#(but this is really just. one of many variations their past might have looked like)

[kandyrezi]

Kurotsuno + Sullivan + Kcalb [thesis + general observation]

I know there have been a lot of speculations before about how the three of them could possibly be related to one another, but I was thinking about this while washing the dishes and it wouldn’t leave my head until I gave it my own two cents & wrote this all down. I’ll probably come back to this post in… five or six years when we finally get a TGG prequel/any Obsolete Dream chapters past the 9th, so I can check case by case how spot-on this was or how many mistakes I made.

This is mostly just for fun, so read this with an open mind, and pardon me for any potential inaccuracies - if that’s the case, then I implore people to point them out so I can… try and fix any inconsistencies there might be.

This is partially a theory post, partially a headcanon post, because there are just too many big gaps in the events to make one, straight, linear timeline to tie everything - from cryptic hints to subtle signs - together from beginning to the end, so a lot of it is really just my charitable speculation.

(rest of it is under the cut, 'cus this is quite long, trust me~)

So, Sullivan has some obvious relation to Kcalb, as they do share noticeable physical similarities (eyes/black sclera + horns), though it is unclear if Kcalb is a blood-related parent to Sullivan (because then, y’know, who is the other parent?), if they are very distant blood-relatives, or if Sullivan is just one of his creations - much like how Ivlis created Vendetto/Poemi from his flames - though I’m not certain how far his capabilities in terms of creation go, because of this line Kcalb says at some point in The Gray Garden.

‘Repair’ is kind of a subsection of ‘creation’. Either way, Kcalb clearly has more than enough loyal subordinates, so how did Sullivan even come to be?

"His upbringing was way too complicated." is one of the sentences used in this specific art to describe Sullivan, so that's enough of a hint already that he isn’t that 'ordinary' in the slightest.

If he was created by Kcalb or born from someone else, the devil would, either way, have required the involvement of another individual (’Raven’? AKA The mysterious figure speaking to him on the train in the ‘bonus room’ video? The red-eyed figure “Fate” who appears in Etihw’s memories of the past in the ‘Normal End’?) in order to do so in the first place. If we assume Kcalb even knew of his existence or was with him at any point, then Kcalb would have used Sullivan for his own gain; a kind of a host or placeholder body if his powers were to be diminished or taken from him, his fundamental connection to Sullivan would allow him to ‘borrow’ his powers back, or someone to lead the war if he would be gone.

Whether or not Sullivan actually possesses the same abilities as Kcalb is unclear, though similarly to Kurotsuno, he is seen with the exact same asymmetrical symbols (the same ones visible when Kcalb renders Ivlis powerless) in some artworks.

Addressing one of the many elephants in the room first and foremost; I don’t believe Elena is Sullivan’s mother or has anything to do with him at all, for that matter, considering she is Zigzag’s sister and doesn’t really seem like a special being - meaning she doesn’t stand out from any of the other demons from the Pitch Black World/Ne-No-Kuni in her art LOGs. She hasn’t been hinted in any way to have possible connections to the Gray World either. The physical similarities (blond hair, black/green retina) are likely just re-used design choices. A very ironic statement considering I used this exact argument with the aforementioned Kcalb/Sullivan’s relation to one another, but their relationship actually has more than just one subtle similarity connecting to one another.

The reason Sullivan might look sickly in a lot of his artwork is because he doesn’t handle these devil-given powers well mentally or physically, since they were thrust onto him forcibly and he has been described as ‘weak’ by many of the characters.

He might be Kcalb's descendant, but he clearly isn't as powerful as the devil is, with his poor physical health and all. Whatever Kcalb’s plans with him might’ve be, it ended up fruitless (for now). Kcalb was quite terrible during the war era, so he probably didn’t treat Sullivan very well. At some point, Sullivan might have been whisked away by someone (possibly ‘Raven’ from the ‘bonus room’ video), or he himself escaped the Gray World to go and live in Neo-No-Kuni.

He’s seen wearing a gyakuan and has been classmates with Gyakuten since their school years, so his departure/upbringing already happened over there when he was quite young. [1]

In the distant future, he meets his wife to-be at some point and they get married, but she dies due to unknown causes [2] when Olivia is at a young age, so Sullivan is left to raise her by himself.

I am, personally, a big fan of the “Olie is Kurotsuno’s mother” theory for many reasons which are stated below. They do indeed have some notable similarities, which have already been brought up before by some other people, such as:

• Similar hair + eye color

• Similar sounding names (+ Olie's last name used to be Kurokuro)

• Olie has been seen interacting with Reina, meaning she’s in the Obsolete Dream universe

• Kurotsuno’s mother was stated to be dead, and Olie correspondingly has strong ties with death/mourning

• Olivia is clearly stated to be human (or at least, partially [3]), so she would need a human parent, and Olie looks quite human enough

• Olie used to be listed in the ‘dead’ category in the funamusea(.)com/characters/ page, not with the youkai (Reina & Jianshi) she has been seen with thus far, despite the fact Olihana is also based off of a youkai. Before DSP changed the layout of the character page on the official website, Olie was actually placed within the ‘undead’ category, which supported the theory of her being dead--

[Image retrieved from the internet archives!]

--but now she’s been put into the ‘youkai’ category (which is visible on the new design of the website), so I don’t know if it’s a retconned idea DSP previously had, or if it’s to hide Olie’s true identity for now, but we also don’t have a lot of information about the youkai characters to begin with, where they reside, where does the youkai world connect with Neo-No-Kuni, or what their role is in the overarching story.

[1] if Sullivan has been in Neo-no-Kuni since his school years, then there is a distinct probability Kcalb has never even met Sullivan face-to-face, and Sullivan may have been raised by someone else from birth/creation.

[2] alternate possibility is, she might not have died and is currently residing in the youkai realm as Olihana?

[3] Olivia might not even be fully human, considering her father is a demon, so there’s that chance she might be a cambion (half-human/demon hybrid, which originates from as far back as 19th century European mythology).

There is very little known about who Olie is, but she is an interesting character and there seems to be more to her than meets the eye, judging from some of the deleted official artwork of her. I want to look at them a little bit further, see if there’s anything interesting to be found.

Oh, hey, would you look at that! Olivia & Olie together in the same pic! The kanji above them is just their names. (Kurotsuno, Kurokawa, and Olie’s old surname - Kurokuro)

Translation: “The grief of the deceased does not reach.”

Is the “deceased” in question alluding to herself, or someone else?

The most interesting picture of her so far, if not the most cryptic and somewhat confusing. It’s worth at least mentioning them; do these objects in the image hint at her character, or backstory - or are they just meant to be decorative? It has a clock stopped at 3:00, a painting, unknown letters scattered about, and a gramophone with many different items (flowers, masks, a radio) inside of it.

The closest visually similar flowers like the ones in the art I was able to find is the Morning Glory.

It has a lot of different allegorical meanings, depending on its color. A blue Morning Glory, in particular, usually alludes to feelings of trust and/or respect - which might be a connection she shares with her other self, Olihana.

Buried in the flowers are two masks. One is the Hannya mask ( 般若 ) which is usually worn by Olihana in artworks, a mask representing a female character drawn to madness by jealousy/resentment. The other one closely resembles either the Wakaonna mask or Ko-omote mask ( 能面 小面 ), which is mostly worn by young girls, and meant to convey the idea of innocent beauty. The latter mask could in theory belong to Olie.

Any connection I could find with the painting in the background is the fact it is a little reminiscent of Mori Ippô’s 1871 painting, “White Fox”. It might just be there in DSP’s art for aesthetic purposes though, so I’ll leave it at that.

And now, onto the timeline.

((A lot of text below is heavily headcanon/speculation based, while trying to stay true to currently known canon information as much as possible.))

Olivia and Sullivan have a big fight at some point, which ends with Sullivan losing his temper and possibly locking up Olivia into her room. She would have either snuck out, or Hanten would have shown up at Rapunzel’s Olivia’s window and helped her out of there. This is Sullivan and Olivia’s last meeting for a very long time.

When she meets up with Hanten and tells her what had happened, the latter would definitely know of the ‘reason’ behind her ‘rebellious streak’ - as the many characters in OD point out is prevalent in her behavior.

Hanten even makes a remark about Sullivan in chapter 4.

The implication seems almost emphasized here; the second panel is zoomed in closely to Hanten, and she's posing somewhat of a rhetorical question with the "Right, Kurotsuno?" as if the latter would know about this first hand. Kurotsuno is seen being physically violent with Sullivan or verbally degrading him in nearly all of their artworks together, yet not once have we seen him losing his temper with her for her behavior, so he might feel some guilt over his past actions and keeps his temper under control, as sort of a vow because he knows what happened last time he didn’t listen to her.

Olivia might have chosen to run away from home altogether, and Hanten might or might not have gone with her, but I won’t mention her too much in this post for the time being.

Either someone takes her back to the Gray World, or she goes there on her own.

She meets Kcalb at some point and the two of them develop something of a friendly bond. Kcalb likely didn’t know about Oliva being Sullivan’s daughter since she’s a human and looks quite a bit like her mother, bearing almost no similarities to her father.

At some point, a bigger war breaks out and Kcalb has to leave, so he doesn’t see Olivia for quite some time.

It’s during this time when ‘Raven’/’Train Guy’/’Fate’ from Etihw’s memories swoops in and finds Kcalb to tell him about Olivia’s relation to Sullivan, making the devil to a complete 180 and come to the conclusion of using her for his own gain to turn the tides of ongoing war in his favor.

Both Kurotsuno and Kcalb have a connection to the moon [1], so it’s during the full moon when he goes back to Olivia after a long time of not seeing her, she’s likely excited to meet him again, except Kcalb will only use her for his own benefit, with Olivia possessing Sullivan’s blood, and to that extend, also Kcalb’s.

Etihw drained Kcalb of his powers, but he can use Olivia to activate them, but since Olivia’s powers are essentially useless/non-existent as a human, Kcalb turns her into a demon, which was (as canon seems to allude to this) a very painful, agonizing process.

Hanten might have found Olivia and gone into a state of grief to find and think her to be dead, only for the latter to finally wake up. When she does, all of her memories are gone and she doesn’t remember any of her time spent in the Gray World, or whom Kcalb even is, or why is she laying in a barren wasteland.

Except for the argument and how he locked her up – then it’s everything else in between is a blackout in her memory – up until the point when the agonizing pain Kcalb put her through begins to take form.

Because of their outward physical similarities, she concludes it was Sullivan who had hurt her in such a painful way.

Oliva decides her name is no longer ‘Olivia’ but Kurotsuno, which is a name she chose to give herself, because of the asymmetrical, mismatched horn on her right side of the head. She wants to cut ties with the past and what had happened, hence the new name.

It’s likely Hanten did not go through the same transformation Oliva did at that exact time, and became a lookalike with Anten at a later point, hence this image here.

Hanten’s arm is cut off and it’s transforming into the black one she has currently, instead of the normal, beige colored one with red nails she did before. Also, not to mention, the horns are also becoming different - as such; both Kuro & Hanten’s transformation took place at different times and different places, Hanten’s not until much later on.

Haten & Olivia both had their memories erased, hence why Hanten has no bitter memories of their time, whereas Olivia (now Kurotsuno) does, considering Hanten doesn’t take Kurotsuno’s hatred of Sullivan seriously and refers to it as “rebellious phase” much like the other characters, such as Maekami. Otherwise she would actually know the real reason why Kurotsuno is in her demon-equivalent of a ‘rebel phase’ and moody all the time?

Sullivan probably went looking for Olivia at some point during when all that took place but couldn’t locate her since he had no idea where to look, that’s why there’s a note in Mogeko Castle and his reasons for being there in the first place.

[1] Olivia’s transformation might have happened during the full moon. That’s why Met says this, because that’s when her memories of that time become more vivid.

Kcalb has a conversation about the distant past with Yosafire when they’re looking at the moon, in one of the bonus room videos. Here’s a transcript of it:

Kcalb: “There are some people I’d like to meet again. The first would be difficult to meet now. As would the second. The third... I’ve never met face-to-face.”

Yosafire: “Why not?”

Kcalb: “I’m simply not worthy of meeting them.”

Yes, he could be talking about his former-now-dead subordinates, but surely he’s met all of them face-to-face. Surely. An alternate interpretation of this speech is the possibility of the first mentioned person being Sullivan, and the second one being Kurotsuno/Olivia. I don’t really know whom the third person might be. Place your bets in my askbox now! The winner gets… nothing, except crippling, soul-crushing depression, sorry.

Also, you kinda need eagle eyes for this, but look at Sullivan holding that black/white diamond handkerchief in chapter 7.

Coincidence? I think N—

...actually, who knows. might just be a coincidence after all this thorough analysis after all.

Okay, now, THERE IS A LOOOTTTT MORE which I did not deep-dive into, such as Kcalb’s conversation with the unknown ‘Raven’ on the train, the ‘???’ bonus room video dialogue, “THE PAST” official artwork with the smiling guy with the knife and the bleeding-from-mouth Olivia, the flashback images that Ivlis shows to Yosafire, etc etc. Because this post is quite long already, I think I’m alright to leave it as it is.

Haha, If you made it this far…. wowie thanks for reading my new and improved thesis! <3

(I also named this ‘daddy issues the theory babey’ as a word document on my computer... u _ u

[fixyourwritinghabits]

How to Tell If That Post of Advice Is AI Bullshit

Right, I wasn't going to write more on this, but every time I block an obvious AI-driven blog, five more clutter up the tags. So this is my current (April 2024) advice on how to spot AI posts passing themselves off as useful writing advice.

No Personality - Look up a long-running writing blog, you'll notice most people try to make their posts engaging and coming from a personal perspective. We do this because we're writers and, well, we want to convey a sense of ourselves to our readers. A lot of AI posts are straight-forward - no sense of an actual person writing them, no variation in tone or text.

No Examples - No attempts to show how pieces of advice would work in a story, or cite a work where you could see it in action. An AI post might tell you to describe a person by highlighting two or three features, and that's great, but it's hard to figure out how that works without an example.

Short, Unhelpful Definitions - A lot of what I've seen amount to two or three-sentence listicles. 'When you want to write foreshadowing, include a hint of what you want foreshadowed in an earlier chapter.' Cool beans, could've figured that out myself.

SEO/AI Prompt Language Included - I've seen way too many posts start with "this post is about..." or "now we will discuss..." or "in this post we will..." in every single blog. This language is meant to catch a search engine or is ChatGPT reframing the prompt question. It's not a natural way of writing a post for the average tumblr user.

Oddly Clinical Language - Right, I'm calling out that post that tried to give advice on writing gay characters that called us "homosexuals" the entire time. That's a generative machine trying to stay within certain parameters, not an actual person who knows that's not a word you'd use unless you were trying to be insulting or dunking on your own gay ass in the funniest way possible.

Too Perfect - Most generative AI does not make mistakes (this is how many a student gets caught trying to use it to cheat). You can find ways to make it sound more natural and have it make mistakes, but that takes time and effort, and neither of those are really a factor in these posts. They also tend to have really polished graphics and use the same format every time.

