#thank you for creating something that was my first real anime obsession as a kid

[23-tiny-wishes]

“Man decays, his corpse is dust. All his kin have perished; But a book makes him remembered through the mouth of its reciter.” - The Immortality of Writers (Papyrus Chester Beatty IV)

Thank you for everything, Kazuki Takahashi ☆

[gendercriticalthinking]

hi, agender non-binary person here interested in gender critical feminism! i was wondering what your take was on people being uncomfortable with certain pronouns (he/him, she/her).

how do you feel about they/them pronouns, or neopronouns?

Hello there! I apologize so much for not answering your ask in a timely manner!! Responding to people on social media still makes me a bit anxious and stressed so I usually ignore my notifs even though I really shouldn't haha

Thank you for your question, and for being open to listening to gender critical people!!! It's an important and admirable quality to have, and especially worth praising when you and others have outright been told to not interact with gc people/radfems at any cost! So yes, thank you for that! :)

As for your question (which is a good one!) I originally wrote this very long rambly reply and saved it to my drafts hoping to make it coherent one day. But then recently something happened that made me realize something about human nature in general that directly ties into how gender identities and discomfort/enjoyment of certain pronouns came about:

My brother has always loved nature, especially animals. The reason his favorite color is green is because it's the color of plants: trees, jungles, the places animals live and eat and get to be free in. He's so obsessed with green that seeing something green, anything green, compels him to go " :O !!!! Green!!!"

Because he loves nature and animals so much, he's also a vegetarian. And not just in a "eating animals is bad for the environment" way, but a "it disturbs me on a visceral level to see, smell, or be near meat" way. I have to clean up my bowls and plates that I eat meals that have meat on (I mean, I'd do it anyway because you should pick up after yourself but you get what I mean) because the thought of touching a utensil that once came into contact with meat, even if I ate that meat and it's gone now, carnally disgusts him.

He loves animals, and he wants pets. He'd never ever malnourish a pet just because he has a problem with meat, but it'd be a real emotional challenge for him to feed a carnivore wet meaty food and/or live prey every day. (The token family dog was always fed by our parents or me; he'd be okay if our dog liked dry food but he doesn't lol.)

So I researched the options out there for herbivorous pets, and I found a couple species of lizards (he loves lizards in particular, partially because they're often... green) that eat an exclusively plant-based diet! I showed them to him and he was definitely on board... but alongside the herbivores we found a species of lizard that's a bright, vibrant green and makes a great pet, but they need to eat (preferably live) insects.

He's over the moon about the green insectivore lizards. Once he learned they existed it was over for him. They're all he wants, he's 100% sure. And it's for a lot of other reasons besides the fact that they're green, but... they're green. There are no herbivorous green lizards that make good/easy-to-care-for pets. On some level, he cares more about the green-ness than the vegetarianism.

Why is that?

It's because humans are obsessed with creating symbols to represent ideas. So much so that they often get more attached to the symbol itself than the thing it's supposed to be a reminder of. It's like a self-made Cloth Mother that's built to look like the Wire Mother, but comes with none of the substance or nourishment.

Green represents nature and animals coexisting peacefully to my brother. The emotion the color green instills in him as it reminds him of the things he loves is so powerful it surpasses his enjoyment of the literal thing that the color represents to him.

I'm just using him as an example, but everyone does this. Your favorite childhood shows make you happy because they're nostalgic and reminds you of being a kid first and foremost. They can be well-written and artistic and enjoyable underneath that feeling, but the simpler time they mentally take you back to is what you love about them. Your favorite characters, the "he's just like me fr" ones you read fanfic of, are ones that remind you of yourself and/or ones that you're attracted to. They can also be fun to analyze and have interesting personalities and be great meme fodder, but at the end of the day they represent something to you beyond their objective qualities.

.

So. If we live in a world where women are treated as lesser to men, not fully human, accessories to the actual thinkers, and we use "she/her" to refer to women, is it possible your hatred of hearing those pronouns is because they represent the idea that the person saying them to you sees you as inferior, vapid, incomplex?

If you're in a community where being a female who goes by "they/them" or "it/its" or "he/they" means you get to be who you want to be, who you truly are, enjoying everything life has to offer instead of being restricted to a role someone else made up for you, why wouldn't you like to be called something other than "she"?

When the majority of people who go by "she/her" in your spaces are amab people who constantly, vocally fetishize and dehumanize people with your biological body type (with a few afab people who don't seem to act like you or share your interests sprinkled in) why would anyone as smart and complex and kind to yourself as you ever like being called "she"?

Do you have an innate discomfort with certain pronouns because of dysphoria, or do you hate what the sound of them represents, reminds you of, that they're telling you what other people think of you? Do you enjoy being called certain pronouns because of euphoria, or do you like what the sound of them represents, reminds you of, that they're telling you the people who use them must listen to you and care what you think and support you being who you are?

What's my take on pronouns? They're symbols that represent the type of person you are and want to be. They mean something important. They tell a lot about a person. They're not something to play around with and try out for fun like they're clothes. They're not something you can make up out of thin air and pretend they have no connotations attached to them other than an Aesthetic TM you like.

Nor are they an escape from the problems of the world: the baggage comes with them, I'm afraid. It's a lot easier to change your bio and Discord server role than to change people's minds, especially ones belonging to those who hate you. That doesn't mean it's better or it works, just because it's feasible for you to do.

Whenever you feel a certain way about hearing "she," know that countless other women feel the same way as you. And know that leaving "she/her" behind doesn't mean you've found a cheat code out of being victimized and belittled, you've only left women like you behind instead.

[cryptoriawebb]

For Akira Toriyama❤️‍🩹💔

Thank you for inspiring me, for bringing me joy during my preteen years and creating something I’ve continued to love long into adulthood. The whole world owes you their gratitude.

Everyone who follows me by now probably knows how much I love Dragonball—specifically Dragonball GT. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: GT was my first proper fandom experience, I was able to watch it in real time on toonami and excitedly head to school the next day to discuss it with all my friends. We would trade art and little fanfiction with each other and wonder what was going to happen next. This was long before social media—fandom on the internet mostly consisted of blog sites. Information wasn’t as accessible and I wasn’t allowed to join any websites or upload art. I really didn’t need to, though: my friends were enough and made middle school a brighter spot than most in my childhood.

I’ve chosen to honor my favorite series with this drawing, including Pan, whom I was obsessed with as a kid and remains my favorite character (the first saiyan girl who was a lead?? Middle school Tori felt so seen.) Goku of course is here because he started it all and his send off at the end of GT still hurts my heart, and my DB OC Okra, who was inspired by all the drawings I did of myself back then in the best Dragonball style I could manage. Anime made drawing people fun and exciting really for the first time and I owe all of that to Toriyama❤️

Rest in peace, sensei.

[stereax]

15 People 15 Questions with Stereax - thanks @simmyfrobby for the direct tag and @jonassiegenthighler for the GC tag <3

1. are you named after anyone?

Nope! As far as I'm aware, I was named from one of those baby name books but my parents fucked up the spelling on purpose to be "special".

2. when was the last time you cried?

Probably just before Christmas when I was realizing just how fucked up my childhood and family dynamics are in a chat with a friend. Before that, in class while I was bombing a presentation. Before that, in class when the teacher told me to... raise my hand before I spoke... I don't really ever cry unless in public and it's always for a stupid reason.

3. do you have kids?

I have a lot of stuffed animals! And a bunch of kids I tutor. But none of my own, that's not in the plans.

4. what sports do you play/have you played?

My parents tried me in everything, but mostly tennis stuck. I'm not that good at it, I'm not really athletic in general and my forehand was busted to the point where I would only do lobs with it, but I was fairly okay, especially when it came to my backhand, so I got by. Haven't played in a few years though.

5. do you use sarcasm?

A lot more in real life than online.

6. what’s the first thing you notice about people?

One of the things I try to pay attention to is the hands. I also end up looking at teeth a lot. Both of those can kind of give you an idea of who a person is. I don't know if I'm good at eye contact or not, but I don't really think so?

7. what’s your eye color?

Hahahaha. It's kind of... everything? Not in a Mary Sue way but like, the outer ring is a greyish blue-green and the inner ring is like, a golden hazel-y green? And depending on the lighting or glasses, that changes? So... my ID says green.

8. scary movies or happy endings?

Scary movies mostly annoy me, so happy endings. I don't like sad endings that much; I tend to dwell on them too long.

9. any talents?

Um, I used to be a mathlete when I was a kid? So I can do a lot of math in my head, generally exceeding the capabilities of most people I know, and usually with speed too. But that's not really a "talent". I guess I speak several languages, but again, not really a "talent". I don't really know. I don't really consider myself good at anything, you know? I write? Sometimes? But not well either. So.

10. where were you born?

Ridgewood, New Jersey. Apparently because my parents thought it would be a "good city to be born in" and that it would "always be on my birth certificate". I don't know the logic either.

11. what are your hobbies?

I really like mobile games! I'm currently obsessed with Path to Nowhere, used to play a lot of King's Raid before they destroyed that game with awful updates, and also play Pokemon Go and Pikmin Bloom regularly to motivate myself to leave the house. Also puzzles, both solving and sometimes creating my own! And I'm also slowly getting into the NFL as well as the NHL (obviously). My thing is that when I get into something, I need to know everything about it and be the "best" at it, which screws me up a lot, but. Knowledge!

12. do you have any pets?

I used to have fish when I was a kid. I'm not in the right conditions to own a pet, both logistically and mentally.

13. how tall are you?

I don't know exactly but I think around 5'5" to 5'6", or 165 to 167 cm. I always wanted to end up around 5'9", so 175 cm, but I didn't get enough tall genes, I guess :( still have markings on the wall about ideal height :')

14. favorite subject in school?

When I was growing up, math; more currently, probably law classes.

15. dream job?

I've always envisioned myself ending up in law or business or especially politics, but like, not as a scumbag? If that makes sense. Like, a senator or even higher than that, but not a corrupt piece of shit. Which I know is impossible and an oxymoron. So I guess the answer is, most generally, a leader of some sort.

I'd tag the GC but Eliot did that already sooooo um, if you're following me and see this consider yourself tagged!

[2ndwind]

World of Memory: A Personal YGO Retrospective

(I don't fancy myself a writer, but these thoughts just poured out of me. This is for me, more than anything. But if anyone reads it, I hope it's amusing enough.)

I must've been in the second grade when Yu-Gi-Oh came to the US.

I remember all the boys in my class trading cards and challenging one another to duels. I remember gazing wistfully at the checkout of every major supermarket chain, pleading with my parents to buy some cards. When they refused, I decided to make my own fantasy trading cards! Using graph paper! But I quickly learned how hard it was not only to create the cards but also to design mechanics that people would actually want to play.

I remember my parents surprising me that fateful Christmas of 2002 with the original Starter Deck Yugi. Even though 90% of the monsters were weak and vanilla, the smell of the freshly unwrapped cards was CRACK. Better yet, I was finally cool enough to hang out with the boys. Well, I didn't actually play the game very much with people other than my sister, and eventually, the school administration banned trading cards altogether. But it was endlessly fun to talk about. I even went to China one year and bought a TON of fake YGO cards to flaunt and trade with the other kids. Yes, we were all kids cheating other kids.

I remember my heart absolutely racing in anticipation of watching the show on Kids WB, and the crushing disappointment of turning on the TV just a moment too late (I'm reminding myself that Netflix didn't exist back then). The visual style was just so striking, so much cooler than Pokémon's. The plot felt so much more serious. And don't even get me started on the characters. I was literally head-over-heels in love with a Nameless Pharaoh. I was a Revolutionshipper before shipping was even a thing. It's pretty obvious from my Tumblr archive lol.

I remember the first fanart I made, which was me trying to copy the cover of the Starter Deck Yugi instruction manual. It was the hardest thing I'd ever drawn up to that point, and I specifically colored Yugi's eyes gray. Because people didn't have purple eyes, of course. I wish I held onto that drawing because it sparked something in me. Maybe it was my obsession with ancient Egypt, which predated my obsession with YGO. Maybe it was my frustration with my drawing skills. Whatever it was, it would stay with me for a long time. Beyond classmates paying me in change to draw their favorite monsters. Even beyond my fairly brief stint posting YGO fanart to DeviantArt (yikes).

I remember finding the original manga at Barnes & Noble and feeling very confused. Why didn't Yugi have a nose? Where was Duel Monsters? Wait, are people actually dying?? These were the questions I asked myself as I learned what manga actually was. Subsequently, I would devour every copy of the manga and even Monthly Shonen Jump that I could get my hands on. In that way, YGO actually became a gateway to several other manga/anime series. It was a gateway to my now lifelong appreciation of Japanese culture as a whole.

20 years! 20 WHOLE YEARS after my first love of YGO, I can look back and laugh at how much money I spent on the TCG and manga. I can cringe at the silly fanficcy stories locked up in my head and the overly sentimental (or just straight-up copying) fanart I drew. I can, as an adult, appreciate the themes, but also be more critical of certain elements (the whole Doma Arc, how the series portrays women, the ancient Egyptians themselves, the clear references to the occult...etc.).

YGO shaped me into who I am right now: a designer who dabbles in fanart, an avid Egyptology nerd, an appreciator of animation and sequential art, and even an aspiring developer of a card-based game (my grad school thesis! For real). And as much as I sometimes weary of this dumpster-fire world, I still thank God that I was born at a time when I could experience the original YGO and grow up alongside it.

With all these fond memories of YGO, you can imagine my utter shock and sadness when I learned of Kazuki Takahashi's passing. It's even more surreal because I'm still following the man, himself, on Instagram. I hope he truly knew the depth of so many people's love for him and his work. And I hope that, one day, as the endless ages roll on, I'll find him and thank him, myself. For now, this rambling and a few pieces of art will have to do. Rest in peace, Sensei.

[starchild--27]

Tag Game ✨️

thank you for tagging me @joon-rkive - i loved reading yours and i always enjoy doing these~ 😊💕

i tag: @heartcravings @kafkascupcake @cxsmicmyeon @byuns-coco @xiu-bee @ladyliliah - only if you guys want to of course ♡

What book are you currently reading?

She and Her Cat by Makoto Shinkai ♡

What’s your favorite movie you saw in theaters this year?

Everything Everywhere All At Once, like 10000%. this movie is so good. everyone go watch it if you can. 💫

What do you usually wear?

a t-shirt (plus a hoodie/flannel shirt if it's cold), a pair of jeans (two if it's cold), a pair of socks (two if it's cold), chucks (or boots if it's cold)

How tall are you?

~ 178cm / 5'10 but i'm slouching horribly xD

What’s your Star Sign? Do you share a birthday with a celebrity or a historical event?

i am a Taurus (or so the birth chart says, i don't really see it tbh), aaaand my birthday is on Beltane, the Gaelic May Day festival. Or if we want to be political, Labour Day.

