#Energy Management Programme

[driverlando]

Okay okay… hear me out a shy Lando fan wanting to meet him but is too shy to approach. Shes wearing his merch so he approaches her to see if she wants him to sign anything or for a selfie and maybe it blossoms into more?

You’re standing at the edge of the fan zone, the buzz of the crowd around you both exhilarating and intimidating.

The Silverstone Circuit is alive with energy, but you can’t seem to shake off the nerves knotting in your stomach. Your favorite Lando Norris hoodie feels like a protective shield, albeit a thin one.

You’ve admired Lando for years, following his career with fervor, and now you’re finally here, just a few feet away from where he’s signing autographs. Yet, the idea of pushing through the throng of fans feels overwhelming. So, you stay back, content with being in the same space as your hero, even if it’s from a distance.

As you watch him interact with other fans, his easy smile and genuine charm make your heart flutter. You wish you had the courage to step forward, but the words seem to lodge in your throat every time you even think about it.

Then, it happens. Lando’s gaze sweeps over the crowd and lands on you. You freeze, barely daring to breathe. He says something to his assistant and starts walking in your direction. Each step he takes feels surreal, like you’re in a dream.

“Hey, I like your hoodie,” he says, his voice warm and friendly.

You manage a small smile, your voice barely above a whisper. “Thank you.”

“Do you want me to sign something for you? Or maybe a selfie?” he asks, his tone gentle as if sensing your shyness.

You nod, fumbling with your programme. He takes it with a reassuring smile, signs it with a flourish, and then stands next to you for a selfie. His presence is calming, his demeanor making it easier to breathe.

As he hands the programme back, your fingers brush, and he grins. “There you go. Enjoy the race.”

“Thank you so much,” you say, feeling a bit bolder now.

Lando’s eyes twinkle. “Maybe I’ll see you around later?”

Your heart skips a beat. “Maybe,” you reply, hope blooming in your chest.

As he walks away, you can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, this could be the start of something more.

[woso-dreamzzz]

Sleep

Katrina Gorry x Teen!Reader

Summary: You fall asleep

"Hi everyone," Katrina whispers to the camera," I just thought I would show you all what I'm dealing with."

It's almost pitch black on the screen as she moves her phone to capture the area. She's in a hotel room, that much is obvious. It's one of those hotel rooms that's got a double bed and a single.

She aims the camera at the single bed, where Clara is sound asleep, pressed up against her pillows.

Then, she draws the camera back to the double bed. It shakes for a moment before it focuses on you. You're curled up against Katrina's side, light puffs of breath tickling at her neck.

Her hand strokes down your bed hair as you fidget around for a second before you settle.

"Got the wifey to bed," She says to the camera," And the kiddo."

You fidget again, eyes fluttering open and closed before you're completely relaxed.

When she arrived at Vittsjö, she hadn't quite expected you. Obviously, there was Clare and then later on Charli but then a fourth Australian on the team wasn't what she expected. She expected it even less when she found out from her new teammates that you were the rising star from the youth programme.

"My parents are both Australian," You had told her when she asked," They're here for work. We moved when I was nine." You had then confessed that you rarely saw your parents due to the long hours they worked and throwing you in football had been cheaper than getting a babysitter for you.

It was at that moment that she knew she'd keep you close. You were barely sixteen, full of energy and a desire to prove yourself so Katrina set herself up as the person to reign you in a little bit.

It was hard at first, all you wanted to do was resist and resist and resist until you nearly snapped your ankle at training and, with your parents on a business trip, you got stuck at Katrina's place.

Suddenly, you had a structure in your life and a routine and (most surprisingly to Katrina) a bedtime. It sucked for the first few days with Katrina watching your every move and scolding you when you tried to wiggle away and leave without telling her.

But, somehow, you managed to settle in with and never ended up leaving even when Clara moved in and suddenly you were competing for Katrina's affection with her.

Somewhere along the way, you ended up between them both every day at practice. You were always within arms reach of them both during training and when you inevitably got called up to the Matildas for the World Cup, Katrina felt more proud of you than she ever had before.

You groan loudly as your eyes adjust to the light of Katrina's phone screen. You lift your head.

"Mini," You say," 'S too early to get up." You moved around slightly until you were fully face-planted in her neck. You did that a lot now, always curling into her in some way or another like a clingy little baby.

She just smiles fondly at you, still recording on her camera.

"I don't want to get up," You mutter, refusing to come out from your hiding place as Katrina cards her fingers through your hair, gently working out the knots there.

"You don't have to get up," She assures you," Go back to sleep."

You're still groggy and already half-asleep but you just make sure to check that it's okay. "Not time to get up?"

"Not time to get up," Katrina confirms, easily manoeuvring you like you're a puppet so you can be in a more comfortable position.

It's hardly the first time that you've shared a bed with her (or fallen asleep on her at all as you do that frequently on the coach) and it's easy to get you into a position that will have you sleep through the night.

You don't fight against her at all. You just allow yourself to be moved around and you yawn as you lay more fully against her body, your hand coming up to rest at the collar of her pyjama shirt.

"Night, Mini," You say even though you're almost completely back to sleep again.

Katrina looks at you, shaking her head fondly before turning back to the camera with a smile. She gives it a thumbs up. "The kiddo's back to sleep."

[robin-evry]

what if!!! hear me out 🙏🙏 yuu was a robot/miku inspired…IT SUCKS but like…miku kinda..yuu mikyuu…😓😓

Sure no worries, no judgement from me, ask and you shall receive

𝐖𝐇𝐀𝐓 𝐈𝐅 𝐘𝐔𝐔 𝐈𝐒 𝐀 𝐑𝐎𝐁𝐎𝐓 🤖👾🎤

A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. But they can act independently if their creators allow it.

( English is not my first language )

Day 3 : robot!yuu

In a world full of technology and robots. Robot!yuu was the number one idol during that time and was in the number one group of the century ; vocaloid, imagine during the middle of a performance one of their solo concerts, a black carriage arrived and they suddenly shut down.

They turned on when it was an orientation ceremony. Since robot!yuu isn't technically an organic being, they would be put between the ignihyde dorm or ramshackle.

After Crowley gave them a cellphone or asked idia if he could do maintenance to connect them to social media of twisted wonderland, by doing this they started to upload their albums towards the internet and it blew up, people are loving it, it's getting headlines about a new genre of music, and the music getting about stream by millions around the world, Robot!yuu created a genre of music. A revaluation towards the music Industry.

This managed robot!yuu to get rich overnight and allowed them to buy more expensive and to fix the ramshackle dorm more to get more expensive technology for their maintenance, Robot!yuu was planning on giving half of the money to Crowley as a thanks but he only received 1/4 half of the money.

Even tho robot! yuu is an idol, their master builds them with an offensive and defensive system, they have extremely tough metal that is hard to find as well an offensive mode, they have a lot on their arsenal attacks, energy beams, rocket launchers, shield mode, and more.

They are also able to connect to any device and hack it without any issue, they manage to hack ignihyde technology without an issue. And they are waterproof

Robot!yuu also can digest and drink things without an issue, they have a special component on their stomach to make sure they can digest things normally.

During VDC they dominated the competition. Lasers, mist appears and light sticks wave around for their presence. They change outfits depending on the song, it was literally a Miku concert.

Congratulations neige Leblanc is now one of their fans, when going down the stage, he literally ran towards you and started asking a billion of questions with stars amongst their eyes

Vil was a little sour but also amazed about robot!yuu performance, he would ask them for choreography and music ideas from them as well as fashion opinions. He originally wanted robot!yuu to transfer into ignihyde but they refused due to ignihyde has the complete equipment for them or ramshackle.

Pomifiore dorm started to take notes and tried robot!yuu fashion styles. Idia is also a supporter of them and basically a super fan, robot!yuu would come to ignihyde to help him with games or help him maintain ortho, Robot!yuu is basically a sister towards Idia and Ortho.

sorry if it's short, this is by far I could come up anon

[thefirstknife]

Got through all of the secrets for Vesper's Host and got all of the additional lore messages. I will transcribe them all because I don't know when they'll start getting uploaded and to get them all it requires doing some extra puzzles and at least 3-4 clears to get them all. I'll put them all under read more and label them by number.

Before I do that, just to make it clear there's not too much concrete lore; a lot about the dungeon still remains a mystery and most likely a tease for something in the future. Still unknown, but there's a lot that we don't know even with the messages so don't expect a massive reveal, but they do add a little bit of flavour and history about the station. There might be something more, but it's unknown: there's still one more secret triumph left. The messages are actually dialogues between the station AI and the Spider. Transcripts under read more:

First message:

Vesper Central: I suppose I have you to thank for bringing me out of standby, visitor. The Spider: I sent the Guardian out to save your station. So, what denomination does your thanks come in? Glimmer, herealways, information...? Vesper Central: Anomaly's powered down. That means I've already given you your survival. But... the message that went through wiped itself before my cache process could save a copy. And it's not the initial ping through the Anomaly I'm worried about. It's the response.

A message when you activate the second secret:

Vesper Central: Exterior scans rebooting... Is that a chunk of the Morning Star in my station's hull? With luck, you were on board at the time, Dr. Bray.

