#Spatial Effects

[zegalba]

Spatial Effects: 'Waterwalks' (2005)

[anakliro]

space divas

commissions 🌌

[catboyfurina]

my early childhood education class is really driving home the developmental in developmental disability.... like i knew thats what adhd is classified as but they just keep dropping skill after skill that are standard for Small Children that i do not have D:

[themontessoriacademyofarlington]

Toddler - Outdoor Play

Outdoor play is essential for toddlers as it nurtures their natural curiosity, supports sensory development, and fosters independence through hands-on exploration. Engaging with nature allows children to refine their motor skills, develop spatial awareness, and build resilience through unstructured, self-directed activities. A hand pump on a water table is a great example of this kind of learning. It encourages toddlers to use coordinated muscle movements, understand cause and effect, and engage in problem-solving.

[chris-ostkreuz]

How Immersive Audio Turns Classrooms into Sonic Playgrounds!

In a world where traditional teaching methods are being put to the test, immersive audio technology is taking classrooms by storm. Imagine a scenario where students aren’t just passive listeners but rather active participants in a cosmic soundscape that makes learning feel like a musical adventure. Welcome to the era of the Sonic Playground, where immersive audio transforms the dull din of the…

[felixwylde]

Dimensional Breaches and Biological Anomalies: Empirical Evidence from the Backrooms Exploration Initiative By Dr. Alexey Petrovitch Ivanoff, Dr. Serina Zhang, Dr. Micheal Torrez, Dr. Emilie Rousseaux, and Dr. Rajj Patel. Abstract:The recent empirical validation of the Backrooms, a complex network of extradimensional spaces, has revolutionized multidisciplinary scientific research, presenting…

[shadowtraveled]

"mithrun is the only real monsterfucker in dungeon meshi" is objectively the funniest bit you can get out of his everything, but in all seriousness i think his attraction to his love interest is deliberately overstated—and that makes sense, because romantic jealousy is a classic and digestible motive, which is explicitly what kabru was aiming for in condensing mithrun's backstory, and also because until chapter 94, mithrun wasn't willing to admit to the true nature of his desires.

but because romantic envy is both classic and digestible, it probably isn’t a unique enough or complicated enough desire to tempt a demon’s appetite. mithrun’s wish, as far as we can figure from kabru’s reduced retelling, was to have a life in which he had never become one of the canaries, and that carries like 3857 implications and desires within it. that’s delicious. his love interest acts as sort of a red herring to his motivation for making it, though. (side note: i'm saying "love interest" here because, keeping in mind that i barely speak japanese on a good day anymore, "想い人" is something i'd usually take as just kind of an old-fashioned and romantic way to refer to a lover, but in context i wonder if both the connotation of yearning and the vagueness are intentional, and i think this phrasing gets those aspects of it more effectively. anyway.)

mithrun considered his love interest to be untrustworthy. there was a minute where i thought that comment might be about a similar-looking elf (yugin, one of his squad members), but comparing the two…

the "sketchy" arrow is definitely referring to the elf we know as his love interest—the bangs go toward her right, she only has the one forehead ornament, and, most notably, her ears aren't notched.

every time she’s given a full-body depiction in his dungeon, she’s drawn as a chimera, with the body of a snake from the waist down. (side note: the “what if a dungeon has chimeras before reaching level 4?”/“then the dungeon lord is unstable” exchange just being mithrun grilling his past self alive is so funny. he’s so. but anyway) there are a couple things about this.

first, the snake part of the chimera appears to be modeled after some species of coral snake mimic

which, in the biology-for-fun manga, i… doubt is a coincidence, especially with the added context of the “untrustworthy” comment. the dungeon’s conjured illusion of mithrun’s love interest was a harmless copycat of a venomous original. for whatever reason, he felt this person was a threat and made up a "safe" version of her to be in a relationship with, and while it’s definitely possible to be attracted to or even love someone you find to be toxic and/or intimidating, when you take that into consideration alongside the configuration of her body, you get some interesting implications.

