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sorinethemastermind · 3 months ago

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Big Feelings Time

In which Soren grapples with what happened the night of the full moon, and makes peace with Runaan on behalf of his king.

No one was really sure what to do about the elf. Runaan, Soren corrected himself. He had a name.

The only person he seemed to know how to speak to was Rayla. Probably cause, you know, he was her Dad. And he was here. Soren tried not to think about the mess of emotions that simple fact awoke in him. But it wasn’t that simple, because to Runaan it had only been a few days since he’d killed the king. And now that king’s son was dating his daughter. (Soren was happy Rayla and Callum had finally worked that out, it had been getting awkward).

He couldn't really blame the elf for not knowing what to do or where to go. If he stuck by Rayla’s side then Callum was always there, frazzled and distracted and riddled with guilt about the pearl and the castle and everything. It was a lot even without adding the fact that his potential future father-in-law had killed his step-dad. It gave Soren a headache just thinking about it.

And if he went into the camp at all he was sure to run into Ezran, who seemed to be everywhere at once these days; helping Opeli with the wounded, sending out letters with the Crow whatever-he-was-now. He’d even somehow found the time to visit every family who had fled the fires. Soren thought that the worst part was how Ezran kept trying to smile at the elf even though it looked like the action caused him physical pain. He made a mental note to take him aside later for some Big Feelings Time, as the brothers liked to call it.

And then there was, well, him. He had almost killed Runaan. He would have too, if Claudia hadn't stopped him. And then what had happened? His father had trapped his soul in a coin for several years. And that was probably the least of the reasons the elf had to hate him. He could still remember that night; the way the torches had all gone out at once, the clang of metal against metal, the wet sound it made when it didn’t hit metal…

“Soren?”

He jumped. Ezran was there, looking up at him. Soren straightened, making sure to smile. “Yeah?”

“Were you… sleeping standing up?”

“No. I was just, uh, thinking. Why?”

“Because your eyes were closed.” Ezran said, eyebrow arching a little bit. He looked so much like his father when he did that.

“It helps me… think.” Soren explained. In all honesty he hadn’t realized they’d drifted closed. It had felt nice, though.

“You should get some rest.”

“I did last night. Just like you ordered.”

“So this morning you had time to travel all the way to the Valley of Graves, discover that Aaravos had escaped, and come back. All before breakfast?”

“...Yes?” Soren tried. Ezran didn’t seem impressed, but he didn’t press it.

“Have you seen Callum?” he asked instead.

“I’m pretty sure I saw him and Rayla head over that way.” Soren pointed towards a small clearing in the trees, just across from where they had set up camp. Good. The brothers had barely had any time to talk after Callum got back, what with everything else going on. They needed this.

“Great. I’m going to go talk to him.” Ezran said, the set of his mouth determined. “Um. Do you think I should say that we need to let go of the past to build a brighter future or that the future is about breaking the cycles of hatred which have kept us chained for so long?”

Soren sighed. The kid had forgotten how to talk to his own brother. Then he realized what this talk must be about. “Maybe… neither? Callum took the news about the pearl pretty hard, maybe you should wait to talk about… the elf situation.”

“He’s not the elf, Soren. And he’s not a situation. He’s Rayla’s father.”

“I know, I know. That’s not what I meant. I just… you’ve got to have some feelings about this whole thing.”

Ezran did that thing again where he smiled too wide. But despite his obvious efforts, it didn’t reach his eyes. “Why would I have feelings about it? He’s just Rayla’s Dad. I’m glad he’s here!”

“Yeah, but see, your voice sorta does this thing when you say that that makes me feel like you do have feelings and just…” Soren sighed. “Look, I know I’m not Callum. Obviously. But I’m still here for you, to protect you but also… whatever you need. Like words and stuff.”

Ezran’s smile wavered and he took a deep breath. “How can I ask everyone to move on from the past when I can’t?” he said quietly, eyes downcast.

Soren knelt before him, placing his hands on his shoulders the way he used to when he was just a little kid. Before he was a king and everything got all… complicated. “No one is expecting you to move on.”

“I’m not supposed to hate him, Soren. I really don’t want to. I tried so hard not to. But… but even though it’s been so long I still miss him.”

“I know.” Soren wrapped his arms around Ezran and pulled him in close, sheltering him in his arms for a moment so that the kid could just be, well, that. A kid. A kid who misses his Dad, and nothing more.

The moment didn’t last long, and when Ezran pulled away his eyes were wet, but there was a real determination in them that had been missing before.

“I’m going to get everything ready for the trek to the Banther Lodge.” he said, voice taught. “I can talk to him when we get there.”

“I’ll talk to Runaan.” Soren decided aloud.

“But, Soren…” Ezran trailed off, biting his lip. “Won't he… remember you from that night?”

Soren blew a strand of blond hair out of his face. “Yeah. But I can handle it. Look, you go help your people, okay? That’s your job. My job is helping you.”

“Thank you.” his king said, standing up a little straighter.

“You got it.” Soren grinned at him and, after a moment, Ezran walked back the way he’d come.

Soren’s grin faded along with his fake nonchalance. Ezran might be a quick study, but Soren had years on him. The art of the facade was just that, an art. And you had to practice art. Sort of like poetry, though that somehow needed even more practice.

It didn’t take long to spot Runaan. He was in the same place he had been since they arrived; hovering just slightly out of view in the trees near the edge of the encampment. Soren rolled his shoulders and pushed his hair out of his face with the back of a gauntleted hand. He had this.

“Hey!” he called, waving to the elf in a voice that sounded way too cheery even to his own ears. He tried to modulate it in the middle of the greeting, but all that accomplished was giving him the voice of a prepubescent teen. He tried again as he got closer. “Hey, it’s Runaan, right?”

The elf looked at him for a long moment. “Yes.”

“I’m Soren.” instinctively he started to stick out his hand, then decided maybe that wasn’t the best thing for this scenario, and used it to lean against a tree instead. Totally casual.

“Did someone send you?”

“What? Me? Noooooo.” Soren laughed. “I mean, I guess I sent myself but… yeah, no."

“I see.” the elf blinked, a slight crease forming between his eyebrows as he studied Soren.

Casual conversation. Casual conversation. Casual conversation. Soren thought desperately, grasping for something to say that would lead them in the right direction. Or any direction other than the one he knew they were about to go.

“So, what do you think of Katol-”

“Here to finish me off, then?”

They both spoke at the same time, seemingly caught off guard by what the other had said.

Soren practically tripped over his own words to get them out first. “Definitely not! I know we didn’t exactly meet on the best of terms but-”

“You killed one of my companions and were about to chop off my head.”

“Yes, but-” Soren let out an exasperated huff, tossing his hands into the air. “You killed the king!”

For a moment neither of them was really sure what to say to that.

“I… did.” Runaan admitted eventually.

Soren still remembered how the arrow had looked sticking from the king’s chest. The look of surprise on his face, the way it had seemed to flick from that and through a million other emotions in the time it took him to stagger and slump to the ground. The cold expression that this very elf had worn as he lowered his bow. The blood and the bodies and the pointlessness of it all and-

“What was his name?” Soren blurted, surprising even himself. But he continued. Maybe knowing would make it worse, but he had to. “The- the one with the twin blades?”

A shadow passed over Runaan’s face and he closed his eyes for a moment. When he spoke, his voice was quiet. “Skor.”

Skor. Soren shivered, the cool darkness of that night creeping through him again like a chill breeze.

“You never forget your first.” Runaan said softly, eyes distant. “We believe that you should honor the fallen, even your enemies. For they have died so that you may live.”

“I try to.” Soren said, adding Skor to the list of people he owed his life to. If not in the same way. “Look, I know that this can’t be easy for you, working with humans and all. After… everything. But we’re not here because it’s easy. We’re here because it’s the right thing to do. And what you did that night wasn’t right, and what I did wasn’t either. Because there was no right thing that we could have done. But there is now.”

“A lot has changed.”

“Tell me about it.” Soren said with a slight smile, trying to lighten the mood. Unfortunately Runaan didn’t seem to understand the concept of lightening or of moods.

“And yet we still face the same monsters as before.”

“Uh-”

“Dark mages have always been a scourge on these lands. And now they have released him. It was only a matter of time. At least now, with our combined strength, we may stand a chance of getting rid of them for good.”

Soren bristled instinctively at the way he said dark mages even though he knew the elf was right. Better to get it all out in the open now, he decided. “Yeah, about that. The mage who released him, we discussed it and we’re actually not doing any getting rid of.”

“They released the dark star! They are-”

“She’s my sister.”

Runaan stopped mid sentence, looking at him again. His eyes widened with realization. “The girl. The one from that night. She was...”

“She’s my sister. And… and I know her. I can get through to her. I have to. So that’s the plan. That’s what we’re going to do.”

“She is a dark mage. They have no respect for the living-”

“I’m standing here because of dark magic.” Soren said, voice rising. “Your daughter is here because of dark magic. Katolis-” he swept his hands back towards the encampment and the people there. “-is here because of dark magic. It isn’t right, and it’s not fair. But it’s also true.”

“My daughter… is here… because of dark magic?”

Soren sighed. Maybe he shouldn't have said that. “A lot of us are.”

“Not the mage from the castle?” Runaan breathed, eyes going wide.

“No. Not him. That was my father. He… he and Rayla didn’t get along.”

“Your… father.”

“Yeah.”

“And yet you are here, with them. With my Rayla.”

“It took me a while to realize who he really was.” Soren said, voice quiet. “I think I’m still figuring it out.”

“I have made many mistakes as a father.” Runaan said, looking past him and towards the encampment. “That night… was one of them. And yet Rayla forgave me, even when I could not forgive myself.”

“That’s who she is. She gives people second chances, even when they don’t know if they deserve them. Look,” Soren sighed. “I’m not going to tell you it’ll be easy, cause it won’t. But Rayla deserves to have her Dad back, and none of us will hold that against her. Or you.”

“A lot has changed.”

“Everything. Everything has changed. Because of her. Because of what she and Ezran and Callum did. So live up to it.”

“I will try.”

“Good.” Soren said, and the silence that followed was more comfortable this time. The truth of that night would always linger over them all, but maybe there was a light in the darkness as well. Rayla had her Dad back.

At least one of them should.

#aftermath fic #runaan fic #soren fic #the dragon prince #tdp #soren tdp #runaan tdp #ficlet #tdp fics #my fic #Ezran fic #ezran tdp

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kaidatheghostdragon · 1 year ago

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Danny has answered the door for half a dozen different people responding to the ad (all out-of-towners - everyone in Amity knew to avoid the Fentons), and assumed it was another one of Jazz's (or ancients forbid even mom or dad's) harebrained ideas to get Danny some extra help with his grades. Frankly, he was amazed there were even that many responders who hadn't been scared off by the Ops Center on top of his home.

This time, the house defenses picked up on a low level ecto-signature, and Danny rushed to the control pad to override them before they decided whoever was on the other side might be a threat. They had triggered his own ghost sense as well, and he was confident he could overpower whoever it was if they turned out to be a problem.

He didn't expect to open the door to a baby halfa.

Okay... maybe 'baby' isn't the first thought most people have when seeing the six-and-a-half foot beast of a man standing on his doorstep. Danny would have definitely believed he was about to get robbed and murdered if he weren't an OP half ghost who fought bigger, scarier eldritch entities almost on the daily.

Or for the smothering aura of awkward-out-of-place the guy radiated (with a tinge of deep-rooted injustice and carefully managed anger, but like, the guy was half-ghost, and in Danny's limited experience, that implied some sort of trauma, so he wasn't gonna judge.)

Or just the fact that Danny is the son of Jack "kool-aid man" Fenton, and he had long since been desensitized to "big and scary," when his mind readily supplied him with all the memories he had of his dad being an utter goofball.

Still, it was all he could do to suppress the ghost instincts to immediately coo at the baby ghost and start a gentle fight to welcome him into Danny's haunt.

"...Hi," the stranger eventually greeted after the awkward silence that Danny definitely hadn't done anything to help, "I'm here because of this ad?" He held up a printed copy that Danny barely bothered to even glance at.

"You're hired," Danny blurted out, then instantly clamped down on the urge to cringe. What the hell, ghost instincts?

Stranger Danger looked just as surprised as Danny felt. "Shouldn't I talk to your parents first?"

"I'm Danny," Danny plowed on, stuffing the internal mortification and simultaneous silent ghost squeeing down until it was no longer a distraction, "I'm the one that needs a tutor, shouldn't I have a say in who tutors me?"

"I mean, ideally, yeah, you should a least have the option to avoid anyone that would make you uncomfortable," Stranger replied, looking (and radiating) a bit off-kilter before straightening into a firm answer.

"Good! Then we're both in agreement!" Danny beamed as he grabbed Stranger's hand and pulled him inside the door with probably a bit too much strength, but the guy luckily didn't falter or stumble. "First, I need to key you into the security system, then I can give you a quick tour and the rules of the house!"

"But you dont even know my name!" Stranger protested as Danny shoved his hand onto the scanner to record his ectosignature. It took a few seconds longer than it probably should have before the LED lit up in confirmation, and Danny mentally filed it away to mention to Frostbite whenever he managed to get the baby halfa a proper doctor appointment.

"My guy, you're the only one that can fix that problem," Danny answered sagely.

Stranger stared for several seconds, then dropped his hand off of the scanner when he realized Danny wasn't holding it there anymore.

"Jason."

"Nice to meet you, Jason," Danny replied with what he hoped was a friendly smile. Jason wasn't really responding to any of the aura cues Danny was giving off, so it was unlikely the guy had much knowledge on ghost culture and etiquette, "This door leads to the basement lab. You won't be allowed down there without supervision until you've completed the safety training lessons. Around the corner is the kitchen. Be mindful when opening the fridge -the hot dogs have recently unionized and are still working out their list of demands. Upstairs is where all the bedrooms are, including the guest room you'll be staying in, and over here is the pneumatic tube to the Ops Center - the UFO on the roof. Same rules as the lab, but it'll be a safe space to retreat to once you've done all the weapons and equipment training."

Danny continued on the tour, dragging Jason around by the arm as he explained where everything was and where to find all the security access panels. Jason's aura grew more and more concerned as Danny prattled on. "Are you safe here?" He asked, interrupting Danny as he tried to explain that the hot dogs make good guard dogs in a pinch.

"Couldn't be safer!" Danny said, waving off the concern, "Mom and Dad are tons better now that they understand that ghosts are sentient. They probably won't even attack you on sight! Which reminds-"

"Okay, first of all, what the fuck? Secondly, I'm sensing a leap of logic here that I've somehow missed. Why would attacking ghosts translate to attacking me?" Jason asked, looking a little panicked and loosing the tightly controlled anger buried in his aura ever so slightly.

