#Also nice header OP

[httpsserene]

singing in the shower — 𝐥𝐧. 𝟒 lando norris x fem!black!reader 2k words. oneshot & mini smau. fluff & humor. one or two mentions of sex, but no explicit content. no beta.

synopsis: lando’s usually well spent sunday off with his girlfriend is different this time around. you put off your everything shower and wash-day causing some edits to the usual routine. how the night ends, however, is 100% lando’s fault.

༊࿐ ⊹ ˚. hello! it’s late night or early morning for me, i guess, when i’m posting this. my first f1 work! i hope you enjoy it! i’d love to have some f1 mutuals out here, if anyone wants < 3. also requests are open, just come talk to me and ramble about anything, or any idea you have the f1 boys, i’d love to have some great anons and asks to fulfill. hope you enjoy it :)

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it’s a rare sunday where you and lando are both home together. usually you two would take advantage of this and make the most out of it. you’d lay in bed late into the morning with an excessively cuddly boyfriend, cook a nice and healthy brunch together you cook, lando handles the soundtrack and vibes because he loses all coordination in the kitchen, play a co-op video game that you guys have been working your way through for a month, go out on a nice little dinner date, and have great sex before knocking out.

HOWEVER, this week you have kinda forgotten that you need to do your hair. originally you had an appointment that tuesday to get a silk press done with your usual hairstylist, but she canceled on you. once you got that “hey girly...” text you’d known there was no hope of rescheduling, for that week at least. so, you decided to do your own hair sometime later in the week, but your boyfriend was home for the first time after a triple-header, and was a terrible lovely distraction. you also had to work, unfortunately, you had to clean the flat, you had to eat, and you had to breathe—so understandably, you’ve ended up pushing your wash-day/hair-day and everything-shower to the last minute.

you apologized several times to lando during breakfast for your forgetfulness and wasting valuable “boyfriend-girlfriend time” as lando coined. but lando is lando—a sweetheart at his core—so he refused to accept your apologies with an “don’t apologize for something so minor, love,” and even offered to help you tackle the fight you end up almost losing every time…. vs. your hair. 

you kindly denied his assistance knowing damn well that if he was in the shower with you, your hair wouldn’t be done until late that night due to a different type of lando-distraction. you suggested that lando streamed while you were doing your shower and hair, and that you could still go out for dinner that evening. lando was pretty receptive to the idea, especially after he made sure that you were 100% okay with him not helping you do your hair (he usually does, you’ve got him trained pretty good; all he needs is the license at this point), and the fact that it’s been like 3 months since he last streamed.

lando posts that he’s streaming starting at noon, and after a brief make out against the sink post-dishwashing that leaves your lips swollen and head foggy, he goes to take a shower and start setting up his stream equipment. cursing lando’s smug-ass face as he walks away, you let him know that you're stepping out to the beauty supply store to get a few items before you start your little routine and that you might not see him before his stream starts. he does a 180, and rushes back to you from down the hallway to give you one more mind boggling kiss and with a smile says, “text me when you get there and when you’re back. i’ll have my phone on dnd but your messages are set to pass through it, so if you don’t want to be seen on stream today you don’t have to worry about it.” internally, you’re pretty sure your heart just imploded at the mindfulness this boy has—that your boyfriend has. somehow, it still surprises you how mature lando is for how silly he acts most of the time.

“you’re too sweet to me, lan.” you respond with a shy smile, “i probably won’t interrupt you today—i’ll let your delulu fans have custody, and deal with you!” lando throws his head back and does his usual demonic laugh, “hey! my fans are not that delusional, but i am afraid that you’re losing the custody battle!” he kisses you on the cheek, and with that you separate until later that day.

or so you thought. you knew lando’s super sweet behavior was too sus without him being his usual gremlin-self at least once.

when you get back from the beauty supply store (which should’ve been a fifteen-minute trip at most, turned into a near hour after the usual shenanigans you find yourself involved in buying things you don’t need), lando’s already started his stream. you text him letting him know you’re about to hop into the shower, and start heading to en-suite bathroom.

when you open the door, the mirror is slightly covered with remaining steam from lando’s shower, and you can see his clothes hanging half-inside the hamper. which is an improvement from being left on the floor—choose your battles, ladies. but as you move further into the bathroom, setting down your everything-shower supplies, changing into your silk robe and bonnet—you pick up on a lingering scent that should not be present.

your ninety-four fucking dollar scalp revival shampoo.

you’ve had that shampoo since you were seventeen, using it only when extremely necessary. you didn’t even pay for it, it was something your mom bought you as a pretty thoughtful and useful gift after you complained about your scalp suddenly getting super sensitive. it lasted through your senior year of grade school, all of university, and goddamn-it, two boyfriends!!! you let out a bit of an hysterical giggle (seek mental help, babe) and walk to the shower to grab the jar. the problem is: you know there was only probably one more usage left.

turning the cap off, your worst fears are confirmed...it’s…empty. with an anguished cry, you fall to your knees on the tiled floor—it’s like your childhood pet died. you gently set the jar down on the floor, and stare dazedly at the ceiling. what makes it worse is: you know that lando probably didn’t even use it properly. he most likely didn’t even let it sit for the mandatory 15 minutes that all girls do as an excuse to waste more time in the shower, he prob- he probably rinsed it out right after he massaged it in; that thought right there almost had you crying. oh, and what makes it even worse-r , what was a one-use sized amount for you was like, three for lando, so if he used it sparingly, you would’ve at least gotten to cherish it for the last time.

and with that, you rise from the floor, like some sort of re-animated monster—and with a twitching eye, start stomping to lando’s stream room. before you barge in, you remember what you're wearing: a black silk robe, matching bonnet, glasses, and your cute orange shark slides (lando bought them for you, he has a matching pair). you do the mental math of caring about this being on the internet for the rest of your life, but eventually the opportunity of terrorizing lando wins out over whatever a digital footprint is.

the door swings open, and with your shout of, “lando norris!” the pinging of his chat becomes rapid. lando looks wide-eyed at the camera and whispers, “oh fuck.” he half spins in his chair to look at you in the doorway, and is met with a flying shark slide to the neck. “oW! what did i do??” he cries out.

“you used the last of my ONE-HUNDRED DOLLAR shampoo, YOU THIEVING GREMLIN!!!” the chat notifications start cutting each other off with how fast they’re being sent.

“i didn’t use your shampoo??” he says with a bewildered look, clutching the shark slide to his chest. you seethe, “the fucking WOODEN JAR, that you didn’t even have the AUDACITY throw away, and left in the shower?!”

lando pauses, and makes an ‘a-ha’ sort of face goes, “oh, i thought that was conditioner.” you scream again and this time you don’t miss your mark. the remaining shark slide bonks him right on the forehead. “oW, again?!”

“I THOUGHT YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO HAVE GOOD REACTION TIME??!”

“yEAH?! WELL, i didn’t expect  MY GIRLFRIEND to ASSAULT ME with the shark slides that I bought HER!!”

“yEAH?! WELL, i didn’t expect MY BOYFRIEND to waste MY hair products!!”

lando cackles but surrenders, he reaches for you in the doorway and pulls you in between his legs with his hands gripping your hips. 

he pouts, “i’m sorry. i can buy you another batch, if you’d like. if you need it for your shower right now, i can pause the stream and run and go get for you, or get it delivered?” you sigh, looking at his wide blue eyes. you let him stew for a minute, trying to find it in you to remain mad. his thumbs start petting you gently while you think, and he leans his head forward to rest on your tummy.

you sigh again, hand coming up to play with the hairs at the nape of his neck, and cave, “nah..don’t even worry about it. i don’t even need to use it today, i just wanted to remind you to keep your nosy-ass away from my hair products.” he nods against your abdomen, you start to pull away, and he does the same. you lean down and give him a brief peck on the cheek, and turn to exit the room. 

“oh!” you exclaim now in the doorway, one hand on the doorknob, “i love you, even though you steal all my shit.”

lando giggles, cheeks turning a light pink, “i love you, princess,” the simp dripping out of every pore in his body. you point at him, “this is actually a mutually beneficial situation! now, for date night you can take me to the store to buy hair products,” lando’s smile drops, “don’t worry we can get some for you too, curly boy!” lando doesn’t even try to fight it once he sees the borderline manic grin on your face, just begging him to test you one more time. he accepts his face, “yes, love. i can’t wait for tonight, princess.”

he turns back to his stream when the door closes all the way and shakes his head. he claps his hands once, ready to get back into it, but you burst in again,

“and when i get out of that damn shower in an hour—you’re sure as hell gonna help blow dry and flat iron this shit! it’s silk press season, lando norris, we cannot be caught slacking!” you slam the door shut, and leave.

lando just blinks at the camera, mouth slightly open like that one pikachu meme. he briefly reads the chat, trying to recover, and looks at all of the chatters pick on him like he just got called to the dean’s office. some messages start to roll in about him having to end the stream.

he waits to hear the bedroom door shut, and a few more seconds for the shower to start running before he pseudo-whispers into the mic, “don’t worry, chat! she may have said an hour, but we actually have more like three. it’s her ‘everything-shower’, no-way she’ll finish that quickly. she needs an hour just to sing and dance in there before she starts actually doing anything.”

he starts to open a lobby in cod, sending invites to a few of the boys online and his phone starts vibrating on the desk. the chat starts to go wild again, recognizing its the ringtone he set for your messages. his face drops again when he opens your text thread, “oh my god, chat. she heard me, i forgot she pulls up the stream for background noise. i’m screwed.”

yninstagram • 2hrs ago

liked by landonorris, ybfsinstagram, and 123,978 others

yninstagram hairstylist did his thing for silk press season 👅

tagged landonorris

view comments

landonorris can’t even see our faces but you can’t tell we’re both pretty

➥yninstagram pretty gyal takeover

➥user bro 😭 i can’t even call this sassy

➥user he’s just keeping it real with y’all

landonorris i’ll always take care of you like a princess

➥landonorris and one day very soon, forever treat you like a queen

➥ynistagram lan ☹️🥺

➥user proposal hint?!!!

➥user it’s a 4ever thing y’all wouldn’t understand 🥱

➥user i do 🙄 y/n comes home one day every two years and takes care of our eight children

➥user bitch—LMFAOOO

user not her gatekeeping the stylist 😤 not very girl’s girl of her

➥yninstagram he’s booked out for the foreseeable future sorry babe

➥user oh uh. that’s completely understandable. he doesn’t take walk in’s ? 😃

landonorris • 3hrs ago

liked by yninstagram, maxfewtrell, and 2,321,768 others

landonorris you attract what you fear? word, oh no a pretty gyal who lets me do her hair😱 oohhhhh how scaryyy

tagged yninstagram

view comments

yninstagram damn 🥵 she’s pretty fit

yninstagram heard her boyfriend’s finer

➥landonorris shouldn’t listen to gossip, her bf can’t match her beauty by far

➥user now THATS SOME RIZZ i didn’t know he had it in him

carlossainzjr y/nnita keep brainwashing him i’m getting good teasing material

➥ynistagram sí señor, el gusto es mio

➥carlossainzjr aye,lando her spanish is better than yours🤣

➥landonorris my tractor is better than yours, mmm yeah that’s what i thought

➥user DAMN LANDO CHILL

➥yninstagram he will be issuing a formal apology at the paddock next sunday señor sainz

➥user i just KNOW she got him at shark slide-point

© httpsserene - do not reupload. photos in header image are from pinterest. divider by @cafekitsune.

[tempesttz]

i feel like causing problems today: correcting actual endogenic misinformation on the anti endo blog about "correcting misinformation"

WARNING: VERY LONG POST ABOUT SYSCOURSE BELOW THE CUT! you have been warned. stay safe! :3c

[/image id: screenshot of tumblr blog @antimisinfo, the blog's profile picture, and the blog's header stating "correcting misinformation." end id.] (before we get into this, some of these images will be very bright! i will try to provide accurate image ids to every screenshot i post. stay safe!) okay so see this account right? op has no clue what they're talking about. addressing pronouns right now, i was going to refer to them by their preferred collective pronouns but i can't find them? i checked their carrd and their alters all had different pronouns and their about me just says this

[/image id: text stating, "horned haters is a subsystem filled with alters who hate endos / pro-endos. our whole system does but we are more passionate about it and plan to try make as many safe spaces for anti-endos as we possibly can!" end id.] so at least i know they prefer alters. cool [happy] so far okay whatever they REALLY hate endogenic systems thats cool thats whatever nothing new there but

[/image id: five images of different flags, likely did/osdd related, anti endo related, or something similar. text underneath flags states "system hot takes," "anti endo support group," "anti endo system terms," "agre and littles safespace," and "fictive stuff." end id.] jegus dude you weren't joking about being passionate about hating. this is like, grade a hater here. but i digress this probably isn't the post to be screwing around on i'll keep the screwing to a minimum i promise. that being said i don't promise to be nice, i do not owe anyone kindness, especially when they are not kind to me. i will try to be polite. so this is already splendid right but you would think with this many accounts dedicated to hating endogenic systems (they also own anti endo vents, i think?) they would at least know what they're talking about, right? right?????

[/image id: text reading "so what are endos? endos or endogenics are people who claim to have did/osdd without trauma or claim to have alters/be a system without having did/osdd." end id.] source: endos / endogenics and why they aren't valid, may 8 2024 for the sake of convenience, i'm going to be referring to did/osdd as osddid from now on. okay so first of all, anyone who claims to be endogenic while having osddid is almost definitely also traumagenic and has reasons rooted in trauma, those two things aren't mutually exclusive. endogenic is a broad, personal label. an endogenic system with did could be one with a lot of created alters or headmates. or just two created alters, headmates, etc. who knows! it's a very personal label after all. that being said, to have osddid, you have to have some form of trauma in almost every case, because trauma is what causes the dissociation, amnesia and other symptoms of osddid. anyone who's arguing to the contrary is wrong. you cannot have osddid without trauma? "so tempy, endogenic systems aren't real! they don't have osddid!" wrong. you can be a system without having osddid. for just one example, sourced from the national library of medicine, pubmed central, "multiplicity can be placed along a continuum between identity disturbance and dissociative identity disorder (did), although most systems function relatively well in everyday life. Further research is needed to explore this phenomenon, especially in terms of the extent to which multiplicity can be regarded as a healthy way of coping." (2017) taking some bookmarks from your sixth grade english class (which i can only hope you have passed by now, if you are on this website,) we are going to use some inferences. if multiplicity isn't dissociative identity disorder, but it is a state of being multiple and a system, what do you have? a system without osddid. "but tempy, that doesn't mention osdd!" that's because osdd wasn't a medical term before the dsm-5. not to mention, it stresses that "...most systems function relatively well in everyday life..." and that "...multiplicity can be regarded as a healthy way of coping." osdd is a disorder and an osdd system's plurality is disordered. non-disordered plurality is a thing that exists, and almost all non-traumagenic plurals are non-disordered! so we're already off to a terrible start. op isn't creating a distinction between plurality and osddid, likely because they believe that osddid is the only way to be plural. this not only was disproved above by a literal scientific article on a .gov website, but also the icd-11.

