#is because I wanted to design interesting ‘spirit forms’ for them

[chloesimaginationthings]

omggggg your crying child is sooooo cuteeeeeee more of him pleaseeeee

I’m glad y’all liked his design! I hope to draw him, and the other ghost kids more

[cherepizza]

Wow it's been more than a month. Didn't realize that. I guess I have something to show but uhh my sketchbook got under heavy rain so paper here it's a little wavy. It's a miracle it had so little damage considering what happened to my other stuff. Also nights proceed to get longer and I wasn't lucky to take better photos. Anyway..

All beacons' religions are based on mythology and existence of numerous gods and spirits inhabiting the world. The closest thing they have to monotheism is a religion formed around the existence of a transcendent all-present force (spirit) which, however, cannot perceive the world and interact with it by itself, only being able to do so by splitting itself into many different "sides". Only sides are able to maintain physical bodies and though they all come from the same source and it the end would become one again, they are treated as completely different entities. There're 8 major sides – 8 major gods, other deities are considered lesser. Aand I'll just leave it there because I'd better wait for the time I have a fine picture depicting gods to have at least something accompany a ton of sentences that would come describing them.

Many religions practices and ceremonies are performed at altars. The most simple home altar is a wooden table, low enough so that a beacon would have to kneel down to perform any ritual. The most common offering is food, other offerings include things associated with a specific god. Watered down alcohol may be poured only on certain celebrations. It's a very uncommon practice and in some households it's not allowed and has to be done secretly. After all, you want your gods to be sober to do their duty.

Living creatures sacrifices are also practiced, but sacrificing other beacons is forbidden (at least on the territory of the forementioned "all comes from one spirit" believers). Animals cannot be sacrificed on wooden altars and it's quite rare for a beacon to a have a stone one at home, so cooking and eating a designated animal or specific parts of it (obviously offering a piece to the gods in the process) on a celebration is usually enough.

An interesting religious thing are these sticks made from wood or bone, always coming in number of 8. If their owner didn't make them themselves, they may have some standard decorations and phrases pre-carved but most part of their sides would always remain empty for the owner to fill. Each stick is devoted to one of the major gods and contains an encarved list of things which a beacon wants to ask for from the deity. An altar is not needed when you have sticks but you should still make an offering if possible.

The sticks also serve as some sort of passport as encarvings may contain information about beacon's place of birth, place of work, profession, number of children and other things like the kind of crop their village grows even if the owner has nothing to do with farming but wants the crop to be protected anyway.

All stick sets are personal and follow their owner to the grave. However, taking copies is not frowned upon. Keeping the original set for yourself and leaving a copy with the deseased is also fine but the ritual of changing sets should be performed by close relatives who wish to keep the original sticks as a memory. Otherwise it might be considered disrespectful.

[nardaviel]

Been doing some thinking about the characterization implications of Makoto's aikido black belt, and the interesting contrast between aikido and her Metaverse weapon.

Like, to start with, the fact that Makoto knows aikido specifically says a lot. Aikido is extremely not an aggressive martial art. It's a little difficult to translate something like a martial art name from Japanese into English, but the one I always heard was "way of the harmonious spirit". I'm not going to do a deep dive on it, just summarize a couple of the most relevant points, but it was created by a war veteran who was inspired by a spiritual experience. His guiding concept was like... self-defense without hurting the aggressor.

(Disclaimer: I obviously only studied in one school! Although all of aikido shares the same overall principles, there may be some schools out there that are extra-aggressive. However, given that we lack any indication of what style of aikido Makoto studies, I would guess that it's not anything wild or unusual.)

Aikido focuses on using an attacker's energy and momentum against them. You learn throwing and pinning techniques to defend against various attacks, but specifically techniques where you can pull back before you cause serious damage. You don't learn barehanded strikes at all, except as much as you need to know to initiate fake attacks to help your partners practice. And you don't need to know how to throw a really good, dangerous punch for that. I had years of aikido training and I still sure as fuck can't. At more advanced levels, you start to learn other things such as weapons forms, but even those aren't really attacks. You just perform a ritualized series of movements against imaginary enemies.

It's not the world's most practical martial art, to be honest, although someone who's really skilled can get good use out of it. If Makoto claims she can use it to ensure her safety, she must be that good, because I expect she's too practical to delude herself with false confidence. More importantly! It takes years to get a black belt, like it does in any martial art. So little middle-schooler Makoto looked at all the martial arts on offer in Tokyo, which I imagine is pretty much every martial art on earth, and decided aikido was the one for her.

It suits her, and continues to suit her up through the end of canon. She's not Ryuji; outside the Metaverse, she's not going to start a physical fight. But she's perfectly willing to finish one. Given her family history and personal values, it makes sense that she'd be drawn to the idea of defending herself, but not in a way that causes unnecessary pain. It's also considered a good martial art for women, due to the lack of emphasis on size and strength.

But pre-canon Makoto is also very repressed, very focused on being composed and perfect. Aikido promises self-defense and an outlet, but nothing too aggressive. Nothing that looks too loud or rebellious. Martial arts are male-dominated practices; by studying one at all, she's already being a little bit out of the ordinary. Best not to stand out too much.

And then she gets into the Metaverse.

It's easy to think that the brass knuckles and the punching make use of her martial arts background, but they don't. At all. Makoto has absolutely not learned how to strike with her fists to cause damage during her training, at least not like people envision. If Atlus wanted to go that route, they'd have given her a karate backstory or something similar.

And if they wanted her to know aikido and wanted to carry her training into the Metaverse, they could've given her a staff, which she will have learned forms for during aikido training. The other classic aikido weapons are already taken, or at least the non-wooden versions are lol. But no one else among the Thieves uses a staff. Makoto the warrior monk with her jo staff and her Pope persona would be a coherent design.

But Atlus didn't do that either. Instead, they gave her brass knuckles (among other fist weapons, I know, I know) and let her punch the shit out of her enemies. That's not merely unlike her training; it's in total opposition to the core tenets of aikido. No "way of the harmonious spirit", no self-reflection, no pacifism. She's going to beat up Shadows for justice.

In short, the brass knuckles are an emblem of her rebellion within the Metaverse. They come from the same place as her spiky leather outfit and motorcycle Persona. In the real world, student council president Makoto isn't afraid of anyone hitting her or grabbing her because she can put them on the ground before they can blink. Like I said, I think aikido suits her really well, even without her pre-canon baggage. But in the Metaverse, Queen doesn't bother to wait for an attack. She hits first. <3

[asaka-lucy-dr-rc]

RAIN CODE Fan Meeting Report ②

From after the reading play to around the middle of the daytime program.

Previous Post: RAINCODE Fan Meeting Report ①

⚠️This is a looong post! Please read this only if you have the time.

⚠️Contains spoilers!

There is already a report article on famitsu.com, so it may be easier to understand while looking at the photos on there.

Note: I wrote some related topics together and sequentially, so this post is not exactly the same as the actual order of topics in the event.

------

A short introduction of the guests and some of my personal impressions of each of them:

After the reading play by Fukuhara and Suzushiro, the other guests appeared on stage one by one. Most people introduced themselves normally, but Kodaka's greeting was the only quirky one:

He is probably the only person who would say something like that out of the blue at a fan event 😅

------

After that, a segment titled "Inquiries to the World Detective Organization" began, in which messages from fans were read out.

Apparently a lot of messages were supposed to be read during this segment, but a question to the VAs about their memories of the recording session took longer than expected and ended up being almost entirely about this topic.

As for Yuma's voice recording, Yuma was often panicked, frightened, and dismayed, and Fukuhara was repeatedly asked to make such performances more exaggerated. So he used the voice of a certain boy character as a reference. Then the MC immediately asked:

Japanese people can easily recognize it, but there are probably many who don't, so I'll make it clear. He meant the protagonist of Doraemon (JA: Nobita / EN: Noby)! XD

Doraemon itself has no relation to Spike Chunsoft, but since the voice actress of Danganronpa's signature character Monokuma is the voice actress of Doraemon, it is interesting to note that the protagonist of RAIN CODE is a reference to the voice of Doraemon's protagonist.

I will mention this in my future post about the evening program, but as those who have played RAIN CODE know, when Yuma and Shinigami say goodbye at the end of the story, Shinigami makes an emergency exit appear, and the design of the door is actually very similar to a tool that Doraemon often uses! So the developers must really like Doraemon... 😅

------

As for Shinigami, Suzushiro said that she remembered how long the audition process was. There were more auditions than usual, but she was only given vague requirements and told to perform different patterns, so she said she had no idea what the right voice was, but she gave it her all anyway. The reason for this, according to Kodaka, is that he paid special attention to the type of voice. He wanted to avoid sounding completely annoying, because Shinigami has a lot of terrible things to say to Yuma. So he was looking for a voice that could say horrible things without annoying the player.

By the way, around this topic Kodaka joked, "Since RAIN CODE is a detective story, we made sure to check everyone's backgrounds during the auditions." To which Suzushiro replied, "So that's what those people in the back were!" Then "Don't worry. The results of the investigation showed that everyone was innocent." He continued to joke.

Suzushiro being examined during the audition (My own imagination.):

However, she said that she still struggled to find the right voice for Shinigami after she passed the audition. She said that she had originally planned to change her voice between the spirit form and the true form. She was instructed not to be too mascot-like when playing the spirit form, but when she tried to change the voice, she couldn't help but sound like a mascot, so she ended up speaking the same way as the true form.

She also said that Shinigami talks a lot throughout the game, so she was careful not to make it annoying for the players.

The voice recording for Yuma and Shinigami took a very long time, almost two years. During that time, they recorded almost every week. According to Fukuhara, one of the reasons it took so long was that, Yuma often had to scream or cry, so the recording took a lot of energy, and he was always unable to record the target number of words for that day, which was often carried over to the next time. Then the voices recorded at the end were different from the ones recorded at the beginning, so they re-recorded the lines recorded at the beginning.

------

As for Halara, Ishikawa said that the most important feature of Halara's voice was that she had to have a neutral voice, and that she sometimes received instructions during the recording such as, "Now you sounded a little masculine, so let's take it back a little," or "Speak a little cooler".