"Jason, my guy, why do you think I hired you so quickly?" Danny asked seriously. He could sense Jason swallow a retort by the way his aura did a one-eighty from flippant to straight-up denial.

"I'm not a ghost," he stated, matter-of-fact. Danny almost believed it.

"You sure about that?" Danny pushed, raising a brow. Apparently, they were having this conversation now, and if Danny had learned anything from his older sister, it was that declaring something point blank rarely worked. It was better to lead the person through the logic until they figured out the conclusion themselves. (Thank the ancients it worked on mom and dad.)

"I have a heartbeat," Jason insisted.

"So do I," Danny replied.

"So you're not a ghost either... wait, Danny, did your parents convince you that you're a ghost? Kid, that's fucked up."

"Please," Danny scoffed, "They didn't even know I died until I told them. They're brilliant ecto biologists, but they're terrible ghost hunters. Didn't even know a ghost was living under their own roof. Well, I *say* living, but we both know that's because there isn't really a better fitting term for what we are."

"I came back from the dead. That makes me a zombie, not a ghost," Jason argued, eyes flashing green as he expertly fought for emotional control.

"I can see how you would come to that conclusion, but zombies aren't revived, just reanimated. There's no soul involved, which you clearly have."

"Wouldn't that mean I'm just resurrected?" Jason argued.

"Can you look me in the eyes and tell me you came back exactly the same as you were before?"

That was enough to convince Jason to look back toward Danny, to finally see that Danny could make his eyes glow too.

"Shit-fuck!" Jason exclaimed as he staggered back from surprise. He still wasn't responding to the *same-comfort-friend* that Danny was sending his way, so Danny tilted his head to try to portray some degree of casualness before blinking away the ecto.

Maybe he over-estimated Jason's supernatural bullshit tolerance. He should probably take a step back.

"You came here to take a tutoring job. I'm sorry I threw an existential crisis at you. You're the first person I've met that's the same thing I am and *not* a total fruitloop or my clone. But I'll understand if you want to turn down the job. Just promise to be careful out there? The anti-ecto acts are still a thing and they define you as non-sentient so if you see any creeps dressed in white suits, just avoid them as much as possible. But if you need a place to hide, then you're always welcome to come back. The ambient ecto here in Amity Park is enough to mask your ecto-signature so they can't track-"

"Kid," Jason interrupted, "Danny. Respectfully. What the absolute fuck?"

Danny cringed.

"Are you seriously telling me that there are laws out there that violate the meta human protection act, and they target both of us? And theres other people out there like both of us? And you were fucking cloned? I was looking for a job that could take me *away* from the crazy! Goddammit!" Jason leaned against the wall and slid down till he was sitting on the carpet, running a hand through his death-touched hair. "Well I guess this is happening now. I cant ever get a fucking break, can I?"

"Im sorry," Danny muttered.

"Why are you sorry? Literally none of this is your fault. Dont be sorry for things you can't control. That's just a recipe for disaster."

Danny nodded dumbly.

"Just please, on top of all of this, promise me you're parents aren't abusive, too."

"I promise my parents are not abusive," Danny stated, raising a hand as if in oath.

"Why am I not convinced?" Jason complained, running a hand down his face, "I dont think I can handle this extential crisis on top of kidnapping a kid out of an abusive home," he muttered mostly to himself, but Danny could sense the exasperation.

"Excuse you," Danny said with a snort, "*I'm* the one doing the kidnapping here!"

Jason looked up at Danny incredulously, "Sure you are, shortstack."

"Hey! Not all of us can make it to the shit brickhouse stage before dying!"

Jason blinked, clearly processing Danny's words.

"I was 15. Almost as scrawny as you," he eventually offered.

"Oh, thank god," Danny exclaimed with clear relief, "There's still a chance I'll keep growing."

"You didn't know? That was something you were worried about? I thought you said there's others?"

"Yeah, the fruitloop and the clone. Fruitloop was an adult when he died. Clone was created the way she is, and we have no idea if any changes or lack thereof are ghost shenanigans or clone shenanigans. I mean, she's my clone and somehow a girl? Is the fruitloop incompetent, or is that just how ghosts be?" Danny finished with a shrug.

Jason's aura was a weird mix of processing information like a supercomputer and having an aneurysm. Danny anxiously waited for him to respond, knowing that if he opened his mouth again he'd accidentally info dump even more.

"I still want the job," he finally stated, "assuming your parents approve."

Danny waved off his concerns once again, "They'll love having another ghost in the house. That's twice as much data for their research!"

DP x DC prompt #161

Jason loves his family, he really does, but he needs a break from them. He just needed a break in general. But what should he do? Well, he saw an ad online earlier for a stay-at-home tutor for a high school kid in a place called Amity Park. Danny, if Jason remembers correctly.

#clockwork placed the ad #danny needed a big brother #and danny was at a point in his life where he could help jason #and wasnt at risk of jason trying to remove him from his haunt #and jason was reasonably safe in the fenton household #i am just imagining that every alarm bell in jasons head is going off #he got to fentonworks #saw the ops center #about-face and turn #time to do research #was absolutely convinced he'd need to rescue danny #went back to fentonworks under the guise of taking the job #prepared to use it as cover to investigate the fentons #and subtly bond with danny to trust jason enough to leave with him #the longer he stays the crazier things get #but he quickly learns that danny is about as safe as he can be #i literally just wanted to reply that clockwork made the ad #somehow i wrote a whole book #why cant i be this inspired for my own fics?#it just kept going and going #i could still write more #in case it wasnt clear this is good parents au #just highly eccentric #they made new safety procedures and everything after learning about phantom #jason will be a fenton before he knows it #“dr fenton im tutoring your son not one of your children”#“arent you the one that hired me?”#where does jason's paycheck come from?#guess someone else can figure it out

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differentpostrebel · 4 months ago

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Lost and Found: A Pirate's Promise

I added two gifs to the mix, since they do go hand in hand with this chapter lmfaooo! Now we just need Y/N power insert

Chapter 13: Tango in the Shadows

A/N: Welcome Guys! Sorry I couldnt post another chapter, I was a bit caught up in the morning but is all good! Here is Chapter 13, this was a fun chapter to write since Law and Y/N maybe settling that promise, Bepo relayed to his captain. Hehehehe. When I wrote Sanji’s part I was cracking up. Cause my boy is ready to go to war and win back Y/N. As always the chapters are all linked! And without further ado lets get to it!.

Chapter 1, Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4, Chapter 5, Chapter 6, Chapter 7, Chapter 8, Chapter 9, Chapter 10, Chapter 11, Chapter 12, Chapter 13 (Here)

Word Count: 4.2K

Sanji x Reader, OP X Reader, Sanji x Y/N

Y/N POV…

“Now, shall we head inside, Princess?” Law's voice was smooth, almost teasing, as he turned to face me, holding Smoker’s heart encased in a clear, small box. His tone was casual, but the weight of the situation was anything but. My eyes lingered on Smoker's unconscious body sprawled on the ground, a chill running down my spine. Why does Law need Smoker's heart? The question echoed in my mind, but I pushed it aside for now.

Slowly, I rose from the steps where I had been seated, forcing a faint smile onto my face. “Wow, Law, you really know how to show a girl a good time,” I quipped, trying to mask the unease creeping into my thoughts.

Law was about to say something else when Tashigi’s voice pierced through the tension. “I refuse to retreat! Let go! I joined the Navy to fight, damn it!” She struggled against the G-5 soldiers holding her back. “Approach him again, and you’ll just end up cut to pieces,” one of the soldiers warned her.

Law’s focus remained entirely on me, undeterred. He stepped closer, his left hand still gripping his blade, while his right hand found its way to the small of my back, drawing me in. I can feel Smokers heart beating. “Now, Princess, let’s not let this moment slip away. I was just about to make things a bit more... interesting.”

I tilted my head, a playful smile curling on my lips. “You know, you can stop calling me ‘Princess.’ It’s starting to sound a bit old-fashioned.”

Law’s eyes sparkled with mischief. “Old-fashioned? Maybe. But I think it suits you perfectly. Besides, it’s officially your title now, whether you like it or not.”

As Law began to lean in, his eyes dropping to my lips before returning to my eyes, the gap between us narrowing, Luffy’s voice cut through the air. “Hey! Hello? Remember me!” He waved enthusiastically as he approached.

Law’s expression shifted, a low groan escaping him. “Just when we were getting to the good part.”

“Is that Y/N?!” Luffy shouted, his surprise evident.

“Hey!!” I called back, my amusement clear as I saw Luffy making his way over. The moment was interrupted, but Law’s gaze lingered on me for a heartbeat longer before he turned to face the new arrival, his frustration barely masked by a smirk.

“You helped me out that one time!” Luffy exclaimed, his grin wide as he approached.

“Strawhat,” Law acknowledged with a slight nod, his gaze shifting between Luffy and me.

I pulled away from Law’s grasp and hurried to Luffy. “You’re all okay!” I said, my relief palpable as I saw my crew.

“Yeah, and Traffy’s the one who helped me out of Marineford,” Luffy said, his excitement clear. “He patched me up and everything!”

“Really?” I asked, looking back at Law. He was standing a short distance away, and the clear box holding Smoker’s heart was nowhere in sight. “He must have hidden it,” I thought, noting his nonchalant demeanor.

“By the way, Y/N,” Zoro said with a smirk, crossing his arms. “What’s with the outfit? And why are you here with Traffy? Did Curly-brows just leave you alone with him?”

I glanced at Law, who seemed to be enjoying the banter, and then back at my crew. “It’s a bit of a story,” I said, trying to downplay the situation.

“Okay, I’m going to talk to Traffy!” Luffy declared, already sprinting towards Law with his usual enthusiasm. “Traffy!!” he shouted, waving as he ran.

I watched, amused, as Luffy barreled forward. “Wait, when did Luffy get an extra pair of legs?” I muttered, shaking my head. I then noticed Brook among the crew and headed over to him.

“Brook!!” I exclaimed, hugging him tightly. “Oh my goodness, I was so worried about you! When I woke up, I didn’t see you anywhere. I thought those bastards had done something to you!”

Brook chuckled softly, hugging me back. “I’m fine, no need to worry. I’m glad to see you’re okay too. But,” he said, pulling back slightly with a playful glint in his eye socket, “it looks like you were on your own adventure with a certain captain, eh?”

I felt a blush creep onto my cheeks. “Well, it’s not exactly what you think—”

“Ah, don’t be shy now!” Brook teased, his grin widening.

I looked over and saw Luffy animatedly talking to Law. “Guys, I’ll be right back!” I said, waving to Brook as I made my way back to Luffy and Law.

“You saved me!” Luffy shouted, his face lighting up with gratitude. “I owe you one! Really, thanks!”

I chimed in, smiling warmly, “Yeah, Law, thanks for saving my captain’s life.” I laughed lightly, feeling a sense of camaraderie.

A faint blush colored Law’s cheeks. “Don’t get too sentimental. I acted on a whim, and we’re still not friends. We’re just pirates, after all.”

Luffy’s grin widened. “Even if you’re an enemy, you still saved me, so thanks.”

“Luffy! Look over there, a marine!” Usopp pointed out urgently.

“Wait! Please!” Tashigi’s voice cut through the chaos as she ran towards us. Her eyes were locked on Smoker’s unconscious body. “No... Smoker!” she cried out, tears streaming down her face. “Smokey, no!”

“Marines! Wait, I know her!” Luffy called out, recognizing me.

“Tashigi really can’t take a hint, can she?” I muttered, preparing to activate my right ring again. “I’ll handle this.”

“Wait! Y/N, what’s going on?” Luffy asked, concern in his voice.

“Long story short, Captain,” I said, “the marines were here and wanted to capture the crew. I stayed behind to give them a head start.”

“Luffy, we’ve got more marines headed this way!” Usopp warned, urgency in his voice.

Tashigi, now kneeling beside Smoker and seeing the injury he’d sustained, was overwhelmed with grief. “Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!” she screamed, charging at Law with a mix of rage and desperation.

I prepared to step in, my right fist crackling with electricity, but Law’s firm hand stopped me.

“Princess,” Law commanded, his voice firm and unyielding, “stay back. I’ll handle this.”

Tashigi, driven by fury, pulled out her blade and charged at Law. Law glanced at her with an almost bored expression. “Really? More drama?” he said, almost dismissively. “Room.”

In an instant, Tashigi was enveloped in Law’s blue orb, unable to move. With practiced ease, Law drew his sword and made two precise cuts in the air, creating swirling, distorted portals. “Shambles.” He manipulated Tashigi’s position effortlessly, leaving her bewildered.

A nearby G-5 soldier stared in disbelief. “Aww damn, he took her down again!”

Law’s gaze shifted to Tashigi, his tone laced with cold amusement. “Once wasn’t enough? It seems I win again, Captain.”

As the G-5 soldiers began to advance towards us, I called out to Luffy, my right hand crackling with electrical energy. “Luffy! We need to get out of here now!”

“Hold on, I’ve got a question for you!” Luffy shouted back, his tone impatient but curious.

“Make it quick, Luffy!” I urged, feeling the electricity surge up my arm as I prepared to activate the left ring too.

Law pointed toward a building. “Head to the lab, around the back. You’ll find what you’re looking for. We’ll meet again soon. We both have things we need to get back”

Just then, one of the G-5 soldiers lunged at Law. I didn’t hesitate. I moved behind him, grabbing his cloak and lifting him off the ground. With a burst of speed, I placed my electrified hand on him. “Now Shock!”

The electricity surged through the soldier, sending him crashing to the ground. I landed beside Law, catching my breath, ready to follow Luffy.

“Let’s go, Luffy!” I shouted, glancing back toward my captain. “Right!” Luffy responded, already racing back toward Brownbeard with the crew.

Suddenly, I felt a firm hand spin me around. “What’s with the spinning?” I asked, only to see Law’s smoldering gaze locked onto mine.

His eyes were dark with unspoken desire. “Seems like our moment was cut short,” he said, his voice low, every word dripping with a provocative undertone.

I raised an eyebrow, a teasing smile on my lips. “Well, it looks like someone’s eager to pick up where we left off.”

Law’s lips curved into a predatory smirk. “Eager doesn’t even begin to describe it.”

Before I could retort, Law’s hands slid up to cradle my face, his fingers brushing my skin with a startling tenderness. His lips crashed against mine, and the kiss was anything but gentle. It was fierce, driven by a palpable hunger, a raw, unrestrained passion that left me breathless. Each touch and flicker of his tongue ignited a fire deep inside me.

When he finally pulled back, his forehead rested against mine, our breaths mingling in the intimate space between us. “Keep my coat on you,” he murmured, his voice a heated whisper. “I don’t want anyone else seeing what’s mine.”

