#based off of a thread i saw on twitter
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conswayo · 2 months ago
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sonnet 18
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tariah23 · 1 year ago
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I didn’t know that family guy had a ongoing mobile game……
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X
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evnseokz · 6 months ago
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{ ☆ just the tip ~ j.sc }
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pairing: bf! sungchan x f. reader
contents: soft dom! sungchan, inexperienced! reader, clothed sex, messy dry humping (there’s nothing dry ab this), i literally dk how to describe this, dirty talk, praise, pet names: baby, princess, darling, corruption kink if u squint, hopefully that covers it!
based off of this twitter link
an: saw that vid on twt and immediately thought of sungchan, wc 680
MINORS DNI
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this isn’t how you pictured tonight going when you pranced around the house in nothing but your boyfriend's shirt, but the moment sungchan saw you, he couldn’t control himself. you drove him crazy.
sungchan was always gentle with you, knowing you weren’t as experienced as him, and tonight was no different. he didn't want to push you further than you were willing to go, so when he offered to make you feel good a different way, you shyly obliged. “w-will you feel good too?” you ask innocently. sungchan cradles your head in his large hand, smiling at you fondly. “yes, baby, i'll feel good too.”
that is how you ended up in your current position: you were laid on your back, sungchan hovering over you, and you're completely bare except for your lower half, which is covered only by your light pink panties. your pussy puffy and throbbing against the head of your boyfriend's cock as he uses you like a toy.
“fuck, you’re soaking wet for me, baby,” sungchan curses from above you, his thick cock rubbing harshly against your soaked panties, his tip prodding at your entrance over and over again as you moan his name. “channie! feels so good,” drool pools at the corner of your mouth as your muscles tense from the pleasure you’re feeling. his large hands hold your thighs open, rutting desperately between your folds as low grunts fall from his lips.
“you look so beautiful like this,” sungchan purred, leaning down to your ear as he feathered light kisses on the skin around it. you sigh in response, your legs threatening to close around his waist. you jaw falls slack as he pushes his tip into your sopping, covered hole at an unbearable pace, stretching you more and more with each thrust. the only thing separating his thick cock from your tight hole being the material of your thin panties.
his arms suddenly snake around your waist, flipping you over and positioning your hips in the air. you moan at the sudden change in position, his cock now rubbing desperately between your plump ass cheeks, his balls hitting your swollen pussy with every thrust. “f-feels- hah! -good!” you moan, all of your noises going straight to sungchans cock as his fingers grip your hips, moving your body in sync with his.
your face rubs against the mattress as he rocks back and forth against you, tears threatening to pool at the corners of your eyes. your stomach begins to tighten and your muscles tense. your head beginning to spin as he drives you closer to the edge. sungchan is right behind you, grunting lowly as he holds his cock steady against your ass. “f-fuck im close, princess,” he bites out, thrusts becoming sloppy as he feels his high approaching. you’re both holding on by a thread at this point, bodies desperately rutting against each other, your wetness dripping down your thighs as sungchans precum smears all over your panties.
“ah-ah!” you cry out; your legs become tingly as the pleasure you’re feeling suddenly heightens. “let go for me, baby,” sungchan coos, a bead of sweat dripping down his forehead as he keeps a steady, yet unkempt pace against your ass, trying to hold out for you to cum first. before you grasp what’s happening, your legs buckle beneath you, sungchans hands keeping you in place as he continues to rub against you, chasing his own high.
he’s not far behind you, letting out a loud groan as thick white ropes spurt from his cock, painting your panties and ass cheeks with his seed. his eyes are screwed shut as he empties his cock, not stopping until he’s completely emptied out.
he flips you back over, collapsing next to you, his arms wrapped firmly around your waist as his eyes scan your face. his proud, predatory gaze on you, his lips curling into a smirk, "you--" he swipes a finger over your lips, "are such a pretty mess for me, darling."
..
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SMT Boardgame Kickstarter Smells Like Suspicious Fish
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There's an SMT boardgame. Curb your enthusiasm, you shouldn't back it. And if you did, lower your pledge to like a buck until they clear things up, because as it stands it seems like an incredibly suspect product.
Checking through the Kickstarter comments and Japanese Tweets about the boardgame makes the entire thing seem poorly planned at best. I'll summarize as best I can;
The designer is incredibly infamous in the boardgame community
Naoki Matsunaga, a self-described "board game sommelier", is the designer. You'll find tweets lamenting that "the board game sommelier is involved". Why is he so hated? This thread goes into detail: co_boze on twitter. Part of it is they bashed Werewolf over one game they saw of it, another is they took on a kind of public-face role for boardgames appearing on late night TV shows to talk about them in ways that annoyed boardgamers. They seem to have designed a boardgame based on "The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People" which ripped off Sid Sackson's 'I'm the Boss". But it's what co_boze talks about next that's really bizarre. The game was apparently banned from most board game cafes and playing spaces. Seminars where people could play the game were hosted, but the venues that hosted these seminars all closed down.
If you keep looking through comments, you start finding claims that his company does multi-level marketing (ie pyramid schemes). To be honest, I don't know if this is true. But even if it isn't, it is really not hard to find people who know of this guy and would really really really REALLY prefer he was not involved.
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"Oh fuck, it's THIS guy" is not a reaction that inspires confidence
2. Questionable development and presentation issues.
A regular collaborator with Atlus recently tweeted "The use of AI in Atlus works or derivative works is stictly prohibited." He responded to a reply asking if this was about a board game.
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The staff running the SMT BG Kickstarter later clarified the actual -game- wouldn't use AI graphics... but from the looks of it, the promotional materials do.
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Dig that... generic metal pipe aesthetic. Nothing screams MegaTen like black plumbing to nowhere.
In totally unrelated news, a board game manufacturer recently tweeted that a Kickstarter used their name without permission, and they're not sure why.
Quote tweets on the post would suggest it was the SMT board game. The comment they are loosely referring to is this:
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In a follow-up post, they do specify "The product figures will be made of PVC." and "We will be manufacturing the games in partnership with a factory in China that has a proven track record... " "Figure director Kimura Yuzuru has over 10 years of experience..." and other boring development stuff that I have no issue with. What I do have issue with is how they can say things like they're "considering" which manufacturer to use and namedropping other companies that they're unrelated with. (While I was typing this post, they posted an update that clarified the CMON issue and literally nothing else: here.)
The boardgame is being presented with machine translated English printed on the same cards as the Japanese. But the actual game will have a translator check everything.
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they hire translators to localize all game content
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Additionally, there was a week long radio silence on the Kickstarter. For reference, Kickstarters are normally very active with the project planners dropping updates, responding to feedback and clearing up any concerns.
Some of the concerns were "How does the game actually play?", a question that would be best answered by dropping a rulebook for people to look at, or better yet showing them an entire run of the game. The SMT BG Kickstarter has boldly chosen neither. Devs have commented the game is on Version 11 and plays well, which makes it strange that they can't share any of it with anyone else.
Actually, when you compare this to how most Kickstarters are run, it becomes very clear the SMT BG Kickstarter is, uh, kinda failing in all possible regards. The first Backer Goal is "Jack Frost Dice" at 2000 backers (not funds raised, BACKERS). Despite getting 300%(!!!) of the initial pledge needed, there are no bonuses or unlocks.
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Mind, this lack of information comes after they already delayed the start to supposedly improve Backer Goals and other aspects.
There aren't a shortage of issues - it's ICREA's first boardgame (but not their first tango with SMT; they made the SMT30th Logo, for instance.) The timeline seems totally wack. The staff have been incredibly slow to respond. Cards with tiny font and two languages printed on them. Etc, etc. Maybe individually these issues wouldn't be too concerning. But all of them combined make the product seem incompetently run at best, and at worst an actual scam.
I'm hardly a big influencer in the SMT scene (my biggest contribution is when that fucking succubus gif gets 36k likes on Twitter every 5 months) but I haven't seen any English speaking sources discuss this in detail, when there really should be at least some noise about all of this. Still. if just one of you end up saving 600 bucks on what ends up being a trashfire carcrash project because of this post, then that'll have made the past 30 minutes of typing this shit worth it.
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thiscoldheart · 1 year ago
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some details that i loved in la chimera (spoiler heavy) :
i posted this on twitter as well but i wanted to include it here too. i love this little moment here where italia rests her head on arthur's shoulder and for a brief moment, he's anchored to the present by that touch, but him being the orpheus that he is, just HAD to turn back and find himself gravitating towards the tombs, the past and his eurydice.
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the fact that italia's name is literally italy in italian and by the end of the movie she creates a community of her own where she's looking out for those that are outcasted by society, in an abandoned train station named riparbella which literally means "to start again".
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arthur's eye always being blocked by shadow throughout the movie until he sees the light at the very end
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according to wiki, the goddess the statue is based on is cybele, goddess of nature, animals, wild places and represents the "creative and destructive force of nature." her phrygian name matar (mother) alludes to the fact that she was a "mediator between the boundaries of the known and unknown, the civilized and the wild, the worlds of the living and the dead." i love that this goddess' presence in the movie symbolizes arthur traversing between the living and the dead worlds and getting closer to beniamina. i love that by the end of the movie, the statue itself becomes unknown to human eyes and returns to the wild, far away from civilization, which is arguably the same fate that arthur meets as he dies.
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the red string that's following arthur around is very reminiscent of the red string ariadne gives theseus to find his way through the maze. it's beautiful how this red string seems to appear only in his dreams at first but slowly starts crossing the boundaries of dreams and reality as the movie goes on until he is able to tug at it by the end and cross over into beniamina's world.
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arthur, at the beginning of the movie, says "so it's you. my last woman's face." how cool is it that beniamina's face resembles cybele's?
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arthur goes back to flora's house after being injured and her daughter finds him in the bathroom. spooked, she says "i thought it was a ghost" which arthur might as well be considering how he's essentially been a walking corpse this entire movie.
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also a special shout out from the bottom of my heart to the sped up sequences, didn't even realize how badly i needed them until i saw them. the chaos in these sequences is everything to me. this is REAL cinema!
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in general, one of the themes that i've come to love about this movie is how objects can have different meanings to everyone. an object like the bell arthur found was just "a thing that rings" whereas italia interprets it as a gift until she comes to realize it's been excavated from a grave. the statue was part of a shrine back when it was made, but to the tombaroli and the sellers, this is only a means to make more money. the train station started off as a place that symbolizes movement of people from the city to the countryside but has now become a home for the outcasts of society. the apotropaic phallus would've have warded off evil and bad luck back in the day, but is now used as a means of escape from the law. a simple red string is the literal lifeline for arthur as he tries to find his way back to his lover.
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also want to give another shout out to the inclusion of the italian troubadours (our greek chorus) who beautifully spell out the tragedy of our protagonist and his gang.
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speaking of music, i really liked this particular song italia was singing as she was practicing. the lyrics go "i'd like to explain to you, o god/ where my suffering lies/ but fate condemns me to weep/ to weep" and that's exactly when arthur finds her crying son. at least italia finds a way for her suffering to end by the end of the movie. maybe we can say the same about arthur too?
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i'll probably add more as i keep rewatching the movie lol and make a thread of this on twitter too (x) thanks for sticking around and let me know what other cool details y'all noticed!
