#and why does aragon get to look cool??

[little-pondhead]

in my humble opinion, dorathea should look more badass

also this turned into perspective practice by accident?? didn't want her to be a floating neck i guess

[agaytransrat]

Ok…

Hear me out y’all..

Hamilton x six

Aragon-Jefferson

Boleyn-Alexander

Jane-Madison

Anna-Lafayette

Howard-Burr

Parr-John

Alexander saying “why haven’t it hit him? He doesn’t wanna bang you. Somebody hand you” to Jefferson. Yes!

And! “It’s calling wearing purple to a funeral. Hit the light! Thomas! Was a MASSIVE! HO-!” Perfect

And then John singing “I don’t need your love. No~ No~” :)

And. “Let’s see who gets the most votes. Trauma or abuse. Whooo..” I think it fits



Burr singing all you wanna do makes a little bit of sense.

Like! “I thought this time was different..why did I think he’d be different..but it’s never..EVER!..different..NO! NO!” I just think it fits him you know.

And!

Burr:same!

Alex:yeah same! Nice neck by the way!

Madison as Jane. Like come on y’all it makes sense.

And that one line on the musical.

Madison:what hurts more than a broken heart?..

Alexander:a severed head.

And also! “OH BOO HOO! BABY MARRY HAD THAT CHICKEN POCKS AND YOU DID NOT GET TO HOLD HER HAND! YOU KNOW ITS FUNNY BECAUSE WHEN I WANTED TO HOLD MY NEW BORN SON! I DIED!” I think that part would also be funny

Laff as Anna. It just fits him.

Laff:so yeah! I really had it hard-

Jefferson:that doesn’t sound difficult at all.

Just yes!

And Jefferson. As Aragon. Yes

Him singing no way! Like yesssss!

And it would be so funny to see the queens fight as them. Like! Look! (This does have spoilers and btw This if from Six the musical slime tutorial Broadway proshot)

Burr:and then I was behead. Yeah I know I know. Now seeing as I won the competition. All I wanna do! Is take this opportunity to thank all the powerful men who got me to where I am today. Couldn’t have done it without you! Thank you New York!

(Everyone starts yelling)

Madison:ok! Hold up! Yeah..you really had it bad. But that’s not the most heart-wrenching song we’ve heard this evening.

Burr:I’m sorry. Where you not listening to my song? There where 4 courses. that’s how much sh!t I had to deal with.

Madison:yes sorry so true. But when you died your son didn’t have to grow up with out a father- oh wait that was me and no one cared when you died.

Alexander:James! Chill out! It’s not his fault that no one remembers his bland and uneventful life! babes. Honestly. I don’t want it to be weird between us. Just because my beheading was the result of years of actual trauma and humiliation.

Jefferson:oh pipe down Alex! You seriously want to talk about humiliation?! Ok well when I was queen Washington had not one. Not two. But three historically confirmed mistresses!

(Alex start to fake cry)

Alex:get over it. When I was queen I had not one. Not two! But three! Miscarriages!

Jefferson:well you know what Asslex! I had! Five miscarriages!

Laff:how about we just move it along shall we? Come on queens

This is just yes!

Ok that’s literally all I wanted to say.

Don’t ask any questions about miscarriages or the queen parts.

:)

I might do something cool with this. You can do whatever you want with this information.

IDC

:3

[lightleckrereins]

Thoughts on the Hungarian costumes?

I like them! While there are some things I would change; in general I really like them.

Breakdowns for both the Hungary and Poland costumes should come soon but meanwhile.

If anyone saw my very long, frustrated post on why I don't like the poland costumes you will know I think a clear concept tying all costumes together is one of the most important things to have. It is one of the basic rules of design: if you are doing things that go together but arent identical be it a set, a collection, a line or something else; you need at least one thing tying them all together, doesn't need to be obvious but needs to be there. When it comes to costumes or outfits for music groups the most common ways to do it are having everyone wear the same pieces (or accesories), or maintain the same silhouette, colors or materials. For replica design six you get the stud trim, no matter the design all have studs in most if not all lines, plus the the materials and some elements accross all designs.

Six Hungary does this very well. All the queens have a mix of corset, jacket, open skirt, shorts (pants and another skirt in two cases but as clearly separate pieces), crown, black boots and either sleeves or bracelets. Silhouette isnt the same but same elements make it so no one looks out of place. Everyone has gold plus another color, there are bands or straps on all costumes and many small details are repeated accross designs. Leather and sequins are a common material. All costumes are different but the designs look and feel like a group without needing to be identical and without copying elements from the replica design.

Colors are have pretty much my entire wishlist for non replica six: purple aragon and seymour, gold cleves and pastel pink howard. The crowns being a sort of high fashion take on historical shapes is a really cool and really smart concept. And I can't explain how much I love the slight fit, construction and material differences they have between each actor.

But there are things I dont love. Colors are generally a bit dull and a lot of the darker ones become black onstage. That also makes the few bright shades become a little too intense. Some of the silhouettes feel a little long for the actors. A few materials feel a little cheap (not that they are but having leather beside multiple synthetic fabrics will make the synthetics look cheap no matter the quality). Most skirts could use some additional structure. And some of the hairstyles feel like they belong in the early 2010s, just on the wrong side of outdated. Which might totally be my perception, I don't have a lot of context to mainland Europe hair trends.

Basically a great concept with good execution. And I love how we are finally seeing full new design concepts in six.

[ficretus]

Knightfall and Hundred Years' War

It's me, back again with more Knightfall theorizing via Joan of Arc references. I briefly touched on this in one of my previous theories, but Hundred Years' War as a setting itself can be used as a material to theorize.

First of all, what was Hundred Years' War and why does it matter? It was war between France and English over French royal succession that lasted with some breaks more than hundred years (duh). Generational bitter conflict can be translated in RWBY in multiple ways. It can represent strife between the kingdoms, it can represent strife between Humans and Faunus and it can represent conflict between Salem and Ozma.

While there certainly are tensions between the kingdoms, they are mostly resolved and have very little to do with Jaune. Same with Human-Faunus conflict, which has even less to do with Jaune. This leaves us with Salem-Ozma conflict in which Jaune is active player.

There are also parallels one can draw between Salem-Ozma conflict and Hundred Years' War. Both are impossibly long wars lasting generations. Both were started between parties that were connected with marriage. Salem and Ozma were of course married, while French and English royals had marital connections. Reason why English even claimed French crown in the first place was because English King was married to the daughter of former French King. And as I stated in my previous theories, Salem and Grimm relatively consistently represent English when looking at RWBY from the position of Jaune as Joan of Arc.

______________________________________________________________

Cool, but what does it have to do with Knightfall as a pairing? Well, Jaune's primary literary allusion is Joan of Arc and while Cinder fits variety of characters from Joan's story, she fits the most as French King at the time, Charles VII (who will be referred to as Dauphin from now on). As for how she fits the role, I will slap the link to the theory below.

Meeting between Joan and Dauphin was the catalyst that ended up turning the war in French favor. Prior to that moment, French were getting pushed back more and more by Anglo-Burgundian forces who were sieging Orleans at the time, one of the key French strongholds. Dauphin and his followers were losing the faith in the war, with Dauphin even looking to escape to allied kingdom of Aragon. Meeting with Joan gave back the hope to Dauphin and with her supposed divine abilities she managed to help the French forces win the fight at Orleans.

While relationship between Joan and Dauphin was completely platonic, I feel like if they ever give Jaune love interest that somewhat follows his literary allusion, it would have to be character that is reference to Dauphin. It's pretty clear that writers are subverting both Joan's virginity and her unattractiveness with Jaune (he is basically in universe thirst trap which is inversion of Joan repeatedly being described as unattractive by her male companions). After all, Dauphin was Joan's one and only.

Reason I go over this is because if writers are staying true to the setting of Joan of Arc story, then it needs to be high stakes romance subplot. There is a difference between stakes in Joan of Arc story and lets say Cinderella or Snow White story. If Cinderella didn't meet her Prince, she would probably spend the rest of her life as abused servant. If Snow White didn't met her Prince, she'd remain dead. That's sad and all, but it has no influence on the rest of the world. If Joan didn't meet Dauphin, it's likely French would have lost and be subjugated by the English, especially when you read more romanticized versions of the story that emphasize Joan's role in the war.

That's why I gravitate towards Knightfall. If Jaune ever redeems Cinder, that's a game changer. Salem loses her most powerful henchman as well as access to the final Relic. You don't get that kind of stakes with something like Whiteknight. Jaune romancing or not romancing Weiss has no influence on the greater picture.

_____________________________________________________________

Last thing to add is supposed ancient prophecy (started by Merlin in some version of the story) that circulated during the late stage of Hundred Years' War. It goes "France would be ruined through a woman and afterwards restored by a virgin". Joan herself often quoted that prophecy and saw herself as prophesized virgin savior. Woman that prophecy refers to was Dauphin's mother, Isabeau of Bavaria who was often blamed for French misfortune due to her debauchery and cooperation with English.

This can be interpreted in variety of ways. First is the state of the world itself. Reason the world is broken is Salem's feud with Gods and her conflict with Ozma. So to restore the world, one would have to do the opposite. This is were Reverse Ozlem theory comes in.

https://www.tumblr.com/ficretus/743569593949388800/knightfall-and-ozlem?source=share

Jaune and Cinder have lot of Ozma-Salem imagery in their characters and encounters, but they seem to be going in reverse chronologically. End point of that theory would be Jaune and Cinder making amends. Ozma and Salem went from lovers to enemies, which ended up tearing the world apart. Jaune and Cinder would go from enemies to partners and fix the world through their cooperation.

Other interpretation would shift France in prophecy to Dauphin. After all, Kings were seen as representatives of their countries and Isabeau not only ruined France, she ruined her son as well. What "ruined" Cinder and set her on destructive path she walks in the story is her abusive childhood. I previously paralleled Isabeau and Madame because of the role they play in childhood of their respective characters. If Cinder was ruined by being unloved, then she can be saved by being loved. If she was ruined by being convinced she was worthless, she can be saved by someone telling her she is worthy. Latter one works especially well as a parallel to Joan of Arc story since Dauphin questioned his own worth until Joan assured him he is rightful King.

Last interpretation is offshoot of previous one, but shifts blame from Madame to Rhodes. Rhodes was aware of Cinder's abuse, yet did nothing substantial to stop it. He symbolically represents Huntsman society as a whole, turning a blind eye. So if Cinder was ruined because Huntsman wouldn't help her, then she can be saved by Huntsman noticing her.

