#those are the two I would choose

[mihotose]

pieced together a short timeline now that ive replayed the game. followup to this

november 7 '50 - date of issue of harry's new badge

november '50 - klaasje arrives in martinaise

december '50 - the strike begins

january 29 '51 - harry is assigned the two drunks case

february 4 '51 - soona arrives at the church

february 12 '51, overnight - the next world mural appears

mid february '51 - joyce arrives in martinaise

krenel arrive in martinaise

around february 28 '51 - lely's birthday

sunday march 4 '51, 23:30-00:15 - lely is killed

thursday march 8 '51, past midnight - klaasje calls the rcm to report the body

friday march 9 '51 - harry arrives in martinaise

afternoon - ruby flees martinaise to the fishing village to hide from harry

night - harry tells people about the investigation and shows everyone his gun

saturday march 10 '51, night - harry crashes his coupris and parties all night with the union of moribund alcoholics

sunday march 11 '51, morning - harry leaves the alcoholics

night - harry listens to disco before trashing his room

monday march 12 '51, around 08:00 - ruby flees to the feld building

08:30 - harry wakes up without his memory [DAY 1]

[ride-a-dromedary]

HALSIN SILVERBOUGH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, but this tiny "not technically canon but word of god so good enough" tidbit lit up all the synapses in my brain because I keep circling back to the fact that elves *name themselves* as adults. And because I am very invested in the fact that Halsin likely came from a primarily elvish speaking community, "Silverbough" is likely a Common translation of his surname.

If we translate Silverbough into D&D elvish using available lexicons, with the assumption that "silver" is referring to the colour (so we can use words like "ari" or "teu" rather than "don" which is more like the metal) and "branch" can be used as a synonym of "bough" (so we can use "kathan" or "shan/on" - the latter also meaning a direct branch of a clan), there are several possible combinations. My favourites are:

Arikathan

Arishan

Teushan(on)

Which is already neat enough to think about, but when considering further, there is a reason this was the name Halsin chose, just as there was a reason he chose Halsin. Elves can choose surnames based solely in things that are important/of value to them, or that resonate with them, or have some meaning (perhaps in this case something like "Silverbough" can bring to mind something that is both delicate and strong, like Halsin is/attempts to balance), or it could be passed down (often done with elven nobility). It can also stand all on its own.

But another reason that gets the HC wheels turning, is that if we add in adjoining words being common elven practice in names, this could also be a case of identification of where he came from (so a clan name or a village; this could be an honouring of his past community), which written or pronounced in full would read, for example, like:

Halsin vand Arikathan or Halsin vantur Teushan(on)

(Tel can also be used if you wish to say "belonging to")

So "Halsin from Silverbough"

Or, if you want to go even more heart-achy, Silverbough could be a matronym. Elves generally (not always, but generally) work matrilineally, in that their familial lineages draw from their mother and her family. So Halsin could have very well chosen the name Silverbough because it was his mother's name. Case in point, it would read more along the lines of:

Halsin va'e Iarishan or Halsin va'e Iteushan

Meaning, literally, Halsin son of Silverbough.

[saetoru]

“it’s no longer 1937 and we wrote a snow white that’s not gonna be saved by the prince”

SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP

[sghr10423]

Florian for coloring practice today, + more assorted pokemon doodles

also, some headcanons! I have so many... many I'll infodump them into a text post by themselves soon...

[sadgoosehours]

Icarus by Bastille

You ever think about how one would think Mav is Icarus but Goose is the one who died?

[dazais-guardian-angel]

Okay, a good amount of time has passed, and after having seen this post by @weretiger-be-my-horse , I've been turning it over and over in my brain going absolutely feral over this concept. I need to expand upon my thoughts on this idea and all the evidence there is pointing towards it, whether that be actual tangible things, or purely strong vibes I have.

First of all, full disclaimer: I did not like the season 5 finale, and how it wrapped up the DoA arc. To say that I "disliked" it is putting it extremely lightly, in fact -- I absolutely hated it, and I am still, to a degree, in disbelief that I actually even watched those 24 minutes with my own two eyes, and that it somehow wasn't a complete fever dream. While I'm not going to go in long-winded detail into all the ways that I feel like the finale almost completely bastardized all of its featured characters and destroyed any and all buildup we've had going on in this arc for 50 some chapters now, because that's not the main point of this post, I will not make any attempt to hide the fact that the theory-crafting I'm about to pose here is partly influenced and prompted by how much I hated the finale, and how much I desperately hope that it will not end up being manga canon. Therefore, if you enjoyed the finale — and that's fine! — and don't want to read any negativity about it, then I would not recommend reading any further (I mean, you've probably already left by this point, which is fair lol), While obviously it's important that I be as objective and unbiased as possible when explaining my thoughts, some of my negative feelings about the writing will be a part of this analysis, even if this isn't going to be a full-blown rant. Just know that if you proceed.

