#and as someone who was strange and offputting child i loved her

[gaysonlyocean]

the best in existence whoever blessed us with cats thank thou my cat reminds me of my old cat. :[ i love them dearly -silly

oh i get that hold on

i have this saved on my laptop and i have had it for YEARS, this is adder (black cat) and lily (white cat) two of the three cats i grew up with, we had another called ripper (really ripley, like from alien, but she was nicknamed ripper and it stuck) but i dont have a photo of her saved :(

[i-am-minty-fresh]

(The ask at hand being: “I'm really normal about robin (<- lying) and I want to hear about her and chopper because their relationship is so important to me” from @noisypitta)

Okay, so I took my melatonin before committing to this so I apologize if I get incoherent about halfway through. I finally get to address Robin and one of the many fascinating elements of her personality and relationships. Not only Robin, but I also get to talk about the world’s bestest boy, Chopper! What a good day for me! And this analysis is going to be about self-image and what makes us monsters.

Hilariously, Chopper doesn’t have that much to his character…because he’s a child. He’s best understood through the lens of a still-developing child. He’s not old enough to commit to his insecurity in the common strawhat way (Sanji, Nami, Robin), but he’s also inexperienced enough not to understand shit like Usopp’s betrayal in Water 7. He’s yet to make a proper mistake because he’s going in completely blind. His only understanding of himself was brought on by either his dad or his adoptive mom. Up until meeting Luffy he always understood himself to be a monster, something no person in their right mind would want anything to do with. Hiriluk takes care of him cause he’s a crazy old man (who paid the price for taking care of him later) and Kureha only takes care of him out o obligation…this is a lot for a child to put up with. Hated by reindeer and people alike he can only associate with the kinds of people that even other people don’t like (i.e. crazy doctor and greedy witch). Chopper thought himself an unlovable monster and rather than being told that he wasn’t a monster, he came to meet other (worse) monsters. He joins a crew of insane monsters who embrace all that makes them strange and offputting because that's the strawhat way, and after Marineford Chopper vows to become a real monster to protect his crewmates from losing like that ever again.

Another thing to keep in mind for Chopper is his development, which is something I brought up a little bit earlier. He’s never really had a comforting parent figure, much less for very long. He’s a child who seeks validation and comfort at every turn because he’s used to violence and hatred. He’s not used to someone treating him like a child meant to be protected rather than a monster to be feared…and Robin…

Robin knows a lot about being a monster. About being hated and hunted and laughed at and being seen as nothing more than devil spawn. She has spent her childhood being chased for just being herself and learning to never fully trust anyone but herself because everyone else will just hurt her in the long run (or her past will end up hurting them). He keeps people at arm's length because she can’t trust herself not to hold everyone too close. She’s so desperate for comfort and safety that it makes her uncomfortable to be too friendly. She’s a textbook manipulator who hides behind the lies told about her because if she becomes the evil thing they call her at least it’ll stop being a lie about a helpless child. Robin is done being a child, or so she says. She’s matured with her terrible self-image and until Enies Lobby was more than willing to let her piss poor perception of herself kill her…but it didn’t. Luffy wouldn’t let her. He made her admit just how desperate she was for a real family. She’s got stupid dreams she’s willing to die for, she finds the crew's antics ridiculously charming, and she loves being both looked after and respected as a powerful member of the crew. She’s cared for in the way that she needs to be at this point which is to feel intellectually important (hands down she’s the smartest member of the crew), and valued as a strategist. She doesn’t need to be coddled, she just needs to feel like she takes up the proper space on hr crew, and she does…but for Chopper….he’s something different.

Zoro and Sanji are stubborn and bull-headed and unwilling to accept help even when it best suits them. Nami has her being more of a sister than a dotting mother, on an equal playing field in terms of trickery. Usopp’s similarly stubborn and does best by learning through his mistakes so not much she can do there. Luffy loves being cared for, but not as the unique god-child savior he is but rather as an extension of how every member of the crew should be cared for (which is to say efficiently). Chopper though is little. So little he hasn’t learned to take compliments in stride or mask his enjoyment. He doesn’t have up all the walls that Robin or Nami built to try to put everything that has happened to them into a context in which it doesn’t hurt as much rather than just admitting that it wasn’t fair and they should be mad. Chopper wants validation from his peers and attention from those he sees as more experienced…but he also wants to be cared for. Similar to Robin, he wants to be respected in his field and as a fighter, but only because that respect can be translated into cool points with older brother Zoro and dad Franky. He’s a textbook case of a little sibling who wants to feel just as important as everyone else and it’s devastating to him but adorable to everyone else. Robin doesn’t want him growing up too fast, because that’s what she had to do. The world turned her into a monster and now she sits comfortably with that title making sure to use it against them when they try to hurt her family. Chopper does the same. He knows that no one will look at him and not see a monster, but it doesn’t mean he can’t break his Hippocratic oath to kick some ass if need be.

Robin treats him like how she wishes she was treated. She hangs on every word and carries around his favorite food because she wants to give him what she never got but wanted so badly. He wants to be looked after because the world is full of stuff that he knows nothing about and he doesn’t have his dad around to wrap his wounds anymore.

Their relationship is one of the teacher and the student. Robin gets to pass on her wisdom through her terrible lived experience at the hands of people who call her a monster and Chopper gets to learn that maybe being a monster isn’t so bad if it means you get to protect the people you care about. If Robin’s a monster, maybe being a monster isn’t that bad.

Not as long as I would have liked it, let me know if you think I missed anything! I’d love to discuss them further because I love my antlered son and his bloodthirsty mom but it is now bedtime.

Sorry for taking so long!

[2n2n]

id love to hear you talk more about tsunene! its not a ship ive given much thought before, but i do think they have such potential to be absolute besties so i can totally see the ship appeal lol

I can do my best.... first off though, I'd point to another ask where I talked about their similarities. I think, because they both love Amane, because they both want to hear what Amane wants, they share a lot of thoughts, feelings, and experiences. I think their parallels are intentional.

When I look at fanfiction... fanart... I often feel Nene-chan gets shaved down to 'a normal girl' ... 'just nice' or something. Nene-chan has almost no friends, and she's incredibly unpopular. She's not simply a frumpy hum-drum normal girl, she's... a weird person...! She walks around the school singing songs to herself, she freaks out loudly, she's clumsy, she's super exciteable and expressive, she's childish and playful, she likes weirdly macabre things....!!!!! She's VERY different from the other girls we've seen in-manga!!!! Nene-chan is the only girl like this!!!

