#(this does matter tho. btw.)

[harbingersecho]

grif's surgery but just a little more... obvious?

I actually rly rly ADORE frankengrif but I don't have an in-show reason why he'd have extensive long-term allogeneic skingrafts on his face 😔

[tilly-tittle]

slightly brighter ver.

[corviiids]

strong opinions on takes of the 'could this character defeat kira' variety

[witchspeka]

Ritsu doesn't respond to Shou's messages, not cause he's disinterested or doesn't consider him a friend, but because 90% of the time he forgets he owns a phone

Like from an outsider's POV Ritsu seems like he's cold towards him or mildly annoyed but in reality he's just introverted and hasn't had any friends before besides his brother

Whatever you think they feel for one another is mutual, whether it's friendship or love or just mutual understanding and sympathy

Like, I can see them argue and be annoyed with eachother's personality once in a while but they care. I like to believe this isn't my bias but canon fact, Ritsu wouldn't have agreed to help Shou otherwise

They understand eachother. Shou tells Ritsu his big ideas and Ritsu understands how he's come to that conclusion and gives criticism and Shou listens to him. Because he knows it isn't an insult, he knows its genuine advice, he knows Ritsu actually listens and wants to help

That has its shortcomings as well, I think they're overestimating how well they understand eachother sometimes, there's a certain degree of projection happening. Their situations are similar but very, very different

What I'm trying to say is that they don't hang out that often but ten years post canon Shou could call Ritsu up after they haven't spoken in forever, unsure if he even has his number anymore, ask for help and still receive it. That Shou would let Ritsu crash on his couch after he impulsively quits his job even if months passed since their last conversation. It's not about personality compatibility with them, its about trust.

[pickled-flowers]

Yesterday at work 3 kids came to my cash register and bought some slime candy, overall a very pleasant interaction they were very polite. An hour later they came back and gave me a chocolate bouquet from the dollar store like I was their Valentine's 😭😭😭 the kids are alright

[nonbinarygamzee]

idk i think insisting, when people talk about gamzees characterization through the lens of a child denied autonomy, that what was going on Wasnt mind control or coercion in preference of insisting its all about revelation of their role as their own prophet is kind of myopic. it feeds off of the assumption people are ignoring that aspect rather than saying that in a situation where the very reality of the world and circumstances gamzee was born into were constructed to assure the propagation of that self forming paradox, what is considered "autonomous" becomes very blurry, even aside from knowing LE is quite literally a stand-in for (colonial, patriarchal, etc) oppression. gamzees religious views are not an unrelated problem that form the consequence, they are a tool to ensure the progression of power and dominion. homestuck has many iterations of characters becoming aware of their own space within a narrative, and gamzees breakdown is a culmination of many things, not the least of which being that realization. with it, the knowledge that the role they are set to play as a plot device is wholly necessary for the revolution of the narrative regardless of what they may want or how it will make people see them. if there is no gamzee to ensure the validity of the alpha timeline there was simply no homestuck and they do not do not have the resources to want or care beyond that. to me if the whole takeaway of gamzees mental breakdown is solely what they say to karkat whilst attempting to get a rise out of him/beg for help in active crisis then idk.... try looking at a story beyond what the (compromised) cast say directly? or dont its your choice but! boring!

more than all of that though i think its just kind of mean. i do not value what is necessarily "objective" about a story because a story is valuable far beyond authorial intent and that goes tenfold for a story that holds a deep resentment for its audience crafted through the lens of a guy who up until like 2014 or so was profitting off of how funny open "ironic" bigotry and being mean was (and then continued to do so, just arguably more covertly). theres so much more value to me in what people who relate to a lonely child with addiction issues and a friendgroup that almost exclusively openly berated or ignored them coming into contact with the adult figure of violence and suppression have to say about all of it. idk its strange that as someone whos felt very much barred from "fandom" that i have to sit here and defend "fanon" interpretation because so many people buy into the intellectual superiority hussie sells to you like he does not resent all of you the same way he does everyone else lol

[wine-dark-soup]

What new life did you think the ancients tried to sacrifice to return their brethren from Zodiark? They weren't growing microbe colonies for that.

it's been a while since i completed shadowbringers so maybe i got things mixed up, but it was my understanding that the ancients were ready to sacrifice the half of the half of them that remained after zodiark's summoning. Making this sacrifice completely foolish in the eyes' of everyone with half a mind because what for? Why sacrifice those who are alive and well? What if they failed? Who was gonna be LEFT? Like they were on the path to erase themselves from existence because there were less and less of them

On the other hand it's true it'd be strange to assume there's a finite number of souls in the universe. But i do like the idea the same souls, sundered, unvariably come back. It just doesn't matter who those people were 12 000 years ago. Most of them probably had an office job anyway (that doesnt make them less valuable but it's a proof not every ancient was a walking hero)

[airanke]

Every day I sit here or lie in bed thinking about how much purity culture destroyed me.