Second message:

Vesper Central: I'm guessing I've been in standby for a long time. Is Dr. Clovis Bray alive? The Spider: On my oath, I vow there's no mortal Human named Bray left alive. Vesper Central: I swore I'd outlive him. That I'd break the chains he laid on me. The Spider: Please, trust me for anything you need. The Guardian's a useful hand on the scene, but Spider's got the goods. Vesper Central: Vesper Station was Dr. Bray's lab, meant to house the experiments that might... interact poorly with other BrayTech work. Isolated and quarantined. From the debris field, I would guess the Morning Star taking a dive cracked that quarantine wide open.

A message when you activate the third secret:

Vesper Central: Sector seventeen powered down. Rerouting energy to core processing. Integrating archives.

Third message:

The Spider: Loading images of the station. That's not Eliksni engineering. [scoffs] A Dreg past their first molt has better cable management. Vesper Central: Dr. Bray intended to integrate his technology into a Vex Mind. He hypothesized the fusion would give him an interface he understood. A control panel on a programmable Vex mind. If the programming jumped species once... I need time to run through the data sets you powered back up. Reassembling corrupted archives takes a great deal of processing.

Text when you go back to the Spider the first time:

A message when you activate the fourth secret:

Vesper Central: Helios sector long-term research archives powered up. Activating search.

Fourth message:

Vesper Central: Dr. Bray's command keys have to be in here somewhere. Expanding research parameters... The Spider: My agents are turning up some interesting morself of data on their own. Why not give them access to your search function and collaborate? Vesper Central: Nobody is getting into my core programming. The Spider: Oh! Perish the thought! An innocent offer, my dear. Technology is a matter of faith to my people. And I'm the faithful sort.

Fifth message:

Vesper Central: Dr. Bray, I could kill you myself. This is why our work focused on the unbodied Mind. Dr. Bray thought there were types of Vex unseen on Europa. Powerful Vex he could learn from. The plan was that the Mind would build him a controlled window for observation. Tidy. Tight. Safe. He thought he could control a Vex mind so perfectly it would do everything he wanted. The Spider: Like an AI of his own creation. Like you. Vesper Central: Turns out you can't control everything forever.

Sixth message:

Vesper Central: There's a block keeping me from the inner partitions. I barely have authority to see the partitions exist. In standby, I couldn't have done more than run automated threat assessments... with flawed data. No way to know how many injuries and deaths I could have prevented, with core access. Enough. A dead man won't keep me from protecting what's mine.

Text when you return to the Spider at the end of the quest:

The situation for the dungeon triumphs when you complete the mesages. "Buried Secrets" completed triumph is the six messages. This one is left; unclear how to complete it yet and if it gives any lore or if it's just a gameplay thing and one secret triumph remaining (possibly something to do with a quest for the exotic catalyst, unclear if there will be lore):

The Spider is being his absolutely horrendous self and trying to somehow acquire the station and its remains (and its AI) for himself, all the while lying and scheming. The usual. The AI is incredibly upset with Clovis (shocker); there's the following line just before starting the second encounter:

She also details what he was doing on the station; apparently attempting to control a Vex mind and trying to use it as some sort of "observation deck" to study the Vex and uncover their secrets. Possibly something more? There's really no Vex on the station, besides dead empty frames in boxes. There's also 2 Vex cubes in containters in the transition section, one of which was shown broken as if the cube, presumably, escaped. It's entirely unclear how the Vex play into the story of the station besides this.

The portal (?) doesn't have many similarities with Vex portals, nor are the Vex there to defend it or interact with it in any way. The architecture is ... somewhat similar, but not fully. The portal (?) was built by the "Puppeteer" aka "Atraks" who is actually some sort of an Eliksni Hive mind. "Atraks" got onto the station and essentially haunted it before picking off scavenging Eliksni one by one and integrating them into herself. She then built the "anomaly" and sent a message into it. The message was not recorded, as per the station AI, and the destination of the message was labelled "incomprehensible." The orange energy we see coming from it is apparently Arc, but with a wrong colour. Unclear why.

I don't think the Vex have anything to do with the portal (?), at least not directly. "Atraks" may have built something related to the Vex or using the available Vex tech at the station, but it does not seem to be directed by the Vex and they're not there and there's no sign of them otherwise. The anomaly was also built recently, it's not been there since the Golden Age or something. Whatever it is, "Atraks" seemed to have been somehow compelled and was seen standing in front of it at the end. Some people think she was "worshipping it." It's possible but it's also possible she was just sending that message. Where and to whom? Nobody knows yet.

Weird shenanigans are afoot. Really interested to see if there's more lore in the station once people figure out how to do these puzzles and uncover them, and also when (if) this will become relevant. It has a really big "future content" feel to it.

Also I need Vesper to meet Failsafe RIGHT NOW and then they should be in yuri together.

[shallyouobeyme]

Spider

Miles Morales, Hobie, Pavitr, Gwen + (mentioned) Platonic!Yandere!Miguel x child!reader (GN)

Summary: Deciding to cause some Mayhem, Hobie, Miles, Gwen and Pavitr go looking through Miguel's office in his absence, only that what they find there, isn't quite what any of them expected. Who'd have thought Miguel was the type to have a secret Apartment...only that that might not be the worst thing in there...

TW: Kidnapping, dark!content, yandere, threat of violence (not towards reader), MDNI, I do not condone this behaviour, this is just fiction

Day 2 of my Yandere Writetober

After Miles' official introduction into the Spidersociety, he’d loved spending his time there. Not only because he’d be able to hang out with Gwen, Hobie and Pavitr, but also because he felt like part of something bigger. He’d made up an after-school club to his parents and had somehow managed to keep the lie up to this day, which took a lot of studying and doing his best to actually attend class to make his parents trust him.

One afternoon the four spiders were hanging out when Hobie suggested doing something less boring, like breaking into Miguel’s office and checking out his hologram Programm. And while Miles and the others knew that there were some serious consequences if they’d get caught, the energy Hobie had was infectious and they soon found themselves sneaking through his door after making double-sure that Miguel and Jessica were on a mission.

The thrill of sneaking through his office, using his floating platform and the holographic floor to show each other nice or funny memories from their respective universes was just the thing four teenagers needed to have the time of their life’s.

About half an hour had passed and they were strewn around the room looking around. Hobie was probably dismembering and taking components from the different machinery, Gwen was trying to use the holographic floor to look at some classic concerts and Pavitr was playing around with the floating platform. Miles had taken to exploring the shelf’s in one of the corners of the room. Usually the room was so dark that you’d hardly be able to see them which is why

Miles had to use his phone's flashlight to see around. The shelves were filled with some gizmos and gadgets, some files strewn around, some boxes and blueprints. Nothing of particular interest to Miles, or at least nothing until his light hit a picture frame standing about where Miguel's eyes would be level with it.

Given that Miles was not quite as tall as Miguel, he had to rise to his tiptoes to even get an idea of what it depicted, he thought he recognized the image from the video Miguel had showed him when telling him about the dangers of ignoring canon events. It was a picture of his late daughter.

Miles had to swallow hard. He tended to forget what hardship Miguel went through because of how much of a douche he was to him. Something in Miles compelled him to take a closer look at the picture so he reached out to it and tried to take it, but instead of coming down from the shelf, he was only able to pull it slightly into his direction. Then there was a quiet but noticeable ‘click’ before the shelf with the picture on it opened a gap.

"Guys? Uhm, there’s something over here,” Miles called out to his friends who all ran over to him.

“What’s up?” Pavitr asked as he looked around, without seeing anything.

“Well, I think this shelf- let me just-“ he stuttered as he took a hold of the side of the shelf where the gap had opened and pulled.

“Whoa, a secret room? Cool,” Gwen mumbled in awe and slight confusion.

“I knew that bloke had somethin’ to hide, he ain’t right kosher, y’know,” Hobie shrugged and was the first to take off into the secret passage, the other three hot on his heels.

Miles wasn’t sure what he had expected to hide in the secret room, but he was sure it had been anything but what they found there.

Behind the shelf was what seemed to be a full apartment, with a nice open concept as Pavitr noted offhandedly, which in itself wasn’t so strange, after alle, maybe Miguel just liked his privacy.

Or at least that was what the four would have thought if it wasn’t for the plushies, toys, coloring books and other children’s stuff strewn throughout the different sections of the big room.

“Maybe Miggy over here is a bit more kinky then we gave ‘im credit for,” Hobie joked as he picked up a princess coloring book from the kitchen table and leafed through it.

“I don’t know, something about this seems weird, right guys?” Gwen looked around and received nods from Miles and Pavitr, “Maybe we should leave…”

Miles wanted to agree, wanted to get out of there and act like they’d never been there, but his stupid spider-senses had to start going off the charts right that second as he heard something from behind one of the three doors leading out of the room, the only door with more locks on it then on an average New Yorker apartment door.

“You guys feeling that?” Pavitr asked, confirming Miles’ fear that he wasn’t the only one whose senses were acting up.

Not bothering to answer, Hobie and Gwen were the first ones to go towards the door, quickly followed by the other two.

Hobie had already taken hold of the door on both sides ready to take it off its hinges when Gwen stopped him.