Gosh, chapter 1 is entirely about just how socially helpless and unable to be a normal, dateable girl Nene-chan is... she can't even give a boy flowers or make him a bento normally...!!! She's... offputting!! To most people!!! She's weird haha! It's what HANAKO loves about her...!

God only knows what she was like as a CHILD with her creepy ghoul and skull plushies, and attraction to ghost stories!! Nene-chan made the DECISION! entering middle-school to become more feminine and acquire more feminine vocations!! Before that, just how unappealing to the average person was she? The Nene-chan we know now, is a Nene-chan who has tried to make herself more appealing... ! And... she's so strange!

Getting a decent role in a school play is impossible for her, nobody would vote for her to be anything !! Because she's unpopular... ! Poor Nene-chan doesn't seem to notice this reality, though...

Nene-chan's playfulness can even be a bit much for Amane, who can be bulldozed by it! Though of course, it's part of why he loves her! That childishness is something Amane really needs in his life!! He needs to be spun and spun around, he needs to be whipped up into a frenzy! He needs someone lively!

I don't think I need to explain that Tsukasa is also exciteable, clumsy, childish, playful! Of course he is, so much so it scares some people or something, haha. Of course, Tsukasa also bulldozes Amane, too playful and energetic! ... but Amane needs that...!

Nene-chan is so easily swept into the moment with someone else-- at the tea party, and with Shijima-san within her wish... really, if Natsuhiko wasn't there, how do you think this situation would have ended? What point was Tsukasa trying to make, by crawling into Nene's lap, while she tries to assert "Hanako-kun isn't my type"...?

she's quite receptive to Hanako's excessive intrusive touching ... gradually. Lol... all these boys are too forward for her at first blush.... they're both such rude boys....

We should give Tsukasa the chance to get up close to her just as often~~ make her heart race~~

his forwardness, his honesty, his desire to peer into your heart-- what about that wouldn't suit an ultra-romantic like Nene-chan, so used to the evasive Hanako, who is always hiding his gaze from her, pulling down the brim of his hat? How do you think a long conversation would go, if they were finally completely alone? How would it feel to have Hanako's twin touching her, staring at her, calling her name? Nene-chan wants to know about him.

anyway I don't know why Nene-chan is blushing here when she recounts meeting Tsukasa, lol...

Personally, I think it's all inevitable.

It's like an approaching train ready to crash!

[leastdatablebracket]

ROUND 2, MATCH 29

Propaganda under the cut!

Kageyuki Shiraishi

Propaganda

He's a terrible unfeeling person. He is insensitive, he teases people to the point of tears and he's the type to use being brutally honest as an excuse to be a jerkass, and despite that is also a consummate liar. He is also part of a terrorist organization, but he was brainwashed by them as a kid.

Anti-Propaganda

first off kageyukis whole personality is literally a cause of his horrible upbringing ( he was a bastard child born to a powerful political father + a mother who was only obsessed w said man ) and the fact that he grew up basically in a facility run by a religious cult / terrorist organization that taught him that he was a dispensible pawn and that feelings dont matter ( he was like. 10 man ) later before the start of the game, kageyuki is finally sent to the outside world on a "mission" for this terrorist organization and he begins to craft this "terribly honest, strange and offputting guy persona" when the protagonist meets him at the beginning of the game she actually suspects him of being part of the terrorist organization but he convinces her otherwise and so they begin this tentative partnership to find out more abt this terrorist organization. over the course of their partnership they often do not see eye to eye and he makes the protagonist upset, but doesnt actually do much harm to her and he slowly begins to actually LIKE being w her. but ofc his upbringing does Not Allow him to feel emotions in a Normal way so he kinds just fucks up over and over but its shown that he does have loving sides for her even when he tries to reject the emotions. this eventually leads to his endings. major spoilers for both good and bad endings if uu wanna avoid those !!!! in one of his bad endings, kageyuki actually ends up dying after trying to go after the terrorist organization boss in order to free and help the protagonist ( from her collar. i didnt explain that she had a collar but yeah. it had like poison and stuff in it that cld literally kill her and he didnt want that to happen so ) in his good ending tho, he takes her to the terrorist organization base and attempts to barter for her collar removal in exchange for her to be "initiated" into the organization thru killing him. he actually anticipates that the protagonist will say no tho and so she ends up shooting the boss guy, however this triggers the poison in the protags collar and so shiraishi frantically searches for the antidote ( which just so happened to be on the boss guy ) and he uses it on her. however she then falls into a coma and he nurses her back to health for a year. once she wakes up from her coma, shiraishi discovers that she has amnesia and cannot remember basically anything that happened, and so out of his love for her he simply tells her he was her doctor and that he had been nursing her back to health over the past year after she had a traumatic experience. he then calls up their mutual friends to come and help take care of her bc he had planned all along to turn himself in as part of the organization to atone for what he did and let happen, snd so him telling her nothing abt his feelings was his way of letting her go and be w someone "better for her"..however when he takes them to their friends they surprise the two of them w a christmas party since they had missed it the last year and it gently helps the protag regain her memories and she has a whole confrontation where they confront their feelings together and she decides that no matter what she will wait for him and its very sweet and very cute AND SO IN CONCLUSION KAGEYUKI SHIRAISHI IS VERY DATEABLE HE GOES THROUGH MUCH CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT AND HE DESERVES THE WORLD !!!!!!!!!

Lucy

Propaganda

Her rent was DUE!!! 😫😫😫 …and she didn’t pay it. Smokes weed in our shared apartment. Lucy we share a wall please be quieter when you bring people over to fuck smh. She’s a good person and kind of hot but she’s annoying as hell and for that reason I’m submitting her.

[star--nymph]

3, 9, 12, 30, and 39 for Eurydice! (which btw is a lovely name for a lavellan)

!!! Thank you so much for both the asks and for the compliment! I love her name so much, it's just so pretty and melodic.

