#i have to read a lot. i'll tell you my models so far

[mishkakagehishka]

So like. My literature notes just got interrupted because i had a new wip idea. Which is so funny to me personally bc you'll be reading notes on the specific genre that brought that divine inspiration on me, and in the margins OC name possibilities and titles to (re)read as my "models" and then right back to literature notes

[ghouljams]

You mentioned once that Price's demon darling is also named Price and that has had me thinking for like days now. How would her powers work compared to the other demon darlings we've seen? I've been like binge reading all of your series and they are all so good.

Price's demon is fun, because I don't know how he got them. He might have summoned them like Soap did, he might have earned them like Ghost/König, I don't know. But what Price needed in a demon was an interrogator, a negotiator, something that could get the information he needed no matter the price. That's who he got, and he's managed to keep a lid on their existence for as long as he's had them. Mostly because he doesn't want the jokes about the demon sharing his name.

Price's demon's name is subject to change because it's a little confusing to tag.

Sometimes to be the good guy, you have to be the bad guy. Price knows this better than anyone. He knows that the rules of engagement only matter if you get caught, and that war crimes are a dime a dozen where people aren't looking. He knows he's never going to see the pearly gates or come face to face with an angel, he's made his peace with it. At the end of the day the only person he has to be alright with is himself.

And you, of course, but that's a separate issue.

He stands now, in front of what anyone would consider a waste of space. It's a tidy operation, as far as trafficking goes, but the people operating it only ever seem to come in one make and model. Slimey.

The man duct taped to the chair spits on Price's boots, swears at him, doesn't seem to be the least bit cooperative. "Sweetheart," Price calls to the room at large. He knows your here somewhere.

"You know that's not my name," You tell him stepping out of the jagged shadows. You're used to this song and dance by now, done it enough times.

"Then stop responding to it," he tells you with just a hint of fondness in his eyes.

"Maybe I will," you grab the trafficker by the back of his head and force it back, "maybe I'll go to the brass and report you for harassing me."

"Empty threats get us nowhere," Price smiles, watching as you push one of your thumbs against the corner of the man's eye. He flinches and jerks away from you, or tries to. Your grip on him is unyielding. He screams when you pop his eye free from the socket, and sever the nerves with one of your nails.

"Let's see what you've been up to," you mumble, standing and tossing the eye into your mouth. It pops like jelly under the sharp points of your teeth, and you pick through the visual data for what you need. Codes, passwords, people he saw, documents signed, maps and transportation logs. You're careful to carve your findings into the man's chest so you don't forget. Dragging your nail through his skin, writing with blood and flesh. Price hands you his phone and you take a picture to send to Laswell.

"Eardrums next," Price tells you.

"No, please, I can talk, I'll tell you what you want to know." The man begs. You twist his head to the side and lengthen your nails.

"Sorry to disappoint you, but your participation isn't really necessary," You dig your nails into his ear canal like needle nose pliers. Maybe you should've eaten his voicebox first, see what he's been saying, it would've made this process a lot quieter.

When you're finished the man is full if holes and you're full of intel. Price hands you a towel to wipe your hands off, and scrub the blood from your lips. He catches you when you turn away from the body, takes the towel to get a last streak of blood off your cheek.

"Good work Price," he hums, you grin.

"Thank you Captain." He says your name so rarely, you try to enjoy it when he does. You hook your fingers in his tac vest to pull him closer. His eyes dart to your lips, but when you lean in to kiss him he leans back.

"We're still working sweetheart," his fingers stroke your cheek to keep you from pouting.

"Later then?" You ask.

"After you've brushed your teeth," he agrees. You gasp in mock offense, and he smiles. You have a long day ahead of you.

[annymation]

🎶Wish Away- the villains song

Magnifico and Amaya's villain duet for my Wish rewrite

So... I was in a silly goofy mood, searching for inspiration to make the Magnifico and Amaya's villain duet for my rewrite.

And what do you know, I came across a deleted song from EQUESTRIA GIRLS 3, YEAH, EQUESTRIA GIRLS, and that inspired me the most... Like, I found exactly what I was looking for, and adapted the song to fit my vision.

The song that inspired me was "Free the Magic (Demo)" and it has the exact kind of tempo and style I think are fitting for two manipulative monarchs, very sophisticated and classy but also hiding a lot of malice.

I may or may not change the lyrics as time goes on, but so far here's what I got:

So first things first, here’s the deleted Equestria Girls song that inspired me. Give it a listen first or while you read the lyrics so you can get a feel for the rhythm and feel of the song. Although in my version the very last verse would play differently, sounding a lot more intense.

If this was a Disney song tho it would obviously have more instruments than just a piano, which could really elevate it, I imagine there could be different kinds of instruments depending on who's singing.

Also, so you can better picture the scenery. Magnifico and Amaya are trying to convince Asha to give away her wish instead of just working hard to get it by herself.

They take her to that room we saw during “This Is The Thanks I Get” in the movie, with the miniature model of the kingdom and the lil dolls.

The dolls will serve as the backup singers, as Magnifico uses his magic to give them life.

The rooms is mostly dark, and the king and queen start out very gentle with Asha but their demeanor becomes more aggressive as the song progresses.

Lyrics in green- King Magnifico 🫧

Lyrics in blue- Queen Amaya 👑

Lyrics in bold white- little puppets from Magnifico’s model 🎎

Lyrics in purple- Asha ✨

Wish Away

You've been an outcast in this land

For far too long

It's time you show to them

That Rosa's where you belong

There's a wish in you

That just cannot wait to soar

So tell us, Asha

What do you wish for?

THINK! 

But before you answer

Look around and just see where you're from

From a kingdom with no sadness, no pain nor dismay 

And it's all because they

Wished away

(aah-ah, aah-ah, aah-ah)

MAY!

I give a suggestion?

What you lack might be just 

Some self reflection

You don't know who you are

So how could you ever go as far

To know what's your purpose in life?

(aah-ah, aah-ah, aah-ah)

Strife and hard work is fine, dear

But it's oh, so much easier

If you give me that wish of yours

Think just how far you'll go

Once that wish is mine-

I mean ours! I mean yours

hehehe

And what about your future?

Will it be just some doodles, my dear?

There's much more you can achieve (thanks to me)

So forget with no-

Forget with no regret

I don't know what I want, I've never knew

Too many pains to count, so much I've been through

But I know a wish will be for me to grant

So thanks for offering, but, I need no enchant

Little one, I don't think you comprehend

(Your wish will be the king’s command)

With my magic I can make all that pain

end 

(You can be one of us)

If you let us help you

Just wait and see

(You should be pleased)

I have a hunch this wish 

Shall set you free

(free, free, free)

Is this really the hill I'll die on?

(Wish a-way, wish a-way)

There's no hope for you

No stars to wish upon

(Wish a-way, wish a-way)

Should I give up on my integrity?

(Give it all away, You cannot get away)

I'm the ONLY ONE

Who'll end your MISERY

SO COME ON! WISH AWAY!

SO YOU MAY FIND YOUR WAY-

OKAY!

… Okay?

… okay … I have a wish …

Thank You For Reading!

[mar3ggiata]

professional help, c10. Kidnapped

simon riley x original character.

trigger warnings: violence, sexual assault, mentions of rape, trauma, sexual themes, swearing, use of alcohol and drugs.

song to listen to when reading this: Come a little closer, Cage the elephant.

abstract: hey this is Jude. you doing alright? you'd never guess who I saw! anyways, I'm almost content in this chapter and then I'm angry again. I've been angry my whole life guys I swear. also, had a special someone with me that night, can you guess who my passenger princess was?

She chuckled when he left the room. Skeleton mask, skeleton gloves, hell he probably had skeleton fucking underwear on. It seemed so out of character for him to be this nice to come all the way to her office and talk to her. He did seem a tiny bit uncomfortable, maybe he wasn't the best at social interactions. He had woke up happy and decided to be a decent human being for once. She didn't trust that his intentions were pure. Maybe he wanted her to speak about it cause he already heard from his friends and wanted the full version. You really want to know Simon, I'll send you the security cameras footage via email, that'll hunt you for a lifetime.

She had a busy day and had to stop thinking about their interaction for a few hours. She was in such a good mood she even had lunch, alone in her office, but still. Her thoughts kept wondering to the Lieutenant, his blue jacket and his thick arms, she had to compose herself when Sergeant Raul, her last patient of the day, had a panic attack in front of her. She got home late, exhausted. She went on a night walk with Jinx, cooked dinner and sat down at her table, her violent grinder and little jar with weed in front of her. She had some reports to finish, she had another two Nutcracker songs to choreograph. Her eyes lingered on 'The Pilgrimage' which she kept as a souvenir from her Sherlock CIA experience with the Arash case. She fished out a lighter from her bag and opened the book in front of her. She liked reading it, she enjoyed it. She had never been much of a religious person, though she was raised catholic. She respected the idea of faith, how it guided people, how it made them feel less alone. She had a thought. A tiny one. A sneaky suspicion. The little urge to lurk. It was a little lightbulb moment, a cinematic sequence in which the music stopped and then violins started playing as she began to think. Her rollie in one hand, the book in the other, she looked at her dog, smell of weed all around her. The poor thing was asleep on the couch, blissfully unaware. When she reached for her laptop to do some research, she knew she was gonna find something.

Two days later she was still debating on telling Price. She really didn't want to bother Laswell, poor woman didn't need more work. They were going to leave in 4 days. She decided she'd tell the first person she would see. It would be the universe to decide. Her office was at the opposite area from Price's so she had slim chances of telling anyone. It wasn't her mission, it wasn't her job, it wasn't her place. She was overstepping.

'Fuck', she said to herself, when she saw the Lieutenant in the parking lot. She froze, foot on the brakes. That's it, it's the universe's choice, you have to tell him. He's gonna kill you. He was smoking. His mask was slightly raised on his nose, exposing his mouth. Not that she could see anything, he was way too far and she was short sighted. Did he ever leave that mask home? He had a vest on, a light blue sherpa jacket that looked extremely comfortable. She looked at his cigarette, he had less than half of it left. Four drags maximum. Just tell him for fuck's sake, it's for the greater good and it’s a fucking good theory. He was almost finished. She slowly came to a stop in front of him and rolled down her window.

The world was silent around them. The sun was setting, the air was crisp. He had noticed the car, he remember it was the same model as hers. He didn't think she would stop. What she said next made his heart skip a beat. 'Hop in? I need to talk to you'. Her eyes were even a prettier colour in this light. They looked translucent. Her skin was shining and golden under the sunlight. 'Can it wait?' He tried to avoid getting in the car with her. Deeply unprofessional. Where did she want to take him anyway, couldn't they talk in his office? What was it she wanted to tell him? 'I'll take you back here when we're done, just a little ride’. She wasn't giving up. Am I being fucking kidnapped by you, Jude? Most guys wouldn't really complain to be honest, but still… He reluctantly sat in the passenger seat, having to adjust his seat to accommodate for his size. The lack of control he had in the situation made him uncomfortable, his fingers tingling with excitement and a slight bit of panic. But this girl… this girl, her presence was just weirdly irresistible. He wanted to know what she wanted to say, every little detail, every hint to who she truly was. He craved that. She slowly took off. She seemed a good driver, she kept her speed stable. 'What is it?' he asked impatient to know why he was being kidnapped. 'So, I kept thinking about what you said about Khorram, that he's hidden somewhere.' She glanced at him while she talked, maintaining her eyes on the road ahead. 'I thought about The Pilgrimage, the book. It's the three stages that I thought about, you know, the Jordan River was the first. Then the middle of the desert, then the Persian Gulf.'

