#and even if they did come loose they're not like structural and i could just redo them and it's for a kid so they probably wont care so

[factual-fantasy]

27 asks! Thank you!! :}} 🔮

Oooo very cool! I hope you have fun with it!! :DDD And as for how I make a story it kind'a depends-

For Grimace, Sylvester and the rest of the gang.. well that was just my Violet team. I gave them personalities that I thought would suit them and just.. went from there I guess? <:D

For Conkeldurr, Zuora, Emboar and the 4 piglets.. well, it started with just thinking about Conkeldurr and how much I like that Pokémon. I pictured him as a Gentle giant and imagined how fun it would be to draw him with some other tiny Pokémon that he adopted. I went through the Unovan pokédex and picked a Zuora because she was small and fluffy <XD

After making a post about them I wanted to give Conkeldurr a friend. Well I like the Emboar line so hey why not do that? She can be a mama Emboar to switch it up and she can have 4 kids. Why not? Since I didn't draw her in that first post, I made the story they they went their separate ways for a time but now they're back together.

I honestly don't have solid concrete advice I can offer- I just think "hey this would be neat" and slap it on there. Or I think "hey this scenario would be fun to draw" and so I structure the events and story to make the characters run into this scenario in a reasonable way. That's really all I do.. <:D

@beryl-shade

I've seen Markiplier play it :0 Its.. well its something! <:D

(Referencing this post)

<XD I never understood why they made him Spanish, the sudden guitar noise is always a jumps care XDDD

@shiny-is-miney

Humans do not exist in any of my Octonauts AUs, nor have they ever <:/

@catain-skyler1987

I do not <:/ sorry!

@nwo-metalscottic

Daww,, thank you 🥹🥹🥹its been rough these past.. how ever many months- my health is still poor and I still am glued to my bed/the couch 24/7.. but I'm hoping to finally see some improvement soon.. and I hope you feel better too! <:))

Any who, I'm glad to hear your views on Conkeldurr! :D Some people can be kind'a harsh :x As for the Tepigs, I can see them sticking around even after evolving into Pignites. They love their mama and would have no desire to leave her.. 🥺

As for what threatens them.. when they were apart, I kind'a image any meat eating Pokémon that thinks they could take them in a fight would be a threat. Or perhaps territorial Pokémon or protective parents that would see a big Pokémon coming near and just attack on instinct.

Now that the two of them are together, they have a lot less trouble with random Pokémon. They're a much bigger challenge to take on as a team. Plus I can see Zuora walking with them disguised as a second Emboar or Conkeldurr. Creating a group that looks like three macho parents that will fiercely protect their piglets.

As for the Minecraft movie, here's the thing about the Piglins. In the actual game they turn into Zombie Piglins the moment they leave the Nether. Why are they still normal Piglins despite running through a village??

And a Netflix show... uhg.. I'm just not interested. I feel like Minecraft looses all its charm when you convert it into a show or movie. And especially if you mess up Steve as badly as they did. Jack Black.. that's the worst casting I can think of.🤦

This is so cool! It feels like it could be canon to the Pokémon universe! :DD

Also thank you so much!! :)))

I have! :0 I watched 8-bitryan play some of it! :) ALSO THANK YOU!! :DDD

@cicutagreninja

WOW!! :00 THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :DDD I plan to return to it someday!! :)))

@astaherussy (Referencing this post)

I think I put that on almost out of habit <XD when I picture old abandoned houses I imagine notes stuck to the door warning of debts and bills that need to be paid lest the owners get evicted. So I drew that because it felt fitting!

..Only just now did I realize that the old owners were supposed to be a mystery.. if there was any at all. So having that note on the door doesn't really make sense.. 😅

ALSO WAAHG THANK YOU!! :DDD

I've seen the FNAF movie and I've seen multiple Youtubers play all the FNAF games. Though I haven't played through any of them myself. :00

As for what I thought of them.. I have a place in my heart for all the games. From the lore jumbling ruin DLC, to the classic first game, I'm a total sucker and I love them all.💞💞

The movie wasn't as bad as I feared it would be. I adored the inclusion of MatPat and the intended inclusion of Markiplier. There were some aspects I didn't like and a lot of missed opportunities in my opinion. And of course the lore is all outa whack..

None the less, I think the movie is charming. And my love for FNAF has only strengthened upon the movies release :))

@i-only-created-this-to-read

Since Metagross isn't in Black/White (Its in Black/White 2) I wont be looking into that species for a bit.. and I wont be looking at Mega evolutions-

As for a Quantum slime equivalent, I have no intentions to make equivalents for all the slimes- I didn't add trubbish to be an equivalent to pinks. I just noted that Trubbish are a common slime that can eat anything, just like pinks are :0

The slimes and foods I add will be their own thing. Not intending to replicate or replace any of the canon slimes or fruits/veggies/meats from slime rancher. If that makes sense-

@petrichormeraki

I don't really have any proper name ideas for them 😅 I've just been calling them the shiny one, the normal one, the runt and the big one. XDD

Also thank you!! :DDD

Oooo that's really interesting actually! :000 That would have been a much more tame version of my Zuoras story <XDDD

@pigeonsplural

SLAKJDJ THANK YOUUU!! :)))0

*plotting noises......

(Referencing this post)

This ask will be very relevant soon.. 😈 Also thank you! :)))

@roughsketch2010

WAHGG THANK YIU SOMUCH!! :DDD

@kermit-ydafrog

Daww 🥹 Thank you! MY question is why are you so kind?? :DDD

I've heard of it and seen a lot of fanart, but i never got into it myself😅

Thank you for remembering my boundaries and respecting them! <:) And yeah that paints a pretty vivid picture in my head XDDD

@holly-opal

He would have been a better voice for Bowser then Jack Black in my opinion..

@fandomcenteral

WAAHHG THANK YOU SO MUCH!! :DDD And its still a surprise to me that I'm considered a celebrity :00 I hope people aren't intimidated to send me asks because of that.. <:D

@muncho1234 (eye post in question)

Peso, Dashi, Tunip and Ranger Marsh have no eye bags because they have decent sleeping schedules and diets. :0 The rest of the characters either have poor sleeping schedules, deal with a lot of stress, or are very hard workers and burn up all their energy throughout the day.. :(

Oh boy 💀

@minnesotamedic186 (Eye studies post) (Kwazii and Calico Jack hug post) (Ranger Marsh jump scare post)

WAAHGG THANK YOU!!! :DD I ALWATS LOVE IT WHEN PEOPLE NOTICE THE DETAILS I PUT IN!! :))))

@caronaro-flipaclip

<XD While I agree with this, I cant help but get red in the face when people like/reblog my old artwork.😅😅 And there's nothing wrong with that! It just shows how far I've come! :)

[icaruskeyartist]

Fuck artist statements let's have some time loop and dangerous Moon @pillowspace

(coming back to this two days later and I'm still using this to avoid editing my artist statement rip)

Uh let's see, there's death again. This time it's not so explicitly written out but it's also suicide-ish so.

You've learned the hard way that Moon is dangerous.

It's hard to explain, the disconnect you had before. Maybe it's because the first time you rarely saw him, the generators in the daycare keeping him away and you, the obedient, oblivious worker, keeping to your schedule until the very end.

You had thought that first time maybe you'd died from the smoke. You'd been rather dumb, in hindsight, racing towards the fire when you realized the pizzaplex was on fire, looking for the attendant. They're an animatronic, so they theoretically would be fine right? Maybe the fabric of their costume would burn, but how hot would a fire have to be to melt steel?

Sometimes, when you struggle to sleep, you find yourself wondering about the other loops. Did you leave these timelines and move onto a new one, like a snake shedding its skin? Were there other yous left lying on a cold metal table in a cold tiled room for your family to identify? Did it hurt to die and your mind was just preventing you from remembering?

They're not thoughts you like very much, as you would start to ache like your body was remembering the ways you died. Warm metal fingers curling around your throat.

You sleep with the hall light on now, when those thoughts come up.

Currently though, you stand at the edge of a pool of light left by a lone pendant swinging overhead. You can see the red LED dots of Moon's eyes as he crouches just out of sight, watching you, and your throat starts to hurt.

"Can't we talk?" you plead, but other than the soft jingle of bells, there's no reply. You continue anyway, willing yourself to see through the darkness. "You weren't like this when we met Moon." That first time, times, before something in him snaps. "What happens to you? What changes?"

"Quiet now." Moon's hand grabs at the tightly knitted texture of your sweater, pulling the thick wool loose as you jerk back in shock. Your eyes dart to the red dots in the distance. Oh, oh, oh no, you'd been watching some sort of motion sensor or whatever, not Moon.

Your throat hurts from an unvoiced scream. You grab at your sleeve, feeling the ruined wool. Moon lingers at the edge of the light, constantly moving, squatting so he's almost shorter than you, swaying. It's silly, how he moves, and it almost makes you smile.

"I don't want to be quiet Moon. I want to help you." You wish you could read the animatronics better, but Moon had even less expressiveness than his daytime counterpart, and when he was like this, you weren't sure there really was anything to read at all. "I'm starting to think maybe that's why I'm still here."

"Still here because you're a rulebreaker and need to go to sleep." You heard once that Moon used to play the villain at the theater. As he hisses out words that by any reasonable measure should not be hissable, you can see why. Worse though, is him returning into the darkness, quite literally rolling away in a backflip. You can't see him, and you ignore those red dots because that's not Moon dammit.

"I definitely need a nap," you agree, scanning the room, trying to make out where Moon's bells are. "But I don't think you'll actually put me to sleep." Pause. "Moon? The kids in those posters. A couple of them were at the daycare. What... what did you do to them?"

"They were naughty and had to be punished."

There's a creaking overhead and you look up in time to see the pendant swing widely before you jump out of the way, the metal and glass structure crashing to the ground as the light went out with a pop. You don't quite make the tuck and roll like you'd hoped, and you sit up slowly, nursing your ankle as you try to stand and immediately drop down again. A sprain, probably. But there was no way you could run right now.

You pat your pockets down instead, fumbling for your phone, a lighter, some source of light, but a hand grabs the back of your shirt and you're hoisted in the air, unable to wiggle free from both the speed and the clumps of hair trapped in Moon's grip. If you move your head, it feels like you're being scalped. You kick out in vain, dropping your phone to grab at Moon's arm. "Moon! Let go!"

"No." He shakes you, and that hurts as hair is ripped out and your head flops uselessly back and forth. You grab at his arm again as he begins to move, almost dancing through the air. You'd been nearish the atrium before, but now he's taking you deeper inside. "She says you need to be punished."

