#that's pretty fucking baller imo

[snazzydwarf]

I'm so normal about Everlasting Trio-

Based on the HC of Danny being a beacon for animals that are related/symbolise death or bad luck.

[intertexts-moving]

still thinking abt what happens next. its such a good dissection of blame + morality+ perpetuation of cruel cycles. however i have to admit i don't particularly subscribe to the main body of commentators ' "everyone is scheming and has awful intention" take. i mean. hanlon's razor.-- milo obviously dismembered a dead body. which frankly in no world sounds better than saying he killed her. like, he is obviously culpable of that + incapable of processing that culpability but it's jarring to see everyone immediately locking onto gage as some kind of evil and actively manipulating from the start mastermind. they seem pretty obviously to me to be a preexisting Type Of Guy: isolated, miserable, (obsessive) parasocial relationship w/ people who Do, in fact, Exist, and aren't fake characters in a story (haha). his treatment of milo seems way more in line w/ that kind of "genuinely ignorant of how normal friendships and relationships work" than "secretly plotting your demise "-- the weed & crossbow thing read as familiar to me. pressuring, yes, but not actively so. thats just like... the way people are? the way u act when you're kind of awkwardly acquaintances/frienfs w someone and u invite them 2 partake in ur hobbies. just sucks that gage's hobbies are literally only stalking murderers + getting high w the nastiest bong u havr ever seen + shooting white monster cans in the woods with a crossbow. the effect is negative, obviously, because milo is a fucking basket case on a ton of medications with a criminal record for sawing off a girl's arms and the looming threat of inpatient if he doesnt behave over his head. not downplaying the other thing btw that's in a different category imo & while the kiss itself wasnt inherently a Bad Thing to Do imo their reaction & justification absolutely was.. still kind of weird 2 me that it appears like there's a bigger sympathy for claire (dealt with the trauma by becoming a transphobic turning point usa girlie who uses her sister's notoriety to advocate for punishing minors in the justice system even worse & treating her gf like shit) than gage (obviously fucked in the head minimum wage worker with no bar for what a normal interaction or relationship looks like at all.) OR vikki (trans woman of color whos career! is to stir up shit! even if she was kind of a cunt!) anyway the milo / claire parallels are baller i love when people fucking hate each other but are so similar... girl its been nine years stop sticking your fingers in your own bloody wounds stop it stop it stop it! when will u stop reliving the trauma ever day for its own sake. (claire's self harming actions here are obviously infinitely worse because she is like,,, Actively Hurting So Many People. and for what! so she can wear awful dresses and get hit on by oily white senators and drag the bleeding dead weight of her sisters body around everywhere she goes?) ahhh what ever. good book i have to pack now.

[emblemxeno]

Legend of Korra First Watch: Book 4 & Overall Series Thoughts

Full thoughts under the cut!

-----Book 4 I feel did a fine-ass job with the emotional impact of Book 3's ending. "Korra Alone" is a stellar and heartwrenching episode, and incredibly done to showcase how Korra's trauma is continually affecting her ability to not only be a fighter and the Avatar, but also as a person. She's hesitant, afraid, and unsure of any decision she makes, but she comes out of it stronger as wise, compassionate, while still headstrong and a force to be reckoned with.

-----While most of main the cast personally don't hold a candle to ATLA's main cast (sans Tenzin of course 💞), Korra I learned to like more than Aang. I think her journey has been a treat to watch, despite the less likeable parts of the show. Now, Aang's emotional journey of maturity and remaining true to himself is still baller, but Korra's journey of self-discovery, coming to terms with her identity, her powers and their responsibility, and learning to accept past mistakes and pain rather than run away from them, touches places in my soul that Aang's didn't quite reach. It's mostly personal preference, and I don't have a stake in which one was "objectively" done better than the other. Lord knows there's enough infighting between the shows' fandoms; even as someone who's not really a part of it has been unfortunately witness to endless social media wars, and I don't really care to join in that.

-----The Beifong family is such a joy to watch when on screen, and it's messy in all of the right ways. Even when Lin and Toph patch things up, it's still not perfect, and it shouldn't be. Now, IMO, the trope that a sequel series should feature the previous cast's kids is pretty cliched, but since it's done, it should be done well; in the Beifong family's case, I think it was raw and real and didn't pull punches. Toph as a mother was never gonna be good, considering how her family treated her. I think the further aspects of that is one of the few examples of generational trauma being done in a show, not even just an animated show (though that could be an indicator that I need to expand my media library to include more things that I might be resistant to). Toph being too isolated made her be too lax with Lin and Su, and that led to Lin being less willing to bend her ways and Su repeating her grandparents' mistakes by being to sheltering.

Opal was a great standout character for the first half of the Book! I liked her as it was in her appearances in Book 3, but damn she shot up the list fast. I like that despite being an airbender who's learned the teachings of the culture, she's no nonsense and wants to stop problems as they come rather than waiting. She's an earth kingdom citizen and a Beifong still, after all.

------Oh boy. Kuvira, Kuvira, Kuvira... okay I'm not against the idea of a character like her being included; lord knows, I fucking had to deal with so much shit the past 4.5 years because of a certain red emperor in a certain video game series, and they have undeniable similarities.

But why oh why is Kuvira the one that gets the sympathy treatment??? I don't give a damn that she was orphaned and that no one wanted her, she was a crazy nationalist who locked dissenters in concentration camps and was terrorizing the entire populace of the Earth Kingdom.

And for some reason she was treated the exact opposite of the previous Books' villains, where Amon, Zaheer, even fucking Unalaq had good points to make but were invalidated cuz they were too crazy or too evil or hypocrite frauds. Kuvira's never treated as if she's had good points, but she's awarded compassion at the end cuz... she's a hotblooded stubborn person like Korra? Absolute nonsense. How dare you write Korra to say those things to Kuvira at the end. I wish this series had one more Book with a villain that's not a nationalist that Korra can extend her compassionate side to, cuz this being the showcasing of such is so uncomfortable to me. I know that the comics exist, but I don't have interest in reading those nor the ATLA ones. Maybe someday, but not now.

Back to ranting about this season's writing of fascism: the writers tried to give some leeway by having Wu step down and dismantle the monarchy to establish democratic states, which... wow could you make it anymore obvious that you see western concepts of democracy and capitalism as superior things that everyone should take inspiration from. And, whatever, my own leftist beliefs and hangups aside, there's plenty to value in democracy despite not being anywhere near a perfect system of government. But for as much as monarchy isn't great, you don't need to kneecap monarchy as a result of the actions of a fucking fascist/nationalist. No form of government is as bad or worse than nationalist fascism. None. Nada. Zilch. They never have a point, they don't deserve sympathy, they're evil people who take away personhood, control people through fear, oppress minorities, and eliminate "less desirable" cultures.

And while this isn't as much of a crime as the messy fascism allegories... Varrick getting redemption? Really? I know it's still a show for kids/teens primarily, and you can't punish your comic relief, but still. He's an opportunist war profiteer, who was still a prisoner, mind you! Though it's to be expected of the era this show was created, where people thought the ultra rich "inventors" were cool nerds with attainable wealth, but growing up and seeing how utterly gross it is for people like Bezos and Elon to even be walking the earth, Varrick never gets a laugh out of me whatsoever.

But it's fine, it's a mid 2010's show and funny capitalist is funny, ha ha /s

-----Goodness me, does no one have anything to consistently do it seems. It's the Korra, Beifong, and Bolin show featuring the air kids. Which, okay, I like all those characters, but regulating Mako to a bodyguard of an... honestly annoying character? Did they have faith in this guy at all? Asami got off better cuz of her reconciling with her dad (redeeming another capitalist inventor who's also discriminatory and tried to supplant a government which put his daughter in danger, yeah okay) and her connection with Korra, but still it feels like she's often reduced to an emotional crutch. Which okay, yes, Korra's the main character, but I was getting genuinely worried that Asami wasn't gonna get resolution at the end.

-----Korrasami yaaaaaay!!!! Love queer people, I wish they were real /s

But seriously, though, I like them together. I imagine for a Nickelodeon show that higher-ups were not willing to give any room for their relationship, and that's why it kind of comes out of nowhere at the end. I'm too gay for my own good, so the subtle hints here and there during last season and this one certainly weren't lost on me. In terms of being a queer relationship in pre-gay marriage legalization U.S.? Fine enough.

-----Previous character cameos! They're there! Uh, I like seeing Toph! And Zaheer, while only a small appearance, it was a genius move for him to be an unorthodox mentor/guide for Korra to get past her block. Aside from those two, I can't say I cared enough about most other characters come back besides saying "oh yeah it's that guy!". Meh, maybe I just don't get it.