With that out of the way, let me continue.

So. In the aforementioned post, the theory presented is that the anime may be operating on an alternate timeline, and that this will become evident once we read the upcoming October chapter, wherein things will go completely differently post-chapter 110 than they do in the final episode — probably for the worse, with the s5 finale intending to lull us into a false sense of security and make us assume that everything in the manga arc finale will wrap up as smoothly and consequence-freely(? lol) as it did in the anime one. It also suggests that the Fukuchi we see at the very end that sskk are fighting came from the manga timeline, where he won, and that he used the Book to jump to a timeline where he lost, the anime one, proven by the fact that this Fukuchi is wearing a mask with the same design on it as the mask Fukuchi is wearing on the chapter 110 DoA color spread/title page.

First of all, I want to note the fact that it's not just the mask design that's the same: the entire outfit is roughly more or less the same as well. It's not completely 1-to-1, because the anime can never fully match the intricacies of Harukawa's beautiful outfit designs, and the Fukuchi in this scene has the kimono half-off because of the... super saiyan mode he's in, but most all of the main pieces of clothing are there. Any small inaccuracies could also be attributed to the fact that Harukawa probably didn't have this finalized art ready back when this episode was being made, so the animators wouldn't have had the complete design to work off of. But in general, because it's all so similar, I think we can quite confidently say that the ending episode Fukuchi is meant to be the one from this manga art.

Also, people have pointed this out, but it's worth mentioning that the mask Asagiri wore at Anime Expo in July was referencing this Fukuchi. It's not a crucial detail, but it just proves more that Asagiri is a gigantic fucking troll, and that he clearly wanted to draw attention to this Fukuchi design. It's important. He describes the mask here as made in the motif of an ellipses inside a speech bubble... could that perhaps be referencing meta aspects, like the Book?

Next, I want to talk about the even bigger elephant in the room, which to me is the most damning and undeniable piece of evidence there is of the anime operating on a completely separate timeline from the manga:

This Fucking Hand™️

As we all know, in the anime, Fyodor injures his hand when the password input device blows up, and as we all know, this does not happen in the manga. In the last episode, Dazai claims that the final nail in the coffin of his impromptu plan to kill Fyodor relied on this hand injury: because Fyodor couldn't pilot his escape helicopter himself, he would ask one of his Meursault vampires to do it for him, unaware that Bram and thus this vampire was now on the ADA's side, and said vampire could kill him while his guard was down.

Ignoring how utterly stupid and contrived this plan is when you stop and think about it for more than two seconds, the fact of the matter is that something that initially seemed like nothing more than an odd but inconsequential anime original addition ended up snowballing into being the entire reason one of the big bads was brought down. If Fyodor hadn't hurt his hand, he wouldn't have needed another pilot, and so the traitor vampire wouldn't have had an opportunity to get near him and kill him without him expecting it even though said vampire was presumably with him as they were leaving Meursault, and was probably already a traitor by then, so there was plenty opportunity for him to still die. not to mention by Chuuya's hands at literally any time he wanted to, because Chuuya was coherent the whole time. Also there's absolutely no way Dazai could have known exactly what Ranpo would do, no matter how smart he is and how much he trusts him. idk it's fucking dumb, just roll with it. Therefore, putting aside all other variables for now, we can conclude that, on the most basic level, this signifies that no hand wound = no death.

And let me tell you, this hand wound bothers me. It really, really does. Because they focus on it a LOT — they go out of their way to draw attention to it MULTIPLE TIMES, from the moment it first happens to the end of the season. Fyodor even talks about it to himself, about Dazai being able to cause him tangible, visible, bodily harm, (something that, again, as far as we've seen, has never happened in the manga). Hell, even after Fyodor's death, they're still drawing attention to it, because his right arm is all of him that survives, and Dazai picks it up and gives it to Nikolai to do his hilarious sad little gay fondling of it played completely straight even though there's nothing straight going on here at all! It's like it's a big red flashing sign at all times going "you see this injured hand? This is important. Are you picking up that it's important? Are you taking note of it?" Why is that? Obviously, it serves to give us the lore crumbs about Fyodor and "that man", but that's hardly the main, much more glaring reason, as I've already mentioned.

