#oh also you can take all the point and inverse them it can make what is a positive ship community

[frenchgremlim1808]

How to spot a toxic ship community in somes steps

I have been apart of many toxic ship community before and after a certain time of interacting with them I started seeing a pattern. It's not like a scientific research or something's, I'm just a bored idiot but I thought it could be helpful

Before i start i just wanna clarify some point, being a fan of a ship who is sadly in a toxic community doesn't make you toxic (ex: you can ship komahina without being a toxic person). Any ships that i used as a reference in the post is not meant to be Taken as an insult towards you okay, it's just my opinion. No hate

Let's start :

1.They act like their ship is the only one who's important and better than the others

For exemple: -They seems to only care for their ship. -They would be able to sacrifice any characters or any ships for theirs to thrive. - They commit slander against other ships fan for no particular reason except being mean and acting like their ship is either a joke or not as interesting as theirs

2.They harass/dox people with differing opinions to them about the ship/characters

It can come in different ways, like for example doxxing address, bullying shippers who ships the character with somebody else, forcing their own opinions on others about the character/ship, harrass the actor/ actress for shipping a different ship or not shipping the ship in general ( wow that make me think of something, but what...,🧐)

3.They tend to make make problematic content for their characters

Okay, when I talk about problematic content, I don't really talk about sex. If both characters are consenting adults then everything's fine. I'm mostly referencing sex with minors characters. A lot of fandom tend to forget that the characters are under the legal age of either consent or maturity. That means they are children, which means it child porn. An example .... Bakudeku I don't need to explain myself.

Then we can see other problematic things like for example shits like abuse, yandere,torture ,obssesion which aren't the characters real personality but are implented in fics for being "sexy". But I think you get my point

Also just because some people did problematic things doesn't mean that the whole community is filled with psycho p*do, it's mostly about the numbers of people who do it.

4. THE +

This are the things that don't really make the community toxic in itself but combined with the other point can show you that's it's pretty toxic, in itself it's just cringe or annoying or just normal. No community is perfect so it's normal to have some of the trait I have mentioned and some I'm gonna mention now. Let's start:

They sexualize a lot the characters,they use one off the characters as a self insert for themself cause they just want to ship themself with them,the idolise the characters and put them on a pedestal, they act like the characters are perfect and did nothing wrong, if the characters are m/m or w/w they fetishize the relationship just because they're gay ( like treating all the gay character like uwus boy in skirt who always talk about sex, the mostly feminize them)/ they don't seem to accept other interpretation of the characters, they always tryies to bend the story for their own enjoyment and don't seem to accept the reality of what happened in the show / They seem to like the characters only for the fanon interpretation and not the canon one , etc

They're is probably more things so comment what you think I missed.

CONCLUSION:

If the ship in question check some af the dots doesn't mean that your ship community is toxic, I'm a byler and I know even tough my community is welcoming that were not perfect and we check some of these dots. But's that normal. Every community is kinda cringe. But like if the ship in question check all the dots I consider running. Don't interact to much with the community and stays with the sanes one.

Anyway I'm tired, for once I did an analysis, but the memes are coming back soon, I don't have my computer so you have to wait. ( You can use this in an argument just credit me)

-a french gremlim

[bobacupcake]

Can you do one about the Sea of Thieves water?

OK

so . there was a biiig long talk about this at siggraph one year!! you can watch that here if you'd like . in the time between me getting this ask and me fully recreating the water, acerola also released a great video about it . the biiig underlying thing they do and the reason why it looks so good is they are making a Really Detailed Ocean Mesh in realtime using something called an FFT (fast fourier transform) to simulate hundreds of thousands of waves, based on a paper by TESSENDORF

WHAT IS AN FFT - we'll get to that. first we have to talk about the DFT - the discreet fourier transform. let's say you have a SOUND. it is a c chord - a C, an E, and a G, being played at the same time. all sounds are waves!!! so when you play multiple sounds at the same time, those waves combine!!! like here: the top is all 3 notes playing together, so they form the waveform at the bottom!!

now if someone handed you the bottom wave, could you figure out each individual note that was being played? how about if someone handed you a wave of One Hundred Notes. you would think it would be very hard. and well, it would be, if not for the Discreet Fourier Transform.

essentially, there is a way to take a bunch of points on a waveform comprised of a bunch of different waves, add them all together, do some messed up stuff with imaginary numbers, that will spit back out at you what individual waves are present. i made a little test program at the start of all this: the left are the waves i am putting into my Big Waveform, the top right is what that ends up looking like, and all the little rainbow points on it are being sampled to spit out the graph at the bottom right: it shows which frequency bands the DFT is finding (here it is animated)

this has enormous use cases in anything that deals with audio and image processing, and also,

THE OCEAN

tessendorf is basically like, hey, People Who Are Good At The Ocean say that a buuuunch of sine waves do a pretty good job of approximating what it looks like. and by a bunch they mean like, hundreds of thousands to millions. oh no.... if only there was a way we could easily deal with millions of sine waves..........

well GREAT news. not only can you do the DFT in one direction, but you can also do it in REVERSE. if you were to be given the frequency graph of a noise for example, you could use an INVERSE DFT to calculate what the combined wave graph looks like at any given time. so if you were to have say, the frequency graph of an oceaaaan, for example, you could calculate what the Ocean wave looks like at any given time. and lucky for us, it works in two dimensions. and thats the foundation of the simulation !!!!!

BUT WAIT

as incredible as the DFT is, it doesn't scale very well. the more times you have to do it, the slower it gets, exponentially, and we are working with potentially millions of sine waves here

THE FAST FOURIER TRANSFORM here we are . the fast fourier transform is a way of doing the discreet fourier transform, except, well, fast. i am Not going to explain the intricacies of it because its very complex, but if you want to learn more there are a ton of good 30 minute long videos on youtube about it . but essentially, due to the nature of sine waves repeating, you can borrow values as you go, and make the calculation Much faster (from exponential growth to logarithmic growth which is much much slower, and scales very well at higher numbers). it's, complicated, but the important part is it's so much faster and the diagram kind of looks like the shadow the hedgehog story plot

so if we use the inverse FFT on a graph of a rough estimate of what frequency of waves in the ocean (called a spectrum, basically tells us things like how many small waves, how many big waves, how different waves follow the wind direction. sea of thieves uses one called the phillips spectrum but there are better ones out there!!) now we have our waves !!!!!!! we can also use another inverse FFT to get the normals of the waves, and horizontal displacement of the waves (sharpening peaks and broadening valleys) through some derivatives . yayy calculus

OK MATH IS OVER. WE HAVE OUR WAVES!!! they are solid pink and look like pepto bismol. WHAT NOW

i cheated a bit here they look better than not being shaded because i am using the normals to reflect a CUBEMAP to make it look shiny. i think sea of thieves does this too but they didnt mention it in their talk. they did mention a FEW THINGS THEY DID THOUGH

FIRST OFF - SUBSURFACE SCATTERING. this is where the sun pokes through since water is translucent. SSS IS REALLY EXPENSIVE !!!!!! so they just faked it. do you remember the wave sharpening displacement i mentioned earlier? they just take the value where the waves are being sharpened and this will pretty naturally show off the areas that should have subsurface scattering (the sides of waves). they make it shine through any time you are looking towards the sun. they also add a bit of specular ! sss here is that nice blue color, and specular is the shiny bits coming off the sun. the rest of the lighting is the cubemap i mentioned earlier, i dont know if thats what they use but it looks nice !!!!!

then the other big thing that they do is the FOAM !! sorry i lied. there's more math. last one. you remember the wave sharpening displacement i Just mentioned. well they used that to find something called the JACOBIAN and well im not even going to begin to try and explain what it means but functionally what it does, is when the jacobian is NEGATIVE it means waves are clipping into eachother. and that means we should draw some foam!!! we can also blur and fade out the foam texture over time and continuously write to it to give it some movement, and bias this value a bit to make more or less foam. they do both of these!!!

YAYYYYY !! OK !! THAT'S SEA OF THIEVES WATER!!!!! THANKS FOR WAITING ALL THIS TIME. you can see my journey here if you would like to i have tagged it all oceanquest2023

thank you everyone for joining me :) i had fun

[millytherat]

Reading through @badaziraphaletakes inspired me to make a post about reasons:

Why people tend to choose Crowley of Aziraphale, and, consequently, think Aziraphale is bad

This might be a long post, i'll cover some topics and i might get all over the place at some point! But please be patient! Can i get into it?

Inversion of values

When first watching Good Omens, you might expect a strong inversion of values, that Heaven is bad and Hell is good, angels are the oppresors and demons the victims

It is mostly religiously (religious trauma) motivated, aka "christianity is a fucking bullshit" motivated, to expect seeing the ones who calls themselfs good (Heaven, who we interpret as Christian religious figures) be actually bad (wich, in real life, they tend to be) and, the ones they cast out as evil and sinful (Hell, wich we interpret in this case as anyone the church calls sinful, like the queer comunity) to be good and innocent and just different, it makes us feel emphatic for them, even seeing that they are, indeed, bad

I believe some people just dont want to accept it, they want to believe the angels are inherently bad and the demons just questioned their bad ways

But they arent, if anything ALL angels and demons are naturally good and innocent, "oh but Gabriel!" He was naturally good, we saw it, the same with Michael and Uriel too, they're all just tainted by the strong grip Heaven demands for them to have; in episode 1 season 2, we see both Crowley (as starmaker) and Aziraphale being totally innocent and adorable, they're good by nature, no one in the story is actually evil

When this inversion of values we wish for isnt fulfilled, it might cause an annoyance, i know a lot of people who dont accept it, and just make it up because... well is expected!

Queerness

This was originally taken from a post of "Bad Aziraphale Takes"

Crowley is "more queer" than Aziraphale, at least thats how people see it as, in fics too, how many times Crowley gender is explored, with pronouns and labels and identities? While the more i saw for Aziraphale was a vulva or they/them pronouns, and never in a human au! Aziraphale is depicted and seem as a cisgender male

I have seem even people saying Aziraphale have internalized homophobia! I- how??

Found them! @theelastword made an ask on the "bad Aziraphale takes" blog that inspired this bit <3 thank you love

Need for a villain and favorites

As we saw, people that hate Aziraphale choose to see Heaven as evil, as the villain, and that is also followed by many people who dont hate Aziraphale! Well, might i say that... we dont have a real villain in Good Omens? The angels arent evil for wishing to follow what they believe to be God's plan, nor for deminishing humanity- but i'm getting ahead of myself here!

The need to see Heaven as inhetently bad, the big bad villain, makes people see Aziraphale, going back there "freely", hurting Crowley's feelings, saying Hell/demons are the bad guys (wich they ARE?? There is not an inversion of values!) As him being evil, as him going to the side of the villain instesd of choosing Crowley, going back to CROWLEY'S abusers, not his, not theirs, Crowley

I do believe humans have a natural need to have favorites, when you're a kid is always "wich caracther of this cartoon am i?" and later is always "wich do i relate to more? Wich do i like more?", and people choose Crowley for all those reasons above and probally some personal ones too

So! As a small conclusion:

People choose to prefer Crowley, they choose to see Crowley as better because he's a "good demon", he's the victim that fell from Heaven and hates Hell, he's the queer caracther, he's kind and genuine and helps Aziraphale and have a car he loves

Because of the idea that Aziraphale is: A) opposite to Crowley; B) an Angel! (The abusers! The bad guys! The evil!); C) a BAD angel for that matter, he's selfish and mundane and comes across as rude to Crowley (because he acts so fucking autistic too!); people tend to DISLIKE Aziraphale, small simple minded people, but people nonetheless

I know the whole post is a bit over the place, it might sound confusing here and there, but i really wanted to put all this together to try and understand why people hate Aziraphale

I though maybe this can give a small input on why people think like that, it sures helps me to understand how they think that and what they mean by their terrible takes! I guess is mostly them being naive

Oh! You know how in the 2000's the media was demonizing femininity by having blond, pink, feminine villains in their high school romances? How we, to this day, tend to see feminine girls as fake, vulgar, naive, etc? How most teen girls go through a "not like other girls phase" because of that?