Kodaka said that Halara's first person pronoun was "boku" (*generally used by males in Japanese) and his/her appearance was masculine, so he adjusted the impression by adding Yui Ishikawa's graceful voice to give it a feminine impression and make it more neutral.

(This is just my personal opinion, but Halara's appearance doesn't look that masculine...🤔 But I am sure Kodaka said something like that. Well, I guess he means that he/she is masculine because he/she is tall?)

------

As for Desuhiko, KENN said that he had originally imagined a slightly higher voice, but was instructed to speak more naturally and closer to his natural voice. Other than that, there were not much many re-recordings.

------

Kodaka and Sakakibara were asked by the MC about the feedback and reactions they received after the release of RAIN CODE, but Kodaka said that he had not received much feedback. (He seemed a bit hesitant to answer when asked, so I personally speculated that he might have had negative feedback in mind and then denied that he hadn't received much...but that's really a personal guess, so it might just be that he feels he hasn't received that much feedback compared to Danganronpa).

When Sakakibara mentioned sales, Kodaka interupted in like this:

Well, maybe the above does not convey the nuance well. I think if I replace "Kodaka" with "Shinigami," it would make more sense:

haha 😂 Sakakibara was just talking about sales, but Kodaka seemed to be making fun of him, like, "See, producers are quick to want to talk about money!" (This itself is not an actual statement. But the statement in the image above, "It's all about money, after all. Producers are money hungry (結局は金なんですよ、金。プロデューサーは金の亡者だからね)," is true.)

Kodaka was obviously rude, but Sakakibara did not seem to care. (Perhaps Kodaka is usually like this 😅)

Then when the topic of sequels and future developments came up:

I don't think it was just because Kodaka pushed him, but Sakakibara told us that he would like to make a sequel or an anime :)

------

The next segment, "Collect Memory Shards of Master Detectives!", looked back at some scenes from the game.

The first scene that was discussed was the one where Halara kicks open a gate in chapter 1. This is the scene where Halara says it is open, even though he/she kicked it down him/herself. When Ishikawa said that she did not expect the scene to turn out like this when she recorded the audio, Kodaka said that the audio for that scene was actually recorded first and the video was made later. According to him, RAIN CODE has many scenes where the video was adjusted to match the audio in this way. I think this was from him talking about when they had a meeting for the promotion, he said that the scene where Halara kicks open the gate was well received when he showed it to people overseas. (Yeah, it's a funny scene for everyone XD)

------ The next scene was Yuma's disguise in chapter 2. Fukuhara was asked to comment on a message from a fan who said Yuma in disguise was so cute:

Fukuhara said that he had noticed that Yuma was rather originally cute, and then Kodaka said that he had actually initially worn more makeup to emphasize that it was a comedy scene. However, when Komatsuzaki checked the sprites on the actual machine, he said that it might be better to make Yuma just normally cute, and then he modified the sprites. Kodaka commented that he thinks that decision by Komatsuzaki worked.

------

The next scene was when Desuhiko was rejected by Shinigami at the end of the Mystery Labyrinth in chapter 2. In a message from a fan who wanted to know Desuhiko's success rate in picking up girls, and when the topic came up, Kodaka replied, "Zero. But he makes all kinds of excuses for himself, and in his mind they are not supposed to have happened." KENN said, "Uh, so he does mind control, right?" Kodaka agreed and said, "Yes, yes."

By the way, it was funny to hear Ishikawa say "It's cool" in a low voice, perhaps in response to the sound of the word "mind control" here. (To which KENN replied, "Is it cool?" 😂):

------

Then, the scene in chapter 5 where the fact that the meat buns were human flesh was revealed was discussed.

The VAs knew from the script that the meat buns sold in the Kanai Ward were made of human flesh, so they had mixed feelings when they saw the in-game tips about the meat buns.

As for Fukuhara, he somehow said that he had dared Yuma to eat meat buns many times, apologizing over and over again in his mind. (This part of the topic was rather fast-moving, so I did not understand the reason why he did so 😅)

According to Kodaka, in his mind, Yuma was never supposed to eat the meat buns. But before he knew it, Yuma was able to eat the meat buns in the game, and he thought, "Huh?...Oh well." lol

When asked by the MC when he first came up with the idea for the human meat buns, Kodaka replied that it had been there from the very beginning, and that he had recently sorted through his file and found the minutes of a meeting with the former producer in which it was noted that this idea might not be favorable for CERO (the rating system). But he apparently left it ambiguous and pushed it through 😅.

(For your information, the former producer he mentioned was probably Yoshinori Terasawa, the producer of the Danganronpa series. In an interview on dengekionline.com, Kodaka says that RAIN CODE was conceived with former producer Terasawa.)

------ After that, there was an advertisement about the event merchandise available at the venue. It was announced that those who bought the OST could participate in an autograph session with Kodaka. I have already posted a short manga about the autograph session in my previous post.

The VAs had left for the next reading, and only the MC, Kodaka, and Sakakibara were left on stage, and as I recall, the sequel was discussed again at that time. So MC asked Kodaka, "What can fans do to ensure a sequel for RAIN CODE?" Kodaka immediately answered, "Pay money! (課金だよ課金！)". 😂 I laughed a lot at his answer.

(It totally looked like this to me):

Every time he makes a statement like this, I am sure that he IS the person who wrote Monokuma's or Shinigami's lines. lol ------

This is finally half of the daytime program! XD

Next:

[hiswitchcraft]

I see a lot of beginner tips on the internet that seem to be for people who have already gotten started, how about some tips from someone who has no idea where to start at all?

Tips for Witches Who Haven’t Even Started Yet

Heads up this guide will be designed assuming someone has learned modern witches are a thing, is interested and maybe wants to be one, but has done none or very little research.  First let’s go ahead and get rid of some COMMON misconceptions people come into my DMs with when they’ve barely begun... 

There are all things you do not have to do to be a witch: 

Do evil things or be a “satan worshiper” 

Be a specific religion, because witchcraft is not a religion

Work with deities or spirits of any kind 

Be a woman, witch is a gender neutral term

Be Wiccan or Pagan

Pick a witch type 

Spend a lot of money 

Be in a coven or know other witches 

Have a big or pretty altar, grimoire, ect 

Have tarot cards or any tools for your practice gifted to you

One final disclaimer Another thing to go into your research with that you may not know if you’re just starting at the very beginning is that there are many paths, practices, belief systems, ect besides the eclectic form of witchcraft I teach here and that you will commonly see presented online. I feel a lot of people may benefit from a more structured, or different path. Keep an open mind. You might come across something more fitting.  So if the above is all false, are there any rules? The only rules I ever push around here are have an understanding of what you’re doing and its consequences, and do not appropriate from closed practices!  Okay, so I read all of the above, now what? If you don’t know where to start at all? Research. Research is always where you should start. That sounds overwhelming and may be something you’ve already seen a few times but it could be as simple as a google search to start and I will be here to make it as simple as possible with this guide. Also as usual my DMs are always open if you have questions. 

Onto how to do that research...  First here is a google doc full of links I’ve compiled that may give you somewhere to start! With that, here are some suggestions for what to research. 

Follow your interests For someone who has just begun I would highly suggest following your interests. What I mean by that is if anything interests you, keep googling, try Youtube maybe, check if your library has books on it, ect. Take notes on what it is, why it interests you and what you find. There are tons of practices and subjects witches study so just keep learning at your own pace and incorporating what works.

If you need somewhere to start, here’s some general topics I’d suggest:

Types of magical/Pagan practices

Cleansing

Charging

Grounding

Warding

Banishing & binding

Divination types

Tools & ingredients

Closed practices

If you’re stuck hopefully doing some searching on the above topics will get you down a rabbit hole of interest. Below is also a bunch of info on how to do GOOD research. Doing good research is very important to me. 

Research tips  Think critically and ask yourself questions like this while researching: 

What are the qualifications, motives and biases of the person giving me this information?

Who recommended this source?

Is anything they're implying or advising here a threat to my or someone else's safety or health? Do I know that this suggestion is safe? 

Does this line up with other things I know to be true? Like science, other factors about witchcraft, your beliefs, ect. Beliefs won't dictate fact but often in witchcraft personal belief is the only thing that will sway you towards one answer or another.

Does it make sense? Like logically does it make sense to you? Why? Just ask yourself why. Ask them why. Ask them for sources or an explanation.

Have I seen someone say this before? How often? Apply the above questions to that source or sources as well.

Here are all my other general research tips: 

Take time to take things with a grain of salt. Try not to categorize them as right or wrong until you're absolutely sure.

Cross reference everything you find. The answer you see the most is likely right. 

Understand that many things are up to personal belief and for many questions the answer will be "Depends on the witch." Both answers might be correct. This path is yours and often you have to dictate how things will work. 

Check out your local library.

Use books that aren't marketed as being about witchcraft or the occult. Folklore, local flora and fauna, nature, botany, gardening, foraging, geology, these are all useful subjects. 

Ask real, experienced witches. Do not rely on them as your soul mentor and ideally and contact multiple witches or groups, but do ask.

Don't worry about making a fancy grimoire or book of shadows or having all the correspondences in the world written out. That's the least of your worries, take notes on the essentials and things that interest you personally. Some things to include are the subject, date & source of what you're reading.  

Take notes, here’s how I mentioned note taking in there and I definitely have more to say on that! A lot of the time people get overwhelmed before they’ve even done anything remotely “witchy” because they feel like they need to have a big fancy grimoire. This is not the case. You can make a google doc or shove a bunch of notes in a binder. This tip has helped a LOT of people including me. I do strongly suggest taking notes, but take them your way. 

General Tips And finally here are some general tips to reference or keep in mind as you research and maybe start practicing witchcraft.

Don’t believe everything you hear and take information with a grain of salt. Most things to do with witchcraft depend on the witch. 

Lots of witchcraft supplies can be found or made. It doesn’t have to be expensive.

You can find supplies at mundane places, the dollar store, craft store, library, ect. 

Follow your intuition! One of the most important things here. To be a good witch and form a solid, personal path you have to know and be able to tune into yourself. 

Experiment! Try different things. Maybe it works, maybe it doesn’t. 

