#Crack Integrity

[marlinspirkhall]

I assumed the reason Logorhythms was trying to make sure Caspian's life mirrored Stephen's as closely as possible was because they wanted to download Holstrom's UI into him & didn't want his brain to reject it, but their actual plan was much stupider.

[fluffyartbl0g]

If you asked me to describe them in one picture it would be this

Here’s the scene in question ^^^^ ITS SO GOOD ITS SO GOOD ITS SO GOOD

And here’s the exact screenshot I redrew

[m1ckeyb3rry]

what really fries me about people who use chatgpt on their homework in my classes is they get the wrong answer and then they text me and i tell them how to do it and they’re like “😱😱 how did you know how to do that ??” well maybe if you opened the slides instead of rushing to jerk off ai you would’ve realized that the professors tell you how to do what they want you to do 😭😭 you dumb fucks FKDKDNJSND LIKE ??

[vampire-in-the-corner]

saw this and immediately had to make it about my emotional support vampires

[thethingliesstill]

Derry Girls 1.06 / 3.07

[banned-from-r-slash-dnp]

banned for showing me Dan's crack in their react video (this one could be justified, tbh)

he's always doing this

[ducktracy]

Moose with implied skwerl

[breezere]

people dont draw kokichi wearing silly lil capes/cloaks more often and i think thats so tragic

[fishhateme]

okay fine let's address the elephant in the room i've abandoned this blog BUT i needed to cope after singapore yall after a good two months of no contact with any media of my pookie danny and the subsequent exposure to THE maxiel paddel date (ft. temporarily adopted paddel prodigy??) i'm ready to be back on my bullshit

this time? angsty introspective danny and max comforting him, aka ao3 hasn't been hitting and im in crisis

if it sucks it's because i haven't written fanfic in ages (started uni and it kicked me in the teeth, the only reason i can justify spending time on this is because at this point it's a Coping Mechanism™)

also i know the whole part things is a pain in the ass but tumblr wont let me write posts as long as i want them to idk i hate technology i was born in the wrong century (id rather die of the black death at 20 than have to deal with hyperlinks again thanks for asking)

read it here

[presiding]

a doctor turned serial killer turned doctor again, an actor who paints, a gang leader, a mining baron, and a vice overseer walk into the room.

oh yeah and they lead karnaca now.

dishonored 2 is my fav game but i think it's mid, story-wise. here's why dh1 works and why dh2's overarching story sorta misses

tl;dr: story integration is critical for gameplay that offers audience payoff, but emily's personal arc from dishonor to honor is inconsistently demonstrated in the story, and is not an interactive part of the gameplay.

essay/long version under cut >

recap: what's dishonored's deal

[skip if you want] dh1 is an underdog story: corvo is an honorable man swept up in the machinations of a callous city, so his canonical ending being 'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation being restored in a more hopeful city, due to his & the player's rejection of the violent connotations of the tagline 'revenge solves everything.'

similarly, in dh1 DLCs, daud's story arc is that of an anti-hero: a dishonorable man who realises too late he has done irreparable harm. he sees the error of his ways after a single monumental death, and eventually a single life redeems him when he/the player stepped in to circumvent a terrible fate for a child, enabling her to rule unfettered.

daud & corvo come to a satisfying conclusion within the extent of their narrative arcs. it doesn't matter that a child on a throne isn't really a fix for a decaying empire - the player's actions throughout the city of dunwall was what mattered - and these stories could be framed as parables. in that sense, young emily as a ruler is a metaphor for a hopeful future for the city & empire.

dishonored 1 & its DLCs are also great examples of storytelling with perfectly integrated gameplay - you, the player, worked towards the outcome that redeemed the protagonists.

in your efforts to save young emily, you either achieved a good outcome (corvo) or prevented a worse outcome (daud).

bringing us to dh2 -

what's emily's arc

emily's arc is a coming of age: we're introduced to a reigning empress who questions her role & skillset ("am i the empress my mother wanted me to be?"), then her titular fall from grace occurs. from there, she learns to reject the violent, selfish connotations in 'take back whats yours' tagline (a la daud & corvo!) while rediscovering why her rule is critical to the empire.

emily's rule is no longer metaphorical, but:

a literal thing for audience assessment (is emily a good ruler?) AND

the crux of her storyline.