Do you go by your name or a nick-name?

irl usually by my name, only online people and sometimes my mom call me by my childhood nickname (which i find really cute btw ^^). and my sister has her own set of nicknames for me xDD

Did you grow up to become what you wanted to be when you were a child?

i think to some extent i am the person all my younger selves wanted to be xD but career-wise not all. my childhood dream was to be a writer, only at 14 or 15 i started to think about my current course of study and also quickly dismissed the idea again back then xD

Are you in a relationship? If not, who is your crush if you have one?

i'm not. and currently i have no real permanent crushes either, only the quick kind where i spend twenty minutes imagining a relationship with a stranger i've seen for like 3 seconds xD (but yeah speaking in terms of kpop, i have an everlasting crush on park chanyeol, today especially the one from the photoshoot that was teased today, and i have had it bad for han jisung from stray kids the past months too xD)

What’s something you’re good at vs. something you’re bad at?

i'm good at.......language stuff (idk why this came to mind first but i have crap self-confidence so i can't really think about anything else); i'm bad at...i guess, being organized, keeping routines and getting things done efficiently, stuff like that. 😬

Dogs or cats?

both :c (but gun to my head, i'd say cat. because i have a cat.)

If you draw/write, or create in any way, what’s your favorite picture/favorite line/favorite etc. from something you created this year?

choking on brown sugar and sweetened milk / wrapped in a flannel shirt cause i hate silk / need a neurosurgeon to cut out my brain / need to take a deep breath, i'm not going insane (which, yes, technically is a verse. the first verse of my song brown sugar actually, and i really love how it turned out)

What’s something you would like to create content for?

ohh i think The Case Study of Vanitas, which is my favourite manga series (no i haven't seen the anime (yet?)), i really want to write a fanfic about Vanitas and Noé because no wayyy they don't kiss at night xDD

What’s something you’re currently obsessed with?

always obsessed with exo xD then again, i think Ocean Vuong still has a hard grip on me right now. i recently finished reading On Earth We Are Briefly Gorgeous and i am reading his poems every now and then and boy... i think that guy himself invented language

What’s something you were excited about that turned out to be disappointing this year?

mmh... i think the fact my two bestied from school and i planned to meet at least twice and it never worked out - i met them separately, but i miss hanging out with my two favourite crackheads :/ (we'll probably meet over the last days of december tho, so...soon)

What’s a hidden talent of yours?

i dunno, it's not really "hidden" but i've baffled people with is before: i'm really fast at recognizing songs, probably because i know many songs that i don't particularly like listening to as well, i guess i just can memorize sounds quite well.

Are you religious?

i am agnostic, so i'm not strictly religious, i have always been really interested in religion tho. like as a kid i went to religion classes voluntarily despite noone in my family is religious.

What’s something you wish to have at this moment?

a different brain hahahah :') jkjk i guess what i (quite childishly) wish for most is everything to be alright again, life to be less shit, generally. that's probably a crap answer but the most honest one i can give right now.

[fill-me-with-your-memes-daddy]

Watching the Rise of the Titans movie and I'll be documenting all of my thoughts/reactions here. [Spoiler Warning]

So instead of reblogging every new update, I'm just going to have this post up on my phone as I watch and type my reactions in a bullet list format.

Nari's human disguise is so cute. As someone who does have a cottagecore aesthetic, I want to cosplay her so bad

Are Skrael and/or Belroc non-binary coded? Regardless, I'm also obsessed and I want to fuck Skrael and be Belroc.

STEVE CARING ABOUT JIM BEING HURT YESSSS!!! My god his redemption has probably been one of the greatest there is because he doesn't just suddenly go from being a bully to a completely good person. You can see the gradual shift in learning better throughout the shows which is awesome.

IN NEW YOOOOOOORRRRRRRK!!!!!! CONCRETE JUNGLE WHERE DREAMS ARE MADE OFFFFFFFFFFFFF!!!!!

The mugshot montage reminded me of season 1 of trollhunters when toby and Jim were arrested at the museum.

STRICKLER PUT A RING ON IT??? HE'S THE ONLY DILF IVE EVER ACTUALLY AGREED WAS HOT WYM I CAN'T HAVE HIM??? well I'm still really happy about his arc over the series probably one of my favorite character growths.

Eli my guy got his growth spurt!!! As an 18 year old who is still 5'0", I'm happy but envious for him

So I went into this movie without watching any trailers or promo, but I doubt anything could have prepared me for the existence of mpreg. In fact, I wasn't going to document my reactions until I saw that.

NAMURA!!!!!!!!! MY BELOVED!!!!!! I CAN STILL THIRST FOR YOU WITHOUT GUILT

The coach teacher just called the kids zoomers so I have to dock one point from my final rating just because of that. Unforgivable

Those husky animation models suck lmao

Oh fuck the titans got power ranger zords!!

God why did they include the mpreg??? This movie would have been perfect without it.... After that plot point being revisited only one time I'm already beyond done with it

Like it's bringing me back to the v*ltron days where they're was a suspiciously high amount of klance omegaverse and mpreg fics and art created and it physically hurts because Steve and Keith's voice actor is the same person meaning this is especially cursed to me since I was unfortunately in the v*ltron fandom and remember all of that

But like on another note, how old are these characters again??? I haven't checked any wikis because of spoilers but is Steve an adult??? I know aja might be technically a lot older than 18 because alien but is whatever age she is equivalent to an adult as far as emotionally and physically in Akaridion development??? IS THIS A TEEN (M)PREGNANCY IN A KIDS SHOW????

Like bruh I saw a singular post on here before going into the movie that was like "rott spoilers without context" and there was a pregnant belly but I was absolutely not expecting the actual context of it. I'll find the post after I finish and edit this post to tag the creator right here: @makoden

This entire post is just gonna be me ranting about mpreg huh

Anyway I love the whole roundtable allusion to the legends of king arthur (not the toa version but the one he's based off)

THERE'S 3 TO 5 BABIES????? I need to take a break bruh this is just too much

Alright I've taken a 30 minute break got some food and did some things i love (decompressed by tactile stimming with some owl plushies and watched some videos on my favorite owl, Garu. He lives in Japan with his owner and is a domesticated eagle owl who basically just acts like a sky cat. If anyone else needs some eye bleach, here is their YouTube channel)

Blinky and ARRRGHHH!!! saying their "if one of us doesn't make it" talk my god one of them is going to die I can see it and I will be utterly crushed. Jim can't lose another father figure and Toby can't lose his wingman again I will riot if this happens

On a similar but unrelated to the movie note, can we just talk about how toa started with Jim having 0 dads and (if strickler and blinky live to the end) will end with 2 dads? Like I just really feel happy for him that he has two dads who actually figured out how to put the past behind them to not have any infighting between them so that both of them are healthy father figures. Jim has already been through literal hell and back losing his actual humanity in the process so if he loses one of them, I'm going to be really pissed because at this point, this is just Jim torture porn. Y'all know how as SpongeBob SquarePants went on, the show just became Squidward torture porn? It's starting to feel that way for toa and I really hope they cut the shit by the ending

Jlaire is such a good ship but like I feel like it's too perfect they never disagree with each other

YESSSSSSS Someone finally doesn't treat toby like a fat waste of space who messes stuff up!!! I think out of all the characters that would have been most deserving of a rewrite, it's Toby. Sometimes I just feel he's only comic relief and any heartfelt moments he's had in the series was also born of stupidity (ie his flour baby project being unharmed was seen by him as divine intervention from his parents but was actually just Eli and Steve behind the scenes).

Ohhhhh yesssssss Archie's father!!! I was hoping I'd see him again because we got so little of him last

Ooooooooooh Asian trollmarket!!!!!

Oh never mind slavery trollmarket

Bruh titanic camelot

I feel like we're not seeing enough of the villains because I completely forgot about the power ranger zord things

NAMORA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO MY LAST CRUSHHHH

STRICKLER NO NOT YOU TOO PLEASE

WHAT THE FUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

THE ONLY TWO CHARACTERS I SIMP FOR ON THIS SHOW DIED WITHIN FIVE MINUTES OF EACH OTHER

THAT WHOLE ASS RANT I WROTE IS COMING TRUE FUCK THIS MOVIE THIS SERIES IS JUST JIM TORTURE PORN

WAIT JIM'S SPERM DONOR INFO?

Oh thank God I don't want to know anything about that person

For the record, I call that man Jim's sperm donor because he has no business being called a father to him. All he did was donate some swimmers to the creation of him and give him abandonment issues

Oh another blind troll elder???? This fucker is just if vendel was a bad guy

Bruh I was grieving

PACIFIC RIM WITH GUN ROBOT VEX AND THE BELROCZORD? I've never seen that movie but I know the reference

Bruh Blinky doesn't read horoscopes? Does he realize conspiracy theories are just the manly version of horoscopes?

NO DON'T KILL VEX STOP KO-ING FOUND FAMILY MEMBERS

Oh thank God he's okay

NO NOT ARCHIE AND CHARLEMAGNE OH MY GOD

oh never mind they're just gonna coup de tat I believe in them :))

But I want to see him again

But I'm glad to see vex

Yay they're in arcadia!

But yeah I wondered why the trolls and Merlin didn't keep the whole "daylight doesn't hurt trolls" feature from the eternal night but now Guillermo del Toro I see you were playing the long con in that just to kill my girl Namora :(((

Oooooh I love the animation of the Narizord over Chihuahua!! It looks very good and realistic (if only they could have put some of that into those huskies from before smh)

Bruh the character designs of the arcane order are so good I want to be them

Nari making sure the Skraelzord doesn't crush the bus

DAMN DOUBLE HOMICIDE

Bruh I'm just glad we finally have an answer on why arcadia had everything going on as opposed to literally anywhere else!! I always found that as a weird coincidence for plot convince.

BRUH WERE BACK TO THE MPREG IM SO JEALOUS I FORGOT ABOUT THAT EVEN THOUGH IT WAS BECAUSE I WAS GRIEVING THE LOSS OF MY LOVELIES.

Oh that's real convenient that the ninth configuration meant all of them. Way to not decide which character gets more attention. Though it probably was a smart way to not have any infighting in the fandom between each character's stan group.

Bruh I just realized where is Barbera did they just ditch her on the Camelot ship???

And where are the other trolls that migrated at the end of trollhunters s3? They said something about new jersey but obviously Jim and the other main characters got on Camelot instead.... This feels like a plot hole

And we never learned the process of how changelings are made and bonded to humans and stuff. We just know it's super painful but I'm curious ffs!!!!

THE DONT THINK BECOME HERO SPEECH ALL SAID TOGETHER!!!

BRUH THEY REALLY HAD TO SHOW HIM GIVING BIRTH??????? WAS THAT AN ABSOLUTE MUST??????

Plus the main audience for this series is little children (the rating for the movie is literally TV-Y7) so even though my adult ass is not in the target audience, I STILL DONT UNDERSTAND WHY WOULD MPREG AND ANAL BIRTH WOULD BE AN IMPORTANT THING TO 7 YEAR OLDS???? THIS IS A LITERAL FETISH HIDDEN IN KIDS CONTENT ITS ELSAGATE ALL OVER AGAIN Y'ALL 😭😭😭😭😭

Though it's probably hypocritical of me to think fetishes don't belong in kids tv when I've openly admitted to thirsting for strickler and namora

HUZZAH

NEW AMULET WAZ GOOD????

STAB THAT BITCH JIM

WAIT NO I SAID STAB NOT GET STABBED

Alright good job just missed the directions at first but you fixed it

SEVEN KIDS?????????

T O B Y ????????????

W A I T NO

N O

IS HE ACTUALLY

OH MY GOD THERE'S HOPE

NO THERE ISN'T

F U C K THIS SHIT THEY REALLY JUST HAD HIM TO BE BULLIED THEN KILLED

Y'ALL IM ACTUALLY CRYING THIS NEVER HAPPENS

I NEVER ACTUALLY GET SO EMOTIONAL OVER MEDIA THAT I CRY IT ONLY HAPPENED ONCE AT THE END OF VOLTRON BUT AHHHHHHHH

W A I T

HE'S GONNA BE BROUGHT BACK?????

HOLD UP THEY'RE JUST GONNA BRING ALL THOSE DEAD PEOPLE BACK??????

WAIT IS HE

BLINKY CALLED HIM A SON

HOLD ON IS THIS GOING TO BE A CLIFFHANGER???????????

BRUH THEY REALLY JUST CAN'T END THE SERIES WITHOUT CLIFFHANGERS like there's always an open ending

TROLLHUNTER TOBY????? You know what forget the whole rants I had on how toby was written they just redeemed it all

And that's all! I'd rate it a 6.5/10 because it's definitely the weakest of all the sequels but still had amazing animation and some good plot points. It's just really hard to look over the bad stuff enough to rate it any higher.

[ayuuria]

Yashahime Translation: Animage October 2021 Issue

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The Beast King’s Daughter

“Hanyō no Yashahime” depicts the battle of three princesses who carry the blood of a demon king. In ‘The Second Chapter’ which broadcasts in October, the one who holds the key to the story is another princess who makes a new appearance.

With overwhelming strength, Sesshōmaru and Inuyasha’s father, the Dog General, was known as “The Beast King of the Western Lands”. The three (girls) Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha inherited the said beast king’s blood.

Despite being inexperienced, Towa and the others have constantly grown in battle. In episode 24 of ‘The First Chapter’, an evenly matched battle unfolds between Towa and Moroha, enraged by Setsuna’s death, and “The Beast King of the Eastern Lands”, Kirinmaru, who is equal to the Dog General. Though Kirinmaru was injured, he successfully landed a single stroke.

Starting from ‘The Second Chapter’, another daughter of a beast king appears before Towa and the others. Her name is Rion. Surprisingly, it is said that Kirinmaru also had a daughter. Rion is an existence who for 600 years has been sealed in Mt. Musubi, which is said to be where the Dream Butterfly is. Exactly who sealed her and for what purpose? Just like Towa and the others, within her is likely an inherited strength of a beast king but her powers are unknown.

There are still many mysteries surrounding Kirinmaru’s daughter, Rion. While it is not yet known whether she is an enemy or an ally to Towa and the others, if she is willing to lend her strength, she will likely become a reliable existence to them as they shoulder many difficulties.

Character Bios

Rion Kirinmaru’s daughter who has been sealed within the barrier of Mt. Musubi for 600 years. It seems her meeting with Towa, Setsuna, and Moroha will move destiny but… …?

The Dream Butterfly The butterfly of the dream world. A spirit. It is said that when they appear in the real world, they devour people’s dreams and those who have been devoured become unable to sleep or dream entirely.

Higurashi Towa Sesshōmaru and Rin’s daughter. She fights with Kikujyūmonji, a demon sword with a blade created from demonic power. The attack she unleashed when she became enraged from Setsuna’s death took on the shape of two blue dragons.

