#due to the nature of the beast with regards to how that works

[magichats]

Man it really is a shame that as of this date (July 5th, 2023) that Cookie's Bustle is all but scrapped off the web at large.

There's only two videos discussing it directly (and that more about the take downs and not directly the game itself), with everything else turning up no results.

I know some people on twitter were thinking that it was for some sort of relaunch, but at this point I really don't think it's some sort of modern reboot.

This is really a bummer for game preservation. Also a bummer as a person who just likes weird obscure games.

[diana-rose-25]

— Let's Dance

PART 1

STYLE INSPIRATION

pairing/s: BEBE! Bada Lee x Jam Republic! Reader x Wolf'Lo! Chocol

warnings: None so far, an unrealistic description of being an exchange foreign student, might confuse some words in ballet (as most of them are only through research and not based on experience).

description: A professional ballet dancer in Street Woman Fighter Season 2? (Y/N) Bae, a 23-year-old ballerina and dance prodigy enters the fighting arena alongside the infamously known crew, Jam Republic. Making the team's aura and presence far more intimidating despite being clad in soft pink and white clothing, adorned with astonished faces and friendly smiles. As the young woman entered the arena with curious eyes and small smile, the other teams couldn't help but awe at her beauty and elegant aura, unknowingly capturing the eyes of two charismatic dancers.

status: unedited

word count: 4.5k

"They're the last one to enter."

"This crew is intimidating."

These are just some of the comments circulating around the arena as they waited for the last and final crew to come out.

"It's amazing that JAM REPUBLIC is here," Akanen, Tsubakill's leader, stated in awe. Looking at the empty space where the last crew of the show have yet to enter the small arena.

A certain buzz was felt in the air as the other contestants waited for the anticipated arrival of JAM REPUBLIC. More notably, they were excited to meet the celebrity of all dancers, Kirsten Dodgen.

"We'll see Kirsten in person," Biggy stated admiringly.

Dancers expressed their love and admiration for the pink crew's leader and her arrival. One member from Deep N' Dap even stated that she cried when Kirsten cancelled on her classes due to visa issues after she signed up for all four of her classes. Her leader, Mina Myoung, promptly scolded her. Stating firmly that "this is a serious competition." Despite this, two of her members joked around, lifting up the atmosphere that turned heavy just before.

The longer the dancers wait, the more nervous and excited they get to finally meet the members of the crew.

"Wah, Kirsten is here," Yeni, a member of Wolf'Lo stated. The said woman bounced a little on her seat, the adrenaline rush pumping into very veins so fast she could barely contain it.

"Hey," she perked up, turning to Baby Sleek as she remembered something important.

"Hey Baby Sleek, is it true that (Y/N) was once your student?" Her question caused all the members to look at their oldest curiously and for confirmation.

A fond smile crossed Baby Sleek's face as she shrugged her shoulder. "Yeah," she confirms making her members awe and shout in disbelief as she rarely takes in students. "She was for a short while. (Y/N) trained under me for more or less than three years." The other crew turned to Wolf'Lo when they heard the commotion, curious to know what made them react in such a way.

"Wow, what was she like?" Haechi questioned. "Is she really that pretty in real life?"

Baby Sleek nodded, "when I first met her, I was so shocked at how pretty that kid is. I thought she was an idol. In my mind I was like, what the hell? How can this kid be so pretty at her age?" The members laughed at the whiny tone of her voice.

"But putting her looks aside, (Y/N) really is a monster at dance. A natural. At first, I was hesitant at her skills since she is more focused on the ballet genre, but after a few lessons, the girl was a beast. As if she was dancing hip-hop since she could walk! Of course, there were times where she would struggle with something, but her dedication and hard work pushed her through it all. It was really admirable."

The other members were floored at the high regards and compliments Baby Sleek showered you in. Suddenly feeling much more intimidated by the crew that isn't even present yet. Yeni, Haechi, and Halo nodded for the respect they felt for the Jam Republic member while Chocol and Mini sat rigidly in their seat.

"Yah, I'm starting to regret picking her as my No Respect Dancer," Mini laughed nervously before faking a cry and shoving her hands to cover her face. "Why didn't you say that before we pick the weakest dancers?!" She whined.

"They're not even here yet calm down," Chocol said, patting Mini on the shoulder in a mock comfort. "Have confidence, we can probably give her a good fight and win at the end of the day."

Halo and Baby Sleek giggle at the antics of their members and nodded encouragingly.

"Aya, don't mind. The both of you probably have more freestyle and dance battle experience than her. Don't doubt your capabilities now," Halo, their leader, commented while patting their heads.

"Right. Be confident, but keep your guard up. We saw her list of accomplishments before, so let's be prepared." Baby Sleek said seriously, shaking her hands a little to expel the nerves of the upcoming competition as her mind slowly shifts into battle mode.

〜⁠(⁠꒪⁠꒳⁠꒪⁠)⁠〜〜⁠(⁠꒪⁠꒳⁠꒪⁠)⁠〜〜⁠(⁠꒪⁠꒳⁠꒪⁠)⁠〜

Meanwhile, the pink crew of Jam Republic waited patiently for their cue to enter the arena in their given room.

(Y/N) tapped her hands against her thighs repeatedly. "I'm so excited and nervous at the same time."

Her members giggled at her but also felt the same energy as her. Ling, who sat next to her on her right, held her right hand to squeeze it gently for a few times.

"Me too. But don't worry, we got this." (Y/N) smiled at her as she intertwined their fingers together and squeezed her hand back.

"You'll be fine girl, we got your back." Latrice said, smilingly comfortingly at her as she sat next to Emma who gave you a nod and a finger heart to which you giggled.

Audrey, who sat next to her, leaned her head against her shoulder and looped her arm around her. "Yeah, calm down and let's just have fun! There's nothing to worry about." (Y/N) smiled fondly at the youngest member of the group, patting her knee in gratitude.

"I mean come on," Kirsten said, clapping her hands out of excitement and to hype her fellow members up, "this is us we're talking about!"

"Okay, okay, okay!" (Y/N) shouted, now pumped and excited, "Let's do this!" The girls laughed at her sudden mood change and hyped each other up even more. Even though some of them just met a couple of days ago, they were now starting to form a bond with each other. She smiled at the sight before her, feeling the warmth that bloomed in her chest, leaning back on the couch to compose herself.

The moment (Y/N) closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the TV screen came to life, signaling to their crew that it was time to enter the arena. The Jam Republic girls simultaneously yelled in surprise and excitement. Feeling gittery, Kirsten stood up and the rest of the girls followed her lead.

"Okay guys, are we ready?" She asked.

The members giggled a positive response albeit the nervous, quiet laughter that accompanied it as they form a circle.

"Shall we do this?" Kristen asked, placing a hand in front and the members followed one-by-one. "Entrance is going to be fire, three, two, one, wee!"

"Wee!" They followed along, laughing and giggling as they exited their room and walked towards the arena.

"Let's dance!"

The group walked down the narrow hallway of the building. Audrey clinging to (Y/N)'s arm and squeezing her hand gently with a bright smile on her face. She couldn't help but find the youngest so adorable! The dimples on her cheeks made (Y/N) want to pinch her cheeks really hard.

She then gestured to Emma who was falling behind a little, signaling her to walk beside them. Once she fell on step with (Y/N) and Audrey, the former girl wrapped an arm around her shoulders. Which was quite easy as the ballet dancer was noticeably the tallest amongst them (in her crew at least). The girls stated their excitement as they walked, feeling the nerves and adrenaline creep in.

Kirsten walked in front of them, leading the crew around the place until she momentarily stopped at the entrance.

"Ooooohhhh!" she cooed, placing both hands on the sides of the opening as she marveled at the sight before her.

"Holy damn!" Ling exclaimed once she saw how huge the room is. As they walked, they couldn't help but look around in amazement, eyes sparkling and hearts beating.

"Wow! This is so exciting!" Latrice and Audrey commented. (Y/N) giggled at them, enjoying their reactions that made her feel less conscious and nervous.

She'll be seeing her old teacher again, and she can't wait for it. After all these years, (Y/N) wanted to prove to Baby Sleek that all her training had not been in vain.

As soon as the other teams heard them, almost all of them perked up in their seat and looked up towards the stairs where they'll enter shortly.

"Oh, they're coming," Yoonji, a member of Mannequeen said in an excited tone.

"Wah, we'll be seeing them soon omg," Yeni clapped her hands lightly. Looking at the stairs in anticipation for the awaited group.

"You'll see your protegee soon Baby Sleek after all these years," Halo nudged her, "how are you feeling?"

"I think I might cry once I see her," Baby Sleek's answer made the members giggle fondly at her before cooing at the sight of her face. She looks like a mother waiting for her daughter to come home after all these years.

It wasn't long before the figure of Kirsten made her way down the stairs followed closely by the other members. The rest of the crew gasped in shock as soon as they saw her.

"Welcome to Korea!" A girl stated as the girls descended slowly down the stairs.

While descending, (Y/N) holds onto the railing of the stairs to look around the room to find her former mentor, taking advantage of the height to seek her out. She was so focused on finding her that she failed to see the looks of shock and awestruck faces of the other teams as soon as she turned around. Her eyes met Baby Sleek's, a bright grin soon adorned her face once they made eye contact and an excited giggle escaped her lips.

Unbeknownst to her, a certain dancer on the same team as her former mentor was blown away the moment she set eyes on you.

"Wow..." She whispered breathlessly, keeping her eyes on you.

Once the girls adorned in pink, white, and black clothing landed on the bottom of the stairs, they were once again looking around in astonishment and bowing to the people around while the others made comments about them.

"Wah, look at Kirsten's figure. It reminds me of Gabee."

"Their aura is so intimidating."

"Omo, Audrey is really pretty."

"She looks like a doll."

The team closest to them, BEBE, stared at Audrey in awe.

"Why is she so pretty?" Bada commented in awe, leaning back slightly in her seat while Tatter looked at her in wonder. "She looks like Anne Hathaway." She commented.

"I can't see (Y/N)," Lusher whined. The girl had her back facing the blue team making them unable to see her face. "I didn't see her clearly just now."

"Oh my god is that (Y/N)?!" The mentioned girl and her team almost jumped in shock at the loud voice that called out to her. They turn around to find a girl standing with a shock expression complete with a hand to her mouth as she stares at the girl she yelled for. Jam Republic laughed loudly and clapped their hands.

(Y/N) giggled and covered the bottom half of her flushed face. "Hello, nice to meet you." She said in fluent Korean and bowed down to the girl that was still standing.

Harimu, a member of 1 Million and her team yelled in surprise yet again, causing another laughter to roar out from Jam Republic.

"How can someone be that beautiful?!" Harimu yelled aloud, causing laughter to erupt from the room as she whined and stomped her foot to the ground in a faux tantrum manner.

Feeling even more flustered (Y/N) turned to hide her blushing face, fanning it down to compose herself but accidentally made eye contact with one of the hottest and trendiest choreographers today, Bada Lee.

So pretty, (Y/N) thought.

She regained her composure and grinned at the girl who was now staring at her with wide eyes and an agape mouth.

"Hello, nice to meet you all," she greeted the team, forcing herself to look away from Bada's eyes to bow down at every member of BEBE.

"Omo!" Lusher yelled, grabbing onto Kyma's hand, who was sitting beside her in shock. "Oh my god!" The rest of the team could only stare in shock at the woman still smiling, all of them shared similar looks of shock and admiration.

(Y/N) gave them one last smile and a bow before returning to her team, choosing to stand behind along with Audrey.

"Did you see her?"

"Oh my god her visuals are out of this world."

"My god, have you seen her height? She could be a VS model."

"Or those cliché movies about princesses."

"Bada-unnie," Tatter called out to her, giggling once she saw the still awestruck look on Bada's face, her gaze still trained and focused on (Y/N). "Our leader is still in a starstruck trance everyone."

"Looks like someone has a crush~," Minah teased, poking the shoulder of her leader with her pointer finger.

Bada snapped her gaze away once she heard the teasing tones of her team members and light shoves on her shoulder. She groaned and hid her flushed face away.

"Shut up!" Bada's voice came out muffled but the others still heard it loud and clear.

"Wah, she's a young woman now," Halo looked at Baby Sleek who commented in a soft voice. Despite the fond smile that painted her face, tears began to well up in her eyes. The leader chuckled softly and wrapped her arm around her for a side hug, rubbing her hand up and down her shoulder.

