#Gonna go with the ages of the actors as looks can be deceiving...

[josephinekhawaja]

So in my mind, the MCU has been in 2023 the entirety of the pandemic. With some spilling over into 2024, as in the case of Wakanda Forever, but nothing past that. So all storylines of Phase 4, with the exception of the 2016 prequel that is the Black Widow film, are just overlapping in those 20 months from Avengers 4. Was made to realise only recently that Cassandra Lang is in fact no longer 15, but closer in age to her future best friend Kate Bishop. She still look 15 though so I should probably pump my brakes on this. (...I say as if I did not already go ahead to Google the age difference between Jonathan Majors and Kathryn Newton for Phases 5 and 6 long term⌛⏳🌀💫.)

[ofkanes]

me   pulling   up   wayyy   later   than   expected   :   👀👀,   fhdjs   hi   !!   i’m   nik   but   u   can   call   me   nikolaj   (   b99   stans   only      😤)   &   i’m   here   to   bring   my   mess   of   a   baby   kane   !!   ok   so   i’m   literally   too   excited   for   this   group   pls   don’t   @   me   .   before   i   start   i   just   wanna   say   that   all   ur   intros   ??   shakespeare   is   quaking   !!   send   tweet   .

[   jack   gilinsky   ,   he   /   him   ,   twenty   two   ,   cis   male   ]   do   my   eyes   deceive   me   ,   or   did   i   just   see   (   KANE   MORGAN   )   getting   out   of   the   car   in   hunnington   ?   i   guess   (   HE’S   )   living   around   (   ROCK   SPRINGS   )   ,   which   i   could’ve   guessed   .   hopefully   they   can   keep   their   (   -   SHORT   TEMPERED   &   -   COMPLACENT   )   shit   to   theirselves   ,   and   focus   on   being   (   +   ADAPTABLE   &   +   CHARMING   )   to   avoid   any   problems   .   and   for   the   love   of   god   ,   lets   hope   they   don’t   talk   about   the   (   HIDDEN   )   thing   .

ʙᴀᴄᴋsᴛᴏʀʏ 

ok lemme say that i envisioned kane as a movie bby , you’ll get what i mean in 2 secs . 

his two parents are both movie directors , his mother is an actress turned movie director . the morgan surname is well - known across the silver screens everywhere , not one that people take it lightly . here’s some background about his parents . 

tim morgan : father , but mostly known of his work as a movie director , i wanna say he has the career claim of frank darabont ( directed : the shawnshank redemption , the green mile , mary shelley’s frankestein , the walking dead ... etc ) . he earned his name despite being , at first , a nerdy film school student . very proud person , definitely snobbish . 

ingrid jackson - morgan : mother , but also a very good actress , i was thinking she had the career claim of michelle pfeiffer (  scarface , grease 2 , batman returns , hairspray , murder on the orient express ... etc ) . she comes from a line of models & actresses , so it’s no surprise there . 

now you have young kane morgan , now im ashamed to say he was named after citizen kane , his parent’s favourite movie ( rlly no taste ngl ) & you’ll never guess his middle name .... brando . that’s it , i’m cancelling him . 

but basically he’s a little accident that happened before the marriage , oops ? so really , an unhappy surprise for ms & mr morgan . his mother wasn’t very happy w his arrival because all she wanted to do was to work on movies & NOT take care of a child . 

don’t worry , cuz kane rlly felt that unhappiness ooze outta her . gr8 nannies though , he loves them . 

his father was happy to have someone to teach all his knowledge to , nerd alert , but that was one of the few moments he appreciated kane . that’s it . 

so one could imagine the disaster of a kid being brought up by movie stars ( read : nannies ) , not a stranger to cameras , red carpets & all that good stuff . 

ofc he was a child actor , his parents tried to put him in almost every movie they could , spreading that good morgan family name n all . kane didn’t think much of it , until he was old enough to understand .

he was definitely a little bratty , demanding attention from everyone all the time . being as fickle as they come , but that’s only because his parents didn’t give a flying fuck . 

as he grew up , still on the spotlight , he liked to be on & off the camera . some years , he yearned to be the center of attention & other’s he hated the job . very hard to keep up with . 

when he turned sixteen , he had his first ( & probably not last ) proper hollywood breakdown , almost as bad as brittany circa 2007 . he got a good role & was introduced to the bad side of hollywood . parties , drugs , shady people & all that good stuff . he was influenceable & fell into all the traps . it was only 2 years later that his parents were able to snap him out of it . they ofc paid all the tabloids to keep the good name out of their articles , but if you do your research , you’ll find some pretty pics of lil morgan . 

since then , he has cleaned up his act . ofc he took a couple of years off , went to college, tried to focus on himself & discover who he was ( he wasn’t only a morgan , he was kane !! who is kane ?? ) & he only started starring in roles recently , post college graduation . 

he just got off his first acting job post - hiatus & it’s a blockbuster . i was thinking maybe inspired on those coming of age movies ( à la hot summer nights but w more traction ) & people are freaking out !! kane morgan on the big screen ?? WHAT ?? he came back to nc before he decides on what to do next .

ᴘᴇʀsᴏɴᴀʟɪᴛʏ

ok so you can already guess that kane morgan is no humble kid . i like to think he has layers , but ppl can’t be bothered to look through all of them . 

some would say that his major problems stem from the fact that his parents didn’t give him enough attention & the public gave him too much . 

having your parents’ attention ? that’s so 2002 . 

for the press i like to think he has this movie star facade down . you know the old charming james dean smile , handsome but kind . loves the underdog , very humble about his social standing . generous , outgoing & loved by everyone . 

idk i never met james dean , all the information i have on him is taylor swift’s song : style .  

now if we dig a little deeper , he’s still quite the charmer ( c’mon he’s an actor after all ) , but maybe not as humble nor kind . he can be quite rude & entitled , but has some good jokes . don’t get him completely wrong , he’s still a bit generous ( he gives 25% tips wow ) . likes a good party , but knows his limits . always down for a good time . 

if we go even deeper , oof , he’s a bit broken . never learned to love properly , all he has it’s movies , which we can all agree are shit if you’re gonna base your attachment type on it . he lives on his own little world & likes to keeps his guards up . a sweetheart really , you can see past all the snobby film critic bullshit & he’s just a boy who wanna have fun & have a good life like all those people on the screen . 

you   would   fucken   think   im   a   film   major   but   NO   ,   i’m   not   even   that   fancy   w   movies   .   and   after   all   reading   all   those   movies   titles   ur   head   must   be   spinning   ,   MINE   IS   !!   but   ily   &   ur   an   absolute   queen   /   king   /   monarch   if   you   read   thru   all   of   this   !!   let   me   tag   my   plot   page   below   hehe   ,   it’s   were   we   get   angstyyy   !

plot page babey

[dazeandhaze]

What is the kagerou project?

This post is for those who are interested in interacting with my muses Kido, Kano, and Konoha, but maybe don’t know enough about the series to really know where to start plotting wise. I’ll be linking this post to their abouts (when I make them) and I welcome any questions you might have on it!