I shivered at the possessiveness in his tone, my pulse quickening. “And what if I don’t want to keep it on?” I teased, my voice husky with the lingering thrill of his touch.

Law’s gaze was dark and intense, his breath warm against my cheek. “Then I guess I’ll just have to make sure you do,” he said, his lips brushing mine again in a fleeting, electrifying touch.

With a final, smoldering look, Law released me, and I turned to catch up with Luffy and the crew. The weight of his coat and the memory of his fiery kiss lingered, a vivid reminder of the intense, unspoken connection we shared.

I made it safely with my crew, landing on Brownbeard’s back just as Luffy arrived, panting and out of breath.

“Hey! No fair! How’d you make it faster than me?” Luffy exclaimed, his eyes wide with disbelief.

I flashed him a teasing smile. “Easy. With this pinky ring I got as a parting gift back at Sabaody.”

Luffy’s eyes sparkled with interest. “Can I wear it?”

I chuckled and shook my head. “I’m afraid not. If it’s anything like my sword, it might do something completely different from what you’re used to. But to be honest, I’ve been dying to see what else these rings can do if I combine them with my moves. I tried it once when we were trapped in the cell.”

“Fine,” Luffy said, a determined look crossing his face. “I’m gonna ask Franky if he can make me one too!”

I laughed at his enthusiasm. “Good luck with that!”

Zoro, having watched the exchange with an amused smirk, leaned in and asked, “So… what was with that kiss back there, Y/N?”

I felt my cheeks heat up as I glanced at Zoro, who was clearly enjoying my discomfort. “Oh, that? Just a little detour before things got too hectic. Law and I… had some unfinished business.”

Zoro raised an eyebrow, a sly grin spreading across his face. “Unfinished business, huh? Seems like things got pretty heated. Are you going to tell us what that was all about?”

I shrugged, trying to play it cool despite the flush on my face. “It’s not like I can explain everything. It was just a moment. You know how it is.”

Zoro’s smirk widened as he looked at me. “Curly-brows is definitely never going to live this down once he hears about this. First, he left you alone back there, and now he’s got to deal with this?”

Before I could respond, bullets whizzed through the air, forcing us to duck for cover. We stayed low until the barrage ceased.

“Fire men! Dont let them escape!” “Forget about them, let's get Smokey and Tashigi out here quick” said one of the G-5 soldiers.

“Hey, look who it is!” Luffy called out, his voice full of excitement. I followed his gaze and saw Nami, Sanji, Chopper, Franky, and a group of samurai, along with the children, all safe.

“Sanji!” I shouted, making a beeline for him. The relief of seeing my crewmates washed over me.

“Y/N! My darling, oh, how I’ve missed you during this time apart!” Sanji cried out with his usual dramatic flair. “Come leap into my arms and let’s get that ugly coat off you!”

But it wasn’t Sanji who spoke. Nami's voice broke through, “That’s strange…”

Ignoring Nami, I ran straight into Sanji’s arms, hugging him tightly. “See, Sanji! I told you I’d be safe!” The familiar scent of his cologne was comforting as I pressed closer.

“Umm, Y/N?” Sanji said, his voice sounding off.

I pulled back slightly, looking up at him. “Wait, what’s—”

“I'm not Sanji… I’m Chopper,” came the small voice. I looked up, shocked to see Chopper’s face looking up at me with wide, innocent eyes.

“Chopper!” I exclaimed, stepping back in surprise. “Wait, what happened to you guys?”

Before Chopper could explain, I noticed Nami, her face streaked with tears. “Hey, Nami, don’t cry! I missed you too!” I said, reaching out to comfort her.

Nami looked up through her tears and managed a shaky smile. “Actually, I’m Nami, but Franky’s body responded. And I’m Franky in Chopper’s body,” he explained.

“So… that means Sanji’s in… Nami’s body?” I said, trying to piece together the situation.

Sanji, in Nami’s body, stepped forward with a dramatic flourish. “Oh, my lovely Y/N, I’m so glad you’re safe and sound, and back in my arms!” He spoke with exaggerated affection, making the most of his temporary new form.

I looked at them all, bewildered. “I’m so confused,” I said, my head spinning as I tried to puzzle together the strange situation.

Sanji POV…

I was utterly distracted by Nami’s body, unable to tear my gaze away. The curves, the familiar scent of her—everything was overwhelming. Just then, I heard a voice that belonged to my angel. “Sanji!” Y/N shouted, making a beeline for me.

“Y/N! My darling, oh, how I’ve missed you during this time apart!” I cried out with my usual dramatic flair. “Come leap into my arms and let’s get that ugly coat off you!”

But Y/N ignored me and went straight to Chopper, who happened to be in my body. She hugged him tightly and said, “See, Sanji! I told you I’d be safe!” pressing closer to my body.

My heart sank as I saw her cling to someone else, and I began to weep softly. “My angel is finally here and not with Law, and she doesn’t even recognize me!” I said, my voice choked with emotion.

“Chopper!” Y/N exclaimed. She turned to us all and asked, “Wait, what happened to you guys?”

I stepped forward in Nami’s body, trying to make the best of the situation. “Oh, my lovely Y/N, I’m so glad you’re safe and sound and back in my arms!” I said, trying to sound comforting despite my confusion.

“I’m so confused,” Y/N said, shaking her head. Just then, I got a whiff of another man’s cologne. My eyes widened as I realized what was happening. “WHAT DID LAW DO TO YOU! YOU SMELL LIKE HIM!” I yelled, my anger and concern mixing into one.

Y/N’s eyes widened in confusion. “Sanji!” said Nami, who was in Franky’s body. “Now’s not the time; the crew clearly doesn’t know what’s going on!”

“Alright, let me explain,” Nami said, stepping up to clarify the situation. After a few minutes of explanation, the crew finally understood the predicament.

“So, you’re Chopper?” Y/N pointed at me, her confusion evident. “Right!” said Chopper in my body.

“And you’re Franky?” she continued. “Yup,” said Franky in Chopper’s body.

“And you’re Nami?” she asked, looking at Nami in Franky’s body. “Yes,” Nami said, tears forming in her eyes.

“So that means Sanji is in… Nami’s body!” Y/N concluded, turning around and noticing me still staring at Nami’s form, unable to hide my awe-struck expression.

Taking a deep breath, Y/N sighed and yelled, “SANJI!” Her right hand crackled with electricity. “Now Shock!” she commanded, and with that, she shocked me, causing me to fall.

“Wait, Y/N,” I gasped, trying to catch my breath. “Next one isn’t going to be so nice,” she said, her look hardening. “Defile my body again, Sanji, and you’re getting fined 100,000 berries—no, make it 200,000.” Said Nami

“But… but—” I stammered, trying to explain myself.

Before I could continue, the samurai found his legs, which happened to be Luffy’s extra pair of legs. The chaotic scene added another layer of confusion to our already tangled situation.

As minutes passed by, Usopp explained the situation, detailing how the distress call was meant for Brownbeard, not for us, and that the samurai was from the Land of Wano. “We followed the signal and ended up here,” Usopp said. “The samurai is searching for his son.”

“Yes,” the samurai said, his voice tense. “I fought those men only to find my son. His name is Momonosuke. He was brought to this dreadful place, and so were these children. There might be more.”

“Yeah, he’s right,” one of the children said. “There were other kids like us, so your son might be there.”

“So… who did this to you?” Y/N asked, trying to understand the situation.

“It was the man we encountered,” the samurai said, his expression darkening. “The one with the cold gaze and the silly cap who bears the title of Warlord!”

“Wait! Traffy?!” Luffy and Y/N exclaimed in unison, struggling to grasp the shocking news.

“Traffy’s a Warlord now?” Luffy said, looking stunned.

“And you’re sure Traffy did this to you?” Y/N asked, trying to make sense of everything.

“YES!” I shouted, unable to contain my frustration. “I KNEW THAT MAN COULDN’T BE TRUSTED! I LEFT YOU ALONE WITH HIM, AND NOW YOU’RE BRAINWASHED INTO THINKING HE’S A GOOD GUY?!”

“Calm down, Sanji,” Zoro said, smirking. “You sure it’s not because of that kiss you two shared Y/N?”

Y/N groaned, “Why’d you have to add more fuel to the fire, Zoro?”

“WAIT, Y/N, LAW KISSED?!” I blurted out, my eyes wide with shock.

Y/N’s face flushed as they tried to avoid my gaze. “Sanji, it’s not—”

“That bastard is going to pay!!” I roared, my anger burning hotter than ever. “I’m going to make him regret ever messing with you!”

“Sanji, you’re not helping,” Y/N said, trying to stay calm. “We need to focus on the situation.”

“Fine,” I grumbled, still fuming. “But once we’re done with this, I’m going to have a word with Law. Nobody messes with my Y/N and gets away with it.”

Y/N POV…

This has truly been a long day. Not only did Zoro blurt out to Sanji about the kiss I had with Law, but now Sanji is even more amped up in Nami's body. I sighed, trying to refocus on the situation at hand. "Please continue, samurai," I said, hoping to steer the conversation back to the story.

The samurai nodded, his expression serious. "That Warlord was the one who cut me into three pieces. My head was kept in the facility, while my torso and legs were scattered across this island."

"I did see a torso outside! It was fighting with me, oh dear!" Brook exclaimed, his voice tinged with concern.

"You've seen it?!" The samurai's eyes widened. "We must go there at once!"

As minutes passed, Usopp thought of a clever idea. He crafted little stickers with the crew's faces on them and placed Chopper's, Franky's, Nami's, and Sanji's pictures on the bodies they were currently inhabiting.

"Really, Usopp?" Sanji grumbled, clearly annoyed by the stickers.

"Ahh, quit whining. Besides, no one is going to remember who’s who, so this is the best option," Usopp retorted, proud of his solution.

"I agree, this seems like a great idea," I chimed in, smiling as I admired Usopp’s handiwork. Then, with a teasing grin, I added, "Oh, and by the way, Chopper—who’s in Sanji’s body—that cologne you’re wearing smells rather good. I’d love to hug you again just to smell more of it."

Chopper, blushing furiously in Sanji’s body, stammered a shy response, while the real Sanji—now in Nami’s body—began to bite her sleeve, tears welling up in her eyes.

"Y/N," Sanji whimpered, his voice tinged with desperation. "Why must you torment me so? My poor heart can’t take it! Seeing you embrace another—even if it’s my own body—is too much!"

I laughed softly, shaking my head at Sanji’s dramatics.

A few minutes later, the plan was set in motion. Nami, Chopper, and I stayed behind to watch over the children while Sanji, Brook, and Zoro (for Nami’s sake, since Sanji couldn’t be trusted in her body) went out to search for the samurai. Meanwhile, Luffy, Robin, Usopp, and Franky headed off to find the lab.

As we gathered test samples from the children, Chopper’s face turned grim. “These kids aren’t actually sick,” he said, his voice barely containing his anger. “They’ve been drugged. It’s awful.”

My heart dropped as I saw the children writhing in discomfort, their withdrawal symptoms clearly evident. The realization hit me hard. “Those bastards who did this to them are gonna pay!” I declared, my voice filled with determination.

Before Usopp joined Luffy’s group, he used his Sleep Star to knock out the children to alleviate their suffering. The tranquilizer worked quickly, and the once frantic children fell into a peaceful, drug-free slumber.

Laws POV…

It’s been a few hours since I last saw Y/N, and her presence still lingers in my mind. The kiss we shared is like a vivid memory, replaying over and over. Her wearing my coat, the way her lips felt—soft and warm—against mine. I had been hungry for more, but the interruption from the G-5 units and the Strawhats arriving at the front of the lab had cut our moment short.

Two long years had passed since I last saw her, and the thought of losing her again was unbearable. The corridors of this facility seemed endless, and yet my mind was fixated solely on Y/N. Every step I took felt like a reminder of how much I wanted to be close to her again.

As I walked, I gently touched my lips, as if trying to grasp the ghostly sensation of her kiss. Her touch was still fresh in my memory, and the lingering taste of her kiss was both intoxicating and maddening.

Pushing Y/N to the back of my mind, I forced myself to focus on the task at hand. I handed Caesar the heart of Smoker, and the scientist's characteristic laugh filled the room.

"Shrorororro," Caesar chuckled, examining the heart with his usual detached amusement.

I made my way to the couch, feeling the weight of the situation pressing down on me. Monet, ever the silent observer, was next to me, her presence almost soothing in its calmness.

"The heart of the leader of the G-5, Vice Admiral Smoker," Caesar said, as he carefully inspected the beating heart. "What a wonderful souvenir. With this, the fight is over."

Caesar’s gaze was fixed on me, his expression a mix of satisfaction and cunning. "Shrorororro. Now, that the G-5 men are going to be taken care of, that will leave just one remaining issue."

"The Strawhat crew," Caesar continued, his tone growing darker.

"What about the Strawhats?" I asked, trying to sound completely indifferent, though I felt a twinge of unease.

"Don’t worry about them. I have a plan to eliminate them and retrieve the children."

The word "eliminate" made my blood run cold.

Just the thought of someone laying a hand on Y/N was enough to make my blood boil, but I tried to suppress that emotion.

"At first, I wasn’t too worried about the Strawhats, that is until Monet warned me about them," Caesar said. "I’m sending them those two, the snow mountain assassins. And I want them to bring me Cyborg Franky and Princess Y/N."

The mention of Y/N’s name caused me to widen my eyes slightly.

"Yes, Franky has some technology that can be useful to me. Y/N, the power she wields is extraordinary. She’s quite the looker, isn’t she Monet?" Caesar said with a smirk.

I clenched my hands tightly, trying to control the surge of fury rising within me. You won’t lay a hand on her, I thought, barely able to contain my rage.

"Why, she is. But also, her bounty has increased as well. She no longer sits at 115,000,000 berries; she now sits at 150,000,000 berries. That’s due to her new title and what she accomplished back at Sabaody two years ago," Monet added, her tone matter-of-factly.

"Then it’s settled. Shororororo," Caesar said, his laughter echoing with a sense of finality.

I gritted my teeth, my mind racing. I need to do something to protect Y/N. The thought of her being targeted by these people was unbearable.

And we are back with another chapter! Today its only one chapter since I didnt have much time in the morning. But Law, be putting the moves, and standing on business. Sanji poor guy just when y/n came back to give him a hug he no longer is no his body. Ngl that section was the hardest to type because I wanted to make sure that it was understandable as I wrote as well. But other than that you guys, thank you for reading this chapter!, thank you for following, liking, reblogging, sharing, commenting etc. I am going to be making a tag list so if you guys want to be added please let me know in the comments!. But tomorrows Chapter its going to be a good one too! Ill se you guys tomorrow

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brucebocchi · 6 months ago

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Spring 2024 anime, Pt. 1: Ongoing/returning shows and the bench

yo! i also post this on my ko-fi! this is very much a labor of love, so if you liked what i wrote consider throwing a few bucks my way! thanks!