The clip show was nice! Again, it definitely shows that the executives/higher ups were not being nice to the creatives behind the show at all, but I'm glad they did what they could. Nothing could really top Ember Island Players, but I'm sure they could've done their own version had they been given time.

-----Overall, to me Book 4 really shows the entire series' strengths and weaknesses. I think it's strong when dealing with philosophy, character development and themes, character growth and consequence, aesthetics, and action packed fight scenes. And I think it's weak when trying to balance too many characters at once, lore expansion and backstory, and pretty much every attempt at political allegory.

That last point, specifically, I need to say some things: I'm not politically mature in the slightest. I'm a philosophical and critical thinking type of mind, and beyond my leftist beliefs, lots of political jargon and analysis of systems flies over my head or is often explained in too much of an exhausting way for me to pay attention. I can discourse on an individual basis, not really on a systemic one. I did just criticize the writing of fascism in this season, but trust, I didn't come up with that from reading extensive theory, it just came from my base level knowledge and my Deep Inner Feelings™️.

I watched that "Politics of Legend of Korra" series on youtube, and it was kind of difficult for me to understand beyond "the writers wrote themselves into a corner by the bad guys having too many good points and they can only straw man themselves out with the few episodes they have left." As an adult in a tumultuous society, I'm probably gonna take responsibility going forward to educate myself on these things more, just so I know wtf is going on besides the surface level stuff I'm already aware of.

-----But yeah, back to Korra. Good when characterizing and deep thinking, messy when worldbuilding and politicking. Book 3 is probably my favorite of all the seasons, and... Book 4 for now is sharing a spot with Book 1. Can't put the former one higher since despite the amount it did right, the compassion for the fascist is so utterly bonkers to me, it gave me metaphorical hives. Book 2 is on the bottom of the list for me, just... so many westernizations of eastern concepts and tries too much while sacrificing what the show is good at.

As a whole, I liked the show lots! Pretty much fell into the brackets of my pre-viewing expectations: higher highs than ATLA, but the lows are too low for me to ignore. ATLA isolated is stronger as a whole than TLOK is, IMO. However, I just wanna see it as a continuation of this world rather than just a show with a similar moniker, if only so I don't unwittingly throw my proverbial hat in the ring of this fandom's discourse.

Thanks for keeping up with my first watch of this series if you did! Stan Tenzin! He's my husband now! 💞💞💞

[lord-shitbox]

whole ask game with mezumaru

Why do you like or dislike this character?

many reasons. he's silly and pathetic but also has his fucked up&evil (silly style) moments + very transgender coded + the skull is baller + he comes as part of a 2-guy set so i can think long and stupid about him & gozu. i am Almost Always insane about a set of characters because I like looking at how they go together

Favorite canon thing about this character?

umm prob the fact that he wears the skull because his face is really girlish. [trangdesnder flag emoji]. i like his hair too. the fact that hes over 400 yrs old is funny but also gives me eternal headaches because iirc nurarihyon married yohime when he was like. 106 years old or something? so hes fucking 500? i think i just spent an hour looking for the panel that specifies nurarihyon & yohime's ages [something something youre turning 17 and im turning 107 ? i dont think it was 1007] but i cant find it. whatever

Least favorite canon thing about this character?

i could dislike nothing about mezu.

ok actually the fact that hes a minor character & a lot of fine details abt the gyuki clan often contradict or dont go along with other worldbuilding because theyre minor characters and shiibashi forgot 👎👎👎👎👎👎👎

If you could put this character in any other media, be it a book, a movie, anything, what would you put them in?

um... i think a form of animation that uses interesting media would be extremely swag. like stop motion or the mob psycho whiteboard effect or the collage-style animations that look like moving quilts. gyuki clan spinoff series when

What's the first song that comes to mind when you think about them?

reminds me of him. tonchinkan feast & villain teniwoha also

What's something you have in common with this character?

long hair and trans gender

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you like?

😂😂🤣🤣😀😂🤣🤣🤣😂😂😂😂🤣🤣😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂😂🤣😂😂😁😂😁😂😂🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣😂🤣

ITS JUST ME AND 2 OTHER INSANE BITCHES ON PIXIV

What's something the fandom does when it comes to this character that you despise?

not post or care about him ever (me and the character with 2 moments of plot relevance)

Could you be roommates with this character?

ummm. i think so. I'd make him do the dishes

Could you be best friends with this character?

having a hard time with this one. his best friend is already gozu and im Sorta like him but I don't go with him as well

Would you date this character?

if he didnt look and act like twelve years old

What's a headcanon you have for this character?

gyuki clan has few to no women in it so it takes him A While to figure out women are real. he thinks women are just dudes in drag or something

What's an emoji, an emoticon and/or any symbol that reminds you of this character or you think the character would use a lot?

👾🐸 :3

Assign a fashion aesthetic to this character.

i dont have the flavor of gay that lets me remember what any of those are. overalls and lots of pins/patches. converses. loose sweaters. colorful (but not super vivid) wardrobe

What's your favorite ship for this character? (Doesn't matter if it's canon or not.)

gozumezu idc if its platonic or romantic

What's your least favorite ship for this character?

have i mentioned how like 3 people on the planet ever post him. gozumezu is the only ship if at all. but i would not like mezu x rikuo (not much chemistry imo, especially night rikuo)

What's a ship for this character you don't hate but it's not your favorite that you're fine with?

have to make up another ship for this.. wait maybe kappa x mezumaru has been a thing? i get that.

How about a relationship they have in canon with another character that you admire?

Gyuki & Mezumaru are pretty close i enjoy that. Like even though Gyuki was in his merciless evil scary era he had a little guy clinging to his leg. found family for Real

How about a relationship they have in canon that you don't like?

N/A i would like to see him develop a good one w/ rikuo's friends though. apologize to maki & torii & yura for trying to kill them in the bath

Which other character is the ideal best friend for this character, the amount of screentime they share doesn't matter?

gozumaru

If you're a fic writer and have written for this character, what's your favorite thing to do when you're writing for this character? What's something you don't like?

i write stupid little drabbles of them sometimes..gotta keep him silly thats all

If you're a fic reader, what's something you like in fics when it comes to ths character? Something you don't like?

he's a significant character in 2 of these and one of those is in French.

Favorite picture of this character?

What other character from another fandom of yours that reminds you of them?

sugihara kei from yakuza's guide to babysitting is the same genre of "silly/pathetic guy that gets bullied by his buddy with bonus moments of scariness"

What was your first impression of this character? How about now?

uhh. this would've been like. over 3 years ago so i don't Remember but I know it was favorable. here's the first time I drew him (late 2020) holy shit i did not know what was coming to me

FREEBIE QUESTION!!

umm ok so I think the gyuki clan gets a gaming console & gozu obviously has bad violent gamer rage but will calm down when removed from the situation. however mezu in gamer voice chat picks up the foulest nastiest language ever & will not stop spouting shit for days. gyuki and gozumaru have to regulate his gaming time severely over this. also he will NOT leave animal crossing once he picks it up

[bonefries]

I saw on your carrd that you've watched Hellsing Ultimate! I've been really interested in watching it and hope you don't mind me asking, but what's your opinion about it?

Hellsing Ultimate is still one of my top favorite animes today, even if the writing is for what it was at the time. There is some unnecessary fan service here and there but, its anime that began in 2006. (It didnt end until 2012 only releasing 1 episode per year.) The animation alone though, IMO is absolutely worth it. Some of the fighting scenes are just fucking incredible. Honestly the whole series is worth the watch just for the nemesis relationship between Alucard and a character named Anderson. Its a gorey anime, lots of bloodshed. And it IS about killing nazis. There are nazis in this anime, it does not shy away from the imagery, and there are corrupted religious figures in the mix. But like, you get to watch Dracula who is OP as fuck and morally questionable in his own right, kill a bunch of nazis and fascists because his boss told him to. Its pretty baller. There are some TWs for sexual assault (Most of the time they involve a character named Seras. There is a moment of it in the first episode. And sometime later in the series there are two more instances I can think of off the top of my head that involve Seras' trauma flashbacks as well as Alucard having a flashback to his own SA) And the only other thing I can think of thats more specifically triggering is in one of the last few episodes theres a frame of a ghoul eating an infant. To today's standards, its by no means a perfect anime and how you feel it handles its themes is up to your discretion. I guess this is just a normal thing to do but, just go into it with a critical mind is all c: hope this little spout helped!

