#I also figure if I'm going to give her a human design I might as well go the whole way and not just slap robot parts on her face lol

[tyrantisterror]

A Dozen Or So Great Vampire Ladies

Ok, so, on a mostly unrelated post the topic of good vampire ladies came up, and @bisexualdaikaiju suggested/challenged me to do a top 10 vampire women list. As a self-professed lover of vampire women, it felt like a challenge I couldn't back down from. But it is kind of challenging, for two kind of contradictory reasons.

First, while there are MANY female vampires in fiction, most of them feel like afterthoughts, getting far less characterization than their male counterparts, who more often than not are the star villains of the show. When these supporting lady vampires do get something to do, it's generally the same role: make their human lovers sad when they rise from the dead as a monster that has to be killed, an emotional beat that is often undercut by a lot of these vampire women not getting much characterization to endear them to us before they died. Everyone wants to have the Lucy Westerna plot beat from Dracula but they don't want to do the work that Bram did to make Lucy lovable. The lady vamps who get to step out of Lucy's shadow are rare - but that just makes them all the more wonderful.

The second problem is that, since this is an obsession of mine that few seem to share (there are lots of vampire fans, but man do the boy vamps get to hog the spotlight among them), I've done a lot of scattered thinking about it and I just know I'm bound to forget at least one excellent lady vampire character that should be here. And whittling it down to ten, and trying to rank them? That's too hard! My thoughts are too mercurial to do that reliably in a way I don't forget!

So instead here's a list of, like, a dozen or so lady vampires that I think are just fucking stellar, many of which I think break the mold of what pop culture makes us expect lady vampires to be. It is not ranked - I love all these characters more or less equally, and think it's a lot more interesting to see how they take their archetype in different directions than to figure out which one is "best" of the lot.

Carmilla Karnstein

I'm going to start with the most famous literary female vampire, Mircalla Karnstein from Carmilla. I think she might be the first vampire to have an unhealthy obsession with using anagrams of her real name as aliases, though I'm sure now that I've typed that someone will find an earlier example to school me. She's also the one who popularized the idea of lady vampires being extremely sapphic, with an arguably genuine romantic affection for her female victims. She's got well-deserved clout, basically, and like Dracula has been adapted countless times and reinterpreted in some excellent ways. My favorite screen Carmilla is Ingrid Pitt's take, which captures her fierceness, passion, and tragic nature so well.

2. Amy from Fright Night

Ok, we're having one Lucy Westerna knockoff on this list, but as Lucy knockoffs go, Amy is one of the best. It actually helps that she spends 90% of her movie as a human, because we get to know and love her so much before she turns monstrous. And once she does...

It is pants-shittingly terrifying. I will never stop raving about the vampire designs in this movie - they made their "game faces" so fucking monstrous and I feel like in a better world this would be the standard ever since, especially since they still gave the vampires pathos while making them so ghastly when they've got their feeding faces on.

3. Drusilla

Buffy the Vampire Slayer had a bunch of vampire characters, and to its credit they did a decent job of making the ladies just as distinct as the gents. Harmony and Darla could both have made this list, but my favorite was always Drusilla, who was so traumatized before she became a vampire that it kind of overwhelms the demon spirit inside her. Like, bare minimum thing to make a lady vampire more interesting than 90% of other female vampires in fiction: give her at least one personality trait, preferably an interesting one, outside of being a vampire. Drusilla's fun, and she survives the entire series after dumping her boyfriend to be a single female vampire. Good for her.

4. Ruby from Scary Godmother

Ok look I am a fake Scary Godmother fan but kudos to the artist of the books for making a lady vampire who's very clearly of the nosferatu mold and is also explicitly benign and sweet. A+ vampire lady character design. I hope it doesn't awaken anything in me.

5. Nadja

What We Do in the Shadows is excellent at finding new takes on vampires in general - it even made me actually like Psychic Vampires as a concept, a feat I thought was impossible - but goddamn do I love Nadja specifically. She's got a distinct personality as vampire ladies go, being very confident and self-assured while also being a complete fucking goober (it is a comedy, after all). She's perfectly capable of being terrifying AND hilarious, often at the same time. A vampire girl failure, in the parlance of our site. I love her.

6. Lady Dimitrescu

I know that she's apparently only in a fourth of the game, but it's still pretty great that Resident Evil 8 decided its mascot villain - its equivalent of the Tyrant, G, Nemesis, etc. - would be the hottest woman I've ever seen a milf an 8 foot tall lady vampire. She's not dainty and willowy like most lady vamps in fiction - not an ambush hunter - but rather HUGE and capable of tossing a human around like a rag doll. She's a physical powerhouse and she looks fine feminine while doing it. Despite being an unabashed blood-sucking monster, she still has enough depth and complexity to have important relationships (like a genuine love for her "giant mass of hive mind flies" daughters), and also she gets to have an awesome transformation into a fungal vampire dragon, which is rad as hell. Also goddamn, her fashion sense is immaculate.

7. Hecate from Hellboy

"Hey, she's not a vampire! She's a goddess! That doesn't count!" Fuck you, my list, my rules. Hecate posits herself as the progenitor and mother of vampires, she drinks blood, and her main form in the comic is as a sicknasty lamia version of the iron maiden used by Elizabeth fucking Bathory, if she doesn't count as a vampire, nothing should. She is the concept of a vampire amped up to maximum capacity, a major mythological figure and an awesome villain.

...also I lowkey shipped her and Hellboy when I was a teenager. They could have made it work!

8 - 12. Carmilla and her girl squad from Castlevania

I suppose I could have counted Castlevania's Carmilla as an adaptation of Miss Karnstein - they're both basted out of Styria, both sapphic, and it's clear she's meant to be an adaptation of the former, just as the Dracula of this show is meant to be a take on Bram's famous vampire. But ultimately they're VERY different characters in the grand scheme of things - Castlevania's Carmilla has none of the tenderness and vulnerability of her literary counterpart, instead being full of barely restrained fury. She is an excellent villain, complex enough to be interesting but thoroughly despicable enough to make it VERY satisfying when she bites it.

I also love her girl posse... in concept, at least. They've all got great designs and the groundwork of interesting characters, but of the the three, only Lenore, the waifish redhead, gets to do much of note. The two on the edges kind of just show up for a few scenes and then bail before the plot catches up to them, doing very little of note - though at least the big hunky one gets one of the coolest fight scenes in the whole show.

Back to Lenore though - she gets a really nice character arc, and manages to become one of the few sympathetic vampires in the series (while still doing a lot of monstrous shit - she is not a defanged vampire by any stretch). I think her death scene is one of the most moving moments in the series finale.

13. Seras Victoria

A good female vampire has at least one non-vampire part of her personality, right? Ok, so, Seras is:

the muscle in almost every scene she is, which is to say, the one absolutely beating the shit out of people while her allies run for cover

the perky henchman/morality pet of one of history's greatest monsters

the sole ray of sunshine in cast of edgy, cigar-chomping grizzled mercnaries and antiheroes she's been pressganged into fighting alongside

the victim of some HIDEOUS trauma even before her vampirization

the protege of a wise master who gets a full hero's journey arc, taking up his mantle at the end of the series

Like, I love her. She's the secret protagonist of Hellsing. She's got layers like an onion. The scene where she killed Zora Blitz reminded me why I love anime.

(yeah it's the TFS version fuck you)

14. Youko Shiragami

My Monster Secret is not a horror manga. It is a romantic comedy about a bunch of idiots trying to keep painfully obvious secrets hidden and succeeding only because almost everyone around them is as dumb as they are, just in very different ways. It is a manga where an entire chapter can be summarized as "all the characters race to get the last McRib, using their various supernatural abilities to try and cheat their way to the front of the pack." It is one of the funniest and most heart-warming stories I have ever read, one of my favorite romances of all time, and an excellent piece of long form story-telling.

One of the two main characters is Youko Shiragami, a vampire girl who can't let anyone know she's a vampire or else her dad will pull her out of school. She desperately wants to have a normal life with friends and, like, school shenanigans, but her fear of people uncovering her secret and hating her is so immense that she's been isolating herself from everyone, accidentally torturing herself by being close to what she wants but unable to actually have it.

At least, until Kuromine, the other main character of the story, discovers her secret while trying to ask her out on a date. He ends up promising to keep her secret, and the two of them form a real friendship that blossoms into a very sweet romance, where Youko gets to display all her incongruous personality traits that go against what you'd expect of vampires - namely, that she's kind of a ditz, with an unrefined style of speech and a complete inability to be suave and seductive. She's a sweet, flaky goofball with a big heart, who just happens to drink blood and tan really quickly in the sunlight. There is no other vampire like her, and the world is richer for her being in it.

15. Marceline, the Vampire Queen

This list isn't ranked, but if it was, I'd put Marceline at the top. I think she is not only the most unique and deeply characterized lady vampire in fiction, but ranks right up there with Dracula in how she redefines the idea of what a vampire can be. Like, look at the forms she takes!

There are DOZENS of different monstrous shapes Marceline takes during Adventure Time's 9+ seasons of television, and any one of them would be a superb and memorable vampire on its own. And she's ALL of them. Just on a design standpoint, she is a standout. I think only Dracula himself could compete.

But she also explores what the concept of what a vampire is in ways no other vampire in fiction can, in part because of the unique nature of Adventure Time's setting. In a world where humans are an extreme minority and most people are weird monsters, a vampire isn't that odd, so we get to explore what being a vampire means divorced from the comparison to "normal" human beings. There's the expected tragedy to Marceline, of course - she's a 16 year old who has been stuck in that adolescent state for hundreds of years, and much of her character arc over the show (including the magnificent vampire-centric storyline, "Stakes") focuses on the horror of being stuck in that transitional state, not quite a child but not quite an adult. Marceline struggles to mature, to understand herself and others, and her vampirism both keeps her distant from reaching those goals but also gives her a lot of time to figure out how to approach them when the opportunity arirves. Marceline goes from one of the most immature and selfish characters in the show to perhaps the most emotionally intelligent, blossoming into a sensitive and thoughtful person she could never have been without first becoming a creature that seems so inherently opposed to ever having those traits.

And she did it all in a children's show where she was rarely if ever allowed to actually drink blood - a problem the writers got around by having her suck the red color out of things, which is right up there with the Joker Venom from BTAS in terms of genius ideas spawned by children's show censorship.

Marceline is the GOAT.

[jenatwork]

I finally finished my Utena re-watch yesterday, binging the last three episodes and Adolescence in one evening, and I am Having Thoughts. Mostly about the story from Akio's perspective, surprisingly.

I don't know if I've ever read anyone's exploration of the story from his pov, so I'm going to brain-vomit about it.

From his pov, he's the one who's trapped. The Rose Bride sealed Dios away from the world, whether for his own good or to keep her brother to herself, or both. The princely part of him, Dios, is trapped, leaving only the human part of him, Akio, out in the world, trying to regain what he's lost and cope without what he sees as his 'real' power. 'The power to revolutionise the world' is, for him, the regaining of his heroic princely aspect that made him something close to a god among mortals, a natural leader, the greatest warrior.

So what is he left with? What does a regular human man have with which to find his place in the world? What is his role, if not a prince? Is he a ladies' man? An intellectual? A fighter? A logical realist who denies the 'miracles' the prince could perform to keep people safe?

It's clear from the Black Rose arc, and from the final scenes, that Akio has repeated the duels in some form many times, assuming that he needs the right sword to open the Rose Gate and access his old power. He holds this 'might makes right' belief that physical strength or a warrior's weapon is the key to power. When Utena, just a girl, succeeds as the winner of the duels, at first he tries to persuade her to stand down, because how could a girl's sword possibly be strong enough to open the Gate? I wondered, during this watch, if this cycle was the first time that any girls had taken part in the duels, and whether that was by design or accidental. In the Black Rose arc, it's 100 boys who are drawn in to find the power or the eternal something. In this latest cycle, it's the student council, a power structure that represents intellectual masculinity: Juri, as a lesbian in a uniform closer to her male counterparts than to the other female students, might possibly have been the first girl to join the duels, an unintentional outcome perhaps inspired by Mikage, who was more easily tempted by a boy than by that boy's older sister. She still represented an aspect of masculinity in her own way, as the logical realist who denies miracles. Likewise, Nanami joins the duels initially to stand in for her brother, and leaves when she is confronted by how damaging the system is to the very people it's supposed to protect.

I wondered if perhaps Utena was never meant to join the duels. If Dios had meant to find Touga and Saionji on that particular day, and stumbled on Utena because they did. If Utena joining and winning the duels was never part of Akio's plan, and that's why he, and all the others, are so perplexed by her and never figure out how to get the better of her. Akio tries to force her into the role of 'Girl' because all he knows is playing the role of 'Man', and what else is a man supposed to do with a girl besides protect her or seduce her?

Utena succeeds because, for all her talk about wanting to be a prince to rescue girls, she gives up that roleplay and acts of of genuine love and compassion. She succeeds in besting the Rose Bride's curse because she doesn't approach it like a man, trying to seduce, fight, or logic her way through, but by loving Anthy and by having the compassion to want to end her pain.