Maximized Tags (That Are Pointless) - Anyone who uses more than 10 one-word tags is a cop. Okay, fine, I'm joking, but there's a minimal amount of tags that are actually useful when promoting a post. More tags are not going to get a post noticed by the algorithm, there is no algorithm. Not everyone has to use their tags to make snarky comments, but if your tags look like a spambot, I'm gonna assume you're a spambot.

No Reblogs From The Rest of Writblr - I'm always finding new Writblr folks who have been around for awhile, but every real person I've seen reblogs posts from other people. We've all got other stuff to do, I'm writing this blog to help others and so are they, the whole point of tumblr is to pass along something you think is great.

While you'll probably see some variation in the future - as people get wise to obviously generated text, they'll try to make it look less generated - but overall, there's still going to be tells to when something is fake.

I don't have any real advice for what to do about this (other than block those blogs, which is what I do). Like most AI bullshit, I suspect most of these blogs are just another grift, attempting to build large follower counts to leverage or sell something to in the future. They may progress past these tattletale features, but I'm still going to block them when I see them. I don't see any value in writing advice compiled from the work of better writers who put the effort in when I can just go find those writers myself.

[jiskblr]

Tumblr Rules for Redditors

Hello, fellow redditors! Many people are trying to tell you rules about how to Tumblr properly. Many of them are wrong, or assholes, or both. I am also an asshole but I’m going to not be one for a minute to give you some advice:

“Reblog this or you’re a bad person” and any variation on that is a violation of intergalactic law. Don’t do it. Also, refuse to comply if someone else does it.

Generally, people can see what you reblog, but cannot see what you ‘like’. A like may seem like an upvote, but it is much less significant than one, since it doesn’t affect visibility in the slightest. A like will be visible both to the OP of the thread, and to the person whose reblog you put the like on. Like promiscuously! It feels good to get likes and there’s no downside. (Unless you are a space alien AKA influencer.) There’s a setting for like visibility, but it’s still somewhat hard to find even if it’s turned on.

Tumblr nominally has the ability to browse global tags (e.g. seeing the entire site’s posts and reblogs tagged #superwholock or #reddit exodus) and to search the site for things. No one uses them and they don’t really work.

You are probably less surprised by this than denizens of literally any other website on the internet, but there’s mostly no algorithm here. Chronological order only. This now defaults to being on, but you can and should turn it off. (If you’re using the search or global tags, they might have an algorithm, but if they do, it doesn’t work. We don’t know because we don’t use them, because they mostly don’t work either.)

Anyone can have absolutely any conversation in the notes of your post that they like. This is how the website works. You are allowed to complain about it, but don’t expect anyone to humor you. I think it’s possible to make posts unrebloggable and disable replies, but this is essentially refusing to use Tumblr. If you want to do that... go ahead, I guess?

Many people have ‘DNI’ lists in their blog descriptions. This means ‘do not interact’ and indicates that they don’t want you to message them, reblog from them, reblog any posts they are OP of, or even, sometimes, ‘like’ their posts. It is good manners to respect these, if you know they exist, but in normal use you probably won’t look at blog descriptions very often so it is entirely okay to violate them by accident. (When the lists get very long, it becomes impractical to check whether you violate them. Generally, just skip it. You probably don’t want to interact with those people anyway.)

Notes on posts you start will go to you no matter how many intervening hops there are on the reblog chain. If you get a post with an enormous amount of notes, this can get overwhelming. Whatever the current incarnation of Xkit (basically RES for Tumblr except we’ve switched names and maintainers seven times) is, will have a setting to deal with this. If that’s insufficient, the suggested course of action is to reblog your OP to your own blog so that you have a copy for posterity’s sake, and then delete the OP. This silences the notes.

If you and another user both follow each other, you are ‘mutuals’. This makes it much easier to have conversations with each other, which is ordinarily sort of hard since everything is purely chronological. Frequently your mutuals are your friends; if not yet true, they may become your friends.

When you reblog things, you can write words both in the word part and in the tags, Modern tumblr norms are to write long rambling tags in full sentences rather than put words in the main body. Unlike some other norms, violating this one and putting your response in the body of the reblog is not particularly rude. The worst it does is make a reblog chain long. Probably don’t reblog things and just say “This.”, though.

Tags can be subjected to peer review, by which we mean someone copy-pastes your tags and/or screenshots them and adds them to the main body of their reblog. Generally this is a compliment. The alternative is to say “#prev tags”, and this makes everyone hate you because it’s hard to find which tags were ‘prev’. Please just peer review properly if they’re good.

If you want to search your blog, consider Siikr. Don’t overuse it, it’s one guy’s project.

Be verbose! This ain’t Twitter, no character limit. (Not even the really large character limit of a reddit comment.) Write a 3000-word story in a single reblog if you want, that sounds awesome. Use ‘read more’ if you do, though. Posts can be very long, one of our oldest memes is about this.

Infinite scroll is the default, but you can turn it off. Actually, check all the settings, many of them will improve your experience.

On queues: Go nuts. Some people put everything in the queue, some people almost nothing. Some queue specific aestheticposting (personally I do #too smol) and post other things normally. Most people who queue a lot add a queue-specific tag like #the mighty queue or #this queue shall pass, or at least I notice them more than poasters with untagged queues.

You know how Reddit lets you buy Gold and people go 'thanks for the gold kind stranger'? On tumblr we spend money on Tumblr Blaze, and it is considered the PvP section of Tumblr. Though sometimes people actually use it to spread posts they like, such as people attempting to evangelize Christianity (no, really, that happened a lot) or the, I hope, actually-kind stranger who blazed this OP. You can turn off PvP with one of the many settings.

Everybody be excellent to each other!

[hibiscusseaart]

huge ass post with MadaTobi Babies

its finally done, its almost 1 am, I started at 7 pm

OK SO HERE THEY ARE

So a little lore and then I'm gonna introduce them.

As you may remember from my earlier post, Tobirama (they married when he was 19) after the marriage, decided to create a child to tie Madara to him and the village stronger just in case Madara would try to leave the village. He couldn't destroy the village if there's his kid running around, right?

So Tobirama started learning biology pretty early in their marriage + Itama (@oh-no-its-bird 's one) helped a lot too. Mito helped with the seals to make an incubator. Tobirama didn't want a surrogate mother just because he was afraid that Madara would get attached to the mother of his children and he didn’t want that (plus he's jealous but doesn't realise it 🤭).

He created some sort of very real transformation jutsu that would trick his body to think that he has ovaries and he'd get the eggs that way! But he couldn't keep uterus and ect for 9 months, plus this jutsu is HARD to keep on for very long periods of time. It's easier to make a few organs from chakra that could produce real eggs than a whole new system. Plus Tobirama really didn't want to get pregnant and he wasn't sure he wouldn't fuck up his own body. Tobirama, with as gray morale as his, could just scrap failed embryo and start anew. He can't do that with his own body.

Anyway, incubator it is!

At first he did all of that in secret, stealing Madara's sperm (that's... a thing now) for his first experiments while they had sex. (Tobirama fucking Madara real hard that he’d pass out after and then take samples) ANYWAY

So he announced about his plans when the first stable and pretty healthy embryo was ready.

The first baby, Motoko! The melanin quee. She got all of it. Nothing left for her brother or sister. Ofc she's not THAT dark skinned, but she is for an Uchiha who are mostly white as a paper in canon.

(Tobirama is 21 for reference)

Her name literally means "Experiment seed first". Tobirama named this project this way for secrecy if someone would overhear his talks with Itama and Mito. It’d be Uchiha clan head’s child so hush-hush.

The name meanings + kanji! Hope I got them right, I have no japanese knowledge

oh and there is flirting with past and time in general in this name so it might be Tobirama reminiscing his first timeline. Like Motoko didn't even EXIST before.

So when he presented the embryo to Madara and Hashirama, they were ecstatic of course.

Madara almost cried. Hashirama became a river of tears.

Madara never really hoped for his own children since he married Tobirama cuz, well, they're both men. Doesn't really work that way. But Tobirama made it work and Madara is in love all over again.

Madara refuses to leave their future baby for a long time, just looking at them in the incubator. But the baby doesn’t need much there so Tobirama makes him leave and live a life while they’re waiting when the kid is ready.

Oh and Madara was SO against the name that basically means “experiment seed 1”. But when Tobirama asked if he got smth better, he ran away to his compound and tried to find the PERFECT names. He got lost in so many variations and never really decided. So when the kid was “born” (Tobirama just… took her out of the incubator*) and medics checked her, Madara took her in his hands, started crying and while he was having “A moment” Tobirama wrote her name as Motoko, cuz they needed it for administration and Uchiha clan.

*come to think about it, wouldn’t it fuck up a kid a bit? i mean, children develop under pressure of their mother’s organs and they’re in tight position. maybe test tube kids don’t really like to be wrapped in cloth? as i know ppl do that with newborns to imitate feelings like they’re in the womb.

But this name also can be read as “Festival child” so its kinda cute? Madara def told her that that’s exactly what her name means. No seed 1.

Interesting thing, when Tobirama made the baby, he thought he’d make a boy first, a heir. But something went wrong and the kid developed to be a girl. Tobirama was confused why. But technically, the kid is a boy with XY chromosomes but bc of their development and being a genetic experiment something went wrong and they developed as a female (its a real thing btw).

In the long run it didn’t really matter except that Motoko can’t have her own kids bc of all hormonal weirdness. And I don’t think that Tobirama would figure all of that out. He’d think he made some mistake when choosing gender, but kid was born healthy after all. Ofc when they found out that Motoko can’t have kids Tobirama will blame himself, that he ruined his daughter’s life. But she’s would be ok, she had her little siblings growing up and other clan kids so she’s done babysitting.

Okay for her personality! I think she’s kinda like Shisui? Very happy kid, spoiled rotten by her uncles (Hashirama and Izuna compete who is THE BEST uncle) and Tou-san (Madara). Btw Tobirama refuses to be called Kaa-san or any motherly terms. He’s barely holding a kunai in his pockets when Madara calls him wife.

But she’s also very Uchiha with temper and protectiveness. She was trained to be very much Uchiha cuz she’s the future clan head so her jutsu’s are strongly fire natured. Oh and her secondary nature is eath! She took it from the Senju side :)

Good sensor, but not as strong as her other siblings. Have really good chakra reserves and vicious on the battlefield.

Surprisingly looks really like Madara and Izuna’s mom. Her face is all that. Has soft dark hair and soft features. Considered to be very beautiful among Uchihas.

Oh and as you can see, I wrote that she has the Mangekyo. She got it when she was around 14. She was already really strong and cuz of her family, she got cocky. So, you ask me, who died? I think it’d be her female teammate (maybe from Hatake clan? idk I take suggestions) who she was in love with.

So yeah, she got a reality check. Because she got Mangekyo, Tobirama didn’t want her baby to lose her sight, so he improved his own seals that helped him with his albinism. Seals improve his sight and protect from the sun. So he drew Motoko tattoos on her face, like his. Years later it’d be a new feature of the main line.

But before that, when Motoko is 12 and Tobirama is 29, after 8 years of research (and possibly sealing/killing Black Zetsu in the meantime) he decided to try to make another kid. He still wanted a boy.

And he was successful. Meet Akemori! The Music King

The name was suggested by Hashirama. It means “red forest”. Red eyes, plus he sensed that the kid has a bit of mokuton!

But on the downside, Akemori was born an albino. Tobirama himself was really lucky, cuz he had a strong health and I hc that he still has healing abilities, but not as strong as Hashirama’s. But it still helped him in his childhood.

Not for Akemori tho. He was a sickly child, almost blind and burned on the sun easily. Tobirama had to put seals on him when he was about 3 years old. But even then his eyesight was still poor. Seals can’t fix everything.

Tobirama, once again, feels guilty that he didn’t notice any mistakes when he was creating the child.

And being born almost blind in Uchiha clan of all people wasn’t really nice. Though he is still clan head’s child and has a whole bunch of very powerful adults to protect him. Plus his older sister who loves him very much and wants to protect him from any harm.

But because of health issues Akemori was never really trained in shinobi arts. Well, he was trained (his fathers are literally… them) just that he could protect himself, but no one expected him to go on missions or even become a shinobi at all. Uchiha elders treated him as a potential political marriage pawn (even though Madara and Tobirama would never let them do that). Akemori caught on that and never had the motivation to become a shinobi at all. He was offended and said that he’d NEVER become a shinobi.

Madara was a little mad at that, cuz they’re SHINOBI clan, what the hell. But he shut up the second Tobirama sent him The Look. Tobirama was ok with Akemori’s wishes, like his twin and himself are shinobi by necessity, but they finds more joy in research.

Akemori was trained in Mokuton by Hashirama of course, even though Senju elders bitched about him selling clan secrets to Uchiha. But Hokage does what he wants.

Akemori’s mokuton isn’t as strong as Hashirama’s, plus he never really wanted to fight. But he was good with plants so he joined Itama-oji in his research a lot! Especially since Hashirama is busy with Hokage stuff, Itama was delighted to get a new helper.

Akemori is also a really good sensor because, like Tobirama, he had to compensate his bad eyesight. Basically, Akemori is a very Tobirama’s kid.

Surprisingly, he awakened the Sharingan! He was 6 and some foreign ninja (prob Kumo) thought it’d be cool to steal a kid with the Sharingan. Because of his naturally red eyes Akemori got stolen. Ofc when Tobirama felt his kid out of Konoha bonds, he sounded the alarm in the whole Uchiha clan to check on their kids whereabouts and was first to chase the kidnappers.

Kumo nin were killed by a very mad Tobirama and bc of the stress Akemori awakened the Sharingan. It wasn’t much of a use for him, since he’s not a shinobi. But at least Uchihas acknowledge him as a fellow Uchiha and not just Tobirama’s carbon copy.

(btw noone outside immediate family actually KNOWS where the kids coming from. They don't see any pregnant women in the main line house or anyone in the clan with the same time who gave birth these days. Tobirama himself or god forbid Madara aren't ever seen pregnant. Where the fuck kids are coming from? Do they just spawn in the house or what)

(they basically do spawn)

Sharingan helps Akemori to actually see! At least he could see something and could read. But stll, its not really strong, cuz not trained enough.

Basically Akemori is a perfect mix between Senju and Uchiha with Sharingan and Mokuton, but he was nerfed by albinism.

Being almost blind boy who can navigate only with his sensing, doesn’t gives him much hobbies. Ofc he helps Itama and he studies plants and medicine a lot with him, but he still needs a hobby. Books don’t work for him, any type of handicrafts too cuz he can’t just use Sharingan all the time, his head hurts and sometimes he doesn't want to remember a whole book perfectly. He’s also not very interested in training as a hobby.

So in his tweens while Itama and he were traveling (with Uchiha escort (prob Motoko) just in case) to the near town for some medicine and plants, he noticed (heard) a group of musicians and he fell in love.

Itama immediately bought him an instrument (maybe Biwa?).

And now the second son of Uchiha Madara became a musician! Isn’t it fun. Elders are furious.