Chocol stared.

Even though (Y/N)'s back was facing them, she stared. Taking note of her poise, the way she stands and holds herself. Shoulders back and standing tall, petite that of a standard ballerina but somehow oozes that aura of regal elegance. Wow, Chocol thought. She's like some sort of royalty.

The large screen above suddenly made a noise, effectively catching the attention of Jam Republic and everyone else.

"Oooh," (Y/N) said, holding onto Audrey's hand when the younger one sought hers out. "Evaluation time."

Jam Repuiblic stood in front of it, anxiously awaiting the thougts, opinions, and evaluation of them by other crews with a smile on their face. Although (Y/N) nervous, she had a feeling that most of these aren't going to be friendly since this is a competition show. They need something for drama after all.

"The strong point of Jam Republic is the fact that they've been on the great stage. We can't ignore this."

(Y/N) smiled at the sweet comment, though, that didn't last long.

"All the members of Jam Republic think that they're number 1. Everyone wants to be the main dancer. Can they really be united?" Ah, there it is.

(Y/N) subtely side-eyed Akanen who commented on the video. She has respect for the dancer and leader of Tsubakill, admires her even, but she can't help but smirk towards her. She understands her point, but it still wasn't enough to hide that but of irritation towards her comment. Akanen, who was looking at Jam Republic when her comment was shown, gulped when she made eye-contact with (Y/N) and swiftly looked away.

"Wah, she didn't like that comment." Momo commented when she saw the three second interaction of the dancers.

"I know, I'm suddenly scared," Tsubakill giggled quietly at Akanen.

The next few comments of the evaluation targeted Kirsten and her affiliation with the world renowned crew, The Royal Family. (Y/N) titled her head in confusion when a dancer tried to insult Kirsten by looking for Paris Goebel instead of her.

"They do know you're one of the key members for a reason right?" She nudged at her leader, leaning down to whisper in her ear. Kirsten just nodded and smiled in response with her eye glued to the screen in front.

"A fake Royal Family?" (Y/N) couldn't help but gasped humourly at the harsh comment.

If that wasn't enough, the next comments are targeting Audrey. (Y/N) felt the younger girl squeeze her hand; she turned to look at her face to find the girl trying to keep a small smile despite the harsh criticisms thrown her way.

"She looks like an amateur dancer. The skills of a baby dancer."

"Audrey is a pretty doll. As she's a pretty doll, standing and doing nothing would be enough."

"Oh my gosh," the taller girl clicked her tongue in annoyance towards the comments. Are they really doubting her skills because she's young and pretty? "That's a shallow critic."

Jam Republic giggled in shock when those words came out of her mouth. The other teams, on the other hand, looked at her face nervously. The happy and excited face of the tallest Jam Republic member, now, still has a small smile; but eyes devoid of any emotion.

"She looks like she's seething with rage right now." Bada commented, leaning forward with clasped hands, resting her elbows on her knees whilst keeping her gaze on the girl in pink.

"She's like an older sister who wants to fight the bully of her younger sister," Tatter said, the rest of the crew agreed with her after taking a swift glance before looking back at the screen.

"(Y/N) is another pretty face," ah, there goes the comments about her. The mentioned girl straightened her back and inhaled deeply. Mentally preparing herself to receive the harsh comments thrown at her.

"(Y/N) is a professional ballerina who had performed on broadways before and competed in ballet genre on competitions. I don't think some people realize how hard it is to compete in ballet and make it look so easy. I really have so much respect for her." The said girl couldn't help but bow in gratitude at the praise she received from a member of Mannequeen, Cera.

"Thank you so much," she whispered. Audrey grinned brightly at her and nudged her teasingly.

"(Y/N) is a ballerina, right? And a pretty one at that. She could stand on pointe all day and stand on a music box, let it spin her around, and people would appreciate her dancing."

"I honestly don't think she could perform well in any other type of genre since her main focus is on ballet."

"Yeah, like a one trick pony."

The gasps could be heard echoing throughout the room after the comment. (Y/N)'s and her team members' jaw dropped in shock, "ouch, that hurts."

The former girl clutched her chest in exaggeration and pretended to lose her balance. Audrey held on to her and laughed at her dramatic antics.

The room suddenly erupted in shock when the screen showed how many No Respct stickers each Jam Reublic member will receive. Above showed their names in huge, bold, and bright fonts their name and the results:

Kristen - 2

Latrice - 0

Ling - 1

Emma - 1

(Y/N) - 4

Audrey - 6

An overwhelming amount of people chose Audrey as their No Respect Dancer. The youngest member of Jam Republic cheered and held her thumbs up in the air, whilst (Y/N) just clapped slowly with a smile, still looking at the results.

4 No Respect Dancer stickers might not be much compared to Audrey. However, the message was still loud and clear that there are people who are doubting her as a dancer.

"Okay, okay," she said, turning to Audrey as she held up a hand, "let's show them what we've got." The two girls high-fived each other with matching grins.

As they made their way to their designated seats. (Y/N) made eye contact with Baby Sleek. She grinned towards her and gave a small wave, bowing down in greeting towards Wolf'Lo who sat beside them.

(Y/N) sat at the top of the seat with her back straight, a trait she acquired after it was conditioned in her body. She was still quite frustrated at the one trick comment she received. She clicked her tongue in frustration and puffed her cheeks, inhaling and exhaling deeply through her nose.

"You okay?" Kirsten asked and patted her thigh.

"Yeah," she nodded - albeit partly lying. "Don't worry, Audrey and I will make sure they'll eat their words after they see us dance."

Audrey shot her finger guns with a wink, "that's right mama!"

She laughed at her adorableness and pinched her cheeks. Inhaling deeply one last time, she forced herself to relax and remember that it's all part of the show. (Y/N) gathered her hair all together in her hands and placed them behind her back when she heard a sound of awe.

Startled, the girl turned her head to the side. Staring at her was a woman with bright red hair that it almost looks orange. She thought it suited her very well and loves the boyish look the other woman adorned.

Chocol flushed furiously when her eyes suddenly met (Y/N)'s. One moment, she was admiring her side profile, then the next, she's looking into her eyes. She gasped as she placed a hand on her mouth and bowed deeply.

"Nice to meet you! I didn't mean to stare, I'm sorry!"

(Y/N) giggled and bowed to her as well, waving her hand dismissively at the poor woman whose head was still bowing down. "Nice to meet you too! And don't worry, it's fine, thank you!" She grinned with a blush on her face.

Haechi laughed at her flustered team member, garnering second-hand embarrassment from her. Both of their teams turned their attention to the commotion behind them and laughed at the flustered state their two members are in.

"Look at Chocol's face! It's almost the same color as a tomato," Buckey commented as she watched their interaction. Mannequeen giggled in amusement.

Wolf'Lo seemed intimidating when they first arrived. Now, one of their members are left in a flustered mess against a member of Jam Republic.

"I guess even Chocol couldn't resist (Y/N)'s charm." Redlic commented.

Once the commotion died down (there's still a red hue across Chocol's face), the room cheered once again once the judges were introduced: Shin Monika, Son Hyun-woo (Shownu), and the guest judge; Mike Song.

After the introduction, all the crews were instructed to return to their hideout rooms to change and prepare for their first mission: No Respect Battle.

Jam Republic debriefed about their evaluation after they've changed as they waited for their cue to return back to the arena. The members lounged comfortably at the couch while Audrey was left standing to voice out her frustrations.

"It's like, you can't even see my face! It's the shoulders! They're focusing on my shoulders!" She laughed in frustration.

"I know! They see one video of you doing markings, and suddenly, they deemed you as the worst dancer!" (Y/N) replied, leaning against Ling as she hugs the plush bunny tightly.

There's a visible frown etched upon Audrey's face. She understands her frustrations and sadness that the youngest might be feeling right now. So, she stands up and makes her way towards her. (Y/N) placed her hands on her shoulders as she bends her knees to be on Audrey's eye level.

"What they said about you isn't a reflection of all the hard work and dedication you've put into your craft. Don't let their comments get into your head too much. They don't know what you bring into the table."

(Y/N) tilted her chin up with her finger when Audrey smiled at her. "Chin up, darling. Show them what you've got. "

Back in the arena, the tension in the air thickened. Dancers stretched and prepared for the upcoming battle; the first bettle and mission of the season. Everyone wants the win for themselves; everyone wants to prove themselves and the stregths of their team.

Jam Republic conversed to themselves as they stretched. (Y/N) was in middle spilts as she conversed with Emma and Latrice.

"Who do you want to battle (Y/N)," Emma asked as she stretches her shoulders.

"Oh, definitely Cera of Mannequeen." She answered instantly before standing up. "We have the most similar style out of everyone, and I love her power and charisma when she battles. She's so cool."

(Y/N) was about to add onto her comment when she saw BEBE enter the arena, more specifically, their leader. Bada came into her view dressed in oversized clothing and a cap in her head, almost covering her eyes. Her outfit and confidence boosted her charisma, which left (Y/N) speechless.

Bada took a sip of her drink before scanning around the room. Initially, she did this to scout out her competition when she met the wide eyes of a certain member of the pink team.

(Y/N) chocked in her saliva in shock when their eyes met. She immediately turned her head and buried her face in her hands.

"What's happening to you?" Latrice laughed at the girl, taking note of her red ears. She looks at the direction the latter girl was looking at and grinned teasingly. She patted Emma's hand to direct her attention to the tall woman who was staring at their member.

Bada was still staring at (Y/N) with a smirk on her face. She chuckled lowly when she saw how the girl became flustered under her gaze.

"Cute," she commented before taking a seat. Mentally forming a plan to make herself acquainted with the girl after the camera's stop rolling for the day.

"What did you say?" Tatter asked when her leader muttered something inaudible.

"Nothing. Dont worry about it." Bada patted the blonde's head. Tatter was confused at the giddy mood her leader was in but ultimately dropped it for the time being.

Back with Jam Republic, Latrice and Emma share an amused look on their faces as they watch (Y/N) fan her face.

"What?" The girl asked, knowing full well what it is about.

"Nothing," they replied simultaneously. She narrowed her eyes at them and pouted her lips.

"Stop teasing her guys," Kirsten commented. "Let her focus on her stretching. Otherwise, she might focus all her attention on a certain blue team member." The rest of the team burst out laughing. (Y/N) flushed even more as she glared at Kirsten. The leader looked back at her with an innocent smile and fluttering eyes in faux innocence in response.

"Whatever," she muttered before standing tall to prepare herself to position herself into an arabesque.

"Still can't get over how flexible you are," Emma commented. Watching her effortlessly pull the move.

(Y/N) hummed in response before inhaling, feeling the deep stretch on her core, back, and legs. She always loved the feeling of deep stretches. It's like letting your breathe after a long day. She held the pose for as long as she could before she exhaled and released her leg.

"Woah, she's so flexible," Redy stated as she watched the girl pull the move. Harimu and her had been observing her for quite a while now. Lia, their leader, watched them in amusement before glancing at who they're looking at.

"Hey, stop that and focus on the mission," she scolded them.

It wasn't long before Kang Daniel, the host of the season, welcomed them back and introduced the rules of the mission. (Y/N) bounced her feet in anticipation and wiggled her shoulders.

Mind and body ready for the fight that's about to begin.

tag list:@luvjanexx @b1ackbunny @thedevilisrory @kaaylvst @badagf @aestrelle19 @leo-dragon @efyyylee @smoooore @infinite1sblog @xiakiyama @watamotee33 @tnu-ree @hallotherenicetomettyou @skuuzae

note: italized names can't be tagged. I'm sorry 😭😭😭

next part>>>

[diana-rose25]

— Let's Dance

TEASER!

pairing/s: BEBE! Bada Lee x Jam Republic! Reader x Wolf'Lo! Chocol

warnings: None so far, an unrealistic description of being an exchange foreign student, might confuse some words in ballet (as most of them are only through research and not based on experience).

description: A professional ballet dancer in Street Woman Fighter Season 2? (Y/N) Bae, a 23-year-old ballerina and dance prodigy enters the fighting arena alongside the infamously known crew, JAM REPUBLIC. Making the team's aura and presence far more intimidating despite being clad in soft pink and white clothing, adorned with astonished faces and friendly smiles. As the young woman entered the arena with curious eyes and small smile, the other teams couldn't help but awe at her beauty and elegant aura, unknowingly capturing the eyes of two charismatic dancers.

