#I may update this scene with further little details

[catartac]

The Wizard Sky’s Private Study

Edited to include the night version

[feyburner]

I ??? woke up at 3am with this scene fully written in my mind palace and quickly jotted it down in the Notes app

*

Clark’s shaking his head before he realizes he’s doing it, and feels a twinge of embarrassment at his own bad manners when Bruce stops mid-word to look at him, brows raised.

“No?” he says.

“No,” Clark says, again without thinking, and again with the reflexive urge to apologize. Somewhere his mother is tutting without knowing why. But he doesn’t apologize, because he’s already saying, “No, it can’t—it can’t be that.”

“Okay,” Bruce says slowly. “Can you elaborate?”

He is, honestly, having trouble taking his eyes off the screen. The mockup design of his new suit is there, dark and sleek, ridged like tactical gear. The blue is like the last shade of evening before you can’t call it evening anymore, the color of nine PM in Kansas in July, so exact there’s a strong chance Bruce color-picked it from a photo. The yellow accents are the cool fluorescent yellow-green of lightning bugs. The red is dark as arterial blood. Every aspect of the suit has been updated—the colors deeper, the angles sharper, the S extending to the corners of its frame—but Bruce has done it without changing the fundamentals. It’s immediately recognizable as the Superman suit, just… well, a little cooler, maybe. A little more of the times. Even the tailoring is modernized. The neckline. The shape of the boots. Where the belt hits at the waist. Clark can tell just by looking that Bruce has not only spent a lot of time on this in general, he’s spent a lot of time designing it specifically with Clark in mind, Clark’s needs and preferences and the small discomforts of his current suit, things he might have mentioned offhand after a mission but never with the assumption that Bruce was listening or filing it away. No doubt the next slides of this presentation will detail all the hidden features of the new suit, and they’ll all be incredibly thoughtful if not slightly overkill, and Bruce will pretend his sole motive here was practicality and risk reduction and respond to any thanks with a curt nod.

And Clark wants to thank him. He will. It’s just.

“It can’t be… cool,” he says, inane. Bruce is watching him with that steady look that used to feel clinical, piercing, and now mostly reads as attentive. “It can’t be—like yours. Tactical, military-grade.”

“Lightyears beyond, actually.”

“It has to—Ma said once, a kid should be able to draw it with crayons. You know? I can’t look like a weapon. I have to—I want to look like a friend.”

He can feel himself flushing. It’s rare that he speaks like this, and rarer still that he does so while being stared at intently. Bruce may think of himself as the darkness, but his gaze is a spotlight: unwavering and revealing and more a little sweat-inducing, for one reason or another.

“Sometimes, when I show up, people laugh,” Clark says. “If it’s somewhere out of the way, where they haven’t seen me before. I show up and I look like a festival performer. It’ll be the worst day of their lives, and they’ve got no reason to trust my face, but when they see what I’m wearing—it goes from ‘Who are you?’ to ‘Who is this guy?’ And that’s a good thing.”

“Hard to be afraid of a man dressed in primary colors,” Bruce says, almost to himself.

“Exactly.”

“I see. Thank you,” he says, “for explaining.”

Clark tries not to show how surprised he is to hear that. Judging by the crook of Bruce’s mouth, his success is negligible. “Of course. Sorry I didn’t—I mean, thank you, obviously, for going to such trouble. I didn’t mean to come in here and—I really do appreciate it, I can tell you put a lot of work in—”

Bruce’s eyes cut away. “No. No need. I didn’t ask, before I…. It was only a first draft. If you’re amenable, I’ll incorporate your feedback into the second one.”

“Oh! Yeah. Yes, of course, but you really don’t have to—”

“If you have any further notes, I would like to hear them.”

There’s something determined in the lines of his face. Clark has the sense that this moment is important, that it’s a turning point, even if he’s not sure why. It feels like striking out into a sea of ice, a blank white expanse under which something precious and vital is hidden, has been hidden all along, just waiting for him to find it. To want to.

“Sure,” he says. He looks back at the suit and swallows, and knows Bruce will see the flicker of his throat and take some meaning from it, and wishes he knew what the meaning was. Or maybe Bruce won’t notice or read into it at all. Maybe Clark needs to calm down, in fact. “Um. I don’t want to assume, but does it… do things?”

“It does things,” Bruce confirms, after the barest pause. “Let me show you the next slide.”

[steamberrystudio]

07/07/2024 Tumblr Devlog

Hallo everyone!  Time for the tumblr update! Whii~iich I think I may have skipped a couple - it looks like I did that annoying thing where I wrote up an update and *forgot to post it*. 

Sorry about that! 

So what have I been doing lately? Well. Lemme tell ya.

I wrote 23,000 words this week, for one. I am ded. ┗( T﹏T )┛

But let's jump into the details because in the most recent update I see, I was still revising chapter 10.

Summary:

Finished revising, proofreading, and formatting chapter 10

Revised Asher ending sequence

Revised Daaz ending sequence

Finished drafting Kav's endings sequence

Finished drafting Noel's ending sequence

Finished drafting Raif's endings sequence

Worked on a ton of UI changes and improvements

Worked on some sprite tweaks

Received some new BG art!

Writing:

So as you can see, lots of writing progress since my last update. 

I finished revising chapter 10 and coding it. It turned out to be 88,000 words coded.

I revised and formatted Asher and Daaz's ending sequences into the game. Those two were already drafted and just needed to be cleaned up and put into Renpy.

The remaining four character still needed to be drafted but I had paused to revise the entire script so I could make some necessary plot fixes before I tried to draft the remaining endings. 

With that done, I've moved into finishing up the draft.

Currently I have Kav, Noel, and Raif drafted and Yren in progress.

And that will be all the main game content complete!

The current un-coded word count amount is 625,000 words. 💪

Art:

So I have completed some CG work since my last update but the main thing I've been working on art-wise is UI updates and changes. 

A lot of small changes to the general aesthetic as well as implementing a lot of small additions I've been contemplating for a while as QoL improvements.

Such as a little indicator that shows when you are in a "character branch" and things like that.

I've also made a few small tweaks to some of the sprites - mostly just making their expressions a little more dramatic since they were reading a bit flat to me. And, of course, adding new outfits. Always new outfits. LoL

And of course, new BGs from both artists.

Background are around 76% complete currently.

Other Stuff:

I guess UI goes in here too since in addition to the "art" aspect, there's the implementation aspect as well.

Once you change the look of something that has to be coded in, of course. 

I ended up deciding that I want to experiment with moving the sprites around a bit more - mostly moving them a bit closer and then further away depending on the scene, what's happening, and how many characters are on screen in a given moment.

There are several benefits to this including keeping the screen from being static for long periods but also, there are a couple of characters that the player will really benefit from being able to see their faces up close (mostly Raif and Yren).

So yeah - in addition to redesigning some of the screens, I have also been implementing those changes bit by bit.

The game definitely looks quite different now. I recently saw a playthrough of the current prototype that's on Itch and was astonished because I forgot how it looked when it was first released. Ha ha. It's gone through a lot of changes. 

Noel no longer matches the ceiling, for one! Amazing.

Upcoming Weeks:

I will be working on finishing up Yren's ending sequence and hope to get that done in the upcoming week - which means another heavy writing week. 

As I've said elsewhere, I have been calling them "ending sequences" but in reality this is the last three chapters of each route which is about 20,000 words total for each character. I have about 3000 words of Yren's done and I'm actually only shooting for about 15,000 for the rough draft because I invariable add dialogue and variations when I edit, which means I have to undershoot the draft so I don't overshoot the word count during revision.

So yeah, I'll be completing Yren's final three chapters, then revising Kav, Noel, Raif, and Yren and formatting them into the game, which will give me the "final" word count for the project.

And then I will be "done" with the writing (in quotes because...you're never done with the writing until it releases. LoL

I should definitely be done with drafting and revising by my next update here but I can't really say what I'll be working on by that point. Probably...UI and CGs. Not sure.

We'll find out in the future I suppose! See you then!

[onwhatcaptain]

Chapter 4 is out! Here's a fresh slice from my novel-length K/S fic!

“That is not the word I would employ, but the concept is essentially correct. Your body’s thermoregulation has been impacted by your injury, and compounded further by the temperature on Aralis IV. Maintaining your body heat will be conducive to increased oxygen transport to your damaged tissues. However, there is little way to raise your core temperature beyond the sharing of body heat. I am certain you are aware of this, having taken the same survival course at the Academy that I have.” Spock does not have to remind the captain that he is the one who designed the ship's survival procedures training program. He inclines his head in the direction of Ensign May and Lieutenant Sulu, who are all but three inches from one another as they sleep. Their arms are around one another. It is logical, but Spock omits that he wishes to have his fingers on Kirk’s pulse for fear that it might just disappear sometime in the middle of the night—omission isn’t lying. “Very logical,” Kirk agrees, with an unreadable expression. “That’s the first time anyone’s used that line on me.”

As always, if you were curious about that bit, you should check out my fic "I Shall Do Neither" here at AO3! Details below:)

I Shall Do Neither (23039 words) by onwhatcaptain Chapters: 5/22 Fandom: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: James T. Kirk/Spock, James T. Kirk & Leonard "Bones" McCoy & Spock Characters: James T. Kirk, Spock (Star Trek), Leonard "Bones" McCoy Additional Tags: Romance, Angst, Heavy Angst, Loss of Control, Psychological Trauma, Mutual Pining, Five Year Mission (Star Trek), Episode: s02e05 Amok Time, Post-Episode: s02e05 Amok Time, Pon Farr, Pon Farr Aftermath (Star Trek), Unresolved Sexual Tension, Friendship, Grief, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, Sexual Tension, Sexual Content, Unreliable Narrator, Vulcan Biology, Tarsus IV (Star Trek), Vulcan Mind Melds, Non-Linear Narrative, Storytelling Through Vignettes, Missing Scenes Between Episodes, Plot, Cover Art, Canon Divergence, Digital Art, Illustrations Summary: In the wake of the kal-if-fee on Vulcan, Kirk is dead. When T’Pau tells Spock to live long and prosper, he knows he shall do neither. This is a story about men who love each other, and the lengths they will go to for one another. - Foolish, he thinks. I have been a fool.   How he had wanted so desperately to prove his Vulcan side. How all his life it had felt like a performance, and yet, to be finally subject to the most Vulcan thing of all destroyed him. The stripping of logic. All sense torn from him. His carefully constructed barriers had collapsed like a flimsy house of cards. To be granted his wish this way was a type of mockery. How he had wanted to be fully Vulcan. To prove that the blood which runs through his veins was not so human.   How wanting had been better than having. - This story is told in two parts across 21 chapters, and will be updated on Fridays.

