#I think I did a pretty decent job editing this idk

[arttsuka]

Guess what

[namgyunation]

Me talking abt random "hcs" / general long ass ramblings and infodump about Nam-gyu under the cut. I talk a lottt. Can you tell I'm obsessed with him? LMAO. Last edited [2/2/25]

My general headcanons and ramblings about how I imagine pre-game Nam-gyu's life to be like. Prepare for my Gigantic block of text

I love quotes. Sooo, to quote Roh Jaweon, "[Nam-gyu] seems like he's carrying a lot of pent-up resentment."

I think it's pretty safe to say that Nam-gyu probably didn't grow up with a warm, supportive family or a similar environment. I like to imagine he's the youngest of a decent amount of siblings. I think this would tie in nicely to his endless desire for approval, his need to feed his ego, and his many angry outbursts. I like to hc that he's the youngest of 4 boys, his older brothers being fairly successful. he was the 'runt' of his family, always being pushed around by his brothers as they grew up. he is fairly timid around them, knowing that they would rock his shit if he attempted to speak out against them / stand up for himself, leading to his behavior towards others outside of his family. he takes out his anger and desire to be seen as an equal to his brothers on people weaker than him. I hc his parents to be run-of-the-mill but very strict, pushing their children to succeed. They wouldn't dole out praises often unless they felt it was truly deserved. Probably not the most affectionate or communicative, either. Nam-gyu's constant search for validation and acceptance, his tendency to assert himself over others to feel superior, and his overall timid, awkward, and cold demeanor would stem from this treatment. He'd definitely carry a lot of resentment for his family for looking down on him his whole life, essentially 'othering' him. (Also, now that I have this thought, I think of that scene in the bathroom where Thanos is confronting Myung-gi before the fight, and Nam-gyu acts like a little kid tattling on someone, whispering to Thanos about Jun-hee (Myung-gi's girlfriend), nodding and smiling all goofy when Thanos remembers, and it just makes me laugh thinking that maybe he exhibited similar childish behavior with his older brothers in order to gain their approval. Idk it's just funny to me thinking about it).

He never finished university, or if he did, he never got far with his degree. Or, maybe he did get a job with it, got sick of it, and decided to fuck off and just be a club promoter that sleeps around and takes any kind of drugs he can get his hands on. I could see him at a 'normal' job trying to play nice with his coworkers at first to appease his parents and then immediately being put off by the suck-up culture that was required in order to get ahead, his complete disinterest in the people there, the power dynamics that put him on the bottom yet again, just like his life at home, ultimately leading to him quitting, much to his parents' dissapointment. Alternatively, maybe he lies to his parents about still working a normal, acceptable job worthy of their approval that upholds their ability to brag about their 4 successful sons, meanwhile he's shooting up random shit into his bloodstream and getting fucked up at Club Pentagon, LOL. Although they mistreat him, he still longs for their approval, opting to keep up the facade of a normal, successful son that is socially adjusted and a functioning member of society.

Around the time leading up to him being recruited for the Squid Games, he wouldn't be talking with his family much, if at all. (Continuing on with the alternative hc where he hides his true job from his parents and family). He lives alone in a dingy apartment, which acts more as a place for him to do drugs, waste away his life, and host people that he's trying to gain the attention and approval of that would in turn boost his own status and ego. Despite resenting his parents for looking down on him and his brothers for putting him down and pushing him around his whole life, without any constants in his life, he wanders around like a lost puppy looking for something / someone to latch on to.

I don't think he was always into drugs or really had a desire to do them until he got a job at the nightclub. I imagine he got pressured into it by people he wanted to impress and maybe had flashbacks to his brothers pushing him around, calling him a wuss, dork, etc. that pushed him into doing the drugs, which naturally segwayed him to continue taking drugs that got more and more serious as time went on (Also tying into how he was so fidgety and nervy during the games and clearly held a grudge and a deep-set resentment against Se-mi for making fun of him during the pentathlon and calling him 'shaky hands.' The casual insult seemed to really touch a nerve for him, as it directly went against the tough, commanding nature he clearly wanted to exude and reminded him of the past treatment he faced from his brothers).

He acted out a lot in school, always attention-seeking even if said attention was negative. Got into a lot of fights and would win/get his ass beat on a pretty good 50/50. Rolled with a lot of the 'tough' kids and tried to assimilate into their group to feel bigger and cooler than he really was. Probably didn't get the best grades and slacked off a lot.

Definitely has a lot of friends and those that were generally close to him die due to drug usage. I like to think that he's no stranger to death, although that doesn't make it any less traumatizing. This has led to attachment issues, clinginess, codependency, and a constant fear of abandonment and being fully on his own, coupled with the way his family made him feel his whole life. He takes drugs as a distraction from his actual life and as a way to pretend that he's not actually alone a lot of the time. His job pushes constant social interaction and makes him feel more grounded and tethered to the world around him, but it also fucks him up mentally since people around him are always coming in and out of his life, whether it's by choice or force (eg. using him for drugs and then leaving, using him for sex and then leaving, using him to get special treatment at the club then leaving, maybe genuinely caring abt him and form an actual bond with him only to die from a drug overdose later on OR actually progress in life and ultimately leave him behind in his addiction).

(Okay, self-indulgent one here because I'm obsessed with the idea of Nam-gyu having a long-term partner before the games that ended up leaving him after he got into severe debt). He is toxic as fuck in any relationship he is, especially when it comes to romantic ones. He's possessive, clingy, obsessive, controlling, a gaslighter, etc. etc. you know. He's with his partner for a long time, them being the one constant in his life that he learns to depend on (also another hc, extremely dependent. He struggles to do anything by himself/without support). His partner stays with him through it all, although they grow more and more frustrated and agitated with his actions and continued drug addiction that drives their savings into the ground. Naturally, they also fear for his mental and physical well-being, pleading with him to go to rehab before he ends up overdosing like a lot of his friends. It's at this time that he invests a majority of his money into crypto while high (and losing it, of course), and I think the final nail in the coffin would be him stealing his partner's money for drugs since he barely has any left. Then, when everything culminates: his partner finding out he stole their money and blew it all on drugs, him losing all his money from the bad investment, and his addiction being in full swing combined with a complete lack of support/genuine bonds outside his partner, they end up having a big, messy argument that leads to their partner storming out and leaving him for good. This sends Nam-gyu spiralling, leaving him in a sickeningly vulnerable state that makes him the perfect candidate for Squid Games. (I'm gonna try to write a fic about this eventually!) Also, I view him as generally bisexual / unlabelled / not really giving a fuck as long as he gets to have sex. "If there's a hole there's a goal," as they say. However, if he were bisexual, I think he would 100% be closeted and probably have some internalized homophobia towards himself.

Okay, on to the shorter, more concise headcanons LOL.

Promiscuous. I think he spent a lot of time sleeping around during university in an attempt to affirm his masculinity and ego that his brothers constantly damage(d). Getting lots of partners, getting complimented, and feeling wanted makes him feel good about himself. I think he would further sleep around while working at the nightclub, as well as constantly being flirty and hitting on guests that he tries to get to come to the club (I remember it being stated that he was a 'club promoter' for Club Pentagon, which is where I'm getting that from). Probably gets really offended when his advances get rejected, leading to him calling people 'bitches' / 'cunts', as seen by his behavior in Squid Game. Besides drugs, I feel like sex would be his vice/addiction.

He wears glasses but usually opts for contact lenses. However, his vision is decent enough that he can function without glasses. He prefers not to wear them because he feels that he looks 'dorky.'

He doesn't eat much healthy foods. His diet and self care isn't the best, and he often has to set reminders for simple tasks so that he doesn't forget to eat, do his laundry, etc. since he's always so focused on drugs, taking drugs, where to get drugs from, and how much money he has left to spend on drugs.

He wears his hair in a ponytail sometimes, especially when he goes to work. It helps him keep his hair out of the way if he's snorting something ^__^

He grows his hair out, not necessarily for the style, but so he doesn't have to constantly get a haircut or have to worry about maintenence. Sometimes he even cuts his own hair.

Not the best fighting skills. Maybe this is canon. Did you see him fall down when he kicked Myung-gi who was literally on the ground already?? He is still decently strong and experienced with at least being in fights, which is consistent with guys his age and height, but he tends to randomly throw his arms / legs around in uncoordinated ways when put under pressure.

A surprisingly good cook, which was a part of him that slowly withered away once he got addicted to drugs.

Wears a lot of baggy clothing and name brands.

His style is fairly simple, a lot of neutral tones: black, grey, white, etc. Nothing too flashy. I think this is evident in his jewelry/accessories too (two simple rings, simple black wristband, simple silver chain)

The chain that he always wears in the games is from his mom as a graduation gift.

I like to think that the other accessories he wears all hold some sort of sentimental value to him as well. Considering I don't think he'd be the type of guy to try and dress flashy, I think he'd be very deliberate with the accessories he puts on and attach some sort of meaning to them. His rings could be from friend(s) that he no longer talks to (or lost to drugs), and I like to think his leather wristband is from his (now ex) partner :3

Very possessive, jealous, and clingy (the clingy part is basically canon, though) over people he deems close friends / his partner

Random, but he prob owns a couple of fidget toys that he randomly plays with to keep his hands busy and prevent him from going through his drug stash too quickly.

Likes wearing anything with zippers / pockets because it allows him to fidget with them. His jewelry also acts as a good constant fidget that he can keep on his person (specifically his rings, he doesn't mess around with his necklace).

Gets cold easily

Chronic nail biter, addicted to caffeine, and often plays with his hair

Insomniac

I also wanted to ramble about this one post I saw on Tiktok. I'm sure many Nam-gyu fans have also seen it. It was the post where someone was analyzing his character and saying they believed he didn't really gaf about Thanos and was just using him as a "mouthpiece", Nam-gyu being a puppet master etc. I can definitely see where they're coming from, and although I do enjoy that concept, I just don't think that's really what Nam-gyu's character was meant to be.

Before I say anything, this is not about Tha//gyu. I view the two of them as friends (although I can enjoy the ship in an AU!) in canon. I just don't think their relationships fits into either of the two extremes that I see talked about by people, which is "Nam-gyu secretly hated Thanos and was just using him to get through the games and for his drugs. He didn't actually care about him at all" or "Nam-gyu was OBSESSED with Thanos and jealous of everyone that talked to him!!! They were in love and Nam-gyu wanted this man all to himself <3"

Simply, I don't think Nam-gyu was just "using" Thanos. He clearly cared about him to an extent. Nam-gyu is a selfish, opportunistic, egotistical coward (I still love him though). He is not at all within the capacity to lead/command a room in the confident way that Thanos seems to be naturally able to. I also don't think Nam-gyu would've done half the things he did in Squid Game if Thanos wasn't there to initiate it, either. He just seems like he'd be so TIMID without someone / a group to back him up. I feel that he would not have taken initiative against MG coin without someone by his side or bullied him as hard as he did, especially with In-ho there. As said by Roh Jaewon (Nam-gyu's actor), "He's one of those guys who's only strong around people weaker than him, but falls apart around anyone stronger." And to quote this article I found about him because I liked how they worded it, "[Nam-gyu] shifts his demeanor to fit the changes in power dynamics." I imagine without Thanos, he would've fallen apart due to his own nerves and just overall off-putting and aggressive personality that would've repelled people from him. He was just as scared as everyone else in that room, and Thanos seemed to be the one familiar face in the games (minus Myunggi / MG coin), along with the fact that they share similar interests / hobbies (namely: drugs, clubbing, being sleazy assholes, etc.), and of course, the fact that they've met before and Nam-gyu is clearly a huge Thanos fanboy. He latched on to Thanos for a variety of reasons: familiarity, clout from the fact he's a famous rapper, and an alliance in the games. Then the drugs, of course.

He cared about Thanos before he even found out about the drugs, yes. Him having drugs just so happened to be a huge plus for Nam-gyu, him being an addict. And when I say the word 'cared', I don't think it was like. Super deep. I don't think they were in love or anything, but I just believe that Nam-gyu genuinely didn't want him to die lmao and had some sort of concern for his life, with or without the incentive of being able to get drugs from him.

