#the alternative of course is that they're full of shit and don't actually know the language

[toskarinfr]

following up on your previous ask, is there a reason people who know the language use mtl anyway? i've seen a couple tls say it and i'm not sure if that squares with what you're saying to be quite honest

first things first, I just need to specify: almost all of the translation projects with people that actually know the language basically never have mtl that isn't heavily edited to the point of basically being rewritten.

the main problem with using mtl without knowledge of the language is that you can't really ever know if you've got the right reading. just to list off a few examples: is there a proper noun messing with the output? are you encountering the hydraulic ram / water sheep problem? what about pronouns? references to other media? slang? or has the translator just eaten half the input since it couldn't parse it properly (surprisingly common for the mtls that value grammaticality the highest)? sure, you can solve some of those issues with a bit of googling, but can you solve all of them? what about the ones where the definitions aren't available anywhere in a language you know?

the reason that translators still use it sometimes is that a lot of those go away when you can manually correct the errors. not all of them, mind you: depending on the workflow and how bad the results are shaping mtl into a translation that reads well takes more work than just translating from scratch. however, in certain situations a quick and dirty lookup on a phrase dictionary with a search entry works as a first draft, and that's what you're seeing people talk about

[discodeerdiary]

There's a good reason why I try not to argue publicly with anyone under 18, and it's not that I think they're inherently stupid, it's not that I think their brains are "underdeveloped", it's not that I think they can "do no wrong", it's that I never know how much freedom they actually have to think freely, or how many of their opinions are actually their own. Of course, under-18s *can be* capable of thinking for themselves and developing their own opinions, but (here in the US at least) law and culture put a lot of roadblocks on their ability to do so.

Of course parents and teachers cannot actually control the inner thoughts of the children they wield power over, but they can restrict the information that they have access to, can punish them for saying the wrong things, can cut them off from healthy diverse social groups, and can convince the child their thoughts are being monitored through religion, psychology, and other appeals to higher authority.

Thus if a random teenager says some headass shit in my mentions I have no way of knowing if these are opinions they arrived at on their own, or if they are dogmas forced on them by the people holding food and shelter over their head. If it's the latter, there's nothing to be gained from a public confrontation: people are generally unwilling to change their opinions in a direction that threatens their social support system, and they are especially unwilling to do so at the behest of an internet stranger who cannot offer alternative forms of support. If a teen is genuinely curious about my opinion (that is *if they consent* to a discussion of disagreements) and if I have the mental bandwidth for a potentially emotionally loaded conversation, yeah I'll have it, but I'm not gonna maintain any illusions about my ability to change their mind until they can find a way to live independently.

This is also why my leniency toward the not-yet-adult tends to also extend to the recently-adult. Coming up with a system of beliefs that you're actually willing to stand behind? Shit takes time, and I'm not necessarily gonna expect it of a 20-year-old who may, for all I know, have been living under conditions of near-absolute control up until their 18th birthday. Sure they may be opening their mind in college, or college may be their parents way of keeping them too occupied with busywork to develop new opinions, as they continue to hold financial support over their head. It's around their mid-twenties that I'm willing to go full gloves-off antagonistic with strangers, knowing that they've had a few years of legal and social adulthood under their belt, and that even if they're still financially dependent on their parents it's a different sort of dependence, one where they're given default legal permission to run away from home.

A lot of people are deeply uncomfortable with this line of thinking because if you look too far into the factors that influence young people's thoughts, you eventually have to start asking yourself which forces of dependency are influencing your own beliefs and opinions. Yeah, as an independent adult you may have the option to quit your job, divorce your spouse, ditch your friends, move to another country, but realistically how many of these can you accomplish at the same time? How many do you even want to? And how are all of these forces *in aggregate* setting the acceptable limits of what you're allowed to think and feel? It can be upsetting to think of yourself this way, it can be easier to think of yourself as a true free thinker and children as mindless automatons, but I urge you to think of mentally coercive environments as a continuum rather than a binary. The point is not to free yourself from all influence, but to gain the ability to see yourself as an influenced mind, and to have compassion for those dealing with all the bullshit you don't have to anymore.

[mmhcs]

₊✩｡🕷˚🕸⋆｡₊✩｡🕷˚🕸⋆｡₊✩｡🕷˚🕸⋆｡₊✩｡🕷˚🕸⋆｡₊✩｡🕷˚🕸⋆｡₊✩｡🕷˚🕸⋆｡₊✩｡

Okay, Miguel with a nice and sweet partner is very cool and very wholesome and I am in full support of that dynamic but what about Miguel with a partner that's equally if not scarier than him?

Like, compared to you, Miguel is actually the nice one? People give him a lot of flak and he used to understand and accept but ever since you two got together, he's like, "You think that I'm mean? That I'm scary? You should meet my partner—you'll cry."

Whether you're a Spider or not, you go to the Spider Society and of course everybody is nice to and you're nice to everybody (just because you have a scary aura doesn't mean that you're a jerk) but Miguel uses it to his advantage because during meetings when nobody's listening to him, he says, "Don't make me call (Y/N)." and everybody immediately shuts up and pays attention.

Alternatively, when Miguel does call you in, all you have to do is stand at his side with your arms crossed and a frown on your face like a disappointed parent/teacher and suddenly everyone is paying attention because you being called in is basically the equivalent of a parent having to leave work early to have an impromptu meeting with their misbehaving child's teacher.

Whenever you and Miguel argue, it's like lightning and thunder.

Everybody knows to stay out of it (which they most definitely do) but they just can't help but watch somebody go toe-to-toe with Miguel O'Hara.

And more often than not, Miguel walks out of his office with a pout on his face, looking like a child who just got grounded.

As he skulks out of his office, a bunch of Spiders that were eavesdropping around the corner scatter in the opposite direction, trying to look busy. Everyone except Miles, Gwen, Pavitr, Hobie, Peter, and Jess.

While Miles, Gwen, and Pavitr all try to comfort Miguel, Hobie simply wraps an arm around Miguel and pulls him down to his height. Then, with a smirk on his face, Hobie asks, "Trouble in paradise, mate?"

Miguel only mumbles something incoherent and pushes Hobie off of him, still pouting. Meanwhile, Peter, Jess, and Lyla are trying to hold back their snickers.

But Miguel loves you.

Sometimes when people give him shit, he doesn't retaliate; he calmly walks away from the situation and goes and tells you what the other person said about him and from there he goes to bed knowing that the person who was mean to him earlier now has to sleep with one eye open and a rosary underneath their pillow because when you see them, it's on sight.

Similarly, if the two of you ever have a child or children, you do not play about them. If people thought that you two were scary before, they're packing their bags and moving to the next dimension when the situation involves one of your children.

You and Miguel angry together at the same thing? Lord.

[kalinara]

So I saw a post earlier talking about Marvel couples and how relatively few long term relationships there are. There was mention of Reed and Sue as being basically the most consistently together couple, crediting that to the nature of the Fantastic Four being about family.

I don't disagree with that.

But then there was a comment about Scott and Jean being "all over the place" and depending on editorial at the time. Sorry for the paraphrase, but I couldn't find the post again to be sure.

And honestly I couldn't disagree with that more.

The thing about Scott Summers and Jean Grey is that, with two exceptions, if they are both alive, and they both know the other one is alive, they are together FULL STOP.

The first exception to this is the original Lee/Kirby years. Because they hadn't gotten together yet. But anyone who has sat through the god knows how many issues it took for the two to actually get the fuck over it and fuck basically gets stockholmed into shipping these idiots.

Because when you go from seeing this nonsense in issue 10:

THIS nonsense in issue 24:

THIS nonsense in issue 3-fucking-4:

And you realize this is only a sampling and that pretty much every issue in between has more of this idiotic bullshit, you'll be screaming at them to "JUST FUCK ALREADY!!!" too.

NGL, it's what turned me into a shipper. Fucking Stockholm Syndrome.

The other time, of course, is X-Factor. Because Scott, in his incredible wisdom and self-perception, happened to marry a woman who looked exactly like Jean Grey, (and asked her if she was Jean Grey on the eve of the wedding).

Scott gets a lot of shit from fans for ditching his wife and son for Jean Grey (which is a vast oversimplification of a very complicated storyline, but fine, for once, let's go with it). So yeah.

A good chunk of X-Factor is basically just these two finding their way back to each other after dealing with a whole mess of other mind-bogglingly traumatizing events and trying to raise a baby while meeting alternate future kids and (in Jean's case) not really handling that well.

