#did a readmore cause some reasons got kinda personal

[mueritos]

Hey! Asking about your experience with being punk/punk adjacent and also in academia. How do you handle the two? Punk action and activism is grassroots, which I try to be involved in, but I feel like I’m just speaking big words and writing into an echo-chamber about gender. Like the only good I do is explaining to a group of cis people terminology. What are your experiences on this, if you have any?

Hmm. Yea this was difficult for me to balance too. I'll insert a readmore cuz this got kinda long.

I enjoy academia and research and being able to have more advanced conversations with people, but I was also sick of being in classes or circles of people who I knew would speak "woke" for the sheer fact of looking like good people, but on the down low were incredibly racist, classist, queerphobic, and just down right nasty carceral people. It was difficult trying to sift through who was safe to open up to and who wasn't, because many people were actually liberals in disguise (even if they called themselves leftists or leftist aligned). I also was never shy about being an anarchist/punk, I was the only person who wore my spiked jackets and boots to class, my outfits were loud, but I also began seeing some other queer people I knew wear their own jackets because they were encouraged by me (so that was nice).

I was doing activism on campus while in undergrad alongside the usual academic theory/research stuff, and it turns out that people actually will hate your guts the moment you start pointing out problems. The usual "YOU become the problem the second you point out THE problems", so I faced a lot of social backlash, even from other marginalized people who I had confided in about problems. My advice is that unless you're willing to become one of the most hated people on campus, don't do your activism on campus. It's a surefire way of making enemies, even enemies in people you have never met in your life. There are plenty of local orgs, food banks, and churches with programming that you could be way more productive in than trying to combat institutionalized oppression like that of an academic institution. You can try, believe me because I did, and while I learned a lot about organizing, I also learned when to give up and focus on my community instead of changing systems.

You pointed out that you're getting sick of explaining to cis people. This is definitely something you can stop doing, if you'd like. I stopped giving up my labor to educate other people (within reason) because I was one of the few trans people on campus. But I also have this value that I am not about to let some person walk around with the wrong idea about marginalized communities, so I always speak up when people say incorrect things (this has also caused some yt people to avoid me lol). Of course, you do this with compassion and with the goal of making sure their future interactions with marginalized people go better, but after a certain point, you need to be able to hold your energy for where you want to put it. Put more pressure on your institution or adjacent orgs to have things like safezone training (or bring in queer orgs for trainings/lectures). You can also just tell people some websites to check out instead of answering their questions, because surprise to them, their questions can in fact be solved by a simple search, they just are far too lazy to do that.

I dunno tho. I still struggle with growing so much in terms of punk/anarchist theory and ideas, but i have a serious lacking in actual community organizing. I'm introverted, don't like big noisy crowds, and I am quite socially anxious. Being punk is like my armor in a world that doesn't like me, because I find people fuck with me less when Im in spikes and boots. I find theory and academia so fulfilling for my virgo brain, but I also don't shame myself for not being active in local community. I know there will be a time I will be, but I also know that everyone is helping in the movement in the ways they can. It doesn't matter if that is at the food bank, in protest, on the computer, or by reading theory. All of it is equally important, and some of us aren't going to be good at everything.

I found myself feeling far more productive and alive when I was working with communities I knew would keep me safe. Started surrounding myself with more BIPOC queer people who were also working against carceral thinking, and I found my life to be way more enjoyable. connecting authentically with people who you feel safe with is just as important as organizing or protesting. You can organize or protest, but if you don't have a community to turn to, you'll burn out and won't be able to sustainably stay in the movement. Focus on energies, peoples, and love, connect authentically and have difficult conversations about love and politics and theory. You can be an academic, but still maintain the punk values you love in your daily life. Humans are made of contradicting values and experiences, we shouldn't shame each other for that and instead hold the multiple and contradicting truths in us all.

I can go on and on, but ill leave it at that. feel free to ask anything else in specific tho.

[marisexmas]

I'm curious, is there any other things in MOTHER 2 with Porky that got poorly translated or removed in the English version? I did notice a lot of Japanese fans tend to be more sympathetic toward him, so that made me wonder if his character is more clear in the original version

I guess I had a lot more to say about this than I thought because Holy Crap it got pretty long. but it's interesting too, so it was worth it. I'll just readmore it for the length though:

The only other Definite example I can think of off the top of my head is the scene after beating carpainter, where porky asks ness to be friends again before pulling the whole "haha I lied, sucker!" thing and running away. He still does the "I lied" in JP, but the way his dialogue before that is worded in EN implies that he actually was lying/being insincere the whole time, while JP portrays it more like a lame attempt to save face/act less affected than he is by ness's "rejection" of him

I don't remember any other Specific Isolated Scenes, but even his dialogue in general (at least for his early-game self, from what I've seen in my not-very far JP playthrough) seems worded more... "neutrally", for lack of a better term. while the EN version, in comparison, seems to go out of its way to use wording that subtly but effectively makes him sound more unpleasant and/or antagonistic. the best (and my favorite) example I can think of is this one here:

this line in EN was "Ok, good buddy! Now let's blow this popsicle stand...", but here in JP it's "All righty, my friend! Let's Go!" (he literally says the second part in english, like 'Let's de Go da ze!'. and it's so adorable. JP porky occasionally uses gratuitous english like that which also mostly gets lost in translation ;v; a shame, cause I think it's a cute little detail. but I digress)

even though they essentially mean the same thing, you can kinda see the difference in tone between them based on the wording, right? and to a lesser degree the punctuation:

EN porky goes back to sounding rude/pushy right after the "good buddy" part, which makes him sound more insincere about it. it makes him sound like he doesn't actually value ness's company, and is only using words like "bestest friend" and "good buddy" to strong-arm ness into helping him for his own convenience.

then there's JP porky... he's still getting ness involved for self-serving reasons, but he also sounds happier/more excited about it, like he's genuinely stoked just to have ness along with him on this little "adventure" of theirs. it makes him sound like he Does enjoy ness's company to some degree, and it makes the idea that they were genuinely close friends at some point a Much More Believable one.

I wanna clarify though that I highly doubt these differences were intentional, at least not entirely... I think they're more just a natural result of english/japanese language differences (things like politeness/respect levels being much more hard-coded into JP than they are in EN). but also, the bar for what qualifies a person as "selfish" and "unpleasant" or a kid as "badly-behaved" is generally much lower in japan than it is in the west, so it might be the localizers trying to make porky's negative traits more "obvious" to western players? that's just a guess from me, though

[shit-taster-connoisseur]

BOO!

Haha, Did I Scare Ya?

Anyways I Noticed That You’re Looking For Some Silly Questions, So Your Wish Is Granted Mate!

A Simple One Of Course, What Are Your Thoughts/Opinions About One Of The Villains Such as The Interesting Twins?

JXJDB sure did

These guys, are by far my favorite villians, also im sucker for sibling dynamics

Wished they were taken more seriously, but won't deny some of their episode were my favorites by far (especially OP T.R.I.P). Less because of the gags they thrown them in, but rather we do finally see glimpses of their own personalities cause up until then there rlly wasnt much on them besides them failing and falling out a whole damn window all the time xxbdj honestly, that calls into question how resistant these guys are holy shit

The sister(if anyone got any name suggestions for them plz tell so I can steal them too/j), is fed UP, and I love her for it, cause with the amount of shit she's face i'd go fucking insane too. I vote we should give her gun, all her problems would be solved/j but actually, i enjoy that she's a little shit, impulsive, arrogant, etc, but i think it kinda stems from a fear of failure because how else would they've been known as father's bestest spies? Sector V had knocked down a pedestal, and that fucks with her head, but then their failures began to pile up and now she's becoming increasingly desperate to prove that she's still somehow #1– in turn she because implusive, impatient, etc. Sbe 100% cares for her brother, so at the same time she feels like she's dragging him down, it all piles on. Maybe a vaca would do her some good.

The brother, I absolutely adore him – tbh I adore both of them equally. He seems more like the younger of the two in terms of personality, we seem always following his sister's lead despite how irrational it could be. His loyalty and compassion to her is something that kinda pushes him to being my fav twin spot, cuz well im a sucker for good brother characters. And despite his more "softer" attuide compared to his sister's, they're both evil and flawed equally on the same level ‐ mo manipulation or pressure(well kind), nah-da. As the brother is just as implusive, selfish, and arrogant, but he hasn't let their failure get to his head just yet – in turn, he has more clearer head than his sister, so he ends becoming a voice of reason than a leader.

(Readmore cuz this is long jdbdb)

It's pretty popular theory that they're delightful, which is something I think about a LOT when it comes to their characters. And a bit more headcanon here: their non-delightful selves are still conscious, as to me(inspired heavily by my SS au with a friend), being delightful serves as just a filter for kids. Kinda like you feel the urge to chuck a plate, but because you're delightful, it's like a parasite keeping your hands folded in your lap, controlling your behaviors and words.

And they both don't like that their delightful-selves are fighting against old comrades because they were probably ex-KND operatives. perhaps got caught during a mission in Father's mansion, and faded to obscurity in KND history. Either that, or maybe they were father's first delightful experiments? Before the DCFDTL? Maybe that's why they aren't as insync as the DCFDTL, cuz you'd think them being related by blood would strength that bond.

Honestly, i just want an AU where they're happy:))

More headcanons:

Lesbian/Gay solidarity and hostility

They are the entire Evelyn Evelyn album(or not idk, havent listen to it in awhile)

If they ever do end up being undelightfulized, they'd have vastly different asthetics out of spite. Not sure which ones yet

They'd marathon Saturday morning cartoons to get the full childhood experience!!

They consider the DCFDTL sort like cousins, a familial connection is there at least

They're presumed missing, so they live alone in a house bought by Father. They're able to split the chores usually, but the Brother is the better cook between them, so the sister just does the dishes.

Alternatively they also live in Father's mansion, but because they keep falling out of windows at comical heights, they're in bed rest planning their next schemes, therefore more out the way

If they got turned into animals, they'd probably be panthers or owls idk

(Lord save me it's nearly 1am on a school might xmsb)

[holydiverr]

[[ reuploading a bunch of artwork of alt world Diego / Dio i did from twitter!! again not sure if i already uploaded a bunch of these to my personal tumblr, but here they are as reference for writing & other shctuff whilst i’m here.

6th image is a modern AU drawing i did of both Dio & Diego but its cute so i wanted to add it here (also provides some idea of their visual differences)

obligatory design / other notes under readmore.