He had to know she was coming up with another theory of hers. He started to get tense. He was getting tired to ear about this, she really had to let this go, it wasn't her place to be talking about it, all these speculations... This was war, people were getting killed everyday by this man and she was here playing detectives. 'I don't think you should keep working on this Jude. It's not your job', he said in the most assertive tone he could manage. She licked her lips, they were entering the city. She sighed, 'I know, I'm just suggesting', she insisted, but he cut her off. 'It's not your place.' He stated. He wasn't afraid to be rough with her or sound disrespectful. She was driving through a bit of traffic, she change gears swiftly and still managed to wave her hand in the air while she talked. 'I know! Since you guys didn't have a clue what you were doing the last time…' he interrupted her again, 'Doesn't mean you're right this time'. She scoffed and slightly raised her tone, visibly annoyed. 'You didn't even fucking let me finish, you don't know what I was about to say!' He caught a glimpse of her eyes, they looked darker. She had the same expression she always had. She looked like she was going to cast a spell on him and turn him into a chair. She must have always won every single argument in her life. Not with him, not with that attitude. 'I don't want to hear it, I can't make my soldiers do things and go places because you read a fucking book, Jude.' If she thought she could win this, she was seriously delusional. 'I read the fucking book that made you not die last week, Simon!' She raised her voice again, turning to face him. Hearing his name escape her lips made him feel weird. It was unusual to hear his name. Ghost, L.t, he had a few nicknames. Only Price called him Simon. He thought about whether she even knew he was Ghost to the others. Simon. It sounded different. It sounded warmer, it sounded pretty. She sang his name. It sounded like it belonged in the phrase Do you want to try that new restaurant with me, Simon, or There's a song I want you to listen, Simon, or Want to take a walk with me, Simon? It sounded like it belonged to a nice, handsome and normal guy, which he wasn't.

'Merda. Oh, merda.' He didn't realise she wasn't looking at him anymore. She had stopped the car, was she going to abandon him on the side of the road? They had stopped in front of a closed building, a few cars parked in the front. The woman next to him had a confused look on her face, which quickly shifted to panic. There was a girl in front of one of the cars. She was alone and she had a bag on her shoulder. Jude pulled the handbrake and got out of the car, walking towards the girl. She must have been 14. He got out of the car, but didn't approach them. He looked at Jude take the girl's hands in her own and talk to her. He couldn't really hear what they were saying, but the little girl was sniffling. She had been crying. 'Oh god', whispered Jude as she hugged the girl, scrunching down. He watcher her hand caress the girl's hair. Why was everything so complicated and bloody mysterious when it came to this girl? He looked at Jude taking the little girl's hand and taking her to the car. He probably looked scary with his skull printed balaclava on. 'Get in Gemma, I'll drive you home okay?' She said, seating down. 'Gemma this is my friend, Simon. Simon this is one of my students, Gemma.'

Jude was perfectly calm now, the little girl sitting in the back of the car. Her eyes were dark, she was driving much slower now, more carefully. She was mad. For what? What do you mean students? He had so many questions he couldn't process to say hi to the girl. Jude kept glancing in the review mirror to make sure Gemma was okay in the back. 'You like the choreography so far?' she asked. She danced? 'Yes, really much' Gemma answered 'I like when we do the circle. With the tour jetés' she said. Jude smiled 'Yeah I like that part too'. She was driving in a residential area more far away from the city centre, but they were getting closer to the road that would take them into the desert. 'Was it this one or the next Gemma?' she was slowing down. 'The next one' said the girl quietly. 'I'll talk to your mom okay?' She said while getting out of the car. She quickly turned towards him, her look apologetic 'I'm sorry, I'll explain. Just a second.' She felt bad for making him wait, it was very unprofessional of her, but it was an emergency and he just happened to be there. At least they stopped fighting. She explained to Gemma's mother that she was driving past the school when she saw her standing outside. The school was open when they arrived, it had closed 5 minutes after she had left. The girls had told Gemma about an extra lesson just for the 5 top students of the class and Gemma had asked her mom to take her. She said she was furious with the others and would talk to them and possibly even prevent some to dance at the final performance. She apologised to Gemma for having to wait outside because of that stupid joke and hugged her one more time, before making her way to the car. Furious was an understatement. How could they be so fucking mean? So so so stupid... She sighed while getting back into the car.

'I'm sorry, I'll take you back. Sorry. Sorry.' She quickly reversed and took off in the direction of the desert. 'Everything okay?' He decided to speak since she was gripping the steering wheel with her knuckles turning white. She waited a second before replying. 'I teach ballet. The other girls told her we had lesson when we didn't, she was the only one who showed up. The school is closed, it's dark out she could have been kidnapped', she said all in one breath. She was shaking her head, how fucking horrifying and dangerous was it to be left alone in the middle of nowhere as a 14 year old girl. Thank God she saw her, poor Gemma. She wasn't blaming her mom, the school was probably still open when they arrived and closed soon after. They were approaching the base in silence, she stopped near the entrance to let him go inside. She kept muttering words in Italian, she was biting her nails nervously. 'Che stronze. Come si fa…assurdo. Troppe poche botte da piccole.' She turned towards him before he had a chance to open the door. 'I'm very sorry you had to witness that, I truly am.' She blinked a few times trying to hide her embarrassment. She messed up all her chances to get him to listen to what she had found now. 'It's fine' he said. His voice was soft. He probably understood that she really couldn't leave the girl there alone, but still. His hand was on the door handle but he wouldn't open the door yet. 'Okay… I'm sorry either way I shouldn't have… done all this.' She was panicking a little at this point. 'Jude it's fine, seriously.' He finally opened the door and got out of the car 'Go home.' He stated before turning away and entering the base.

She went home. She facetimed Salvo and told him about the situation to rant a little bit. She didn't mentioned who she was with, cause it embarrassed her. Cause picking him up was the stupidest idea of her life. She was so fucking mad at the girls she thought about a million fucking different ways to find out who was responsible and make them pay. God, I sound like my mother. Which is very bad, considering what she does for a living…

notes: oh god, what does her mother do then? translation: 'those bitches. how is this possible… incredible. didn't get hit hard enough as kids.' don't hit your kids, violence is bad. also is bullying. I am getting really good results at uni guys!! I'm gonna post the next preview as well cause I'm gonna be studying a lot again, and working and you know. figuring out how to be happy with my life I guess.

love, mare.

taglist:

@ghostlythots @sweetfemmefatal @natxpat @chavarriakeren647 @ravenmoore14 @farther-than-pleiades @internallyscreamings @hwromi @atoxicrat @cuti3maddi3 @deafeningkittenblaze @its-celeste @serene-hills @lexidoll12 @poohkie90 @lunatiquess

@warmedbythebody @katzykat @iristhemuse @azkza @keiraslayz @abbyandermine @jennyjencakes @dest-nai @corset-briefs @nutze-kekse @ilytsukiw @b3anspr0ut

@pondsblog @missyouzoe @fallenkitten @bigauthorrascalturkey @bethtay @angelynn-nicole @starluv @stargirlisworld @giyuuslittleslut @impossiblecupcakelight

@rkrivees-blog @ghosts-hoe @kam1snotverysmart @gauky76 @freyjaaasstuff @spicyspicyliving @scottpilgrimvsmyfists @courtney0-0 @shinchanboi @darling006 @my-therapist-hates-me

[aviyinglet]

Pixel Yinglets 0.975 is now out for PC!

Hello, everyone! Hefty update today with a bunch of changes and customization options, getting closer to making this presentable as a cloneable public avatar. The Quest version will be live in the next few hours; you can buy this model for $30 on my fascinating Gumroad page, as early-access pricing before it hits 1.0. Details and changelog after the jump!

I finished 0.96 thinking "Ah, time to relax!" and then it was made clear to me during a meeting with friends that the leg rigging couldn't wait any longer -- so I devoted the entire week of working hours (and then some) to releasing 0.97 -- and the following night of experiences made it clear to me that some bugs needed fixing and more work was needed to improve the new-user experience, so now we're at 0.975. The model now has full digitigrade leg rigging on PC, but also a whole bunch of customization options for character creation, including face/body sliders and separate hue sliders for the body and eyes. In retrospect I'm embarrassed as hell that I waited so long to rig the legs properly, but I like to think I went through my hard knocks fixing it.

Because this is now cloneable, I can confirm that this is very functional in six-point full-body tracking. Putting this in the hands of experienced FBT users (my life-partner and several good friends) was revelatory, and has convinced me to get a set of trackers myself right after Vancoufur. Body language changes a lot!

The next update will probably not come as quickly as this one, but it will feature retopologized hands/feet and toggleable clothing. We aren't done with body customization yet, but I consider this a pretty good start!

The public version of this is currently in the wild, but I'll be waiting till .98 to buy Furhub ad space for it. I'm committed to maintaining feature-parity between the free and paid versions of this, with greater customization through production files as the draw for the paid version. Any questions or concerns, please let me know. <3

CHANGELOG:

02/28/2024 & 03/02/2024

VERSION 0.97: THE "LET'S DIGRESS" UPDATE and VERSION 0.975: THE "LET'S DIGRESS" HOTFIX

(PC-only currently, will have Quest version added in less than 24 hours.)

Feature additions:

Radial menus for body characteristic customization:

Hue sliders! Only visible on PC, since it requires the Poiyomi shader. Body and eye colors can be customized independently.

Shelltooth length.

Snout length.

Snout width.

Snout roundness.

Ear roundness.

Ear length.

Belly size.

Chin height.

Hip width.

Underfluff density.

Digitigrade leg armature on PC version, using constraints. Your hip bones should no longer completely dislocate when you crouch! :D

Front and back fur patterns! In the "Base Fur" layer category in the .psd is a "Patterns" subcategory, with "Front Pattern" and "Back Pattern" subcategories that can be toggled, recolored, and customized as you please.

Credits page, accessible from the main circle menu! Tell all your friends!

"Read this first!" page, which summons a plane containing helpful tips for first-time users.

Geometry tweaks:

Raised feet slightly to prevent them from clipping into the ground.

Adjusted shelltooth angle to prevent it from clipping into the lower lip.

Retopologized legs! Now significantly less boxy, and they stick out less far in front of the body (I used Valsalia's "Anatomy of a Yinglet" as reference).

Retopologized ears. The inner part's concave now!

Added blendshapes for all the customization sliders.

Added a bit more volume to the breast size blendshape.

Tweaked waistline to be more yinglet-y.

Tailtip now tapers more to a point.

UV/texture tweaks:

Added front and back fur-pattern layers, toggleable in the PSD.

Repainted legs and ears.

Repainted the weird transparent pixels bordering the tops of the hard black sections of the legs.

Made eyebrow anti-aliasing pixels actual transparency instead of the default fur color.

Changed credits page to use pixelated fonts.

Condensed color legend on texture.

Added "Read this first!" UI elements to texture. (Will be cleaned up when I expand the texture canvas for clothing.)

Armature tweaks:

Re-weighted feet. Still not ideal, but hands and feet will be retopologized for the next update.

Constrained feet to plantigrade ankles.

Added glasses bone. This and the skirt bones will factor into the next major update.

Added bones for individual whiskers.

Other tweaks:

Assigned default values to most properties between 0 and 1.

Radial menus have been reorganized. All customization sliders are nested in a Customization submenu.

Fixed default lid minimizer not firing in eyelid animations.

Restored eye sparkles on Quest.

Known issues:

Feet rigging is passable but could be better; I'll throw myself at it after feet receive the hand retopology.

Can't yet toggle front and back fur-patterns. (There's an issue with decals that causes them to not retain the hard edges of the rest of the model's pixelated texture.) Will be fixed in a later update.

[headspace-hotel]

Howdy! I've been following your discussions of ecology and spirituality and indigenous ways of knowing with interest! If it's alright I'd like to share some thoughts. A commonality I've noticed in a lot of the people who object to a lot of the things you're saying, and I think you've noticed as well, is that they seem to see science as a way of accessing reality without filtering by bias and belief. I think that idea comes from how we teach science in the US, and probably more broadly. We tend to teach science as a set of objective unchanging facts and truths without much detail or thought on how we came to know these things. My personal belief is that it would be far better to teach science as a process. Maybe have a class tracing the history of scientific ideas and understanding previous scientific or even pre-scientific thoughts and theories.

I've commented on your posts a few times and you may know I'm a geologist. As I've gotten further into my studies, I've had to change my idea of what science is. I now see it as a living process of making ever more useful simplifications about the world. The world itself is far too complex to understand even one aspect of it in its totality, so we observe patterns and try to simplify them to make models and rules out of them to understand behaviors of the world around us. Scientific models aren't always true in a simple direct way, but what they are is useful. If it isn't useful get rid of it and make a new hypothesis or conjecture or theory. I think one culture difference between different scientific disciplines is in how the subject matter confronts you with complexity. Much of the rigour that gives physics and chemistry their prestige for being able to explain so much stems from the fact that they remove as much complexity and impurity as possible. I think that baked into that sort of hierarchy of sciences is how close they are to pulling all of the different theories within the discipline under a universalizing theory (ie., quantum mechanics/relativity for physics being the best example) but I'm now off topic so I'll stop.