which brings us to our second point: if we assume that mithrun was not in fact fucking a snake, then sexual attraction, at least, was so far removed from his idea of a relationship with this person that he did not even bother to keep her dungeon copy human enough to maintain the illusion of the option of a sexual relationship. this is somewhat echoed in the depictions of their interactions, which also imply a frankly unexpected romantic distance. she kisses his cheek and he doesn't seem to react; she's at the edge of a narrow bed with only one set of pillows, on top of his blankets while he's underneath them.

the kiss is particularly interesting because it seems to contrast the text. kabru's narration tells us this was everything mithrun could have asked for, but mithrun is there looking unreadable to pensive, likely because this is right before the panel that makes it clear things in the dungeon are beginning to go wrong.

walking through this backwards for a minute, we have the physical barrier of his bedding and the spatial separation inherent in a bed made for one person, the emotional barrier of his mounting anxiety getting in the way of his ability to enjoy the affection he sought, and... the snake, which historically carries the connotation of temptation, yes, but also mistrust, barring physical intimacy. okay. ok. if a dungeon reflects the mentality of its lord, all of this might suggest that mithrun was not able to have any real desire for a relationship with this person. his unwillingness to be vulnerable or let another person in was insurmountable. but in that case, why was she such a focal point that she remained to the end, after his dungeon had stopped creating iterations of his friends to come and visit him? why would he get so upset over her meeting with his brother that he became lord of a dungeon about it?

well. mithrun's brother was also interested in her, probably genuinely. and mithrun had to win.

you have an older brother who your parents completely ignore, probably in part because he is chronically ill/disabled and almost definitely in part because he received a ton of recessive traits that resulted in rumors that he was an illegitimate child. you are aware, most likely because those same parents fucking told you, that you actually are an illegitimate child. but they keep you around because you had the good fortune of looking just like your mother. what can that possibly teach you but that you, like your brother, are disposable?

it's utterly unsurprising that mithrun, under these circumstances, developed a pathological need to be better than everyone around him. people don't keep you otherwise. i'd argue this is also why he says he looked down on everyone he knew while milsiril claims his dungeon reeked of feelings of inferiority—he sought out people's worst traits and prioritized them in his mind to protect his already extremely fragile sense of self-worth, and all the while he tried to be as likable and high-performing as he possibly could be. his parents disposed of him anyway, but even then he tried to keep up the performance. he was kind to everyone. he never once lost to a dungeon.

when he saw his "love interest" meeting up with his brother, what he saw was himself being replaced by a person his parents had always treated as worthless, and if that was what they thought of the child they'd kept, what value could anyone possibly see in the bastard they'd given away to die? mithrun and kabru tell the story like he wanted to win this unnamed elf's heart, but it was never about being with her. it was about cementing his worth, proving that he didn't deserve to be thrown away.

and so it's particularly cruel that his demon discarded him, too. but maybe it's also particularly gentle that, in the end, there was someone who refused to even consider giving up on him.

kui laid it out in three panels better than i could hope to.

yeah. it's love. you wanted to be loved, even when the only way you were able to understand it was through the desire to be wanted, and you wanted that so badly that the idea of being consumed felt like the promise of finally mattering to someone.

[fuckyeahgoodomens]

SFX Magazine Issue 372 - Designing Good Omens ❤ 😊

PRODUCTION DESIGNER MICHAEL RALPH REVEALS HOW THE SHOW’S CENTREPIECE SET, WHICKBER STREET, WAS GIVEN A DEVILISHLY CLEVER UPGRADE FOR THE SECOND SEASON

WORDS: DAVE GOLDER

Invisible Columns And Thin Walls “The new studio is Pyramid Studios in Bathgate – it used to be a furniture warehouse. And unfortunately – or fortunately, because I accept these things as not challenges but gifts – right down the middle of that studio are a series of upright columns. But you’ll never spot them on screen. I had to build them in and integrate them into the walls and still get the streets between them. And it worked.

