#I don't think this is what they're doing but its fun to think about

[oppaihun]

No cheeky title, no beta readers.

I just think Omega has to help Chain out in the Ministry’s breeding program. And I think he’s weird about it.

CWS: Quint intox, breeding program, freaky water ghoul anatomy (cunt/clit/folds AND tentacle for Chain’s anatomy) , mild medfet, kind of ovipositon

Omega can’t help but hum as he finishes setting things up. The breeding program has multiple purposes, namely avoiding the intensive rituals require for summoning and also to help with the ghouls natural cycles. Ghouls tend to get rowdy when certain instincts and needs go ignored.

Usually there’s a system in place, matching on various factors like health, desired hybrid matches if required, multi ghouls are always adored.

Chain however, well he requires a different approach. He’s a bit feral when he’s here. In fact he’s been ousted from the normal program. The ghoul will perceive anything as a threat to his partner or to his clutch, he will fight, and it will be messy. So he’s delegated to Omega, which he has no complaints about. But Omega is particular about it.

Chain lays back, dumbed down with a dose of quintosis to dumb him down and have him just complaint enough to be in an exam room with the big quint like this. Does his legs need to be in stirrups? No, but it’s more fun that way, and Omega’s even managed to sneak in a mirror to put on the ceiling, the water ghoul can’t help but lie back and watch everything he does.

“Alright. Now we’re ready.” Omega says, an audible click of a tape recorder in the background, also unneeded but not unwanted. “You’ve waited too long this time, I’m surprised you two haven’t gotten egg-locked yet.”

“Fuck you.” Chain spits out, still got that bite of a nearly feral ghoul. But Omega’s right, the channel where his tentacle resides is distended, uncomfortably so, in fact she can hardly be convinced to comply for Chain because she’s too full. “Not yet Princess.” The quint replies with a snort, putting on gloves and making sure the snap is a little extra.

The water ghoul is wet already from that, he can smell him since he’s on full display. “I’m gonna start trying to coax her out now.” He says, weirdly clinical about it. But gentle fingers prod around the tentacle’s channel, getting a feel for just how full they both are. But then they travel down to the sheath. Chain’s breath hitches when he feels a thick finger slowly spread the folds there. It’s overwhelmingly sensitive there. But with the quintosis, she’s affected too, lazier than normal. Her tip slowly comes forward. She feels Omega’s gloved hand and knows what she’s in for. “Come on honey.” He speaks sweetly to her.

She slowly emerges, using her suckers to cling onto the nitrile covered fingers. "Can't believe you fucking pillow talk her." Chain mumbles, hes dumbed down, sure, but nothing gets rid of that bark. He hisses under his breath a bit as Omega gets a hand wrapped around her, pressure always gets her excited. "She's behaving right now. Don't encourage her to misbehave like you do." The bit ghoul chuckles.

"You, however, always a little thorn in my side, aren't you?" There's no real bite in Omega's voice, its just how the two of them are together, always wanting a reaction. Just to add to it, he swipes a big thumb through the folds of his cunt, managing to get Chain's voice to pitch up juuust a bit. His tentacle responds in kind, firming up under his touch. They're easy, like this.

"Play nice for me, won't you please sweetheart?" Once again, he speaks to the tentacle and not the ghoul it's attached to. "You're too full, I know. Let's make you feel better." He then leans down and takes her in his mouth, one good slide back with no issue, especially after dealing with Alpha and Ifrit for years. Chain lets out a gasp, head falling back to just look at the mirror in the ceiling tiles, watching the whole thing like he's not even there.

But a warm hole, regardless of where or who's was all she needed. Chain's tentacle steadily pushes herself back and forth since Chain's a little too gone to thrust himself. Especially since Omega sloppily works his fingers into his cunt, kind enough to only really work the two right now. The eggs are pressing everywhere, it wouldn't be too good for either of them.

The exam room is heavy with panted breath and slick sounds. And in their current predicament, there isn’t a whole lot of stamina. Only need. Omega’s hand on the tentacle feels her start to bulge, knowing she’s about to start depositing. Chain whines at the loss of his fingers, but also shudders at the feeling of all those eggs finally starting to leave. The quint is quick to pull a specimen tray close, stroking her until she starts to spill into the cold metal.

It’s a shame that all of these eggs are duds, having not been fertilized in time, it would have been quite the clutch. They’re still soft, but solid black. That doesn’t matter anymore. Chain’s finally at ease, no longer uncomfortable and even letting Omega press along his lower abdomen to check for any potential stragglers. “Good job.” He says quietly, happy to have been able to give him this relief. But they’re not really done here, and Chain could nearly cry when he feels the bigger ghoul’s mouth on his cunt. He trembles, feet shaking and making the stirrups rattle a bit.

Omega’s had his sick fun, the pleasure in this whole little charade of a medical procedure. And to work him up so much, just to leave him hanging after the clutch was deposited is too cruel to all of them. But there’s no preamble, no wasting time. He wraps his lips around his fat clit, groaning as it twitches against him. His finger enters his cunt and hooks up to find that spot. His sole focus right now is getting the water ghoul to cum, preferably against his face. Chain would die if anyone could hear him now, whining and weakly rutting his hips down. This is a secret they’ll both take back to the Pit.

And it doesn’t take long, and Omega knows when it’s about to happen. He flicks his fat forked tongue over his clit, pressing upward as he quickly fingers Chain’s cunt. The water ghoul damn near cries as he cums, gushing a mixture of fluids onto Omega’s face, just like he wanted. “Good fuckin boy.” He groans, a soft puff of breath blowing out against Chain’s skin.

[tendermiasma]

Anonymous asked: What are some of your favorite antique things to collect? Do you have any especially favorite finds?

Strawpage/tendermiasma

That's hard... I love furniture, it's so neat to see how they shaped and reflected trends and values and just the pure craftsmanship is so wonderful. My favorite styles hover around the 17th and 18th centuries-- Jacobean, George III, Federal/Hepplewhite/Sheridan. There's something about the crispness of the detailing of the last four that makes an ornamented piece feel so light and airy. I love Jacobean because every piece looks like it was hauled out of a fire, the dark patina is so rich. I don't actually own any originals from these periods (yet!!!) but fashion is a flat circle and Jacobean had a revival in the late 19th and a couple decades into the 20th century. I have a court cabinet from probably around the 1930s that I found here in Austin that was a part of this revival and you can see the Jacobean influence also carries a secondary Arts and Crafts influence that the US was on the tail end of. The engraving on the panels are a little bit flatter than the traditionally extremely 3D Jacobean carving, and that's what Arts and Crafts brought. They kept the dark patina look and I think it's interesting to think about how much lighter actual Jacobean furniture might have been during its time, and that we're choosing to imitate its aged look as part of its original intent-- sort of like how we thought Roman statues started out white when they were actually originally brightly painted, but we choose to make them white in most of our casual references. Regardless the charred finish looks amazing against light colored walls. It feels contemplative. Welsh 18th century design also has that quality although more pared-down but still warm and welcoming somehow. I love it.

Back to Georgian/Sheridan/Hepplewhite/Federal though, also don't actually own any from that time either, although I have been heavilyyyyyyy eyeing a credenza from one of my favorite antique dealers in Austin who randomly has some incredible pieces. I could't buy it responsibly but they're all free right there for me to study and admire. Sheridan and Hepplewhite are super similar and a good way to tell them apart is the feet. If they're tapered little unadorned pegs, it's probably Hepplewhite, and if they have a ball or box on the end or have some other angular detailing, it's probably Sheridan. THOSE styles came back around almost 200 years later in the woodwork of midcentury modern which I think is so neat. You can also help yourself date a piece with other little things, like screws. There was a period in the early-mid 1800s where screws had machine-made threads while their heads were still cut by hand with a hacksaw; the machinery for cutting screwheads came later. Philips screws weren't widely used until the 1940s so that's another possible way to tell. However you have to be careful because a lot of furniture gets repaired and modern hardware is usually used, so it's good to hunt around on it for signs of the original hardware. You can also tell whether hardware is new or possibly original by the amount of patina built up around the hardware. That's hard to fake. 