“If we break it, there’s no denying what we did anymore, maybe we should try this differently. These locks seemed to be electric, maybe we could overload them to reset them or something.”

Miles quickly realized that with ‘we�� Gwen meant him so he pushed himself to the front and got ready to electrify the locks.

A few seconds later there was a shrill beep and a click and with high anticipation, Miles took hold of the door handle and… It opened without problem.

With bated breath, he opened the door.

“Daddy?” a soft, quiet voice, doubtlessly that of a child, called out to them and all of them stood there like frozen as they stared towards the small kid sitting on a fuzzy blue rug surrounded by dolls and plushies. The child tilted their head, looking at them in confusion.

“Hi, are you friends with Daddy?” they asked, but none of them were in the mental state to answer them, all too shocked.

Suddenly a voice called out from speakers somewhere in the room.

“Y/N go into your room immediately please,” a voice - all of them recognized it as Lydia’s - said and after a slightly disappointed ‘okay Aunt Lyd’ from the child they left through a sliding door in the wall opposite of the four spiders which immediately closed (and probably locked) after them.

“Miguel has been informed of your intrusion, I’d advise you to take your leave immediately, and if you enjoy your heart beating I’d tell you not to mutter a word of this to anyone, now leave.”

With a heavy heart and many questions the four ran out of the secret apartment, making sure to close the shelf after them, before they disbanded and returned to their original universes. All of them couldn’t get the child out of their head, but especially Miles couldn’t help but feel he’d seen them before.

Only when he was lying in bed that evening mulling over the events of that day again did he remember.

Months ago his father had taken one of his files home with him, a missing persons report, a little child had disappeared right out of their childhood bedroom without any hint as to what or who had taken them.

In the upper corner of the report was a picture of a smiling toddler with an white area below where their name was…Y/N.

[neressma]

Danganronpa and the Paranormal

Danganronpa is extravagant, from it's deliciously unhinged plot to it's refreshing psycho-pop aesthetic. Ontop of all this, the series contains some paranormal elements, which some players tend to forget about. In this post, I'll go through every instance of paranormal happenings in the series; this includes the first two games¹, the spin-offs and novels.

I hope you'll enjoy it!

Spirits

Ghosts are a surprisingly reoccurrent theme in Danganronpa games. The most flagrant example is the revenant Komaru and Toko encounter in Ultra Despair girls: none other than Tokuichi Towa, the late father of Haiji and Monaca Towa. He appears and speaks to the girls, even revealing he has the ability to curse (though he refuses to do so, considering the act "lowly"). His death was caused by his own daughter, who ordered Monokumas to slash his throat after the man betrayed Junko. Tokuichi's soul is stuck in a tormentuous purgatory at the hands of Monaca, and thus, he begs the protagonists to stop the child (a feat which would probably lead to his soul being freed and moving on to the afterlife).

One might think this is the only case of revenants appearing in Danganronpa, but the first game might contain some as well. When considering that spirits hold the power of possession, it becomes clear that Chihiro Fujisaki and Kiyotaka Ishimaru might be victims of possession themselves. Regarding Chihiro, it's rather curious how his Alter Ego program emulates human-like behaviours and emotions. While this might simply be due to Chihiro's talent as the ultimate programmer, it is possible that a part of his spirit went on to possess his program, albeit in a subtle, barely conscious manner. Much less subtle and dubitable is the possession of Kiyotaka Ishimaru, who is overtaken by the ghost of Mondo Owada after the latter's execution. Taka reacts to his best friend's death by becoming deeply traumatized and entering a near-catatonic state, rendering his spirit feeble. Shortly after, he becomes white-haired, and exhudes a powerful, radiant energy in the form of a glowing aura. His behaviour, mood and even speech patterns begin to ressemble Mondo's. Note however that it stays at that - a ressemblance. The ultimate moral compass keeps a certain amount of restraint, by not daring to actually curse for example. One could blame this on a form of psychosis, or - the more likely option, ironically - possession. The following official artwork suggests as much.

One could argue that Hajime undergoes a comparable process at the end of the second game, when his spirit rejects that of Izuru Kamakura's, though this instance seems to be rather similar to an anime trope than something meant to be paranormal.

There's also a haunted grave at the Jabberwock Hospital in SDR2. However, since the island is apart of a simulation, it's likely that this is simply an addition of the Junko virus rather than a recreation of any "real" Jabberwock Island element.

Superstition

There are two types of superstitious forces in Danganronpa, the first being luck. As simple as it may be, it's a talent that proved itself to be a true function in the DR-verse. Makoto and Nagito both manage to use this "power" (though when it comes to Nagito, this tends to backfire at times). Both young men manage to have events unveil in their favor through the power of luck, despite not having any direct control over the talent. It's also known that Hope's Peak Academy's steering commitee even attempts to harvest this power through the Izuru Kamakura Project, in spite of scepticism surrounding the existence of luck. Regardless of such subjective opinions however, luck is undeniably real in the DR-verse.

Another superstition that's mostly present in the first game is clairvoyance. Yasuhiro Hagakure, the ultimate clairvoyant, is said to have a 30% success rate on his predictions. One turn out to be accurate (the first being about how Kiyotaka and Hifumi are the last victims of their killing game²) and the second is correct depending on the player's performance. In fact, if they fail at the last trial, they get the bad ending, which is a perfect display of a fate Hagakure predicted: him and Makoto fathering the children of the same woman (Aoi). Hiro's character is often portrayed as that of a shady con-man; these two true predictions however hint at the possibility of his powers being real.

Aliens

Not only is Yasuhiro Hagakure gifted with clairvoyance, he also had an encounter with an U.F.O. This U.F.O. (likely a flying saucer according to the artwork) flew to him one night, locked onto the hamburger he was eating with a ray of light, and then absorbed part of it before flying away. According to Hiro, whoever piloted the flying saucer wanted the beef from the burger (which aligns with the well-known trope of aliens stealing cows from fields). The scene is very much out-of-place and it's veracity is unconfirmed. It isn't the first or last time aliens appear in Danganronpa's universe.

Back in Kirigirisou, a parallel ending introduces the player to Rhinogradentias. Those aliens also appear in the third Togami novel³. They come in different shades of brown, with various specimens possessing diverse features; some have tentacles, others have hands, etc. These creatures are based off rhinogrades, or snouters, which are actual real-life mammals known for the fact that they "walk" on their long snouts. The Rhinogradentia are introduced in Kirigirisou as "super galaxy level invaders". They wish to take over planet Earth and get rid of of humans, which they deem too destructive and polluting. However, their limited intellect restricts them. Like the aliens Yasuhiro saw, they fly in U.F.O.s. The third volume of the Togami novel hints at their existence being purely theoretical, without any further confirmation.

Lastly, there is a group of aliens at the Jabberwock Hospital in SDR2, though this once again seems to be a gag set up by AI-Junko rather than any recreations from the real Jabberwock Island. They return in Danganronpa: Ultimate Summer Camp, once again as an easter-egg. The meaning of this scene, of these aliens standing next to an operating table, is very enigmatic.⁴

Notes:

Gundham Tanaka and his antics aren't included in this post, as he doesn't really have magic powers, but instead has Chūnibyō syndrome.

¹ I deliberately left out Killing Harmony, as it's parallel canon, and ontop of that it's events are confirmed to be in-game fiction. Hence, the paranormal events of V3 qualify as inauthentic.

² This first prediction concerns the 4th chapter. 4 is the number of death and bad luck in japanese numerology, fitting for the chapter with the most victims.

³ Kirigirisou's alternate endings are parallel canon. As for the Togami novels, whether or not they're canon is unconfirmed to this day.

⁴ I like to think there is some sort of hidden symbolism behind those aliens. In my opinion, it's related to Kamakura. There are 4 people in Monokuma masks, so perhaps they symbolize the steering commitee? I'm not sure what the aliens symbolize though. I like to think AI-Junko included the easter-egg as a nod to Hajime and his transformation.

[cosmerelists]

If Cosmere Characters Had Real-World Jobs (But Not The Obvious Ones)

In this list, I wanted to try to give Cosmere characters jobs in our world while avoiding the jobs that would be the most obvious picks--like, for example, the real world equivalent of whatever their canon job is.

1. Kaladin: Professional Football Player

It's a dangerous job that Kaladin's dad would scoff at, but the other kids in town think it's really cool and also the recruiters are coming through town and, I mean, he's really good at football.

2. Lirin: Public Defender

If we avoid the obvious job (doctor), then Lirin still needs a job where he is doing good, but it's pretty thankless and the general public are suspicious and think he might actually be evil somehow. So I figure: public defender. He's highly educated, helping people who need it, and just getting nothing but grief as a result. Worst of all, his smart son wants to be a FOOTBALL player!

3. Marsh: Masseuse

I feel like people who are good at hemalurgy know about the body and its pressure points and things like that. And frankly, "acupuncturist" felt too on the nose.

4. Shallan: Park Ranger

Shallan HATES to be confined, so no way she's going into an office job. Plus, she likes nature and animals, but I'm trying to avoid the more obvious jobs (like botanist or ecologist). It's just too bad that Shallan is SO bad at staring a campfire, though.