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hoseoksluna · 10 months ago
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A MILLION YEARS AGO | jhs
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pairing: idol!boyfriend!hobi x f. reader 
genre: smut, fluff
word count: 4.6k
summary: when your faith in your healing wavers, hobi is there to go the extra mile for you.
taglist: join | playlist: million | cp: wattpad, ao3 | discord: join
warnings: near car accident, confusion in the body, iffy feelings towards an ex, seeing an ex for the first time in million years, being mistreated, religion, praying, oc smokes, hobi is the perfect boyfriend that i wish i had, oral sex (f. receiving), raw sexual intercourse.
note: i'm crying as i'm writing this because i'm so sad, but i promise this healed me more than i expected. as you know, i write little fics whenever something happens to me—and this is based off what happened yesterday. me and my cousin sat down at our smaller family event (not the one we had on friday, if you follow me on twitter), and she asked me if i were healed. and she told me about what she saw. i think it's meant to move me somewhere forward, otherwise i would've never got to see his face. i don't know. i hope you like this little fic, you know i had to write it out like i smoke out my feelings. i'm proud of this work in terms of the way it's written. think i kinda killed that. i love you guys. and i miss you, terribly. i love you.
side note: sorry for my vulnerability. a smaller side note: this is also for my baby @hoseokkie-caeks. i promised i would write a hobi one shot after berries, and here i am. <3 i love you, baby. miss you.
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The night was dark. Too, too dark. 
I sensed it swathing my bones long before I glimpsed at something I should and shouldn’t have—or rather someone, to be proper. 
The trees remained unmoving, despite the summer breeze drifting through the macrocosm that unfolded with each and every footfall I shared with my beloved beside me. Hand in hand, we walked leisurely through streets that were prosaic until our energy imbued them with our intimate poetry. White swallowing, little by little, the dark. There was no one and everyone around us, but we didn’t see them; we merely saw each other, for we were in love and we deserved to be so. Hoseok after his hard, agonizing work regime and unfair treatment from his management and… the whole world essentially. Me after the way I had been treated, handled, tossed aside by the person I found inside the screen of a phone—inside a world that once used to be mine, but now is nothing but foreign. 
Million, million years ago. 
The stars were aligned just right, stringing together a shape of the wholeness and the throb of my heart, and we sat down to eat dinner with one of my closest friends that came to town—one me and Hoseok have settled in within the precious, year-long break that burst open in his work life. Hobi didn’t want to see people, at least not those who didn’t bear familiar faces, and I didn’t want to see the city, so it was the most fateful of compromises, most perfect of the kind that was naturally threaded between us; a conjoined idea that blinked within our brains at the same time. And the laughter that followed after we voiced it out at the same time, the long kiss that spread roots inside the pillows of our lips—to this day, it is a fond memory, or perhaps something beyond that, that embraces me at night before I enter the realm of dreamland, tugging me closer into the snug heat of Hoseok’s safe place that I regard his body to be. 
Though before we arrived, I gazed up at that constellation of me through the windscreen as Hoseok’s car began to make a strange noise that unnerved him. I prayed for its rightness to be true and I prayed for our safe travel, as short as it was. According to our previous plan, we were supposed to wait for my friend, Hyun-Ae, and her boyfriend, Do-hyun, outside of the restaurant because she had a strong yearning to jump into my arms upon seeing me. My excitement for that to happen ripped my eyes away from the nightly heavens, searching for her in the dimmed lights of the mutely lively building, in the shadowed greenery surrounding it, near the trees that didn’t move, yet my hair did. 
Strange, that dark energy. 
I hoped she was peeing somewhere, where the light doesn’t reach. She invariably had a tendency to chug everything she drank and her bladder paid for it each time—but this time, she wasn’t squatting by a bush. 
She almost didn’t get to me at all. 
A driver, merely minutes away from entering our town, nearly swerved wrongly into the traffic lane that Do-hyun was driving through, yanking away the stars from the canvas of the heavens. He had to pull over and take deep breaths in order to stabilize his mental state as the thought of almost getting in a car accident with her being in the passenger seat triggered his long-fought panic attack. And because the woods at the beginning of our secluded town doesn’t have any service, we waited for them for half an hour without any knowledge of their whereabouts. 
I bit my cuticles until they bled. Until Do-hyun’s lungs were lifted of its heaviness with Hyun-Ae’s help, his breathing evened out, and he was able to get behind the wheel and cross the distance. 
Upon hearing what obstacles stood before us, I didn’t understand it at first. Hyun-Ae’s yearning was gratified, we hugged until our necks ached and our arms quivered in our stifling, long-coming hug with her legs wrapped around me, ate the food we always ordered when we were together and not apart while she filled me in—but I didn’t perceive the darkness for what it was until that very last detail. 
One she wouldn’t provide until I promised her, a million times, that I was fully healed and ready to hear it. I didn’t know what she was about to uncoil, sitting beside me as she was, with her hands in her lap. But I should’ve known that those obstacles were put in our path for my preparation. 
Hyun-Ae hinted, before she began articulating her discovery, that it was about my ex-love. I stiffened a little, taken aback. I downed a shot of the spirits that we had left. And I was being tugged in two different directions, thrown to and fro, asked by the lawlessness of life to choose. 
Stay back and not go further—not let her tell me because Hobi doesn’t know the specifics about my last situationship. 
Ask her to hold my hand and give her the consent to proceed as my curiosity was piqued and my wound was healed, a million years ago. 
And in the short dwelling of the manhandling, my spirit of inquiry crowned, my fatal flaw. I chose the latter—because why would I not? I carry my heart in my chest for my beloved beside me proudly, for his waters mine with the fulfilling streams of his laughter and sound effects, gentleness and devotion. He has grown and nurtured monsteras within its past mutilated chambers—and the longer he cradled my life and made it his own, made it his endeared responsibility, the more healing flowers of wild, undomesticated origin bloomed against the verdure. The pair of us—Hobi, the elegant leaves with its perforation symbolizing the dimples above his mouth when he smiles; I, the chamomile that has the gift to make better, but everyone mistakes it for a daisy, tossing it aside. 
Everyone but Hobi, the worker who cultivated it in me. 
And caught in the snare of my pride, I wanted to know if my ex-love still remained in the exile of his emotional unavailability, fucking everything that walks on his solitary Pluto planet while I made love to the Sun three times a day, minimally. 
Hyun-Ae gripped my hand with her lukewarm, refreshing touch as she told me that he was dating someone, fundamentally poisoning the girl with his ways like he did to me. That she didn’t understand what I had seen in him as he looked worse than ever before, a characteristic of the unhallowed set deep within his eyes. My lungs refused to inhale any particles of air; they must’ve taken a break from their work in order to process, at their own time, the information that was given to them. The male who pretended to date me while I edged his planet for years, laboring myself in order to heal him with my prayers and words because I believed him after he said he loved me, but he needed to get right first. Needed to unload his baggage and bandage up the slashes across his heart from his previous relationship. 
All sweet nothing without an ounce of genuineness. He took pleasure from the way I stayed around while he hurt me again and again by entertaining other girls, my feet indented in the soft soil of the planet. It was a form of compensation for him. A some sort of merriment—and madness, unmitigated madness for me. 
I lost my mind, standing upon that edge. And I had to get off in order to find it again, my hands outstretched beyond me—held by the invisible fingers of God while he taught me how to walk again, how to walk in a gravity-filled space of greenery, the rainbows of colors, the rain and the sunlight like a baby. 
And I did. 
I walked until my feet stopped in front of Hobi’s.
At first, I felt a sheer wisp of happiness for the guy that he managed to make such an immense step in that direction, however it flickered in me for mere seconds, replaced by a doom of nothingness that began to swim in me. Heavy, heavy nothingness that felt cosmically peculiar—and my body urged me to go outside and smoke it away.  
But my mouth spoke first. 
Who is she? Show me. 
Hyun-Ae narrowed her chocolate pools at me, her brows furrowing until they darkened. Then, they flicked towards Hobi beside me and I followed her gaze—he was preoccupied with a heated conversation with Do-hyun and he didn’t hear a word shared between us. Hyun-Ae lowered her voice, nonetheless. 
So you could compare yourself to her? No fucking way. 
But I pushed. Driven by that nothingness in me, I desired to feel something. Hurt, pride—anything that would stir my body and give it what it asked. It was used to feeling great clouds of negative emotions in terms of the male, and now it was searching for it, in spite of the million years that have flown by since. And to shut me up and distract my mind from wanting the wrong things, she showed me a picture of him. 
And upon seeing that dark characteristic of his eyes, gone, hollow and dead from the laws and the ghosts of the Pluto planet, my stomach clenched and I averted my gaze. My body rejected him—I couldn’t look at him for more than two seconds. 
My good, smart body. 
I fell into quietness, more gravely than the one this town was weaved with. Hyun-Ae’s eyes returned to their original round size, softening on me, and I held her hand tighter. I needed, vehemently, to smoke the descending nothingness away, and when I asked her to go outside with me, Hobi reached the conclusion of his conversation. Wrapped his slender fingers around my arm, tender sound effects, only for my ear to hear, slinking inside as he rubbed his nose against the place right beside it. 
You wanna go smokie smokie? Hobi asked, gliding his fingers down my arm until he reached my wrist, the belly of his index tracing the blue and violet ‘V’ shape of my veins upon my left arm. 
He grounded me. 
I nodded, my smile natural, my love for him abounding, and Hyun-Ae encouraged me to go, gently slapping the side of my bum. And so I went, hand in hand, with him.
Our inherent, pristine characteristic. 
Hobi stole my lighter once I fished it out of my purse. He didn’t smoke, but whenever he joined me, he thought it gentlemanly and proper to light up my cigarette for me. It’s the least I can do, he had explained and I had kissed him so hard for it that he blushed. 
It’s what he does now, flicking his thumb upon the spark wheel until the small flame erupts and bathes us in a delicate, orange tint. I hold the cigarette steady between my lips with my two fingers and Hobi draws closer, appeasing my inner need. Waits for me to take that first drag before he prepares me for the rush of his enormous affection by heating the small of my back with his palm, rubbing the sensitive place. It’s something that I’ve learned he likes to do; take things slow so I open for him like a bud of flower. It gives him pleasure, the laboriousness of the process and the following harvesting, the dampness of my dew the evidence of his success.  
It’s extremely attractive because he does it more for my sake than for his own. 
He lets me take another drag, our visual connection a string stouter than the constellation up above, and I feel myself, nonvocally, giving over that heaviness of the nothingness with each exhale. I decompress and Hobi can see it, joining his other hand to my loins and dipping his head to my neck. He scatters tiny, weightless kisses upon that tenderness of me and I am lulled by his enticement, soothed and sleep-drunk, his pheromones and the cedarwood of his fragrance unfettering me. 
I want to take him to bed. 
And I tell him, innocently, with my hands that clenched the muscles of his arms rounding towards his pecs and lowering to his abdomen, the ivory smoke following my movement, but never touching him. Hobi knows this is my language of sensuality and his mouth parts as he feels the words. 
“We should go.” 
He lifts an arm and brushes a strand of hair away from my cheek, his fingers lingering upon the shell of my ear—his private obsession. His endeared eyes study my features for a fraction of time before he leans in and peppers a singular kiss to the button of my nose. “Why are you sad, muffin?” 
The trees towering behind him move in a daze at last, but it’s a blurred swaying motion that merely divulges to me that the obstacles, the preparation and the dark energy have been conquered. And it helps me to speak a little. 