I got lost again. I also love looking at pottery and dishware because there's so much information and history in its marks. It's always such a fun little forensics game to look at its stamps and writings and symbols on the bottom to track where it's been, who made it, is it a forgery of a well-known artisan? That happened to me really recently when I found a Meissen tea set at a thrift store and it turns out I believe I have one actual Meissen cup in there from mid 1800s. The only way I could figure it out it was genuine and also its general date was because of its imperfections, which is pretty cool. Meissen had a specific way of marking B-grade dishware that they only used during certain time periods, and thankfully there's document of it, and my piece carried it. I don't care if she's not A-grade, she's beautiful and I'm a sucker for blue and white china.

I could talk a lot more but I'm just rambling at this point so feel free to ask more. I love it all so much. I've had a great time learning so much more than I bargained for with every new piece I find. I'm still mourning the Austin Antique Mall closure that happened last May but thankfully there's another great one in Round Rock and I should go back next month.

The smoking-gun wheel marks for the date and authenticity of the Meissen cup

My Jacobean-revival court cabinet from probably the 1930s

In her natural habitat. I built the fake fireplace! None of the existing ones were Georgian enough for me lol

The coffee table is I believe late 1930s and the chair is a 1960s wingback that got recovered in probably the 90s and I want to get it recovered again when I can. I'm at capacity since I'm in a 1-bedroom apartment and my primary goal is a well-designed space but when I can get an office it's going to be so over

[l1ndseyper3z]

More gallavich headcanons cause you're tweaking about them just as much as I am

- they kind of become the new kev and v

- mickey ends up owning the alibi (kev sells it to him because he knows mickey knows what he's doing)

- ian still misses being an ENT so he kinda becomes the new nurse V.

- I get the vibe ian becomes a youth worker, him and Trevor probably stay kinda friends and Trevor gets him a job because he knows he genuinely cares about the kids

- Tommy and kermit actually think they're kinda sweet (in their own fucked up way)

- they become the designated babysitter for franny because franny ADORES mickey

- debbie will be like "franny come on we need to get you to school" and she'll be clinging to mickeys leg

- mickey goes soft around franny

- ian sometimes just stares mickey (kinda like when he was tryna see the look in his eye in like s2 or whenever)

- ian ends up getting a tattoo of mickeys name in the same spot as mickeys (also spelt wrong)

- probably like micey milcovich or something

- mickey gets all smiley and giggly when ian gives him a kiss on the cheek or head

- I mean you all saw him in 4-11 when ian kissed him on the head he looked so happy

- they don't have their own draws or closets they take what's mine is yours and what's yours is mine very literally

- like boxers and socks and everything

- they've had each other's dicks down their throats they do not give a shit about clothes

- mickey sleeps infinitely better as long as he's got a tiny bit of contact with ian

- you've seen their little touches

LOOK AT THEM.

- ian subconsciously nuzzles into mickeys neck every time they hug

- mickey makes fun of him for it but if he doesn't do it he'll bitch and whine

- they also constantly hold hands during sex

- like every single time

- initially mickey wouldn't have initiated it but wouldn't care if ian did it

- s9 and forward mickey initiates it and bitches if ian forgets

- after their lease is up on the west side they buy a 2 or 3 bed house in the southside and they're much happier

- mickey runs absolutely freezing so he's always stealing ians hoodies

- ian just brings a hoodie with him everywhere he goes just to make sure mickeys warm

- mickeys a surprisingly good cook and he always makes sure ian (and a potential bipolar kid) has good food with the meds

- ian fiddles with his ring constantly cause he doesn't wanna loose it again

- he finds it so endearing that mickey cares so much about the fact that their married

- he likes that its not a piece of paper to him anymore

- mickey asks without really asking ian to put eyeliner on like he did when he worked at the fairytale

- whenever ian goes through one of his downs if his meds are out of balance mickey handles it like a PRO

- whenever mickey does anything sweet or really thoughtful ian gets all smiley and mickeys like "the fuck u smiling about gallagher?"

- I love them 🙁

[tuttle-did-it]

I've said this before, here's the problem. Sub Rosa and Threshold are in a different category than Move Along Home.

I would argue that Threshold is actually much better than Sub Rosa because there is progress for Tom's character development and it's really only the last 10 or so minutes where it goes off the rails.

And Sub Rosa... well, zero character development for the granny ghost sex candle. Just a terrible and silly attempt at a Gothic storyline that does not at all work. great.

Sub Rosa and Threshold-- for all their faults-- are entertaining. They're absurd-- awful. Huge mistakes. But still, entertaining and silly and fun. So they are worth celebrating for their sheer silliness factor.

Move Along home-- with all its faults-- is boring.

Threshold, I can feel Robbie Duncan McNeil's JOY at actually getting to do anything but sit there saying 'yes, ma'am.' At actually getting to show some acting ability, of getting to show some character development. He showed the fuck up to work, he's going to do the best he can. Yes, even if he's just shouting 'Pepperoni'.

Sub Rosa, as truly awful as the entire script is, Gates does give her heart to it. She goes all in. She is one of the most criminally under-used actors in the entire show, and for some reason, on the rare occasion she was given a plot, it seemed to mostly be Gothic storylines. Gothic stories, by their nature, are absurd- and very often terrible. But Gates finally gets an episode completely focussed on her, and dammit, she's gonna show the fuck up to work. She's going to give her best. Even if it's... *checks notes*... having an orgasm to her grandmother's... candle. Righty ho, then.

The performances in these terrible episodes *almost* make up for the absurd storylines. For all the stories' flaws, Robbie and Gates really TRY to make these episodes good, and they TRY to give their best. The performances and absurdity makes the episodes worth watching. I mean, granny ghost sex candle? de/evolving into salamander creatures and babies in three minutes, and then totally fine ten minutes later? Sure. Why the fuck not.

Awful, silly stories + truly invested actors who are trying to do their best? = entertaining.

Move Along Home is just... boring. I adore Armin Shimerman, but I couldn't care less about the aliens and Quark's storyline. The hopscotch and games are just... they're dumb. But what's worse is they are BORING.

I say this with true affection for the actors on DS9-- they ALL seemed miserable in this episode. I would and do happily argue that DS9 has the best actors, they have the best episodes of all of Trek history. These actors are wonderful, professional, and they work hard to make this world feel real.

Except for this episode. I can feel Armin thinking 'well, it's fine, at least I'm on the Buffy set tomorrow. It's fine. Say your lines, get paid, go home. You have a mortgage.' I can feel Terry wondering if she should go back to New York and just do modelling. I can feel Avery Brooks questioning every life choice he has ever made and telling himself to go back to teaching at a university. Nana and Sid have completely checked out and are obviously thinking about their taxes or something. They all feel like they would rather be ANYWHERE else. I love all of these actors, but they were NOT there that week. And I don't blame them.

Result? BORING story + completely un-invested actors who clearly wish they were not there and are just hoping the cameras don't catch their eye-rolls?= Snooze.

For the exception of two moments-- the dumb Alamaraine hop-scotch and Bashir's weird standing up screaming moment? the whole episode is incredibly boring. And those 45 seconds out of the entire 44 minute episode? It's NOT enough for me to forgive how absolutely BORING the whole episode is.

I can forgive bad writing, I can forgive absurd, silly stories and granny ghost sex candles and baby salamander things.

Threshold and Sub Rosa are awful-- AWFUL. But delightfully silly, with actors who are giving themselves over despite the awful sillyness. Threshold has become a holiday because the fans can feel the JOY that Robbie brought to this episode.

Move Along Home is BORING. It is not delightfully silly, it's just DULL. And the actors have all checked out because they don't fucking care. There is NO joy, there. There is nothing to celebrate because nothing happens.

Move Along Home does NOT deserve the same celebrations Threshold or Sub Rosa do.

I can forgive BAD. I can forgive absurd.

I cannot forgive boring.

Move Along Home first aired on March 14th 1993

I propose that since we have Threshold Day for Voyager we should have Allamaraine Day for DS9

This day we shall all post of Julian's noncommittal screaming, Sisko and Kira being nice to Dax, Dax sensually feeding Kira the antidote, everyone dunking on Bashir and Quark and Odo playing snakes and ladders for the lives of the senior staff.