Madara was baffled but “You do you, son. When you learn, show us? Oh and maybe you can copy someone else’s playing, but be discreet. They may not like that you’d try to copy their music. Shinobi don’t really like when we copy their jutsus too”

With age he learned to play several instruments (I take suggestions on which ones). Some people even thought that he’s trained to become geisha (he's not, he's just a pretty boy who plays music for fun).

When he grow old enough, Itama started to give him weed for inspiration and to relax. Akemori is prone to quiet anxiety attacks after he was kidnapped.

Okay, the final kid. She was born 4 years later after Akemori.

Nari! The pout queen

Madara finally got to name his kid. Her name means “Calm, harmonic village”. Yeah he decided to name his kid after a village. It's still better than Konohamaru

And she’s the final kid, because Tobirama finally got it and produced a “normal” healthy kid. Plus he's not sure how many kids (3) and students (another 4 and Kagami) he can actually handle.

She has very Uchiha coloring, but Tobirama’s facial features. She also inherited his stare.

She’s the baby of the family, but she grew up slightly strict and serious cuz she stayed a lot with Tobirama, cuz he decided he won’t spend another maternity leave out of the Tower. The first two times were a disaster when he came back.

Tobirama left on maternity leaves just cuz he needed to monitor his kids health, especially Akemori’s. Idk about Konoha maternity leaves, but they should be really short, since well shinobi are needed all year long and they can’t wait for mother-shinobi to spend a whole year on that. Though on the other side, mothers need time to recover or they won’t be able to perform good on their missions (plus they probably have a milk smell lol). Who knows, maybe Tobirama was the one who drafted a law about at least one year maternity leave. He got very popular among kunoichi (can you believe that I just remembered that this word exists)

Nari is really like Izuna, but got her temper under control. Maybe think of teen Kakashi but without dead fathers and angst. But also brat.

Her chakra is water nature and she has 0 affinity with fire. Still she did produce great fireball as their traditions dictated, even though it took her many trials and errors. After that she decided that she hates traditions like that. Got really rebellious in her teens, about 13 and even tried to challenge her sister (25) for the clan head position. She didn’t win ofc and was bitter about it.

Also because her sister and brother both have seals, she always dreamed of the same, cuz as a baby she thought that it’s something special for their family. But Tobirama doesn’t think she needs them cuz her sight is perfect and her skin is pale, but it doesn’t burn like Akemori’s.

It triggered interest for seals in general cuz “FINE if you won’t give me seals, I’ll just make them myself!”

Tobirama was completely okay with it. He always strives to encourage kids when they want to learn something new. So he sicked her at Mito. Though his aunt was quite happy to teach her niece sealing art.

also idk why i write evil near her. she's just a brat. though she has the potential to become Azula ish

And that’s it!

I will write more about them later cuz im tired. I have some other ideas I wanna expand. Like Tobirama introducing his pups to his Hatake aunt (did i tell you that i LOVE Hatakes?),

Oh and fun little sketches close ups for a treat

i love this Hashirama with the kids, ugh he's so father

if you have any questions you can send them to my ask box!

[trans-axolotl]

hi! saw your recent posts and wanted to ask for some advice, if that's okay. I'm a wheelchair user and I really want to get more involved in protests, but I feel pretty out of my depth. A lot of protests seem inaccessible and I just have a lot of questions about how things would work as a wheelchair user. I guess, do you have any tips about protesting as a wheelchair user and how you deal with inaccessibility?

Thank you!!

Hey anon! completely okay to ask for advice about this--I feel very passionate about this topic and am happy to share some tips! disclaimer that not all of the tips I share here are going to be applicable to everyone's situation--even among wheelchair users, we have so many unique situations, types of wheelchairs, health variations, other medical devices, etc etc. and many of us are multiply marginalized, which can also shape our experiences pretty significantly. so i'll share some general tips, and feel free to take what works for you and ignore the rest! most of this is based on my experience in the type of protests I go to in my city, so I also understand that this advice might not be applicable to every type of protest in every location. i've been involved in many types of protests for the past 9 years, from marches to die-ins to encampments, and have dealt with many situations including tear gas, riot cops, police brutality, fascist agitators, getting arrested, and many different types of high risk tactics. i don't want to position myself as an expert or anything, because i'm always learning and growing, but I do just want to share that for context!

I think the first thing I want to say is just to affirm that it is absolutely possible for wheelchair users to get involved in all kinds of protests, including higher risk and escalated protests. I'll focus on actual on the ground protests in this post because that's what you asked about, but know there are many many ways to get involved with organizing if protesting in the streets is not accessible for you. There are many of us involved in these type of actions already and figuring out ways to make it work for us, so you are not alone in that. I won't lie that it can be complicated, there's a lot of inaccessibility, and some shit might not be possible, but a lot of stuff can be made possible if we get creative.

Before the Protest

For me, one of the most helpful things is trying to find out as much information as possible before the protest, so that I can have a really good plan going in. Sometimes this might be more difficult, because there might be legitimate security culture reasons that a march route can't be announced publicly, for example, or specific tactics aren't posted about on social media in order to keep people safe from police surveillance. But when it is possible, this is the type of information I like to figure out:

What is the location? is it a stationary protest like a sit in or an encampment? is it a march? what is the route? how long is the route? are there obstacles in the route? are there curb cuts? is there hills? construction? other barriers? are there easily accessible exit routes? is there pavement, grass, gravel, etc? are there accessible transit stops nearby? are there accessible bathrooms nearby? if it's indoors, are there elevators and ramps?

A lot of times, to find out this information, I look through google maps street view, ask friends, or go in person if i can beforehand. for me, as a manual wheelchair user, I can deal with a lot of of nonideal circumstances such as hills, curbs, rough terrain, especially when I have a protest buddy who can help push me when needed, but it helps to know if i'm going to have to deal with those situations. Often times, protests are held in pretty inaccessible locations. Sometimes, this is because organizers are not considering accessibility which pisses me off, but sometimes, there are legitimate strategic reasons that we might need to protest at an inaccessible location because of the specific circumstances of the protest. (maybe we're even protesting at it because it's inaccessible!) You'll know best about what geographic features are inaccessible deal breakers for you and having that kind of information can help you make a decision about whether it's possible to attend.

What is the risk level? What tactics are being used? Are people intentionally risking arrest? What patterns of repression and brutality are most commonly used by cops in your city? How high is the risk of chemical weapons?

This can be really hard to predict--there's no way to ever say for certain how cops are going to respond and we can't see the future. But paying attention to how cops in your city have been responding to protests and learning the patterns of what types of protests are more high risk can help us make more informed guesses. We can reasonably estimate that a silent vigil in the daytime is likely going to be lower risk than a occupation of a building, for example. And for some of these things--there's no real way to make getting tear gassed an "accessible" experience for anyone, but for some of us, the consequences might be more severe than others. I have a comrade who uses a ventilator who cannot come to protests where we think there's a risk of chemical weapons, so that can be really important information to try to figure out beforehand.

What do I need to practice? Do I need to teach my comrades how to de-arrest a wheelchair user? Do we need to practice lifting me and my wheelchair over a barricade? Do I need to teach my comrades the safest places to hold onto my wheelchair if we're locking arms and moving as a line? Do I need to practice wheelies to get over curbs? How will I plan to protect the electrical parts of my wheelchair from chemical weapons? etc.

For higher risk protests there might be a lot of different tactics that we can use to navigate things like barricades, arrests, facing down a riot line of cops, etc. It is so, so helpful to be able to practice these skills with your protest buddies before a protest, so that when these situations start happening in a chaotic, fast moving environment, you and your comrades are prepared to navigate the inaccessibility that can come with a lot of these situations. You'll know what is possible for you and be the expert on what feels important to prepare for before an action.

2. At the Protest

Navigating a Crowd. To be honest this can be one of the most frustrating things for me to deal with while at protests. A lot of people are not aware of their surroundings, areas will get very crowded with little space to navigate, and people will block my view. The main ways I try to deal with this are by trying to be in the front of a march or on the sides of a march when possible, to try to have the most space to navigate. As we move, I continually scan our location to find the closest accessible exit route, paying attention to where cops are, curb cuts, etc. My protest buddies know that if we're in a middle of a crowd, they need to provide me with updates about cop movements or any other information that I can't see. I get loud and tell people to get out of my way when I need to. I try to stay near other mobility aid users, bike marshals, or people with wagons because they often leave more room for me to navigate.

Roles. There are lots of different roles we can take on at a protest that might make it easier for us to navigate. I sometimes like to join the bike marshals and help block off roads and intersections. Maybe you have medic training and you act as a street medic. Maybe it's more accessible to act as a scout and communicate police movement to your comrades. Other roles could include leading chants, handing out supplies like water and masks, acting as a legal observer, filming the cops, organizing art builds beforehand, etc.

Community. It's been super, super important for me to always go to a protest with a protest buddy so that we can watch out for each other and keep each other safe. Oftentimes, situations can change rapidly at higher risk protests, and we might end up in an inaccessible situation that we didn't plan for. If I don't have a protest buddy, I usually just turn to the nearest person next to me and start saying loudly "I need you to help me exit this situation/grab my handles and get me up this curb/tell me what the cops are doing etc." It can feel really scary and vulnerable to have to rely on complete strangers in these type of situations, but I've found that a lot of people are really willing to help if I tell them exactly what I need from them.

Surveillance. A lot of us really can't bloc up or hide our identities, because our wheelchairs are easily identifiable. This might shape what tactics we use, and also means there might be added surveillance concerns after a protest. When thinking about your own risk tolerance, grappling with the fact we are visible in a crowd is a really important consideration. This might mean we need to be even more careful about security culture, use encrypted messaging to communicate, avoid cameras, stay in a middle of a crowd to block visibility, and other things like that.

Unique advantages. There can be advantages and skills that we bring as wheelchair users! In flat locations and downhills, I'm much, much faster than my comrades who are walking--I can easily pass messages or get in front of a line of bike cops. I can usually carry a lot more supplies on my wheelchair backpack without getting tired. In my city, there's only one cop van that has a wheelchair lift, and at a recent protest where there were multiple of us in wheelchairs, I heard a cop say on their radio that "There are too many people in wheelchairs and we don't know how to arrest them all." In situations where it's logistically difficult to arrest us or the cops think the optics are bad, that can allow us to cause a LOT of logistical delays, act as a front line, get in between the cops and other people, and just generally make the cops lives a little more difficult.

3. After the Protest

Arrests. If we're risking arrest, there's a lot of wheelchair specific information we need to know. Theoretically, under the ADA, cops are supposed to arrest us with our mobility aid and let us have access to our mobility aid in jail. In practice, this doesn't always happen. Cops might arrest us with our wheelchair but then take it away from us in the holding cell, make us use the jail's standard transfer wheelchair instead, or just completely take away our mobility aid altogether. Cops might zip tie our hands so that we have no way to independently move. The cops in your city might have a van with a lift, or might try to get you to fold or disassemble your wheelchair and put it in a standard car. If they don't have a van with a lift and your wheelchair doesn't disassemble, they might have a contract with a wheelchair van company. Once we're taken to a holding cell, there's a lot higher chance we might get put in solitary. We often won't have access to wheelchair accessible restrooms. We might get separated from all of our comrades--at my last arrest, all my other comrades were taken to a location that processes mass arrests, while I was taken to a separate, wheelchair accessible location and held in solitary. It's super important that whoever's running jail support knows these things and can advocate for us and also track us in the system, especially if we're taken to a different location. If your area has a chapter of the National Lawyer's Guild, they often have a designated person running a hotline. It can be super important to memorize that number, and also to reach out beforehand and explain your needs as a wheelchair user if you're risking arrest.

Overall, there are a lot of considerations for protesting as a wheelchair user, and you are going to be the expert on what is important for you! My general approach is that I want to have as much information as possible so that I can make an informed decision about if I want to attend a particular action. Then, when I'm at an action, I expect my comrades to respect my autonomy and support me in making sure that I can participate and that all of us can stay safe.

Also, for any abled people reading this post, I want you to read this very carefully and understand just how many barriers there can be at protests for wheelchair users. You have a responsibility to your community to whenever possible, mitigate these barriers, choose accessible locations, communicate with your disabled comrades, and support us in the moment. If your excuse is that "oh there aren't any disabled people at our protests, so we don't need to think about these things," you're wrong, and this attitude ensures that no disabled people can show up to your protests. and if that's the case, you're missing out on so much meaningful experience and knowledge that your disabled comrades could bring to the table. "We keep us safe" means that we actually work to meet everyone's needs, including the needs of your disabled comrades.

anyway, this turned into a very long post, but any other wheelchair users feel free to add on your own advice! love to share as much community knowledge as possible, especially advice from people who have different access needs than my particular situation.

anon, please let me know if you have any other specific questions that i didn't cover, and best of luck!

[puppypeter]

Watching the new season of queer eye and of course had to think about the Fab 5 being called on someone in the Ted Lasso universe

imagine post-s.3, roy has just become manager but jamie is not there for the season because he has suddenly taken off to go join some other big team in spain

roy has been a big grumpy mopey sad dog, torturing the team with super intense workouts, growing out his hair/beard back to retirement-roy levels, doesn't really go out anymore so someone decides to call the fab 5 on him (keeley/rebecca/the team/his sister)

there's so many things they'd do like, first, obviously, absolutely freak out about how attractive he is and that he looks like a grumpy hairy soft teddy bear and they'd make him blush like hell

then there would be all the interactions they have with the people around him, like finding out how much he matters to the team and the club and his niece, and yet he doesn't seem to fully understand this like in the things he says it's all very much like about how he used to be something / this idea of youth and his glory days vs what he is now.

karamo would absolutely love the concept of the diamond dogs and man in sport trying to find a way to be open and vulnerable with each other

I also love the idea of things not lining up with who they assume him to be, like when they find out about the yoga mums and the drag queens and also all the love he'll get around his sexuality once it's kinda revealed he might have a thing for a boy... like he's always known and not cared about it, but the football world has not let him feel like he can express himself on it as much as well as when it comes to masculinity and his preconceived ideas because maybe he does want to wear something different but what if people think things because of it...

so for the angst - there would be a lot of roy being stuck in the past, both his fame, his grandad and jamie. They would go over to his house and he'd already be very uncomfortable having so many people around

jeremiah would frown at seeing the dusty room with the trophies and the frames on the floor turned towards the wall, he would tear up at the pictures of baby roy with his grandad but lack of pictures with his parents

tan would be staring at a mostly black wardrobe (yet pleasantly surprised at this "supposedly straight" man knowing about dark heather charcoal and different variations of black) and curious about the funky socks. He also comes across a baby blue hoodie (or a ugly colourful pattern t-shirt in the wrong size) that roy growls at the mention of getting rid of it... which makes him wonder if it really belongs to roy....

jvn would walk him to the bathroom to find out about his routine, eyebrows raised when roy has a few really nice products that are suitable for his skin type and all and he wonders about roy's pout when he asks about all these lovely products on his sink and roy says they're not his and walks out the door :(

antoni would find some old notebook of recipes of roy's grandad and they would probably cry in the kitchen to each other about cold-hearted parents

anyway they all talk to the diamond dogs, keeley, rebecca, ruth and phoebe and the team to understand more about roy and what happened, and it all comes back to jamie who they clock to be the "ghost" around roy's house (the hoodie, the beauty products, the lack of interest in cooking...) but nobody seems to know what happened, besides them all saying jamie departure was very sudden

(would be so fucking funny if phoebe was the one snitching)

so they fly over to spain to talk to jamie and it comes out that when they went to the bar (the "bar scene") jamie thought roy had asked him on a date and it absolutely broke his heart when he brought keeley up and he decided he couldn't handle spending so much time with roy anymore, 4am workouts, movie night half cuddled on the couch etc when it didn't mean the same to roy as it did to him. Bonus points if the fab 5 go to jamie's apartment and see that he's not unpacked anything because it doesn't feel like home :( They are also all in love with him cause he's such a sweetheart and he looks cute when he pouts and tears up

It ends with jamie flying over and there's lots of tension and roy admitting he fucked it up and let his fear get in the way because of having such a big "feeling" for jamie and then they kiss and get together and the post-show bit the fab 5 watch from the couch is just a royjamie date

(also something something about roy being surrounded by queer man closer to his age!!!! who might be able to understand his experience a bit more than these gen z folks)

[thewrothode-if]

Has this been abandoned?