[/image id: text stating "boundary with normality (threshold):" which then moves a line down to a bullet point stating "the presence of two or more distinct personality states does not always indicate the presence of a mental disorder. in certain circumstances (e.g., as experienced by 'mediums' or other culturally accepted spiritual practitioners) the presence of multiple personality states is not experienced as aversive and is not associated with impairment in functioning. a diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder should not be assigned in these cases." end id.] so someone can experience multiple personality states without it being part of a mental disorder. and it's not dissociative identity disorder, and it can't be otherwise specified dissociative disorder, so... i wonder what it could be? well, many things! all under the wonderful way-too-vague umbrella that is endogenic plurality. oh, you need more proof? how about we look to a book written by eric yarbrough, a psychiatrist who specializes in lgbtq issues:

[/image id: text reading "the phenomenon of plurality is unknown to most mental health clinicians. most professionals know this condition as dissociative identity disorder (american psychiatric association 2013), although plurality and dissociative identity disorder are not exactly the same. being plural, or having two or more people existing in one body or space, is just one part of the diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder. many people who are plural do not experience distress from the existence of others within themselves." end id.] what was that, psychiatrist eric yarbrough in your book transgender mental health which was published by the american psychiatric association?

[/image id: text reading "plurality is a more patient-centered approach to what has historically been referred to as dissociative identities. this is not the same as the dsm-5 diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder (american psychiatric association 2013). plurality makes up just one part of the larger diagnosis and does not necessarily cause distress. although many people who are plural have a history of trauma, there are just as many who do not. a plural system is a collection of all the alters present. with some people these alters might come and go, whereas with others they are static and waiting to be discovered." end id.] this is not the same as the dsm-5 diagnosis of dissociative identity disorder, huh? it's just one part of a larger diagnosis and doesn't necessarily cause distress, huh? still not convinced? rapid fire! zarah eve, sarah parry: "not all multiplicity is based in trauma" (2021) mick cooper: "neuropsychological research has demonstrated the inherently divisible nature of the brain and consciousness" (unsure, likely pre-2013) zarah eve, kim hayes, sarah perry: "multiplicity experiences are phenomenologically distinct from clinical dissociative experiences" (2023)

kymbra clayton: "there may be in the general population a large number of people with [multiplicity] who are high-functioning, relatively free of overt psychopathology, and no more in need of treatment than most of their peers. they may not have abuse histories and may have evolved a creative and adaptive multiplicity." (possibly 2005)

the entire endogenic and non-traumagenic resources google doc, created by a diagnosed traumagenic system can we at least establish there's been a recorded medical existence of healthy, non-disordered multiplicity in psychiatric fields and that this isn't something that someone just made up on tumblr one day? okay, cool, thanks. now i wonder if there's a word for that. oh wait. it's called non-disordered plurality and tends to be much more common in non-traumagenic systems. by now you've probably forgotten the actual reason this post exists, so back to antimisinfo!

[/image id: text reading "why is this bad? this is misinformation because as far as science knows did/osdd is a trauma based disorder (specifically caused by trauma in early childhood, which is speculated to be 1-9 / 1-12 years old) and your brain would not split/create alters without reason. you cannot have alters without having a disorder, this is common sense as it's not normal to have alters. to add onto this endos also take over our communities and teal our terms. (we'll make a post with further information on that in the future.)" end id.] okay so first off non-disordered systems exist, let's stop talking about osddid as if it's the only way plurals can exist. second off, you can be multiple without having a disorder, it's literally highlighted in the icd-11 that non-disordered multiplicity exists. see above for disproving that. this is not common sense, because as seen above people can experience multiplicity without it being disordered, therefore meaning it is "normal," though not realistically normal as all plurals are a minority. normal =/= bad/disordered. cool? cool now, onto "endos take over our communities and steal our terms." i have no clue what terms op is talking about (tried to find their elaboration on those terms but it seems they haven't posted it), nor have i ever gotten an actual comprehensive list of terms they think we're stealing, but here we go: the terms traumagenic and endogenic were created by an endogenic system

[/image id: text reads "an important part of the development of these terms involves our journey towards identifying as plural. we have used a lot of terms for ourselves over the last thirty years; since 2014, we have identified as endogenic, but have known we were plural since at least 1990. the road" text cuts off. end id.] the term plural can be traced back to 2003 and even in its oldest records recognize the existence of non-traumagenic plurality. it has always been an inclusive term

[/image id: header reads "heart's home." text next to it reads "join date: january 02, 2003." text underneath reads, "this is my site for people that have mpd did, {;} also i agree that not all is cause by trauma. {;} i was on the ring from ring world and did not know this was moved." end id.] introject is a psychiatry-focused word, meaning that it could be claimed to be osddid exclusive, however multiple communities have used them in tandem for years. it can be traced back to this glossary which was written before the dsm-5, or pre-2013.

[/image id: text reads "introject - introjection occurs when a person (singlet or plural) internalizes another person (real or fictional) into his or her mental space. in classical psychology, the introject is usually a parent, whose advice for good or ill becomes integrated into the person's moral system. more broadly, many people experience introjects as a kind of muse, inspiring them to creativity or self-improvement (a psychologist would call this an "internalized imago"). (psychiatric)". new line. new line text reads, ""introject" is seen as derogatory by some, because it is a psychiatric word and seems to imply that such people of necessity are unreal. They prefer terms like walk-in, soulbond, or fictive. having an introject does not necessarily mean you're multiple. it is an experience common to singlets and plurals. some multiple systems report adopting people from books, films, or real life, making them part of the group and allowing them to take the front if they desire." so, having introjects hasn't even always been seen as a fully plural experience! singlets used to be considered to be able to have introjects too! isn't that cool? not to mention, they also have a definition for fictive in there, recognized as a wider plural term! cool, cross that off the list... oh? what's this?

[/image id: text reads "system - a group of persons in one body. also, the operating system by which a group governs itself. multiples have many different names for this: group, collective, clan, household (or house), family, etc. (may have originated with a few multiples writing for the amateur press; we first read it in an early mpd book.)" end id.] so non-disordered plurals have used the term system since ever too... not to mention, hey, look at this term!

[/image id: text reads "empowerment is for all multiples. It is not only for natural (non-trauma) multiples; you can be empowered and be a multiple who was born as one person and split due to child abuse. In fact, if that's your situation, empowerment is a wonderful thing for you, and is something your therapist (if any) ought to be encouraging." end id.] wow... non-trauma multiples. look at that. is that enough terms? if you want me to look up more, feel free to suggest anything the endogenic community is "stealing" that haven't been used synonymously and consistently in both traumagenic and endogenic spaces since before traumagenic and endogenic were terms. okay back to misinformation.

[/image id: text is a link that reads "there is also a carrd that explains why endos are bad and debunks a few myths if anyone is interested in it! if not continue reading." end id.] i didn't need to click on this to know it was the why endos are bad carrd. this is the most touted anti endo carrd in existence. i'm so sick of seeing it i'm not even addressing it today. it's wrong and blames endogenic systems for systemic issues like "making actual systems be less believed." not a verbatim quote, but you can go read it for yourself and then scroll up and read everything i just said again.

i've never actually seen another anti-endo carrd. which is saying something, because there's a lot of endogenic carrds, some better than others. carrds in general aren't reputable in most situations, unless they cite other sources, which the why endos are bad carrd doesn't. it cites a google doc about cultural appropriation and the theory of structural dissociation, which is about osddid, not non traumagenic plurality. it also implies that anyone identifying as endogenic has been lied to, is traumagenic and in denial, is a singlet who's experiencing a factitious disorder or other disorder misleading them, or are a singlet faking because they think it's "fun." no comment, i'll talk about it in length another day.

[/image id: text reads, "why can't you have did/osdd or alters without trauma? as far as science knows did/osdd is a trauma disorder and in order to have alters in the first place you require dissociation, which is also a trauma (or stress) response. here are tons of medically reviewed sources that say this:" image ends. end id.] once again, not osdddid. also, "as far as science knows..." see above. science knows about non-disordered plurality. op goes on to list a bunch of articles about dissociative identity disorder, that talk about dissociative identity disorder. they are wonderful articles about dissociative identity disorder and prove that individuals with dissociative identity disorder (and by extension otherwise specified dissociative disorder) experience that disorder due to trauma. that being said... non-disordered multiplicity is a thing, and endogenic systems still don't have osddid. seeing a pattern?

[/image id: text reads, "what about religious beliefs / tulpamancy? first people are not required to believe or participate in your religious beliefs (and religious beliefs are not exempt from criticism) and second tulpamancy is a closed buddhist practice that has nothing to do with being a system and should not be compared to being a system nor should it be included / involved in system communities. Note that the dsm-v also says that in order to have did; "the disturbance is not a normal part of a broadly accepted cultural or religious practice." <- this does not mean it's possible to have alters due to a religious thing, if anything it says they cannot be counted as alters / as a system." end id.] okay so i corrected this in the image id, but op actually wrote "tuplamancy" twice. lol first off, tulpamancy isn't a closed buddhist practice. a tulpa is a theosophical term that was originally inspired by the tibetan buddhist nirmāṇakāya, translated as in tibetan as sprul-pa. "the western understanding of tulpas was developed by twentieth-century european mystical explorers, who interpreted the idea independently of buddhahood," according to wikipedia, sourced from tracking the tulpa (2015). a google search could tell you this. did you research any of the communities you are attempting to debunk past listening to what people who agree with you say? if you've decided in the past three months that google is your friend, i would google "echo chamber." second off, people absolutely are not required to believe or participate in your religious beliefs, and religious beliefs are subject to criticism. however, they should also be respected. this post, along with most other things you have had to say, have not respected spiritual plurals. not to mention, not all non-traumagenic plurals are spiritual. not to mention, not all tulpamancers are spiritual, in fact, most aren't. "modern practitioners, who call themselves "tulpamancers", use the term to refer to a type of willed imaginary friend which practitioners consider to be sentient and relatively independent. modern practitioners predominantly consider tulpas to be a psychological rather than a paranormal concept. the idea became an important belief in theosophy." see: wikipedia again. i mean, if you want me to go find scientific articles about this i can but wikipedia has plenty. go check the sources on wikipedia. this should have been the first thing you did if you wanted to "combat misinformation," by doing actual research before posting. op then starts talking about did. see: not all plurals are disordered. op also takes the time to shit on spiritual multiplicity again, which i will rightly ignore, refer to two paragraphs ago. it's midnight and i would like to finish writing by 1am.

[/image id: text reads, "to add on, no you cannot pray to be a system or transition into being a system. if you were to pray and one day magically become a system you are either in denial or you've convinced yourself you're something you're not. believing you can be a system without trauma or that you can become a system by praying is like believing you can get autism from vaccines or drinking too much dairy milk, that's just not how it works." end id.] this is a half-truth! you cannot pray to become a system unless you count spiritual possession (and frankly that responsibility lies on the individual in question), and you cannot pray to have osddid as that's a dissociative disorder that stems from childhood. you technically can transition to being plural (created systems are a thing, intentional and unintentional creation of headmates has been recorded dutifully since at least the early 1900s (see: tracking the tulpa, 2015). for the sake of it, here's a sciencedirect article about authors who experience different forms of hearing their characters in their head, who's recounts all sound very similar to non-disordered plurality. "believing you can be a system without trauma or that you can become a system by praying is like believing you can get autism from vaccines or drinking too much dairy milk, that's just not how it works." maybe if all plurality is disordered. it isn't. see above when i showed multiple examples of non-disordered multiplicity. believing that all plurality is disordered is like insisting that god created everything on earth after being presented with the theory of evolution. the analogy goes both ways.

[/image id: text reads, "what about mixed origin systems? Mixed origin systems are not a thing. did/osdd forms purely from trauma, you can't form from a mix of trauma and not trauma, that's not how it works. if you identify as mixed origin you are likely in denial and really need to come to terms with the fact that you are either traumatized or you're not a system at all." ] okay so first of all people can be traumatized past the age of twelve. ooh burn i know crazy. not to mention, plurality in general is known to be experienced by neurodivergent individuals, who as a minority are more likely to experience some form of trauma. this isn't a controversial statement, right? i don't have to prove this, right? cool great thanks. oh hey i just found a really flat ginger ale this will now fuel the rest of this post. there's this crazy concept, some people can be traumatized without it causing them to be disordered. or, a person with osddid could have created headmates, therefore making some of their system of non-traumagenic origin. personally, i was a system before i was traumatized. this caused my plurality to have some very trauma-based aspects, trauma holders and trauma-focused roles. that being said, my plurality (mostly lol) isn't disordered and my first recorded headmate was a created/spontaneous headmate at the age of ~nine.~ isn't that cool? anyways i've been medically recognized as plural so you can't fakeclaim me [silly] i dont have osddid. don't fit the diagnostic criteria. but i've been experiencing headmates since 9 and have recognized my plurality since 12. i'm 18. most of my headmates can be sourced to when i was 13-15, as that's when i experienced the most trauma (i'm better now stay safe though yall). that's decidedly after the gracious "1-12" estimate you gave, op. not to mention, we created headmates intentionally at the age of 12. so what's up with that op? what am i? okay i'm done being anectodal, i just took the opportunity to parry a personal opinion with a personal anecdote just to further drive the nail in that people like this exist and are living breathing sentient individuals with lives outside the screen and many of us have been plural since ever. i sourced non-traumagenic multiplicity to before the dsm-5 just in this post alone, not to mention tulpamancy (many tulpamancers don't consider themselves plural/multiple or part of the community).