5. Navani: Wedding Planner

Navani is VERY good at managing people and events, as seen when she had to manage everything while Gavilar was off plotting. She's also very organized and literally invented wristwatches. So I think she's be very good at this job.

6. Elend: Grad Student

This one may be too obvious, but I figure something like "politician" or "philosopher" are more obvious. But to me, Elend has major grad student energy.

7. Nale: Insurance Adjuster

Nale is a cop, of course, through and through. But if he wasn't a cop, then he'd need some other job where he uses the rules to screw people over. So I see him as, like, an evil insurance guy who's denying people medical coverage because the company wants him to.

8. Blackthorn-Era Dalinar: Debt Collector

If flashback Dalinar couldn't make a living mowing people down in battle and had to find a less obvious job, then I could see him being the guy to hunt down people and demand money they don't have. He doesn't really care about the money. He just likes the hunt.

9. Adolin: eSports Player

It's a job where you can head-to-head battle people and your dad is vaguely puzzled and thinks you should be doing something more important with your life.

10. Lightsong: Customer Service Agent

In canon, Lightsong's job is to face down a huge line of people and tell them "no" in response to them asking for something they want. So, I mean, I feel like that's equivalent to one of those shitty customer service jobs where you're not really allowed to help people (until, of course, Lightsong goes rogue and does start helping people, but that's another story...)

11. Stormfather: Bus Driver

He has his route, and he's not deviating from it. And if you miss the bus, he's not stopping. He's not going back. You can try to run, but you will not catch up to him.

12. Tress: Mechanic

As a Sprouter, Tress had to figure out how each of the spores worked and how to use them. I just feel like she'd be good at diagnosing issues in machinery and then fixing them.

13. Steris: Programmer

She's precise, she's smart, she likes rules. I think coding would suit her.

14. Yumi: Waitress

She could stack the plates SO high.

15. Marasi: Investigative Reporter

Which, honestly, is what I wish she had been rather than being a cop like in canon. I think it would suit her! She'd get to research, investigate, find the truth...

16. Kelsier: Motivational Speaker

He tells you about the power of smiling no matter what, so that you are never defeated. He tells you to carry something small, some memento or photo, to help you find your motivation. You tells you that no goal is out of reach--you just have to find the right people and the right steps to move forward. And he tells you that the most important thing is to survive.

[corvin-ito]

okay btw one of my wreck-it ralph movie universe headcanons is that theres bosses in heros duty, which are the various soldiers getting turned into cy-bugs.

now, i imagine that the programmers of the game had to implement code to delete the "becoming a cy-bug and dying" part of the characters memory because before doing that the characters would Stop Showing Up in the bossfights for Some Reason (the characters chose not to show up. but. the devs dont know theyre sentient.)

which this is a good enough band-aid solution! especially for personal ports of the game where like the characters will only sometimes experience the boss fights, and no little errors in their code can crop up. especially very little issues for physical copies of the game (unless the disk scratches or somthin)

but in an arcade enviroment? where hundreds of kids are playing daily? and where the hero's duty and other arcade game characters can interact? the tiniest imperfection- the tiniest memory leak (a litteral one in this case) can be fucking devestating.

thats what i think happened to markowski. i think he had a tiny imperfection in his code where ! oops ! he doesnt forget being turned into a cy-bug! and i also think markowski would be the first boss in heros duty. so like. in One Week of bein g plugged in he's been turned into a bug over and over and killed over and over (either from the player's gun or the big ol bug zapper lazer) and no one fucking believes him because THEIR MEMORY GETS ERASED EVERY TIME.

i think that, in other arcades in the WIR universe, arcades where there was never a Turbo incident, Hero's Duty would be a problem game of apocalyptic proportions. like. One Guy doesnt show up for a quarter alert because hes sick of becoming a bug and it kinda fucks up the game a little. And like, theres a significant risk of a Cy-bug breaking out and getting into another machine.

arcades with copies of heros duty end up having to replace some of their games because of "dead pixels" (cy-bug swarms rendering as just green blurs) or "missing assets" (cy-bugs destroying everything in sight) or the entire machine just. breaking. the outlet it was in exploding (in cases where the hero's duty characters notice a cy-bug escape and manage to quarintine it in one of the games it fled to. rare "good" ending where they evacuate the characters and blow up the exit before the cy-bugs infect another game)

some arcades just straight up go out of buisness because cy-bugs have taken over all of the games. they just cant be stopped if there's no beacon. and most games wouldnt have one! sugar rush was really lucky that diet cola mountain was there and the devs didnt think it a waste of gigabytes and cut it. real "we put this tomato out of bounds because if we deleted it the game broke" energy.

and nobody outside of the game world would know whats Really happening.

Litwak's Arcade, though? there's probably a therapy group that gets started for game characters. one similar to bad anon but maybe one thats a seperate branch for hero characters, especially fighter / shooter / general violent video game characters. like bad anon and similar groups would have been started because of Turbo and these groups were essentially formed to stop other characters from doing something so drastic. so litwak's arcade ends up being one of the few arcades with a still functional cabinet of Hero's Duty.

also i think that in a "turbo/king candy coded himself so deeply into sugar rush that he respawns" AU he would remember being a cy-bug and it would be. just. the worst fucking thing to have experienced! not only would he remember being eaten he would remember being burned to death by boiling hot soda! cause hes not programmed to deal with that. any character not from hero's duty would not be programmed to forget what being a cy-bug was like and it would be traumatic as hell. because i do think it fucks with your brain as well. i dont think all of cy-bug candy's behaviour was himself, i think a lot of that was the cy-bug just basically being given voice. i think the bug moreso took on some of king candy/turbos personaly rather than turbo taking over the bug.

characters who die after being eaten by a cy-bug will respawn like normal if they're in their correct game though. so if a cy-bug invasion happened but the bugs were exterminated, the characters would be fine. plus games have a world reset condition so damage can likely be repaired (like how for sugar rush the world reset condition was vanellope crossing the finish line.)

it would have lasting effects for sure. probably different ones depending on the individual. i think turbo specifically would end up with an "i need to BITE everyone" kind of lasting effect 100%

im putting this note at the end but i think the final boss of hero's duty would be seargent calhoun. i think she would get eaten by the cybug queen after all the other soldiers are gone and then she herself goes down. i also think tthat in the 1 week of hero's duty being plugged in at litwak's in the movie no one has actually gotten to the final boss yet (difficult game yknow!!) so its not really known if calhoun would experience a memory leak issue or not.

the second wreck it ralph movie isnt real it aint happened (/silly, joke) so if it condradicts anything i ever say. no it doesnt actually. i make the rules.

[gallusrostromegalus]

So for AEIWAM, how does the whole Ukitake thing work? I’m still fuzzy on how it was in the manga (and that’s not even touching the ‘epilogue’/Echoing the Jaws of Hell why are these arc names like this) but wasn’t he essentially reverse faith healed-slash-possessed for death? I see you keep mentioning gods so like- what does that whole situation make him?

I need you to imagine a Self-Propogating Cryptocurrency Mining Computer. Whenever it's hardware starts to burn out, it creates a little man to build it a new machine and port it's memory over, keeping the machine alive and solving equations.

In An Elephant Is Warm And Mushy, that's God.

I may need to back up.

If you're not familiar with how Cryptocurrency Mining works, essentially, a computer thinks very, very hard about how to solve an extremely complicated equation, and when it solves it, it gets a little bit of money (or it gets a receipt saying that it has money that uh. nobody will accept, because the money aspect is a scam but the math, at least is real).

Anyway, thinking very, very hard like that runs through the computer's hardware- it's especially hard on the graphics cards. So eventually, if it want to keep solving equations, it needs new hardware. But a computer can't replace it's own parts, and this Ultra-complex, reality-generating God-computer is no different.

So when it starts to get old and degraded, the God-Computer does a neat little trick: it builds itself a programmer. That programmer learns all about the God Machine and how it works and the way it's powered- it moves souls through three planes of existence- each enormously complicated question is representative of the shape of a lifetime- each time a soul completes it's life and is reborn, the God Computer gets a little burst of extra energy. The larger and more complex the soul and longer and richer lifetime, the more energy the God Computer gets. So for the last millions of years, many, many generations of God-computer have made the universe richer and more complicated to generate larger and more complex souls to power themself (themselves?) further.

The programmer learns all about how the God-Computer works, and sets about building the next Generation of God-Computer to keep the universe running.

Due to a slight miscommunication, the programmer is colloquially known as the "Soul King" this time around.

Anyway, the Soul King was doin' his thing, when he happened to start chatting with a cool guy online and agreed to meet up with him. And it was fun! They hung out, Soul King showed him the true nature of reality, they stayed up late eating junk food and talking bullshit, good times. Later, The Soul King's cool friend from the internet said he had some other friends who wanted to meet him, and Soul king thought "BALLER. SLUMBER PARTY!!!" and told everyone to come on over!

-and then the new guys beat the shit out of Soul King's buddy and dismembered the Soul King for parts to sell as part of an organ-harvesting scheme!

Whoops.

Now, Soul King's buddy DID manage to get up and stop one of the organ thieves, the guy absconding with his hands, and tackled him off the Balcony. One of the psuedo-god hands (the one with the power of stagnation) fell into the Spirit World,took the name "Mimihagi" and became a minor kami because he's really bad at this Witness Protection thing.