"She?" You stop struggling. This is new. "Who is she?" But Moon doesn't answer. His grip tightens against your back and you find yourself staring up at him.

Moon is harder to read than Sun, and definitely harder to read than the other, more expressive glamrocks. But even in the dark, you could swear that right now he's... sad? Resigned?

Maybe he didn't want to do this either. You look down. The fall is a good thirty, maybe forty feet. Okay. "I know you don't want to do this Moon," you say softly, and he doesn't look at you. "That's okay. I'll figure this out next time."

"Wha--"

You wiggle free of your sweater to fall, staring up at Moon as he stares down at you, immobilized in shock. That's the last thing you see before your back hits a bannister, and there's fireworks in your mind and then blackness.

.

.

.

The quiet screech of your phone's alarm wakes you from sleep. You're curled up like some sort of hibernating bear, twisted in the blankets piled on your bed. One hand finds your phone and silences it. You know where you're at and when. Your back and foot throb when you try to remember why. You remember talking to Moon.

There's a she involved now. Who is she? Maybe she was the key to solving the loops.

You don't remember falling, just not wanting to put Moon through anymore pain. Maybe this would be the loop to end it, to break all of you free. You sure hope so.

But for now, you're going to spend a few more minutes curled up and safe, just until you're ready to face the day.

[ice-cap-k]

Please go on, I'd love to hear your thoughts about Dominion Shadow 🙏

Fair warning before I get into it, I like my science, biology, physics, etc. and I'm about to loosely apply those two subjects to minecraft, of all things. If you're not a fan of applying any of that sort of stuff to silly block men, consider this fair warning to click off now. I'm about to ramble. Seriously. Turn back now while you still can.

Still here?

Alright.

Law of Conservation of Mass says matter cannot be created or destroyed. Same's true with energy. When something withers like a plant, it's usually because as the cells making up the body die out, they lose moisture and the cellular structure collapses in on itself as the remaining mass is converted into decomposed tissue.

Wither skeletons are already decomposed and exist in the nether where moisture is near non-existent. It would make sense that their desiccated skin would sap moisture from the player at an extreme degree since water moves to the place of least concentration. In a pure vacuum, such as space, moisture leaves at an even faster rate because there are no other atoms in the atmosphere that would bombard the skin and slow that process down. Technically a body out in space could mummify considerably faster than it ever could in the desert on Earth.

Now, I'll admit I jumped on the Dominion train after it had ended, but Shadow his origin is a wither, and he kind of has an association with those void creatures once the blood moon appears. And void is associated with space in minecraft. Loosely. Obviously you can still breath in the End and whatnot, but with the star backdrop and the moonrock texture of the endstone, the parallels are intentional.

Wither as a sapping force, drawing moisture and life essence. Shadow's still alive. Still has a body, unlike a skeleton, so unlike a skeleton with bones that would grow denser as it saps the lifeblood right out of you, so too would Shadow's wither effect, but his is caused by an artificial vacuum created around his person like an aura as his body sucks up the atmosphere and gaseous water around it. And when a person gets close enough, say, close enough to touch, they hit that pocket of vacuum and suddenly they're caught and affected by it like that body in space.

BAM! Instant wither effect.

But like I said, Shadow's still alive. So what he's getting from that person is both their energy, and the mass he's absorbing that's carrying said energy. And as I mentioned in the last post, I picture Shadow as a big-ish guy, if not tall.

That's where gravity can come into play.

Because when something has more mass, it's gravitational force is greater.

People lose moisture, muscle mass, bone density, it's gotta go somewhere, right?

Yeah. Shadow gets it. And he becomes bigger. More moisture running through his veins as sickly black sludge, more muscle mass on his still living body, denser bones capable of handling intense shear and compressive stress, less likely to fracture and break under extreme duress.

It's led me to some really cool headcanons like, if Shadow withers too many people, absorbs too much, he gets bigger. Not, like, tall, but more mass to the point where it might hurt to walk. But also, it makes it easier for things to be drawn to him and his sphere of influence/vacuum larger around him as more air particles within the vicinity are trapped within the draw. And also, it would make it THAT much easier to wither anyone who comes close.

And like I said, I came to the party late, but I did hear that there was rumor of him playing into the Wither Storm concept. So I'd imagine, like a black hole, he could have simply kept growing and growing as his sphere of influence spread, things getting caught in his vacuum's event horizon, people getting hurt just walking by him, until he ultimately became an unstoppable force that was no longer capable of decaying back to the point of stability.

[busyxfangirling]

The second season is honestly becoming increasingly harder to watch because what are they trying to do?

The show is titled Loki but he feels like a side character is his own show, I know many MANY things are happening but literally Loki is not the central figure driving the story.

My expectations were low but I did not know Disney could do this much worse!!!!

What the FUCK was episode 3 with the Miss Minutes thing and weird little Ravonna/Victor attempt???

Marvel is just getting worse and worse with what they're putting out, I want the character or even narrative driven stories back where people were well fleshed out, had consistency and their actions made sense to who there were!!! This feels like just trying to sell shock value because you know you have a base of consumers who will stay to see what happens to their favourite character.

They are absolutely ignoring all the material they have available to them to work with! This Loki has only experienced things till the Avengers movie, there is so much character deep dive they could do! What is the point of giving them their own show and then not talking about them at all??

I'll come to the queer things later cause boy do I have a list for that, but first of all, Loki is not a new character in any capacity??? He has been loved and is arguably the biggest fan favourite since his introduction, the amount of theories about him and what people would like to see is very well known!! Right in front of them is his still unclear feelings in his adoption, about being a Jotun, loosing his family and the complicated relationships with them. I can see they are acknowledging his God of Mischief status a little bit but!! Trickster!! Let us see him be a wild card properly!! Not in the sense of betraying his new TVA family - that's what it is and you can fight me on that- but being chaotic!! Yes, using his magic like with Brad!! SHOW ME HE IS A GOD!!!

The worst thing is how lost everyone feels, like I'm not talking about the whole free will conundrum everyone is going through, that is spectacular! Unfortunately it is not coming across, we literally don't get to hear any of the characters talk about what they think of it. There was the key lime pie moment but no follow up to what that is for Loki? It's just one crisis after another, maybe rehash some of what has already happened, bring back the seriousness of this!! The entire multiverse is at stake but we'll make it look like whimsical wishy-washy stuff??!??!!!

Don't get me wrong, I am LOVING the time travel aspect of it, where it looks like Loki/Mobius are on cute dates. But then make it real, the fucking queerbaiting is ridiculous. The throw-away comment in season one about looking being bi was just that and nothing else. And I'm not saying this cause aww they look cute together! But also cause the development of their relationship has been as such!! They have been very dependent on each other and that's not being addressed at all.

I know there are multiple posts about a possible betrayal and my fear is that they're going to try to use that to basically change everything about the characters again, a lot of OOC based on the fact that oh yeah they're going through an existential crises so it makes sense.

Sylkie made barely any sense to me even apart from the whole selfcest issue- they just imposed a the structure of what a straight relationship should be where there was barely any chemistry. S1 E3 had them as really good chaotic siblings/twins and then adding the romantic tones to that really ruined it. Trying to bring it back, possibly, is just weird cause so far they want very different things. These people just don't align together, stop forcing them to? The fact that they refuse to even talk about that kiss shows that they are keeping it open and not just acknowledging that "hey, we don't want the same things in life and I'm happy for you, you matter a lot to me but a romantic relationship is not happening. Also cause you know, we're the same person, lol."

Sylvie as a character is also very confusing rn, there is honestly no need for her to keep coming back in this way??? I'm going to reserve further opinions because half the season is left but I dont expect anything to really get better.

[ot3]

Ok, now after all that Phoenix dad asks, i can't help but share my own unnecessary opinion. I feel like the rapport between Beanix and Trucy is too good for him to be a shitty parent, but the game strongly implies he has alcohol problem. Like no matter how I squint at the source material Beanix is alcoholic. And it's really hard to imagine him being a great dad if he' s spending their meager funds on "grape juice". ( Although with his life at this period I would really wish that at least he did the parenting gig right)

oh man i have been getting a lot of asks on this subject over the past coupe days and mostly avoided answering them because i just sort of more or less said my piece on the matter and didn't want to keep dragging out the same points but this take. is a really insidious one imo. and i feel like you've unwittingly touched on The Elephant In The Room regarding this entire discussion.

I don't think you really meant any harm by this and i hesitate to ascribe any real-world politics to people based on how they interact with fiction, but it's really difficult to see people talk about addiction in fiction this way and imagine they would have more sympathy for real addicts.

Someone being an addict does not de facto make them a bad parent. Someone being poor does not de facto make them a bad parent. I would also argue that someone being too poor to fully provide for their children doesn't de facto make them a bad parent either, because poverty - especially child poverty - is a structural problem and not an individual one.

But I digress, that's not really relevant, because there's absolutely nothing in ace attorney 4 that suggests that the wright's financial problems are caused by phoenix's drinking! Nor is there anything that suggests his drinking has caused him to in any way mistreat Trucy. Anything we see that could be loosely interpreted as neglectful parenting, such as bringing Trucy to poker games or leaving for long stretches to work on the jurist system, can be linked to their financial situation. And you're immediately correlating between the financial stuff and the addiction. Not illogically, but what you have to remember is that alcoholism is often a symptom of poverty, rather than the other way around.

Addiction is obviously very bad even if its not at the point where it's causing your entire life to fall apart! But phoenix is clearly functional and competent during the events of aa4, so i think to act like struggling with addiction is in and of itself enough to negate all of the good parenting he does is just suuuper shitty.

There's really a lot of bizarre distaste for anything resembling Addiction and Poverty amongst ace attorney fans, I've seen really nasty sentiment from people wrt aa4 that, once you cut through what they're actually saying, boils down to 'implying phoenix could ever be an alcoholic made him a fundamentally less good/less likeable character' and man. i just think that really sucks.

especially considering the fact that shu takumi has been pretty open about the fact that 1. he writes phoenix with a lot of Himself in there and 2. he's had, to say the least, a somewhat involved relationship with alcohol. He talks about drinking through work extensively in a pretty cavalier way. I don't expect everyone to know these details but i think anyone who has ever laughed about how shu takumi wrote most of JFA drunk needs to stop and wonder why they think making phoenix an alcoholic crosses some sort of moral line. Along those lines, I also feel similarly uncomfortable when people try to insist non stop that 'its just grape juice, there's no way it was supposed to be implying anything, it's just a joke.' it just feels super disrespectful to try and ignore the narrative implications here coming from a creator who has struggled with alcohol because you think it somehow taints the wholesomeness of a character he based off of himself.

i would urge you and everyone else who has had similar thoughts to please just sort of take a moment and re-asses the opinions you have on this subject and see if you're not just voicing some pretty harmful kneejerk responses to seeing alcoholism depicted or alluded to in ways you're not really used to. Because this just is not the take in any way, shape, or form.