See you on March 14th if you wish to participate

I believe you may be interested @planetlongjourney

[chaifootsteps]

something about Viv trying to compare critics being told to sit down and shut up with fans feeling like they can't say they like hellaverse rubs me the wrong way, idk

I think it's because Viv so often feeds the worst bullies in her fandom by liking their tweets and never saying boo about any bad behavior. like fr, has she ever told her fans not to dogpile on critics? given the way she was happy to vague about the diregentlemen without even watching their work I kinda doubt it (and diregentlemen commented that they have know creators who are scared to talk about the show openly)

creators like cartoonshi have openly said they're not covering hellaverse anymore because they got lied on, threatened and harassed for critiquing it. and with people like sarcastic chorus making videos like "I've been critiquing this show with kid gloves but I'm out because it's not enjoyable anymore", that says a lot about what kind of reception anyone expects to receive for just saying they don't like something

do I believe someone might get made fun of online for saying they like hellaverse, especially with its notorious reputation? sure - and it sucks and they should be left alone to enjoy the show, as long as they're not pestering anyone.

do I believe it's at all equivalent to how stans have treated critics? no, not without anyone showing me proof that they've been threatened, lied about or harassed half as bad as critics of the show have been.

full disclosure, I'm the anon that wrote that way too long critical essay on a03 awhile back. I did it anonymously because I didn't want to be dogpiled by stans. I keep wanting to repurpose my essay into tumblr posts on an account solely for that so more can see it (and I can use images) but every time I consider it, the fear of being accused of absolutely buckwild shit holds me back. Hand on heart, I've never been in a fandom where I felt that way before

Couldn't have said it better. Is there bad behavior on the critical side? Without question. But Viv's stans have not only repeatedly harassed critics with death threats, rape threats, transphobic comments, and racist comments, they've outright bullied someone to death. A young person is no longer alive because of Vivziepop's fandom, and this is behavior Viv has praised and encouraged.

She should never be allowed to forget that.

[flesh-of-a-hare]

poppy playtime oc/self insert bc i have no self control and i draw to anti-cope (oc info n shit below the cut)

their name is Baseball and they r a silk moth version of a discontinued line of smiling critters that were going to be based off of bugs. they were a little older/more mature than the average kid who got taken and read the most stories out of all the other kids so they r safe haven's designated storyteller. on good days they reenact the stories they can remember or make new ones up, on bad days they use their claws to climb up the walls to hide out in a corner of the ceiling so they don't spread their bad mood to the others. the one person they have any amount of respect for/listen to is Doey and the two make an effort to cheer one another up when they notice the other is in a bad mood.

the face they have here is actually a mask, bc when they were being made they came out scarier than intended- too scary for a kids toy, so they were fitted with a mask/ balaclava so they wouldn't scare the others. their name comes from the stitching on the mask looking, y'know. like a baseball.

they r covered in fluff so the sweater it looks like they r wearing is just fur lmao. they are soft and fluffy and make for good hugs and are more emotionally mature than most of the other kids in safe haven, so they are also the designated hugger whenever one of them needs to cry/be held (especially if Doey isn't around)

on especially bad days, they will randomly decide to venture out of safe haven to wander/find supplies. Doey hates it when they do this bc they never tell anyone when they're leaving and even though they are one of the more nimble/sneaky members of haven, they have gotten themselves in bad spots more than once. they don't talk about why they do these random 'supply runs'. the truth is uncomfortable, and neither wants to acknowledge what the other knows they r thinking. Doey does get mad and will give them a lecture if they do something especially stupid but he knows they hate it when he gets loud so most times he just gives them a lot of angry looks until they apologize

they do not like Poppy and will actively make fun of her in childish ways whenever they hear her talking lmao. they don't trust the Player and will spend any time around them just. staring at them in silence. its mostly awkward but also slightly terrifying. they hate the doctor more than they are scared of him, and spend a lot of time thinking about all the things they would do to pay him back for all the harm he's done. when he is gone, they feel strangely sad about it. they almost miss him, maybe only because it was easier when they had someone to hate and blame for everything. they curl up in a corner of what's left of safe haven and try to daydream their way out of the real world.

[star-fandoms]

LADS REDESIGNS!! + notes

Note: These are solely for fun, nothing wrong with the original designs and I still plan on drawing their original designs!

I used the Linkon Chibi Report cover because I couldn't be bothered to actually draw them all, my bad LMAO Here's the link to the Love and Deepspace twitter where I got it: https://x.com/Love_Deepspace

THE ART IS NOT MINE, JUST THE REDESIGNS!!(Which even then were highly inspired by the new Valentines cards!)

XAVIER

(His hair is 100% inspired by his "Deluded Fiction card.)

Uh but yeah, as for WHY I decided to go with this design, it has a bit to do with his lore. Please correct me if I get anything wrong, I'm not super aware of everything lore related(Esp not with Xavi's, too focused on Zayne and Caleb :,< )

But Xavier has been traveling for a while, and I think over time he would stop really caring about his appearance, more focused on defeating wanderers and trying to protect the mc.

I also feel like he'd eventually cut his hair again and brush it! So his longer hair is more so an early game thing lol

I also just love the idea of chronic bed head Xavier. Like I imagine his to be a still sleeper, but I think it'd be funny that no matter how still he sleeps, his hair just gets messy again LOL

I just felt like eyebags fit Xavier a lot. I also gave him a mole! I thought his face felt empty without a mole and for some reason I just keep thinking he has one and then I look at him and I'm shocked he doesn't have one LOL But I also think the whole "Your moles are where your lover kissed you most in your past life" soulmate thingy. I think it'd be cute if Daye(one of my mc's. But I think it'd be cute to see moles on where other's mc's kiss Xavier the most!) was a cheek kisser in every timeline.

I think it's like...pretty impossible for Xavier NOT to have a single scar, no matter how good he is right now. I honestly feel that way about most the men(Other then Zayne since he has scars) but like Xavi's a hunter and ur telling me I can't find a single scar on his body?? So I gave him one on his jaw and one on the corner of his mouth! There's multiple more scattered around his body as well!

Speaking of his body, I think he'd have a sleeper build LOL!! Just for those who don't know, a sleeper build is when someone doesn't look strong and doesn't have obvious muscle, but they're strong and the muscle is hidden. I mainly chose this cause of the name LOL

I also gave him heterochromia, I just thought it would look nice LOL

RAFAYEL

I made the tips of his fingers blue, I did think about red and I might try that honestly, but it's because he's a Lemurian. I wanted something kinda subtle to show that(Its not that subtle with Raf though since he's an artist and uses his hands LOL)

I did also give him longer hair and I wanted to keep it fluffy! I might also mess around with a bit more wavy hair! I also made one of his little side bangs just a bit longer for some asymmetry, I wanted to add hair clips but decided against actually drawing it in the end!

I also added a teal streak to his hair. I already like Raf's design so I wasn't really sure what to change, so this just seemed a little fun. I think its like a little artistic streak.

Raf does NOT have muscles, don't even play with me. No matter what the game shows, Raf will always be a little stick that I can pick up.

I also think that Raf might have a few tattoos! Not too many, I think he'd cry getting every tattoo cause it all hurts him. But I also think he would like to see his own body as kind of a canvas(This is also something that I do to myself and others. I love painting on myself and other people) That said I think after a while Raf probably decided against getting anymore tattoos and just doodles and paints on his body, he also likes that he gets to change it up more.

ZAYNE

okay...I prommy I wasn't going to originally give Zayne longer hair. I think the short and clean look suits Zayne and his personality well. But also...I think it's really fun to kind of imagine liking having long hair(A little throwback to "Master of Fate")

Anyways, Zayne with some of his hair tied back is WOOOOO MAMA!! I do wanna play around with a little ponytail too, which is what I think he'd actually do while performing surgeries.

I did give him eyebags as well. Bro works super late sometimes and struggles with nightmares and insomnia, yeah he has eyebags.

I didn't change too much about Zayne honestly. I was thinking about adding glasses permanently but also decided against that. Though I do really like Zayne in glasses so I wanna draw him in them more, I just also hate drawing glasses.

SYLUS

okay...most notably, Sylus has the longest hair! I don't know why but for some reason I always remembered his dragon form having long hair, which it literally doesn't. Anyways, long fluffy mullet Sylus supremacy idk. LOL

^ his hair also has a bit of a red gradient. I didn't want it to be too obvious, but his hair felt a little lacking without it!