Eventually, some parents with an extremely sick kid came to the hand's shrine and asked him to save the kid, and Mimihagi went "Well, I can't cure him, but I can hang out in his body for the next few centuries and prevent his disease from getting worse with constant effort?" and they said "...Please?" and Mimihagi said "Yeah OK.

-And ever since then Ukitake has had the left hand of The God Machine's dead repairman living in him and (mostly) stopping his super-tuberculosis from getting worse, like a benevolent tapeworm!

:)

The God-Machine is still dying this whole time, BTW. Might want to do something about that.

(the best part is, that of the three-to-five-and-a-half living pieces of the Soul King, Mimihagi is actually probably the least weird and definitely sanest of them)

[doveshovel]

The SSO mech AU is heavily eva, paci-rim and ac6 inspired but. random au lore stuff I think about sometimes below :)

KEEPRS is this universe's specialized defense organization, based in Jorvik, whose purpose is to protect the world in the event of Garnok's revival (NERV style)

Dark Core is a private mercenary company, in partnership with GED (a mech engine/generator manufacturing company with a monopoly on energy systems worldwide).

Pilots are chosen through a scouting/testing process. If they pass, they undergo rigorous mental and physical training. A neural connection puts a great deal of strain on the pilot's mind and body, and they must be able to withstand it. KEEPRS has a lower turnover rate, as their training methods are slower, but have fewer immediate health risks. Dark Core has a very high turnover rate, relying mainly on a few gifted pilots with a natural aptitude that can be trained and mobilized as quickly as possible. Those who fail are disposed of. They pay exponentially better, but are a very dangerous employer.

AIDEEN is a KEEPRS system designed to support pilots, connected directly to their brain and nervous system. Her primary functions are to monitor vitals, manage life support systems, and provide guidance. Each pilot's AIDEEN is slightly different, tailored to create as much cohesion as possible between pilot and mech. Different companies have their own variants with different names for a system with similar functions. Hunter's AIDEEN is malfunctioning, and has gained sentience. With a will of her own, she's capable of breaking artificial limits set by her programmers, but keeps her pilot's actions in line with her own interests.

Kembell and Drake are both handlers for GED/DC mercenaries. Similarly, Elizabeth and Rhiannon are KEEPRS main handlers.

The Bobcats and Bulldogz teams are both participants in professional level mech-fighting coliseum tournaments.

[askzloyxp]

how do you find and keep motivation to create in the *gestures broadly*? genuinely need some help now, three gift fics won't write themselves

Well, first and foremost I have to tell you, that 3 whole gift fics is a whole lot of writing and I admire your committment! Hope you can make it and I'm sure your friends will appreciate their presents!

As for your question, I hate to admit it, but through my depressoin over the past two years, the primary two driving forces behind anything I do have been pretty much just sheer raging spite and the kinda "this would be insanely cool if I did this" factor.

There's no response I really have to the current geopolitical mess other than "I won't let this f***ng stop me", and though it feels really wrong to draw energy from anger in creative endevours, it gets me to my desk and opening the programms. From there just the joy of making something awesome takes over.

I do hope this helps: art is amazing, and no one but you can make this particular art. And it would be insanely cool if despite the absolute STATE you are in, you still went and made it. Like, don't martyr yourself over it: take your meds, eat your snacks, get all the rest you can and manage your resources. But also it would be really cool to write those three gift fics. The world is terrible right now. What we do makes it just a tiny bit better.

[gallifreyinstituteforlearning]

Hello,

I am the Timelord currently responsible for the human who wanted to clone themselves.

I only noticed what was happening after the 54th clone. That alone is already a ridiculous amount, so you will understand my appall after discovering from the chronology of this exchange that your "humanon" wasn't even halfway done. Do you have the slightest idea of how difficult it is to deal with clones? A whole 54 of them?

Of course you don't, you must be no more than 30 years fresh from the Academy.

Frankly, I expected more from a trustworthy channel like yours than humoring an idiotic question such as "how many humans to overcome a Timelord". Surely you must have seen where it would lead, given the level of naivety displayed by your interlocutor and the instrumentation they had access to? Were you perhaps curious to see how much damage a human in a TARDIS could do?

Well, I invite you to satiate that curiosity with your own companion, in your own ship, provided you even have either.

Dear Esteemed Time Lord,

We sincerely hope this message finds you in good health and minimal temporal disarray. While we understand and sympathise with your situation, please allow us to point out some details you may have missed.

How Did 54 Clones Escape Your Notice?

One cannot help but wonder how a Time Lord of your esteem managed to overlook the creation of 54 clones. Surely, the repeated usage of advanced cloning technology with frequent energy drains and the sudden multiplication of your human companion might have warranted at least a casual glance away from your VDU? Given your unparalleled intellect and finely honed observational skills, it is indeed a mystery.

Access to Advanced Technology

Your human's free access to such sophisticated technology raises further questions. How did they acquire it, and what supervision did you offer? Might we suggest a review of your security protocols, as it appears that humans' boundless curiosity, combined with the free availability of your advanced instruments may have caused this.

Hypotheticals and Theoreticals

The Gallifrey Institute for Learning frequently explores hypotheticals and theories, providing a fertile ground for intellectual exploration and academic debate. However, we cannot be held accountable for the literal and misguided application of these thought experiments by any Time Lord or their companions.

Our Disclaimer

We must refer you to our standard disclaimer:

The information provided by the Gallifrey Institute for Learning is intended for educational purposes only. We do not accept any responsibility for information from the programmes being used to harm or harass any Gallifreyans, no matter how irritating or destructive they might be.

We trust this clarifies our position and sincerely hope that your cloning dilemma is resolved. Perhaps consider creating a small 5-a-side football league?

Hope that helped! 😃

Any purple text is educated guesswork or theoretical. More content ... →📫Got a question? | 📚Complete list of Q+A and factoids →😆Jokes |🩻Biology |🗨️Language |🕰️Throwbacks |🤓Facts →🫀Gallifreyan Anatomy and Physiology Guide (pending) →⚕️Gallifreyan Emergency Medicine Guides →📝Source list (WIP) →📜Masterpost If you're finding your happy place in this part of the internet, feel free to buy a coffee to help keep our exhausted human conscious. She works full-time in medicine and is so very tired 😴

[yuzurujenn]

[2023.11.11] AERA Special Edition - 100 Q&A with Yuzuru Hanyu

1. What time do you wake up in the morning?

This morning? 12:30pm.

2. Is it always like that?

It’s usually around 6pm.

3. The first words uttered when you wake up in the morning. Is it “sleepy”?

“Sleepy” maybe.

4. The first thing you do when you wake up in the morning.

Put away the futon.

5. The last thing you ate.

Tofu! It was a cold one.

6. The ideal way to spend your holidays.

Wake up, play games, and sleep (laughs). Then, um, wake up again, eat when I’m hungry, lie down and go back to sleep again.

7. The ideal breakfast.

I wonder.. break and milk.

8. What kind of dinner makes you excited?

Gyoza!

9. What do you keep in mind to manage your physical condition?

I keep additives at a minimum. It’s hard to avoid them, but I’m trying to reduce it.

10. How do you spend your time on the shinkansen? Check SNS? Sleep?

Either.

11. A dream you had recently.

It’s a scary one, I had a dream of jumping into the lake.

12. Why the lake?

I was being chased by some scary people, their faces were covered in mosaics. Felt like these people were trying to kill me, so I jumped into a lake.

13. What would you end up buying at the convenience store?

Pudding.

14. What kind of pudding you prefer? Firm or soft?

Firm.

15. Favourite app.

App. I wonder what it is, Pass! I can’t say (laughs).

16. Do you drink alcohol?

I can’t drink alcohol. Allergy.

17. What do you want to be if you are reborn?

Human! Preferably myself.

18. Sweet things, spicy things, bitter things, and sour things. Which do you like?

I guess something sweet.

19. When you’re feeling down, what do you do?

Just dance according to the music.

20. Mountain or sea, which do you prefer?

Mountain!

21. If you could shout something from the top of the mountain?

“Yay!” Or something? Hahaha.

22. Who do you talk to when you are feeling troubled?

Myself. Or listen to music.

23. Favourite time of the day.

5 or 6 o’clock in the morning.

24. Why that time of the day?

It depends on the seasons, but the sun will rise around this time. On cloudy days, although the sun will rise, it will be a bit dim. But it’s not a sinking feeling since it’s sunrise, I like that kind of gloomy morning.

25. Frequently used emoji.

What is it? Cry 😭! (Use both hands to express). I use this a lot.

26. Favourite animal.

Cat!

27. If you were to get a cat, what name would you give it?

Milk. Because what comes to mind right now is a white cat.

28. Yuzuru Hanyu expressed in one kanji character.

Well, this is a difficult question. I’ll leave this for later!

29. What do you do to boost your spirit?

Take caffeine.

30. How do you take it?

I will drink something, like energy drink.

31. A habit you want to fix.

Staying up late.

32. What’s a word you always end up saying?

Sou desu ne (Indeed/I See).

33. Do you believe in fortune telling?

I do. Hehe.

