#nerd brigade

[shushmal]

okay pacrim au (it's gonna be steddie bear with me here)

nancy is the best jaeger pilot the world's ever seen, her and barb are an unstoppable force. but then barb dies, gets completely ripped from their mech. so they pair nancy with steve, a pilot known for being generally drift compatible with everyone to a degree. it's not perfect, but nancy who is full of fury needs someone that can roll with her punches, keep her going. and they do well. they aren't the best, but he's the only one that can handle nancy's force. steve's good at taking hits. they mange it for about two years. and steve had been doing such a good job hiding it, absorbing all of nancy's internal grief and fury so she could keep doing her job.

but he breaks. the two of them are force-retired, and nancy lashes out so intensely, steve goes into a depression, completely severs ties with the jager program and disappears.

then there's eddie, a street rat by birth, but a guy so inherently good with the jaeger technology, he's managed to build his own on scavenged scraps—part of it from the jaeger barbara holland died in. he's used his lil jaeger to defend his little forgotten part of the world best he could, mostly luring kaiju away towards the actual military and stealthily escaping before any government detects him. but it's hard to do alone.

and then he meets steve.

[dilutedconfusion]

I made a fully realized self insert…

[mo-ok]

glad these boys are back i was worried they were gone for good lmao

[crow-posting]

Mostly reblogging to see everyone else's OCs, but

I have (7) of them so far! RZ-3 [my Young Wolf], Takara Kagesaki / 景崎宝, Liu Bai / 劉白, Duane-B312 [my Halo crossover], Usad, Avraam Rigel, and Riley!

Bai and Duane form Fireteam Nike; while RZ, Takara, Avraam and Riley make up the Awoken Brigade. Usad works as a search-and-rescue paramedic for the Last City.

I can draw robots/mechs semi-realistically but I usually draw RZ like a potato bc it's funnier that way.

But Usad is actually my favorite to draw! He's very emotive so I love practicing expressions with him, lol.

And @swoopsstar made my favorite reference of him!

Not gonna spam too much info, since I'm not expecting anyone to read this far, but here are some fun facts and more drawings!

RZ likes to communicate with non-human sounds as much as he communicates with words. Most of the sounds are cat-related (chirps, purrs, and chattering) but he can also "laugh" like a kookaburra, "yell" like a white bellbird, and make various startup/dial-up/shutdown/error noises.

Takara worked in customer service during her first few months as a Lightbearer. She ultimately decided that - while she loved helping people - she would much prefer helping them by doing patrols and other Vanguard assignments.

Bai didn't take a name after he was rezzed; he couldn't think of one right away and he refused to let his Ghost make one for him. Eventually he became known as "the White Death" (due to his white-hot super) and the unfortunate moniker stuck.

Duane drinks the D2 equivalent of Black Label coffee, usually "Irish coffee"-style. He claims he doesn't have a caffeine addiction, but he once hunted a Psion and snapped it in half because it made him spill his coffee while on morning patrol.

Usad may act overconfident at times, but he has only lost six fights in his entire life (two of them being against Lord Shaxx and Saint-14). He is far more perceptive than he seems and anyone who tries to take him on is in for a rough surprise.

Avraam's singing voice has been compared to that of a siren. He personally doesn't believe it, claiming he knows "much better singers" amongst the Techeuns and within Mara Sov's court, but those who've heard him sing* describe it as smooth, clear and calming. *[He is rather shy about his voice so he rarely sings in front of others.]

Riley loves pre-Golden Age rock, especially Queen. He also enjoys trying various dishes from the Last City and is fascinated by the Thrilladrome on Neomuna. Takara likes to joke that Riley is secretly human instead of Awoken.

HEY D2 TUMBLR OC ENJOYERS!

Do you have a Destiny OC? I draw them all the time- I'm known for my Exo OCs! I want to see YOURS! Any race, species, be it casual "just a dude" or the 7th son of Oryx, I want to see them! Tell me about them!!! I want to draw them, I specialize in Exos but I REALLY want to learn more about the community on here. Be it big or small, please don't be shy!! I want to know sooo much. You can even submit a whooole block of text and only ingame screenshots if you're not the artistic type. Examples of my D2 OC art here:

[faerieriddle]

Overprotective!Robin is literally one of my favorite character tropes, but today, I offer you Eddie Munson who tries to one up whatever bullshit the Party says about Steve.

“Yeah, well, Steve barely graduated.”

“Guess what nerd brigade, I failed twice. Top that Princess Steve.”

Steve is torn between telling Eddie to be less self-deprecating and being flustered at the flirty smirk Eddie just sent his way.

[weaselandfriends]

Lucky☆Star (Anime)

How does art age?

There's a joke in Lucky☆Star where the four main characters fill out a questionnaire that asks them what they want to be when they grow up. Konata, the otaku, puts down "Brigade Leader," which draws as punchline an eyeroll from her sarcastic friend, Kagami.

The core of this joke is that Konata has taken a serious question and answered it with a fictional "occupation" from an anime she likes -- specifically, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, which was monstrously popular at the time. Almost everyone watching Lucky☆Star in 2007, when it first aired, would understand this reference. That understanding would then foster a sense of kinship with the work, the feeling of "being seen," the long yearned-for ideal of niche nerd subcultures laughed at by society at large.

Despite its incredible influence on moe aesthetics and anime culture in 2006, Haruhi Suzumiya is virtually forgotten now, unwatched even by diehards and unrecommended by the old weebs who were around in its heyday. I've never seen it myself. It's my next watch, with another friend who is even more of an anime neophyte than I am; our third friend, who did watch it in 2006, refuses to rewatch with us. It's too cringe, she says. The suggestion I get is that, if we were to modernize the what-you-want-to-be-when-you-grow-up joke, Konata might instead put that she wants to become a Skibidi Toilet.

Haruhi Suzumiya haunts Lucky☆Star like a ghost. She is in almost every episode, as either a poster or figurine or manga cover or cosplay or karaoke rendition or even, once, a voiced commercial. She has more presence than most of the supporting cast, the majority of whom do not appear until the 14th episode (but who also haunt the show via their unexplained presence in the OP). Konata is voiced by the same actress who voiced Haruhi, a fact that launches an armada of arcane metafictional injokes, including a scene where Konata sees said voice actress in concert. The sheer magnitude of these references wash over the 2025 viewer. They are meaningless. Haruhi Suzumiya is dead and buried. She is seen more by the shadow she casts in this show than anywhere else.

