#I'll be honest 2023 was pretty great

[pixelpaladin24]

I've been officially in 2024 for 33 minutes and it's great so far 😁

Happy new year to all of you again!!

[mcflymemes]

BARBIE (2023) PROMPTS *  assorted dialogue from the film, adjust as necessary

i'm definitely not thinking about death anymore!

i've never seen this kind of malfunction.

am i being too technical?

if you ask me, you're responsible for this, too.

to be honest, when i found out the patriarchy wasn't just about horses, i lost interest.

i just gave you a choice so you could feel like you're in control!

how will i get back?

this happened once before.

i just don't want to leave!

you'll be such a hero to them!

i feel appreciated but not ogled.

i hate it when people think. i'm so bored.

the faster i figure this out, the faster we get home.

i'm not pretty anymore!

humans have only one ending. ideas live forever.

you're so beautiful.

how come you're so amazing!

i worked very hard, so... i deserve it!

you're the voice of a generation.

this makes me emotional, and i'm expressing it.

i got us both ice creams!

i think you have that the wrong way around.

how much of that did you see?

let's get you up on your feet.

you should heal up in no time.

this night is just perfect!

please call my mother.

i thought i might stay over tonight.

does the label "long-term long-distance low-commitment casual girlfriend" mean nothing to her?

i'm great at doing stuff.

it is literally impossible to be a woman.

we always have to be extraordinary, but somehow we're always doing it wrong.

never forget that the system is rigged.

find a way to acknowledge that, but also always be grateful.

it's too hard!

i'm just so tired of watching myself and every single other woman tie herself in knots so that people will like us.

i was arrested for tax evasion.

i smell like basement.

what are you doing here?

did you bring your rollerblades?

i literally go nowhere without them!

do you guys ever think about dying?

i'll play the guitar at you.

yeah, i'm... confused about that.

it's like i've been in a dream where i was really invested in the zack snyder cut of "justice league."

can i talk to a doctor?

i need a clicky pen.

somebody get security.

i've never seen the godfather.

every night is a boy's night.

i just don't know who i am without you.

i only exist within the warmth of your gaze.

i'm just a little blond guy who can't do flips.

you guys aren't doing patriarchy very well.

men hate women and women hate women. it's the one thing we can all agree on.

you don't have your license.

you can be brainwashed, or you can be ugly. there's nothing in between.

she's not dying, she's just having an existential crisis.

i'm sensing some kind of ententre here... and it appears to be double.

who am i to burst their bubble?

you use your imagination!

you can ask me any question you want.

[l13]

Hi!! Would you be willing to write something about reader that’s obsessed with peter b parker’s tummy? like how he lets reader indulge in that obsession, teasing reader for how just having their face in his belly drives them wild :) a hot ending would be great toooo

sorry this kinda turned into the reader teasing peter insteadD:

cw : NSFW 18+, MINORS DNI, gn!reader, mostly fluff, established relationship, kinda sub!peter? he's whiny in this, like one mention of body hair, hints at smut but there's none:c, thick/dad bod(whatever you wanna call it)!peter appreciation<;33

Peter breathes out your name softly, and you glance up at him to find that he's covering his flushed face with an arm over his eyes, “Cut it out already,” he scolds but there's no strictness behind his tone. “I'm running late.”

“One more minute,” you say, and Peter knows you're lying but he can't bring himself to say anything when he feels you touching and squeezing his plump sides. He raises his arm a bit to peek down at you and holds his breath as you run your fingers from his bellybutton down, down to the waistband of his sweatpants, following the trail of his fuzzy hairs.

Peter bites his lip and runs both hands through his hair. He's so overwhelmed by you showering him with affection that he doesn't know what to do with himself. “You're so obsessed, it's kind of embarassing to be honest..” is what he chooses to say, his voice cracking slightly and he cringes. His heart swells when you huff out a laugh and nod, so much so that he feels it thumping in his throat.

“Promise you're never gonna get rid of your tummy? Please? 's so pretty, Peter.. can't get enough,” you talk with your cheek pressed against his belly, your words getting muffled as you turn to lay kisses across his chubby skin. Peter whines, his hips jumping up involuntarily. “M not gonna.. just... stop feeling me up or else I won't be able to go anywhere,”

You grin up at him and say, “That's fine with me,”. Your voice is dripping pure sin and it makes Peter want to scream and start running around like a maniac.

“That's fine with- Miguel will kill me if I don't show up, d'you want me dead or somethin'?”