3. What is something they really like about themselves and what is something you really like about them?

Eurydice likes that she's quiet and strange. That she can think clearly without letting irrational emotions get in the way and come up with her funky ideas. She enjoys being by herself, enjoys daydreaming and silently hanging, and figuring out things on her own. She also quite likes her hair--hence why she combs it so often! I love everything about Eurydice so it's hard to for me to pick. I think what I love the most is that she's unapologetically very autistic herself and despite everything the world tells her, she doesn't want to change. As someone whose neurodivergent (I have ADHD), I've always felt very...wrong, I guess, for who I was. So creating Eurydice has this unabashedly strange and offputting person who can't ever quite get a grip on social interaction or being anything but brash but 100% doing her best is something that is so freeing for me. I admire Eurydice so much which is funny considering she is my OC, but she's kind of this big power fantasy for me? Weird, mean lady who won't change for anyone and is too powerful to stop!!! Of course I try to write her as grounded and realistic as possible and I don't think she's really special but!! She's wonderful! I want to see her freak people out and tell them to shut up all day!!

9. How would they react if a person they love (friends and family included) gave them a flower bouquet unexpectedly?

Oh, she'd love it. Thank them while her ears flutter up and down (a good sign! it means she's so happy). I think she'd tell them about what's special about the flowers and how she can use them. Maybe out one in their hair because she likes sharing. Enchant them so they won't wilt so fast. If it was someone she has a romantic relationship with, her eyes would be tipped read and she'd stick her face in them. Later on, they could catch her staring them at them and playing with the edges of the petals.

12. What is their safe place? And what does “safe place” mean to them?

Oh! I suppose it depends, right? For Eurydice, her safe space is somewhere that she can't get away from people. They're usually unreachable, dark, quiet. In a childhood, her safe space was anywhere in the forest no one could find her--she'd stick herself up in trees, in caves, on ridges of mountains where one wrong step could send you tumble down to a river below. In Haven, her safe space was the shack in the woods owned by Adan's master; it was away from loud voices and while the army trained near there, the clashing swords were far more soothing than many people chatting within haven.

In Skyhold, Eurydice's safe spaces was the stable with all her mounts, which she loves so much, her workshop in the depths of the fortress, her quarters, and Cullen's loft. Sometimes if she's really feel as if she needs to isolate, she'll crawl up in the rifters of one of the broken towers or hide on the roof above the kitchen.

Basically if she can get away from people and not be seen from any angle, she's safe.

30. What is their love language?

Acts of service and gift-giving! Words are hard and she fumbles them often, but making people eat or giving them a weapon? Useful! Practical! Logical! What are words when she could make you live to see another day! Now THAT's love!

The other is quality time. If Eurydice loves you, she will sit silently in a room with you and just exist.

39. If they could go back in time, how would they reassure their child-self about the future?

"There is nothing wrong with you. You are not empty. You are not a thing. Exist as you are. The world is not made to understand you, yes, but it is not your fault. It is loud and confusing; you can not fix that. You are good to be loved. There are some you will find who will do so without question. Stay with them, not with Papae. Do not seek him out. Do not go near fires with him. It is not good. He is not good. You are, though, yes? Yes. Very good."

[spiritshaydra]

Looks like I haven’t posted art here in months and this is my fourth time trying to add a description to this because it keeps getting purged whenever I switch tabs >:( 

Anywho, here’s some Pokémon gijinkas I finished earlier in the week ^^

Additional info stolen from my amino post down below c:

Howdy!

This took me WAY longer than I thought it would. I started this group back in December, and only now just completed it ^^

I’ll be showing them off in the order I finished them along with some info on each character c:

✨Here they are!✨

🏙 Reshiram 🏙

She’s not as complex as the rest of the batch because she started off as just a headshot test and practice for drawing humans ^^’ then everything else kinda just got more complex. Her design is more of a work in progress than the rest.

She’s a living lie detector :)

🎆 Palkia 🎆

[

She took a LONG time to draw and is probably the most complex. Sorta. She’s also probably one of the first gijinkas I’ve designed so her design is pretty solid for now. She’s based off of Roman gladiators and Valkyries. Palkia is also a total jock with a short fuse that constantly gets in fights with her brother, Dialga. She’s kinda a loud idiot but that’s okay. She’s also very rash and tends to act before thinking. Will kick down doors and attempt to put brother in a headlock. Probably chugs sport drinks and punches drywall. Will challenge poor unfortunate souls into doing arm wrestling matches. Has very strong opinions on science fiction. (Stuff with space is superior!) Curses like a sailor and likes to get creative with insults. Cannot organize things at all. Room probably looks like a bomb went off. Has the worst handwriting in her family. Middle child and the shortest out of her siblings. Is uncomfortable around Giratina but feels bad about it.

🌄 Giratina 🌄

Giratina’s another one that I’ve had designed for a while and am pretty happy about it! I tried to give her a more inhuman and unsettling appearance (gaunt features, pale skin, sunken eyes, long limbs, digitigrade legs, four arms, etc) She’s pale from the lack of sunlight and her hair is borderline uncontrollable. It’s in a constant state of poofy rat’s nest.

Believe it or not, she’s probably the friendliest out of her family despite her off putting demeanor. She completely lacks social skills and is still trying to learn how to speak normally after being locked away for eons. She’s best friends with a Shaymin and has gardening as a hobby. She just really wants friends :( She likes stupid paranormal shows and animated movies. Not violent at all unless provoked. Absolutely fascinated by car windows and toasters. She’s the second tallest and the “baby” out of her family. She wishes to have better relations with her siblings and parent but struggles :(

🌺 Shaymin 🌺

Shaymin. Oh boy Shaymin. So with her I was wanting to do something completely different from the usual Lolita and cutesy based gijinkas. So I made her a punk :) Shay acts like she eats nails for breakfast and isn’t afraid to fight god. She’s short but by god, she’s going to go for the kneecaps. She has a nasty temper and is very protective of her strange noodly demon bestie. Taught her how to garden. She’s loud, argumentative, and ‘Tina’s siblings are probably more scared of her than the Terror of The Distortion World. Does not do well in cold weather. She rides a motorbike, and is the one who generally drags ‘Tina around to get her used to the normal world. Big fan of slasher films and loud aggressive music. Loves nature and is generally enthusiastic about funky plants.

Very short. Very aggressive. Wears stud covered platform boots.

🪐 Arceus 🪐

Oh boy. Arceus.

He was VERY hard to design but I think I’m happy with the results. For now. I wanted him to look somewhat regal and nasty, and not exactly human.