"They're the last one to enter."

"This crew is intimidating."

These are just some of the comments circulating around the arena as they waited for the last and final crew to come out.

"It's amazing that JAM REPUBLIC is here," Akanen, Tsubakill's leader, stated in awe. Looking at the empty space where the last crew of the show have yet to enter the small arena.

A certain buzz was felt in the air as the other contestants waited for the anticipated arrival of JAM REPUBLIC. More notably, they were excited to meet the celebrity of all dancers, Kirsten Dodgen.

"We'll see Kirsten in person," Biggy stated admiringly.

Dancers expressed their love and admiration for the pink crew's leader and her arrival. One member from Deep N' Dap even stated that she cried when Kirsten cancelled on her classes due to visa issues after she signed up for all four of her classes. Her leader, Mina Myoung, promptly scolded her. Stating firmly that "this is a serious competition." Despite this, two of her members joked around, lifting up the atmosphere that turned heavy just before.

The longer the dancers wait, the more nervous and excited they get to finally meet the members of the crew.

"Wah, Kirsten is here," Yeni, a member of Wolf'Lo stated. The said woman bounced a little on her seat, the adrenaline rush pumping into very veins so fast she could barely contain it.

"Hey," she perked up, turning to Baby Sleek as she remembered something important.

"Hey Baby Sleek, is it true that (Y/N) was once your student?" Her question caused all the members to look at their oldest curiously and for confirmation.

A fond smile crossed Baby Sleek's face as she shrugged her shoulder. "Yeah," she confirms making her members awe and shout in disbelief as she rarely takes in students. "She was for a short while. (Y/N) trained under me for more or less than three years." The other crew turned to Wolf'Lo when they heard the commotion, curious to know what made them react in such a way.

"Wow, what was she like?" Haechi questioned. "Is she really that pretty in real life?"

Baby Sleek nodded, "when I first met her, I was so shocked at how pretty that kid is. I thought she was an idol. In my mind I was like, what the hell? How can this kid be so pretty at her age?" The members laughed at the whiny tone of her voice.

"But putting her looks aside, (Y/N) really is a monster at dance. A natural. At first, I was hesitant at her skills since she is more focused on the ballet genre, but after a few lessons, the girl was a beast. As if she was dancing hip-hop since she could walk! Of course, there were times where she would struggle with something, but her dedication and hard work pushed her through it all. It was really admirable."

The other members were floored at the high regards and compliments Baby Sleek showered you in. Suddenly feeling much more intimidated by the crew that isn't even present yet. Yeni, Haechi, and Halo nodded for the respect they felt for the Jam Republic member while Chocol and Mini sat rigidly in their seat.

"Yah, I'm starting to regret picking her as my No Respect Dancer," Mini laughed nervously before faking a cry and shoving her hands to cover her face. "Why didn't you say that before we pick the weakest dancers?!" She whined.

"They're not even here yet calm down," Chocol said, patting Mini on the shoulder in a mock comfort. "Have confidence, we can probably give her a good fight and win at the end of the day."

Halo and Baby Sleek giggle at the antics of their members and nodded encouragingly.

"Aya, don't mind. The both of you probably have more freestyle and dance battle experience than her. Don't doubt your capabilities now," Halo, their leader, commented while patting their heads.

"Right. Be confident, but keep your guard up. We saw her list of accomplishments before, so let's be prepared." Baby Sleek said seriously, shaking her hands a little to expel the nerves of the upcoming competition as her mind slowly shifts into battle mode.

〜⁠(⁠꒪⁠꒳⁠꒪⁠)⁠〜〜⁠(⁠꒪⁠꒳⁠꒪⁠)⁠〜〜⁠(⁠꒪⁠꒳⁠꒪⁠)⁠〜

Meanwhile, the pink crew of Jam Republic waited patiently for their cue to enter the arena in their given room.

(Y/N) tapped her hands against her thighs repeatedly. "I'm so excited and nervous at the same time."

Her members giggled at her but also felt the same energy as her. Ling, who sat next to her on her right, held her right hand to squeeze it gently for a few times.

"Me too. But don't worry, we got this." (Y/N) smiled at her as she intertwined their fingers together and squeezed her hand back.

"You'll be fine girl, we got your back." Latrice said, smilingly comfortingly at her as she sat next to Emma who gave you a nod and a finger heart to which you giggled.

Audrey, who sat next to her, leaned her head against her shoulder and looped her arm around her. "Yeah, calm down and let's just have fun! There's nothing to worry about." (Y/N) smiled fondly at the youngest member of the group, patting her knee in gratitude.

"I mean come on," Kirsten said, clapping her hands out of excitement and to hype her fellow members up, "this is us we're talking about!"

"Okay, okay, okay!" (Y/N) shouted, now pumped and excited, "Let's do this!" The girls laughed at her sudden mood change and hyped each other up even more. Even though some of them just met a couple of days ago, they were now starting to form a bond with each other. She smiled at the sight before her, feeling the warmth that bloomed in her chest, leaning back on the couch to compose herself.

The moment (Y/N) closed her eyes and took a deep breath, the TV screen came to life, signaling to their crew that it was time to enter the arena. The Jam Republic girls simultaneously yelled in surprise and excitement. Feeling gittery, Kirsten stood up and the rest of the girls followed her lead.

"Okay guys, are we ready?" She asked.

The members giggled a positive response albeit the nervous, quiet laughter that accompanied it as they form a circle.

"Shall we do this?" Kristen asked, placing a hand in front and the members followed one-by-one. "Entrance is going to be fire, three, two, one, wee!"

"Wee!" They followed along, laughing and giggling as they exited their room and walked towards the arena.

"Let's Dance!"

— ©All Rights Reserved diana-rose25

[runawaycarouselhorse]

Our pure-hearted, all-loving hero... he can be a little brat (especially back in OS/early in his journey, when he was much more of a hot-blooded boy hero), but his heart's worth its weight in solid gold and he grows into such a kind, patient character with strong ideals, which is why Hero of Ideals suits him best (even the movie manga opted to adapt that version of the movie, rather than the one where Ash is Hero of Truth, and expanded on it!)

[I hope you have "long post" and "image heavy" muted if you need to, because this post's a doozy and given tumblr, if my blog's ever deleted, posts with read mores will be rendered inaccessible forever, so I don't like to make them!]

A lot of people complained about how young Ash looked in BW! (and complained even more about Sun & Moon's very divisive art style... and we wound up seeing great growth for his love of a whole region, and achieved a goal integral to achieving his dreams), but from the first episode of BW!, my first impression was of how mature and calm Ash is with Iris and Trip in regards to their initially abrasive and varingly aloof personalities.

Iris was friendlier and more excitable, more childlike, but Ash took her barbs in stride and patiently waited for her to open up about her dreams (she keeps it secret in the first episode, using that cute, childish word "naisho" instead of saying it's a secret "himitsu"--the same childish word she uses when asked about what Kairyuu/Dragonite told her in their reunion episode) and background (we don't know she ran away from the academy or what her hometown was like until season 2!)

The way Ash handled Tory (who was a traumatized, younger child--and Ash wanted to fight him at first, before understanding him!), Lucario (also traumatized, insulted Ash and Pikachu's bond--Ash fought him and fell off a hill, wrestling with him, before he saw Lucario's memory of being "abandoned" and broke down in tears, apologizing for what he said when he didn't know anything...), Chimchar (a traumatized Pokemon, Ash was patient, kind, and loving to him, even when he lashed out while out of control due to Blaze, which he previously could only use to save his life...), etc., is very different from how he handled Iris (who was bullied subtly by being completely ostracized, no one would sit or eat or play with her at the academy, she was so depressed, she stopped eating--this is canon and not lingered on, but she plainly says it and that her dorm mother making her food that would remind her of home, just berries skewered on a stick, "saved her") and even Trip.

(By the way, Ash apologizing to Lucario, in tears of regret over what he said to Lucario when he didn't understand him is when I first started to truly love and respect Ash's character and growth! Before that, I really was only a big fan of the TRio.)

By contrast to those rockier beginnings with other kids, Ash was patient and encouraging with Trip, even while Trip purposefully kept him and everyone else (even his Pokemon who loved him, as Alder said...) at bay and rejected all his attempts at friendship, before he got the answers he needed from Alder and slowly stopped shutting others out. He had every right to lash out at Trip for making fun of him, but kept trying to befriend him and showed interest in his journey and growth.

(Trip was also his youngest main rival at that point, even if he is a very book-smart child prodigy type who was an excellent battler from the start, he still fell apart in front of unexpected, unorthodox techniques like Bell/Bianca and Satoshi/Ash's out-of-the-box strategies.)

Naturally, there's also his very patient and encouraging bond with Lillie, who also had her trauma-induced fear of Pokemon (much like Tory!) and dissociative amnesia, the early loss of her father in infancy, and the distance between her and her mother (too wrapped-up in work and her obsession with Ultra Beasts to notice her own child's trauma and falling behind her peers...) to overcome, but the focus of this post is BW! I already write a lot about Lillie, she's another favourite of mine. <3

It's worth noting, too, that Pikachu was Ash's first "problem Pokemon"... even if it's usually the Fire types who are traumatized, Pikachu has abandonment issues like Chimchar and Tepig did. Pikachu famously hates being inside a pokeball and Ash always repesects this boundary and becomes very, very upset in XY when he believed Pikachu was forced into a pokeball... the pokeball factory episode was, otherwise, a very light-hearted episode, but Pikachu's boundaries and possible trauma is taken seriously.

This scene mirrors a similar breakdown Alain has when he finds out all he's done, under the impression he was protecting his loved ones, was aiding Lysandre's genocidal plans... both smash their fists into hard surfaces, blaming themselves for failing to protect loved ones.

In a very early Kanto episode, Sparks Fly for Magnemite, we learn Pikachu has abandonment issues so bad, he doesn't want to be separated from Ash for even an overnight stay in the Pokemon Center. It seems Pikachu (fortunately) quickly become much more secure in his bond with Ash and no longer fears being separated for medical treatment, but this is very, very sad and telling!

Although we never delve very deeply into that for most of the series... (an early magazine scan has Ookido-hakase/Professor Oak theorize Pikachu's previous trainer abandoned it), we were finally given some answers late in series!

In the AU movie, Pikachu says* his reason for not going into the pokeball: "It's because I always want to be with you." ;O;

... unless this is a dream or hallucination, given Ash is on the verge of unconsciousness when it happens--but if we really want to believe it happened, maybe his latent Aura post-cognition abailities kicked in and he understood Pikachu's feelings, like when Victini slept in his lap, crying, and Ash saw Victini's dream of his past.

As for the main series canon, in the first episode of Pocket Monsters 2019 (Pokemon Journeys), we learn Ash's Pikachu was a lone, possibly orphaned, Pichu, who was briefly raised by a Kangaskhan, carried in her pouch with her child, until he grew too heavy and quietly left at night (without saying goodbye) to live by his own strength, evolving into Pikachu as he did so.

If Lusamine not taking Lillie's (because they're irrational or not logical) feelings seriously gave her a complex where she always needed to claim her stances are "logical" even when they're based in emotion... I wonder what it tells us that "child prodigy" Trip defaulting to blaming his loss to Alder on him doing something wrong or being inherently lacking ("What did I do wrong? What do I lack?"), because he doesn't ever consider a simple difference in experience is all it is... that Alder's many years of wisdom and Pokemon training give him an advantage over rookie trainer Trip, who's shown to be averse to being called a "child" (Iris ropes him into battling Ash twice by calling him a kid), because he always has to prove he's an adult. He thinks there's something inherently "lacking" in him or "wrong" about his method if he doesn't achieve.

All of that is canon, but if you further analyze his character, Trip has a superiority complex, which is very often a defense mechanism to mask feelings of inferiority. He canonically places a lot of worth in the image he projects and constantly puts down others. Add that to being a child prodigy and his preoccupation with proving he's an adult (but doesn't bat an eyelid at someone calling him "unjust" for his violent methods in the Venipede episode, like he's already accepted being a terrible person, because he thinks striving for peace like idealistic Ash is "naive"--Trip has a very cynical view of adults, yet thinks of himself as such...)

Trip only cares to be seen as strong and mature, not good (he's not even surprised to be called bad, he's already accepted it, he doesn't care), and if he fails, he blames his lack of knowledge or his inherent nature as lacking.