When you don’t know what to do, return to the basics. Whatever that means for you. Cleansing, warding, your deities, ect. 

If you feel overwhelmed, start with just one topic or two! You don’t need to take in witchcraft as a whole right away. Same goes for if you return from a break from the craft. 

Finally remember that you are always welcome to DM me for any reason with any question or concern throughout your research and practice! After my hiatus I’ve learned helping you guys one on one is my favorite thing, so remember I’m always here 💕 

[aragonlediagon]

Shingyoku fashion :)

Hi it is me the Shingyoku guy™️ posting of the very specific touhou pc98. Today I finished baking an unsollicited height scale with all my Shingyoku design interpretations :)

Took me a while to arrest them all!! This is quite a wide picture so I made some standalones grouped per pairs, below if youre interested 👇

Felt the need to mention it as some disclaimer: Unless the opposite is mentionned (for one take), all brunettes are men and all redheads are women. (I know this place's userbase seemed less judgy than on other places ive posted before, its just. To not assume some of them are women just because they have long hair 🙄)

1a. Shapeshifter Shingyoku (a kami, my main take). The ones with two tones hair are headcanon additionnal forms (small one being a "weak/rest form" & the dramatic one a "true/complete" form). So these 4 are the same person.

1b. Shingyoku's creators. HC: Shingyoku being a kami born from the fused spirits of 2 shrine officiants. They are humans who reach godhood and lived a long time before HRtP took place.

2. Weird """genderbend""" take. Shingyoku has no canon, but brunette is mostly depicted as a man & redhead as a woman, this take goes the opposite way. I imagine too theyre the gatekeepers in case 1b didnt fuse into the kami Shingyoku. They are youkais (fudakaeshi & oni).

3. A more derivative take. Redhead is a dragon deity from an other planet/realm who arrived on earth (I have a whole worldbuilding WIP). Brunette is human. Both are diviners (redhead refers to Yi Jing, brunette an onmyoji impersonating a priest). They live in some sort of fantasy Heian era. The gates are their final destination tho nothing refering to touhou like names being mentionned (hope I clearly explained it Id like to keep it short)

4. A very derivative take. Both are same species as redhead from 3. My main direction was in general to create a whole species/civilization using Shingyoku's vague concept rather than make something which would fit into touhou lore. So these dont look "touhoulike" at all but are my personal favorite as I went with my own designing style. So they dont live on earth/gensokyo, no touhou terms mentionned, just me wanting more Shingyoku inspired content. It would take me a while to explain what they are, refer to & the worldbuilding of their planet/realm, so Ill dedicate a whole post for them one day. Im just happy a concept as vague/obscure as Shingyoku now inspire me into making my own lore :)

-----------------------------

Thank you for reading I love Shingyoku Touhou Project The Highly Responsive to Prayers heres a bonus them as worms because I would still love them even if they were worms:

:))))))

Maybe for some people ALL of these designs will look very derivative and "they dont look like the sprites!!" but

Im an old fashion student with a degree, I love making designs since years

The sprites have very simple designs, maybe for some its not a bad thing, but ive always been more interested in the more ornated designs, I wished to enhance the designs a bit. I love Shingyoku I want them to be extra!

Not just about simplicity but the balance of flow as well. I dont straight up interpret a design from its base material especially for such old sprites. I treat the sprites elements more as a list of "to add" reccurences (to not say "pr*mpts, I hate that word now). I initially dont love Shingyoku for their design, rather the history I have with them, its hard for me to appreciate most fanarts of them. But this is a whole topic regarding touhou pc98 chara design which deserves its own post for an other day.

[waywardmillennial]

watchergate & where we go from here...

To start at the end, I purchased my annual Watcher TV subscription on April 20th because I wanted to support them when it felt like so many others were not. I'm cancelling another subscription to make this work with my budget, and I'm very happy with this!

Watcher has always made high quality, entertaining content that I love, and I'm happy to support them as they try to grow like they've always wanted to so they can bring on more creators and give us more diverse art.

So, moving forward, I'm going to be posting about Watcher TV when it comes out - spoiler parties with the sexy moots! - and I'll be blocking any and all haters I see. 💜💜💜

(read more bc ofc this got long)

To walk this back and give a little history/context, *ahem* [sotto Byron voice]

April 12, 2024: Watcher announced they had a surprise coming for us in a week's time. The news came in the form of a very spirited ad-read in the Mystery Files s2 finale. And afterwards there were a few blogs posting about it, but I commented to a friend that my dash had been devoid of Watcher posts (oh, how that sweet summer child would grow to long for a day such as that).

There were some corkboard theories, and I broke down the new logo design, but nothing big happened until the following Thursday.

April 18, 2024: I saw the leak for the announcement. It was on reddit and a sock tumblr blog was made sending the link out to people. I didn't post it or share it because it wasn't my news to share. I wanted to wait to see how they were going to explain it.

Maybe I should have said at the time (but it's fine if you don't believe me now I guess) but I was hoping Watcher TV would become like their enhanced Patreon replacement, where the new shows like "Puppet History Karaoke" and "Road Files" would be exclusive, and some other perks like early access. [note: if Apollo is laughing at him right now, I'd kindly request he stuff that red ball somewhere Helios doesn't shine]

I imagined some people would be mad at the streaming news but it didn't prepare me for how bad it would get...

April 19, 2024: Most of us know what happened. The announcement was not well received. Watcher's silence right after wasn't helping, but I don't think many people were willing to give them any grace for their pre-planned trip to the UK and instead demanded answers immediately.

Do I think maybe their announcement could have been timed better? Or maybe given a different tone? Perhaps. But either way what they were trying to communicate was not what people chose to hear, and the response from many viewers was, to choose a very formal phrase here, absolute bonker banana balls insane.

The main anti-streamer "arguments" I saw basically boiled down into these categories:

"high production tv quality content is what they want to make, but we don't want that - we only want them to sit in a blank room and talk to each other with blue and yellow text like the bfu days!!"

"Steven's the one behind all this bc he's rich and greedy and only eats gold"

"they already make enough money off their patreon why are they doing this?? they should have consulted [insert other yt-er here]"

"they've become the capitalist elite that we swore to destroy! so we have to tear them down from their thrones!!"

Even now, feeling better than I have in days, I don't have the energy to say why each of those takes completely misses the point of who they are as a company, as creators, and as human beings. But there are some eloquent posts in my #watchergate tag, or my other post, if you're interested.

April 22, 2024: We got the Watcher update - giving people access to all videos after a month on the new streamer - and that seemed to placate a lot of viewers and those on the fence. But it was also the day I learned about that horrible petition against Steven, and I'd been following all this drama for several days (foregoing some self-care) and so I had a little meltdown...

Even though the new setup is closer to what I'd hoped for like 10 days ago, I hate how we arrived at it. It's shown people that they can bully creators to get them to compromise on their company. In fact, I've seen accounts celebrating this.

Opinions like this have given me trust issues when it comes to the Watcher fandom at large now. As many of my beloved mutuals have said, I'm going to be wary of accounts that follow me and be applying that blocking feature liberally.

I can also only imagine how things like this must have broken some of the trust that the Watcher crew feels for us - fightingfuries really said it best. If they do start distancing themselves on socials and things, I wouldn't really blame them.

I don't have more to say, other than I'm going to support them as much as I can, for as long as they continue to make content. I'm going to send the team a care package. And I hope in time we'll earn back their trust.

Now I'll let Ryan Bergara play me out...

As for the question of why we decided to launch our own platform, when we started Watcher in 2020, we wanted to create shows that we were proud of, that we had ownership over, and that would provide you the caliber of content that we felt you deserved. However, we were finding it harder and harder to stay relevant to advertisers and the constantly changing YouTube landscape. We faced some incredibly challenging decisions. We didn't want to compromise our content to ensure they met advertising requirements. And we definitely did not want to lay people off that have brought Watcher to life behind the scenes. And we didn't want to bring Watcher to a close, which would have happened if we stayed solely on YouTube. - An Update, April 22, 2024

[gleefultogo]

Aira Character Talk

Since Aira was mentioned again in Saltyplaytoons (spongebob reference? Lol, funny either way) blog post I wanted to take a deep dive and talk about her. Plus at this point she’s the only pure character that deserves to be rescued from this shit comic and not written by a misogynist. She get’s shit on for no fucking reason. 

It is very well known now that kique has stated that she is his “least” favorite character. Why? Probably because she’s another female character he made and got bored of her. Honestly it saves her the injustice he would have given her if she had more screen time.  When we first met Aira, she was stuck in her creature form. I thought at first she was an evolved creature that was based on Aedra and her beast form was pretty cool in my opinion it looked like a mix between a cat and a dog. Which btw people was made and turned into by a Spirit, so that quickly leads my thoughts into rhov’s and feaf’s future kids. If a spirit can turn a dog into an evolved creature, then it’s very much possible because of the spirits for them to have hybrid kids. Will it be canon? I don’t know, like many have said; it’s obvious kique is bored of his own comic and shoved into our faces just to keep pages being pumped out with nothing really interesting. For me, I see the comic as a sitcom show that just goes nowhere and the characters do and say random stuff that doesn’t revolve around their world or plot. Besides, you can’t tell me half of the characters in this world wanna sit cooped up in one area based on “Tribes” Dog’s just don’t do that they would have way too much pent up energy and would need to run. Can you just imagine if this comic was realistic,  the dog's muscles and bone structure would become weaker because they aren’t doing anything really, they just sit in one place and that's it. Ok sorry, back to Aira :) 

   (Aira’s first appearance form)

You see what I mean though? She resembles a sorta dog and cat hybrid mix. The paws are a dead giveaway as they look like a feline and she has retractable claws. It’s a neat design in itself. I'll give kique that much of any positivity for his comic XD. 