Fyodor doesn't hurt his hand in the manga. Fyodor won't die here in the manga. I am so dead serious by this point about this, and it's not just simply the fact that this was absolutely not at all the time for him to die, or the fact that his hand is the reason for his death in the anime in and of itself, but how much EMPHASIS they place on this, and on the hand in general. What would be the point of adding something like this, if it's not meant to alert us to the fact that it has a major impact on how the story plays out? We all know Bones: they struggle to get right and include everything that's already there in the source material; they would never go out of their way to add something this noteworthy if there wasn't a very good reason for it, if it wasn't absolutely necessary. I've seen a few people bring up the fact that Fyodor gets shot in the shoulder by Sigma and that that could lead to the same outcome in the manga, but I disagree: although he has blood on his shoulder in the manga, it seems like the bullet just grazed the top of it, because his arm and hand appears completely functional afterwards (not hanging limp by his side or anything). But that doesn't even matter, because this isn't even about the semantics/logistics of how the hand wound caused Fyodor's death because again, it's a stupid outcome, or what could serve as a substitute in the manga — thematically, this is a textbook example of the butterfly effect. Countless parallel universes exist within this series, ones where even the most minute differences lead to a majorly different outcome: this just happens to be one of them. There's no reason to think it isn't, and there's no reason to not think that the anime wants us to clue into the fact that things only went as smoothly as they did on the Meursault side because of this wound; in other words, that things will go very differently in the manga thanks to the absence of said wound. They wouldn't have added it in the first place and put such clearly deliberate emphasis on it otherwise.

Things are going to happen very differently in the manga, at least when it comes to the Meursault crew (but then, if you assume that, you then naturally assume it all will be very different). This is the only conclusion one can come to with the presentation of this anime-only wound, combined with the fact that parallel universes are a very real thing in BSD.

I'm going to go on a bit of a tangent, so bear with me. I play a lot of visual novels, and although such concepts aren't really as original now as they were a while ago, some of my favorite and some of the very best VNs out there are the ones that break the fourth wall and make the visual novel branching route format directly intertwined with the story: you know, the ones where the characters go "if only I had done things differently, maybe everything would have turned out better...!" in a wink wink nudge nudge moment, and the ones where the characters are aware of the different timelines, even, or even have the ability to gain information from their selves in said alternate timelines to influence events in their current one (I'm intentionally not naming the games I'm thinking of for the sake of spoilers, but if you know, you know lmao). It gets very meta in this regard, and this is how I started viewing BSD through the lens of ever since I first learned about Beast: like a visual novel with many branching routes, and only a few routes that feel entirely "right".

When I first read Dazai's Entrance Exam, I was struck by how unnerving the ending sequence in the abandoned hospital felt. Obviously, Kunikida's internal struggle over Sasaki's actions and motives is him still desperately clinging to his ideal world that does not exist, but the specific type of phrases he uses — "who is wrong?" "[who is] the cause of all this?" "there has to be an ideal world" "there has to be something, I'm sure of it" "There must have been something we could have done!" — and the framing of the scene in general, is eerily reminiscent of a bad ending in a visual novel, to me. There's a haunting, looming, bleak sense that a different outcome could have been achieved, if different decisions had been made, or if things outside of anyone's control had been different... and we know that this is true, because in Beast alone, Kunikida never goes through the Azure Messenger incident, because Dazai doesn't have his entrance exam. Hell, you could even consider the anime's version of the Azure Messenger arc an alternate timeline in of itself, if you really wanted to, long before we even arrive at season 5.

When it comes to Beast, this timeline has almost the opposite feeling of what I described above, that I've also encountered in visual novels: the idea of a "good route" or "good ending" that still doesn't feel quite earned, or as perfect as one would expect. Beast is presented as the "ideal" timeline purely for one sole reason: Oda is alive. It is the only timeline where he's alive, and keeping Oda alive is the ultimate goal Dazai wants to achieve, the only reason this timeline exists; therefore, disregarding all else, Beast should be the best timeline, because Oda's death is the greatest devastation in the series to date. We all want him to live, so why wouldn't the timeline where he does be the best one? And yet... of course, it isn't. Dazai is alone, and steeped in darkness and loneliness without Oda, and dies by the end of the story for Oda's continued living. Atsushi has Kyouka still, but he's suffering and more traumatized, and unable to heal while stuck in the mafia, and neither can Kyouka. Akutagawa is living a much better life in the ADA... but without his sister, and without what he has from his bond with Atsushi in canon, that isn't replicated in Beast. And Oda... Oda is alive, and he has his children and his novel, but there is a feeling that he is aimless, that something in his life is missing. He has everything he ever wanted, but all that means nothing without what he truly needs: Dazai, and his time with Dazai and Ango at the bar. In this way, things going well and us getting what we want — in this case, Oda living — goes against how it's supposed to be, the natural order, which is why it feels so hollow. In the specific visual novel I'm thinking of here as a comparison (again, shoutout if you know), there's an alternate ending that involves you inputting information you gain at the end of the game very early on in the game, wherein the protagonist now has memories of the future and is able to bypass and prevent all of the events that take place normally. This means that people who die or are hurt somehow in general are saved from that fate, and nothing bad ever occurs; everything wraps up neatly and nicely... but again, there's an undeniable, unsettling feeling of emptiness, of a victory that rings hollow, because what's the point if everything is simply handed to you easily, where's the sense of accomplishment, without any struggles to achieve said victories, or any growth along the way? How can it feel earned if one doesn't have to, in Dazai's words, "scream within the storm of uncertainty, and run with flowing blood"?