Dio is a few inches taller than Diego (5ft3 > 4ft11), and is also built considerably wider & is generally more muscular than his counterpart. the reason for this is Diego’s injury to his midsection caused him to lose a lot of weight & muscle post-race; during the race, they’d have been built very similarly with Diego just being a touch shorter! you wouldn’t be able to tell them apart on horseback.

in their faces, they both look almost exactly the same. but again due to Diego’s weight & muscle loss, Dio’s face appears a lot more broad. his hair is slightly different, too, nowhere near as long as Diego’s is post-canon-- but he normally chooses to have it in a ponytail

As this is a canon-divergent AU where they both survived, instead of using one of Diego’s body parts to kill Dio, Lucy instead attempted to slit his throat open to kill him when he got too close to her. this attempt failed, but he has been left with a very sensitive rope-like scar which is usually covered up.

also Dio is an amputee! obviously he lost his leg to Tusk ACT 4 during the High Voltage arc. That is still acknowledged as canon to this AU! if his prosthetic is ever unavailable, he will begrudgingly use crutches (and yes, if you annoy him, he will throw them at you. lmao.)

as for his outfit; Dio’s favoured colour is green, & his jockeys outfit is usually green/light yellow/brown/white (as opposed to Diego’s teal/yellow/brown). he has partial heterochromia in his eyes, the lower half of his iris being a gold colour, and the upper half being green.

whilst his jockey’s helmet is no longer worn post-canon, he does wear a flatcap with the name ‘Dio’ embroidered onto it.

additionally, Dio will almost always prefer to be referred to as just Dio-- although he may respond to ‘Diego’, he will always introduce himself as ‘Dio’.

i believe thats everything about him design-wise? not much has changed i’ve just kinda applied a bunch of headcanons to make the ‘everyone survived’ AU to work smoothly here lol

[fireandpowder]

Hi! I hope this is okay, but I wanted to send you an ask about “love is heavy”!

I found myself having a really intense and unexpected reaction to the scene with Geralt and Vesemir. Basically, while I was 100% on board with Vesemir drawing a line in the sand and protecting Jaskier - there was admittedly a *small* part of me that was like “okay but you raised him to be this emotionally broken (but won’t say that to him) and are now punishing him for it that’s kinda fucked up”

Which took me by surprise right? Cause like 1) kudos to you for getting that intense of a response out of me and 2) this isn’t eye for an eye and past wrongs don’t mean Vesemir shouldn’t have said anything.

But what it DID make me curious about is if any of *that* was going through your or Vesemir’s head (or any other character too!) when making the decision to have that confrontation? Or is the voice in my head just petty and grudge holding lol

Lastly, I thought you should know that this is my favorite Post-Mountain Fic I’ve ever read and easily like top 3 Witcher fics I’ve ever read and I’m not even finished yet!!!

hi, hello, tumblr did not inform me about this ask until just now sorry!!!

anyway, re the reaction it got out of you - i'm sorry and you're welcome, lmao. but yeah, the entire point was for this to be not an eye for an eye situation

also i am very much a pleading eyes emoji about that last bit, thank you so much it means a LOT

but for your question: yes, vesemir was! i don't know if you've finished the fic by now, but just in case you haven't, i'll put this under a readmore so if you don't want a sort of spoiler you can come back when you've finished :D (also it got long, oops lmfao)

so the others were not really thinking about that, because they were all raised the same, and are varying levels of poorly-adjusted/oblivious about it. vesemir, though, was - and is - very aware of the ways he's failed his boys, how he and all of his fellows failed them when the school was functioning. he's also aware of how he was failed, and how much of his regrets likely echo the generations of witchers before him - that the elder have been hurting the younger for hundreds of years.

that is part of the reason that he takes jaskier to the dungeons, shows him the "memorial" of dead boys' names, explains that generational trauma and how it lives in all of them, and how much he hates himself for it. vesemir was upset, at the reminder of kaer seren's fall, and he knows that one day, kaer morhen will finally fall the same - it's just a matter of time. he could have just shown jaskier the memorial tree, the medallions and the names on that stone. but he didn't; he chose to admit to his wrongs, to how viciously he failed geralt, because he is viciously aware of that failure.

he didn't make the choice to give geralt that sort of ultimatum lightly. he did not want to punish geralt for a lack that was vesemir's and other witchers' fault. however, he recognized that geralt was in a cycle of self-destruction and self-sabotage that wasn't going to be moved without force. so he gives him a wake-up call.

however, note that vesemir does not make himself the arbiter of this ultimatum - he tells geralt that until jaskier forgives him, until jaskier says he's repaired the damage he did, that he won't be welcome back. that, specifically? that's not just vesemir recognizing that the person geralt hurt should be a part of this - it's him saying that jaskier is the only one of them who can say.

because none of the witchers are well-adjusted. all of them are broken and traumatized and have coping mechanisms that border on self-destruction. jaskier isn't some kind of all-knowing benevlont judge of rightness, but he's much better adjusted than his witchers, and they all know that. he has the emotional intelligence to handle this in a way none of them can. vesemir knows that the clearest, with the benefit of having been one to raise a new generation of witchers that he knows he damaged, and the reflecting realization that his elders damaged him.

vesemir didn't want to give geralt an ultimatum, to punish him - but like the story he tells about geralt and eskel as children, he needed to impress the importance of what he was saying, and he doesn't really know any other way to do it.

(you might also find some clarification in a lot of the choices i made in the addressing concerns posts i made after the fic finished posting! i also put anything like those, this, or other asks and background in the tag #background post on this blog <3)

[trashboatprince]

I was tagged by @terryfphanatics 

I’ll break this up with a readmore at some point cause this is pretty long. 

What book are you currently reading?

Smoke Gets In Your Eyes by Caitlin Doughty (aka Ask a Mortician on youtube), it’s pretty good. 

What's your favourite movie you saw in a cinema this year?

The only movies I’ve seen so far is Puss in Boots’ sequel and it was AWESOME! I want to see it again, but the tiny theater in town only keeps a single movie playing for about two weeks (unless if it’s a Big Studio Movie where it’s in there for a fucking month like they did with Avatar and anything Marvel Studios)

What do you usually wear?

Shirt, leggings or pants, and I’m usually found wearing a plaid/tartan button-up shirt of some color and kind. I don’t get to dress nice often cause I tend to spend my time at work cleaning. 

How tall are you?

5′6, the most average height. I am, however, the tallest of my siblings

What's your star sign?

Pisces

Do you share your birthday with a celebrity or historical event?

Albert Einstein, Billy Crystal, and Michael Cain. Also, Stephen Hawking died on my birthday. And it’s Pi Day (technically not PIE day, despite what people say, that’s in January. There is an irony to this day because I have severe dyscalcula)

Do you go by your name or a nickname?

I got by [REDACTED] and John. (I don’t like using my birth name online, because I still go by it on days when I’m not John, but this name is very uncommon so... safety reasons)

I have a lot of nicknames from family members based around my birth name, my older sister has a specific nickname for me just as she does for our younger sibling, and online some of you guys call me by my username when you don’t use John. My girlfriend has a few names for me, and is literally the only person who is allowed to call me Johnny. I LOATH being called Johnny, she has permission because she’s cute and I love her.

Did you grow up to be what you wanted to be as a child?

Kinda???

I mean, technically, I did actually work as a museum archivist for several months during and after college, and my library job was technically an archive job. But this is work that is hard to come by, and is often done by unpaid volunteers, and I’d like to be paid. 

Currently I work at a job that is nothing that I’d ever want to go to school for, but the pay is good and no one bothers me. That much. 

Are you in a relationship? Who is your crush if not?

Yep, I’m in a relationship with my angel, Verzi. Have been since 2016! I do have a fictional crush (Lucian) and celebrity crush (Michael Sheen. Shockingly not David Tennant, but that’s on the grounds that I want to steal David’s gender. Also, Michael’s my type)

What's something you're good at versus something you're bad at?

I think I’m pretty decent at baking and cooking, I greatly enjoy doing these activities, and I think I’m pretty good at writing when I remember to beta my work. However, I’m terrible with time management, but that’s normal for people with ADHD, especially those who are unmedicated. Oh, and I’m HORRIBLE at learning other languages, but, again, that’s related to my ADHD. I’m trying, but it’s never been easy, even from a young age when I lived in Germany.

Dogs or cats?

Both, but maybe I lean a little more on the side of cats because I have three of them

What's something you'd like to create content for?

I dunno, I make stuff for the things I really like all the time, it’s just a matter of actually doing it or not. But then again... there’s this au someone has on twitter that I really like ant for, but I have no idea how to talk to the creator about doing so (mostly it’s a language thing). 

What's something you're currently obsessed with?

*gestures in the direction of Good Omens, Doctor Who, Bendy, and the GOEU* 

I dunno, the usual offerings on this blog and on my side account if you know where to look. 

What's something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?

Hmmmm... work stuff. I legit happy with the work schedule I had gotten, and I was actually starting to get some decent sleep cause I wasn’t always stuck to four night shifts a damn week, but then a coworker threw a fit and quit on the spot over something stupid and now we’re scrambling to figure out how to give everyone enough hours. 

What's a hidden talent of yours?

When I was a kid, and my memory issues weren’t as severe as they are now (three comas and adhd will do that to a man), I used to be able to quote, word for word, whole episodes of shows I really liked. From Spongebob to YuGiOh, kids paid me to do these things at recess cause it was entertaining. I can still... sorta do this, but nothing like back in the day. 

Nowadays, the only hidden talent I can think of is that I’m double jointed in my hands like my mom, unlike my dad and siblings. They can’t fuck up their fingers like we can (I can even bend my thumb behind my hand) 

Are you religious?

I guess? I’m a Methodist (who doesn’t go to church) who also practices Buddhism and looks into the beliefs of Daisim.    

What's something you wish to have at this moment?

For someone else to clean out my drawers and closet to get rid of old clothing I don’t want anymore, because right now I’m getting things ready for when I move out of my apartment in a few weeks.

I’m not big on tagging people, but anyone can do this if they want to.

[syekick-powers]

Re: the oc ask meme, i know the answer to 15 is "yes, always, any given chance for as long as possible" so I'm going to give you an excuse for a long ass ramble!

3, 6, 9, 11, 12, 14, 17, 18, 23, 26, 27, 29, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 50

good LORD that's a lot of questions. i definitely appreciate the huge pile of questions to answer but my god, i certainly wasn't expecting that many. obviously, this answer is going under a readmore so i don't create The Longpost that drives my followers insane.