[bodybeyondstories]

Just ignore it - 3

David realizes he may have overestimated his ability to handle the newly adopted deity in his head. In trying to figure out how to direct an unlimited supply of body transforming chaos magic, he discovers the power of words, leading to some interesting developments at the bar and in Lee's lab.

1 | 2 (Previous) | 4 (Next)

MaleTF // Ass growth // Dick growth // Growth // Suggestion // nsfw

---

A Tuesday night during Winter Break was not the liveliest time at our usual haunt, the Cockatrice, but Lee and I weren’t complaining. We could gossip and scheme in peace in our back corner booth, a spot we so consistently occupied that the bartender, Jaime, jokes that our butt prints are permanently in the seats–which, in light of recent events, is probably true. As Lee had pointed out to my chagrin, the hemispheres of my ass had successfully carved out a noticeable dip in the cushion that would set a normal man off balance. Yet another reason the back corner booth was consistently ours to occupy. With the semester having ended and most of our colleagues having fled town as soon as grades were submitted, it was especially sparse, except of course, for the new regular to our little booth chats, Blake.

I had given just the essential details to the class about the extra dimensional reality warper that was seemingly auditing for most of the term, winning their silence with automatic As, no term paper, and any reference or letter of rec for any reason. I made myself available as a resident expert if they wanted to learn more about this exciting new research opportunity tied to my being through the astral realm. And of course, if they needed guidance on any unintended side effects, from wardrobe malfunctions to unwanted attention. Noah, for one, had developed a similar level of insatiability as my own and was tearing through every available hung top in the city, but had also developed a knack for coming across progressively bigger and bigger dicks; a pattern that was verging on unrealistic. I made a note to investigate further, but encouraged him to just slow down before we had an epidemic of dicks just as unwieldy as my superhung fuckbuddy sitting across from me.

The rest of the semester was relatively uneventful after I explained the situation. I decided I might as well use it as a teaching tool, one of the more extreme examples of what one might encounter in this line of work. I didn’t name Logan, though, for the risk of him drawing the ire of his colleagues. However, after some initial discomfort and surprising ambivalence, they were mostly okay with the changes, even appreciative, though they may not admit it directly. But golden boy park ranger Blake was especially enthusiastic, not to mention deeply interested in all these magical happenings. To the point where his own disproportionately meaty butt was leaving its own comical imprint in the booth next to my own. 

Blake became a fixture of our weeknight scene, eager for the latest updates from Lee’s lab, which had begun to research the power of my new mental roommate. Trying to understand the unfathomable deity living in my head was slow going, but I had figured out that while they don’t have a name for themself, or really a concept of naming that makes sense to us, they deigned to experiment with some sort of grammar of identification, a small part of which is interpretable in our dimension as Synt. Blake was usually in the field during the day, so would join us after hours to get caught up, even going so far as to jot down notes and ask questions we hadn’t even thought of. He was a de facto research assistant, and at the very least this whole ordeal had gotten someone actually interested in our little corner of the world. Apparently, he’d also been chatting with Logan about some mystical archival work (I really should pay more attention to what Logan actually does). But this evening he was getting excited about his own neck of woods (pun intended) with something brewing in a local forest reserve.

“It’s one of the old ones that got absorbed into the current system when they modernized it,” said Blake, leaning forward slightly with an air of playful conspiracy, his dense biceps straining against the cuffs of his sleeves. “Not entirely public property, but not really owned by anyone anymore either. We basically have de facto jurisdiction,” a phrase he pronounced with uncertainty, “over the Marshlands.”

I wasn’t familiar with this place–admittedly I didn’t get out enough–but I dissociated as a vague image popped up on my mental map of the region, carrying a resonance that felt like a string being plucked. As I sat with this, I was aware that Blake and Lee were carrying on a conversation without me but sound and light went slightly opaque as I tried to focus on this image of…a forest clearing? And some figures that looked suspiciously like–

“Palmer!” I was brought fully back to reality by a forceful slap on the shoulder from our park ranger friend sitting next to me. Blake quickly had an apologetic look on his face that said he hadn’t quite figured out his own strength. 

“Oh, sorry,” I said. “Zoned out. What’d I miss? The forest?”

“Nah, we moved on to the BBL allegations,” said Lee, with a smirk.

“I’m just sayin’ my leg days are legendary these days,” said Blake, hands splayed in mock humility. “I don’t blame ‘em for thinking something’s up. You know it’s real because I keep maxing out machines at the gym and having to scrounge up more and more plates. It’s starting to draw attention,” he chuckled.

“There’s still a lot we don’t know about the changes that Synt caused,” I offered, mentally putting on my researcher hat.

“Is still causing,” interjected Lee.

“Yes, still,” I said, suddenly feeling very self conscious. When I invited Synt to give Logan a break and join forces with me, I may have overestimated my ability to keep them reined in, and it was becoming a full time project just to keep their power from leaking out into this world at a reasonable trickle. Most of the time, I could relieve little bits of pressure here and there, resulting in acquaintances and strangers getting a little boost in passing; something to fill their pants a little more that they wouldn’t complain about. This got tricky when it comes to people I was not only intimate with, but vulnerable with. Hence why Lee’s lithe, muscular form not only filled the other side of the booth but looked downright ethereal. And yet another reason Blake enjoyed spending happy hours parked right next to me. He was, after all, enthusiastic about the situation.

“Not that I’m complaining,” said Blake. He leaned towards me slightly with a smile that was verging from friendly to flirtatious. “I look better than I ever have. Better than I thought was even possible, all thanks to our mutual friend.” He gave me (and Synt) a wink, allowing his ripped forearm to brush lightly against mine before pulling back at the static shock that visibly–and possibly audibly–jumped the centimeter between us.

“I’ll take that as a ‘no problem’,” he said, getting up and turning to the bar. “Y’all want anything?”

“I’m already at my limit,” I said, “but thanks.”

“Two-drink Tuesday,” added Lee, holding up his index and middle finger, as if that wasn’t something he had just made up. Nevertheless, I appreciated the support. Getting shlammered is no longer an option when you have immediate access to an unbelievable reservoir of chaos magic. Something Lee was constantly reminded of by the trouser snake bulging down the length of his left pant leg. 

What didn’t help the situation was that Blake was really taking his time in getting to the bar, swishing his hips back and forth as he moseyed over to Jaime. The park ranger uniforms are a flattering, relaxed fit, but Blake was bursting out of his. The khakis were stretched tight across his bubble butt and quads and the button up couldn’t be buttoned all the way against the mass of his pecs and shoulders. He was a wall of dense muscle, body so sculpted from the realm of fantasy that it was almost a crime for him to even try to wear clothes in the first pl–

I knew what he was doing. He, obviously, knew what he was doing. And most importantly, the reality-altering minor god that had tied themself to me knew full well what he was doing.

We can’t keep doing this, I said to my mental roommate. He’s getting hooked.

Hooked? came a voice like tectonic plates sliding against each other.

Like, he’s enjoying these changes too much. He keeps trying to grow more and more, I worry he might go too far.

Too far? It had become clear that they had no conceptualization of what this meant, but they were starting to figure out what one might call moderation. I felt a small nudge of encouragement as if right behind my shoulder blades, but a small nudge from Synt was like a cruise ship lightly tapping against a wooden pier.

Okay, but just a little, I thought. It’s about finesse, just like we practiced.

Synt was a powerhouse to say the least, and I wasn’t so much tapping into their reservoir of chaos magic as I was slightly loosening a small pressure valve. My fingertips sparked lightly as I felt the peculiar taste of raw possibility in my mouth, like a battery on the back of my tongue that crackled down around my vocal chords. I was focusing on Blakes’s broad shoulders and muscular backside at the bar. His overdeveloped glutes defied gravity, perched like two globes above his hamstrings. 

“Those could really do some damage,” I muttered under my breath. I imagined him at the gym, maxing out the machines as a warmup, having to stack weight after weight just to get a good pump. The blood rushing to his strained muscles as they repaired themselves supernaturally fast, swelling against the overstressed fabric until it couldn’t take anymore. At the bar, Blake was adjusting his waistband surreptitiously, his massive butt seeming to grow in real time to match my slapped together tipsy fantasy until finally his work pants began to give way, splitting open in a few spots to hint at a pair of bright green bikini briefs fighting for its life over his round cheeks. Much to his chagrin–but eventually to his delight–whoever he was chatting it up with failed to take notice of his sudden growth. His hand had left Blake’s hip to adjust his own crotch, which was displaying a surprising, and apparently uncomfortable, bulge.

I maybe shouldn't have done this two drinks in. I was going for more juicy pump and less wardrobe malfunction. And I didn’t even predict the spillover effect in this new beau who just happened to be in the right place at the right time. Maybe I wasn’t being focused enough, maybe it was some sort of daisy chain from their erotic connection, maybe Blake was figuring out how to re-route the chaos magic with which I had touched him. But as he apparently took notice, he played it off, turning his fat ass to squish against the bar as he faced out, glancing my way with an appreciative wink.

“He can’t keep getting away with this,” said Lee, an amused tone entering his voice. Lee had caught on to Blake’s little trick early on and found it more funny than concerning. “He pulled a fast one on you again!” he laughed.

“He’s kind of doing me a favor,” I reasoned. At least I had a willing participant to let some of the pressure off while honing this new ability. “But he could just ask me directly.”

“Well where’s the fun in that?” asked Lee, his eyes dreamily following Blake’s ass as his new friend let him into the cool winter evening, presumably to explore their respective new assets at one of their places. His eyes flicked back to me as he danced across the word fun, and I tried to evade losing myself in the chocolate brown depths of his irises, captivated by a gaze that had become hypnotic. I didn’t get very far as I began to trace the curvature of his plump lips, the rightmost third of the bottom one lost behind a row of playfully biting teeth.

This was a game we had begun to play and one I would inevitably lose. He knew what he was doing. He knew I knew that he knew what he was doing. It hadn’t taken me long to realize that a side effect of the changes in Lee was that he was beginning to have a draw on people that was hard to resist. It hadn’t taken Lee long to realize that whenever I released Synt’s erotic power into the world, I needed to in turn release my own. Hot and bothered would be an understatement, the recent double whammy in tandem with the pheromones coming from my friend across the booth were sending me into overdrive. And judging by the way Lee kept shifting in his seat, he was in a similar state of excitement.  

Apparently Two-drink Tuesday also gets its name from the fact that we can’t make it to a third round without fucking each other’s brains out. Soon enough, I’m plopping my fat ass onto a table in a half forgotten supply closet that makes for a decent hookup space if you’re cool enough with Jaime. It was one of the plastic folding ones that are always already old and whose supports were groaning under my weight. The ambient light from the bar that made it down the hallway framed Lee’s expansive form as he lumbered in behind me, round shoulders rising just past the level of the door frame as he ducked in. God he was massive. As he pushed the door closed behind him, sliding us into complete darkness, I could still feel his outline moving toward me, as if he produced his own luminescence just outside of the visible spectrum. 

