#which makes them so similar despite being wildly different?

[wildflowercryptid]

resisting the urge to be annoying and ramble about how kieran's arc wouldn't really work if transplanted onto hop or wally without changing core parts of their own personalities + stories + motivations, essentially ( most likely unintentionally ) pigeonholing them as the " weaker rival " archetype despite how all three grow far beyond that.

[kaijutegu]

Alligator Body Language and You, or: How To Know When An Alligator On Social Media is Being Stressed for Views

Alligators are wild animals. Despite the idiotic claims of animal abusers like Jay Brewer, they cannot be domesticated, which means they are always going to react on the same natural instincts they've had for millions of years. Habituated, yes. Tamed, yes. Trained, definitely. Crocodilians can form bonds with people- they're social and quite intelligent. They can solve problems, use tools, and they're actually quite playful. Alligators are also really good at communicating how they're feeling, but to somebody who doesn't spend much time around them, their body language can be a bit mystifying. And it doesn't help when social media influencers are saying shit like this:

That is not what a happy gator looks like.

That's a terrified, furious gator who isn't attacking because the ogre handling her has her in a chokehold. She's doing everything she can to express her displeasure, and he's lying about it because he knows his audience doesn't even know how to think critically about what he's doing. He knows that because his audience doesn't know anything about these animals, he can get away with it. This I think is why I hate him so much- he deliberately miseducates his audience. He knows what he's doing is factually inaccurate, he just doesn't care because attention means more to him than anything else in the world.

Let's change that! Here are two really important lessons for understanding alligator body language on social media.

Lesson 1: Alligators Don't Smile (in fact, most animals don't)

So what's going on in this video? Jay Brewer is aggressively choking his white alligator Coconut while scrubbing algae off of her with a toothbrush. And make no mistake, he is digging into the creature's throat while she is visibly distressed. He claims she's happy- but she's not. He is willfully misrepresenting what this animal is feeling. That's a problem, because people... well, we actually kind of suck at reading other species' body language. The reason for this is that we tend to overlay our own responses on their physical cues, and that's a problem. For example, let's look at an animal with a really similar face to ours, the chimpanzee. Check out Ama's toothy grin!

Wait, no. That's not a happy smile. That's a threat display. When a chimpanzee "smiles," it's either terrified and doing a fear grimace, or it's showing you its teeth because it intends on using them in your face.

How about a dog? Look at my smiling, happy puppy!

Oh wait no, this is a picture of Ryder when he was super overwhelmed by noise and people during a holiday party. He'd hopped up in my sister's lap to get away from stuff that was happening on the floor and was panting quite heavily. See the tension in the corners of his mouth and his eyes? A lot of the time when a dog "smiles," the smile isn't happy. It's stress! Why Animals Do The Thing has a nice writeup about that, but the point is, our body language is not the same as other species. And for reptiles, body language is wildly different.

For instance, look at these two alligators. Pretty cute, right? Look at 'em, they're posing for a Christmas card or something! How do you think they're feeling?

Well, I'll tell you how the normal one is feeling. He's annoyed! Why is he annoyed? Because the albino just rolled up, pushed another gator off the platform, and is trying to push this guy, too. I know this because I actually saw it happen. It was pretty funny, not gonna lie. He's not gaping all the way, but he was hissing- you can actually see him getting annoyed in the sequence I took right before this shot. Look at him in this first shot here- he's just relaxing, and you can see he isn't gaping even a little bit.

By the end, he's expressing displeasure, but not enough to actually do anything about it. He's annoyed, but he's comfy and that's where one of the best basking areas is, so he'll put up with it.

Reptiles open their mouths wide for a lot of reasons, but never because they are actively enjoying a sensation. Unless they're eating. No reptile smiles- they can't. They don't even have moveable lips. If a reptile is gaping, it's doing so because:

It is doing a threat display.

It is making certain vocalizations, all of which are threats. Alligators are one of the rare reptiles that do regularly vocalize, but most of their calls aren't made with a wide open mouth.

It is about to bite something delicious or somebody stupid. Check out this video- virtually all of the gaping here is anticipatory because these trained gators know darn well that the bowl is full of delicious snacks. (I have some issues with Florida's Wildest, but the man knows how to train a gator AND he is honest about explaining what they're doing and why, and all of his animals are healthy and well-cared for, and he doesn't put the public or his staff at risk- just himself.)

It's too hot and it has opened its mouth to vent some of that heat and thermoregulate. This is the main reason why alligators will often have their mouths part of the way open, but sometimes they'll open all the way for thermoregulation. This is what a thermoregulatory gape looks like- usually it's not all the way open, kinda more like < rather than V, but you can't say that 100% of the time. Additionally, a thermoregulatory gape... typically happens when it's hot out. If they're inside, maybe they've been under their basking light for too long. Heat's the dominant factor, is what I'm getting at.

There is another reason that a captive crocodilian might be gaping, and that's because it's doing so on command. Some places have their gators trained to gape on cue, like St. Augustine Alligator Farm and other good zoos. They have the animals do this in presentations that are genuinely educational. They ask the animals to open their mouths so that they can show off their teeth and demonstrate how their tongues seal off the back of their mouth. They'll also do it as part of routine healthcare, because looking at their teeth is important.

In this case, the animals aren't gaping because they're stressed, they're gaping because they know they're gonna get a piece of chicken or fish if they do it. And what's more, they're doing it on cue. They have a specific command or signal that tells them to open wide. It's not an instinctive response to a situation. It's trained. If the animal provides the behavior after a cue, the situation is much less likely to be negatively impactful.

It's also important to remember that there's a difference between a partially open mouth and a gape! As discussed above, alligators will often have their mouths a little bit open just to maintain temperature homeostasis. It helps them stay comfy, temperature-wise. These guys are all doing thermoregulatory open-mouthed behavior- that slight open and relaxed body posture is a dead giveaway. (That and it's the hottest spot in the enclosure.)

Lesson 2: A Happy Gator Is A Chill Gator

So if alligators don't smile or have facial expressions other than the :V that typically signifies distress, how else can you tell how they're feeling? One way is stillness. See, alligators subscribe to the philosophy of if it sucks... hit da bricks.

Basically, if they hate it, they'll leave. Unless, y'know, somebody has their meaty claws digging into their throat or is otherwise restraining them. (Restraint isn't always bad, btw. Sometimes the animal is going through a medical thing or needs to be restrained for their safety- which a responsible educator will explain.)

Let's look at a very similar scenario, in which a captive alligator is getting his back scrubbed.

As you can see, it's quite different. First, he's not being restrained at all. Second, look at how relaxed he is! He's just chilling there vibing! He could simply get up and leave if he wanted to, because he's not being held. Towards the end of the video, as he lifts his head, you can see that his respiratory rate is very even as his throat flutters a bit. I'm not sure what this facility is, so I can't comment on care/general ethics, but like. In this specific case, this is an alligator enjoying being scrubbed! And you can tell because he's not doing anything. A happy gator is content to be doing what they're doing.

Why Should I Listen To You?

Now, you should ask yourself, why should you listen to me? Why should you trust me, who does not own an alligator, versus Jay Brewer, who owns several?

Well, first off, there's no profit for me in telling you that what you're seeing on social media is in fact not what you're being told you're seeing. I'm not getting paid to do this. That's the thing with people who make social media content. The big names aren't doing it just for fun. They're doing it for money. Whether that's profit through partnerships or sponsorships, or getting more people to visit their facilities, or ad revenue, you can't ignore the factor of money. And this is NOT a bad thing, because it allows educators to do what they're passionate about! People deserve to be paid for the work that they do!

But the problem starts when you chase the algorithm instead of actually educating. A "smiling" alligator gets the views, and if people don't know enough to know better, it keeps getting the views. People love unconventional animal stories and they want those animals to be happy- but the inability to even know where to start with critically evaluating these posts really hinders the ability to spread real information. Like, this post will probably get a couple hundred notes, but that video of Coconut being scrubbed had almost 400,000 likes when I took that screenshot. Think about how many eyeballs that's reached by now. What I'm saying here is that it's just... really important to think critically about who you're getting your information from. What do dissenters say in the comments? What do other professionals say? You won't find a single herpetologist that has anything good to say about Prehistoric Pets, I can tell you that right now.

Another reason you can trust me is that my sources are not "just trust me bro," or "years of experience pretending my pet shop where animals come to die is a real zoo." Instead, here are my primary sources for my information on alligator behavior:

Dragon Songs: Love and Adventure among Crocodiles, Alligators, and Other Dinosaur Relations- Vladimir Dinets

The Secret Social Lives of Reptiles- J. Sean Doody, Vladimir Dinets, Gordon M. Burghardt

Social Behavior Deficiencies in Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Z Walsh, H Olson, M Clendening, A Rycyk

Social Displays of the American Alligator (Alligator mississippiensis)- Kent Vliet

Social Signals and Behaviors of Adult Alligators and Crocodiles- Leslie Garrick, Jeffery Lang

Never smile at a crocodile: Gaping behaviour in the Nile crocodile at Ndumo Game Reserve, South Africa- Cormac Price, Mohamed Ezat, Céline Hanzen, Colleen Downs (this one's Nile crocs, not American alligators, but it's really useful for modeling an understanding of gape behaviors and proximity)

Thermoregulatory Behavior of Captive American Alligators (Alligator mississippiensis)- Cheryl S. Asa, Gary D. London, Ronald R. Goellner, Norman Haskell, Glenn Roberts, Crispen Wilson

Unprovoked Mouth Gaping Behavior in Extant Crocodylia- Noah J. Carl, Heather A. Stewart, Jenny S. Paul

Thank you for reading! Here's a very happy wild alligator from Sanibel for your trouble.