“There’s all sorts of cheeky design values to those sets. Normally a set like this is double-skin. In other words, you do an interior wall and an exterior wall, with an airspace in between. But really, the only time a viewer notices that there’s that width is at the doors and the windows. So I cheated all that. I ended up with single walls everywhere. So the exterior wall is the interior wall, just painted. All I did was make the sash windows and entrances wider to give it some depth as you walked in.”

GOOD OMENS HAD A CHANGE of location for its second season, but hopefully you didn’t notice. Because Whickber Street in Soho upped sticks from an airfield in Hertfordshire to a furniture warehouse in Bathgate, Edinburgh. It’s the kind of nonsensical geographical shenanigans that could only make sense in the crazy world of film and TV, and production designer Michael Ralph was the man in charge of rebuilding and expanding the show’s vast central set. “I wish we could have built more in season one than we did,” says Ralph, whose previous work has included Primeval and Dickensian. “We built the ground floor of everything and the facades of all the shops. But we didn’t build anything higher than that, because we were out on an airfield in a very, very difficult terrain and weather conditions, so we really couldn’t go much higher. Visual effects created the upper levels.”

But with season two the set has gone to a whole other level… literally. “What happened was that the rest of the street became integrated into the series’s storyline,” explains Ralph. “So we needed a record shop, we needed a coffee shop that actually had an inside, we needed a magic shop, we needed the pub. To introduce those meant we had to change the street with a layout that works from a storylines point of view. In other words, things like someone standing at the counter in the record shop had to be able to eyeball somebody standing at the counter in the coffee shop. They had to be able to eyeball Aziraphale sitting in his office in the window of the bookshop. But the rest of it was a pleasure to do inside, because we could expand it and I could go up two storeys.”

For most of the set, which is around 80 metres long and 60 metres wide, the two storeys only applied to the shop frontages, but in the case of Aziraphale’s bookshop, it allowed Ralph to build the mezzanine level for real this time. According to Ralph it became one of the cast and crews’ favourite places to hang out during down time.

But while AZ Fell & Co has grown in height, it actually has a slightly smaller footprint because of the logistics of adapting it to the new studio.

“Everybody swore to me that no one would notice,” says Ralph wryly. “I walked onto it and instinctively knew there was a difference immediately, and they hated me for that. I have this innate sense about spatial awareness and an eye like a spirit level.

“It’s not a lot, though – I think we’ve lost maybe two and a half feet on the front wall internally. I think that there’s a couple of other smaller areas, but only I’d notice. So I can be really annoying to my guys, but only on those levels. Not on any other. They actually quite like me…”

Populating The Bookshop “The props in the new bookshop set were a flawless reproduction from the set decorator Bronwyn Franklin [who is also Ralph’s wife]. It was really the worst-case scenario after season one. She works off the concept art that I produce, but what she does is she adds so much more to the character of the set. She doesn’t buy anything she doesn’t love, or doesn’t fit the character.

“But the things she put a lot of work into finding for season one, they were pretty much one-offs. When we burnt the set down in the sixth episode, we lost a lot of props, many of which had been spotted and appreciated by the fans. So Bronwyn had to discover a new set decorating technique: forensic buying.

“She found it all – duplicates and replicas. It took ages. In that respect, the Covid delay was very helpful for Bron. There’s 7,000 books in there and there’s not one fake book. That’s mainly because… it’s a weird thing to say, but we wanted it to smell and feel like a bookshop to everybody that was in it, all the time.

“It affects everybody subliminally; it affects everybody’s performance – actors and crew – it raises the bar 15 to 20%. And the detail, you know… We love a lot of detail.”

(look at the description under this, they called him 'Azi' hehehehe :D <3)

Aziraphale’s Inspirational Correspondence “There’s not one single scrap of paper on Aziraphale’s desk that isn’t written specifically for Aziraphale. Every single piece is not just fodder that’s been shoved there, it has a purpose; it’s a letter of thanks, or an enquiry about a book or something.