That turned into a bit of a stream of conscious mess, but I think I put down what I wanted to. I've been really enjoying your thoughts, and it's been (as you may be able to tell from the length of this) food for thought for myself in a similar way as reading Braiding Sweetgrass was for me. Keep it up!

basically, yes, correct. and also that, in times and places where "spirituality" and "science" are not culturally considered separate, you can't bring your "science is about the real world of real things, spirituality is about things that can't be measured or proven" framework because it Doesn't Work

The oldest mathematicians viewed mathematics as what we would today call "spiritual;" that doesn't make mathematics not real. Just because shamans with a framework that deals in the world of spirits use X plant for medicinal purposes, doesn't mean the plant doesn't have medicinal properties or that the shaman's usage isn't rooted in observations of what that plant does.

And if you went back in time to a Neolithic shaman with nothing in common with you and tried to explain the germ theory of disease to them, through a universal translator so both of you could understand, you could explain that mammoth pox isn't caused by a slight to the mammoth god by accidentally knocking over the mammoth god idol.

But you couldn't explain that mammoth pox isn't caused by evil spirits that leave the body of a mammoth when it is killed. It would be literally impossible to explain this. Because the Neolithic shaman's conceptual framework for "evil spirits" doesn't have a stipulation that it excludes microorganisms. It has no reason to.

And instead of trying to explain to the shaman THAT "demon=things that don't exist in physical reality" and THEN explain that demons (by this definition) aren't real, you would have to realize that you and the shaman are using different models for the same thing, and the shaman isn't fundamentally misattributing the cause of illness in any meaningful way, they just don't know exactly how it works.

[anhed-nia]

So I'm in the middle of this research project centered on Dario Argento's OPERA, for which I have required myself to watch as many screen adaptations of the Gaston Leroux novel The Phantom of the Opera as I can take. What I have determined so far is that the Phantom of the Opera is a story everyone wants to tell, but not very many people are sure of how to tell it. In fact, it's not that easy to say what it is about archetypally. You know, Wolfman stories are typically about "the beast in man" (with femininity positioned as some sort of cure for this personality split), Frankenstein stories are usually about human nature (i.e. an uncanny creature can have more humanity than vain and bigoted humans), Dracula-type vampire stories are most generally about the problems of being an outsider (queer, foreign, etc). But Phantom of the Opera is like...well, everyone likes the love story part of it, which is more or less modeled on Dracula, with a woman torn between seductive darkness and the safety of square society. But then there are all these other parts that seem to flummox people in the retelling.

I haven't read the Leroux novel YET but the first round of movies have been interesting, and also sort of perplexing. The iteration from 1925 holds up, largely due to Chaney's creation of the Phantom which remains a top tier monster. People don't often talk about the mask though! Which looks like a cross between Peter Lorre and the Devo Boogie Boy, it's disturbing and I like it.

This Phantom was born in the dungeons during a revolutionary bloodbath and is disfigured from birth, drawing on the antique idea that a mother's trauma is translated in the deformity of her children; also, compellingly, these dungeons lie fathoms beneath the opera house where the bourgeoisie are witlessly dancing on the graves of martyrs and criminals embodied in the Phantom. The ingenue Christine is an interesting figure who breaks up with her boyfriend at the beginning because she wants to give her whole self to her career; when the Phantom starts murmuring to her through the walls it's as if the spirit of opera itself has chosen her to be its avatar, which she seems to find totally rational. It's sort of cool, what other movie of this era has a likeable heroine choosing her potential for greatness over love? This is the element of the story that is the most interesting, but I'll expand on that in a minute.

The Chaney edition benefits a lot from keeping things simple. The 1943 version with Claude Raines has a little bit too much going on and the story doesn't get a lot of time to congeal between so many long opera sequences; this movie really takes the opera part of the title seriously! Actually they're the best thing about it, mostly because of Nelson Eddy who is extremely beautiful and a real opera singer, and who projects this blazing desire for Susanna Foster that is incredibly convincing. Like I'd normally say they have great chemistry, but I think it's just a lot of power radiating from him specifically.

Ahem.

Uh anyway. This movie picks up the reoccurring (but not universal) idea that the Phantom is a genteel and sophisticated composer who has just fallen on hard times, who goes mad when his latest concerto is stolen. He is disfigured while struggling with the plagiarist and installs himself under the opera house where he can haunt his former protege Christine, who is already torn between dreamy Nelson Eddy and her stuffy cop boyfriend. One of my favorite things here is that even though this film is extremely quaint and old fashioned, everybody hates cops; this Christine is less a self-determined careerist than someone who is under pressure from her artist friends who find it profoundly repulsive that she is dating a policeman. Meanwhile the Phantom is just way too gentle and sappy, which is extra disappointing because Claude Rains's Invisible Man is so fabulously chaotic and sadistic, it made me really aware of the Phantom that could have been. This one doesn't properly represent the high society vs. underworld dichotomy that Christine should be torn between. So what is this movie about? There's so many guys in it and a few different themes flapping in the breeze. Is it about love? Is it about self-actualizing through art? Is it about the cutthroat world of showbusiness? It doesn't have that much to say, ultimately, and it just seems really unmotivated. Also I don't like this mask, sue me.

The Hammer edition is even more disappointing, considering the studio's previous successes with Universal Monster remakes. Here Christine is torn between a suave opera producer, the lecherous composer who has plagiarized the Phantom, and yeah the Phantom. Too many guys, it confuses whatever the dynamic and themes are supposed to be. Michael Gough as the plagiarist is so much more evil and threatening than poor Herbert Lom's Phantom that it's hard to stay focused on the main point here. Curiously the Hammer version is rather unromantic, with the Phantom just slapping Christine around until she sings his tunes right; that is kind of refreshing in a way, although it also means that the film lacks tension, which contributes to its being surprisingly anticlimactic. The best guy in the movie is actually Thorley Walters whose character serves almost no narrative purpose at all, he just hulks around with this WTF? look on his face and it is kind of adorable. I guess I like the gross mask in this one, too.

But the Hammer version has one interesting strength, which is that Christine is singing the lead in a new opera about Joan of Arc. Just like Joan, Christine hears a disembodied voice prophesizing her ascent to power. The best thing about the Phantom lore is the idea that the woman has this latent power that can either be activated by the Phantom, or suppressed by her square boyfriend (the relationship being mutually exclusive with opera stardom in many iterations). She isn't just a love object to be possessed, she herself possesses of some kind of devastating energy that needs to be awakened and channeled--or contained and forgotten, if she decides to get married and stay home or something. This is pretty cool, and it is interestingly realized in Dario Argento's OPERA, in which (spoiler alert I guess) a killer stalks an opera singer with the aim of catalyzing her own latent psychopathy. This idea is at the center of my thesis and I'm looking forward to fleshing it out, although I'm kind of dreading all the other PHANTOMs that I have committed myself to watching. I really don't want to deal with Andrew LLoyd Webber at all, but after I get through at least the Joel Schumacher one of the those I'm going to reward myself with a rewatch of PHANTOM OF THE PARADISE which I'm going to guess right now is the best retelling of this story after the Chaney one. I'm counting on Paul Williams' music to be catchier than Webber's.

I'm whining about my own decisions, I know, but really the main hardship of this project is that now I keep getting the Vandals' punk theme song from PHANTOM OF THE MALL: ERIC'S REVENGE stuck in my head, and let me tell you that is very unwelcome. Here it is, if you've decided you're done being happy and sane:

[doubledyke]

How do you think would be Edd and Ed's lives in a world where Eddy was never born or they never meet him? Would they indeed be accepted by the other kids, or would they be lonely hermits stuck on their houses (Edd with his experiments and Ed with his sci-fi movies as their only friends respectively)? I bet more on the second option.

oh boy, the question of all time. i guess i'll have to go with the second option to some extent.

ed is unlikely to be truly and wholly accepted by most of the other kids with or without eddy imo. he's smelly and weird, and sarah, who's part of the in-crowd, can't stand him. she's not going to let him join in the reindeer games, and i doubt he'd want to spend more time with her than he already has to, let's be real.

he could very well be perfectly happy with the life of a hermit. like you mentioned, he's got his movies and comics, his models, and a limitless imagination. he doesn't strike me as the type to require much or really any social interaction or validation. he does love being around his friends! edd and eddy that is. he's an extremely sweet person, and very affectionate towards people he cares about. but he could fare just as well being a loner. also, dude can evidently conjure up a tulpa any time he wants (e.g. jib).

he isn't one to hold grudges at all, so if the kids did occasionally need him to effortlessly lift a house or car, he'd happily oblige. that's about the extent of their "acceptance" of ed though. jonny and rolf are the exceptions - i think they'd be buddies with the lump.

it might be a little harder to say for certain with edd, since he puts up so many fronts. i think he may be somewhat accepted - he's clean, smart, and the girls think he's cute. he's good to have around when you need help with homework, or your bike chain slips... or you've got a growth of some sort... but much like big ed, he's pretty strange, on top of being finicky, pretentious, etc.. and he's a buzzkill a lot of the time, which gets old real fast. that being said i think he could easily build a superficial rapport with the kids, though they probably won't be inviting him to any soirees. if i had to choose a kid who might connect most with edd, it'd be jimmy..... so literally exactly what happens in the show.

as far as edd ending up a shut in, i imagine without eddy he probably would spend most of his time on his own, but does venture outdoors. he loves being in nature and looking at bugs, that typa stuff. he'd still do that, just alone i guess. not a farfetched assumption at all. but edd does crave SOME level of social approval and validation. and since he doesn't get it at home, he has to look elsewhere. so without eddy, he would have to manage with a few fair-weather friendships in the neighborhood until he inevitably leaves peach creek and meets people that are more his speed.

there's an argument to be made that despite his need for socialization, he, like ed, would have little to no desire to hang out with the cul-de-sac kids. cuz like, what would they do? it's nearly impossible for me to imagine edd 'playing' with the other kids, since he's 12 going on 45. edd doesn't play, at least not uncritically lmao. he likes to read and do his tinkering and experiments, etc.. at least with ed and eddy he can put those things to some kind of use.

which brings me to my semi-related tangent, and i'll try not to go too far off the rails here, but don't hold your breath.

i feel like this kind of question is prevalent because some people want to imagine that the cul-de-sac would be all sunshine and rainbows if only eddy wasn't around. as if ed and edd are clamoring to hang out with kevin (lol) and the only thing preventing them from being the toasts of the town is eddy? it's really weird seeing as he's basically the main character and there's not a show without their antics. idk what to tell those people except that maybe they need to find another long defunct cartoon to over analyze 😬

not that you're doing this at all anon, but it drives me crazy when people try to absolve edd of wrongdoing and paint him as a trembling victim. i mean, people can do whatever they want, but shitting on eddy is a bit much. plus it strips away a lot of what makes edd interesting.

edd makes a conscious and informed choice every day to hang out with ed and eddy.

i don't personally think it's because he was or necessarily would be outright shunned by the other kids. dare i say, he just likes them lmao.

eddy and edd have a major similarity in their desire to appear more mature than they are:

eddy is shameless in his attempts, whereas edd tries to play it off.

and that's it. that's the show.

kidding, but only a little. essentially, they're both precocious and have probably been exposed to shit that kids shouldn't be exposed to. i think that's the foundation of their friendship, aside from having the same name.

in some ways, eddy IS more "mature" than his peers, in his own greasy way. he's mostly a typical idiot pre-teen, but let's give him some credit here: he knows it's a dog eat dog world and you don't get anywhere in life by whistlin' dixie. he's just trying to get a head start.

edd is complicit and just as culpable as eddy is in their grift. he compulsively voices his disapproval and still not only goes along, but contributes greatly. it appears that a lot of the time his biggest qualm is even that the scams are immoral, but that they're unconvincing.

there could be a few different explanations for that, but "edd is a victim of eddy" simply isn't one of them.

a) edd also wants money, and if that means fleecing people he believes are below him, so be it.

b) edd views these rackets as the preferable, more adult-esque alternative to playing tiddlywinks with his peers.

c) he likes spending time with ed and eddy and that entails running two-bit scams

these aren't mutually exclusive by any means. to me, all three apply at various times in the series.

all that to say, i don't think edd is forced to hang out with ed and eddy because he's just SO outwardly off-putting that the kids wouldn't give him the time of day. that assumes that he even wants their time, y'know. unlike eddy, edd is not "cool-conscious". he doesn't care where he belongs, he's just wants to belong. and he found his sense of belonging with dumb and dumber. it says a lot about him, i think 😂

much like any kid if he really wanted to mesh with the in-crowd, he'd find a way. to act like edd has no other option just comes off as a slight toward the other two eds.

okay anyway, the eds are a package deal. without eddy... there's literally no ed edd n eddy. none of them would develop the way they did if one of them was missing. that's why it's weird to try and guess what would happen if eddy wasn't around. but...

i don't see edd giving ed much of a chance if it weren't for eddy's forcing them to be around each other. he'd get one whiff of the guy and disintegrate into a pile of wood dust. and ed barely understands what edd says, so why would he have ever initiated a conversation if not for eddy standing by to interpret??

of course, edd did a pretty good job at predicting what life would look like for ed and eddy if he ended up as the pretzel legged boy in the sideshow - the sucker quotient does go way down when the signs are misspelled. and as for if it were just edd and eddy, they would've killed each other by the end of season 2.

