the failed first level has no idea about their existence.

The name Mirrage is a pun; combining the word mirror and mirage together to point to their character.

And that's my take two on Selph/Mirrage!! I hope you guys like my take ^^

[italiantea]

ok dont kill me for this but. i know till is textually supposed to be very gifted and ahead of his peers and all. only character who plays musical instruments etc etc. i just find it very funny that out of all the possibilities. he plays 1) the recorder- the instrument every schoolkid plays in primary school and 2) original songs on the guitar but all hes shown playing is a pop punk song with POWER CHORDS like...where is the genius....the pizzazz.... bro sjould be shredding.... bro should be pulling some polyphia shit....

[ultrasopp]

Want to make a zine with these kinds of doodles eventually

[fulcrum-art-fox]

My phone insists on autocorrecting ‘Baylan’ to ‘Batman’ and it never fails to make me smile

[snowytasha]

i would use firefox but the last time i used it it ate all the ram on my computer and made it almost unusably slow

also vivaldi is actively changing the chromium source to not adopt the shittiest things google is doing. i've seen someone mention that it's "just another chrome derivative" and hello this browser has a built-in adblocker specifically because of manifest v3? like they wrote an entire blog post saying "fuck manifest v3, we're going to resist as much of it as we can"?

[beemovieerotica]

which 3 US presidents do you think would be the best omegas and which 3 bisexual pop stars would be their best matched alphas

1) John Adams

John Adams was a tireless advocate for the revolution (i.e. topping from the bottom) and he once described himself as "obnoxious, suspected, and unpopular" - "he was known for his bluntness, impatience, and tendency to be easily frustrated with those who disagreed with him." As a brat in Congress, his personality was repulsive, but everyone listened to him and they all still wanted him. They wanted him so bad they made him president. Kind of makes you think.

His match:

Adams needs someone with a strong personality to challenge his - someone who's not afraid to repel the mainstream in order to realize their vision. Gaga has it, and he needs it. "Bad Romance" in many way encompasses Adams' struggles through the 1776 Continental Congress. They could teach each other much.

2) Theodore Roosevelt

A man dedicated to the preservation of natural parks and ecological wonders - and for what? To run through the trees under the full moon as his pheromones wafted through the air? We know.

His match:

Grimes once described herself as becoming "way less gay" after she became pregnant, which is 1) weird, and 2) the reason I'm sticking her with Teddy. I don't think that he could fix her completely, but she seems the type to maintain no moral compass of her own, simply adopting the political ideology of whomever she's with, so maybe there's hope. Maybe Grimes could introduce Teddy to shrooms, and Teddy could take her out on trips in the forest. And then we can find out if Grimes getting a man pregnant makes her more or less gay.

3) Richard Nixon

Best known for his one legendary debate with the handsome JFK, wherein he became a stuttering, sweating mess, unable to focus or say what he meant. Interesting!

His match:

Bisexual icon Taylor Swift is also struggling to appease both sides of the political aisle. They could share their woes and their love of good ol' fashioned Americana, and then Taylor could tie him to the wall and make him bark like a dog. The pregnancy would be difficult on both of them with Taylor's extremely busy schedule, and Nixon would regrettably terminate it in the second trimester, causing a rift in the relationship that would never be mended. The resulting laments that Taylor composed about Nixon's abortion would of course be dissected and attributed to a secret relationship with a woman - Nixon's wife.

I welcome critical analysis.

[bitcoinmasterhub]

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[saintmelangell]

to be fully honest this new trend of remaking and sanitizing not only gothic fiction and its genres (hill house, dorian grey, turn of the screw) and horror movies more generally (carrie, the exorcist) point to much more serious cultural movement than the death of art or the death of horror as a genre in the mainstream. specifically it is gesturing to a sanitizing effect in which cultural authority has now deemed the subversive as worthy of living but only if it is a) commodified and b) divested of all its subversive elements. we can play-act at feminism, trans inclusion, and anti-racism as long as it serves a corporate interest and does not actually challenge cultural authorities. we can adopt its aesthetics as something to be sold without actually inhabiting it ideologically. it is the newest manifestation of cultural authorities anesthetizing effect on anything that threatens it and it is becoming more and more prevalent. anyway i want to beat mike flanagan with hammers

[bam-monsterhospital]

Y'know, i bet you, with enough time and research, i could find a link between the past decade's (and maybe beforehand, i'd have to look into when it really took off) rise of hatred towards elves (manifesting especially as hitting elves with the racist-supremacy stick) in mainstream western fantasy spaces with the (continued) condemnation of femininity, or anything associated with women, especially when it buts up against ideas of masculinity (aka, masc as being 'not woman', rather than something that stands on its own).

