#while also being The Most Human of them all. in some ways that are so wonderful and some that are so infuriating

[erose-this-name]

Kabru is such a brilliantly written character, one of the best in Dungeon Meshi (which is a high bar as it is, most of the main cast are similarly genius). 

His thing is that he is very friendly and nice confident and maxed out his charisma stat, but is also kinda ambitious and manipulative. But not in an overtly malicious way. Which kinda scares me.

The most impressive thing about him, writing wise, is that it’s all show-don’t-tell. He very frequently uses his charm and empathy and understanding of how people think in really clever ways. We’re often walked through his thought process of how he does these social deductions. We’re never told he’s scarily charismatic, besides other characters reacting to him being scarily charismatic.

Kabru is a natural-born leader and social engineer with superlative skills in both, which makes him the perfect foil for Laios, who’s too autistic and unambitious that he’s not even the de facto leader of his own party that he’s the official leader of. He’s so bad at leadership that his party just, sort of, doesn’t have a leader. They just kinda argue and do stuff.

What’s also neat, and perfectly inline with Meshi’s general theme of clever and logical subversions of fantasy tropes, is that Kabru’s character design in no way clues us in on this fundamental character trait of his.

He’s sort of a human fighter / knight archetype, which in the language of fantasy RPGs is a class most would associate with being a white bread jock, chivalrousness optional. (Laios subverts the same trope in the same way. It’s really funny that the walking exposition dump of the group looks like the character creator default preset spec’d as the most generic class available.)

If Kabru was a bard or noble and Laios a wizard, their character traits would be far less interesting

Even better is that we would expect someone who looks like Laios to have Kabru’s personality, and vice versa. Their character designs are flipped; the confident super charismatic leader is a short wide-eyed twink, while the slightly naive and very autistic monster enthusiast is a tall conventionally attractive Aryan lookin’ mf. (see what I mean by Kabru being such a good foil for Laios?? No wonder everyone ships them, they’re perfect for each other!)

Yet, their designs also work for them. Kabru just has a face that’s easy to talk to, his piercing blue eyes and curly hair gives him a false sense of naïveté, while his iconic 👁️👁️ expression hints that there’s actually quite a bit going on inside his head. Meanwhile, Laios believably looks like someone who doesn’t know what hair conditioner is. His armor’s collar gorget thing is also pretty dorky.

You can’t trust people like that (I mean overly charismatic people with a manipulative streak, not blue-eyed twinks) because you can’t know what their real motives are. You can’t know they aren’t pretending, you can’t know they aren’t trying to or haven’t already manipulated you. How could you? When he has so much more social intelligence than you do, average socially awkward Tumblr user? He’s touched all the grass!

In episode 16 (spoilers, btw) Kabru finally meets Laios’s party, who he’s been trying to find and fight for the better part of the season, and he just decides that no confrontation is necessary. Like, immediately upon meeting the guy. Just from how Laios looked at him. He figures that since Laios didn’t seem to recognize him, they either have never met meaning he has the wrong guy, or Laios forgot meaning he didn’t think it’d be a big deal, meaning the treasure was a trap or something. Which is pretty in line with Kabru’s established ability to always roll nat 20s for every charisma and deductive reasoning check, so cool.

But he doesn’t even seem curious about which of those cases is true. (He might be interested to find out some of the treasure wasn’t dangerous, but accidentally got thrown off a bridge). Much to Rin’s dismay, he’d rather just not bring it up because that could upset the leader of the party he might be working with for the foreseeable future.

Actions speak louder than words. So, all we really learn in this scene is that Kabru’s goals and M.O. can change on a dime, and that he values reputation and political capital more than money and vengeance. More than his own party’s desire for those things. Not only is he someone with a silver tongue, but he knows its value and is determined to use it at every opportunity.

Kabru and his party might not be very good at fighting or surviving in the dungeon, in fact their frequent TPKs are a running gag. But, he also doesn’t need to be when he can just manipulate Laios’ and Shuro’s much more proficient parties into helping him.

So far, Kabru seems like the most likely one to become king of the dungeon or whatever the mcguffin is. He is the only protagonist so far who has said that’s an actual goal of his. He’s said that he doesn’t think someone like Laios who isn’t a born leader should get it.

In fact, Kabru seems to have very strong opinions on what kinds of people should be allowed to adventure in the dungeon, evidenced by the fact that he murdered an entire party over it, justified or not. Kabru seems to think that Kabru is such a leader, and he’s probably right about that, but what kind of leader? 

What would Kabru do with that kind of power if he gets it? Because I’m not sure. All I know is that he is the kind of person with the ability to use real political power to its full potential. For good, or for very, very bad.

I’m not saying that Kabru is evil or that he’s secretly gonna be the surprise villain. I dunno, I haven’t read the manga. He could just be a nice guy that’s just, like, is like that. Everything he’s done could be justified by the explanations he’s given. He actually reminds me a lot of one of my IRL friends, and I’d trust him with my life.

But, I can’t help but feel a distinct sense of unease whenever he’s on-screen. I try not to trust confident natural-born leaders like him right out of the gate. I don’t like that our instinct as humans is to blindly follow them without thinking about it.

Tyrants and psychopaths also use confidence and charm and a friendly demeanor to make people think they’re a good guy, while manipulating everyone into thinking their self-serving actions are altruistic. Benevolent, confident, skilled leaders do exist. But there exists many more snakes wearing their skin. Wolves rarely bother with sheep’s clothing, they dress as shepherds and sheepdogs.

Anyway, my point is that I think it’s kinda neat that it’s possible to overthink this much about a character whose probably just a nice guy that is the mirror opposite of an autistic person. Writing that kind of ambiguity is hard, and employing it in this way is inspired.

[kamiversee]

Poll time! :)

Consider this an official masterlist for my upcoming works!

The F*ck List was a wonderful story to complete & I’m excited to write another sooo, take a look through these & lmk which one you’d like me to focus on next! :3

My Love Note (Choso x f!reader vs Gojo x f!reader)

In which your innocent crush on the cheeky cashier Gojo Satoru slowly swirls into something more complicated as his feelings for you are never clear. Then, in the midst of your complications, there’s your hating best friend Choso Kamo who also beings to act differently toward you.

F*ck The List (TFL Sequel) (the title is subject to possibly change)

A continued tale in which the truth of why you were forced to be a whore comes into the light.

The Better Brother (Guitarist!Choso x f!reader vs Boxer!Sukuna x f!reader)

When a night of drinking with your friends turns into a conversation about your nonexistent sex-life, you say you slept with the most random name to come to mind-- never expecting him to walk through the door moments later. Naturally, things only worsen for you when you eventually learn that this man is connected to your longtime unrequited crush.

Be My Cowboy (Cowboy!Gojo x f!reader)

A love story in which you fall for the infamous cowboy Gojo Satoru whose job was to protect you.

Sex For Business (The “Office” men of JJK x f!reader)

When you’re the epitome of sex-appeal, it’s easy for you to dominate the business world. Or at least, that was until you come across a specific company harder to climb to the top than others. Man after man– you know how to use and seduce them no problem. But for some reason, the men here are a bit more challenging than ones in the past. Especially the man whose position your arrival threatens; Nanami Kento.

Chase The Thrill (Geto x f!reader & Toji x f!reader)

By your senior year of College, you come to the realization that you’ve yet to experience even half of what you wished to within your College experience. This is to blame of your toxic older ex-boyfriend Toji Fushiguro, who was your first and only ever boyfriend that stripped you of all fun you wished to have. So when you decide to go out one night to live it up a little and somehow end up playing seven-minutes in heaven with some hot stranger, you don’t expect the name to show you an entirely new world in the most cliche way imaginable.

Not My Resident (Vampire!JJK Men x f!reader)

A JJK fanfic that takes place in the alternate universe of “Not My Neighbor”-- you knew they were doppelgängers but you didn’t care, they were hot. Plus, their human forms never batted an eyelash at you so, what’s so wrong with letting a few of them inside… of you.

No Strings Attached (Ino Takuma x f!reader)

According to others, fake dating your best friend always leads to a real relationship and eventual heartbreak but, you and Ino swore you two could pull it off with no real feelings involved.

Petals to Thorns (R. Shidou x f!reader & Sae x f!reader)

From young and innocent love to something complicated and ugly, Shidou Ryusei takes you to hell and back just to say those three stupid words to you. Then there’s Itoshi Sae who sweeps you off your feet the very second Shidou fucks up; who would you pick in the end?

