#I had the idea of what they do etc mapped out so clearly for so long

[kayatoastkkat]

infodump time!

this is for my TOH au, some basic information for the big three of the cast and what their roles are! aaaand maybe also a sketch dump since I have too many pencil drawings of this au...

Dr. Henry Jekyll

Leader of the Secret Society for Wild Magic. Also a part-time potions seller. 

After graduation from Hexside, his initial aspiration was to join the Emperor’s Coven. As such, he began trying to test out his magical prowess and became a curse researcher, collecting rare curses (akin to Eda’s) and began looking for cures. While some of his methods proved effective, during this time Jekyll was deeply absorbed into his work and started neglecting his own health, leading Lanyon and Rachel to become very worried for him. 

One night, while researching a particularly gruesome curse, Jekyll believed he finally worked out a cure. With no other subjects, he could only test it on himself. Thus, potion in hand, he decided it was a great idea to go curse himself with a cure that he believed was mostly effective.

Lo and behold, that was the first transformation. The curse lashed out in black ribbons, enveloping Jekyll before diving straight into his heart, issuing several screams from the brunette until all that was left was a bundle of loose clothes, shattered glass, scraps of paper leftover from the curse and research, and one tiny blonde gremlin among said loose clothes. Thus, that very night, Hyde was born. A curse that should’ve killed Jekyll, torn his very body apart, taken control over the leftover scraps, now resides in his body as half of himself, shares his memories and would become the mask Jekyll uses to indulge in activities he finds unacceptable for himself to engage in. The potion that failed to cure the curse is now the key to transforming into each other.

With Hyde, Jekyll quickly realised that joining the Emperor’s Coven is no longer a feasible choice for himself and instead, with Lanyon’s help (due to his family being super wealthy and influential) was able to pull some strings and fake a Potions coven sigil, thus taking suspicion off of him while keeping his status as a wild witch.

His palisman is a crow named Crowley. His staff also never initially had the red gem lmao, he stuffed it in himself to try and give it a more sophisticated look. He also has ear piercings! First made just to get Hyde to stop whining, he later decided he may as well wear something, namely tiny black diamond studs.

Mr Edward Hyde

bithc.

Jekyll’s personal “assistant”. A trader and scammer at the Night Market. He often enjoys committing petty crimes and also trades his potions for rare ingredients required for more powerful spells. Sometimes he’d even bring a few of the Lodgers to sell their inventions too, to make sure the Society still has snails to spare for basic necessities. Most of what Hyde earns in the Night Market goes to his nighttime adventures, but whatever’s left by the time he transforms back will be used by Jekyll to keep the lights on in the secret Society. Besides the Night Market, he likes to go drinking at the sketchier parts of Bonesborough, often getting into skirmishes and bar fights. He relies on Jekyll’s magic and rarely ever uses his palisman to avoid divulging his identity. For transportation, he prefers teleportation spells or magic some wings to make a quick escape. No, he’s not a bird beast. I’ve long decided he is not some crow beast or something, he’s just an amalgamation of Jekyll’s worst traits.

He has about the same relationship with Jekyll as in TGS, perhaps even more tense as Jekyll is very concerned about ensuring that Hyde keeps a low profile and does not reveal the fact he’s a wild witch. Hyde hides it about as well as you’d expect, and eventually the information that he doesn’t have a sigil is picked up by the Emperor’s Coven. He’s never gotten caught before though, oh, and he also idolizes Eda the Owl Lady very much, but never goes to find her, since he’s terrified of Hooty.

The oopsy-doopsy arson will still happen, which I will cover eventually but bottom line is it’ll make Belos strengthen efforts into finding and tracing Hyde’s roots. Through the following disagreements and punishment from Jekyll, Hyde learns he can block Jekyll from using his magic for short bursts of time, and eventually with practice, longer periods spanning from hours to days.

He also has silver ring earrings. Every time he transforms he takes the time to take off Jekyll’s plain black diamond studs to replace it with them and I find that funny.

Dr. Robert Lanyon

A master illusionist, one of Jekyll’s closest friends and co-runner of the Society. Also helps around Jekyll’s potions business.

He’s the reason Jekyll was able to stay a wild witch in the first place. He was able to use his Illusion magic to fake a sigil for Jekyll and using his position of power, pulled some strings to prevent the scouts from investigating further. His father is a prosperous Constructions witch who helps Belos strengthen the castle and fortify bases for scouts throughout Bonesborough, earning him a position of high rank in the Isles. Lanyon despises it though, and took Illusions to spite his father, who wanted him to take a more “useful” track in school such as Abominations or Constructions so he would have more job opportunities. Outside attending dinner parties or finishing errands for his father, he does whatever he wants, usually sneaking off to parts of Bonesborough or to the Society to see Jekyll. He doesn’t even necessarily attend dinner parties, often preferring to have an illusion of himself attending. Lanyon Sr pretends not to notice this.

Unaware of Jekyll’s curse, he hated the idea of Hyde being affiliated with him and yet always so dangerously on the brink of exposing his identity as a wild witch, but so long as Hyde continues helping the Society stay afloat and doesn’t get caught, Lanyon keeps his thoughts to himself. That is, until the arson changes everything. While he helps sort out the paperwork and aids Jekyll in keeping the Society hidden, he is not close to any of the Lodgers and prefers to pretend he isn’t associated with them, mostly out of concern and to keep suspicion off him and by extension, his dear friend.

He has the most insane piercings too, with large gold spheres resembling Eda’s, along with two more piercings further up his ears.

also, minor thing but I've finally given this au a proper name lol, it's now called The Crow House after Jekyll's palisman, which is a crow! I've also updated the tag for it in my pinned post so not to worry!

[elodieunderglass]

Hi! I was wondering if you could help me out with a word I've forgotten? I'm trying to remember the name for a concept that (I think) talks about how people better understand or process Things once they have vocabulary to describe it - I've heard it talked about in regards to the colour orange, or coercive control, etc.

long story short i've just read a paper saying ancient Greeks and Romans weren't racist bc they had no word for racism and am trying to form an argument against!

(no worries if this is unanswerable, i'm aware its a bit of a long shot but you struck me as a person who Knows Things)

That’s extremely kind and funny of you. i don’t know much but i am ok at synthesis.

I think you might be thinking of the concepts loosely called the “Sapir-Whorf hypothesis”, which describes something called “linguistic determinism.” This idea has been “disproven”, as it is just too reductionist as a concept - people are clearly perfectly capable of having experiences that are tough to describe with words. There will be plenty of papers showing how this reasoning is applied.

but it is still commonly thrown around and still considered a useful teaching framework. That’s why you’ll see it referenced online as if it is fresh, new, and applicable - people learn about it every year in college. Also, elements of the framework are probably perfectly sound. It definitely seems to be the case that language shapes brains; it just doesn’t seem to be the case that humans who don’t have specific words for them can’t experience orange, or the future.

(Many things in college are taught using teaching frameworks that may not be, technically, true; the framework is intended to give a critical structure for interpreting information. Then, when we later find evidence that disproves the hypothesis, that single piece of information doesn’t destroy our expensive college education; what we paid for is the framework. This is mostly frustrating in the sciences, when fresh crops of undergraduate students crash around on social media, grappling with their first exposure to (complex concept) and how it’s DIFFERENT to what they learned BEFORE and their teachers LIED TO EVERYBODY and they’re going to save the world from POP SCIENCE by telling the TRUTH. You’ll notice that these TOTALLY NEW INFORMATION reveals map along the semester schedule. The thing here is that getting new information, or information being different from what you were previously told, does not cancel out the fact that you are getting what you pay for - an education. Learning new facts that change our relationships to hypotheses isn’t a ✨huge betrayal ✨ , but the expected process of academia. Anyway.)

You have an interesting response here, and can start by looking at the ways that Sapir-Whorf has been disproved. There will be loads of literature on that.

However, it would be interesting to look at the argument as an unpicking of the other side’s rather weird, ritualistic superstitious belief that a behavior doesn’t exist if the creatures doing it can’t describe it. It is not on the ancient Greeks and Romans to categorise and interpret their behavior for a modern educated audience. They do not have the wherewithal to do so. They are also fucking dead. We can name the behaviors we see, and describe their impacts, however the hell we like.

Sure, the ancient Greeks used “cancer” to refer to lumpy veiny tumors. We can infer that they still had blood cancer, because their medical texts describe leukaemia and their corpses have evidence of it - they just didn’t know it was cancer. But we do, so we can call it cancer. Just because Homer said “the wine-dark sea” in a flight of girlish whimsy doesn’t mean he was unable to distinguish grape juice from saltwater, which we know, because we can observe that he was an intelligent wordsmith perfectly capable of talking about wine and oceans in other contexts. We are the people who get to stand at our point of history with our words, and name things like “this person probably died of leukaemia” and “poets say things that aren’t necessarily literal” and “this behaviour was racist” and “that’s gay” and “togas kinda slay tho” despite Ancient Greeks having different concepts of cancer, wittiness, prejudice, homosexuality, and slaying than we do today.

Now just to caveat that people do get muddled about the concept of racism. Our understanding of racism from here - this point of history, with these words, probably from the West - is heavily influenced by how we see racism around us today: white supremacy and the construct of “whiteness,” European colonial expansion, transatlantic chattel slavery, orientalism, evangelism, 20th century racial science, and so on. This is the picture of racism that really dominates our current discourse, so people often mistake it for the definition of racism. (Perhaps in a linguistic-deterministic sort of way after all.) As a result, muddled-up people often say things like “I can’t be racist because I’m not a white American who throws slurs at black American people,” while being an Indian person in the UK who votes for vile anti-immigration practices, or a Polish person with a horrible attitude about the Roma. Many people genuinely hold this very kindergarten idea of racism; if your opponent does as well, they’re probably thinking something like “Ancient Greek and Roman people didn’t have a concept of white supremacy, because whiteness hadn’t been invented yet, so how could they be racist?” And that’s unsound reasoning in a separate sense.

Racism as the practice of prejudice against an ethnicity, particularly one that is a minority, is a power differential that is perfectly observable in ancient cultures. The beliefs and behaviors will be preserved in written plays, recorded slurs, beauty standards, reactions to foreign marriages, and travel writing. The impacts will be documented in political records, trade agreements, the layouts of historical districts of ancient towns.