[mac-tirs]

the not-insignificant differences between the omen twins

so, i saw this picture posted by @amanaci which inspired me to write this rather lengthy piece on the contrasts between morgott and mohg. i decided that, instead of dumping this whole think-piece on their post, i'd make my own separate post and ramble here.

this difference in their height really tracks for how their fighting styles and personalities are like, i feel. i always found it peculiar how different they are despite being twins; i feel like there's a rather stark resemblance between miquella and malenia in their soft-faced features, pale skin, and long flowing hair, and a close resemblance between the carian siblings with their red hair, but morgott and mohg are rather different from each other, only bearing similarities due to their omen nature. i looked a little bit into that and found that there's pretty good reasons behind why.

firstly, morgott is severely malnourished and unhealthy in comparison to mohg. you can see it in his body and how his skin sags, how his ribs and bones show, and how dry it looks. below is a comparison between his hands and mohg's hands.

morgott's hands are dry, almost rubbed red and raw around the knuckles and fingers. it reminds me a little of psoriasis, or some kind of skin discolouration caused by his poor health. it's likely he isn't eating well, or at the very least, he isn't eating as well as mohg. his twin, on the other hand (ha!), has shiny, veiny skin with a healthy colour and gleam to them. it's like he wants to call to attention how well moisturised he is (which, in this case, compared to morgott, he is).

above is a comparison between the twins' horns. the difference is extremely evident to me; morgott's horns are dry, almost seeming brittle, like sun-dried bone that hasn't seen rain or moisture in years. it reminds me of the horns of a very neglected ram, almost, but despite that, the horn growths seem more controlled, less like the wild growths all over the royal omens of the shunning grounds and more controlled as a sort of jutting crown from mainly one side of his head. meanwhile, mohg's horns are shiny, curling wildly to the point of injury, taking his eye in its path of growth. they grew wildly enough to replace his hair altogether, if he ever had any, and give him an even more imposing silhouette with a literal crown of horns (and a beard to boot). beyond this, his horns look healthy, with clearly defined rings to each growth that shine under the light, much like the rest of him. he's oiled leather to morgott's dry hide.

another somewhat interesting detail of morgott is his tail. i know a lot of people see it as soft, and it certainly looks the part, but what i find interesting are two things: the first being that his fur looks quite matted in some lightings and angles but overall looks soft to the touch, and the second being that his tail's horns look much healthier than his own horns on his head. this is in clear contrast to the rest of his body, which looks dry and unassuming with smatterings of coarse white hair up and down his body, and i believe its a matter of the limits to his own self-care. he utilises his tail as another weapon in his arsenal, so he cares for it that it might serve him well in battle, unlike his head of horns, which only serve as a detriment to him with how they must obscure some of his vision, if not most of it. additionally, he likely could bear to look at his tail and care for it, but for an omen that hates his nature more than the average, he probably doesn't enjoy looking at his own face in the mirror enough to properly care for himself.

which brings me back to the sheer differences between these two. morgott, unhealthy and self-loathing, neglects many visual aspects of himself likely because he sees vanity as a luxury not afforded to someone like him. mohg, healthy and self-obsessed, cares and grooms himself to appear very much so like the lord he claims to be, loving himself to a heretical extreme (in the eyes of the golden order). their statures reflect this too; morgott hunches low to the ground, ready to pounce at any given moment but also due to his own shame and humility, while mohg stands tall and proud, though not as tall as he could possibly be due to his upbringing being one of likely having to hunch low to fit beneath the ceilings of the smaller parts of the shunning grounds.

above is a picture of an omen from stormveil, which bears resemblance to all the omen you see in the game. in terms of clothing, one of the big ways people set the omen twins apart, morgott is completely naked save for the ragged cloak of animal hides he wears, signifying he is not fit to even dress himself in a shirt or trousers as befits a king, much like the omen pictured. he wears even less than that, actually, since he lacks even the slightest adornment save for the rope that clasps his cloak together. on the other hand, mohg is entirely adorned in finery, wearing a beautifully embroidered, fashionable priest's robe with matching vestments, and beneath that (as seen in the first image) some underclothes, a plain black button up and some pants. mohg's entire silhouette changes with the removal of his robe, while morgott's barely makes an impact once you realise he has only taken off the one article of clothing he had.

then, of course, there are their fighting styles. there's this fantastic video on youtube that i recommend watching of the twins fighting every major boss in the game, and you can clearly tell them apart from their fighting styles alone. morgott is fast, his size making him look deceptively slow only for him to dart out and do sick flips and somersaults and pirouettes that rival even the most flexible dancers, and he fights with speed and almost animalistic ferocity, save for when he conjures his weapon incantations. mohg is slow but strong, capable of swinging that large trident around like it weighs nothing while hitting with the force to knock down most enemies in a few hits, and most tarnished in just one, but he fights with a steady gracefulness in his every move, walking slowly and carefully while casting spells that hurt a lot.

even their phase 2 transitions are markedly different, with morgott's being one where he drops to his knees, vomits, and releases his cursed blood(?) all over the battlefield, causing his weapon to become alight with his curse and for him to fight with more in-your-face aggression, and with mohg's being one where he simply ignores your attacks and begins stabbing his spear into the formless mother for power at your expense, gaining a majestic set of wings that put distance between you and him so he can cast more of his spells at safer distances. where morgott is pushed to his limit and forced to confront his nature, mohg has long since embraced it and enjoys the fruits of his bloody labour with the mother of truth's blessing.

speaking of the mother of truth, even their patron orders are at odds with each other. the golden order was built upon the foundation of a very carefully-guarded lie: that marika is the one true god, which she can't be, with the existence of radagon (as per goldmask, perhaps the number 1 fundamentalist we meet in game). the formless mother is known also as the mother of truth, existing in direct opposition of the golden order's lies and craving the honesty of one of the purest expressions of life: blood. these two ideals would war against each other, with one being dedicated to the upholding of a beautiful, corrupt lie and the other being dedicated to the instillation of a dynasty of raw, pure truths. as such, even morgott and mohg's own great runes reflect these contrasts in faith, though, remarkably, these two great runes are ones that fit perfectly over each other, with mohg's slightly elevated (seen below, taken from the fextralife wiki).

so, where does this leave us? i don't know, exactly. i wasn't really writing this with any sort of ultimate conclusion. i just found it really interesting how different they were, and i wanted to talk about all the noticeable, significant differences between them here. thanks for coming to my ted talk.

[wewerebornsextuplets]

idk how but you draw in the Oso-san style so good i need to know your secret please

HAHA thank you very much!! im glad you think so :D unfortunately im not very good at explaining how i work, but ill try my best to show what i mean!!

once again this is long as hell. you know the drill at this point

to be honest, half the battle i fight with drawing in the osmt style is just. Looking at it. the ososan art style actually fluctuates pretty wildly depending on what you're looking for, whether that be the mobile games (for instance, tabimatsu and hesowars look nothing alike in terms of style despite both being the same source material), official art and merch, or even the seasons of the show itself!

using ichi as my example here since i draw him the most, but its pretty easy to play spot the difference with the varying styles. even within a specific season you can do this across episodes, especially with season 1!

when i draw, i tend to be a bit sacrilege and use references across different media; usually ill use the show [especially season 2, if only because its a bit more "uniform"] as reference for the actual features and colors/poses/etc, but i like to use hesowars to reference proportions, since they seem to be most consistent there.

SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO NOTE: theres a WEALTH of fanartists that have styles that are INCREDIBLY similar to the show, so be careful to check your sources! these artists deserve credit for their hard work, which they often don't get since their work is reposted under the guise of being official art.

once you've pinned down the exact style you'd like to emulate, and the character you're looking to draw, its really just a matter of finding references, which is pretty easy! you can scrub through different episodes for good angles/shots, or if you're going for one of the game styles the AU wiki has most of the games catalogued to my knowledge. if you're looking to draw an oc, use characters you think they would look similar to in the show. if you really wanna waste your time, though, you can always scrub through crowd scenes in the show to see if any background characters might look like what you're going for; the season 3 episode Mt. Takao comes to mind, there were a lot of cute mob characters there.

using keiko as my example here, you can see that i pulled her features from multiple different characters to get her to look right in the style. with ocs, its important to reference a number of different characters, since the likelihood of a background character being a 1:1 for your little guy is unfortunately pretty low. there WILL, however, be a lot of characters that look KIND of like them. the key is to figure out what parts go where!

to this point, most prominent ososan women have very similar stock anime girl faces with very minor differences, so if youre looking to make a cute girl oc, most of the womens' faces can be used somewhat interchangeably. if you want your cute girl oc to have a more unique face, though, the movie gave us some women with more unique faces in the form of the NEETs' old classmates! theres also no harm in referencing male characters faces in this regard. #butchswag #kiruminikuya

BUT. going back to the assumption that you're drawing a canon character, today I'll be drawing oso for my example

when you're first getting a feel for the style, tracing some of your references can actually be a really great way to acclimate yourself to the characters proportions and features. think of like when you were a kid, and would trace over pictures of pokemon or cartoon characters so you could draw them better. its basically the same principle! this was especially helpful for me when it came to eyes; they vary the most wildly of any other trait that characters have in ososan, so going over the different shapes to get a feel for each of them was very important.

when you trace, though, I recommend doing so a bit more loosely, sort of like if you're doing a photo study for anatomy; block out the basic shapes and do small markers for different features (i.e small lines to denote where the eyes start and and, distance from nose to mouth, things like that), and from there draw the rest on your own.

after long enough you'll get a feel for the basic placement of where everything should go! the eyes and nose are undoubtedly the hardest when it comes to the sextuplets, since they shift around a LOT between games/seasons/etc. so don't feel bad if you have a hard time with that, since there isnt really a "right" answer with how frequently it changes. i still fuck it up all the time myself!

as for some basic tips, heres some stuff i try to keep in mind when drawing them that just helps the finished product look a bit nicer!

when drawing the hair + fringe line, its important to swoop it downwards a little bit; the flat across look Can work, but if you're not careful you risk showing the tops of their eyes, which is um. ew! ick! nast!