at the beginning of dh2, emily is introduced as a disengaged leader ("i wish i could just run away from all this;" "i dont know if whether i should sail to the opposite side of the world, or have everyone around me executed"). the antihero has a precedent for the dishonored series in daud, so it's not at first glance an issue*, however, the fact that emily has ruled poorly reframes corvo & daud's endings as being less than ideal (a moralistic retcon) *we could talk here about how ready an audience was in 2016 for a flawed women as a protagonist, hell, even in 2023,,,

throwback to the beginning of this essay when i said:

'this child will rule over an empire' isn't about the child's rule but rather about corvo's reputation

emily's story arc, unlike for daud & corvo, is literally about the quality of her rule. we're no longer in metaphor territory (ironic phrase): a parable-style ending doesn't work.

does emily become a good ruler

we know she becomes a good ruler because the game says so. it is narrated to the audience via a (literal) word of god in the space of 30 seconds, after the final boss. the outsider tells us that emily becomes known as Just & Clever.

drawing a distinction here - this narration is not the same as the player actively being involved.

the player does not throughout the game become aware that emily has made political allies. during the game, she doesn't talk to these characters about saving karnaca or being a better ruler to the empire (there's a few lines might imply it, but you need to be actively looking and being careful to wait for every voice line. it's a far cry from daud & corvo's fight to save emily being unmissable - even though daud doesn't know at the beginning that's the goal).

how does the game show it

you can coincidentally not kill most of your subjects and never be aware that emily is looking to restore karnaca by means of instating a council - it's never brought up. it *couldn't* be brought up, because that council serves under the fake duke (armando), who is the last person she speaks to before she leaves for dunwall. its her suggestion that he rules karnaca, but armando's condition is that he will rule as he sees fit.

to back up a bit, emily's canonical method of restoring karnaca is by banding together key allies - hypatia, stilton, [byrne &or paolo], pastor, under a council beneath the duke's body double. they are passionate people who would each individually make worthwhile advisors, but if you think about those characters sitting at a table trying to reach an agreement, it feels like an assortment of people that emily didn't kill along the way and doesn't feel organic (up to interpretation). it's not stated if emily herself banded this council together, but logically she must have (worth a mention these are mostly characters that you as the player had reasonable rationale to kill during a high chaos run, except pastor). the underlying concept may be that karnaca's power is returned to its people - which is interesting given that the monarchy remains and armando's decision is final.

this overarching solution could also be taken as a critique to dh1's 'put your kid on the throne,' which is another reason its worthwhile looking at how emily was shown to be a better leader. obviously my point isn't that her solution was bad given the circumstance, but i mean she has very little agency here in all. if emily was shown to be more controlling as a leader, this could be interpreted as character growth, but that's not the case.

coming of age

how do you learn & grow when you can't specify your failings? emily doesn't really touch on her shortcomings as an empress. she non-specifically worries delilah makes a better empress than her. it's hard to argue her worries are meaningful when someone good at their job will still worry when lives are in the balance.

emily's best 'aha' moments (eg. crack in the slab comment about gaining perspective) are consistently undercut by a conversation with sokolov or meagan afterwards in which she demonstrates she hasn't learned anything (before the grand palace, emily condemns 'toadies sucking up to me' and is reminded by meagan that she's part of the problem). the story is confused about what it's trying to say about emily's progress, and when she's meant to show progress, if she was meant to show any progress at all. it could be argued that emily was never even a bad ruler, she had just been fed misinformation about the problems in karnaca and been the victim of slander by her political enemies. the game doesn't make this clear - it's easier to argue that the opposite is true given that her allies only have criticism.

worth a mention here that the heart quotes about armando - a fake ruler - interestingly mirror emily's character concerns. "see how he sighs? his life is a gilded cage." but this essay is already long.

while corvo & daud spend their games (and through the gameplay) 'earning' their redemption, emily is being led by the NPCs around her to a conclusion and a fix for the political mess in karnaca: meagan & sokolov guide emily to her missions, and there's no recurring quest for emily to investigate possible allies. she is able to gather the people she hasn't killed to herself by manner of... post-game narration. during the game, she's primarily concerned with getting her throne back.

an easy fix: if there had been less dialogue & narrative focus on emily's failings perhaps the ending would have felt more satisfying. it has the feel of cut content, but i don't know what was cut to be able to comment on it.