Very Interesting design features if you ask me. Anyways, Aira gets killed by kargo and she wakes up a normal dog again and sets off into the woods to heal her wounds I guess? Probably also went to seek shelter maybe. We later on see her again on page 138. Heavily bleeding still and this when she meets keirr and you know how it goes. He ends up helping her and she’s taken aback from being surprised I guess, which is quite valid of her character, as we do eventually learn about her backstory and she was never treated kindly by others. Aira is a character who’s a really good example of someone who would have a “fixation” on someone, I don’t think it would personally be a bad thing and realistic to her character because she’s never been treated so kindly before and i don’t think she’d be able to help herself with that mindset. She obviously took comfort in keirr  as she hesitated to follow him at first, but also because he was offering to help her and wasn’t appearing a threat to her.

  (oh look when keirr was actually a nice guy, before becoming a dick to her) 

Moving forward. Keirr takes her back to her cave and was suspicious why she was living in such a large area for one individual. Aira remains mute and just eats the food she was given. Which I suppose was rude on her part, but her communication skills seemed to be lacking as she was trapped inside a body and couldn’t talk for a long time, ok at least that makes sense because there is a valid reason enough for her to be doing that. Eventually keirr leaves her behind as she is now safely placed back into her sheltered area. But she ends up following him and keirr ends up venting to her about why he couldn’t go back to his family, he was understandably grieving over zilas. I find these next few parts important to Aira���s character. She willingly sits there even if not knowing him for not a very long time. But she sits there and listens to him vent and doesn’t question him, that’s just an empathetic thing and it's wholesome to have seen that in the comic as they being the characters actually talked about things that troubled them, and it didn’t lead to sex confrontation. She may not have known him very long, but she’s a character that gives off a warm and comforting vibe, like a friend you can tell anything too without her judging because she obviously cares about others. 

Later keirr ends up following her and getting to know her more. Then we see a page with them together and keirr is giving her physical therapy? 

(hey keirr how do you know about PT?). They end up jumping over some logs to strengthen her legs or whatever. Kinda pointless in a way if she was born with a weak structure. It’s like saying you can just magically cure a dog with mobility issues with just some PT. Wellll nope, it’s much harder and time consuming. Plus it won't fully heal someone with a physical disability, it may help strengthen her a bit, but she wouldn’t be able to fully walk normally. Compare it to a dog who was born with swimmers syndrome or cerebellar hypoplasia. That’s a lot of PT work and also medication in order for them to walk to a degree. It’s not something that can fully be cured, so Aira’s 180 later on would be really stupid when the author wrote her this way. 

Now the next page (198) is important, keirr states he has to go back home cause he’s been gone for too long. Aira very clearly goes into panic mode and begs keirr to stay with her because she clearly states she doesn't wanna be “Alone” She’s told to basically just shut up and he’ll return soon whenever. Again Aira panics and kisses keirr forcefully. 

Now I find that quite sad and interesting for her. I’m not a therapist or a physician by any means. But this is my own take on this situation. Aira is using a tactic that almost feels like she is forcing her own affection onto keirr, not being in control of her own body due to her panicking. In a way, yes Aira did sexually assault keirr and he had every right to confront her about it because it was wrong of her. He leaves her behind anyway to go back to his family. Aira is then left with what looks like the expression of shock and most likely guilt because she’s being left behind again and most likely processing stuff in her head. I'd like to believe that her mind is very scattered due to her having issues of being left behind. 

We then proceed to see Aira again and most likely took keirr’s words to heart and goes back to the spirit of strength because she feels weak without and can’t survive. She practically feels hopeless without that spirit, keirr stops her and then asks was it because of him? Keep that in mind. Aira is obviously upset in this scene and then tells keirr her back story and the things she did. She basically claims that she went back to the spirit because of Keirr, she was upset. It’s like if someone told you as a person, that you weren’t good enough for them, nor did they want you around them because to them you felt like a burden. I wouldn’t be surprised if Aira was the first dog in the comic to commit suicide because she deems herself as a burden and was never accepted. If the spirits didn’t exist and the comic took more of a dark turn, I think she would have been a character to have that type of mindset. 

Eventually keirr takes Aira under his wing with a better understanding of her to a degree. She proceeds to then help him look for his family as she’s apparently traveled all over the map while being a beast at the time and saw many tribes fall and create new ones. We meet the deer rp tribe and then kique puts them there because he doesn’t know what to do with them at that moment. Aira is then very clearly seen to be hesitant and doesn’t wanna join them because they were just going to ask if they saw family members of keirr’s. But then the 180 happens and they join anyway. Keirr becomes a dick and then judges fucking Aira behind her back  because of the jarl confronting her leg structure. Yeah hey morons, maybe she's struggling because she got a giant ass heavy deer rack strapped to her head and has weak legs, antlers are not light things. Of fucking curse she’d be struggling. 

Honestly that’s when I started hating keirr the most, like why the fuck are you jugding her? She literally told you she was born with a mobility disability and was tossed aside for it. *sighs* She ends up stuck with Keirr as a Herbalist, like kique? The fuck man, how stupid can you be. You made a character with a physical disability who struggles with that and you give her a rank that requires to walk a lot? Like what? She’d be a terrible herbalist because she’d probably take much longer to even get to a location and back to the tribe. She has to carry her weight around. How frustrating, it’s like he literally forgets his own character traits they have. Like if you didn’t wanna deal with a character with a disability then why give her one if you're gonna 180 it.

Page 481. The page that did it all for me and hated this dude's guts. Ok so even if Aira did end up stuck in a tribe she didn’t wanna be, plus she looks absolutely miserable in the panel. She literally got excited when he returned with bootleg kargo after their little flirting session or whatever that was. 

    (look at the sweet baby… I love her)

Like damn keirr, you should be fucking honored that someone likes you for you and your company, plus she was even worried about you. He could have easily just told her he was being sent to scout, like keirr did you not forget that you joined the tribe when you didn’t have too? Like at all. Aira stated to you that she didn’t wanna be there and wanted to go back to looking for your family. But whatever, he gives her the cold shoulder and tells her to suck it up and build connections with a tribe of strangers. God I really want to just rewrite this page at times. Keirr should have welcomed her with open arms (or paws) and told her about his travels and that he didn’t find what he was looking for unfortunately. Like why did you diss the only character who showed remorse and care for you. She obviously likes having you around and because you took her under your wing, you have no right to be a moody dick to her. This is when I see abandonment issues come into play. As someone who has abandonment issues myself, Aira is so frikin relatable. It hurts a lot when you think about it and you're stuck in your head wondering what you did or if you're doing something wrong to have someone push you away like that. It’s the worst feeling ever and poor Aira here basically got rejected from someone she clearly cares about. 

    (She looks so lost and heartbroken in this page)  But like keirr, dude how the fuck did you forget that she told you earlier on before you joined the stupid tribe. That she literally went back to the spirit because of YOU. That’s basically her struggle, Rejection and being alone. I’m disappointed that some of the people were siding with keirr on this page. In reality if a friend asked about your mental health and you told them to fuck off in, just because your moody. Then be damned if they leave your ass. That's such a shitty thing to do to a person. Aira is no exception and didn’t deserve any of that. And sadly it only gets worse for her as even when he did do that, she still looked out for him and had to save his ass from a ghoul. 

(She cares about him still)

      (Fuck you keirr, you should have thanked her)

I’d also like to point something out. But in a certain page, Aira claims she lived with the meteor tribe. I’m unsure if she was referring to a beast or when she was a normal dog before cursing herself? 

If that’s true then could Aira quite possibly be a victim to rape as well? I didn’t think much of it at first because the wording confused me for a while. But going back it made me think. If she was used by MT before arenak rules then she’s very much understanding when it comes to her trauma and issues she has. In conclusion Aira seems like a complex character with her own trauma and if it was written better, it would have been interesting to see her overcome her said trauma. She’s a literal victim, a lot more than what kique claims rogio and his “mental chains” bullshit. Aira didn’t have a choice in her life,she didn’t ask to be born the way she was or have to deal with not feeling wanted by others. I feel if kique actually knew how people worked when it came to trauma and one’s mental health and emotions. Aira and keirr could have been a great duo for each other and helped support each other as friends and grew a good connection based on needing each other in a certain time because they were struggling. Sexual intercourse during trauma isn’t something that’ll help someone. It's only a distraction really at the moment. But again it shouldn't be a way out when you're in your feelings and all that. It’s quite unhealthy. I’ll say it again, Aira deserves better and needs out of this terrible comic. 

[yamameta-inc]

thinking about true robot/AI characters again. if 'personality' or 'identity' can be loosely thought of as what makes a being uniquely themselves, a robot's personality would lie in what differentiates them from other robots of the same make and program. but by design, programs shouldn't differ from each other--inconsistency is the exact opposite of what you want. what differentiates a robot then would lie in deviations from the norm, i.e. glitches. but programs will frequently have "known glitches" where the same type of error will occur semi-regularly. this wouldn't differentiate one instance of a program from another. lived experience would help in shaping others' perceptions but not really the crux of the matter, because no one thinks of "my excel" versus their co-worker's excel, even if those two excels are used to do totally different things. maybe then what creates more unique glitches is a physical defect in the hardware. a form of the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak, maybe. the 'personality' of the robot wouldn't be their general affect or behaviour, because those would be dictated by their programming and i have no interest in sentient robots, but rather in that tiny little kernel of deviation. well, at least internally. at the end of a day a robot is an object, and what makes objects meaningful is quite literally just what the person on the other end feels. a plushie can be just a mass-produced toy to everyone on earth except one person, to whom it's a companion they've shared years of adventures with. and it wouldn't correct to say that that plushie is the latter to someone who's seeing it for the first time, but it would also be silly to act like the plushie's "objective" (!) characteristic as a mass-produced toy somehow interferes with that one person's view of it.

there's loads to analyze and question about our relationships to objects and how they change depending on context, but i think what i'm most interested in is how robot characters by and large are not thought of as objects at all, but as people. this is for obvious reasons, but i think it's also rather boring. i like fantasy and sci-fi that explore different types of subjectivities altogether, including ones that maybe aren't "subjectivities" in the way we usually mean it. an AI program is inherently a "personality" that you can only experience from a second person perspective. that person is "just" a chinese room. but just like the plushie example, why should that prevent others from creating a unique bond and perception of the AI, as an object rather than as a person? a robot like that would essentially be a different thing/person to different characters, in a way different from how people are different people to different people. i think it would be really fun and interesting to explore the interplay between an entity's "soul" (for the lack of a better term) being in the eyes of the beholder, a soul that literally takes shape outside of the body, without agency. a robot's personality can only be experienced from the second person perspective, but by experiencing it you are also literally hosting it, in both senses.

honestly you could go in so many different directions with this, depending on what kind of story you're trying to tell. whether it's you, or you're it, or it's itself and you're you, or both but only in one direction. there simply needs to be more "speculative fiction" that actually speculates about things other than, what if there was something that was exactly like real life. but with a different name and simpler

[digi-lov]

We talked about the Twin Digimon last week. This week, I wanna take a closer look at their (standard) evolution lines.