_____________________________________________________________

This is it for this one. What are your thoughts? Feel free to comment if you have your own interpretations or think I missed something.

[ineffectualdemon]

I posted 2,994 times in 2022

That's 183 more posts than 2021!

786 posts created (26%)

2,208 posts reblogged (74%)

Blogs I reblogged the most:

@ineffectualdemon

@adoratato

@vaspider

@linguisticparadox

@cum-villain

I tagged 890 of my posts in 2022

#svsss - 194 posts

#shang qinghua - 103 posts

#not safe for esmes - 82 posts

#moshang - 75 posts

#shen qingqiu - 62 posts

#cumplane - 56 posts

#conversations with my husband - 50 posts

#mdzs - 50 posts

#conversations with my kid - 49 posts

#bingqiu - 44 posts

Longest Tag: 135 characters

#actually i would love a fic where its just mobei and binghe trying to figure out whats haunting their husbands and how to get rid of it

My Top Posts in 2022:

#5

Another reason I love Tolkien is what he does with character death

When characters die (or are perceived as having died) the others characters grieve their loss

When Gandalf falls in Moria once the rest of the fellowship is safe in Lothlorien they take time to mourn and grieve and remember

When Boromir dies Aragon, Gimli, and Legolas stop to give him as good a funeral as they can before going after Pippin and Merry and even that's not the end of his effect on the narrative.

Denethor allows his grief to destroy him (and nearly allows it to kill his other son) Faramir fights with his grief and his guilt for not going to Rivendell instead

And Frodo, who was betrayed by Boromir, is heart broken to hear of his death

The story of the Eo family is one of a family touched deeply by grief and that's why Eowyn and Faramir bonding in the houses of healing is so important

Because they do heal, by sharing their individual grief and carrying that combined pain between them

Because when death happens in LOTR it is always with intent, with purpose, and it allows for mourning. And while grief can be destructive mostly it's not, because it's shared.

(and I know there are a lot more examples these are just the first that came to mind)

Too many times I have read fantasy novels that don't let characters support each other when a character dies. And often if a character dies it's sad in the moment and then the narrative just stops caring

Tolkien's work is a story about grief and healing from it. People are changed by grief but it doesn't have to be a bad thing, it's just something that happens and that love and mutual support can carry you through

"I will not say, do not weep, for not all tears are an evil."

This is why I love Tolkien

5,418 notes - Posted February 11, 2022

#4

Opening the Tumblr app to find that dark mode is broken:

EDIT: ITS BEEN FIXED

5,675 notes - Posted November 15, 2022

#3

Hey people coming here from Twitter or tiktok?

Tagging your posts with unrelated trending tags doesn't "manipulate the algorithm" or whatever the fuck you do it for

It just clogs the tag with posts people don't care about and pisses them the fuck off

Tagging trending tags onto unrelated posts isn't something we do here and is actually against Tumblr etiquette

So for the love of Christ knock it the fuck off

We have a barely functioning search function. Don't fuck it up more

16,672 notes - Posted October 6, 2022

#2

Me: so apparently Looney tunes Instagram declared that Bugs Bunny and Daffy are canonically a couple

Husband: *long long long pause as they process this*

Me: I mean it makes sense

Husband: well since they're both men I hope Bugs tops because ducks have corkscrew dicks

Me: oh bugs definitely tops

22,598 notes - Posted July 19, 2022

My #1 post of 2022

This lady I follow on tiktok has been creating character designs to encourage people to make fantasy characters who wear a hijab and they are so incredibly cool!

This is a compilation of looks they have done so far and they are all really awesome

Here's the link to her tiktok profile btw

46,559 notes - Posted May 21, 2022

Get your Tumblr 2022 Year in Review →

[reginakhoward]

Ex-Wives Solos:

I feel like we don’t talk enough about how the little solos each queen has sets up the sexist stereotype they are shoved into by society and then how they are broken down in their song.

“If you try to dump me, you won’t try that again” For Catherine of Aragon, it’s the petty, angry ex-wife. It reminds me of a crazy ex-girlfriend trope where the ex is basically painted as evil for trying to get revenge on her poor, nice guy ex. Then, in No Way, “Please tell me what you think I’ve done wrong... You’ve got nothing to say” totally flips the script, the audience realizes that it’s Henry that is the crazy one, trying to find all these ways to get rid of her be it sending her to a nunnery or saying she’s cursed with infertility. No Way shows us that Aragon not only has a right to be angry, but also that she has been biting her tongue this whole time to what Henry has been doing to her, in a show of restraint and strength.

“Why did I lose my head? Well, my sleeves may be green, but my lipstick’s red” makes it seem like Boleyn is using her sexuality as a weapon. Anne has been characterized this way in much of history, she is the classic “Other Woman”, the whore with “the plan to steal the man”. In DLUH, we see a different side of Anne, one where she seems a lot less calculating, more helpless and clueless. Superficially, this throws her into yet another stereotype, of the “Dumb Blonde”, so to speak. Looking deeper into the lyrics, however, a lot more is revealed. The people making many of the decisions are the men in her life. Her father tells her to get ahead. Henry pursues the relationship, breaks things off with the church, and cheats on her. Anne is subject to the environment she has been thrown into, reacting to things instead of acting a lot of the time. She “didn’t mean to hurt anyone” (although she does make many decisions that do hurt people), but pays the price of Henry’s insanity.

“Jane Seymour, the only one he truly loved” would make Seymour the “Perfect Wife”. She’s doting, she’s dutiful, in the picture perfect relationship. She has the perfect husband, she has the heir to the throne, even in death, she has the queen’s funeral (the only one out of six to receive it), and buried beside her love once he passes. However, in Heart of Stone, we see that not everything was as easy as it seemed. “You can tear me down”, “I’ll stand the test”, and the other descriptions of turmoil show that Henry was not as good to her as we’d like to believe. Although perhaps, in his own fucked up way, he did love her, he did not treat her well. Many like to say that Seymour was not abused and shouldn’t win the “competition” because she didn’t have to deal with much from him, but reading between the lines shows that she dealt with his abuses in silence. She was not weak, but she wanted so desperately to make it with him and Edward, that she stuck it through until her untimely end.

“But I didn’t look as good as I did in my pic” implies that Anna of Cleves A. believes that and B. accepts it, which is a stark contrasting point in Get Down. From the beginning of Get Down she paints the picture that while, yes, what happened to her is awful, she did not lie down and accept what Henry decided was to happen for her. She used what happened and made her life amazing, far more wonderful than it would’ve been if Henry was still involved in her life. Although historically this could be far from the truth, Six Cleves is one bad bitch flipping that rejection and making it a victory.

“Lock up your husbands, lock up your son, KHoward is here and the fun’s begun” is one of the most apparent flips once we get to AYWD. It’s carried through the song, as at first Katherine is “wanting” (don’t get me started on the statutory rape here) her encounters, but then we quickly learn the truth. She leads us to believe, like Henry believed, that she was a promiscuous woman not worthy of the throne, until we realize she was only a girl who was taken advantage of. Her stereotype is a very well-known and believed one as much as Anne Boleyn’s, so it’s refreshing and heartening to see the musical portray it in a different way for the KHoward character, and I’m so glad they did it this way.

“I’m the final wife…. I’m the survivor” For Catherine Parr, all she mentions in her intro is that she was the final wife, the one who survived, and other things to do with her being Henry’s 6th wife, or one of the Six. When we get to IDNYL, we are introduced to Catherine as a person, the things she did, the people she affected, outside of Henry. We are shown HER real story, not reliant on anyone else. Parr sets us up to believe that she was merely one of Six in order to make the reveal of her breaking off/having agency even more impactful. She went from one dimensional to 3D this way, which I think was a really cool way to segway into giving all the queens agency in the last part of the show.

Overall, I think it’s a really cool device that was used through the show, because of how rooted it is in our perceptions. Most people have a preconceived notion of these queens from their real lives and our understandings (or lack thereof) of what happened to them. For Six to break those really emphasizes how they are telling their own stories, “taking back the microphone”, and freeing themselves from abuse, which is always a story the world needs to hear. 💕

[the-sprog]

So since I'm very bad at remembering my ideas, I'm gonna throw this out there and hope one day I'm like "WAIT didn't I have an idea for a fic??? What was it???" And I will find it on my tumblr.

It's about Danny Phantom, obviously.

There are actually two of them in here so:

The easiest one: Jack and Maddie are not stupid. I mean they're scientists, the use the scientific method. One of the things about the scientific method is that if you do a bunch of tests, based on an hypothesis and only one of them comes out disproving it, then your hypothesis is incorrect.

Phantom has disproved basically all of their hypothesis.

So, next thing to do? Create a new one. Do new tests. They take Jazz's suggestion and try and see if the ghosts of Amity are actually conscious. Because obviously they're sentient, but are they like animals? Or are they like robots with artificial intelligence?

Or even better yet, are they like humans?

They grab Phantom's attention and ask him if he would cooperate for this test. A simple Turing test. Obviously they're still wary because of everything that happened with him, and do the test with witnesses to keep both Phantom's and their minds at ease.

He passed the test. With flying colors.

They're shocked and ask him if he knew peaceful ghosts that would be willing to take the test (because, y'know. Scientific method. Need to try over and over again). Phantom would have to explain that not all ghosts are as human-like as him (as, first of all, he's a halfa, but he doesn't say that. And second, lots of them are blobs or animal-like ghosts), but cue his parents meeting Jhonny and Kitty (cause I like the idea that they have a truce with Phantom and that going out of the zone helps them with their couple problems), as well as Shadow (example of a less human-like ghost). Then Sidney, Dora, the Fright Knight (cause king ghost Danny ftw) and Frostbite.

They all pass, more or less. Some, like Dora, the light and Sidney, where given away by their choice of word, but other than that all of them passed the test.

OK SO MORE COMPLEX ONE:

I love crossovers. I love finding ways of putting the two universes together, of making them work with each other, adapting the rules so that they apply to both. (With Danny Phantom it's also really cool to just... Make him travel the multiverse. He doesn't adhere to the rules of where he goes to, so it's always hilarious. But we're not here for that now).

One of the best ones to do this with is My Hero Academia. Whenever a show has someone with powers I end up asking myself "how should that work in the world of my hero?" And start trying to incorporate it in the lore.

So, first thing first, we're getting rid of the canon story of my hero. Completely unrelated to the show. This takes place decades in the past, when the first people where developing quirks (so if I wanted to write something with this and actually use my hero characters, I'd make it so that they where hit with a time traveling quirk or that Clockwork was somehow involved).

