#nobody hound me for it

[dnangelic]

skimmed LN vol 3 out of curiosity (no massive translation post just yet because i'd like to go back to it when i'm fresher-minded) but i do have some fun bullet points from the whole thing overall. for anybody who doesn't know the plot summary, the gist of the novel is dark and daisuke's next target is a pair of glass shoes, like cinderella's, only a cute lil girl (maho? more sugisaki-esque wordplay probably cause there's a lot of 'magic(mahou) isn't real you idiots/magic is very real you idiots' in this book) and her older brother named sagami who looks veeery similar to dark shows up and stuff starts happening.

dark trying to find a place to land so he can turn back into daisuke includes him, at one point, landing near a senior citizen area only for all of said senior citizens to turn out to be retired/ex-police officers that chase him waving around their walking sticks ready to beat and whack his ass

dark feeling a sharp, intense pain in his heart when daisuke worriedly suggests that hiwatari's methods are becoming more and more unlike himself and desperate. BUT even though he notices it, daisuke doesn't push on dark's reaction and dark too entirely ignores everything that just happened by changing the topic too to looking forward to seeing how cute riku is on the date they're supposed to head to. fucker

daisuke gives riku his shoes to wear and goes barefoot when her feet start hurting because she’s not used to wearing anything but sneakers!! riku gives in and puts them on from him because she knows he’d insist until she did.

dark tries to have a serious conversation with daisuke at one point but daisuke's only responding/talking and saying 'yeah' in his sleep until dark realizes it and YELLS AT HIM (MORONS (AFFECTIONATE))

or this part: [ 'i could carry riku myself.' sure, he might be smaller than the average boy his age but if it was for riku... 'if i were as tall and strong as dark and sagami, i'd be...' ] <- cut to dark 'maliciously laughing' and saying 'then you should've just transformed into me!' to which daisuke obviously calls a ridiculous suggestion

or this part. ['dark... i just don't want riku to feel bad because of me.' "---i'm the same way." daisuke was startled by the unexpectedly quiet voice. that's right, dark loves riku just like himself, but she hates him. i feel sorry for him, but it's weird for me to comfort him... as daisuke pondered this, dark continued. "---i want all girls to be happy." 'people hate me because of that kind of attitude!' feeling like he could see dark grinning instead of himself reflected in the glass, daisuke closed the curtains. (fucker x2)

‘you wouldn’t understand, because you’re not like other people.’ ‘naaaaturally.’ <- dark (fucker x3)

riku still has the camping picture she bought of herself and daisuke from the 2nd LN 😭!! the whole scene with her breaking the ice after daisuke's been trapped and transformed within it into dark's appearance, daisuke only regards as riku being 'desperate' and trying to save him from the 'nightmare' too. he hasn't actually brought himself to confess anything yet and still wavers in his insecurities over not being strong enough for riku and blames dark's existence for a lot of his unhappiness too in a harsh single line again, a la '[...] if dark weren't here, everything in the world would have been right'/all these problems could have been avoided

sagami 😭

sagami 😂

SAGAMI 😂😂😂

daisuke actually turns into dark at one point at school and promptly hides in a bathroom while casually being mistaken for sagami by saehara, sekimoto and risa. then when he jumps out a window and flies off they're all 'THAT WAS DARK?!?!?!'

sagami's sister is soooooo cute. she's around elementary school age and mistakes dark for a wizard (angels have gold hair and white wings, but you wear black clothes so you're a wizard!) AND dark also politely drops on a knee and treats her like a princess with complete sincerity and tenderness the whole entire time once they actually meet. the glass shoes light up different depending on whoever touches it (blue for a truth, red for a lie,) and when dark makes a straightforward promise to her about sagami's successful future the shoes light up a strong blue in response to him. ohhh i love dark so much scumbag KING

she also gives dark a surprise kiss on the cheek that 'feels like two cherry blossom petals' and fr he deserved that. all is right in the world

the next morning. 'my sister said she wanted to grow up to marry dark so now i'm getting a haircut.' SAGAMI!!!!! 😂😂😂

'i'll do my best to make sure that kaitou dark doesn't steal my work!' <- said playful statement IMMEDIATELY causing daisuke to stand up and respond without thinking 'in that case, i'll definitely go steal it.' IN FRONT OF HIS WHOLE CLASS!!

hiwatari very nearly did strangle dark and daisuke to an asphyxiated blackout if not flat out, outright, straight up death. that is a thing that happens. it does. and that was after psychic blasting wiz and dark with magic music to intense, excruciating pain already too. my god man. afterwards daisuke happily tells hiwatari good morning at school and hiwatari's described as surprised and hesitant at daisuke's greeting because yeah no kidding. fuckin. dai vc apparently: it's okay we're best friends so you try to kill me all the time!

