#what better way to visually show it's set in the past than making it look like it was MADE in the past

[franeridan]

just finished watching the first two lupin zero episodes and can I just say

[physalian]

Writing Exposition (Or Turning a Textbook into a Story)

Exposition concerns every facet of your work from character descriptions, backstories, and relationships, to world history, geography, religions/faiths/superstitions, politics, and current events. Whenever the author takes an aside to say “Joe, Bob’s second cousin, said ‘hello’,” the exposition is establishing that Joe is Bob’s cousin.

So shaming a story for its poor handling of exposition is like shaming a movie for bad visual effects. Yes, some of it is probably bad, but I guarantee that you did not notice every single VFX shot in the movie, and you weren’t supposed to.

Most examples of bad exposition occur when the following happens:

Informed Character A exposits to Informed Character B and tacks on “as you know” with full sincerity

Random Important Detail gets dropped in conversation that does not fit the tone or direction of conversation

Character suddenly monologues about The Thing unprompted

Convenient Breaking News Alerts

Character, out-of-character, begins monologuing about The Thing even when prompted

The pacing screeches to a halt so the Exposition Train can thunder past

Exposition exists to give information, and in order for a reader to understand a story, not all of it can or should be agonized over making perfect. Settings have to be established. Character names and relationships have to be understood. “Telling” over “showing” is, in my opinion, perfectly fine when the “showing” would take more lines, effort, and priority over a single inconsequential sentence. Heck, sometimes the “telling” is better than the “showing”. The trick to understanding when, how, and to what degree to give exposition is making it motivated.

What is motivated exposition?

See this post about character descriptions and the plight of the cliche “mirror” trope for unmotivated exposition.

Motivating your exposition means giving it a reason to exist where it does, prompted by the story you’re telling. Citing the “mirror” trope: I can have my character wake up and describe themselves to you, but in doing so, that rarely tells the audience anything more than just what to picture as they read. Or, I can have my character description spread out as those details become relevant. They’re describing their hair color and texture as it begins to irritate or distract them, telling us both what it looks like, and what our character thinks of it, and a little bit about their personality in how they treat it.

I can open the first chapter with a long-winded editorial about the long lost king destined to unite the shattered kingdoms, or I can wait until the tale becomes important to my characters to tell.

I can spin tapestries about politics before you’ve even met your hero, or I can wait until those politics begin to cause the hero problems and then invite the hero to talk about why those politics cause problems.

See this post about pacing and ensuring your scenes always do at least two things at once. Motivated exposition takes bland information’s singular purpose (to inform) and gives it flavor in coloring the personalities of the characters who give and receive it.

When to give exposition

Caveat: Not all front-loaded exposition is poorly-handled. Everyone loves the Star Wars title crawls because they’re a part of the episodic movie experience. Whether it’s a cheap way to deliver information is irrelevant.

Most prologues exist to front-load exposition and, because I love using Lord of the Rings as my shining example in every post, the trilogy opens with a lengthy speedrun of the main villain, some of the important pieces on the chessboard, the importance of the ring, the smeared reputation Aragorn must live up to and repair, and an idea of the stakes should the heroes lose. Not only is it a prologue, it’s a narrated prologue. There’s an impressive amount of information given in not a lot of time.

Last Airbender begins every single episode with a reminder about the 100 year war and the aggression of the Fire Nation and the purpose of the avatar.

With that said, prologues and title crawls are their own tangle of weeds.

As I said above, exposition should be given when the story gives it reason to exist. Don’t talk about the politics until you have a scene where discussing politics is relevant.

If you need to establish your cool, unique magic system, wait until you have a character using that magic and give it in little chewable bites. That character likely isn’t using every trick in the book right then and there. If they wrote Last Airbender as a novel and started explaining the other three bending styles the second Katara levitated some water, it would read sloppy and slog.

Or, leave the exposition as a mystery to be told later. Make your audience crave the hero’s backstory, piecing together little hints throughout the narrative until just the right moment comes along where your hero would realistically start spilling the beans about themselves. Have other characters frustrated at the lack of information. Have other characters missassume and be wrong about the information they think they know.

Have your characters crave knowledge about their world as much as your audience does.

How to give exposition

Exposition can be given three ways: Via the narrator, via dialogue, or via images or texts observed by the narrator (think news broadcasts or the front page of the paper, books, letters, videos, diary pages).

No matter which avenue you give exposition through, the less random it is, the less “hand of the author” the audience sees. Characters given a lucky break by a convenient breaking news alert is a mini deus ex machina —- the heroes do not earn their victory, it’s just given to them. They are not active in the plot making decisions, they are being railroaded by information as it falls into place before them.

Narrated exposition

The narrator’s internal monologue will interrupt the story to explain whatever needs explaining in that moment. The difference between it reading like a textbook and reading like a story is whether or not this information is important to the narrator.

Meaning, what does my hero feel about this new information? Katniss Everdeen in Hunger Games exposits the entire book because she’s alone for a fair chunk of it with no one to talk to, and she’s no stranger to the politics and history of her world. And yet, she has such strong feelings about everything she says that it doesn’t feel like she’s just giving information for the sake of informing. Everything she says and how she says it reflects on her personality and how she views her world.

Dialogue exposition

When Katniss is clueless about the tribute parade process and all the nuances of Capital life, how she asks about this information and how Effie, Cinna, and Haymich tell her also speaks to their personalities and biases about what they’re saying. In essence: Their exposition is in-character, and, thus, services their characters.

This is the complete opposite of when two informed characters exposit to each other information both already know for the sake of the audience because the author has no other way to give said information. A prime example is the hero happening to overhear two minions discussing The Plan dropping lines like “as you know” (which makes it worse every time).

The only time “as you know” works is when it’s in character. As in, the villain expositing to their minion they think is stupid and the minion reacting to that assumption appropriately. Or, the heroes are gathered to discuss The Plan and the leader of the meeting goes “as you know” because that happens in the real world. Bonus points if some characters are irritated by the redundant recap.

Exposition via dialogue also opens the door for lies, half-truths, and characters simply being wrong or blinded by their biases. Or, characters simply being ignorant of the world they live in. In Lord of the Rings, Gandalf is like 3,000 years old and has been all over Middle Earth. It doesn’t break the plot to have Gandalf exposit because he would realistically have witnessed or have deep knowledge about historical events and politics. Aragorn, too, is 87, and has ranged all over the place. He’s the future king and thus had better know his history and politics. Aragorn expositing makes sense.

Say what you will about Last Jedi but it has a prime example of nuanced exposition: Kylo Ren and Luke Skywalker have incredibly different perspectives on if/how Luke attempted murder on his nephew. There’s 3 sides to every story and the audience is never shown the truth. Had this been given in the title crawl, it would have lost much of its potency.

Dialogue also nurtures the relationships between the characters talking. Telling stories brings people together. If a character is sharing their backstory, why are they telling the narrator, and what does this mean to them as they tell it? If a soldier is sharing his grizzled leader’s backstory around a campfire, how does his relationship with his leader impact how he tells that story, what language he uses, how he sounds, the expressions on his face?

Third party exposition

Information given from an object can be incredibly hit or miss, depending on how hard the heroes worked to obtain it, and whether or not the object in question is meaningful to the heroes.

In the Assassin's Creed games, you abandon the gameplay in whatever historical era you're playing in to watch cutscene after cutscene of exposition (specifically referencing the Ezio Trilogy) by characters no one cares about, giving information that no one cares about, when we'd all rather just keep playing the game.

You can literally have a character read from a textbook, logbook, or daily minutes. What matters is how that info reads, and how the character responds to it. Is the information prejudiced or saturated with bigoted language? Is the mere existence of it where it is horrifying?

In the Mines of Moria (Lord of the Rings) Gimli learns that all his kin have been murdered by goblins once he sees their corpses all impaled with goblin arrows. Later, he finds his dead cousin’s crypt containing a dead dwarf cradling a book that tells of the downfall of Moria. The log entry isn’t finished, and the penmanship rapidly degrades as the dwarf writing it likely dies from his wounds, ending with the ominous, “We cannot get out, we cannot get out, they are coming.”

Had Gandalf warned Gimli ahead of time that all the dwarves were dead, or had they never found the crypt or figured out the owners of the arrows and simply were told “oh yeah we’re about to be attacked by goblins, I suspect they’re the reason Moria is a ghost town” that would have lost all emotional impact, and character development for Gimli.

This doesn’t have to be just objects, get creative! Have the hero watch a parody retelling of the Big Event. Have someone tell it like a ghost story around a campfire. Have it be a crazed rant all across live TV that no one takes seriously. Have six different characters remember it differently and all argue over who’s right. Have someone tell it poorly, thinking it “just a stupid rumor”.

When to withhold exposition

Satisfaction is the death of desire and sometimes uncovering the details of an enticing tidbit of information ruins whatever the audience had imagined to fill in the blanks. In terms of “showing” vs “telling” concerning worldbuilding, deciding whether to have a character speak about the information, or actually writing the scene they’re referring to, is entirely dependant on the story you’re telling.

If you are going to write a flashback, or describe a video of the event, that flashback and video has to be *packed* with as much information as you can cram in there as artfully as you can. Flashbacks and dream sequences take up space and entire scenes and settings need establishing so the audience isn’t floating in the ether trying to follow along. Which tends to mean that the meat of the flashback is barely half of the words you’re now forced to read.

