#''controlling the narrative'' play his origin then?? lol

[oars]

saying astarion shouldve faced repercussions from his past before he was turned is a room temperature take imo

[ohno-the-sun]

Spoiler heavy fnaf ruin dlc rant up ahead

I am so fucking proud of steal wool they really took every criticism from the original game and fixed it and even added more

Like Cassie actually acts like a human being?? And like her knowledge of the original characters and cute little comments on every item are so endearing there is so much detail going into this.

The fact that they expanded on one of the fan faves Roxanne and giving her a great arc I’m in love I’m so happy

They honestly gave more depth to all the animatronics too like we finally see Bonnie’s design and get and get a taste as to what happened, also that poster Freddy gifted him I’m crying they are so cute and gay I love them

😭😭😭

Also the whole dark ride section with Monty is so fascinating like is that narrative kind of true or is it just fabricated by fazbear inc to cover up the decommissioning of Bonnie

Why replace Bonnie with Monty?? Why not make a new Bonnie model?? With the prototype label on Freddy it may be confirmed that they make multiple models (well we already kinda knew that with Freddies comments but oh well)

Also Freddy?? Like is that our Freddy or a different one?? They very clearly highlighted the prototype label so they want to emphasize it, but then the head is still missing like in the princess quest ending so what is the truth??

Feel bad for chica fans tho she really was sidelined hard

Aaaaa and my baby boys!!! There’s 3 now aaahaga

I was really not expecting eclipse to be the way they were, very… normal? Is that the right word?? Like obviously a little delusional on when the daycare is gonna open again, but in the right mindset of like this child needs to leave this place is not safe. It is interesting to me that both he and Roxy thought that it was Cassie’s birthday, maybe that was the last day before she left the plex? Or maybe that was the day the plex caught fire? Or maybe most depressingly we are playing on Cassie’s birthday so the animatronics have it in their systems what her birthday is and wish her a happy one (if they are in the right state of mind lol)

Some peeps are upset moon is a little too villainous

I think you can still say it was mainly the virus but I would argue even if it’s not the virus I feel like moon is kinda justified here. Like sun has been shutting him away for a long time before this (if the books are to be believed but also in general) so when he finally gets a chance to roam free of course he’s gonna take it. And idk about u but if my alternate personality was constantly trying to shut me out and I finally got control, I probably too would try and keep my control for as long as possible. Also from what I have seen so far, not even moon is all that aggressive? Like he grabs you at the beginning, but I think that’s just his very ineffective way to get kids to sleep and other than that he just kinda stays away

Poor sunny baby is stuck in the ar world 🥺🥺 I didn’t notice at first but yeah everytime you talk to him it’s only in the ar world. And the end part where you switch them out for eclipse if you do that in the ar world, he says not for me it’s for moon.

I will say though I noticed the voice acting for them changed a little this game, like both have a higher pitch and are more goofy sounding? Like more gremlin energy than evil villainy. I wonder if that was on purpose? Both of them sounded more like the other so maybe that was the reason? Interest interest

Also their mouth moves?? Sort of?? That’s so silly to me they have a whole working mouth system and their face mask doesn’t work with at all 😭

Does give me lore intrigue tho cause like why do their mouths move but not anymore?? Did something happen?? Are they just not maintained enough?? They also move outward instead of up and down (at least from what I saw) so is the mechanism different?

Also the way that sun and moon talk about eachother is so interesting. Like moon says the light hurts “us” and sun says “no the other me” like they seem to almost consider eachother more connected than we first thought, like they’re not just coworkers or strangers they are almost like two sides of the same person. It’s very interesting and I wonder where people will take this.

Overall great job I’m so excited to comb through the game and find every little secret (especially regarding the dca) aaaa

Ok ok update moon does have a jump scare but it’s ridiculously hard to get and I’d still argue he’s not as vicious as he was base game. I mention in another post but eclipse being as kind as he is and being (presumably) a combination of both AIs, gives even more evidence moon is supposed to be kind and caring like his posters suggest but something went wrong. Also Cassie’s comments on their plushes show that there were kids who truly liked the daycare.

[shakingparadigm]

Not only Till and Ivan, but it seems like Luka parallels with almost every ALNST character in different ways. I mean, I think this applies to everyone in how they parallel each other in some form, but I find it interesting that Luka’s character in particular seems to have adopted/inherited specific traits from nearly every character. I say nearly because Mizi seems to be the only exception, but maybe if I squint a bit harder I’ll find something they can relate with. For now nothing comes to mind lol.

Luka and…

Sua: Similar in demeanor, appearance, and in their mysterious narrative role. Both have a strange ethereal “vibe”, wear empty doll-like expressions, are dressed up like dolls with white frilly clothing adorned with a bow, their owners objectify and present them to the universe to be leered and gawked at, their birthdays are one day apart, and they both covered each other’s songs despite having no known direct relation to each other.

Till: Similar in background, talent, and onstage presence. Both artistic geniuses, overwhelm their opponents on stage, and are physically abused and exploited for their skills by their segyeins.

Ivan: Similar in personality, execution, and reputation. Both are seen as perfect “princes” in their respective audiences, calm and consistent, smart/calculating, psychologically twisted, and put on a mature charismatic facade around others.

Hyuna: Similar in their motivations. Both share the same rooted desire for freedom and control over their own life and gain a sense of catharsis in finding that autonomy/independence on the stage.

Luka’s character seems to have no real sense of identity. So, in a way, it’s as if his entire identity is built off of every other character despite being the most alienated (ba dum tss) of them all. He’s a blank canvas who’s been painted in the other characters’ colors. Actually, everyone was originally a blank canvas. Sua is the stemming point who’s painted everyone in color, then everyone painted Luka in their respective colors. The author has stated that every ALNST character originated from Sua. In contrast, it seems like Luka was originated from everyone else.

This is a fantastic observation, anon! I agree! I find that Luka is a rather omnipresent character, almost to the likes of Sua but not quite. This might not make as much sense, but I feel Hyuna is on this level as well.

(Long post ahead! Sorry, I ended up rambling and maybe going off-topic...)

Something that has always intrigued me is that Hyuna and Luka are set apart from the rest of the cast. Unlike the main 4, who's story is rapidly unfolding in the present, Hyuna and Luka's inciting incident has already passed. What they're doing now is dealing with the aftermath and attempting to lay their demons to rest (for Hyuna, at least). Bits and pieces of these two can be found within the main 4, and several comparisons can be made (and often they are made canonically, whether it be implied in the content or directly stated by Q and V).

Mentally, I've always split the main 6 in half. Hyuna with Mizi and Till, Luka with Sua and Ivan. The reasons are obvious, of course.

Luka, Sua and Ivan make up what is essentially the perfection trifecta. Dressed in pure white (eventually, for Ivan), charismatic personas, camera-ready marketing stars. An important part of how they cope with expectations and lack of control is by separating themselves into the persona they put on for the audience and the person they actually are. They're passive and obedient, playing along with whatever the segyein want them to do, top students at anakt (Luka was number 1 during his time, while Sua and Ivan often alternate between 1st and 2nd place, essentially a tie in a way), and often perform to perfection. However, Sua and Ivan still retain a part of themselves that is theirs and no one else's. It's obvious in the way they allow themselves to indulge in certain things, the way Ivan makes room for personal time and how Sua refuses to disclose more information than absolutely necessary, protective of her privacy. While Luka gives himself to the audience completely, it's safe to assume that he's doing it out of necessity and not exactly by will (is there an identity behind the success? what is he if not a winner?). There are the sides of them that will happily present themselves in front of a camera, and the sides of them that are cynical and scornful of the life they were forced into. For the most part, they act logically. The obedient pet act ensures their safety and although it is excruciating, they've weighed their options and decided that this is the best way to take advantage of their circumstances. Smart, well-behaved and proper pets.

I like to call the trio of Hyuna, Mizi and Till the rebels because that's essentially what they are (at least eventually). As the other half, they're meant to be the opposite of what is considered "perfect". It's established that Luka, Sua and Ivan are careful and calculated when presenting themselves to an audience, putting forward only their best and hiding their true imperfect selves under this mask. Hyuna, Mizi and Till however are largely characterized by their authenticity, their genuine display of self. When they perform, there is no mask. They offer themselves fully on stage and present their genuine emotions, whether or not it's palatable enough for the audience to take. Their actions are less calculated and moreso driven by the heart, for better or for worse. Mizi and Till are openly dejected and upset in their respective second rounds, while a more careful pet like Ivan would attempt to hide their true feelings and put on a brave face (which he does during the beginning of his part in ROUND 6). Hyuna's rescue of Mizi leans less towards logical reasoning and more towards her own emotions, her personal need for self-consolation. There's also the rebellion factor, Hyuna is a literal rebel, Mizi becomes a rebel and Till is described as a rebel. Unlike their counterparts, they are able to act more freely and don't carry the same heavy sense of responsibility that the others do. They are themselves unabashedly, either because they fought tooth and nail for it (Hyuna & Till) or because they were raised in an environment where they never had to (Mizi).

You've already done a great job at pointing out the parallels between Luka, Sua and Ivan. To further add onto your points, it's commonly believed that Luka so easily and uncannily mimicked Sua in ROUND 5 because of the fact that he was already so similar to her. It's also directly stated in Luka's character design logs that Luka and Ivan's characters were incredibly similar, with the only difference being the personality of the mask that they put on (calm and doll-like for Luka, cool and cheerful for Ivan).

Hyuna can be seen within Mizi and Till as well. The fact that Hyuna sees herself in Mizi is the main reason as to why she saves her in the first place. Once full of joy and blind optimism, innocence shattered at the loss of a loved one. Till bears resemblance to Hyuna as well, both physically (their eyeshapes are strikingly similar, and Hyuna's eyecolor, brighter as a child, is quite close to Till's teal during specific moments), personality-wise (rebellious, fighting for freedom) and in terms of singing style (Hyuna was originally described to be "rock-and-roll", both perform with strong, loud and energetic voices).

Luka's similarity with Till is a special instance. I've said this before (and you've already brought it up), but I believe they're both essentially two very different people who were put into very similar circumstances. Till is overflowing with emotion and a desire to protect his individuality, bearing "quirks equivalent to 10 people" as Ivan says. Luka, on the other hand, seems to have a rather fragile identity. We don't know anything about him besides the fact that he was created to be a winner, trained and conditioned under extremely brutal means. The only times we see him exhibit any semblance of free will and desire is when he's vying for Hyuna's attention or exerting control over others. While Till and Luka are different fundamentally, they're both put through abusive training and experimentation in order to fulfill the goals of their power-hungry guardians. Unrivaled talent at a steep price.

It's interesting how even Hyuna, who was created to be Luka's exact opposite, is able to parallel him in a certain way. Thank you for pointing that out! As their lives are constantly dictated by their owners, the stage is their only escape, a playground of sorts where they finally have the opportunity to control their circumstances. The difference is that while Heperu is overly-invested in and nearly obssessed with Luka's victory, Phan does not care for Hyuna at all. In fact, Phan does not particularly care for ALNST in general, only participating as a sponsor. They care so little that they couldn't even be bothered to watch the show. As Phan lacks any investment in ALNST, Hyuna's life is much less restrictive and ruthless than Luka's. Hyuna loves performing because it allows her to feel free, a form of self-expression that liberates her from the monotony of segyein routine and allows her to feel like her life is hers. While Luka is essentially the same, his means are much more intense. His life is managed right down to the minute, basically a puppet on a string. Since every other aspect of his autonomy has been taken from his control, the stage is genuinely all he has. Unlike Hyuna, who has a strong personality and set of beliefs, Luka does not have much to express. Instead, he finds his identity and sense of control in dominating others, exerting force and pressure onto his opponents. This can be seen in ROUND 5, where his performance is the least emotionally charged and instead calculated to intimidate and provoke his opponent, Mizi. Hyuna's love of the stage stems from the fact that she is brimming with emotion and energy that she wants to express, parts of her that feel restricted by the way her life is led by aliens. Luka performs to dominate, to assert himself as the most powerful force in the arena, which is a privilege he will never get to have outside of it. Both Hyuna and Luka find their strongest sense of self on stage, however the ways in which they go about it are very different in nature.