“Hyun-Ae told me something I didn’t really expect to hear. Can I tell you on our way home?” 
Hobi nods, cradling my cheek, and I melt. 
“I can leave the car here and we can walk home. And in the morning, we can go grocery shopping in the city.” 
I liquefy in his hold and I finish the last of my cigarette, kissing him feverishly and reciprocating the kisses he left upon my neck, sinking our domesticity into the column of his throat while he holds me and I drip into the fullness of him. 
When we return to the restaurant, Do-hyun is by himself, informing us that Hyun-ae has gone to pee. The familiarity solidifies me and I sense upon me a moonlit energy of joy that cleanses me of the past. Hyun-ae perceives it long before I open my mouth and she jumps into my arms, telling me how she’s proud of me. We say our goodbyes, promise that we’ll see each other soon, and Hobi pays for the whole table, calming every inch of me. 
I pray as we watch them drive off. I pray for their safe travel into the city and I pray over our car. 
We walk through our miniature, unlit version of the city, breathing in the purity of the air, listening to the rustling of the leaves being fondled by the breeze. Hobi mimics the act of love, rubbing his thumb over my hand, and I feel at ease when I tell him about my first love, chain-smoking just to help me infuse poetry into my words. 
With each detail, I forget it has happened to me as I unattach myself from it, consider it an element of the past that no longer has anything to do with me. Hobi lets me speak, doesn’t interrupt me, though I notice that as I venture into the brutality of the pain I waded through, his teeth grit and his jaw clenched, the preceding flush of his cheeks withering and falling beneath his skin, pallidness blanketing it in ashen gray. And it pushes me further into my process of letting go and forgetting for another million years to come. 
He stops in the middle of the road once I finish the story. Gives me a mournful look that penetrates me so deeply that I mourn, too. His hands find my forearms, my shoulders and my clavicles. Prepare me for the treasure of the most sympathetic of hugs I have ever received in my life and I loosen up in his strong hold, bury my face in his black-clothed chest as his palm holds my head to him. And he kisses my crown, kisses my temple; strengthens me when he squeezes me until I can’t breathe and I grasp that he is cleansing the pollution of the monstera leaves and the chamomile petals. 
And then he begins to speak, dampening me with a fresh layer of hydration. 
“You had to walk through hell in order to find me and I shall spend my lifetime bringing heaven to you. I swear on my life, muffin,” he says, for the entirety of the peripheral corn fields and the trees to hear, as he cradles my face and makes me look at him. My vision blears as I regard him more as my savior than I ever have before, nodding my head in agreement as my eyelashes flutter, the finality of calmness settling down in me like we did in this town. “You’re mine. You were mine when you were with him, which is why fate didn’t allow him near you. Mine to find, mine to take care of, mine to love, kiss and dance with. Mine. You’re gonna keep blooming in my hands and you’re no longer gonna pray for him, you’d done enough of that already. You’re only gonna pray for yourself.” 
This, I disagree with, dissolving sugar personified. 
“No, I’m only gonna pray for you.” 
Hobi pouts, his mouth rounding downwards, and his thumbs rub my cheeks, smearing my makeup—and I don’t mind. It’s always been his to ruin. He presses his nose and forehead to mine, breathing with me as the breeze swishes past. I slip my hands beneath the hem of his T-shirt, needing to feel his skin, and Hobi sighs against me. Withdraws a tiny bit and steals the breath he gave me. 
“Teach me how to pray for you.” 
I’m so struck with awe, wonder and my genuine love for him that I cannot speak, my lung failing, though differently this time. They swell up with the essence of my feelings for him, my devotion and my besottedness that my eyes well up before I can halt their rivulets. No one has ever prayed for me, certainly not a male I loved and looked up to. I spent years having my empty prayers echoed back to me and now the love of my life, my eternal beloved one, asks me to teach him how to pray for me. 
Only the omnipotent Listener of my prayers could make this possible for me, and before I know it—my mouth gives my beloved the instructions, the contents of my knowledge that I learned along the trajectory of my somber, otherworldly life and then he’s whispering the voice of his heart into my ear. 
“Dear God, please give my muffin the strength not to be pulled back into the life she had before me. Make sure she’s not influenced by it either. Take her burdens and give them to me because I can bear them. Relieve her heart and make her happy. Use me to do it.” He withdraws and drags his thumbs across my eyelashes, asking me to open them and I do. Once he has my attention, he seeks my guidance. “What do I say now?” 
I huff a soft laugh, endeared. Kiss the edge of his hand. “Say thank you and amen.” 
Hobi grins and the Sun peeks through the night. “Thank you and amen.” 
My laughter gains volume and he wraps his lips around it, shushing me, kissing me madly, and I bury my fingertips into his short hair, reciprocating the different, different madness and expanding it. Weightlessness seizes me and I don’t feel my limbs, stupefaction firing me with enthusiasm and then tongues clash and the kiss gains a verve that forces me to collide my body with his and— 
And then we’re dancing. 
To a slow song he begins to hum with the deep raspiness of his voice. Our bodies are one, singular, intertwined as we move to the rhythm of our unified heart and I weep. 
I weep in my joy. I weep in my contentment—and I weep in my love for him. 
He touches my back all over, cupping my hair as if it was water, leading our bodies in the dance, and there’s no one around us, no cars coming, no animals to watch us—only the trees, the fields, the buzzing of cicadas and the breeze and the moon up above. And then he’s twirling me until I’m dizzy and my soft laughter reverberates through the spaciousness of the road that is ours at this very moment. And the Sun beams at me, my Sun, as he pulls me close and continues to dance with me. I feel the jealous shafts of the light of the moon digging into my back that I soon forget about because his lips pursue mine and I dwindle away into his magnetism. 
His hands, his pheromones and his cedarwood fragrance take me to his bed. 
And he’s feasting on me like the dessert he didn’t get to have at the restaurant, bent over as I am over the foot of the bed, my dress bunched in his fist over my loins and my panties pushed to the side. My hungry beloved, my parched Sun, nuzzling his face in my femininity while I drip my dew and moan his name for him. Sucking my clit, he keeps me hovering on the cusp of my orgasm and I tremble in my vulnerable position—face planted on the bedding while the lower half of my body is raised in the air for him. And once my throat begins to let out whimpers and incoherent pleas, he draws back, closes his body over mine until his lips explore my ear and there, there he teases me. 
“What was that, my little muffin?” 
I whine, grinding my ass into his groin, and he hums. It takes me back to his song and I apperceive that it is the only thing I ever want to be pulled back to. Reminiscent of it, his song is blackened by eroticism, by his enormous arousal, drenched by my dew and I need him. While I feel God, the Listener of my prayers, to be a glaring light in me, I need my beloved Hobi to be interwoven with it. 
“I want you inside me. Please, I need it,” I beg, twirling my hips against his hardness like he twirled me in the middle of the road and Hobi sucks in a breath, exhaling it in the form of a whimper and I stoop in my heady longing. 
Abruptly, he plops me onto my back and yanks my panties away. “I’m gonna marry you, you know that?” 
I can only whisper my overwhelming agreement, my bones and my muscles too overcome with elation to do anything else. I would marry him tomorrow if I could. Go grocery shopping with him in the morning, unload it at home, put on my white silky dress and go to church with him by midday. Spend the rest of the day celebrating our union in bed, round after round until we get so exhausted that we submit to slumber, dreaming of our wedding, reliving it. 
He takes off my dress, kisses my forehead, ruffles my hair around me, his thumb dragging across the skin beneath my lower lip as if he was fixing my smeared lipstick for the special day, getting me ready, and I change my mind. I would marry him right now if I could.  
And I tell him. 
“I would marry you right now.” 
His eyes wet, casting a glimmering light upon my naked form, and a paroxysm of his joy gushes out of him and onto me. Hobi tickles my tummy with butterfly kisses, holding me down with his strong hands that he soon pins above my head, leveling with me, my dew drying on his face—yet he still glistens. Glistens with a gleam of bliss that washes over me. 
“Then, let’s get married,” he murmurs, and seizes my lips with his own, kissing me so roughly that I instinctively open my legs for him, the heated pressure in between unbearable. And then he holds my wrists in one hand while the other unbuckles his pants, fisting his length and tugging on it. My favorite sight. He guides it to my sopping hollowness and with one hard thrust, that he knows I am wholly enraptured by each time, he sheathes himself inside me all the way, completing me. Rests at the delicate touch of our mounds. “I’m gonna fuck you like you deserve and then I’m gonna take you to church.” 
And he gives it to me. Doesn’t pull out fully, but pounds me into the mattress. One hand gripping my wrists together, the other my jaw—ascertaining that my attention doesn’t fluctuate but remain fixed on him, on the twists of his features, on the guttural moans, his pheromones and his fragrance that trickle out of him and dunk into me while I struggle to take it all. 
“Am I hurting you?” he whispers, kissing my cheek and breathing against it, slowing down his strokes that scramble my brain. The tip of his cock grazes my cervix and I lose, I lose my identity. 
My eyes flutter and he pries my mouth open with his thumb, providing me something to focus on as I intuitively suck on it, keeping my head afloat enough to answer. 
“No, it’s just too big.” 
Hobi hums, rewarding me with a peck on the mouth and the gradual speed of his thrusts. “You can take it, muffin. I know you can. You’ve shown me before.” 
The praise, the belief in me—it all crests in lowest part of my sexuality and again, I edge around the cusp of my orgasm. Beads of perspiration line his forehead, soaking his hairline and he’s a sight to die for, the final piece to the fulfillment of my release. Blush reddens his cheeks, his irises enlarged and digging into mine. He doesn’t falter, continuing with his fast rhythm and I moan out poetry lines that make him squeeze his eyes shut. 
“I’m gonna come for you.” 
He groans. “Uh-huh, come for me, muffin. Give it to me. Show me again how well you can come on my cock. Yes, yes—”
Pluto bursts and ceases to exist. I come so vehemently that my spine arches off the mattress, colliding into Hobi’s chest. I shun out all constellations, all planets, the entire universe collapsing under the weight and gravity of my orgasm and our own marble, green, yellow and white with no one around but us, is called to creation with the bloom of Hobi’s own climax. 
He stuffs me full, my hollowness and my mouth, kissing me so hard that I become dizzy all over again. Moans my pet name as he shoots out his ivory love for me, fucking into me sluggishly while the twitching of his cock enamors me even more. I swallow his voice, swallow his grunts and little curses. My iridescent, entranced spasms caused by his exuberance prolong until I don’t know where my head stands, where my legs are wrapped around or what body part of his my hands clench. 
My savior, my beloved, linked to me for all eternity. 
This must have been our wedding because I shall never be the same again, my mind and my heart swept clean and filled with brand new oxygen. I no longer remember what happened prior to our love-making and when I share that with him, Hobi is possessed with the need to do it all over again. 
And he does, a million times over, until he marries me in the church of our town, with Hyun-Ae and Do-hyun present, mine and his parents and his sister with Mickey. 
A wedding most perfectly extraterrestrial, on our own Hope planet, with nothing hurting, with no thoughts resurfacing. 
Me and my beloved, me and my savior, me and my Sun. 