Same principle! Is the same reason for why they see Heaven and Aziraphale as evil

I hope someone can appreciate this lil silly thoughs put together <3

[antialiasis]

Chess (2018 Kennedy Center revival)

So I was just going to briefly mention all the other different versions of Chess I have consumed in the big essay post I’ve been writing on and off, but there was just too much to say about this one which made it really awkward to fit it in, so fine, here is another individual chesspost. Nearly 7500 words of rambling under the cut, oh my god.

This production represents the latest official full overhaul of Chess. It sports an all-new book written by Danny Strong, also known as the actor who played Jonathan on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which is some whiplash (Sarah Michelle Gellar is apparently a big Chess fan, too). It was later staged again as a concert with some further modifications in 2021, but I listened to an audio bootleg of the 2018 version. (There exist some videos of it online, but only scattered bits.)

The Story Changes

This version has London’s basic plot structure with the distinctive two chess tournaments (this time four years apart, which is neither the original number nor the actual number of years between world chess championships), but rearranges Act I, adds a lot more quippy dialogue and swearing, reinterprets the characters, and recenters real-world politics in the whole thing — sort of the exact inverse of what Chess på svenska did with the material. It opens with “Difficult and Dangerous Times” to set the scene in the Cold War and features the Arbiter narrating with sardonic omniscient commentary between songs/scenes throughout, which does feel a bit more consistent than the Arbiter suddenly having a narrator role for the duration of one song in Act II.

All the main characters in this version are reinterpreted with significant new background context, which is a very interesting way to rewrite it that I definitely dig in principle. For example, Florence’s first scene here involves Walter threatening her with deportation from the US unless she can make Freddie behave for the duration of the tournament. Most versions of Chess make the political scheming very symbolic and vague — exchanges of mostly unnamed political prisoners or handwaved concessions — but this version is noticeably specific, with specific nuclear arms treaty negotiations that the CIA believes would be negatively affected if Freddie keeps openly antagonizing the Soviets. She tells Walter to go fuck himself (told you it adds more swearing) and that nobody can control Freddie Trumper, but ultimately she doesn’t have much of a choice but to reluctantly play along. This addition recontextualizes her character and her interactions with Freddie in Act I a fair bit — it’s pretty significant, after all, that she is under threat and may lose her home if she doesn’t somehow control what she really can’t.

Meanwhile, Freddie himself here suffers from a full-on mental illness which he takes medication for. Walter asserts on a phone call early that they’re dealing with a “genuine paranoid schizophrenic”, but then later calls him a “bipolar bitch”; I take the blatant inconsistency combined with the obviously insulting nature of these remarks to mean probably we’re not meant to take either of them at face value, but these two lines from Walter are the only ones suggesting any specific diagnosis. (I unfortunately suspect Danny Strong didn’t have a specific condition in mind and research it so much as just slap him with a Generic Ambiguous Mental Illness for which he takes Pills.) One way or another, Freddie’s ambiguous mental illness gives him bouts of intense paranoia, driving him to do things like trashing his and Florence’s hotel room to look for listening devices at one point. Florence keeps insistently, frustratedly telling him to just take his goddamn pills even as he’s in genuine distress; it’s pretty uncomfortable, and also definitely one of those things that are at least more human when his episodes could cost her the only home she has: she’s desperate and in distress too.

(I do kind of feel as if this whole bit would make more sense if Florence and Freddie had a strictly business relationship here to start with, instead of being explicitly portrayed as a couple — when they have a committed intimate partnership going on, one would think Florence getting deported would also be pretty obviously significant for Freddie, and Florence quietly playing along with the CIA and crossing her fingers that she can indirectly coax him into behaving with seemingly no serious thought given to whether it’d be better to just tell him why he needs to stop feels stranger. The scene with Walter sounds like Walter/the CIA are not aware of their romantic relationship and Florence wants to keep it that way — they both refer to Freddie strictly by his full/last name and as “her player” — so I guess Walter would have assumed she wouldn’t tell him, but surely the calculus would at least look a bit different to Florence herself. Even if it just prompts her to realize Freddie would still be liable to react by becoming even more erratic and vocal about his paranoias, that feels like it’d be significant enough, at least for her feelings on this relationship going forward, that it never actually coming up or being suggested within the story starts to feel marginally odd. Not a major complaint, though, just a bit of overthinking.)

Freddie in general is noticeably portrayed much more sympathetically here than usual throughout. Where other versions of Chess tend to present Freddie as an attention-seeking drama queen who plays up ludicrous arbitrary demands for money and press, here things like his walkout from the first chess game are made to come from a much more genuine place: he has major sensory issues and is intolerably thrown off balance by distracting noise and lights (which really are deliberately arranged to sabotage him). “Florence Quits”, the song with the misogyny verse, usually reads as being triggered by his jealousy and inability to accept that Anatoly’s just playing better than him, but this version makes it feel more about how he feels persistently gaslit about the ways he’s being sabotaged than anything else: he accuses the Soviets of having a hypnotist in the front row to throw him off (which they do, and Freddie literally saw him and recognized him) and Florence of working for the CIA (which she has been, if not by choice) while they deny it and brush it off, and the tense opening notes of the song play under him desperately yelling “You’re lying to me! You’re all lying to me!” (Which doesn’t make the misogyny okay, obviously, but it does make it feel more like a desperate, paranoia-fueled lashout where you don’t know how much he really means all that.)

When he subsequently forfeits the match against Anatoly, he makes a speech that sounds absolutely despairing where he says chess has been taking a toll on his health since he first became champion at eleven years old, and he doesn’t feel he can trust anyone, even himself. In Act II, before “The Interview”, he even actually apologizes to Florence for how he treated her; heck, his motivation for going so hard after Anatoly in “The Interview” itself is portrayed as being that he is genuinely disgusted by Anatoly leaving his family so callously (which is a lot of fun given Freddie’s own issues about his father leaving him and his mother behind) and wants Florence to hear the truth about what a despicable man he is, which is still unpleasant to her but clearly comes from a much more sympathetic place than either simple spite or reluctantly complying with Walter’s orders.

As for Anatoly… he was taken from his parents when he was a small child to be groomed by Molokov and the KGB into becoming a chess champion, and he’s well aware from his very first scene that the state had killed the previous Soviet champion after Freddie unseated him. (Freddie excoriates the press early on for not covering why the former champion disappeared off the face of the Earth because they’re too busy bashing Freddie, which sounds like paranoia, but the narrative has actually told us Freddie is right and they really did execute him but no one but Freddie seems to notice or care — another way in which Freddie is jarringly sympathetic here. In general, Freddie is portrayed as paranoid, and the other characters treat him like he’s just paranoid, but the narrative keeps proving Freddie’s paranoia right.)

Anatoly, though, isn’t afraid of the same fate, because “The state cannot execute a man… that is already dead.” (This general sentiment could press my buttons, but it just feels super corny and melodramatic the way it’s presented and performed, especially with that dramatic pause in there.) He is deeply depressed, thinks his marriage to Svetlana is fake and his kids hate him, and says repeatedly in Act I that he hates chess and just wants to be free of it, though he also describes a particular championship match he watched as the only time he’s felt love. At the end of Act I, he defects to the UK along with Florence as usual (his defection fully blows up the treaty Walter was worrying about despite Anatoly’s victory, so Florence’s refugee visa is indeed revoked, and that’s why they end up in the UK). Theoretically he should be free of chess now, but it bothers him intensely that he only won by forfeit (here they never finished playing a single match), resulting in him returning to defend his world champion title, and win it ‘properly’, four years later in Bangkok against Viigand.

Unknown to Anatoly, by Act II, after the election of Ronald Reagan, the Soviets are extra on edge and believe a planned NATO military exercise is actually the US mobilizing for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union. Walter tries to convince Molokov it’s just an exercise; Molokov insists unfortunately the generals are going to believe it’s an invasion and be ready to retaliate unless Viigand wins the championship (if Viigand wins they will take it as a ‘sign of goodwill’ from the US, which will change their minds on the apparent invasion because, uhh, unclear). Throughout Act II, the larger stakes in this version are set up to be that if Anatoly should win the match, the Soviets are liable to start a nuclear war.

Does Walter go to Anatoly to frankly tell him that apparently the Soviets have lost their minds and are basically threatening nuclear war over a chess match and try to convince him to throw on that basis? Does Molokov realize that if he’s telling Walter to go rig the chess match so the generals will call it off, he clearly doesn’t actually believe that the US is about to invade, so probably he should be trying to convince the generals not to go for the nuclear option himself? No, of course not; this is Chess, so we have to have the songs that are in Chess. So instead, Walter and Molokov just go through the same indirect schemes as usual to unbalance Anatoly and convince him to throw the game, with some minor twists. Molokov actually actively threatens Svetlana with being sent to a gulag to die if she doesn’t convince her husband to return — and Svetlana does straight-up tell Anatoly this, only for Anatoly to brush her off and tell her they won’t do that. Florence learns the same from Walter and initially dismisses him, and fully doesn’t believe him about her father being alive, but does ultimately sympathize with Svetlana and worry for her, which I like. But Anatoly is obsessed with winning this championship above all else and fully convinced Molokov is bluffing.

In the end, he plays the game to win, oblivious to the nuclear threat; as he checkmates, Walter makes a desperate phone call to his superiors to call off the training exercise. (Why he didn’t just do that immediately when Molokov told him the Soviets were taking it as an attack, instead of spending all this time playing along with this elaborate chess mind game, is a mystery.) Only… they don’t, and the Soviets watch with their fingers on the nuclear button, but ultimately they don’t fire. The Arbiter’s narration informs us this was the closest the world ever came to destruction, even closer than the Cuban missile crisis, and that this then served as the wake-up call that prompted negotiations about nuclear deescalation.

Anatoly, meanwhile, returns to the Soviet Union as usual, this time successfully exchanging himself for Florence’s imprisoned father, and Walter gives the two of them visas so that they can return to the US together.

Broad thoughts

I feel profoundly weird about the mixing of real-life history and completely fictitious alternate history here — you can’t just assert in narration that the fictional events in your musical were what taught the US and Soviet Union that maybe they should just talk to each other, while making a specific comparison to an actual thing that really happened, after spending the musical asserting that the Soviets murdered chess players for losing the world championship. I think mixing history and fiction can work fine if we can imagine that for all we know this is what really happened, or alternatively that this is what might have happened in some alternate universe similar to but distinct from ours. But here, we’re creating highly significant and publicized events that are obviously fictional, making it absurd to pretend this is what really happened, while also presenting these fictional alternate-universe events in objective hindsight narration alongside real events that happened in the real world and as a supposed cause of them. This ending narration just feels like it’s weirdly trying to have its cake and eat it too.

All in all, though, I think this is definitely one of the most interesting efforts to rewrite Chess. It definitely has something it’s going for, there are several neat ideas in it, and in particular I appreciate that it tries to give extra attention to the characters, more context to their actions, and more messy, humanized depth, inner conflict, and complicated motivators and stressors behind what they do. I genuinely enjoy what it’s doing with Freddie in Act I, in particular, even though it feels somehow both jarringly like it’s woobifying him (I genuinely think he ends up coming across as the most sympathetic of the three mains here, with so much of his erratic, childish and unpleasant behaviour being recontextualized to be more understandable and the way his hatred of the Soviets keeps being validated by the narrative) and like the narrative is weirdly harsh on him (this much more sympathetic Freddie who suffers from an actual mental illness is treated like absolute irredeemable scum by every other character including the fourth-wall-leaning narrator, even more than usual).