Then at the scene where he's on Thanos's bed after the bathroom fight, he held the cross and was clearly emotional, trying not to cry. He spoke angrily, saying that Thanos "treated him like an idiot." He was angry, yeah, but gave a fuckkk about what Thanos thought of him. He wanted his approval SO bad. He thought of Thanos as a friend and clearly had intentions of staying friends with him past the games. He wanted Thanos to get his damn name right!!! He wasn't an evil scheming puppet master collecting people for his own benefit (with Min-su? Ok sure. But I would definitely not say the same for Thanos). Nam-gyu was fanboying over Thanos as soon as he saw him, although he tried to act casual (eg. the scene where he rushes up to Thanos to take a picture with him). It was clear that Nam-gyu cared for Thanos's approval, validation, and companionship in the 'OMG cool celebrity / idol please be my friend and think I'm cool too kind of way'. So, similar to the way Gyeong-su was acting towards Thanos, except Gyeong-su wasn't afraid to show it outwardly lolol.

In short: I don't think Nam-gyu was an evil puppet master with these brilliant schemes up his sleeve. He was/is just as scared as everyone else in that room, although he pretended not to be. He formed natural alliances to dampen his fear and hopefully survive. He latched onto Thanos out of familiarity and recognition of a 'stronger' person and someone who is a 'fighter', and it helped him get through the games with a pretty solid alliance. It made him feel invincible, like he could escape death.

He said he tells himself that he doesn't care if he dies, and that's what gets him through everything, but he clearly does. He fuelled his huge ego by putting Min-su down to make himself feel strong, but he clearly felt safer with Thanos around him as an ally. After Thanos's death, it's clear that this comfort / illusion of being above death and not caring if he were to die crumbles apart. He's alone now, really, really alone. Now he has to face his own thoughts and the gravity of the situation that he's in without a drugged up, energetic, loudmouth friend by his side to distract him from the grim possibility of death.

Nam-gyu is a coward starved for approval of those that he deems 'above' him, egotistical / suffering some sort of superiority complex, and filled with nerves.

Uhhh yeah.

A bit of a long blurb about nothing really, but I just wanted to touch on that Tiktok because I couldn't fully agree with it. This isn't necessarily/at all about Th//an/gyu either, I just feel like Nam-gyu genuinely cared about Thanos and isn't some sort of evil scheming villain mastermind, is all. He is simply a scared dude with an ego, a desire to be seen as anything but, and a wholeee bunch of personal issues.

[sleepdeprived-idiotlol]

yknow what? i bigb could win! and while he is a fav of mine i've actually put thought into this (never a good thing, i know) but! some reason why j think he'll win, or atleast be close! (keep in mind for all of this that i haven't been able to see much if the life series and so i dont know much abt how alot of the lifers act, wildlife is the first i can reliably and consistently access/keep up with. most of my knowledge is from wildlife and animatics)

allies: he's teamed witht the g's, which not only are a pretty big team, but (as far as i can tell) are also pretty strong. also ren is there ig {not discrediting him i just don't know how he fits in ti this rlly}

base: its secluded, decently far away, directly next to the creeking forest, which players are weary of, but its also got a decent view, and due to its multiple entrances and visibility of the sides and stuff, its not the easiest to trap, with multiple failed attempts.

him in general: he's very much go with the flow and while he is somewhat loyal if the gs where to all get out, he would likely find other allies (possibly). hes a decent lier [i think] and did do a good job of convincing the g's to take hom back. he has atleast decent luck (he somehow didn't die when scar punched him off the cliff, and happened to have a golden apple on him) he also seems to be-in my opinion- a good mix of "willing to trap and kill people" "refusing to harm allies" and "cautious about dying" in his red life, which is quite good for, yknow, winning.

hes my blorbo and i comand him to win :3 (/hj)

edit: he did not, in fact, win. bro was 1st out this episode. *sigh* next time ig (if there is one? idk how this works lol)

[orcelito]

Just finished rereading ITNL chapter 2 again

Yknow, it's long felt like a weaker chapter to me, especially compared to chapter 1. It's a Necessary chapter, but it's basically an entire chapter of introspection. Add in the fact that I wrote it in a single day and was half falling asleep by the end of editing it, but pressing onwards anyways bc I wanted So Badly to get it out that night...

The Legato part was the weakest for that. I remember staring at it and breaking my brain just trying to make it sound better before just giving up and posting. But when I worked on my full-fic re-edits about.. a year ago now? A year and a bit. I think it was October ish of 2023. But I focused on that part again, trying to get it up to my standards to be satisfied with it.

Coming back to it after some number of months, my brain relatively fresh, I think I actually did a pretty decent job. Despite being an introspective chapter, it really drives home how Wrecked vash is about it all. I like to say that chapter 1 is like a thesis to the fic, where you get vash's goals laid out pretty clearly (him picturing the things he wants to fix + him picturing his dream of having all the people he loves around a table with him, including Knives. It serves as motivation for him jumping back in time in the first place and it remains his driving force throughout the fic). In contrast, chapter 2 is... almost a secondary thesis. We see his doubt, his fears, his panic. We see the things that he's going to be struggling with throughout the whole fic. His wish to handle it all on his own, as well as how overwhelming it all is to him. Chapter 2 is the necessary second side to chapter 1's thesis, showing the weakness in his own strength and drive.

The cracks in his own unstoppable force.

Idk it's just interesting to me. Having been away from it long enough, I think I really do appreciate chapter 2 after all.

[fauxkaren]

The Frog - 6/10

I've been deep into some currently airing romance dramas recently so I thought I'd mix it up by watching this thriller and... it was just ok. lol. It wasn't BAD, but it just felt like it could have been genuinely good with some reworking and editing. The feel of the series was creepy and unsettling in a good way, but like the structure of it was lacking, imo. I think it was trying too hard to be ~different~ but it just didn't quite work for me.

There are two separate stories that the show tries to connect and it sorta works but not quite. The first story starts in the early 2000s in which a horrific murder happens at a motel. The subsequent press attention causes the motel to go out of business and ruins the owner's life. And like... honestly at the end of the day, it seems like the only reason this story exists is to justify the actions of the lead in the present day storyline.

In the present day storyline a widower is running a vacation rental home when a woman her child come to stay for a night. The next night, the woman leaves without the child in sight and house reeks of bleach. There is some blood present and towels missing. So like... pretty obvious what happened here. And it feels like the entire point of the early 2000s story is to justify the main character NOT immediately going to the police. Like........... idk man. Firstly there's no guarantee that his vacation property would become a notorious location like the motel did. And secondly, he wasn't like on the verge of poverty? Even if the property did stop being profitable, he had a daughter who was doing well as a pharmacist and would have let him live with her. So like... just go to the police??? But no. Instead he like... erases all evidence of the crime and tries to forget it happened. Until the woman shows up at his rental again a year later.

The show actually does a good job with the mind games played between the property owner and the murderer. It's tense and you can see the ways the two are negotiating with each other and with themselves. It's well done. But like... the only reason we're in that place is because he didn't go to the police and the show is desperate to prove to us that it was totally a rational choice to not go to the police via the early 2000s story. I'm not buying it though.

ANYWAY, it was still a decent enough watch. And the title of the show comes from the idea that when a stone is thoughtlessly thrown a pond it can destroy the frogs house, even though that frog has done nothing wrong. Or something like that. I don't remember the exact metaphor. lol. But the point is that the two timelines share that commonality. Two people who were just unlucky enough to be owners of the location where a bad person committed a crime and it's nothing they did wrong. Just bad luck.

[fadetouchedsilk]

okay so i finished the game last night, time for some thoughts--

might as well throw this under the cut but i will Try to keep it as spoiler free as i can edit: i did not in fact manage to do this so open at your own risk

overall i think this was a neutral to positive experience for me, with some (imo well justified) criticisms and frustrations here. i'm trying my best to be objective & fair here and i think i did a decent job lmao (but also this is completely just my opinion so sometimes we veer. it is what it is.)

i feel like the entire time i was playing this game i was basically assessing it on two levels. the first was more critical, trying to take into account the production & the game as a Product in the franchise as a whole (regardless of how some people may feel, it's still under the ip & is still officially a da game). more of a technical side basically. the second was looking at it without the 'what could have been' lens & just trying to see if it was able to be successful in what it set out to do.

don't ask me why, but having these two channels helps me with personally more relaxed about how i'm feeling & process better. idk if this is a me thing or if anyone else knows what i'm talking about, but anyway.

in general i always expect bioware games to be uh. kind of crap in a very specific way lmao. i honestly think part of why i enjoy these games is genuinely Because i can patch up some of the gaps with my own ideas and still have the core of the narrative followed. personally i don't like deviating Too much from canon, i like to make connections to bolster it if that makes sense? if media is too good it doesn't usually end up compelling me in the same way since i don't feel the need to pick away at it (with very, very few expections). the scaffolding bioware gives me is pretty much ideal for this, so i was expecting another solid C+ feeling game to poke around in.

that's a very long-winded way of saying my expectations were absolutely not high going into this. not so low that i would have just been satisfied with literally anything, but low enough that i was going to play it anyway if for no other reason than just to see what happened next. (honestly, had this never been released, i would have been content with someone leaking a script & just reading through that. that's where i was at lol. it's been a decade, i invested a Lot of energy into loving dai in particular and even though it's not my first choice hyperfixation anymore by a long shot, there's still some interest there.)

most of my thoughts on the first are speculative & formed from trying to piece together what i've seen the devs speak on and what we know about the whole mass-firing thing. i think there are definitely areas where it seems like corners were cut with the writing, a lot of the time it gave me the impression that Someone on staff wanted to do more with what they were writing, but for whatever reason it wasn't allowed to go there.

i'm not really sure why it was implied pre-release that there wasn't going to be a lot of cameos or callbacks, because those were definitely there. i did definitely find myself frustrated with this on some level. i don't think it was malicious, but if nothing else it showed that it was completely possible to connect things to past games more than they did. i do somewhat understand the glossing over origins, since it was released without the expectation of sequels in the first place & you Can kill off your protagonist there (which automatically presents chances for continuity discrepancies later on). i also wasn't expecting to hear from hawke since we had their appearance in dai. but there should have been more callbacks to inquisition than there were, period.

even if the game was supposed to function as something to appeal to new players, i don't think it would have been hard to add a few extra line of context to the codexes to fill those gaps. we hear enough about the happenings in the south that it would have been justified, imo. this wasn't enough to pull me out of the game completely or anything, it was just a small ever-present disappointment as i went through. it really felt like a 'bare minimum for the sake of continuity' situation, and at that point i start to wonder if we would have been better off not getting them at all? i can't really decide either way. it's been a good half-decade since i picked up dai, but i was invested like you wouldn't believe for a good handful of years. my lore knowledge is slowly unearthing itself from my brain and it's entirely possibly my stance on this will shift as i remember more.

i will also say that this one-foot-in method doesn't really do new players any favours either. no, me forgetting lore doesn't really put me in their shoes, but it did definitely allow me to temporarily see how having less context for some events made it more confusing than just. having a codex blurb.

the pacing was. odd throughout. it's apparently a three act structure, but it felt unbalanced. i don't know if this had to do with the way i was playing (did all main/companion/a bunch of side quest stuff) and spacing things out or what, but the game felt weirdly lengthy up until i hit the davrin/taash/emmrich recruitment period, then fell into a lull, and only really found footing near the end bits. that's... not super great. when inquisition felt long, it was because you were still wandering around a map instead of progressing. here, it's like the non-main story content is being bread-crumbed out to the point it becomes disjointed. i think we probably saw the companion quests chopped up like that to encourage us to return to the lighthouse periodically & make sure we were catching up with everyone? a lot of the ambient conversations there reminded me more of field banter than the actual field banter, and i wonder if this had something to do with moving from a 4 man team to a 3 man team.

field banter triggered fairly regularly, and i Loved the fact that if it got interrupted by a fight it would pick up again right after. considering how slow dai's was to trigger, i would call this a quality of life win lmao. sometimes the banters would repeat, but i believe this is some sort of bug related to the way some people noticed that reloading a save would push you back a few minutes in time from when you Actually made the save. bug wise, that was the only thing i experienced consistently and i wasn't particularly bothered by it + i know some people had it worse. i do hope there are some hotfixes out soon, particularly for the player appearances being overwritten & saves not loading properly. i have a theory that the player appearances might be tied to using a preset rather than just starting from scratch, but i haven't seen enough people saying this to be sure.