The inscrutability of this massive swath of the show suggests that Lucky☆Star itself has not aged particularly well. Indeed, compared to its zenith in 2007, it's not faring much better than Haruhi today. The sole advantage Lucky☆Star has, in fact, might stem from the "Out Of Touch Thursday" meme, which keeps some small shard of it alive in the anime community's consciousness. Even if you take the time to research the references, needing to research them at all gives the ultimate impression is that Konata is no longer the trendy otaku she once was, but passe, lame, dated, cringe, Out Of Touch. It's only the thin line of competent verbal skills that keeps her from becoming her dark mirror, Tomoko Kuroki.

But Haruhi Suzumiya is by no means the only obscure reference the show flings out, and some of these references I can only imagine were unknown even to the teenage-skewing anglosphere anime culture of 2007. At one point, Konata makes a reference (Timotei, Timotei) to a Japanese commercial for a Finnish shampoo brand from the 1980s. Karaoke segments feature Japanese pop songs from the 70s (with Kagami sarcastically asking Konata "How old are you?" whenever she puts them on). The entire Lucky Channel bit that appears at the end of each episode is an extended reference to a Japanese-only radio show that ran concurrent to the original airing. Even within that context, the fact that Lucky Channel co-host Minoru Shiraishi is a real person playing himself (and the other co-host, Akira Kogami, is not) is lost on anyone without highly specialized knowledge. That the credits sequences of the show's second half feature the real Minoru Shiraishi in live action is equally easy to miss. The bleeding edge transience of the references culminates with the show recursively referring to its own fame. In one scene, Konata reads a fortune at a Kyoto temple that says "Konata is my wife"; this is a reference to real-life otaku going to a temple in Saitama, where Lucky☆Star is set, and leaving the same prayer.

The show requires footnotes. It had them, on the 2007 anime forums where the show accrued so much buzz, entire Bibles breaking down every reference; it truly wasn't understood even when it aired. It makes perfect sense why Lucky☆Star wouldn't age well.

Yet, watching the show for the first time in 2014, long after its cultural moment, and again in 2025, I have found it extraordinarily timeless. In fact, I liked it better in 2025 than 2014, despite an additional 11 years of watching anime that enabled me to understand exactly 0 things I didn't get the first time around. And there are a lot of things I didn't get. The references I detailed earlier are only the ones, in complete befuddlement, I bothered to look up; so many more continue to elude me.

In many ways, Lucky☆Star is aware of how inscrutable it is and compensates for itself. Wikipedia describes Konata as the "main character" of the show, and to the otaku audiences of 2007 she was the most relatable of the cast and by extension the most popular character by far (something outright stated in one of the Lucky Channel segments, which reveals the results of an actual character popularity poll), but in terms of screen time, she is not appreciably more present than either of the Hiiragi twins, Kagami and Tsukasa. It's not as though Lucky☆Star has anything resembling a plot, either, that would frame a particular character as the "protagonist"; at best the cast can be described as ensemble. This decentralization of perspective enables a wide variety of ways for the viewer to connect with the show. Konata's authentic (in 2007) otakuism made her the darling of that audience, but the show itself does not innately weigh her so highly. In fact, even when her references are inscrutable, it's the confused response of Tsukasa, or the sarcastic response of Kagami (who tends to call Konata the 2007 equivalent of "cringe"), that provide a contextual framework for what the joke is supposed to be. I don't need to know what the SOS Brigade is when Konata expresses her desire to grow up and become a Brigade Leader, because I can understand through Kagami's biting remark that it is some frivolous anime horseshit.

More importantly, the show's equivocation in terms of perspective makes it possible to empathize with Kagami's position over Konata's. The simplest comedy dynamic is the comedian/straight man, but the reliance of most narrative comedy on some form of social stakes -- either in the form of argument, humiliation, physical or psychological pain, or so on -- generally leads to empathy with one of the duo over the other. The straight man might be a put-upon everyman who is unfairly forced to deal with an obnoxious oaf, or a too-serious curmudgeon who is getting what they deserve from a guy who's just having a little fun. In the first case, the straight man is the point of audience empathy; in the second, the comedian is.

Konata and Kagami follow this comedy dynamic to a T, with Konata an aimless slacker and Kagami the uptight perfectionist. But in Lucky☆Star, divorced entirely from anything resembling a narrative -- episodic, situational, or otherwise -- there are zero social stakes to their conversations. Nobody ever "loses." Nobody is ever hurt. Nobody is wrong or right. Nothing happens at the expense of one character or another. As such, it is possible to watch the show and see the joke from the perspective of any given character at any time. If Konata says some arcane reference you don't get, Kagami's clapback becomes the joke. If Konata says something and you do understand it, the reference itself is the joke.

This comedic ambivalence is structurally remarkable (jokes typically have rigidly defined punchlines, moments you are "supposed" to laugh at), but comes with the price of the jokes not really being very funny. What it does do is create comprehensible and even "relatable" situations out of incomprehensible bits of referential information. Not understanding the reference is not an impediment to understanding Lucky☆Star. As such, Lucky☆Star functions as both a hyper-specific time capsule of 2007 anime subculture and a work that can be engaged with on its own terms even when completely divorced from that context.

The advent of the internet has led to an explosion in the spread of information and the ascendancy of the niche. It has also led to shorter shelf lives for information and an increased focus on the immediate. Memes burst into prominence, linger a month or two, vanish. Media is buzzed about in some section of society, is unknown everywhere else. A social media influencer has millions of followers and yet is a complete blank in the wider cultural eye. How can a work of art reflect this reality without rendering itself incomprehensible in a year, ten years, twenty? Is it possible to make timeless art in such a milieu, without stripping away as many signifiers of the world we live in to rely solely on "universal" and thus generic themes such as love, death, etc.?

I've seen many ways of attacking this problem. Infinite Jest's famous footnotes are one, as is the genre of "hysterical realism" itself, which attempts to create the suggestion of information density via massive novels with tons of characters spanning many countries and even time periods. Homestuck builds its own internal language of memes (I warned you about stairs bro!) that the reader will always understand no matter how many arcane applications those memes receive throughout the work. (Hence why an audience of teens in the 2010s were able to laugh uproariously at jokes about the 90s action flick Con Air that none of them had ever seen.) Multiverse movies, from Everything Everywhere All at Once to Into the Spider-Verse, depict the density of information horizontally rather than vertically, with unlimited variations on the same core theme. Even if you have never read whatever obscure comic run Noir Spider-Man comes from, you can understand him immediately based on his relationship to a sort of Platonic ideal of "Spider-Man".