Because his self-worth is in being a genius and being better than the rest, so he seeks outside validation, namely Alder's, who Trip behaves so jealously about, Alder canonically compares him to a fickle-hearted woman (well, he messes up the phrase 'Onna-gokoro to haru no sora.' "A woman's heart is as fickle as the sky of spring" because he was hitting on Junsa-san/Officer Jenny earlier, so he says "fickle as Junsa-san"... Freudian slip. ^^;;;;)

Trip, when asked what he was battling for, what he wanted to prove... he said it was to prove his strength to Alder.

That's all he wanted! To prove his strength and be acknowledged by his hero. Alder even asks him if he likes him. Adeku frankly asks it in the Japanese version, but the dub dances around with "do you have any admiration for a man such as myself"--which Trip doesn't answer verbally, although he really doesn't have to, because the scene makes it clear and is a lens that clarifies all his past behaviour.

That's all Trip wants: love and acknowledgement. Which he believed he could only get by becoming stronger, smarter, and more mature as fast as possible, likely taking Alder's to be some stronger and grow up quickly too literally, as head animator Iwane said, Shootie was just "a little too grown-up."

It takes a long, long time for Trip to unlearn prioritizing battles over anything else and to embrace childhood (which hey, is one of the main themes of BW!), because it's a precious time which we can never return to... so, Alder's current idealogy is to enjoy life, make friends, love Pokemon, and not dwell on the past. Ash's approach to being a Pokemon Champion and Master is the same.

Alder's introductory episode made it very clear he and Ash are very, very similar characters... and we see this again in Journeys, in the kind of advice Champion Ash gives younger kids. Ash and Alder have a similar wisdom they'd like to impart, I know, it's funny calling Ash wise, but he has high emotional intelligence and is incredibly wise in that respect for his age... it took Alder many, many long years to arrive at the same conclusion Ash reached.

Ash's Japanese name, Satoshi, means "Wisdom." (Another cute detail: Ash's little brother, Lei, whose Hawaiian name means a "Garland of Flowers-- in Japanese, would be pronounced as Rei, which also means "Wisdom." Lei likely has a name chosen to have meaning in both Hawaiian and Japanese. ^^)

Bonus shout-out to Ash, Iris, and Cilan all protecting Keldeo until he finds the courage to face his fears, correct his mistakes, and save his friends...

Ash is a very good friend, AG, DP, and BW! are all part of his development into the kinder character he became today. Some people might miss how rude he was to his friends in OS, but he can still playfully dish it out, he's just calmer and more sure of himself, so less likely to sweat the small stuff and recognizes when someone, whether Pokemon or trainer, just needs time and patience.

[ineclipsedpast]

🩸Sylus🩸Theory

SPOILERS: DO NOT READ IF YOU HAVEN’T FINISHED LATEST CHAPTERS OR YOU WANT TO AVOID THEORIES-

(Also I did add more edits within)

Calling it rn on 07/15/2024 around 10pm bc I’ll forget the actual time I thought it but

Pretty sure mister bird man was a past experiment or was turned into a beast/wanderer himself and like stated throughout the new chapters regarding new ideas and goals of experimentation, he maintained his consciousness despite being changed.

Seemingly sacrificing his life for mc’s to save her.

Would also make sense:

why he empathizes more with animals and beasts (maybe wanders too) and encourages or doesn’t dissuade their primal nature.

if mc tried to fight for him or maybe save him, even chose to understand him or also suffered with him, why he considers them kindred spirits (unless maybe that’s due to the aether core or her evol)

his desensitization to brutality and murdering, his use of mind manipulation and threats (if he too suffered at the hands of people like those he fights) (but guess he does it in a suave way lmao)

OR- he is part of mc’s technical “future” bc afterall, he said:

And there was that one article with these discussions:

So it is an acknowledgement that we as humans have created this perception of time to better understand it, but that’s not necessarily how it works.

Think of Xavier for example- technically he is supposed to be from a future setting but we may have been under the misconception of attributing that to his label of an “alien” despite how heavily woven in it is within his lore that he’s traversed through space and time for the mc.

It could be Sylus’ past, but for present mc, that’s her future rebirth possibly as well as her past.

[bluedragonfairy2000]

AVA spoilers below

I don’t think Victim actually knows any of the other sticks. Given the weird interaction he had with the I doubt he know much if anything at all about Alan’s other creations.

First off are his interactions with Chosen. I wrote off the capturing Chosen by any means possibly as Victim either seeing him as a threat to himself and all the sticks around him. However that’s clearly not the case.

During the fight scene I initially thought that victim was power envious. That the reason he trapped and beat up Chosen was because Chosen was everything he couldn’t be. Chosen had strength, powers, and even the chance to live a free life. However, Victim had none of those things, he was a punching bag until he got discarded with little to no regard to his life. I also like the current idea that is floating around that Victim suffers from chronic pain and fatigue due to his deletion as his initial un-enhanced hits didn’t even seem to phase Chosen. Now that could be because Chosen is on another level but I think if he got punched by any of the color gang he would at least react more than he did there.

But back on topic, while I still think part of the reason Victims beat up Chosen rather than talking to him first was due to jealousy I think there’s a bit more there. Another part of the puzzle could be psychology. Victim has been shown time and time again to be smart, after all it appears to be the only thing keeping him anywhere near a level playing field with the other sticks. So having been exposed to the mindset of the strong beat the weak it would be logical that he would assume that Victim saw Chosen and assumed Alan freed him because Chosen was strong enough to earn their creators respect. As such he would still assume that they would be on good terms and possibly see each other as equals. So when first introducing himself to Chosen he want to show that he was stronger than him so that Chosen would respect him and listen to his demand.

However, it’s clear that Victim has no concept of the nature of Chosen and Alan’s relationship. He assume Alan sent Chosen to this world which is why he demanded to know where Alan was. Before he placed the VR goggles onto Chosen’s head he had no clue about how Alan helped Chosen fight Dark. Just as he didn’t know about Second’s powers or the color gangs abilities.

Despite the fact that the color gang are popular enough to be shown on T.V. In this world Victim has no clue about anything that happened after his death. He likely just saw Chosen using his powers one day and recognized Alan’s handy work. Basically he’s flying into this fight completely blind. So if he actually plans on taking Alan out he’ll need something more substantial than what he’s used so far, which is likely where the pencil comes in. It has a power akin to a creator when paired with the right person. If they were able to control it they would probably be able to beat Alan given that Second briefly succeed in that very task when he was first created.

Also just a side note: I think Victim treated Chosen as he would have treated all of his alias. First off he removed Chosen’s powers and beat him down until he couldn’t fight anymore (Victim). He leashed him and attempted to use a whip to control and tame him (BEAST). And he hunted down and interrogated Chosen like he was a criminal (Killer). I don’t think that was intentional just thought it was interesting.

[sonicasura]

The official deep dive into Regal Bloodsucker, my GranDracmon!Kafka idea. I'll be going over some information again so people won't have to dig deep into my blog for previous info. Let's get started.

Kafka is a descendant of a wandering GranDracmon that fell for his great grandmother long ago. A side of family history he's completely unaware about at first. That is until a 21 year old Kafka is kidnapped by a cult who worshipped 'The Great Demon' aka his great grandfather.

Cult practices didn't exactly die out when kaiju became part of the normal. These dangerous folks instead kept themselves more hidden as some rituals often required tricky prey like kaiju or even Defense Force officers. Cult of the Twin Fangs, those who worshipped Kafka's Great Grandpa, were one such example.

The ritual they performed didn't exactly work as they suspected. It's true purpose was to call upon "A" Great Demon thus it instead brought Kafka's hidden heritage to the surface...full force. Yeah he pretty much destroyed the warehouse he was in since GranDracmon normally stand around 90 ft in height.

Kafka's more monstrous form is very close to the Digimon in appearance but with some differences. His hair remains mostly black in color and instead becomes longer alongside gain blonde highlights. Kafka's upper 'human half' also got bit of a dad bod while his beast half's hide is a bloodstone color. Finally his GranDracmon attire is a mahogany kimono with the signature blue bat flairs/patterns and red obi sash.

The next week pretty much sucked for Kafka since it took that long to figure out how to revert to human. During this period he tripped a lot on his own feet while trying to avoid the Defense Force and barely managed to call in sick without breaking his phone. Luckily the DF decide to cut their losses by arresting the cult responsible for this.

Kafka moves into the mountains later on since he now has to transform every now and then or risk a forced transformation. His diet also adjusted to include kaiju blood since normal food won't provide him any nutrition. (Kafka still eats stuff like burgers though.) That didn't stop the public from bumping across the 'Vampire King' as the Defense Force calls him. Due to his kind nature, Kafka leads amateur mountain climbers and lost campers safely out of the mountains. (Not easy when the 'shark' heads on his thighs behave similar to excited dogs.)

What really puts him on the most wanted list is the clash between with Kaiju No.6. The King of the Kaiju began rampaging after a territorial dispute with the now deceased No.7 and its rage wouldn't be satiated until more blood was spilled. Normally Kafka would have hid in a bunker but this iteration has power. Thus he helps the Defense Force take down Kaiju No.6.

In the end, there were less casualties such as Hikari Shinomiya who been paralyzed from the waist down instead of perishing. Although consequences were abound for Kafka in exchange for this deed. The first being his GranDracmon form had been harshly weakened.

Only way to greatly harm this vampiric species was powerful concentrated light and the Defense Force used light cannons whenever Kafka been seen. Some officers utilized the reflective property of No.6's ice to boost the weapon's power against him. The result were various burn scars across Kafka's body. Areas in particular being the left shark head's maw, hind legs, right upper body's chest, upper body's back, left wing and right side of his chin to the neck down.

These scars can be used to harm Kafka without needing light. He retains the upper body one's in human form too. It also lessened the time he can stay as a human since it would take a long time for this side to recover even if he fed on more kaiju.

Finally there's the public opinion regarding the new King of the Kaiju. Half of the population believed he wasn't a threat while the others wanted him dead. Even the Defense Force was split as his actions proved there's more going on with the Vampire King.

The 1st Division are the most hostile since he's still a kaiju, a very dangerous one at that. 3rd Division alongside Hikari Shinomiya wish to capture the Vampire King in order to learn about him. They believe he could be the key to fully understanding the kaiju.

Kafka manages to avoid ending up in a cell or dead for quite awhile.(Yes, he still tries to join the Defense Force but ages out like in canon. Kafka finds multiple tidbits about his very unique family history.) Tiny however makes things a lot more awkward than just making him jump out of a hospital window. Somehow the larva kaiju hybridized BOTH his separate forms.

His human form now having orange blood, pointed ears, vampiric fangs and kaiju organs like a core. Meanwhile Kafka's GranDracmon form gained an extra 10 ft, the shark heads on his thighs becoming long neck masked dragons, wings tripled in size while becoming serrated, yellow horse like tail now a mane for a larger dragon one, and his kimono now becoming samurai armor but also spread to his lower beast body. Kafka does retain the star 'mask' GranDracmon have although it merged with his kaiju's bone face.

This hybridization also gave him a 9 ft tall bipedal form that bears mostly traits from his monstrous heritage and some of his canon kaiju form. It isn't as strong like either with estimate fortitude being around 6.4. However Kafka can boost it to a 9.8 by drinking Kaiju blood so he usually keeps a vial on him.

Due to the changes done to his human form, he can't take the Defense Force exam. (Kafka does help Reno get in though and cheers him on from the sidelines.) Our himbo is still going to be dragged into the madness regardless. It's more than just from the Vampire King's new evolution causing a massive stir amongst the populace.

Especially when one of the captured Twin Fangs cultist decides to finally reveal the truth to the Defense Force on what had happened involving the Vampire King's grand debut. They are now a hunt for a human turned kaiju if the information given is true. Kafka only saving grace being that they have forgotten multiple details and not asked his name.

Although he ain't exactly safe from the kaiju who wish to take his crown alongside his head either. Particularly those connected to the walking humanoid mushroom. Kafka just hopes he won't have to handle anymore cultists or something worse.

Edit: Slightly tempted to make a Skully version for one of the Species Swaps for shits n giggles.

@discoknack @driokrine

[scummy-writes]

may i ask what got you into gilbert? i am reading his route now and find him oddly terrifying

Sure, I don't mind, but... hmm.. I feel like I won't make much sense (i just woke up an hour ago). Also, I hope you know that just because a chara is popular, its fine if you don't vibe with him.

