#What about Yolanda's family????

[the-greatest-magic-of-all]

Sorry for bringing discourse onto your blog but your post just reminded me of when I saw an unhinged rant abt how “if they have a senior year all the parents of the rat grinders should try and violently murder the bad kids and when tbk ask for redemption instead it isn’t given to them.” And I get that like you wanted your thematic bullshit or whatever but you LITERALLY just advocated for a munch of adults to kill teenagers without mercy bc of tbk not thinking twice when they need to save the ENTIRE world. Idk maybe we’ve lost the plot a little.

OH BABY! We've lost the plot in Costco and need to find a responsible grown-up to help us find it again.

Anon, that's the funniest thing I've seen in a while because... didn't the Bad Kids just take down Oisin's Grandma not one episode ago? I'm sorry, what are the Copperkettles gonna do? Bobby Dawn (to quote Gorgug) is a regular freak. Henry can get someone to cast Plane Shift and go get Ruben back. Like, damn, I WISH the Ratgrinders' parents would show up so they can come get their kids, the fuck?

Also... The Bad Kids would never beg for anything not even redemption. Especially not from some adults who were about to kill them. They'd flip them off and insult them on a deep level only teenagers can before dying glorious deaths. And then they'd find each other across afterlives, figure out how to get back to the Material Plane and get revenge. Because what does death mean to the kids who died on the first day of school?

[muwapsturniolo]

✯Matt dating a black girl✯

-he doesn’t know how he pulled you fr but he’s very happy he did

-if you’re rowdy (like me fr) he gets stressed.

-I’m talking deep sighs and rubbing over his face in frustration

-“bitches can’t say excuse me?”

-“y/n please don’t start.”

-“you saying that makes me want to start”

-when he gets in his lil moods (tough guy) yall bud heads

-“Matt who are you talking to cause I know damn well it’s not me!”

-hears your tone and apologizes (it’s the same tone our mommas use when we talk back💀)

-for my soft black girlies, you always have him giggling like a lil girl

-“you so handsome, I just wanna smother you in kisses!”

-if he catches an attitude with you and you gets upset, he’s on his knees saying sorry.

-if you got ass, he can’t handle the twerking😭 his head actually moves in circles and his eyes are WIDE!!!

-sexxy redd comes on at a party and you start dancing, this man starts blushing and everyone tells him he can’t handle you (he can)

-he loves when you sit on his lap. Chairs are available? He does not give af, SIT ON HIS LAP!!!

-if you got titties, his eyes won’t stay off of em. You could be wearing a regular tshirt and he gonna be like 👀

-“Matt stop looking at my boobs I’m literally in my wash day tshirt”

-“don’t care, I’m not arguing with a girl who has big boobs!”

-speaking of wash day

-this man loves watching the process

-keeps asking questions like a lil kid

-“what’s this for? Why do you need to many creams and oils? Does that hurt? WHY IS SO MUCH HAIR COMING OUT!?”

-“stop talking to me because my hair isn’t acting right and I’m two seconds away from crying and hitting myself with this brush.”

-wants to help but chooses not too, afraid he will put the wrong creme in the wrong order

-he loves going to the beauty supply because the aunties fawn over him.

-“hey Matt baby! Our girl treating you right?”

-“hi auntie Yolanda. She is, but she got mad because I didn’t get her candy she wanted.”

-“y/n if you don’t leave this boy alone!”

-“I didn’t even do anything!”

-buys all your stuff with no problem!

-“you always smell like pancakes and syrup.”

-goes feral over your shea butter, coco butter, vanilla, brown sugar scent.

-I’m talking he wants to be all over you and possibly have sex anywhere.

-“Matt we are in the car going to my parents house!”

-“Please? I’ll be quick.”

-he doesn’t not understand time! If you don’t know what I mean, let me explain.

-“shouldn’t we be leaving now? It starts at 5.”

-“no. 5 means you will be helping set up. We need to be there at 6:15.”

-blinks at you in confusion but nods anyway.

-if you not that close to your fam he gets confused as to why

-“don’t you think you should talk to them? That argument happened two years ago?”

-“and I’ll still swing at thanksgiving dinner!”

-loves eating at your parents house but thinks everything is supper spicy.

-“Matt it’s literally just seasoning salt?¿”

-“are you sure?”

-lowkey gets mouthy with your family on accident but he apologizes when your mom gives him, the look (yall know what im talking about)

-At the cook out he’s gets roped in to grilling.

-mf suddenly has a towel over his shoulder and joking with your uncles.

-he does sum that makes you and your fam look at him oddly.

-“Gon head and sit at the kids table baby.”

That’s all I can think of💀 hope yall enjoy

TAG LIST 🍑

@bernardsgf @bernardsleftbootycheek @blahbel668 @mattfrfr @gdsvhtwa @sturniolo-aali @lily-loves-struniolos @kynda-avery @causeidontlikeagoldrush

@st7rnioioss @carolinalikesthings @mattslolita @suyqa @xxloveralways14 @pepsiimaxx @judespoision

@ivonchetooo1239 @iloveurgf @m4stermindd @itzdarling @gigisworldsstuff @that-general-simp

[youremyheaven]

Momagers, Stage Mom's & Mama's Boys: The Dysfunctional Moon Child

Moon influenced people often come from households where they had a very dysfunctional relationship with their parents. Both parents are usually toxic but the Moon person forms a close, overly sympathetic and anxiously attached bond with one parent who they perceive as the victim or martyr in some way. (Dad's abusive or neglectful and mom's the one trying her best, for example).

WHY does this happen?

Moon is said to be the most Yin of the planets. It's passive, feminine and emotional.

Most of the time, these bonds are toxic because its overly protective, overly nurturing, controlling, overly caring as opposed to say Sun influence which will create bonds that are too independent and unattached (aka female friendships vs male friendships lol). Moon influenced parent-child bonds become toxic because there's TOO MUCH love, care and attachment and neither party can have a separate independent existence.

Moon influence is prominent in the charts of momagers/stage moms AND the kids who are under their control.

Priyanka Chopra, Rohini Moon

Pri and her mom are attached at the hip and they're literally ALWAYS together. She has managed Pri's career since she was a teenager. And since she's not a nepo kid, it's known that she's had affairs with several married men in the industry, especially when she was starting out, to secure work :((

And I think its fucked up to have a parent basically pimp you out to make money. Be it PC getting a nose job or her army doctor mother quitting her job to open a cosmetic surgery clinic or her family running a pub?? PC is the golden goose and her family has just been living off of her money and encouraging her to basically do anything to make it. I think its a bit fcked to be smoking with your mom and its not bc I'm Indian lol

Alia Bhatt, Shravana Rising

Now Alia's dad is a pretty well known asshole who is infamous for being abusive. And Alia had a pretty rough upbringing, so its no wonder that Alia is as attached to her mom as she is. Alia's own marriage is pretty fucked up and toxic.

Alia started her career when she was 17 and to this day, her mom manages her finances. She was recently in the news for being scammed out of 1 crore rupees (119,000 dollars) so like I guess her mom's not exactly brilliant at what she does lol

Katrina Kaif, Hasta Moon

Katrina Kaif who is British, came to India when she was 17 and met and started dating the violent, toxic abusive Salman Khan, who was 20 years older than her. He helped her establish herself as a huge star but she went through a lot including physical abuse.

Kat endured all that because she had 7 siblings to support and her mom was a single mom. She's extremely close to her mom but I still think its fcked up that a literal teenager had to become the breadwinner of a family of 8 and endure all kinds of abuse in a toxic industry and in a country where she knew nobody just to break even.

Bella Hadid, Hasta Moon

Yolanda is a toxic mom in general but she has a particularly toxic bond with Bella for sure

Britney Spears, Shravana Moon

She's probably the most notorious example of being controlled by her toxic , abusive family :(((

Brooke Shields, Rohini Sun/Jupiter/Rahu

Her mom made her pose naked for playboy when she was 10. That should say enough about how fcked up her momager was. She has spoken about how her mom was an alcoholic and she felt like she had to do everything she could do to keep her mom alive :((

Ranbir Kapoor, Shravana Moon

He grew up in a toxic home where his dad cheated on his mom and was an alcoholic. He's KNOWN to be a mama's boy and his mother lowkey influenced all his previous relationships until he finally tied the knot with someone his mom approved of ://

Today his wife dresses and emulates his mom lmao

Leonardo DiCaprio, Hasta Moon

He's another infamous mama's boy

It's interesting to me how in most of these cases, the fathers were either absent or neglectful. These people grew up under the sole care of their mothers and it created an overly possessive, toxic, codependent bond. All of these people have spoken about how hard their mom's lives were and how they're grateful for everything their mothers did for them. This tendency of the Moon to make its natives be entirely sheltered from Yang or male influence or in some ways find Yang influence repulsive is very telling.

Similar to how Sun influenced people find it difficult to relate to or connect with Yin themes (like being clingy, attached, being nurturing in a traditional way, being openly loving etc) Moon influenced people struggle the most with detachment, letting go, independence etc. The extremes of both these can be unhealthy. It's important to learn how to be balanced and not give in to the tendencies that can harm both us and the people in our lives.

That's all for this post<3

[yumeka-sxf]

Spy x Family Exhibition Pamphlet

I got my copy of the Spy x Family exhibition pamphlet! I wanted to make HD scans of some of the notable pages and try to translate if I can.

First off is this great "Main Character Correlation Chart" (sorry for my amateur editing, all I have is MS Paint!)