I'd like to genuinely thank you for this ask, you make a lot of good points and I find the idea of Luka being a canvas "painted" by everyone else very interesting! While I agree with that idea in terms of his character conception, within the story I find him less affected by others and more as if he's the one affecting them. Just as Sua changed the trajectory of Mizi's life, Hyuna would not be where she is today if not for Luka.

[fernsnailz]

Not sure how much meat this question has to it but if back in 2006 you were the one that spearheaded the shadow the hedgehog game, how would you have done it?

i'd want ShTH 2005 to keep the same core energy its final form ended up with, but tbh there's a lot i would have done differently lol. here's my 3 step plan for how i would have directed it previously/would direct any sort of reboot or remaster

1. TIMELOOP!!!!!!

i'm not the first person to come up with this idea and i won't be the last to talk about it, but the gist of this point is that ShTH's story makes WAY more sense when you treat it like a timeloop. you finished a story path and end up back in westopolis? great job, you're at the beginning of the timeloop again. it's a smart way to make this wack story a little more cohesive.

i would LOVE to further utilize the timeloop concept for this game because it could be a very simple addition to add flavor OR it be the core of the game's story and gameplay. small things like shadow going "hey wait, have i seen this before?" when he's going through westopolis for the third time can hint at the narrative, and once shadow realizes he's in a loop he's motivated to find EVERY path in search of the full truth. every new story path could be treated as a new game+ as shadow starts to consistently remember more from previous timeloops, carrying over certain weapons, abilities, and memories from his previous experiences.

one really cool idea i saw a while ago on here (edit: FOUND IT! i'm talking about this post) is someone's ShTH timeloop pitch where after a few resets, silver starts to show up and tells shadow to stop messing with the timeline. this continues, and eventually silver becomes a final boss of some of the paths. this idea has never left my mind since i saw it and i need to find the person that came up with it they mean so much to me

i have more timeloop thoughts but i will move on for now

2. simplify or rework the morality system and levels

this is my big gameplay critique - there is A Lot to do in ShTH and very little of it is consistently fun. i have grievances with the morality system i talked about a while ago, the gist of my opinion boiling down to "the system removes agency from shadow and the story doesn't fit within the morals you choose anyway." i'd either MASSIVELY rework the morality system to make it feel worthwhile or just throw the whole thing away. unfortunately i don't have many pitches for what to replace it with since i haven't played that many games with branching stories - maybe the story paths you go down are based on BIG story decisions shadow makes during boss battles or in cutscenes (?) like choosing which boss to fight, which characters to save, what moves or weapons to use, stuff like that. i just want the stuff that leads to branching stories to be more impactful and a little simpler.

this also applies to the levels, of which there are... a lot. and maybe there should be less? i think it would be smart to cut down or combine some of the levels, then really flesh out the ones that matter. and given the non-linear nature of ShTH, i think a version with levels more focused on exploration and combat would fit the game better than the linear mission-based gameplay of the original.

3. MORE GUN

listen man. they advertised this as the sonic game with guns and in my opinion i think they could've done better. i mostly just want a more fleshed out weapons system with upgrades, a little customization, better controls, etc. just put the merchant from resident evil 4 in there and have him accept rings and i would be happy

-------------------------

those are the big points i would personally stick to, but i do have smaller points i would consider as well, including:

make black doom seem competent

explain who the chaotix are working for and fit it into the story

no more "kill this many enemies to progress" missions. please

super shadow can have a gun now

[mywitchyblog]

Hi there! i just wanted to say thank you so much for writing so many in depth essays that really delve deep into the concepts of shifting. I'm planning on going through all of them today lol they are very interesting. I have a question in regards to age changing, and before I ask, I have nothing against age changing, I am simply curious : could you maybe expand on the age changing for exploitative reasons and what would those reasons include? Does experiencing young love only stop at love without carrying into intimacy? what if someone ages themselves down, and shifts to have both romantic and sexual experiences with minors? questions like that. Thank you for taking the time to read this!

Part 1: Fetishistic and Exploitative Reasons for Aging Down

When discussing the reasons for aging down in a Desired Reality (DR), it’s essential to acknowledge that not all intentions are ethical. Some individuals might engage in age changing with motivations that are exploitative or fetishistic. Here are specific examples:

1. Fetishizing Youthful Sexuality:

Example: A person might age themselves down specifically to engage in sexual experiences that revolve around the idea of being "young and inexperienced." Their focus is on scenarios that highlight the novelty or innocence of youth, driven by an attraction to these aspects. This is a clear example of fetishizing youth, where the motivation for shifting is to indulge in sexual fantasies centered around being younger.

2. Manipulating the Age Transition:

Example: Some individuals might script themselves to be a minor in their DR and plan to shift back to their Original Reality (OR) or change the DR as soon as they or others in that DR reach 18 or 20 years of age. The motivation here is rooted in fetishizing youth. As soon as the characters are no longer minors (18) or no longer teenagers (20), they lose interest and shift back because it no longer fulfills their fetishistic desires. This indicates an unhealthy fixation on the age transition itself rather than on a genuine experience.

Important Distinction: It’s essential to note that this is different from those who shift to a teenage-centric DR and return to their OR once the "main plot" or storyline has ended. In the latter case, the shift back is about completing a narrative or experience. Correlation does not equal causation; simply shifting back after a storyline ends is not inherently fetishistic.

3. Scripting Power Imbalances:

Example: Normally, when you shift, your awareness and maturity align with the age you have scripted in your DR. However, some individuals might script themselves to retain the awareness and mindset of an adult while being in the body of a minor. This allows them to manipulate or dominate younger characters in their DR by exploiting the power imbalance. The intention here is deeply unethical, as it involves using shifting to control or exploit others who are genuinely experiencing life as younger individuals.

4. Regressive Fetishism:

Example: A person might shift to a much younger age, such as a child or pre-teen, to engage in scenarios that involve being taken care of or infantilized in a way that aligns with regressive or age-play fetishes. Here, the focus is not on healing or reliving childhood in a meaningful way but on indulging in fetishistic fantasies that involve exaggerated age differences and power dynamics.

Part 2: Valid and Acceptable Reasons for Aging Down

In contrast, there are many legitimate, valid, and even therapeutic reasons for aging down in a DR, including for romantic or sexual reasons, provided the intent is healthy and respectful. Here are some examples:

1. Healing Past Trauma:

Example: A person might age themselves down to relive a stage of life where they experienced trauma in their Original Reality (OR). By shifting to a DR where they have a loving and supportive environment, they can heal from past wounds and experience a fulfilling, nurturing childhood or adolescence that they missed out on. This process can be deeply therapeutic, helping the shifter process and overcome their past.

2. Reliving Missed Opportunities:

Example: A shifter might choose to become a teenager in their DR to experience aspects of life they missed in their OR, such as participating in high school sports, attending prom, or forming close friendships. This intention is about exploring personal growth and enjoying life experiences that they couldn’t have in their OR, rather than focusing on relationships with minors or sexualizing the experience.

3. Exploring Innocent Young Love:

Example: Some people might age themselves down to experience the innocence of young love, which can include romantic relationships that are not centered around sexuality but rather on emotional connection and affection. The intent here is to experience or relive the purity and excitement of first loves and youthful romances, which can be a wholesome and fulfilling experience without any exploitative motives.

Extended Scenario: Some people age themselves down and script a romantic and sexual relationship that begins when they are minors or teens and continues well into adulthood. In this sense, they are not "shifting for a minor" but for a romantic relationship where they grow up with the person they love. This approach focuses on long-term connection and growth, not on fetishizing youth.

4. Nostalgia and Exploration:

Example: A shifter might age themselves down to explore a time in their life with a sense of nostalgia or curiosity. For example, they might want to experience what it would be like to go back to middle school or high school with the knowledge they have now, not to exploit others but to understand and appreciate that stage of life from a new perspective. This can include forming friendships, engaging in school activities, or simply enjoying the simplicity of youth. The intent here is reflective and exploratory, focusing on the richness of life experiences rather than on any fetishistic or exploitative motivations.

5. Long-Term Romantic Relationships:

Example: Some individuals may script a romantic and sexual relationship in their DR that begins during their teenage years and continues as both individuals grow into adulthood. The intention here is to experience a deep, enduring connection with someone as they both navigate different stages of life together. This kind of age-down scenario is focused on the development of a long-term relationship, emphasizing the journey of growing up with a loved one, rather than on any fetishistic attraction to youth.

6. Persisting Shifters with Original Intentions:

Example: Some shifters may have started scripting their DR when they were much younger, with a love interest who matched their Original Reality (OR) age at the time. Over time, even as they grew older in their OR, they continued trying to shift into this DR without giving up. Their original intention may have been to experience romance or even sexual experiences as a minor, but now, it’s more about fulfilling a long-term goal they’ve been committed to for years. Their persistence is not about fetishizing minors but about finally achieving the reality they envisioned when they were younger. It's more about fulfilling a long-standing personal desire rather than an inappropriate attraction.

Conclusion:

The distinction between valid and exploitative reasons for aging down in reality shifting is crucial and lies primarily in the intention behind the shift. Ethical reasons for age changing revolve around personal growth, healing from past trauma, exploring missed opportunities, and experiencing life stages in a meaningful, respectful manner. These motivations focus on genuine emotional connections, nostalgia, and the pursuit of long-term relationships that evolve naturally within the Desired Reality (DR).

Conversely, exploitative or fetishistic reasons involve a problematic focus on manipulating age dynamics for personal gratification, often centered around unhealthy fixations on youth, power imbalances, or regressive fantasies. Such motivations are unethical and misalign with the respectful, introspective practices that should guide reality shifting.

Ultimately, shifters must engage in deep self-reflection to ensure their actions are driven by healthy, positive intentions. By doing so, they can maintain the integrity of their shifting practice, fostering experiences that are enriching, respectful, and aligned with their personal growth and well-being.

P.S : Ultimately, this is why I don't judge people who choose to age themselves down in their desired reality (DR). If people can age themselves up for romantic or sexual reasons, why is the opposite—aging down—considered "prohibited"? This double standard shouldn't exist because, in both cases, individuals are simply shifting to a reality where they have always been a certain age.

Some are quick to "call out" shifters who age themselves down, labeling them as creeps or worse, without acknowledging that teenagers often shift to a DR where they are married with kids and then immediately shift to a DR where they have a 16-year-old high school sweetheart.

Both sides of this issue should be subject to the same level of scrutiny. In the end, every reason for shifting can be boiled down to the desire for experience. As humans, our desires for different experiences vary widely.

As I've said before, I don't care if someone who is 50, 20, or 16 decides to age themselves up or down, as long as the relationships they form in their DR are based on love, appreciation, and mutual respect. Who am I to judge? Are they harming their significant other or treating them like an object? No. Then I don't care—do what you want to do. Plus those realities are alwaredy existing those event you scripted ? they already happened are happening and will happen regardless if you shift there or not.

[mykingdomforapen]

courage of stars | a writer's commentary

It's here! The end of the fic is finally here. Oh my gosh, I cannot believe it. I'm so thankful to have gotten to write this fic and share it with you. Thank you for joining this journey with me, and for enjoying this story enough to want to read the behind the scenes. I'm really excited to shout obsessively about the thought process that went into this story, to the point where this commentary is +3k words rip.

Of course, major spoilers for the story ahead:

Original Inspiration

After finishing ‘spinning silk,’ I knew that I wanted to write a story about Cheng Xiaoshi and his mother. It took me some time to settle on how that story would play out, but the one thing I knew for sure I wanted, because this was the image that kickstarted my desire to write about them, was the idea of Cheng Xiaoshi diving into a photo and then stumbling into his mother, equally diving, who realises he is there and goes, “Little rabbit, is that you?” 