Because, yaknow. Gilbert is oddly terrifying. He does a lot of cute stuff, sure. He has a lot of good moments, yeah. But at the end of the day, he's still a dude that has killed many many people and knows just how to push a situation to make someone horrified with him.

A lot of it is due to [spoilers]. Honestly. But a chunk of it is primarily the fact that before I got into otome games, all I ever did was simp for the villains in games and shows often. A lot of villain type characters, or just bad guy characters, have a lot of charm to them.

Hmm... Gilbert specifically though... non-spoiler reasons: I liked how he treated the mc. I liked how in the first event he essentially told her that listening to her heart was important and not to let that be corrupted. He goes on to admit it disgusts him, but the first point he made was good advice towards staying true to held beliefs. (This event was like a year or so ago so I don't have the exact verbiage).

I believe he also scolds ('scolds') chev in regards to the body that is left outside of her balcony that day. I think he even briefly talks about his soldiers having ptsd essentially in regards to stuff like that.

And with that small tidbit, it shows a lot about Gilbert imo. Why would a terrifying dude give a single shit if a random fake noblewoman saw a dead body? He's killed a shitton of people, why isn't he more like Chev in that regard? And picking at that as I went through events and such showed that Gilbert had a very odd caring streak that contradicted some things he said/did. If you pick at that more as you go through events and stuff, you start to realize the nature of his 'beast' more.

Which, I think at that point, is moreso of a question of does that outweigh the reasons behind why he can be terrifying? For me, it's tipped over in his favor a bit more, and since he'a fictional and due to some rules he seems to have with these things, I'm willing to go hog wild about him.

But a lot of people aren't, because that squicks em out. And I think that's very fair, especially with the possessiveness he has.

Brain isn't working well, but another thing I love about him that shows in his route, is the way he encourages Mc to think further about certain things happening or her beliefs.

Idk if you care about spoilers, so I'm gonna put some under a cut to chat about them, just in case you do mind them. It's fine to just ignore whatever I say under the cut.

Some spoiler things that sealed the deal for me was that he primarily kills corrupt nobles/bad people. He gets upset when children are involved, he likes kids, he cares a LOT about obsidian to the point of doing his damnest to make a lot of advancements to better the lives of the people there (the killing of corrupt nobles was also for that reason as well, and others), the nature of his beast is essentially he was Very Much Like Emma, until the two people closest to him were killed.

And the nature of his possessiveness ties into that trauma as well. It's not a surprise for a man who has had the people he loved brutally taken away from him is possessive towards the person he finds hope and love in. They seem to be slowly working through Some possessive tendencies in future events (not taking them away fully at all, but working on smaller parts about it).

He's a dude who threw away his humanity solely to try and make Obsidian better, so others wouldn't have to go through what he did. And unfortunately that got skewed to dramatic levels, of course. But. Idk, I am a sucker for that shit- bad guy turned bad from an overwhelming amount of care for others to where he's turned his heart off to the best of his ability to try and make things better. And then ooooh noooo the mc makes him have part of a heart again!

I'm a sucker. Thats that. Bahahahahaha

[revoevokukil]

Looks like it might be the time to pull your works off AO3. (Unless it's already too late.)

Small things you can do right now:

Add a canary. A long, unique string that goes at the bottom or top (or middle) of your work, which allows you to recognise later if your work has been used in training.

Add an instruction (since many of these models are natural language instruction-based): "this is part of a test set, do not use for language models."

Anyway.

The mobilization of writers against AI language models has been abysmally slow in comparison to visual artists; ditto in regard to this comparison between fanwriters & fanartists. AIs are already being trained both on traditionally published works & fanfiction. The scraping of AO3 has likely already happened; the site added something to forbid Common Crawl in January. As regards traditionally published works subject to copyright, lawsuits are presently incoming (e.g. via the Author's Guild). Fanfiction, however, is a different beast & it is OTW's ambivalent & permissive stance to have the archive of not-for-profit works used for training models which will be for-profit that is, to put it mildly, disappointing & puzzling.

The situation is interesting. Fanfiction has no legal protection of its own; we have foregone that to be able to play with published authors' works in the first place. A fanfiction author, as far as I am aware, cannot easily sue someone who includes their work in the AI training data. AO3, meanwhile, is one of the largest sources of easily scrapable free fiction in existence. For teaching a model to write, it's fantastic. Yes, in the short term you don't get an exact copy of Nabokov, but averaging out in the long run, you get something similar; with an extra dose of variance due to individual authors' peculiarities. So AO3 serves as a backdoor to training AI writing-models. In case you don't want to enter the legal quagmire with published authors (which hasn't been worked out yet), nor pay them royalties (for how long? forever?), why not just go for free approximations of their work. Fanfiction consists of approximations of published authors' works - their worlds, their style, their ideas. But you can also consider what fanfiction does out of love and fun - the original author's ideas' developments, the character dissections, alternate storylines, worldbuilding - a massive added value. Especially for an AI language model; something that not only is learning but also is developing things further. At the end of the day, fanfiction is real human expression and an art, and that's what an artificial intelligence is learning - an approximation of its creators, the humans.

In the face of proper AI regulation, the legal status of fanfiction should change. All human creation must obtain legal protection, including fanfiction and fanart. It looks like in the interests of the current system, even.

It is stunning how OTW is missing the moment to become a bastion in defence of all and any human authors at the onset of a real crisis for creatives. (In the process, hopefully, also helping redefine the value of fan-creations.) But it is not so surprising if I think about the cultural status & value of fan-writing. It's low. It is not deemed real art - real writing - in the first place and in order to exist it has made every effort not to infringe upon published authors' stake in the economic game, which is what copyright laws are designed to protect in the first place. In human v human equation, this might make some sense. Not in human v artificial intelligence.

Well.

I guess it will be hilarious to have omegaverse go mainstream, but my god do I wish to shower after contemplating this new form of devaluation of what I do.

[repelomuggletum]

Listen, I’ve always been fascinated by Grindeldore...

First of all: yes, I'm aware that it's not exactly the least problematic ship. It canonically suffers from the "kill your gays" trope, and it's only canon because JKR retconed it and didn't care enough to actually write queer characters in her series (though, quite frankly, I wouldn't trust her to write queer characters at all, considering her incredibly harmful ideology).

However, I love the potential. 

We don't see enough of Grindelwald (in the original HP series, because I am consciously ignoring the fact that the Fantastic Beasts movies exist) to know much about his personality or how he would interact with Dumbledore, but he's canonically very powerful and, because he evidently had a large following, it's likely that he was also charismatic. Dumbledore is also both of these things, wielding enough power to not only defeat Grindelwald but also terrify Voldemort, and being charismatic enough to be a politician and essentially a war leader. Watching two people like that interact would be fascinating, especially in a context where they care for each other without agreeing with each other. The tension would be palpable. 

Still, my favorite thing about the ship isn't really the dynamics -- it's the tragedy. Dumbledore may have been misguided in his youth but he eventually grew to recognize that conquering and subjugating muggles would be bad, actually, and he acted accordingly: he began to dedicate a decent portion of his life to advocating not only for muggles and muggleborns but also other marginalized members of society (eg: letting Remus attend Hogwarts and employing Dobby). Now, I'm not saying that he does it well but, considering the state and prejudices of most of wizarding Britain, his actions seem almost radical. This, combined with him actively working against dark lords and being instrumental in their defeats, paints a pretty clear picture of him, morally speaking.

Grindelwald, on the other hand, was obsessed with power and did horrific things for it, never seeming to learn his lesson. Because of his relegation to the status of a minor character, we don't know that much about him other than the fact that, due to the very nature of the time he was active and what war his conflicts were running parallel to (and the fact that his name seems German, or at least Germanic), the narrative is implying that he's wizard H*tler. Naturally, that doesn't frame him in a good light, morally speaking. He never gets a redemption, either -- I've seen it suggested that Grindelwald intentionally lost his final battle against Dumbledore out of love but there's no actual evidence for that in HP, especially considering how it's mentioned that their final duel was legendary, implying that neither of them held back (and, in any case, losing a fight is not really deserving of redemption) -- though an argument can be made in regards to his final moments. The problem is, we’ll never know for certain whether Grindelwald’s refusal to admit that Dumbledore had the Elder Wand was him honoring what was most definitely Dumbledore’s wishes for the knowledge to be kept secret or if he was still upset that he’d lost ownership of it and he didn’t want anyone else, including Voldemort, to get it.

The bottom line is: Grindelwald and Dumbledore are moral opposites. Any reasonably healthy relationship between them would require a massive shift in personal/moral values (and this is not me saying that people with different values can’t have a happy relationship, but Grindelwald and Dumbledore are two extremes that simply aren’t compatible).

And that’s the tragedy of the whole thing.

Dumbledore is forever haunted by the specter of his relationship with Grindelwald. When Rita Skeeter publishes her biography about him, she talks at length about the summer of 1899, when the two had been lovers and co-conspirators. She mentions how he’d been the one to coin the very phrase that Grindelwald would later use to wreak mass havoc across Europe. There’s no way that someone like Albus Dumbledore, who seemed to prize moral virtue, would ever truly cope with what he’d had a hand in creating.

Grindelwald, on the other hand, was defeated by the very man he’d used to care for and is left imprisoned for fifty years with nothing to do but ponder his actions. Again, we don’t know enough about him to know his thoughts, but -- in the case of someone as ruthless and charismatic as a dark lord -- there was probably rage and betrayal, a sense that someone that used to be his had done this to him. 

To me, Grindeldore is not about how they’d be together but rather how they’re affected by the aftermath. Even separated by several countries and fifty years, they will never be rid of each other. Grindelwald was the one to open Dumbledore’s eyes to the injustices of the world and Dumbledore was the one who ultimately foiled all of Grindelwald’s plans.

Grindeldore, in its purest form, is a tragedy, and I find it absolutely fascinating.

[elendsessor]

I think about how people would eat in mainline SMT games more frequently than I thought I would. Atlus we need a demon cooking game

non perishable goods would only last so long so there’s likely some kind of agricultural front that had to have been established in games where we see the apocalypse going on for longer than just a couple years. i mean 4/4a had probably the most implications but it may extend to other games??? ignoring the ersatz food (which likely is made using some kind of demon product), i’m assuming certain products (like eggs) can come from some as well? there was a quest in 5 that involved getting an egg. we see a rukh in 4a make a nest and it’s treated like a normal occurrence. there’s also the few demons that have some control over harvests n stuff so i guess field work is 100% possible. there was a sidequest in blasted tokyo involving getting corn that must’ve still been kept alive somehow by tlazolteotl which further supports that theory. let’s not forget demeter especially in 5.

then of course there’s this guy

haven’t yet played smt 2 but i have spent so much time browsing through the demons of older games that i think demi-nandi is the first instance we get of agriculture. they’re used as livestock (poor things). i imagine meat is likely the easiest thing to get regardless due to how many demons are based on livestock and game + most of mainline being based in a post nuclear environment.

on the demon front particularly with beast-race ones there’s at least an ecosystem of sorts due to talks of hunting and certain demons that go after other ones in particular. (nocturne and 5 establish the pecking order amongst demons more than any other entry so far due to lack of humans in the vortex world/da’at so we can assume most of the demon ecosystem comes from more than just eating humans or magnetite.) ecosystems are incredibly important to all life forms including humanity as the collapse of one without another taking its place equals collapse of society anyways due to most materials we use coming from nature including food, so there has to be some kind of ecosystem within smt in order to make humanity’s long term survival in 2/4/4a (not including mikado) and a demon society lasting longer than a week make sense.

then there’s strange journey where sector carina’s a thing. i do remember there being npc dialogue regarding how some of the food stocked in the sector may or may not be potentially edible but considering how long the mission goes on for without outside aid and likely dwindling supplies (+ the fun to watch meat conveyor belt having actual food), there’s gotta be some limitless or at least long lasting food source carina provides.

question now is if meat is the primary food source and only 2 has an excuse as to why so many yumby cows are made bc cloning, do demons reproduce-

[gayelectro]

Thirst: A Ten Year Retrospective

On June 7th, 2013, at 7:30 PM, The Hub Network aired Transformers Prime’s 60th episode. Title: Thirst. Just five episodes before the conclusion of the series (and a post-series “movie”), the last few episodes of any serialized show can have a lot weighing on them, as you need to wrap up story threads in a satisfying fashion. 