I love how Bond has a different "bofu" (woof) for Loid and Yor!

Several of the pages show the creation process of the manga, starting with rough sketches to final drafts, using chapter 1 as an example. There were a lot of pages for this, so I just scanned the ones that showed the end of the chapter.

Probably the most interesting pages of the pamphlet are the early character designs/concept sketches. Most of these have already been shared by @sy-on-boy on her post here, but I thought it'd be cool to have them in HD! Unfortunately, even with higher quality images it's very difficult to decipher Endo's handwriting. I could make out just a few words here and there, and Google Lens is very unreliable when the writing isn't clear.

The first page has early concepts for the Forger family, Loid, Anya, the WISE logo, and the Eden uniform.

Things to note are that "Oscar" was a working name for Loid, as was "Yolanda" for Yor. What's also interesting is that a beta version of Franky is shown along with the Forgers. Unfortunately I can't make out the notes about him, but I think this has significance because of a sketch on the next page...

Most of the next page shows concept designs for Yor, with a section for Bond and Yor's coworkers on the bottom.

However, what's really intriguing is the sketch in the upper right of the whole family, titled 疑似家族 (pseudo family).

Once again, a Franky-looking character is with them, and he has the title "Uncle" (叔父) Was an uncle originally going to be part of the main Forgers? Was he actually related to Loid or Yor, or if that character did eventually become Franky, maybe he would just pretend to be Loid's brother? I can also make out the word "otaku" (オタク) in the notes for this character as well as "enjoying life" (人生を楽しんでる) Also in the notes for beta Yor it looks like 最強 (the best/strongest) and バカ (idiot/dummy) All I can make out for Loid's notes are 孤独 (loneliness) I think? And what's up with the older and more sinister looking Anya? She really looks like Ashe there. But these are all just early concept designs/notes so I wouldn't take them too seriously.

The next page titled "East and West During the Cold War" has concept designs for Franky, Yuri, Fiona (referred to as a female WISE spy), a male WISE spy, Melinda, and various assassins from the cruise arc.

The first interesting thing to point out is the notes next to the very crudely drawn woman at the bottom of Yuri's concept designs. It says "Yuri's girlfriend?"(ユーリの 彼女?) though I can't make out clearly what the rest of it says. For the Franky designs, I could make out "tsukkomi or boke". So it looks like at some point Endo was deciding whether to make him more of a tsukkomi (straight man) or boke (wise guy) personality. There's also mention of giving him a high IQ (IQ高い). Also, the fact that the sketches include Melinda and the cruise arc assassins gives the impression that Endo had ideas for these story elements very early on.

But the character relationship chart in the lower left is really intriguing.

I'm not sure how accurate these translations are so take them with a grain of salt, but they do make sense to me. But I have to wonder why Anya and Becky are connected to Desmond. For Becky, it could be because her family has ties to the Desmonds, but why Anya? Could the "mysterious institute/lab" she comes from have ties to Desmond too? Again, these could just be early concepts from ideas that Endo is no longer using, so best not to take them literally. Also, the lack of Shopkeeper/Garden in the character relationship charts, the concept art, and the exhibition overall, really does portray them as a "mysterious organization" that Endo perhaps didn't plan out until later in the series' development and is still trying to figure out. But as far as this sketch, I have to say that despite how terribly crudely drawn all their little heads are, it's easy to identify every character...proof of Endo's top notch character design skills!

Another sketch that stands out is on the same page...

It's a very rough drawing of what appears to be either Loid holding Yor or Yor holding Loid with Anya next to them. But honestly it's such a rough drawing it could be any other parents+child. All I can make out of the text directly above is "My wife is stressed!? At this rate..." And the drawing next to it also appears to be two parents and maybe two children? I also have no clue what the "WJ4C 9/20, etc" at the top means. Very mysterious sketch, lol.

The next page has Eden related concepts, including Becky, Damian, George, and various teachers. The drawings in the bottom section appear to be an alternate/abbreviated version of how the Forgers met.

Pretty funny that an image of Franky is covering what's supposed to be a sketch of Demetrius. The text from Franky says "I can't show you this information yet" which is pretty solid proof that Demetrius will make an appearance in the series eventually. There's also nicknames for Damian and Demetrius in the notes - "Dami" and "Demi."

Some notes on the Eden page says there's 2,000 students in the school, with 13 grades divided into 8 classes/houses. The chart on the left is a list of teacher names and their classes, all of which are given names of colors. None of the teacher names have been used so far in the series.

And all that's on the last page of sketches is a continuation of the previous page with the early concept of how the Forgers started (it honestly looks pretty cute, wish it wasn't just rough sketches). And the following section looks like drafts Endo did for promotional material.

The final pages of the pamphlet are the new extra mission chapter which I already fully translated here.

And that's all I'm going to share for now from the pamphlet! I could spend more time trying to decipher the concept art notes but it was giving me a headache after a while, lol. But if anyone wants to try translating them, go ahead (I have higher quality png files of all the scans if needed...they were too big for Tumblr). And again, these sketches are just trial and error pre-serialization ideas that don't necessarily reflect Endo's final vision for the series, so I wouldn't dwell on them much other than for fun theorizing.

The pamphlet does have other interesting information, including an interview with Endo, a timeline of his work on Spy x Family and other manga, and his notes about random things from the series. So I might return to translating the pamphlet at a later date when I have time/motivation.

[witchhazelnut]

This new revelation that the rat grinders all died and were brought back by this cleric of the unnamed ankarna, and Yolanda and Lucy’s refusal was what kept them dead but also bound with that sigil, has got me thinking about the events of Yolanda and particularly Lucy’s deaths.

If the rat grinders (+ jace) died in the mountains of chaos, why was lucy’s body in the far haven woods? she also died after spring break, which means she came back from that adventure. There’s also the matter of someone trying to change her paperwork to reflect a new, unnamed divinity, who we now know is ankarna, who is still unnamed to the rat grinders.

I think the rat grinders did kill her, but maybe it wasn’t the first time she died. It’s pretty heavily implied that there was tpk in the mountains of chaos, and if that’s the case, perhaps she was brought back once under the promise of changing her divinity to ankarna, but shortly after realized she couldn’t give up the goddess who meant so much to her and her family, and so she had started the change paperwork but then reverted and the rat grinders confronted her and killed her, and bc she broke her deal to be a follower of ankarna she was branded with that sigil?

OR, maybe she did survive the mountains of chaos! Maybe kipperlilly tried to convince her to convert first with words alone, thinking that it would be like it always was where lucy would support her decisions. She gets the paperwork drawn up and everything. And then lucy refuses. And kipperlilly kills her, calling upon the cleric who brought her back to bring lucy back the same way, so that she would bend to her will by force, bc she couldn’t imagine lucy refusing life to honor her divinity, but she does. and her refusal traps her in her body, and she’s gone perhaps forever.

Maybe the honey is just for kipperlilly to forget. Maybe it’s why she can smile ruefully to kristen as she slits buddy’s throat and tries to force-convert another cleric.

[hatchetation]

the way teenage bounty hunters DESERVED a second season. like what a tightly written, quippy, funny little show with so much heart. there’s so much good going on in it but things I particularly love:

Twin themes!! There’s so much good foreshadowing surrounding the big reveal (iykyk) and there’s also so much DOUBLING. Double lives especially is a big theme. Like, Debbie hiding Dana; sterling and Blair hiding their bounty hunting; the (functional) froyo shop being bowser’s bounty hunting lair; Terrance the lone wolf bounty hunter and bowser with his little “teen white savior” teammates; Yolanda’s sister who is a perfect foil for her; miles hiding Blair from his family; sterling hiding april from Blair…and then april hiding sterling period.

And I guess the doubling is kind of showing like, here are all the possibilities and here’s what happens when we let love in and here’s what happens when we shut it out

so much good stuff about being from the American south. As someone who grew up in the south and who grew up visiting close family in Atlanta…it is cool as fuck the way the south is portrayed in all of its complexity. The show does not shy away from issues of race, religion, SES, etc SPECFICALLY in Atlanta and manages to do it in a way that doesn’t come across as heavy handed. This show could ONLY be set in the south—it would be a fundamentally different show in any other setting

Also, like I said with the doubling points above, this show is full of secrets and secret keeping!!! But yet a fundamental point of the show is that being silenced is one of the worst things that can happen to a human being. There’s a scene where Blair is telling sterling that her dad yelled at her and that the worst part of all is that he told her to Be Quiet! And like in some ways that scene highlights what a loving household Blair has grown up in that the one of the worst things her Dad has ever said to her is be quiet (not even shut up)…but it really made me be like wow being told to stop questioning and be quiet IS something terrible. It’s a denial and a violation of our right to use our voices

and like it’s not a coincidence that in the final ep Dana gags sterling. Because the way sterling is talking to her is powerful and you can tell it is making her hesitate and question her whole life

so yeah anyway watch teenage bounty hunters! Or if you haven’t in a while, it’s definitely worth a rewatch

[lovelessrage]

I have been struck by an urge to discuss Bojack Horseman. While I am not asexual, I am aspec in every other sense outside of it, and Todd Chavez still matters a lot as a character to me. It was the first canon aspec, the first character where it is said, matters to his plot, and impacts his life, that I had ever seen in a show I actually enjoyed.