But anyway, after that? They're together.

Now, admittedly, the Grant Morrison era of X-Men is a bit complicated. We all know about Emma Frost. I still resent deeply the fact that a man is named cheater for getting taken advantage of by his therapist, but fine. Maybe they'd have broken up over Emma, maybe not. Maybe Jean would finally break down and fuck Logan, maybe not. Sadly she died instead. And then a future version of her decided to push Scott and Emma together for a while. Which was a fucking weird narrative choice, but fine.

When Jean comes back? Immediate romantic scene with her resurrected husband by the way. And yeah, fine, he drops dead again later. And then when HE comes back to life, she's off in another dimension and presumed dead for a bit.

But when they are back, alive, and in the same place? She immediately shoves her tongue down his throat.

On Krakoa, they're the most married they've ever been. They finally get to raise their son together, in a place that isn't a future hellhole. They are explicitly polyamorous, implicitly in a throuple, but when it comes down to the wire, it's Scott Summers and Jean Grey.

And now, in From the Ashes, she's off being a goddess in space. But she's still having psychic phone sex with her patiently waiting husband. It's not clear if they're still doing the polyamory thing, I'd like to think they are because we so rarely get to see portrayals of non-monogamous but still very happy couples. But who knows. What we do know is that even now, even when they're not in the same place: it's Scott Summers and Jean Grey.

I suppose the one exception is young Scott and young Jean when they're brought to the future. But here's the thing. As much as they both try to fight it, as often as they've tried to tease some other kind of ship with Hank or Laura or Jimmy Hudson, or teenaged Vampire Storm, or anyone else. The two still can't ever really escape each other's orbit. (And you know, maybe if they actually got the full story instead of fucked up fragments from incredibly biased people who currently hate at least one of them, they might have felt a little less like escaping. Who knows?)

I guess I can see the argument that the state of their relationship can vary. Sometimes they're very happy, sometimes they're raising a kid. Sometimes they're frayed. Sometimes they fight. Sometimes they fuck other people.

But in the end, as long as they're both alive, it's Scott Summers and Jean Grey.

Reed and Sue still get top billing as the big couple of 616, sure. They're not immune to silly love triangles, but they tend to be dead less often.

But I still think Scott and Jean are up there, as consistent and steady as anything in the Marvel Universe.

[bambiraptorx]

What’s the biasd au? I saw that ask but didn’t see it on your pinned post and Jr and 03 Casey are my two favorite animated Caseys lol

yeahhhh I'm gonna be honest I've been needing to update my masterpost since like last august, there's probably around half a dozen AUs that aren't listed on it oops.

Anyway the full title of the au is Bishop Is A Shit Dad, and it's one where basically Rise Casey Jr ends up in 03, is found by the EPF, and essentially convinces Bishop that he's a Bishop clone from a future timeline--partly because that's technically true considering my lore for him and Rise Bishop and partly because 03 Bishop 100% identified the weird kid asking about the EPF as an alien, and well, we all know how he treats aliens.

So Casey Jr is essentially stuck in the EPF for a while as he tries to figure out how he got here and how to get home, and that time is spent learning the inner workings of the EPF. Also annoying the heck out of Bishop because Jr is pretty familiar with the ins and outs of how Bishops tend to think (again for lore reasons related to him technically being a version of Bishop himself), and therefore very well equipped to conduct psychological warfare on the guy.

All that said, Bishop essentially sees Casey as an extension of himself because of buying into the "I'm a clone of you from the future" thing, so even though he sees Casey as something of a flawed/failed experiment, he decides it's worthwhile to invest the time and energy in training him for field work. And hey the boy does have a lot of good skills already (which actually are from growing up in an apocalypse lol) so whatever Future Bishop messed up by letting the kid become like this, clearly Present Bishop can do better. So the boy starts getting trained.

After a while of Casey Jr being in 2003, Bishop feels that Casey is prepared enough to start going on missions for him, usually ones involving people who would know enough about the EPF to be able to recognize operatives like the Purple Dragons, but wouldn't recognize Casey as being connected to the EPF. For example if Bishop finds out the PDs have a stash of alien weaponry they're trying to sell, he'd send Casey to interfere and/or steal some of the weaponry himself. But of course, these are also the targets the turtles + allies tend to keep an eye on, so it was really inevitable that their paths would cross eventually.

CJ recognizes 03 Casey as some sort of alternate of himself pretty quickly. 03 Casey does not do the same because he is a himbo, so he kinda just goes "oh this reedy looking guy with long black hair has the same name as me what a coincidence!" In his defense I don't think he's got any experience with dimensional travel lol. I like to think that 03 Casey has a couple run ins with Jr before the turtles meet him, though. Enough time to maybe have a fight on his side and get to know him a bit before the whole rug pull of him being from another dimension.

[forthegothicheroine]

Ah, Waxwork (1988)! The epitome of "I didn't say it was good, I said I liked it." A trashy horror comedy which became infamous among a very specific community of monster fuckers: those too hardcore for Edward Cullen and too squeamish for Pinhead.

I was going to just make a bullet-point list of my thoughts upon rewatch, but there's too much to say, so you lucky people get a full recap!

Our protagonist is Mark, a rich boy who for some reason attends community college. He lives under the thumb of his ridiculous sitcom-villain mother, and has to rely upon his butler sneaking him coffee and cigarettes. I suppose we're seeing what Bruce Wayne's life would be like in a world without alley muggings.

Mark getting sexually rejected will be a running theme in this movie, so let's meet the women who will be doing the rejecting: China and Sarah! These college classmates of his are that improbably 80s horror movie duo, the evil slut and the sweet virgin who are for some unexplained reason besties. China has exchanged Mark for a football player, and she smokes and wears sunglasses and comments on boy's bodies while Sarah acts mildly scandalized. They walk to school, discussing boys and just how promiscuous is too promiscuous, when they see something at the side of the street- a new Waxwork house!

Little do they know what darkness and delight await them inside.

Isn't this a bit outdated, the girls ask each other? You're telling me, I respond, as a former actress at a tourist attraction that was next door to Madame Tussaud's, I have no idea who buys tickets.

They are welcomed at the door by holy shit, David Warner? I really hope he filmed this directly back to back with The Company of Wolves. David Warner invites them to come to a special private opening with a group of up to six people- any more would be too crowded! And China, apparently having nothing better to do as a sexy party girl in the 1980s, agrees. Thus, the rest of the friend group is roped in to attending.

Mark is there, mostly to be hurt whenever China talks about how much fun she's having sleeping with guys who aren't him. There's a dating couple who will show up now and again late in the movie but don't really matter. There are, of course, China and Sarah. And then-

Oh my god. I hadn't seen Twin Peaks yet when I first saw this movie, but oh my god, that's Bobby from Twin Peaks. Doing the same movement tics and vocal cadence that he did as Bobby from Twin Peaks. This is so distracting, you have no idea how much.

Anyway, the gang go to the waxwork house and speaking of Twin Peaks, they are greeted by a small man doing the Peter Dinklage bit from Living in Oblivion ("Make it weird, put a dwarf in it!") We don't have too much time to dell on that, though. The kids hang out for a bit so China has more time to sexually insult Mark, and then they are finally allowed into the wax museum itself.

The waxwork is, all in all, actually pretty cool! It's a bunch of scenes from "history", by which we mean classic pre-80s horror movies. There's the Mummy, there's the Invisible Man, there's Audrey II, there's Jack the Ripper. Keep in mind that all of these exhibits, not just Jack the Ripper, will later prove to have been taken directly from real life events. The sequel muddies this with horror movie scenes that take place in alternate dimensions in a cosmos that weirdly resembles Moorcock's Eternal Champion mythos, but we're not talking about the sequel right now.

I wish I could write a novelization of this movie and just go nuts on the worldbuilding. My speculations would make for an epic of Tolkienesque length.

Bobby from Twin Peaks is the first to go exactly where you're expecting: into an exhibit to get killed. He stumbles into a scene from the Wolf Man (which oddly enough looks a bit like the 2010 Wolf Man but they're obviously trying to do either the original Universal or Hammer version.) He bitches about this, how it must be a hologram and a super lame one at that because there are, like, no girls in bikinis or anything, just some dick in a cabin telling him to run for his life!

(Put a pin in that, by the way.)

He should have listened. But hey, someone has to be the first bit of canon fodder.