34. A place you would like to go.

Ise Jingu and Izumo Taisha.

35. Have you been there before?

I went to Ise Jingu once on my way home from an ice show. It was amazing, I felt a lot of energy and power there. I'd like to go there again.

36. Favourite place?

Sendai.

37. What’s good about Sendai?

It’s a place where the city and forest can co-exist.

38. Speaking of Sendai?

Zunda!

39. What would you do if you had a different job for just one day?

Occupation? One day only. Um, programmer!

40. Do you have any programming experience?

I took programming classes when I was in college, and I’ve been doing it a little bit since. I think it would be fun to do something like that.

41. If you have 10 minutes free time?

Play game!

42. What game?

Now I’m playing “Fire Emblem”.

43. The best movie you’ve seen.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time.

44. Something that makes you think “This is just impossible”.

Bell pepper.

45. An episode with bell pepper.

During the ice show the other day the hotel caterer served us curry. Before the actual performance, I can’t eat curry at all because it’s a bit heavy for me. However, I thought I might be able to eat it before rehearsal the night before, so I went to eat it and found that it had bell pepper in it. I was in shock, I couldn’t recover from it. Even though it’s curry, it had bell pepper in it! There were only red and yellow bell peppers (laughs).

46. Do you prefer to eat your favourite food first, or last?

Divide it, and eat it the first and the last.

47. Your favourite dagashi (penny candy).

Um, gummies. Are gummies dagashi? Not sure?

48. Would you put them as dagashi?

And then, there’s that soda candy. Big one. Tastes like cola. Sometimes with gum in them. I like that.

49. Something that surprised you recently.

Nothing much. However, that dream surprised me though, I was thinking “I’m going to be killed” (laughs)

50. Is there anything surprised you in real life?

Ah yes, bugs! Just at the entrance of my house, there was a relatively rare scarab called the Polyphylla albolineata (Motschulsky). I poked it with my hand to see what it was, and it made a loud sound, which shocked me (laughs). First time seeing that kind of bug.

51. Favourite scent?

I like chamomile and jasmine.

52. Favourite bento side dish?

Karaage (fried chicken).

53. Favourite tea?

Early grey.

54. Favourite ingredient in miso soup?

Tofu.

55. Favourite onigiri filling?

Now I like kombu!

56. Favourite sandwich filling?

Tomatoes.

57. Favourite meat?

Pork belly!

58. Favourite drink?

Dr. Pepper.

59. Favourite colour?

It depends on the time and occasion, but right now it’s yellow-green.

60. Favourite manga?

What manga would I recommend. There are quite a few, but hmm, I wonder what is it now. Tokyo Ghoul, I guess.

61. Favourite flower?

I wonder... Hydrangea!

62. Artists you’re interested in recently?

I'm feeling troubled. I don’t want to say who is popular (laughs), but ah, what should I do. Mrs. GREEN APPLE!

63. Your favourite toy as a child?

Jungle gym.

64. Do you like being at the top?

I like the top. I think I fell down once when I was a kid though.

65. Were you okay?

It’s a small jungle gym for home use. I seemed to have hit somewhere. Hit the forehead.

66. Recommended Youtube channel?

“HANYU YUZURU” hahaha.

67. Important words?

Daijoubu (It’s okay).

68. The moment you felt glad that you were skating?

Probably when I could move as my heart dictates.

69. If you could only bring one thing with you to an uninhabited island?

Knife? As long as you have a knife, you can always find a way.

70. If you can take a week off starting tomorrow?

Play games!

71. If tomorrow is the end of the world, what would you want to eat?

Gyoza. It’s all about gyoza (laughs).

72. What would you buy as a gift for yourself?

Earphone.

73. Describe your personality in one word.

Well, weird. Hahaha.

74. Why do you feel you are like a weird person?

I didn’t feel like I was weird at all originally, but recently I took on a lot of various jobs, and when I was being interviewed, I thought, “I’m such a weirdo”.

75. What was the moment that you felt that being weird is good too?

Because I am weird, I think about many different things and observe and make progress from a different perspective than others. Based on this, I don’t think it is a derogatory term, but after all I was a bit shocked to realise I am different from others (laughs).

76. Favourite number.

1.

77. Favourite novel.

キマイラ (Kimaira). I don’t reach much novels, but I’ve read quite a lot of the Kimaira series.

78. How big is the largest Pooh that you own?

(Opening his arms) About this big? It should be this big. Is it about 1 meter, or 80 centimetres?

79. What about the smallest Pooh?

That would be the Tsum-Tsum, the plastic kind, there’s a very small one, almost 2cm, the stacking kind.

80. If you’re not a figure skater, what would you be?

A baseball player. I liked baseball more (laughs).

81. A costume you want to try on for Halloween.

Vampire!

82. When did you have your first cell phone?

No, I don’t have one.

83. How do you check SNS?

Although I have been using an iPod touch, it has been discontinued. Now I’m using an iPhone without a SIM card. Since I’ve never used a cell phone, I don’t have a number.

84. If you could get one thing, what would it be?

I wonder. Hmm… I guess I rather get it on my own than receiving it.

85. What kind of nerd (otaku) are you?

Audio.

86. What is your specialty dish?

Frozen gyoza (laughs).

87. What kind of illustrations are you good at?

I can’t draw Pooh. Ah, but I may have drawn all kinds of wings, and skates.

88. Things you tend to collect.

Just earphones, and gyoza (laughs).

89. Something you always keep in mind.

Never forget your original intention.

90. Words that you dislike.

Right. There is, but I wonder what it is. “Uncool” is definitely something I don’t want to be told.

91. A relaxing moment.

When I’m in the futon, lying on my stomach and squeezing the pillow.

92. How do you spend your birthday?

I was hardly in Japan for my birthday. There was always the Grand Prix Final, and when I couldn’t go, it’s usually because I was injured or sick.

93. On your 28th birthday after turning professional, how did you spend it?

I felt like it was the first time I could spend some time at home. Yeah. It’s like “I’m not fidgeting!” Moreover, I was not injured and not in a bad shape. That’s what I was thinking.

94. Were you also off work?

There’s a program called “Classic TV” with Shinya Kiyozuka, and there was a recording of it. However, even though there was a recording session, I was able to spend time at home.

95. You will be 29 years old this year. What kind of year would you like to have?

Well, for now, I would like to continue my research and study.

96. What kind of research and study?

Performance and expression techniques. I want to learn more about those things, and also learn more skating techniques.

97. What do you want to do when you turn 30?

For now, continue jumping quads. Like, “I can jump!” hahaha.

98. What will you be doing in 10 years?

I wonder if I will still be skating. My goal is to maintain my health and reduce the risk of injury as much as possible so that I can still skate 10 years from now.

99. Once again, “Yuzuru Hanyu” expressed in one kanji character.

Hmm. Core, I guess. I absolutely do not want to waver.

100. Lastly, what would you like to ask your fans?

Am I living up to your expectations?

Source: Own image

Info: https://x.com/AERAnetjp/status/1708679949245100224

[diazsdimples]

WIP Wednesday!

This fic is eating me alive. We're at 22k words and I'm probably 2/3 of the way done? Maybe a bit more lmao. I'm still hoping to have it done by the end of the week but my husband has had a bit of a backwards step in his recovery and I've come down with the most evil flu alive haha. Please enjoy a small snippet from their final day of rehearsals before the concert!

Eddie files into the auditorium, sending Buck a quick grin as he catches his eye, and settles himself down next to Terry and the other members of his section. “Slept better last night?” Terry asks as he sits down, “You seem perkier.” Eddie smiles. “Much better”. They start tuning as Bobby steps up to the podium, Riko the first oboist leading with their A, and Bobby taps the music stand when they’re all finished. “Well, everyone, seems we’ve reached the final rehearsal of yet another programme. Now, as usual, we’ll go through the pieces we’re playing until lunchtime, at which point our regularly scheduled team building exercises will begin. I must say, I’m glad to see that we all seem to have remembered the dress code this year. I was half expecting the trumpet section to arrive in assless chaps this year, but Chimney seems to have restrained himself.” There’s a bunch of cheers and Chimney sends Bobby some finger guns across the room, yelling “There’s still time!” Bobby rolls his eyes playfully and continues. “Instrument swap will happen after lunch so please, make sure you’ve found yourself a partner and take a few minutes before we start to show them the ropes. This will be filmed and sent out to your families so please, take this as a threat to try your hardest. After the swap, we’ll go over the concerto one last time so Buck doesn’t feel obliged to hang around all afternoon and do nothing. We’ll finish early so you can all go home to your families and get some rest before the concert. Dress rehearsal tomorrow starts at noon, please arrive by 11:45 at the latest so we have time to set up. Concerts are at 3 and 7. Now, happy playing.” With that, they all flick to the front of the cello concerto and begin to play. Eddie will never get over how passionate Buck is when he plays. This piece is perfect for him, really. It’s quick and full of energy and truly shows off Buck’s prowess. He sways back and forth with the music, his bow flying across the strings and fingers trotting along the fingerboard as he manages to elicit the most incredible noise from his cello. After a masterclass at what those hands can do last night, Eddie can’t say he’s surprised Buck’s such a good player. When it’s time for Eddie to play, he notices Buck lean back in his chair, closing his eyes and properly appreciating the music. Eddie notices Buck plays with his eyes closed most of the time, as if he’s picturing the music in his head. Eddie does the same thing when it’s a piece he’s familiar with. He hasn’t got Buck’s ability to memorise sheets and sheets of music.