“Michael Sheen is so submerged in his character he would get lost sitting at his own desk, reading his own correspondence between takes. I believe wholeheartedly that if you put that much care into every single piece of detail, on that desk and in that room, that everybody feels it, including the crew, and then they give that set the same respect it deserves.

“They also lift their game because they believe that they’re doing something of so much care and value. Really, it’s a domino effect of passion and care for what you’re producing.”

Alternative Music “My daughter Mickey is lead graphic designer [two of Ralph’s sons worked on the series too, one as a concept artist, the other in props]. They’re the ones that produced all of that handwritten work on the desk. She’s the one that took on the record shop and made up 80 band names so that we didn’t have to get copyright clearance from real bands. Then she produced records and sleeves that spanned 50, 60 years of their recordings, and all of the graphics on the walls.

“I remember Michael and Neil [Gaiman] getting lost following one band’s history on the wall, looking at their posters and albums desperately trying to find out whether they survived that emo period.”

It’s A Kind Of Magic One of the new shops in Whickber Street for season two was Will Goldstone’s Magic Shop, which is full of as many Easter eggs as off-the-shelf conjuring tricks, including a Matt Smith Doctor Who-style fez and a toy orang-utan that’s a nod to Discworld’s The Librarian. Ralph says that while the series is full of references to Gaiman, Pratchett and Doctor Who, Michael Sheen never complained about a lack of Masters Of Sex in-jokes. “He’d be the last person to make that sort of comment!”

Ralph also reveals that the magic shop counter was another one of his wife’s purchases, bought at a Glasgow reclamation yard.

The Anansi Boys Connection Ralph reveals that Good Omens season two used the state-of-the-art special effects tech Volume (famous for its use in The Mandalorian to create virtual backdrops) for just one sequence, but he will be using it extensively elsewhere on another Gaiman TV series being made for Prime Video.

“We used Volume on the opening sequence to create the creation of the universe. I was designing Anansi Boys in duality with this project, which seems an outrageously suicidal thing to do. But it was fantastic and Anansi Boys was all on Volume. So I designed for Volume on one show and not Volume on the other. The complexities and the psychology of both is different.”

[theonion]

University of Iowa neuroscientists studying spatial learning and the effects of stress on memory announced Tuesday that a little son-of-a-bitch mouse ruined an experiment on cognitive performance by effortlessly navigating a maze that researchers spent nearly a year designing and constructing.

The test subject, a common house mouse, briskly traversed the complicated wooden maze in under 30 seconds or, according to the study’s final report, roughly 1/8,789,258 as long as it took the lab to secure funding for the experiment. According to researchers administrating the standard Y-maze test, the fucking bastard never even broke his stride during the first trial, always selecting the correct route while consistently avoiding blind dead-end alleys.

Full Story

[ardnin]

I uploaded the Splatoon 3 Side Order OST

I just added the Side Order OST to my Splatoon 3 OST game rip which you can look up here

As always these are direct rips from the game, converted to flac and normalized.

This rip also includes the overworld and tower foyer tracks which had to be recorded in-game since these tracks are not stored as music files but rather - from what I understand - the game mixes these tracks live by having each instrument emit its sound from the visual elements that represent the sound.

To make it special I recorded these tracks in surround sound and then tried mixing these channels with a spatial audio mixing tool to emulate the "3D" effect from each instrument playing from a different location. (Mind you I'm not super experienced with mixing like that so it might not be optimal)

I also uploaded every other Splatoon CD release if you're interested!

Edit: I re-uploaded the OST now with tracks that were missing in my first upload. Be sure to use the "Side Order (Complete)" folder!

[solxamber]

Hi! I had some questions about your guideverse AU after reading one of your fics. I’ll admit most of it is just because I’m unfamiliar with the concept of a “guideverse” AU.