[/image id: text reads, "what about other kinds of origins? Other origins like "willowgenic" and all that bullshit? Yeah no, same thing as endos, not possible. look above for all the proof you need, did/osdd is only caused by trauma. traumagenic is the only valid origin." end id.] i dunno if i told you this but did/osdd isn't the only form of plurality because not all plurality is disordered. also, spelling every origin you don't agree with incorrectly in a post that's supposed to be informational doesn't lend to your credibility. it's spelled willogenic. you're welcome. also, the word "traumagenic" was created by an endogenic system (see above, during "endos are stealing our terms," first link). you're appropriating our terms, buddy. [silly]

[/image id: text reads, "but I gave myself did! / but I created my own alters! no you didn't. that isn't possible, you cannot turn yourself into a did/osdd system and creating alters is a coping mechanism, not something you do for fun, sources on this;" text ends. end id.] half truth! you can't give yourself osddid because it's a dissociative disorder that forms due to childhood trauma. you can, however, create alters/headmates. see above when i talked about tulpamancy. op goes on to link more resources about dissociative identity disorder that don't mention other forms of plurality. not all plurals are disordered, let's move on.

[/image id: text reads, "isn't being a system like the same as being trans or being lgbtq? no, many endos compared the two but they are completely different. Being lgbtq is an identity, it's something you are born as. being a system is a debilitating disorder caused by severe trauma, it is counted as a disability which is;" text ends. end id.] first off i gotta say it again, not all plurality is disordered. op goes on to explain why did is a disability, which is true. that's just true. but again. not all plurality is disordered. second off, half truth! being a system is not the same as being lgbtq! that being said, a lot of systems are part of the lgbtq community, both due to its known effects on gender and sexuality and because a lot of them are neurodivergent. speaking on the internet plural community here, anyways. a lot of anti endos are referred to as "sysmeds" as a reference to "transmeds," people who believe that all people who are transgender must have a disorder in the form of gender dysphoria. sysmeds are people who believe that all people who are systems must have a disorder in the form of osddid.... same thing different font debunked not all systems are disordered. anyways.

[/image id: text reads, "but the dsm-v says that trauma isn't required! no, the dsm-v actually says csa isn't required, there are other forms of trauma that don't involve csa or child abuse. To act as if it saying that the trauma isn't always ca or child abuse means that it doesn't require trauma at all is extremely invalidating to those who are traumatized in ways that don't involve child abuse or csa." end id.] both of you are wrong jesus christ. okay so first of all the dsm-v heavily implies that trauma is basically required in order to have osddid.

[/image id: text reading "dissociative identity disorder is associated with overwhelming experiences, traumatic events, and/or abuse occurring in childhood. the full disorder may manifest at al-" text cuts off. end id.]

[/image id: text reads, "the dissociative disorders are frequently found in the aftermath of trauma, and many of the symptoms, including embarrassment and confusion about the symptoms or a desire to hide them, are influenced by the proximity to trauma. in dsm-5, the dissociative disorders are placed next to, but are not part of, the trauma- and stressor-related disorders, reflecting the close relationship between these diagnostic classes. both acute stress disorder" text cuts off. end id.] second of all the part of the dsm-5 that goes over dissociative identity disorder doesn't mention sexual violence once. the best i can assume this claim came from is an old belief that most dissociative identity disorder trauma if not all is inherently sexual.

[/image id: text reads, "promoted by charismatic individuals such as cornelia wilbur -- that multiplicity was almost always caused by severe, repeated child abuse, usually sexual, and was an extreme form of dissociation." end id.] so... where did you get this info, op? you didn't give us a source, after all. and again.... not all plurality is disordered. so this is a pointless argument to make. shit, i'm out of ginger ale. and it's 1am. it's okay i'm basically done right? uh, right?

[/image id: text reads, "but this source claims endos exist / did doesn't require trauma! most of those sources are extremely old and / or made by endos (or pro endos) themselves. (we'll make a more in-depth post on this topic some other time, but for now this is all we have to say on it)" end id.] first off i dated every source i cited, most are post-2013 and the newest is from last september (sep 2023). the oldest is ~2003. you're welcome. second, if you denounce every source given matter how reputable because it's "written by pro endos," you'll only end up listening to people in your own community. hey, remember when i asked you to google "echo chamber?" also, i'm waiting for that post, op. also also, for the sake of it, not all plurality is disordered, so why are we mentioning did again? oh yeah, because you don't believe in non-disordered plurality. is that because all the sources proving their existence are pro endo? hey, fun challenge, if you're over the age of 21 and find yourself wishing to, take a shot every time i reiterate not all plurality is disordered. [joking]

[/image id: text reads, "but we don't know everything about the human brain! you're right, we don't. the brain is mysterious, but we do know enough to know that it doesn't do these kinds of things for no reason. we know the brain reacts to trauma and we know what the difference between a normal brain and a disordered brain is. just because we don't know everything doesn't give people an excuse to jump to conclusions and spread misinformation. it is better to stick to what science currently knows which is the theory of structural dissociation, which is the current theory about how did/osdd forms, and so far no one has been able to disprove it. and before someone says it, no it is not only a theory, it is a scientific theory which is;" end id.] hey i have this fun concept for you not all plurality is disordered. also, just to throw it out there, otto van der hart, the guy who created the theory of structural dissociation referencing the haunted self and doing so along with ellert neijenhuis, suzette boon and kathy steele, had his license revoked years ago for abusing his plural patients. not to mention they promote only referring to the "client" and not the "parts," and only referring to alters as "parts of the client." i recommend reading this article on power to the plurals, and if you feel like some extra reading, you can also check out this old article about how psych professionals used to be encouraged to bait or purposefully leave information out or use different names for integration to attempt to coerce their plural patients into final fusion. in conclusion, not all plurality is disordered, source your shit, and if you're going to talk about only dissociative disorders at least get your claims right. thank you. stop spreading misinformation.

dave got a blinkie for his post so now i want one

[/image id: green and yellow blinkie gif with the words "written by jade harley!" in pixelpoiiz font. end id.]

[/image id: blinkie with a dark blue, almost black background featuring multiple stars, one of which twinkles. contains text reading "written by kankri." in the pixeloid sans font. end id.]

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed reactions, the bench, and the gems

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it! part 1 can be found here.

And we're back for part 2! Here's all the new stuff I finished this season, and one more I'll get back to later. As with before, these are sorted alphabetically within each category and are not ranked as of yet.

Also as before, the OP for each series is linked in the title. Check them all out if the header images aren't giving you the right feel for each show, but also check them out because most of them were actually pretty damn good this season.

[Solo Leveling OP voice] LET'S GET IT!

Mixed Bags:

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Your standard, quasi-harem “easily flustered Regular Guy wins over hot girls just by being really nice” shonen romcom. I really don’t have much to say about this one other than if you’ve seen My Dress-Up Darling, you’ve basically seen this already. The only thing that really sets it apart is the setting.

Tsubasa (voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki, in a FAR cry from his turn as Mahito in Jujutsu Kaisen) is a straight-laced Tokyoite whose family situation lands him in a small city in the frozen boonies of Hokkaido. While looking for the bus to his new house, he runs into a gyaru in the snowy wild, the underdressed, hilariously-proportioned Minami, and they hit it off. It turns out they go to the same school, there are other cute girls there who take a shine to him as well, it’s nothing new.

I ultimately don’t have much to say about Hokkaido Gals, but I do have a soft spot for series like this, and after reading ahead in the manga I felt obligated to see it through. This is all junk food, but it’s all stuff you’ve seen done better in other series. I also have a soft spot for gyaru in anime and manga, and while I do like Minami just fine, she isn’t Marin Kitagawa or Rumiko Manbagi. I don’t really have it in me to recommend this show to many, though, at least not until another season rolls around, if that ever happens. The manga genuinely does get a lot better as it goes on, but the really worthwhile stuff may not happen until a third season, and I just don’t see that happening. 

The manga has issues that the anime isn’t willing or able to solve, chief of which being the visuals. The art style of the manga is wildly inconsistent, and getting a mediocre animation team on this didn’t help matters at all. While the colors often pop nicely against the pretty, snowy backdrops, nobody looks all that great overall. The characters are recognizable, but they just plain don’t look great a lot of the time, nor do they look consistent from one cut to the next; I said that Minami’s proportions are hilarious, but just as hilarious is how wildly they vacillate from one scene to the next for the sake of trying to titillate the viewer.

My biggest takeaway from both the manga and anime was everything I learned about Hokkaido in the process, and if the series is taking subsidies from the island’s tourism bureau, then it’s a job well done. I want some goddamn jingisukan now. The OP is a great time, though. I’m shocked it took over a decade for us to get a proper “Uptown Funk” knockoff in an anime.

Metallic Rouge

I’ll be upfront in saying that this was my biggest disappointment of the season by far. This show had so much going for it, and what we got was… ugh.

There was an unbelievable amount of promise from the outset: This was Studio Bones’ commemorative 25th anniversary production, and coming from the studio that gave us all-timer adaptations like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Mob Psycho 100, not to mention later works from Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichiro Watanabe (including the Cowboy Bebop movie), you can’t fault anyone for having high expectations. It looked to be a fitting production as well: Watanabe’s influence shines through immediately in the gorgeous, lived-in cyberpunk off-world locales and racially diverse cast. Action takes the form of dope robo-tokusatsu transformation fisticuffs, and it’s entirely in 2D animation to boot. The first couple of episodes were killer, too; everything looked and sounded amazing, and there were just enough plot threads teased out that I just had to see how they’d unravel.

It brings me no joy, then, to say that Metallic Rouge collapses into a jumbled mess. I don’t even want to bother talking about what happens in the show because I don’t fucking care anymore. There are few media experiences more sobering than to have it dawn on you over a span of several weeks that “oh… this isn’t actually all that good, is it?” Episode after episode piles on with sloppy lore, weak worldbuilding, warring factions whose names you immediately forget, pointless double-crosses, and the most predictable twist you’ve ever seen. For a while I was willing to accept the fact that I didn’t know what was going on half the time and expected things to become clearer, but now I’m not entirely sure the writers knew either. The stakes apparently kept rising and everything just kept getting more claustrophobic. I’m glad it’s over, if only because if I had to hear “Clair de Lune” one more fucking time, I was going to go ballistic. 

There are several attempts at emotional beats, as the story is rife with tragedy and sacrifice, and every single one lands with a wet thud. Nobody gets enough time, motivation, or characterization for any of these things to feel like they actually matter, and that’s especially a shame because the finale might have been able to stick the landing if the previous episodes were less dense and better paced. Emphasis on “almost,” though, because just before the season ends, we get the absolute most pointless fakeout I’ve seen since The Rise of Skywalker, which is the lowest point of comparison you can make for any work of sci-fi.

This is especially frustrating because on paper, there is so much to like here. Rouge and Naomi are likable-enough deuteragonists with a fun dynamic, and they’d make easy yuri bait in a better show. The characters are all pretty and uniquely designed across the board, and the overall aesthetic, almost a pastiche of late-90’s anime futurism, is undeniable. The toku suit designs are neat and several of the action scenes are gorgeous. The score and soundtrack are outstanding (except for the aforementioned Debussy indulgence). I have few complaints about how the show looks and sounds; the style is great! All of my issues lie with the substance.

Metallic Rouge may have had all the ingredients, but it just needed more time to cook; whether that would have been by doubling the episode count or by more carefully planning the pacing and trimming some of the fat from the lore, I’m still not sure. Probably both. It probably needed better writers, too. Maybe it just isn’t as smart as it acts and there was no way to satisfyingly resolve the clumsy civil rights allegories that bring it uncomfortably close to the likes of Detroit: Become Human. So all of the above, I guess. I tend to adore stories that involve artificially-intelligent beings developing their own wills and emotions and learning to cut their own strings (the likes of Blade Runner, Nier Automata, even a couple of character arcs in the Persona series), but this ain’t it. I’m not even mad anymore. I’m just disappointed.

If there are two positives that will stick with me, though, they would be the absolute banger of an OP and, of course, Naomi Orthmann herself (pictured above, left). Outstanding character design. I’m mildly obsessed. She deserved a better show.

The Unwanted Undead Adventurer

This one isn’t even worth talking about, so here’s a brief synopsis, then I’ll add some commentary, and then we’ll all move on with our lives. 

Rentt, a beloved but mediocre adventurer in a fantasy town, gets lost in the mysterious labyrinth that all adventurers explore for personal gain, gets waxed by a dragon, and awakens as a shitty-looking CGI skeleton. He notices, though, that he’s able to level up better as a skeleton than he did as a human, and with the more monsters he defeats, the more he evolves into something closer to human. The rest isn’t really worth discussing.

If I’m being honest, I should’ve dropped this show much sooner. It looks kinda lousy most of the time, the plot (inasmuch as there even is one) is boring, character designs are forgettable (except for Rentt’s closest ally, Lorraine, holy hell) and it seems wholly uninterested in actually building its own setting. If it returns for a second season, I won’t be there, nor will I feel like I’m missing anything. Each episode felt like a chore to watch. I probably only saw it through because 1) I liked looking at Lorraine, I know what I’m about, and 2) I didn’t want to lump it in with the shows I did drop. The Unwanted Undead Adventurer isn’t as patently upsetting or frustrating as those three, but it just plain isn’t a very good show.

The Witch and the Beast

This show could have been so much more. I was drawn in by the gorgeous character designs and intriguing blend of Victorian gothic aesthetics and architecture with modern infrastructure, and very quickly disappointed by just about everything else. The first episode is an exceptional proof of concept, and almost everything that follows is an upsetting showcase of what could have been.