when a matsu is facing forward, their hair will usually tend towards one direction to keep the silhouette. in most screenshots i saw, the bowl cut points left! that said, dont be afraid to point rightwards if its better for your specific drawing!

and lastly: USE THE LIQUIFY TOOL. LIBERALLY. i am not joking when i say this has saved my ass so many times, its hard to get the placement right on the facial features and even harder to get everything to LOOK good, so if its available to you i HIGHLY suggest just squishing everything around with a liquify tool until it looks right. you can always go back and correct the blurry lines. its really a life saver

BUT YEAH! i dont know if this was very helpful but i hope you're at least able to gain something from it :-))

[mallahanmoxie]

one thing about ham dani that nobody seems to get and why I'm always fighting for my life in the webtoon's comment section is that in all her fear and reticence around opening herself up with her friends, believing she belongs in this world, trusting in her place and relationships is that SHE'S NEVER WRONG ABOUT THE NEGATIVES. i think it's very easy to look at dani a hundred chapters in still going on about her place as a side character and what she can expect from them realistically, what she can allow herself to feel for them, and feel frustrated, like she's being deliberately obtuse. but dani. is. not. wrong.

one thing that many isekais do is that they will take the premise of "being transported to a novel" and use that simply as a vehicle for the FL to use her knowledge of the future to her advantage and turn the odds on their head. beyond the initial "ehhh why is the ML flirting with me??" which tends to wear off rather easily, there is little questioning about what being in a story means. and inso's law takes that question seriously. because dani IS inside a story, her friends ARE characters AND THIS IS EASILY PROVABLE SINCE THE BEGINNING. How? because she leaves.

it has happened to her before! It happens multiple times in the novel! that's why march 2nd is SO terrifying for her, because everything she's built can be taken from her in the blink of an eye and SHE will be called crazy and SHE will be left grieving and nobody else will remember what ONLY SHE LIVED. she is effectively, practically, tangibly separate from each world by this experience. when dani insists on the labels of main character, side character, the tropes and the narrative possibilities happening within them SHE'S NOT WRONG!! because those things are TRUE!!! I know it's easy to gloss over it bc we as readers just take everything in as a story, but the crazy plot points? they're insane to her too because SHE is a real person and others are not! They're characters! That's why it's called The Law of Webnovels because dani is making sense of the rules of a world which factually functions distinctly different from hers. she's not making that shit up, it's not (entirely) an emotional hold up. that's shit's fucking real.

the nuance is brought on by the fact that the characters are, in fact, also people. they behave like people (albeit inside the margins of wild webnovel logic), they feel like people and they see her as a person. but she does not entirely reciprocate, because to view them as people means assuming the hurt that will inevitably come when 1) she gets sent back into the real world and loses them all or 2) the plot to the novel finally kicks in and who knows if the guy she liked was the ML and will end up with her best friend and all her love and all her trying were for nothing. No matter what, dani loses.

there's also the fact, which i think is exemplified very clearly in her feelings towards her grades and being compared to yeoryung, that even outside the character/real person dichotomy, ham dani and the boys come from WILDLY different backgrounds. when they graduate high school, they will go to different colleges and they will get different jobs and the wide wide gap which dani had managed to bridge due to the magic of webnovel rules will be opened once again. in the social hierarchy of modern korean society, dani will be left behind. ban yeoryung is somewhat immune to this despite sharing similar socioeconomic status because she has 1) better social capital in the form of her beauty and intelligence and 2) plot armour immunity bc she's destined to be with one of the boys anyway (and again it IS destiny bc she's the FL and according to the genre clues dani's been gathering that seems to be the most likely outcome). yeoryung has resources and tools beyond the story that dani cannot access. even IF this wasn't the world of a webnovel, if they existed in the real world, yeoryung COULD feasibly climb her way up but dani? she's realistic about her prowess and she knows very well that being a good friend and a good person does not mean she will get to remain close to her friends who are much much much richer. my point here being that even if she weren't under the assumption (WELL TESTED!!! SCIENTIFIC, EVEN!!!) that she's in the world of a story ruled by story laws, she wouldn't be silly for guarding her heart against the possibility of drifting away from byr+the boys.

all of this is why i love dani's character arc and her as a person. she doesn't act irrationally. she only acts very, very humanly. it's why i loved the kidnapping arc and her confrontation with choi yuri. she has to learn to treat them seriously, as human beings, because despite factually being characters, they don't have the awareness of it and their lives are every bit as real as any other to them. it's part also of dani learning how to be a person herself, because she's still a kid growing up and learning what's what, and doing so in an environment much more stressful than the usual. i think people are being irrationally mean towards her simply because they do not make the effort to understand her.

[stoplookingup]

Umbrella Academy S4 reaction (spoilers)

I'm a little surprised how negative the reaction to S4 has been. It's flawed and a bit too loose, sure, but I think there's a thematic arc, to do with the painful but redemptive potential of selfless love, that a lot of people didn't recognize, or didn't like, possibly because it's too sentimental, or too tragic, or both.

In particular, I have a really different take on That Relationship. You know the one I mean.

But before I get to that, I just want to address the issue of unexplained plot points, of which there are certainly many.

Short version: Just let it go.

Long version: Comic-book storytelling is all about the impossible premise, the unlikely twist, the overblown threat, the arbitrary race against the clock, the catastrophic non-ending. A big part of TUA's appeal is that it takes that formula to an absurd extreme, unwinding a plot so convoluted and horrifying as to be comedic, then offering a resolution that raises more questions than it answers, and that seems final -- but is it ever? There could always be more. Even now. Because reasons.

But scratch the surface, and it's really all about the over-the-top super(anti)heroes who are surprisingly endearing, nuanced and tragic, whom the audience roots for despite a million reasons not to. Would S4 have benefitted from a few more episodes? No doubt, mostly to give each character their due (Klaus, my Klaus, you deserve more!), and to let the story breathe a bit. The plot probably wouldn't have made any more sense anyway. But c'mon, did it ever, really? So, why a subway? Why a squid? Why a diner? Does it really matter?

On to That Relationship, the much-criticized story of Lila/Five (aka Live -- can I copyright this?). This comically trope-laden ship (forbidden love, montage love, love triangle, enemies-to-lovers, pocket universe, happily-ever-after, etc) fits right into TUA sensibility. Despite being a bit underbaked, it's moving. The actors play it well, and in dropping their characters' armor, you realize how much armor they're usually wearing, how hard they're always working to cover their feelings. Out of all the characters, seeing these two having real emotions is most devastating, especially with each other. It's because this pairing is wildly unlikely that it hits.

Lila and Five have similar histories as traumatized, sensitive souls turned cold, cruel killing machines. They're smarter, more cynical, and stronger-willed than everyone around them. And they are clearly starved of love and desperate for connection. (Everyone on this show pays a price, but I find Five's terrible loneliness the most heartbreaking of all.) So then fate throws them together in a way that makes it inevitable they'll form an attachment, only to then demand of them the ultimate sacrifice. Their surprisingly quiet, life-affirming, Guinevere-and-Lancelot love is redemptive, in contrast with the meddling, selfish, and/or destructive love of others: Reginald and Abigail, Ben and Jennifer, Gene and Jean. Live aren't an unnecessary digression, they're central to the thematic development of the story. Sacrifice saves the world, but without love, there is no sacrifice.

And yes, I absolutely think Lila loves Five to the end. And while I appreciate that some might find the age difference between the actors off-putting, I don't think there was anything inappropriate on a Doylist level, and it all makes perfect sense on a Watsonian level.

Also:

Aidan Gallagher and Ritu Arya are extraordinary;

the use of Baby Shark is genius;

Diego, Luther and Allison have been the least interesting characters from the start, and S4 does nothing to change that;

Viktor needs a sense of humor;

I love that alternate universes are all the rage these days (so many great tropes started with Trek), but tbh Loki does it better;

as visual representations of the space between realities, I love both the Loki automat and the UA subway, but at some point, using recent-past retro design to signal liminal space is going to get old, which, come to think of it, will be deliciously ironic.

[sir-adamus]

RWBY takes its inspirations from a lot of places

it's no secret that RWBY wears its influences on its sleeves - it's characters are all based on fairytales/myths/legends/memes and is a series created by someone who wanted to make his own anime. and while it does make a lot of nods to specific things (and is dogged on for that by some people despite that it isn't new or even exclusive to RWBY - see the episode of AtLA where Aang dreams about being Goku and Naruto), the show itself draws or seems to draw so many elements from so many different sources and arranges them into something new

putting the rest below a cut because it got lengthy

like i think i've seen the claim that Remnant's four Kingdoms are a ripoff of AtLA's four Nations... except the Kingdoms aren't elementally themed and these places are so important because most of the planet is uninhabitable, which isn't the case with AtLA, and each Kingdom has thoroughly different theming that it's barely similar. it's such a surface thing that it's barely a nod because the world setups are so wildly different

Dust is clearly inspired by Materia from FFVII (or more broadly, Magicite, which recurs through the FF series and has a similar function); a resource mined from the earth that allows the wielder to do magic (though Dust is more limited in its function where materia/magicite can allow for non-elemental and abstract stuff like time-stopping or summoning). the four Academies are almost definitely a reference to the three Gardens in FFVIII (and one of them, Balamb Garden, is where teenagers are trained to become SeeD, a mercenary force for hire that conducts missions around the world, which likely was one of the points of inspiration behind the Huntress/Huntsman career in RWBY)

Aura, being a personal protective shield, both visually and purpose-wise, is a reference to the personal energy shields used by the Sangheili in Halo

the Maidens seem to be a cross between the Sorceresses from FFVIII (who unlike normal people can do magic naturally, and each Sorceress passes on her power to another individual upon her death) and the rule basis for the Sirens from Borderlands (only 6 Sirens can exist at a time and their powers transfer to another individual upon their death, similar to how there can only be 4 Maidens at a time) - Sorceresses, Sirens and Maidens powers can also only be exclusively passed on to women (Troy Calypso in Borderlands 3 has partial-Siren because he was conjoined with his twin sister Tyreen in the womb, and has to leech off of her in order to survive; it's made clear both by the appearance of his Siren tattoos that he's an aberration to the normal process)