i like the companions a lot, more than i thought i would, but much like with the callbacks, i just really wish there was More for them. they're fun! the lore expansions are interesting (what is going On in the crypts), we just don't get to spend enough time with anyone? the cutscenes in this game feel so short, specifically for anything not related to the main story. this game feels like it takes place over at least a couple months, we should be able to spend some time getting to know these people. i don't like how you can't just click on them at the lighthouse and get a dialogue loop once you're done talking to them about something new, surprisingly. even if in the past it was just a 'hello/goodbye' situation after exhausting dialogue trees, losing it was disappointing. i think it somehow led to the home base area feeling more static than it needed to be. again, the ambient conversations between them don't really do enough to help, because you can pretty easily miss it and/or just walk away. i know a lot of people struggled to click with the dai companions, but there was absolutely more screentime you could have with them than these ones & it's a real shame.

the inquisitor was There. i know a lot of people are saying they were bland and that's pretty accurate but also from what i remember, also not unfaithful to how they came off in dai. i think i forced this out of my mind after writing so much for my inquisitor back in the day, but it all immediately came flooding back to me as soon as i heard the dialogue. annoying, sure, but also consistent so i don't really have any strong feelings here. (why was i as an elf almost the same height as dorian though. she is not that tall lmao.)

i do think that fundamentally the game set out what it wanted to do when it came to solas' story. i actually really enjoyed the last sections of the game, & he became a delightful bastard antagonist type which was unironically the most fun i've had with him as a character since... ever? with inquisition, i hated that you couldn't really hit back at him in a way that had teeth, unless you wanted to punch him. which is fine for some, but i was sorely craving the option to ask him if he fucking hears himself in Multiple conversations. rook satiated that one in me, i won't lie lmao. pulling the knife-swap on him and then watching him stick to the veil like a fridge magnet was Great. i will probably try something else next time just to see what happens, but that felt like a pretty organic way to handle someone who couldn't help but lie & condescend to you the Entire time. from what i've seen, a good number of people are also enjoying their endings & finding that it makes sense, so i'm comfortable saying that in this respect, the game did its job.

and god help me i actually liked solas this time around.

look, i'm a human person. i'm also nearly 30 and have been around for almost a decade with this franchise, i have shifted opinions before & am capable of doing so again. do i like to be a hater sometimes because i think hyperbole is funny? yes! am i also 100% open to a new perspective from the writing and moving on from there? also yes! i wasn't optimistic here, but believe it or not, i actually wanted to be given something so that i could shift my thoughts on this man. romanced or not, he's the wheel that these events turned from. being completely sick of him 100% of time was somewhat draining. like i would see the writers talk about him and i would become frustrated because i genuinely could Not see what i was supposed to be latching onto here in any capacity. dai solas didn't make me love him, like him, or even hate him--i was mildly annoyed by him and honestly? kind of bored. considering how i don't exactly hold these games to high standards for entertainment, that was a pretty damning strike against him.

understand that i have never vibed with solas before this time, like, period. i wanted to, because i love a morally grey motherfucker & an antagonist who sees himself as literally anything but that, but something about him has consistently just rubbed me the wrong way. i think this is definitely partially due to dev favouritism (something that gives me the ick no matter the fandom. you & i are not friends, leave that boundary between fan and creator up, thanks.) & also, quite frankly, a lot of abhorrent behaviour from some of his louder fans. i didn't like the vibe of him being THE most important thing here, everyone else who didn't romance him or wasn't otherwise up his ass didn't matter. it just felt really mean spirited & like we played the game the 'wrong' way coming from dev comments. i can't tell you how happy i was to see that end up not being the case. true, majority of us weren't thrilled with how dai got treated in general, but at least it's across the board lmao.

however, we got to push back against him this time & peel back some more layers. the dialogue choices felt more like actual reactions i can see someone having when having a conversation like that. i was impressed that there were actually multiple options for his fate near the end. it did feel like a more fair version of the me3 ending choices, at least insofar as they were presented & played out. there was a choice that made sense for the different ways we could have handled interacting with him, which i did appreciate. him being physically incapable of not trying to fuck us over isn't something i consider bad writing, it was in character, his actions were logical based on context & as a player i had options that existed beyond 'roll over and take it' or 'punch him.' he's very fun to argue with, i must say. no, i probably won't ever be able to do the solavellan route myself. i can push my suspension of disbelief pretty far and roleplay a character well enough but if i man i was interested in irl ever spoke to me that way i think i would snap and i just can't get over that here lmao, but i can 100% see how this would feel like a pretty decent ending for the ship.

(as an aside, i've seen the 'happy' ending there, but can you do something like the fakeout/uno reverse betrayal with the inquisitor here too? i think the old kiss'n'stab would be a very fun option because of betrayal parallels, but i'm not sure if that's something we're be allowed lmao)

anyway it probably doesn't sound like i vibed with him here very much, but i promise you i did. i'm harsh by default & like to argue irl for fun with my friends, & i would have 0 issues saying if i thought he kept sucking here lmfao. he did, just like, in a way that i personally enjoyed, so it turns into a net positive.

varric being dead was just. ech. personally da2 was my least favourite & actually still is lol. i'm not attached to his character. he's a fruitfly to me. i don't hate him but when i saw him returning again i was like Really? but his presence makes sense to me on the grounds of me being unable to picture literally Anyone Else trying to do what he did during the prologue. even harding was like 'should i shoot him in the head.' in hindsight the clues are very much there but i 100% did not catch them because i straight up wasn't paying enough attention to varric.

on the subject of that, yes, it's very annoying that you need to keep being told to Do Your Sidequests For The Love Of Fuck. i got why immediately as i picked up on what we were supposed to do during the last fight, though. and if we're assuming that this will be a number of people's introduction to this sort of game, then yeah, alright, on a mechanical level the reminders make sense. somehow i have still caught a handful of people surprised things went poorly because they didn't do the companion quests, and with peace and love i think some of you need to brush up on basic media literacy. it was not subtle in delivery, we were supposed to know those were important. i can't decide if i'm annoyed with this writing or if i'm impressed bioware was anticipating the rpg horseblinders this way. it's probably both.

the blight evolution felt natural & made enough sense that i don't feel the need to chip away at it. like alright, based on the information we were provided with in the text, this tracks. it did start feeling a bit like me3 with the husks, but that might also be a glameplay thing. also, same studio. a bit of similarity here and there isn't a surprise imo.

dwarf lore was pretty neat to get, dwarf players how are you feeling? i honestly didn't think we would get to revisit the titans in any significant way, so i was pretty pleased to see them return & be a major part of the story. i haven't delved too much into it structurally yet, but to me it came off as another loose end being tied off in a way i can live with.

elsewhere, though... i don't know. i had a good time, but i also wasn't really allowed to 'settle' in this game the same way as i have before. it felt very go go go onto the next mission, spend 5 minutes there and keep going. 'shallow and short' is the combination here for a lot of the first 3/4 of the game, and that's unfortunate. obviously we weren't going to get the same puttering around like in dai, but i think we could have had some more depth from these people. again, frustrating. i like what we were given, but i don't think there was nearly enough of it (seems to be a repeating sentiment here doesn't it?)

i will out myself as someone who enjoyed the score. i will also out myself as someone who have no music background and can't remember the dai main theme despite having 400+ hours in that game. do what that information what you will. as my girlfriend pointed out, the music because very mass effect, especially with the synth coming in (which explains why i was vibing). she does know music, and did also say the score was objectively fine, it just didn't quite fit the game.

interestingly, something we both picked up on was the structure itself starting to feel more like mass effect the longer we played, specifcally me2/me3. if you've played me2, you will absolutely get flashbacks to its suicide mission during the last two pushes in veilguard. i'm actually not mad about a shift towards this format. i think it will be Significantly easier to produce these games going forward if they're looking at the trilogy as a model. like, yes, there was choice in those games, but it was far more linear & limited than what we came to expect from dragon age. given that the veilguard epilogue seems to hint at another game (and, as someone pointed out, there were at least 3 eluvians that were still blacked out by the end of the game. not shattered, just inactive--dlc maybe?) & this game seems to be doing well with reviewers/financially, i suspect they will be wanting to continue with the series in some form. changing the structure up this way will hopefully help avoid another decade-long hiatus. also i just objectively liked the trilogy a lot. veilguard seems like a transition piece into that sort of structure, and i think it shows. there are some growing pains, but i think if they settle into it it won't be nearly as apparent going forward.

speaking of me3.

the final couple missions were absolutely taking notes from me2's suicide mission, but the overall ending felt more along the lines of the me3 finale. there were some callbacks and appearances of past characters, and i think we were definitely meant to feel that same 'everyone collectively coming together to fight' thing from me3. it did kind of miss, though, since we don't have everyone. this game is the direct sequel to dai in a way that the other games weren't billed as. this is the place i would have had more connections to really hammer home that feeling of unity. if we got the cameos and links no where else, it should have been here. me3 was painful, i cried when i was done. there were heavy emotional beats near the end for sure, but they didn't hit as hard as i know they could have. i think if we had more of dai to latch onto for the epilogue, then the South being scorched earth (literally and metaphorically) would have felt like less of a sore spot. me3 also destroyed... just about everything. we watched a lot of people die, we couldn't save everyone. but there was still some catharsis in the narrative. choices we made previously might not have mattered in a big way, but we got a couple frames during the climax and it was like oh! okay! & you sat there and Felt Something.

i don't actually mind that this is a soft reset, or that the south got fucked up. i knew going in this was intended to reboot things so i already acclimated to the idea beforehand & i'm sure that helped. inquisition stressed that we were not a small organization, there would be influence over thousands of people's lives. in some way, i personally feel like this is a clumsy extension of that. there was always going to be collateral with the scale of what we were fighting here, it just would have been nice to see (even quickly) some signs that the characters we moved on from were actually involved in it. the inquisitor letters didn't really fulfill this need at all. i'm not sure what the best way to implement it would have been either. my gut instinct says cutscene but who knows? we were obviously meant to feel a lot of emotions here, but the punches were pulled in the end to the game's detriment. i'm still not overall mad at it, but i can't help see where there are massive holes.

rapid fire other stuff:

i love some of the visuals here. some of those maps? absolutely wretched! disgusting! i was living in the blighted areas. no idea why i saw so many people saying that this was 'too light' for this franchise. maybe early game? and then you get to a turning point (you'll know it when you see it) and it's like ah, i remember how i felt seeing the brood mother for the first time.

the maps in general are very decently sized. you don't realize it initially because you can't explore all at once, but they're fairly large & there's plenty to see. i don't miss the open-world format at all tbh.

popping the blight boils had no business being as satisfying as it was but every time i did it compelled me.

i'm okay with none of the companions loathing each other this time around & wasn't actually bored by it. there are some conflicts, but they feel like a decently realistic level of beef to have with acquaintances.

i didn't notice a lot of approval/disapproval happening but found myself not missing it a whole lot either. i don't know, i think because we all had the same end goal here it was kind of whatever to me.