Also I gave his arms a dark red gradient, I also think he'd have claws I just didn't draw them. These are also because...half dragon. I know they aren't the hands he had as a dragon, but I wanted them to be more human.

It's so subtle, but I gave him fangs.

I didn't even think about it but I might mess around with slightly pointed ears. a more subtle touch to show he's not human.

I did also think about giving him little horns and wings, but decided against that. I also decided again red streaks on his hair and landed on the gradient instead.

CALEB

Caleb is one of them I'm STICKING with long hair for. He looks so good with a mullet I feel like I belong in a psyche ward.

I gave him little white streaks in his hair, It's supposed to be heat damage but aesthetic from the ✨explosion��� once again, not really meant to be realistic at all.

Its also so subtle, but I traced one of his pupils with red because I think it'd be even more tragic is Caleb had lost an eye and it got replaced with a mechanic one, like his arm. I think it'd be useful for scanning people and recording their actions too. And I think it'd also be tragic if his vision was warped from this eye, like it doesn't really view properly. I'd have to draw out what I mean eventually cause I don't think I'm making any sense.

i didn't do it but god, him having a little slit in his brow would be so good too, with like a little scar there.

Anyways, I hope you enjoyed my silly little redesigns! Once again the art I edited belongs to Love and Deepspace!

[tyrantisterror]

Wife Goals: Edelgard von Hresvelg

Alright gang, after covering Morrigan from Dragon Age Origins last time, it's time for another RPG gal here on Wife Goals, the emotional breakdown masquerading as a series of personal essays that I swear won't go more than seven entries! I swear! It's going to be video game ladies from here on out actually, both because the interactive nature of that medium makes it REALLY easy to form these unhealthy parasocial attachments to fictional ladies, AND because it's the most socially acceptable way to project your desire for romance on made up people! Huzzah for video games! Huzzah!

I don't remember exactly why, but I was in a bad headspace when Fire Emblem: Three Houses came out. It was probably just the normal "why have I accomplished so little in my life why am I still alone oh god I've wasted my time on earth" thing that's always gnawing at my brain, IDK. What I know is that the void inside me was GNAWING and I needed to fill it, preferably with something new, because replaying my age-old favorite RPGs, while soothing, would also feel... sad. You gotta try new things to trick yourself into thinking you're going somewhere, you know?

I had played Fire Emblem Awakening, and it was pretty good! Pretty fun, it had an evil witch in it who was romanceable, and that was fun. I didn't finish it, but I sunk a good few hours into it. I had also played Fire Emblem Fates and.... I shouldn't have! It's bad! It's basically Incest: The Game! Don't play it! So, you know, I didn't exactly have full confidence in Fire Emblem: Three Houses when I picked it up, but the gnawing void needed some new content, and if it was as good as Awakening, or just less incest-y than Fates, it'd scratch the itch for a bit.

Guys... Three Houses is so much better than Awakening. My void was eating GOOD that summer.

The conceit of Fire Emblem: Three Houses is that there are three nations who send their most promising young people (i.e. mostly the rich kids) to an academy located in the monastery of the Fantasy Vatican - by that I mean it's owned by the leaders of the church that forms the primary religion in all three nations. Each nation has its own "house" in the academy - fraternities, basically - and your Player character is a mercenary who's been more or less forced to be a long term substitute teacher for said fraternities despite being about the same age as the students. You're the honor student who's forced to play teacher by a struggling school district, basically, only if said honor student was hired because of their experience in killing bandits.

Which house you choose matters immensely, as the OTHER conceit of the game is that all those friendly college-aged students of yours are destined to inherit important political roles in a war that is beginning to brew, and when that war breaks out, you and your students are going to be seeing one nation's perspective in the three-way conflict that ensues. Those perspectives, or routes as they're officially called, differ DRASTICALLY, in part because the leaders among the three groups of students you have to choose from have vastly different goals they're trying to achieve. And one of those students is Edelgard von Hresvelg, heir to the Adrestian Empire.

The first thing you need to know about Edelgard is that she is heavily villain-coded, both in general and in the Fire Emblem franchise specifically. Fire Emblem is a franchise with so many entries that it has its own recurring tropes. There are specifically archetypes that recur a lot, and one of the most common is The Big Villainous Tyrant Wearing Red. They often lead a big, villainous empire that's trying to take over the world, as you do. And Edelgard's nation... has red on their banners. Edelgard's customized school uniform includes a red cape and red tights. And the title she stands to inherit is Emperor - i.e. a title that you specifically get by owning more than one nation, and it's stated that the Adrestian Empire used to own ALL of the continent before it was fractured to its current state, which is exactly the sort of setup that led past Fire Emblem villains to start world-conquering.

She is going to grow up into an empress in red. She's the Big Bad. Maybe not right now, but if you know the genre, and specifically the Fire Emblem tropes, you KNOW she's inevitably going to be the villain. Or at least a villain - often the Big Villainous Tyrant in Red is, in normal trope terms, The Heavy, i.e. the villain you fight the most, but not the FINAL villain. The Darth Vader, if you will, with a Palpatine who reveals himself towards the end.

This is why Edelgard's route is the only route that bifurcates - there is a crucial moment, the moment right before Edelgard proves she is very much the Fire Emblem trope you'd think she is, where you have to choose whether to stand with her or not. You can choose to side against her, and if you choose to do that, or to do either of the other two routes, then Edelgard is exactly the villain you think she is, and as such, you have to kill her before the game is done. And that's all she is - another Evil Tyrant in Red, an emperor to be slain, a villain through and through.

...but this is a game about different perspectives on a war, and wars are never black and white. They're messy, and the game is very good about showing that while most of the people in this conflict have good intentions, NONE of them have all of the facts, and none of them made completely perfect choices, in part because there were very few perfect choices to make.

We get to know Edelgard very well before the crisis moment in her route. As you'd expect of a royal heir, she has a lot of weight on her shoulders from the responsibilities that leadership will bring. But she also has weight from a lot of unexpected sources as well. She's tight-lipped at first, but it becomes clear that this young woman has some horrific trauma in her past - she keeps waking up with night terrors about rats trying to eat her, night terrors that you find out are suppressed memories.

Edelgard, it turns out, is not just a royal, but also the subject of the fantasy equivalent of horrible genetic experimentation. So were all of her brothers and sisters - the only difference is that Edelgard is the only one who survived. She spent her childhood being tortured physically and psychologically to make her stronger, all while watching the same things happen to her siblings until they died one by one. Her night terrors about rats come from the time she spent in dungeons with her dying siblings.

See, the magical fantasy world of this game has a society that buys into what is essentially fantasy eugenics - noble houses are marked as such because they bear "crests," i.e. magic powers that make them stronger and more durable than normal people, which can be passed down through familial lines. Crests are said to be gifts from the gods that the Church is devoted to, so the Church explicitly supports and provides propaganda for this eugenics-based hierarchy of nobility.

Everything Edelgard suffered as a child was because of a scheme endorsed by some nobles to put two crests in one person's body - a scheme to make an ubermensch through eugenics. If it weren't for the crest system and this idea of noble, divinely ordained bloodlines, Edelgard would not have had such a horrendous childhood.

So, rather than make a girl who embodies the ideal of this system, the people who experimented on Edelgard ensured that she knew one thing was true above all else: the crest system, and everything that supports it, needs to be burnt to the fucking ground. And hey, what do you know, she now has superpowers AND is the heir to a fucking empire. With some clever scheming, she could turn the tables on the people who planned to make her a pawn, destroy the entire hierarchy of the continent, and remake society into a place where bloodlines don't matter. It'd take a lot of work and ruthlessness, but it was possible. She could make a world where no one would suffer like her again.

And, like, she's not the only one suffering! In her house alone, you have students like Bernadetta, who has become an agoraphoric wreck as a result of her father trying to force her to marry men she doesn't know to secure their bloodline's place in the hierarchy, and Dorothea, who is a commoner that had to scrape and strive just to get to this monastery in hopes of marrying into a family that will let her live without the specter of poverty hanging over her. In the other houses you have characters like Marianne, whose family's crest is said to be cursed and feels she deserves to die because of it, or Lysithea, the youngest student at the monastery who knows she's going to die in a few years because she suffered the same experiments as Edelgard did, or Mercedes, whose father was so desperate to continue his crest's bloodline that he, uh... tried to do a Fire Emblem: Fates on her. The crest system sucks, nobility sucks, the Church created and enforced all of these systems so it sucks, ALL of this shit needs to be BURNT TO THE FUCKING GROUND!