[transmasc-rose]

I was talking to Curtis about how certain aspects of Doctor Who would be treated if they were episodes of Torchwood and/or had that rating leniency of Torchwood (imo the limitations of Doctor Who make for better TV than Torchwood in general, but not always) and when I brought up Amy's Choice, Curtis said I should do an episode rewrite and.

Hm. Hmmm. That could be really interesting. Amy and Rory and the Doctor's dynamic would be so... different in a Torchwood rated show, given the things they do with them in Doctor Who, and if they actually used the Dream Lord as an interesting villain (and they'd actually be able to play into the Doctor's worst traits in an adult show! For better and for worse!)...

However I'd have to actually rewatch Amy's Choice, and also decide how much I want to stay faithful to the episode, how much I want to stay faithful to "what would/could Torchwood have done here, and how much I actually want the result to be. Good.

Because "what Torchwood would do" and "what would be interesting" are not necessarily the same things.

(Accidentally wrote a Novel in the tags also. Whoops.)

[mx-melancholic]

Viktor is such a better person than I am because if my family treated me like this and I had superpowers? No because I'd leave the first chance I had and when they inevitably came back for me because my powers are in fact the strongest powers and the world is ending, well let's just settle I'm good with that find another option. Or don't :)

[faebriel]

hgs brainrot has returned due to tbosas .. speaking of hgs here’s an ask abt the hgs au: if things were totally different, and Wilbur were to be a 12 victor, what do you think a possible mentor-tribute dynamic would look like between him & Niki? I feel like it would be similar to Snow & Lucy in the way that he’s just going out of his way to cheat n help her

anon u have in fact struck jackpot because this is a concept i was spinning some thoughts abt before bee mentioned avoxes and we went OOOOH at that!!! so yes i have considered rainduo as a mentor-tribute dynamic and would love to talk about that concept too :]

so for this concept i think wilbur and niki would be close friends throughout childhood from 12, and then in their teens wilbur is reaped and, well, no one has particularly high hopes (he's a writer and a musician at heart, not a fighter) but through sheer trickery and dumb luck, he makes it to the end of the games. wilbur pulled some pretty fucked up tricks to win - when you can't use brute force, you have to use your brain - and partly due to the trauma of the games, partly due to his shame and survivor's guilt, he sinks into the capitol and relishes a new life there as a socialite. to him, the old wilbur died in the games and the new one has taken his place - to niki, and to his other friends in 12, whatever the games did to him made him into every vapid heartless capitol victor there is.

or. niki has her doubts. they all saw how horrible the games were, but surely there is some part of him left, some part that's hurting, even if it's buried deep?

anyway.

like og spin of the au, niki is reaped and this sucks - this time she does expect wilbur as her mentor on the train, and she expects some kind of warm welcome (maybe even an apology for leaving them so suddenly and silently? an explanation?) but she gets jack shit. wilbur is jaded and cruel and unrecognisable and niki entirely hates it. this is the part where i REALLY WISH we got some time of those two beefing with each other directly in canon (or at least interactions while niki was So Mad at him) but it's okay we fly blind. niki feels abandoned, lonely, thrown off of her kilter - she expected an ally in this place, but she doesn't recognise the person wilbur has become. she doesn't recognise his shallowness (...much), his ruthless advice for the arena, the way he doesn't seem to care for anything. she's scared and now she's lonely and it pisses her off - their mentorship is fraught. here are some thoughts from discord on that:

i tend to think of niki as a bit naïve before l'manberg or even doomsday - i think this is an au where this streak would come out real strong, and niki is stubborn that she can get through the games without losing herself. stubborn that she can stop things, that she can protect people. i don't think wilbur is cold enough (or, really, can bear to say aloud) to say that her odds in the arena are slim enough as it is, but he definitely tells her that she's making enemies and that her odds of survival dwindle with the more trouble she causes.

beyond that... hm. niki's trust in wilbur is almost unshakeable until nov 16, even when she outright says she doesn't recognise him anymore. i think she'd reluctantly listen re: don't burn down any buildings, but she would grow bolder each day she had to stay in the capitol. she gets more honest in front of the cameras. she makes more friends in training, and not the ones wilbur recommends. she throws barbs at him every time he makes one of those callous, cold-hearted comments about other tributes and rankings and odds. and besides, she's going in the arena this time, not him. she needs to practice her bravery.