These are all highly controlled forms of conveying the idea of "current day information density" without actually wallowing in actual current day information density. What's remarkable about Lucky☆Star is both that it actually does engage with the incredibly niche memes of its exact moment in time, but that it does so through the complete ceding of narrative control. Lucky☆Star functions because, not in spite of, the fact that it has no protagonist, no plot. It doesn't even have situations, like an episodic sitcom. It is not especially concerned with being funny, or dramatic, or heartwarming, or any particular emotion.

As a sort of thesis statement for the show, its first episode opens with a six-minute scene in which Konata, Tsukasa, and Miyuki discuss various ways of eating different types of food. There is no buildup, no joke, no emotional payoff, not even any of the references I've spent this entire essay talking about. There is no progression. The girls discuss how to eat one type of food, then move onto the next. In a way, this scene is a more aggressive challenge to the viewer than the niche references it employs later on. It is a complete surrender to banality.

Even within the context of the slice of life genre, which is full of comfy shows about Cute Girls Doing Cute Things, Lucky☆Star achieves phenomenal laxity. Other popular examples revolve around a specific theme that creates a sense of progression toward an ultimate goal; in K-On!, for instance, the girls are members of a band and work toward a successful performance, even if they spend a lot of their practices slacking off. Alternatively, without a clear theme, these shows might use surreal characters and situations to elevate the show above the mundane, such as in Azumanga Daioh, where a main character is a 10-year-old genius in high school. Or, in the case of Clannad, there might be a romantic angle to the laid-back character interactions.

This is all gone in Lucky☆Star. It has been stripped down past the basics of storytelling, akin to an abstract work of art that is three colors on a canvas. (Or four, in this case.) In this context, even Konata's deep cut animanga references sink to the level of banality, their impenetrability both an abstract confusion and a level of verisimilitude that other works can usually only suggest or evoke when they attempt to grapple with the reality of subculture. (To this end, Lucky☆Star is massively advantaged by its adaptation, as studio Kyoto Animation also made Haruhi Suzumiya and was able to mine its cultural relevance without the usual fear of copyright reprisals, in a prognostication of Ready Player One/Space Jam 2-style pan-brand media crossovers.) Similar to the best abstract art, there is an odd, ungraspable power to the starkness of Lucky☆Star's composition; also similar, much of this power emerges out of the work's context. Not simply its hyper-specific 2007 cultural context, which I've already discussed, but also the way it contextualizes itself internally.

Because I lied when I said the first episode of Lucky☆Star opens with a scene of three girls talking about how they eat different types of food. I'm not even talking about the actual first scene, which is a 10-second quick gag where Konata tells Tsukasa she doesn't join a sports team because it would cut into her free time to watch anime. No, Lucky☆Star opens in episode 1 the same way it opens every episode, with this:

The ambiguous 3 cm? Does that mean it's plushy? Wait! The wrapping is a uniform, argh, it's not an act, pooh Gotta do your best, gotta just do it That's time to catch n' release, eek Between sweat (whoop) sweat (whoop) Darlin', darlin' FREEZE! Kinda lethargic, something's kinda comin' out I love you... oh wait, one of those was different Worrywarts, high metal bars Tasty thoughts... and that's enough! The heated body of that flying you-know-who It's what you'd call a normal girlie Am I the only one surprised? Seconds on pork-bone broth ramen with wire-hard noodles Da da da da da! [Several seconds of indistinguishable chatter] Pom-poms cheer squad Let's get cherry pie [this line is in English] Happy fun welcoming party Look up! Sensation [also English] Yeah! Feeling of existence, dot dot small planet Collided and it melted away, in total awe Go all out to sing, shi-ranger! Take it away! I should be the one who'll be laughing in the end Because I have the sailor suit ← This is my conclusion It's only Monday! Already in a bad mood? What to do? I really prefer the summer outfits ← kya! Wah! Good! (cute!) <3 Until we approach 3 pixels, no hesitations please ☆ Do your best, be energetic My darlin' darlin' please!

The lyrics of Lucky☆Star's OP are nonsense, both in translation and in the original Japanese (and if you don't believe that, the English line "Let's get cherry pie" should be evidence enough). At best, they are a mishmash of schoolgirl concepts and oblique anime references, which at the very least is an accurate reflection of the content of the show. But the presentation is frenetic, erratic, aggressively at odds with the show's lassitude, without any contextualizing remark from Kagami to make it make, even in the abstract, any sort of sense.

Likewise, on the opposite end of the show is its concluding bookend, the Lucky Channel segment. This segment also sharply juxtaposes the show's core content, first in tone -- being far more cynical and meanspirited -- but also in structure. Lucky Channel engages in the exact stakes-driven comedian/straight man dynamic that the show eschews. When the Lucky Channel co-hosts Akira Kogami and Minoru Shiraishi banter, the results are either Minoru's physical or emotional abuse at the hands of Akira, or Akira's humiliation as a failed but narcissistic idol constantly upstaged by the unassuming Minoru. Lucky Channel also has another concept anathema to Lucky☆Star: narrative progression. Minoru grows bolder as the episodes draw on, Akira more violent; in a late episode, a mental breakdown leads to the destruction of the set, which remains destroyed in the final few episodes as Minoru and Akira finally and without reconciliation descend into blistering hatred of one another. At the same time, these segments are the location of some of the show's most indecipherable and multilayered injokes, injokes almost defined by their transience as most stem from a real-life radio show lost to time if you weren't right there listening to them as they went live. This segment is probably the most consistently funny part of Lucky☆Star; that's not because its jokes make sense, but rather the blunt slapstick and Akira's dramatic shifts from ultra-cutesy child idol to chain-smoking world-weary industry cynic.

The effect of the OP and the Lucky Channel segment is to sandwich the sedate, relaxed, mundane central content of Lucky☆Star between chaos, nonsense, and irony. Thus, the inner show contextualizes itself as a retreat from the storm of information and self-reflexivity, despite the fact that it deals directly with these topics. The show's indolence renders them harmless, comprehensible, and nonthreatening. Lucky☆Star is a world where the unknown can be easily and pleasantly demystified; the show's fourth character, Miyuki -- sometimes nicknamed Miwiki -- is an encyclopedic fountain of knowledge whose primary role is to exhaustively explain oddities on the fringes of Japanese culture with a polite and friendly smile. Miyuki is clearly secondary to Konata and the Hiiragi twins in terms of screen time, which gives her the feel of a supporting character despite her main cast billing, with an emphasis on the word "supporting"; like a servant, the other three will, after a conversation among themselves, call her to define some term or idiom. (That this obliging sense of service comes from the richest and most aristocratic character of the cast is another matter.) In Lucky☆Star, information is not chaotic and confusing, the way it is at the show's fringes, or in the "real world", but something that stimulates curiosity and kinship. So many scenes begin with a character saying, "I wonder why...?" followed by speculation and finally an answer. In the absence of plot, progression, or even humor, it's this sense of curiosity that renders Lucky☆Star's mundane scenes compelling. And it is their tonal juxtaposition against chaos that renders them so comfortable, so soothing.