[valoisfulcanellideux]

Points of interest from today's Pix stream

See behind the cut for some points of interest transcribed from Pix's Empires stream today (fWhip joins in, in chat, too). Included:

endings for the season and fan expectations

fanworks and headcanons, how Pix wanted to structure his S2 to enable fans to run with their own ideas, and how his S1 ending the way it did also enabled that

what Pix would like to do if there's an Empires S3 [speculative only; not concrete plans]

Behind the cut with you!

This led out of a conversation wherein Pix discussed having seen many fans' opinions of S2 ending 'suddenly'/'too soon' and 'unsatisfactorily' and not to their liking, and how the endings could have been better/loose ends tied up more, etc etc (we've probably all seen those opinions and posts repeatedly by now, so I'm not going to belabour them anymore).

First off, Pix very briefly mentions his season end plans:

fWhip (in chat): A lot of people seem to have taken my video as the end.. not realizing everyone will upload their own finale. I didn't do any real lore this season so having a full lore based ending felt wrong

Pix: I've got an ending planned, but it's going to be very much like my ending. And, again, I'm somebody who doesn't have any story to my stuff, really. Like… I became a ghost. Nothing's really happening with that. It's just a fact of my existence now.

fWhip (in chat): I finished building gobland to where I was happy with it, so that was a natural end for me as a creator

Pix: Yeah, like, "Guess what? I'm done building. Series over!" [pause, then mutters] I wish I was done building [laughs]

[discussion continues for a while around fan expectations]

fWhip (in chat): also I think some fans don't realize not all of our audiences love the heavy lore, and if our videos don't get views we can't really keep making videos lol

Pix: Yeah, that's the thing. There's always going to be the most activity around stuff that people really feel like they can get behind as a community. But the communities tend to isolate themselves with other people who enjoy the same stuff they do, right? So, like, folks on Tumblr or Reddit, for example, might get really behind certain creators' approach to lore.

[short discussion about browsing the Empires subreddit and seeing so many posts about Jimmy being a toy, including polls worded in such a way that they're biased from the outset. also how - when fans latch on to certain ideas like that - it can be stifling to a creator, as in 'once you've exhausted that thing but people still want it from you, where do you go from there?']

This next part was what I really loved about this stream discussion: Pix's views on fanworks:

Viewer: Tumblr will come up with lore even if there isn't any tbh

Pix: And that's what I wanted to do with this season. I really wanted to just create whatever I wanted to create, and have it be something that people could speculate about all they wanted to, and any answer would be the right answer. That's one of the things I liked about… [pause] Even though I felt bad having left Empires Season One when I did, and everyone else was very kind in pointing out, like, "You said you were going to leave then anyway, so it's not you kind of left us in the lurch, or whatever"… [pause]

One of the things about the ending of Season One not really being there was that people come up with their own theories about what happens to the Copper King after all of that. And I'm, like, "All of those are correct!" [laughs]. Whatever you think happened, happened. Because that's the fun of using your imagination for stuff like this, right? That's sort of the approach I want to encourage people taking when we do projects like this, is your interpretation is just as valid as ours. And if you want to imagine that stuff, don't always expect us to act on it.

Finally, someone in chat asks what Pix would like to do if Empires S3 takes place. [NOTE: This should not be taken as gospel and what Pix plans to do. He appeared to just be spitballing and chatting casually here, so this isn't a concrete plan, nor is it confirmation that there will be a season 3. I'm just adding this as another point of interest from the stream.]

Viewer: I know you said that you're not sure about Empires season 3 but what would you do if it did happen?

Pix: That's the thing: I really don't know, and that's part of the reason we're not doing a season 3 immediately, if at all. I don't know what ideas would work, I don't know what ideas would be compatible with other people's ideas. Like, I would love to do something that feels a bit more modern, because I don't challenge myself often enough to build in a modern style. I would love to do something that felt a little bit more cyberpunk, in… like a System Shock kind of way. But I don't know for certain if that would be at all compatible with anything else, because Empires in general skews a bit more, like, D&D fantasy, which tends to be more medieval fantasy; European medieval, specifically. And, y'know, there's a few exceptions to that, but I think a lot of the time - because Minecraft itself feels like more of a fantasy world… y'know, there's cobblestone and wood everywhere, and bookshelves, and enchantment setups, and brewing and that kind of thing. It all feels a lot more medieval fantasy than anything else. I just think it's kind of difficult to sell the idea of there being, like, a cyberpunk kind of modern setup in the middle of all these other people who are still playing, like, straight-up D&D. It feels anachronistic, and not in a good way.

[brief discussion about how 'modern empires' could also mean business empires, but that would then mean creators having to build whole cities, which are a pretty hefty undertaking]

[koraesrambles]

Thoughts on the conclusion of Gotham War

Alright, so I've made it absolutely no secret that I've been enjoying the crap out of Gotham War. Is it structurally sound with good pacing and clear stakes? HELL no. It's not an air tight story, there are so many holes in all of the characters logic, but it is also an extremely good time.

I don't mind loose storylines in comics like this. Mostly because the premise "full grown man dresses up as a bat and cannot stop himself from mass adopting every orphan that looks like him" is already so ridiculous that anything they posit as a solution in their "war on crime" I think, "Yeah, I can see that." None of the rules of this world make sense.

But I don't really read most things for their air tight plot. Slight detour (There's a point, I swear!), but some perfect examples of this are Puss in Boots and the Last Wish and The Super Mario Bro movie. The last wish is PHENOMENAL. A literal work of art. I've seen it so many times and just basked in it's beauty. Love everything about it, absolutely stellar. But do you know what movie made me look up fan content, read fics, and forced me to buy the digital copy of the movie before the DVD came out? Yep. Mario Bros.

Why? Because I like stories about brothers who love each other and the mario movie gave me exactly that. It's not an air tight, phenomonal story with gorgeous real world applications, but it gave me a fun time where two characters worried about each other incessantly and honestly? that is what I'm here for.

So back to Gotham War. If I'm not actually looking for a ground breaking story (which honestly, I know those happen in these big super hero comic books but I feel like they're usually the *exception* rather than the rule) and just want good character interactions, then Gotham War delivered phenomenally. Especially since my favorite character was the one constantly being wrung through the wringer.

It was a great time. I enjoyed reading it, the art is better than anything I could ever produce even when the characters made weird faces. It was great. But did they stick the ending?

Eh, endings are hard. I would love to see more consequences for Bruce. Him just going off at the end and getting away with the horrible things he did to Jason is annoying. I almost wanted Jason to actually die at the end there, just so that Bruce would feel stupid and sad. If Bruce never acknowledges what he did to Jason (which . . . he probably won't, given the track record) then I'll be pretty disappointed. That's some juicy angst right there that should absolutely be addressed.

And I appreciated that literally every character that interacted with Bruce that knew about what he'd done yelled at him for it. Even Dick's seeming about-face at the end with "I'm sure you had your reasons" came after two weeks of getting used to the idea AND him trying to actually get Bruce to make good choices for once. I mean, Bruce doesn't, but A for effort, Dick. Thanks for punching him in the face last time, that was cathartic.

I surprisingly really like the fact that it wasn't Zur who did this to Jason. It was Bruce. Horrible, wacked-out, messed up Bruce Wayne who is so desperate to control everything around him and so terrified of losing the people he loves that he constantly overrides them like they're his freaking pets. Bruce is in a BAD place, and I sure hope that there will be tons of fics exploring that even if canon never acknowledges it.

But that's how I deal with comic universes like this. Everyone jokes that "Canon? what canon!" and we all laugh but honestly . . .yeah. Like, seriously. Canon is whatever works for the writer's plot in the moment. They make stuff up and contradict themselves all the time. They're constantly retconning stuff. It doesn't take away from any of the stories I like, I can still read them. And at this point, legitimately, I approach every single comic I come up on as though it's an AU. There is no canon timeline for me, because it's too messy. DC is literally just an AO3 platform that's allowed to make money.

Because the people who originally created these characters are long gone. These guys (gender neutral) writing and drawing the comics now are just fans like we all are. It's all fake. None of it is real. So let's all just have a good time.

I was talking to some friends about this and they pointed out, "It's difficult because people feel like when they're constantly screwing around with things like that why should they even care about the characters?" And they were absolutely right, that's extremely frustrating to deal with. I put a lot of emotional investment into characters, but every writer is going to approach the characters differently and with a universe like DC has, you just have to roll with it. There are no stakes. We all complain about it, but nothing is done to change it because we love these characters and we'll keep coming back for more, and so they keep having to make more content and that means messing with stuff they already have. It's a never ending cycle. These are living legends, mythology that's being written out in real time. Nothing about them are ever going to be cohesive.

Wow this is getting long, sorry about that. Things I loved about the Gotham War conclusion: Jason almost sacrificing himself and being a hero even though he was terrified. A+ content. Gorgeous, you go my boy! Tim telling everyone how to beat up all the rouges (Good job sweetheart, way to be a morally ambiguous little shit like you always are). Even if he claimed to be the second best robin at the end, those are fighting words my man. I also liked Jason's "Go 'save' another one of your sons." jab. That was great. I liked that everyone told Bruce he was wrong, even if it could have been stronger. The rest of the issue was plot stuff that I didn't really care too much about. I really like Bat/Cat, so I didn't mind those scenes too much even though Bruce is still the worst (affectionate AND derogatory).

I didn't really expect anything spectacular from the conclusion, and it really did end kind of like what I expected (nothing's changed except now Jason gets to deal with the Joker when he's sick with Super Anxiety -- which I actually am really excited for). But it wasn't as much fun as some of the previous issues.

That said, I would not mind owning an omnibus of all the gotham war issues, if just to re-read all of my favorite scenes. There were some truly unhinged crap in there, and that's just my cup of tea.