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𓂃 ౨ৎ LOVE-KISSED BABIES: @tkslovechild ,  @jjk7k ,  @parkinglot-nights , @bethvar , @Sexytholland , @yoongibaybee , @crystaleah , @fennecnco, @lil-kpopstan , @euphoricmyth , @jungkoock , @cinmongirl , @hoseokkie-caeks , @kam9404 , @fr0ggieth1nk .
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olderthannetfic · 6 months ago
Note
TW Suicide. I talk about suicide from a religious perspective, and religion is not kind with suicide.
I might be reaching but I think religious Asian countries might be more proship-friendly than western countries??
Let's see a few cases. Japan. I'm not sure how religious Japan is, but they have very strict values and traditions. There are so many how-tos and even the language has levels that you can only use to certain people, otherwise it's rude. They can't express queerness so freely that yaoi/yuri is the best outlet they have, and they got called rotten for it.
Japan is notorious for being very proship friendly. There was even a huge "what is proship and why should you block those with 'proship DNI' in their bios" thread over on Twitter and it was so widely shared by Japanese users. At that point, even antis took off the "proship DNI" off their bios (such cowards lol).
The people in my religious (Muslim) country and its neighbor, Malaysia and Indonesia, even the minors, are so proship-oriented that I only ever saw exactly one person with "proship DNI" in their bio. And their posts tell me they're the more "liberal" people of the country. You know, the ones that the older people are using as examples of "Look at that girl. She's been poisoned by the western values, she's showing so much skin. Don't be like her". Now I obviously will just laugh at older people who says such things but hear me out.
The people who are actually practicing religion to the point where nothing sexual is allowed, who WILL screech at sex (both vanilla and kinky) in fanworks should they ever join, won't touch fandom with a ten-foot pole. This leaves us with the absolute freaks who thinks "I'm religious, I believe in God that other people call fiction, but I can't have sex until I'm married and masturbation is haram, so smut fic is actually a great way to let off tension! No one real is having sex so it's a green area. I'm not masturbating, I'm just reading. Sometimes they excite me, most of the time not! Halal mode."
Also, murder and suicide is a sin. A huge sin. If you tell someone to kill themselves and they actually did, the religious guilt would be MASSIVE. I can't imagine an actually correctly-practicing religious sending death threats and not be haunted by the promise of a sin. A sin that involves other people is much harder to forgive (it requires forgiveness from the hurt people, and that's impossible with suicide. They can't forgive you if they're dead) than a sin that involves yourself (masturbation. All you have to do is regret and never do it again. Which is why suicide is seen as unforgiveable. You can't undo it).
So, it sometimes makes me wonder that in the west, MAGA catholic conservatives shares a lot of values with fanpols. But in religious countries, the actually rigid religious ones aren't in fandom, so the fandom is filled with people who aren't evangelical purists.
This incoherent yap might be reaching, but hey, a new perspective to US-Europeans or non-religious people. It's just kinda funny to think about. Since you are very well-spoken and critical (I think so from your replies to the asks!), what do you think?
--
Well... I think there are a lot of specifics here that are hilarious in how you've framed them. (The situation with queer people in Japan has evolved a lot over the last couple of decades. That isn't at all how I'd describe politeness levels in language, and I think your assumptions based on how politeness works in Japanese are ludicrous. Catholicism isn't the big, powerful flavor of Christianity in the US, so it's not where the majority of the nutbars ruining politics come from. Etc. Etc.)
But back in the 90s in US fandom in English, slash was the domain of freaks, and the puritywankers were openly homophobic and did not hang out in the same spaces.
Yes, I do think that part of the rise of the current flavor of antis has to do with somewhat wider acceptance of queerness combined with an overall anxiety-inducing and uncertain situation. They're not secure enough to chill the fuck out, but they wrongly believe that our battles for queer rights here are done and/or that they can be won by throwing the freakier members of the community under the bus.
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miss-musings · 1 year ago
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"And We're Not Done Yet": How Omega Also Needed Crosshair in The Bad Batch Season 3
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Both during and in the weeks after "The Bad Batch" Season 3 aired, a lot of people talked about how much Omega helped Crosshair grow and change during Season 3 (and the show in general).
I'm certainly one of those people, but I thought it might be time to talk about just how much Omega needed Crosshair in Season 3 as well. I know he generally supported her like his brothers did throughout the show, but let's focus on how she specifically and uniquely needed him throughout S3.
(NOTE: I already posted this as a thread on my Twitter — @catchingclassic. So, sorry for any repetition across platforms. But, if you already saw the Twitter thread, I am going to expand on a few points, because Tumblr is more conducive to that.)
So, let's talk about how Crosshair and their special bond helped Omega in "The Bad Batch" Season 3:
Initial Imprisonment on Tantiss
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Let's go chronologically and start with our characters' five- or six-month imprisonment on Tantiss.
While Omega is a prisoner at the base, she basically only has four individuals she has neutral to positive interactions with on a daily basis: Nala Se, Emerie, Batcher and Crosshair.
While she spends the most time with Emerie and does seem to develop some bond with her -- as we find out from Emerie's comments in 3.14 -- she also doesn't fully trust Emerie. If she did, she would've clued Emerie into her escape plans in 3.03.
But, Crosshair is someone she KNEW she could trust.
Crosshair was essentially Omega's only comfort during her imprisonment (other than Batcher, I guess). She'd just lost Tech and been separated from Hunter, Wrecker and Echo. She clearly needed someone to support her mentally/emotionally.
We only see two conversations between them in 3.01, and in the first one, he doesn't offer her much in the way of comfort. But in the second one, it's clear that Crosshair is trying to keep Omega focused on escaping, even if it's without him.
Look, I'm not saying Crosshair's demeanor was great. I wish we could've seen him offering her more comfort and support (and maybe he did off-screen).
But, at minimum, she continued to interact with him on a regular basis and seemed to tell him all sorts of details about her day, her plans to escape, etc. And, again, Crosshair encouraged her as best as he could:
Crosshair: What is your primary objective? Omega: Escape. Crosshair: Then stop wasting time on lost causes. Forget the hound, forget me, and complete the mission.
In early 3.01, he doesn't believe escape is possible. But, by late 3.01, he's apparently realized that Omega does have a good chance of escaping, if she plays her cards right, so he's trying to keep her focused.
And, he's actually right. Omega could've left with Batcher at the end of 3.01, but as I'll talk about shortly, that wouldn't have gone very well.
I've been showing TBB to my sister and we recently started S3. She was surprised by the five-month time jump in 3.01 and by just how much Omega had changed. She'd lost hope. She'd become almost complacent about her new life on Tantiss. She doesn't acknowledge Crosshair in the hallway. She doesn't demand to leave anymore. She's just accepted this is her life now, to some degree.
Omega definitely still had some fight left in her, as we see when Batcher is threatened, but five months on Tantiss clearly diminished so much of the stubbornly optimistic person she used to be. She also seemed to tunnel-vision on Batcher and Crosshair, and so that's why Crosshair has to remind her exactly what her objective is.
Again, we don't get to see much of it, but it's clear that Crosshair was basically Omega's only real support system on Tantiss. She might've had some positive interactions with Nala Se and/or Emerie off-screen (although that doesn't seem likely), but Crosshair seemed to be the only person encouraging her and helping her toward an escape attempt.
Speaking of...
Escaping Tantiss, Round 1
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Omega absolutely needed Crosshair's help to escape Tantiss, especially on the day and at the time she did.
Let's say she took Crosshair's words to heart and left with Batcher at the end of 3.01:
She's outside the base with no weapon and no datapad. Even if she happens to remember the abandoned shuttle, she has no way to find it other than just blindly running around the jungle.
(EDIT/UPDATE: I forgot the droid K9-X1 also had a datapad Omega could’ve taken after she used it to open Batcher’s chute in 3.01. Not sure if it had the same capabilities as Nala Se’s datapad, but I would guess so. The droid also had an electro baton she could’ve taken. Not exactly a blaster but it’d be better than nothing. 🤷‍♀️)
And, while Batcher would be some help against the jungle creatures, one lurca hound isn't going to do much.
It would probably take a while, but I’m sure the lurca hounds and/or the stormtroopers would find her. And even if she remembers Plan 72 herself, now she doesn't have another person (or a weapon) to help her execute it.
But, in 3.03, once she gets Crosshair out of the cell, he gives her the second blaster. Now, they're both armed. They get outside, and he suggests they "follow the flight path" to find the crashed shuttle. He also watches her back the whole time they're in the jungle, and when the stormtroopers find them, he suggests Plan 72 and acts as a distraction while she steals the shuttle.
I also love that moment when she seems to give up, but Crosshair doesn’t let her:
Crosshair: You got us this far, and we’re not done yet.
One small detail I appreciate: if you look really closely at his facial expression when she apologizes, he really goes 😟 to hear that Omega of all people has given up hope that they’ll actually escape.
In any case, Omega, Crosshair and even Batcher all needed to be there to escape Tantiss as they did. And even then, they probably wouldn't have gotten away safely without Emerie bringing Hemlock Omega's results to have him call off the V-Wings.
Navigating Lau
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Once the group crash-lands on Lau, Crosshair proves crucial to their escape efforts there. We always focus on her contributions, but don't really talk about his.
Omega probably would've been at the crash site all day, freezing and trying to fix the shuttle, if Crosshair hadn't prompted her to leave. He locates the spaceport, and says they need to move before they're discovered.
Once there, he reassures Omega that the stormtroopers are a standard patrol presence and tells her they can't contact Hunter and Wrecker because the Empire monitors long-range comms. He then comes up with the plan to try to sneak about one of the shuttles at the spaceport, but it's too well-guarded.
This is where Omega then takes the lead: she tries to bribe the spaceport employee and then decides to get money by hustling people at the cantina.
The whole time, though, Crosshair is watching her back and tries to stand up for her against the Imperial officer and the street kid.
And, despite how much he dislikes it, he does follow Omega to the cargo docks and helps her free Batcher. During the shootout, he fights the troopers while she steals the ship. Just like on Tantiss, they wouldn't have gotten out of there without working together.
Finally, as they head to reunite with Hunter and Wrecker, Crosshair tries to prepare her for the possibility that they might not be there. We know he's wrong, but he was still looking out for her (even if it was probably just him projecting).
Crosshair's Knowledge of the Empire and Tantiss
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Just like on Lau, Crosshair's knowledge about the Empire and its procedures, etc. proves crucial in TBB's larger fight against Tantiss.
Once he and Omega reunite with everyone in 3.05, Crosshair helps by sharing what information he does have (although it does take him a while because of his trauma).
He takes TBB to Barton IV to decrypt the datapad in 3.05; he tells Rex & co. about the CX operatives in 3.06; he volunteers to take on CX-2 twice in 3.07; and he initiates the plan to break Rampart out of prison in 3.12.
Obviously, I don't like that Crosshair stayed with the Empire and left his family in 1.16. But the unspoken truth is that, without Crosshair staying in the Empire as long as he did, TBB probably never would've found Tantiss.
It was so well-guarded that the only way they could've found it was to track a ship already going there, like CX-2's Dagger in 3.11 or the science vessel in 3.13.
Also, while Omega wasn't there, Crosshair's knowledge of Tantiss and the surrounding jungle was crucial to TBB infiltrating the base in 3.14 and 3.15 -- even though the CX operatives beat their asses and take them prisoner anyway.