I also knew that whoever Cai Liangxing embodied would have a birthmark on their forehead, which I will get into later. 

Initially, I was going to make it a story that drew loose inspiration with the Magic Lotus Lantern story, which is about a demigod boy whose mother is stolen and trapped underneath the mountains by her godly brother, and he had to go on a quest to eventually be capable enough to break open the mountains and save her. In this story, his mother would have had some kind of photograph-related curse instead of abilities that fell upon her somehow, in which at random and uncontrolled moments, she would look upon a photograph and suddenly be sucked into it, and into the person within the photograph (not necessarily the photographer). She wouldn’t have control over it, which means it could happen at random, she can never go forward in time but backwards. Cheng Xiaoshi would have to keep diving into different photos further and further back in time to look for her, which would have led the narrative to explore different decades in Chinese history until he would find her. At one point, they would have agreed that whenever she was and whoever body’s she was in, she would bite her finger and place a small bloodied dot on her forehead so that Cheng Xiaoshi could find her. 

Slowly, though, I realised I didn’t want that to be how the story went. The dot on the forehead is in reference to a Chinese legend that I wanted to explore, and I realised that if I wanted to explore it to its full potential, the story had to go differently. So I scrapped the tumbling down into time idea and leaned more into this legend. This is how the legend goes: there was once a young prince who loved his partner, but something arose (intruders, I think) in which she was fatally wounded. As he held her in his arms and wept, she bit her finger until it bled and painted a small dot on his forehead and said, when I’m reborn, I will have this birthmark on my forehead. I will find you again. And then she dies. 

Many years passed, and the prince became the king. As king, he one day met a young man with a birthmark on his forehead and realised that this was his lover reincarnated. Of course, the young man did not retain any of those memories, but the king showed him great favor and took him in as his own, and eventually the young man grew to become the king’s trusted advisor. However, this young man slowly became corrupt, his allegiances were elsewhere, and it eventually became evident that he was a traitor to the kingdom and to the king. With a mournful heart, the king ultimately executed this young man. 

I wanted this idea of someone Cheng Xiaoshi loved being in the body of someone else, but who is losing themselves entirely until they are someone who causes Cheng Xiaoshi harm. I replaced reincarnation with the Cheng family’s photo hopping abilities, and eventually (and might I say, through tremendous and late-night efforts lol) developed SUn Yihan, the one who really had to carry the story’s stakes. I also knew that I still wanted this story to be deeply tied to Chinese modern history, and so Sun Yihan’s backstory was the way it was. 

There were three scenes I knew for sure I wanted to write, that really propelled the direction of the story: 

1) “Little rabbit, is that you?” 

2) Cai Liangxing, knowing of Lu Guang’s abilities, speaking to him through a photograph, and 

3) the scene in heaven of Cheng Xiaoshi and his parents, “Oh, Yinhe, he’s so beautiful.” 

I just knew I wanted to keep these concepts in and write them in whatever way possible. 

I also would be remiss if I didn't mention the song from which the title of the fic originated. Also, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that its music video left an indelible mark on me, and is probably from where the imagery in the final chapter drew inspiration!

Epigraph

The epigraph for this story is one of the most famous poems from Li Bai, a Chinese Tang dynasty poet. It’s so famous, in fact, that I hesitated to use it because it’s famous to the point of cheesy. Elementary school children recite it, it’s one of the first poems you will learn in any Chinese language class. It’s very simple, and yet the themes just felt fitting. 

Here it is again in Chinese: 

床前明月光

疑是地上霜

举头望明月

低头思故乡

Here is its English translation: 

Before my bed lies a pool of moon bright I could imagine that it's frost on the ground I look up and see the bright shining moon Bowing my head I am thinking of home

The moon is such a crucial symbol in this story, and Chinese literature/art is FLUSH with moon imagery. This one I felt to be really fitting because I felt it reflected Cheng Xiaosh and Lu Guang all at once. Cheng Xiaoshi’s relationship with the poem a little more in its literal meaning, in that his mother had told him in the beginning of the story to look at the moon when she is gone because Mama Rabbit is always looking after him. And how, as Cheng Xiaoshi walked to the forest to his death, he looked at the moon and saw it for what it meant, rather than what it was, to draw courage from it. 

Lu Guang’s relationship to this poem is more tied to its context. Li Bai was writing this from a place of reflecting on filial piety. The inspiration from which he wrote it was imagining a Confucian scholar in the employment of the emperor who misses his hometown on Mid-Autumn Festival. It’s almost a little too on the nose for Lu Guang, isn’t it? Haha. 

Sun, Moon, and Stars

When I first wrote the opening of “courage of stars,” with Cheng Xiaoshi and his parents stargazing on their last night together, I honestly expected that to be the extent of celestial bodies’ presence in the story. All I had asked from it was for the stars, representative of his parents, to reflect that myth of stars being long dead but their light still reaches us. In this scant use of the motif of the heavens, light still represented love. 

In fact, the mention of Mid-Autumn Festival aligning with CXS’ death scene was just for my fun, since his death might coincide with Mid-Autumn on any given year (albeit not any year that the story could logically take place, but we’re assuming that they live in an alternate earth anyway hahaha). It felt like it would be fun to make the slowly filling moon reflect the passage of time that draws closer to CXS’ death day. In short, the sun and the moon were really meant to be somewhat melancholic motifs, and not much more.

Also, I liked to draw a through line between Cai Liangxing and Chang’E, the legend of the moon goddess. In order to protect her husband’s magic, Chang’E consumed a magical pill that a cruel man was trying to steal, which made her levitate all the way up to the moon. She kept the villain from taking the pills, but in turn she was trapped on that moon with no way to come down for the rest of eternity. Much like…

But the more that I wrote, the more that my appreciation for the moon and what it could symbolize really took root, particularly in the moment where CXS and LG reconcile after their painful conflict. Chapter 7 is really precious to me because I wanted to write a reconciliation between best friends that showed them in all their messiness and earnestness. I wanted these two best friends to be confronted with the shortcomings and pitfalls of each other and their own ability to love, and to still be able to comfort each other. I think for me, I err on the side of writing a friendship love in an idolizing way, putting it on a pedestal as the Ultimate Source of Love, when that isn’t really sustainable. CXS and LG aren’t going to be perfect friends to each other. They’re going to be messy and selfish and their love for each other will not be complete. But it is still precious. 

So when I wrote the last scene of them in LG’s bedroom, forgiving each other, the moon motif struck me. I thought about how the moon, in its pearly luminescence, is really reflecting the light of the sun. It glows, it is gorgeous, it is the stuff of poems and music, and it is in truth a reflection. My writing is really guided by my faith, and I often think of the line from the musical Les Miserables: “To love another person is to see the face of God.” My experience with love and with faith has often been best described as that we people are riverbeds, receiving and outpouring love to one another whose source is the Living Water. So when I wrote about the moon, it just…clicked. Ah, it’s a fountain. From the sun, to the moon, to the earth. Light as water as love. Cheng Xiaoshi shines with love to Lu Guang, but he doesn’t have to have the pressure or the burden of being Lu Guang’s only source of it. They are both joyful, earnest riverbeds, whose imperfections are not enough to stop the flow of love coming to one another.

After that, it really guided me in my writing, especially as we reached the climaxes, and Mid-Autumn approaching. The filling moon, and the holiday, still held this ominous tone to them because they do still indicate Cheng Xiaoshi’s coming death day. But, much like the memories of other motifs in this story, painful imagery also live alongside hopeful and encouraging ones. The full moon that terrified Lu Guang is also the moon that lit Cheng Xiaoshi’s way and followed him, symbolically, when he was afraid. We all go through journeys in life where none of our loved ones can follow us all the way, physically or emotionally, whether because they leave or because they simply cannot. Only we can feel the heartache in our own chest, even when someone is holding our hand. In that moment, as loved as Cheng Xiaoshi is by his friends, he must take this journey to his death alone. His own mother had literally forgotten him. But the moon, sunlight reflected, this story’s motif for love and courage and mercy, followed him every step of the way. 

Frogs/Corpse Pond

Frog Guang has become such an icon from this fic that I feel like I must make a little section for the frogs! 

When I was writing ‘spinning silk,’ there was a moment where Lu Guang is reliving his childhood and there’s a moment where he is with his grandfather, and he’s showing his grandfather a fat frog that he found. It was a throwaway line, and I do not intend for the universe of silk to be the same as stars (for the most part, I intend for each of my fics to all be of different universes, not even different timelines, but they simply cannot coexist), and there are differences in each Yeye’s backstories. But that throwaway line did plant that idea in my head that Lu Guang loved frogs, to carry over into ‘stars.’ 

I’m not a frog aficionado myself, although this headcanon has made me a lot fonder of them. I am ever thankful to Rulos who knows much more about frogs than me and told me frog facts and types to flesh out Lu Guang’s favor for them. But I do have an echo of frogs in my own family history. When my grandmother was pregnant with my father, this was during the famine years and she was like, 36kg/81lbs. There just wasn’t a lot of food! So she ate frogs that came from the pond in her neighborhood to supplement her nutrition. That was a story she told us and it stuck to me ever since, especially because said pond is one I am very fond of in my own life. For, of course, very different reasons than hers. Which leads me to my next subsection…

Hunger

The motif of hunger vs abundance came almost naturally, as a result of the frogs. One of my readers (I see you Juno) aptly noticed the juxtaposition between Lu Guang having a love for frogs that his grandparents ate out of desperation, and I was so excited that they saw that because that’s exactly what I was trying to capture. Hunger vs abundance. Starvation in Yeye’s anecdotes, and even Sun Yihan’s adulthood (for my parents’ generation, it was indeed so rare to eat chicken that it would only ever be eaten on New Year), compared to Cheng Xiaoshi and Lu Guang basically having tons of snacks and meals in every chapter. And then, the way that hunger can really make people go impulsive and reckless and foolish. I know I make some dumb decisions when hungry just to fill my stomach. Anecdotes of people in horrible situations, be it in war or genocide or famine, hurting or killing others just to have a small bite to eat. Cheng Xiaoshi was so, so hungry for want of his mother that he betrayed Lu Guang. Sun Yihan/Ye Ci, starving for lack of a father figure and a sense of belonging in the world, betrayed his mother. Remember that you have been hungry, too. 

Names

I was very excited about the fact that I could make each chapter name of ‘stars’ correlate to a name, or to a meaning of a name/name-adjacent, because names really do play such a big role in this story. For one, plot-wise it is what put Cheng Xiaoshi in so much danger. Cai Liangxing and Cheng Yinhe’s names being oh so symbolic. Cheng Xiaoshi’s and Lu Guang’s childhood nicknames become almost motifs in and of themselves. And of course, Sun Yihan’s chosen name marking him as a punishment versus his secret, lost birth name of Ye Ci (which shares a character with the word ‘mercy.’) 

Also I want to emphasize that whenever he talked about him, Grandpa Lu always referred to Sun Yihan by the family name (Sun zai) because I didn’t want him to really interact or acknowledge his self-given name of Yihan. As he always said before, Grandpa Lu has no regrets meeting SYH, and he wishes SYH would not either. 

And I do love when a name is thematic. Cheng Xiaoshi naming Lu Guang’s new frog ‘Cassini’ is so important to me. 

Alternate Scenes/Ideas

Yeye was originally going to have abilities! His abilities would have something to do with being able to see a room in the past, so time traveling within a confined space of a room. He would have been able to use the traditional art of paper cutting that, if you pin it onto the wall, you would be able to see what had occurred in the room during the past (although, not necessarily able to interact with it). I did want to try to create a power for him where one could interact with the past, but then realised it would get messy and also would be very ironic of Lu Guang to be so adamant about his time scruple. The wall art magic would have been the original way that LG and CXS find out about CXS’ father’s death–witnessing it, not so much living through it. Sorry, CXS.