[artsekey]

I'm not super into Lackadaisy, but I am super into animation, and...

How are they planning to finance an entire season with just 1,000,000?

(Everything below assumes that they're aiming for episodes that are comparable to the pilot & that they plan on fully financing the season with solely the donations on Backerkit. It's likely they have additional financing through merchandising, the pilot, and/or Iron Circus's other projects, but since that information is not available, I'll go off of what I know. Additionally, production management and budgeting are extremely project dependent, so the "averages" listed below may be far off what the PM on Lackadaisy's got quoted.)

[EDIT: It’s been brought to my attention that the episodes are 10-12 minutes long, which means it’s MUCH more doable than I was expecting! They budgeted for a lean (but doable!!!) production. Thank you to those who clarified! I’ll leave this post as-is for those interested, but read it knowing they’re considering roughly half the time I used to calculate everything below!]

Quick preface as to why I wanted to talk about this and Why I Feel I May Have Valuable Things To Say: I'm an indie filmmaker and professor of animation, production management, and VFX. I'm not trying to call out the company or the production because-- and I cannot say this enough-- I truly do not know what's happening on the back end. Every production is wildly different. Their original goal was 125,000, with 45% going to animation-- that includes rough, cleanup, & color. That means that for a ~27 minute animated episode, they've got $56,250. If we collect all facets of production together-- story, layout, animation, compositing, and editing-- we wind up with a grand total of $82,500. Even if we estimate at the lowest average production cost of $8,000 a minute, this budget would account for ~11 minutes of animation.

An animator's average hourly rate is ~$36. With the outlined budget, the Lackadaisy production would be able to afford ~1562 hours of animator manpower. Let's assume (for the sake of this discussion) they'll split that over at least four animators, leaving us with about 10 weeks of full-time work (~390 hrs per person) for four people.

Now this may seem like a lot of time, but as far as I can tell, the pilot was largely animated frame-by-frame without the use of 2D rigging. This means every frame needs to go through roughs, then cleanup, then color, then composite. Every frame you see on-screen has been worked over at least four times-- six if you count layout and story. Ten weeks is simply not enough time to finish 27 minutes of 2D animation.

Now, I know what you might be thinking; Artsekey, they never said their production period was ten weeks! And you're right! However, that's how much production time they can afford. Whether it's split over 20 weeks or a year, they only have enough money to pay their animators for 1562 hours of labor.... if they're paying them a competitive hourly wage. To be completely clear, I am not insinuating that they're low-balling their animators; there're a dozen unknown factors that play into this, such as:

The level of animator they're hiring (an apprentice animator may make ~$17-$23 an hour whereas an experienced pro may make ~$43-$45.)

Whether they're actually hiring animators as opposed to contracting animators (I assume their model is likely relying on the latter based on the fact that I'm seeing a lot of animators that worked on 1-3 shots). They may be doing single-sum deliverable based contracts rather than hourly.

The use of tools like EBsynth (which is listed among the programs they're using) and smart frame management (which they're definitely doing!). This can, if used properly, cut down on the number of in-betweens animators need to get done.

The amount of money the studio is planning to re-invest on their end. The goal on backerkit may just account for the additional funds the studio needs to enter production, meaning their budget may be far larger than what's listed. However, if this were the case, I'd hope they'd disclose it! If I were considering backing the project, knowing that the studio was going to be buying in would increase my faith in the fundraiser.

Obviously, the team loves animation. It shows through in the pilot, and I think that it's clear in their mission statement that they stand against the exploitation of animators. But... I also know that indie production is like trying to wring water out of a log. I'd personally like a more comprehensive breakdown of their expenditures not because I think there's anything suspicious happening behind the scenes, but because as someone who teaches production management for animation and who has an interest in indie production specifically, I'm wondering what choices they're making to stretch their funds.

And what about sound?

While I'm not an expert in audio design, I do live with a professional voice actress/audio engineer, and she had a few thoughts I'd like to share.

At their original goal, roughly ~12500 was set aside for:

Sound Design

Music Composition

Voice Acting

Now, I can only refer to my own experiences as an indie filmmaker regarding price, but the rate I received-- from friends-- for sound design was roughly ~325 per minute, and this was a very, very good deal for what I personally needed. The audio engineer can be responsible for collecting and/or recording foley, or the sound effects you hear in film. This can be expensive and time consuming. They're also responsible for editing all the foley, music, and voice acting together in a way that feels seamless. If we were going off the rate I was given (which was very reasonable given the amount of work that needed to be done), ~27 minutes of full foley, complex sound design, and mixing would run about ~8,000. This number could fluctuate significantly depending on whether they need the sound designers to create the foley, get some ADR in, or just mix the audio, but let's assume that Lackadaisy has a pre-existing foley library and that the price falls in a lower range of ~5,000.

Music's a complete wild-card. In my experience, most composers charge per-minute, and most of the indie composers I've worked with were at a rate of ~$100 per minute of music. That'll land at a nice $2,700.

Now where my friend got particularly heated was the rate for the voice actors. As a voice actress herself, she was floored that the budget for voice was so low-- particularly because the project's pilot pulled industry voices like ProZD. Obviously, the price for voice can vary wildly based on how many lines an actor has, their experience as a voice actor, their personal terms, ect. The cast for the pilot included 11 credited actors. I can't assume their rates or whether they charge a fee to even get in the booth (my roomate charges $100 flat at the start of a session), but if my other estimates are in the right ballpark, their goal budget accounts for roughly ~500 per VA (and it's extremely unlikely that it's divided equally for obvious (and logical) reasons). Honestly, for a full episode of animation, that's... about average. But average in the voice-acting community doesn't necessarily mean good. Voice actors are notoriously underpaid, and-- as previously mentioned-- bigger names with more lines are going to be taking in more of that pay-pool.

And, of course, the Production Managers.

I'm not going to speak on this for too long, but the original budget held 8750 for the admin team. I assume admin includes their PMs, director, and leads (if they have enough specialization to need leads). Assuming it's just one PM and one director, they're pulling in ~4375 a person. For the duration of the project. There's no way that prepro, production, and post would take less than 8 months. Of everyone involved in a production, these roles are on-board from start to end, and it's simply not enough! PM's are absolutely critical to success!

Not to mention the editor!

In animation, the editor is the director's right-hand man, and is working to edit the storyboards, reels, scratch music, and the final cut. This role is also on the production from pre-to-post, and their original budget allows for.... $2,500. What? If I go extremely low on the hourly for the editor, you maybe get one part-time weeks' worth of work for several edits of a 27 minute episode. With most everything else I've talked about, I've mentioned there's a lot of wiggle room because of all the factors I simply don't know, but in no universe is $2,500 enough for this editing job. (Even at the current budget of 1,000,000, $4,000 an episode is super low.)

But, hey! They've got more money now!

Of course, all of these concerns go out the window when you consider that the team's already raised a whopping $953,000 (as of 7/31/23) with the fundraiser only up for five days... right?

Well... It certainly alleviates some of the strain, but their stretch goals were scope increases! This means that once they reach their 1,000,000 stretch goal, they're adding on four additional ~27 minute episodes. This increases the budget-per-episode to 200,000 (yay!), but that still leaves the project with about $7,400 to spend per-minute... which, in the world of animation, isn't much!

All in all, I think that the original goal of 125,000 -- if there was going to be minimal investment from the company-- was completely insufficient, and it would have been irresponsible to try to produce a 27 minute long pilot with that budget. At the same time, I imagine the PM/Admin team could reasonably expect a strong outpouring of support from the fans based on past success and low-balled the original goal. Now that they're near 1,000,000, I think- and hope - they'll be able to swing it.

If anyone has any insight into the production of the pilot (either because you worked on it or know someone who does), please feel free to add context to this post! Again, I am not trying to call out Iron Circus. I'm fascinated by indie production and have been following the successes and failures of crowdfunded animation since it started picking up, and while the goal for Lackadaisy raised some concerns for me up-front, I think they're making strategic choices based on hard data (that we the public are not privvy to). They've already done it once, so they should be able to do it again!

[drrutherford]

May, 2024.

It starts like this; his father offers him a cigar. And Gideon declines.

"Now you're too good for my old cigars?"

It's a poisoned dart. His nerves begin to thrum. "That's not-... It has nothing to do with that." He defends, following Andrew into his office. "I'm just thinking if I win this case it'll mean that I'll have Felix around a lot more so I'm trying to- I probably shouldn't..."

There's a puff of smoke from the lit Cohiba Siglo, the bitter coffee scent singes his nostrils even at a distance. Andrew exhales sardonically. "Ah, yes. A model father."

Gideon looks at him. Really looks, and sees, perhaps for the first time, what he's failed to see these last few years. The flash of insecurity-resentment in his father's chestnut eyes, the wiry hair – more salt than pepper these days – frown lines about his mouth, the papery creases around the corners of his eyes... He's getting old. Older, perhaps frailer, too. Maybe it shouldn't come as a shock. But for someone who's always been more myth than man, as immortal and impervious to ageing as some demigod in the Greek Pantheon — it's a realization that occurs to him with a start. Gideon lashes his own retort back behind his teeth, letting the patriarch's bitterness pass as if unnoticed.

"You know I've been seeing Amélie."

"The schoolteacher, you mean? The one we had over for the holidays?"

"Journalist." The surgeon corrects a little tersely. He can't help the suspicion that it's an intentional slight, innocently dressed as a slip. Andrew has information at his fingertips and all the paranoia in the world to use it; knows everything Gideon wants to do almost before he does it. He would have found every piece of dirt on Amélie that he could find, traced her genealogy back to Eve and the Serpent before letting her so much as draw breath under the crystal chandeliers of his front foyer. He knows she's a journalist.

"Pleasant young lady," Andrew acknowledges charitably, "awfully well-mannered." But Gideon knows that it's about as much a compliment as he might throw to the runt of a litter. The mob boss has little use for well-mannered in his world and esteems it about the same amount. "What is it you wish to tell me about her, son?"

For all his years'-long stubbornness as his father's black sheep, Gideon feels a tendril of trepidation run through him at the question. The familial phrasing, the luring invitation. He wets his lips. "We've been together for almost a year now and known each other far before that. I know I didn't-... I haven't advertised that part, exactly," – he hadn't denied it, either, but had kept external opinions at bay as long as possible by avoiding the label of 'girlfriend' to shelter her – "but we've gotten to know each other in all that time."

"How wonderful."

Gideon struggles to continue. "And-... Well, the point is, I can't keep lying to her."

"Then don't."

"I mean about us. The family."

Andrew Rutherford's hawk-like gaze meets him over the thick frame of his reading glasses. "I fail to see how that's relevant to your girlfriend. Otherwise known as a girl who may be here today and gone tomorrow. With all due respect, of course."

"She won't be. That's my point." The stubborn streak is back as son and father stare at each other over the latter's desk, though Gideon feels his pulse beginning to hammer in his throat. "She's important to me... Special. I want to pursue something serious with her, but I can't do that in good conscience if I'm lying to her all the while. She deserves to know what she's signing up for, by being with me."