3. Have you ever adopted a character or gotten a character from someone else?

i think technically the only time i ever really fully got an oc from someone else is with my character psy, and even then they were still supposed to my character in a really weird roundabout way. back when i was like 12-13 i had an RP partner who was also a writer posting work on ff.net and she and i both started writing fanfic with some characters that were pseudo-self-inserts; she borrowed my character sy for one fic, then wrote a sequel to that fic that involved all our pseudo-SIs being reincarnated in a modern setting. to keep a similar character name but make it obvious they weren't the SAME same person she called my character's reincarnation "psy" instead. and i just kinda absorbed them into my brainspace until they were fully my own charecter completely independent of my old RP partner's influence.

6. Two OCs of yours that look alike despite not being related?

probably a lot of my self-inserts look similar in that way because they have similar hair styles and hair/eye colors. most of them aren't even in the same story but they do have the same kind of Vibe for the most part. for a good fucking reason lol

9. Would you ever be willing to give any of your OCs to someone else?

i think like. i'd be willing to publicly give control of a character's story to someone else. but the way my brain works is like. the fuckers are alive in there. and they have minds of their own. and once i've created a character i can't really "get rid" of them. so even if someone else was in charge of the story. the character would still be in my brain. it's not like i can psychically transplant the fucker into someone else's head. and if the person who had control of the character's story did something with them that the character in my head did not agree with it would cause me some amount of Pain, just because the character in question would make my life a living hell about it.

11. Is there any OC of yours you could describe as a “sunshine”?

probably kass and karini. and adenna. basically i have a character archetype of "sweet kind girl with a ponytail who is too good for this world but could kick your ass" and kass and karini and adenna are all that.

12. Name an OC that isn’t yours but who you like a lot

@rebornfromsea's rikard has been in my brain a lot lately for reasons. i'm also particularly fond of some of my IRL friends' characters, though idk if i can really tag them because idk if they even really use tumblr much anymore. ^^;

14. Introduce an OC with a tragic backstory

god that's a wide fuckin net to cast dghdgjdg a LOT of my characters have tragic backstories tbh. though i think probably the characters whose backstories are most tragic are devon and adelle? they're from the hosts' universe.

basically, sonia, one of the major figures in host society's development, got this weird fucking idea in her mind that she was going to give birth to some kind of savior of the host race. basically like a virgin mary complex if that makes sense. she was incredibly fixated on this idea and used white christian rhetoric to recruit and brainwash a huge number of hosts to her cause that treated her like a holy figure. once she did finally find someone willing to submit to her desire to have a child the human way (hosts reproduce asexually in a fashion that does not require having sex, and in fact almost the entire host race is sex-repulsed and find human sexual reproduction absolutely disgusting) she got pregnant with devon and adelle. and once she gave birth to them. well. their lives did not go good from the start.

for one thing, the offspring of two hosts reproducing sexually (colloquially called 'hostlings') are completely, fully immune to host psychic powers. because hosts' powers are part of how they maintain hegemony, the kids' total resistance to all host powers freaks the FUCK out of almost all hosts. they don't have any psychic powers of their own, but their brains are structured in a way that they read to a host like a complete psychic dead zone. like, hosts can kinda sense the psychic energy emitted by anything that has a functioning brain (humans, animals, other hosts) so a host is used to living creatures giving off kind of an "aura" that they can sense that alerts a host to the presence of other living things around them. devon and adelle, as hostlings, psychically read like they're just. voids. like they aren't even impenetrable--they feel like there's nothing within them at all. no emotions, no feelings, no memories. nothing. which is deeply fucking creepy to pretty much all hosts.

secondly, hostlings are like. kinda OP, but also, they age at HALF the rate that humans do. they're physically stronger and faster than humans by a HUGE amount, and they stay developmentally as children for a much longer period of time than human children, so devon and adelle were strong enough most of the time to easily resist being restrained by both hosts and humans, and adelle in particular was belligerent enough to do serious physical damage to anyone, host or human, who attempted to restrain her when she was angry. like there were occasions when devon and adelle were children where adelle was throwing some kind of tantrum and some of her caretakers were trying to get her to calm down and she just jumped up onto a host's back and started biting and tearing at their symbiote and very nearly killed them. like i can't explain enough how freaky it was for hosts to realize that these kids could literally kill them if they wanted to. like they were kids, but their host caretakers were terrified of them.

and thirdly, hostlings look really weird and unsettling to both hosts and humans. they have the white hair and purple eyes of hosts (though their eyes don't glow like hosts' eyes do), but also. most of their circulatory system is black, and their blood is black. so their skin is a really weird color and you can actually very easily see the black veins all over their entire body. (hosts have some black venation visible too, but it's almost always around the edges of where the symbiote is attached to their back, rather than throughout their entire body). they really do look incredibly unnerving as a result.

so devon and adelle had a very unpleasant childhood because 99% of hosts thought they were horrid little freaks of nature who should not exist, and humans also were freaked out by them because of how similar they looked to hosts. so basically once they reached a certain age sonia just kind of abandoned them. they are pretty much forced to live out in the wilderness because in host-dominated society it's illegal to offer them any kind of assistance, since most hosts are afraid that they'll interbreed with humans and introduce their total psychic resistance to host powers into the human population and threaten their supremacy.

17. Any OC OTPs?

seth/dustin is a big one. kass/aiden, but also gareth/aiden/blair as a polyam trio with kass as an added partner later. whatever the fuck seyna and raniiless have going on is also fascinating to me. also cenryx and [redacted] has been utterly consuming my brain lately. like i can't talk about it much on this blog because the relationship technically hasn't happened in-game yet but my brain is obsessed with them.

18. Any OC crackships?

i think the most crackshippy pairing between ocs i ever got seriously invested into was seth/aiden as an enemies to lovers kind of thing. which. let me tell you. that was a wild ride.

23. Introduce OC that has changed from your first idea concerning what the character would be like?

probably the character i created that has changed the most since their creation is seyna. she's one of my oldest characters, whom i created as like a LITTLE kid, and when i first created her she was 100% a thinly-veiled, overpowered self-insert. when i became a teenager i became obsessed with avoiding the accusation of a character being a "mary sue" so i made her role in the story less central to the plot and also changed her personality--i was focused on characters being "balanced" by having flaws and strengths calculated like a fucking math problem, so i made her very smart but "balanced" that by making it so that she "didn't have emotions". as i became an adult i kinda retooled her character and made her more actually realistic, and now she actually feels like A Person to me. and man. what a person she is. (sarcastic) (but affectionate)

26. Have you ever had to change your OC’s design or something else about them against your will?

some of my older characters like shaa'ten and raniiless i changed the spellings of their names out of sheer frustration, because people were not able to figure out what the proper pronunciation of their names was just from how they were spelled (and shaa'ten especially had a lot of people pronouncing his name WAY incorrectly in a way that especially frustrated me).

27. Any OCs that were inspired by a certain song?

i don't usually get inspired to make ocs from music? it's usually moreso like i make an oc than find songs that make me think about them. i don't think i've ever made a character that was i was inspired to create specifically by one single song. i've had stories that were frequently inspired by multiple songs of certain specific artists, but rarely a single specific song inspiring the creation of a whole character.

29. Which one of your OCs would go investigate an abandoned house at night without telling anyone they’re going?

probably all the mutant ghost hunter characters except the group's leader, lucinda. She's Only Fuckin Going In There If You Pay Her For It.

34. Do you have any twin characters?

i think the only twin characters i have are devon and adelle, sonia's kids. previously mentioned in question #14

35. Any sibling characters?

again, devon and adelle. i also had some siblings in my 2022 nanowrimo project with solyn and enric, where enric's siblings alan and maddie were pretty important to the story.

36. Do you have OC pairs where the other part belongs to someone else (siblings, lovers, friends etc)?

honestly i have no idea how to answer this question because i don't know what "belongs to someone else" means in terms of what kind of relationship is being described? also i don't usually tend to think of relationships as possessive so the idea of someone "belonging" to someone else is. weird to me.

38. Which one of your OCs would be the best dancer?

honestly probably sylvus. he has both the dexterity score and the Vibes for it. he's not formally dance trained but if he learned he'd be slappin good at it.

39. Introduce any character you want -- 50. Give me the good ol’ OC talk here. Talk about anything you want

honestly with both of these questions my brain is blanking. i am not good at being given an incredibly general prompt and told to just talk about whatever. if i'm not given specific ideas for a jumping-off point, my brain just blanks. like. i have a lot of goddamn characters both minor and major, and a lot of different stories and projects. being told "introduce any character / talk about whatever you want" is like giving me a blank piece of paper that you tell me is a map and then saying "go wherever you want"-- it will legit just make me stand there uselessly because i don't actually know what direction to go or even where the fuck to start, let alone how to pick a direction to go in the first place. sorry ;;

[ruhrohrps]

I’m sorry if my ask offended you. There were many posts by you in the tags back to back and it felt like a lot. Like I said, you’ve posted some really good things there. I know the standard reply in the rpc is to say “block me if it bothers you” but again, you’ve posted some really insightful things. Since there were more than one ask that were more personal to your characters and blogs and how you roleplay, it felt like tagging them as rpt/rph might have been more out of reflex.

This got long so 'readmore' it is

Hey! I wouldn't say it offended me, but more-so just gave me 'here we go again' vibes. I feel that usually I get berated for 'not doing anything to help' via anons, and then when I do help, I get told it's too much. Also, I've been told I'm hard to relate to and to open myself up some more, and then I do so and I'm berated for that as well. I also get told how to run my blog a lot, and I'm just kinda over it? Not that you're trying to control anything, but to me I have reasons as to why I tag things the way I do.

1.) I am a part of the rpc, I am an rpt and I am an rph; and in order for others to find my blog and connect is through the 'rpc' 'rpt' and 'rph' tags.

2.) I was speaking of roleplaying aspects, which means the posts were not off topic to the tags I utilized. Not only did my posts touch base on 'rpt' (roleplay TALK), but it also did matter to be in 'rph' because it showed another way to connect with muses/build layers to them that maybe not many do or have thought of. Also, my posts rightfully so belonged in 'rpc' cause, I'm in the rpc and have been since 2012-ish? And for as long as I can remember, utilizing the 'rpc' tag was to find others and connect - which someone did comment on one of those posts regarding my muses.

3.) I answer things as they come. I am not one to queue. I very rarely queue anything. This is important to me, because it shows others that I am actively online and that they don't have to wait a week or whatever, to hear from me.

At the end of the day, I understand what you're trying to say - but then again, I do not. My perception of it is vastly different from yours, due to the points I have listed above. Also, I do not see 2 posts back-to-back as clogging anything? I don't understand how that's seen as clogging, yet there's others who post about specific members and what they talk about on Discord or other nonsense that actually doesn't benefit anyone, and I haven't seen them be told they 'clog' the tags.

So, I don't mean any of this to be rude - but I do recommend you blocking my blog if you don't want to see it in the tags so much, I guess? Because I have my reasons as to why I tag the way I do.