Lu Guang initially was supposed to be able to talk directly with Cai Liangxing while she was in the past. So LG was actually going to be the person to tell CLX that CXS has an unchangeable death node, and they would have come to some kind of agreement that they would do everything in their power to save him. Something about his abilities combining with Yeye’s would have made that possible, however I scrapped it because I couldn’t think of a way to do it elegantly, and that would stay true to the rules of the magic/universe. 

Qiao Ling at one point would have tried to use her abilities to look into a photo of Cai Liangxing, and would notice that when she peeked into Cai Liangxing’s mind, it would be exactly the same as when she would try to peek into Sun Yihan’s, thus emphasizing that the two have molded into one person. 

Sun Yihan was actually going to be something of a serial killer. He would have murdered young men with the surname Cheng in order to absorb Cheng Xiaoshi’s abilities, albeit he doesn’t know if he found the right Cheng Xiaoshi or not. Scrapped because I realised that would lean him towards villainy, which wasn’t what I ultimately wanted for his character, so…serial kidnapping. 

On that note, Cheng Xiaoshi would hae been recruited by Captain Xiao to dive into the photo of one of the victims to find out who the killer was. Upon discovering that it was SYH, LG would have panicked at him to get out and that would be how they realised SYH is hunting CXS down and for what reason he was killing all these young guys. I ultimately took all the tension I wanted from such a scene and put it into CXS diving into his father. 

CXS was initially going to get kidnapped by SYH (no Lu Guang as bait) and forced into experiments, which would lead him to dive into SYH’s mother at one point. He would inherit her emotions towards her son. I scrapped it when I reasoned that she probably would not have had any chance to take a photo between getting accused and getting killed. 

Fanart

I am so blessed to have artists share fanart of the fic with me. I wanted to put them all in one place, and will continue to add to this doc as I know one of my commissioned pieces from Sunny will be posted sometime later today. Thank you so much for everyone for sharing their imagination and vision of this little world with me. I'm so touched. Everyone please please please feast your eyes on these arts and show the artist love!!

PM_Paint

@sailboat-sparrow 1, 2

Blepps

@quarriart Quarri

@sgdlr-asdfghjkl Niebo

intothefrisson (sunny)

Thank you...

I just want to dedicate this space to say a HUGE thank you to my wonderful beta and dear friend, @fluffy-rulos. Rulos was cheering me on as I wrote this monster of a fic, tracked the mystery for me, gave me suggestions and feedback that helped me make the fic better, and of course, gave me all the frog facts for Frog Guang. I am so thankful for her and this story wouldn’t be the same without her. This story took about five months to write, writing for almost every single day of the week, and I don’t know how I would have made it this far without her encouragement and excitement. Thank you for joining me on this adventure my friend!! 

And thank you to everyone who stayed with the fic from beginning to end. I really hope you liked it and enjoyed reading the behind the scenes. I'll miss you all <3.

[ryuichirou]

AzuIde Marriage AU replies

A couple of replies related to the comic we posted yesterday + a reply for a pretty old ask from back when we posted the comic on Ko-Fi! Since the comic is finally edited properly and posted here, I can actually write a proper reply.

Thank you for your patience, and thanks to everyone for your interest!

Anonymous asked:

Can I just say how much I adore your design for adult azul? It just hits all the marks, the round glasses with chain? Yes! White suit? Yes! Hairstyle? fucking yes!

Thank you so much, Anon!!

Round glasses work super well with Azul’s face, he looks like even more of a villain somehow lol So I love making him wear those. And I am such a sucker for horrible people wearing white suits (it’s like a trauma from my Yami no Matsuei days). I am very happy you like this design for Azul!

In-universe though, I think Azul is very careful with what he wears and how he accessorses himself, so every one of his decisions is very intentional.

Anonymous asked:

Is Azul still going to be mad at Idia when they get home? Will he dole out punishment?

Partially replied here, as well as gave some more explanation about what actually happened (there isn’t much though because the story is very vague), and I’ll repost that explanation just in case! <3

Here is what I can say for certain: after being separated from Idia for quite a long time, Azul is going to kind of take care of him, as in “it’s okay, you’ve suffered enough” kind of way; but Idia is smart enough to know that this is just Azul trying to make Idia rely on him again, so he could shut the cage door and trap him once and for all. Azul is also very good at victimblaming, manipulating and gaslighting + has will-power that Idia doesn’t always have, so even if Idia knows that Azul’s kindness isn’t genuine (Azul never forgets those who betray him), he is powerless to change anything at this point. He just wants him and Ortho to be safe, and Ortho wants it too. So even though Ortho technically could blast Azul and the Tweels’ asses, Azul is perfectly aware of this risk, so he uses a different approach on Ortho. After all, Ortho is a smart boy + he and Azul have the same goal: they want Idia to be happy, right? It’s easier to do it while working together instead of fighting!

Anyways, Azul scary and powerful, and at this point in the story he has a lot of useful connections including STYX and probably even Idia’s parents. A lot more strings to manipulate the events in a way that would portray him as a forgiving and loving saint, but still ensure that Idia never leaves him again.

And after this position is secured, then he might start punishing Idia. But in a way that is very subtle to everyone around them, but painfully obvious for Idia.

So a TL;DR answer would be: yes, Azul is still mad, but he won’t punish him right away. He’ll act like a sweet and caring husband for a while (Idia won’t buy that bs), and when he gets tired of that act, he’ll start punishing Idia in a sneaky way.

As for what kind of punishment it would be…

Anonymous asked:

I remember the general punishments Azul would dish out to Idia from the original dark headcanons post but in a recent post, you said that when Azul punishes Idia in this case it would be in a way that no one would notice. Do you have any headcanons about these punishments? 😀

(Once again, sorry for the wait, Anon!)

I do have some thoughts! But when it comes to these kinds of scenario, it’s a bit difficult to come up with headcanons because I feel like no matter what I come up with, Azul would’ve came up with something more cunning, more sinister, more subtle and more cruel. So take whatever I’m about to write and keep in mind that it could be x3 times worse lol Azul is very bad when he feels rejected.

Azul would control the entire narrative of what has happened between them. He would play his cards in a way that would make everyone believe that Idia left him seemingly out of nowhere, and that this is just Idia causing trouble due to being bad at interacting with people. He will even manage to fool S.T.Y.X. people and their ex-classmates into thinking that yeah, Azul is notoriously pretty sleazy and cunning, but he seems to be genuinely in love with Idia: ever since that accident he’s been all over him, protecting him, taking care of him, even skipping work (!!!) to be with him. “Maybe even Azul has a heart, who would’ve thought”, “I guess it really was Idia’s mess-up…”, “He is such a good husband, Idia needs to appreciate him more”…

At the same time, Azul would defend Idia in front of all these people whenever someone would even hint at Idia hurting Azul’s feelings. He would insist that Idia is completely forgiven, and that it would be incredibly petty to worry about this little thing when he almost lost him. Azul might even say that the Universe has given them a second chance, and that this time Azul will make everything right just so Idia doesn’t feel the need to run from him anymore. What an angel you are, Azul Ashengrotto! Idia would feel like he is losing his mind hearing these conversations. It would be overwhelming and so horribly isolating, he’d feel like he can’t talk to anyone about anything anymore. His social anxiety would actually become way worse.

And yet, Azul would force him to come out more often. Together, of course. He would walk with him (Idia wouldn’t be able to walk properly by himself for a couple of months during his recovery), bring him to events (“You are probably very bored and lonely, let’s visit our friends at [company name], shall we?”). Not only it would make Idia see a huge swarm of people discussing his every move, he would constantly feel eyes on him because Azul would become more clingy in public. He would constantly hold his hand and kiss it, kiss his face and lips, bring him closer while hugging his shoulders, etc. PDA was never Azul’s style, but now it feels like he is showcasing their love to everyone and cementing their status as a hopeful young couple that is together against all odds. This would make all the social pressure on Idia absolutely unbearable. It feels like a walk of shame…

It’s not like the situation at home would be any better, mind you. Azul being sweet with Idia would make him feel even more anxious because it’s one thing to act all nice in front of people to save face, but when they’re all alone, it feels like Azul is preparing something, something big and horrible, and Idia would feel this anticipation so vividly every second around him. Azul would just smile and say that Idia is being paranoid and overly suspicious of him, and that it’s actually very hurtful. Azul would barely hide his smile because he hasn’t done anything yet, and Idia already looks like a caged animal with fear in his eyes. He wants him to marinate in this fear more, even if it breaks his psyche completely.

Azul would start gaslighting Idia into thinking that his health is declining, both mental and physical. He would act very protective and caring, he’ll even manage to make Idia believe that he is genuinely scared for his well-being at some point. The amount of unnecessary potions and drugs he would make Idia consume both sneakily and openly is insane. He might even do that toxic husband thing and pay a therapist to make them tell him everything Idia was talking about to them during the session… if he managed to make Ortho make Idia go to the therapist, that is (no way he’d manage to make Idia go himself).  

He would guilt-trip Idia a lot. Even though Idia doesn’t love him, Azul would still manage to make him feel bad for leaving Azul like this. Even if Idia knows that Azul is playing games with him, he would feel guilty all the time, but this isn’t even the worst thing. What is much worse is that sometimes Azul just sighs and goes “I didn’t want it to bring this up because I know how bad it is for you, but…” and drops the bomb about Idia putting Ortho in danger again. Blaming Idia for harming Ortho (intentionally being vague, knowing that it would reopen old wounds) is another thing that Azul would never usually do, but right now he’s spiteful, angry and genuinely wants to hurt Idia as much as he can. Even if Idia doesn’t care about Azul and wants to run away again, would it really be the best move for Ortho? He barely survived the accident, after all.

Idia isn’t the only person Azul would guilt-trip. He would also guilt-trip Ortho who feels very responsible for everything that’s happened to Idia. He would’ve easily sensed that Azul is lying, but it seems that even a machine could be messed with if the most important person in its life is hurt. Like I mentioned in another reply, Azul would make Ortho feel like they want the same thing and should work together. Of course Ortho would feel like he is betraying Idia in a way, but he would still cooperate because of his guilt + feeling that giving Azul full access to everything that Idia does online would make Idia more safe and happier somehow.

[axnewxera]

// I've been deep in thought the last few days about Rufus and his character. I just started this blog and I'm still fleshing out my muse in my head.

So. I'mma dump some of my headcanon on the character, and this WILL affect how I RP him and this WILL get long and ranty.

(I'm sorry if the format is wonky, I'm laying in bed on mobile. Also spoilers of pretty much all FF7 media ahoy)

In the original game (and arguably in different levels in other media since then), Rufus is definitely presented as a villain.

His big introduction in the original game has him giving off this big speech to the party about how his father was too soft on the world with propaganda and narrative control and intended to instead rule through fear and intimidation. He stages a public execution of our party members late in the game. He tries to take Cid's plane instead of reviving the space program. He sent Cait Sith to act as a Shinra spy on our party (or at least was aware of this, as the Turks actively follow Cait Sith's intel). He bankrolled Avalanche to essentially backstab his father! He's very manipulative and deceitful and you can never quite trust him!

But honestly..... Nothing he's actually done has me convinced that he was ever actually a bad guy.

Yes, he SAYS how bad he is when you first meet him in the original. He definitely seems to WANT to be the big villain of the series. But Sephiroth's greater threat to the planet aside... Rufus is just not that guy.

Is Shinra, Inc. evil? Oh hell yeah. Heidegger, Scarlet? Yup. Hojo? LOL

But almost IMMEDIATELY after becoming president, Rufus started suppressing Heidegger and (presumably) Scarlet. Heidegger seemed to be THE dude for President Shinra. The two were very much in alignment in their goals and methods. And Rufus lowers him by berating him and never taking him seriously. Not to mention the fact that he basically started an eco-terrorist group to get his heartless evil father gone.