The bass of his voice filled the room as he chuckled, coming in for a deep kiss and sliding his fingers under the waistband of my leggings as our tongues danced. He was hungry. He pushed me back onto the table as he pulled my thighs toward him. The radiant heat coming off of his crotch became all the more enticing in the chill of the back room, tingles of pleasure echoing from my hole in anticipation. I arched my back as his fingers from one hand traced along my spine, the other tenderly beginning to peel the waistband of my leggings down the curves of my hips. His hands, at this point, were the size of dinner plates but moved with surprising grace. I could feel him resisting the urge to tear the fabric clean off as he struggled to get it over my colossal cakes and tree trunk thighs. A performance of agonizing slowness that had become part of our usual foreplay.

With my hole finally exposed, he slid in one finger, then two, opting for nimbleness and dexterity in light of the brute force that I knew was coming. He worked with a light touch, loosening me up as he undid his pants and slowly slid them off, bending slightly to finagle his prodigious cock free. I regretted not having hit the lights. The slow reveal of his member was a sight to behold, even in the weak fluorescence of the store room. With a grunt, I heard his pants fall to the floor, followed by a thwack against the underside of the cheap plastic table. I briefly fantasized about Lee’s gargantuan cock lifting the entire table with me on it, entertaining the notion that I really could make that happen if I wanted to.

Don’t you? Came a deep rumble from my psyche, the familiar crescendo of energy as Synt’s attention was piqued.

Don’t you start, I warned, still thinking of Blake and his now very well endowed friend. Finesse, subtlety, I added, knowing full well Synt cared nothing for the concept.

But didn’t I? In the haze of lust, I couldn’t shake the hypothetical of Lee with a truly impossible monster cock, and a corresponding body that shattered doorways rather than ducking through them. Was it Synt’s idea or my own? Was there a difference?

I was brought back to the present by a sudden absence. My hole ached with need as Lee’s meaty fingers were withdrawn, moving to caress my torso as he maneuvered his unwieldy dick into place, stroking up and down he pumped out a steady stream of slick precum. He was already starting to moan softly as he slowly worked inch after inch after inch of his schlong inside of me. Ever the scientist, he had last measured his growth at 15.25 inches, but personal experience told me it had definitely grown a little more since then. He settled into a steady pace, holding my body gingerly with his strong arms, leaning in periodically to nuzzle against my lips.

“Is that good?” he asked.

“Harder,” I muttered, the pleasure from his cock stretching my walls only leading to a deeper and deeper need.

“Like this?” he said, picking up the pace, letting more of his strength come through as he thrust into me.

“Harder,” I breathed, feeling the familiar taste of power, the crackle across my throat.

“Mmhm,” said Lee, audibly putting in some effort as he pounded into me, his gigantic hands digging into the globes of my ass cheeks, giving them a hard slap periodically.

“Harder,” I grunted, feeling some sort of release as I had the acute image of Lee’s pelvis corded with muscle, his hips and glutes flexing with vascularity as he pumped with inhuman power.

He made a sound that was some cross between confusion and pleasure, losing control as he jackhammered into me with animalistic lust. He dug his hands in under my thighs and lifted me up bodily, impaling me on his dick as his hips went into overdrive. He roared as both of us reached climax, shooting ropes of cum as his hips continued to buck involuntarily. After the last shudders of orgasmic release, he slowly came back to his senses, pulling his softening dick out of my hole.

“Was that…you?” he asked, his hands exploring a slightly more developed muscularity than what had been the reality earlier that night.

“...I think so.”

 —

I found myself in Lee’s lab early the next morning reflecting on what exactly had developed last night. Of course I was used to dipping into Synt’s power to change people, but this was different. More direct in a way I couldn’t put my finger on.

Lee was bouncing around with some extra pep in his step, his usual lumbering movements now imbued with much more grace and poise. One would find it hard to believe that just 12 hours previous he was rearranging my guts with wild abandon. His bubble butt filled out his form fitting khakis, glute and hip muscles becoming all the more apparent every time he squatted down to look at something more closely with his co-PI, Armand. At 5’6”, Armand was almost two feet shorter than the literal giant with whom he ran the paranormal research lab in the basement of the Center. I sat patiently, coffee in hand, watching them navigate the space and prep things for that morning’s procedures. 

Lee and Armand had taken it upon themselves to help me study how Synt’s power worked and what kinds of research implications it might have. Lee was  wildly enthusiastic about the possibilities presented by the deity in my head whose capabilities were seemingly only limited by the imagination of the host. Armand, if a little annoyed by being there earlier than the start of their usual workday, was more interested in how this development, if presented the right way, could secure some more reliable long-term research funding for the entire institute.

After all, the lab could use a makeover. It was kind of a drab, slapdash mix of alchemical and traditional scientific instruments, slowly cluttering into a maze of in-progress and semi-forgotten projects and experiments. One wall was an entire blackboard covered in a collage of equations, mathematical proofs, ancient grammars, bits of poetry, and a running list of takeout places that after many late night deliveries knew Lee and Armand by name. It at least drew the eye away from the rest of the color scheme, which consisted of specific shades of blue and sherbet-beige that one might see at a hospital or some sort of mystical DMV. But it was Lee’s high voltage magic lab. A cleanroom as he calls it.

I was crammed into an office chair at the center of a circle whose circumference featured sigils across multiple human and inhuman languages, each one glowing and fading lightly in slow sequence. I know a protective ward when I see one, and this formed an invisible, magically impermeable sphere. I sat in the middle of the snow globe, wondering what might get knocked loose were someone to come along and shake it, as Lee and Armand set about their final preparatory tasks. Lee was adjusting the angles of what looked like modified environmental sensors, following the wires back to his desktop to check that they were working. A cluster of wires ran not along the floor, but up to the ceiling and above the circle, dropping down and hooking into a brain scan helmet that sat lightly on my head. Armand was fiddling with what was certainly a decades-old fax machine, outputting a slow but continuous stream of paper while chittering softly to itself and occasionally jotting down little dots and symbols. According to Armand, it’s a device that “picks up magical grammars in ambient space and translates them into textual data for further analysis,” but I still think it just looks like a fax machine. He was not amused by this.

Our routine many mornings was me in the evil snow globe, relaying messages between Lee, Armand, and Synt as they tried to experiment with ways to activate, measure, or at least gather data on the texture of Synt’s magic. Bursts of erotic, body morphing energy were beyond impressive, but wildly unpredictable, and the research team wanted to start small and controlled.  We had made little to no progress. It’s not exactly a thing that I can just turn on and off and Synt doesn’t particularly care or even see the point of all this. These little science experiments are a blip on their radar and we probably seem like anxious primates hitting things with sticks. Which to a certain extent is true.

This morning was no different than the others. After enough failed attempts and false positives, Lee sighed, shaking his head at the monitor perched on his modified standing desk.

“I need some caffeine,” he yawned, loping off toward the exit and, I assumed, the coffee shop on the ground floor upstairs.

I was left with Armand, standing hands on hips, staring intently at his fax machine as if, with enough silent pleading, it may just start speaking English. It continued its indecipherable chittering, spitting out snippets of static on the page.

“Did you get a fax?” I asked. “From the cosmos?” widening my eyes for emphasis.

“It’s not–we’re getting basically background radiation and ambient noise. Nothing that really tells us anything,” he said, turning to glance at Lee’s computer. Armand awkwardly adjusted his lab partner’s standing desk, waiting impatiently for it to lower to his height. Eventually, he relented and grabbed a step stool just so he could read the data, shooting me an annoyed glance at having to have an audience for what seemed like a daily ordeal between them.

“So you didn’t feel anything this whole session? No surges of otherworldly power?” he asked.

“I felt hungry,” I responded. “Haven’t heard much from Synt.”

“But Lee said yesterday evening you did it without even trying,” said Armand, scratching the scruff on his chin in thought. 

My heart skipped a beat as I imagined Lee informing Armand about how he got his new power thrust pelvis as if it were anecdotal data, before I realized, “Oh, you mean Blake!”

“Yeah, that was his name. The park ranger guy. He’s been emailing me about some abandoned site out in the forest, I need to look into it. But you changed him just by what? Thinking about it?”

“Thinking isn’t really an apt descriptor of what Synt does,” I thought out loud. Armand had settled into a flat footed squat in front of the cosmic fax machine, on the edge of the ring of sigils. He was staring not quite at me, but at the space around me, as if Synt might materialize from my aura. “Sometimes it feels like the way their mind works is itself a sort of manipulation of space and time. Maybe the way all of our minds work, when you think about it.” The fax sputtered something out, but I couldn’t tell if it was in agreement or dissension. Armand’s eyes glanced at the printout then back at me.

“But you channeled that manipulation deliberately, right? Not just specifically to Blake, but specifically to his glutes.”

“Not just that, but yeah. I sort of focused the energy and…released.”

“And what did that feel like?”

“Like…singing?” The familiar feeling danced around my vocal chords. Synt perked up in anticipation.

“Singing. Ok.” Armand began to bounce slightly in his deep squat, which I’d come to realize meant he was on to something. As he mulled over this new bit of information, his eyes traced one of the sigils on the floor. Mine, however, were locked on to the bulge made more prominent by his stance. I could always tell Armand was packing something, and under ‘normal’ circumstances his bulge would be the focus of anyone’s attention, but it was an afterthought with Lee carrying around an unmistakable pipe in his pants.

“Have you done any work on metaphysical harmonics?” he asked.

“I’ve taught the basics, but it’s not something I deal with a lot in my research,” I said. “Bouncing different planes and dimensions off of each other by fiddling with the right frequencies and resonances, that sort of thing.”

“I’ll have to dust it off, but I think we do have the equipment for it,” said Armand. “Maybe instead of brute force reality shifting, Synt is actually doing something much more subtle and graceful, like moving through the pages of a higher dimensional flipbook. Which would explain why Lee, for one, is so good at carrying such big…changes.”

I don’t know why I said what I said next. I had that taste of possibility on my tongue and you know who was pushing at the back of my consciousness, dangling a small invitation to play with the warp of the universe, compelling me to blurt out “Yeah, but I’m pretty sure you’ve got him beat.” With a wink no less.

A few things happened. One, I did manage to catch the feeling of that spark of power in my throat being released in a very specific direction, straight to the crotch which I had been trying to not look at in my early morning haze. Two, the fax machine printed out what looked like a poem of some mix of text, symbols, and glyphs before proceeding to rewind the spool of paper on its own and carry on printing blanks like nothing happened.