so what went wrong?

i can't help but wonder if arkane were worried they would lose a certain demographic if corvo wasn't playable (may have been deemed too much of a risk - 2013 was a different time), and so they had to take out story elements that were unique to emily's growth as a character/empress, because the usual storyline/gameplay integration had to work for both characters - in other words, gameplay that made sense for both corvo & emily was prioritised before emily's story & character development. which is a silly problem to have in a game that added character voices for the sake of improving characterisation - maybe emily's tale would have felt more akin to a parable if she had less lines that betrayed her ignorance (to the disdain of those around her).

i wish more care had been taken with emily's story. most players will never really notice the large variety of different endings - they're not particularly satisfying in and of themselves.

it's ironic that one of Emily's complaints is about her father/protector being overbearing, when his (parallel universe) presence in the gameplay may be one of the reasons her own narrative arc falls flat.

what are the upsides here

changing tune from what didn't work - don't you think the concept is fantastic? it's a great idea overall - can you imagine if the coming of age storyline was better integrated into the game?

it's valuable to talk about the integration of story and gameplay and characterisation from a craft perspective. dh2 genuinely is my favourite game - it's beautiful, the imm-sim design philosophy makes the world a delight to explore, the combat gives endless creative options for tackling any fight, there is a far greater diversity of cast in an in-text canonical way. there's loads to love!

i love emily as a dodgy leader, to me it adds interesting dimensionality to the outsider's narrations - of course in dunwall there's never a neat happily ever after! emily, like the outsider, both work well as characters who hold ultimate power but aren't necessarily worthy of it - and this makes perfect sense for the dishonored universe's morality & critiques of power. however, within this grey area there's still plenty of room for a satisfying ending, which isn't what we ended up with, whatever the true reason for that was. and also, damn, emily's a marked assassin empress, if she can't lead well then who can?

while dh1 was criticised for its narrative simplicity, dh2 in contrast and in hindsight shows us that simplicity isn't so bad - there's satisfaction in gameplay achieves a clear, simple narrative goal.

[blenselche]

scored the first bat sighting of spring today~

[nemesis-is-my-middle-name]

house of leaves is so fucking clever it’s not fair what the fuck

[math-imagines]

Black Doom Shows You How to Do Integration by Substitution

Gender Neutral Reader, Black Doom & Reader or Black Doom/Reader, up to interpretation

Being in space, you would have assumed that you wouldn’t have to worry about things like math and calculus. It wasn’t like you assumed it wouldn’t be involved in space travel, but you assumed that you wouldn’t have to deal with it with this exact space trip, considering you were abducted by aliens and all. You’d assumed that you were going to be eaten, like everyone else who’d been captured. Yet you and a very small number of others hadn’t yet and were instead being put through a number of tests. A few were physical in some way, but most had tested your intelligence. You couldn’t help but feel like a rat in a maze, being tested on how fast we could change our behavior after being electrocuted. Were these aliens, the Black Arms as you now knew they were called, studying you? If they were, then what for?

This specific test was a test of your ability to do calculations. Vaguely you thought back on that comic that was rather popular a while ago, about someone being forced to do algebraic equations to get into heaven, and couldn’t help but feel that this was something like that. The first few questions weren’t too hard for you, you’d never been bad at math. But when you got into the calculus section, you started to get nervous. You’d only learned so much calculus before you’d been, well, abducted by aliens. And one part in particular always go to you. Integrals in general just hadn’t clicked with you yet. You knew how to do it, but you couldn’t always do it right. It didn’t help that the massive ruler of the Black Arms, Black Doom, was watching everyone testing. You were sure it couldn’t be, but it was almost like he was watching you more than the others.

The next question was about just one of these. Of course it was. It asked what the indefinite integral was of the cube root of seven minus tangent t, all multiplied by secant squared of t. Nothing seemed to be going your way. Why did they even to know if you could do integrals anyway? Surely, they were just going to eat you in the end anyway! Why did they need you to work alone too? Wouldn’t this test be just as effective if you could all work together? You tried to solve the problem anyway, if you only could get a little help…

The floating Black Doom started to move through the space, and to your horror, he came towards you! Had you displeased him in some way? You were quite certain this was when you would be eaten, when he said in his low voice, “You struggle. Why do you persist?”