He’s a major asshole, prick, and elitist, and is petty to the highest degree. Got offended whenever someone suggests that he should go to an anger management class. Probably a Karen. He’s the type to wear a fluffy bathrobe while drinking box wine on a lawn chair on the porch to look scornfully at the neighbors whenever they get too close. Not a great parent. (Loves his gaggle of goblins in his own strange way) Kinda hates everyone. Rude. VERY VERY short temper. VERY stubborn. He’s short and is going to make it everyone else’s problem. (Refuses to just... change his height himself. ‘Cause he’s some primordial creation entity. He just... doesn’t) He woke up one morning and just chose violence. takes great pride in his creations. Awful taste in music. No sense of style. Cant dance. He’s offputting and unsettling to be around because he has a very “off” feeling about him. Really really likes to get the upper hand on others. There are a f e w times when he actually acts like a decent person. Likes to put an air of regality onto him even though he’s a total train wreck. Wears three to four inch heels.

🌌 Dialga 🌌

DIALGA. I also wanted to do something different with him! So I made him a nerd. He likes to take things apart and put them back together. Especially clocks. He’s more level headed than his sisters and has a longer fuse than Palkia. But he’s also very stubborn. He’s a total workaholic and perfectionist. He doesn’t sleep much and can be a nervous wreck whenever he’s behind on whatever schedule he runs on. He gets into fights with his younger sister a LOT and will often try to use her as a lab rat. They’re sorta like Yzma and Kronk. But he’s less diabolical and Palkia’s more aggressive. Like Palkia, He also has very strong opinions on science fiction (Stuff with time travel is WAY better!) he’s also very organized if not organized chaos. He wears a heavy pair of boots that one could hear from a mile away. Think large goth boots with metal in the soles somewhere. Also a metal head. He will blast loud metal or rock music (sometimes more classic rock. Depends on the mood) as he works on whatever insane project he decided to tinker on. He has a large collection of very cursed socks. Somewhat poor eyesight. Generally easier to get along with than Palkia who’s more abrasive. He tends to think more before acting upon things. Probably runs on entirely coffee and energy drinks. B A D taste in fashion. But not worse than Palkia. Likes to read. Not very good handwriting. Tends to bump his head on doorframes. Will walk into things if lost in thought. The tallest out of his family and the oldest out of his sisters. He’s somewhat afraid of ‘Tina.

Approximate Time Taken: About 27 hours

Program Used: Procreate

[docholligay]

PHARAH TRACER BODY SWAP FREAKY FRIDAY STYLE

I’m going to move on from this since I know some people want SM stuff and I’m already to 2600 words on this but I am having a GREAT time and please let me know if you want me to continue this! 

Lena Oxton was used to having an unusual life. She had been the world’s top fighter pilot, she had seen herself as a child, not knowing it meant, she was a medical miracle who by all theories and standards shouldn’t have been able to be sitting there next to Pharah when it happened. No, she was very used to life being just a little strange, just a little off-key, and mostly, she appreciated that she would never be bored, or boring.

None of which truly prepared her for waking up on a hardwood floor, twenty centimeters taller.

“Bloody…” she rolled over, her head pounding, and looked over to her right.

Her body was lying there, next to her. Her eyes widened, and her heart leapt into her throat, the tight panic of knowing that it had happened again, oh no, it had happened again, and she was out of time, and her whole body began to tremble as she thought of the pain of it–she couldn’t do it again, she’d die, it had nearly killed her the last time–but there was no cold at all. No pain. Just a strange tingling at her shoulder, which was offputting, but not painful. This wasn’t being lost in time at all.  

She was so surprised for a moment, that she forgot to be afraid, and sat up.

“Am I dead?” Her voice echoed off the walls, but it was wrong, it was deep and rich and nice enough, but it wasn’t hers, was it?

Her body began to moan next to her, and pinched its fingers at the bridge of its nose.

Tracer looked at herself. “Uh..you alright…me?”

Her body mumbled something in Arabic.

Tracer looked down at her hands, one metal, a gold ring welded to it, and one so much darker than she’d fallen unconscious with. Her hands, or at least, the ones she was currently processing, flew to her hair, a small low ponytail fixed to the back of her head, a gold bead wrapped around a strand. She looked back to her body, and crawled over next to it.

“Fareeha?”

Her body’s eyes opened, and blinked a few times. “Nothing, I only must have…” Pharah’s bright brown eyes looked into Tracer’s dark ones, “Ahhh!”

Tracer yelled back, and jumped away from Pharah, who was also Tracer, trying to twist her arm behind her and finding that the body she was inhabiting wasn’t quite as flexible as her own, and she fell back to the ground for a moment.

Pharah rolled to the side, and made to grab the knife from her pants, only to discover that there was no cargo pocket at all. She took in the scene for a moment, and sat back on her heels. Her body folded easily in the position Pharah had stretched herself for so many times. It was painless. Easy. She looked down at her chest, at the blue light there. ANd then glowered back at Tracer.

“What did you do?”

“Right,” Tracer said, laughing, “I’s like, God but I’d love to steal Fareeha’s body, and me with all me science knowledge, be nothing but a bit of a lark to do, just going to take me–”

“I did not mean,” Pharah growled, in a voice that was much too high to bring across the frustration she felt, “That you meant to.”

Tracer slowly stood up, a little dizzy from the strangeness of her body. She reached out a hand to the desk, feeling at it with the hand Winston had created. It felt mechanical, in a way she struggled to describe even to herself, like the information was being delivered, and was simply that. She touched the hand back to her chest. She didn’t care for the sensation.

Pharah rose to her feet. “You have to be used to it.”

Tracer walked over to the tiny closet, so much more quickly than she was accustomed, and opened the door, looking at the small mirror inside it. She felt at her face, tracing the tattoo below her eye, the sharp carved edges of her chin and her nose, her commanding jawline.

“I’m you.” She said, the mystery and strangeness in it permeating the space.

“No,” Pharah pulled at the sweater on her body, “you are in my body.”

Tracer whirled around and looked down at Pharah, which Pharah disliked immediately.

“Bloody ‘ell Fareeha, you know exactly what it is I meant, no need to get so specific over it.”

