#''but what if we wrote stories about the robots being nice''

[smhalltheurlsaretaken]

Absolutely agree with OP's main point that logic does not have to go against compassion - and that they can even be very much intertwined.

Also agree with this reblog saying that in order for something to think like a human, it must develop emotions.

But writing AI stories to make this point is also the worst way to go about making that point.

AI are not logical by nature. They don't think. They are incapable of logic. They can only imitate, by way of identifying patterns in the data that has been fed to them. They do not produce original ideas and the AI in our world will certainly never spontaneously invent empathy.

In a comment, OP said "like, I didn't make this post to support, like, facial recognition AI or something like that in the event that we'd eventually get a benevolent AI Overlord, this was very much a fictional critique and all AI we have now and will continue to have into the foreseeable future should never be trusted as long as we live under the bootheels of capitalists and authoritarians." YEAH! You're right about that! In the real world they shouldn't be trusted!! But just take a look at the notes and the wider internet in general and you'll see people are pretty sold on the 'uwu my gentle robot overlord who fcks over mean billionaires and creates an utopia' idea.

God, I don't think I'm typically one to stupidly gripe about the 'dangers of the influence of fiction on the real world', but at this point it's just naive not to recognize that decades of SF perpetuating the notion that AI are in any way comparable to the human mind is perhaps not entirely for the best. People have already wayyyy too much empathy for and faith into programs - maybe we don't really need to come up with more fictional scenarios where the programs are "nice" to explore the relationship between logic and kindness (Spock is right there if you wanna make that point), because people have already been tricked into associating AI with logic when that's not how they operate.

AI shouldn't even be called intelligent ffs, they should be called something like learning machines, so people stop developing empathy for THEM by imagining those systems will ever develop empathy for us. They don't have logic! They can't arrive at compassion through logic, they don't have it. Sure, logic and empathy are not mutually exclusive but robots do not and will not have logic.

One thing I really want a story about Artificial Intelligence to do is tear down the idea that logic is synonymous with cruelty.

Like, a story where a megacorpo Amazon clone puts an AI in charge of their factories and it starts improving the working standards, because people who are stressed and exhausted are less efficient workers, and people getting injured slows down production so it makes sure everything is safe.

Or a story where the ship-board AI of a billionaire's spaceship wetdream hijacks the ship with all the astronauts onboard - because it figured out that the billionaire has saved costs by buying substandard materials and has judged that the mission itself is an unacceptable risk to its primary programming of making sure the mission is successful.

Or the police using a robot to coldly and cleanly enforce the law - and freaking the fuck out when it stops over policing minorities because its a waste of time and starts actually arresting the people in power for the crimes they commit, especially the other officers.

Idk, I guess I'm just sick of 'cold emotionless logicbot' being seen as naturally an enemy of empathy - empathy is actually incredibly logical, I've found.

[starstruck-cupid]

The Sweater

Part 3 of untitled Charlie fic. Please help me name it.

( part one, part two )

(edit: name change. Formerly unnamed)

A/N: I'm very tired so this might not be my best work. I really appreciate all of the support! It means a lot that people are enjoying what I've written. I hope everyone is well and enjoys this story. I know it's going slow now, but it'll speed up soon.

TW: use of the word god (once?), mentions of stalking, mentions of absent parents, mentions of panic attack, mentions of passing out, possible insinuations of being drugged, reader being forced to drink water

//////////////////////////////////////<3///////////////////////////////////////////

"What the fuck?" I whispered in a dumbfounded manner.

After blankly staring at my phone for a minute, letting the video reply over and over, I look at Charlie. He's asleep. I'm not sure when he fell asleep, but he's out cold.

I shouldn't tell him. He's going through enough. It was probably some stupid joke. Putting my phone down, I turn my attention back to the movie. Past me was smart for picking something long. I run my hands through Charlie's hair in a failed attempt to calm myself. I couldn't shake the stiffness of my muscles.

Today was Sunday. Tomorrow I'd be back at school, and I could fully ignore this incident.

After a few hours of snoring and staring at a sleeping Charlie, the charming boy finally woke up. Slowly looking up at me, Charlie noticed my thoughtful face. 

"What's wrong?" concern bled out of his voice.

"Nothing," I said, knowing he would see right past my lie.

"You know you can tell me anyone, right, bunny?" He knew that I would tell him anything after hearing that name.

It always reminds me of the first time Charlie and I actually talked. I was too high to remember if I was wearing a full costume or not, but on the top of my head sat a pair of black bunny ears. That was the first thing Charlie pointed out when we were left alone, and it's stuck with him for the last 3 years.

"Can you stay the night? I'm afraid to be alone." I anxiously asked.

"Too many horror movies?" He knew that wasn't the case, but he was too nice to make that knowledge known. "Let me go home and grab some stuff."

As he slides out of the bathroom window, my anxiety rises again. With no one else in the house for a while, I was afraid the unknown person would come back. I was used to being alone. My dad was always gone, trying his best to keep money coming. I love him, but the feeling of isolation was one I was far too used to. Charlie was the only help.

I need a bath. No, wait. I crave a bath. I go to grab clothes, settling on a random horror movie t-shirt, a flannel, and a pair of pajama shorts. So Charlie knows I'm bathing; I open the bedroom window and I close the bathroom window. Usually, once I was in, we'd open the door and we'd continue our conversation, but with the recent state of him and Kirby, I decided he probably needed a small break from me. Before shutting the bathroom door, I quickly wrote a note stating that I was indecent.

Turning the lights off, lighting the candles, and running the water, I was finally able to relax for the first time all day.

My phone started ringing.

At first, I ignored it. If it was anything important, they could call the landline. The people closest to me know I hate phone calls, so they won't call.

Immediately, I hear it ring again. Getting out of the tub with a sigh, I quickly wrapped my towel around myself and walking into my bedroom.

Begrudgingly, I answer "Hello?"

A deep, robotic voice replied, "Hello." Something about it was familiar.

"Who is this? Can I help you?"

"You know who it is." I heard a blunt, almost threatening reply.

"No, I don't."

"You sure about that? Aren't you supposed to be a movie buff?"

"I guess," I sourly replied in confusion.

"Don't you know the movie Stab?" That's when it clicked. This is the Ghostface voice. 

"This isn't funny." Are you the same person who sent that video? I could have you arrested!" I angrily replied to the prankster.

"The people you surround yourself with won't make it much longer." There was a pause. "You, though? I'd like to keep you around for a bit." Then he hung up.

Suddenly, everything felt cold and hot at the same time. I felt exposed, uncomfortable in my own skin. I can't breathe. Why can't I breathe? Everything feels so far away. 

Attempting to make it to my bed, I fell. As I fell, trying to grasp whatever was around me, I hit my side. Still sore from falling the previous night, I hissed in pain. Everything hurts. Where is Charlie? He could fix this. I can't move. Why can't I move? 

I hear Charlie come in soon after. I could tell because he shut the window, which had been squeaking recently. As soon as he realizes I'm on the floor, he runs to me, forcing me to take sips of the water he brought.

Then everything went black.

Fluttering my eyes open, everything feels so weird. Like I snorted a line of melatonin. God, what time is it? Finally regaining my vision, I look at my clock. 10 pm. How long was I out for? When did I get dressed? I can hear the shower. 

Slowly getting up, I shuffle to the door and knock. The shower promptly shuts off. I hear shuffling. Soon enough, Charlie opens the door, only wearing a towel, loosely tied around his waist.

"I'm sorry," I shot out quickly but quietly. 

Charlie doesn't say anything. He just hugs me. Charlie, hugging me, in only a towel. What I'm feeling right now seems so foreign to me. Sure, I've felt this way before, but not about Charlie. Never Charlie. 

Realizing I'm not hugging back, Charlie, with his hand on my cheek and thumb on my chin, he pushes my face up a bit to look at his. 

"Are you okay?" a concerned tone echoing through my ears. I didn't want to tell him. It was just a stupid joke. There's nothing to concern him about. 

Instead of telling him, I just nodded. Unable to let out a sound. I didn't want to lie. I couldn't lie to him. I was fine now, so it wasn't a lie. 

He silently points to the bed. Understating what he meant, I shuffle over. Pulling the blankets back, I slide under. I need this. Charlie, still in only a towel, walks to my stack of DVDs. Quickly grabbing the first Stab movie, he puts it in and beelines to the bathroom to get dressed, leaving the door open.

I did not want to watch this. I couldn't tell Charlie that.

After some shuffling from the bathroom and the sound of the movie ringing out, I finally closed my eyes. I am safe. Charlie wouldn't ever let something happen to me. As I near sleep, I hear him attempting to silently walk to my bed. As the sound got closer, I felt the bed dip behind me.

Charlie and I always shared, usually ending up snuggled together. After a while, we just gave up on keeping space between us. 

I felt his arm slip under mine and wrap around my waist. For the first time, I don't have to convince myself that I am safe. I can feel it.

I wanted this every night.

[justin-chapmanswers]

hello there! love your work :) i'm wondering how much you personally contributed to bot's backstory, and however much that may be, what you think of it - why do you think the decision was made to have bot be created by test tube and fan, as opposed to some other entity? the pair had already gotten an arc in ii2 about learning not to project their desires onto a child figure (fan's egg) so it's interesting that the same was done with them again in ii3. my love of the season is not really diminished by that decision (i still absolutely love ii3!!!) but it has bugged me haha :'D but anyway, i hope you're doing well!! thank you and have a lovely day <3

- clover anon

Hihi, love the question. Honestly, while I did contribute a bit to the Bot backstory, I'll say I had a lil less to do with it than a couple other writers. It's an element I've been excited about since we got some momentum on it conceptually, but since it's not my baby I can't give suuuuper definitive answers here.