You glanced around, hoping there would be someone else nearby to respond, but no one did, so you answered nervously, “I don’t know how to do this bit. I hadn’t learned it in class yet. I think I can get it though, if someone…” You paused for a moment, considering whether or not this was a test too. Should you say it? Was that against the rules? No one else spoke, and some others clearly struggled too.

He seemed to read your mind as he let out a low laugh. “It is no shame to require assistance,” he said, “The Black Arms are a hive mind, there is a constant cooperation and collaboration between us. I’ve not seen one of your kind request assistance, not in a non-life threating situation. It takes intelligence to be capable of learning and wisdom to be willing to ask questions. Certainly, you are a promising candidate. Come with me, I will show you how to solve problems such as these.”

…what? Black Doom, ruler of the Black Arms, probably a demi-god, destroyer of worlds, was offering to teach you how to do calculus? Called you intelligent and wise? This couldn’t be real. Shakely, you stood and followed the towering alien out of the room. You still weren’t sure you weren’t going to be eaten, but you followed obediently. And how did he know what you were going to ask for help? Could he read your mind?

“Yes,” he said, though you hadn’t spoken a word. You walked with him down a long corridor now. “We’ve partially attuned you and your fellows to the hive mind. You cannot connect to it, but we can examine your thought processes through it. We use it to determine how well you complete the tests to reveal which of you are most suitable.”

“How are you able to do that?” you asked, knowing there’s no point in leaving it unsaid now. You tried not to think about what “suitable” referred to.

“It’s in your food. A psychokinetically active additive makes your small minds more open to us. We need you all alive for now, so you must eat to live.”

“So, it’s like the radioactive compounds in PET scans, but to see our thoughts instead of our brains?”

He glanced at you, giving a judgmental gaze. “They do not have those in the rest of the civilized universe. Most do not put radioactive compounds in their bodies willingly.”

“Oh.” You walked in silence down the long corridor, until you followed him into an antechamber with a giant tablelike structure in the center.

“I will show you how to complete problems like these,” he declared, moving to one side of the table and indicating that you should join him by scaling a massive seat that seemed more like a monolith than a chair. You managed, with a reasonable amount of effort to climb on top of it. “Good,” he said as you gazed up at him, “You struggled with this.” You nodded as he indicated the problem in question.

“It simply a matter of substitution,” he said, using a massive claw to etch the problem on the table.

“You must simply replace one part of the integral with a separate variable, making it easier to integrate.”You weren’t quite sure you knew what he meant, but you nodded along as he etched a separate variable, u, into the table.

He continued. “It would be more difficult to integrate the cube root of 7 tangent t than of a single variable, such as u. To integrate with respect to u, you must also transform dt to du.” He then wrote a derivative equation:

“Why would we take the derivative of u?”, you asked, confused at the seemingly irrelevant step.

“Have patience,” Black Doom snapped, then continued, “If you’d not interrupted, I would have been able to inform you that the derivative of u is taken to isolate du and dt, and their equivalent portions of the equations.” As he took the derivative of 7 minus 7 tangent t, it made more sense; the majority of the derivative was the factor outside of the radical.

“Multiplying both sides by dt isolates du and dt, making it possible to replace secant squared t and dt with an equivalent expression in that makes the integral possible to integrate in terms of u rather than t.”

When he lay it out before you, it seemed far simpler than you thought it would be. “So, you can take a simpler integral rather than a more complicated one by replacing parts of it with equivalent and simpler variables?”

“Correct,” If Black Doom had a mouth, you could have sworn smiled at you. “Your species’ capacity to learn so rapidly is something we valued in you. If I were to name a positive characteristic in your inferior species, it would be that.”

You gave a weak smile in response, somewhat concerned by his phrasing. You watched him write the edited integral.

This integral was far more reasonable to deal with, a simple matter really. You etched the integrated solution on the table in your smaller hand writing with your writing utensil, something between a pencil and marker.

Black Doom nodded approvingly. “There is but one more step,” he said, “to replace u with what it was originally substituted for.”

“That’s the solution then?” you confirmed.

“Indeed,” he replied. “You are certainly a most suitable candidate. Very adaptable and obedient. I shall keep you in mind for later. Now return to your fellows. Do not bother with completing more of this test, your progress has been deemed satisfactory.”