And we are back! This one came a little later because I'm much busier now than I was three months ago, but that's a good thing. It'll be a bit longer before I cover last season's new anime, so bear with me. I'm happy to say, though, that I didn't hate anything I watched this season! So there's that.

As always, the OP is linked in the title of each show. Check them out, there were some good ones this season!

Here we go:

Continuing & returning shows:

Delicious in Dungeon, second cour

Ahh, Dungeon Meshi. At the start of my review of its debut cour, I said that Dungeon Meshi is a difficult anime for me to talk about unprompted because it’s such a complete, self-assured work that saying anything about it besides “PLEASE WATCH THIS ANIME IT’S SO FUCKING GOOD” feels like a fait accompli. After twelve more episodes and spending the better part of a weekend binging the entire manga, I’m left with little else to say besides please watch this anime (and read the manga), it’s so fucking good.

Our adventuring party has managed to slay (and cook) the red dragon and resurrect Falin from its belly, but the victory came at a cost: They have managed to not only invoke the ire of the dungeon’s ruler, the “lunatic magician” Thistle, but Marcille’s use of forbidden resurrection magic has also raised another number of hackles. Reunions aren’t all happy ones and the dungeon is getting weirder.

This line break represents where I wanted to add so much more and just kept falling short. This continues to be an exceptional adaptation of an exceptional manga. For all the silly gags, for all the goofy potshots everyone takes at each other, Dungeon Meshi is a series with a beating heart worn permanently on its sleeve. The group dynamic remains superb, and no less so for the standoffish half-girl-half-cat Izutsumi joining the gang (my joy at seeing her added to the OP was indescribable). The ways in which everything interconnects make up only a fraction of this series’ unmatched worldbuilding; much hay has been made about how Ryoko Kui designed the dungeon as a living, breathing ecosystem, but there’s so much more of that within the human element as well, and the latter aspect looks to only improve when the show returns for the next season.

Dungeon Meshi is, without question, the best anime of 2024 so far, and I will be impressed if anything manages to overtake it in this year’s latter half. The manga became one of my favorites in record time, and I have little doubt that by the end of the second (and almost certainly final) season, one of my favorite anime of all time will indeed be Dungeon Meshi. Ahh, Dungeon Meshi.

KonoSuba: God’s Blessing on This Wonderful World!, season 3

When I reviewed last year’s Megumin-centric spinoff, I mentioned that I’m not quite as high on KonoSuba as other anime fans. I always thought it was a perfectly serviceable comedy isekai, nothing too special, but mostly worth the watch. Even after the letdown that was An Explosion on this Wonderful World! last year, I was still looking forward to the long-overdue third season. And pretty much as expected, what we got was fine. Just fine.

That said, I was instantly delighted to see Megumin once again surrounded by Kazuma, Aqua, and Darkness. And as is frequently the case when those four are together, shit goes south fast. Kazuma, hoping to heal the mental wounds he incurred in the Legend of Crimson film, gets his groove back when he’s invited to regale the adorable Princess Iris with tales of his exploits. As a noble herself, Darkness is mortified throughout this ordeal, scrambling to ensure that Kazuma doesn’t get beheaded for being a loudmouthed freak, and also that Aqua and Megumin don’t accidentally burn the palace down in their revelry.

KonoSuba gets a lot of comparisons to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, in that both are ensemble comedies in which the entire main group consists of awful people who don’t entirely like or trust one another. It’s a fair enough comparison, but what makes the group dynamic work for both shows is that the moral center is never a fixed point; the “voice of reason” among either group changes along with the situation to ensure the comedy stays fresh. And the fact that Lalatina Dustiness goddamn Ford has to be the voice of reason for the majority of this season should mortify you.

Darkness losing her mind aside, I didn’t really care for this arc. There was some interesting worldbuilding happening toward the middle of the season, but Kazuma acting way too eager about having a tiny, prepubescent girl calling him “onii-chan” just made my skin crawl, and I’m otherwise pretty much immune to the bog-standard “hey, laugh at this man because he’s a pervert” anime trope at this point. Fortunately, it only lasted for half the season, but unfortunately, it still felt an episode or two too long. The second half of the season followed Darkness’ forced betrothal to a gross noble from an earlier episode, and that arc also felt an episode or two too long.

Season 3 felt like KonoSuba both at its best and worst. The character dynamics are as rich as ever, even as Aqua and Megumin largely fell to the margins in favor of the larger stories. The smaller moments with the main four just bumming around their mansion are always just as entertaining as their larger exploits. The narrative seems to want to continue pushing Kazuma and Megumin together, nurturing the seeds planted in the movie, but later episodes also make a pretty good case for Kazuma and Darkness getting together; for better and for worse, those two absolutely match one another’s freak. Some of the gags this season were pretty darn good as well: This anime’s facials are already the stuff of legend, and we got some bangers here too (see above). For as loud as it often got, there were a few gags that centered on prolonged, uncomfortable silences like a late episode of Evangelion. And for as bored as I started to grow with the last arc, the punchline at the very end of the season almost made the whole thing worth it.

On the other hand, this show somehow got noisier. Some of Explosion’s funnier moments last year came from Megumin’s shrieking outbursts, so Studio Drive (taking over the main series from Deen) seemed to think that everyone needed to yell all the time now. It felt jarring; like watching season 4 of SpongeBob for the first time. I’m also not impressed by the fact that this series still seems to think sexual assault is just the funniest when it happens to men. It was a serious lowlight of the Legend of Crimson movie, and it just seemed to double down this time for a completely unnecessary segment in which Kazuma helps Dust get back at a creep, only for it to backfire on Dust and only on Dust. That shit sucks!

At the same time, it’s still KonoSuba, so ESH. If you made it this far, you’re pretty much along for the ride until it breaks down, so you take the good with the bad. Neither particularly outweighs the other, nor are they enough to push me towards declaring this show as either essential or unwatchable. It’s KonoSuba, and KonoSuba is fine.

Laid-Back Camp, season 3

The reigning champion of Cute Girls Doing Cute Things anime returns to the present day after the 10-years-later film, and it’s in fighting shape. Though the third season of Yuru Camp (another anime I refuse to call by its official English title) is in the hands of a new studio, it’s still full to bursting with all the gorgeous countryside scenery, tantalizing food porn, and whimsical music you’ve come to expect by now.

This is one that was on my backlog for the better part of a couple years, so I figured there was no better time to catch up than to time it with a new season hitting the air. Through two seasons and an original movie, Yuru Camp was peak slice-of-life: Low on conflict, heavy on cuteness, and brimming with personality. It does what it says on the tin; it’s a show about high school girls going camping, and by God are you getting high school girls going camping. And in the meantime, you, the viewer, get to learn the ins and outs of camping while discovering all these real-life, lovely spots along the Japanese countryside with Mt. Fuji always in view, and maybe help boost the local tourism economies once you go outside and touch grass.

The previous two seasons largely followed the girls’ exploits at school and out in the open as individuals and smaller groups before building to a big destination trip with all five of them, but season 3 takes a more, uh, laid-back approach. The first half follows Rin’s bike trip along with Nadeshiko’s hometown bestie, Ayano, until they meet up with Nadeshiko after her own solo excursion. We also get a quick peek at a heavily-fictionalized retelling of Chiaki, Aoi, and Ena’s outing with Toba-sensei, as well as a cherry blossom viewing trip with Nadeshiko and her sister, before the girls all come together once more for a nighttime hanami outing. It’s more of the same, and that’s exactly what you’re here for.

That said, the character work is the glue that holds Yuru Camp together, and it’s as wonderful as ever. Rin and Nadeshiko’s friendship remains a delight, and Hazel covered it better and more succinctly than I ever could in the Yuru Camp segment in her phenomenal video on countryside scenery in anime. Watching Rin bond with Ayano one-on-one on their own trip was a real highlight; they’d hit it off quickly in the first season, and it was lovely seeing Ayano working at Rin’s go-to bike shop in the movie, so I was overjoyed to see more of these two. More than anything, though, seeing a habitual loner like Rin connect so naturally with another person (and one who isn’t Nadeshiko, no less) just warms my cold, dead heart. The looser plotting also gives us the time and space to take in how the girls individually spend their downtime. Nadeshiko’s quickly becoming as much of an expert solo traveler as Rin, and her youthful enthusiasm about everything remains as endearing as ever. We even get to watch her becoming a train nerd in real time!

At the same time, the communal aspect of camping is a huge part of what makes this show click. Part of that, of course, has been watching Rin’s social circle expanding, but also in seeing how readily campers observe and aid one another. Nobody is “the best” at camping (except maybe Rin’s granddad), so none of the campers in this show have any reservations about going out of their way to help one another. Even an expert solo camper like Rin was a greenhorn at one point, so she’s always happy to give and receive help. The various campers the girls run into along their journeys are always ready with local information about good spots to eat, relax, and take in a good view as well. Even camping on your own, you’re never truly alone.

In that same vein, Yuru Camp is as educational as ever. Along the girls’ travels, we learn plenty about the myriad suspension bridges over the Oi River drainage basin, the various types of passenger trains connecting the countryside, torii gates along the mountains, and clever ways to build a camping menu around local crops. Yes, Yuru Camp is as much food porn as it is nature porn, and the dishes are sumptuous. On that note, my favorite thing I learned this season came from Nadeshiko’s drooling outbursts during the other OutClub girls’ camp retelling: It turns out that there’s an equivalent Japanese colloquialism to what we call food porn, specifically in the act of taunting people about delicious food they can’t have right now, and that is “meshitero,” or “food terrorism.” That is just terrific.

Yuru Camp is in the hands of a new studio for its third season, and the difference is mostly negligible. This is a show that trades largely in vibes, and the vibes remain impeccable. Almost everything still looks and sounds great, but season 3 leans a little more heavily on CG for moving bikes and cars, and they do look markedly worse. Not immersion-shattering, but definitely distracting. The scenery largely looks less hand-painted in favor of a more photorealistic style, which does make me wonder about the actual level of artistry put into it, but that could just be me splitting hairs. Otherwise, it still looks like Yuru Camp, which is all you can ask for.

This show still rules though. I don’t often get intense in my praise of slice-of-life anime, and the ones that get me acting like that are the ones that go to wild lengths for the sake of a joke, like Nichijou and Kaguya-sama. I don’t know what it is about a show as lowkey as Yuru Camp that has me wanting to scream from the rooftops that “THIS FUCKING SHOW WHIPS ASS,” but I’m not questioning it. Maybe it’s cuteness aggression.

Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation, season 2, part 2

And we’re back with more of the best-made anime that I can’t recommend in good faith to just about anyone.

The latter half of season 2 surrounds Rudeus’ aims for a quiet domestic life, settling down with Sylphiette and at the request of his father, Paul, taking his little sisters Aisha and Norn into their home (along with a very welcome reunion with their escort). Aisha takes after her mother, Lilia, and is eager to please and help around the house, but Norn’s last memory of Rudeus is of his violent reunion with their father. Norn idolizes Paul, so she doesn’t trust Rudeus and refuses to open up to him. While Aisha is content with working around the house, Norn wants to keep her distance, so she decides to enroll and board at the magic academy.

Norn’s apprehension towards Rudy and the mental anguish it causes her becomes an isolating factor in her daily life, leading Rudeus to believe that she’s being bullied, much as he was in his previous life. Rudy’s attempts at sticking up for his sister fall flat and lead him to realize he’s been projecting on her this entire time rather than actually reaching out to her. It’s these moments of learning and unlearning that nearly make all of this worth it; this was easily one of the best episodes of Mushoku Tensei’s second season, and frankly one of the best episodes of anime I watched all season. Another episode near the end also earned that distinction, but it got weird afterwards. Even in its lower moments, this season traded very well in the themes of family, growth, and loss, and those aren’t always tidy subjects to handle.

Because this is Mushoku Tensei, the cozy home life can’t last forever. Paul’s attempts at saving his wife have continued to fall short, so he calls on Rudeus and Elinalise to come and help rescue Zenith. Rudeus is conflicted; though he finally has the opportunity to save his mother and face his father as a man, Sylphie is now pregnant and he doesn’t want to abandon his wife and future child. As often happens at times like this, Rudy gets some face time with the Man-God who has been seemingly invested in his journey, and for once Rudy flouts his advice to venture out. Many reunions are had, including one that had been teased all season, and a lot of things go south from there. I was spoiled on some of what would happen in later parts of the series, so it didn’t come as a massive shock to me, but it still got weird, it wasn’t really addressed all that well, and people were rightfully put off by it.

On that note, I’ve given up on the idea of this series being about Rudeus improving as a person, because he’s done just about as much “improving” as he’s going to by now. As I’ve said before, he’s not quite the drooling pervert he used to be (he was actually doing great for more than half of this cour before a succubus attack briefly got the better of him), but his moral compass, even in his best moments, still seems to be poorly calibrated. I do see a side of him now that genuinely cares for others and actively wants to help, but it doesn’t erase his questionable acts, nor do I get any sense that he deserves to get the things he wants. I particularly don’t care for what’s already looking like a formula wherein sex seems to be his cosmic reward whenever he hits a low point or achieves something great. For a series that genuinely has such excellent worldbuilding and storytelling, that part feels cheap enough to undermine everything else.

But hey, a rapist died, so it’s not all bad.

I’m not sure I’d necessarily put Mushoki Tensei on the level of Frieren or Dungeon Meshi, certainly not thematically, but with all three off the air this upcoming Summer season, it’s been a minute since we’ve had a season of anime without one of those three lovingly-made fantasy series on the air. It feels like anime has a massive fantasy void now, and I desperately hope I’m proven wrong soon.

Urusei Yatsura (2022), season 2, second cour

The final run of the remade Urusei Yatsura ended on a strong note with an honest-to-God story arc! Lum and Ataru’s tempestuous situationship is put into stark relief with the fate of the world in the balance, except not really; Lum just wants him to think that because she’s fed up with his shit and that’s just how she operates.

Even as disjointed as this run has been prior to the final arc, there were still some gems this season. The time-travel segment where the gang tries to undo Mendo’s fear of the dark was a certified banger, Asuka’s violent androphobia is as funny as ever, and the introduction of Nagisa as a means of further muddying Ryunosuke’s whole gender situation was the most quintessentially Rumiko Takahashi shit I’ve ever seen. It’s the character comedy that makes Urusei Yatsura what it is just as much as the central will-they-won’t-they, and it was just as potent as always before the series hurtled towards its finale.