The Wolf Man is, of all people, John Rhys-Meyers! He pleads with Bobby to run, but it's too late- his transformation has begun! This is not a bad werewolf look, as practical effects go; he's got a snout and everything. The extremely long ears are what bother me. I felt this way in the Into the Woods movie as well- Johnny Depp just looked like a really sleazy rabbit. But this Wolf Man is a real deal monster, and while Bobby cowers after taking a flesh wound, he sets upon a pair of hunters who have tracked him down, ripping the younger one in half straight through the head.

As goofy as it is, Waxwork gets pretty damn gory.

The older hunter, who's clearly supposed to be Peter Cushing as Van Helsing, ends his reign of terror with a silver bullet. And when the wounded Bobby starts to transform as well, Van Helsing puts a stop to that with a second shot. Fade out to the waxwork exhibit, which now has a half-transformed victim beside the Wolf Man.

So much for Bobby. But eh, fuck 'im, he wasn't much of a character. China, on the other hand...

China notices a display with a particularly handsome villain. She takes a step over the velvet rope to take a closer look, and thus seals her fate.

(Side note: I don't know if I'd survive the movie or be first to get killed, because I would be going "But we're not supposed to touch the exhibits!" the whole time.)

China emerges into a Christopher Lee-worthy dark castle, wearing a white prom dress that's good enough period attire for this sort of movie. Thus begins the Dracula sequence, the first reason this movie has a very specific cult following.

As a teen in the '00s, I frequented web rings of blogs that reviewed old science fiction movies. There was one sight which was dedicated to cataloging every vampire movie the author could find- her favorites were The Lost Boys, Mr. Vampire and Interview with the Vampire- and she listed this as the single sexiest depiction of Dracula on film. Naturally, I spent the next several pre-streaming era years hunting down a VHS.

And who do we have playing sexy Dracula? In yet another 'you're not gonna believe this' casting choice, Miles "How Much Keefe" O'Keefe! The man known to all MSTies as Ator, and to other shlock aficionados as Tarzan! I have no idea why they cast him, but you know what? That barbarian warrior cleans up pretty damn well.

China is too stunned by her surroundings to quibble, and takes the part of a gothic heroine staying at the castle, whose fiance "unfortunately had to leave just now." Dracula introduces her to his lovely lady friends and his brooding adult son Stephan, and serves her a meal of steak tartar in salty red sauce, the suggestive setup for a rather gruesome payoff later.

In-character, Sarah is cornered in her room by Stephan, who says that his father wants her for himself and that he'd be banished from the castle if it was known he put his hands on her first- but before he can get past the fangs-out stage of his assault, she flees down the hallway, as far as she can run, until she reaches a room out of a Saw movie poster, half-dungeon and half-kitchen.

Her fiancee- that is, the fiancee in whatever real-life story she stepped into- is chained up, with one leg gruesomely cut down to the bone to serve to his captors and his own unknowing bride. China tries and fails to unchain him while he runs her through a quick explanation of what vampires are and how to kill him, just in time for Stephan to catch up with her.

China is surprisingly heroic in this scene, given how completely unsympathetic the movie had set her up to be. Son of Dracula goes down with a cross burned into his forehead, while she takes out a few Brides via wine bottles through the chest. When the chained up fiancee turns, though, she flees, sobbing, though the castle, her white gown covered in blood.

"Going somewhere, my beauty?" Dracula asks. She turns and looks into his eyes- and now it is too late. She falls under his hypnotic trance, and he lowers her to the floor, ending her human life in an ecstatic kiss.

It's a better way to go than she would have gotten in most other dumb horror movies of this era.

Mark- remember Mark?- has finally noticed that two of his friends (such as they are) have gone missing. He figures they must have gone off to hook up, but that doesn't feel right- for some reason, he knows that Bobby is the one man that China would never ever want to fuck. Sarah is less concerned, as she's focused on a statue of the Marquis de Sade looking like a sexy pirate. When Mark does get her to leave with him, he shoots his shot, but Sarah says that while he's a nice guy and she likes him a lot, she's looking for something...different.

Sarah's whole deal, as you may have guessed, is that she's a virgin at least in part because she can only be satisfied by BDSM, a desire she learned about through secretively reading de Sade but has no contemporary sex ed language to talk about. To the film's credit, this very Clive Barker plotline isn't used to make her unsympathetic or deserving of death, but rather to enhance the theme of Mark getting sexually rejected.

(Also, Mark paid his ESL housekeeper to write an essay for him, which was demanded by a history professor who was weirdly into Hitler. To his dismay, the essay read "I do not like dictators. They do the shouting and wear the small mustaches."

Well. She's not wrong.)

When China and Bobby fail to reappear the next day, Mark and Sarah go off to investigate. A mean cop tells them that lots of people have recently gone missing, and ends up investigating on his own- an investigation that ends with him being killed by the Mummy while the theme from Swan Lake plays in the background. (The title music in Universal's original Mummy and Dracula! The music I walked down the aisle to at my wedding! It's a little detail I liked.)

China's jock boyfriend also shows up to get killed by the Phantom of the Opera, while David Warner shakes his head in surprise to learn that he knew the character from a movie. "They'll make a movie of anything these days!" he says. However, I found myself focusing on the brief close-up where we saw that the Phantom had a mustache. A well-maintained mustache. Half-covered by a half-mask. Does he shave and maintain it on the deformed side, too? These are the kind of questions my novelization would go into.

Mark and Sarah get a quick rundown on everything from a professorly type of guy in a wheelchair who's basically the Criminologist from Rocky Horror. He tells them that via something something dark magic, victims are being given to evil men who are long dead to revive them and then something something destroy the world. For all I joke, it is my fondest dream to be this kind guy- a librarian who could give the protagonist exactly the book they need to fight Dracula.

Remember that pin I had you put in the Wolf Man pleading with Bobby to run? That brings up the question of what this movie considers "evil men". The Wolf Man really didn't want to kill anybody, but his body was taken over by the curse! And what about Audrey II? I'll grant that the plant sure was a dick, but was he a man? And what about all the ghouls in the zombie exhibit? The first time I watched this I also quibbled about the Marquis de Sade being here alongside actual murders, but I'll let that slide this time- the sheer scale of his imagination for evil was impressive enough, even if he didn't get to do most of it.

Mark and Sarah go to burn the waxwork down, but the temptation to fuck the Marquis is too much and Sarah just willingly goes right into his wax exhibit. Mark falls into the zombie exhibit, where it goes black and white in a pastiche of Night of the Living Dead as he fights off walking corpses and crawling disembodied hands.

Sarah has a better time. Now we see the second part of why this movie has a very specific cult reputation.

The Marquis de Sade, as portrayed in Waxwork, is dashing man with long dark hair, a puffy shirt open to reveal a very hair chest, wearing leather boots and gloves and always carrying a whip. He is entertaining a man (blonde and similarly good-looking, played by the director) whom he calls "your majesty", who will later to be revealed as Prince George of England, the future George IV. This struck me as absolutely hilarious.

For the prince's entertainment, he offers the sole virgin in his stable of beauties- Sarah, of course, stepping forward to have her arms affixed over her head proudly and eagerly. He leans in and whispers his intentions to Sarah- to whip her bloody, hand her over to George and his men for their enjoyment, then torture her to death- and she kisses him and swoons into her chains.

This scene is interesting because of how it's shot. There's no nudity in this movie- the only skin Sarah proceeds to expose is her back. I don't want to use terms like "male gaze" or "female gaze" because the former is a greater scale film theory term and the latter isn't really a term outside of tumblr, but this scene and the one with Dracula are presented as bodice rippers. Whether or not women went to see this movie, let alone enjoyed it, both scenes but especially the one with Sarah and de Sade are portrayed as female sexual fantasies. We don't see much of Sarah's body, but we see many close-ups of her face, perspiring and biting her lip as she waits for each sting of the whip.

Britain's "Video Nasties" list from 1984 banned many gory horror movies as obscene. Waxwork has far less gore than Evil Dead or Bay of Blood. As far as I know, it has never been banned under any obscenity laws.

By the time Mark (remember Mark?) gets out of his exhibit and into Sarah's, we are told that she has taken more whipping than any other woman the Marquis has ever seen, and enjoyed every bit of it. Mark saves her, but she pushes him away and runs back to the Marquis, kneeling at his foot and grasping at his boot. No, she protests, she wants to stay here! Smirking at the polo-clad dork from the future, de Sade said the line that dropped my jaw to the floor when I first saw this in my impressionable youth.

"Don't be angry just because she had her first orgasm at the end of a whip and not by your touch!"