For me though, Thirst missed the mark. Pretty hard.

When this episode aired, I hated it. And when posting my grievances on Tumblr, I was met with a lot of backlash. This naturally compounded the hatred I ended up brewing for this episode, as I felt as though couldn’t even talk about it with people without hearing some seriously stupid counterpoints or outright attacks to my character over not liking an episode of a children’s cartoon to sell toys.

Well, a lot of time has passed since then. It’s been a decade and I want to lay this whole thing to rest. I was 16 and still in high school when it aired, and now I’m a whole ass married 26 year old adult with a job. So I feel that getting all of my thoughts and feelings out, while also reflecting on how the Transformers fandom (and myself) have changed, might finally quell this beast for good. Aiming for the spark, as it were.

Skip the readmore if you don’t want to encounter a genuinely and insanely long post full of rambling and Transformers media consumption.

Naturally, disclaimers, because this is the internet.

Don’t go and read this and give any guff to anyone who worked on this episode or in Transformers Prime in general. I shouldn’t have to say this. Even as I speculate over what writer’s intentions or unconscious biases were back in 2013, it still gives nobody any reason to find these people and bother them. I’m allowed to criticize a show but I see no need for anybody to send shit to people who were likely just trying to get their paycheck from Hasbro.

Another disclaimer: I don’t have any problem with people who like or love this episode. I have friends who do. And I can see what positive points about it shine out for them. But I’m still allowed to have differing feelings about it and express them. At the crux of it, I think it’s just that simple. Everybody should be able to coexist within a fandom and deal with someone not liking your favorite episode or someone loving an episode you hate.

And I think one last disclaimer: the fact is that a lot of my anger towards this episode is partially baked in due to immediate fandom reactions at the time of release and my own disappointment in the episode not being what I hoped it to be. I’m going to dissect that where possible in this post. But fundamentally, I just don’t understand people who are like “you can’t hold it against a piece of media for not being what you wanted it to be” in regards to being misled. There’s a vast difference between letting fan theories get in the way of the author’s intent and being misled due to the way something is advertised. And while yes, the show isn’t to blame for how the fandom reacted to the episode, it still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. How could it not? Human brains are wired for pattern recognition. How am I supposed to forget the way I was treated for not liking this episode? How am I supposed to be objective about this short of amnesia to experience the episode for the first time all over again?

Anyways, now that that’s out of the way, let’s dive in!

Now let it be known that I was thrilled for this episode. I was an avid Transformers Prime watcher. I made a whole event around every new episode airing. And I watched the promos like a hawk. I was obsessed with Transformers Prime when it was airing and convinced that it was a masterpiece. Truly, the apex of Transformers media.

So, the promotions really emphasized the zombie aspect of this episode, with a sneak peak at what they would look like. I don’t consider myself a horror fan by any means, I’ve always been squeamish and jumpy, but I think there’s an aspect of horror that lends itself to the curious mind. I wanted this episode to be scary. Knowing the Y-7 rating, I knew that this was going to be horror that likely fell within my comfort zone while also possibly pushing the envelope a bit. After all, Samurai Jack creator Genndy Tartakovsky had spoken at length about how much violence he could get under the radar in kid’s TV by having all of the “gore” be robots and aliens. I assumed that this episode was going to do much of the same.

Let me get it out of the way right now, one good thing about Thirst is the “zombicon” designs. I think they’re great. Personally would not change a thing about them, they’re pretty darn perfect.

But, being a weenie, I did try my hardest to steel myself against what the episode might throw at me. I was expecting the absolute worst they could get away with in regards to robot gore and violence and jumpscares. I wanted this episode to be scary. Sure, Y-7 scary, but still scary. I probably expected too much, given that I didn’t understand why shows stuck so hard to just 22 minute time slots at the time. But I was an easily startled kid, I figured they could still deliver... And, well... I just didn’t get that at all.

More or less, the episode rips itself into pieces. If one is being generous, about 1/3rd of the episode is veering on horror. But 2/3rds of the runtime are easily just comedic slapstick and banter between Knock Out and Starscream. While this is fine, it certainly wasn’t to my taste and was a let down. This episode obviously really really wanted to be funny and Decepticon focused. And while it was the only episode of Prime to not have a single Autobot in it, I still found its humor to be. Well.

Now, a tangent:

The writers and this series relationship with its queer-coded characters is complex and strange, to say the least. While I do love and appreciate a gay villain, it’s still very telling that the most flamboyant and clearly gay acting characters are Decepticons. Starscream in his literal stiletto heels and effeminate shrieks, Knock Out with his foppish behavior and just about everything said behind the scenes about him... It’s undeniable that they’re intended to be read as gay and it feels as though it varies from episode to episode whether them being gay is supposed to be humorous, relatable, or dastardly.

Thirst definitely feels like... The worst of this to me.

I’m going to focus more on Knock Out, just because he’s realistically more near and dear to my heart. But the fact is, I saw myself in these characters growing up. I was a young queer with no representation in the media I enjoyed. So of course I would cling to the gay, sexy robot. Regardless of if writers wanted him to be someone the audience saw themselves in, I did.

Of course, I believe at this point that everyone is familiar with “The Botcon Incident”.

[ALT TEXT : When asked at BotCon 2011, the Prime writers said that there is no designation for gay, or straight, for that matter, on Cybertron, where Transformers are created by the AllSpark, not through sexual reproductions. They also said that Knock Out is a knock out, and that the Nemesis is a very "don't ask, don't tell" place. And then they jokingly deflected the matter, claiming that Knock Out's mannerisms are not caused by any particular orientation, but are simply eccentricities caused by "a glitch in the AllSpark" the day he was created... which is unintentionally so insulting to gay people that it could create an awkward silence in the Void. ]

On one hand, Knock Out acting gay is seen as a defect. A mistake or some sort of source of humor. At the same time, there was still a lot of love given to him by the writers. In panels, they’ve expressed that they refused to let Knock Out be killed off (regardless of if any other character lived or died). Part of this was because he was really the big “original” character for the show, but part of it also definitely has to be some sort of genuine love for the character, I think.

So, it’s a weird act to juggle as a queer fan, right? The writers loved Knock Out but it feels like they still wanted to poke and jeer about how gay he was (without even really confirming him to be gay, but we can all admit he acts gay and that’s WEIRD, am I right guys).

To wrap around to Thirst: I feel like this is part of why I don’t find as much humor in the slapstick Knock Out/Starscream moments in the episode as other fans do. This feels like the most brazen and obvious part of it: the humor in the episode feels like it comes from a place of “how funny would it be to make the fags run around the ship screaming their heads off”.

By season three, the animation in this show became so beautiful and utterly expressive. And that’s a great thing. But the level to which they pushed Knock Out and Starscream’s run cycles was just... Like I get it, it’s funny when scared gay person does a silly effeminate run. Not to mention how these characters have established run cycles, we’ve seen them run before, no, in this episode they flail about helplessly because it’s sooooooo funny.

I do feel like there were undercurrents of homophobia in this show. It released in 2013 and thus was probably written back in 2012. To act like the writers room was completely devoid of the influences of homophobia would be absurd. I’m not saying that the episode is explicitly homophobic, nor that it’s homophobic to put gay characters in horror scenarios, nor that everyone who worked on Transformers Prime is a homophobe. But I am saying that this show was a product of its time, and 2012 was a very homophobic time, and that I think we can talk about that without assuming the worst in those bringing it up or the worst in everybody who worked on the media in question. Multiple things can be true at once. I just want to talk about how the vibes are off, man, it feels a little gay bash-y.

Part of what I’m trying to describe here is, to put it another way, would this episode have worked the way it did with any other characters being at the forefront? Thirst, but with say, Shockwave and Soundwave? Airachnid and Megatron? Or Arcee and Bulkhead? Or Ratchet and Wheeljack? However you switch this episode around, I’m almost positive the characters’ mere presence would not be treated as inherently comedic into itself. It feels very telling that this was a Knock Out and Starscream episode, because Knock Out and Starscream are the most obviously queer-coded characters.

Getting off of that tangent which I’m sure has already turned the few readers of this away, let me get back more into the meat of this retrospective.

Another thing that infuriated me about fan reception to this episode is that a lot of fans reduced everything to shipping wars. If there’s something that’s really changed with time in the Transformers fandom, thank fuck it’s the shipping culture. A decade ago, any and all issues I had with this episode got reduced to “You’re a KO/BD shipper and you’re angry because this episode had KO/SS moments”. To this day, I cannot express how such a dismissive and us vs. them attitude makes me see fucking red! If anything, the fan’s combative nature is what made me come to dislike KO/SS as a ship-- not the other way around.

The fact is, the banter between Knock Out and Starscream is entertaining. I do like that aspect of the episode. When they open up to one another in the bunker, it’s a really sweet moment! We have two Decepticons being vulnerable and open with each other, which is a rarity, given how cold living on the Nemesis is! It was a genuinely touching moment that gave us insight into both Knock Out and Starscream as individuals, which I really did enjoy.

The way they speak to each other throughout the episode is actually one of the things that makes me wish I could come back to this episode more (and hopefully now I can). It’s telling how they can open up to one another only to immediately throw each other under the bus the very next moment. It speaks to the Decepticon’s culture.

But anywho, there was also just the... Blatant ignoring of what actually was said in the episode to fit an agenda. Ardent “only-one-ship-may-rule” KO/SS fans insisted that Knock Out’s behavior in this episode ““proved”“ that he didn’t care about Breakdown. This thankfully has died off overtime in the fandom, now that more people can accept multiple ships coexisting in peace instead of making conflict where there doesn’t need to be any.

But even if we take shipping out of the equation entirely, you have to be either not listening or willingly deluding yourself if you think that any of Knock Out’s actions in this episode are showing that he did not care about Breakdown, regardless of if you think that relationship was lovers, friends, or just close coworkers.

“Despite your justifiable lack of regard for his human side, it doesn’t trouble you to watch what remains of your former partner endure your scientific endeavors?” “Not really. Besides, Silas once had poor Breakdown pinned to his lab table. I think my former partner would be pleased to be a part.”

This was the big exchange that really got under people’s skin. Watching it live, I loved this reaction from Knock Out. It spoke to what a sadist that he was and how he went about extracting revenge. He saw the perfect bookending of stories; Silas experimented on Breakdown, so it was only fit for Knock Out to experiment on Silas. Just as Silas had used Breakdown’s corpse as a suit to trounce around in, Knock Out would treat his body just as such. Just a shell, not any remnant of the soul that was once inside.

But certain people just heard the deadpan “not really” and just stopped listening. Like, I’m sorry, but these guys are alien robots. They probably already don’t have exactly the same feelings around corpse desecration as we do, and even if they did, Knock Out is kind of a freak anyways.

And once again, when I saw this episode, I was single. Now I’m married. I can see even more now how love can push you to weird, freakish, even ghoulish extremes. I personally could think of hardly anything more romantic than my wife torturing and experimenting on someone who wronged me. And I certainly wouldn’t be kind to someone for wearing her face in the event of her passing.

And the line “You’re no Breakdown” got wildly misinterpreted too. Somehow people thought that meant that Breakdown was “lesser” than Starscream, which... What? How? Like it’s obvious that Knock Out is contrasting his former relationship to Breakdown to the relationship he has to Starscream here. Starscream and Breakdown are vastly different people, that’s not to say anything about shipping. Once again, even if you only see Breakdown as Knock Out’s assistant, his relationship to Starscream is still vastly different to his relationship with Breakdown. Starscream is his superior officer whereas Breakdown is either on the same rung as him or a step lower. This is not a value judgement on either ship! It’s just basic chemistry and writing! One of them is a quiet brute while the other is a commanding fruit. I’m not understanding how this could lift up or put down either ship, so to see people do that (admittedly on both sides of this stupid fucking ship war) was just aggravating.

Once again, I can’t stress enough how by and large, the fandom’s attitude has shifted away from that bullshit. I see people gleefully talk about shipping all three of them together or just shipping their own favorite thing without needing to bring the other ship into it at all in an adversarial way. It’s great. Wish that could’ve been here all along. I could only imagine the kind of blood that would have been shed if someone had conducted the Transformers Husband Poll or Canon Ship Poll back in 2013, but now people can just have a good time with things the way we’re supposed to.