I also think the restructuring of Act I was pretty solid for the most part, though there’s definitely some awkwardness, like how Freddie’s expanded encounters with the press sort of clumsily repeat the same beats a bit. On the one hand, I can get what Danny Strong was going for in choosing to introduce everyone first and then go into “Merano” instead of doing several minutes of narrative meaninglessness before the main characters are even introduced; on the other hand, that kind of just half-defeats the sole original purpose of “Merano”, which is to provide a very jaunty more stereotypical musical theater song so that Freddie can be introduced via barging in and interrupting it with his very different vibe, and if I were Danny Strong I would definitely have just removed “Merano” at that point. But the “Difficult and Dangerous Times” opening works great, and it nicely avoids the “almost nothing of note happens for nearly forty minutes” and “several meaningless fluff songs in a row” problems of the London script, introducing conflict and stakes early and keeping the narrative going.

Ultimately, though, a lot of what it’s trying to do doesn’t quite come together to me, and some of it is variously misguided or just strange.

The Politics

To start with, I can definitely get wanting to emphasize the role of Cold War politics in the narrative, and I basically enjoyed the increased political focus and higher stakes in Act I — but I don’t think making Anatoly unwittingly almost start a nuclear war works here, or fits properly into this narrative at all. The Soviet generals have to be holding idiot balls; Molokov has to be holding an idiot ball; Walter has to be holding the biggest idiot ball of all; and most importantly, the ludicrously massive stakes being pasted on top of the match despite none of the main characters even knowing about it means we zoom thoroughly out of the character drama of the situation: “Endgame” just becomes grotesquely trivial with that hanging over it without Anatoly’s knowledge, rendering the actual drama of the climactic song completely irrelevant to what’s really at stake.

I also dislike, in a version that emphasizes the politics, how distinctly slanted it is. One of the things that I like in the London strain of Chess is that Walter and Molokov are both slimy, manipulative bastards in different ways, both sides’ political actors cruelly toying with the lives of the players for their own impersonal ends; the righteousness of each state as a whole doesn’t really matter to this story, only the impact that the whole conflict and the mutual scheming has on the main characters’ lives. But in this version, the Soviets and Molokov are cartoon villains who literally abduct children to force them into chess camp and then murder them if they don’t win the world championship, while Walter may be a condescending asshole who’s willing to threaten Florence but is distinctly the ‘good guy’ in his interactions with Molokov, which comprise most of his screentime, especially in Act II. Walter even gets a humanizing moment where he explains he has a nine-year-old son and has nightmares about him suffering a nuclear winter (Molokov, meanwhile, tells Walter in Act I that Anatoly is like a son to him but could not more obviously not care about Anatoly at all when he proudly presents his new champion material Viigand in Act II). I just find it really detrimental to Chess’s narrative to make it about Soviets Bad, US Good, and more so the more you focus on that — to whatever extent you highlight the politics in this story, it should be done in a way that’s about how the political machinations of the Cold War impact the character drama at the center of it, and it’s distracting when instead you make it into a loosely related B-plot about Walter’s desperate diplomatic efforts to stop the evil Soviets from destroying the world with their shortsightedness.

I think a successful more politically-focused Chess could definitely exist, but I think it’s always going to function best if Walter and Molokov feel at least narratively like just about equal scumbags. It’s not even impossible to imagine nuclear weapons and mutually assured destruction coming up in the course of it — but it needs to be using that to make us enraged at all of this on behalf of Anatoly/Florence/Svetlana/Freddie, not enraged at Molokov on behalf of Walter.

The Character Work

Meanwhile, I do basically like the setup and recontextualization done for all of the main characters in Act I, but unfortunately none of them quite delivered as well as I hoped in the end.

Let’s start with Florence. I actually quite liked the deportation threat, putting Florence herself under personal pressure in a way she usually isn’t. I dig characters being put through the wringer and making decisions under stress. But the story doesn’t quite do anything with that other than using it as silent context behind her early interactions with Freddie and technically as the reason she and Anatoly move to the UK offscreen. We don’t, for instance, ever see Freddie learn that that’s why she moved or that he was unwittingly indirectly responsible for that, or otherwise address that in any way, and as far as Florence in the rest of the story is concerned, it might as well never have happened — we never see her having any kinds of feelings on it, or even confronting Walter about that nasty little part he played in her life when she meets him again (she doesn’t even comment on it when he offers her the chance to go back to the US at the end!). To an extent this is, of course, because Florence being deported was never originally part of the story of Chess, so of course it doesn’t come up in any song or have any significant specific impact on the core series of events — but if you’re going to add it in at all, you really ought to be taking that somewhere in the rest of your additions that isn’t just briefly handwaving that she gets to go back at the end.

Like Long Beach, this version brings Florence’s father back at the end — but unfortunately, it feels really unearned here. Compared to other London variants, it actually ditches the bit of “The Deal” where Florence is tangibly emotional and riled up by Walter’s offer of her father — she fully dismisses the idea of her father being alive as bullshit, and instead it’s Svetlana who moves her to have doubts when she sees her begging Anatoly to return on video and realizes Svetlana still loves him. I do really like that, by itself, and it’s probably my favorite thing about this version’s portrayal of Florence; her empathizing with Svetlana to the point of feeling genuinely guilty for having taken her husband from her, and believing maybe the right thing to do would be if he went back to Svetlana for her sake, is actually very good, serves as a great lead-in to “I Know Him So Well”, and makes Florence’s character feel far more sympathetic in a production where she’s otherwise pretty lacking in that department. But it leaves us with no emotional connection whatsoever to Florence’s father — we’ve only heard her mention him twice before Walter’s offer, very briefly, in Act I, and not really with any sense that she misses or is all that invested in him. Seeing her reunite with him means nothing for her or her arc; it just comes out of left field, and winds up being another thing slanting this version towards Good Guy Walter, Bad Guy Molokov, what with Walter offering her visas back to the US for both of them seemingly out of the goodness of his heart.

It would have been possible to actually build up to this in a way that would make it satisfying. Florence and Anatoly have several conversations; we could have used some of those to have Florence actually talk about her father and how she feels about him being gone, and that could have been part of building up her relationship with Anatoly, made it meaningful that Anatoly’s parting gift to her is to ensure her father’s return. I suppose Danny Strong’s thought process may have been that if he built up Florence’s father too much, that should become her main concern once Walter brings that into it, and he wanted her concern to be about Svetlana instead, which I guess is fair; it also means Anatoly only really has to dismiss the potential harm to one other person in his obsession with the winning the game. But if you do make the decision to not build up her father, then bringing her father back is not an ending that makes any sense, and there was no need to do this — they could have easily cut out all suggestion of her father being alive entirely and it would only have made things smoother. I think the only reason she gets her father back in this one is in some hasty effort to make Florence’s ending less bleak, but because it doesn’t have any emotional resonance, it’s just not the right way to do that here.

Speaking of Florence and Anatoly, the romance here… once again has some neat, interesting things it’s going for but doesn’t quite come together as a whole. The two of them do have some actual conversations where they bond a bit, which is already a marked improvement over the default London script — but their very first conversation features Anatoly asserting out of nowhere that Florence has “a way of brightening his spirit”, despite not even knowing her, which isn’t super convincing and just comes off kind of creepy-awkward. Florence asserts a few times that he’s sweet and kind, but we don’t really see much of him actually coming across as sweet or kind — his lines tend to be either melodramatic or sardonic moping interspersed kind of jarringly with awkward jokes. He’s less charming or sweet and more like a lonely, kicked dog, which is fine if Florence is into that but doesn’t quite make her descriptions of why she likes him ring true.

This production actually goes back to the concept album a bit when it comes to Florence and Anatoly — namely, more than political manipulation and external pressures forcibly tearing them apart from the outside, there’s a more substantial internal tension between them as Anatoly genuinely simply prioritizes winning the chess match over her and dismisses her as she tries to question him about Svetlana. The two approaches can both work but do different things for the narrative; this internal approach puts more focus on the personal conflict and character drama and makes the relationship more interesting, which is definitely good, and in principle I think this is built up to in a pretty solid way here — Anatoly, raised to become a chess champion to the exclusion of all else, being maddened by the notion of not actually beating Freddie in Act I and needing to prove he deserves the championship to himself in Act II before he can feel “free from chess” works as a coherent reason for him to be so strikingly, unhealthily obsessive about it.

But I think the biggest problem is that Florence and Anatoly individually don’t hit well enough as characters to create investment in them. Florence is ultimately not developed enough and mostly just acts kind of unpleasant, especially to Freddie, all the way up until that Svetlana bit in Act II. More importantly, I just can’t like or understand or sympathize with Anatoly at all, beyond recognizing that core of what his arc is going for. Part of it is probably down to the writing of his lines, which I’m just not a fan of in general. I already named one example from his first scene. Here’s how Anatoly and Florence’s very first conversation starts:

ANATOLY: It’s not his fault. This game drives us all crazy. FLORENCE: I’m fine. Aren’t you even a little bit scared? ANATOLY: Of Trumper? FLORENCE: No, that they’ll kill you if you lose. ANATOLY: Oh. To quote the great Leo Tolstoy, “Even in the valley of the shadow of death, two and two do not make six.” FLORENCE: What does that mean? ANATOLY: I don’t know exactly, but it is very Russian.

I just don’t find this dialogue very convincing. Why is he reciting a dramatic irrelevant quote if he doesn’t know what it means and just thinks it’s “very Russian”? It feels like a generic quippy exchange off a snarky TV show. Does Anatoly use humour to cope with his situation? Not really; this is pretty much the only time he says anything that might be taken as that. This feels like a joke that’s there only to get a laugh out of the audience, not because Anatoly would actually tell it — and consequently, it doesn’t tell us anything real about Anatoly. Meanwhile, Florence responds to this with “Oh, you’re funny,” as if that’s one of the reasons she falls for him when I would decidedly not name that as a character trait he has. I feel like most of his dialogue just doesn’t have a great sense of character — in stark contrast to Freddie, who oozes character. I can’t get a good sense of who he is and how he thinks. He’s just there. And this also makes it harder to see what Florence sees in him and believe in the relationship.

Moreover, this Anatoly just comes across as kind of a terrible person, not in the fun coherent intentional way Freddie is a terrible person but in a flat, confusing and kind of unintentional-seeming way. Svetlana here is actually really sympathetic, with lovely little additional bits of dialogue that make her feelings hit harder (her voice as she tells Anatoly that “You left us!” breaks my heart), and this is possibly my favorite version of Svetlana in any Chess. But Anatoly is really, really terrible to her, by which I don’t even mean the cheating on her but the bit where he keeps angrily insisting to her face that she never loved him and she brainwashed their children to hate him and of course they’re not going to kill her (hey, Anatoly, guess who’s already well aware that the Soviet government in this universe is not above executing people over chess?).

And even that could be made understandable, given his situation — he could just be in hard denial about it because the thought of them having been suffering with him gone and being punished for his actions is so horrific he just shuts it down — but there’s never any sense that that’s what’s really going on. We don’t see him privately upset about the possibility later, for instance — he just keeps insisting the same and dismissing Svetlana to Florence, too. We know it’s not that it’s true — we see Svetlana admit to Molokov that even though he ruined her life and she never wants to see him again she still loves him, and we hear her sing “Someone Else’s Story” and “I Know Him So Well”. Nor do we ever get any hint at exactly what Svetlana or his kids did to make him think this of them, if anything (his own kids!). Anatoly just seems to sort of bitterly, adamantly believe this for no reason at all. And that makes it impossible to empathize with. Okay, sure, Anatoly, you were taken from your family as a child, but that really doesn’t even start to explain any of this. There could have been ways of making it feel at least believable, tragic in a deeply fucked-up way, but the story here just doesn’t do the work. And once again, Anatoly being so unpleasant for no reason just makes it harder to feel at all invested in his relationship with Florence or sad when they part.