[terramythos]

Some positives about Scarlet and Violet despite the many completely justified complaints:

-Theres small art details that are great. The fake billboard ads, the drawings on the wall in the art class, every pokemon having a picture in the Pokedex in its natural environment, the artwork of the restaurant items

-fantastic character designs

-there is an actual story reason for one of the minor complaints people had about the beginning but I literally can't elaborate without spoiling the entire game

-I think the paradox pokemon are fucking cool as shit, gimmick or not

-i noticed a weird level of detail on some unexpected things, like there's a unique sound effect for rain falling on an umbrella, or most (all?) pokemon having reflective eyes in the caves/at night, like a cat

-some of the pokemon models have been redone and improved. I noticed Hawlucha, Jolteon, and Persian all got reworks and imo look better.

-the story is actually pretty good even though it's literally all squeezed into like an hour and a half at the very end of the game lol

-minmaxing individual pokemon is doable and easy, so competitive is accessible to just about anyone. It's been a steady thing for multiple gens, but right now the only thing a pokemon generates with that can't be changed are super unique details (like sinistea's forme) and whether a pokemon is shiny. IVs, natures, and even egg moves can be added and changed on the fly

-Arven

-Tinkaton

-baller music all around, don't @ me

[littleblondesoprano]

Ellow! If all dino's would be the size of a golden retriever, which one would you pick as emotional support animal?

Oh hello!!

OOF okay - I have two choices, because I can't pick just one! And I think, if raised together, they'd actually get along pretty well.

Okay, my first pick is the Carcharodontosaurus. More specifically Carcharodontosaurus saharicus. This thing is a wall of pure muscle and teeth that are formed like a specific shark we all - at least I do - know and love (recognize it from the name? :D). It's teeth were 8 inches long and serrated and - though it doesn't matter because it, in this instance, is a golden retriever size - was BIG, like 45ft big. It had a wonderful sense of smell and hearing. Tbh there's not a lot known about its behavior, but I'm willing to bet it lives and operates in packs, like other megatheropods, which lends well to being an emotional support animal. Plus, can protecc. Big scary cuddly baby.

My second choice, and the original one that popped in my mind, is the T. Rex. My favorite dinosaur when I was growing up! Ofc bc of Jurassic Park, but still. Alike the Carcharodontosaurus, it's a wall of pure fuckin muscle and feathers and I love it. It was a pack oriented animal, from what I remember of the fossils found with the more mature ones trying to protect the babies - and they found several generations within one fossil deposit. I feel like a T. Rex would be one of the best emotional support animals - like, not only can and WILL it protect you, it will be fucking savage doing so. Plus, as a pack oriented animal, it's concerned with care and, well, love with members of its own pack, ie, me and the Carcharodontosaurus; a little family. Also incredibly smart, wonderful hearing, and sneaky! What they lack in speed and arms is more than made up for by how fucking baller they are. They are the total package, imo and I would happily have one.

Also please watch The Real T-Rex with Chris Packham, it's free and only about an hour, and so entertaining.

[fallingtowers]

btvs season 6 episodes ranked

a lot of people don’t like season 6, but it occupies a special place in my heart. imo, even despite the fact that s6 is noticeably shakier than s5, together they represent btvs at its best. i totally understand why some people might not enjoy it, though. there are a few moments that cross a couple lines, and one of them—tara’s death—stands out as the biggest fumble in the history of the show. still, apart from those moments, i think the bleaker tone not only works, but also directly leads to a few of the most affecting beats in the series. it’s a good season with a couple of really glaring flaws! i’ve ranked its episodes! click through to check out the list!

21. episode 12, “doublemeat palace”: not only is this episode stupid, it’s also dumb.

20. episode 6, “all the way”: one of those episodes i found myself struggling to care about. nothing particularly riveting happens in it. sorry dawn for dunking on your big moment in the spotlight.

19. episode 4, “flooded”: my main issue with this episode is that the “buffy needs money” plot doesn’t make any sense. so the watchers’ council can pay its myriad employees livable wages but you’re telling me there’s not like, a stipend or something for The Actual Slayer? dumb. anyway shoutout to giles for being this episode’s saving grace. i think if giles called me a “rank, arrogant amateur” i’d die on the spot.

18. episode 5, “life serial”: the way the nerd trio is written is like, super grating. it gets a little better as the season goes on; it’s pretty bad here. a lot of the stuff they do in this episode also doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. the time loop is a ton of fun though, and the scene where buffy and spike hang out is great too.

17. episode 15, “as you were”: get out of here, riley!!! begone from me, vile man!!!

16. episode 19, “seeing red”: i debated where to rank this one. it’s not so much that it’s a bad episode—it’s well-written and everything—it’s just that the content is so uncomfortable. this is like THE episode that gives s6 a bad name i think.

15. episode 14, “older and far away”: in which xander and anya try to set buffy up with a slice of plain white bread with the crusts cut off. the best part is that buffy totally deserves it after setting the tone with riley.

14. episode 11, “gone”: a firmly middling episode. the invisible buffy stuff is a lot of fun, though.

13. episode 13, “dead things”: this is where the trio starts to get really interesting—although, to be fair, i GUESS all the goofy shit that came before this was necessary too in order to set the tone. buffy asking tara to confirm that she came back wrong is great; the ending scene is an all-time classic.

12. episode 16, “hell’s bells”: the whole wedding prep storyline is kind of a slog, but it kicks into gear and actually gets pretty fun in this episode, when all the relatives and demons start showing up. a lot of people don’t like the ending of this one, but imo it makes perfect sense for xander’s character. poor guy.

11. episode 9, “smashed”: there’s a lot of fun stuff in this one. willow slips further into her addiction, and buffy and spike finally fuck. the reveal that spike’s chip doesn’t work for buffy specifically is some big brain shit on the writers’ part.

10. episode 3, “after life”: the thing about this one is that the haunting stuff starts out so fucking baller and then it gets progressively lamer until, by the end of the episode, buffy is killing a ghost from a haunted house attraction with an axe. i gotta rate it pretty highly for a few scenes though: the apparition of buffy visiting willow and tara, spike seeing buffy again, and buffy’s reveal that she was in heaven.

9. episode 10, “wrecked”: poor willow :( the most heavy-handed of the heavy-handed metaphor episodes. still kinda hits though, mostly thanks to the strength of the acting.

8. episode 1, “bargaining (part 1)” & episode 2, “bargaining (part 2)”: poor buffy :( the ritual magic stuff is great. willow has never been sexier than when she’s vomiting up a snake while covered in blood. also, shoutout to the title of these episodes. episode? does this count as one episode or two? well, anyway, “bargaining” is a really good title.

7. episode 18, “entropy”: whoof!! rough stuff!! this one is really well-written. the way two plotlines collide and both come to a head because of it—that’s the good shit.

6. episode 17, “normal again”: whoof again!! what is up with the fuckin ending of this one??? it’s so scary. like ok maybe the plot of this one is a little dated, a little ableist, idk. i still think it’s a candidate for scariest episode of btvs.

5. episode 20, “villains”: god dark willow is fucking sexy.

4. episode 8, “tabula rasa”: this is such a classic. it’s like THE quintessential “spell gone awry” btvs episode. it also features what is probably the most memorable demon design in the entire series. the emotional beats hit so nice even though they are slightly undercut by tara’s absolute mess of a hairstyle in the final scene. what the fuck were we all thinking in 2001.

3. episode 21, “two to go”: GOD dark willow is fucking sexy.

2. episode 22, “grave”: god, what a fucking banger. this one’s got everything. giles coming back, xander saving willow… the scene where giles and buffy laugh about how much everything’s fucking sucked in his absence. a really excellent season finale. did i mentioned how fucking sexy dark willow is?

1. episode 7, “once more, with feeling”: okay, look, listen, i know i’m the most annoying person in the world for giving the musical episode the #1 spot, but i’m willing to die on this hill. this episode is so fucking good. it works on every level—the lyrics are clever, the music is good, the gimmick is a genius way to bring every plot thread to a head and put everybody’s secrets out in the open.