Even though he starts off saying how little the common people mean to him, his goals from very early on are to protect the world from Sephiroth, and to spearhead the effort to find the Promised Land. Even his execution of Barrett and Tifa is an attempt to comfort the people (and, I suspect, to draw Cloud out of hiding) - but he never seems too upset that they escaped the attempt. Or that Cait Sith remains on the party after his usefulness as a spy was over.

He comes off as arrogant and tricky, he sure does some mean things... but his intentions are noble, and his known tendency to play both sides of any conflict - secretly funding Avalanche, secretly funding the World Regenesis Organization, whatever amazing shenanigans are going on in the remakes with Wutai and Viceroy Sarruf - has me doubting that the "evil" stuff like the execution were even intended to actually take place. He's pulling strings to get people where he wants them.

Rufus can't just SAY what he wants. Advent Children is a good example - his intentions are much more openly "good", but no one believes him and there's all this doubt and "What is he really up to?" that swirl around his character. When it counted, he seemed surprisingly honest, yet it just pushed Cloud away.

If he came out as the president of this huge evil corporation and laid out his noble intentions to the world, everyone would doubt him every step of the way and his plans would never get done. Not to mention the very likely possibility that Heidegger and Scarlet and whatever supporters President Shinra still had would stage some sort of coup against him in that event. He still has to be a Shinra. So he does it to play the game, give the world or sometimes our party a villain to unite against, and get things done.

I also think Rufus sees HIMSELF as a villain, even though his intentions are pure. He's a Shinra, after all, and was raised by his father to be this heartless embodiment of pride and corporation. All that lying and manipulating and double-dealing leaves a mark on the psyche. He is fully comfortable presenting himself as the villain because he believes that's who he is, but he disagrees with his father's goals and methods so much that he actively sabotages himself.

I'm not sure if any of this was the writers' actual intent or if it's just all my interpretation, buuuuuut that's the fun of RP right? Getting to dig deeper and assign your own spin on the character.

[snakeeyesdraws]

Overly Analyzing; Favourite Scene in Bowser's Inside Story

Well, analyzing is a bit of a stretch. I moreso just want to highlight my favourite small interaction from this game!

After the main incident that kickstarts the plot of this game, which is Bowser inhaling most of our main cast (no, I'm not kidding. Bowser's Inside Story is a literal title LOL) we control Mario as he tries to find the others.

After reuniting with Starlow, the first person he finds, of course, is Luigi. And yes, this is what inside of Bowser looks like. Just don't think too hard on it.

Luigi jumps back up, takes a couple of glances around their current predicament, and...

-immediately bursts into tears and falls onto his knees, clinging onto Mario. Aww.

Very clear example of Luigi being prone to crying when overwhelmed! But of course, there's no judgement on Mario's end. Hell, the moment isn't even really played for laughs narrative wise, considering Starlow doesn't chime in until after the fact.

Instead, we just get Mario being happy to comfort Luigi. He holds him back and gently pats him while he cries. Mario doesn't think any less of Luigi for have a brief emotional breakdown; they're in a scary and unfamiliar situation! Most people would be rattled and upset, especially someone who is as anxious and scares easily like Luigi, but he at least has someone to comfort him. It's a very sweet moment.

In the remake this scene is largely the same, albeit with different graphics. They do add one cute detail which I find very fun.

The scene is interrupted by some enemies spawning. In the remake, Mario straightens up and repeatedly taps Luigi's back, noticeably quicker than the gentle pats he was giving earlier, to get his attention.

We get a very quick reaction animation of Luigi turning his head while still holding onto Mario, which I just find, so cute. It's a very blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but it's attention to detail that adds some good personality that I adore out of this series.

Link to the scene in the original Bowser's Inside Story game

Link to the scene in the remake

[kickedin17]

I saw your post about potential clancybearer fics, and oh boy, I have so many thoughts about Torchbearer in particular that got me writing way too much fic. Because yes the inherent tragedy of Clancy's character is already so fascinating but there's just something about being the person responsible for leading a martyr to their fate that has me Obsessed with Torch as a concept.

And the way that some videos imply some kind of relationship between them on top of that?? Is he more than allegory? Does he want to do this? I have so many questions, all of them probably have sad answers. I love those two, and would be very happy to see potential fics 👍

Ouhhhhhh yeah Torch is so complicated and I wish we got more from his perspective within the actual lore (maybe if we do actually get another album next year to finish up the story it'll include him more?? Hopefully??) but the nice thing about not knowing much about him is there's so much free space to speculate lol

Like I'm so curious what his situation is irt Dema, was he originally a citizen who successfully escaped (which means escaping the cycle is possible)? Or has he always been on the outside and if so what is wider bandito culture like, beyond their efforts to save Dema citizens and eventually defeat the Bishops? I'm still not fully clear on whether Clancy and Torch knew each other prior to the point where we start the story w/ the Trench cycle. It certainly seems like they did, at the very least Clancy seems to have known the banditos existed and coordinated an escape with them, but when/where did he meet Torch & at what point did Torch become this guiding force for Clancy? And like you said his role is basically to aid Clancy in martyrdom. Is that something they agreed upon or is it something Torch is just doing because he either believes it needs to be done or knows he can't persuade Clancy otherwise (or some other reason)?

I don't remember if it's a theory or actually confirmed but I like the idea that the fake Torchbearers Clancy sees during the SAI era up to the Navigating MV are actually projections of some kind intentionally sent by Torch to remind Clancy to keep fighting/to find his way back to the banditos, which is also how Torch knew where to find Clancy on voldsoy. Which obviously raises the question of how Torch is able to do something like that. Some altered form of psychokinesis maybe?

The more I think about it the more I think Torch's presence and guidance in Clancy's life is essential to him becoming the "prodigal son" of sorts who can be controlled by the Bishops while he's still alive, harness their psychokinesis without being one of them (probably), and ultimately be the one who can face them. Something something "I can't be alone" or whatever. I think Clancy was always fated to "wake up" to the realities of Dema in such a way that would prime him to destroy it, but I don't think he could do it without Torch.

I also really don't think Torch is fake or has been dead the whole time or whatever. If anything I would think he's just aware he's in a story and knows what role he has to play in it, even if it's hard or ends in tragedy. Because as far as we know, since we don't have his perspective yet, everything he's done so far the whole narrative has been orchestrated and intentional. We don't know how much he knows about the Bishops and everything prior to Clancy finding it all out, but at the very least he always knows where and how to find Clancy (maybe he just has an insane catboy radar lmao). Which is so interesting and sad!!!!! Love a guy who's haunted by the narrative. Fingers crossed he isn't also doomed by it. I really don't think he is but you never know

Idk if any of this rambling made sense lmao I'm just ponderin. Thank u for fueling me

[furbygoblinxiv]

For Inktober, I like doing personal challenges. This year? That challenge is gonna be detailing out some of the media rewrites/aus that I have laying around, compiling my ideas into one spot.

First up! Miraculous Ladybug! A show I stopped watching after 2 seasons but kept up with tangentially lol. I used to have a lot of ideas and expectations for this show, but sadly never had those fulfilled. I will likely never post anything Miraculous related again btw.

More rewrite info, elaboration, and the villain picture below! Warning you tho, this is like a personal archival post for me, so the following is Very Long, like 3k words. You've been warned.

if this makes no sense then actually yes it does anyways

So! This idea originates from how I found out about Miraculous Ladybug. I saw art of it, I googled it, and the Wikipedia page filled my head with so many ideas that are never expanded upon in the show. Marinette is a fashion student and a hero! That love for fashion would be such a fun thing to bake into her character and the world! And yet while they up something like that in the show, it's never fully realized. Hence, rewrite.

The basic frame of how my Miraculous AU rewrite (that's been cooking since like season 3 i suppose) would be based on the idea of logos, pathos, and ethos. Marinette as being logos, the brains of the operation, the solver of puzzles. Adrien being pathos, the empathetic and playful one, in tune with the emotions of others. And Gabriel, with ethos, having immense credibility due to his status and wealth. I kinda tweaked their characters and the plot to reflect this focus on how they're three parts of the same narrative. Also, Adrien and Marinette are highschoolers.

First up, Marinette! I wanted to fully lean into her being a fashion student. While she does have friends and hobbies, her passion that she spends all her free time on is fashion. She knits, sews, crochets, and weaves to make clothes. She even volunteers for the local community theater making their costumes in order to get experience! She's not really a games or media nerd, or else she'd do cosplay, but she definitely helps others like Alya with their cosplays. She really like the technical aspects of fashion, and she's quite good at having an eye for things around it. She could eyeball someones measurements pretty accurately if she needs to tailor something for them, guessing their height and wingspan with ease. As Marinette, she's a bit of a scatterbrain when she isn't focused on something she's innately interested in (like clothes). She's fidgety and forgetful and rambling, and can get loud when she's passionate about something. She has her own systems of organization, which from the outside appear to be completely random and scattered.

As Ladybug, she's cool and confident and in control. She enjoys using her skills and brains to help people, and the work of saving Paris is just another puzzle that she needs to solve to help everyone. She settles down when focused, a feature that's reflected as Marinette. Her Ladybug outfit is different every time she transforms, the fashioning of the outfits reflecting her moods and mindset at the time of transformation. Her eye for technical fashion stuff comes in handy. In this au, the villains that Hawkmoth sends after Ladybug are completely unrecognizable due to how over the top their costuming is. Ladybug is able to use both her logical deduction skills and critical fashion eye to deduce who might have been transformed, and use that knowledge of them to formulate plans to pacify and save them. While she loves being able to use her deduction skills to save people, she prefers being the brains BEHIND the operation, and thus tends to avoid the press and public appearances where she can.

Also, something I think would be fun and would give Marinette a connection to Gabriel and play on her fashion interests would be if she actually managed to land a role as his intern. I feel like this would give them a dynamic thats like the opposite one to the lovesquare dilemma. Marinette sees Gabriel as her cool mysterious aloof competent boss who she respects and wants to imitate, and Ladybug hates Hawkmoth and resents what he keeps doing to Paris. Gabriel, while definitely viewing himself as above Marinette, does respect the work and ideas that she brings in. Meanwhile as Hawkmoth hes like plotting Ladybug's downfall. It'd also open up plotlines that include Gabriel as Gabriel as opposed to Hawkmoth, as well as more Marinette and Chloe interactions, since Chloe is a prominent model in the agency.

Also she owns a cat that acts lowkey like Plagg but lazier.

Next up is Adrien! Adrien is a normal human boy in this au, btw. I'm gonna explain his back story more in depth than Mari's since I didn't change too much about hers. He was raised by two rich famous parents, with Emilie being the one generally in charge of what he did. Under her direction, he was home schooled, learned music, and learned dance. She was artistically inclined, and wished to refine his skills in the arts, hoping he would be a cultured figure in the future. He also occasionally modeled for Gabriel, but that was more of a once a month type of deal, and he had plenty of free time to watch movies and play video games. He never left the house. While both of his parents worked frequently, he saw Gabriel less often, and viewed him as more of a distant influencing force in his life that he respected.

Then, not too long ago, Emilie fell into a seemingly permanent coma, which caused the rift between father and son to grow even more distant. Suddenly, Gabriel was spending even less time in the house, and the person who was directing Adrien's free time and education was gone, and neither pursued any therapy types of resources. Adrien spent some time grieving his not even fully dead mom while alone at home before Gabriel decided to change things. He started pushing Adrien to model even more, in a twisted attempt to spend more time around his son and ensure he kept him safe and supervised. He also promoted Natalie to his own personal assistant, giving her full reign over what happened to Adrien and their estate. While she cared for Adrien, she was never fully able to reach him on his level, especially following Gabriel's orders.

It actually ended up being Chloe, a girl he met while modeling, who became his first friend and actually started trying to drag him out of his depression. She watched movies with him, supported him at photo shoots, and most importantly, she actually listened to him and what he wanted. Under her questioning, he realized that what he wanted to do in the future was become a teacher. She's the one who pushed for him to go to public school, both so she could have a friend there and so that he could have more opportunities to pursue this dream. So long as he shows up to model, Natalie actually ends up lying and saying he's being homeschooled in order to cover for Adrien going to public school. For public appearances on tv, he acts like the perfect extrovert, but he's actually a quiet and reserved introvert, which is how he acts at school.