The best fix here isn’t quite obvious, and I can’t say I envy Danny Strong trying to put all his neat little ideas together and make them work. If Anatoly were to appear substantially conflicted about Svetlana and put any real stock in Molokov’s threat, that would render “Endgame”, where he doubles down anyway, kind of jarring and inexcusable as he’d be not just refusing to return to her but refusing to care if she is killed. So in order for this to properly work with “Endgame”, he probably does need to be very deep in denial about whether they’d really kill her. I think what I would do, if I were writing this plot where groomed-as-a-chess-champion Anatoly knows the Soviets killed Boris Ivanovich and they’ve threatened to kill Svetlana too, is to emphasize better how irrational Anatoly is being and try to show it more as a consequence of growing up among the constantly plotting KGB.

Let him go off on a proper paranoid rant to Florence about the reasons why he thinks Svetlana is just plotting against him, and some innocuous things he saw his kids do once that mean she brainwashed them. When Florence tries to challenge him on how batshit he sounds, he just storms out, saying she’s being taken in by their lies and just wants to sabotage him, and disappears — and she doesn’t see him again until he appears at the final game and plays this manic, desperate match while insisting to himself that Svetlana and Florence both just never understood him and hated his success. Afterwards, we can perhaps see him finally, quietly asking Molokov if they’re really going to kill her, showing that on some level he already knew the threat might be real and had just firmly blocked it out (in the actual ending as it is Molokov simply tells him unprompted that she really will be punished unless he comes back, and he just asks why with no addressing of his previous adamant insistence that that wouldn’t happen). His and Florence’s final conversation could then involve a bit more of a reckoning with that and with what his relationship with Svetlana was really like, through a more honest lens.

I’m actually pretty tickled by this scenario because that would really drive home a pretty fun parallel between Anatoly and Freddie — which in hindsight I think this version must in fact have been trying for, but didn’t quite do in a focused enough way for it to really hit. Anatoly and Freddie are both chess players with deeply abnormal childhoods and bouts of paranoia that cause them to behave in toxic ways, which ultimately drives Florence away from both of them.

This production shows the first chess game as the “Chess Game” instrumental playing under Freddie and Anatoly having alternating inner monologues about the game and their issues, deliberately drawing a comparison between the two of them; they both say they hate chess, that they don’t feel like real human beings. It’s not exactly subtle, but I liked the way this was used to build up their respective brain gremlins and was intrigued by the parallel being set up. I didn’t feel they ultimately did much with the parallel, though, because the story then didn’t really continue leaning into it much from there. By emphasizing this Anatoly’s paranoia as paranoia and not just as him legitimately thinking the marriage was never real and the KGB wouldn’t kill her, we could properly build the story around that parallel, and I would genuinely dig that.

The one place after the chess match where the actual thing does sort of try to get at the Anatoly/Freddie parallel again is in the dialogue scene that precedes “Endgame”. This scene is not sung (though it has the “Chess Game” instrumental in the background, which connects it neatly to that previous bit comparing the two of them), but it’s clearly based on “Talking Chess”: Freddie approaches Anatoly to tell him Viigand’s weakness lies in his King’s Indian Defense, and:

ANATOLY: Why are you helping me? FREDDIE: Jesus Christ! Am I the only one who cares about this game? ANATOLY: It’s more than a game now. There is so much more at stake than who wins or loses. FREDDIE: No! No, winning is everything. Fuck politics! Fuck the KGB, fuck the CIA, fuck them all! We are the ones who have dedicated our lives to chess. We are the ones who have given up everything for greatness — our childhoods, our sanity, our loves. Anatoly, we’ve sacrificed everything. They’ve sacrificed nothing. What’s the number one rule of a chess champion? ANATOLY: Play to win. FREDDIE: As long as you do that you can never lose, even if you do.

Much as I love “Talking Chess”, though, this on the surface similar scene just didn’t feel right in this context when I listened to it. In Anatoly’s last scene here, he told Florence firmly that he just wanted to win and that his marriage with Svetlana was never real and it’s all KGB mind games. Him going “It’s more than a game now, there’s so much more at stake” suddenly now comes out of nowhere — if he believes that now, it could only be if he actively reconsidered something offscreen, but he doesn’t say anything elaborating on what he’s thinking now or what he might have reconsidered or why, just that vague, generic line that contradicts everything he’s expressed up until this point. It’s another example of Anatoly’s dialogue just feeling really flat and meaningless to me — his lines here don’t say anything, just serve as vague filler to prompt Freddie onward. And because unlike London proper the setup leading up to this is all about him already being absolutely determined to win the game at all costs, this just feels redundant, unnecessary, going through the motions of something that’s in London without realizing that with the changed context it doesn’t quite make sense anymore.

I think that’s unfortunately the case with Freddie a bit here too. I enjoyed Act I’s quite different take on Freddie, and his establishing narration for Act II petulantly stating Anatoly won the championship last year “by forfeit, I might add”, and “The Interview” is recontextualized in a very fun way as I mentioned before — but after that it feels like Danny Strong doesn’t quite know what to do with Freddie anymore and just has him sort of arbitrarily go through the motions of London in a way that doesn’t necessarily hang together with everything he’s established of Freddie so far. It made sense that this Freddie, despite being decidedly hostile towards Walter and the CIA, conducted the interview to show Florence what a bastard Anatoly is — he’s not doing it for Walter, he’s got his own reasons to want to do it once Walter’s shown him the Svetlana video. But I find it a lot harder to swallow that this Freddie — whose usual problem seems to be that he’s compulsively blunt about how he really feels — would then be easily persuaded to play his part in “The Deal”, which involves exaggeratedly trying to be all buddy-buddy with Anatoly. Maybe if there was better setup around it, like with “The Interview” — but “The Deal” only has seconds of kind of half-assed leadup here, and from there it moves directly into “Pity the Child” (after a segue featuring the recording of Oppenheimer quoting the Bhagavad Gita, because nuclear war).

Freddie’s next appearance after that, then, is this “Talking Chess”-esque dialogue where he’s realized the parallel between the two of them, how they’ve both sacrificed everything for chess and the political schemers have sacrificed nothing and that’s why he should play to win. I can appreciate how the low point of “Pity the Child” would trigger that particular realization, contemplating how much he lost and sacrificed to achieve his status in the game and perhaps afterward realizing Anatoly is the only other person here who might understand that. That feels like it basically tracks and is interesting.

But… it also means that fun very specific contempt for Anatoly in particular based on him having left his family like Freddie’s own father did is just kind of… gone, I guess, or at least Freddie doesn’t consider it relevant enough for it to stop him from going out of his way to pep Anatoly up for the game with no mention or hint of it. (At least Freddie probably isn’t aware of the threats made against Svetlana in particular, so he doesn’t know Anatoly winning would shatter his family even further.) And we’ve lost the bit in “Talking Chess” where the notion of the political scheming actually leading to Viigand winning the match just personally offends Freddie because Viigand is not even that good; instead Freddie is just putting forward “Play to win” as some kind of general inviolable chess principle, which is kind of generic and not nearly as characterful, in my opinion. I’m not saying we ought to have had the “Viigand is mediocre” bit here — I don’t think it would quite fit in for this Freddie, whose feelings about chess itself are very conflicted and who is more concerned with showing up these political hacks who have sacrificed nothing while they sacrificed everything — but as a Freddie moment I would really have wanted to end on something stronger there than this vague assertion that “The number one rule of a chess champion is to play to win.”

Like in London, this is Freddie’s last substantial scene, but he does have a part in “Endgame”, and it’s also an interesting one: he gets Sixty-four squares / they’re the reason you know you exist (but not the preceding How straightforward the game…), but also a couple of other verses usually sung by the chorus, and the lines he gets are clearly very purposefully chosen to reinforce that final resolve regarding the sacrifices they’ve made for greatness, which I really appreciate: Listen to them shout / They saw you do it / In their minds no doubt / That you’ve been through it / Suffered for your art and in the end a winner and They’re completely enchanted / But they don’t take your qualities for granted / It isn’t very often / That the critics soften / Nonetheless, you’ve won their hearts / How can we begin to / Appreciate the work that you’ve put into / Your calling through the years / The blood, the sweat, the tears / The late, late, nights, the early starts?

All in all, Freddie is still definitely my favorite part of this Chess, but while the parallel itself is neat it’s too muddled and I find the second half of Act II pretty uneven for him. What would I do if I were writing this bit?

I’m not totally sure how I’d want to tackle “The Deal”, but as for the “Talking Chess”-but-not scene: I would ditch the bit where Freddie is trying to advise Anatoly on strategy and the bit where Anatoly is apparently suddenly not determined to play to win just so Freddie can then tell him he should be again. None of that is contributing anything in what this version has been building up. Instead, they just sort of bump into each other, Anatoly fresh off his paranoid rant to Florence about Svetlana, Freddie fresh off “Pity the Child” and the strange realization Anatoly might be the only person who’d understand him a little bit. At first they just sort of stop and look at each other. Freddie starts, guarded, with some kind of oblique accusatory prod about the leaving his family thing, which he still deeply resents.

Anatoly has calmed down now, but he tells him what he told Florence: that it was always a fake marriage, a fake family, that the video was just a lie set up for him by the KGB, that Svetlana had brainwashed their children to despise him.

This incidentally plays into Freddie’s existing preconceptions pretty well. He’s probably not instantly convinced but it checks out enough he’s willing to reluctantly leave it alone for now. Probably mutters something like, “Fucking Soviets.”

Anatoly says something like, aren’t you going to try to make me a deal to get me to throw the match and go back? Freddie says no, fuck that. Says the whole bit about how we are the ones who have dedicated ourselves to chess, who have sacrificed everything, childhood, sanity, love, and they’ve sacrificed nothing. Why should we listen to those CIA and KGB assholes? Draws out that parallel. The two of them are probably standing in symmetrical positions on the stage.

Anatoly just nods slowly, agreeing. “I would have beaten you.”

Freddie scoffs and says, “Dream on,” but not quite with the spiteful arrogance he would’ve said it in Act I.

Then they part, and we move on to “Endgame”. The scene isn’t about Freddie helping Anatoly, or about Freddie convincing Anatoly to go for the win; it’s about the Freddie/Anatoly parallel, about Freddie realizing it and in his profound loneliness finding a smidge of connection with this guy he hated because he’s the only one who sort of Gets It, and about showing how Anatoly’s conviction has developed since the first chess match where part of his inner monologue went, “I can’t beat him, he’s too good.” Anatoly is so ready to prove that he really is the world’s best chess player.

Conclusion

Man, this version is so interesting. It’s a mess, but it’s a fascinating mess with a bunch of tasty potential and a real sense that Danny Strong had some genuine thoughts on what the show was missing and how to rework it to fix that, even where his attempts were ultimately confused and don’t succeed. In some ways it’s the most me-core version of Chess and in other ways it’s deeply antithetical to me and in most all ways it’s trying to do something neat but does it in a flawed way. Special shoutout to this Freddie, who honestly deserves better than this Florence.