You can probably already see where I'm going with this.

This finale feels weird. Really, really weird. It feels too cheap, too simple, too unsatisfying. So much so, in fact, that for almost the entire runtime, as I was bombarded with resolution upon resolution one after another, I kept thinking "There's no way this can be real. Where's the catch? When is the "gotcha!" moment gonna happen? The "it was all a dream" reveal?". And this isn't just because I hated the writing, and that it really did feel like a fever dream watching fanfic levels of bad (actually, that's an insult to fanfic writers, tbh; they could do better) — no, it genuinely feels so incredibly fake. Even upon rewatching it and already knowing what happens, my brain still naturally keeps expecting some kinda of "sike, you THOUGHT!" moment to suddenly appear. It just.... feels "too good to be true". Dazai and Chuuya come out unscathed, and it's revealed that they were never in any real danger to begin with. Fyodor, one of our biggest threats, is dealt with supposedly for good (I say "supposedly" only because of the Jesus line, but if anything imo, I think that's just a hint that this won't be the canon ending in the manga, so in a sense he's going to "come back to life"), and Nikolai seems somewhat at peace with his death. The other biggest threat, Fukuchi, is also dealt with, and he and Fukuzawa get their final moment together of closure. Yes, Sigma is left in Meursault don't even get me started on how angry this alone makes me, and Fukuzawa loses Fukuchi, but overall, everything is portrayed in a positive light, and any negatives or losses are quickly glossed over. Everything is tied up nicely, neatly, and smoothly. ...And that is exactly what makes it feel so wrong, and hard to trust in.

I'm not sure if this will make sense, but to me, the finale is so incredibly poorly written that it almost feels.... intentional. It's so bad to the point of feeling self-aware in how bad it is, how unrealistically happy and convenient an ending it is. It had to end this neatly in order to rush to wrap up this arc for the season finale and not leave the last episode on a cliffhanger — which imo is chiefly the main reason it turned out this way, and, if this whole theory is true, Asagiri just used it to his advantage — and I'm not saying this was probably an effect Bones had in mind intentionally, I'm sure they just threw shit at the wall and went with whatever stuck, maaaaybe with some suggestions/approval from Asagiri, but the result is that you have a conclusion that contradicts so much of what was set up before and goes against so many character arcs, making some characters so out of character and even regressing in their development Dazai. I'm talking about Dazai abandoning Sigma, because he would never; hashtag #NOTMYDAZAI. Also Nikolai, Nikolai for most of that is so ooc I can't even begin to describe it oh my god. Everyone is OOC to a degree though lmao, and opens so many plot holes, to the point that it's impossible not to watch all that and get the feeling that it is subtly saying to you "did you really think it could be this easy? It feels wrong, doesn't it? It doesn't feel satisfying. It feels unearned." I find it incredibly interesting and suspicious in particular that they confirmed multiple theories people had about soukoku in Meursault: that Chuuya slowed the elevator's fall so that Dazai wouldn't die from it, that Chuuya slowed down the bullet so that it only penetrated Dazai's skin and not his skull, and that the both of them used Fyodor's camera angle to their advantage because they knew he wouldn't be able to see certain things from his view. I'm not saying that Asagiri trawled BSD twitter and tumblr after those chapters dropped for the most popular theories before the final episode was made lmao, there was no time for that (imagine though lol—), but I do think it's highly likely that he already had in mind exactly what theories would be made about these parts (I mean, the evidence for the gun scene was all there), and that Dazai rattling them off in his long monologue to Fyodor at the end is essentially him speaking to the audience and going "yeah, that's what you would predict, right? Those are the clichés, after all", much like him suggesting earlier that he can maybe bring Chuuya back to himself with a few moving words and the power of friendship, and Fyodor using the split personalities trope to fool Sigma. We expect these tropes to be true. Of course we'd fall for them, as Fyodor tells Sigma, especially if the evidence is right there. But Asagiri himself has explicitly said that he likes doing the opposite of what people expect. And so just because people predicted correctly with the three things I mentioned in this timeline... doesn't mean they'll be true in the manga's. Things happened how we wanted and expected it to, and everything turned out happily. So we can relax now, right? Everything will work out just as easily in the manga, right? Or... is the reason most of this finale feels so fake and unsettling and unsatisfying because it's meant to lull us into a false sense of security before all our heroes lose in the manga? Because deep down, we don't want an ending that's this simple, because we'd rather have a conclusion where our characters have struggled more and grown more and come out the better for it, and we know it?