How does the guiding work? How do the bonds actually work? The idea of being able to force one ruined any understanding I could piece together. One of your fics mentioned the reader being a battle-type esper, so there must be something like support-type espers too? How is that classification determined? I assume it has to do with the type of powers manifested. Also, I noticed there’s a pattern of calling espers dramatic. Is this just a plot thing, or do the powers make them more emotionally unstable?

Sorry for the wall of questions.

omg guideverse questions yippee (don't be sorry i get really excited when i see questions about guideverse!!!)

these are not answers for every guideverse, this is just how things work in mine specifically!

How does guiding work?

When a Guide touches an Esper—always skin-to-skin—it acts as a conduit that opens a psychic link. This link allows the Guide to "hear" or "feel" the Esper’s emotional and neural frequencies.

Once contact is made, the Guide consciously pushes their own stable frequency toward the Esper’s. Think of it like tuning two instruments to the same pitch.

How do these bonds work?

So there are 2 types of bonds: Temporary and Permanent. They're both used for making the guiding process more efficient.

Temporary Bonds:

A temporary bond is a flexible, short-term connection between a Guide and an Esper. Its usually initiated when there's a large rank difference between Esper and Guide to make sure that the Esper can feel the exertion and stop when the Guide is getting dangerously drained.

Permanent Bond:

A permanent bond is a rare, lifelong psychic connection formed when a Guide and an Esper resonate at a near-perfect frequency and both willingly consent to solidify the link. The guiding is more efficient when the pair is permanently bonded.

Consequences of a permanent bond:

For the Guide:

They become unable to guide anyone else.

For the Esper:

They can no longer be effectively guided by anyone else.

Others may try, but the effects will be weakened, often feeling hollow or even physically uncomfortable.

Forced Bonding?

A forced bond occurs when an Esper deliberately overwhelms or hijacks a Guide's resonance without consent, attempting to lock a bond against the Guide’s will.

These are extremely rare and universally condemned—both ethically and legally.

Consequences:

For the Guide:

Suffers psychic trauma—the equivalent of being set on fire from the inside.

Experiences a sharp, often permanent loss in guiding efficiency.

For the Esper:

The bond does not become permanent, no matter how hard they push. It eventually collapses under its own instability.

Most Espers who attempt this do so out of desperation, not malice—but it’s still treated as a serious offense.

Types of Espers?

There are Battle Types and Support Types. They're classified according to the abilities that they get.

Battle Type Espers:

Primary Role:

Offense, combat engagement, and direct suppression of Gate-born entities.

Abilities:

High-output, volatile, or destructive in nature.

Manifest as elemental control, psychic force projection, weaponization of thought, or raw energy manipulation.

Prone to power surges and emotional bleed-through during high-stress combat, making them heavily reliant on stable guiding.

Support Type Espers: (Very rare)

Primary Role:

Defense, utility, stabilization, and team augmentation.

Abilities:

Subtle but essential—often involve shielding, spatial control, time perception slowing, healing, detection.

Designed to regulate or manipulate the Gate environment itself, rather than destroy what's inside it.

Still emotionally reactive, but generally more stable than Battle-types.

Are espers dramatic or is it a side effect?

Almost all Espers are emotionally unstable.

Emotional instability isn’t a flaw in Espers—it’s practically a feature of the job. The very nature of being an Esper means existing with your psyche wide open, constantly flooded with noise, power, and pressure. Even the strongest ones—the SSS-Ranks who clear Gates single-handedly—aren’t immune. In fact, the more powerful an Esper is, the louder the chaos gets.

1. Noise

This ���psychic noise” never really turns off. Sleep doesn’t mute it. Solitude just sharpens it.

Guides help quiet it, but outside of those sessions? It’s like trying to meditate during a rock concert.

2. Guilt

Espers are the first into Gates and the last out.

They’re trained to fight, save, contain—and failures stick. Hard.