honestly i think the second/snow queen LN is still probably my favorite holistically followed by the very first LN but this one really wasn't too bad either. the overall message is a pretty easy to digest 'just be yourself and don't run away from the potential of your future!' whether it's by trying to copy others while lacking legitimate self confidence or denying yourself/giving up by saying everything's hopeless and it's too late, and sagami isn't a bad character either for being quite literally a knockoff art-teacher dark with like, a real human life and siscon accusations. he's good burnt out college kid rep i like him, plus he actually got daisuke pissed enough to be described as looking/acting almost like dark (possessive-protective) for a page, which, nice. dark even gives sagami a whole entire little tough-love motivational spiel and simultaneously tells him to be proud of being capable of making 'good copies' and sagami grumbles about it all later too going like 'why should anybody even listen to that guy when he's a thief!!!' which like, okay, ungrateful, but funny.

in any case i'd very much like to implement the events of this LN too into my portrayal in whatever regards i can or feel like, so that's proooobably what i'll do!

[fluent-in-lesbianism]

I did a home visit with a client who had 3 pit bulls locked in the backyard and after I told her her kids had to go to relatives (meth labs in the house are a big no no) she literally opened her back gate to let her dogs out, but I was so focused on my phone calls arranging relative placements and writing up a safety plan that when I saw the dogs coming at me I just went, “hey babies! hey babies! are you good babies? you’re good babies! you’re all very good babies!’ and they all stopped at my feet and let me pet them so I continued doing my work not even realizing she fucking let them out on purpose I guess in the hopes they would maul me to death or whatever, the cops told me what she did after I was packing up to leave 😂 I was like ‘she did WHAT?!?!?’ I was so shocked lmao like wtf???

[gin-juice-tonic]

whooo wants more screenshots of stone butch blues

..

[tainbocuailnge]

there’s something melancholic about how much time caster cu just spent waiting. odin approached him in fuyuki like “shit’s fucked I know I don’t really go here but I need your help specifically” and he became a caster and then he waited in the burning ruins for however long it took for chaldea to arrive so he could help them on their way. after that he went to the british lostbelt, long before lostbelts were even on the menu, and waited in the ruined snowed-over belltower of orkney for however long it took for chaldea to arrive. years of just preparing and waiting when normally he was always the one who stepped in and handled it. first obtaining knowledge of the disaster odin foresaw and then of the previous life odin lived as tonelico’s ally, becoming something that has strayed just far enough from being cu chulainn that he prefers to go by grimm the wise instead now and only uses the name cu chulainn to identify himself to chaldea as the same person who helped them before.

cu chulainn is only ever himself but that self was not meant for a life of patiently waiting, he’s still himself but also a self that he never became, an old man who died before he grew old patiently waiting in a land that lived for 14000 years after it died. this too a passing fantasy anchored by a promise made to a fellow teenager knee deep in corpses with the world on their shoulders. i like that in fuyuki it was cu chulainn who was chaldea’s first ally because once long ago when he was their age he also awoke to find his peers dead and himself the only one left who could do something and that in avalon le fae he is grimm instead because the lost children have become battle hardened heroes and there is no need for cu chulainn to take to the field. like the nameless warrior who did not come with when he avenged the boy troops. i like that caster cu chulainn wishes he were his heroic lancer self but grimm is fine with how he is now, not someone his younger self wanted to be but still someone he can be proud to be.

[renegadeem]

That’s it! *Fallouts your Final Fantasy*

[syn4k]

cant wait to be an adult so that i can finally start being treated like a human being instead of a teenager

[flyawaybooks]

I went to my friendly local gaming (and comics) store today (somehow for the first time even tho they've been at this location for years) and guys they had SO many indie TTRPGS and zines (in variety if not in volume of stock per game). and when I checked out, the person at the counter was like. "yeah if you like indie RPGs come back in like two weeks cause we actually don't have that many in stock right now compared to usual" which made my heart go !!!!!!! and THEN the clerk got out some hollow metal dice from under the counter, which sound like MAGICAL FAIRY NOISES when you roll them together.

anyway I picked up Epitaph and Dwelling which are both about death and life but Epitaph does it so cozily while Dwelling does it so spookily and I love them both and can't wait to play some fucking games!!!

[redhotarsenic]

Desperately wish to leave home I wanna be GONE

[feralparsnip]

.

[dreamlogic]

...

[rosehearrt]

tag revamp pt. 1.