First off, the Kagerou project is originally a set of vocaloid songs / videos that later got translated to a manga, novels, and an anime. It’s a story told achronlogically, meaning pretty much out of order and not straight forward at all - another reason I wanted to make this post so newcomers don’t feel confused.  That and all the mediums help tell the full story - so unless you’ve taken in all of them it’s hard to piece together the story from start to finish, and there is still a lot of details we don’t know. The kagerou project isn’t perfect but it’s a good story overall.

The actual story / character info will be below the cut cause this is gonna be a super long post.

Also if you get weirded out by snakes it’s probably not the best idea to read this - there’s no pictures but the word ‘snake’ comes up ALOT. Also please don’t read this if Suicide is a trigger for you, as that is something that I will be mentioning a few times aswell.

MAJOR CHARACTERS

First off I’ll introduce the characters / what their powers are and then explain the songs then the story and how the powers are significant and how the characters play into the story as a whole.

Azami - the medusa. Creator of the abilities.

The Mekakushi Dan - the ‘blindfold’ gang. It started as a childhood fantasy but Kido, Kano, and Seto kept the group name after Ayano’s death. Kano was the one that came up with the name.

 Ayano Takeyama - Number 0, Foster older sister to Kido, Kano, and Seto. Has the snake of favoring eyes. She is able to project her feelings and memories onto others.

Tsubomi Kido - Number 1, technically the leader. Has the snake of Concealing eyes. She can make herself effectively invisible and unable to be perceived by others as long as she doesn’t touch anyone. She can use this ability on other people, and any sound they make while the ability is active is unheard of by others.

Kousuke Seto - Number 2. Has the snake of Stealing eyes. He can read people’s minds and when used to its full potential, he can read a person's memories.This ability also lets him understand the thoughts of animals, though they can still not understand him.

Shuuya Kano - Number 3. Has the snake of Deceiving eyes. It allows him to change what people perceive him as. He can change his appearance to impersonate other people and even animals. He can only use this ability on himself and not others.

Marry Kozakura - Number 4. Has two ‘eye’ abilities technically, Locking Eyes and Combining eyes. Locking eyes she inherited from her mother Shion and her grandmother Azami. It allows her to temporarily stop the movement of whoever meets her gaze. She is not able to turn people into stone, but it can paralyze them for a short amount of time. The Snake of Combining Eyes can combine and therefore control all snakes. It was directly given to her by Azami when she died and entered the Kagerou Daze. This ability causes her to automatically obtain a snake after its owner has died and also allows her to take a snake directly from them.Combining Eyes also passively causes the other snakes (and thus their owners) to be drawn towards its owner.

Momo Kisaragi - Number 5. She has the snake of Drawing Eyes. This ability can draw peoples' attention to herself regardless of their preferences in tastes or interests. She is also able to tell where a person's attention is drawn to.

Ene / Takene Enomoto - Number 6. She has the Snake of opening eyes. This allows her to to split her consciousness from her body, which then can reside in electronic devices (such as a cellphone) as a cyber-being. After regaining her body as Takane, she is still able to send herself to other electronic devices as Ene, but doing so causes her body to lose consciousness.

Shintaro Kisaragi - Number 7. Has the snake of Retaining eyes. This allows him to remember everything he sees. When his ability is fully activated, he is able to remember the events of past routes and speak with the Snake of Retaining Eyes.

Hibiya Amamiya - Number 8. Has the snake of Focusing Eyes.This has the power to perceive objects and details that are far away from an aerial view.

Konoha / Haurka Kokonose - Number 9. Has the snake of Awakening Eyes. This gives him the power to remake his body into one that he finds to be his "ideal" - as Haruka was physically weak and sickly, this meant for him to become supernaturally strong. He can also heal from even fatal injuries with this ability, which looks like multiple black snakes wrapping around his body when activated.

Hiyori Asahina - Number 10. Depending on the route she will have the snake of Focusing Eyes instead of Hibiya. 9/10 times though it is Hibiya. Just mentioning this fact for technicalities sake.

The Snake of Clearing eyes - the story’s main antagonist. This ability can interfere with and stop the use of other eye abilities completely. It normally possesses either Ayano’s father or Hibiya depending on the route. In every route it will always possess Konoha towards the end - as he is the strongest member and none of the others in the Dan can stand a chance against him. (if you see me reblog a black haired konoha, it’s him being possessed by this ability)

SONGS

As mentioned before, this started off as a set of vocaloid songs. So I will list SOME of the songs below - there’s over 33 songs related to the kagerou project but these are ones with MVs (or at least fan made ones) that have the main characters as the focus.

Shinigami Record - Azami Song

Jinzou Enemy - Ene and Shintaro song

Mekakushi Code - Kido’s song

Headphone Actor - Takene song

Imagination Forest - Mary song

Kagerou Daze / Heat Haze Days - Hiyori and Hibuya song

Konoha’s state of the world - Konoha song ft Hiyori and Hibuya

Yobanashi Deceive - Kano song

Shouen Brave - Seto song

Kisaragi Attention - Momo Song

Ayano’s theory of Happiness - Ayano song

Yuukei Yesterday - Takene and Haruka song

Children Record - everyone is here lmao serves more like an opening if anything

Moon Viewing Recital - Momo and Hibuya song

Outer Science - Clearing eyes song / The Bad ending

Lost time memory - Shintaro song

Summer time record - everyone is here but there is a focus on Haruka / the good ending

Additional memory - Ayano in the daze song

Never lost world - kido post story song

THE STORY

the first thing to know about the kagerou project story is that it is a time loop story. Each medium contains its own loop (or in the manga’s case, multiple), which is why someone has to consume all the mediums to really get the full story. Some character details or interactions only happen in one route / loop.  I’ll be going over what people are most likely to find out through google searches / the easiest medium (the music or anime) but will mention other routes here and there for context. Generally most routes we know of follow most of the same story beats but some differ dramatically - and I don’t want to confuse people.

For the overall story though - it starts with Azami. She is the medusa, but not in the traditional greek myth sense. It is just what humans started referring to her as thanks to her snake-like features. Truthfully she doesn’t know entirely what she is, she was born at the beginning, and lasted through the ages with not even a physical form until she met two beings - humans and a snake. The humans tried to kill her on first sight while the snake was kind and explained what the humans were to Azami. Her physical form ended up being a mix of these two species, hence humans calling her a medusa. (pictured below is azami from the novels)

Overtime she tried to interact with humans but they always shunned her and tried to kill her until one day she met an albino man named Tsukihiko. I will skip over the specifics but she ends up falling in love with him and building a family with him. They were both considered ‘monsters’ by society and thus made a perfect pair. They even had a daughter, Shion.

Now it’s important to note that during this time she made her abilities. considered ‘eye’ abilities or ‘snakes’, Azami had the ability to create almost sentient forces within her to help her solve problems. For example, the ‘favoring eyes’ ability was created so she could properly show her emotions to her infant daughter, pass on all the love that she had onto Shion in a way she would understand even as a baby.