After rewatching the episode a lot, and watching some other videos, and doing a lot of thinking, I am pretty confident in suspecting that the only part of this finale that is actually from manga canon, aside from Aya jumping off the building of course, is Fyodor and Nikolai's exchange after Fyodor leaves Meursault — specifically, them talking about Fyodor leaving Sigma behind, and their "new game" and Nikolai being excited at the prospect of it. This little conversation actually feels in character for them, and it's easy to tell this when contrasting it with everything that happens immediately after, wherein Fyodor is fatally stabbed, and Nikolai, completely at odds with what he was just talking about, just... stands there and watches Fyodor die while Dazai monologues lmao. I'm not sure if the helicopter is still a factor, but I would bet good money on Fyolai getting out of Meursault being manga canon, and that Dazai and Chuuya getting out as well and killing Fyodor + everything with FukuFuku, is part of the anime original ending, in order to wrap up everything positively. It makes much more sense if you think about, in reality (aka in the manga), Dazai and Chuuya still being left behind in Meursault (where they can eventually try to get Sigma), because none of it was an act and things did not go according to plan, and Fukuchi having an entirely different goal that doesn't feel so stupid and contradictory to his character, and Fukuzawa possibly dying — everyone seemingly loses, with Aya still being the last hope, perhaps by awakening her ability like we all speculated.

There's a youtuber I watch who covers BSD in-depth, despite being an anime-only (she reads the respective manga content after each season, though). Going into this finale, she knew about the fact that the anime had overtaken the manga, though she didn't know where the cutoff point was; despite that, however, she made predictions about what was from the manga so far and what was anime original, and it was almost entirely spot-on, based mostly on what she basically described as "anime original dialogue." She talked about how you can always tell when dialogue is veering into the realm of anime-original, because the sentences are very short, choppy, and slightly out of character, but generic enough to not be TOO out of character, and so that anyone can easily write said lines, even if they're not extremely familiar with the character like the original author would be. And when I heard this explanation, everything clicked — because so much of this finale has dialogue like that. The Fyolai scenes just feel peppered with it, around the lines I mentioned earlier, the Dazai dialogue does too, and ESPECIALLY shit at the end like Fukuchi and Fukuzawa exchanging the cliche death lines to end all death lines: "Are you there? I'm a little tired." "Rest up." That just isn't Bungou Stray Dogs. That isn't Asagiri. BSD is cheesy at times, yes, but it isn't like this; it's smarter. The dialogue is smarter, the explanations/plot twists are smarter, Asagiri is smarter, and the aforementioned youtuber I watched agreed. She's a pretty casual fan of the series, so if even she could pick up on these things, I think it speaks volumes.

I mentioned this briefly earlier, but this theory makes sense if you consider that this situation probably came about because of Bones wanting two seasons back-to-back when they did, and this arc being as long as it is. Season 3 aired in 2019, and I imagine Bones would have wanted season 4 in 2020, and might have then been willing to wait a bit longer for season 5 in order for more of this arc's manga chapters to come out — but then covid happened. Because of that, season 4 was delayed to 2023, creating the longest gap we've had between seasons, and I wouldn't at all be surprised if the delay made them want season 5 right together with it, after getting so far "behind", so to speak. S4 was announced in November of 2021, and roughly around that time, Asagiri was finishing up writing the plot of the DoA arc. If Bones came to him sometime in late 2021 and said they wanted two seasons now (so basically, one giant two cour season), Asagiri would know that not only of course would this arc not be finished publishing in the manga for a very long time yet, but that roughly 20ish episodes would not be enough to cover it all to the end, with this arc being longer than any arc the anime has adapted to date. Because of all this, and the arc manga chapters being nowhere near fully drawn to completion, he'd have to make a decision about what to do, and what to give Bones. Without ending season 5 on a massive cliffhanger that wouldn't be resolved for years until an eventual season 6, the only other option would be to rush towards an anime-original ending for the DoA arc.... and for Asagiri to take advantage of that, and integrate it into BSD's lore. Thereby creating a truly unique cross-media experience that utilizes the different mediums to create multiple timelines, that could make both the anime and manga interact with each other and become part of a bigger picture (not that you'd need to see both to get the full experience, mind you, just that it'd provide a little bonus if you did).... and would without a doubt be Asagiri's biggest surprise yet.