As you can see, they each have a "regular" and a "dark" evolution line. In Lopmon's case, the "dark" evolution line specifically has a corruption theme. This is, of course, because Lopmon and its entire "dark" line were designed for the movie Hurricane Touchdown, which had its corruption as the main plot point. As a result, Lopmon's lines are very different from each other, while Terriermon only gets simple classic recolors.

Possibly the most corrupted among them is Wendimon.

Wendimon first gets introduced in the movie, and it posesses a chilling presence throughout all of it. However, not just Hurricane Touchdown, but all iterations of Wendimon, across the franchise's media, depict it as somehow corrupted beyond reason, usually not even being able to talk in cohesive sentences.

I wanna take a short moment to talk about its name origin. I'll not delve into too much detail, as I'm sure there are more educated people on this topic, but Wendimon is named after an evil spirit from Anishinaabe cultures, which name you are not supposed to say, as to not draw the spirit to you. I just wanted to share, in case some of you weren't aware.

But, moving on

The "regular" adult levels Gargomon and Turuiemon. Comparing the two, I really like how Gargomon has a long-range armed combat theme and Turuiemon a close-range combat theme. Gargomon, as mentioned before, appeared in Hurricane Touchdown and appeared plenty in Tamers as Jian's partner. Turuiemon, unfortunately, didn't have any big appearances until recent years. It had its debut in December 2001 as a card in Hyper Coloseum, in a Tamers themed booster.

Next up are Lopmon's perfect Level evolutions, Antylamon and Antylamon (Deva). The original Antylamon from Hurricane Touchdown is a Virus type. For Tamers, they decided to have Antylamon as the Deva representing the Hare, and so a Data type variant was created. It had its debut in Hyper Coloseum, in a booster featuring all Deva, a month before first seen in the anime at the end of 2001. The biggest visual difference is the purple scarf of Antylamon (Deva), but it also has a crest, like all Deva, on its chestplate (more on that maybe at some point?). Video games predominantly feature Antylamon (Deva) over Antylamon (Virus).

Now, if you remember, Terriermon and Lopmon were specifically designed for the movie Hurricane Touchdown. With Terriermon first showing up in its child form and Lopmon in its adult form, Wendimon, Gargomon and Antylamon are each twins' first evolution we get to see them actually evolve into during the movie. Because of this, it's interesting to me that these two share a distinct symbol, Antylamon on its arms and Gargomon on its face.

Another evolution we get introduced to in the Hurricane Touchdown movie is Rapidmon (Armor). Most people are probably more familiar with the green Perfect level Rapidmon as we see it in Tamers. Looking at the Digimental of Fate, you can see the classic Armor Digimon - Digimental resemblance. Rapidmon's abdomen comes from the sphere part of the Digimental, the base below that resembles its boots, and the wing on top resembles the ear-wings. Because the Perfect level Rapidmon uses essentially the same design, the jump from Gargomon to Rapidmon seems a lot bigger than the one from Terriermon to Gargomon. On a little side note, the official Bandai artwork of Rapidmon (Perfect) has an open helmet, even though the anime uses a closed helmet like the Rapidmon (Armor). BlackRapidmon, despite being a recolor, has a closed helmet as well.

Lastly, a short look at Cherubimon (Virtue) and Cherubimon (Vice). Both of them, again, debuted in the movie Hurricane Touchdown, which influenced their design. We get to see the corrupted, mad Cherubimon (Vice) first and only briefly see it in its Cherubimon (Virtue) form.

I believe the simple but effective changes between their designs were in part to allow this nice transition at the end of the movie.

The Lopmon line, especially, gets used in a lot of media for the sake of corruption/dark evolution story lines. Most noteworthy, Cherubimon (Vice) is the (first) main villain in the Digimon Frontier Anime season.

[writerblue275]

My favorite LoL skin (with photos) for each Heartsteel member (excluding their Heartsteel/Prestige Heartsteel and Base skins)

So I absolutely adore the Heartsteel skin line, and for Aphelios, Kayn, and Yone, their Heartsteel skins are arguably my favorite skins of theirs (especially Yone’s Prestige Heartsteel skin). HOWEVER. I want to talk about some other amazing skins too. Three of the ones I’ll mention come from the same skin line, but listen, it’s a beautiful line. Also note: These are based on the splash art. I know some of the aesthetics change when translated to a player model. Ok let’s GOOOOO!

Aphelios: Spirit Blossom Aphelios

I love the COLORS of this skin. I love Spirit Blossom Aphelios’ hair design (like damn Phel go off with the man bun/small pony I see you), outfit/accessories, the markings on his face, and how his horns are opposite to Alune’s. (Also can we discuss how Alune also looks so pretty here like omg. I’m so glad they made sure she fit into this as well.) But Aphelios just looks softer than some of his other skins and it’s an interesting vibe from him. I dig it!

Ezreal: Faerie Court Ezreal & Prestige Heavenscale Ezreal.

(Listen I genuinely can’t fucking pick between them so he gets two.)

THE OUTFIT (with all its wing motifs). THE WINGS. THE PINK HAIR. HIS expression!! I love the redesign of his gauntlet as well. Another thing that I really enjoy is how they managed to keep his face markings and make them unique. His face markings are a trademark element of Ezreal’s base skin so I’m glad they kept those here. AHHHHH HE JUST LOOKS SO GOOD. This is just such a fun reimagine for his character.

This might be one of his two newest skins but holy fuck it’s already one of my favs. His HAIR. MY GOD IT’S SO GOOD?? His pose and expression exude so much power and confidence. His gauntlet with the draconic claw and his horns is just so fun. Also that OUTFIT? His outfit genuinely looks amazing. The color combo of light blue, maroon, and gold is just EXCELLENT. Again, they also kept face markings of some kind, even if they moved from his cheeks to his forehead.

Kayn: Snow Moon Kayn

Kayn’s skins are always fun because you really get 3-in-1 with Kayn, his shadow assassin form, and Rhaast. I love a good black and red (with gold accents) theme and the Loki-esque horns, as well as the addition of the furs on his basic Kayn form are really cool. And the shaddow assassin’s hair. My goodness I do love a man with long white hair 😂 (this will appear again later). I love the color contrast between the shadow assassin and Rhaast designs as well. Also Rhaast looks badass. Terrifying, but still badass.

K’Sante: Prestige Empyrean K’Sante

This skin is so fucking cool. We get to see his face here unlike the original Empyrean K’Sante skin. I love the color scheme with the purple, gold, white, and pink as well as the designs on the clothes/his weapons. The little pink on his face also adds a really small but eye-catching detail that I very much enjoy. Also Lil Nas X helped design this skin and I think that’s so fucking cool.

Sett: Spirit Blossom Sett

Ok listen yes a bit of the reasoning for all these is that the characters themselves look fine as fuck. But holy shit look at Sett here. LOVE his long white hair (hehe what did I say it’s a pattern) with his ears here. That outfit and the accessories are stunning. And again the color palette for the spirit blossom line is just so pretty. Sett just looks so in charge and powerful here. He really is the boss. (Also shoutout to the [I believe] first instance of canon SettPhel which happened in the lore/voice interactions for this line.)

Yone: Spirit Blossom Yone

Look at him. LOOK AT YONE. There is something about Yone with longer white hair that is just so…right, even if it’s tied back or braided. All the beautiful shades of purple in his outfit too! I love. I also like how, besides the horns and his hands/arms, he seems almost human and he’s not stuck to his mask like in his base skin (though I do love his base skin). He also just gives off really pleasant vibes in this. I cannot explain it lmao.

These are my thoughts! These are just my opinions, and frankly so many of these champions have so many amazing skins. I’d love to hear your favorites if you have opinions!

[flamemons]

How do you think Digimon Frontier might have gone if the Spirits of Steel, Wood, and Earth had been bequeathed to Ophanimon, the Spirits of Darkness and Water had been bequeathed to Seraphimon, the Spirits of Flame, Light, Ice, Wind, and Thunder had been bequeathed to Cherubimon, and the protagonists had been Katsuharu, Teppei, Chiaki, Teruo, and Koichi (with Kouji joining later)?

im just gonna ramble whatever comes to mind lmao. i drew some stuff too!

uuh while i find it hard to care too much about those other kids because well, I don't know much about them, it is really fun thinking about how kouichi would act if he was there from the start. I think he'd be serious, in a similar way to Kouji, bc he's there on a mission, y'know! All he remembers is following his brother around until Kouji gets some weird text message (wait,,, does kouichi have a phone? probably not, huh. poor people gang ftw...) and now hes in this fuckin place! (hes a dead soul in this au too.) I'd imagine he'd be just as driven as Kouji was, if not more so, bc he KNOWS koujis gotta be here somewhere....but instead of initially trying to avoid the other kids (koujis strategy), he'd probably stick around as soon as he realizes that theyre gonna get themselves killed if they keep acting stupid. So, instead of trying to ditch the kids or act distant, he'd nag them and rush them to stay on track, and come off as kind of a bossy stick-in-the-mud at first

Side note, its easy to think of kouji as being a lot more serious and mature compared to the rest of the frontier kids, but honestly, I have to wonder if he wouldve acted differently if ophanimon wasnt calling him all the damn time telling him that he has to find answers! hes gotta get stronger! theres something he Has To Know!!! like damn if ophanimon was that specific with the other kids they'd also probably be just as sullen. anyway, kouichi would be feeling the same kind of pressure.