The four-episode arc to close out the all-stars run, similarly to the final arc of the manga and the final movie of the original anime run, centers on a blowup between our romantic leads over a colossal misunderstanding (sasuga Takahashi-sensei) involving a unilaterally-fated marriage between Lum and the prince of a dark planet, Rupa. Though Ataru and fellow dark-planeter Karula (basically Rupa’s own equivalent Lum) foil the wedding, a carbon copy of Lum created to ensure a proper exchange of vows tells Ataru that she’s over him. Ataru’s feelings are genuinely hurt, and he tells the real Lum that they’re through, and he returns to Earth with Karula, accidentally spreading spores of the dark planet’s enormous mushrooms.

Said mushrooms rapidly grow enormous when exposed to sunlight, so Earth is already in certain danger. Lum sees an opportunity to manipulate convince Ataru to finally get serious, so she sets familiar stakes: She’ll enlist Rupa’s help in destroying the mushrooms, but only if Ataru can beat her in a ten-day game of tag by grabbing her horns, just like when they first met. More importantly, though, she’ll let it all go if he can just say out loud that he loves her. And you know damn well by now that these two are both as stubborn as they come.

As I’ve said before, this is a shorter run, so we may not have the benefit of the entirety of Urusei Yatsura up to this point to be properly salivating for the finale, but I’ll be damned if it didn’t still hit like a freight train. The emotional climax was still meaty and satisfying in ways that made all of this worth it. Half of the joke of this series is that Ataru’s never going to get serious about Lum in a way that matters, but every time the mask slips is a well-earned shot to the heart. The ending is no different, and it made the shorter run still feel worthwhile.

And with that, that’s a wrap on a modern (if truncated) retelling of a legendary comedy manga. I’ll be forever grateful to this iteration of Urusei Yatsura for finally pushing me into getting into Rumiko Takahashi’s classic works, and I’m beyond excited that there’s also a Ranma ½ remake on the way. If David Production takes that one on as well, it’ll be in great hands.

Anime I Watched Two Episodes of and Will Probably Get Back to Later

I Was Reincarnated as the 7th Prince So I Can Take My Time Perfecting My Magical Ability

I mean, you read the title.

This is less an isekai and more of a lateral reincarnation story; magic already very much exists in this fantasy kingdom, but this is about a guy who is very obsessed with magic but sucked at it suddenly gaining a wealth of talent and the opportunity to go absolutely sicko mode.

Lloyd’s existing knowledge of magic serves him well, and he becomes a virtuoso at a young age. He manages to subjugate a demon lurking in the palace’s library and turn him into an adorable familiar (and having the demon go from being voiced by Akio Otsuka to Fairouz Ai was a brilliant move) and just terrorize the poor little shit with his experiments and travails. The kid could basically do a Hollow Purple by the second episode. He’s kind of psychotic, and I love that for him.

This is definitely a comedy, but the comedy is kind of all over the place early on. Prince Lloyd is surrounded by beautiful young ladies-in-waiting who, uh, seem way too into him, and that kinda sucks. Lloyd himself is drawn and animated a little too lovingly for a child as well. It’s definitely uncomfortable in parts early on, but I’ve heard it lightens up on that and gets crazier in the parts that matter, so I’ll be coming back.

And it started with a menacing monologue from Takehito Koyasu himself, so of course my interest was piqued from the jump.

Oblivion Battery

It’s weird, I love both anime and sports, but sports anime was just something I never sought out too much until I picked up Blue Box recently (also please read Blue Box, it whips ass and the anime is gonna be incredible). Oblivion Battery’s debut coincided with the start of the American baseball season, so it seemed like a great time to hop in.

I can’t say I was too intrigued by the premise, though. The intentionally generically-named Taro Yamada quit baseball after middle school after getting utterly rinsed by the high-powered battery of pitcher Haruka Kiyomine and catcher Kei Kaname, so he enrolls in a high school without a baseball club, only to find that his classmates are… Haruka and Kei. Kei, as it turns out, took a bad hit to the head and has completely forgotten all about baseball, and now spends all of his time trying to be a comedy boke for unwilling participants. Taro and Haruka would like Kei to learn about baseball again, so they start up a new club, alongside other classmates who also quit baseball because of the titular battery.

Fine premise, but eh. The hook wasn’t enough of a hook for me, and even MAPPA handling the animation didn’t keep my attention for long. I’ll probably get back to it eventually, but I ended up watching plenty of other anime this season that felt like higher priorities.

Also, I’m pretty sure Oblivion Battery’s manga introduced a character named Aoi Todo before Jujutsu Kaisen did. I still prefer the latter.

YATAGARASU: The Raven Does Not Choose its Master

See, this one I probably should’ve picked up sooner, because it seems like it’s very much my jam, and I’ve seen plenty of praise for it. It’s a dense one, though, and I’d rather not cram it just to turn around and review it a few days later.

I won’t even go into the details because even two episodes in, there are darn near too many of them. This is a massive ensemble cast in and around a succession battle in a fictionalized, imperial Japan-esque kingdom created and ruled by yokai. We’ve got a battle of brides-to-be vying for the hand of an embattled prince, a cunning but resentful empress overseeing the proceedings, a possible spy or two, and a rambunctious little shit who looks like he got plucked out of Avatar: The Last Airbender getting roped into working in the palace. It’s a lot of moving parts, but I’m curious to see how they tie together.

Two episodes in and this show looks good, but probably not as great as it could. I know I’m spoiled on The Apothecary Diaries, but something like this already feels like it deserves better than some of the stiff character animation I saw early on. I’ll reserve my judgments for now.

YATAGARASU is continuing into the summer season, so I’ll take my time catching up on it. This one feels like it deserves to be sipped slowly, not chugged, and I’ll have my tasting notes in due time.

#anime reviews

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physalian · 1 month ago

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Wicked (part 1) was a solid adaptation

Saw Wicked last night. Only seen the musical once and for a movie longer than both halves of the original combined, the extra added minutes aren’t wasted. I can't exactly praise a movie for storytelling when its legwork was done near beat-for-beat already in the musical, and in the original book, but if you haven't or won't see anything except this film: Yes, it has a very good story.

But I want to talk about what I think is the best example of a “maybe they weren’t so terrible after all” villain redemption retcon, of which Elphaba is kind of the poster child of this whole trend. Why she works, and why something like Cruella did not. Not specific to this version at all.

Quick synopsis: Wicked is an alternate telling of the events before The Wizard of Oz, the backstory of the Good Witch Glinda and the Wicked Witch of The West. It is not the story of how good triumphed over evil, how Elphaba devolved or perhaps was always mean and nasty and underdog Glinda saved the day.

Instead, it’s a deeply political (and whoo boy is it relevant today) smear campaign against the disenfranchised and the minority population of Oz—the talking animals. Elphaba is the underdog, an up-and-coming bright-eyed sorceress taken under the wing of her magic school’s legendary professor, with hopes to one day meet the Great Wizard of Oz. There she meets mean-girl Galinda and for about half a classic mean-girl storyline, the two are enemies. Galinda makes amends, the two become friends, and they go together to Oz to meet the Wizard…

Who is an even worse man behind the curtain than in the ‘39 movie, a charlatan and a fraud, who, when Elphaba refuses to let him abuse her magic to scapegoat the talking animal community, launches said smear campaign, turning Elphaba into a pariah. Galinda (now Glinda) stays behind as the events of Wizard of Oz play out, using her socio-political savviness to help Elphaba where she can. Oh, and the melting? Well, the Wizard isn’t the only master of illusions.

—

The ingredients are all there for a ridiculously base “girl boss” plot about this OP Mary Sue who just will not get taken seriously by the ugh “men” around her (and this is absolutely a feminist storyline screaming high notes from the rooftops) until she shows them all they’re idiots and fools and she’s amazing. The bullying classmates, Glinda’s narcissism, Elphaba’s unprecedented raw power with magic.

Except it has the one thing so many recent “girl boss” movies don’t: You like Elphaba and she’s not perfect, and, you like Glinda (eventually). She’s not arrogant and flawless. She’s introverted and can come off as rude and unfriendly but she just lacks foundational relationships to help her socialize, and in the face of the shallow dipshits at her school, she has every reason to be rude and unfriendly.

Glinda, too, is naïve, but not cruel, save for one moment where she immediately owns up to it once she realizes how badly she screwed up, risking the thing she cares about most—her reputation and popularity and likability—to help a girl who selflessly gave her the other thing she cares about most: The chance to also become a sorceress.

But most importantly: Elphaba is a victim, not the architect of so much of this story. Mary Sues do everything right without any effort, they don’t struggle, they don’t overcome any fears or prejudice or limitations. Elphaba isn’t the one loudly and proudly demanding an audience with the Wizard. She isn’t going around praising herself and her abilities. She has a lot of power, but never learned how to use it, and she doesn’t luck into her story, she’s explicitly, strategically manipulated into her role.

She'd be more of a Mary Sue if the Wizard's offer was genuine and he was actually a good person, then she really would have lucked her way into fortune by virtue of being inexplicably adept at magic. But she's not, and he's not.

The story manages to build her up without dragging everyone else down. Nor does she "turn evil" because the Wizard doesn't respect her for being green, or a woman, he doesn't give a shit, he just wants what she can do for him. She "turns evil" because they have deeply different philosophies and he's standing in her way and she has no other choice but to flee and become a fugitive. She chooses this, the Wizard doesn't kick her out.

But even before that, Elphaba does become popular, her shallow classmates do start to like her (disproving any notion about how the world will hate her no matter what she does, so fuck ‘em), Glinda does actually have a heart and she is smart, just in a very different school of thought from Elphaba. The influence of the Wizard is just so strong that of course they’re going to believe his lies.

It’s not a story about how “this villain was actually the victim of a Tragic Backstory and you should feel bad for them because it’s even sadder than the hero’s” it’s “this villain was actually the victim of a smear campaign, and the heroes are still heroes, but here’s the other side of who they were fighting”.

But it also works because of the story that it is. Ignoring the actual Oz books (and there are many of them): Precedent already exists in the ‘39 movie—the Wizard is already revealed to be a charlatan. Wicked doesn’t rip up the old script, tell you you’re wrong, and then plop in a whole new story that fucks the continuity. Nor does it ask you to change your mind about a villain who doesn’t really deserve redemption in the first place, like, say, one who skins puppies to wear their fur. Instead, it digs into the fissures that were already there and pulls up the rocks to reveal what’s underneath.

And, Elphaba knows she’s going to be seen as a villain, but she’s not happily engaging in “villainy”. She’s doing what she thinks is right, something the audience should agree with, and is choosing to become a pariah to get her way. She never becomes a “villain”, just the antagonist to the hero’s journey, and I don’t remember the ’39 movie perfectly, but “this little rat from another world dropped a house on my sister and is on her way to kill me, too” would make one justifiably upset.

But overall, it’s just a story with layers and nuance that’s sorely missing in its contemporaries, and, like I said, deeply political without strawmanning either side (wellllllllll...). And, it respects the source material.

I also don’t remember the first Maleficent that well, but I think that also did a good job? Back when the live-action remakes weren’t all hot garbage.

So. Yeah. You want to write a powerful female character very explicitly being a feminist icon (and the consequences that come with it)? Elphaba is the perfect example.

#wicked #wicked 2024 #strong female character #movie review

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cynicalrosebud · 2 months ago

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Lacuna (2) - Homecoming

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Summary: Laswell has an unusual gift for Price, one he is reluctant to accept. If only that unwanted gift would stop making such sad eyes at him...

Warnings: Mentions of PTSD and therapy, you are responsible for your own media consumption

Notes: None, enjoy!

John Price sat in the briefing room, arms crossed and brow furrowed, the usual chaos of the base buzzing around him. He was used to facing enemy fire, but this? This was something else entirely.

“John, I’m telling you, you need this,” Laswell insisted, her tone firm as she gestured toward the door. “You’ve been through a lot. You can’t keep carrying this weight alone.”

Before he could respond, the door opened, and in walked Angel—a small, energetic K9 Hybrid with a soft coat and big, expressive eyes. She trotted up to him, tail wagging eagerly.

“Meet Angel,” Laswell said with a smile. “She’s a trained PTSD service Hybrid, specifically for servicemen in your position. I think you two will be good for each other.”

Price felt a knot tighten in his stomach. “I don’t need a dog, Kate. I’ve been managing just fine.”

Angel paused, her ears drooping slightly, sensing his resistance. The change in her demeanor tugged at his heart. She looked up at him, those big eyes full of hope, and he felt a pang of guilt.

“John, this isn’t just about having a companion,” Laswell pressed, her voice softening. “She can help you process everything—give you the support you need.”

Price sighed, running a hand through his hair. “I don’t have time for a pet, and I certainly don’t need someone to coddle me.”

Angel stepped closer, nudging his hand with her nose, a silent plea that made it even harder to stand his ground.

“Just… think about it,” Laswell urged, watching the interaction intently. “How about a trial period? If it doesn’t work out, you can return her.”

He glanced down at Angel, who was now sitting patiently, her head tilted slightly as if she understood every word. Her expression was a mix of hope and uncertainty, and he could feel his resolve crumbling.

“Fine,” he relented, irritation creeping into his voice. “A trial period. But don’t expect me to get attached.”

Angel’s tail wagged furiously at his words, and he couldn’t help but crack a reluctant smile. “Just remember, I’m not a softie,” he added, trying to maintain his tough exterior.

Laswell chuckled, clearly pleased. “That’s the spirit. Just give her a chance, John. Be a good girl now, Angel.”

As Angel leaned against his leg, he felt a warmth spread through him, despite himself. Maybe this wouldn’t be so bad after all.

The hum of the barracks was a familiar comfort to John Price as he walked through the door, Angel trotting alongside him. She was still adjusting to her new surroundings, her ears perked with curiosity.

“Alright, lass, let’s see how this goes,” he muttered to himself, glancing down at her. Angel looked up, her tail wagging slightly, ready for whatever came next.

As they entered the common area, the rest of Task Force 141 looked up from their various activities. Soap was leaning back in a chair, a half-eaten sandwich in hand, while Gaz and Ghost were engaged in a heated discussion about the latest op.

“Oi, Price! You finally decided to grace us with your presence?” Soap called out, a teasing grin on his face. “What’s with the pup?”

“This is Angel,” Price introduced, trying to sound nonchalant but feeling the weight of their curious gazes. “She’s a… uh, a service Hybrid.”

The room fell silent for a moment, the others exchanging glances. Soap leaned forward, eyes sparkling with mischief. “A service Hybrid? Is that your new battle buddy?”

“Not exactly,” Price replied, crossing his arms. “She’s here to help with… you know. PTSD and all that.”

Ghost raised an eyebrow, his usual stoic expression softening slightly. “She looks well-trained. Wot’s her name again?”