[mushi-miko-unya-no-happypy]

Okay okay okay funny stuff going on in current times but I can’t slack on data mines

Khronshtadt (aka Chompcraft)-

Funny thing about my girl GUNBOAT TIME

CA/CB slot, CL slot, aa slot PLUS GHOST GUN

that’s right baybee motherfucking dakka unlimited

Skill one- on-fire barrage for first skill standard cb stuff (8/4 shots) but also adds a cool 8% fp/eva

Skill two-reduce ap damage by 8% fire another barrage every FOUR (4) secondary fire (at cl reload?!?!? MASSIVE), when equipped with NP equips increase secondary efficiency by 45% (originally its abysmal so this gets her to flat 100%) and ap damage reduc applies to all damage

Skill three-if she falls under 10% heal 1% for 10 sec, crossfleet barrage slows 40% and decreases bb spread by 2 (by far her worst skill imo really wish this was an in fleet buff instead and the zombie is pretty bad considering she has almost 8k health)

Bad (? This is just opinion) third skill aside she’s built to dps imo I think she’s gonna looks great in any vg, I think she wants either mob or bb fleet, all around hype UR

Kiev-

Pretty standard dd imo built like a fp dd but tragically no mgm+1, I think she’ll lose to some better competitors but is by no means a slouch

Skill one-barrage skill bumps her crit rate and damage 10% every 10 seconds (stacks twice, could be good will need to see)

Skill two- free 10% accuracy, if you have full vg or another NP increase fp/torp 15%, there’s a second half to this skill but it requires one vg for a dd might as well not exist

She’s not a game changer by any means but she’s a solid performer imo, treat her right and I’m sure she’ll do you good

Volga-

Not the CV I thought we’d get but she looks pretty baller, not much else to say let’s hop into what makes her good

Skill one-75% chance to fire a barrage, if it fails to fire hit a different barrage tho (first one has flooding, I’m willing to be the second one will be the same but without but that’s just conjecture)

Skill two (real stuff to look at)- every 20 seconds heal the lowest health+2 random ships for FIVE (5)% of Volga’s max hp, then summon an “ice crystal armament” that blows up after 2 sec

Skill 3- free 15% avi as long as you have 3 vanguard or an NP flagship/vg leader

Basically a direct upgrade to ryuuhou, run both for practically immortal dds l0l

Arkhangelsk-

Normal looking purple bb, no dilly dallying I’m tired (125 she has 420 fp l0l)

Skill 1- fire a barrage every 15 sec increase main fleet acc for 8 sec (we’ll have to see the barrage so jury’s out on that one but not very likely to be good)

Skill 2-gain 5% fp per hms/np ship up to 15% at max stacks get 15% aa and -10% burn damage as well (silly little buff skill you get what you see)

Normal purple bb (too be fair at the higher end of purple bbs) sorry if I sound a little mean she’s just very plain

Soobrazitelny-

No silly stats here, high fp for a dd but suffers from the same ailment that afflicts Kiev (no mgm no hoes)

Skill one- 30% (🤢) chance to deploy a smokescreen every 15 sec (normal 40% eva rate for 5 sec) gains 12% damage and 8 luck (luck lasts the rest of the battle) while affected by smokescreen

Skill two- every 20 sec 70% chance to fire barrage, if there are more np dds heal random np dd by 5% max health and if that ship is Tashkent heal increase that by 50% (like 7.25% presumably), this can happen twice per battle

I wasn’t expecting much from a purple dd but holy shit is she bad, like god the couldn’t spring for 50% proc rate on the smokescreen? Couldn’t make the heal skill consistent? God she is just an absolute waste of a VG slot holy fuck sorry if she’s your fave you got absolutely robbed G Jesus Christ

Sorry to end it on such a sour note oomfies but I hope you all enjoy this event! Stay safe and good night~💕

[cock-holliday]

Of all the No Mercy Percy-isms, nearly all I think got even better in the animated show. 

IMO for Stonefell, “You were the one I was least looking forward to” is level between original and animated, but “I wanted you to know it was me” in the animated bumped it up for me.

Anders’ death was pretty cool in original but the imagery and delivery of “you’re the face I saw when murder entered my heart” was somehow even better in the animated.

“We have debts to settle”? Even better in animated.

The one I’m more on the fence on is “Your soul is forfeit.” I like that they just combined the carriage driver and mercenary fight into one scene. I think the imagery and delivery kicks ass in the animated, but I *do* miss Percy going through the names of his family.

The one I think lost something is his “luckiest person in Whitestone” bit to Ripley. It was sooooo sinister in the original. The delivery was just so venomous, and Taliesin played up his Ripley trauma so well, between the fact that Percy was fucked up about being back in the dungeon, and then especially when Vex asks if he recognizes Ripley.

I still can’t believe they fit in all of Taliesin’s absolutely baller lines/delivery and I don’t know how they managed to make them even cooler, but I also shouldn’t be shocked since you know fans would riot if they DIDN’T put these in there.

[draayder]

Omi Pins Tojo Pins

okay onto the final part: everyone else! as with the previous two, mild spoilers across all the games

Atobe Family

Do you remember these guys? no you don’t. if you said yes you’re lying. This is a family from Asakusa who shows up for approximately 10 minutes, has their name mentioned once, and you see their pin once. That’s right, this is the family involved with that part in Y1 where you gotta deal with the Florist’s shitty kid. A really great pin, shockingly, very striking and good use of silver black and grey as well as breaking the circle. I would have expected this to be from a major player

Ryudo Family

Not to be confused with the Omi Ryudo, this is the Okinawan family from 3 featuring Nakahara, Mikio, and of course Rikiya. I.............. don’t think any of them actually wear it though, so you only see it as fight intros. A stellar pin, the use of the shisa is great even if it is a little hard to read. The way it encircles the family kanji really gives off the protective vibe of the shisa

Ueno Seiwa Family

so normally I complain about gold on gold being hard to read, which is true, but the shape of this is so different than anyone elses’ that you can tell at a glance exactly what family you’re dealing with. A good pin

Yamagasa Family

This pin has always slapped. It’s bold and geometric, easy to read, and looks great on a formal hakata. It’s very sleek and modern imo, which is once again funny for a very traditional family like the Yamagasa out in Nagasugai, but overall just a top tier pin

Yahata Family

It makes sense that the direct subordinates would just tweak the design, but adding in the calligraphy 八 clashes a little with the nice geometry, making this a worse pin. It’s also extremely hard to tell from a Yamagasa pin, but that’s fine since they’re part of it and they benefit from people thinking they’re higher up than they actually are. Still a pretty good pin

Kitakata Family

Y5 really went off on its pins, this one’s for those guys up in Tsukimino. It’s bold and easy to read, but not quite as good as the Yamagasa pin. Very effective still though

Yomei Alliance

Time for these assholes out in Onomichi. So obv we got that rising sun iconography kind of going on which is Not Great but does tie thematically with what that family was founded on. Definitely very good at conveyance, you’re not going to mistake it for anyone else in the area

Masuzoe Family

Remember this dude? I sure didn’t. The Yomei guys don’t really stick to a theme, which is fine, and this pin is pretty good. It’s a little busy, I think the center kanji could use a little more room to breathe and feels slightly off center due to how the line on the left almost touches the edges unlike every other part of it

Koshimizu Family

Remember this guy? Maybe you do, he was a lot more memorable than Masuzoe. His pin is actually really great. I love the evocation of a sword hilt and how the scalloped edges are cut out internally to slot in the calligraphy, it gives a very nice organis flow to the whole thing. The color balance is also very good. 10/10 pin, one of the best in the series imo

Hirose Family

Simple, effective, unmistakable. Hirose has a good pin. The edges remind me of a government organization, which gives it a nice sense of authority despite being a tiny little group. The use of the grass lines helps break up the space so it’s not just a boring circle and draws the eye up to the top kanji, which has the lines to draw the eye back down. A good pin

Kyorei Clan

An Osaka based group that isn’t Omi! It’s from judgment and most famously Shioya is a member. Really cool pin! I like the angles a lot, and it’s a very unique shape! very cool, great pin

Seiryu Clan

what no I totally didn’t forget this one the first time. shut up. So this pin has a lot going for it. The swirling waves leading the eye in, and the fact that it has the full family name + clan sets it apart. A fun fact on this one is that the patriarch is  星野 龍平 (Hoshino Ryuhei) and this family takes the first kanji from his family and given name to make  星龍 (seiryu) which is a homophone with  青龍 (seiryu), the blue dragon of the four legendary beasts (also the one Kiryu is represented by!). However while the blue dragon’s kanji is literally blue+dragon, this family is star+dragon, which is fucking baller as hell. A great pin on that aspect alone, and a solid design to back it up

Non-Yakuza Organizations

Peace Finance

Okay so all the non-yakuza “pins” are out of Y1 (with 2 exceptions), because they just fucking loved making pins and icons and shit during that game. No one actually wears this one, it just flashes during one of the very early fights in Y1 when Kiryu helps Shinji deal with some shitty loan sharks. It kind of reminds me of a cult? It’s definitely trying too hard to be non-threatening, which ends up making it threatening, which is perfect for the organization it’s used for