Story telling quality? eh, 6/10

enjoyment had? 9/10

[nerdylittleguy]

just my rambling about the new alignment chart and poster, mostly in relation to Breakdown, but there's more in my head then Breakdown's arms spinning in circles. trust me im sane!!

i am going to add a 'keep reading' to keep the rest of you unsuspecting mortals saner than me! /lh

okay! so here are some notes i made throughout the day, edited to sound more coherent and structured because i was loosing my marbles today! (these are about the alignment chart btw!)

tarantulas... evil? i'd say true neutral or something because he just wants to be alone, not cause anyone any trouble. leave my guy alone he just wants to do science!!

skullcruncher... chaotic evil? has he even had a voiced line??

grimlock - well, we haven't seen him, either. maybe this hints at his personality? i haven't seen many grimlocks yet (bits and pieces of cyberverse, RiD2015 and G1) but he's always seemed more chaotic than lawful, or just in the middle. eh, what do i know?

the most lawful good character i can think of in earthspark is Optimus, or if you asked me to think fast and name an LG character, optimus would come before bumblebee, that's for sure. i've seen lots of people say - and honestly this sounds very likely - that optimus is being isolated from other transformers by GHOST, so they can manipulate him. perhaps that would/ will shift him away from LG?

before we get onto my main event - Breakdown, of course, anyone surprised? - i'd like to quickly say i'd love one of these for the humans!! it'd be cool i think. calling that agent Croft would be lawful evil, or even neutral/ true evil.

okay, fasten your seatbelts, you're in for a ride! maybe. a ride of my rambles!!

it seems that this chart, for better or worse, had defined the good-evil scale as an autobot-decepticon scale. fair enough, that could be the basic idea.out of the three neutral characters, we have one we've seen nothing of (however, grim still has his autobot badge, so he's not with GHOST. maybe he's more of a rouge from the autobots, not decepticons?), we have megatron (who switched sides onto the side of 'good' - autobots and later GHOST, but that's falling apart pretty fast ain't it?) and breakdown (whose heart seems in racing more than fighting).

based on that, the alignment chart could be:

good - autobot/ main characters who are obviously good

neutral - rouges, side-switchers and unenthusiastic fighters

evil - decepticons lmao.

alright, alright, but what about BD??

here's my line of reasoning: if he's dead, why has he been on both the new things released? there's a lot of characters missing from the poster - hashtag, nightshade (who's on the chart), jawbreaker and tarantulas (who, despite being put as NE, did the Maltos more good than breakdown.) etc etc. so, why put a dead man on these two new releases?

if whoever was making this alignment chart was just 'ticking boxes', so to speak, and needed a CN character, why breakdown? okay, so who else could be classed as chaotic neutral?

if our scale here truly is autobot - rouges/ side-switchers/ whatever breakdown's loyalty is - decepticon, who could be neutral?

it's kinda a short list, but here it is:

sky warp and nova storm no longer work for the decepticons. it even sounded like they considered joining the autobots, but (curiously sounding in episode 9/10) didn't for fear of ghost. technically, they're former decepticons who would take a better chance if it was presented to them. on the scale, that might be considered neutral. and they certainly have an air of chaos

laserbeak and frenzy, mostly for those same reasons. yes, they do currently (? well, last we saw, anyway) work for mandroid, but they're former decepticons and they're very chaotic. additionally, from a realistic point of view, they're more likely to be alive than breakdown. we didn't see their limbs hanging around, they're small, and laserbeak and fly. they'd get out of that brawl no trouble! therefore, if breakdown is dead, laserbeak and frenzy could have been placed in CN.

here's the conclusion i wrote down: Breakdown is alive! why would he be in the poster, and on the chart, if he's dead? what the heck would be the point of that?? especially becuase he's so popular...

oh? what's this? i haven't mentioned arms yet? well, i'd hate to disappoint. here goes!

in both the new images, one of his arms (the left one, which was seen hanging in mandroid's lair) is out of sight. unfortunately, my digging has lead me to the conclusion that the image from the chart is not new, it's from the moment when breakdown leaps, transforms, and attacks GHOST agents.

note the red lights underneath his torso, and behind the letters. apologies for the awful episode screenshot!

the angle and zoom on the chart made this hell to pinpoint, and i still don't feel perfectly confident, especially due to his head's angle - something just feels off about the images, but maybe if i'd pinpointed it better it'd make more sense. and obviously the above images are not perfectly pinpointed, but it was hard to find a frame where it wasn't all blurry! maybe someone can get a cleaner image?

the image from the poster, though, it's bugging me. he's literally a few pixels on it, but...

that other arm is bailing me out here! as far as i saw during ep 14, i didn't see him raise his arm like that, but that could be just me. also, here's a shot from later in episode 14:

it has paint scratches on, and because the poster-breakdown is a few pixels, i can't really see if there's scratches there, but there might be a little bit of discolouration in similar places. so, either the poster is like... an unused image, or the paint is there (painting... knockout?) or (so??) it is a new image. whoohoo! he'd... be alive, then??!!

and would it really be one of my rambles without a little diagram?

no i cant do proportions. next question--

anyway, i'm sure i've missed something, or made a massive leap, but it's been chewing away at my mind all day, so enjoy! feel free to point out stuff that i have missed/ assumed. thanks for reading :)

@transformers-earthspark, you seem to enjoy my madness. /lh here's more overanalysing!

(funfact: i have been rambling about this to my family. my dad joked about a wanted/ missing poster...)

the search continues i guess!

[depressedhatakekakashi]

Had a thought about head canons for Dragon Gai. Specifically about his long life and him slowly aging throughout the centuries.

I imagine Gai aging so slowly as a dragon, that for a LONG time he doesn't notice. Especially with his depression when he first transformed. But also a lot of things that indicate human aging are no longer attatched to him. He has maybe a black maine that doesn't change colour (imagine if he gets someone to cut that from a crazy maine to a bowl cut every year or five, and him just being kinda super attattched to that hair style and the humans who cut his hair also being excited to do so. Maybe it's a great honor in the kingdom (imagine what they could turn that dragon hair into! XD!!!)), he has no wrinkles, or loose skin. And I imagine him sitting with Kakashi on a cliff one day, watching the last of his friends get buried and asking "is this why gods never get close to us... because it hurts so much to watch us die?" And Kakashi just putting a hand on his scaly arm and maybe giving him a hug. (Because he needs one!)

So anyways for a few hundred years after that conversation, Gai stops believing he can age at all. He's actively flying to other lands. He's learning how other people live and bringing that knowledge back to Tonika so the village can learn and advance at a faster rate than any other nation that exists. He's learns new philospophies and takes the time to learn new languages, and has gotten a penchant for talking to people in riddles just to mess with them and see how they react. It's quite funny to him. Sometimes he finds people, or groups of people in horrible situations, and just decides to bring them back home to Tonika. Bringing more ethnicities into the village and more diverse thinking, but also a more clever society. (The firest time he came back with like 20 people on his back and says he's coming back with 500 more, I'm sure Tonika was surprised. But everyone learned to deal with it because... well. No one is going to question or backtalk the mother hugging dragon keeping them safe!).

And then one day, 700 hundred years later, Gai finds himself... tired. That it's harder to move out of his cave. Kakashi may acually have to help him up sonetimes or to massage his muscles. Maybe even get Tsunade over and perform some acturpuncture. And neither know what was wrong he just felt...stiff.

Another hundred years go by. Gai feels slower to answer questions. It's getting harder and harder to fly and when he does, he needs time to recover. One day someone is cutting his maine and they come across a white hairs and Gai finally knows what's happening to him... he's aging... which means he'll be dying and it's a mix of fear and excitement. He's in absolute wonder until he looks at some of his art of Kakashi he feels... regret... and fears leaving his friend alone again. Especially now that he knows he did so before and the results were devestating... He has to come up with some precautions before he passes. He's pretty sure he still has time to do so, he's just not sure how long that is.

So he gets busy. He finishes art projects in his cave that will hopefully last forever. He finds a family that has been noble, loyal and kind to Tonika for hundreds of years, and he introduces the title of "king" and "queen" to the people and suggests this family, which gets a near 100% agree rate and starts watching people make a castle for a stronghold near the middle of the city, to protect them when he can not. He's learned a LOT about architecture over the centuries, so he borrows designs/ offers advice to the makers, so by the time they're done there will be a structure that can watch over and protect the entire kingdom long after he's gone. He may have even donated some of his scales, so there are rooms in that castle that are basically unbreakable! Im case of the worst case scenario (a fact that may have been forgotten to time or is just refered to in legend.)

Then slowly but surely... he starts to find it harder and harder to move out of his cave. He loses the ability to fly because it hurts his back and joints to much. He's colapsing under his own weight as he slowly gets to old and frail to move himself. Maybe he could retreat to the rivers and ocean if he wanted to make his life a little easier... but he chooses to stay in the mountains. Close to his home...to Kakashi. Where he first met him a previous life time ago. Next to the man he adores and who visits him regularly still...who now learns he's dying now that Gai has prepared everything.

And he's sorry to leave Kakashi. He didn't want to hurt him again like he apparently did the first life. He suggests Kakashi can go if its too hard to see him like this. He just doesn't want him to get hurt and drown the world again. Even if that means Gai dying all alone and being eventually forgotten...

But Kakashi shuts that down. And confesses one of the reasons it was so hard on him the first time Gai died... was because he wasn't there to say goodbye...He truly didn't see it coming... and he would NEVER let that happen again. He won't ever let Gai die alone again, no matter how much it hurts him.

And Gai falls a little more in love with Kakashi all over again...but can't find it in him to tell him. He never can get over that final layer of unworthiness and self loathing in his mind... he just gets a promise for a proper burial from his best friend. His remains will not be fought over or ripped apart like some greedy seagulls swooping down on him... he will die properly, his remaind scattered and disposed properly and what ashes remains will be buried or scattered properly, never to be found again...he will have a proper finding resting place, just like a human that he always was... just as he deserved.

It takes somewhere between a week to a month for Gai to finally die, and Kakashinever leaves his side. He gets him water and food and helps keeps him as comfortable as he can... when it's finally time, Gai hopes that next time he sees Kakashi, he gets to see him as the man he always was...

(And then a bunch of gods attack but that's not Gai's fault.)