And three, while Armand was watching his precious sensor apparatus misbehave yet again, the bulge in his slacks began to bulge even more. Like, really bulge, unspooling down his leg. To the naked eye, it looked like he was somehow oblivious to the fact that his dick was expanding in real time to over twice the amount of space it had just been taking up in his chinos, the mushroom head becoming distinct against the fabric and his balls alone putting catastrophic pressure on the stitching along the seam. Except, if one would look closer–though that would be rude–they might notice the seam continuously adjusting on its own.

I watched his package inflate as he seemingly didn’t register the changes at all. But through the other sight of Synt’s perspective, it was as if the area around his crotch, and to a lesser extent the area around his body was pixelating, shifting, and falling back into place piece by piece over and over again, resulting in a visibly larger and larger bulge until…what?

You’ve got him beat, said Synt, quoting my earlier comment with what felt like a sly smile. I had been through enough by now to know that the next move was not to investigate the prodigious member in front of me but instead reflect on the timeline–New? Altered? Unclear–that I now found myself in. 

“I guess you’re right,” said Armand, “but Lee still wears it better.”

I guess I had gotten relatively used to it because we were co-workers, but Armand has by far one of the biggest dicks I’ve ever seen. Not that I had ever actually seen it, but the bulge snaking down his leg was obscene on his small frame. Even with what I assume were tailored pants, it was unavoidable and unwieldy, drawing stares and even comments in public, much to introverted Armand’s annoyance. I kind of felt bad for the guy. Rumor has it that when fully erect it’s a whopping 16 inches, somehow just slightly bigger than Lee’s schlong, which though impossible to miss, still blended in better on a frame that was two feet taller.

If what Armand had surmised was true, and Synt had let their hands play across a multidimensional keyboard, then we had been moving through proximal dimensions in which Armand wasn’t actually growing, but simply had a bigger and bigger dick for whatever reason, following the path of least resistance until he arrived at a size that beat Lee’s, and my offhand comment proved true. I loosely wondered when Noah would get his hands on him, if he hadn’t already.

Armand rose out of his squat to head to the board and add the metaphysical harmonics angle to the parking lot of working hypotheses. His gait was wider and a little awkward, but he wasn’t adjusting to his new size so much as he had already been used to it for years. Had I progressed to what Synt had been doing in my class this past semester? Moving beyond brute force changes and reworking the time stream itself? What else had I inadvertently changed about Armand’s life? What other elements of his social, romantic, or work lives had been altered in unpredictable ways by his inexplicably massive cock?

I needed more caffeine. As Lee came strolling back into the lab, I rushed past him, bounding up the side stairwell to the ground floor and the conveniently placed coffee shop. This wasn’t the most high traffic part of campus, so even during the morning rush, the baristas were bleary eyed and underwhelmed, snapping awake as I lumbered up to the counter.

“Oh, hi, what can I, uh, get started for you?” asked a barista across the counter who was not one of the usuals, made obvious by the fact that he clearly did not expect to be staring up at a man in leggings and a plaid skirt who loomed a full head taller than him.

“Just a dirty chai, and can you throw in an extra espresso shot…Jamal?” I asked, leaning awkwardly to read his nametag.

“Gotcha!”

I still felt disoriented, standing in a sleepy coffee shop having just manipulated space and time through the power of horniness. We may have finally cracked the code for at least a piece of the mechanism of what Logan had been doing originally on accident. The implications were staggering for our understandings of physics, metaphysics, reality itself. I had no idea how far the possibilities went and it sent a chill down to spine to think of what could happen on accident, let alone on purpose, but to be honest I felt powerful. And incredibly horny.

The familiar aftershock of arousal finally hit me, a deep, tingly, insatiable hunger that I quickly realized I would need to find some way to take care of this morning. Lee was right downstairs and this wouldn’t be the first time we fucked in some back corner of the basement. I wondered if Armand might want to prove the rumors true and hit a spot even his lab partner couldn’t reach. I shivered at the thought of almost a foot and a half of rock hard cock jutting off his slim, twinkish body, a completely absurd image of it bobbed in the air as he walked towards me.

“Um, excuse me?” Jamal, with an intonation that implied that hadn’t been the first time he’d tried to get my attention in the past 30 seconds, and he didn’t much care but a line was starting to form. “Can I get a name for that?”

“Oh! Um, sorry. David,” I said. “The only giant in the coffee shop. Can’t miss me,” I added with an awkward laugh.

He chuckled. “You’d be surprised. There was just a guy in here who had to be like seven and a half feet, I don’t even know. Like freak show tall,” eyes widened and hands splayed out.

“Not nearly as tall as you, right?” I responded without missing a beat. “You’ve got what, a foot and a half on him?” 

In my defense I was horny. And in an experimental mood. And a little annoyed at the quip about my friend. And in retrospect, starting to get drunk on power.

But Synt got the message loud and clear, and I watched the fabric of spacetime pixelating and refocusing around Jamal as I craned my neck up and up and up to his wire rimmed glasses catching the reflection of mid morning light.

A blush across his cheeks. “Yeah, I guess so,” he muttered, with a slight smile and a roll of his eyes. “That chai will be right up.”

[your--isgayrights]

Outside of Lee Seolhwa and Lee Sookyung, do you have plans for any other character outside of Kim Dokja’s primary companions (like Gong Pildu or Han Doonghoon) for your soulmate fanfiction? Constellations like Persephone or Uriel or Sun Wukong probably wouldn’t make sense to exist in real life but maybe characters such as Han Myungoh/Han Dareum or Jang Hayoung could fit? If I recall correctly, Jang Hayoung in particular is the one responsible for the title of the fanfiction, right? I feel like she alongside the Unidentifiable Wall and the Fourth Wall would be so thematically appropriate but I couldn’t imagine how you would do it if at all. I also want to say that I’m impressed how you managed to seamlessly incorporate so many references to the original ORV into your work. It must have required you to reread and recheck the wiki.

Yess, I'm glad you asked this anon bc literally I just threw in a little reference to Han Doonghoon and Lee Sungkook in the 4.4 update and got worried people would think they had to remember the characters well to understand the surrounding plot point better than Kim Dokja does. But I think I should trust the reader a bit more lol.

Unfortunately my inclusion of Aileen and Jang Hayoung isn't going to be as big as the other kdjco members, but they're sort of already set up in the fic and have a role in chap 5. I think JHY doesn't appear directly bc to me the relationship between her and KDJ is harder to make 'real,' though I have some ideas depending on how much I decide to include in chap 5. In my plans 5 will have a gaming tourney featured, so other big 'wos players' may be referenced further there as well.

Of course like you mention the fic title and many of the chapter titles are coming directly from the mouth of Jang Hayoung, so in that way she is constantly being referenced, haha.

Han Myungoh and his daughter are referenced earlier in Chapter 4. It's sort of a drive by.

I do make use of the wiki (bless the editorsn🙏), though mostly just to check dates, numbers, and spellings of names. I like to think of myself as someone with a pretty decent memory tho, so a lot of the more specific story references are definitely just me pulling in stuff I remember from my novel read throughs. Like I might have to look at the wiki to remember Han Dareum's name, but I'll never forget Han Myungoh's entire Male Pregnancy that he had like that was a crazy random W to me on my first ORV read through I was like hello??? Also that being around when JHY was being confirmed trans haha. I think I was only out for like a year or so before reading orv so the little gender fucky moments really stuck out to me.

Sometimes rereading my old work I also remember things I forgot happened in ORV. I think part of the reason I'm struggling so much with chap 4 and onward is that now that the wall fic characters have sort of developed to where they are some of the scenes I had in mind are less 1 to 1 with the OG. For instance, I'm trying to rewrite a scene I have of YJH and KDJ having a rooftop chat that like parallels the one back before the seoul's strongest incarnation arc in the novel, but it's a bit difficult. At first I wanted to include a lot more of KDJ interacting with the rest of YJH's team, but the rooftop Scene makes more sense to put a cap on the themes explored in chap 4. But when I first wrote this scene it was less specifically addressing that theme, because it was in the outline of like right after I wrote chapter 1, so it was kind of just the OG ORV scene with the flavoring of my AU on top. A lot of the little things they do and say in the OG novel would have to be quite finagled to fit anymore, so reworking it is the big task rn.

Anyway I'm really appreciative of people like you who take note of these small details <3. it's kind of helping me remember and appreciate a lot of the parts of me that were behind a lot of Wall fic originally if that makes sense? I am like reintroducing myself to him and giving him a hug instead of running away cringing just because it's me lol.

[withasideofshakespeare]

A Rundown on the Absolute Chaos that is First Quarto Hamlet

IMPORTANT UPDATE: This post may be getting a revamp with better citations—my cross-checking source was scrubbed from the internet entirely???

I said I was going to sleep before writing this. I did not. Here it goes anyway!

TL;DR: Multiple versions of Hamlet were printed between 1603 and 1623. Across these multiple texts, we get some fairly major differences in characterization and plot disparities. The First Quarto is most infamous for its oddness- which includes shockingly brief soliloquies, mother-son bonding, wild spellings of everyone’s names, and deleted/adapted scenes with major plot/character implications.

A full (long!) rundown is below the cut, including sources, transcribed Q1 content and lore, further Hamlet lore, and my fan theories! Feel free to skip the bits you don’t care about, I got way too into this.

Note: *I have updated these lines to their modern spellings for ease of reading

What is the First Quarto? What’s a “quarto”? Who wrote this?!

All pressing questions, my dear dedicated fan of William Shakespeare’s hit play Hamlet! 

The First Quarto was published in 1603 and was (presumably, as implied by the name) printed as a quarto (a little book created by folding printed pages into four leaves- eight pages). It is much shorter than the later publications and is presumed to be transcribed from memory by an actor (probably the guy who played Marcellus), who may have been a member of a touring troop of actors performing the play. 

Q1 is not necessarily considered a first draft of the play, but something of a “pirated” (by memory) copy that was later amended by Q2 and F1.

Are you saying that Hamlet comes with the stageplay equivalent of a “deleted scenes and extra credits” movie disc?

Yes! And not just one, but many: Quartos 1-5, the First Folio, multiple foreign language versions, and more! Your typical modern copy of Hamlet is a combination of the Second Quarto and First Folio. 

Q2 (published in 1604 or 1605) is considered more “Shakespeare-accurate” than Q1- it seems to be a manuscript actually written by Shakespeare combined with an edited version of Q1′s Act 1 text rather than just some guy’s memory of the play. F1 was published much later (1623) and is some combination of another playhouse manuscript and possibly Q2 (but which—Q2 or the manuscript—had more influence in the creation of F1 is unclear). Q2 and F1 have tons of differences in wording and each has some content that the other doesn’t, but what you need to know here is that a typical modern script is an F1/Q2 combo (because editors didn’t think the public would want like six different scripts- fair enough.)