...I feel like at this point I'm starting to ramble, and my evidence become more and more incoherent and less substantial lmao, so I should probably end this post. 💀 Thank you if you've read this far, and hopefully it made some semblance of sense, despite not being structured very well; I know I promised at the start to try to be as objective as possible and curb my negative feelings, but I'm not sure how well I succeeded in that regard. If it weren't for the Fukuchi thing and the Fyodor hand thing, I probably wouldn't take how wrong and strange and bad the finale feels to me as serious evidence about it being an alternate timeline, especially since I seem to be one of the only people who actually hates all of it.... but combined with everything else, I am just so convinced of this theory being true. It started off as pure copium, but as more time has gone on, I fully, 100% believe in my bones (ha) that there is no way that finale is the same Bungou Stray Dogs I know and love, for so many reasons. It just isn't. It can't be. I know BSD better than this, I know Asagiri better than this, and I know that it's absolutely in the realm of possibility for him to cook up this whole scheme to completely blindside us with in the upcoming chapters, because that's exactly the kind of shit Mr. "Please Be Surprised!" himself would pull. If I end up being completely wrong, I guess I'm wrong, and you can laugh at me all you want then.... but I just know that ages ago people were teasing the idea of the anime operating on a different timeline from the manga, and I truly do think that only now are we finally seeing that idea come to fruition, as a setup for Asagiri going full-bore insanity with the Book in the upcoming arc(s). if I and the OP of that theory end up right, this will be the wildest time in the BSD fandom's history.

Like. I cannot even emphasize how hard they are trolling us at this point. Something is going on. Something is being cooked over there, the likes of which we've never seen before... and I don't think any of us are ready for it.

Oh yeah, and one last thing of note: both Fyodor and Nikolai here have their right arms hidden from view. Is that alluding to anything? I'm not sure. I also think that since chapter 110 was so short, next chapter will likely be 110.5 instead of 111, and if that's the case, this title spread could still technically be associated with the next chapter... wherein we might see this Fukuchi, who ends up wreaking havoc, right before he jumps to the timeline in the anime, as we see him at the end of the s5 finale.

I guess we'll find out on Tuesday.

[sonknuxadow]

originally had a super long multi paragraph ramble about this written out but then realized i did not have to say all that . anyway . i think that the reason some little animal guy sonic characters have last names while most others just go by (name) the (species) has to do with cultural differences... the fact that the characters with last names are also the same characters who have more human sounding first names makes me think that they were born in an area that had a large human population, or that their parents or grandparents were, so their family was influenced by human naming practices

[glue-thief]

pls let me back into the friend group. i was barely a part of it the first time and i won't contribute anything if you let me back in. but i wanna know why the breakup between that one couple was so bad that the entire group is falling apart

[shorthaltsjester]

taliesin and laura remain truly so fantastic at making characters who… don’t necessarily have something extremely and inherently in common but do have experiences that were caused by similar sources and that lead them to have quite different opinions/ideas about things but in ways that are typically very reconcilable? which is a lot of qualifiers but it’s a through line of vex/percy with nobility, jester & cad with loneliness (and also god stuff but in a different post maybe someday i’ll talk about how actually their god stuff is intensely related to their different experiences of loneliness), and now imogen & ashton with being left behind.

like vex was this character who technically had a claim to nobility due to her blood but at the same time was burdened because of that same claim. and percy who was born into and raised by nobility but that nobility ended up making his family the targets of a massacre. and then vex who lets down her walls and Do I Look Like I Come From Money? and percy giving her the title grand mistress of the grey hunt because it has nothing to do with blood, or his love for her, or anything aside from the fact that it’s something she can prove herself worthy of simply by virtue of who she Is, not who someone makes her. and percy and vex’s conversation about forgiveness and it’s necessity for growth as probably two of the characters most inclined to hold grudges.

and caduceus clay who gets left behind with nothing but his Belief while his family goes off into the world. and jester lavorre who gets shut inside with no company except her Belief as her mother protects her from the world. and they both get the burden of loneliness and the understanding of love’s nonmalicious imperfection. and caduceus having a panic attack on a ship and jester telling him that the world is a lot bigger than his cemetery and that means he has to break out of his comfort zone to find his path. and caduceus telling jester that he doesn’t think she gets as much credit as she ought to and she deserves more pastries. and jester thanking caduceus for showing her how cool it is to actually heal people and caduceus asking if she wants to use his shield while he doesn’t need it.