[aestariiwilderness]

BB Season 3 Thoughts, Part II, since this is apparently a thing I'm doing at the moment *SPOILERS*

For the new episode. I have already forgotten what it's called. Aside from "The One Where Omega & Crosshair Become Hustlers"

So, from what I'm seeing from this, Crosshair is most relaxed and content (a) in an inversely proportional relationship to the aggravation of the people around him; bonus points if he is causing the aggravation and (b) when someone else -- ANYONE ELSE -- is in charge. Up to and including small blond civilian. That's when he can snark the most at the people soldiering on under the actual responsibility (see: Hunter, Rex), footloose and fancy-free in the knowledge that even when the plan goes wrong, it won't be His Fault. This is, objectively, hilarious. ("Smoker-Coded Angst Man Manifesting As the Physical Representation of a Hard-Bitten Hedgehog Perfectly Happy Being Smoker-Coded Angst Man: Film at Eleven"; "Younger Sibling Most Fulfilled In Life When Criticizing Older Siblings' Plans While Bringing Absolutely Nothing to the Table").

The extent to which he is taking this in "Life Changing Field Trip with Little Sister Less Than Half My Height" is both hilarious and concerning. (Seriously. Is there brain damage here? Is he just that determined to Not Be Making the Decisions? No wonder he identified so hard with the Empire, the man can't seem to function without an overlord to be bitter about).

Omega is setting her sights too low. JUST letting all the animals free? JUST helping Gregor? JUST helping Hera's parents? With a squad of elite commandos (who were also, when they met her, cocky nine-year-old morons with blasters and mild superpowers, I will grant you that) wrapped around her little finger against their better judgment, she could have pointed them at the Emperor by now and BANG. The next thing you know, through the power of plot, family, and completely unhinged clone shenanigans? Palpatine is a smoking pile of nerf nuggets, someone's lost a limb, Omega's hanging from the Senate Dome, and we're still retrieving Hunter after he accidentally grappled onto a passing speeder and got dragged three planetary blocks downtown.

Omega, having just survived prison, a prison escape, and a violent crashlanding into a planet that actually seems to be the geographical equivalent of Crosshair himself, flying high on step 45.7a of this escape "plan": wait we need the navicomputer so we can go back and rescue all the other prisoners! Crosshair (who was on step 2: survive?? Maybe?? Why is there a dog behind my seat??): what

Crosshair's biggest complaint with Omega's leadership: you're wasting my murder skills! Rampart wouldn't do this to me

Omega's first idea for a moral, peaceful resolution: um. Gambling. I've done it before and earned lots! (Crosshair, frantically rearranging everything he knows about his brothers in his head: you've what)

Omega's second idea for a moral, semi-peaceful resolution: RELEASE THE KRAKEN

Baby Goggles Victorian Street Urchin Child (which Crosshair was totally 100% down with beating into the ground at the slightest provocation, which is also 100% in character)

Omega, morphing into Hunter after five minutes with Crosshair in a mildly snarky mood: STOW IT

Omega, ship thief master. Han Solo wishes he had what she has

Scottish?? Imperial Officer??

All the clones. They're all so homeschooled

Crosshair, wearing a soft quilted jacket instead of the black gothic armor caked with blood his soul naturally craves: ugh mom why

Oh, don't even with this ominous music and Wrecker not smiling. Please. Pull the other one, it's got bells on. Is being miffed at Crosshair a rational reaction? Absolutely. Would they be in this mess without his, uh, everything? No, they wouldn't. Is being suspicious of Crosshair a rational reaction? Yes, and VERY HEALTHY TOO. Do I want them to be mad at him? 100% with this garbage man. Which is why it will be very hard to convince me that in the next episode, actual marshmallow Wrecker and currently-held-together-with-string-and-duct-tape Hunter aren't going to take one look at Crosshair, missing-stray-cat-with-one-ear-and-no-redeeming-qualities, and burst into tears.

[borzoilover69]

> BORZOI: READ HOMESTUCK LIKE ITS 2011 (PART 4)

(4225) Oh yeah it's all coming together now. This panel fucks so hard.

Jakeroxy is probably one of my fave relationships to think about they're so silly together! They have a really great relationship full of whimsy. They call out each others good points are generally incredibly supportive of each other, and they just feel like they click so easily together.

I could muse it comes down to their both shared aspect of void. While hope rings true in Jakes story, clear as a fucking bell, I have reason to suspect his secondary aspect may be void, due to how reluctant he is to open up to others, his ability to distance and generally keep off radar, and his own ignorance, not to mention his literal sort of secondary awareness he has for larger things hidden in the dark. Like seriously, where is he getting this information? Yet his own ignorance gets the better of him most times, leaving him paralyzed. This stirs up rage in others, his inverse.

As for how I approach classpects, well I like to see them sort of like a triad. Humans are multifaceted with multiple problems, so you should read up on your classpects. I started with Dana, and while I agree with some points, i don't really agree with all points, however Opacificas Classpect Meta is two essays that are a must read for any classpector.

Back to the point of the triad. You have your main classpect, which defines you and your main problem / struggle. You should carry to some extent of course traits of your inverse aspect. As a Prince of Void, I naturally ghost and carry traits of light, of extrapolating at length while I destroy void. I'm insightful and observant, yet more often than not I struggle with ignorance. My secondary is a Knight of Blood, due to how well I work with interpersonal relationships among others, pointing out what people are ignorant of helps me gain more knowledge of them as they toss their woes into the void that I naturally present. My bonds are strong however my natural gravitation towards void, towards being unknowable, etc, makes it difficult. My ignorance has been my downside on multiple occasions and while i've had difficulty with blood (hence why its secondary) my primary link is void.

So to sum up. Your main classpect should ring true to your main struggle and how you approach it, but also some of the inverse. They're two sides of the same coin after all. Class is your head, and how you use it. Aspect is your core, and what your nature is. Your secondary classpect is also necessary to help shit process. I don't know, you come up with a better allegory.

Maybe it'd help with how I classpected my boyfriend? I started off with looking at this post with a list of classes and aspects, and I listed off which felt like they fitted for my boyfriend:

Classes:

Witch

Thief

Mage

Aspect:

Doom

Space

Time

Heart

Having that, I started looking at classpects. Tossing at the walland seeing what would fit. But see that post I mentioned earlier doesn't really cut it. My boyfriend, personality wise according to that post, acts very much like a thief but he's not a thief at all, so we can cross that off the list. Thieves are about relocation which he certainly didn't do.

Then I took a look at aspects. If you're doing it right, go read these. Having read them, I figured out it was less problems with self and more about what needs to be done, and he wasn't as martyr like or acceptant of Doom as doom players often are, which left me with Space and Time. My boyfriend is very talented with the arts, and struggles with the same immaterial things space players do, but his mindset leant to time. I won't go into too much detail on it there, but like I said, take a read of Opacifica. Those essays are godsends. At the end of it we realised he was a knight of time. And oh boy was there a reaction.

Look NOTHING against davekat BUT WE ARE NOT DAVEKAT WE CANT DO THIS. (Hence my posts yesterday about it being so, so unbelievably over). But the shoe fit and it wouldn't come off.

So anyways final tip on classpecting, is if you have an alt account where you vent, go look at what you vent about. Or ask your friends for the reoccurring theme that your vents usually spiral into. Those help. But god I got offtopic, back to homestuck

Jake you speaking facts boy. Also is it just me or is the new Apple AR glasses reminding me of something.. I mean slap in some flashing colours on that puppy and you'd be set.

</3 :(

The frustration that sits in JaneRoxy is so often overlooked. Like shit man...it's a frustration that's so deeply rooted that it only comes out when she's drunk. I think realistically it'd come out at some point, perhaps at a party when they're older. Roxy getting upset that Jane didn't believe her, didn't see her as important as Roxy saw her. Accusing her of being unable to change. One that Jane will have to apologise over and over and even then it won't be fixed entirely. There is such tragedy and adversity that the Alpha kids have to tackle to keep their bonds strong.

Here's Jake being Jake. Just snaps right to the fucking chase! Well aware buddy! Most of his hesitant guesses and assumptions are usually facts that ring true and it's later in the story that they become more muddled but his assumption it's true never CHANGES and AUGH.

And then there's Roxy, with that subtle passive aggression that the alpha kids just HAVE going for them and facepalming as they type it out with gritted teeth. Roxy wants to be in something!! So sick of being relegated to the side to cling on.

4227

Boy watch out boy.

4228 I knew that panel looked familiar! Awesome! Except the thing is a million times BIGGER. Haha thats so awesome!

4230

You do the thing where you fly through the air shooting two guns at once. That thing isn't even that big of a deal for you. You do that thing practically every day on hellmurder island.

Jake English you are so admirable leaping out to shoot at a big monster I LOVE YOU.

4232

JAKE WATCH OUT- OH NO FUCK!!!! JAKE YOU HSOT TINKERBULL! YEAARGH!! AGGH! Haha the way he says AH HA. GOT YOU YOU SON OF A, SHIT, WAIT. is so funny.

4234

I really wanna redraw Jake panels later hes so endearing in all of them. (excepting a few..) Darling dearest.

BUT ENOUGH ABOUT THIS SHMUCK LETS CHECK ON JANE!

4242

This could be some primary body horror if I was good enough for it.

MY BROTHER IN CHRIST YOU JUST WATCHED HIM CRAWL OUT OF YOUR DEAD POPPOPS NECK HOLE AND YOU RESPOND BY CALLING HIM A TROUBLE MAKER?

4247

Majestic. Spectacular. Superb.

4249 spectacular. magnificent. Spiffy. spectacular.

4253

Jake is so small compared to so much life that is happening on the island good fucking GRIEF. And he doesn't even break a sweat he's just like "Ah botherations! Shit."

I'm out of images again. Welp.

[moon-blanket]

Going insane about the last two videos !!! What is happening right now !!!!!

Avior being able to see Starlight's home for the first time in person-- the both of them trying to take the little victories where they can get them considering all that's stacked against them :(((

And yet the Ear-Ringing continues.

But it's nice to learn a little more about Inchoate Demon feeding needs !!

"My Starlight, so determined and so beautiful. Both for those things, and separate from them. In every hell we find ourselves, you're heaven to me." I'M GOING. TO SCREAM. God what is with Redacted Characters and being so Poetic. This is beautiful. Starlight is his Home now, i'm falling to the floor.

Their cute moment getting interrupted by more Ringing :(( and RUMBLING ??? Oh god, it's actively getting Worse. A VOICE ? He feels nauseous even though D(a)emons can't get sick.

VOICE DISTORTING ??? Oh god it sounds a little like Hush. and it Keeps sounding like the time Hush used his powers in the First Video. is Hush trying to reach out to Avior ? And not Starlight ?

Is Hush the Sovereign's way of communicating with the Outside World ?

Avior asking to be held before he goes to Aria to try and figure out what's wrong :((((( Poor guy. HIS VOICE DISTORTING WHEN HE THANKS THEM ??? Hey. Hey that's Scary.

-------

Hello Blake. We're back in the fucking Building again. Already i notice that his Symbol is Different. Also looks like Hush's ??? This is getting Ominous now !!

"We're done here" Is... Is he letting Sunshine go ? OH MY GOD HE'S LETTING SUNSHINE GO ?

oh GOD he's wiping their memory. Oh but memories of Elliot still remain. Thank God. SCORPIOUS MENTION YIPPEE !!!!

"I'm going direct to the Source." WHAT does this mean. Is he going to the Sovereigns ? How is that possible ?

HE'S GOING INTO THE SHADE ROOM ?????? "I'm doing this for You. All of this. For you. You'll be Happy. You'll be safe...." ??? WHAT ????? HE JUST LETS THE SHADE GET HIM ??? WHAT ???? HE'S FUCKING DEAD ????????

BRACHIUM ???? THE SOVEREIGNS WANT HIM PASSED TO THEM ??? THAT'S THE DEAL HE MUST OBEY ??? WHY ARE WE GETTING SO LOUD RIGHT NOW.