A lot of aspec representation feels like it isn't made for me; it's made for young/rowdier teens, and while that's a demographic that needs those figures, it leaves me feeling like reading these books and watching these shows just aren't my thing. It isn't my carnival ride; it feels like I'm too old, despite... not being that old. Maybe it's my humour or my preferences, I dunno. Regardless, Todd Chavez feels like, for all his goofy antics and being the character that has the most absurd life out of anyone, an adult facing a real crisis of identity. Not a teenager coming to terms, but an adult man realizing what's expected of him as an adult is immensely limiting and petrifying as a closeted asexual.

The way his first interaction with being aspec is not being comfortable with labelling it yet, setting boundaries about whether he likes jokes, trying to find community but still feeling a bit lonely and out of place. It all feels very natural, real, and lived. And so does his relationship with Yolanda, which was immensely good commentary to me about aspec loneliness.

Especially for those who still like to date, have hookups, QPRs, or any other type of committed dynamic, it often feels like you are compelled to choose the first person who offers it to you, because you have no other choice. This extends to other queer labels as well, such as T4T struggles and the gay and lesbian dating scene, but we're talking aspecs right now and we'll stay on that ball. There is nothing wrong with Yolanda, which I like as well, she's not framed as a bitter person or frigid, they're just not meant for each other. I also like the inclusion of, despite how different they are, Yolanda is still desperate to cling to this because she's afraid she'll never meet another asexual again. It is, again, a real problem; people getting into unhappy relationships because they think it is all they will get.

That's why this show's representation speaks to me so much, even if it's not my label. It feels like an honest confrontation of aspec issues, rather than just making a character aspec as a one-off, or only confronting it for one episode. As well, it doesn't belittle Todd for this aspect or make his problems childish. It's another adult problem alongside all the others the characters are going through, and there are plenty of references to the struggle of acceptance and the struggle of existence without making asexuality at fault for any of it. It is acephobic society, not asexuals, being blamed. They get to be part of the humour rather than at the expense of it.

There gets to be ace joy alongside ace struggle, and neither are treated as more worth focusing on or telling a story about. His later happiness with Maude is celebrated by his family and friends, and his coming out is met with understanding, even if it's not fully informed. He gets to meet other asexuals, and even if it does not solve his problems, it lends a needed helping of reminding the audience there is a community, not just an individual.

Nothing in Bojack Horseman is instantaneous. No change of character is simply a heelturn and a continuation. I am always immensely happy on every rewatch to see how much time was devoted to making Todd's asexuality journey mean something and mean something to his life. To me, this is the textbook example of what it means to write an aspec character with their identity in mind; it's not just a label, it's also how your life is affected, your relationships, and how you see your future.

[thisisnotthenerd]

Curriculum at the Aguefort Adventuring Academy

Now that the Night Yorb adventure has concluded and the Bad Kids are headed back to school I have thoughts about the structure of the Aguefort Adventuring Academy.

The Solisian School District in Elmville, as far as we know, consists of Skullcleaver Elementary School, Oakshield Middle School, Mumple School, Hudol College, and the Aguefort Adventuring Academy. While Skullcleaver and Oakshield serve the population as a whole, Mumple focuses on NPC trades, while Hudol is a private school that focuses on theoretical magic for the ‘upper class’ of Elmville, and the Aguefort Adventuring Academy focuses on training adventurers from within their specific classes while also providing general education.

Obviously, the differing structures of each of these institutions brings up some questions. Since the Solisian School District presumably has a school board and a superintendent, are there any enforceable curriculum standards that the high schools have to abide by? What common classes do Mumple, Hudol, and Aguefort have? What does a high school diploma from each of these mean? 

Given the endless questions brought up by the organization of this school district, I’m going to try and make logical sense of it by tackling them as they come to me.

First, I’m going to focus on the Aguefort Adventuring Academy, since that’s what we have information on. I can speculate on the nature of Mumple and Hudol, but we have actual info about the AAA.

What has to be in the base curriculum for each school?

For the AAA:

I’m basing this on a combination of what we know from the Bad Kids’ classes and their investigation during Family in Flames.

Here’s what we know of the AAA faculty:

Administrative Staff:

Principal: Arthur Aguefort

Vice Principal: Goldenhoard/Kalvaxus, Gilear Faeth

Lunch Lad(y): Doreen, Gilear Faeth

Guidance Counselor: Mr. GIbbons, Jawbone O’Shaughnessy

Librarian: Maugly Dimweather

Nurse: Fatima al-Aydaa

Receptionist: Chart Bomsk

Custodian: Kasavian the Wise

Bloodrush Coach: Coach Daybreak, Gorthalax the Insatiable

Gen Ed/Elective Teachers:

History: Kurby Rockstone

Linguistics: Efevrian Stuttle

Home Ec: Pilby Hatchet

Driver’s Ed: Alphonse Doublefist

Health: Spunge Dirtfoot

Theater: Ebria Dwimmerwaithe, Mr. Pepper

Music: Lucilla Lullaby

Arcana: Joria Casterwall

Class-Specific Teachers:

Artificer: Grunding Tomblast

Barbarian: Porter Cliffbreaker

Bard: none listed

Cleric/Religious Studies: Yolanda Badgood

Druid: Ellarian Fallowglade

Fighter: Corsica Jones

Monk: River Moondaughter

Paladin: Halo St. Croix

Ranger: Ellen Fleetfoot

Rogue: Eugenia Shadow

Sorcerer: Jace Stardiamond

Warlock: Evan Freem

Wizard: Tiberia Runestaff

So we know there is at least history and linguistics, as well as many elective options. Math and science likely run differently when Arthur ‘Chronomancer’ Aguefort is around, so I can understand them not being present on this list, though I would say that math is probably present in the elementary/middle schools, just because having a basic understanding of how arithmetic and geometry work forms a lot of what goes into basic life skills and also things like material components and ritual circles for casters. Adaine has made reference to math classes before, so the existence of them is kind of up in the air–we don’t have direct confirmation, but they’re likely present.

I took the liberty of moving arcana to the elective category because while it is a specific specialization, it doesn’t fit with the rest of the class model, and it fits more as a class that would be shared between the casters that have to learn things. Understanding the foundations of each type of magic, learning the bases of material, verbal, and somatic components bc even if you use an arcane focus, it’s important to understand where the idea is coming from. 

Based on my own American high school experience, I would have expected a few more core classes. There really are a lot of electives. There don’t seem to be specific curriculum standards that would transfer well from school to school. Thus, I would expect that earning a diploma and/or a GED would have significantly different requirements.

Class-specific curricula:

Artificers

They likely have some sort of shop class/STEM course to learn how to build things and repair them–easy way to get tool proficiencies. Also a class on the different infusions and how to use them? 

Subclasses: Once you get past 3rd level and choose a subclass I'd assume they would have optional electives for each subclass (alchemist, armorer, artillerist, battlesmith). Ultimately it just comes down to different skills, but artificers do a lot of the same things from subclass to subclass.

Barbarians

We have insight into these classes because Fig and Gorgug attended them; they are learning about  the sources of rage, and how to control the rage state while in combat. 

Subclasses: electives likely split into controlling magical elements of rage for wild magic, zealot, totem, storm herald, and ancestral guardian barbarians, and martial elements of rage for battleragers, berserkers, beasts, giants, and juggernauts.

Bards

Bards are one of the classes that often have a strong theoretical basis, so I would assume they have a relatively heavy curriculum. We know there’s bardic history, because Aguefort talks about it in Sophomore Year, but bards would likely have some required music classes as well. 

Subclasses: Lore bards would definitely have some history crossover and maybe arcana crossover with the wizards once they started taking electives for their subclasses, while swords and valor bards would share classes with the fighters, creation bards with the artificers, glamour bards with the charisma rogues, and eloquence, spirits, tragedy, and whispers would likely have similar electives.

Clerics

Healing/medicine is likely one of their core classes, but generally clerics are probably going to be learning rituals and the histories of deities, along with other wisdom based skills. 

Subclasses: like the bards, there’s a ton of variance with clerics. A knowledge cleric is not going to have the same classes as a trickster cleric, or a grave cleric, etc.. Now that I think about it, it makes sense for forge clerics to be taking shop classes with the artificers.

Druids

Ecology, druidic magic, survival classes? They’re probably paired with the rangers often. I think I recall Aabria and Erika talking about Danielle helping Antiope with more traditional ranger skills, so it makes sense that they share some classes. Wildshape training and summoning practice probably factor in when they can perform the skills more than once a day.

Subclasses: the things that druids can do can vary significantly, but if i had to guess: moon & shepherd druids would get paired because they’re working with creatures, spores & blighted druids would work with more necrotic spells, dreams & stars druids would get paired because they’re associated with night in differing ways, land druids have their own classes, and wildfire druids would be arsonists. Just kidding.

Fighters

Fighters are explicitly trained warriors, so learning strategy, different fighting styles and martial skills depending on what fits their needs best. Learning to use action surge and attacking quickly would be a big one.

Subclasses: Each subclass would get slightly different training, but ultimately they’re all learning to fight, so it would be more like groups within a larger class. Fighter is also a solid multiclass, so I’d expect a bunch of multiclassed kids to join in with training.

Monks

Monks are also  explicitly trained warriors, though the focus is ki and finding enlightenment at a base level. We haven’t had a monk PC in the world of Spyre, but there is a monastic studies chair, so there presumably are monks at the AAA

Subclasses: some monks learn more ki-based techniques while others learn more arcana, so there’s probably some really split classes there.