Decide how important it is that the audience sees the incident as it happened, versus told in the aftermath through the biases and flawed memory of another character.

Sometimes the fewest amount of words pack the biggest punch. You can have a shattered soldier describe the battle of which they’re the last survivor in gory detail, or you can have them simply say “it was hell” and let the oomph hit in their expression, how their voice cracks, how vacant their eyes look. The injuries they sustained, the traumas visible in how they hold themselves. At that point, the audience can imagine whatever hell they want. At that point, what you are "showing" (the emotional and physical toll taken on the speaker) is likely way more important than the battle itself.

Concerning pacing — no matter how hard you worked on designing your politics and royal lineages and fantasy geography, odds are if that information isn’t important to your characters, it isn’t important to your readers. It’s not motivated.

I love trivia and fantasy maps as much as everyone else, but I like them on the wikis and next to the table of contents, not interrupting an engaging story.

And, give your audience credit where credit is due. How many fan theories stand on the basis of a few scant lines of narration or zoomed-in snippets of background characters (R+L=J anyone?) and pieces of costume? The mystery is what makes it fun, and I just watched the criminally disappointing second adaptation of the Lightning Thief completely robbed of that mystery every chance they had.

—

In short, the amount of exposition isn’t what makes it well or poorly handled, it’s how and when it’s delivered. Inception is my favorite sci-fi movie and the entire script is exposition, but the way it’s given is entertaining. Motivating your details to exist for a reason, to be given exactly when the time is right and not a moment before, is the spoonful of sugar helping the medicine go down.

Make it timely

Make it relevant

Make it important to the cast

Make it earned by the cast

Make it entertaining

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

HOLY FUCKING SHIT HAZBIN WAS SO FUCKING GOOD IM GOING INSANE AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAKENFKCMKWJRKFNSMSMDMSMDN-

Okay. Okay deep breaths. Time for some cool and collected comentary. Okay.

Putting it under the cut so ppl can avoid spoilers :)

HUSK USED TO BE AN OVERLORD!?!?!?!?!? HELLO!?!?!?!?!? FUCKIN PLOTTWIST OF THE CENTURY WHAT THE FUCK!?!?!?!?!?

Huskerdust my beloved

SIR PENTIOUS MY BELOVED

Vox was great. I love him he's so fucking cool-

If Vox wasn't already a Tumblr sexyman he's definitely gonna be one now. He's so fucking Onceler coded it's insane.

Velvette was amazing too. It's so funny that she's British lmao I was not expecting that

Velvette is also very Anne Boelyne(like from SIX not from Real Life) coded it's wild. Her part in that song with Carmila was giving so much Don't Lose Your Head

I swear I'll stop comparing them to other characters I SWEAR

Okay but me and my brother are working on a Hazbin Hotel swap AU where we swap the main cast with the overlords and in that AU we swapped Husk and Vox. The Husk used to be an overlord reveal is gonna make that AU soooooo much easier lmao

ADAM IS REALLY GOOD I promised I would stop comparing to other characters but he was giving SO MUCH Hades from Disney's Hercules like its insane

I think we should let Alex Brightman sing rocj and roll more often that song was such a fucking BANGER

SPEAKING OF THE SONGS- oh my god I love the soundtrack so fucking much-

Stayed Gone was a lil less hype then I was expecting but thats okay cuz it was still a banger and I loved the visuals

That song battle between Carmilla and Velvette????? Oh my god??????

Carmilla and Vaggie's song was also amazing but I think I know why they didn't have Stephanie Beatriz sing her own song in Elena of Avalor y'know, girl cannot hold a character voice while singing

LOSER WAS SO FUCKING GOOD- I love Huskerdust so much. I love Keith David so much. Blake Roman is such a phenomenal Angel Dust.

SPEAKING OF all the voice actors are amazing. Blake Roman, Brightman as Pentious and Joel Perez were the ones I was the most worried abt but I loved all their preformances so much it was fucking fantastic

Valentino can go die in a fucking hole <3

The other Vees are cool and fun to watch but I hope Valentino fucking dies

Okay to be fair he's also fun to watch when he's not in the same room as Angel Dust but tHAT DOESNT SUPERSEID MY HATRED FUCK 👏 THAT 👏 GUY 👏👏👏👏

Speaking of the Vees tho I do love their dynamic

My favorite episode was probably Radio Killed the Video Star bcuz of mY BOYS PENTIOUS AND VOX!!!!!!!!

And the most painful episode to watch was- no surprise- Masquerade

That episode was a fucking rollercoaster Jesus fucking Christ...

Those scenes with Angel and Valentino where so fucking visceral... like. Who the fuck wrote that. Who are you. Are you okay. Do you need help-

Tho I'm not sure abt how they're handling the ah- more serious bits of Angel's character. It is WAYYYYYY to early to tell and I think Loser wasn't like. Trying to downplay the situation. But the writers better have been careful moving foreward bcuz I can def see a world where Angel's arc goes very wrong very fast-

Also while we're criticizing: wasn't a fan of the pacing. Especially in episode two. Like I can look past it, but the way they breeze past some plot points kinda bugged me

Otherwise it was sooooooo fucking good man oh my god

THE HUMOR WAS SO MUCH BETTER THAN PPL MAKE IT OUT TO BEEEEEE PPL NEED TO STOP SHITTING ON THE COMEDY IN THESE SHOWS MAN-

The gag where Niffty just fucking stopped thinking every time the camera turned on was so fucking good

Niffty in general was really fuckin funny

Alastor was a lot less prominent of a character then I thought he would be but tbh I think that's for the best. He's like Discord from My Little Pony, fun in small doses but if you don't set perameters for how often he appears and when he's willing to help it kinda breaks the show

Chaggie is adorable and I love them <3

I think this show does a really good job balancing the focus on the whole cast! These first 4 episodes seem to be pretty Charlie, Angel and kind of Vaggie heavy but everybody still gets their fair share of attention!

THE ANIMATIOJ OH MY GOD- IT WAS FUCKING PHENOMENAL IM LOSING MY M I N D

Im going feral IM GOING FERAL THIS EXCEEDED MY EXPECTATIONS AKFNVKKENFEKFNDN

I love comedy. I love musicals. I love drama. I love silly characters. I LOVE ANIMATION!!!!!!!

It's like the South Park movie but longer and better animated and IVE BEEN WAITING FOUR FUCKING YEARS-

Just. So excited overall. Can't wait to see where it goes. May make more posts abt my thoughts in tbe future.

[duskyashe]

CAMP NANO DAY 12

[AO3]

============·^·^·^·============

Danny could have cried in relief. All of his hard work (and Jazz's pointed words with the more friendly of his rogues) had paid off—Danny could finally, finally take a nap. His homework was caught up, all his chores were done, his parents were off terrorizing yet another ghost hunters convention, and the only ghost he'd had to deal with the entire day had been a blob ghost making itself at home in the neighbor's trash can. With Jazz and his friends on deck for emergency ghost wrangling, Danny couldn't find it in himself to feel anything but relief as he buried himself under his blankets on his rarely used bed.

As the sixteen year old half ghost started drifting off, eagerly looking forward to catching up on his sleep, a familiar green glow appeared over his bed and a bone chilling gasp got stuck in the back of his throat, startling Danny awake. "No, no, no, come on!" Danny cried out in frustration. "Just one undisturbed afternoon nap, is that too much to ask?!" Half expecting Wulf to come tumbling out of the dimensional tear that was suspended above his bed, Danny changed forms and sat up against his headboard. If the Esperanto speaking ghost showed up, Danny wanted ready access to his ghost half's innate understanding of all languages spoken by the dead and the NeverBorn.

Instead of Wulf, however, the person who fell through the unstable portal and onto his bed was wearing an armored costume. A very familiar armored costume. What was Nightwing doing in his bedroom?!

The Gotham vigilante quickly rolled off his bed and landed in a crouch, visibly taking the situation in. It was something Danny, himself, had done many times over the past two years, and personal experience had him raising his hands and carefully holding them away from himself as a peaceful gesture. Even though Danny was hella confused, he let Nightwing dictate when the questioning began.

He wasn't even going to think about the kinds of questions his bedroom would raise or the deductions that one of the superhero community's greatest detectives would be able to make from this experience. That way led madness.

Apparently satisfied with his visual scan of Danny's room, Nightwing turned the majority of his attention to Danny and asked, "Who are you?" Overall, definitely one of the better questions to ask in this situation.

"I'm Phantom," Danny replied, then cringed at the remembered lecture from Pandora about titles and using them and amended his statement. "King Phantom, I guess."

Nightwing's attention narrowed in on him at that, feeling almost like a laser. "King Phantom? Ghost King Phantom?"

Danny scowled at that, suddenly understanding the gist of what had happened. "Let me guess, some hoity toity big wig fruitloop kidnapped and sacrificed you to the Ghost King, either for favor, power, immortality, or all of the above?"

His reaction seemed to have set Nightwing off balance somewhat, as the man hesitated slightly before responding much less hostilely. "Yessss? I mean, the Lazarus Pits have been growing less and less potent over the last two years, and Ra's seems to be getting more than a little desperate. Apparently he did the same ritual once before, about four hundred years ago, and ended up with the Lazarus Pits. The same Pits that are losing potency at a frankly astonishing rate."