As the internet grows older and more central to everyone's lives, as the headlines everyone talked about last week are forgotten today, Lucky☆Star's expression of retreat and reorder will only continue to become more emotionally satisfying, even as its 2007 references become more dated. What I find most potent in Lucky☆Star, though, is the steadily growing sense of wistfulness it fosters, not through any one scene or tone shift, but through a collection of tiny ones. New cast members are introduced in the second half, which dilutes the presence of the main characters and thins the tight-knit sense of friendship that unified the work. The characters increasingly ruminate on their futures (despite the lack of progression, time does pass linearly, and the show ends with the end of high school on the horizon), always suggesting a "real world" of adulthood lurking behind the corner. The show's artifice is explicitly exposed by the Lucky Channel segments, which metafictionally describe the show as "the show" and the characters as "actors." ("They must all hate each other once the camera stops rolling," Akira cynically suggests.) The ED of the show's first half features the four main girls in a karaoke bar; in the second half, though, this is replaced with live-action footage of the real-life actor Minoru Shiraishi from the Lucky Channel segments. Reality infringes on Lucky☆Star at its corners, slowly creeping inward. Its calm fantasy, a fantasy founded on verisimilitude rather than imagination, is gradually exposed as fake, a production. (Which it always was, no matter how real, how relatable it felt. For all the verisimilitude in its tone, these are characters who are more moe than moe, blobs of cuteness and distorted proportions beyond even the average CGDCT anime.) It ends, in the final episode, as the characters diegetically recreate the frenetic nonsense OP, with them all arrayed on a stage, the curtain rising to white light. And even more ominously, its final ED ends with Minoru Shiraishi intoning a few plaintive notes as he faces a lone and level plain.

This is Lucky☆Star's final shot. This what awaits outside of the show's dewy comfort. Bye-ni.

[bluastro-yellow]

Kurvitz stresses that Kim doesn't actually have a character sheet hidden in Disco Elysium's code. Imagining that Lieutenant Kitsuragi has only one natural attribute point in Motorics helps the ZA/UM team to understand the depth of his character beyond what's referenced in the game's dialogue. "We just came up with this stuff for coherency," says Kurvitz. "And because we're nerds."

"I like to think Kim has a Thought Cabinet project called Revolutionary Aerostatic Brigades that he's worked on since he was a teenager," Kurvitz says. "This raises the learning caps for his Reaction Speed and Interfacing."

Kim's high Volition skill makes him impervious to prying, Kurvitz says, as the detective can find out on occasions being met with Kim's brick-wall resolve. Kim often chastises these whims of the detective's, but will occasionally play along. The Lieutenant finds his new partner funny, says Kurvitz.

Kim is naturally shit at Motorics and thinks Harry is funny source

[giggly-squiggily]

Ooo, fun! Thank you for the tag, Rachi!!💖💖💖💖💖🥰🥰🥰🥰

I tag YOU! @anyone who reads this and wants to play :D

thank you all for the tags 🥹 @polaroidcats @faggylittleleatherboy @kaaaaaaarf @lynxindisguise @kaleidoscopexsighs @greengrug you are all on my rob list <333

OPEN TAG <33 pls do this this is so cute

but also! np tagging: @cosmmicdancer @shipsnsails @pretentiouswreckingball @sugarsnappeases @belleandsaintsebastian

@fatemy-friend @allbuthuman @dickggansey @all-yourn @velanavis @stillforests

@fruityindividual @angelfruittree @godsofwoes @werewolfenthusiast @magneto-manifesto @faefibs

[salvadorbonaparte]

May 2025 in Films

The Tenant (1976) - A guy moves into a shitty apartment after the previous tenant jumped out the window. He becomes increasingly paranoid and starts crossdressing. I hate Roman Polanski as much as the next person but it is kinda fun to watch him get forcefemmed because of an apartment that doesn't even have a bathroom.

A Taxi Driver (2017) - a reactionary taxi driver becomes radicalized after accidentally agreeing to drive a German journalist into an uprising. Korean cinema perfected tonal shifts and I laughed and cried so many times watching this. powerful. one of my few 5 start films this year so far.

The Eye (2002) - A blind violinist gets eye surgery and can see ghosts now. The effects are actually pretty cool. The film kinda rips off Ring in the second half but who can blame them.

Memories of Murder (2003) - Cops trying to catch a serial killer in the 1980s using rather problematic techniques. Film really says ACAB. I first thought this was a little over-rated but the ending was simply so so good.

Phantom: The Submarine (1999): A fun little action thriller about a mutiny on a top secret nuclear submarine entirely staffed by personnell declared dead.

Wild Prairie Rose (2016) - a period romance that feels really hallmarkesque but at least they cast a Deaf actor.

Illang: The Wolf Brigade (2018) - not very good but very stylized. Ever watched something so grim-dark it becomes camp? I kinda lost the plot watching this but something something special police units something something terrorism.

District B13 (2004) - a banlieueu action film about a bomb. Soundtrack and stunts are really good like the main actor is the guy who invented parkour. But this film only has one female character and she's a damsel in distress. twice.

Mal-Mo-E: The Secret Mission (2019) - a film about the creation of the first Korean dictionary during Japanese rule. Catnip for a language nerd like me. Yeah, I cried.

The Quiet Family (1998) - a fun little horror comedy about a family opening a bed and breakfast and guests keep dying there.

The Happiness of the Katakuris (2001) - a remake of The Quiet Family but with musical numbers and claymation animation elements now. Trippy.

Welcome to Dongmakgol (2005) - Set in the Korean War with groups of South and North Korean soldiers, plus an American pilot, getting stuck in a remote village unaware of the war. Tragic and funny, this should be a mandatory viewing for anyone who likes M*A*S*H.

Secret Sunshine (2007) - a woman loses her husband in a car crash and her child in a kidnapping. She initially finds solace in Christianity but then starts a kind of one-woman holy war and Jeon Do-yeon is like a force of nature in this. Her grief manifests like physical illness and she is like a storm cloud ready to wreak havoc. Song Kang-ho has a secondary role as an obnoxious simp.

