#so having the mod the hell out of or only having the canon option to kiss like two ladies is rough

[diy-fire-water-pups]

@paw-patrol-mighty-asks

Alright let's go! This will be a totally OOC post (for those who don't know, it means "Out Of Character", it's a post made entirely by the mod of the blog instead of the characters in it).

I decided to do better than just asking people to go interact with your blog: As an ancient Tumblr dweller, experienced in running roleplays and askblogs, why don't I give some tips for everyone who's starting a new askblog or wants to start one?

1- Prepare your blog for your future followers!

You want people to look at your askblog and be interested. You want them to look at it and be like "Oh that's so cool, I'm gonna follow them and send some asks!" So, for that to happen, you gotta first make your blog look attractive! Pick colors that match your muse(s), maybe a nice looking theme too - while the Tumblr app doesn't show themes, Browser/desktop mode will show a blog theme if you install one. First you'll want to go to your blog settings to activate this:

Now for example, this is what this blog looks like on the Tumblr app (on my phone and on my laptop in dashboard view), on a mobile browser (my Samsung tablet) and on a desktop browser. I'll change this browser/desktop theme in the near future because I don't like the three columns thing making the posts too squeezed in, but let's just go with it for now:

There is a wide variety of free themes (by Tumblr and by other bloggers who create themes and offer them for other users) to install in your blog and customize to make it look unique, attractive and matching with your muse! It's very easy to install a theme, but you can only do so through a browser/desktop. The mobile app doesn't work with this, but it's important to set up your app view as well in the customize blog options on your app, since your blog will look different in each different viewing option XD No sense customizing one look and leaving the other unattended!

2- Choose your fighter(s)!

Select your muse or muses. Get some information about them. Some people will look at your blog and have no idea who are these characters, so why not make a nice short introduction? You can make an intro about them in a pinned post on top of your blog, or a more elaborated "About" page like this:

This will make things easier to catch the attention of people from outside your fandom too! Some roleplayers who are semi or very selective will only interact with other blogs whose muses have an about page, so they can know each others' muses.

3- Set up your rules!

Make a post to pin on top of your blog welcoming people and inviting them to interact. You'll also use this post to set up some rules for interaction (trust me, without rules things can/WILL go downhill really quickly). You can list down what people can and cannot do when sending asks, according to your muses and to yourself. For example, running an askblog with underage muses will demand for no NSFW content or asks. If your muse feels extremely uncomfortable with something in particular, you can add that to the rules for people to avoid touching the subject - same goes if YOU feel uncomfortable with something too. The idea is to keep your muse as true to the canon character as possible, so your followers will feel the magic of actually interacting with that character (think of this as if you're cosplaying at a con, but it's all online!), unless you're going to use your headcanons or if you're working with an AU, but you need to take your own well being into consideration as well!

And now, last but not least, the most controversial tip ever...

4- Send yourself (as anon) the first asks for your characters to answer!

"Wait, WHAT THE HELL, LARY?" you may ask me, "But isn't that CHEATING????"

No, it isn't! Let's see why.

So this is the situation: You just finished creating and preparing your blog, it's BRAND NEW. There's NOTHING in it when you start. It may have a nice theme already, it may look good, you got all pages for your muses prepared, you got the rules for interaction, everything is ready. BUT...

Without posts in it, more importantly, without PROPERLY TAGGED posts, your blog is as good as INVISIBLE.

You need posts with relevant tags, so your blog will show up on Tumblr search. No, it doesn't work for reblogged posts. When you post something, the tags you add to this post are the way for people to find your post (and your blog) when they're using Tumblr search engine. When you reblog a post from someone else, the tags you'll add will serve only for organizing your blog's archive and for the search WITHIN your blog, they will not make that post appear on the general Tumblr search.

This is why I always add certain tags to every ask the pups answer, let's take a look at one of them, shall we?

Here you find:

1- The username of the blogger who sent the ask. 2- A tag for the fandom. 3- A tag identifying this post has something that's not necessarily canon to the original media. 4- Tags with the names of the characters that show up or are mentioned in this post. 5- Tags of the fandom and the characters, because that's how people look for posts about them in the Tumblr search.

If you go on Tumblr search right now, input "Paw Patrol Headcanons", do the search and filter for "latest" instead of "top", you'll see A HELLA LONG RESULTS LIST of posts made by this blog and by my personal Paw Patrol blog (self-indulgent-paw-patrol). Heh, I wasn't joking when I said I'm currently feeding this fandom because trying to get other people to create content here is like beating a dead horse. This happens because I'm always tagging my headcanons and they'll show up in search results so my blog will appear for the people in the fandom.

This is how you get your blog to show up for people. Using the relevant tags for people to see your blog's posts in the results when they're looking up for something related to it.

SO YOU'LL WANT POSTS IN YOUR BLOG, PROPERLY TAGGED, FOR IT TO SHOW UP FOR MORE PEOPLE

That's where enters the "send yourself the first anon asks for your characters to answer" part. By sending some asks yourself, you'll get the chance to start fleshing out your muses, testing how you'll make things work, and have some content in your blog to show up in the search results for the fandom. People will come take a look at your blog, see what you got there, and decide if they'll give a follow, a like, maybe a reblog and ask stuff. If they find an empty blog, it's more likely they won't be interested in interacting.

You can also reblog an ask meme/game like this one, or this one. You can find these kind of ask game posts on Tumblr search too, or follow blogs like @rpsourcedmemes which focus on gathering these kinds of posts for people to find more easily and reblog to get some interaction with your muses! Sometimes people want to interact with your characters but they just don't know what to ask them, so these posts help with suggestions for that!

I think that's it for now. I hope you and other people will find this post useful to help starting your askblogs. It goes for canon characters AND for original characters too - just askblogs in general! Make them look attractive and interesting, get your muses ready, set up your rules, get some well tagged posts in it and you're off to a good start!

[weeb-polls-with-pip]

Autistic Anime Boys Side A Round 1 Match 11

Propaganda:

Yu -

"Like all Persona protags, he hardly canonically speaks. Seems too cool for school but is actually just a cringefail guy who loves his little sis Nanako, likes to fish and make beef stew, and also likes cats. He also solves murders with his friends and forcibly teach people the power of friendship! And to paraphrase one of my mutuals, "I love Yu because he just stands there like •_• and then everyone falls in love with him. Gets accused of dating like every girl he meets, gets teased by every girl on the investigation team, has whatever he has going on with Yosuke. This kid and his autism swag". Oh yeah there was also originally gonna be an option for Yu to romance said Yosuke guy, including the confession dialogue being recorded in both Japanese and English, but it was removed because ALTUS hates gay people </3 But don't worry because there's a mod that adds this option back in because the devil works hard but gay JRPG fans work harder."

Sechs -

"As a teenager his father reveals to him that he's actually not human and then he essentially intellectualizes his own crisis toward that so hard that he talks himself into enacting a doomsday plan to make all life cease to exist so technically nobody will suffer anymore. So he takes two of his fellow wizards both of whom are absolutely infatuated with him (one of which is the closest the BlazBlue series gets to a canon gay man imo), takes a super powerful weapon from his father and in a sort of misunderstanding slash random event ends up killing him, and then the three of them flee the country and start trying to act out his plan. He pretty much just stares at people silently and only talks occasionally, when he does it's usually either a short sentence that is either blunt or vague. His magical attribute is gravity magic idk as someone with vestibular/proprioceptive sensory issues gravity magic is an autistic as hell magic to master in. He also has a funny name. In the joke route he is also written adding a sort of gap moe attribute to his tendency to not talk a lot where he stops talking in any instance where he's thrown off a social script or doesn't know what to say, and in the gatcha spinoff of course because they have to make him at least cooperate with you he tends to read as less overtly evil and more just having low empathy and a strong sense of his form of "justice." There is so much more I could say about him he's one of my favorite characters in the entire BlazBlue extended universe he's just a very cool character both as a villain and a circumstantial ally. Vote for funny guy named sex as a win for autistic emo twinks everywhere."

[jordaninthevalley]

Mods that I use / reccomend

So this is a list of various mods that I use, and in turn reccomend for other players that want to mod their game or are looking for new mods to add to their game.

I will only directly link to the mod that I am talking about, if you go to download something on the list you will most likely be required to download other mods to make it work. The mod page itself should give you a list, as well as links, to the mods that you need to download!

Everything I list should be updated for 1.6!

Modsite I use: Nexus

Stardew Valley Expanded: A common mod that Stardew Valley players download, and was actually my first mod I ever downloaded! It adds new NPCs, locations, events, fish, expands on the Joja Story, new forage and more, so it's really fun to download once you feel like you've compeleted the vanilla storylines enough that you could do them in your sleep with no issue! It also has links to two optional new farm types, and I highly suggest downloading the grandpas farm one over the immersive farm that they have on the download page because it just fits in better, imo, with the feel of the game.

Ridgeside Village: Another common mod that Stardew Valley players download! It also adds new NPCs, items, locations, shops, festivals, quests, events, food, fish, and many more. Another great mod to add if you're wanting new storylines and new romances!

East Scarp: Also a common mod for players to download, once again it adds new NPCs, items, fish, locations, events, quests and much more. A good expansion mod all around.

Alongside East Scarp I do like to download Always Raining In The Valley which adds even more NPCs, recipies, events and dialogue! Helps to make the village and the surrounding areas feel even more full!

Cape Stardew; Another expansion mod, it's really good if you want a more fantasy related playthrough!

Downtown Zuzu: Adds downtown Zuzu to the game, which adds new characters, quests, events, and many more things! I think it adds more realism to the game in a lot of ways.

Luna - Astray in Stardew Valley: New NPCs, new locations, and new fish. I, personally, feel like this is a bit of an underated mod.

I do really reccomend exploring these mods on their own once and then playing with all of them together! It really does elevate your game play and does provide a lot more fun content.

More Warp Points V2: Provides the ability for you to warp to various points within the game, which can be really helpful for a variety of reasons. I tend to use it for traveling to the desert or ginger island and back without having to pay for it, and warping home if it's nearly 2am and/or I am almost at 0 health so that I don't lose any of my stuff! [Follow the link to see all of the various places you can warp to!]

Experience Bars: Adds a visual on your screen so you can see how far you are from leveling up in one of your vanilla game skills. AFAIK it will not show modded skills. This is a great mod to have if you're like me and completely forget about leveling up skills because "out of sight out of mind" plus it adds a great visual for those of us that only have the drive to finish something if we can easily see how well we are doing.

Skull Cavern Elevator: Skull cavern is basically bottomless and it's hell to get through. This makes it easier for you to continue to get depper within the cavern, and if you use it to help you reach floor 100 it doesn't trigger the "negative" lines from Mr. Qi (or, at least, it hasn't for me).