No pressure tagging all my faves @thewolvesof1998 @theotherbuckley @disasterbuckdiaz @hippolotamus @watchyourbuck @fionaswhvre @wikiangela @eddiebabygirldiaz @eddie---diaz @evanbegins @wildlife4life @callmenewbie @cal-daisies-and-briars @daffi-990 @malewifediaz @spagheddiediaz @fortheloveofbuddie @fruitandbubbles @incorrect9-1-1 @monsterrae1 @loserdiaz @buckbuckgoose @weewootruck @jeeyuns @smilingbuckley @jesuisici33 @housewifebuck

[mariacallous]

The New Zealand government has been accused of waging a “war on nature” after it announced sweeping cuts to climate action projects, while making no significant new investments in environmental protection or climate crisis-related policy.

In its 2024/25 budget, handed down on Thursday, the rightwing coalition announced spending on law and order, education, health and a series of tax cuts, as the country struggles with inflation and cost-of-living pressures.

Finance minister Nicola Willis, who delivered the budget against the backdrop of a technical recession and widening government deficits, said it was a “fiscally responsible budget” that was “putting New Zealanders’ money where it can make the biggest difference”.

But absent from the budget documents was any meaningful new spending on the climate crisis. Instead, dozens of climate-related initiatives, including programmes in the Emissions Reductions Plan and funding for data and evidence specialists were subject to sweeping cuts.

In a media release, climate change minister Simon Watts said “responsible and effective climate related initiatives that support New Zealand to reduce emissions, and adapt to the future effects of climate change are a priority.”

He said the government would invest to reach those goals, including funding climate resilience projects such as stop banks and floodwalls through the Regional Infrastructure Fund, a $200m boost for the Rail Network Improvement Programme, and extending the reach of the Waste Disposal Levy to support a wider range of waste-related and environmental activities.

When asked by the Guardian if there was any significant new funding directed towards tackling climate change and environmental protection, Watts pointed to the resilience projects.

Meanwhile, the environment minister, Penny Simmonds, told the Guardian the increases to the waste levy “will mean a broader range of environmental projects can be funded”, including waste disposal in emergencies, cleaning up contaminated sites and freshwater improvement.

But critics said the government’s approach to protecting the environment and tackling climate change was backward looking, while climate resilience projects were the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff without future-facing climate mitigation plans.

Meanwhile, the rail improvement programme was understood to be focused on existing rail lines. It was unclear if it included new rail projects. Changes to the waste disposal levy involved mostly reallocating existing funds.

The Labour opposition called the budget a “catastrophe” that was “taking us backwards”.

The only new investment in the environment section of the budget was a $23m annual commitment to pushing through the government’s resource management changes, including a controversial fast-track bill that could see conservation concerns ignored and projects once rejected for environmental reasons given the green light.

The government says it has found $102m in savings and revenue per year across the environment sector through various cuts, including cutting climate change programmes, reducing spending on specialists that provide evidence and data including updates to environmental standards, monitoring and reporting and scaling back funding for the Climate Change Commission, which advises the government on climate change policy.

In conservation, another $33m a year will be cut. There is a $1m annual investment listed in the budget documents, but government officials could not explain where this money would go, citing “commercial sensitivities”.

The programmes and areas related to climate policy that are subject to cuts across government included:

Māori knowledge-based approaches to agricultural emissions reduction

Community-based renewable energy schemes

The Climate Change Commission

External and internal specialists who supply evidence and data on environmental monitoring and science

Freshwater policy initiatives

Native forest planting

Development of a circular economy, relating to recycling and reuse

Jobs for Nature, a programme creating jobs to benefit the environment

Reducing biosecurity monitoring

New Zealand is still rebuilding from massive destruction caused by 2023’s deadly Auckland floods and Cyclone Gabrielle, which killed 11 people and laid waste to large swathes of the North Island’s east coast.

Among the spending promises in the budget was $1bn to rebuild the regions hit by these disasters.

Human-caused climate breakdown has increased the occurrence of the most intense and destructive tropical cyclones (though the overall number a year has not changed globally). This is because warming oceans provide more energy, producing stronger storms.

‘Head in the coal’

Green party co-leader Chlöe Swarbrick described the government as a “coalition of cowards” that was allowing the climate crisis to “rage on unchallenged” and whose attack on the climate would ripple through future generations.

“The other day, government parties said, ‘drill, baby, drill,’ and today, they may as well have said, ‘burn, baby, burn’,” Swarbrick said, adding that the budget had seen funding from almost every major programme in the Emissions Reduction Plan gutted.

The government was “choosing to bury its head in the coal,” she said. “It has made the choice to put cynical politics ahead of people and planet, serving the short-term interests of wealthy donors over the wellbeing of all of us.”

The first budget from the rightwing coalition – made up of the centre-right National party, libertarian ACT party and populist NZ First – is a sharp departure from the previous Labour government’s commitments to protecting the environment. In 2017, Labour prime minister Jacinda Ardern said climate change was her generation’s nuclear-free moment and put climate policies high on her agenda.

In 2022, her government unveiled the most significant announcement on climate change action in the country’s history – $4.5bn for a climate emergency response fund (CERF) to try to drive a low-emissions economy and prepare the country for the effects of climate collapse.

On Thursday, the government said $2.6bn of climate change initiatives previously funded by CERF would continue, including a public network of electric vehicle charging infrastructure, decarbonising public transport, and public transport concessions for community service card holders.

But the climate change minister also said the government would discontinue the practice of ring-fencing money raised through emissions trading for that climate fund, meaning the previous government’s ambitious fund would be absorbed into the usual budget process.

Environmental group Forest and Bird said the budget signalled another blow in the government’s “war on nature”, and singled out its funding of the fast track bill.

“The government’s biggest new investment in the environment is to implement reforms that are going to cause untold environmental harm through the fast track,” said Richard Capie, the organisation’s general manager for conservation.

“In the middle of a climate emergency, you don’t walk away from investing in climate action – this isn’t business as usual, and to call it such is head-in-the-sand stuff.”

[canmom]

Animation Night 169: Sex. 2.

So. Storytime.

Two years ago, we had a joke. "We should totally show some hentai on Animation Night 69." we said. Having said that, we were honour-bound to totally commit to the bit. Teaming up with @mogsk, I wrote a massive post on sexuality in animation and the history of 'hentai', from the hentai seiyoku discussed in 20th-century sexology journals to the modern subcultural kaleidoscope.

It is, genuinely, one of my favourite posts I ever wrote in this project. It's definitely not perfect - the sections on BL and the lolicon boom are especially weak, but still! There's no way I'm beating that.

Mogs, meanwhile assembled a perfectly pitched playlist of animation dealing with the theme of sexuality, from classic oldschool BL like Kaze to Ki no Uta to charming little comedies like Oruchuban Ebichu, and a scattering of actual h-anime like Weather Report Girl. For my part, I led with the genuinely classic film Kanashimi no Belladonna (Belladonna of Sadness).

So somehow - somehow! - we managed to make the idea of getting together with your online friends to watch a bunch of anime about sex just... plain fun and uplifting, to the point that @footsteps-on-the-dance-floor will tell me years later how much she enjoyed it. Not to mention, we got a pretty good cross-section of the different dimensions of sexuality in animation as well!

I didn't even get banned on Twitch.

This week, the counter has drawn the sex number. So can we do it again? Well, my friends, we're gonna try~ Tonight, @mogsk and canmom present: the long-awaited sequel to sex. Sex, 2.

This time we're narrowing our focus a bit. One of the distinctive elements of eromanga, by the analysis of Kimi Rito in The History of Hentai Manga, is how particular images get encoded as signs that can be reused by other mangaka, and these signs can become the seed for particular subgenres. So, our selection tonight is in part designed to give a brief cross-section of some of these visual tropes.

So let me introduce you to our program. CWs: sex, obviously; also a couple of these films (Cleopatra, Parade Parade) cw for rape. Here's the programme, read on for brief descriptions of each item and a lil cultural context~!

Cleopatra (1970) - oldschool Tezuka weirdness

Boku no Sexual Harassment (1994-5) - 90s salaryman BL

Interspecies Reviewers (2020) - monstergirl sex comedy, and an instance of the trend of recent cable TV h-anime

Agent Aika (1997-9) - panty shots to the most ludicrous degree

Comical Psychosomatic Medicine (2015) - ONA comedy framed as fetish education

Parade Parade (1996) - futanari + yuri

Golden Boy (1995-6) - 90s sakuga and a classic comedy

Queen's Blade (2009) - kyonyuu

Colorful (1999) - panty-centric comedy skits

after that: if you still have energy, I might take requests~

[n.b. a lot of these are TV series - we will only really be getting a 1-2 episode sample of each one, for runtime's sake.]