Short answer: No!

Long answer: My relationship with this IF resembles that of a toxic ex-partner. I've been on and off with my baby girl (the IF) for the past few months. There have been moments where I ended up writing more than I planned to, and then the next day, I lose that motivation to keep going. So, I simply stop writing for a week until I find that passion again.

However, it's not abandoned! I just suck at keeping that consistency. I tried to stay off Tumblr because, honestly, it contributes to my lack of focus. When I use Tumblr, I become fixated on the idea of my IF, my characters, my story, rather than the actual act of writing.

But I feel so crappy for keeping you all in the dark. So, I apologize for that! I wanted to post this when I was actually finished with the first chapter, so you guys actually had something to look forward to. But MAN, this is taking so much longer than I thought. I really never imagined just how much 1,000 words is to write.

I have planned a few new things for the prologue as well. I plan on editing that after I finish the first chapter (or going back and forth between the two until both are finished, hehe). As of now, the first chapter sits at around 49k, the prologue at around 19k. In total, around 68k.

But trust me when I say this: it is not yet finished and I have so many other variations to add, so much flavor text to include.

Pray for me, ya'll.

Edit: I forgot to mention that I actually added a minor RO.

He is a male. I apologize to the ones who wanted more female RO's. Right now, I have a minor female RO that I have floating around in my head, and that I actually need to think about before adding her in.

Anyway, you will meet the minor RO in the first chapter, but never see him again (since you go to England, poo), at least, not until the second book. He will be A LOT more present there.

The reason he is a minor RO is because he will only have two endings, and for another reason I feel like might be a spoiler.

So get ready for that!!

[terresdebrume]

"Charles. You promised."

Charles, sprawled on the ground with his feet up against the walls of the office, lowers the cover of his current volume to send an apologetic smile Edwin's way.

"Well I didn't know you meant right away, did I?"

Edwin cannot help a sigh. They have had some variation of this conversation at least once a year since they met, and Charles has yet to actually submit to any sort of schooling. This time, however, Edwin prepared for the inevitable.

"That was also your argument the last time we had this conversation," Edwin sighs, crossing his arms over his chest. "As well as the previous time. And as I recall—"

"Look, Edwin," Charles interrupts, looking up at Edwin again with a half pleading look, "I just really don't like the idea of fighting."

"Sometimes, fighting is the only way," Edwin points out.

He himself has bitterly regretted his avoidance of combat sports as a living boy on many, many an occasion. Who knows how things would have changed, if he had known then a fraction of what he knows now? Perhaps he would have lived. At the very least, he might have died fighting, and avoided Hell altogether. Of course, that would have meant never meeting Charles, but he would not have known that. He would have been blissfully ignorant of what true suffering feels like.

Edwin sighs, then makes himself blink. There is no point in dwelling on the past, especially if it makes Charles look at him with his worried frown, book forgotten on his chest. Edwin attempts a smile, though the look Charles sends him in response does not speak of success.

"I know," he sighs, hard enough to jostle the cross in his ear. "But you'll be there to defend me, yeah?"

Always, Edwin thinks. He is, however, cruelly aware that things do not always happen the way one plans for. Sometimes, students who may have had a very satisfying academic career die and must learn to fight to escape literal Hell. These things are unfair, but they happen. And the thought of Charles, trapped defenseless as Edwin once was... It is unbearable. It does not bear contemplating.

"Charles," Edwin pleads, hearing the touch of despair in his voice. "I will protect you as best as I can for as long as I exist here with you... But there may be times when I am not enough. I might be away and need some time to find you, or—any number of things could happen to keep me from your side. It would ease my mind to know that you have the skills to keep yourself alive until such time as I am able to take up the task again."

For a moment, Charles says nothing. He stares at Edwin, with his bright brown eyes the color of rich soil, with that smile he gets when he thinks Edwin is being particularly chivalrous. Edwin sustains his gaze, sweat filling his palms...and sighs in relief when Charles takes a deep breath and stands up.

"Alright, mate," he says, softly. "Fine. What am I learning then, how to throw a punch?"

"That would be the more sensible choice," Edwin admits around his own smile. "However, since I know very well how distasteful you find any of these activities, I thought perhaps I would appeal to your other sensibilities."

Charles makes an inquisitive noise as Edwin rummages in the coffer he prepared for this exact purpose earlier. He finds the tricorns first, handing one to a bemused Charles before donning his own. The way Charles frowns is as endearing as ever, and Edwin smiles as he reaches back into the coffer to find the sabers.

Charles gasps.

"Get out! You're not seriously teaching me how to be a pirate!"

"I should think you have seen ample evidence to belt that sentence," Edwin points out with a roll of his eyes.

Charles, of course, ignores the barb entirely.

"Can you say 'Ahoy, matey?'"

"Do take this seriously please." Charles sobers up, although his grin remains. As a reward, Edwin makes a point to demonstrate an old fashioned salute before he says: "En garde."

Charles smiles as brightly as if Edwin had told him Christmas would come early.

(Reblogs make the world go round! Consider sharing this if you enjoyed it!)

[turiluvr]

Could I request something (anything) with venti or lyney? 🥹🥹 only if you have time ofc no pressure!!

moonstruck

Swallowing his doubt, the words lodged in his throat finally got out.

— lyney x gn!reader

Lyney recalled that Inazuma had an old phrase that was commonly used in the past to profess their love. It was a piece of trivia he came across after talking to a traveling merchant in Fontaine. He couldn't help but think they were romantic in nature despite their roundabout way of declaring their love. It was a gamble anyway, it all depended on whether or not the other person knew the meaning behind those seemingly meaningless words.

People from Fontaine were romantic in their own way—they often found ways to romanticize any sort of situation and it wasn't difficult for them to come up with their own ways of declaring their love. As a magician, Lyney found himself liking things that were more indirect and roundabout. After all magic was all about misdirection and he was a master at it.

Lynette often told him to just go out and say it without anything veiling his feelings and words. Coming from someone as straightforward as she is, Lyney can only chuckle and remind his sister that it didn't come to him as easily as it did to her. He went out of his way to mention that perhaps even Lynette will have a hard time being forward once she falls in love; they are quite similar, after all. She might find herself tongue-tied the same way Lyney is right now.

But the moon was out and it was shining so brightly to the point where it took his breath away. His mind wandered to the words the merchant told him that time. It was the perfect opportunity to say it—gazing into the sky side by side, the moon was waiting for the words to be uttered and to bear witness to a long awaited confession.

But it's more difficult than he thought it would be. The words are already on the tip of his tongue, begging to be released but the voice is stuck in his throat and suddenly he's having second thoughts about this whole confession attempt. It was laughable, really, he was usually smooth with his words but he can hardly get a word out when it came to you. Especially during times where his words mattered the most.

Then, when he finally looked at you and mustered up the courage, “The–”

“The moon is beautiful tonight, isn't it?” His lips parted slightly in surprise, his eyes widening when he realized that you took the words right out of his mouth and made it your own. A part of him felt that it was a little unfair for you to steal the spotlight from him, now he's left speechless and wondering if your words carried the same intent as the one inside his head.

He'll take the chances in the end. He didn't know if your words had any meaning—were you declaring your love to him or were you just simply saying the moon looked beautiful? Despite his questions, his mind was already searching for answers he could give you. There was no time for pondering. If you meant it in a way that made his heart leap with joy, then perhaps you'll react just as strongly once he gives his response.

“The moon has always been beautiful.”

*Note: It's a famous phrase in Japan to say "The moon is beautiful tonight" as a substitute for saying "I love you"

There are many variations of responses to the saying however in this case, "The moon has always been beautiful" means "I've always loved you"

[the-wip-project]

SloMo WriNo: The Writing Habit

You’re going to get tired of hearing me say this, but when it comes to finishing your writing (or getting pretty much any long term project accomplished) habit is everything.

A solid writing habit will get you through those days when writing feels boring, when you’re tired, uninspired, lost. Habit is the magic that makes the writing train go— more often than most people want to admit.

That said, establishing a new habit can be fiendishly difficult— especially if you have a neurodivergent brain. (This is coming from personal experience, as someone who took literal years to establish the habit of brushing my teeth before bed. (I still frequently have agonies about washing my face at the same time.))

So. How to establish a solid writing habit?

Step one is finding the time.

Your writing does not require large blocks of time. You can write productively in as little as fifteen minutes a day (yes, really!) but the only way that gets accomplished is by making it fast and simple to get into your writing headspace.

How though?

By making it a routine at a similar time and place each day, by creating rituals that cue you that it’s writing time, or by attaching your writing to another established habit. Ideally your writing habit will combine all three.

Yes, flexibility is important, because every routine has variations in it, so being able to write even when you don’t have everything just right is important. But if in the past you’ve struggled to keep writing as a consistent part of your life, then creating a routine is the best first step to creating a habit.

Connecting your writing to another, enjoyable habit is good first step. Writing while you take your morning coffee break, or during your headphones on commute time, or along side your lunchtime treat might be all you need to create a positive association. You want writing time to be something you look forward to, not dread.

By keeping the session short (Somehow setting a timer for a number less than thirty makes even the most scary tasks feel approachable for me.) and adding something pleasant and relaxing to the mix you can start to build that positivity. I think this is why so many writers like to write with a cup of tea, or in coffee shops. Adding a delicious beverage habit cues your mind that this is writing time, and what’s more, that writing is a pleasant time taken just for one’s self.

It also makes a huge difference to write at a time when your brain feels good.

I have tried writing later in the evening, and every moment feels like work. My brain is tired, and all I want to do is relax, not think. It feels like I’ve already used up all my energy and motivation.

Instead I like to wake early to write. This might sound like torture for all you night owls, but for me, (and plenty of other people) writing has become a keystone to healthy morning habits. Knowing that I’m going to wake by 5am in order to write is an incentive for me to be in bed by 9:30, (instead of staying up late to doom scroll, eat junk food and make other poor decisions) which helps me wake up with the right level of brain activity to write, which then makes me energetic enough to head out on my morning run directly after writing. Which means all the ideas from my writing session float around in my head in a pleasant soup, distracting me from the monotony of feet hitting ground. It’s a string of positive associations that keeps me happy and healthy.

For you the opposite might be true. Perhaps you find yourself in a peaceful writerly head space after the rest of your household is asleep, or while taking a break at work or school. The key is to find a time and/or place that’s low friction, when the obstacles to writing are less, when getting to your keyboard (or notebook if you’re old-school) feels less like work and maybe even like a reward, and then build out other positive associations around it.

If you’re used to viewing writing as something painful and difficult this might seem alien to you. So let me just add this: your words are not worth more because you were miserable when writing them. It’s not only okay to enjoy your writing time, it’s preferable. Sure you’ll connect a bit less to the writing is misery memes, but it’s worth it, I promise!

So, here is your assignment for the week: Take a look at your schedule and figure out what times might be convenient for regularly scheduled writing. And then try them out and see if you can find a time and place where writing feels good. You might have to move some other activities around to find that sweet spot, (like me, moving my bed time to allow morning writing time) and expect some stalls, some fails and lack of consistency. It’s not going to feel good all the time immediately, and you will need to will power your way through at times. But overall, once you can start forming that positive habit, the writing will become far easier to get to. And much more enjoyable when you do.

—Maree

Subscribe to my substack to make sure you don't miss a post, chat with me on the WIP Project discord, and tag any posts you make about the challenge with #slomowrino if you want me to see them!

[glitteringcrab]

Why is Evil Morty still next to the Central Finite Curve?

He killed so many people to get out of the CFC and then he stopped running just as he crossed the CFC's metaphorical doorstep...!

Why did he anchor his minecraft base on a CFC universe???

No, they hadn't! The shockwaves had just as much range as they should! And Evil Morty deliberately insulted Rick immediately afterwards, to derail this train of thought and stop him from pondering over the implications or his calculations too much. And it freaking worked. (And might I add that Evil Morty stuttered just a little bit at that point: "l-look at this scan array". Nervous, boy?)

Evil Morty is a lying liar, he lies about everything...! (I still love him with all my heart). I-I-I no longer know how much of what he says or does to take at face value. In season he said he wanted to escape the Central Finite Curve, and it was clear he desperately wanted to do so, but he stopped running immediately after he exited. What is happening?!?! Why?

Theory 1: Home

Assuming he is a clone Morty, there is a universe from which the natural Morty whose memories he got originated. He was therefore created loving this version of his mum, this version of his dad, this version of his sister... Maybe he has not lived there once, he switched 20 Ricks since he was manufactured, and has spent more time in the Citadel than outside it, but in his heart this is were his home is supposed to be, so he anchored his space base on the limits of this one universe, just so he could be close.

Theory 2: Hiding

Since a Rick can hide from other Ricks by being next to a Morty, I'd assume that it also works the other way around: a Morty can also hide by being close to a Rick. And maybe if Evil Morty worries that someone will scour the multiverse searching for him (inside and outside the CFC) then maybe staying close to a CFC universe hides his own brainwaves when someone is doing a really wide (multiverse-wide) scan for him (of course, I doubt it'd work if the scan was more focused).

Maybe this is just a variation of the "Mortys of the Morty Dome thing": he needed a lot of alive Mortys to hide amongst then, he needs CFC universes to hide amongst now.

This could be just a precaution in case e.g. a Rick survivor of the Citadel or something comes after him (which is not so unlikely).

(eh. Would staying near a CFC universe, which might not even have a Rick inside at times, really be enough though?? I just stopped believing my own theory)

Theory 3: Time shenanigans

"Rick and Morty, a hundred years, forever"

...Were you being cute, Rick, or is this literal???

Is there a time loop of some sort? Is this why they say things like "how many thanksgivings have we had" or are they simply breaking the fourth wall?

Is this what the "Rick Experiment" that Evil Morty threatens to blow up if he gets pissed is? Is this why Rick hates to mess with time travel stuff, because it's already an ugly mess?

Does staying close to the time mess allow Evil Morty to stay young for longer or something? (but would he really want that???)