Suck or Fuck (Vampire!JJK Men x f!reader)

They don’t call you the best detective around for no reason. While your methods may be a bit… unorthodox, people can’t say they don’t work. Human or Vampire, you always get your job done. So when crime rates in your city skyrocket; murders occurring around you, kidnappings, theft, and blatant Vampire attacks threaten your job– you make it your mission to get to the bottom of things... even if that involves sleeping with your suspects.

After the results of this poll, I’ll narrow it down to a top 5 and do another one since this is quite a long list! The winning fic will be my next focus after I finish all the whatif’s for TFL.

@KAMIVERSEE on tumblr. All Rights Reserved. Do not steal, copy, or translate any of my works.

[valsdelulucorner]

Leviathan head cannons<3

Leviathan is a shut in, its just a known fact but when he is alone, he likes to remain in his demon form. He finds it more comfortable and he likes to have his tail out to act as a extra hand. When someone knocks on the door, he goes back to his normal form because he is insecure that someone might make fun of him for being in his demon form, scared of judgement from his other brothers due to them remaining in their usual forms most of the time

When he is hanging out with you in either yours or his room, he slips back into his demon form, showing you that he is comfortable around you and trusts you to not make fun of him. This also happens when he is exited to show you something or rambles on about a new anime to you, him accidently slipping into his demon form without him noticing as he continues to ramble on to you. If you point this out, he will turn beat red and hide his face, his tail wrapping around his legs in embarrassment

If you guys do start dating and get to the point where you two cuddle, he will 100% be flustered the entire time your holding him in your arms, his face buried in your chest. He will quietly ramble on about something or another while his tail wraps around your legs, his arm holding onto your side while your fingers massage his scalp. After getting used to cuddling you more, he will open up abit more and get more used to being close to you, speaking up more while nuzzling his face into your neck

If you come down to devildom as a artist / tattoo artist, he will absolutely pull a anime nose bleed and faint. He constantly asks you to draw his favourite characters, willing to pay you for your works while commissioning the most out of pocket drawings from self inserts to fandom cross overs. He will absolutely take you on those art dates where you go to a art cafe and you both can make art while you eat anime style foods. If he sees that your getting abit overwhelmed with his requests, he will back off abit and apologize to you with a anime date and some food

At first meeting him, he is cold and distant to you, distrusting of the new human from the world above. He doesn't try to get close to you out of social anxiety and fear of you making fun of his interests, that's why he's so pissed off at his family for calling him a otaku Infront of you. Once he makes the pact with you and actually gets to know you, he starts to realize your one of the only people beside his online friends that wont make fun of his interests and his hobbies so he tries to cling to that

In Levi's concept, they said that he would of been yandere so i took that idea and ran with it. He might not kidnap you or hurt you like that in any way, but he will definitely cling to you and try to manipulate you into staying with him. You both have school today? He pretends he's asleep while holding you in his tail, laying on top of you in a clingy cuddle position to make sure you stay with him today. One of his brothers is talking to you? He will randomly push him out of the way and start nerding out on you, smirking slightly when his brother gets annoyed and leaves, letting him have you all to himself

Leviathan has a reptile like tail so it might be abit gross but he does shed every now and then. He normally gets agitated and violent whenever this does happen, refusing to leave his bedroom and getting violent whenever someone tries to come in and coax him out. The brothers warned you the first time this happened to not go into his room but you didn't listen, walking in to see him full on snake hissing at you. Once he realized it was you, he completely melted and just held onto you, whining about how his tail is irritating and hurting him. Get comfy because this man will NOT be letting you go during this period, cuddling into you protectively while his tail restlessly moved and rubbed against stuff. If you offer to help him, he will absolutely take this as "you will help him every time he sheds" and just steal you away every single time when he feels something happen.

Feeding more into the reptile side of him, he despises the cold whenever he is in his demon form. Before you came down to devildom, he used to cuddle into his brothers for warmth or he used to steal as many blankets he could get his hands on and rest in his little fort. When you both started dating, he found out how warm humans were and how much he liked cuddling. He loves cuddling up with you under a blanket while resting in the general area, watching a cheesy rom com anime while the fire roars in the background

He misses his player two whenever you go back up to the human world but gets overjoyed whenever you return, knowing that you brought human world snacks, candy, movies, gacha games, and new animes. Be prepared to not see the sun for a few weeks because your living off of the snacks you brought down. He adores you for doing this for him, even shedding afew tears after seeing how much you actually care about him

He may be antisocial and non confrontational but he will defiantly go out into social settings for you, weather it be a convention, a restaurant, a cafe, a mall, a concert, anything. He loves being with his player two

"Stay with me, Mayonaka no doa o tataki" "you.. you will even sing for me?!"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I love our otaku boy, i leaned alot into him being clingy with you but overall, i enjoyed writing about him!

Who should i write about next?

[mammons-hubby]

Hiiii :3 can I request platonic headcanons of the brothers with MC who is a child/preteen? You pick which age you're more confident writing, but like in this 8-12 yrs range if possible, thank youuu🩷

I wasn't sure if to make the Mc be cursed or the Mc being chosen for the program while still being a child. I chose the later, hope you enjoy!

The little Mc! :

When the one stepping out of the portal was a 10 year old, he almost passed out.

Lucifer

This wasn't in the papers, at ALL. There is just no way this could've possibly happen, maybe a child stepped into the portal by accident?

But no, once the kid was questioned it was obvious they were the exchange student they were expecting.

Internal panic.

This kid can't go to the basically highschool for demons, and there are no schools in the Devildom.

He has a really stern talk with the brothers so they behave in front of them.

Depending on your behavior he may start to get more grey hairs or take a big liking to you.

In the end he ends up really attached to you.

Pampers you, and denies he does it.

"What?! I gotta take care of a kid?!"

Mammon

New babysitter for Mc. He at first dislikes it a ton, but he has a soft spot for kids so he doesn't take it on you, but you notice he is kinda mad.

Very overprotective. Not at first but with just a couple of days he really starts to like you and can't leave your side.

Will bother you to get a reaction, if you start crying he may even give you some Grimm.

Teaches you how to gamble and gets strung to the ceiling.

Gives you piggybacks.

He may involve you in money schemes at first but never putting you in any actual real harm.

Great. A little kid with sticky fingers.

Leviathan

He doesn't want you anywhere near his room at first, afraid that you will break his precious figurines or destroy his Manga collection.

He still forces you to watch Anime, but in the living room with him. Once you get a liking to it he even dresses you up as his favorite characters.

Once he realizes you won't purposefully break anything of his, he invites you to his room.

You are mesmerized by the pretty lights, the bathtub and the giant aquarium, you say hi to Henry and he melts.

He sees you looking everywhere with awe, and he feels very proud of himself.

From then, you start to play games in his room and carefully read his Mangas.

Lets you play with his tail in his demon form. He finds it kinda funny but gets grossed out when you put it in your mouth and cover it up with saliva. Eugh.

He is kind of curious about you and how you ended up in the Devildom, for Lucifer to make such an oversight is clearly extremely bizarre, almost imposible.

Satan

You kinda look at him with your big baby eyes and he looks back at you, until one of you stops staring and go back to their normal routine.

He is chosen by Lucifer to be your personal teacher. He complains but knows he has to do it.

He will try and teach you things to bother Lucifer, succeeding in some and failing in others.

But he also takes a lot of effort to learn about human culture and teach you the right things and needed things for your mental development.

Will read for you to fall asleep. Devildom fairy stories and others, you seem to like grim stuff too but he reads this stuff to you very rarely. Doesn't want you to be negatively affected.

Buys you a cat onesie and takes lots of pics. Super adorable.

He finds you extremely adorable and amusing, like a little pet.

Asmodeous

He will dress you up in the prettiests of clothings, with the most expensive perfume and hair decorations.

You seem upset and he doesn't understand at first. You explain you don't like being treated like a doll for his amusement.

He thought he was doing everything right?

He thinks about it hard and realizes that maybe being treated like a thing rather than a person must've hurt you.

He apologizes to you and offers to take you to eat something yummy.

He tries and know more about your likes and dislikes. About the shows you like, your favorite colors, the type of clothing you like.

He takes you to buy some pretty clothes of your choosing, and even gets you a cute haircut.