“Angel,” Price said, kneeling down to her level. “Say hi, Angel.”

Angel stepped forward, her head held high as she approached the group, tail wagging more enthusiastically now. She sat in front of Soap, her big eyes full of curiosity and charm.

“Look at her!” Soap exclaimed, reaching out to gently scratch her behind the ears. “She’s adorable!”

Gaz chuckled, shaking his head. “You’ll have everyone in the base falling for her before you know it, Cap.”

“Just don’t get any funny ideas,” Price replied gruffly, though he felt a smile creeping onto his face.

Angel leaned into Soap’s touch, her posture relaxing as she soaked in the attention. Ghost moved closer, observing her with a hint of intrigue. “What else can she do?” he asked, genuine interest in his voice.

“She’s trained to help with anxiety and can alert me if something’s off,” Price explained, feeling a sense of pride. “But she’s also a bit of a therapy dog.”

“Let’s see what she can do, then,” Soap suggested, his excitement palpable.

Price hesitated but nodded. He had read her file, briefly skimming over the basic commands she was trained to perform. “Alright, Angel, how about we show them your favorite trick?”

Angel perked up, clearly ready to impress. Price stood back, and she performed a perfect “sit” followed by a “paw” as he commanded. The group watched, impressed.

“Bloody hell, she’s a natural!” Soap laughed, ruffling her fur. “We’ve got ourselves a proper recruit here!”

As Angel basked in the attention, Price felt something shift within him. Maybe this wasn’t just a trial period after all. Watching her connect with the team, he couldn’t help but feel a sense of hope for the journey ahead.

“Alright team,” he said, voice steady. “Let’s make sure our lass feels at home here.”

With that, the barracks erupted into laughter and camaraderie, and for the first time in a long while, Price felt a flicker of joy in the warmth of his unit’s presence.

#call of duty #fanfic #x reader #simon ghost riley #john soap mactavish #john price #kyle gaz garrick #18+ mdni #k9 hybrid au #captain john price x reader #captain john price

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grits-galraisedinthesouth · 3 months ago

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Look who flew into DC for an early Halloween.

Blake Wolf Thursday, September 26, 2024

Hillary Clinton continued to demonize supporters of former President Donald Trump this week, arguing that the term “deplorables” is actually “too kind” of a characterization for the Republican voter base.

Clinton released an op-ed in The Washing Post on Wednesday. She described how difficult it was for her to empathize with “radicalized individuals,” reflecting back on her “basket of deplorables” phrase from 2016, when she lost to Trump in the U.S. election.

However, political strategists highlighted how Clinton’s use of that phrase greatly damaged her political campaign, as she continued to openly insult a demographic comprised of working class, blue collar voters, the same group that many Democrat politicians claim to want to benefit in their campaign messaging.

“In 2016, I famously described half of Trump’s supporters as ‘the basket of deplorables’. I was talking about the people who are drawn to his racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, Islamophobia – you name it. The people for whom his bigotry is a feature, not a bug. It was an unfortunate choice of words and bad politics, but it also got at an important truth. Just look at everything that has happened in the years since, from Charlottesville to Jan. 6,” Clinton wrote in the piece.

She continued on, stating, “The masks have come off, and if anything, ‘deplorable’ is too kind a word for the hate and violent extremism we’ve seen from some Trump supporters.”

In contrast, Clinton attempted to compare and integrate the “expertise” of Shannon Foley, a former white supremacist, who has changed her life and now “works to deprogram and rehabilitate people leaving hate groups,” to reigning in Trump supporters. Clinton added that she “marveled at the empathy Shannon managed to summon for even the most (yes, let’s say it) deplorable bigots.”

However, The Denver Post outlet previously noted that “when Clinton aides speak in private, their basket of ‘deplorables’ includes faithful Catholics and evangelicals who believe in the sanctity of human life.”

Clinton continued in the op-ed: “I wondered whether Shannon’s thoughtful, empathetic approach could offer lessons not just for rescuing radicalized individuals but also for healing our wounded country. What will it take to pull us out of the madness? Is there any way to drain the fever swamps so we can stand together on firmer, higher ground.”

Although she believes that her “deplorable” characterization holds true, Clinton claimed that she would strives to look at the Republican base with more empathy.

“Talking about the ‘deplorables’ in 2016, I said, ‘Some of those folks, they are irredeemable.’ Part of me would still say this is objectively true. Just look at the lack of remorse from many of the Jan. 6 insurrectionists who’ve been convicted of sedition and other crimes. But another part of me wants to believe something else. I’d like to believe there’s goodness in everyone and a chance at redemption, no matter how remote,” she concluded, presenting herself as taking the moral high ground.

#Hillary Clinton #epstein didn't kill himself #bill clinton #clinton foundation #Arkancide #just in time for Halloween #Trump 2016 #trump 2020 #trump 2024

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dreamerwitches · 8 months ago

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Good morning, I know that my question may be sudden, but I would like to ask you and if you did it it would make me very happy, however, not doing it would not make me angry either, it is more of a recommendation for the future. Could you redesign Leila and Gunhild? Thank you for reading

Since you asked so so nicely op

Its such a shame about Leila’s cause everything else is so cute. I used her back bow as a skirt, keeping the cute trousers underneath. The bottom part of the bow now instead takes from the top. Covered up her chest a little more cause you dont need that window thaaank you. She is 14 :))) I also added lil ribbon bracelets and hearts to the shoes cause those bits just looked a bit empty

Now Gunhild. She doesnt look anything like the original? Why, thats because the original is pure dogshit ^v^ I used my knowledge from designing my own viking magi before to make her outfit at least a bit historically accurate. And… i decided to make her a wolf weeb. Because that’s more fun for a character trait than just being a riz clone.

#Ask #my art #magia record #magical girl

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bullet-prooflove · 8 months ago

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A quick round up of updates on the blog including new characters added to the ASK LIST and a list of fics that went out last week:

New characters were added to the ask list this week:

Sean Archer

Jack Reacher

Jack Hodgson

AJ Chegwidden

Carlton Lassiter

New Fics:

Chicago Med:

The Only One (NSFW) - You're the only woman Sean has been with sober.

Big Heart - How it starts between you and Mitch.

The Morning After - Mitch makes a decision after the two of you spend the night together.

Fuckable - You and Mitch were never just friends.

The Study Part One: Courting Disaster - Dean realises Jack is courting you.

Sleeping Late - You sleep late for the first time in years. (Jimmy Lanik x Reader)

Chicago PD:

Make Me Forget - Antonio is devastated when he catches up with you after the op.

CSI Vegas:

Something About You - Trey has never been able to figure out how he fell in love with you.

The Equalizer:

Watch Me (NSFW) - You want Harry to see everything he does to you.

FBI:

Little Changes - Stuart notices when you start to make little changes.

FBI International:

Live Stream - You recieve a lead on Damian's location.

Ravaged - You find Damian in a bad way.

FBI Most Wanted:

Attention - Remy realises you need a little extra attention.

Fire Country:

Sunday Mornings - Luke takes your advice and carves out some time for himself.

Haven:

Burden - Dwight carries the entire town's burdens on this shoulders.

All Night (NSFW) - Dwight spends the night with you.

Law & Order:

Pushy - Cyrus has forgotten how pushy you are.

How We Met - Nolan reflects on your relationship.

Happy Birthday - Nolan doesn't celebrate his birthday.

Distraction - You distract Nick from work.

Law & Order SVU:

Say My Name - Joe needs to hear you say his name.

Marvel:

The Day We Met - Frank reflects on the path the relationship has taken.

Mayans:

Future Building - Riz builts you a house.

The Musketeers:

Memories - You and Treville have a lot of history.

Duty - Treville is bound by his sense of duty, even at the cost of your life.

Rubies - Aramis spends a momeny alone with you.

Love You More (NSFW) - Athos hates that he loves you.

NCIS:

In The Night Hours - Alden reflects on your relationship and how far you've come

Nothing I Wouldn't Do - There is nothing you wouldn't do for Nick.

NCIS LA:

At His Best - AJ only wants you to have good memories of your time together.

For Better, For Worse - Your sister Sissy causes problems for you Nik.

Numb3rs:

Invaluable - Ian stays the night.

Psych:

Coffee - Carlton knows something wrong from the way you take your coffee that morning.

Reacher:

Not What I Expected - You aren't what Reacher expected.

The Rookie:

Out of Your League - John has always thought you were beautiful.

Scars - John loves you and all your scars.

The Rookie Feds:

Lifetime - Brendon is building a life with someone else.

Climax (NSFW) - You think about Brendon on the day of his wedding.

Silent Witness:

The Backseat - You and Jack have an unusual meet cute.

Cursed - Jack is sure his car is cursed.

SOA:

Worship (NSFW) - Tig worships you in the bedroom.

ATF!Series Part One: A Rabbit You Don't Want To Chase - Stahl makes an unwelcome return to David's life.

Triple Frontier:

Break (NSFW) - Frankie forces you to take a break.

Yellowstone:

Bluebelle - Walker sings you a very important song.

Stop Thinking, Start Listening - Ryan hates seeing you with another man.

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flutterflora · 10 months ago

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so.....i have a very deep and tragic history with dragon city.....in 2015 (at about age 12/13) when dan and phil did their first dragon city sponsored video i ended up being influenced so i downloaded it and i got extremely EXTREMELY invested. every morning before school i would wake up and do all the daily tasks first thing. i battled everyday, i bred the dragons every day and i spent so much of my time watching ads every day just to have enough in game currency to look after my dragons. i was obviously only a kid back then so i couldn't spend any money on that micro-transaction hellscape but i had still gotten some good and rare-ish dragons just from the sheer amount that i played. i was so invested i even had a whole separate app on my phone that showed me all the dragon city breeding guides and how common they were. my whole life revolved around this silly little game for probably like a good 9-10 months, it was a DEEP hyperfixation. i played EVERY DAY for HOURS. then one day i realised that i could get extra food for my dragons if i sign in with a facebook account and bc i didn't have my own one i asked my mum if i could use hers, she said yes so i connected it and.....a pop up came up asking me if i wanna restart my game using the facebook account. i didn't read it and just clicked "YES" fast. because i hadn't been signed in with anything else i lost EVERYTHING, close to almost a full years worth of work and dedication, completely gone......i cried. hard. i'm fairly certain i had a full blown meltdown over it in fact. i still remember being in complete disbelief, staring at my once full and densely populated world, now being almost completely empty with nothing more than one single baby fire dragon and a lvl 1 flame habitat sitting in front of me. once i had calmed down i just decided to uninstall the app and try to forget about it. but i never did. 9 years later and i still think about it. my OP as hell viking dragon i miss you so dearly every day and i hope you're doing okay in the digital void.

#dan and phil #dnpg #dapg #dnpgames #dragon city #i tried re-downloading it like a year ago just to see what was going on #and it's just been overcrowed with features now #just way too much going on

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hyrulehobbit · 2 years ago

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RECOGNISING AI GENERATED IMAGES

(Disclaimer: This is not a foolproof guide as these softwares are constantly changing, but it is intended to help you learn things to possibly look out for.)

We've all heard "count the fingers, count the teeth" for AI generated images of people, but more and more frequently I see people sharing images of objects and scenery that are AI generated without realising it. These people are often vocally anti-AI but still get caught out. This post is not intended to shame or make anyone feel bad for not recognising AI imagery. Usually, AI images posted on platforms like tumblr are not tagged as AI; the OP is often fully intending to trick you just to gain some quick numbers, so it's not your fault that their tactics work. They're designed to be pretty at a glance and betting on you not looking any closer.

So, that out of the way: How can I spot and avoid AI Generated images?

Here's some things I've learned to pick up on, and now I can spot them pretty much on sight.

Full guide under the cut. Contains AI images as examples.

1. Source

Your first easy step is to check if there's a source. Remember when everything on tumblr was just credited to weheartit?? This is the new worse version of that. If the image has no source in the description describing an artist, photographer, brand, location etc... check the original post.

If there's nothing in the tags to indicate that it is art or a piece of photography or an advertisement, it could be AI. Sometimes the caption is just something generic or aesthetic like ~witchy cottage life~ etc. The tags above for the image below of the room with the tree are largely nonsense.

Important note: A watermark does not always indicate a photographer or artist: if you think it might be AI but it has a watermark, that will most likely lead you to the socials for the person who created the image using AI.

2. Visual Soup

Zoom. In. It sucks to feel like you have to get into the habit of pausing and closely checking the details of images on platforms designed for infinite scroll and quick engagement, but if you get into the habit of this, soon you'll be learning to spot AI at a quick scroll glance.

Generally, when you zoom in on a photograph, the details and divisions of where one object ends and another begins still stays the same, just out of focus. Zooming in on an AI image, the details become... soup. Why is that plant morphing into the countertops? Why is the tap floating? Why are there five thousand burner dials???

The same applies to art. Zooming in on art reveals things like brush strokes, pencil lines, pixels, imperfections and intentional small details. If zooming in reveals soupy details that don't look like intentional stylistic choices it could be AI.

3. Interior Design Disasters

One thing AI doesn't seem to be good at is separating the depth and layers of rooms full of furniture, and making things sit properly in their 3D space. Window frames are wonky. Chairs and tables are fused to each other, or to walls. Bookcases get narrower at one end when they really shouldn't. A little wonkiness is fine and expected in artwork, but when the whole thing isn't sitting right, it could be AI.

(Compare the white image on the right to these real photographs of a similar house, and notice how messy and nonsensical the AI image seems).

(Edit 03/06/2023: See also this abstract furniture that still has a proper sense of depth and doesn't merge into the background)

4. Toothpaste

I don't know what else to call this but midjourney effing loves it. I most commonly see this on things like AI generated objects, outfits and garments rather than scenery. It looks like the software has applied all the details with a piping bag. Weird, greebly swirls like it's hoping you won't notice if it adds enough visual noise. Notice it. It's AI. And it looks super fucking weird.

Midjourney also loves adding weird concentric circles to everything, which can be seen in the image example for Lighting below.

5. Giblets

What is that bowl of stuff?? What is on that shelf?? What's that pile of...things?? They're giblets. This is another prominent midjourney feature and another example of visual noise. Stuff it with details, and maybe the viewer won't notice that what they're actually looking at is a lumpy pile of nonsense that definitely shouldn't exist. Spot the giblets!

6. Lighting

This one is hardest to describe and to spot, but I often find that the lighting in AI images of scenery and objects has a flat, dream-like quality. Once you study it, it begins to feel distinctly unreal.