"Of course," Danny mumbled with a curse and a facepalm. "Here's the problem. Two years ago, there was a different Ghost King. He was very much not a good dude, very power hungry and very evil. He probably received that sacrifice four hundred years ago and decided it was a good investment, and so created those Lazarus Pits as a show of favor. They probably granted inhuman power and the ability to cheat death, right?" At Nightwing's nod, Danny continued. "Yeah, see, there's no real way to cheat death, not like that. Death comes for everyone eventually, you can just prolong the inevitable. Ever since I defeated the previous King in ritualistic single combat, all favors, spells, and curses put in place by the former King have been dissolving without the power of the throne behind them. Unless the new King, me, reinforces those favors, spells, and curses, they will eventually wither into nothing." Danny saw Nightwing start to pale and hurried to reassure him. "Luckily for you, I have no intention of doing that. You'd become my thrall and effectively die right here and now if I did. I really don't want to do that, you're one of my favorite heroes ever, so instead what I'm going to do is basically quicken the process of those Lazarus Pits drying up. Anyone willing to sacrifice one of the heroes of the world for a little bit of power and prolong their death will never find favor from me," Danny declared, feeling his eyes flash silver as his Royal Decree was written in the very fabric of the universe. "Now! How about we get you back to where you belong!"

============·^·^·^·============

So sorry for missing yesterday, my boyfriend flew in from out of state, so I had to go pick him up from the airport, which was almost three hours one way, and I ended up with hardly any time to write. I also forgot to write for a good portion of today, so this was a bit rushed and not at all what I was originally planning on writing (⁠^⁠～⁠^⁠;⁠)⁠ゞ but hey! Another prompt from the Batpham server has been written and published! (⁠ノ⁠^⁠_⁠^⁠)⁠ノ

I'm trying to finish Cryptid Crash Course chapter 3 for y'all, but I can't quite get the opening to work the way I want it to, so I'm letting it sit and marinate in the back of my head (⁠；⁠^⁠ω⁠^⁠）don't worry, I'm planning on finishing the entirety of Cryptid Crash Course this month! I just don't know when that'll actually be ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠⊙⁠_⁠ʖ⁠⊙⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

Once again, if anyone wants to add on to this, please feel free! I fully intend for this to be the only time I touch on this world, so it's free game, y'all (⁠｡⁠•̀⁠ᴗ⁠-⁠)⁠✧ have at it!

Have a good morning/day/night wherever you are!

[mirai-e-jump]

TV Guide & TV Life, March 2024 Issues ft. Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger Main Cast Member Interviews (translations below)

TV Life 3/15 Issue, Publication: February 28, 2024

Iuchi: When you first heard the title, "Bakuage Sentai Boonboomger," were you surprised?

Suzuki: I said, "Huh?" in response. I also said "Is that true?" (laughs).

Hayama: For sure, I kept wondering what it meant (laughs).

Iuchi: Did it mean "to cheer up" or "the sound of a car's engine"? I wondered which one "Boonboom" was, but it ended up being a double meaning for both.

Hayama: It seems that "Explosive (Bakuage)" also incorporates the staff's desire to make Super Sentai even more "bakuage" than ever before.

Suzuki: It's upbeat and outlandish in a good way, and leaves an impact.

Saito: Other than the title, I was also surprised by the visual impact of Boonboomger.

Soma: They have tires on their faces.

Saito: These forms have a past, nostalgic feel to them. The more you look at them, the cooler they get.

Soma: When I see them fighting, I get alot more attached to them.

Saito: I think they'll be easier for children to draw pictures of.

Soma: I want them to draw alot.

Iuchi: Genba's hairstyle too. All you have to do is go around in circles a bunch.

Soma: No, no! My hair isn't yakisoba! (laughs).

Iuchi: When I was a kid, I liked miniature cars and played with them alot. However, I never really knew how cars were made. Taiya in particular is a master of development and modification, so I first made sure that I knew about cars, and then I'll try to make him look mature and calm as I play him.

Hayama: What I'm most conscious of, is being cool. I was told that "Red" and "Blue" have always appeared in every Super Sentai production. When I heard that, I felt more responsible. I want children to think that Boonboomger is cool even after they grow up. Especially since Ishiro is the coolest of cool, I try to be like that in the way he stands, and even in the way he speaks.

Suzuki: Mira is a bright, energetic, and innocent kid who enjoys everything. I try to be like Mira from the moment I enter the set. I also try to express myself clearly so that the viewers can understand what kind of emotions Mira is feeling when she speaks and moves.

Saito: Since Jou's a police officer, I started by researching the profession. I watched alot of footage and close up interviews at police academies and learned what it was like to be a police officer. While maintaining the seriousness of a police officer that I felt, at the same time, I want to show him as the cheerful and lively Jou that's eccentric when he needs to be.

Iuchi: Also, the angle of his salute.

Saito: Yeah. I'm careful about that too.

Iuchi: When I imitated it alittle, he said, "It's wrong!" (laughs).

Saito: There's a proper way of doing it. Such as it being with your right hand, not left.

Soma: Genba's rather mysterious and doesn't show his true feelings. He's a unique character that hasn't been seen before, so I try to play him freely without being restrained by anything. I try not to make it too elaborate. I think it'll make it feel more "Genba like."

Iuchi: All five of them are unique. Let's "bakuage" through the whole year so that as many people as possible can enjoy it! _

How would you describe yourself in terms of "Explosive(ly) XX"?

Iuchi Haruhi is: Explosively Stubborn It's fine to be particular, but I've been reminded to listen to the opinions of those around me. I think I've gotten alittle better at this compared to in the past. However, I'm still stubborn in some areas.

Hayama Yuki has: Explosively Long Legs All the small, medium and large sized pants at clothing stores are so long that they don't fit. I thought it was fine, since Ishiro often crosses his legs, which makes him stand out. I'm also prideful (laughs).

Suzuki Miu is: The Explosive Mother Everyone calls me "Mother" on set. This is because I'm the one who arranges everyone's shoes and puts away our lunch boxes. I'm Boonboomger's mama (laughs).

Saito Ryu is: Explosively Extreme I take what I like to do seriously, but I never do anything that I don't want to do. I'm either at 0 or 100. That's why I'm serious in some strange ways (laughs).

Soma Satoru is: Explosively Fun I love anything that's fun, and I like to enjoy everything, whether it's having fun at work or in my private life. I try to keep my spirits as high as possible.

TV Guide 3/8 Issue, Publication: February 28, 2024

Iuchi: When I heard that I was going to be apart of the Super Sentai series, my mind went completely blank. The first time I really felt it was at the introduction meeting. When I saw the documents on the desk, I thought, "Ah, so this isn't a joke" (laughs).

Hayama: Ever since I started acting, it's been my dream to be apart of the Super Sentai series, and this was the third time I auditioned for a role. I felt like I had taken the baton from the blue's of "Avataro Sentai Donbrothers" and "Ohsama Sentai King-Ohger", both of whom I know very well. If I was going to do it, I wanted to be blue, so when the decision was made, I immediately asked, "Which color?" and was very happy when they said blue.

Suzuki: I went to the audition thinking, "I'm definitely going to be picked," but when I was finally chosen, I felt a great sense of responsibility and pressure. I strongly felt that since my name would be etched into this historic series, I had to be prepared to take on the challenge.

Saito: I've admired heroes since I was a kid, and I entered the entertainment industry to be apart of the Super Sentai series, so I was very happy when I was chosen. When I put the suit on at costume fitting, I realized that I could finally become a real hero.

Suzuki: You say you entered the entertainment industry because of the Super Sentai series, but what will you do when this is over?

All: Are you going to disappear? (laughs)

Saito: No, the Super Sentai series was just my first goal.

Suzuki: It's a production you absolutely had to do. I'm glad (laughs).

Soma: I've had multiple auditions for the Super Sentai series, but this time I was chosen, so I was very happy. Just like Miu-chan said, I felt pressure behind this happiness. But, on the other hand, I hope to enjoy the pressure and do my best together with my wonderful friends.

Saito: Many of the recent Super Sentai's have a flashy look to them, but Boonboomger has an old fashioned coolness, it's as if, in a good way, we're back in the Showa era. It's very appealing.

Suzuki: Ryu-kun, you're always mentioning the names of various Super Sentai series.

Soma: He's the most knowledgeable out of all of us. He's the Sentai master! (laughs).

Saito: I'm from the "Engine Sentai Go-onger" generation, but thanks to the influence of my sister and mother, I've also seen some of the older ones.

Suzuki: When I heard the title, I thought it was an interesting one, but at the same time, I thought it would be an uplifting and upbeat work.

Iuchi: I'm very happy that I'll be involved in the memories of today's children through this production.

Soma: I think it's a production that focuses mainly on smaller children, so I hope alot of children will watch it.

Hayama: I didn't play with toy cars that much as a kid, but even I think it's cool to see singers turned actors appearing in dramas. Cars are a theme that's easily understood by smaller children, so I feel explosive (bakuage) every day when playing the role (laughs). _

Q: What's the moment when your mood explodes?