Quartos 3-5 are slightly edited versions of Q2. There seem to be a few other versions in different languages (like the German version) which share points from a variety of the above sources. 

So... Q1? How is it any different from the version we all know (and love, of course)? What do the differences mean for the plot?

We’ll start with minor differences and build up to the big ones.

First of all, the language! Everything is spelled to the discretion of the transcriber, which produces gems such as “for England hoe.”

These spelling differences also extend to the characters! Laertes is “Leartes”, Ophelia is “Ofelia”, Gertrude is “Gertred” (or sometimes “Gerterd”), Rosencrantz is “Rossencraft”, Guildenstern is “Gilderstone”, and my favorite, Polonius gets a completely different name: Corambis. 

(This goes on for minor characters, too. Sentinel Barnardo is “Bernardo”, Prince Fortinbras of Norway is “Fortenbrasse”, Voltemand and Cornelius- the Danish ambassadors to Norway- are “Voltemar” and “Cornelia” (genderbent Cornelius?/hj), Osric doesn’t even get a name- he is called “the Bragart Gentleman”, the Gravediggers are called clowns, and Reynaldo (Polonius’s spy) gets a whole different name- “Montano”.)

The stage directions include more detail! Ex: Ophelia enters in Act 4 with a lute to play along to her song of insanity. (*Enter Ofelia, playing on a lute, and her hair down, singing). (Some bits are missing direction though! In Act 3, when Hamlet calls upon Horatio to watch Claudius on the night of the play, there is no instruction for Horatio to enter the scene. He appears without being asked.)

There is a slight reordering of scenes in Act 3. Claudius and Polonius go through with the plan to have Ophelia break up with Hamlet immediately after they make it (typically, the plan is made in early II.ii and gone through with in III.i, with the players showing up and reciting Hecuba between the two events). In this version, the player scene (and Hamlet’s conversation with Polonius) happen after ‘to be or not to be’ and ‘get thee to a nunnery.’ I’m not sure if this makes more or less sense. Either way, it has minimal impact on the story.

Many lines, especially after Act 1 are considerably altered or shortened. Everyone is a lot more straightforward and (sometimes) a lot less iambic pentameter-y and poetic. A few examples: Laertes’ usually long-winded I.iii lecture on love to Ophelia is shortened to just ten lines (as opposed to the typical 40+). Polonius (er... Corambis) is still annoying and incapable of brevity, but less so than usual. His lecture on love is also cut significantly! Hamlet’s usual assailing of Danish drinking customs (I.iv) is cut off by the ghost’s arrival. He’s still the most talkative character, but his lines are almost entirely different in some monologues, including ‘to be or not to be’!  In other spots, however, (ex: get thee to a nunnery!) the lines are near-identical. There doesn’t seem to be much rhyme or reason to where things diverge linguistically.

And then the big differences: the additional scene and Gertrude’s promise to aid Hamlet in taking revenge. Act 3, scene 4 goes about the same as usual with one major difference: Hamlet finishes off not with his usual declaration that he’s to be sent for England but with an absolutely heart-wrenching callback to act 1, in which he echoes the ghost’s lines and pleads his mother to aid him in revenge. And she agrees. Here is that adapted scene (without line breaks for some reason- ah, formatting!):

*Gertrude: Alas, it is the weakness of thy brain which makes thy tongue blazon thy heart’s grief: but as I have a soul, I swear by heaven, I never knew if this most horrid murder: but Hamlet, this is only fantasy, and for my love forget these idle fits.

Hamlet: Idle, no mother, my pulse does beat like yours, it is not madness that possesses Hamlet. O mother, if you ever did my dear father love, forbear the adulterous bed to-night and sun your self by little as you may, in time it may be you will loathe him quite and mother, but assist me in my revenge and in his death, your infamy shall die.

Gertrude: Hamlet, I swear by that majesty that knows our thoughts and looks into our hearts, I will conceal, consent, and do my best what stratagem so ever thou shalt devise.

Hamlet: It is enough mother, good night. [to polonius] I’ll provide for you a grave who was in life a foolish and prating knave.

*exit Hamlet with Polonius’s body*

Despite having seemingly major consequences for the plot, this is never discussed again. Gertrude tells Claudius in the next scene that it was Hamlet who killed Polonius (Corambis, whatever!), seemingly betraying her promise.

However, Gertrude’s admission of Hamlet’s guilt (and thus, betrayal) could come down to the circumstance she finds herself in as the next scene begins. There is no stage direction denoting her exit, so the entrance of Claudius in scene 5 may be into her room, where he would find her beside a puddle of blood, evidence of the murder. There’s no talking your way out of that one…

And now the most drastic change: the bonus scene. After IV.vi (act 4, scene 6), (but before IV.vii) comes this scene*, in which Horatio informs Gertrude that Hamlet was to be executed in England but escaped. Here it is with modern spellings but without line breaks (man, I hate formatting things!)

Enter Horatio & Gertrude 

Horatio: Madam, your son is safe arrive’d in Denmark. This letter I even now received of him, whereas he writes how he escaped the danger and subtle treason that the king had plotted, being crossed by the contention of the winds, he found the packet (letter) sent to the king of England, wherein he saw himself betray’d to death, as at his next conversion with your grace, he will relate the circumstance at full. 

Gertrude: Then I perceive there’s treason in his looks that seemed to sugar o’re his villainy: but I will sooth and please him for a time for murderous minds are always jealous. But know not you, Horatio, where he is? 

Horatio: Yes, madam, and he hath appointed me to meet him on the east side of the city to-morrow morning. 

Gertrude: O, fail not, good Horatio, and commend me a mother’s care to him, bid him a while be wary of his presence, lest that he fail in that he goes about. 

 Horatio: Madam, never make doubt if that: I think by this news be come to court: he is arrive’d, observe the king and you shall quickly find, Hamlet being here, things fell not to his mind. 

 Gertrude: But what became of Guilderstone and Rossencraft? 

Horatio: He being set ashore, they went for England and in the packet there writ down that  doom to be performed on them pointed for him: and by great chance he had his father’s seal, so all was done without discovery. 

Gertrude: Thanks be to heaven for blessing of the prince, Horatio, I once again take my leave, with thousand mother’s blessings to my son. 

Horatio: Madam, adieu.

If Gertrude knows of Claudius’s treachery (”there’s treason in his looks”), her death at the end of the play does not look like much of an accident. She is aware that Claudius killed her husband and is actively trying to kill her son and she still drinks the wine meant for Hamlet!

Now, the moment we’ve all been waiting for! My thoughts! Yippee! 

Clearly, my favorite gift this Christmas was my copy of The Riverside Shakespeare, gifted to me by my grandma. I don’t think I’ll ever sleep again now that reading this is an option. (This play has me head-over-heels, goddamn!)

Anyway, here are my thoughts on Q1 (as abridged as I can get them, seeing as this post is already nearly 2,000 words long.)

On Gertrude: WOW! I’m convinced that she is done dirty by First Folio and Q2! She and Hamlet have a much better relationship (Gertrude genuinely worries about his well-being throughout the play.) She has an actual personality that is tied into her role in the story and as a mother. I love Q1 Gertrude even though in the end, there’s nothing she can do to save Hamlet from being found out in the murder of Polonius and eventually dying in the duel. Her drinking the poisoned wine seems like an act of desperation (or sacrifice? she never asks hamlet to drink!) rather than an accident.

On the language: I think Q1′s biggest shortcoming is its comparatively simplistic language, especially in ‘to be or not to be’*: (again with the formatting!)

Hamlet: To be, or not to be, aye, there's the point. To die, to sleep, is that all? Aye, all: no, to sleep, to dream, aye, merry there it goes. For in that dream of death, when we awake, and borne before an everlasting judge, from whence no passenger ever returned, the undiscovered country, at whose sight the happy smile, and the accursed damn'd. But for this, the joyful hope of this, who’d bear the scorns and flattery of the world, scorned by the right rich, the rich cursed of the poor? The widow being oppressed, the orphan wrong'd, the taste of hunger, or a tyrants reign, and thousand more calamities besides, to grunt and sweat under this weary life, when that he may his full quietus make, with a bare bodkin, who would this endure, but for a hope of something after death? Which puzzles the brain, and doth confound the sense, which makes us rather bear those evils we have, than fly to others that we know not of. Aye that, O this conscience makes cowards of us all. 

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good, but it doesn’t feel quite complete, which makes sense for Q1- that’s the vibe I get overall from this version: it’s Hamlet at an earlier point in the play’s journey to becoming its modern renditions and compilations. 

On the ending: The ending suffers from the same effect ‘to be or not to be’ does- it is simpler and (imo) lacks some of the emotion that F1 later emphasizes. Hamlet’s final speech is significantly cut down and Horatio’s last lines aren’t quite so potent- although they’re still sweet!

*Horatio, to Fortinbras and co.: Content yourselves, I’ll show to all, the ground, the first beginning of this Tragedy: Let there a scaffold be reared up in the marketplace, and let the State of the world be there: where you shall hear such a sad story told that never mortal man could more unfold.

Horatio generally is a more active character in Q1 Hamlet. This ending suits his character here: He will tell Hamlet’s story, tragic as it may be. It reminds me a bit of We Raise Our Cups from Hadestown. 

Overall, I loved reading this version and highly encourage you to do the same! (Two PDFs are linked below!) The spelling is hard to overlook at times, but if you can get through it, this is a fascinating interpretation of the same Hamlet we love and it’s worth a read! There’s so much more I want to get into but I absolutely must sleep, so adieu for now!

And finally, my sources:

The Riverside Shakespeare (pub. Houghton Mifflin Company; G.B. Evans, et al.)

Q1 PDF (Internet Shakespeare) https://internetshakespeare.uvic.ca/doc/Ham_Q1/complete/index.html

***THIS SOURCE NO LONGER EXISTS.*** Q1 PDF (STF Theatre) https://stf-theatre.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/02/HAMLET-%E2%80%93-the-1st-Quarto.pdf (cross-reference for lines) 

[homestuck-archive]

HOMESTUCK NEWS UPDATE!

"Hi, James here. Hope you had a good holiday! New year, new me! New you! Whatever, man! We got the usual patreon updates for you. Wahoo! Did you know that's a kind of fish? I watch a lot of fishing videos. If everything goes right and nothing goes wrong we should have something very exciting very soon: a new website! What does this mean for you? Stick around and find out!

Thanks for coming to our AMA, I hope we were able to answer some questions. I especially liked the one where Haven said he was going to fill Dirk full of Milk and slap him against a wall. Great job team. In other community news, the folks over at SAHcon are having their New Year's showcase around 5 pm PST today. Wow! I'm excited to see what the community is cooking.