The Fenton's hatred for ghosts? Make it discrimination against the people who have quirks.

Danny being half-ghost? His quirk's fault. He calls it Ghost, for simplicity, it allows him to come back as a sort of ghost-like creature after he dies. Somehow, one day, he doesn't die completely so his body fixes it the only way it know how. Making him partially ghost.

Obviously that would mean that all the ghosts he fights aren't ghosts anymore. They're villains with quirks, and their powers would be based on what they can do on the show, minus the basic intangibility, invisibility and flight.

Obviously only Sam and Tucker would know he was Phantom and he had a quirk, he's also kinda the only one in town with one. People would be a little racist against quirk havers, but the kids, like in the show, come around to it. And actually start loving Phantom and thinking of him as a hero.

How do I fit Vlad in all of this? Ehm ahhhh this is the one thing I didn't think about. Very basic, but could give him a power similar to Danny, were instead of a ghost, he becomes a vampire. But his quirk is caused by an accident in college, so it's artificial.

Why does Skulker (who doesn't have a quirk. He's just a guy in a suit) hunt Danny? He has a very unique quirk.

Does Dani exist? I mean. Yeah. Cloning is not so farfetched, especially with the existence of quirks.

Clockwork can control time, he involuntary does that being a child, then an adult then an old man thing. The Observants are people without quirks that keep him in check, an organization that made a pact with him to stay young forever or something in change of idk what. No idea what Clockwork would get out of it I won't lie. Money maybe? Or somehow they found a way of keeping him there against his will?

Walker (and I'll make a seperate post about this) is an ex guy in white. Yes they still exist, but they hunt quirk havers instead of paranormal stuff. Walker was kicked out because he actually has a quirk but lied about it. He's after his own kind in the show as well. I mean, he's a stickler to the rules, but he only ever seems to care when it's ghosts that brake them. Correct me if I'm wrong, but never has he punished a human. His quirk is making semi-sentient minions. They're not copies of himself. They're like clay humans with basic forms. They all look alike and have no special characteristics.

Frostbite is just... A yeti. With cryokenisis. It's a mutation type quirk.

Same goes for Wulf, he's just a humanoid wolf that can create teleportation portals. I can't think of a reason why he would only speak Esperanto though. It could be something similar to Five from umbrella academy. He accidentally got stuck in the 1600 as a kid and managed to come back only relatively recently.

I feel like all the other ghosts have obvious powers.

Cujo can become ginormous,

Technus can control technology,

Dora and Aragon can become dragons,

Jhonny gives people bad luck and can control his shadow,

Kitty can make man disappear,

Ember can mind control using music,

Spectra can use people's negative emotions to stay young,

Bernard has shapeshifting,

Youngblood can't be seen by adults (side effect: can't grow old) and his sideckick has a variant of shapeshifting where he can only transform in animals. A definitive father figure),

Box ghost can control boxes,

Pandora can control the plagues of the world,

Desiré can make people's wishes come true,

Sidney can swap bodies with people,

Undergrowth can control plants,

Pariah Dark- I... Actually don't know...

Lunch Lady can control food,

Aaaanndddd no more come to mind.

I want to do something with this AU but I can't really think of an interesting story, other than "kids from 1A get misplaced in time and Danny has to help, discovering the existence of Clockwork and the Observants, whom he hates. So he tries to get Clockwork out of there with the other kid's help" but that's it, really.

I actually have a 3rd idea, but it basically works the same as the MHA one. Crossover with the X-Men.

Substitute quirk havers with mutants and quirks with mutations and you get the idea.

The plot would be more of a "Danny gets recruited by Xavier after the trauma of almost dying activated his mutation and goes to live at the mansion. This happens after the events of season 3, alla salted to make sense in the world of Marvel, but without Phantom planet. He makes friends there, since Sam and Tucker aren't with him and everything is fine and dandy and happy. Until it comes out that the Fentons actually contribute to the creation of the Sentinels, because they hate Phantom that much.

So Danny has to infiltrate his own family to get info on how the Sentinels work so they can destroy them, since his parents are still oblivious and they made it so that the Sentinels wouldn't attack Danny thinking that his accident just somehow make him register as a mutant on machinery" and that's it.

[letsgoravendors]

Six Villain Au

Aragon: you bet your ass she’s bougie af, you can never wear too much gold. She’s the most elegant out of all of them (and this is definitely my favorite picrew i’ve made of her). Her villain vibe is the corrupt authority figure, kinda has a god complex and will manipulate people to get what she wants cause obviously she’s entitled to it. Unlike some of the others she does have a sense of when to stop doing that stuff and when its appropriate, but its more of a question of if she cares enough to stop herself. [Song to describe her character: You Should See Me In A Crown - Billie Eilish]

Anne: Anne is just….. batshit insane and we love her for that. Blood? Check. Sword? Check. Choker? Check. Smirk? Check. She doesn’t get a little golden leafy crown thing cause there wasn’t one in green and that’s unacceptable, also she doesn’t seem like the crown wearing type to me. Ruthless as fuck and will judge the others for not being as crazy as her, but Unhinged Anne™ is still one of my favorite things so hey no judgment. Has a very strained relationship with her siblings cause being evil was not the family business. [Song for her character: Gasoline - Halsey / I’m Gonna Show You Crazy - Bebe Rexa]

Jane: Looks like a pirate and tho it wasn’t purposeful I’m here for it. A smaller choker to show her relation to her cousins and a scar across her face cause… well i don’t know why yet but it fits her character in my head. And Jane having a scar seems fitting since she’s usually the most kind out of all of them not anymore. Honestly she still kinda looks like a babey tho but she will fuck you up. Her character vibe to me is “you made me do this so fine, i’ll be the villain” so she sees her actions as justified. [Song: Control - Halsey]

Cleves: *gay panics in the background* don’t get me wrong, she’s still hella evil and drunk with power but look at her. I love the image of her just sitting in her palace on a cool thorn and being a bad ass bitch, basically like her six song Get Down. She’s just vibing, high af off of having money and power and y’know what, good for her. She’s got scars cause of course Anne has scars, its either from doing something super cool and evil or really dumb, no in between. Doesn’t have a point in her life where she turned evil, she’s just power hungry and has no problem other throwing other people. [Song: Feeling Good - Michael Bublé]

Kitty: yes she is wearing a pink fur coat but don’t for one second think that she can’t be intimidating and violent, also she’s got some of Anne’s insanity cause genetics and it’s my story and I want kat to be slightly crazy. Her past in this au is pretty much the same to history, the only difference is she decided she was gonna stab any dude that was a dick to her and I completely stand by that decision, you’re doing great kitty! Not exactly sure how she got to running a kingdom yet, but I do know she maintains that monarchy because she doesn’t take anyone’s shit and anyone who misjudges her and doesn’t take her seriously is soooooo fucked. [Song: I Did Something Bad - Taylor Swift / Believer - Imagine Dragons]

Cathy: *accidentally creates goth!cathy* …..well, its kinda accurate. Seriously tho she looks dead inside but it’s cathy so it fits, especially in this au (her matching indigo eyes shadow, lips, and crown are pretty great) and she’s got a scar cause *mysterious backstory im not sharing rn*. The voice of reason™, well as much reason as she can have as a villain, but basically the person who ends up talking the others out of hardcore violence. Is more of the calculated type of evil, not goes-around-stabbing-people (*cough* anne *cough*) but WILL stab someone if it comes down to it. Fallen hero vibes cause “fuck people, they aren’t worth saving” and it matches her character so well i love it. [Song: Don’t Make Me - MALINDA]

Songs that fit the general vibe of the story/specific scenes I have in my head: Heathens - twenty one pilots / Battle Scars - Lupe Fiasco / Renegades - X Ambassadors / Princesses Don’t Cry - CARYS / Little Lion Man - Mumford & Sons / Blood // Water - grandson & more but I have to search for more songs :)

@waterloobasin @thejamdergod you wanted me to keep y’all posted so here you go!

[the-quiet-winds]

I’ll Know My Name as It’s Called Again

Catherine Parr wakes up with her laptop smushed against her face, ass-up in the bed, at half-past eight in the morning.

She groggily looks around her bedroom. Papers are strewn haphazardly around the room, Argyle having made a comfortable nest of them near the wall.

Cathy drags herself off the bed and picks up the cat, cradling him to her chest as she rocks him almost like a baby.

“Another day,” she mumbles down to the Tabby, who makes no indication whatsoever to have heard or understood her.

She sets him down and sets off into the house, where most of the other queens have already gathered.

“Good morning,” she singsongs, settling down for another one of Jane Seymour’s homemade breakfast. It’s the same thing every single day - eggs, toast, and tea. Never deviating, never faltering.

Catherine of Aragon gestures to Cathy’s cheek with concern, which, according to the reflection of a spoon, is sporting a solid outline of the few keys where Cathy’s face had spent most of the night.

Everyone can’t help but laugh.

After breakfast, everyone splits off to get ready to go to the theater. Two show day, after all.

Cathy feels lighter than air as she enters the theater with her girls around her, just like they do almost every day. They’re confident, cool, and ready to dazzle another audience.

With Jane Seymour and Catherine of Aragon next to her, she begins to put on her makeup for the show. Little foundation, little blush, little lipstick, and an ungodly amount of blue glitter. 

Where do they get all this glitter from, she can’t help but wonder. 

She moves on next to her hair, trying her best to knock a few of the knots out of her curls before sweeping them all up into her iconic “side-poof” as it was called, complete with her crown.

Jane Seymour and Catherine of Aragon are right behind her. Like a well-oiled machine, they all strip down and get into costume with near-perfect synchronization. 

The trio step out into the hall at the same time as Anna of Cleves, Anne Boleyn, and Katherine Howard. 

Cathy’s smile is insanely bright as they all make their way to the stage, where she can already hear the hum of the audience beyond the curtain. 

She grabs her microphone and steps onto the stage, and the show ignites just after.

For the next eighty minutes or so, Cathy is on fire. She dances, jumps, sings, and moves with a vigor she never knew she had until this show. 

And the best part, of course, is getting to do it all with her girls.

They end the show in their defiant poses, fists raised and beaming smiles all around. The audience is cheering for them as they all bow and are played off the stage by the band.

As is after every show, Cathy is a bundle of energy, a firecracker waiting to explode. “That was so good you guys!”

It must be the leftover ringing in her ears, because whatever her costars say gets lost in the din.

There isn’t too long before the second show, but Jane Seymour somehow manages to whip up that same fantastic meal as always (meatloaf, mashed potatoes, and green beans).