in an attempt to make it more interesting for me, chiaki and teruo are now siblings. or close cousins. or something. (what if they were fraternal twins?? that would be so funny actually. there is a statistically improbable amount of twins here!) AND bc i like chiaki the most i think she'd make a cool leader of sorts! like, the lancer to kouichi. kouichi ends up accidentally being the leader bc hes so driven, and chiakis like, a genuinely nice person who really wants to help the digital world as soon as she steps off the first trailmon onto the flame terminal. she also doesnt take shit from anyone. maybe she was a quiet wallflower-type kid at school, but, if its for another's sake, then she'll always speak up! so now, in the digital world, she cant stay quiet!

ah i love just making shit up. this is fun

so together, they make the most chillest leader/lancer duo ever. (hey, if they WERE to be the two Main Ones, wouldnt it be cool if their Susanoomon-type evolution was deep-sea themed? mix darkness and water together, and you get The Fucking Abyss. it could be bioluminescent! a cool way to turn "light into darkness!")

btw, im not drawing any spirit forms here bc I think these kids would have alternative spirit forms as opposed to the evil ones in the show. like, heroic looking ones (basically, no child deserves to have to spirit evolve into grottomon) BUT im no good at character design and that sounds like a lotta work. also, the other spirits (fairymon, chakkmon, agnimon, etc,) would need evil forms too then, right?? that sounds like a REALLY hard thing to try drawing, so nah. just imagine these kids spirit evolving and fighting offscreen. speaking of the other spirits though,

i want chakkmon/tomoki to try pummeling the shit out of katsuharu and teppei!! karmas a bitch!! tomoki didnt get to have his character development in this AU, bc he (probably) fell off the trailmon train tracks and got Got by cherubimon!

i like the main frontier kids too much to not include them in everything i draw Ever, so imagine that maybe they all came to the digital world alone, and wandered around until they found their respective spirits (in similar circumstances to the show) but since those spirits belongto cherubimon, theyre possessed/convinced to fight on cherubimons side!! like "oh shit i have no friends and i hate my life, yea this big evil bunny has a point lets go fuck shit up". maybe some of them are fully in control of their actions, maybe some arent. maybe some of them remember that theyre human, but maybe some of them dont....?

lastly, i have to apologize bc i got completely sidetracked bc i thought "oh takuya and kouji would be very funny as team rocket-esque villains" so heres flamon and strabimon but Evil™

i like to imagine that theyre the Most Incompetent of cherubimons Evil Guys but theyre the only two (that cherubimon knows of) that can form susanoomon so THATS why hes trying to collect all the spirits. bc of that, they DEFINITELY dont remember that theyre human. (bc of that, they also kind of dont have anything to care about, so theyre just trying to have fun)

it would be fun if they were initially kind of lame but although they may be idiots, theyre not Dumb, so they slowly become competent at the same rate as the Heroes do, and instead of a sephirothmon arc theres like.......a beowolfmon and aldamon arc??? im not a writer i dont know. watch these five kids (and counting!) get slowly hunted by two fucking Beasts in the darkest forest ever.

or maybe they do Actually manage to collect all the spirits but it goes so horribly wrong and now theres like ten goddamn kids and ten spirits mashed up in the psyche of a very unstable susanoomon and its just some fucked up Twisted psychological nightmare. digimon evangelion.

basically in this AU, there is even MORE wild tone shifts and the plot goes Absolutely Fucking Bonkers. and takuya's cosplaying Jotaro Kujo for some fucking unknown reason.

thank you for asking! this was....probably not what you were going for, but c'est la vie

[apollomes-supremacy]

LO Dionysus design 🍇🎭

| Apollo | Persephone | Hermes | Ares | Artemis | Ganymede | Aphrodite | Eros | Zeus |

This will be a long post since Dionysus isn’t a character yet so I had to create him from 0.

The beginning of Dionysus’ introduction started on EP 93 (with Semele, Dionysus’ mother), but it has been more than 100 episodes and we got absolutely nothing from that plot, which is bad considering that other gods get involved in the og myth (Zeus, Hera and Hermes, mainly), but none of them (before and after the time skip) display any knowledge or memory of the event, especially Zeus, who is the one who accidentally kills Semele in the first place.

I already talked about it here, but im 100% sure that the child mentioned in episode 218 is Dionysus. He should be 10 yo right now and he’s the only character (vaguely) introduced who is around that age. Not to mention, Dionysus does have some connections with the Underworld. My main theory is that he will be adopted by HxP and will remain a child for the rest of the series (probably skipping the majority of Dionysus’ myths). And that’s honestly such a waste of potential. So I decided to give my take on him if he was in LO, like the redesigns I did with many other characters.

Design

My main inspo was 60′s and 70′s Hippie fashion, with a lot of patterns, accessories (crystals, evil eyes, beads, rings, etc), loose clothes and a more lazy/cozy look. He’s two shades of purple that split his face, which is meant to represent his duality as the god of parties and joy & god of wrathful madness. Hermes gave him nymph ears to use as a disguise when he was young, but he doesnt want to change them back because he grew up and feels comfortable with them. He has a very androgynous/feminine look, which leads to a lot of people thinking he’s an actual nymph.

In his true form (which can come out voluntarily, but usually happens when the god gets so mad that they are unable to control themselves) he can get really big. Leafs and grapes sprout everywhere, he gets another pair of arms made of plants’ stems and his eyes go full neon green.

Story

His story is very similar to the og myths, with just some small differences. He is born from Zeus’ thighs and goes to live with Demeter and Persephone as one of their nymphs to escape Hera’s wrath. There he starts to question a lot about himself, like his gender and his origins (he doesn’t know he is not an actual nymph), and when puberty hits, his body and his powers go crazy. Its also around that time when he meets and falls in love with Ampelos (and you know how that story ends).

When the wine he creates starts growing in popularity and Dionysus starts getting worshipped by some cities, Zeus decides that there’s no reason to hide him from Hera anymore, so he brings Dionysus to Olympus and reveals the truth, inviting him to become an Olympian. Dionysus says yes without thinking twice, so he moves in and starts to get prepared for his ceremony and his new life.

But there’s a problem. The Olympus lifestyle is way too different from Dionysus’. People are sophisticated, modern and even mean-spirited, while he is the complete opposite. It’s hard for him to fit in and he just wants to go home with the nymphs and satyrs, and he eventually does... illegally.

Personality & relationships

Dionysus is very outgoing and funny. He’s kind to everyone around him (not discriminating against nymphs, satyrs or mortals), but he can get very emotional very fast. He gets easily annoyed, which will prob just result in some unwanted vines around the house and a grumpy look, but the moment he gets mad is when everything falls apart (wrath form). Anger issues + no control over powers = no good.

He sees Demeter as a mother and Persephone and the nymphs as older sisters, while Silenus and the other satyrs served as fathers. His favorite brother is Hermes who kept an eye on him during his entire childhood and still cares deeply for him. He also has an interesting relationship with Apollo, he is very scared and intimidated by him (I understand why lol) but wants to start a friendship. Except for the fact that Apollo already has a soft spot for him, Dionysus is just oblivious to it. Ares is also scary and kinda mean, but he likes Dionysus and cares for him. He’s very indifferent towards Zeus, Hera hates him (he hates her too) and everyone else is pretty neutral, considering he doesnt know a lot of people outside of the nymphs and satyrs.

Powers

Dionysus is a fertility god (which in this universe doesnt mean that much), this means he has powers over vegetation (like Demeter) and mortals’ desires (like Aphrodite). Being the god of madness also means that he can make people so mad to the point of committing atrocities and completely losing their minds. In his true form, simply looking at him can lower your sanity. He also has the powers all the other gods have, like changing forms, cursing and blessing people, being summoned by mortals, etc. 

That’s all I have the energy to write rn. I tried to replicate the LO art style, and honestly I really liked the result! Hope you guys liked it too <3

(Also, Dionysus would be around his 20′s when the story takes place. He is Pansexual and is still confused about his gender but he’s fine with any pronouns).

[skyflyinginaction]

Kingdom Hearts Destiney Trio Character Design Analysis

This is another character design post based on Kingdom Hearts. I said before that Kingdom Hearts is a convoluted game. It's mainly because how it's just so much to remember so it is difficult to compile everything in his post. This is going to be taken from interviews or design notes from the creator. 

I wanted to talk about the main Kingdom Hearts trio Sora, Riku, and Kairi. Their names mean sky, ocean, and land respectively. The meanings in their names might have been obvious but in Japanese, the important thing is the context in which those names' meanings are used in Japanese. Knowing Nomura he puts as much meaning in the games as possible the same can be said with the trio's names.

The sky, ocean, and land are components that make up the world. These three act as the basis of the worlds we live in, worlds are an important terminology in Kingdom Hearts Sora, Donald, and Goofy travel around worlds fighting heartless and places where one resides and calls home. The meanings in the trio's name note their close relationship with each other, their importance to each other, and the importance of the friends that make up their worlds; they are each other's world so to speak. 

Sora

You can’t talk about Riku and Kairi without talking about Sora, the main character of the series. The series started with him and his character design goes through the most changes in the series. When he goes to many worlds he takes on different forms to suit the world he is in. Sora goes through numerous changes in the series; this is seen best in his design; the character design notes his growth and change in the series.

Name:

Sora's name in Japanese means “sky, (空)” it references his role and personality he displays that being his adventurous spirit, cheerful, bright, friendly, and light-hearted personality and he can easily make friends due to his outgoing personality and he seems to look at the bright side of things. 

There is something to how it's used in the game: sky is referred to as heaven's source of goodness sky where the light comes from references to the goodness in Sora’s heart that has the power to mend the hurting. The sky connects all worlds as sort of an interdimensional pathway that Sora uses to travel to worlds to fight heartless and seal keyholes. There are many worlds but they share the same sky which can mean they share the same Sora. This can refer to the people connected to Sora’s heart, hence the same sky. 

Design:

Tetsuya Nomura designs his characters based on their names and outfits related to their personalities the same is said about Sora, Nomura created Sora’s design based on Sora’s cheerful outgoing personality. Sora has spiky hair in his design. This is a Nomura-styled character art so having spiky hair characteristics is a signature of Tetsuya Nomura.  