Final Destination (2000) - Fun (and relatable if you have anxiety) horror film about trying to cheat death.

Crazy Moon (1987) - a fun, eccentric romance between Kiefer Sutherland as a Manic Pixie Dream Boy and a Deaf woman (played by a Deaf actress).

Harbin (2024) - Pretty cool historical drama about Korean resistance against the Japanese but also very long and I struggled to tell the characters apart because they literally all have the same outfit, hairstyle and beard and walk around Manchuria in winter.

The Restless (2006) - a deeply romantic wuxia-esque film about a demon hunter finding himself in the after life and meeting his Dead Wife who doesn't remember him because she became whatever the equivalent of an angel is for Taoists (?). I love a tragic romance and we get lots of heart eyes in this film and about a metric ton of rose petals.

Final Destination 2 (2003) - we're all traumatized by that log truck aren't we?

Il Mare (2000) - weird little romance in two different time lines. The cooking scenes were kinda hot?

Meeting Dr. Sun (2014) - two groups of poor students compete to steal a statue of Sun Yat-sen to finance their school fees in this teenage heist film. The stakes are simultaneously so low and so high. Very class-conscious and still funny.

Farewell my Concubine (1993) - microdosing on Beijing Opera by watching a 3 hour long drama about opera singers in the political turmoil of 20th century China. If I was that other guy I would have simply fallen in love with Leslie Cheung and none of that would have happened. Seriously, he was so pretty in this.

Yourself and Yours (2016) - Not really my cup of tea and very confusing but I appreciate that this is just Freud's Uncanny with all that doubling and repetition.

Thirst (2009) - A priest dies during a medical experiment to cure a disease but gets resurrected as a vampire and now he's...horny. Park Chan-wook has a real talent for making films that feel tailor made for me to enjoy. Maybe I'm just too ace and find most sex scenes equal but some people were way too disturbed by some of the fetish stuff like of course there was foot stuff in this, it's basic Jesus imagery, get over it.

My Brother (2004) - a drama about two brothers. One is a talented writer, artist, med student, but has a disability, the other feels neglected by his mum and becomes a gangster. Shin Ha-kyun is in this and he's a tragic little guy, again.

Broker (2022) - a "found family" drama about two men who steal babies from baby boxes, a desperate young mother, a child orphan, and the cops chasing them. Giggling and twirling my hair every time Song Kang-ho is on screen. Still, the film was slightly lacking something.

My Son (2007) - a prisoner with a life sentence is allowed to see his son for the first time in 15 years. I kept waiting for a heartbreaking plot twist and wasn't disappointed.

Pulgasari (1985) - a film with an even crazier story behind the film than the plot. A North Korean kaiju-golem saving a village from feudalism but then turning into a metaphor for either communism or capitalism depending on how much you think the abducted South Korean director was trying to make a point.

I Saw the Devil (2010) - a serial killer quickly and painfully realizes that murdering the fiance of a secret agent is perhaps a bad idea. Your "typical" Korean revenge thriller with all the blood and violence and complicated morals in the sense that it absolutely slaps holy shit.

Joint Security Area (2000) - A South Korean soldier kills two North Korean soldiers in the DMZ and a Swiss official has to figure out what happened. Absolutely heartbreaking film on the same emotional level as the Christmas Truce of 1914. This should be a mandatory viewing for anyone who likes M*A*S*H too.

Swing Kids (2018) - What if the musician subplot from the M*A*S*H finale was about tap dancing instead? What if it was from the pov of a North Korean pow learning to tap dance? This is that movie.

[thestralluvr]

Lars Pinfield x reader headcanons part 1

⋆˖⁺‧₊☽◯☾₊‧⁺˖⋆

- he’d have the usual socials like tiktok, insta and all that but his only post is a picture of you that you absolutely hate and his following is just his friends, family and famous cats.

- he probably has another instagram account for his cat basil, a chunky tabby who he adores with his whole heart.

- taps on the possessors enclosure (the possessor taps back it’s like a weird little high five) before he leaves and at this point it’s become an instinct.

- his work space is definitely an organised mess, you’ve got no clue how his system works but he surely has one.

- you guys definitely get takeaway at LEAST once a week (especially on a friday).

- claims he doesn’t know how to flirt yet every single word that comes from his mouth leaves you BLUSHING.

- he’d never admit it to anyone but he secretly loves reality tv 😭 it has him hooked and it’s one of his favourite parts of the day when he can just unwind with you and watch shitty television.

- this man just adores you, you’ll catch him just admiring your features like you’d hung the moon and stars.

- i feel like he’s a decent cook but a terrible baker, he never fails to set off the fire alarms.

- one morning he’d tried to surprise you for your anniversary by baking you a lovely breakfast.

- it ended with the pair of you standing on the front lawn in your pyjamas waiting for the fire brigade.

- baking is now left for you and uber eats.

- this man had a hipster tumblr phase i just know it and you take every opportunity you can get to tease him on it 😭.

- i’d imagine his favourite bands would be stuff like the kinks, tears for fears, the smiths, talking heads, soft cell etc. (he’s a music nerd).

- he loves gloomy rainy days, 1 because it reminds him of his home town, 2 because it’s the PERFECTTTTT weather to snuggle under blankets with you (his favourite activity).

- maybe has a few tiny tattoos that only you’ve seen besides one.

- one night the two of you went out with a few coworkers (much to lars’ annoyance) so what better to do than take the opportunity to get pissed? makes the boring conversations less boring right?

- anyway let’s just say it was an eventful night as you’d both woken up with the wonkiest matching ghost tattoos on your wrists.

- the pair of you weren’t exactly ecstatic to find your drunken decision but hey, they didn’t get covered up. besides, it makes you think of him whenever you see it so it can’t be that bad.

- he has a tendency to run his thumb over your little ghost whenever you’re holding hands or cuddling, it’s very sweet.

- you take turns being the big and little spoon every night but basil is always the tiny spoon.

- he’s a little touch starved so he never ever takes any little touch, kiss, and caress for granted.

- speaking of kisses, ALLLLL THE KISSES!!! forehead! head! hand! eskimo! cheek! neck! this man is just so lucky to be able to kiss you he never wants to stop oml i could cry he’s just the sweetest.

- basil definitely gets many kisses too she’s very spoilt.

i hope this was decent, my first time writing for this lovely man so i hope i did okay!! lmk if you want anything in particular for the following parts through my asks or comments!! <3

[maxwell-grant]

What are your in-depth thoughts on THE CHIMERA BRIGADE? Would love to know what you make of it, given its handling and assembly of so much pulp material.