Purgatory

Damn do I fucking love ho-o’s. Nagoshi please put a ho-o on someone’s back. You can have my oc. Please. This isn’t a pin, it’s the floor of the colosseum, and it looks great

Snake Flower Triad

Another one that no one wears, it’s very effective. You got snakes. You got a flower. There’s three things. Got it in one, everyone go home. The shape is unique enough that even being the worse kind of gold on gold you can tell whose it is

MIA

This one does get worn! It’s effective as a weird government shadow group, with the military look to it alongside the divine looking wings/halo/rays of light. It’s super hard to read from a distance, but that’s okay for a group that isn’t trying to advertise itself to anyone who doesn’t already know them

Jingu

Jingu’s personal pin. It’s very government-y, being not far off from the royal family’s pin or a lawyer’s badge, and the kind of purpley look is really nice. A good pin for an awful guy

Dragon Heat

This is from Kurohyou, and like the Purgatory design it’s what’s on the colosseum ring. It’s got two dragons fighting each other, what more could you want for a bloodsport? It’s scuffed and faded, showing that this place either gets a lot of use or isn’t making that much cash, which is some nice environmental storytelling

Ashura

Same deal as before but this time it’s for Kurohyou 2. Another fighting ring, another scuffed up floor, this time featuring an asura, beings in a state of constant battle with the devas of hinduism, which is fitting for a fighting ring that’s supposed to be even more brutal. a good design, though I wish it had a little more of the depth that the dragon heat one had

and that’s all of them! except for whichever ones I missed! But we can ignore those!! I’m sure they’re not important

[unironicduncanstan]

rating disney movie sequels ive seen from worst to best bc i can

12. pocahontas II: journey to a new world - caught sight of it on my tv one time, and as a child who was probably still identifying as republican at that point, i s2g it was so racist i could not finish it. ‘wait till he sees you’ gives me fuckin hives

11. tarzan II - its. tarzan as a kid. like just more young tarzan adventures and dont get me wrong its a cute idea but after about 5 minutes it gets so boring 

10.  atlantis: milos return - this one gets a lil bit of a pass bc from what i heard it was supposed to be a better sequel but that got canned and they were working on a spin off series too so they just like. took a couple of the episodes they were working on and stitched it into a movie. its like a bootleg parody of the first film and my family and i despite loving the original , once again, could not even finish this one. the only memorable part for me was kida picking up a life preserver presuming its a game and milo telling her you throw it to someone whos drowning and she responds “does this not make it difficult to play the game”

9. beauty and the beast: the enchanted christmas - not that bad, tim curry plays a great villian per usual, its just kinda confusing where and how it fits into the plot of the first film. and its like. Dark? perhaps scary? for a christmas movie??? i remember my mom didnt want me to watch it every year she’d dread it bc it was such a bummer lol

8. brother bear 2 - ok nah introducing the new girl character was actually a baller move, and the concept was pretty cool. they just didnt make it fit very well and ngl the entire rest of the movie also feels disconnected from the first. had a lot of good dots but no good connection ya dig. also even though they tried in the end it was still just a ‘we have to give this character a love interest’ movie which kinda trumps the whole reason the first movie revolved around brotherhood. it aint wife bear

7. cinderella II: dreams come true - i barely remember it i am literally just giving it this high of a rating bc the romance between the baker and one of the stepsisters was so fucking wholesome. that true love lives in my head bitch xoxo

6. the rescuers down under - i never saw the original so when i saw this on tv i thought it was the original , thats how quality it was imo. i just hardly remember it and had no real urge to seek it out again for years. its eye catching but not super duper memorable

5. the little mermaid II: return to the sea - ik most of the plot is just the first movie reversed but i actually rly liked the character melody and how they inverted a lot of the concepts, its just. a lot of it includes secondhand embarrassment and some of it rly is too lazy for me to ignore. solid B- for me

4. the lion king II: simbas pride - INCREDIBLE soundtrack, nothing can beat the first but its still Baller, and the newly introduced characters are all iconic. my only qualm is how like. the concept of bigoted simba is very hard to watch which ik ik it makes some sense with the events of the first movie but jfc my man does not have a great look in this one

3. mulan II - most ppl hate this one?? but i actually rly loved the princess characters and the music as well, i watched it a LOT growing up. the whole mushu trying to break up mulan and shang thing is equal parts entertaining and frustrating. and the animation is a tad bit... off. but like am i ever gonna FORGET mulan hanging off the bridge and reaching for her man and screaming with her entire heart? or the way she kinda parallels his ‘ping, hold on’ from the first movie with ‘shang, hang on’? no

2. peter pan II: return to neverland - broe....... howd they take the racist misogynistic trainwreck that was the first film and make this. its so fucking good, it has emotional depth and speaks to kids who feel they are being forced into growing up too fast by showcasing wendys daughter going thru WORLD WAR II and making her an incredibly realistic portrayal of a traumatized kid, pairing her with the happy go lucky peter pan and the lost boys who CANT grow up, symbolizing the death of her innocence with the way that her not believing in fairies is slowly killing tinkerbell, it all just makes for a really impactful movie. and even in a kids movie sense its just so entertaining and at times really funny and/or whimsical? not to mention the ‘i’ll try’ song/scene gets me crying every single time. beautiful movie dude the only reason its 2nd is bc it is , So emotional that im not always in the MOOD to watch it bc i have to prepare a little

1. the lion king 1 1/2 - god yes i fuckign loved and still love this one so much. the music is fire the comedy still makes me laugh so hard and the whole idea is so fucking genuinely clever. god bless whoever came up with this one i had it on dvd and im p sure i watched it for years till it was so scratched up it wouldnt play anymore, 11/10

[mooosicaldreamz]

Have you listened to folklore yet?? Can you do commentary on all the songs??

it’s time.

THE 1

This song has a funny vibe in comparison with “I Forgot that You Existed” - it really sets a tone of calm, quiet vibes in comparison to the more bombastic stuff on Lover. Also this song is kind of a banger. It has a very gentle rhythm, like I’m in the sun in the woods and I’m in my hammock. I have a hammock now and I’m considering moving into it. “It would’ve been fun / if you would’ve been the one.” Also I love the “I had this dream you’re doing cool shit” - so fun, so sweet. Taylor said a curse word.

CARDIGAN

This song is proof to me that this album was produced by a Dessner because it has the same repetitive piano that I would say is a hallmark of National songs - it sounds a lot like “Light Years” to me. That song is, by the way, an absolute banger. This song? Fun! It’s an interesting metaphor, and an interesting way of saying the point of the song. And I think it’s much more grounded than some more old school Taylor metaphors of like fairytale stuff. “Tried to change ending / Peter losing Wendy.”

THE LAST GREAT AMERICAN DYNASTY

As we ALL KNOW, this song is about Taylor’s wonderful little house wherein the great Fourth of July celebration took place all over Instagram in the Red era. I googled it and it’s semi-biographical! I think it’s clear that Taylor is making commentary on her life on the Cape just as much as she is telling the story of this person, Rebekah Harkness. It’s an interesting piece of self-awareness to compare herself to an oil heiress who caused quite the stir in a segment of the world that is full of big stirrers (ie the Kennedys who I’m pretty sure she was neighbors with somewhere down the beach). I’m intrigued. She is having fun.

EXILE (FEAT BON IVER)

This will sound like absurd hyperbole but between Bon Iver and Taylor Swift, I’d be hard pressed to name two artists who have fucked up my life more. Getting to hear his beautiful baritone without layers of distress like he’s been rolling with lately is a gift. Thank you to Taylor Swift. “I can see you staring, honey / like he’s just your understudy / like you’d get your knuckles bloody / for me.” VIBEZ???? ARE WE VIBING????? I AM VIBGIN!!!!!! “Those eyes add insult to injury????”” BANGER!!! IT’S A BANGER.  THAT BREAKDOWNN!!!! LET’S ROLL!!!! LET’S GET FUCKED UP!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I’m PUTTING THIS ON SO MANY PLAYLISTS!!!!!!!!!!