and ashton who was left broken and dying on the ground and was given inescapable pain as their means of survival. and imogen who was left behind by the only person who could provide true understanding of the pain she’d one day come to feel. and ashton who’s a barbarian, who wields their rage casually and unapologetically and who sees the Shittiness of the world but is unrelenting in his version of optimism. and imogen who is weighed down by pessimism she doesn’t Want to have but hasn’t cracked how to undo and who doesn’t admit her anger until it comes up again and again and again and carries it like a burden or like guilt, who we only see really Grasp and feel Confidence about her anger being something good in front of others when she has those conversations with ashton. and like. ashton who looks at imogen and sees a superhero. imogen venturing through ashton’s mind and holding his bleeding and exhausted head and saying i’m sorry. i’m sorry. and imogen who looks at ashton and sees someone special. and fucking “we got him killed.” and “no, we didn’t. don’t you dare. […] we are not what fucking killed that man. […] we are his eventual victory. we are his fucking revenge.” and “i’ll be his revenge.” and “i have no fucking doubt.”

and in general rp wise they both tend to make some of my favourite characters (also typically the ones i find most frustrating) because they both tend to make flaws that are easy to hate and they make those flaws very central to their characters but i think that’s also what makes their character interactions so deeply compelling because so frequently it’s like. yes yes these two characters have like. a helix of things they have in common but also things they deeply disagree on but they’re going to spider-man point at the things that are the same and they’re going to honour their differences while doing so. and it’s just. i always enjoy it so much and i was psyched when i heard about an imogen and ashton side pit stop in last nights episode and i was not let down when i watched the episode today.

[wow-thisismylifeiguess]

thinkin about pacific rim soapghost, but they're not drift partners

Ghost has been in love with and dating Roach since they were teenagers. They join the Jaeger Program together and everything on Roach’s suggestion.

One day, Roach dies. Ghost is distraught. Ruined. But not more than Roach’s drift partner, John MacTavish.

See, Roach and Ghost were never copilots. Going through the program, Roach ended up paired with Soap of all people. And Ghost hated him for it because it was always supposed to be him and Roach. And now that Roach is gone, Ghost has all the more reason to detest Soap’s entire existence. Meanwhile Soap is stuck with his own dilemma.

He's caught between the hell of having felt his drift partner die whilst also struggling to determine if the feelings he has for Ghost are purely his own, or an after effect of drifting with Roach.

Eventually, Soap is paired with Ghost, something neither of them are all that pleased by, but the program basically controls their lives and neither of them have a choice unless that choice is to leave the Jaeger Program all together. It is rough. Their test drift is delayed for months, mostly because Soap makes excuses of not being ready yet, that Roach's death is still too fresh in his head, something that only further irritates Ghost. How dare he? How dare he talk about the love of his life like Roach meant anything to him? Ghost is blinded by his grief, and it finally culminates in a fight the night before their compatibility test.

- - -

"You don't know shit-!"

"I know more than you! I know everything about him, Riley! I was in his fucking head!"

Ghost freezes. His expression is caught between surprise and burning anger, but Soap doesn't give a shit. He's been holding back this entire time, taking the abuse because he *knows* it's different for Ghost. Knows that he lost the love of his life and has no other way to fucking grieve. But he's tired of this shit.

"I know how much he loved you. How much he wanted to spend the rest of his life with you. Fuck, it was so strong. Fucked me up in the head, if I'm being honest. 'Cause I liked you too. Kept my mouth shut about it, even if he knew anyway. It was like a mutually agreed upon decision. I didn't bring up his feelings for me and he didn't bring up my feelings for you. We just ignored it. And then he died in the middle of everything, and the only fucking thing in his head was *you*. You you *you*. Fuck, can't even tell what parts are me and what parts are still him. He haunts me like a fucking *ghost*, and I hate it, but I miss him at the same time so I just fucking cling to any part of him that I can. And the strongest part is his love."

Finally, Ghost breaks his silence. He ignores the part about Roach's feelings for Soap like he never mentioned it at all. "How can you love me when you don't even know anything about me?"

"I do, though. I know that you hate sweets, but you loved kissing Gary and tasting the sugar on his lips. I know you love this program, despite what it's taken from you. You've always struggled to belong, and outside of Gary, piloting feels like your purpose in life. It's why you haven't left, right? I know everything about you that he's ever known."

Soap doesn't sound happy about that. Doesn't sound upset either. Just...resigned. The red finally fades from Ghosts vision, and for the first time, he looks at Soap. Really look at him, and sees just how *broken* he is. Takes a moment for the connection to form in his mind, for him to realize why. Ghost had lost the love of his life, yes. But Soap had been the one to feel it. To be there. It had felt like he was dying too. And here Ghost is, *blaming him*.

"I-"

"It's whatever, Riley. I'm leaving. Don't think I'm cut out for this anymore, it's all just one big fucking headache. I'm tired."