However after Shion was born, after creating these abilities, she realized that both Tsukihiko and Shion were going to out live her and die. She had lived thousands, maybe even millions, of years by now and hadn’t aged a day - but her husband obviously had. In this fear a new power was born, the snake of clearing eyes. It offered a solution to Azami, for them to create an entirely new world where death and time didn’t exist, where she could simply be happy with her family. She does this, and tells her husband and child they would leave the world together. They agree, but Tsukihiko wants to officially marry Azami before they leave the world. She allows him to go back to his old home to get wedding rings and someone to marry them officially, but doesn’t return. What does return are humans, out to kill Azami and her daughter. Azami defeats the men with ease but believes now her husband is all but dead. In her grief, she escapes to the world she made - the Kagerou Daze - and leaves her child behind.Tsukihiko manages to return, escaping from the confinement the other humans had put him in, and knows once he finds his daughter alone that his wife left the world. They are not upset with her, and continue to live out their days in their home in the forest.

Tsukihiko eventually dies of old age and Shion grows up. Shion has her own daughter called Mary, who is a quarter medusa. Shion is extremely protective of her daughter after the events of her own childhood, and tells Mary never to leave the house. However being the fun loving child she was, Mary disobeyed her mother once. It wasn’t long after she was found by humans who were proceeding to beat her to death when her mother found her. They were both about to die at the hands of these humans when Azami decided to intervene.

She wasn’t gone completely, she had been watching over her daughter and grandaughter from the Daze. Knowing what was about to happen to her family, she issued a command to the world to take in the two people dying and bring them up into the world. The date? August 15th.When the two arrived in the world they were dead. The world brought them back to life but they couldn’t leave back to the ‘real’ world without a new lifeforce. Azami, wanting her daughter to live, gave her the core of her power - the snake of combining eyes, also known as the ‘queen snake’. But Shion wanted her own daughter to live, and passed it onto Mary. Mary was able to return to the real world, but had no memory of the Daze or what her mother and grandmother had done for her - she was now alone.

The combining eyes was the core of Azami’s power, and without it she could no longer control the Kagerou Daze. She couldn’t tell the world to stop bringing people into it, to stop giving them powers,and to stop returning people to the real world. This was the mistake that costs the main character’s so much grief.

Each of the members of the mekakushi dan (besides Shintaro) died on the day of August 15th. The Kagerou Daze, still fulfilling its order, took them and whoever they were with at the time up into the world, and if they resonated with one of Azami’s abilities, gave them the snake before putting them back out into the real world - the snake/ eye ability being their new life force and the reason they’re alive.

Kido died in a fire with her sister, and got the snake of concealing eyes. Seto drowned with his dog and got the snake of stealing eyes. Kano died in a robbery with his mother and got the snake of Decieving eyes. Momo also drowned and got the drawing eyes ability. Takene was poisoned and got the opening eyes ability. Haruka had a heart attack and got the awakening eyes ability. Hibuya and Hiyori were in a traffic accident and depending on the route - one of them gets the Focusing eyes. As stated above, 9/10 times it’s Hibuya, Hiyori only gets it in the manga route/loop.

Ayano is a special case. She committed suicide with the goal in mind to go to the Kagerou Daze. She stays in the daze with her eye ability for a reason which I’ll get to later.

Now Shintaro does have an eye ability of his own, however it was NOT one of Azami’s abilities. I will also get to this later.

Kido, Kano, and Seto all end up being orphaned around the same time and ended up in the same orphanage. Forced into the same room together as they were the ‘strange’ kids. They were all adopted by the Tateyama family, Ayano’s family, who were researching the Medusa aka Azami. they took these kids in for their research but also genuinely cared about them. With the help of Ayano - the three children come to be not so scared of their abilities and learn to like humanity again. The hoodies the three wear were gifts from their foster parents and Ayano to hide their eyes - as when their abilities were being used / went out of control, their eyes turned red.

One August 15th, Ayano’s parents were involved in a mudslide. They went to the Daze, and her father returned with the snake of clearing eyes. This wasn’t apparent to Ayano or any of the children at first, but Ayano soon found out that her father planned to kill her two friends at school (Haruka and Takene, who have pre existing health conditions and were in his ‘special education’ class) on August 15th so that they would go to the daze and get more snakes.

She found the clearing eyes wanted all the snakes in the real world for some reason, and thus on August 15th, she committed suicide by jumping off the roof of the school building, going into the daze and holding one of the eye abilities hostage by never returning from the daze. The clearing eyes still continued with his plan, Takene and Haruka died that day as well and got their respective powers. Haruka and Takene were strange cases though, they didn’t die with another person. Instead the clearing eyes tricked the world of the Kagerou Daze, getting it to recognize the mind and body as two different entities. So Takene’s body was left in the Daze while her mind returned to the real world as ‘Ene’, and could only exist within cyberspace. Haruka’s mind was left in the Daze and the perfect, healthy, body that he wanted returned to the real world as Konoha, who had no memories and seemingly little personality.

 But left the only one of their friend group, Shintaro, alive with all of his friends having died on the same day. He became a shut in, and for two years did not leave his home. The story officially ‘starts’ with Shintaro and Ene. Ene pretending she did not know Shintaro at all, found his computer during the two year timespan and proceeded to make his life hell, but also give him company within those two lonely years.

It’s important to note that Ene is crucial to Shintaro’s overall development. In some loops, her presence wasn’t enough and he ends up committing suicide out of grief. But emotions and lessons learned are kept throughout the loops, and eventually Ene came to realize that she had to help Shintaro no matter what.

Anyways, in a series of unfortunate events, Shintaro ends up needing to leave his house to go shopping as August 14th is a part of the obon holiday in Japan and he couldn’t survive one day without his precious computer being operational. On his one outing in two years - he ends up being wrapped into a robbery / terrorist attack on a shopping center and meets the rest of the Mekakushi dan (at this moment, only Kido, Seto, Kano, Mary, and Shintaro’s sister Momo). They help diffuse the situation at the shopping center and Shintaro ends up passing out (just due to nerves or he actually gets grazed by a bullet, depends on the loop), and brought back to the Mekakushi Dan hideout aka their apartment. It’s here he learns about the eye abilities, how his sister has one, and the exact events after this differ from loop to loop. Either way Shintaro becomes a sort of ‘unofficial’ member of the Dan and spends time with them over the next few days as he tries to wrap his head around the mysterious powers of the Dan and what they mean.

How the Dan ends up recruiting Hibuya and Konoha differs as well, but generally the group comes across the traffic accident that Hibiya and Hiyori were involved in and Konoha being there as well. Sometimes Ene will ask Shintaro to chase after Konoha, recognizing him as Haruka, and then they end up at the hospital and wait for Hibuya to be released / able to have visitors so they can talk to him. At this point in some of the loops, the Dan knows that August 15th is an important day to them, they’re just not sure why.

Hibuya leaves the hospital, determined to find Hiyori - not quite sure what has happened to her but knows she might be dead or lost or looking for him. Momo manages to get Hibuya to calm down and control his new eye ability, just in time for the Dan to be put into trouble.