The Love Of Cooking: New cooking menu, redone recipies, new tool, new skill, and new recipies. I really like the cooking aspect of Stardew Valley and this really expands on it in a variety of ways that I find really enjoyable.

Canon-Friendly Dialogue Expansion: New lines for the vanilla villagers, I just like when they have more personality.

True Love Valley - A Romance Dialogue Expansion Pack: Same as above, new lines for the marriage candidates! [Note: This mod is a WIP]

Lookup Anything: Lets you look up any villager, animal, monster, crop, fish, crafted item, building, and pretty much anything and everything else you can think of in game. It's really useful for finding out what someones gift prefrences are, and what something is if you've never seen it before.

Automate : Automatically puts / pulls items from one thing to another. My favorite part of it is that you can utilize more space for kegs, perserve jars, and casks because instead of needing room for you player to be able to walk through to get everything, you can fill your entire shed / greenhouse / basement / whatever else with your item and only leave enough room for two chests and you to be able to get in and gather items. I like using one chest as my input chest and one chest as my output chest!

Bigger Backpack: Adds another backpack to Pierres for 50,000g which gives you 48 slots instead of 36. This is really useful while fishing and farming.

Chests Anywhere: The ability to access any chest from any location is very useful. I typically use this to put all of my community center items in a couple of chests and then grabing from them while at the community center so I can just provide everything all at once because instead of running back and forth I can just hit a button and grab what I need.

Personal Greenhouse: An, objectively, better looking greenhouse. Has optional fruit tree spots, a bigger crop area, and other optional aesthetic choices.

Farmhouse Vists: Exactly as it says, NPCs will now randomly visit your house. This does include modded NPCs. I feel like this helps to add to the realism of the game.

CJB Cheats Menu: A cheats menu. I like to use it to get all of the professions toggled minus the fishing ones because those seem to be a bit janky, as well as to upgrade my walking speed so I zoom around the map. Sometimes I will use it to change the weather for the next day if I am trying to catch certain fish or get the mermaid pendant so I can get married by a specific day. I also like to pause the time in the mines so that I can spend however long I want in them.

CJB Item Spawner: An item spawner. I mostly use this to decorate my farm, but sometimes if a certain quest is taking me too long and I just can't figure out how to get what I need or I am just tired of having the quest in my journal after multiple years for whatever reason I'll just spawn in the quest item. This is usually done for quests in relation to cooking.

UI Info Suit 2: [NOT on nexus] Shows you a variety of in-game things to make planning your day, or the next day, easier.

[bringthekaos]

fdslkgjslk I know I've come late to this fandom and I can't believe this is my first ask here but. The latest ones you've got have made my brain go BRRRRR. I think that Viktor as the Herald wouldn't be 100% machine and it's not only because of fangirling ok. This dude is gonna be a posterboy of What It Could Be for humanity. A symbiosis. There's the Hextech/Flesh mix he's made of some of himself, which he'd keep. There's the parts I think he'd def change into a machine entirely. As someone who does have chronic pain, I don't think he'd replace his entire torso, because he's already spent like ten years in a harness, and paradoxically if he replaces his lungs and heart and throat and spine, he'd like to feel what it's not like to be in pain and not be constricted there. Like, maybe he changed his ribs, or maybe he put metal over the sides, but not around the whole thing? So, that's a cyborg feature. I feel like he'd augment his left leg with cyborg parts (specially on the knees and ankles) but keep the flesh. And the hips and buttocks, same thing - Lower back and hips reinforced, flesh for the rest. There's a spiteful streak to him, after all.

And he'd keep his human face. To fuck with Jayce. To know that yes, he has a mask on, and he may believe the mask is his real face (hell, even Viktor feels like it sometimes); but he could take it off any time he wants to.

(Also the temporo-mandibular joint is def going to be metal tho, supported by the chin, because look at this guy and tell me he doesn't have bruxism. And I'm sorry about this huge thing, maybe I should've made a sketch X'DD)

Hiiiiii! I said it once already, but welcome to the fandom! We’re stoked to have you!

I do a lot of flip-flopping on how much I think he’s replaced as the Machine Herald. Sometimes it’s more than others. Like… he preaches the superiority of metal and how the human form can only be improved upon. But then… he enjoys sweetmilk. He has a sense of humor, even in League, where he has supposedly eliminated a fair share of his emotions. So there’s also an element of hypocritical thinking when it comes to Viktor. Like… he says emotion is a barrier between humanity and their highest possible form, but then he finds joy in the little things (like the aforementioned sweetmilk), which is a fundamentally human character trait. And on the other end of that spectrum, as you said, he’s spiteful and holds grudges. Like… my guy has deluded himself into thinking he’s above emotion.

Until we get a definite confirmation in Arcane on just how much augmenting he’s done, it’s fun to play with the options, as a writer. I can write a more detached Viktor, who has replaced basically everything except his brain. And I can write him with very minimal augments—really just what was required to save his life and stop his pain. It’s actually kinda nice, not knowing. For now, anyway. It gives me freedom. But when we do eventually know, I’ll get to write a whole bunch of new canon-compliant stuff!!

I don’t know that Viktor would do anything mod-wise specifically to fuck with Jayce… it kinda depends how bad their falling out is. I feel like Arcane may be stepping back from the contention between them, and making it more of a tragedy of circumstances with notes of personal betrayal. Idk though. If Jayce really does end up betraying him, then all bets are off. He builds parts of himself with the sole intent being to torture Jayce. And maybe even builds the mask so that he never has to look Jayce directly in the eyes again.

Ugh. Can’t believe S2 is still a year away. I NEED ANSWERS.

[sebdoeswords]

you rb something from my art account and mentioned some marina, and not to be nosy but who the hell is that

oh boy, strap in for a loooong story. I was gonna answer this privately because i just know she can sniff her name out in a crowd and will come for me, but I saved it as a draft and because tumblr is such a marvel of technology now there's no option to answer privately anymore so 🙃 Gonna put this under a cut. Fandom drama ahead.

Basically Marina is a a user who has been involved in a lot of fandom drama (that she keeps starting). She ships Roche with Ciri, and I assume she's a monoshipper (or whatever you call the opposite of multiship) because she can't get it into her head that other people ship different things. She insists that Ciri is the one true partner for Roche, and has been going around harassing people who ship Roche with other characters, mostly Iorveth, because that's the most popular pairing for him, but I've also gotten some flak for shipping him with Geralt. On the other side she goes around to people who ship Ciri with other characters as well, most prominently whenever people have wlw ships for her (Marina is homophobic, it's clear from some of the asks she sends).

Lots of people are uncomfortable with Roche/Ciri (Or VernonCiri, as is the ship name she uses) because of the big age gap, and more specifically the fact that Ciri is only barely out of her teens (I've got some age gap ships myself, since that's just a thing that happens in a fandom with characters that reach supernaturally high ages, but where I get uncomfortable is when characters that aren't quite settled into adulthood are involved, and Ciri is shown throughout especially the third game to still be quite immature in a lot of aspects)

Anyway, this aversion some people show really grates on Marina, and she keeps insisting that people's refusal to ship something equals harassment and "throwing shit" at her ship, when really I've not seen many instances of people actually talking badly about her ship outside of trying to explain why they don't ship it.

Marina has a habit of stalking the tags of Roche and Ciri, as well as rorveth, cirys, vesiri, many of the ships she doesn't like, and then sending hate to the people who post things she doesn't like. I assume this is what happened on your art blog, since when i went down it and found the old ask she sent you, you'd posted a picture of Roche and Iorveth before that, and I think she just assumes it's ship art whenever those two are shown together, regardless of context. She'll often say things about ships not being canon (funnily enough neither is hers, but whatever), Roche or Ciri not being gay, or asking why X ship and not VernonCiri. She also keeps insisting that her ship is not pedophilia, which none of us ever claimed it was, so.

She's also sent explicit modded screenshots of her ships to people unprompted (and by explicit i mean nsfw), has taken credit for other people's mods, as well as plagiarised a friend of mine's edits by recreating the set of images exactly except with the models swapped out, with no mention of any "inspiration" or credit. Over on twitter she quote retweeted a fic summary i'd tweeted, copied the summary and swapped out the character names, then blocked me so I couldn't see, and when called out for it tried to claim that wasn't plagiarism and that I shouldn't take it so seriously.

This whole thing got to the point my friend made a callout post because there was just so much harassment going on across so many different throwaway blogs, anon messages, and even different platforms. If you want to see everything she's done (or did up to the point that post was made) here's a masterpost with all the receipts.

I've left out a huge chunk of happenings, but if you wanna know more, or want to chat, feel free to DM me. Also sorry you got involved in all of this 💀

[cuprohastes]

Starfield!

OK I've been playing the heck out of this and I have some thoughts. Under the cut.

TL:DR - I'm enjoying it a whole lot.

OK, this is a very Bethesda game. I mean you can see the Fallout 4 DNA, and it's distant ancestor, Skyrim.

And there's some classic bugs: Putting your super rare and cool looking space suit on the Armoury Mannekin is great. And if you change the least amount of your ship it will vanish forever.

Not all your very cool, upgraded weapons will stick around. They'll just show up missing. The tutorials on navigation or ship building appear to be 100% missing. The speech challenge is... hilariously crap and badly explained

But... but...

Out of days of play that's pretty much the only issues I've had, apart from 'Oh dear god I'm over encumbered AGAIN?!' Because for some reason, Bethesda thought that an upper limit of 150KG before buffs or perks or suit mods was acceptable. I mean... OK. It probably is, but given most of your income is hauling gently used equipment and other goodies back to your ship and flogging it off for space bottlecaps septims dollars, it can get really annoying that while carrying the equivalent of two adult humans, you can only sprint for a little bit.

Unless you get your robot butler to pick up the load, but say goodbye to stealth play because at the merest hint of Bad Guy activity, it'll sprint into the thick of things yelling about how it's not programmed for combat, DIE SQUISHY HUMAN RARG RARG PUNCH KICK TWIRL... yes dude, please back off so I can fire this proton canon into that bad person's kneecaps.

I mean you can just park it and say 'wait here'. You even get a quest and marker to find it again if you forget.

But it's a very mellow game. Yes it is super easy to make the game spawn a couple of loot dungeons. But have you tried going to Mars where the horrible grimy mine is... staffed by fairly happy and content miners who are not being exploited, and where you can pick up a mission to put up posters so that people will feel happier? OR that fetch quest designed to get you visiting other locations on behalf of the comic book fan? What about the first faction you meet who won a war but who's citizens were so horrified by it that they formed a working peace with their erstwhile opponents, and admit, yeah, the enetire thing was their fault: Let's rebuild and be better people.

They have a museum where they have a display explaining 'We won but when we asked AITA, the answer was Yes.'