Grimm are so obviously inspired by the Heartless from Kingdom Hearts - dark beasts of destruction that are defined by their lack of something (the difference of course being that Heartless come from the nebulous 'realm of darkness' which is separate from the other worlds while Grimm are very much a part of Remnant). Kingdom Hearts has a lot of influence thematically, as it similarly presents itself as a bright and cheery story with a lighthearted, stylised aesthetic, only for that to be an artificial facade for a very dark and often brutal story that becomes more obvious as each series continues. and in terms of specific Grimm, the Apathy (and the Brunswick farm story in general) are a direct reference to the short story Bartleby the Scrivener, but the Apathy's emaciated, skeletal appearance and paralytic scream draw from the ReDeads of the Legend of Zelda series

the Faunus being part animal could be inspired from any number of different shows or games, but in the BlazBlue series, demihumans (who are also part animal) are also noted to face discrimination (though the series doesn't touch on it much by nature of being a fighting game)

in terms of characters, Ruby is obviously Red Riding Hood, but she wields a scythe like Maka from Soul Eater, was initially presented as a completely silent, gun-wielding protagonist in a high octane fight similarly to Black Rock Shooter (the 2012 show also served as an influence on RWBY's animation style, and BRS's flaming blue eye is similar to the Maidens), and her bladed weapon also being a gun brings to mind Squall's Gunblade from FFVIII. plus, positioned as the protagonist and falling into the leadership role and it continuing to weigh down on her is something she has in common with Sora from KH

additionally, the visuals for Ruby's Semblance are inspired by something similar Vincent Valentine does in the FFVII Advent Children movie, with the addition of rose petals (which may be inspired by a similar thing the protagonist of FFXIII, Lightning, has)

Yang is Goldilocks, her design evokes Tifa from FFVII (and her characterisation not being what you'd expect based on the initial impression of her design also borrows from Tifa), her original theme outright compares her to a Super Saiyan from Dragon Ball with her glowing, flaming hair when she powers up with her Semblance evoking the aesthetic appearance of the form (and her 'gets stronger every time she takes a hit' is essentially a temporary, low-level zenkai boost from that series; 'get stronger every time you almost die'). in fact, character-wise, her losing an arm and being characterised as fairly thoughtful and introspective, you could make an argument that she's meant to parallel Future Gohan specifically. however, losing an arm, growing up in the woods and having to care for her younger sibling when they were young also could be a reference to Ragna from BlazBlue (and to boot, Yang's weapon is named Ember Celica, Ragna's parental substitute was Celica A Mercury), and additionally, Nine the Phantom from the same series (Celica's doting older sister) also has heavy fire theming, meaning she could serve as another point of inspiration

finally, Yang may also be partly inspired by Nero from Devil May Cry. while it wasn't explicitly confirmed until DMC5, when Nero was introduced in 4, he is highly implied to be the nephew of series protagonist and demon hunter Dante (who typically wields a greatword) and the son of Dante's twin brother, Vergil (who wields a katana that he can open portals with). Nero's design from jump is asymmetrical, with one of his arms being demonic. asymmetry is a theme for Yang from her trailer (and culminates with her losing one of her arms), her uncle Qrow wields a greatsword and her mother, Raven, Qrow's twin, wields a katana and opens portals with them (that Nero then gained a mechanical prosthetic arm in DMC5 is a hilarious coincidence)

Ozpin, Headmaster of Beacon is obviously the Wizard of Oz (his name comes from the acronym of the Wizard of Oz's actual name, Oscar Zoroaster Phadrig Isaac Norman Henkle Emmanuel Ambroise Diggs - OZPINHEAD), but he also draws from Cid Kramer from FFVIII (being the headmaster of Balamb Garden), as well as Gandalf in putting his faith in a 'smaller soul' (and his manipulative bs is clearly meant to analog to the guy from the bad wizard books, except in rwby it's clearly meant to be a bad thing that has actual consequences, and no more needs to be said about it)

Ironwood is clearly the Tin Woodsman as his main inspiration, a man who (thanks to a cursed axe) kept hacking off parts of his body and getting them replaced with metal until even his heart was gone (and at no point did he consider putting down the axe) - with the key point that he's a subversion of the Woodsman's story. but his descent could be inspired by Walker's descent in Spec Ops The Line (as it would've been in the public zeitgeist when Monty, Kerry and Miles were developing the show and writing these characters, and the game had been played on Achievement Hunter around that time), or from Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now, which inspired that game. his willingness to go to extreme and appalling lengths to achieve his goals may also be drawing from Director Leonard Church, from RT's first show Red vs Blue, who has the quote: "Have you forgotten sir, we were at war? A fight with an alien race for the very survival of our species. I feel I must remind you that it is an undeniable, and may I say fundamental quality of man, that when faced with extinction, every alternative is preferable." which feels very in line with Ironwood's willingness to compromise every moral and sacrifice whatever and whoever he thinks he needs to to win

Penny's fairytale inspiration is obviously Pinocchio but her robotic nature and relationship with a caring father also brings to mind Astro Boy and Mega Man, while her combat style is directly inspired by the Prime Field Devices of BlazBlue, who also fight with a floating array of many swords

the structure of the show honestly feels like a JRPG too - with the first few volumes being the lighthearted prologue where characters and concepts are introduced to ease you into the world, there's some hints to a wider world and a bigger story but there's very little sense that the protagonists are in real danger

until they are, and things go catastrophically wrong in a major way that shakes up the plot, throws the characters out into the world and gives them the main goal they're now striving toward (stopping Salem, in this case), with personal narratives developing in tandem with plot progressions that shake up how the audience and the characters see the world and reveal things to be more complex as things go on

you could literally go on forever; and it's not so much 'taking these disparate puzzle pieces and making a collage' so much as it is laying out the bones and building up something new on top of them through the way these bones intersect and interact in new contexts. RWBY isn't ashamed of its influences while still standing as its own story to tell

[jinxed-sinner]

I 100% think Alastor's behavior is a trauma response tbh. It feels like something happened that inhibited his ability to be fully open with other people, sorta like Blitz. In fact, how about we look at differences and similarities between Blitz and Alastor, since we know Blitz's behavior is a result of trauma?

Both Alastor and Blitz take pleasure in hurting other people. With Alastor, he doesn't care who he hurts (although I 100% think he'd feel guilt for hurting Rosie), while with Blitz, he cares about hurting other people when they're close to him (most recently made clear in Full Moon and Apology Tour). Blitz enjoys hurting people as long as he's not close to then/doesn't know them, which is, in my opinion, a likely reason he started a freelance assassin business (and I actually wouldn't be surprised if it contributed to IMP changing their business from a general Hell assassin business to an assassin business that focuses on offing humans that have wronged sinners). The main difference here is that Alastor's emotional responses are muted (which is why he's significantly less likely to act out), while Blitz's resemble splitting in BPD.

Both Alastor and Blitz are reckless and impulsive. Alastor's recklessness is most clearly seen in The Show Must Go On when he fights Adam, while Blitz's recklessness is made clear throughout Helluva Boss (takes his team to the human world without proper disguises, visits a party where if anyone except Verosika and Stolas knew he was there he would be murdered for it, etc). Alastor also berated Husk on an impulse born from already being stressed out. I can't really think of any specific examples of Blitz's impulsivity and I can't decide if it's because he's so consistently impulsive or if it's because I genuinely can't think of any examples lol

Neither of these two assholes (affectionate) will open up to people unless something forces them to (and potentially not even then in Alastor's case). The only times Blitz has opened up is if he's forced to (Truth Seekers) or if circumstances lower his inhibition (emotional outbursts, Queen Bee, arguably also Truth Seekers). The closest we've gotten to Alastor "opening up" is his mental breakdown that he had when he knew he was alone.

They're both still capable of making genuine connections. Alastor is incredibly close to Rosie (something I personally think is because she has motherly tendencies), and Blitz, despite all his tendencies towards them, seems to consider Moxxie and Millie friends. They're both capable of forming genuine connections, but don't, at least not often; for Blitz, it's because he's afraid of it, and for Alastor, it's likely because he either views it as a weakness or would just rather manipulate people for his own benefit.

It feels a lot like Blitz and Alastor have similar types of trauma; their responses to that trauma are simultaneously similar enough to be comparable and on wildly different ends of the same spectrum. Blitz craves connection, so he seeks it out, then sabotages it when he thinks it's going too far. Alastor avoids connection aside from a few genuine close friendships here and there that he can count on one hand.

I don't think Alastor is incapable of forming genuine emotional bonds with other people, and Rosie and Zestial are proof of that. It comes off more like he actively avoids connection; he doesn't interact much with the hotel's staff and residents aside from Charlie and Niffty, and when everyone's partying in The Show Must Go On, he's watching from afar with Niffty. I also feel like you can easily interpret Alastor's muted emotional responses as him actively trying to mute them; he sounds like he's actively trying not to have a breakdown after he gets slashed by Adam.

He would've largely grown up probably between 1895 and 1915 (or something close to that, depending on his age when he died) as a mixed race kid in New Orleans. You absolutely can not convince me that alone did not in some way contribute to how he is now. Add in a potentially abusive dad and yeah, is it really surprising that Alastor is the way he is? It genuinely just feels like he's a product of his circumstances in childhood. This is doubly the case if the theories that 1, his first murder was that of his dad, and 2, he basically did vigilantism turn out to be true. He himself implies he finds it cathartic to kill the loan sharks in Dad Beat Dad and is pretty much content the rest of the episode after that, he doesn't even seem to care that he's sharing a space with Lucifer after that. I'd be more surprised if his killings in his human life weren't him taking out his trauma on people he thought deserved it to be completely honest.