MY TEARS RICOCHET

LET’S GET EMO !!!!!!!! You know, just recently I was discussing with Lynne (or myself? I talk to myself about Taylor a lot) about how she’s gonna go on her like farewell tour when she’s 50-60 or whatever and it’s gonna be all these low-down sexy baller mixes, like when Cyndi Lauper did her greatest hits cover release (it’s a banger!). This album is just an excuse for her to sing in her low register. God, I’d die for her. I love how sad this is. I have too many favorite lines. “I didn’t have it in myself to go with grace / ‘cause when I’d fight, you used to tell me I was brave / And if I’m dead to you why are you at the wake?” ALSO “And you can aim for my heart, go for blood / But you would still miss me in your bones.” OKAY HONEY!!!!!!! This is a clear Supercorp song. Since I know this is why you are asking. Start here for fic titles.

MIRRORBALL

Oh, okay, Taylor went to the woods and listened to Ryan Adams, Bon Iver, and just fucked around and made shoe gaze pop? What kind of talent!!!! Her last album was premium pop. Why is she like this. This song is very interesting. It’s very sweet. The phrasing on “tallest tiptoes / highest heels” oh my God. I love this song. I might cry.

SEVEN

Another absolute National-style production, God, we are living in my dream world on this album. “I’ve been meaning to tell you / I think your house is haunted / Your dad is always mad and that must be why / And I think you should come live with me / and we can be pirates.” WHAT A JOKE. WHAT A JOKE!!!!!!! What a beautiful portrait of childhood. There’s a scene in Spring Awakening (the musical, I can only assume now that Taylor is a big fan), where they talk about playing pirates when they were younger and now everything is tragic. “Are there still beautiful things?” It shouldn’t be that easy bro.

AUGUST

This, like “Seven” is an Antonoff production, which is just vibes. The dreaminess. We are vibing. As much as I am inclined to hate the line, “August slipped away like a bottle of wine” it is phrased so well and delicately that it comes across more dreamy than wine mom memey. I also just want to say that I bought the OG vinyl and the “meet me behind the mall” vinyl and after hearing the song that it comes from it’s a vibe. This is obviously a teenage romp song, which is really great because obviously Taylor wrote about being a teenager in love when she was a teenager and wrote about like, the classic world-ending Romeo and Juliet style fairytale. But this is….”meet me behind the mall.” Which is such an adult perspective on what being a teenager is. It’s so wonderful to see that artistic depth in an artist we’ve literally watched grow.

THIS IS ME TRYING

I feel like this is the depression song that should have been on Reputation but was so out of step with the rest of the album between it’s thunderous anger / thunderous oh-shit-I’m-into-this-dude that they couldn’t work it in. And it doesn’t quite vibe with Lover either…this whole song is GREAT. It’s very depression 101. It makes me cry also. “They told me all of my cages were mental / so I got wasted like all my potential / and my words shoot to kill when I’m mad / I have a lot of regrets about that.” I LOVE the way she sings “I have a lot of regrets about that.” Also “and it’s hard to be at a party / when I feel like an open wound.” Absolute banger.

ILLICIT AFFAIRS

I feel we should give this song the true banger status because Taylor wrote a song about a girl who is the other woman and it’s empathetic. God, we love progress. This song also does a good job of being about the other woman, but also has a little more universal appeal. I know when I heard this I was like, “oof, okay, I don’t miss being 16.”  The word mercurial is used in this song.

INVISIBLE STRING

Not to get too emo about it, but this song is adorable and it’s messed up that she wrote it. The idea behind it that I think must be fairly common for people who are in love, that their lives have unique crossover moments, and there’s this hope/want to believe that you were always going to end up in this place because of all those connections? That’s kind of a complex thing (imo) to express. And she WROTE IT!!!! God. If I were Joe Alwyn I would cry every day.

MAD WOMAN

The fact that Taylor would ever attempt to make me believe this is not about Scooter Braun is insane. I love this song. Proof of concept that you don’t need to yell to show how mad you are.

EPIPHANY

This song is sad. But very interesting. I don’t think I’ve ever heard her write anything like this. I think the back half of this album is a little more experimental.

BETTY

I’m not sure what I’m expected to say here. I know that this song is not actually gay. But I don’t care. It’s country twang from a boy’s perspective and you know what? We’re taking it. We are taking it for ourselves. But also, I love that she chose to write this weird “teenage love triangle” set of songs and that she chose to write none of them from like, her perspective? Right? “August” is James cheating on Betty, “Illicit Affairs” is the other woman, and this is James…when Taylor was 17 she would have written this song from Betty’s perspective. And that’s what we would have got. There’s real growth in storytelling here, and a real interest in expanding the canon of what she’s writing about. It’s really great to see an artist do that. Also the way she sings “The worst thing that I ever did / was what / I did to you.” This whole song is a masterpiece. I hate her.

PEACE

I just learned that Joe Alwyn is a Pisces. I am A PISCES. TAYLOR!!!! WE COULD BE TOGETHER.

I love the “I talk shit with my friends / It’s like I’m wasting your honor.” This song is so adult. She’s in like. Real love bro. BRO. I AM HAPPY FOR HER. BRO!!!!!!

HOAX

I am interested in why this is the last song on the non-deluxe version of the album. I don’t have a lot to say about this but that it reminds me of Wuthering Heights. Also if you wanted to get emo this is probably a good SC song.

[whirlibird]

Your posting of fate makes me wanna try watching it again but I have NO IDEA where it's supposed to start smwnwnj

<3 <3 <3 To Think I Am Being Rewarded For My Behaviour Of Spamming Anime Posts....

but yea GOTTA LOVE FATE it gets wild!!! it is pretty hard to get started and i cant say im the best to give recommendations since i havent even seen everything dfhjgsdgf but i will give it my best shot!

fate stay night is where fate started, and the easiest place to start *that* would be the fate/stay night unlimited blade works anime by ufotable

it should be on crunchyroll, thats where i watched it. it lacks a few things but gets most of the themes right, which is what’s important. the animation is also baller and its a fun watch! very good intro to the series.

https://www.crunchyroll.com/fatestay-night ‘tis here if you wanna hop in

alternatively, you can also start with fate/zero, which is a prequel to fate stay night.

theres quite a good anime adaptation - i wouldn’t personally recommend it to start with, bc its a bit too dark and lacks optimism for my tastes, which isnt really reflective of fate as a whole? at least imo. it is good, though - or at least, enjoyable?

listen, it has lancelot du lac jump on top of a fighter jet and chase king gilgamesh around on it while screaming and firing a minigun! while rock music plays!

tangent, but fate has the best lancelot take of any adaptation ive seen so far because it actually remembers that a major part of his character is his Emotional Delicacy and his tendency to regularly go batshit when faced with difficult problems. fate really said “what if we manifested the second most mary sue knight in all of arthuriana, but like, only from the times when he went insane and ran off naked into the woods”

and also gave him a gun!

i love lancelot

anyway. it also provides some background for fate/stay night and adds some depth and reinforcement to the Juicy Themes(TM) behind fate, which is the main appeal of the franchise. that and the extremely off-the-walls bullshit they come up with sometimes.

i started with the unlimited blade works anime, lost my mind over archer, and then sort of passively consumed fate by just...seeing posts that turned up on my dash about it, or from friends talking to me abt some of the wilder shit that happens.

fate meta is incredibly enjoyable to read bc theyre just hog wild and occasionally give me emotional whiplash from how fucking weird fate is, but also how emotionally compelling some of the Themes(TM) are

then i got into fate grand order bc i read a post analyzing the character motivations of salieri, you know, the musician, who in fate is actually the manifestation of the rumors that he killed mozart, and has a Lot of issues about this

he first shows up in an alternate timeline of russia where everyone had to become furries in order to survive permawinter

because aliens

fate grand order is a gacha mobile game and i cannot even begin to describe what its deal is. it starts slow but gets very, very good later on.

but yeah fgo sucked me back into fate, permanently this time, and im STILL working my way thru fate content

there is so much fate content, oh my god

on the plus side you wont run out and most of it is self-contained so you can just stop at your favourite

the one downside of the anime adaptations is that they dont go in as deep on the characters and their dynamics with each other as the visual novel does, so some of the finer details that really make the themes Pop dont get across, which is a shame. but also it doesnt really matter when youre first getting into fate? you can just start at UBW, and if you like it, mosey along into the other stuff when you so feel like it

(sidenote - there isnt a decent anime adaptation of the fate route - it’s the first of three routes that make up fate/stay night, before unlimited blade works and heaven’s feel. each of the three routes do build up on each other, and the fate route is chronologically first, but. well. an anime adaptation of fate route does exist, but its kind of a mess, and also combines stuff from other routes, which isnt great)

this went on a lot longer than i expected but i hope it helps!

tl;dr start with the fate stay night unlimited blade works anime, and then go from there :D

[ballplayersxo]