[the-nysh]

Who are your favourite manga/anime protagonists of all time and why?

Of…of ALL TIME!? *mind goes blank* Whew, that’s a difficult + huge pool to choose from, but ‘protagonists’ actually narrows it down, as not all my fav characters are the protags either. Usually I go for the Vegeta + Raphael archetypes instead, cause their character arcs (growth that’s often emotion-based) are more interesting/appealing to me. Protags in general are often nice and likeable by default (in the sense that if I didn’t like them, I wouldn’t force myself to continue the story where they’re the main focus), but they’re also often portrayed with average traits to make them most relatable to the target demographic. Many of them are similarly structured this way with comparable traits/behaviors, so I tend to prefer the ones who can still stand out (in their own unique way) from the rest in general. I also tend to prefer those who aren’t ‘chosen ones’ or who don’t have special hereditary gifts. Instead I prefer them being special through the merits of their own character and the choices they make. So with that criteria said, some names definitely came to mind.

Nausicaa: probably the one I most looked up to and was inspired by as a kid. She did everything I liked and thought was cool, from her free flying/piloting abilities, exploring nature on her own, running her own lab, easily befriending animals, and often finding interesting/different solutions to things that her people wouldn’t conceive of (often in a pacifist way). She could still lead and take charge & responsibility of things as a princess, but still believed in freely doing what she wants (and could still be girly about it too). However, the defining scene that most stuck with me all these years, was her reaction upon finding her father assassinated. The one where she wordlessly gaped in horror and flew into a blind rage (even Teto, her critter, sensed it and got scared), and murdered every assailant in the room with a blunt weapon. Before she picks up the nearest sword and her uncle stops her with his own body, accidentally harming him in the process, and shocking her to her senses, where she then becomes so petrified and guilty at what she’s done that she passes out. She confessed she became that afraid of herself when her emotions and anger ran out of control. And I thought, wow that’s powerful, especially unprecedented and rare for a female (mostly pacifist!) character to suddenly do as well, because that was the strength of her heart, her love for her family, that shone and drove her with the instinct to react so brutally that way. It always made me take pause and ponder, that if I witnessed anything like that happen to my own family or those I cared about, just what form would my anger manifest in response? It’s chilling and ugly to think about, because I’d never want that to happen, but I honestly don’t know if I could hold back either. So I could understand her fear. It’s quite humbling. It’s always this scene I remember and gauge in comparison to when I see other characters strongly react with that same righteous anger/instinctual drive to protect who they care about. And it’s always a fav when I see that happen.

Edward Elric: oh he’s definitely a keeper. Probably one of the most well-rounded and human I’ve seen, with the full spectrum of emotion, badass feats, and quirky + dorky character traits of his own too. A standard I feel, when it comes to well-written and memorable shonen protags. Probably one of my first legit anime crushes obsessions back in the day (even way before Brotherhood existed). I got all the merch, shirts, wall scrolls and everything (got a bunch of craft models for Nausicaa too for that matter). I remember back when my sister asked me who my fav character of the series was, and I answered him without hesitation, but she said ‘oh that’s boring’ just because he’s the protag, (://) so preferring him is apparently expected I guess, oh well. I didn’t go back on my answer then, and I don’t think I could ever go back on it now either. I still faithfully wear an old chibi keychain of him on my bag. My fav scene is probably that really touching moment when he convinced Winry not to kill with a gun, because her hands were better for healing, including how she created and continually fixes/heals his arm & leg. :’) Just ahhh, keeper. 

Guts: hoooo boy. The one and only. The most badass determinator around, continually struggling against all the absolute shit dealt to his life. Just ugh, it’s amazing he hasn’t keeled over yet, after surviving through so much literal hell. His life is just eternal suffering and tragedy, and he’s accepted going down that path. He almost submits to the despair sometimes, but he’s strong. Strong to keep going and not give in no matter how bad it gets. Because he has a mission he absolutely must see through and commit to the end. It’s both painful and awesome to watch him, and I honestly have no idea how he can win (vs Griffith) on his own eventually, but I can only hope he survives to achieve some form of happiness someday, because damn, it’s been so unfair to him. Please just give him a break. I’ll be in that long haul of a ride just to see how he’s doing.  

For more recent protags (and I wish I could choose more girls), ONE is definitely onto something though with his massively relatable yet genuinely hard-working characters, where even if they’re strong in ways, they’re also very humble, and their own merits shine through even stronger. Saitama probably fits my fav protag criteria, along with being an interesting commentary on what happens once you reach the peak of your craft. Is it really worth all the hard work and effort if there’s no one else to share it with? Most interesting food for thought. However, I’m still waiting for him to do something more…where he becomes a bit less passive (and oblivious) to things happening around him, and a bit more engaged and emotionally receptive. For example, if he’s physically invulnerable, then that leaves his mental/emotional vulnerability as a possible target. If it ever comes to that, and he can feel something that makes him react, reflect, and feel alive again, then that’ll be something worth waiting for. He’d really enter my all-time favs that way.

Another recent one who’s caught my eye is Senku (Dr. Stone). Sometimes you’d think he’d be a scheming sneaky bastard (mad scientist) but he’s actually a very standup and compassionate guy. Trustworthy, persistent, and dependable. He’s quirky, he’s unique, and he’s not your typical shonen protag. (He’s also immune to all advances; not interested in the slightest cause his priorities are much stronger.) And I like that. It’s like if Hiruma (es21) got the chance to be the protag, but more down to earth and less threatening/imposing. So far the story’s still pretty new but he’s already pretty memorable. Just gotta see now how his persistence and faith in science will change and save the post-apocalyptic world.

[pokemon-my-beloved]

my thoughts on the new scarlet/violet trailer

and also the information about it that was added to the official site, though granted i will be referencing the trailer more

under a readmore again because BOY is there a lot to unpack

general

the big theme is going to be past and future, i’m calling it now. i don’t speak japanese, so forgive me if this is incorrect, but to my knowledge “korai” means something from ancient times (aka the past) and “mirai” means future. also, sada could possibly come from “pasada” (past in spanish) and turo from “futuro” (future in spanish)

they’re officially open world pokemon games??? screaming /pos

it looks like you go to a school at the start of the game, so the story probably starts with you going out to fill the dex as part of an assignment or smth

it sounds like you can do the gyms in any order you want, at least based off this quote from the website, which is a touch i adore “...a world that you’re free to explore at your leisure and not in an order dictated by the story.”

you can play the game co-op, apparently, which is probably not something i’ll do (at least at first) but still is cool!

got a look at the new battle interface! nothing too special, but still pretty visually appealing!

the region is definitely based off spain, i’ve made up my mind. shoutout to @modern-alebrije for pointing out the windmills on my last post about sv, which basically made up my mind, and @kirigaya-art, who saw smoliv, thought it was a corn pokemon, realized it was an olive, and was disappointed until he realized corn would make more sense for latinam than spain and olives did make sense for that

speaking of, no region name yet! i want to know what this place is called cause it looks really cool and i’m very excited, but i’ll manage to wait probably fjlkasjgla

we’ve got a release date, november 18! looking back, i didn’t really put much thought into when the games would come out, but this does make the most sense. mainline pokemon games generally come out between mid and late november, except pla for some fucking reason idk

the pokemon centers look VERY different. i mean, i like the fact that they’re outside now, that’s cool, but the design seems more consumeristic, i guess. like, it’s more of a gas station than a cafe, if that makes sense

still don’t know what the significance of scarlet and violet are. i can’t tell if the light spectrum theory has been debunked for sure, but it kinda seems like it, especially with the past/future symbolism

pokemon

sprigatito weed cat confirmed lmao

we’ve got a look at the box legendaries! they’re okay, i guess, not BAD or anything, but i’m not super big on them, they feel like the least creative box legendaries aside from dialga and palkia, but those two at least have different body shapes and types. also why do they have wheels for chests, is that necessary, what the hell

pawmi looks to be the pikachu clone this gen. having it unveiled so soon is new (at least to me, i only started paying attention to this shit at the beginning of gen 7), as is the fact that it looks like it might evolve into something, which the pikachu clones have never done, iirc

i would like to personally shake the hand of every single person who contributed to naming lechonk and smoliv JGKLASJGLKAHSGLJKA

lechonk is probably based on lechon tho, which is made by cooking a baby pig so that’s. morbid

as the early-route normal-type, i cannot WAIT to see what lechonk evolves into ljgkasjgkjalgkjs

we seem to have moved away from early-route rodents to early-route farm animals as the first normal types. gen 8 had wooloo AND skwovet, but now we’ve just got lechonk (so far, at least)

also excited to find out what the early-route bird is, that’ll be exciting

so far, the previous confirmed pokemon are pikachu, fletchling, flaaffy, chewtle, bagon, larvitar, venonat, coalossal, toxapex, cryogonal, lurantis, talonflame, flabebe, starly, hoppip, petilil, psyduck, drifloon, combee, meowth, stonjourner, clauncher, pelipper, swablu, blissey, seviper, magnemite, and lucario, plus (by extension) all of their respective evolutions and pre-evolutions. seems like a good balance of pokemon from all the previous regions, though i’m unsure of if this means we’ll get the natdex or not (i’d guess probably not, though. this game will likely bring the total number of pokemon over 1000, and there’s no way they can fit all of them (plus alternate forms and possibly mega evolutions and such) into the game without sacrificing a decent amount of quality)

no regional variants have been revealed yet, which is kinda disappointing. hopefully we’ll get some later (maybe with the reveal of the region name), but if they get rid of that, i will be very upset

also i know we’ve only had two regions with variants (three counting hisui), but meowth is the same as its kantonian form in the og trailer, which means that this is the first time since that feature was introduced that he won’t have a variant. just something that i found interesting

characters

gamefreak said “happy pride month to wlw ONLY” huh /j

i am obsessed with professor sada she is so pretty

also the rival, nemona? incredible

speaking of nemona, this is the first time we’ve had a girl as the main rival! the closest we’ve gotten to that before were gens 3 and 6, where the rival depended on the player’s gender (and also shauna was in gen 6 ig), gen 5, where we got cheren AND bianca, and gen 8, where marnie was a rival, but not the main one (which was hop). tldr, i’m very excited to see what they do with nemona

continuing on the nemona train, according to the website she apparently has a smoliv on her team, which means there’s probably going to be an early-route water-type and early-route fire-type to balance it out and she’ll have one of those plus the starter depending on which one you chose

alternatively, i’m completely wrong and she breaks new ground by NOT having a traditional starter and having a preset team that doesn’t change based on your choices at all instead

we’ve got two professors now! they differ based on version, and i gotta say, as much as i love the futuristic aesthetic and prefer it over the historical one, i might pick scarlet JUST for professor sada

also, this is probably just me here, but i don’t like professor turo that much so far? maybe it’s the outfit (it’s definitely the outfit), but i’m also not a fan of his face, if that makes sense. definitely a “me” thing, but i’m not super big on more masculine looking characters, which professor turo seems to be. i know a lot of people disagree with me on this (callout post for @yamakagashiz /j), but i still wanted to put that out there

i mentioned this a bit earlier when i was talking about the past/future thing, but our professors aren’t named after trees! they’re not named after any sort of plant at all!!! at least, no plants that i’m aware of. this is unprecedented, as far as I know. like, there’s probably some random fuckoff professor in the anime that’s not named after a plant that only showed up a few times or something, but i never kept up with that religiously and also it’s been a hot minute since i watched it at all. regardless, another first in the series!

that’s about it, i think. i’m very excited, and can’t wait to find out more!