*Also as a last minute addition, I think it's also easy to interpret Alastor's attitude towards emotions and relationships as viewing them as a weakness, something that it's very likely is also a sign of him being a product of the time period and circumstances he was raised in.

[leaveitupluck]

Im sure someone has talked about this but I’m watching season 6 for the first time and it’s genuinely insane how despite Fox not having this intention at ALL they almost perfectly set up a storyline for Bi Buck and his unpacking of the missing piece in his life being his queerness AND for Eddie to dismantle his Catholic Guilt and realize HE is queer as well!!

With Buck, he is searching for this missing piece in him, something more in his life but especially relationship wise. He feels like in his past relationships he was searching for something with them but none of them fulfilled that, despite the fact that he thought they would. This is just completely exasperated by his death and the coma dream, making him realize the things he thought were missing in his life with his parents wouldn’t truly fix anything they are just a fantasy. His realization throughout the season that the missing piece can’t be fixed with a girl he meets on a call or by fixing his dysfunctional relationship with his parents is such a perfect set up for him to look deeper at himself and not the factors around him leading to Bi Buck realizations (which IS canon). Of course by the end of the season he thinks he found the answer with Natalia, and I of course have no clue what Fox was planning to do with that storyline and how to further it but it seems like such a rushed relationship like a “we must fix his issues with a new straight relationship that’s no different than the ones he’s been reflecting on” bc they (the network) think that’s the only way. Interestingly with Eddie, he has a similar feeling of a void in his life but that idea is prompted by his grandma/ reflecting on Shannon’s death! His Grandma wants him to date again and keeps setting him up and although Eddie is against it at first it makes him realize he does want to date. This of course helps him start to unpack the idea that his only truly serious relationship was with Shannon and that he never even made the first move he was sort of passive in their relationship, the way he even explains his proposal is that she just got pregnant and he was like “hey we should get married” like if that was the only option. He’s desperately looking for someone to date, he starts doing activities like golfing hoping he’ll find someone without his grandmas help (as he claims he can do). He’s WILDLY unsuccessful with this of course which helps him even further unpack his idea on relationships with Bobby. This whole idea HARDCORE alludes to this repressed queerness and just going with the flow bc that’s what your expected to do. Again such an amazing start to this unpacking of queer repression and catholic guilt amazingly set up, especially so with his comment earlier in the season where he says dating feels like performing. Of course similarly to what they do with Buck they just throw him in another relationship, which feels like a strange throw at the audience sort of trying to “no homo” their way out of the subtext they’ve created.

For both Buck and Eddie we see them have a relationship in the last two eps of the season WHICH IS CRAZY WHEN THEIR SEASON ARCS REVOLVE AROUND REFLECTING ON THEIR PAST RELATIONSHIP AND BEING MORE MINDFUL GOING INTO NEW ONES WHICH NEITHER OF THEM DO BY THE END OF THE SEASON!!

This season is wild for doing this with zero future plans to make either character queer, but it’s even crazier that the new network does exactly what is set up by season 6 with almost zero change besides making a Buck single.

[basshole-astard]

hey you, blogger. do you find yourself in incredible pain daily? even weekly? despite being in your 30s, or younger? despite doing everything that's ""supposed"" to help?

On top of being in incredible pain, can you or could you at any point in your life:

bend yourself into funny positions like putting your foot behind your head

can bend down without fanfare and put your palms COMPLETELY FLAT on the floor

do your elbows bend a bit backwards? how about your knees?

you can bend your pinkies backwards 90 degrees

you find your joints are incredibly weak and garbage; wrists often in pain despite doing stretches; shoulders/neck always hurting no matter how good your posture is; can’t get down on your hands and knees because doing so is Ow Ow Oof Ouch

you have gastrointestinal issues that you cannot link to food in any way (yes, for real,)

headaches/migraines – especially unexplained, but even if you do have an explanation (for real)

never had enough room in your mouth for your teeth

vision prescription gets better and then gets worse again and you find yourself very confused about how??? why????

have really bad allergies including “I can’t use x soap it gives me a rash for some reason” or other similar “coming into contact with certain things makes me break out” (it’s called MCAS, it’s often comorbid)

stand up and your heartrate spikes and/or you get dizzy (that’s called POTS, also comorbid)

Then, hi, you might possibly have something called Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, or EDS; specifically the hypermobile subtype (hEDS), which doesn’t yet have a known genetic marker and goes wildly underdiagnosed in patients, partly because the things they test for hypermobility are pretty limited, partly because doctors don’t know what it is, partly because doctors would rather diagnose you with a different condition (if arthritis or fibromyalgia diagnoses/treatment didn’t help, well...!) because if it sounds like a horse it’s PROBABLY a horse (but it could be a zebra)

Of course having any one of these does not an hEDS diagnosis make, but if you have multiple on my above list? Multiple of the list I am including below the cut? It’s worth looking into. You can continue on reading to see my brief overview, or you can head to www.ehlers-danlos.com to do your own research; they’re a great resource!

"I have a lot of these but not all of them" that's still worth looking into! I've only got five on the above list, and i definitely still have hEDS! Even three is worth considering!

more symptoms and info below the cut, if you want to hear it from a fellow blogger who was diagnosed at 25 and found the diagnosis Extremely Eye Opening as to why i was always in pain and Various Other Issues

---

General hEDS info: EDS itself is a genetic disorder that affects your connective tissue, which in general makes your joints weak and your ligaments weaker. hEDS is the most common subtype, in which you have a lot of EDS traits AND hypermobility BUT none of the genetic markers for the 12 other EDS subtypes.

“Wait, but this thing I can do is normal, my whole family can do it!” or “my mother’s side of the family is all like this!” hEDS is genetic. It’s possible to have it if your parents don’t, but VERY unlikely. So unlikely, in fact, that having immediate family history of hEDS is one of the 3 main diagnostic criteria for it. (You can still get diagnosed if you hit the other 2, but they only ask for 2/3.)

“Surely it can’t be so hard to diagnose that doctors don’t notice it!” my sister did not find out until she was in her 30s, because one of her friends has hEDS, and when my sister was bemoaning how useless doctors were, her friend was like “....hey those sound like MY symptoms, have you considered you might have hEDS?” (Which, due to it being genetic, is how my mom and I found out we also probably had it.) Also, much like ADHD, doctors are wary of diagnosing people with it, afraid they’re just trying to get the “good” meds.

“What good does a diagnosis/research even do me?” 1) an explanation for why you’re in pain all the time 2) knowledge so you can avoid doing things that would hurt you (you have to be SOOO careful with most forms of exercise!) 3) it’s a disorder that warrants higher pain meds than what you can get OTC, so if you are seriously in a lot of pain all the time, and would like to not be...

I’m gonna put a more in-depth list of symptoms below. If you have any five of them, I highly suggest you poke around www.ehlers-danlos.com and do your own research, because even if you aren’t in a position to get a clinical diagnosis right now, even suspecting you MIGHT Have it is useful, either for an explanation for all the things that seem wrong with your body that couldn’t otherwise be explained, or to know that... hey, you should really be careful with what kinds of physical exercise you’re doing, because your risk of injury for some sports is WAY higher than it is for people who don’t have hEDS. More on that below, as well.

-

Symptoms list time:

*THIS IS ALMOST DEFINITELY A MARKER OF hEDS*

hypermobile joints

unstable/weak joints

joints that dislocate frequently

CHRONIC PAIN

stretchy and fragile skin (classic EDS marker, but can show up in hEDS): do you bruise easily? Do cuts take forever to heal?

your parent(s) are also like this (it's a genetic disorder!! Chances are you got it from one of them!!! Love to hear “oh my hips do that too!!! Didn’t realize it wasn’t normal” thanks mom.)

"my parents don't have hEDS tho" are you sure. like. my mom didn't know until my sister found out she did. this thing is *wildly underdiagnosed*. Mom’s in her 50s and had doctors diagnose her with arthritis and fibromyalgia, the treatments for which didn’t help her because it wasn’t what was actually wrong

-

*OTHER THINGS THAT OFTEN COME FREE WITH YOUR hEDS*

chronic fatigue

gastrointestinal issues (if you thought you had IBS, but hit any of the hEDS things, you should consider, well, an hEDS diagnosis; gastroparesis is a common comorbidity)

dysautonomia; i don't have this but it causes things like POTS or "heartrate spikes when i stand" or "i get dizzy when i stand and lose vision briefly"

headaches (and/or migraines!)

MCAS, aka really bad allergies. your nose gets offended at the slightest bit of pollen. the weirdest materials give you a rash. you can only use one soap because all the other ones make you break out. etc.

...ADHD. I’m not shitting you. It is so frequently comorbid that in the UK when you test positive for either ADHD or hEDS they will immediately test you for the other. Connective tissue exists in your brain, as well, so I guess if your connective tissue just doesn’t function properly...

-

HEY CAN YOU PUT THIS IN NON-CLINICAL TERMS FOR ME

sure! did you, at any point in your life:

- able to bend into funny positions like put foot behind head; especially as a kid (hi! that's me!) but of particular note if you can still do those things now

- stretches like butterfly or crossing your arm over your chest just... don’t feel like stretches? (my sister)

- could you bend and without effort place your palms flat on the floor? can you still now? apparently most people struggle - without regular stretching - to touch their toes, let alone put their palms *completely flat* to the floor. that's hypermobility baby!

- elbows bend a little bit backwards? knees?

- can you bend your pinkies back 90 degrees?

- consider yourself double-jointed?