[maryqueenofmurder]

Obito trains Sasuke au

I can’t remember why I made this, just that I have a drawing of Madara hugging Obito and Sasuke.  I laughed myself silly calling it the most messed up family dynamic I’ve created.

-Zetsu is spying on the Uchiha and senses the fact that Sasuke is Indra’s reincarnation/has his transmigrant chakra.

-Zetsu sends Obito to investigate.  Someone who may eventually be capable of manifesting the Rinnegan would be a good pawn to keep an eye on.  Obito watches Sasuke learn the fireball jutsu at five and decides that he’d make a great fit for the Gedo Mazo.  Or some other plot of his.  Idk the Gedo Mazo is kind of… weird.

-Obito passes himself off as “Tobi”, an Uchiha with an orange facemask who meets Sasuke at a training field and offers to help with his training, as Fugaku and Itachi are too busy.  Sasuke is smart, but he’s also five.  “Tobi” is an Uchiha in Konoha, so Sasuke never even considers he could be dangerous.

-Itachi is off on an ANBU mission, and continually rejects training offers from Sasuke.  Which means it takes him a while to find out, and by then it’s too late.  “Tobi” isn’t shown to be malicious, Sasuke is already attached, and Fugaku has allowed it.

-Fugaku wasn’t happy but his duties as clan head and training Itachi as a shinobi/clan heir takes up too much of his time to properly train Sasuke as well.  Sasuke may not be the clan heir but it would be shameful for him to be left untrained, so they let “Tobi” do it.  Fugaku doesn’t turn “Tobi” in as an Uchiha in Konoha when he shouldn’t be because Fugaku really doesn’t like the Third Hokage at the moment.

-Another reason Fugaku doesn’t rat out “Tobi” is because Fugaku knows about the discrimination the Uchiha face and doesn’t want to force “Tobi” into living in the Uchiha compound.  Also because he’s a teenager (Obito is 19 when Sasuke is 5) who appears to have been the victim of kekkei-genkai theft.  Poor Fugaku is just too sympathetic.

-The massacre still happens, Obito just makes sure his Madara persona can’t be traced back to “Tobi”.  “Tobi” isn’t in Konoha the night of the massacre, and Itachi doesn’t intend to kill him because he was an outsider who had no knowledge of the coup.

-”Tobi” often visits the Uchiha Compound, basically living there with Sasuke.  The Third Hokage looks the other way/doesn’t look too deep into it because he feels bad about being involved in the death of Sasuke’s family.  Danzo has been very pointedly told to stay away from Sasuke and everything involving him by both Itachi and the Third Hokage.

-Teleportation powers are incredibly helpful to Obito as he continues to run the Akatsuki/be shadow Mizukage.  Also in evading Konoha security.

After Sasuke graduates from the academy but before he becomes a genin “Tobi” tells him the truth about the massacre and provides proof.  Or at least tells him why Itachi did what he did.  “Tobi” says that he told Sasuke now and not earlier because with a sensei and teammates Sasuke actually has a very slim chance at killing Itachi.

-Also “Tobi” purportedly doesn’t want Sasuke bound to a village that ordered the death of his people.  He didn’t tell him before because he didn’t want Sasuke to slip up and end up murdered by Danzo.  Or do something else equally unwise because he’s a child.

-Sasuke leaves some very pointed papers detailing why he was leaving and his headband pinned to his door with a kunai.  Then he joins the Akatsuki.  Kakashi fails his team because Sasuke didn’t show up.  The Sandaime and Kakashi go to Sasuke’s house together, and find the papers.  Kakashi discovers the truth of the massacre, and is assigned as ANBU agent Hound to go find him.

-Naruto and Sakura are given Sai as a teammate and assigned to Yamato.  Sasuke overcomes his trauma towards Itachi slowly instead of the 180 he did in canon.  He’s also relatively more mentally stable as he didn’t have to deal with Itachi’s retraumatization via Tsukuyomi, had support growing up, and didn’t just kill his final family member.  Being a relatively innocent/good 12-yr-old also means he doesn’t jump immediately to destroying the Leaf Village.

-When “Tobi” shows up to join the Akatsuki with his little brother in tow, Itachi immediately makes the connection “Tobi” = “Madara” and has the biggest “Oh crap” moment when he realized that not only was Madara Uchiha hanging around the Uchiha compound and Konoha for 2 years while Itachi was there, Itachi left his baby brother with Madara Uchiha.  For 5 yrs.