So think about that big choice in this route again. You can look at what the tropes tell you - that Edelgard is a villain, that she is starting a war that will cost hundreds of lives, and that it would be perfectly morally defensible to stand against her. If you make that choice - that very genre savvy choice - you will become the champion of the Church, literally the organization that stands for the Status Quo above all else, crush Edelgard's rebellion, and forever brand her as the villain she so definitely is.

...OR

You can see her point, and stand with the woman you took as your pupil. You can make the choice to allow yourself to be branded a villain by history if it means fighting for the possibility of a better world - and that very well could happen, because one of the secrets of this game is that you're villain-coded too. The default player character name is Byleth, after all - and that's not just any name, it's one of the fucking arch demons in the Lesser Key of fucking Solomon! You're a mercenary dressed all in black with the name of a fucking demon who just spent half the game tutoring a Tyrant in Red. If Edelgard fails, it will not be hard for history to smear your name alongside hers!

But you can be brave and do it anyways. You can say fuck it, let me be the villain, because this system needs to burn.

Edelgard makes some horrendous and evil choices in the other routes, but one of the great things about this game is that playing all the different sides allows you to make sense of the actions of other characters, and that's SO important to Edelgard's route. You are, in many ways, the crucial component Edelgard's plan needs for success. She has, until meeting you, been more or less on her own - I mean, yes, she has Hubert, her loyal minion who acts and dresses like a Dracula, but Hubert's flaw is that he is slavishly loyal, to the point that he is unwilling to tell Edelgard she's wrong. You, however, are an ally that does not treat Edelgard as a superior, but as an equal - you provide her counsel that's willing to contradict her, and as such provide insight that allows he to find better solutions to problems.

With you on her side, Edelgard never gets so desperate as to take the more drastic and cruel choices she does in the other routes. She's able to stick to her ideals without risking survival, she's able to be her best self, to offer mercy and reduce casualties as much as possible.

And it's not a one-way relationship, either. Byleth, your player character, was also a sufferer of magical genetic experimentation - Rhea, the head of the Church, basically tried to make her dead mother (who's also the main god of the church, it's a whole thing) reincarnate by implanting her crest stone into Byleth as a baby, an act that killed Byleth's mother in childbirth and resulted in Byleth always feeling half-dead as a person. In the other routes, Byleth ascends into a sort of demigod, absorbing those godly energies but never fully manifesting as the old goddess reborn.

But in Edelgard's route? You kill Rhea, and in doing so, that crest stone in your body vanishes, and your heart beats for the first time in your life. Protecting the status quo makes you a demigod - but burning it down let's you finally be yourself. Your mortal, human, living self, with a heart that's you're own, not something someone forced into you.

Edelgard does not remain emperor long when she wins - she keeps the throne long enough to put all her reforms in motion and make sure anyone who'd bring the old crest system back is dead as dirt, then appoints a successor and retires. She lives a normal life, with you if you choose to romance her, content to have made sure that the horrors she and others witnessed under that hierarchy never happen again. That was her goal, her big villainous scheme.

I don't know about you, but I think that's fucking rare in fiction - to have character look at the systems in place, think, "this shit needs to burn," and, in at least one version of the tale, be 100% right on the fucking money. God, I love her so much.

(Also, if you need additional convincing: Rhea, the leader of the church and basically Edelgard's archenemy, is a green-haired milf with a dumptruck ass who turns into a dragon, and I still chose Edelgard over her. Do you know how hard that is for me, specifically? She's got an enormous butt and turns into a dragon and I still said "No thanks, it's the albino for me!" instead. That's how much Edelgard fucking rules!)

[gorekiss]

oh i loved this!!!!!! this was so fun. never say sorry for too much information, especially on cultural history

it was really fun to reach because wow i felt so many parallels in terms of like being black and southern. like it's crazy how universal the term "y'all" is now. europeans say it. we'd get in trouble for saying that in middle school because you sounded uneducated. i won't go in depth here, but there were really so many parallels. it's one of the reasons i love learning about different cultures. i get so excited seeing trends and asking what it means about us as social pack animals.

a perfect example for the terseness i think is their 2023...? nyc episodes with 2n1d. they have to write letter to atiny. san finishes his quite quickly and then looks awkward because everyone's writing a novel and yeosang laughs at him. this is another parallel i see, too, but i wont ramble about that.

actually, when i wrote this i wasn't thinking about him crying! if i think about a "crybaby" member, it would be yunho hahaha, who i don't get maternal vibes from at all. i wrote it in my original ask because its an easy way to get across how my dad is to others. or maybe because i perceive it as a sign of powerful emotional attachment. your body has spiked in feeling and it needs to release the sudden rush of hormones. and the ability to develop those attachments without shame is what i see as maternal. also like you said, ive been in a lot of masculine spaces growing up and i used to be so confused about people saying women were more emotional bc my god every all man friend group ive been in was full of fucking tantrums instead of just having conversations. i literally stopped befriending men in college because i was so sick of it.

but i think the other aspects about san that i see as maternal line up with what you're saying. the examples i was thinking of were how quick he will physically protect another member (whenever they're doing riskier physical activity, or they're like on top of something or on the ground because they're ateez doing ateez things) he rushes up to them and is always ready to catch. he does this in the background too, when the focus is elsewhere. i assume the instinct comes from learning martial arts and always checking other people for safety, but his attentiveness always surprises me. the fact that he seems to always notice it happening. like, you can exaggerate your sense of protectiveness for your fans, but seeing those moments where it's needed when you're in a group of 8 hyper men needs a sharp eye! or when he gets defensive for a member, even when they don't openly seem to mind the teasing. etc etc etc ok my brain has stopped working. ive barely slept in 5 days so i hope this made sense hahahaha

The Magic of San (2/N)

my question: what are your thoughts about san!! in comparison to wooyoung, he is much more like...feminine? not like he is a feminine person, but he reminds me of my dad. my dad has all the masculine hobbies and is very traditional in his beliefs, but i always say about my parents is that their instincts were swapped. my mom is loud and brash and blunt. my dad is very in touch with his emotions, he cries, how he interacts with his loved ones is quite maternal. san reads to me like that. i don't think he's necessarily feminine, but he has a lot of emotional intelligence and care i think a lot of boys aren't raised with.

@gorekiss Thank you for asking me this question (absolutely ages ago), because it's about San, but also because it has so many interesting elements to the question! The topics that are going to be covered in this, my second essay on the topic of the K-Pop Idol Choi San of Namhae, born 1999 and a member of the band Ateez are:

THE DAD CONNECTION. Being the tough, logical daughter of a tender, emotional father. (I'm not presuming that you are this - I'm saying I am.)

Gender and cultural analysis of men who cry.

What it means to be a man from Gyeongsangdo and how people of that region think and talk about ourselves, and how people from other regions think and talk about us, and how that ties in with San's presentation as an unusual star.

The inevitable Wooyoung mention at the end.

gif by tumblr user: newpartnerincrime

What follows is not really an answer to your question but me using it to discuss masculinity, Gyeongsangdo, and all kinds of other stuff.

Whee~~~

It's always fun to meet people on the internet, because you usually connect with them for one really specific reason (fandom about something), yet time and again, the people I actually end up having meaningful interactions with tend to have surprising things in common with me, across cultural and background differences. Such as this one!

Hey @gorekiss ! My mom is also brash, blunt, unromantic and emotionally self-sustaining, whereas my dad is emotional, and wants things to be nice, soft, and lovey dovey. All the women of my immediate family tend to be stoic and logical, with a tendency to get irritated with mushiness, whereas the men are more romantic and soft. And San also reminded me in many ways of my dad - or rather, to be more precise, reminded me of what I have gathered my dad as like when he was a young man. But you see, my dad is from Gyeongsangdo (he's from North Gyeongsang, San from South, and within Gyeongsangdo this is seen as a meaningful difference), he came up to Seoul as a teenager to pursue his dreams, he speaks the dialect as a native language, has one older sister and was adored by his mother, so he has a lot more in common with San!