Before Cathy can blink it’s time to perform again. Even with all the exercise she got from the first performance, she feels like a new woman when she steps onto the stage once again.

Once again, the show is flawless. Everyone sounds, dances, and acts amazing throughout the whole performance.

This time, as the band plays the outro, they stay and dance a little on stage, Cathy singing out some nonsensical words as she dances with Catherine of Aragon.

---

Through a camera feed, the pair watch her with interest.

Dancing again, one scribbles down, singing same melody.

Her partner, meanwhile, does his best impression of the melody into the recorder in his hand.

“Subject is expressing excitement over the just-completed performance of her ‘show,’” he says into the recorder. “She is talking animatedly.”

“Subject mentions name ‘Jane Seymour’,” the woman adds, “and thanks her for the dinner she made.”

Carefully, they both observe Subject 1548 as she moves through the padded room. She talks aloud, then stops, nodding along as if someone is talking back. She laughs. She hugs a sandbag she seems to think is another human.

Subject 1548 picks up a foam cube and holds it to her chest, mumbling something about argyle socks.

Finally, Subject 1548 finds her bed in the corner of the padded room and pulls a pillow into her lap, tapping at it furiously as if typing something on a keyboard.

After not too long, she slumps forward, falling asleep on the pillow.

“She has been here for over two years,” the man says, looking over pages of notes and gesturing vaguely to the bin of recorders on the next table. “We are still no closer to figuring it all out.”

“We’ve figured some things out,” his colleague corrects him. “We know who she thinks she is and who she thinks her friends are.”

“But that’s all we know.”

“True,” the woman concedes, “but we can’t lose hope.”

“She’s done the same thing almost every day for two years. I’m surprised we haven’t gone mad yet.”

“If it ever gets too much, you know we can take some time off. Work on other cases.”

The man sighs, running a hand over his face and looking back at the camera feed of the mostly dark room, although the figure of Subject 1548 is still somewhat visible.

“I feel like we’re close,” the woman says. “Maybe if we try changing up the food, or some other stimulation-”

“You know we can’t do that.”

He’s right, and she knows it.

In silence, they shut off the monitors and gather their belongings to leave for the night.

He can’t help but glance over the notes scattered on the table, including the image of Subject 1548 from the day they brought her in.

“What makes a woman believe she’s a reincarnation of a 16th-century queen?” He mumbles aloud. “And why does she think that her husband’s other dead wives are alive too? Why are they in a pop-girl group?”

The woman steps in front of him, blocking his view of the notes. “Let’s get out of here. You need some sleep.”

They part ways for the night, and try as they might, Subject 1548 stays stuck in their minds all the way to their homes.

---

And the next morning, Catherine Parr wakes up with her laptop smushed against her face, ass-up in the bed, at half-past eight in the morning.

[hphmmatthewluther]

Merula Snyde and the Letter from Someone

To  Dear To  Merula,

 The sound of scrunching up paper is heard, followed by a quiet thump as the ball of scrap is thrown into the bin.

 Merula,

 I don’t know if this’ll get to you before Christmas, but I wanted to send this to you anyway as a present. In the parcel is a Walkman, which allows you to listen to music wherever you want, as well as a tape with some of my favourite songs on it. Also in there is a list of all the corridors and areas I managed to charm so they could allow muggle devices to work (I don’t know if it’ll work in the Dungeons- Snape caught me while I was doing the spell and told me to leave - sorry.)

 I hope you’re having an okay time, I imagine the castle is a fair bit quieter now, which should be nice. I know that Chiara and Talbott are staying at Hogwarts over the summer, and so maybe it would be nice to spend time with them...well, maybe with Chiara, Talbott likes to keep to himself really.

 Well,  The Celestial Ball was amazing, Merula, as I knew it would be from the moment I asked you to go with me. I know I’m not that good with words, which is sort of why I’ve sent you that tape. As crazy as it sounds, I couldn’t really see myself going with anyone other than you. I still enjoy our rivalry, of course, but I can’t deny how what happened there made me feel.

 I can’t wait to see you again,

 Matthew.

 ***

 Trembling pale hands with slightly faded nail varnish held the letter over a sofa, as their owner’s pink eyes read its contents. Then she read it again. And again. And a fourth time. Merula took a deep breath. Her mind was, to put it mildly, a bit of a mess right now. It was the day before Christmas Eve (Matthew had once called it Christmas Eve Eve, which even Merula found pretty funny) and she had been sitting in her room when the most evil-looking owl in history had flown into the Dungeons to deliver her a smallish parcel and a letter. She had been even more surprised to learn that this Owl belonged to Matthew Luther, who she had, as the letter reminded her, went with to the Celestial Ball just a week ago. Merula sighed. He’d written to her. He couldn’t wait to see her again. Merula didn’t notice herself giggling. She’d sat down in the corridor, with the walkman on her lap, and Matthew’s owl giving her the evil eye. She traced her finger over the final paragraph again, glad that nobody else was in the Common Room.

 Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she noticed someone standing in the doorway in a purple hoodie. Merula’s eyes widened as Night Rhea merely grinned at her.

“Eep!” Merula exclaimed, clutching the letter close to her chest, “Wh-what is it?! What do you want?!”

Merula’s fear only grew at the sound of more Slytherins entering the common room. Night looked at Merula, at the letter, at Matthew’s Owl, and at the pink on her cheeks. Merula gulped as they grinned an almost sinister grin.

“Hey look! Matthew sent Merula something!” they exclaimed. At once there was a sound of “ooh!”s as the group moved into the Common Room. Merula recognised Cres Aragon, Ismelda, Liz and Barnaby in the crowd. Uh oh.

 “Ooh Matthew’s written to you!” Cres exclaimed, stepping forward. “Told you he would.”

“I...” Merula began. She took a breath. She was not going to be dragged into one of these simpering gossip circles. “Of course he did. This is Matthew we’re talking about.” She looked over at Matthew’s owl, which squinted at her.

“I didn’t expect him to have such a cool owl.” Ismelda admitted. “Dark. Brooding. Evil. Like my soul.”

“Matthew sent you a letter?!” Barnaby asked, “What did he say? Was it about how you two-'' he stopped suddenly looking at Merula’s face. “...um, how you went to the Celestial Ball together?”

“None of your business!” she snapped. “What Luther may or may not have written to me about does not concern any of you!”

“I think it does, Snyde...” Night said, leaning forward. “In fact I - Expelliarmus!”

 The letter went flying, and Night moved forward to catching, smirking as they succeeded. Turning to the others, and ignoring Merula’s pleas, they read over the letter. And smiled once again.

“Aww...what a romantic.” Night sighed, pretending to wipe away a tear. “You’ve found yourself a keeper, Snyde.”

Merula went a deep red. “I...uh...”

“Go on, Night, read it!” Cres said, sitting down in front of the large window overlooking the floor of the Lake.

Night looked at Merula. She didn’t seem to be enjoying this one bit. They sighed, and passed the letter back to Merula. “She can read it if she wants to.”

Merula nodded, taking the paper back. She looked around at the others, and sighed. “D-don’t tell anyone about this, ok?”

The group nodded. Merula sighed, and read Matthew’s words aloud. As she did, she found it very hard to keep her face in a scowl. By the time she had finished, she had a small but visible smile on her face.

 The group instantly erupted into conversation.

“Way to go, Merula!” laughed Cres.

“Who’d have thought Matthew’d have it in him to write that?” Night pondered aloud.

“Hmph. Muggle music is...isn’t bad...” Ismelda admitted.

“Where’s this man meant to be walking to?” Barnaby asked, gazing at the strange device.

“So what are you going to say back?” Liz asked her, feeding the owl a treat from her pocket.

“N-None of your business, Lizard!” Merula snapped, “I..I...I dunno, okay! I’m not used to letter-writing, I...look, I wanted to just send him some chocolate or something, you know, but now he’s sent me this and...”

“Why don’t you just send a small message,” suggested Cres, “you could put it on the tag or something, couldn’t you?”

 Merula grinned wildly for a moment, before racing off into the girls’ dormitories. When she returned, she had a christmas present with red wrapping, as well as a large owl following her. She put the present down on the table, and Merula’s owl sat beside Matthew’s, both immediately starting to stare each other down.

“Okaaay...” Merula began, Night noticing that she was using a pen, “What do I put?”

Barnaby raised an eyebrow. “You’re...asking us?”

“I thought you said it was ‘none of our business’, Merula...” sneered Ismelda. Merula ignored her.

“Okay…’Matthew’...’comma’” she muttered.

“Good start, Snyde.” chuckled Night.

“Hush, Rhea.” Merula snarled. “Where was I…’Thank-’”

“No, don’t start with the thank you, you’ll run out of things to say.” Liz said sagely.

“Fine. ‘The music is great. Thank you for the present and for your letter...’”without saying it aloud, she then wrote ‘I eagerly await your return to Hogwarts...it’s rather dull without you.’

“...Thanks again, Merula.” she finished, putting the pen back into her pocket. She then moved past Night over to her and Matthew’s owl.

“Just follow him, okay?” she asked. Her owl nodded. Matthew’s owl audibly scoffed at her, an impressive achievement for an owl. Merula then left with the two owls for the Owlery. When she got there, she was slightly surprised to see Talbott Winger there, feeding the owls.

“Can...I help you?” he asked, not looking away from the owls in front of him.

“I’m....just sending a letter to M-...to Luther,” she explained, wincing at her minor slip-up…”What about you?”

“Being alone...or at least I was.” Talbott sighed, getting up, “Is that a present for him?”

“None of your business, birdbrain!” Merula yelled, before looking down at the present. “...sorry. It’s just...I’m new to this, and want to go at my own pace, you know?”

Talbott stared at her, this other Merula which until now only Matthew and maybe Tulip had been able to see. “...he’s really started to rub off on you, you know that?”

Merula chuckled as the owls left with Matthew’s present in tow. She looked down at the walkman, put one headphone up to her ear, and pressed play. It worked.

“Yeah...” Merula said, as if just remembering then that Talbott was still there, “Maybe you’re right.”

(Night Rhea belongs to @night-rhea​ and Cres Aragon belongs to @cres-aragon​ !)

[belizedeservesbetter]

Six is Super Fun But Also Kinda Bad

sorry not sorry ‘bout what i said... 

In a way, I’m not entirely convinced Six is actually a musical. It feels more like a concert than anything, with a paper thin plot and dialogue that had me constantly cringing. However, much like a concert, I was there for the music and the music was of course fantastic. 