[bookwyrminspiration]

What are your favourite places to travel to and what's one place you want to travel to? Also unrelated, but what was that mysterious orange powder you found in the laundry room and what happened when you set it one fire? Ooh! Did you ever get a really bad burn? What's the worst injury you've ever got? Sorry if I sound like an annoying five year old it's because I am. Have a nice day! <3

oh asks like these are so much fun!! this is so sweet, and I don't think you sound annoying at all! I hope you also have a nice day, as today I finished my intersession courses so I have the afternoon free before my actual summer courses start tomorrow, which is nice

(if you want to unlock the Quil Lore it's under the readmore for space reasons)

I actually don't know if I have specific answers to the travel questions, as my family doesn't really travel. And when we do it's specifically to visit family, and we happen to stop at other places along the way sometimes. But out of those I'd say my favorite would be the Cabin. My great-grandparents own a cabin on a lake up in Minnesota, so when we visited family more often we'd go there and swim and see our cousins. Last time we were there we had a seaweed fight (cause it's a lake) and nailed my cousin Oliver in the face, which was excellent. Though I did also enjoy playing on the farm (other side of the family) as a kid and helping feed the calves. I really don't have a lot of travel experience to draw on and it's frequently stressful, but the Cabin is the best answer I have to that question!

As for places I want to travel, I'd say Mexico is pretty high on the list. I'm Mexican, but I've only ever been once when I was four, and I'd like to go back so I can actually remember it. A college nearby has a study abroad opportunity that tours the various ruins and historical sites (think Aztec), so I think something like that but maybe if I could do it outside of school and just for the enjoyment would be my ideal trip. Other than that I'd probably just follow along wherever my partner went, as they like to travel more than me.

The mysterious orange powder!! I'm. How did you even. Either you have a great memory or you were looking very far back in my posts because I don't think I posted about that recently. I think the mystery orange powder was some form of borax? We don't have it anymore so I can't confirm but it was like. Really granulated and light orange and didn't look like borax. But the suspicious box it was in was labelled borax, but that was a handwritten label in sharpie so I don't know if I really trust it. As for what happened when I set it on fire, fire happened!! My phone is being annoying and not letting me access the video I have saved of it and I don't remember which substance had the biggest reaction, but I do know that I got a pretty solid orange, yellow, blue, and purple flame. The only chemical I can remember rn is that sodium-free salt is what made the purple and the blue was just hand sanitizer. Red and green were unsuccessful but also I was doing it with chemicals any person can get their hands on. I couldn't easily access lithium or copper to get red and green. Did get to set those on fire in class a month or two ago tho :)

and I have not gotten a bad burn before!! I get small ones from time to time because sometimes I forget that you're not supposed to touch hot things and then I do and get little baby burns on my hands--the toaster oven is the source of most of these tbh. I do also have a habit of accidentally pouring boiling water on my fingers too. For instant noodles in a cup where you hold back the lid a little and pour in hot water, sometimes I'm overzealous and pour too aggressively and it gets on my fingers. But I don't usually feel it for some reason. Like I can feel that I just poured water on my fingers, but it doesn't register as hot despite it literally steaming, so that's the closest to bad burns I've got!!

Kinda the same situation with the worst injury situation, as I don't really have one! I've gotten injured throughout my life, but there's no noteworthy injury I can give. I can say that I used to have blisters on my hands all of the time as a kid. I loved the monkey bars and spider bars and anything else I could climb on (I got told off from time to time because I'd climb things I wasn't supposed to), so my hands were always absolutely destroyed despite having calluses. My mom will also occasionally tell me about the time I, as a toddler, fell face first through a bench--one of the kinds that has a bottom and a back but no in between, like this--onto the ground and had a bruise for weeks on my face.

But yeah I really don't think I have a "worst injury" because I haven't really gotten hurt. I think my mom has the most interesting worst injury in my family, cause she got her three front teeth kicked out in a game of hackysack when she was 12-ish.

I think that answers all the questions to the best of my ability!! it's very fun to answer random questions like this so thank you for sending them <33 Now you know a little bit more about me!!

[podcastdyke]

Final Thoughts about the Archive 81 netflix show because I can't stop being annoying <3

I hope the readmore works!

Anyways. Like first of all, I think the show is actually pretty good on it's own. Like if I came to it completely blind, not knowing what it was based on, I think I could have really liked it! I have to raise my hat to all the actors, they did an amazing job eoth what they had. It would be interesting to know whether or not any of them had listened to the podcast. Other things that I really liked were how the tape restoration looked like and the way they had Jess (and Mark) play a bigger part in the story. I also didn't mind Melody's parts not being just the recorded footage but properly filmed, I don't think just watching found footage would have made for a that enjoyable viewing experience for the long run. The camerawork itself was also really good imo!

Like first of all the whole anticapitalism thing being removed. The fact that LMG and Davenport are just corporations playing with something they don't understand feels so important to me. And the noting of how the people living in the Visser were also people no one would look for, and that was something the Voss family was using for their advantage. I feel like they eraised all the social commentary that the podcast has...

And I don't want to come across like I was expecting them to follow the podcast script to the letter (i mean i had barely any expectations when i started the show). Like obviously they couldn't have done that, the mediums are so different it couldn't have worked. However, what I think lessens my enjoyment of the netflix show is how different the themes and ideas are?

And actually I want to say at this point that while I thought that these things were kinda stupid, I cant say that the show should have been exactly like thr podcast. And some of these issues arent even REAL issues. Like I didn't expect it to be the podcast but for screen. I think these are just thr things I was personally disappointed by, cause they could have been more interesting, at least in my opinion

Speaking of Visser, I found it also kind of annoying how they took the power from the Visser and gave it to the cult? The Visser could have been any apartment building. The way they dropped the idea of Melody trying to learn about the people there was kind of sad. Idk, I personally love evil and haunted architecture, and I thought that one of the most interesting parts of Archive 81 season 1 were the people of the Visser. The man who can't be recoreded, the man who can't see faces... I was also kinda sad about what they did to my girl Tamara, thry made her opera boring :( where is dinnerparty music... dinnerparty music my beloved... I think the fact that this show was visual would have given so many oppoturnities for interesting people and inhabitants of the Visser. Also sad to lose Jacob :( rip Rat Archive81season2

And the cult! First of all, not a fan of them including the catholic church at all, but thats just cause I personally think that it's boring <3 something about this version of the monster was just really boring to me lmao. It felt too understandable? Also there is something really tired about statues and "ancient languages", it's just so... basic? The cult felt basic. And the song was bad I'm sorry. I liked the idea of it being made of breathing, it just didn't sound good. Although that could have been the idea?

The witches. I hated that too djfndj but actually that connects to one of my biggest annoyances: everything being connected to everything. To me it was kind of significant how insignificant Dan and Melody REALLY were. They were just people who were curious and who liked stories. Them givibg Dan and Melody tragic background reasons to do things just removed that whole aspect, and lessened the importance of stories all together, which uh. i'll get to. But the interconnectedness got kind of ridiculous, like yeah. Dan recognizing his dog. that was stupid. and the whole bloodline thing? Super tired.

Annabelle's character was just a fucking slap in the face. literally that could have been Alexa, they wouldn't have had to change almost anything. I didn't even really mind the idea of reality being thinned by the tapes and Dan and Melody meeting, but the way they almost manic pixie dream girlified Melody in the scenes where she was with Dan to make it seem like they had a romantic connection? Served no purpose. Also they just made all the minor female characters lesbian as compensation for straightwashing Melody? Fuck you. I feel like it was also a detriment on Dan's character. He was given barely any character!!! I don't know HIM i just know about things that happened TO him. I don't mind exploring his backstory but like. they could have given the actor SOMETHING to do

About the short-lived Samuel/Melody thing. Absolutely unecessary! Although the hotmanifying of Samuel was kind of funny. I did hate that he was Davenport's brother, I genuinely thought that Davenport was lying to Dan to get sympathy. Like that's so stupid and also I do not feel anything for Davenport he's literally a capitalist

Maybe my biggest issue was the remocal of the idea of stories. Or at least the sidelining of it, they kinda mention it in the final episode but don't expand at all? Anyways, like that was such a central idea in the podcast, how the act of listening to the tapes and being a witness was enough to bring Dan into being a part of the story. And the story being almost like this character of it's own. I thought they would have done more with that idea, seeing that they had the VHS thing (which, I thought, was actually pretty good!)

The ending didnt make much sense to me but whatever lmao it felt like they stopped trying and also they would have never given me half VCR half human Dan

Okay I think those are like... my most major issues. Obviously they couldn't follow podcast even if they wanted to since it's even less comprehensible. But they also couldn't have the character of Rat with both no Jacob and no in-universe podcast. Speaking of Rat, they just dropped Ratty too!! I mean I guess I'm glad he wasn't eaten but still :( AND the s2 is so much about colonization of the otherworld and LMG (which was such a nothing corporation inbthe netflix show) that they couldn't dance around that

I think my biggest issue and final though actually might be that they should have allowed the show to be weirder. I feel like they tried too hard to follow horror tv-how convention (even having episode 7 be a backstory episode like in Bly Manor sbgnsbg) and so they removed the things that made the podcast actually interesting. Let things be weird!! Let things be strange and unexplainable!!

[violetren]

My first theory for volume 9 while the second half of volume 8 is fresh in my mind!

Volume 9 is gonna be the therapy season, but in the most traumatic you'll need different therapy afterwards kind of way. Instead of paying a therapist they're all just be bargaining with the universe like "yo I've had this trauma for a while, and I'm feeling pretty done with it. Here you take it back and uhhh I'll take a new guilt complex. Maybe a fear of falling? IDK, fuck me up bro."