And then you can go sit in the park and eat meatloaf. Maybe build your own colony and put up Space Frog, the Frog from Space posters. Start a garden. Get eaten by a Terrormorph

But you want to be a pirate, a smuggler, a Space Cop, A Ranger, a spy, a bounty hunter, a collections agent or a freelance bad-guy murderer? Oh yeah that for SURE is a bunch of things that you are basically offered right away, and that's not even the main plot. These are fun sub plots. This is a way to rack up XP and bank the hilariously small amount of money it takes to re-build your ship into the space Winnebago of your dreams.

How's that work?

OK you have a space winnebago. Cockpit at the front, mobile home in the middle, then a bunch of engines and pew-pew sticks. Porch on the belly and buncha legs to stand on.

You can swap the middle part - Bed n' kitchen, science room, workshop, infirmary, armoury, captains quarters, living quarters, a couple of other options.

Want more? Well... click a second unit on. Or a long version. Or some passages. Hell, make a star destroyer with every type of room and cover it with engines and lasers and storage units.

You just need to be able to train up to get the reactor to power it all. The good news is that you can absolutely hire staff to run all your systems and have ship with a crew, and a companion who'll happily tag along and provide banter. Or solo it all.

And so far there's no Preston Garvey.

[vulpixelates]

mass effect, my beloved (derogatory)

[meanscarletdeceiver]

Why the hell is Thomas, supposedly a LB&SCR engine, on Sodor?

That's a long trek! Plus, E2s are way bigger than Thomas is portrayed in every iteration of canon!

The second thing can be explained away as "major rebuild" (I suppose—it's still weird), but the first is a pretty big strain on belief.

Here are some of the options:

Thomas was being sent to the front but his ship called at Tidmouth and his crew just rolled him right off into the docks. The NWR was in a state of half-built chaos and desperately needed engines, so no one questioned too hard what tf Thomas and his crew were doing hanging 'round so long as they were making themselves useful.

Young Thomas stowed away on a long-distance train out of his home depot wanting to see the world and/or show up whatever engines were currently teasing him. He managed to finagle odd jobs in the chaos of war preparation until he wound up on Sodor.

STH is plain lying about Thomas being an E2. It's an amazing bit of cheek. I'm thinking in this case Thomas is something close and handy, maybe a Johnson 2411 class or a contractor engine, and when his owners tracked him down to Vicarstown FC1 just bald-facedly claimed that this was an LB&SCR engine that had been sent to them for war service, sorry about your lost engine, if you have any posters we're happy to put them up. They were infuriated but Thomas had already been modded so much that they couldn't prove his identity.

Bonus to that: STH made it legal with the LB&SCR, who knew there were shenanigans afoot but who just shrugged and accepted his five hundred pounds or whatever for an engine they knew very well they hadn't lost.

Variant: There is also the @tethrendevez explanation!

For the "lying to his owners" theory I did not propose the obvious alt of Thomas as a Furness G5, if only because I can't see even FC1 having the chutzpah to try gaslighting his next-door neighbors. But consider: Thomas was a G5, but in 1960 he was embiggened in the post-breakfast rebuild. FC2 decided to have him rebuilt to look like a somewhat plausible LB&SCR E2... so that they could request that BR send one or two of these soon-to-be-withdrawn engines to them gratis for Thomas's "spare parts." The beaten, frightened engines arrived to find their mysterious long-lost brother was... just some northern sidetank rando winking at them and saying that he hoped they didn't mind being rushed off their wheels at their new assignments!

The North Western was one of the odd railways that were then air-braked, so when the Admiralty decided they needed to be loaned locomotives they sent some engines from railways like the LB&SCR that would be compatible with their stock.

Bonus to the above: Annie, Clarabel, and probably similar coaches were also donated during this time, being themselves air-fitted.

Thanks to @joezworld for helping spark this post.

[betweenlands]

You should talk about the way kj does magic!

okay okay okay SO this is really interesting, because there is some canon consistency to kakujo's dark magic (usually. we'll get to the exceptions.) actually!

...under a cut. this actually got really long. woaw. tl;dr kakujo normally does stuff via components but if he gets pissed off he can probably just thanos snap people

kakujo's magic is what i like to call totem/sympathetic magic -- that is, he uses items to represent the effects of the spell before casting it. there's a pretty clear example of this partway through magic world -- he rummages through a couple chests looking for spell components to transfer bax from one body to another, gets the spell wrong, then picks up the components and does a new one. it also happens in departed; apparently doing necromancy on C.O.R.E. is as simple as honey, salt, and consecrated soil!

well, kind of. there's also ritual about it. apparently a good deal of effort in kakujo's spells is also put behind how the items are tossed into the world? again, the closest we've gotten to codification is in departed. the resurrection ritual requires that you slam dunk the honey and salt onto the consecrated soil "like michael jordan, oh sorry i need to keep with the times, lebron james" and a later item duplication ritual requires that you "eat a watermelon like ya really mean it"

so there's a physical cost (items) and a ritual involving specific motions. cool cool. except that's not the only thing that kakujo's magic requires. it also requires souls. we know this for a fact because he says at several points in time throughout his various series. kakujo owes souls to the Dark World, whatever that is. we don't know how many, only that it's a lot, somewhere in the thousands. we also know this potentially adds up to "years of servitude" assuming kj can't pay the soul debt, which... implies some stuff

so. kakujo's magic probably goes like this: find ritual components to represent transaction. perform ritual. sell or otherwise use soul to power ritual. relatively simple and versatile! (as a side note, we personally have a headcanon that he's selling his own soul repeatedly to fuel the transactions, hence why he's in debt -- he only has the one soul.) that's fine, right?

...let's talk about the end of magic world. The Scene. the one we will not shut up about. kakujo's frustrated at a farlander (think a villager, but enderman) for seemingly stiffing him out of a trade for a portal to the end. his eye of ender has been trying to lead him to a stronghold that doesn't exist thanks to faulty worldgen. he's mad. he's running low on options. he storms up to the farlander and (screen turning increasingly more red all the while) goes "you have to make this right. if you know what's good for this village and all the people in it, you will MAKE THIS RIGHT."

...and then the farlander vanishes, and leaves behind exactly enough end portal frames and eyes of ender to make a portal to the end. and when his companion at the time asks him what the hell that was, kakujo responds in a very "got caught with my hand in the cookie jar" manner that "well i try to get away from blood magic, but you know how it is!"

this is. obviously not the mod blood magic. kakujo seems fine with doing the blood magic mod. this is Ancient Blood Magic. this is Old Magic and if i had to hazard a guess at what kakujo did there, he probably used the farlander as fuel for the ritual, blood and soul and everything. and quite possibly didn't even do it on purpose! holy shit dude! that's fucked up if true!

anyway that's how kakujo does magic. he just kinda Does It. it's probably for the best that everyone pretends it's got some internal logic to it besides his own whims, because it really seems like the only thing keeping him from going whole ham is his (dubious) moral compass and the fake limits he puts on what he's able to do.

[falloutsketchysecretsanta]

Sketchy Secret Santa: THE HOLIDAY PROMPT!

Friends, fans, and followers-- it’s finally here! The time you’ve all been waiting for! The anon function is off, the request window is OPEN, and the prompt is HERE!

For those who have never participated in a Sketchy event before, let me break it down for you. Sketchy Secret Santa is a Fallout Fandom Event where you send in a sketch request to our group of volunteer artists to whip up a nifty gifty for someone else as an anonymous surprise! If you’d like more information, here’s a link to our info post.

And now, let’s get into the meat of THIS post. How to send a Valid Request, the Do’s and Don’ts, the Prompt List itself, and What to expect after you send a request in!

[Read more to keep dashboards clean]

To Send a Valid Sketchy Secret Santa Request, Please Send an Ask Including The Following:

WHOM the request is for. ---- At current, we are only making requests for people on Tumblr. We’ll need their username so we can @ tag them with the finished work when it’s posted. 

The character[s] you’d like sketched up ---- All characters welcome! Canon, OC’s, everyone is fair game so long as it’s Fallout! ---- MAXIMUM FOUR CHARACTERS PER REQUEST. Our artists are working on a volunteer basis, and more figures means more time.  ---- Is a request intended to be shippy? Let us know! We don’t read minds. ---- Poly? Found family? Hell yes! Just make sure to let us know the relationship context for the request. All genders and sexualities welcome, so long as everyone is a consenting adult. 

1 [ONE!] Item from the prompt list below ---- The prompt list is both to give the artists direction and to limit the scope of what can be requested, keeping things manageable.  ---- The items on the prompt list can be considered INSPIRATION, and what is drawn is up to artist interpretation of that prompt.  ---- Do not dictate specific poses, colors, or situations. These are freebies, not commissions. All specifics are up to the volunteer artist who takes your request.  ---- Do not dictate a specific artist to fulfill your request. Artists are operating on a self-directed basis and are, again, volunteers providing freebies to spread holiday joy. If you want work from a specific artist, might I suggest checking their commission status?

[OPTIONALLY!!] Tell us what holiday traditions the requested characters keep. ---- While there are various holidays on the prompt list, those are general AF prompts. Telling us what holidays an OC celebrates, or what holidays you HC a canon character to celebrate is additional character context and EXTREMELY ENCOURAGED, and does not replace the prompt. It’s like reference information-- telling the artist whom they’re drawing.

Please Do: 

Be polite! Say please and thank you, be kind to the askbox managers, ect. Everyone working on this project is doing so on a volunteer basis. 

Be patient. Depending on what kind of traffic we see right off the bat, it may take a hot second for your request to be accepted. 

Be present and ready to provide ref information! If you request an OC for a friend, we’re going to need reference material for our artists to work with! Have files ready upon request, and be prepared for one of our helpers to request that information through the Tumblr IM [check your blog settings and make sure you’re set to accept messages]

Be kind. We’re going to do our best to get to every request we can throughout the month, but please don’t be upset with us if we can’t serve everyone. 

Please Don’t:

Try to circumvent the rules. Just don’t.

Be an entitled jackass. This is a volunteer holiday event. We’re gonna do our best, don’t be a jerk if there’s mix ups or we don’t get to your request. 

Try to request for yourself. The whole point of this event is do something nice for others. 

Ghost us. Please, please don’t send a request in and then ghost the staff of the event. Nothing kills morale quite like a participant dropping off the map without a word. 

Okay, are we through all the rules stuff? Then onwards to...

THE PROMPT LIST!

The following is a list of words, phrases, ideas, and memories brainstormed by our team of volunteers to give the requests direction and verity. You may pick 1 [ONE] per request. 