Iuchi: I like to write lyrics and compose music with my guitar as a hobby. When I think things like, "I've got the chorus" or, "I've finished a whole song," I feel an explosive sense of accomplishment. But, I haven't let people listen to it…(*The other members then say, "We want to listen to it!"), Well then, I'll play it for you sometime over the next year.

Hayama: I like to appreciate music as an art form, and I'll use music apps to play music randomly by genre depending on my mood. During that time, if I happen to land on a song that I like, at that moment, my mood rises dramatically.

Suzuki: I have the biggest blast when I eat ramen! I really like noodles, but I especially love ramen. Even when I'm exhausted after filming all day long, I've still got energy after eating some ramen. Truthfully, I post the ramen I eat on a secret account with zero followers that no one sees. I write my impressions of what I eat for my own record.

Saito: I like to do muscle training, and I get excited about it. I get more excited when I can actually see my muscles growing after my workout is over, rather than during it. I'll look in the mirror and be like, "Nice~ My muscles are growing~" (laughs).

Soma: I'm from Shizuoka, where I used to play soccer, so the moment I kick a ball is the best moment for me. When I'm playing soccer, I get the biggest rush out of it when I get to play the way I want to play and when punting the ball. It's a great feeling. I put all my stress into the ball…but, I don't have that much stress, so my plays are weak (laughs).

[entering--hyperspace]

Was talking to a friend about this but like. The fallout show is weird in a way that like, objectively its good. The cast is great, the production value and attention to visual detail is stellar, but it doesnt feel like Fallout. Well, It feels like Bethesda Fallout which is a negative, bc that Also doesnt feel very Fallout to me, But I digress. I was wondering what else it was missing outside the obvious weird lore tie ins.

Its the Hope. Its the silly satire. I think the show leans too heavily into the grim direction of the wasteland, theres never any payoff, theres never any hopeful seeds planted, and they blew up Shady Sands for no good reason other than to hammer in how much the world sucks which, isnt a good enough reason, narratively. Theres not really any moments that make me appreciate the uniqueness of the setting way Fallouts 1/2/New vegas did.

Im not saying fallout cant be serious, it absolutely can be, but its being steered into a weird tunnel vision of everything sucks direction for no reason other than to continuously loop a "war never changes" without the nuance of civilizations trying to rebuild and look towards the future in their own way, of learning from the past and stepping into this weird, struggling but endearing.

Take the Kings of F:NV, for example, theyre an independent group trying to help freeside without an outside faction, theyre objectively one of the more morally upstanding groups in Fallout...And theyre a bunch of Elvis impersonators without even knowing what that means. Its silly, and the part that fallout excells in is taking that silliness, seriously. And even to continue. This not really train of thought.

The "comedy" of The Fallout show is so weird, its just thrown into the script which, personally, is 1. mostly not even funny to me and 2. Just takes you out of the moment in general. I always felt like Fallout's dark humor and comedy was moreso built into the world itself and the people you meet more than it is just a haha funny joke.

Its just. Weird, this whole show is Weird. I think it wouldve been so much better if they kept it an independent story rather than trying ot give us answers that, honestly, the world didn't need. We did not need to know who was responsible for it all directly, thats not the fucking point. Is it an objectively good show? Yes. Is it a good fallout show? No. It had so much potential to be, but it really just wasnt there.

[readerxxandxx]

Seto Kaiba, you charming Bastard…

Seems like rich boys with hearts buried deep, deep, deep down are your thing! I both congratulate you and send kindest condolences as well for your taste. But I think you know what you are getting yourself into with this man. And it’s worth it to you…because you get: 

Seto is surly especially in the morning. Especially if things aren’t perfect. And he will let everyone in the vicinity know about it except you. He barely acknowledges your presence or at least verbally. He brushes past you to get things, lingers a bit long each time. But no words. Not until he’s properly caffeinated and seems less likely to strip wallpaper with his sharp tone. 

Visual cues are easier than verbal acknowledgements. He will do things to show that he cares in what he does rather than what he says. The proof is there and you just have to see it. He sees you browsing certain shops for things? You can bet you will be getting parcels of whatever you were looking at or suddenly Kaiba corp is manufacturing them and you absolutely have to test this out and keep the tester, of course. It just makes sense from a business standpoint to branch out…

Somehow you will always have your favorite snacks and drinks around. Like it’s almost creepy how often they show up. And you don’t even have to worry about buying anything. Cupboards seem to just restock themselves.

In public it’s harder to see but he’ll stand closer to you than anyone else, brush against you or lean into your space. Nothing that anyone else will see but you will know. He trusts you close. 

Trust that Seto’s nicknames might come off as a bit of an insult but there will always be a tone that you will come to recognize. So a partner being more into books and culture will be ‘bookworm’ or ‘dweeb’ but it will always have a softer emphasis. And heaven forbid he hear someone else call you that because those are fighting words and he will throw down. 

While Seto is very much into keeping a certain reputation, if it matters to you then it matters to him. So if you want a quiet picnic somewhere, you best believe that it will happen. He will be flexible when it comes to your wants because seeing you light up at the sight of the scenery or the basket (no matter how rustic) is worth his own unease and misgivings.

Keep in mind that this man has very different ways of responding to things based on his level of care. For some people, he’ll stand and watch them set on fire seeing a nearby hose or extinguisher and say nothing and then there are those he will go out of his way to look after. So if you are in the latter, consider yourself very lucky because he is very difficult to soften in such ways. 

If you are dear to him then know that your battles will always be his and he will always strive to finish them. And woe be to whoever is bothering you because he will destroy them, their life’s work, their future generation’s chances, hell their past relatives will suffer, too. Seto is very thorough about his revenge.

If you get sick in the beginning of your relationship then not to worry you are in good hands because he only employs the very best. However, if you get sick and he’s the only one allowed to tend you then know you’ve made it because not only is it something that will get him potentially sick and dirty, it’s intimate in ways. He wants to be at your side and wants your comfort to be seen by him alone. 

If you have a bad day then you better be prepared to be pampered with whatever it takes to make you feel better. He’ll have made sure to investigate to be sure all the facts are there but there will be less mechanics in the fact that he will be the one to tuck the blanket on you. Want a specific icecream or snack? You got it. And more than that, he’ll be right there watching over you. If you just need to be, he’ll do work but you will always be touching him because it’ll be as much for you as it is for him. 

Commission 1 of 2 for @lovecorekirby for Seto Kaiba and friend your taste is spectacular if not a big adventurous so best of luck! But I think you have more than the Heart of the Cards on your side. :) 

[thighzp]

For those who prefer to read on tumblr over AO3, here is the newest chapter I posted today! I'll be posting in both places to get maximum eyes on the work. Now do enjoy, because I made myself horny on the LORD'S DAY to write this, as Skippy would have wanted!

(tagging those who showed love on the original post! @itsalinh, @fanfic-keeps-me-sane, @alexgraphyy, @arrpegio, @hawklovesskippy)

Here are some important visuals for you lovely readers: Picture 1950s Hawk and Tim for the 2012 flashbacks, okay? That innocent little dorky Skippy smile melts my fucking heart. And I personally find Hawk to be very daddy in the 50s (before he was actually even a daddy). I'm thinking up titles, and I have a playlist of songs going that will inspire certain chapters of the book, so chapter titles will be coming soon as well with lyrics of songs that inspired each installment. Gird your loins, we're jumping right into some light to medium smut. ***

The loud music thumped in Tim’s ears as he pushed through the crowded bar. It was the first weekend of his graduate program at Georgetown and he, against his better judgment, agreed to meet up with some classmates he met at orientation. He never went out much in undergrad, mostly opting to stay in his dorm room and study or catch up on his shows while his other peers stumbled through the streets of the small college town.

Now that he had one degree under his belt, he felt like it was time to be a damn adult and see what the bar scene was like in his new city. Besides, at least he was now 21 and didn’t get that pins-and-needles feeling across his skin when he handed a bouncer his ID. Even if his fake that he’d acquired through his freshman roommate did look enough like him and he had memorized the address and date of birth of the man on the card, it still made him extremely squirrely and anxious and usually resulted in ducking out of the line and telling his friends he forgot he had work he needed to catch up on.

The bar was dark and filled with bodies, Tim’s brow already beginning to sweat as the music pulsated with his heartbeat. He finally shoved his way up to the bar and shouted for the bartender to bring him the same beer the guy before him had just ordered. He set down enough cash to cover the single beer as well as a tip, and turned his back toward the bar.

Tim leaned back against the counter, elbows propped up behind him on either side. He perused the crowd for anyone he recognized from orientation this past week. His gaze failed to fall upon any familiar faces, but he did catch the eye of another man across the bar. His heart leapt into his throat and he took a sip of the amber colored ale to try to push it down.

The man was older than him by at least ten years. This was not a concern for Tim, as most of his past lovers were well above his own demographic. The man was sipping his cocktail through the skinny black straw bobbing over the top of the drink. His blue eyes were locked on Tim, and Tim could feel his cheeks getting hot.

He subtly tried to look to his right and left to make sure that the man’s eyes were, in fact, trained on him. The man removed his lips from his drink and one corner of his mouth drew upward, indicating that Tim’s attempt at being covert had definitely failed. Tim let out a breathy chuckle to himself and threw the man a wink. Taking this as an invitation, the man began to walk towards him.

