#whats also interesting is this is not the first time a neighbor has adopted their pets before

[scithemodestmermaid]

i take my dog for a walk in the afternoons that i’m free.  down the road from us was a dog that looked almost exactly like her, except a boy.  she absolutely loved him.  she would body slam him with glee whenever she saw him.  i didn’t really like his humans though, they were off.  but hey, they had a good dog and he was cute playing with my dog.

one day, he stopped showing up on our walks. a couple of weeks ago, the same dog showed up on the website for our local dog shelter.  he was an owner surrender with a bad leg and heartworms and nipping issues.

long story short, i have two visually similar dogs now. 

[kaihuntrr]

The Sea Prince: The Watcher, ‘Civilians’, and Hunters.

To celebrate this au being one of my most favorite things to work on, I’ve made designs for the Solidarity brothers, Big B, and redesigned the trio!

Closeups and introductions under the cut :> here they are!

Now that’s character design! I’m super proud of how they turned out, and they form a rainbow by pure coincidence. Let’s talk about them!

Starting off with the duos!

‘Nosy Neighbors’ & ‘Mean Gills’

Big B is a new one so I’ll talk about him first. I’ll talk about the other three as characters :)

‘Big B.’

Big B is a Watcher; an organization that studies and hunts sea monsters. He used to be a famous vagabond hunter, but due to some mysterious circumstances, he retired early. You’ll meet him much later on in the story, but he’s quite an interesting character! He keeps his secrets. He knows yours. Who knows if he's trustworthy or not.

He seems to have a connection to Grian.

‘Pearl Moone.’

She’s a cocky, energetic person to be around. She doesn’t seem too trusting with strangers, especially hunters. Her accessories are golden, and she has a scar over her left eye so she definitely stands out.

She has a red shell bracelet similar to Scott’s necklace. Are they friends?

‘Scott Major.’

A pleasant, sassy, and entertaining server in the port town the Red Canaries visit. He often flirts with Martyn, leaving the hunter speechless with promises of something more. He’s hiding something. Maybe he’ll tell Martyn his secrets one day?

He swears a couple of necklaces, but one is hidden under his shirt.

‘Martyn Woods.’

The second mate to the Red Canaries. Loyal to a fault, he prioritizes everyone before himself, even neglecting his needs. He believes that his isolated life is worth it, but his feelings change the more Scott talks his way into his life. Is he ready to love again, even after what happened to Ren?

He has a couple of scars, some big ones on his chest. He has a locket and tattoo of a crown and a necklace trinket of the first monster he killed as a boy.

‘Bad Boys’, the Solidarity brothers.

A bunch of new designs here! I referenced their bad boy skins so they have similar ‘leather jackets’. I’m excited for you all to learn about them and their history.

‘Grian Solidarity.’

The youngest adopted brother of the trio. He’s chaotic, but he’s shifty. His birth parents were from the Watchers, but after their death, he was entrusted to the Solidarity family to care for him. They died when he was young, so he doesn’t remember them. He loves his brothers to death and does what he can to protect them and his crew.

He, like his other brothers, keeps a locket with their family photo. He wears a yellow bandana with his name crudely stitched on it. Strangely, he has some similarities to Pearl…

‘Joel Solidarity.’

The awkward, funny middle child. He has the most muscle out of the brothers but he masks it with his pleasant behavior. He quickly accepted Grian into the family and shared his interest in starting the hunter crew. When they were younger, the two would sneak away from their older brother to meet Martyn and Impulse by the docks. Currently, he’s engaged to Lizzie Shadow and is waiting for winter so they can finally tie the knot.

He keeps a falcon feather in his hat as his parents were falconers. He wears his red bandana, also with crude stitches of his name, on his head.

‘Jimmy Solidarity.’

The oldest and most emotional of the brothers. He wasn’t particularly interested in becoming a hunter, preferring to spend time with the birds and become a falconer, but he loved his brothers so he went with it. He’s impulsive, stubborn, but a wonderful and simple person all around.

He keeps his red bandana on his belt, with neat stitches of his name. He has a braided bracelet and a tattoo on his neck.

...and he’s dead.

...or is he?

There’s a LOT going on with these designs, a lot of spoilers in them so what I’ve said could or could not be hints to what’s to come! Not sure when the next design dump would be, but I think my upcoming post would be fun, particularly for those who want to read the story ;) all in due time.

oh, also new life Scott is partially ginger. I predicted that HA- /j I’ll probably whip up art of those two bc. That’s incredibly funny-

Which one of these characters/ designs is your favorite? Let me know! :D

[perfectlyoongi]

ROOMMATE!TAEHYUNG who spends one night a month on the living room with you. Taehyung knew that the best way for you to charge your energy was to have a night to yourself. but Taehyung also knew that you wouldn’t do a night like that on your own. as such, every month Taehyung would place his bed mattress in the living room and order your favorite food. after choosing a movie that would ease your tension a little, Taehyung would call you, leading you to the living room hand in hand, too excited by his surprise to be able to contain himself. and, although it was a recurring thing, you continued to be surprised every month when you came across a makeshift bed next to your sofa — Taehyung did all that work for you. “your week has been really busy, so let’s watch a movie together. i already ordered pizza and opened the juice. bring your pillow and stop making excuses.”

ROOMMATE!TAEHYUNG who buys matching curtains for your room and his room. when Taehyung came across that light fabric in the store, he had to buy it. it was too beautiful to be trapped in a store, that fabric deserved the freedom of a curtain. but it was so beautiful that Taehyung had to offer it to you too. to be honest, offering the fabric to you was the first thought that crossed Taehyung’s mind, but he would deny it if you asked. he only offered you those curtains because he accidentally bought double, that’s all. “look, i accidentally bought the same curtains twice so i thought you might want them? they are simple, i think they look good in your room. if you don’t want to, it’s okay. but… do you want them?”

ROOMMATE!TAEHYUNG who likes to hear you talk about the gossip in the building. when Taehyung could hear you opening the door to his room with a small gasp, Taehyung knew that gossipy moments were coming — and he didn’t mind one bit. somehow you knew everything that was happening in your building and every time something new happened, your first reaction was to go to Taehyung’s room and make him aware of everything. of course, Taehyung didn’t want to know if the neighbor across the corridor bought a dog like the neighbor on the third floor. Taehyung didn’t even want to know if the doorman was caught again with the businessman on the fifth floor. what Taehyung liked was that for mere minutes, everything disappeared. only you existed. just your cheerful voice and adorable reactions. for mere minutes, the sun would cease to exist just to give you space to shine. “i’ll be honest with you. our downstairs neighbor doesn’t interest me at all. what i really enjoy hearing is your little comments. you can be so dramatic, you’re amazing.”

ROOMMATE!TAEHYUNG who puts you in the bathtub when you have bad days. Taehyung knew perfectly well when you were sad; he knew perfectly well when you were really sad and he knew that at those times all you asked for was a friendly shoulder and some comfort. so, when he knew that the world was more aggressive towards you, Taehyung would hold your hand and guide you to the bathroom, where he made you sit in the bathtub fully dressed. he quickly found a place next to you and in that place, as together as you could, as silent as you could, you collapsed. if you cried or screamed, if you were silent or talking so much that nothing you said made sense, Taehyung was always by your side, next to you. with bodies so close that you could feel Taehyung’s heat, you would let off steam in that bathtub and, when you were more relieved, Taehyung would help you get out of the bathtub, repeating the same speech every time. “what happens in the bathtub, stays in the bathtub. there is no need for you to feel shame or regret. it’s already passed. it’s not in your heart anymore. don’t give it that importance.”

ROOMMATE!TAEHYUNG who adopts a rock with you. when you and Taehyung went shopping for the first time, you let yourself be guided by the last rays of sun that invited you to explore a little of that city. and when Taehyung came across a small round grey stone, his first reaction was to bend down and pick it up. after showing you the stone excitedly, Taehyung returned to observing it carefully and, when he noticed that there were no imperfections, all he could think about was how that stone, so round and perfect, would look good on top of the furniture at the entrance of the house, your house — it would almost function as a small pet shared by the two of you. “look, isn’t it cute? let’s take it home. it could be our pet that greets us whenever we come home. what do you think? i think it looks like a Roger…”

ROOMMATE!TAEHYUNG who watches the sunrise with you when life gets more complicated. as much as you wanted to end those days as quickly as possible, the reality is that it seemed like they stretched on for an eternity, without showing any signs of ending. and on those days, when the bathtub and crying weren’t enough to appease your heart, Taehyung would sit with you on the living room floor in front of the window and, in total silence and without putting any pressure on you, Taehyung saw the sun rising with you. it was a simple ritual, something that to many meant nothing, but being there with Taehyung, seeing the hope of the morning sun rays, was enough to make you feel like a human being. “everything is fine. everything is fine. you don’t need to talk. i am here. when you’re ready, i’m here.”

ROOMMATE!TAEHYUNG who makes a paper star every day since he met you and offers you a jar full of them when he declares himself to you. if you asked Taehyung, he wouldn’t be able to explain to you why that habit appeared when he met you; maybe, in a way, it was the universe’s way of telling you that you were meant to be together — all the stars knew your names, all the stars told your story. so, when he offered you that jar full of colorful stars, even though he managed to hide all his nervousness, you knew that it was something important to Taehyung. and, it was when you accepted the jar that Taehyung took a deep breath and finally spoke to you. “there are too many stars to count, so i’ll just tell you… each star represents a day since i met you. the red stars are the days i realized i liked you. there is no more room for more, so i decided to offer it to you as a token of my love.”

[artist-issues]

Would love to know your thoughts on the Planet of the Apes series, or at least the newest movie!

This is so kind of you, to ask!

I started watching those movies before my formal education. And they're in that teeny little corner of my brain where I just like things, without having examined why I like them. In that teeny little corner, I have my critical thinking and movie analyzation turned off, and I just enjoy things like singing animals even if the movie is objectively bad (I'm looking at you Alpha & Omega 🫠) or Transformers. So yeah, Planet of the Apes falls in there.

I know. I just made a post about how important it is to train your tastes for good stories, and accept no junk food...and then the very next post was like "the future is meaningless but the monkey movie is now" ^^" Look there's a time and place for examining why you like things and I'm just saying I haven't gotten down the list to why I like the monkey movies yet!

Until now! Partly because you're asking, partly because watching the new one made me start to think about what I liked about the first three...because the new one hit me differently. So what I'm getting at is, I'll answer you, but I'm going to be "thinking out loud" and we'll find out what I think of those movies as I type, and it's going to be rambly. Sorry! (Skip to the bottom to read about the Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes.)

I Miss Caesar

My favorite character in these movies is actually Koba, but Caesar is the heart and soul of them.

There's nothing particularly unique about Caesar as a main character—he's a coming-of-age, great-leader-from-nothing Savior-type character. He doesn’t have many character flaws, he’s the idealist, etc.

But what makes you, the audience, love Caesar so much is that you get to see his story, and the whole driving hook of the movies—“apes with human intelligence”—embodied in him, from the very beginning.

Caesar has two really awesome things going for him. The first is that he is an ape, and you get to see his intelligence and his empathetic, human nature, grow in real-time. The audience is excited to see how he’ll respond to the simplest thing because he’s so believably a super-intelligent ape. You’re like, “ooo, he just noticed that he’s wearing a leash, and the dog is wearing a leash, so how will he respond to that comparison? Ooo, now he’s meeting other apes, is he going to notice that they aren’t as smart as him? Ooo, he just attacked a neighbor, but he’s smarter than the average animal on a rampage, so how will he feel about the moral repercussions of violence?” We want to watch an animal that’s becoming self-aware; it almost doesn’t matter what he’s doing, we’ll watch it, because that’s fascinating. That’s the first thing he has going for him.

But then the second thing he has going for him is that, even if he were human, he’s just a really inspiring, likeable character. If you rewrite Caesar as a human (but somehow keep the equivalent of “gradually becoming self-aware of his uniqueness as a creature” plot point) his story is still really compelling. Think about that scene where he learns what he is, for the first time, point-blank.