You feel better when you can also express yourself. But from time to time you let him dress you as he wishes, you even match clothings sometime.

Okay so at first a bit dangerous to be near him, considering he sees you as small and chubby and feels the urge to put you in his mouth.

Beelzebub

Once he controls the urges, he is very sweet and caring.

Kinda blunt when he talks, but not clueless. He is not dumb so he knows that he shouldn't say certain things, but considering he is quite honest he lets slip some stuff, but inmediatly notices and fixes it.

Will share his food with you and sit you on his lap while you eat, sorry if you get slobber on your head.

Will make sure you get proper exercise so you grow strong.

Will also take you on piggyback rides wherever you'd like.

Considering he has a younger brother, he grows attached to you very quickly and would give his life for you, and take others.

Belphegor

It depends. If this is an universe where Belphegor doesn't have a vendetta against humans, he may not care too much at first, but then begins to like you.

He would take naps with you, and help you draw and color stuff.

He is the youngest brother, so he may teach you how to get away with being a brat, much to Lucifer's dismay.

Now. If it's the og timeline Belphie?

Things are difficult. He will still try and trick you into doing the pacts with his brothers. And you're a child, so you'd probably believe him.

He does feel more guilty about wanting to kill you, but in the end commits regardless.

It's up to you to forgive him or not. He did kill a child after all.

The brothers are all shocked at him, and disgusted.

It takes a while before things settle down after discovering you're Lilith's descendant.

They're very wary of leaving you with him in a room, in case he tries to hurt you.

But Belphegor feels extremely guilty. It eats him alive, he can't believe that his rage for humanity would make him kill a literal kid.

He tries to make it up to you by being present in your life. Helping you get ready on your day to day life. Taking you places you need to go, pampering you.

It's still up to you if you'll ever forgive him. Perhaps you do, but you'll never forget it.

You can still have a nice relationship with him though, it's not the end of the world. And your life is just beginning.

[entomjinx]

ONE PIECE CHAPTER 1113 SPOILERS!!!

It's tagged, it's in bold, if you didn't see it that's on you, but I'm sorry. (I'm also a little sick so sorry for how this starts to turn a little insane at the end.)

The reveal makes perfect sense. I've seen a few people struggle to figure out where it came from, so I'm gonna explain why it makes perfect sense and then pop off with some silly theory.

The first hint at the fact that the One Piece world is sinking exists all the way back in Long Ring Long Island.

That seems like an odd place to start, but it's the first time we're shown how drastic the tides of the ocean in the One Piece world can change. It's enough to separate entire parts of an island, causing it to appear as separate islands, once every year.

This implies that the tides change drastically over the course of much longer periods than it does in the real world.

After that, we get to Water Seven and discover that it's sinking, and that the Aqua Laguna is getting worse every year. We also know that it's caused by the water receding at Long Ring Long island. We're also outright told that they want to make the city float to stop the sinking problem.

We also, much later, see just how high Wano is in altitude.

Knowing that the Redline is so tall that it cannot be passed by any ship, cannot be broken through, and that Mariejois is sat right on top of it only adds to why it makes sense.

The world isn't "sinking," those some islands technically are(Water Seven, modeled after Venice), the tides are going to rise exponentially, and fast.

The force of the water would instantly drown most people, and those who survived would be those who could get to higher altitude islands, the sky islands, Fishman Island, or the Redline.

And because I know someone will try to point this out: land bound plant life can temporarily survive underwater, so Ohara's 5000 year old library tree would be fine for a a bit while submerged. There's lots of places with high tides who's plant life is just fine. (This also could explain why they'd be so willing to throw the books into the water. Not only was it to save them from the fire, but many of them had likely been submerged for long periods of time before. They knew the books would be find in the end because they had record of it. And well, it's mentioned in the chapter that Vegapunk means to finish what Ohara started.)

This would also explain how thorough the government was able to be with wiping out information from the void century. If only a few places can survive, then few things that tell the truth will survive, and even fewer people.

Do I think I'm 100% correct about any of this? Or course not, it's Oda. It's One Piece. Things are pretty much never predicted with 100% accuracy. But that's my thoughts on why it makes sense. Now we get into theory:

I have several points to make, so I'm going to write out the shortest ones first.

-This would, completely unironically, explain some of the centuries long racism campaign against fishman. They have no reason to fear the high tides. They will survive no matter what happens on the surface, and that scares the humans who cannot.

-I think that the extreme tide is a part of why the bridge is being built in Tequila Wolf. I believe the bridges purposes is to connect all the highest points of the world so there's no need for ships to carry them. This way, the Celestial Dragons will still have access to more slaves, produce, and anything they can't get within Mariejois on their own during the time period when everyone drowns.

-and now we get to the big one:

I think that the reason the 20 kings and their people destroyed the ancient kingdom is because the ancient kingdom had a way to survive the high tide while keeping the maximum number of people safe in the process, and while being able to save many more people. They refused to ask for help, and were instead afraid of the power the ancient kingdom held, so they sought to destroy it.

I think that the ancient "weapons" were instead a means of survival, and the reason they were hidden is because the 20 kings would have used them as weapons instead. We don't know much about the ancient kingdom, so much of this is speculation.

I think Pluton was a large enough ship that it could carry the entire kingdom. We've already seen some massive ships in One Piece, and Iceburg intends to turn the entirety of Water Seven into a ship, so the idea of an island sized ship isn't all that odd.

If you continue to think about it, why did none of the Beast Pirates manage to find Pluton while searching for the poneglyph in Wano? I have two theories for this based on the fact that we're told Wano would have to open it's borders in order to get Pluton. If the walls would need to be torn down, then we can continue to assume that Pluton is massive.

Theory one is that Pluton is is hidden within the mountain itself, and that the mountain was man-made to hide the ship. Not only would the walls need to come down, but the mountain itself would have to be destroyed. They would also need a way to survive the high tide without it, so creating a mountain that is high enough in altitude to keep them safe would have been a necessity. I think this is the more believable of the two theories.

Theory Two is that Pluton is Wano. The entire island is the ship, and many of Wano's people descended from the people of the ancient kingdom or those they rescued. This one is much less likely, but it's still a possibility in my mind.

We know that Poseidon was the former mermaid princess, and that the current one is Shirahoshi. She can control the sea kings. Why would this be important? Because if everywhere floods, then the sea kings, who are already very large creatures, suddenly have an influx of room to move, food to eat, and places to lay eggs. It would cause a population spike. *However,* that would cause an ecological disaster within the food chain. The sudden influx of sea kings would be desperate for any food they can get their hands on, and many would likely die of starvation. This means they need some way to repel them from the large ship.

We don't know anything about Uranus yet, so I've nothing for you.

Another thing we know about the ancient kingdom is that they seemed to be friendly with everyone, or at least it's implied via how many friends Joy Boy made.

Fishman: Along with the bonus of having Poseidon, the fishman also have access to the tree resin from Sabaody. Should the ship(Puton) or the ancient kingdom ever need to submerge in order to keep people safe or to have a temporary air bubble, They'd be safe.

Lunarians: The people who originally lived on top of the redline. Sinee the redline is high enough to not sink, it would have made sense for them to be trade partners.

Skypians and Shandians: Another race with wings. if the tides really got too high, then they could join them in the sky sea for a time. They could also trade with them.

Minks: Zunesha was a friend of Joyboy's. We don't know much else about that situation, but it's likely that Zunesha is plenty tall enough to keep the minks from drowning, and they could have traded often as well. Maybe Zunesha was even able to do something similar to the giants.

The Giants: This feels like the most important one to me, and not just because of recent chapters. Obviously the giants think very highly of Nika/Joyboy, but it's also very likely that Elbaf is tall enough to survive the high tide, and if not, the the giants themselves are. If you look at what's known about current giants, some of them are tall enough to walk along the sea floor, and the ancient giants were so large that it's said they pulled and moved continents.

Why is that bit important? Because a ship the size of an entire island would likely need a lot more than sails buoyancy to move quickly. The ancient kingdom was pulled by the giants. They moved to different areas to rescue people and to trade so that life continued while the tide was at it's highest point.

Another random thing that supports this is the giant's vehement hatred towards Charlotte Linlin. She has Totto Land, which is supposed to be a place where all races live in harmony, but it would be a mockery of what the ancient kingdom was like, and for giants, who live about 300 years, that's only a few generations back. They would still have stories about the ancient kingdom and remember the truth.