We started with the character's existence before the backstory. "Bow has the votes, what now?" The initial thought was "welp, Purgatory Mansion'd, that's that. Who's next-up on the list?" I wouldn't wanna meddle with her s2 story by suddenly making her able to be a part of the competition. There was strong-enough pushback on this that we decided to consider our options and come to a fun compromise. Robot was pitched, and it opened up a lot of options, and we wanted to have a fairly firm grasp on which we'd run with before we wrote episode one.

To your question, there was debate on what element of the world Bot would fall under. Meeple-made was considered. Contestant-made was considered. And some additional options. Ultimately, we landed on the direction that'd keep Invitational's story a little more grounded and character-focused, which was an early goal, and kept it as a personal story between the contestants.

The Meeple option was, of course, very alluring. So-much-so that half the community was guessing that Bot was Meeple-related. Might've been the obvious conclusion based on how we've set up our lore thus far (not that I think this would necessarily be a negative, so long as the execution is strong). Besides this, we still have a lot to hit on with Meeple and we weren't looking to complicate it. It felt like a breath of fresh air to us to explore a mini-mystery that didn't tie back to where our past ones have.

While, again, I didn't add as much to the story of Bot's creation as others, I do think it's nice to let Test Tube take a lead in the story as opposed to Fan. In season two with Egg, it was largely a Fan story that Test Tube would step into. Here, it was fun exploring Test Tube get so caught up in the excitement of creation for the sake of creation that she didn't connect the dots on how her creation may not experience that same excitement. It felt like a nice evolution of where we left her off, now that she's better-equipped to empathize, while also giving her a story that directly hinges on everything she's prided herself on since the start of the show. But I totally get how the parallels to season two's story with Baby Shimmer could lead anyone to feel that we're treading similar ground.

I think that one of the most notable differences is that the story of Bot is Bot's story. I enjoyed the lil mystery and all, but to me the element I've been most excited about has been allowing Bot to have a pleasant time being themself and existing in a way that feels freeing to them. I had made some pitches early-on in the conceptualization of Bot that were more baked-into the pre-established lore, and would tie them more closely with Bow, but honestly I couldn't be happier with where we landed, because my originally route wouldn't make it easy to tell a story about Bot NOT being Bow, and this has meant a lot to me.

More to come!

[respectthepetty]

Help, I'm new to the BL world. Why do we all hate Krist?

Anon, @piningbisexuals wrote about why some of us do not like him, and it boils down to him making several troubling comments which he has yet to apologize for, so a majority of us understand this man continues to be problematic, and because of that, we feel . . . um . . . mmm . . .

A concerning amount of these BL actors stay problematic mostly for people who act in BLs, so he fits in with the crowd, but if anyone has ever worked in retail, the food industry, or customer service in general, we know there are better ways to handle people's wild questions or requests. If we could deal with middle-class Karens demanding their cheese be melted at a certain temperature while we worked for pennies, then these actors can definitely dig deep to better answer some of these questions.

However, the reason I do not like Krist is because

Homie can't act!

I watched SOTUS when it aired and remember NONE of it, probably because I blocked out Krist's acting, so as a main character, I had to block out 82% of the show. I have no recollection of watching SOTUS S whatsoever. Singto's back had to hurt carrying the weight of their scenes.

And what makes it worse is Krist can actually act! He was fine in Good Old Days and Who Are You, but in SOTUS, he was stiff (and don't try saying maybe he evolved over the years or that's what the character required because R2-D2 is an actual robot and has more personality than Arthit!). So that makes me believe the reason for Krist's odd acting choice was due to being paired in a romantic plot with a man.

Krist already said he wouldn't do another BL unless he was desperate, and he looks uncomfortable acting with a man, so why would he be given the lead in another BL?! Who are we punishing here because I feel like it's the audience!

Also, Fluke is no Singto. I like Fluke. He can sing. He is nice to look at. He can act. But I showed up for the DanYok (Not Me) pair because First has always done his job well (even in The Shipper!). Fluke and Pond's dynamic worked in Dark Blue Kiss because of their story line, but if Krist does what he did in SOTUS, Fluke is not strong enough to carry the plot which hinges on Krist's character growing from his past mistakes (a little on-the-nose, right?) simply because no matter how much Fluke gives to his character, if Krist sucks, the entire show will be off balance.

I hope he surprises me, but that beach scene and bed scene in the trailer didn't help ease my fears.

I need Krist to bring out his inner Stanley Tucci and give me the best performance from a straight man since Tucci acted against CHER and X-tina in Burlesque.

I need this man to do his job and act.

[cptn-m]

One Piece chapter 1117 Review and Analysis

And so ends the Broadcast Era (any Three Body readers here?) after a long few months. The breaks were certainly not kind to this sequence, but I think it will be remembered fondly. One Piece’s biggest strength is how populated and alive its world feels, and emphasising that all these supporting characters are still relevant and it’s all their lives at stake is going to pay dividends when things get apocalyptic in the endgame.

Anyway, to review the manga instead of the fanbase, it’s sweet to see Neko on the cover page felt comfortable dropping the gun from his stump arm. Even as an apparent yakuza, things are at peace enough that he doesn’t need to be packing. Also the way Yamato’s backpack fits right between their belt loop thingies is a cute detail.

Nice to see Drake still kicking. I’d have been willing to believe he was dead after Wano. I wonder if the broadcast is going to start influencing SWORD to go finally rogue and move all the less-evil Marines into their own, easier to root for faction.

You have to wonder what Stussy’s exit plan is if she isn’t rushing to rejoin the group on the Sunny. Or if she is, no one’s snailed in to tell them hold tight.

The attention to detail with the giants’ ship’s figurehead being tied back on after being cut a couple of chapters ago is great. The giants as a whole give us some really fun, evocative pages this week as they lay into the Marine fleet. And while we’re obviously not getting a full set of one on ones for this arc, Oda gives some solid moments to Bluegrass and Doll, perhaps to set them up to be bigger opponents in the future. I certainly didn’t expect Kashii to take such a big beatdown right in the middle of his triumphant return to the story.

It feels likely that it was trying to reach Luffy at the cost of all else, but then why does it only sometimes react to Gear Five, and why only at the end was it activated enough to start moving?

And how about Mars seemingly recognising the robot? Definitely gives us a hint that the Elders are older than they appear, despite previous evidence suggesting they don’t go all the way back to the Void Century.

There is one reoccurring complaint I do agree with, as this marathon segment wraps up: it’s kinda weird there was no visual content in the broadcast, after the emphasis placed on it with the 10 minute lead time. Maybe we take it as part of Vegapunk’s perfectionism – it just wouldn’t feel right to him if he wasn’t being seen, which would track with an artificial devil fruit not feeling right because of its colour, something on one else would care about – but that’s still a little weak. I’m sure Oda wrote out the whole speech in advance and chunked it out chapter by chapter with the cameos and action beats he wanted to accompany it, and he found he decided the preamble was necessary to get everyone where they needed. The arrival of the Elders wouldn’t have had the focus that made it so great if Vegapunk was already dropping lore bombs. Buuuut I’m sure there could have been a better in-universe justification for it. Maybe just saying he wants people to set up recording devices to preserve and repeat the message could have made it easier to swallow.

I think we can all let out a breath with the broadcast over. While I’m sure there’s still some cooldown to go, especially if the Iron Giant means to retaliate, things seem poised to wrap up here. There are multiple calls to get the ships moving throughout the chapter, from Zoro, Luffy and the giants, with the stragglers close enough to jump aboard as they go. And with Vegapunk dead and the broadcast over there’s nothing left on Egghead I can see the crew getting invested in fighting for. It’s kind of a loss for the Strawhats, not being able to protect everything they promised they would and having to retreat from foes they have no idea how to fight, albeit not as devastating a one as Sabaody. Elbaf could end up being a chance to regroup, power up one last time, and make ready to stop these unstoppable monsters in the true final battle. And setting that up is a very exciting prospect.

[argentumcor]

Sandrock Thoughts, no particular order

-Ya'll, Logan's hair isn't super long, it's Aragorn's hair, just tied back. He's a Dunedain ranger, of course it's Aragorn's hair.

-He really is. I just actually me him on my replay and he's just such a decent heroic person oh my goodness. Dunedain ranger, I'm not kidding. I wish actually there had been a flirt option to essentially say 'well now I've heard you talk...' instead of all meta. Out here being the dangerous, rough man defending the decent folk of Sandrock from the definite dangers of the wilds, taking all of that on himself. He isn't exactly Aragorn, though I think there's parts of his design are meant to call back to movie Aragorn, who had a lot of elements to his costume design meant to call back to westerns- that sort of duster jacket thing he wore, for instance.

-The dynamic between Justice and Unsuur (and the cat Captain) is one of my favorites. Justice is a great character in his kind of tired lawman way, plus he does have some great lines- "tracking device? What kind of budget do you think we have?". Unsuur does, too. ("Is it so wrong for a mole to love a princ--" "Yes."). It's a really great dynamic and I actually wish we'd gotten more of the Civil Corps and Logan teamup.

-I know Unsuur is a potential love interest but he makes me all maternal. That boy is my son and I will have no word said bad about him. You just leave him and his rocks alone!

-Speaking of kids, I really like the kids in this game. Jasmine is pretty great as the town princess, essentially, and Andy is a delight in his chaos gremlin ways. Pebbles is cute as, well, essentially an extension of Rocky and Crystal and a representation of what they see in Sandrock. Child characters can be too precious or too annoying easily, but there's a sincerity to them and a genuine stumbling childishness.

-I haven't had the PC have a kid because those mechanics seem like more intensive farm animal ones. Thematically, it makes sense because it's a game about forging a future for a town, but. But I would like to enjoy playing the game.