Once he learns who he is and what he is, he does not immediately turn bitter, or resent his adoptive father, or even try to change the status quo of his own life. He looks sad, and very contemplative about it, but when he loses his temper and gets taken to the ape sanctuary, he still wants to go back home. He wants to go back to living in an attic, with brief excursions to the woods on a leash. At that point he already knows, on some level, that he’s a super-intelligent freak of nature and could resent Will for making him that way or keeping him a secret. But he doesn’t.

He also shows mercy to Rocket, the bully ape, and makes him super-intelligent.

He also shows signs of being interested in Cornelia, his eventual wife—before she turns super-intelligent. While she’s still significantly stupider, on a whole lower plane of intelligence, than him.

They give him all these little touches, like the fact that he wants to play ball with the other apes immediately when he meets them, instead of being shy, or treating their naked stupid selves like they’re beneath him. Like the fact that he asks Will’s permission before he goes climbing. Like the fact that he gives them all super-human intelligence, instead of keeping that superpower for himself and leveraging it to his own advantage, or gatekeeping it for only the apes who are nice to him.

He’s awesome because he’s got all the protective, trusting, loving, humility of our favorite pets. But then he takes all those pure qualities and combines them with supernatural intelligence, and “noble leader of the pack” traits. So he feels like a wise king, even in the second movie, when, from our perspective, he should just be…a naked ape who talks in broken English and lives in a tree fort.

Probably the best character trait of Caesar’s is that he inherits this “family” mentality from his adoptive father, Will. He thinks that the difference between apes and humans is that apes are loyal and love one another, specifically “like a family.”

And what that means to Caesar is that you would do anything to keep your family safe. Because that’s what Will did. Will only made the serum that started this whole franchise because he was trying to cure his father of Alzheimer’s. Will was always willing to break rules and cheat the system and change the world if it meant he could keep his family safe, and that included Caesar, who was not his blood relation.

So to Caesar, being a family means you would never hurt the people in your family; you can’t hurt them yourself, and you can’t let anyone else hurt them—and you can’t do things that would lead to them getting hurt, like starting a war.

And that’s just really appealing. A noble leader whose whole heart is “family,” but also, he’s this really interesting animal-that-learns-human-empathy.

I was going to talk about Koba, but this is too long, so maybe in another post. Suffice to say, I think the first two movies do a really good job of pacing everything, so that you have plenty of time to fall in love with Caesar, feel like you’ve watched him discover who he is and decide what to do with that in real-time, and then feel fully invested in the world he’s trying to build.

Basically what I’m saying is, I think I just really love Caesar, and so does everyone else who watches him, because he’s really well-done. And Andy Serkis smashes this role out of the park. It’s like my favorite thing he’s ever done. He does it perfectly. And in the fourth movie, I just go into it…already missing Caesar.

War For the Planet of the Apes

I didn’t like this movie as much as the first two. The first two I’ve seen over and over again. But the third one is not as enjoyable.

I think I don’t enjoy it because a lot of it feels like gratuitous misery. I mean, I understand—traditionally, in an epic-scale trilogy, you develop your main characters over the course of the first two movies. They learn who they are, they commit to a mission statement born out of the lessons they’ve learned, and then, in the third movie, that lesson learned gets tested with the “ultimate challenge.”

Well, so, Caesar learned he was the leader of basically a naive species and the founder of a new world—and the lesson he took from that was, “to keep my family safe, I must protect them from hate.” (I know that’s broad, but what I mean by that is, Caesar initially took the apes to the woods when they were “reborn” as their own species to hide them from humans, who would fear and hate what they couldn’t understand. But then he had to protect them from a new form of hatred; the hatred of Koba, and other apes like him, who hated humans so much and hated anyone else being in power so much that he was willing to hurt “family” to satisfy that hatred.

So what’s the ultimate test of “to keep my family safe, I must protect them from hate?” Giving Caesar hate. Caesar is not a hateful character. He’s like the total opposite of that—that’s why he can single-handedly defend the ape species from Hate in general.

But you murder his wife and child in the first part of the movie?

That’ll do it!

Plus, it’s been a long, hard fight and nothing he has done since the “war” against “hate” started seems to be working, so he’s understandably tired even before Blue Eyes and Cornelia die. Then they die. And then the rest of the tribe gets nabbed. And Caesar is ready to focus all his energy on revenge, just like Koba.

So yeah, that’s the correct “ultimate test” of everything Caesar has learned as a character, to put him through in this trilogy. But honestly, it was just too sad to enjoy watching.

And remember how I said that the two things Caesar has going for him as a character that make the movies (which are all about him) so enjoyable are:

He’s a well-written, inspiring character outside of being an ape (we just talked about that side of the 3rd movie, how it’s the conclusion to that character.)

The movies are well-paced so that you’re fascinated by watching an animal become increasingly human-like and empathetic, without losing the best parts of a noble/niave/animal nature

Well. The problem is that, because of the way these movies go, the apes have to become less animal as the story goes on. The whole point is that they’re as smart as humans now. So they’ll make human-like mistakes, and start to come to some of the same “conclusions” as “early man” did.

What I’m saying boils down to, they stop acting so much like believable apes in War for the Planet of the Apes. They talk out loud more often than they pantomime or speak through obvious body language. Heck, Caesar has full on monologues or confrontations with the human villain, the Colonel, in the third movie.

What made his interactions with humans before so appealing to watch was that he would still act like an ape. When he wants the humans to drive him to his old home, he just lays in the back of the car and grunts and taps the window when they’re getting close to make them stop, without explaining himself. Like your dog might, straining at his leash toward home when he wants to be done walking. But we, the audience, like that sort of thing because with Caesar, we know there’s human levels of understanding behind all the appealing animal actions that make us think of our pets.

It’s that sweet savage naivety. It’s that fascinating simplicity meeting human wonder. You like watching Malcolm try to explain why they need to get the generators on, while Caesar just silently looks back and forth from him to the machines, because it’s fun to try and figure out what’s going on in his head. It’s fun to watch how the animal with superhuman intelligence will communicate that he sort of understands what the stranger wants. It’s also fun to see how the new species of superhuman apes will still act like animals with each other.

The whole fact that, even though they’re just as smart and technically non-savage, mentally, as we are, but there’s still a part of the apes that will just follow Koba if he beats Caesar in a fistfight, is fascinating. The fact that Caesar is the most “evolved” of the apes, mentally and emotionally, but when Koba challenges his leadership or insults his love for his family, Caesar will just straight-up start ripping him to pieces with his fists, is fascinating. You keep watching to see what an anthropomorphized animal really looks like, because they make that part so believable.

But in War for the Planet of the Apes, the Apes don’t have that contrast as much. You’re not getting to see civilized, fully-realized human characters share you, the audience’s, fascination with apes who are still figuring out what it means to be empathetic. You’re not watching anthropomorphized animals anymore as much as you’re watching…hairy, superstrong humans. Which brings us toooo…

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes

Sorry it took so long to get to the part you asked me about 😅

They’re just hairy, superstrong humans in this movie. That’s all. They’re very clearly super-humanly intelligent, they walk less like apes and swing through trees almost not-at-all after the first climbing part of the movie. They talk out loud (even though sign language wasn’t completely abandoned, which I appreciated) even when they’re just talking to themselves. They look more human, in the face. It’s just a joy to watch Koba, and in this movie, Proximus, even though they’re bad guys, because those two characters have the most animal-like faces. So you love to watch their snarly, long snouts and teeth speak human words, in ape-tones.

But the main ape characters all have human-like faces. Too human-like. They look uncanny-valley-y in some shots. (Except Anaya, who I liked best out of the new main three apes.)

And like I said, they have these more-advanced cultures, which just makes them feel more human. It felt like I was watching a movie about, like, a tribe of post-apocalyptic humans meeting the leftovers of civilized humanity. Not anthropomorphized animals meeting the leftovers of civilized humanity.

I kept waiting for the apes to have those fascinating interactions with the human characters. I kept waiting for May to teach something to Noa and the other apes, and for them to get all fascinated and have like, an animal reaction. That never really happened. The closest moment to that was when she switches on the lights in the bunker and the apes whoop and stumble around confusedly. Or when Noa learns to curse. 🫠 Also, the apes don’t have any kind of interesting reaction when May murders the other human of her own kind. They just stand there, looking sort of surprised, while dramatic music plays and May looks stressed. It felt like that should’ve been a moment where the apes realize something profound or scary about humanity (that she’d turn on her own so quickly,) or respond to her like they might an alpha-animal who just killed a challenger, or something like that. But that doesn’t really happen.

The movie was kind of full of moments like that, where it felt like they were building toward something profound…and then concluded on a vague or undecided note. Can humans and apes live side by side? …We don’t know. Was Caesar using apes for his own gain, or was he a noble elder? We don’t know. (Well, we do, but the main characters don’t.) Was May just trying to re-establish a communicating human community, or are she and the other humans out to retake the apes’ world? We don’t know.

Other random notes:

The cinematography was really good. There were moments where I felt like I was standing in the scene, or like I was on a ride at Disney World that believably sprays you in the face with water even though it’s a virtual environment, or pumps the smell of trees into the room to make you feel like you’re there. I don’t know what it was about the way this was shot, but I felt like I could feel the sun, and the wind, and smell the rain, etc. I actually can’t remember the last time a movie made me feel that way, so the cinematography was great. The animation is good, too, despite the uncanny valley ape faces.

I can’t decide if I like Noa. I could tell they were being very protective of the value of slow pacing, and maybe that “feel-like-you’re-inside-the-screen” cinematography was meant to help with this, but I also felt like they were trying to make us feel like we were vicariously on Noa’s long, scary, melancholy adventure with him. It was definitely supposed to be an epic-scale coming-of-age for that ape character.

But I was a little bored. I didn’t need to see him walk from one end of a field of vision to the other every single time he entered a new area. (Especially not when he’s just walking, or worse, sitting on a horse who’s just walking. When he’s an ape. And all you want to do is see him climb and swing and flip.) I also thought the actor did a really good job of emoting, but there were so many scenes of him choking on blood after a hard fall or a fight, or crying, or gazing sadly into the middle distance for a long time. It was like, “I get it. I don’t need so much of this.”

Also, there were things I didn’t care about emotionally that I felt like I should have, in order to empathize with Noa. First off, his father and his father’s death. Noa made lots of anxious expressions and clearly wanted to please his father, I guess…but there wasn’t really an indication that his father was a tough guy to please. Or that they were super close. We didn’t get enough scenes with the father before he died to make us feel emotion that would carry us all the way through Noa’s journey, in my opinion. Even his two best friends—I felt like they were building up to some thematic thing about growing up together, doing everything together, etc. But they didn’t. That sort of went nowhere.

I also felt like the most compelling parts of the movie were when May had not yet revealed herself to be intelligent, and Noa didn’t like her…but they were slowly starting to trust and understand each other. When she stands up and calls his name, that was my favorite part of the movie. Not because it was a great callback to the impactful, iconic “The Animal Spoke” moments of Caesar. But because it was her, a dumb brute, learning to trust and rely on this alien-like creature that was so much smarter than her, and building that dynamic.

It was just that I was missing “animal interacts with human” fascination. But then it turns out they’re both human. Noa is just hairy and strong, and May is not.

Also I didn’t love the whole spin they took to communicate “nature over unnatural progress” with Proximus. I get it. The eagles are symbolic of nature and living in harmony with it. Proximus is symbolic of trying to cheat nature and jump the gun unnaturally. But I’m a Christian. I don’t find anything compelling, inherently, about the idea that it’s “nature” that causes us to “evolve” to what we’re “meant to be.” It also doesn’t even make sense within the context of these movies. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t have the reason apes become super intelligent and free be a non-natural drug…and still say that the non-natural drug was a bad choice with world-ending consequences. Which is it? Try to control nature? Or don’t? Because if you don’t, the apes still get treated like dumb brutes and rounded up for experimentation. And Alzheimer’s is never cured. But if you do, yes the brutes get freedom, but all of humanity goes through a brutal virus, your father’s suffering is prolonged, and your girlfriend tells you “some things aren’t meant to be tampered with.”