You don’t need permission to point out behaviours and impacts. You can point them out in any words you like. You can make up entirely new words to bully the ancient romans with. You are the one at this point of history and your words are the ones that get used.

Pretending that “words” are some kind of an intellect-obscuring magical cloud in the face of actual evidence is just a piece of sophistry (derogatory) on the part of your opponent here. It’s meant to be a distraction. You can dismiss this very flimsy shield pretty quickly and get them in the soft meat of them never reading anything about the actual material topic, while they’re still looking up dictionary definitions or whatever.

[juuuulez]

📰 | part one: capulet.

info: Carl Grimes x Saviour!Reader, female reader I’m so sorry!!!!, mostly scene setting..next chapter will get juicy.

summary: You meet Carl whilst the Satellite station is being raided, where they take you as prisoner.

previous | next

This is gonna be an ongoing fic!!! I’ve already got like,, 8 parts mapped out, but will likely add more stuff here and there. It also currently has no name……but I’ll think of something. It will follow canon loosely, mostly at the start, and then I’ll just diverge into whatever I want to write about LOL. Let me know what you think, if you like it, want more soon etc etc.

It’s Saviour!Reader, with very heavy father-figure Negan because I am sorry but I LOVE HIM! Slow burn, enemies to lovers with Carl, teenage squabbling, you get the gist.

I’m also open for requests!!

It feels like you can’t breathe.

It’s dark, so dark. Almost pitch black, if not for the moonlight shining through the windows, spaced out near the rooftops to allow some visibility. You try to keep your footsteps light, one hand clutched around a metal baseball bat, the other feeling the wall to make sure you don’t trip. Everybody else is asleep.

Everybody else is dead.

You have no idea who’s done this. But it’s multiple people, from what you’ve gathered. A group uninvolved with the Saviours. Until now, you suppose.

It was no secret that your father was a tyrant, and had his fair share of enemies, but this? Talk about retaliation. If you’d been sleeping, too, you’d be dead. Maybe it was some sort of fate that you weren’t. Divine intervention. Whatever, it didn’t matter.

Then an alarm blares, disturbing the calculating silence, awakening anybody who remained unconscious. Panic spreads throughout the satellite station, followed by the relentless noise of machine guns. Your grip on the bat tightens as you sprint down the hallway, searching for salvage, somewhere to hide. They’d overpower you, no doubt. Though you were strong, a dedicated fighter, there was only so much a 17 year old girl could do. Facing them was too risky.

And to come home in a body bag? Not an option; Negan would kill every last person alive.

You round the corner, facing a door that you knew led to a supply room. The perfect hiding spot. So, you check your surroundings, weapon at the ready before entering the small space.

The door slams behind you.

“Hands up.”

You panic, momentarily, yet don’t obey. Spinning on your heels, you meet the source of this threat, a pistol pointed in your direction.

But behind it stands a boy, likely no older than yourself. Messy brown hair, stupid looking hat. Eyepatch. Definitely not a soldier.

He takes your silence as offence, “I said, hands up!” The boy barks at you, pulling back the safety with a distinct click.

It feels like there’s a lump in your throat, yet you speak anyway, arms still caged defensively at your sides. “You wanna kill me?”

The question clearly takes this boy off guard, judging by the way his jaw clenches, displeased by the ambiguous attitude you’re holding.

“Haven’t decided yet.” He answers, tone cold and steely.

But the gun isn’t pointed at your head. It’s a little to the right, just past your ear. If he shot it now, the bullet would hit the concrete wall. Lack of depth perception, you decide. One eye.

And so, you take that chance. With one motion, you’re swinging your bat towards him, using all the strength in your body. For some reason, he doesn’t shoot, but does duck down, the swift motion causing that stupid sheriff’s hat to fall to the ground.

The minuscule moment of shock, uncertainty, is your window of opportunity: it doesn’t take much to barrel towards him, your shoulders colliding with a thud as you disarm the boy, letting the pistol fall to the ground.

You don’t bother to pick it up, kicking the weapon away from the two of you, letting it skid across the concrete and hit the opposing wall. But in the time it takes him to retrieve the gun, you’re already out the door.

It doesn’t take long to navigate your way out of the station. Sprinting through hallways, narrowly avoiding tripping over limp bodies of people you once knew. Then the doors are right there, so close. You could even see cracks of sunrise seeping through the gaps.

Fresh air assaults your face, filling your parched lungs, and it takes everything in you not to fall to the ground in relief.

But it doesn’t matter.

There’s shouting, the figures of people coming into view. It floods your system with panic, suddenly alert at the newfound danger. Your sprinting comes to the stop, skidding on wet grass, blanketed with morning dew.

You fall flat on your ass.

The moment of clumsiness is all it takes for these people to approach you, shouting, demanding a name. A gun in your face. You grit your teeth, spotting the metal bat a few feet away, too far to reach.

And that boy, with the stupid hat. He picks it up. It makes you want to scream.

They demand you take them to Negan. To the next outpost. Locate their friends. There’s talking, bargaining on a radio. You stood in silence, childishly frustrated about being used like a pawn on a board. Exchange of you, for their two friends. That, or they’d kill you.

This immature silence lasts the whole trip.

The handcuffs around your wrists are irritating. There’s an itch on your cheek you can’t scratch. Your shoulders begin to hurt from being twisted into such a position.

But the worst of it? That boy, with his stupid hat, holding your baseball bat.

You swallow your anger.

You swallow your anger as they leave you in the RV to raid the Saviour outpost.

You swallow your anger when they come out with their two friends, but none of yours.

You swallow your anger when they tell you that Negan is dead, he’s been killed. That you’ll be put in a cell until they know what to do with you.

“Let me see the body.” You demand, brows furrowed, attempting to shield your inner confliction. Concern.

The man with the curly hair and beard answers, already distracted, moving onto the next task. Like the life of your father was meaningless. “Ain’t no time, we gotta move. Get back to Alexandria before nightfall.”

You swallow your anger.

Until you can’t anymore.

It hasn’t even been that long. The end to a long, gruelling day. At least, it appears to be, judging by the dimming light seeping through tiny windows. You’ve never been in a prison cell before. Though, granted, it was probably time you got some semblance of consequence for your morally-grey actions.

There’s footsteps. Once person approaching, then another walking away. Keeping guard on your cell, you presume. The same process had happened twice already.

Except this time, the footsteps continue a little further. The jingle of keys, a metal door creaking open.

Then he’s standing in front of you, on the other side of the bars. You want to burn that stupid hat.

“Your hat looks stupid.”

His face twists, brows furrowed, but otherwise ignores the harsh statement. The hat remains on his head.

“What’s your name?” He asks, standing a few meters away, warily. As if he’s afraid you’ll squirm through the bars and attack him. Maybe that’s a good thing.

You don’t answer.

But the boy continues talking anyway, “Mine’s Carl.”

It’s like an olive branch, a truce. An ounce of humility amongst this whole, terrible experience.

You roll your eyes, but tell him your name anyway. Carl seems to take this as permission to continue, as he now sits down on the cold concrete floor, though still maintains the distance between the two of you.

“Were your parents back there?” He asks you, though doesn’t sound particularly curious, nor judgemental. It’s that same, weird, stony tone. Like he only wants to know simply for the benefit of information.

So, you humour him.

With a shrug, you mumble, “No.”

“Is Negan your dad?” Carl asks almost immediately, already having a path of conversation in mind. This boy knows what he wants, and intends on figuring it out. That, or he’s just really blunt.

Once again, you shrug, giving a pointed look that conveys how you don’t intent to cooperate.

In response, Carl narrows his eyes, taking your lack of cooperation as hostility.

A few moments pass, and he’s getting up again, storming towards the door. The keys jingle. Metal creaks.

And he’s gone.

Another few days pass.

Nobody had interacted with you; it felt like you were going insane. Four walls and a dinky bed.

At least Carl tried to talk to you, nobody else seemed interested.

Until the curly-haired man is back, who you presume is named Rick, and is getting you out of the cell, once again adorning handcuffs.

“You’re going to Hilltop,” He tells you, snapping your wrists together once more, but this time offers the reprieve of cuffing your hands in front of you, “Somebody will watch you, give you a new home. You misbehave? It’s back in the cell.”

Though displeased, you have no choice but to follow. Suspicion stews in your gut, as these people appear to be in a rush, ever so slightly frantic. An energy in the air.

You remain impartial, annoyance radiating from your being as they drive, all these people packed into an RV. Everybody is having their seperate conversations, though you remain alone, handcuffed at the back of the vehicle.

A few hours in… and the road is blocked.

Blocked by people. A few cars parked nearby.

Disruption stirs in the RV, weapons suddenly gripped, prepared for a threat. Just before Rick can go to investigate: you hear it.

Whistling.

Your face must clearly light up, a hint of hope, and you’re rushing to stand. Though you can only make it two steps forward, deeper into the RV, when suddenly hands are gripping your shoulders, a firm hold keeping you in place.

Keeping you from escaping.

You twist and turn, aggressive curses leaving your mouth, but are unable to fully face your captor.

But from the corner of your eye, you see the rim of that that stupid, stupid hat.

[melonteee]

I think the thing that’s both odd and interesting about Zoro (especially when compared to the other Straw Hats) is that I think he’s the SH other than Luffy that I find the most difficult to articulate and map out the trajectory of. Like every other Straw Hat I feel like I can point to specific panels and go “That. That’s their damage.” But with Zoro… it’s not that he *doesn’t* have those moments, but it feels like a lot of his thematic character beats are buried in a lot subtext; and like there’s a lot of gaps.