"Signing up for what, exactly?" A droll tone enters his father's voice. "You've made it ever so clear you have no part in this family's business endeavours, I hardly see how—"

"It's not good enough. I'm still lying by omission. It still affects her, my association to the family alone is enough to affect her. Reflect on her, it wouldn't be fai—"

"And how is it fair to this family that you would spoon-feed a journalist her next big break by telling her whatever drivel it is you believe about the work that we do?"

"Drivel?" He echoes. It's followed by a disbelieving scoff. There are so many things he could say to that in reply, write an entire bloody essay on exactly the sort of drivel his father has been responsible for in countless neighbourhoods across two continents an ocean apart. The fires he's ignited, the lives he has torn apart, the brainwashing of their mutual loved ones to bear the brunt of that blame alongside him. It makes him sick to the gills to think of all the drivel his father's allowed or actively incited, but it isn't why he's here today. He's fought that battle a million times already... He's always lost.

"She isn't like that. You don't know her at all." Gideon struggles to keep his voice even, rather than accusatory. Remembering that it has been just as much his choice to keep Amélie away from his father as it is Andrew's to be dismissive of everyone's potential to be more than lying, thieving opportunists.

"Whose fault is that?"

A muscle tenses in his jaw. His gaze stays fixed to the cabinet behind his father's desk, patience beginning to fray. "All I'm trying to say is that she wouldn't. She wouldn't want to bring harm to the people that I care about. Hell, she worked herself into a tizzy just thinking she might insult Lara by her choice of dress last time we met, or worried she hadn't complimented Yvonne enough on raising Maddie so well. She loves Damon as much as everyone loves Damon, and Adri she—"

"— And you're willing to change all that. By running your mouth off so that you can sleep better at night. What good will it do her, Gideon? Answer me that."

It's a wonder that Andrew doesn't see it. But is it so surprising? A man whose personal relationships are decomposing at various rates all around him. "If she is going to be a part of my life, a part of this family, she has a right to know what she's signing up for."

"If you're thinking about jumping into another marriage—"

"I'm not," He cuts in hastily, an embarrassed flush spreading along the back of his neck. "Or well, I don't know. It's too early to thi-... But it isn't about that, it's about clearing the air and giving her full disclosure before things get that point. Not just blindsiding her. Why is that so difficult for you to understand?"

Andrew strolls over to the long, arched window and grabs the tieback holding the silk curtains off to one side. He releases it with a snap, nursing his tobacco all the while. The room falls into shadows. "And what about Lara?"

"What about her?"

The father turns back on his son, moving towards his desk again, keeping it between them. "You love her — some say to a fault." A smile cuts cruelly on his mouth. "Because you think she's so different than me. What's to spare her my fate if your journalist runs prattling to the first newsstand that she can find?"

If he were a better man, he would tell his father that Lara's fate is her own. That she's neither a prisoner nor a child anymore; blindly following in her father's footsteps. That if she cleaves to the mob, one day her fate will be sealed either way; by a court or by a criminal, and that in either case there will be violence.

He would tell his taunting father that even in such a case the responsibility would be neither his, nor Amélie's, nor even some stranger's — but her own.

... But he isn't a better man.

The house of cards shudders with that warning and the surgeons croaks out; "She won't! I know she won't." Resting his argument on a plea. He hates begging, hasn't begged anything from his father since he was a child; but Amélie, he knows, is worth his pride. "You gave Rodriguez a chance. I just wish you'd do the same for Amélie."

In mentioning Lara, Andrew seems to know he's hit a nerve. His posture relaxes, he takes another puff from the Cohiba Siglo. It's almost gleeful. "They aren't quite the same though, are they?... Félix Rodriguez brings us prestige, a foothold into politics. What does your French girl bring us, exactly? What makes her worth the risk?"

Gideon doesn't offer any response. Once again, it's clear how much his father has grossly underestimated a person if he believes that Yvonne's fiancé is the sort of lapdog to roll over for a treat. But he says nothing. It isn't his job anymore to warn Andrew Rutherford of the consequences that come with devaluing human beings.

"You're going to do it anyway." The older man observes, after a beat of silence passes between them. He pulls out the office chair and eases himself into it. He rests his cigar on its wooden holder and looks up at his son expectantly.

"Yes."

He can't tell if it's respect or contempt in his father's eyes. These days, they tend to look the same. He steps away from the desk, as if testing the bounds of his freedom. He rounds the chair, turns his back on Andrew Rutherford and makes it almost to the door when the older man calls out to him. "— Gideon."

He turns, guarded grey eyes finding inscrutable brown.

"Not everyone will understand us. Not everyone should try." The mob boss reaches for his decanter, removing the top and pouring some of the liquid into a glass with careful, precise movements. "If you lose her, remember that it was not my doing."

— End.

Mentioned: @amescastaignede, @lararutherford, @yvonne-rutherford, @amaroadriana, @damonrutherford

[jewishvitya]

I see a lot of countries believing in the two states solution. What are your feelings about that? (I'm sorry if I used the wrong terms, I'm trying to translate from my native language)

You used the right terms! But I'll be honest, a solution to the whole thing sounds like such a far away idea when we can't even seem to push for a ceasefire.

Maybe someone who wants to see two states will have solutions to these problems I have. Maybe one state has even more issues. I mentioned before that my reading progress is very slow, so while I can tell you a lot about my lived experience and about Israeli mentality, when it comes to this I'm pretty ignorant.

But you're not the first to ask, so I guess I might as well.

My personal feelings about the idea of two states, from a place of being relatively uninformed about this aspect of things.

First, if we do that, we're starting from the position of Israel being so much more powerful, and Israel will find ways to maintain and exploit that power even if it changes form. For example, the fact that Gaza and the West Bank are separated. Israel, from the very beginning and through every day of its existence, meant the suffering and deaths of Palestinians. It's always had an expansionist mentality - when accepting lands given by the British, the plan from the start was to take it and expand from there. I was shamelessly taught this in history class. And Palestinians are treated as a security threat for existing. I don't know that you can rehabilitate that into a safe neighbor to a Palestinian state.

Second, this option allows Israel the opportunity to maintain itself as an ethnostate, and I object to an ethnostate as a concept. There's a Palestinian minister in the Israeli government who talked about it and I remember a Jewish minister replying to him with "so all the Israeli Arabs will move to your Palestinian state?" like. This is not talking about people in occupied territories, but about 20% of our citizens. To maintain an ethnostate, your only tools are ethnic cleansing and genocide, or manipulating birthrates, things like that. Israel is already very preoccupied with demographics, and I don't trust this not to deteriorate and become very fascist very fast even with a Palestinian state next door.

Lastly, even cities that are considered part of Israel and not the occupied territories have been stolen from Palestinians. And there's a reason indigenous people talk about landback. If we give a Palestinian family "permission" to live free in the West Bank without our military occupation, but that family comes from Tiberias... That's not really justice, is it? Justice would mean they're able to go home, they're able to travel within the land, they're able to enjoy the freedoms that Israel denies them. I personally don't see that happening in a two states model.

And I'm just a random person online, not even Palestinian myself, I don't know that my opinion matters. So I'm not going to tell you what the solution should be, I'm sure there's a lot of writing about this by Palestinians. That's also why I block reblogs sometimes, I don't want my takes on some things to be too loud, or my personal feelings to be too centered outside the personal space of my blog.

Push for a ceasefire. That's the immediate need. People are dehydrated and starving with bombs raining down on them. And then, once we addressed that, look at what Palestinians want and what they envision when they talk about a free Palestine and push for that.

You asked for my opinion. That's my opinion. Don't put too much weight on it please.

Ceasefire is the immediate need, liberation has to be the goal, and they decide what it looks like.

[mediocre-quill-ink]

Sarcasm

pt3

It smelled like cigarettes as I closed the car door. Gavin had an older model of one of those cyberlife self driving cars. The seats' pleather were cracked in some areas, the navigation screen was dusty, and cigarette burns in some places. Not to say the car was gross, but it was clearly very used.

Without saying much gavin started the car. He turned the key, and it hummed to life, pulling out of the police stations parking lot.

I felt tense. It felt wrong being in gavins car, like when you clip out of bounds in a video game. It was strange sitting so close to him, it was strange doing any of this.

Why did he even invite me?

He could have asked any question to test how predictable I was, yet he decided to waste both of our time and take me to a bar. To waste my sanity and make me keep nice with him out of work. Fuck. I should have just told him no. I don't want to do this shit.

It was strange how silent the ride was so far. I wasn't sure if I preferred the awkward silence or his god-awful conversations. I swallowed hard realizing the corner I've backed myself into.

"So, not talkative, huh?" Gavin asked. I looked at him, chewing on my cheek. I didn't know how to respond. "Come on. What? Am I too stunning to speak?" He briefly gave me fluttering eyes and a wide shit eating grin before turning back to the rode but he was still smiling. I tried not to scoff. "Oh! So handsome, my legs turn to jelly!" I snapped back.

He looked me up and down for a moment, brows frowed, chewing on his cheek. Like he couldn't figure put how to respond. "What? To stunning to speak?" I asked before turning my attention back to the road.

We pulled up in front of the bar. It was sleek but still edgy and dingy looking like obsidian brass knuckles. I stepped out of gavins car, reading the large silvera typeface font "Smoky Cheers" hanging over the wooden doors. Despite the slightly roughed up appearing, it looked really nice. I shot gavin a suspicious look. "What?" He asked, stuffing his hand into his old warn jacket.

He pushed open the wooden doors, the smell of cigarettes and vapes immediately overwhelming my senses. Loud prog rock blasting out of speakers and random party lights swinging every way they could by the karaoke stage. It was immediately overwhelming and disorienting.

He guided me to a stool by the bar which I took, he sat next to me. He was close. Closer than comfort. "So," Gavin started, "tell me a bit about yourself." I held back a scoff. "Come on, you've been so quiet. I admit I enjoy not hearing your bitchy attitude for once but you're starting to freak me out."

"I'll tell you something about me if you tell me something about you." I replied. He sighed. "Fine." He took a moment to think. "I like comedy horror and action movies... I have a cat... I've had this jacket sense high school and... I... my favorite color is brown."

I could feel a little wheel spinning in my head. Where to start.

"Okay..." I replied. "So... let's break this down." He just raised his brows for a moment, shaking his head. I couldn't tell if he was angry or amused. "You like comedy horror?" I asked. Gavin nodded. "Well... that's one of my favorite genres too." I added. I was surprised we had some middle ground. "Really?" Gavin replied. "Yeah. It can be really fun. Killer Klowns, beetlejuice, Willy's wonderland, deathgasm, the babysitter as unpopular as that last one is they're some of my favorites. They don't have to be good they're just... fun. It's nice." I said. I felt a sense of embarrassment wash over me. Aside from beetlejuice and killer klowns, nobody likes those other movies. God that Jack ass is gonna laugh.

"Well, you've got some weird ones, but yeah. I agree. Nonsensical but fun is about right." He stated. I nodded, chewing on my cheek. "You have a cat?" I asked. At that he nodded, if it wasn't so dark I would have thought he was a little embarrassed. "Yeah he... his name is..." he stopped, rubbing his cheek and pulling the skin down, making his eye bag. "Mr peanut..." he whispered.

I tried to hold back a laugh, but it didn't work. I could feel myself shaking and my voice vibrating against my fingers, trying to keep my mouth shut. "Oh shut up!" Gavin snapped, rolling his head back over his hunched shoulders, arms crossed. "I'm sorry, it's just," I was slowly pushing back the laughter. "That's adorable! I love that! Mr peanut? Oh my god!" Gavin sighed, but he looked a little relieved. Just a little. "Hang on, can I see a picture?" I asked, eagerly.

He hesitated for a moment before pulling out his phone. After a minute of muttering to himself he showed me a picture. It was a black cat with orange splotches all over. Almost as if it got globs of paint splashed on it. The picture was of the cat perched on his shoulder, though gavins face was mostly out of frame it looked like he was cringing from pain. I couldn't help but aw and squeel at the picture. "Did his claws get you?" I asked. "Yeah the dumb bastard jumped on me fresh out of a nap and dug his claws right into me." As he said it he gestured claw marks down his sholder and back. "Yoch" I replied. "Is your cat always that dumb?"

"Oh yeah." He said, after swping through a few more pictures, none of which I could see. Then he put the phone back in his pocket. "Why did you name him Mr peanut?" I asked. "I... I found him as a kitten in a dumpster. He was sleeping on top of a mostly empty bag of peanuts. He smelled like 'em too. So I took him home and called him Mr peanut."