Chat Noir is an extension of Adrien's play at being an extrovert. He's also Adrien having the chance to let go of the guilt and the strings attached to all of his public appearances he does for his father. As Chat Noir he's a performer! He has showmanship! He's having fun and cracking puns! He also uses it as a chance to get out all his pent up jittery energy from being inside and inactive most of the time, especially in terms of talking to people. I want him to love talking to people, chatting with the random citizens of Paris, wanting to meet and get to know everyone. He's just a little stir crazy from being inside and isolated for so many years. He's also the one who willingly and happily does all the press appearances that Ladybug tends to avoid, which he has fun at due to being able to say whatever under the mask of anonymity. Also, after some time as Chat Noir and realizing how much he enjoys performing as this eccentric and energetic character, he ends up using some of his precious free time to go join the local community theater.

Also, Emilie had a little yapper purse dog that Adrien ends up taking on once she's comatose, because I think it'd be funny.

And now for the villains, all of whom have something to do with status wealth and credibility because of it, and side characters:

Gabriel is a well known and well respected man in the fashion industry and in Paris. He spends all his time away from home, focused on his job and furthering his fashion empire and career. His wife was also a prominent public figure and a working woman, and while he loved her, he didn't spend enough time with her. In her youth, Emilie was actually a villain with the peacock miraculous that she stole in her youth, with Gabriel being a hero with the butterfly miraculous who opposed her when he stumbled across it by accident. They fell in love and gave up their miraculouses, especially after the peacock got damaged. However, Emilie used it as a last ditch effort to stop a home invasion and save Adrien, and even that one transformation was enough to damage her body and lead to her going into a coma (this attack is also what led to Gorilla getting hired). Gabriel was determined to get her back, so hired a team of specialized doctors to care for her and keep her stable while he donned the butterfly miraculous to try to find and take the mythical ladybug and chat miraculouses that Emilie had told him about so many years before in order to wish her back to health.

See, while I like the drama of Adrien not knowing where his mom is and one day being able to stumble across her preserved corpse in the basement, if Emilie is a public figure and disappears, there'd be a manhunt for her. If she's said to enter a coma? Not only is there no manhunt, but Gabriel gets a perfectly curated tragic image to garner sympathy and support from the public, and Adrien has the opportunity for angsty moments of visiting his mother in the hospital

Hawkmoth is the form he dawns when hunting down the miraculouses. His outfits are over the top flamboyant runway style outfits, with his face obscured in abstract ways with each transformation. His lair is actually his office at work, not in his basement, part of the reason why he started spending even more time at work after the "death" of Emilie. Having to keep up the appearances of being at work is why he starts sending off akumatized people as scouts to do his work for him. Specifically, he uses his targets as bait to get the magic box holder to distribute the the ladybug and cat miraculouses in order to combat the problems he's causing. As things progress, however, and he gets more info on the powers, routines, and profiles of the miraculous holders, he gradually starts making more in person appearances as Hawkmoth.

Natalie started off as Gabriel's work assistant, who had worked with his company since graduating college. She had immense amounts of reverence and respect for both him and Emilie, and he in return had immense amounts of respect for her. After Emilie fell ill, he promoted her specifically to his personal assistant, giving her parts of the responsibilities that Emilie had in the company as well as over Adrien at home. At first, she takes her role over Adrien incredibly seriously, not really listening to him in favor of filling out Gabriel's orders. Over time, however, she finds herself getting incredibly attached to Adrien, wanting to connect with and help him wherever she can. She doesn't always understand him or his moods or his interests, but she cares for him nonetheless. It's after this point that she accidentally learns about Gabriel's identity as Hawkmoth. Since he trusts and respects her, he offers her to join him, though she knows she doesn't really have a choice. She ends up joining him and not voicing her concerns, determined to stay on his good side in order to continue being able to be there for and support Adrien. She still has respect for Gabriel at this point, especially once he explains his motive, but as time goes on, her motivations and allegiances become more and more muddled.

Chloe is another villain of credibility, but lessso. I really liked Chloe as a character, so I wanted to do a take that gave her more depth. Chloe's mother is an international superstar, and her father was a peer of Emilie's who died when Chloe was young. Chloe's mother married the mayor of Paris not too long after that. Chloe has grown up in an environment of money, privilege, and nepotism. She got into modeling work at a young age because she wanted to become famous and show off how beautiful she was, and her dream is to become just like her mother one day. Due to her upbringing, she looks down on those she sees as beneath her, but is actually incredibly kind to those she sees as equals. I wanted to kind of paint her as a foil to Adrien. Both have a distant parent and a parent no longer with them, and both have different responses to people and the world around them because of it. Adrien cares for people but tends to be reserved, while Chloe is cruel to others and tends to be loud. However, she does genuinely care about Adrien, and tries to be a nice person, it's just that this is all she's known. She has no idea that what she acts like could even be considered cruel since no one's ever told her before.

She worked alongside Adrien without much thought, but after he started working more due to the Emilie situation, she became fast friends with him. They shared a love of comic books and a desire to go on grand adventures, as well as a similar enough sense of humor. Chloe, having never had anyone willing to be kind to her and also build on her ideas and challenge her like Adrien does, gets attached. She thinks she's in love, but really the feeling was just friendship. She's the one who pushes Adrien to go to public school. I also think it'd be interesting if it was a reverse of what happened in the origins episode, where Marinette is the one viewed to misstep. Something she said is misinterpreted by Chloe to be a diss against Adrien, who she then defends with a passion as he is sad. Marinette, in return, feels genuinely awful for misstepping and hurting the feelings of the new boy even if she doesn't really like Chloe. By the end of this, Marinette ends up seeing Adrien as this aloof mysterious hot classmate of hers, and starts catching feelings. Adrien, meanwhile, ends up seeing Marinette as what could be considered his second friend, much to Chloe's chagrin.

Yes Chloe does eventually get the bee miraculous. That plus her realizing that are two reasons she dislikes Marinette so much: 1) she's leeching the attention of her best friend and 2) why is such a pretty girl so focused on her best friend and not her anyways, and uh oh Chloe accidentally develops a crush on Marinette lol. for the lols. anyways.

The only plot I care to develop beyond what's mentioned above is irt Alya. Logical Alya and logical Marinette, and brainiac duo. Alya, without knowing Marinette is Ladybug, starts doing independent research to track down who Hawkmoth is, just based on journalist curiosity. She uses things like cctv footage and areas of Akumatization to narrow down location and suspects. After learning about her research, Marinette tries to learn more, but Alya actually blocks her from learning more for her own safety. Eventually, Marinette reveals her identity to Alya in order to work hand in hand with her to track down Hawkmoth. Meanwhile, also for safety reasons, Ladybug and Chat Noir haven't revealed their identities to each other, despite Chat Noir's requests since he has a crush on Ladybug lol.

Beyond that, again this is a show I haven't actively watched since season two, so i dont really care about explaining every detail out lol (despite like three thousands of words to the contrary above). This is just how I would have shaped Miraculous if I was in charge of it or a reboot. If you've read this far and any of this sounds at all intriguing to you, especially if you're a miraculous fan, I encourage if not beg you to steal any ideas wholesale, idec about getting credit lol. I explain this every so often, and the initial typed explanation is in a screenshot of some instagram DMs, so this is all from memory with the hopes of preserving this au in a place I can actually access again the next time Im discussing ML with an irl and wanna reference what i'd change lol. If you're reading this still i genuinely like actually cannot fathom why but thanks i guess?

[goldrushenthusiast]

Have you read The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes? 🎼🕊️🪱

If you have not read it, what do you think about the title? What characters represent birds and snakes?

*spoiler alert*

If you have read it, how birds and snakes play a part in the narrative? Also what do you think about Mockingjay role in the original trilogy and this prequel?

Thank you.

@curiousnonny

ofc!!! literally I live for BOSAS. like I’ve read it so many times I’ve lost count.

I think the second part is supposed to be if I have, even if not I’m gonna answer anyways, but I love the title, especially because Lucy Gray loves ballads.

Like she literally writes them. And this is their own story- of themselves. Which also really represents them, writing stories about themselves lol.

I think that the Coriolanus and Lucy Gray are the snake and songbird respectively. While I have seen cases made for the other way around, and some points are valid, I can’t really understand it as well.

Maybe that could be interpreted as how they’re not too different overall. How sometimes, when you love someone, you start to adopt parts of them you wouldn’t have normally, and you take parts of each other too. Idk. But Coriolanus is definitely a snake, not a songbird, and Lucy Gray is definitely a songbird although she for sure could be a snake.

Coriolanus is constantly tricking and manipulating people & things for his own gain (snakelike behavior), is in general a snob, and very ambitious. Lowkey I’m just naming slytherin behavior but you get the idea.

Of course, Lucy Gray loved to sing, but she also knew where danger was and how to avoid it, like Mockingjays did. She sang songs passed down from Covey member to Covey member and still kept her own voice, making songs of her own too. She is who she is because of something naturistic (the Covey) and something Capitolistic (the Games), like the Mockingjays.

Really I think that’s just surface level, and the most obvious (imo) but there’s many other things the songbirds & snakes could represent in the book too.

Like the fact Lucy Gray used snakes as crutch, and knew how to manipulate them (hmmm, makes you think of how she treated Coriolanus, who I’ve alr labeled as a snake), and how Coriolanus’ first military order/idea thing was to immediately get rid of Mockingjays (a songbird, which I’ve alr related Lucy Gray to) because they…unnerved him. And covered it up by saying target practice.

I think this shows how they saw each other, although both at different parts in the relationship- Lucy Gray saw Coriolanus as someone to help her stay alive during the beginning of their relationship and used him for that, and at the end, Coriolanus couldn’t handle Lucy Gray leaving him so he starts blindly shooting (remember- he wasn’t too good at catching Mockingjays). It’s why songbirds is first- she’s the beginning. Coriolanus, a snake, is what leads to the end.

Songbirds and Snakes could also be a metaphor for the capital vs the districts.

The districts, the songbirds, flocking to what keeps them safe yet never actually being guaranteed it. The snake, the capital, controlling said songbirds. It’s a ballad of the differences between the two, a showcase of what they represent and what happens when you mix two of them. I don’t think BOSAS is a love story, but it’s not not one, either.

Genuinely a case could be made for Dr. Gaul & Sejanus being the snake & songbird. The snake constantly toying with the songbird. The songbird who has a voice but is constantly confused on how to use it.

It could also be a nod to how important both songbirds and snakes are to the story, but I’ll get to that in the next question.

This is basically a testament to how all-encompassing the songbirds and snakes are, and how many things they can be interpreted as.

Ok, yay, now next question!!

The story wouldn’t be what it is without birds and snakes.

Coriolanus’ first sighting of Lucy Gray is her dropping a snake down Mayfair’s dress. This drastically impacts how the capital and how Coriolanus view her from then on- a preformer and a fighter. Without that small act of rebellion, and the performance onstage, she wouldn’t have half as many sponsors or interest in her.

Lucy Gray also leaves a small snake as a present for Coriolanus when he tries to kill her. Like a last goodbye, almost. That snake really drove the point home Lucy Gray wasn’t playing around or anything. She was fr. It shows Coriolanus who he thinks she truly is, and drives the point home she’s wrong for him.

Songbirds are a bit trickier/less obvious. Songbirds help represent the differences between them- Lucy Gray’s love of music, Coriolanus’ tolerance of it. Lucy Gray’s love of freedom, Coriolanus’ disgust of it (in large portions when anyone other than him has it).

As I mentioned earlier, Coriolanus, upon hearing them for the first time, wants all the Mockingjays dead. He literally can’t help saying how much he hates them ((as we see with him & Dr. Kay, while he usually has good control. Also good lesson on how songbirds (Lucy Gray) make him lose control)).