To begin, I want to say that I won the $30 lottery seats for this, which put me in the front row. To be very honest, I would not have paid any more than that to see this show. It is only about 70 minutes long and is again very much a concert and not a musical so I really couldn’t justify paying even a TKTS price for it. Unfortunately, the cheaper seats are usually in the back of the theater and this is very much a show where you want to be as close as possible. 

I really expected to be blown away by this show, but honestly? I was more disappointed than anything. The plot is genuinely bad and the dialogue is genuinely awful (filled to the brim with “lol” and social media references) and I’ll definitely be going into spoiler territory here but honestly it doesn’t even matter because there isn’t enough plot to hold the weight of a spoiler in the first place.

So basically the premise is these six queens are performing this show for you (how? why? don’t think too hard on it) since they have decided to form a girl group but will now hold a contest to see who had it worst with Henry VIII to see who will become the leader of the girl group - even though girl groups don’t really have leaders but again don’t think too hard on this. The six queens then each sing a song about their life and somehow skip all the actual interesting details about themselves before Catherine Parr (wife #6) is like guys WAIT we shouldn’t be pitting ourselves against each other! We should be feminist and be a TEAM and then they all turn to the audience and are like ACTUALLY we were a team all along and this was all a trick to get us the audience to see how bad comparing women is. Why was it a trick? Didn’t we already know comparing women is bad? Anyways, this “plot twist” occurs like ten minutes before the show ends and is just... kinda there? It’s very much a “oh okay” moment where you really can’t do anything but accept it for what it is because we know they’re gonna do the big MegaSix number at the end and that’s the best part anyway. 

But like I said before, the music is super fun and super catchy and in the moment is an absolute BLAST. So I had a fantastic time watching it because it’s a fun time, but once you give the show one single shred of thought it kind of falls apart completely. 

Also, the costumes are super gorgeous and I loved getting a front row seat to see all the details. I visited the Showstoppers NYC! exhibit in August and got to speak with one of the guys who hand makes Katherine Howard’s costume so it was very cool getting to see them all live and in person. 

Since the cast is only six people, I’ll go through them all (and their songs) one by one. Uniformly they were great, but I will admit that almost none of them stayed in character unless it was their turn to have their number. I blame this on the weird and clunky choreography, which is so excessive and so many moves that make them all look like robots. 

First up is Catherine of Aragon, played by Adrianna Hicks. She sings “No Way” which is a fantastic first song of the Queen Competition. She really commanded the stage and was super interactive with the audience.

Next up is Anne Boleyn, played by Andrea Macasaet. Her song is “Don’t Lose Ur Head” and it’s the best song in the show. It will in fact be stuck in my head forever and I loved how bubbly and fun Macasaet was! She is so tiny but her energy filled the entire theater! Her costume is also my favorite of the queens. 

However, as much as I loved her performance, I do take issue with how Anne Boleyn is portrayed. In actuality, Anne Boleyn was wicked smart and very religious and was not the ditzy having fun all day long person that she’s portrayed as. Her sister was Henry’s mistress and Anne really didn’t want to get involved with him. She was more interested in religion than anything else. 

(and a side note, something I found odd was Catherine of Aragon’s brief mention of Mary but Anne Boleyn not bringing up Elizabeth at all. She even jokes about writing lyrics for Shakespeare in a better version of her life but Elizabeth was not only one of the most influential queens England had but also saw Shakespeare’s plays) 

Which brings us to Jane Seymour, played by the lovely Abby Mueller, who looks and sounds strikingly like her sister. Unfortunately, Mueller is given the very worst song in the show in “Heart of Stone.” Oh man. This is a bad one. It’s the lowest energy song and has the worst lyrics and since you know the song is literally about Henry VIII you absolutely cannot get behind it. It’s a shame, because Mueller is giving the best performance in the show, and also the most consistent one!! 

This brings me to my wider Jane Seymour Problem. Jane’s whole character is basically “wait but actually I loved him” and the show kinda brushes aside the whole fact of Henry being completely awful whenever it comes to Seymour. Anne Boleyn does chime in a couple times with a “but he literally beheaded me” but Seymour is consistently trying to spin it around. The show doesn’t know how to navigate the fact that Henry probably only loved her because she gave him a son and that very little is actually known about this woman. In Jane’s little “better version of her life” in the last song, she actually pairs herself with Henry as a long term relationship/family thing, even though the whole point of the song before is that they don’t need Henry? Make it make sense, Six! Make it make sense! 

I’m gonna skip right over “Haus of Holbein” because that song was stupid and that whole sequence was stupid. 

Luckily the next song was way better, with Brittney Mack’s Anna of Cleves bringing down the house with “Get Down.” On the cast album, “Get Down” is the one I always skip but I don’t think I will anymore because Mack was incredible. She made that song one of the absolute highlights of the show. She was absolutely fantastic. 

Usually Katherine Howard is played by Samantha Pauly, but she was out and tonight the character was played by Courtney Mack, who was really wonderful. She can Sing with a capital S! “All You Wanna Do” is a really great song and it actually dives into interesting emotional territory and I wish more of the songs had that! I wish the show had more of that!! K Howard is usually the one no one talks about so I was glad she had a really good song that really laid out her life in a fairly raw way. 

Coming in at song number six is “I Don’t Need Your Love,” sung by Anna Uzele’s Catherine Parr. Uzele has a lovely voice but her song is kinda boring and the fact that it’s tied so tightly with the “plot twist” is kind of a let down. 

Then the six queens all sing a song (called “Six”) about what they would have liked their lives to be, and most of them are kind of absurd and have to do with becoming pop stars even though that wasn’t a thing back in Tudor England. 

Ultimatey, the show is ridiculously fun but has absolutely nothing to say, even though the show really thinks it’s saying something about feminism and history. It doesn’t. It really doesn’t. The closest it gets is “All You Wanna Do” and even then that’s barely breaking the surface. The show is also very high energy and high fun, so they expect you the audience to also gloss over all the inaccuracies and weird Jane Seymour stuff. 

This show is being built up as this pinnacle of feminist theatre but honestly it’s mostly mediocre writing that’s saved by catchy songs and powerhouse performers. 

Looking back at this review, it does look pretty negative but I swear I had a really good time! I swear it’s very fun! It just isn’t anything more than that. 

[reallunargift]

SISIDIDIS replied to your post: I’ve been thinking about your headcanons all day long, and there are so many questions fizzing in my mind! Thank you for sharing these with us! Nowadays, do you think that the personifications of Galicia, León and so on are still alive? Or do you think that they gradually withered and “died” once Spain and Portugal became unitary states?

sdfgfd the fact you gave them any thought at all just wow :’) I hope you realise I will talk way too much again!

I like to think they are, because the alternative is too sad for me if the Japanese prefectures can have personifications then so can these guys hahaha. So I imagine them as going from kingdoms to the current regions. I focus more on those two because they’re obviously more relevant to Port, but I imagine the same happened with the others (including those who remained under Al-Andalus for longer)

SISIDIDIS said: “And Port’s kinda weirded out by it (…) he doesn’t understand why they all fight over the other kid.” This is so interesting 👀 Do you think that’s when Port’s jealousy and inferiority complex kinda started? I mean, Galicia, Castille and León certainly never shied away from giving Toni preferential treatment. And what do you think Spain thought of Port when they first met? I imagine kid!Spain just wallowing in all that extra attention and gloating about it to Port.

Hmm that’s a good question! I really do think he was more weirded out by it than jealous at the time. (If anything, his inferiority complex would have started earlier, with always being under more powerful people. I really think it’s only much later that Toni comes to play a part in it) I don’t see him as wanting anything from the other kingdoms apart from respect (especially Galicia’s!)

And from Port’s perspective the attention Toni got didn’t translate to respect, it was more like he was a battle good luck charm trophy of sorts. Port saw it as Castile and the others trying to control Toni. Now, Toni definitely enjoyed the attention! I can see him talking about it and all the cool stuff he would see at Aragon’s and at Navarre’s and wow look at the nice robes Castile gave him etc etc. But I think Port really would have just thought “you idiot can’t you see they’re just holding you back.”

(Holding him back from what? Well, even though Port doesn’t have the same type of bond the others do with Toni, he still sees him as his equal the most out of everyone else. And if he’s meant to be a kingdom, then so is Toni. But if Toni isn’t given the chance to conquer territory and take on a territorial name, he won’t be anything. The eventual way in which Toni became a representative for the others didn’t even cross Port’s mind. Once Port became a kingdom and Toni didn’t, he sort of gave up on that idea of equals, but still had this weird little hope that he’d get to negotiate with Toni instead of the others one day)

And while Toni enjoyed the attention, I do think he also knew he was meant for more. I have this headcanon that Toni’s eyes were always very intense when looking at the others, because he knew he’d supersede them in time. Toni really did see the others’ territories as being his, but mostly kept that to himself.

(And post-independence, Port always got an eerie feeling when he looked at him, like he somehow knew what Toni was thinking and didn’t like that Toni might think he was also someone to take over.)

Do you mean when they first met under the other kingdoms? I think Toni would be happy to see his old friend again (they’re always that one constant in each other’s life, after all)

SISIDIDIS said: It’s fascinating how an underling became a kingdom, an upstart, and an equal of sorts with the older and stronger geopolitical entities inside the Peninsula, simply because a rebellious knight seized the mantle of a rebellious people. Fate does favor the bold, and Port embodies that perfectly.

It is! Though Port can’t claim to be an exclusive example (Castile did beat him in the county to kingdom race by like 100 years lol), as I guess most of the personifications had to have been bold to get where they are today!

“a rebellious knight seized the mantle of a rebellious people ”

That’s such a poetic way to put it! You have the best wording, I swear.

[fanfictiondatascience]

How to Get More Reviews: A Data Analysis

A time-shifted serial correlation analysis of reviewing and being reviewed.

Acknowledgements: Investigation by Arthur Liu with thanks to Dr. Cecilia Aragon and Jenna Frens for feedback and editing and also to team lead Niamh Froelich.

Is it true that giving someone a review will make that person more likely to write reviews as well? Conversely, is it true instead that writing more reviews yourself will help you get more reviews from others?

In this post, we explore one avenue of reciprocity by analyzing the time series of reviews given vs. reviews received. 

Of course, you have to be careful with this technique. The inspiration of the analysis we utilized comes partly from Tyler Vigen’s Spurious Correlations site (http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations) where he shows interesting correlations between clearly unrelated events. With a humorous perspective, he reminds us that correlation is not evidence of causation (since sociology doctorates and rocket launches are totally coincidental), but the analysis techniques here are an interesting technique to investigate potential relationships between two different time series.