I'm skeptical about Ricks being able to mess with time in that scale because of (a) the existence of a pretty strict time police and (b) Rick apparently had to purchase illegally a small time crystal... whatever time shenanigans are needed for a hundred-year-loop, it'd need a lot more than that.

Theory 4: He likes something in that universe

Like, a friend he made a long time ago, who he plans to visit in the future when he finds the courage to do so (right now he's wiped out).

Or Morty Prime, so he didn't run very far away so that Morty Prime could find him in the future.

Or he's trying to make amends for his past misdeeds and visits CFC universes in secret, batman style, to fix stuff.

(I don't see that theory really playing out. He doesn't seem to be working towards anything, he's just on vacation... And I think he has given up hope of Morty Prime joining him)

Theory 5: THE WORLD IS A BIG, DANGEROUS PLACE

The world outside the CFC is filled with even more dangerous, power-hungry and evil people and governments than those in the CFC. Living in (or near) such a universe is stressful for a lone boy, so he'd rather stay close to the Curve and its brand of familiar, known evil (which he knows how to deal with) rather than face the absolute chaos that reigns beyond. (If there is a specific government or organization Evil Morty is worried about, I can see him considering asking Rick C-137's help... "Maybe I can use that some day"?)

Alternatively, the rest of the multiverse still believes that the CFC is unbreachable, so they keep their distance. Staying close to it is just safer.

(yeah I don't buy my own theory. I think Evil Morty would gladly face whatever crazy evil is beyond the Curve, as long as it wasn't a Rick. Could be he already tried and barely escaped with his life though, so he had no choice)

Theory 6: Not a clue!

I mean, we couldn't have predicted the existence of the Central Finite Curve in a million years...! It might just be a bit of unrevealed lore.

And it's impossible to guess or know what Evil Morty is thinking or feeling almost at any given time. He is always expressionless, always flat-toned, always cautious, always lying, and the way the scenes with him are built, we're not even sure when it's him on the screen half-the time and missing scenes can turn the whole plot on its head. He tricks the other characters, and he tricks us as well.

[offshore-brinicle]

see now i'm wondering if his ring ID is the kind of person yi sang could have become if he didn't join limbus company. like he internalizes the thinking pattern of "i'm a fool and not worth a damn and everything i do only hurts people" and expresses that self-loathing via his art. eats drywall

OK SO. I TOOK SOME TIME TO ANSWER THIS ONE BECAUSE I WAS TRYING TO GET HIM FOR MYSELF. I don't even really play the game anymore and keep up with the story via YouTube but. Y'know just to prove a point basically and Virtual Yi Sang Collectionism while I find myself with too much free time again so you might have gotten to see it by yourself by now but. Still.

Actually looking into this with his story and all of his dialogue they really did just give him an actual Bad End ID like Nclair, Ahabmael and G Corp Gregor (with some variation of Erlking joining eventually? but I have no idea how that will work taking in count the plot aspect) since Spicebush Yi Sang doesn't really Qualify as one of those and is even framed as being empowering in a way for him taking in count its release was timed so it could be used in the Farmwatch fight instead of waiting for the end of the Season like the others. I believed that W Corp Yi Sang was this spiritually; since it depicts him at his lowest point imaginable following on the track he was on already and the themes of Canto IV perfectly though not related to it, but now Ring Yi Sang has shown us a much more connected, and much darker potential path for him. So I'll take this post as my chance to analyze this:

In regards to his self-loathing it's very interesting that he actually seems to feel a sense of pride not seen in any of his other IDs, talking about "what he deserves" and disregarding everything that doesn't cause him a reaction. He now uses creation itself as a way to fill the emptiness inside of him, while in the main story, Yi Sang's resolution was that his impulse to create was his way of connecting with others.

You can see that in these lines, where he has completely disregarded everything about life and other people, pretty much all of his dialogue revolves around wanting to create and he has only interest in what can inspire him, to the point he nonchalantly kills civilians for failing to make him feel that way.

I feel like this is even expressed in the Sins for this ID compared to base Yi Sang, the set-up is the exact same; S1 Gloom and S3 Sloth. However, the one that changes is S2. Regular Yi Sang has S2 Envy while Ring Yi Sang has S2 Lust. Added this to Ring Yi Sang's passives even being fueled by Lust as well while base Yi Sang's are fueled by Gloom. I take this as a representation that he has taken this Lust, an obsessive desire, as being what will drive him forward throwing away all the self-loathing and regret, with many of his lines calling the past meaningless.

Now I'll tackle his story and do a rundown on it while giving my observation, as it ellaborates into this and what his mindset is (and frankly, it's utterly fantastic). First of all, we get a unique, dissonant track that so far seems to have never been used in any other instance in the game to my knowledge.

Yi Sang's approach to his scientist position is very...unique, because he does so as an artist rather than more proper scientific people like for example Faust, Dongrang, Aseah and Gubo. People who simply want practical application and results, means to an end. Dongbaek seems to be the only person who shares this approach he has which is why their bond is treated as unique compared to the other League of Nine members. At his core, what fascinated Yi Sang so much about technology and sciences was simply the euphoria of discovery itself, finding new things. Which is tackled immediately when Ring Yi Sang's story begins as I am showing here.

With science, you never truly "create" anything, you go through right and wrong answers until finding something that works or causes some effect, he even says so himself in Canto IV. And he goes on to criticize his prior fascination with technology with this particular aspect in mind. Even more shockingly is that he calls the League of Nine's conferences a "waste of time" now, each of their creations predictable which could tie into him being a one-of-a-kind genius, which is also somewhat tackled in Dongrang's observation log. To him, everything else his friends made was child's play.

So instead, he looks towards what made him so fascinated with The Mirror in the first place, echoing this particular point he makes during his log for Dongbaek, both of them are driven to reach something abstract and inconcievable and ended up using technology as their path to that vague destination that can only be described in poetry.

And finally, he completely foresakes his past at the League. He even he believes he finally has his wings but calls them fabricated, and there is something obviously wrong with the entire thing on multiple levels. They are fabricated wings because he was guided to this conclusion by the hand of another, rather than the introspection throughout IV. His chapter title is "The Unchanging", and it's the only chapter where the trait assigned in the title to the focus Sinner is a positive; him staying true to himself and his ideals was the key, but he needed to actually move past his apathy and actually grasp them, but here he has completely changed beyond recognition. Turned arrogant, callous and utterly irrational, discarding all of his self-loathing by divorciating himself from the self that he hates, yet the Sloth—the apathy remains, instead of moving past it, fighting it back with his Lust in an endless cycle of dopamin chases while growing numb to everything else and even destroying it if it fails to satisfy that Lust so that it will, as shown as he kills failing students to take delight in their shock and agony.

But at the same time it frames that portrait of the League in his background art a completely different meaning. It is most likely that this portrait is a mockery of all of them, regarding the past and the life he lived until now including his past self with the same condescencion he does examinees that fail to impress him. Specially when you take in count how his own face is much more well-painted than the childish erratic strokes he assigns to the other, making them look ridiculous. But at the same time, Yeonsim is there under them, but flipped to its underside, he still held onto it but as far as we know it might be completely broken and only keeps it as part of his insulting work going by another of his idle chatter lines.

This dark inversion of Yi Sang's journey even before Limbus and Canto IV is also emphasized by Pointillism in particular being chosen as the subject for this ID, this was first pointed out by this Korean Twitter user (and fellow irl Yi Sang enjoyer going by the layout) in the original announcement for this ID:

Of course, this theme compliments Yi Sang's resolution in IV pretty well. He loved the League and grew to love Limbus because they were his resting place. I can't find any translation of Jochunjeommyo however, so I can only rely on summaries and posts put through machine translation. But from what I can summarize, the story is about an artist who can't find a place to breathe and simply exist due to the materialistic, capitalistic nature of the city he finds himself in, which fits pretty neatly with Yi Sang's story as a whole.

I'd also like to point out how a less overtly unhinged variation of this kind of development is shown in his Dieci ID story (which I wanted to make a post on for a while because it really feels like it was preliminary to this and not enough people talk about how messed up Dieci Yi Sang actually is) and how he comes to adopt a mentality just like Ryoshu's, with her already being linked to The Fingers and knowing about their workings personally to the point she might have been affiliated at some point though we cannot confirm, however I will instead link to this post by my friend on the topic since they already did a dissection on how Yi Sang and Ryoshu act as ideological foils and they pretty much said it better than I could: https://www.tumblr.com/ishcliff/743271628518129664/so-any-thoughts-of-well-the-blade-lineage-itself?source=share

So that's all I've got for now! Honestly I am so over the moon with this ID and the potential implications going forward as you can imagine.

[alexanderwales]

Book Review: Metropolitan Man

[content warning: sexual violence]

It's been 10 years since I wrote Metropolitan Man, and last night I read it for the first time in almost that long. Since writing it, I've written over 4 million words, and hopefully, grown as a writer. I've also forgotten parts of the story, so was looking at it with as fresh of eyes as possible. These are my overall thoughts.

I should say, before I start, that I've read tons of comments and discussion on this story over the years. I don't know how many of these thoughts are my own, or how much I've internalized things that people have said.

Writing Style

There were lots of changes I thought about making while reading, but people hate change, and this story is about ten years past when I wanted to be making editing passes on it. In many places I kept thinking of little extras I would add, things that would make the dialogue pop a little more, or provide characterization. I had this idea for a line where I describe Lois typing out two letters like she was letting loose with both barrels of a shotgun. There's dialogue to clean just a bit more, a few places where words are repeated or something is just a bit awkward, and where it could have been tighter or more clear.

The biggest thing that stood out to me was how little time got spent on scene setting and how short some of the snippets were, just five paragraphs to get a scene across before we're onto the next thing. I might have webserial brainrot, but those are definitely places where today I would give a little more breathing room and maybe use the same amount of words to describe something in a more oblique and stronger way. One that stood out as a clear example was a private investigator going home with Jimmy Olsen even though she was done pumping him for information, which could have been twice as long and benefitted from it. Another was a brief little thing about a Superman spotter on the roof, where I'd now describe everything he was doing, and only get to the conclusion of "he was a Superman spotter" at the end of the section to let the reader have this mini mystery of what they're being shown and why.

I would describe things more if I was writing this today, trying to get those nicely tight and evocative descriptions and ditch the stuff like "she wore a white blouse", but I often feel that way about stuff that I'm revising from last week, so it's not surprising.

The plot is very tight, which is good. I tend to prefer my plots tight, but it takes work, and webserials aren't conducive to it because it's difficult to know when you're writing a scene whether it's really pulling its weight as far as moving things forward. The initial idea for MM was to move as cleanly as possible through a series of events: Superman -> Superman is invincible -> Superman is Clark Kent -> Clark Kent grew up in Smallville -> the ship is in Smallville -> the ship has a Kryptonite power source -> Kryptonite can kill Superman -> Superman is dead. The only thing that would make it any faster would be if we dropped the Lois Lane subplot, but that's like half the novel.

Superman is OOC

I've gotten tons and tons of comments on this story over the years. If I hated myself, I would go back through my email and count them up, but there are some death threats and "kill yourself"s in there, and I prefer not to reread them. The major thing that people hate is the ending, which I don't care to talk about, but the other major thing is that Superman isn't Superman.

In this, I largely agree, but then, I'm pretty sure I've always agreed. That said, Superman has had a ton of interpretations over the years, and there's a wide range of acceptable behavior from "a Superman", even if we're not counting the really out there variations like Red Son or some of the alternate timelines.

... but I still would probably make him more like a canon Superman if I had to do it all over.

There are a few things that raise red flags at the beginning, which is where I think they're inexpertly placed. Superman takes Lois off the roof and flies her around, making her very afraid, and this is fine, I think, a misunderstanding that might be stronger if we got his insight into what was happening before we got hers to help bridge some of the disconnect there and characterize them both better. But there's a little note after that, where Clark makes a joke about "Superman's girlfriend Lois Lane" that I think is a HUGE red flag, and which probably comes too early in the story. It would be better as a joke someone else made that Clark laughs along with, which raises the red flag to half mast.

The other major moment I would change is when the bombs start going off. Superman pulls back, unsure whether he's actually immune to mustard gas, and I think this is one of the moments that most goes against the character of Superman. Canon Superman would just say "welp, guess I gotta find out whether I'm immune to mustard gas in a hurry". Superman making the argument that he doesn't know the bounds of his powers and so should exercise caution reads as either cowardice or as him being way too bitten by the rationality bug.

This would then obviously have to change the plot of that section a bit, because in the novel as it stands right now, Superman is convinced by Lois Lane that he can't just sit on the sidelines for game theory reasons. Better to either scrap that section or have Lois convince Superman that for game theory reasons he should offer to have testing carried out against him in a way that doesn't harm civilians, which canon Superman might submit to if it saved lives. Then the rest of the plot can proceed as normal, because Superman is immune to everything and that's the whole plot beat anyway.

I'd definitely clean up some of Superman/Clark's dialogue to nail the character voice better, but I don't think it's that bad, and it's mostly a few places where the wording is off. I think in particular the points where he's feeling anger go too far, and are not how someone internally conflicted about the anger might talk.

And then, oh yeah, Superman punches a guy's head clean off, which I think is the biggest sticking point for most people.

I've thought about that scene a lot. I personally like it. But if I were ever trying to sell this story to DC, it's one of the things I would almost certainly change. Superman doesn't kill, except in that one movie that came out just before this story was published where Superman snapped a guy's neck.

The change I am most happy/comfortable with is that Whitman, the governor whose children were [REDACTED], is the one to kill Calhoun. This happens just outside the courthouse with Superman watching and not intervening in the slightest, or maybe catching the bullets as they go through Calhoun so no bypassers get hit.

I don't know, as I type it out, it doesn't have the same weight to it. It's not cool. It's not a watershed moment. Maybe there's a plot thread to pull there, where Superman has tacitly endorsed other vigilantes, and it would be a great time to pull in other mundane street-level heroes ... but that's an entirely different story at that point.

Another option is for Superman to simply fly off with Calhoun and put him away, but that lacks punch too, and gets talky, and ... it's about the rage, right? The feeling of injustice, not just at Calhoun, but at the entire world, and it's not just an unhappy side effect that there's blood everywhere, all over the clamoring press, that's part of the point.

Social Justice

I really enjoy how wide-ranging the novel is, and how many things it touches on. Good job me. There was a line I had completely forgotten about where Lois asks "Why doesn't Superman stop abortions?" that I had completely forgotten I had ever written, and which brought a big smile to my face (but no wonder some Superman fans hate this story).

There are a few other things that I raise my eyebrow at a little bit, at least sitting here in 2024. There's a particular line that Superman gives when talking about this whitewashed mural of the past they're walking by, and he says "It's easy to forget that slavery ever happened, you know?" Now, I will grant you that this is a part of a conversation where he's saying that maybe he should have been a better student of history, and is saying this as a white guy in 1934, but I wanted him or someone else to tear that statement apart. It never really happens.

"It's easy to forget that slavery ever happened [if you and your people have not been affected by slavery]". The novel takes place ~70 years after the end of the Civil War, which means that when Clark was growing up there would have been freed slaves who were in their fifties, probably many of them in Kansas, though Smallville is (notably) small. I don't know, it wouldn't have been historically accurate for them to have a discussion of privilege, but there's way more meat on that bone, and it's all left as subtext.