Because it really feels like a socially-acceptable conduit to vent backlash (y'know, to challenged ideas of masc. to being told 'you're not special', especially with people having such a huge bug up their asses about "perfect" elves, aka 'feminine' figures who are 'better' than the more traditionally masc characters? that sorta thing). Like it's a manifestation of this timeframe's wave of backlash.

I'd really like to look in to that.

[ailithnight]

To me, it's funny when Bruce adopts Danny on the spot. It's funnier when his kids do it for him. Bonus if everyone still think Bruce has some sort of adoption problem.

Situations like 'Danny haunts the "rich airhead's" house for free room and board' or 'Danny befriends Batkid, who is rightfully horrified by his living situation and practically drags him to the manor like a feral cat' just tickle me teal.

It's fun. It's shenaniganery.

Danny trying to hide from Batman. The kid[s] trying to hide Danny from Batman out of some sense of 'Can't let Bruce adopt this one' when in reality they are the one[s] who adopted Danny and Bruce's only role is to make it legally official if Danny wants. Bruce in the background like 'I look but I do not see' because he's not gonna turn away a kid in need, especially not when his other children are already attached.

It just feels like it works really well.

Every day i read a post where people write that “Bruce Wayne has an adoption problem” or that Danny is adoption bait on the first second of seeing him, not even knowing if he has a want of vengeance and a sad backstory and parallels to Bruce, and every day I want to softly cry in a corner.

[jade-curtiss]

It's so tacky when white liberals attack communist online on the behalf of the poor people who had to suffer the communist (vague) regime in their homeland. I mean if anything communist was a slur I was called in school until I looked it up then realized maybe it's interesting, especially given cultural context, and kind of bold that some people not only reclaim it, but look into it. Because the problem in many case wasn't communism, but corruption and that comes with every political system and turns out that if these people really wanted to genuinely sympathize with us that much and were sincere instead of just oversensitive and doing a shit effort to preserve a good image, well, they'd drop any ounce of patriotism for their own culture, and do the effort to actually analyze its real impacts. But given the current circumstances and various before, I doubt that ever happen. Like if I have to pick between white american kids reclaiming communism or liberals who appopriate every whatever cause to speak on the behalf of people they won't ever try to genuinely understand I wouldn't even hesitate a fucking second.

[asharaks]

it is, i think, symptomatic of the way larian has built this brand: bg3 was always marketed as being mature (read: sexual), and that was one of the big draws for players - myself included! especially as media pulls more towards extremes, with mainstream video games starting to get increasingly graphically sexual, graphically violent, and the vogue for 'grey morality' becomes the norm, those boundaries get pushed, and it becomes more and more of a selling point.

larian obviously focused on this, along with the How Do You Do, Fellow Kids brand, the increased accessibility of game devs on twitter, and adopted it heavily into their marketing strategy, and are now pretty reliant on the horny gamer crowd for a lot of their audience, and more importantly, they're doing this on purpose.

which is how you end up in situations like this.

characters (white men) the players want to fuck get centred: they get updates, they get more content, they get favoured. halsin's gone from a side character in EA to a half-fledged romance option, to a full romance option: he shows up in the promotional material, is larian's poster boy for the sex scenes, he gets more content with every update.

now gortash gets more heavily implied situationship lines with the dark urge, because players are horny for him. nevermind that some people aren't playing that way, or that he was originally set up to be a lower-level antagonist; nevermind that if the durge's storyline needed expansion, it should've been with orin and sarevok and bhaal, or that it muddies the writing for the rest of gortash's arc + characterisation: people want to fuck him, so it gets put in the game. it's not even to do with karlach, whose quest so desperately needs expansion! it's specifically catering to the people who want their character to have a Relationship with the slaver, because they're either not interested in or not able to focus on strengthening the weak spots in the narrative: they're just doing things that will net the 'my favourite dating sim' people lmfao.

meanwhile, literal main character wyll gets his quest demoted to a subquest, doesn't get bugfixes, doesn't get a single unique romance greeting after 6 patches and months of requests. he's not a Horny character, so he doesn't get the focus: he's not a player favourite, so he gets nothing. it's just... so unbelievably, indisputably racist, and it's incredibly grim and disappointing to watch it happen in real-time.