Back to our topic of reciprocity, we wanted to investigate the relationship between reviews given and reviews received. We had two hypotheses that we were interested in testing: first, we were curious if users who received more reviews would be more inclined to give reviews themselves. Second, we were curious if giving reviews would help increase the number of reviews you personally received.

To get into specifics, here is an example plot of a real user’s review activity.

Let’s break it down. This plot follows the activity of a single user over the course of several years. It plots the total amount of reviews that they gave (in red) and also the total number of reviews that they had received on their fan fictions (in blue). What this chart shows us is that this is a user who has had a very consistent amount of activity in terms of giving out reviews. It also captures spikes in the number of reviews received (blue) which may correspond to having released a new chapter.

If there was a strong link between reviews given and reviews received in either direction, we would expect to see that increases in one is followed by increases in the other. Here is an example where we witness such a relationship:

Since it is harder to analyze the change in activity level from these cumulative plots, we then looked at the total number of reviews given each month. Here’s what that looks like for the same person:

This time, it is more apparent that there is a similar pattern in the activity behavior for the reviews given and reviews received. For this example, that similarity is a similar spiking pattern.

From Vigen’s website, we could naively apply a correlation calculation here, but there is a glaring flaw: one of the time series is clearly ahead of the other. So, what if we just shifted one of the time series so they overlapped and then computed the correlation? This is the basic intuition of serial correlation: we apply a range of possible shifts and then compute the correlation between these shifted graphs. The one with the highest correlation would be the one with the best match.

The results for different shifts:

The best shift of “11 frames”:

In other words, for this person, giving a lot of reviews correlates well with receiving a lot of reviews roughly 11 months later. Of course, this doesn’t prove any sort of causation, but we can speculate that the increased amount of reviews this user gave helped boost the amount of reviews they got later!

From this analysis of an individual person, we were curious how this extended to the larger community to see if these same trends existed! The short answer, “eh, not really,” but it is interesting to see why this cool pattern might not generalize adequately.

1. Not all individuals get reviews and give reviews at the same scale

Some users just like to give reviews and some users just like to write reviews!

For instance, here is someone who gives a lot of reviews and didn’t get many themselves.

Here is someone who gave some reviews, but then focused on writing stories and received a lot more reviews instead!

For graphs like these, it is hard to apply the analysis we did earlier because the relationship is likely a lot weaker or there might just not be enough data points to capture it anyway.

We can summarize these examples for the overall population by looking at the ratio between reviews given to reviews received.

For this sample of 10k users, we see that those who primarily receive reviews will have a larger ratio (right), and users who primarily give reviews will have a smaller ratio (left). In more detail, a ratio of 1.0 means that they only received reviews. For example: 10 reviews received / (10 reviews received + 0 reviews given) = 1. For a ratio of 0.0, it means they received no reviews. For each ratio, the graph shows the total count of the 10k users who had that ratio.

To address issue (1), we reduced the scope down to users who had a relatively equal ratio of reviews given vs. reviews received.

Additionally, we pruned for users who had received at least 10 reviews. This way, we would have enough data points to use for our analysis. In fact, this is also why there is a large spike in the 0.5 ratio which consisted of a lot of users who had written one or two reviews and received an equal amount.

With this cleaned up, we also computed the lags on a finer scale--weeks--instead of months since we noticed that months were not granular enough. We computed the most common lags, and here is a plot of the results. This lag is the shift applied to received reviews, and the correlation is how well the two series correlated with each other after the shift. A correlation of 1 means that as one increased, the other increased as well, a correlation of -1 means that as one decreased, the other increased, and smaller values such as 0.8 mean that the correlation was positive, but less strong.

So the result here is both a little messier and structured than we had hoped from our hypothesis, but that’s part of the research process!

To elaborate, in the X dimension, the lag, there isn’t a particular range that was significantly denser than the rest. In fact, if we looked at the histogram, we see something like this:

So we lied a little, it looks like that last lag of +20 weeks looks really popular, but this is actually an artifact caused by the serial correlation process. If you recall this graph:

The red line is the chosen lag at the peak. In this case, the shifting actually peaked, but if we had truncated the graph at 5, it would have simply picked that highest shift.

Not convinced? Here’s the same analytics, but now we calculated up to a lag of 40.

Looks like the 20 bucket wasn’t particularly special after all.

So ignoring this last bucket (and the first bucket for a similar reason), we notice that our histogram matches this noisiness that we observed for the lags.

What does this mean? It suggests that there is no general pattern that can succinctly summarize the larger population, and that we are unable to conclude that there is a common average positive or negative lag relationship between the number of reviews someone has given and the number of reviews that they have received. Some authors sent more reviews after receiving more reviews (positive lags), some authors received more reviews after getting reviews (negative lags), and some authors did not exhibit much of a relationship either way (the first and last buckets which didn’t find a reasonable shift). Although these relationships do exist, the timing was not consistent overall so we can’t say anything about fanfiction.net authors in general.

So...

2. Looking across users, we do not see consistent behavior in a time-shifted relationship between a person’s received and given review count

Even when we look at the lags with the highest correlation (r > 0.7), we see that this even distribution of lags still holds.

In summary, this isn’t the dead end! (With research, it rarely is!) But it helps paint a better picture of the users in the community and why this approach may not be well suited to encapsulate it well. We see that the relationship between reviews received and given doesn’t follow a necessarily time-shifted relationship and that in fact, this shift can go either direction. Try taking a look at your own reviewing trends, and see where you would be located within these graphs! Are you someone who has a positive shift or a negative time shift… or no strong correlation at all?

In the meanwhile, we’re still exploring some other interesting approaches in reciprocity! Stay tuned :)

[sanchoyo]

danny phantom season 2, ep 12-16 thoughts! these episodes, in comparison to the first 10 or so, felt way more laid back and low-stakes, which I appreciate sometimes. I didn't appreciate how lazy jack's halfa design was in masters of time, it made me so annoyed I redesigned it. 👎🏻 u_u

see prev episode thoughts in this tag <3

-'picking a fight with me and my upgraded form!' 'you upgraded to a mullet?' DANNNNY. YOU CANT SAY THAT TO TECHNUS. YOUVE HAD A MULLET TWICE NOW ('fun' split danny, and evil future danny BOTH HAD THEM). I HAVE THE RECEIPTS.

-danny seeing technus hurting valerie and yelling I AM GOING TO BREAK YOU IN HALF. SAMEEEE <3

-axion labs is now a part of vladco. FUCK YOU VLAD. hes not even really IN this episode, but just thought I'd throw out a nice fuck you anyway.

-'capable of blasting a single person into space in (2) minutes!' tucker. that would kill someone. i mean yeah they might get to space, but theres NO WAY THEY WOULDNT CATCH FIRE, OR THEIR ORGANS WOULDNT LIQUIFY BECAUSE OF THE STRAIN. THEY'D PROBABLY PASS OUT BEFORE THEN, BUT. ...no, okay, I get why vlad bought this company. this is RIGHT up his alley.

-danny KNOWS VAL DIDNT DO THIS, THAT SOMEONE STOLE THE SUIT. AND SPENDING ALL NIGHT CHATTING WITH HER. <3 and val is a 9TH DEGREE BLACKBELT?? danny's mom is, too!! omg and she hunts ghosts, his parents would love her. and her fav fruit is kumquat bc its a funny word. im so with danny val is amazing. I love her and I Do Not Want To Hear It From Sam.

-I knew danny wanted to be an astronaut, but the bowling tidbit is like. yes give me more useless info abt these characters, I love tiny details that make them feel more human, and im glad hes got hobbies aside from ghost stuff, we dont really see a lot of that!!! (I mean, we knew 'fun' danny from when he split himself in half liked bowling, so obv it makes sense he LIKES it, but hes very GOOD at it. so proud of him, bowling king) val calling him neil armstrong and them teasing each other. LOVE THAT.

-technus you are my favorite grandpa for setting this up. SAM WHY ARE YOU BEING SO CREEPY BE HAPPY FOR YOUR FRIEND!!! STOP SPYING ON THEM!!! who actually cares if technus did 'set them up' together, theyre having fun and enjoy each others company!!! 'you think the universe wants you two to be together?' 'i dunno, but maybe /I/ do!' EXACTLY DANNY!!! SOO TRUE.

-and valerie being happy sam said she wants to try and be happy for them and make room at the lunch table for them. and hugging sam over it. VAL NEEDS MORE FRIENDS.

-VAL GOING AFTER TECHNUS IN HER SUIT WITH (1) MILK, AND (1) TREE BRANCH AND KEYS!!!. I LOVE YOUUUU BEST GIRL. her new suit kicks ass

-dannys like 'HEY IM AN ASTRONAUT :D' AW. ...HES IN SPACE... the fact he's actually intending to give her the ring. with SAMS NAME ON IT?? IM CRINGING DANNY NO. YOU CANT DO THAT...thank god he didnt. thank god valerie cut it off and said they can just stay friends for now. tbh, they both have a lot on their plates!! they obv both still like each other...it can be a future thing!! when she knows about phantom! youre 14 theres no need to rush. I just want her to have friends and be happy :(

-...danny struggles to do (1) pull up. SAME. but all the ghost fighting in phantom form REALLY doesnt carry over at ALL? that sucks

-sam being as fit as she is, is not just a goth. shes a goth jock.

-honey I Shrank Our Kid, One of his Enemies, and his Bully: the episode

-dash's crush on phantom is So Obvious. fitness buddies :) watching them interact always makes me laugh. also, phantom, with PANTS. 'how many costume changes you gonna go through, what is this, vegas??' DASSH DJKSFHASKDF

-MADDIE GOING AFTER THE MOUSE WITH A BROOM, WHAT THE FUCK. AAAH. JUST BUY SOME KIND OF MOUSE TRAP.

-danny likes lime and vinegar chips. which sound very good.

-'our boy finally has the physical prowess of a 60 year old president!' ...poor danny LMAO

-'what's wrong with beauty pageants' oh tucker you sweet naïve child. what ISNT wrong with them. who approved this for a high school?? (I mean, yes. unfortunately child pageants exist, but...) also danny and tucker once again treating the pretty girls like objects. I need to meet the grown man who wrote this, I just want to talk...

-prince aragon's dragon form reminds me of maleficent (color scheme wise) which is always a bonus. considering the episode is called beauty marked, I feel like the sleeping beauty references are deliberate

-sam with the fake fangs. once again her accessories never miss. hate the 'not like other girls, girls who get sucked into this kind of thing are all shallow and all want to be carbon copies' bs tho.