We'll circle back to Tantiss, Round 2 later, but for now, let's refocus on mid-Season 3:
Recovering from Tantiss
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Let's talk about Omega needing Crosshair during their downtime on Pabu.
While the show focuses on Crosshair recovering from his trauma, Omega was traumatized by her imprisonment too. And Crosshair is the only one who knows firsthand just how bad it was for her.
Her day-to-day routine on Tantiss clearly wasn't as brutal as his, but she was still separated from her family for months.
As she tells Emerie in 3.03, it reminded her of being trapped on Kamino; and as we know from Season 1, that's where Omega was initially traumatized.
In mid-Season 3, she's so focused on going back for the other clone prisoners, but it's clear from several looks and remarks in 3.05 and 3.06 that she's still processing everything that happened to her there.
Throughout Season 3, we get several scenes of Crosshair being worried about her, checking on her and trying to keep her safe. We also get at least two scenes where he affirms just how bad Omega's suffering was:
Emerie in 3.03: "You should go back to your room." Crosshair: "You mean her CELL."
This exchange was short, but I love that Crosshair refused to let Emerie gaslight Omega. (I know Emerie was essentially a prisoner too, so her gaslighting wasn't exactly intentional, but that's a story for another time.)
We also get The Argument in 3.05 where Crosshair holds Hunter accountable, albeit in a very mean-spirited way:
Crosshair: You let Omega be taken to Tantiss. She went through what she did because YOU failed. You're angry because she escaped with MY help, not yours.
Admittedly we don't get to see it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Omega's recap of her imprisonment in 3.05 glossed over just how bad it was for her.
Again, Crosshair knew firsthand just how much she suffered. So, he tries to look out for her as best as he can, whether that's physically or emotionally. (Admittedly, we could've gotten more scenes of this, but the show is focused more on Crosshair's post-Tantiss recovery rather than Omega's.)
In 3.08, Omega's focused on helping Crosshair start his healing journey. I'm sure it proved to be a decent distraction while inadvertently helping her start processing her own trauma too.
I mean, at the end of the episode, they're meditating TOGETHER. It's not like she showed him how to do it and then just watched him or walked away.
It might have been inadvertent, but by helping him heal, I also think Omega was starting her own healing journey too.
Family, Reconciliation and Hope
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Another recurring thread in mid-Season 3 (and even into the finale) is how Crosshair's journey reaffirms Omega's belief in the power of love, hope and family.
We know from Season 1 that Omega always wanted to save Crosshair and bring him back to their family. Even though he leaves them willingly in 1.16, she still cared about him and in 2.15, she and the others pushed Hunter to do whatever necessary to save Crosshair.
But, especially after losing Tech in 2.16, I can imagine just how important saving Crosshair and restoring him to their family was for her.
As she says in 2.16 when Hemlock captures Hunter and Wrecker:
Omega: I already lost Tech. I'm not gonna lose them too.
From the way she pushes Crosshair to talk to Hunter at the beginning of 3.05, it's clear she's invested in seeing the brothers reconcile. And, based on her expression when she sees Wrecker hugging his brothers at the end of the episode, it must've been so comforting for her after everything she and their family went through -- especially losing Tech.
Additionally, throughout the show, Omega has always tried to believe in people's goodness, and appeal to their kindness and compassion.
With Cid (and others), she's proven wrong, and they ultimately take advantage of her.
But, Crosshair proved she's right to believe people CAN change -- that they can reject the darkness and choose light.
When the group is debating whether to let Omega train with Ventress in 3.09, Omega uses Crosshair as her prime example that "people can change" and that she's not naïve for wanting to give Ventress a chance despite her past crimes.
I think she ultimately learned that there's a balance: that yes, some people like Cid will take advantage of you; but that there are others like Crosshair and Ventress who are trying to be better and will come through for you if given the chance.
(ADDITION: While it took her a long time to come around, Emerie also ultimately makes the right decision to turn against Hemlock/the Empire and help free the Tantiss prisoners. Maybe after reuniting with Emerie in 3.12, Omega hoped her sister would come to her senses and help/join her, just like Crosshair did. I can’t say for certain, but it’s a thought.)
Returning to Tantiss
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In 3.11, when the Empire attacks and invades Pabu, Omega feels guilty for seeing the island full of refugees suffer because of her.
She straight-up says as much to Hunter and Crosshair. And while Hunter tries to emphasize that it's not her fault, based on what she tells Crosshair later in the episode, she still feels guilty:
Omega: Look at what they've already done. I can't let the people here suffer more because of me.
And, in 3.12, when Crosshair justifies letting Omega surrender herself, he affirms her sacrifice for the people of Pabu:
Crosshair: The Empire would've destroyed this whole town. She stopped them.
You can argue that Crosshair made a bad decision by letting Omega surrender, but I personally feel like they had no choice, especially if they wanted to minimize the suffering on Pabu. They couldn't hide; they couldn't fight; and they tried to run but failed.
I've wondered before if Hunter had been in Crosshair's shoes in 3.11, whether he would've let Omega go. I honestly don't know if he would've. Crosshair himself was so reluctant, and I imagine Hunter would've been just as bad or worse.
We've all talked before about how much Crosshair was afraid of going back to Tantiss, but we tend to overlook Omega's fear because of how brave and determined she is in 3.11. When CX-2 is taking her back to Tantiss, the way Omega breathes when she's on the ship is reminiscent of meditation breathing. I imagine she was trying to collect herself before facing Tantiss again.
I think she was afraid to go back, but she was more concerned about the people of Pabu and the prisoners on Tantiss, so she was trying to make the best of a bad situation.
But, despite all her fears and his own, Crosshair supported her decision and then tried his best to track her ship. And while he ultimately failed, I'm sure the thought that he was there for her -- physically and emotionally watching her back -- helped Omega make that choice and face it as bravely as she could.
(ADDITION: Right before she boards CX-2’s ship, there’s a moment where she turns around and looks back at Pabu. Was she looking for Crosshair specifically, or Hunter or someone else familiar, or just looking back in general? I’m not sure.)
Escaping Tantiss, Round 2 (AKA The Shot)
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So, Crosshair helps his brothers infiltrate Tantiss.
They get captured by the CX operatives and taken to the training room/CX lab. Echo, Omega and the clone prisoners work together to fight the CX operatives and save TBB.
After Crosshair saves Hunter from CX-2, he affirms he's going with Hunter to find and save Omega.
It's honestly a really good thing he did, because without Crosshair on that bridge, that scene plays out very differently.
Hunter probably could've taken out CX-2's Dagger and Scorch by himself, but with Hemlock holding Omega at gunpoint, I think Hunter might've actually put his blaster down when Hemlock threatened her.
It'd be in-character for him, as he surrendered when Hemlock's commandos had Wrecker at gunpoint in 2.16. Admittedly, he was vastly outnumbered, which is a big factor. But, if Hunter is on that bridge by himself, he and Hemlock are basically in a standoff.
With Crosshair with him, though, the brothers have Hemlock outnumbered and outgunned. If Hemlock managed to shoot one of them, the other would take him down.
Additionally, either of them might’ve backed down if they had to navigate that situation alone. But together, they have each other for support. They're greater than the sum of their parts after all.
So, Hemlock has Omega at gunpoint and is using her as a human shield. The brothers take a knee on the bridge, and Hemlock decides to take Omega over to the edge, so if the brothers manage to shoot him, he and Omega will both fall to their deaths.
Omega signals them. Hunter catches it, but Crosshair apparently doesn't. So, Hunter tells him what to do.
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And now we come to The Shot:
Let's say Hunter is out there alone and the scene plays out the exact same way. Omega signals him, he sees it, and she stabs Hemlock in the leg and lifts the binders so he can shoot them.
Could Hunter have made that shot?
Obviously, it's a TV show set in a science-fantasy universe. So, there's always a chance. Plus, Hunter is definitely a better shot than the average person, and in a high-stakes situation like that, I'm sure the adrenaline and his love for Omega would help (just as it does for Crosshair in-canon).
But, based on everything we've seen of Hunter's shooting abilities in the show, I'm going to say: No, he probably wouldn't have.
In 2.09, Tech shoots the vial of ipsium instead of Hunter or Wrecker because:
Tech: If the shot is not precise, it'll cause another cave-in.
If Hunter was a better shot than Tech, Tech would've had him take it. But, Tech was the best of the three, so he did it.
And, Crosshair -- as a sniper -- was the best shot in Clone Force 99. I mean, that was his whole thing. He’s a sharpshooter.
I know that Crosshair has basically everything stacked against him, and he still managed to do it. But, Hunter would've been facing many of the same disadvantages -- injuries; lighting and weather conditions; the distance, size and speed of the target, etc. And based on everything we've seen in the series, Hunter is a worse shot than Crosshair.
If Hunter knew he could make that shot himself, I think he would've taken it knowing Crosshair was missing his shooting hand. And, if Hunter only thought there was a chance he'd make it, he clearly didn't want to risk it. He deferred to Crosshair, because he knew Crosshair was the better shot of the two of them, even with all the disadvantages they were facing.
No, it HAD to be Crosshair.
As I said, Crosshair needed to be there for Hunter and Omega.
He helped Hunter take out the Dagger and Scorch; he supported Hunter as Omega was being held at gunpoint and Hemlock told them to surrender; and he made The Shot to free Omega and then helped Hunter turn Hemlock into Swiss cheese.
That was the only way the three of them could've done it -- together.
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Final Thoughts
Ultimately, as much as we understandably love to talk about Crosshair needing Omega to grow and change, Omega needed Crosshair too.
After losing Tech, she wanted so badly to escape with Crosshair and return to TBB so they could all be a family again.
He gave her support and encouragement during her darkest days.
He looked out for her as she processed her traumas and never let others diminish her suffering.
He supported her decision to protect Pabu by surrendering herself, despite her fears and his own.
He showed her that change was possible and that healing is a journey -- one they started together.
And then he helped his brothers rescue her and the others from Tantiss, and ultimately saved her life.
Plus, as we hear about in the epilogue, Crosshair helped his brothers raise Omega for ~10 happy years on Pabu.
Omega needed Crosshair in Season 3 just as much as he needed her.
She needed ALL five of her brothers/dads to become the kind and capable person we meet in the epilogue.
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nalyra-dreaming · 6 months ago
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Hello!
This is a really pedantic question and I apologize if you’ve been asked this before, but what is the timeline of the first episode flashbacks?
I see people saying sometimes that Lestat courted Louis for months before their first “date” but in the scene where Louis and his family are at breakfast Grace says “a month before my wedding…” and then, after Paul’s funeral and Louis gets drunk and goes to the Fair Play, Miss Carol says Lily died “two weeks ago”. Also, Louis says that the sunrise he and Paul watched is the last he ever saw which means Paul’s death, his funeral, and Louis’ turning all take place on the same day which was the day after Grace’s wedding. So, based on that, the entire flashbacks of the first episode only take place over a month and, if we assume Lestat killed Lily soon after that night they were together then Louis and Lestat only “courted” for about two weeks and then it was another two weeks between their night together and Grace’s wedding. Unless I’m just missing something really obvious…?
Again, I know this is kind of a silly question, but the timeline of the season 1 flashbacks can be a little hard to keep track of sometimes.
Hey!
So.... first of all: you need to let go of any -precise- dates for the show.
They're all off. The times, too.
I'm not kidding. Louis is remembering things he mixes up with other events, breakfasts that happened at different times, and so on.