So like, which is it? Should the vault be opened and shared with the apes? Or should the eagles knock the mean unnatural King Ape off the cliff? I don’t know.

I don’t love that the movie ends with so much of that. But I guess it had to. Thats the logical next step of a series that is about a new species continually growing to be more human, and it’s the next step for setting up the next phase.

So that’s how I felt about all of that! Thanks for asking. Maybe I will talk about Koba someday.

[squeakygeeky]

I Feel You Linger in the Air Novel vs Series

I guess this is a thing I do now. Anyway, I feel like most people who posted about the novel were understandably focused on the ending, but this will be all over the place, full spoilers, this is for if you're interested in how it was adapted but don't actually want to read the novel. I would say I preferred the series since it took full advantage of being a visual medium and also because of the way it expanded on the story.

So the series only covered the first part of the novel, with Jom being transported back to 1928. The novel is first person from Jom's point of view and we really only get Jom adjusting to life in the past and his relationship to Yai.

Jom figures out he's in the past pretty quickly. There's also a mistaken identity thing so he never has to pretend to have amnesia.

Ueangphueng is still his sister's past life, but she's not Yai's sister, just a random neighbor married to Robert and not in a relationship to Mei. Ming is still in love with Mei but she's going to marry someone else, this is just a random thing not important to the plot. Fongkaew's story is kind of similar to the series and so is Khamsaen's, but there's no plot with Robert having done crimes etc. so she and Ueangphueng are just stuck being married to him and having his kids. James is there and flirty with Jom but there's no gay bar. Jom's piglet belongs to Robert and loses the race due to banana shenanigans, I'm sure you were dying to know.

Yai Palathip is 18 and going to be sent off for school and never gets engaged, instead his non-Ueangphueng sister does (happily it seems). No one finds out about Jom and Yai when Jom starts working for him, so there's not really homophobia they deal with, but also no support. They also barely get time together as lovers before Yai gets ripped into the past.

Jom gets transported to the 18th century (I think?) and meets Moustache Commander Yai. I won't go into much of what happens since it's not relevant to the series, but this Yai has no existing connection to Jom, so basically this part is Jom realizing he needs Yai to fall in love with him, which of course is successful because that explains why 1920s Yai was in love with him from the first moment. This is the Yai that gives Jom the tiger ring. Also there is stuff about personal pronouns used in the past: catnip to me.

Jom gets sent back to the present, but weirdly right before the accident. He doesn't check his phone this time but still goes into the River, he just manages to be in slightly better circumstances and gets rescued (by a foreign doctor, my theory is James reincarnated, although there is nothing to support this). He still has the tiger ring on so he knows it wasn't all a dream. When he returns to work on the renovation, he's given a key to a box in the trunk, which has his phone, the letter he wrote (not a letter from Yai), and the theater tickets Jom and Yai never got to use. Then he's told he needs to meet the son of the lady renovating the house, who is Yai Kanthorn of the present day.

1st special is a cute scene of Yai Palathip interacting with his nieces and nephews many years after Jom's disappearance. He became a judge and the family is prosperous because of Jom's advice about the future.

The 2nd special explains that present day Yai is a decendent of Lek, 1920s Yai's brother, so that's how he ended up also being called Yai. His adoptive mom/aunt is Yai's heir, tasked with giving Jom (as far as she knows just a random person of his full name) a key to the box in the chest. She sees his name in an article about a renovation which is why she insisted on hiring him. Yai sees Jom's picture in the article and remembers his past lives, so he goes to Thailand to find Jom.

The 3rd special is Yai and Jom in the present being boyfriends and getting engaged.

There is absolutely no explanation of why Jom time traveled.

[voracious-tales]

Spy x Family: For the Mission (M/M, Digestion, WG)

When you were “Loid” Forger, there was never a dull day. Not when you were at the top of your field as an agent for Westalian Intelligence. The young man was never one to deny a mission including the one that he was currently undertaking. Who’d have guessed posing as a father and husband would have been more complicated than perhaps disguising himself and breaching enemy territory? But what made Operation Strix even more complicated had to definitely be the neighbors. Loid could not afford making any of the neighbors suspicious. So, to avoid the accusations of “being a bad father,” he took his pretend wife and adopted daughter to the aquarium. Yes, that sort of familial trip would make him look normal.

The fake family head to Ostania to attend the capital’s aquarium the Berlint Aqualand. Before he could relax and play along, he became alert again when he saw the same neighbors from the apartment also attending the festivities. But he was lucky that his “wife” Yor was more interested in interacting with them. At least he could slip away without anyone’s prying eyes seeing him leave.

While Yor chatted with the neighbors, Loid decided to buy some coffee and orange juice. Heading towards the confectionary stand, the blonde-haired man went to withdraw some money when the elderly woman running the stand starts to directly speak to him.

“Ah, Agent Twilight, it is good that you are here.”

Loid looked behind him to ensure no one was within hearing distance before looking back at the woman annoyed. “I’m sorry, I can’t accept this assignment at this time.”

He had hoped that saying this would deter the woman, but she continued on as if she was unaware that he had said something. “Our intel has informed us there is reason to believe that a terrorist group is transferring a chemical weapon in this facility.”

Loid again ignored the woman turning his interest over to the beverages. “I just want coffee and orange juice.”

“If you do not accept this mission, there could be great casualties here.”

The secret agent wanted to continue to probe for the coffee and orange juice, but the older woman was still ignoring his order. Sighing, he relents and learns that the chemical weapon was dispensed inside a microfilm that was fed to one of the penguins.

“Good luck, Agent Twilight,” the woman said. Before Loid could at the very least get his coffee and orange juice, the woman vanished into thin air stand and all. Well, that was just great, Loid thought to himself. He was not only given another mission when he was already exhausted, but now he would never get his beverages.

But since he was given the intel that it was primarily a penguin that was carrying the film, Loid quickly took control of the situation and suggested that he and his neighbors all go to Penguin Peak. No one objected, which was great, but the bigger obstacle was figuring out which penguin it was. Fortunately for him, his daughter, Anya, happened to have telepathic abilities due to her being the result of a human experiment. She could read his thoughts and secretly scanned the penguins for any oddities.

“Daddy,” Anya said.

Loid, still deep in the zone, looked at his daughter. He could see that he was pointing to one of the penguins who happened to be drinking a large amount of water despite gagging. This was most likely the bird he was looking for, but he couldn’t help but sometimes be curious with how his daughter has seeming omniscience when it came to something like this. He shook his suspicions out of his head as he still had a mission to fulfill.

However, to do that, he had to blend in with the trainers.

“Alright, newbie,” the lead penguin trainer droned out, “take a few minutes to become situated with the animals before you come out.”

The young newbie nodded to his loud-mouthed superior and headed towards his locker. It was his first day on the job. He had loved penguins all his life and decided to take classes to better learn about the anatomy of these flightless birds. He had passed his interview well enough, but he was always the type of person who would carry note cards for memorizing purposes. After all, the aquarium had well over a hundred penguins and it wasn’t like he could remember their names in ten seconds.

He read off a few cards containing the names of the penguins for a few minutes. There was still that lingering doubt in his soul that things could end terribly for him, but his determination fueled him. After reading the front and back of the cards in what appeared to be an eternity, he returned the cards to a plastic bag of his and slipped them in his locker. Every trainer had a mirror attached to the back of the locker door. He inhaled deeply before forcing the air back out through his mouth.

“You can do this. You have devoted your entire life to this.”

He says his self-reassuring words over and over until he felt pumped up enough. With renewed vigor, he slams the locker door...but is suddenly grabbed.

“What the!?”

A gloved hand covers his mouth to keep him from screaming for help. The assailant then had him in a choke hold. He struggled and squirmed underneath that stronghold, but the older man maintained his grip on the younger man. He must have had years of experience given how thick his bicep was. The air flowing to his lungs began to slack. The more he was being held in that position his face turned first blue then a dark violet. He was slipping away. Fast.

Eventually, the assailant took his arm away freeing the newbie’s neck. The air returned to his lungs, but in a slow haze. Before he could consider running, the older man held his shoulders in a tight grip. His vision, while blurry, was still adequate. From his limited sight, he could see that his attacker had short blonde hair and cold, blue eyes.

“I’m on a mission right now which means I have to take your place. Sorry in advance.”

“Wha?”

CHOMP

The newbie’s head disappeared into the darkness of Loid’s mouth. His tongue twirled around and sampled every orifice of the younger man’s face. This was actually not the first time that Loid had to administer this kind of procedure: it was actually taught by him during the war and it served as a good way for him to dispose of enemies. In two minutes flat, the older man slurped his way up the newbie’s abdomen.

Naturally the newbie was unimpressed and struggled as hard as he could. He screamed out in fear but Loid’s heavy slurping, combined with all the tugging, drowned out the echoes of the newbie’s screams. The increasing strain of the heavy meal caused the hem of his shirt roll up exposing some of his rock-solid abdominal muscles.

Ulp , ulp , ulp , ulp.

The newbie’s screaming face pressed against the walls of Loid’s stomach creating a bulge to stretch his outer skin. Loid moaned at the sensation of having fresh meat throb around inside of him, but he couldn’t dare to pleasure himself and get caught with the new guy half-way into his gullet.

The young man thrashed around the fleshy membrane but his blows were absorbed. Gone from the bright light and familiarity, the world was now pitch black and humid accompanied by the internal heartbeat of his assailant. Every squelch rang in his ears.

Loid lifted his prey with his free hands and grabbed the man’s pelvis and chomped on it. For someone who was meh as a meal, the spy could appreciate the plumpness of his food’s hips. Wrestling his hips inside of his maw, his invasive tongue slid on the newbie’s exposed rear eliciting a yelp from him. Loid’s hard abs began to smoothen over because of the additions to his girth.

Slurp slurp.

The newbie’s midsection bulged out of the secret agent’s neck and slid past his chest. Loid curled his tongue around the newbie’s back legs. His prey tried kicking the man several times, but his blows were ineffective and instead spurred the man on. Grunting, Loid sealed the newbie’s toes inside of his mouth. Clenching the sides of his moving globe, Loid’s eyes squinted shut and heaved. The last of his meal squished down his esophagus and the entrance of his stomach opened to welcome him.

He was surrounded by the incessant sounds of the stomach’s drones and the squishy sounds of his body slipping and sliding off the walls. Loid sighed in relief that the worst was over and trudged his way to a bench and plopped down. The buttons on his shirt gave way and sprang across the room with the fullness of his meal reaching its limit.

“HELP!!”

Loid’s belly wobbled around with the indents of his meal vibrating around. The blonde-haired man winced and clenched his teeth. “I should have sedated you first.”

The walls pressed and ground against the man’s body secreting juices to break him down. Again, and again the walls clamped down on the man sandwiching him and lubricating his skin with acid. It sent chills down his spine with the sensation of a growing pain coursing through his veins. Having done this numerous times, Loid kept some air in his stomach to give the illusion that there was nothing in his stomach.

The newbie’s skin was far gentler than the grizzled older gentleman. If the situations were reversed, it would take about two days at best for the acid to corrode through his tough exterior. But the newbie was melting like butter. It helped that his energy was being zapped away making him exhausted.

Loid pried himself off the bench and returned to the man’s locker. Looking through it, he steals the newbie’s uniform. After all, it was not like he’d need it where he’s going. It was a hassle to slip into the outfit thanks to his food baby, but he managed it. Before leaving the room, a building pressure rose from the bottom of his stomach and bolted from his throat. The newbie’s shirt planted itself on the surface of Loid’s engorged belly covered with spit.

He nestled his belly. The newbie was losing definition. Quickly. Loid knew the man was weak, but even the most persistent of prey would at least put up a fight that would last hours before they were turned to melt into mush. Shrugging, Loid quickly discarded the shirt and headed towards the exit.

“This guy is no rookie,” one of the penguin trainers noted.