That wags page is so damn messy. Ppl not might agree with me on this but if you fuck a nigga and you know he got a girlfriend you are dirty asf. And so is he. That page literally uplifts that🥴 that shit ain’t a sisterhood that shits ghetto ! They ain’t playing the game right. Playing the game right is getting your own shit and stop tryna depend on a baller. IM SICK ! And the woman that runs the page is too pretty for that. Everybody playing into that shit are birds ! Just had to get that off my chest. And for that paying money part - lemme just hush. She getting a bag off desperate ass women. Our gender is down by 40.

ehhhh imo you can mess with a baller and still play the game right. if you’re a good looking girl & can capitalize off of it by using men, i don’t see why not tbh. i just think that as long as you aren’t hurting anybody, do whatever. i get wanting to get your own shit, but if you can do less and gain more, i don’t see why not, especially if you use what you gain to improve your own life. idk i just think that women need to make smarter decisions when they consider messing with athletes cause so many people can end up getting hurt. plus things can get really messy

[whetstonefires]

"the top three of its forty floors are filled with brass telescopes of every size, pointing in every possible direction, including several that do not exist within the normal three dimensions of space." thats SUCH a cool image / "If any harvest will come." ooh i wonder whats going on / "The roofs are of red tile, the stucco of the houses painted in shades of blue. It stands empty, but has not had time to fall into disrepair." the little bits of detail getting added to the picture im LOVE (1/?)

I’m gonna do these all as one post but broken up for ease of reference, I think.

Thank you! 🥰 Deciding the theme for the Tower and giving it that visual anchor really helped to pull things together. If you consider the whole setup, it seems unlikely the Tower was originally built as an observatory, since those tend to benefit from height (especially if you’re looking around you rather than up, but for the up ones also) and the builders could easily have put it on top of a mountain or at least some hills, but instead put it by the river. It’s above sea level, and it’s away from light pollution, but there were better locations. Nearby.

So either it wasn’t an observatory, and it’s been refitted as one, or they had so many observatories they didn’t care about locating them optimally, there was some other factor making having the tower there important even if it was suboptimal in terms of observation capacity. Or, potentially, it’s been moved since it was built!

:} Yay thank for being interested by the foreshadowing. I tried to put just enough in without actively overshadowing the actual place-setting-up and making the reader impatient with the description. 

"If you look through an enchanted telescope you may see trees without needles fail halfway up the nearest of the great peaks, and even these fail before the top, though there is a span of nearly barren stone past that line, before the snow begins." you: mentions different plants living in different climates me: :0 / there's so much good description!! its all so pretty!! (2/?)

sflka;l;jlk i mean yeah, that’s pretty straightforward isn’t it. But! It establishes How Much Mountain it is visually rather than by saying ‘it was a big fucking mountain’ or ‘it was tall enough for the thinness of atmosphere near the top to create a small tundra region.’

o(*￣▽￣*)ブ

<3 Thank you! I kinda cut loose lmao.

"blocks veined with every color, pale blues and purples, reds and greens and golden-duns all mottling toward white and grey and black" god i want to live there so badly!! this tower is meeting all my standards!! cool pretty magic tower with rad telescopes!!! / "make a remark no one present understands about a Doctor named Seuss. His guide, the dousing tracker Amnaphi, will assume this person to be a famous astronomer from his homeland." im love!! misunderstandings about references!! (?/?)

💗💖✨ Yay! That’s an important feeling to create in fantasy, imo. The wanting. 

I really enjoyed playing with the standard forms for ‘thing made of marble’ here, because all these marbles really exist, but in spite of the existence of the word ‘marbled’ our narrative uses of it tend to be tied up with Neoclassical aesthetics. So very white and smooth, yeah?

Also idk if it’s obvious to the reader but this Tower is to some degree in dialogue with Orthanc, which made a great impression on my mind as a child as the iconic wizardly tower, and while I don’t disagree with any of Tolkien’s use of symbolism for the purposes he was deploying it, there’s so much potential in Isengard as a setting that LotR had no space to explore, even if Tolkien would have noticed those angles at all.

Like...the parkland around the Tower is shown being despoiled for the orcish war machine and then reconquered by the forest, but of course it wasn’t forest to begin with. What was it for before Saruman lost his shit? Ordered gardens, for peaceful contemplation? Who dedicated the space that way? Who maintained it? 

Did Saruman employ a gardener? Did he design his own gardens, or did they come with the keep, which we’re informed was built not by him but by the Numenoreans? 

(“I liked white better” is still one of the greatest lines in a fantasy novel, Tolkien does not get enough credit for his contextually hilarious one-liners that rely on pointed code-switching, but Saruman’s evil rainbow oil-slick robes also sounded really baller and it’s kind of a shame they were not attempted for the movie lol.)

The fact that this is a world designed around a kid getting portal-fantasied into it and staying for 30 years really gives me some options which are fun to deploy but also like. Risky lmao. Because it encourages the reader to surface from the setting-logic and apply their own perspective, which can really break up the magic.

Being able to zoom out on the Tower after all that detail and be like ‘it’s awesome but also it looks like something Doctor Seuss would draw’ was fun though.

"Within the even hexagon of its outer wall, the Tower encloses a great parkland, enough that if it was all put under cultivation it could easily feed as many people as could live in the Tower itself." the tower has PLANTS i love it so much / "Ten Years’ Winter" god PLEASE tell me this is going to get into the agriculture and society stuff game of thrones didn't about long winters that would be SO cool / "Watchers of the Stars" AND they have a cool name holy shit (?/?)

Plants are important! As is food supply. As everyone who’s been reading this blog for a while already knows I think lol.

I mean, it’s not about that, really? The Ten Years’ Winter is a historical event--the most recent meteor impact severe enough to have global climate fallout. The dust it kicked up took a while to settle, and the famines were pretty severe.

But the cultural consequences of something that happened a hundred and fifty years ago exist, and are important, including the relationship between governance and disaster preparedness, which varies a lot regionally as you may imagine. 

Astronomy has a long history as a wizardly sort of activity in the real world, both because it’s had continual overlap with astrology and just because the process has always been mystical and abstruse. In this setting, with a history of both devastating meteor impacts and being invaded from the Moon, but also actual magic, it’s got more obvious practical importance. Although since neither of these are remotely everyday occurrences, the average person on the street might not agree lol.

So it’s on the one hand a purely descriptive title, and on the other hand a serious boast, suggesting as it does that they are primarily responsible for Watching The Sky For Stuff. While also having broader philosophical implications and just sounding nice lol. 

You gotta have good marketing if you want to persist as a wizardly order, because if talented students aren’t motivated to come to you how will you gain new members? Natural replacement is not an ideal strategy to say the least. That’s how you turn into a cult instead of an intellectual powerhouse.

"The northern third of the Tower’s park contains neatly regimented orchards, apples, pears, plums, and a few rows of carefully tended peaches and apricots, all clipped flat against low brick walls angled south and slightly west." hhh t r e e s / "wizards, while enthusiastic about innovation in the abstract, hate change." me too, wizards. me too / "The Tower grounds are filled with refugees." ooh now we get to why everything was empty earlier (?/?)

Trees! Which are also food!

And technology lol. Greenhouses built against fruit walls with good insulation are so much more sensible than ones heated from inside. Obviously as a passive solar-powered technology these only work when the sun is available and not, for example, cut off by a giant dust cloud. 

These people are fairly acutely aware of their dependence on the sun and it figures prominently in a majority of their religions and their magical theory, even more than in ours.

There seems to be a mild consensus that the wizards are relatable. In truth: we are all wizards. :D

Yup! At long last lol.

"This division corresponds imperfectly to the usual split of the town by the course of the Meroda." because people!! take comfort!! in what normalcy they can find!! / "Makeshift pallets line the spaces between every fruit wall—the injured are being laid out here, now that the Tower is full, to get the benefit at night of the warmth meant to mature fruit." the awesome magic tower people trying to do everything they can for the injured who come to them for help in case i thought i couldn't be (?)

more in love / "Half of them are making ready to turn south along the Meroda." oh nooooo / "but the Moon People are the successors of the ancient magics, and just because they could not break the walls the last time they came, according to legend, does not mean they have not worked out a method now." im so worried for the people oh no (?)

Yeah! It really seemed natural. But of course they also aren’t recreating it obsessively; lots of people are grouping up with relatives who normally live across the river, or with people in the same line of work on the river, because people also adapt to circumstances.

No institution is ever perfect, of course, but I’m glad the Watchers have come across this way so far. They’re broadly well-intentioned and mostly well-organized.