Paladins

Paired with the clerics for deific history, though they have electives on the different forms of oaths as well as fighting classes/training. Ultimately paladins are a partial caster combination of a fighter and a cleric, so I would expect them to share classes with both of those

Subclasses: as stated, it would mostly be based on the differing oaths and the magics they get from each.

Rangers

They’d share ecology/survival classes with the druids, though the rangers are given more specific combat training and ways of tracking favored enemies and such. There’s probably a class that helps you decide your favored terrain.

Subclasses: all of the animal companion subclasses would get paired, while the hunter/assassin types would probably have some kind of stealth and tracking classes.

Rogues

Rogues would get skills training for expertise but also stealth training. Basically assassin training but also charisma classes for charisma rogues and elective magic for the arcane tricksters

Subclasses: not huge differences here except for the arcane tricksters because they’re partial casters. they're learning to sneak around and kill people by surprise.

Sorcerers

Sorcerers would get basic magic training, with a focus on controlling sorcery points/fonts of magic, and understanding where sorcerers come from. Sorcerers don’t technically have to do work to get their magic, rather, it’s a matter of precise control of what they have i.e. metamagic.

Subclasses: There’s a wide variety of sorcerous origins, so each would have pretty different classes associated. Divine soul sorcerers would probably get paired with the clerics, but everyone else would have their own options.

Warlocks

Warlocks are the weirdest type of full caster, so they probably don’t combine with other classes very much. I imagine that not many high schoolers are making these kinds of deals early on, so it probably involves learning about patrons, and maybe negotiation with your patron? There’s also probably classes on invocations and the different benefits of each. To be completely honest, I wouldn’t expect them to offer much in the way of warlock classes anyway. The only warlocks we’ve run into have been Johnny Spells and the greasers, Fig, Bill Seacaster’s cult, and Sam’s eldritch adept feat. Most of these are outside organizations, and if they aren’t it’s been based on in-game deals and negotiation.

Subclasses: very split. Different patrons have very different demands.

Wizards 

They’re already nerds that learn magic from books. Arcana and history classes, split courses to work in different schools of magic. Aguefort is a wizard–you think he wouldn’t have a robust wizard’s education at his academy?

Subclasses: one for every school of magic and also chronomancy. 

Next Question:

How does leveling work at the AAA?

Everyone presumably starts around level one in freshman year, probably with some variance based on family background and previous experience. The seven are level 10 when they get their GED, and all of them lost at least part of a school year. According to the RTX college visit oneshot, college students are ~level 15. I would say they probably don’t enter at level 15–somewhere around level 12-13 maybe?

This is not canon, but I think what’s maybe intended is annual progression requirements. You start at level 1 and get to 5ish freshman year, start at 5 and get to 8 sophomore year, start at 8 and get to 10 junior year, and start at 10 get to 12 in time for graduation. While they’re forming adventuring parties on the first day, most groups are not going to be going out and finding encounters immediately in Solace. They’re going to school. They’re learning how to work together as a party. They’re participating in extracurriculars. The lower levels are easier to get through–that’s why the progression slows down at the higher levels, because you get diminishing returns on leveling the higher level you are.

This seems to fit–the 7 are evenly leveled, but fit into the junior-senior model that would allow them to get their GEDs while being a little underleveled for graduation. The assumption is that they’re immediately going to go and be an adventuring party–they’ll make up any difference very quickly. By contrast, the bad kids had progressive leveling during freshman year that left them at level 8 during the Prompocalypse fight. I’m fairly sure that Penelope and Dayne were level 10 at least, and during sophomore year she can cast 6th level spells and has 3d10 fire bolt damage, so she’s at least 11th level if not higher. So being at level 12 in senior year tracks.

Thus the bad kids over-level during freshman year, even going by milestone leveling. if you go on an xp model you’d have to get around 10000 throughout the year to hit level 5–they’re running into so many encounters that they overshoot. And thus they’re still over-leveled in sophomore year, but if they had a relatively quiet year up to spring break, then not leveling up significantly makes sense.

Numerically, if a student is assessed on xp basis for what they have to earn in that year to level up appropriately, if they go back to zero at the start of each level.

Freshman year: 10,400

Sophomore year: 71,000

Junior Year: 112,000

Senior Year: 185,000

That tracks for high school–you can do very well in freshman year classes and then all of a sudden start struggling, and it’s more work every year. you’re capable of more, sure, but you also have way more responsibility. 

How does the quest assignment system work?

What we know: they have adventures during the year as a party that serve as a sort of capstone project–60% of their grade. My hypothesis: Knowing how high school classes work in a non-fantasy public school, I’d posit that the adventures are considered a form of independent study; every student is required to do a certain amount every year, in order to move to the next grade as an adventuring party. If they don’t complete a quest of a high enough level, or enough lower-level quests, the party can be disbanded, and they may need to repeat grades in order to move to the next grade.

In order to support the infrastructure of a modern school system, and modern technology, Solace can’t be unstable enough to require adventurers. That’s the crux of what Charity Blythe was advocating for with Project Reset–using a catastrophe to drive the market of adventure. Since this was a distinct event that the Ministry of Adventure was planning for, one can conclude that these Class A, B, and C quests are not happening all that often. What are those you ask?

The Ministry of Adventure classifies quests in a six-tiered system, from class A to class F, in order of decreasing severity. Class A quests threaten the existence of the Universe and planes beyond the prime material; class B quests threaten the prime material/the world of Spyre; class C quests threaten nations; classes D-F are for localized threats, the ‘bread-and-butter’ quests, though an adventurer that can handle a class F quest may not be able to handle a class D quest. There is likely some further calculus when it comes to these classifications–the classes simply refer to the scope of the threat with regard to what it threatens, not specifically how difficult it is to complete the quest.

A GED from the Larger Solisian School District requires the sign-off of the Superintendent of Schools as well as the completion of a Class A, B, or C quest. By classification: the Bad Kids’ defeat of Kalvaxus was a class C quest, their defeat of the Nightmare King was class B, and the Seven’s quest to release Talura to infinity was a Class A quest. Sidenote: if a GED requires quest completion, how does anyone not from the AAA get a GED? Do they still have exams for non-adventurers? What subjects are required in the world of Spyre? Is it even needed?

So, Solace isn’t unstable enough to induce quests beyond class D on a regular basis; where, then, do these teen adventurers get high level quests? We first need to talk about how the rest of the world and their capacity for teen adventurers.

Highcourt: Nation ruled by monarchy that reigns over most of the rest of Spyre, the have an ongoing treaty with spyre–they were the source of the original Sol worshippers that became the harvestmen. Thus, the mentions of perditional contradoxy in their treaty with Solace make sense. Not suitable for adventures beyond D class as it would likely violate treaties, unless the adventurers are specifically hired.

Fallinel: high elven nation ruled by the court of stars, or Seven Immortal Dancers on a Spindle, who Sing to the Various Phases of the Moon, with lower courts for bureaucracy. No lawyers. Not suitable for adventures beyond D class as it would likely violate treaties, unless the adventurers are specifically hired.

Sylvaire: aka the forest of the nightmare king. south of Highcourt, home of cassandra’s original worshippers, the town of arborly, and a bunch of captured gnomes who were sustaining magic for the druids of the storm king. The forest itself was walled off for ~850 years. Quests are feasible along the coast and around the borders of the forest, but quests to enter the forest would not succeed without infernal permission.

Red Waste: Kalvaxus’s initial territory but his lair was in the mountains of chaos? Desert-like, full of Kalvaxus worshippers and Yorbies. The Seven went there for their sophomore year quest. Developed enough to have a tattoo parlor where Antiope could get her leader tattoo. Suitable for higher level adventures.

The Baronies: collection of small city states/nations that are constantly at war, where the richest of the rich have access to technology while others are still operating in a medieval society. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Mountains of Chaos: where Kalvaxus’s lair is located, but also home to the Temple of the Earth Defiant. Sklonda Gukgak has family from there, though she is from Bastion City in Solace. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Swamps of Ruin: Not much that we know currently; Kristen was building swamp Venice there while on a humanitarian/missionary trip. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Nekronomicron: subterranean city of necromancy and the undead, the location of Talura’s final stand. Kalvaxus was allied with the necromancers–which extended his control beyond the Red Waste. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Leviathan: the pirate city made of ships cobbled together into a functional city. if you can find it. They have their own adventurers though. they’re more likely to kill you. Technically suitable for higher level adventures.

Throshk: North of the Mountains of Chaos and Solace, home to Kalebrimbor, not much known in canon. clear for adventure. Suitable for higher level adventures.

Frostheim: North of Throshk, snow-covered according to maps of Spyre.  Suitable for higher level adventures.

And that’s just the continent we’ve been shown; there’s probably more to Spyre that we have yet to explore. Sidenote: the map poster from the seven has been taken off the dropout store and i’m sad about it. I know this means they’re probably doing a poster for this season but still.

So what does this all mean? Well, all students of the aguefort adventuring academy must engage in a quest of an appropriate level with their adventuring party in order to jointly pass the year and move to the next grade. They are allowed to travel to achieve their objective, and can enlist paid assistance from non-students known as hirelings. They must go on at least one higher level quest, or multiple D-F quests, presumably starting in sophomore year, since parties are generally formed on the first day of freshman year, and the expectation is that the students are not of a high enough level to engage with threats of class C and above. 

This contextualizes Antiope failing a year for non-palimpsest reasons–her party would have failed their yearly quest and been disbanded. It also gives context to the rest of the Seven losing their adventuring parties; if one of your members is not participating in the completion of the quest, they can be removed from the party and left as a solo adventurer.