Again, I don't think anything I predict will ever be 100% accurate, but I hope you enjoyed my rambling nonetheless.

[onepieceoftheoceanblues]

Batfam X One Piece Crossover AU

Someone mentioned this sort of au and I went Insane a bit ^-^' hope you guys enjoy!

Okay so a Batfam in the One Piece world au and how I think it would work/go;

I imagine the Batfam were whammied into an entirely new dimension while on patrol so we have the full costumed roster (but not the full extended clan cuz that's so many people lol) so we have Bruce/Batman, Dick/Nightwing, Jason/Red Hood, Tim/Red Robbin, Damian/Robin, Cass/Black Bat, Stephanie/Batgirl (you can pry Steph still being batgirl out of my cold dead hands), and Duke/Signal.

The First thing they do is figure out where they are, an island in something called the ___ blue (idk which they should be in lol, but it's best if they start in a blue I think), and are very obviously not in their world. (I'm gonna say for the sake of Plot either One Piece doesn't exist in their world or none of them have watched/read it because that would be too easy lol)

Ofc the second thing they do is try to find a way home and gather info but uh, they quickly realize this world doesn't have the best tech around to build something to take them home, and places/people they can get to would be either hard to find or in a place that's very dangerous to get to (Vegapunk is their best bet but... not really an option for right away due to mentioned reasons).

They think of asking this "World Government" for help for all of two seconds, before finding out how fucking awful and corrupt the whole system this world has and nixes that idea right in the bud. They're Vigilantes for a reason, after all, and know corruption in governments very well. So honestly, their best bet is either trying to go along and find someone that can help and materials, or waiting for their people from their world to come and get them.

(SO much more under cut im sorry Brain went Brrr)

Tbh it must be so wild to be in this world too tho, for some many reasons. It's close enough, but then you factor in all the different races and species, and how the world is set up. Add the fact most of it not as advanced as their world, except in some places which it is? And how half their technology runs on... snails?????? What a baffling world. Also, people can have powers and are gained from something called Devil Fruits which give you powers in exchange that the sea can and will kill you, except for some races have natural powers due to their biology.

They decide pretty quickly in world of water to not eat the Devil Fruits. Also keep an eye on Duke because his powers, while not too flashy, arnt a devil fruit, and they have no way to explain how he has them, and how he can manipulate both light and shadows.

Its probs also so jarring because like, in their world, they are used to being the peak of what humans can do. They keep up with metas and aliens and are cosidered among the best of the best for a reason, and while they often have to compensate with gear and tech, at the end of the day they can only go so far as humans.

However, it's different in this world. Clearly even though there are humans, their biological standards are different then their Earth, and even just humans without powers can go far beyond their own norm if they train and work hard enough for it.

The Batfam could easily handle the Blue's pirates and marines, and probs all cannon fodder marines, and while I think they could deal with a good chunk if not most people in Paradise baring the strongest in the first half of the grand line, there's no way they could deal with the New World even with their best gear and in peak condition for them. Which sucks because their best bets are likely in that Sea.

Idk where I'd see them, my heart wants them to be pirates of their own little run pirate crew, but I could easily see them being picked up by a canon crew or turning Revolutionaries in exchange for getting help find a way home, or pirates with connections to Revs. The only thing I can't see is them as Marines, as stated a few paragraphs above, lol, but also I figure they run into the law and go fuck you guys and what you stand for and end up with bounties so they are wanted anyways. But either way they are gonna be progressing and trying to find a way home while getting stronger.

I imagine Haki is the first thing they really try to get down after leanring about it. Idk how they managed to find out about it either in the blues or so early in the grand line, but they are expert information gatherers so they do and immediately try to learn it (either tracking someone down who knows it or how to unlock it, or finding adequate documentation in how to do it) and get to work. It's their best chances in getting a leg up in this world.

And they do unlock it! They're pretty much all geniuses, and they already have experience learning weird skills and manipulating their mental will (they can block out telepaths and have strong willpower in general against mind control canonically), so learning to manifest it into Observation and Armament Haki is less about how hard it is and more just if they can (After all they aren't from this world) and how to apply it. Thankfully, it seems they can.

Duke's Observation makes his future vision so much more powerful, so much he actually has adverse effects to it at first before he gets used to it. Observation is great, just helps what they already natrually know but Armament is very much beloved, instant armor that helps you hit harder even against normal people, let alone devil fruit users!! They are big fans.

Conquerors Haki off the table rn because A.) they don't know if they have it and B.) Who or whatever they learned Haki from didn't explain it or have it to explain so that's put to the side for now, but I'm unsure who, if any of them, have it. Maybe Bruce and Jason, and maybe Damian? I feel?? I could also see Dick unlocking his use of it in a fit of protective rage? Im largely Unsure.

I also think it would be neat if the longer they are here, their bodies adapt to this world more and more until they start being able to past their peak of what they could do before and just... keep going. It varies from each batfam member how they feel on their biology changing over time, but they can't do more than just accept it. At least it will help them survive.

Also, they have to adapt in more ways than one. They arrive and their best gear, fully stocked and mostly undamaged, but the longer they are here the more they run out of supplies and things wear down so they have to figure out how to get/make more or alternate for something better. Batarangs thankfully, while having to be made of a different material, can be made from any island with a good blacksmith who's willing to let them use their forges to make them themselves (cuz having to commission them would take money they don't actually have)

Their suits thankfully are fine and reinforced, but over time they're gonna have to likely find a fabric that could replace the stuff their suits are made of or just switch to diffrent outfits inspired by their suits. Dick's Escrima Sticks can't be charged, so they end up not electrified until they find a way to do it later. Jason's guns inevitably run out of ammo then even if he makes his own, they get just damaged so he's forced to switch to the local pirate guns, thankfully not all are just flintlocks.

Damian's sword is apparently very high grade here and is very smug about it, though annoyed other "Swordsmen" keep wanting to know more about his blade and where he learned to use his "weird style". Tim gets a boa staff that has the ends tipped in sea stone.

Their styles also adapt over time. I have this vision of Dick getting his hands on these boots, probs with Dial technology, that let him jump higher and bounce off of walls if he times it right. Jason with Dial guns. They start picking up the 6 powers as well, not all, but Geppo and Soru become very heavily utilized. I think one of them should end up with Voice of all Things, either Cass or Duke, because it's fun lol.

Im... unsure about devilfruits, but I think it would be intrestin to explore if somone ate one, likely out of despration or having little choice. Unsure who or what fruit but just would be neat i think, expecially dealin with the side effects. Tho Dick with a Wind Logia or a winged Zoan of sorts sounds SO interesting. (Can you tell who my favorite batfam memeber is? ^-^')

As for Ponyglaph Runes, Bruce and Tim def find out about it and try their best to tackle it, but It's REALLY hard to learn an entirely different language with unfamiliar sentence structure when you have absolutely no keys or references to work with. They learn of Nico Robin, and aren't stupid so figure it's likely an awful cover-up or more to the story, and decide to lowkey make it one of their goals to track her or any other knowledge on how to learn it down. If they get even a bare hint of a clue on how to translate, I'm sure they'd figure it out over time, but Robin is their best bet.

They find out about Whitebeard, and they are quietly glad Bruce's adoption problem isn't that bad but think its funny. Dick is beloved by all and makes enough friends and allies to rival Luffy's charisma, it's a skill man. I can't decide if their Epithets in this world are just their Vigilante names, and they stay masked, or they get knew Epithets and decide there's no point in hiding, or a mix of both but yee.

The OP world either speaks "Common" they can all magically speak now with some diffrent launages in diff parts of the world, OR Japanese, which some of them know and have to teach the others, OR a weird mix of English and Japanese. There's a point in time that people think Damian is Nico Robin's child or sibling because of the Robin thing, and he's a little demon child. Or hell they still do, and he's very livid while Robin is both amused but also scared for this child who is being tied to her.

They still dont kill for the most part, baring Jason, but some of them are pushed into it and they have to figure out what that means for them and what it means moving fowrard with their no kill policy. Some do better with it, some dont. Bruce still hasnt and wont kill, same with Cass, and Damian decides he doesnt want to but will if absolutly no other choice is offered, thankfully they havnt let him had to make this choice yet. (I just have so much thoughts about a assassin raised child deciding they dont want their hands more red now they have the choice).