It should be noted that technically, Azami had only 10 powers. And now with the exception of the power now taken by Ayano, all of those powers are in the real world. Which means it was time for the Clearing eyes to make its move. In the Novel and Anime route, the Dan ends up taking the fight to the Clearing eyes. (Possibly in the manga route aswell, I haven’t finished it).

Regardless, the Clearing eyes objective becomes clear rather quickly - it plans to kill every member of the Mekakushi Dan except for Shintaro (who doesn’t have one of Azami’s powers, but he still dies in some routes just for getting in the way) and Mary (who has the queen snake / snake of combining eyes, which clearing eyes wants). With each member of the Mekakushi Dan that dies, Mary gains their ability and grows closer to a full medusa. When she has five snakes - she can control the Kagerou Daze itself. The Clearing Eyes plans to kill the Mekakushi Dan, possess Mary, and become immortal + have control over the Daze and all of Azami’s abilities.

This is how most routes end. As soon as Mary has five snakes (four or more of her friends die), she has the power to control the Kagerou Daze and she has the world take in the Clearing eyes and thus trapping it there forever. After this she uses her new found powers to rewind time to sometime after her mother’s death but before everything else happened. This is how most routes start.

In the manga route specifically, the only ones alive after Mary has trapped the Clearing Eyes is Ayano (as she didn’t stay in the Daze in this route), Shintaro, and Mary. Everyone else is dead and gone and Mary is about to rewind time. Before she does though, she has Mary do something - give Shintaro an eye ability. Ayano gives up her life so that Mary may make her life force into an ability - the snake of retaining eyes. It is so that Shintaro ‘will never forget the tragedy that occurred here’. Shintaro has the ability to retain everything he sees, even across timelines. This route happens early on in the number of routes, but it’s never told to the audience when exactly it happens.

But, the problem with this is that he doesn’t remember he has an ability, it has to be triggered somehow. But it’s because of this that Shintaro killing himself out of grief in some timelines is so detrimental to the overall story - if Shintaro dies then he can’t activate his power and he can’t help save everyone. So for the story to truly be realized and head towards a good ending, Shintaro can’t die until after he remembers his ability.

In the novel route, only Seto, Mary, and Hibiya are alive after the confrontation with the Clearing eyes, and they live out their lives for almost two years before Mary decides to rewind time. Hibiya is able to contact the people who died and are now stuck in the Kagerous daze (death doesn’t exist there, so people are ‘alive’ there but trapped forever) and they all collectively make the decision to turn back time. Shintaro even comments that they’ve probably done this dozens, or maybe even hundreds or thousands of times by that point.

In the Anime route is when Shintaro remembers his ability. He remembers this due to something he knows but he shouldn’t have known. While he was friends with Ayano in school, he never knew that her siblings that she spoke about were Kido, Kano, and Seto. Yet while at the Mekakushi Dan apartment, he finds a picture with them all in it - and somehow knows that it’s the truth despite being surprised to find it out. This one event was enough for him to get things rolling and eventually remember his ability. He ends up killing himself and going to the Daze to see Ayano.

This is also shown in Route 1 of the lost time memory music video. He gets shot trying to protect Konoha (who was getting possessed by the clearing eyes, and thus tried to kill himself so that he wouldn’t hurt his friends), and he appears in the Daze to speak to Ayano and bring her back to the real world. The combination of Shintaro’s Retaining eyes, and Ayano’s favoring eyes, is enough to help get Mary to calm down. Ayano’s ability also lets her put the memories of others into other people, so she helps Shintaro show Mary that everything will be fine and that no matter what happened in every other route, they all love and care for her. This was enough to get her to calm down and for her to take everyone up into the Kagerou Daze, not just the clearing eyes.

Once trapped there, the Clearing eyes had nowhere to go and also was tricked by Konoha and Haruka into becoming the new snake / life force for Hiyori so that she could come back to life. I should note here that it is possible for those with snakes to sort of come and go from the Kagerou Daze as they please - people in the daze just can’t leave without a snake, so Mary also returns the snakes to those who had died up until this point so that they could leave the kagerou daze afterwards. Haruka is able to get back into his body after Konoha willingly gives it over, Takene gets her body back, and they are all able to have a few moments with those that they had died with to get some closure.

They then leave the daze together, and are able to continue on with their lives. (also shown in sumertime record)

Again, I skipped over ALOT here. But this is overall the major plot points of the kagerou project.

The Kagerou project is about dealing with loss, about looking forward to the future, about learning that you don’t have to deal with everything alone - there is always someone willing to help you. It’s about overcoming fear and despair, and learning to take a step forward. There is a lot of death and sadness in this story but there’s also a lot of goofy fun moments too - to remind us that even dark moments have a little light in them.

[nvrissa]

hello laid ease and furries ( u know who u are )......hahaha....are u ready for this ? zimzalabim ! my name is xan ( she/her pronouns ) and my laptop has been broken for a good 3 years now i have to use an onscreen keyboard so if u see me typing for 20000 years on discord only to send u a single sentence u know whats up x JSDBJWBJW here is the intro....im really winging this no one call me out for that WOOO....tw: medication, mental health, body image ? perhaps just to be safe <3

ok ! so im not gonna talk too much abt family stuff bc yuno and i are doing the collab of the century here and art takes time people ! JSBDJBWDJW but so u get a good idea...i will write a little abt it lets get it 

so the kwons were two of the biggest faces in hollywood ( and tbh they are still considered icons / hollywood royalty no matter how old they get they stay #Relevant ) think bradgelina ! literally everyone knows who the kwons if u dont u probably live under a rock /: 

their parents are very into the fame thing...so when it came to their kids ( nari and wolfe ) they SUPER pushed the famous life onto them, really expecting both of them to be just as obsessed and enamored by the public. idk if u guys ever say that vid of gigi and bella hadid before they were huge were their mom was pressuring them both to get into modeling and to stay skinny and to be stars etc....it was kinda like that !

so narissa, being the first born, really just internalized that shit...like imagine being told ever since u were a baby that fame and status and ur last name are wildly important and not being able to remember a time when u werent being watched by cameras / a third party ( the public ) bc that was her life ! nari has....no experience as to what life is like without cameras and without having to create this image of herself that ppl are gonna be into 

obviously that’s NOT normal....and it had it’s toll on her /: as a kid she grew up so fast like u know those kids that seem so mature and wise for their age ? that was nari. she always had two versions of herself: inside nari vs outside nari. she was so good at being good just bc she knew what stuff to express and what stuff to keep inside ( spoiler alert: most of it was kept in x )  

she is still very much desperate to please her parents despite it all /: i feel like for a long time she kinda excepted and agreed that fame is everything ( hence why shes known for using her last name to get her places ) but shes starting to realize just how FUCKED it all is and just how much it’s messed her up so stay tuned for more fun !

ok so career stuff ! nari started off as a child model bc she was um super cute and super good at knowing what to do / not freaking out in front of cameras <3 but she was always obsessed with actors ! she used to sit in front of the tv for hours legit study and memorize ppls mannerisms and various movie lines.. she was literally always just quoting random lines / imitating various actors so often her parents were like ok word go act !    