Also probably the case that if I were writing it now, I would pay more attention to race in general, but that I'm less sure on, because it would mean some major structural changes to be done well. There's a single black guy in the whole thing, who is barely a character and has no speaking lines: the farmhand Ma Kent has before he gets lured away with the promise of being an actor. I have never felt that any novel needs racial balance to it, but if you're going to be talking about slavery and whether Superman would have done anything about it, you start to make black people look like props, which is not a good look.

I mean look, I think it's fine for a given story to not actually take a stance on political issues or have a diverse cast, but this story goes from abortion to the Equal Rights Amendment to Prohibition to Nazis to the death penalty, and then despite being set in 1934 sort of talks around the subject of how shitty race relations were. As a white guy, I never feel comfortable talking about race, but I think it would have been appropriate to have here in more than the cursory way it was handled. But the cast is just not that large, and the way that modern Superman stories handle that is usually making Jimmy Olsen black and then not actually talking about the fact that he's black so it's just a palette swap, which I don't think would work here, especially since Jimmy is such a bit character, and also it's 1934.

Sexual Violence

Alright, I will say it: there's too much sexual violence.

Chapter 7 is when the two Whitman kids get kidnapped. Their driver gets his throat slit, the boy gets dismembered, and the girl gets raped. I knew it was coming and I was still horrified by it.

I would not remove this part. I would foreshadow it better with a few scenes with Calhoun, the brutes, etc., and I might change some of the details to be a bit less awful and gruesome, but I don't think I would remove it. There are a few core ideas here that I think all work:

The better class of criminal has left the city now, and all that are left are the worst of the worst, the people who will not respond to incentives or symbols or rational thought.

If you cannot strike at Superman's physical self, you strike at his mind instead, and one of the ways to do that is psychic damage. In Calhoun's case, this is irrational, a pure desire to hurt Superman in any way possible while his empire collapses.

The amount of evil in the world is enormous. The pain and suffering cannot be comprehended. I love what Superman says, that this isn't really unique, that these things happen to children all the time. He's upset about not being able to save them, but they're a drop in the bucket.

I think you have to be careful with sexual violence, whether it's depicted or hinted at or just briefly mentioned. There are tons of people who are not on board with that in their media, and even of those who are on board, it has to be handled carefully and can feel very cheap, as though you're just going to the worst and most transgressive thing you can think of for the shock value. People will see it as lazy and trivializing and making entertainment out of this horrible thing.

I think the world is shit. I think terrible things happen. I have always felt both oppressed by the weight of evil in the world and powerless to stop it. I think that's the thing that I'm gesturing at here, and it feels weird to me that sexual violence would get put on a pedestal as the one thing too horrible to mention, even though we're mentioning all the most horrible things.

How do Superman comics and shows and movies deal with this? My impression is that they don't. Surely Superman must be stopping rapes from happening, but I cannot think of a single time I've seen it happen. I'm actually having trouble thinking of a time it was implied to happen. I think this is probably a good idea on the part of the people who make these bits of media, but it's absolutely not realistic if you're thinking about how Superman would operate in the "real world". Sexual violence happens, child abuse happens, and I guess we just sort of assume that these things are dealt with by Superman off-screen.

Though ... I mean it impacts the characters, right? Does Superman not have a trauma response? Does he have a superpower where he can bottle it all up? He's definitely too late to stop certain crimes, and he definitely can't make things better for some of the victims, and I guess in the comics when he shows up to a burning building he generally has a 100% success rate and people come out with only minor injuries, but ... alright, this is definitely the sort of thing that led me to write this fic in the first place.

It's a question that the fic doesn't have an answer for: how do you go on living when you know that there's so much evil in the world?

I think dialing that particular scene back is, maybe, fine. But it's the sort of thing that would feel like I was being less authentic in a way, as though I wanted to grapple with the big questions but not that one, wanted to consider ethics and morality but silo myself away from things that actually are on my mind. I see the point of blunting that scene, and I rebel against it because I don't want to be blunted, I want to be sharp.

I would, however, remove a lot of the earlier references, or blunt those, because they didn't need to be sharp. There are, before the Whitman stuff, about five references to sexual violence, and maybe even just using "sexual violence" would be enough, rather than "rape". One of these references is to what crimes Superman is statistically most likely to stop, another is to a plot to besmirch his name, both can be massaged or they can go.

I don't know if I think about these things differently because time has passed or I've had a bunch of discussions about these issues, or whether it's just having the outside view. It's weird to think about what a conversation with myself would look like, if we were working on the story together.

Retrospective

I understand why Superman fans sometimes hate this story. There's the Superman OOC stuff, sure, but there are also a lot of questions about Superman that apply to canon equally well, and people hate that. Superman is a fantasy, maybe the ultimate comic book fantasy. He stops crimes and bullets bounce off him! You're not supposed to think about his stance on abortion rights. You're not supposed to look at the Clark Kent mask and say 'huh, that's strange'. I mean it's media, you can do whatever the hell you want, but if Superman is a fantasy, then there are a lot of questions that are fantasy-ruining.

I stand by the story as written about 80%, which is higher than I thought it would be, though there are certain things that I stand by more than others. There are certain structural changes and many line-by-line changes, and I'm glad that I didn't have the story open in edit mode, because it would have taken me three times as long to read and when I hit "save changes" people would grumble about archives or bad changes or whatever, because you can't please people.

About five years ago, I started writing A Common Sense Guide to Doing the Most Good, which was meant as a companion piece to MM. It ended up being all mechanics, no plot, and the plot that I wanted it to have was divorced from the center questions it wanted to answer. It didn't feel as grand, I guess, and the cats were out of their bags a little too quickly.

One of the Answers that MM gives is that the thing you should do in the face of overwhelming evil is to grind relentlessly, grind until your bones are scraping the grindstone and there's nothing left of yourself. The story does not believe this answer, but it's one of the places I ended up ten years ago, and am still sort of at now. The other answer is to live as best you can, be aware of the evil and do what you can against it without letting the idea of it (or the battle against it) consume your soul.

When I was finished reading, I kind of wanted to write an uncritical Superman comic. Something where Superman can be as his most loyal fans see him, someone who is Good and doesn't often have to grapple with what Good means, where the thorny edges of moral quandaries never come to light and the hero is always there in the nick of time. Where Clark Kent is a bold and noble expression of humanity rather than a deception and a mask. Maybe I will go do that.

[sonkitty]

The Sideburns Scheme Post #100

(For reference: The Sideburns Scheme)

Crowley, Good Omens 2, Episode 6, Every Day, partner

...

I will be covering Maggie and Nina talking to Crowley, then the little bit that happens afterward before the argument scene of the bookshop.

...

Sideburns Check

The sideburns are still a medium length.

...

Brighter Red Streak Check

The more saturated red streak of hair can be found.

...

Hairstyle Changes

The top hair looks to have smoothed some and rises up a little taller.

...

Earthly Objects

(For reference: Earthly Objects)

Both Maggie and Nina touch the doorknob, the rug, and the steps into the bookshop.

Nina has a question and number with, "Where's the other one?"

Crowley is shown as having his feet crossed with his touch on the chair.

Both Maggie and Nina sit down on a couch. Each of them has some variation of a statement of place, which is often used as an extended form of Hello, but we seem a little past when a Hello should happen.

Nina points out, "You and your partner..."

Maggie claims they are not a game. They're real people.

Both of these characters are in a game as game pieces and not real people, but I guess that's a thing fictional characters do and say. The story is real enough to them.

Crowley has a question with, "Why are you telling me all this?"

Maggie says Aziraphale's "Mr. Fell" name.

Despite the weight of this conversation that Maggie and Nina want to have, neither one of them have any respect or care for using Crowley's name during this conversation. It might be that they can't, but we at least know for certain that they don't.

Crowley shifts his touch on the chair by crossing his legs.

...

Time to pay attention to the pockets.

At the start of when Crowley appears on screen, his tassel tips are on his belt. Put another way, that's the thumb tips of his Tied Hands on his Belt Head.

In my looking to see if the Tied Hands retie, a clasp might be at an edge of the lapel when Crowley shifts to cross his legs differently. The face of Crowley's watch is visible. He has an extended index finger when pointing at them, talking about Maggie crying and Nina needed rescuing.

I can't seem to find any thumb joint alignments with the jacket edges though Crowley's right thumb tip does such a thing when he moves to shift how he crosses his legs.

Crowley doesn't seem to be making many pockets with his body. I can mainly find a couple involving his right arm and the rest of the body when he moves around in the chair.

His Belt Head is visible at the start of the scene and when he shifts how he crosses his legs.

I can't find any Overhead Lights for him.

...

Story Commentary

In the part before cutting away to Aziraphale and the Metatron, I think this scene sucks.

The bookshop is closed. The door is not locked, but the bookshop is closed and has the sign saying so. Maggie and Nina show us that they do not care. They don't bother themselves with being invited. They don't even have the decency to knock, like Gabriel and Muriel did. They just let themselves in.

Based on what we've been shown of the story, they shouldn't do that because angels were on the verge of turning them into pillars of salt.

We have been given no indication that they know who is actually inside.

But they still go in, lacking basic human decency to a closed bookshop.

Receiving the news that Aziraphale is out and it's not a good time, they, again, show us they don't care. Nina says, "I wasn't asking. There are things you need to hear."

These two do not give a fuck about Crowley in this scene. They really don't.

I can understand the whole, "We're not a game," thing. Earthly Objects itself isn't exactly easy to find, play, or understand. It's a very interesting (but frustrating) part of a very strange story.

So, fine, okay, the sooner they tell the supernatural being to back off, the better and maybe that's their sense of urgency.

Up to that only though, in my opinion.

The part that really bothers me is mainly Maggie thinking she has any grasp of the relationship between Aziraphale and Crowley.

Maggie and Crowley have barely spoken to each other the entire season.

Aziraphale never even mentions Crowley to Maggie in the two main conversations they have in Maggie's record shop.

We didn't see her invitation, so we don't know what she knows of the relationship in something that simple.

Her argument is that they don't talk to each other. Then when Crowley points out they've been talking for millions of years, her argument shifts to Crowley never says what he's really thinking.

Maggie has no way of knowing that because nothing in her or Crowley's characterization says she is familiar enough with the relationship to make that call.

Even if she did have some twisted way of having spied on Crowley and Aziraphale during the season, she'd still be wrong. Crowley was quite forthcoming in his thoughts about taking Gabriel in during episode 1. Before he had that argument, he was quick to ask about what the problem was because he knows Aziraphale's Something's Wrong voice. He said so himself. Crowley had his own special way of responding to the idea of loaning his car. He made his opinions known about Aziraphale making changes to his car while it was borrowed. And so on.

Nina says some notably wrong things too, but they are a little more understandable in the full context of the story given. I'm not bothered by them.

She says Crowley's the "can't trust anyone ever again" one.

That is emphatically untrue, but she's not around Crowley enough to know. Crowley does trust. He trusts Aziraphale. He developed a trust in Gabriel. I don't know why he seems to have such a deep trust in Muriel, but that's what I read from the Earthly Objects game and how the two interact overall. I am very curious about him and Muriel.

So, here we have two human beings understandably getting on Crowley's case for interfering with their lives. Then one of them proceeds to interfere with his life by giving him bad relationship advice on a subject she is very clearly very ignorant of. She does that while being either unwilling or unable to address him by name.

Oh, and how about how Maggie finishes it off by saying, "That was all we needed. It's what you two need as well."?

I don't know what story Maggie's reading or thinks she's in, but it's not the same one I'm reading about her. She and Nina have not gotten all they needed. Nina just recently said as much because she needs time to deal with her recently ended relationship. They aren't together. Upon Maggie insisting she'll be there when Nina's ready, Nina took no solace in that and told Maggie that wasn't helping. That signifies problems are already brewing between them.

Like I said, they have not gotten all they needed.

Her advice to Crowley isn't what he and Aziraphale need either.

Crowley and Aziraphale are two different people who love the world in their own separate ways, handle problems together and separately, and who love each other dearly. They are both supernatural beings who have a lot of experience she doesn't. They have a problem specific to their status of being an angel and a demon.

Not only are Crowley and Aziraphale together, they've been playing games this season where they have to work together separately in a story designed to pull them apart by its end.

I have my differences with The Magic Trick You Didn't See theory, but this scene is one where I mean that the idea of possibly intentionally bad writing resonates.

If I'm supposed to find Maggie endearing or this advice worthwhile, that didn't happen. She is clueless, and it shows.

And because I like Crowley and can head canon as I please, I'm going to take his reaction as more of him thinking if there's something more he wants to say before "it's too late," than any merit in anything Maggie actually says.

Despite all my complaining, something this conversation does accomplish is show that these two humans still see Crowley as human enough to think his relationship with Aziraphale is like a human partnership.

That could be why the left sideburn will shorten, even if these two humans probably don't think Crowley is actually human.

Moving onto what happens next...

The story cuts away to Aziraphale and the Metatron. Aziraphale's showing mixed emotions. He looks nervous, sounds flustered, looks happy, then looks nervous again.

In light of looking for a Metatron mistake, the Metatron could be messing up the shoulder-demon role because Aziraphale pulls away while humans end up visually pocketed between the two characters as Aziraphale keeps moving. I have not been going over the matter closely but keeping it in mind ever since engaging with this post about looking at the Metatron as the demon on the shoulder. Most shoulder-angel or shoulder-demon cuts keep other characters out of the pocket between the focused character and the shoulder character.

Another thing I notice with this particular cut is that three relevant humans to the door trickery coming up at the end of this episode pass by. All three are even among those who are my guesses for the magic words.

The woman wearing black, including a black hat, and carrying a bag is my guess for "dash of nutmeg". The guy in yellow and pocketing his hands with a dark gray vest is "banana." The woman with the orange jacket is "shoelace" (later). She doesn't show her shoes here.

To remind us that things are off with these background humans, Banana ends up passing by the bookshop front behind Aziraphale in the next cut.

In any case, Aziraphale makes his way back to the bookshop and shows us his doorknob touch for this episode.

Maggie and Nina are preparing to leave.

In the background, Crowley is shown standing with pocket touches. He's easy to miss and not clear, but from what can be seen, it looks to me like his left sideburn shortened to what is usually found around humans.

Something I certainly don't know and a question I have is if there is any benefit to him having short sideburns there. He should still be able to touch his pockets, and he's done with his silly face touches with the sunglasses. The humans were already able to find him as a demon in the bookshop, and no human is coming back in again for the rest of the episode. So, what does he get out of it, if anything? The sideburns are about to lengthen once the humans close the door.

Something else this glimpse of Crowley accomplishes is to make sure he's in the front bookend to the next Muriel scene.

This part of the episode also shows that Crowley fixed the broken window during his tidying process earlier.

Instead of Maggie or Nina stopping to say they wanted to talk to Aziraphale too, they keep moving. Maggie says they were just going. Nina says she's sure they have a lot to say.