Utena is still very much about smashing the patriarchy (literally in the case of Adolescence), but in its own way it also artfully deconstructs the ways in which patriarchy hurts men too, by limiting the roles available to them. Utena offers an alternative to the masculine roles of warrior, lover, intellectual and cynic, as well as to the feminine role of princess. The student council recognise it in the end, but Akio never does, because he is so utterly stuck in his role. That's why Anthy gets to leave at the end, telling him he's the one that's trapped, because Utena showed her that she, and we, can choose our own roles.

[bluginkgo]

Episode 7 Teaser is out and it gave me too many crack theories

Well, after finally getting my head wrapped around the entire teaser- which took literal hours to process how amazing it all looked- I think I finally found the ability to put it into words.

Spoilers, duh and uh lots of words, so sorry

This'll be somewhat frame by frame crack down as well as crack theories that came to me while spending time looking at the red images too long that gave me a headache - anyways

As many have mentioned this before, V's corpse is gone, and only a sentinel's tail remains on the ground to the right. Although I wish to believe that V made it out alive, that hope is quickly dwindling. Although there is a small possibility that V somehow won the fight (perhaps with outside help such as J) and dragged herself away (based off of the splatter on the ground) I more so think that she turned into an eldritch V. That or perhaps has been mauled by the sentinels, and the body was dragged off. Although, I can not wait for Liam to prove me wrong about this theory (I hope he proves me wrong, cause I miss V ;w;)

The ground looking hall seems to be where the gang will enter right after exiting the elevator. Alongside this, it seems that the moment with N is also here (based on the background). Now, as for the look that N gives. It goes from worried and slightly scared to harsh concern (in my opinion, feel free to take that thought and yeet it as far as you wish ^_^). Something made him worry in a way that also slightly flared his anger. Two theories:

He saw something ahead of them, and this is the more likely possibility, because that tunnel gives way to the cave that N seems to have been dragged into from the teaser from November.

2. Uzi might have said something that made him more concerned. There is a figure that moves behind N, but it is very hard to see as to who it is- my guess it's Tessa, making Uzi the only candidate to possibly to walk in front of them.

Then we get to see this hole.

Possibility (also a bit wacky and highly unlikely): The entity will finally be revealed, that is, the center of the absolute solver. Something I noticed with the design of the absolute solver is that we get to see its limbs, but never the main body. It is always hiding somewhere, be it in the ceiling or the walls. Of course, there are also the eldritch forms we saw of Cyn, but in my opinion, it feels more like another limb. Now, with J's huge form, I'm a little more inclined to believe that's what it looks like as the main body. Holo spooky snake crab like.

Not to be dramatic, but... Core collapse, which made me chuckle. Because despite all hell breaking loose in these last couple episodes, Murder Drones still manages to sneak in tiny jokes like this. Oh, and I can't forget the dog too! XD

Something I still cannot grasp my head around is what is going on with the environment around the cathedral?? It's raining, but it's in a cave- ok can be sorta explained that it acts like a stalactite... but then what is going on with the vortex around the building? My current theory: uhhh... robo-satan, that is all.

A lot of scenes with humans and in a clear view (i.e. not like a video tape). This might suggest a flashback as many have already mentioned it. However, who, how, and why is there a flashback? Well, there is one crack theory I came up with. This is what Uzi is seeing. She is an absolute solver host, and it has been seen on multiple occasions that absolute solver has a hivemind, so it can easily show its hosts whatever memories its previous hosts had.

These next scenes I believe to be in the progression as shown.

@/haastera (don't want to bother them with a tag) also pointed this out, that these scenes may be back to back, based off of the lamp that is off to Uzi's left. However, what the heck would cause Uzi to snap like she did in ep4?

Uzi saw something in the tape that made her upset, the possibility of N killing Nori. Cons in that theory: N killed Nori post core collapse, and there would not be any evidence of it.

The tape had something that was similar to zombie drones tape that was marked "Don't show this to drones, they will not like it." Something in the tape may have forced boot the solver string in Uzi, and she was powerless to stop it. Cons: @bloodywolfwings mentioned to me that the reflection in Uzi's visor seems to be a door instead of a screen. So there's also the 50% chance that these two scenes are not even related.

MA'AM YOU PUT THAT SWORD AWAY, UZI HAS IT BAD ENOUGH MA'AM- in all seriousness, this is a 50/50 shot once again. Maybe Tessa is attempting to get rid of Uzi while N is gone. The opposite end of that is Tessa is attempting to help Uzi, perhaps an enemy that Uzi did not sense behind her.

These two scenes are related, I believe- the claw is hard to see behind the cross, but it is there, and not to mention that Dr. Chambers is wearing a camera on his head. However, there's more to it after I stared at it for a while. The absolute solver claw appears to be burning and glitching, this is only seen with DDs and solver drones when they are exposed to the sun. Perhaps the humans were slowly getting better at controlling the absolute solver, with some sort of power equivalent to the sun. But in the end, their efforts were useless, seeing as Nori still destroyed everything there.

We have seen these two scenes already, so not much to dissect here. Just NUzi being NUzi :3 while all hell breaks loose

This scene had me so confused at first.

I could not figure out what was going on with the cars. Cars are outside, our gang is in a cathedral, what happened- That's it. This is outside. And as many have already mentioned this, there are drones in the background so far identified as Lizzy and perhaps Thad. (I say perhaps Thad because my dumb brain won't let go of the idea that the drone on the left is Khan. Look, my brain said 'I think I see a mustache' and now I can't unsee it.) Either way, this is outside and the gravity has decided to take a break (as RedMage put it in the nuzi discord server). It seems that the gang will do something, or something drastic will happen (perhaps a second core collapse) that will cause the gravity of copper-9 to become unstable. So maybe the episode will end with the possibility that copper-9 is about to collapse like Earth did, as the gang tries to stop that event from happening.

Ahem, allow me a second of: FERAL N FERAL N FERAL N FERAL N- ok, I'm done for now. As many have pointed out, this may be the moment that N killed Nori, and Uzi might have to relive through that experience as the absolute solver shows Uzi everything that has happened up until now. His smile is not the one we've seen up until now when he's in his murder drone mode, but more of a smirk. Another theory I came up with is that when Uzi becomes possessed by the absolute solver, perhaps by default, N does too. Uzi is now N's admin, and if the admin is corrupted, there is nothing to keep N's solver string in his ai from fully corrupting him. However, there's a hole here.

The X on the visor generally means that there is a string in the drone's core is faulty and not functioning. This is because when the solver string attempts to take possession of the DDs, the admin program switches it to false and gives the faulty os string sign on the visors. That has to mean the admin program is still up and running, which pushes the theory of this scene being a flashback of N killing Nori, more likely.

Uzi's eye has burst, it seems, just like Yeva's. So now the question is, why does it do that? Doll also covered her eye, perhaps to conceal the damage that is already there. Theory: this happens because the solver inside of the drones is constantly attempting to get out of the host. It has been seen that it does destroy the bodies from ep5. And it seems that the red goop is what Uzi's attempting to hold back on her eye. It might be oil, but what makes me believe otherwise is the fact that it doesn't look liquid-like enough. Granted, that scene is literally 1 second, so the movement that may be there is really hard to grasp.

Doll HAS MADE A RETURN! And she's fighting someone with knives is what it seems like. Thoughts on who it might be? Literally, anyone in the gang, there is not much to go off of here. But to dissect it further, it could be like this:

Uzi- because she teamed up with Tessa and a DD, and it seems like Doll and the gang have separate goals, which upsets Doll and causes the fight.

N- another DD that had caused a lot of pain and suffering for WD when they first arrived to copper-9. So why not get rid of him as well while she's at it.

Tessa- the main character that seems to be very suspicious about every action. We know very little about her, and even more so what happened to her post gala massacre. Perhaps Tessa discloses the idea of killing every drone that is on the list of the drones experimented on. This will include Yeva and, therefore, Doll.

Now as for THIS.

That is a drone, for certain, now as to who it is, is really hard to guess. There is clearly a helmet on the drone, so it kinda narrows it down. Routes:

This is part of a flashback:

Nori or Yeva- one of the stronger solver drones that needed a better way of controlling/containing them. Backed up by the balconies/cat walks that are on the corners of the screen.

Some other poor drones- An even crazier idea of mine would be that the people were, in fact, worshipping the absolute solver. This is what happens to the heretics. Either that, or this was some sick way of worshipping the solver.

This is real-life time: Doll is the number 1 candidate, how she got to be like this, though... there are some possibilities.

Doll's solver form is taking control/form.

Uzi and Doll had a fight (consciously or not, solver might have forced a fight), with this being the outcome.

It's late for me. The amount of crack theories that have been bouncing around in my head is unreal. More than half of them are probably most likely wrong. Once again, take all of my theories and yeet them into the stratosphere if you wish ^_^ These will be mostly here just to come back to and see how wrong I was about everything.

[bonefall]

i'm ngl depicting thunder's prosthetic as a burden is pretty uncomfortable even if it is something some amputees experience because like. there's a huge stigma around prosthetics already you know? it's like having a parent forcibly strap a child into a wheelchair when they don't need it and having a horrible experience with it and that being your only character in a wheelchair. some full-time wheelchair users do resent their wheelchairs but when that's the only time you're bringing it up at all it feels like you're playing into our society's perception of wheelchairs and mobility aids in general as useless and best and divine punishment at worst. idk do let me know if i'm wording this wrong because i really do love better bones! it's just that this detail is... strange.

I mean, I'm open to feedback if that's not something I should do-- but I do actually have other characters in prosthetics and mobility aids! A lot of them! Thunderstar's actually the only one who ends up rejecting his own, because I also wanted to depict that it's bad to force a device onto someone who does not want one.

Especially in circumstances like Thunder Storm's, where that sort of device would be actively unhelpful for his lifestyle. It might help in open field environments like moorland, but then I got more feedback and realized that it would just make a lot of unwanted noise in a forest (since cats have carpal whiskers to help them figure out where to place their paws). Then I figured it was a good way to show how BB!Clear Sky doesn't actually listen to his son's needs and acts differently when he's not "grateful" enough for his gift.

But he's far and away from the only one with a mobility aid or prosthetic!

I haven't figured out Frog entirely yet, but he's going to be the first cat with a "wheelchair" type device, to set up a long line of cats through the generations improving on it (Probably not much more than a reinforced canvas or durable leather, as this was the age of very early flax processing)

Wildfur's the next in the big advancements, even making the Great Journey in his own and getting a side story based around Littlecloud and Cinderpelt collaborating over this

The device is then improved upon by Jessy for Briarlight, giving her a level of independence and confidence that she needs to finally cut her mom out until she learns how to behave

Deadfoot has a brace for his front paw because the joint is loose (it was based on a friend's carpel tunnel bracelet) which is affectionately referred to as The Bonker; his name is also now an Honor Title (Old name: Hoprunner) for inventing a battle move by distracting with his good paw, and then SLAMMING his other limb down hard on his opponent. It's called "deadfooting."

I think mobility devices are super important, usually massively improve quality of life, and I just enjoy designing them, so the choice to portray Thunder Storm's as negative was a very deliberate one that I did in response to what I thought was a desire in representation. Even the fact it's a hind-leg prosthetic was thought out, since those have a much higher satisfaction rate in humans than hand prosthetics, but in a cat would probably be the opposite.

Still, I'm not missing a limb, so now with all of that context presented, do you still think the same thing? Should I just add even more limb prosthetics to make the ratio of satisfied prosthetic users vs Thunder Storm even steeper?

Sunlit Frost is actually going to have a bite on his good paw go septic (the other side has permanent damage from the fire). I could have that paw get amputated and have Thunderstar "return the favor" for how Sunlit Frost created the prosthetic he rejected by helping him build his own. A pawsthetic, if you will

OR would it be better to just remove the subplot of Thunder Storm grappling with/rejecting a prosthetic that is unfitting for him entirely, and have all prosthetics be 100% treated as positive in the narrative?

[mintsuwu]

please how did you come up with her design I've been trying to make a design for my poppy playtime oc but it always ends up looking like rubbish please give tips😭😭

Hello, thank you for asking! Truth be told is that it took me a bit to figure out how to do LoolaLamb in general, she didn't come out too well on the first try xD I had to tweak a couple of things in her like the hair, colors or snout.

Initially, I wasn't quite sure of what animal picking for her, but then I went with the lamb idea for a few reasons:

- When I was little, I used to have a lamb plush I used to love dearly. Sadly I don't have any pictures to show since I no longer have it with me so I tried to look for one that looked similar on the Internet- But that was the main inspiration for her character. And since the Smiling Critters have their own plushies as well, I thought it would be interesting to make one of them after a real toy. I also took reference from other characters in media that were based on sheeps, like in Pokémon (Flaaffy & Whimsicott).

I would always recommend using references if you ever don't know where to start with a design. And in the case of a Poppy Playtime OC, you can look for references if you desire as well, or even turn a beloved toy of yours into a character, anything works!