she landed her first role at 12 and it was a pretty huge role as a lead chara in a mini television series that revolved around a cast of kids ( think stranger things but not plot wise just how some of the mains were kids ) with zero acting experience before hand ... so it was pretty clear to the media nari got the spot bc she was a kwon ! there was a bunch of controversy around the show before it came out but once it was released...there was no denying nari had talent

after that it was just a whirlwind of acting doors opening up for her. everyone wanted nari bc of her last name and all the attention that came from it, not to mention every director wanted to be The One that helped narissa kwon become one of the most famous actresses of the 21st century. most of the time she was getting cast for selfish reasons but nari never realized it /: she was just happy to be acting bc it really was like therapy for her to become different ppl

flash forward to age 15 when narissa was finally diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder and was prescribed meds to help ! it was actually a director from a movie she was working on that suggested to her parents nari might be struggling after witnessing her have a panic attack on set. not wanting a scandal, her parents agreed it was best to get her “help” which included pills and weekly therapy ! 

so nari actually didnt mind it too much tbh she HAD been struggling for a while she just assumed her anxiety was normal and just like something all famous ppl were dealing with but that wasnt the case. she was hesitant to open up to her therapist just bc she was still obsessed with this idea of inside nari vs outside nari, and she was very scared to cross that line so it took....years of sessions to build up that trust

as she got older though and as she got more famous, everyone just assumed she was better. she was more famous and loved by the day, she had become a chanel ambassador ( thank u jennie x ), her interviews on youtube always brought in record views, she��d started in plenty of movies critics agreed would become cult classics, her social medias were nearing kardashian level in terms of followers: everything was on track....

....except nari had actually never been more unstable. she had become so dependent on her meds she couldnt go anywhere or talk to anyone without popping a few in. all the watching eyes were starting to make her paranoid, not to mention the pressure from her parents ( who couldn’t be happier with nari being so famous ) was at its all time high. she had been nominated for an oscar at 21 and everyone was expecting her to win...and then she didnt

narissa kwon famously fainted at the 2018 oscars after it was announced she had lost the award. her actual fainting wasnt caught on camera or televised, but it WAS witnessed by some of the most relevant names and faces in hollywood who were in that room. the scandal took the media by storm, the hashtag #getwellnarissa trending for over 42 hours until a statement was released she had fainted bc of dehydration and other undisclosed causes and that she was okay & currently taking it easy at home surrounded by family 

in reality it was the abuse of her medication as well as all the stress, but when your last name is kwon manipulating the press is as simple as making the right phone call. unfortunately for nari and her parents, the article about the brat pack came out a week later, and there was no manipulating that source /:

for narissa, it was all a wake up call. she decided to go off her anxiety meds altogether. after falling out with the brat pack she spent that year trying to figure out who she was separate from her fame and her last name. despite some offers from a few casting directors ( surprisingly some people still wanted her despite the scandals bc she was still a kwon, after all ) narissa rejected every role except one in a coming of age indie movie that explores womanhood and mental health as well as strained relationships with mothers. the movie is set to release sometime mid august hehe (~:

she agreed to come to milan to reunite with the brat pack bc she’s still searching for herself ! nari figures the people who quite literally grew up with her might give her some answers......not to mention there is still a part of her who is desperate to reclaim the image and status she had before everything fell apart </3    

PERSONALITY/TIDBITS

narissa is....complicated to say the least. growing up in front of the cameras and in a family who prioritized fame and outside opinions of you as the most important thing, she is quite literally desperate for praise and approval. because she legit has no idea what parts of her are real and what parts of her she’s created for her public persona, she often looks for understanding in others!! shes very very good at analyzing people and understanding people in the hopes that its gonna make her better at analyzing herself, but to no avail. 

libra sun capricorn moon !! THIS is super accurate and telling if u wanna read but i kinda just summarized it in the last bullet

she is such a perfectionist with everything she does and a bit of a control freak in the sense that if she’s not the one doing something, she doesnt have faith whatever that is will be able to live up to her unrealistic standards. directors are often concerted with nari bc whenever she gets big roles.....she is so hard on herself, often asking for take after take bc she monitors every little thing abt her expression or her movements. she’s often left frustrated and disappointed with herself bc again, her standards are SUPER unrealistic ):

she’s relatively sweet!! growing up with the brat pack they probably knew her as the life of the party, very bubbly, confident, and very easy to have fun with as long as you’re being tolerable. however, she can get kind of opinionated at times so it’s very hard for you to gain her trust and respect back if you lose it. she’s also prone to random mood swings / periods of isolation, but whenever she returns its with a big smile and a soft voice assuring you everything is okay 

very good at lying and deceiving ppl but she hardly ever does it on purpose ( unless her publicists asks her too ). she’s carried this persona / public image of herself curated for consumption from others for so long, sometimes she has no idea when she’s being sincere or if she’s just convincing herself she’s being sincere. most of the time she only deceives other people about herself. she can come across as kind of elusive because of this ( think daisy from gatsby’s perspective ) but it’s not on purpose. she just legit has no true sense of self isnt that sexy?

speaking of sex. JWDBJWBDJWBD she also uses that as a coping mechanism / a weird affirmation that yes, she IS wanted by others and yes she IS seen as someone beautiful and that she IS something to be consumed by others ( like i said in my tags....male fantasies male fantasies ) but then at the same time she feels guilty abt this and so unsatisfied and disgusted at how she’s living her life as an object / manifestation of other people’s projections rather than as a normal person...rip </3 its a cycle

ever since her relationship with micah that was so hated by the public it actually ruined and ended their relationship, nari has been too scared to publicly have a relationship again. the media seems to love seeing her on casual dates with other stars, but not to see her tied down to one person, as that kind of “damages” this super accessible persona she’s put out ( think idols and why they cant date )  

she loves poetry, french music, all of marilyn monroe and audrey hepburn’s movies, nonfiction essays abt womanhood and identity, anything chanel, is particularly fond of silk dresses but is partial to velvet as well, wears lacy bralettes under everything bc it makes her a little more confident, actually prefers large parties to small ones because small gatherings are more personal therefore give her more anxiety, would only eat fruit and drink champagne if she could live like that, doesn’t know how to swim so she’s scared of the ocean as well as the dark, used to study ballet as a kid and misses it terribly, doesn’t know how to drive and isn’t planning to learn, can be materialistic at times, is probably an introvert masquerading as an extrovert for 22 years now, the only movies she cant stand are westerns, loves to travel but is scared of flying, doesn’t drink coffee, and is allergic to nuts. 

last but most important fact about narissa is that she loves her brother wolfe more than anything in this world so messing with him is the only way nari is bound to 100% hate you. she can bully him all she wants ( ex. starting very real rumors he IS in fact a furry ) but no one else is aloud to actually be mean to him or she will kill you

also very random but i had a hc that when she was 6 and her pet cat jinx died she caused enough fuss at home her parents actually made it a national holiday in about thirteen different states. the anniversary of this death is december 4th and yes . the brat pack better mourn jinx with nari every year......

pls spare plots im sorry this is so long.....JBDJBWJDBWJBWDJBJ i promise it will be worth it also im sensitive and very small ... how can u say no ? 