Here is a rough timeline of the show:
And here is a post detailing that the dates being "off" is deliberate:
Memory... is a monster.
And it is fallible.
And that is threaded through all of the episodes, all of the tale.
Louis misremembers. He thinks he knows what train Claudia took, but she actually couldn't have. He thinks he knows what breakfast they talked about the brooms and the witches and Grace's wedding, but that could not have been before he met Lestat. He thinks he went for a walk in Ponchatoula after the hotel, but that is also highly unlikely.
I linked it in the hotel post, but there is an interview, where Jacob says this:
"Louis believes that a lot of this is the truth. There are other things that he knows deep down are not true. He has to tell himself a version of it in order to cope.”
This is not supposed to be a big discussion about truth or not :), but it is necessary to consider this angle when you want to fit hard truths (the dates) to the narrative.
Because you can't. The tale Louis narrates does not fit. Not quite.
Part of it is the fact that memory is fallible - and the other is that we know now that his memory has been tinkered with by Armand, as Assad called it. And so the second interview could not have been the truth either, just as the first one wasn't.
I am not sure if we will ever get "the truth™". The absolute dates. You will have to "choose to believe it", as Daniel calls it in the show, within the tale :)))
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badgalsasuke · 7 days ago
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They deadass tried to take your accounts down ?? Oh my god that’s hilariously sad. I think it really pisses them off how you have so much proof behind everything you say. A lot of interactions on twitter are just people being mad at each other and trying to “win” with some shitty catty comeback but they can’t even argue with you lmao. They know damn well none of the lies they usually use will work so they just have to silence you, hoping other people will stay not knowing the truth.
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Hi anon!
Yeah, they’re trying to take me down like they’re the CIA and I’m a socialist Latino politician from the 70s.
I think after my last argument w/ SS it became clear they can’t use their misinformation they try to pass off as Kishimoto’s statements because I have all sources on my side.
However, I got the flagging notification after I posted my thread debunking the Sasuke and Sakura are based on ninigi no mikoto and konohana sakuya hime bullshit theory. Judging on the likes-views ratio I’m pretty sure they saw it, maybe sent it to one of their groupchats and mass reported me for spam because the notification I got was that my account was exhibiting “inauthentic behavior” when it wasn’t.
Thankfully, Twitter support is so much faster than tumblr’s so I was able to fix it right away.
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honeyhotteoks · 1 month ago
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on twitter, one of my moots is getting like ‘canceled’ because they were in an nsfw groupchat and intersxtef with someone who wanted to make an atz tip color thread ,, but to me, it doesn’t seem like THAT big of a deal. obviously oversexualising is bad but i feel like the complete opposite (infantilizing) is just as bad. atz are grown men, if you’re doing it in a space where they can’t see it then i dont see the problem?? when i first started entering fan spaces, i started out with tumblr and it was never really seen as a problem as long as you weren’t being weird about it.. i guess i just wanted to know your take on it ? someone getting canceled on atiny twt everyday like clock work but i feel like someone saying they want to fuck a teezer is the least of anyone’s worries (especially if they are censoring names, etc)
- 🪻 anon
ahhhhh so i actually have a lot of thoughts about this and i'm happy to share!! click under the cut
to start off, this is just my opinion, so please remember that doesn't mean i'm right, it's just my thoughts and my own personal boundaries and comfort around nsfw content. i generally think cancelling people in fandom spaces is bad, unless someone has done something seriously awful along the lines of racism, homophobia, terf-language, etc. etc. as fandom should be a safe space for all / that kind of behavior shouldn't be tolerated anywhere BUT i also don't love the thread you've described and i'll explain why.
something you might have already picked up on if you follow me on twitter is that for all the smut i write and for all the nsfw imagining i do here, i don't often tweet in an overtly nsfw or sexual manner on my public twitter outside of innuendos. (i.e. you'll catch me throwing out a suggestive 🧎🏻‍♀️emoji but you won't see me be like 'when will he let me put his cock down my throat' etc. etc.)
i personally get a bit of the ick when people aggressively talk on main about the things they want an idol to do to them / things they want to do with an idol, regardless of censored names (i.e. yh instead of yunho). that doesn't mean it's a bad thing, i just don't necessarily want to read someone's unfiltered thoughts about a celebrity that way..... it makes me personally a little uncomfortable, i prefer engaging like that privately with friends or occasionally screaming on my priv but even there i'm fairly tame.
that to me is the far end of the spectrum between SFW and NSFW fandom. so if one end is sfw 'uwu these boys are babies who've never heard of sex' then the other end is nsfw 'i want ***redacted**** done to my ***redacted*** by ***idol***'
what you've described falls somewhere like....... almost towards the far end, and while i don't personally think anyone should get cancelled or dragged for it, if i saw it on my timeline i would probably not retweet it and possibly choose to block or mute that person based on how graphic the thread was. to me, while it's 'fair game' as long as none of their names are spelled out in full as to show up in searches, for me personally it feels a bit objectifying in a way that i wouldn't share on twitter (i'll explain my feelings on twt v. tumblr in a second). this to me falls into almost the same vein as sharing bulge photos and speculating about size, again.... a thing i don't think someone should be cancelled for, but a thing in my opinion that is best left to DMs with friends or tumblr if it's going to be a public post.
to your point, atz are grown men. they're also not chronically online like the fans, they're too fucking busy, and they've probably learned not to google themselves too hard. (even if they are.... they primarily speak korean, they're probably naver searching the hangul of their names not their english nicknames on twitter....) - so for that reason, it's bizarre to me why sfw fans need to act like they're saving the members from something horrific if there are fans who say whatever explicit thing.... like i hate to break it to atiny but..... a ton of these songs are about sex, include sexual choreography, and that's fully intentional to make fans WANT to fuck them and buy albums. that's just what it is.
that being said, for me personally, i do see a difference between the levels. i feel like if i were to break it down from least to most nsfw on twitter (in my eyes) it would go something like this:
sfw puritans who think the boys are children
sfw puritans who think the boys are adults but need protection
sfw / soft stans who just don't want to engage or post sexual content
neutral fans / casual fans
sfw stans who like or engage with nsfw content privately or in posts they like but don't rt/reblog this for their own feeds
nsfw stans or content creators who aren't too sexual in their tweets, but might do things like write fic or draw fanart and then link out to that work on a different platform than twitter (i fall here i think)
nsfw shippers or rpf content creators who post things like imagines/threads/scenarios/fan art with all names censored and official accounts blocked
nsfw threads of things like bulges/objectifying pictures with commentary (i would place the idea of a tip color thread here)
nsfw commentary that is super overt and direct like "i want *idol* to do xyz graphic thing* (this for me is more of a 'you know it when you see it' kind of thing, and usually it's just that someone's whole account is basically seriously horny and detailed about it)
nsfw accounts sharing actual pornography and attaching member names to it (even if censored)
nsfw accounts using member names in full or even sometimes tagging official accounts (this is the only one i think is like legitimately bad and not okay, and i fully support people trying to get these accounts reported and removed)
where you fall in that gradient as a content creator or content engager in this fandom is completely your choice, and i don't think (with the exception of the last bullet) you should get cancelled for that alone.
i personally have my boundaries where twitter is concerned because of the following reasons:
twitter is something that the members have used or potentially do use, and if they are ever looking up their english names my account could show up. i'd rather the top tweets there be more delulu / fun / complimentary of them versus graphic sexual content.
i don't really trust elon's internet to properly filter / display content / protect content, and it just makes me feel uneasy
more sfw accounts are on twitter versus tumblr, i'm not really comfortable taking the risk of sfw accounts getting mad at me / doxxing me / canceling me, so i just keep that kind of content on tumblr where it's better hidden and better received.
tumblr provides settings that help you limit your posts from showing on google searches, so does ao3. if yunho is finding my tumblr he did some serious key word searches and that's on him.
and if yunho ever finds my ao3????? that's between him and god, he went looking.
long story short........... i have complex feelings about nsfw content even though i consider myself a nsfw content creator. at the end of the day, i don't think people should be getting cancelled, but i think it's probably smart for nsfw folks to make sure they're tweeting in ways that will skirt the sfw fans or keep that kind of content to a platform like tumblr where you're way less likely to be harassed.
for me, the tip color thread is a little too far for things i would post on twitter, but sfw accounts need to learn to mute/block and move on. and if it's a situation where they're getting cancelled for saying that in a group chat..... well..... my only advice is be careful about giant group chats and how far you go in those until you're really close with the people in there, and even then, i would say be cautious if it's a large group.
hopefully this makes sense! again, this is all just my personal comfort and boundaries, so feel free to disagree with me or have different levels of comfort / boundaries of your own.
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kurisus · 2 months ago
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On the Emma case...
I was rewatching season 1 with a friend who was seeing it for the first time and as this is the first time I've revisited this season since season 2 came out (not to mention Bridon arc), I have some thoughts I need to ramble about. Spoilers for existing episodes under the cut.
So a lot of this is based on a Twitter thread I saw a few days ago, and I'm paraphrasing, but the person in question thought Li Tianchen couldn't have killed Emma because Liu Min gave him his first job when he was already in the wheelchair. He got the injury that paralyzed him the night Emma died. Tianchen can only possess people in the present, so Liu Min couldn't have been calling Tianchen to finish off Emma when he wasn't in the wheelchair yet, and furthermore was passing out and being taken to the hospital at the time that happened.
We also still don't know who gave the initial case of Emma to the trio, although Qiao Ling makes a throwaway comment (could also be a translation thing; I don't speak Chinese so I'm going off the Crunchyroll subs) that Emma herself was the one who gave them that case. The timeline of events is confusing, so I can't tell if she was already dead when the case came about or if her death came about after the company's financial records were leaked, exposing their embezzlement.
There's also been speculation Liu Xiao was the one to give them that case (at least indirectly) since we know he's connected to Quede Games from his business card in Bridon, as well as being Liu Min's brother, who was already connected to the company and knew Emma.
But anyway, circling back to the murder mystery, I still think Tianchen was the one who killed Emma, but it wasn't at Liu Min's request. When talking to the police Liu Min said he just wanted to scare her. And since he couldn't have given Tianchen a case yet, what if Liu Xiao instead was the one who requested Li Tianchen kill her that night? Not out of love for his brother, but rather trying to eliminate all possible loose ends in his embezzlement (ie disgrace to their family). OR their father gave the order to Qian Jin, who had Tianchen do it.
It also seems Liu Min's father gave the order to have his son killed. This is why Tianchen possesses him and strangles him with his handcuffs in the interrogation room, and we already knew his dad had cut him off financially, hence the embezzlement from Quede that Emma was involved in. It doesn't seem far-fetched that his father found out and decided to get rid of him to save the trouble.
Anyway, to sum it up, there's still a lot we don't know about that case and stuff that makes less sense contextualized with the later episodes in mind, but I do believe Tianchen was the one who killed Emma, just that Liu Min wasn't the one who hired him. I also think there are still scenes that will need to be shown in season 3 for this all to make sense, I just don't know how it would tie into what's happening in the story right now (CXS dying, Xia Fei going missing, Vein's faked death, etc).
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gunkbaby · 1 year ago
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All Of Shuu’s TG Calender Appearances! (In Chronological Order!)