The story centers around Ashaf, a languid, chain-smoking agent of the governing church with a big-ass coffin strapped to his back, and his partner Guideau, a snarling hyena in a young woman’s body, as they investigate abuses of magic across the continent in search of nefarious witches. Guideau in particular has a bone to pick with witches, as the body they presently inhabit is the result of a witch’s curse, and they remain in furious pursuit of the one who cursed them. The curse can be temporarily undone by a kiss with a witch, allowing Guideau’s true body, a hulking brute confined to the coffin, to escape and wreak havoc. Meaning that on a few occasions we get a girl-on-girl kiss followed by a big dude wrecking shit. There’s also other investigations of serial killings, necromancy, and a cursed sword, and here’s hoping you like those, because the coffin breaks are few and far between.

This wasn’t great! By the third episode I had the sneaking suspicion that the animation talent on hand just wasn’t enough to support the aesthetic. While the character designs are exceptional, almost everyone looks awful in any shot that isn’t completely focused on them. This is especially true of Guideau, who looks so inconsistently off-model from one shot to the next that I’m still not entirely sure what they’re supposed to look like, and that’s kind of unforgivable when we’re talking about a main character. Everything looks too dim and too shiny at the same time, and action scenes look like shit more often than they look interesting. I can see so many flickers of something excellent (or at least really good-looking) in Witch and the Beast, and everything else that keeps those flickers from actually igniting makes it so much more frustrating to watch. Maybe just read the manga instead; the panels I've seen from it were uniformly gorgeous.

Actually, yeah, you should probably just read the manga, because for a season of anime, the pacing is atrocious too. It’s clearly trying to angle for a monster-of-the-week format, but each of these mini-arcs is a little too dense for a single episode, so multiple episodes are dedicated to these one-off curiosities, most of which do nothing to advance the plot or show off what the show does best. And if one of them isn’t particularly interesting, you’re saddled with it for the next two weeks like you've been stuck munching on a mealy apple. And I know you can only adapt so much in a 12-episode season, but the decision to end the season on a flashback arc and a lore dump was baffling. That’s not world-building, that’s lazy, and it made the show’s existing pacing issues feel that much more inane.

I feel like I was sold a false bill of goods. I can only imagine how the mangaka feels about this. Dull and uninspiring all around. What a waste.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Isekai, unassuming high school boy gains a unique power, impending war with the Demon Lord, yadda yadda yadda. The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic isn’t anything new or special by any means, nor is it particularly well-animated or -paced, but at its best it’s silly and charming enough that it made a nice, brainless palate cleanser on Fridays.

Usato, your standard quiet high schooler, ends up walking home on a rainy evening with the popular, attractive student council president and VP, when an isekai portal happens. It turns out that it was just the seito-kai that was invited along for the ride (and President Suzune, as it turns out, is fucking psyched to get to be in an isekai), and Usato got caught along with them. When tested for magical aptitude, Suzune and VP Kazuki hit the jackpot with electric and light affinities, respectively, but things go awry when Usato’s reading turns up with healing magic. Terror strikes the palace as the intimidating dommy-mommy Captain Rose barges in to spirit Usato away from his new friends and into her squadron of goons to train him as a combat medic.

As character comedy goes, this one is actually pretty solid at times. Shogo Sakata is plenty of fun as the put-upon, lippy Usato (a much louder role than Chainsaw Man’s Aki Hayakawa), and Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusanagi herself!) is a blast as the terrifying Rose, an uncompromising slave driver of a drill sergeant with a secret soft side. The dynamic between them is great, too; Usato is over Rose’s shit from the beginning and isn’t afraid to talk back to her, but before you know it, this transforms into friendly banter as Rose clearly takes a shine to Usato and knows he can handle any punishment she doles out. Suzune’s also a bunch of fun now that she’s broken away from having to be the competent, popular girl at school and gets to fully lean into being a complete dork.

Wrong Way also works decently as an isekai, because it makes an effort to stay rooted in high fantasy rather than fall back on JRPG mechanics, meaning there are no stat screens! It also avoids the trappings of wish-fulfillment isekai series by having Usato start out as a regular-ass guy; he’s not a Kirito type, just someone Rose sees as a rough gem in need of cutting. There are no cheat skills or OP weapons or anything, just a kid training every day to get stronger so he can protect the people close to him, and that’s the kind of anime protagonist you should want to be.

For better and for worse, I get serious mid-00s vibes from this one; watch the OP if you don’t believe me. Some of the colors pop uncannily in that early-digipaint-era way, and the animation is pretty middling; the most fluid animation we see is whenever Suzune is acting like a creep. Much like those mid-00s anime, though, Wrong Way may have benefited from being weekly (or twice as long) rather than seasonal. There’s a ton of planting with very little payoff, and it doesn’t feel like the actual scope of the story has even been addressed yet. We don’t even learn why the series has the name it does until someone literally says it aloud in the 11th episode. I may have to reevaluate this season after a possible second, if we ever get one, because this doesn’t stand too well on its own.

Of the anime in this “mixed bags” segment, I’d say I enjoyed Wrong Way the most, but it still had enough problems for me to keep it here. It’s not a particularly bad anime, but it’s not especially good either. I guess we can slot it into what Hazel refers to as “good mid.”

On Hold: 

Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (three episodes watched)

Man, what a title. That was the main draw for this BL series, which on paper is basically a gay version of the Mel Gibson vehicle What Women Want. 

Adachi (a surname that will always make me laugh thanks to Persona 4), a gloomy salaryman, has hit the big 3-0 without getting any, and now he can somehow read anyone’s thoughts just by making physical contact with them. Just as he laments that this is his life now, he accidentally bumps into his handsome, popular coworker, Kurosawa, whom he learns has been harboring a massive crush on Adachi this whole time. Well dang, what now? Kurosawa’s a really nice, thoughtful dude, but Adachi’s never even thought about being with a man before! And isn’t there something wrong with already knowing this secret? How can he even go into the office and look Kurosawa in those big, handsome eyes… every single day…

What I’ve seen so far has been pretty solid, if not particularly well animated. The visuals are really my only gripe here; I just put it off for way too long and didn’t have it in me to finish it on time to actually get this thing written and published. Yaoi isn’t my forte, which feels like a shortcoming on my end as a fledgling bisexual, and I’ve already remarked on the solid LGBT representation this past season, so I do plan on hopping back on this one.

I gotta say, the co-leading voice actors put in serious work this season. Adachi is voiced by Chiaki Kobayashi, who continued his role as Stark in Frieren, returned to Mashle as Mash Burnedead, and contributed to Metallic Rouge’s cluttered cast as Noid. Kurosawa’s seiyuu, Ryota Suzuki (of whom I’ll always be a fan for his masterful turn as Yu Ishigami in Kaguya-sama), also held down leading roles in Bang Brave Bang Bravern and The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. They’ve been great in the few episodes of Cherry Magic! that I’ve seen so far, and they’ll be a huge part of what brings me back.

The Gems:

Bang Brave Bang Bravern

I feel like the mark of a perfectly audacious piece of media is in the moments where I find myself incredulously shouting “WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING” at the screen, and Bravern made me do that at least once per episode. I have so many things to say about what makes this show great but all of it can be summed up as “it fucks so goddamn hard.”

A joint military exercise in Hawaii between Japanese and American mech pilots goes south as a sudden invasion by metalloid aliens portends certain doom for humanity. Just in the nick of time, though, a bombastic, autonomous mech named Bravern arrives from space and insists that ace pilot Isami Ao take his reins. Isami reluctantly agrees, and to his consternation, Bravern goes full tokusatsu on everyone’s asses, complete with fully-diegetic theme music, and keeps the threat at bay. With Bravern continuing to pester him to act as a pilot, Isami is forced to take up the mantle of a reluctant hero as everyone rallies around Bravern to save Earth. Tagging along is blond-haired, blue-eyed American pilot Lewis Smith, who gets to live out all of his Top Gun fantasies, right down to the latent homosexuality.

That last point isn’t a projection or anything: This show is legitimately gay as hell, and it rules. Bravern’s feelings towards Isami feel far more romantic than what you’d expect from a literal robot, and his description of how it felt to have Isami pilot him for the first time, as relayed to a grim-faced military council, is riddled with hilarious innuendo. Isami struggles not only with shouldering the burden of needing to be a hero to all of humanity, but also being beset on both sides by a loud, insistent mecha and a dewy-eyed gaijin, both of whom very well seem to want to get in his pants. Intricate rituals punctuate Isami and Lewis’ angsty relationship as these broad-shouldered, muscular men grow ever closer. It’s also worth reiterating that Isami is voiced by Ryota Suzuki, who also voiced Kurosawa in Cherry Magic!, and that may not have even been his gayest role this season. I’m not super well-versed in mecha as a genre, but I do know that there’s a lot of Warrior’s Bond-type stuff in these series, and Bravern lays it on thick. And hard.

This show looks killer, by the way. CGI implementation in 2D anime is still a touchy subject, but Bravern features some of the best I’ve ever seen. Simple cel-shading goes a long way to the point where, outside of some uncanny motion, Bravern himself feels perfectly blended into the hand-drawn animation. Mecha designs range from realistic military-style tech to otherworldly sentient robots, and battle sequences run the same gamut as the stakes rise. As goofy as all of the above may sound, it’s committed to being a grandiose, big-time mecha showcase.

This is as good as camp gets in anime; Bravern does for the mecha genre what Akiba Maid War did for yakuza film pastiche (I have also heard positive comparisons to Samurai Flamenco, which I’ll have to get on ASAP). It’s an excellent mecha show in its own right, and wildly hilarious to boot. Bravern himself is very genre-savvy and seemingly a bit of an otaku himself; he loves acting like a mecha hero, to everyone else’s chagrin. Several of the villains (also mechanical beings, voiced by an all-star seiyuu roster that includes Kenjiro Tsuda, the aforementioned Atsuko Tanaka, and Rie Kugimiya) are total dorks themselves. A CIA interrogator tries to waterboard a mecha at one point. Bravern is a deeply silly show, but its heart is planted as firmly on its sleeve as its tongue is in its cheek: For as wacky as it can get, the story still unfolds with a straight face and excellent emotional beats. 

This show also has the most unskippable ED of any anime since Chainsaw Man dropped a new one every week. I will not say what happens. You cannot predict what it is. Just watch it. One of the top YouTube comments on that video says “When I saw this ending after episode 2, I thought I was going crazy.” That’s a ringing endorsement.

Chained Soldier

On the heels of 100 Girlfriends completely rewiring my brain, I was raring for some more good old-fashioned anime trash. I was told that there would be plenty this season, but you can consult the “dropped” section to see how well that worked out for me. Chained Soldier came with some significant hype, and soon enough into the first episode I realized that I’d actually skimmed through this manga before (don’t ask why), so I was on board immediately. Now here’s some nice trashy fun.

The world is in peril thanks to creatures called Shuuki that can advance on our world via portals from another dimension. Women primarily lead the charge against these monsters, as this dimension produces a special fruit that can lend them (and not men) otherworldly powers to help them in the fight. Yuuki, a perfectly normal young man, ends up in grave danger as he stumbles into a portal, where he is saved by the beautiful Kyouka, a commander who is able to subjugate Shuuki at will and use them to fight others. In a bind, she asks Yuuki if she can subjugate him, which he agrees to by licking her finger and transforming into a monster himself, at her beck and call. Because of his utility in battle, Yuuki is enlisted into her squad of baddies (and also an 11-year-old), living in their home as a caretaker and answering directly to Kyouka as her “slave.”

I know. Hear me out.

I put “slave” in scare quotes because Chained Soldier fortunately isn’t going full Shield Hero on us; this arrangement has a give-and-take baked in. See, every time Yuuki completes his service, Kyouka (or whomever else takes advantage of this anomaly) is compelled to carry out whatever suitable “reward” springs from his unconscious, and this is where the ecchi kicks in. Sometimes it’s a kiss, and sometimes it’s something a little more; the reward corresponds to the length and intensity of Yuuki’s contributions to battle, so the heat can turn up in the form of, say, clothed face-sitting, a good scrubbing in the bath, or some nice, casual CBT. All of this is to say that “slave” is a bit of a buzzword here: It’s more of a dom/sub situationship with a lot of extra steps.

Yes, just about everything that isn’t an action setup is full-on harem trash, and Chained Soldier lays it on thick, right down to full-on nudity. Nothing about this show resembles high art, but I can’t help but admire such a high level of commitment to its aesthetic, including the sleaze. It fully commits to the bit and doesn’t even bother lampshading its own trashiness. Chained Soldier knows what it’s about, and I respect that. It also has the good sense not to sexualize the youngest girl, which is a point in its favor that I can’t award a couple other shows previously discussed.

And while this show is plenty fun, the action sequences often excellent, and the character designs usually delightful, there’s not actually a whole lot going on here. As I said with Mashle, I know that battle manga like this can take a minute to really get cooking, and as I said with Witch and the Beast, 12 episodes may not always be a sufficient runtime to adapt enough to break ground, but the debut season feels more like a proof of concept than anything else. That being said, Chained Soldier’s manga has a very effusive audience, and its praises don’t seem to entirely be about the boobs and butts, so I’ll wait patiently for the second season. I think it’s earned that much.

Delicious in Dungeon

This is the one I’m having the hardest time writing about because it so confidently and so completely speaks for itself that anything I could add would feel like scattering sawdust at the beach. Dungeon Meshi (I refuse to call it by its official English title) is a widely beloved manga among those who’ve read it, and for Studio Trigger to do an honest-to-goodness manga adaptation for the first time might as well be front page news among anime fans. 

The story follows Laios, the deeply weird human hero, as he delves back into a bizarre and mysterious dungeon to rescue his sister Falin from the belly of a dragon, along with his misfit party: The neurotic half-elven mage Marcille, the temperamental halfling rogue Chilchuck, and the dwarven warrior-slash-chef Senshi. The party is frequently low on supplies, so to survive the trip they’ll need to subsist on the most abundant resource in the dungeon: Monsters. Senshi’s aptitude in the kitchen helps ensure that everything is edible and sufficiently tasty, regardless of how nasty the monster it came from may have been. With monster obstructions out of the way and their bellies filled, our party delves deeper into the dungeon as the mysteries deepen in kind.