And they were not ready for this.

A significant fraction of the reason for the order of the Watchers to exist at all, particularly in this observatory with its great eye fixed ever on the face of the green moon, is to be able to warn the world if this ever happens again. But the Moon People knew they were being watched, this time, and they kept all the build-up to mobilization that might have given them away on the far side of the moon until the last minute.

What the Magister is doing, as I hope was made clear or at least successfully indicated--I wish your commentary on the ending had come through!--is summoning what turns out to be an actual child from another world to do hero stuff.

Even if he’d gotten an adult that would be kidnapping someone to help with your problems, a routine element of the portal fantasy whose ethics have been addressed in a variety of ways, most famously ‘is Lion Jesus and always right.’ 

The reason they need a hero from another world is that the Moon People build a lot of their wards and their offensive and disabling magical attacks around a targeting system based on what planet people are from, because even though they’re originally from the same stock--they’re the descendants of ancient moon colonists who evacuated ahead of a major meteor impact somewhere approaching four thousand years ago--on a magical level having been born and raised on the planet or the moon makes a pretty huge difference. 

So no one can get into the place their magic space elevator is anchored and fuck it up so they can’t keep bringing troops and supply in and loot out. Their single supply line is their only strategic weakness, and they’ve taken appropriate precautions.

Getting someone in from a third location is the best idea anyone’s been able to come up with in the very limited time available. Since no one can figure out how to turn one of the Moon People against the cause they came here for, on short notice, when they aren’t even stopping to talk to anyone so far. Like, that’s clearly not going to happen.

Heron Yl Fanult isn’t unaware that it’s ethically questionable, but he’s doing it anyway.

So I’m glad the ominous imminent oncoming of the Moon People can really be felt, because that atmosphere is fairly essential context for the decisionmaking going on at the top of the Tower.

"Young wizards sit in their bunks, six each to rooms that were previously individual, and hold lighting cupped dancing in their palms." a quick break from being worried to point out that this is rad as hell / "some with their heads decorously covered..." cultural differences!! especially with regional purposes like the Hedro!! 

Thank you! 😆💖 I thought so too lol. 

It also establishes the parameters of the magic system a little more. Throwing lightning bolts is pretty iconicly high-powered, right? And here it’s what most of the student wizards are practicing in anticipation of a battle, because most of them aren’t specced into combat and this is actually one of the easier lethal spells to master, especially if you have an academic background.

‘Electrocute’ isn’t a very flexible spell and it’s easy to lose control of, but it’s actually easier than, say, ‘set on fire to a significant degree in a non-electrical manner’ because concentrating a lot of heat in a certain location takes a lot more brute force than encouraging ionization. 

You can pull most of the actual destructive force for the palm lightning spell out of the physical air and/or earth if you grasp the principles, which is much easier than channeling a comparable amount of magic directly because it doesn’t have to go through you. 

The limiting factors on magic in this setting are how much power you can tap into and how much of it you can actually use without hurting or killing yourself. It’s not usually a lot, though the amount can be increased by things like choosing your workspace, prepping your workspace, and a whole lot of practice and meditation and things like that.

Magical traditions that get bundled under the heading of wizardry tend to focus on force multiplication, obtaining enough contextual understanding of a subject to make whatever power is applied go further. This means a lot of studying theory and using magic to make observations (such as the existence of microorganisms and their connection to disease) and often results in making clever devices based on what you’ve learned that may not actually wind up being magical at all. 

Which is why the solar greenhouse proposal is considered ‘more wizardly’ than the fruit walls, which are wizardly in the first place even though the technology is pretty widespread at this point--it’s carried the principle of minimizing the energy you have to invest to get the result you want to the logical conclusion, where you don’t have to do any magic at all, you just set up the situation and get out of the way and the sun will do the work for you.

Other schools of magic, particularly religious ones, are more likely to emphasize just getting better at handling energy for yourself, which tends to yield a lot more in the way of immediate practical dividends and in a lot of quarters wizards who don’t do something obviously practical like physic or smithcraft with their theoretical background are considered crackpots or dilettantes 

An impression helped along by the fact that being taken on as a student of wizardry at a basic level tends to focus more on your reading comprehension than your ability to actually do any magic, so in places where religious and wizardly institutions coexist the most talented students have a tendency to gravitate toward the religious life. This is particularly marked in areas religiously dominated by the Compact of the Golden Circle, wherein full ordination is contingent on being able to pull off certain fairly hefty rituals, so if you aren’t physically or mentally up to that kind of magical heavy lifting your religious career will stall out in one of the lay fraternities. In some of the cities on Sutouchel, the landmass to the southeast where the Compact is based, a slang term for wizard is ‘sanctum washout.’

But of course force multiplication is something that can scale up pretty far, and studying theory doesn’t stop you from also putting work into your practical skills, and not having talent isn’t the only reason someone would choose not to seek out a clerical career, if it’s even an option. Religion along the Meroda is pretty localized; communities tend to have local deities who correspond to a natural feature like the nearest mountain or the river or something, and if that deity rates a fulltime shrine the keeper also tends to be the major local medical provider, and since the wizards got settled in at the Tower it’s become pretty popular for shrinekeeping families to send their kids there for a year or two to get some educational polish in addition to what their parent already emphasized.

So depending on where you live and what your personal experience has been you’re going to have very different ideas about what wizards are good for.

Hrm. I’ve gone on a tangent. But that wound up taking so long you came back! :D I love it when being turtle works out in my favor.

Or was this actually the meta I was supposed to be doing in the first place? Aaaaa who knows.

im fairly confident you said eight asks survived so this is number nine? anyways onwards! "The hale survivors of the First Battle of the Second Descent sit waiting in their leathers, jack-chains and helmets laughably inadequate armor against the coming danger, and yet the best hope now just as they were on Carun Tol once the wizard fell" i have a lot of emotions about how their best bet is also a terrible bet but its all they have (9/?)

Yes 8. 

Woo, thank you! ^^ & I love that you described it that way because that also describes the ‘summon alien’ spell Yl Fanult is casting and echoing the same emotional theme throughout the scene was very much the goal here.

"Threads have escaped from the braids pinned across the top of her skull: she has not had the chance to take them down for two days." god just the continuation of how desperate everything is / "He leans forward to peer through the narrow glass that has been turned on its articulated base to face the middle of the room, and relaxes very slightly. At least there has been no catastrophic alteration there, either." what does that one do id assume theres no approching army in the middle of the room -

:D Yeah, the fact that one of the chief medics available is already overworked to the point of neglecting nonessential personal hygiene and the enemy isn’t even here yet I hoped would resonate.

Well, remember how some of the telescopes at the beginning point in directions not included in the normal three dimensions of space? :}

- "trained as it long has been upon the face of the moon" also forgot to mention their enemies being from the moon is Rad As Hell / "He snaps his fingers for a spark that falls into the deep circular groove full of distilled spirits, and steps through that as well. He is not burned." ooooh whats he doing / "At his feet lie a glittering piece of gold ore, a moonstone, and a carefully sanded round of pumice." i see the connection to the moonstone bc moon army but i wonder about the others -

Thank you! It took a fair amount of poking before I decided it was a solid approach; it provides just enough physical alienation that there’s no direct cultural relationship and you can have that ‘everyone in the entire world Disliked That’ vibe, without needing to create any complicated magical and cultural explanation for such a long run of isolationism. They were out of contact because they were On The Moon.

Also I really get a kick out of putting space invaders in a fantasy setting in a way that stops just short of turning into sci-fi.

I’m glad the ritual lead-up is exciting! Even if the foreshadowing wasn’t as obvious as I thought it was lol. That’s fixable. 

Gold is for the sun, moonstone is yeah for the moon lol (although in other circumstances people also use jade, because it’s been a long time since the moon was uniformly silver on account of it having been terraformed a few thousand years ago) and pumice is for the world--it’s a stone full of air that floats on water, so it’s popular as an anchoring device for rituals that call on all three local celestial bodies.

"He cannot take much time. He has only until the ring of fire dies." whats he doingggggg / anyways i love this so much!! the descriptions are gorgeous and im so invested in all of everything!! i hope you write more im so curious about it all!! 

XD Ok I covered this already, I would have saved it for down here or Been Mysterious if tumblr hadn’t eaten the last few asks the first time lol. Thank you so much again! For encouragement! Before and now! I’ll try! To keep it going!

Here’s hoping this successfully posts, tumblr just kicked me onto New Dashboard again and disabled the turn-it-off button, so now my alternate posting strategy is borked up too. 🤞😅😘