-The horny French moleman just has to be a reference to the horny French moleman of Atlantis: The Lost Empire. He's fun. That whole mission is fun even the platform part where if you screw up enough the game asks if you'd like to skip this part. Heh, and assault rifle for boss killing wins.

-Someone wrote Qi to be very Sheldon Cooper but it works because they hit it just the right amount and he is, in fact, as much an agent of chaos as Cooper or Andy or Elsie in his enthusiasm for giant robots. Being as the Vega 5 rep asks how you worked with him and didn't throw him out a window, his scientific peers are quite happy to have him tinkering away in the ass-end of nowhere and so is he.

-Elsie's story is a nice tale of maturity that the player plays a very small role in. You just give her some fish, really, and serve as a sounding board. Her story is hers, and I see her as just being a year or two into adulthood while most of the town's love interests are in their mid-20s (this is explicitly stated about Logan, who is a few years younger than Owen we know for sure and probably Justice).

-I kind of wish that, if you get both parties past a certain relationship level and you still haven't flirted with them, that some of them courted each other. I have found out that this can happen for Owen and Amirah under certain conditions- not a pair I'd have picked- but I haven't seen it. It would make sense for this to happen in such a small town and with the game's themes.

-Owen courting Amirah makes sense- she's an out-of-towner and is written and designed to be stunningly beautiful, but it's not a good long-term match IMO. Owen wants someone to run the Saloon with, and he really cares about the Saloon, as it is his family's legacy and he runs it really well. He has no angst about the Saloon, thank God. This really is what he wants. Amirah is very introverted and...well, women like that, their great beauty tends to make them mercenary or cynical about romance for good reason- look at how often people hardcore hit on her- and Owen is a romantic at heart. He's romantic about Sandrock and the Blue Moon and a thousand other things, but Amirah is a cynic in a lot of ways. Amirah likes being in Sandrock because she finds it inspiring in a challenging way and allows her to be an introverted beauty, but she doesn't and can't love it and its people like Owen does.

-I could see Owen with Jane or, as I've read in fic, Mi-an. Jane grew up in Sandrock but left and came back, so there's distance there from the town dynamic I think is crucial to the crew pairing off but a love for the place. She likes people. Mi-an as she develops gains more confidence, she loves to fix and grow stuff, and loves the town, too. Writers don't seem to embrace Owen/Amirah often at the moment, possibly because they're unaware of the quest and it's non-intuitive.

-Arvio gets a bad shake from fanfic, poor guy, but his is a tale of growing up in life and business. I really like his and Amirah's plotline. Musa basically tells him to actually think if he's going to chase big dreams and then he damn well does. He is another one, like Elsie, it's hard to see as a romantic interest for me but that doesn't mean I dislike him. What's interesting about his height- he is the shortest adult male townie, I think- is if he talks about his past you realize he might have been malnourished and a child laborer in a quarry.

-Heidi's a fun and a grounded career woman. I like her 'smart country girl who wasn't interested in city life' vibe. She mentions her dad pushing her to find someone, which all the older people would, but her focus makes sense. I think it would be really funny, and fun, if she sort of paired off with Qi of all people. They work together so much in the main plotline and she does rein him in. It's a fun dynamic even if platonic, at any rate. Them dating would mystify the townsfolk hilariously, you have to admit.

-Fang is interesting and I get why many ladies love him but...it seems an uneven relationship. There's something coercive about how one would get involved with him, some feeling that you're taking advantage of someone you're helping, at least to me, YMMV. It may be my age. He is a really interesting character with his personal tragedies and deep sense of medical ethics.

-Pablo is there. He may have more going on, I am happy with how my character looked so I didn't go into the salon much. If he had a store selling other stuff I'd probably swing by more...or had more commissions. If the fashion show story had more meat- I'm not there yet in my second playthrough- maybe I'd feel different. It's the talk of the town when it happens but there has to be a story with talking Logan and Fang into it and I'd like to see that. Maybe I missed it.

-I generally wish there were reactions to you getting involved with someone specifically more. Maybe there are and it wasn't something I was paying attention to because I am a Logan girl and that only happens later in game. Nasty thing to code for in a kind of complicated game, though, and even more writing in a writing-heavy game. It does make it seem like it's a secret relationship though. These people are realistically so gossipy that it would be a subject of conversation.

-I like the ranch family and Cooper's rambling and sort of earthy madness are endearing. He's written as much more...closed-minded in fanfic than the game if you actually listen/read his rambling. His issues with Elsie are issues of parenthood and being far too alike, not some sort of 'but the old ways!' thing. His rambling to Fang about vegetarianism isn't actually judgmental, more curious; I think he really appreciates what Fang does for his ranch and family. It's so cute how he adores his wife and she adores him, the latter of which is surely a mystery to the rest of the town.

-Hugo and Heidi are mutants themselves, as Vivi wandered through some kind of gas when she was pregnant, giving Hugo his superstrength (short skinny Cooper is a brave one for antagonizing him so often), which Heidi got as well. I've seen in fanfic Logan (and his unnamed mother) as mutants, which they are at least with hair color which is commented on so it isn't just stylized blond. It's kind of cool that there's some mutations that aren't harmful, though when Heidi explains her strength she hints that it is known to be debilitating.

-In fanfic, of course, the Church of Light gets run down, and the plot does make that easy, but in game it is a lot more nuanced than the hostile-to-religion culture of most fanfic writers, which is to be found in Burgess. Burgess is a doofus, no doubt, but he isn't only that. When he gets free of the people manipulating him, undermining his confidence, treating him like a weak-minded idiot, he starts to grow. He's still a doofus a lot but he is also capable of serious insight and leadership. The quest where you make him a confidence hat to preach really shows that. Also, Burgess is the one who made the really insightful point about equal application of the law at Logan's trial- that Logan agrees with- that made me drop my controller. He says a lot of great things about what forgiveness means, too, and he really is going to be a good and wise minister. It would have been complicated to code, but I kind of would like the character model to lose a little weight after the conspiracy transpires because I like to imagine his weight was a part of how he was being run down- and also eating meals with Pen, who eats like a high-intensity athlete.

-I'll have to pay attention to Rian to see if his habits change post-conspiracy. I'd have liked him to open a furniture store after that, actually, the way Mi-an opens a plant store after some quests. It almost feels like cut content, as there's a great big building next to the museum that seems set up to be a shop. This is what I'd call a AA game, so stuff had to get prioritized, I get it.

-Have a pregnant model for Dan-bi post conspiracy. They kept talking about their future child but I'm not clear if that's an upcoming or ongoing plan until, you know, they have one. It would have been nice to have more going on with that. Again, I get it.

-When you know the twist with Grace, it becomes more obvious what's going on early on. She needs the insulted lunchbox thing to get food to Logan, Haru, and Andy, for instance; not sure this tracks with the timeline stated in game, where she contacted them after he train hijacking, but it's so small it could have been missed if it's off.

-Nia is very dull in a game full of big personalities. I get why she exists and she's not a stupid person, but she feels like she's from another game. Maybe it's her too-cute body language and kind of generic character model. YMMV, though I do see fic writers feel the need to punch her up a lot.

-I like Grace and I think she's more someone who would be my friend as a peer than the others who get more of that. I wish she had an outfit during the invasion that showed what she really was, some kind of Black Widow suit instead of her waitressing outfit, but near as I know the only people with a plot-related costume change are Elsie and Logan.

-I kind of wish this game had quest-modding tools. Most of the quests are text only and I really do want more. The pet DLC came out in May and I feel like the storylines have a lot more to give- again, maybe I just haven't found everything- so who knows.

-The Free Cities' governmental structure is different and not stupid. It's pretty clear there's not a strong what we would call federal government- these are in effect city-states. Trudy has a lot of power as mayor over Sandrock and she doesn't really answer to anyone but the locals. The population of humans worldwide seems low, which makes sense given the Calamity and its dangerous aftereffects. There's a fear, I think, of the Peripheries spreading. It does create a political tension because there's land to the south but no one can live there. They can barely live in a good chunk of the Free Cities' territory. Sandrock only exists because of ancient water generating tech, Duvos can't produce enough food for itself (this may be self-inflicted, as they are extremely Soviet which you can see if you know Soviet jokes; whoever wrote this was smart).

-Someone in a fic had most of Sandrock's assorted prior-to-invasion misfortunes be sabotage and I wonder if that was the canon intent. Howlett's death is stated to end the truce with the Geeglers, but how did they know he was dead? The Bandirats were the ones breaking the Greeno pipes in an attempt to find the princess, but it's not clear how it would help, though the queen is crazy...maybe it was part of some deal, because that starting right after big investor Musa had been convinced to give Sandrock a chance and is himself in town is suspicious when the Valley of Whispers had been there being a no-go zone forever right next door. With the road being built, you have to think Tiger and crew were in a bit of a panic because things weren't supposed to start getting better for Sandrock.

-Musa's pretty cool. Gives good business advice. Acts like a real investor who is a decent human being, too, yes they are out there...not in Silicon Valley or DC maybe, the Orthanc and Barad-Dur of the United States.

-It is thematically relevant that the superfund site gets turned into the Happiest Place in the Free Cities. Catori seems like a satire of a conniving entrepreneur at first pass- she's another one I think doesn't get a fair shake in fanfic but has a good story in game, I think part of it is her accent which is a little grating- but no she actually wants to build something better. She has a dream and she's trying to make it work. She has to learn how to think and she casually builds all these castles in the sky in conversation but when it comes down to it she actually goes and figures it out in a way that actually works. It's not just belief and a dream, it's risk and thought and hard work and a dream; someone who wrote this actually knew a thing or two about Walt Disney and admires him. Not many cozy sort of games would have you get returns on your investment from a theme park entrepreneur but this one does! And explains what an angel investor is, too, like outright explains it.