Loid was quick at work dishing out dozens of fish to the hungry penguins. There were around 200 of the flightless birds present and yet, he was identifying each individual penguin with startling accuracy. All this especially when he had the newbie stewing in his guts. The others watched Loid in amazement blissfully unaware that he was an imposter. They could have sworn they heard strange noises ringing from somewhere, but they could not put their finger on it.

Soon, Loid singled out the penguin and already had the elaborate cover story cooked up. Claiming that there was something wrong with the bird, Loid confiscates the animal and returns backstage. In these situations, it would have been easy to cut the creature open and remove the microfilm like that, but Loid was not one to recklessly sacrifice a penguin for something like that. But he had to get the penguin to work with him.

“Excuse me.”

Loid turned around and saw a bespectacled man. He smiled warmly at him noticing that he had the animal in his hands. “What are you doing with the penguin?”

“It is sick, so I am treating it.” He had already methodically planned it out in his mind, the explanations were flowing out of him like butter.

“Well, I need to see it,” the man replied.

“Sure,” Loid answered, “but I would like to know who you are.”

The man nodded and withdrew his ID card. Loid read the writing on it before bouncing it around in his hand. Without much warning, Loid bent down and gently scooped his fingers around in the water. Applying the moisture to the card, the truth became clear.

“It’s fake.”

The man, seeing that he was caught, tried to run away, but the spy grabbed his shoulders and pulled him back. The man screamed and kicked for anyone to intervene, but Loid propped his hand over his mouth and pulled him into the locker room slamming the door behind him.

Wet sounds and screaming rang from the outside of the room alongside the succession of squishy gulps.

Yor and Anya had already finished watching the show at Penguin Peak and were looking at more of the exhibits. The young girl became mesmerized by the brightly colorful fish and sea animals from the sunfish to jellyfish that glowed in the dark from bioluminescence. As the hours passed, Loid was still not around. Anya, holding her fake mother’s hand, looked around to see if she could find the signature silhouette of her father.

“Where is Daddy?”

Yor tapped her chin. “I don’t know. He said something about there being a leak or something.”

As Anya allowed her mind to ponder the different scenarios, she was knocked out of her train of thought when she heard grunting. Looking away, there was Loid. Sweat beat down from his forehead this being probably one of the first times he was caught out of breath. He clutched at his sides for some odd reason. In fact, if any took a closer look, Loid looked husky. It struck the young girl as weird: they did not eat a whole meal during their visit, but the normally trim man was now out of shape. His pant legs tugged to his sides now splitting at the seams. His shirt was in total disarray and disheveled.

His potbelly poured between his fattened thighs spilling out over his zipper. More of the fat weighed on the seat of his pants in a muffin. With his bigger assets, he could rival his wife in terms of maximum thickness. That was not a pleasant thought for the poor spy. Fat poured through the seams of his shirt exposing his pale skin for all to see.

Yor was taken aback. “Mister Loid, what...?”

“Eh....I had a.” Loid darted his eyes around the halls of the aquarium looking for an explanation. “Uh, it was an allergic reaction.”

Yor let the explanation digest until she was able to comprehend the implications. “Oh, dear, should we get some medicine for it?”

Loid shook his hand. “No worries. I’ll just...need to rest for a while.”

Yor nodded as he sighed in relief. He was grateful that Yor appeared to readily accept his explanation rather than further probe him.

“Good. I don’t need to tell her that I ate two guys. I just hope I can get all this excess fat taken care of before I am given a new mission.” Loid pats his distended potbelly. “Why did that boy’s ass have to taste so good?”

Anya’s eyes widened from reading her father’s mind. Two innocent men were completely devoured by her dad and are now padding on his body forever. She should have been horrified, but instead, Anya’s eyes sparkled. “So cool!”

[nanjokei]

same anon here, incredibly interested in the history from someone who lived through it

ok!

here's my own rundown on why the vocaloid bubble burst in the mid 2010s!

almost irreversibly! (don't worry— this story has a happy ending)

if anyone is wondering, yes, you can reblog this! i only say this because this took a lot of work to write so if anyone feels compelled, yes, stroke my ego a bit, i allow such a thing. now, i might get snippy here and there, but i'm not serious at all. my sense of humor is pretty tsukkomi-ish and it shows up in how i describe things. <-disclaimer for if this post breaks containment because i know fandom types don't like my sense of humor if they're not given the context that i LOVE what i'm talking about and rib on it out of utmost adoration

as a disclaimer, i do lightly look things up to check on stuff timeline wise and its validity, but this is from my own point of view and memory and a personal retelling, so if you have a different take on it then i'm sure our viewpoints can co-exist. also, i speak about utaite from the point of view of someone who respects their existence but does not participate. so if a few facts are off... i am speaking only from the aspect of what relates to what i'm talking about. also if there are any typos i stopped being thorough with my checking and editing like 4k words in since i am not being paid to write this, it is just for fun. anyways~

so where we wanna start here is before the big bubble era. i think most people would agree that it was in full swing around mid 2012, but i'll set the date at september 23, 2011. the posting of the song kagerou daze (by the way, as a testament to how much of a boomer i am, despite being an kagepro fan from the start i find myself still using the "kagerou days" romanization by accident every time). by the way, senbonzakura, one of the biggest vocaloid songs ever for the longest time, was posted only a few days earlier. just to paint a picture. but that's not the only thing... i think what we want to look at especially is the end of the vocaloid2 era and what was going on during and before. the final vocaloid2 product, vy2, was released on april 25th, 2011. in this timeline, there are a few angles i wanna focus on. the state of the culture, its spread, utaite and producers. by the way, if i had to date when i met vocaloid, it was around 2008. right before gakupo came out, maybe.

around this time, the culture of vocaloid-ke (vocaloid family) type secondary works were falling out of fashion. 2010 and before, i feel that vocaloid had a strong image of nico nico douga especially— not that it didn't during the bubble era. but i mean the people participating. when miku came out, people viewed her as a novelty while still thinking to themselves they had stumbled across something special. there was no subculture like that before, and the closest counterpart to this was idolmaster. now, many know this is the origin of the -P suffix came from. it's a tossed around factoid now but people should know that it was certainly a phenomena back then. and a LOT of early miku adopters (like 80% were either already in the doujin music scene, the DTM (desktop music) scene, trained musicians or even some industry pros. and a lot of these people were nerdy and geeky and loved anime and games and manga so of course their first point of reference for building vocaloid's identity was idolmaster. touhou, idolmaster's next door neighbor, also had a lot of influence given many of the music people in its scene dabbled in vocaloid early on. so naturally the fans that were attracted to vocaloid were also nerds. at first there were only cryptonloids, but gakupo quickly followed (and continuing in the trend of heavy nnd association— kentaro miura (RIP), a big fan of nnd and especially idolmaster— designed and drew his art 100% pro bono out of love for the site and its culture). luka came out... i think gumi was the first shift. gumi just felt, different. i personally owe it to her being modeled after ranka lee, the iconic role of her voice provider, megumi nakajima— ranka lee was the underdog character in her source macross frontier's love triangle. so i feel like that image somewhat imprinted itself on gumi. gumi was not popular at first at all. her release came and went with not much fanfare. ironically the aspect of rivalry would come back under stuff like the miku vs gumi debate. this is probably the first real demonstration of "it doesn't matter how good the voice is, it matters who uses it and how that propagates the voice".

and so i arrive at the producers of the time, maybe late 2008 early to mid 2009, the newcomers. the ones that weren't necessarily otaku through and through, but more on the "teenagers who like vocaloid and/or don't have a singer to sing for them, and want to make music". i will be specific and say it is people like wowaka (RIP), deco*27 and hachi/kenshi yonezu specifically. wowaka for example had a very fresh take— his pvs deemphasized the vocaloid, but it also inspired many fan pvs because of it. i will not go into how it became ironic that he quit due to the attribution to the voice. but his moody lyrics captured a lot of hearts and his style carried a youth to it. hachi did a lot of his own artsy pvs. deco*27 was very unpolished and amateur but his music was VERY of the times. the synths, the guitar, very youthful. aside from wowaka, whose comeup immediately led to him getting signed quickly (and the guy himself just walked and i don't blame him) i think what made these guys (deco and hachi) stand out from the rest in the end is one thing: they picked up gumi. and this set them apart from the old and dusted otaku who didn't pick gumi up, or those who picked her up thinking of her only as ranka lee. mozaik role (still deco's most viewed song on nnd btw, with no sign of stopping. and he is clearly PISSED about it). matryoshka. all that kibs of noise. by the way, matryoshka's stint in the vocaloid rankings went unchallenged until it was finally killed by senbonzakura. that's a good two years of dominance!! a lot of the breakout stars or people who got more popular during 2010 used gumi, i'm talking your 40mPs, your sasakure.UKs, your buzzGs. incidentally, a lot of these people got signed... most for their vocaloid stuff. 40mP, sasakure, deco, kous and others were signed under label split-offs like U/M/A/A. wowaka and hachi... were signed for themselves. specifically, wowaka and his band hitorie, and hachi as himself kenshi yonezu.

but producers were not the only ones being signed. utaite, who had been a thing before even vocaloid was a thing, found themselves growing rapidly due to them increasingly participating in the culture as both fans and beneficiaries. personally, i split off utaites eras as "before piko and akiakane" and "after piko and akiakane". the before era included people who either started very early on when vocaloid became a thing on nnd, or started before it (participating in chorus medleys or posting utattemita videos of anison for example, like gero). it was all amateur and everyone was doing it for fun... but the record companies doth lurk around the vocaloid scene at this rate. akiakane and piko i pick specifically because they were the first utaite who were very publically signed. piko was signed under sony's ki/oon records! akiakane had two or three big albums under the subsidary of VAP, toy's factory (if you wanna have fun take a look at the list of talent they rep). piko is especially important— as he had a vocaloid made of him. this marked first big interest of corporations and large record companies to actually enter the vocaloid space— in the most direct way possible. btw, the reason piko the vocaloid is dead is because piko the person is no longer signed under sony. it's not outright confirmed, but piko the guy stopped tweeting about utatane piko the second he transferred labels. he is stuck in a weird catch 22 he probably will never be free of, though yamaha is doing some insane moves lately, i wonder if they'd ever try to buy the character out and revive him as a stunt. (they are doing many funny stunts lately. but a subject for another time.)

finally, my last point in this preamble is the interest in telling stories through vocaloid had only continued to grow. i think the two biggest early examples were the prisoner series by shujinP and the ever so infamous evillious chronicles by mothy. their explosive popularity is wholeheartedly owed to rin and len— ok this is a tangent but this is the genius of the rin and len package, that to this day was never replicated, they come together as you know and since they are male and female with no set setting, they are an easy buy and you can make a story because you can do two points of view across several songs... like literally. its paperplane vs prisoner. daughter of evil vs servant of evil. and their fans were and continue to be super passionate. it's great, we would be missing a huge chunk of what makes vocaloid subculture what it is without them. of course, shujinP's series (plural because they had several) is less known these days but it was probably the first series to get plays and novels and all that. quickly followed by EC. later came series like sasakure's doomsday series, stuck in a limbo between old and new era (most of the songs released in the old era but the novelization and such came out during the new), and a few "outsider" series like numtack05/putinP's series (the reasons this never got popular is because it was absurdist and shitpost-y and involved too much political imagery, not only that but also because putinP used a lot of copyright samples (most famously ronald mcdonald and sazae-san clips)— the freely distributed album vers omit these samples entirely and i can confirm the songs are worse for it)

so to give a summary of the above section

the tastes of fans were maturing

there was a shift in how vocaloid was perceived

the growing influence of utaite

the growing interest of big corpos in the scene

the growing interest in storytelling using vocaloid as a medium

anyway, here comes the real deal. and... it's gonna be a mess. just like the era itself was. i hope you're ready, at least.

even the very first echo of vocaloid3 felt kinda corpo-y. it wasn't, but.. looking back. it kind of felt like it. the first time we ever found out about v3 was through a leak of seeU's demo— but it was a work in progress leak, so it had the voice of her provider dahee kim singing along. people had no idea so they assumed this was the capability of the software. it was exciting! kpop was just starting to get popular, and we were getting a new vocaloid software, with korean capability!!!