@thedeathalchemist asked: With your first initial thoughts on League posted, I have to ask did you ever get around to reading all of the Chimera Brigade and its sequel/spin-offs?

Anonymous asked: Any advice for how to a fictional character mashup story ala chimera brigade, league, etc?

(So first and foremost huge thanks to Ritesh Babu for being the whole reason for me finally picking this up again and finishing it, our conversations with him and @davidmann95 were crucial for putting this together)

(Also SPOILERS for The Chimera Brigade - this comic is impossible to discuss meaningfully without spoiling it down to the last issue, so go read it first)

The French tradition of booklets and serials certainly didn't have the punch or the sociological freedom of the pulps, but certain of its great figures did survive the Second World War: Fantomas, Arsene Lupin, Rouletabille and even, in a way, Maigret. Why those and not the others.

Why doesn't anyone remember the Nyctalope, or Hareton Ironcastle, or Felifax or Michel Ardent? Which cultural black hole of pre-war French science-fiction were they swallowed up by? And why have our bandes dessinées authors neglected these virtual superheroes that a little touch-up here and there could have modernised? - Serge Lehman

I can very confidently say two things - 1: I've read countless works like The Chimera Brigade that set out to do something similar to what The Chimera Brigade does, and 2: I have never seen a work like The Chimera Brigade, and one that achieves what it does the way it does. This being a superb pulp fiction crossover, who makes most of the others seem like they're not even trying, is maybe the smallest of it's achievements.

It's the kind of project that so very often tends to get lost in the weeds of it's source material, of having it's context overtaking the plot, of devolving into simple sentimental reverence or spiteful potshots at the expense of the story it set up, of being able to construct a story and world convincingly but fumbling at the finish line, and it's so very rare to find one of these projects that is ENTIRELY about the finish line of what the narrative has set-up, especially when they have significant messy real-life history and context to bolt in, which The Chimera Brigade has a ton of.

Pulp nerd crossovers tend to be largely about the novelty of it's characters meeting up, or the unresolved tension between it's characters and the historical context they coincidentally inhabit, or setting up a shared verse to be played in, and thus a lot of them are predictably aimless when it's time to wrap up the story and thus define what the story in question was about. This is even an issue that series creator and co-author Serge Lehman even brings up during the annotations, regarding why he asked his friend Fabrice Colin to co-write the script with him, specifically in part to try and prevent this. I want to make note of what he says here, "confusing fanatic nostalgia for creativity". A thing this set out to avoid, and a thing that helps set this apart from so, so, so many pulp hero crossovers / pulp-in-wartime stories / dissertations about publication-meta-fictional history presented as stories, miles and miles of Wold Newton adjacent stuff I've scoured for days and weeks on end and tried very, very, VERY hard to like so much more than I actually do.

This project does demand a lot of data archival, it demands the laborious Jess Nevins annotations and footnotes to keep track of who's whom or who's meant to be what. It's a story about European superheroes that is focused why European superheroes don't actually exist / completely vanished stillborn around the time the American superheroes first appeared and became a dominant force, specifically drawing on reasons like publishing failures and the fascist incorporation of superhumanity that really did cause these things to vanish. But The Chimera Brigade is a very, very focused project: it's about one thing first and foremost, and it's about one moment first and foremost, and thus the thing that it is about, and the historical moment that informs it, completely defines the purpose of it. Crucially, this is one of the many things this has that makes it so good, that makes it so different from so many other modern takes on pulp fiction or crossovers: the clarity of purpose this has, the point it's making and the unflinching vision it achieves to serve it.

It's a historical pulp nerd project initially entirely centered around a real phenomenon only historical pulp nerds are likely to know anything about, and then it gradually reveals itself to be, in fact, about something everyone has always known about all along, and you were only ever deluding yourself for thinking this was heading anywhere else. You want to talk about European superheroes? You want to talk about European pulp history? You want to know about the absence of the European Superman and why the Americans got to really create that instead? Okay, let's talk about that. Let's talk about European fictional history and see where it goes.

Even before the central question of European Superhero History comes into play, the baseline concept of The Chimera Brigade's worldbuilding is already taking such a smart, clear-eyed, versatile approach to the crossover aspect, starting from really strong pitches and compelling hooks regardless of what context you have for it, that enables it to tie it's pulp characters to the superhero history and political turmoil it will dwelve into, by tapping into The Great Unifier of Marvel Origin Stories: radiation. What if the first superheroes were also created by radiation? If superheroes are so inherently tied to World War 2 and the Atomic Bomb, and pulp heroes are so inherently tied to World War 1, what if we went back further to Marie Curie and the discovery of Radium as the connective tissue between them? What if we set about unpacking the radioactive monster elements inherent to the genre, as they creep into the world before the actual superheroes do? What if the existence of superhumans, in itself, inevitably placed humanity into a cold war / arms race, just as the existence of atomic bombs in our reality did (a.k.a what if The Power Fantasy was actually about what it says it's about, or really was about anything at all)? What does it mean for these constructs to exist at the time they do, to come from the nations they come from, in the way they are made to be?

Everyone here may not have a singular common origin at first, but they really are all tied together, and that in itself allows all these wildly different fictions to exist together in a way that feels cohesive and justified, on top of lending itself to fun sequences and reimaginings of classic characters and visuals and ideas to engage with. And that's an important thing to also highlight first, that this is a very well-crafted and fun comic to read. Don't let all the pulp nerd context scare you, this thing is a hoot.

It does a superb job at being a fun, engaging pulp comic, playing with a Mike Mignola/John Paul Leon-esque artstyle that makes a lot of this feel familiar and dynamic, with a lot of collages that play more experimentally and add a lot to the real-world history aspect of it. Gess and Bessonneau's art lives up to the tremendous task of taking all these characters from very different sources or creators, or at least very convincingly made to feel as if they would have if they existed before this, and paying tribute to replicated history both real and imagined as well as making them all feel like they belong in the same world and even share similar rooms and spaces, to the point that you can't tell which characters were made up for this and which existed beforehand without consulting the collected edition notes.

A lot of stories do great work by honing in and highlighting the novelty of clashing wildly different tones and structures and designs against each other, that is actually one of my favorite things to see done well in any kind of fiction, I'm certainly not arguing that visual consistency is a definitive must for any kind of crossover. But I will argue that here, consistency is a must, because this is not a story about the crossover, the crossover is necessary for the sake of what this story is about. You must believe that you are reading about a world that exists, in part because the finale of this is about making you realize that you were, indeed, reading about the world you live in all along.