Ghost watches Soap walk away. And he doesn't follow, because what can he even say?

[aroaceofdiamonds]

I have feelings about this...

Until Dawn is a game where YOUR CHOICES AFFECT THE STORY. That is the core of the game. I don't like the idea of the movie definitively saying 'these are the canon choices', but then again, maybe it's one path...

The story is also tailored to the player in a way. Like, if you say you're scared of needles in the segment with Dr Hill, the killer will chase you with a syringe instead of a tank of gas. They're probably not going to be able to adapt that, which is a damn shame...

There's something unique about Until Dawn that I don't really want lost in adaptation.

There's also the issues with the monsters in the game being of Native American origins. I cant speak for how accurate or respectfully they've been represented in the original game as im not Native American (from what I've gathered, their appearance is better than some other uses, but thats about it), but if they're going to use them, it's better done with someone from the Cree tribe (the tribe used in the game, if i remember correctly) at the helm. Also, please cast someone of Native American descent as Jack Fiddler.

So yeah, I really love the game but it is a game which needs to be adapted with respect and sensitivity.

[nvenjpg]

twilight sporkel twilight purlep twilight ourple twilih- 

cannot believe i saw like, two or three mlp edits and then never stopped seeing them and then i fell down in that rabbit hole and now im back in my mlp era, its been like 5 years i need to catch up hhghhgh

(the background should be purpleeee not pinkisshh im gonna break open my computer with my teeth and chew on its insides..im going maaaaadddddfrghtbfcth)

[solradguy]

Having ADHD but only having it just enough to get the like 2 symptoms left out of every conversation about ADHD fills me with an apathy that has no practical solution. Rolling up to the ADHD conversation like "Some days I can't focus and everything pisses me off and the best I can do is lay on the floor with music on and scowl at the ceiling until it stops because if I don't then I'll be mean to other people because I have no patience when I get like that" just makes everyone side-eye you because they immediately jump to the conclusion that you want to commit unspeakable acts of violence.

But a lot of people don't know that this is something people with ADHD can experience. The only time I ever see it mentioned is when I go out of my way to find research on it...

[hychlorions]

checked the shipping wars blog for funsies to see that sulemio got disqualified for their shippers sending death threats??? they were winning too. what the fuck did you need to get so mad for

[misc-obeyme]

okay so! Imagine if you given the choice to marry barbatos and Solomon but here’s the twist! You have to choose only ONE to marry! Who would you pick? >:3

-🍁

Noooooo why do I have to choose?!

I want to marry both of them 😤

Though can you imagine having those two as husbands at the same time?? LOL oh ho ho that is fun to think about.

Right, but anyway, back to the question!

I'm really trying to come up with ways to get out of choosing lol. I'm like well technically I could marry either one of them and then have the other one just live with us or something... But I know that's not the point. I just want to find a way to keep them both!

But okay, if I had to choose for some reason...

I think I would choose Barbatos. But I would feel bad because I think Solomon would really struggle with rejection.

I almost chose Solomon for that reason alone because I think Barb could handle it better, but my heart was like, lol no you love that butler too much. And it's true, there's quite a lot I'd be willing to do if it meant I got to marry Barbatos. Sorry, Solomon.

But let the record show that I would rather just have them both to myself because I am greedy like that. speaking of greed I wouldn't mind Mammon as a third husband either tee hee

[wantonlywindswept]

workshopping clone selkies

Hmmm, how do we think a selkie au might work for the clones?

I don't think I'd want them to all be one thing, animal forms are different according to personality or w/e, but from a 'we are making these people into soldiers' cloning a selkie would not necessarily make sense? Like that's a huge weak spot right there.

Maybe the Kaminoans just took the skins from the start? Mean route would be to destroy them, but maybe they just have silos or warehouses full of animal skins. Some of them are really unique or rare - it's just good recycling to sell off the skins of clones who die.

Or maybe they carry their skins with them, there's a compartment in their armor/kit to put them in. Maybe they leave them on the ships while they go to battle? Maybe the skins are a huge secret and the clones go to great lengths to keep the knowledge from their commanding officers. A more gentle version of the Kaminoans having them - maybe the Jedi are in charge of their clones' skins, and there are halls in the Temple where they're carefully and reverently kept safe.

Is this just a blatant excuse for Palpatine to have a beautiful vulptex skin hanging in his office that he encourages all of his visitors to admire but for some reason makes all of the Coruscant Guard clones stiff and uncomfortable and one time when Plo Koon has the misfortune of having to meet with the Chancellor he's extremely surprised when Commander Wolffe sees the skin and goes absolutely fucking feral?

...MAYBE SO.