anyway. we're not talking about the can of worms that was seeU.

not just because of dahee kim. but because it's not related beyond this. also the fact that korean fans were heavily and horribly mistreated by the majority japanese fandom for obvious reasons. i do not have the depths to speak on that stuff, but it says a lot that the software's first big swing ended up like that.

but i wanted to illustrate the mood of the fans going into this era. it was full of hopes and dreams. now, i don't want any wannabe know-it-alls wagging their fingers at me and checking the wikia going "b-but cullen, mew also came out!! at the same time!!" the seeU leak came out first. i remember there were fights over whether or not that demo was real. it was a cultural shift like no other. who the fuck cares about mew? literally her only legacy is one really amazing ezfg song. i will not debate anyone on this btw. i try to be objective but i'm allowed to inject a bit of my own opinion here too. you know who were also full of hopes and dreams? the companies. not your internetcos and your ahsofts, no, i'm talking publicly traded shits and record companies. look... i'm coming off harsh. i actually don't hold that much animosity, but you're gonna see why this was the first huge misstep of the era.

nice picture, right? this was the kind of optimism we started off this era on. but, i'll break down the picture for you in a way that helps illustrate a point somewhat:

your girlies from V2 like gumi (who was this era's it girl), lily, galaco (even if her shitty V2 version is contest only)

your earnest newcomers mew (look, even yamaha girlies count), cul, aoki lapis, seeU (one could argue.), IA (one could argue...)

tone rion of dear stage (who represented dempagumi inc., the group her voice provider came from, though this was a myth for years until it was proven... also it was clear they wanted to make the rest of dempagumi into vocaloids but rion flopped at the time. there was even a picture of her friends floating around. astoundingly embarrassing confidence. one billion dead vocaloids.)

akikoloid-chan of lawsons (yes, the convenience store! she is a vocaloidification of their mascot and i would argue the poster child of the modern brand private vocaloid. she was retired in uh.. 2019 i wanna say? though she was dormant for a long time anyway)

ring suzune, the aborted failure of minna no vocalo keikaku (everyone's vocalo-project)... this one involves a lot of otona no jijou AKA adult circumstances (japanese corpo's favorite excuse. you will now notice this phrase every time you hear it oooo). just unfortunate all around

yuzuki yukari of vocalomakets, i put her in a separate category because she really is a girlie of her own. a vocal born from producers being dissatisfied that their wants weren't being answered and no company was taking them up, they just went "fuck it" and produced yukari on their own. a huge outlier in this era of vanity projects and companies using the scene for their own crap.

not pictured, but i have to mention her due to her complicated position in this era, but mayu of exit tunes. exit tunes is a record label that heavily supported vocaloid and utaite during this era, signing both producers and utaite, and making compilation cds of popular vocaloid hits. and probably saw to it that due to their dominance in the area of compilation cds (and they still dominate, even if their releases are sparse these days their cds still top oricon without effort), them sneaking mayu into the tracklists would work... my thoughts on this? my position has softened a lot over the years. and i've always thought "they gave up right before she organically caught on, they should have kept pushing. so what a shame".

now you may notice i bolded a few of these and made special mention of the companies behind them. you probably already figured it out, but this era had heavy investment from parties who had only to gain from a rapidly growing niche subculture. see, unlike the other two of nnd's big three idolmaster and touhou, who are IPs where you need some kind of cooperation to officially get in on, vocaloid... is incredibly free, so laissez faire in comparison. you buy a 9,000 dollar dev kit and get to work making your mascot. it was... so easy. so free. so sweet. but real life is not so easy, or free, or sweet. you actually had to be accepted by the fans, and like i said before... the voice does not matter. what matters is who uses it, and how that propagate the voice. this is true time and time again. it is the ultimate "how many times do i have to teach you this lesson, old man?!" of the scene from a commercial standpoint. no matter how many years pass. ergo, one billion dead vocaloids. corpo vocaloids were releasing and they flopped immediately. earnest products from newcomers were dropping and struggling, though def doing better than the corpo ones (like lapis, lapis did ok). existing "in crowd" companies were vomiting out new vocals and not even promoting them. it was a disgusting era of excess and death and bile and plague and war and and and. it's astounding that it is hard carried by the art that came out of it. because if you only look at the commercial side of things, it is fucking disgusting.

now, onto the fan aspect. remember when i said this era truly kicked off when kagerou daze came out? yup. here it comes. so, anyone lived through this era remembers the cambrian explosion of original projects that did not make use of vocaloid mascots— arguably the final death knell of vocaloid-ke secondary works being the mainstream.

now, i'm planting my flag in the ground here very firmly— i do not ride the bandwagon of the people who erroneously attribute the near death of the scene to kagepro. it's just not true. personally i have a very complicated (bordering on near sort of but not quite negative, depending on how nostalgic i feel that day) relationship with the series, but to blame it is incredibly narrowminded and ignorant of the actual reasons the bubble burst, and not to mention unfair. if you find it annoying, fine. but just say you don't like the series and move on. and really, for better or for worse, mekakucity days and mekakucity records are unironically god tier vocaloid albums that will be remembered for years to come. i just have to say this because i see a lot of people blame jin for very flimsy reasons... SHUT UP!!! anyway.

i think one of the issues with the whole project culture that flourished during this era was simply the fact that since they were multimedia projects (whether by accident like kagepro or intentionally from the get), fans were coming from all angles, and even those who got into it through vocaloid eventually became super mega invested in them as separate IPs. which is... unfortunately an issue. so when these properties eventually spun off into manga, light novels, covers with real seiyuu, merch and ultimately some even netting anime projects... once those projects either abruptly ended (lol, lmao, this will come back later) or reached their natural conclusion, inevitably a lot of those fans either leave with it or found themselves burned out on vocaloid itself, or perhaps even think they've outgrown it.

next, utaite. now i mentioned a bit earlier about how the first batch of utaite were amateurs who didn't expect anything out of it and did it just cause, and how exit tunes signed a lot of them in this era. now, comes the time i speak about utaite "after piko and akiakane". i believe due to a generational gap and subconsciously perhaps due to the signing of a few utaite from the old guard at this point, the nu utaite of the 2010s had a sort of individuality to them... this isn't an insult, and a large part of their popularity actually came from them always collaborating and a lot of them ending up befriending each other. again, i'm an outsider, but i understand this much. but this era for utaite was the beginning of the idea that an utaite can become a superstar. in the end, very few of them did become superstars.

a lot of them naturally returned to a normal level of popularity after the bubble. there aren't a lot of your AtRs or your amatsukis and such. the smart ones became vtubers before being a vtuber was cool. to give an example: un:c and hashiyan who are arguably oldheads more than nu era became anjo and kosaka of monsterz mate. this isn't a doxx btw, this is publically available information, and un:c often credits himself as a mixer under projects he does as anjo. also, a certain duo of female utaite whose names i will not mention went on to form the super popular vtuber duo himehima. there are other early adopters like kano and god knows who else that i don't feel like mentioning. anyway, if your utaite did it after 2018 and under their own identity it is a desperate plea for attention. sorry but it's just the objective truth. tangent over... did you think i wasn't gonna shoehorn vtubers into this somehow?! anyway.

even sutopuri who got mega popular, only really formed after the vocaloid bubble burst, perhaps even as a result of it. utaite had a positive effect on the vocaloid scene and still do. but at the time, i think it was at its strongest. utaite NEEDED vocaloid, and vocaloid benefitted greatly from their continued patronage and love for it. i for one will not be caught slandering utaite and their relationship with vocaloid even if i will always prefer the vocaloid versions. the issue here comes from the fact that way too many were signed without much star factor (i'm not disparaging them, i'm just saying they did not hold their audience across the mediums), and even at that their fans splintered off into many tribes and many weren't really into vocaloid in the first place and were more into the livestreams and twitter banter. that's just how things shook out. you even have your reols and such, as reol was the face but in a sense her, gigaP and okiku were a set and gigaP left the scene to focus on commercial work with those two. too many of them got signed and splintered off into their own little fandoms before THOSE fandoms kind of died out. so this is another part where fans disappear and lose interest. you're starting to see the pattern here, right?

there's so much stuff i thought i would touch on, like how gumi was the undisputed it girl of the scene at this time, and how kagepro rose IA to prominence (all because jin wanted to buy gumi but didn't find her in the store) and how IA's people 1st place locked certain producers in their basement (like jin, yasuhiro, ishifuro etc) and... now this is a conspiracy on my part but prevented them from working on anything else, so that drew more talent away from the scene... but i realized it's tangential and belongs to other parts in this conversation. i want to reiterate here though before we go on to the biggest elephant in the room of all which would be the point of no return... there is more to the vocaloid bubble era of 2012-2015 than projects, than corpo and record company bullshit, than utaite fans. and there is more to the era before that than the top brass producers i mentioned earlier. i really... really lament how so much of early vocaloid reuploads are gone from youtube. there's a whole world just gone. so, anyway, are you ready?

the final block in this weird jenga of a story.

the producer, suzumu, and his unfortunate associates.

i will cut to the chase because it's easier to explain who was involved once i say what happened. to put it shortly... suzumu "stole" his songs. this is weird and vague and i always hated the way people used polite euphemisms to explain it because it made the situation way more confusing than it had to be— he used his producer friends as ghostwriters to compose songs for him, basically. and was very not nice about it according to one of the people involved. now i will probably adopt a somewhat sympathetic angle that people who have previously heard of this case may have not encountered before. not because i feel bad for that fuck, but because it seems like at least one of the people impacted has forgiven him, and others have moved on in less obvious ways. he's also professionally making music in the industry now. as much as i want to keep up the act of disliking him, i don't care anymore. i still dislike what he did immensely because it impacts producers i love to this day. but the man came forth about it himself and those involved forgave him. it's been almost a decade now... man!

suzumu, before getting into posting songs (who knows how many were actually his and which were ghostwritten), was a prolific lyric writer who worked with some of the trendiest vocaloid producers around. i'll cross gigaP out, since he was not involved in the incident, but almost every single person involved in this had worked with him in a lyric or story writing capacity (for 150P and komine specifically). here are the involved parties as i recall, bolded are people who he "stole" from

mafumafu, the person who spoke the most about it post suzumu's confession and the most vocal, and likely the person who was used as a ghostwriter the most (i don't recall if he actually alludes to this or not but people commonly think this). mafumafu had a series of vocaloid songs that told a story, but stopped using vocaloid after the incident for a while and songs that were going to get pvs from his first vocaloid album were not posted. he contributed a song called machigai sagashi for the vocaloid flavored moba #compass in 2015, but it seems like that song was probably in the works since before the incident for reasons i will highlight in a moment. suzumu wrote the lyrics for only one of the songs. iirc, mafumafu's song berserk is about suzumu. don't remember if this is confirmed or not. btw, the album of those songs, meikyou shisui, is really underrated and you should check it out. im not a mafu guy but that album is great

kemu, the person who is arguably closest to suzumu and the one who most publicly supported suzumu (albeit wordlessly) in later years by working with him professionally. when i mention someone forgiving suzumu, i mean him. suzumu wrote the lyrics for most of his kemu voxx songs, a famous multimedia project kemu was on the helm of along with hatsuko as the main illustrator. since kemu no longer had a lyricist, the project stalled for years until he posted a song suddenly in 2017 (with self written lyrics). it seems like the series is continuing still, but with a different direction

150P, who worked with suzumu heavily for his shuuen no shiori (bookmark of demise) project, a project that was conceived from the start to be a story. this part makes me really mad, guys!! i'll try to keep calm about it. 150P wrote over 50 songs (idk if this is an actual number but he wrote a lot. at least 40.) for the series, with suzumu writing the story and lyrics. the character designs were done by saine (who dodged a bullet all things considered.) and the art was done by komine. 150P was already doing crazy things before shuuenpro, his most popular song is still his insane 12-len classical metal chorus song lost destination. now shuuenpro caught on slower than its peers and was an underdog. i LOVE shuuenpro to this day. you know what? right when it was finally getting its first W, when the album that had seiyuu covers at come out on oricon in third place, suzumu dropped his confession. what a slap to the fucking face!! the manga of the series hastily wrapped up after that. 150P and komine disappeared and no longer did stuff ever. 150P recently appeared for a mafumafu anniversary thing so i'm glad he's still alive. but, komine...