Tim pushed his back off the bar and began walking to meet the man on the dance floor. Though he did not go out much to the college bars with his friends over the past four years, he had plenty of experience meeting men in bars around his hometown. He knew the game and he had to admit, he played it well.

The man’s eyes never broke contact as they squeezed through a sea of bodies to get to one another. Once they reached each other in the mass of drunken college students, the man leaned down into Tim's ear, and just loudly enough over the music, said, “Your lips look so pretty wrapped around that beer bottle.”

Tim’s breath caught in his throat at the man’s forwardness. He’d encountered many a pickup line, but none that sent the blood rushing from his head and into his pants quite like that one. The man towered over him by at least 5 inches, to where Tim had to crane his neck up to meet the man’s gaze. Using his thumb and forefinger, Tim adjusted his thick framed glasses and on tiptoe, he placed his mouth right next to the man’s ear. His voice came out deeper than he expected, and thank God, because inside he felt his heart squealing like a little girl.

“So you think I’m pretty?”

With his one free hand, the man grabbed Tim’s waist and pulled him close. Tim was pleased with his choice of words, as he could now feel the man’s hard-on pressed against his leg. It took every ounce of self control Tim had not to rip this man’s clothes off in front of all these people. The man read Tim’s mind, or perhaps recognized the animalistic look in Tim’s eyes, as he grabbed Tim’s hand and began leading him off of the dance floor.

Once they reached the edge of the crowd, the man wasted no time before setting both of their drinks down on an empty table and pushing Tim against the nearest surface, which was the wall next to the men’s bathroom. Tim’s back was against the wall with the man’s massive hand cradling the back of his neck. The man used his other hand to place it under Tim’s stubble and tilt his chin up until their lips were millimeters apart, both men breathing heavily.

“Do you do this often?” Tim asked breathily. “Cruise for younger men at the college bars?”

“Ouch,” the man had a pained expression, though the sultry smirk never left his lips. “How old do you think I am?”

Tim gently nipped at the man’s neck, trailing light kisses upward until he reached the man’s ear. “Old enough to know better than to start something unless you want to finish it.”

The man pressed his hips against Tim’s, closing the space between the two of them and kissing Tim so deeply that he nearly choked on his breath. “How about this,” the man said as he pulled away from Tim’s desperate lips. “I’m gonna go close my tab, and when I get back here, if you’re still here, I’d like for you to come home with me.”

Tim rocked his hips against the man one more time before pulling away, “I’ll go get us a cab.” The man practically growled in Tim’s ear, placed a sloppy kiss just below Tim’s earlobe, and turned his attention back toward the crowded room. Tim watched as the man’s broad, muscular shoulders and back towered over the tiny women he had to push through to get back to the bar. He felt a surge of pride as he watched these college girls ogle at the man he was about to go home with. If only they knew, he thought, that the man’s stature clearly translated to other things of impressive size, if the feeling against Tim’s thigh had been any indication.

Tim finally tore his gaze from the man as he turned and exited the back door of the bar. As he stepped out into the hot August night, his ears still ringing from the loud music, he looked down the street and held up a hand to hail a taxi. A handful of other people were on the curb trying to do the same, a group of raucous frat boys jumping in the first cab that pulled up. Just as well, Tim thought. His suitor had not met him out back yet anyway.

Just then, the back door of the bar opened and his conquest emerged into the dark night. It did not require many strides of his long legs before he was back in front of Tim, grabbing his face and driving their lips together. The man’s lips were hot on Tim’s as he closed the space between their bodies once again. Tim felt something twitch in his pants at the thought of onlookers in this dark alley behind the bar, watching the two men, all hands and lips and teeth.

The man leaned down to kiss and bite at Tim’s neck, just above the collar of his shirt. While the man was sucking and licking at a spot of his skin, Tim took in the surroundings. He was sure the man was going to leave a mark, but he would be lying if he said he wasn’t enjoying a bit of voyeurism. Groups of girls whispering as they passed the men, missing available taxis that passed by because they were too busy in their moment of passion.

Then, Tim saw a man leaning up against the back door of the bar, having a smoke just under the bright security light that lit up the back alley. With two fingers, the stranger removed the cigarette from between his lips as he kept his eyes locked on Tim, his expression unreadable. Tim threw his head back as his own stranger placed his hand on his ass, clawing desperately at the smaller man. The man with the cigarette ashed it on the brick wall of the bar, ran a hand through his hair, and folded his arms. He wasn’t even pretending not to watch. He was enjoying the show that Tim was putting on for him.

Tim created a fantasy in his head of the stranger joining himself and his suitor in the back of the cab, the three of them fervently swapping sloppy kisses on the way to the original man’s home. Though he already had one man locked in for the night, the man who was whispering absolute filth in Tim’s ear about all the things he wanted to do to him, Tim couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like to have the two men worshiping his body at once. The dimly lit stranger shifted on his feet, appearing to become uncomfortable at the tightness in his own pants.

The fantasy world Tim had created was fractured when his suitor pulled away and finally flagged down a taxi. He opened the car door for Tim like a gentleman and slapped Tim’s ass as he climbed into the back seat. The man told the driver the address of their final location for the night. As the cab began pulling away from the bar, Tim watched as the stranger stomped out his cigarette, turned on his heels, and disappeared into the dark of the night.

[spicybylerpolls]

I know this blog has died down a bit but there's been some "leaks" (take it with a grain of salt) regarding spicybyler. Apparently Mike wants to take his relationship with El "to the next level."

I see some people saying if the leak were true, it would be a horrible idea. Of course these are people who are viewing the show through a sex-less lens (which, honestly, is so so intriguing to me. because many of them primarily stan the show for this exact thing: sexuality.)

But I was wondering what you all thought about this "leak"?

Personally, I think it's positive (for byler). In my opinion, the Duffers have already set this up through visual metaphors in S4. (I could talk about this further but it's regarding the hose gate scene.)

Mike may want to "take this next step" but he's not going to have a positive reaction and he's not going to like it. This is my interpretation: he's going to be forcing himself to conform even further until ultimately he can no longer deny the truth.

A lot of people think the Duffers are "simply not going to have enough time" to focus on a scene like this in the midst of everything else going on. But I just don't think they're viewing the show from the right lens. This is exactly what they have time for.

Will is a central character in S5. Mike is going to be right there beside him most of the time as we already know based just on their filming schedules and production. Will's arc is going to heavily revolve around his sexuality. Yes, there will be time for other things too, but the main focus is undoubtedly going to be about his sexuality (because it will be intertwined with the supernatural storyline). This means Mike is going to be involved in this storyline too!!!! Obviously!!!

And since he is, they're 100% going to have to explain his side of things. Why he's behaved the way he has. Why he said certain things to Will. What better way to do that than Mike forcing himself to conform to the ultimate standard (in this context) and ultimately failing or disliking it?

This would *show* the audience exactly what they need to know without having to explicitly state it. Honestly, if anything this saves time. It's a perfect and easy way to show that Mike is gay without having to rehash moments from the past in his perspective in a long, boring storyline (because we've already seen those moments.) Rehashing the past means conversation means longer scenes.

The best and quickest way to show Mike is gay is to just put him in a sexual situation with a girl lol.

The audience would be like:

"Oh, cool, they're going to have sex and essentially come of age.... But wait ... Why is Mike... having trouble? Why does Mike look dissatisfied?"

Cut to a scene of Will, sad and lonely.

"OH............."

Please note that the purpose of this blog is not to be creepy or to make anyone uncomfortable. That's why I created the #spicy byler tag (I will tag all polls with this). If you don't want to see this blog or anything related to it on your feed, please block that tag. Not everyone is comfortable with this sorta stuff, and that's okay.

[themattress]

Kodaka's back, y'all.

Between this and the anime Akudama Drive, it's clear that Kazutaka Kodaka has learned from where he went wrong in Danganronpa Another Episode: Ultra Despair Girls and Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony. For the former, Akudama Drive took the grim, dark, dystopian city action thriller and actually made it consistently fun by not bringing in extremely uncomfortable subjects that he's clearly way out of his depth in covering and then failing to even follow them through to their logical fatal conclusion. And now in this, what I hope is the first installment in a new series, he revitalizes the Danganronpa style mystery game in a way that balances light and dark tones perfectly, washing out the bad taste that V3 left behind.

For one thing, Kanai Ward is an excellent setting. While narratively it's isolated from the rest of the world, as a player you don't feel any isolation given how huge it is, which differentiates it from the enclosed spaces the Danganronpa games were set in...except for Ultra Despair Girls, but this time the city's a real city, full of people and activity and culture, not just a bunch of mostly vacant arenas to shoot enemies in. The perpetual rain, as well as the musical score, gives it so much atmosphere which is equally parts haunting and comforting.

In addition, going fully 3D rather than stick to the more standard visual novel format helps give the game its own identity, and with full animation the slower pace feels way more justified than in V3. Said pace is also helped by the addition of optional side quests to break up the monotony of the chapter-by-chapter formula, and by the blessing of the R button's fast-forward feature. The only times things feel like they're dragging on is in the Mystery Labyrinths, and even then they're so unpredictable that they held my interest the whole way.