The foreshadow-y Alice in Wonderland-esque fairy tale Oscar told to himself/Oz while in captivity is my guide post here.

Aaaand this is gonna get long so! 10 ideas of shit that's gonna go down next volume beneath the readmore, each one about 1-2 paragraphs each.

In the fairy tale the girl runs away from her problems into a new land, but because she never learned from her problems they just followed after her. Yeah? So first--second? First discounting the volume therapy theme theory.

FIRST BIG THEORY: The girl from the fairy tale was real, and she used the Spear of Creation. And like Weiss and the crew, she was fucking smart about her wording. She offered up materials that'd last even after someone else inevitably used the staff. IDK what materials she woulda used. Maybe there's a story about a missing continent we just haven't heard of yet? Maybe the Brother of Light's pool, since Salem seens to have claimed the Brother of Darkness's one but no sign of BoL's these days. Maybe there is a reason the land beyond Menagerie is so uninhabitable beyond desert + grimm? idk. Point is, it's a thing that happened, and since Ambrosius can't destroy/directly kill she's still in her wonderland. For themes sake I'm gonna call her Alice from here on out.

So Alice made a pocket dimension to flee from her problems from.

SECOND BIG THEORY: Her problems were relic related. She needed to hide em, and hide herself from Salem. Tbh I'm not sure how into this one I am. Maybe she had other shit going and some version of Oz was like "hey you don't want to be here, I have some property that I don't want to be here, lets make this happen!" THE POINT IS, the little pocket realities the relics are in, are aalllllll places in her pocket reality. When the team said "hey Ambrosius just make the middle ground into one of these type places" that's what he did, cause that's how he do. What better way to make sure it works like those places than to be kinda connected to em?

THIRD BIG THEORY: Ambrosius was buds with Alice once upon a time, but knew staying in her pocket world ultimately drove her crazy. He knew his middle ground worked like the pocket dimensions because it touched em or something, so he gave a vague ass warning not to fall, because he knew where they'd fall to.

Back to the fairy tale. It's implied Alice was never able to leave/give up her wonderland because she never learned from her mistakes.

FOURTH BIG THEORY VERSION 1: RWBY + Jaune can't figure their way back to reality until they adress a major personal issue and break out of whatever cycle it's got them in. This one I feel is shaky because they all have such different issues and are in very different places with each of them, trying to do one big arc on em would be too much of a mess. Plus it doesn't account for saving any of the many civilians that may have survived the fall.

FOURTH BIG THEORY VERSION 2: nobody can leave until Alice either leaves, dies, OR is convinced to let them go. As we're following good kind people this means we watch the kids try to give someone else therapy that THEY need. RWBY+J work through their shit through variations & combinations of witnessing mirrors of their struggles in Alice/other wonderland inhabitants, and just having time and space to slow down and breathe whether they want it or not.

FIFTH BIG THEORY: Alice is the "antagonist" of the underworld because she is the obstacle to overcome.

What about Neo you may be asking. Well I want her to let go of the revenge schtick, or at least redirect it back onto Cinder thus calling a truce with Ruby. However it's more than likely she's gonna be on team keep Alice as an obstacle at least as long as it takes to kill Ruby, and so Neo will be the "real" Antagonist™ within wonderland.

SIXTH BIG THEORY: Neo because of her unwavering determination to enact revenge is gonna die this volume. She'll be the comparison against which RWBY+J will be measured. As they grow and get closer to leaving she'll become more wrapped up with whatever strange classic wonderland logic this pocket universe has. Potentially depending on how things go with helping Alice, Neo may just end up trading spots with her, and end up trapped while everyone else goes back. But dead or trapped, I have a sad feeling this could be our last volume with Neo. My only hope of her surviving at this point is that she like Emerald switches sides, and in doing so joins Winter as a Cinder foil. While Neo grows and lets go of revenge and thus survives, Cinder stays dedicated to her own desires for revenge and other self serving instincts ringing her own death toll for either the end of the volume, or maybe somewhere in vol.10.

SEVENTH BIG THEORY: Ruby is gonna be grieving and maybe even getting full on angry about being expected to fix everything just because she's the optimistic one. She shouldn't have to deal with this brand and advanced level of childhood stealing just because she wanted to do what was right and won(lost) a genetic lottery for magic powers type anger. Jaune is going to have SO MUCH GUILT to work through, mostly the survivors kind. The bees will be experiencing couples therapy, they've both been pretty solid about individual growth leading up to this, Underworld will be them learning what it means to them to be partners now that they are so different to who they were. Weiss is different. Weiss is at first gonna feel like she's there just because it was a way to really shove all the other Schnee's into their therapy arcs and gave RBY+J neutral presence to rely on. Weiss is gonna go in the most stable of the bunch. But then, slow boil style, she'll start to realise how fucked up basically her whole life has been, especially upon realising that her "good years" with her new family have been spent getting sucked into being the last line of defense against the apocalypse, but will be too busy helping the others, so at the end of the volume when everyone else is actually doing pretty good and refreshed for the fight against Salem she'll only just be beginning her breakdown.

EIGHTH BIG THEORY: All this therapy shit is gonna be mirrored back on Remnant by the others grieving the percieved loss of the hearts of the team. Both sides of these story are gonna deal with some heavy shit, but the Remnant side is gonna be the depressed side, at least as long as it takes for Oz to tell them maybe the other's aren't dead leading to desperate attempts to get the staff OR the make desperate attempts to get the relics back anyways and inadvertently find out from Ambrosius what is up. But anyways. Winter is gonna be dealing with survivors guilt and the loss of both her little sisters (friends are great but Penny was little sister zoned and it's a hill I am prepared to die on. good sisterly relationships are friendships too). Nora is gonna be doing her self discovery thing. Ren is gonna be building on his end of vol.8 developments. Oscar will continue his grappling with the merge stuff. Qrow and Willow might get forced into AA. Whitely is gonna learn his own definition of being a Schnee instead of what his dad taught him.

NINTH BIG THEORY (OR FOURTH VERSION 3): The other way they get out is QORN obtain and use the staff to bring them home, potentially by trading enemy lives for them.

BONUS CONSPIRACY THEORY: QORN if presented with needing to trade for their loved ones & lost civilians have a lightbulb moment and decide hey why not trap Salem in a pocket universe since that is a thing Ambrosius can make? Like, if this bitch hasn't budged on her not learning to appreaciate life and humanity or whatever (which I'n pretty sure is the other way to break her curse instead of stopping remnant from turning) then she's a prime candidate for shoving into a personal reality that you can only escape if you can face your problems long enough to break the cycle they have you in. It'd be really fucked up but I think it might actually be possible to run the place using her as her own material component. Like kill her over and over and redistribute the energy to make the pocket world, but because god given power + Ambrosius can't actually destroy she just reforms anyways. MIght take a few hundred thousand deaths but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯. Or use the BoD oasis/grimm pools to make a world that mirrored the one she chose to live in on Remnant really make it hard for her to break that cycle....

Anyways.

TENTH BIG THEORY: Working on the idea that the relics are actually hidden in secret protected pockets of the underworld RWBY+J are gonna have a secondary quest of trying to get the relics from this side, and either finding a new place to hide them ages away from their vault doors. If you wanna make it a FOURTH VERSION 4, they're specifically gonna seek out the sword of destruction (HOLY VORPAL BLADE ALLUSIONS BATMAN) either with the intent of cutting their way out underworld--ahem wonderland--or with the assumption that someone is inevitably gonna have to open the vault door, because that's just how things be these days and they'll be able to cross to Vacuo from there.

[dana-chan-the-control-brain]

Happy new year everyone 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉

I know 2020 has been hard for everyone.

And I want everyone to know, suffering isn't a contest and we all suffer in different ways. But I feel I should give my year in Review. Just some things that happened to me personally.

This was an intense, and long and spiritual and emotional journey for me...

I really discovered what it meant to have community, family and what my life means to me.

But I feel I need to get this in writing cause I can remember the year with vivid detail and I will probably forget if I don't get it down.

Do I have to share this publically online to my tumblr account for a bunch of strangers to see? not really.

Do I want to?

Yes. I think so. Just from how so many people on tumblr and real life have touched me.

This is kinda long and no one needs to read this.

(idk how to do a readmore on mobile. But this is where I would add it later. No one needs to read if they don't want to.)

January/February: (and some background on the last five years of my life cause.....well. it's important.)

As people knew, I got way into Invader Zim last summer. I spent most of my waking life working a dead end job at a grocery store. I lived a sad lonely life, going straight home to a single dark studio apartment. With not many material possessions outside of games, my laptop and my tablet to my name. Half of my material loves, such as home furnishings and books were still in boxes from when I moved in. In case I ever had to move again, or get some "big screenshot or copywriter" job in the city.

....

I lived in that city in the same dead end job and apartment for five years.

No friends. No social life. I often refused to make doctor appointments or attempt to establish myself in that city. I didn't even talk to anyone in my workplace.

Work. Go online. Go to sleep.

I lived like that for five years.

I thought it was good.

Even my therapist thought I was doing well.

When I really wasn't. My main character flaw I struggle with is motivation.

I can talk to someone about very detailed plans I have to fix a problem... But I tend to never follow through.

Just because I can describe in detail how to fix my personal problems, it doesn't mean I will do it.

(I have gotten better at this but it's a major struggle)

I might have been a Zombie during the day...

But by night I was pouring my soul into my AU and my analysis.

After being so thoughly ignored or overlooked by the Naruto fandom and the Undertale fandom, I felt like I had finally found my home and was settling into a community there.

I just loved that people loved what I had to say.

Especially my AU.

It's no secret that a lot of themes in my au revolve around found family, grief, and loss.......

Fatherhood, in particular.

What it means to be a father, how much do you need to try when you mess up, how willing should a child forgive their parent, especially those that have wronged you and how much of it is factually accurate and simply a self projection of what children want their parents to be and visa versa... What amount of forgiveness and change is nessasary...is it needed?

....

It's no secret that a lot of my AU is a giant coping mechanism for my Dad's death. Espessially the falling out and growing closer with a lot of my family members throughout the years following his death. (Most of the time I keep it ambiguous to how it relates to my personal life unless I include a readmore that states so outright. I feel my au can be enjoyed by a variety of people in the fandom who don't need to know me as a person or my life story.)

My Dad passed away in 2016 in February and my family still feels the aftershocks to this day.

It's part of the reason I moved to the city, alienated myself from my family and people that loved me and refused to experience life for five years.

My entire world was Zim, and I was okay.

March: When America finally realized and started to feel the effects of the pandemic....

A lot of people got scared.

Me included.

I didn't have any streaming services or access to the news. So I only heard accounts from my mom.