- shoulders/neck always hurt? and like your muscles are SOOOO tight in your neck all the time? hey guess what: the thing EDS does is make your body produce less collagen, which makes your ligaments weak as fuck, and so your muscles are constantly spasming to hold your head up. this is why you're in pain. this is why working the knots out never helps and they always come back. no, this isn't because you’re on your computer too much. your body was just built differently (poorly)

- stretching never seems to help? stretches make you hurt more??? or even: most forms of exercise cause you pain? yeah, most exercise/stretches are meant for Able Bodied People, not people with an underlying undiagnosed hypermobility disorder. You have to adapt them to your needs, and also stretches will never be the be-all-end-all solution to back pain like those funny little infographics on the internet will try and tell you. Maybe it is for able-bodied people, if you have a genetic condition that causes chronic pain, well,

- “but my shoulders are soooo tight tho” POINTING ABOVE AGAIN. they are doing that because the muscles have to overcompensate for your weak ligaments. Stretching does not fix this; you may loosen your muscles, but they will simply tighten again later. The real fix is doing exercises to improve your shoulder muscle stability – I’ll talk about some exercises below.

- have you ever thought to yourself "what the hell, i'm too young to be in this much pain all the time??" you're right! it might be hEDS.

- struggle with opening jars? weak upper body strength? randomly lose your grip on things you’re holding with your hands? “are you serious” I’m serious

- can't crawl on your hands and knees because that hurts your wrists and your knees?

- tangentially: did your parents say you crawled funny as a kid? army crawl? started walking way earlier than expected? yeah.

- you can't squat or kneel because ow oof ow your ankles ow ow your knees? yeah.

- is getting up from the floor hard sometimes?? despite being 30 or younger???? yeah.

- despite everything, and not trying to be, you're still kind of really flexible???

- like, you could do the splits as a kid without having to train yourself to do it?? you can still do the splits now without any effort at all?

- do you seem to get injured really easily? joints especially, or, again, bruised really easily.

- are you in pain right now? think about it. shoulders? back? legs? did you see the part where one of the diagnostic criteria for hEDS is chronic pain? yeah.

i could probably keep going.

-

~here's some specific connective tissue disorder things; i've included only the extremely "normal" ones that haven’t already been listed above and/or are easy to check yourself. you can find a full list at https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/what-is-eds/hypermobile-ehlers-danlos-syndrome-heds/ under "how is hEDS diagnosed?"~

listed above: stretchy/fragile skin. By stretchy btw I mean: can you pinch your skin anywhere and pull and get even half an inch away from your body? Neck/back of hand is a good place to try. If you can’t pinch your skin at all w/o hitting Meat then you don’t have this (I don’t, even tho my sister does!) but it’s worth looking out for and alone is like THE thing EDS (all types) is characterized by, so if your skin stretches, that’s of particular notice (but your skin not stretching does not disqualify you from having EDS)

stretch marks (they hate to use this if you're afab, but,)

"Bilateral piezogenic papules of the heel" uh when you're standing are your heels kinda. lumpy. like they got balls in 'em. that's what this is. (this is one of the things i have)

dental crowding (lol!!!!)

can you close your thumb+pinky around both your wrists? (steinberg sign)

when you make fists, thumbs underneath fingers, do your thumbs stick out past your fingers? (walker sign)

-

“Hey, I’m not really hypermobile - is it still possible to have hEDS??”

in theory! I’m only mildly hypermobile myself, outside of the “foot behind head” trick from when i was ten and the “can even now at 25 bend down and put palms flat on floor with no effort” i have… basically no other signs of hypermobility. Though, I guess “things that should be stretches like butterfly or touching your toes are super easy and not stretches for me” also counts as being hypermobile, huh. It’s just really mild.

And, you know, maybe you just have a different EDS subtype. EDS as a whole is not super well understood, so the chances you got a doctor who didn’t know what it was / didn’t want to order a genetic test about it is still, like, high enough it’s worth looking into, I think.

Basically every issue my body has can be drawn back to hEDS, and that kind of knowledge is insane but also really liberating. There is a cause for this. I’m not just in pain for no reason – or worse – because I’m “bad” at taking care of myself. I have a genetic disorder that makes it so my joints don’t work right and also I’m in pain all the time. It’s not necessarily happy, but at least it’s an explanation, instead of sitting there and shrugging and going “I dunno” about it.

So, sincerely, if even five of the things I’ve listed above sound familiar to you, I think you should look into it. Maybe you’ll research and go “oh, that doesn’t sound like me at all, actually”, but on the chance you, like me, start researching and find yourself going “THAT’S WHAT’S BEEN CAUSING THAT THIS WHOLE TIME????” I think it’s worth looking into. That validation is sincerely quite freeing.

-

“Ok, you've convinced me. Now what do I do?”

first of all research some more!

https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/what-is-eds/ <-- EDS overview and EDS subtypes! Maybe you have one that isn’t hEDS

https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/what-is-eds/hypermobile-ehlers-danlos-syndrome-heds/ <-- hEDS specific page

https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/heds-diagnostic-checklist/ <-- hEDS diagnostic checklist

https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/assessing-joint-hypermobility/#1667831445611-fb40d58e-84a4 <-- the checklist opens on something called the Beighton scale, which is explained in more detail here. **IF YOU DO NOT SCORE HIGH ON THE BEIGHTON SCALE BUT STILL HAVE MOST OTHER HEDS ISSUES, PRESS FOR DIAGNOSIS NONETHELESS. ENTIRELY POSSIBLY YOU ARE HYPERMOBILE IN AREAS THAT AREN’T TRACKED BY THE BEIGHTON SCALE. IT’S IMPERFECT AND PROBABLY NEEDS TO BE REPLACED BUT THEY HAVEN’T GOTTEN AROUND TO IT YET.**

https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/2017-eds-classification-non-experts/ <-- EDS things in layman’s terms, including comorbidities, like what I was talking about wrt gastrointestinal issues, orthopedic issues, chronic fatigue issues, etc, etc, etc. if you have issues with allergies look at the Mast Cell Disorder one. if you have that “heartrate spikes or I get dizzy when I stand” issue look at the Cardiovascular Autonomic Dysfunction one.

(ngl, sorry if its gross, but learning that hEDS often comes packaged with gastrointestinal issues was what really sealed the whole deal for me being convinced, despite “your sister has it and your mom almost definitely has it” being EXTREMELY damning evidence, because. I have had issues with diarrhea my whole goddamn life. I can’t tie it to food. It just curses me daily.)

second of all: talk to your doctor! or, find a doctor in your area that specializes in EDS. book an appointment, see what they can offer you. they can probably hook you up with physical therapy options (to safely strengthen your muscles to compensate for your weak connective tissue) or some pain management options! If you find the physical therapist is making you do things that make you hurt more and they repeatedly do not listen to you and your body, fire them and find a new physical therapist. 

https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/healthcare-professionals-directory/ <-- list of doctors. 

Third of all: find a support group if you’d like? There’s FB groups and Reddit groups and probably even more. Links to some of them here: https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/support/ 

YMMV because hEDS sometimes gets shit on by people with the other EDS subtypes, but at the very least, if a fellow Zebra is bitching about a doctor, you’ll know who to avoid. 

Fourth: Just… if you think you might have it, I want you to take a step back and reconsider the way you feel about yourself and maybe about the exercise you are/aren’t doing. I had a lot of compounded guilt about how I “wasn’t taking good enough care of myself” ; when you’re in pain all the time you sometimes start blaming yourself, especially if you, like me, find that exercise is difficult and painful and that stretching doesn’t ACTUALLY help, you quit doing it. But you don’t always quit thinking “well apparently if I did those stretches to prevent back pain that people always talk about, then I wouldn’t have any back pain!!!!!!” and that kind of mindset... sucks.

It's also not true. Like, not in general, but also especially not if you have hEDS. My back is in pain because my body was built different (poorly), NOT because I “wasn’t doing the right thing”.

So here’s my get out of jail free card, for you. You aren’t in pain because you aren’t doing anything to “fix” it. You’re just in pain. Sure, you can do some (specialized) (hEDS friendly ones) exercises to help combat it, or you could go take some painkillers, but... your pain is not a punishment for your decision not to exercise. Your pain just kinda... is.

Every generalized exercise advice you see online you need to take with a grain of salt anyway, because it was not written for people with a hypermobility disorder. If doing it doesn’t help, then you don’t need to push through the pain because “it’s the thing that’s supposed to fix everything!!!!” No no. There is no correct answer. There is no one-size fits all. If it doesn’t help, or if it hurts, then you shouldn’t do it.

I say this from a place of love. I spent several months trying to fix my wrist pain with stretches, and you know what never went away? My wrist pain. In fact, I’m mildly convinced the stretches made the pain worse. I kept pushing through it for ages, though, because I kept getting told it was supposed to help, and that it was IMPORTANT as someone who spends all day on the computer to TAKE CARE OF MY WRISTS via THESE STRETCHES WE HAVE HELPFULLY COMPILED ONTO AN INFOGRAPHIC FOR YOU!!!!! ...but that’s not how it works. The rules are a little different when you have a hypermobility disorder. You have to really look into exercises that are safe for you to do, instead of just assuming the ones that everyone passes around are going to help.

“Man, so even those shoulder stretches you see around might not help?” nope! They might not!

“What do I do then?” strengthening exercises... I’ll put resources / explain one easy one (for shoulders) below.

Also if you are someone with a job that requires sitting at the computer all day, and you’re worried about how that affects your health... Even if you just get up once every two hours and walk around / look at something else (even your bathroom!!!) for a little bit, that’s fine, that’s plenty, that’s more than enough. You don’t have to stretch your shoulders every 30 minutes. You shouldn’t stretch your shoulders every 30 minutes if that’s hurting you.