Oh my god, Blake actually made it to the Sovereigns. He actually did it.

"I've been expecting you." A Singular voice ?? I assume it must be a Sovereign, but aren't they all fused together at this point ? Did they manage to split apart for just this One instance, or is this something else entirely ?

------

So now it's my turn to ballpark theories.

Hush, Blake, and Avior are mostly likely bound together in Some way. Maybe. I have Two (and a Half) Ideas:

1-- Hush is somehow reaching out to Avior, or they're Linked some way. Every time Hush uses his powers, Avior hears/feels it. And because it seems like people are hunting Hush so frequently, he has to use his powers more and more often-- which in turn makes it worse for Avior.

2-- Blake could be Hush, sure. I like this idea. Very interesting twist. He is obviously crazy enough to go to the Sovereigns, maybe this IS his "Deal with the Devil" situation. And they're using him for whatever purposes-- probably Freeing Them.

Maybe Doc stirs up the old residual feelings he had for Bestie in his past life, which is why he feels the way he does about them. Or maybe Doc IS Bestie-- we never got confirmation on if they were Empowered or not. He can't save them as Blake, but he can save them as Hush.

2.5-- Blake OR Avior could be Hush's Brother, the one that Hush said is out to get him. Maybe Hush is an unwanted byproduct of the Inversion-- something the Sovereigns did not expect maybe-- and Blake/Avior is tasked with finding him and seeking him out.

OR. hear me out. Vega is Hush's Brother. Maybe. In some weird twisted way. Vega wants to go to the Sovereigns, yeah ? I wonder what's going to happen when/if he reaches them. Or Hush is just another stepping stone for him to reach the Sovereigns or something, maybe. This is probably NOT it at all lmao.

-----

The timeline is about to get Real Weird, Real Fast I think LMAO. BUT HEY, SUNSHINE IS GETTING OUT OF THE BASEMENT !!! WOOO !!!

Oh my god I wonder how that's going to play out with Elliot, Aaron, and Smartass. And how the Department is going to look into things going forward. What happens when they find Blake's Body in that room ? Is everyone going to be pulled into this mess now ? And we still don't know what Vega is up to right now lmao.

I'm on the edge of my seat !

[mega-ringsandthings-world]

Ok, ok, glad you liked the art! There's more to come because I am full of ideas and sadness! Prepare!

Anywho, now that I have rambled about the boys a lot (and trust me, there's definitely more where that came from), I thought I'd take a change of pace and focus on others.

Like Buggy. What we know is he escapes, possibly due to running away (which will probably haunt him forever) or getting saved by someone. He does meet someone, as you've said before, but who? Could it be Dragon? Does our greedy, narcissistic clown somehow become a revolutionary? Maybe it's a marine. Did a marine see this kid and go, "Screw it, I'm not killing kids," and let him go? Does he run into Smoker? Start a traumatize boy band (now I wanna write the fic we’re buggy and smoker run into each other after lougetown.) Or is it someone else, someone I wouldn't have guessed in a million years? Doflamingo, perhaps? That would be the meeting from hell. One of the other would-be warlords? And what happens to him? Does he spend the next two years trying to help Shanks in any way he can? Does he do mostly what he's done in canon and go for the One Piece? Or is he a warlord? Did he make deals with the world government for Shanks? ‘Gasp’ I'm gasping at nothing but thinky thoughts, but eh, I'll just throw some crazy in there for fun.

Also, are you going to add pirates we know to Loguetown who get caught, aside from the characters we already know? There are a few characters we see in canon that could be the right age to have been around. You could just slip them in there to add more people to the "Fun Time with World Government!™️" and more people Shanks and Mihawk can bounce off of while captured and once they get out. You said that they won't trust anyone who didn't go through what they went through, so not a lot of allies or having civil conversations. But maybe that's the point... oh well, whatever you do, I'm sure I'll love it.

Also, this pirate generation needs a name. If the last generation were the Great Pirates, maybe this generation could be the Silenced Generation? And later, after the two years, the Monster Generation.

And propaganda, does Roger's message about the One Piece get out there like it did in the main timeline? Not a lot of people escaped from the excision, so that's not a lot of people to spread the word. Is the World Government suppressing it after all? They didn't mean for Roger to tell the crowd, so why in hell would they want that driving force that created pirates who are specifically seeking a piece of the Void Century and possibly information on Joy Boy or Nika? So, do they turn it into, instead of a last word, a rumor? Like Davy Jones or Nolan and his Sky Island, like it's a fun bedtime story but nothing that's actually real.

Those are all the questions I have today hopefully I’ll get you that new art out soon no promises but I will try! Seriously thanks for indulging my asks, I know you don’t ow me any of you time and it’s cool that you’ve given me some. Anyways off to dreamland for me!

Prepared and so excited! See, with Buggy, it's a mess. If this AU is the sort-of inverse of canon events, Buggy has to keep his beef with Shanks. That happens because Shanks is the one who saves him. He gets him to safety, and then gets himself caught to lead the marines away from him. But from Buggy's perspective, Shanks abandoned him. Which. He's going to spend his time torn between grief/worry/resentment and thinking Shanks got what he deserved, (because Buggy is vindictive like that) only to find out how wrong he was. During the end of the two years, he's going to try to help Shanks, though. Him and Smoker do meet, Smoker being the one to spur him into helping Shanks. Smoker is going to go the way of Vergo in this AU, at least as far as the marines are concerned. Dragon is going to pick up some key players, (wink, wink) and he would save a child. So that's Buggy, even though Buggy doesn't espouse revolutionary ideas. (and Buggy would be even more obsessed with the one piece, it's his way of coping) And here's the thing, once what the marines are doing starts coming out, there's going to be an alliance between the revolutionaries and pirates to protect themselves. Because after the marines get information out of the captured pirates, they will start hunting the free ones. Benn Beckmann is already around, and some other characters will come sooner, some later. Garp is going to be the one who brings Mihawk and Shanks and some of those characters together. It will take them a long time to trust anyone else, but they will. And the pirates who weren't captured but were still hunted count as having a shared experience in their books. As well as the people who have been hurt by or due to the government, especially children. (wink, wink) I was thinking the Ghost generation! Since the marines kept an entire swathe of these people in captivity for two-three years, living as nothing more than ghosts. The one piece declaration did get out, though yes, the WG is trying to make it seems like nothing more than the ravings of a madman. It still becomes a substantial rumor, though, because it's something for the the pirates left to cling onto while they are being hunted. And the WG also wants the one piece. So it's them, and not the pirates that initially began the search. They go out systematically raiding pirate ships and hideouts and work their way up from there. When Mihawk and Shanks get out, Shanks kicks off the real pirate hunt by confirming Roger's last words. Which he does for Buggy's sake. No rush! And you're welcome! Ask away as much as you want, my mind is full of this and I'll literally talk forever if given the chance!

[kuwdora]

20 Questions for Fic Writers

Tagged by @deerna and @jawanaka !

How many works do you have on A03? 110 - but this would probably be +200 if I had been crossposting my fanvids there. I still remember when video embeds did not work on AO3 pages. But that was ages ago. And I’m terrible at crossposting. Especially when I have so many to crosspost at this point.

What's your total A03 word count? 280,783

What fandoms do you write for? In the past it was Stargate SG-1/Atlantis, Heroes and Sanctuary and a lovely romp with Being Human UK. Star Trek. These days I’m still on The Witcher, with the occasional fleeting non-witcher stuff I manage to finish.

What are your top five fics by kudos? I can see through you, The Witcher Netflix. My Geralt and Jaskier role reversal thing. More like a role inversion.

Surface Tension, The Witcher Netflix. soft very established relationship Geralt/Yen/Jaskier smut.

Papa’s Got a Brand New Suit, Star Trek: Deep Space 9. Julian/Garak PWP. From ye olde porn battle days. Learning Curve, The Witcher Netflix. Yen/Jaskier, post-season 2 soft feelings and sex with an emphasis on all of Yennefer's pain.

Heart Tap, The Witcher Netflix. Leshen Eskel(/Geralt). My first story about what it could be like for Eskel to live with his transformation into a monster. I'm actually surprised this is in my top 5 kudos considering how niche it is but man I love my tree boyfriend and have so many more thoughts about him that I haven't gotten out yet...

Do you respond to comments? Why or why not? Yes! I try to respond to comments when I can. Sometimes it takes forever and sometimes I do forget to respond to comments but man I love rolling around in them.

What's the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending? My angstiest endings are for fic that I haven’t finished or posted on AO3 yet for more of my witcher fixations. But for posted things?? Hmm. I do have an old Heroes fic called Code of Hammurabi that is Peter/Sylar time travel AU that’s particularly angsty and gave me the chance to rummage around in the way Peter would endure in a very very messy situation.

Oh, my Doctor Sleep ficlet is also pretty angsty. Danny reflecting on his time with Billy when Billy's ghost shows up. I'm smiling upside down is the name of that ficlet.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending? Oh that’s probably my smutty fluffy thing for Being Human. PWP. Moon Mambo, Hal/Tom.

Do you get hate on fics? No, but I sense that’s only a matter of time before someone directs their hate at me.

Do you write smut? Yup.

Do you write crossovers? Yes, but not for a very long time. I have a “Ciri collects all the young girl protagonists from sci-fi/fantasy books for a group project” crossover idea but my focus is too scattered to get that going. I did start it with a Nona-meets-Ciri Locked Tomb/witcher crossover here: Call to Adventure.

Have you ever had a fic stolen? Not that I’m aware of. I think my stuff is far too niche and self-indulgent for that kind of thing but who knows. The internet is a smaller place these days but people seem to find new ways to steal. Alternatively: I did learn that someone submitted one of my Stargate SG-1 vids to a Creation Con fanvid contest that had prize money in it. That was very upsetting to learn well after the fact.

Have you ever had a fic translated? Nope.

Have you ever co-written a fic before? No, not co-written. But I do love rolling around with my beta and workshopping my fic into better shape and a lot of my stuff ends up way better as a result of my betas. And I also love doing the same with folks who ask me for beta. It’s a fun kind of collaboration.

What's your all-time favourite ship? Agh this one is so hard. Don’t make me pick just one. Aeryn/John from Farscape. Fraser/Ray(s) from due South. I don’t write a lot of book Yennefer/Geralt but they also are It for me.

What's the WIP you want to finish but doubt you ever will? Oh my god, definitely my TWN Leshkel canonical divergence AU thing. I have something like a whole season 2 (not a fix-it) outlined, with lots of stuff focusing on Ciri and Leshy Eskel, and Leshy Eskel with Triss. With more stuff about witcher-and-leshen biology and Wolf School disappearing, Kaer Morhen becoming a magical greenhouse where a mythical Swallow is rumored to visit every 6 years.

What are your writing strengths? Description, maybe characterizations. Theme and tone.

What are your writing weaknesses? Too much description, comma splices. Slow pacing.

Thoughts on writing dialogue in another language for a fic? I think it’s fun to do but it can be a lot to read and I definitely will overthink the writing and both the reading. If it suits the characterization and context clues within the text, I think that’s cool. But I think it’s fine to go without con-lang or other languages in fic. It’s just a matter of texture and color that adds to the scene, you know?

First fandom you wrote for? Stargate SG-1.

Favourite fic you've ever written? Ever??? It’s so hard to pick just one. Hang on, I got several of those ‘rec 5 of your favorite fics’ asks in my inbox. Lemme see if I can pick 5 for that.

[arcplaysgames]

slurps tea loudly

okay as I recap this I am gonna try to navigate my emotions

Oh its the Fortune Arcana boss from Persona 3 but not as good! But the whole point is Sae's cheating anyway so it's not supposed to be fair or fun, that's fine. After proving she's cheating, she turns into her monster form.