- 3 years later Itachi takes a fatal wound saving Sasuke.  Sasuke awakens the Mangekyo.  Itachi pulls him into a tsukuyomi where he explains that “Tobi” is actually “Madara” and helped with the massacre, as well as to take Itachi’s eyes.  Sasuke is very angry at “Madara” for lying to him and the audacity.

-Hound probably shows up at intervals throughout the story.  Just the most hilarious interactions between “Tobi” who btw uses the Tobi persona when around people other than Sasuke, and Hound the cold-as-ice ANBU agent.  Hound is losing btw.

-Sasuke gains the Eternal Mangekyo.  Events mostly play out in the same way as canon with the 4th great shinobi war.  Madara meets “Madara” who is revealed to be Obito, Naruto uses Talk-no-Jutsu on everybody he meets.  It is ineffective on Sasuke, who has a dramatic moment where he reveals the truth of the Uchiha Massacre to everybody.

-Madara + Obito + Sasuke have the unhealthiest dynamic ever, and Madara is mockingly overjoyed to have a great-grandson.  The reason Sasuke is on the battlefield is to prevent the apocalypse, yes, but also to kill Obito because Sasuke is blinded by grief.  And maybe Danzo as well.  Naruto and Kakashi plead for Obito’s life because he is “reformed” now.  Sasuke doesn’t care because reformed just means leaf dog to him.

-Obito accepts death for the wrongs he’s done to Sasuke.  Sasuke has another dramatic moment where he doesn’t kill Obito, saying that while he cannot forgive Obito, he cannot stop caring for him either and won’t kill him.  Danzo definitely gets murked though because he tries to do something super shady and Sasuke finds out about his arm of Sharingan.  Naruto and Sasuke save the world, like always, and Sasuke becomes the best missing-nin ever as he pursues his dream of revolutionizing the ninja world.

Pls let me talk about this ask me all the questions i know nothing

[mrbitches]

i think I’ll just use this to vent tbh

[ohnoitstbskyen]

re: Somerton

Not for nothing, but I think we should remember that James Somerton's fans and subscribers are normal people, just like you. They are people who received his output in good faith, and extended to him a normal amount of grace and benefit of the doubt, which he took advantage of.

I don't think it's helpful to respond to the exposé on Somerton with sentiments along the lines of "wow, how could anyone ever think THIS GUY'S videos were any good, ha ha ha, how did he ever get subscribers?" because 1) you have the substantial benefit of hindsight and a disengaged outsider perspective, and 2) it's a rhetoric that creates a divide between you (refined, savvy, smart, sophisticated) and Somerton's audience (gullible, unrefined, easily taken advantage of, terrible taste), which is a false divide, with a false sense of security.

Somerton's success happened because he stole good writing. He found interesting, insightful, in-depth work done by other people, applied the one skill he actually has which is marketing, and re-packaged it as his own. He targeted a market which is starving for the exact kind of writing he was stealing, and pushed his audience to disengage from sources that conflicted with him.

Hbomberguy makes this point in his exposé video: good queer writing is hard to find and incredibly easy to lose. The writers Somerton stole from were often poor or precarious, writing freelance work for small circles under shitty conditions, without the means or the reach or the privileges necessary to find bigger markets. And, as Hbomb demonstrated, when people did discover Somerton's plagiarism, he used his substantial audience to hound them away and dissuade anyone else from trying to hold him accountable.

He stole queer writing by marginalized people, about experiences and perspectives that people are desperate to hear more about, and even if his delivery and aesthetics were naff, his words resonated with people because the original writers who actually wrote them poured their goddamn hearts and souls into it.

Somerton also maintained a consistent narrative of persecution and marginalization about himself. He took the plain truth, which is that queer people and perspectives are discriminated against, and worked that into a story about himself as a lone, brave truth-teller, daring to voice an authentic queer perspective, constantly beset by bigots and adversaries who sought to tear him down. As @aranock, who works with some of the people he targeted, writes in this post, Somerton weaponized whatever casual bias and bigotry he could find in his audience to reinforce his me vs them narrative (usually misogyny and various forms of transphobia), which is what grifters do. They find a vulnerable thread in a community and pull on it. And while you may not have the particular vulnerability that he exploited, you do have vulnerabilities, and they can be exploited too.

People felt compelled to support him, even if his work was sometimes shoddy, because he presented himself as a vulnerable, marginalized person in need of help, he pulled on that vulnerable thread.

Again, he has a degree in marketing, and just like propaganda, nobody is immune to marketing.

YouTube as a system is set up to push for more, constantly more. More content, more videos, more output, more more more more, and part of Somerton and Illuminaughty's success was their ability to push out large amounts of content to the hungry algorithm, even if it was of inferior quality. The algorithm rewarded their volume of output with more eyeballs and attention, and therefore more opportunities to find people who were vulnerable to their grift.