(again, very mass effect of them here to do this. it's been a while since i played that too, but you really could just do Whatever as shepard and people would stay 99% of the time)

i still wish the well of sorrows came up. seeing how mythal was fractured, i don't think there's a reason it should have been glossed over. if nothing else, solas was mad as fuck about that incident & i'm kind of surprised it didn't carry over for that reason alone.

there are some... decently salvageable looks. i think the shadowdragons & crows do the best, with the lords of fortune being absolute bottom of the barrel for me. it's not only impractical, it's also orientalist and ugly. literally 0 redeeming features to it, throw it all away. (or like just give isabela pants. that actually would have made that look a low pass for me. peacock feathers don't fucking sit like that.)

mournwatch outfits broke my goth heart though. i know it's like... morgue scrubs inspired or whatever but i don't like it & why is there so much green and gold. game devs in general do you know silver metals exist. not everything has to be yellow gold.

i don't think we needed a crafting table, but i was for sure missing dye abilities (ffxiv has spoiled me in this regard i fear, i forgot the trenches dai had me in before mods)

the dreadwolf is bald?? like as a wolf? grain of salt, i'm running this game on med-low settings (on a ssd, it has no business being sold as hdd compatible but that's a rant for another time) so i might just not see the strands but uh. that looked like my cat's bald patches and turkey neck. i know it was a cool fight scene but Bald Dog made me laugh way too hard.

i chose to talk isseya down, i didn't catch it but i think we just left her on the floor crying? or something? did we kill her? like what happened there.

the art style, i have mixed feelings here. in general i think the stylization is actually fine, my biggest issue is with the character proportions. the heads are too goddamn big. full stop. it makes everything look off, & every time i see someone trying to figure out what's bothering them about the models, it can almost always be blamed on the head size relative to the body. the qunari have the worst of it, but the short neck/big head situation is rough for everyone*

*unless you look at dwarves, who have stockier builds and the ability to have actual curves (the body models are weirdly triangular?) & end up looking the best because of it.

fuck you if you wanted to have ass/thighs/tits above a downwards tilted a cup. i am so fascinated by the game's ability to let you be fat but not actually retain fat in areas that people typically do.

the high quality hair physics look really strange to me, it seems too slippery & i actually prefer how it moved when i turned this down.

combat is fun! very reminiscent of andromeda actually, a lot of mobility & flashy abilities. i played on the lowest settings because i wanted to do the story first, but even that was a good time and didn't drag on (i am looking at you dai). my girlfriend has tried a few other difficulties, it looks like mob size fluctuates as well as how armoured the enemies are.

camera tools is a plus for console players in particular. it's limited to non-cutscenes & i don't think you can toggle the ui off though, but it's still nice that it's there. (i still prefer to use other camera tools because i would rather pause cinematics.)

i can't argue about the way some topics being handled came off as corny or in your face, because it did. but on the flip side i've also seen a lot of people say they felt really seen by taash's storyline & were affected by it, so even if it was pretty unsubtle, i think it was overall a net good that it was there. this will absolutely be some people's introduction to Gender Things & i genuinely wish them the best with that. also taash's note in the codex about gender terms after talking with mae was actually pretty funny & mae's quote at the end was nice. despite being nb myself, i'm filing this portion of their storyline in the 'it's not for me but it's going to hit for someone & probably wouldn't have achieved that if it wasn't blatant in delivery.'

fade fish tank, 10/10 no notes.

overall, yeah, i would actually recommend that people give this a shot but to absolutely manage your expectations beforehand and understand that the goals here were to primarily wrap up with solas & give the devs a clean(er) slate for future installments. contrary to the impression given online in the weeks leading to release ('just headcanon it yourself' is imo the worst response that could have been given to people asking valid questions & will piss me off every time i remember it & this is why i say we need boundaries with creators online but anyway) it didn't come off as the fuck you i was quietly bracing myself for. there were parts left to be desired in execution (when aren't there) but it wasn't bad by any means. i think if you actually give it a fair chance, majority of people who play it can at least find a good couple things to be invested in. i'll always wonder what got scrapped & what suffered under production constraints, but i wouldn't call this a failure by any stretch. some of my predictions came true, some did not, some things i was genuinely surprised by & while i'm not remotely as attached to this game as i was to inquisition, i am still left quietly interested in what comes next.

[simlicious]

I started a TS4 to 3 conversion project in Blender 3.4 today! The first image shows the original TS4 outfit, the second image is my edit in progress. If you are interested to read about the details of this project (warning, it gets technical), read on!

I have not checked whether this has been converted before, because I am changing so much it is basically a new mesh 😆 I have to google every little thing and have trouble finding stuff in the new Blender. With those major version changes, they like to move things and change how they work. The nodes feature is interesting, though it seems a bit like rocket science to me at the moment. I followed a basic tutorial to get the marble/stone effect so I can have a sim statue in Blender 😁 I wanted to make a ts4 to 3 conversion for a while now. I guess this outfit is a good place to start, I just randomly selected it because I like the high-waisted look. The TS4 bodies have different proportions, especially on hips and arms, and adjusting them to the Sims 3 body figure is a lot of work, but I think I did a good job so far. I remapped half of the stuff already, adjusted and tweaked the legs to have a bit more space between the legs, and so on. I'm not done yet. I am currently remaking the belt loops from scratch, just like I did with the belt. I just don't like the loosely stuck-together geometry that Sims 4 meshes seem to have. Those can easily lead to floaty bits in TS3 and who wants to see a random belt loop floating around a sim? Not me 😬 I am properly anchoring the belt loops so they are directly connected with the pants, vertex on vertex. This method was used on TS3 meshes. Idk why the devs changed it, maybe it was too tedious or produced too many vertices.

Converting from TS4 is a pretty ungrateful task, at least if you want the stuff properly mapped and recolorable. Now I know why a lot of conversions look bad with patterns, you'd have to remap a lot to improve this and you can't reuse the default textures as easily if you do that. Sims 4 seems to have less texture space than Sims 3 when it comes to tops and bottoms. Upscaling these textures with an AI upscaler to 2k could yield improvements though, that might be worth a try for projects where keeping some of the original textures is more important. For this, project, I am just going to toss the original textures and will make my own. There were not many texture details on those wide pants anyway, and I want a proper greyscale texture, and removing the pattern from the original to achieve that is not worth it due to the other issues I mentioned. All in all, it is easier for me to heavily edit and remap the mesh to TS3 size and make a new texture than to work with the weirdly mapped UV pieces and tiny textures. Making the patterns look great on the mesh is my main concern and that is why I make meshes in the first place. I don't care how much work is going into those, if I do not do it to fit my standards, there is no point for me in doing it at all. Making textures from scratch is not super easy either, I might be able to recycle some ts3 ones though, we'll see. I'm a bit sad that there are so few creators that make new TS3 meshes (not necessarily conversions) with patterns in mind. If you know some good ones, please let me know! I've been looking for new clothes to download recently, but most of the stuff that works well with patterns is years old. I think we may need new era of Marvelous Designer stuff, the Maxis Match era. MD now supports quads, meaning even rows and columns of vertices that you can easily decimate to reduce polygons and that you can easily adjust to fit to TS3 standards. And not everything that is made in MD has to have hundreds of exaggerated folds 😉 It's probably less time-consuming to mesh new clothes with Marvelous Designer than to convert stuff from TS4. Maybe I can find some decent tutorials, I'd love to figure out how to make Maxis Match meshes and learn more about MD. If you know any good ones, please share :) I just hope my enthusiasm does not get crushed by the harsh reality again (I have way too many wips that never amounted to anything 😫).

[ahyoungbe]

next gen plotcall

hiii everyone!! i'm following the trend and putting a lil next gen plotcall post up for my girls AHYOUNG and NAYOUNG! ahyoung is a contestant and nayoung is a coach so we'll get the best of both worlds. please like this post if you want to plot with either of them, and i'll do a quick rundown of some relevant info on them too.

AHYOUNG is just along for the ride. she is honestly bad at taking anything seriously and a bit of a delinquent and just signed up for next gen because she thought it would be fun so i currently don't know how hard she's going to work, because she is also super lazy JKDSLLDGS i think she'll put Some effort in but she ultimately doesn't care about this that much and could probably use a kick in the ass of some sort. she might fight people on camera too. she's a fun gal though, she will also talk to and befriend anyone and loves getting shyer people out of their shell. i would say she doesn't have a filter but it's not really that, she mostly just says whatever she wants all the time with no fear of the consequences. i think she will be a mess on the show. she is also not the best at dancing, at all, and will probably get annoyed and want to take too many breaks. watch her get kicked out episode one it would be what she deserves. but she does love performing and wants to perform something presentable for the judges, so she'll do what she has to.

NAYOUNG is like the opposite of ahyoung. she will take this So Seriously, like her life depends on it or something. she is not going to be nice. she is like definition of bad cop coach. but i think she'll be pretty good at her job. she's very meticulous and a perfectionist and is insistent on everything she's involved in being The Highest Quality Possible, so she will apply that standard to every contestant. i doubt she will give anyone any praise, but she'll give a lot of feedback...constructive feedback??? but not delivered in the most graceful way LMAO she is blunt and can be cold and got edited as the scary contestant on next gen last season, and it's true! that being said she can give decent advice and Was on next gen last season so she has some experience to share in that regard too. but she's here to make fragile contestants cry (she did that last season) and be harsh where others won't and ultimately try to build the contestants into the best versions of themselves they can be. that's what she thinks, anyway aklsdfaljkslkdasg

i also wanted to say that anyone can say anything about either of my girls in their interview solos! good, bad, anything is fair game, so feel free to use them if you need something extra to write about 💓 (just tag them somewhere bc i'm nosy and want to read it)

my health has not been great and i've been super exhausted lately so i might cap this at two threads for each muse??? maybe?? idk we'll see, if we can come up with something fun i'm down for more &lt;3

[thiefnessman]

as stupid as i think a netflix live action of one piece, a famously very cartoonish and incredibly long series, is, i am enjoying watching it. uh putting down a read more but here r my thoughts after 2 & a half episodes.

i don’t know one piece all that well so i can’t speak on how good of an adaptation it is, but i think it’s doing well? visually, apart from the sepia filter, it looks decent as far as a live action one piece could go (which is still a weird thing to do but). they don’t lean into the ridiculousness enough with some of the characters, i think, but they do have a lot of people who look fucking weird and it’s great.

Buggy was really cool imo? I have no idea if his portrayal in OPLA matches the original tonally, because he’s definitely scary in this, but i imagine w clown who can separate his body parts at will is supposed to be kinda scary. The CGI was definitely weird at points (when his head is in an audience member’s lap it looked really bad) but because most of it is fast-paced action scenes it managed to look pretty cool. The actor was also like, amazing imo. Like, he’s playing an anime clown pirate, some people might be lame and half-ass it, but he’s putting his whole pussy into it. Idk I’m just obsessed with Buggy now, that was so cool.

Shanks looks bad. I thought he looked kinda stupid so I looked up his original design and and it made me think it looked worse. like i know you can’t cast someone who is just like, a cartoon shape, so i can overlook the body proportions, but the wig is TERRIBLE. he doesn’t look cool with it! he’s supposed to be someone we should find cool (i think) and he just looks scraggly. considering his hair is this defining trait apparently i think they should’ve done better.

luffy is great. his actor is amazing, there’s no sort of irritating self-awareness or anything he is fully committing to being luffy who is so hyped about everything ever. i think the casting was great appearance-wise as well, he looks like luffy imo. In terms of Luffy’s powers it’s surprisingly not as bad as i thought it would be? Like it’s still cursed to see it in live action but i think they get away with it with the way they shoot and pace it.

i think they do a similar thing with Zoro’s mouth sword, trying to shoot it and pace it so that they can use it without it actually being unsafe for the actor but also not looking obviously edited in. he obviously doesn’t have it in as much as his anime counterpart does, bc you can’t actually talk with a sword in your mouth, but they still have him fight with it. Again, it’s one of the many things where it’s like “ok this is probably a sign you shouldn’t have done a live action adaptation of this series, but you did a good job with it considering”

btw I know Alvida or uhhh whatever her name was was bad but honestly that was cool and pretty girlboss of her.

also captain morgan’s son didn’t look stupid enough imo. even when he got the bad haircut it didn’t look bad enough. idk his name i don’t think they’ve said it.

i am glad they have usopp looking like a normal human person bc that would be a terrible look to have the black major character look especially wacky, especially since the eyebrow guy doesn’t have his eyebrows, and his design and some other characters’ designs are kinda what have turned me off of one piece? like the length is the primary factor but also the kinda racist-looking design of a major character (as well as others) isn’t helping. i am disappointed that the eyebrow guy doesn’t have his eyebrows though bc that would be hilarious.

[clannfearrunt]

Actually I wasn't expecting this to get rb'd around so I don't think I made some things clear enough so I wanna address some stuff!

#man that adds extra horror to all those infection aus too #they literally have no immune defenses #damn does this mean in any 'last surviving human' aus they'd all die out because of whatever pathogens the human would have (tags via @smithy-will-eat-your-babies)

Cephalopods (and other invertebrates) DO have a perfectly good innate immune system!! It's adaptive immunity that they don't have. Adaptive immunity is thought to have evolved in jawed fish approximately 500 million years ago, and also in jawless fish independently as well apparently. Things like idk a frog, human, a shark, the powerful lumpfish, we all have this awesome adaptation! In addition to our innate immune response, we also have the ability to adapt to new pathogens and remember them when we encounter them again.