Christmas

Hanukah

Kwanza

Samhain

Keeping Old Traditions

Ghosts of Christmas Past

Drifted Myths

Twisted Christmas Tales

Deck the Halls

Making Decorations

Repurposed/Reused/Recycled

Junk into Jolly

Improvised Christmas Tree

Nuka Cola Christmas

Santa Spotting

Holiday Clothes

Ugly Sweaters

Posing for Pictures

Gift Exchange

Present Scavenging

Firelight

Thawing out

Tending the Bonfire

Lights

Unexpected Kindness

Little Mercies

Rare Reunions

Community Celebration

Found Family

Oh Shit I’ve never had real friends during the holidays before

Holiday Meal

Baked Goods 

Potluck

Fireside Cooking

Kitchen Catastrophes 

Pound Cake

Feasting Aftermath

Holiday Mischief 

Brahmin Tipping

Stolen Pants

Pet Dress-up

Mistletoe Mishaps

Someone is kissing Santa

CUI [Caroling under the Influence]

Holiday drinks

Holiday drunks

Is that supposed to be glowing

Candlelight and Snow

First Snow

Noob in a Snowball Fight

Soaked Through and Freezing

Snowed in

Antlers

Pinecones 

Fire and Ice

Tropical Transplant

Ringing in the New Year

To New Beginnings

Celebratory Toast 

Watching the Clock 

Fireworks 

Reinvention

Hokay! So you’ve gotten this far-- you know WHO you wanna request for, WHAT you wanna request, you’ve picked something from the PROMPT LIST, and you’re ready to SEND IT IN! 

... So what happens after you send your request? 

The mods on this blog will add it to our list, and answer your ask PRIVATELY to confirm your request has been added. At the time of the confirmation, we may ask for additional OC reference information, if an OC was requested, or request clarification on relationship context between the requested characters if more than one character was requested. Be ready to correspond with us, and have reference material ready for OCs!

Once your request is confirmed, you’re all done! The rest is up to us. Finished requests will be posted on New Years Day, @ tagging the gift recipient and no one else, leaving the requester entirely anonymous. 

Thank you so much if you choose to participate. The request window is open until December 25th. We’ll be working hard until the very last day.

We wish you all a happy holiday, whatever you celebrate, and a happy New Year!

[curechocolattymilk]

TES V OC Thingie

[Got tagged by @jessaryss​ ! ]

Pause your game! Wherever your OC is in their game currently, tell me about their story so far.

✧✧✧ General

Current Level: 56

Name: Jeer-Tei Perdes

Name Meaning: Literally got it from a name generator lol. But lore wise it was a name gifted to them in honor of an Argonian who served beside Tei’s mother during the Great War

Pronouns: They/Them

Age: Early 30s where they are story wise???

Race(s): Argonian

Place of Origin: Hammerfell

Pick A Theme Song For Them: oof that's tough... From a Crowded Wound or maybe even Firstwake? If you really played around w personal interpretation/the lyrics that is haha

✧✧✧ Locations

Where Did You Begin Their Game?: Argonian Assemblage, Windhelm (Alternative Start)

Where Are They Currently In Your Game?: Whiterun

What Are They Doing There?: Just finished attending a party held in their honor (Post Blood of Kings)

Homes?: Breezehome, Proudspire, Lakeview & Autmnwatch

# of Locations Discovered?: 274

Dungeons Cleared: 104

Misc. Quests Completed: 87

Favorite Areas and/or Locations: Falkreath / Lakewview Manor. Both areas are where Tei heads off to in order to collect their thoughts/feel some sense of calm.

✧✧✧ Main Quest

Are They Dragonborn / Do They Know It At This Point?: Yes & yes

How Do They Feel About Being Dragonborn: It's...complicated, being thrust into the role of savior by gods of the Cult, which in turn are followed by the folk who see you lesser than them. Tei already has a dislike towards the Divines, this doesn't really help lol

Main Quests Completed: 21

Where Are They In The Main Story Line: Alduin's dead, currently trying to ignore the Civil War as long as they can before the Empire forces its hand into forcing them to join their ranks

Dragon Souls Absorbed: In total overall? 147. The amount currently stored in Tei? 45

Words of Power Learned: 64

Shouts Mastered: 21

Favorite Shout: Firebreath / Dragonrend

✧✧✧ Combat

Most Used Weapon(s): Daedric war axe OR Dragonbone battle axe. Tei technically has both on them at all times during adventuring, alongside a shield, so which they used depends on the situation/which they grab fastest.

Combat Style: Two/One-handed tank. Main tactic is to rush in, cause as much damage/chaos as possible to shake up the opponent, & clean up what the ranged attackers of the party (usually Rumarin, Inigo and/or Lucien) weren't able to deal with.

Armor Type / Level In It: HEAVY ARMOR BABYYYYY (Level 100 + 35 extra points via enchantments)

# of Training Sessions: 99 in-game, lore wise its a lot of self-teaching/keeping their skills learned from Hammerfell sharp. Some of these are magic but lore-wise this doesn't happen cus Tei is not a magic user, save for shouts. I just did those in-game for exp OR so I can help Lucien raise his magic skills :'D

Who Taught Them?: In-game?? Fuuuck so many npcs. Lore-wise? They learned this from their schooling in Hammerfell, going off the canon-lore that it's p much expected for everyone to have a grasp on combat & weaponry! Though they did learn a few things from Kaidan & Anum-La.

Favorite Enemy Type: Dragons! Despite the fact Tei does not have the best magic resistance, it's one hell of a challenge they love to meet.

Least Favorite Enemy Type: Automatons, because of a bad experience with them as a child. Also Undead, because they were raised not to disturb them & it just feels so wrong having to fight them/go into tombs.

People Killed: 945

Animals Killed: 749 (Hunterborn makes hunting fun lol)

Undead Killed: 766

Automatons Killed: 105

Daedra Killed: 136

✧✧✧ Magic

Favorite School(s): None, actually. Destruction is okay though....they guess

Most Used Spell(s): Firebreath or Dragon Aspect. Tei doesn't consider shouts spells though. It's totally different guys shut up they ain't no smelly mage gods

Spells Learned: 9 in-game, mainly due to the spells you're kinda forced to learn for some quests/the ones you automatically know

Items Enchanted: 19 (Tei technically doesn't enchant, and wont next playthrough for sure I wont give in this time >:[ )

College of Winterhold Quests Completed: 8

Where Are They At In The Questline?: Main quest is done bcus i dont like seeing unfinished quests in my journal lmao. Tei's involvement is completely different from canon though in my take. Moreso was hired as a guard for the expedition & was, unwillingly, dragged into the rest of the mess. Is not offered the Archmage position, that went straight to Tolfdir.

Opinions on Magical Guilds (Arcane University, Winterhold, Psijics, Synod, Radiant Dark, etc.): As they get older, they tolerate the guild & magic users more n more, BUT, Tei grew up in an environment that frowns upon the practice of magic, & it shows. They mainly mistrust necromancers/illusionists & still hold onto that belief that reliance on magic, especially for combat, is a weakness.

Bold words for someone with shit magic resistance.

✧✧✧ Crime

Current Gold: 10,640

How Did They Acquire Their Gold?: Odd jobs, selling a lot of the items they made/harvested from smithing & hunting (jewelers are their go-to hirers bcus Tei is great at getting things like ivory), Dwemer ruin diving (they refuse to loot the tombs), also yknow....being part of the Dark Brotherhood helps

Largest Bounty On Their Head: 11,240

For...?: Unfortunately they did not stand down when they were being falsely accused of murder in Markarth. First time Tei called down dragons (Sahrotaar, specifically, Tei managed to get command of Miraak's dragons post-Dragonborn) to absolutely smite some fools.

Current Bounty: None! They're good at not getting caught/threatening and/or bribing guards. :)

Locks Picked: 15 i think?

Jail Time: 1, Cidhna Mine

Jail Escapes: 1, teamed up w the Forsworn lol

Murders: 28

Assaults: 307....In their defense people keep getting in their way during dragon attacks

Items Stolen: 37, most of them from the nobles of Windhelm

Thieves Guild Quests Completed: N/A (wont be doing this storyline unless i cant find a mod that'll let me get the shouts locked behind it)

Dark Brotherhood Quests Completed: 20

Where Are They At In Those Questlines?: DB is completed main arc wise!

✧✧✧ Relationships

Relationship Status: Married to two lovely fellas

Current Companions: atm? none

Housecarls: Lydia & Rayya

Friends (outside of party): Zora Fair-Child, Inigo, Lucien, Anum-La, Morndas, Aela the Huntress, Nazir, Babette, Scouts-Many-Marshes, Isobel, Madesi

Children: Khash, Chases-Starlight, Ram-Ku. (going of where Tei is now - Otero & Mei come around later on in Tei's story!)

Romantic Interest(s): Kaidan & Rumarin.

Sexual Orientation:

GAY

✧✧✧ Religion

Pantheon: Yokudan, with a hint of Hircine worship in there

Patron Deity(ies): From the Yokudan pantheon: Tei mainly views HoonDing as their main patron, but also prays to/pays respect to Satakal.

They are also Hircine's champion.

Daedric Quests Completed: 3 (Hircine, Vile, Dagon - the last Tei didn't really help, moreso pissed off)

Aedric Quests Completed: 1 if you count the whole Alduin thing I guess?

How Devout Are They?: Tei is rather devout, esp to their Yokudan patrons, praying or making offerings daily. They aren't the type to really push it in your face though, but have no issues answering questions one might have.

How Do They Feel About Talos Worship?: Deep down they acknowledge & admit trying to ban worship is terrible, but....Tei also lets their bias/experience with Windhelm, the Stormcloaks & especially Ulfric kinda cloud over this. If the Nords want their old ways so damn much, why fight for a divine from the Imperial Cult? Why not go back to the actual old ways? No, this isn't about worship, not to the men leading this so-called rebellion, they just needed something other than their racist bullshit to fool the common man into throwing their lives away for the nobles sitting comfortable in their thrones.

Also during their whole thing of getting into their role of dragonborn, they get a bonus 'fuck this dude actually' towards Talos, Ysmir, whatever the fuck he calls himself. (tldr; it sucks but good luck hearing Tei say that fully)

✧✧✧ Politics

Gray-Mane or Battle-Born?: Neither, ask them again they will punch you for the love of Ruptga they get asked that every time they enter Whiterun.

Stormcloaks or Imperials?: Also neither, Tei hates em both n think they can all choke. Unfortunately they were forced to join the latter due to, yknow, calling dragons & causing massive damage in Imperial territories during isolated fits of rage and the group being more aggressive in wanting something in return for "letting it slide"....oops

Opinion on the Thalmor?: Oh absolutely despises them, they loudly complained having to work with them during the CW & would go out their way to disrupt their plans/piss them off. Sneaking was an option they did not take during the Embassy quest, if it helps paint the picture.

Opinion Of Ulfric Stormcloak?: Tei doens't say they hate people often...but they sure as hell hate Ulfric. Again, their experience in Windhelm added to this heavily, how both the Dunmer & Argonians were treated like shit, with no help whatsoever from the Jarl or guards when the local Nords targeted them. It's still up in the air if I keep this for Tei's story, but I have it where they knew Chases-Starlight's parents, who were killed. When Tei went up & demanded justice/an investigation, only to be brushed off because it "wasn't a priority," it completely destroyed what little empathy or hope they had left for Windhelm as a whole.