In many cultures, the lamb is a revered symbol of innocence, purity, and sacrifice. It is often associated with religious connotations, particularly in Christianity, where it symbolizes the embodiment of Christ's innocence and the sacrificial lamb offering redemption and atonement for humanity's sins. I simply liked the symbology of this because I'm always a sucker for that when it comes to creating characters;;

This was mainly due to lore reasons, her association with Catnap, a follower of an entity, the Prototype, whom he workships and would do anything to get its blessing. LoolaLamb "sacrified" her voice for the Prototype (well, it actually was that Catnap took away her voicebox with that excuse).

Her name "LoolaLamb" is a word play for "lullaby", given the role she was going to have in the Smiling Critters line, a replacement for Catnap who would have a similar role as his, except that instead of using a gas to make people fall asleep, she would use her voice. Sheeps and lambs are also heavily associated with sleep and dreams, given the advice: if you can't get to sleep, just “count sheep” until you drift off into a peaceful slumber.

Sheep are wanderers. It's their nature. Even in the best and safest of places, places that provide protection, water, and food, sheep are known to wander off, get lost, and sometimes eaten by predators.

Her color pick was mainly because even if the smiling critters have more or less the colors of the rainbow and there are already two blue colored critters (Bubba Bubbaphant being more of a neutral blue or azure and Craftycorn cyan or aquamarine), I noticed that there were no dark blue or indigo colored ones. My first idea for LoolaLamb was to give her more violet colors, given her correlation to Catnap, but at the same time I wanted her to stand out amongst the others, being a little more of her own character, so that´s why I ended up picking a different color pallete for her.

And those are pretty much the basic things I had in mind when creating LoolaLamb! Of course it doesn't always have to be so elaborated with all characters, but I'd always recommend to find references, information, symbolism, anything that might help you with the creation of your character in case you don't know where to start or are simply stuck!

I might not be the best when it comes to explaining things but I hope this has helped you and I wish you the best in your creative process, anon! 🙏🏻💖

[topshelf2112-blog]

Fellow enjoyers of suggestive desserts, I decided to translate this part of the episode “Distant Voices.” The actors are at fault for this, bless them. Translations are in bold.

BASHIR: Can I interest you in some more Yigrish cream pie?

May I entice you into eating a suggestive dessert as a prelude to other suggestive things?


GARAK: No, thank you, Doctor. I'm quite full.

You’re a touch obvious, you know that? As well as obscene. We are in public.

BASHIR: But you've hardly touched your food.

I pay very close attention to you, but only in totally appropriate ways.

GARAK: The truth is, I'm trying to lose a little weight. Hemming women's dresses may provide me with a modest income, but it offers very little in the way of exercise.

Tell me I’m pretty. Also thin.

BASHIR: Well if you like, I can help you set up an exercise programme in one of the holosuites here.

I am using exercise as a euphemism, here, darling. Hint hint.

GARAK: I might just take you up on that. And speaking of holosuites 
(Garak takes out an isolinear rod with a ribbon around it and hands it to Bashir.) 
GARAK: Happy birthday. I know it's a few days off, but I wanted to give you your present early. It's a Cardassian holosuite programme. An adaptation of one of Shoggoth's enigma tales.

Still in public, silly creature. No, you never told me your birthdate, but you think the spy thing is hot so I figured it out. Also, I refuse to share you with this entire station, so I’m celebrating you today. Speaking of getting up to things in the holosuite…

BASHIR: Is it? I see.

I told you I wanted you to design yourself some lingerie. You’re such a prude.

GARAK: You sound disappointed. I thought you enjoyed mystery novels.

Praise me for my thoughtfulness.

BASHIR: I do. Human mystery novels. The problem with Cardassian enigma tales is that they all end the same way. All the suspects are always guilty.

Lingerie, Garak. You won’t wear it in the holosuite so quit trying to distract me.

GARAK: Yes, but the challenge is determining exactly who is guilty of what. Is Lieutenant Dax throwing one of her surprise parties for you this year?

Jealousy.

BASHIR: Oh, so I'm told.

Come to the party and make out with me, you twit.

GARAK: You don't sound enthusiastic about that either.

Not happening.

BASHIR: It's not that I don't appreciate all the trouble she goes to and everything. It's just that this year is a little different.

Fine. If we aren’t going to discuss lingerie, existential angst it is.

GARAK: How so?

I can win much more easily at this.

BASHIR: This will be my thirtieth birthday.

Isn’t it obvious?

GARAK: And?

I’m older than you. Do be careful, hmm?

BASHIR: Well, in many human cultures, the thirtieth birthday is considered a sort of landmark. It marks the end of youth and the beginning of the slow march into middle age.

Plays: “Will you still love me when I’m no longer young and beautiful?”

GARAK: And that's considered bad?

Augmented does not mean that you exist outside of time, Julian. Honestly.

BASHIR: No. It's just that when you hit thirty, it becomes harder and harder to ignore the passage of time.

Tell me I’m pretty.

GARAK: I wasn't aware that humans saw growing old as a negative experience. On Cardassia, advanced age is seen as a sign of power and dignity.

Hint, hint. I’m hardly advanced, but you’ve secured yourself quite the catch, my dear.

BASHIR: Well I am aware that aging is part of the natural process of life. It's just that I don't want to be reminded of it, that's all. Look, Garak, in two days I turn thirty. If I choose to be grumpy about it, that's my prerogative

(Oblivious) Yes, I am a doctor but I would like to overlook all that biology rubbish.

GARAK: By all means, Doctor, be as grumpy as you like.

I’m feeling a touch cross myself, given that you are missing what’s right in front of you. This is what one gets for dating another species…

BASHIR: Thank you for the support.

What are you cranky about? I’m the one who is fast becoming ancient and undesirable.

QUARK: I hope you'll forgive the interruption.

Fierce and dangerous boyfriend of the idiot, I apologize for butting in.

GARAK: Of course.

At least someone sees my amazing qualities.

QUARK: You know, we just introduced a new lunch menu at the bar.

Can I sell you something? Anything? You’re looking much too thin!

BASHIR: Goodbye, Quark.

GARAK: Don’t take it personally. He’s turning thirty.

Apologies for my young, stupid boyfriend. He gets by on his looks, you know.

[chronozen]

Dissecting Tales of the Empire (Barriss stuff)

So let's break down all the Barriss stuff in the trailer:

There's an Inquisitor Shuttle approaching Our - likely after she is freed from prison

When Barriss is freed from her cell

This little bit is actually quite interesting. First of all Barriss is wearing a prison symbol with the emblem of the Jedi Order on the shoulder.

The clone troopers are Republic Shock Troopers, The Coruscant guard.

Fourth Sister is actually wearing Jedi robes not an Inquisitor uniform, she's already fallen to the Dark side as evidenced by the eyes.

This is suggesting that Barriss is freed from somewhat close to the end of Revenge of Sith

Also the framing of Barriss in prison is very similar to Luminara's hologram in Rebels.

Barriss's eyes are really blue in this scene. Like more so than other ones.

Barriss walking down a hallway

Pretty self explanatory. She's walking down a hallway. She's wearing Robes that a likely Inquisitorius initiate robes. (Or maybe it wasn't Laundry day and Barriss's uniform wasn't ready)

The Clones are just Regs in Phase 2 armour. It looks like Fortress Inquisitorius on Nur.

Speculation: Barriss is giving a little side glance, she's either taking her environment or she's plotting something.

The Grand Inquisitor scene

When then see the Grand Inquisitor leading Barriss into a room with several lightsabers

None of the Lightsabers are Luminara's (Trust me i double checked Weapon's Factory.) They are most likely reused models and generic sabres - because animation and props design is hard and short cuts should be taken whenever you can.

.....but two of those lightsabers are very close to Barriss's lightsaber.

The one in the middle doesn't seem to hold a significance (The bottom of the hilt slightly resembles Ahsoka's Padawan lightsaber, and you could go Green symbolic of Luminara.)

....wouldn't it be just awful if its Tutso Mara's lightsaber?

Inquisitor and Barriss have a sparring session, he tries to get her to use Anger and slams her into the roof, she's noticeably angry.

"Mercy only breeds defeat, i will help you overcome this weakness."

This line is interesting because it's not the usual only your Hatred can strike me down line, the Grand Inquisitor is actually being polite and offering a twisted form of assistance.

Which brings me to a thought - The Grand Inquisitor was right beside Barriss during her big confession at Ahsoka's trial, he's probably going to see her as someone that they don't have to break or torture.

Fourth Sister using Spinning Lightsaber

So this is a very short sequence. The Fourth Sister is in an area with a Rock wall, jumps down, glances around nervously, spins her blade and looks up.

Speculation: Something hasn't gone to plan, maybe the Jedi later in trailer is tougher, or maybe someone else has swapped sides...

The Jedi Fight

This shot opens with Barriss in a proper Inquisitor Uniform and her own useless spinning lightsaber running towards Fourth Sister and an unknown Jedi with a blue Saber

During the fight we can see ITS NOT LUMINARA, this Jedi has a different facial structure, skin tone and likely human.

We can also see who i assume is Barriss looking like she is hesitating on what to do.

We then cut to a different seen of a hooded figure using the force to blow away B2 Super Battle Droids. This implies its during the clone wars and the hooded figure is very likely Barriss cause that silhouette is very similar.

The figure is illuminated by a white glow and it's probably a part of sequence meant to show Barriss before she went nuts - cause its been 11 years so new viewers might not know this character who only appeared in technically 7 eps at most is...

FIGHT TO THE DEATH

Fight to death between Barriss and an unknown initiate.

Grand Inquisitor throws a lightsaber between the two - no its not Barriss's lightsaber

Ray shields go up. Initiate who i'm calling Glup, goes for the Saber. The crystal has been bled so it's red.

Glup and Barriss fight and Barriss goes for the sky high kick or possibly punch to the head.

THE NEW MASTER

'it is time to meet your new Master."

This implies the initiates don't meet Vader until they're full members.

We see Barriss lined up with the other Inquisitors - she's in full uniform. Really hard to tell if her eyes are dark side yellow or not. (They still look Blue compared to Fourth's)

Also it's really funny to me that she's lined up with Bird face Inquisitor, Marrok and Fourth Sister, cause everyone said all of those Inquisitors was Barriss Offee.

They all kneel, Barriss goes down first.

Vader walks past and Barriss looks up slightly and watches him...and she immediately frowns and furrows her eyebrows.

She's plotting something....

Interesting note: Since bird face is alive and has his head perfectly attached to his neck still, This places Barriss's eps of Tales of the Empire prior to Ahsoka's last ep of Tales of the Jedi

Look i can hope for Barriss to escape and then we seen the back of Ahsoka walk into frame....

[ladyloveandjustice]

Hello fellow sailor moon I just found your blog and in quite intrigued and figured you might find this question interesting

So I was watching Sailor Stars episode 7, and I realised that the sailor moon in the anime has something of a no kill rule in the anime while the in manga she seems pretty OK to kill most of her foes

In the anime, she spears a lot of her villains with the exception of Queen Beryl and pharoh 90, so I was wondering, do you think the sailor moon should have a no kill rule

Personally, I'm not a fan of her killing in the manga, considering she's meant to be the representation of love, so I'm kinda glad the 90s anime gave her the no kill rule

But in your detailed opinion do you think sailor moon should have a no kill rule?

(ftr i think manga Sailor Moon would also have saved an innocent civilian she knew had been transformed into a monster against her will. She refused to kill Hotaru, after all)

The no kill rule is kind of a weird thing thing to contemplate because it's like, does killing the monsters violate her supposed no kill rule? Sure, they're technically made of evil magic or objects or whatever but they're all sentient, and in later seasons they start having distinct personalities (the doorknob one who was bad at fighting, the jump rope girl who wanted friends, ect) but she never tries to talk them out of their behavior the way she would a human foe. It's kind of a convention of the genre.

I think Sailor Moon killing most of her enemies quickly was just a convention of how the manga had to work--Naoko only had twelve chapters and she was told to design seven or more villains to cover a 45 episode season and now she has to fit them in a short space somehow... so having them one shotted is really the only way to go about it. She didn't have time do do stuff like redemption arcs for villains, while the anime did.

It's also notable that Usagi regrets this even at the end of the manga. She realizes that these dark magic abominations were not something seperate from her or the rest of humanity, but lonely beings just like herself. And she grows tired of killing, because with all her loved ones gone there's nothing left to fight for.

As for my ideal, I prefer a mix. The Usagi who offers a hand to everyone, who sincerely believes anyone can change and should be given a chance... but if they've rejected that hand, and even worse, hurt/killed her friends, she'd do what needed to be done to protect the world, with a very heavy heart. She will never, ever give up on anyone if there's even a glimmer of a chance they would change their ways, but she's not stupid enough to die instead of defend.

I do thing the end of the anime where she forgave Galaxia for killing her friends and just totally let her off the hook- without even knowing if Galaxia would bring them back--was a bit too much in the other direction, personally. I wanted to see more anger from her, and i believe she WOULD normally have been very angry (like she was in the manga) if the writers hadn't decided she must be as saint like as possible in those episodes. I'm fine with her reaching out to Galaxia and helping her but there should have also been some anger and a demand there- undo the damage you've done, bring back my friends and if you can't I WILL personally remove your powers and we will rebuild every planet you've destroyed, find every survivor, because you're going to have to work for this."

