I think a lot about how vale would rather k*ll himself than cry in front of a camera, like nobody ever saw that man shedding a tear. he really wants to be THAT though guy 🤨
i get it thoughhhhhh!!!!!!! like imagine EVERY aspect of your life since you were literally a TEENAGER has been exposed to the public for consumption and interpretation and worship and ridicule!!!! imagine loving the place you're from SO much, but refusing to live there for yearssss because you get mobbed by press and fans who want a piece of you. literally every time you step foot in the country. every time you go on a date —or simply dare to exist in public— there are news articles and pictures in the tabloids and people commenting on social media....
like after #TAXEVASIONGATE he felt the need to build a self-sufficient ranch slash mansion where he can practice privately (no paps !) and where he only invites people to come to him if they wanna hang out. like NAUR he wouldnt want to afford people any access to his soft little underbelly and the things that make him feel vulnerable, because he knows that they will be broadcast with a MEGAPHONE to every person with an internet connection on earth !!!! (which even HIS FATHER DID TOO). like. it would color a person's relationship with their emotions in all contexts of their life methinks !
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top 5 blazblue character designs
YIPPEE BLAZBLUE
I feel like my tastes are known but I still will take this chance to gush a bit about the characters and design philosophy of em that Ive always been real fond of :)
No particular order here or else I'll be here all night formatting on mobile. More under the cut!
HAKUMEN it goes without saying I LOVE HAKUMEN'S DESIGN SO MUCH. The taloned tabi, the silhouette of wide pants and closefitted shinguards/torso. The faces/eyes scattered across his armour while the face is totally blank—made more unreadable and inhuman by the slats of neck guard. Fox-ears built into the helm shape to feel both animal and mechanical like antennae...and obviously the longass hair to sell the "tailed" look.
I remember reading really early on into liking BlazBlue—I can't remember the source, come maul me if I'm wrong—I read that Hakumen as a character and design was made when Mori was in middle or highschool, the idea of "what is really cool," and much of those ideas stayed. I not only really respect that and think its charming as someone who still likes MY own designs from that time, but, as it turns out, middle schoolers are still right. Hakumen is very cool. Augh. Fucking? Time travelling fox-robot samurai who's here to kill his brother to save him and also himself because his old self wanted to do the same thing for the wrong reason and thay thought disgusts him. Also him and Tsubaki in general make me start to choke (positive). God ok I have four more guys to discuss. Yes i also like Susanoo but I feel like thats a copout, I like that he's both animalistic and brutal martial arts as the God of War. Anyways CONTINUING
VALKENHAYN R HELLSING I will admit that he is an old man in a suit and that speaks to me but that he's one of the strongest beings alive as a old man in a suit ohh. And he's a werewolf ohhhh. Shifting just his body parts to kick and rip with his claws, quickly leaping back and forth between a normal bone-breaking jab or knee or biting and snarling—the dance between raw force and refined precision and a brutal tear's always been sooo cool to see and think about. I also think his ribbon in his hair moving to his wolfy tail is very cute. A man of sharp extremes from refined to flashing his fangs, human and wolf, cool and very cute. I like him :)
TSUBAKI YAYOI her uniform is so nice uruururururugh. Big cape and the way it drapes around her in combat like wings... Her sword and buckler/Izayoi looking so unique for being a "basic sword and shield for the hero"-type of deal! The eye on her hat's always been really striking too—the only "cold" colours being her and her uniforms eyes.....................Sparing a glance at Hakumen's recurring red eyes for no reason here. Knightly angel women and her flower-like "tassets" hanging off her clothes. Its a uniform which plausibly feels like it could be a uniform—she doesn't have anything uniquely "hers" or "for this female character" while still being really standout and clean. Her design's just really good guys. You can do so much.
Really want to mention her masked look too at least really quick here. my girllllll...
RAGNA THE BLOODEDGE well of course I really like his design. Yeah him being here is partially obligation because I love his character a lot but both things inform each other in the end. Mr Grim Reaper, Enemy of the World, red-and-black with a demon's arm on one side and a rebuilt one on the other. His big red coat and the oversize shoulders! The massive baggy pants—I love the silhouette he has. Blood Scythe/Aramasa/His sword transforming and able to clack around and shift's just. Always been such a cool design. Seithr-powered man, devil-smoke powered man, ashes of your own old dead self-powered man. Ragna is fucking cool auauauuuaghrhg.
And it DOES only make it more charming that he has a good heart, has a bit of a Kicked Puppy charm about him if you can pardon uhh that implication. He is just some fucking guy and he likes barbecues. He is sweet and cares for stray cats. His dad is a cat. He blows up the government regularly. He's a rebel who visually looks really clean if "intentionally trying to look like someone you should think is cool", which is both dork-charming and cute and also actually yeah cool because it's not a visual mess.
I like that his arm underneath is all belts and bandaged—Bloodedge only wearing half his coat for example is such a good look and it shows his clean black shirt underneath, which feels a lot like... Under that big eyecatching rebel coat of his (personality), Ragna's... Ragna, I don't know. I hope that makes sense. Knowing his personality makes me like his design a lot more than if I didn't I think.
As mentionned in Hakumen's block of text however: I already really like chuuni-ass designs, so combined in Ragna he makes me unwell entirely.