Opinion of The Empire?: Cowards too weak to continue fighting back against the Thalmor, in their opinion, & holds these views they grew up with even when being strong-armed into aiding them. If anything they're at least attempting to use their influence to hint towards a rebellion against the Thalmor, but the Empire could also full-on dissolve & they could give less of a shit.

Civil War Quests Completed: 0

✧✧✧ Personal

How Are They Doing? Need Some Juice? A Nap? A Hug?: The whole event of Blood of Kings has fucked with their head, to say the least. It's the starting point of Tei's eventual spiral. So uh...yeah they're not sure how they're doing everything they knew about reality was kinda challenged & they don't rlly have anyone to talk to about it so its cool, its fine, its all good.

A nap is probably needed, not sure about a hug theough they're super flinchy rn

Days Past In Game: 196

Hours of Sleep: 846

Food Items Consumed: 1833

How Many Playthroughs Have You Done With This Character: Tei actually is an older character from the 360 days so uh...maybe 5 at most? This playthrough & their S:EC one coming up when the mod releases being the main ones focusing on their story

Overall How's Your Level Of Fun: Alright I would say! I just been stepping away from Skyrim more often lately to avoid burning out from it

Must Have Mods To Play This Character (for story or other reasons): Ordinator, Wintersun Faiths, Immersive Armors, Sarcastic Player Dialogue, 3DNPC, Inigo, Lucien Flavius, Kaidan 2, Khash the Argonian, Alternative Start, Leviathan Animations, Beast Race Body Paints, Beast HHBB, Apocalypse Magic, Deadly Dragons, Growl: Werewolf Overhaul, Pronouns, uhhh....idk what else without actually listing my current modlist lmao

----

And that's it for Tei! Anyone who wants to do this go on ahead!

[dgcatanisiri]

All this time on the whole thing about making Mass Effect inclusive is reminding me of the biggest frustration I’ve had with same-sex romances across BioWare’s games.

Which is that I usually DON’T walk away from these games happy with my options. When BioWare is one of the rare publishers who even offer the ability to play gay characters in RPGs, and like hell you’ll see a mainstream AAA game feature a gay protagonist. I think the closest we’ve had to that is the Deadpool game, since he’s canonically pan, but the most we get of that is his groping Cable’s chest, and otherwise, it’s all about how much he wants to spend time with “big breasted fans” and his relationship with the female-presenting Death (yeah, sure, anthropromorphized form of an abstract concept, Death looks, sounds, and is spoken of as female, so...).

But while BioWare gives the option... I’m rarely content with the options.

Jade Empire offered Sky, who I do love as an option, but I can’t help but feel like this is in many ways due to the fact that I first played Jade Empire when I was still coming to terms with my sexuality - any romance that affirmed “yes, you are deserving of love as a man who loves other men” would be embraced at that point, and because of my issues with the general archetype he is cast from the mould of, I don’t think I’d feel the same if I encountered him new today.

ME1 SHOULD have had Kaidan, but doesn’t. 

Dragon Age Origins has Zevran, who is from that same archetype as Sky, the loveable rogue. Repeating the same character type, and throwing in a character who is a shameless flirt is not the way to my heart. No, I latched on to Alistair, and get frustrated at only being able to fulfill that desire with a mod.

ME2 again has nothing. And, even if it HAD, the way that things turn out in ME3 would have left me pretty disappointed if I’d gotten the ability to romance Jacob or Thane. 

DA2 is the first aversion - while I went in expecting to love Anders, I was pushed away by finding the romance (and the friendship, tbh) toxic and abusive. Luckily, however, I could balance it out with Fenris, who was FINALLY a romance I could love to replay the game for.

ME3 continued that, with Kaidan finally an option. And, while I don’t like to shake that OTP up by leaving Kaidan behind, I find Steve Cortez a good character, just hampered by finding the romance uncomfortably framed in a “get over your grieving so I can get in your pants.”

But then Inquisition takes a step back - I find Dorian as a character obnoxious, not to mention coming across as a prop for the development of his father at his expense (plus fandom’s treatment of him souring me further). Meanwhile, the game drops as I’m getting to accepting being asexual, which puts Iron Bull’s whole romance way out of my comfort zone, on top of feeling like the writing is more focused on making the whole thing a punchline.

And then Andromeda and THAT mess... Gil’s a decent character hampered by THE WORST combination of lack of concern for him and a plot written by someone who has NO idea what they’re talking about when it comes to gay people trying to have kids. Reyes goes back to the old archetype well, on top of me both finding him sketchy as hell AND vehemently objecting to a romance lock in that has you making out with him not five feet away from the still-warm body of the woman he ordered killed (and that’s the summary version...). Then there’s Jaal who, just to get his bisexuality, BioWare had to be shamed in to offering it.

So the rough version of this is that of the eight games above, almost all of them come with caveats. Only six games HAVE options, and of those options, two are “options” in the sense that they exist, rather than being options I would take, dropping it to only four games. Of those four, I’m still very, VERY hard on the options within the Mass Effect games. Because, while I do take Gil or Jaal as romances when I play Andromeda, it’s more in spite of than because of the romances proper. Like, they involve active mental patching for me to roll with them. And Kaidan as a romance is one that is a barely there THING, happening in the last game only.

And this is the best I GET. What are my alternatives? Cyberpunk? There’s... issues there, particularly around bodily autonomy and how V has to give up theirs just to get the ability to meet the one gay option. Skyrim/Fallout? Where the “romance” is just a persuasion check and no special content, on top of the romances being bisexual more due to developer laziness, rather than inclusivity. Assassin’s Creed? Where the romances have mostly been pointless flings? That forced a het relationship in the name of forced reproduction in Odyssey’s DLC? Where the most important relationship of the games that offered it is still with a female NPC? Where the “canon” version that carries forward in both Odyssey and Valhalla says that the PC was actually a woman, not a man, so the pairings I viewed as M/M were “actually” M/F? Games like Pillars of Eternity, where the romance exists more through blocks of text than gameplay? 

At best, there’s games like Technomancer and Greedfall (the latter having its own issues, and sort of retroactively tainting the former as a result of those issues.), by a smaller studio. But... I mean, that is one publisher. Out of how many?

I love video games as a medium. I love playing an interactive story, one that advances because of your choices and how you want the story to unfold. But... The medium is in the iron grip of people who don’t love me, and don’t care about me.

[jupitermelichios]

DC: The High-School AU: The Series: The Staff (the musical)

So I finally cast the school staff and teachers for my DC High School AU, which I thought some of you would have some fun with! I took the subject list from a fairly fancy looking private school, because only schools you have to pay for have their subject lists online, so I’m probably offering way more classes than your average state school, but hey, it’s my AU and I wanted to cram in as many supervillains, obscure heroes, and bad jokes as possible.

Admin & Staff

Principle - Amanda Waller

Deputy Principle & Treasurer - Noah Kuttler (the Calculator)

Nurse - Myra Mason (she was Dr Midnite’s nurse and love interest in the 40s & 50s, then got fridged, but I’m unfridging her and giving her a job with much better survival prospects)

Councillor - Ethel Peabody (she’s a psychiatrist from the Gotham TV show, and also in my headcanon, Amanda Waller’s sister)

Librarian - Stanislaus Johns (The Librarian. I considered bookworm for this job but he’s literally called the Librarian, what was I supposed to do, not use him?)

Admin Staff - Laura Conway (Superman supporting cast and occaisional vampire), Mabel Martin (Riddler’s secretary), Theresa Collins (Goldstar, also Booster Gold’s secretary)

Business

Loren Jupiter (aka Mr Jupiter the richest and therefore most thrustworthy man in the world) - Business 101, Business Law, Entrepreneurship

Wesley Dodds (Sandman) - Business Communications

Annabeth Chamberlain (Brimstone) - Marketing, Hospitality & Tourism (she doesn’t work in tourism, but I figure anyone who can waitress while also having the power to set people on fire and damn them to hell and keeps her job probably knows a whole lot about customer service)

Family & Consumer Science

Miss Tribb (Lobo’s childhood teacher who inexplicably survived the extinction of their species) - Childhood Developement, Early Childhood Education

Neil Richards (The Mad Mod) - Texiles/Sewing, Fashion

Tenzil Kem (Matter-Eater Lad) - Food & Nutrition

Finance

Noah Kuttler (The Calculator) - Personal Finance

Foreign Languages

Matron Bertinelli (Nu52 Huntress, who I’m declaring a sepperate character and the aunt of pre-52 Huntress because they’re radically different characters and I like both of them) - ASL, Italian

Chang Jie-Ru (Nu52 Yo-Yo) - Chinese, AP Chinese

Yolanda Montez (Wildcat II) - Spanish, AP Spanish

Barbara Minerva (Cheetah) - Latin

Health Sciences

Myra Mason - Emergency Medical Responder training

Charles McNider (Dr Midnite) - Anatomy & Physiology, Health Class

IT

Brian Durlin (Savant) - Computer Programming, Web Dev

Jennifer Lyn-Hayden (Jade) - Digital Art 101

Arnold Wesker (Ventriloquist) - 3D Animation, 3D Graphics (I don’t know why but the idea of Wesker as an animator just tickled me. Obviously his real passion is stop-motion, but he learnt 3D because there were more jobs)

English (the fancy private school called this ‘language arts’ which is so prentious it makes me feel slightly nauseous)

Wesley Dodds (Sandman) - English Language, AP English Language

Rac Shade (Shade the Changing Man) - English Literature, AP English Literature

Chloe Sullivan (the worst character in the Smallville TV show, a hotly contested position) - English Language, Communications 101, supervises the School Paper and the Yearbook

Shelly Gaynore (The Whip III) - Englist Literature, Creative Writing

Basil Karlo (Clayface) - Intro to Shakespeare

Nick Scratch (officially his supervillain name is just Scratch, but I refuse to consider that a code-name, looking at you Drake) - Communications 102: Public Speaking

Mathematics (which has a 100% villain make-up, which seems accurate from what I remember of high-school maths)

Noah Kuttler (The Calculator, because I think I’m funny) - Pre-Calc, Calculus, AP Calculus

Harlan Graves (The Underbroker) - Stats, Algebra 1, Algebra 2

Angelo Bend (Angle Man, becuase I know I’m funny) - Geometry, Trigonometry

PE (I realise this is probably too many PE teachers but there are a lot more caonical althetes than just about any other job in the DCU except maybe scientist)

Lawrence Crock (Sportsmaster, you knew this was coming) - Gym, Weight Training, coaches Baseball, Basketball, Tennis & Hockey

Lisa Snart (Golden Glider) - joint-coaches Cheerleading, coaches the Drill Team, Wrestling