You nodded and rushed towards the exit, then paused for a moment. “Thank you,” you said, trying not to make your voice shake.

Black Doom looked at you curiously for a moment, after which he said, “As you should. Now begone!”

As you turned and returned to the first chamber you were in, you gave the test you’d completed in a pile of other completed tests and returned to a group of your fellow abductees.

“Oh my chaos!” one gasped as you returned, “You’re alive! We thought for sure you got eaten!”

You shook your head. “No,” you said, “Actually, Black Doom explained calculus to me.”

“You’re clowning? You’re not clowning? I sense clowns.”

“No, I’m serious.” You turned away. “I think there’s something more going on here, though,” you whispered, “I’ve told you before I think they’re studying us, right?”

The others nodded, and some of the Black Arms nearby almost imperceptibly tensed, shifting.

You glanced around, “I think these tests are for more than just study,” you said softly, “I think there’s a bigger goal here. We’re candidates for something. These are just the preliminary tests to determine which of us is best for the real experiment.”

The rest of the group recoiled. “Surely not?” one chuckled nervously. “I mean, the aliens wouldn’t have told you their real plan, right?”

You opened your mouth to double down, but one of the Black Arms jerked their head and reached for a phaser at the edge of your vision. “You’re probably right,” you said, keeping your eye on the alien, “just a theory.”

The group visibly relaxed and so did the surrounding Black Arms. You didn’t though. What had happened still didn’t feel real to you. But as much as you knew something else was going on, you pushed it to the back of your mind, in a place you hoped the Black Arms couldn’t find.

***

Author's Note: Hope you enjoyed and/or learned some calculus from this! Again, if you have any character requests for any fandom or any math topic, just ask. I feel completely deranged for writing this, but I sure did review that topic! I think the plot's not terrible either. Until next time!

[dangerliesbeforeyou]

just unfollowed an artist on bsky for a shit ass take and like yeh it's kinda petty but i'm in a bad fucking mood & seeing artists do the whole 'look at me being holier than thou not selling prints of my fanart because i Value The Creators' makes me so pissed off like shut the fuck up lol fanartists making literally pennies from selling their stuff online or at cons or whatever doesn't take shit away from the original creators get the fuck over yourself jfc

[mamamittens]

Had a funny thought about a fem!Ace AU where all that charisma and good looks from her parents coalesced into her being absolutely

Postiviely

Fucking adorable.

Like, from day one this girl has folks fawning over her, even when she was chewing on table legs cause she was still a feral fucking brat.

Like, all those good looks hit so hard from day one it looped from (age appropriately) sexy to just timelessly adorable. Nothing she does changes this. Even as a pirate, Marines are half trying to save this clearly air-headed cutie from the poor decisions of those scoundrel pirates holding her up as a figurehead.

This is absolutely not the case but Garp thinks it's funny and half refuses to believe otherwise so he throws his weight in to support that idea.

Anyway, Ace is still a bit bratty with a heart of gold and genuinely, truly cares about the people around her. She's not as concerned about her father's shadow because she's too busy being pissed that out of all that terrifying legacy she managed to only get Lethal Cuteness.

Dadan has an interesting time raising her cause she's not immune to cute, she's just so pissed at how quickly those watery eyes get to her it ends up failing anyway. Dadan does, however, meticulously teach Ace caution about her looks and how to best use them and when. She's strong enough on her own to not worry too much at least, but it's a much more prepared and cautious Ace that leaves Dawn.

She's very put out when it's confirmed by Shanks that the cute is almost certainly from her mom cause Roger was definitely an idiot at times, but no one was cooing over a grown man like they would over her. She did get most of his coloring though. She thanks her lucky stars she doesn't have strawberry blond hair or the airhead allegations would never die, no matter how many times she sets marine bases on fire.

Anyway, the funniest part is that there's a mix up or someone gets the bright idea of having her taken out by other pirates since other warlords clearly weren't cutting it. Or at least 'scaring her off from the dangerous world at sea since she somehow hadn't gotten overwhelmed yet, that poor girl'. Which leads to the false claim she wants Whitebeard's head.

She's so pissed about it cause it's even written with an undertone of an enamored relative cooing about a toddler offering to beat up someone's husband if he doesn't treat their favorite auntie right or something. It's so condescending and if she didn't know full well it wouldn't help at all, she'd actually kill Whitebeard just to shove the obituary down the author's throat.