komine, the only non-producer, an artist with the worst luck. she was slowly rising to prominence doing pv art for a lot of popular producers, and was the main artist of shuuenpro most prominently. during the initial release of the first few shuuenpro songs, she was accused of tracing, and the art of the pv of sarumane isutori game had to be done by someone else. komine stopped using social media at that point, but continued to make art for the project quietly and quite prolifically. so she was already on some kind of fraught standing even though the tracing allegations were disproven. fast forward to the suzumu blowup, komine packed up her bags and disappeared forever. if she had become disillusioned, i do not blame her. her final public contribution was the design of jeanne d'arc from #compass, the character who was paired with the mafumafu song. all subsequent artworks of jeanne were done by different artists. i suspect the reason the vocaloid version of machigai sagashi did not have a proper pv was due to komine quitting. i can only imagine what that pv looked like! if you're wondering why i mention a pv, it's cuz compass fans got mad at mafu for having a fancy pv for his self cover but not for the original. but otona no jijou, you know? and where is that energy for eve who still hasn't released a pv for mistletoe publicly and only put it on his kuso app and with 0 compass association? who let that wishy washy fuck do an anniversary song? ...im not gonna go on a compass tangent. anyway.

so... why does this matter?

it matters because people became disillusioned due to this drama. it matters because suzumu took out some very popular and prolific people from the scene during what one could argue was a transitional phase. the fans of all those people, including suzumu's... gone. if you weren't there, you may not understand the cult of personality suzumu had. he had his name on everything and was friends with all the right people. when i heard about this incident... i just closed my eyes and sighed lol. it hurt and it hit when the scene was at its weakest. and was the final blow, almost. and it impacted the way people saw and talked about vocaloid for years. miku became "owakon" for a time. people thought kizuna ai was gonna replace her as a cultural touchstone (lol, lmao, it is proven time and time again that the big three cannot die). kenshi yonezu, in all his detached glory, came down from his jeweled encrusted throne to compose a song for miku's 10th birthday that he smugly thought was the death knell of nico nico douga.... which even at the time of its release was contested by even people who were on the same miku anniversary project and, whether you wanna acknowledge it or not, is still mocked to this day by several producers. magical mirai's theme this year even does it. there is no respect for sand planet or anything kenshi yonezu stood for in that song. what an asshole move no matter how you see it. argue with the wall if you don't agree, i don't want to hear it. the scene survived because there were producers and artists and fans who still loved it. not because of some sardonic fuckoff song by a guy so detached he'd write a funeral march for a birthday.

these days, i feel like the community is incredibly conscious of what happened. there are wanton community led events that encourage not only the creation of songs, covers, art and secondary creations but also the discovery of new producers— the biggest of which being vocaloid collection, which happens three times a year and has many categories, but most importantly the top ranking (producers active for 3+ years) and the rookie ranking. i once read a japanese article that said proseka brought new fans hungry for something beyond the music presented in the game, and vocacolle and other community led events and song posting festivals supplied the works. the average age of the new vocaloid producer is— and this is my own estimate based on how many heart attacks i've been given the past 3 or 4 years— 17~19 years old. they say things like "i know of kagepro but i wasn't there"!! should i get my cane out!! who's driving me to the retirement home?!

even companies involved in the product end are more savvy these days.... (holding my tongue about a certain company of a popular synth software and its ceo because i have nothing nice to say). i think they realized that you can't clap with one hand and that appealing to the end user and fans is a necessity. honestly, i can only be excited for what comes next. we're never going back to that dark age, i can say this with utmost confidence. do i miss the past of the times before the bubble, back when vocaloid was a smidge more geeky? sure. but we can only really move forward, so why not enjoy it

[inukag-archive]

Hi, do you have some recommendations for the "inukag as cat/dog parents" or maybe one of them as adoptive parents of a stray animal? Thank you so much! 😊😊

Hey @chit-a-to ! We love seeing our dog-boy as a cat-mom (or dog, or horse) so thank you for this ask! We hope you enjoy this list of predominantly -- but not exclusively-- modern AU's from across the ratings spectrum, so please do check individual fics for additional tags.

Dumplin' by MooMiscief (E)

She was officially settled working from home, she owned her own house and the time had come for her to get a puppy. Until a gruff volunteer gave her sass, until said volunteer gave her his number, and until she realized maybe was interested in him for more than dog tips.

--

Cat Person by @arisukingdom (G)

Inuyasha is a cat person, and every cat person needs to meet his first cat at some point in life. So here it goes a little Inu finding out what a cat is and trying to bring a cat to a dog house.

--

The Seven Sins of Buyo (G) by @ruddcatha

It is Inuyasha Sins Week, September 20-26, Sloth, Wrath, Envy, Greed, Pride, Gluttony, Lust. How does Buyo, Kagome's faithful cat, represent each of the sins?

--

Begin Again by @coccinellesroses (T)

There is beauty in starting over when you get to let go of what happened and who you were in the past.

Kagome has moved into a new apartment, and she looks forward to a brighter future where she leaves the baggage of a toxic relationship behind. Rooming with her best cat Buyo, Kagome starts to experience the fun of living alone. Although, she didn't count on her neighbor being a cute half-demon.

She also didn't expect to develop a crush on him either.

--

How To Train Your Dog Demon by @anxietyaardvark (M)

Izayoi is tired of Inuyasha's excuses. All he does is work; despite his protests, she knows he's lonely. She decides to get him a companion to get him out of the house, and when she finds a no-nonsense dog trainer with great reviews, ulterior motives take over.

--

The Cat Came Back by @fawn-eyed-girl (T)

When Kagome and Shippō adopt a stray cat from a village, Inuyasha is incensed. Cats (who aren’t Kirara, of course) just cause trouble; don’t they know that?

And then, Kagome goes home to study for an exam, and Inuyasha is left with a cat he doesn’t want, but who has suddenly decided he is the most interesting person in all of Musashi.

--

Little By Little by LittleKnownArtist (E)

Post Manga. After the three year separation, Inuyasha and Kagome are finally together as a couple. There will be little bumps in the road along the way, but its all part of the learning experience. And they plan to learn everything about and every inch of the other-little by little.

--

Must Love Dogs by WakingPriestess (NR)

Taking her dog to the park was a sure fire way to get a dose of serotonin. But the sight of a scary looking dog being lonely and unable to make new friends broke Kagome's heart. Thankfully she had the sweetest pup in the world who was also a little intimidating and also looking for new friends. The owner being drop dead gorgeous was just a bonus.

--

Chai. by @inusunflower (E)

In which Kagome and Inuyasha fight over the custody of their shared corgi, Chai.

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Ramen by @writemydaydreams (T)

Three years is a long time to be separated from the person you love. Inuyasha had to find a way to cope with Kagome's absence and the possibility he may never see her again. Sometimes support comes from the last place you expect it.

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Quarantine (series) by @superpixie42 (E)

Starting a new relationship can be hard when you have to host all your dates via webchat because of Covid-19 quarantine regulations.

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Light Me A Lantern by @inuyashasforest (T)

Picking up the pieces after being separated for three years isn't as easy as it may seem. A quiet, burning kind of chaos sweeps through Feudal Japan, and it's going to take a lot more than a fairy tale ending to put things back together. They defeated a man who would become the Devil. Can they survive a man who would become a God?

--

You Rescued Me by @keizfanfiction (E)

Maybe it was fate that he decided to take the back way home that night, but whatever the reason, Inuyasha was grateful for arriving just in the nick of time to rescue a waif of a woman who had clearly been through hell. He never would have imagined that she would end up rescuing him, too.

--

Max by KittyKatz (T)

It was business as usual until Kagome's family adopts her father's canine partner. A short 3-chapter blurb about a military working dog joining ranks with the inu-gang. [T - Inuyasha's potty mouth]

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Guard Dog by @keizfanfiction (T)

Kagome moves into her very first house and decides to introduce herself to her new neighbor with the scrumptious gift of Oreos. She had no idea she'd be leaving as a new dog owner.

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Hermit's Haven by @britonell (NR)

In which one dog leads to a hermit failing to be a hermit…

--

Feel free to add your own recs in the comments or reblogs!

Check our Masterlist of previous lists to see which topics we've covered. 

Send us an ask (here).

[aloeverified]

i’m curious do u have any headcanons abt wayne and raj… they are the characters ever

yes 💪

their fullnames are raj kapoor & wayne graham (the most candian name ever for the most candian character ever).

wayne was always way taller than raj growing up, but now they're roughly around the same height. it's just not obvious to most people since wayne wears boots and raj sticks with his trusty converse. raj is just pushing 5'10 and wayne's a little over 5'11.

raj has two younger siblings who are twin brother and sister and are much younger than he is. wayne is an only child, but their families are so intertwined that they basically consider him their older brother too.

they're juniors in high school (assuming that's how it works in canada, too lazy to google it rn) and are about seventeen. they don't look or act super young, but they still got the "when i'm older" type of vibe that most people who are right about to graduate don't really have.

they've been best friends for a while, but not quite childhood best friends. i think they met during gym class of sixth grade and just instantly hit it off due to their shared interests in sports and humor.

raj's parents are first generation immigrants so they're not completely fluent in english and have a bit of an accent when they talk. since his moms raised him to be the most highly of gentlemen, wayne asked raj to teach him a bit of telugu so he could make polite conversation with them whenever he came over without all the pressure being on them. that was his first step to almost being immediately adopted by them.

this actually caused them to both realize they really enjoy studying languages. they continued studying telugu together, with raj tutoring wayne. wayne also decided to take up french classes early, and raj had his parents sign him up to learn the basics of other southern indian languages they knew. they both view this as a helpful skill for when they're international hockey stars, of course.

they live in a decently smaller-sized town, so despite not being neighbors, they still find a way to be at each other's house every other day. they switch off depending on what they're feeling, and their parents learned to accept that they're a package deal that comes and goes whenever they please.

since his parents discovered he was gay through the show rather than raj actually coming out to him, they — along with wayne's moms — thought it would be funny to turn his coming home party from the show into a coming out party as well. raj realized this when he cut into the cake and it was rainbow inside.

his family was very adamant about showing raj how supportive they are. he wasn't sure why, as their best friends were a lesbian couple and his best friend was the son of said couple, but they still repeatedly told him how proud of him they were and how much they loved him. the only pushback he received was his nani complaining about how he wasn't allowed to date until he was thirty and that this bowie boy was ruining that.

teacher hate these two. they never shut up in class, will ditch their assigned partners to work with each other, never get their work done, and yet still manage to have good grades (because they know they won't be able to play otherwise). no one understands how they do it.

they always have the most over-the-top cartoony outfits for spirit weeks. even the asb and student council kids find it embarrassing how much school spirit they have.

besides their accidental menace behavior, they never actually get into any real trouble at school. the only time they've ever gotten suspended was when wayne wanted to test his new padding gear and rammed himself into the lockers at full force and nearly killed himself while raj recorded.

because of their ridiculous stunts they like to post, wayne has a bit of a following on social media. he doesn't really do it to be an influencer or for attention or anything, he just likes being able to look back on all the fun moments he and rajie have together. that's one of the reasons they were so eager to be on total drama, to showcase their awesome friendship and have the tapes of all their fun challenges together.

they work part-time at the local ice rink, where they were able to land jobs due to their skills on the ice. they even work the same shift most of the time since they have the same availability hours, although they switch off between standing behind the counter and supervising on the ice. sometimes they both get to help out with the little league hockey teams, though, which they both really enjoy.

[polkadotsunshine]

Preparation and Flexibility

Seeing a total solar eclipse requires both preparation and flexibility.

First is the equipment. My family has a collection of welder's glass so we can watch the sun before totality. It's a high quality, comfortable, and durable version of eclipse glasses. We use rubber bands to fix the glass to binoculars, so we can quickly remove the filter during totality. We've also fitted a perfectly parallel straw to our telescope's reflex sight so we can align it to the sun*.