Somehow not shriveling up and dying from that insult, Mark persuades Sarah that they should go because this setup did kill their friends and Your Mind Makes it Real and ugh, fine, Sarah will go back and save the world if she really has to. de Sade promises Mark that they'll meet again, though. ("How much did the Marquis de Sade know about this whole time and/or dimension traveling thing?" is another great question I would have expounded on in my novelization.)

But the kids have not yet saved the day, and their two friends from the very beginning are sacrificed in their places. The stars are right, the sacrifices have been made, and it's time for all the monsters and assorted villains to come to life and something something destroy the world! Thankfully, backup has arrived in the form of the wheelchair-bound expert from before and a while gang of his elderly and heroic friends, including Mark's totally-not-Alfred butler. Let the big chaotic fight scene commence!

Blood sprays left and right. Mark kills a zombified former friend, and weeps when his butler kills the vampirized China. Sarah tosses the small minion guy right into Audrey II. Dracula gets perhaps the lamest death onscreen he's ever had, surpassing even Scars of Dracula where he was randomly hit by lightning.

And the Marquis de Sade, who apparently is quite the swashbuckler, is flitting around with rapier and whip, having a grand old time. (At least it's better than what he supposedly did during the storming of the Bastille...) He beats Mark easily in combat, but makes the mistake of doing a gloating monologue before driving his blade through the boy's throat, giving Sarah the chance to break his spine with an ax. Let's hope Mark appreciates the sacrifice.

David Warner still must be confronted, however. Mark demands to know why he wants to destroy the world, and he smiles and responds "Somebody has to."

I guess you can't argue with that.

The elderly gentlemen give their lives to kill Warner, and the whole building goes up in flames. The only survivors are Mark, Sarah and a crawling disembodied hand who is off to set up the events of the sequel. Mark and Sarah embrace, but nothing more, at least not until the sequel.

Is Waxwork good? No. Is it scary? Some of the gory bits did make me wince. Is it funny? Sometimes on purpose, sometimes probably not on purpose. Is it offensive? We see a brief glimpse of what looks like a very racist tableau with an evil witch doctor or something, the role of the small minion is not exactly a great part, and China and Sarah were plucked right from the virgin-whore archetype with only somewhat more depth.

But do I watch it, fascinated, as if it is an esoteric text containing the secret alchemical formula for gold? I sure do.

[beetleviolet]

Let's talk about Bishop from TOTTMNT

(Tw sibling death)

@hahachiknfunny

Ok. I'm going to just get this out of the way at the beginning.

I HATE THIS CHARACTER

And not in a "aaa this villain makes me so mad bc they're evil" no I mean I hate the way her character is developed and justified.

IF YOU DISAGREE PLEASE DO EXPLAIN I WOULD QUITE GENUINLY LOVE TO HEAR ABOUT IT!!!

So I am still working my way through a lot of different tmnt series (currently alternating between 2012 and 2003), so I don't have a lot of experience with the usual Bishop character. Based on the little I know about him (mostly from fanfiction), my general impression was that he was this bigoted white guy who was like. A mutant nazi or something. He hates mutants because they are different, they are "flawed", and therefore they are a threat. I figured he was just a hateful asshole, and hadn't thought about it more then that.

But for this, they decided to go in a different direction. The ✨tragic backstory✨ direction. Which is a pretty good direction! IF you do it right. Which, in my humble opinion, THEY ABSOLUTELY DID NOT!!!!

Ok let's get some actual points here!

When we get Josefina Bishop's backstory, she starts as this passionate, nice character who is eager to achieve her robot building dreams. Nothing about her is mean or hating or anything of the sort. She is exasperated by Rod, but doesn't say anything incredibly bitter to him, she's just frustrated being forced to work with this rich guys man child. Which yeah! Thats fair! She has a sister who died and who is the inspiration of her work. Awesome!

And then her workshop is destroyed.

Let me just add. She is being funded by a millionaire. She probably has insurance! Her sister is in no way harmed by these events. And yet her response to property damage is DOMESTIC FUCKING TERRORISM.

She immediately gets bitter and revenge-filled, deciding that she should exterminate ALL THE MUTANTS!!!

You know, the mutants that were helping fight Superfly? The enemies of the one who destroyed her work? THEYRE LITERALLY ON HER SIDE???

And not only does this hatred of Superfly extend to the turtles.

SHE ALMOST KILLS A SUBWAY TRAIN FULL OF PEOPLE!!!

Because, of course "iTs A sMaLL pRicE tO PaYyYyyy"

Bestie. Honey. Girlfriend.

Its just. Weird to me? It doesn't seem very thought out. I would have loved a kind of change up from the usual Bishop themes, but just because its different and new isn't an excuse for it to suck!

IT TOTALLY COULD HAVE WORKED AND HERE IS HOW.

Nickelodeon needs to stop being a bitch and kill off her sister during the Superfly conflict.

Its very clearly what they WANTED to do. Its like the original concept was that her sister died, but that was considered too violent, so they took that out, but then didn't replace it with something else. And they tried so hard to be like "ohhh its about my sisterrrr" GIRL WHAT THIS IS ABOUT SUPERFLY DESTROYING YOUR SHIT AND YOU BEING BUTT HURT ABOUT IT.

And another thing! For a character to turn evil, they have to SNAP! And a character can't snap unless they are already under enough pressure to make that a threat.

Make her be cruel to Rod. Have her be control freak who has to have all the variables perfectly in place. Bitter about the sponsors that doubted and rejected her. Make her already angry at the world, have the only thing that matters to her be her robots and her sister, the two things that were always at her side. And then one day Superfly kills her sister and destroys her lifes work. Yes, she can rebuild the robots. Not the sister though, and making them without her is such an empty and performative motion.

Mutants have gotten people killed. They're too dangerous, its too much of a risk.

This mindset would make so much more sense if they just HAD SUPERFLY KILL HER SISTER LIKE OMG.

Also she had several direct conversations with the turtles, so she was well aware they were intelligent beings.

ALSO! She didn't target the mutants who used to work with Superfly. That would TOTALLY make sense even without the sister thing!

But no. She had to kill the TURTLES. The ones who are widely acknowledged and widely known to be the ones to stop Superfly and save NYC and the world.

But you know what? Maybe i could let that go. Its a kids show, right? And I did like her recovery arc at the end.

Until they. You know. COMPLETELY UN DID ALL OF THAT!!!!

I thought that maybe Bishop will be like. Idk a spy for the mutants or something, like a double agent, but tbh based on the previous writing of her character, I wouldn't put it past the writers to just. Have her do a complete 180. I'm just mad she's going to be a reoccurring character.

Anyway. I kinda hate to dump on this show so much bc I love (most) everything else about it. Bishop was the lowest point to me by far.

[cherikdogfood]

Ask game.

AU College Single father!Erik and Professor!Charles Dadnetp. Adorable child Lorna. Forbidden relationship. Sexual tension. Age difference.

Thank you so much!

@fullcatkryptonite First of all, thank you so much for the ask! I like getting prompts/asked to make summaries like this!

Secondly, I apologize in advance if what I'm wrote isn't what you had in mind.

Lastly, I wrote a summary based on the tags you made and I'm posting it here, and it's pretty long (I'm sorry, I can't write short things). However as I wrote the summary I had the idea for a full-blown fic and I actually started writing it. If you like the summary here, I'll be sure to write the actual fic for you! or, alternatively, if you want you could use the summary and write your own fic, i don't mind.

I can't give you any promises to finish the fic asap (my wips are glaring at me, plus i haven't finished my fics for cherikweek2024), but i'll do my best (if you want me to write it).

Sorry for rambling. Anyway, enjoy the summary below!

#AU College #Single father!Erik #Professor!Charles #Dadneto #Adorable child Lorna #Forbidden relationship #Sexual tension #Age difference

***

Charles is a professor at a university, and while he flirts a lot, he draws the line at dating his own students. He knows many of his students like him or have a crush on him (thanks to his telepathy), and he may flirt a little sometimes, but he won't ever date his students. He knows things could end badly for him (and the student) if they start dating, plus, the university would not be happy about it. 

Meanwhile, Erik is the single father of Lorna, who is around one year old at this stage. Erik and Magda didn't plan the pregnancy, it was more of a one night stand for them, but when Magda told Erik about the pregnancy he was ecstatic.

Unfortunately, Magda passed away at childbirth and Erik (who has always wanted a family) doesn't want Lorna to be raised by others or thrown into a foster home. Magda's parents are upset that their daughter is dead and kind of blames Erik for it, so he isn't close to them.