-sam trying to be the Worst Bride, being rude as shit. DORA IS GOING TO GET KILLED. DID YOU MISS THE PART WHERE SHE SAID THE PRINCE WILL HAVE HER HEAD IF YOU ARENT THE IDEAL BRIDE. YOU /KNOW/ DANNY WILL COME SAVE YOU. JUST ACT CHILL UNTIL THEN. even if you were doing fine to get him to take off the crown, consider maybe not letting his poor sister get punished also?? sure, she could also take off the crown and has dragon powers, but did you know that for sure?? dora didnt even really realize it until you guys talked!! (or at least, she was scared to stand up to him. you had no guarantee she would...) but. good for dora. ANOTHER friendly ghost to add to the List :)

-tucker is so under appreciated in his time. if he was doing a tech-based campaign today he'd have a better shot. people in 2004 had NO IDEA how much tech would be a part of our day-to-day lives...altho. tbh if you're going to be running for student council president, maybe you should..focus on things to actually improve the school? since he's going for a tech angle, he could say like, he would be running fundraisers for the schools computers to be upgraded, etc? we've already SEEN he can be good at money-making entrepreneur type stuff!!

-oh my god wait. this episode is JUST YUGIOH?????! A REBORN PHAROH USING A TEENAGER AS A VESSEL?? YESSSSSS

-tucker using his new minion to feed him grapes and carry him. AND LOCUSTS ONTO THE BULLIES. I love how when he's possessed, he gains winged eyeliner.

-this episode is giving me big 'plankton makes everyone in bikini bottom his slaves and build monuments of him from the spongebob movie' vibes. and the pharaoh has a traitor who works for him? VERY big yugioh vibes. aknadin confirmed

-I like that danny is still completely exhausted after using ghostly wail. (still patiently waiting on him to get duplication)

-LOVE the fenton's 80s outfits. I get hes 14 and embarrassed by everything they do because theyre his parents, but. cmon, this is one objectively cool thing theyve done. love 80s fashion.

-...was vlad just standing on that streetlight waiting for danny to come out? how'd he know they'd be coming out the back? how long has he been up there???

-oh, wait, his ecto-acne has flareups? that SUCKS. danny was...well I dont want to say he was LUCKY HE HALF-DIED, but he was lucky his was pretty instant (I'm assuming that had to do with the power/scale of the portals being different?) I remember in the ep we met him, vlad made a point of saying he was stuck in a hospital for a long time, so. that really actually sucks and I feel bad. not that it excuses anything he's done...but like. it does suck.

-vlad being so sure danny wouldnt help him he made it somehow contagious to his friends to make sure he'd get help? danny is a nice boy, he wouldve helped if it was anyone else. the only reason he wouldn't have is because of the shit vlad did to him, on purpose. vlad 100% dug his own grave by being the biggest asshole, so it is very hard to feel bad for him.

-clockwork is back!!! and making danny learn lessons The Hard Way. Uhhh, okay. I kind of get Danny’s logic, that time traveling this far back would prevent vlad from becoming a halfa also, ergo no arch nemesis or ectoacne to worry about. But the fact that was basically the first solution Danny came up with to solve this problem is actually so funny. It’s so extreme

-APPRICIATION FOR THESE 80S LESBIAN BG CHARACTERS.

-vlad telling maddie in the lab (in the 80s) he has something he's wanted to tell her 'for a long time'...how long have they known each other? I assumed they met in college, since jack always calls vlad his college buddy/roommate, so jack and vlad for sure met in college, but did vlad know maddie longer? thats surprising if so. Tho we don’t know what year of college they’re in so they could mean they met as freshmen and a few years have past…speaking of maddie shes crushing the 80s look.

-vlad blames jack, but. maybe dont stick your face 2 inches from the portal??! THIS FEELS LIKE LAB SAFETY BASICS. IF SOMETHING HAS POTENTIAL TO BE DANGEROUS, DONT GET NEAR IT. WITH YOUR FACE UNPROTECTED IN ANY WAY. (altho jack didnt really give a Big Warning besides screaming BONZAI. so. also that, but cmon.) also, they need gloves, goggles, and to pull all of their hair back tbh. but fuck lab safety, I guess!

-cryyyyinnng at how lazy they were with jack's ghost form design, its just plasmius' design on jack!!! you couldve given him his own design!!

-there. I did that in about 10 minutes and its somehow less lazy than what made it into the show. embarrassing! better yet, I think the episode would've been better if maddie would've gotten the ectoacne. or maybe its just me, wanting to see her design! anyway. I'm sure people have already done redesigns of them both as halfas. I have to go look after I finish this watch through. Also mildly frustrated jacks resentment and bitterness is basically also a copy paste of vlads backstory. They’re different characters, I really don’t think jack would stew in bitterness and jealousy the same way vlad would!! I also don’t think he’d give up after one time of trying to hunt ghosts and getting laughed at. Our canon timeline says different…I dunno, I get it was for laughs, but I’m annoyed because the POTENTIAL this plot has…

-did vlad really wear a stupid cheese hat to his wedding. ok actually that kinda rules. and the cheese door knocker. the dairy-only buffet table. vlad still got rich, just on being the New Dairy King. (Assuming that means he owns a lot of dairy businesses?) ok! this actually is great. hope maddie isn't lactose intolerant!

-'no matter how hard I tried, I could never get rid of my ghost half, the half I knew Maddie could never accept' ohh, ouch, what a horrible thing to say to her HALF GHOST SON. 'YOUR MOM WILL NEVER ACCEPT YOU' BASICALLY.

-maddie strapping danny to the table with a lazer pointed at him in a secret lab she keeps from vlad that she makes a point of saying is sound proof so he can scream all he wants...CHRIST. DANNYS POOR PYSCHE.

-also, not to feel bad for alternate vlad (because, he did lie to maddie saying jack blames her and never wants to see her again...) but. being married to a woman 20+ years and she immediately goes back to jack? if she didnt love vlad and feels like she had to hide shit from him, and says she wasted her best years with him, WHY MARRY HIM. it feels like leading him on!!! cannot believe im feeling bad for vlad, but. this alternate timeline vlad is significantly Less Horrible than Our Vlad. did she not think she'd get funding for her ghost stuff? (which, fair assumption since they're considered 'ghost fanatics/nuts in canon...but...) why did she think jack or vlad would be her ONLY OPTIONS? be like your sister. be single. Actually, this au could’ve been really interesting if after the accident, vlad lied to her and said jack never wanted to see her again, but she stays single. Imagine how much that would bug vlad… like, in her mind, it was never a competition it was jack or no one type situation…

-danny being like 'leave him ALONE' this jack is a HOMEWRECKER, DANNY. let them go to court and settle this at the least. ...or just throw vlad into the portal. (100% human, defenseless vlad) CHRIST, MADDIE THATS BRUTAL. THATS MURDER.

-danny seeing his mom immediately accepting him and his dad being half ghosts in this universe, if I was him this would be a great sign that his universe's maddie would also.

-*maddie voice* "clockwork will help!" *2 seconds later, with clockwork* "I will Not Help." TOUGH LOVE KING. YES LET DANNY SEE THE SODA HIMSELF AND DEVOLP BETTER OBSERVATION SKILLS.

-when clockwork ""reset time to the way it was"" just before danny "meddled"" ...did he really erase a whole alternate timeline? ...damn. because maddie and danny both called it an alternate timeline by name, it splitting when the college incident went different, so it wouldnt have really mattered if he reset it, right. like because danny's timeline is on a different stream? why didnt clockwork just. show danny a replay and not Reset That Timeline. wh...I wonder how many people that Erased From Existence. Anyway! once again stating clockwork is casually terrifying!

[absolutelyinvinciblebritishgent]

What if the Sound Trio survived and became Leaf ninjas?

Headcanons under the cut (bitch, it’s a lot of headcanons)

~ Chunin Exam Finals/Invasion~

Dosu was shown to be suspicious of Orochimaru because of the whole Sasuke/curse mark thing and seemed like he wasn’t wanting to be a part of Orochimaru’s shit anymore so he’s the one who realizes something is up

Rather than face Gaara he somehow finds out about sand’s allegiance with sound (overhearing Baki and Kabuto on the way to Gaara, eavesdropping on Orochimaru [because, again, sus], etc...) and that’s what pushes him to defect from sound (also how he manages to live)

Dosu, Zaku, and Kin aren’t necessarily close, but in the anime Dosu did sort of say he was gonna get revenge on behalf of Zaku for what happened to his arms so there is a sense of something there (whether it be friendship, camaraderie, or just wanting to stick together to survive... idk) and Dosu tells his teammates what’s up and convinces them that they gotta GTFO

Zaku is a little more difficult to convince because why would Orochimaru do that to him? He saved Zaku from being a street rat, he gave Zaku power

Dosu ain’t having it and is like “if you wish to stay behind then that is your decision, in the end it is better for us to not have to carry any dead weight” (obviously referring to Zaku’s inability to do anything because of his arms)

Dosu then proceeds to tell Zaku how he no longer serves a purpose without his arms and he was nice enough to still want to take Zaku with him, Orochimaru would not be so kind

Zaku is upset because he knows Dosu has a point and they all leave

They (read: Dosu) decide that their best chance of survival is staying in Konoha because, the minute they leave, the sound village/Orochimaru will be gunning for their asses and also they’d be missing-nin, so others would try to kill them too

But what can they do to assure they don’t get imprisoned or killed due to having worked under Orochimaru? Rat out the sound village and give all the information they know/found out about the invasion and sand’s involvement

Third Hokage is a cool dude and also was Orochimaru’s teacher so he knows the kind of power this bitch can have over people which is why he agrees to let the sound trio stay and have them watched by Anbu

Dosu does not participate in the chunin exam finals because witness protection, or something

The invasion still happens because Orochimaru ain’t stupid. His “pawns” are nowhere to be found so it’s likely they’re betraying him, so obviously he makes changes to the plan

Dosu, Kin, and Zaku do not participate in fighting off the invasion because, uh, super strict house arrest orders???

Third Hokage dies and this FREAKS the trio out because a) oh shit Orochimaru actually did it and b) we’re only allowed to be here because of him, so what’s going to happen to us

Council is deciding what to do with them and has them staying hidden/as they were, but what’s more important to them is finding Tsunade and having her take over as Hokage so the trio are just anxiously chilling

Tsunade is Hokage now and she decides to let them stay because they turned their backs on Orochimaru and also she trusts Sarutobi’s judgment on letting them stay initially, but they are still going to be watched by Anbu to be sure

Naruto and co. find out about the trio and they are PISSED because “not only did you try to kill Sasuke, not only are you from the village that attacked us, not only did you work for Orochimaru but you did nothing to defend Konoha during the invasion. If you want to be a part of this village then you should have helped”

Tsunade tells these bitches to simmer down. They were under Anbu house arrest. She’s Hokage and they need to respect her decision. Also Zaku, let’s fix your arms.