So us both going "Oh, that's a lot like my dad!" is very funny.

The thing is, I don't think it's actually an expression of femininity for men like San or my dad to cry.

Granted, weeping in the form of emotional incontinence, and I do mean that literally, is a trait attributed to women and treated with the same contempt that is given to someone who pisses themselves in public, with all that it implies in both sexism and ableism: weak, embarassing, humiliating, and generally attesting to the inability to be a full, functioning adult.

"Real" men don't do this kind of crying. And it's generally agreed, isn't it, that 'real' men aren't supposed to cry? And because they allegedly don't, when "real" men do cry, those tears are so valuable, so moving, so precious. This is definitely true in the Asian context, and I would argue that it's true in the Western one as well.

When a man cries at someone's funeral, that proves he really loved the deceased, because he's a man, and he's crying. When a man cries because he's drunk, he's forgiven immediately and cooed at, because it's the alcohol that's melting the hard cement of what it means to be a man and you get to see the little boy still in there somewhere, and that precious child must be protected. When a man cries at art or in empathy, it's a testament to the goodness of his spirit, his artistic sensitivity, and the tenderness of his heart,precisely because he's not supposed to cry, which then means these he must be protected by women and men alike.

What I have experience in life is that men are not supposed to cry but actually do cry, liberally, a lot, whenever they want, because men have the monopoly on valuable tears. They are free to panic and start screaming at a high pitch (because all humans do this when panicked) because hysteria doesn't apply to a creature without a uterus, even though the symptom they are exhibiting is exactly the same as a creature that does. Men in Korea protest that there's a lot of rules preventing them from having full emotional lives, but as that's an interior thing I can't gauge the veracity of this sort of claim. What I have seen and experienced, however, is that they basically cry when they want, panic when they want, lash out when they want, whine and complain when they want, talk as much as they want about as many stupid topics as they want, utterly untrammeled by anything stopping them, because of this monopoly on valuable tears. Korean men do all the shit (cry in an incontinent manner, get emotionally warped, gossip meanly, complain) that they accuse women of doing. It's women who can't express much beyond a narrow set of 'correct' feelings in public in Korean society. We can't even like pop stars loudly without there being a whole set of words invented to speak of us in a derogatory manner so harsh that other women react by disavowing all interest in something as harmless and fun as pop music.

The types of crying that San (and also Wooyoung) have done that I have seen in the 자컨 (self content) has all stayed firmly within the lines of correct, valuable, masculine tears. These include: 1) when drunk, in the company of other men, in a light or funny way and 2) being overcome with sentimentalism with your adoring mother.

Sidebar: Male Korean judges have forgiven confessed rapists of elementary school aged girl children because the rapist said he had been drunk. Yes. It's like that. No, we hate it. Yes, it makes me homicidal.

Moreover, San being able to cry while drunk and protesting that he has picked a terrible seat (between the very aggressive prankster Wooyoung who knows he will always be forgiven by San no matter what he does, and Jongho who is an opera singer pretending to be a kpop star and a very dominant eldest son strafing against his work-assigned role of being the maknae of this group) is in many ways Gyeongsangdo masculinity that is so old school it's a little shocking. But then, Ateez is a group that both pushes forward with gusto (Hwa playing with gender, Woo kissing boys) while at the same time insisting on values that are actually going out of style (뉴꼰대, Woo insisting on babying the maknae, there being a 대장 / captain who has the final say). He wept because he was being screamed at, but he was drunk, and he did it while cursing someone out and in dialect.

Illustrative example of what I mean by Gyeongsangdo masculinity. When my dad as in college, he and his buddies went on a hike up a challenging mountain. We have a lot of these. They were ill prepared, so got caught in a snow storm and had to shelter in place because going down was more treacherous than staying put. They were unable to light a fire (because ill prepared) and so couldn't eat properly, and were freezing besides. Night fell. It was cold. They were huddling, and then one of the started to cry. Someone else said, 임마, 울지 마라! (Dude don't cry! but in the Gyeongsangdo accent) and the crier replied, 내 안 운다! (I am not crying! - same accent), sobbing, and then, my dad said, these dudes in their 20s all hugged on the mountain pass and cried together until the snowstorm subsided. Nobody had gay panic about this at the time because, gayness didn't really exist in Korea back then, but also because this sort of homosocial safety - men can be really themselves only with other men, in the same way women can only really be themselves when men are not present- is a core norm of Korean society. They all became super close friends for the following decades from this experience. My dad was not embarassed by his friends' or his own tears. He tells this story as a way to show how very manly (in a boyish way) they all were. The capacity to trust other men enough to burst into tears is a form of correct masculinity.

Moreover, a word about Gyeongsangdo dialect. Gyeongsangdo dialect sounds aggressive to Seoul Standard speakers, both for the sound and for the historic association with men from that region. Gyeongsangdo is where two military 'strong men' dictators in Korea are from - Park Junghee and Jeon Du-Hwan (I'm using my own spellings for their names). They spoke the dialect a lot. Pusan, as the major port city of S. Korea during its rapid development also had a lot of organized crime around import/export, so a lot of gangsters in film are portrayed as having strong Pusan-accented Gyeongsangdo dialect. (And - just to give you too much information - Jeollado, where Yunho is from, also suffered from historic stereotyping as the place where Korean gangsters/mafia/yakuza are from, so in a reverse cultural vengeance sort of thing, a lot of Jeollado culture makers specifically made Gyeongsangdo gangsters to try to give the finger to what they view as the oppressor's region.) (OK that as too much information, sorry).

gif by tumblr user: jenrubyjane

Gyeongsangdo dialect uses a different vocabulary altogether than Seoul Standard Korean but also uses a completely different rhythm, and is almost a tonal language, which Korean is not. You have to sing it in order to say it correctly. And like most regional accents and dialects that are very pronounced, outsiders who didn't grow up with it get it horribly wrong - the sound is wrong. The only persuasive Gyeongsangdo characters I've ever seen in Korean film and tv are actors who are actually from there or only one or half generation removed from native speakers. Plus, the tonality of Gyeongsangdo is impossible to completely eradicate, no matter what. I've never lived in Gyeongsangdo, but since I lived a very peripatetic childhood because of my father's job, I grew up speaking Korean mostly with my parents and grandmother, who are all from different parts of Gyeongsangdo, and I've been told that even I have the tonality bleeding over into my Seoul-Standard Korean (which also has additional weirdness because it's got tinges of various other language zones I've lived in). Since the language is so different, Gyeongsangdo speech is also considered very unfeminine - blunt, impatient, angry, loud, abrupt.

If you've ever wondered why Seong-hwa's Live has fans tell him to 'do the accent' and then immediately tell him that it's scary, or when Hwa and San teach each other for being 'scary,' this is why.

Gyeongsangdo is also the politically right-leaning, conservative part of the country. Conservative in Korea does not mean 'conservative' in the American sense by the way - it's not the same. Right leaning isn't the same either, but I can't get into all that right now. But it was a base of power, and it still is a base of power. Having produced strongmen isn't necessarily a thing to be proud of, but then (in a weird twist?) those strongmen didn't do too terribly in some of what they set out to do - develop the country, build highways, build international relations, make Korea a worthwhile place for foreign investment etc- even as they trampled on democracy. So Gyeongsangdo men are both proud and slightly defensive about being themselves. And more than that, like I said, the accent is impossible to remove.

Gyeongsangdo men are stereotyped to have only three things to say when they come home from work:

밥 묵었나? 아~들은? 자자! (Have you eaten? And the children? Let's go to bed!)

The thing is, as I've said above, as a woman for whom all sides of her family come from north and south Gyeongsangdo and only all moved to Seoul in her parents' generation, this is not true. Gyeongsangdo men talk endlessly. It's just that the Gyeongsangdo dialect is compressive, as a language, and tonal, which makes the very long, very wordy sentences spoken by Seoul Standard Korean speakers unnecesary. But to them, I think it sounds very blunt.

To me, the accent is the sound of love, of uncles consoling me at my grandmother's funeral in sentences no longer than 10 syllables each, but containing everything I needed, you know? To me, guys like HongJoong, who speak in full Seoul-Standard sentences, talk way too much. They just never stfu, and I get tired listening to them string word after word after word, without breathing.