Songbirds provide a gruesome opportunity to show Coriolanus’ true colors.

Last question! Ok lowkey feel like that all sorta answered it, but I love the mockingjays. They’re such a vibe, honestly, and I love how crucial they are to BOSAS and the OG series.

Rue’s whistles (representing safety and codes).

Coriolanus’ hatred (representing his hatred & slowly sliding grip on self control).

Their mutative state (the capital can’t control everything, good always wins, yada yada what Katniss says basically).

Like what a W for birds all around, honestly. I’d love one that just sits outside my window all day.

As always, thank you for the question @curiousnonny, and anyone else feel free to debate but not argue these points in reblogs or replies, but please stay civil.

[kevin-the-bruyne]

hello! i dont mean this in an inflammatory way, but on the subject of how darker skinned actors like p'earth shouldnt be pigeonholed into working class roles, do you have any recs for characters who are originally dark skinned and rich (if adapted from a novel) or characters played by dark skinned actors who are rich? im curious if there are any prominent examples that come to mind for you

Honestly I really don't know of any BL story that pointedly makes colorism a part of its narrative but in the case of dark skinned thai actors you have to look no further than our very own Net Siraphop.

Now, I don't follow him as closely as I do Earth so I can't say that his life in DMD is rosy but there are some things I've noticed about his pairing with James that makes me feel less like my head will pop. Because James isn't just fair skinned he's light even by thai celeb standards.

I don't know that any of the characters Net has played are meant to be upper class rich (you know like Mix's characters are lol) but they're almost always of equal social standing to James' characters. I didn't see Bed Friend through to the end but there were allusions made to King being more wealthy or becoming Uea's sugar daddy.

Even in their period drama where James is royalty Net is also playing a noble. In fact, the guy that murders James' character says Net is next, implying that Net is somehow even more politically valuable in the story. Either way, their class difference doesn't seem to be in any way a key aspect to the story or dynamic (versus say Zee and New in The Next Prince where it's all about that master-servant taboo romance)

Thankfully, in the NetJames pairing, they get to play around with the dynamics like bratty bottom/brooding or service top without first pigeonholing Net into some interclass escapist fantasy kjhhfdsfdggj

Also, I know that the crimes of whitewashing Net's skin is constant and relentless but this is where I love having James as a control group adsfdgfhgjkg the magazines that have a modicum of shame do eventually remember that Net and James have a noticeable difference in skin color so if you see them looking the same you know whats happened and how egregiously!

[bomberqueen17]

vacation

I'm in Maine with my dude. Our anniversary is around the 4th of July so we kinda try to do stuff around then. This year is 22 years, which marks the point at which it's been more than half of each of our lives. So that's keen. Not to be mushy.

I just saw a thing about celebrating Pickett's Charge Day and it amused me a lot. As an impressionable child I read Michael Shaara's The Killer Angels repeatedly, which is an account of the battle of Gettysburg with alternating points of view from participants on both sides-- it was adapted into a movie but I didn't see that so IDK if it captured any of what I found so poignant in the narrative. (Does the song Kathleen Mavourneen play a big role in the movie? bc it does in the book.) But because of this I knew that it was the 20th Maine Reg't led by Col. Joshua Chamberlain that held the left flank against repeated assaults on that day, so it seems fitting. I looked it up before I posted this, but I did actually know that.

No, I've never been to the battlefield at Gettysburg either, I'm a poor secondhand student of the civil war. My mom wrote a book about it but it's unpublished, she just put it up on the town website. LMK if you want to read it (I'm not linking directly to it because it's on the town website so it's kind of uh doxxy, LOL); it's an extremely dry work, simply recounting the results of her research into the service record, origins, and ultimate fate of every single person she could track down who either served in the regiment our town sent to the war, OR who served in the war and later settled in our town. It was years of research by her including many trips to battlefields. This is my background, is all I'm saying, and the reason why I know the names of like a bunch of the colonels at Gettysburg without checking.

Anyhow. We're not up here for civil war purposes, we're here to sit in a house on a lake and listen to some loons. We went last night and got on a schooner and schooned around Penobscot Bay, which was fantastic; saw the sunset, but not the moonrise, as it was cloudy. It's been mostly rainy here but it stopped raining long enough for that and that's all I care about. If it rains tonight, so much the better, as it'll keep the noise down. Na ha I'm the Grinch of the Fourth of July.

so anyway a couple of photos and some meandery stories behind the cut:

I'm putting the descriptions/captions in the alt, idk how well that works. Ah you can see the lighthouse here-- Camden, ME has a slightly dangerous harbor entry , with two nice wide channels that allow easy entry but a large submerged rock ledge in the middle that at high tide is completely invisible. Every year, our skipper said, some boat forgets about this and runs violently aground. This year's sacrifice was a 50-foot powerboat, and he heard the mayday call as he was on his morning commute. Some lobstermen were in range and managed to haul the boat off the rocks and tow it in to port, but it sank in the launch area-- still, they could easily raise it from there. The passengers were all unharmed, following behind in a dinghy very abashed. A couple weeks later on one of his several-times-daily tours our captain found all the cushions from the wrecked powerboat washed ashore in a nearby cove, and was wondering at the etiquette-- should he collect and return them? He did not reveal whether he had, as conversation moved on.

He was a college kid, raised locally, home for the summers, but in his senior year as a computer engineer up at the U of Maine in one of the campuses about an hour away.

Since it was not very windy we had to use the motor a bit, but we did sail for a goodly while, and in the very light breeze he said "So I'm going to do a controlled jibe here, because the wind is super chill, and if you know a lot about sailing you'll know why I've been taught not to do this move but this is the ideal condition for it. So everybody duck, I'm holding it but the boom is going to move."

A schooner has two masts, so that meant both booms moved. And the mate controlled the forward one admirably, and he the aft, and we were all fine. But as we were coming into the harbor and taking the sails down, the forward boom swung again a little unexpectedly, and the passengers sitting below it had to duck. The mate worriedly asked if everyone was okay, and one woman said "Oh, no, I had a past life regression where I learned I was killed by a sail boom, so I'm really good at ducking!" to which the mate cheerfully, slightly awkwardly, replied "Oh that's great! that! uh! I mean not that you died! But that you didn't this time!" which was extremely gracious of her, especially given that she was about seventeen years old. (She had just been explaining to us that her doctor made her wear glasses full time now because she had gotten her driver's license and he didn't think she should drive without glasses.)

ANYWAY the lighthouse at Camden has been automated since the 1980s, like all US lighthouses, BUT has still had a lighthouse keeper-- a local woman lived there 50 years and raised a family there and only recently at 90 retired as the keeper, and now the assistant harbormaster lives out there. Nobody really needs to be in that lighthouse but it's a point of local pride to have a manned lighthouse.

There are also bell buoys, which I hadn't really noticed as a thing before-- but it's just a buoy with a large bell on it, and the waves' rocking tolls the bell constantly, and it's meant to warn of a hazard. There are several in Camden harbor, because there are a number of very tall rocks that stick up out of the otherwise mostly 180-200ft depth, and some of those rocks are submerged at high tide so you would never see them coming and your onboard depth sensor thing wouldn't catch them in time. (Those rocks, our skipper said, are called The Graves, because of the number of wrecks on them, but they're so steep you can almost touch them from the side of a passing boat; they're used as turning points in some of the tall ship racing that happens locally, and he was aboard one once that turned so tight around one of those rocks and he said he was so terrified the whole time and would never himself sail that close to one.)

It was so calm while we were out there-- Lake Erie is choppier-- but it was sunset, which is when the wind changes direction usually, and the weather here has been heavy rain for days and it was a break in the weather. Anyway that was the Atlantic Ocean, though we weren't really out in it, it was all Penebscot Bay.

Apparently the Olad's original name when commissioned was The Whistle Binkie, which is terrible and hilarious.

OK next slide, good thing I'm only doing two

Good morning, I woke at 5 and noticed the sky was pink and knew it would be fleeting, so I threw my bathrobe on and went out even though I really needed to pee, so I suffered for this art-- I got out a little ways on the dock and listened to a loon calling and took several photos, and then went inside and when I came back out the light had gone, so I'm glad I ran out when I did. Those bridges are narrow though, and I'm not the steadiest when I first wake up, so I was not going all the way out to that last dock. The view is great from that last dock but the great view is to the north, and the pink clouds were to the west, so for this photo, this was the better view anyway.

This is Megunticook Lake.

Today we have no plans; the restaurants downtown were nuts last night, we walked into one place at 4:45 and were told we could be seated around 6:25, so we walked back out and went instead to the Sea Dog brewery, which I had heard of-- I've had their beer somewhere-- but we're thinking tonight will be nuts, so we're going to stay home and eat the stuff we brought for today's lunch instead, and we're going to venture out for lunch today in hopes that it will be less insane.

We'd asked the skipper of the Olad what the 4th of July was going to be like, did he have the day off etc, and he laughed and said no, he works on that day, but it is kiiiind of the worst, because everyone with a boat or access to a boat has to take it out on the 4th of July, and they're all drunk, so he spends most of the day trying to avoid drunk boaters and trying to make sure nobody falls off his boat. (When we'd boarded he'd given us the rules before we pulled out of the berth, and the only actual rule was stay on the boat, and I don't like to think about how emphatic he had to be about that.) I think I mentioned, he was like twenty, and when someone asked him how long he'd been doing this he blithely said "oh this is my first day!" but then admitted it was actually his first season as skipper, but he'd been crewing these kinds of boats for about five years now. Uncommonly among tourist attractions, his job had gotten more busy during the pandemic, because honestly it's an extremely low-risk activity, you could not be any less enclosed, though they had to abide by the same regulations re: mask wearing as airplanes and large commercial ferries, so it was a bit silly-- but absolutely lowest risk of all given that they're wind-operated.

So we know Camden town is going to be insane all day tomorrow, and there's a fireworks display they launch off a boat in the harbor, and we are not going to attempt to go see it! We will hear it from here, and that is fine. We brought our own sparklers, should we be so inclined.

[gingerbreadmonsters]

echo and... gavin??

ok so this is incredibly outlandish and doesn’t really have a huge amount of supporting evidence in canon that isn’t entirely circumstantial, but i think it’s cool and a fun idea to play with - plus, i have a wip based on this premise and i wanna lay the groundwork for that bc it’s a pretty mad concept if you’re not expecting it lol

so, i think about the imperium a lot - probably more than is normal or healthy - and i especially like to think about that one meme that erik posted on patreon just in the wake of cataclysm:

now, in all seriousness, it’s just a low quality meme that was probably made in about 5 minutes and just for fun, so i doubt it has any actual meaning - but i would like to propose a world where this meme is actually one of the most significant lore drops we’ve had yet!

in short, just go with me for a minute here - i would like to propose a world where gavin and echo are the same person.

we tend to treat a lot of these characters like real people with free will and agency, but they’re not - both on a meta level and inside the narrative itself. there’s a creator, and a larger narrative at play! even from echo’s very first introduction, he makes it clear that he exists as an independent, self-aware character - he’s emphatically NOT an impartial narrator, and while he certainly implies that he’s omnipotent and omniscient, it’s not clear whether he actually is, or where the real extent of his abilities and knowledge lies.

interestingly, he’s also both aware of AND separate from ‘Redacted’ (i.e. erik, canonising himself within his own universe) - he’s highly conscious that the events taking place aren’t real, and that he has some degree of control over the narrative. presumably, echo and ‘Redacted’ exist on the same level of reality in this universe - i.e. outside of it, but aware of what’s going on in there and able to change it.

ok, cool, but what does this have to do with gavin?

also, it’s a little bit weak, but go back and have a listen to echo’s playlist - don’t you think he speaks a lot like gavin (specifically early gavin, when he’s still all arrogant and whatever)? maybe this is just because they’re both being written by the same person, and their characters are just quite similar, but the resemblance is definitely there. circumstantial evidence, yes, but it’s worth mentioning.