I didn't understand why the store was so dead quiet and empty for a few days, then it went into mass chaos and panic in the span of two days.

It felt like Retail black friday in the worst way. Everyone was packed like sardines. Everyone was yelling. The lines at the registers bled into the clothing department.

I was witness to customers shoving others for toilet paper, being rude to cashier's and just overall unpleasantness.

At the time, I didn't even fully grasp what the pandemic was, and I feel a lot of people at the time didn't either.

I ended up absentmindedly scratching my eyebrow in front of a customer and she screamed and villanised me for it. That they didn't want groceries touched by my "unclean hands"

I ended up breaking down into tears.

The customer behind me gave me a hug and told me I was doing a great job.

But the damage was done. It was the final straw, I couldn't stop crying and I was breaking apart.

Thankfully my Boss (the one who likes me) pulled me aside and asked what's wrong.

It was then that I quit. No notice. Same day. I had to get out of there.

I was planning to move to an apartment with my sister in the summer, but my Mom offered for me to move back in with her temperarily just so I can get out of the city and away from the pandemic.

So I did.

I got scared, broke my lease a month early and quit my job of five years that gave me nothing back.

He told me, "take care of yourself and your family, I won't keep you here, do what you need to do."

So I did.

April-June:

A very eventful few months.

My mom offered for me to live at her place, but for some reason she was acting like I would live there forever. That this wasn't a temporary arrangement, and that I didn't have an apartment set up already.

This was in large part to my sister, who had lived with my mom taking advantage of her for years.

Even though my sister and I were going to move in together, I was just never sure about it cause of how she never packed her stuff or made any effort to find a job.

My mom often acted like I was lazy and not searching and was treating me like... Well, an unruly teenager instead of a woman of 29 years. She acted like I was a failure for returning home when it was her idea in the first place.

I would have just been petrified in the city.

Like usual, I retreated to my au again.... And in the spring, something eventful happened.

In may, 8th 2020:

I was invited by @rissynicole to join an invader zim discord.

Now, I've never really used discord before. I always thought it's interface is too confusing.. and I'm a member of a few other iz discords and I usually don't follow them that closely.

Rissy assured me it was different cause some friends of thiers made it and it was smaller.

Before I knew it, I was sharing memes and getting to know everyone there.

It wasn't long after I invited my partner in IZ crimes, @paketdimensioncomic who was genuinely wary of iz servers due to a bad experience with the last one they were a part of.

But soon they were sharing memes and laughing with everyone else.

My eyes were starting to open and I was able to connect to fans of my work in an interpersonal way. And I was able to discover new artists and aus I never knew about.

I was also able to meet so many others of the community and invite them to the server myself.

The moo-ping 10 server kept me sane while I was living with my judgmental mother.

Not only that, the summer was very productive for my au.

Drawing was all I did, and it was a huge break from the job as a cashier I had.

Not only that, June came, and with it, me and Ceph's first collab fic:

A result of us just going back and forth in our DMs constantly about Professor Membrane and how he changed in ETF for the better and how much we adamantly stan "trying-to-be-a-good-dad-brane" and how much of his ETF development has to be implied off screen in order for the emotional resolution in the movie to matter.

The only reason I never professed my love for Membrane as a character in the fandom before the fic dropped was.... Well....

Membrane can be a decisive character in the fandom and I was so worried people would hate me if I did an analysis on him, simply because he's not the best parent in the world. (As an understatement)

Ceph and I really encouraged each other to scream our love for the science himbo loud and proud more frequently and so often.... I actually start to see less Membrane hate posts and breakdowns then their used to be.... I like to think it's a combination of Me and Ceph's influence, along with ETF and the Quarterly's painting Membrane in a slightly more nuanced light then he was previously.

I never wrote a collab fic before and it's such a rewarding and fun and unique experience that I don't think I'll ever have again. And I love working with Ceph on our fics so much.

So much so we did it again...

July-August:

I never thought I would be one of those people who writes NSFW IZ fic... But here I am.

The Brainbrane au started.... An au of my au where Membrane and the Computer fall in love and Membrane makes him a body.

This ship was based around the idea where we joked that Membrane and Zim's Computer would have funny interactions if they ever met, under the pretense Membrane thinks Computer is Zim's parent.

Our headcanons morphed and shifted until we just full blown started shipping them.

Just because Membrane and Zim's Computer have overall REALLY entertaining chemistry.

It's a character dynamic never seen in the show or comics (yet) and I imagine thier interactions to be nothing but entertaining banter.

The fic was also born from spite... Making fun of the troupes and cliches that we found personally destestible in some questionable zadr fics.

So an angry ace and a demi-bisexual collab on a porn and end up blessing the fandom with

Compapa headcanons,

Computer being recognized as a more common used fanon character,

The ship of Brainbrane.

The fandom having a crisis of "oh God, not only are we xenophiles we're technophiles too!!!" Or "why you gotta give Zim's Computer an ass"

More android Computer designs

It was an eventful summer.

In the midst of all this, I moved into my new place, got a new job, and I was able to see my friend (who is def my platonic straight soul mate) who lives in Indiana.

She came to visit, showed me how to decorate and how to take care of my body better! Things were looking up! It was great.

September-November:

My job was at a boat store. If was approaching the fall and my hours were being severely cut.

I was getting into a rut of depression again.

I thought things were changing but the same routine I was trying to escape from was the same thing coming back.

But instead of letting it take hold, I decided I was going to do something about it... I was gonna visit a museum and go with my sister. Just... variety stimulation.

Well that didn't happen.

I talked about this shortly in my au itself...but..

My sister had a complete mental breakdown.

She stopped taking her meds, went off the deep end and was in the hospital a total of five times throughout November.

A lot of it was acting out and the perfect storm of environmental factors that made her scream and act out so she would keep going back to the hospital.

It was traumatizing for me.

I just can't explain what it's like. For her and for me to be in that position.

I'm not telling the full story and a lot of bullshit things happened I won't share here.

She got diagnosed with bipolar one and my mom expected me to be a caretaker for her.

I threatened to disown my family and move away out of state.

It was just too much for me to handle.

So much I was a nervous wreck.

I tried to pick up a second job... Cause my sister was in the mental ward so frequently and couldn't pay the bills.

But I was fired within a week cause I was so stressed I couldn't retain the basic information they were training me for.

It was an office job.

My dream.

It could have been.

I was fired from something I really wanted.

I was only there for three days.

I could not retain any information.

I was a mess.

My sister was a trigger, my mom wanted me to live with her. I couldn't live like this.... I had to get out.

I had to get out.

December:

Remember my Indiana friend?

Well the first week of December is my birthday.

My 30th to be exact.

While I did pick up a seasonal position at Target (not my first pick)

I took the first week of December off so I could spend time with her. Cause she agreed, I needed a break from this crap.

Surviving 30 years is cause to celebrate and if I had to celebrate with my sister I would have cried.

I know there was a risk traveling out of state during a pandemic...

But I needed out, I needed a friend..

And I kinda wanted to look at the place since I was considering moving there.

My friend's mom was sick so she avoided me and her daughter and got us a hotel room.

It was fun! I got to swim in a salt water pool, we talked about Naruto, I showed her the iz and su art books I brought, also Computer and Membrane tea.

I also got to meet her other friends and get crunk. And her bf who is super nice and funny!

I had a super fun birthday....

Until her mom told my friend that her grandparents had covid and that was what she had. And my friend got sick within that same day.... As did I.

I owe so much to her family.

I was an entire state away...about a ten hour drive from home.... She let me stay at her house. "The covid house" we called it.

Cause everyone (except the father. He avoided everyone and booked a hotel immediately cus he was an ER doctor) had covid within a day.

I called in, the test results were positive and I had to stay with her family for ten days quarantine before I could work again.

Which would have been fine....

If my tumblr didn't log me out perminately of my old account. @dana-chan325 .... Which really sucked cause I had a constant headache and was too sick to engage with tumblr or much of the fandom. I didn't want to make a new account when my head was in a bad fog and I could barely breathe or smell.

It's not like I saw much of my friend either.... We all slept at different hours and she had more symptoms then I did.

It was just netflix, danganronpa v3 and cry.

I was miserable, but at the same time.... Not?

I really feel like God himself was the one who pulled me off from tumblr, and my living situation.

Maybe a whole extra week feeling like a bobblehead was what I needed.

It gave me some much needed clarity on my relationships with my mom and sis and friend.

Running away to Indiana was not the solution here.

Once I was better within ten days and no longer had a leave of absence, I drove home.

I am glad I fully recovered (but from how I understand it, my dear friend is still ill. I'm praying for her)

I might have gone to work a bit too soon, cause I had an asthma attack after trying to unload a single cart in the span of six hours.

My boss lectured that my speed was unacceptable, and even though I explained the covid situation and breathing problems many times, she threatened that I'd be fired if I'm that slow again.

Que the next few days of work where they put me on register.

Instantly I was sent into a panic remembering the last time I was on the register and how that panic attack caused me to quit.

I even asked if I could go back to stocking, since my breathing had improved. My boss assured me that I was put on the register cause they needed help and nothing to do with my covid thing.

Then as December concluded and the new year began, my boss said that this was the last shift for me cause my position was seasonal and they were letting a lot of people go.

I then asked why I was on the schedule for Sunday, and he told me to ignore it and I'm free to reapply for full-time.

I mean.... They can act smart about it...

But putting your general merchandise stocker onto register after she had an asthma attack and missed working the first two weeks of December due to covid.....

Not a good look.

So once again, I'm jobless once more.

Will probably continue to live with my sister for awhile.

But I do not feel as if it's a bad thing....

I met so many good people this year....

My friend's family even gave me 500 usd to cover my rent since I couldn't work for a majority of December.

I've seen evil and good from humanity this year. I've seen acts of god, good friends and what my real family means to me as well as friends I consider family.

This year really made me look back at the person in the mirror and say,

"I deserve better."

And actually worked for it this time.

Oh and after Christmas I got a horrible yeast infection that burns over most of my body currently.

Very accurate doodle to the pain I'm in right now.

(seriously my body is a fungus.)

But hey, good news, I respected myself enough to go to the doctor about it!!

So that's progress.

I really hope 2021 holds good things for me.

Thank you to the mooping 10 server for always being there and keeping me sane,

Thank you tumblr for liking my au and everything.

AND A SUPER SPECIAL THANK YOU TO @evartandadam and her family for housing me and my dumb diseased ass. Everyone, she is an angel and I can't express how much she means to me. Please check out her art and buy her stuff on redbubble.

Anyways... Byebye 2020.

I look forward to what I can accomplish for myself this year.