Randy Hanrahan (Stallion) - PE, joint-coaches Cheerleading & Cross-Country, coaches Football

William Everett (Amazing Man) - PE, joint-coaches Cross-Country, coaches Track & Field

Matron Bertinelli (Huntress, sort of) - coaches Soccer & gymnastics

Performing Arts

Lisa Snart (Golden Glider) - Dance

Hartley Rathaway (Pied Piper) - Music 101, Music Theory, Composition, teaches Guitar & Percussion

Isaac Bowin (The Fiddler) - Music 101, AP Music Theory, leads Jazz Band, Orchestra, Marching Band

Siobhan Smyth (Silver Banshee) - part-time, leads the Choir and teaches singing

Basil Karlo (Clayface) - Theatre, Theatre 101

Simon Trent (Grey Ghost) - Theatre, Theatre 101, Film Studies

Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) - Theatre Tech

Mary Louise Dahl (Baby-Doll, from B:TAS) - Film Studies, Video Production

Betty Bates (Lady-at-Law, who is technically owned by DC now due to corporate buy-outs) - Debate

Science (do you have any idea how hard it is to pin down areas of specialisation for comic book scientists? TNT is on this list entirely because he’s the only actual honest-to-god professional chemist I could find)

Kirk Langstrom (ManBat) - Biology, AP Biology

Pamela Isley (Poison Ivy) - Biology, Environmental Science

Thomas “Tex” Thomas (TNT) - Chemistry

Achilles Milo (Professor Milo, again not really much of a code name) - Chemistry, AP Chemistry

Will Magnus (I refuse to even dignify it as a code-name) - Physics, Earth Sciences

Ray Palmer (The Atom) - Physics, AP Physics

Adam Strange (DC is just doing this to fuck with me, personally) - Astronomy

Social Studies & Humanities

Barbara Minerva (Cheetah) - World History

Maxie Zeus (ffs) - World History, AP World History (fun fact, Maxie was canonically just a normal history teacher before he got lightning powers, became convinced he was Zeus incarnate, and set out to become a criminal, making him my favourite DC mobster by a country mile)

Terry Long (aka one of the only characters to really deserve to get fridged) - US History, AP European History

Eobard Thawne (every code-name he has is stupid, but lets just go with Reverse-Flash as the least awful option) - US History, AP US History

Nick Scratch - US Government, AP US Government, AP Comparative Politics

Rex Tyler (Hourman) - AP Art History

Magdalene Kyle-Burton (Sister Zero, she’s a sometimes-nun and a sometimes-sister to Catwoman) - Comparative Religion

Michael Carter (Booster Gold) - Economics, AP Microeconomics, AP Macroeconomics

Jonathan Crane (Scarecrow) - Psychology (there is exactly one heroic psychiatrist in all of comics, and I’d already used Dr Fate elsewhere. Scarecrow seemed like the least bad option of the remaining pool for being around children, and he does at least have teaching experience)

Adam Strange - Sociology

Betty Bates (Lady-at-Law) - Law

Richard Occult/Rose Psychic (it’s complicated, lets just say Dr Occult and leave it at that) - part-time, Criminal Justice

Technology & Engineering

Ted Kord (Blue Beetle) - Electronics, CAD, Woodworking

John Henry Irons (Steel) - Engineering, Metalworking

Will Magnus - Robotics

Visual Arts

Linda Lee/Danvers (she’s Supergirl, but I’m making her a different character from Kara Danvers/Kent because the DCU is really short on artists and I needed someone to teach the damn class, although the only thing that really makes her distinct from other supergirls is that she fucked a horse that one time and IDK how that will translate into a personality...) - Ceramics, AP Studio Art: 3D Design, Art 101

Rex Tyler (Hourman) - Graphic Design, Drawing, AP Studio Art: Drawing

Jack Knight (Starman) - Painting, AP Studio Art: 2D Design, Art 101

Jennifer Lyn-Hayden (Jade) - Photography

So there you go - I’ll be honest I still don’t really understand how high-schools in the USA work, and I have no idea what Design studio art even is so I kind of assigned those ones at random, but now it’s done and cannot be changed.

As always this universe is open to prompts so if you want a chapter focussing on any of these characters just drop me an ask or a comment and I’ll see what I can do. Making Dr Occult & Rose Psychic a single gender-fluid person is already on my list to do, since that’s who I thought they were for a longest time when I started reading comics and I’m still kind of annoyed that isn’t canonically what’s going on.

[furby-organist]

Since y’all enabled me! Sexual orientation talk under the cut.

Viv mentioned in a stream that Alastor predates the term asexual and it’s possible he doesn’t know that he’s ace, though upon being introduced to that term, would find it resonates with him. That’s where this blog stands. He doesn’t know what asexuality & aromanticism are (or at least, not enough about them, if he has heard the terms in passing).

So that leaves a few options about his perception of his sexuality.

1. He perceives himself as straight but idk waiting for the right person / picky / disinterested

2. He perceives himself as something else under the lgbt+ umbrella, also possibly waiting for the right person / picky / disinterested

3. He doesn’t perceive himself as anything in particular, just waiting for the right person / picky / disinterested

I’ve modded the university ace group at both my undergrad and grad school, and been part of ace circles online, and in my experience (heavy caveat there) the overwhelming prior identification from older aroaces just getting their hands on aroace terminology has been bi or pan -- which is where I write Al. It’s probably not where the canon is going to go so I’m owning up to this divergence.

(My own personal relationship to aroaceness? I figured out I was indifferent to a person’s gender since I was in the single digits -- and I learned very early on this was not a universal, or acceptable, way to feel. I was like barely in the tail end of elementary school when I figured this out, though I wouldn’t get my hands on aroace terminology until undergrad. I was mostly ??? until then, but barring aroace terminology, bi/pan made the most sense.)

The experiences I’ve been privy to have ranged from ‘I think I’m bi/pan but haven’t rly explored that’ to ‘I’ve tried dated a handful of people of varying genders and it didn’t work out’ to ‘I actively forced myself into romantic/sexual situations with multiple people of various genders as self-corrective behavior’ or just ‘I’ve only dated X gender(s) but would be open to exploring otherwise and oh shit I’m actually aroace lol that’s why I’m theoretically indifferent’

I write Al as a fairly moderate ‘I dated a handful of close friends who showed interest first, didn’t care what their gender/sex was, and it didn’t work out lol’ type.

He’s been vaguely out as needed (i.e. when he’s had a guy partner) since the 20′s, which was a friendlier time for LGBT+ folk (particularly in NOLA!). He’s been using the term bisexual as needed since the 40′s. LGBT+ spaces haven’t been a place for him to search for a partner, he’s never been looking for a partner, but they’ve been places he could safely go when he did have a guy partner while alive, or when he didn’t want to deal with straight people nonsense. (Straight ppl are exhausting!! Hello!! Every aroace I know is more comfortable in LGBT+ spaces than straight ones!)

He’s a fairly private person as I write him, but it’s not like, a secret that he’ll ‘swing whatever way he’s swung -- if you can swing him at all!’ But it’s not something he really considers a huge part of what’s notable about himself, especially since he’s written off dating/sex postmortem. In general, other people’s weird hangups about him vibing with someone’s soul regardless of their inferred sex/gender have made no sense to him -- they’re the ones with a problem, he’s just being himself and it’s not a big deal to him. (Also like, I’m p sure Lucifer is bi/pan, at least Val & Vox are bi/gay/pan? it’s not a Huge Deal in Hell, either, for a powerful person to be vaguely out.)

Also no one has ever looked at him postmortem and been Yeah, A Heterosexual.

What prompted this was actually a little conversation with an alternate! My Al said ‘the girls are fighting!’ about an alternate and an Angel (which is, yes, a meme), and the alternate tried to express displeasure at being misgendered while sounding modern and said “you’re appropriating my gender.”

My Al took this as like, an accusation that he was trying to ping Angel & the alternate as both Not Straight (gay men have been using she/her and calling each other ‘girl’ well before Al was ever out) while trying to distance himself from it. His response was effectively to clarify that he wasn’t trying to distance, he too, is a Not Straight! Not that it was relevant to the fight at hand. Just a misunderstanding on all sides frnkfvkfvkzkfv

I also have a RP partners who write trans muses and I’ve had to think abt what Al’s attitude is gonna be towards them, and it’s basically gonna be “I’ve been frequenting the same bars as people like you since the 20′s, there’s nothing to worry about.” (Not that he’s a beacon of trans knowledge but like. Yeah.)

reading. more reading. more reading.

Segueing into aroace stuff!

Finding out he’s aro/ace isn’t going to rock his world a whole lot. It’ll be something To Process, that he isn’t miswired, he’s just experiencing a nonpathological variant of human sexuality. It’ll shed a lot of light on why his relationships in life failed, and give him more of a framework to figure out how to navigate what he does want (like qpr type shit). It’ll give him a term to communicate something about himself as necessary.

But he already knows and has accepted, on a functional level, that he’s not romantically or sexually interested in people. As far as more-than-friends less-than-lovers qpr stuff goes -- he technically qualifies bi/pan in that sense, and that’s not going to change. Like functionally knowing he’s aroace is going to change very little other than to give him an understanding of himself and possibly a more effective understanding of how to navigate qpr type situations.

[a-student-out-of-time]

Twisted Sister Aftermath Review Part 2

And we are back! Sorry the last part was a bit meaty; I couldn’t really cut bits out and most of the relationship stuff could be covered in the first part. And with this part we move onto the more plot relevant sections. So, seeing as we are going to start on a bad note (you will soon see what I mean by that) let’s hop right in!