Ok probably the only things i would change is

Not Gai introducing the idea of a monarchy to protect the village, but the villagers realizing they’re about to lose a very powerful force that protects them and deciding they need to do something to protect themselves because Gai had been attacked and people have tried to go to Tonika as other civilizations grew and began travelling, but Gai always protected them. They won’t have him anymore so they need to protect themselves

Kakashi knows gai is dying. He realizes it before anyone because he recognizes those signs, but he also doesn’t know how long that process will take so he chooses to ignore it in favor of making memories (filling the hole in his heart kinda idea)

Gai’s ashes maybe being molded into something like a weapon by tenten, and gifted to the new ruler (nonbinary ruler) as a symbol of their status. They take an oath to protect the village just as The Hero Gai did and to keep it prosperous and strong. The ashes have no magical power so even though some try to steal the weapon thinking it is magic because of gai, it really is just a really cool sword (that maybe gets lost for hundreds of years until two mortal kids go exploring in the forest beside the village and find it in a tree that no one can remember being there.

But i really love the idea of Gai getting one lifetime to learn what a painful existence immortality can be, and then in a much later lifetime deciding to accept the offer of immortality with the full knowledge that it will HURT sometimes

[chronurgy]

For Dragon Age: The Veilguard HYPE Q&A - 1, 6, and 13!

What was the first dragon age game you played?

Inquisition was the first game I played, but it wasn't the first game I finished! I got about halfway through inquisition before a friend of mine found out I was playing it and went "oh shit you gotta play the first two games first, here you can borrow them from me!" So I stopped halfway through inquisition and played origins then da2 and then finally came back, started a new playthrough, and finished inquisition. So technically inquisition, but also sort of origins?

Do you have your Rook(s) planned out to any degree? If so, would you share some details or ideas you have?

I'm trying not to plan out too too much before we get more confirmed details about the factions and the backgrounds so I don't end up getting too invested in something that the game won't support, but I've got some loose ideas -

I'm thinking a human Laetan mage involved with the shadow dragons, with two possible back stories. Either they're a first generation Laetan (the first mage in their family) and are struggling to make their way through this new world they've been thrust into and carry all their family's hopes or they're from an old and well established Laetan family, related to a former archon even, and are looking to disrupt the imperium's power structure for their own gain since they're tired of being a second class citizen compared to Altus mages. I think it could be interesting for them to have some common ground with Neve or possibly even know her! I've also kicked around the idea of a mournwatch mage but I just don't know enough about what our background for that faction will look like to commit (but that could change as we learn more). Same with the wardens.

What's one thing you've seen confirmed so far that you're a fan of?

Minrathous looks fucking incredible. Genuinely fantastic. I saw that piece of concept art of a massive neon lit Minrathous with floating buildings that they put out like eighty million years ago and just instantly fell in love. I was so afraid that they wouldn't commit to the bit but they did!!! I really love the massive contrast it creates between Ferelden and Tevinter and how it changes the way we see the last three games! They all really were set in some provincial backwater! It's fucking crazy! And also I just love terrible horrible cities and the blood they're built on so much so this is genuinely like a dream come true to me. If the whole game had been set in Minrathous I think I would've died of joy on the spot lol

[frogmanfae]

Newsies as shit that happened at band camp part 4 (its a hefty one today y'all)

Crutchie: *shows Finch a video*

Finch: I don't get it..?

Crutchie: WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU DON'T GET IT??? It's a weiner dog doing a flip!!

Albert: Did you just spit on me?

Race: No my nail broke and I accidentally threw it at you (/srs)

Davey: I painted my nails and watched Euphoria

Race: Of course you did

Davey: I got through the entirety of season 1

Race: You should be ashamed of yourself

Davey: Why?? It's about lesbians!

Race: exactly! I don't like gay people

Buttons: Preach!! Kill the gays!

Finch: How long have you been straight?

Albert, who had his heart broken by a guy three months ago and has been saying it turned him straight but he keeps "relapsing" into queerness every time he sees a pretty boy: ...Two minutes

Crutchie: Come on heterosexual you can do it

Katherine: *sobbing/laughing* I can't do it!! This is a man's job!! (/j)

Finch: What are you doing?

Race: He's pumpin

Albert: I bought this water balloon pump for $10 and it's already halfway empty because I just keep pumping them with air until they explode

Davey: Fabio (Les, who previously had hair longer than Sarah's) cut his hair

Jack: WHAT??? NOOO!!!

Romeo: Jamaica they're trapped down in

Romeo: Jamaica they can't even

Romeo: Japarty

Elmer: What are you doing??

Romeo: That's my favorite episode of Total Drama

Spot: He looks like Topher

Race: He looks like Geoff

Romeo: I know he's a registered felon crazy man but I'd still smash

Jack: *randomly* happy happy birthday from Applebee's to you we wish it was our birthday so we could party too, hey-

Race: Trumpets are just anorexic bugles

Albert: Literally what??

Jack: The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania

Davey: My mom told me she wants me to have kids with you

Katherine: SHE SAID WHAT

Davey: yeah so she knows I'm gay but she still wants me to have biological children and she said you would be a, quote, "perfect choice"

Katherine: why?? Should I be flattered??

Davey: no idea, she just kinda said it

Spot: Ahhh I already have drum shit on me and it's only 8:30

Spot: My hips are so fuckin bruised

Davey: Does your harness need adjusted? It shouldn't be sitting on your hips-

Spot: My body is structured different than yours, genius

Race: It's not a four year difference it's a three year difference

Albert: Oh wow so much better

Sarah: One time I took it and it said I was a child of Apollo and the other two times I was a Hunter of Artemis. So basically the Percy Jackson official godly parent quiz called me an official faggot like four times

Spot: I don't know his real name but I call him critter because he's annoying as fuck

Jack: Clap! If you care!

The band: *silence*

Denton: If you're losing your trombone it's not here

Albert: *sobbing* I'm losing MY MIND!!!

Jack: I have backne and I can feel the sweat dripping down

Crutchie: That is incredibly too much detail for me

Denton: If you're going to make a mistake, make the 76 Trombone mistake

Medda: Don't breathe! DON'T BREATHE!!!

Elmer: You can't go naked!!

Albert: It's fine I have a wife beater-

Race: You have a WHAT

Albert: Have you not been up at the field this week? Your shoes are still white

Finch: These ones are new

Albert: Oh so you're a cheater

Finch: You gotta even out the redness

Race: My gluteus maximus is wet!!!

Specs: I lost sense of smell in my right eye

Denton: Woah Betty...!

Crutchie: I get to leave early to go to therapy

Finch: Which kind?

Crutchie: Physical. The worst kind.

Davey, Jack, Finch, and Spot: *an entire conversation made up entirety of various incorrect pronunciations of Duquesne (doo-kane)*

Albert: *google searching where gay marriage is legal* GRAND THEFT AUTO THE BALLAD OF GAY TONY???

Race: Oh my god Davey's mom! *joking lustfully*

Denton: Who is that? Jack?

Jack: Me!

Denton: Okay do you have some screws loose or...?

Medda: On his instrument or like in general?

Denton: We have one shared pencil in this band where is it??

Blink: I'm that guy

Tommy Boy: Hey guess what

Blink: Yeah?

Tommy Boy: Shut the fuck up.

Denton: Out in trumpet land- or I guess brass land

Romeo: Nuh uh we know who your favorite is now. There's no saving yourself.

Denton: Okay so it's Tuesday-

Albert and Race: IT'S CHEWSDAY

Jack: CHEWSDAY

Crutchie: *snorts* is it really chewsday?

Sarah: It's chewsday innit?

Denton: ... I don't get it is this something I should know or-?

Jack: No we're just making fun of British people

Denton: Oh! Okay that's... Fine, I guess? Anyway-

Medda: Okay I wanna hear everyone who plays at 17 so that's... Bari sax, trumpet trombone and tuba

Specs: Wait but we play at 17

Medda: Yes flutes play but I don't want to hear you

Albert: *flipping his drum stick* One *flip* two *flip* three *flip* four! *flip* five!! *flip*

Spot: *hits the stick away*

Denton: You start to sound like a saggy diaper. Nobody wants to be the saggy diaper of the band

Jack: Oh my god does that say Scope??

Crutchie: Scope???

Buttons: ... Who's Scope?

Jack: They graduated last year

Davey: Gone, but not forgotten

Davey, about Jojo: That kid wears a propeller hat in my brain

Denton: Okay lets go marching cadence

Davey: ugh...

Denton: Old fashioned roll off

Davey: Ugh...

Denton: Into the fight song

Davey: UGHH

Davey: *sitting on top of the drum cabinet*

Jack: Wha- how- why??

Davey: Do you see any other seats?

Jack: *gestures to a ledge on the floor*

Davey: No

Jack: *points at a chair 2 feet away*

Davey: Dude, I'm gay

Jack: Just because you're day doesn't mean your not-

Davey: Day? I'm day?

Jack: Wow I can't believe you would make fun of my speech impediment, I thought you were gay. Turns out you're not even slay.

Race: I did better this time! We got together around the same time as my last relationship, end of February and I didn't do anything until June- July! I should get a medal!

Buttons: *randomly approaches Elmer* do you want some week old Cheetos?

Elmer: no- actually I have to think about that... No...

Spot: *squeaking his drum harness* me and your mom last ni-

Jack: I need him to come back and just squirt directly into my mouth

Davey: *blinks aggressively*

Elmer: What did he say?

Davey: What?

Elmer: You just got like transported into another dimension

Davey: Oh my contacts shifted out of place

Elmer: Oh and you saw the future?

Davey: my legs hurt. We don't move for this one do you think I can lay down and play?

Denton: okay musicians just relax for this run, you can sit and play while the fronts figure things out

Davey: ooh I'm gonna lay down and play!

Spot: you're an idiot

Davey: shut up help me lay down!

Spot: *helps Davey lay down with his drums on looking at him like he's stupid the whole time*

Davey: oh yeah. This is it.

[bi-hop]

HEY. your essay on alien shapeshifters is FANTASTIC and reminded me of a question i've had for a bit. it's about human shapeshifters who aren't Black most of the time, but do shapeshift into being Black. or really any shapeshifter who shapeshifts into a minority that they weren't born as. a lot of debates about "transracial" people like oli london are founded on the belief that race is innate, or at least that the current concept of race is unchanging. i'm white and jewish and i really don't know enough about the structure of race to know how being a shapeshifter would change being "transracial", but it's a question i would be delighted if you could explore, or at least narrow down for me so i could find sources that aren't you.

Hi! Thanks for reading my essay!

My mind definitely went to the concept of 'transracial' when I was writing; while it's predominantly used nowadays to describe people like Rachel Dolezal and Oli London, it's also been used previously to describe adoptees who are raised by people of different racial and ethnic backgrounds than themselves. As what I linked says, how the term is used nowadays has been pretty controversial among this community. In connection to comics though, there are an oddly high number of transracial adoptees who are also aliens. The Clark and Lex graphic novel coming out in early July casts the Kents as a Black couple raising a white child, Naomi McDuffie's adopted parents are white (one being also an alien), and even Augustus Freeman in the absolute loosest sense of the word could be read as a character loosely based on this phenomenon.