The story and characters are fantastic. Many of them are reminiscent of Danganronpa characters, but have just enough unique qualities to make them distinct, with the standout of course being Shinigami who is like Junko Enoshima / Monokuma if s/he were an anti-hero instead of a villain. She steals the show with her antics and quips, with wonderfully energetic voice-acting by Anjali Kunapaneni. I won't be forgetting the term "boom-kill" anytime soon! However, I think that besides her the characters that left the biggest impression on me, causing me to think about them long after having witnessed their last moments on screen, were Chief Yakou Furio, Director Yomi Hellsmile, and CEO Makoto Kagutsuchi. Long story short, they're twisted as fuck, although each in varying ways: Yakou leaning toward the light, Yomi toward the dark, and Makoto as a solid True Neutral. They always held my attention.

Lastly I need to mention some of the plot points that were executed a lot better than in past Danganronpa games. The first chapter featured a huge subversion of expectations related to the game's characters, but unlike in V3 it didn't overreach to the main character in a way that felt mean-spirited and sapped away my enthusiasm for playing the rest of the game. In the second chapter, we finally got an instance of separate culprits rather than a single culprit or accomplices, which V3 had once looked like it was setting up to do before totally backtracking on it. In the third chapter, we had a murder happen while investigating a different murder done to much greater effect than in V3 where it was expected and ultimately underwhelming. In the fourth chapter, which is the third case in Kanai Ward, we get the return of Case 3 Syndrome where an intriguing and terrifying set-up ends up with a disappointingly mundane revelation fueled by some outlandish criminal motivation, but this is the first time since the original Danganronpa where I was willing to buy it since it fit the characters and situation involved from how they were established. In the fifth chapter, let's just say there's a certain character voiced by a certain VA who is killed due to the machinations of a hateful villain, and it is handled much more tactfully and meaningfully. And in the final chapter, we get kind of a repeat of the Hajime-Izuru situation from Danganronpa 2, but while I liked that just fine I actually found this to be better executed since it had way more narrative build-up in-game.

All in all, a great game. Mystery lovers everywhere should check it out.

[alexissara]

The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood - A Deck Of Brilliant Cards [Review]

The Cosmic Wheel Keeps On Spinning and it shows us a game of politics, sisterhood and ideas. In this game you draw cards and gaze into the future and past to craft a brighter path forward for yourself, your sisterhood, and maybe all of existence. However, there is more pressing matters, Fortuna has been exiled for 200 years and she has 800 years more to go and she can't take it anymore so she does a forbidden spell and calls fourth a Behemoth to help set her free. Get revenge, hug some friends and get to reading the cards.

This game is presented in a visual delight with some of the best sprite work I've ever seen, it is truly a beauty to behold. That beauty stays with it's writing as well, the content warnings it has are no joke and the content is unavoidable so please do read them for your own safety but I do think they are handled well, their brief, they give you an idea of the character and they add to the story in a way I think they were needed.

The gameplay is fairly simple you read people's fortunes picking from a limited set of choices based on what card you drew for what questions, you make cards, and in the last parts of the game you are doing a political worker placement game where you try to win an election. All these elements are simple and basic enough that they would work for a mobile game. It's extremally fun and easy to play.

The world itself is delightful, it's the kind of thing you play and you wish is real, that you could ascend and become a space witch with your loved ones and live eternally. It gives the world real problems, flawed systems and let you shape your own opinions about it. You may not be able to fix all the problems with society and there are times where the game even outside of card readings will present you with having to choose something you might not agree with but the game lets you engage with it's world in big ways and make big decisions.

This game is pretty queer and engaged in queer reality, your character is from the 1960s and she's some flavor of queer, what that flavor is is up to you as far as I can tell, she reads to me as like Demisexual and a Lesbian but I think there is plenty of cases to be made for other sexualities. If you choose Romance as the option you want to size then you will get with a woman, the game only has women in it outside of the demon you summon all other men are off screen, mentioned to exist sometimes positively, something neutrally, sometimes negatively. The games queerness adds to the theme of Sisterhood both being queer in the relationships the women are looking for while having some women express desire in men that exist off screen. It also is queer in that you help a trans woman transition into her true self. She is definitively a woman and you will be helping her out and you can potentially have her at your side for the political campaign. The broader sense of sisterhood here and the different things relationships to womanhood and other women can mean are really strong here.

Politically this game ranges from like American Democrat to arguably anarchist positions. When setting up your policies and seeing the policies of others you'll get a range of politics to choose from but ultimately you do only have 4 choices in most sections for policy. That said policy isn't all there is to the politics of the world itself. The world is fairly nice as it is, far better than earth as it stands so the base line is good and the previously mentioned queerness is never a conflict. They live in an all women sisterhood and while people travel and there are men in other places, obviously queerness is the most common thing for witches. In fact even polyamory is totally normalized in this world and while you can't be polyamorous romance is not a focus and you stating desire in someone else does not in any negative way impact your romantic relationship that you can get into with a hot butch lesbian. Then the politics have one last layer which is the cards, what you choose from the cards readings can also show a range of politics, beliefs and more from you. Choosing the choice you think is best for you, for them or the world. These can all paint a political picture outside of the range of your political campaign although your choices are also more RNG dependent and also tied to your cards. Plus there was a non RNG point where I did have to make an argument I really did not want to make and it really did annoy me especially in retrospect when It didn't factor into the game at all. However, that was the only moment in the whole game I felt like that when it wasn't based on RNG from the cards.

Now, I did not like the ending I got the first time I played this game through, some people will find that a somber ending, not getting what you wanted or paying the price you promised will be fitting but not I. So I played the game again, I speed ran through the game knowing the future now, in a way it felt very thematic, to know all the players, all the twists, all the turns and to use that to craft myself a perfect ending for everyone, a true happy utopia no matter what it too and I did it. A very small percent of people have managed to craft a truly happy ending but I am among them! I do think if I did not have the time of will to basically just rush through the game a second time I might have walked away with a worse impression of the game having disliked my ending and knowing I wouldn't have liked the other somber options either. However, it was really satisfying to make my ending even if it required a few additional hours of gameplay in which some of it I was more on auto pilot. The game is not super long and if you do the second run right after the first you won't need to reread a lot of what is going on only the choices you make differently.

Overall, this game is really a delight and something special, I think anyone who wouldn't struggle with the themes in the content warnings will really gain something from this game and for me it was a 10 hour little adventure on my first run, with a lot of that being taking time to think between choices because every choice felt like it mattered even if I knew the choice maybe wouldn't ever come up in game the people felt so real I wanted the best possible futures for them. This game is really special and has such fantast design and visuals that it is probably worth buying just to stare at and then actually playing it is another even better experience. Check out this game!

[roboticbuild]

Hello everyone I need to be insane Abt Asuka NOW!!!! Warning for anyone who cares Abt it I guess this post is gonna have guilty Gear spoilers? I doubt people who see this are gonna care but better to be safe than sorry.

But also hey what if I overanalyzed the lyrics of the Guilty Gear theme for Asuka, The Gravity? Haha, just kidding.......

........Unless?

Read more just in case it becomes long lol

Anyways I've been listening to the Circle on loop and there's obviously a LOT of symbolism, it's guilty gear, but there's a very specific set of lyrics that's making me feel like an insane madman (or thatman.)

So I wanna go over each lyric MOSTLY one by one kind of. And now I will immediately be inconsistent.

Find it, find it

Something unseen

Play back the history, answers within

I think this part is so so important bc I think it shows how Asuka doesn't only choose to never leave the past, but ACTIVELY chooses to stay in the past. It's only MAYBE at the end of strive where he thinks somewhat about the future of himself and the people around him. And even then, he continues to run from his consequences, and the truth of how everything is now. And so, he looks into the past, to find the answers he needs for the present. He thinks about Fredrick, he thinks about Aria- but in the end he doesn't think about Sol Badguy, or Jack-O Valentine. He looks into the past and can only think about his sins, and how he needs to persecute himself to "repent"- when it never was the answer. This isn't to deny he's changing- he absolutely is. But timeline wise? It's only recent. While Sol and Aria's soul (and the fragments we see chars become from her soul) have been changing CONSTANTLY. They've never stopped changing.

And I think it makes something very, very interesting. Where somewhat recent, Sol decided to not look too far into the past, while also being blinded by it. He didn't think of the future, because he- at least in my opinion which is a whole other post- didn't plan to be in a future after his original goal of destroying all gears. Asuka wants the past to be the past again, and Sol wants the past to be destroyed in something similar to a blazing glory.

And Aria? She's like a god damn anchor. She doesn't want to look at the past. She doesn't want it, knowing what has happened. She looks toward the future, and she stands in the present, and she decides she refuses to let the cycle continue. She knows this present and this future isn't her own- she was never supposed to be this far. And so, as she refuses to overwrite Jack-O, she decides one thing, her own choice for herself- this isn't her world. It's Jack-O's. She already had her own time, and she's not going to rip it away like it was ripped away from her.

Does existence have a meaning?

This one is extra interesting to me, as it's eventually followed up by "Does meaning have (a) meaning?" And I think it kind of shows the way Asuka thinks. He over thinks everything, but not the things in the now. He thinks until the definition of things are ripped apart- and on the way he questions his own existence. He questions if all of this was meant to happen. If what he did to Fredrick, to Aria, was truly an act of himself or an act of fate.