7. Names

Lastly, some people do state that an image is AI in their descriptions or tags, but might not do so in those exact words. If you aren't already familiar, here's the names of the most prominant AI generators as of May 2023:

Midjourney

Dall-E or Dall-E 2

Stable Diffusion

Deep Dream

Artbreeder

WOMBO

NightCafe

Lensa

Stablecog

BigSleep

Brands such as Bing, Google, Shutterstock and Canva are also bringing out generators

8. Multiple Angles (added 03/06/2023)

I forgot to add this earlier, but it's another very simple tell! If the images are objects, garments or rooms... are there multiple images in the post of the same object or location from different angles? No? Then it could be AI. The shoes used as Toothpaste examples above were part of a set of lots of different shoes, but of each design there was only one image. AI is Not Good at creating the same thing twice consistently.

(See these photographs of hair pins. The post contains a source link to the photographer's flikr account, where there are multiple images of each pin in different angles and lighting, confirming that they're real.)

If I think of anything else or some new tell starts to appear, I will come back and update this post, but for now, thank you for reading. My hope for this is that people will either share AI generated images less, or if they do, at least learn to spot and tag them so that those who don't want to see them (aka me!) can filter and avoid.

#AI #AI image #AI generated #AI art #anti AI #AI generatred images #how to avoid AI #how to recognise AI #i had to look at so many ai images to make this post and i hated every second i am so brave #I hope this is educational and helpful I really do!!

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boomstab-papa · 10 months ago

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Tae's guide to Pillowfort

So you fucking hate what tumblr is doing, you're fed up, but you don't know where else to go / what to do when you get there

Here's a guide what I've been up to over on Pillowfort:

For starters, new users need to either get an invite code (message me if you want one, because I literally always have some!) or donate to Pillowfort's operating costs to get started. I recommend getting a code first, and then donating later if you decide you like Pillowfort.

Recognize that Pillowfort has no ads and does not sell user data, so you are not the product. You are the customer. Pillowfort lives because users give their money to the webisite directly, just like how ArchiveOfOurOwn.org operates. If you give Pillowfort a try... and you want to see it keep growing... and you have a couple bucks to throw their way... please consider donating!

On your new account, you'll set up your blog. User icon, description, settings, etc. You get one blog per account. Consider making this your "everything" blog, where you make your original posts AND reblog things.

Consider making a Community that will serve the same purpose as a tumblr sideblog. For example, I made my main blog ceylon-tae and then made the Community "ceylon-tae-art". Just make the Community for now.

Did you set your NSFW and blacklist preferences? You should. Filters & Blacklist have their own link in the sidebar, so you don't have to go into your Settings every time you want to blacklist something. Easy!

Join some more Communities! Think of joining a [Fandom] Community like following the [Fandom] tag on tumblr. Posts from that Community will show up on your feed now! Here is a list of the currently-most-active communities.

Follow some people! You might have seen some of your comrades on tumblr posting their Pillowfort accounts, or maybe you really liked someone's post in a Community and you decide you'd like to follow them! Go follow them! Their posts will show up on your feed now!

Make a post! Remember to add any relevant tags to the post, especially if your post is NSFW, and don't cen/s0r your tags. Your post will now show up on your blog, and you can control who can see it, reblog it, or comment to it. You can make text, image, video, or link posts.

Now you can reblog that post you made to your Community that you made! Or to another Community someone else made! Some Communities review submitted reblogs before posting them, others do not. Remember to add the relevant tags to your reblog here as well.

Reblog posts you enjoyed, so you can show it to your followers!

If you have something to say about the post, Pillowfort has a nested comments section! Livejournal / Dreamwidth / Reddit users will find this familiar. Newbies will hopefully find it easy to learn: make your own comment, reply to the comments other people have made, talk to people in a space that's made for talking and replying.

You can make your own hush-hush commentary in your tags when you reblog a post to your blog, but these tags are not visible anywhere else. So Pillowfort is not gonna rat you out to OP when you make weird tags on your reblog. But also there is no bulit-in way to read everyone's tags in one long list.

You cannot make addendums to posts when you reblog them. If you want to add something, make a comment! Or make your own post and include link to the original post.

Seriously. Comments section. Good stuff. If you enjoy a post, check out its comment section. For comparison, tumblr discussions lived in reblogs, but comments on AO3 fics are what makes an author's world go 'round. Comments are where discussion lives on Pillowfort. So comment on the post if you have something to say! You can have real discussions again! GO. BE FREE. You can also do a Kung Pow Penis in nested comments if you want to. Nested comments are good.

Likes just tell OP you liked the post. That's it. It's just like how kudos works on AO3.

Remember, there's no algorithm, so Likes don't boost any post's visibility, and if you want other people to see a post, you reblog it. If you want to see posts, you follow people and communities, or you dive into the tags for yourself.

There's more details and things to know, but I think these are some good basics for "how the fuck do I even get started"

More how-to-pillowfort guides: https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/3459763 by DoktorHobo https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/4099124 by rah https://www.pillowfort.social/posts/4404622 by killerandhealerqueen

In summary:

Make a blog. Make posts. Make a niche-interest Community or three. Follow people and Communities. Reblog other people's posts to your blog. Reblog posts to your niche-interest Communities. Make comments. Reply to comments. Love the comments. The comments are a fertile land and we will thrive. And we will call it... Pillowfort!

#pillowfort #talking #still figuring out cohost but i do like what people post there too

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x147 · 2 months ago

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op disabled reblogs so i'm pirating this post

written by Cory Doctorow 8 feb 2024

Last year, I coined the term “enshittification” to describe the way that platforms decay. That obscene little word did big numbers; it really hit the zeitgeist.

The American Dialect Society made it its Word of the Year for 2023 (which, I suppose, means that now I’m definitely getting a poop emoji on my tombstone).

So what’s enshittification and why did it catch fire? It’s my theory explaining how the internet was colonised by platforms, why all those platforms are degrading so quickly and thoroughly, why it matters and what we can do about it. We’re all living through a great enshittening, in which the services that matter to us, that we rely on, are turning into giant piles of shit. It’s frustrating. It’s demoralising. It’s even terrifying.

I think that the enshittification framework goes a long way to explaining it, moving us out of the mysterious realm of the “great forces of history”, and into the material world of specific decisions made by real people; decisions we can reverse and people whose names and pitchfork sizes we can learn.

Enshittification names the problem and proposes a solution. It’s not just a way to say “things are getting worse”, though, of course, it’s fine with me if you want to use it that way. (It’s an English word. We don’t have ein Rat für englische Rechtschreibung. English is a free-for-all. Go nuts, meine Kerle.) But in case you want to be more precise, let’s examine how enshittification works. It’s a three-stage process: first, platforms are good to their users. Then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers. Finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, there is a fourth stage: they die.

Let’s do a case study. What could be better than Facebook?

Facebook arose from a website developed to rate the fuckability of Harvard undergrads, and it only got worse after that. When Facebook started off, it was only open to US college and high-school kids with .edu and K-12.us addresses. But in 2006, it opened up to the general public. It effectively told them: Yes, I know you’re all using MySpace. But MySpace is owned by a billionaire who spies on you with every hour that God sends. Sign up with Facebook and we will never spy on you. Come and tell us who matters to you in this world.

That was stage one. Facebook had a surplus — its investors’ cash — and it allocated that surplus to its end users. Those end users proceeded to lock themselves into Facebook. Facebook, like most tech businesses, had network effects on its side. A product or service enjoys network effects when it improves as more people sign up to use it. You joined Facebook because your friends were there, and then others signed up because you were there.

But Facebook didn’t just have high network effects, it had high switching costs. Switching costs are everything you have to give up when you leave a product or service. In Facebook’s case, it was all the friends there that you followed and who followed you. In theory, you could have all just left for somewhere else; in practice, you were hamstrung by the collective action problem.

It’s hard to get lots of people to do the same thing at the same time. So Facebook’s end users engaged in a mutual hostage-taking that kept them glued to the platform. Then Facebook exploited that hostage situation, withdrawing the surplus from end users and allocating it to two groups of business customers: advertisers and publishers.

To the advertisers, Facebook said: Remember when we told those rubes we wouldn’t spy on them? Well, we do. And we will sell you access to that data in the form of fine-grained ad-targeting. Your ads are dirt cheap to serve, and we’ll spare no expense to make sure that when you pay for an ad, a real human sees it.

To the publishers, Facebook said: Remember when we told those rubes we would only show them the things they asked to see? Ha! Upload short excerpts from your website, append a link and we will cram it into the eyeballs of users who never asked to see it. We are offering you a free traffic funnel that will drive millions of users to your website to monetise as you please. And so advertisers and publishers became stuck to the platform, too.

Users, advertisers, publishers — everyone was locked in. Which meant it was time for the third stage of enshittification: withdrawing surplus from everyone and handing it to Facebook’s shareholders.

For the users, that meant dialling down the share of content from accounts you followed to a homeopathic dose, and filling the resulting void with ads and pay-to-boost content from publishers. For advertisers, that meant jacking up prices and drawing down anti-fraud enforcement, so advertisers paid much more for ads that were far less likely to be seen. For publishers, this meant algorithmically suppressing the reach of their posts unless they included an ever-larger share of their articles in the excerpt. And then Facebook started to punish publishers for including a link back to their own sites, so they were corralled into posting full text feeds with no links, meaning they became commodity suppliers to Facebook, entirely dependent on the company both for reach and for monetisation.

When any of these groups squawked, Facebook just repeated the lesson that every tech executive learnt in the Darth Vader MBA:

“I have altered the deal. Pray I don’t alter it any further.”

Facebook now enters the most dangerous phase of enshittification. It wants to withdraw all available surplus and leave just enough residual value in the service to keep end users stuck to each other, and business customers stuck to end users, without leaving anything extra on the table, so that every extractable penny is drawn out and returned to its shareholders. (This continued last week, when the company announced a quarterly dividend of 50 cents per share and that it would increase share buybacks by $50bn. The stock jumped.)

But that’s a very brittle equilibrium, because the difference between “I hate this service, but I can’t bring myself to quit,” and “Jesus Christ, why did I wait so long to quit?” is razor-thin.

All it takes is one Cambridge Analytica scandal, one whistleblower, one livestreamed mass-shooting, and users bolt for the exits, and then Facebook discovers that network effects are a double-edged sword. If users can’t leave because everyone else is staying, when everyone starts to leave, there’s no reason not to go. That’s terminal enshittification.

This phase is usually accompanied by panic, which tech euphemistically calls “pivoting”. Which is how we get pivots such as: In the future, all internet users will be transformed into legless, sexless, low-polygon, heavily surveilled cartoon characters in a virtual world called the “metaverse”.

That’s the procession of enshittification. But that doesn’t tell you why everything is enshittifying right now and, without those details, we can’t know what to do about it. What is it about this moment that led to the Great Enshittening? Was it the end of the zero-interest rate policy (ZIRP)? Was it a change in leadership at the tech giants?

Is Mercury in retrograde?

Nope.

The period of free Fed money certainly led to tech companies having a lot of surplus to toss around. But Facebook started enshittifying long before ZIRP ended, so did Amazon, Microsoft and Google. Some of the tech giants got new leaders. But Google’s enshittification got worse when the founders came back to oversee the company’s AI panic — excuse me, AI pivot. And it can’t be Mercury in retrograde, because I’m a Cancer, and as everyone knows, Cancers don’t believe in astrology.

When a whole bunch of independent entities all change in the same way at once, that’s a sign that the environment has changed, and that’s what happened to tech. Tech companies, like all companies, have conflicting imperatives. On the one hand, they want to make money. On the other hand, making money involves hiring and motivating competent staff, and making products that customers want to buy. The more value a company permits its employees and customers to carve off, the less value it can give to its shareholders.

The equilibrium in which companies produce things we like in honourable ways at a fair price is one in which charging more, worsening quality and harming workers costs more than the company would make by playing dirty.

There are four forces that discipline companies, serving as constraints on their enshittificatory impulses:

Competition. Companies that fear you will take your business elsewhere are cautious about worsening quality or raising prices.

Regulation. Companies that fear a regulator will fine them more than they expect to make from cheating, will cheat less.

These two forces affect all industries, but the next two are far more tech-specific.

Self-help. Computers are extremely flexible and so are the digital products and services we make from them. The only computer we know how to make is the Turing-Complete Von Neumann Machine, a computer that can run every valid program.

That means that users can always avail themselves of programs that undo the anti-features that shift value from them to a company’s shareholders. Think of a boardroom table where someone says, “I’ve calculated that making our ads 20 per cent more invasive will net us 2 per cent more revenue per user.”

In a digital world, someone else might well say, “Yes, but if we do that, 20 per cent of our users will install ad blockers, and our revenue from those users will drop to zero, for ever.” This means that digital companies are constrained by the fear that some enshittificatory manoeuvre will prompt their users to google, “How do I disenshittify this?”

And, finally, workers. Tech workers have very low union density, but that doesn’t mean that tech workers don’t have labour power. The historical “talent shortage” of the tech sector meant that workers enjoyed a lot of leverage. Workers who disagreed with their bosses could quit and walk across the street and get another, better job.

They knew it and their bosses knew it. Ironically, this made tech workers highly exploitable. Tech workers overwhelmingly saw themselves as founders in waiting, entrepreneurs who were temporarily drawing a salary, heroic figures to be.

That’s why mottoes such as Google’s “Don’t be evil” and Facebook’s “Make the world more open and connected” mattered; they instilled a sense of mission in workers. It’s what the American academic Fobazi Ettarh calls “vocational awe” or Elon Musk calls being “extremely hardcore”.

Tech workers had lots of bargaining power, but they didn’t flex it when their bosses demanded that they sacrifice their health, their families, their sleep to meet arbitrary deadlines. So long as their bosses transformed their workplaces into whimsical “campuses”, with gyms, gourmet cafeterias, laundry service, massages and egg-freezing, workers could tell themselves that they were being pampered, rather than being made to work like government mules.

For bosses, there’s a downside to motivating your workers with appeals to a sense of mission. Namely, your workers will feel a sense of mission. So when you ask them to enshittify the products they ruined their health to ship, workers will experience a sense of profound moral injury, respond with outrage and threaten to quit. Thus tech workers themselves were the final bulwark against enshittification.

The pre-enshittification era wasn’t a time of better leadership. The executives weren’t better. They were constrained. Their worst impulses were checked by competition, regulation, self-help and worker power. So what happened?

One by one, each of these constraints was eroded, leaving the enshittificatory impulse unchecked, ushering in the enshittocene.

It started with competition. From the Gilded Age until the Reagan years, the purpose of competition law was to promote competition between companies. US antitrust law treated corporate power as dangerous and sought to blunt it. European antitrust laws were modelled on US ones, imported by the architects of the Marshall Plan. But starting in the 1980s, with the rise of neoliberalism, competition authorities all over the world adopted a doctrine called “consumer welfare”, which essentially held that monopolies were evidence of quality. If everyone was shopping at the same store and buying the same product, that meant that was the best store, selling the best product — not that anyone was cheating.