They stood there in silence for a moment, both of them attempting to wrangle with the strangeness of the situation, both of them wondering how this could possibly have happened, and if it had been borne of ill intention, or a mistake, or just one of those things that seemed to befall only those who live storied lives. Neither of them came up with much. The day had begun like any other, right up until a blinding headache and a dash into the darkness.

Tracer sat cross-legged on her desk, pulling her legs into position. “Well,” she said, chin in her hands, “Now what?”

Pharah sat down in her chair, immediately noted the desk was too high for her to comfortably type, and and pressed her lips together in annoyance, eyes closed. There was no protocol for this, no answer she knew. As far as she was aware, there was no precedent for this sort of thing, no case study or treatment Mercy could even consider.

But it would have to be Mercy, because there was no better option.

“We will ask Angela.” Pharah nodded her head, determined.

“Mmmm,” Tracer was looking at her own body more closely now, pulling up her sleeve to look at the muscles there, “Fareeha, do you ever eat a carb? Drink a beer? I’m plenty strong meself and that’s the truth, but it takes a good deal more deprivation than I care for to get this sort of definition, and–”

“Tracer! Pay attention!”

Tracer looked at her, and scowled. “Well,” she slowly dismounted from the desk, “We’ll ask Ang later, as I’m off to actually use these looks. You never bloody ‘ave, and someone ought to–”

Pharah leapt to her feet. “Are you saying you will make me cheat on my wife?”

Tracer giggled. “I’m not you, just in your body, right?”

Fareeha Amari considered herself a patient person, most of the time, and over the years, she had found a particular level of patience with Tracer, who she even, sometimes, could admit to herself, although never anyone else, she quite loved, and found charming in her own way. But Tracer knew how to needle her, and sometimes simply did it as her own sort of stress response, and Pharah was in no mood.

Well, she thought, Tracer is an excellent fighter, and I have always been curious what fighting as her might be like.

With that thought, she exploded toward her own body. But old habits die hard, and she went to throw Tracer into the wall, forgetting that she was much smaller than Tracer now, until Tracer grabbed her by the collar and tossed her back across the room. But Tracer herself was locked in her ways, and as Pharah came back for another round, Tracer tripped over herself–her balance was not nearly as keen or even as it had been–and she was staggered to find that jumping up out of the way was a near impossibility with all the stone she’d gained in the last half hour.

Whatever they had imagined fighting as the other might look like, and well they might manage a body with strengths they could not possibly know, it ended up looking quite a bit more like two toddlers on the playground. Pharah could feel that her body was one firm muscle, but she did not know how to use it, still throwing punches that could not possibly land with the force she wanted, lacking any knowledge in how to use speed and momentum. Tracer was ready for the sheer power of Pharah’s body, but not the slow planning it required to use it, born a creature of impulse and quickness. She was a hummingbird in the body of an eagle, and just as awkward.

Then Pharah tried to blink.

She had seen Tracer do it a hundred times before, even in this casual CA where she wasn’t supposed to be able to at all. It was a small advantage–half a second perhaps, maybe one in an outside chance–but it was still there, and she had used it to best Pharah on a handful of occasions. Perhaps in a wiser moment, Pharah would have recognized that knowing it could be done and knowing how to do something were cousins, but not twins, and so she should ask and practice, and be sure of herself. She was so often careful, and wise in this way. But she was frustrated, and she was angry, and she knew it was a great tactical advantage, and so, she thought about where she wanted to be, and tried to move there.

She fell to the ground immediately, not by any force of Tracer’s, who was still figuring out how to aim with the cannon that was her new body, but with a fierce contraction that went through her whole being, something that reached into her brain and fired, and she gasped with the pain of it. She crumpled to the ground, her stomach turning, heart pounding, barely able to breathe.

She heard her own voice in Tracer’s patter, and hand rubbing her back as the haze cleared. “It’ll pass love, I promise, it’ll pass. Just a moment, is all. Shouldn’t ‘ave tried it, ‘arder than it looks, in this kit, but it’ll pass.”

Pharah looked at her. “Does that happen often?”

“Nah,” Tracer smiled and shook her head, “But I do remember it. Not any fun at all. Deep breath, love, come on then.”

She helped Pharah sit up and lean against the wall. Pharah had often wondered, what it was like living in Tracer’s body, if it caused her pain, and had always thought it would be too rude to ask. Tracer avoided speaking about anything that teetered on the medical, and had expressed multiple times that while they could do what they liked if she was killed, during her lifetime she had no interest in being a scientific subject.

Pharah had not known how to make it clear she was asking as a concerned friend, and so had never asked at all.

But now she had Tracer’s body in hand, and so she felt justified to ask a short question. “Is it like that when it works?”

“Oh no, oh no,” Tracer sat beside her, “bit of nausea, sometimes, but nothing like that, love. That’s only when I don’t manage it,” she laughed, “beside all that, we’ll go to Ang, and she’ll fix us up, and so it won’t be your worry at all.”

The phone on the other end of the room went off, and Tracer reached into Pharah’s pocket and pulled out three candy wrappers and a small, blue, three sectioned box with a cheerful cartoon frog on it. She popped open the middle compartment, and handed a small yellow pill to Pharah.

“Do take this though, and I’ll thank you later when I’m back in me own body.”

She handed Pharah a glass of water, and Pharah did what she was told, the dizziness and pain beginning to subside.

“Sorry, Fareeha.” She sat next to her. “Didn’t mean anything by it. Pushed you a bit far.”

“You were only playing,” she sighed, “I…am anxious, to solve this.”

“Well,” Tracer shoved herself against the wall and stood up, “Let’s go find Ang.”

_________

Mercy was pleased with the quality of her life, since they’d moved to London. There was a temple she liked, not too far from their brand new apartment, and a pastry shop down the road, and she enjoyed sitting out on their tiny little plot of cement and reading a book in the inconsistent sunshine. Maybe they could stay, she thought. Maybe she could stop living her life as a tumbleweed, and find a place to settle, with her Pharah, and be still and happy.

It seemed more and more possible every day. Pharah complained, but she mostly did it in that way where nothing in life was perfection, or as organized as it might be, and she had long since given up the idea of moving back to Cairo, ever since a beach vacation in Spain had resulted in Mercy nearly getting heatstroke. Pharah would never want to be in a place where Mercy was unhappy, because, she had said, in that sweet and tender way Pharah herself never recognized as tenderness, then Pharah would be unhappy. They had kicked around Zurich, but Mercy never missed Switzerland, it was simply a place she had been born, and where her childhood had died. She had liked Boston, she hadn’t cared for Alberta, but London seemed like it could be home, if Mercy was ever allowed such a thing.