The Usagi who killed Beryl (and Kunzite!) would have demanded those things, and I don't think her into becoming someone who wouldn't do those things makes her more enlightened, it just makes her seem less like a real person.

(Usagi does save Galaxia even more inexplicably in the manga, but there it comes off as an act of desperation after seeing everyone she knows get killed, it's over, there's no hope, she can't take it anymore, she wants to at least still have one person there with her even if it's the person who killed them, because at least Galaxia understands her deep loneliness)

To be clear, it's not like I think the last episode is terrible or anything. I can roll with it, and I love the scene where Galaxia's shell cracks open and we see her true self underneath. It just felt off, because yeah, Usagi is love, but love can be angry, love can be unforgiving, when the people you love the most are hurt.

[canmom]

The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere: 013-032

Previously: 000-012, spinoff post about entropy [all Flower posts]

Time for more flower...

...no, not that flower!

Unless...?

Welcome back to my liveblog of sorts for web novel The Flower That Bloomed Nowhere by @lurinatftbn! Shout out to the Flower discord for giving me such a kind welcome. You're making me want to go all out on this liveblog, but, I musn't...! So I'm going to try to just comment on things that jumped out as especially noteworthy rather than write down everything that went down.

Especially since... a lot happened in these chapters. We have a perfect androgyne tree thing! Magical duels! Questionable student/teacher relationships! Steamed hams! Intense political arguments at dinner! Metafictional assurance of fair play! Prosognostic events! Transgender AIs! And of course........

a murder!!!!!

...ok that one was kinda obvious. But the first body has hit the floor! I don't feel like I have nearly enough information yet to start speculating about who might have dunnit.

That's a lie. It was definitely Kinzo Ushiromiya. That bastard.

So, from the top!

We're introduced to a few of the members of the Order, with by far the most screen time going to Su's mentor and ah, kinda-girlfriend? Neferuaten. And like, damn, lot going on there!

Before I get into the meat of that - first the bit where I search a character's name on Wikipedia. Neferuaten's name is most likely a reference to an Egyptian female king/pharaoh (a rank that's apparently distinct, conceptually, from a queen) variously called Ankhkheperure-Merit-Neferkheperure, Waenre, and Aten Neferneferuaten. Most often shortened to just Neferneferuaten.

Her exact historical identity seems to be a little unclear - she may or may not be the same person as Nefertiti for example. Whoever she was, she apparently reigned for a couple of years around 1334–1332 BCE, and was then succeeded by the famous child king Tutankhamun. Or maybe Smenkhkare came in between them? Seems to be a matter of some debate. Girl really needed to leave a few more vast and trunkless legs of stone so we can figure this stuff out.

In any case, this version of Neferuaten goes way back with Su. Her introduction is to launch a magical attack on our poor girl while she's contemplating the 'everblossom'. One of those classic 'master surprise attacks the student to see how much they've learned' deals. This servers as a fine exposition for the exact mechanics of magical duels.

Zettai! Ummei! Mokushiroku!

Let's briefly note how magical duels and magic works here, since it seems like it will be very relevant later.

The more we learn about magic, the more explicit is that this system is not some natural property of the universe, but something that's designed by the mysterious Ironworkers. It seems like it's kind of an API to the Ironworker admin console. The Ironworkers wanted to make it difficult to do magic on human bodies, and therefore they designed a system for detecting what is 'human', based on three heuristics - anatomical, motion and neurological.

Humans, being the freaky little hackers that we are, of course set about figuring out how to bypass this system, and created standardised means, consisting of three spells, termed [x]-beguiling arcana. In a sense the three criteria are something like three 'hitpoints': the primary way to win a duel is to get all three spells off, thus making your opponent vulnerable to magic.

To achieve this, you can either speak the words of a spell or sign them by drawing them with your fingers - i.e. one way or the other express the appropriate string of symbols. This is risky because if you're interrupted at the wrong time, your spell can backfire and blow up, and getting a spell right requires precise pronunciation and also rapid mental maths. So the general 'gameplay' of magical duels involves attempting to disrupt the opponent's focus and aim, while fast-casting the spells that are most familiar to you.

We're introduced to a few spells that could be useful in battle, such as

Matter-Shifting (telekinesis spell with a geometric bent, used to move a cube of dirt to act as a smokescreen),

Matter-Annihilating (deletes stuff),

Entropy-Denying (essentially a shield that freezes objects and fluids in relative motion),

Air-Thrusting (creates a shockwave air blast),

Light-Warping (fucks up the light for visual cover),

World-Deafening (mutes all sound, which can interrupt casts)

Entropy-Accelerating (disrupts coherency, causing rapid aging-like effects - can be used on a 'higher plane' to disrupt all magic in an area)

Entropy-Reversing (rewinds matter along its path of motion - reference to entropy here seems a tad dubious but w/e)

It's clearly a pretty carefully thought out system - I appreciate that it's approached from the point of view of someone trying to exploit the shit out of the system and figure out what the real meta would be. It does kinda seem like if you got the drop on a wizard and shot them with a sniper rifle they'd be toast, but we'll see later that much more powerful weapons than mere chemical firearms exist in this world, and presumably in a combat situation everyone would have entropy-denying (or equivalent) shields up, so maybe that's a moot point.

Anyway, we are later informed by the closest thing to authorial voice that everything we're told here about magic can be assumed to be axiomatically true, similar to the red text in Umineko. Which pretty heavily foreshadows that this is going to be on the test, if you like!

the magical metaphysics

With apologies to Neferuaten, who will get more detailed comments shortly, there are some other big revelations about magic and the nature of this world that I should talk about while we're on the subject of magic!

In the last post I wondered whether casting magic is an innate quality or a 'skill issue' situation. It turns out the answer is sorta 'neither'. In fact, it's something that has to be unlocked, using special equipment and a particular ritual. The cost of this ritual is not yet entirely spelled out, but we definitely get an inkling. It's rather ominously implied by this exchange in chapter 22:

"We're supposed to want to save people, to make the world better. To defend a bunch of people who practically committed murder--" "You're a murderer too, dour girl." I stopped, and blinked. It took me some moments to process the words. They'd come from Lilith, who now seemed to have finished with her dessert. Now she was just slowly swirling her spoon around in the last remnants of the chocolate sludge on the plate and, occasionally, dipping a finger into her cream bowl and licking little bits of it up. Her expression was irritated, but disconnected. "All arcanists are," she said. "It's how it happens. So having fights over moral high ground like this is very stupid and annoying. Please stop."

In the same chapter, Su uses something called an 'acclimation log', in which she records her 'association' with a series of diary entries from her childhood self. It all suggests that Su's present consciousness has somehow taken over the body of another character, who we could maybe call original!Su.

A few chapters later, we find out what's the deal with prosognostic events. In fact we get a pretty extensive exposition. It turns out that iron is magical in this universe, providing access to higher dimensions, FTL and all sorts of shit. However, because the Mimikos and other worlds are running on a 'substrate' of iron - sort of like a simulation - we are told this is why they can't recursively include iron within. And since the human body includes a certain amount of iron (most notably, in the haemoglobin protein in red blood cells), it is not possible to fully realise the human body inside these artificial worlds.

a self-referential quibble

Here's how Su puts it:

A substrate cannot exist within itself. That sounds awkward when I put it so directly, but it's not too hard to understand if you think about it in abstract-- A foundation obviously can't support another foundation of equal weight and nature, because… Well, it would make nonsense of the whole premise. A book is a device for storing information, but it cannot contain within its letters everything about itself and what it contains, because that is already more than it contains. A box cannot hold another box of equal size, unless it is bent or otherwise changed. A mind cannot hold another mind…

On the face of it, this seems on the face of it... not entirely true, at least in some domains? You can run a virtual machine program on a computer, representing any particular combination of hardware and software, which is from the perspective of software 'on the inside', essentially indistinguishable from a computer running on 'bare metal' hardware. The only real difference is that operating the virtual machine has some computational overhead, so it will be slower. The more virtual machines you nest, the slower it gets.

But 'from the inside', the only way to tell which layer of virtual machine you're on would be to refer to some kind of external clock signal (which can trivially be spoofed) and notice that it's running slower than it should!

We could also mention here the subject of quines, which are programs which print their own source code.

Let's consider Su's examples. The book that completely describes its contents might be able to get around this problem in a similar fashion to a quine, by exploiting redundancy and self-reference.

For example, let's try creating a string that completely describes its own content, using a quine-style technique.

This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: "This string begins with a sentence followed by its quotation, and then 100 letter ws; the sentence is: " wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww

In fact the '100 letter ws' could literally be the entire string that follows. Suppose the length of the 'real content' of the book is S, and the length of the rest of the 'metadata sentence' describing properties of the book is M; then the total length of the book is 2M+3S.

You can add as much additional information to the 'metadata' string as you like, provided you quote it again afterwards. If you don't like having a book be three times the length it needs to be, you could compress the 'real content' string using an algorithm like DEFLATE, and include instructions in the 'metadata' on how to decompress it. (Text tends to compress really well.) This is where we run up into notions probably all too familiar to rats, or indeed anyone who recently read Seth Dickinson's new novel Exordia, such as Kolmogorov complexity.

But... I think this might well be intentional. Given how common notions like 'stacks of simulations' and 'self-reference' are in rat space, I suspect we may be being misled! The 'rules' of the game - more on that in a moment - say that Su won't deliberately lie to us, and won't withold information without saying so, but her perceptions could be mistaken. Maybe she's been given a false explanation of why the world works the way it does.

It's also totally possible that while the general point (you can't contain a thing in itself) may have some edge cases, the specific instance - you can't build a universe on a giant higher-dimensional iron spike and still have that universe contain iron - may still be true. We don't know the first thing about building universes using magic iron after all.

anyway... the Deal with Prosognisia!

The Ironworkers had a hacky workaround to the 'no iron' rule: they had a few tens of thousands of preserved human bodies on board their Tower of Asphodel. Asphodel, incidentally, is a genus of flower, said to carpet the Asphodel Meadows, one of the three divisions of the realm of Hades. (In their game, Supergiant decided to convert it into a lava zone.) It looks rather pretty actually!

So, they were able to instantiate these bodies in their rebuilt worlds by sort of making them into a reference to one of these stored human bodies. Here's Su again, chapter 26:

Some human bodies, or at least the impression of them and the iron within, had been preserved as part of the Tower, frozen in a timeless place. And because of that, it was eventually discovered it was possible for them to exist in the artificed planes as a sort of stable paradox. After all, while a book can't exist within itself, it can still reference other stuff it does contain internally, even if it makes for somewhat awkward reading. A few tweaks and workarounds solved the problem of the iron associated with that human body staying a part of it, and just like that, human beings were walking something at least akin to the earth once again. However, this only permitted replicas of those bodies within the Tower to exist. The creation of new ones remained impossible, and births not incubated by anima taken by the same mechanism would inevitably fail. And there were far fewer preserved bodies than minds; scarcely more than ten thousand or so for each party.

So every human born in the Mimikos is forked from one of these human bodies. For... mysterious reasons, if you recognise that someone nearby is forked from the same body as you, you both straight up die. If you touch such a person (a 'contact paradox') it's even worse, and all the iron in your body disappears, leaving behind a 'greenish sludge', which seems to be a severe enough disaster to cause deaths of nearby people as well.

(This is a little surprising given that the iron in the human body is only about 60 parts per million by mass, but it would kinda destroy your blood's ability to carry oxygen, so it would definitely be pretty fatal.)

The 'distinction treatment' we heard about is able to mitigate the risks somewhat - with quick medical intervention and time magic, it's possible to allow the people involved to make a full recovery. An interesting wrinkle is that it's implied either Ophelia or new character Balthazar is trans, because normally people of the same gender can't share an upstream body.

That definitely leads to a very fascinating fucked up medical emergency scene, but the reason I'm discussing it now is because it's got bearing on this big-deal question of 'what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway'...

so what's so fucked up about arcanists anyway?

Having finally answered one of the major questions, we can start zeroing in on another. In a flashback scene in chapter 30, we learn that the 'original' bodies have innate access to the magic API, but when you're given a distinct identity at birth you quickly lose it. To have your sv_cheats 1 restored, you have to go through a process that, it would seem, downloads a new mind into your head from one of those original bodies...