Many Espers carry survivor’s guilt or a martyr complex. They can’t save everyone, and that gnaws at them.

Hope this cleared up some things!!

[present-mom-blog]

Can we stop and think about how Atsushi broke Akutagawa's jaw on the second fight? Like, as a direct effect from breaking the Spatial Shield?

Atsushi must absolutely TERRIFY some people, especially in the Port Mafia. He's come out of nowhere, terrorized police enough to get the Armed Detective Agency involved, has an enormous bounty in his head that the Port Mafia hasn't yet collected, and he broke Akutagawa's jaw. He broke Akutagawa's jaw, who was basically untouchable.

Give me my cryptid Atsushi, give me the lower ranks of the Port Mafia, hell, maybe even some of the higher ranks, fearing him.

[phanamu]

Some lighthearted headcanons I have based on an old post of mine I'd like to update:

Despite his tendency to slam into walls, Danny has Fenton-levels high spatial intelligence. He has a strong intuitive grasp on how things physically relate to each other, and how much x force will affect y mass. This grew out of his love of space, got even better once he started ghost fighting, flying, and working with ectoplasm, and is a major reason for his stellar bowling average. He doesn't quite grasp how impressive it is both because he's too used to thinking of himself as the Solid C Student of his family and because it's So Easy for him surely everyone can do that. Right?

Jazz's major creative outlet is music. She keeps her favorite CDs in her car and uses drive time to vent through songs. She knows how to play the bass guitar and has considered pursuing music therapy. At this point, though, she just plays to quiet her own mind and keep her hands busy.

Tucker's main contribution to the Trio isn't actually his tech genius. It's the fact that he makes sure they all take the time to take care of themselves and relax. Danny and Sam are both high-strung people who feel the need to fix or fight all the time, so Tucker decided to be the guy who suggests and plans outings just for fun. He's one of the first people to verbalize he could use a break, which reminds the other two to check-in and gives them an excuse to slow down. It's subtle, but effective.

Sam knows how to cut, style, and generally take care of hair. She doesn't really advertise it because she's still invested in pretending to be allergic to 'normal girl things' but she likes the confidence and control she gets out of fixing and shaving her hair the way she likes it. This is also how she knew how to style Tucker's temporary Goth hair without causing damage.

[exopelagic]

aaaaaaaAAAAAAAAAAA PRESENTATIONS BAD

[contract-crawdad]

Look Outside epilogue thoughts!!

You know the Shovel Knight ending credits? Where you get a little epilogue vignette for each area? The following are my thoughts for if Look Outside had something like that, probably more like one still image, where you get to see how the choices you made effected certain characters.

Spoilers for… well, pretty much everything in the game down below!

No Going Back/Flawed Ritual/Screaming Skies

The following occur regardless of which of these three endings you get. Basically, any ending in which the world isn’t perfect but there IS still a world for people to keep living in!

- Lyle

If you killed him, it’s just a shot of an empty dilapidated dark room.

If you peeked during the second kiss, Lyle is in the dark room, tearing up pictures of Sam.

If your relationship with Lyle was good for the whole game, he finally unveils his ‘big project’: a collage of Sam, made entirely out of pictures of Sam!

- Jeanne

If you didn’t help Jeanne, her heads are continuing their feeding frenzy. She looks dead ahead, with a catatonic stare.

If you killed her main body, the room is full of lifeless hydra heads. Though the ‘Jeanne’ head is giving a relieved smile, even in death.

If you took out all the feral heads, Jeanne’s main head is chatting with Hellen and Leigh in Mutt’s Fish n Chips (extending down from a hole in the ceiling).

- Frederick

If you fell for Green Frederick’s trick, he’s enjoying having the apartment space all to himself… and painting more green clothing items with the implication that he’s going to use them to do the same thing he did to you to more people.

If you sided with Wriggly

Frederick, he’s trying on Fred’s clothes in the mirror, posing proudly. A single tear rolls down his cheek.