And San is proud to be where he's from. He's not just proud to be the first (and possibly only) Idol to come out of Namhae. He's proud of Namhae. I like that about him so much.

There's moment their ATINY Day live from 2024.11.17, at the 59:30 mark or so, where they all play, the 'You're breaking up with me?' role play, and he starts out speaking in dialect, because he's tired. The others burst out laughing, because again, the dialect can sound aggressive, almost to the point of comical effect, for other Korean regions. San doesn't understand why they're laughing, and that's an interaction I've seen my family members have, and had myself with Seoul Standard speakers. (I will refrain from telling another story about my parents - my mom and my dad - and their first year at Seoul National U, when they had to speak up in class, in their accents, and people either found them incomprehensible or laughed.)

Which is why San is fucking fatal to me.

On top of which, he's very hot when he gets into this tough gyeongsangdo boy character, because all the men I love in my family also can 'get into' this character, and then they fritz out just like he does and turn into puppies.

WOOYOUNG. OK so -

Wooyoung clearly thinks this accent is way cool. He loves imitating it. He doesn't do it very well though. His 마! which he loves saying, is said in the wrong note and with the wrong emphasis (yes, there is a wrong emphasis you can put on a single syllable exhortation). He's absorbed really odd pieces of the dialect, like the word 디비, which he said recently in a live. He as complaining that the 영부인 are sending him off 'too easily' and he says, 디비 자 which means... flop over and sleep. But he says 디비 in a Seoul accent, which had me DYING because you know he's absorbed that word from spending a lot of time with San (and possibly, San's Mom).

And finally, (I say finally like there as some sort of structure to this instead of it just being an insane stream of consciousness ramble) - people used to give 'country' accents, like the Gyeongsangdo one, a really hard time. It got eliminated quite a bit which is why neither San nor Hwa have any difficulty speaking Seoul Standard most of the time (but for the times it inevitably bleeds out) and why, by the same time, Yunho actually doesn't seem to speak Jeolla's very distinctive dialect much at all. Then, recently, because it's dying out, it became hip, as all dying cultures do. And I feel some type of way about that too. They're trying to preserve it now, actively. Which is why people who aspire to be big, representative stars like the Ateez guys have not one but two members who trot out an intensely South Eastern Korean regional dialect at will.

The cycles of irony never cease.

[stagefoureddiediaz]

KR has been sat over there saying things like Eddies going to go dating and have mixed results and the show is doing some experimental things and we’ve all been nodding along and analysing and thinking about trauma responses and the fact that they’re doing an alternate reality episode and they’ve actually killed Buck (temporarily) and expecting to see a steady increase in signs pointing to Buddie. They know that - they know we think its still a bit further to go so they’ve double played us and are actually going to pull the trigger on Buddie earlier and then have them work through their trauma etc - together!!!

[marypsue]

Man, it's cool and all if you see a metaphor for marginalisation in the monstrous, and if you want the power fantasy of 'what if you could just eat anybody who threatened you/pissed you off'. Me too.

However, as soon as you start saying 'no, these monsters are a 1:1 on Specific Marginalised Group, and you have to treat them in the fiction like they are directly representative of real human members of the marginalised group', BUT you also, in the fiction, make them hurt/kill/eat humans? And then try to shame me, your audience, for noticing or engaging with the bit where they kill people, because you made them directly representative of a real-world marginalised group? You have lost me, and also, I think, the plot.

[crossbackpoke-check]

blessed be (lorscher bienensegen) | telling the bees (wiþ ymbe)

"Bees" [remixed, abridged], Claudia Emerson // "Letter to Someone Living Fifty Years from Now" [remixed. abridged], Matthew Olzmann // "Letter to my Great, Great Grandchild" [remixed, abridged], J.P. Grasser | Len Redkole, Nina Weiss, Brian Babineau, Christian Peterson, Mitchell Leff, Dave Isaac, Megan DeRuchie

[spinjitsuburst]

watching secrets of the forbidden spinjitzu while i get some stuff done and i like to think wu's overly harsh vibe at the beginning of the season is him trying to reclaim SOME sense of authority after his ninja literally had to raiSE HIM FROM A CHILD GFDHKJGKJ

[eastbluecrewed]

things you can't get back

aka i've been waiting so patiently to see kidd get his ass beat by shanks (affectionate)

[odessa-castle]

I'm bouncing around a larger post about Nishiki and the mortifying ordeal of being known, but in the meantime I'm thinking about Nishiki and Kiryu and how the clothes make (or don't make) the man. Like, beyond my visceral horror that Kiryu begged Nishiki to pick out a safe and boring suit for him in Y0 and then said he was envisioning something purple with gold stripes.

I'm thinking about Nishiki's incredible sensitivity to image and his need to control how he's perceived. I'm thinking about Kiryu's inability to let go of the past. I'm thinking about how KIryu dresses like who he thinks he is, and Nishiki dresses like who he thinks he wants to be.

There's some interesting incidental dialogue between Nishiki and Kiryu in Y0 while they're en route to the men's suit store. I wish it wasn't so easy to miss, because there's a lot to unpack here. (I'm just transcribing the English in-game subtitles here; I don't speak Japanese so I have no idea how loose vs. direct the localization is in this part.)

NISHIKI: …now that I think about it, you've been dressing like an old man since we were kids. KIRYU: Have I? NISHIKI: Yeah. The few times we got to pick our clothes, it was always like, "you're choosing THAT?" NISHIKI: I wouldn't say you're a plain guy…You'd pick shirts with weird prints though. KIRYU: Guess I forgot all that. It's weirder to me that you haven't. NISHIKI: Well, confession time. You're why I started caring about fashion. I swore I'd never go out dressed like you. KIRYU: Come on, I'm not THAT bad. [we have already discussed why kiryu is, in fact, that bad.] NISHIKI: [laughing] Aww, did I hurt your feelings? NISHIKI: Well, this time you've got me with you. I'll see my bro gets taken care of. KIRYU: Heh. What an honor. NISHIKI: Leave it to me.

Nishiki doesn't bring up Sunflower Orphanage much; when he does share memories of his childhood, those memories are kind of painful (see: "do orphans not get to dream?"). Kiryu's surprised that Nishiki remembers how they dressed as kids, but it makes sense that wearing a limited selection of hand-me-downs stuck with Nishiki so strongly. His clothes announced his poverty, and they weren't even his -- he had to share them with the other orphans, so what he wore showed he belonged to yet another stigmatized group. And I'm sure people picked up on those visual signals, especially other kids. Kids can be vicious, and appearance is an easy and immediate target! We don't know for sure how young Nishiki interacted with his peers and teachers, but given what the Morning Glory kids go through in Y3 (and given, like, everything about Nishiki), he probably didn't have a great time.

Kiryu frames his childhood as poor but loving, and places much more emphasis on the latter. There might be some rose-colored glasses at work there -- let's look at the flashback where Kazama tries (and fails) to violently dissuade Kiryu and Nishiki from joining the yakuza.

KIRYU: I owe you everything, but this isn’t about that. [...] We’ve looked up to you for all this time. Your car. Your confidence… The way everybody bows to you. We idolized you. I want that life, too. Is that so wrong!?

Nishiki doesn't really speak in this flashback, but like, Kiryu uses "we" enough for us to draw some obvious conclusions about Nishiki's own motivations. That being said, I don't think Kiryu's being dishonest or disingenuous when he describes his childhood as happy, and himself as well-loved. He's not ashamed of his upbringing, and he doesn't hide where he came from. Nishiki seems to have the inverse view. It's not that he doesn't love (at least some of) the people he grew up with, but what comes up first for him is what he didn't have. He didn't have money. He didn't have respect. He didn't have a cure for his little sister. He didn't have a lot of choice, right down to the clothes he wore.

(There's a whole other essay here about why Kiryu's and Nishiki's perspectives diverge on this, but I'm trying to limit the scope of this post. Suffice to say that, while I don't think game canon gives a timeline, I do think Nishiki was a little older when his parents were killed -- old enough that he actually remembers them, at least.)