The man sat back a little in his chair, crossing his legs idly. "It's intimidating in concept, but please do understand that, in the overwhelming majority of cases, there are no observable effects whatsoever. Around half of the individuals who go through it don't even lose consciousness, and of the other, four out of five don't report any abnormalities when they reawaken. And even of the remaining 10%, the symptoms are negligible for nine out of ten-- Fleeting false memories, minor alterations in temperament that self correct, usually in under a day..." "And the others?" I inquired. "The remaining one percent." He considered this question for a few moments, obviously choosing his words carefully. "The technical term for the rare cases where confusion persists in the longer term is pneumaic assimilation failure. We have a program for treatment, using a combination of various phychological and medical means. It's time-tested. It brings people back to themselves quickly, usually within only only a few months at most." 'Confusion.' 'Brings people back to themselves.' I wasn't feeling fond of the way he couched everything in euphemism. It wasn't helping. "What do you mean by 'it brings people back to themselves'..?" I furrowed my brow. "They just... Forget everything?" "Not immediately," he said. "But they lose a sense of association with... Well, with anything that shouldn't be there, and that leads those memories and feelings to fade over time." He smiled. "The human mind is very adept at excising anything it judges to be out of place. All it needs is a push in the right direction."

The new mind tends to rapidly adjust to its new context, connecting to the memories stored in the body and assuming continuity of identity. But in rare cases it fails! Nuts! And we can infer poor Su appears to be one such case.

Presumably this is what Lilith is referring to when she says that all arcanists are murderers. It's not clear if there is continuity of consciousness when you get /mode +o'd - since you (usually) inherit the memories it is perhaps hard to say whether such a thing is meaningful.

In any case, Su's mega-guilt complex, the reason she seems to want to visit the mysterious egomancer Samium, seems to be at least partly that she's evicted the previous consciousness to inhabit this body. I don't think that's the whole story though! Her grandad seems to be involved somehow too. I don't think Su is literally the reincarnation of her grandad, because it seems unlikely that he'd be motivated to carry out ego suicide like this.

introducing teacher mommy

All those major revelations aside, let's get back to the subject of Neferuaten, aka 'Grandmaster', Su's old mentor in entropic thanatomancy. She quickly establishes herself as one of the most likeable of the inner circle of the Order - she's funny, understanding, generally affable and a little self-effacing. Su definitely puts her on a massive pedestal - though other characters such as Ran find her a little more sussy.

I gotta say, the author is really good at writing old academics. Each one of them comes across as strongly believable, distinctive, motivated and flawed characters. I'll talk a bit about the others in a bit but first let's talk age gap yuri! lmao

Anyway, at the end of chapter 20 we get this:

Then she leaned over and, in an impulsive, almost casual gesture, kissed me on the lips. Before turning, heading to the exit.

'Huh!' thinks the reader. 'That sure is an unusual thing for someone's teacher to do.'

It is quite a few chapters later before Su gets round to telling us a bit more about what's going on...

After that, we met outside of the university more and more often, her becoming sort of a source of emotional support. At some point, I became aware that what was happening was probably quite inappropriate. It's not like I was underage, having turned 25 two years prior, but she was my professor. But I'd been bad at making friends in both of... Well, in both my past contexts, and I'd felt so lonely living in Tem-Aphat, away from Ran and any reminders of the resolutions we'd made. And it all somehow felt so natural. Things got out of hand. One day, I'd had a fight with my father over the logic bridge, and had got a little drunk when I was due to see her. I don't know exactly what I was thinking, but I did something uncharacteristic of me. Inappropriate. But she didn't respond in the way I'd expected. To my shock, she didn't act like it was inappropriate at all. It wasn't as if we ended up dating. That would never have worked, and I was pretty sure she was past wanting that sort of thing anyway. On some levels, she always kept her distance. But it became something we did together, an avenue of private expression that became part of her support for me - and mine, eventually for her.

Su then expresses a bunch of guilt over the whole thing. (Not least because it's a 'selfish' thing she's doing in a body that, implicitly, she doesn't think of as hers.)

The issue of age here is interesting lol. Definitely my gut reaction, and probably the one the story is aiming to elicit, is to be a bit 'wuh oh' by all this, maybe think of Makima wrapping Denji round her finger. That said, by vastly expanding the range of human ages, it's definitely poking pretty hard at our intuitions about what's 'appropriate'. The vibes are like... the students are constantly referred to as 'the kids' by the hundreds-year-old wizards. I don't think we're told Su's current age, but if she was 27 in this flashback, and in the present she says a 29 year old computer is close in age to her, so I would guess currently early 30s. Neferuaten's age is not stated at this point but given her position she's def a few hundred years up there.

The vibe though is that Su is infatuated with someone who has vastly more emotional maturity and experience of the world, not to mention social power over her, and that person is all too happy to encourage it.

The way Su tells it, it sounds like this fling went pretty ok for them? But I definitely feel like things are probably not gonna stay ok, given how clearly the 'inappropriate' nature of this relationship has been foregrounded!

Dark yuri is literally one of the things I'm here for, so I'm looking forward to the fireworks lmao.

Anyway, besides that, we get a bit of a sense of Neferuaten's ideology. She actually shares a lot of Su's skepticism about the viability of the whole immortality project. She makes a big point of making sure the gang get a sense of the order's culture and rituals, apparently viewing this as a chance for their project to be judged by outsiders for the first time. On a personal level, she raises the issue of if the project might be able to save only the young - whether they might be the last humans to not become immortal. Nef's attitude seems to be that she'd be good with that - something she clashes with Kam over.

Otherwise, she's kinda... world-weary, I suppose you could say. She seems to look at the firey youngsters with an attitude along the lines of 'wish I still had that'. She does love to perform to an audience, asking leading questions to set up some lesson or another.

She's a fun character, I enjoy reading her a lot.

Also she seems to have made a sapient AI in the basement! Only everyone says it's definitely not sapient - it is in some sense not agentic, it can't change its motivation, allegedly. Still, it definitely has a 'passing the Turing test' sorta vibe.

don't mention the war

Besides Nef, we get introduced to a few of the remaining members of the class, and also the masters of the Order. Of note is Bardiya, the former revolutionary. He's a very 'speak his mind without preamble' sort of character, which can land him in hot water.

So, returning to Chapter 22, we have a really juicy scene in which a dinner conversation gets very heated after Bardiya mentions his role in the war, provoking a political row with Durvasa, a member of the order. It's a really well observed social dynamics scene - the characters dancing around the topic and the way a row is almost avoided, and then it isn't - Bard's determination, Kam's brown-nosing, Su getting drawn in against her better judgement in a deeply relatable way.

Thanks to this convo, we get a sense of the events of the revolution! So, as @nightpool helpfully informed me, I actually got things a bit mixed up in my rough timeline last time. The 'gerontocrats' were not a feature of the distant-past imperial era - rather it's a figure identified as an oppressor class by a very recent movement, still within living memory for even the youngsters.

The events broadly seem to reflect something like the Paris Commune. There was a famine under the hand of a 'Meritist' city council, killing thousands, which led to a popular uprising let by a 'paritist' movement. The paritists executed a handful of people and redistributed property based primarily on age, intending to break the power of the 'gerontocrats' who had neglected the 'younger generations' by hoarding resources. The Administration overseeing the whole world alliance then cracked down hard - deploying a poison gas that, though it was intended to be nonlethal, turned out to have unexpected lethal side effects.

In the aftermath of the revolution, it seems many reforms were made - besides relaxing the rules on what magic is banned, they changed the equation of scarcity so that food could be replicated more readily? Little unclear on this part. Su mentions that the situation is different now than it was when the Alliance was built, with the material scarcity mostly gone, but clearly there was a famine in recent memory.

Anyway, there is naturally a big generational divide over this. The older generations lived through some pretty fucked-up sounding wars, called things like the 'Great Interplanar War', and in the aftermath built a political system that was supposed to secure peace. (c.f. League of Nations, UN). Although she broadly sympathises with the revolutionaries, Su seems to extends the older generation a fair bit of understanding for having built this system and fearing what would happen if it were destroyed. Though the most relativist view comes from the mouth of Neferuaten:

"I think a common problem with inter-generational communication is an inability to really convey context and scope," Neferuaten said. I noted she didn't actually convey if Kam's understanding of what her point had been was correct or not. "Someone who lived through the Interluminary Strife might tell a young person from the modern day that they have no understanding of hunger, only for the latter to stubbornly retort that they lived through that Ikaryonic famine that preluded the civil dispute… Except that one was a catastrophe that lasted decades and killed tens of millions, while the other slew less than a thousand." She sighed. "People try to relate the experiences of others to their own lives in order to contextualize their understanding of the world and how it might be bettered, but those second-hand experiences inevitably become caricatures, conveying no useful truths. It makes me wonder if human beings, both young and old, are capable of learning from history at all."

Around here is raised the question of a person's political development - the arc from a young person's anger at the state of the world and determination to tear it aside for something better, against the resignation of an older person who fears losing what is already there, however flawed. (We might note of course that there exist young conservatives and old radicals. Circumstances have a lot to do with it.)

Of course, with this whole 'gerontocrat' business at stake already, the mission of the Order hoping to achieve immortality is naturally cast in a dubious light. Fun conflict. On the one hand we have 'can immortality be achieved, and what will it cost', on the other 'who will benefit from it, if it is'! So much narrative force is obtained by politicising this, attaching it to characters with personal motivations and histories, instead of leaving it up to an abstract 'living forever good/bad'.

But it's not all political debates and shagging your teacher...

Over the course of these chapters we get a sense of what the order's been up to!

Let's talk flowers. Just prior to the meeting with Nef, Su comes across an enormous freaky plantlike thing. This turns out to be an experiment to create a being that can survive in even the most extreme environments, like the bottom of the ocean - an attempt to demonstrate that immortality is possible at least in principle. This lifeform is termed the Nittaimalaru or 'Everblossom'. It seems like a pretty good candidate for being the story's eponymous Flower - symbolically, the underwater immortality-granting plant that appears in the Epic of Gilgamesh.

It's worth noting here that 'indefinite lifespan' is actually not entirely impossible in our natural world. I was talking about this with a friend who raised some interesting points:

reading the first post i wanna bring up that while the concept of cancer is fundamental to any multicellular organism the presence of cancer as a problem is actually pretty niche. same with telomere degradation, which is a purposeful anti-cancer measurement. like pretty much all perennial plant life is capable of absolute immortality. while the lobster grows forever until it can no longer use its legs to push its great weight along the sand towards food, if a tree overshoots its growth it's more than happy to break off its unnecessaries, though with both of them at a certain point it's always good to have help after a while. as mammals we're very obsessed with the concept of like ending death as this sort of ultimate goal, prime directive, whatever, when that shit was deliberately turned on in the first place (assigning intent to evolution sue me), because in terms of cost benefit it gave us something in return that we as students of medicine or biology are still not fully grasping.

After a little more discussion:

@play-now-my-lord wrote:

even if humans weren't causing climate change, climactic fluctuations over centuries upend a lot of what is normal in specific areas. if the people on a farmstead in bronze age sweden lived 500 years, the methods and habits they internalized when they were young would habitually be incorrect for the conditions as they existed, the weather, the soil

other friend:

that's how most trees die in the end the root system operates as a weak parallel to the tree's neurons, with a more physiological bent than say our chemical one. patterns around balance, nutrient access, hydrology, and wind are ingrained and learned over centuries and the more regular/consistent that cycle is the more a root will grow. if a tree's roots are built around buttressing from a wind tunnel due to forest conditions and the trees around it fall for whatever reason, it has to relearn what used to be a hundred year old certainty that it needs to lean against the westerly gale every winter, etc. - this is generally a pretty brittle process altogether when it comes to the base of the plant n stuff

some caveats:

should be noted i overlooked a lot of nuance about perennial mortality, like, some plants are more used to investing into survival than others i'm thinking of like how beech bark disease doesn't affect the roots of the beech, so the trunk dies but new shoots continue to grow out and eventually catch the disease and repeat, so the plant is essentially still immortal but forced into a perpetual state of adolescence. but i think for a great number of trees if the tree falls it just goes "eh the rot consumes us all " and dies

Among mammals, we could also note the cancer resistance of the naked mole rat, which loves to defy all sorts of generalisations (also one of the only non-arthropod eusocial animals). They're not exactly immortal, living around 37 years on average, but their chance of dying at any given year is pretty much flat rather than increasing with age.

Of course, longevity and resilience are different things. Nef mentions the resilience of tardigrades as an inspiration. As far as their experiment goes, the 'everblossom' is not an entirely successful experiment, requiring twice-yearly maintenance to address an imbalance.

Given how prominently it features, and the invocation of Gilgamesh, it seems pretty damn likely that the everblossom will in fact be a key to immortality, or something like it.

Religion exists after all!

Other parts of the facility are also pretty funky. We learn that it was patterned after the old headquarters of the Order, which was destroyed when they got found out; that headquarters was built in an old church compound. What sort of thing does a church worship in this world? Actually it's kinda goffic as fuck. Makes Catholicism look downright tame. It's a polytheistic religion and the deities involved are figures like this...