With the exception of a not-so-disguised figure who makes two small but very crucial appearences (with other characters scattered across a handful of cameos and mentionings), this completely refrains from using any majorly known characters, and it's important that it does so. This has a very tight control over which characters show up in what way, which characters are relevant and which characters are not, in part because this is about real-world history as much as it's about any of the existing characters it's pulling from elsewhere, and so those are chosen more so as representatives of their nations than anything else, picked first and foremost to represent the real historical circumstances driving this war. The cadaverous and inhumanly wealthy Gog to represent fascist Italy, the weaselly and controlling and useless Nyctalope as a condemnation of France's inaction and whose greatest failure was his unwillingness to stop the fascist takeover of Spain, the mechanical men of the Soviet Union, Dr. Mabuse as a living rampant metaphor for Nazi doctrine and dehumanization, and so on.

All these fantasies/metaphors turned literal and on the warpath, constructs that stand for more than just their respective characters or publishers but the imaginations that created them. You have to talk about those to talk meaningfully about these characters, about the history, and about the reasons why there are no European superheroes from that era, about the profound failure of imagination that occurred in Europe at that time. You have to talk about not just the ways Europe's imagination not only failed, but turned for the worst in the worst ways imaginable, for the worst ends possible. This comic is frequently compared to, or pitched as a companion to, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which I've covered here, and that's not a parallel I feel is particularly worth getting into (not in the least because this is, obviously, tremendously better written and more thoughtful and purposeful with a fraction of the page count), but I'll say this: if LOEG touches a lot on the idea of fiction as a dangerous, noxious force, largely in terms of stunted moral development and unhealthy attachments to problematic ideas (a thing it can never fully commit to because Moore and O'Neil themselves do have a lot of attachments to it and because it's trying to extend commentary to ALL of fiction), if it's always dancing around the idea of our fictions being unhealthy and problematic and potentially dangerous, The Chimera Brigade picks a subject it very much cannot dance around. Instead of trying to be about all of fiction, it takes a laser-focused approach on the way fiction informs it's central topic. The Chimera Brigade fires a bullet into your heart by just showing the example of how, when and why fiction was used to enable and justify and even perpetrate the slaughter of millions.

There is so much about this comic's final stretch that feels like it shouldn't work, particularly the literalized cockroach metaphor purposefully evoking anti-semitic fiction, but there is no other way this could possibly end other than showing how fiction very much did get weaponized in the name of slaughter. There is no triumph to be had in the European imagination of 1939. There is no way the European superhero can possibly end in anything other than colossal shame and failure, if it allows this to happen. Even if Superman shows up to help, you can't Hope your way out of the Holocaust, not when you're in this historical playground, not when you're talking about the history of the genre. The finale in particular is something I'd like to see being dissected and discussed from a Jewish creator perspective, because so much of it is specifically about that aspect of the superhero myth, but this finale is the big reason why this comic can't be discussed without spoiling it. It would be like trying to discuss Watchmen or Miracleman without spoiling their endings, and believe me, those comparisons are extremely warranted. This ends on even more of a downer ending than those two, and there is no other way this could possibly end.

This comic doesn't just come from a place of great curiosity and historical interest and research, it doesn't just come from a place of love for the medium and it's possibilities, it doesn't just come from a desire to rectify or correct or live up to an ideal within the genre, but it comes from a place of genuine insight and honesty and focus on what it's about, and what it has to say to truly be about that thing. It's a comic that is willing to turn to you and say, "let's take this all the way to the top, let's take this concept where it was actually always going in a way that can never be walked back, no beating around the bush or happy ending, this is what the European superheroes were, this is why they stopped existing after a point. Maybe we could have had them, maybe we could have had superheroes the way the Americans did, but we drove their creators elsewhere by bulldozing their people into mass graves, we deserve this shame and we must confront it, there is no happy ending here, only a reminder of what has been and what must never be again"

It can't pretend this failure, the failure of the European pulp heroes and superhumans, the failures of European society, were redeemed by a different kind of super imagination, and it becomes apparent how much of this is built on the understanding that you do know how this is going to end for everyone and how much all of these characters must dissappear basically forever, The End of the European Superhumans as it displays on the back of the collections, ending the only way it possibly can and with just as horrible of a gut punch for them as it needs to for everyone.

Everyone except the mysterious smiling American strongman with a spitcurl and a suit whose real name can't be legally said, and who is here to bring his family of fellow constructs home so they can take and create The Superhero Genre elsewhere. "Mr.Steele"? Why, he is gonna do just fine from now on.

I was wildly underprepared for how much this would give me to dissect and think about, on it's own and especially in comparison to the kinds of stories that usually attempt what this one is doing. I do know there are sequels and prequels, the sequel doesn't seem like it's any good (you can feel Colin's absence from the first issue) but I do want to check the Nyctalope prequels, and apparently there's a big fancy animated project coming out and I have NO idea how the fuck is that gonna work. But overall this is just a tremendously impressive achievement in genre archaeology and storytelling by every metric, it's astonishing how much this can do with the space it has.

This has genuinely reinvigorated my entire interest in pulp fiction like nothing has in a really long time and I think from this point onwards, any question I get regarding how to tackle a pulp fiction crossover or genre mashup is gonna be answered or prefaced with "read The Chimera Brigade and try to get on that level".

[steddiebbang]

a/s/l?: hey, hwkstiger94

Posting on October 15, 2024

Author: dismay_gray l Artist: @peachypurr | Beta: strangethetimes

↳ Keep reading below for a sneak peek!

Edsthebanished69: I think u really hve this thing down, man. those lil punks should be impressed

Steve let the compliment get under his skin way more than it should have. But he couldn't help it, it felt good to not suck at something for once. Even if it was something so...out of his league. Who would have thought he would be so excited to hang out with Dustin Henderson's nerd brigade? Especially when the plan was to play something as inherently dorky as Dungeons and Dragons.

Hwkstiger94: hey, I would still b up shit creek wthout ur help

Edsthebanished69: you flatter me, Steve. 

Edsthebanished69: FYI, that's my weak spot...just don't sneak attack me again

Hwkstiger94: what if I wanted to keep it going?

Hwkstiger94: just 4 fun..if ur not bored of me already

Edsthebanished69: ...you mean the rp? Cuz I'm down, dude. Prepare to get wrecked. 

Steve caught a glimpse of his own face grinning in the reflection of the monitor. He didn't feel like himself at all. He felt...happy.