She was thinking on all of this, gazing out the window at the clear, humid day, when she heard the door open, and the familiar clunk of Pharah’s boots on the floor. She wasn’t normally home this early, but Mercy’s heart leapt at the thought that maybe she had finished with work, and since Mercy had finished with hers, they could go have lunch together at one of the little restaurants nearby. There was such a cute patio at the little brasserie, and Mercy had been wanting to try it–Pharah usually indulged her with a smile–so the timing seemed nearly perfect.

“Angela,” Pharah’s voice rang out into the kitchen, “I was so much hoping you would be here, I was wondering.”

Mercy’s body tensed. It was all wrong. Everything was wrong. She knew Pharah, knew her like she knew few people on this earth, and this was not her Pharah. Her voice was wrong, her movements were wrong, this imposter knew Pharah so little that her boots were still on, on the floor Pharah had waxed only yesterday. She was trapped here, with something pretending to be Pharah, and her phone was at the other end of the room.

The creature grinned at her, too wide and too bright.

Mercy grabbed for a knife from the block, eyes wide, and faced back at the thing. She would fight. She may lose, but she would fight hard.

“You are not my Fareeha.” She growled, as frighteningly as she could.

“Ang! Ang!” The monster put its hands up. “It’s me! It’s Lena! Fuck’s sake, love, just thought it would be a bit of fun.”

It was Pharah’s voice, but it was Tracer’s, too, and Mercy set the knife down, confused. Tracer came through the door, looked at Mercy with with great concern, and then glared at the strange Tracer-voiced Pharah.

“It was a terrible idea, which I told you it would be.”

Pharah! Mercy sighed relief, just for one moment, before the horror of the moment set in, as she stared across her small kitchen. There was Pharah. Same warm, dark eyes that Mercy always lost herself in, same wide shoulders, same soft mouth. But she was altogether different, too, her eyes darting around, looking this way and that, as if trying to take all of life in by snippets. She hadn’t stopped moving since she came into the room, fiddling with her hair, rocking up on her toes. And Tracer, too, was right, and wrong. A smattering of freckles, chestnut hair, chirp of a voice. But still, and solid, hair combed down and neat.

But this was impossible.

[purplethebunny]

In which I describe the experience of speaking with family members about the engagement and creatively rage against my father’s casual heteronormative bullshit.

 The same evening that I cariño encantador propsed to me, I called the blood family members who should probably know before facebook does – there were a lot of witnesses.

I called my sister first, who was sleepy but congratulatory. She texted me a bit more during the evening to really underline it.  My relationship with my sister is…. complicated.  That said, I expect her to essentially respect whatever boundaries I set about wedding planning or whatever with only minimal interference.  I also expect that she has a greater understanding of the meaning of this in my life.  Like, she’s stuck in her paradigm, her desperate need to be loved and how that affects all of her choices, but she understands enough to at least put a face on it for a minute, to be kind about it.

When she texted me later, she said “aren’t you glad you didn’t kill yourself before you met Ruby?”  She’s damn right too.

I called my mom next, who I also woke up.  I think her husband was a biiiiiit irritated, but I’m sure he’ll survive. Mom said congrats and started chatting with me about her recent tooth problem.  She wanted to make sure I’d called my sister.   This was all a little strange – I really don’t think my mom knows what to say.  I don’t think she views my partner as one who is “suitable” for me, and I really do think it’s partially racism, partially her own never-healthily-fulfilled obsession with big, strong men doing big, strong things. My mother is more easily understood if you assume that she has no concept of the fact that other individuals have vastly different internal lives from her own.

I put off talking to my dad until the next day. My father and I aren’t connected on facebook by my choice. I called him in the afternoon the following day, shortly before I had to leave for another task (intentionally).  I tried to hit his cell phone first, but it was straight to voicemail. I reached him at his store.

My dad initially sounded confused.  He sounded entirely baffled.  I can’t entirely understand why because we haven’t enough of a relationship for me to guess.  It was offputting.  We then had what amounts to yet another awkward conversation where we clearly do not speak the same language.

After the bafflement, he congratulated me and began offering advice.  My father is married to his fifth or sixth wife, and while it seems to have staying power, he’s left a swath of life destruction behind him.  My father exhibits the essential selfishness of capitalism: get the best deal you can out of anyone.  I believe the only kind thing my mother has ever said about him is that he always paid his child support on time.  I wouldn’t even give that (shit’s court ordered yo).

So, when his next statement is “You’ll find real happiness,” I have to swallow my tongue rather than just laugh at him.  “I am happy” I say, trying to communication with the most perfunctory language that I’ve not said yes because I’m bound by some biblical or cultural scripture, trying to communicate that I am happy.  

“Oh no,” he responds, “I mean several years down the line when the honeymoon has worn off.”  It strikes me that we haven’t anything close to the same conceptual understanding of relationships, the importance of them in our live, or neurobiology.  I’m stuck and can’t respond.  What I’d like to explain is that we DID that.  We’ve DONE that.  And that I have genuinely more experience in relationships than he does, in vulnerability and courage, in adoration and foolhardiness.  I have significantly more experience than he does in owning up to my mistakes, in forgiveness and acceptance, in staying through and being stronger for it than he ever has. I want to tell him how cowardly I find him, how disgusting I think his treatment of all the women in his life is, but I’m stuck on my tongue, on how to phrase it without destroying whatever this is. So he keeps talking.

He talks about his wife, how they’ve been together for 18 years and how there are disappointments and battles and things they can’t stand but how they just “get used to it” and are too old to change now.  Like, how do I respond that I could have settled, I could have torn out pieces of me and left them behind like breadcrumbs in a forest of unrelenting dick pics?  How I could have refused any sort of risk, how I’ve done that?  How I already know how to origami myself inside of myself until I am a frog, a bird, a flower, instead of a galaxy? How do I explain that I’m unwilling to settle, that I know it takes courage to be with me and that this is part of what my dear love, shaking and sweating but with his strong voice, offered me when he asked me to be his wife?

I don’t.