In the center of the circle was a statue, about 8 feet high, and of the kind of ornate-but-formulaic design that characterized art from the Second Resurrection. It depicted a tall, skinny woman, though her two sides, left and right, were very different in nature. The left was beautiful and youthful in a generic, almost ethnicity-less way, dressed in the most delicate of silk peploi, with long and unrealistically tidy curls falling elegantly over her shoulders. Her lip was curled into a gentle half-smile, kind but slightly mysterious, teasing. Her right... Well, her right, to say the least, was very different. On that side, she appeared to be skinless, although it was hard to tell with a statue; I recalled it being a matter of hot debate among the boys in my class back in secondary school. It was possible she was simply incredibly emaciated, or that there were supposed to be growths - like scales - erupting from her flesh. Her hair was made up of hateful, eyeless wyrms, biting and hissing at each other, and her flesh, which was naked save for a tasteful rag covering one area in particular, was covered in numerous stab wounds, bleeding openly. As for her face, it was grim and wide eyed. Mournful and contemptful both. I recognized the figure depicted at once; I passed one of her temples whenever I went to the distribution hall to pick up groceries. This was Phui, Dying Goddess of Love Given Way To Anguish, one of the eleven deities of the now largely defunct Ysaran-Inotian Pantheon.

In the stories, Phui was the third-to-last of the gods to fall during the end of the world, who attempted to take her own life after the death of her lover. But the breaking of the heavens had left her unable to die, meaning that no matter how she much she cut into her flesh, how much she starved herself of food and drink, reprieve would never come. Only relentless, unceasing pain, and grief for that which she had lost.

Metal album cover ass-religion, I'm into it.

The mysterious Ironworkers seem to have really drummed into the population of their new Mimikos that there was a very nice world once, and they'd better be damn sad about what happened to it. However, religion has waned in the present day, and it seems most characters are atheists of some sort.

What did happen to it, anyway? It's referred to as 'the collapse' with a lowercase c; I noticed an author's comment where the author says it's not a case of just a name for the apocalypse. A few people in the comments started speculating about false vacuum collapse. This is a physics thing. Basically, a remote possibility exists in the standard model of particle physics that the existence of matter in our universe could be in a kind of local energy minimum, but it would be possible for it to locally fall into a true minimum, creating a kind of bubble that expands at the speed of light and just deletes everything. We're pretty sure that isn't true though. If it did happen we literally would not be able to do anything... at least in a universe without FTL.

(Curiously, Su mentions special relativity at one point. With all the funky cosmology stuff I kinda wondered if special relativity is still real, but apparently it is! Electromagnetism has been mentioned as still being a thing a couple of times now, so rather than being totally absent it seems like the physics is a bit different, with an electric shock being sufficient to cause radiation poisoning.)

The fair play interlude

In between chapters 22 and 24 we get a curious little interlude called Intermission ∞ 1. The introduction presents it as something that is happening on one of the 'higher planes', translated into terms we can understand, which is grounds for it to get metafictional.

Two entities, calling themselves the Playwright and the Director, discuss the direction of the story so far before laying out the version of fair-play mystery rules this story will be operating under. They are as follows:

THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE PROTAGONIST IS ALWAYS TRUTHFUL

ALL EVENTS FOLLOW THE RULES OF CONVENTIONAL REALITY, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

ALL SYSTEMS INTRODUCED CANNOT BREAK THEIR OWN RULES AS DEFINED WITHIN THE NARRATIVE, UNLESS INDICATED OTHERWISE

I made them red because it feels like they would be red in Umineko.

Further clarifications and caveats allow that Su can withold information (for dramatic tension or whatever I guess) but she'll always tell us when she does, and an example of 'system introduced' is the magic duel sequence: the characters know accurately how magic duels work.

The two entities are performing this story for some sort of audience, and during their double-act credit themselves with control over the direction of the scenario, sometimes disagreeing. (Another one, the chorus, enters at the end.) Probably best not to think too hard about what that implies for our characters on the 'main' level of the story being 'real', it's probably just a cute bit to take the audience aside without completely breaking the fourth wall. Then again... who knows!

What this means is that my concerns about professed liar Su being an unreliable narrator are unfounded. It's still a limited POV, so Su could fail to notice things or be deceived, but she's not trying to pull one over on us.

I bring this up because...

There's been a mordah!

So, in the last chapter I read - strictly the beginning of a new arc - we find someone dead!

Well, this was kinda foreshadowed earlier. The chef disappeared, the assistant chef was knocked out by magic, and some kinda crazy time magic happened in the pantry - with the heavy implication that someone was trapped in some kinda hyperbolic time pantry for many years. At least they'd have plenty to eat..? The characters don't pick up on the implication of the tally marks and write it off as a stasis field malfunction.

So, it was natural to suspect the cook is dead. Indeed they are: Su finds a mysterious note in the book given to her by an academic at the school as a parting gift, warning her not to trust the inner council - inexplicably written two years prior and warning her to check the archive in a certain position. Investigating this, she and Kam find a secret armoury room. In there is a tunnel, and at the bottom, the cook appears to have committed suicide, leaving a suicide note vaguely implying the Order is up to some seriously sussy shit.

Of course, Kam and Su immediately suspect foul play. But they also both have ulterior motives for coming to this conference, so they agree to keep it hush-hush. This is definitely a great idea that won't get everyone killed by Beatrice... I mean uh. Whoever the murderer is.

The obvious question is, who dunnit? And why? Unfortunately, we don't really have alibis for most of the characters. Many of the inner circle haven't even shown up on screen yet. So there's a lot of people who it might have been.

More suspects! More suspects!

I haven't even mentioned several of the characters. We also have Sacnicte, steward of the house - she's an arcanist, and Su is kinda insanely horny for her aesthetically appreciative, in a way that the other characters notice and are literally like 'I don't see it'... which makes me wonder if we have a situation where someone has fucked with her perceptions. She's very down to earth and casual.

Her name is probably a reference to the Maya princess Sac Nicté, meaning 'white flower', who according to legend was involved in the migration of the Itza people from the Chichen Itza. Mind you the article I'm getting this from is kinda horrendous; the sole source is in Spanish and appears to be some random website from 2004.

Among the older generation, we have Theo's dad, Linos. He is a generally affable chap, kinda socially awkward (he's responsible for prolonging the political discussion by a botched apology) but otherwise not particularly standing out among the Order members.

Linos or Linus is another Greek name with a few referents.

The Order member who really does stand out is Anna, or in full, Amtu-hedu-anna. She's the one who's properly old, having dodged many of the 'kills people around 500' bullets of this setting, and not especially inclined to make nice. Very 'straight to the point' kinda lady. We meet her fairly briefly - Ran seems to have landed in her good books.

This one really took some digging! It seems to be based on Enheduanna, who was a Sumerian high priestess of Nanna and the oldest named author in history, credited for tablets like The Exaltation of Inanna, although it seems there's some debate over whether she definitely wrote them. Her rank in Sumerian was Entu, and I could fully believe 'amtu hedu anna' is a different transliteration of 'Entu Hedu Anna'.

As mentioned above, we're introduced to two logic engines, Sekhmet and Eshmun, built respectively by Neferuaten and (the as yet unseen) Hamilcar. Sekhmet has more biological components and wants to be a human. She wants to be human, and she's also expressed a distinct pronoun preference and gender id, which I suppose makes her trans. Eshmun is a more traditional logic engine with a lot of cogs; Sekhmet calls him 'big brother', so I guess he gets he pronouns from that.

Sekhmet is of course named for the Egyptian lion-headed warrior/medicine goddess. Eshmun is a Phoenician god of healing. Hamilcar was a name used by a number of Carthaginians, mostly generals.

Ezekiel is another one of the student gang. We haven't seen much of him yet, so I don't have a lot to say about him. Abrahamic prophet.

Balthazar is a student from another school - another thanatomancer in fact. He's something like the protégé of Zeno, and his presence is Zeno's condition for having this whole affair go ahead. He's got the same eyes as Ophelia, and Zeno failing to do his paperwork and allowing to happen is a big deal. But Zeno's kind of a bigshot so it might not come to anything. Anyway, Su is kind of suspicious towards Balthazar, but he takes it all in good humour.

Balthazar was one of the three magi in Christian mythology. There were a few Zenos, but the best known is surely Zeno of Elea, who came up with his famous "we need to invent calculus to solve this" paradoxes around infinite sums.

Yantho is a member of the Order staff, who was cooking when whoever did shenanigans in the kitchen... did shenanigans in the kitchen. His roast was ruined, but sadly he was too unconscious to order fast food and pass it off as his cooking. He can't speak and communicates by writing on his tablet.

The name crops up as an obscure Maya deity, part of a trio of brothers with Usukun and Uyitzin, but I can't find any source that seems particularly definitive.

Samium is an old egomancer, whose presence is a secret that only Su and Ran are in on. Su wants to speak to him, for reasons that are probably to do with finding out if he can restore 'original!Su' into her body, or maybe resurrecting her grandfather, or something?

...is that everyone? I think that's everyone. At some point I probably need to make an Umineko-style character screen lol.

can we solve anything yet?

Since this chapter is the beginning of the arc, I suspect there's more info to divulge before we can think about trying to solve this one. And, given the Umineko inspo, the problem to solve probably isn't simply 'whodunnit' but something more fundamental to the nature of this world.

Still, it seems all but spelled out explicitly that current!Su failed to properly assimilate into her body after she became an arcanist. Her grandfather's final 'kindness' is less clear. Her intentions with Samium... I've mentioned the obvious theories about already. She's mega guilty about overwriting this poor girl and has decided the only course of action is to try and restore the mind that inhabited her body originally. But I don't think we have the whole picture just yet, because I still can't figure out what her granddad did.

Given her discussion of 'dragon' vs 'phoenix' resurrection, and of how her meeting with Samium might change the order, I also theorised - before I really twigged the arcanist thing - that she was here to resurrect her grandfather in her own body. Body-hopping is like, the classic immortality strat after all. But... I'm less convinced of that one now? It doesn't seem like Su particularly liked the old man, she definitely doesn't want to follow in his footsteps, and 'saw him die unexpectedly during the revolution' does not seem like it would inspire the same sort of guilt.

Still, he surely did something to her, she's definitely cryptically alluded to that enough times.

Besides that?

Obviously really digging this story! Honestly, this one rules. It helps that the author is clearly into a lot of the same shit I am. All the long discussions and beat by beat narration could potentially feel a little dry, but honestly, I'm pretty hooked, it's definitely pulling me forwards. It's a fascinating, conflict-rich setting, that raises all sorts of interesting concepts. It's confident in knowing what it wants to be. Umineko is a hell of a tough act to follow, but this one has a distinct identity of its own. Can't wait to see what happens now the mystery seems to be about to kick off for real.

With that in mind, I'm sure it won't be long until the next one of these. I may have to dial back the detail a bit, this is kinda having a bad effect on my work right now. There's just so many fascinating corners to follow up ^^'

Anyway, I realise these posts are kinda massive for tumblr, so I'm gonna start copying them over to canmom.art soon. <See you next time>.

[omegaversebookshelf]

BatFamily: Omegaverse Edition

I have been recently re-hit by my enduring, overwhelming love for these anxious, extremely competent, disaster humans. So I'm making this post to cope with the Feelings.

This is just going to be a breakdown of the gender designations I usually give each member of the family, and why, the short version, because there's a lot of them. (Does include some more peripheral members, the only requirement to be included here is to be part of the core cast really)

I might do more in-depth posts for them on an individual basis at some point in the future.

Also this post is p much ship-neutral, with some acknowledgements of canonical relationships.

In age order...

Talia: (Becuase she is actually the oldest rip) Talia is an omega. Her relationship with Ra's in the comics is in a large part defined by his despair that she would be the perfect heir "were she not a woman" (pause for eyeroll) (Ra's is an alpha, of course. He doesn't get a full section because fuck him) This is just that scaled up. She also took control of multiple criminal organizations partly by weaponizing her femininity (but mostly by killing people and we love that for her). This also adds some layers of complication to her relationship with Damian. And also the rest of the Bats and Birds but Damian is the one she cares about.

(Also like, on a more serious note, the absolute character assassination she has undergone during her run time is horrific in a way that is very much centered around her identity as a woman, and specifically a woman of color, and I cannot in good conscience ignore that. Fuck Grant Morrison. All my homies hate Grant Morrison)

Alfred: Alfred is an alpha. Yes, I know most fics have him as a beta but I firmly believe alpha fits more with both his backstory (military and theater) and character (very protective and willing to get lethal with it.) He's a very low-key alpha, who, as the Wayne family butler, most people assume to be a beta, but his is very much an alpha.

Bruce: I write Bruce as a beta. Brucie Wayne is the epitome of non-threatening himbo and being a neutral beta helps with being not taken seriously as a danger. It also adds a wider layer of disguise for Batman, since the general consensus is that Batman has to be an alpha. (Also lets me have the trinity be "one each"* and that makes me happy. They’ll get their own post together soon)

Beta Bruce also means he gets to be consistently flummoxed by his children’s situations. He is more comfortable with alpha things, since both Alfred and his parents are/were alphas so they’re more familiar to him.

Selina: An omega. (As you can tell, Bruce may or may not have a bit of a weakness for omega women who don't take anybody's shit XD) Selina is an archetypal femme fatal (though also so much more) couldn't have her be anything else. This also adds to her reputation in Crime Alley, both in the sense of building herself into a serious faction and in her reputation as a safe space for strays.

Barbara: An alpha. More independent than the rest of her generation, only a Bat on her own terms and has never worked for Batman, only with him. As Oracle, who most people never meet in person, she is fairly genderless, though very much fem-presenting, but that counts a bit less in an omegaverse context.