That’s all I have for now on this because I don't have the energy to keep digging at the moment. We’ll see about more as this season progresses.

[bi4bihankking]

Okay the main reason that you should read Infinity Inc. Do you like cute college students who are fun together? Do you like found family? Do you like your favorite characters being friends forever and nothing bad happening to them at all? 

Well TOO BAD! If you read Infinity Inc. your favorite character has a 92% chance of either dying or going evil! You will love these stupid children and you will be so upset that DC refuses to have an actual full Infinity Inc. Reunion and instead decides that every few years former members should attempt to murder each other. 

For characters you have: Boy with daddy issues, other boy with daddy issues, gay angry boy with daddy issues, (unfortunately not canon gay yet) boy with EVIL daddy issues, and 7’6” himbo. It’s just... daddy issues all the way down. Also sexist 1940s man who is incredibly annoying. Jennifer-Lynn Hayden, or Jade, who you should all know, and frankly I think if your only exposure to Jen is Kyle Green Lantern you should be OBLIGATED to read Infinity Inc. I have seen some awful stuff flung around about her by Kyle fans. “Jade is only important to comics to tie Kyle to Alan and since she can’t do that properly she might as well stay dead” and that’s just what I’m willing to quote. 

Read Jennie-Lynn RIGHT NOW to properly appreciate her or learn to keep her name out of your mouth. I say while shipping her other ex with her dad and her brother. 

Lyta Trevor who has been through so much and deserves so much more than being hated because of Sandman, you do not know Lyta and you have not read her struggles, how dare you, I am assigning you the homework of Read Infinity Inc. or shut up. 

Okay that is the big sexisms it’s time to get to the big homophobias, or both. Hey remember how the mini series that Beth and Yolanda were killed off in either heavily implied that they were dating or ramped up the sexual tension so much that it seems that they are. I think you should read Infinity Inc. and join me in demanding that Geoff Johns brings back that relationship. Yeah it would be cute. 

Read Infinity Inc. now to fall in love with the cutest college age idiots you’ve ever read, ship a ship that is definitely considered problematic now (it’s Hank and Todd I don’t mean problematic problematic I mean, my god people are weird about non-canon gay ships involving canon gay characters, they just have a ridiculous amount of UST and you have to understand Hank was absolutely in love with both twins you have to you have to), be destroyed by the only death in the main series as you learn to care about them all, and also read further in the main characters lives and see the horrible shit they all but especially Hank gets subjected to... 

I forgot someone... 

MISTER BONES 

MOST IMPORTANTLY 

Infinity Inc. is the origin of this meme!

[dayslynthesix]

im currently obsessed with tennis and tennis is the only thing that's on my mind so i just doing what my brain cells are asking

first, the characters here were mentioned in another stories, but its not relevant at all, a little bit of context: lauren is priya sister (from delicate - lewis hamilton x volleyball!player) when i wrote delicate she was supposed to be a little younger than priya, so i made an adjustment just so the agegap wasn't so big and jeremy is yolanda brother (from match point)

i think this one will be like 2 parts

lets goooooo

Deuce | Daniel Ricciardo x tennis player girlfriend

laurencaspari

liked by priyacaspari, ccaspari, usaopen, danielricciardo and 45.876 others

laurencaspari had a little but not so much break time

danielricciardo looking good, laure

landonorris daniel clearly doesn't know how to impress a girls

laurencaspari i feel very impressed

maxverstappen1 wait, what?

robertcaspari everytime my daughter decides to take a break shes not taking a break at all!

georgerussell63 listen to me, you and danny against me and max, when?

maxverstappen1 who told your delulu mind i would play with you?

danielricciardo you did, yesterday, when lando threat to be his mate

laurencaspari i mean we can make it happen but i would rather to play with carmen

lewishamilton what about that grand slam you promised me?

laurencaspari at wimbledon!

ccaspari big sis doing big sis things, love yaaa ❤

user1 so this is the girl daniel is dating? wow, she's gorgeous

user2 i mean, i would date her too

user3 so this is the point where max and daniel go for the divorce?

danielricciardo

liked by redbullracing, maxverstappen1, lewishamilton, ccaspari, laurencaspari and 765.877 others

danielricciardo my date for the night

maxverstappen1 let's all of us pretend we don't know who she is

laurencaspari that pasta is looking good, wondering who made it

landonorris ew, pda

carlossainz55 you don't complain about pda when youre the one receiving the pda

redbullracing wondering when we will see her at the garage 🤨

danielricciardo soon adm, soon!

charles_leclerc that pasta is indeed looking very good

elisebutton yeah, ok, i got the clue

elisebutton wow, steeling each other's wife? dirty move, ricciardo

danielricciardo please, dont tell your dad

laurencaspari im still your wife!

maxverstappen1 lauren...

elisebutton everyone knows shes his girl now

user4 she's a roland garros champ!!!! how does danny ric got her is my question of the day

user5 hes a f1 driver, girl

user6 so the lauren caspari is dating a dude who goes vroom vroom very fast for a life?

user7 now she got herself a personal driver

laurencaspari

liked by mercedesamgf1, wimbledonopen, ccaspari, priyacaspari, danielricciardo, maxverstappen1, charles_leclerc, elisebutton and 143.567 others

laurencaspari hey @lewishamilton what about that? im still shaking, i remember being a child and watching wimbledon on tv with my dad, never expected to be a champion here, and now dreams came true. thank you to my family and my partner and my friends for all the support. usopen see you soon! let's gooooo 🥇🎾

lewishamilton ok, youre a woman of word, i call mercedes to see about my part of the deal

robertcaspari immensely proud of you, my precious daughter is a wimbledon champion

ccaspari big sis doing big sis business once again

jeremyrossi wow, huge congrats lauren! well deserved, you've played a tennis i never saw in my 20 years playing tennis, very proud of you!

priyacaspari HAHAHAHAH i mean, now we all combined have more titles than the boys @yrossibutton

lewishamilton im still 7 times champion of the world

yrossibutton ok, were 3 times olympic champions

laurencaspari i didn't knew we were counting but im tied with jeremy, meaning i have 12 grand slams too

priyacaspari congrats sis, im very very proud!

maxverstappen1 how am i supposed to beat you when you keep winning grand slam after grand slam? congratulations, by the way

danielricciardo im very proud of you, my love, you're incredible and it was magical seeing you play.

laurencaspari i love you ❤

elisebutton wifey doing wifey things considering ferrari is not helping hubby so he can do hubby things

redbullracing hello, @charles_leclerc

charles_leclerc no

maxverstappen1 yes

laurencaspari hey redbull, what about that sponsors thing?

redbullracing come to the next grand prix and we'll see 😉

danielricciardo don't wink at my girl, adm

user8 "my partner" 🥺🥺

user9 she said "i dont have wimbledon yet, hold on" and she went there and won

user10 going 4 out of 4 for grand slams, wow

user11 imagine being bff with aryna and having to play her in the finals?

user12 wait, tennis and formula one world are colliding

user13 that's why charles and pierre have been at roland garros for the past 2 years, they're supporting danny rics girl

danielricciardo

liked by redbullracing, maxverstappen1, ccaspari, laurencaspari and 587.888 others

danielricciardo back to where all started, happy 2 years to us and congratulations to your 12th grand slam, im insanely proud to share you highs with you and insanely proud to call you my girl, love you. ps: could you please get max and i tickets so we can see sabalenka play?

maxverstappen1 dude, i told you to be sutil about it

elisebutton oh, youre so cute its adorable (im crying)

charles_leclerc lis, baby, people will start to think that you're not happy with me 😭

elisebutton i am! im just missing my wife. but i love you, you're my invisible string

landonorris ew 🤢🤢

laurencaspari i knew it! you're with me just so i can get you to see aryna play with your husband! max, stop stealing my man! but yes baby, everything for you ❤

sabalenka_aryna congratulations, lauren! im very happy for you, looking forward to play you again! and please, bring you personal driver to see me play, i will love to see you guys again! xx 😘

ccaspari now we all know who does the cooking in this relationship

maxverstappen1 we all knew wayyyy sooner!

user14 i mean, they are indeed very cute

user15 i just love how lis is friend with her

user16 lauren sister, catharine, have a youtube channel called 3 girls at a boat where her and her sisters went for a boat trip every sunday, lis is one of her closest friends since i don't know 2014

user17 just saw they went to greece this summer with charles and lis

user18 catharine is very funny, i love how she's mocking on lewis and priya and lis and charles all the time

user19 aussie boy got the girl

user20 daniel 2 and a half years ago after watching a tennis match deciding that "hey laurencaspari would like to go out with me?" send tweet was a good idea

maxverstappen1 i was there and told him that yes, was a very good idea

an: ooooooookaay i started this one and at first i didn't liked it but now im just wow, i love it! missing my girl aryna playing and my man danny ric driving a fast car

[roobusmcscroobus]

More Muppet High AU Headcanons (or I guess just regular canon in my version of this)

- Aside from being the class president, Sam Eagle is also the hall monitor.

- Pepé is a foreign exchange student from Spain! Unlike his fellow foreign exchange student (Swedish Chef), he's almost fluent in English. He lives with Seymour for the time being, but his family is in the process of moving to America.

- Lew Zealand and Fozzie have an intense rivalry when it comes to the title of class clown.....if only Lew knew about said rivalry.