Setsuna Sesshōmaru and Rin’s daughter. In episode 24 of ‘The First Chapter’, despite wounding Kirinmaru during their battle, the tables turned on her and she lost her life.

Moroha Inuyasha and Kagome’s daughter. When she puts on rouge, she goes on a rampage that ends quickly but when Setsuna lost her life, she managed to fight without losing her composure.

Kirinmaru The Beast King of the Eastern Lands. It appears he spares some leeway with the Yashahimes such as naming Towa’s technique ‘Twin-Headed Azure Dragon Wave’, but?

The Parent Needs to Pull It Together More!

Kirinmaru has considerably complicated child rearing. In contrast to that, Rion is a girl with a straightforward upbringing. I can’t say the specifics yet but when I see parent and child, as a father of a daughter in her 10s myself, I think “The parent has to pull it together more” and I also get a sense of “I guess even if the parent complicates things, kids will grow up on their own.” By the way, Fujita Saki plays the role of Rion. She also took on the role of the mean heroine in my previous work “Fairy Ranmaru~ Anata no Kokoro Otasuke Shimasu~”. Just when I thought I finally defeated her in “F Ran” (Shortened name of said previous work), I meet her again in “Hanyō no Yashahime”… … I felt a mysterious fate (laughs).

- Director Hishida Masakazu

I Felt Destiny from the Lives of Towa and Co. Director Hishida Masakazu 

Synchronizing With His Own Life?! Empathy Towards Towa’s Situation

— In the previous issue’s interview, Director Hishida, you said that you felt that “it was fate that I should accept” the offer for this current work which was memorable.

Hishida: I worked at Sunrise’s Studio #1 for a long time, but I started to do work for Tatsunoko Production in 2008. From there, I mostly worked at Tatsunoko but now Sunrise has called me back for the first time in 13 years. Just as I’m wondering what sort of work it’s going to be, they tell me it’s a work that carries on the world of “Inuyasha”, (the work) that taught me the foundation of production. Not to mention, the protagonist, Towa, is a girl who was flung from the feudal world where she was born and raised, to the modern era, and then returns to the feudal (era) again after 10 years. I felt Towa’s situation synchronized with mine and all I could think was that this was fate.

I’m about the same age as the director of ‘The First Chapter’, Teruo-san (Director Satō Teruo), and our careers are just about the same too. Teruo-san worked at Studio 1 for the longest time while I on the other hand, got thrown outside and came back… … I thought that aspect felt similar to Towa and Setsuna’s life (laughs). That’s why watching Towa and Setsuna’s relationship in “The First Chapter” was very tough. Like, they were such close sisters so why doesn’t she remember… …

— To change it to your position Director Hishida, it’s like “You returned to Sunrise for the first time in a while but the people you used to get along with have forgotten about you” kind of a situation.

Hishida: It’s exactly that! The current staff of Sunrise’s Studio 1 don’t know me, and they don’t thank me (laughs). You see, I was the one who revived the steppingstone for the “becoming a producer by being a production assistant” route that came to an end at Studio 1! There weren’t many before me but afterwards, there were a lot of people that took that route and flew the nest like Fujita Yōichi-kun, Watada Shinya-kun, and Kyōgoku Takahiko-kun! No one is really grateful so Fujita-kun and Kyōgoku-kun would always say to me “I should’ve crushed you back then!” (laughs). As I watched Setsuna not remembering Towa, I ended up remembering that.

— You seem to have an unusual attachment to Towa and Setsuna’s relationship (laughs). Well then, what sort of impression do you have of Moroha and Sesshōmaru?

Hishida: Moroha has a brilliance to her. It’s amusing that she inherited Inuyasha’s mischievous side, and she’s got a similar silhouette to Inuyasha as well, so I feel that she is a real eye-catching character. When Towa and Setsuna take center, the story becomes heavy no matter what, so it’s fun to watch Moroha soften the place up.

Then, regarding Sesshōmaru in this current work, I felt “He’s a father”. I bet in his own way, as a father, he wonders how to interact with his daughters. Even while carrying out a strict “trial of courage and cowardice”, he still concerns himself with his daughters which I feel is a little human like. I’m also a father of two girls so I can relate to him somewhat. In the last (scene) of “The First Chapter”, he purposefully hands over a broken Tenseiga to Towa but he wouldn’t do that if he didn’t care about them. He just gives a pass like “Do something about it with this” and I think that is also (a form of) training in a sense.

Also, drawing wise, the pattern of Sesshōmaru’s kimono is still brutal (laughs). “Inuyasha” was an analog cel anime back then so (drawing) that pattern was even more difficult. At the time, the suggestion “Let’s omit the pattern on Sesshōmaru’s kimono” was made but Director Ikeda Masashi opposed it. I didn’t understand why Director Ikeda was so fixated on that pattern back then but thinking about it now, I think it was the right call. Since it could be said that Sesshōmaru’s existence is one of two wheels in the work that is “Inuyasha”, he probably didn’t want to make him plain wherever possible.

The First Attempt At ‘The Second Chapter’ Storyboard Was Like A “Trial of Courage and Cowardice”

— Next, please tell us about Kirinmaru’s side. In ‘The First Chapter’, many of their actions were puzzling so by all means, any hints to their activity in ‘The Second Chapter’!

Hishida: At first, I couldn’t quite understand Kirinmaru, but once I heard he was a father with a daughter, I understood. While he is a person who’s thinking “I want to surpass the Dog General”, his feelings of admiration towards that man and wanting to show his strong side to his daughter are feelings that I completely understand now. Kirinmaru has had many mysterious aspects up until this point, but I’d like to depict his emotions in ‘The Second Chapter’.

Just like her younger brother, Kirinmaru, Zero has also become obsessed with the Dog General. In any case, she lives on her “love”. Zero’s womanly heart is a little complicated, but I also feel that seeing her persist with her earnest feelings for the Dog General is cool.

Also, I think the parts of Riku, who’s neutral towards Towa and the others, that were difficult to see up to this point will become clear in ‘The Second Chapter’. How he feels about Towa will be brought to the forefront, so I told Fukuyama Jun-kun who plays him, “In ‘The Second Chapter’ please go with a slightly handsome boy feeling route” (laughs). By the way, Fukuyama-kun was the one who played the main character in my director debut work “Onmyō Taisenki”. The name of the role (character) was ‘Riku’. ‘The Second Chapter’ is a story about the ‘fate’ that connects people together, and I also felt a mysterious fate from that.

— What did you think of production for episode 25 (episode 1 of ‘The Second Chapter’) which continues from the shocking last scene of Setsuna’s death in ‘The First Chapter’?

Hishida: It was such shocking last scene that I was overcome with the feeling of “Why are you passing the baton to me at such a difficult spot!?”! I truly thought this was a ‘trial of courage and cowardice’ (laughs). I did the storyboard for episode 25 myself, but coming into the work midway, it took me some time to understand the story, so I really struggled. Until now, the record holder for storyboard that took me the longest was episode 13 of “Gundam Reconguista in G” with 2 months. However, this time, it took me 3 months.

— To say that it easily overtook that “G Recon” (shortened form of “Gundam Reconguista in G”) that you struggled so much with (laughs).

Hishida: Yes. My worst record was brilliantly made new! However, on the reverse side, I thought with ‘The First Chapter’ ending like this, there’s no doubt you’d want to see the continuation. In that sense, they passed the baton in the best way so I should meet up to that (expectation). It was tough but I put my all into it!

— ‘The Second Chapter’ is loaded with things to be curious about aside from what will happen to Setsuna like Rin who’s sleeping within the Tree of Ages and Inuyasha and Kagome who’ve been trapped within the black pearl.

Hishida: I can’t talk in detail about that yet but I will say “There’s no way it would end like this!”. I would certainly like for everyone to look forward to October.

In the new key visual for ‘The Second Chapter’ that is overflowing with lively motion, the three princesses show gallant expressions with weapons in hand. What exactly is beyond Towa’s reaching hand… …? Also, when will we get to see ‘Sesshōmaru & Rin’ and ‘Inuyasha & Kagome’ standing side-by-side together as shown in this picture?

[holycow99]

石田お寿司 12/9/21 stream translation Part 1

This is not the full translation of the stream. I only translated the parts I could understand & interpret or parts I found interesting/important. I’m still a beginner in Japanese, so the translations may not be accurate. If you want to repost, please repost at your own risk.

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I: Hello. Can you hear me? Good night. (t/n: He’s replying to a comment.) You can hear me? Hello. Welcome.

I: My tone sounds great today, ***-kun? (t/n: OP commented that his tone sounds great.) Of course I’ll be excited in the beginning of the stream. But only in the beginning.

C: Your voice somehow sounds young.

I: It’s because I just slept.

*Typing on twitter

I: I finally did it. This is a simultaneous worldwide stream. Do you understand it? Ah, I’m so tired. I’m tired of sleeping.

I: I’ll be drinking my coffee. Itadakimasu.

I: It was a long vacation, wasn’t it? When was the last time you guys heard from me? On September…Well, it doesn’t matter.

I: I don’t have anything particular to do for this stream. I just felt like it.

C: I’ve been listening to your streams repeatedly during holiday.

I: Thank you.

C: We last heard from you at the end of August.

I: I see. Thanks.

C: Thank you for your hard work on the manuscript!

I: I did the rough sketches first. I was brainstorming.

*Someone commented on Animal Rap.

I: Animal rap? I actually wanna try this. Actually, I’ve done recording for one video, but won’t it be scary if suddenly in the middle of the stream, animal rap video is uploaded. Without saying anything, suddenly there’s a new animal rap video being uploaded. Won’t it be scary stream?

(t/n: I’m not sure if the translations for this part is correct. He said something more but I haven’t reached this level of Japanese understanding skill. Forgive me.)

C: Animal rap itself is scary, so it’s okay.

I: What a hilarious thing to say. Are you actually afraid of animal then?

C: Have you got vaccinated?

I: Nope, since I’ve been locked up in my house. I want to though. I want to get injected a lot. Around 10 times.

C: Sensei, did you read Berserk chapter 364?

I: Is it the final chapter?

Y****: Let’s inject the head.

I: Nice one, Y****. Well, since Y**** is an introvert at school, he must be a non-popular kid. Because he doesn’t have any friends, he can’t wait to meet me. Is it like that? Hahahaha.

I: I’m not even aware of the things happening around me. I don’t even know when the exhibition in Osaka will open. I want you guys to tell me about me.

C: I’m aiming to be a mangaka, but having someone that can be a mentor for me to learn from is better, as expected?

I: I don’t think so. It depends. In some degree, it’s better to do it by yourself. If you really wanna write a manga and you wanna create an environment that allows you to do so, if there’s a chance to be an assistant, I think it’s better for you to grab it. Because you’re still not familiar with how these things work. I think it’s better to be an assistant first. You don’t have to be one for a long time though.

C: I want to diet. Where should I start?

I: Record your weight. Measure your weight and record it in calendar. Doing that makes you feel conscious about your weight. You’ll probably can lose weight that way.

C: Are you still eating oatmeal?

I: I’ve been eating Onigiri only. 

C: I wanna change job, but I’m anxious to because of the economic situation. Please encourage me!

I: It’s better for you to change job, since you said you wanted to. I think everyone is anxious. There’s no one who isn’t.

C: I’m happy that the JJ illustration that you posted on twitter will be made into goods!

I: Yeah, without my permission. Hahaha. When the illustration was made into goods without my permission, I was like “Eh? This is…”. I’ll stop talking about this. Hahaha. I won’t talk about this.

*Someone commented about Kingdom exhibition.

I: I wanna go to the Kingdom exhibition.

I: What I said just now (about JJ illustration) was a lie. Please forget about it. Are there companies like that? Of course not. I was just joking. If that’s the case, then anybody can freely turn my illustrations into goods. Though there’s a person who sent me the PugMax t-shirt.

C: I wanted to be a mangaka when I was small. As I got older, I only immersed myself in the real world. I’ll be a civil servant starting from next year. I don’t have the courage to challenge myself, so I want to give my unconditional support to those who are.

I: I don’t know how old you are, but you can still draw even if you become a civil servant. Just draw one if you really want to.

C: You have to collect royalty.

I: I do get royalty. I get 5 yen in total.

C: How old will you be this year?

I: 250,000 years old.

C: How are you?

I: Like usual. But I made progress on the manuscript, so I’m relieved. I kinda forgot how to draw it.

C: I thought you were in your 30s.

I: Nope, I’m far older.

C: You haven’t started game streaming?

I: I’m haven’t decided yet for today.

*People were discussing about his age.

I: Doesn’t matter how old I am.

C: Do you prefer women with long hair or short hair?

I: Short hair.

*People commented about Heavy Rain.

I: Oh, you want to see me playing Heavy Rain? I’m okay with that. I’m okay with playing games or anything. I’ll be a yes-man for today. Everyone’s yes-man & toy, Ishida Osushi.

*Someone commented about Animal Rap again.

I: I wanted to say something about this. I’ve done the animal rap video. I only upload videos I’ve received from the animal themselves, not me. But I was afraid to upload it, so I refrained from doing so. I wanna try uploading the video while streaming. That’s what I wanted to say. Well, it doesn’t really matter. I just upload it after I finish streaming. I don’t understand the need to upload the video and streaming at the same time.

(t/n: He said something more, but again, info on Animal rap is hard for me to decipher. I’m really sorry.)

C: What did you watch recently?

I: Movies.

C: There were people who got scared by the fact that Ishida Sui raps.

I: No, you’re wrong. Ishida Sui doesn’t rap. Ishida Sui doesn’t do streaming as well.

C: Do mangakas have the chance to meet women?

I: It depends on the person. The ones who’re locked up in the house won’t. But…That’s right. You might if the workplace has mixed genders. You also have the chance to meet people during party or some sort. I’ll always be at the corner every time I go to parties. It’d be nice if the party was fun and the staffs could enjoy themselves. I also said that I went to parties to take a break, but I hated it.

C: You’re not going to parties?

I: Nope, I won’t. The company doesn’t hold them as well because of the current situation.  Even if I did, I wouldn’t know what to do. I don’t really eat the food, and introducing myself to people is tiresome.

I: S****** is here.

S******: Ishida Osushi can become a pro mangaka.

I: I’m aiming for it.

C: Fukuoka suits you, sensei.

I: Somehow, I feel grateful. It’s like you’re telling me that it’s okay for me to live in Kyushu.

(t/n: Kyushu is an island where Fukuoka is located.)

C: Sir Osushi, what do you think of Sir Sui?

I: I have a murderous intent towards him.

C: Does the thumbnail hold any meaning?

I: It does. Look forward to it.

C: Being a streamer suits you (Osushi) better than being a mangaka.

I: Hahaha.

C: The drawings of Neji (JJ character) by Ms. Towada were wonderful!