Like I find it curious that Zoro’s the only Straw Hat whose arc didn’t take place in his home (or in the case of some later crew members a symbol of it), but he’s also the only one who has flashbacks throughout the story. Yet, even then, we still don’t know as much about him as we do others. With everyone else, you can easily answer where they slept or ate and what the relationship with the community at large was like growing up, but Zoro? The snippets we get don’t extend beyond the dojo - and the recent revelations about that only raised more questions. I can’t be the only one who thought it was weird of Oda to drop that nugget that the blacksmith in his childhood village was a pirate (or at least wanted by the marines) and then died not long after that. Or that Zoro doesn’t seem to know that he’s related to Kuina’s family at all (Zoro didn’t even know the blacksmith was her grandfather until after he died) despite only being 2 generations removed from the founding of the village. What could have possibly happened in the time between Zoro’s grandparents and parents that means Zoro - who had to have been an orphan in the flashbacks we have seen - is so far removed from his own family and the village history?

I think the other thing that’s odd about his relationship with Kuina/her death (and I think a big reason the theories that Kuina was murdered, secretly Tashigi, etc. continue to persist no matter how many times they’re debunked) is that the circumstances of her death kinda rub against other parts of the series. For instance, if you consider that “the weak don’t decide how they die” to be a through line in One Piece (not saying I do) then Kuina’s death feels like a direct counterpoint in the same way Katakuri telling Luffy “people don’t die because they didn’t want to live badly enough” does. But then, even though Zoro’s flashback on her death (which I love in the manga for how that’s Zoro’s life flashing before his eyes) ends on “humans are fragile” but then this very idea is immediately countered by Luffy the rubber man deflecting bullets; then later Zoro kinda rejects that concept of fragility in Arlong Park altogether when he declares he can’t allow himself to be killed by anything that would kill a normal human. Not to mention how in-universe there’s only theories as to what his Asura form is, which is about as far from Kuina’s mundane human fragility as you can get.

Honestly how Zoro’s character arc is laid out made a lot more sense to be when I heard Oda’s original outline for One Piece was a five year storyline. It might just be me, but it feels like there’s a few missing puzzle pieces, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Oda is saving some of those gaps in information for a specific moment.

I really appreciate this long ask and you've clearly thought a lot about it, but I don't think anything is missing with Zoro at all. Because, first off, his story does take place in his home - his home is in the East. That's like saying Nami's story doesn't take place in her home because Bellemere found her as a baby on a different island. The east is still Zoro's home, nothing says otherwise, and it's explained with Zoro just being an orphaned boy who was running from village to village looking for a challenge.

Usually you'd ask where the orphaned boy was from, but we know One Piece is just a world like that. He has a full name, his face is on wanted posters, and no one has looked for him or said they know him apart from as a Pirate Hunter. His Roronoa name wasn't known in Wano at all, and apart from his very minimal connections to the Wano family, there's nothing there that matters.

Also, all of the Strawhats stories are kinda only presented in flashbacks dfghjkdf

Oda put Zoro's story in an SBS because, to me, he's stating first and foremost Zoro's past BEFORE Kuina does not matter to Zoro. It feels Oda just made that SBS as an Easter egg people could have fun with. If Zoro were told of his parents, or his origins, why would he care? He didn't know them, it's not like he ever thinks about his mother nor seems to even remember her - unlike Usopp, Robin and Sanji. If you told Zoro he had a mum and dad, he'd probably be like Luffy and say "?? okay? so what?"

Zoro's story, first and foremost, is about the future. Because the monster trio all parallel each other in this regard. Sanji is about the past, Luffy is about the present, and Zoro is about the future. The only time Zoro's past ever matters is with Kuina, and that's because Zoro's story IS Kuina. We see it clearly with Wano, the only reason the blacksmith matters is because it connects him to Wado, which connects him to Kuina, which lets Zoro know where KUINA was from and why WADO is such an important sword to her family - and now to him.

"The weak don’t decide how they die" is a quote said by Law, that is taught to him by Doflamingo - an insanely cruel person. Law THOUGHT this was the case, but this does not MEAN it's the case. Same with what Katakuri said, we are encountering different people with different lives and different experiences. Kuina's own death, in my opinion - WHILE possibly being a murder or suicide - was meant to show Zoro that no matter what you do, or how strong you are, the world will be cruel enough to take those you love away. There's a tragedy in that simplicity, and that's all we need to know about Zoro. To me, there is no other mystery in the way he acts or the way he fights - it's all right there within Kuina's promise and death.

When Zoro learns things about the past it's about his swords, it's about Kuina, and it's never his OWN past - because, again, he is a character about the future. I cannot see him caring about parents he never knew, nor seems to even remember, nor caring about his social life around the dojo when he had one set goal in mind - which was to become a master swordsman.

Luffy was the one who introduced him to the power of bonds and love, along with the rest of the crew as they grew around him, and he grew to love them back. I don't really see any other setup for Zoro, because again, why would he care? How has it affected him BEFORE Kuina? We simply have no reason to see that, and Zoro has no reason to care about it either. The only piece missing, in my opinion, is WHY Zoro cared so much about PROVING his strength as an orphan. But that could easily boil down to...because he was an orphan, and had nothing better to do as a rowdy kid lmao.

Zoro's life is filled with coincidences, that's true, but I'd be shocked if they mattered at all? Oda also connected Otama to the Kurozumi family, but he said it didn't mean anything, it was just a coincidence.

I'm not totally opposed to Zoro having MORE backstory, I am just unsure why it'd matter when...there's nothing to answer. We HAVE the answer for why he's an orphan, and it's because pirates raided his village when he was a kid. It's pretty standard stuff, and that's all it has to be. Because Zoro only looks forward, and that's the only place he'll ever look. He's not being chained down by his past, he's being pushed by a promise, so he will run towards the future if it means fulfilling that promise.

[kakudo45]

do you have any tips on how you color? your coloring style is similar to what i’m trying to achieve but i have no idea how you actually pull it off

Hi!

I'm gonna separate this question into rendering vs. coloring. I'm not sure which you mean so hopefully tackling both covers your question, although I'm not really the best at explaining things.

For rendering, I usually paint using some square/textured brush (kind of like the one pictured below and a low opacity circle brush (the standard in photoshop, and most painting software). Lately I like using brushsets from the digitalbrushes account here on tumblr.

I sketch, and then paint underneath the sketch. after i paint for long enough I either delete the sketch layer or I merge the two. I like to add texture where the midtones are. I think a lot of my "rendering style" is probably owed to that.

I like adding texture around midtones. I also like adding limited random variation of color and value to large areas. Like below, you can see that I added a slightly different shade of red to the lit part of the apple in step 3. If you add variation or slight gradation to the large light shapes or shadow shapes you can create the impression of depth. At the very least it looks more fun.

Also a disclaimer, but for the last two drawings I did I've kind of went off kilter. The process is the same but I used some oil paint brushes I downloaded and I pretty much added as much variation to every shape possible, which I would not recommend unless you're sure of what you're doing. But you can see here that even though I added variation (in color, brush stroke, etc) that the shapes are pretty readable and the light is very clearly separated from the shadow.

In terms of choosing color, I had a long stretch of time where nothing would look right to me. Things were colored really literally, with no regard for lighting or ambient color (background/environment surrounding characters). I would often fix things up using a gradient map and using color burn or multiply on 14%. Honestly, this is still a great way to make things look coherent, I really like these gradient maps on the CSP asset store if you want to look into them.

My colors improved a lot after I developed an eye for color/figured out what colors I like to put next to each other. I did this by saving and making a folder of any piece I saw that I liked specifically for color. By doing this I got a clearer sense of what kind of color schemes I tend to like. I suggest doing this as well so that you can figure out what kinds of color schemes and pairings you tend to enjoy most.

Hopefully this answers your question <: ] Apologies if this doesn't make sense, it's a bit of a long post.

[librarycards]

How’d you discover you were plural? If that’s ok to ask

of course! genuinely, it's less of a discovery that &i is/are plural, and more that plurality is a meaningful conceptual framework to apply to my/our existence.

to dip a bit into coming-out cliché, &i've never felt, like, singular; we've always been iterative. we hardly even share the same body. actually, the iterations we've been are sometimes tied to particular forms of embodimindment, not unrelated to other experiences i've had - disorderly eating/drastic weight changes/puberty/trans medical interventions/elective body modification/lived experiences of trauma. this, like many things, is something for a while we assumed everyone felt (and perhaps everyone would, if we as a society did not tamp down so violently on our inherent systemhood [we're made of systems]).

then, &i learned that not everyone referred to themselves with different pronouns directed toward different iterations, and that this actually offended some trans people &i tried to like, ~build community~ with. people don't like seeing selveshood as periodized, because that disrupts the narrative of linear progress/growing-up we like to ascribe to "being a person."

so we sat with this feeling of having grown sideways or crossways and learned about multiplicity (beyond harmful media/medical discourse) on tumblr. actually, &i think [S]arah learned about it back when she was knee deep in the whole indigo children thing lmao, because there was also soulbonding stuff etc. [don't bother with those types of sites, they're run by new age antisemitic anti-vaxxers, but obviously 9 year old [S]arah didn't know that].

when we began learning about multiplicity on tumblr, we were under the assumption that alters had to be far more clearly defined and transparently mapped than is true, &i think, for most systems. others have commented on the weird proximity to clinical confessional discourse that fixations on system mapping point toward: not because there's an inherent problem with system mapping, but because the idea that everyone/everymany must do this / leave evidence of their collective (and ultimately, legible) existence, is just bullshit, just like the stories we have to tell to receive "gender dysphoria" diagnoses.

i think what really changed our relationship with multiplicity was/is our friendship with @materialisnt. it's difficult to describe the degree to which mix moss have impacted &my life, both through chaim "formal" scholarship (the formal/informal binary is bullshit ofc) and through several years of deep friendship and unwavering solidarity. &i recognize in hindsight that &my longstanding interest in multiplicity - and alterhumanity writ large, because i am not a human and actually don't think any of us are or were? - was really just, you know. being an egg. many such cases. mix. moss's patience with &my questions & collective excitement at my interventions and thoughts gifted us the confidence to, only recently [and partially pursuant to &my dissertation, which includes discussion of alterhuman digital epistemologies and pedagogies] begin identifying with plurality. perhaps even "as", though that preposition has always skeeved &me out when it comes to identity stuff.

ultimately, &my relationship with plurality isn't a concrete object that we eventually dug up and slapped a nametag on. it's a meaningful, collaborative, and community-based signifier that helps us best situate ourselves in conversations about relationships and love and pain and time and all the important parts of. existing, we guess. it's a choice to generate linguistic and spatiotemporal friction be just kinda existing and not being "one human being". it is also something that feels deeply heart-aligned, something that allowed me to let out a breath we'd been holding for a long time, and free up space to think with more creativity and compassion toward those &i value most: that is, those rejected by the existing conditions we call "reality" and "commonsense" and instead think more capaciously, as ourselves, about different ways of being persons and people together.