Plotly Plot Stuff

Unfortunately, we cannot go one Arc without going back to Mr. Polarising himself, Yasuke. If A Student Out of Time ever gets its own TV Tropes page, Yasuke will definitely get the ‘Base-Breaking Character’ trope to him, because yikes has this guy been debated among Anons. Heck even my original review of Yasuke caused some tension! And to address some of the criticisms I’m been getting about Yasuke being nothing like Byakuya…what I meant was that he is a good ‘Rival/Antagonistic’ character. The villains aren’t going to challenge the Quantum Crew’s views, they know they are bad and they are going to get punished. Tsurugi despite being touted as Hajime’s rival isn’t going to challenge him from a moral standpoint, it’s basically like Sae towards the Phantom Thieves, when one riles up society, the law is going to oppose, and as we know the law is evil, it kinda dampens Tsurugi’s viewpoint. Yasuke though, can challenge Hajime as he’s made Hajime think whether going a Pacifist playthrough is really the best way forward. Given how irredeemable some of the villains are, and that simply imprisoning them might not be good enough, it’s going to be a real test to see if the Quantum Crew can go forward without spilling any blood. Granted Yasuke’s morality is twisted as his only friend is Junko…who isn’t the best of influences, and he is narrow minded in thinking that because his girlfriend is invincible, not helped by how much of a Villain Sue she was in Despair Arc, which is another among many reasons why the anime was a piling hot piece of crap. I used Byakuya as a comparison because really the other rival characters are nothing like Yasuke, and I needed something to get my point across. But the best part about his appearance was the savage beatdown Umeko gave him for thinking that the Many Worlds theory is valid. See this is what I love about this blog, the Mod could just go the lazy option when it comes to time travel, but no they take the time to research a plethora of topics and all the research into quantum physics is so good, it’s like reading a better version of Game Theory. Again, the whole Yasuke Multiverse thing could have easily been avoided if the Mod decided to take a break and not write when they were tried, as it seems to be when the most questionable story choices come from, and used their revised idea of having Umeko toss some ideas to Hajime, Hajime thinking about the Many Worlds Theory and heck even using the fact he played the Zero Escape franchise to get a better idea of time travel so he thought he was SHIFTing, and then when he found out he was wrong, for Umeko to chew him out. Anyway, that’s enough talking about Yasuke, I hope I don’t have to touch this jackarse again in a while, I don’t like him, you don’t like him, the Mod doesn’t like him and pretty sure 95% of Anons reading this don’t like him and just talking about him stresses me out.

Umeko wasn’t the only person to throw punches at Yasuke though because Chiaki had a few choice words to say to him as well. And while Umeko is more of ‘Your knowledge of quantum physics is BS’ Chiaki is more from a morality standpoint that she is very sus about Yasuke’s role in the mess. And think about it, he’s been sus of Hajime and co for a while now, we only have his word that Junko doesn’t know, and that ain’t good enough, and it seems the only reason why Yasuke wants to ‘help’ the Quantum Crew out is because they claim his original plan with Junko fails and he wants to ensure there is no chance that the Mindwipe process once he perfects it on Kanade can be done flawlessly with Junko. And again, Yasuke could be secretly involved in the whole plan because the one thing that for many of us is a concern regarding Kanade’s kit to start a school massacre is the BCI containing intel on Class 77-B. You can make an argument about Junko being involved with the other stuff, her analytic talent would have allowed her to create the complicated chemical formula for the addictive, as a model Junko is loaded so she has plenty of money to spend on stuff such as experimental armour on the black market, and her darling sister could have provided the combat data. Yasuke was in Hope’s Peak and would have known that Hibiki came to Hope’s Peak after Kanade was arrested and bonded with Class 77-B. Bear in mind as soon as Junko saw the news that Kanade was arrested, her first response was to call Juu and said she has plans for Kanade but they can wait for now. Obviously, Junko was waiting to see what was going on regarding Kasugano and wanted to test him by seeing how easy or hard he is to break. People often debate why Junko converted Class 77-B and not her own class but I think the reason why she went after them is because of how unified Class 77-B are. As we learn more about other Hope’s Peak classes it becomes clear just how much of an anomaly Class 77-B are in the regards that they are all friends with each other, and have a high level of hope, which of course Junko due to her desire of a challenge went to break them as sending that class into despair would give her the ultimate satisfaction, even more so than her own class. I think Yasuke isn’t going to be talked about for a while because his very presence stresses people out and after how much the Mod was savaged from their last usage of him, they are going to have to seriously rethink how to use Yasuke in a way that doesn’t cause a scrum debate among us Anons.

Still Yasuke did raise a fair point that against someone with no morals like Junko, the Quatern Crew are going to be hard pressed to keep their ‘Thou shall not Kill’ policy. While Hajime claims he has beaten Junko before in the OG timeline and will do so again in the various times Junko has lost, she has played by her own rules and allows room for failure in her plans, because due to how much of a despair fetish she has, the prospect of losing and tasting the despair of losing is too tempting for her. But if Junko realises that Hajime is hell-bend on standing against her, and that the very laws of time are against her, Junko might just go ‘fuck it’ and forgo that prospect of failure and become, much, much more dangerous as a result. Chiaki’s response to this is simple, they just need to expand their ranks and hire more people. In other words, it’s time for the entirety of Class 77-B to know. To some this is a case of ‘about time!’ But there was a reason why Hajime didn’t want to involve the class. He wasn’t aware on how much history can be changed, and as soon as he discovered he can change the timeline, he also became aware that fate is actively working against him, and the more he fights against it, the bigger the backlash. The last thing Hajime wants is his only friends, Class 77-B, to be hurt due to ripple effects of the Ankle Effect. While half of Class 77-B knew, Hajime didn’t go out of his way to tell them, they either forced Hajime to tell them, or they got caught up in one of Hajime’s plans and he had no choice but to tell them. Chiaki got sus of Hajime when he saved Natsumi and Sato and thus he had to spill, Mikan overheard Hajime and Chiaki talking to Umeko about the future, and the only reason Hajime told her is because he knew there was a risk that Umeko could accidently expose Hajime. Sonia and Gundham went to the Melody Rhythm Concert on their own separate investigation because Koroko and Yoruko was talking about serial killers in order to help get intel into Kanade’s mindset, Sonia got sus about all the mysterious deaths around the Otonokoji Twins, and thus got caught up in Hajime’s plan to save Hibiki and stop Kanade. Mahiru and Hiyoko were investigating Kasugano when they got kidnapped by Junya and Haiji, and Fuyuhiko and Peko were the only ones brought in because Hajime needed extra muscle to deal with the traffickers. And it is becoming apparent that changing the future is a task too large for one person as without the help of his fellow time travellers, his classmates that know, Void, and other allies, Hajime wouldn’t have achieved all the victories that the Quantum Crew have enjoyed. And given that Kanade tried to kill them all, its something they cannot hide from their friends anymore and thus its time to spill the truth.

This of course means that the rest of Class 77-B (Teruteru, Imposter, Ibuki, Nekomaru, Nagito, Kazuichi and the Canon Akane) get to meet Void, Another Akane and Sora for the first time. The interactions between them are both sweet and bitter. Sweet because all the Class 77-B interactions are wholesome, Nekomaru and Maku are developing a bromance similar to what Maku enjoyed with Shinji in SDAR2, Akane is done to have a scrap with Maku, Kazuichi is simping for Emma, I hope that doesn’t last, Iroha is fawning over the Imposter, Taira and Teruteru dosed Pornhub, and Kazuichi and Chisa are amazed that Sora exists. But also, bitter because if you noticed, I didn’t mention Nikei. And that’s for a good reason as Nikei didn’t really interact with the rest of Class 77-B, his only interaction is helping Mahiru getting the two horny members (you know who they are) away from each other. We could have had at least an interaction between him and Ibuki as those two actually met before, but nope. This is a clear example on how the other Void members have become comfortable around Class 77-B and warmly welcomed the other class members with open arms and yet Nikei is still gated off. Clearly our Reporter friend here is going for a slow burn character development but one that hopefully will pay off in the end because I will cry rivers of joy when Nikei finally becomes comfortable around Class 77-B. Oh yeah forgot to mention, Chisa and Juzo are in the truth meeting as well. I was wondering if they would be told but it makes sense to tell them as they alongside Kyousuke are doing an internal investigation into the dark under dealings of Hope’s Peak and in Despair Arc came the closest to foiling Junko’s plans to despair bomb the planet. They failed because A) it’s a shitty prequel anime and Junko is a Villain Sue in this and B) she brainwashed Chisa and blackmailed Juzo with his feelings towards Kyousuke dosed with a lot of homophobia, because we didn’t need any more reasons to hate Junko already. Once all the fuzzy feelings are done, the truth is spilled and everyone is horrified, as you would if you found out that in a couple of years’ time the world would end, you are the reason the world ended and you were basically turned into some Anarchist Model’s mind slaves. Naturally some are a little hesitant to accept it, but at the end of the day, its their friends at the end of the day, they didn’t tell them not because they didn’t trust them but because they didn’t need to know and they didn’t want themselves to be hurt by the forces they are up against. Its unclear how many are official Quantum Crew members or just allies, as knowing the truth about the future and being a Quantum Crew member are two different things. Natsumi, Sato, Fuyuhiko, Peko and Mahiru were all offered the chance of membership and they refused for their own reasons, but they didn’t rule out helping the Quantum Crew out if they need their help. Koroko and Kyoji aren’t official Quantum Crew members and yet they pull some serious weight in regards to the various missions the Quantum Crew go on. Chisa and Juzo agree to help as well, and Kyousuke is being left in the dark because he would go and try to kill Junko and we know from experience how well THAT would go. Spoilers: Not very well, just ask OG Juzo and OG Nagito.

Speaking of Kanye West Sans from Undertale on the Nintendo DS, Iroha started to chat up to him as she’s dating Makoto and he’s going to be Class 78’s Lucky Student if nothing changes about his Worst Day Ever, and Nagito drops a bombshell that Kanata is being upgraded from Class 79 student, to Class 78 student! Ever since Toko was sent to the mental hospital and thus means she could never become a member of Class 78, which was already a small class, debate ranged on who would replace Toko, if it was going only be 15 students, or if someone like Hibiki or one of the Voids would replace Toko. Welp the answer is that Kanata is replacing Toko. That’s going to be interesting because I would love to see how Kanata interacts with the rest of Class 78, especially those like Chihiro and Aoi. Obviously, she would be at great risk because she would be in the same class as the Despair Twins but that cannot be helped. But Kanata moving to Class 78 means there is a gap in Class 79. Now this obviously depends if there ever IS a Class 79 because ideally the school will be open as long as Junko is at large but once she is caught and defeated, the next step would be to expose Hope’s Peak, which would be easy because here’s a hint, what did Hajime promise to Nikei to get him on board with helping him in the first place? But call me pessimistic but someone like Junko, the main villain of Danganronpa isn’t going to be caught in a year, and depending how long it takes to defeat Junko, Class 79 might get formed before Junko is defeated. We obviously have a gap, and it depends if say Hibiki goes back to high school and gets scouted for Class 79 because I doubt while all the Voids would be eligible then for Class 79 (Reason why not all would be eligible for Class 78 is because Iroha is a year younger then the other Voids. The Voids as a whole are the same age as the Trigger-Happy Havoc cast, so Iroha is basically similar age to Class 79) That’s something to be tackled another time though.