I love the character dynamics in this so goddamn much. Marcille and Chilchuck are frequently put off by the dubious monster food presented to them, but their consternation is worsened by the fact that Laios’ fascination with the monsters it came from annoys the shit out of them. I referred to him as “deeply weird,” but that doesn’t begin to describe his absolute galaxy brain, and I mean it as a term of endearment. Laios is deeply knowledgeable and curious about the fauna in the dungeon, and not just how they taste: He is vocally curious about how certain monster attacks may feel, sings along with siren songs, and even keeps a hardcover bestiary inside his breastplate. He’s one of those people you turn to if you have a question on a hyperspecific subject, but you have to be careful how you ask it or else you’re trapped for the next two hours. And I love him for it.

Even putting the comedy aside, there is a fascinating human element at play in Dungeon Meshi, and I can tell that that surface has barely even been scratched yet. Marcille is just as dogged in her pursuit of saving Falin as Laios is, maybe even moreso (remember what I keep saying about LGBT representation this season?). Chilchuck continues to convince himself that he’s only in the job for his own personal gain, but you can see that mask slipping. And I still wanna know what Senshi’s deal is. Even with the five major players I listed, there’s an increasingly deep roster surrounding them—showcasing a broad spectrum of races and ethnicities, both real and fantastical—each with their own histories and motivations, and I cannot wait to see how they play out and interact with one another. There seem to be much deeper themes at play here as well as we learn more about perceptions and grudges between differing races, oppositional magics, clashing ideologies, and the monetary incentives that drive both the dungeon’s exploration and its very existence. I’m here for it.

I’ve been holding off on reading the manga until the season is up in June (though I could crack any day), but I know a loving adaptation when I see one. Not that Trigger ever slacks off in the animation department, but they absolutely brought their A-game here. Everyone looks bouncy and cartoony in the way only Trigger can pull off while still looking as close as possible to Ryoko Kui’s source material (as far as I can tell). As with Frieren, the action sequences aren’t frequent, nor are they entirely what the show is about, but they look incredible every single time. And the food, of course, looks incredible, no matter how weird. This is practically a cooking anime and a fantasy dungeon anime at the same time, and both aspects are visually on point at all times.

I’m obviously speaking from my own bubble as one of the six people who still use Tumblr in 2024, but I rarely see new anime make a splash like this on social media every single week, and the ones that I do are usually the monster shonen hits like Chainsaw Man or Jujutsu Kaisen. Dungeon Meshi deserves the exposure and success it’s attained, and I’m excited to see it continue. I’d easily slot this right up there with Bravern as one of the best new anime of the season.

A Sign of Affection

I’ve seen a hell of a lot of shonen slice-of-life romances in the past year and change, so a nice fluffy shoujo like this was an excellent palate cleanser. There were a hell of a lot of Big Action Setpieces and panicky teens and grim dungeon crawlers this season, and at the end of the week I wanted to unwind with a bunch of pretty twenty-somethings falling in love with each other.

The show centers on Yuki, a young woman living with congenital hearing loss, making do at a public college after growing up at a school for the deaf. Though she’s able to get by with LINE messages and lip reading, she’s unprepared when a foreigner asks for help, but she’s saved by a handsome and mysterious young man named Itsuomi. He’s able to help out, and takes an interest in her when he realizes his fellow undergrad is deaf, and Yuki takes an interest in kind because he’s really goddamn hot. It turns out that he’s a polyglot and an avid world-traveler, but sign language is not in his purview. This mutual interest sparks the concern of her childhood friend, Oushi, one of the few people in her life who already use sign language, who wants to be sure that nothing untoward is happening. And it isn’t, because this is just a really lovely, low-stakes romance story.

This is pure, unfiltered shoujo at its best. Yuki’s internal monologue is peppered with flowery prose, and everything and everyone looks soft and beautiful. Fashionable, doe-eyed women and pillowy-lipped ikemen abound (seriously, holy shit, the lips on these boys) as the scope widens and the main love interests’ friends explore their own possible love stories. Itsuomi is very much of the “mysterious boy” archetype you’ll find in romance stories in this demographic, but he’s not hiding any sort of dark past like you’d typically expect; he’s just an interesting guy who keeps his personal life close to the vest. He’s a self-appointed world citizen who loves learning about how people of all cultures live their lives, and in Yuki he sees someone within his home turf who happens to live in her own world entirely. And it’s easy to see his forward behavior with Yuki as infantilizing at first (Oushi sure does, and I’ll get back to him in a second), but as they grow closer Itsuomi quickly becomes much more considerate of her boundaries and learns to accommodate her as he studies sign language and gestures that help ensure her comfort. This is a story about Yuki’s horizons broadening just as much as it is about Itsuomi wanting to be let into Yuki’s narrow world, and that sort of synergy makes for some exceptional romance.

A Sign of Affection deserves some credit for refusing to shy away from Yuki’s disability and making a point of depicting her world as one that does little to accommodate her. Very few people in her daily life ever bothered to learn sign language, she relies on a friend to take notes during lectures, and work is hard to come by. It’s an honest depiction that makes an effort not to be exploitative, which is a breath of fresh air. Not only that, but there’s some interesting meta-commentary in there: The only major conflict in the story stems from Oushi’s jealousy, and his reservations about Itsuomi possibly “taking advantage of” Yuki almost feel like he believes that he’s the only one who knows what’s best for her just because he’s done the bare minimum to accommodate her. He thinks he’s coming from a good place, but he winds up accidentally infantilizing her in exactly the way he thinks Itsuomi might. That’s a particularly interesting bit of irony!

I’ve seen enough shonen-oriented romcoms where an unassuming Regular Guy gets flustered as a way-too-casual girl pushes his buttons (hell, I’ve already reviewed two of those this season), so it’s nice to see the formula flipped for a shoujo as Yuki and her best friend Rin blush and squee over Itsuomi and his coworker Kyouya, respectively. A Sign of Affection isn’t afraid to get a little silly with it, either; plenty of these moments are punctuated by characters’ faces going low-detail or full chibi, and they are cute as shit every single time.

This one was just cozy as hell. If you’re into this sort of thing, swaddle yourself in it and bask.

Solo Leveling

I let this one collect dust after the third episode and didn’t pick it back up until the season was almost up, and honestly, I was kinda dreading it: The trailers didn’t look too promising, the show was slow to start, and it looked like yet another derivative JRPG-style dungeon crawler that managed to get popular. Turns out, nah, this show actually kinda fucks and the web novel series and webtoon it’s based on are popular for a reason. The story is nothing special, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a perfectly serviceable turn-your-brain-off action spectacle with a bit more lying beneath the surface.

In a modern-day South Korea where portals to mysterious dungeons open up and threaten the populace, those who can brave the dungeons, known as hunters, are an invaluable human resource. Once someone is assigned a grade as a hunter, they have that grade for life, barring some rare occurrences. Sung Jinwoo is at the lowest rung on that ladder as an E-rank, incapable of improvement, assigned the epithet “the weakest hunter of all mankind.” He mostly shows up to portal raids as a warm body to fill a quota, and one such job goes haywire as most of the raid party, Jinwoo included, is brutally slaughtered in an arcane secondary dungeon within a portal. He somehow wakes up in a hospital, unharmed, and able to access a digital menu before his eyes that exhorts him to do the One Punch Man workout every day, lest he incur punishment. He gets hilariously chadly in the span of a few days in the hospital, including an inexplicable haircut, and finds access to dungeons only he can enter and levels up within this new system.

This one gets off to a slow start and may have benefited from a longer premiere like Oshi no Ko or Frieren, but once the table is fully set, Solo Leveling really starts to cook. Jinwoo’s titular leveling process is a blast from one fight to the next, and as he moves to work in the dungeons that other hunters can access, it turns out he’s been training with the weights on. He’s suddenly fighting way above his pay grade, and after staving off attacks from hunters taking advantage of portals for nefarious ends, he is recruited by an ambitious corporate scion to make some real coin and establish an independent association of hunters.

While it can feel like there’s a whole bunch of table-setting between portal sequences, it’s some smart worldbuilding on Solo Leveling’s end to establish how portal hunting became a central pillar of this society, and doubly so how political and capitalist interests can leave a wide berth for corruption and bad actors. If there’s money to be made in hunting, of course people will find ways to make even more at the expense of others, both at the corporate and individual levels. There’s a lot of talk in there about “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” and that… makes me nervous.

Those are terms that can be used to justify immoral actions in the name of money, sure, but Jinwoo also uses them to justify his own process. To what end is he constantly improving himself? Sure, he's doing what he can to provide for his younger sister and their ailing mother, but I see less and less humanity in him as this goes on. There are constant hints at something far more sinister at play than just a dude getting stronger for himself, not the least of which being “the system,” the UI that implores him to keep taking on these “quests.” Something, or someone, seems to be guiding him. Whenever another hunter turns on Jinwoo, of course his self-defense instincts kick in, but system pop-ups instruct him to defeat X number of hostiles like it’s a normal video game scenario. There’s something eerily depersonalized about these encounters, despite them being full-on mortal combat, that gives me serious Ender’s Game vibes. Consider me intrigued.

I’d heard that the Solo Leveling manhwa’s main draw was its visuals, and though I had my doubts early on, I'm sold now. This is a pretty solid presentation! Hiroyuki Sawano turned in yet another banger soundtrack to punctuate all the action setpieces, helping to stitch together a fairly complete tapestry. Said setpieces are exhilarating and almost impressively bloody, and while the animation is nothing impressive in the day-to-day, it goes absolutely batshit when the gloves come off. Movement is inhumanly fluid and the visuals can go into the same loose, psychedelic territories we’ve seen in the likes of Mob Psycho and the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen. If this is the new meta for shonen action, I’m not complaining.

By all rights, this is a pretty decent show, but if I’m being honest, this one just hasn’t stuck with me much. And that’s fine! Sometimes I just wanna see some nutty action stuff and move on with my day. Solo Leveling hits that spot perfectly, and I'll be right back there when it returns for its next season.

‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess

I was surprised to learn that the gag manga this is based on, with such a seemingly simple premise, has been running for well over 200 chapters and counting. As the anime progressed, I was far more pleasantly surprised to learn that it actually works.

In a standard anime fantasy world where the forces of good are fighting the demonic Hellhorde, an unnamed warrior princess and her talking enchanted sword are taken prisoner and subjected to torture as they’re squeezed for intel. Said “torture,” as the title’s scare quotes would suggest, is mildly unconventional, as the demon baddie inquisitor, aptly named Torture Tortura, attempts to ply the princess by presenting her with tantalizingly delicious-looking food that she can only partake in if she coughs up some info. Naturally, the princess caves every single time, but her intel is often inane and useless, so the “torture” continues. It’s not all food, though: The princess is soon held out of arm’s reach of adorable baby animals by a gyaru beastgirl, pampered into submission by a spa-loving giantess, and is faced with a tsundere vampire faildaughter, who… tries. 

And you’d think that would be it; the joke wears thin and you move onto something else. Before you realize it, though, something’s changed: The princess and her captors are quickly becoming friends. The premise almost feels perfunctory: These inquisitors are actual people just doing their jobs, and whatever happens after the princess’ myriad confessions is fair game. There’s no malice or animosity, even during the “torture” sessions themselves: Everyone will have a blast and grow closer as friends, and then the princess will voluntarily go back to her bedless cell. It’s like Sam and Ralph after they clock out, except they’re almost always off the clock. Everyone is genuinely looking out for each other in all directions, and the only thing that keeps the torture going is the need for a status quo to return to, even as it grows more elastic. If anything, Time for "Torture" is a good example of committing to the bit without having to necessarily rely on it.

The real irony in all of this is that it becomes increasingly apparent that the princess is having her needs met in captivity far better than she ever did back home. In her proud proclamations about how she’ll never cave to the temptations before her (shortly before she does just that), the princess often talks about her upbringing and her time as the head of an imperial legion, but these stories often betray her lack of friendship or any of the little things that make life worth living. Her life as royalty was one of isolation and deprivation, to the point where she finds more freedom and fulfillment as a prisoner. She truly lives in a society.

Hellholm, on the other hand, has a surprisingly healthy approach to things like work-life balance, food, and leisure, and its most valuable prisoner is no exception. The Hell-Lord himself is a surprising exemplar of this; for as much as he looks and talks like your standard terrifying JRPG demon king, he’s a surprisingly good dude! He looks after his family, employees, and even the captive princess as if they are all one and the same; he exhibits strong principles and an aversion to conflict, sees to his employees' needs and wants alike, and is a supportive, loving father to his unbelievably precious little daughter (who also serves as a “torturer,” to the princess’ delight). He’s also a big time anime dork, and even bonds with a knight attempting to rescue the princess over their shared otakudom before sending him off peacefully. As “villains” go, he’s top tier.

Time for "Torture" is nothing groundbreaking by any stretch, but it’s a cute, silly time and it plays with anime fantasy tropes in the same way a six-month-old German shepherd “plays” with a cheap stuffed toy. How long the premise holds up is entirely up to you, but I had a lot of fun with it. I have no idea how this ended up being one of the better shows this season, but I guess it just scratched the right itch for me.

[zoanzon]

If you've seen the post circulating around that HR9495 - the bill to strip nonprofits of their tax-exemption - is a credible threat to AO3 and to download your fic, you may or may not be going 'oh fuck'. This might be because 9495 is a fucking abominable document...or it might be because you're like me and you have far too many fics to download one at a time.

Well, this is a bit quicker-and-dirtier than the post I'd planned on making next month, but as it's needed now:

Bulk Downloading from Ao3

Nianeyna has a program up on Github that can download Ao3 fics in bulk. You give it a starting URL (such as the start of your Bookmarks, or someone else's Works page) and tell it to either stop at a certain page or to keep going until it downloads the whole range. If you don't have code experience, that's fine, the linked page has a basic walkthrough on how to download and initialize the program.

Now, if you're also worried about fiction on other sites too...

Downloading from Fanfiction.net, SpaceBattles, SufficientVelocity, QuestionableQuesting, & More [WITHOUT Embedded Pictures]

Have you heard of FicHub? You have now.