[violentlyexplosive]

man, trying to find good fan-written work featuring a blind/visually impaired character (or reader) is like wading through waterfalls of literal shit. like I hate being mean about this kinda stuff, I understand not everyone on the planet knows what it's like to not be able to see properly, but for the love of GOD, GOOGLE IT. OR ASK SOMEONE. OR JUST DON'T WRITE ABOUT SOMETHING YOU KNOW LESS THAN NOTHING ABOUT.

if you're hell bent on writing a visually impaired or blind person, here are some quick pointers so you don't come across as an ableist prick:

99% of us don't hate being blind. some of us were born this way. others have had plenty of time to come to terms with whatever happened to us. for a whole lot of us, it is simply a fact of life, and not something we even really think a lot about on a day to day basis. I am sure there are tons of low vision people out there that do hate it, but it is an incredibly individualised and nuanced experience. please for the love of all literary goodness, don't do the whole "oh woe is me, I'm blind, however will I go on!!!" thing. it's tired, overdone, and frankly a little insensitive.

WE DON'T JUST SEE DARKNESS. WE DON'T SEE BLACK. WE DO NOT SEE. for some people, like myself, we have significant vision loss, but can still see clearly enough to move through life without much difficulty. for others, they might have large blind spots, and small sections of vision to rely on. only a very small percentage of us have absolutely 0 vision, and in those cases, it isn't "darkness" or "pitch black" that one sees- it is nothing. I know it can be hard to wrap your head around, but a common example used is: bend your arm and point your elbow forward. what does your elbow see? nothing, right? not blackness, not darkness- just the absence of sight. that is what total blindness looks like.

ok, so I'm aware this one people are getting better about, but it bears repeating: blind people do not touch faces to "see" them. why the fuck would we do that. I'm sure with close family members, romantic partners, or even friends, it may be something one does just for the fuck of it, or to make note of a specific feature (i.e. hair texture, nose shape, scars, etc,) but nobody is out here using their fingers to map out people's faces just on the reg. do you have any idea how awkward that would be. I don't know where your face has been, and I'd frankly rather just imagine the specifics of your features and admire your blurry visage WITHOUT my fingies, thank you very much.

OUR OTHER SENSES ARE NOT MAGICALLY ENHANCED. we're not superheroes, we're disabled. sure, over time, we might come to rely on our other senses more, and hone them better, but we're not fucking Daredevil. I can't hear the buzzing of my lightbulbs because I'm legally blind and super cool (unfortunately,) I hear them because I'm fucking autistic.

a good chunk of us don't know how to read braille. an unfortunate side effect of having text to speech functions on phone cameras is the loss of this skill. if i can't read something, I ask someone else to read it for me, or I take a picture and zoom in. braille differs from country to country, language to language, etc etc. even if I learned Irish braille (written as Gaeilge, by the way, so not even in English!) I would not be able to read braille in my native language of Swedish. and beyond drugstore products, it typically isn't used much. I've rarely, if ever, found braille menus, instruction manuals, books, etc. and with modern technology, learning and knowing braille is falling increasingly out of style.

not all blind eyes look milky/all white. my fully blind eye is constantly closed, but my functioning, legally blind eye is perfectly normal in appearance. in fact, you've probably met one or two people in your life who would qualify as legally blind/low vision who function and, through all outward appearances, are no different from you.

we are not weak little babies that need protecting. I'd argue that visually impaired people can probably get around better than some fully sighted people, purely because we're forced to be more aware of our surroundings. not to mention some of us have guide dogs or friends/family/what-have-you to help us manoeuvre when necessary. just because we can't see well doesn't mean we're damsels in distress incapable of wiping our own asses. we're people with personalities and skill sets and life experiences, not infants.

ok so I'm sure this has come across as aggressive and/or rude, but yknow what? I don't particularly care anymore. I have seen far too many ignorant and uneducated people try to write or otherwise portray blind/visually impaired characters using guesswork and stereotypes from television, and I've just hit a wall in terms of being able to disregard it and not care. I do care. a whole lot, apparently. I'm tired of seeing random people on the internet deciding they'll write a low vision character and butchering it so terribly it makes me physically cringe. if you have to write a character with a visual disability, I implore you to read a fucking book, google it for 15 minutes, hell, make a reddit post or something to ask actual visually disabled people about their experiences so you're not making a fool of yourself, talking out of your ass and insulting an entire category of human beings. it is that easy.

[lostfirefly]

You’ve Got the Same Dream as Me

Hello, kiddos! The idea for this fanfic came to me from a dream (again) I had about a month ago. Тhe main characters were Tom Cruise and Henry Cavill (don't ask me why), but with a light hand they have been replaced (sorry, guys). The main action of the dream took place somewhere in the sands. Аlthough this fanfic will feature Sir Crocodile and our beloved Buggy, the action shifts to the desert. No marines, ships etc. Sorry, not sorry :) The devil fruit's abilities are preserved. Catch the Mummy and Indiana Jones vibes :) I have no idea how many chapters there will be.

Since English is not my native language, errors may occur. As always, feel free to share your thoughts :) 

And thank you to my dear @yujo-nishimura and @laurasoretta for believing in me :)

Description: Catherine, a librarian who is searching for the trail of her sister who went missing on an expedition. Notes in books and diaries lead her to Cairo. There she finds Rika, a retailer from an artifact shop who, in exchange for selling her a map and equipment, insists that Catherine take her along. They get into a little (or maybe a big) adventure.. 

Warnings: 12+, I think. As always, no smut, angst, violence. Adventures and fun only. Buggy x OC, Sir Crocodile x OC.

Words: 700

The title is taken from «You've Got the Same Dream as Me» (Sonya Belousova & Giona Ostinelli) (One Piece, Netflix)

✎﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏﹏

Chapter 1

"I need one ticket, please! I need to get on that plane!". Catherine said pleadingly, snapping her fingers in front of the girl's face. "Do you understand what I'm saying?"

That was the last flight to Cairo for today. 

Tired and laden with bags Catherine begged the girl at the check-in desk to sell her a ticket. 

"I N-E-E-D T-O G-E-T O-N T-H-I-S P-LA-N-E". She spelled it out in an irritated voice. 

'You need help?" a girl's voice came through.  

"What? Oh, yes. I need to buy a ticket. This’s the last flight to Cairo, I cannot wait until tomorrow. But she..", Catherine pointed at the girl behind the counter, "Said there are no available tickets". 

"Well, yeah. This destination is very popular now, unfortunately, it doesn't help these checkout girls learn English well. I’m Laura, by the way", the brown-haired girl, adjusting the strap of her bag, held out her hand to Catherine. 

"Oh, sorry. I’m Catherine. Catherine Mitchell". 

"Well, Cath, today is your lucky day, I think", Laura said, pulling a small envelope out of the inside pocket of her jacket.

"What? Me and happy days are clearly bypassing each other", Catherine mumbled, scratching her neck.

"Well, I was supposed to go to Cairo with my boyfriend. But he dumped me right outside the airport. Shithead. Said he was bored with me... Anyway, I've got an extra ticket if you want it. As I can see, you need it more", Laura said with a wide smile. 

"Really? You're just gonna give me a ticket? I… I'm-- I can pay for it…", Catherine reached for her wallet.

"No, please! You owe me a cup of coffee and one pizza. Furthermore, it'll be nice to talk to someone normal on the flight", Laura held out the ticket.

"But how do I get on the ticket? It's under a different name".

"Come on, the staff are rubbish, they don't really look at the details", Laura said with a teasing tone. 

"That’s… Great! I guess. You’ve saved my life!", Catherine couldn't contain her joy. "In that case… Come on! Let me buy you coffee and the biggest pizza".

"Just a minute, ok? I'm gonna give my mum a quick call and tell her it's okay and my trip's not cancelled".

"Sure".

Laura stepped behind a column and pulled out her phone. After looking around at the people around her, she dialed a number.

"Sir, everything's on schedule. She bought it". 

⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥫⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭⥭

Dear passengers! Our plane has landed at Cairo airport. The temperature outside the window is +40 degrees.

"God, I'm going to die in this heat", Catherine groaned. 

"Well, you'll try not to die somehow. So.. I guess we'll say goodbye after baggage claim. Thank you so much for the company", Laura said, pulling a backpack off the luggage rack. 

"I can’t even express how thankful I am, Laura. Really". 

Walking out of the airport building with her suitcase, Catherine took a taxi and went to the hotel. When she finally got there, she shook out the contents of her backpack on the bed. 

"Where is... where is... ", Catherine was going through the papers and books that were all over the bed. "There it is! 15, Marineford Street. Hm.. Why does Cairo have a street with that name?"

Without wasting a second, Catherine put everything back into her backpack and ran out of the room. 

Within 30 minutes she was standing at the door of a small shop. Its entrance was decorated with a large brown door with peeling paint and a worn handle that had been probably tugged on for decades. 

"Rika's shop: your adventures begin here", Catherine whispered the name of the shop and rolled her eyes at the same second, "Oh my God, how original".

She started knocking on the door.

"Hello-o-o-o! People! Somebody? Anybody?", she put her ear to the door, hoping to hear the sound of footsteps.

"What's all the fuss? The shop's closed", said a woman passing by. 

"But I have to get to the shop!" said Catherine with hope in her voice. 

"Come back tomorrow, you lunatic. You'll get in then. The owner had already gone home. Get out of here".

"Come back tomorrow. Then you'll get in", Catherine muttered under her breath. 

There was nothing left for her to do but go back to the hotel, take a shower and burrow under the blanket. 