And maybe this is me overanalyzing in the "analyze everything" game series, but I think it's in a way shown that Asuka in this song and some parts in general finds fate to be something horrifying. One of the hardest things he has trouble understanding is something out of his control, something that doesn't fit his visual, even if the visual is caring. He couldn't understand why Aria would choose to eventually die than be cryo frozen into a cure, after all. He just... Can't understand it, when isn't the essence of humanity to survive? To live? When he wants to help the people he cares about most? When he loves them, god he loves them, so why would they choose to the "obvious answer" to continue being alive? To continue existence and love and care?

And so he rips down meaning after meaning to do what he can to understand definition and not person, because he doesn't know how.

The reality of truth, the reality of truth

what should we accept?

Reality of truth, reality

This. Makes me fucking insane.

Because it's a part of Asuka, understanding he needs to accept the present. The reality of truth- that Sol isn't Fredrick, and Jack-O isn't Aria. The reality that Sol isn't just gonna be buddy buddy with him again like old times, nor is Aria coming back. That everything has changed, and he barely has. And he can't help but wonder, if he should accept it. If he should accept the now instead of his original goal of making the past real again. He isn't sure, and after the events of Strive ESPECIALLY not sure at all. And it kind of scares him, I think. He fears change so badly, after all.

As the Universe turned black

Okay here's the part that led to me making this post at like seven am. I think the "Universe" turning black is a part of the next lyric, but also its own type of thing. He almost ended humanity. Even if for the people he loves and cares about, even if outside forces were involved- He still almost ended humanity.

And I think this shows how hopeless he felt, witnessing the Crusades. Watching as he knew that was Aria, that was fucking Aria, in Justice. Even if it was a mixture of things, it was still her! It was still her!!!!! And he fucked everything up. And he knows this so god damn well, especially as he witnesses Sol bring her down.

Did the Sun ever defy fate?

This one is connected to the above part, yes. It shows Asuka's fear of fate, shows how he believes it to be inescapable and world ending. After all, when the Sun goes out, so does the world. And when the sun is gone, only black will fill the stars, without the light of the Sun.

But not only that: It's also about Sol.

It's about how Sol, with the Flame of Corruption within, who tries to burn the past and present- and with every attempt, everything traces back to Sol as well, and he's the one to stop it because it's in his way. How Asuka sees what Sol does now as an inescapable path of horrifying, world ending fate. And how Asuka has felt for so long it was his own fate to be killed by Sol.

Beyond it all, do you recognize me?

THE BIG INSANITY INDUCER EVERYONE. MY GOD. I THINK ABOUT THIS ALL THE TIME.

It's so. Clear as day. It's how Asuka hadn't confronted Sol because he was scared of losing his friends. How Asuka runs away and away and away. How Asuka wonders, I must be so different now. He must not recognize me anymore. How in one of the dialogue things as vs Sol, he says Sol is the one who hasn't changed. And when Sol replies that he's one to talk? It just makes me crazy. Because Asuka sees himself as someone who has changed so god damn much, when he hasn't. He simply hasn't. And he continues the cycle, to fulfill his want for knowledge and understanding of this world and universe. He continues, over and over, and admits it to himself: he's not different. He's so recognizable to the point it's horrifying. He has the hair from the past. He has the demeanor, everything. Meanwhile, Sol has changed so much he could be considered near unrecognizable.

And, in the end, even if he's starting to finally face the present? He wants everything back. He wants Fredrick back. He wants Aria back. He wants it to be the same again, and he wants Sol to recognize him as his friend, not the person who caused him so much despair and pain. He doesn't want Sol. He wants Fredrick. He wants Fredrick.

And, with the backing vocals? The "the wings, the wings, Gravity"? The sun burns Asuka's wings every time, and makes him fall. And he continues to fly again and again, to continue the cycle he made for himself.

So in conclusion. This guy is so fucked up and I think about him a lot.

[not-goldy]

https://www.tumblr.com/not-goldy/748436905910239232/you-lot-jimin-haters-keep-excusing-the-17-year-old?source=share

"I'll complain to authorities, I'll threaten to leave the company, I'll block him" are you sure you're talking about k-pop idols that debuted and were having hard to in their initial yrs? 😭😭 Cause what is this?

You think jm was at any place to threaten the comp when the same company almost wanted to throw him 12 times before debute? The same kpop idols community where keeping a good image and showing"bets friendships" is their actual job? Not saying jm was doing all that but he sure does care about jk but he also cares about their image (remember how he said the other members couldn't or didn't meet jin in MS when jihope went there cause all members were busy doing their stuff and right the same or next day came taekook's update of hanging out together lol that's literally jm he doens't want to give that image of members). And no jm wasn't considered as visuals not even taehyung has the official visual position despite him considered as the visual of the group. Only jin has the official position as visual but taehyung is considered one too. They called jm fat, made fun of his chubby cheeks. Jm still is not the traditional standard of beauty in sk. But he's beautiful in his own unique way. When people around you constantly digs at you not being that visual standard then you hear the same thing from your members, then when someone keeps ranking you last at his visual ranking you sure as hell get's pissed plus sad. There's a reason jk doens't do that anymore isn't it? Cause jm must have told him that he doens't like it. There's difference between teasing a person and making fun of their insecurity. Them making fun of jm's height is called teasing but them making fun of jm's looks is called poking at someone's insecurity. Let's see if your own children gets made fun of like this how much you'll shrug it off calling it teen shit.

Jungkook was wrong in the past, he learned and left some of those habits, accepting what he did in the past isn't too hard but the way y'all keep defending it says alot. despite telling jk that he won't care for him jm still forgive him when jk called that show how sweet jm is. his song face off is right there to tell you that how he was in tha past that many people could take advantage of his good nature and use him. Not saying that applies to jk but it shows how jm was in the past and how he learned things over the yrs from experience. It shows that he wasn't always the tough guy but he learned it from experience to cut off the people so don't go around saying pjms are making him look weak when it was just jm's nature to be the bigger person and there was a time where people had taken advantage of his good nature. If he was always good at cutting off people right at the moment there wouldn't have been instances where people used him. Again he learned it over the yrs. If the jk of now says the same thing to jm of now I'm sure jm would know what to do better than his past self. His astrology says it's his nature to be the giving one. Another example is how in past he went to all memebrs' solo sets years ago when no one visited him but did that stopped him from again doing the same last year? NO he still again went for all memebrs' cause that's park jimin. He shows the difference. There is a reason why the fandom calls him the Angel and not every member is given the same tag. Cause he's selfless and giving in nature without expecting anything in return. Tae himself said sorry to jm that he's always at the receiving end of his love and support.

It feels a lost cause to tell you people that all those remarks done by jk weren't funny or good at all but sure believe what you want.

Ohhhhhh kpop idols were having it hard in their initial years????? YOU DONT SAY

Also wait,

Does that include Jungkook the youngest band member in Kpop group BTS???

Was he having it hard in his initial years???

[frankiebirds]

Just wanna say the coloring of ur gifs are absolutely beautiful, what all do you do if you dont mind sharing :0?

ah thank you! that's very kind of you <3 step-by-step under the cut:

get my clip

i open it in microsoft clipchamp (has a paid and free version, i use the free one. nothing fancy, it came with my laptop) and cut as needed (i cut when there's a new gif, or when i'm putting a new subtitle on one gif—so some gifs will be multiple clips, some will be just one)

under filters: i choose 35mm and keep it at the automatic intensity

i take the contrast down to about here. i keep it similar between gifs by trying to line the slider up with the "n" in saturation

it's going to look really weird. that will be fixed in a moment. i export one clip as a 1080p video. not as a gif. exporting as gif will kill the quality

i create a video in canva, which if youre unfamiliar is a browser program with a paid and free version, iirc i have the paid version but i dont use any paid features in creating these i dont think? i should probably cancel my subscription tbh i dont use the paid features that often. and it has ai now which sucks :///

i upload my clip to canva. i usually drag and drop it into the timeline rather than onto the page, because it takes the right placement to get it to fill the whole page if you do it that way, while it will be the right size automatically if you put it in the timeline

go to "edit video" in the top left, then go to "adjust" and set these values: Brightness: 10 Contrast: 20 Highlights: 100 Shadows: -100

to add subtitles, go to text — body text. i usually just use the default, but a lot of fonts work well

set the font size to 40 (or whatever works best for the font youre using) and make it bold and italicized. use whatever colour you want as long as it shows up. lighter colours are almost always going to look better.

then go to effects — outline. set it to 80 and the colour to black. in the past ive made the outline a darker colour of whatever colour the subtitles are, but ive switched over to always using black because i think it looks better. ymmv

share — download — gif. you can download multiple clips as one gif, which is what i do when a gif has multiple subtitles or a lead-up to subtitles. so, for example: clip one: gif one clip two: gif two clip three: gif two download clip one as one gif, then select both clip two and clip three for the second.

a lot of the time it's larger than 10mb. when that happens, i upload to giphy and redownload from there and that usually fixes it. it probably reduces the quality and it's convoluted, i know. no idea how people keep their gifs under 10mb. witchcraft, maybe.