FicHub only goes on fic at a time, and if you try and feed it too many URLs too quick it'll time out and you have to wait a bit to let it 'cool down', but it was the first program I encountered that could not only download fics from FF.Net, but also the forums where the Worm fandom is found.

Plus, that's not all it download from. To quote FicHub's site:

Supported Sites SpaceBattles, SufficientVelocity, QuestionableQuesting (XenForo) FanFiction.net, FictionPress Archive Of Our Own Harry Potter Fanfic Archive Sink Into Your Eyes AdultFanfiction.org Worm, Ward Partial support (or not tested recently): XenForo based sites (Bulbagarden Forums, The Fanfiction Forum, Fanfic Paradise) Fiction Alley The Sugar Quill (largely untested) FanficAuthors (minimal) Harry Potter Fanfiction (archive from pre-revival)

One thing I really like about FicHub is that it doesn't default to EPUBs. Like how Ao3's built-in downloader gives you file options, FicHub lets you choose between EPUB, a zipped HTML file, MOBI, PDF, and a 'sharable link to this export' which I've never used but sounds nice.

The downside of FicHub is that if a fic has embedded media - pictures, for example - you don't want to be using FicHub as it won't embed the picture. All it'll do is embed a link to were the picture was supposed to be drawn from. However, this isn't a concern for most-all FF fics as well as a good chunk of stuff from other sites. Just be warned that if you want media embedded, you want the next tool.

(You'll also want the next program if downloading from a forum and the OP who's fic you're downloading has a gigantic signature box: for some reason, FicHub adds the signature page to the bottom of each chapter in the document you download. Fine enough if it's a line or two, annoying if it takes up a page or more.)

Downloading from AlternateHistory.com, SpaceBattles, SufficientVelocity, QuestionableQuesting, & More [WITH Embedded Pictures]

This time we're looking at a Firefox addon: WebtoEpub.

According to its page, its download options include the following:

Baka-Tsuki.org (obviously) ArchiveOfOurOwn.org Blogspot (some) FanFiction.net. gravitytales.com hellping.org krytykal.org moonbunnycafe.com mugglenet.com nanodesu (some of the *thetranslation.wordpress.com sites) readlightnovel.com royalroad.com shikkakutranslations.org http://sonako.wikia.com And many other web sites.

It only downloads EPUBs, but if you're trying to grab a fic that has facecasts for characters, or maps, or anything like that...well, this actually grabs the pictures.

However, brief tip: I don't know how it is for any of the pages it actually lists, but if you use this for a fic from AH/SB/SV/QQ - the forums listed in the header - you want to open the page and then click the button that opens the whole index of threadmarks, and then call the function. If you don't do it that way, it won't know the full range of posts.

So, yeah...

While I hope HR9495 dies and isn't passed, it's better to prepare than to not. Even if it doesn't pass, I lived through the NC-17 purges on Fanfiction.net and saw thousands of fics vanish into the abyss; and I've seen authors delete fics or their whole collections off of Ao3 too. All that's taught me that I can't rely on just going to a bookmarked fic and expecting it to be there; if I want to be able to find and reread anything into perpetuity, I need to have a copy downloaded.

Hopefully this helps some of you download up the fics you want to have on hand, too.

[raayllum]

I have a question that has been very divisive in my friend group of people who enjoy tdp.

What direction do you think they'll take Callum's magic in:

Do you think he'll master his Sky Arcanum, following the footsteps of Ibis, especially with his staff.

Or, connect to and become a master of all 6 primal sources, like Aaravos, but for good and love.

And more importantly, what idea do you enjoy more as a concept?

First off would just like to say your header is incredible.

As for your actual question: Callum is a character who chases magic out of a desire to learn and have agency. It becomes a fundamental part of who he is ("I will learn magic. It's who I am") which eventually manifests in him literally creating magic inside him (an arcanum). This transcending of limitations and what other people thought was possible means that Sky (representation of Freedom) was the perfect arcanum for him... to start. After all, seeing through illusions and crafting your own reality is very Moon arcanum-y, and there's been a decent amount of foreshadowing that he might connect to the Moon arcanum next for a while now ("After all, you really only know the appearance itself" "Now you're starting to sound like Lujanne" from 3x01). By forging a manual connection to one arcanum, it naturally begs the question of why wouldn't he at least try to connect to others in a similar manner?

All of this to say: I'd be surprised if Callum isn't connected to all 6 by the end of the show, for a few reasons.

While Callum being connected to primal magic is extraordinary on its own, and it's certainly an accomplishment... it ultimately means next to nothing if Other Humans don't also follow in his footsteps. A lack of access to magic is what created a lot of issues in the world of Xadia, and evening out that score / removing the need of dark magic is the ultimate way to Break the Cycle, as the wheel has always spun on magic and dark magic. If other humans don't connect, we're right back where we started. And humans being connected to Sky would be great, but there's so much more out there, and Callum will only really be able to be a teacher for all the arcanums if he knows and understands all the arcanums... hence, Archmage. (It'd also be very nicely full circle, given that Callum starts off as part of a lacklustre student-teacher pair in 1x01, and growing to become a wise and understanding teacher.)

Callum's parallels to and eventual rivalry Aaravos are mostly dependent upon Callum gaining more magical prowess. Right now they don't have a ton of parallels, but they are undeniably wrestling for narrative control. Aaravos is also underestimating as being just another dark mage like all the rest, "and destined to play right into my hands" but Callum will be, eventually, so much more than that. And thanks to Aaravos, we know a six primal archmage is possible. Seems only right that Callum would become his literal mirror.

One of the core weaknesses of Xadia is their insistence on isolation. Exile is their most common punishment and they literally split the continent in two. Elven society is generally very segregated according to their primal with only a handful of exceptions in ways we know don't exist in the Human Kingdoms (Duren coming to Katolis for aid; Lissa being from Del Bar and marrying a man from Katolis, etc). We see that the arch dragons are more likely to fight than convene with each other successfully and that since imprisoning Aaravos, they basically all went no contact. Xadian characters are also more likely to want to do things alone (Runaan, Rayla, Zubeia) than to pull on all possible resource areas, and the human villains who hate them (Viren) are also more likely to be isolationist. VS the princes ("We're in this together" in 1x05, "This is a chance to solve our problems together" in 4x03, Opeli and Corvus going to Duren for aid) and the Human Kingdoms. Kasef, however antagonist, believed in and depended on the collective. Karim starts to lose his shit in S4 precisely because New Aurea isn't going to be entirely Sunfire elf in nature; I don't think he would've responded to other elves any better than he did humans, honestly. Okay, great, so what? Well the one Xadian character we have who hardcore rejects that isolationist attitude in regards to a primal source with his very existence... is Aaravos. And that elves, humans, and dragons all presumably worked together to imprison him once before. It would make sense that the kid who is going to be the key (or one of the keys) to his defeat would likewise carry that same Rejection of Isolation, and instead embody literal Magical Solidarity by having access to all magics.

As for which I prefer, it depends. I think canon could do just about anything and make it work, and so long as we see other humans connect to arcanums (with or without Callum's help) I have no other Narrative Requirements, I think, in regards to places I think the story has to go in order to function narratively, in the end. He could master just sky magic, and as long as other humans are able to connect to arcanums, I think that'd be just fine.

If I'm writing fic, and I want Callum to be more limited for plot / angst reasons, I'll probs just write him as a sky mage. Magic is useful but can't (and should not, for story reasons) be able to fix everything, and is still only as useful as your brain can figure out how to use it, anyway. By and large, a magic system is only as good as its limitations, as that is what allows a story to have conflict, and places to show off creative thinking (with or without magic).

But generally (in post-war / late season speculative stuff; in looking at where canon is going, etc) I lean towards Archmage Callum and always have, and dumped all my headcanons about it accordingly into this fic (order of connection, how each of the arcanums feel different, dual wielding, what it brings between him and Aaravos, etc).

I would also love for Callum to get his own staff at one point, simply because it'd be nice to have a weapon 1) of his own and 2) wasn't yet another thing he inherited from a dead man (the cube from Harrow, the mirror from Viren) but if he uses the staff all throughout the show, that's perfectly fine too. Just means I get to write a fic where it gets destroyed for some reason, and then him (and maybe Ethari) get to help design and build his own for Reasons

[stepswowdsen]

【KagePro】 KuroEne AU: Ene confronts Kuroha 🖤💙

Intro

Kuroha/Saeru + Uroboros Symbolism 🐍

KuroEne AU: Ene confronts Kuroha (Dialogue Scripts)

For the 2nd one, I imagined a scenario where, after Saeru's revealed his true intentions, Ene and Mary sneak into his underground lab and Ene finds his design/plans on the android body he made her and confronts him about his motives. I only posted a bit of it for now

Kuroha/Saeru reminds me of the imagery/symbolism of Uroboros (Ouroboros)

The imagery of a snake devouring its own tail to represent the cycle of destruction and rebirth

I've been meaning to make a post about this but I forgot

I was just thinking of how much this imagery/symbolism fits him...

F: I've heard of Uroboros from a game and the meaning, I never thought about associating it with Kuroha-

Tho it does fit, he destroys the future of the MekaDan and then the rebirth part is Mary reseting the world

Me: Destruction of the eyes at the end of a Route (destruction of the world) and rebirth (world rewinding back to the beginning)

Me: It would be nice to draw him with the Uroboros symbol 💗 I was thinking about how much it fits him with the context of KagePro!

Misc Rambles

When I first came off priv on this side blog, I was debating whether to use hashtags on my ramble posts or not.

I used to be on priv on my side blog cuz I was used to having priv accs for rambles with Twt and Insta, but then I came off priv when I realized how limiting Tumblr priv blogs were.

So I started using Tumblr as a public archive to remind myself of which rambles I've posted on my socials, since I copy post the rambles from my Notion docs

At first I was wondering whether to tag my posts (doodles or rambles) or not, but whenever I tried searching for stuff to ref old posts, I couldn't find them even with key words

I mainly started tagging my posts cuz Tumblr's search function was so dogshit I couldn't even search and find my own posts without them

Tumblr's search engine is ASS without hashtags

So I started using them to sort my interests and ref my posts

Ig the other option would be saving the links in a Notion doc and putting a header of what the post is about

Quote Bots

Me: Douman (FGO) and Idate (WATGBS AU) taught me that cannibalism can be a metaphor for intense love (in fiction) 👍

Me: OMG. LIMGUDA??? THIS QUOTE BOT FUCKS

THIS IS ALSO SO KUROENE OMG

I NEED TO CAPTION A LIMGUDA AND KUROENE ART POST WITH THIS

C: OP of this bot: Haha Cannibal gay esque quotes go brr

You, an intellectual: My demon meow meows are resonating with this

Me: 👍

Basically before Twt's bot API died, some accounts were gathering their favourite quotes from poets and literature and such, to post as tweets. And people would QRT with the quotes that vibed with their fave characters/ships

Not only LimGuda, but ngl this quote also fits sooo perfectly with KuroEne cuz of the symbolism of Uroboros, a snake always swallowing its own tail.

"Ouroboros (Uroboros): a circular symbol that depicts a snake or dragon devouring its own tail and that is used especially to represent the eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth"

Which is exactly what Kuroha/Saeru's role is by destroying the "Eyes" (killing the Mekakushi Dan who are represented by their Eye Abilities) and forcing Mary to use her powers as a Medusa to reset the timeline, causing a never ending time loop tragedy (hence, an eternal cycle of destruction and rebirth)

I first saw the Uroboros symbol in KHR with Mammon when I was 11

It reminds me of how in KHR, Mammon, who is the Mist-flame Illusionist of the Varia, has Fantasma as their frog familiar but it turns into a snake swallowing its own tail when Mammon uses their powers to fly/get more serious with their powers

Also FMA as well

F: I wouldn't call this cannibalism, just endless physical mess 😭 The fact both the moebius strip and Uroboros represents "endlessness" really shows a lot

Me: Oh yeah I meant that just in general, the quote bot mainly posts Cannibal/Ship esque quotes

KuroEne Dialogue Scripts

KuroEne AU: Kuroha joins the Mekakushi Dan and pretends to be one of them, and proceeds with the plan to kill everyone on August 15th. Mary and Ene are the only ones left and team up against Kuroha. They sneak into Saeru's underground lab, trying to come up with a plan. Ene finds his designs and plans on her body while searching through his lab and confronts Kuroha when he finds her, and Kuroha tells her how he gave her everything she wanted.

These are still WIPs but I was thinking of something like this

Not the whole thing obviously, cuz this Route is REALLY LONG. This is a snippet of KuroEne's exchange

...

KuroEne AU: Mary and Ene team up against Kuroha. Ene confronts him when they’re alone together

So I imagined this scenario would happen when Ene confronts Kuroha. Basically, Ene stalls for time while Mary goes to search the other rooms, and Ene asks him everything she's wanted to know that he kept a secret from her up until this point

(The details of his android body, how he made it, his goals/motives, why he chose to do all of this and play the game with her, etc.)

Kuroha decides to indulge her curiosity & give her answers since it's the grand finale (of their game)

Me: Was watching recent FGO story - Ordeal Call 3 (OC3) so I got inspired to write this

F: SHE CLAPPED BACK

Clock that snake

Even Kuroha brings up the fact he did give her everything she wanted

I've always HC'ed that KagePro takes place during 2014

Me: That fact's pretty much deniable. He made all her wishes come true, even if it came at a heavy cost

Yeah I imagine it probably takes place around 2010s - mid 2010s

F:

Your KuroEne AU Final Route idea of Kuroha being a helper for the Kozakura family would be such a good idea of him being able to move onto the future together, despite him revealing his evil intentions

The idea of Kuroha living along with the MekaDan and the rest of the world…

F: That's when KagePro started anyway ✨

...