[regicidal-defenestration]

Please tell me more about the mechsworld (discanisms?) Fic ideas

GLADLY

Under a readmore because it got ~long~ fdhfd

So this is split into three parts because unfortunately that’s the kind of person I am dfjghgj

Mechs + Death

According to Ao3’s word count, I have exactly 7306 thoughts on what would happen if the Mechanisms met Death (you know. The skeleton)

Because the thing is, Death (capital D) understands death (lower case d) perfectly well. He understands the process of life ending, he understands you go one way and only one way. After all, he’s got plenty of experience.

But! All of a sudden you’ve got this crew of eight people who definitely don’t stay dead like they should, plus the Toy Soldier, who’s a different deal entirely jdfghj

Now this doesn’t lead on to my next point really, but I’m moving on anway!

Death is a creature of belief, and so doesn’t obey the laws of physics as regular people. My favourite example of this is the Poker, which goes right through him, but does hit Teatime. Who else do we know that is powered by Belief (well. Narrative reasons (well. nanobots (well. Whatever fits best at the time)))

The Mechs!

All of them (Mechs and skeleton both) are powered by the story, and that is an incredibly interesting alley to explore

Also it’s fun to write situations where Death is inconvenienced .

Must there be “plot”? Is it not enough to imagine the Luggage, running full pelt towards you, the Toy Soldier riding on it’s back?

As the title kinda suggests, I have a bunch of ideas that aren’t full plots (and will likely never be because sometimes ideas just stay Ideas) but are fun to imagine

Ashes O’Reilly and Moist von Lipwig. If ever they started working together, basically you’d be fucked sdfgjhjk

They’d be terrifying at swindling, quite frankly, and if you compare their ability at maths and the like to that of the average Anhk-Morporkian well- it’s hardly a challenge at all

Of course, Ashes may well just take over the Post Office like they did the Acheron and all power to them!

Captain Carrot Ironfoundersson and Jonny d’Ville!

Jonny is the absolute opposite of Carrot in every conceivable way. Carrot wouldn’t hesitate to put him in jail as soon as he physically could and if Jonny thought it’d be funny to cause more problems inside rather than outside of jail he’d let himself be captured. They would not get along

Except

Except if they dealt with children

Carrot “organised the most deadly gangs of kids on the streets and got the to play football without fatalities” Ironfoundersson and Jonny “read to kids in a hospital (and only shot the annpying ones!)” d’Ville would find a grugding sort of respect there

Carrot would be explaining the rules of some game, and the kids would listen because it’s Carrot and you can’t not (and also stood behind him is Jonny and more accurately Jonny’s gun)

Speaking Susan Sto Helit into existence because I love her

Idk she meets the Toy Soldier in Biers

TBI (Discworld Flavour)

So this is much more involved than everything mentioned previously, where I just took characters and moved them around as needed. This is something I very much want to write, and am in the process of planning and, more specifically, finding explanations for a few Fairly Large Plot Points that at the moment I’m kinda hand waving away dfhghjk

TBI (Discworld Flavour) is basically me thinking “hey. What if I rewrote TBI but set it on the Disc, and went from there”

Inspector Second Class Lyfrassir Edda doesn’t exist as a single character (apologies to the Lyf fans who’ve read this far fdghjk). Instead, I think it’d work to split their role across a range of characters, namely Vetinari (and a newspaper) for the narration parts, and the City Watch (specifically Sam Vimes, Fred Colon and Nobby Nobbs) for dealing with Raphaella, Marius and Ivy in prison (those three remain unchanged, because the other three, Vimes especially, would have one hell of a time trying to deal with them)

Odin is a wizard (because, with all respect to Sir Terry Practchett, this is My Town now and wizardry and witchcraft aren’t gender specific (which he did get at, in Equal Rites, but over 41 books there wasn’t much deviation from Male Wizard Female Witch (also non-binary people exist!)). Also Many more people aren’t straight). She’s head of a project to run a train from Anhk-Morpork to the Hub in three hours rather than three days. Naturally, this involves lots of magic, and this magic attracts the attention of Things from the Dungeon Dimensions (which, like Yog-Sothoth are heavily inspired by the whole eldritch Lovecraft stuff, so that all fits nicely) Another thing that fits nicely is the fact that they can “infect” wizards (hence Odin), and also they really Cannot survive long in this world, whch gives a nice way to end this thing

No Asgard, so instead the passengers on the train are the staff of the Unseen University (yes, even the Librarian) Of course, they won’t die in this one, but the Bursar has a gloopy Thing land on his face after the Lecturer in Recent Runes booted it across the traincar so not much difference (/j) dfhfd

Loki, Thor, Sigyn and possibly Kvasir (though they also may not exist as a character, and instead be a name for the engine) are all UU students (hence why the passengers don’t care for them)  They are the ones that Do Things, and likely study in the High Energy Magic building, so are actually qualified to deal with this sort of shit

Then: shit happens! Odin dies, Loki Thor Sigyn die and meet Death and have some sort of ConversationTM about the power of stories. It’s all very touching

Obviously, the Disc doesn’t get destroyed - the Things get driven back. Ivy, Marius and Raphaells do still escape, of course, and, in the immortal words of everyone’s favourite human(?) Nobby, Mr Vimes goes spare

[roc-thoughtblog]

Sense and Sensibility Readthrough Part 22

Chapter 25, Pages 131-137

Oooh new text editor - oh dear lord it’s broken right now. I can’t paste everything in and it just ate my the rest of my post when I tried to delete the readmore. Needs more time in the oven. Anyway.

Previously, Elinor and Lucy have A Polite Talk. About Edward. Sort of more like a standoff really, no real shots were fired but somehow I still feel like blood was drawn. Actually no, the more I think about it, shots were fired and Elinor has been gravely wounded.

Summary of Elinor and Lucy's pianoside pistols-at-dusk: Elinor is the faster shot, and clips Lucy early, but Oh! 'Tis but a flesh wound! But Elinor needs to reload, she's now wide open! Lucy takes aim and fires back! Oh! Straight through the HEART! Elinor can't recover from this! Lucy Steele emerges victorious, and her prize is conviction of Elinor's intent to surrender of Edward Ferrars.

Lucy Steele: Silk hiding Steele - Okay I should stop that thought before I let TvTropes devour my soul - though a casual scan says that page doesn't list any direct Austen entries - there is a Mr. and Mrs. Darcy Mysteries though - actually this is fascinating - but there's no mention of my girl Anne Elliot here - aaaaand TvTropes is devouring my soul again even as I update what I'm doing as I type.

I'm going to assume this extra level of meta-awareness did prevent me from going even further down the rabbit hole.

Anyway!

Readthrough below.

Chapter 25

We're entering an entirely new segment of the story. Last chapter seemed to have wrapped up the Edward saga with a sort of two paragraph conclusion glossing over the aftermath. This chapter we're starting over fresh talking about Mrs. Jennings' personal life.

She insists on inviting the older Miss Dashwoods to her actual home near Portman Square. The Miss Dashwoods of course refuse, but I'm pretty sure this is where the next stage of the story will be set so something is almost certainly going to send them.

"I have had such good luck getting my own children off my hands [...] if I don't get one of you at least well married before I have done with you, it shall not be my fault."

Oh, I think that's the chief motivator of Mrs. Jennings' invitation. And she's very confident too. :'D

"I thought it would be more comfortable for them to be together; because, if they got tired of me, they might talk to one another, and laugh at my old ways behind my back."

Aww, is this chapter going to be a "Mrs. Jennings is a just a sweet lady really" showcase? ... I still wouldn't want to live with her though, I dunno if she'd let me have my social cooldown time.

"Lord bless me! how do you think I can live poking by myself, I who have been always used till this winter to have Charlotte with me."

... oh... she's just going to be lonely... :(

Also, my does she get along well with her son-in-law. She really ribs with Sir John like he is her own son.

Oh! It's London that Mrs. Jennings is taking them too. I was wondering what physical locale "near Portman Square" actually meant. Well, this is the most convenient location for having run-ins with the lads then. Willoughby and Brandon were both called to town on mysterious business weren't they? And Edward might be here too, that February visit with the Steeles that Lucy was so excited for.

Elinor was half-heartedly appealing to the cause of keeping their mother company as reason to turn down the invitation. Mama Dashwood ain't having it though, so they have no reason not to go. Peace and quiet to educate Margaret with everyone gone, and ample time to renovate rooms without disrupting people. Also, Marianne seemed like she kinda wanted to see town, possibly for Willoughby-related reasons. Yep, the Miss Dashwoods aren't getting outta this one.

Oh actually, Marianne really wants to go. Her countenance sunk as soon as Elinor tried to voice one last objection. My mind has immediately drifted to sudden onset of sad puppy look.

Marianne would like to go alone if Elinor won't go; Elinor is... not going to let that happen because as much as Marianne claims to be able to endure Mrs. Jennings' personality right now, in Mrs. Jennings' company it will probably be a bad time for all parties without Elinor also there reigning her in. Well, it doesn't matter anyway because Mama has made up her mind and they are both going.

Mama brings up Edward in a semi-romantic context again, which Elinor has been trying to wean her from for Reasons. Yeah, I get that. Elinor comments that she's perfectly indifferent to everyone else in Eddie's family besides himself. Apparently that's cause for astonishment in the other two? Not sure what that's about. Is she supposed to like the rest of Edward's family such that being indifferent to them is some kind of admittance? Or is it just a very impolite, un-Elinor statement to make?

With any luck, she won't run into Eddie because the trip will be over before February. Haha, this is narrative, there's no chance of that.

Oh no the Miss Steeles are still around. Welp.

Marianne's joy was almost a degree beyond happiness, so great was the perturbation of her spirits and her impatience to be gone.

Oh wow, I seriously underestimated how excited Marianne was to be on this trip. I think the narration was downplaying it earlier in the chapter, so I guess she was really bottling it in while Elinor was still disapproving of the idea. But now that Mama has commanded them to Go Have Fun, the stopper is unstopped. Pure unadulterated Marianne is out to play again! :D

It'll be good to have excited Marianne back! As much as I tend to disapprove of her general thoughts and attitudes, Elinor-style, I do enjoy her silly rom-antics. See what I did there? Haha, actually that simple dumb thought-slash-joke has put me in a more chipper mood than when I started.

Also, sorry this took a while again. I wish I could say that I've been busy, but it's more like I've had trouble managing myself/motivation for the past week. Also, I keep skipping out medication because I get up too late. Isn't it crazy how I get more things I want to do done when I take it, like today. ;>.>

Semester starts again on Monday, so I may start to get actually busier, but provided I don't manage to "lock" myself again the added routine will probably be a positive change.