[kikithedeceiver]

Are you going to translate kagerou daze last chapter? I can’t wait

Well...okay. I’m gonna be honest with the Kagepro Fandom here.

It is not likely Iwill post the RAW manga for the fandom anymore

I will get the manga, yes. But at this point, I don’t evenwant to contribute anything to do fandom to help with access to officialcontents.

It was a very hard decision to make, but with how theKagepro fandom is acting today, I have decided I will not post the Kagepro RAWson Tumblr anymore, and will remove all RAWs I have scanned once I get thesubscription.

TL; DR: At thispoint, the fandom is too toxic, therefore I have no more desire to provide themanga chapters even though there is only one chapter left. Sorry to those whowere not involved in this, but screw it with the antis who now run the fandomand hope you’re happy.

Also still shipKanoKido and don’t see HibiMomo as a “pedophilia ship”

Listen. Back when I joined the fandom, it was a simplertime. Yobanashi Deceive came out, followed by Lost Time Memory and Ayano’sTheory of Happiness shortly after. Those days were simple as we all cried overKano and Ayano, and think of the potential plot LTM revealed as we all waited forMekakucity Actors to come out. We also had awesome contents on translatorstranslating some fancomics (with permission) and a good amount of fanfics andfanarts provided by the fans in this fandom.  

Of course, we had some discourse over which was better:KanoKido or KanoAya; and over Shounen Brave’s MV being leaked online. And wehad major discourse over how MCA went, but in the end it’s just agree todisagree and move on to focus to other medias Kagerou Project was released in,or just move away from the series in general.

Right now with the fandom, however, they cannot agree ordisagree over ships. Majority of the fandom anyway. Today the fandom…other fandoms really, just love to throwthe word ‘incest’ and ‘pedophilia’ left and right with ease and spread theirflames in their posts, tags and replies. In everything, really. Even when theyposted official art, they feel the need to scream in their tag to tell usshippers to fuck off and die for shipping what they think is ‘incest’. I also knowthere are those who are disgusted over my display picture of Kano and Kidokissing, which an old friend of mine edited when that episode of MCA aired(won’t reveal name because I don’t want you to attack them). And even feelgross out over the pic in my blog of Kano petting Kido’s kitty ears.

I want to ask, how can the antis who claim Kano and Kido aresiblings, can see petting as sexual? You could have chosen to see it as abrother petting his sister’s kitty ears because it is cute and fun to tease herfor that, but no. Just because Kano and Kido are alone within a picture…or apanel frame really, you guys choose to view it as a romantic relationshipinstead of a sibling relationship, getting angry over it and spreading hate.

Ironic for antis who claim Kano & Kido are siblings, butjust seeing them together doing something makes you think it’s romantic anyway.

What’s more. Age gaps. Ever since another discourse over ships happened when my friend tried to makepeace with shippers (and sadly failed and upset over it when you guys flamedher), I have heard of this thing called “Half your age + Seven” to dictate whoto date with, and what is appropriately shippable, like HibiMomo. Honestly thispost have the best response over it, but I will quote the replyhere.

so a 16 year old can’tdate a 14 year old? so an 18 year old can’t date a 16 year old? so a 40 yearold can’t date a 27 year old? a math expression should not be the regulation ondating ages…

and if it’s shippingwho tf cares? not hurting anybody because they all fictional…

To be honest, this reminds me of Dead Poet Society. Ifanyone had seen the film, maybe you recall a scene where poetry is calculatedby math as well. This is that level of stupidity. The fandom today is doingsomething what could be considered excrement on what is acceptable over whatis fiction and bringing that over to reality. The reality where your parents,grandparents, classmates or anyone you know also have age gaps, and that reallyyou are more upset over fictional characters dating instead of real-life issuesof incest and pedophilia.

Other than that little discourse fiasco, there are otherthings, but I will not go into detail. Instead just says this tiny fandom justfeels too entitled with their belief and doing uncalled for things likebackstabbing and limiting others to enjoy supporting the fandom in their ownway. Also to let the antis go free by just sit by and watch. I understand thosewho are just tired and don’t want to deal with them. But for those who actuallyenable the antis to do what they want because you guys just don’t care, youguys are part of the guilty party as well by letting them grow and think it’sa-okay to be like this.

With that being said, I do not feel the need to post thefinal chapter anymore. You guys will have to figure it out yourselves or justwait and hear bits and pieces of it maybe. But I don’t even want to post what Iknow. Instead I will just share those RAWs with who I am friends with and whomI trust, plus those who are more mature because instead of flaming, they justlet others enjoy what they ship and do their own things.

The chapters being taken down will also remove myself as aRAW provider to the fandom, which I am thankful because I do not need to dothis anymore, as I, again, I hate scanning and always believe I would get intotrouble.

I know there are those, like my friends and mutuals I havehere on Tumblr, who wanted to read the manga since they do not have access tothem where they live. I am sorry for doing this to them too, but it just isn’tworth it in the end.

Instead, I will spend my remaining days in the fandom asjust someone who hears bits and pieces of Kagepro fandom here and there while Iam enjoying myself more in another fandom or doing other things I enjoy inlife, instead of spreading hate when someone doesn’t agree with you. I willstill look forward to Jin’s next album and when Mekakucity Reload to come out, andalso I might finish my KanoKido Oneshot requests and multichapter stories Iwanted to finish, but that will take a longtime since I’m planning to focus other writing instead.

But what I look forward to the most is when the series’ end,so then it can be put to rest for real and I can officially leave and let thefandom to slowly die. Might hear some things, but it will be a dying fandom atthat point.

The asks are still open for yelling. But it will just provea point. But right now, I believe I have blocked a lot of anti, which goes toshow how toxic this fandom has become. If I do get any asks/anon hate though,feel free to blacklist #discourse and #negativity, dear followers. Tumblralways had that option at least, you guys just need to use it when you’re onthe app without xKit. Also I will just answer those asks once, then block them afterwards (if you’re sending an ask through anon, you’re IP blocked).

If you guys read this whole thing (over 2 pages at thispoint), then I thank you for reading this. And more so if you understand what Iam doing. Sorry to those who are upset over this, but not to the antis who areupset and possibly raging if they read this.

Because with antis running the fandom, I want no part in itby providing them the last manga content.

[ofstarsandvibranium]

Questions That Need Answers

Fandom: Marvel (Celebrity AU)

Pairing: Steve Rogers x Reader

Summary: Steve Rogers is a famous actor known for his role as playing Captain America and you’re his girlfriend. Steve attends a convention and at a panel, fans start asking about you.

A/N: Okay. Technically, this is a Chris Evans fic, but because I don’t write for real people you get a Steve Celebrity AU fic. So just accept it.

You loved attending conventions with your boyfriend. You loved to see him interact with his fans. He adored them just as much as they adored him. Also, you loved going to conventions because you were a total nerd. And that’s what Steve loved about you.

You woke up early to get dressed in your custom made Captain America show girl costume. You were just finished curling your hair when Steve woke up, “Holy sh-”

“Language, Cap,” you said smirking as you set down the curling iron.