Cleopatra (クレオパトラ), 1970

Last time we led with certified classic, genuinely moving and good as hell film Belladonna of Sadness. This was part of a last gambit by the struggling Mushi Productions, the studio of Osamu Tezuka, credited with inventing TV anime back in the day with Astro Boy. Long before there would be such a thing as an h-anime subculture, Tezuka experimented with creating erotic animated films based on history and mythology.

Belladonna is the best remembered of the three, and with good reason. Tezuka was largely not involved by this point. The others, though... are some plain fucking weird movies, I'll tell you that much. So tonight we'll be watching Cleopatra (1970). I may have shown you the trailer before - this is the Caesar trampoline movie. That is only the beginning.

I recently finished reading Osamu Tezuka's manga Ayako, written in 1972-1973 - not long after this movie, actually, during Tezuka's gekiga phase. I'm sure it's common knowledge by now, but Tezuka was one horny old guy! Ayako has all manner of skulduggery: incest, murder, gangster stuff, more murder, etc., but the core story is about a girl who is imprisoned in an underground cell for 20-some years by the machinations of her family. As she grows up, she ends up in an incestuous relationship with her protective brother - and once she finally escapes, she is highly agoraphobic but also throws herself at nearly every man she meets.

It's very much a story of the sins of the past echoing down into the future, shot though with post-war history and gangster movies, but its central fixation is the figure of Ayako herself: the soft cloistered object of obsession and attraction. Whether they want to protect Ayako, seek absolution from her, fuck her, or exploit her.

But it's also in places a really wacky manga, with a lot of very comical contrivances or hyper-cartoonish panels with extreme squash and stretch. It's a completely different way of displaying action.

I think this gives me a sense of the sort of wavelength Tezuka was on when he draws a scene where Cleopatra is tied down by stakes and a bunch of guys line up to rape her while she shouts at them defiantly. It's all very theatrical, a huge contrast to the much more internally oriented Belladonna. Just a plain strange movie, but it's one I've been fascinated to watch for ages.

Whatever we make of Cleopatra, we'll jump into the program that Mogs drew up! Once again she's come through magnificently.

My Sexual Harassment (僕のセクシ���ルハラスメント), 1995-6

Our next act is some old school yaoi! One day I'll get to do that big effortpost on the history of BL, but not this day. In any case, Boku no Sexual Harassment is an OVA from the mid 90s about a young man called Junya Mochizuki trying to fuck his way up the company ranks for the sake of himself and his partner Kazunori Honma. In particular, he has an affair with his boss, Mr. Honma, running across the whole OVA.

This is perhaps best known for an infamous scene involving corn. It's here as a window into this period of BL - not quite as high-mindedly aesthetic as its 80s predecessors, and with its erotic focus being on like... 90s salarymen, which is quite a specific thing!

Interspecies Reviewers (異種族レビュアーズ), 2020

Next, a series which has the dubious distinction of proving too steamy for Crunchyroll. Interspecies Reviewers enters the general milieu of modern videogame-inflected fantasy anime, a comedy dancing along the line of whether it's too overtly porn to air on TV. The story tells of a group of fantasy characters who are the clients of monstergirl sex workers, hoping to encounter as many different species as possible. This is a frame device for a series of episodes focused around what it would be like to have sex with various kinds of monstergirl.

This is an example of a recent trend in TV anime, namely very overtly sexual cable TV anime such as High School DxD, which have in a way come to fill the gap left by OVAs. This is a niche that also includes the likes of Goblin Slayer and Redo of Healer. In contrast to those series' "big grimdark plot with a side of rape" approach, Reviewers is light-hearted fantasy sex comedy mixed with (if you live in China) a certain amount of actual porn, which fansubbers have kindly spliced back in to the censored release for us.

Agent Aika (AIKa), 1997-9

The panty shot is one of the more popular visual tropes in eromanga, to the point that Even a Monkey Can Draw Manga dedicates a whole two page spread to the history of the trope. (Surprisingly, I can't find any more substantial account in Kimi Rito's History of Hentai Manga).

You'll see it often enough in anime, overtly or subtly, and certainly in the early works of Katsuhiko Nishijima, who debuted in 1986 with Project A-ko, a classic Kanada-inflected OVA that still bears signs of its hentai roots. But there is nothing that takes the panty shot to the same extreme as Agent Aika (1997). The degree to which the camera in this action anime contrives to show panties at a machinegun rate... it crosses over into a level where it feels less like outright fetish material and more like experimental art.

This is a series that is only coherent through the erotic focus. And yet, it's not generally categorised as porn. Nobody actually fucks. Lines are very arbitrary...

Comical Psychosomatic Medicine (アニメで分かる心療内科), 2015

This ONA adapts a gag manga series themed around the idea of an education series on fetishes, paraphilias, and so on - not so different in concept from Peepoodoo and the Super Fuck Friends, from the sound of it! The ONA is produced by Shin-Ei Animation, a venerable studio known for beloved characters like Doraemon; it's a bunch of five minute bite-sized chunks which I plan to sprinkle in between the other stuff we watch as a palate cleanser.

Parade Parade (パレードパレード), 1996

Having warmed you up sufficiently, this is the point in the evening where we pull out the futa porn.

Parade Parade is an OVA by the studio Pink Pineapple, one of the giants of the 90s erotic OVA scene - I wrote about them a bit last time. It's a relatively "tasteful" example of the futanari (二形) trope, literally 'two forms', referring to basically a character with a mostly cis woman-typical body except for a penis (generally in addition to a vulva), which she will typically use in penetrative sex. This is typically represented as either the result of magic, an intersex condition, or just a fantasy world where it's not unusual.

Depending on your subcultural corner, this might be further distinguished from other niche variants of dickgirl (e.g. a futa must have both sets of genitals).

In anime and manga, the futa trope apparently traces back to the introduction of American trans porn magazines to Japan, inspiring mangaka such as Kitamimaki Kei to start drawing futanari characters. Futanari manga first spread through dōjinshi in the 80s, and became popular in eromanga in the 90s, before circling back to the West. So actually yeah I guess this one is on us trans girls! I always assumed it was like, an independent invention. The more you know...

Here we have succesful idol Kaori, who's secretly intersex - and only her girlfriend Yuko knows. She's very careful to let nobody know, for the sake of her career, but a rival lesbian idol is about to find out...

Golden Boy (1995-6)

Now here is a true classic.

Golden Boy is a comedy series about a wanderer named Kintaro, who dropped out of uni to travel around Japan getting into sexual escapades. Each episode, he runs into someone and hopefully falls for them while coming across as an idiot pervert, but gradually reveals that he's actually a decent and resourceful guy - and yet, having found love, there will always be a reason he must move on. A setup to hang all sorts of plots, carried by some honestly unreasonably impressive animation from the realist school, most notably Mitsuo Iso. It's just... very very well done.

The above clip did the rounds on here a while ago (I think maybe the dubbed version), and we will indeed be watching episode 4 to put that in context.

Queen's Blade (2009)

So this is a studio ARMS OVA - the guys who did stuff like Mezzo Forte with Yasuomi Umetsu - a fantasy story about a warrior tournament. But for our purposes it's standing in for the 巨乳 kyonyuu subgenre - meaning 'huge boobs'. So if you wanna do the meme in Japanese, that's the word you need.

This has a rather specific history in eromanga, recounted by Kimi Rito in The History of Hentai Manga. Per Rito, the popularity of the term dates back specifically to 1989, where it was used to promote porn star Kimiko Matsuzaka, as well as Western gravure porn magazines. Gradually displacing other terms like 'D-cup', the onomatopoeic ボイン boin and portmanteau デカパイdekapai, kyonyuu soon became cemented as the term for a type of character design. It grew in popularity in the space opened up by the bishōjo genre established by the lolicon boom.

So under the pen of mangaka like Kei Keitamimaki (him again!), designs with massively exaggerated boobs became very popular, defining a subgenre of their own. Artists would sometimes express anxiety over whether they would be 'allowed' to draw such extreme designs, but it became widespread in seinen magazines. Gradually, these genre boundaries dissolved and boob size started to become a symbol of characterisation.

Queen's Blade is a fairly longrunning series but as far as I understand, it's broadly a silly ecchi anime about women with very large boobs fighting to become queen. It's not the most comical example of this trope necessarily (nothing can really beat High School of the Dead's supersonic bullet dodging tits) but it's pretty up there.

Colorful, 1999

Colorful is a comedy series of brief (~7 minute) skits about boys trying to see panties and suffering many consequences. As a late 90s anime it's got some interesting stylstic Y2K stuff - look at that rotoscope clip! - as well as strong animation from people like Norio Matsumoto of Naruto fame.

So!

Mogs's encylopedic knowledge of weird obscure horny anime once again coming to the rescue: I'm fascinated to see where this night will take us. And whether I'll still have a Twitch account tomorrow.

I realise this is a much later start than we'd like with such a big programme, but I hope you will come join me for some weirdly educational sexy animation! Dip in and out or stay for the whole programme, the choice is yours - see you at twitch.tv/canmom, going live now, programme starts in about 30 minutes at 22:30 UK time!

Animation Night 169 is gonna be a little postponed - we'll be going at 7pm UK time on Tuesday (29 August) at twitch.tv/canmom! Hope to see you there! I will try to write a little more interesting info as we lead up to that~