So to explain the difference (as I understand it- if I make any mistakes pls feel free to chime in) and why I was horrified:

The innate immune system is like, the Default Defense you were born with. It's the part of your immune system that looks at a foreign invader and goes UNAUTHORIZED FUCKING THING. BLOW IT UP NOW. Most living things are gonna be pretty decent at this. You have to be, to keep on being a living thing on this Earth. The functions of the innate immune system are genetic, and it does not improve with experience. If you happen to meet a pathogen that has evolved to survive whatever default defenses you were born with, then well. That's that. There's also the risk of managing to fight off an infection, only to immediately be re-infected by the same fucking thing you just fought off, and you start the fight alllll over again the exact same way you just did, with no improvements, because your immune system cannot remember Who this intruder is and how to tailor its response to it specifically. An important thing to remember, though, that not everyone has the same genes, so Squid A might still have been born with a stronger immune system than Squid B, and survive an illness that Squid B might die from. Unless you have a population with very little genetic diversity, like, say, maybe if your country had a habit of cloning soldiers off of tentacle cuttings or something silly like that, then you're prooobably not just going to have everyone wiped out from One Disease. Also, innate immunity within a population can improve over time, but it'll be over the course of generations, not within an individual person.

The adaptive immune system is the part that can learn to identify invaders it's seen before. It's that system of target-tailored antibodies and other fancy shit that makes fighting an infection more efficient. You know how when a human child gets chicken pox once, and then once they recover from that they'll never get sick from chicken pox again? Or how you can get vaccinated against various terrible, deadly diseases, and it'll let your body know how to fight off a real infection without nearly killing yourself in the process? That's adaptive immunity in action. It lets the body remember enemies it's seen before, and respond efficiently. With this ability, you're not just stuck your whole life with whatever Default Stats you happened to be born with - your defenses will improve with experience. This is a big fucking deal!!!

Like. Consider how important the invention of vaccines have been to society. We've eradicated entire deadly diseases through vaccinations. And then to consider this whole society made up of a bunch of species that don't have that option? (Though maybe with gene editing tech they might be able to, idk but that's a pretty advanced tech compared to traditional vaccines) That's horrifying!! Also, the body not being able to adapt to shit it's fought off before also means that if you don't do a good enough job sterilizing your living space after getting sick you might get caught in a death loop of being re-infected over and over until your body just can't keep up the fight anymore. Imagine getting fucking spawncamped by idk the same strain of strep throat that's still hanging out on the toothbrush you forgot to throw out. Scary!

As far as the "Inklings meet a human" scenario goes most pathogens are specific to a host so unless the human just happened to be carrying something that knows how to infect cephalopods, they'll be fine. Given how terrestrial cephalopods weren't even a thing during humantimes I would think the likelihood of a human carrying any pathogen that would know what to do with an Inkling, let alone efficiently enough to cause a significant epidemic, would be fairly slim. You could certainly play with this slim chance though, just keep in mind they're not just inherently all fucked, they do stand a chance as a population. Also remember they have access to medicine and sterilization techniques and such let's be fair 2 them in our horrible pandemic scenarios

@mosspodge said:

dang so a single deady infectious disease could reasonably take out a large portion of if not all inkfish huh. interesting interesting ✍️✍️

I initially put this at top but I reread it and yeah you've got the spirit lol. Like I said, there's still going to be differences in immune response between individuals, so it probably won't wipe out everyone. But it can easily get really bad.

I've been mulling over what this might mean for how their society handles infectious diseases though. I'll probably make its own post, but one thing that's probably taken a lot more seriously than it is in some human societies not naming any names that start with U and end in A, would be quarantining sick individuals. That's probably the very first step they recommend taking, and I would hope they take it seriously enough to actually accommodate it! It won't help much for a disease that has a contagious stage before any symptoms appear, but it's something lol

U can look into sea cucumber toxins but watch out. You might shatter some crucial underlying assumptions you were making with regards to fantasy cephalopod society epidemiology

[dreamingofaizawa]

Potent

Alpha! Hanta Sero x Fem! Omega! Reader

***18+ Fic***

If you are under the age of 18 please vacate the premises.

Warnings: A/B/O, smut, knotting, marking, breeding kink (sorta? idk it comes with the A/B/O territory), a hint of pregnancy kink, a bit of blood

Word Count: 3.6 k

Author's Note: Ohhhhkaayyy so this has been sitting in my google doc for AGES. I think I started this in...October of last year? It's been sitting there for months and I've lacked the motivation to finish and post it but then I sent in an anon ask to @reinawritesbnha and, being the absolute queen she is, she became the little push I needed to do it. I DID IT FOR REINA!!

Also, this is some of my earliest writing and I only skimmed and edited a little bit of it so if there's a little bit of weird pacing or a strange cutoff where the writing styles clash it's because I haven't touched this piece in months.

Anywho, enjoy~

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It had to happen when you were surrounded by alphas.

Your suppressants flaked out, again, and your scent wafted through the air on the street. Normally It’d be fine for an omega to let their scent float freely around them. But your scent is particularly...potent, even when you weren’t in heat. Not only that, but you weren’t mated yet, your scent glands still bare, and you still didn’t have a pack. To make matters worse, you’re quirkless.

You hadn’t realised what was happening until your path was blocked by an especially large male alpha. You turned around, and there were two more behind you. Fuck. This isn’t good. You took in your surroundings and searched for an exit, but you couldn’t find a way out. There's no way you’d be able to outrun the three very large male alphas.

Probably the worst part is that more alphas are turning their head toward you, taking notice of your lavender honey and rain scent that slowly began turning to a sour swamp. You dared to hope that change would ward off the three cornering you, but they’d already got a whiff of you. Several distressed chirps sounded from your chest, voicing your discomfort, and you glared pointedly at the three alphas as they edged closer to you.

You hate when this happened. Why’d you have to be cursed like this? Your growls only grew, baring your little omega fangs. There’s no way in hell you’d let some stranger scent you, let alone one of these creeps. They wouldn’t take the damn hint and just crept closer to you, calling out to the ‘pretty little omega’ to ‘come have some fun’.

You’re scared now, the involuntary chirps in your chest coming more frequently. None of the other alphas or betas on the street were big enough to face the three, making you a sitting duck and a ragdoll if they wanted you to be. Your claws are small, nowhere near ideal for this situation, but you’d use them if you needed to. With a final low defiant growl you dropped your bag against the wall behind you and readied yourself for a fight.

Suddenly a large body dropped in front of you, his back to you. His scent alone hit you like a freight train, orange zest, mint, tree bark and something earthy. It had your head spinning, nearly sending you into an early heat. He growled, low and powerful, the sound rattling in your chest and making you sink further into the wall behind you. The other three alpha’s scents together were still overpowered by the new alpha before you, and they vanished faster than they appeared.

He turned around and stepped away from you, giving you space to breathe. He kneeled down enough so he was eye level with you, his hands reaching out clearly in an attempt to comfort you, but kept from touching you.

“Are you okay?” The question barely registered, still delirious from his scent, and you’re having a hard time recovering. Large hands grip your shoulders and shake you lightly, your mind beginning to clear with the soothing pheromones he’s releasing.

“Omega.” The command snapped you to attention, your gaze fixated on his own dark irises.

“Are you okay, omega?” You blink, swallow down the lump in your throat, take a deep breath.

“Yeah...I’m okay. Thank you, alpha.” But you’re not quite okay. You need to get home. Fast. The alpha seemed to catch on, probably by your scent that still hadn’t returned to normal. He stands and slips off his jacket, draping it over your shoulders and wrapping you in his scent. It’s a comforting gesture.

“Let’s get you home.” With a nod you set off, the man walking next to you with a strong, warm hand on the middle of your back.

“What’s your name?” You introduce yourself, and he does the same. His name is Sero Hanta, and now that you’re calm again, you take in just how handsome he is.

Raven hair is pulled back into a small bun, showing off his undercut and strong, sharp jawline. Onyx eyes shine with kindness and playful mischief, and a beaming grin reveals pearly white teeth. He’s incredibly toned, his muscles calmly rippling under the t-shirt that stretched over his chest. You vaguely noticed the strange shape of his elbows, but disregarded it as his quirk. The omega in you is howling, begging for this alpha, his scent invading your senses. But you suppress it quickly, reminding yourself you’d only just met this man.

As you reach your apartment you exchange phone numbers, and he tells you to keep the jacket and use it when you go out to ward off any unwanted attention. You thank him again for helping you earlier, and he waves to you as he walks down the hall and enters the elevator, the doors closing in front of his handsome smiling face.

Despite meeting him only ten minutes earlier your instincts trust the alpha, and you hold the jacket close to your face, breathing in his scent. It’s wonderful, and your inner omega is in love. You find yourself wondering when you’d see him again.

The next few days are riddled with work and calls to your doctor about the strength of your suppressants. You work from home as a secretary for a small company. It’s a miracle you’d found it, too. Nobody wants an omega, let alone a potent one. It’s an alpha’s world, you guess. When this job opening popped up you were ecstatic, so you took it and have been working from home with decent pay for the last five years.

The calls to your doctor were not going as smoothly as your job, though. You leave a message every four hours until she finally calls you back. She was concerned since the suppressants she’d prescribed are the strongest out there, and if your scent was overpowering them they were either defective or your scent glands were overproducing. It wasn’t an immediate threat to your health, it only meant you’d be drawing more attention than you wanted to. Still, it’s annoying and makes life so much harder than it needs to be.

After she prescribed twice the amount, she said she’d look over your tests from the latest visit before she hung up the phone. You groaned once the call ended. You seriously needed a break from your second gender. Taking the prescribed double dose of suppressants, you got ready to go out to the corner cafe to read and drink coffee. Hopefully the new amount will keep steady. You really don’t want to deal with any more aggressive alphas this week. For good measure you pull on Sero’s jacket, allowing his scent to cover you, then grab your keys, phone, wallet and a book and begin the walk.

When you arrive at the cafe you order a hot mocha, curl into the small corner booth and crack open the book. You got lost in the ink and your mind floated along the adventure, putting yourself in the shoes of the main character and leading the mission to take down the corrupt queen who’d framed you for killing the prince of a neighboring kingdom. You were ripped from the fantasy world when a bright, enthusiastic blonde came up and tapped you on the shoulder, making you jump. His smile was as bright as his hair.

“Sorry to scare you cutie, but I couldn’t help but notice that jacket of yours smells an awful lot like my friend Sero!” You smile softly at the blonde.

“Well if we’re talking about the same Sero Hanta, then your nose would be correct. This is his jacket.” His eyes widen as he nods.

“Oh my gosh you must be the omega he keeps talk-” The blonde’s words became muffled by a large hand. A hand that belonged to the very man you were talking about. Sero smiles apologetically down at you as he shoves the blonde back to where you assume they’re sitting.

“Sorry about Kami, he’s… extroverted.” You smile back at him, mostly because you’re happy to see him again.

“It’s no problem at all. He recognized your scent on me.” He looked down and only then realized you’re wearing his jacket, and he beams at you. Then he takes a glance at the booth you’re sitting all alone at, his smile falling just a bit.

“Do you wanna come sit with us?” You take a moment to think about the offer, then agree with a nod. Your omega couldn’t pass up more time with him.

As you approach the booth you notice there are more people with Sero than you anticipated. There were four other people sitting there. Sero introduced all of them from left to right. Bakugo Katsuki, Kirishima Eijiro, Ashido Mina, and the happy blonde from earlier is Kaminari Denki. You introduce yourself and when Sero slid into the booth, you followed after him.

These five are a tight pack, and you learn they all met in high school. Bakugo’s brash personality made you wary at first, but it didn’t take long to realize he’s just like that with everyone. He makes a bit of a snippy remark, which you easily counter, and he smirks while the rest smile or snicker. It would seem they like you.

You can’t tell what their second genders are, and you mentally kick yourself for even wondering in the first place. Their genders are none of your concern, but you can’t blame yourself when you’re constantly alert because of your own stupid second gender. As it turns out, you don’t need to wait very long to find out.

This time you smell your own scent as it permeates the air around you. You swear under your breath at the stupid suppressants that obviously can’t so their job, and the others snap their gazes to you. You sigh.

“Yeah, that scent is me. My suppressants flaked again. Sorry about that.” They all nodded, seemingly understanding. Sero must have told them about the other day. Of course, it would soon repeat. It didn’t take long for an alpha to take notice of your scent. The man -- why is it always the largest males??? -- strides up to the booth with a cocksure grin and leans down to inhale your scent. You duck away from him, into Sero, and let out an albeit small warning growl that was drowned in Sero and Kirishima’s. He ignored them all the same.

“Hey there little omega, you smell real nice. You wanna come hang with me instead? We can have some fun together with my buddies, what do you say?” The others stayed quiet. They’re going to let you defend yourself before they do anything in case they end up escalating the situation. You turn your head and lift your shoulder, hiding your scent gland.