I: That’s right. Neji drawn by Ms. Towada. I want you guys to tell me something like this. I want you guys to tell me about my current situation. Things like, “would you retweet this?”, “This is JJ’s…”, “The CD’s also…”. Let me change my twitter account. First is Ms. Towada, right? Let’s retweet Ms. Towada’s tweets. I thought of drawing something like this. She drew quite a lot. She drew him more than me. I feel bad having her to draw it. I feel grateful rather than feeling bad. She drew a lot of them. Yonaga’s illustration looks nice. I see… There’s like an incomplete rough drawing. I thought of copying and drawing that illustration. I’ll just retweet this. Tell me what should I retweet next.

C: Is Ms.Towada doing well as well?

I: I talked to her a few days ago.

I: Do read Fool Night.

C: Do you like Aespa? (t/n: Aespa is a kpop girl group. Ishida had drawn one of the members.)

I: The girl caught my attention. I thought she was beautiful.

*Someone commented about his illustration of Ano-chan. (t/n: Ano-chan is a Japanese singer. Ishida had come to her radio programme once, and he did the album cover for her latest album.)

I: Ano-chan! What happened to that? Have you seen the album cover? It’s already out?

*Someone commented about Fool Night.

I: The world in Fool Night is super amazing. It was quite a while ago, the person in charge of the Superior magazine watched one of my streams and asked me if I could write some comments. I was like “Don’t tell me that!” (referring to watching his stream). I hate being seen. But then, I was like “whatever.” I usually turned it down, but I just wrote for this one.

*Someone commented about Wooma (t/n: an illustrator.)

I: Who’s Wooma? Let me check it.

C: Sensei, I’m a good child. So, is it okay for me to sleep?

I: Yes, of course.

C: Sensei, do you smoke?

I: No.

I: Ah, Wooma is the illustrator for the song ‘Usseewa’. Sorry for the lack of knowledge.

C: Do you watch Christopher Nolan’s works?

I: I’m not that familiar with movies, but I may or may not watch it. I’ve been getting into movies lately. I searched for the movies Takahashi Kunimitsu told me about. You tend to watch anything when you’re obsessed with movies, right? I was also obsessed with history for a while after I learned how fun it was from Takahashi Kunimitsu. I’ve been reading 2-3 books on history a day lately.

C: Until what time are you gonna stream?

I: Today is infinite as well. We have another 12 minutes left. Haha. I’ll keep on streaming today. I won’t end the stream today. It may end tomorrow. (t/n: He definitely kept his words.)

C: Sensei, do you like itzy? (t/n: Itzy is another kpop girl group, and Ishida had also drawn one of the members.)

I: Yes.

I: Tomorrow is a holiday? There are people who are not working tomorrow.

C: What are you drinking?

I: Coffee.

C: You only need another 800 people to reach 30,000 subscribers.

I: Yeah. It’s gonna reach 30,000. I have to make an appreciation stream or video for 30,000 subscribers. A lot of youtubers are doing this, so I have to do it too. I wanna do it. Feels like a youtuber. Isn’t it fun? I wonder what should I do for it? What would be fun? Let’s go with this concern first. I get lost if I don’t go one-by-one. It’s one of my bad habits.

*They’re planning on what Ishida should do when he reaches 30,000 subscribers.

C: Show your nails.

I: I don’t do manicure.

C: Heavy Rain.

I: Wanna play Heavy Rain as well.

C: Please let us hear your sneeze.

I: There is such person sometimes. Creepy.

C: Why don’t you play Ghosts n Goblins for now?

I: After the stream, I felt like playing the game. They had something like magical clock, though I forgot the name. The one that double the speed of the game. I really wanted to play that, honestly. Though, it wasn’t suitable for streaming. I thought of playing it in my own time. I really like that kind of games.

C: Will you sing when you reach 30,000?

I: During the previous silent stream, Queen Bee’s song was playing. Those who watched may know. I thought of appearing for a moment and sing and then end the stream. I wouldn’t do it, but I just thought about it. At that time, I wanted to try having just an illustration stream.

C: I’m waiting for an autograph session after the Corona ends.

I: The pandemic probably won’t end for at least 2-3 years.

*Someone wanted him to sing Gaston’s song.

I: Gaston. Singing, huh? Hahaha, why am I having second thoughts? I thought I’m okay with anything.

C: how about a karaoke battle?

I: Karaoke battle, huh?

C: Do you have any piercings?

I: I’m not wearing one right now, but I do have it. (t/n: I didn’t expect him to have a piercing. He’s really different than what I imagined a mangaka to be. XD)

C: I’m hoping for JJ’s song covers!

I: JJ? JJ’s songs are difficult. It was super hard during the time I did the covers. Seriously, when I heard it back…The cover for the opening theme was scary. I thought my singing ability had increased since I recorded this one the last. A few months ago, I listened to it after a long time, it was…what should I call it? A sutra, no, a curse. Me and JJ’s opening theme. I forgot the title of the song. Jack and something. There were parts in the songs where the female and male characters had to harmonise. To convey that part, I had to cover the song multiple times. I multiplied into 7 people, since I had to record as Kisa as well. When I was recording Kisa’s part, the other version of me at the back, probably Kai, was harmonising with me. I was told to deepen my voice by Mr.Kasama. So embarrassing. The voice was really low. I was drawn by Mr. Kasama’s voice. His voice was really good when he said ‘Broccoli’ for the cm.

*Ishida imitating Mr. Kasama.

I: It’s cooler than this.

*Imitating him once again.

I: I was like “So cool!”

C: Invite the animals that appeared in Animal rap as guests.

I: That’s a good idea. But what would the guests be doing? It’s absolutely hard to do that. It’s hard to invite the animals because of corona.

C: The title is “Jack & Jeanne of Quartz”.

I: Right. Thank you.

C: Won’t you invite Hanae?

I: I won’t. That’s impossible. (t/n: I want to see him playing horror games with Hanae Natsuki.)

Part 2

[simibraun]

Attack on Titan, chapter 137 analysis.

Chapter 137 has put everyone to thoughts by giving the answer which is so obvious and simple, an answer that is right before our eyes every single day, regarding the meaning of life and its beautiful simplicity. This chapter has some beautiful parts and I feel that Isayama completes my complex thoughts as a human being. After all, this is why I am so passionate about the story of Attack on Titan, because in one way or another, in the last 11 years reading his story, Isayama described to me, teached me, gave me answers and helped me in his way, to understand my journey in life. I have a lot say and I could write endless things regarding this matter, but I expressed many things in the following texts, regarding the conversation between Zeke and Armin, which is the most interesting part of this chapter. The following texts are a mixture of chapter analysis and personal expression. Let's begin with the quote Zeke said: “Maybe the end of your days are being manipulated.. all in the name of multiplication. Without ever knowing if it means anything at all.” The meaning of life sure is a complicated matter, but as far as we can understand life, a human is able to give and leave behind more things to this world, than just multiplication. A man is born to feel the completeness of his/her journey in life. But nowadays we are mostly lost in the heaviness of a dark life that we created by our own actions or created by others. We forgot the beautiful, meaningful and simple things that exist in our world and we lost our connection to them. Isayama made a story that most of it contains life struggles, we felt many times sadness and heartbroken while reading a chapter. The things that happen in his story and the experiences of his characters, are reflections of our reality and in each reflection, there is a part of us or a part of someone we know. Those reflections evoke to us the emotions from something that happened in our life, and we keep it in our memories. We too struggle in our reality, nowadays we are so busy dealing with problems and we mostly forget to observe and enjoy the beauty of the simplicity that surrounds us, because we are lost in worries and we are blinded by fake sights. I bet you can feel it too, you can see it too, how our daily life is filled mostly with problems, antagonism, people with fake personalities who cannot  even understand their own selves, showing something that they are not. And the result? Spreading misconception which can lead to hatred, setting high standards, do bad actions only to offend other people and see their downfall. That is something that happens too in the story of Attack on Titan, we see reflections of our reality. A human is not born to be lost in the worries and heaviness of a cruel world, which is something that has been created by his own actions. A human is born to connect to life, create, daydream, philosophize and feel its completeness in his/her journey. When Armin held that leaf and then the baseball, he said while showing it to Zeke: “To my eyes, even if there's no need for something like this in order to multiply, it's still something incredibly precious.” And Zeke said: “It doesn't mean a thing but.. you are right.” Reading this part, I can only think of how it is also in our reality, how some people became pragmatists-realists to the point as if they are paralyzed in their own thoughts and cannot allow themselves see and feel the simple beauties in life, feel fondness towards something. Some people cannot understand someone's fondness-affection towards some things. They believe that some things we love, are meaningless, because they don't have a specific purpose in life, rather than just being lifeless objects. You can see it every day around you, each one of us has different interests, different passions, some people may even ask you about the things you love and cannot understand why you love them so much. Regarding the things I love, these are some of the questions I've been asked and not only from people I don't know that much but from people who are very close to me: “Why do you buy all this merch?” ”Why would you spend so much money for these stuff?” “Why are you so obsessed with this anime-character?” “Why do people give you their money, to draw them a fictional character?” “It's funny how you people get so obsessed with these things, why do they even pay you to draw something that is not based in real life people or events? Let me bring you back to reality, they don't exist, there's no meaning to it.” To each one of these questions, the answer is: “Because in every part of these things, are memories and memories evoke emotions." and it's also the opposite, there are emotions that evoke memories. There are some things that people fail to understand, even if they think they do and still they believe that the things we love are meaningless, in reality they are not. A memory is evoked by emotions that are connected to something that happened in our life. Be it a story, a fictional character, an object, an image, these things can connect us to those memories, those emotions that we once felt and to life in general. This is why we love owning some things and are passionate about them, because we see a part of ourselves, they make us feel comfortable, they remind us beautiful memories and emotions, simply they give us life. Nothing is meaningless, no matter if some people cannot understand some things, the emotions that are being evoked through the things we love, will always be personal, not everyone is able to understand them completely and we don't always have to explain to them, simply because they are personal, only we are able understand them deeply. Those who have been following me throughout the years, you may remember some of my comments or talking on livestreams regarding this story, that the reasons for being so passionate with AoT and feeling so attached to it, are reasons so deep and personal. Armin describes his memories, about enjoying the simplicity in life and when describing those moments, he feels peaceful. We often recall memories that evoke a nostalgic feeling about the good old days and somehow, even for a moment, we feel as if we are there living that moment again and we feel peaceful and complete. Those are the moments that connect us in life. As Armin describes some of his beautiful memories and thoughts to Zeke, I want also to describe to you some of mine. Memories that I keep remembering and still cling to them. Some of the memories I keep remembering, are the days I've spent in nature when I was younger, my first house was right in front of the sea, so daily I used to play around the shore and on the other side of the sea, was visible mount Olympus. What a beautiful sight it was. There was a small harbor close to my house and I remember we dived there with the other kids from the village to take out the starfish that were laying on the harbor, we brought them out to the shore and we observed how they were moving their legs and slowly went back to the sea. As Zeke misses and feels about Ksaver, that's how I feel about my grandfather, I remember how I walked with him and his two dogs in a beautiful forest that was close to his house, and specifically I remember the image of a path we walked deep inside the forest. The image of sunlight falling among the branches still frames my thoughts so clearly. I really miss him and those moments, I even saw these memories in my dreams. It felt like I was living it again. Another memory of a village I used to visit, which is among mountains, we used to climb on the mountain's slopes with some kids and we had a specific spot of a rock that was very slippery. We called it “the slide” it was our playground. As Armin remembers that sweet warm breeze, I can also remember that chilly breeze of those moments in the mountain and the sight of its wild nature. I sure cannot forget these memories. Every time I think of them, I feel peaceful, moments so simple yet they make me feel complete, because I was completely connected with life. I remember someone asked me a question on one of my IG livestreams: “What is inspiring you? How do you convey your inspiration into art?” and here also, with this chapter Isayama completes my answer to this question: I said that, anywhere I go, be it for a walk, travel somewhere, even when I just have to go to work, from the moment I step out, I observe everything around me. I don't like to look down as I walk, if I do, it will be only because I am lost to some thoughts that take me to another place. I always observe the things around me, observe the sky and its colors, the clouds and the sunlight, the birds flying, I observe the flowers how they dance in the breeze, I will catch a glimpse of the gaze from the person walking past next to me, sometimes I see beautiful sad gazes, sometimes bright ones, sometimes a smile, it's as if I live in my own world and I see everything in a cinematic view. I love observing, and I love to see things beyond of what I observe, I love trying to understand the deeper part of what I see. And all these emotions along with personal experiences, make me create worlds in my mind that I convey into art. I guess this is why I am so passionate about this story, because it completes my complex thoughts. When Zeke says “So I suppose, I'll thank you. Dad..” to Grisha, it's like what we are used to say regarding some of the hardships that we've been through. That no matter how rough some of our experiences have been, in the end, these experiences made us who we are now and made us stronger. We saw and understood a different part and meaning in life. If Zeke wouldn't have been through those hardships from Grisha, he wouldn't have met and have those precious moments with Ksaver. Although, sometimes we wish that it would be preferable not to have been through these hard times, but still, isn't it somehow a magical thing that we are able to feel such deep emotions that were evoked through hardships? A human is made and is capable to withstand all the hardships of the world. This is also a part of life, to be able to understand its different perspectives, both good and bad ones. These moments and memories give me joy, and I want to continue to create more beautiful memories, even if there will be sad ones too and even if I've been through really tough hardships so far, I still want to feel its completeness. Which beautiful memories and experiences, are the ones that you keep remembering, have the nostalgia to go back to and live them again? The ones you think about, are the ones that prove that you were truly connected to life. Thank you for reading my thoughts.