One or more of them should end up pulled into the War at Marineford and Ace should be saved because I will try to fit a Ace Lives plot into everything lol

Overall I think if this was a fanfic the plot would be a lot of exploring the differences in their worlds, how they adapt and overcome, and trying to find a way home while also coming to like this world and overturning corruption and fucking over the government. I think them with the Strawhats or another crew would be fun, either as allies or joined idk, but I think with them as their own crew would be cool as well. If they join or ally with a crew Bruce lowkey adopts everyone, and he's given SO much shit for it but christ so many of them have such sad backstories and he wants to help

I think in the end they should get to find their way home and like no time has passed, but they're so changed, and arguably considered powered now because lol, but find a way to go back and visit safely.

Sorry for the word vomit but man im in love with this idea. Feel free to comment or send Asks with questions or comments about the au! Please Reblog, and not just like, as they do nothing <3

[balkanradfem]

I just had an Experience in the water.

Heading home from my garden where I re-planted new tomatoes (because my original ones all got destroyed by the frost, RIP), I was feeling a little dizzy, light-headead and woozy. I figured putting myself inside the cold river was the best solution for all of these things, so I changed my course to the secluded edge of the fields, where trees and bushes were guarding the ground. And, if one was not afraid of slipping and rolling down, water could be accessed as well.

I hid myself into the bushy riverside area, got most of my clothing off and slowly tipped inside the river. It was colder than usual, due to the recent frosty days, so it took me a few tries to get myself completely submerged. I usually make sure nobody can see me; this time there was a small group on the other side of the river, but they seemed to be children, and I don't believe they had noticed me at all.

I was having a great time up to my neck inside the icy water, when something hit the back of my thigh. A log must have somehow bumped into me, I thought, and I turned around trying to see it in the water, when something poked its head out and swam around me. A dog somehow swam here, I thought even more confused, but then she turned her head around, and looked at me, and I realized it was a beaver! A whole big grown up beaver was right next to me, looking at me! I gasped and stared mesmerized, while she stared back at me good-naturedly, for a good few seconds, both of us in shock. Then she turned to swim away, but I couldn't watch her departure because something else got my full attention. A big bird was flying right at me. I saw the big wing span before I saw the head, and it was – a heron. I was immediately thrilled by this, because herons will not come close to me, I had herons offendedly fly away if I so much as looked at them from 500 meters distance. This one was already so close! Come to me, I thought with satisfaction, but then, already so close, the heron realized I was there, and changed direction mid-flight, flinching away from my offensive presence. It made a big circle to the other side of the river instead. I could still see it from up close!

Also during this entire encounter, I was almost completely naked, was only wearing my underwear. The animals were also not wearing anything so we were all even. I've never seen a beaver, or a heron, from such short distance before. I don't think this kind of thing could happen in the warmer months, I think the animals only relax this much in the river when the water is not very human-hospitable, so they don't expect to run into a whole human being while chilling on a Saturday evening.

My first interaction with a beaver was an underwater headbutt! It wasn't strong, but I can still feel the place on my thigh where she bumped into me, it was so damn cool.

Now, the mystery remains: why were both the beaver and the heron heading for this exact location, at the same time? My first thought was that maybe heron was hunting the beaver, but it doesn't make any sense, the beaver is way too big to be prey. Then I thought, maybe all of this was a coincidence. Maybe the beaver was just there to get some of the floating logs, because she needed some building material. And the heron was using this spot as her usual chilling place, and I rudely occupied it before she could land there. But then it hit me.

They were heading for the same spot, at the same time, because they had a meeting. They were secret friends, and this spot was their hangout spot. They were gonna chill together and discuss recent river news. I sadly was not accepted into their friend group as I was the wrong species and also did not announce that I would be there. I scared them away, my only hope is that they had a chance to gossip and rant about me later.

[1ightsen]

Maxie Infodump #1 - Little known character details from official media

I promised to post some of my maxie infodumps and headcannons, and I think I'll start it off with something simple. His official character bio that was hosted originally on the first release of ORAS (this will be ORAS Maxie focused)

here is a transcript for easy reading: "Maxie is the leader of Team Magma, the team seeking a world ideal for humanity. He pays attention to even the smallest of details, and is quite sensitive in some regards. He has a habit of describing situations in numerical terms. He possesses a cool-headed outlook, thinking that some sacrifices cannot be avoided if he is to achieve his goals." Okay, so first, after looking at the original japanese version of this page,

小さいことまで細かく気にする、神経質なところがあり、さまざまなことを数字を交えてあらわすのが口癖。 目的を果たすためなら、犠牲が出ても仕方ないと考える冷徹な思想の持ち主でもある。 The one word in here I wanted to be sure of was 'sensitive' since it can have many meanings, and the original japanese gives us some possibilities with:

Personally I think (being) highly strung is the most likely option here, but either way its an interesting character trait. And we all know he certainly builds up frustration and tension and explodes a bit like a volcano. Even if he does manage to correct himself afterwards.

~ ANYWAYS ~

Now that we have the bio, let's break it down a little and look at some fun examples of it in action! Maxie has a habit of describing situations in numerical terms. This typically comes out more when he is nervous or stressed. Here are some examples: Ill just take ORAS as an example here since this is already getting pretty long... In ORAS after fighting him at mt chimney, he lets you know in a specific numerical way, how much he fell behind:

And then again, when you battle with him and lose in the Battle Resort where he just has to let you know the situation in numerical terms by giving you the exact lose chance according to his own calculations of course:

"So the great Maxie has fallen, even when battling alongside your team... I shall commit this curious phenomenon to memory. It had less than a 1 percent probability of occurring, you know."

this culminates in a really interesting interaction between him and courtney after the delta episode. While It's pretty clear that Maxie cares for his team and especially his admins, he definitely struggles when faced with his crying admin, and being unsure of what to say, he settles with a numerical quantifier again.

He assesses the situation, and decides to comment on how MUCH courtney is crying. His "paying attention to even the smallest details" trait also ties into this habit of his, and is probably why he jumps to conclusions a little too early because of small things he's noticed. Accusing Tabitha of wanting his spot as leader, just because he disagreed with him is one of those situations.

Pokemon Masters EX has a lot of new scenes with Maxie, and I would love to talk all day about them, but I'll just pick out one here, and that's from the "A pasio Spectacle" event. In this event, Maxie overhears team break members simply say the word 'glasses' and instantly jumps to the conclusion that not only did they want to talk to him, but that they noticed his "magnificent mega glasses" and would like to hear a lecture on how they were scientifically made.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZmmaf9bhD8&t=144s here's a link to watch it, its worth it :D He certainly picks up on small details, but tends to miss the bigger picture sometimes, which is fun because I believe archie tends to do the opposite. Perhaps his mega glasses are actually designed to reflect this, because they work like horse blinders, and keep maxie looking straight ahead (trust me, I've made a pair of these, and you cannot see someone standing to your immediate side). Looking straight ahead is also relevant to his life goal, of ensuring the bright future of humanity, and as he says: "propel humanity to greater heights of progress and evolution." And that concludes my infodump regarding this one little bio that is no longer available without the wayback machine, and I just wanted to share it with any other Maxie fans out there :D Next I think I might tackle the bigger topic of how Archie and Maxie have so many fun contrasts in personality and more. and then maaayyybe I'll feel comfortable enough sharing my headcannons and theories. But only if people want more lol, I am not good at writing big posts :>

[66sharkteeth]

Weekly thoughts!

Hooboy, the big episode! First off, I think everyone knows by now that you probably shouldn't read these if you haven't read the latest episode, but I ESPECIALLY mean that this week! Talking about some way bigger than usual spoilers.

Phew, this was a big one, both from a writing and drawing perspective. I actually spent a full day on that last panel alone, but writing it took way longer than usual too. Going back and forth between Bell's speech and Jericho's backstory played perfectly like a movie in my head, but it was really hard to portray it as a comic and it was one of the few times I was struggling with the limitations of the format. I think I pulled it off though, since everyone seemed to follow along fine! So while it was probably just a neat scene to everyone else, I'm rather proud of that haha.

As for the actual contents of the episode, I'm also glad everything hit w/ the majority of the audience for the most part. I know a handful were confused about if that was Bell or Jericho who did that, but to those people, I remind you it's been loooong established Jericho can control his extensions (Bell, Charlie, and Claude. Remember, they all took injections of Jericho's blank space?). Also on that note, Bell does not have her own scion... Only Rex and Jericho do. Bell, Charlie and Claude all took injections of Jericho's blank space, thus get to borrow some of his power. I recommend re-reading ep 80 if you need a refresher.

I do consider this ep kind of a big reveal of Jericho's true colors. I mean, you guys have known he's the main villain for ages now, but this is the ep that reveals his "better world for blanks" act is kind of a façade and what he's really seeking is a worse world for humans. The fall of humans benefitting blanks is just kind of a bonus. I'm glad a few people caught onto this with the fact that one of the worst horrors he experienced was having his autonomy taken away from him, then he proceeds to do just that to Bell.

And speaking of Jericho's horrors- Before this season launched, I dropped a bunch of hints about upcoming things. One of them was that the most disturbing scene (in my opinion) was coming up. I was actually referring to what happened to Kallie. I'm not sure if it was as disturbing to everyone else (I totally get like if Claude's leg thing fucked people up more), but being evaporated into nothingness but not dying was an existential dread that really fucks me up haha. If it fucked even a couple of other people up, then I did my job.

I don't have too much else to say about the contents of the episode. It was so hard to bite my tongue for weeks as everyone predicted pretty much every character but Desmond was gonna get it. I'm sorry I don't have too much else to say about him right now given what happened, but I definitely will in the upcoming weeks.

I guess the only other note I have is I might as well address something that bugs me slightly- It's definitely a minority but there's a handful of people who seem done with the series because "too many things go wrong." To which... I'm not sure what to tell ya. I'm fine with critique and criticism to be clear, but honestly, this is one thing I'm actually really confident I'm good at balancing. I'm not sure where people are coming from with "nothing good ever happens in this series" when this season alone has had probably the cutest and fluffiest scenes. Rex has a canon girlfriend, he had his first kiss with her, Desmond was reunited with his sister and learned to accept himself, Lyss learned to move past her trauma and accept blanks, Rex was reunited with Shnee, Rex's scion turns out to be a puppy dog w/ a crush. I'm aware a lot of these got kind of crushed with this latest ep...but that's.. kind of. the. point??? That's how you write tragedy and impactful scenes??

I dunno, maybe this is personal to me because it's ALWAYS bugged me when someone tells me they think a show is bad because it's "too dark." Like no... It's not *bad* because it's too dark, you just don't like dark themes, and that's okay. I TOTALLY get if CoB has gotten too dark for some people- it's definitely hit some hard themes and subjects, but I don't like to accept that as a critique. It just means it's not for you and that's okay. There's a ton of other great comics that are more light-hearted! I think the TLDR of this is it will always annoy me when people say something is bad just because it's not their taste.

Now. That said... everyone is completely valid in their hate of Jericho. I, however, still love him.

[bonzos-number-1-fan]

TMAGP 13 Thoughts: Phone Bug

A big episodes for small reasons. Not much world-shaking happened but just enough was said about just the right things. A lot to get into in this one around the incident. We're starting to have the curtain pulled back. Just a crack right now, but that's just more reason to be cracked.

Spoilers for episode 13, and all of TMA, below the cut.

Not a huge amount to touch on in the date portion of the episode other than a couple of sentences. Yeah, Sam is a gifted burn out that's sad about not getting experimented on. Same old same old. But Celia has a baby. Jack being Celia's kid I wasn't expecting mostly because of how that figures into her timeline. She's very heavily implied to be TMA's Celia but based on what she said if she is then she's been in TMP's universe for at least 4 years. A "couple of wild years" and Jack's "just over a year old". Plus 9 months and it's a lot longer than it might've appeared. None of that stuff tripped Freddy's possible lie detector either that I heard.

If you work under the assumption that the voices are who most people think, and they started roughly when they arrived, then that's a fairly major time discrepancy. The voices are about a year old but Celia has been around for 4.

However, it doesn't strictly rule that out either. Firstly, we know that moving between universes isn't actually one-to-one time-wise. Anya Villette went backwards 2 weeks when she crossed over. So them arriving at different times could support the idea that she's TMA's Celia further. Her general explanation of events could also be explained by this too. If she's not there willingly, or is there willingly but it didn't quite go to plan, a couple of wild years while you get your footing in a world you don't belong to isn't far fetched. If she was there looking for the voices then her showing up so relatively late could be explained by her baby too. So it's certainly not a dead and buried theory yet.

While Jack isn't Jack Barnabas he and the voices are about the same age. If people want to go rabid over that.

Gwen and Lena's little chat has a similar amount to really dig into. It's nice to see Gwen dealing with it all, and it's annoying we still don't know who died, but Lena does have a lot to say in a few words.

The world is full of opposing forces, some benevolent, most not. In order for the wheels to keep on turning, all these forces need to be monitored and balanced. That is where we come in.

This probably the most information we've had on the OIAR to this point from the show itself. I think most of this was safely assumed before this point. They've been doing a lot of monitoring, categorisation, and the only responses we have seen have been tamping major spikes down. A world of opposing forces is also a given. We are being led to believe that these are analogous to the 14+1 but there being benevolent ones if that's true is a big mix up. If you take the above timeline idea a step further and say the 14+1 arrived much earlier (or it doesn't matter because of how they're temporally weird) the benevolent ones could be native to TMP. They could be all TMP had.

Her assertion that the OIAR is a balance on these forces is interesting. Beyond the obvious stuff it also leans into an idea I've been throwing about regarding Starkwall. In the perception of Starwall might not really be the whole picture. The San Pedro Square massacre could've been an easy scapegoat to pin on them for the OIAR to split with them. A split caused by a disagreement in ethics. Starkwall thus far hasn't been shown to have an incredible disregard for human life based on Ep 7. The OIAR definitely has been. It could just be a PR move because the massacre was too big to contain but that feels like the least interesting way to handle this. A faction that's all in on monster hit men splitting with a faction who is against it has more room for interesting drama and worldbuilding IMO.

Balance was also a very large aspect of TMA in the end. The OIAR working towards that balance isn't as noble a goal as it might sound. Or it at least has the potential to be an incredibly misguided goal.

Okay, with all that mostly out of the way onto the incident itself. I enjoy this one a fair bit. Very different to what's come before it but with another recurring theme. We're starting to see a couple of patterns emerge now although it's too early to start naming things. I don't think there is a lot to really get into but this one was written by Alex, had a new VA, and was a recurring idea. Which does all point to this being quite important as these things go. All the episodes will likely tie up quite nicely in the end but this one seems quite relevant currently. In any case this was a fun one and I'm kinda curious how some of the elements within it will tie together. Mainly the gambling and insects.

Also, super weird they went with Zorrotrade for this. Because that's a real thing. Or was a real thing? It might be dead now, but still.

Post-incident chat has nothing I really want to comment on. More Alice and Sam is always good, even if Alice is trying really hard to not seem very upset.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Incident/CAT#R#DPHW Master Sheet

DPHW Theory: 4622 doesn't seem particularly noteworthy. It's interesting from a thematic angle how this differs from Rolling With It. Both obviously very linked to gambling but this one lacks the compulsion elements. Which is a good indicator that H is linked to that sort of thing. Not that I need to convince myself of that further.

CAT# Theory: 3. Insert screams et cetera, et cetera. More seriously there still isn't a convincing pattern to this. Although I might be swinging back to my original tria prima and/or triple deity interpretation.

R# Theory: B is where I was thinking it'd end up while listening. So that's nice. Not much to add to this. Much like with DPHW the more information that lines up with the theory the less there is to talk about it because I've already done the hard bit.

Header talk: Gambling (Application) -/- Murder. Other than Application being a pretty weird Subsection I'm not sure there is much to dig into here. Although it does likely confirm he's dead. Which does make it a little strange that his statement wasn't read by one of the Freddy lot.

[mdhwrites]

Have you seen the leaked TOH pilot and pitch bible yet? IMO it’s crazy how most of it is better than the final product.

I have! And... I don't know if I entirely agree with that.

What I found most fascinating about it is that a lot of the contradictions and issues of scope with TOH that doomed it are still in the pitch bible itself. Just some quick examples of what I'm talking about: When talking about themes, they talk about Fantasy versus Reality but it's as shallow as it is in the show. After all, one of the episode concepts pitched within it features a plot that has Luz literally going "This is just like in my fanfiction!" and being better able to handle it because of that.