“Jesus, doll. You look amazing! I’m not dreaming, am I?” Steve sat up and rubbed his eyes. He blinked a couple times just to make sure his eyes weren’t deceiving him, “Man, that’s an amazing thing to wake up to.”

You giggled, “Glad you like it. Now hurry up and get dressed. The con starts in about an hour. We still gotta get you fed before you do your signings.”

Steve laid back down onto the bed, “Can’t we just lay here for a bit?”

“Nope!” you said with a pop to the “p”, “If you’re not ready within the hour, I’m leaving your ass!”

Steve chuckled and sat back up, “Yes, ma’am.”

Luckily for you two, your hotel was connected to the convention center, so you didn’t have to do a lot of walking. You and Steve walked hand-in-hand to the main convention floor and waltzed right up to Steve’s designated table. A women walked up and greeted you, “Hi, Mister Rogers! I’m Bella, one of the con’s coordinators.”

Steve smiled and shook Bella’s hand, “Nice to meet you. Just call me Steve. And this is my girlfriend, Y/N.” You smiled and shook Bella’s hand.

She smiled, “Nice to meet you! I love your cosplay!”

“Thank you so much!”

“You’re welcome! Anyway, this here,” she gestured to two young adults about nineteen or twenty, “This is Karen and Andrew. They’ll be supervising your booth. Answering questions for the guests and whatnot. Also, did you need someone to handle the money for you.”

You spoke up, “Nope! I got it covered!” you said with a big smile.

“Perfect!” Bella looked at her watch, “Ah! Show time! Enjoy the rest of your day, guys. If you have any questions or concerns, you can ask Karen or Andrew to contact me.”

Steve shook Bella’s hand again, “Thank you so much!” Steve then pulled you behind the table and settled in his chair. 

You held his hand and squeezed it, “Today’s gonna be fun.”

And it was. For two hours, you watched Steve talk with fans, sign their merch, take pictures with them, and give them hugs. Every once in a while, some fans would ask to take pictures with you or have you join them in their picture with Steve.

When you and Steve first started dating, he was very protective of you. You and he hardly spent time together in public because he knew how mean the paprazzi and fans would be. He fully expected his fans to hate you just because you were dating him. Because that’s how it always went when he dated someone. But that wasn’t the case.

His fans loved you. They loved how you were just a regular person like them, not to mention a total nerd. Steve was relieved that his fans welcomed you with open arms. And when some “fans” talked ill of you, Steve’s true fans came to the rescue saying that you made him happy and they should respect your relationship with him. His fans slowly started becoming yours as well. 

And because his fans loved you just as much, it was very common for you to come up in conversation during panels. Like now.

A young tween looking around the age of thirteen had come up to the mic and twiddled with her fingers, “H-Hi, Steve.”

Steve always had a soft spot for kids. He smiled, “How ya doin’, sweetheart? What’s your name?”

The girl nervously giggled, “Y/N.”

Steve’s eyes widened, “Wow. That’s my girlfriend’s name too!”

She giggled again, “I know! Um, I was actually wondering, uh, when do you think you’ll propose to Y/N?”

The audience all “oohh”ed and squealed at the question. Steve couldn’t help but blush and hang his head low. He chuckled and looked back up, “Just gonna call me out, huh, sweetheart?”

With no hesitation, you ran up to the mic from your seat in the front row. You spoke into the mic, “Actually, yes. I was wondering the same thing.” Everyone in the panel room screamed and cheered, not expecting you to show up like that.

Steve laughed, “Well, let’s see. We’ve been dating for how long, babe? Five years? So soon yeah? That sound good to you?”

“The sooner the better, Steven!” You exclaimed jokingly into the mic.

Steve laughed more and asked the little girl, “How about you sweetheart? You think I should propose to Y/N soon?” The little girl nodded and everyone applauded. As you and the girl made your way back to your respective seats, you blew a kiss to Steve, who blew one back to you making everyone go “aaaawwww”.

Once the convention was over, you and Steve made your way back to the hotel room and flopped onto the bed. You toed off your heals and groaned, “Remind me to never wear heals for cosplay ever again.”

Steve chuckled as he stripped off his jeans and shirt and slipped into bed, “I told you it was a bad idea.”

“But they made me look soooo gooood!”

Steve pulled you into his arms, “Honey, you already look sooooo gooood without them.”

You smiled and pecked his lips, “Thanks.”

Steve kissed your head, “You know I love you, right?”

“Well I hope so or else these past five years have been a total waste!” Steve proceeded to tickle your sides causing you to squeal, “Okay! I’m sorry! Yes, I know you love me!”

Steve stopped the tickling and just wrapped his arms around you, pulling you close to him, “I do wanna marry you, ya know.”

You looked up at him, “You don’t need to propose now, Steve. I was just joking in the panel. We could wait as long as you want.”

Steve nodded, “Can you guarantee that you’ll still say ‘yes’ down the road?”

“If you still love me just as much as I love you, and you do still wanna be stuck with my lame butt for eternity, then absolutely.”

Steve softly smiled and nudged your nose with his, “I love your lame butt.”

You pecked his lips and giggled“And I love your incredibly amazing butt.”

[kawaiitidalwavekitten]

Words are the new pixels: Why designers must become storytellers

Screens are disappearing.

There’s a delicious irony in that sentence, right? I mean, you’re probably reading this article on a screen right now, (unless you make a habit of printing out your morning reading). But look around: human-computer interactions no longer exclusively occur through the keyholes of our smartphones, smartwatches and TV screens – something that Bill Gates predicted would happen back in 2002:

“…computers themselves will gradually “disappear” into the fabric of our lives. We are still a long way from a world full of disembodied intelligent machines, but the computing experience of the coming decade will be so seamless and intuitive that–increasingly–we will barely notice it.” ~ Bill Gates, The Disappearing Computer

Granted, he guessed this transition would happen by 2010 – but he was only off by a few years, so give the guy some credit.

As voice recognition and chatbot technology improves, these “invisible” user interfaces will replace screens as the default medium of interaction. Just as many modern websites & applications today tout themselves as “Mobile-First”, it won’t be long before those same innovators are applying the “Voice-First” label to their new offerings. Indeed there’s a non-zero chance that the next killer app may launch with no visual UI at all! Thus, today’s UX designers face a stark choice – evolve beyond the pixel, or look for a new career.

In this post, I’m going to explore some of the reasons behind the sunset of visual-first design, and explain why designers must learn to wield their prose and stories as fluently as they do their imagery, in order to remain relevant in the age of invisible computing.

Let’s get to it, shall we?

Why visual-first design will soon decline

Words are the new pixels

What designers can do to keep their jobs

Why visual-first design will soon decline

If we’re to understand why designers must learn to tell stories without relying on visual aids, we must first grasp the drivers behind the decline of visual-first design.

It’s getting old

In short, predominantly visual design as a source of innovation is approaching the maturity phase of its life-cycle.

Just like any product or service, visual-first design is reaching its maturity

Take a look around – aren’t websites all starting to look kind of samey these days? This is no accident. As new design best practices have been shared, and higher conversion rates achieved, this standardized knowledge has propagated to businesses and website owners all across the web. But this wasn’t always the case. 