Dick: Dick Grayson is an omega, the tendency towards being flattened into "sexy golden retriever and support of the family" and ignoring of the very real complexity in his character and storylines? he couldn't be anything else. (No, I'm not salty, don't @ me) Robin is genderless/gender neutral, Nightwing is an omega. (Titans era Dick Grayson did not give a flying fuck, as appropriate for a run about teenagers figuring out who they are in the world.)

Cass: I usually write Cass as either a beta or an omega. Part of her character is how she is deceptively non-threatening at first glance while being able to absolutely wipe the floor with the majority of her opponents. I usually lean beta for her, because I think it adds to her bond with Bruce. She has very firm connections with Babs, because of her support and care, so giving her that kind of mirror to Bruce helps balance out that relationship. It also allows for the continuation of Beta Batman in the Future. (Because Cass absolutely should be the next Batman I have been saying this for a decade and I stand by it)

Jason: Jason is an alpha. There is just something about the particular flavor of non-toxic masculinity that comes with Jason’s character that I think lends itself to this very well. Also something something expectations of violence and choices.

Stephanie: Steph is an omega. When I was first figuring these out (back in like, 2016-ish) I went back and forth between beta and omega for her before ultimately coming down in favor of omega. On the shallow side, it allows for the three main batgirls to hit each gender option. On the character history side I think it fits her teen pregnancy storyline she had. And it just fits her particular story imo. She fought literally everyone to be a vigilante. Everyone in her life has told her no at some point.

Tim: Works well with any gender, I usually opt for beta!Tim just because I think it lends itself well to his general perception as Bruce’s mini-me (despite how far from the truth that is in some significant ways). Usually if I’m not writing him beta I’m writing him alpha.

Duke: Duke I lean towards alpha both because it helps balance the family out (the perils of being the newcomer) and also I have a fondness for “chill but also absolutely unhinged” characters as alphas. Also, in a similar way to Jason, his gender means people tend to assume/underestimate how much his intelligence is involved in what he does (intersectionality also hits hard here let’s be real). I just really like the idea of Jason and Duke sending like, crossword puzzles back and forth to each other as a weird form of bonding okay.

Damian: Imma be honest Damian is who I go back and forth on the most. Any option gives a good story for his character, they’re just all different ones. Baby Damian would consider being an omega something to be ashamed of, being an alpha proof of his superiority, and being a beta merely acceptable (and maybe a way to relate to his father). As he grows into the person he is now, it would be either accepting his own worth, or accepting the worth of others, and figuring out how his gender identity and the social roles that come with it play into who he is as a hero and as a person.

I adore Damian so much. When I first was getting into comics he and Dick were just wrapping up their stint as Batman and Robin and they hold a special place in my heart.

Genetically, all three options are possible for him, his mother is an omega, his father a beta, and at least three out of four grandparents are alphas.

[not-a-space-alien]

K&J x MMSS 4: Valen & Jim Part 2

Part two of the fourth crossover with @whumpsday!

K&J masterlist

MMSS masterlist

K&J x MMSS crossover masterlist

To be added to the taglist, contact @whumpsday

Warnings: Misgendering a transmasculine character, some dehumanization

In this chapter: Valen and Jim go out, but happen to bump into an unexpected and unwelcome someone.

***

When Jim wakes, Valen is sitting across the room in a beanbag chair reading a book. The vampire glances up. "Ah, have you slept enough? The sun's down now, so we can go shopping if you're ready."

It takes Jim a moment to get his bearings and remember where he is, but he smiles when he does. He's out.

"Yeah, thanks." He sits up. "I'm good to go. I could eat a horse."

Valen's eyes widen. "Is that–is that a euphemism for something? I'm not sure where to get those."

Jim laughs. "It's an expression. Means I'm real hungry. I'll eat whatever you can get your hands on."

"Oh. Good to know." He's visibly relieved. He'd thought that seemed like far too big of an animal for a human to eat, but he didn't know for sure. "Let's go, then. I imagine you'll not want to get more than you can carry, but I have a backpack I can give you to carry things. Let's take the car there."

Valen leads Jim down to the building's parking lot, where he unlocks a white sedan for them to take to the marketplace. Unfortunately, it becomes clear quite quickly that Valen is a very bad driver. Fortunately there aren't many other cars on the road, and vampires are much more lax about traffic laws, but it's obvious nobody taught him how to drive a stick shift. He spends most of the drive there in first gear and is visibly afraid of the noise the car makes when he tries to shift into second gear.

Jim considers asking to take the wheel, but figures it's probably not kosher for someone who has no license here and isn't even considered a person to drive, oblivious to the fact that the concept of driver’s licenses does not apply to vampire territory.

He does end up verbally coaching Valen on his driving: Jim isn't the best himself, having only been driving for 3 years before he was taken and not having driven since, but he was at least better than Valen is. "Just go slow, so that if anything happens it won't be too bad."

Valen takes the advice to heart, nervously tittering about how he's not used to having someone else in the car, let alone someone who would get seriously hurt if they crashed. He goes along at a nervous crawl.

They do get there eventually. Valen has taken Jim to a specialty store, which is also where he buys his ethical blood. It's run by countercultural vampires who have also set up a portion of the building to be a place for humans to shop for food. The number of humans in vampire territory with the authority to make their own shopping decisions is vanishingly small, so the store as a whole still caters to vampires, but Valen figured Jim might appreciate going to a store where the staff see him as a person and the design is to appeal to him rather than his supposed owner, despite the more limited selection.

Jim feels a little relaxed when he sees the store's whole 'ethical blood' schtick. Guess there are places in vampire territory that don't support treating humans like shit. Makes sense that Valen would frequent those places.

The cashier has spiked purple hair and facial piercings, and Valen introduces her and Jim as though she and Valen know each other. 

"Hey." Jim greets the cashier with a wave. "Cool hair."

He's quickly distracted by the selection of food. He grabs a can of beans, a bag of rice, and a few apples. His stomach growls as he stares at the apples he's holding. It's taking some restraint for him not to dive into them before Valen has a chance to pay for them.

Valen can see Jim staring longingly at the ready to eat foods, so he quickly takes the apples and moves to the front of the store to buy them, then brings them back. "Always a bad idea to shop on an empty stomach."

"Thank you!" Jim bites into an apple and hums pleasantly. "This is so good. I never thought an apple could taste this good. Holy fuck."

He puts the rest of the food in the backpack and follows Valen out of the store. Unfortunately, as they make their way back to the car, they're interrupted.

Jim gasps when he sees him. He wants to run, but it's too late: Anton’s spotted him first, and is already making a beeline for them.

"Valen. Valen, we have to go now,” he urges, voice dripping with terror.

"Hey, funny seeing you out here, Kane's thing. Long way from home. With... Priscus Kithrara's wife?" Anton laughs. "How'd that happen? Looks like you've got something that's not yours. Would've thought you'd have enough humans. How about I take this one off your hands?"

"Valen," Jim squeaks, clinging to him now, eyes brimming with tears. "Please, please don't. Please don't let him take me, I'll do anything." 

Valen gives Anton a dirty look and scoots Jim behind himself. "And who might you be, sir, to come up and randomly demand to take my human?" He tries to be confrontational, but he really can't remember who this person is, but he obviously remembers who Valen is, and that puts him at a disadvantage. 

"Anton de Sang. Tsk-tsk, that's not your human. That's my brother's human. I didn't forget." Anton gives Jim a grin that makes him cower behind Valen. "Don't worry, you can just hand him over to me. I'll make sure he gets back where he belongs. With someone in the family, anyway."

de Sang. Anton de Sang, brother of Kane de Sang, the poor, wretched creature who was socially ostracized for not being able to use persuasion. That's why Jim wasn't brain damaged, his captor simply couldn't use persuasion at all.

"No," Jim whispers, horrified. "Please, I can't be his. I can't, you said, you s-said I could–" He stops himself from saying go home just in time. "–be yours." He hugs Valen tightly, the only bastion of safety he has, tears brimming in his eyes. 

Valen feels a wave of sympathy for Jim. He feels bad for Kane, for being treated harshly for something he can't help, but he feels even worse for Jim. He can only imagine what Jim was treated like in private, the one person Kane could take his problems out on. Given Jim's condition, it's probably quite bad. He'd noticed the broken arm that hadn't healed correctly, and Kane had apparently threatened to shatter his ankles.

Yet Jim is apparently more scared of being with Anton.

"I found him out in the wild fair and square. It's of no concern to me who he belonged to before that." He starts to back towards the shop as he speaks, shuffling Jim towards it, the shop filled with vampires who think humans should be treated decently.

Jim takes the hint and darts inside, looking pleadingly to the cashier. "Please help me," he begs tearily.

Anton laughs. "Ha! Oh my god, did his human really escape? That's hilarious. Bet he's still searching the area like a dumbass, doesn't know you're taking his human on fucking shopping trips." He eyes the shop. "Yeah, seems about right from what I've heard about that marriage."

Valen's face twists stormily at the mention of his failed marriage. "My marriage is none of your business, sir, and I use the term loosely," he snaps. "And to be perfectly clear, the only way you're taking this human home with you is if you physically attack me, right here in front of everyone, to make me. So you might as well turn around and leave." 

Anton peers through the shop window. Jim has ducked behind the counter, still cowering. More trouble than it's worth.

He chuckles. "Fair enough. Be seeing you." Before Valen can question that, he’s already dashed off.

Valen turns and runs back into the shop, the bell on the door clattering behind him. "Jim, where are you? Are you all right? He's gone now."

Jim's tear-streaked face peeks out from behind the counter. "Thank you." He sniffles. "I, I thought I was a goner for a sec there. Worse."

"You're all right," Valen says. He takes Jim's hand and pulls him up into a hug. "You're all right, we won't let anything happen to you." He looks to the cashier. "Thank you for letting him hide in here."

"Of course. Be kind of a shit ethical blood shop if I didn't."

Jim hugs back, letting himself be held. He's safe, he's protected. There's finally someone looking out for him. It's not just him alone, woefully overpowered anymore. He sobs into Valen's shoulder. "Thanks, Valen." He's choked up. "That means a lot."

"Of course. Come on, let's get home quickly. I have no reason to believe that Anton, or any of the de Sangs, knows where I live." He scoops Jim up. "It'll be faster for me to run us there."

***

Tag list:

@barebarb

@cc1010foxy

@emcscared-whumps

@hurtpluscomfort

@lolrpop

@melancholy-in-the-morning

@pigeonwhumps

@secretwhumplair

@some-thrilling-heroics

@t0rture-me

@thecyrulik

@thejinglingcourtjester

@vehan-tikkun-olam-and-stuff

@whuarri

@whump-cravings

@whump-my-heart-away

@whumpycries

@wolfeyedwitch

@whump-addict

@why-not-ask-me-a-better-question

[leviathan-supersystem]

why dont you like the church of satan? im not a satan simp i promise i'm just genuinely curious because idk anything about them

i'm glad you asked! during my debate with the CoS simps on twitter i dug up a bunch of evidence of the Church of Satan's right-wing leanings, which was wasted on those losers because obviously they're not going to concede anything ever, but i'm glad to have a more receptive audience here.

so, to start with, the most well-known pieces of evidence relating to this are A: Anton Lavey said at one point that the CoS gives people "Ayn Rand with trappings" and B: there's a segment in the satanic bible called "the book of satan" which is outright copied from the proto-fascist philosophical tract "Might is Right", written by Ragnar Redbeard.

now, apparently CoS simps have taken it upon themselves to go around bothering anyone who brings this up, arguing that Anton Lavey only said that thing about Ayn Rand once so it probably doesn't mean anything (i am skeptical that he did only say this once but i haven't been able to find smoking gun evidence of him saying it other times) and the parts which copy from Ragnar Redbeard directly are only a few pages out of the satanic bible so, again, it probably doesn't mean anything. (ignoring that the influence of "Might it Right" is woven throughout the entirety of Anton's work, hardly limited to the direct quotes.)

so, to prepare my readers for if they get hassled by some CoS loser for stating the obviously correct fact that the CoS is right-wing, here's some more evidence to that effect, under a cut because i am merciful and this is going to get very long and very ugly.

here's Boyd Rice, then a major figure in the Church of Satan, saying that the principle of satanism is "let the master be the master and the slave be the slave, and never the two shall meet." this was in the documentary "Speak of the Devil", created by Nick Bougas, also a prominent figure in the CoS at the time. Nick Bougas is more well known by his nom de plume "A Wyatt Mann", aka the guy who drew those old nazi comics that became memes ("le happy merchant" etc).

here's some quotes from the official website of the CoS:

Satanists see the social structure of humanity as being stratified, thus each person reaches a level commensurate with the development (or lack thereof) of their natural talents. The principle of the survival of the strong is advocated on all levels of society, from allowing an individual to stand or fall, to even letting those nations that cannot handle themselves take the consequences of this inability. Any assistance on all levels will be on a “quid pro quo” basis. There would be a concommitant reduction in the world’s population as the weak are allowed to experience the consequences of social Darwinism. Thus has nature always acted to cleanse and strengthen her children. This is harsh, but that is the way of the world. We embrace reality and do not try to transform it into some utopia that is contrary to the very fabric of existence. Practical application of this doctrine would see the complete cessation of the welfare system, an end to no-strings attached foreign aid and new programs to award and encourage gifted individuals in all fields to pursue personal excellence. A meritocracy will replace the practice of such injustices as affirmative action and other programs designed to punish the able and reward the undeserving.