[aroaessidhe]

The Spider and Her Demons excerpts I saved in relation to queer / aroace /relationship hierarchy themes etc etc

some spoilers, obviously! this is just kinda a place to compile things & thoughts for myself to remember lmao

[Aunt assuming she's sneaking around with a boy]

Out of all the possibilities of where this would go, this path wasn't even on the map. 'I told you your friends are a bad influence,' Aunt Mei snaps. 'Distracting you from your studies. Do you know how dangerous it is for you to be around a boy?" Zhi's never even considered dating. Can't possibly imagine herself in a romantic or sexual relationship with another person. Not now. Not when she's eighteen. Not when she's twenty-five. Not when she's forty. Not ever. 'Kuku, where would I meet a boy?' Her panic has taken a backseat to anger. 'I'm at school all day, then I'm at work.' ...

obviously the main context here is that she's a spider demon with a bit of monstery body dysphoria/it's dangerous to get that close to other people; but considering the author is aroace, there's clearly intentional choices made.

And also: a story about a straight/allo character in the same position would just as likely have a plot about being desperate to kiss/date/be in a relationship 'like a normal teenager' but they're not allowed etc etc, whereas she just. Has Not Thought About It

This is not specifically related, just wanted to add:

Dior knows all the worst parts of Zhi and she's choosing to stay anyway. Zhi looks down between them, at Dior's hand flat on the concrete, long fingers splayed, nails sparkling in the light. Before she can think too hard about it, Zhi drops her hand to the ground too, pressing her palm close to Dior's, and spreading her fingers so their pinkys touch. 'I was thinking, Zhi says slowly. 'Maybe we could be friends.' She wants to repeat whatever it was Dior said in the library that day, but doesn't remember the exact wording. Hopefully this is good enough. Dior sits up, scooping Zhi's hand up into her own. She presses their palms together firmly, watching Zhi carefully before intertwining their fingers. Zhi can't say she doesn't flinch, but she tries not to, which should count for something. Dior curls the side of her mouth. A small show of gratitude she puts on just for Zhi. 'Sure,' Dior says. 'Let's be friends.'

--

They're talking about spiderdemon anatomy (which they don't really know anything about), and Dior says something like 'what if down there is different too' (and implied "surely you'll want to know at some point, if you sleep with someone..." )

'I’ve never had the urge to go prodding and poking up there, and I can't imagine that changing.' The vestiges of amusement and embarrassment are still bubbling in her chest. She looks to Dior, who's gone quiet. 'Wait.' Zhi stares, face on fire. 'You mean- What? That With another person? Nope. Hard pass. Never happening.' Dior doesn't ask her to explain, but she's staring in that weirdly intense way she does, like she's trying to hack into Zhi's brain and steal the information through sheer will power. 'Dude, I don't even like being looked at, really, let alone touched.'

'Anyway, even if I ever got past the supreme discomfort,' Zhi continues, 'it's too risky. Like, kissing would be off the table. I can't tell when my acid and venom will or won't work. Best-case scenario? Short-term paralysis. Worst-case scenario? Hole through the skull.' Dior's still staring at her, wordlessly. It occurs to Zhi she's been doing most of the talking. 'What about you? There's a rumour at school you've got some hot-shot lawyer boyfriend who works at Martin Place.' 'I don't know any lawyers.' 'You're not dating anyone, though?' 'I haven't the slightest idea what that would entail.' Dior shifts on the bed, lying down next to her, their shoulders pressed together, arms tangled. It's too warm in the room, and Zhi's starting to feel light-headed from exhaustion. 'Y'know ... a lot of people have this hierarchy of relationships:' Zhi holds a hand up as high as she can reach it. 'Most people put romantic relationships at the top, and family under that, and friends under that. ' She shifts her hand down a level, only to sigh, dropping it to her chest. 'But I'm never gonna date; I'm never gonna have a partner or a fiancé or a spouse. So family and friends - those are the two types of relationships I get. I didn't get to choose Aunt Mei, but I do get to choose my friends. Friendship's always gonna be the top tier relationship for me.' Dior's so quiet Zhi thinks maybe she's fallen asleep. When she turns her head to look, Dior's already looking right back. Their faces are too close, soft exhales lingering between them. Dior's lips part and the movement has Zhi's eyes dropping to her mouth.

There are a reasonable amount of moments of attraction like that, which are never actively acknowledged other than her freaking out and changing the conversation haha.

If I were to guess, I'd say there's probably more conscious attraction (of whatever form) on Dior's side of things (+ probably pretty touch starved from a somewhat emotionally neglectful childhood) in contrast to Zhi's Avoid Everything mindset lmao

While I think specificity around that could have been great - obviously they're not at the point to really examine the details of how they feel about each other during the book, and tbqh I do love the ambiguity of the aroacespec to lesbian attraction spectrum bc like....... a) common experiences there and b) you can be Both. i am probably both, i don't rly care to overanalyse details about myself lmao

(anyway)

Dior's father talking to Zhi:

'I have met many people in my life, and felt all the feelings they have felt, and none of them - no two people - love in the same way. The way a person loves. This is something unique to each heart. The way Quinlee loves Dior, it is not the same as the way your aunt loves you.' Zhi doesn't understand how he can possibly know that's true. Julien smiles gently, lifting his chin. 'You see the sunrise?' Outside, beyond the garden, the sun is rising in the distance, turning the sky orange and blue. 'If we both paint the same sunrise at the same time, even if we use the same brush, the same paint, the two paintings - they would look different, non?' Julien waits until Zhi meets his gaze. 'That is love.'

so true, king

-

Zhi talking to her other friend, who's just been rejected by a boy she had a crush on:

"I mean we were never official or anything, but I always thought ..? She trails off, shaking her head. 'I know,' Zhi says, because she does. Nadira always spoke of him with such fondness. 'He said he always saw me as just a friend.' A soft breeze picks up a strand of Nadira's hair, twirling it into her face. She brushes it away. 'Just a friend. I guess it made me feel like my friendships were these small, insignificant things that I'd been over-valuing, over-investing in.'

(i love the sort of flipping of this concept - usually it's from the POV of the aro person not the allo person who was rejected yet still doesn't appreciate their friendships being devalued)

'I just feel like I'm the one someone sits with in the waiting room before they start their real relationships, y'know?' She offers Zhi a smile that has no mirth, the movement making her tears spill over, rolling down her cheeks. Zhi takes Nadira's hand, intertwining their fingers and squeezing. I'll always be your friend,' Zhi says. 'Even when you meet a New Boy, when you get a job and make Work Friends, when you get married, buy a house, and have kids, and make Other Mum Friends. I'll be here, with you. I don't think there's anything just about that, Nadira.' 'That's not true.' Nadira sniffs, wiping her face. 'You're already out of the waiting room. Of all people, Zhi. I bet if Dior asked you to go swimming, you would go. If she asked you to go out for Tim Tam Chillers after school, you wouldn't say no to her, would you?'

Whenever there's a buy-one-get-one-free special at the canteen, Angela and Nadira will automatically go halves. Whenever they have to pair up for drills in PE, it's a given that Angela and Nadira will partner, and Zhi will have to find someone else. If Nadira ever gets married, Zhi doesn't doubt Angela will be her maid of honour. None of this has ever bothered her, because Zhi's fiercely grateful they want to be friends with her at all. "Ange knew before me, right?' Zhi asks. 'What?' About what happened with The Boy. You told Angela before you told me, right?' 'Yeah.. "That doesn't mean you love her more than you love me, does it?' 'I- Of course it doesn't.' Nadira's cheeks are stained now, flustered at the insinuation. 'I know,' Zhi says, smiling. 'I'm just saying. Just because I've told Dior stuff I haven't told you - it doesn't mean I love you any less.' Nadira looks like she wants to argue, like she wants to be mad, a cute little furrow between her brow. Eventually, she deflates, a frustrated huff leaving her lungs. 'This might be hard to believe, but there's nothing on the other side of the waiting room for me, Zhi says. 'Being invited to sit with you and Ange in that room - that's what I've been waiting for. That's happily ever after for me.' It feels like a confession. With the way Nadira's cheeks flush further, she seems to think so too.

--

On possibly being a demon and 'incapable of love':

'I really Wish you would stop talking about Dior like she’s a jar to store bugs in, Zhi says. 'Witch, demon, whatever - she's still a person.' Quinlee laughs, this loud, sharp crack of derision. 'Did you think she harboured some sort of affection for you? Some form of fondness? Dior cannot love. She is incapable of it. It's an act - a farce - to get her what she wants. Every word out of her mouth is calculated. Every action, planned.' 'She saved my life,' Zhi retorts. "She has no soul.' 'Do you?' Quinlee glares up at her, but it's slightly less intimidating when Zhi's standing above her. “She likes pork and chive dumplings with extra dipping sauce. She hates being bored, and she loves heights and stealing cars. She sucks at making jokes. She fucks up, but at least she tries to fix it. I don't care if you don't think she has a soul. The world is better with her in it, so I'm going to do everything I can to bring her back.' Zhi holds out a hand. 'Are you helping or not?''

I love this from the point of view of lovelessness - she doesn't counter it by saying 'yes she can love!!!!' she just. lists all the things that show caring etc without getting theoretical about it

And the very end:

To her absolute horror, Dior pulls Zhi's hand back, tucking her fingers against the warmth of her neck, palm against her jaw. Gaze unwavering, Dior turns her cheek into Zhi's hand and presses the softest, lightest kiss against the delicate skin of Zhi's wrist. Zhi's neck immediately starts to sweat. Oxygen is a foreign concept. The urge to build a cave out of silk and hide inside it is increasing with every second that ticks by. 'Is this how things are gonna be from now on?' Zhi wonders aloud. 'Because I am not brave enough to deal with any of... whatever this is.' 'Bravery isn't a lack of fear; it's moving forward in spite of it' Dior drops Zhi's hand, turning to look back out at China-town, appearing to be fascinated by the view.

(which really, is not much more than an expression of a desire[general] for something to be there, that is not being dealt with right now)

[gojou-violin]

Hello is it ok if I can request a streamer!kenma x new small streamer!fem or gn reader where kenma and reader are doing a stream together and kenma is flirting with reader and it ends up in a steamy make out session?

| pairing: kenma kozume x gn!streamer!reader

| warnings: 18+ MDNI; none, sfw.

| wc: 1k

| taglist: @aylitgirl , @thisbicc

| a/n: Ahhh yesss- I literally was talking to my friend about this the other day when I was doing hc’s for Kat (my Kuroken poly oc)!!!!!