The same mindset fuels Nishiki's interest in fashion. Yeah, part of it is that he's ribbing Kiryu, but I think it goes deeper than Kiryu wearing ugly shirts. Nishiki doesn't want people to look at him and see what's missing. Fashion isn't a means of personal expression for him, really. It's a message. It's the interplay of knowledge and resources and presentation: knowing what clothes read as successful and trendy and expensive, being able to afford those things, and convincing people that your successful important outfit makes you a successful important person. And he's not wrong about the social dimensions of fashion.

NISHIKI: Try sporting a suit that runs 500 grand for once. Trust me, you’ll see the world in a whole new light. KIRYU: Fashion’s not my thing. Besides, Kazama-san never wore flashy clothes. NISHIKI: You do realize he’s the family captain, right? Number two in the whole Dojima operation? You get to that level, you can wear whatever you damn well please. But for the rest of us, “flashy” is part of the business. KIRYU: So that fancy new car you bought was just “business”. NISHIKI: Yeah, and that fancy lighter of mine, too. Which you still haven’t given back. KIRYU: You want to play the rich guy, quit being so stingy. NISHIKI: But you get what I’m saying, right? People see the expensive car, the designer jacket, and the gleam of that little Dojima pin, they pay attention. A yakuza’s only as good as his image. [...] Take your buddy today. These squeaky-clean idiots, borrowing money just to blow on tits and booze… Nobody in this town gives a crap about substance. What you see is what you get.

That's our first take on one of the major themes of the game: what does it mean to be yakuza? Again, there is truth to what Nishiki's saying here, particularly in terms of the ethos of the eighties. I'm not an expert on the bubble era, but the worldbuilding in the game speaks for itself. People hail taxis with 10,000-yen bills. You punch money out of punks during random street battles. Nishiki keeps a personal bottle of high-end booze at a bar he's visited twice, mostly because he "can’t stand being taken for a bum." The act of spending is important, not what you're spending it on.

Nishiki's outfit in Y0 is perfectly suited (heh) to that outlook. And look, I might be inviting controversy here, but in context, I think it's a werq. Yes, it's loud. But the silhouette -- squared shoulders, single breasted, thinner peaked lapel -- is right on trend for the time period, and it fits him well. The colors look good on him. The bold pattern (no, it's not animal print) under the solid maroon is a risk, but he pulls it off. And excess aside, he knows when to pull back on the accessories. It's bright and confident and memorable, and boy would Nishiki like to be all of those things.

Also -- and importantly -- Kiryu would never go out dressed like that. Because we can't talk about Nishiki and Kiryu without talking about Nishiki's Mt. Fuji-sized inferiority complex. Mastering image doesn't just make Nishiki stand out; it makes him stand out from Kiryu. Let's go back to the beginning of the game.

NISHIKI: I’ll admit, though, you’re finally starting to look the part. You make a pretty convincing yakuza. You’re done with collections today, right? KIRYU: Yeah. NISHIKI: Good. That should put Kazama-san’s mind at ease a bit. KIRYU: Heh, dunno about that. But he always knew all I could do is fight. You’re the one who’s good at the dance.

Nishiki then calls attention to the "rags" that Kiryu's wearing, which...is not an unfair assessment. (TUCK IN YOUR SHIRT, KIRYU. HEM YOUR PANTS.) As the two of them walk around Kamurocho, Nishiki offers Kiryu plenty of hot tips, from meeting girls to making big bucks to cozying up to the brass. But even when Nishiki's opining on his area of expertise, there's a competitive edge to it. "You asking me to pick out clothes for you means you admit you have terrible taste," he tells Kiryu on the way to the suit shop. Kiryu tells him to shut up, but there's no actual hurt behind it. Kiryu doesn't really care that his taste in clothes sucks. Fashion isn't important to him. Most of the things Nishiki knows so much about don't really matter to Kiryu. And that makes Nishiki feel more insecure! Because if Kiryu rolls out of bed looking like a yakuza, if Nishiki's image counseling sessions aren't helpful or meaningful, if Kiryu can skip the dance and get to the top on the strength of his fists and convictions, then who cares about Nishiki's 500 grand suit or his hourlong hair care routine? If image isn't what makes a yakuza, what does that make Nishiki?

At the end of Chapter 6, Nishiki tries to look out for Kiryu again -- this time, by granting him a merciful death before the Dojima Family drags him to the Hole. It's one of my favorite scenes in the game. Nishiki's crying too hard to aim the gun properly; Kiryu tells him to man up and shoot. Finally, Nishiki collapses.

NISHIKI: Can’t do it… How could I shoot you!? Without you, I’ll always be nothing. Can’t make it as a yakuza… No. I wouldn’t even still be alive now if I didn’t have you beside me! I’m just… If you’re not with me, I’m useless! Nothing means anything!

Mastering image hasn't granted Nishiki anything of substance. At the end of the day, Nishiki's playing dress-up, and he knows it.

And I'm almost certainly getting into overthinking-this territory now (if I haven't gotten there already), but I kind of like the spin this puts on Nishiki ripping his expensive suit off in Chapter 14 when he decides to fight the Dojima Family at Kiryu's side. Like yes, ripping off your outer layers to get at the naked (so to speak) truth -- your irezumi, and what it represents -- is just Yakuza Storytelling 101. It's decisive, it's kind of dumb, it's great, it gets me hyped every time. But I like that Nishiki's honest answer to "what does it mean to be a yakuza?" isn't about looking the part. I am genuinely trying not to end this paragraph by saying that Nishiki must become like a dragon, but like...you get where I'm going with this.

Of course, Nishiki's back to playing dress-up in Y1/Kiwami. I'm not the first to call the Patriarch Nishikiyama look a glow-down (though I like the patterned white tie). Like, fashion-conscious Nishiki would look good in a Hedi Slimane/Tom Ford-esque skinny black suit. But he picks a silhouette you'd expect to see on a much older man, torso-swallowing pants and all. The slicked-back hair doesn't help. He's just so transparently trying to look bigger and broader and older, and he doesn't pull it off. Big Bad Patriarch isn't a good look for him, in any sense of the phrase.

A final thought: Kiryu's clothes, and Nishiki's commentary on them, are the subject of their first conversation in Y0 -- and of their last. Kiryu's costume progression in Y0 is a pretty obvious commentary on his journey, to the point where Kiryu and Nishiki explicitly call attention to the color connotations in their final exchange. As a Dojima grunt, he wears black, and it doesn't look good on him because "brutish thug who keeps his head down and does what he's told" isn't a role he's comfortable with. He wears white when he works in real estate, but the change in color isn't enough to sell anyone on his transformation into a civilian. Although it's a little rich for Oda "Red Clown Shoes" Jun to chide someone for not wearing a proper suit. At the end of the game, Kiryu's in his classic grey suit, and well, the game spells it out:

KIRYU: I’m not feeling black or white these days. This is where I’m at right now. I chose it myself. I’m making it a fresh start. NISHIKI: Fine, fine. See if I care! Wear it the rest of your life!

Nishiki, dismayed, tells Kiryu that the grey suit already looks dated, but for Kiryu, "fresh start" doesn't mean "on trend". His image might be out of step with how other yakuza view themselves, or want to be seen, but if he's always going to look like a yakuza, he might as well stake his claim on what being a yakuza means. Still, it's telling that, even as a young man, Kiryu looks like a throwback to an earlier era. As the series progresses, the games hammer this home more and more. How many antagonists tell Kiryu that he's out of touch with the modern world, that he represents a version of the yakuza that no longer exists, that it's time for him to make way for the next generation?

"Wear it the rest of your life!" is a funny little in-joke, yeah, but...it's a little sad when you think about it, isn't it? Kiryu gets new outfits from Y3 on -- and in every game, he ultimately puts the suit back on and heads to Kamurocho. It's exactly of a piece with how Kiryu views being yakuza. We, and he, can debate the exact extent of his retirement from the Tojo Clan's affairs, but the yakuza isn't a career for Kiryu, it's a set of beliefs he carries with him. He wears the suit the same way he wears the dragon on his back: as an indelible part of his self-image.

[tangents-within-tangents]

Would that there was a faithful, accurate adaptation of Dracula so that Jonathan Decker and Alan Seawright could discuss the nontoxic masculinity, healthy friendships, and the BEST MARRIAGE RELATIONSHIP IN FICTIONAL HISTORY but nooo!