One last thing before the Arc concludes and it’s the biggest bombshell of them all. So, one might ask, what is bigger than Kanata being part of Class 78? Here’s a simple answer; how about that being a time traveller isn’t the only way to remember the future? Remember when Mikako came to visit her mother? Turned out it wasn’t just a curtsy visit as ever since Mikako had her brain surgery, she’s been having recurring nightmares and the worrying thing about those nightmares is…they are memories of the OG timeline. She drew a picture of Monokuma, which is something that shouldn’t be possible as Junko didn’t come up with the design of Monokuma until she arrived at Hope’s Peak, and the robot version of Monokuma was only made by Junko influencing Monaca, which given that Monaca is more under the influence of the Quantum Crew, means that the Dis Bear more or less is non-existent in this universe. The nightmares are only the start though as before Mikako had her surgery, she met Kanata because Kanata’s adoptive father is the one who did the surgery to remove Mikako’s brain implant, and Mikako noted that Kanata felt familiar, which if Mikako was getting memories of the OG timeline, she should as Kanata was a classmate of hers. Now that Kanata is part of Class 78, she would no longer be a classmate and Mikako also remembered the Massacre timeline as she thanked Koroko before leaving with Yamato for saving her life, which again she shouldn’t have known as that only happened in the Massacre timeline which no longer exists. Mikako didn’t recognize anyone in the nightmares expect for Yamato obviously, but when shown pictures of future Class 79 members like Akane Taira, she noted of them being familiar. So, WTF is going on? I’ll be clear, I don’t think Mikako is a time traveller or a time traveller in the making. If she was, Umeko would have detected that and she didn’t. But what is clear is somehow Mikako is getting memories of other timelines. My best theory is a few factors. Firstly, being the future Ultimate Exorcist, Mikako possesses spiritual powers and maybe said powers provide some immunity to resets, which means that if Hajime has to go up against an enemy who has supernatural abilities, he has to be careful with resetting as its not just time travellers who can remember. Secondly, in the OG timeline, Yamato managed to develop a solution to reserve the memory wiping that Junko and Yasuke invented, and he used it on himself and Mikako. Granted, said machine wasn’t perfect and it did have side effects, Mikako’s emotions got supressed and she had difficulty expressing them and Yamato’s speech patterns got fucked up, but Yamato isn’t experiencing the nightmares like Mikako is. This obviously requires some investigating and probably another goal for the QC to explore in the next arc, but if other characters aside from time travellers can remember the other timelines, it can be both a boon as it means more allies and a bane because all we need is one villainous character to have this ability and then shit will hit the fan. Bonus points if it happens to be Junko. My big worry for Mikako though is that in DRA Mikako gets framed for Yamato’s murder by Monokuma, and he rigged the trial so that Mikako would be executed, forcing her to take poison so that Monokuma won’t get the pleasure of killing her himself, didn’t stop a spiteful Monokuma from executing her corpse though. Her death was on her terms but still recalling being poisoned to death, as Hajime can tell you is very unpleasant and something that Mikako is going to not enjoy dreaming in the slightest.

And with that we have finished Twisted Sister Aftermath! It was lengthier than I wanted but coming off from a plot heavy arc and being basically the spill over from that, it cannot be helped. I will give this a C overall. Normally I would give it a B because it’s not as intense as the previous Arc but the mere presence of Yasuke and the fact that I could see that most of this Arc was the Mod try to remedy their terrible inclusion of him from the previous Arc knocked it down a few points. At least the Mod learnt that you do not write plot when sleep deprived or lacking in energy, as its when the worser aspects of the story tend to be manifested from. Next Arc should be much chiller in tone and I just hope I can cram everything into one submission there. Nikei’s bemoaning that his article about Kanade’s death being too long speaks to me on a personal level. I hope you enjoy this review everyone and see you next time when we hopefully finish with a chiller Arc, and happy Holidays because I believe by the time the next Arc finishes, Christmas would be behind us! -Review Anon

[kokichi-and-co-imagine-blog]

Because I Finished Binging Persona 4 Golden About A Month Ago And I’m Still Not Over It:

So hi everyone. Yes, I still exist. No, I’ve not become Cryptid 2.0 just yet. (If we’re being perfectly honest I probably should have put that on the last Mod answer I did. Oh well.)

Anyway, this year has been... well you all know. However, there was at least one golden ray of hope amidst the sea of despair. 

As the title suggest, I’m of course referring to Persona 4 Golden’s port to Steam.

I LOVED this game. Absolutely adored it. And it clearly wasn’t just me; the response this port got has seemed to catch Sega’s attention. We can only hope, but I think this may mean more ports in the future. About time.

Now, obviously after playing this game I got to thinking a bit. Specifically, what if the Persona users ended up in Hope’s Peak? What would their ultimate titles be? How would they interact with other members of the DR cast (not including DRV3. Still haven’t played it, know all about the plot but not enough about the characters to figure out interactions here)? So, I’m going to go over that right here, in the first of a... okay a many many part post.

Yeah, I know, kinda a let down that I can’t have it all at once but as I was writing it up I realized that this was going to end up being huge. I couldn’t do it all in one post. I thought that maybe I could then divide it by game and have three posts, but as I finished doing just two members of SEES I realized that wouldn’t work either. There’s just too much to write about. So, due to this, I’ll be doing a single post per character and when it comes to relationships with canon characetrs I’m going to try and limit the amounts of characters to just 3 to 5, depending on how much there is to say.

Anyway, without further ado,

Presenting: SEES, the Investigation Team and the Phantom Thieves as SHSLs/Ultimates!

(The title isn’t exactly amazing I know.)

Group 1: SEES

Part 1: The Protagonist(s)

Makoto Yuki/Minato Arisato/Hamuko Yuki/Minako Arisato: 

SHSL Luck/Ultimate Lucky Student: I figure this makes sense for all the Wildcards. In Makoto’s/Hamuko’s case specifically, we got the fact that they survived the car crash that killed their parents, we got the fact that they were ‘lucky’ enough to end up in the Velvet Room and be a Wildcard and ‘lucky’ enough (or unlucky) to be caught up in the Dark Hour insanity. Plus the ‘luck’ of being able to find meaning to life again with SEES. 

Alternative SHSL/Ultimate: -While I was hoping to do this for all the Wildcards, we happen to run into a major issue from the start. Simply put, it is VERY difficult to think up an alternative talent for these two due to how their Social Links and personality choices are. None of the clubs they join can really be argued is ‘their’ amazing talent and unlike Yu they aren’t exactly the most... sociable/friendly of the Wildcards. At least Makoto isn’t given his portrayal in spin-offs and other media that give him his own voice and just general dialogue options (I’m pretty sure there are more harsh ones for him than there are for Yu). I can only assume similar for Hamuko. And as much as I kinda want to, SHSL/Ultimate Savior only works if they aren’t actually around and are busy being a door. Plus the people who decide on that wouldn’t know that they’re busy being a door. So yeah, gonna have to leave this one empty sadly.

Unlike Makoto’s hilarious stream of Lucky/Unlucky incidents and Nagito’s own INSANE cases, Makoto and Hamuko are rather... ‘normal’ for Lucky Students. In fact, one would think they’d be reserve course students. The truth is very few people besides themselves even realize the full ‘depth’  to their luckiness. If anyone else even. I have no doubt the Steering Committee is quite annoyed about this and questions if the raffle messed up somehow this year. In addition, this means that there is a LOT of enmity from all sides towards these two. The Reserve Course despises them because these two are basically just them just having been lucky enough to win the raffle AND NOTHING ELSE. On the other side, there are plenty in the Talent Course who look down on them even more than a typical lucky student. And it doesn’t help that at least in Makoto’s case he would likely not bother going to far out of his way to try and bridge any gaps with these people.

Major relationships within the DR cast: From the get-go we know that as Wildcards these two are potentially limitless in ideas for interaction with characters and forming relationships. Bearing that in mind, I think there are a few very specific characters they’d have some connection to: -Hajime Hinata: As stated above, the ‘luck’ that Makoto and Hamuko have is very different from the typical lucky student’s and they don’t even seem to fit the ‘ultimate’ moniker. As such, I could seem them gravitating towards Hajime due to simply feeling like they really don’t belong here, even more than Makoto (Naegi) and unlike a lot of the reserve course, Hajime just doesn’t seem like the type of guy to really fault them for winning the raffle. Bonus in Makoto’s (Yuki) case as he just drips sarcasm and bit of apathy and I imagine he’d get along well with Hajime’s own personality.  -Sonia Nevermind and Gundham Tanaka: Assuming a full crossover with personas, the full collective unconscious and such, both Sonia and Gundham would have a very similar fascination with these two. Sonia’s interest in the occult would make her very interested in any Wildcard and the tarots that they inevitably would have her draw if she tried (like Igor). While that may be slightly interesting to Gundham though there is a far more pressing matter for him. Because if he does have some supernatural connection there is no doubt in my mind he’d somehow catch on to these two harboring death and be very interested in it. -Junko Enoshima: Junko is... difficult to figure out here. On the plain surface (or in a crossover without the supernatural bits of Persona) there’s no reason Junko should have any special interest in these two over anyone else without having very special knowledge that not even freaking Itkutski seemed to have. On the other hand, should Junko find out about their wildcard and how it works she would be keeping a VERY close eye on them, realizing that she cannot leave them be since their S.Links would be far too dangerous against despair. And then there’s the giant elephant in the room. Should Junko discover that the two are harboring the literal manifestation of humanity’s desire for death there is no way in hell Junko would ever ignore that. And considering the BS Junko is able to pull, I could conceive it possible that she would somehow find out. As such, I would put it like this. If Junko never finds out about their ‘gifts’ she wouldn’t care. If she found out about the Wildcard somehow and what it meant (I don’t know, Nyarlothep decides to be a bit more involved in his bet with Philemon and pushes Junko in the right direction) she’d be very on top of them, perhaps even actively sabotaging their abilities to form S.Link or trying to break them, thereby inflicting a decent bit of psychological damage to them and thinking that could drive them to despair (which I don’t think it could since Makoto at least would be far too apathetic to really be in despair but that’s a bit up to interpretation how such things would affect a wildcard). Should she find out about Death, then all hell breaks loose as she would try and probably team up with someone like Ikutski to make The Fall occur for the ultimate final despair. Because not even the Tragedy was the absolute end of the world. The Fall though? That’s game over. -Nagito Komaeda: Nagito is yet another difficult option. If he knew what was really going on with them he would probably worship the ground the step on, even moreso than most ‘Ultimates’. However, he doesn’t have a reason to (though with his BS luck who knows, he may accidentally stumble onto all the secrets). Without knowing, we get into a problem. Nagito already looks down on himself as not being a ‘real’ ultimate. So, how does he look at other lucky students? I need to sit down and watch DR3 and see if there are any major interactions between him and Makoto before Makoto becomes the Ultimate Hope and see how he treats him. Even if he does treat him well though, Makoto at least has very obvious cases of good/bad luck even if it isn’t on the level of Nagito’s. These two though? It would be near non-existent. And that maybe enough to cause Nagito to despise them, perhaps even more than his disgust towards the Reserve Course. These two won the raffle and yet show as much ‘talent’ as a reserve course student? I could see him looking at it as a bigger mockery than the reserve course itself. As such, there would for sure be something there with Nagito but I can’t be certain if it would be a decent relationship with another lucky student or an animosity that’s the worst we’d ever seen from him.