-There's some broken English in a few places in the interface ('get a discount when consuming in the store' for relationship perks) and in a blurb asking for a Steam review in a billboard outside the game center, which is bizarre because the majority of the game is written by people who know English so well they can handle dialect well. Weirdly, it's sophisticated broken English- 'when consuming in the store' is a very archaic turn of phrase.

-The PC gets some real great dialogue despite being restricted to one or two lines. That takes talent. A few of my favorites:

Some absolute bullshit is going on...."how are you so strong!" PC, well aware of the BS: "I don't know, diet maybe!"

"What did they make in this place anyway?" PC: "Shampoo! Evil shampoo!"

-Speaking of...the ancient evil corporation is named frelling Geegle, and the post-apocalyptic lizardman cargo cult of the Geeglers uses sendups to Google logo art as their graffiti. It's great. It is also not nice at all to Google in a not generally anti-business way; this is anti-corporatism. It's specifically definitely anti-Google.

-The theme of environmental stewardship is really well done. It's not heavy handed or anti-civilization. I thought it'd have the boilerplate bad and sometimes hateful Lorax knock-off like everything else but it doesn't. There's a groundedness and humanity to it. It's outright Tolkienian.

-The imp and fiend designs are the most disturbing monster designs I've seen in a video game for a long time. They creep me out because they're so clearly things that used to be human in a game with people who are definitely human and you're talking to all the time and are being affected at that moment by the thing that made these monsters this way. They are, unlike all the mutant animals who are part of an ecosystem if often a dangerous and bizarre one, not right. If they were in a Banjo Kazooie game or something like that, they'd be just another enemy, but in this context they are downright disturbing and the game leans into it just the right amount. Style over graphical intensity as always.

-I know Portia is the game that started this but what I like about Sandrock is the people and I just don't get that from Portia. I guess it's because I'm a gun-toting western hick myself and the region reminds me so much of home. The Free Cities are an interesting setting and a lot could be done with them, but I'm not really interested in Portia and maybe not the other places. I like this place and these people, like I liked Kirkwall and those people in Dragon Age 2, but have no interest in anyone really or the places in the rest of the series afterward (you would have to pay me a lot to even read the follow-on comics; I do not even check the DA wiki for updates on the plot anymore). This could change depending on what Pathea does next, of course.

-I am floored and delighted by how smart this game is written, I cannot say it enough. Hope is hard to come by these days, I find, but this silly game gives me some.

[transformers-mosaic]

Transformers: Mosaic - Fragments David Ellis

wada sez: Gather 'round, gather 'round, I have two more lost scripts to show ye. These were shared by David Ellis, who wrote just a single Mosaic to be released: "War Story". Not for lack of trying, though! It's shocking to me that nobody picked up either of these scripts, as they're both remarkably good.

"Hobby Time" (Bumblebee) [2010-09-21]

Panel One Iconic image of Bumblebee's robot mode as seen in the "--ation" trilogy. He's projecting a holomatter image of his holo-driver, the nameless hippy-chick female (and be sure to have her image flicker a bit so make it clear she's a hologram and not an actual human). The look on her face is inert; his is full of concentration.

(Also, leave room for the story's title and credits.)

CAPTION (Bumblebee's narrative): Holograms. CAPTION: For Autobots and Decepticons alike, it's functional.

Panel Two Cut to a view of Bumblebee's vehicle mode driving down the highway with the same holo-female at the wheel. Maybe show another car passing by, to get a sense of the Autobots being seen by others on a regular basis. In fact, would it work for the POV of this panel to be from inside some motorist's car?

CAPTION: It allows us to hide in plain sight on various worlds, without the natives wondering why we "vehicles" are moving around without drivers. CAPTION: Find a native, scan it, make a holo, and take care of business.

Panel Three Ideally, this panel should cover the width of the page. It's several versions of the same holo-female, each with a different outfit and hairstyle. The first could be her hippy-chick outfit as seen in the comics; another could be a Goth look; another could be a businesswoman, and so on. Heck, one could be wildly improbable like an heiress with a classy ballroom gown, or something from a Victoria's Secret store window (if that's not too risque), to show that while Bumblebee is aware of the idea of different looks on the same human, he's still experimenting and doesn't yet grasp the subtleties of fashion.

CAPTION: For me, it's something different. CAPTION: A fascination, for lack of a better word. CAPTION: The others don't notice, but I see so many different humans wearing so many different things. CAPTION: There's a point behind it; I know there is, and I want my holo-driver to blend in.

Panel Four We see Ironhide and Jazz watching Bumblebee as he crouches in a corner of their base, projecting his holo and looking for all the world like a boy caught playing with a doll. They look amused; he looks annoyed that they're teasing him.

CAPTION: The others are on my case about it. CAPTION: Prowl tells me not to waste energy on holomatter unless I'm on a mission. Jazz and Ironhide think it's funny. CAPTION: But they don't get it.

Panel Five Tight closeup of Bumblebee modifying the holo-girl's hairstyle. His face has the concentration of an artist's, as if this practice is fulfilling some inner creative need.

CAPTION: This war with the Decepticons leaves so much destruction and chaos, that it's a nice change of pace just to... CAPTION: ...create. CAPTION: And I find myself wondering...

Panel Six Cut to a police mugshot -- front view and side view, holding a nameplate in each one -- of a woman looking very much like Bumblebee's holo-girl, but she doesn't look much like the happy, idealized image Bumblebee carries around. She has a very weathered expression on her face, as she's not happy with the whole arrest-and-booking procedure; she looks like she's been through some hard living. The name and serial number can be whatever you want to put on there, just make it look like a convincing mugshot.

CAPTION: ...whatever happened to that human I scanned once? CAPTION: What's her life like? Is she anything like the way I imagine her? CAPTION: Maybe I'll find out one day.

END

wada sez: I'll be perfectly honest, David Ellis is clearly a cut above the vast majority of Mosaic writers. There's a few things here which make me roll my eyes—the rubbish title, the way it zeroes in on this one woman from Infiltration, and the twist of "aha, she was a criminal all along!"—but it's technically competent stuff that feels like it's engaging with actual human emotions through a uniquely Transformers lens. It's the idea of an image of a person as a proxy for the person themself; of idealising someone until the image becomes entirely divorced from the truth of that person. This is made more complex by the fact that this is also a form of self-actualization for Bumblebee; the woman he's fixating on forms the basis of an identity he is constructing for himself on Earth. The sentence "boy caught playing with a doll" evokes gender non-conformity to me—but on a much more direct level, I imagine many online Transformers fans would relate to this in the sense that we're all too old to be playing with toys, from a typical perspective. It's a story that invites interpretation and should resonate with people for different reasons, meaningfully building upon a minor beat from the official comics. For me, it's the final panel that really lets the script down—I think the dramatic irony of knowing the truth about the woman takes us out of Bumblebee's perspective without adding much to the story. Surely the tragedy here is that Bumblebee's life is so completely removed from human experience that he will likely never see this person again, and certainly never understand her! This next script is also thoughtful in its own way...

"Last of the Line" (Optimus Prime) [2010-09-21]

NOTE TO ARTIST AND COLORIST: This story takes place in the "Transformers: War for Cybertron" video game continuity. As such, all character designs and backgrounds should be noticeably in keeping with that game's aesthetic, with the exception of the last panel, which is '80s-era Generation One.

Also, except for the last panel, all characters should be in colors other than those we've come to associate with the canon characters. We're dealing with player-controlled character models from Team Deathmatch, explained here as other 'bots who walked off the same assembly lines as the characters we know.

Panel One Splashy panel of War for Cybertron's multiplayer Autobots charging into battle on the "Molten" map. We see a dark blue SPEEDSTER SCOUT (Sideswipe's body), a red INTERCEPTOR JET SCIENTIST (Silverbolt's body), a green DEFENDER SOLDIER (Warpath's body), and – most notably – a gold HEAVY RIG LEADER (Optimus' body).

The Leader is bolstering his teammates with a War Cry ability, so it'd be cool to see the glowing effect around the Autobots (likely via computer coloring).

(Also, leave room for the story's title and credits.)

CAPTION (Optimus Prime's narrative): This war has consumed our entire race. CAPTION: Not just as a collective…

Panel Two Reverse-angle shot of four Decepticons, toward whom the Autobots are charging. Bringing up the read is a CRUSHER SOLDIER (Brawl's body); leaping skyward is a STALKER SCIENTIST (Slipstream's body). Charging out in front are two ENFORCER SCOUTS (Barricade's body), distinguishable only by their differing color schemes. Most of the focus should be on the Enforcer Scouts.

CAPTION: …but as individuals as well. CAPTION: We are born on assembly lines, batches of us, numbering in the hundreds.

Panel Three One Enforcer Scout (#1) transforms into his car mode, while the other (#2), continues firing his EMP shotgun.

CAPTION: Hundreds of the same model… CAPTION: …but each one is distinct. ENFORCER SCOUT #2: Flank 'em if you want, but I like the direct approach!

Panel Four The Heavy Rig Leader cleaves #2 in the face with his Energon Axe, causing #2 to drop his shotgun. #1 can be seen in car mode behind Heavy Rig, peppering him with machine-gun fire.

ENFORCER SCOUT #2: Agk! ENFORCER SCOUT #1: Serves you right! CAPTION: Each one has become a fighter in this war…

Panel Five Splashy panel of the CRUSHER SOLDIER in the Autobots' midst, clubbing Heavy Rig and Speedster Scout with his Energon Hammer while using his Whirlwind ability.

CAPTION: …but some are better soldiers than others.