[nanamisgirly]

hihi ma girlies, my mind had been racing lately and idk what to write next sooo might you vote what you wanna see next !! :)

u can send me asks if u got any ideas too <3

[nose235678]

*Veilguard Thought*

“Feather Brigade,”

Davrin, you big fucking nerd (affectionate)

[brightside-brigade]

blarg, you know what?

🌟 System intro time !!! 🌟

Welcome to the Brightside Brigade!!! We are a trauma based mixed origin + potentially frameworked system, and this blog belongs to the host. (Trauma based is bold to point out the fact that we are traumagenic in initial nature, so no one claims we're endo as a point of dismissal! Which shouldn't be anyway, but yk. We consider ourselves mixed origin because not all of us identify as originating from the bodies brain!!! Very few of us are brainmade). We also have very low switching and are full of fictives and nonhumans!

Only a small handful of us really front, but there's more of us in there for sure! So, let me show you us, the bastards!!!

First up is me! I'm the host of our system: the one (of many) Dr. Jack Bright! I'm probably the coolest fictive around...(/silly). I'm the one who posts most often, the nerd you see posting up a storm and never stopping! And no, I'm not going to source separate because of one bastard, I am myself and only myself!

*(Host/fawn[with bite])

My pronouns are he/they/nya, and these are the emojies I associate with myself: 💉🥀👁🦌

And next up, we've got... well!!! We've got Homelander! (If any of you are weird to him I'm going to sentence you to a hamsters death). He's our second most frequent Fronter, our anger/aggression holder, and the hosts specific protector, and in sys partner. Hdgdsddd. It's important to note that he's blocked from most of his memories when he fronts, which tends to irritate him even more, so be wary of that. He's usually the one you see complaining about the hosts behavior.

*(Anger/aggression holder, personal protector, occasional agressor/ect)

He uses he/him and this particular emoji:🎆

If I had a nickle for every time we've got a fictive from a source we haven't actually engaged with, I'd have two nickels. ANYWAY. We've got Kev here. He's currently Jacks CG when Jack is regressed, and possibly an age slider himself though that's unsure at the moment. Definitely autistic. He can't front alone or without something to occupy him or he'll start getting anxious.

*(Personal CG/potential age slider)

He uses he/him pronouns and this emoji:🐙

Our third most frequent Fronter is Bug! Unfortunately, Bug is radqueer adjacent, but Bug is monitored closely so he does not get hurt. Bugs stances do not reflect the overall system. Bug is semi-verbal and types very simplisticly, and refers to bugself in third person. Bug is very sweet despite what his stances may suggest, and is anti-contact and non consensual acts. Bug is highly social.

UPDATE: CURRENT DORMANT

Bug uses he/him and nameself pronouns, and uses these emojis: 🦠🦂

Moving on to those who don't front/we don't know much about!!

Dogday is a happy-go-lucky little guy! He tries to cheer up members of the system when they're sad, scared, or angry, even when they don't like him much! Everyone is his friend, weather they like it or not.

Pronouns: he/it/pup

Aster (the collector) is Dogdays best friend, and they're never far apart. He also holds a lot of childhood anger, and unfortunately has the vocabulary of a COD Lobby back in its peak. Despite this, all he really wants to do is play!

Pronouns: He/they

CherryBlossom, better know as Chee, is our general caretaker. Sweet and patient, she handles even the rowdiest of headmates.

Pronouns: she/her

This fellow is N! He's our librarian. He has catalogs of all the memories anyone fronting or looking for info about the system could need!

Pronouns: he/it

Prince is a symbiote!

Pronouns: he/sym

Epsilon

Pronouns: They/Glitch

And Axis!

Pronouns: he/it

[bubblecat-co]

SSS - Shameless Self Promotion Sunday

The idea: We make a post and show off, what cool stuff we created over the past week. Art, Screenshots, writing (anything from a questionnaire about your OC to the 100K epos...) anything we do is worth to be seen and to be promoted. And by tagging people, commenting, and reblogging, we share the love and boost ourselves and other's confidence. No matter what form you choose, whether you reblog your initial post, or create a new one with teasers, you decide!

I was tagged by @antivan-sprig who shared some amazing art of Liselath! I love seeing more of her. Absolutely adore her with every fiber of my being.

Gentle poking with a tag @a-mumbling-nerd @virenasalin @ghastlyang3l @mythals-whore and @hedwigoprah

So I focused mostly on finishing up chapter two of my fic which I did YAY. Then I started another fic Idea for something completely different. Because the mind never sleeps ig.

Little thing of Viago and the day that my main rook's parents died and He took her in.

little background info some I have posted like briefly and others is pretty new.

Viago is 19 here. Enzo is an antivan crow from the Arainai house and Aria's father, Vesa is Aria's mother and isn't a crow. Aria is eight years old and it's been currently a month since the end of the blight. (in my timeline)

right before this excerpt Viago found Vesa already dead.

The hairs on his neck stood up as, he pushed his back against the wall and made his way down the hallway, where he saw their bedroom was wide open. Inside was Enzo tied up and bleeding. “Viago?” His voice was quiet and weak as it cracked. The man still lived. Viago moved to his former mentor examining his body. Cuts were all along it some of them were deep others were shallow but all of them had a ring of yellow blotches around the wounds, the blades had been coated in poison. “I don’t have very much time. Do you still have the letter Vesa gave you?” The letter, something Vesa had given him years ago. Viago hadn’t opened it himself, but he remembered how serious she looked when she gave it to him and remember her instructions clearly. “Give this to Ash’anne if something happens to me and Fen'hel” Vesa was always a little more paranoid and he couldn't blame her because he was just as paranoid.  “Yes, but-” “Let me talk, we do not have time for your questions.” Enzo took in a shaky shallow breath. “Aria is in the wardrobe, you remember the knock I taught you? The one we use for the door?” Viago nodded his head, scared that if he spoke he would began his brigade of questions. “Good, use that knock on the wardrobe doors, let her know it’s you…and take care of my girl.” the elf gave him a weak smile. “What? I can’t take care of a child, Enzo-” “Shush, take care of her, you are her family now and she is your responsibility. Promise me you will protect her.” his blue-violet eyes were fading, his gaze turning far away even as Viago was crouched right in front of him.  “I- I promise.”  “Good. Vesa has journals she wants Aria to have.” his words were getting slower as his breath got shallower “they’re in the chest by the shelf….” there was a long pause, Viago stared at him waiting to hear either more of the sentence or his final breath. “You’re a good kid.” with that his body stilled and his breath stopped as his head hung limply to his chest. Viago’s mentor was gone.