[schoolbookdepository]

HAPPY 2 YEAR ANNIVERSARY @pinkmoondoll4shihtzu 💚💖 these past 2 years have been some of the years of my life. sure they’re what they’ve been, up and down, but the ups have been the best i’ve had and the downs i’ve always had u there to let me know it’s going to be ok. the moments we’ve made have been the most important and valuable moments of my life. i’m so very grateful 4 all the things you’ve taught me, all the stories you’ve shared, all your advice, your cosmic knowledge, your favorite music, your hatred and insults for things that suck. your bubbly burning bigbooty bimbofied energy and love for ur friends warms my heart in a very special way. u are a real life anime girl w the passion of a thousand magical girls. i love ur autism obsessions, the way you pronounce against, ur favorite snacks, ur writing, ur art, ur everything. all of it is something i hold near to me and all i want is to just to listen to u it all, and remember all of it. the way you listen to me and my silly lil factoids and tales makes me feel so understood. you’ve been here for me in ways i can’t put into words. i’ll list some of my favorite things i’ve experienced with u: both of the trips to vancouver. LAKE DAY!!! the summer nights spent making kandi and listening to you talk about astrology and making me realise it’s real. going to madrid for christmas and seeing a ufo. the roadtrip to white sands with maheyo. watching all of south park in like a week. watching u become the best mother to piepie i could ask for and talking to him. watching nadia for your first time, especially the one day it was raining and we were eating tonkotsu. going to the cliff dwellings with my parents. the soviet science fair shows. the raves. walking in the snow and listening to the route 211 music. hearing about new conspiracies from u. showing u how to play guitar. recording us being cute w my camcorder for ur 27th birthday. the time we took molly with sarah on a whim and it felt like i was a kid again (not the aftermath tho LOL). giving u sloppy while u play sonic adventure 2. watching u raise ur chao garden. (RIP ;_;) bryan’s birthday. vlogging at savers n showing our haul. sitting in bed while u work on ur neocities as its snowing outside. doing ketamine and learning to love bladee with u. finding fred spencer’s youtube. getting catcalled and walking to burrito spot every day. making stickers with u. the moment we found out that you were now legally an american. complaining with u (never gets old). going to the plant store with you and hearing all your flower shop lady knowledge. cooming inside u. watching you play minecraft and freaking out n screaming. going tagging with you. going to the store to get u ur little snacks. watching chills videos and other clickbait with u, and lastly walking into our room to find u rolling on the floor laughing and saying wamart aebeb pie while u were mushroom’d out. i still can’t believe that god sent me an angel like urself that loves me the way u do, in the way we met. you make me want to be a better me, to create things everyday, to cherish the little things, to wake up early, and to take care of u until ur a raisin. as long as i have you i know things r gonna be okay. i love you with every cell in my body and soul, ella kimberly jackson. ur my schizo shihtzu, my libra librarian virgo vixen scorpioid succubus cosmic cutiepie. ur my mallwhore, my ningen, my one of a kind britbong bimbo fembladee frosslass gyaru gringa seapunk snowfall autism angel cryptid gf. i can’t wait to go swimming w u today n make another memory like all these that i hold so dear. thank you for marrying me. 💖💚💖💚shika+usagi;yui+azu;L+yagami;nadia+jean;mado+homu;leafeon+glaceon 222ever & everrrr.

[myhauntedsalem]

13 True Horror Stories from the Psychiatric Ward that Will Give You the Creeps

Death, illness and tragedy have long been part of the history of insane asylums, and for as long as they have existed, so too have the scary stories associated with them. From haunted hospitals to sadistic doctors and nurses, psychiatric wards have been the inspiration for many of our favorite horror movies and books. Yet, the true stories told by the psych ward workers below far surpass any horrors that we might have seen at the cinema or read in a book.

Without further ado, here are thirteen of some of the creepiest psych ward stories on the internet that have been shared by health care professionals.

1. Holding her own Eyes

My mom told me this story from her time at a neuropsychiatric ward while she was in grad school. She was making her routine room checks and happened upon the most horrific scene I’ve ever heard.

This was during the night shift, and generally, all the patients’ bedroom doors should be closed. So my mom turned a corner and noticed an open door. She saw a staff member’s legs on the floor, halfway out the doorway.

When she looked into the room, she saw the patient, a woman with a severe postpartum psychiatric disorder, who had just gouged both of her own eyes out with her bare hands. She was sitting cross-legged on the floor, holding her eyes in her hands.

The first staff member to witness the scene, who was now lying face down on the floor, had a heart attack when he first witnessed the woman while he was making his rounds.

My mom screamed for help and frantically tried to perform CPR on the staff member. All the while, the woman just sat rather calmly, holding her own eyes.

2. The Saw

I work as a psychotherapist in a hospital system. My definition of creepy is probably quite a bit different from other medical professionals.

The one that got to me the most was a patient who came to us after attempting suicide by sawing both his arms off at the forearm with a table saw. His arms were reattached, fairly successfully too, with only limited impairments in mobility. All I could think was how bad it would have to be to live in his head that sawing his arms off seemed better than that.

He has since completed suicide.

3. Jane?

We had a young lady in our custody with quite a few issues. We’ll call her Jane. Jane’s first night at our facility staff doing a bed check found Jane in a puddle of blood. Turns out Jane had been slicing the skin around her shin with her finger nails and was pulling her skin up her leg, essentially de-gloving her calf.

Jane also had a ritual she performed every night before bed. While in her room she would run between walls in her room touching them in a crucifix pattern. After doing this for a few hours she would sit on her bed and go to sleep. This particular night Jane was frantic in her pace, practically running between walls. Our night staff observed the entire interaction and reported Jane screaming late into the night. When the staff went to check on Jane she reported Jane standing in the doorway smiling. The staff asked what was wrong and Jane replied, “what makes you think you are speaking to Jane?”

4. The Vampire

My mom worked in mental institutions in her younger years (and actually worked at a large, well-known asylum before it was shut down.)

There was one woman there that thought she was a vampire of sorts. She was only allowed out one hour a day, and they had to use safety precautions. She had already attacked and killed at least one hospital worker before these were enacted.

When my Mom asked about her, it was revealed that she had killed at least two of her children, wounded another as well as her husband because she had some sort of physical condition called Porphyria, which apparently made her crave blood.

By the time that they discovered there was something physically wrong with her, she already had lost her mind from guilt and grief.

5. The Spitter

I’m not a psychologist but my friend is. She told me about a patient of hers who was HIV positive and a paranoid schizophrenic. He thought that the nurses who worked at the hospital he was in were trying to kill him, so he would frequently bite his tongue, and spit HIV positive blood into their faces/mouths. When they had to come into contact with him, they were required to wear full masks and gloves.

6. The Only One

I once knew a woman who had spent part of her residency at a psychiatric hospital for people with severe mental conditions. Apparently, the grounds had a lovely, enclosed greenhouse. One day, one of their schizophrenic patients was sitting on a bench, smoking a cigarette, as a heron frantically flew around. It had found its way in and, not being able to escape, it was smashing into the large panes of glass. The man just sat there watching.

Finally, my counselor asked him if the bird was bothering him and he kind of sighed and said, “Thank god, I thought I was the only one seeing that.”

7. Family Photographs

My sister is the director of a psychiatric hospital. There was recently a lady there who would cut her arms, legs and torso open and place photographs of her family under her skin.

8. Under the Bed

Once, a fellow female patient told me she found writings under her bed. They were just old, small wooden bed frames with hard mattresses that would make all kinds of noises when you rolled over, but I still wondered what exactly she was doing lying under her bed to find these writings.

When she first told me, I thought it was a joke. But sure enough, one day during group we managed to sneak away, and she showed me. Indeed, there were stories written under her bed. After that, we had everyone check under their own beds, and there was more writing under every single bed.

They were stories of patients who had stayed here before, or ways they were planning on killing themselves, or who the good and bad nurses were. It creeped me out.

9. Time of Death

Well, my mother was a nurse that specialized in geriatrics, and she worked for several hospice hospitals for many years. She often described situations at her work with several of the patients. She would say that each person tends to have a very similar “checklist” that they follow right before death. This checklist often ended in a very similar way.

They would get caught talking to someone that wasn’t there. When asked who they (otherwise lucid people) were talking to, they would describe an individual who was already dead. When asked what they were talking about, they would say that their relative wanted to know if they were ready to move on. A pretty common response would be, “Yeah, he/she said that she will take me tomorrow at 3:00.” Well, it would often happen that they would die at the exact time their relatives quoted.

10. The Test Subject

I had an hour-long conversion with a delusional guy who was confined to a mental health facility, and who was probably smarter than I am. Lots of these folks believe that somebody – often the CIA – is either beaming thoughts into their heads, or has implanted a microchip in their brains for this purpose. This guy was offering a very thoughtful argument as to why such claims should not be so quickly dismissed.

“It’s precisely because such delusions are so common that mental patients make the best test subjects,” he said. There he was, confined and protected, constantly observed, his health and behavior documented, and there is zero chance that anyone would ever take his concerns seriously. How else would you test and improve such technology? Does the government not have a strong motivation and a plausible ability to create such a device?

“You can see I’m not irrational,” the man said. “I’m just straight-up telling you that they are doing this to me. I know just how unbelievable it sounds, and yet, here I am.”

11. The Boy who Loved Knives

As a tech in psych years ago, there was a 7-year-old kid sent to the floor because the mom didn’t know what to do with him. Sadly, common thing to happen, even if the kids don’t have psych issues. Anyway, the mom was shaking and crying, and they had to take the kid into another room. She was genuinely afraid of her own son. She had suspected something was wrong when she kept finding mutilated animals in the backyard, but never heard or saw coyotes or anything around. The neighbors smaller pets started disappearing. The boy had an obsession with knives, hiding them around the house. Denying anything when the mom confronted him. Then when the two started getting into arguments, he would get really violent and hit her, push her down and kick her, threaten to kill her. On multiple occasions she woke up in the middle of the night with him standing beside her bed, staring her in the face. She put extra locks on her bedroom door to feel safe while she slept. The last straw was when she lifted up his mattress and found 50+ knives of all shapes and sizes under there. So she brought him to us.

I remember talking to him, treating him like he was just any other kid that came through. He seemed remarkably normal, until you spoke directly to him. He had this way of looking right through you, or maybe like he didn’t see you at all while you were speaking.

He would respond like a robot, like he was just saying words because that’s what we wanted to hear. And he would always put on this creepy, dead-looking smile. Like all mouth and no eye involvement in the smile. Especially when he would get away with something, like taking another kid’s markers and they couldn’t figure it out. Still gives me chills laying here thinking about him.

I believe I met a 7-year-old psychopath.

12. The New Mom

I was a pharmacy technician at a hospital with a psych ward for some time. We would have to go around with a cart and dispense the patients’ medications, and being a 5’2″ girl, a security guard or male nurse would accompany me, just as a precaution. I never had any real issues other than the occasional death grip onto my arm or manic outbursts, but there was one boy who was entirely different.

His chart said he was nine and he had pale skin, dark hair, and huge bright, green eyes. He always greeted me in the most polite way, asked how I was doing, and always found something different to compliment me on every time. He was extremely well-spoken and mature for his age, so I began looking forward to seeing him, as normal small talk is definitely cherished in that setting. If he saw me outside of his room in the halls, he made sure to say hello and always called me “Miss Jones” or “ma’am.”

One day, a couple of our female nurses saw me pause to chat with him in the hallway, and waved me over to ask if I was out of my mind. Apparently, when he was in kindergarten, he grew an intense attachment to his young female teacher.

This escalated to the point of him calling her “Mom” and leaving notes for her about how he wished he were her son. He had a normal home-life with both parents, and the teacher tried to explain to him that she couldn’t be his mom because that would hurt his real mother’s feelings, and that she already had that job covered.

So, he went home and, killed his own mother in her sleep by cutting her throat, so his teacher could be his mom. The female staff had a general rule of not interacting with him excessively to prevent any kind of attachment from forming.

13. Bugs

Nothing I can say can possibly describe the year I worked in Psychiatric Intensive Care. Creepy isn’t the thing that comes to mind when I think back on it…more heartbreaking and horrifying. But creepiness was a part of it. Especially evening and night shifts, naturally.

There is always something disturbing about watching someone while they hallucinate. You can tell it is 100% real to them, and something about that makes you believe it, on some level. A lot of stories end with, “and of course, I had to look over my shoulder to make sure”. You see the emotions it brings out.

There was a woman that came in and sat down across the table from me for her admission interview. She had bandages all over her arms and scotch tape over her mouth and ears. She looked very uncomfortable and wouldn’t really sit still. When the nurse would ask her a question, she would peel the corner of the tape back and answer, then stick the tape back on really fast.

We eventually found out that she saw and felt bugs crawling all over her, and they were trying to get inside her body. The tape was to keep the bugs out. The bandages were because some bugs got in and she had to dig them out. She couldn’t sit still because she felt the bugs all over her even while we sat and talked. The worst part was, she had some idea that it was her mind playing tricks on her. Can you imagine going through your life, feeling like someone is continuously dumping buckets of cockroaches on your head, feeling like they’re all over you and getting inside of you to the point that you’re digging chunks out of your flesh in a panic, all while knowing intellectually that none of it is real?

[galacticjava]

so I know it's 2021 and death note aint exactly poppin anymore but let me say something here

one thing I love about death note that makes me both happy and sad is the fact that we are never shown how light actually is outside of the death note's influence. we see him for like twenty seconds before he picks up the death note, which is heavily, HEAVILYYYY implied to be cursed (Ryuk saying every human who's met with it has led a life of misfortune, light being DRASTICALLY different during yotsuba, it being said that the note makes people use it, etc)

so that gives people a LOT of wiggle room when writing light in fanfic. and that's fun and fine and good, but can I say that I am tired,,,, 🤌TIRED🤌 of seeing light just be actin exactly the same even when he's written as never even having touCHEd the death note

I GET IT, ITS YALLS AU AND YALL CAN WRITE WHATEVER U WANT HOWEVER U WANT!!!!!! it is yours to do with as u PLEASE 💕😤💕

But mannn my favorite light is a warm light. I rly like imagining light as being just as charming when he's himself as when he's Kira, BUT Real Light runs out of socially smooth, scripted things to say after about an hour, and eventually drifts into Dork Mode where he ends up talking about all this nerdy shit he's actually into (",,,,,,,,,,,,,,, have you heard of sanpaku eyes? I don't know how much merit it actually holds, but it's still an interesting observation. it means 'three whites' and it's in reference to how a lot of psychopaths have the top or bottom white of their eye visible around their iris--" "okay light")

more headcanons I have for my lil version of Actual Light I've created in my head:

• surprisingly funny and usually out of nowhere

• makes fun of L for being a "homeschooler" and how it explains a lot

• v close with sayu. plays wii and Pokémon with her and they go on morning jogs together before school while light quizzes her with unnecessarily complicated versions of her study guide to get a laugh in before breakfast

• much closer with his mom than he is with his dad. knows how to and is adept at sewing, cooking, and cleaning. I like to think his mom knew he Wasn't Straight Very Early On and they both know it but light still hasn't said anything out loud to her yet. they love each other v v much

• got his first and only failing grade when he was 14 just bc he forgot to do it. keeps a planner now and writes absolutely everything in it. L thinks it's funny bc light's so, so smart but he's also so forgetful. also forgets to eat all the time

• doesn't have any real friends and never has. really adept at socializing for a little while, but runs out of socially smooth things to say after about an hour, and that's kept him from making genuine friends bc no one else rly wants to talk about black holes or unsolved murders. has One Friend at To-Oh that sits next to him, and it's bc she listens to true crime podcasts and is rly interested in unsolved murders. that's it

• going off that, I also like to imagine light being really reALLY interested in L when he first meets him, not even romantically or anything. just bc hes never met anyone on his same wavelength and it's so cathartic just to sit and talk to L and not have to wait or slow down, bc L already knows what he's saying and what he means. loves playing chess as expected, but also loves playing "guess who" with L once they're good enough friends for a while to get there. they make up questions like "do they look like they wake up at 4:30 am every day and drink lemon water while they run before the sun is up" "yes" *flips down seven tabs*