And last (I am running out of images allowed per post :((((( )
Kitty peepaw. I am cheating slightly here. I like the Kaka Kittens' big hoods too and think they're very cute and very eyecatching and I adore them always—the kittens especially being stompy little things that travel in packs are really cute. I love that Jubei, actual strongest thing in the world, has the oversized paw sleeves too. There's cat claws bigger than his body stored in what looks like emo kids' oversize hoodie sleeves. He's so simple and still the imagery of that coat gets reused several times over and it looks good every time. Orange kitty peepaw. AND he has an eyepatch, how can I not like eyepatches.
There are my 5 favourite BlazBlue designs :> Sorry if them all being C series or smth is boring wauh. I can spend as long as I want thinkinh about it but I do always seem to come back to these guys, give or take one change depending on the mood. Unchanging faves are Hakumen and Tsubaki for sure and forever though.
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Allow me, if you will, a moment to go absolutely rabid over your blog and everything that goes on here. I’ve always loved history but the USA hardly likes teaching anything that isn’t American History. I’ve forgotten how much I love WORLD history, specifically the rise and fall of empires.
I’ve been smothering myself in your posts and I love it ALL. JC, Pompey, Crassus, Sulla, Octavian, Antony, Cassius, and Brutus. Wow what a mood. You don’t miss on your references or your modern AU’s and I’m over here like- I’m trying to buy whatever web comic you put out, book you write, etc.
Also, if you’d be so kind to list some material with like themes to start breaking into these topics. Preferably materials in English or translated materials.
HELL YEAH LET'S GO
if you really want to start on the ground floor for breaking into something, I'd recommend my personal favorite approach which is picking the figure that's most interesting to you, reading through plutarch's biography on them (free! online! in english!) and then putting their name through a jstor search and reading whatever sounds fun.
other than that, the primary theme I've been wandering around in lately, so these are the materials I've been really enjoyed related to that:
The Deaths of the Republic: Imagery of the Body Politic in Ciceronian Rome, Brian Walters
The Game of Death in Ancient Rome: Arena Sport and Political Suicide, Paul Plass
Ideology in Cold Blood: A Reading of Lucan's Civil War, Shadi Bartsch
Statius and Virgil: The Thebaid and the Reinterpretation of the Aeneid, Randall T. Ganiban
Rome, Blood & Power, Gareth C Sampson
I also have a comparatives tag where I play connect the dots with texts that made my brain go brrr
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but the thing is, melanie hates jon because he is so very much like her.
they work in adjacent fields, they've got such similar temperaments - they both run straight for whatever supernatural horror they need to understand, they both suck at planning ahead (poisoned coffee, melanie?) and they both lash out as a primary defense mechanism - and jon wasn't qualified for his job, and martin's only "degree" was in paranormal psychology, so clearly the Institute was hiring from a broader pool than "qualified archivists." i can't imagine ghost studies are all that lucrative as a field. if melanie hadn't made it as a youtuber, what would she have done? we don't know a lot about her educational background but - she knows what it's like, to need to know. she walked into the Institute and got a job because Elias saw that he could use her.
If she'd had a legitimate encounter sooner, if she'd started her quest a few years early, if she'd come to the Institute to give her statement and stayed to use their library before Gertrude had died -
Or even if she just couldn't survive on a youtuber's salary, if she'd gone looking for job postings in relevant fields -
It could have been her. She looks at Jon, and she sees exactly who she could have been. It's only luck that it wasn't.
And that's the kicker, isn't it? It's luck, that she's in her shoes instead of Jon's.
And is she supposed to feel lucky? To feel thankful that she's had to suffer through attack after attack, Elias showing her how her father (her dad, who called her his little moth) died screaming, her body torn open by things that don't exist, her sense of self slipping as she ripped into flesh with no recognizable form, her trust violated as she woke up to two of the few remaining people who are supposed to be on her side cutting into her against her will - to feel lucky, because she had to gouge her eyes out just to have her body back in her control -
Is she supposed to be happy that she lived through all that? Is she supposed to be glad, just because she could have been Jon?
Nobody told Melanie she needed to feel sorry for Jon, or give him her sympathy, or any other kind of pity. She just wants to give it, because God, what he'd gone through -
(Thank God it wasn't her -)
- Fuck that, she isn't lucky.
She hates Jon, because she refuses to feel grateful for the horror show her life has been. (Because she's grateful, that it wasn't her; and she's furious, because - yes it was. she paid the price of the apocalypse in blood and scars and trauma, too. She wasn't Jon, and could have been - but fuck it, she was still Melanie. and the hell that she has lived through isn't nothing.)
It's just bad luck, that it was Jon of all people. It's just bad luck, that it was Melanie.
No one here is lucky.
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Sometimes I get fic ideas where it's like. This isn't porn, it's not even featuring any sexual act, but it feels like it would be odd to write it because it would be taking something that I've only seen discussed more seriously and only approach it fully through the lense of humor
It's what happened when I wrote the Lightwoods having a banterous conversation about periods, and when I wrote the Spartacus fic that's literally just a guy doing a stand up routine about the difficulties of having practically non functioning hands*
*He gets nails driven through them in the original show
And now I've been struck with the urge of writing a fic (Band of Brothers, modern AU) where the gang is spending a vacation together in a lake cabin, Bill Guarnere (partial leg amputee) and his partner bring their sex swing along, and when the rest of the group hears about it the entire evening devolves into a joking and irreverent conversation about sex, the logistics of it, and the solutions they've found to their issues
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