Deciding not to put tumor Frederick out of his misery reveals that he’s grown up and through the apartment ceiling. And will presumably only continue to grow and suffer further.

Leaving Bright Frederick as the last shows that he converts the studio into a clinic to help those still recovering from the Visit. He’s tending to multiple patients at once.

Letting Bitey Frederick alone shows him painting a sign that reads ‘WARNING: KEEP AWAY! All shows affection are appreciated but best performed remotely’.

If (for some reason??) you choose to leave only Black Frederick alive, it has smashed the paintings the other Fredericks got returned to.

If there are no other Fredericks than Shy Frederick left, he is seen peeking out of the door to the studio and into the hall.

Frederick the Many is using his many heads to eat cereal, read a newspaper, type at a computer, and smoke at the same time. Livin’ the casually life. Still can’t find clothes that fit him, though.

If you fell for Faceless Frederick’s ruse, his blobby paint form is pondering which face to wear from a large collection of newly acquired faces. Some of the faces are familiar.

If you saved the real Frederick, he’s burning a pile of his paintings.

- Mr. Henderson

If you haven’t paid off your rent, the outside of Mr. Henderson’s apartment has barbed wire creeping along the ground outside it like ivy, as if the spatial anomaly within it is spreading.

If you have paid off your rent, a blue hand is seen hanging a ‘NO LEASE’ sign on the door.

- Rat Baby

If you sacrificed the baby rat to the wall mouth, you just get a shot of the now-empty crib. The music box slowly winds to a stop.

If you instead sacrificed an arm for rat baby, you get a shot of them in front of the apartment door, waiting for Same to return. If you have recruited them, Joel and/or Sophie are also present and comforting the rat.

Denial Ending

The best of the best! Where do people wind up in a positive future that has fully recovered from the Visit? All of these are assuming that the character in question is alive, and replace the respective ‘best’ paths in the other endings.

- Lyle

Becomes a world renowned ‘landscape’ photographer. Almost exclusively photographs landscapes containing earth’s protector, for some reason. Yes, he’s awkward if pressed about it.

- Jeanne

Attending a support group with other warped individuals, such as the folks from the sewer settlement and the cafe! Hellen, Lyle, Frederick, and Leigh are also there. Leigh looks like she’s so bored that she wants to die.

- Frederick

If you saved Frederick and let all the other nonhostile Freds live (well, the ones that WANT to live, anyways), you get a shot of all of them having a good time together playing poker.

- Mr. Henderson

The small group of somewhat lucid hand-mutants inside Henderson’s warzone are seen exiting his apartment, confusedly taking off their military gear.

- Rat Baby

Being sent off to his first day of school by one of Sam’s tendrils. The tendril is waving.

[toriaaniin]

Part II: What Rebranding Really Means... and Why It’s Risky

When we talk about rebranding, especially in the entertainment industry, we often picture something loud. A haircut. A viral campaign. A new kind of role that screams “I’m not who you thought I was.” But the truth is: the most effective rebrands often whisper before they shout.

And that’s what we’re seeing with Luke.

This isn’t a radical reinvention. It’s a strategic pivot. A slow exit from the “soft romantic lead” persona into something more sculpted, more stylized, and—at least on the surface—more masculine-coded. The grid is darker. The gaze is cooler. The softness is still there, but buried beneath shadows and sharp tailoring.

But here’s the risk:

When you shift your brand, you risk leaving people behind.

Fans who fell in love with the soft, earnest Luke—the man who made self-deprecating jokes, who looked at Nicola like she was made of starlight, who tap danced his way through press tours—don’t always know what to do with this version. The version with the drink in hand and the unreadable stare. The version who posts a cheek kiss without tagging the woman in the photo. The version who archives his history.

It doesn’t mean this version is fake. It just means it’s different. And difference invites interpretation. Especially when your fanbase is this emotionally invested, this observant, and this good at picking up what’s unspoken.