I say “Well, I’m glad you have because Judy’s kind of great.”  And she is, for someone I’ve met a dozen times and whom I haven’t had a proper conversation with since I was in my 20s.  She’s fine.

He replies jovially “Yeah, I only really stay with her for the income and cooking.  You know how men are.”  Cue laughter.

I don’t say anything.

Later, when telling my roommate of this (known ‘im since I was 14 and he knows my dad) he laughed and said “Chuck is such a slimeball HERPADERPA BETTER LEARN TO COOK.”  

Later, when I told my partner about this, he responded “HAAA!  He thinks I’m a man.”

Right in that moment I just can’t tell him how incredibly stupid he sounds and, you know, I think we’ve reached the point where the gulf between our experiences and values is too great to bridge without extensive emotional labor. Labor that I do not want to provide because he sees it as his right. Labor I am unwilling to provide because the men in my life deserve better than a crude joke suggesting they have an inability to perform basic functions.

I stay silent and he awkwardly tries to pick the conversation back up.  He asks me to send a picture, which I later realize is because he has no idea who my partner is.

This is the most surreal moment for me.  All of my father’s relationships from my mother onward have had some distinct affect on my life (Judy’s is mostly stability).  I realized that my father has no awareness of who my partner is because he sees my relationships from the lens of teenage romance.  My father is under the impression that “millennial” does not mean “adult under 40”.  My father is entirely unaware that I am an adult closer to mammogram time than I am away from it.  My partner is nearly 40.  Neither does he know my partners name, background, or what is important and beautiful about our relationship.

I send my father the picture, putting us against a rainbow backdrop in my house as the only “fuck you” I can manage.

I feel like a coward, but since I don’t assess this relationship as worth the work or risk it would take to fix it, I don’t think I can do elsewise at this time.  I think this particular relationship is headed for a change.  

[primalspice]

hiiii rattus my love 👪, ☕️, 🍃, 🙉, 🌌 , 🪤, ⚙️, 💧

oou

👪 what is their family like? what is your ocs relationship to them? does your oc have any siblings?

she grew up in a poor family with her parents (factory worker dad and shop manager mom) and an older brother, raymond (i think hes like 4 or 5 years older than her????), who joined the military at 18 as a general infantry dude (just some body). She was v attached to raymond (not necessarily Close) bcz he was a lot more accepting of her Weird Kid-ness than her parents LOL. she certainly was made to feel like she was the Disappointment child (weird and depressive and asocial and not particularly talented or good in school) for the majority of her life until she started gaining relevant positions with the government but it didnt even matter at that point bcz she kinda ditched her family after raymond died and kinda blamed them a little bit. so yea basically theyre dysfunctional LMAOO 

☕️ do they prefer hot or cold drinks? what is their favourite drink?

i think hot drinks. definitely into coffee, maybe tea too, i dont think she’s picky.

🍃 do they enjoy being in nature? what is their favourite outdoor activity?

i don’t think she minds it. big fan of Walking Around and contemplating but she isnt really afforded that luxury very much anymore as a high-profile person. she likes to be wherever people are Not and if that’s gotta be in the radioactive woods somewhere then Fine. i think she likes being by all the lovely rivers and lakes too but she doesn’t swim.

🙉 what is the worse thing your oc could hear from someone?

if she was 15 then probably ‘ur brother is dead’ but nowadays i think she would be/is terribly upset at Haters (even tho she knows she sucks at her job she feels guilty bcz shes maybe barely sorta responsible for some of the death occurring) and just like. perhaps some news that her escape plans have not gone as well as she thinks they have o__o shes very anxious

🌌 what was the inspiration behind your oc? what was the first thing you decided about them?

apparently the first thing i decided:

and in general i think i got the Premise from my original half-baked idea of like. Its Winter. Shit Sucks. We Live In A Society. Technology Is Ruining Us. i always needed a shitty tech savvy oc for that so ig that remains. i wanted a Strange and Offputting Evilbitch bcz im into those (ended up meowmeowifying her). Earliest factor of her current concept ig would be Incompetent President. my biggest insp is the sleep of no dreaming and imagining the type of psycho that would feel at home amongst massive industrial landscapes and desolate winters. 

some oldish art even tho she hasnt changed that much:

🪤 what will always lure them into certain danger? a loved one in danger? a promise of something they are always searching for?

i think her recklessness is the main thing that gets her into trouble but ‘disregard for her own life’ isnt a very good lure LOL. i’d say she’s easily pressured into doing things tho. so anything that promises more peace of mind and less fear than she’d otherwise be dealing with LOL. of course her brother’s death has also kinda led her into her current lifestyle tho so i cannot count that out as a factor. i think she wanted to make a change and find out what happened to him but very quickly found out that it dont work like that. (lest). 

⚙️ what are your ocs thoughts on science & art? which do they give more importance to? how much value do they place on each?

her toxic trait is thinking art is frivolous thats why her city fucking sucks. shes v science-minded but finds that to be Pleasing Enough. certainly finds it to be the more valid form of worldly exploration. thinks it can Never go too far. which is probably about the most Region 0 Patriotic belief she holds LMAO.

💧 random angst headcanon

tried really hard to not be an athiest after her bro died i think thats partially why she was so ok with trying to kill Herself afterwards as well. maybe some home for reuniting. now she just does it bcz she fr wants to die LOL but anyway about that hope for reuniting O__O

[chesleya]

Blade Runner 2049

2049 is not called “Blade Runner 2″ for a reason. It is set in the same world as Blade Runner, somehow little changed in 30 years, but feels very different. I note here three ways it differs:

Plotting: Deckard is given a simple task in Blade Runner. K is given a simple task in 2049. But the way these tasks unfold is very different between the two movies. Blade Runner does not telegraph what Deckard’s next move is in any way. 2049 plainly lays out what K is going to do in order before he does it. Then he does the things he says he is going to do. Blade Runner obscured (to the viewer, but not to Deckard) what in video game parlance would be called the “critical path.” 2049 might as well give the viewer a quest screen with all the steps marked with checkboxes. 

Parable: I had originally called this “narrative style,” but that seems too close to “plotting.” Does Blade Runner directly ask any questions? If you showed the movie to an extremely literal person, they might ask some factual questions about the plot. The questions the movie causes viewers to ask (like “is Deckard a replicant” and what does that mean for our own humanity) are not discussed in the movie itself. 2049 takes on all of its questions head on, driven mostly by Leto’s character Wallace, who fancies himself a god. Tyrell was a man who built robots. Wallace is a lunatic. Blade Runner indicted all of mankind for its maltreatment of replicants. By having (George) Wallace preaching about the need to build great human achievements on the backs of slaves, 2049 takes some of the load off other characters and maybe the audience. 

Visual Style: Blade Runner was a dirty movie. It is a product of the 1980s. 2049 is either a product of no time (which is often how contemporary media feels), or a product of the mid-2010s expensive blockbuster era. All gorgeous cinematography unsullied by such imperfections as film grain, unbalanced color, and strange concessions to the challenges of shooting in the dark. When K is walking through the orange haze of a post-nuclear fallout Las Vegas and the camera hovers behind him about 20 feet off the ground, it feels like you’re floating behind him. Blade Runner never feels like that. 

(A film grain aside. I miss film grain! There’s a flashback towards the end of the movie where Deckard remembers seeing Rachael for the first time, walking towards him in the Tyrell office. It’s gorgeous through the grain, which picks up strange flecks from the super bright sun through the window. When the CGI’d Sean Young appears in the flesh to tempt Deckard into helping Wallace (more Leah in Rogue One than Tarkin in Rogue One), her very being appears slightly fuzzy, no doubt because they could not totally eliminate noise in the underlying footage that formed the basis for the CGI model they superimposed on someone wearing a green suit. I thought it worked, strangely.) 

Dialogue is also easier to follow in 2049 than in Blade Runner. Lots of scenes of two characters standing indoors talking to each other, with nothing obstructing the audience’s full view of each character’s face. Maybe I’m misremembering Blade Runner, but this feels like a difference. One example, Edward James Olmos now talks like Adama instead of like his character from Blade Runner. I didn’t get that. 

2049 is “Her” if instead of being an original screenplay, it was adapted from a Franz Kafka novel. The ending of Her is optimistic. This version of Her is deeply pessimistic. I like this one more. (The Kafka comparisons are laid out and analyzed by Walter Chaw, surprise surprise. I’m not smart enough to add anything to that). 

Chaw also says that the use of the themes of Her is less fresh in 2049 than in Her. But I think this movie takes the cake for the most disturbing scene depicting a romantic relationship with an AI. That would be K’s sex scene with the replicant pretending to be his holographic whatever-you-want-to-see-and-hear girlfriend. I enjoyed the times Wallace-employee Love refers to K as both a Wallace product and a Wallace customer. Love says to K “I see you’re a customer as well.” (Does she mean Love is herself also a customer, or is she saying “as well as a product”?) When Love kills K’s holographic girlfriend, she says “I do hope you were satisfied with our product,” while looking at the hologram, not K. What does it mean for a constructed man to be in love with a constructed computer program? What does it mean for the computer program? K’s relationship with the hologram is disgusting from beat one, when he comes home to her cooking him a holographic Americana dinner while wearing a classic 1950s housewife outfit. K’s relationship with the hologram stands directly opposite Deckard’s relationship with Rachael. We know what K, Rachael, and the hologram are all manufactured people. Deckard remains ambiguous. But who can love whom? Why is it so obvious to the viewers (and, eventually, to K) that the hologram’s love for him is gross, fake, and forced? But when K tells Deckard that Tyrell set up his meeting Rachael in that moment, so that he would fall for her, and that they could have a child together, why do we reject that hypothesis, or at least set it in the back of our minds and think only of the “real” love between Deckard and Rachael? Does it even matter if Deckard is a human or a replicant? What matters, I think, is Rachael’s interiority. Was she like K’s hologram, “programmed” to tell Deckard everything he wants to hear so that Deckard would eventually impregnate her? 

If it’s not obvious, I think that love is the most interesting theme of 2049. Humanity was the most interesting theme of Blade Runner. There’s another difference. 

(Another side note: that horrifying sex scene is a great example of the kind of storytelling that modern special effects make possible. That scene couldn’t have been done to look convincing anything more than 3 years ago. That the hologram is always very slightly see through is a cool effect too. The sex scene is very Lynch. One person becoming another, two people being the same person. Hmm.)

Miscellany

I liked Leto. Here’s something that Katharine Trendacosta wrote in her great review for io9 about Leto:

Leto’s Niander Wallace isn’t, thankfully, in this movie much. First of all, an unintended consequence of his “method” is that it’s now impossible to see him in a film and not think of him as Jared Leto. He doesn’t disappear into roles anymore. If you told me that in the future, Leto becomes a blind tech billionaire who speaks in circular riddles, I’d believe you. It’s just him now. Second, he’s also so over the top that, in a movie where everyone else is giving much lower-key performances, he’s impossible to take seriously.

I agree that all you can see in the role in Leto, but I don’t mind this. I had no trouble taking him seriously, which I chalk up entirely to the production design of the places where he speaks and of the props that he uses. All of the Wallace interiors are incredible, as are these floating robots that help him see. Wallace’s weird windowless floating office is such a great contrast to Tyrell’s insanely bright dining room/office in Blade Runner. Deckard first meets Rachael in both of these rooms. But the second one is a poor copy of the first. Something something commentary about sequels? 

Gosling is great. Ford is better in this than he was in Force Awakens, giving me some confidence about the new Indiana Jones. Deckard is a different person 30 years later. Han Solo was still Han Solo, even though both he and Deckard lost children. Robin Wright and Dave Bautista are also great. Sylvia Hoeks is better than either of them (but Bautista would have been better in a larger role). Ana de Armas was good in her creepy, creepy role. 

Why does K only experience anti-replicant discrimination in one scene and never again?

The baseline tests that K undergoes are instant classic sci-fi scenes. They are shot perfectly, cutting back-and-forth between K and the camera. They are offputting for reasons that are hard to identify. As this movie's version of the Voight-Kampff tests from Blade Runner, they succeed.

I didn’t think the movie was over-long, but I do think there’s a very interesting sub-2h cut of this movie to be made. What would this movie be like without any of the scenes of K thinking he is the child? I also think it would be better without the couple of times there are flashbacks to help the audience make connections. I didn’t need to see K remembering Bautista’s character saying that it is good to die honorably before K dies, honorably.