But back to the question at hand, which is more focused on human shapeshifters. Honestly, part of why I focused so heavily on alien shapeshifters is because the nature of a human shapeshifter and how that relates to race is a hard thing to tackle. I'm not particularly sure if I could even find the amount of panels I did for Icon and Martian Manhunter if I went looking for 'DC or Marvel human shapeshifter who changes race regularly'. And I think that's because, in today's day and age, we'd conceptualize a white shapeshifter changing to look Black for extended periods of time more as Blackface (or equivalent terms) than the sort of identification I described in what I wrote.

This article about race not being genetic is long, but I think it helps to answer the primary concern that we see race as this constant, permanent thing. It absolutely isn't. But how we define it in specific cultures at certain points in time offers more concrete snapshots while also illuminating fringe cases, such as the one linked in the essay of Ernest Cole and Trevor Noah, who details how he was classified as Coloured despite it being illegal for him to have a white father during apartheid in his autobiography Born a Crime. I haven't read the full thing, full disclaimer, just parts assigned for a college class I was in last month, but his discussion of identity on paper versus identity in the mind stood out a lot to me.

And I suppose that's where I'm at? There are papers out there defending 'transracialism' (not sure if that caught on as a term) and drawing parallels between it and being transgender, and I've never quite enjoyed acting like they're one and the same as a Black trans person, but people wanting to present themselves as other races and genuinely identifying with these racial or ethnic categories isn't exactly new. So that's identity in the mind. But I don't know, it's not like some of the examples I'm giving are utilizing this identity in benign ways. Dolezal's pretty famous for leading a branch of the NAACP, claiming people fraudulently as family members to verify her identity, falsely filing hate crime reports, and also positioning herself as a Black professor of Africana studies, which is pretty unethical to say the least. Like, I can't really control how people identify or present themselves, but I can still be critical of their intentions and if they're actively harming the communities they want to be a part of. In a fictional sense, I would also be examining it that way.

But either way, I don't think there's a big list of writers who I think could handle the idea of a human shapeshifter changing their body to match an incongruent mental racial identity with effective nuance. Hell, I don't think I'd be able to write it too well either, mainly because of my own discomfort (that I happily admit to). I think probably the best example might be Kamala Khan's early comics having her shift to look like Carol Danvers, and how that reflected the sort of insecurity and internalized self-loathing a lot of Black and brown people feel about themselves. But it wouldn't be read the same if a white Inhuman shapeshifter decided to take on Kamala's visage permanently bc they felt Pakistani.

I don't know if any of this is helpful, but I hope the sources give a good jumping off point for discussions surrounding this, and again, thanks for taking the time to read everything!

[jedi-valjean]

I get why people think Glass Onion was cheap and dishonest. The truth is, it is gimmicky, structurally. It's often said that a good mystery is one the audience can figure out alongside the detective— or even ahead of them, if they're clever. The audience should have just as much information as the detective does. Not all mystery stories do this, but it's generally considered a rule that the best ones do.

Glass Onion infodumps its twists all at once. Although the story itself is an excellent one, it may feel cheap because of its structure. Prior to the extended flashback, we have no way to predict any of the revelations contained therein. It's an out-of-left-field development that recontextualizes everything. Twists like this aren't inherently bad— the revelation that Darth Vader is Luke's father comes out of nowhere because it literally wasn't part of the story until the film where it happened. I'm not going to go into why that twist works— that's another post entirely. I'm going to go into why the twist in Glass Onion doesn't work.

We have no reason to suspect Andi is her twin sister Helen in disguise. For one thing, we don't know anything about Andi's family, let alone that she has an identical twin. Even if it were revealed that she had a sister, it would not occur to most people that this sister is her identical twin. The reason this feels cheap is because Benoit Blanc, the detective and our POV character, is aware of this information while we are not.

The film even goes out of its way to make the audience assume Blanc does not know Andi/Helen by having them "introduce" themselves to each other immediately after stepping off the boat. We learn later that this is for the benefit of the other characters, who are in the dark and might find it suspicious that Blanc and Andi already know each other, but this is not clear to the audience at first because the others have already walked offscreen. We have no reason to speculate that this interaction is anything more than two strangers exchanging names. This is something I like to call a Sixth Sense misdirect— a scene that, upon rewatch, clearly exists for the sole purpose of misdirecting the audience while having, at best, a loose justification for existing in the context of the rest of the story. In that film, Bruce Willis' character meets his wife for dinner, where they have an emotionally strained conversation at the table that suggests marital conflict. When we learn that Willis' character has been a ghost this whole time and his wife cannot hear or see him, this scene becomes questionable. We are left to assume that for some reason, she went to a restaurant alone and pretended to talk to her dead husband because she missed him. That she did this out loud, in public, is highly unusual behavior. While one could believe that the wife might do this, there is little reason to accept that assumption other than to avoid compromising the integrity of the scene.

There's an easy fix for this. Simply introduce the possibility of Andi having a twin sister in advance. Maybe insert a flashback or begin the movie with a scene of Andi and Helen conversing. They could be chatting casually, arguing, reconciling, doesn't matter. What matters is that we see Helen's face. This way, when Andi shows up, the audience could reasonably suspect that "Andi" might actually be Helen, if if they won't at first because no suspicion is raised. Alternatively, a more subtle option would be to have a framed portrait in Andi's house, or a photo on Helen's phone, showing the twins together. There could be a brief shot of Helen looking wistfully at the picture, so we get a good idea of what each twin looks like. We see Helen in the beginning with her hair covered up to hide the twist that she's changed it; in this new version, the audience might not know at first which twin is the one looking at the photograph. This would prime the audience to believe that whichever twin appears next was most likely the one looking at the photograph. We see "Andi" receive a box, so we'll likely assume at first that the twin is Andi. A successful misdirect while giving the audience a necessary clue to uncover the twist.

That is, if the twin-in-disguise reveal is even necessary at all. I realize the movie loses quite a bit of substance without the twin reveal (which is why many people have a problem with it.) Here's the issue. Remember what I said about the audience having the same amount of information as the detective? Well, it's more important to have the same amount of info as the POV character. In Knives Out, Marta Cabrera is the POV character, and (we think) that we know the whole story already, and we're rooting for Blanc not to get to the bottom of it because Marta will get in trouble. We aren't solving the mystery alongside the detective because the film is fundamentally not a whodunnit. The surprise isn't who the culprit is, but that the culprit is actually someone other than the person who we've been told the culprit is. Importantly, Marta herself thinks she's responsible, so she and the audience are on the same page. Meanwhile, our new female heroine, Helen Brand, is not a POV character until the extended flashback, while Blanc is. Yet we are not on the same page as either of them until that moment.

To analogize, this is a curtain revelation rather than a sheet revelation. When you cover something with a sheet, you can guess at its shape. You can surmise that the elephant-shaped object under the sheet is probably an elephant, although the shape is vague enough that it could be a birdcage the size of an elephant, so when it's revealed to be a birdcage, the reveal will make sense even if it wasn't what we were expecting. Meanwhile, if the elephant-sized birdcage is hidden behind a curtain, we have nothing to go on. The expectation of a birdcage instead of an elephant isn't subverted because we weren't expecting an elephant or a birdcage. A curtain is flat and reveals nothing about the object it conceals, so we are forced to take the narrator's word as to what is behind it. That is, if we're even led to believe there is anything behind it. Many stages use curtains as backgrounds; we have no reason to believe there is anything being hidden from us except actors and special effects crew moving backstage, which are not part of the story experience.

In many Sherlock Holmes stories, Sherlock knows more than the audience, despite not being a POV character. But Watson, our POV character, has all the clues to solve the mystery; it's just that Holmes puts the pieces together first. The principle of giving your audience all the tools to figure out the mystery means that, depending on the cleverness of your audience, the reader can either be on Watson's level or Holmes'. But in Glass Onion, the audience is not on the level of Holmes or Watson— if Helen can be considered a Watson. The revelation that Andi is dead and that "Andi" is actually her twin in disguise is something the audience doesn't know, but that both our POV characters have known for the entire story. This is why the twist feels dishonest.

I feel like I've rambled on for a bit too long so I'm cutting it off here but basically, Glass Onion's twist is cheap, which is a real shame to me. The reveal that Miles Bron is the bad guy is incredibly obvious, and that's the point. Layers of seeming complexity that point to an obvious solution. But the twin twist is not obvious. We are not misdirected from it the way we are from Miles' guilt because the fact that Andi is actually her twin sister is not even brought to the stage until the flashback. The twin-in-disguise element is an opaque layer in the glass onion that is the film's mystery, and that's why it's unsatisfying. I still love the movie though

[sothischickshe]

Writing ask games are so fun!!

Dialogue or description? Why is the other one so hard?

I was JUST talking to a friend about this! Do you have a preference for narrative versus summary styles? Is either more challenging than the other?

Thank youuuu 🥰🥰🥰🙇🏼‍♀️ & 🤝I agree they are fun (+ maybe capable of shaking something loose 😅)

Although coming in hot with the hard question/s I see! 😅😄

Okay: dialogue vs description... I'm not sure I have a preference?! I like writing both, and I think both are challenging, especially to do well/succinctly.

And... ~it depends!! I find writing dialogue pretty fun generally, but if I'm writing Beth & rio speaking to each other my face gets grumpy & lots of stuff ends up crossed through bc I tend to violently dislike it when they speak (🤯🤯🤯) & also they're so taciturn, nonsensical, insane etc.

And description! I mean what even is that! Of settings, of ppl, of outfits, of how ppl are speaking (eg volume, pitch, facial expressions & movements etc)...? It's a huge topic to lump together as a preference no, and not to be that guy (just kidding! I love to be that guy!) there's no reason dialogue couldn't be descriptive eg 'what did the man look like?' '18ft tall with 7 feet and bright purple scales'.

So first of all: kinda false dichotomy maybe? But most of all: deffo false dichotomy, in that I think the really hard bit is knitting them together! Just back and forth dialogue btwn (espec only 2 characters, particularly of different genders so you can rely on pronouns as identification) isn't so hard, and neither is finding ways to describe whatever needs describing: and even if the latter doesn't come super naturally, I think if you can identify what needs more detail to bring it to life, that's a workable challenge. The heavvvvy difficulty is tying them together dynamically, & unforcedly!