The Male Gaze and Rebranding Masculinity

One of the most overlooked truths about rebranding male actors is this: they’re not just being repositioned for us. They’re also being positioned for each other.

Luke’s new aesthetic doesn’t just appeal to a fashion-forward, film-savvy audience. It appeals to casting directors, studio execs, and brand reps — many of whom are still operating within systems coded by the male gaze. That doesn’t just mean how men look at women. It means how men are conditioned to see themselves. To aspire. To be perceived.

Softness can be charming. But when it comes to anchoring a franchise, fronting a fashion house, or leading a billion-dollar drama series, the industry still leans toward controlled masculinity — the kind that reads as sexy, stoic, and “in demand.”

Take the photo above from this weekend's Gentleman's Magazine as an example:

Controlled Masculinity - Posture: Relaxed, but not vulnerable. His left arm is fully extended, hand planted — it claims space. Meanwhile, his right hand rests across his lap, subtly pulling your eye toward the centre of the frame. This is deliberate spatial command — it says: I own this table. I own this room. - Suiting: Dark and tailored, but unbuttoned at the top — a deliberate contrast of formality and access. He’s not in a tux; he’s in leading man casual — elegant, but dangerous. - Chest hair and necklace: These signal earthiness and sex — a man comfortable with his body, with just enough aesthetic restraint to keep it high fashion. It reads: I’m sensual, but controlled. - Pool table: Deeply symbolic. Cue associations with strategy, competition, dominance, and old-school masculinity. He's not playing the game — he's waiting for you to join, but he's already won.

Luke's shift from boyish to brooding isn't accidental. It's calculated aspirational masculinity — the kind that makes him relatable to the men who want to be like him and palatable to the brands and studios who want to sell him. He’s being made watchable from a distance, rather than lovable up close.

And that’s uncomfortable. Especially for those of us who fell in love with the closeness. The charm. The silliness. The joy.

Rebranding vs Betrayal

This is where the emotional dissonance lives.

To some fans, this isn’t just a shift. It’s a betrayal.

It feels like Luke is walking away from the version of himself we trusted — the one who felt sincere, open, and maybe even in love. And now that he’s carefully sculpting something more controlled, more aesthetic, more leading-man-adjacent… it’s hard not to wonder if we ever knew him at all.

But what if the two versions aren’t incompatible?

What if the joy was real, and the distance is necessary? What if the softness is still there — just beneath a layer of curated fashion and editorial-style shadows?

And what if… he’s still telling us who he is — just in a new language?

When the Image Doesn’t Match the Man

And here’s the part that keeps catching in the throat for so many of us:

This new version of Luke — calculated, stylized, curated — doesn’t feel like the man we’ve come to know. The man who couldn’t hide his emotions during the World Tour. The man who made awkward jokes, let his heart leak through his eyes, and seemed to lose all sense of self when Nicola laughed beside him. The man who wore softness openly, not because it was strategic, but because it seemed to just spill out of him.

So when we see him now — posting sleek portraits, standing beside someone who feels more like a prop than a partner, it creates whiplash. Not just because we miss what was, but because it doesn’t feel true. Or at least, not true to him.

It’s possible that this is growth. It’s possible that this is strategy. But for those of us who have been watching closely, it also feels like he’s playing a part.

And the heartbreak is: he was most magnetic when he wasn’t playing anything at all.

Next: Strategic Separation (or Part III of Rebranding)

We’ve talked about branding. We’ve talked about perceived betrayal. But what if this new version of Luke — the one that looks so far away from Nicola, so calculated and cool — is part of something deeper?

What if the rebrand isn’t just about him… but about them?

In Part III, we’ll look at the growing theory that Luke and Nicola may be separating on the surface to protect something underneath — a tactic of camouflage, distance, and privacy that says more than it hides.

Because sometimes, the act of pulling apart is the clearest sign of trying to keep something whole.

Aaniin Xxx

P.S. Find a listing of this blog post series along with short summaries of each - including those not yet published - here: