jaerantsandwritesblog

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Well we got 11 days to go until BG3 (when I post this at least). I've done everything I could in the EA, romanced the smarmy vampire and gave them as many headpats as I could, so now it's time to make OC designs for my Tav the first time through so I can contain this feral energy I have for this game. Headcanon Info on him for fun. Iolas is a Half High-Elf bard currently living in Baldur's Gate, he's an entertainer by trade, music, painting, rock stacking and knife throwing. He's also been known to entertain the idea of a duelist from time to time. He comes from a family of travelling tricksters, be that theft, information gathering, or just entertainment in general. He's a pretty happy dude, loves to hear stories, because information and who you know can be life or death. He's a good mortal embodiment of his patron, Hyrsam, playing the fool until the time calls for it no longer and action must be taken. For the technical, going 3 in Archfey lock up to Blade Pact and the rest in College of Swords. Miss out on bard 10, but I think it'll be fine with the rest of the other companions making up for it. Wanted a face char since there really isn't one among the Origin chars (other than Wyll but I somehow managed to miss him not once, but twice lol) so figured a man of many faces would fit the quota just fine.

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What if we were BEST FRIENDS with a HOMOEROTIC SUBTEXT and we are doomed to love one another and end tragically because our morals and goals were FUNDAMENTALLY NOT ALIGNED, and yet we can’t bring ourselves to hate one another in the end.

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The gig economy is so hard when you're a brunette girl that's like 3 inches tall...

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why Divine Beast Dancing Lion has the best soundtrack in the entire game

When I watched the first DLC trailer 6 months ago, I was so focused on Messmer that I never gave the lion dancers a second thought. But in a shocking turn of events, Divine Beast Dancing Lion is now my favorite boss in the whole game. To me, what makes this fight truly exceptional is its soundtrack, so I want to go through the music and outline all the things that make it so great!

What makes the music stand out is that it feels SO different from the rest of the OST… the majority of the boss tracks have a pretty similar style and instrumentation, but Divine Beast stands out in my opinion because of how it emphasizes its rhythm and texture.

Conceptually, this boss fight is first and foremost a dance — you are fighting two Hornsent warriors operating a lion costume based on the traditional Chinese lion dance in an arena that’s actually a giant stage.

The Chinese lion dance is typically accompanied only by percussion (drums, gongs, and cymbals). So naturally, Divine Beast’s soundtrack has much more pronounced percussion in comparison to the rest of the soundtrack, featuring heavy drum beats and cymbals, plus shouts and chants from the choir. The music is in a steady 6/8, with 2 beats per measure divided into three pulses (think 1 2 3, 1 2 3) giving it a lilting, dancelike quality (this type of meter is often used in folk and traditional dances!). And, in the boss’s second phase, the dancing lion’s lightning, wind, and frost phases each have their own music and are timed to transition as the music transitions. The whole boss fight is programmed like a dance, so when you fight the boss it feels like you’re dancing with it too!

The choir has a range of vocalizations that goes beyond singing melodies and harmonies; as I touched on before, they’re also shouting and chanting. The shouts are used percussively and help accent the rhythm of the dance, and the low chanting also brings to mind a sort of religious ritual? Which is exactly what this boss fight is… in Hornsent culture, the lion dance is a ritual for invoking divinity:

“A charm depicting the crazed, cavorting dance of the divine beast conducted at the tower festival. Raises potency of storms. Divine beasts are messengers of the heavens, and their rage mirrors the tumult of the skies, of which storms are the pinnacle.” (Enraged Divine Beast talisman)

The lion dancers, or “sculpted keepers,” are those amongst the divine beast warriors (themselves the chosen amongst the tower’s horned warriors) who truly excelled at divine invocation, and were “granted the honor of the lion dance” (Divine Beast Warrior Armor). In the boss cutscene, the Hornsent Grandam calls upon the divine beast to possess the bodies of the sculpted keepers, and rise again to defend the tower… so the lion dance, performed by warriors skilled in divine invocation, is essentially a ritual for invoking the presence of the divine beast within the dancers in order to commune with the heavens.

The sculpted keepers, having invoked the rage of the divine beast, are able to channel the forces of the stormy skies — lightning, wind, and frost. The force of the storm is represented in the music by quick runs in the high woodwinds and strings that come and go like gusts of wind. The music almost never lets up or loses momentum; it goes at a powerful, furious pace until the end, embodying the divine beast’s fury.

But the Divine Beast that we fight has an extra layer of emotion that goes beyond divine ritual:

“When the Impaler's army assailed the tower, the ritual of the lion dance was turned toward martial ends—its divinity, its fury, its light-footed beauty.” (Remembrance of the Dancing Lion)

What was once a beautiful ritual dance conducted at the tower festival was forced to become a weapon of war in order to fight against their people’s annihilation at the hands of Messmer’s crusade. And even this was not enough…

The Dancing Lion that we fight was slain, lying in a pool of dried blood, when it is miraculously awoken again with a fervent prayer. This is the last lion dance that may ever take place, giving us a mere glimpse of this ruined city’s long-vanished splendor.

Listening to the soundtrack, there is not only pride in the music, but also an urgent, visceral, warlike rage, a multitude of voices joining in a desperate fight for their civilization’s very survival.

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ELDEN RING

› Shadow of the Erdtree: verticals [3/?]

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BLEACH - Name Games(?)

Kurotsuchi[涅] Mayuri[マユリ]

As you can see the given name, Mayuri[マユリ], isn’t written with an explicit Japanese meaning, which is something Kubo generally does pretty deliberately.*  Nemu[ネム] is the same, although we learn later that it’s shortened from Nemuri Nanago[眠七號] meaning “Sleep(er) Model-7” denoting that she was the 7th in a line of “Sleep(er)” experiments.

*shit it never occurred to me to come back and edit this post after all these years. His name is a loan word, it’s the hindi word मयूरी for “peacock”. I did a little blurb about it years after the fact here.

The surname Kurotsuchi[涅] is actually pretty straight forward, by Kubo’s standards anyhow.  It means literally “Black Soil” (and sounds exactly like Kuro[黒] “Black” and  Tsuchi[土] “Soil”) but the phrase specifically refers to “Mud” or “Slime.”  Real obvious character qualities being evoked there, and there’s honestly not much more to it beyond that.

It is written that same as a common abbreviation for Nehan [涅槃] which refers to the Buddhist Nirvana.  And his sword, Ashisougi-Jizou[疋殺地蔵] does reference the bodhisattva, Jizou (aka Kṣitigarbha[क्षितिगर्भ]) so that may have been intentional.  I don’t think that really carries a direct “meaning” in relation to his character so much as it just establishes a general theme, though.

So, there’s really not a lot to talk about with Mayuri himself, which is why this only sorta fits into my series of Bleach name posts…  But so long as I’m looking at kanji related to Mayuri, I want to address the egregious mistranslation of his sword, Ashisougi-Jizou[疋殺地蔵] as “Leg-cutting Jizou.”

For one it’s not the word “Leg” at all, it’s “Foot.”  And I’m not even sure it’s referencing an anatomical foot. The kanji 疋 is used as a counter word for a number of things, including measurements of cloth, so I think it’s actually just a sloppy translation into the English “foot,” as in the unit of measurement.  But the reference I think Kubo is actually making here is that this kanji is used to count what most dictionaries seem to refer to as “small animals,” (as in a “foot” where a foot is the length of a small “roll of cloth” where the roll is the size of a small animal pelt; ergo you count livestock kept for pelts with the same counter word used for the fabric they yield. But also you start calling larger rolls by the same word because they’re made and stored in the same basic form even as the measurements vary) which is a little vague, but it does implicitly tells us a few things.  The things it counts are,

small in size

living things

but not human

The obvious literal usage of this would be for things like rabbits being counted by a hunter or farmer: things you collect in large numbers and that are smaller than livestock.  But I think it’s a more obtuse reference here…

See, the deity Jizou is a patron of children, pregnant women, dead children, and aborted fetuses(as he protects travelers on the road his domain is abstractly over those whoa re “inbetween” places, between birth and life, life and death, here and there, etc…) so I think the reference to a word measuring numbers of “Small (not human)Animals” is being used to reference children, and maybe even specifically fetuses or unborn children.  And the specific choice to refer to them in that way is meant to convey callousness and heartlessness; treating babies like animals, expendable, exploitable, things to be cultivated and then harvested and ultimately less than human.

Also, [殺] is just flat up “Kill,” “Murder,” “Butcher,” “Slay” as well as a bunch of other context specific terminal phrases.  And yeah, to “cut down” or “to slice” is in there, but they’re hardly the most prominent interpretations of the word.  So really, “Leg-cutting” is just a confusing choice for that translation, no matter how you slice it.

And that makes what I think is the more correct interpretation of name, 

Ashisougi-Jizou[疋殺地蔵], “Patron God of Baby-Killing”

This also re-contextualizes the release command, Kakimushire[掻き毟れ] which can translate as “Scratch” or “Tear” but also as “Scrape” or “Rip off/out.”  So, again… BIG abortion themes being tossed around here, which just got totally ignored in most English translations, intentionally or not.

And while I’m nitpicking things… Viz’s translation of Konjiki Ashisogi Jizou [金色疋殺地蔵,] as “Divine Leg-Cutting Jizou” is another bizarrely wrong choice, as Konjiki[金色] is just the word “Golden;” as in literally the kanji for 金 “Gold” and 色“Color(ed).”  So, you know, “Gold-Colored Patron-God [of] Baby-Killing.”  But I have no idea what would motivate them to just arbitrarily change the name into something unrelated.  And just to make it a full set, here…

Konjiki Ashisogi Jizou: Matai Fukuin Shoutai

[金色疋殺地蔵: 魔胎伏印症体] 

…adds,

Ma[魔] an “Evil Spirit,” or if you want to ignore cultural specifics, yes, “Demon” more or less works (also in some contexts is gets translated as “Witch”)

Tai[胎] meaning “Womb,” pushing us further into the whole baby and abortion thing we have going here

Fuku[伏] translated as something like “Prostrate(d),” “Prone,” or in Viz’s case “Recumbent.”  But the specific position it actually refers is “to lie face-down,” (notably the OPPOSITE of Recumbent i.e. “To lie BACK,” which, granted, is the pose the bankai is in.) but it’s also just the kanji written on the bankai form’s stomach (as seen above)

In[印] referring to a number of words like “Mark,” “Sign,” “Seal,” etc…

Shou[症] meaning “Illness” or “Disease,” and…

Tai[体] but a slightly different one this time, also referring to “Torso,” (relating it to the other Tai[胎] for “womb”) or more generally “Body” and also “Corpse” as it refers to a body as an object, rather than to the body of a “person.”

SO, that makes Konjiki Ashisogi Jizou: Matai Fukuin Shoutai [金色疋殺地蔵: 魔胎伏印症体] read something more like…

“GOLDEN BABY-KILLER GOD: DEMON-WOMB 伏-BRANDED DISEASED-CORPSE,” or possibly “… DEMON-WOMB, FACE-DOWN, DISEASE-MARKED CORPSE,” depending on how you want to read the Fuku[伏].  This reading also suggests that the big stitched up, lumpy, purple, blank-eyed form that Mayuri summons up is legit just a giant dead baby that his new modded bankai form hatches from, like some kind of parasitic larvae eating its way out of a host its egg was laid in.  Gross.

Other Bleach - Name Games posts: [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]

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BLEACH

zanpakutōs

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Mayuri's sense on body horror is just top tier ughh🤌 look at the umbrellas, the hideshi hino slingshot bombs, the idea of exposed nerves so it must endure continuous pain, and the baby that gave birth to other babies🤌also his aesthetic on incorporating invertebrates and babies🤌ughh big mua to mayuri

So fond our ashisogi jizo babe

Nnoitra babysitting ashisogi jizo (anime ver)

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every bad faith poster says shit like “competitive players don’t care about Pokémon as individuals, they only care about them as stats and numbers on a spreadsheet, it proves N right” and then actual competitive players are like “I’m running a heatran team meaning I’ve looked at its render a lot the last few days, and I’ve started to see a repressed sadness in his eyes. I think he dreams of a better life he doesn’t let himself live. Is this just me”

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Some Basic Inclusive Tips on Writing Sex Workers with Respect and Intent

The other day, I aired some grievances about the harmful portrayal of sex work in smut writing, and @zeddylux asked for advice on avoiding common traps when writing sex workers. This list is my response—a collection of observations, critiques, and suggestions rooted in lived experience, intersectional thought, and activist work.

Here are some terms of engagement before we dive in:

This is by no means a universal or exhaustive list. On the contrary, I’ve narrowed it down to four of my most urgent concerns. Others with different lived experiences may have additional perspectives, and I welcome dialogue from informed individuals. I have more input myself but will save it for possible follow-up parts to avoid cognitive overload. Reblogging and sharing this post is encouraged and appreciated if you want to honor the time, labor, and vulnerability in this piece.

However, if you’re just someone writing smut fanfiction, (mis)using sex work as a trope, and feel the need to explain why you or others rely on certain harmful narratives—whether for escapism, fantasy, or whatever else—please don’t. I already understand why these narratives are perpetuated and reinforced. Your defensiveness won’t add value to the conversation. I've heard it all before, okay?

These are my boundaries, and I expect it to be respected.

#1 Forget the "Selling your Body" narrative.

Sex workers are not selling or "renting out" ownership of their bodies. They provide specific services requiring physical, emotional, and mental labor in exchange for compensation. Consider this like other professions involving the body—such as athletes, ballet dancers, or physiotherapists—to normalize sex work as legitimate labor without perpetuating harmful stigma.

#2 Kill the "Former Client to Love Interest" trope.

This trope is one of the laziest in the smut writer’s toolkit, often used to fast-track intimacy without developing authentic trust, vulnerability, or mutual desire. While it’s not inherently impossible to write well, most writers lack the skill or nuanced understanding of power dynamics to pull it off.

Here is what to consider:

Clients projecting romantic feelings onto sex workers is not romantic—it’s terrifying. I’ve personally experienced this, and it was one of the scariest situations of my life. A client mistook the attention and intimacy I offered as part of my job as "proof" that I was in love with him. When I insisted on maintaining my boundaries and professionalism, his frustration turned into entitlement, hostility, and transgression. While this situation didn’t escalate into physical violence for me, it easily could have. These scenarios are not about devotion—they are about power, projection, and risk. If you aren’t prepared to grapple with the dangers and complexities of this dynamic, it’s better to avoid this trope altogether.

“But What If It’s Mutual?”

Then, it’s likely lazy writing and you oversimplifying a complex relationship dynamic and the delicate power imbalances involved. We call that skill issue. Relationships require work—mutual trust, shared values, and vulnerability. This trope skips over those complexities in favor of a tired "sex leads inevitably to love" narrative. Newsflash: it doesn’t.

Sex workers are professionals. They have a business relationship with their clients that carry inherent power imbalances that need careful navigation. Just like a plumber or personal trainer, they aren't engaging in their work to make personal connections—they’re providing a service. Assume most clients are not the kind of people the character would pursue romantically.

Explore relationships outside the scope of their work—romantic, platonic, or otherwise—that aren’t rooted in the transactional nature of client dynamics. Let them exist in spaces and as persons independent of their job. Like everyone else does. In fact, it is actually super important to have relationships, hobbies, etc., that are separated from professional life.

Consider depicting professional friendships instead of romance. Regular clients can develop camaraderie with sex workers, similar to other professional relationships (etc. a hairstylist who listens to their client's problems, tc.), while still respecting boundaries. Exploring this dynamic thoughtfully could offer depth without veering into harmful and exhausted tropes.

If you’re committed to writing this trope, address it thoughtfully. Address the complexities head-on: the trust-building, boundary-setting, and delicate navigation required to shift from a professional to a personal connection.

Consider the narrative potential and rich opportunities of a love interest/partner who isn't involved with the sex worker's occupation. For example, the partner can serve as a pillar of support when the sex worker needs to vent about difficult clients or decompress after an intense session. This dynamic lets you explore how the character navigates intimacy and trust in personal relationships while maintaining professionalism at work.

By stepping away from or subverting the "former client to love interest" trope, you create richer, more respectful storytelling that challenges tired narratives.

#3 Mind the Gap—Intersectionality matters.

Sex work is not a monolith—it doesn't exist in a vacuum, free of cultural or societal conotations. Sex work itself is an umberalla term and it doesn't have to involve direct sexual contact with clients. Cam work is sex work, writing erotica is sex work, too, and sex education efforts and activism can also fall in the realm of sex work as they involve labor that often challenges societal taboos and provides intimate knowledge. Small digression to introduce some variety of the profession.

However, if we look at sex work that involves direct physical, sensual and sexual intimacy and contact, be aware that experiences of sex workers are shaped by intersections of race, gender identity, sexual orientation, class, disability, and more. A Black woman’s experience in sex work is different from that of a white woman, just as a trans woman’s experience differs from that of a cisgender woman.

Ignoring these intersections flattens your characters and perpetuates stereotypes. Writing with an intersectional lens means recognizing how systems of privilege and oppression interact to shape your character’s reality.

Here is what to consider:

Marginalized sex workers often face greater risks and additional burdens due to systemic biases.

Race: lack, Indigenous, and other sex workers of color are often fetishized, treated as hypersexual, and subjected to greater risks of violence and over-policing.

Gender Identity: Trans and nonbinary sex workers frequently deal with fetishization, discrimination, and heightened risks of physical harm, even in contexts that are ostensibly “safe.”

Disability: Disabled sex workers may face barriers to accessibility, both in the physical and societal sense or have their sexuality erased altogether. Disabilities themselves can be othered, treated as curiosities or 'kinks'.

Class: Socioeconomic background affects whether a character has the privilege to turn down risky clients or demand higher compensation.

Write with sensitivity to these factors. In many cases, multiple factors intersect and affect the experience and reality of the individual - a Black bisexual woman can't be separated from either her Blackness, nor her womanhood, nor her bisexuality. If you’re including marginalized characters, be prepared to research and engage critically with the systems that impact their lives. Listen to individuals who are affected. Should they offer you criticism, don't take it as an attack; it is a valuable contribution to the understanding necessary for more inclusive writing. Consider a sensitivity reader/beta-reader with insight and compensate them for their labor

Be mindful of fetishization as a dehumanizing, painful and traumatizing experience many marginalized people encounter daily, and which is often amplified through the power dynamics inherent in sex work. Clients may view their race, gender, or other aspects of identity as commodities to consume rather than facets of their humanity. Be mindful to not perpetuate it in your writing by implying that a Black woman is inherently more sexually 'hungry' or 'eager' and thus naturally inclined to sex work for personal enjoyment. Marginalized sex workers are far often subjected to exploitation and objectification.

#4 Sex Workers are more than their jobs.

Treat sex worker characters as fully realized individuals—center their humanity in all its complexity, beauty, and messiness. Sex work is a profession, not a personality trait or identity. Reducing a character to their job robs them of depth and diminishes the richness of their story.

This is where I want to highlight my frustration with the reductive “prostitute!reader” label that often crops up in smut writing. It flattens the individual into a caricature and fetishizes both the profession and the person. You are not contributing to sex-positivity and de-stigmatization; you are repackaging them for consumption and clout. Congratulations.

Sex work is not a fetish or kink. When writers treat it as such, they dehumanize sex workers and perpetuate damaging stereotypes. Writing “prostitute!reader” as an excuse to insert explicit content often overlooks the realities of the profession, reducing the character to a titillating aesthetic. While we're at it: Be mindful of your language. 'Prostitute' is an outdated term with a lot of stigma and loaded with baggage.

Some Thoughts on Language Use:

Use "sex worker" as an inclusive, neutral term unless context (e.g., historical setting, character voice) requires otherwise.

If derogatory terms are used in dialogue or by other characters, acknowledge their weight. Show how they affect your sex worker character—whether they brush it off, push back, or simmer internally for the sake of safety.

Don’t romanticize or fetishize stigmatizing language. If you’re writing smut and your title or tone leans on terms like “prostitute!reader,” you’re reducing a humanized profession to a hollow kink. Rethink your approach.

Here is how to do better:

Give your characters lives outside their work. Just like any other profession, sex work is part of a person’s life—it isn’t the sum total of who they are. Let your characters have hobbies, interests, relationships, dreams, and struggles that exist outside of their job.

Does your character love baking, painting, or gaming in their free time?

Are they deeply invested in a community project, a family dynamic, or a personal goal?

Do they find joy or solace in routines, friendships, or hobbies that help them recharge?

Such details make your characters feel real and relatable, showing that their identity isn’t solely tied to their work.

Acknowledge their boundaries and humanity. Sex work involves emotional, mental, and physical labor, but sex workers are not tools for fulfilling fantasies. They have boundaries, vulnerabilities, and unique personalities that inform how they navigate their lives and relationships.

Show how your character protects their emotional well-being and maintains boundaries in their work. Consider giving them a support network, routines and strategies.

Explore their moments of joy, frustration, exhaustion, or triumph in and outside of their work—just as you would with any other character.

Respecting the humanity, professionalism, and complexity of sex workers leads to better stories and more inclusive narratives. By avoiding harmful tropes and centering your characters’ agency and individuality, you honor their experiences while creating more meaningful, impactful stories.

Sex workers are under no obligation to love their job. Give the character space for a nuanced and ambiguous relationship with their work. Like anyone else, a sex worker might love some aspects of their job, tolerate others, and absolutely despise certain parts. Allow their feelings to evolve based on their experiences, and resist the urge to force a tidy resolution.

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who do you need for a (fictional) rebellion?

I've been thinking about this a lot recently, given that my book series is about toppling. . . several monarchies. not quite sure how they're gonna do it yet. anyways.

so often I see posts/articles about how to write revolutionary leaders, but you need more than just a handful of angry people to enact meaningful change! here's a list of character archetypes I see all the time in stories centred around rebellions (in no particular order). you by no means need all of them. mix and match as you please.

a financier. this shit isn't gonna get done without funds.

spies. lots of spies. double agents, triple agents, people on the inside.

symbols for all the propaganda (this can be a person or something else, eg. your mockingjay).

someone who knows their way around the law to de-arrest folks and make sure no one gets caught out, etc.

demo mannnnn. or the swords guy depending on your story's setting (my demo man is a blacksmith).

the Really Angry Young Person (it's usually a teenage boy but obviously you can and should change it up) that's entirely devoted to the cause, willing to do anything.

not like, mandatory, but a character like saw guerrera from star wars comes to mind. specifically in andor, he says that as an anarchist, he's "the only one with clarity of purpose." kind of a blow stuff up now, form a government later kinda guy. basically you need some infighting.

ADMIN. you need someone organising all these madlads. who's reading all these 'emails'?

adding in my personal favourite of these archetypes: the guy that defects from the Institution to join the rebellion. possibly for homoerotic reasons. looking at you, agent kallus (from star wars rebels btw)

a tired older person who's seen far too much bloodshed in their life but is still fighting.

journalists/historians/documentarians/regular people with cameras (or the equivalent in your world), telling the world of the atrocities past and present. this bullet point is directly inspired by the people of gaza sharing the genocide happening there. free palestine, from the river to the sea.

the overlooked second-in-command that's kind of doing most of the actual work and keeping coalitions together n stuff.

the opposite of the spy: the traitor.

someone with charisma to convince people to join up. they're well-spoken and give rousing speeches. often, this person in actually the leader, but they don't have to be.

smaller groups within the rebellion that are probably constantly ignored by the higher-ups. will they break away and form their own movement? you decide.

add more if you can think of any!

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Republicans not wanting to fund libraries is part of their plan to make the next generation illiterate. That is why they are banning books too.

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Saint Jellyfish Exhorter by seok young choi

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アカウント作り直したので過去絵中心にボチボチ更新していきます。

I have re-created my account.

My creator name is Nishiki Suzumori.

I will update mainly illustrations I have drawn in the past.

All illustrations may not be reproduced without permission.

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Shiny pyukumuku for @mugiwarasinger :)

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Y'ever have an idea so stupid you couldn't not draw it?

Back has the reverse side that says, "What if we kissed in the safe zone behind the BABYGIRL directional mine?"