~conversations (I'd say beyond only dialogue, bc there could be unspoken communication via say eye contact, body language, movement etc) can be a great way to pepper in descriptive texture (eg of the environment, the objects characters are interacting with, the characters & their physical responses) but it's a fine balancing act!

Typically when I'm reading a conversation, I want to know what the other person says next in response!! I don't always want a lot of superfluous detail abt where their fingers are dallying!! That can take the reader out of the rhythm of the dialogue! If there's a paragraph of motion and detailed description btwn each spoken line and/or relevant gesture, I might simply forget what the heck they're responding to by the time we get there!!

So I think ^structure & rhythm/pace (as well as what pov it's filtered through) become v important. If it's a "dialogue" scene btwn oh let's say 2 v taciturn annoying insane etc chars where actually only about 3 lines of speech are exchanged, having a lot of additional descriptive texture can help. If the responses are being eked out, then a lot of glaring & gesturing & looking away at other stuff indeed makes sense to be happening & makes sense that it would be noticed by the pov character. Whereas if it's a rapid fire screaming match, too much detail & motion can slow the scene down, be distracting for the reader & easily seem unrealistic for the pov character (eg why are they staring at the actions of each individual finger when it was established a moment ago they were glaring into another character's eyes? How are they taking in & enumerating micromovements when they're established to be apoplectic with rage & incapable of focus?).

I'm trying to type up a ragged paper first draft atm, and what I've been struck by for the dialogue + description sections is:

too many dialogue tags! In order to convey who is (still, sometimes) speaking + shove in some relevant description, there can end up being too much he says she says where it doesn't need to be specified, which can get clunky & repetitive, and inevitably slows scenes down

Too much/fussy visual detail -- description can be fun, but ultimately writing can never convey visuals the way TV/film/comics can. It's easy to fall into the trap of trying to make the reader 'see' the story, but again I think this runs the risk of slowing things down too much and also if everything is described in detail, it makes it difficult for the reader to pick up on what's important (but conversely, if only the important things are described, it can make it too obvious what's plot-critical)

Beth and rio are... There I guess? And... Wearing clothes maybe? And rhea is there!! Let me describe to you her entire outfit, including each pocket in vivid detail 😂 (the author might like one character more than the others and maybe she should just leave it like that cos she's right!!!!)

Sentences aren't that load-bearing!! You can't realllly just throw 24 commas into one and pray it makes sense, which can make knitting dialogue + description together more challenging, espec in terms of trying to keep sentence structure varied (eg not 12 in a row starting with a pronoun or name, or SVO generally)

I'm looking fwd to one day being at the editing stage to find solutions 😊 & I don't know if I'm cheating but I deffo vote for an idealised seamless combo as the really challenging bit!!

Which leads clumsily onto your second q, narrative vs summary styles, to which I'll start by saying (since it is the brand): false dichotomy...?

Firstly cos I'd probs term it ~scenic vs summary (given that I think summarisation IS still [or does still have? 🤔] narrative), but also bc they frequently operate in combination, and, as ever, ~it depends.

Dialogue (+ description) scenes are probs the perfect vehicle for the combo! In order to keep dialogue snappy & engaging, over realism, things like pauses or repetition are often culled from the genuine "spoken bits", and summarised eg 'he agreed & they organised the next meeting', 'he said her name again', 'she ummed & ahhed, until eventually admitting it'.

Additionally, I generally prefer summarised dialogue when characters are remembering something from the past, rather than them apparently having perfect recall of a conversation from ages ago. This also allows for them remembering in full detail one or two choice lines that were yelled @ them to stand out!!

Likewise, this switch is a device that can be employed to display information about the pov character/'s ~mood eg is there a full record of conversation with one character vs with others it's simply summarised? Or are their scenes with character/s when they're on good terms detailed vs ones where they're on the outs just staccato summaries? Or indeed vice-versa! What are they paying attention to, and what are they comfortable expressing even to themself?

Ppl talk about the difference btwn the two styles (& indeed showing vs telling) as if they're absolute, but I'm not sure I adhere to that. If you have a character who is v matter of fact (at least in some scenarios), their pov might come across as summarisation rather than scenic; if you have a character that doesn't want to engage with their interiority (at times anyway), scenes might veer twds the telling side. That's not necessarily bad!

Ultimately I think it depends on the type of story! Many will have both 'proper' scenes & summarisation, and I think they work particularly well in concert bc of the contrast! The latter is often used to convey the passing of time succinctly (although I think that can be done scenically too, eg with the length of them, or bg deets), and I'm a proponent of allowing things to be glossed over which arent super relevant bc the reader doesn't need to be bombarded with too much (as that makes it difficult to pick out what matters) & also cos otherwise it gets too bloody large (hell for author).

A seamless transition btwn the 2 styles (ie from general to specific) can be one of my fave narrative tricks to experience as a reader eg (à la 85% of dh Lawrence stories) 'he lived in a cottage, with a long lane behind it. Every day he took that route to work, climbing over the tall gate. The sun was shining, hot on his head & bright on the clover as he panted along', like oh OK we've arrived at the action in the middle of the establishing detail have we!!!! Conversely, it can be one of my most hated experiences to read (what! I contain multitudes 😂) eg a couple of proper scenes suddenly descending into summary with not even a line break between 🤯 (I suppose it comes down to whether it feels intentional, vs messy? 🤔)

& I think both have challenges! A story purely composed of 'real' scenes runs the risk of putting too much onus on the reader -- can you know that you've conveyed what you wanted accurately as the writer? And to whom? What implicit references could be clear universally? (is an audience of a different generation or region or experiences going to pick up on things the same way?) plus a bunch of similar scenes can become repetitive -- do you need to slog through each weekly meeting, or do you just want to display one or two, then establish that they keep going on? (repetition CAN be really powerful, bc if it's established then the breaking of that routine may be v striking, but you probs don't want eg the minutiae of several similar council meetings if they're not super plot relevant.)

But is summary too simplistic? Is stating things removing needed ambiguity? Are these things which could have been displayed elsewise and/or earlier?

I'm not sure I have a preference, and I'm not sure they can realllly be separated out (most proper snapshot scenes will have some degree of summarisation to them), and I think ~summarised storytelling gets a bit of a bad rap & is unfairly seen as juvenile where it can be such an effective way to move through time, can certainly be told v much via the pov character's lens, allows authors to skip over stuff which would bloat the story (or indeed paper over weaknesses) & can be so so effective in short stories.

Especially where the two are used in combination, I think it comes back to structure & pov for me. What's actually relevant to the story? What would the ~narrator bother to dwell on? How long do you want this monster to be?? What needs to be clear to the reader? If everything else is the other way, does diverting here feel weird or does the difference underline a change in mood/focus/whatever?

And ultimately: trying things out is the best! The more comfortable I've got/ten with being able to do different things, even if not to a very high level, the better I feel about the ability to utilise them as a tool!

Writing asks

[throwing-roses-into-the-abyss]

https://www.tumblr.com/throwing-roses-into-the-abyss/741684295375192064/ - can you talk a bit about restrictive fashions that went out of style super quickly? I just want a few examples because this sounds fascinating

I can! (though minor disclaimer that I'm very tired and feeling a bit ill so I'll keep this short, I'm sure people can add more examples though) Some of these will be more objective, while others are more obvious, but here's a few examples (all of these are western/european fashion, I know there's lots of stuff in other cultures but I'll leave those for people with more knowledge about the cultural aspects of them)

those full jumpsuits that were popular a couple of years ago: I know people still wear these, but let's be real, they were everywhere for just a season or two and then everyone realized they're awful to go the toilet in because you have to basically undress, and a lot of people stopped wearing them.

Hobble skirts: these were a trend between 1908 and 1914 (according to wikipedia), and they disappeared because they were actually dangerous. it was really fashionable for a bit to have your skirts somehow gathered at your ankles/lower legs, which obviously made it really hard to walk and a lot of women could only kind of hobble around, hence the name hobble skirt. People would even sometimes just tie rope around their ankles. This resulted in several deaths, and the trend disappeared, though weirdly it's come back in different forms a few times.

1880s fashion: in the 1870s clothing started becoming more restrictive, but it reached Peak Nonsense in the 1880s, with really tight sleeves, long corsets where even the boning could go well over the hips, and lots and lots of trim and decorations (which made skirts very cumbersome and heavy, on top of both the skirts and decorations sometimes being made out of really heavy fabrics). even the collars of bodices could have boning in them.

although this trend didn't disappear super quickly, it did mean the start of anti-corset organizations (reform) and the increasing popularity of teagowns, which were very loose fitting gowns that could be worn completely without a corset if you wanted (though teagowns were usually only worn at home/around female friends. there were people who were them out and about but they were often in some kind of subculture like the arts & crafts movement)

I also want to do a shoutout to those really wide late 18th century french court gowns:

they were restrictive in that they could make it hard to go through doors normally, but these extremely wide ones were also pretty much only worn by royalty/people adjacent to royalty, so it really wasn't much of a problem. there were smaller, more manageable ones that were worn under more 'regular' fashion for a longer time, though afaik it was still largely a thing for people with money. the upside to these though is that you could turn the pannieres (the structures holding the skirts up on the hips) into really, really big pockets if you want. Hazariel Costumes on youtube made (smaller) ones and made a song about it that I highly recommend you watch here.

[foreverindreamlandd]

Locker Drama

Pairing: Neighbor!Steve Harrington x Plus Size!Reader

WC: 2.3k

Summary: Your locker neighbor, Tommy, can't seem to stop being an asshole to you. Even though they're technically friends, Steve draws the line when it comes to picking on someone who is apparently extremely important to him.

Warnings: Bullying, body image, fatphobia, protective Steve, does not contain spoilers for the show Stranger Things. Unedited because I am a piece of human garbage :,)

Note: Okay....so this is going to be the first fic within the Neighbor!Steve Harrington x Plus Size!Reader world. It's going to be a very loosely-structured series, friends to lovers with no real timeline (next fic could be them married with ten kids....kidding but you get the gist lol....hopefully). I hope you enjoy it! :)

*****

“All I’m saying is that when I grow up, I’m going to become Vice Principal of a school and tell any student athlete who thinks they have the right to skip finals and not do their homework to fuck off.”

You blanched at your best friend, shaking your head as you put your math books in your locker. “Robin, I’m pretty sure if you told a student to fuck off you would be fired on site.”