~Sasuke Retrieval Arc~

Everyone is immediately on the trio’s ass because “we knew you couldn’t be trusted”

Tsunade has to tell everyone to stfu again

The trio want to go (to prove themselves) and feel they can be of assistance but Tsunade is like Catherine of Aragon because she says there’s no no no no NO WAY. It’s already a dangerous mission, it might be more so for them because Orochimaru is probably after their heads for betraying him and knows all of their skills

Everything about the arc is the same until the point where Shikamaru, Kiba, and Lee need help. Instead of the Sand Siblings being the ones to arrive it’s the sound trio

Zaku saves Kiba... mainly because I imagine them being friends once the trio are accepted and I just want this to be the beginning of their friendship. How he saves him idk because I’m not creative when it comes to fights

Kin saves Shikamaru. Again idk how. Zaku’s slicing sounds waves make more sense here because they work similar to Temari’s fan but I want it to be Kin because kunoichi vs. kunoichi, genjutsu vs. genjutsu, and also the idea of Kin saving the guy who beat her in such an embarrassing way does something to me, but also is a sort of redemption? I just want this battle to show off how skilled Kin can be because she was very underutilized and kinda weak in the original story and I love her so much, she deserves to do cool shit. So let her outsmart Tayuya and, in a way, she is outsmarting Shikamaru because he had no more plans to fall back on

Dosu saves Lee. Again, idk how and, again, I think Zaku’s slicing sound waves would be better here because they can keep Kimimaro (a close range fighter) at bay but I guess seeing Dosu and Kimimaro throwing hands would be cool. And then you have that redemption moment with Lee because Dosu kicked his ass in the forest of death and now he’s saving Lee!

After the mission, despite its failure, the trio are accepted as leaf shinobi and are introduced to their new sensei: cue Anko crashing through the window with a big sign introducing herself again

Similarly to the moment when Naruto spoke out and Anko threw a kunai at him, Zaku gives a snide comment and Anko is immediately at his throat, and then she’s like “JK! But don’t say that again you little shit!”

Anko was chosen to lead the trio due to her past with Orochimaru and because of that she can better understand them

~Other Headcanons~

It took the Konoha 12 a while to accept the trio. The first ones to accept them were Kiba, Lee, and Shikamaru (duh) but also Choji and even Naruto. Choji became cool with them when he found out Shikamaru was cool with them because he trusts Shikamaru’s judgment, and despite originally trying to kill his teammate, Naruto accepts them because they came out and helped so that means they’re a-okay in his book. Neji was slightly taken aback but also accepted them pretty quickly. Basically, the retrieval team was like “yeah okay” and vouch for them.

The ones who took the longest to come around were Ino and Sakura because did y’all just forget what happened at the forest of death???

As I said, I imagine Kiba and Zaku being friends. Mainly because I feel they have similar personalities in the sense that they’re both pretty cocky, boisterous, and talk shit. I imagine them kinda being like rivals in the sense of they’re always trying to one up each other

Zaku is still not fond of Shino because of the whole bugs in arms thing so whenever Shino is around Zaku is just like “I hate your teammate” to Kiba

Kin/Shikamaru could potentially replace the Temari/Shikamaru relationship. Both Kin and Temari are very similar in the sense of being an ex-villain, being viewed as scarier/more intense compared to the Konoha girls, being older by a couple years, and they both lost (well, Temari technically won but we all know she lost) to Shikamaru. Because of this the Kin/Shikamaru relationship wouldn’t be all that different to how the Temari/Shikamaru relationship is shown

That being said I love the sand siblings and don’t want them gone and because of how similar I feel Kin and Temari are they become really good friends and Kin enjoys when Temari visits. They both make Shikamaru’s life hell though. Double Trouble™️

Also I said potentially because I like exploring the idea of Kin/Zaku or Kin/Dosu (:

Dosu and Shino actually get along really well (much to the dismay of Zaku). They’re the type of people where they can sit in silence with each other and it’s just chill. And when they have to work together they kinda have flawless teamwork and don’t even need to speak to know what the other plans on doing

Kin and Sakura actually get along now? They’re not best friends by any means but they can be civil and respect each other

Team Kurenai and Team Sand are the teams that the trio get along with the best/most easily tho

Kin cut her hair to her lower back. Cue everyone cracking jokes about Neji and Kin looking the same from behind. Kin stops tying her hair after that

The trio have really well trained ears because back in Otogakure they had to learn to pick up on the subtlest of sounds in order to spy on enemies and communicate at such a low volume that to any normal ear sounds like silence but to them the message is loud and clear

Because of this they’re all amazing singers (Dosu is the best tho because he has the best trained ear. Seriously, being able to tell what someone is writing based on the sounds of their pencil? Skills.) and everyone likes hearing them sing.

That being said, despite being from the land of sound they didn’t actually know any songs because the sound village doesn’t really do music. It was forbidden because no one is allowed joy in the land of sound. Jk. But it did have to do with depriving people of normalcy because Orochimaru was creating an army of followers

This little singing/music tidbit was discovered by Naruto and he took it upon himself to show the trio music. It wasn’t all good music, but it’s music!

Also, despite being the best singer, Dosu doesn’t really do it. Dude doesn’t even hum. He’ll only sing if Kin and Zaku start pestering or if Anko wants him to

The first (and only) time Kin and Zaku saw Dosu cry was shortly after they became leaf shinobi. Anko and Tsunade were telling the team how brave it was for them to leave Orochimaru and sound behind, and Anko especially complimented Dosu on taking him and his team out of that situation. Kin and Zaku had been trying to hold back tears and keep up their tough image but the minute they saw Dosu crying, not trying to wipe away his tears or hide them or anything they lost it

No one talks about their little crying session. It’s a secret

Despite getting his arms fixed by Tsunade, Zaku still has problems with them, especially his right one (I think that’s the one that got blown off) and needs to get them treated consistently. Partly due to the fact they he didn’t give himself all the time to heal after Tsunade fixed him because he went to help the retrieval team and, mainly, because of Orochimaru’s experiments. Like, essentially Zaku’s air tube surgery was actually kind of botched and, for lack of a better term, experimental, and is fucking with the nerves and muscles and chakra in his arms and kinda eating away at them. And the crazy damage he took from getting his arms blown off only fucked everything up more

Eventually Zaku gets a better version of his air tube in his left arm and has to completely replace the right arm with a cool prosthetic that lets him do stronger/cooler jutsus

Kin has combined singing with her genjutsu and has created a sort of mind control jutsu... I may or may not have gotten this idea while listening to Come Little Children and remembering that Sarah Sanderson would control kids with song

The trio think Sasuke is a fUCKING DUMBASS for willingly going with Orochimaru. Like, bitch we had to leave that no good asshole for the betterment of our lives and you just waltz out of Konoha and straight into his arms?! What is you doing Uchiha?!

[onestowatch]

The Band Camino Aim For Anthemic and Emotional Highs on Debut Album [Q&A]

After one-and-a-half years of being stuck inside, not only is The Band Camino back on tour with Dan + Shay but they have also dropped their long-awaited self-titled album, The Band Camino. The highly-anticipated album combines ‘80s synths, punchy hooks, and vibrant anthems that are guaranteed to vibrate across the crowd during live shows. Beyond the infectious sonics, The Band Camino has its fair share of important and deep-rooted messages. From stepping back and taking in what’s around you to not taking life for granted, the trio takes us through a much needed rollercoaster of emotions. 

We had the pleasure of sitting down, virtually, with The Band Camino to discuss their debut album and plenty more!

Ones to Watch: I already have The Band Camino on repeat; it’s amazing! What’s the story behind choosing to go with your band name as the title for your debut album?

Spencer: It just felt appropriate. Like this album is a perfect snapshot of who we are at this time. Always ready to grow and change but this is exactly where we are right now. You’ve probably told this story a million times but for those who may not know, how did The Band Camino get its start?

Spencer: Jeffery and I started the band at University of Memphis. Jeffery was wanting to be an Americana / country artist and I played in his band, then one day we were just like “well this clearly isn’t that” and we started The Band Camino. We had a few different members along the way and met Garrison in the summer of 2018 and then the band was complete. You played your first show in over a year-and-a-half in Nashville and are currently on tour! How does it feel to be back on stage performing for your fans?

Jeffery: Incredible. No other word to describe it. After just sitting home and watching time pass for the past year-and-a-half, we’re all more grateful than ever to be able to get back out and play. “Roses” was the first single released off the album. What’s the meaning behind the song and why was it chosen as the first drop?

Jeffery: It just felt like the best foot forward because of the message. It was written as a pep talk to yourself, a reminder to the person in the mirror that sometimes you just have to step back and look at what’s around you. What was your writing process like for this album? Did the pandemic have an impact on it compared to how you guys did things in the past?

Spencer: We did a few writing retreats, wrote on our own, wrote however we felt was right at the time. Songs came from a ton of different places. Rather than how the songs were written, it changed the content more than anything. What do you want your listeners to take away from The Band Camino?

Jeffery: Hopefully whatever you’re looking for at the time. It runs the gamut with positive songs, heartbreak songs, songs about personal doubt. You made your national tv debut on Jimmy Kimmel just a few weeks ago. What was that experience like?!

Garrison: Wish we had been able to actually get the experience of going to the TV studio and all that, but there’s another one we can chalk up to Covid. Was still so cool to see ourselves on TV! Did you find it difficult to write 14 songs or were there any other challenges you faced along the way?

Spencer: We wrote WAY more songs than the ones that made it on the album. The biggest challenge was just picking the ones that made the album. A few not as serious questions but still very important… what are your go to tour snacks?

Cheez-Its, Guac & Salsa, Sour Patch Kids, and Celsius Energy. Dream venue to play at?

Spencer: Wembley.

Garrison: Aragon Ballroom. 

Jeffery: Terminal 5 in NYC, which we MIGHT be doing soon - more on that soon enough. If you could tour or collaborate with anyone dead or alive, who would it be?

Spencer: Eagles

Garrison: The Killers 

Jeffery: John Mayer Who are your Ones to Watch?

Spencer: Slow Pulp, Hastings

Jeffery: Hastings, Valley, Arlie

Garrison: The Paper Kites The Band Camino is available everywhere you can stream it.