And so, all over the world, governments stopped enforcing their competition laws. They just ignored them as companies flouted them. Those companies merged with their major competitors, absorbed smaller companies before they could grow to be big threats. They held an orgy of consolidation that produced the most inbred industries imaginable, whole sectors grown so incestuous they developed Habsburg jaws, from eyeglasses to sea freight, glass bottles to payment processing, vitamin C to beer.

Most of our global economy is dominated by five or fewer global companies. If smaller companies refuse to sell themselves to these cartels, the giants have free rein to flout competition law further, with “predatory pricing” that keeps an independent rival from gaining a foothold. When Diapers.com refused Amazon’s acquisition offer, Amazon lit $100mn on fire, selling diapers way below cost for months, until Diapers.com went bust, and Amazon bought them for pennies on the dollar.

Lily Tomlin used to do a character on the TV show Rowan & Martin’s Laugh-In, an AT&T telephone operator who’d do commercials for the Bell system. Each one would end with her saying: “We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.”

Today’s giants are not constrained by competition. They don’t care. They don’t have to. They’re Google.

That’s the first constraint gone, and as it slipped away, the second constraint — regulation — was also doomed.

When an industry consists of hundreds of small- and medium-sized enterprises, it is a mob, a rabble. Hundreds of companies can’t agree on what to tell Parliament or Congress or the Commission. They can’t even agree on how to cater a meeting where they’d discuss the matter.

But when a sector dwindles to a bare handful of dominant firms, it ceases to be a rabble and it becomes a cartel. Five companies, or four, or three, or two or just one company can easily converge on a single message for their regulators, and without “wasteful competition” eroding their profits, they have plenty of cash to spread around.

This is why competition matters: it’s not just because competition makes companies work harder and share value with customers and workers; it’s because competition keeps companies from becoming too big to fail, and too big to jail.

Now, there are plenty of things we don’t want improved through competition, like privacy invasions. After the EU passed its landmark privacy law, the GDPR, there was a mass-extinction event for small EU ad-tech companies. These companies disappeared en masse and that’s a good thing. They were even more invasive and reckless than US-based Big Tech companies. We don’t want to produce increasing efficiency in violating our human rights.

But: Google and Facebook have been unscathed by European privacy law. That’s not because they don’t violate the GDPR. It’s because they pretend they are headquartered in Ireland, one of the EU’s most notorious corporate crime havens. And Ireland competes with the EU’s other crime havens — Malta, Luxembourg, Cyprus and, sometimes, the Netherlands — to see which country can offer the most hospitable environment.

The Irish Data Protection Commission rules on very few cases, and more than two-thirds of its rulings are overturned by the EU courts, even though Ireland is the nominal home to the most privacy-invasive companies on the continent. So Google and Facebook get to act as though they are immune to privacy law, because they violate the law with an app.

This is where that third constraint, self-help, would surely come in handy. If you don’t want your privacy violated, you don’t need to wait for the Irish privacy regulator to act, you can just install an ad blocker.

More than half of all web users are blocking ads. But the web is an open platform, developed in the age when tech was hundreds of companies at each other’s throats, unable to capture their regulators. Today, the web is being devoured by apps, and apps are ripe for enshittification. Regulatory capture isn’t just the ability to flout regulation, it’s also the ability to co-opt regulation, to wield regulation against your adversaries.

Today’s tech giants got big by exploiting self-help measures. When Facebook was telling MySpace users they needed to escape Murdoch’s crapulent Australian social media panopticon, it didn’t just say to those Myspacers, “Screw your friends, come to Facebook and just hang out looking at the cool privacy policy until they get here.” It gave them a bot. You fed the bot your MySpace username and password, and it would login to MySpace and pretend to be you, scraping everything waiting in your inbox and copying it to your Facebook inbox.

When Microsoft was choking off Apple’s market oxygen by refusing to ship a functional version of Microsoft Office for the Mac in the 1990s — so that offices were throwing away their designers’ Macs and giving them PCs with upgraded graphics cards and Windows versions of Photoshop and Illustrator — Steve Jobs didn’t beg Bill Gates to update Mac Office. He got his technologists to reverse-engineer Microsoft Office and make a compatible suite, the iWork Suite, whose apps, Pages, Numbers and Keynote could read and write Microsoft’s Word, Excel and PowerPoint files.

When Google entered the market, it sent its crawler to every web server on earth, where it presented itself as a web-user: “Hi! Hello! Do you have any web pages? Thanks! How about some more? How about more?”

But every pirate wants to be an admiral. When Facebook, Apple and Google were doing this adversarial interoperability, that was progress. If you try to do it to them, that’s piracy.

Try to make an alternative client for Facebook and they’ll say you violated US laws such as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act and EU laws like Article 6 of the EU Copyright Directive. Try to make an Android program that can run iPhone apps and play back the data from Apple’s media stores and they’d bomb you until the rubble bounced. Try to scrape all of Google and they’ll nuke you until you glow.

Tech’s regulatory capture is mind-boggling. Take that law I mentioned earlier, Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act or DMCA. Bill Clinton signed it in 1998, and the EU imported it as Article 6 of the EUCD in 2001. It is a blanket prohibition on removing any kind of encryption that restricts access to a copyrighted work — things such as ripping DVDs or jailbreaking a phone — with penalties of a five-year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine for a first offence. This law has been so broadened that it can be used to imprison creators for granting access to their own creations. Here’s how that works: In 2008, Amazon bought Audible, an audiobook platform. Today, Audible is a monopolist with more than 90 per cent of the audiobook market. Audible requires that all creators on its platform sell with Amazon’s “digital rights management”, which locks it to Amazon’s apps.

So say I write a book, then I read it into a mic, then I pay a director and an engineer thousands of dollars to turn that into an audiobook, and sell it to you on the monopoly platform, Audible, that controls more than 90 per cent of the market. If I later decide to leave Amazon and want to let you come with me to a rival platform, I am out of luck. If I supply you with a tool to remove Amazon’s encryption from my audiobook, so you can play it in another app, I commit a felony, punishable by a five-year sentence and a half-million-dollar fine, for a first offence.

That’s a stiffer penalty than you would face if you simply pirated the audiobook from a torrent site. But it’s also harsher than the punishment you’d get for shoplifting the audiobook on CD from a truck stop. It’s harsher than the sentence you’d get for hijacking the truck that delivered the CD.

Think of our ad blockers again. Fifty per cent of web users are running ad blockers. Zero per cent of app users are running ad blockers, because adding a blocker to an app requires that you first remove its encryption, and that’s a felony. (Jay Freeman, the American businessman and engineer, calls this “felony contempt of business-model”.)

So when someone in a boardroom says, “Let’s make our ads 20 per cent more obnoxious and get a 2 per cent revenue increase,” no one objects that this might prompt users to google, “How do I block ads?” After all, the answer is, you can’t. Indeed, it’s more likely that someone in that boardroom will say, “Let’s make our ads 100 per cent more obnoxious and get a 10 per cent revenue increase.” (This is why every company wants you to install an app instead of using its website.)

There’s no reason that gig workers who are facing algorithmic wage discrimination couldn’t install a counter-app that co-ordinated among all the Uber drivers to reject all jobs unless they reach a certain pay threshold. No reason except felony contempt of business model, the threat that the toolsmiths who built that counter-app would go broke or land in prison, for violating DMCA 1201, the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trademark, copyright, patent, contract, trade secrecy, nondisclosure and noncompete or, in other words, “IP law”.

IP isn’t just short for intellectual property. It’s a euphemism for “a law that lets me reach beyond the walls of my company and control the conduct of my critics, competitors and customers”. And “app” is just a euphemism for “a web page wrapped in enough IP to make it a felony to mod it, to protect the labour, consumer and privacy rights of its user”.

We don’t care. We don’t have to. We’re the phone company.

What about that fourth constraint: workers? For decades, tech workers’ bargaining power and vocational awe put a ceiling on enshittification. Even after the tech sector shrank to a handful of giants. Even after they captured their regulators. Even after “felony contempt of business model” and extinguished self-help for tech users. Tech was still constrained by their workers’ sense of moral injury in the face of the imperative to enshittify.

Remember when tech workers dreamt of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over? That dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake start-up, get “acqui-hired” by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion. Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire you, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired last year, eight months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

Workers are no longer a check on their bosses’ worst impulses. Today, the response to “I refuse to make this product worse” is “turn in your badge and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out”.

I get that this is all a little depressing. OK, really depressing. But hear me out! We’ve identified the disease. We’ve identified its underlying mechanism. Now we can get to work on a cure.

There are four constraints that prevent enshittification: competition, regulation, self-help and labour. To reverse enshittification and guard against its re-emergence, we must restore and strengthen each of these.

On competition, it’s actually looking pretty good. The EU, the UK, the US, Canada, Australia, Japan and China are all doing more on competition than they have in two generations. They’re blocking mergers, unwinding existing ones, taking action on predatory pricing and other sleazy tactics. Remember, in the US and Europe, we already have the laws to do this; we just stopped enforcing them.

I’ve been fighting these fights with the Electronic Frontier Foundation for 22 years now, and I’ve never seen a more hopeful moment for sound, informed tech policy.

Now, the enshittifiers aren’t taking this lying down. Take Lina Khan, the brilliant head of the US Federal Trade Commission, who has done more in three years on antitrust than the combined efforts of all her predecessors over the past 40 years. The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page has run more than 80 pieces trashing Khan, insisting that she’s an ineffectual ideologue who can’t get anything done. Sure, that’s why you ran 80 editorials about her. Because she can’t get anything done.

Reagan and Thatcher put antitrust law in a coma in the 1980s. But it’s awake, it’s back and it’s pissed off.

What about regulation? How will we get tech companies to stop doing that one weird trick of adding “with an app” to escape enforcement?

Well, here in the EU, they’re starting to figure it out. Recently, the main body of the Digital Markets Act and the Digital Services Act went into effect, and they let people who get screwed by tech companies go straight to the European courts, bypassing the toothless watchdogs in places like Ireland.

In the US, they might finally get a digital privacy law. You probably have no idea how backwards US privacy law is. The last time the US Congress enacted a broadly applicable privacy law was in 1988. The Video Privacy Protection Act makes it a crime for video-store clerks to leak your video-rental history. It was passed after a rightwing judge who was up for the Supreme Court had his rentals published in a DC newspaper. The rentals weren’t even all that embarrassing.

Sure, that judge, Robert Bork, wasn’t confirmed for the Supreme Court, but that was because he was a virulent loudmouth who served as Nixon’s solicitor-general. Still, Congress got the idea that their own video records might be next, freaked out and passed the VPPA. That was the last time Americans got a big, national privacy law. And the thing is, there are a lot of people who are angry about it. Worried that Facebook turned Grampy into a QAnon? That Insta made your teen anorexic? That TikTok is brainwashing Gen Z into quoting Osama bin Laden?

Or that cops are rolling up the identities of everyone at a Black Lives Matter protest or the Jan 6 riots by getting location data from Google?

Or that red state attorneys-general are tracking teen girls to out-of-state abortion clinics?

Or that Black people are being discriminated against by online lending or hiring platforms?

Or that someone is making AI deepfake porn of you?

Having a federal privacy law with a private right of action — which means that individuals can sue companies that violate their privacy — would go a long way to rectifying all of these problems. There’s a big coalition for that kind of privacy law.

What about self-help? That’s a lot farther away, alas. The EU’s DMA will force tech companies to open up their walled gardens for interoperation. You’ll be able to use WhatsApp to message people on iMessage, or quit Facebook and move to Mastodon, but still send messages to the people left behind. But if you want to reverse-engineer one of those Big Tech products and mod it to work for you, not them, the EU’s got nothing for you. This is an area ripe for improvement. My big hope here is that Stein’s Law will take hold: anything that can’t go on forever will eventually stop.

Finally, there’s labour. Here in Europe, there’s much higher union density than in the US, which American tech barons are learning the hard way. There is nothing more satisfying in the daily news than the recent salvo by Nordic unions against that Tesla guy. But even in the US, there’s a massive surge in tech unions. Tech workers have realised they’re not founders-in-waiting. In Seattle, Amazon’s tech workers walked out in sympathy with Amazon’s warehouse workers, because they’re all workers.

We’re seeing bold, muscular, global action on competition, regulation and labour, with self-help bringing up the rear. It’s not a moment too soon, because the bad news is enshittification is coming to every industry. If it’s got a networked computer in it, the people who made it can run the Darth Vader MBA playbook on it, changing the rules from moment to moment, violating your rights and then saying: “It’s OK, we did it with an app.”

From Mercedes effectively renting you your accelerator pedal by the month to Internet of Things dishwashers that lock you into proprietary dish soap, enshittification is metastasising into every corner of our lives. Software doesn’t eat the world, it just enshittifies it.

There’s a bright side to all this: if everyone is threatened by enshittification, then everyone has a stake in disenshittification. Just as with privacy law in the US, the potential anti-enshittification coalition is massive. It’s unstoppable.

The cynics among you might be sceptical that this will make a difference. After all, isn’t “enshittification” the same as “capitalism”? Well, no.

I’m not going to cape for capitalism. I’m hardly a true believer in markets as the most efficient allocators of resources and arbiters of policy. But the capitalism of 20 years ago made space for a wild and woolly internet, a space where people with disfavoured views could find each other, offer mutual aid and organise. The capitalism of today has produced a global, digital ghost mall, filled with botshit, crap gadgets from companies with consonant-heavy brand names and cryptocurrency scams.

The internet isn’t more important than the climate emergency, gender justice, racial justice, genocide or inequality. But the internet is the terrain we’ll fight those fights on. Without a free, fair and open internet, the fight is lost before it’s joined.

We can reverse the enshittification of the internet. We can halt the creeping enshittification of every digital device. We can build a better, enshittification-resistant digital nervous system, one that is fit to co-ordinate the mass movements we will need to fight fascism, end genocide, save our planet and our species.

Martin Luther King said: “It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can stop him from lynching me, and I think that’s pretty important.” And it may be true that the law can’t force corporations to conceive of you as a human being entitled to dignity and fair treatment, and not just an ambulatory wallet, a supply of gut bacteria for the immortal colony organism that is a limited liability corporation. But it can make them fear you enough to treat you fairly and afford you dignity — even if they don’t think you deserve it.

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Cory Doctorow is a special adviser to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a visiting professor of computer science at the Open University. His next book ‘The Bezzle’, published by Head of Zeus, is out this month. This piece is adapted from his Marshall McLuhan Lecture, delivered at the Embassy of Canada in Berlin last month

#enshittification #electronic frontier foundation #cory doctorow

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