*Spotting the sun with the naked eye would cause physical harm yet welder's glass blocks out so much light you couldn't see the sight with it on. By aligning the shadow of the straw on your hand, so that the sunlight comes straight as a white circle, you can aim the telescope.

Next comes the location. Years in advance, we analyze historical weather data to determine a path along totality with the least likelihood of cloud coverage. We're not looking for a location to sit in; we want a road we can travel along to escape dense clouds. Months in advance, we change our plans from Mexico to Texas. Days in advance, we change our plans from Texas to New York. Even as we drive through the Adirondacks the day of the eclipse, we watch the radar to adjust course. Even as we set up our telescope, we watch for changes in cloud density and the direction of the wind. We settle by Tupper Lake, mentally calculating how long it would take to pack everything up and drive east.

Fetching supplies from the car, we discover someone parked less than an inch away from our passenger’s side. We shuffle through the driver's side doors, over to the other half of the car, and accept the circumstance. As my dad waits in line for a portable toilet, someone points out our neighbor’s parking job and offers astonishment then condolences. As my mom gets a blanket from the car, someone rushes up to her, exclaiming they witnessed the parking job in horror, and they complain about the Cornell bumper sticker on their car. The third time someone runs up to us, it's the driver himself. He profusely apologizes.

We get to know the guy: Jordan. My mom asks about Cornell, since that's where she and my dad met. His daughter went to Cornell. He asks where I went to college. The conversation goes from there. It turns out his wife is home sick and he went to finish the trip alone. He's visibly jealous of our telescope. We adopt him into our party. He corrects his parking job and we share our equipment with him. I teach with him the little I remember from what my dad had taught me. 

The anticipation builds. For a while, it's just a relaxing day outside. The moon hasn’t even begun to cross the sun. I look at sunspots through our telescope and ask my dad how many times the size of Earth they are. I read my book and listen to the lake lap up the shore. A son plays catch with his father. A group of college friends yell over cards. I watch Canadian geese swim around a family in kayaks.

The anticipation builds. My dad shouts, "First contact!" as he checks the telescope. We lazily look through our glass and idly remark interest that such a small sliver is visible without magnification. I eat beef jerky and check my phone. We occasionally look to the sun and make small talk over how fast it's moving. I walk to a nearby McDonald's to use the bathroom; I don't want totality to be interrupted. As the sun wanes, I play with a colander to find the focal points of each pinhole camera it creates, speckling our folding table with polkadot sunshine in the shape of tiny crescents.

The anticipation builds. It starts getting dark, like twilight. Automated lights flick on along the lake. The geese come to shore. My mom identifies the nightsong of birds in the park. Totality is in 10 minutes. The lighting shifts from twilight to unnatural; a dimness creeps from every direction, somehow illuminating the now-muted colors of the world. Our brains struggle to make sense of it. It's cold. My grandparents' dog hides between my brother’s legs. He comforts her.

It's fast. My dad points across the lake. It's the shadow of the moon, screaming towards us at over 1000 mph. The clouds dissipate inside its cold beam of darkness. He points out Venus, visible to the naked eye. The crowd clamors. The last light of the sun forms a brilliant white diamond atop a ring, surrounding the pitch black moon in the sky. I've never seen contrast so strong in nature. I shout because Jordan shouts and Jordan shouts because I shout.

Each moment is heavy. Totality will begin soon. Totality will end soon. It will be years before I get the mere possibility of seeing anything like this ever again. I tell myself to make each second count. I won't waste time taking pictures. I won't waste any time at all. I look up.

There is a hole in the sky. The stark white corona tinges aquamarine, fringed by red Baily's beads bleeding through the mountains on the moon. My emotions overpower prepared thought. Yellow orange sunsets surround every horizon. Anywhere I look is a beautiful moment that can't last. Everything feels wonderfully wrong. Red plasma arcs at a magnitude incomprehensible; three solar flare prominences push their way to my attention. I see the eclipse. I cry.

And then it was over. I had counted down to this day for 7 years. It marked the end of an era; bookending the as-of-now most important years of my life. It landed on a day I made up layered sentimental feelings for. The eclipse was beautiful because I forced myself to savor every memory, yet despite all my plans, for those 3 minutes and 31 seconds, it became something else. I allowed myself to fall in love with whatever came my way - and I found more than I had ever expected.

Seeing a total solar eclipse requires both preparation and flexibility. The sight is gorgeous of course, but for me, experiencing a total solar eclipse is a communal ritual. It is my dad showing me how to align his telescope. It is the tips my aunts and uncles exchanged when deciding where to go. It is the picnic I had with my grandmother. It is the unlikely friend we made. The anticipation built from our collective preparation allowed me to follow my central directive: I lived in the moment, no matter where that took me.

After all, isn’t everything amazing?

[void-botanist]

🖊 🖊 🖊 🖊 !!!!!!!!!

Hello Ren!!! You get several paragraphs about Fay and Lou's terrible divorce :D

They're like the inverse of Sorian and Avis, because it was less clear-cut what exactly made everything fall apart. There were first the general resentments of Fay being mostly a stay-at-home mom while Lou sunk way too much of his time in the bakery - simultaneously a moneymaker, a status symbol, and the target of Fay's ire. But this was a simmer of a conflict. Things didn't start escalating until Isabel came out as trans when she was 11. Neither Fay nor Lou had any trouble with this, at least until Lou made it all about him. He would never ask Isabel to be someone she wasn't, no, but now he was left high and dry with no son to inherit his bakery, to carry on the patrilineal tradition he'd singlehandedly revived. All that time he spent there was a waste without an heir, you know?

Fay took this as proof that he did care about the bakery more than his family, and they started to fight more and more. In his deepening unhappiness Lou accidentally found a new love interest (along the lines of "she happened to help me with bakery taxes" or something) and realized that oh, maybe he really didn't need to be in this miserable marriage anymore. I think it's actually more interesting if they were "good" and never banged prior to the divorce, because that was immaterial as soon as Lou told Fay that he'd found a new partner so maybe it was time they broke up. This was the moment when Fay's poorly attached hinges flew off and she began throwing everything of his in a pile at the bottom of the stairs, followed by screaming at him to leave so loudly that the neighbors could hear.

After that the divorce should have been quick but they argued about the bakery revenues and the house and custody of Rodney and Isabel (who were 10 and 13 when the whole debacle started and pretty clearly sided with Fay, because at least she'd always been there) and whether they could get a fault divorce (honestly I'm not sure but Fay wanted one) and finally, a year and a half later, the divorce was finalized. Lou let Fay offload the house onto him and she, Isabel, and Rodney left for Antarac. He got remarried to his new partner, Annette, who he's still married to, and they later adopted a kid, Hatt, who's the middle sibling age-wise between them, Rodney, and Isabel. I have yet to work out a lot of Hatt's background but between them and Annette, Lou has learned quite a lot about how not to be transphobic and also how not to be weird by adding a "Be My Heir" letter into the mix of yearly birthday cards to your son (just don't do that). Hatt is all too happy to be the heir to the bakery but had the advantage of being adopted as a teenager and therefore not raised with Expectations like Isabel and Rodney (I suspect they were like Annette's nibling or cousin to begin with). Annette ends up low-key being Isabel's hero because she had a double mastectomy for cancer reasons and therefore also has a flat chest.

I'm indisposed for doodles/picrews atm but I want to make some of them later and get their designs a little more nailed down.

🖊️ send me a pen and get some cool OC facts 🖊️

Nicea taglist: @kahvilahuhut @malloen8c @outpost51 @writernopal @athenswrites

[magicmindless]

have any hcs for Emmlette?

Y’all I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve made one of these😭😭 mainly due to (lack of) interest in making these and other sorts of things

Anyways

A HC List but it’s just Emmlette

I really like her… theatre kid chicken lady…

- Very cheerful and sweet but is down-to-Earth. Being a transparent person, she can come off as a bit snarky sometimes but she only means well. She’s a gem to have around and usually tries her best to make people feel comfortable around her

- Has ADHD. It’s hard for her to focus and stay in one place, her thoughts overlap a lot, and she can be forgetful sometimes. She wasn’t diagnosed until her 20s. She uses medicine now to deal with it which helps her enough

- Developed depression for a good portion of her teenage hood and college years. She hated school and needed accommodations to barley keep her grades up but. Undiagnosed ADHD didn’t make it any easier

- Unsurprisingly she’s a theatre kid. It was one of the few classes she was good at and she always made sure to audition for every single musical/play Sakura Bay High ever did during her high school years (yes she went to Sakura Bay High and became a teacher there. Funny huh?)

- Her favorite musical is Into The Woods and she has a fond memory of it because she got to be the witch back in high school (I’m sorry I haven’t watched enough musicals and most of the ones I’ve watched idk if she’d like bear with me-)

- She used to write songs and play them on her piano as an outlet, even going as far as to record them though she’s never really shown them. She still has the recordings and admits that they’re really cringy looking back at

- Should be mentioned she’s actually really good at singing and playing the piano

- Her nails always look bad since she tends to bite or rip her nails whenever she’s bored or stressed out. Vicky nearly fainted seeing her nails for the first time

- The reason she became a theatre teacher was due to not only her having a lack on confidence in herself to make it big as an actress back then, but no one else at the time believed in her either, so she settled for teaching. She does sometimes wonder what could’ve been though…

- She does like teaching and has met some incredible students who’ve gone off to do great things, but teaching can also stress her out whether it’s from misbehaving students, or those who just have no interest and are taking theatre as only an “easy grade” in their eyes

- She’s not only a good support for her students, but also for her adult friends when they need someone to talk to or provide a shoulder to cry on

- Always had a bit of a chicken obsession. She had a neighbor who had chickens when she was little and she’d frequently go to their place to spend time with them. Now she has 4 of her own chickens named Scrambles, Tamagoyaki, Sunny, and Fluffles

- People think it’s weird that she doesn’t like to eat chicken out of guilt but is willing to eat eggs and other meat. It’s just an attachment thing for her

- Likes giving gifts to people randomly. Usually they are edible things like mochi or bread from a bakery but she also gives things like cute little keychains

- A great cook. She likes making cute bentos and stuff like that and has even cooked for her friends and family

- She’ll act like a mom sometimes trying to make sure her friends are eating enough and doing well. Some of her friends (like Petrona and Rollie) have found it irritating but they will sometimes tolerate it

- Is able to cry and stop crying on command. It’s a little disturbing, but helpful in acting

- Is the type of extrovert to adopt introverts, including Petrona

-She can read people’s faces and body language scarily well. Even if someone stands slightly off she can tell if there’s something wrong or bothering someone

- Keeps a bit of a close eye on Petrona since she always worries about her physical and emotional health due to her work ethic. She’ll usually try to do things like get food for Petrona’s lunch break or talk to her a bit if she suspects Petrona’s been crying/having a rough day. And despite Petrona’s annoyances, she seemed to have warmed up to her overtime

[bookwyrminspiration]

What if when Sophie came to the lost cities the black swan had been overthrown, and their leaders arrested. So by the time she arrived, she doesn’t have that same support. I think it’d take the story in a crazy, but fun new direction.

oh that would be very interesting--not only would she have significantly less guidance at the start of the series, but depending on how the Black Swan were handled, the attitude towards Sophie could be quite different; she'd be the product of known convicted criminals, not just the odd human girl.

She was observed when she first arrived, but I imagine that would've been much more intense in this situation. I wonder when she would've arrived, actually. Because Alden didn't find Sophie by his own work, Mr. Forkle led him to her. So without him, when on earth would Sophie have been brought to their world? Would they have discovered that sort of information through a mind break and located her around the same time, or would years pass?

I'm imagining the Mr. Forkle who posed as her neighbor might've escaped being arrest, which would create an interesting dynamic with her having one singular influence and resource.

But that aside, without the rest of the Black Swan able to work masterfully behind the scenes, there'd be no notes, no clues to prompt hidden memories. It would require a lot more work on Sophie's part to figure things out--which, depending on when she was brought to the lost cities and how (agreeing it was the best decision vs council forcing her, for example), she may or may not be capable of.