Yeah I honestly think this would be the perfect ending for them

Though some things need to get fleshed out since HaruTaka are supposed to reunite in the end

It'd be nice if he uses his knowledge of tech to make a body for himself to inhabit

Maybe this time he can live out his life/existence putting his knowledge to good use instead as a guardian figure to Azami/Mary's family

Though admittedly, I'm much more interested in the XX amount of Routes in a KuroEne AU than the Final Route

Since I like exploring their endless possibilities. But a good end for KuroEne is fun to think about

F: True, KagePro doesn't end

Let them keep being reunited in multiple routes until the world ends, which is impossible-

Me: The world being constantly rewinded to the beginning means they'll get to meet again forever and ever ✨

F: Infinite sex glitch wtf 😭

Me: If I were to do a Final Route for KuroEne, I'd have to come up with a less stupid way for him getting defeated

One that's actually feasible, and not bland/boring/generic/badly written like MCA was

No way would the "embodiment of knowledge" get defeated by the power of friendship so easily…

Though right now I'm more interested in writing many KuroEne Routes

F: DON'T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE.

Me: He's going to hang onto his concept of eternity as much as he can

The only solution that I can see for this is that Kuroha uses his knowledge of tech to occupy an immortal body himself, (maybe HaruTaka gets reunited?), but he makes himself an Ene to be with

F: My guy coded a robot girlfriend props to him 😭😭

...

Also let's be fr, Kuroha would like being called "evil" and "the most evil person in the entire world" by Ene. Because it's an acknowledgement of him and his true nature

He had been pretending to be nice up until this point for the sake of the game, but Ene acknowledges him by calling him by his true name (after he's revealed all his cards and true intentions/betrayal)

He'd take it as a compliment. He'd be especially delighted at being called "the most evil person in the whole world..." It's an ego boost for him lmao

(Just gonna use this for phrasing cuz it's hard to put a defining term on their r/s in my KuroEne AU)

Like their r/s in my KuroEne AU is like lovers in a way...? But it's really messy

...

Me: Oh one thing I thought about is that he'd like getting called evil by Ene. He'd take it as a compliment. Especially getting called "The world's greatest evil" and "An evil monster"

F: I KNEW IT

Like it's an ego boost for him

"I'm so evil even my wife calls me evil I'm so good at being evil-"

Me: RIGHT

He'd brag about being evil and how they can't kill/defeat him

"Look at me I'm so evil even my wife calls me evil!"

(I'm evil and in your way)

Trying very hard to Impress gloat/call attention towards him

It strokes his ego

Me: I was debating whether I should use the term "Evil of Humanity" or "Threat to Humanity" but that's specifically a FGO term for Beasts

The Beasts in FGO are beings that manifests as calamities that threaten human history (and represent mankinds' greatest Sins/flaws)

Me: So I didn't want it to be too on the nose. It would fit him tho

Me: Especially for him to be called "The world's greatest evil" like he'd be smug at Ene saying there's no one more evil than him

F: It's like her admitting that's he's good at being evil 😭

Tbh he'd laugh at every negative comment she makes about him

Me: Like he'd be like "My cute cheeky wife is calling me evil wwww"

"Doesn't it prove how good I am at it?"

F: Him proposing to Ene in the middle of this mess would be funny to imagine (idk why I just came up with that) 💀

Me: HWHDHSHDS IT WOULD BE

Like in a lighthearted casual way

His form of "marriage proposal" would be like "I may have killed all your friends (collateral damage who cares), but I gave you everything you wanted, didn't I?"

/lh /j

KuroEne Rambles

KuroEne is one of my top fave ships (I tie all of them as no. 1), but I definitely do approach them differently from my other faves.

KuroEne is my case study ship like it's fascinating to me

I'm studying them like a hamster spinning on a wheel

My mad scientist brain (or maybe Kuroha/Saeru's mad scientist brain?) is going off the rails /lh

Every other fave ship of mine, I want them to be happy. My ship AUs are generally fluffy and focused on the ship and their character interactions and intimate moments and them spending together. Building moments of emotional rapport.

It isn't KagePro without tragedy y'all 👍

So that's why KuroEne's relationship ends up being super angsty (angst up the wazoo). I mainly write fluff for my other ships, but I clearly have a lot of fun writing angst too

It's inevitable with Kuroha's character that his ships would all be tinged in tragedy/angst

Once my faves are past the initial animosity/hostility, getting to know each other, I could definitely see my other ships in actual romantic relationships. KuroEne is different though

I see them as the type that's not really in a usual romantic relationship, but that they will meet and cross paths with each other and meet and engage in intimacy with charged sexual tension.

My ship AU for KuroEne is focused on their character interactions and intimate moments too, but for KuroEne, I want their infinite XXX amount of Routes to keep on going forever so I can keep writing their endless possibilities cuz it's so fun to think of

All the different outcomes with them fuels my creative juices (irt art and writing)

There are some ships where I'm like "I don't think of them in terms of being in a usual romance/relationship, I just think they're interesting"

And yeah. KuroEne engage in intimacy, but their r/s would be soooo complicated and messy, and that's what makes it fun.

Like I ship KuroEne mainly because they're my faves and cuz I think their dynamic/relationship potential would be interesting to explore.

I also love that Ene is really confrontational and aggressive and assertive with him (but would still be able to have a certain tenderness/softer side towards him too in their interactions)

Cuz imo KuroEne works better as a ship than KuroTaka. Their personalities mesh better together

KuroTaka still works but even though Takane/Ene are the same person, KuroTaka has much more personality clash.

She would react differently to him as Takane and clash way more with him (bite heads and get really aggressive and violent wtih him)

KuroEne is more appealing cuz their personalities balance each other out rather well. KuroTaka's personalities together is much more imbalanced

I have more thoughts on this, but, Haruka is the perfect counter to Takane, and Kuroha is the perfect counter to Ene (who has trouble being honest with her feelings and desires)

He is generally knowledgeable and good at reading people and figuring them out/their emotions/desires...

KuroEne is a different case from my other ships tho because of Kuroha's role/setup as the instigator of the time loop tragedy constantly killing the cast who retains the knowledge/memories of previous Routes...

So in these XXX amount of Routes, they get reset back to 0 at the end, everytime, and then they meet again... And so the cycle of eternity continues. And Saeru remembers all these encounters.

Their relationship is filled with conflict and tension, desperation, love, obsession, passion, yearning, desire, attachment.

KuroEne is definitely different from my other ships, cuz, in the context of a ship AU, Kuroha/Saeru loves mainly for his own sake due to his nature and selfish, twisted desires. The emotions are real, but it lacks pure, genuine love.

I imagine that the KuroEne AU started cuz he wanted to prove his theory that humans will do anything for love.

Irt how the KuroEne AU starts

He first questions humans' desire for love (that he probably mistook as lustful pleasure) then he decided to test his experiments on Ene (due to his vessel). Takane/Ene is more affected by Haruka & Konoha than anyone else. And that's how he comes up with the whole idea of the "game" with her, their trysts. And that's when he approaches her with the proposal to make her a body...

He pulls off his elaborate scheme in the most roundabout convoluted way, lol

One that he presents to the other party as being an equal trade, but ultimately benefits himself, mostly.

When he proposes the game to her, he makes an unfair trade that mostly benefits him the most, but he sees it as fair because it "benefits both parties" and the benefits/advantages of his game far outweigh the collateral damage

He considers it fair because he gives his partner everything they want... But he robs them of a future at the end.

Though it is true that Kuroha/Saeru grants all of Ene's wishes in their relationship... He caters to her wishes and appeases her personality and whims, takes her out wherever she wants, gives her gifts, and love and affection...

Kuroha gives her everything she wanted (even if it comes at a heavy cost)

That heavy cost being - He kills everyone at the end.

He gives her everything except for what she truly wants (getting to move onto the future with everyone and have a happy life)

And he gets to satisfy his desires for accumulating more knowledge (with getting to build the android body and improve on it)

It's filled with a very ILL affection, cuz he is at his core, ill.

Even Douman can be very genuine/show more tender sides...

When he reveals himself to Ene, the betrayal's gonna sink in... Like, if you spend that much time getting to know someone then the betrayal from him revealing his true intentions is gonna be devastating

I imagine they were basically living together for 1 - 2 years in one of Kenjirou's spare homes so they're constantly around each other

I imagine that he genuinely enjoyed his act of playing pretend with his S/O (and to the rest of the MekaDan, if he decides to join them and act nice) and enjoyed the time he spent with them, and that's exactly why he won't give it up.

Like...... He's gonna push back against the idea of Ene proposing moving onto the future with everyone as much as possible for the sake of his own immortality (above all else), and then, on a secondary level, for the sake of the game - the love that's keeping him fulfilled and fueling his obsession

I wrote dialogue scripts for this up above - Kuroha/Saeru immediately pushes back against Ene's ideas/notions of moving on with everyone (what he deems as foolish)

Though said dialogue scripts are still a WIP

Like. No. He gets everything he wants this way, why should he give that up and settle for anything less?

[ashitomarisu]

As the summer begins to wind down, I want to share a few non-spoiler things about my experience reliving Digimon's "AiM era" (which covers Adventure, Adventure 02, and Tamers).

(Note: I will not go in-depth because I have a couple followers actively watching this franchise so let's cut to the chase.)

June

Adventure had the least impact on me since I knew most of the story and background already from watching the dub during my childhood. Although, that did not affect my enjoyment in the slightest as the moments between seeing Mimi and [my boi] Gomamon still hit the feels as it did the first time.

(He is best digimon; don't @ me).

[Side note: I did start to let Gabumon slide as second best, since I do remember loving him as a kid for looking LIKE a doglike creature, and MetalGarurumon is still one of the coolest Ultimate forms at that point.]

As for the music? Of course, Butter-fly was a huge nostalgic punch (for the first week), but then it got old (in a weird way). BRAVEHEART still kicks ass though. In terms of the ED, hearing "I Wish" and "Keep on" felt nice to revisit AiM (Ai Maeda) early in her career trying to perfect those vocals (more on that later).

=Let's fast-forward to 02.=

July

(Is "currencist" a good adjective to describe a noob who refuses to accept anything but dollars? )

This is the season I watched over and over again in reruns and still cannot get over it. It ties in with the original 8 as a continuation, but is HEAVILY driven with spoilers. With that, the only change I notice is the fact I finally paid attention more to the ending, which I failed to understand for the last two instances I watched this.

All I can say is "what a literal dark turn".

Nevertheless, the music was a memorable portion of this season. Target ~Akai Shougeki~ is my personal favorite OP with Kouji Wada putting a lot of effort into the song. Miyazaki returns with BRAVEHEART but also Break Up!, a huge double-header of hits to my ears. "Ashita wa Atashi no Kaze ga Fuku" by AiM, on the other hand, is AiM at her literal rise. Her vocals improved so much throughout the ED, and has become my favorite ED overall as of recently. All three singers brought their A-game for this sequel.

Oh, and one more thing: THE NEW TRIO. I can't choose who gets my heart I guess.

August

(I LOST COUNT OVER HOW MANY TIMES THIS BASTARD KEEPS SAYING "MOUMANTAI").

All crossover ideas aside, it was a pleasure [and a pain] to rewatch this spinoff. Supposedly, I had to remember this season was directed by someone who worked on Evangelion; thus, the darker vibe lurking over the usual Digimon traits. Despite the oncoming fear factor ranging from [this spoiler] to [that spoiler], the season still left a massive scar on my psyche. As for the main characters, Ruki and Renamon are still my guilty duo. I still get pumped up looking at Kyubimon every time it appears on screen.

The music this season is decent, although...

[Side note: Once upon a time, I actually considered Days~Aijou to Nichijou~ to be my favorite ED from AiM. However, upon discovering the English translation...]

(I've been living a lie for 8 years).

-----

Overall, this has been an insane, memorable trip back in time for me. Unfortunately, fall is approaching and I must move on from this nostalgic phase.

------

With the "Digital Summer" over, let's get into what is in store for September. Luckily, I have already lined up something (good, I suppose). The only catch? WE HAVE TO GO BACK ABOUT 13 YEARS.

IT'S TIME TO GO BACK TO THE 80s!!!

Now, if I can remember which button it is to reveal the hint...*brb; pushing buttons*

Okay! Here is the hint:

(If I did an audio hint, it would be a dead giveaway).

Until then, here's hoping your buddy doesn't have a bonk stick nearby.

[knuxify]

The Ultimate Test Post v2

Welcome to the ultimate test post, a show of strength, wit and only the finest in NPF parsing engineering. Well, as far as the editor will let me go, anyways. The docs for NPF actually have some stuff that you can't do in Tumblr's editor like skipping indentation levels in lists.

In case you don't know what NPF is: it stands for Neue Post Format, and it's the standard for Tumblr posts. Instead of storing post content as HTML, posts are stored as blocks - which pretty much match the ones you can create in the editor. This absolutely

HUGE VARIETY

of the format makes it very fun to parse.

Blocks cover text, images, videos, audio, polls and anything else you could think of.

Text blocks are by far the most common, though they can have many types:

Bigger, roughly equivalent to a <h2> header;

Biggest, roughly equivalent to <h1>;

Quote, mimicking the old quote type;

Chat, mimicking the old chat type;

Lucille, which shows up in a fancy font;

And a handful of indented types as well:

Indented, which is a block quote;

Bulleted lists,

equivalent to HTML's ;

And numbered lists,

for counting all the things, like HTML's .

All of the above are just text blocks with a different type. Separate from the type is the formatting - so, bold, italics, strikethrough, small and mixtures of them all.

Also, colors! The standard blog UI exposes red, orange, green, blue, yellow, pink and purple. As a fun fact - Tumblr's CSS actually has more colors, and these colors that are exposed have names - they're named after Friends characters! I've found that sometimes the old HTML API will return them; othertimes they return just the color code. Sadly NPF only returns the color codes, so this fun easter egg became forgotten.

Links are also formatting - for example, here's a link to your favorite website. Mentions are formatting as well - @knuxify.

Two fun easter eggs that AREN'T part of formatting are:

You can make the tumblr logo by using "[ tumblr ]" without the spaces between the brackets: [tumblr]

Tumblr's font also includes a Tumblr logo character in the reserved codepoint space:  (that's Unicode codepoint U+E022 for the curious).

These both utilize quirks in Tumblr's fonts.

Also, if you include up to 3 emoji on one line, they will become big, like so:

😀😄😅

Note that this also works with multi-codepoint emoji (oddly enough, it seems broken in the editor!):

👨‍👨‍👦👨‍👨‍👦👨‍👨‍👦

Also, using another type like "quote" will override the big emoji:

😀😄😅

Note that formatting counts one Unicode codepoint as one character; so, make sure emoji like 👨‍👨‍👦 don't break your offsets.