I smiled. "I love that that's so cute." Then that weird feeling came again. This feels wrong. Behing friendly with Gavin? Him being friendly with me? It didn't feel right...

"So..." I said,"You've had that jacket sense high school?" I needed something to make fun of him for. It was weird being so kind to him.

"Yeah. I... it's a long story that I don't want to talk about, but it's kind of helped me through a lot. A lot of... fear and pain. That's stupid, though. I'm not a weak ass baby any more it's just..." he didn't finish the sentence.

I wanted to say something but decided against it. Shit. What the hell do I do now. "Damn." Was all I could say. I felt so stupid.

There was a moment of silence that felt suffocating. I just wanted to get out. "... so. No offense but why did you even bring me here?" I finally asked.

He just looked at me for a moment. His face was hard to read but... it was some form of upset. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, why any of this? Taking me to some bar, hangout? Somethings wrong here." I stated firmly. I began to feel dizzy with confusion. None of this was normal.

He didn't respond, he just looked at me with his bitter look.

"I know Jeffrey said play nice but that dosnt mean we had to be friends..." I stated quietly, folding my arms.

Gavin sucked in a deep breath and clenched his jaw. "I'm not a fucking idiot, y/n." He replied. "Then why? Cause I know damn well if you had the opportunity you'd get me fired on the spot. Next thing I know I'm here with you. Dosnt make sense." I demanded. I could feel myself reaching the point of no return but I wanted to keep talking. I was mad now.

"God, can you just keep your mouth shut for one damn second?" Gavin snapped, looking back at me. I raised my eyebrows, dropping my jaw slightly "can you make sense for one goddamn day?"

He huffed, shaking his head slightly. He pinched the bridge of his nose and took deep breaths. For fucking once taking a moment to not explode. It was weird to see. Gavin actually tries to control himself. The longer I stared, the more he looked... tolerable. Kind of... nice?

He let out a final puff of anger before saying, "The moon is beautiful, isn't it?"

I blinked a few times. "Reed, what the fuck are you talking about?" Did he really think he could just change the subject? No. "See? You don't make any sense. You're a complete..." I sucked in a deep breath. "I'm going home. I don't know what I expected."

As I walked away I heard Gavin shifting behind me. "Fine, walk away like you always do." He stated.

I stopped. And slowly turned back around to look at him. He was sipping on a freshly opened beer. "Say that again." I demanded. He continued to stare in front of him as he spoke. "Walk away like you always do. It's the only thing you know how to do." At that moment I saw red.

I quickly slammed money on the bar counter and grabbed Gavin by his jacket collar. "What the fuck do you think your doing?" He shouted. I didn't reply. I had no clue why I was doing it. At that moment, I just had to do something. I quickly dragged him across the bar, I could feel him resisting, dragging the rubber part of his shoes against the floor, but I barely noticed. Eventually, I got to the door, and I kicked it open behind me, dragging him outside with me.

"What the fuck is your problem?" He shouted. "All I wanted was to fuck with you and enjoy a drink. You had to turn this bull shit into another fight! Do you know how obnoxious you are, dipshit?"

I didn't reply. I couldn't even muster words. Why was i so angry.

"Say something!" He demanded. He got close. Very close. I stayed still. Why did I even do this? I could have just walked away.

"Hey, I'm talking to you ass whipe. Say something!" He pushed the side of my head with his fingers shaped like a gun.

"I don't know." I finally stated. I could feel someone crushing. I wasn't sure what but it was angering and defeating. "You don't know? You don't know what?" He barked. I had to resist shoving him with how close he got. I had to remind myself he just wanted a reaction.

"I just... I don't know." Was all I could say. I didn't know. I didn't know why any of this. The crushing feeling began to cave in. All I do is just run away. Even right now. Right now I just wanted to walk away and get this over with. How do I always prove him right.

He just stared at me, jaw clenched, fists tightly at his sides. He looked like he wanted to speak but just couldn't.

There was a long moment of silence. It was suffocating. The prying eyes of the patrons from the bar windows did help make things more comfortable. Gavin scoffed, then said, "Just leave." I glanced back up at him. His eyes were full of fire. I just shook my head. I'm not leaving first. Not this time. I mumbled, "I can't do that..." At that, he quirked his head. "Oh? Why not?" I could feel my breath growing heavy, "I just... I can't."

He chewed on his cheek. "You're a real peice of fucking work you know that." I closed my eyes, I sucked in a deep breath. The same feeling of anger and sadness continued to spread through my body. I wanted to keep yelling at him, but I just wanted to go home more. This was a waste of time.

"Are you done?" I asked. His nostrils Flaired, but he didn't continue. "I... I'm sorry..." Confusion creeped up my neck. What was I doing? "For dragging out of there and making a scene. I... I was just..." I paused, anger rising a little "you were pissing me off."

He stared at me.

"Look. I just want to leave. This was a waste of my time." I pulled out my phone, ordering a cyberlife taxi. He shook his head.

Gavin sighs, folding his arms "god your such a drama queen!"

"Me? Oh, I'm the drama queen?" I snapped. "You are the one that always starts shit! You're the one who can't mind his goddamn buisness, walks up to them, and harasses them! You're the one who makes a God damn riot out of every little thing! I'm the drama queen?"

"You just proved my point."

I clenched my jaw, staring into his eyes. They burned back at me as if he's waiting for me to pounce. "Are you gonna slap me again?" He hissed. "Are you asking for it?"

He stayed silent, just slowly creeping closer to my face, eyes still burning into mine. I suck in a deep breath, he grabs my coat. I get ready to punch him again, prepared for him to lift me up buy the collar, but instead... he just starts... smoothing it out?

I feel all the anger in my face shift, confusion taking hold of me. His expression softens ever so slightly and says "your funny when you're angry." My lip raises in annoyance, I feel my face get hot. He just smiles. "There it is."

I push him away, "shut the fuck up, Reed." He just laughs, backing away from me, stuffing his hands into his pockets. "Who do you think you are?" I demanded. God, I hope this taxi gets here quick. "I don't have to think im anybody to say what I think." He chuckled, pacing in a circle. I just watched him, slowly pacing a circle around me like a shark. His eyes were watching his feet.

"Well, you also don't have to think you're anybody to keep your mouth shut." I retorted, I was tapping my foot against the pavement, watching the street, preying that damn taxi would show up. "What? Did being called cute strike a nerve?" He teased, I could hear his footsteps continue to circle around me, but i tried to ignore it. "When it's from you, everything does..." I mumbled.

His head tilted to the side slightly. "Oh? So who would you like to hear it from? You've got a special someone?" He asked. I rolled my eyes, swallowing hard. Goddamn it, cyberlife, why is my taxi taking so long?

"Judging by the silence, I'm gonna guess that's a no." He chuckled under his breath. I felt my face get hot again, I wanted to punch him in the throat. "Of corse I do." I replied through clinched teeth. I was lying. God, was I lying. I couldn't remember the last time I dated someone. I think the last time I did I in elementary school. And I don't think that counts.

"Really? Do you know?" I nodded stiffly,"yep." I stated flatly. "Who is it?" He asked. I snapped my attention back towards him, "Why? Jealous?" His pace slowed, answering. "Dear God, no." Theres a moment of silence, and he eventually comes to a stop. "So who is it?"

I feel my head spin. What was I supposed to answer? I don't come up with fake names! I need to answer quick before he gets suspicious. "Connor." I wanted to punch myself in the skull. Connor? Why the hell did I say connor?

He froze, staring at me for to long before saying "...connor?" I clenched my jaw, nodding awkwardly. "You- you're really dating the plastic shit?" I nodded again. "That's not even a real person! You may as well be dating a Ken doll!" I didn't respond. "Y/n, you cant be serious!" He began to laugh. "Holy shit! You really are a lonely bastard! You're dating plastic!" I scoffed.

I felt so mad. I might not be actually dating him, but he's still my friend! I hate when he talks about androids like this. "Shut the fuck up." I snapped. "Why? It's not like his feelings are gonna get hurt!" He objected, taking a step twords me "he can't feel anything!"

"I just think your jealous."

"Jealous? Why would I be jealous of him?"

"Because it's probably not the first time you've gotten upstaged by plastic."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?"

"With how much you act like you own every room you walk into it wouldn't surprise me if you were compensating for something."

His nostrils flaired. "Say that again, I dare you!"

I paused, clenching my fist. "Compensating."

He tilted his head slightly, baring his teeth a little. "Bull shit."

I hear a car pull over just a few steps away. "Prove it." I spit.

At that he pauses, his arched brows raising a litte. "What the fuck did you just say?" I blush, taking a step back. When I argue with him I don't think, I just say the first thing that comes to mind. I did not mean to tell him to... dear God. I feel my face heat up. How do I even recover from this? "Just forget it." I quickly turn away, almost running towards the car in pure embarrassment. "God..." I whispered to myself. "I'm not going to forget that what the fu-"

I slammed the car door shut, and the car started to drive. Once it pulled out of the parking lot, I covered my face with my hands and screamed. I wanted to punch something. What did I just do? I told him to whip his dick out, and now I have to break the news to connor that we were dating? Jesus christ.

Pt2 pt4

Thank you @caffeinedarling for motivating me to finish this today and @princessthatcantfuckingsleep because i haven't forgotten about you

[confused-n-queer]

So a video about Beastars gave me feelings

I just came back to this video about a year after having first watched it simply because it was in my recommended feed and I needed something to listen to and well I have left with a new litmus test for my internal growth. I feel how much my connection to the story being woven my both the creator of the video and the author of Beastars has changed in only one year. I have struggled a lot with my own sexuality gender and overall sense of self throughout my life and am only now feeling the chapter on my adolescence come to a close. When I first saw this video and read the manga I identified very strongly with Haru. Her perceived weakness as a rabbit mirrored my own having grown up as a short,unusually skinny girl with undressed health issues. I was often mad and unable to express it since my anger was seen as cute, nonthreatening, and pathetic. Any attempts at my beliefs or anger being taken seriously and being seen as an equal to my peers was met with jokes and threats. Haru's tough abrasive nature towards people she perceives as a potential threat is a defense mechanism I shared with her. I like many girls has been subjected to both what I would call aggressive sexualization, sexulization through direct comments about our clothing, bodies and behaviors as well as leering, cat-calling and all the other various degrees of sexual assault I don't wish to discuss and what I would call passive sexuialization which is the everyday messaging we received from family peers and media, aka everything from your mom telling you to put on a shirt and cover up long before you had breasts to the comments made by aunts about how "slutty" a girl walking down the street looked. My response to this was repressing my desires burring my longing to be a confident sexual being. To bury my desire to wear the short shorts and skirts and bra-less styles of the early 00's I saw modeled on my dolls and a few older girls. I wanted to be like Haru, or at least posses the sexual freedom and confidence people believe she has. Instead I felt I had to hide my burgeoning sexuality behind a screen. Instead of healthy experimentation with my peers I was introduced to sex through men far older than me online because I knew romance,dating and sex was "wrong" and "not something a girl my age thought about". So I hid full of shame so strong it nearly led me to end my own life. The craziest part, I wasn't raised in an exceptionally conservative home. My family was pretty normal, hell I was given books about puberty and was told, once, after years of pestering (something I never did as I was, in retrospect and due to trauma, a disturbingly obedient child something I'll touch on later) what sex was and was sort of permitted to learn about sex from a scientific perspective. It wasn't until my freshman year of collage that I began to unlearn all of my shame and allow myself to be and accept myself as a sexual being, you know the thing I should've been allowed to do and that most people do while going through puberty. I joined a production of RHPS and drove over an hour to the main campus and back every week to rehearse for a show where being sexual was a given, and where the words that had been embedded into my chest were shouted without malice. It was a place where "slut" and "queer" weren't dirty they just were. I had my first kiss a few months before my 19th birthday with a girl who was so kind to me and who treated me with such sincere affection and respect that I as I write this am left sobbing thinking of all she did for me. I wish I could reach out to thank her without it being weird or potentially harmful since we haven't talked since the pandemic forced a weird mutual ghosting breakup a few months into our relationship and I don't know her current situation.

I was also always "playing nurse" (of both the standard and psych-ward variety) for friends,family and strangers due to trauma and my ability to do so like Haru but in the words of John Mulany "We don't have time to unpack all of that." so I'll leave it at that.