“I’m not interested, thank you. Please leave me alone.” You hoped to whatever deity watched over you that the man would leave. Before anyone could react the alpha grabbed your wrist in a vice grip, yanking you roughly from your seat. You chirp, your scent turning sour and the entire pack abruptly stands, baring their fangs at the man. It barely registered in your head that Kirishima and Bakugo are alphas, Mina is a beta, and Kaminari is an omega, their fangs giving them away.

The man tightens his grip on your wrist and you cry out, your bones creaking under the pressure. With no other options you did the one thing that would get him to let go, and sank your fangs into his wrist. You jump back into Sero, who wraps an arm around you protectively.

“You bit me, you bitch!” He raises an arm, clearly about to try and hit you, but a large hand grabs his wrist. Surprisingly enough it’s Bakugo, and his growl is laced into his words.

“Leave now, or you lose a hand.” Sero speaks up from above you.

“You might wanna listen, amigo. That’s Dynamight.” The alpha rips his arm from Bakugo’s hold and looks down at you, and you growl at him as he scoffs and walks away, apparently not ready to fight the #2 pro hero over an omega.

You all sit back down and you pull up the sleeve of the jacket to inspect the already forming bruise on your wrist. Your nose wrinkles with a half-angry half-pained snarl. Tenderly, Sero takes your wrist and lightly squeezes the sides of your forearm, against your bones, and your lack of reaction tells him nothing’s broken. Still, he growls at the offending bruise.

“I’m gonna kill him.” You shake your head and put a hand over his.

“It’s not worth it Sero. He’s probably long gone.” You turn to the rest of the pack.

“Thank you for protecting me.” Kirishima is the first to speak.

“Of course! That dude was a jerk. I just hope he doesn’t go around doing that to other omegas.” Bakugo, surprisingly, spoke next.

“Obviously we’d protect you. You’re a potent omega and quirkless, so you attract unwanted attention without even knowing or wanting to. Besides, if you’re gonna be Sero’s omega there’s no way in hell we’d let some extra handle you like that.” The implications make your face burn, and Kirishima smacks the blonde’s arm with a ‘Don’t just say that kind of thing, Katsuki.’

After an hour or two of talking, and shockingly no other aggressive alphas, they all walk you home to your apartment. Sero wanted to check on your wrist again, so you invited them all in, but they all had something else to do, so you were left alone with Sero. The fact that the one alpha you desperately wanted to be around is alone with you in your apartment is both great and terrible. Thankfully, you have self-control and his own suppressants are working perfectly fine.

He inspected the darkening bruise on your wrist, his large hands gripping your arm tenderly and turning it gently as he prods at the skin. It doesn’t hurt too bad, so you assure him you’ll be perfectly fine. Eventually he leaves with a hug and you sigh once the door is closed, relieved that you were able to keep your omega at bay and your hands to yourself.

A couple days later you get a text from him and the two of you text often, asking how each other’s day went, if anything interesting had happened. You didn’t leave your apartment unless you needed to, since your suppressants clearly weren’t working, so you made sure to cut grocery trips short and keep away from any alphas that seemed a bit aggressive. Sero invited you to hang out with the pack at their house, and you obliged.

They lived in a huge house all together. Most of the rooms were sealed so no scents or sounds could go in or out for ruts and heats, and there were several spare rooms that were empty and waiting for more pack members. It was a fun hangout, filled with video games and good conversation, and even better food which Bakugo cooked. Sero had an arm around you whenever he was close, and you definitely didn’t mind. Your suppressants flaked in the middle, again, and Sero insisted he walk you home. With him walking you home there weren’t any alphas trying to get you this time. You ended up going over to hang out with them a lot when you weren’t working, and eventually Sero began to court you.

Obviously, you accepted, and after a few months of dating and scenting, your overactive scent glands seemed to mellow out, Sero’s scent mixing with it. Your suppressants are lasting much longer now, which is a good sign. Now that you’re Sero’s omega, he often helped you with your heats and you’d help him with his ruts, and he was strong-willed enough that he hadn’t marked or knotted you in the middle of things.

About a year and a half into the relationship you realize you really love him. Sure you had arguments, but everything was settled through calmed discussions over coffee or tea, and you came to understand each other well enough that arguments became few and far between.

You’re happy with Sero, so when your heat came around early and he was there to help, you were going to let him know just how much you loved him.

You texted him once you felt it starting. He was there within half an hour, and you pounced on him once the font door closed, smothering him in hot, wet kisses, eager to feel him inside you. He carries you to the bedroom, and you two are quick in shedding all of your clothes. He lays you on your back with a hand on your throat as he growls into your ear, making a hot shudder roll down your spine.

“Are you ready for me omega?” You whine and nod, your slick already dripping down your folds. You want him so bad it hurts.

“Please alpha, I need your cock.” He growls again, satisfied with your answer, and he presses into you, bottoming out with one firm thrust. You chant his name like a mantra as he set a bruising pace, rutting into you recklessly, wet skin slapping on skin the only other sound beside your whimpers and his growls. His teeth nip at your shoulder, sharp fangs testing your skin and claws digging into the fat of your hips. His cock is so deep, hot swollen tip kissing your cervix with every full-bodied thrust and sending you into a euphoric haze. Your own claws are sinking into his back, leaving little trails of red and blood beading down the lines. It drives him wild every time.

“That’s right, little omega. Mark me up, I’m all yours. Fuck you’re so pretty underneath me like this.” His hands grip behind your knees and press them into your chest, folding you nearly in half as he plows into you further. The angle knocks the breath from your lungs and your eyes roll back. You can feel his knot beginning to swell, feel how his thrusts are getting more controlled and his grip on your thighs tighten from the sheer concentration it’s taking for him not to breed you. You have other plans. Between wheezed breaths you squeak out.

“H-hantaaa~” He slows to a near snail’s pace, grinding his slowly growing cock into your sweet spot, a smirk stretching across his face as you splutter from the sudden change. He’s enjoying making you squirm.

“What is it, sweetness? Tell your alpha what you need.” You pant, chest heaving as much as the position will allow.

“Want your mark, want your knot~ Wanna be bred Hanta! I want your pups!” He stills completely, claws digging into the fat of your thighs with enough force to have drops of blood falling to the sheets beneath you. You’d never said anything like that in the heat of the moment. He can’t have heard you correctly...right?

“Princesa, do you know what you just said?” The seriousness in his tone has you sobering, but even before you knew exactly what you were saying. You nod frantically, wiggling your hips to get him to move again.

“Yes! I know alpha! Please, give me your knot~” His growl makes your bones shake, and with no warning he drops your legs around his waist and leans down so his face is buried in your neck.

“Fuck, I’m gonna trust you with this baby girl. I’ll give you exactly what you want.” His fangs sink into your scent gland just as he picks up his brutal pace, and the euphoria makes you cum hard, your whole body locking up and mouth falling open in a silent scream. He plows into you as you regain your breath, and you bite down on his own scent gland as hard as you can, tearing into his skin with every intention of leaving a pretty scar for the world to see.

His knot swells more, and he’s pushing it into you with every ounce of power he can generate with that gorgeous body of his. With one final snap of his hips he locks his body to yours and cums hard, ropes of hot seed filling you to the brim. He collapses on top of you and laps at the wound on your neck and you do the same. After a few minutes he leans back and cups your face in his hand, gazing down at you like you hung the moon and the stars.

“Are you alright?” You nod, nuzzling into his palm.

“I’m sorry. I was gonna talk to you about it, but my heat came early.” He kisses your forehead gently, brushing the strands of hair from your face.

“It’s okay, pretty thing. I trust you know what you’re getting yourself into.” You giggle and wrap your arms around him.

“Of course I do. I love you, Hanta.”

“I love you too.” You lay there, tangled in each other’s arms until his knot goes down. You whine at the loss when his cock slips out of you, clawing at him to come back because you’re still in heat. His hand gently wraps around your neck, a low chuckle on his lips.

“Relax, we’re far from done.” His already hard erection rubs up and down your glistening folds, barely stimulating your clit, teasing you until tears prick your eyes and you’re beggin him to fuck you again.

“When I’m done you won’t be able to walk for days. I’m gonna breed you so well, You’re gonna look so pretty all big and round with my pups.” He groans at the image he’d conjured in his head and you squeal as he slams his hips into you.

You’re in for a wonderfully long night.

[graysongraysoff]

3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 11, 18, 35!! 💜

writing asks

3. what is your writing ritual and why is it cursed?

perhaps what is cursed is that i don’t really have a ritual, lol. 90% of what i write is so short and spur-of-the-moment it’s a lot less like Planning and Writing a thing and a lot more like a moment being dropped into my brain that doesn’t go away until i’ve spent about 400 words on it.

the closest thing to a ritual i have is when i’m writing anything longer than a drabble that i really want to do well on, i will word-for-word rewrite it until i get it to a place i like. that sounds more insane than it is since even when i’m being Serious i don’t tend to write anything longer than 1,000 words, but. i’m certainly the only person i know who does it, lol.

4. what’s a word that makes you go absolutely feral?

you know what? “clutch.” love it when people clutch things, especially each other; love the desperation that word implies.

5. do you have any writing superstitions? what are they and why are they 100% true?

i don’t really know what a writing superstition would even be, so probably not. is this like having a Special Writing Pen or something??

idk if this counts as a superstition, but i did hear once that when you accidentally delete a whole big chunk of something you’re working on and you have to rewrite it from scratch, the new thing always turns out better than the thing you accidentally deleted?? and idek how you would confirm that, so in that way it feels superstitious to me, regardless of the fact that i believe it 100%. maybe i have to believe it to keep from Kermitting when i accidentally delete a ton of writing, lol, which thankfully happens much less in the age of autosaving BUT STILL VERY MUCH HAPPENS!

7. what is your deepest joy about writing?

going back and reading old writing and thinking, “damn. that was actually pretty fucking good.”

8. if you had to write an entire story without either action or dialogue, which would you choose and how would it go?

oh god take as much action as you want but never take from me my dialogue!!!!!! the reason i live and breathe!!!!!!!

something i used to do for fun was pick a random letter of the alphabet to start with and then write an exchange between two characters where each line of dialogue started with the next letter of the alphabet until i had gone through all 26 letters so. i feel like if i had to write a dialogue-only story right now that’s the method i’d probably use, haha.

11. do you believe in the old advice “kill your darlings?” are you a ruthless darling assassin? what happens to the darlings you murder? do you have a darling graveyard? do you grieve?

well someone is concerned about the status of the darlings, op are you ok??

anyway, i can’t remember who taught me to do this but i usually have a scrap document for any bigger projects where i copy/paste any darlings that need killing; that way i don’t have to get rid of them entirely, but they’re no longer clogging up the work. i’d say i’m pretty ruthless, and i’m only getting more ruthless the older i get, because not only do the things i write tend to be on the shorter side anyway, but also now i copy edit as part of my grown-up job, so i really like to be concise. i want to create the biggest feeling i can with the smallest amount of words possible, so on my more “serious” projects i do usually end up cutting a decent amount.

18. choose a passage from your writing. tell me about the backstory of this moment. how you came up with it, how it changed from start to end.

so here’s the passage (apologies, it’s jujutsu kaisen fic; that’s pretty much all i’ve written this year)

from all in, palms out:

When he opened Megumi’s bedroom door, the kid was sitting on his bed in the corner of the room with his knees pulled up to his chest, glaring. Satoru didn’t want to make light of his feelings, but he couldn’t help a little smile.

Satoru had once fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole that led him to the video diary of a shelter volunteer documenting the rescue of a litter of feral kittens. The kittens had started out defensive and afraid, hissing and swatting at any attempt at contact. It took days before the little guys began to feel comfortable and curious enough to let their guards down. Still, one look at their little faces once they realized they were in a safe place with someone who wasn’t going to hurt them, and you knew all those days of patience had been worth it. And, if you were Satoru, maybe you cried a little about it.

Megumi Fushiguro reminded Satoru of one of those feral kittens. He had been making progress with him before he left, had seen glimmers of trust in the kid’s wary eyes, but now he was backed into the corner of his room again, ready to take a swipe at anyone who got too close.

the backstory of this moment is that jill @antique-romantic compared the character megumi fushiguro to a feral kitten, which in turn made me feral.

enter spicy sorbet, my favorite video on all of tiktok.

after a few days of not being able to get this correlation out of my head between megumi fushiguro, a spiky little boy who had been neglected by a shitty dad for the first five years of his life before experiencing genuine care for the first time after being taken in by a weird teenager, and spicy sorbet going from 

to

i simply had to do something with that, which is how i ended up with the first version of that middle paragraph, the one that starts “Satoru had once fallen down a YouTube rabbit hole…” and ends with “Megumi Fushiguro reminded Satoru of one of those feral kittens.”

i built the rest of the fic up around that paragraph; i’m pretty sure jill came up with the situation of gojo coming home the first time he leaves his newly adopted kids for a significant period of time.

and the rest is history! five-year-old megumi fushiguro experiencing a guardian’s love for the first time in his little life is spicy sorbet confirmed.