Erik is doing his best to juggle between being a father and attending university -- one of the classes he attends is taught by Charles.

Charles notices Erik because Erik's attendance is sporadic (this is because Erik has to take care of Lorna when babysitters aren't available, plus Erik is working two jobs in his spare time), and yet Erik's grades are really good. Other than noticing that Erik is hot and smart, Charles doesn't really notice that much.

However, things change after an incident in the park: it's Saturday and Erik takes Lorna to the park, and he sits on a bench with her on his side, and Erik is floating some metal objects and Lorna is giggling. Basically they're having a good time, but then a mutant hater (I shall call this person Karen) sees Erik's actions and starts screaming/cursing, basically making a racket.

Erik is upset, of course, and he gets more and more angry when Karen says, "Is that even your kid? Will the child be safe in the hands of a mutant like you? You're a danger to society, I should call child protective services!"

Angry (rightfully so), Erik stands up and starts shouting back at Karen, and in the midst of the argument Karen throws her drink at Erik (to splash him with it). Erik instinctively dodges and then he freezes, because shit there's Lorna behind him, and maybe Karen is right, he's not fit to be a father, how could he dodge when his daughter is behind him and oh god --

And the drink splashes unto Charles, who is standing in front of Lorna.

(Charles had been taking a walk in the park when he heard the racket and felt Erik's rage and anxiousness, and when Charles saw Karen throw the drink at Erik and Lorna he didn't think, he just moved to block it, because he could feel Erik's anxiousness and love for Lorna and, well, it was the right thing to do).

Erik is relieved because Lorna is alright, and then he realizes it's his professor standing there and he's just stunned. As for Karen, Charles mind-whammies her to go away and leave them alone. Anyway, thanks to this incident, Charles finds out that Erik has a daughter and he's a single father.

Charles starts helping Erik out, giving him the study materials for the classes that he missed, babysitting Lorna when he can, and just accompanying Erik. Charles is amazed at everything Erik has accomplished, because Erik is a good dad. He can change diapers and read fairytales and work 2 jobs and still get good grades.

Slowly, Charles finds himself falling for Erik, and vice versa. Unfortunately, Charles tries to keep in mind that Erik is his student, for god's sake, how can he date Erik? There's tons of sexual tension between the two of them, but every time things are getting really close, Charles pulls away.

It makes Erik frustrated, and he starts thinking maybe Charles is just doing this out of pity, maybe Charles doesn't like him, and how could Charles like him when he's a single father? When he's a failure to Lorna and he can't give her the life she deserves? So Erik hides his feelings, and Charles hides his feelings too.

Anyway, after misunderstandings and shenanigans, about one and a half year later, Erik and Charles find themselves locked inside a room, the metal doorknob melted into mush (courtesy of Lorna, who discovered her powers). Erik tries to unlock the door and Charles is angry, thinking Erik just hates him and wants to run away, and they argue and kiss and make-up.

Once Erik understands that Charles does love him, and Charles realizes that yes, he wants Erik even if Erik is his student, the two of them make up and start dating. Obviously it's a secret, and they have to do their best to make sure no one notices (Charles has, on more than one occasion, used his telepathy to cover up his hickies or to hide from prying eyes when he and Erik want to make out a bit after class).

When Erik finally graduates, the two of them can finally date openly, and they lived happily ever after.

The End.

[positivelybeastly]

Hey, it's been a while since I rambled on about Beast things, and I have something in mind. Let's talk about Hank McCoy . . .

From Earth-1610, the Ultimate Universe.

So, you often hear the generalisation thrown out that the original Ultimate Universe was, widely, garbage and full of far too much 2000s edge to be of worth if your name wasn't Spider-Man. And, by and large, that's true. There is some truly heinous shit in there, and certain issues . . . well, certain issues would likely have trigger warnings if they were made now.

But.

It wasn't all trash.

No, some of it was just tragic.

So, Hank McCoy, recruited to join the X-Men, age 17 I believe? He's your standard Hank - super genius (though that tendency is dialled back in this universe), devilish wit, bouncing, bounding hero with a good heart. Honestly, there's not a ton of differences to him, at least, on first glance. The only major difference is this.

Oh.

So, yeah, this version of Hank didn't have the Edna and Norton McCoy that I spend my life extolling the virtues of. He doesn't have this.

He has this.

Apologies for the language contained within, this is an Ultimate comic. But, yeah, this is . . . this is not great. And it's kind of horrifying to me, to think about how different Hank ends up, depending on how parents. 616 Hank was one of the most moral, lovely, warm, and emotionally open people you could have ever hoped to meet. He wasn't without his problems, but he was all right. He was stable.

Dark Beast, well . . . he grew up in a nightmare apocalypse Darwinist hellworld, so he didn't really stand a chance. His only parental figure was Mister fucking Sinister.

And 1610/Ultimate Hank had . . . them. And that's all it really takes.

Because Hank does have nice things, to start with. He's a good kid. He tries, anyway. He's just a little off in his own head - this is a Hank who's very much of the internet age, so as well as reading books, he spends a lot of his time on blogs, watching movies . . .

Watching a lot of 24 hour news coverage.

Internalising a lot of things.

And eventually it just . . . becomes a little too much. All the insecurities just mount, all the self-hatred becomes a little too acute.

Yeah, Beast and Storm are together in this universe. Kinda wild, huh?

But it's just so . . . awful, to me, to see him internalising all of this, and thinking that it's true. And the worst part is, he has every reason in the world to think that the Professor does this, because in this universe, the Professor really does do it! All the time! Every single time you thought he might be fucking with someone's head, yeah, he actually is!

So he has every right to be worried.

Every time he beats back the insecurity, the worry, the fear . . .

It comes back so much more acutely next time.

He ends up running from Xavier to Emma Frost, who is. Very different, but still running a Massachusetts Academy, which is going to be government sanctioned. An alternative to Xavier, since they're worried about telepathic interference in the President's head (Ultimate Emma only has diamond skin in this universe, no telepathy). And you know what the kicker is?

The ultimate irony?

Yes, pun intended.

"He's a teddy bear. He tests well."

People like him. They don't see him as threatening. He's soft, and warm, and intellectual, and he's just . . . every negative thought he has, it's in his head. It's in his head, where it can do the most damage.

Because of this.

God, it fucking kills me.

And then this happens.

Fucking kills me.

In the comments, you see a lot of people haranguing Hank - because of course they do, there are some things that are just multiversal constants - and they just . . . don't get it.

They don't get that self-doubt and insecurity and self-loathing and the fear that you'll never be worth anything, the fear that you never were worth anything, the belief that all you do is fuck up, that no-one could possibly like you for you, that they're all just pretending, it's all just one big joke and you're waiting for the shoe to drop, they don't get it.

They don't get it.

I have no idea how in the hell Brian Michael Bendis of all people managed to stitch together a decent narrative out of this, considering all the constituent parts he was handed and his limited skill as a writer, but I actually have to give Bendis kudos for once, this arc . . . this arc hit me.

It's one of the great tragedies of the Ultimate Universe, to me. This is the core difference between 616 and 1610 boiled down to one character arc. In one universe, Hank is one of the most popular mutants in the world, a beloved icon, X-Man, Avenger, Defender, the Bouncing Blue Beast!

In another, he never claws out of that pit of insecurity, and it kills him as surely as any disease or Sentinel.

[yurisorcerer]

Holy shit that was fucking incredible.

Warning: major hyped-up ramble session below.

The scheduling of the concert being switched around gives TogeToge a leg up to hopefully make an even bigger first impression at their first festival. Things seem to be going well for them, for once! Let's see if that lasts.

In the leadup to the festival, with Nina and Momoka actually doing pretty much fine for once, the show refocuses on its other three characters for a little while, spotlighting Subaru and how she's still hiding her involvement with the band from her overbearing grandmother, and then moving over to Tomo and Rupa, whose relationship---played to a tasteful tee, neither over- or under-explained---provides a source of strength for the both of them in the face of the loss of their respective families. Physically in Rupa's case, emotionally in Tomo's. Subaru seemingly resolves things with her grandma later in the episode, but Tomo and Rupa's issues aren't so easily packed away. I wouldn't be surprised if the show touches on them one more time before it ends.

Oh hey, Mine's back!

In general the atmosphere of the pre-show buildup reminds me a bit of the pre-concert scenes from Oshi no Ko, although in that show there's a different and more cynical context at play to the upbeat, nervy anticipation on display here.