This time around I related to Legoshi so much it hurt. My struggles in the past year or so have been much more focused on my liberation as an adult, to be myself, to learn who I am, to move freely and to demand respect for myself and others. Which of course means the issues around my gender and sexuality (but mainly my gender) came back with a vengeance so the queerness of Legoshi et all hit very hard. The past year has been an odd meeting of my old self destructive habits meeting new healthier ones.

On the bad side I had al breakdown, multiple depressive episodes, stressed myself to the point of worsening a tic disorder i didn't know i had, neglected my health, fed into my eating disorders as well as my internalized ableism, homophobia and transphobia.

On the good side I attended concerts alone and with friends, decorated my room for the first time, bought sex toys, went on dates, dressed how I wanted to, dyed and shaved my hair without asking for permission (which was extra important since my hair was the one feature I was never allowed to mess with), and worked hard to fight my body issues and eating disorders which I'm happy to say as of right now I looked into the mirror for the first time in 10 years and liked my reflection despite my body dysmorphia. All things my therapist had to give me permission to do because, like Legoshi and all the other canines in the series I was made, through my natural disposition and a dash of abuse, to be obedient to my own detriment. I'm not joking when I say the whole " a canine told to wait will wait until it dies" section is accompanying me to therapy this week and is joining my "therapeutic media metaphors I use to describe my traumas,feelings and behaviors to other people" folder.

So...yeah...people change and this video was and will probably remain a very important part of my life.

Edit: Adding onto this but also like coming back to this video as someone who's currently educating themselves on queerness after years of feeling like "ah yes I understand myself and my own sexuality and gender. This is fascinating anyways. Perhaps I'll read this manga as a cathartic work to analyze but not really dig into because I don't need to do that right now/that's not the purpose it serves right now. It serves the purpose of allowing myself to confront other stuff and like a thing despite it's stigma as weird furry shit because people can't understand the merits of using non human characters to explore human topis including sex without getting all weird"

[fareehaandspaniards]

*shoves Katy out of the way and cringes at the sound of glass breaking + cats yowling*

AHEM. (Sorry Katy <3) My turn!

Fareeha, what are your headcanons on Eileen and Bloody Crow so far?! Have you thought about them a bit? Or are you still figuring them out? 🐦‍⬛🐦‍⬛

For now I have something about them!

For this ask, I combined my headcanons with my spouse's thoughts, because he's Eileen fan! I've had Eileen's image in my head since the first playthrough, and even though it has undergone many changes, her overall vibe remained the same. Crow of Cainhurst is harder to deal with, as you can create him for yourself almost from scratch! They actually both are very expressive characters! But while Eileen has her own voice, a quest line, and a description of her clothes that tells at least some canonical story, the Bloody Crow of Cainhurst - like Damian and other Old Hunters - creates a lasting impression with his equipment, fighting style and appearance!

(I should have put them next to each other, but Tumblr decided that Eileen's pic is too long, so it cuts her D:)

I should probably start from afar, because I usually get things mixed up, and here I have two characters to describe at once!

Eileen's background. She's a foreigner, but we don't know exactly how her covenant formed, how she came to all this. I think she arrived in Yharnam before the whole blood mess. And I really like the headcanon that Eileen was in love with one of the pre-hunters - the one who was protecting Yharnam and nearest villages from monsters and other people. They eventually became an established couple. And once when madness struck her love, Eileen was the one who had to behead her once-lover. And so was the birth of the covenant.

Eileen reminded me of another character from my all-time favorite game, and she's a dragoon knight whose lover has lost his memory. Aaaaand… her phrase from the game I might give Eileen in this case:

«What irony. To find the man about whom I have dreamt endlessly... only to discover that he cannot even remember who I am!»

Also about origins, if we relate Eileen to modern geography, I'd say her homeland could be Mexico? Not for any deep reasons, I just really like the Santa Muerte aesthetic, and I feel that vibe in Eileen (I'll also mention Scandinavia and Tibet later on, so it's hard to attribute her ONLY to Mexico)

Eileen is quite a tough, cold-hearted person. Actually, to stand under her gaze is a very difficult task, I think even Henryk couldn't do it! (You know, that look of an angry mother, when she doesn't need to explain her child that she is mad, they have already realized that! xd) I think, besides hunting, she also has a lot of applied talents, such as sewing, drawing, modeling, but because of the Hunt she almost forgot all of them.

Eileen really did understand crows somehow! It was HER kind of bird, to which she had dedicated her appearance and to which she had counted herself. In fact, in her homeland she was called as something of a witch because of it, though Eileen herself was hardly related to magical matters! One day she told Crow about it, she wanted to make it sound like a joke, but he took it very seriously and sternly said, "You do look like a witch!" <3

You know the legend of Huginn and Muninn? I think she has her own pair of crows that bring her news and keep an eye on everyone.

We don't know all the Great Ones, but based on the image of Mergo's Wet Nurse, with wings and stuff - could there be any bird-like GO? I think Eileen, just by being herself, has attracted Great One's patronage or became an unspoken servant of this Great One? She's a warm "mom", but she's also connected to something so ancient.

I read some time ago that Eileen and her "foreign tradition" funeral is a reference to the Tibetan rite of heavenly burial!!!! It impressed me madly at the time, it's amazing to find such a fact after all! Thanks you, @heraldofcrow , for that! And it's already "canon" to me that this was the essence of the funeral she was conducting? Many Yharnamites found them heretical as they were in foreign traditions, but with all the despair heaped upon the city and Eileen's faith in what she was doing - I think she was called upon to do such things by people… At the very least to ensure that the soul of the deceased would have a chance at a new life and not be stuck in the clutches of the Great Ones and the eternal cycle of the Nightmare….

Eileen gives me some Boss vibes from Metal Gear, while Crow gives me some Sergei Razumovsky vibes from Bubble Comics. (TBH Sergei is the mental child of Micolash, Crow and Laurence…. I used to really like him, as well as the whole comic. But it changed the course of the storyline a bit, so I don't read it anymore)

Boss in the left, Sergei in the right (One was destined to battle her best apprentice, almost son, and die tragically(on a field full of white flowers, yeahm hello, Gehrman, take a seat), and the other one has inner crow-like crazy personality)

When Eileen became a hunter of hunters, she picked up the boy after finding him in the woods, half dead with many scars. We don't actually know how old Crow really is, some headcanon that he's a grown up man, but in my vision he's a young man of about 20, about the same age as Edgar (again, according to my headcanons! You'll never tell exactly what age is this accountant-looking man xdd)

Judging by the estimated time of the massacre, Crow was just a kid at the time. I think he was about ten years old when all this happened? Oh, ten years old is a terrible age for moral trauma. Child is too old to forget everything because of shock, and too young to find the strength to recognize and process that trauma without outside help, without creating more wounds in himself… What did he experience? What he saw? I don't even want to imagine.

But, as it sometimes happens, we expect from a "traumatized" person vulnerability, need for protection, delicate soul and sensitivity. But it happens that the consciousness gives absolutely opposite behavior, hiding all sensitivity deep and far away. So young Crow was not the best child to raise! He came to Eileen rough, heartless, with a slight sadistic tendency. I think because of him and his behavior, Eileen went through many difficult hours… But here you either refuse to let someone else's problems into your heart and miss the opportunity to help, or you live someone else's suffering as your own, and Eileen, of course, in Crow's case, chose the second option. It's a very hard thing to do. But such kindness is always reciprocated in one way or another, and it can also spark the strongest bond!

Eileen raised him, keeping him strict but spoiling him occasionally (I think she always dreamed of having a family, you know, with two people loving each other and kids? But fate deprived her of such an opportunity - she wouldn't be able to love again… But having lost it, Eileen would have gained a "son"). She couldn't not being strict and even sometimes cruel (NO physical punishments or anything else! Hard trainings - yes, tough tasks - yeah) - otherwise Crow would never have taken her seriously. Eileen was great at separating her images of "mother" and "mentor" into two different parts. "Mother" was always understanding and comforting, but "mentor" demanded that she do her bidding and kept a stern eye on her protégé's progress.

As a young boy, he was very sensitive to being laughed at. And as it happens, he did funny things quite often, whether it was awkwardness, attention-seeking, or just plain luck in life. Eileen found him funny but didn't know it hurt him. Crow was offended. But once he saw her sad, watched her stay up at night, found out HOW MUCH heaviness she had on her mind and experienced the most genuine understanding, he realized WANTED to be funny to her? That giving your loved one a reason to laugh is a way to take his mind off his problems. That's how he probably got over his exorbitant ego for the first time. And that's how people grow up! :^)

Crow grew into a skillful and very strong young man. "The student surpassed his teacher" was their situation. Crow became a better man and took from his mentor all that she could give him. Aaaaand... He made his own choice in life, I believe. He stepped out from under his mentor's wing, taking his course back to Cainhurst. And, taking to my headcanons the research of @heraldofcrow, I willingly believe he chose the "heretical path" of not taking souls to heaven as he should, but coming to his Queen and bringing those souls to her feet.

I don't think there was any drama between them when Crow committed the betrayal. There was no breakup, no words, why would they need them? He just chose his path. There's no room for her judgment, they just became strangers. They went their separate ways, and that's a conscious choice Crow made. Did it hurt Eileen? Madly, I think. But her emotions can almost never get the better of her, which is why she coldly refers to Crow as "my prey." She doesn't allow herself to take offense. Except in her failure quest line, when she's distraught and attacks a player. I think it's naturally all about Crow there. It's just that in the "failed" quest line she has no alternate successor to her covenant as a player, and thus has no hope at all. Only despair and bitter betrayal by the closest person to her.

Does it hurt Crow? I don't know. I think he respects Eileen, I think he values her and knows that he will never meet a better and more honest warrior. Maybe he's sorry he had to do it. But no more than that. Is he heartless? Not really. What's inside him? I think he wants to get back what he lost a long time ago. Unfortunately, it's human nature. Even if we feel very good in a new home, we will agonize and think about the old one we were deprived of, that old home will always be "more valuable" in our imagination….

Small headcanons and relationships!

Damian + Eileen. (of course I started with Damian I am sorry lol... My fav will be everywhere) The two met when Eileen first arrived in Yharnam. Their little unspoken friendship began over a glass of Eileen's tincture. Almost no one knew of this acquaintance, but somehow they were comfortable in each other's company. Perhaps because they were both kind-hearted adults for everyone else and had a warm personality and compassion for others.

Damian was visiting Micolash's mummy, constantly lighting candles in the hall where he is. But on one of his visits, he was able to open the empty building of the School of Mensis. He found Edgar's corpse there. He called Eileen because he wanted to give him a proper burial. Together they performed the ceremony in the proper manner. They couldn't know it, but Edgar's soul and mind, trapped in a nightmare, felt better. And when the hunter killed him finally - his soul was free and cleansed, thanks to this ritual.

Eileen + Gascoigne + Henryk + Viola. A real family friendship! Gascoigne is also a foreigner, as is Eileen, and Henryk isn't really from around here… I think Eileen was the best friend of the family, and Gascoigne's little daughters adored her! It's a common headcanon, and I like it a lot :^) They were all very connected… (I think Crow have been a frequent visitor to their house with Eileen. And Eileen would tell stories about him at the table and Crow would resent xd)

Crow + Annalise. OooOooOoooh, I'm chuffed, to tell you the truth xddd But! I think Crow could have been very much in love with Annalise as a boy, carrying that feeling for an immortal woman through the years. Only - he would still be a "boy" to her, and he would have to prove that he had indeed grown up. And, thanks to Eileen's influence, he would succeed!

Crow + Maria. In my version, they're quite different ages, but I think there's definitely a family connection between them. At least as a young boy he would have seen Maria within the castle walls. I think they would have grimaced, showing each other tongues because they're both kids at heart xd And for a while they could both learn the Blade skill, where Crow would be enamored with blood magic and Maria would be the opposite. (I really need to make a table of character ages by time of events, because otherwise I get confused, and I have different ages for Maria in different headcanons! xd)

Crow + Alfred. Alfred would probably look like a nasty little bug to Crow, wouldn't he? The kind that's annoying just by the sight of it. (I like bugs actually, all I want to say is that Crow despises Alfred) He'd obviously have heard of a follower of Martyr Logarius who zealously seeks revenge for his teacher? (I'm surprised there is no quest line in the game where these two meet and try to kill each other) And Crow couldn't even imagine this man violently cut his Queen open one day... (thanks, Hunter! xd).