35. what’s your favorite writing rule to smash into smithereens?

oh smashing writing rules is my ultimate favorite thing. a lot of what i wrote in school growing up was inspired by things my teachers were telling me “never” to do, because my response to that was always “i bet i could do that good, though.”

my favorite rule to smash since i was very, very little has always been a grammar rule, and it is the rule that says you shouldn’t use sentence fragments. i love using periods for emphasis and cadence, they carry more weight than commas or dashes, and i will never stop.

[dihalect]

umbrella academy s03e01-02 thots

ep 1:

the sparrows are introduced pretty quickly — and in the middle of a fight — and aren't really explained at all. kinda gives the vibe of "this is normal in this timeline, better get up to speed on your own, and quickly"

(on that same note: i think the dance-off — even if it was a hallucination — was a very weird note to start the season on.)

the timeline has been changed. they assume that they had been left with their birth parents, which would mean that they had entirely different lives. why does allison think she would still have the same husband and child???

i love justin h min's acting, and i'm honestly super glad he's got a bigger role this season (both in terms of screentime and in being his own person)

there are six umbrellas, seven sparrows, and one dad. come on, guys. apes together strong. /hj

ep 2:

the clipping that viktor reads says that sissy died on the umbrellas' birth date. by the end of the episode, we know that this is the date that the umbrellas' would-be birth parents died. i doubt she would've been one of those parents. but she is the mother of harlan, who has shown up in the periphery of this season. it'll be interesting to see how they come into play.

they weren't lying, viktor's transition was WICKED rushed.

to paraphrase:

five: you met with the enemy, vanya??

viktor: it's viktor, actually. that's who i've always been

five: ok cool, love that for you. but what the fuck were you thinking?

i do hope that, if there are more seasons after this, they flesh out viktor's gender stuff a bit more. especially if gerard has more of a hand in writing that — i trust him with a trans arc way more than some rando.

i kinda appreciate five's forced nonchalance. i think his actor did a decent job of capturing this old man's "can't i get a god damn break" energy.

the sparrows include TWO white women with long dark hair. i am pretty much faceblind (#autism) and only noticed that they were two people when they formally introduced themselves to luther. so far my only way of distinguishing them is "hits on ******" vs "spits".

klaus's steering wheel is on the right side of the car.....?

allison's ptsd is depicted pretty realistically. i'm certainly glad that the trauma they've all faced wasn't glossed over, and i appreciate that it affected them all differently.

the way the amish are treated here is..... suspect somehow. very "isolated, Weird group with misplaced hostility, and one Good Apple who helps the protag". idk, i can't exactly write an essay criticizing this depiction right now, but i feel like i've seen this trope before and it's been ugly

i'm sure we'll find out more about this, but how did that amish lady find out about all the other umbrella-mothers' deaths??

not sure i like this approach to time travel. five says that, since they were never born in that timeline, time-traveling into it creates an Ultra Mega Super Bad paradox. but i mean..... wouldn't it be a worse paradox if they actually had doppelgängers walking around? *sighs* i guess i'll just have to see how this plays out but. mmrggghhh

come ON, you bastards. KEEP it IN your PANTS.

edit: i've partially changed my mind on the vanya/viktor name change. bc there are trans people who are given names that "match" their gender or are gender-neutral, and change them anyway to better match how they feel. so *shrugs* cool. of course one also has to consider that viktor is a fictional character, not a real trans person with real agency. but like. it's whatever.

edit edit: got a couple names mixed up and misspelled a word

[decennia]

Ok I just gave up catching up on my dash full stop because Clementine and George and Wildest Dreams got my brain like this:

I feel I desperately need to make an OC for George but he is YOUR precious lol

So instead while I'm here, give me and I mean GIVE all your George and Clementine headcanon

SORRY THIS TOOK SO LONG I WAS FINISHING UP SOME GIFS ✨

First things first, that image lives in my mind rent free.

Second things second, please create an OC for George holy shit please yes?! George has already been romantically (or at least sexually, because Sable is a hoe) linked to Ellis Grant from @chlobenet (nothing ever came of it, George developed an infatuation and was perpetually rebuffed by our Lord and Saviour Miss Grant), @perfectlystiles' Laurel Chase, and @randomestfandoms-ocs' Reese Masrani. It is my goal to accumulate enough George Cassidy romantic interests that I can make a Wives of Henry the Eighth edit, so literally go nuts. Everyone, Create An OC To Thirst Over George Cassidy Challenge!

The best thing about George and the other Corpsemen is that the only thing that makes them Jurassic World OCs is that they happen to be hired there. It is by no means their entire story, and although they've been around for literally three days (?!) I keep thinking of more and more things about them and I keep building their backstories to the point where dinosaurs are literally the least craziest thing they've experienced.

If I were to sum up Clem and George's relationship in a gif, though:

(This got hella out of hand so keep reading under the cut if you want to know more about George and Clementine.)

A brief history on George "Sable" Cassidy and Clementine "Calico" Roscoe:

He is known as "George" to his friends, and "Cassidy" to his enemies. "Sable" when he's on the job, and "hers" when they're alone.

But it wasn't always like that. I'm not going to bore you with the details about George's fatherless upbringing, or his reasons for joining the British military, or how he'd always been a bit of a troubled kid. Where his story really begins is when he directly disobeys orders and murders the military hostages who were responsible for the attack on his unit. He is dishonourably discharged, and is sent back to the U.K. to await trial for murder and treason.

He manages an escape and goes dark; during which time, Clementine Roscoe, an agent at Interpol, is assigned his case. Unfortunately, after a year of searching (one close call where he was literally within breathing distance of Roscoe ) and a thousand too many mistaken sightings after that, the case goes cold, and she is assigned another case, one which results in the death of her entire family.

Clementine resigns from her position after she is denied leave to pursue the murderers, and spends the next few years methodically hunting down and executing the list of people she knew to be responsible. It was enough to impress Malcolm Drake, who located and recruited her into the Corpse Corporals (aka Gucci Suicide Squad).

All this time, Cassidy had been residing in Southern Africa, making a hefty living as a poacher under ever-changing pseudonyms (I had to make y'all understand that Sable is a bad man but y'all be forgiving Tom for murder and incest so here we are but honestly did it even work because here I am, being fooled, alongside you 😭). He runs a pretty decent operation, also dabbling in the smuggling of weaponry, and he lives a comfortable life. That is, until he is betrayed by his business partners (a brother-sister duo, FCs Megan Fox and Aidan Turner? Idk, still debating) and pushed out of the business under threat of death.

He is rescued by Malcolm, who has managed to track him down, and in exchange for his life spared, he agrees to work for Malcolm. His reunion with Clem is incredibly tense, with both of them pulling their guns on each other and refusing to work together. Malcolm snaps some sense into them (that, and the sum of the payload which had so many 0's added to the end, you couldn't be sure what the number really was other than "a lot") and they swallow their pride and work together.

They would continue to work together as Calico and Sable for the years to come, and when I say it is a slow burn, I do mean THE SLOWEST OF THE SLOW. But there is definitely a fuck ton of sexual tension thrown in there for angst, and a couple of near brushes with death (hazard of the job, really).

George is a prolific man whore, and he's bisexual and proud. So Clem has gotten used to an endless slew of people of all genders cumming coming and going from his hotel room, especially during the long cons where the Corpsemen go deep undercover for months at a time (Hector doesn't come on those jobs, he's got a family to worry about. He taps out at a month, max, if he doesn't get to leave to see his family).

George Cassidy is not a man who is used to not getting what he wants, but Clementine Roscoe is the only exception to that rule. He has come to view her as "unobtainable," this irreverent forbidden thing that he must not ruin. By the time the heat of their mutual hate had dissipated, it had turned into a friendship, and although there was an undeniable electric tension between them, they have never done anything about it. But it has that "will definitely be the best sex of your life" kinda energy.

They fight quite a lot, and disagree on almost everything. Have they tried to kill each other? Oh, absolutely. But they're also professionals, and although Clementine and George may be going at it, it never bothers Malcolm, because he knows that Calico and Sable will put those differences aside and do the damn job.

Clem only involves herself in George's sex life when it comes to people who she considers friends. She has the warnings already mentally scripted, because the thing about George Cassidy is that he cares about no one but himself, and nothing but his holy trinity: blood, money, and sex. He's an emotionally devoid sociopath at the best of times, and at the worst, he's a well oiled and dangerous killing machine.

He is not a good man, Clementine knows, but sometimes, you don't want a good man.

I have a gifset in store involving the two of them, and I'm busy compiling a list of headcanons as we speak. If you want, I can tag you in it :)

But this is everything about their past and a bit of their present, so if you want to create an OC please do and tag me so I can write up a crossover and make some gifs 💕

(And before anyone comes for me, yes, I am aware of the fact that George "Sable" Cassidy is a very toxic and fucking despicable man, I created him, and I made him that way. I am not condoning his actions, nor would I want to be in a relationship with him in real life, but this is fiction. It is not meant to be taken seriously, if you don't like my hot mercenary boyfriend, then please unfollow me, because he is my current obsession, and I cannot promise that I will not be thirsting for him on my TL at any and all hours).

[queenlua]

hey, i started following you recently and ur bio says ur a hacker? any tips on where to start? hacking seems like a v cool/fun way to learn more abt coding and cybersecurity/infrastructure and i'd like to explore it but there's so much on the internet and like, i'm not trying to get into anything illegal. thanks!

huh, an interesting question, ty!

i can give more tailored advice if you hit me up on chat with more specifics on your background/interests.

given what you've written here, though, i'll just assume you don't have any immediate professional aspirations (e.g. you just want to learn some things, and you aren't necessarily trying to get A Cyber Security Job TM within the next three months or w/e), and that you don't know much about any specific programming/computering domain yet.

(stuff under cut because long)

first i'd probably just try to pick some interesting problem that you think you can solve with tech. this doesn't need to be a "hacking" project at first; i was just messing around with computers for ages before i did anything involving security/exploitation.

if you don't already know how to program, you should ideally pick a problem you can solve via programming. for instance: i learned a lot back in the 2000s, when play-by-post forum RPGs were in vogue.  see, i'd already been messing around, building my own personal sites, first just with HTML & CSS, and later on with Javascript and PHP.   and i knew the forum software everyone used (InvisionPowerBoard) was written in PHP.  so when one of the admins at my RPG complained that they'd like the ability to set multiple profile pictures, i was like, "hey i'm good at programming, want me to create a mod to do that," and then i just... did. so then they asked me to program more features, and i got all the sexy nerd cred for being Forum Mod Queen, and it was a good time, i learned a lot.

(i also got to be the person who was frantically IMed at 2am because wtf the forum is down and there's an inscrutable error, what do??? basically sysadmining! also, much less sexy! still, i learned a lot!)

the key thing is that it's gotta be a problem that's interesting to you: as much as i love making dorky sites in PHP, half the fun was seeing other people using my stuff, and i think the era of forum-based RPGs has passed. but maybe you can apply some programming talents to something that you are interested in—maybe you want to make a silly Chrome extension to make people laugh, a la Cloud to Butt, or maybe you'd like to make a program that converts pixel art into cross-stitching patterns, maybe you want to just make a cool adventure game on those annoying graphing calculators they make you use in class, or make a script for some online game you play, or make something silly with Arduino (i once made a trash can that rolled toward me when i clapped my hands; it was fun, and way easier than you'd think!), whatever.

i know a lot of hacker-types who got their start doing ROM hacking for video games—replacing the character art or animations or whatever in old NES games. that's probably more relevant than the PHP websites, at least, and is probably a solid place to get started; in my experience those communities tend to be reasonably friendly to questions. pick a small thing you want to do & ask how to do it.

also, a somewhat unconventional path, but—once i knew how to program a bit of Python, i started doing goofy junk, like, "hey can i implemented NamedTuple from scratch,” which tends to lead to Python metaprogramming, which leads to surprising shit like "oh, stack frames are literally just Python objects and you can manually edit them in the interpreter to do deliberately horrendous/silly things, my god this language allows too much reflection and i'm having too much fun"... since Python is a lot of folks' first language these days, i thought i'd point that out, since i think this is a pretty accessible start to thinking about How Programs Actually Work under the hood. allison kaptur has some specific recommendations on how to poke around, if you wanna go that route.

it's reasonably likely you'll end up doing something "hackery" in the natural course of just working on stuff. for instance, while i was working on the IPB forum software mods, i became distressed to learn that everyone was using an INSECURE version of the software! no one was patching their shit!! i yelled at the admins about it, and they were like "well we haven't been hacked yet so it's not a problem," so i uh, decided to demonstrate a proof of concept? i downloaded some sketchy perl script, kicked it until it worked, logged in as the admins, and shitposted a bit before i logged out, y'know, to prove my point.