RESOURCES TIME

1) https://www.ehlers-danlos.com/resource/strengthen-your-hypermobile-core-a-home-exercise-approach-for-eds-hsd-and-hypermobility-jeannie-di-bon/ <-- webinar that covers at-home exercises you can do

2) and a whole playlist of at-home exercises (in reasonable sized video chunks) by one of the experts, here: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLp-oNOmoFdAMFZB7XfpUZyvg_xzE3S3Ue – DISCLAIMER I HAVE NOT WATCHED OR USED THESE, SO WHILE I CAN SAY I DOUBT SHE WOULD BE FEATURED WERE SHE NOT A REAL EXPERT, PLEASE JUST. Err on the side of caution. If even one of these hurts you, try not to do it until you can talk with your personal physical therapist, which, yes, I realize requires Acquiring one first..... worth poking around tho, this person has a ton of tips on how to be careful with your joints while doing chores and day-to-day tasks as well, it seems. Actual advice that might actually help you instead of “oh make sure to stretch every 30 minutes!!!!” (might not help) or “have you tried jogging? Its free and easy!!!!!” (sport that is more likely to injure you thanks to the weak joints thing)

3) You can also search “exercise” on ehlers-danlos.com and come up with a ton of other pages/videos/etc of EDS friendly exercises produced by the experts that run this site.

4) That One Easy One I Can Explain In A tumblr Post: Bridging

Meant for core stability, but also works towards strengthening your shoulder muscles as well. Bridges!!! You can probably look up guides, or the lady I linked above has a video that includes her doing bridges about 4 minutes in. here's the video (link).

The version I do involves going up for five seconds, then down for five seconds, repeating for a minute (time yourself). Each day add on ten seconds (so second day you do a minute ten, third day minute twenty, etc) until you are eventually able to do it for three minutes. You do not need to go past three minutes. You are recommended not to. You are recommended to work up to 3 minutes and then continue doing it for 3 minutes every day.

(It doesn’t have to be every day nor does it necessarily have to be 3 minutes every time; if I’m tired or in a hurry I’ll just do two minutes. If I’m really tired I’ll just skip it and do it the next day. No big deal!)

That’s all I got. Thanks for listening to me rant. Hope it was enlightening at all!

[coolbeesbro]

TGOFC Kallamar Lore

Out of all the siblings, Kallamar feels the most like he constantly has to prove himself. He started off as a major "yes man" when it came to Shamura, doing everything to constantly seek out their approval. He was never really a fighter, but he learned everything he knows about that, as well as having extensive knowledge on weaponry all to impress Shamura and get their approval. So he can fight and wield multiple weapons at one time with ease, but would rather avoid having to all together if he can. Despite this, he's often pretty overlooked in lieu of the younger siblings. This isn't to say that Shamura dislikes or has ill intentions towards Kallamar, but more sees it as Kallamar is old enough and very capable of taking care of himself, whereas Narinder, Heket and Leshy were all very young gods in need of guidance (Shamura tries their best to do this, but they were never very nurturing to begin with so they often fall short in some areas).

Continuing off that last part, Kallamar was always there to help take care of them and make up for the areas Shamura is unable to provide. I did an animatic a little bit ago involving this fact (here), but he's always had a more empathetic and emotional connection with the youngest three. As the others grew up, they also fell into a similar state that Kallamar did with wanting to prove themself to the eldest; and Kallamar feels like it's partly his own fault for setting that example to begin with.

Although he's wildly respected in Anchordeep, he got his reputation as a coward for being fearful of death himself thanks to the prior god of Death. There's more going into that than the youngest three understand, being more PTSD related than anything else. In TGOFC canon, his fear of the Red Crown stems from The Great God War, which was a series of battles over the span of decades against the old god of Death, Corvius, who used his ability to revive to pull in followers from other faiths. Corvius also sent out his own followers to pillage other's territories, and without followers and devotion, a god would eventually die and their crown would vanish for good. Eventually, the number of crowns was narrowed down to 5 before Shamura was finally able to kill Corvius. In the whole war, Kallamar came very closely to death on many occasions. But despite his fear of the Red Crown, he still did what he could to take care of Narinder (in part hoping that being raised to be more empathetic and caring would prevent a repeat of The Great God War). Although Narinder was a civilian victim in the war at the time, he could never really relate to the fear Kallamar had because of their differing status.

One of the ways he aimed to get Shamura's approval, he used his background in medicine thanks to the Blue Crown to work towards HRT treatments. This proved to be very successful in a number of ways. Shamura grew to be a happier person and was very grateful towards the gesture, that being something they'd never considered to be a thing prior. Then there was the huge boost in followers and moral in Anchordeep for any other trans person seeking that treatment. He went on to learn more about gender affirming care which only grew his following. This later down the line helped with treatments and surgery for Leshy when he joined and got older.

After many years in purgatory, he's also fearful to go back to his temple. That doesn't mean he doesn't miss it and want to go back eventually. But for the time being, if there's anything he needs there, he's often able to convince the Lamb to retrieve it for him.

This post is getting very long so I might do a part 2 with much less sad parts in a little bit.

[liauditore]

cleo/martyn for shipping bingo?

original

when i say criminally underrated i mean CRIMINALLY underrated ok. unhinged rambling under the cut

like every fictional character and real person in the world is marina and the diamonds oh no coded but these two are literally this song so much im gonna throw up

One track mind, one track heart If I fail, I'll fall apart Maybe it is all a test 'Cause, I feel like I'm the worst So I always act like I'm the best

they mirror each other so perfectly. they're both deeply insecure people who desperately want to be strong for themselves and those around them, but they dig their own graves doing that by refusing to be vulnerable and only pushing people close to them away.

in my mind they both see the worst parts of themselves in the other person because they're so similar internally, despite having wildly different personalities.

I know exactly what I want and who I want to be I know exactly why I walk and talk like a machine I'm now becoming my own self-fulfilled prophecy Oh! Oh, no! Oh, no! Oh, no, oh!

they both have an ego and a malice that gets them antagonized by the rest of the server which is 100% their fault, and they both pretend they don't care when really both of them yearn for someone, Anyone to see how much they're hurting (but they'd never admit to it).

You type out your bias on me it’s all nitpicks and paying no mind to be so sadistic They pin on the thorns make her maleficent In bloom the rose made a perfect fit He drowns out the crowd that throws a burdened fit They blow up the sound regardless to admit They’re stabbing a knife and quote without a wit “Bet it’s no strife, no it’s just the tip”

(^telecaster b-boy lyrics cus that song changed my life but also it reminds me of them)

Just.. that one clip of Cleo admitting she's a rubbish fighter and saying that she would only drag Martyn down to which Martyn immediately responds that he doesn't care and thinks she's great company. Or any number of the times Martyn offers some dumb surface-level act of servitude towards Cleo because he doesn't know how to just be vulnerable and admit he wants some form of acknowledgement.

They keep testing the waters with eachother but one always backs out when it starts getting too real. They both just want love but their egos won't let them admit it.

Cleo has this magical ability to divorce men she's never dated and I love her for it.

OFC all this aside they're also just both so losercore and dumb and divorced and martyn being The Most Pathetic Man Ever with trying to court cleo is hilarious to watch and also bdubs ships them and I agree with everything bdubs says.

also uh i think ren should join them in the middle idk

[recreationalfanfics]

You think Yan!Bane would interested in a Shinobu Darling? (KNY) She comes in like a Butterfly (I had too say it 💀)

Darling who’s physically inferior than a lot of people, but her intelligent, wit, reflexes, agility and creativity make her stand out (Using Poison but she’s also a Doctor and a incredible one, able to make medicine that fixes/repairs Bane’s Body after he uses Venom)

Yandere! Bane x Shinobu! Darling Thoughts:

No, because I just think this is a fascinating prompt-

- NO, HE MOST DEFINETLY WOULD LOVE A SHINOBU DARLING/DARLING WHO IS SIMILAR TO SHINOBU.

- He really does respect your ability to adapt and overcome your shortcomings and obstacles. It would be something that sticks out to him because he also had to do that growing up to survive so he'd immediately feel a sense of kinship with his darling because of that ability.

- He also, straight away, does not underestimate you for a second. Like if you tried to do the knife shoe thing that Shinobu did to Giyuu, he'd be impressed but it just proves to him that you are wildly unpredictable and that's something he will keep in mind as his obsession with you grows.

- His obsession with you doesn't fully take root until you show that there is some sincerity in your sickeningly sweet facade. Such as if you were to tend to him if the venom or another injury weakened him significantly. Bane does not like feeling vulnerable, so he is hesitant when you offer to help but as you work on him and heal him, this seals the deal.

- With that being said, if you catch onto his unhealthy obsession with you right away, he honestly finds it thrilling how you try to evade his attempts at courting, stalking, and etc and how you see the more darker side of his romantic efforts. Like you see that his love for you is genuine but you also see that the lengths he'll go to for it are terrifying.

- But he likes that you're a bit resistant, because it's been a while since someone could match wits with him and despite your shorter stature, it's your unpredictability that really sticks out to him.

- Unlike a normal darling who Bane would see as precious and defenseless, you have proven yourself strong in different ways aside from physical. He would want to test that and provoke situations in which you have to show him what other tricks you have in your sleeve and to see your limits. You'll be a little scuffed up but you won't ever be seriously harmed if he believes you can't handle it.

- So yes, he would most definetly be interested in a Shinobu darling and while he would be tougher on them, it's vecause he believes and admires their resolve and adaptability and to not test them would be wasted.

[fandomfluffandfuck]

I have dyslexia as well so I listen to podfics a lot! Can I ask how you write so perfectly with dyslexia? No need to answer if you don't want to, jus curious about your process :-)

Hey, sweets, it's no problem, don't worry!

I'm gonna take this opportunity to do what I do best and... overexplain. (Which--the overexplaining, overwriting that I do--I'm convinced is due to dyslexia. It takes a lot of words, which I don't feel naturally attuned to, to communicate the thoughts I have in my head. I struggle with words and sentence structure, and it all comes out tangled, so I just keep trying until I have monster paragraphs, lmao.)

Yeah, I'm dyslexic! Very dyslexic, lmao. And I do a lot to work around it, trying my best to write (mostly) coherent words, but also, I don't really think about the process I use all the time because... it's just what I have to do, y'know? I've always had to have work arounds. Like, I've obviously been dyslexic my entire life, but I didn't get a diagnosis until late, late middle school, and at that point, the "accommodations" I got at school were entirely useless. Like, oh, wonderful, preferential seating. Sure. Yeah. That will definitely help with my dyslexia. Thanks.