So, again, the story shows us that Maggie and Nina do not actually give a fuck about talking to "them," the plural of Crowley and Aziraphale. They were here specifically to get to Crowley, whether they realize it or not.

Aziraphale smiles nervously as the others leave, closing the door behind them.

Maggie and Nina smile, and I'm generally annoyed with both of them.

Nina walks toward the coffee shop, and the Metatron vaguely follows. He stops and talks to Muriel.

Now onto my next guess for a Metatron mistake.

I've actually mentioned this potential mistake, without calling it that, as far back as Windows Part 2 of my posts.

A complex window scene requires three steps. The looker looks. The window sees. The looker is seen clearly behind the window with some of its window frame visible.

The Metatron looks, but we don't see what the window sees for his Earthly Objects play.

Okay, well, not every character tries for a complex window scene. Sometimes we don't get what "the window sees," which is supposed to be the camera telling us there's a window frame for the window.

But even if we don't get what the window saw, we get what the looker saw in some form because the camera and characters shift us forward to do that. For example, in episode 1, we don't see a complex window scene for Gabriel's arrival. We see Maggie and Nina exit the coffee shop amidst the commotion from other people in the street. They crossed a door threshold instead and give us information about what they saw in the story through their movement and dialogue. In episode 2, Maggie and Aziraphale look at Nina through a window. There's no window frame to indicate what the window saw, but we see Nina to confirm she is the subject they saw.

The Metatron's play does not do that here as the Final Fifteen starts. We will not see him again until he touches the doorknob of the bookshop again. He, as a character in the story, isn't confirming for us that he is indeed looking through a window and what he sees through that window. He never will. His dialogue will do the same thing with him asking, "How did he take it?"

Another factor is Muriel.

Muriel wears all white, and White keeps. That's not going to help with the window look. Muriel does at least two things that probably prevent the Metatron from taking advantage of their all-white attire. They keep their pocket chain hidden from the camera. They are holding a book where the cover is mostly black. Black blocks.

...

That's it for this post. Sometimes I edit my posts, FYI.

...

Main post:

The Sideburns Scheme

[intersex-support]

Something that has been helpful for me when having conversations about what counts as intersex is to really engage in enquiry about what the label means and how we're using it. To me, it's been more helpful to think through questions like:

What purpose does labeling a variation as intersex serve?

In what ways is societal understandings of "typical" changing?

Why was the label of intersex created and has our use of the label shifted?

What ways are we building intersex community? What do we want intersex community to look like?

How do our experiences of oppression impact our understanding of intersex as a term?

What sources are we drawing from when we develop definitions of intersex?

What is the history of the way intersex has been used?

What ways has intersex community been exclusionary in the past, and is that in line with our current values?

Definitions of intersex have always been tied up with what the medical world decides to classify as differences of sex development, but especially in the past twenty years as intersex community has grown more connected, we've started to have a lot more self-determination in our communities. But I think a lot of people still really have a misconception that intersex is a biological "third sex" that is strictly medically defined, and that there are clear cutoffs between intersex and endosex.

Instead, I'd like to bring in the concept of compulsory dyadism to introduce a framework where intersex is an intentional political label used as a way to build community for the people whose variation of sex characteristics are most impacted by the stigma and violence associated with compulsory dyadism.

Sex diversity is not just limited to intersex people. Even within the boundaries of dyadic/endosex bodies, people have variations like different amounts of body hair, penis size, hormone levels, breast size, as well as things like disabilities affecting any of those traits. For example, very few people actually have all the "ideal" traits that line up with this constructed idea of an endosex body that has the exact "correct" amount of estrogen, the right size chest, the ability to bear children, "normal" periods. Many endosex people might have a variation in one of those aspects at differing times during their life, such as during menopause, for example. And this framework can help us understand how diagnoses such as endometriosis are not intersex, but people might still notice overlaps in certain experiences.

But the reason that not everyone is considered intersex and the reason that having a separation between endosex and intersex is important is because of the stigma and violence associated with straying further and further from that dyadic norm, and intersex is a label used to describe people who are the most impacted by that stigma and violence. We have been socially labeled as "deviating" the most from the "normal" sex binary, and consequentially face intersexism both on a systematic and personal level. Our collection of sex variations becomes located entirely outside of the sex binary, and as a result, we often face curative violence, social stigma, and systematic exclusion from many parts of society.

This definition isn't a perfect definition. I think we need to have room to develop more nuance around the fact that many intersex people might not feel like their experience of being intersex has brought them any personal stigma or violence, as well as understanding that there isn't going to be a universal intersex experience. Even when discussing how intersex people are the most impacted by compulsory dyadism compared to endosex people, I think it's important to recognize that within the intersex community, our additional intersecting identities are absolutely going to influence our experiences with oppression and that it's vital to intentionally uplift the members of our intersex community who are most impacted by oppression. In the United States, the creation of the sex binary was an explicitly racist process, and racialized intersex people are subject to additional layers of stigma, violence and scrutiny. (Check out chapters 4-6 in the book Cripping Intersex by Dr. Celeste Orr for a really in depth discussion of how antiblackness and compulsory dyadism are forces behind why the Olympic sports sex testing has pretty much exclusively targeted Black women from the Global South, regardless of whether or not they are actually intersex. Also recommend reading The Biopolitics of Feeling: Race, Sex, and Science in the Nineteenth Century by Dr Kyla Schuller.) I also have talked with many intersex people who are tired of us always being represented through trauma narratives in the media, and who want us to be able to build a definition of intersex that isn't based around violence or tragedy. And I think that's really important that we also share our stories of intersex joy, and pride, and healing. I think that claiming intersex can be something really radical, and that's super valuable to me.

Overall I think that if we build our discussions around who is intersex on concepts to do with our social and political location, and take into consideration concepts like compulsory dyadism, sex diversity, and disability, we are going to be able to understand why any of it matters better than if our determinations of intersex identity are based solely in medicalized concepts of a third sex.

TL;DR: Although endosex people also have diversity when it comes to sex traits, intersex is still an important label that not everyone can claim. Compulsory dyadism is a force that affects all of us, but intersex people are the most impacted by compulsory dyadism and face intersexist stigma and violence for our intersex variations. As a result, intersex is an important label for us to claim so that we can build community and solidarity around our experiences. I think it is better understood as a sociopolitical label that describes the relationship between our biological bodies and the cultures we live in, rather than as a medicalized term that described a coherent "third sex."

other intersex people feel free to add on to this post-I'm only one person without all the answers, and would love to hear other perspectives!

[inventors-fair]

Counterplay: Increment Commentary

There were a lot of mechanical variants this past week, and a lot of variations on the same mechanical aspects. Amassing, and card draw, and +1/+1 counters on green creatures... Yeah, there are only so many things you can increment in so many ways. I'm kind of surprised by the amount of variance even within those similarities, though, and it's clear that people liked forging their own paths! 

Decades of mechanics and precedent allow us to select what designs work best, how they work best, and what kinds of aspects of MTG will show up when we need them to be bigger and better. I think the one suggestion I would give generally would be to consider the play patterns based not just on your own imaginations but also experiences from limited, from standard interactions, from the world in which everything is a little bit reliant on everything else. There were big swings between ambitions and precedent, mechanically and flavorfully.

There were also arguable differences between what I consider precedent for increments and what's technically incremented, so keep that in mind. Some of this—actually, all of this, because I'm the judge—is my opinion for what I was looking for in terms of direct increments. So keep that in mind: my opinions are totally fine to hand-wave on that front. I'd like to think you're still here because you care about the parts where I say what I think works and doesn't work otherwise, but that's ego speaking.

See a card marked JUDGE PICK? That meant that I liked it enough to either point out something super specific about it or it was in the running for the podium before paring for space. Read on until you're accumulated all that knowledge.

@bread-into-toast — Sprout of the Hate Seed (JUDGE PICK)

Calling combat triggers "incremental" is technically true, but not precisely what I was thinking of for this contest. That goes even more so for the optional trigger there. But maybe I'm being too narrow with my internal definition of "will happen every turn" versus "may perhaps happen every turn," because some of those example cards did kinda get there. I think part of my internal view was considering that you were the one in control of the increment. BTW, all of this is me waxing and musing, so for you and your card specifically, I'll say that this card really got me thinking about what I wanted to mean by increment and what was unspoken. Kinda on me for that.

I do love this card in general, though, although I'd change that trigger to: "Whenever this creature deals combat damage to a player, if it had a +1/+1 counter on it, create a token that's a copy of it. Otherwise, create a 1/1 green Saproling creature token." The reason is because it could be argued that the "it" in the second sentence could refer to the Saproling, or at least someone might be confused by it. Everything else is perfectly awesome for a Gruul design—swingy, big, potentially game-ending, and the kind of rare that would sway you in limited into these colors. Swell job!

~

@cthulhusaurusrex — Elvish Growthcaller / Embodiment of Growth

Big effects into bigger effects are incremental enough, sure. Transforming into Cathars' Crusade on a stick is pretty excellent, and with enough lords or other effects I think that this card could be absolutely powerful when it transforms. The design itself is fine and would be a snap-pick if you're anywhere near green and/or if you wanted to hate because you didn't have the right removal. Mechanics are fairly standard, and that's all good there. I suppose the world around it and the vibes are what I wanted more of, so let's talk about that.

What this card is depicting is the healing/lifegiving power of a young elf that transforms them into a leader amongst their people. This is one of those cases where I feel that "elves connecting to plants" could have used some kind of emotional crutch to separate it from... The word I'm going to use is "expected." This is all flavor talk, so feel free to skip it, because the only actual chance on the card I'd do is making the T in Trample lowercase. For flavor reasons, though, I don't yet feel that kind of surprise that I need to make these fairly straightforward mechanics feel fresh again. Is this an expected mutation among the culture, or a surprise gift of the world's magic? The flavor text isn't giving me anything new here, and its vague poetic styling needs to provide that sense of strangeness, transformation, or change.

~

@dabudder — The Hype

I get this card, for sure. Totally do. It's absolutely not what I was looking for for increments, as it relies on a lot of non-deterministic factors to do...well, anything. But man. The first thing that comes into my head is Throes of Chaos, but much different. I suppose you could search for The Hypes, get them into the graveyard or whatever, but once they're in the graveyard then you need at least one to get it going... And then, to what end? The hype feels kinda let down by having only one extra copy, but having too many would be way too wild. Chain together The Hype until you hit two five-mana-or-less combo pieces, what a deck. Isn't that basically how this deck would work? Geological Appraiser got banned in Pioneer for a reason.

The main point is that this card can only get so big before the hype dies down, unless you're using The Hype to win on the spot. Limited probably wouldn't use this card (although not every card is designed for it, so that's aight) except as a maybe one-off ramp. "Find your combo piece" is effectively all that you'd be doing in constructed effectively. Maybe the randomness being let down by The Hype copying multiple pieces is okay, but even then, this isn't the kind of scaling that's right for an increment contest. What happens at the top? Via the card itself, nothing much. It's hard to evaluate a card that effectively is designed around only itself without assuming the most broken intentions.

~

@feyd-rautha-apologist — Grassy Gnoll (JUDGE PICK)

I imagined this card to be a build-around sleeper hit for constructed. Pinging your opponents' creatures doesn't have to be massive to be effective, right? And if there are two of these things, well, you're in for a treat. It's the return of Temur Staticaster combo! That's all just hype, though. The narrowness of this card at uncommon meant that it wasn't exactly slated for a podium spot given the fact that we had an immense number of awesome cards. Still, despite the name being something that perhaps wouldn't pass the marketing team, I think this card's pretty wonderful.

And aside from that, there's not much of a second paragraph to add here. The "W" in "Ward" should be lowercase, so jot that down. I do want to say: I think that the shortening of a card name to "this creature" was a mistake on WotC's part. Later pronouns can increase text to decrease the following confusion, although this card clears it up enough with the "that" later on. All the same... Look, this card feels great—it eats, shoots, and leaves. Leaves you with an arrow in the back, anyway. I love hyenas and I love the vibes. What more can I say?

~

@frognarch — Avalanche Elemental (JUDGE PICK)

Conversely to the previous card, you could use "this creature" here and I'd be none the wiser. But! This is one of those copying effects that distinctly feels incremental, and by far stronger in limited for it. Evasion and copying and snowballing, well, that's pretty wild. The only question I have for limited power is whether or not the fact that it can get exponential is too much. Blocking the token copy can wear it down for the moment, but if you get a single copy to stay, the board's basically done for. Every turn, swing and swing and swing again. These days, though, a five-mana 3/3 is pretty low. Maybe the environment would redefine it? Hard to say.

I do really love this design, though. I'd replace the "and" with a "then," or just remove the comma from behind the word "combat." Those are the minor potatoes. As for the flavor text, I'm iffy on a couple counts. Firstly, that's not how avalanches happen so jot that down for your nerd notes. Secondly, though, that line of just "the snow fell" doesn't carry much weight with it for me. The card's intent is that these elementals are rising from the alpine and barreling down uncontrollably, but the flavor text makes it seem like the army just got buried in a particularly heavy storm. It speaks to the aftermath rather than the moment, and the card's energy is carried with that moment. Y'know? Gotta match the energy to the action.

~

@grornt — Mangrove Stalker

I'll start off by saying that it's a generally phenomenal design and you should keep this in the files. No notes there. I'll follow that up with the unfortunate part that it doesn't feel quite as incremental to what I was looking for for the contest. As soon as this comes out, you can pop it and get your benefit if you have enough creatures in the graveyard. Inversely, I was looking for a card that started the buildup itself and used itself as a requirement for bigger effects. There's the technical argument, and then the vibe argument.

I guess that this is a design lesson for me for contests. Most of the vibes were totally met, but this is a card that just doesn't hit that specificity for me. All of the values are subtle and I was actually hoping that people would be less subtle this week. I know, shocker! But if this creature got 'stalking counters' whenever you milled a creature or whatever, then drew for each stalking counter, that would be more in-line with the intended increment. And that would, in my opinion, make for a worse card. What happens when a good design clashes with the bespoke niche? I mean, you get me waffling for two paragraphs, that's what. 

~

@helloijustreadyourpost — The Book of Grudges

Multiplying your power as a punishing effect for attacking hurts a lot. Even though your creatures can't block, a single attack from your opponent the turn after you play this will create an additional four power on board, and then six the next turn, and so on and so forth. Yeah, it's a three-mana can't-block token. But we've all heard the adage "math is for blockers," and that really makes this card feel like it's doing more than it should be able to. Landing this early in limited is a game-ender without removal. Landing it late can change the parity immensely—if you have parity. I will say that the can't-block addition is the best choice for ability balance. (Or in this case, cannot-block. You should change that to the contraction.)

Personally, I'd do one of two things: either I'd limit the number of counters that can be placed on the book (which would be okay but not great for the contest, and would add a lot of text), or I'd make the creatures 1/1s. I am also curious about the flavor here, because I want to praise the subtle humor and the cool worldbuilding piece you've made here. Presumably, you have a group of dwarves on whatever world (I'm thinking Eldraine or Kaldheim) with a massive tome of their wrongs that incenses them to combat in a way that's more aggressive than thoughtful. Shortsighted and grumpy! That's a great way to use names and abilities together to create a sense of grounding without even needing art direction.