It builds up the emperor of the land and Belos (known as Oberon) when talking about them but NONE of the plotlines include Oberon in the episode pitches or even mention the coven system for that matter. They are still barely a thing to the show with the only episode concept about that part of the show being the one about William.

An utter lack of real stakes like how King has to face the deep crises of a decision of either being a lackey to the people he used to run with while also losing any chance to ever reclaim his lost power... Or he can save Eda and Luz and lose the chance to work with these people again. That's not really a compelling decision, is it?

The pitch also claims that the show will mostly be about Luz and Eda's relationship and how Luz's determination will push Eda to be a better person... And most of the episodes pitched are still not actually about the two spending time together. Just Eda making Luz upset so she goes off to do her own thing, just like the same problem as in the actual series.

You actually have MORE characters in this version which sucks harder for trying to narrow things down, especially since more of them are disconnected from each other than before. At least Boscha, unlike Pascha, has a connection to literally anyone in the main cast.

You also have stupidity with your magic still. "Look! I need to work hard to make small objects float!" And apparently that's enough to make all of Hexside lose their fucking minds. WHY!? In 90% of settings, that is as basic as the light spell Luz learns. It's why it's one of the first spells Harry learns.

Oh and let's not forget "Almost all known portals to the human realm have been severed" but apparently Amity has access to one of those known portals freely enough to attend two schools. It's a small thing but it would cause problems in theory.

BUT.

I will give credit to this: Luz is MUCH more compelling in this version. I think if there is something that is just unequivocally true, it's that. She is way less inoffensively nerdy, instead her interests being more upfront and troublesome, helping explain why that would be why she is rejected and not because, you know, she puts people in danger. Also her rise to power is just better.

Arguably, Luz in canon is a chosen one essentially from episode FOUR onwards. Now, this is up for debate but being given a power almost out of nowhere, with no training, that no one else has, is usually a sign of a chosen in a narrative. Episode 4 is when she gets the light glyph. She doesn't work for it, it's not a big character growth moment, etc. like that. She mostly just oops into it. Making it that Luz ACTUALLY has to work for her magic and the show actually has to explore how the magic works, making it so she has something to learn is just strictly better, especially for the concept of her learning to be a witch. Eda would actually be able to teach her something instead of shrugging and going "Welp, good luck!"

I will say that the bible does also lean more into an adventurous aspect though. This version of episodes would easily be more fantastical and include more magic in them which would help the Isles not feel so much like our realm. I will say the fact that there's also active anti-human prejudice also would be good because then Luz being human would, you know... Matter. Not that the Isles is really given a personality even here besides the oppression they're theoretically under. It's still a very generic fantasy setting.

A lot of the rest though? It's really not that unique or different from the show itself. Lilith is almost exactly the same, Tibbles is just Gus but a demon, there are slightly more restrictions on things like being human or magic but, you know, the show didn't care about its one law, why would it care about three? Even Amity, who does look better on here, is only because it's on paper. This is literally just Amity's pitch in S1 after all. All the reasons people loved Amity are here.

Conceptually it is fine but I am surprised about how not only this got picked up but also how it was greenlit so heavily as to get a pilot animatic, with voice acting, based on these concepts. There's just some very clear cleaning up that needs to be done, basic questions on its own setting and own logic that isn't even playing into the comedy/fantasy angles that could let you let it pass. It's not all of them or even the majority but a skeptical prereader could even raise these basic sorts of inconsistencies like the ones I brought up above. After all, this is half a season's worth of episodes pitched and a fifth of them are still going to Amity and more of them have Luz directly interacting with King than they do Eda.

There's a final thing I have to bring up due to it being why I think the show changed so drastically from this pitch bible to its final form: This is way more complicated. TOH already has extremely decompressed storytelling and too many elements working in tandem. Meanwhile, every character is MORE complicated in this one and less connected to each other, necessitating that each, except maybe Eda, will take more time to get through their stuff. The writing team either had to sharpen how much they could do in an episode or simplify and congregate elements. We see this a LOOOOT in S2A, especially Escaping Expulsion, where it seems the writers went "Even with three whole seasons planned, we don't have enough time to do everything we want to, the way we like to, so we need to start cutting and simplifying even more than before."

One example of this that's really easy: In the pitch bible, Willow is a random witch who lives near Eda. Well that means she'll likely either take time out of a couple episodes as she's introduced or take up an entire episode just for herself. Tibbles is also just on their own, like in the show. Introducing both of these characters is not really an option. However, put them both into Hexside and suddenly you can introduce three characters at the same time organically, like we saw with I Was a Teenage Abomination.

Luz just being gifted magic is another element to this. Her having to actually experiment for every spell and having to have a real system to her spells limits what she can do but also means spending a LOT more time on her magic. You can't just have a flower open up and give her the glyph of the day as easily, nor have her be able to throw her spells around as she wants. Making it so she just needs reams of paper and/or a marker makes it a lot easier and simpler to have her start casting magic.

This version of TOH would have SHATTERED under its own scope while the current version mostly bends and cracks from it. However, if people do use this to go "FUCK DISNEY EVEN HARDER!" I won't be surprised. Grand scope ALWAYS looks better on paper than it does in action. It sounds epic and multi-faceted and complex. The problem is that it still has to fit its format and it is MUCH harder to execute on than a more simple concept.

There's a reason the only perfect project is the one you never do because you can promise the world without ever having to deliver. So, while it's nice to see an earlier version, I am by no means going to say this would have been a better version of TOH.

======+++++======

Sorry for anyone hoping for a link to the pitch bible btw. I just don't have one as I got given it as a document.

I have a public Discord for any and all who want to join!

I also have an Amazon page for all of my original works in various forms of character focused romances from cute, teenage romance to erotica series of my past. I have an Ao3 for my fanfiction projects as well if that catches your fancy instead. If you want to hang out with me, I stream from time to time and love to chat with chat.

A Twitter you can follow too

And a Kofi if you like what I do and want to help out with the fact that disability doesn’t pay much.

[elismor]

These days, it seems to be fashionable to refuse to believe that AI has any possible use beyond "plagiarizing" (please look up the actual definition of that word?) fic, so I wanted to share a brief list of questions I have asked MS Copilot and Perplexity as a demonstration that the bots can actually be leveraged to HELP fic authors.

Generate a list of one to two word writing prompts about things soldiers experience while at war.

using the list above, iterate to add 12 prompts that touch on the lighter side of life in a military unit

What are some good names for a secret society?

using the list above, iterate to include fraternal organizations comprised of soldiers

Generate a list of possible titles for a story about brotherhood, loss, and the horrors of war

re-generate the list above with a tone of sadness or mourning

To be clear, I have not used any of the results wholesale. The titles query in particular produced a set of very cliche and overly dramatic possibilities, no matter how many times I refined the ask. The prompts were pretty decent and I cherry picked them to add to other lists of prompts I've gathered, then used AI to randomly shuffle the list, divide it into sections of 25, shuffle those 25 in each section, etc. This was done to make personal bingo cards and I'm pretty pleased with the results. In the case of the question about the secret society, the AI tendency toward the absurd actually worked in my favor, though I did not like any of the answers well enough to choose it.

AI can be incredibly useful when you are stuck on something.

what are six ways a man might escape from a burning building?

generate a list of four types of injury that would prevent a person from walking, but would not be fatal

how might a robot respond to being teased by humans in a sci-fi setting?

in layman's terms, explain the science behind the concept of hyperspace travel in sci-fi

Those are all ways of generating ideas that you can then chew on and adapt for your own use rather than sitting and staring at a blank page or blinking cursor. AI can help you brainstorm.

I haven't tried this yet, but I bet it could also help you figure out what the cliches in any given genre are so you can either lean in or run away from them.  Something like "in Star Wars fan fiction, what are the most common ways Obi-Wan Kenobi and Commander Cody flirt with one another?" might produce a list of Codywan tropes that either sparks your imagination or makes you laugh hysterically.

There's a lot of worry that AI will replace artists and writers and, yeah, there are people who are using it to create things out of whole cloth. We're all entitled to our opinions on that (mine are deeply conflicting and still forming, tbh). But we shouldn't damn the tool because we perceive that people are abusing it. The tool can help you if you let it.

[underthehedge]

CTVT and a weird niche theory I fell down the rabbit hole about - giant transforming retroviruses???