*this was initially just gonna be a twitter thread but I’m posting it here first bc is easier to draft and arrange. :) Wrote the little information cards that are under the pics and will try to image ID them for the text late one.
Under a cut bc there are twenty-four of them! Enjoy! <3
(I believe the image below is from an anime calender? Or something? I’m not sure.)
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January 12th - Skiiing Day
On January 12, 1911, Major Lerch of the Austrian Army first taught a young officer in the Niigata Prefecture how to ski. Be careful when doing tricks!
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February 6th - Blog Day
Based on bu (2) rogu (6). A blog post from Shuu, it reads: “February 6 Have you heard of a flower called the ‘Hardenbergia’? It is also called a ‘Komachifuji’ and as its name suggests, it blooms with lovely purple petals. And here is the usual Tsukiyama Shuu’s Flower Language Corner. In flower language, a Hardenbergia refers to: “A fateful encounter.” “Happiness will unexpectedly drop in.” …and the like. There’s also “a miraculous miracle”… —But this is what I think. Encounters are always fateful, and reunions are always miraculous. Fate, miracles, our world is filled with such. This moment is also a miracle.” The comments feature Touka being quite rude, Kaneki adding little of importance, and Yomo not understanding technology.
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February 13th - Bank Robbery Day
On February 13th, 1866, the first ever successful bank robbery took place in America by Jesse James.
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February 25th - Hori Chie’s Birthday
Hori was Tsukiyama Shuu’s classmate in Seinan High School. Hori treats Tsukiyama as her photographic subject and despite Tsukiyama being a ghoul, she doesn’t fear him. Tsukiyama in return finds her intriguing and treats her as a pet. Their relationship continues on until now making them long-time acquaintances. Whether they have a good relationship or not, it’s difficult to say for sure.
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March 3rd - Tsukiyama Shuu’s Birthday. (Obviously.)
Happy Birthday, Tsukiyama Shu.
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March 26th - Untitled.
No text.
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March 31st - Untitled.
The inauguration (to celebrate the completion of the structure) of the Eiffel Tower in Paris was held today. I wonder if Tsukiyama has ever been to France before.
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April 28th - Nice Bath Day no. 3
No text.
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May 1st - Untitled. Shu’s second blog post.
This blog reads as follows: ‘Hey, everyone. We have now entered May, yes? Speaking of May 1, it is a custom in France to send muguet (Lily of the Valley) as a present to the person you love on this day. And the recipient is said to be visited by great fortune.” Now then, upon hearing the words ‘the person you love’, whose face do you picture in your mind? How about giving flowers as gifts to him?…Or her? …With that said, that beloved person you just thought of may already be a happy person at this point. Shu.’
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May 11th - Salvador Dali’s Birthday
The Persistence of Memory. “I saw three soft Shuus. One of them had a deplorable figure that hanged down from the branch of the olive tree.”
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May 27th - Hyakunin Isshu Day
No. 86 Saigo Hoshi “Should I blame the moon, for bringing forth this sadness, as if it pictured grief? Lifting up my troubled face, I regard it through my tears.” Grief? Is that what you’re trying to say, moon? I don’t think so. Did I only just want to blame the moon for this sadness?
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May 28th - Fireworks Day.
On this day in 1733, fireworks were launched for the first time for a festival in Ryogoku. The festival was first held by the 8th shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate, Yoshimune, in order to calm the spirits of the dead who fell to the great famine and cholera in the previous years. Now, it is held annually as water god festivies to ward off evil spirits. (Note: turn up the brightness or stare very hard for a long time. He is there, I promise.)
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June 9th - 6th Ward Day
A huge amount of members were sacrificed during the annihilation of ‘Aogiri’s Hideout’ in the 11th Ward. Afterwards, Kaneki left ‘Anteiku’ in order to follow Rize’s footsteps and entered a new world, the ‘6th Ward’, alongside Tsukiyama and Banjou.
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June 25th - Spaceyama.
No text. Shuu gets a cow and a Strange Thing and his father is proud.
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July 20th - The Day of the Moon Landing
On 1969, the human race landed for the first time on the moon in the spacecraft, Apollo 11. At that time, Commander Armstrong sent a message to Earth saying, “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.
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August 6th - Handsome Day
Based on ha (8) nsa mu (6).
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August 27th -Miyazawa Kenji’s Birthday
A poet and writer of fairy tales who was based in his hometown of Iwate. The paradise of his work was given the name ‘Ihatov’.
In his masterpiece “The Restaurant of Many Orders”, two young men went hunting in the forest, got lost, and strayed into a restaurant called ‘Wildcat House’. The irony of it all is when the two instead became the food.
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September 21st - Fashion Show Day
On this day in 1927, the first fashion show in Japan took place in kimono shop called Mitsukoshi in Ginza. At that time, kimonos were mainstream.
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September 8th - TG’s 5th Year Anniversary
Serialization strted on Weekly Young Jump No. 41 which was sold on this day in 2011. Thank you very much for reading.
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September 9th - Rollcake Day
Based on how the cross section of a rollcake forms a ‘9’. June 6th is also called ‘Rollcake Day’ for a similar reason.
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September 16th - Match Day
On this day in 1948, freely selling previously rationed matches was accepted.
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October 14th - Glasses No.2
No text.
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October 25th - World Pasta Day
On this day in 1995, the World Pasta Congress was held in Italy.
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October 26th - Kishimen Day
Kishimen is a slick type of noodle that’s thin and wide in width. Based on tsu (2) ru (6) which means ‘slick’ or ‘slippery’. It is also considered the ‘autumn of appetite’.
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December 23rd - Palindrome Day 3
‘Intimidating, Tsukiyama… Will you get burned?’
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December 29th - Chanson Day
On this day in 1990, a long-established Chanson cafe in Gonzales called ‘Ginpan’ went out of business. The place was known as a gateway to success for Chanson singers.
Ok I think that’s all :)
Tell me if I have missed one, I will edit. Sorry, am tired from exam prep, hopefully this is okay. I love you so much. I feel like Shuu is always home for me in stressful times.
I’m planning to do one of these for Kanae and Rize too. I can do other characters I guess afterwards.
I own this calender. I think I might like a second one to cut out and make postcards with to go on my Shuu shrine.
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magolandandfriends · 2 years ago
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TWITTER SHENANIGANS [ Season 1 - Part 2 ]
⋆。 ゚☁︎。 ⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。 ⋆ ⋆。 ゚☁︎。 ⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。 ⋆ ⋆。 ゚☁︎。 ⋆。 ゚☾ ゚。 ⋆
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[ Part 3 ]
[ Back to Part 1 ]
(Very short mini post today!!! Classes are starting to become real PLUS I’m getting my new Apple Pencil and case soon so I can produce EVEN COOLER ART (no I’m not switching art programs I’m using IbisPaint no matter what iM TOO USED TO IT-)
(And these are all based off silly memes I saw- please do not try any of these at home your microwave will explode- I have one based off a tumblr thread so I might post that next- that one or the Twitter dms one- we’ll see)
(Ok that’s all I have to say I hope you guys like my sillies now if you excuse me I gotta get all snug as a bug in a rug for my painting class tomorrow)
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mushiemellows · 1 year ago
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On Rivd and AI
So last night I made this post and said I'd elaborate more in the morning and when I had the time to do a bit of research. Upon doing said research, I realized that I had misunderstood the concerns being raised with the Rivd situation, but that isn't the case any more. However, some of my thoughts on ai still stand. Heads up, this is going to be a long post. Some actual proper blogging for once wow.
I'm going to discuss the Rivd phishing scam, what can be done for fic writers as ai begins to invade fan spaces, and my elaborated thoughts on Language Learning Models. Warning for transparency: I did utilize chat gpt for this post, NOT for the text itself but to provide examples of the current state of LLMs. Some articles I link to will also be ai generated, and their generated quality is part of what I'll be warning about. This is not a generated post and you can tell because I've got those nifty writing things called "voice" and "style."
ANYWAYS:
Okay so what was the Rivd situation? So two days ago this post was uploaded on tumblr, linking back to a twitter thread on the same topic. I saw it late last night because I was traveling. A reddit post was also uploaded 3 days ago. According to google trends, there was a slight uptick in search traffic the week of June 23rd, and a more severe uptick last week (June 30th-July 6th). That's all to say, this website did not exist until last week, caused a stir, and immediately was put down.
Rivd is not longer up. Enough people contacted its web hosting service Cloudflare and they took the site down. This happened yesterday, from the looks of it.
So, then, what was Rivd? And more importantly, what was the point of scraping a chunk of ao3 and re-uploading it? There seems to be 2 possible theories.
1) The more innocent of the two: they genuinely want to be an ao3 competitor. I can't look at the website any more, and very little positive results appear when googled, but I did find one ai-generated puff piece called "Exploring Rivd: The Premier Platform for Movie-Based Fanfiction" posted to Medium last week by one "Steffen Holzmann" (if that is your real name... x to doubt). This account appeared the same week that Rivd had that first little uptick in google queries, so it is undoubtedly made by the people running the website themselves to create an air of legitimacy. Medium appears to be a safe enough website that you can click that link if you really want to, but you shouldn't. It's a bad generated article, there's very little to glean from it. But it is a remnant source on what Rivd was claiming to be, before it was taken down. Here's the conclusion from the article, the only portion that gave any actual information (and it barely offers any):
Rivd is the ultimate platform for movie-based fanfiction, offering a diverse range of content, a supportive community, and robust interactive features. Whether you’re a writer looking to share your work or a reader seeking new adventures in your favorite movie universes, Rivd provides the perfect platform to engage with a passionate and creative community. Start your journey on Rivd today and immerse yourself in the world of fanfiction.
There's a second article by Holzmann titled "Mastering the Art of Fanfiction Writing in 2024" that's essentially similar ai bull, but trades explaining that fans can write Star Wars fic for explaining that you can make OC's and maybe get a beta (not that that's advice I've ever heeded. Beta? Not in this house we don't.) This was posted six days ago and similarly spends half the time jerking Rivd off. That's all to say, if they are to be believed at face value, this website wanted to just be a fic hosting site. Scraping Ao3 would have made it seem like there was already an active user base for anyone they were attempting to attract, like buying your first 50,000 instagram followers. Anyone actually looking to use this as a fic site would have quickly realized that there's no one on it and no actual fan engagement. There's already fan community spaces online. This website offers nothing ao3 or ffn or wattpad or livejournal or tumblr or reddit didn't already.
Similarly, it reeks of tech bro. Between the scraping and the ai articles, the alarms are already going off. According to that Reddit thread, they were based out of Panama, though that doesn't mean much other than an indicator that these are the type of people to generate puff articles and preemptively base their business off-shore. Holzmann, it should be mentioned, also only has 3 followers, which means my tiny ass blog already has more reach than him. Don't go following that guy. The two comments on the first article are also disparaging of Rivd. This plan didn't work and was seen right through immediately.
If fan communities, and those who write fic know anything, it's how to sniff out when someone isn't being genuine. People write fic for the love of the game, at least generally. It's a lot of work to do for free, and it's from a place of love. Ao3 is run on volunteers and donations. If this genuinely is meant to be a business bro website to out-compete ao3, then they will be sorely disappointed to learn that there's no money in this game. It would be short lived anyway. A website like this was never going to work, or if it was, it would need to ban all copyrighted and explicit materials. You know, the pillars of fic.