Also, if you're parsing text for display, you may want to escape HTML sequences, or else <style>body { background: blue; }</style> will make your site blue and <script>alert(1)<script> will make a popup appear.

Oh, and once you parse those, make sure that they don't break formatting. Though, after all, a safe website>>>>>>>a bunch of code execution exploits.

A text block represents a paragraph, but it doesn't represent every line break. As a matter of fact, multiple line breaks can be used in a paragraph, and they will all remain as part of one block. Crazy, right?

(I grabbed the first best GIF from the picker, didn't even read the original post. But hey, nice occasion to show off the attribution label, which is also carried in NPF's block data!)

A fun thing about blocks is that you can specify a layout, which contains a list of rows, each of which can contain more than one block. Here's an example:

Images below 300px (so, 299px and below) are displayed at their original size:

However, this is ignored for multi-image rows:

Here's the other block types:

In order: image with "link" attribution, link with header image, link without header image, audio, video, poll.

You can also add embeds:

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by SEAVS (@seavsonline)

...and more that I'm probably forgetting.

Oh, and there's also "read more" functionality:

That's it for the fun formatting tricks. Have fun parsing Tumblr posts, and good luck - you'll really need it.

[lukewarmbreadatamoderatepace]

It does seem crazy to me that tumblr doesn't have anything even approaching this privacy setting yet, yeah.

One issue I see though is the part where, in the Twitter system, when you set your account to private, no one can see your posts, even on other people's blogs, and even if those posts were reblogged before you went private. That's how it works on twitter, and I definitely see the benefits for reducing harassment, but that tradeoff extremely doesn't work for me.

Other users being able to functionally remove a post from my personal blog is absolute poison to me, it's the reason I don't expect to ever move to Pillowfort or Cohost unless tumblr actually explodes. My blog is my own personal archive and I need to be able to have some amount of trust that it will stay intact and not gradually have more and more and more posts silently disappear from it as time passes and the OPs delete those posts/accounts or go private.

Basically: Once a post has made its way onto my blog, I should be able to trust it'll stay there same as if I'd screenshotted or quoted it instead of using the reblog button. Reblogs are otherwise strictly worse for archival purposes than those alternatives. I would love it if there was a practical way to keep this intact while also giving users much much better tools to avoid harassment.

(Just, man. So many of the old classic timecapsule posts still in circulation on here would just be gone if tumblr's reblog system didn't work the way it does. Don't like that!)

---

I'm trying to think through how you could at least somewhat meet both needs-- a locked-down blog is only viewable by approved accounts, that's easy enough, but what happens when you want to reblog a post from your buddy Jan who's got their blog set to private right now? Making all their posts unrebloggable even by approved people sounds pretty stifling though it might be nice to have a toggle for it. I guess you could have a big header above the post telling you that if you reblog it while Jan's account is set to private it won't be viewable by anyone not in their approved list. But... what happens to those posts if you and Jan have a falling out later and you get taken off the list? Do you lose your ability to search your blog for that one art tutorial you reblogged from them 5 years ago? That's back to destroying the ability of a blog to function as a personal archive.

Ignoring situations involving doxxing (which are more serious but also less common and easier to protect yourself from), the main goal of sustained harassment on here is to get you to delete your blog. You can probably keep most of your friends by adding them on discord or whatever, but the underlying logic in these cases is "you are a person who exists on the same part of the internet I use, and I want that to stop."

I reject the idea that moderation will ever be a solution to this problem, at least not without creating new, worse problems. But tumblr can and should provide users better tools for defending themselves.

Let's talk about tumblr's private blog feature. You can password-protect a blog, so that users have to enter the password before being able to see and interact with your posts. This is barely a step above deleting your blog.

You need to manually share this password with everyone you want to have access to the blog, which does not scale to a following in the thousands. You need to hope that no one ever leaks the password to your harassers, in which case your only recourse is to change the password and manually reshare it, again. This is a Bad System.

What does a good system look like? Consider twitter's private account feature. All your followers are preserved, but future followers have to ask to follow your blog. If you block a follower, they can't just create a new account and dodge the block - they're locked out. You keep your blog, you keep your following, you keep your friends, and no one outside your bubble can touch you.

There are still downsides here compared to not being harassed at all - people who don't already follow you can't see your posts - but it gives you a way to turn off the harassment spigot that can be easily reversed if/when your harassers get bored.

Combine this with a feature ideally for both private and public blogs (allowing only people you follow to reblog or reply) and I think the situation on this site improves a lot.

[eti-mun]

"You turned off replies on your desteil meme!!!!" Yes I absolutely did and let me explain to you why

People are stating iver and over to just Google the information. And that is fair. I get that. Look up the stuff for yourself, the meme is just supposed to be a fun header. I know that, I get that, I've been around these parts for over a decade I am not stupid and I'm not trying to make people spoonfeed information.

However, if a fuck ton of people are going to end up learning about a topic first through a meme, then the least the op can do is add the source of where they got said information from. From there, we have easy access to read the information, find more, and form our own opinion.

That's also a good way to ensure if the thing they credited to is actually a good source to get info from. From there people can let the op know if the website they got the information from isn't legitimate if it happens to not be. The Logitech Sue desteil meme being fake, but people blindly believing it anyway, is a shining example of why we need those sources. Not everyone is going to look up information, it's just a reality that some people don't seem to like to accept.

Im not trying to encourage people to only get their news from hellsite dot com, that is the worst thing you can do tbh.

What I am encouraging is the share of useful information on a site that claims to absolutely love when things are sourced back to the original material or credited properly

And all it would require is for the op to make like. 4 extra clicks.

With that said yeah, I don't like hearing a broke record. I don't expect this to get as seen as the meme, so I know I'm still gonna get backhanded comments, which is fine. But I just wanted to clear it up for the people who actually listen and understand what I'm trying to say.

Anyway have a nice day, add sources to things, please and thanks

[margaetyrell]

hi luvvies! you may have heard that last year, i accidentally deleted my old blog (please don’t say that again) and spent months trying to reblog as much content as i could. it was sad to lose everything on it as it’s been a difficult year for me overall, but ever since, i’ve met lots of nice people and everyone has been supportive, until i’ve hit 1k! so i just wanted to thank you for interacting with my posts and tagging me in your creations, it really means a lot to me!! that’s why i’m taking the shot to give you some of that love in return 💜

wanna join? here’s what you need to know:

op is a swiftie so this is a taylor-themed event

i’ll do up to 30 requests + 2 surprise gifsets (i’ll make a draw with all the people and take two winners out of it. then i’ll post two separate gifsets made especially for them!)

you just need to follow me (duh) no matter if we’re mutuals and send me a request to join in! only asks will count.

request a custom lockscreen/bg, header or icon (1, 2 or all them, but only 3 requests per person) with any pics, lyrics, colours and everything you want me to use!

anons aren’t allowed, but! if you want it to be secret, lmk and i’ll make something just for you that i’ll send you privately :)

if you don’t wanna request anything, you can still join the draw by sending me an ask! i’d also appreciate it if you specify the type of gifset you want, in case of winning (for ex. a lover gifset in pink)

that’s it! i’ll be answering and tagging everything as #sarahs1k once i finish each request!!

[cyborg-franky]

oh no these fall prompts are so cute.. fall themed icon+header is cute, too. could i ask for prompt 12 or 3 with Sanji or Franky, please? horror games are a big bonding thing for me, but i've always secretly wanted to do a couples/group theme costume. headcanon format preferred but w/e you feel up to!

Thank you! I changed them now but they were lovely and I adored them.

Franky

You loved watching people play horror games as much as you liked to play them, and when you found out Franky was the same, you guys organized a nice date night.

Pizza was eaten and cokes drunk you were both in your room, comfortable on the bed as you talked about what games you had.

Franky let you pick, happy to go along with whatever your choice was, easy-going as always.

“This one?” You asked and he nodded, taking a big swig of his drink and nodding, leaning back against the headboard. “Sounds super babe!” He said with a big grin and you smiled.

You played a few co-op pieces together, he was pretty good at them despite never playing a few. You were impressed with how fast he picked things up, he also seemed fearless as he had this big wide grin on his face as he took down every boss.

“Do you watch a lot of walkthroughs?” You asked as you opened a bag of chips, taking a few to munch before reaching over to offer him one which he gladly took.

“Nah, I just get a feel for the gimmicks and stuff pretty fast,” Franky explained with a little shrug of his shoulders as you cuddled up next to him.

He was also very good at watching you play, letting you try and figure things out by yourself before you gave in and asked him for some advice.

The afternoon became night and the night became early morning as you two played another co-op together, kicking everyone's asses and time again, A brilliant team.

[brucebocchi]

so i just made some edits to my anime rankings so far and embedded a link to the OP of each show in the headers. i couldn't find any on youtube for lv1 demon lord or horimiya for some reason (and FLCL has never used OPs) but i thought it might be nice to provide some extra visuals outside of the header images

also, there have just been some fucking banger OPs in 2023

[d-nghy-ck-ficrecs]

Ah I love this, it’s like a character analysis in pretty prose form. 

basically just me describing bf!hc. this is more self indulgent than anything.

𝐰𝐨𝐫𝐝𝐜𝐨𝐮𝐧𝐭: 700

lee donghyuck is a different kind of person.

he’s beautiful even when he stares at you with irises pooled in the same warmth that the sun provides when it casts over his face in the morning. he’s stunning even when you run your thumb across his cheek before he asks you how you’d slept with a sort-of tired smile on his face. he’s magnificent even when his lips are a little parched against yours as he pulls you into him and kisses you like he’s starved of your touch.

he’s sweet.

he lets you paint his nails for him (he gives you the excuse that he messes them up more frequently on his own), when really he just thinks you’re too cute when focused. he likes matching accessories with you, because he likes those small hints of letting people know that you don’t belong to eachother, but rather with eachother. when he’s up late at night working on acoustics (and you’re coincidentally still awake, too), he sits you on his lap, teething at the top of his pen before asking you for feedback on melodies that are undoubtedly inspired by you.

(of course, his voice is always the prettiest: a sweet and melodic color to his tone that always has your heart soaring, especially when he giggles into the side of your neck as you hum and say they’re coming along well.)

he’s lively.

he never allows you to dwell on things for too long when you’re sad — says it hurts him too much. instead, he cups your face and wipes at your cheeks, making sure to crack a few jokes that have you tearfully smiling despite the small hiccups that stumble past your lips. he takes you on adventures; drive-ins where he narrates the movies being played just to hear you tell him to shut up because it’s funny to him, arcades where you become a little too obsessed with a claw machine and he teases you saying you can’t win the plushie that you want only to prove him wrong (albeit, after more than half of your coins are gone), and late night walks that are way too domestic when he brings your hands up to his lips and blows hot air into your palms to warm you up.

he’s attentive.

he’s one to notice when you’re off; he pulls his gaming headset away from his head and turns off his monitor in favor of cuddling you until you feel better, telling you that you’re more important when you ask about his teammates. he’s the first to feel you get overwhelmed being around too many people at once, so he pulls you aside and helps you steady yourself with a breathe, baby, breathe for me as he rubs at your back and looks into your eyes.

he’s the person you trust most with yourself, because you know he’ll never overstep.

he’s caring.

he pulls you away from your textbooks when you start letting out responses that are a little too venomous with classwork in front of you; always reels you back into yourself until you sigh against his chest and promise him that you’ll be okay. he’s more mischievous than anything, but in the moments he rubs soothingly at your arm after you wake up from those too-realistic nightmares, you’re able to feel his empathy. his voice is soft, too, during those hours, all sleepy and reassuring whispers that make your heart positively swell.

he’s loving.

it isn’t often that you fight, but he never lets you go to bed angry with eachother when you do. small things like these are subtle signs that he values what you two have more than anything else, and you use that strength to get through any adversity together. he’s the first to say i love you, because after you’d looked at him with constellations in your eyes on that one ferris wheel ride years ago as fireworks exploded around you, he was sure he fell for you. (and he fell. hard.)

he’s nurturing, and playful, and optimistic, and intelligent. lee donghyuck is anything and everything anyone could ever ask for in someone.

above all, he’s the love of your life.

[olderthannetfic]

(1/2) I recently returned to Tumblr fandom after a number of years away, and all this pro/anti and DNI stuff has been hard to adjust to. Am I really supposed to check everyone's bio before I so much as reblog anything to make sure the OP doesn't think I'm a Filthy Irredeemable Pervert who will taint them by mere association? I mean, I HAVE been checking because I genuinely don't want to upset anyone, but man it makes things complicated.

--

(2/2) Also do you know if any of this DNI stuff happens on AO3? Do I need to worry that I'm going to ruin someone's day by telling them how much I loved their fic while being someone who openly writes #problematic shit? I love leaving nice comments on fic and art whenever I can, and I hate how all this stuff is making me second-guess myself about it...

I don't check. It's a stupid convention that's the opposite of how tumblr is structured. If a post seems suspicious, I might do a quick check to see if I think the person is an anti and block them when I see they are, but for some pretty gifset with no commentary, why would I ever check? They can block me if they want that.

A few scattered idiots do try to do DNIs on AO3. Those are even more moronic. I would typically avoid a fic with any form of DNI just because it's a good sign of immature jackasses who can't write, but I don't think you have a moral obligation to do so. The people who want to do this will make it clear in the fic header, not just their profile, so if you don't already see that, I imagine you're safe to comment.

[just-a-drawing-bean]

In an entirely non judgemental and very nice way, when I scrolled through your blog I think I got some whiplash - my thought process was just "Oh Gigasun artist! Fun to see the op of the specter haunting my dashboard! Wait. Art nouveau Moon and Gigasun from the same artist?? FOLLOW" so yes Hi Hello your range is impeccable gfhdjs (Also I love your soggy beasts in your header, they make me happy c: <3)

HELP is my legacy to be known as the gigasun artist??? LMAO, thank you!! This ask made me laugh. Also yes!! The soggies! I hold them near and dear💖💖💖