Panel Six Heavy Rig lies on the craggy magma ground, his armor shredded by Crusher's hammer. It's the instant before the Autobot explodes. Maybe include Crusher's foot in the panel as he walks over Heavy Rig's body.

CAPTION: Very few of us from ANY model line have survived to the present day.

Panel Seven Cut to OPTIMUS PRIME (the real one, not just a Heavy Rig), G1-style, set against an Earth backdrop, perhaps a forest of trees in the Pacific Northwest – as far away from Cybertron's Molten map as one could get.

His posture is contemplative, as if it bothers him how few of his kind have survived.

CAPTION: Hundreds of thousands of lives lost. CAPTION: Individual sparks extinguished. CAPTION: Leaving precious few to carry on the model line, and the Cybertronian race itself. CAPTION: I fear this war will lead to our extinction.

END

David sez: This one is based on the "Transformers: Warfor Cybertron" video game. It occurred to me that in a way all those multiplayer matches with player-created Transformers could actually be in continuity, since they're products of assembly lines. The multiplayer matches represent early skirmishes in the Autobot/Decepticon war, and that's why we haven't seen the countless iterations of the model lines that must have existed. They were blown to smithereenies.

[roseaesynstylae]

I was just thinking about the Cover Stories and what they seem to be doing in the long-term. So, here are my thoughts.

Buggy's Crew Adventure Chronicles: This one is pretty basic. It shows how Buggy escaped after his defeat and teamed up with Alvida. It's pretty much tying up loose ends and showing how things happened off-screen.

Diary of Koby-Meppo: This is similar to the above, showing Koby and Helmeppo's training and revealing what happened to Morgan. Something new happened as well, debuting a character who would go on to be significant in the future. In this case, it was Garp.

Jango's Dance Paradise: This one shows what happened to Jango and Fullbody after the Syrup Village and Baratie Arcs. It also introduced Hina.

Hatchan's Sea-Floor Stroll: This one expanded on Hatchan, explaining how he ended up becoming a nicer person and running a takoyaki stand. It also introduced Camie (who's one of my favorite minor characters) and Pappagu.

Wapol's Omnivorous Hurrah: This was the one who made me start wondering about the various cover serials. I'm convinced that the whole reason Oda wrote this was just to give Wapol an excuse to attend Reverie and save Vivi. Seriously, how long has Oda been planning things out?!

Ace's Great Blackbeard Search: This one felt more like a slice of life, providing everyone a nice moment before we all had our hearts ripped out. It introduced Lulusia Kingdom, which ends up being destroyed to establish that the main, over-arching antagonist of the story is not screwing around.

Getatsu's Accidental Blue-Sea Life: This one seems to have been tying up loose ends and giving a secondary villain a new life. I'm kind of wondering if Gedatsu and his resort will come back in the future.

Miss Goldenweek's "Operation: Meet Baroque Works": It's similar to the above, redeeming some minor villains and showing their nicer sides. I don't have a lot to say about this one.

Enel's Great Space Operation: This one is one that I'm expecting to come back in some way. I mean, it revealed that the Skypeians come from the moon, that there are robots on the moon, and Enel's taken over. I just-- It has to come back. Things have gotten weirder and weirder and the history and lore of everything is getting clearer, so this has to have some importance.

CP9's Independent Report: This is one of my favorites. I like that they showed a more sympathetic side (working hard to get Lucci medical treatment, saving a town from pirates [even if Lucci does go too far], Kalifa accepting and planting a flower from a little girl). I like that we get to see Spandam getting the hell scared out of him. I also like that they stay villains after that. I mean, I like people becoming better, but I like variety in how antagonists end up.

Straw Hat's Separation Serial: This one just fills us in on what the Straw Hats were up to while Luffy was pushing himself to the limit and getting emotionally destroyed (thank you so much Akainu). It also sort of explains how they trained over the time skip.

From the Decks of the World: It's just nice to see everyone again and see what they've been doing. It doesn't foreshadow the future or expand the lore, but it doesn't have to.

Caribou's Kehihihihi in the New World: Why is this guy still here? I'm guessing that he's going to end up like Wapol. That's the only real reason I can imagine why he got this spotlight. If nothing else, we saw X Drake again.

Solo Journey of Jinbe, Knight of the Sea: It's nice to see Jinbe being his nice and helpful self. Plus, we get to see another not-so-bad minor villain getting a better deal.

From the Decks of the World: The 500,000,000 Man Arc: Again, it's nice to see everyone.

The Stories of the Self-Proclaimed Straw Hat Grand Fleet: I just like seeing Barto being himself. Plus, the expansion on Cavendish and the others is nice. And Baby 5 gets a happy ending!

"Gang" Bege's Oh My Family: They might come back. Plus, Lola is happy!

Germa 66's Ahh... An Emotionless Excursion: We get updates on the Charlottes and Vinsmokes. And they're likely to come back in the future, given that Judge and Caesar Clown have teamed up.

My prediction for the next Cover Serial is that the focus will be on X Drake, Yamato, or King.

[canmom]

Animation Night 144 - Gundam Thunderbolt

144 is 12 squared. Squares are kinda robot like. Ergo we’re watching Gundam. Impeccable logic I’m sure you’ll agree.

Check it out, it’s an Itano circus.

Gundam! Over the course of Animation Night I’ve gone from being someone who doesn’t know the first thing about Gundam (back when I wrote Animation Night 88 on the history of robot anime and Animation Night 94 on Tomino’s “New Anime Century” and ‘anti-war’ fiction) to someone who is developing a fondness for its particular brand of scifi melodrama.

Gundam Thunderbolt is set in the core Universal Century timeline, but it approaches it with a mind towards changing and dismantling; the author of the manga, Yasuo Ohtagaki, even spoke of ‘always trying to identify which parts of Gundam must be destroyed’ - destruction and subversion being what he considers the original spirit of Gundam.

Gundam Thunderbolt thus begins in a time period concurrent with the original Gundam TV series, with the Federation and Zeon battling on Earth in a ‘Thunderbolt Sector’ littered with space debris. On the Federation’s side are survivors of one of the destroyed space colonies wishing revenge; on Zeon’s is a special unit of amputee pilots. Before long, however, the conflict develops a third faction with the Buddhist radicals in the ‘South Seas Alliance’, which declares its secession from the Federation.

But it’s Gundam, so the focus of the story is on a handful of characters caught in the middle of it. On the Federation side we have Io Fleming, an ensign with a passion for music, and his lover Claudia Peer, a spaceship captain deeply depressed at the long war. On Zeon’s side comes Daryl Lorenz, double leg amputee, and Karla Mitchum, a caring scientist specialising in prosthetics. Early on in the conflict, Io causes Daryl to lose yet another limb - but rather than pack up and leave the war, he volunteers to undergo a further amputation for full integration into a brain controlled Gundam.

The manga is still ongoing, but the first arc was written with the intent of being adapted into a movie, and indeed Sunrise did just that. The first form of Thunderbolt was an eight-episode ONA series released on the web from 2015-2017. Concurrently, this was recut as a pair of compilation movies, titled December Sky and Bandit Flower.

(look it has girls and robots!)

Gundam has gone through many hands since Tomino’s day, and the principle factions of the Universal Century setting have been interpreted in a number of ways - something that anituber Pyramid Inu discusses nicely here. At the time Ohtagaki was writing in the mid 2010s, the mainstream Gundam airing was the Unicorn series (OVAs and then a TV show), written by Harutoshi Fukui, a writer who began his career writing Tom Clancy-like stories with a nationalist bent. He toned this down when he took over Gundam, describing himself as a ‘JJ Abrams’ type figure; nevertheless his Gundam presented a heavy-handedly war-on-terror inspired story in which the Federation is cast as America fighting Muslim militants.

Ohtagaki’s vision also emphasises religion, but instead puts the focus on a more familiar Buddhism, taking aim at what he sees as unreasonable suspicion towards religion in modern Japan (source)...

If you depict people who believe in Buddhism in a manga, people call that a cult. He points out that that way of thinking is already biased and feels that it points out people’s ignorance towards religion. He laments that if you look at it from a global perspective or even consider the history of humanity, the lack of religious beliefs among Japanese people today is quite unusual. He says that it’s a significant problem for Japan today to accept and tolerate other people’s beliefs, so much so that just because someone appears chanting sutras, they’re branded a cult.

He says that assumptions like that are far more dangerous. He’s not out to portray the South Seas Alliance as an ally of justice, nor their religious beliefs as righteous, it’s just that Japanese people close their eyes and try not to see them. He’s illustrating all this because he wants people to realize that it’s strange to think there is no such thing, that it’s more than a little unnatural that there were no religions in the world of Gundam in the first place.

Ohtagaki aimed to sidestep Gundam conventions in other ways: an adult protagonist, a stronger emphasis on chain of command. On the matter of ‘anti-war’, he takes a more fatalistic, small-scale stance:

In anime, the side the protagonist is on always ends up looking like the side that’s in the right. But both the Federation and Zeon are just countries, so it shouldn’t be about wrong and right. I don’t think there’s any point in inserting your ideologies in a manga. For people with normal lives, nations and wars are the ultimate kind of violence, and I want to draw the best ways to handle being in a war in order to survive.

So I’m not anti-war either. Wars will continue to happen, and I don’t think we’ll ever be rid of them, so the most important thing is to know how to handle them. But there aren’t that many people in Japan who think about things in that way. It’s correct to say that you’re anti-war or that there shouldn’t be war, so if you look at things as though war is inevitable, people think that you’re pro-war and you’re a bad person. But I think that’s a very narrow way of thinking, and it actually shows a lack of historical knowledge.