You and Kenma had been close for a while. Being friends online was difficult at times, that part was easy to admit to yourselves, but having to find time within each other's schedules to talk and play games together was impossible sometimes-- Until you decided to say "fuck it" and start streaming, following in Kenma's footsteps. Over the past few years, Kenma had become the most successful streamer on YouTube since it was a fairly new platform for live streaming which gave him ample room to build a fanbase while doing whatever he wanted without the political strings that came with contracts on other platforms like Twitch. You, however, were anything but famous like him. Though you streamed here and there at first, when you decided to take it seriously in order to make it a living, you felt somewhat lost in what to do without relying on Kenma to give you views and subscribers.

However, Kenma was your best friend. It had been that way since long before he was ever famous. To you, he was still that shy kid who liked to hole himself up in his bedroom to play video games or watch anime all day; and he'd jump into VC with you whenever you were free. Now, he could see how much it meant to you to stream, because it was so obvious on your bright face every time you gained a new subscriber or earned even a single dollar donation-- You just wanted to make people's day. Money, vanity, popularity, who could give a fuck about any of that when you could entertain the 50-100 daily viewers you got on your own? He just wanted to help you out... If you could be that happy with such a small following, only Kenma could imagine the change you could bring about with a following like his.

So he invited you over one day to stream with him.

The plan was that you'd play some co-op and competitive LAN games like Star Wars Battlefront 2 and Mario Kart Wii respectively. Kenma plugged your stream by mentioning you in the title of his own, and he linked you in the description, on his socials, and even in his bio on YouTube. Why the hell he was going above and beyond for you, you weren't exactly sure; but this was Kenma, he was a sweet guy who cared a lot about his friends-- Who were you to say no to something he was so clearly excited about?

"No shot you're bumping me off the shortcut!" Kenma exclaimed irritably.

You grinned.

The two of you were three races deep in a four-race Grand Prix, which meant that this race was the decider of who would win after he was winning by only a few points since the cows on Moo-Moo Meadows seemed to favor him for some unknown reason. You were so relieved when the game randomly chose Mushroom Gorge as the last map. It was easy for you to get 1st on that map. Throughout your entire childhood, you had been preparing for this moment by going up against anyone who would entertain the idea of playing the same map over and over again, giving you the opportunity to memorize the perfect routes. Jump spots, wheelie lines, shortcuts, etc. were all necessary to get a huge lead on that map. And you knew it all by heart.

Kenma was struggling to keep up with you. He knew everything you knew, it came naturally to him since the two of you had played before and he learned it all from you just by watching the way you played; yet he couldn't seem to break away from you to maintain his spot in first place. The two of you kept exchanging the lead every turn or so. Finally, though, on the third and final lap, as the two of you took the shortcut on the last group of mushrooms, you used the banana you were carrying behind you to bump Kenma off the shortcut, which led to him falling into the abyss, resetting him to the jump before the mushrooms.

There was your lead. You could see the finish line just past the goombas.

The cheer of you winning rang through the speakers of his PC set up.

You looked over at chat who were laughing at Kenma who was trying to not fall further back into sixth place, while also cheering you on for doing it, for beating the best gamer on YouTube.

"Too damn easy, Kozume," you teased.

He finally passed the finish line, earning him sixth place in the race, second place overall in the Grand Prix.

Chat was spamming the emoji known as "Kek" in response to the way Kenma was frowning.

"I hate you..." he grumbled. "I had that... If you didn't knock me off, I would'a won."

You laughed. "It was a valiant effort, I must admit. But it wasn't enough."

As you reached down to the ground to grab your water bottle, Kenma was following you with his eyes, squinting angrily, and when you looked back up, your faces were extremely close. You gulped.

"Sore loser..."

Kenma wasn't smiling. "I could'a won that." He was inching closer and closer. "Rematch."

"We've been streaming for five hours, Kenma."

Without thinking twice, he reached over to the Stream Deck on his desk and pressed the button to end his stream. You were still staring at one another, his breath hot on your nose, his lip twitching before suddenly, without any warning or hint as to what he was going for, Kenma pounced. His lips smashed against yours. He dropped the Wii controller so that he could lace his fingers in your hair. He pulled in order to bring you closer. He melted into you when you started kissing him back.

"Kenm..." Your words were muffled by his desperation.

"I would'a won," he mumbled.

You rolled your eyes and kissed him harder-- Your best friend! The two of you were making out, something that was probably obvious to everyone who had been watching before Kenma abruptly ended his stream.

"Rematch... Later..." you replied.

Kenma smirked before pulled you onto his lap, the two of you fighting to speed things up before you'd die of unbearable need.

[marengogo]

3 YEARS WITH BTS 💜🙌🏾🎉

THIS IS BTS on Spotify. On Random starting from VIBE.

[Music is a very big part of my life and I’m MOSTLY INCAPABLE of writing without music, so I just thought I'd share what I am listening to while writing this]

–🐺–🐺–🐺–

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME,

I’M SO GRATEFUL TO BE ARMY~~~💜,

HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!

I will NEVER FORGET how I was like “Damn they are trending uh? … let’s see what they got?”, I clicked on the following link and THAT WAS IT FOR ME.

though I became obsessed with that particular performance of ON, which brought me to check out ON KINETIC MANIFESTO, and got me to add ON as a favorite song on spotify, which I listened to everyday as I went to work. I still couldn't imagine the me of today. 

I then decided to listen to the whole of “Map of the Soul 7” and not gonna lie, I would have the following songs on repeat, every day:

ON never the SIA version, sorry SIA 🙏🏾

Black swan

UGH

Filter

It even got to a point where I would listen to only Filter on repeat 😬😬😬 … Mind you I still didn’t know who any of the members were by that point. Eventually I decided to take a look at the members and I started and ended with the leader 😂. We seemed to have so many things in common: English not being our first language, love for anything intellectual, reading, etc. I couldn’t get past RM. So it was MoTS + RM for me. But nothing serious yet, life still proceeded as normal.

Full into COVID, I had the worst sleeping pattern still do, but that is a different story. So I just so happened to be awake when on August 21, 2020 Dynamite premiered. I had no idea what a comeback was, or anything associated, I just watched as the seconds counted down and then watched this colour video: I WAS SHOOK 😂😂😂. I also remember very clearly that I made my very first BTS gif out of that video, which was Tae at the very end not sure where the gif I made is now but the scene was the following:

So then I got into Tae, I was like “Who is this Cali-looking handsome thing?”. In the same fashion, through reactions, music videos, interviews, RUN BTS, etc, I started being obssessed with each member at a time, for different weeks at a time 😂😂😂. Eventually having to admit that, even though given the chance I'd marry Kim Seokjin 😂😂😂, I actually loved all of them.

As life kept going on, I had a whole series of firsts (photoshoots, reactions, RUN etc) but it took me up to some time in January 2021 to realise that I indeed hadn’t spent a single day of my life since February 25, 2020 without consuming any BTS related content. OF ANY KIND AND WILLINGLY. From that realisation I then happily dove into the rabbit hole, but also came up an amazing journey of mental health recovery:

I OWE THEM SO MUCH.

Because I can feel getting sappy, and in all honesty I want keep enjoying my ARMY birthday with a smile on my face, I’ll stop here. I guess in a way I need to thank Jimmy Fallon uh 😂😂😂?

LOVE YOU MY BOYS, MORE THAN YOU WILL EVER KNOW 💜 The following was the ever first BTS photoshoot that came across my timeline.

Always so gratefully yours 🫰🏾💜,

Marengo. 

[karinyosa]

Hello fellow asp enthusiast lol not to ask you like…. Half of your ask meme but 4, 5, 6, 13, and 14??? I would love to hear asp thoughts

no no believe me this is the ideal situation since i have a limited number of asp mutuals so THANK you for all the questions i am rubbing my hands together gleefully

4. favorite part?

i’m bad at favorites but one part that always gets me is the section where gene talks about “his” moment in history, which in his words is supposed to be the moment where if asked generally about the world or “the world today”, a person will think of this moment/era. and his is of course devon during the war, aka his school days. i just found that very poignant, and i think it’s so in line with everything we know about gene, how he continues to live in this very specific traumatic time bubble and how it has never really died for him, it’s just as present as it always was, he remembers it just as clearly as he always has and (as the explanation implies) always will. it haunts him, it is alive for him still, he carries it around inside, etc etc. it hits me in the heart a bit

5. favorite quote?

“[E]verything at Devon, the playing fields, the gym, the water hole, and all the other buildings and all the people there were intensely real, wildly alive and totally meaningful, and I alone was a dream, a figment which had never really touched anything. I felt that I was not, never had been and never would be a living part of this overpoweringly solid and deeply meaningful world around me.”

goodness does this one hurt/hit! again i’m bad at favorites, but after i read this in middle school i was like i think i know exactly what he’s talking about in fact i think he’s hit the nail on the head. i was obsessed with that quote for quite a while and made this art piece that was a watercolor painting of devon at sunset and then i had a cut-out sketch of gene i’d done on looseleaf that i pasted in the middle. and yeah that’s exactly how i feel about it

6. brinker opinions? love or hate him?