Robin groaned, head tilting up in frustration and leaning against the closed lockers beside yours.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll just give them the detentions they deserve rather than just letting them off the hook for being the golden children of the school. Us band kids have more brains and talent than any of those boneheads and we get diddly squat.”

“At least we can find solace in the fact that we most likely won’t peak in high school.” You grabbed your supplies for science class. “Well, you might actually, if you end up working at one, Mrs. Vice Principal.”

Your lips quirked up into a smug grin as Robin groaned again, this time turning to lean her forehead on the locker.

“Okay, new plan,” she said. “How about-”

“Can you believe Mr. Cooper gave me an F on my paper?” You fought back a groan as the whiney voice of your locker neighbor approached. “I know I got every answer right because I was copying off of that redhead’s work!”

Tommy Hagan - whom you affectionately referred to as Freckles - strolled over to the locker next to yours, head turned in the other direction at his girlfriend Carol as she pressed her body against his.

Though she was tiny, it was enough force to knock Tommy back and bump into you.

He turned to sneer at you. “Watch it, Tubby.” 

Your heartbeat quickened as both rage and shame flooded through you. At least the nickname you had given Freckles was somewhat tame. Tommy gave you one look up and down at the beginning of the school year and immediately deemed you as Tubby.

The first time he said it, you had thought you were hallucinating. It had always been your biggest insecurity, ever since you had put on weight in middle school, and kept putting it on up until this point no matter how many miles you ran and how many diet programs your mom had you try. Still, most of your peers had the courtesy of not saying anything, just letting you exist as long as you kept quiet and didn’t cause any problems.

Not Tommy, though. He just liked to push people’s buttons, and although he was dumb as rocks, he had a knack for identifying the things that hurt you the most.

The nickname stung like salt to a wound, but you knew to keep your head down and stay quiet. You saw what happened when people tried to fight back with Tommy. It only made him want to ramp it up.

He relished in the attention.

Your dearest, hot-headed best friend did not understand that, though, so when she heard his crude remark she scoffed. “Excuse you, numbnuts. But you’re the one who crashed into her.”

You narrowed your eyes at Robin, silently telling her to stop as Carol mewled. “Watch out, baby, you’re upsetting the freaks.”

“Yeah, well, I’m upset that I have to be in such close proximity as them all day!” Tommy’s voice grew louder as he opened his locker, side intentionally bumping into you once more to make a point. “All I’m saying is that it would be nice to have a locker next to someone who took up so much space! I can barely move around here.”

Carol giggled as tears started to burn your eyes. You kept your face in your locker in an attempt to hide your large frame from the world.

Maybe if I stand still for long enough I’ll just blend in and no one will notice me.

With your locker door still open, Tommy was out of view, so you only heard the slam of his door and a small yelp from Carol.

“That’s enough, Tommy,” a familiar voice declared.

Tommy scoffed. “Come on, Harrington. Just airing my grievances.” You could hear the dumb smile on his face.

“No, you’re just being a dick.”

You allowed yourself one small, almost unnoticeable smile.

“Why your panties all up in a bunch, King Steve? Am I being mean to your girlfriend or something?”

Your smile dropped.

There was a few moments of silence, and you could only imagine the type of disgusted face Steve was making then. 

“Just shove off and get to class before another teacher flunks you and you can’t be on the team anymore,” Steve responded, the fight gone from his voice, switching to the charismatic popular guy that almost everyone knew and loved.

This Steve made you sick to your stomach.

Regardless of the disappointment you felt, Steve’s shift in demeanor was enough to distract Tommy. “Ms. Pine would never flunk me, especially now that her daughter is on the cheerleading team. Gotta make sure our team makes her look as good as possible, which means I get a free ride through history.”

You heard him mumble a let’s go, baby to Carol and then the hallway immediately became less tense.

You still couldn’t move, though, still horrified by the public humiliation.

“I’ll kill that asshole,” Robin muttered, crossing her arms.

“It’s fine,” you whispered, quickly wiping your tears. 

“Hey.”

The familiar voice, now much softer and more sympathetic, was right behind you.

You closed your eyes for a second and willed the tears away before turning.

Steve Harrington stood in front of you, hands in his pockets and shoulders sagged, hair perfectly swooped to the side.

His lips were pressed into a thin line. “Sorry about that.” He shrugged. “Tommy’s an idiot.”

“He’s also a jerk, and still your best friend,” Robin cut in, glaring at Steve.

You watched him bite the inside of his cheek as his eyes flashed to Robin, running his fingers through his hair.

“It’s fine.” It seemed as if those were the only two words you were capable of saying.

“It’s not fine,” they both said at the same time, Robin with much more bite and Steve with a quiet assurance.

They both locked eyes in shock that they managed to agree on something, horror painting across their faces.

You couldn’t help but giggle at it.

Steve’s eyes went back to you, smile spreading across his face at the sound of your laugh.

“You sure you’re okay?” he asked, head tilting down a bit, making it so that his large, deep brown eyes stared into yours through his long lashes.

You fought the butterflies as they tried to swarm your stomach. 

“I’m fi- okay,” you said, switching words when Steve’s eyes narrowed.

He nodded. “I’ll deal with Tommy. Meet you after school?”

You nodded back. “Sounds good, Steve.” 

His smile grew ever so slightly when you said his name, and after making eye contact with Robin - who continued to glare at him - he walked down the hallway to his next class.

“You know I love you,” she said, shoulder leaning against the locker, “but I’ll never understand why you let that guy breathe the same air as you.”

You huffed. “It’s not like we’re besties, Robin.” Well, you used to be, but that was before Steve started high school and became an instant celebrity at Hawkins High. When Steve Harrington was just Stevie, and he was your favorite person in the entire world.

Now?

“He’s just my ride. As if I’d give up the BMW so I can ride the bus where the rest of the bullies dwell.”

She pursed her lips, still not buying it.

You sighed. “He’s a good person, Robin, I promise.”

At that, she scoffed, shaking her head and wrapped her arm around your neck to lead you to your next class.

“You’ve spent too much time in close proximity with Freckles, Y/n,” she muttered. “His idiot brain is starting to run off on you.”

*****

“How the hell do you have a B in chemistry?” Steve asked, shaking his head as you both got out of the car. “Erikson is brutal. I barely managed to get a D.”

“Hate to break it to you Steve,” you said while swinging your backpack over your shoulder, “but some studies show that doing your work and paying attention in class helps you learn enough to get a good grade.”

He whined, steps falling in line with yours as you approached the school building. “I bet it’s all a hoax. You actually suck at school and have found some new top-secret method of cheating.”

You gasped, feigning offense. “How dare you try to unveil my master plan and risk destroying my reputation as the school nerd?”

Steve laughed, opening the door for you as you walked in. “Don’t worry, your secret is safe with me.”

The two of you shared a small smile as you headed down the hallway. Your locker was closest to the entrance, so you prepared to break away and not see Steve until the end of school.

So it confused you when his stride continued to match yours, slowing as you both veered off to your locker.

Your eyes narrowed at him, slowly putting in your combination. “Listen Steve, I know you promised to keep things with Tommy handled, but I promise you don’t have to be my bodyguard anytime I’m at my locker.”

Steve’s head jerked back as he gave you a confused look, raising his hand to the lock of Tommy’s locker. “What do you mean? This is where all my stuff is.”

Your fingers began mindlessly turning your own lock, suddenly forgetting the combination as you stared at him wide eyed. “What…”

“I switched lockers,” he said with a casual shrug. You could see the corners of his lips twitch as he fought back a smile.

“You what?”

“What? It’s no big deal, Y/n. Tommy seemed to have such a big issue being here, whereas I think this is prime real estate.”

You bit your bottom lip, stomach turning to knots. “Steve…”

“It’s fine, Y/n. Besides, it makes sense that we’re neighbors in school and at home.” His face turned serious for a moment. “I told you I’d handle it. Now, you don’t have to worry.”

You scowled. “He’s still your friend, though. So he can come here and harass me anytime he wants-”

Steve shook his head. “Nope. Told him if he stepped foot anywhere near here that I’d have coach put him on the bench for the rest of the season.” He opened his locker, tossing his bag in and grabbing his books. His brows rose when he turned back to your still stunned expression. “Are you going to open your locker yet? Don’t want to be late for class and ruin that master plan of yours, Miss Cheaterpants.”

A bark of a laugh erupted from your chest and you lightly slapped Steve on the arm, pulling giggles from your new locker neighbor.

It brought an overwhelming sense of relief, having him by your side instead of Tommy. For months, you dreaded stopping here between classes, shielding yourself for another snide comment from Freckles.

Now, you didn’t need to worry. Steve was here, and though you weren’t the best friends you had been your whole lives, having him by your side made this spot finally feel like a safe space.

You turned your attention back to your lock, opening the door and grabbing books for your first class.

The worst part about Tommy’s complaints were that technically it was sometimes true. You did take up more space than others, meaning that your arm would inevitably wiggle around in his area as you moved.

And so, of course, the same thing would happen with Steve.

When your hip bumped against his, any sense of relief you had felt crumbled in seconds, the familiar feeling of shame the only thing left in its wake. 

Steve felt your body go rigid, and he rested a hand on your shoulder. “Hey,” he said, turning your body to face him. There was a tenderness in his face that you hadn’t seen in years. “The shit that he said yesterday, what I assume he’s been saying…it’s all bullshit, Y/n.”

You tried to shrug and force a smile, but Steve knew you better than that, and his hand squeezed your shoulder. “No, listen.” His eyes pierced yours, face leaning forward until it was inches from yours. “What he said was absolute bullshit, and he’s a complete idiot for not realizing how lucky he was to be so close to you all the time.”

His breath tickled your skin, causing you to blink a few times as you tried to identify the tone he was using as he said this. This was nothing like the Steve you grew up with, nor was it the voice of King Steve, ruler of Hawkins High.

This was something different, and it brought heat to your core.

He seemed to lose himself for a moment, leaning less than an inch closer and the movement was so overwhelming your breath hitched. That seemed to be enough to break the tension, and Steve swallowed, standing straight and grabbing his books.

“I should get going,” he murmured, using his free hand to run his fingers through his hair. He gave you a small smile. “See you next period?”

You blinked a few more times, bobbing your head up and down slowly.

Steve bit his bottom lip, staring at you for a few more seconds before closing his locker door and heading down the hallway.

Your gaze remained on the spot he had been standing at moments ago, a part of you wondering if you were dreaming.

Maybe the new locker situation wouldn’t be as easy as you thought….

*****

Thank you for reading! :)

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