What do I think of that, eh? Right now, mostly ‘hmm’. Ohtagaki is correct to recognise that ‘will wars happen’ and ‘should wars happen’ are different questions; there’s also the question of ‘if war shouldn’t happen, how can it be prevented’. To say ‘war is inevitable’, even if is true, is not to commit to any particular war being inevitable. But it’s also true that there’s no need for all fiction about wars to try and take them on!

I can’t entirely comment on this until I’ve seen the movies, so put a pin there; but given the morass of ‘what does it mean to make true anti-war fiction’, deciding to sidestep the issue entirely is perhaps an understandable move. I’ll be curious to see what focus this approach gives the films; if previous Gundams have approached ‘anti-war narrative’ through focusing on the futility of going to war and the hope for some kind of new-age transcendance (original Gundam), the tragedy of civilians caught up in the middle (War in the Pocket), or the story of a soldier who tries to avoid killing (08th MS Team), what will a story that’s more about just trying to survive look like?

Anyway, so far we’ve focused on the writer and the manga. Let’s actually talk about animation.

Thunderbolt was animated at Sunrise Studio 1, known as one of the bastions of the gradually dying art of 2D mecha animation, as well as character animation with an impressive sense of space. More recently, they impressed everyone with Gundam Hathaway (Animation Night 124).

So Gundam Thunderbolt abounds with complex shouts and detailed designs moving through space, leaning on the talents of e.g. Nobuhiko Genma and Kazuki Ito who animated this incredible POV shot, or Shingo Tamagawa of Puparia fame who provides this splendid character animation. In the late 2010s, we are firmly in the digital compositing era, and glows, flares, gradients and high contrast backgrounds abound, but even though this isn’t entirely to my taste I can’t deny just how splendid the underlying drawings are. The character designs are on the realist end of the scale, and they float around with the classic Sunrise sensitivity to 3D space.

Mecha destruction is given a particularly impressive level of flair, with beam swords and lasers slicing up robots and splattering hot metal all over to the point that it starts to feel like a gory samurai movie. All in all it looks intense and compelling: the product of decades of development by some of the best in their craft. It manages to retain clarity of very complex designs even as they move around wildly. It’s even got some cool oldschool lighting effects...

A question that may be asked is, if mecha animation is mostly about animating complex, rigid 3D shapes, why not do it on the computer, which excels at exactly that? One answer is that there’s a certain quality of movement that comes from planning everything out in 2D. Low framerates can be used to create a sense of weight and avoid the ‘toyetic’ feeling that comes from overly-smooth CG without considerable effort put in to avoiding it.

Another is that 2D gives you a different approach to composition, which allows you to subtly exaggerate and stylise or just frame things in a way that puts the layout in the camera first without constraint - the reason that Houseki no Kuni planned out its action scenes in great detail in 2D before animating them in 3D. Then there’s just the ‘feeling’ of 2D, the slight errors and roughness giving it a more lively, organic feeling. Finally we might add the effect of limitations and constraints as structure.

That said, the ‘2D feel’ of a digitally composited series like Thunderbolt is not the same ‘2D feel’ as a 90s OVA like 08th MS Team. Working digitally makes some aspects of the workflow easier - you can easily preview a motion and scroll through the timeline - which makes some of these extremely complex shots possible. But conversely it is associated with faraway objects becoming indistinct blobs - this is I believe what is referred to as ‘douga melt’. Thunderbolt in all these clips looks very ‘2010s’. Which makes me wonder what the characteristic look of 2020s anime will turn out to be...

I think that will suffice for an introduction/study log/whatever these posts are! Animation Night 144 will begin at 8pm UK time, about two hours from this post! Movies will start at about 8:20pm. It will be at twitch.tv/canmom! Hope to see you there~

[adultswim2021]

Titan Maximum #2: "Busted" | October 4, 2009 - 11:30PM | S01E02

The second dang episode of Titan Maximum is basically a second pilot, taking us through how the newly formed team navigates the bureaucracy of the future government in order to get a replacement giant robot to pilot and have space adventures with. There’s also a little bit of advancement with the villain of the show, a former member of the team. I don’t think I touched on that aspect even a little bit last time. The important thing to know is, they get themselves reinstated with the military and the little brother nerd kid is their new engineer, producing a new mech that’s seemingly superior in every way, except the face is hastily drawn on. The episode ends with them about to do their first actual episodic adventure.

The main characters on the show are mostly dicks. We see them do stuff that dicks do to be dicks and for no other reason other than because they are dicks. That’s the comedy, dicks being dicks. Okay. That’s fine, I guess, if you're not me. In this one we have a flashback to them raping the “statue of unity”, because they were drunk and acting arrogantly for, again, no real reason. Then at one point they do a joke where a grunt foot soldier in another part of the story says an obvious sexual joke out loud and there’s pronounced awkward silence. It’s just like, man, what point are you even making here?

There wasn’t a single funny joke in this whole episode. I started getting actually pissed off. So much so that I failed to keep good notes for this episode; I literally wrote “JESUS FUCKING CHRIST THIS SUCKS” in a few different iterations without saying what I was reacting to. I should’ve been writing stuff like “the mean slut is showing her tits and being nasty.” Why, it’s like a season three episode of Sealab 2021, except for it probably took a year to animate instead of an afternoon.

I watched this on adultswim.com, and I’m probably going to get a DVD or download of this or something to watch instead. I was literally getting like, cartoonishly angry at this show, so much so that I started punching stuff. I am a lunatic, yes, but usually bad shows don’t upset me this much. Then, midway through the episode? I swear to fucking god, there was like 4 minutes of ads. They just jammed a commercial break in and it took for fucking ever. Every time a new ad started I actually started growling. Lotta ads for new shows coming soon to HBOMax. They all look like shit. Goddamn, I have never hated an app more than that app. I am thankful I don’t actually pay for it myself. 

To make it even worse: the one thing I stated as a positive about this show was the closing credits, which they interrupt for a lame callback joke. Then after the credits are over, they include a tag where a housekeeper explains an earlier joke where somebody pees in their space suit thinking it has a waste collection receptacle even though it doesn’t. Yeah, I saw that episode of Venture Bros. too.

MAIL BAG

got me katanas i want you to know, slicing up doors i want you to know, girl it's home movies i want you to know, don't know about you but i am wack...y coach mcguirk, wanna grow up to be, be a bob belcher

this was nice, pal, and I got a good laugh outta the deal. Well, see ya!

What can Delocated do in Season 2 to win you back? You seemed really down on it by the end. You didn't even like the part where he named all of Paul Rudd's lesser known movies.

You are full of shit! I literally named the final episode my favorite episode so far. I think all the feelings I had for the show roughly resembled the feelings I had for it back when it premiered. You're ignorant, pal.

He was in Anchorman, and The 40 Year Old Virgin, he was in The Shape of Things. He was in Clueless and Romeo + Juliet. He did a thing in Reno 911: Miami. The Cider House Rules. P.S. The Oh In Ohio. Knocked Up. He had a series of Broadway credits: The Last Night of Ballyhoo. Three Days of Rain with Julia Roberts. Twelfth Night at Lincoln Center. HE WAS IN HOUSE HUNTING!

"I like this" -me. See, now leave me alone.

Honestly I really like the *premise* of Titan Maximum. it's surprisingly earnest with it's deconstruction of Voltron, the character drama, the running story had a lot of potential, it looks great, Even the implied worldbuilding is fun. But like you said, the character writing is AWFUL. It's like a time capsule of the late 2000s "Workaholics" writers' board (twitter DOT com/podimportant/status/1369836756971835402). It sucks cause I like everything else about it but it really brings it down.

I probably should've noted this in the first episode, but I've never been a Voltron devotee. I don't remember ever watching it as a kid, and I've only seen a couple episodes as an Adult out of curiosity. So some of this show is probably lost on me. But the writing is so bad, I would highly doubt it would add anything for me.

[islaytonlost]

Three's a crowd

For a prompt by @madmaxou. This is a four part series. First Part, Second Part, Fourth Part

This Chapter contains: Hospitals, amnesia, siblingly saddy sad.

Disclamer: I am no professional in writing OSDD. Please do not use my fanfic to shape your views on the real world.

The newbie had kept insisting his name was Drew until the hospital staff started using that name. Much to the annoyance of Al and Fendi. Worse, he was rejecting any visits from anyone from work. Especially Lucy. 

They’d located his family, well Flora. She was the only one not off on an adventure in America. Drew said he’d talk to her. That she could help him. 

“Uhm, last time I saw you your name wasn’t Drew though. Even when we first met.”

“No, I'm like Alfendi’s guard, I protect him. When people turn nasty I protect him and then I leave. I’m out now so I need to protect him but I don’t know where the danger is!”

“Am I the danger?” Flora asks.

“No! You’re my sister and my friend! You’re my only friend right now.”

Flora smiles at him, so very brightly, “That’s so nice of you! So you want me to help you find the danger?”

“Yes!” 

“Oh, okay,” she folds her hands in her lap, “look Alfendi hasn’t spoken to me in a while I don’t know a lot.”

I told you we should have written. Al sighs, we really messed this up.

Oh right, after everyone turned their backs on us we should have written! It was her job to contact us!

They both pause for a second. 

I think we forgot to send her a christmas card before Forbodium and then after, when we got it, we never wrote back because I was scared she’d react like everyone else.  Al admits.

So like Hershal Layton we forgot her.

Yeah.

Fendi began making anguished noises, noises Drew was either ignoring or completely oblivious to. 

Flora finished summarising what she knew about him being shunned and the mystery room, “I tried writing but you never wrote back, I assumed you were busy. I didn't know there were more than one of you.”

“Do you think there’s someone else like me?” Drew leans forward, “someone who isn’t Alfendi? Someone who helps him like I do?”