It is a system which quite literally rewards the exact kind of plagiarism that they do, because watch-time and engagement are easily measurable metrics for a corporation, and academic rigor is not. There is pressure to deliver, and a lot of rewards to gain from cutting corners to do it.

Somerton and Illuminaughty and Internet Historian are extreme and very obvious cases, so blatant that you can make a four hour video essay exposing what they've done, but the vast majority of this kind of plagiarism isn't going to be obvious - sometimes it might not even be obvious to the people who are doing it. Casual plagiarism is endemic to the modern internet, and most people don't get educated on what the exact boundaries are between proper sourcing and quoting vs plagiarizing. We had an entire course module at my university aimed at teaching students the exact differences and definitions, and people still made good faith mistakes in their essays and papers that they had to learn to correct during their education.

All of this to say: it is extremely easy in hindsight to call Somerton's work shitty and shoddy, his aesthetics flat and uninspired, and to imagine that as a sophisticated person with good taste and critical faculties, you would never be taken in by this kind of grifter. It is extremely easy to distance yourself from the people he preyed on, and imagine that you will never have to worry about your fave doing your dirty like that.

But part of the point of Hbomberguy's video is that plagiarism is extremely easy to get away with, and often difficult for the average person to spot and call out, and with the rise of AI tools blurring the lines even further, it is not going to get any easier.

So I think we should resist the temptation to think of Somerton's audience as people with bad taste and poor faculties. We should resist the temptation to distance ourselves from the perfectly normal people he preyed on. Many times in your life, a modestly clever man with a marketing degree has fooled you too.

On a personal note, by the same token, I am resisting the temptation to assume that I am too good to be vulnerable to the systemic pressures that produced Somerton and Illuminaughty. No, I've never made a video by word-for-word reciting someone else's work, but I know for a fact that I could do a better job of double-checking my work and citing my sources. I feel the exact same pressure to get a video out as fast as possible, I have the exact same rewards dangled in front of me by YouTube as a platform, and I can't pretend it doesn't affect my work. To me, Hbomb's video felt like a wake-up call to do better.

[sosquaresowhat]

I just had to reschedule a dentist appointment that was supposed to be tomorrow and this. Bitch.

My time off got declined bc I put it in too late so I just wanted to move my appointment to a Friday and the service rep was like "okay but what's the reason for the late notice?"

Like. Babes. It was Easter weekend and the start of a new quarter, my life has been on fire for the past 3 weeks that's why the late notice. It doesn't fucking matter either reschedule this apportionment or don't and I just won't fucking show up, there's a fee either way so who gives a shit.

[heartfullofleeches]

Dog Hybrid Mall Security Darling - A pup found rummaging through trashcans one night during inspection and taken in for a position as a member of security, later becoming the unofficial mascot of the mall for their sweet personality and friendliness. They aren't the greatest at their job as they can easily be persuaded with snacks from the food court, but nobody cares to point out areas of improvement as their gentle giant can do no wrong - and how can anyone say they're doing a poor job when looking in those big, gorgeous eyes. Most robberies are stopped if they beg enough anyway, and if they aren't whimpering always seals the deal.

They're cared for by nearly every shop owner in the mall. Pet groomers tend to their fur and claws, making them presentable for the crowd and often trying to sneak collars on them. Food vendors always leave some of their stock on standby to reward their hard work when they drop by. Anxious/overworked retail works are always soothed when Reader squeezes behind their desks and lets them pet them.

It's not widespread knowledge, but Reader never leaves the property when others do. They sleep in the backrooms of stores that leave out beds for them or in one of the breakrooms. Not one person has a problem with this, but a select few always attempt to get them into their car when heading home. Reader is a loyal hound and refuses, but sometimes the thought of a forever home as many offer is pleasant fuel for their dreams

-

Dog Security Reader: Please don't steal from our stores anymore :(

Yan Thief: ...

Dog Security Reader: 🥺

Yan Thief, dropping the thousands worth of stolen goods: ok.

-

Yan: Wanna go for a ride, puppy? Come on, get in the van-

Dog Security Reader: Ride?! :D... wait... [looks at the board of shoplifters] That won't work on me again, I'm mall property. Shame on you!

Yan, under their breath: damn... almost had them..

-

Yan: I'm completely stuffed and there's still one sausage of a stick left. Whatever shall I do?

[Dog Security Reader, sprinting from the third floor and the down escalator - mouth still full of treats they got from others]: Me! I can take it!