Oh my god, it's the punk girl from episode one. (Kyouko, apparently.) There feels like a bit of symbolism in how even she's a fan of TogeToge now.

Momoka taking them all to the big main stage to see Diamond Dust play before their own show is gutsy. And at that, we get our rewind all the way back to Nina's confrontation with DD's current lead singer when they were both students. And, as has been previously implied a few times, friends! We still don't precisely know what their falling out was about, as Pink's remark to Nina where she tells her to stop "playing the tragic heroine" are awfully vague. Regardless, DD's performance itself is pretty good, although one gets the sense they're sort of being set up to fail here from a meta perspective. Their little show of rivalry here is admirable, but they aren't the band we've been following this entire time. (And while they sound fine, if we're being honest, they'd be rinsed not just by TogeToge but by most protagonist girl bands from these sorts of anime. Then again, maybe this is the intended reaction, and we're supposed to be feeling some amount of fannish partisanship.)

Rupa's just here for the drama as usual, what a queen.

During the sound check Subaru plays a pretty nice little break beat, and Rupa gets to show off her bass licks.

TogeToge also unveil their new looks here and all of them look genuinely fucking fantastic. Rupa's weird military uniform thing with the goggles, Subaru's pinstriped suit(?!), Nina's underdye and badass long shirt, Tomo's almost pixellated-looking hair bow accessory, Momoka's arm bands. Honestly just a killer visual presentation both in- and out-of-universe.

When the time comes to take the stage, they absolutely kill it. At the end of the day, this is an anime, so of course, Girls Band Cry deploys absolutely every single visual trick it can think of to really sell the performance that serves as the climax of this episode. "Void & Catharsis", the song they play, is a, if you'll pardon the pun, rock solid alternative number with a surprisingly heavy low-end that serves as a bed for Nina's incisive, comet-like vocals. (Also it has what I'm pretty sure is a breakdown??? I'm not a heavy metal expert, but what the fuck.) The show spins out into full music video mode here, taking a page from the otherwise very different Love Live series, as the stage blends into a blurry stitching-together of idealized, crystalized memories; defiance, lies, love, loss. It is perhaps the single most arresting moment in a music anime to air this year. I ended up replaying the entire thing from the start of the song onward, twice. I can't help myself; TogeToge have charisma. Every single one of them sheds tears during their part of the music video, making this episode something of a sideways title-drop.

The single most compelling visual element though has nothing to do with all the crazy camera tricks, overlays, flashbacks, anything like that, though. It's Nina herself. In what I can only describe as an absolute triumph of CGI in anime as a form, this little sixteen year old pipsqueak comes off as a complete and total superstar. She stomps angrily from one end of the stage to the other with her long shirt drooping and billowing dramatically, she grips her head in anger as she sings like the words are being physically ripped out of her throat, she headbangs, she pumps her fist and spins around to egg her own band on, she glares at the audience like she's trying to kill them---maybe Diamond Dust specifically, who are also watching---with her mind, she does weird shit with her hands and gestures around like a rapper. It's mesmerizing. Clearly the result of a ton of love not just for animation as an art form but for concerts as a form of performance. The entire thing is just end to end nuts, and this moment, regardless of what came before it or comes after it, completely validates Girls Band Cry as an artistic endeavor. If the entire rest of the show were to somehow go missing, removed from reality with a surgeon's knife, this performance alone would make the undeniable case that it deserved to exist.

Nina isn't even my favorite *character* in this show. But good god she's great here. I'm just honestly stunned.

As for GBC itself, there is only one real problem. There are still two episodes of this anime left. It's possible I'm just sitting in a sort of concertgoers' afterglow at the moment, but I kind of can't imagine what else the show could really do from here. How do you top that?

Nonetheless, Girls Band Cry wants to try, and that ambition is admirable.

[mossy-green-aka-ferrythem]

Yeah. Sort of given up on Limbus Company. Even with the tempation of "Oh, get your weekly lunacy for the future event pulls and Walpurgis Night!", it's like. Why even bother.

Like sure, I will probably come back to experience the story, because I believe Project Moon can still write truly powerful narratives, but honestly? If you ask me LobCorp and Library of Ruina will always have that ideal narrative structure, two games, with the first following into the second in such a beautiful way, and Library of Ruina being so open and shut in such a wonderful way.

While Limbus I don't like how much they're playing the long game. Hell, even when new Cantos come out, it's always a mix of "holy shit that's fucking amazing!" and "what. why. I mean it will probably grow on me but. odd narrative choice."

Like just. I can go on about things that have come to make me dislike it. There is no such thing as a good gacha. A forgiving gacha is an oxymoron. If the game itself is good, it will be held back from it's full excellency by the gacha aspects.

I mean like sure. I still love the characters. I love Don Quixote's muddled sense of heroism and excitement, Faust's mystery and capacity to know so many things through the Mirror Worlds, with the Mirror Worlds being on the FAR better end of a narrative implementation of "alternate universes", I daresay it hinges on being a favorite of mine, due to the concept of the themes and defining traits of a character being present in every single world, like it feels much less "muddy" like that, you know?

Also of course Heathcliff's story resonates with me but like. I don't know. I just got burnt out around Canto 6. Like it's just like. Not fun for me, it even can feel a bit tiring to read this all because I know what comes next, I know what this game wants from me.

I mean just like. Yeah. I still really and truly do love the characters, but like. In how hard this game tries to keep me with it, it lost me. That's the very thing about it. It has all these mechanics and systems that try to keep you playing and playing, worse yet, if you bought the battle pass, you have EVEN MORE of an obligation to keep playing, so you get your full money's worth. God I am glad I stayed free to play, as the Sunk Cost Fallacy aspect of it all really would have hurt more.

Like just. No. Even now I can feel that temptation, that is not out of fun, but rather out of necessity. The necessity to keep gaining resources so your characters are leveled enough to actually enable you to play the fucking game. Like just.

Stop. No More.

[typingatlightspeed]

i'd say pyro's a little bit harder to write than the other mercs because they're so mysterious and vague—in canon, their world is shown through pyrovision, and there are multiple different ways to interpret pyrovision itself, and their dialogue in the comics is sparse, and in the games it is muffled to near-imcomprehensibility. the only thing that isn't really vague at all are their mannerisms, actions, and consequences of said actions! and i believe pyro's vague qualities makes them a bit of a blank slate for authors to do as they please—as long as they don't erase pyro's pyromania, queerness (in many senses of the word) and murderous tendencies, they're pretty much different interpretations of the same character with the same personality instead of being an alternate personality altogether. so, my question is: how do you write pyro? how do you handle pyro's character? like, we can see it by reading your fics where pyro is included, of course, but like. what goes on behind the scenes?

Your observations are delightfully thorough, and I agree. An author has a lot they can build wholecloth with Pyro, because we're given precious little of him to work with. In my opinion that's what leads to a lot of woobification of Pyro, and also a lot of people projecting onto him because he's kind of a cipher.

And I've done that too. It's hard not to! But more and more I've been putting work into looking harder at what we DO have of Pyro and trying to spotlight that and bring it to the forefront.

The obvious one is, of course, his generally GNC-ness. Regardless of what you headcanon Pyro's gender, sex, and pronouns to be (other characters' in-universe interpetations don't even line up, like Scout using he/him pronouns (though the subtitles have fun by switching between he and she) and Sniper straight up calling Pyro a woman and suggesting he has ovaries in domination lines).

Of course, the pyromania, and whatever Pyroland is. I remember back in the day I assumed it was more of a visual metaphor in the video of Pyro just having a delightful time murdering people, and not what he actually saw. The TF comics clarified that it is, indeed, how Pyro sees the world, when Miss P came to get him from the board room. It also showed that Pyro sees the mundane as grey and boring while fire is beautiful and lights up the world around him. (Not gonna lie as a Changeling: The Dreaming fan it gave me tee-hees of banality vs glamour which I ABSOLUTELY touch on when I write him in MI.)

But way less remarked upon but deeply important to actually writing Pyro is how fucking sassy he is. His humiliation animation is him putting his hands on his hips and tapping his foot as he waits for his opponent to get it over with. In the comics, when Scout is bleeding to death in the snow in front of him during the bear fight, Pyro just kinda shoves snow on him like a little shit. His voice lines are full of little touches where he's clearly annoyed and snarking at the team. He's definitely got an attitude, so he's present enough to be kind of a shit about things, and I kind of love that.