I'm also curious how that would impact her morals and sense of right; we see her learning from and guided by the Black Swan for most of the series before she branches out, following their methodology and beliefs on the limits. If they were never there, what's stopping her from going a step further much sooner? Especially if she's being more heavily monitored/judged and in order to make any impact she has to push harder--side note: I feel like in that case she might become similar to Tam in her disdain, she didn't do anything but exist and need help and this is what they did?

Would she be allowed to attend Foxfire with a significant association with a serious criminal organization? Even if she hasn't done anything yet, she might. And if she doesn't go to Foxfire (or is too old when brought), her friend group would be entirely different. She might not even have a friend group and it would instead be her against the world, perhaps a few misfits gathered along the way. Fitz might still be around because he found her, but Biana might stay bratty. She wouldn't meet Marella or Jensi, and she wouldn't have been adopted by the Ruewens (because confirmed huge Black Swan association when he thinks they killed Jolie? no way) so no meeting Dex. If she doesn't go to Foxfire, I could see them sending her to Exillium, in which case she might keep Tam and Linh as friends--but with a very different dynamic, since I think Sophie would be incredibly bitter.

Actually now that I'm thinking about this maybe she'd be picked up by the Neverseen. At least temporarily and in the same way that Rayni was--not that she's for their atrocities, but because they extended a hand when no one else did. Which!! Could then be an interesting exploration on how she wasn't a criminal, but via seeing her as one/as dangerous they limited her options and made her into one. She wouldn't have joined the Neverseen if they'd treated her properly, but they didn't, so now she did. Except they don't see it as their fault, as a consequence of their boxing her in, but instead as confirmation of what they always feared.

indeed, Nonsie, there is a lot of potential for a very different but fascinating story here. I've barely scratched the surface of all the implications and everything you could do with it!

[passingfaces]

Ian's Intro

welcome to marina, IAN CAMERON ( cis-male, he/him ) ! they are a/n 30 year old who has lived on the island for HIS WHOLE LIFE. word on the street is they’re currently living in MARINA HEIGHTS and works as a DERMATOLOGIST. everyone also says they look a lot like DANIEL SHARMAN. what do you think?

tw: cancer, death, illness, body image

STATS

Name: Ian Cameron Age: 30 Fc: Daniel Sharman Job: Dermatologist Hair: Brown and curly Eyes: Brown Zodiac: Cancer (June 23) Positive: Great Listener, Confident, Charming Negative: Emotionally Unavailable, Noncommital, Trust Issues Fun Fact: He has two mutts he adopted named Lilo and Stitch

BIO

Ian has lived in Marina since high school and can not imagine wanting to go anywhere else. His parents were both well-known models in their youth but unfortunately gave into the toxic side of Hollywood. They spent a lot of time in the tanning booths and did not take care of their skin properly. The effects hit his father first but he ignored it until he was diagnosed with Melanoma Cancer. His parents moved them to a Marina so that he could enjoy what time he had left and they could be a family.

His father passed when Ian was 16 years old and his mother was obsessed with taking care of her skin. She didn’t want to leave Ian all alone and he has always been really grateful for that. Between everything he grew up with and his having a skincare routine since the age of 10, Ian decided to go into dermatology. He didn’t need to work during his 12 years of schooling because his parents still had a good bit of money set aside from their Hollywood days along with the money his father left them. His mother still did the occasional skincare ad but once he became a dermatologist he didn’t need to worry about the money running out. People were willing to pay an arm and a leg to keep looking young and healthy.

He dated very little while in school because he really didn’t want to get distracted from his life goals. It wasn’t until he was getting his specialization, that he met the love of his life and he was hooked. It was like a dream from the moment his eyes met hers. Three years into their relationship he had finally gotten hired as a dermatologist and he was ready to settle down and start a family. The next step was clear in his mind so he bought a ring that was almost as beautiful as her and popped the question. Unfortunately, his bubble popped along with it.

Everything from the rejection to admitting she cheated on him was all a blur. Maybe his brain was doing him a favor because he simply didn’t understand how he could have been so painfully wrong about someone. It’s been two years but he hasn’t called anyone his girlfriend since. His trust issues are raging and he has no interest in any of that anymore. He doesn’t like to sleep alone but the emotion walked out the same time she did.

CONNECTIONS

friends a best friend Neighbors or people he grew up with fwb/situation-ships open to suggestions!

[cartoonfangirl1218]

Twisted Tales: Set in Stone Review

What if Arthur wasn’t meant to be king?

This took awhile to get to as it was only sold in the UK and Australia but I finally got my hands on it! Set right after Arthur pulls the sword out of the stone, Arthur is having a hard time adjusting to royal duties. Sure, he got Excalibur but it doesn’t mean he knows what he’s doing. Worse is that since his fight with Merlin, his mentor has been off in Bermuda. Arthur has truly been on his own.

Unbeknownst to him, the sword is not the famous Excalibur but a clever fake planted by Madam Mim so that she could choose a nice patsy to pull out the sword that she could easily control. She hadn’t realized that patsy was Merlin’s protegé who immediately rejects her suggestions to prove his kingly authority by going to war. But she had a plan b, her adopted daughter Guinevere will be the one to stick to Arthur’s side and get him off the throne.

I found the premise interesting but the first chapters felt cliché albeit in-character. For instance, Arthur shows off his first gesture of wisdom and kindness by figuring out the true owner of chicken bug suggesting the two feuding neighbors to cut it in half. Straight out of the Bible. And Guenivere’s story of being kidnapped as a baby and raised by a witch is straight out of Rapunzel’s tale including her daughterly love of Madam Mim who has turned her against Merlin by telling her that the wizard killed her parents and put this pretender, Arthur on the throne. Thus prompting a semi enemies to lovers as Guenivere initially believes Arthur is the enemy but soon comes to know his real character and believes he’s an unwitting pawn so she’s stuck in the difficult situation of wanting to help him but keeping her initial intentions a secret. But things get interesting later on when Arthur and Guenivere time-travel to the Bahamas in the 21st century. Arthur and Guin’s amazement and horror at 21st century clothing and hotels was funny and allowed for a more interesting plot twist of them returning home to a find a new shapeshifting pretender on the throne. Plus Guin grappling with the truth about Madam Mim and her childhood of lies.

So while the plot itself doesn’t feel the most original, the characters and their development is engaging. Arthur gets the bulk of the character development, starting as an unsure kid who doesn’t feel prepared for the role and wants to run away. But he stays because even though he doesn’t have the physical strength or courage others (and he) believe a king should possess he has Merlin’s lessons to guide. To lead with love, kindness and knowledge. Most of all, he cares. He understands that he has to lead because he cares about England and that if he left the throne, it would be to unthinking, might makes right brutes like Kay. There are also some heartbreaking moments like when Kay and Ector challenge Arthur to a dual for the throne which he reflects how much he wanted to earn his foster family’s admiration only to understand he’ll never get it. But the triumphant thing is Arthur coming to realize he does deserve the throne and to be more confident. Not because he pulled a sword from stone but because he is capable.

Guin’s characterization reminded me a lot of the one from the Merlin tv show. She’s kind, and generous but she has strong morals and backbone of steel in fighting for those morals and the ones she loves. Her background of being a princess of Summer County whom Mim stole because of the family’s strong fairy blood. But Guinevere shuns magic, it actually scares her despite the potential she has in small bouts of shapeshifting. Even though it fits with the Arthurian legends as Guinevere was a regular queen, not a sorceress queen but it feels like there is lost potential in seeing her do magic since twisted tales is all about doing new things to canon. Nonetheless, I liked her journey of realizing the truth about her childhood and her willingness to go against her adopted mother’s wishes once she realizes she’s wrong. Even though she’s in denial most of the time or trying to explain alternate reasons for Mim’s behavior before she accepts the truth. Because it is hard for Guinevere to accept the truth. While Arthur and Merlin see Mim for her madness and destruction, Mim was like a mother to her. An eccentric, playful woman. Mancusi’s characterization is wonderful as Mim’s villainy is different from classic Disney villains. She’s not in it for power or fame or money. She just enjoys chaos, everything is a game to her. Which makes her more unpredictable, more dangerous and more heartbreaking when Guin realizes Mim kidnapping and raising her was just another game of Mim playing mentor, tearing her away from her family for selfish whims.

Finally, Arthur and Guin’s relationship is simply so sweet and wholesome even though Guin’s lying about her intentions for the first few chapters. They have so much in common from being commoners taught by sorcerers to their innate sense of fair play and kindness.

In fact, the humor and fun shout outs to Arthurian are the highlights of the book even though some parts of it felt like other Disney tales with Arthurian aesthetic.

[frigid666]

there's the rape fantasy. a sexual fantasy. if i really want to talk about 'my' rape, i will have to go through this. it's a fantasy i've had since i was a child. i would say it's a remnant from the bit of religious education i indirectly received from books, television, kids at school, and neighbors. the women martyrs - those female saints who were tied up and burned alive - were the first images to provoke an erotic response in me. the idea of being handed over, forced to, made to, was morbid and fascinatingly arousing for the little girl i was at the time. those fantasies have never left me. i am convinced that lots of women prefer not to masturbate - claiming it does nothing for them - rather than admit to what arouses them. we aren't all alike, but i'm not the only one to have this fantasy. these rape fantasies, the fantasies of being taken by force in more or less violent situations, which have been present throughout my masturbatory life, didn't come out of the blue. it's a powerful and precise cultural mechanism that predestines female sexuality to climax from its own powerlessness - which is to say from the superiority of the other - and women to orgasm against their will, rather than as sluts who enjoy sex. in judeo-christian morality, it is much better to be taken by force than considered a bitch in heat; we have been told that often enough. there is a female predisposition for masochism, which stems not from our hormones, nor from prehistoric times, but from a specific cultural system, and this predisposition has disturbing implications for the way we exercise our independence. it may be voluptuous and arousing, but it also handicaps us; being attracted to that which destroys us keeps us away from power.

virginie despentes on female sexuality and masochism, king kong theory (trans. by stephanie benson, beatriz preciado and lydia lunch)

adding a break for my personal thoughts and reflections. feel free to ignore, as it is tmi.

this passage really helped me understand why i have always felt a strong alienation from conventional heterosexual female sexual expression (aside from the fact that i am bisexual). most of it does in fact contain a lot of elements of masochism, both overt and subtle, and i picked up on this fact when i was really young; i didn't have the vocabulary to discuss it the way i do now, but depictions of it always made me feel uncomfortable. for whatever reasons that i haven't deciphered yet, i never developed this masochism streak that is so common among women. lacking the proper verbiage for this at the time, i always considered myself to have a more 'masculine' sexuality; i wasn't interested in being sexually brutalized or subservient - the idea seemed humiliating, and not in a sexually arousing way. coupled with my early signs of gender nonconformity, such as peeing standing up, adopting boys' roles in pretend games, and attraction to other girls, i would say i identified more with a male sex role. of course, i've learned since then that not wanting to be harmed during sex or fetishizing dubious consent scenarios is normal, as is being a woman who is sexually attracted to women, but i was left in the dark for years, believing something was wrong with me sexually. i also learned to masturbate (on accident) at a pretty young age, and felt no shame about doing it in private - which is something girls normally struggle with; we are raised to believe masturbating is something only boys do, and that it is shameful for us as girls to indulge ourselves in that way.

additionally, i think it's really interesting that despentes names popular religious imagery as the triggers for her preferred sexual fantasies, because that was the same with me as well. i remember watching passion of the christ (2004) when i was around 10 years old, and its gratuitous depiction of jesus being battered and tortured was essentially my introduction to the concept of male masochism, which became one of a couple early sexual interests i developed. when i finally started being attracted to men, my fantasies were sadistic. due to moral reasons, i did and will not indulge those fantasies, but they remain. this is not my being 'not like other girls,' as i do not judge women for whichever side they happen to fall on. but i suppose being somewhat unconventional in this aspect makes conversations about female sexuality and feminism interesting to say the least.