- Uncle Deadly, Pops, and Dr. Strangepork are all teachers (Theatre, uhhhh social studies probably???, and science respectively)

- Piggy is Uncle Deadly's favorite student. Maybe it's because of the gossip they share, maybe it's because Piggy's family is the reason that the theatre department hasn't lost all funding, or maybe it's Maybelline.

- Constantine is around, but he finds it very odd how everyone says he's from the USSR, considering it's been dissolved for decades.

- Beaker and Janice are both trans. Janice has been on estrogen since she was about 14, and is on the road to getting bottom surgery when she's 18. Meanwhile, Beaker is on Bunsen's "HRT" (It's definitely not legal) which has done everything but make his voice deeper.

- For the above point, I don't care that this place is vaguely in the 1950s, let them be trans damnit

- Whenever the main gang are up to some nonsense, there's a Little Shop of Horrors style Greek chorus narrating what's about to happen. It consists of the cheer team, and if one of the members of the cheer team is involved, their spot is replaced with Yolanda.

- Gonzo's affinity for poultry started at a very early age, and at this point he's got a huge crush on Camilla. If this was a cartoon, this would definitely be the plot of one of the episodes, especially since he's not yet the confident weirdo we know today.

- Dr. Teeth is still called Dr. Teeth in high school even though he's not a real doctor yet.

- Link Hogthrob is only passing any classes because he's a nepo baby and his family has ties with Dr. Strangepork.

- Scooter's uncle is the principal.

- Skeeter is the only girl on the football team, and one of 3 members that isn't a monster (Rowlf and Link are the other 2)

[mongo-the-liensis]

Carl's personality could be fully explained through love in the different stages of his life.

His love for his mom helped him get through the terrors of his childhood and helped him get rid of his dad. It made him stubborn and resilient and able to love even when everything sucks.

His love for Bea showed how desperate he was for any sort of affection (he literally overheard her and her mom talking about him, saying not the nicest things, and he ignored it). It showed that he was naive and trusting. That he wasn't able to see what was perhaps obvious for everyone else.

His love for Donut shows how he is unfailingly loyal and willing to deal with people's bullshit if he loves them. It shows how good of a person he is, how kind and thoughtful and caring. It shows how he is willing to die for those he loves.

His love for Mordecai showed how he still isn't over his childhood. Mordecai calls him "son" and tries to keep him out of trouble, and chastises him whenever he does something stupid. He cares and tries to protect Carl. Nothing like Carl's real father. Apart from that one time he hit Carl. And Carl immediately drew a connection to his father, and created a huge rift between them to distance himself from that, showing how deep his daddy issues run.

His love for Safehome Yolanda shows that he doesn't need romantic love. His platonic, familial love for his guild holds him up and keeps him going - keeps him fighting. He loves them all, they are his family, and he'd do anything for them. Every loss just makes fuels him more and more. Every loss strengthens him until he is able to take on anyone to avenge those he has lost.

Carl is a person so full of love, a person who loves so deeply, it's heartbreaking to see how the world keeps trying to break that. But he won't let it. They will never break him. He refuses to let them destroy the most essential part of him, the thing that makes him himself at his very core: his love.

[miracles-and-butterflies]

What kind of relationships do grandkids have with their new families in second lives?

A bit of a mixed bag.

Isabela has a positive relationship with her new family. She was the one who decided she wanted to track down the Madrigals, but didn’t stupidly start saying that - it would probably make her sound insane. So she tried her best to appear normal and just shelved the idea of finding her family until she was old enough to travel, had the money, etc. Her parents were Rubén and Yolanda Parilla. She was the youngest of two children, having an older sibling called Feliz (they/them).

Dolores has a more strained relationship with her new family. She found them to be quite overly affectionate compared to the last. She was an only child, which she loved and hated at the same time. Her two mothers, Carolina and Mónica Aguilar, truly treasured their only child.

Luisa also has a really good relationship with her new family nowadays. She was an only child to a single dad, Tadeo Herrera. She was a bit hesitant to build a close relationship with him - feeling it would replace the one she had with Agustín. But, over time, slowly started allowing it to happen. The beginning, after Luisa got her memories, was a huge struggle, they are doing much better now.

Camilo has a very bad experience with his new family. His mother, Elena Banderas, is very homophobic and his father, Dante, left prior Camilo getting back his memories. He had two much older half-siblings, Marisol and Xavier, who left the family before his birth. He also has a younger brother, Tito, whom he cares for deeply because of the reminder of Antonio.

Mirabel isn’t going too great either. She was the eldest of three and fully expected to parent/raise her younger brothers, Domingo and Emmanuel. Her mother, Daniela Sarto, is fairly absent parent and her father, Leandro Aceves, didn’t know anything about children. This later resulted in the middle child, Domingo, dying as a toddler. He has been her mother’s favourite and this caused a huge rift in the family, making everything a lot worse.

[cidthesquid]

What's next for our Styling Star? | Style Savvy : Styling Star #06

[Previous Post]              [First Post]              [Next Post]

Alright, so we're back after a bit of a break, and I've been really wondering what I'll do with this blog after I finish this game... Sure, I could finish Style Savvy DS, but there's not much to talk about there, and it feels a bit too soon to going back to play more trendsetter/Fashion Forward. I've considered writing about new topics that are not style related (have a few ideas) But I honestly think it would be just better to make a second blog for that.. But I guess I still have plenty of time to decide

Anyways, I forgot this game has a harvest moon style clock, so while writing that above paragraph, the day actually ended up advancing. We're nearing the end of April, and it looks like we have a new arrival in town! And it looks like the day starts off with her event:

It looks like the new girl is being chased by someone!

(Also I meant to ask, How does the dual photo layout look on mobile? (Do you find yourself having to open each one to read the text?) (Would a single image looks better? Even if it makes the post longer?)

They head into an alley, so we follow... and they stop in front of a cafe

(I have a feeling this is NOT what it looks like) The man begins speaking with her, and she tells him to 'stay back' He replies that this is not a topic for discussion, and grabs her arm. Then the girl (Yolanda) does some kind of martial arts move, knocking him down.

She apologies, mentioning that she make have taken this too far, (obvious were 'practicing for a move flag') And Fortman replies, complementing here black belt grade judo skills. Yolanda apologizes and mentions that she can't leave as there's still something she needs to do in this city. And that she'd like some time alone.

Fortman Says she can have 30mins to settle whatever affairs she has left, and they need to leave right after that. And she agrees.

After Fortman leaves, The waiter is clearly a bit rattled by the display then proceeds to offer her a seat to take her order.

The game then proceeds to spoil her backstory a bit with her character card:

I then go up and talk to her, and overhear her mention that she only really bought the drink to be polite, but she ends up enjoying it more than she expected.

She mentions that she likes the café, and gives a slight hint to her wealth, mentioning that the café would fit easily in to the parlor at her home. She then asks if I'm local, and if she could get help with something... Conveniently, she'd like to know if there are any boutiques nearby. How every convienet that we just happen to be the manager :)

She then mentions that she'd like to vist our shop to get help with what she refers to as "a small fashion dilemma" I guess we'll see that entails..

But we're then interrupted as fortman mentions that her time is up,

We also get a little more background on why she's here in the first place:

(maybe I'll just put text heavy images, one at a time, and double up on text-less ones, again, any feedback is welcome) She then mentioned that she only snuck out, and came all this way, so she could visit the cafe. And Fortman seems a little confused as to why she would come all this way just for coffee, and asks that she doesn't do it again. He mentions that she is in a bit of what he refers to as "a rebellious phase", and says it's time for her to return, as her mother was worried. And they then prepare to leave.

Yolanda mentions that Fortman is her bodyguard, and asks that we don't tell him about our conversation, and mentions that she intends to meet us again. Well, that was an... interesting event. I may have been wrong with my initial read of the situation, but it seems they went with the 'rebilious kid from a rich (controlling) family' trope.

I've seen this background dozens of times by now, it was really popular in the late 90's early 00's, So I hope they do something interesting with it. ----- Alright, I'm gonna have to cut this post a little short, I started playing a few days ago, but ended up getting busy with life stuff, I wanted to at least finish off the day, but that would delay this post even longer, so I'll just give some final thoughts on this event, and end it here. So, it's really starting to feel like they traded off the 'town npc' from Fashion Forward, for the 'multiple story lines' that we're seeing in this new game. I'm still not sure how I feel about that change, but at the same time, Fashion Forward still exists. And changing it up really makes both games stand alone with their own distinct identities. I'll reserve my judgment on what I think is better till I complete the game, and for now I'll just try to accept this game for what it is! Thanks for reading! ----- As always, all comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome! (I'm also looking for feedback on this new style, how's the formatting?)

You literally can't bother me, (unless you go out of your way to be a jerk), so post whatever you need to say!

[reasoningdaily]

In April 1976, my twenty-seven-year-old uncle, Craig Baskerville, made a tape recording of his great-uncle, Thomas Holcomb. The tape is scratchy, and Lady, the family dog, keeps barking in the background. “My father was a runaway man,” my great-great-uncle Tom says. “He was a slave” in Cumberland County, Virginia, near the Appomattox River, and “he had a boat.” Sometime in the spring of 1865, after the Battle of Richmond, when Confederate soldiers were “running all through the woods,” Jackson Holcomb “was down there” ferrying those “Jeff Davis men . . . across.” “And everybody he put em across the river they give him money.” They “paid him.” On the recording, my uncle Craig sounds a little puzzled. Thomas Holcomb seems to be saying that his father had a piece of property, and that he used that property to make deals that sound a lot like contracts: a promise to pay in exchange for a promise to ferry. Why would a band of heavily armed white men, who were risking their lives in a war to preserve slavery, treat an enslaved man as if he had rights?