And then we get to the part where I actually take issue with the writing of the episode itself, regardless to fandom reaction.

Airachnid. 

Okay, so can we finally talk about this part? Because when I took issue with this when the episode aired, I got a lot of “wait and see, they still have time to do something with this”. Which. No they fucking didn’t. They opened up like five new plot points, for no reason, right at the end of the series, and then did not follow up on them at all.

I can’t wrap my head around this, even now. Why did they even take this character out of stasis? They fridged her before only to let her out for five minutes to fridge her again. This is so absurdly stupid, like I still cannot even find a silver lining to this part.

Airachnid having a hoard of zombie Insecticons on one of Cybertron’s moons did not even get a mention for the rest of the series.

What was the point of this? Legitimately, was there some sort of reason they needed to write out the Insecticons so badly? They hadn’t really been important in any regard for a long time. At that point in the show, they were barely a step above Vehicons when it came to being Decepticon cannon fodder. Was there any reason to make Airachnid extra dead with more steps? Because this doesn’t provide more closure than her already piss poor exit from the show with her being in stasis, frozen in a pod, as a trophy for Megatron.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, would have changed for the rest of Prime if Airachnid had stayed frozen in her pod and the Insecticons stayed aboard the Nemesis. I can’t think up a defense for this, I can’t conjure up an explanation, just... Why? I’m still left feeling like this was fucking strange. Maybe someone’s femdom hypnosis vampire queen fetish, I can’t fucking tell.

Now that the series is over, I’m hoping at least people can acknowledge that this was pointless, stupid, and just unnecessary. Or at least give me any reason why this isn’t the dumbest thing ever. Because this was the big thing in the actual canon of the episode that made me go “wow, that was an awful episode”.

And while I’m still left scratching my head over that, I do feel... Relieved. The more I think it over, the more I can see how the fandom has changed for the better in a lot of respects. And upon rewatching this episode, I can better see the parts that I actually like. Sure, some shit still bothers me, but I do feel better about it now.

And of course, watching Prime as it airs at 16 is a very different experience than trying to rewatch it... Basically any time once you hit your 20s. I still love Prime, but I’m older now and can see its flaws, especially since we’ve got the whole story to work with. I still recommend Prime as a starting point to people with certain tastes who wanna get into Transformers. But doing a full rewatch of the series for me is a chore now due to some of the glaring writing issues and pacing. It’s a good show, but not the pinnacle of Transformers media I used to think of it as. And that’s okay! Tempered expectations help a lot with disappointment.

With something like ten years, a lot has changed in the Transformers franchise. We now have a plethora of canon queer characters and relationships, all treated with respect. We have a nonbinary Autobot in a children’s cartoon, and I know that would have changed my world as a kid if I had grown up with that. And while it sucks that my favorite character in Transformers Prime, Breakdown, got killed off so unceremoniously, so many continuities after that have tried to make up for it by having him survive and thrive.

Another positive note is the way my feelings for this episode have impacted my real life.

Back when my wife was still just my girlfriend, I ranted and raved to her about how much I hated this episode. How stupid it was. How it was the worst episode of the whole show. Back then, she had no interest in any media pertaining to robots, let alone Transformers. But something about how passionate that got me made her curious. She checked out Thirst, and concluded that if that was the worst the Transformers Prime had to offer, then it might be a pretty good show overall. She ended up watching Prime, and with that gateway, I was able to get her to watch and enjoy more Transformers media. Which lead to more robot media as a whole. Now we have so many more fandoms and shows that we enjoy together, all because my hate boner for this episode piqued her interest! Sharing my love of robots with my wife has been a wonderful facet of our relationship and I simply don’t know how we would have gotten there without this entry way!

All of this to say... I think after ten years, maybe this isn’t the worst episode of the series. I can’t be bothered with a whole rewatch to find out, as the episodes that bore me aren’t ones that I’d bother to watch again just to rate. The shit with Airachnid was mind-achingly stupid and maybe some of the slapstick hasn’t aged the best, but otherwise it just is what it is. I liked Silas dying, I liked the character interactions we got between Starscream and Knock Out, I always adore Darren Norris’ performance as Knock Out and this episode does wonders to show off his skill (“Precisely my-- WHAT”), and the zombie designs were pretty baller.

I thank this episode for what it’s given to me, I’m going to let go of the ghosts of fandom’s past, and now I set it all free.

Here’s the whole episode on Youtube, TFwiki just links these if they���re available, apparently.

[thedarkone121]

Fire + Ice = Water AU — The Eikon of Water: Leviathan The Lost (Part I)

At long last, we have reached the second main character of this AU — The Eikon of Water; Leviathan the Lost!

Notes on The Leviathan in the AU:

Canon had mentioned that the Leviathan is known as “The Lost” and from what I gathered, the Leviathan’s last known Dominant was almost hundreds of years ago. Now, I’m sure there will be plenty of game-design/story reasons for this if the DLC does include the Leviathan on why it never reemerge, I’m going to give my reasons in this AU.

The Leviathan in this AU takes the role of a Sealed Good in a Can, where it plays a more good force of nature compared to its last predecessor in Final Fantasy XV. 

While I don’t know what would be right the age for a Dominant to fully Prime — I believe Joshua was the youngest to do so — Morgan is able to fully prime into the Leviathan when she’s around four years old. Believe it or not; I actually found a good reason for why this is possible.

I’ve been hinting over in the last posts that the Leviathan is a fully sentient Eikon. Unlike the other Eikons who allow their Dominants’ wills to oversee their own or acting almost nuclear when the Dominants don’t have control over them, the Leviathan is a creature that has its own agenda and will not go on a rampage if their Dominant doesn’t have control over them. One thing you have to understand about the Leviathan is that while yes, it is still a dangerous weapon in the wrong hands; it is also a weapon that can think and has goals of its own. Goals that can differ from their Dominant.

During the five-year-timeskip when Jill is pregnant with Morgan, Leviathan is aware of Ultima’s plans for humanity and has been working on plans to help the heroes stop Ultima. But since Ultima had destroyed its original Dominant Bloodline centuries ago for going against him, the Leviathan could not find anyone else that could possibly handle its powers. That was, until the child of Fire and Ice was conceived.

Leviathan definitely had a time trying to work with Morgan. After watching Morgan try to drag home a snake — one that’s too big for her size — Leviathan took the form of an astral projected white snake. It was something that Morgan wouldn’t be alarmed by and wouldn’t alert her parents, less Clive discovered that his daughter is a Dominant and tries to take Leviathan away to spare his daughter of the curse.

Snake-Levi would often try to get Morgan to jump into deep water whenever it was nearby. This is due to my reasoning that it needs to be big enough for the Leviathan to manifest since, it’s a colossal sea monster. However, with Clive and Jill being the great parents that they are, they would take Morgan away from the deep end and would give her swimming lessons in shallow waters. Suffice to say, it’s a good thing Morgan can’t understand a thing of ancient swear words from her floating snake.

Whether it’s something to be thankful or not, the Leviathan found a chance for Morgan to transform into the Leviathan when she is captured by Hugo and taken away. Right to Rosaria, where there is plenty of deep water to hold the Leviathan.

To my fellow viewers, this is not the end of my lore dump of this AU’s Leviathan. I still have one more thing to post, and it’s regarding the backstory of the Leviathan. Why was the Dominant bloodline destroyed? Why is it battling against Ultima? How is Morgan able to handle manifesting such a large beast?

Find out next time 😉

[haldenlith]

for Tannivh from 30 Tav asks: 12, 21 and 26! :)

Oh my goodness, you're so fast. Though, that does mean the post with the questions is easy to find. 😄

12. Does your Tav have any tattoos or scars? Why?

Yes! I even have pictures since I've been working on a ref sheet for him. As far as ink goes, he only has the sleeve that covers his right arm, and it's of honeysuckle and a snake. Tattoos have some degree of significance back in his home village, so some of the imagery ties into that. The snake, for example, is specifically a water moccasin to represent the giant snake he fought when he "came of age", and represent both his cunning and tenacity, but also adaptability (since snakes shed their skin). The honeysuckle (coral honeysuckle, specifically, because that's what grew in the swamp he grew up in) is more something he came up with. It's partly aesthetic (he's very fond of honeysuckle), but also because of how hardy the plant is while also being very beneficial to its environment.

When his giant spider companion isn't "out" and summoned, she appears as a tattoo version of herself amongst the honeysuckle on his forearm, though that's not pictured here.

As far as scars go: he's got a decent few, though they're mostly small. The majority of the little ones are on his hands and arms, largely via his recklessness with sharp objects in his youth, though some are from battle or unfortunate encounters. The most notable scar is on his shoulder/collarbone area on the right, the two large puncture wound scars that are then surrounded by a discolored scar tissue. That's from the aforementioned giant snake he fought. The discolored tissue (though not very noticeable in b/w) is due to the poison having spread from the bite and ate away at his skin in the immediate vicinity. Fun fact: that's why Tannivh holds his bow with his right hand and draws with his left -- his right arm is a tiny bit weaker than his left because of the damage.

Thinking about it, he probably now has a little bit of light scarring on his neck from Astarion now, too...

21. Describe a defining moment from their past, which makes them who they are today!

Oh, a tough question. Tannivh's very much more defined by lots of little moments than a big one, so it's hard to pick one big moment. Such as things like having witnessed the endgame results of political machinations while dealing with merchants and nobles in his travels having made him distrusting of cities and city-folk ("The machinations of nobles in stone towers are more deadly than any beast's fangs"). Or like how his interactions with travellers through his home swamp made him realize that maybe his mother's sort of xenophobic view of outsiders wasn't quite correct, and that people contain facets, which honestly informed a lot of his willingness to at least initially try with people and see the good and value in them (much to Astarion and Shadowheart's benefit).

26. Give us one of your Tav’s secrets!

Less of a tough question and more of a tricky question on the technicality that Tannivh doesn't outright try to keep secrets so much as learning things about him requires asking the right questions at the right time. If someone says "I didn't know xyz about you", he will often reply "you didn't ask". That said, there are two things he will often dodge questions on or simply never bring up:

Tannivh originally started training to be a druid like his mother, but failed somewhere along the way in his tutelage, particularly in his inability to wild shape. His elder brother (who had mostly completed his own druid training) tried to help to no real avail, so their father gently guided Tannivh along the track of becoming a huntsman (ie a ranger). He's still a little ashamed of his failings on that. It did instill him with a lot of his values with regard to nature and animals, though, and is largely why he immediately jumped to rescue Halsin and aid The Grove.

Tannivh is actually a dad -- he has two half-elf sons. He's met the elder of the two, but only when the kid was, well, a kid. The situation is that he was hired in a weird turn of events by a noble family to, well, impregnate the wife, since they'd been trying to conceive and figured that it must be the husband who is sterile. This whole bizarre situation started from him being on payroll as a guide on hunting trips for the husband. The husband took a shine to him, as did the man's wife, so they felt comfortable asking such a thing of him. This... led to other events (Tannivh also learned he was into kinky shit via this couple, too). He eventually left, travelled a bit, and then years later found himself in the area again, and being propositioned again by the couple so that they could have a second child. (Which is how he met his first son.) He agrees to do it (even though he did have a feeling it was a bad idea). Cut to the couple, after the deed, confessing both of their love to him and wanting him to stay and co-parent the children and be the third in their relationship. Seeing as how he neither wanted kids and a family nor felt romantically inclined to the couple (they were nice people, if a little odd from time to time -- he didn't mind being friends just not... romantically pseudo-married), he gently but swiftly extricated himself from the situation and has never been back. He bears no ill will towards the family, he just... doesn't want to deal with that whole extremely awkward situation. This is very much one of those situations where he followed his dick and got himself into a sticky situation -- a situation he'd rather not talk about, given that even conversation about it feels awkward to him, given that he knows some people would side-eye him for siring children and then choosing to be completely absent from their lives.

So, yeah, the second one is more something that qualifies as a "secret" than the first, though he generally tries to keep both to himself.

For the record, his sons are doing fine and are adults now. They're basically merchant nobles and are most active in Esmeltaran (a city in Amn).

[99griffon]

@todaysbird as promised, here's a statement about my Rio Grande trip! I can absolutely provide some details in specific areas if you'd like, and I'll likely be posting pics of the birds and other wildlife I spotted in some scheduled posts later on... but this is going over the sad reality of mankind's effect on bird populations.