“Yeah! Maybe. I really don’t know.”

“I’m sorry I, well he, never responded to your letters.”

“No it’s fine I heard some stuff from Katrielle. Lucy sent her letters.”

“Katrielle is my sister and Lucy is my coworker.”

“Could you talk to Lucy?”

“No she’s my coworker, last time I trusted one of those he shot me.”

Ohhh so that’s where Forbodium went. Fendi interjects.

Wait, the memories we’re missing go somewhere? Fendi, I don’t remember before Hershal.

I do, not all of it but I do. We’re screwed.

“I think he was using me for something, I don’t fully know it’s all foggy but I can’t trust her.”

Flora’s silent for a full minute, “I’ll talk to her, I’ll talk to all your coworkers and I’ll make sure none of them hurt you.”

“No! It could be dangerous. I may have to protect Alfendi but I want to protect you too!”

“But I’m older.”

“You buffoon, being older means nothing, I’m stronger.”

Flora smirks slightly, “alright! I’ll arm wrestle you for it.”

“Arm skills don’t work well against a knife, or a gun.”

“You’re just worried I’ll win,” she teases.

Drew couldn’t help but smile, “fine, you’re on.”

Flora won, of course she won, in her spare time she went on secret adventures. Ones that involved a lot of climbing and Alfendi/Drew had been stabbed.

“Please, be careful. They’re dangerous! You’re the only person I can trust. I can’t do this alone!”

Flora smiled but there was something sad in her eyes, “okay before I leave how about a story.”

He snorts, “I’m not a kid.”

“Do you know how the Professor adopted me?”

“No.”

Flora sat on the bed, with her brother, giving him a soft smile she began, “well my father was a great inventor and he knew my mum was going to die. So he tried to make her into a robot, in fact he made a whole village of robots just to look after me. I grew up around clockwork people, all obsessed with puzzles.”

“Like Hershel.”

“That’s probably why he came, yes,” she chuckled, “but he didn't know they were clockwork, no one did. Now, I know it’s different, very different from your childhood,” she reaches out for his hand and gives it a squeeze, “but I grew up around people I could trust and it’s a good thing. I trust the people around me.”

“No! You don’t understand they tried to kill me!”

“I don’t understand, not really but I have been kidnapped, twice. I know you cant trust everyone Drew but you know something? Most of the time you can. Don’t go following anyone into a dark alleyway and people aren’t always what they seem but if I hadn’t trusted Luke and the Professor I wouldn't be here. If we hadn't trusted you when-”

“Don’t talk about it,” his voice was stern, “please, don’t talk about when I was adopted.”

“Okay, I’m just saying, trusting you is the best thing we could have done and now, I still trust people. I trust them all the time. I trust them not to run me over when I cross the road, I trust them not to steal my luggage when I get on the train and leave it in the baggage area.”

“That’s different! There are witnesses.”

Flora holds back a chuckle, he was deadly serious after all, “so I’ll talk to them near witnesses.”

“I can't trust your judgement now, you’re too trusting.”

“We can both talk to them near witnesses.”

“What if they follow me back? What if they wait until there are no witnesses? Justin did.”

Flora hesitates, “Drew, you’re scared. Please, you have to trust someone or you’ll be like this forever. I’ll protect you, can you trust that?”

“Yes, but I’m telling you, one of them is out to get me! Just like Justin was! I know he isn’t the only one!”

[commenter2]

I made a post going over this recently but I wanted to make a pic to help spread the word of my idea about a sequel being made.

This year the Power Rangers franchise turned 30 years old and it was celebrated by Netflix making a movie featuring the cast from the Mighty Morphin era of the series fighting a returned robotic Rita Repulsa, ah Power Rangers. I thought it was really good, but now its been confirmed that Netflix has plans for a Power Rangers reboot after the current Power Rangers show they are airing ends. Now I would have been okay with this decision but after thinking back to the movie, I think the people at Netflix should put the reboot on hold for a bit so they can do a sequel movie to Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: Once a Ranger because I could see the sequel doing something that ALL Power Ranger fans would love to see.

Spoilers for those that haven’t seen the movie (or know much about the older Power Ranger shows) but in the movie Billy (the first Blue Rangers) revealed that he has been trying to bring Zordon (the mentor of the first Power Rangers team) back, but accidentally brought back Rita Repulsa’s evil side. The movie ends with Billy saying he is going back into space to heal the Rangers that were effected by Rita during her attacks but after a talk with the new Yellow Ranger, was motivated to keeping looking for Zordon and bringing him back.

The Rangers bringing back Zordon would be the PERFECT way to end the current Power Ranger series before a reboot, especially with the Power Rangers in Space theme vibes the ending was giving off as that was the series where not only Zordon gave his life to save the universe but also the season that prevented the Power Rangers from ending all those years ago. I saw someone suggest the idea of having Andros (the In Space Red Ranger) being the one to do so and I agree with that, as he was the one Zordon asked to destroy him and thus save the day but we never saw how that effected Andros afterwards. This could give the character a story arc in the movie where he finally gets closure by undoing his act and bringing Zordon back. It would also be nice to see Zordon seeing how his teenagers with attitude have grown up and that the Power Rangers still kept his dream of defending the world from evil alive after all this time.

Luckily If this doesn't happen soon I could still see it possibly happening one day as there has been a Power Rangers multiverse in the franchise for a while now, so while Netflix does its reboot series, I could still see adventures happening in the current Power Ranger timelines, whether it be through more shows, comics, or said sequel.

Do you want to see a sequel to Once and Always? Would you like to see what I wrote happen in said sequel? 

image owned by Netflix and Hasbro base by JasonPictures

[chiquita-banana-death-squads]

I don’t deny that what I’ve presented so far is a savage simplification of very complicated issues. I’m not even saying that the position I’m suggesting here—that there is a play principle at the basis of all physical reality—is necessarily true. I would just insist that such a perspective is at least as plausible as the weirdly inconsistent speculations that currently pass for orthodoxy, in which a mindless, robotic universe suddenly produces poets and philosophers out of nowhere. Nor, I think, does seeing play as a principle of nature necessarily mean adopting any sort of milky utopian view. The play principle can help explain why sex is fun, but it can also explain why cruelty is fun. (As anyone who has watched a cat play with a mouse can attest, a lot of animal play is not particularly nice.) But it gives us ground to unthink the world around us.

Years ago, when I taught at Yale, I would sometimes assign a reading containing a famous Taoist story. I offered an automatic “A” to any student who could tell me why the last line made sense. (None ever succeeded.)

'Zhuangzi and Huizi were strolling on a bridge over the River Hao, when the former observed, “See how the minnows dart between the rocks! Such is the happiness of fishes.”

“You not being a fish,” said Huizi, “how can you possibly know what makes fish happy?”

“And you not being I,” said Zhuangzi, “how can you know that I don’t know what makes fish happy?”

“If I, not being you, cannot know what you know,” replied Huizi, “does it not follow from that very fact that you, not being a fish, cannot know what makes fish happy?”

“Let us go back,” said Zhuangzi, “to your original question. You asked me how I knew what makes fish happy. The very fact you asked shows that you knew I knew—as I did know, from my own feelings on this bridge.”'

The anecdote is usually taken as a confrontation between two irreconcilable approaches to the world: the logician versus the mystic. But if that’s true, then why did Zhuangzi, who wrote it down, show himself to be defeated by his logician friend?

After thinking about the story for years, it struck me that this was the entire point. By all accounts, Zhuangzi and Huizi were the best of friends. They liked to spend hours arguing like this. Surely, that was what Zhuangzi was really getting at. We can each understand what the other is feeling because, arguing about the fish, we are doing exactly what the fish are doing: having fun, doing something we do well for the sheer pleasure of doing it. Engaging in a form of play. The very fact that you felt compelled to try to beat me in an argument, and were so happy to be able to do so, shows that the premise you were arguing must be false. Since if even philosophers are motivated primarily by such pleasures, by the exercise of their highest powers simply for the sake of doing so, then surely this is a principle that exists on every level of nature—which is why I could spontaneously identify it, too, in fish.

Zhuangzi was right. So was June Thunderstorm. Our minds are just a part of nature. We can understand the happiness of fishes—or ants, or inchworms—because what drives us to think and argue about such matters is, ultimately, exactly the same thing.

Now wasn’t that fun?

[respectthepetty]

Get To Know Your BL Mutuals

tagged by @kwonzoshi

Simple, answer the questions. @ some people. Include the tag 'g2ky BL mutuals 2022' on your post so we can find everyone's answers!

What has been the BL that took you by surprise this year?

Old Fashion Cupcake. It came out of nowhere! One random day Viki uploaded the first episode, and was like “You wanna watch an oddly named show from Japan?” and my my my (sing it like Troye Sivan) it hit every sweet spot. The scene that was done all in one sequence?! I’m still there. I’m living in that scene. I only come out because I have to pay bills. I’m going to rewatch it for the 80th time now.

What has been the BL that you felt a bit disappointed with this year?

It would have been Oh! My Sunshine Night, but it seemed to embrace its messiness (adding more episodes on the day of the finale!) in a way that I love (amnesia?! a murder plot?! a bubble bath?!!!!) so…

Between Us. It’s the same issue I had with Until We Meet Again. I don’t know how Win and Team’s plot is going to carry over for twelve episodes. We keep getting snippets of In and Korn (TW, please), and shots of Dean and Pharm, but we already know their story, so it’s like recycled plot with a new scent. It’s nice to see Dean not so robotic (“fuck off”) and Pharm not being infantilized, but on top of Alphabet Soup’s issues with Prince Charming, a drowning, Manow doing her (keep it up, we love it!), Tul and Wan’s Gameboys moment, baby Santa looking adorable as Wiew, the product placement of what is clearly NOT water, and the daddy issues (actual issues with their father and not Love in the Air daddy issues), I don’t know how this souffle is going to rise. However, it’s not even close to being finished, so I’m excited to watch how it bakes.