We got another great comic update coming mid month, and in the next few we're letting some of the new writers shine. I'm excited for you to read them!

Speaking of updates on things… some of you sleuths may have noticed some changes. I'd like to go into a little more detail about them to the extent that I am able. I also wanted to do this in an official newspost, and not on socials etc, so that there is no question about it.

The contract with VIZ media has been restructured. What does this mean? Well, let's start a little further back. We have gotten a lot of questions about Andrew's involvement with HS:BC and Homestuck as a whole. I mentioned before that Andrew approached me to finish HS:BC. As many of you know a few years ago Andrew stepped back from having a creative role. This has allowed him to focus on oversight, and some behind-the-scenes stuff. A large part of that was regaining a sort of legal control of the brand as a whole.

So who "Owns Homestuck?" Well Andrew still does. Who has the publishing rights? We're working on that! The HICU has a license to do what we want with the property, which is what has allowed us to do some of the more creative things we are trying to do. Is the Website going to be fixed? They're working on that! I have very little to do with that, personally, but once there is something solid to announce there and the concerned parties are comfortable with it I'll let you know. What does this mean for the commentaries? Behind the scenes, some ideas about how to handle the issues with the way Homestuck is going to be published are being discussed. Some of these ideas may include a new way to release the future book commentary in absence of the books themselves. Wow!

With regards to VIZ, as some of you have correctly surmised this is good news for us. It has allowed things like HS:BC and HICU licensing etc to happen, as well as the SAHcon license. Hopefully, this can also include some additional fan-friendly licenses Andrew is considering. This all will take time to fully unfold so more details will be forthcoming about what this means for Homestuck as a whole. All in all, I think we are in for an exciting year.

Man what else is goin on? Some good news on the Vinyl is that I talked to the printer and with such an overwhelming response from you guys, instead of a simple Best Of EP, we actually want to try and do a print of Vol. 1-4. This makes all my very scientific and organized data gathering completely useless. I am humbled by something new and mundane every day. Anyway, this represents a completely different beast logistically, but as a fan of those tracks I am very very excited about that. I will Literally buy a Record Player for this. "James, you don't own a record player?" No! What do I look like, an old man? Please don't answer that. (Yes James, you do. -Homestuck Archive, 2024.)

This month (January 2024) we are also going to start seeing some of the bonus content go public. I ran a poll for the Patrons, and the general consensus is that after 2 months, they're ok with the bonus content going public. This includes Bonus strips, the Illustrations, and the commentary. They're really fun to do, so I hope you guys are into it. If you want to see these as soon as they go up, they are available to subscribers. Thank you for that, btw. It means the world to be able to pay some of my team's bills. Look at me, getting all sappy on New Year's Day. Maybe it really is a new year and a new me..."

SUMMARY -

New HS:BC Website in the works, with some new features.

Update mid-month as usual. Some of the newer Team Writers.

VIZ deal has been "restructured." (that's good for us)

Andrew still "Owns Homestuck."

Working on a solution to homestuck dot com debacle.

There are plans for commentary.

Homestuck Vinyl will be Vol. 1-4, pending some light Logistical Upkeep.

Patreon Bonuses from November will be going public this month.

[dandelion-jester]

ATTENTION LOVELY FOLLOWERS!!!

I am soon launching a writing patreon!

This is very exciting for me, as it's always been a dream of mine to write full time and this will be my first proper step into making money from my writing! Currently, getting a regular job is quite difficult for me and I am living off of my student loan, so every little extra is a pleasant surprise.

If you are interested in joining, I will be reblogging this post with the link when it is up, so keep an eye on the reblogs!

More information is below the cut, I go into detail about Tiers, rewards, and my future plans!! The current most expensive tier is only £5/month so don't hesitate to have a look!!

Tiers

I am starting out with just three, very cheap tiers although depending on the patreon's success I would like to launch more tiers in the future. Currently I think that I'll be posting every wednesday, but if that day changes in the future I will post about it ahead of time. For now, here is what I am offering:

£1 - Town Cryer: The first tier costs only £1 and as well as getting my eternal gratitude, you will receive access to my writing blog where I will post weekly articles about writing, reading, and stories at large. This will include, but not be limited to: Reviews, writing thoughts and processes, tips and tricks, introspection on the craft, resources and much more. Joining this tier will give you access to four pieces of writing a month!

£3 - Wealthy Merchant: This tier is for people who would be interested in reading my creative writing. As well as blog access, you will also get access to weekly poems/short stories written by me. I mostly write fantasy, but there will likely be sci-fi and historical fiction in the midst and who knows what else. Work will come with neccessary trigger warnings and the poetry will be accompanied by a detailed analysis. Joining this tier will give you access to eight pieces of content a month!!

£5 - Court Jester: If you want to be generous and support me and my work even further, this tier is where you will find all the behind the scenes stuff for all my current WIPS! For this tier I will be posting, amongst other tidbits: draft excerpts, thought processes, character information, art (accompanied by the appropriate text), and personal updates on my writing and how it's going. Joining this tier will give you access to 12 pieces of content a month!!!

The Future

Patreon has removed the goal feature but I still have some of my own. These will be written in the about section of the patreon but will include:

A patron discord in which to build a writing community (all tiers will be eligible)

Q&As

Higher tiers with more content

I will also be doing polls on Tumblr and my Instagram (Dandelion_jester_) to see what kind of content patrons would be most interested in seeing in the future (I'll probably do these quarterly, but it may end up being every 6 months).

If you've read this far, thank you for tagging along! And if you are thinking of joining, then thank you even more!! As I said before, watch this post for the launch!!!

[gorillawithautism]

things i would like my mutuals to tag !!

easy catch-alls: #awae from pae, #away from pae

i'm not gonna like,, make detailed descriptions of what triggers me publicly available (i will be leaving some things out and not really elaborating to the fullest extent) because internet safety or whatever but if you have questions about other things i would like tagged or clarifying questions you may dm me and i may or may not provide further information

also: nobody is obligated to tag any of these things. it's not a big deal if you forget or just don't have the energy. it might make my life a little easier if they're tagged but if you don't it's entirely guilt free please don't worry about it

that said, here's the list:

#rat harm - use this for any posts that talk about rats being hurt or killed in any way

#reblog bait - this is for those posts that are like "reblog this if you care about [cause]" to guilt you into it or "reblog this for good luck"/"if you don't reblog this [bad thing] will happen." other kinds of reblog games are fine.

#gore - excessive blood and whatnot

#nsft - sexual stuff

#antisemitism - generally self explanatory but i will make a note that antizionism in itself is not antisemitism. i am an antizionist jew i don't take any issue with antizionist posts

#bbc merlin arthur death - feel free to help me workshop that tag idk it feels a little long and clunky but regardless i don't really wanna see art or screencaps of that scene

#pjo, #fnaf - because there are zionists involved in production i don't wanna see stuff about these media/fandoms on my dash

brainwashing - this is a word i have muted rather than a tag so if you post a screenshot of something like a tweet that includes the word i just ask that you find a way to also make sure the word is typed into the post somewhere

that's it for now :)

if i update this list i will probably reblog it

again, no guilt if you can't/won't/don't tag these things. for my own safety, i've very intentionally only listed things i can handle coming across even if i would rather avoid them, so if you're unable to tag things purely for my sake that's still something i can handle.

[spectralstitions]

Well! I've got good news for the Caspar OC Fandom (population: me)! ♪~ ᕕ(ᐛ)ᕗ I've found the potential resolution to the (main) arcs of Silas and Finlay, and now that I've got a solid Point A and Point B, I feel a thousand times more emboldened to make a little something with my characters!

Today I created a Google Doc wherein I shall throw my every idea, be it scene, line of dialogue, character moment, random detail, or anything else, no matter how random, outlandish, insignificant, or straight up stupid, into a bullet point list. Over time I will edit and organize the points in the list until I have a usable outline! I took most of the day to figure out how I could trick myself into writing and brainstorming in the first place (focus problems are the bane of my existence) and spent the next couple hours adding the ideas that I already HAVE had about the story into the document. So.... it does kinda feel like I've done nothing at all... But DEEP DOWN I know that putting this stuff to paper is an important step of the process! So I will be ignoring the voices until further notice!

As further incentive I may write up a little update at the end of each month, since I really like having an excuse to go on and on and on.... Plus they'd be kinda fun for me to look back on :]

Well, that's the good news over and done with... Now prepare for the bad news.... this post is over :(

[bizarrequazar]

GJ and ZZH Updates — May 14-20

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

This is part of a weekly series collecting updates from and relating to Gong Jun and Zhang Zhehan.

This post is not wholly comprehensive and is intended as an overview, links provided lead to further details. Dates are in accordance with China Standard Time, the organization is chronological. My own biases on some things are reflected here. Anything I include that is not concretely known is indicated as such, and you’re welcome to do your own research and draw your own conclusions as you see fit. Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, concerns, or additions. :)

[Glossary of names and terms] [Masterlist of my posts about the situation with Zhang Zhehan]

05-14 → A Twitter space was held briefly reviewing the Zhang Sanjian concerts and celebrating Zhang Zhehan’s birthday. [recording] [written notes]

→ It is rumored that Gong Jun started filming a new drama; very little information is known as the director is said to be very low-key. According to the rumors, it’s a crime procedural titled The Remains of the Wind (no relation to Rising with the Wind lol) based on the novel 尸案调查科, and the female lead is Sun Yi. At the time of this post nothing is officially confirmed.

→ The Go Fighting! Weibo posted two promotional photos featuring Gong Jun for episode 5, [here] and [here].

→ Hogan posted a promotional video for 520 spoken by Gong Jun. (1129 kadian) [subbed video]

→ Gong Jun made a post for Mother’s Day: “I wish mothers a happy holiday, good health and all the best!!!”

→ Tiffany & Co. posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun and Elaine Zhong.

→ The Instagram posted three photos of “Zhang Zhehan” and “Zhang Mama”.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted fifteen photos of him from Go Fighting! episode 5. Caption: “Different choices, multiple endings, tonight at 9:00 #Go Fighting!#, guess which choice boss @ Gong Jun Simon will make?”

→ The fifth episode of Go Fighting! season 9 aired. [full episode (raw)] [GJ cut (raw)]

05-15 → Zhenguoli posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Another Zhang Sanjian “airport sighting”, he looked significantly too short, was wearing platform shoes, and was wearing sunglasses indoors. One fan also posted a “chance encounter” photo of him on a plane (still wearing sunglasses and now not masking); QuelleVous later posted photos with measurements of the plane cabin showing that he could not have been taller than 175cm tall—the real Zhang Zhehan is 181cm.