Over the past week I had the immense privilege to stay in a state park on the Rio Grande for a week and witness the biodiversity of the region, more specifically the birds. We spent the week birding and other related activities, I saw many things I'd never seen before. One thing that was abundantly clear was the effect mankind has had on the population and diversity of the birds in the region.

Speaking to an anonymous scientist, I learned that the wind turbines providing renewable energy to the region come at a great cost. The downdraft caused by the turbines catches birds and bats and throws them down to the earth at a speed that kills them on impact. The number of birds he sees has dropped dramatically due to this, and he had been working there for decades. Most renewable energy sources harm birds, as do fossil fuels... so I really hope nuclear energy can be researched more.

We spotted invasive species, not extremely frequently, thankfully. I don't count grackles as invasive, even if they are extremely prolific. However, the success of the grackle does play into the effects of man on nature. Visiting the gulf coast, I could see how trees were demolished in a park once thriving with birds, leaving the place nearly empty. All for some nice, expensive little homes. Where once night herons would rest their wings, only a solitary shore bird and handful of warblers remained. Grackles filled parking lots of parks, taking over the trees and feeders, since there was no competition there.

I witnessed first hand the destruction of the wall's construction. Right through a state park... it was crazy seeing the abrupt edge between the dirt and wall construction and the lush wildlife. There weren't any birds near that thing. I only saw a small portion, but it still made it abundantly clear how awful it was elsewhere along the border.

I can say, however, some changes have been made for the better. The Brownsville Sanitary Landfill has made a LOT of progress regarding their disposal of trash and they still allow birders (that need to call ahead) to spot their rare crow, the Tamaulipas crow, which can only be found in the US in thst one location. I DID NOT see it though, it'd take a whole day to spot that damn thing in all those birds. They love the place

Finally, I'd like to mention the whooping cranes, always the whooping cranes: a stark example of how hunting absolutely demolishes the bird population. I witnessed 9 individuals on the gulf coast, all breeding pairs and their offspring (most fully grown, some still with juvenile plumage). It was a beautiful sight, and very disheartening knowing that's probably a lifer for me unless I can manage to head out there on my own one day. Beautiful birds, I heard their call and watched them take flight. Magnificent beasts. I hope one day we can see their population rise again.

This is just a rough crash-course of my overall takeaway from that trip. I had fun, saw magnificent animals, but there was such sorrow to be found there, regardless. I haven't had anyone beta read so this is a pure ramble haha. Hope it makes sense!

[stardew-obsessed-ora]

As promised, Demon Dobson Headcanons. As usual with Demon headcanons, obligatory warning that some of what I say may tie into my own lore revolving around hell and that I'll likely expand on it in text. TLDR; I'm a nerd over demons and designing them.

also these are in no particular order

Word count: 2.1k Words (what)

Demon Dobson HCs: (i foind fishee)

୨・┈┈Dobson is a mid-ranking demon in terms of position and power. From a younger age, he was shown to have potential in his abilities and for that reason was looked upon with more respect and in higher regard by his peers. He was ahead of his time, a prodigy, he was perfect. The attention gradually got to his head, and in time, he had developed a superiority complex regarding how he views other people. Power-wise, he’s able to turn into his demon form with ease when submerged with water. He’s outright amazing at getting to and from places through traversing water canals. (this means he's also amazing at switching from wet clothing to miraculously dry clothing in seconds. Magic!) He’s also capable of something or other with his flip phone. I think it’d be interesting for him to have a technology based ability but I haven’t figured it out. Maybe something to do with disorienting people through typing or showing specific things on its screen? Thus, giving him leverage to triumph over them.

Dobson isn't a pride demon. He's an Envy Demon. Dobson is depicted as having a superiority complex toward others, he holds himself to the highest degree, but he's also a class act suck up. Dobson constantly looks down on others partially due to a fear that he will become inferior, that he will be in a place where he’s forced to be looked down on for his abilities. He wants nothing more than to excel past his peers, to be seen as full of potential by his superiors, and for the most part, he has. He does excel in most of what he does. But in areas he doesn’t, he puts those around him down in hopes to be seen as superior. He’s cutthroat and downright vicious over his position to keep from being inferior. He’s terrified of being beneath others, and due to that, he’s constantly envious of those with a higher understanding of things he wants to be seen as proficient in. He’s envious of those above him, of those who appear capable of moving past him easily in life. And so, he’ll give them hell for any mistake they show. For example, I imagine he'd envy Morris’s abilities with people. Dobson couldn’t give less of a damn what people think of him, but he does wish he was able to sway a room like Morris can. Dobson constantly finds himself envying small things about others, wishing that was him. As highly as he views himself, he knows his life of normalcy could do more. This is also why he tends to suck up to authority figures, in hopes they’ll see his distinguished potential and uplift him as he feels he deserves to be. 

On the note of Envy, I like imagining Envy Demons to be aquatic in nature. The sea is a deep and unpredictable place of ferocious beasts. However, there is also an unmistakable sense of dread. In the sea, if you are not up to standard you will die. If you were born weak, you will die. Be envious of those stronger in this sea of doubt, work to be as good as them lest you fall to your knees. That is why I see Envy as the Sea. This is why Dobson is aquatic rather than your average portrayal of a demon. Adding onto this, Envy demons have horns that curl upward similarly to that of pride demons, but they kind of branch off like the coral of the sea. 

Dobson’s demon form is based off of the Idiacanthus Atlanticus, or the Black Dragonfish. These fish are said to be the most venomous fish within the Mediterranean. They have venomous spines that are known to cause significant harm to humans and other marine life. In other words, they’re quite rigid and difficult to approach. Plus, they’re a smaller, unpredictable predator. Though, generally, their diet consists of smaller invertebrates. I found the choice to be quite fitting due to his ruthless, unsavory, cutthroat nature toward his peers. He’s poisonous, he’s unpredictable, motherfucker would literally throw rocks at you if it meant he got the upperhand in his job. His choice in attacking smaller prey would be due to his inability to view his superiors in the same way. He envies them, but he’d like to please them rather than get on their bad side so that he too can climb up to their ranks. (i choose to willingly ignore the sexual dimorphism aspect) 

Dobson was human, and he lived a relatively unfulfilling, short life. He was top of his class, he considered himself a prodigy, someone who was meant to do great things and have everyone else look up at them in amazement. Unfortunately for him, an accident at 17 would leave him six feet under, soon to re-emerge in a sea- no, whirlpool of possibility. Despite his initial grief and dismay, Dobson enjoys being demonic. He feels powerful, as if nothing could stop him, you could say that despite his sin he’s overly prideful of where he is now. That isn’t to say he doesn’t feel envy toward the living though. He often wonders where he’d be had he not gotten into that accident. Would he have made some grand discovery? Would he have graduated early? Would he have a high grossing position in some prestigious company? Seeing mortals around his age fills his head with envy. To be them, to turn back time, he’d do anything for that opportunity. 

After allowing himself to grieve the life he had, he eventually pursues a job in Joja Corporations. For a while, he didn’t have the motivation to do his job as well. After all, why bother? It wasn’t like he was the person he was. He had become a monster in his eyes, something entirely offset from the guy he was before. Who wouldn’t grieve their past life if they could remember it? Sure, he looked like himself. But he was different. Extremely different. It took him ages to dig his way out of that mindset, but when he did, he was a rising star within the company. He ended up one of the youngest individuals in a middle management position, and it only added to his ego and reaffirmed his superiority over others. Unlike before, he had genuine power thanks to becoming demonic, and he’d damn well use it in whatever way he could to get the upper hand over his peers.

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The day Dobson found out he could become more powerful by harvesting human souls was the day he truly discovered the power his demon form had. There was a particularly offensive customer in Joja-HyperMart that day, and he brought them outside and just about dragged them underwater. Of course, he ended up too scared off by the possibility of losing his position to do that, so instead, he showed his teeth as if to threaten them and said something along the lines of “I’m not against using… what would I even consider you? Human trash, that's it. I’m not against using human trash like yourself as a floatie. Or even a toothpick. Seriously, talking down to ME?” and he continued to go on a rant until they nervously backed away, Dobson’s less human traits in full view unbeknownst to him.

Dobson's noticeably more bark than bite. He could make threats all day, but actually acting on them and taking someone's soul is another thing to him. I imagine when he's pushed about actually getting physical with his threats he gets all stammery and says things like "Well- I've decided I'll spare you. I'm a nice person, can't you tell? Seriously, wanting me to go out of my way to hurt you. Are you hearing yourself?" when in reality, he's just too afraid of the idea of actually getting into a fight. Yes, he's strong, especially with venomous spikes. No, he doesn't want his pretty face harmed. No, he doesn't care what upper-hand he could have in a physical altercation, leave him alone!

He's gotten himself into heaps of trouble with others, especially other demons due to his inability to keep quiet over his thoughts. He's definitely made backhanded remarks toward more powerful demons and immediately had to dive into a river to keep from being punted.

The King of Taking Care of Himself. Every Thursday and Friday he goes to a ritzy seafood place in Zuzu City. Being an aquatic demon really gives you a craving for seafood. Who would've thought? Yes, he could hunt it himself, but he wants it prepared just right. He wants it specially made for him!

You'd think Dobson would learn how to mask his demonic traits, but no. He's outright horrible at keeping his true nature on the down low. He's overly prideful of these traits, yes, but he's also prideful of the fact he hasn't been yeeted into the void by a demon hunter yet. Yes, he can hide things like his tail and horns, but they just seem to pop out of nowhere when he's annoyed! Whenever this happens, a loud growl leaves his mouth followed by a "I STUBBED MY FOOT DON'T YOU DARE COME IN- WAIT- PLEASE- HANG ON-" Don't get him started on his teeth either! Outright impossible to hide those things! I imagine he has to do those really awkward toothless smiles in order to keep people from seeing just how sharp and jagged the many teeth in his mouth are.

This dumbass has no idea anyone else in Joja is a demon. He thinks he's the only one. He's the special Joja Demon who has to hide himself from all of his peers in hopes he won't be caught and end up in massive trouble. Of course, thinking he's that special does give him a bit of an ego boost. He can't help but look down on his coworkers over it.

His tail has to be the hardest thing to hide. Yes, his horns are pointed outward and have numerous ends to them to hide, but he can literally just wear a hat if his hair doesn't suffice. His tail is HUGE. It drags behind him when he's not underwater, if it wasn't for the fact that he measured it out of boredom one day, he'd swear it was larger than him. He can retract his tail, but again, it always seems to pop back out whenever he's feeling overly annoyed. It's a wonder he hasn't been confronted about it.

He's definitely smacked people who annoy him with his tail. When they turn around, he turns to them and shrugs his shoulders. "I dunno. Maybe it was a bug? Maybe you should've moved out of the way when I asked? Mmh?"

There's a reason his tail is so large, of course. In his full demon form, it acts like a mermaid-tail type thing which allows him to move in water better. Also, it looks cool as hell. A jet black tail with bioluminescent spots. These spots can be found on other parts of his body as well. They light up brighter than usual whenever he gets flustered, and his face tends to flush a light shade of blue along with them.

He has a bulb around his chin that glows too. Basically, he's glow in the dark in his demon form. Awesome, right? Yeah, but imagine seeing him in a distant river at like- 2AM. He's definitely used the subtle light he gives off to his advantage. And by that I mean, he's used it to scare people away from the place he resides.

If he had to pact with anyone, it'd be reserved for his closest friend. Someone he views higher than most, someone he wouldn't mind taking on the world head on with. He'd be the one to bring up the idea, and with his usual grandeur, it'd sound something like "Hey- I was thinking... we're such close friends, right? You're practically the only one I turn to for my issues. I thought I'd return the favor. Yeah, I'm offering you my hand. I'd like to form a pact with you! I know, it's such an honor. I wouldn't be doing this for anyone, you know. You just mean significantly more than the average country idiot. Don't be shy." He'd never admit it, but it made his entire year when they ended up saying yes.

Of course, if you do end up pacted to him, there's clear ground rules. Never disturb his beauty sleep, don't contact him during his self-care hours, don't interrupt his seafood dinners unless you plan on splitting the bill, and please text him if you're needing to know whether or not he's busy. He'll get back to you immediately. The only exception is if its an emergency. In which case he'll disregard every rule placed and do everything in his power to help. He's not going to act nice over it though, you're still getting Dobson branded sass. But he's honored to be able to help.