• I see light as a heavy iced coffee drinker. not even bc he needs it to wake up or anything but just bc he likes the constant light buzz throughout the day, and it also helps him stay focused on everyday things that would otherwise bore him and make his mind wander. mans likes iced caramel macchiatos. eet eez what eet eez and it makes sense in my head

• don't clown me but y'all know how every lil genius in death note has their favorite snacks. aight so lights is fresh sliced oranges. mans could eat a whole bag by himself in an hour. I will not elaborate

• always does dress nice yeah, like Kira!Light, but also comfortably and sometimes like he's 45. Has never worn a pair of acidwash jeans in his life. Khakis or joggers 24/7, and the occasional slim fit dark jeans. has 20 cardigans. one pair of high top white vans, one pair of dark grey low top vans, and the rest would all qualify as business casual. doesn't know what a flip-flop is and will cut you off if he hears you say it

• loves cats and really wants one but soichiro doesn't want animals in the house. light secretly feeds a cat that comes to his windowsill every day and has named it "Mao" bc of its obnoxious meow. was once caught meowing at Mao to come closer by sayu walking home and she snapchatted it to him. sayu starts feeding Mao and scritching his ears while light goes to cram school

• openly likes tally hall, joji, mother mother, and glass animals. secretly likes ariana grande and lizzo. blares them in the car with sayu

• typical gifted kid piano player. soichiro signed him up for piano lessons upon learning light was gifted when he was young. uses his skills now to make piano renditions of cardi b songs

• sometimes bakes obsessively when stuck on something. during the Kira case, L walks in the headquarter's kitchen at 2 am to find a very tired looking watari and 16 apple crisps on the counter with light cutting out intricate dough shapes to decorate the tops. they meet eyes once light notices him and stay Silent for a minute. light says he can't get off the idea that it has to be supernatural, as silly as it sounds, because causing heart attacks in such a controlled manner is impossible. there's no way otherwise. L says he was starting to reluctantly think the same thing, but didn't want to overlook anything before he settled on that. they nod to themselves and light goes back to cutting out shapes. L grabs a plate of beignets light made a couple hours earlier and turns back around to walk out

well that's it. thanks for coming to my death note Ted talk

[thedannyphantomcookbook]

The Phantom Origins

Okay, so I know probably a bunch of people have already done this, but I wanted to rewrite Danny Phantom, from just before he got his powers to maybe when he tells his parents.

 I’m tired of waiting for a reboot that may never come, so here is what I picture the reboot would look like. 

I’ve always thought it would be darker and more horrific, that the ghosts he fights are more monstrous and demonic.

 That there would be a little bit more of a medical concern for Danny’s humanity being affected by his ghost half. Is he becoming more ghost like? Is he gradually getting sicker and sicker, and his ghost DNA ravages through his body like cancer? 

Would Vlad be not only a sexist, creepy, abusive old man, but contains a thirst for deception and power that he poses a real, apocalyptic threat on Earth and the ghost zone?

Are ghosts actually the spirits of the dead? Or are they a different breed of human that lives in a completely separate dimension, that’s is layered and hidden within ours?

What about Danny’s mental health. He has to keep this big secret from his parents because he absolutely FEARS what would happen if they found it to the point he’s scared they wouldn’t believe he was their son and try to kill him as a result, or keep him hostage in the basement, slowly torturing him and dissecting him until he’s dead? What would the world think of him? A prophet? A demon? Would they accuse his parents for experimenting on their own children? He would have so much fear and anxiety that he’d have to be on edge all the time, falling into depression, panic attacks - not to mention the PTSD he’d get from it all while battle nightmarish monsters and the hanging question over his head of what he is now. 

These are just SOME of the questions I’ve had that Butch Hartman will never answer. He set up such a great plot and characters but carried it out pretty poorly over the show (which may or may not be his fault since they wanted to keep it kid friendly.)

I hope to get into the deep and dark and nitty gritty details of Danny Phantom we’ve imagined but never get to see. I wrote the first chapter below, and I plan to write much more. :)

I hope you guys enjoy it!

Follow me over at Ao3 

Summary:

Dr. Madelyn Fenton and her husband, Dr. Jackson Fenton, have just built the world's first portal to the Ghost Zone - an alternate dimension where undead linger for all eternity. The only problem is no one believes in what they are doing. The townspeople call them the Fenton Freaks and the rejection letters from the National Science Foundation are piling up. Not even their own children can tolerate their ghost obsession. Their 14 year old son, Danny, does what he can to separate himself from his parents. Mocked by his peers and judged by his teachers, he keeps his head down and stays out of the spotlight. 

It comes as no surprise to Danny when his parents' machine fails to work on the first test run. Discouraged, they leave empty handed for the weekend to go to the Ghost Hunter's Expo, where they were expected to present their portal during their panel. As soon as his parents leave, Danny invites his friends over to give a tour of yet another one of his parents' failed experiments. When he gets dared to walk inside the machine, he triggers something that turns it back on, and for the first time ever, his parents have an invention that works. But that's the least of the surprises when Danny emerges from the portal himself...

To Whom It May Concern,

To the esteemed members of the National Science Foundation, myself, Dr. Madelyn Fenton, PhD., and my husband, Dr. Jackson Fenton, PhD., write to you today to consider us for the New Exploratory Scientific Research Grant Award. Our combined decades worth of research within paranormal scientific research fields have led us to believe that the “ghost” entities that haunt our very Earth, could in fact be the missing link to creating new technology, curing human illnesses, and prolonging human life on Earth.

The term “ghosts” is defined as a religious or spiritual being, or the hypothetical soul of the human body, separated from physical forms, usually that of a person recently deceased. Dr. Jackson Fenton and myself have a different theory about the “ghostly” entities that visit our Earth. We have sufficient evidence to prove that ghosts are in fact not the spirits of the dead, but an entirely new species of the human race. We believe they exist in an alternate dimension - a separate plane of existence that is not unlike ours. Recent developments have also shown the possibility of dimensional travel -  we believe ghosts are able to pass through into our plane of existence for a temporary amount of time. Through our rigorous research, construction, and experimentation, Dr. Jackson Fenton and myself have created what would be a “portal” to this plane of existence, to the “Ghost Zone.” By exploring and studying the ghost zone, we could collect a limitless amount of research and data that could be used to benefit humanity for the rest of our existence.  

We have provided within our application our twenty years of research and development, along with video recordings of our experiments as evidence of our work in progress, as we humbly request your consideration for the New Exploratory Scientific Research Grant  Award.

Sincerely,

Dr. Madelyn Fenton, PhD. in Quantum Physics and Paranormal Studies

Dr. Jackson Fenton, PhD. in Theoretical Science and Paranormal Studies

From the Grants and Admissions Office of the National Science Foundation

To Dr. Madelyn Fenton and Dr. Jackson Fenton,

Thank you for your interest in applying for the New Exploratory Scientific Research Grant Award. The New Exploratory Scientific Research Grant Award (NESRGA) is an esteemed scholarship opportunity that looks to provide funding for ground-breaking scientific research to scientists working within small and local laboratories. After carefully reviewing your application and research, we have come to the regretful decision to decline your request to receive the NESRGA.

We unfortunately could not approve your request due to the following issues:

Insufficient or lack thereof evidence or proof of scientific research of ghostly entities and/or undiscovered species, the “Ghost Zone” dimension in which these entities exist, or possible travel to said “Ghost Zone.”

Insufficient of lack thereof peer review research and laboratory data.

Paranormal entities and alternative dimensional research is not recognized under the National Science Foundation as factual scientific work.

We are thrilled to hear that you share such enthusiasm, passion, and ambition in the pursuit of scientific exploration, research and development. You are a part of a wonderful community, and through your tireless efforts, you will help bring our Earth into the future.

We welcome you to apply for the NESRGA again next year.

Sincerely,

Barbara Keaton,

Director of Grants and Admissions

National Science Foundation

GHOST HUNTERS EXPO - THIS LABOR DAY WEEKEND

To Drs. Maddie and Jack Fenton,

We are excited to have you return to speak at the Ghost Hunters Expo this coming labor day weekend. We have reviewed your Ghost Zone Theory and we anticipate your presentation of your research.

Please note: due to new regulations we cannot allow the following into the convention center:

Ecto-infused food, inanimate objects, or animal mutations of any kind.

Alarm or defense systems that release a form of knock out gas, ectoplasmic goo, ectoplasmic foam, spoiled meats, or  live rodents. All alarms and defense systems must be turned off while inside the convention center.

Samplings or gifts of homemade cookies or other food, beverages, or gifts to bribe the judges.

Disclosed weapons that are not a part of your presentation and/or not approved by the convention prior (we will have metal detections at all entry points of the convention hall)

Asking for audience volunteers unless approved by us prior your scheduled presentation time.

Ghost claims targeted towards convention guests, judges, or other presenters.

All presentations and inventions must have been tested and approved by a judge prior to your presentation time (i.e. no last minute or surprise inventions).

Fighting or displays of physical aggression.

Destruction of convention hall equipment, the building’s foundation itself, or other presenters equipment and or inventions.

We thank you in advance for your compliance and full understanding of the new regulations.

We look forward to seeing you!

Best,

Trevor Martin

Ghost Hunters Expo Coordinator

“Did you see this?” Jack Fenton asked, waving the notice from the Ghost Hunters Expo. He scoffed. “New regulations...I wonder who were the bimbos that made them enforce these rules.” He crumbled up the notice and threw it carelessly on the floor.

“How’s that portal coming, sweet cheeks?” he asked his wife.

Maddie Fenton was deep within a hexagon shaped chamber carved out of her laboratory converted basement wall. The interior was lined with a colorful array of wires and tiny blinking lights. At the end of the chamber, sheets of metal and hardware fanned in on itself. Maddie was kneeled on the floor, wrestling with a few cords.

“I’m just struggling to connect these last couple of wires,” she answered, pinching the two cords together. With a last bit of strain, the cords connected with a satisfying click.

Wiping the sweat off her brow, she came out of the chamber. “Hopefully that will stabilize the gravitational pull of the Ghost Zone once we get the portal running.” She briefly thought back to a dark memory from their college days when their first Ghost Zone prototype had malfunctioned and the toxins from the Ghost Zone leaked out of the portal, resulting in displacing one of her lab partners for the remainder of their college career.

“We got it this time, baby,” Jack said confidently. “There is no way we could make the same mistake twice.”

Maddie sighed as she walked over to the control panel to record the ecto-readings. “I just wish we knew for certain what had gone wrong that day. All of this guess work is driving me crazy.” She picked up her notebook and briefly reviewed her meticulously hand written notes before adjusting some dials.

“Okay,” she huffed, satisfied. “I think we’re ready for a test run.”

Jack clapped his hands. “Excellent! I’ll go grab the kids!” He ran to the basement steps and shouted, “Jazzy-pants! Danny! Get down here!”

A few minutes later both of their teenage children shuffled down the basement steps.

“Is this gonna take long?” Danny asked, disinterestedly. “Tucker and I were in the middle of planning our next battlefield strategies for Doomed. There’s only a few days left of summer vacation and we still have so much planning to do if we want to beat the other online players and achieve the seven Keys of Destiny.”

“And I was in the middle of an important breakthrough in my self therapeutic psychology research,” their daughter, Jazz promptly stated. In her hands she clutched an open copy anxiety and phobias workbook. “Did you know that high functioning anxiety in adulthood is caused by childhood trauma from never feeling safe in your own home? This would explain so much about me and Danny -” she paused in her speech when she saw the machine her parents were working on.

“Oh, no.” She snapped her book shut and pinched the flesh between her eyes. “ Please do not tell me you called us down here to witness another one of your experiments. Don’t you remember what happened last time?”

“Oh, Jazz, relax,” Maddie said, waving her off. “Those burn marks from the last ectoplasmic gun experiment healed eventually. And look!” She walked over to a closet in the back of the room and pulled out two polyester jumpsuits. “We made you both your own custom fitted, lab safe, jumpsuits!”

Jack appeared beside Maddie. “And we matched them with ours! Jazzy-pants, yours is teal to match your mother’s. And Danny, yours would have matched mine but the store didn’t have orange.” he held out a plain white jumpsuit with black gloves and boots.

“And I haven’t even shown you two the best parts!” he grabbed the jumpsuits from Maddie and spun them around. Crudely pressed onto the fabric of the jumpsuit was a cutout of Jack Fenton’s smiling face, emblazoned on the chest.

“Pretty cool, huh?” Jack grinned.

Jazz was the first to respond. “Dad there is no way you’re going to get me to wear that,” she said while backing away and shaking her head. “How about Danny and I will just go upstairs and you can call us down after  you’ve tested it? That way we’ll be safe and not have to wear those hideous jumpsuits.”

Danny silently agreed with her while struggling to conceal his own disgust at the suits. It was one thing to be forced to wear a jumpsuit like his parents but it was an entirely different level of lame to have to wear his father’s face across his chest. What if his parents insisted he wore it all the time, like they did? Involuntary images of him becoming the laughing stock at his new high school was surfacing in his mind, more than he already was for being the son of the city’s eccentric ghost hunting husband and wife team. He was already struggling to stay above the pathetic nerd social ring in his class. They’d have to create an entirely new category of nerd just for him if he wore that suit. The thought of it made him want to crawl away in a hole and be left there to die.

“Mom, Dad, I have to agree with Jazz,” Danny said. “The suits are kinda...lame.”

“Oh, nonsense,” Maddie dismissed. “These jumpsuits are the latest fashion that every ghost hunter wants.”

“And when we reveal these babies with my face on them, everyone will be scrambling for one. We’ll be rich!” Jack stated proudly.

Jazz snorted. “Um, I somehow doubt that. Look, we’ll just go back upstairs and you two can let us know when it’s safe, okay?” She looped a hand around Danny’s arm and started pulling him away.

“Oh, no you don’t!” Jack clamped a hand on both of them  and spun them back around. “You two are being given the chance to witness scientific history! And we are not going to let you pass up on this.” He tossed the jumpsuits to Jazz and Danny. They unwillingly caught them.

Jazz glowered at Danny. “If you take any photos and post them on the internet, I will kill you.”

Danny held out his suit reproachfully. His dad’s smiling face seemed to be laughing at him, like all of the students as Casper High will be if they ever found out about this.

“Don’t worry about it.”

A few minutes later, Jazz and Danny stood alongside their parents in their matching jumpsuits. Jazz stood with her arms crossed, silently fuming, her foot tapping impatiently. At her mother’s insistence, Jazz was forced to tuck in her long, red hair and wear the hair sealing head cover and thick, dark eye protection goggles that came with it. At equal height, Jazz and Maddie were identical in their suits.