In its heyday in the early 2000’s, flashy web design was THE competitive differentiator for any business that wanted to make waves online. The arrival of Macromedia Flash (that’s Adobe Flash, to you kids), brought rich interactivity and visuals to the previously dull and static World Wide Web, and boutique rich media design studios like 2Advanced and Big Spaceship blew people’s minds by pushing the envelope of what we all thought was possible with web design and motion graphics. And fancy pre-loaders (ugh).

With unique and eye-catching design prioritized over everything else, it used to be a generally accepted workflow to have your web designer simply create visual “buckets”, (stuffed with Lorem Ipsum, of course), for the copywriter/client to fill with content after the fact.

We now know this is no longer an appropriate workflow for truly effective web design – in such circumstances, the actual content becomes subservient to the design, which diminishes the effectiveness of both.

It’s being commoditized by economic pressures

Visual design is cheaper, more accessible and more standardized than at any time in the history of the internet. Sites like Upwork, 99Designs and Envato have democratized (some might say commoditized) visual design, while free access to blog tutorials, website themes, and drag & drop tools like Canva, mean that anyone can invest a little time or money, and walk away with a presentable design.

Automated design is coming

Meanwhile, procedural design engines like The Grid and Act-On, can automatically generate entire layouts based solely on the content you feed them, and simultaneously A/B test like 8 gajillion different page variations to find the ultimate killer converting layout. While the output of these tools may not currently match human visual designers at the top of their game, there’s been more than enough interest around them to validate the existence of significant demand for cheaper, automated delivery of good visual design. It’s only a matter of time before the technology catches up – and it’s a problem that need only be solved successfully once to greatly reduce the need for human involvement in the visual design process.

“In 2010 only 2 per cent of Americans worked in agriculture and 20 per cent worked in industry, while 78 per cent worked as teachers, doctors, webpage designers and so forth. When mindless algorithms are able to teach, diagnose and design better than humans, what will we do?” ~ Yuval Noah Harari, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow

Voice & text recognition technology has reached a tipping point

Following a powerhouse showing at CES2017, Amazon’s Alexa is the first application of voice interaction to have reached mainstream adoption, with almost 8 million Echo units sold since it debuted in 2015 – and more than two thirds of those sales happened last year.

One stunning stat in particular is that Echo owners have also increased their spending on Amazon by 10% in the last year. Consider all the effort that’s gone into optimizing Amazon to be the best-converting e-commerce store on the internet – and now consider that one of its biggest leaps forward came from removing the visual interface altogether!

It’s also worth noting that voice and chat interfaces are only just getting started, and haptic, gesture-driven interactions aren’t far behind.

The video above was posted in 2015, so who knows how far this technology has come since then?

Visual design is struggling to keep up with consumers’ needs

How many screens exist in the average urban-dweller’s life? Smartphone, TV, laptop, tablet, car, (maybe even the fridge, if they’re painfully early adopter). Effective visual designs today must solve for an ever-growing variety of contexts & circumstances – but the kicker is that each time there’s a new breakthrough in our display technologies and devices, we’re having to almost completely rethink our approach to creating visual interfaces that effectively capitalize on these new capabilities.

  This is becoming unsustainable – we can’t keep redesigning our entire visual methodologies with each new innovation, so there’s an immediate need for an intuitive interface medium that works in almost any context, and has enough future-proofing built into it to stick around for a while.

Words are the new pixels

So, I’m just gonna throw this out there: humans have been communicating with words for about 70,000 years. We all know how to use them and interpret them, and I’d argue that words are the only truly responsive UI element for all computing devices, past, present and future.

Words: they worked back then, and they still work now

Words work at all screen resolutions, on all devices, across all global cultures, and in almost any context. This is an indispensable trait, since your responsibility as a designer is to guide users as they hop between individual interfaces within an overall guided experience.

Words are built for sharing experiences, ideas & stories

No matter how well-designed your website & mobile app are individually, if the transition between them is disjointed, it’s still a bad experience for the user.

As a result, customer preferences are shifting from favoring individually well-designed interfaces – Brand X’s mobile app, Brand Y’s website, and so on – to expecting a seamless overall experience within a single brand, regardless of the context. Businesses are discovering that this seamlessness is essential for driving repeat purchases from customers in a recurring cycle, nicknamed the Loyalty Loop.

In short, users need compelling narratives to guide them through the entire experience – not more infinitely-reconfigurable visual interfaces.

Wall-E is a masterclass in visual storytelling – but few can reach that bar consistently

  Thing is though, unless you’re Pixar, it’s really hard to tell a compelling, understandable story without words. Thus, the shift towards designing cohesive narratives for customers across multiple channels is opening the door to competition with visual designers on their own turf. Copywriters, authors, linguists, voice actors, casting directors, screenwriters, hell even songwriters – are all about to get into the user experience game.

  These folks are already familiar with creating engaging non-visual content – and demand for their expertise is about to explode. Although voice interaction has penetrated the mainstream, there’s still a dire need to build & maintain customer engagement. Alexa’s total library of almost 7,000 Skills (that’s Amazon-lish for “Apps”) currently averages only 3% retention after 2 weeks – ouch!

What designers can do to keep their jobs

LUKE: “With the blast shield down, I can’t even see! How am I supposed to fight?” OBI WAN: “Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them.”

Effective storytelling is as big a differentiator for today’s UX designers as the “unicorn” status of designers who could also code in the ‘00’s and early ‘10’s – so here’s what visual designers should be doing to prepare for this shift.

Lorem Ipsum must die – Content IS the design, so it should be factored into your workflow from the outset of the project. No more punting consideration of content down the road (although Samuel L Ipsum is always welcome entertainment

Understand the structure of a good story – There are tons of ways to do this – learn from storytelling masters like Pixar, read a “Choose your own adventure” book, study Joseph Campbell’s timeless classic “The Hero with a Thousand Faces”, or even play a text-based adventure game like Zork.

Tease apart and deconstruct these examples to learn how words alone can guide and compel users through an experience.

Learn the art of persuasive writing – Don’t fear the encroachment of writers on “your design turf” – embrace them, learn from them. They may know this new, invisible medium better than you do, but you know how to incorporate their work, and harness it to create compelling user experiences.

The legendary Zig Ziglar’s “5 obstacles to a sale”, and the Persuasive Triangle are great frameworks with which to start learning how to write persuasive, compelling copy.

In summary: Learn to use your words

Visual-first design is in decline, so designers must become familiar with telling stories via the invisible media of voice and text. There are a number of drivers behind this decline:

Good visual design is no longer a competitive advantage for online businesses – it’s expected

Economic competition & automation are making visual design cheaper and more accessible

Voice and text recognition technology are enabling viable alternatives to traditional visual interfaces

Visual design can’t keep up with the pace of innovations in consumer devices

Words are the ideal medium for accommodating this next phase of human-computer interaction. They’re universally used and understood globally, and are easily woven into stories that can fit into any user context.

Designers who embrace the power of storytelling will be better positioned to navigate the transition from visible to invisible computing – and I, for one, can’t wait to see what kinds of stories you guys start telling.