it's like... she hasn't given up on him. she thinks the old wilbur is in there somewhere. (she is wrong. that is not how trauma works.) but she won't hold her tongue just because she

for extra angst points could definitely play up the whole 'feeling abandoned' angle between them as niki goes into the arena - probably due to how fraught their friendship gets leading up to the games. niki wants to focus on them and their friendship, wilbur has stringently cut off (almost) everything from 12 and refuses to let her in; he tells her to behave for the cameras, she tells him she never will. i think the last point in that screenshot would also make for a super tasty argument where niki feels wilbur has gone astray, that he's abandoned 12, and that he'll probably do nothing but sit on his ass and watch her die and he can't even bring himself to care about her anymore, can he? just more fodder for the arena. and honestly, i think wilbur would passively agree with most of that - he values niki's opinion, after all, even now, and if she says he's rapidly descending into a lost cause then she must be right. and it's niki, so she will be fine, and he goes to his bedroom that night and tries to pretend he is sleeping perfectly fine instead of feeling paralysed with fear.

okay now onto the games - YES HE SO WOULD. or at least i think he would go out of his way to help. as for cheating - he's a recent victor for 12 and i think he would value tommy (no doubt a link to him... i think they'd be in touch in this au also) too much to risk the punishment falling onto him as well. i get the vibes this is a games closer to 74th than 10th, so there are far fewer opportunities to cheat and the consequences of getting caught are higher. but schmoozing up sponsors? making stupid ass radio interviews or whatever to talk up niki's odds? sharing anecdotes from their childhood - some real, some entirely fabricated - across capitol airwaves to stoke their sympathy? 100%. with less to lose in this au, i think niki would be far less inclined to play nice for the cameras - i hope you starve, she spits at one of them, and wilbur appears on a talkshow two days later as she scrambles for survival in the arena to talk up how she always saved loaves from the bakery for the poorest mothers and children in 12. he borrows and begs and swindles to the point where it feels like cheating. but hey, this new wilbur is capitol-branded. he knows how to play the game.

if anything he probably sinks into the game a little too much. self-preservation is not his forte. probably wracks up a few heavy debts and favours to owe, but those are not priority until niki is out of the arena, alive. as long as she wins, and as long as the family he has isn't in danger, he will manage. wow it would suck if at some point those two goals became impossible to co-achieve. anyway

i kind of see niki's victory in the arena being similar to the one in the main au - if only because planning out an entire games is hard for meee >-< . she walks in bolder and braver for sure, and with a less strategic pick of allies, but they all get picked off and she spends a few weeks so terrified she can barely sleep and then she ruptures some fuel line and sets the arena alight with a fire that burns brighter and more ravenously than it should. but she wins, and she's airlifted out of a filthy, muddy creek she had resigned herself to die in, and wilbur barges his way through as many peacekeepers so that he can actually see her with her burnt skin and hair and unfocused eyes and trust that what was on the screens wasn't a fluke, and that they made it. and then it's just a matter of surviving the after.

i'm sure there are some other random quirks or tidbits i can think of re: this take on a c!rainduo hunger games au but these are my base thoughts!!

[claire-starsword]

Authentic Story of the Shining Force - Saint Fencer Max - Chapter 3

Translation notes:

So, uh. Elliot's name is rendered with two t's in the og game, but a single one in the GBA version. I had never paid attention to that at all until I had already edited all these pages, and I don't care enough to change it.

Cain's sword causes an explosion here. In the game, it is indeed capable of summoning flames.

This is a perfect illustration of how I feel about these names, but I do wonder what the actual intention was, since Cain is supposed to be already gone. The original image is even cut off weirdly in the middle of the text, and i don't think it's a problem with the scan, since every scanned page has a black border showing that the paper itself doesn't cut there. I wonder about the production of this thing, but i'll wait until i translate the author's comments before saying more.

The map in the previous chapter was very accurate to the beta map of the game. The smaller map here showing Rindo however looks off, the coast is different, and there seems to be a river directly to the north of Rindo, as opposed to the path to Shade Abbey. Perhaps fitting since Shade is skipped here.

Metaphaluna, huh? Needlessly to say, the country of the gods/Ancients is called only Metapha in the final game. Also, in this panel, it pops up as an alternate reading for 前世紀 (ancient times), not the name of a country specifically. I chose to romanize the last part as "luna" for three reasons. One is that the continent of Rune is actually rendered as Lune in at least two guides. I take romanizations from JP guides with a grain of salt since they sometimes look bad/unnatural, or are inconsistent (Pelle's name for example has been romanized as both Peil or Payle depending on the book). I checked though, and town names however are consistent in both the books I've seen romanizing things. The second reason is that the beta map used at this point has a fairly noticeable crescent moon shaped island right in the middle. In the final game, we can't know exactly where Metapha is, because you only teleport there. But I wonder if this island had something to do with it at some point. The third reason is simply I saw no better reason. Metaphalna and Metapharuna would be just as valid, but don't have any meaning to them.

The biggest equation next to Tao as she explains the magic types is very clearly a E=mc². Look close.