LOVE! i cannot lie i love that boy and i also think he sucks 🫶🫶🫶 he has that lovable smarmy rudeness, which i can’t find flatly hateable. and i mean, he’s a funny guy, like he writes those poems and i think they’re very much written to be at least kind of funny. i’m not an apologist in the sense that i don’t think he did nothing wrong, but i find him a fun and interesting character with fun and interesting flaws. he also has a level of conviction about everything that he believes that is kind of endearing to me, especially when he does that 180 at the end of the book about his war opinions. he’s all, i LOVE the war everyone should come do the war with me, and then by the end he’s like i fucking hate the war. lol or at least he thought it was stupid and was sort of disillusioned about it. which was especially interesting in the context of that allusion to his Complicated relationship with his father, plus the fact that gene was AWARE of how complicated it was. i love the camaraderie implied by those two’s wariness of each other’s parents lol. and i love to think about their relationship after devon. i like to think brinker continues his 180 away from his father’s politics and expectations and becomes the loud bisexual that the spirit of gore vidal inside him is willing him to be, and i think down the line he’d be a lot more open and liberated about his sexuality than gene. but i mean, gene’s a low bar to beat in that department. i am a capricorn brinker truther

also, i'm a firm believer in the idea that all of the main four are queercoded in various ways, and i find him interesting to place in the tapestry of queerness/map of gay drama that asp paints. i'm majorly mixing metaphors but whatever. brinker is obsessed with monopolizing the attention and time of gene, while also feeling the need to present himself as morally superior to the object of his affection, to the point where he takes on literally the role of a judge. like there is something deeply wrong with him but not just in the silly asshole way and i think we haven't talked about that enough. i imagine his relationship with popularity and having kind of a curated public face/persona is more similar to gene's than it seems, and i think they understand each other in ways that neither of them were necessarily able to do with finny, which is why their friendship remains strong even at the end the book. plus i've always thought they knew each other before the events of the book took place. there's a lot of shared history there and i think that would cause them to continue to share their lives even after enlisting. this went on a tangent i didn't intend, but i have a very detailed idea of their lives after the war lesjdkksdlj

13. appearance/voice headcanons?

finny:

has heterochromia, parts of his eyes are different colors

very melodic voice, a bit higher than average (the melodic part might actually be canon)

dimples

tan for a white guy, freckles

bad at volume control, always ends up talking Loudly. if you take him to a diner, the next table over will hear his entire half of the conversation, terrible in libraries, etc

never wears his uniform fully properly. it's always folded up or modified in some way or he's just not wearing part of it

i think he has curly hair, but the color changes in my head all the time

gene:

brunette bowl cut bitch. the early 2000s movie was so right about the bowl cut. hair is wavy

pale, sunburns easily

i always draw him with these big downturned glassy eyes, always looks a little teary

ill-fitting clothes (hand-me-downs from his brother)

BAD posture that makes him palpably little next to other people

i think he has a weird like tired quality to his voice that i think dane dehaan also has. not raspiness but that kind of low, slow, round, weirdly nasally sound. is that a tired quality? idk but he and dane dehaan both have it

this is not a headcanon this is completely canon but his ass does not have a southern accent or at least not a very strong one. he was playing it up to get attention

brinker:

in ms/hs i headcanoned that he had some form of a buzz cut or crew cut at devon because he was such an enlistment enthusiast

gene described him as athletic looking which in middle school i could only conceptualize as buff. so now i just imagine him stocky, wide, and chubby, with a brief period of weight loss during/after the war

lipless. notably so

i think he cares the most about fashion out of the main four in that elitist rich people private school way, so he’d have all the right pieces and brands, everything would fit properly

enunciates very sharply. has like, a teacher voice lmao

blond but like of course he is

leper:

light brown hair, kinda dorky middle part

very quiet, breathy voice. people ask him to speak up often

overgrown hair. grandma always says he needs a haircut

i am a tall leper truther. i think he’s a beanpole and i think he’s the tallest one. i had a friend who thought the opposite

layered the fuck up in terms of clothing

the book mentions him wearing “spectacles” when he goes off to find the beaver, which were probably just snow goggles or something, but i like to think he wears glasses

leftie with an always-stained hand (paint, pencil lead, etc) and badly bitten nails

lots of knitwear from gramma

14. what would you change about the book apart from [REDACTED]?

you know i’ve admired and liked a separate peace for so long and spent so much time dissecting its various intricacies that i just haven’t been in the mindset of looking for/noticing things i want to change about it very much. if anything, i think leper’s ptsd or “madness” or whatever it was was handled poorly and with an obvious lack of understanding of what that was and how it worked, although to be fair the mental illness knowledge at the time was probably lacking in general. leper’s actions and choices at the end of the book are explained away by generic tv movie craziness when i think it could’ve been a lot more interesting to explore the implications of leper having more obvious agency in those choices, leper actively choosing to be vengeful towards gene (he definitely had reason to be!) and battling with that internally during the trial. his explosions of emotion would’ve been more impactful to me if that had been the case

i would’ve of course loved for the book to be canonically queer, just so we could get a more explicit exploration of each character’s relationship to their queerness and how it colors the book’s pet topics of repression, rivalry, devotion, and coming of age, but i don’t even think it’s necessary because you can truly just read the book as if it were queer and nothing need change. like it all works, no leaps in thought or reading-into required. i mean it certainly helps to do those things, and i think reading into things is often part of a good reading experience, but it is literally about gene’s repressed desire for finny and the unintended consequences of that repression, among other things, but very explicitly that. plus there's the ass paragraph and the characters’ relationships with family, etc etc. like gene LITERALLY stops himself from telling finny how much he means to him at the beach and that could just as much be about gay love as straight boybestfriendship, in fact i think the case is stronger textually for it being queer than not. no straight person can read asp and not have at least one moment of, hmm this seems gay, but you can absolutely just read it as gay without issue. as much as i would love to see the "canon" version of their queerness, i am also very comfortable with the amount of freedom we have to take it in many different directions ourselves, and i think there's something very poignant and true about asp's queerness being heavily implied but never outright confessed

[genericpuff]

I appreciate your art style! It’s very confident with strong shapes and great body language. Who are your inspirations and do you have any advice for drawing efficiency because I always get hung up on the small things and it keeps me held back

Aw thanks so much! Regarding my inspirations, I grew up on a lot of manga, animation, and video games, so many of my inspirations are Japanese artists in the gaming and manga industry. Included but not limited to: Takeshi Obata (the artist behind Death Note, Bakuman, Hikaru No Go, Ral Grad, etc.), Tetsuya Nomura (FF VII, FF X, Kingdom Hearts, The World Ends With You, etc.), and Akihiko Yoshida (FF III, Bravely Default, Nier: Automata, etc.)

But honestly? I kinda tend to just grab whatever I can learn from whoever's art I feel like studying. There are a lot of webcomic artists and modern digital artists who I've learned so much from over the years just by observing their art and identifying what they do that almost feels unique to them. Like, the creator of Two Guys and Guy? I always like how he draws elbows. Or the creator of Alfie, I love how he stylizes eyebrows and body proportions of all shapes and sizes! And of course when it comes to those aforementioned inspirational artists, Tetsuya Nomura's line quality is top notch, and I learned a lot about how to color from Obata.

I really rambled there, but inspiration comes from so many places! <3

In regards to the second part of your question, honestly, that confidence just comes from a lot of practice and drawing the same things over and over and over and over and over-

Anyways, I've been drawing webcomics for a number of years now, so along the way I've sorta had to learn tricks and shortcuts to make the process a bit more efficient and less headache-inducing. I think after all that, the core things I can recommend are:

Learn how to draw from the shoulder and elbow vs. the wrist. This will allow you new motions that can accommodate long, confident lines and shape structures. Tiny strokes are great for detailing, but long swooping lines are the best for getting in gesture, form, and line clarity! Plus it's just healthier for your body all around, helps engage your shoulder muscles and reduces the potential risk for carpal tunnel ;)

Keep your toolset simple! I know it's easy to sort of want to just collect and own every single brush out there (especially if you're a digital artist) but honestly, the best way to be efficient is to simplify your kit and process its strongest tools. You can accomplish so much with just a good ole' fashioned round brush, soft airbrush, and blur/blend/smudge tool of your choice - all the fancy ones are simply there to make your life easier after you've learned how to draw the fancy stuff those brushes are trying to replace, IMO (ex. I know how to draw things like leaves and bark with the round brush... so having brushes to do it for me is way handier nowadays! But it's only because I know how to draw them normally that I can ensure I'm using those tools properly, if I'm explaining that clearly ?)

Always be open to trying new industry tools, there is no such thing as 'cheating' (barring blatant theft lol). I don't think a lot of people realize just how many artists across every art industry use tools and techniques designed to make the process more efficient, like 3D models, photobashing, gradient mapping, color balancing, tone curving, etc. to help speed up the creation process and turn an okay drawing into a great one. Of course, none of these tools can substitute for actual skill, you still gotta learn how to use these tools properly in addition to learning your foundations, but those super efficient artists definitely aren't working from the same process that everyone else is, it's different for everybody and it's all about finding what tools work best for you! And the only way to do that is to try 'em :)

Remember that the core of creating and presenting art is expressing an idea to your audience. There's no pre-requisite to how 'detailed' that idea needs to be to be understood, because 1.) your audience may interpret it entirely different from how you intended anyways and 2.) your audience is way better at 'filling in' the details than we give them credit for! One such artist that I can recommend you look at is WLOP, their paintings are well known for being gorgeously rendered and almost 'hyper-realistic' but when you actually zoom in on their paintings, you'll find many of the 'details' are very basic, often times just splatters of a round brush. Here's an example:

From that first glance, it looks like an incredibly detailed hyper-realistic painting, but zoom in a little and you'll see all the messy brush strokes and where they used brushes that are all incredibly simple (I could recreate the same look of the owl with just the transparent watercolor brush in CSP!) Regardless of the details not being rendered out as much as we'd assume, we still assume that what were looking at is completely rendered down to the last pixel, because our brains are doing all the work to fill in those details. WLOP focuses on shape, color, and form first before worrying about nitty gritty details, and their art doesn't suffer at all even when they don't bother with detailing at all. Pretty neat, huh?

THAT WAS A LOT LOL But I hope that helps ? I try not to keep it at "just practice" because often times that gets misconstrued as just "draw a lot" when if you don't know what you're lacking or what piece you might be missing in the puzzle, then of course it's gonna feel like you're just bashing your head against a wall! It's like teaching someone how to skate or ride a bike or drive a car, practicing will definitely do more than not practicing, but there are additional things you can learn and apply to make that learning process work for you rather than against you.