She looks like if the SAW movies were a person, jesus christ.

Anyway, lets get to the meat of the situation; the big escape.

Even though Sae's treasure was stolen and the Palace Ruler has been defeated, the casino is not coming apart like normal. (Which is because the treasure they're taking is a decoy, but more on that later.)

And finally we return to the cold open, which admittedly: I fucking loved this. I love that nothing is changed at all, it's just the same sequence again, but now you have context for what the fuck is happening. Now the face the player can use their persona makes sense, now the presence of shadows in a 'real' location makes sense, everything comes together.

No matter how I fall on my opinion on this game, I have been convinced that Joker is the best protagonist of any of these games. With the unfortunate exception to the lack of Gay Options he gets, he is an enormous improvement from P4MC in every metric. I know who this character is, even absent my own input, and he's weird and funny and kind of a huge bitch and salty as the Dead Sea.

Huge fan.

This sequence becomes such a victory lap. Like, I'm still figuring out how I feel about the Whole Thing, but this moment of handing the player control and going "Hey, remember this?" and letting them fucking RACE to the end in the hopes of finally figuring out what the fuck is going on, it's a pretty clever trick. /slow claps for the devs

It's still fucking weird that Kasumi is here tho.

Also: Kasumi has the worst mask of everyone in this game by far. Every time i see it I wanna give her literally anything else.

I do wonder if its a Bebop reference. Oh well.

In the present, Sae offers Reverie a plea deal if he gives her the other Thieves. No go.

His beat-up face is so soft and sad, I just wanna hug him close. He needs a bag of peas against his cheek and a hug from dad so bad.

holy shit the fucking pancakes. Morgana was the one demanding pancakes when the team was talking in the hallway before the studio recording and Akechi walked in saying he heard something about pancakes. He couldn't have heard that unless he'd been to the Metaverse before. He's always known what Morgana's saying from the moment everyone met.

HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THAT

That's really fucking smart honestly. Like, I sussed out Akechi because I'm the audience and I know tropes and story structure so it absolutely had to be Akechi. (Also there were a lot of other hints.) But I'm happy there was a hard piece of evidence for the characters that was more concrete than "have you MET him, he's a murderer."

As everyone and their dog guessed, when Futaba grabbed Akechi's phone, she slapped one of her wiretaps on there. That part's easy.

After that is where things get tricky.

The last thing Reverie does as Sae leaves the room is convince her to take his phone with her and to show it to Akechi.

I am completely convinced that no one in this game has met the real Goro Akechi. Not Sae, not Shido, not anyone. That facade is made of four layers of reinforced cement and the windows are all mirrored glass. He's kind of the inversion of Adachi, who looked like there wasn't a since thought bouncing around in his vacant gaze. Akechi is nothing but loud thoughts, but the container is soundproofed.

Also, it occurs to me right here that someone is directing Akechi, someone has a hand on that leash, and I wanna know what the hell keeps Akechi from spinning around and killing that guy.

Anyway, Sae shows Akechi the phone, he's like ?????? whatever? and they part ways.

Akechi waltzes in, deep-sixes the guard with his own gun, and shoots Reverie in the head.

Your hair has never looked worst, Beige Boy.

"A TRULY SHOCKING TURN OF EVENTS," MEMBER OF LEOPARDS EATING PEOPLE'S FACES PARTY SAYS AFTER LEOPARD SHOCKINGLY EATS HIS FACE.

Out of images.

[kitsunebishake]

this is just a little rant about how queer fire emblem engage is

I abstained myself from going on this rant on the tags of anotjer post because I know I'm annoying as hell lmfao

also mild spoilers tho I already speak vaguely by nature so nothing huuuge

OK SO can we just take a moment??? to think about how fucking queer this game is???

we have diamant pondering how pretty alfred is and comparing him to a serene and beautiful flower covered scenery

we have rosado wanting fogado to think he's the cutest person ever

whatever the fuck was that support with alcryst and fogado

MARYGOLD AND ETIE???? FEELING EACH OTHER'S SKIN????? LIKE????

rosado's entire existence is queer no matter from which side you look at it too, transfem? transmasc? fem gay? nonbinary? all of them, literally could be all of them

ivy in general is peak pathetic woman OTD material, she IS the fictional lesbian standard

(yes I am aware they're technically all bisexual but me HC 2 of them as gay/lesbian is not bad... I think)

kagetsu and alfred @ diamant and boucheron is so fucking queer too like I couldn't stop laughing because they made me feel a bit self aware LMFAO (they could be a polycule too who knows)

and speaking of muscles, why the fuck bunet was so okay with the idea of alfred licking his muscles? 💀 THAT'S NOT NORMAL MY DUDE, I MEAN I KNOW ALFRED IS PRETTY BUT DAMN

I think celine and chloe were also very 🏳️‍🌈

and merrin, which is literally inverse rosado

I have not watched all the supports but I'm sure if I did I'd find even more stuff to point at like a wojack meme and go "queer."

the resident cis gay man on my Facebook friend list who is constantly talking about wanting to get railed also has deemed male alear is extremely queer just for existing, so has one of the 50 lesbians on my twitter friend circles

and you know what? I think I can see why

there's also THAT scene during chapter 10 which made the VTuber I watch go from shaming his chat for being thirsty for the evil dragon to "oh shit, I get it now, that's kinda hot" which is like peak homoerotic violence

I'm sure there's more I've seen but I have forgotten

back to thinking about diamant and alfred kissing

EDIT: I wrote this on the 15th, it is currently the 16th and I have to say... I was right, there's a lot more queer

I have officially watched all of rosado's supports and some of them in Japanese, and it is incredible how they just didn't translate some parts? I need a transcript to confirm, but I'm pretty sure rosado uses 中性 to describe his townsfolk... that means gender neutral, literally the kanji for medium/middle + sex/gender

he also specifically mentions cutesy men and cool women, confirming people from his village are not just cute but in general showcase different types of beauty, regardless of gender (and yes! he also says the "regardless of gender" part in Japanese too! I love him sm)

there's also the first support with louis which I think is really funny because the ENGLISH VERSION JUST REMOVED TJE PART WITH "EVEN THOUGH I'M A BOY????" LMFAO

I imagine because they thought it was offensive or something? but I think it makes sense, fogado said to celine the firenese appear unsociable and closed off to those from other lands, closed off being the key word here

rosado obviously doesn't care about gender, much less his own, and he clearly doesn't even care when people find him cute and stare at him, he was quite comfortable with seadall and fogado staring, so he was probably just surprised a firenese (*he probs doesn't know mauvier was firenese, he doesn't seem to talk about that too much) would find him please to look at as well, much less on the level louis was staring lol

also, I think in general the Japanese version was cuter, cuz it has louis explicitly saying he doesn't give a shit about gender/sex :3

(also my HC is currently that rosado is a fem transmasc and merrin a masc transfem... balanced, as all things should be)

EDIT 2: it's the 18th and I have no idea why I didn't mention seadall at all

but he is also queer, everything he does is extremely queer

him watching rosado bathe is... certainly something

(also him being the "women looking unkempt after using 83738477448 skin and hair care products vs men looking perfect after washing with only water and soap" meme with rosado is god tier content)

[nocturnalghoul]

ghoul blood and science talk?? my interest is piqued 👀

Okay so like I’ve talked about ghoul bloods before (a lot more coherently. If ghoul blood is interesting to you please go look at those lol) I think under “ghoul blood stuff” tag which I’ll slap on this too BUT: Welcome to Drunk Kait’s Science Corner now :) (there is some ghou blood lore in this after the rant don’t worry but also I got big mad about coag so >:( )

The coagulation cascade (pathway that happens in the body to make clotting and coagulation of blood happen) is fucking stupid! There’s two pathways that meet in the middle, which like okay physio is weird that’s okay, but one side starts with VII and the other with XII. The things got named in order of discovery, not in order of the cascade so it’s all out of order and everything is roman numerals (STUPUD). But also all the numbers also have a written name which are stupid. And the early things are usually referred to as their number and the later stuff by their name which is also stupid and I FUCKING HATE IT. Factor IV is literally just calcium like just SAY CALCIUM?! One of them is called Christmas Factor (why?????)

Anyways so I’ve decided that since ghoul blood is different anyways I’m REINVENTING the coag cascade for ghouls! I still have not finished formulating how Ghoul hematopoietic stuff works (working on it!) and how it relates to renal physiology (important in humans, could be fun in ghouls) but I have decided this: I’m remaking the coag cascade to make sense! This effects nothing and matters to nobody but makes me happy so that’s enough

Now it’s just the numbers for ghouls and they are going in order now! One side goes 6->7 and the other can go 1-2-3-4-5->7 and now they have met up at 7 and we can continue on from there. Factor 13 can stay though I like him :) he’s at both the beginning and end which feels cyclical yay

Okay ghoul blood thoughts!: instead of calcium taking part in the cascade it’s phosphorus (they are sort of buddies in an inverse relationship in serum chemistry so I like that they are using the opposite thing). Due to this a lot of common anti-coagulants don’t work on ghoul blood. In the infirmary they have special blood collection tubes just for the ghouls.

My original point that I was ranting about to friend before I got distracted by coagulation is that if elemental affinity has an affect on blood type like I’ve talked about before, then I feel that it should also effect what their hematology results like a cbc or manual diff. Fire ghouls are kind of anemic but that’s their normal so it’s fine. Quintessence ghouls have weird white cell morphologies; they tend to stain deeper and have weird nucleus shapes!!!

I also feel like Rain has hemophilia but haven’t decided which type

Im going to try my best to remember to come back to this tomorrow and make it make sense more but oh well for now :)

[halfusek]

okay so now multiple people have asked me about one of the themes - dependency inversion - so i think at this point i should make a post about it

you might have noticed that in this year’s theme list i’ve included the 12 disney animation principles - I’ve modified the names a bit so they can work better as themes:

  15. Squash And Stretch   16. Anticipation   17. Staging   18. Pose (original principle: Straight ahead action and pose to pose)   19. Action (original principle: Follow through and overlapping action)   20. Slow In And Slow Out   21. Arc   22. Movement (original principle: Secondary action)   23. Timing   24. Exaggeration   25. Dimension (original principle: Solid drawing)   26. Appeal

i thought it’d be a fun idea to include them, though as with any other theme you are free to interpret them however you wish! it doesn’t need to be related to the animation principles at all, you do you :)

i have also added another list of principles like that to the theme list - programming principles, i have also altered their names so they can work better as themes:

  3. Responsibility (original principle: Single-Responsibility)   4. Open/Closed   5. Substitution (original principle: Liskov Substitution)   6. Abstraction (original principle: Interface Segregation)   7. Dependency Inversion

If you are not familiar with programming then these might look extremely weird to you and googling won’t help you much (like what the fuck is Liskov Substitution am i right) but it is not the point that you need to understand these programming terms - they were just an inspiration for me to create themes that I think can be applied to bendy related art, like for example character’s having responsibilities, closed doors, replacing (substituting) one character with another, abstract art, swapping one character being dependent on another to portray a different dynamic between them - but yeah those are just examples, as i said, you can interpret them however you like and you do not need to grasp any programming definitions for that :)

i know that some may think of programming inspiration as out of place for an art event, like animation principles make sense but programming is a bit wild, but i did it for a reason

this fandom (and fandoms in general) have members that do tackle with programming, be it dataminers, modders or fangame creators for example; and plenty of them unfortunately got lots of bad reputation in the bendy fandom - for example dataminers being looked down on because “they dont play the game normally” even though their efforts helped us all a ton in getting references for our theories and even drawings because we are able to see the game models

and don’t even get me started on how the bendy devs treat fangames, it’s truly a sad thing that it is so hard to create a bendy fangame that will be accepted by them; i think it’s really unfair to take down fangames that have entirely original assets, i mean how different are they from fanfictions or fancomics? they are telling stories, just with a different medium

not to mention that strong fangame communities help a ton with keeping fandoms active and i’m pretty sure if the bendy devs weren’t so harsh on them, they’d get a ton of free marketing but oh well their loss

but yeah, just wanted a bit of appreciation for the developing/modding folks :)

[wordsandrobots]

What if 'Gundam SEED' was told from Flay's point of view? How would they approach it? Would it have been better?