So then what was the point of all of this? Unless there was a more nefarious plan going on.
2) Rivd was a phishing scam. This is so so so much more likely. The mark for the scam isn't fic readers, it's fic writers. Here's how it works: they scrape a mass of ao3 accounts for their stories, you catch it, you enter a lengthy form with personal info like your full name and address etc. requesting they take your work down, they sell your data. Yes, a lot of personal info is required to take copyrighted materials down on other sites, too. That's what makes it a good scam. Fic already sits in a legal grey area (you have a copyright over your fic but none of the characters/settings/borrowed plot within it. You also CANNOT make money off of fic writing). So the site holds your works ransom, and you can't go to Marvel or Shueisha or fuck it the ghost of Ann Rice herself to deal with this on your behalf. Thankfully, enough people were able to submit valid DMCA's to Cloudflare to deal with the issue from the top.
Remember this resolution for the next time this situation arises (because of course there will be a next time). Go through higher means rather than the site itself. These scams are only getting more bold. Me personally? I'm not going to give that amount of personal info to a website that shady. Be aware of the warning signs for phishing attacks. Unfortunately, a lot of the resources online are still around text/email phishing. We live in a time where there's legal data harvesting and selling, and illegal data harvesting and selling, and the line in between the two is thin and blurry. Here's an FTC article on the signs of phishing scams, but again, it's more about emails.
I should note, I do not think that Rivd is connected to the ransomware virus of the same name that popped up two or three years ago [link is to Rivd page on PCrisk, a cypersecurity/anti-malware website]. It's probably just coincidence.... but even so. A new business priding itself on SEO and all that tech guy crap should know not to name itself the same thing as a literal virus meant to scam out out of a thousand dollars.
That's all to say, this was absolutely a scam meant to take personal info from ao3 writers. And that blows. To love art and writing and creation so much just to have your works held hostage over data feels really bad. Of course it does!
So, should you lock down your ao3 account?
That, to me, is a little trickier. You can do as you please, of course, and you should do what makes you feel safest. Me personally, though, I don't plan on it. I really, really like that guests can interact with my work from the outside. Ao3 still uses an invite system, so a lot of regular users still don't have accounts for any number of reasons. I read a lot of the time logged out anyways. I started writing again last year after all the info on the ao3 Language Learning Model training had already come out. Like I talked about in my last post, I set out to write things that a computer couldn't produce. (from here on out, I'm going to be using One Piece fic as an example, simply because that's what I write. It's also in a really prime position for a lot of ai discussion due to the size of the fandom and the size of the original work)
I'm going to be honest, I'm not all that afraid of my work being scraped for LLMs to train off of. Text generators have existed for a decade now, but they really popped off last year. LLM's are at a point, though, where the tech is sort of stagnating after the initial boom. The flaws of current ai chat bots are so baked into the flaws of ai itself that they won't be ironed out soon. They make up info, they're easily manipulated, they simply are not people. The flaw here is deep- you can trace it to the fact that we don't know enough about neuroscience itself, and even then neuroscientists don't make ai. Ai programers do. Complex info already has to make one synaptic jump without losing any understanding from person to person, and then it has to be perfectly abstracted for a machine to comprehend. It can't be done with the tools we currently have. I DO hate to admit it, but there are some decent uses for ai. if you are specifically a python programmer. The rest of us? Maybe not.
I don't like generated fic, I don't read it on principle. Checking on ao3, though, there's only 4 total generated op fics (3 in spanish, one in english, 3 xreader, 1 zosan but 2nd person zosan? and the author edited the framework the computer generated text. I still didn't enjoy the fic, tho.) But that breaks down to .005% of all op fics. I went into chat gpt and asked it to generate a drabble for me based on One Piece, and this is what it wrote:
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[Image ID: A screenshot of chat GPT. The first line shows my prompt. It reads: You- write me a short 100 word fanfiction based on the manga One Piece. Next line, Chat GPT- "On the shores of an uncharted island, the Straw Hat Pirates stumbled upon a hidden treasure trove. Among the glittering gold and jewels, Luffy discovered an old, weathered journal. Inside, he found sketches and notes detailing the adventures of a legendary pirate who once roamed the Grand Line. Excited by the prospect of a new adventure, the crew set sail. following clues left in the journal. Along the way, they faced formidable foes and forged new alliances, unraveling the mysteries of the lost pirate's legacy. With each island they conquered, they grew closer to uncovering the ultimate treasure- a legacy that would shape their own journey." End ID]
Okay so like, this blows, yeah? 75,000 One Piece fics to train off of on ao3 and it still can't like, write a decent little story. This reads more like an episode summary or a book dust jacket blurb. Drabbles have an internal structure that make them interesting, much like a single sentence short story. You have to get very baby shoes never worn with them, yeah? Ai doesn't understand that, it just knows how many words it has to generate. It doesn't have any sense for creative language, metaphor, simile, poetry. I asked it to write me a poem and it wrote me the same poem with thesaurus replacements each time it re-generated one. A lot about dreams and stars and midnight and whispers, over and over again. The same rhyme scheme and cadence too.
It's also- vitally- so unhorny that it's almost a crime. For a test, I asked it to generate a story about a uhhhhh robot and an archeologist kissing. Just to see what it would give me. I ran 4 tests, a robot falling in love with an archeologist, a robot kissing an archeologist, an archeologist kissing a robot, and an archeologist falling in love with a robot. All 4 were incredibly chaste, quiet little drabbles about the innocence of discovery or whatever the fuck. Here's one of them:
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[Image ID: A screenshot of chat GPT. The first line shows my prompt. It reads: You- write me a short 100 word story about an archeologist kissing a robot. Next line, Chat GPT- "Int he dimly lit chamber, Professor Evelyn Porter stared in awe at the ancient artifact- a remarkably lifelike robot buried for millennia. As she leaned closer to examine its intricacies, a surge of curiosity and admiration swept over her. In a moment of spontaneous fascination, she brushed her lips against the cool metal of its cheek, a gesture of reverence and connection across ages. The robot, dormant for eons, stirred faintly in response to the unexpected contact. It was fleeting, almost surreal exchange between past and future, bridging the gap between human exploration and technological marvels of ancient civilizations." End ID]
So like, some of these phrases gets to what's vaguely intriguing about this dynamic, sure. But at the end of the day it's still uhhhh chaste as hell. A reverent kiss??? Not what I want in my fic!!!! This is all to say, LLM's can scrape ao3 all they want, that doesn't mean they can USE what they're stealing. The training wheels have to stay on for corporate palatability. I'm stealing, I'm taking these dolls out of Shueisha's grubby hands and I'm making them sexy kiss for FREE.
In my opinion, the easiest way to keep your work out of the hands of ai is to write something they cannot use. If the grey area of copyright lies in how much is transformed, then motherfucking TRANSFORM it. Write incomprehensible smut. Build surreal worlds. Write poems and metaphors and flush out ideas that a computer could never dream of. Find niches. Get funky with it. Take it too far. and then take it even farther. Be a little freaking weirdo, you're already writing fic so then why be normal about it, you know? Even if they rob you, they can't use it. Like fiber in the diet, undigestible. Make art, make magic.
Even so, I don't mind if the computer keeps a little bit of my art. If you've ever read one of my fics, and then thought about it when you're doing something else or listening to a song or reading a book, that means something I made has stuck with you just a little bit. That;'s really cool to me, I don't know you but I live in your brain. I've made you laugh or cry or c** from my living room on the other side of the world without knowing it. It's part of why I love to write. In all honesty, I don't mind if a computer "reads" my work and a little bit of what I created sticks with it. Even if it's more in a technical way.
Art, community, fandom- they're all part of this big conversation about the world as we experience it. The way to stop websites like Rivd is how we stopped it this week. By talking to each other, by leaning on fan communities, by sending a mass of DMCA's to web host daddy. Participation in fandom spaces keeps the game going, reblogging stuff you like and sending asks and having fun and making art is what will save us. Not to sound like a sappy fuck, but really caring about people and the way we all experience the same art but interpret it differently, that's the heart of the whole thing. It's why we do this. It's meant to be fun. Love and empathy and understanding is the foundation. Build from there. Be confident in the things you make, it's the key to having your own style. You'll find your people. You aren't alone, but you have to also be willing to toss the ball back and forth with others. It takes all of us to play, even if we look a little foolish.
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royalsunshinehotel · 1 year ago
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social media preference (dev patel)
Anwar Kharral (Skins UK): Anwar is the only one on this list active on TikTok. He's not an uncomfortable teen anymore - he's being cringe on main and setting trends. I bet he's got 90K followers at least! He uses Threads and Instagram to back up his TikTok, not much else.
Sonny Kapoor (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel 1&2): For the benefit of the hotel, Sonny is active on Reels to promote the corporate 'brand'. He likes the chance to be creative, and the 'Board' likes the chance to show off the handsome CEO.
Neal Sampat (Newsroom): Neal is an OG Tumblr user, who joined the site as early as 2008. As demonstrated on the show, Neal is adept at using Twitter to cross-reference and fact-check various sources, I do think he'd be a prolific shitposter on a side account, rivaling our king @dril.
Deon Wilson (Chappie 2015): Deon is self-explanatory. he likes to support the indie social media sites that sprung up in the wake of the Fall of Twitter. He's a fan of SpaceHey because he went to Computer Camp with the engineer who started it (it's based out of Germany), which he's always wanted to visit!
Sheru “Saroo” Bierley (Lion 2016): I find it harder to deny with each passing day that Saroo Brierly isn't an Instagram thot. Look at @brockohurn on IG and tell me that they don't have the same respectful bro energy. I think Saroo likes the chance to use all the photos in his camera roll, and I think the MILFs of Instagram are grateful for the content.
Jay Menha (The Wedding Guest, 2019): The closest Jay gets to social media is the Polaroids he likes to stick up on the wall of your shared room. Sometimes, if he's having a bad time, he likes to sit in his beanbag and look at the wall. He only gets a ghost Facebook account to keep up with relatives- nothing ever is posted, ever.
David Copperfield (The Personal History of David Copperfield, 2020): I think David would do numbers on Medium.com because he can write self-prompted think-pieces that no one ever asked about, AND get paid for them! He's writing analyses of "Jeyton vs Brucas vs Leyton: One Tree Hill", and he's actually making money. It would be magic to him!
Joshua Madika (Modern Love, 2019): Joshua's social media is all on Tinder. He's perfected his profile, and he likes talking to people. It's all genuine and zero malice. Who wants to be alone with their thoughts?
Sir Gawain (The Green Knight, 2021): I once read a post about Edward Cullen texting that read, "just saw a snail . . . effervescent," and I think that's as close as Gawain should get to the internet. It's just like shitposting, but it's all for you.
Dr. ZZ Chatterjee (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar, 2023): ZZ keeps his drama on Facebook. He's definitely showing up in comments to defend someone's mutual friend from accusations of bias when she broke up with her tiny boyfriend because she was having neck problems*. With a doctor on her side, she didn't have to post X-rays of her neck! ZZ will be beefing!
The Kid (Monkey Man, 2024): "Ted, the movie hasn't even come out yet! How can you say The Kid is a Pinterest girlie?" It's all pretty pictures with an indefinite scroll. I also bet he's a big fan of putting things in categories (see also: skittles). We'll see who's right.
*true story circa 2018 on my Facebook page.
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