That's all for now! Best of luck in your journey! Remember that the key is to just take it at your own pace, be comfortable with making mistakes (it's the only way to learn!), and have fun! Being able to make art efficiently is great and all, but having fun and enjoying yourself is definitely the most important thing! <3

[zorilleerrant]

I like the idea that the people of Gotham know there are multiple Robins, and it's always funny if they don't know how many, but I like the idea that in the general conception there are more Robins than there actually are

there are so many designs for Dick's first costume that at this point it's easiest to assume he made tons of them and tried them out at different points. what if people thought these were job interviews and none of these early sidekicks landed the job?

as Dick gets older (and this holds true for Tim as well) his personality changes and becomes more mature. depending on when any extended absences might have occurred, people might think this is a new Robin with a different personality

many costume redesigns. each of these should be a new Robin in the general consensus, not just Red Robin. while I like people being aware that some heroes used to be Robins, I want it to be a matter of great debate which Robin became which hero

if you want to include the part about Jason dyeing his hair (whether by choice or demand) that should definitely be a new Robin unrelated to the old one

that one time Steph had a terrible hair day should be a special case Robin that everyone remembers. there's a debate about whether the girl Robin before her and the girl Robin after her are the same Robin, but everyone agrees Big Hair Robin is different

weapon changes should also figure for new Robins. i think this applies mostly to Damian, who's used a ton of different weapons, but people should classify the Robins into Staff Robins, Batarang Robins, Sword Robins, etc.

while we can argue as the audience who does and doesn't count as Robin, would the people of Gotham be aware of whether Batman supported or trained that character? so the average resident would definitely count Maps as a new Robin, and anyone else who wore the Robin colors, even without using the name

Jason dressing up as Robin for revenge would definitely look like a new Robin without context so let's pretend that everybody in the world saw that version. maybe even thought it was the same Robin (back again) that left the city to make his own team

villains dressing up as Robin or creating fake Robins in order to trick Batman etc. might not look noticeable from the outside. so while Gothamites know this happens sometimes, the fake Robin might have helped them (to maintain cover, etc.) and so they think it was another real one

disguises by other people pretending to be Robin (friends and coworkers etc.) could get noticed and catalogued, especially by avid birdwatchers

would they know about all the alternate universe and time traveling etc. Robins? some would clearly come from rifts in spacetime and that would be on the news, but other ones they might just think were another short lived Robin

plenty of potential for deaging hijinks

of all the kids who dress up as Robin just for fun, how many helped someone in need? defended the helpless? did something good for their neighborhood or the city? stood up for each other? how many did it over and over again, just to do what they could?

[cthulhubert]

Alan Dean Foster's "Journeys of the Catechist" was a formative book series for young me. The main character, Ehomba, a diligent shepherd and sage, was directly inspirational. I think I read it when I was 16, so more than half my life ago (sits down dizzy with that realization).

It also stands out in my memories because it had a much more folkloric tone than most of the fantasy books I'd read around then.

I've had... mixed results on rereading books I loved when I was young (ditto watching shows etc). But I decided I might as well bite the bullet, see what new things I could spot.

Thankfully, this one was still good. Well. It had its flaws, but they were ones I recognized back then. The big one is that it... honestly maybe should've been condensed to one book. By the end of Carnivores of Light and Darkness, you've seen most of Foster's good ideas, so Into the Thinking Kingdoms and Triumph of Souls felt repetitive.

Spoilers:

A small handful of things I'd glossed over before stuck out to me. More women hit on Ehomba than I'd realized, and he briefly considers cheating with one before choosing not to.

Unlike most of the fantasy books I read around then, Catchist had no map. And the book is never explicit about this one, so it was fun to realize that the setting is, in fact, a parallel, or possibly future Earth. Ehomba starts his journey somewhere in Africa, crosses the Sahara and the Mediterranean, travels through the Iberian peninsula, and crosses the ocean to the Americas and travels there. I'd realized this in my first read through, actually. But it was neat to see it hold up. Can't give my past self too many points, because parallel or future post-apocalypse, or some mythological pseudo-past Earth was a really common fantasy trope in the late 80s through the 90s.

His swashbuckling rogue side kick was stupider than I remembered.

One of the things I really loved about the series was the ending. The whole series is because Ehomba has taken on the task of a dying knight who washed ashore near his village: to secure the return of a princess, kidnapped to become the bride of an evil sorcerer emperor across the sea. The twist is that once he gets there, she doesn't want to return! She's fallen in love with the evil emperor, and wants to stay. Unfortunately, says Ehomba, my mission isn't do what you want, it's get you home, and the mission is what I have sworn to do. So he counter-kidnaps her, drags her back to her people. Then, obviously, since this is a dick move, he re-anti-counter-kidnaps her and they adventure back to the empire where he drops her off before heading home.

Here's the biggest one I missed in my initial read through. I remembered her saying that she'd realized the emperor's virtue one day. She'd discovered that he was some other, highly discriminated against race (I read it as something like a neanderthal with stubby legs), constantly wearing armor to hide it. Somehow I'd come to an interpretation that he was actually a good guy but playing the role of a harsh ruler to get his people to work together. That "evil" was mostly propaganda.

NOPE. The man is vile. He visits a fate worse than death on a servant for dropping one of his plates. He spends large amounts of his kingdoms wealth on frivolous entertainments for himself. The thing that had been clearly written between the lines, that young me still missed? The princess has a fetish for his people. She is almost sweating when she talks about his "virtue". That's the reason she wants to stay. She gets hornt up for the protruding brow ridge.

(No idea where this one came from, but somehow I'd even remembered thinking that he didn't have much magic, that that was all showmanship to mislead people. But no, he's turning people into living furniture with a wave of his hand.)

Honestly, this revelation is even more in line with some of the themes of the book. He has an almost daoist attitude. Ehomba isn't out there to fix everyone's problems. He's not gonna defeat the evil emperor. Sure he'll extend a helping hand if it's on the way (a favorite memory was him giving a doll to a little girl who's been kicked out of her home by a sheriff of Nottingham type; who realizes the doll is special and steals it; the doll kills him that night). But undertaking his chosen burden is what's really important to him.

I also need to reiterate how dumb the swashbuckling rogue sidekick is. He asks, one last time, if Ehomba isn't really a wizard. Ehomba, having solved 95% of their problems with tools he mentions were given to him by his fellow villagers: "I promise you. I am no more a wizard than anybody in my village." That night he initiates his son into adulthood, taking him to the special cave where his people store their lost knowledge of magic on books with pages of carved ruby.

[watercolormogai]

hi sorry for the mini vent but i'm so tired of having to say i'm pro para because like... imagine it had to be that way with any other disability. "yeah i'm pro autism." "i'm pro bpd" it sounds so fucking stupid. i don't know if i make sense but what i'm trying to say is that it sucks we have to treat paraphilias differently than any other disability or disorder or mental illness. i hope this doesn't come across as like anti-para or anything im bad with words lmfao

honestly ? v feel the same way

it sucks to have vy disorders painted as so horrible and disgusting , no one would actually ever support them except fake troll accounts . it sucks that theres basically no community (besides the radqueer community , but v'm clearly not in that) where there are a lot of people who understand and accept it . even people who "accept" it go on to talk about how "harmful paraphilias" are gross and immoral and only the "non-harmful kinks people pretend are paraphilias" are good and okay .

it absolutely sucks that v have to repeatedly say that v'm pro-para and still have people have no idea what paraphilias actually are and be against them because of that . like you said , nobody has to do that with any other disability , and even when people put "people who believe in narc abuse" on their DNIs there is really no one in the mogai community who is actually like that . meanwhile paraphiles are constantly painted as so incredibly horrible and wrong that people literally side with TERFs and call bigots "better" for not supporting paraphiles .

a lot of the anti-para shit in the community comes from people not actually understanding what paraphilias are or how they work . if v try to say "well someone with BPD isn't inherently violent and abusive because of their violent thoughts , and paraphiles aren't either" , v'm told that v'm ableist and a horrible person for daring to compare two disorders . if v try to say "people think you can cure being attracted to the same gender , but you obviously can't , so it's not very hard to understand that you can't cure being attracted to a child or an animal" , v get called homophobic and harassed for daring to say that pure innocent gay people are even slightly similar to the gross awful pedos . people who hate something are never just going to see one post and then suddenly change . they aren't going to see a hundred posts and even think about changing . a lot of ableists have said that even if it was their best friend who came out as a paraphile , theyd tell them to kill themself . so the lack of knowledge and understanding is going to take a long , long time to change , as absolutely frustrating as that is .

(plus , the fact that people think that any attraction to minors is pedophilia . that is not true and one of the main reasons why v feel the urge to punch anyone who says "i call maps pedophiles because thats what they really are!!!" because no you idiot map means any attraction to minors and pedophilia is only towards prepubescent children . the terms hebephilia , nepiophilia , ephebophilia , etc exist for a reason .)

it absolutely sucks to have to repeatedly say "yes , v support all disabled and neurodivergent people , yes including paraphiles they are still neurodivergent / disordered" . it should be basic common sense that all disabled and neurodivergent people are wonderful and amazing and your disorder doesnt make you a bad person , but for some reason it isnt . it constantly makes ve frustrated and angry because people choose to believe the media and hate paraphiles instead of just listening and understanding . having to say that v'm pro-para over and over is incredibly frustrating and makes ve just wanna hit things because oh vy gods why cant people just stop being so fucking ableist , but as frustrating as it is v know it's not going to change and until then we will just have to keep saying it over and over until people start understanding .

paraphiles being treated as "worse than" or "different" than other disorders is stupid and just ableism . no disorder is "worse than" any other . every disorder is morally neutral no matter what . if a paraphile hurts someone else , it is not "someone abused me because theyre a paraphile" it is "someone abused me becuse theyre a bad person" . "pedophilic abuse" is no more real than "narc abuse" . if an adult grooms a child , they are a predator , and actually that vast majority of predators are not pedophiles at all and the vast majority of pedophiles never groom / abuse anyone , so they probably arent even a pedophile . "dont armchair diagnose anyone" includes calling someone a pedophile because they hurt a child . dont call your abuser a narcissist because they probably werent and even if they were they didnt hurt you because of their npd they hurt you because they were an abuser . it is the same with paraphiles . treating paraphiles as "different" or "inherently wrong" only pushes them further and further away from any sort of help they may want to find and leads them to hurt themselves and others .

sorry that v kinda went off on a rant , but v have A Lot of opinions about this , as you can probably tell lol