This is a story about how a single line on a wikipedia page sent me down a rabbit hole of finding one scientist's fringe theory that's juuuust plausible enough to make me question everything while almost certainly being absolute fucking bunk.

Some background

So, on parts of tumblr at least we all know about Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumour, aka The Immortal Cancer Dog. For those who don't know, it's a cancer dogs get, usually on their junk, that unlike most other cancers, isn't made up of their own cells. The cells are actually all descended from this one dog or wolf that lived like 11,000 years ago and are, arguably, all technically that one dog. A dog that became a single-celled infectious disease.

We have a wealth of genetic, histological and observational evidence for this. As in, we know it what population of canids it came from, we know it's got a weird chromosomal structure compared to normal dogs, we know it's genetically distinct from the hosts. We also know it's not the only one out there: There's a similar thing in Syrian hamsters and also the famous Tasmanian Devil Facial Tumour Disease (DFTD).

Which made me pause when I was reading something on wikipedia about the devil facial tumour and saw a line mentioning that it was now known to be caused by a giant virus, much like CTVT. Which...huh? Oh I hadn't heard that afore.

Giant viruses

Ok so giant viruses are a thing and they're fuckin cool. They're a relatively recent discovery and comparatively huge, i.e. bigger than a bunch of bacteria. They were only discovered in 1981 and we still don't know an enormous amount about them but they're big and have large genomes and because of the way viruses are they're not easy to detect unless you're specifically looking for them.

They show up under microscopy (sometimes) and you can find them with genetic probes but you gotta already be looking for them to see that really. Current research though basically says they're more common than we think, just overlooked, and there's software out there that scans through genomic data to find sequences that might indicate their presence. There's even a possibility that one group might be involved in some cases of pneumonia in humans, though I need to stress that that's extremely not confirmed right now.

The "wait, what?" moment

So I mentioned that it was a line in the wiki article for DFTD that had me going "wait, really?", the line in question was this:

A study found evidence for an infectious agent resembling a giant virus that was capable of turning heathy cells into cancer cells. It was found to be a huge retrovirus with similar viruses being found in human and canine cancer cells.

Big If True.

So of course I check the source, which was a 2020 paper by Lusi et al. titled "A transforming giant virus discovered in Canine Transmissible Venereal Tumour: Stray dogs and Tasmanian devils opening the door to a preventive cancer vaccine".

Hang on, CTVT not DFTD? This is where some alarm bells went off because uh, as mentioned at the start, we know a shit ton about CTVT. Including the fact that it's all one specific dog. Which doesn't fit at all with the idea that it's caused by a virus transforming host cells into cancer cells.

So what fucking gives? What is this research that fully overturns decades of pretty conclusive research to the contrary?

Is this another case of Dr Barbara McClintock? Who spent decades being ridiculed by the scientific community over her wild theory that was, in fact, 100% right even if it seemed to fly in the fact of all prior evidence?

Or is this a Dr Donald I. Williamson situation wherein a scientist with appropriate training is just wildly but extremely vehemently wrong?

[bots-and-cons]

Since requests say open

Can I get knockout and Shockwave with werewolf reader (not the transforms only on a full moon kind but the basically always able to transform, also not very scary just fluffy creature)

A/N: I basically went with the twilight type of werewolf (or at least what I remember of them), because that’s the only “fluffy, not very scary” one I can think of, also they’re biiiiiig. The reader is their partner/s/o so they’ve got a romantic relationship

~Shockwave~

•Shockwave is probably more interested in the whole werewolf thing on a biological/scientific level

•If you let him, he’d like to scan you, take blood samples, and other stuff like that

•He’s just interested in how the whole transformation thing works for you, because the mechanics of it seem way different than for his kind

•You sometimes sleep in the lab, just on some counter, in your wolf form

•Shockwave is aware that humans pet dogs, and the dogs enjoy it, so he’s wondering if the same would apply to you

•So one time you’re asleep, he starts giving you some scratches behind your ear

•You seem to quite enjoy it, and he’s absolutely enamored with how happy you seem to be when he pets you

•He doesn’t really do it often, because he doesn’t think it’s necessary or a thing you would need, but he does still think it’s nice 

•Shockwave thinks it’s odd that you don’t seem to match much of the lore he ends up reading about, because you’re very much a real thing

•You explain to him that most people don’t actually think werewolves are real and that most of the stuff online is just flat-out fanfiction

•Shockwave learns that he shouldn’t believe everything that’s on the internet

•Because he asks some very weird and uncomfortable questions based on his online research

•You’re just like “No, no no no, no no, no nope”

•Shockwave doesn’t really see you as a normal human, though you’re the only human he knows so he doesn’t really have a benchmark for a “normal human”

•He thinks of you as a werewolf, which you’re not offended by, because that’s what you are

~Knockout~

•The first time you transformed into a wolf in front of him, he was pretty freaked out

•In his (very loud) words “How the scrap did you turn into a dog?!”

•You walk up to him and bark at him playfully, and he thinks you’re the cutest thing ever

•Then he just basically starts baby-talking to you, because “puppy!”

•You of course can’t answer, because wolves can’t talk, even in the case of werewolves

•It’s honestly a bit weird, because if you showed a human this side of you, they would run away screaming, but Knockout’s reaction is “puppy” because you’re basically the size of a normal dog for him

•There’s a sort of “magic aspect” to this that your clothes become a part of you during the transformation, so you’re clothed when you turn back

•He of course has a ton of questions, main ones being “What?” and “How?”

•You’ve been werewolf since birth, but the traits only started presenting themselves when you were about 15

•You mostly find the “puppy” comment to be funny, but it ends up becoming a pet name that Knockout uses for you all the time

•It grows on you, but you weren’t that fond of the name at first

•You have to transform every once in a while, or you start getting this itchy kind of feeling and it starts driving your crazy

•You also just like running in the woods and feeling free so Knockout bridges you to places around the world where you can run

•Sometimes you like sleeping on Knockout’s chest or lap, and he likes to pet you, which you enjoy as well

[spacedlexi]

the way the ericson group were at the outbreak just a bunch of troubled kids who made various mistakes or committed crimes and were judged by a system that punished and abandoned them instead of giving them the support and love they needed, are then nearly a decade later put into a situation where now they must judge a troubled child for the mistakes and crimes hes committed against them. and 5 to 3 vote them out 😭

[commsroom]

i think one of the boldest and best moves wolf 359 makes in its character development is that, in terms of the major defining events that led him to where he is, eiffel doesn't have a tragic backstory so much as he is responsible for the tragic backstory of someone else.

(the archetype of the everyman protagonist who copes with past trauma via humor does in many ways describe eiffel, but like with every character in wolf, it's the complexity of their circumstances that make them feel like real people with believable inner worlds. they don't subvert the archetypes they represent, exactly; they're just people, complex and contradictory, who ultimately can't be constrained by the expectations or defined lines of the narratives imposed on them.)

eiffel believes this is an intrinsic part of who he is, that he was "just those mistakes"; he externalizes his desire for redemption and that manifests as lenience towards people who lack his fundamental desire for growth. and in failing to recognize his own ability for growth, he presents himself as a doomed character archetype more than a person; he sidelines himself as an observer within his own story. his guilt and self-hatred allow him to in some way abdicate responsibility, to see his failings as inevitable, and it's only accepting his own complexity and capacity to be more, the human quality he recognizes so fervently in others, that frees him from those self-imposed conceptions.

(once my friend kit said that eiffel “defines the tone and the moral compass of wolf 359 so strongly that if you put him into any other series he would turn it into wolf 359 too” and i think about that a lot.)

doug eiffel is wolf 359, in all it believes, and despite his perception of himself as the weakest link, he is so interwoven with both the crew of the hephaestus and the themes of the show that he is inseparable from either. he doesn't always embody the show's values or its morals - in fact, he frequently fails to live up to them as much as he'd like - but he is the one who advocates for them. "it's not just about surviving; it's about being able to live with ourselves after we get off this tin can."

it's a show about communication; he is an intermediary, a vessel for communication - sometimes literally, and he's also just a guy who is still trying to learn how to communicate better himself. what eiffel represents is a flawed, contradictory, unpredictable, irrepressible humanity, singular, and so desperately in need of connection. the show's love of humanity is truer for that. he has genuinely done wrong, in ways he may not ever be forgiven for. he has very real flaws, some of which persist through the entire show, even as he's consciously trying to do better. and he is very much human, and very much loved.