Ar

Searching for an answer to this question sent me down the path toward this book, which reveals a hidden history of civil rights among African Americans. It’s a story that begins not in 1955 but in 1830. It is not about people mobilizing to march but about what made it possible for the people to march. It is about the rights to make a church, own a home, get paid. These civil rights are like an invisible thread woven into the fabric of Black people’s lives since before they even had rights, patterning how they loved, worshiped, worked, learned, and played. At bottom, this book is about how ordinary Black people used law in their everyday lives. People like my great-great-great uncle and aunt, Jackson and Louisa Holcomb.

They touched law at every step of their lives. A few years after freedom came, Jackson Holcomb made a marriage contract with Louisa Brown, who had also grown up in slavery. In 1883 they bought a hundred acres of farmland from a local white woman, with a swap of timber rights for eight months’ rent. Over the next few decades, they bought and sold and mortgaged more land, and each time they had a deed recorded at the Cumberland County courthouse. Every year, Jackson Holcomb rode the ten miles up Guinea Road to the courthouse and paid their property taxes. As time passed, the Holcombs bequeathed some of that land to their children and nieces and nephews, sold some of it to a Black neighbor, and donated still more to the Cotton Town Odd Fellows Lodge and to their church, Midway Baptist, an unincorporated religious association founded in 1874, where they held the rights and privileges of membership. In the 1920s, the Holcombs’ youngest son, Thomas, and his wife, Annie Reaves Holcomb, moved to South Orange, New Jersey, a small town next to the city of Newark.

Like most migrants, they never really left home. They started “fellowshipping” at First Baptist South Orange but they remained members of Midway Baptist. They bought a little house and paid taxes in South Orange but they also sent home money for Thomas’s brother Robert to take to the courthouse for their share of the taxes on the family’s land in Cumberland. They laid plans to move back for good, buying out some of Thomas’s relatives’ shares of the land. They were always driving down for funerals and family visits. Sometimes they brought along their niece and nephew, Yolanda and Osborne Reaves, who lived with them in South Orange after Yolanda and Osborne’s parents got divorced in the Cumberland courthouse. Later, they brought along Yolanda’s children, Craig and Penelope, my mother.

Uncle Tom died in 1976, five years after Aunt Annie and a few months after his interview with my uncle Craig. I was five years old. We all caravaned down from New Jersey, my little sister and I yawning in the back seat of our family’s powder-blue Plymouth Valiant. The burial was at Midway Baptist, on a strip of land Thomas and Annie had deeded to the church in 1965. Uncle Craig talked with lawyers to settle up the deeds, tax receipts, life insurance, and the title to the Holcombs’ old Buick, using notes Thomas had penciled out sometime earlier. Then Craig put the papers back into my uncle Tom’s dented, wood-grain-metal file box. I am looking at it now. It holds but a few of the millions of legal acts that are memorialized on scraps of paper in attics and basements and on a hundred thousand docket books in county courthouses all across America—the vast paper trail of “the law.” Once you start looking, you realize that the history of Black civil rights is all around us.

Article continues after advertisement Today, even as many historians remain committed to the idea of scholarship as struggle, they are debating what that struggle actually was and what lessons it holds today.

The story of Thomas and Louisa Holcomb and their descendants is not a very special one (though it is special to me). Probably many of you, reading this now, have a similar story. Yet precisely because it is so ordinary, it challenges much of what we think we know about civil rights— and about Black people and the law more generally.

The story of civil rights that most people are familiar with goes something like this. Once, the legal system was dominated by racist state and local officials who refused to recognize not only Black people’s civil rights, but their basic human dignity and even their lives. Law was a hostile, fearsome power to be avoided whenever possible: full of unknowable secrets and often deadly. Then, in the 1940s, a few brave lawyers ventured south, bent on changing the law. They confronted the system with a carefully planned series of strategic lawsuits and with the powerful symbolism of a Black lawyer in a white courthouse. Soon, ordinary African Americans, their sense of possibility awakened by Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka and other Supreme Court victories and galvanized by racial justice activists, coalesced into a mass movement demanding that the federal government force those racist state and local officials to recognize Black people as free, full members of American society. This is the master narrative of civil rights. It is powerful, not least because it refuses to concede to right-wing reactionaries the right to say what “freedom” is.

It is also powerful because history is not just about the past. “History is literally present in all that we do,” James Baldwin wrote, at the height of the civil rights movement: “we carry it within us.” The choices historians make—what to write about, what counts as evidence and how to interpret it—are inevitably shaped by the world around us. African American history is no different. In its modern form it grew directly out of the civil rights movement itself. Activists in the 1960s created Black history units to teach in the Mississippi Freedom Schools; at colleges, a Black student movement demanded Black history courses, faculty to teach them, and a wholesale rethinking of what our country’s history is and how it should be taught. Many leading Black historians came into the field profoundly shaped by their experiences as activists in the 1960s; some explicitly said that their scholarship was a continuation of the struggle for Black freedom.

Today, even as many historians remain committed to the idea of scholarship as struggle, they are debating what that struggle actually was and what lessons it holds today. Instead of looking from the top down— from the perspective of great leaders like Martin Luther King and Malcolm X, famous lawyers like Thurgood Marshall, statesmen like Lyndon Johnson, and the liberal justices of Earl Warren’s Supreme Court—a “grassroots” approach has transformed our understanding of the movement by rethinking it from the perspective of “local people.”

Others have taken a long view of the era of mass protests commonly called The Movement—the dozen years or so between the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 and the Civil Rights Acts (1964, 1968) and Voting Rights Act (1965). Looking back to the 1930s and forward to the 1980s reveals a much bigger struggle, contend the proponents of the “long civil rights movement” view, a struggle for full citizenship, economic justice, and true grassroots democracy, a struggle that burned as fiercely in New York and Los Angeles as in Selma, Alabama. Movement activists realized that civil rights were not enough, the long-movement scholars argue. Real freedom required changing the underlying structures that kept most Black people poor, politically weak, undereducated, and abused by police. It meant transforming American democracy itself.

Article continues after advertisement

What hasn’t been rethought is the fundamental moral drama of the movement, in which civil rights—and Black history more broadly—are framed as an unfinished “freedom struggle,” a battle against the forces of “plunder,” a journey from humiliation to dignity, from second-class citizenship to full citizenship, from Black fear in the face of white lawlessness to Black people defiantly asserting their rights under the law. That moral vision gleams bright today, as police killings mercilessly continue and as Republican politicians knowingly enact policies that systematically hurt Black people. Movement-centered scholarship is as urgent and necessary today as it was in the 1960s.

But the notion of Black history as a freedom struggle has also cost us something. It has helped make Black history almost synonymous with the history of race relations, as if Black lives only matter when white people are somehow in the picture. It has laid a moral burden on African American history that few other scholarly fields must carry, urging us to judge our ancestors according to how well they advanced the freedom struggle. It has often infused a subtle romanticism into African American history, with Black people playing the role of humble folk heroes overcoming adversity against the odds, or “fugitives” defined by a common history of dispossession and “yearning for freedom.”

Most of all, it has shrunk our vision of Black life down to the few areas of Black life where federal law and social movements made a difference. There are shelves full of books about the struggle for the right to vote, to open up the workplace, schools, and military, and to challenge a violently racist criminal justice system.

Overshadowed are many other parts of life that Black people might have cared about just as much but that do not fit into a story of freedom—things like marriage and divorce, old-age care, property-owning, running churches and businesses. Historians have echoed the racial justice advocates of the 1950s and 1960s, whose courthouse showdowns with hostile white officials have become canonized in films such as Selma and Just Mercy. Because African Americans were “ ‘afreaid to go to the court house to vote,’ ” as one Black farmworker wrote in a letter to the NAACP, scholars have assumed that they were afraid to go to the courthouse for anything else.

It has been easier to imagine Black people fighting for “freedom” or “ justice” or “full citizenship” than to imagine them arguing over alimony or a deed of trust. In the freedom struggle story, Black people are seen as ordinary and heroic precisely because they knew so little about law. But if that is so, then why, when a mass movement against racial injustice finally took hold in the 1950s, did so many Black people put their faith in law at all? Civil rights history has left Black people disconnected from our own legal commonsense, the way we actually think about and use law in our daily lives. It has made it harder to see Black people as people in full.

[bitterrobin]

using this site as a notes board to shop around my Bette Kane-Battle for the Cowl AU which I will now be lovingly regarding as the “Flamebird&Not-Robin in: the dangers of dead fathers, two (2) different spy organizations run by our evil-except-not-really-mothers, and somehow everything always is either a Wayne or a Kanes fault.”