Which leads to the inevitable clash of wills where she (in a rare display of what's left of her bratty childhood self) whines that she has no intention of killing Whitebeard.

"I can already see it now!" Ace whines, throwing her hands in the air as Thatch and Marco give each other a look. Whitebeard watching in great amusement. "I could have all the strength and power in the world! Able to kill you with a flick of my finger before you could even blink! And! And you know what would happen?!"

She whirls around to glare at Thatch and the man instinctively steps back, hands up in a placating gesture like it's flu season and the nurses were ready to put the shots in dart guns if anyone else tried to run.

"Uh... We'd be very sad?" He tries lamely, struggling to not coo at the soft pout that transformed Ace's sharp features to round, apple cheeks. Face flush as she stomped her foot with a strangled screech.

Whitebeard was exactly no help at all, it was all he could do to not pick her up and cuddle the tantrum out of her--like she was five.

"The next FUCKING DAY--THE PAPERS WOULD BE ROLLING OUT! EVEN IF THERE WERE THOUSANDS OF WITNESSES AND LIVE COVERAGE BY EVERY HARD ASS MARINE AND GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL--UGGGH!" Ace shot of flickers of fire, sparks that flew from her hair as she ruffled it aggressively. Black curls dancing around her face and shoulders. Just as suddenly she deflated, huffing in defeat with a dramatic pout. "Oh, the strongest man finally gave up his reign of terror--just couldn't bring himself to fight back against wittle Cinders Ace! Heart probably gave out at her little cutie pie attempt to stand strong against a big, mean, pirate! Poor thing, bet she didn't even know what was happening until it was over! Whitebeard, dead by natural causes due to old age. Good riddance. Hope someone saves that poor, silly girl from all those nasty pirates taking advantage of her!"

Thatch awkwardly pat her shoulder, cautiously consoling her.

"Aw, honey, it's alright. We were there front and center when you fought Oyaji! You knew exactly what you were doing! And crazy strong too--where the hell did you even come from?! Papers say East Blue but they're also pretty biased about you so..." She huffed but he wasn't scorched, so Thatch considered it a win.

"Nah, I'm from the East Blue... Well, I was born in the South but my mah died in childbirth and Gramps brought me to his home island. Maman raised me from there." She sighed, lightly flicking his hand off her shoulder, which Thatch removed without complaint. "Been like this from day one. Can't have shit around here without some asshat talking about me being so damn cute and precious. Setting them on fire only does so much... For some reason most think I do it on accident? Like, no???? I set your dick on fire after hitting on me for half an hour and putting your hand on my waist, that shit was intentional."

Ace whines some more.

Whitebeard doesn't seem dissuaded in the least from adopting her. Yeah, she has issues, but it was arguably one of the funniest problems a pirate could have.

Too cute to commit crimes.

[deliriousblue]

the eclipse, episode 12 (previous)

sometimes i do like to see a little wildly explicit homophobia in television ! and it does feel right to have had the school’s rules of order be this background malevolent force for the entire show, operating as a metaphor for heteronormativity and homophobia that isn’t necessarily quite made explicit, and then have it made very explicit here and now.

i'm going back and forth on how i feel about the meta element here. it does broadly work for me as a throughline in the show about the power that fiction holds but i don't totally get what they're going for now that it's so directly explicit and built off the literal characters (e.g. akk and ayan's scene at the beginning being the same dialogue as khan and thua's at the beginning of the show)

at the same time the contrast between wat talking about accepting who you are in the context of their characters vs akk still unable to quite reconcile everything within himself is compelling....

also don't really get the eleventh hour rules revision.... wouldn't she know this already? chadok leaving makes sense but honestly Eye was half expecting him to take responsibility for akk and thua's actions and get fired/resign for it. i admit it’s arguable whether that’s actually any less of a deus ex but he DOES bear partial responsibility and it would allow him to gain a bit of redemption by doing now for akk what he couldn’t for dika. but that’s just my opinion......

did make me crack up. aye folding instantly like a wet paper towel.

and also really love the way that despite being soooo annoying [affectionate] this is one of the first times — aside from episode six — that we've seen akk actively initiating affection between them without aye directly prompting him first. and aye's expression like he doesn't know quite what to do with it but certainly doesn't want it to stop.....

<33333333333