05-16 → Gong Jun posted a promotional video for MARRSGREEN for 520. Caption: “To like, is to smile uncontrollably at them.* Happy, shy... I can't hide it.” This was reposted by MARRSGREEN. *he used “TA” as a gender neutral pronoun. Fan Observations:  -  This day was Zhang Zhehan’s lunar birthday.  -  The post was made at 10:08. 2020-10-08 was the day Zhang Zhehan got a hole in one in golf.

→ The Instagram posted eight photos of “Zhang Zhehan” at a night market, where some of the “chance encounter” photos came from.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted twelve photos from his trip to Thailand back in February. Caption: “The sound of cicadas singing, a travel memory from the boss @ Gong Jun Simon”

05-17 → Gong Jun flew to France.

→ L’Oreal made a post announcing that Gong Jun would be appearing at the Cannes International Film Festival as their spokesperson.

→ Zhenguoli posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ The Go Fighting! Weibo posted a bonus clip from episode 5 of Gong Jun singing.

→ CAPA posted a notice asking its members to boycott the company of the comedian Li Haoshi (aka House) following a police announcement two days earlier that he is being investigated for anti-CCP comments. CAPA apparently forgot that the company is one of their own executive units—comments under the post derided them for this and for their lack of authority in the issue. The hashtag #CAPA calls for the boycott of House# got on Weibo hotsearch under other related hotsearches, with many posts making similar comments.

→ The Instagram posted a “behind the scenes” video of the concerts.

→ Tiffany & Co. tweeted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun and Elaine Zhong.

→ (Exact time unknown) Songcheng received a letter from the Shenzhen Stock Exchange requiring them to submit paperwork showing their investment income and sources in order to audit their recent increased profits. As a reminder, Songcheng is an executive unit of CAPA and has connections to the Zhang Sanjian scam.

05-18 → #GongJun trended on Twitter.

→ The Go Fighting! Weibo posted the trailer for episode 6.

→ BesTV posted two additional clips of Gong Jun from Go Fighting! episode 5, [here] and [here].

→ The fashion brand Rare posted a teaser image for their endorsement with Gong Jun that would be announced on 05-20. (1129 kadian)

→ L’OFFICIEL magazine posted a teaser video for their photoshoot with Gong Jun that would release the following day. (1129 kadian) Caption: “Gong Jun's eyebrows and eyes have a stern temperament when he is not smiling, but when he smiles, most of the alienation that seems to be there is dispelled. At 11:29 a.m. on May 19th, @ Gong Jun Simon will be there or be square.”

→ L’OFFICIEL posted a second teaser video. Caption: “He is sunny, he is humble, no matter ancient or modern, he is also leisurely and free and easy. At 11:29 am on May 19th, stay tuned for @ Gong Jun Simon.”

→ Zhenguoli posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ L’Oreal posted six photos of Gong Jun arriving in Cannes.

→ Tiffany & Co. tweeted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ A photographer posted two photos of Gong Jun from his pre-red carpet photoshoot.

05-19 → Gong Jun walked the red carpet for the Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny premiere at the Cannes International Film Festival, wearing a custom embroidered suit by Jason Wu. [livestream clip] A number of fashion news publications later included him in articles about the event: [Deadline] [Vogue] [RCFA]

→ #GongJun, #SimonGong, #龚俊Simon, and #GongJun_in_CANNES trended on Twitter.

→ Gong Jun posted nine photos of himself in his red carpet outfit. Caption: “Bonjour”

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted an additional eighteen photos of him. Caption: “Leisurely southern method, embroidered picture scroll. The rhyme of the East is hidden in the sleeves of @ Gong Jun Simon.” 

→ #Gong Jun pink suit appears on Cannes red carpet#, #Gong Jun photographed by G#, and #Gong Jun helps Zhong Chuxi up the stairs# got on Weibo’s entertainment hotsearch.

→ An unflattering photo of Gong Jun with his eyes closed was posted by Hung Huang, a well known fashion commentator on Weibo, which was spread around by marketing accounts and got a hotsearch. The photo was later removed by her.

→ Zhenguoli posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ Deeyeo posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun.

→ L’OFFICIEL posted a video (flashing lights cw) from their shoot with Gong Jun to their Xiao Hong Shu.

→ L’OFFICIEL posted eighteen photos from their shoot with Gong Jun. (1129 kadian) Caption: “@ Gong JunSimon seems to have a relaxed temperament, just like any ordinary friend you know around you.  He is very typical, sharp-edged, loves freedom, enjoys freedom, lives freely, is not limited by time, but only in the feeling of the moment.  A simple but rich heart has experienced ups and downs, opportunities and circumstances, and has accumulated emotions, matured thinking, and accumulated foundations.” Gong Jun’s studio reposted this with the added caption: “Stepping into the world of boundless mirrors, building on the water, boss @ Gong Jun Simon goes from complex to simple, and lives comfortably at home.”

→ Hogan posted four of the L’OFFICIEL photos, highlighting their shoes.

→ Gong Jun posted twelve photos from the previous day to his Xiao Hong Shu, caption: “Aiyo  Really good @ Jason Wu” and ten to his Instagram, caption: “Merci @ jasonwu” 

→ L’OFFICIEL posted their article with Gong Jun.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted a video (flashing lights cw) of behind the scenes footage from the L’OFFICIEL shoot. Caption: “The water lines are clear and shallow, boss @ Gong Jun Simon embraces a handful of coolness~” BGM is Violetta by Ballpoint, Cushy, and Dylan Sitts.

→ Gong Jun posted nine photos from the L’OFFICIEL shoot. Caption: “Flying birds and swimming fish live everywhere.”

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted a douyin (flashing lights cw) of footage from the L’OFFICIEL photoshoot. Caption: “Feel at ease, see the boss in the reflection of the pool surface @ Gong Jun Simon A corner of summer.” BGM is Fool For You (VIP Remix) by Kastra.

→ Gong Jun’s studio posted ten behind the scenes photos from the L’OFFICIEL shoot. Caption: “The water wave reflects the mirage of the fingertips, the boss @ Gong Jun Simon lives in a simple house and is at ease.”

→ The designer Jason Wu posted photos of Gong Jun and his suit to his Instagram. Caption: “@ gongjunhahaha in custom #JasonWuCollection couture embroidered suit for @ festivaldecannes -This is a very special and personal project as it is my first menswear design and that in reflects the beauty and exquisite cultural significance of both of our Chinese heritage. It is incredible to showcase this unprecedented collaboration on such an International stage. I am so proud.” He also retweeted quite a few tweets made by fans about the outfit.

→ L’Oreal posted a video of Gong Jun’s arrival in Cannes.

→ The Instagram posted eight photos of “Zhang Zhehan” on a beach. The photos show obvious signs of editing [1] [2]. Xie Yihua attempted to post them previously on 05-11 but they were among the ones removed by Weibo. 

→ Gong Jun appeared in a livestream for L’Oreal. [recording] During it, he confirmed that he is currently filming in Haikou, supporting the rumors about The Remains of the Wind.

→ L’Oreal posted four photos of Gong Jun from just before the red carpet, followed by five photos and two videos, [here] and [here], of him on it. They also later included a photo of him in an Instagram post about the event.

05-20 → #GongJun continued to trend on Twitter.

→ Gong Jun flew back to China.

→ Deeyeo posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun for 520.

→ Rare posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun, announcing their new endorsement with him.

→ MARRSGREEN posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun for 520. They also later posted a video with illustrations of him. (1129 kadian) Fan Observation: The music in the video, Journey by AMPai Music, has a few bars that are very similar to A Love Letter to Filmmakers, the song Zhang Zhehan sang at Weibo Night 2021. 

→ Gong Jun posted a video for Rare. Caption: “It is a pleasure to be the global spokesperson of @ RARE. The fashion brand in Venice has created the legend of Italian fashion luxury, dare to be RARE with me, dare to be different.” This was reposted by his studio, added caption: “Boss @ Gong Jun Simon starts the undefined trend exploration, captures the extraordinary Italian aesthetics, and releases the new trendy luxury.” and by Rare.

→ Zhenguoli posted two photo ads featuring Gong Jun, [here] and [here]. (1129 kadian on the latter)

→ Fresh posted a video featuring Gong Jun for 520. (11:52, 511 and 520 kadian)

→ MARRSGREEN posted a letter about Gong Jun for 520. [translation]

→ The Instagram posted ten more photos of “Zhang Zhehan” at a beach, this time in the evening.

→ Rare posted a photo ad featuring Gong Jun for 520.

Additional Reading: → Rising with the Wind is rumored to start airing on 05-31, Legend of AnLe in August.

<<< previous week || all posts || following week >>>

[creativenicocorner]

Hey! I really enjoy your discworld fics and wanted to draw some fan art. I've had a hard time finding the motivation to draw recently but these fics really got me inspired

I started reading your Maurice and Moist fics before I had actually read The Amazing Maurice, but now that I have, I really like how you kept up the same tone as the book. Loved the scene with the golem so I had to draw it

Runaway's Gamble is such a fun idea and chapter one was SO sweet! I love Young Sam's characterization and cringe/fail uncle Moist and I can't wait to see where the story goes when Angua gets involved

Σ>―(〃°ω°〃)♡→

Okay OKAY please know it took me, like, half an hour to calm down and stop flailing with JOY and DELIGHT!!! (I may or may not have done some wall pushups just to reach some level of chill lol it's a miracle I'm not keysmashing cause I am vibrating with JOY) Oh my goodness I'm HONORED I was able to inspire and motivate you to draw even when struggling with motivation!! And trust me, I get it! It can be rough, and the fact my fics helped in any way is just, wow, like I said, an absolute honor.

Perhaps one of the highest praises a writer can receive and just ;0; I can't thank you ENOUGH for sharing these wonderful pieces (♡PLURAL!! YOU MAD LAD THANK YOU (*꒦ິ꒳꒦ີ)♡) and kind words!!!♡ It is wonderful to know I was able to capture the tone of the book, I'm oh man OVERY JOYED to hear that!! And a further relief I was able to handle Young Sam's characterization well! While writing I felt like that was a point I was worried and struggled through more than anything and, yeah, again, A RELIEF to know I stuck that landing!!♡ Though I gotta say re-listening to Equal Rites really helped since Esk is very close to Young Sam's age for a majority of the book

ヽ(o♡o)/ I CAN'T THANK YOU ENOUGH!!! BUT I'LL TRY DANG IT! THANK YOU SO MUCH!!!!♡

And the ART!♡ Can we talk about the art?! I'm Dying to talk about the art!!♡ THE DETAIL on the slate!! Moist's little expression looking up at the golem!! The green roofs!! The flowers!! YES!! And you captured the softness of the scene so magnificently!! AND LITTLE YOUNG SAM YOU MADE HIM SO CUTE!! And holy MOLY the detail of Moist's hands as he's holding the cards!! His coy smile!! Incredible!! I'm shaking with JOY! This piece is as sweet as those eaten cherry pie slices, and twice as wholesome!! Phenomenal!!!