When it came to designing Sora Nomura placed roundness in his designs and designed Sora with soft curves to fit with the Disney universe art style in which soft curves reflect Disney's style. Sora has soft curves to match Donald and Goofy. He is traveling with Donald and Goofy so he would be designed to match them. 

Why the designs of Kingdom Hearts characters designs look deformed because they capture that Disney cartoonish look so you see more shapes in Sora's hair since it is a trademark of the cartoon art style that Disney has looking at Sora’s design has fewer details and triangle shapes in Sora hair it's simple not overly complicated much like the cartoon style Disney is known for.  

Mickey Mouse was originally going to be the main protagonist but Sora was created instead, Sora's clothes are based on Mickey Mouse Sora is wearing clothes similar to what Mickey is wearing in Disney with the red shorts, yellow shorts, and white gloves resembling Mickey's clothes. Sora’s base colors reflect the colors of Mickey Mouse; his colors are red, yellow, white, and black. 

An interesting detail in Sora’s character design is that he wears a crown necklace and has a crown chain hanging on his waist.  Sora wears a crown necklace which is prominent in all the designs; the crowns in his design are a reference to the crown logo in Kingdom Hearts fitting since he is the main protagonist of Kingdom Hearts. 

The blue eye color is a reference to the sky color being blue. 

Sora is a character created as a link between Disney and Squire Enix and his design tells.

Kingdom Hearts 2 clothes

Kingdom Hearts 2 Sora goes through another design as he matures throughout the series Kingdom Hearts 2 design is notably mature and it shows how much Sora as a character has grown.

In case you didn’t notice sora’s Kingdom Hearts 2 outfit has sharper edges the designs lost the soft curves and were replaced with sharker lines Nomura tried incorporating sharper elements in their designs how much they grew compared to the first Kingdom Hearts they appeared.

Sora’s hair has changed a lot which means that he grows more, his hair was pointed down as a kid now it's stuck outside. If you look at his design the spikes in his hair are more vertical. Sora now has lighting in his hair because of Roxas influence.

Sora's base color is black so Sora’s clothes have an entirely black color, his base color is used to contrast with Roxas base color white, nobody even his Kingdom Hearts 2 clothes are designed to contrast aside from Roxas black base reference to Mickey Mouse's own body which is colored black.

The designs in Kingdom Hearts 2 are slightly more realistic and more like Final Fantasy design.

Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance

For Sora’s clothes in Dream Drop Distance, his outfit is taken from the first game but has a few differences, black and red are Sora’s main colors, and it's prevalent in his clothes. dream drop distance primarily on growth it would make sense if they take us back to his look from the first kingdom hearts.

As I stated before black is a reference to Mickey Mouse's body and it shows up again in his clothes. 

There is a new detail in the design its sora has an x in the middle of his chest, x is a sigel that Xemnas uses with nobodies to make the members of the organization vessels of Xehanort mark the death of a self this is what Xehanort is planning to do to sora make him a vassal of Xehanort hence the death of his self this a foreshadow that Xehanort interferes with the exam. 

Kingdom Hearts 3 clothes

Sora’s Kingdom Hearts 3 clothes show how much Sora grew as a character And faced bigger challenges. 

Sora's clothes design is a mix of his Kingdom Hearts 2 clothes and Dream Drop Distances clothes his clothes are more sleek and sporty to reflect Sora’s new battle style that he moves around more sora does a lot more acrobatic action-oriented movements and his clothes show that. Since Kingdom Hearts 3 is a new game, Sora's Kingdom Hearts 3 outfit reflects that. 

The hair in Sora’s Kingdom Hearts 3 design is muted and his hair points back, the bits that are used to stick outside or folded back.

If you look at Sora’s hair from the top view in Kingdom Hearts 3 it's shaped like a crown. This is unintentionally from Nomura, the use of crowns in the game references Kingdom Hearts.

His current design is from Kingdom Hearts 2 clothes might have some Roxas influence in them if you put Roxas and Sora Kingdom Hearts 3 clothes together you can tell that parts of his clothes are taken from his like the plaid is a reference to the light and darkness motif a callback to Roxas wristband.

Sora’s clothes in Kingdom Hearts 3 are red and black, black to reference his Kingdom Hearts 2 clothing base color his Kingdom Hearts 3 clothes are black it's just the graphics make his clothes gray. 

Sora has buttons on his clothes the button is a reference to the buttons that Micky Mouse has on his shorts, Sora 3 buttons on his jacket are a reference to the 3 in Kingdom Hearts 3. 

Sora’s design looks more realistic and more defined as compared to his design in Kingdom Hearts 2. 

Here is an interesting detail I want to mention it's about Mickey Mouse, Mickey's clothes in Kingdom Hearts are based on what Soras wears in the game which would make sense since Sora is designed after Mickey Mouse this is used to resemble what Sora wears in the game this is a clever reference to the fact that sora is based on mickey mouse mikey had the same clothes to match Sora. 

Riku 

Okay, the next design to discuss in the trio is Riku, Sora’s best friend aside from Kairi. Riku’s design, much like Sora's, goes through numerous clothes changes due to his character development in the games. Riku goes through a lot of growth across the series and the clothes in his design prove that. 

Name:

Riku’s name in Japanese means "land, (陸)” Land is one of the components that make up the world land is associated with being strong and unmovable this can reference Riku’s newfound strength and resistance towards the darkness and desire to have the strength to protect those who matter like his friends Riku and Kairi.

Unmovable can infer how Riku is steadfast in his convictions demonstrated in how he is determined to wake up Sora no matter what form he takes and his ambition to travel to other worlds. 

The land is a common feature in all the worlds, landforms are the physical core of all the worlds this notes Riku’s personality being that Riku is more mature, grounded, and realistic compared to his other friends. 

Design:

Riku is drawn as an old-fashioned rival character, rival designs have a contractional design their rival is the same is said with Riku whose entire design heavily contrasts with Sora’s. He is created based on the series' main theme of being able to choose light and darkness so it would make sense that he is created to contrast Sora.

Riku is designed to balance Sora, he is created as a foil in Sora’s which is seen in his design If you put the characters together you can tell how much they contrast one another, even their clothes show contrast, Riku has long hair to Sora’s spiky short hair, sora wears a jacket and Riku wears a sleeveless shirt. Riku’s color scheme contrasts with Sora’s color scheme where Riku's main base color blue contrasts with Sora's and the rest of the colors in Riku’s design contrast with Sora’s colors in his design.  

Riku’s eyes are green, this is a reference to what earth or land appears to have a green color.

Riku’s hair color is silver, Riku's silver hair is a clever nod to how he was possessed by Ansem before even took on his appearance in Kingdom Hearts 2 Riku’s silver hair references Ansem's gray hair notes his possession of Ansem, and his hair color foreshadowed that. 

Riku is ashamed of his actions in the first game which still haunts him until Dream Drop Distance, Ansem references his darkness Ansem haunts Riku in the form of his darkness until Riku reconciles with his darkness in Dream Drop Distance. 

Riku is close to a final fantasy protagonist or a Squire Enix-style character due to the fact he plays a worried protagonist and it shows well. 

Kingdom Hearts 2 clothes 

I don’t know what to say about Riku’s clothes in Kingdom Hearts too other than his clothes follow the same pattern that I previously mentioned His clothes are still made to contrast Sora he has a similar color scheme to Sora The white in Riku’s jacket contrasts to soras black base color. 

Riku’s hair becomes long in Kingdom Hearts 2. This could infer how he is trying to control the darkness his hair is the last thing to think about. 

Riku looks much more mature and cool in his Kingdom Hearts 2 design. 

Dream Drop Distance

Time for Riku’s design one thing to notice is Riku’s short hair, his hair is altered in Dream Drop Distance and is focused on Riku’s growth in the series. I think there wouldn’t be the best way to show his growth by cutting off his long hair. growing long and then getting cut off in a new style is symbolic of a new beginning. 

Riku’s clothes in Dream Drop Distance resemble his Kingdom Hearts 2 and the first game outfit his shirt resembles his jacket from Kingdom Hearts 2 and his pants come from his Kingdom Hearts 2 clothes. His appearance is back to what he appears in the first game. This game is a reference to Riku’s growth so that would make a reference to it.

Riku has a dream eater symbol on his back this notes that he is Sora’s dream eater Riku is Sora’s dream eater he's supposed to protect Sora from nightmares and shows up to wake him a reference to Riku’s true wish which is to protect the things that matter in his case it's Sora so Riku being Sora’s dream eater is fitting. He is protecting Sora from a distance. 

Kingdom Hearts 3 clothes

Riku gets a new outfit in Kingdom Hearts 3 Riku’s clothes are black and blue with a yellow accent on his shoulder blue is widely dominant in his Kingdom Hearts 3 clothes this is in contrast to Sora’s black and red base color in his clothes.

Riku’s new clothes design is made to match Sora's clothes in Kingdom Hearts 3, they share the same chequered pattern which is a reference to the close relationship that the three have. 

Kairi

Last but not least the third of the trio: Kairi, the girl with whom Sora has strong feelings.

Name:

The “Kai” in Kairi’s name means "ocean,海” in Japanese, “ri” has no meaning to it in particular “ri” was added to her name because Nomura felt “Kai” wasn’t feminine enough. 

When I look up what “ri” means in English there is one kanji that comes to mind it's “里”, which means village. “ri” is another way to say village in Japanese and if you put her name together it means ocean village this can reference to how she lived on destiny islands. the context of the kanji for “ri” not only comes from the village but is used in the context to mean one's hometown. Kairi is Sora’s home the person that Sora is going back to, a village among the ocean where you hear ocean waves evoke nostalgia and peace which is what she is to Sora, Kairi is the girl Sora has strong feelings towards and gives him peace she is the wildfire that eats soras anger as Saix puts it. 

The ocean plays a part in Kairi’s role and personality in Kingdom Hearts, the sea is home to all life forms, a reference to how Kairi is Sora’s home as I previously mentioned. There is a lot of symbolism with the ocean that has to do with Kairi’s personality of nurturing and caring. This can infer how she cared about her two friends Sora and Riku and how she helps others. The ocean connects to the world; this references how Kairi can connect to others in the series like Namine and aqua. The ocean is the bridge between the worlds this references Riku’s and Sora’s goal to save her in the first game the ocean acts as a bridge between the lands which infers how Kairi helped Sora see Riku in his Ansem form connecting them again.