At least Danny couldn’t match his dad. Jack’s suit was bright orange and about twenty sizes larger than Danny’s, due to his father’s obsession with Maddie’s homemade fudge and cookie inventions. Danny’s own white suit was slightly too large for him, and hung in odd places due to his skinny frame. He didn’t have to wear a hood and goggles like his sister either - another thankful shortage from the ghost hunter’s clothing warehouse. He picked at his dad’s pressed on face design on his chest as he waited for his parents to get the machine ready for its test run. His dad had tried ironing it on, but had done it poorly, so that with a bit of a tug, it was already beginning to peel off.

Jack and Maddie Fenton ran back and forth across the lab, double checking last minute calculations. Machines whirred and beeped around them, the hum of electricity warm in the stagnant air.

Danny had a good idea of how this was going to go. If this would be like any of their past experiments, it would fail miserably. The experiment would go haywire, probably spout ectoplasmic goo everywhere or accidentally giving ecto energy to the nearest food item. One year, their parents had tried making the Christmas Turkey in their newly invented Ultra-fast Instant Pot and instead infused it with demonic ghostly energy and reanimated it. Danny remembered hiding underneath the kitchen table as Jazz had to beat it back with a pastry roller, screaming for their parents.

The ghost zone portal was their most ambitious project yet. For most of Danny’s life, they had dinner table discussions, weighing mathematical equations and scientific chemical balances in hopes of being able to one day engineer the world’s first ghost zone portal. He was fairly surprised when he found out at the beginning of the summer that they were finally constructing it, and even more so when they claimed last night it was completed. They had been rushing to get it done in time to present it at the Ghost Hunters Expo this weekend.

He glanced at the table beside him looking at the pile of papers his dad had haphazardly stacked among the beakers and ghost weapons. Sitting on top of the stack was the rejection letter from the National Science Foundation.

“It means that they don’t think what they’re doing is science,” Jazz had interpreted for Danny after reading it when their parents’ back was turned. “And who could blame them? There is zero evidence supporting the existence of ghosts. It’s just superstition.”

That’s all it was. Superstition. And  yet, his parents had at some point in their youth latched on to the idea that ghosts were more than a myth, and even though they’ve never actually seen one in person themselves, they were determined to prove ghosts were real. What amazed Danny the most is the amount of people who also believed in the same theory. In the years past when his parents had dragged him and Jazz to the Ghost Hunter’s Expo, the crowds always seemed to grow bigger and bigger. Scientists, hunters, enthusiasts, and even ghost cosplayers gathered under the same roof for a full weekend, exchanging theories, stories and footage of what they thought were ghosts. The most ridiculous rumor he had heard at the last ghost hunter’s convention was one of a young, blue haired female musician, who became an overnight sensation after one performance at a local carnival. She had also disappeared quite suddenly after the performance, which raised a lot of speculation. Ghost hunters claimed her unusually pale skin and hypnotic vocals were a part of her ghostly powers. Jazz had stated that it was simply because she was a successful female in the patriarchy they had to deem her as a ghost to explain it.

Danny didn’t want to say anything else after that.

“Jack,” Maddie called from across the room, typing away at a computer. “Did you remember to pour in the ecto-purifier?”

“On it, baby!” Jack cried while fumbling with a control panel. Danny watched as grabbed a can of diet cola, which sat next to the similar sized gray cylinder labeled “EP.”

“Uh, Dad?” Danny called. “I don’t think that’s the ecto-purifier.”

“What’s that?” Jack asked. He turned to look at the object in his hand and barked out a chuckle.

“Thanks, son! That was a close one.” He placed the can of diet cola down and picked up the correct cylinder. “Who knows what would have happened if we purified the toxic ghost energies with diet cola. Could you imagine?” He poured the bright green liquid into the appropriate chamber.

In the corner of his eye, Danny saw Jazz shake her head. “Idiot,” she whispered.

Jazz believed she was the only mature Fenton in the family. At some point during her high school career, she had decided it was up to her to convince her parents that ghosts were not real, and to force them to change their careers to something more normal or socially acceptable. She had tried to get them interested in just about any other scientific field she could think of, such as deep sea diving to discover creatures living on the ocean floor, to NASA’s space engineering program. When those didn’t work, she tried to build a case proving the psychological damage they were causing to her’s and Danny’s upbringing. Over the summer, when she wasn’t preparing herself for the SATs she’d have to take later that school year, she poured over every psychological book she could get her hands on from the library. No matter how many times she argued about the permanent damage her parents were inflicting on their amygdala by creating an unsafe environment for her and Danny to grow up in, their parents would say it’s all worth it for the sake of scientific advancement.

Danny tried desperately to stay out of their fights. Most days, he was too focused on trying to survive a day without being called “that ghost geek” by his peers, no matter how many times he told his classmates he didn’t believe in his parents’ work. Maybe it was because of his small, bony limbs that made it so easy for his classmates to mock him. Or the fact that his only two friends in the entire world were also considered a variety of nerd within the social climate. His best friend Tucker was a little too obsessed with the latest technology and his other friend, Samanatha - Sam for short - was the only school’s goth girl, who filled her entire personality and outlook with dark and depressing outfits and literature. In a weird way, it did make sense that the girl who loved to read about the dead, and the boy who loved technology, would want to be friends with the kid whose parents called themselves ghost scientists. Still, they were his best friends and he wouldn’t trade them for anyone else.

He had been telling them about the portal his parents were building all summer. Just like he was, his friends were also doubtful it would work. They deliberated about what the inventions would actually do. Tucker still brought up the time Danny’s parents were testing out an anti-ghost gravity spray, to temporarily make a ghost lose their flight ability. The morning they were testing it out, Danny had woken up in a hovering bed. It had shocked him so much, he fell off his bed and face-planted onto his bedroom floor, breaking his nose. At some point, Tucker and Sam started placing bets about the outcome.

“Maybe the portal will just blast a hole through the wall and you’ll send up in the Amity Park Sewer System,” Sam guessed last night after he told them his parents were getting ready for their first test.

“Bet you five bucks that Danny will lose all of his hair this time,” Tucker had joked.

He absentmindedly ran a hand through his exposed hair and briefly wished he had a head cover and goggles like Jazz. He couldn’t help but notice there was something different about his parents this time. They didn’t have the same, bubbly and excited energy they usually had when showing off a new invention. They seemed more focused this time. Even his dad’s goofy banter towards Maddie had taken a back seat as his dad frowned over the controls. It was weird to see his dad actually concentrating. Maybe it was the hundredth rejection letter they received from the National Science Foundation, or the pressure to present this weekend at the Expo, but it seemed like they were seriously trying to make this thing work. They did not want to fail.

“Okay everyone!” Maddie ran over and started waving her hands. “Backs up against the wall.”

Jazz sighed and turned to walk over to stand behind the boxed in yellow line, the “safe” spot in the lab. Danny thought  a metal containment center with a viewing screen would have kept them safer, but supposedly his parents didn’t have time to build one. Danny followed his mother and sister.

“Almost…” Jack muttered at the controls, typing away. Suddenly there was a loud click that echoed off the basement walls. Machines roared to life and lights winked on. Inside the portal, the metal fans began to spin.

“YES!” Jack punched the air, triumphant.

“Jack!” Maddie called to her husband, gesturing towards the safe zone. He jogged over and squeezed himself in between his two kids.

“This is it!” he shouted over the noise, which was gradually becoming deafening.

All around the room, machines and computers turned on. Attached beakers and graduated cylinders filled up with green, bubbling liquid. A wall lined with dialers bounced up and down. Puffs of smoke expelled out of exhaust pipes. The portal itself began to crackle with electricity, its interior fans spinning faster and faster until it started emitting a bright green glow. The pressure in the room changed, popping Danny’s ears. He felt the tips of his hair begin to rise with the electric waves.

The whirring of the fans inside the machine began to ring out a high pitch squeal as the machine glowed brighter, and brighter, blinding Danny’s naked eyes. He squinted and held out a hand over his eyes, peeking through his fingers. The air around them grew warm and staticky. His father clamped a hand tightly on Danny’s shoulder, as if to hold him back from running away.

It was working. Danny couldn’t believe it. Not once in all of their years of inventing ghost machines and hunting equipment, they may have actually been able to build something that worked like they wanted it to.

What would this mean? That ghosts actually existed? That his parents were not the crackpot fools the town took them for? And if they did exist, there was the one question that no one has been able to answer.

Were ghosts dangerous?

He looked up at Jazz. Her expression was unreadable through the head covering. He looked at his parents, wild and furious excitement in their eyes.

Then, when it seemed like Danny’s ears couldn’t take much more of the screeching noise, a BOOM exploded from the portal. Light poured out of the machine and flooded the room. Danny yelped and turned away. Jack stepped in front of his family and hid them with his massive torso from the explosion. Then, very suddenly, the room went dark. Every light and machine that had been just buzzing with life, died. Danny’s hearing rang in the abrupt silence.

“What the heck?” Jack was the first to say something.

“I got a flashlight, hang on,” Maddie said next. Danny heard her fumbling around her utility belt and a small light winked on. She shined it around the room. Curls of smoke rose up from the machines. The glow from the ecto-purifier had also faded.

“I don’t understand,” Maddie said, dumbfounded as she gazed around the room. “This should have worked.”

“We checked every calculation,” Jack said, equally mystified.

“And tested every single machine.” She threw up her hands. “I even made sure the damn computers turned on!”

“Well, obviously, this wasn’t going to work,” Jazz suddenly said, her anger returning. “You guys were trying to open a portal to nothing . Because ghosts don’t EXIST.”

She ripped off the hood and goggles. “I’m going back upstairs to change and burn this stupid jumpsuit, and work on processing this trauma that you have inflicted on us, yet again.” Without waiting for her parents to respond, she stomped back upstairs, her footsteps echoing off the silent basement walls

Jack shook his head. “What is her deal?”

“Oh, never mind her, Jack,” Maddie said. “We need to figure out what went wrong. We only have a day until the expo and we promised to present this.”

Danny’s parents turned their back on him and began working to restore the power, jumping right into a deep discussion. Danny took the moment to quietly slip away back upstairs.

The second he was back into his room, he let out a long exhale. Suddenly remembering he was wearing the jumpsuit, he hastily ripped it off and then threw it in the trash bin in the corner of his room.

He flopped back onto his bed, and lay in the stillness of his room for a few minutes to collect his thoughts. He stared up at the plastic, glow in the dark stars and planets stuck on his ceiling.

He couldn’t believe there was a moment back there where he thought the machine was working.

He didn’t want to imagine what would happen if ghosts were real. There were no real scientific facts about them. All those convention attendees at the ghost hunters expo all had different theories about what ghosts are - the religiously damned, aliens, spirits with unfinished business, souls that died before their time, another species - no one could settle on a single argument.

But if they did exist, what would happen then? Would they swarm the Earth, like cicadas after their years long sleep? Would they haunt each and every home and building in towns and cities, and try to claim it as their own? Would the world be plunged into a ghost apocalypse, where every human had to fight for their own human survival and soul? Were ghosts malicious or peaceful?

His parents might be arrested for creating the portal in the first place, if it did turn out bad. Or the government might force them to work alongside them to rid the Earth of the ghost population. What would happen to him and Jazz? Would they be put into juvie, just for being the kids of the Fenton Freaks? Would they be put into foster care, once the government decided Jack and Maddie were unfit parents for him and Jazz?

What if the human population adopted a sick fascination of ghosts? Businesses would try to profit off the ghosts by selling fake anti-ghost protection devices or offer tours inside “haunted” houses. There might even be a community in which some would fall in love or even want to become a ghost themselves.

The world would become absolute chaos.

Danny shuddered at the thought. He didn’t understand what his parents saw in trying to prove their existence. What good would proving the undead existed bring to the world?

His anxious, spiraling thoughts were interrupted when his computer dinged. Danny got up and sat down at his desk. He wiggled his mouse to wake up his computer. Tucker had sent him a message.

Still have all of your hair?

Danny chuckled and wrote back.

Yep. Nothing happened though. But the power in the basement blew.

Damn ,  was Tucker’s response. And I had just invested in a 25 pack of markers to color your head in Lancer’s class when you fall asleep.

Danny laughed out loud. I can only imagine all the pensises you’d draw.

I had planned no less than 50. Two for each color.

Well I hope you kept your receipt cause I still have a full head of hair. Unlike you. Danny made a jab at Tucker’s own buzzed haircut. He had tried growing out dreads for the school year, but his mother forced him to shave it off after he got caught staying up on the computer way too late one night. She paid the barber to give him a military buzz cut.

Shut up, dude, Tucker typed back. While you were away not getting your hair fried off your scalp, I was devising up a new battle plan to defeat Chaos.

Danny smiled. Oh yeah? Lay it on me.

[thegreenwolf]

Betting on the Ponies (originally posted at my blog at https://thegreenwolf.com/betting-on-the-ponies/)

(Above:  Breyer Classic Arabian Stallion made over into a winged unicorn with real wings from a barnyard mix rooster I raised for meat.)

If you’ve been paying attention to my social media or my shop links at all, you may have noticed that I haven’t really been posting much in the way of new hide and bone art for the past year or so. It’s not that I’ve stopped; I still make some fun things for my Patrons on Patreon every month, and I make some bone, tooth and claw jewelry on Etsy to order. But ever since events dried up, I haven’t been regularly making new batches of costume pieces or other Vulture Culture art. My usual M.O. was to make all sorts of new things for an upcoming event, and then once the weekend was done and I was home, post whatever hadn’t sold on Etsy. And since there haven’t been events…well…I’ve just found myself doing other things.

Some of that is because I’ve had to scramble to make up for the lost income; events were a pretty big chunk of my “pay”, and losing them meant having to tighten the belt. I also lost several other income streams thanks to the pandemic making it unsafe to be around groups of people, which didn’t help. So I had to rely on what was left, along with adopting a few new sources of bits and bobs of cash here and there.

And, honestly, I’ve needed a bit of a break. I’ve been making hide and bone art for over two decades now, and while I love it, any artist eventually wants to explore different media for a while. Sure, I’ve stretched my Vulture wings in new directions, going from costume pieces and ritual tools to assemblages and the Tarot of Bones. But ever since the Tarot came out, I’ve been feeling….not really burned out, but a little creatively wrung out, at least. I’ve really appreciated my Patrons and Etsy customers who have helped me keep a hand in that particular medium, while also allowing me to head off in other directions, too.

Which is to say that if you have been paying attention to the aforementioned social media and shops, you may have also noticed that I’ve been increasing the number of customized Breyer model horses and other animals I’ve made over the past couple of years. This might seem like a heck of a departure from skulls, bones, and other dead things. But in a way it’s really me getting back to long-neglected roots.