To me, Pyro is sarcastic, sassy, playful, exhuberant, and loves cute things and most of all fire. He's unrepentantly violent, and very matter-of-fact about that. Like, yes he sees burning people to death visually as blowing bubbles and hearing their laughter, but I doubt he doesn't know what's actually happening under the hallucinations because he absolutely grabbed an axe and turned a bear into chunky salsa upon hallucinating that it had talked shit about his beloved fire. There was nothing but malice in that action. He was not giving that jerk bear a lollipop. Talk shit get it.

He gives zero fucks about social gender expectations, and does what he likes, what he finds fun. He's childish, but not child-like, and not an innocent little uwu bean. He's a grown-ass hyperviolent adult who also probably has more plushies than open space on his bed lol.

When I write him, he's very plain and open about his feelings. He doesn't have the time for guile or double-talk when it comes to his emotions. He wears it all openly, because he does not have the time nor energy to pussyfoot around about how he feels. The world is kind of hard to navigate, and he sees things through layers of visual metaphor thanks to pyroland, so he isn't interested in dancing around things. So much of life is boring and grey and square, why the hell would you want to make things stressful by denying how you feel because of boring social mores? When you could just come out with it and have beauty and joy sooner? Also: if he likes you a lot he's a total sweetie with you, friendship or romance. He'll sass and snark with you, but he'll also surround you with love and earnest appreciation.

In Monstrous Intent in particular, Pyroland is an active choice, a somewhat dysfunctional coping mechanism for escaping things Pyro doesn't want to deal with, maladaptive daydreaming writ large, by bascially peering into another layer of reality and checking out of what's actually going on. So Pyro's a lot more present by default than canon Pyro. He's better able to hold back on unloading his feelings, but he will still show and make known how he feels about things. If things are too complicated, he seeks outside advice on how to handle it, because he knows that other people tend to require more finesse than he defaults to, and wants to consider their feelings too. He's earnest, but still a little sassy, very playful, a little snarky. Absolutely cutesy with Engineer, who just makes him utterly giddy in love.

That said, I have strong vibes of how I like to write Pyro, but they also change a little based on the story I'm trying to tell. Any character does, of course, but Pyro has a stronger tendency toward that thanks to, again, his somewhat cipher-like existence. But if you can hit the big few: * GNC * Sassy!!! * Fun * A little spacey * Exhuberant * Fire! Then you've got the kernel of a Pyro there, in my mind.

[pseudonymousposting]

The left is chock full of people who transpose evangelical Christian ideas onto a political ideal, and it's been forming a strange quasi-cult mannerism. I look at it like a young evangelical Christian youth discovering reddit atheism at 15 and decided they can supplant their Bible with leftist writings, replace their preacher with whatever red flag weirdo they can find on the internet with a large enough Twitter following, and replace the holy rapture with the glorious revolution.

Since they just vacated from a death cult, they usually seem to also follow that route, they're far, FAR more prone to the purity testing because, again, evangelical values dictate that behavior, having the same masturbatory vision of valiantly sacrificing themselves in a revolution as evangelicals have with the idea that Christians instill in children by prompting them to proclaim that in the event Christians are so oppressed that they will have to choose between renouncing the faith or being shot, they will choose being shot. A rather abusive tactic used by far right Christians for decades to enforce a militaristic fervor as early as possible, but this translates to a sense of what appears to be a revolutionary suicidality.

My biggest problem with that is if they wish so badly to die and make their way to commie Valhalla, fine, whatever, maybe consider not taking your 'comrades' with you through careless political operation. However, this type of person is, of course, more interested in the aesthetics of politics rather than practicum. Hence the obsession with the sacred texts, donning clothing and merchandise which signals an ostensibly leftist bent such as red flags, ushankas, memes using ostensibly leftist imagery and short quotes and quips without the full context of the text similarly to evangelical Christians Cherry picking the Bible to justify their views, they're often the person who will act like they're "discoursing" but the moment you actually challenge them, they will do the weird white guy in an online argument thing where their vocabulary goes from a normal vernacular to suddenly bringing out the big words and start talking like they're drafting a letter two centuries ago, but they do it with a lefty aesthetic, so they'll start saying shit like "dialectic" and "material conditions" when two seconds ago they were talking like a somewhat normal person.

I believe this jargon-spew to be alienating to the individual, ensuring the only people who would attempt to relate to them, much like right wing circles effectively alienate prospective recruits by inundating them with alternate speech patterns, memes, behaviors and such creating an alter-culture which is incomprehensible to your average person who doesn't know what any of it means, but overall highly damaging to a broader left, as they consistently are trained to present themselves as THE left in the same manner more fervent Christian sects present themselves as the *true* followers of the faith, considering any deviation from the following of their particular denomination as a deviation, an aberration, a heresy.

Worst part is given this usually starts happening online, for one it's obvious a lot of the online "leftist" figures know that in generating an audience, that type of person has several toxic incentives to cultivate that type of audience and encourage that behavior, including social clout, financial gain and, if played correctly, a very closed-off community that self-polices. What they don't understand about the downside of that is that all you need do is commit one minor 'heresy,' even if that heresy appears fabricated or a stretch in the interpretation of what you say, to immediately be deemed a false prophet and their version of justice has evolved into a form of permanent harassment.

Moreover, I've been adequately convinced a lot of online accounts which present these behaviors may be right wingers who have engaged in a very long form version of an infiltration tactic using sock accounts which seem to usually have some kind of non-identifying profile images and such, engage in similar tactics to right wing hate mobs but carefully wrapped in language crafted to appeal to left leaning people. For example, if you look at damn near any leftist content creator from before, like, 2019, those who have had some kind of 'cancel' situation come up, magically a whole database of anything (usually only if misenterpreted) slightly potentially offensive thing they've said or done suddenly appears out of the woodwork and spreads like wildfire.

I can think of three specific left leaning, though not entirely hammer-and-sickle communist content creators, all women, two of whom were Trans, who experienced such a campaign and magically when they pointed either directly or indirectly at a place where right wing weirdos gather to log everything someone has said or done to use in harassment campaigns, the harassment *magically* intensified to a fever pitch. Almost as if in addressing it, they poked the hornet's nest.

In the place they were gesturing towards, if not directly naming, many users directly spoke of how they've created fake accounts to do exactly that. I believe this infiltration no longer really needs such gathering places, as those who engage in such behaviors have kind of embedded themselves in left leaning online circles so deeply, either by lurking quietly or being consistent actors in those communities building trust, or in some cases I fully believe actually being the admin/host/content creator themselves, and have figured out they can actually keep themselves in those communities, their contributions useful in directing the rest of the community to positions, behaviors and viewpoints that are detrimental to the left but crafted specifically to appeal to someone who leans left of center.

Infiltrate, distract, disrupt, disappear, repeat, if you're embedded as a community member. Curate an audience that is aesthetically left but susceptible to the BITE cult model and direct their behaviors and views accordingly while taking as long as possible to drop any given mask. When you point at the likelihood of such infiltration, you sometimes get the same hornets nest reaction. It's like COINTEL but for terminally online right wingers.

These types of infiltrators, I believe, will appeal heavily to the type of person who adopts leftist aesthetics with evangelical disposition. That kind of person is highly reactive and very useful so long as you keep them constantly pointed at some general 'enemy' who isn't a direct boon to the right, and as such would be persuaded in spaces where this influence is heavy to only briefly speak ill of right wing figures and actors, sometimes even downplaying the danger they pose, almost to make sure there is still some plausible deniability while minimizing the impact such attention can have, while ensuring they attack literally anyone else and overemphasize if not manufacture the potential harm the preferred target could have, usually ensuring there is no act considered "too far" against that intended target.

This is, in my opinion, a severe danger to the capacity and sustainability of a left movement. It should have been addressed years ago. If it is not addressed soon, I fear it will render any budding left movement having a strong presence in modern mass discourse essentially impotent. Moreover, I believe it will also ensure people will spend decades of their lives believing that this behavior is how to BE an effective leftist.

I fear those who consider such tendencies an image of what an effective left should be, and those who would happily cultivate those tendencies in the left specifically to render the left ineffective, are in prime position to condition young or new left leaning people to believing that is what a left movement should look like, which could be long-term damage.

In the event these toxic, cult-like circles are dealt with by shining a light upon them and revealing them for what they are, the bad actors will be rendered less effective temporarily (though, they can always create new accounts and the trick is knowing their modus operandi and pointing to that instead of the individual actors and engaging in active educational efforts which counter the tendency,) and the aesthetic leftists will either cult-hop to the right without some kind of space to exist which somewhat resembles a kind of stochastic exit counseling.