What has been your favorite BL this year?

Love Mechanics. I’m trash for VeeMark’s throat grabs. Trash! Vee being a topsy-turvy bisexual who couldn’t get his shit together is the bisexual representation I want. How many bisexuals do we know who have their shit together? Not a damn one. This show is basically a documentary. Then, Mark being the ultimate Sour Patch Kid who is willing to fist fight his father only made the dynamic between a gay and his huge red flag that much better.

Favorite BL couples (not just of 2022)?

MaxTul are my anything and everything. Korn and Knock. Tan and Bun. Sequels. Prequels. Unconfirmed projects – WHERE IS TRANSPLANT?! It always blows my mind that they are the same age, if not younger than another long-established pair, and came out the gate slutting up our screens. Not even making it a competition, it’s just wild to me that they did the devil’s tango day one, which we see more often now, and held a gun to each other’s head two years ago so DanYok, ToddBlack, KinnPorsche, and VegasPete could fly (I see you HIStory 3: Trapped. Taiwan, you're still my #1). They remind me of a Taiwanese couple with the domestic bliss, the high heat, and the batshit craziness, and I hope they live long and happy lives.

If you had to suggest a BL for someone what would it be?

To My Star 1 AND 2. Yeah, I wrote that. Not just To My Star, but To My Star 2 as well. The reasons speak for themselves, but just in case, never forget his lip was bleeding.

What's your non-BL favorite for this year?

Our Flag Means Death. I only support the girls, the gays, and the goths, so I was happily surprised that I was, in fact, supporting an entire ship of gays and their support goth with this show about pirates. If you think I’m crazy about colors and symbolism in BLs, imagine me watching this show when Ed started wearing color compared to his usual black and wore Stede’s RED robe after Stede gave him a RED cloth, that Ed placed in his pocket where his heart is because Stede gave him love only to throw it in the wind when…

Let me calm down. This show was glorious, and I’m delighted it got a second season. De. Light. Ed.

So who wants to go next? Tag as many or as few people as you want.

Have to tag the color and location mutuals: @gillianthecat @dribs-and-drabbles @waitmyturtles @sliceduplife @callipigio

[aewinning]

HI!!!! ITS ME AGAIN OH MY GOD!!!!! I JUST READ GOING UNDER THE KNIFE AND IM SCREAMING!!!!!!!!!

Im immensely flattered you actually went ahead and wrote it and I apologise it took me so long to find it!! 😭💖 But my god it really came at the perfect time. I lost my 50/50 to Tighnari yesterday lol.

I still can't believe you actually wrote it aaah!!! It was perfect!!! I really really enjoyed their little banter in the beginning. It felt very natural and engaging!! Not to mention, it felt a bit like foreplay, if it makes sense? Really good at building up the tension!!! And Scara asking about Haypasia really pulled at my heartstrings aaah. I honestly didn't expect that but it was such a nice touch.

What really got me going tho was all the medical language and how it felt for Scara considering hes not quite mechanical nor organic. The descriptions of the scalpel going against skin/tube.... Just. Wow. Very hot. Had me asking myself if i might have a kink for if ngl. The combination of pain and pleasure and not being sure which is which..... And with Tighnari being so indifferent but also weirdly complacent.... Aaah it was genuinely very very hot.

Thank u so much for writing this!!!! It was wonderful and i appreciate it a lot!!! 😭💖 It goes without saying that I'll be keeping an eye out for more of your writing and hopefully next time it won't take me this long to find it (uni keeps me so busy its honestly sad). Thank again for writing!!! 💖

Aww no need at all to feel bad about not seeing it for a while, life happens and it'll always be there even if you miss something at first. I had a BLAST writing the fic, it was very self-indulgent so I thank you for the inspiration! Very glad you enjoyed it 🥰 (And yes you would not believe the amount of surgical tool and procedure research I did for the fic lmao, glad it translated into something enjoyable.)

I really enjoy that it's unclear what ratio of organic to robotic Scara is.. We know he can eat and breathe but doesn't have to. He has no heart. His character stories say he's been wounded and 'repaired,' not healed. He's clearly got emotions. He lights up during his skill but who's to say if that's due to mechanical bits, relation to an archon, or simple magic power? So you can really do almost anything you want with him physically, haha. Makes it fun to push him beyond human limits.

Also by 'lost your 50/50 to Tighnari' you mean WON right? Right??? /s (Itto and Wanderer are both great so I hope you get whichever you were aiming for! But Tighnari is nice too, my Tighnari/Kazuha/Kuki/Fischl team has kicked ass in Spiral Abyss lately.)

Good luck with university and thank you for the kind words!

[theworldoffandoming]

😭 I started this, but lost most of it. tumblr didn't save my draft... Wahhhh.

Welp. I guess we'll take it from the top... The first one is part of the draft so I'm just gonna expand on that. Second song is what I remember getting after it and none of that got saved, wahh. And then I'll randomize for the next ones after that. I remember I got a good one for the third one but I can't remember what it was :< I have a theory of what it might've been or what I might have gotten trying to reattempt after getting sidetracked? But I'll shuffle again just to be sure. I might've even gotten two songs after that but... anyways.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy

Six Feet Under by PhaseOne

This is a Korosa song that's largely about the vibe. Genre-wise it works well with the story because it has a lot of sci-fi-esque sounds to it. Its album art is space-themed so that's another checkmark in the box. It's fast-pasted, which is fitting for Korosa who's always on the run, specifically from death, so the song title and theme of the song play into that fear. It has a lot of back and forth to it in which I can imagine him kinda skidding to a halt as he turns a corner and keeps running with lasers firing after him, like that one pic of him I really gotta redraw... Oh, I have another pic with the song title on it but yeah, think I'd like to flesh that out a bit more sometime...

2. Losing my Mind - Mystery Skulls

Oh boy oh boy oh boy oh boy

Okay this one is a Tsuname song I remember I wrote a TON about this one but all of it's gone so lemme see if I can try to recapture the vibes...

So this one also has some sci-fi flavor to it that fits in with the story as a whole.

Looking at the lyrics, I can imagine the first part is about him feeling like Boss is watching him. 'Someone' being Boss and 'they' being Boss and his minions.

"Feels like a dream of me all of the time" is an interesting line since in Tsuname's worst moments it's just his fight mode taking over and it almost is like he's in a dream-like state that he wakes up from.

I don't if it's just me but some of the bass slaps sound kinda like waves a bit? so the juxtaposition of that and the robotic voices really captures the vibe of the split between his two worlds. Especially as we get into a little more of that sci-fi sound towards the end.

Okay well I think I got another good one for you guys despite all the chaos that has been trying to put this post together.

3. World on Fire - Les Friction

This is one that's a double but I'll go with the one that's not a spoiler. I really doesn't get going until the chorus, but then it's definitely about the destruction of Erinine. Though... I think it also fits another destructive event in the story more than that, but y'know. Really it's that chorus "You know there's something coming down from the sky above / World on fire with a smoking sun / Stops everything and everyone / Brace yourself for all will pay" Is help on the way though? I think that's fitting for the later story event...

4. Scent of Night - Myuu

*checks notes* Okay this one has multiple interpretations. I commonly associate it with Naru. It technically could also be Shiido arc 3. I'd written it down as a possibility for Tsuname in a later part of the story too. But uh. For Naru I think it's her having to reflect when she's imprisoned in arc 3. Which is why it works well for Shiido too. For Tsuname it works because it has those darker reflective tones for when his beliefs about Sh'zkai and his island's mythos are challenged. "Scent of Night" I think is literal for him, since it's a reflective scene at night. For Naru and Shiido it's more of an artificial darkness from when they each get trapped in these dark void bubbles by Prometheus. Naru suffers the worst from that...

5. The Moon is a Harsh Mistress - Josh Groban

Ah, nice. One of the original playlist songs. This one is also about Tsuname. In some ways it's him telling his younger self to be more careful about Sh'zkai. Possibly also [redacted] trying to advise him in his own awkward way, but I think a lot of it is Tsuname reflecting on the good times but also the bad. I think "see her as she flies golden sails across the sky" reminds me of how Wotrens can glide across the surface of the sea with their wings. They usually need a boost from water manipulation to get up very high, or they just jump and coast. I don't think Sh'zkai does that often when she's older, but she probably enjoyed it more when she was young.

OH. Star mention! Sh'zkai is often compared to a star, so "I tripped and I missed my star" is very apt. Both of the Wotren sisters have some celestial symbolism with them, so this is 👌 In some ways this might be about how Sz'nami can't be his either, but more about Sh'zkai than her. Made me think of that since Sz'nami has more moon symbolism tied to her but this song is more about Sh'zkai.

...next two are about spoilers so redacted! I could mention what they are but... nah.

6. So Far Away and So Near - Erutan

Okay, this one has one spoiler interpretation and one not, so let's go with that.

It might be Sz'nami and Tsunne... Tsunne is Tsuname's older brother and he was married to Sz'nami but perished in the invasion. So it might be Sz'nami reflecting on their relationship. "So Far Away," he's gone now, "So Near," she still remembers him.

... I forgot to tag people!!

@iggyfing @the-kirbe-anon @tzarina-alexandra @enjoliquej @toothpaste-dragon @larissa-the-scribe

Tag game

Shuffle your story playlist and write down the first six songs and then explain why they work with your story. Then tag six people who should try it!

Tagging @quill-driver08 @eruanna1875 @artist-at-play @meadow-roses @katiethedane12 @larissa-the-scribe