(One of my favorite customs I’ve done on one of my favorite molds, the Breyer semi-rearing mustang. )

See, I was a horse girl when I was a kid. Or, rather, I was a wannabe horse girl. I never got to lease or own a horse, and even now in my early 40s I’m still about the greenest rider you’ll find. (Seriously, I need one of those kid-proof horses that’s seen it all, done it all, and is probably more trail-smart than I am.) But I was obsessed with horses from a young age. It started with my very first My Little Pony that I got Christmas morning, 1983 (Applejack, if you must know), and then exploded further with a book on how to draw horses and my first Breyer model (Black Beauty 1991 on the Morganglanz mold) in my preteens. Horse actually took over for Gray Wolf for a few years as my primary animal spirit during my teens, so we have a very long history indeed.

And since I couldn’t have a real horse, I ended up collecting model horses, mostly Breyers with a few old Hartlands for variety. I had over 100 at the peak of my collecting, but I had to sell them all in my early twenties when I was between jobs. In hindsight it was probably for the best because having less stuff made it easier to get through the period of my life where I was moving about once a year, but I do miss that collection.

Back then I did my part to add to the artistic end of the model horse hobby, mostly with badly blended acrylic paint jobs and terrifying mohair manes and tails. But it made me happy, and that was the most important thing. Even though I only knew a couple other collectors in my little rural area, and my only real connection to the hobby was through the quarterly Just About Horses magazine Breyer put out, my collecting really made me happy in the same way that my first fur scraps and bones would catch my interest a few years later.

2020….well, it sucked. We all know that. Pandemic, political stress, financial roller coasters and more made it a really tough year for anyone who wasn’t wealthy enough to hide away and weather it all. And many of us found ourselves with more time at home, in need of distractions and solace. It ended up being a time where many people rediscovered their love of childhood hobbies. I’m one of those people. I’ve been slowly edging my way back in for the past few years, starting with repainting a few old Breyer models found at thrift stores, and then gaining momentum as I found that not only was I much better at customizing these models than I used to be, but I was having fun without the pressure to make a living off of it. (Yes, I love my hide and bone art, but when an art form is your bread and butter, it changes your relationship to it. But that’s a post for another time…)

So 2020 saw me really ramp up my customization efforts. I had to stop for a few months in summer and fall when I moved to a spifftacular new living space on the farm I’ve been working on the past few years (with, by the way, THE best studio space EVER!) but as the days shortened I found myself making more dedicated time to repainting and otherwise customizing models. I even started keeping a few of the models I’d bought to customize that were in better condition to create a small, but slowly growing original finish collection, and that really helped me feel like I was back in the (not actually a) saddle.*

That’s why a well-established artist of organic, pagan-influenced arts made from fur and leather and bone and feather suddenly started painting all these secondhand plastic ponies. It’s giving me that deep injection of childhood nostalgia balanced with adult skill and perspective, and it’s offered me a much-needed break from the exhausting schedule I’ve been living the past decade or so. Because suddenly, even with the time spent rearranging my income opportunities to make sure I could stay afloat, I found myself with a little time that hadn’t been scheduled to death, and when I thought about what I wanted to do with that time, I gravitated toward one of the few creative outlets in my life that was purely for fun.**

(Yes, this IS fan art of “The Last Unicorn”! I used a Breyer Stablemate rearing Arabian for the unicorn, and a Breyer Spanish fighting bull for the Red Bull. A LOT of fun to make this particular project.)

In a way having all my events canceled was one of the best things that happened to me, because it made me slow the fuck down. I no longer had several weekends a year where I had to spend weeks beforehand making art and otherwise preparing to be away from all my farm responsibilities for 4-7 days at a time, with all the packing and moving and setup and vending and teaching and teardown and going home and unpacking and exhaustion that goes with each event. I realized just how much each one was taking out of me, especially as I’ve gotten older. And I also recognized how much pressure I had been putting on myself to ALWAYS MAKE MORE STUFF FOR ETSY EVERY WEEK OR ELSE.

So the model horses are really sort of a symbol of the childhood joy I’ve managed to recapture, wresting time and energy back from my workaholic tendencies. I’ve even been thinking about what my professional life is going to look like once the pandemic eases up enough to allow events again, and whether I’ll put the same amount of time toward vending and and teaching at conventions and festivals as I used to. (There are a few favorites that I’m not going to miss for anything, so don’t worry about me dropping out entirely.) But for the first time in a very long time, I’m relearning to prioritize myself, and figuring out that maybe I don’t have to go hell-bent for leather every week, every year, in order to keep the bills paid and the critters fed.

And maybe, just maybe, it’s okay for this dead-critter-artist, pagan-nonfic-author, teacher-vendor-farmer, to indulge herself with something fun, and bet on the ponies to help her get through the tough times.

(P.S. Amid everything going on, I am back to working steadily on my next book, which I mentioned in this blog post almost a year ago. As a recap, its working title is Coyote’s Journey: Deeper Work With the Major Arcana, and it’s a deep dive into that section of the tarot using pathworkings with the animals I assigned to the major arcana of the Tarot of Bones. It’s not just a Tarot of Bones book, though; it’s a good way to get a new, nature-based angle on the majors in general, as well as hopefully gain a better understanding of yourself. My goal is to have it out later this year, self-pub of course, and at the rate I’m going it may end up being my longest book! Stay tuned, and if you want to get excerpts of the work-in-progress, become my Patron for as little as $1/month!)

*At the height of my “horse girl” phase, I had a really beat-up pony saddle I’d bought for ten bucks at a yard sale, and got a cheap saddle stand for it and put it in my room. And yes, I occasionally sat on it and pretended I was riding an actual horse. Hey, it made me happy at the time, and it was the closest I was ever going to get apart from a trail ride every few years.

**Yes, I do sell my customs. But I don’t make them on a schedule, I take commissions VERY sparingly, and I’m getting to stretch some new creative muscles, especially in the realms of sculpting and painting, so this is primarily for my enjoyment. The sales are just a side benefit.

(My ode to the forests of the Pacific Northwest, a Breyer deer repainted to resemble the Columbian black-tailed deer that frequent the farm I live on, along with hand-sculpted Amanita muscaria mushrooms, real and fake moss, and real lichens from fallen branches.)

[lenixsocial]

spoilers ahead!!

This is a long one so bear with me here:

My rebuttal to this article:

https://www.thegamer.com/star-trek-picard-is-garbage/

Has pushed me to actively post here on Tumblr for the first time in two years, I believe. So kudos. I'm back (baby)...

To begin with: is "Picard" the show the fandom expected? I heavily doubt it. I think a lot of fandom expected to see something familiar. Ol' Jean Luc out there commanding a fleet as an Admiral in his old age, still the guy who we followed throughout TNG and films. Tempered by his experiences, but still the same basic character.

The fandom almost immediately reeled when we saw a CGI de-aged Data in previews for Season 1. What was this all about? Why de-age him (that's because Spiner is old...so too is Stewart). And then came the naysayers. Gatekeeping you see is a pastime in fandom, but it's a special sauce in Trekdom.

HOW DARE they create another show! It's NOTHING like the last one. And yeah, pretty much EVERY Star Trek show since the early 70's animated series has got this treatment:

The Animated Series: "Cartoons are for Kids!"

TNG "This isn't Star Trek. Who are these guys? They're weak. Bring back Kirk and Spock and McCoy. That's Star Trek!"

DS9 "Oh so it's just a bunch of people on a station? That's not exploring. How are they gonna find strange new worlds? This isn't Star Trek. Gene is turning in his grave!"

VOY "A female captain. They have to come up with some gimmick I suppose. This is a copy of The Next Generation and a bad one too. If you wanted to make more TNG you just should've. Gilligan's Island in space no thanks. This isn't Star Trek".

ENT: "WHAT IS THIS THEME?!?! AUGHHHH! MY EARRRRRS! Why do we keep going BACK? I wanna go forward! Too much violence and sex. Why are they always rubbing lotion on each other? Gene would be appalled at this. It isn't Star Trek".

DIS "Too woke for me. Too many SJW. Does Burnham ever stop crying? The writing is awful. The casting is terrible. Tilly is annoying. They're ruining canon. Why are the ships so futuristic looking have you seen TOS? This isn't Star Trek"

LD "Too much fan service. The characters talk too fast. The jokes don't land. The animation is awful. Cartoons are for Kids. This isn't Star Trek".

PRO "It's a kids show. It's a reskinned Star Wars show. The scripts are terrible and predictable. I guess my kids will like it. Animation is for kids. This isn't Star Trek".

You notice I didn't mention Picard and that's because it's just more of the same. Plus, I'm going to directly rebut some of the claims I hear over and over again, and those same claims just also happen to be the headers in the article itself. So on with my opinion:

It's obsessed with violence and misery

It is? Obsessed seems a bit harsh. It is a show on a major streaming platform in the 21st century. Cerebral semantics and missions to study moss on planets may have been fine in 90's syndication but Picard like it or not is a flagship tentpole of Paramount+. As such it must titillate and astound. A good way to do that is roughhousing. I heard a lot of anger over how Icheb died in Season 1. Truth is, that scene was a shock. It got everyone talking. Good and bad. And in TV, there's no such thing as bad PR. It also wouldn't have landed as hard had it been shown off screen or dumbed down. You needed to FEEL Seven's pain in that moment. I think Q's walloping of Picard in S2 also likely had the same general impact. Needed for dramatic impact, but distasteful to diehards who aren't familiar with the concept of showing these things openly with little to no censorship. Other than those two moments, the violence seems fairly par for the course. It's actually kind of laughable when you consider shows like Game of Thrones and Euphoria exist and nobody ever complains about the violence there. They commend it for being raw and real and gritty. My advice? Expand your horizons. The game has changed. Roll with the punches. Literally.

There's no actual science fiction in it

What in the flying bullshit are you talking about? Ships blasting through the cosmos, a cyborg race bent on destruction and universal assimilation, touch screen computers, holographic command crew and doctors, other worlds, and oh...time fucking travel...can't forget about that one. Are they tropes at this point? Yeah likely are. Am I pissed off? Nope. Because whether or not they are, it's science fiction. I'm curious about the judgment of 'real' science fiction. That's about the same as REAL Star Trek. So this writer has gone a bridge further and called this entire series not Sci-Fi in addition to it not being Trek. Gotcha. Double gatekeeping. It's Sci-Fi. Simply because you don't like the TYPE of Sci-Fi it is does not mean that you can't call it Sci-Fi. Also, the show has subgenres too like action, drama, and thriller. Is it any of those? I mean...the terms are labels...generic words meant to gauge your interest only. Stop applying some exalted meaning to it.

Picard feels like a totally different character

I love this one. Of all of these bulletpoints this is a fave. So yeah, he is. Because almost 20 years have passed in the series. Are you the same person you were 20 years back? No, of course you aren't. You've grown. You've changed. Your life experiences have impacted who you are. This is called character development in the world of fiction. Picard's world expanded, his duties, his position in Starfleet it all changed. Even the way he's perceived by his superiors. They find him pompus and arrogant and too forceful. Hell, you would be too if your one big career plan to save a race kinda just went kablooey in your face. Also...he's now an android. So yeah...that may have some impact on things as well. He's a shell of his former self. Hung out to dry by Starfleet, and seen as a dry, curmudgeonly old man at the end of his career. He isn't the captain of the Enterprise anymore. He isn't an action hero. He has given up his speeches because talk seems cheap when nobody is listening. He knows it's still in him (his eloquence came shining through in his speech to his ancestor in a recent episode) but life has got in his way. In that aspect, he's more real than perhaps he ever was on TV. My advice is to adjust to him now, and realize that you can always go back to TNG to see him when he was younger and and how you remember him. Also...next season is probably going to be quite a moment for you seeing all the cast and how they've grown. You probably won't like that is my guess. You'll probably think they ruined those characters as well. Your head canon isn't canon. Neither is beta canon. Like it or don't the writers room is in control and they will do whatever they feel is needed. I guess be thankful Patrick Stewart is usually in on the story sessions?

There's no dialogue, just sarcastic quips

Admittedly there are a TON of sarcastic quips. But the show is dialog heavy in my opinion. Those cute quips are often used as a nod and wink at the audience. The way this bulletpoint reads you'd think the cast barely talk and walk around cracking one liners. Couldn't be further from the truth if it tried. Sometimes I feel the show is too verbose, takes too long to explain something, but there are an equal number of times in which it isn't explained enough and blips off the screen before I can assimilate it (no pun intended). Episode review sites like Trek Culture on YouTube are excellent companions to the show if for any reason than to shine light on something you might've missed.

The fan service is relentless

In the current season, I agree. It's become less of a "oh look at that thing it's from (insert episode here)" to "here's another tongue in cheek reference to Star Trek IV". Is it bad? Well, it's a bit much, but they gotta realize everytime they do something like put the punk on the bus back into the show it now is canon. He held his neck, remembering his interaction with Kirk and Spock in 1984. So this event occured and hence we must be in the prime timeline. Did they mean to intimate that? Did they want the fans to know? Or was it just something they threw in? Because if that's the case, diehards are gonna be mad.

Everyone is an alcoholic for some reason

This is one thing I have issues with. Openly drinking alcohol as a on duty Starfleet officer would be forbidden (that's why Sythehol was invented). Also people don't smoke on ships so...unless Rios was smoking a holographic cigar, that is also deemed a canon no-no. But yes alcohol does flow like uh...alcohol. I think this may owe more to society being more obsessed with drinking. Especially the current generation. Again, the writers are courting the younger viewers and trying to be relevant. Is it needed? Is it warranted? I think perhaps yes in a few characters realms. Rios certainly had reason to become an alcoholic after what happened to him and his career. Raffi also has had her share of struggles which led her to the bottle (and drugs), and Jurati is unstable so it kind of just tracks for her character. Oh and Picard owns a vineyard and winery so yeah he's gonna drink.

They made Q boring

Actually feel the opposite. By becoming desperate he struck Jean Luc for the first time. He wasn't listening and Q had enough insolence. That tracks with his character. But once we also learn that he's unable to use his powers and he seems to be losing himself one wonders why that is. Do the Q get senile? Is he mentally unstable? Is it something related to time and alternate timelines? This season has seen him use people to gain his goals, and there's a definite air of mystery surrounding him. One perhaps deeper than we've ever seen on TV.

Ultimately, the reviews of Picard are (like Discovery and Lower Decks) very good. Critics love the show and a fair amount of fandom does as well. There will always be gatekeeping, folks telling you what is and isn't Star Trek and what would and wouldn't have upset Gene. Truth is Gene was a sex crazed, disrespectful writer who often screwed over his creative team for personal glory. He owes a lot of what we call Star Trek today to Gene L Coon, DC Fontana, Harve Bennett, David Gerrold, Brannon Braga and a whole host of others. People often forget that he created the sandbox in which the universe was created, but took a backseat thereafter (as most creators of series do). That's not to belittle his accomplishments it's just the truth of the matter. His rules were not conducive to drama, and the shows honestly needed him to go to become the cornerstones of the series they have become.