Crow + Arianna. Oh, I think he would despise her as well. Not because of her kind of job, but because she, an heiress of noble blood, an aristocrat, lives under the wing of the Yharnamites who exterminated her people. I think he would have tried to kill her! But Arianna is not so simple. He simply wouldn't have succeeded. You know, that spectacular scene in the movie where the killer comes for his victim and she welcomes him with open arms, completely naked and defenseless, and he gets lost, because he's still just a young boy, not a man… If there were no such scenes, I'm sorry, but that's how I see it xd

Little Headcanons:

Crow has always wanted to wear long, luxurious curls, and Eileen was always cutting his hair, all through his youth, to make him look better (I wanted to first justify that long hair in combat is inconvenient, but it hasn't hindered anyone in Fromsoftware games yet, so okay xd)

Crow is ENTP, you can't convince me otherwise lol…. (maybe you can)

He's also great with kids, I think because kids can sense strong people and are often drawn to them, and he's exactly like that, independent and cool, so Gascoigne's daughters loved him! (He also doesn't mind playing with dolls, just in secret.)

Crow's birth name is Astolf.

I think Annalise knows Crow exists, when Good Hunter comes to the castle. But she doesn't want us to know it.

Crow and Eileen have come a long way together - growing up, accepting their own flaws, that deep bond between them where two can live like a real family while being completely unrelated. But Crow still belongs to Cainhurst and to his Queen, and so his and Eileen's paths have diverged.

Hope you enjoy reading all of those!

[collegeboysam]

personally I love your fic because it doesn’t fall into cliche, I love that your Lucerys is jealous it feeds me. The list of suitors for Luke is a little tired and a bit of a Twitter meme so not telling you what to do but I’d hate for your fic to fall into a few loud voices that push for the same tropes over and over.

Thank you soo much loving the story and letting me know! 🥰🥰 It really means a lot and keeps me excited to continue updating it!

I personally don't mind cliches, as I think if something is good then it's worth repeating many times, in many ways. I like about 5 thropes and it's all I consume on repeat across all my interests hahahaha so I'm a cliche enjoyer for sure, can't turn on my people 😌. But I appreciate the compliment and thank you dearly for it, since I know you mean it in possitive way 💕💕💕

The rest of the reply got super long so I'll throw it under a "read more" to not clog the timeline:

As you saw, Luke is quite jealous too and there will be more of it, so hopefully you'll continue to enjoy that side of him 😏. He's just so much better at hiding it (so far), he's way more patient than Aemond, but he also has his limits, since he's never had to deal with Aemond showing interest in anyone. Aemond is not paticullarly interested in courting and wooing. As a man of those times, he does not need to, what he wants is power and strenght, not a wife. (Besides, we know he's obsessed with Lucerys, that's where most of his sexual desires stem from, as almost all of the women he has slept with looked like Luke in one way or another.) He would have only gotten a wife if it had served him to obtain something he wanted, but being part of the small council put him in a way better position. Marrying a woman won't give him a state nor a castle, so there is no need to do it. For Aemond, in this storyline, a wife would have only been a bother before the main plot started.

But Alicent is obviosly quite interested in the matter lol and you can be sure she will be pushing for it lmao she's Hand of the Queen, too, which makes it easier to chat ladies into approaching him (she knows how her son is, she's aware Aemond won't go out of his way to start any pleasantries.) Aemond might do certain things to entertain his mother's enthusiasm on the matter, even if he means nothing of it, but Lucerys doesn't know that :)))))) and sooooo many high borns are coming to King's Landing...and perhaps instructed to make the most of the ocassion by the head of their houses. Yes, the Queen's son is the one to officially get bethroted and the one with the Velaryon seat and affluence, but there are other Targaryen who are still single (Aemond, Daeron, Joff) who would serve as much of an ideal union. Having a dragonrider in the family is no joke, it's a connection to the Throne, it means eventual children in their bloodline who could potentially have dragons one day. Targaryen rarely marry out of the family for that reason, is a great chance to try to get tied to one of them.

Many are coming to King's Landing for Lucerys, but you know how Westeros is. Other interests are afoot and Luke is not gonna fucking like it hahahaha

I gotta tell you tho the second part of the message reads as being judged on America's Next Top Model or Drag Race and it gave me a good laugh (in a good way). Tyra Banks pulled my photo at the end but I gotta watch it next week for the "who wants to wed and bed Luke for personal gain" challenge 😌.

The list a little longer than the two characters I answered for, since the anon wanted to know for Dalton and Cregan particullarly, I only named those two. Cregan won't persue Luke and Dalton will, so that's as far as I went into it. Oh, and a Martell character! But I guess it's not too hard to figure out who it could be by the timeline the story is set into. Didn't add anyone else to the answer since many are originally minor characters in asoaif (but will be relevant in the fic) since I guessed it's not that interesting to know that Amaury Peake, Gwayne Hightower or Ser Erwin Lannister, a knight, will be appearing and having important roles. Can't imagine they got many fans who will get hype to read about them in a Lucemond fic hahahaha but hopefully once I post scenes where these and other "less known" characters appear and interact with the main characters, it will gain people's interest all the same.

I don't really know which characters are more common to ship on twitter since I'm not on asoiaf/hotd twitter, but this is a bit of a relief for Dalton. I was actually worried people would get mad/dislike the detail of adding him to the pool of characters who would use Luke's situation for their advantage, since...well, Dalton is an A class piece of shit. And interesting one for sure, worth exploring! But still an asshole. We still don't have him in the show so there is no way to do an mix of book!Dalton with whatever they go with for show!Dalton. I only have book version to go with and we know he's suuuch a fucking dick. Interesting and quite the character, but a psycho dickhead all the same. I was kinda nervous people would be uhh bothered, maybe? that some of the suitors are less than stellar. Dalton is a rapist, he has like 22 saltwives he has kidnapped after killing their families, he's obviosly not a lovely match. I know the fandom adores Luke and was sweating a little, worrying people would not like me putting Dalton in his way. If Dalton and Lucerys together are more popular on twiter (which I didn't know omg good for the twitter enjoyers, toxic yaoi lives long and prosper) then it's a relief, since I now think people won't be bothered by Deepsea Dipshit wanting to add Luke to his harem (which lmao Lucerys himself is not gonna he pleased nor flattered about, you saw how he is.)

Don't worry about people maybe influencing the story? If that's what you mean. The main draft is already written from start to end, I go over it and add scenes and make already written parts longer before posting new chapters, but it's already been planned from start to end. So, even if I wanted to, I really can't add things or characters people may like to see, since it wouldn't fit with the main plot nor the ending I have planned. If it turns out that details/characters people hoped to see do happen to be in the story then it's a win-win! But apart from coincidence, I really can't add much to aplease everyone.

Hopefully if people have nice ideas they would like to see, I can with (their permission) add them to future Lucemond fics! But the fate of "You May Bury My Body" has been decided for a while hahaha and hopefully people enjoy the ride 😌

Once again, thank you so much for the ask! As you can see, i enjoy discussing it with readers, sorry I got so carried away replying lmao look at this bible of an answer. And I hope you enjoy the upcoming parts!

Once the entire list of suitors has appeared and interacted in future chapters, I hope you come back and let me know if I passed the vibe check and if it's no longer tired 😜 I really don't wanna be Tiffany being yelled by Tyra that you were rooting for me, everyone was rooting for me, how dare I!

[effervescentdragon]

Hi, I hope this isn't too random, but you seem like a good person to ask for fic recs. Ignore this if it's too much of a bother, but if not what are your favorite Seb and or Charles-centric fics? Hope you're having a good day :D

Hello dearest anon! Thank you so much for asking me this and giving me a way to decompress after my exams, and also, thank you for trusting in my taste about my favorite vroom vroom boys <3 I will put the recs under the cut, because it's going to get long. Many (if not all) of these are slash fics, and most of them will probably be Sebchal (because I am trash about them), but I'll include pairings and some details, but please mind the tags and warnings in fics :) also these are the ones I remembered off the top of my head rn after 2 exams (read: fics that live in my head rent free all the time)

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sebchal/cheb fic recs first!

an evolutionary theory of the soul by Anney

sebchal soulmates au. my absolute favorite, one of my ultimate comfort reads, the most perfect thing i've read and one of the first ones i've ever read. i re-read it often, and it also contains links to the moments described in the fic, so i use it for research (and comfort) on top of it all <3

Down in the Depths We Make Our Home by my dearest @antimonyandthyme

a pacific rim au that made me almost miss roc22 race because i was so invested in it, i couldnt even stop reading it. pacific rim is one of my all time favorite movies, and this is just. so, so bloody beautiful. athy is a master wordsmith, and this fic is. i don't know how to describe it. transcendental. ephemereal. everything. <3

here comes the sun by the lovely @wdcseb

aka the fic ive read probably top 3 most times out of them all. sometimes i go and just read that japan part and melt and die all over. seb comes back as ferrari's team principal after retiring. charles still drives. idek where to start with how wonderful this fic is. i can quote half of it by now. <3

Everything I do, I'm gonna think of you by @misonikomi

beautiful, beautiful, beautiful. seb still races, but charles is a disillusioned model. its such a lovely story of acceptance and of two different worlds crashing, but not really. it has some of my favorite descriptions, and seb's character is wonderfully done throughout. also, there is a sequel from charles' pov, which is equally lovely. i reread it a lot.

With you I'm in real danger by wonderful @jean----ralphio

seb sells antique books in Monaco. charles is a pornstar. i am IN LOVE with this. the way their rl personalities and issues apply to how they are in this au is magnificently written and just all around amazing. also, very hot :)

postcards from places that miss you by @streetlightsky

i screamed about this fic so much, like so so much. the postcards have one of the best confrontation scenes ever. the showing and not telling really comes through here, and it just. it makes me feel happy whenever i read it.

all of these authors have other fics that you should definitely check out, but these are my favorites by each of them! all of these are also completed bcs I rarely bother with unfinished work, but there is a wip i follow religiously: To be wild, to be free by anonymous author (if you by any chance happen to read this, i adore your fic <3!), where in a twist of fate or magic or whatever, Charles wakes up and Seb is young, and only starting his F1 career as a rbr driver :) and nobody remembers older Seb except Charles. i've re-read what's published like. 5 times so far or sth, i love it so much.

for seb-focused fics, the first, ultimate, and only fic that comes to mind is dearest @kritischetheologie 's Everybody Wants To Rule The World, which is a NicoR/Seb fic and has some of the absolute best characterisation of Seb i've ever seen. it made me so feral, i couldnt write anything for a week because it took over my brain and every time i thought of anything else, i just couldn't. i adore it <3

i will also self-promote here, because my first foray into f1 rpf was a seb-focused fic Red Gods of Old, which is a 2nd person pov magical realism diary entry that focuses on seb in ferrari :)

honorary mention to my ultimate comfort sewis fic I've Got You by @loveyouhomex which made me cry with how perfect it is, and i've only read it twice, because it devastates me in the best way out there. it spans their whole acquaintance in f1, and its so, so beautiful.

there is another wip i follow, which really explores sebs character in a fascinating way, and the self deprecation we've all witnessed, transformed through the superpower au. it's a simi fic by @creampuffjiggle called Six Feet From Ice and i am entranced by it! tho i did binge read it just as the last chapter published turned out to be a hearbreak <3 wholehearted rec!

for charles-focused fics, there are so many lovely ones in the pierre/charles tag on ao3, though most of them are extremely angsty. the ones that i love, and that come to mind instantly are these:

whatever our souls are made of (his and mine are the same) by empireofclouds - a soulmate au with heavy mythologizing that i fucking ADORE;

 hopefully, one day you will love me back by @sebchalex - where monaco gets kicked out of eu and pierre and charles marry and somehow still pine over each other;

If I were proper, I’d have a chance; not with you, but somebody else by @deepdowninshipperhell - an a/b/o which i literally have open on my phone at all times for comfort because its just perfect.

in the end, i will include my own fics here too, because first of all why not, and second of all i do write about seb and charles most often :)

Monaco - sebchal, monaco gp 2022 as it shouldve been;

Taller In Another Dimension - piarles, montreal 2022 date as i choose to believe it went;

By The Same Blade - sebchal, magical realism ft hanahaki disease 5+1.

thank you so, so much for asking anon, i love you for this <3