hopefully this is semi-coherent? can you tell i dont know how to write a tutorial lmao. disclaimer that if it wasn't glaringly obvious by the free programs and weird, clunky process, i'm not...super passionate about gifs? i like it when i can make them look nice, but mostly they serve as visual aids for my yapping. there are other, more talented people out there who have put out better tutorials using better programs like PS. sorry if this was a disappointing tutorial!

a note: both clipchamp and canva have AI features. i wish they didn't, and i don't use them. i went hunting for a similar free program that didn't have them, but everything just seems to be saturated with ai now ://

[hypersonic04]

i wasnt the person to request angst but i had a teacher!ross angst/fluff idea — it's matter of whether or not i can explain it well enough 💀

ngl it's probably more fluff than angst but anyways... i'm thinking you had quite a difficult time in secondary school with boys + romance specifically, maybe trusting the wrong people and being at the butt end of teenage stupidity (been there ✊😔). usually you can look past this when you're doing your job, you love the kids and you love teaching, but sometimes the school setting and the air of romance between you and ross (im thinking this is pre-relationship, yearning/hard crushing kinda thing), whilst wholesome and precious, also fills you with unwanted dread and anxiety. it's the visual and energetic combination of romance and school that trigger that feeling, i suppose. i think you're scared of repeating past mistakes, being hurt again, despite the idea of teenage heartbreak being impossible at this point. could you fashion something up? maybe ross realises something is up and comforts you about it, what would he do or say etc. or maybe, to dial up the angst, you distance yourself from him a bit, upsetting him, a lot of tension and whatnot, but then you confront these feelings and bad memories together, remake new, better ones — it's your call, i don't mind the direction you take this. either way, this would be very healing for me icl. ANYWAYS LOVE YOU, YOU'RE MY FAV PERSON ON HERE XOXO

I totally get what you mean.

I think you were quiet at school, so when you went to uni and got your first boyfriend, you were a bit naive, and the heartbreak hit you hard (speaking from experience? me? never.). Anyways, like you said, the whole ‘having a crush at work/school’ thing puts you very on edge, and you can’t help but feel negative about it sometimes.

One specific scenario comes to mind. You and Ross had spent the morning together, both of you having free periods, so you go to the school library and find some materials and books for your lessons. It’s very cute, very flirty - he shows you one book in particular, your heads very close together, and then him walking you back to your classroom after. You’re sat in your classroom that afternoon, feeling a bit like a teenager with a crush (which alone gives you a bit of anxiety), but you’re pulled out of the lovesick bubble by the sound of laughter from the hallway. Like the blurb from the other night where new guy was flirting with you, I think it’s the other way around this time - one of your colleagues is just a bit too friendly with Ross, always bringing him up in conversations and making a beeline for him whenever she can. You poke your head out of your classroom to see them both stood together - her manicured hand is on his arm, and she’s looking up at him exactly the same way you look at him, her blue eyes sparkly and blonde hair flicked over one shoulder. He’s looking at her with a grin, nodding along as she tells him something. You swallow heavily and immediately retreat back to your classroom, clearing your throat and attempting to get back to teaching. You feel so silly. It’s just like uni all over again - feeling naive and thinking that someone like Ross could ever possibly be interested in you. Anxiety surges your chest as you wonder whether he thinks you’re silly, whether he thinks you’re throwing yourself at him (of course he doesn’t, this is you we’re talking about. He thinks you’re incredible, you could say anything and he’d take it as gospel.). You’re sat at your desk, eyes stinging a little and feeling really disappointed. You’re scared that you were wrong about everything.

I definitely think Ross notices when you start distancing yourself from him. You pass each other in the hallway later that day, and rather than giving him the warm smile you normally give him, you just kind of purse your lips and make your way past him hastily. He finds it strange, but puts it down to you being tired, maybe? The days pass, and you’ve declined lunch with him, as well as a lift home, so he’s starting to get a bit concerned now. Obviously, he was super jealous when new guy was flirting with you a few weeks ago, so he’s worried that maybe it’s that again. You’re both crushing on each other so hard, and you’re both so worried that things aren’t going to work out for the two of you, that you end up miscommunicating. He’s distanced from you, you’re assuming that he’s seeing blondie, and you’re both in a bit of a state lol.

I think there’s an evening maybe a week later or so when it’s the two of you left in the building. You’re like ‘oh, sorry, I didn’t realise anyone else was still here.’, smiling at him and averting your eyes from him as you stand in the staff room, washing your mug in the sink. It’s a bit awkward between the two of you as he stands there, hands in his pockets, unable to take his eyes off you for some reason. ‘How’ve you been?’ he asks, clearing his throat. You look at him a bit surprised, realising it’s actually been over a week since you’ve properly spoken - ‘uh, yeah, I’m okay. how’re you?’ - and he says he’s been alright too. You’re liars, both of you. A conversation comes up where she’s mentioned, maybe a staff night out or something, and you’re like ‘yeah, she said you’d be going together, or something.’, feeling a lump in your throat as the words leave your mouth. He frowns immediately, shaking his head a little - ‘uh, no. I don’t think so. I’m not sure why she said that, we’ve not really spoken about it.’. You can’t look at him because you’re just so sad about the whole thing. His heart breaks when the cogs start turning in his mind, piecing it all together.

“We’re not a thing, you know?”

He kind of just says it. He knows it’s a bit of a big thing to say, assuming that you’d care, but the relief that visibly washes over your face makes his stomach flutter. He knows you’re not with new guy (because he outright asked him earlier, it was killing him), so he wonders whether maybe this is a bit of understanding between you both.

“Oh, yeah, I mean-“ you stutter a bit. It’s silent between the two of you until he suggests that you go together (cue Christmas part blurb, one of my favourites, here!), and you cannot fight the smile on your face.

[writingquestionsanswered]

I had a question about the pacing of my writing, and was hoping you had advice? Whenever I write, it feels like the scene moves too fast. I start out with a scene and though I write everything I'd planned in it, it feels far too short and fast-paced. Is there any way to make it smoother, more natural?

Slowing the Pace of a Scene

Three things you need to make sure you're doing:

1 - Balance action, dialogue, and exposition.

When people say their scenes are moving too fast, it's almost always because the scene is mostly dialogue. Adding action and exposition will help beef up your scene and slow down the pace a little.

"Action" doesn't have to mean "big action" like a car chase or a battle. Action just means something is happening. One of the easiest ways to include action in your story is to incorporate it into existing dialogue by making sure your characters aren't just floating heads exchanging words. Think about their facial expressions, their hand gestures, and their body language. Think about how they're moving around, how they're interacting with their environment, with each other, and with other characters. For example, a character fidgeting with an object while the other speaks is action. A character petting the cat while speaking is action. You can also incorporate action by having your character notice things happening around them while dialogue is taking place or while they're thinking about things. They might look out the window and watch a car driving by, leaving a trail of dust in its path. Or, they might be watching some kids play while they're thinking about their childhood or something that happened in the past.

Exposition is what we think of as the "narration" part of the story. Depending on the POV of the narrator (whether they're third-person omniscient, third-person limited, first-person, or second-person -- see Choosing a Point-of-View) they'll be able to tell the reader important information, relay character thought and observations, and describe things like characters, setting, and things that are happening.

2 - Beef Up Your Description

Since describing things like characters, setting, and things happening is part of including exposition, it's worth noting the importance of creating solid descriptions. I can say "the fruit was round and red" and that's a description. Or, I could say, "the fruit was round and rough-skinned, looking more like a small red dragon egg than a piece of fruit," and that's a beefed up description. The second one is more interesting to read and paints a better picture in the reader's mind.

One of the keys to beefing up description is to make sure you're including sensory details. Always be thinking about what the character can see, hear, smell, taste, and feel. You don't have to include all of those elements in every description, but always have them in mind so you can use the ones that add something.

Another thing to consider is "showing vs telling." When writing, it's sometimes tempting to write things like: She looked out the window and saw that the sun was shining. Sometimes it's okay to just directly state things to the reader like this, but a lot of the time it's better to take the time to show the reader the thing instead of stating it. So, for example: She moved the curtain aside and peered across the yard. Golden rays of sunlight cut through the boughs and branches of the stately oak trees lining the driveway. That's a little more interesting and visual, isn't it? Again, though, don't be afraid to "tell" when it makes more sense. Follow your gut. :)

3 - Know the Structure of Your Scene

Scenes, like stories themselves, have their own structure. A solid scene has its own beginning, middle, and end, as well as its own goal. There are different ideas about how scenes need to be structured and what they need to accomplish--and these often depend on the type of story being written--but what matters is that the scene has a purpose that somehow advances the plot, and that it has some type of conflict... something that opposes your character as they try to accomplish their goal in the scene, and some sort of outcome--either they accomplish their scene goal, or they don't, and we need to see what that means for the character.

And a scene goal doesn't have to be anything grand. It can be as simple as they need to explain a misunderstanding to another character. The opposition can be as simple as the other character resisting hearing them out, or maybe they keep getting interrupted. The outcome is either that they succeed in explaining the misunderstanding or they fail. The consequences of succeeding are that they make up, the consequences of failing is that they don't. And we don't have to actually see the consequences play out, we just have to know they're there. A simple, "When they smiled, I knew prom was back on and everything was right in the world." Or, "As I watched them storm off, I knew I'd be going to prom alone."

Have fun with your story!

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