The ocean symbolizes purification and healing; it references Kairi being the princess of heart. She heals others like how Kairi saved Sora many times in the series, able to return Sora to his form when he was heartless and helped Axel steadily restore some of his memories of Xion she saved Sora not physically but through his heart.

The ocean reflects the sky, the horizon is where the sky and sea meet; this refers to Sora and Kairi's inseparable connections. Kairi serves as a motivation throughout his journey. 

Nomura wanted to depict her personality against Sora, Riku and her past in Radian Garden Kairi is the exact opposite of her friends in many ways. 

Kairi is a special individual you think that might be her princess of heart power but that is not it, Kairi recognized Sora when he was heartless just like she saw Riku through their Ansem form. Kairi was initially frightened about the prospect of training with Axel but was able to make peace with it to befriend Axel despite the fact he kidnapped her. She can make peace with Axel; she saves Sora and the other guardians by using the power in her heart to hold on to and believe in Sora; faith and belief are products of the heart, a reference to why Kairi is a princess of heart; she has that sort of strength. 

This might be what Nomura meant that Kairi is the strongest person on the island, not a reference to Kairi’s princess of heart powers but that Kairi has a powerful inner strength. 

Design:

Kairi is drawn as somewhat of a tomboy with short hair and active clothes references that, her clothes reflect that she is a country child since she lives on the islands. 

One notable thing about her design is how it references the game, Kairi hair is an homage to Utada Hikaru the one who provided the theme song for Kingdom Hearts, kairi hairstyle that changed throughout the series is credited to Hikaru Utada. The clothes that Kairi wears in the first game are taken from Hikaru which serves as a basis Kairi’s clothes are based on what Hikaru puts as much meaning as possible and he references certain people when he designs his characters.

Kairi has blue eyes in her character design, a reference to the ocean whose color is blue. 

Kingdom Hearts 2 clothes

Kairi had a different design in Kingdom Hearts 2 Kairi became a bit more mature because she is at the Age when girls grow a lot faster than boys.

Kairi is noticeably a lot more feminine in her design, pink is Kairi's image color, it's the color of femininity. Kairi wears a pink one-piece dress and has long hair and ribbons on her heels; this makes her look much more feminine than her first design in Kingdom Hearts.

The one-piece dress and the white can be a reference to her nobody Namine who wore a white one-piece dress.

Kingdom Hearts 3 clothes

Kairi has a brand new design in Kingdom Hearts 3, her clothes in her design are made to align with Sora's clothes are made to match Riku and Sora this is a reference to the trio's close bond to each other and her close bond to Riku and sora is referenced again in the chequered pattern in her clothes.  

Kairi’s pink dress is her image color that carried over from the second game as well as the hoodie too passed on in her design in the game. 

There was one interesting detail in her hoodie. In her design it has cat ears on her hood, They are folded ears from a Scottish fold cat this is a reference to Chritihy. The car ears on Kairi’s hood are not cat ears but Chirithy ears not just in the game but in the concept art as well. You see the ears in Kairi’s concept art.

Chirithy are dream eaters who bond to the wielder to oversee them and their progress and help them where they may they act as guidance of sorts Chirithy is a guardian to the player this might be a reference to the fact that Kairi is one of the 12 guardians Chirithy is a close companion to the player this references to her relationship with sora that she is close with sora Kairi is there to guide sora back like how a surrogate Chirithy would act to the player like she has always has done in the series when she saved Sora.

you can see how much Nomura put as much meaning as possible in her design and it shows.

[abwatt]

Diviners: what are you reading

Fortune tellers, diviners, tarotists, astrologers, geomancers, bones-throwers, rune-readers... what are you reading??

I’ve heard tell, recently, of someone who got a reading from a Tarot card reader. The client came in with questions about their business.... and the Tarot card reader answered with advice about the gods and spirits, and connecting with the ancestors.  They talked in numbers of disks and singular swords, and emperors and Devils.

Umm.

My friend was bewildered. And angry to be out $45.  And lacked advice — actionable advice — about how to manage a deteriorating relationship with a business partner.

OK, I get it — I myself have shelves that are bending and sloping under the weight of tarot card decks and books about astrology.  I have piles of workbooks and guides to being a better astrologer. And I’m certainly interested in gods and myths and legends of spirits, and how to do magic to make them help you get what you want.  If you’re anything like me, THAT’s on your bookshelves, too.

BUT.

I read eight to ten books about business — about sales, about administration, about marketing and advertising, about business design — every year.  I read two or three biographies of historical persons (partly to pick them apart for astrological purposes, partly because real people are interesting).  I read five to six books about magic, because you have to keep your skills and techniques up-to-date, and know whether or not you’re doing stuff right.  I read three or four books about history (ancient and modern) to have examples to draw on in consultations with clients.  I read four or five how-to books (and devour YouTube educational content) on sewing, embroidery, woodworking, and more, every year.  As my parents (and I) age, I’m reading more books about health and medicine, too.

And because I’m cis-, and white, and straight, and male, I read books by and about and for women, queer people, women of color, men of color.  I read books by non-Americans, too, and try to get a sense of the world beyond my state and nation: geopolitics, the economics of South America, the logistics routes that make T-shirts and jeans in the US possible.  

In ancient times, the laws of the city of Delphi, home of the most famous oracle in the Mediterranean, simply required that only a woman could sit on the tripod in the adyton and prophesy.  By the Classical era, it was required that she be a married woman with children, in her fourth decade — someone who knew something of the world, and knew its pitfalls and challenges, as well as its opportunities. 

Please don’t get me wrong — if you’re nineteen, or fifteen, and starting to learn a form of fortune-telling or divination, that’s fine.  You don’t have to be married and in your forties to start.  You don’t even have to wait for someone to give you a tarot deck or a pack of runes.  

But PLEASE —widen the horizon of what’s valuable knowledge for a diviner. It’s not just the official meanings of the cards in the little white book.  It’s ALL the other reading and information you’re carrying around in your brain: the things you learned in summer camp about making Friendship Bracelets and the class about computer programming; the obsessive binge-watching of every documentary about China you could find; the map you drew in your journal in math class of who was kissing whom; the lemonade stand you ran with your cousin during the family reunion; the book you borrowed from the library about how to write a novel.   Fortune-telling, divination, is a weird method for deciding what information you carry around in your head is relevant to a given conversation with a client or a friend.  But feed that head.  Locked up inside that head is a treasure-house of experiences, and the more you put in there, the more that you will be able to unfold to a client in the course of a consultation.

[mdhwrites]

I know you've criticized TOH's magic system as a whole before, but what are your thoughts on the actual types of coven magic themselves? (abomination, bard, beast keeping, construction, healing, illusion, oracle, plant, potions)

I mean, I like magic enough to like just about any school of magic. If I had any real issue with them it's that Bard is amongst them. I know that may seem weird but the rest are actually very specific, to a degree of being kind of... material. Illusion is the closest to being different but you still have a specific idea of what sort of spell is being cast, even if it falls into a more broad category than specifically plant instead of Earth (I'll get back to this point). Bard on the other hand? As far as we can tell in TOH, the biggest thing about it seems to be that it designates that you actually use a spellcasting focus instead of a spell circle but otherwise you can do as you please. Otherwise, why is it that they can literally summon storm clouds and lightning? Why is bard magic also akin to weather magic?

And that's kind of the issue I have with trying to actually talk about each. Do I like plant magic? Sure. Do I like construction magic? Sure. Why are these two different covens though when what seems to be the material different between the two is that one's power is flexible while the other makes concrete pillars? Maybe if we saw them actually use their magic for more than offense that'd be one thing but as it is, you have to wonder why they aren't one coven. Or hell, where do medicinal plants fall into this system? Do they not have potions of healing or potions of growth because they cross into another coven's territory?

And all of this excludes an evocation coven. In D&D, that's the school of magic that does fireballs but there IS NO FIREBALL COVEN!?

Sigh.

So yeah, it's kind of hard for me to judge them individually because most of them are just very basic. And that's just conceptually. If we go by what the show shows us: Potions: Boring and barely used.

Plant: SURE HOPE YOU LIKE VINES! And then one toxin despite the fact that you'd assume that was a potion coven thing.

Abomination: Definitely the coolest by asking what happens when you focus on golem making but also just does whatever the writer wants it to. Otherwise, why the fuck does it have a teleportation spell? Let alone one that doesn't require a golem. Also they never actually do anything with the golems they make except turn them into robots and that's not interesting.

Bard: Listed my issues above, especially since clearly much of its magic just does whatever, regardless of if you can hear it or not.

Healing: Pretty much not in the show.

Illusion: Fucked over by the show lying about it not being able to affect real objects and the show never actually does anything interesting with it and when it has fun with it, it's only once for the actual potential of the coven.

Beast Keeping: We see it only a couple times and it looks cool but is ill defined and doesn't seem to actually be familiar based. In fact, with how easy it seems to be for witches to call upon creatures and there being a super mode for it, it comes off as just an objectively better form of what abomination magic's main gimmick is.

Construction: Has the amazing fact of having power GLYPHS when glyphs are supposed to be Luz's thing and also they never come back. Otherwise, it's literally just stone pillars. Boring.

Oracle: We never actually see anyone tell the future or have future sight be a plot point of the show so entirely pointless. Otherwise, ghosts and telepathy, the latter of which seems to have been through an artifact and not through an oracle power, so again: Boring. Hell, the only thing we ever see one of their spirits do is attack like any old golem or beast so that's THREE covens where they effectively all do the same thing. Also the second coven who's primary color is purple.

And if you're going "Well, what about using them outside of the show?" I don't think that's a good question. It's MAGIC. It can do quite literally whatever the fuck you want. It is only limited by the rules of your setting and your imagination. As there effectively zero rules on what any of these covens can actually do, no power limits, it was only ever the limits of the creators.

And that only made it ever look like the creators lacked any creativity. Or, bare minimum, lacked interest in their magic to make it creative and distinct in anyway.

======+++++======

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.