(they responded by banning me for two weeks, and did not patch their software. which, y'know, rip to them; they got hacked by an unrelated Turkish group two months later, and those dudes just straight-up deleted the whole website. i was a merciful god by comparison!)

anyway, even though downloading a perl script and just pointing it at a website isn't really "hacking" (it's the literal definition of script kiddie, heh)—the point is i was just experimenting a lot and trying a lot of stuff, which meant i was getting comfortable with thinking of software as not just some immutable relic, but something you can touch and prod in unexpected ways.

this dovetails into the next thing, which is like, just learn a lot of stuff. a boring conventional computer science degree will teach you a lot (provided you take it seriously and actually try to learn shit); alternatively, just taking the same classes as a boring conventional computer science degree, via edX or whatever free online thingy, will also teach you a lot. ("contributing to open source" also teaches you a lot but... hngh... is a whole can of worms; send a follow-up ask if you want that rant.)

here's where i should note that "hacking" is an impossibly broad category: the kind of person who knows how to fuck with website authentication tokens is very different than someone who writes a fuzzer, who is often quite different than someone who looks at the bug a fuzzer produces and actually writes a program that can exploit that bug... so what you focus on depends on what you're interested in. i imagine classes with names like "compilers," "operating systems," and "networking" will teach you a lot. but, like, idk, all knowledge is god-breathed and good for teaching. hell, i hear some universities these days have actual computer security classes? that's probably a good thing to look at, just to get a sense of what's out there, if you already know how to program.

also be comfortable with not knowing everything, but also, learn as you go. the bulk of my security knowledge came when i got kinda airdropped into a work team that basically hired me entirely on "potential" (lmao), and uh, prior to joining i only had the faintest idea what a hypervisor was? or the whole protection ring concept? or ioctls or sandboxing or threat models or, fuck, anything? i mostly just pestered people with like 800 questions and slowly built up a knowledge base, and remember being surprised & delighted when i went to a security conference a year later and could follow most of the talks, and when i wound up at a bar with a guy on the xbox security team and we compared our security models a bunch, and so on.  there wasn't a magic moment when i "got it", i was just like, "okay huh this dude says he found a ring-0 exploit... what does that mean... okay i think i got that... why is that a big deal though... better ask somebody.." (also: reading an occasional dead tree book is a good idea. i owe my firstborn to Robert Love's Linux Kernel Development, as outdated as it is, and also O'Reilly's kookaburra book gave me a great overview of web programming back in the day, etc.  you can learn a lot by just clicking around random blogs, but you’ll often end up with a lot of random little facts and no good mental scaffolding for holding it together; often, a decent book will give you that scaffolding.)

(also, it's pretty useful if you can find a knowledgable someone to pepper with random questions as you go. finding someone who will actively mentor you is tricky, but most working computery folks are happy to tell you things like "what you're doing is actually impossible, here's why," or "here's a tutorial someone told me was good for learning how to write a linux kernel module," or "here's my vague understanding of this concept you know nothing about," or "here's how you automate something to click on a link on a webpage," which tends to be handier than just google on its own.)

if you're reading this and you're like "ok cool but where's the part where i'm handed a computer and i gotta break in while going all hacker typer”—that's not the bulk of the work, alas! like, for sure, we do have fun pranking each other by trying dumb ways of stealing each other's passwords or whatever (once i stuck a keylogger in a dude's keyboard, fun times). but a lot of my security jobs have involved stuff like, "stare at this disassembly a long fuckin' time to figure out how the program pointer got all fucked up," or, "write a fuzzer that feeds a lot of randomized input to some C++ program, watch the program crash because C++ is a horrible language for writing software, go fix all the bugs," or "think Really Hard TM about all the settings and doohickeys this OS/GPU/whatever has, think about all the awful things someone could do with it, threat model and sandbox accordingly." occasionally i have done cool proof-of-concept hacks but honestly writing exploits can kinda be tedious, lol, so like, i'm only doing that if it's the only way i can get people to believe that Yes This Is Actually A Problem, Fix Your Code

"lua that's cool and all but i wanted, like, actual links and recommendations and stuff" okay, fair. here's some ideas:

microcorruption: very fun embedded security CTF; teaches you everything you need to know as you're doing it.

cryptopals crypto challenges: very fun little programming exercises that teach you a lot of fundamental cryptography concepts as you're going along! you can do these even as a bit of a n00b; i did them in Python for the lulz

the binary bomb lab is hilariously copied by, like, so many CS programs, lol, but for good reason. it's accessible and fun and is the first time most people get to feel like a real hacker! (requires you know a bit of C beforehand)

ctftime is a good way to see when new CTFs ("capture the flag"s; security-focused competitions) are coming up. or, sometimes CTFs post their source code, so you can continue trying them after the CTF is over. i liked Stripe's CTFs when they were going, because they focused on "web stuff", and "web stuff" was all i really knew at the time. if you're more interested in staring at disassembly, there's CTFs focused on that sort of thing too.

azeria has good ARM assembly & exploitation tutorials

also, like, lots of good talks out there; just watching defcon/cansecwest/etc talks until something piques your interest is very fun. i'd die on a battlefield for any of Christopher Domas's talks, but he assumes a lot of specific x86/OS knowledge, lol, so maybe don’t start with that. oh, Julia Evans's blog is honestly probably pretty good for just learning a lot of stuff and really beginner-friendly?

oh and wrt legality... idk, i haven't addressed it here since it hasn't come up in my own work much, tbh. if you're just getting started you're kind of unlikely to Break The Law without, y'know, realizing maybe you're doing something a bit gray-area? and you can cross that bridge when you come to it? Real Hacking TM is way more of a pain-in-the-ass than doing CTFs and such, and you'll learn way more with the latter, so who cares lol just do the fun thing

[astrojoy]

Hiiii! Can I join your exchange game? UwU 💕💕💕💕

Can I choose 3 questions? In exchange, i'll also answer you 3 questions <3

My initials are V.D <3 I want you to answer :

- Future spouse characteristics, looks

- Career ( what is it about )

Now onto your reading <3 UwU I'll also answer for you the same questions I asked <3 (I'm pretty confident in my intuition <3)

Future spouse looks :

- long hair ? he could dye it blond or he's blond (and he looks freaking good in it)

- sharp jawline

- honeyed skin

- straight eyebrows

- proportionate body, tall, more on the slim side but still thicc in some places 😏

- seductive smirk 😏

- tapered eyelids?

- small and thinner lips but it's smexy 😏

- idk but he's quite good looking for me 😳 also has attractive bone structure, taller than average

- idk but his vibe and looks can quite resemble Hyunjin from stray kids, just more defined, mature and more seductive ( also bigger eyes) ?? ( idk if it's true but when I think about him (your fs) , I think about him ? )

Future spouse characteristics :

- SMART, knows how to trick you 😳 (but no one thinks he's that smart)

- lmao why did I get seductive- 🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️🤦‍♀️(only to you)

- seems quite bland but is actually a very interesting person ( but they rarely let their interesting side on )

- loves books ? loves researching before working on something

- quite a neat person, loves cleanliness

- 😳 i got virgo / aquarius vibes from this person 😳

- Moon in Capricorn or aspected by saturn ?

- INTROVERT but can also be social . They love small groups.

- 12th house placements ?

- Cap rising or aspected by saturn 😳 damnn-

- hard-working and generous? he's trusted by many people

- loves to stare deep into your eyes and hug you 💕💕💕

- you awaken his sexuality ??? lmao- (quite unrelated)

- damn why did I feel pain in my chest? He could have been hurt by someone who he trusted 😔 ( so that's why he doesn't want to love anyone-)

- loves ranting, late-night conversations, tea time

CAREER :

- counsellor?? provide help to people? Or some kind of job related to that kind of thing ( oh or tarot reader-)

- You'll be pretty comfortable with your job, it also makes a decent amount of money that's enough to make you feel satisfied

- People trust in your advice 💕💕💕💕

- I sensed that this is the path you wanted to go so there is not many things to say 💕💕💕💕

Thank you and i hope i get it right 💕💕💕💕💕💕

MA'AM OML OK OK OK I'M NOT GONNA SAY MUCH BECAUSE THERE'S A LOT TO EXPLAIN BUT EVERYTHING YOU SAID WAS 100% CORRECT AND I'VE BEEN TOLD THOSE THINGS ALL THE TIME OML JEEZ YOU ARE BLESSED WITH A GIFT CUZ- 👏

Crazily accurate. Like you got everything and idk how. Mind blowing. Even the reference I've been told before- are you a mind reader? 🤨 LMAO OK OK onto you 😏

FS Characteristics

- Making choices is a difficult task. It can be on anything at all. The seem to get stuck with the pros and cons of each one. They need someone to help them haha

- SUCH a romantic person. And I mean SUCH. They are super super romantic. I'm talking about cheesy and cuddly very often. Think of pisces, libra energy for that

- Ride or die. They believe in loyalty. Sticking together through Thick and thin. Doesn't matter what, if you are their lover or friend, you best bet they will be at the party but then jumping off a cliff to safe you

- Protective. They are protective of whoever they love. If you guys have a kid, that kid won't have to worry about getting hurt around them. If you get hurt? Lord help who ever did it

- Dual sides to them. They can be really silly, goofy at times but when it comes to being serious they put all that siliness quickly away and instantly change for the mood

- They were betrayed once in love. They were close go whomever it was but that person literally back stabbed them in some way, broke their heart. Cheater?

- They are really attracted to a peaceful environment. They love flowers, etc. Think of someone meditating in a meadow of blossoming dandelions, the slight gust of wind while the trees sway.. That kind of peace. That's what they look for. WAIT OMFG I LOOKED AT MY CARD JUST NOW AND IT HAD AN OWL WITH A DANDELION IN ITS MOUTH- OK OK let me explain. I never said this before but 90% of your cards had birds in them. Now what's funny is an owl was on another card. Literally there is a normal bird, another normal bird, a baby bird, an owl over an egg, another owl, 2 cranes and etc. These cards are from 4 different decks 2 of which are oracle

- So uh... Might have a favoritism towards dandelions 😏 being hopeful too!

- A true softy. Got so much on this in particular

FS Looks

- Wears glasses for sure

- Beautiful big eyes 🥺

- Brown eyes

- They have a nice body

- The chest and upper back are prominent, nice one no matter the gender

- Feline features honestly

- Freckles

- Dyes their hair different colors

- Fluffy soft hair

- They dye their hair a dirty blonde often though

- 18+ whatever gender this is, they have nice COUGH areas ✨😁✨

- Thin nose (random but yeah)

- Woah I got my camera card, very photogenic face and/or body

- For sure styles their hair different from time to time

- Average height

- Dry skin

Career

- There's a lot of options here actually. I got my good karma card, so this tells me you actually have more free will in career than you think. You earned this in a past lifetime so in this one, whatever you want, go after it

- Singer (literally had my Singer + sing card come out)

- Teaching people self-love through whatever career you pursue

- LOTS of wands, creative cards. Your career is revolving around the arts, femininity, creativeness

- I got images of fashion, clothes, jewelry also came out

- Entertainer

- Something you will find fun but took a lot of work

- Possibly something with fitness, telling people they are "sexy" beautiful the way they are

- Standing up for people in your career can happen

- Fire energy. Firefighter came with my creative wands cards

- 2222222 lots of 2's

- 101010

Have a beautiful day!! 🥺💖

EDIT: Found a random card- apparently my guides wanted me to see it. "Healing" you will definitely be healing people in some way. Even got the self-love card 😏