~

@horsecrash — Bubbling Brew

The design: super cool. The flavor: perfect use of those counters. The math: weird. Too weird. Hold on, I'm actually going to get out a deck and muck around and see how it feels. ... So, I just tried this in a Sultai midrange kind of deck. Played it on turn three. Turn four: basically no hand, played out a card. Turn five: lost a lot of life, but drew cards. Didn't want to play anything because of the life loss. Turn six: draw a lot, lost a lot. I basically didn't want to play any of the cards that I drew because that meant the next turn I'd be incrementally losing all of the other resources.

Quite frankly, I want this effect to be symmetrical. Smokestack-style. Standard can handle it. Or there has to be some other kind of way to mitigate the life loss, because you're discarding so many cards that you're losing basically everything you get at the cost of your life and eventually there's no way to play out all that you have so you just mill yourself or drain yourself. I think this was the first time I've actively played a card in a deck that it was probably intended for, and lemme tell you, it's worth for anyone to do for a card this ambitious. Pros: ambition, flavor, uniqueness. Cons: my life total :(

~

@hypexion — Ignition, Errant Arson / Cataclysm, Vengeant Inferno

The design is decent, but I'm left with a lot more questions than answers. Let's go through those first, because the second paragraph here is for sure going to be talking about the cool stuff you're doing. I feel that the increment-specific design is intended to be like Animar, in that your costs go down with the incremental uptick, so that's understandable. But it feels so localized, and this is a personal thing, but I think the intent of the contest was more universal to the board? Still, out of the technicalities, it makes a lot of sense to me with the buildup. The names are baffling me, though, because I can't place them at all. I assume these are chosen names, but they're... I don't want to say that they're "obvious" for the archetype. "Telling" is the closest adjective I have.

Mechanics are surprisingly in-depth, though, so let's have some fun. Firstly, menace plus potentially killing a small blocker is a great combo, and depending on how much an opponent is forced to block, that may be a perfect way to get those counters, discounting burn/combat tricks. Could even be worth making the front side a 3/3. "Non-player target" is also a great choice on the backside—accounting for Battles, I assume? The only wording choice on the back side I'd change would be to switch first strike and menace (see Kari Zev et. al); I thought "they" should be "that player" but I guess your wording is accurate as well! Both work even if I prefer "that player." The bombiness and dedication to the theme is on point, even if some of the details are evading me.

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@izzet-always-r-versus-u — Tyvar, Hero in the Dark

Sorry about not saving this one the first time—I definitely saw it, and I went through the inbox a second time, and it just flew under the radar. So let's talk about it now! And part of that is me wanting to hear the thought process for this card, because as a mythic, it's possible that it's really good, but I'm not entirely convinced. Omen Hawker was the first card to come to mind, although this one is distinctly more powerful—but just as narrow. Here's the question I'm left with: in what environment would this be considered a mythic in terms of gameplay versatility? Where are the most activated abilities that one would want to do postcombat or during combat?

Maybe it's just me, but I feel that this would've been a fine rare instead of a mythic. The general design is fantastic, though, and it works quite well with the other Tyvar. And, I can see from the past precedent that Tyvar has a little bit of "activated abilities matter" from the past. Everything shows that you've done your homework here. I feel 'whelmed' by the overall effect, though. Attack, counter, make mana—that's all fine. Where do we go from here? Boasting is potentially valid, I suppose, but again, I would liked to know a little bit more about your vision. I'm imagine there was a lot build up in the process that maybe didn't translate into demonstrating this card's utilitarian strength. (Also: love the name, 10/10)

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@melancholia-ennui — Creeping Misery (JUDGE PICK)

Yep, that's an alternate wincon for black, very much in the spirit of the contest. Once more we're delving into the world of black enchantments. Was there a particular reason we had six mono-black enchantments this week? I'm not creeping on anyone's misery here, but I find it fascinating. Anyway! Underworld Dreams is one of the first cards that come to mind when people think about BBB punishing enchantments, but this card's more along the lines of... Well, it's got quite a pedigree! Bloodchief Ascension, Fraying Sanity, and more... And yet it's not until you start to pick apart the card that you see how all these influences turn into something original. I think that it's reasonable to call this card more of a constructed build-around but the limited potential is there.

And in limited, you're going to have a lot fewer chances to save yourself and find answers if this hits the board, because things will be trading all the time. You only need one copy to lock someone out of the game, because everyone's going to be getting rid of creatures, especially you. Having that BBB restriction to prevent this from being even remotely splashable ensures that only dedicated decks can make it work. Obviously it's a pain in the butt to deal with for limited, but some cards are just like that. With our limited space this week, I still wanted to showcase this card for being overall just plain good. Pedigree matters sometimes, and this is a well-worded well-executed enchantment. Thumbs up!

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@nine-effing-hells — Exponential Grower

I completely forgot what expend was for a moment there. For anyone reading this who also happened to forget, expending was the raccoon-themed mechanic of Bloomburrow where you expended X as you spend your Xth mana to cast a spell in a single turn. I think I understand expending as a mechanic that would be reasonable for Strixhaven! You have these students who are putting a lot of mana into casting bigger and better spells, so that's fair, or maybe Quandrix could just be that home, as they're a growth-themed school. I think reminder text might've been appropriate, though, because let's be real, expend was...not a memorable mechanic.

As for how this card works, I think incremental growth is a little bit problematic, because it essentially tops out at eight unless you're playing a massive EDH game, and this card isn't especially playable except in those unworldly dedicated decks, which have other and better options. Having a 16/16 trampler isn't bad by any means, of course, but in terms of incremental cards... Well, maybe I'm being too strict with the definition, because getting that 16/16 is pretty rad. I guess between the top-off and the expend stuff, this card feels decent—but that's about the limit. I'd like to see this card in a Quandrix-expend-Strixhaven world, and it's a fair design. Having the limit be pragmatic instead of mechanical doesn't feel great for this contest, but I wouldn't really change the design.

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@piccadilly-blue — Press Gang

You said it yourself in your submission, so I'm not gonna go gushing over this card as a paramount of progress. It's good, though so liiiiiike... Anyway. Getting more and more power with your Pirate Army is going to get out of hand pretty fast, but not in a way that's not deal-with-able, considering, like... They're two creatures that can be fought against with the various tricks in black and white via combat and in green via big stuff. But, you have extra help with evasion to get your Treasures in these colors, so you're gonna have that going for you. Is it any surprise that this card's pretty much exactly what's reasonable for a set that would call for it?

The flavor text is good as well. I can see the head of a gang walking down the port with a sword in hand, smirking as they lead a hooting and hollering band of miscreants. It feels a little off that there's no Threaten effect with this card, though, and considering that there were other effects like that in the Ixalan era of piracy, I wonder if there was an opportunity to have that come up here? Maybe the flavor text could've been more in reference to bigger crews having more fun or whatever. I guess that's not the point, though, and again, not bad at all. Take a pat on the shoulder and don't check your pockets until your wallet and I are at least two states away.

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@real-aspen-hours — Incremental Research (JUDGE PICK)

Remember to get your rarity on if you're doing text submissions, folks. But that's neither here nor there, because I imagined and hoped that this would be a rare card. Plenty of research goes into making this work for sure, and it's one of those things with high risk and high reward. After a certain point, there aren't going to be many spells left unless you're doing X spells. Where I really see this popping off is with extra turn spells. From mana values 5-10, there are a number of excellent ones. I guess that's if you're playing solitaire, though; normal burn/control/value stuff is fine too.

I think this card significantly rewards strong deckbuilding. It's possible for this to be playable in limited if you really work for it, even if it becomes not very useful after a certain point. But isn't that part of the flavor? You have to do your research, you have to really make it work, you have to use your knowledge. It wouldn't fit this contest, but I think this card could've been even stronger if you were forced to either add OR remove a counter from the enchantment. Still, that's messing with other powers, and doesn't help for this card for this specific contest. It's pretty good overall, and I like the choice of skill intensity.

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@roxbot — Furnace, Fierce Protector

This card could be perfectly fine in the right environment. The major issue is that, for all intents and purposes, it's a french vanilla mythic that doesn't do anything but get bigger. It doesn't necessarily affect the board, but it plays into a couple of specific strategies, perhaps. Looking at what's in Standard right now, there's not a great comparison. The question of what this card does hangs over it. As I was reading it, I actually thought that these were oil counters and not charge counters at the beginning, and that's a whole other thing—what kind of deck do you have to build to make this work, really, and is it worth it just for this kind of body? I'm not entirely convinced, even in a set that would use an immense amount of charge counters.

Couple of wording changes, by the by. Names are usually replaced by "this creature" as of Foundations, and that would work best here. The "on permanents" should be "among permanents" in the first line. Rules things: if you have no charge counters out when you play this card, it'll actually die as a state-based action, because when the spell itself resolves the P/T check will see it as a 0/0 before the trigger goes on the stack. That's why cards like The Mimeoplasm are worded the way they are. Last note, "start" should be "beginning" there. Overall, I think there were a few tweaks, but the base judgement is that I feel the power level is too low and too narrow for the impact it needs.

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@sparkyyoungupstart — Detesting Beast

I think that this card would be awesome in a multiplayer set or in a Commander precon! I also think that introducing the monarch mechanic in 1v1, for which you are designing, has led to several problems and I'm not gonna wax poetic about an issue that everyone and their cat has been talking about for the last thousand years. Anyway. Let's look at the design choices from THAT perspective. The general take: this card's fun and you're gonna be pretty detested by the end of the game assuming that nobody has removal for it. Nobody wants to be hit by this, and nobody wants to give you the monarch for sure. Everyone suffers. I like that. Puts a good threat out there.

All these synergies makes me really wish that you had actually gone and done a Questing Beast variant with three different mostly unrelated takes like how the original QB had done, though. I think part of QB's strength is the fact that it's just a pain in the butt for different reasons, as opposed to this card with has many reasons but one specific track for it to be awful. The only wording change is to change the 7s to "seven"s. I also like how damage to ANY opponent will yoink the monarch back, BTW, very subtle. I hate this card! I would love to play with this card.

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@tanknspank — Rats' Nest (JUDGE PICK)

Very curious if you were going for Eldraine or Ravnica here, but either way it's a great use of the name and of the typal agenda. I think Army technology makes a lot of sense for increments overall as well, so I'm glad that folks were using that a lot this week. I'm okay with it being used here not just because having "amass rats" is an awesome thing to see on a card, but also because, yeah, it's just what this contest could want. Get a big enough rat and you're forcing your opponent to make the rat bigger. That's pretty great!

There's just no guarantee that this card's going to get going, and for that reason I wouldn't make a P1P1 out of this in limited. Not that you'll never have rats or that things won't die, but with the right kind of evasion and alternative removal, it makes it difficult for you to 100% guarantee that you'll find a large enough rat to make this card really pop off. It's not a bad rare; it's a slow rare for sure, but eh, what're you going to do. The general vibes are exact, the card's going to do what you want it to in a dedicated rat deck that's not one of the gimmick decks, and so we're all happy with what we see here. I'm really feeling more sewer-y Ravnican rat nonsense with this, but I couldn't tell you why.

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@wildcardgamez — Benevolent Scalelord

Cumulative upkeep and bolster are two mechanics that I really don't see being that great together, even with the things that you use to make it...well, this. The reality is that cumulative upkeep isn't a great mechanic and wasn't that good even in its heyday; it's a 10 on the storm scale for a reason. Bolster is also one of those mechanics where you're stuck in a strange spot with the kind of creatures that you're able to put counters on, but that's one where I'm more of a personal meh-sayer. As it is, though...why is this a dragon hydra? What kind of weirdness justifies that? A dragon without flying could have hydra-ness in it, but if the two are coming together you bet I'd rather see a flying hydra than a grounded dragon.

The idea of big counters that transfer over to another creature upon death isn't a bad idea at its core. This particular card has a mishmash of strangeness that leads me to wonder why they'd ever be together for a premier set. I feel that the lesson to be learned here is to focus the backwards-looking lens on what should be returning rather than what would be good for a contest. On top of that, the excitement of ideas should reflect the best of both worlds rather than a compromise. Did this need to be a dragon at all? Could you have brought bolster to another creature type?

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@xenobladexfan — Bloody Knowledge

"If you would draw one or more cards during each of your draw steps, instead put two deal counters on this enchantment. Then you draw X cards and lose X life, where X is the number of deal counters on this enchantment." is how I would word it. There are a few precedent-y cards to go with that, but this is a pretty convoluted card as it is. Drawing two and losing two, then four, then six, then eight... I mean, hey, that late in the game, you better be ready to make some sacrifices. I think that the addition makes some really rough deals out of this spell, but it's a mythic black card draw thing, so for standard sets it's as powerful as you're gonna get. Maybe 2BB would be fine, but that's pushing it just to keep things even.

I guess that the most important thing about this card to critique is the fact that it's pretty much a stripped-down flavor for bargaining, to the point where there's little meat left on the bones. Bare bones are good for chewing, but there ain't much blood in them any longer. Sometimes the basics are important, but there's zero context for what's happening beyond all the "give up blood for knowledge and power" spells that we've seen before. I think that this card needed a little bit more of a personal story touch for me to feel something beyond the good-mechanics. Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with the tropes—it's me personally that's wanting more.

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@yd12k — Sphinx's Grasp

I'm ashamed to say that I'd build around this card. It's a looping wincon, where you can play one, counter a spell, then hold up counterspells in your hand for the rest of the game and then just loop them once or twice a turn until you have literally all the power you could possibly need to strip them of their resources. As a limited card, nobody would play this. Constructed? Absolutely revolting as a wincon and I'd play four of them in a bounce-control deck. The gist is that this just isn't a good play pattern for constructed at all.

Even an uncounterable meta would have a difficult time if this were combined with literally any other aspect. Oddly enough, I'm reminded of Lullmage Mentor, although the ceiling for that card was significantly higher than here. But for that, it's a once-a-turn possible lock. This card is an active wincon that permanently removes further resources. I don't think that there's a world where I can really justify this card, as much as I like it.

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@yourrightfulking — Invasive Briar

The give-and-take is interesting as a card. It's definitely not what we're looking for for increments. What's increasing, exactly, and by what? The lands that you get to put on the plants can be replayed if you draw into them, but nothing gets bigger the more that something happens. The more lands you play doesn't necessarily correlate to the increase in plants, and the growth of the plants isn't necessarily tied to the fact that you're playing the lands. Give-and-take is a different kind of technology here. I do like this card, though, so take that for whatever you will.

I actually really like this as a limited bomb, to be honest. You can drop this and then do absolutely nothing but play out the rest of the game until you can get a plant army going to annihilate your opponent with your spare lands. Like, that's a fine game plan that requires forethought and survival without being a brainless exercise in abundance. Multiples are a pain and can get overbearing quickly, but there are far more answers in constructed. I think that there are other ways to flavor this to make it a little bit scarier or funnier or more immersive, but that doesn't take away from the mechanical cohesion. Good card...for a different contest.

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Have fun with myths this week! @abelzumi