to be honest, echo’s actually a little bit… strange?? when it comes to gavin?? he talks about him quite weirdly - the most obvious example for me is in ‘The Deal’, where he says:

it’s always struck me as a bit strange that echo SPECIFICALLY chooses gavin and fl to cross over with ivan and baby - and yes, i realise that there was probably an irl reason for this, but just go with it a bit longer! it’s likely that it was just pragmatism on erik’s part, of needing a storyline that could plausibly overlap with sadism’s hold, although maybe if the outcome of the poll had been different maybe this could have freed up fl to go out with damien as was the original plan… anyway, i digress.

hold onto that thought for a minute, and we’ll come back to the ‘why did echo choose gavin and fl?’ idea in a second.

it’s no secret that, if things continue as they are, freelancer is going to die - they are painfully, deeply human, and tbh they’ve survived some pretty long odds already! the confrontation with vega in their bedroom, the fight with vega in their living room, the inversion (and if you count the imperium, the takeover of - and escape from - the imperial academy)... all of these situations had the enormous potential to go horribly, horribly wrong, and freelancer could EASILY have died at any of those points!

if we exclude vega and fl’s first meeting (bc all things considered, vega was being cruel but not actually all that hostile in that interaction), gavin is almost always the one to save them - to step in and protect fl from whatever threats arose.

combine that with our idea from before - i’m suggesting that a world exists where freelancer dies at one of those points, or maybe even for an entirely unrelated reason that we don’t know about. maybe’s it’s vega in their living room, or the shade that killed xavier killing them too (i’ll come back to this later), or maybe it’s just that their natural lifespan comes peacefully to an end. they die, and that’s that.

except it’s not just that - because gavin’s not having it. it’s no secret, how much he loves freelancer, and i think he has the potential to do absolutely ANYTHING to stop them dying.

that anything, i suggest, is becoming echo.

this establishes the world that we’re hearing now - the universe that we’re familiar with is actually the second attempt. perhaps what we’re hearing are the delusions of a grieving demon, DESPERATE for a world where freelancer doesn’t have to die. or perhaps he finds a way to genuinely create a world where he makes the rules - maybe he finds his way to a world - ‘Redacted’’s (i.e. erik’s) world - where he can finally change things for good. maybe it’s time travel, or some sort of reset point, but whatever the case may be, he’s outside of it all now.

he couldn’t save his freelancer then, so he’ll do whatever he can to save them now - he’s walking them and this version of himself (whatever that might mean) through the life he had with his freelancer, just with a few… changes.

is he fully in control? no, that’s erik. but echo DOES control the imperium - and of everyone, it’s arguably vindemiator and freelancer who escape the horrors of that world the most successfully. they both survive RIDICULOUS odds, when you consider just how dangerous both of their situations are!

or, if you like, maybe echo’s not really in control of anything in the prime universe - maybe it’s erik steering the narrative but echo’s just able to hit the handbrake and make a few hasty edits whenever things look like they’re taking a turn for the worse. nothing earth-shattering, just changing a few minor details that keep freelancer safe (or even just alive).

in that vein, let’s come back to that point about xavier. this hc goes really well with the idea that fl is killed during the inversion, more specifically at the point just before gavin creates his ward. perhaps gavin can’t make that ward in time, and freelancer’s killed by the shade - so all that energy and power and hurt that OUR gavin pours into his ward from seeing xavier die? it’s that, but times a million if it’s freelancer who dies there - maybe that’s the moment where gavin manages to change things and step out of the bounds of the narrative. now, when we get to see it (i.e. in the versions of the audios that we know, which i’m calling here a ‘second attempt’), we’re given the character of xavier, who - apologies to the xavier nation - is essentially ballast, a human shield to stop the shade killing fl or gavin. for all intents and purposes, he’s a filler character with very little actually going for him - other than the fact that he dies during the inversion (and you can argue that even that is just to develop the characters of the DAMN crew a bit further). if we accept this hc, xavier is basically placed there by echo-gavin as one final, hail-mary barrier between freelancer and the shade who killed them the first time, to give gavin just enough time to put that ward together.

to take this a bit further, let’s return to the point about fl’s mortality for a bit. are we ever going to know their fate, or will this be left unresolved and up to our interpretation? will they settle for their human lifespan, or be turned into a vampire (willingly or otherwise)? will they die prematurely, or live out their natural lifespan, or find a way to artificially extend their life via some hitherto-unknown method?

placing this problem squarely in the context of the echo-is-gavin hc, i would love to see a world where echo finds some way - any way - to bend the rules of this universe, and to change freelancer or gavin in some way that they might be able to be together for the rest of both of their natural lives, however long or short that may be.

it strikes me as very interesting that when a’xerahn accidentally makes vampires, he’s searching for a way to create ‘a more manageable form of Concubus’ - of which incubi are a subset. is this just a choice that erik’s made either at random or because of the historical and cultural associations between sex and vampires and blood and all that? probably, yeah. but it’s especially interesting because it might imply that concubi are the easiest type of demon to convert humans to/from - which would then come with a whole HOST of implications for gavin and fl!

to be entirely honest, this is a completely off-the-wall hc that will almost certainly not come true - but it’s certainly fun to think about! basically i just want gavin and fl to be happy and in love and together forever, and i’ll come up with whatever hcs i like to make that happen lol

[lookingforcactus]

Live action Yu Yu Hakusho liveblog (ep 2)

Okay listen. Whoever wrote and whoever is voicing the little kid Yusuke saves has never heard an actual six year old talk in their lives

Also forgot to say last ep but liked the move to age yusuke up a bit. Also Botan's digital file of Yusuke talking back at her is hilarious

Botan's voice (Eng dub) isn't quiiiite as expressive as would hit the mark for me compared to the anime but whatever she's adorable I forgive her

Also forgot to say last ep "Maybe it's better you're dead" BOTAN STOP ASDLKFJADS I love her your honor

Fights and vfx on Goki are actually kind of shockingly good, esp given how much I Did Not like him in the anime

VERY annoying and unfortunately typical that the darkest-skinned guy we've seen so far is. very specifically. the demon that eats children and that the anime makes uh iirc a lot more directly than I ever wanted to watch into a Certain Allegory

Interested that Reikai doesn't seem to know who Kurama actually is. Was that the case in the anime/manga?? I feel like no, they knew who he used to be from the initial briefing on the thieves but idk season 1 wasn't exactly my favorite to go back and rewatch literally ever

My favorite was 2 and 4. If you even care. lol

Kurama standing there during the fight like a creeper go

Actually fight with Goki is very epic. Again super creative and impressively believable way for Yusuke to survive and fight back against a guy with WAYYYY superior strength

Also wow is Yusuke underqualified for these fights rn lol. I mean we knew that but he's lucky he pulled that one out in the end. And esp lucky that Kurama won't want to fight, obv

YUKINA

Her wig is sadly Not as impressive as Botan's, and I'm not a fan of what looks like her contacts. Did they make her eyes green??? Bc her eyes being red is kind of narratively. you know. Relevant

Wait is that guy helping Yukina Hiei???!!! Human-form Hiei??!!!

Wait no of course not Hiei would've just killed everyone and gotten her out

(Listen we don't have any good shots of his face yet okay. That little sister line made me think!)

Interesting new jagan origin + (presumably?) moving up Yukina as Hiei's motivation. Makes sense given how everything about Hiei's first manga/anime appearance was ignored afterward lol when he was too popular to kill off

I hope they got rid of his original plan/motivation, anyway. I hated the mind control arc thing with him esp on Keiko. Dickhead

Well. Eyehead. Technically. But yknow

Pfft Kurama 100% staging that entire encounter and stalking ep meaning Yusuke thinks he's being sooo sneaky

Kurama's outfit is really pretty actually btw. I like it better than his anime outfit by a lot. The pink always clashed with his hair sooo bad

Also the pink in the preview images made me think/hope he was a girl (who actually got to fight in a shounen anime!!!!) and you have no idea how disappointed I was when I realized that wasn't true

Pfft Kurama using his demon powers to?? Pull a quickchange?? Amazing

His hair continues to not work nearly as well as in the anime but that was a lost battle from the beginning let's be real. At least it's better than Hiei's

(Which is so actively bad what was that shadow with his hair in the knife scene what)

Shiori benefits a lot from being played by like. an actually human person who also is older and has visibly aged. Gives her Character, makes her less of Just An Archetype

Momma's boy Kurama excellent as always. Meanwhile Yusuke's just flat out not replying to a single thing Shiori is literally saying to him lol

Wait does the quickchange imply that Kurama only uses that outfit on demon business. Bc in the show it's just his (ugly) school uniform but here it's clearly not. I really desperately want that to be his On Demon Business outfit in this show lol

Also makes the fact that he had Yusuke stalk him in that outfit funnier. then. boom. quickchange. Mom can't see the Demon Business Outfit

Hmm something about Kurama and his delivery isn't rly landing for me here. But to be fair he is being super Performative and Deliberate about all of this so that may be on purpose

I hope it's on purpose. Bc Kurama's great and I'd REALLY like to buy him/his lines as a character in this

He does successfully pull off "casually menacing" (you know, without murdering someone first) much more easily than his anime counterpart tho so that's cool

Meanwhile, Yusuke's face. Great face-acting there. Also great face

The scrapes on Yusuke's face really are v aesthetically arranged lol. but still look legit enough. I'm a fan

Okay I'm buying Kurama now. Excellent

"I've been deceiving that woman for many years" genuinely love that he put it that way. He's come to care about her so much but he's not trying to make himself sound better or lying to himself about the situation

It is killing me that he used the phrase "fertilized egg" in this explanation. It's killing me. It's also raising Fucking Questions. (But does at least give an explanation for how Kurama didn't like. Kill the original Shuichi's soul when he took the body.)

Oh the pattern on Kurama's outfit is roses!!! love it

Kurama: Sees Kuwabara following them

Kurama: ...Anyway.

The mirror of darkness looks like a fucking ipad. I can't take it seriously why does the mirror of darkness look like an ipad!!!

IT DOESN'T EVEN REFLECT ANYTHING

What's with the weird scifi aesthetics here and on the other artifacts? This is a fantasy show, fantasy aesthetics would fit better

The mirror-realm life-taking sequence is just. so much. lol it's so much once again I am unable to take it seriously!

Wait Shiori! You don't know there was magic saving you!! Don't take off your oxygen mask without a doctor's permission!!! Practice self-care!!!

Okay Kuwabara looks super different from his anime/manga self-from the front, but from the back he has the EXACT same silhouette as anime!Kuwabara, so much it's EERIE. I'm learning lots of things about what pompadours look like in real life-

hsb, ig???

HIEI HAS BLUE EYES?!!??!?!?!!!!

I mean at least they didn't only change Yukina's

But this is WEIRD

Also making the jagan not purple anymore, just an actual third eye, was the correct choice

Hmm I don't like how they translated Hiei's outfit as much as I do the others. (I like how they translated literally everyone else's outfits. This is so disappointing, esp since Hiei's aesthetics go off. There's too much white and too much detail in his outfits. Give me his cloak!!! Also changing the scarf into a turtleneck is highkey Not Working For Me

Anime!Hiei would literally never wear a turtleneck

Why is he wearing a turtleneck, he's a FIRE DEMON, it's not like he can get cold

The scarf is okay because it was clearly not primarily for keeping him warm

Give him the cloak I want the cloak!!

And he should be wearing all black underneath it! I mean I know he wears other color shirts under it in the dark tournament arc iirc. But live action won't have the control over the cloak for that lol

At least give him something all black (except the scarf or something similar) (NOT a turtleneck) with a similar silhouette to the cloak

And idk compared to the others I think his costume looks kinda cheap

OOF effects on the Toguros are NOT convincing. Oof. I admire their commitment to taking their physicalities literally but uh. They should've been less ambitious and focused more on translating the vibe. Imho

Okay! Time for episode 3!