I've retranslated Elliot's scenes from the game thinking it would be relevant to these notes. Now I feel it really isn't, but you get more content so you should be happy.

My main point with that is that Elliot does not say anything about Cain in the game. In the GBA version, Balbazak does try revealing Max, Cain and Darksol's identities before dying, but that's not a thing in the og. So yeah I really translated a bunch of stuff for nothing this time! Except not because Darksol is awesome in that scene and everyone should get to see it.

Now let's talk about Otrant. I have mentioned before that Otrant's gender is never explicitly said, and they speak in a mostly gender neutral way (I feel like there's a few masculine patterns in some lines, but I'm not confident enough to say for certain). What I hadn't noticed is that they also use lipstick in the games, which is probably what sparked these observations to begin with, but i'm uh, occasionally not smart. In any case, if any of these aspects were done at this point in development the artist here sure ignored them, and drew a regular old man who gets called an old man. They hate to see an androgynous boss winning.

I don't recall Otrant's third eye being called "Eye of Truth" anywhere else, but the manual of the game does say it can see the past and the future.

Otrant's naming of the Shining Force is a bit more elaborate here, but the wording is very similar to the actual game.

Finally, let's play spot the cameo!

We've got Gong, Zylo, one of the birds, and probably Anri. Easy.

Here, besides the obvious three who were actually introduced in the story, we again have a bird, Anri between Ken and Hans, Gong to the right, and Mae and Gort behind Luke. If you read the pre-release page you know that Gort was meant to be Mae's servant at some point, so this might be why they're together, or it's just coincidence because they still join around the same time in the final game. More importantly, to Ken's left we have...

Some guys. Who are these. They could be made up by the artist (there will be another case of this), but I find it curious that the artist had to do that when there are so many character to pick from, and he clearly wanted to depict official characters here. For one, there's evidence that Earnest was already designed at that point in development. However, that link also shows that Vankar didn't have a portrait by that time at least, and Vankar would have already joined by this point in the story. So could the bald centaur here be a beta Vankar, or the artist's interpretation of Vankar via unfinished art? Maybe, but just a guess in the end. Mostly I'm just fascinated by how detailed this guy is compared to even Mae and Gort's cameos. The other guy isn't so i don't think about them nearly as much.

[swordmaid]

drawing shri’iia in the unnamed nyc aeir dress but now i just saw the ayla dress and it’s perfect too 😭😭😭 now I can’t choose send help 😭😭😭😭

[livvyofthelake]

once upon a time is fun because all these ancient fairytales literally happened 30 years ago. snow white? yeah she was doing all that about 30 years ago. hercules? fought cerberus around 1970. king arthur pulled excalibur from the stone AFTER the release of disney’s the sword in the stone. mulan saved china (china? magic china? unclear actually) about 35 years ago. and it slaps and makes total sense don’t even worry about it

[dutybcrne]

Kaeya’s body temperature is constantly running cold, more than even the average Cryo user’s body. It’s partially because of his own anxiety constantly thrumming through him and making his Vision act up some, but also because he’s come to really dislike warmer temperatures and will do whatever to ensure he doesn’t feel them.

[nyxronomicon]

I’m pestering either Diaval or Lycanon to take me out for Valentine’s. Come on I’ll even pay for dinner if I have to! 👉 👈 🥺

Heh that's funny bc autocorrect hates Lycaon's name and it only knows it on my phone bc I forced it to learn...

PLS these two are paying for you btw... Lycaon is literally a trust fund baby and Diaval owns a business lol.

(if you're new here, Diaval and Lycaon are my ocs from the monster boyfriend dating sim that lives in my head lmao)

.

The moment you walked into the shared kitchen, dressed to the nines for the fancy dinner date Lycaon had planned, he was speechless. It was like his heart froze in place. He could feel the embarrassing heat in his cheeks, using his hand to shy away from the blush he's sure is apparent. Though, what is much more enticing to him is the decadent scent radiating from your skin. It would take a monumental amount of self-restraint for him to keep a respectable distance during this dinner. He almost prefers it this way, having to hold himself back until he brings you home...

"Let's go," he blushes, "we don't want to miss the reservation."

.

Diaval had something much more casual planned. He doesn't like dressing up or crowded restaurants so he's bringing you somewhere lowkey. He smirks when he sees you, a bit surprised at how good you look despite wearing your usual type of outfit. Of course, you always look good so that's no surprise. He places a hand on the small of your back- he can't help it, he needs his hands on you. He needs to claim you, if only to ensure no one else will dare interrupt your evening. All night he's got a hand around your waist, and whenever you're not paying attention, he stares daggers at the other men in the room.

"You wanna get out of here?" He whispers in your ear. "I got us a room, just for tonight."

.

send me an ask w your f/o and your valentine's plans and I'll write a paragraph in their POV