Starting off this au with a general list of the characters in it and their roles as of Battle for the Cowl:

(((Edit: I changed the format to make this easier to read)))

Bette Kane - Flamebird

I’m throwing around the idea of her being a forensic scientist/or a pro-athlete

I hc her as being the same age as Dick i.e around 26

she’s back in Gotham bc Bruce died, stays in Gotham bc she sees the absolute mess it’s in & decides to help

even if it’s dubious if anyone really wants/needs her there

still an established LA hero with a public reputation so she’s not totally unknown to Gotham

finds Damian basically homeless in Gotham/breaking into places to stay and offers to take him in

he only accepts bc he knows she’s a Kane/related to his father

correctly regards Damian as an abused child / but doesn’t have the prior extensive knowledge or experience with the League to cloud her judgement on Talia or Damian (they’re equally both victims in her eyes)

while she is leagues more adjusted emotionally than the other Bats (she almost never interacts with Bruce outside of her childhood) - she’s still a lil traumatized and unhealthily copes regarding her parental situation and Kathy Kane

also has a little bit of trauma-related amnesia with a certain section of her childhood (that will come into play)

She does remember being Batgirl vaguely, very vaguely

Damian al Ghul-Wayne - not Robin in this au

at least not yet

he goes out on his own without a definite vigilante identity until later developments

came to Gotham to see Bruce after leaving Talia

Bruce is “dead” so Damian decides to wander Gotham on his own before Bette discovers him

tentatively stays with Bette bc they are related and he needs shelter

is secretly still insecure about Bruce (bc of how they last interacted) ((Batman#655-657)) /and whether or not Dick would have accepted him, as they haven't met before this au (Resurrection of Ras al Ghul is heavily altered)

tolerates Bette, Tom, and Rory’s friendly affection but will not hesitate to leave in the early months

is struggling with his place in the world bc Bruce is gone, Dick doesn’t know who he is, and Tim still hates him. So he’s not on the best terms with the main Bats.

Tom Bronson - Wildcat (the third)

If you don’t know who he is (I think only JSA fans know if his existence), he’s the third-ish Wildcat of the 2007 Justice Society, the estranged son of Ted Grant, following the long-ago death of Yolanda Montez and way-longer ago death of Jake Grant.

And yes, he is the one that transforms into an anthropomorphic black jaguar (he got it from his mom)

Ted will make an appearance and somehow I WILL bring Yolanda back from the dead/maybe even Jake too

Tom goes to Gotham to help his dad with the city shenanigans of BfTC

jury’s still out on whether I’m making him a love interest for Bette (my brain will make crack ships of the most random characters, don’t mind it)

decides to stay in Gotham even after his dad leaves bc the Bats really are stretched thin (in his opinion) (he’s used to the large size and scope of the JSA)

becomes a brother figure for Damian

accepts him as a annoying little brother in the sense of someone taking care of a stray kitten that bites your hand

lacks literally all experience with anything Batman related before going to Gotham / so he has Opinions about the family

is constantly anxious about Gotham (he is from Brooklyn) (someone pls tell him how this dysfunctional group of people manages to do anything at any point in time in This Fucking City)

a non-Bat POV into the insanity of Bat-events happening

what’s the League of Assassins? or Leviathan? Or Spyral? Or a Red Hood? Fuck if he knows

In my mind, Grant Emerson never died (he is happy and thriving OK) (fuck u Blackest Night) (he will make an appearance) (alongside Maxine)

Rory Regan - Ragman

our favorite underrated Jewish hero

originally from Gotham, I’m surprised he isn’t used more

for those not in the know : Ragman is a magical/mythical Jewish hero consisting of a costume made of rags which contain the countless souls of sinners who will eventually gain redemption within the rags if they help the current Ragman

Rory can use their strength, minds, and skills to help him as Ragman

Ragman (the suit) was canonically created to protect the Jewish population of Europe around the 1500s after the Golem of Prague was also made

Bruce makes an appearance in his 90s series actually / and Rory makes a cameo in a couple issues of O’Neil Batman

I’m planning on making him a more homegrown hero who tends to the homeless/poor/criminals that the Bats don’t get to- the whole “Tatterdemalion of the Justice” thing

is here bc we need another non-Bat pov of Gotham (he’s way more familiar with Gotham than Tom)

and I also like Gotham being more diverse in terms of vigilantes

bonus mentor for both Bette and Damian

he likes Bette bc shes 1. Jewish 2. a lighter hero than the other Bats 3. is a little easier to communicate with

he knows Damian is struggling and tries to support him in any way he can (as Rory also has daily struggles about his own morality bc of the Ragman suit/entity)

has been in Ragman in Gotham for about as long as Bruce has been Batman / he has seen some shit

The Ragman suit canonically slows the aging of the user, so Rory is older than he looks

he only just now started working with Oracle bc he understands the need for a semi-formal organization of Gotham heroes (he does appear in BfTC: The Network)

Kathy Webb-Kane - Agent 0/Headmistress

The leader of Spyral

not a child of a n*zi/ Otto Netz does not exist in this AU

still the first Batwoman

not romantically involved with Bruce bc ew

formerly married to Nathan Kane - the oldest Kane sibling of the little dynasty (Martha’s older brother)

after he died, she inherited what fortune he had that wasn’t taken by the Kanes

formerly Bette’s legal guardian/adopted mom after her dad died when she was 9

yes there will be mommy issues/familial conflict bc Spyral is an antagonist

conflicted about Bette bc she does still care for her, but she has a mission that she was committed too long before Bette was even born

clearly remembers being Batwoman

Spyral is still a spy organization connected to St. Hadrian’s Finishing School

currently targeting Talia/Leviathan, Damian, and Jason

also begins targeting Bette after she starts investigating in search of Kathy

Talia - Head of Leviathan

okay so. Resurrection of Ras al Ghul happens, but not the same way. Talia tries to go against Dusan on her own with Damian after learning of the body snatching plot

Inevitably, Ras comes back. He manipulates Talia and Damian into staying for a little longer. Things do not work out, and Talia deliberately sends Damian to Gotham bc Bruce isn’t dead (yet).

Bruce dies, and Talia loses hope in trusting any of the Bats to help her and Damian (she and Dick never got along, her relationship with Jason is strained)

So she creates Leviathan as a way to combat her father

BUT it’s not the same organization at all. It’s more of a spy organization with the direct purpose of taking down Ras/implementing a better version of his ecological agenda without as much murder and bloodshed.

Leviathan also is technically against Batman bc obviously Talia has never aligned completely with Bruce either. But she doesn’t purposefully try to kill him or Damian.

She’s a very conflicted character here, and she’ll show up in person to see Damian and learn of his status. As a mom, not a villain.

She’ll have a bigger part later on as Leviathan comes into conflict with Spyral.

Wants to take Damian back but is terrified that she’s not a good mother, that’s she’ll only make her precious son worse, and that Ras will just take something else from her permanently again (familial trauma x2)

So she flip-flops between helping Damian and trying to stop him from being a vigilante out of fear for his safety - which Damian detests (mommy issues 2: electric boogaloo)

Leviathan becomes a target for Spyral after it starts gaining followers that aren’t former League traitors and gains a wider influence among the eco-conscious and those who genuinely want Ras al Ghul gone forever

Dick - Nightwing/Batman

basically the same as og Battle for the Cowl

he becomes Batman and struggles under the mantle

doesn’t take in Damian so Tim stays Robin and in Gotham longer

he doesn't meet Damian until after Bette starts taking care of the kid so they don't have the same connection as in canon

he slowly becomes endeared to Damian the more they interact as the plot goes forward

while he’s still dismissive of Bette at the beginning, he’s forced to trust her when it comes to Damian and Spyral

He comes very close to like seventy mental breakdowns over the whole story

Tim - Robin

stays Robin bc Damian doesn’t need the role when he gets to Gotham

so no, there isn’t any conflict regarding the mantle until way later, and by the time Damian becomes Robin - Tim is already Red Robin

Bc Tim is Robin, he stays in Gotham for a while after Dick becomes Batman

that doesn’t mean there isn’t any tension bc there’s still the whole “Bruce isn’t dead” thing

Unlike canon though, Tim has words and can communicate before he leaves so Dick actually knows that Tim has at least a barebones theory of what happened to Bruce (doesn’t mean that Dick fully completely believes him and he’s still grieving so he doesn’t want anything dangerous to happen to Tim)

(this also means that the zombie Batman thing doesn’t happen)

Tim still leaves on his League pilgrimage and becomes Red Robin out of necessity

He still pushes people away, and he still is an asshole to Stephanie

Ras is very clearly manipulating him out of his own goals to strengthen the League and act against Leviathan

When he comes back to Gotham, Tim fights with Damian over the issue of Talia and Leviathan (bc he sees it as another fully evil organization, slight bias put into him by Ras)

Stephanie - Batgirl

the same as the comics

technically more on Barbara’s side than Dicks after BfTC

still a sister figure for Damian

will eventually meet with Bette bc it’s a crime that they never know each other in canon

is carving out her own legacy and path as a hero and Batgirl

still dealing with insecurity over Bruce

Cassandra - not Batgirl or Black Bat

will eventually become Batman

doesn’t show up until after the initial Battle for the Cowl

becomes Batman entirely on her own (for a bit there’s like three Batmen running around)

exclusively works with Oracle and Steph, comes to work together with Dick

doesn’t interact as much with Bette or Damian until they cross paths investigating Leviathan

Barbara - Oracle

still the same

does not interact as much with Dick&Tim bc she’s still running the Birds of Prey on top of training Steph

will interact with Kathy and Bette eventually bc I need the Batgirl interactions

Jason - Red Hood

is Batman briefly during BfTC

still takes in Scarlet as a pseudo-child

he won’t play a big part in the Bette/Damian part of the story

will eventually become a target for Spyral bc Red Hood is a crime boss with some wide connections

Bruce - dead (lol)

still time traveling and everything

tim will still investigate

the omega sanction/Barbatos hullaboo still happens