Satanists also seek to enhance the laws of nature by concentrating on fostering the practice of eugenics.

but if you REALLY want to get into the ugly shit that the CoS has been promoting, here's some excerpts from the magazine "The Black Flame", which the CoS published throughout the late 80's and through the 90's:

^that last one's from an interview with Lavey himself

and to bring things back around, here's another interview with Boyd Rice:

on the whole, while the CoS may present itself as an opponent of right-wing christianity, it's ultimately just controlled opposition, pushing largely the same right-wing agenda that the christian right was. it's funny that people never seemed to ask why christian conservatives like Bob Larson were always spending time interviewing, or being interviewed by, the Church of Satan if they were supposedly such mortal enemies.

[fullcry]

*knocks on your askbox* hostage/creature vash au?? may i ask for more details please 👀👀👀

You may!

So, I've had this fic outlined for a while but I wasn't going to work on it until maybe the end of May? I wanted to finish Memories on Film and Biology first, then make more progress on Love and Peace and Gunsmoke.

BUT. @zeearts had to go and create this incredible creature!Vash design and it just got my brain spinning all sorts of gears and now I'm back to dabbling with the Hostage AU!

Basically, the story goes something like this:

Meryl grows up in a rural town without a plant whose primary trade is worm hunting. They've got industrial production going, trading their goods for water from July and other essential resources. There's problems in the town, and being close to July they are firmly within the thrall of the Eye of Michael (except Meryl, ofc, because our girl is Smart and Knows a cult when she sees one).

Well one day Meryl gets chosen as a sacrifice and she gets taken to July where she's put in service to Knives and Conrad as sort of a glorified maid/caretaker to this strange creature Knives proclaims is his brother. Meryl doesn't know what's going on and the whole things seems hella sus and what the fuck is this bird thing huddled in the corner, but she does what she's told and pretends to be a Meek Believer while she tries to figure out how to bust out.

Meanwhile, in the background:

Knives, unable to forcibly control Vash's gate, has proceeded with his "Destroy the Parasites" master plan using the Eye of Michael to start a holy war while he hopes that giving Vash a little of what he wants--a human companion--will weaken his resolve and/or give Knives something to hold over him so he can gain some kind of leverage in this battle of wills with his brother.

Unbeknownst to Meryl Conrad is also plotting, secretly dosing her food with drugs to use her as Test Subject 1 in his plan to create part-plant humans. He hopes that he can secretly dose the water supply he controls to get the drug out to the masses and create hybrid humans that might stand a chance of surviving Knives' war and win a place in his Eden.

Wolfwood, the one responsible for capturing Vash and bringing him to Knives, is also skulking around Knives' lil July penthouse. They've got a baby Livio hostage they're using as leverage and Wolfwood wants his lil bro back and is making his own plan to bust him out while Knives and Conrad are distracted with their war.

Back to Meryl.

Our girl slowly befriends dear Creature!Vash, locked away in his lil plant-proof chamber. He's half-delusion from Knives' mind-fuckery, and through kindness and patience Meryl slowly brings him back to himself.

One day Meryl and Wolfwood meet, and together they strike up a plan to bust everyone out--her, Vash, Wolfwood, and Livio. But things don't go according to plan...

I've been dabbling with it a bit the past few days, though I'm TRYING to stick to the goals I set for myself as much as possible (I have a Patreon now and I'm trying to stick to an actual schedule!) but you know how inspiration can be <sob> It controls me I don't control it.

Speaking of Patreon, for anyone interested I'll be posting WIP snippets of this fic and other ideas this upcoming week on my page!

[joemerl]

I'm watching the Eragon movie after rereading the book this year.

It's kind of more enjoyable, sometimes because its changes legitimately improve things but usually because they stray into So Bad It's Good territory.

Durza is still generic af, but Galby is delightfully narmy.

Sloan feels more like an actual character, and the idea that the Spine is considered royal property is a lot simpler than "Sloan's wife died there because it's cursed, maybe, but Eragon can go in there because shut up."

"All hail Eragon, the mighty hunter!" And just like that, the movie makes Roran and Eragon feel more like brothers than Paolini managed in the first two books. Also, they're eight-year-old dorks in teenage bodies.

Sass-master Arya.

I am both annoyed and amused that the Urgals are just burly guys. They give them a little face makeup, but still.

Not really feeling Saphira's voice. I just imagined it huskier.

Durza summons the Ra'zac from the ground like Power Rangers villains. WTF (affectionate).

Eragon figures out that Brom was a Dragon Rider! And just like that, he's outstripped book!Eragon's supposed brilliance.

Arya is awake when she meets Eragon. Makes for a less awkward romantic arc. Also she just says she's a princess, so again, kudos on the screenwriters for not bothering with the obvious twists.

I think there's a passing line about dwarves and elves, but Arya is ostensibly human. There are some guys in the Varden who are clearly supposed to be dwarves but never referred to as such.

Why does the spell for dragon vision let Eragon see through walls? And why does the fire spell make things levitate?

"I expected someone a little more...well, more." Is this line actually clever, or do I just enjoy Eragon getting dunked on?

The whole thing with Brom flying on Saphira as he dies is kind of nice. It would have worked better if they mentioned that Saphira was named after his own dragon, though.

Murtagh is weird, because he acts totally different than book!Murtagh and is introduced with a different backstory. He even offers to lead Eragon to the Varden, which is directly opposed to his motivation in the book. But canon reasserts itself once they get there, so you're left wondering why he chose to do this.

Murtagh's prison cell, incidentally, appears to be a cage left out in the open.

I said Galby was funny, but how many scenes do we need where he's just whispering threats at Durza?

In the books, there are moments where I feel like Eragon has more chemistry with Nasuada than he ever has with Arya. Given the gratuitous "walking in one him shirtless" scene, I feel like the screenwriters agree.

Most of the clothes are Generic Medieval Drab, but then there was one costume designer who was like "NO! Shiny and exotic!"

One change I don't like: Saphira breathing fire before the battle starts is supposed to be cool, ooh-she's-badass-now, but sorry, having her dramatically do that at the end of the battle to save Eragon's life is much better.

So Durza summoned the Ra'zac from the ground, and now he summoned the Lethrblaka from Saphira's fire? somehow? Is it supposed to be made of smoke?

They're not very well done, but the script is trying to give Eragon some arcs that he doesn't have in the book. Some of it is generic "I don't want to be the Chosen One" stuff, but there's also this idea that he might get Saphira killed, like Brom with his dragon, augmented by the fact that Brom's death is kind of Eragon's fault in this version.

Speaking of which, the hell you letting Eragon think Saphira is dead, Murtagh? It's not just a jerk move, it's also out of character. Murtagh is not jokey, either in this movie or the book.

I was gonna say that the final scene is desperately trying to convince us that Eragon and Arya have chemistry, but I actually don't think it's trying that hard.

*watching the credits* That random guy who looked like a dwarf but was never referred to as a dwarf was supposed to be Hrothgar? I assumed it was Orik. He didn't seem to be a king or anything.

[aparticularbandit]

Okay, but.

Junko is the Ultimate Fashionista (among other things).

I made a post that's been doing the rounds about what that might have looked like when she was locked in Hope's Peak before the Killing Game, how specifically her Fashionista Talent might have been useful in changing and crafting and etc. clothes with the others. Modifications, all sorts of things.

I also tend to highly headcanon that Junko runs her own clothes company (I read a fic once that referred to this; I don't remember what the fic is, but it makes sense - Junko's a famous model, she could easily have her own fashion line, or she might even simply be the primary model for a specific line, etc.) - I call it Junk Co. because. Junko would love a good pun, and we know that she is all about being her brand. (Also the idea of We take your junk and make it livable! sticks with me.)

However.

This post talks about fashion design, and having read it, I had thoughts.

Junko would never have gone to a fashion design school. Junk Co. would have been making clothes for the people around her. Notably, Junko and Mukuro are scrawny (I've posted about that, too, although my numbers were off - Mukuro is 97lbs and Junko is 99lbs - but that's still drastically underweight for both of them), but even if you look at that sketch for fashion design, you'll notice that actually (and I hate to bring this up again) Junko doesn't fit. Mukruo fits it better than Junko does because of breast size. Which means that Junko would already be going off from normal design because she's making clothes to fit herself.

But more importantly, if Junko is designing clothes for the people around her, she's not being held down by that figure. She's making real clothes for your everyday person.

What I'm saying is Junko Enoshima, the Ultimate Fashionista, probably sells some fantastic plus-sized clothes through Junk Co.

And like - sure - if she's the True Ultimate Despair, why is this a decision Junko would make? Wouldn't there be more despair in not having those clothes?

Absolutely there could be.

But also consider - when did Junko become Despair? Was it all at once? Or over a period of time? We know from Ryoko that Junko was lying when she said she was born with despair (she may have been born into it, but Ryoko alone proves that she was not always the despair fanatic that she becomes later; Ryoko actively dislikes despair). So it's possible that Junko was designing these clothes prior to that full giving herself over to it.

Which could lead to maybe there's despair in the idea that Junk Co. did, at one point, provide plus-sized clothes, clothes for every girl and boy and nonbinary friend, and then slowly but surely stopped doing any of that.

But I think that Junko - and Junk Co. - kept making them.

Why?

Because what is more despair-inducing than being able to point at one fashion company and say If Junk Co. can do this, when their head is a literal middle school girl (and, eventually, high school girl), then there is absolutely no reason why none of the other fashion companies can do it. Be BETTER.

It's the same as the Reserve Course. They could do this. They could be better. They just REFUSE. And why?

Junko would say it's because they see you as less than human. Junk Co. doesn't. She certainly doesn't. But all those other companies don't care one lick about you.

Not like Junko does.

It gives her an in. It tells people she loves them. And it makes them devoted to her.

Which is useful for starting the Tragedy, don't you think?

[sunkern-plus]

inspired by a tumblr post i saw: would they give good hugs because they're the designated fat character or would they suck at hugs

bob richards, tekken: he would be amazing at hugs because 1.) he can control his strength and can probably bench press his own body weight + more, and 2.) he's a normal guy who wouldn't crush your ribs in by hugging you because he actually can control himself

rufus, street fighter: oh no he would crush you giving a hug. he's a 400+ pound guy who can lift the average weight of a CAR, no way this guy is giving you a hug without you cracking a couple ribs even if you're as big as him. he loves giving hugs though. only person he's gentle with giving hugs to is candy because he's accidentally given her a cracked rib because of it, and he nursed her back to health, and then he vowed he'd be as light as a butterfly with her since. same with anyone he's previously hugged before that he's injured.

birdie, street fighter: "what? haha, dumb bloke, i ain't giving you a hug! you think i've gone SOFT, eh? well, i'm a few things, but i ain't a hugger! ya hear me? i'm not gonna hug you, mate! not gonna!" [karin tells him to give the person a hug] "....HAAAAAAAAHHHHH...yes'm..." [gives the most awkward, weak, limp hug a human being can give another human being] (he's even an awkward hugger when he hugs eagle! which eagle is disgruntled at, partially because "you think if you put on this much weight for me you'd also get good at hugging for me.")

e honda, street fighter: oh that man absolutely gives the best hugs. though watch out: he might knock the wind out of you hugging you. but like, not in a dangerous way. but in a dad way.

moritaka inuzuka, housamo: she loves giving hugs but people often joke about her hugs only coming to about waist height because she's the shortest girl in the world (moritaka is a genderfluid trans girl and has SUCH a trans coded narrative to me, fight me housamo fans)

hideyoshi ushiromiya, umineko: if this man doesn't become real and give me a hug after (potentially horrible christmas eve dinner tomorrow) i am going to explode please i want one nice thing in my life please (he would not only give the best hugs, but the most warm and comforting hugs NOT because he's fat but he's southern uncle (the not bigoted but southern matthew cuthbert from anne of green gables version) coded)

hugo andore, street fighter and final fight: "i can't hug you, what if i hurt you? what if i crush your ribs and you get mad at me and we can't be friends anymore? what if---(poison screaming "HUG THEM, HUGO!" at the top of her lungs)--okay..." (gives you the warmest kindest most romantic hug imaginable) (yes they are fat to me because andre the giant was ALSO fat and many portrayals of hugo draw them primarily with an apple shaped figure and a large belly as their most prominent feature. also they are nonbinary. to me)

gordie, pokemon: "of course, i always give good hugs to my best fans~<3" (hugs you awkwardly on accident and starts beating himself up about being a failure of the ultimate galar hunk)

sorry that most of this was fighting game characters. suggest me more fat characters that i probably know and i probably will do more