I also remember, just as a side note, that it was during that time when I was refused accommodations like extra time for tests, reading aids, note-taking aids, etc. all which would've been EXTREMELY HELPFUL because I was doing "well enough" in school. So, clearly, I didn't "need" them, if anything, they would be "wasted" on me when they could go to someone else who was actually struggling (which, I get, public school funding is shitty and there aren't unlimited resources, but I'm still slightly salty, lol. Just because I didn't appear to be struggling on the outside didn't mean I wasn't struggling. It's similar to having "high functioning" depression, like, it doesn't matter if I can function if I still feel like fucking shit constantly). I was also so, so close to not being diagnosed in the first place because, according to the doctors I saw, I was smart enough that it wouldn't matter.

That's a reoccurring theme with my dyslexia, actually!

People never believe me!

Which, sure, is a compliment to other people. But it's a backhanded one. I don't want to be complimented by pushing everyone else down.

ANYWAY-

The process.

The process starts--background wise--with practice. The shit answer. I know. But, really, practice. I've been writing stories for a lot longer than I've been posting fics. I've written lots of fiction (short stories and nonshort stories), I used to write poetry, and I'm a life-long journal-er. I used to read a lot, lot of books, too, despite the challenges with my dyslexia. It'd just that now I write so much for fandom and with higher education challenging me, I find it hard to have the time or the energy to read and deal with more words than I already do.

So, I have lots of practice on my side, active and passive, but I also have other things...

I type all my fics, and I use fonts and font sizes extensively. I tend to use bigger font sizes overall, not like wildly huge fonts, but not 11 or 12, either. It depends on the font itself--some fonts have larger letters than others. Something about the letters being more visible and having smaller sentence chunks on each line helps me anchor the letters in place.

I also will plan my fics in one font (probably whatever the program is set to by default), then flesh out the plan more in a different font, after I'll actually go and write out my fic in a new font, and when I'm ready to make edits and add final touches I use a new font, again. I tend to bounce between Arial, Verdana, Open Dyslexic, and Comic Sans. Yes, I write smut I comic sans regularly 💀💀

I've seen research that says, yes, fonts can affect dyslexia and research that says it doesn't do shit so... 🤷🏻‍♂️ Either way, I feel like it helps me find mistakes because it tricks my eyes into thinking the words are new, lol. That, and I find it more comfortable to write in dark mode, I don't know why or if it's doing anything specifically to my dyslexia, but I get less lost in the words when in dark mode.

While I'm doing all that font changing, I'm also, as I mentioned, writing and re-writing, which means reading and re-reading. I go over my fics A FUCK TON. Pure repetition irons out a lot of shit by brute force, lol. I have friends who will write essays for school and look over it once, maybe twice if they're feeling spicy. I can not comprehent that. Not me. If I haven't re-read it, once I'm at the final editing and final touches stage, at least six times then... it's not going to be posted. I'll also change fonts between re-readings. And when I put the fucking thing into AO3, I re-read it again.

(I'm sure a beta reader would be very helpful, but I'm also very protective over my art--writing, drawing, sculpture, or otherwise, and so I haven't played with that, lol. You'd have to ask someone else about their experience there!)

While writing, reading, re-writing, and re-reading, I'm also reading out loud to myself.

Everything.

All 👏🏻of 👏🏻 it 👏🏻

I say all of it.

It helps me with flow and writing style, sure, but really, it forces me to realize mistakes and lessens my mistakes. You mentioned podfics and while I haven't gotten into podfics I am a fucking podcast, music, audio guy. I find audio so much easier to process than written words.

(You might find this poll of interest, I do, lol)

Aaaand, while all of this is going on, I also, of course, use a grammar program. I use Grammarly because it was most accessible (re: free and recommended to me by an English teacher) in high school. I keep in mind that it has batshit insane suggestions sometimes, and I have all their bullshit AI helping tools turned off, but... it does help a ton.

In conclusion, something that I am working on myself is that sometimes when I'm having a bad day with my dyslexia--maybe I'm tired and I can't focus, maybe I have a headache, maybe my eyes are fried from staring at a screen all day, maybe I've done too much reading for college, maybe my threshold for frustration has been exceeded and I just can't deal with the challenge that writing presents that day, or whatever--I can't write and I need to accept that. I'm not gonna be able to produce something good, maybe not even something presentable, every time I sit down to write.

That's fine!

That's how writing works for everyone! That's how writing works for me, someone who struggles with letters and numbers and writing and reading and the whole fucking thing. That's okay. Let it happen. Let it go. Try again tomorrow.

Uhhh, I hope some of that, any of that, was of interest? Helpful? Maybe?

[phospadparadscha]

Disco Universe Pale thoughts-

Instead of being the physical manifestation (de-manifestation?) of entropy, maybe the Pale is instead a phenomenon that causes rapid erosion. Gems without adequate protection are basically getting hit by the world's shittiest sandblaster. The effects are similar to canon Pale exposure, with the added bonus of visible damage. The Paledriver has nicks and scratches across her gem, while Joyce uses some sort of clear coating to obscure hers.

Of course, those lost bits of gem don't just evaporate, they join the rest of the dust making up the Pale. The Pale is mostly inert rock, but there's still a significant amount of gem dust in there. With enough exposure, a Gem can get so worn down they can no longer hold a form and are functionally indistinguishable from shattered gems. I.e., they're fuckin dead.

Harry's druzy damage is rare, because those colors are didn't come from nowhere; they're deposits from other Gems, and the conditions under which they formed wpild normally be lethal. It's why the Skills aren't really whole people; they're miniscule fragments of other Gems, joined together. Almost like the Cluster on a very small scale.

I really really really like this Blue. FIRST of all let me thank you for being so involved in this crossover with me and giving me the enthusiasm to keep illustrating and theorizing for it, it means a lot that you and others as into this as I am because I LOVE both of these medias so just a quick thank you lol. More of my answer below so I don't flood people's dashboards:

I was wracking my brain on how to incorporate the skills into this AU and what to do with the Pale, and for a while I had a vague sense of the pale being a cosmic phenomenon rather than limited to one planet like Elysium in the game. I go into some detail about that and the failed rebellion here.

I agree with you that the pale would be something that causes rapid erosion, and that gems need to prepare physically to protect themselves (like buffing or coating). However I disagree that the Pale wouldn't be psychological in origin still. Steven Universe is a very emotional and interpersonal exploration of characters and I do think that the entropy and psychological horror of the Pale and of fragmented gems can coexist very well in this crossover.

Gems develop listlessness in their stagnating and deteriorating society in Steven Universe and the depleting resources causing physical deformities in gems like peridot and amethyst requiring limb enhancers to accommodate them. I think this idea- of a government failing its people contributing to a miasma of hopelessness and deteriorating sense of self in and outside of the Pale- works very well within the context of both the game and the show, and is part of why I think this AU can work the way it does despite the show and game being wildly different in world building and tone.

Gems like Volleyball for example are what I think the result of Pale damage would be. Volleyball's eye is cracked on her projection. This is a result of the psychological damage to her gem from Pink Diamond's abuse. It cannot be repaired like other cracked gems- it is deeply embedded in her gem and the data that projects her. And when sufficiently stressed, it can even spread. I think this aspect of the Pale damage and rapid erosion you mention would work similarly. The Pale is psychological deterioration and torture. It erodes the sense of self, and the gems themselves in a very permanent way. It is a lot like a sandblaster, but not just for the gem- also for the gem's minds as well, a bit like Houseki no Kuni where if the gem loses its inclusions their memories are lost as well.

What I love MOST about this ask is the way you incorporate the gems as particle dust into Harry's Skills, or furies, or voices. They dust over Harry's gem and erode his own at the same time, in a way that removes a large chunk of his data (his memory and gem coloration / density / powers) and dusts it with the shattered remains of past gems as well. The only issue I see with this theory though is that Harry's skills have been with him since before his wipeout in Martinaise, and are part of why Dora left him and why he was known as a can-opener. So perhaps Harry has always been able to hear these voices on the wind somehow, and only after Martinaise did they nearly over write his own gem. This is one aspect of the theory that I am not sure how to proceed but I think definitely that the drusy formations on his gem being particles of gems lost in the Pale manifesting as his Skills makes a great deal of sense.

Anyways I'm sorry for the long ass response lol I just love this crossover and I'm really glad that it caught your attention Blue because you've brought so much to the table!!! If you ever have art requests or anything at all please let me know and feel free to spam me with ideas and messages bc I'm always on that damn phone lol.

[adorable-deku]

ok so hear me out abt the megamind fanfic. we all know that golden boy and social outcast is *chefs kiss* always a good pairing. roxanne richi is the fucking common sense and grounding that both of them desperately need. it is the most stable and balanced polyamorous relationship bc they all trust the fuck out of each other.

like. metroman always knew megamind wasnt evil, so he would never truly hurt him (kind of my opinion that he has gifted child syndrome where despite being loved by everyone, his differences make him feel very isolated. he relates to megamind who is extremely similar in the opposite way)

roxanne is investigative and intelligent, so if she had met megamind younger i would bet a thousand dollars he wouldnt have become a villain. instead, she would encourage his crazy inventions, especially ones that can actaully help people (which i think is most of them if you use them the right way). she also finds megaminds awkwardness and the way he pronounces words wildly despite never learning to pronounce them that way (metrocity, ollo, etc) incredibly endearing

megamind is more emotionally vulnerable than either of them, but he was also raised by convicted felons, so although he'll let ppl convince him hes a villain, he will not let them convince him that he is wrong. crazy stubborn, but its a functioning defense mechanism when ur blue w a balloon head. minion is to megamind what alfred is to batman, tbh.

anyway if i was gonna write a fanfic id have all three meet in high school and get up to shenanigans bc roxanne could absolutely bridge the gap between megamind and metroman