I don't know. This is just a thought that's been turning around in my head for a few years now. I don't know where else to put them down in writing. I'm sure voicing them anywhere your identity can be tracked is a surefire way to be targeted by people who specifically benefit from such tendencies or would prefer to retain such tendencies rather than reassess them. I'm sure someone smarter than me can probably see where I'm getting at, and may have the capacity to form this into a more complete thought, but it isn't something I can leave entirely unsaid.

[thornshadowwolf]

(same oc ask anon) i looked at your tag for your retrostatic thing and you have some sus things tagged if i may say ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°) so are they like, robots? or just one of them?

Ahahaha yeah. Some... uh, er, interesting things tagged. Don't really know what to say about that like you saw the posts. (For those who haven't: it's "eroticism of the machine" and cybersex kinda stuff).

They're not robots exactly (at least none yet) but the majority of the characters are from a kind of... technology dimension? So there are two (relevant) dimensions in the story, one of which is actually the Retrostatic and the other of which is unnamed but is a more normal realistic earth-like dimension (tho there are still differences). Most of the characters so far are from the Retrostatic because that's where most of the story takes place. And in that dimension everyone is in some way related to technology (usually they just. Are. some piece if technology. But not always; at times it's more complex than that). 1-800-CASH-NOW is a TV/radio demon I guess (I usually follow that up with a bunch if question marks cuz it's not super well defined), The Operator is a telephone, BaitHook_Fix.txt.bin is a piece of malware... loverboy is from the normal dimension so he's just an anthro wolf (the other dimension is populated by anthropomorphic cartoon animals). A lot of characters don't have names yet (especially if they're gonna be side or background characters) but there's also a gun, a car, a two dimensional insect, a... thing that has old gramophone music play around it... a worm with a zipper... two... flamingo jackalope unicorn snakes... it's a very loose and undefined dimension. Like that's what it's supposed to be not just "I haven't figured it out yet" (tho there is some of that too). But that does make it hard for me to build characters for it since there aren't any guidelines for me to fall back on. I just kinda have to try stuff until something works. Both in terms of design and lore.

Not directly related to what you asked, but the main characters are 1-800- and loverboy. 1-800- is a celebrity gameshow / radio show host who is the cause of the whole timeline alternate universe mess (not on purpose, it just has that effect on the world) and different versions of it keep slipping into each other's places. It's got this red-string-of-fate thing going on with loverboy (I usually call them "fate-tied") who is literally just some rando that basically gets isekai-ed into the Retrostatic. Due to that 1-800-CASH-NOW has unknowingly been searching for him since forever (time works differently between dimensions). Like 1-800- has this feeling deep within its core that doesn't understand, and it keeps being compelled to do things like pull people into its dimension. It doesn't know why or how it just does these things. And then eventually it finds loverboy and is like "oh I see now this is The Guy" because it was fate the pull of fate trying to get them together. But that exacerbates the whole "space-time dimensional instability" thing. And shit happens. Because the different versions of 1-800- have wildly different goals and ways they are tied to loverboy. Like for some it's romantic, for some it's trying to kill him, for some it's got an unhealthy obsession with him, etc. etc. and many are a mix too. And of course loverboy is thoroughly freaked out. Especially since until now the whole multidimensional spacetime alternate universe thing hasn't affected him. But now he Feels It. So they've got this very weird and fucked up relationship that is full of distrust and confusion (both around each other and themselves).

Anyway that was supposed to be succinct it's just hard to explain. There's actually so much more but this is already long as hell. Thanks for sticking around if you read all this.

[neechees]

To answer your questions:

I've seen some people calling it a mimic, which is a monster from D&D, and while in d&d a mimic usually disguises itself as a chest or wood, I think this is a lovely alternative. However, again, we don't even know this enemy's name. We'll just have to wait until its full release & then it can be called whatever DBD has named it.

The reason you see so many people refer to any type of monster that "wears human skin" and/or "mimics people" is because of people on the internet bastardizing and appropriating Native spirits for their little stories and creepypastas & thinking its fine to add shit on for those stories (like Stephen King 🙄), people believing the White versions are the original versions, getting them mixed up with each other, adding more bullshit, and then these newer "bastardized" concepts being born out of the world's worst game of telephone to the point that most people don't even know that the actual, original versions are from Native American beliefs and instead call them "cryptids". Because White people see Native spirituality as a plaything and have no idea wtf they're talking about.

White people heard "sk!nwalker" & "animal" and bastardized it to mean "monster that wears human skin", then they saw Stephen King (& lots of other media) make wend!g0es into skeletal deer humanoids with the "mimicking humans calling for help", then literally got the two mixed up or even amalgamate the two to be synonymous with each other. I've seen people describe sk*walkers only to call them wend!g0es, and then describe the falsified skeletal deer monster & then call it a "sk*nwalker", and then of course, now we have people taking elements of BOTH of the bastardized concepts to interchangeably refer to the new DBD monster. I fear that the whole "wears human skin" thing might have partially come from antisemitic conspiracy theories about Jewish people being lizard aliens wearing human skin. But the whole "wearing human skin" thing is, again, not even actually related to EITHER of these spirits, and the reason you see people call it that is because of misinformation due to appropriation.

This is why Native Americans don't like sharing our spirits and mythology with White people online or even anywhere, because look at what it's done to many of our spirits that even WE don't talk about except under certain circumstances. People don't respect our spirits and beliefs, which is why I'm so adamant about people leaving our stuff the hell alone.

There's a new DBD villian out so here are your periodical reminders because im already seeing people refer to the new enemy as both "wend!g0es" & "sk*nwalker" & getting them mixed up:

The DBD team has already said that the new enemy wouldnt have anything to do with Native American mythology

Wend!g0es & sk*walkers are from Native American mythology, they are NOT "cryptids" (Algonquian & Navajo respectively)

Therefore, the new enemy is neither of those things

The whole "monster that mimics human speech & humans calling for help" thing was completely made up about ice cannibals by Stephen King in Pet Semetary iirc. This is not an original or even popular part of the "lore" or definitions of ice cannibals. Ice cannibals don't and cannot speak, let alone mimic human speech.

A sk*walker is NOT a "monster that wears human skin", or an animal wearing human skin, or a monster that looks like a "weird looking" animal, it is a human who utilizes ANIMAL SKINS, and as far as I know, they also don't do the "mimicking humans to lure them in" thing, they don't have to because they can already talk and are human.

These two beings from our cultures are not the same thing and have been heavily appropriated & bastardized & amalgamated by both the media & by moniyaws online.

Leave our spirits alone and stop calling the new DBD enemy these things because it's not anything close to what these spirits actually are.

[smashalltheguitars]

actually i do want to put my tags in their own post

the thing about the alt scene is that its always been, well, alternative. it's a counter culture. by definition, it counters the mainstream culture.

and when my chem started, i feel like a lot of the media and pop culture (or at least what i grew up with, which admittedly was not much) wanted to push the idea of happy happy all the time. bad things happen, but it's okay! watch this comedy show, listen to this pop band, go to the mall and buy frills and ruffles in turquoise and pink - and of course, support the military machine who keeps us all safe so we can have the privilege of tv. and the alt scene in general and my chem in particular said hey, fuck that, there's messed up shit and we can't just sweep it under the pink chevron rug. fuck that, it's allowed to hurt. you're allowed to hurt and scream and bleed, (you're not in this alone,) you're allowed to be ugly and macabre, you're allowed to want better and you're allowed to be angry about it.

and it worked. people loved black and red and vampire fangs.

but now i feel like so much of the world is buying into the misery - and i do mean buying. aren't you depressed? aren't you anxious? we all have panic attacks. we all don't sleep. don't you want a better laptop for your telehealth counseling appointments? don't you want the premium version of the meditation app? don't you want more houseplants, since there's no real human connection? don't you want a better monotone gray apartment that you never leave with neighbors you don't know? hashtag introvert life, amiright.

you can't be quirky without being __core, and you're a fake poser __core if your bedroom isn't chock full of stuff to match. you can't be weird without buying it off of etsy.

so my chemical romance being back, older and beautiful for it, hugging each other and holding their children and smiling so, so much, that's their message now. you're allowed to want better and you're allowed to get better. you must fix your heart. wear what you want, smile and dance, play because you don't want to stop, let your past die if it wants to.

and coming from them, it's not empty, it's not hollow; they were there, too. they wanted better, too. they're letting the light in, too.

you must fix your heart. you're not in this alone.