I recently started a new job, so that might have an impact on how frequent I'll be able to update, but never fear they will be updated!!! I think between the two fics the Maurice and Moist fic might be updated sooner, but we'll see!

(ง •̀ω•́)ง✧♡ All the same I will endeavor to make just as enjoyable if not more! I'm very excited ✧

♡In the meantime take care of yourself! And thank you so much again, from the bottom of my heart, this means so much to me♡

[justpercy]

I am rereading Percy Jackson & The Olympians. Last time I read I was 12-13 years old, so it is a very different experience, but I still love it very much.

Now I have a B.A in English and Portuguese Languages and Literatures, then I thought it would be an interesting exercise to analyse it from this new perspective.

This is an on-going analysis that I will be updating as I finish the books. I am reading it in Portuguese so little details may differ due to translation. Not spoiler-free.

The Lightning Thief

It is heavily emphasized that Olympian gods only reign over the western civilization, but in a certain moment (Percy’s visit to Hades) a “prophecy” depicts the “hunger in Africa”. Which means that the Olympian gods are aware of other civilizations, and there is some level of relation between them. But there is no further explanation, it is only a mention.

It reinforces the colonialist narratives about Africa. Which Africa? It is not mentioned. A whole continent treated as a generic place. And only a bad characteristic about it is presented, in the worst scenerio of the entire book.

It seems as a slip, because the plot and the characters are constantly reminding the reader that the story is about the West. 

There are some scenes in which pollution has a big role, and Grover’s speech is used to emphasize this. The West is killing nature, and this helps to construct the idea of the western civilization as a broken one.

Gabe Ugliano, Sally’s situation, and Ares’s love for the way Americans deal with guns, point to the violence and poverty that exist in USA, which are some other reasons to see West as damaged.

After we understand that the villains want to destroy the western civilization, all these reasons come up to make us think: “are they wrong?”. But Percy is a 12 year-old boy who never really fit in, this is the first time he actually has a proper family, and he is not fully capable of seeing all these reasons.

The Sea of Monsters

Tyson is a cyclope, a mythical monster, but he lives among humans and is presented as one in the book. The fact that the characters meet with other cyclopes and Percy feels guilty about killing an individual from the same species of his step-brother is enriching to the narrative. The book is not afraid of dealing with its own contradictions, and Percy grows as a more empathetic character, which makes him such a good hero. Killing or not killing monsters is a choice with consequences, and there are good and bad monsters in this world.

There are more explanations about the presence of monsters among humans: the fast food chains that are used by monsters to capture humans, and cyclopes living as homeless people. This is delicate because it could seem as an implication that some homeless people and some fast food restaurant workers are monsters. As the book doesn’t mention anything else about it, it is a little open to interpretation. But a different of seeing it could be that those people are so ignored by society that it is easier for monsters to disguise among them.

Tyson’s plot is another example of the construction of the idea of the West as broken.

In this second book, the relationship between gods and their children is further explored, and Percy starts to question his father’s reasons again. This is another side of the issues demigods have with the Olympians. Not only they allowed the West to end up like this, they also never were good parents. This is not explicitly said in this book yet, but we can already see it in it. In the first book, it seems as Percy finally understood his father, but now more questions come up.

[thetoxicgamer]

According to Statistics, Honkai Star Rail May Be Killing Genshin Impact.

Honkai Star Rail could potentially be one of the standout PC games of 2023, and I don't say this lightly. Its smooth release has drawn a significant amount of my gaming time, possibly even surpassing my affection for Diablo 4. This sci-fi adventure from HoYoverse is characterized by its breathtaking anime-style visuals and engaging turn-based combat. It's undeniably a success story. However, this success might have unintended consequences for HoYoverse and its sister title, Genshin Impact. A detailed analysis conducted by Naavik, a gaming research, consulting, and advisory firm, reveals that Honkai Star Rail's success may be causing a division within the HoYoverse gaming community. Using data from data.ai, the report indicates that Genshin Impact is struggling to maintain its player base because many players are migrating to Honkai instead. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8vPZrMFiZ4 According to Naavik's research, from its release on April 26th until August 2023, Honkai Star Rail generated approximately $1,089,208,633 in revenue (although this figure is estimated and not precise). In comparison, Genshin Impact reportedly earned $3,663,384,204 across all platforms throughout the entire previous year. The data also suggests that Honkai received twice as many downloads as Genshin did at launch. However, despite maintaining a larger player base, the two games' revenue after two months appears to be relatively similar. Naavik speculates that this could be because Honkai's monetization strategies might not be as effective, and they delve into the potential reasons for this. Other contributing factors to Honkai's successful launch include significant investments in TikTok and influencer marketing campaigns, along with an impressive pre-registration period. Regardless, it's evident that Honkai has made a strong entrance into the gaming scene. Nevertheless, this situation raises concerns about Honkai potentially cannibalizing Genshin's potential revenue, as players seem to be divided between the two games instead of playing both simultaneously. PCGamesN has sought clarification from HoYoverse regarding these statistics and will update the article with any additional information provided. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i7wgl1v1_5M Speaking from personal experience, I can understand this trend. As mentioned earlier, I've spent a considerable amount of time playing Honkai Star Rail but relatively little playing Genshin Impact. While Honkai captivated me during long flights to Boston with its sci-fi aesthetic and breathtaking visuals, Genshin Impact, for me, felt somewhat grind-heavy, with the gacha elements sometimes overshadowing the gameplay. With Zenless Zone Zero on the horizon, there's potential for HoYoverse to further divide its player base, especially considering the impressive visuals of ZZZ. If you find yourself immersed in Honkai, we have a Honkai Star Rail tier list to guide you on character pulls, as well as a list of active Honkai Star Rail codes to help you acquire much-needed Stellar Jade. Read the full article

[duckielover151]

THE ONE PIECE DIARIES

Episode Count: 400

Holy crap. It's been so hard to hold out for the 400th episode to write an update. Everything just got crazy in the last 10 episodes or so. There are so many things to talk about! Strap in for a long one.

Okay. First. Sabaody. A location that is as beautiful as it is horrifying... Honestly, I feel like it took just a little too long for that fact to sink in for the crew. What part of Hachi's "Stand by and do nothing even if someone gets shot in front of you" warning was unclear that things are pretty fucked up here? The government's corruption has escalated even further with this new, up-close look at the human- (and other) trafficking and slavery system. It's honestly astonishing that anyone supports the World Government at this point.

And don't even get me started on the World Nobles. Never has a punch been more overdue yet so satisfying. I want them to storm into this so called "Holy Land" and just start beating up anyone they can find there too. (It's been a minute since I've talked about Enel, but have I mentioned how much I hate god complex characters?)

And then, of course, was the mass introduction of so many important characters... (Supernova is such a cool name for a group of rising stars... Maybe not totally, scientifically accurate... but cool.)

I recognize a lot of those names. The only one I really know much about is Law. I believe I've gotten basically his entire backstory, but I'm excited to see it play out in person, the little details I'm sure to have missed. Kid and Killer are also really familiar names, though I don't actually know that much about them.

I can definitely see why Law and Kid in particular come up so much in the fandom, if their introduction is anything to go by. That fight with the three captains fending off the Navy outside the auction house may not have been the most impressive fight in the series, but it was also a really fun spectacle. Kid, Luffy, and Law have already got a great sort of chemistry and dynamic, and I'm excited to see that grow.

There were a few others who stood out who I'm also looking forward to getting to know better... Jewelry Bonney is an interesting one. She seems to have the ability to age and de-age herself at will, which could be super useful... Though she doesn't seem much like the type for espionage... She seems like someone who really walks her own path. Some of these introductions were a little rushed, but I feel like hers was really good. They got in everything we needed to know about her, including her main policy of not getting caught up in anyone else's bullshit. And the Straw Hats seems to specialize in getting caught up in other people's problems... I'd like to see her team up with our crew... but I kind of get the feeling that she'll end up being an enemy, or at least a hostile rival, whenever they meet again.

Basil Hawkins is the other one who really stood out to me. He's another interesting one who I'm really not sure where he'll stand in the future. He has the potential to be either really cool or really annoying. Fortunetelling has the potential to be a fascinating ability... I'll be interested to see if he pairs it with another talent... and just how much he relies on it. His assurance that it wasn't his time to die because his cards told him so while his crewmate was panicking... isn't exactly reassuring. The concept of fate can be a tricky one in fiction. He seems like a character who might get shot down just to make a point if he relies on it too much.

And! I can't believe I almost forgot about Rayleigh.

Now, the huge backstory element that he revealed... That the Roger Pirates were never actually captured; Gol D. Roger turned himself in because he was already dying of some incurable illness... is something I already knew. But damn, those were some really great reveal scenes. Hell, Rayleigh's reveal scene, where they pause for just that extra second before adding that he's the former pirate king's vice captain (I think I prefer the term first mate, to be honest...) was really great. Kind of gave me the shivers even though I already knew who he was.

There were some really, really great moments throughout his story too... The one where he's reliving Roger's last words to him before turning himself in... It just struck me all of a sudden and made me kind of unexpectedly emotional... to realize that Rayleigh wasn't remembering the scene as his younger self. He was still the old man sitting at the table with the Straw Hats while Roger's comparative youth (and overall vibe) was frozen in time, as it always will be...

I think it really reinforced that Rayleigh's moved on and is living in the present, no matter how much he may have been affected by it at the time. But I think it also raises some questions. And comparisons.

We've already seen other characters meeting Luffy and being struck by the resemblance to Roger. But I think it's going to be these crews' differences that really stand out to me. Because if the Rogers are all still alive and well... it's almost a little disappointing that they're not still out there raising hell in their own ways, even if the crew's disbanded.

I just can't help pondering what it would be like if the roles were reversed. Because while I'm sure Luffy wouldn't want his crew to risk their lives for him... especially if they all knew he was already dying... I also can't picture it going down any other way than his friends storming the execution platform. After everything he's proven he's willing to do to save a friend... I can't help but feel the best way to honor him would be to live their lives by his example. I can't imagine this crew just fading into obscurity, even if they lost their captain.

But maybe that just has to do with the biggest mystery of all. Rayleigh basically comes right out and says that they were all changed forever by whatever they experienced at the end of their journey, whatever the One Piece is... And that they all made a choice when confronted with that knowledge. And maybe the Straw Hats will make a different choice once they find it.

And I sure wish I could say I would have had Robin and Luffy's resolve, to decide I wanted to find it myself, no matter how long that might take... But I probably would have cracked and demanded answers. Whenever it all does get revealed... I feel like the fandom's gonna explode.