For a long time, watching Gundam SEED, I would have said Flay was the most interesting character so I understand the appeal. 'X manipulates Y to exact revenge for Z while simultaneously being what Y needs in the moment and using this to avoid dealing with their own grief, fear and bigotry' is definitely a meaty premise.

However, this is also very clearly not the story SEED was interested in telling.

SEED is fundamentally about Kira and Athrun, and when I say 'fundamentally', I mean the show commits to the day being saved by two blokes in magic space robots who successfully blow up various bits of evil technology and/or bad guys because they're just that special. And to my mind, it's with this notion of 'special' that SEED's underlying flaw lies.

See, the Coordinators are definitively special. Textually, they can do things other humans cannot. We are told (and shown) that people are scared of them as a result. Yet this and Kira's struggles to be defined beyond his genes are obviously poor analogies for any real-world prejudice. It's 'being bullied for being smarter than everyone' logic, rather than how oppression or ethnic conflict actually work.

Basically, it's the X-Men. Hated and feared for being the brilliant ones, why oh why can't we just be treated as people.

Now, I like the X-Men. Always have. It's just, once you commit to inherent genetic 'specialness' of any kind, you back into a corner from which it is extremely hard to extricate yourself. Despite its token protests about Coordinators still needing to train, SEED presents a world where some people are just better. It embraces the idea of functional eugenics. There's nothing here of the nuance allowed by 'new-types' being analogous to new ways of thinking that emerge naturally from a changing world and are subverted or maximised by people who want to control the future. Nor does SEED turn around, as Gundam X did, and saying, nah, you're all random quirks of nature and/or incredibly lucky.

Eugenics is the explanation for why Kira is special. Someone literally bred a super-protagonist. That is a thing that is possible in this world.

So is Flay therefore right to fear the Coordinators?

Even as it presents her hatred and anger towards them as a flaw, SEED allows the possibility that the answer is 'yes'. Because it is reasonable to be wary of those who hold power over you, and the Coordinators come with power built in. Which is an exact inversion of the ways prejudice ascribes particular malevolence to groups who are, in fact, more vulnerable than people holding the prejudice.

I think a story centred on Flay over Kira would automatically be more interesting. If that's the criteria for 'better' then I must answer your question in the affirmative, straight up. The thing is, given all of the above, I can't in good conscience say it would address the stuff I don't like about what SEED is saying. As much as there are stories I love whose politics and worldview are quite at odds with my personal beliefs (currently delighted by Dracula, adore The Man Who Was Thursday, etc), I draw the line at centering lazy misconceptions about bigotry and oppression. And you would need to centre those things if you spent more time with Flay because, within the confines of what is presented in SEED as it stands, they form a significant part of her character.

If you were to take out the whole concept of the Coordinators and simply make Kira a talented member of some group responsible for killing Flay's dad, then tell the story of how she uses him as her instrument of vengeance before growing as a person and confronting the fact Kira is a person too? Sounds like a fantastic set-up with which you could do some very entertaining, very messed-up stuff.

That, however, essentially brings us back to my one big idea for improving SEED which is this: rip it up and start again.

[thwackamabob]

a 3am rant you should probably skip

the thing is: i can never seriously believe that me being trans is an issue when i'm trying to do this whole music thing, or else i will blame everything on that instead of trying to work through it. but it sucks. idk, i've just been thinking that maybe you can find success if you're trans, but only if you're the acceptable kind. if you're transfem you better never let anyone know, you stay in the background, or you cover your voice in so many layers of pitch-shifting and distortion that no one can tell that testosterone touched you. the inverse is also true i think, but you can come out of the other side. you can pass as a cis man when singing after long enough on t. whereas i'm just here forever. and then ethel fucking cain comes along and sounds like *that* despite everything and then i can't blame my transness anymore. but god do i want to be normal. i don't want to have to be a fucking genius with interconnected worlds and concept albums who produces and records fucking everything, and then does the art and the video and is entirely self-sufficient and manages to look like they have an entire label behind them, because that's the only way anyone will take a tranny seriously, but a label won't sign someone they can't promote. i just want to make music from my perspective, about the world i live in without any lore or characters or cinematic fucking universe. not because that's bad, but because it's just not what interests me. most gigs we get are because i'm trans, ran by activists having a go at organisation. i don't want to slag any of them off, but i'd really like to do a gig ran by someone who's ran gigs before. where it isn't a bunch of randomly slapped together queer acts who sound nothing alike. we've done 3 gigs like this now, and out of the 7 acts we played with across the 3 gigs, maybe 1 of them sounded anything like us, even in the same ballpark. it's all sad lesbian singer-songwriters who's audiences go for a smoke the instant they realise what we are. i'm always the only trans woman there. i'm always the only dropped voice heard all night. peak frustration at *all of this* however, was a gig we applied for and didn't get. in feb, we applied for a gig with our uni's lgbt society they were doing for lgbt history month. we hadn't played a gig for 3 months at that point, had none in the pipeline, and were getting antsy. one of my flatmates is playing in one of the other bands so i go down anyway, and one of my favourite bands end up being a last minute replacement, so extra points. i get there, and just: 2 of the 5 artists are MT students who've been playing guitar for about 5 seconds and, to be brutally honest, probably aren't a point where they're good enough to play live yet. out of the other 3, one is "lesbian singer-songwriter" as mentioned earlier. she's extremely good, and for some reason she keeps being the support at gigs i go to, so no complaints there. then, band i both adore and am friends with, who i find out are a last second replacement *after having been rejected.* the person they're replacing is, to again use stereotypes, that kind of "gay boy pop." think troye sivan? the kind that is still pretty marketable to straight girls. the final band tho. oh god the final band. said flatmate is the only queer person on the band. she is on keys and barely visible. the songwriter/vocalist/lyricist/face of the band is extremely straight. across the entire original lineup, there was not a single trans person. 2 of the 5 were quite frankly not ready to perform live, and yet got it over multiple bands i know were rejected. all of whom contained visibly trans members, and were in genres other than "sad slow music." even in events designed to try and slightly tip the balance, we are unpalatable. and that's only when it's "lgbt events." when it's merely "diverse", it's all bands full of cis straight men, with one cis straight woman at the front with a mic. nice. on a course where i am, to reiterate, the only dropped voice/amab person doing vocals as my specialist instrument, it's diverse to have the vocalist be a cishet woman. idk it kinda just seems like it's impossible to get anywhere outside of trans circles if you're visibly trans (which, to reiterate, includes basically all transfem singers). i am the only trans woman fronting a band in this city as far as i am aware. i know of a few solo acts, but from what i've heard they all fit into the "distort and bury all vocals" category from earlier. it just sucks and there's no productive thing here. is posting this a good idea? no. will it piss some people off if they find it? yes. does this feel terribly arrogant? like i'm blaming being trans for my complete failure to actually get anywhere in the first 3/4s of "doing a music degree wherein i barely have to worry about supporting myself?" and completely wasting it? yes, yes it does.

[lightdancer1]

And oh yes, a few other story elements with Death that tend to be under-used:

The only one that I kind of downplay is that she's canonically a total nerd and dork for Disney films. This is because as the writer I do not really care to focus on the Disney canon nearly that much as a bit of a backlash to how much Disney has become MomCorps. Instead I have it take a bit subtler forms and use different facets of Death's comics characterization as most humanlike cosmic entity to give her a very specific theme that isn't 'Dream of the Endless in a tophat.'

Specifically Death is humanlike, but not human. This isn't exactly a Pinocchio Syndrome, as she does become mortal every 100 years and then ol' Kenny of the Endless dies at the end of that one day. As I like to adapt aspects of the show but set in a DCU type setting this also means that like Kenny her Mortal Days sometimes go very badly, like say, Apokolips and Warworld, where she never makes the full 24 hours.

But it does shape her view of mortals, her view of interacting with them, and her problems distinct to that of her siblings in a way that accounts for her canon self's no small amount of solipsism and self-absorption to match anything that Dream shows in his own appearances. It also shapes my view of her granting immortality, and a paradox. A being who lives (and dies) as much as she does grants immortality freely, and with a casual halfassing of her day job, in one sense. Very much the inverse of Marvel's Mistress Death who hires a contract killer and gets into pissing matches with the superheroes.

Death is the most casual about her power and her natures of all the Endless, because she can and does freely give it up. None of the others are truly willing to do this and Destruction very much does not do this. He retires from family life and governing his realm but in his own place in the mortal sphere he is not human with appearance of Destruction, he is Destruction of the Endless with all the immense power that goes with that. Death spends her mortal days powerless.

Further, she is only shown in her realm in her second miniseries, where it shows the same fluid elements of reality and interaction of her will and those of mortals that the Dreaming does, and is shown as a dark and cold and shadowy place (hence my portrayal of it as a blend of the Sumerian afterlife, the Tanach Sheol, and the Norse Hel (and hence also why it's the Land of Twelve Rivers like Norse Hel itself).

Her apartment, which is a small NYC apartment in size, is her home. It is not her realm. She lives in the mortal world by analogy in a way that none of her siblings do. Meaning, in other words, that her interaction with her realm, what is to be an Endless, with her function and her duties, are all vastly different.

Further still she is not bound by the laws and fetters of the other Endless. This is spelled out with a complete lack of subtlety across multiple aspects and facets of Sandman media. The only limits she has are what she accepts. She is not her brother Dream, who is overly rigidly bound by laws and to which challenging them is his central story motif. She has no laws, she is utterly unbound (as such if something did change this what would be moderate in other contexts has a vastly different psychological impact for all these reasons).

And of course if you look closely at her interactions beyond her job, Death is more feckless in interacting with people than Dream. We see it but a few times, and only a few and what is seen in this raises some interesting points that are very obvious factors and facets of her identity. She truly becomes mortal, she is the most like mortals, yet that 'most like' and 'actually is' are a huge gulf she cannot cross, and in a way not understanding other people really does make her the most human of the Endless in the most ironic possible fashion.

Finally, we do have that one story where Death speaks in her own voice, the only Endless besides Despair who does so save Dream himself. And I believe very firmly that what is shown in A Winter's Tale shows that she is very much struggling with depression and with a fundamental dislike and distaste for her job and by extension her own being that was never actually resolved. And in that she is much more like Dream than either of them would be likely to accept and both are tragic in very different ways.

And with all that sadness comes the ultimate reality, and one that would in its own way account for all these other differences. She outlives the universe and she leaves it. When that day comes Death of the Endless is dead, for there is no universe to be an Endless to oversee. The being who was Death of the Endless continues to exist, with all the memories of her world and of her siblings. In short, to her the Endless part of her is a title and a moment in time, not a fixed reality.

And that, to me, would account for my take, ultimately, on Death and Hob Gadling's relationship. Dream and Hob become friends, but that was not her intent or her motive in that moment. It was about Hob's view of life and death itself. Hob and Dream had the willingness and the ability to make her own choices, Death is his sister, not his mother, nor someone interested in playing the kind of manipulative games the other Endless do....nor, judging by her interactions, someone very good at them if she tried to do so.