“It's just a meeting, Peter..” you coo, shimmying your body down to straddle his thighs, humming when you spot the outline of his dick underneath those stupid grey sweatpants that he loved. They did look good on him... but the fact that he refused to put on underwear each time he wore them, knowing that it drove you insane, was absolutely evil.

You let your hand fall on his bulge, hearing him inhale sharply, and you bit your lip to try and stop yourself from smiling as you ran your hand up and down his length over the material, “Plus I'm gonna treat you so well if you stay.. I swear, baby.”

“God, you're such a -Oh fuck.. please...” Peter stutters when you bend down to bite at his chubby tummy softly, giving the skin a kiss right after.

“Please what?”

“Want your mouth on me so bad.. c'mon, I'll do anything-”

“Good boy,”

2023 © l13 | Do not steal, copy, edit, translate or re-post any of my works.

[aerkame]

Do you have hcs for the "Hero is Back" Sun Wukong?

Since I do not know the context of the headcanons, I'll just go with anything in general. Also, this is canon. (I'm being serious)

And you know what? That's very fitting.

Just like Monkey King Reborn and The Monkey King 2023, I think this version of Sun Wukong would also be very standoffish, especially towards someone he just met or doesn't know well. That is, if this was hundreds of years ago. I think modern day Monkey King would probably be more secretive of his identity but more friendly. Just respect his boundaries and personal life please.

Defiantly doesn't like the fame of Sun Wukong in modern times. He really doesn't come off as the type to like large crowds and popularity.

However, there's still that playfulness to him, he might pull a joke or two on you and act a bit silly while alone or with friends.

He would be a great dad if I'm being honest. He did so well with taking care of Liuer and the girl even if he probably won't admit it. Though I don't think he likes kids all that much, those two had to grow on him.

The modern version of him seems like he'd be a chill and nice person to hangout with. Although a bit stubborn and hotheaded

There is a bit of confidence to him and everything he does, he's got a natural charm

This dude is also surprisingly calm compared to most people, pretty sure he would feel safe to be around and relax with. I know I would feel safe around him.

Would absolutely be an introvert's best friend. He's patient even if it doesn't seem like that at first glance, and he's mindful of others personal space. He knows when to leave someone alone.

I feel like he'd be in the same boat as myself when it comes to relationships just based on how he acts. He's open to being in one, but he doesn't catch feelings easily, if not at all. So the chances of him dating are pretty slim. Plus, there's the immortality issue.

He does like to tease/flirt every now and then, but don't take what he says to heart. It's all in good fun.

IF he does find a special someone, he'd be so soft around his lover. He's a big softie around people he cares for in general.

I'd expect him to be very romantic and hush hush about his partner as well.

This monkey man, dresses to impress. Even if it's a hoodie. He will find the best looking one for sure and wear matching clothes.

He probably stays near other monkeys or people he personally knows, he doesn't seem like the type to get out much to socialize. Maybe go to events, but not to meet people though.

Probably socially anxious when the crowds start to get too large.

Bet he'd love to go to art walks and art events.

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime roundup, Pt. 1: Ongoing/returning shows and the trash heap

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it!

I wasn't expecting to watch nearly this much anime in just the past three months, but life completely failed at getting in the way. So here's everything I either watched or tried​ to watch for the Winter 2024 season, and a short review for each.

I'm not going to bother with trying to rank them, so instead they're sorted by category, as follows:

Continuing series from Fall 2023

Returning series

What I dropped

Mixed reactions

On hold

New series that are actually good

With this first entry, I'll be covering the first three, with the back half arriving in another couple of days. As with the 2023 rankings, the OP for each show is linked in the corresponding title.

Here we go.

Ongoing shows:

The Apothecary Diaries

Looking back at my 2023 rankings, I think my placement of The Apothecary Diaries’ first cour at #11 may have belied how much I love this show and believe it to truly be one of last year’s greats. If anything, it was hampered by its status as an ongoing show making it incomplete by nature, and I worried myself over the possibility of recency bias taking over my top ten (Frieren is in the same boat, so its top overall ranking should really highlight how damn good it is). Make no mistake, though: The Apothecary Diaries fucking rocks, and it continues to fucking rock. 

It’s largely more of the same, and that’s what you would want from another cour of this show. At the same time, though, more and more is uncovered about Maomao’s background and Jinshi’s status as the proverbial camera continues to pull back and the mysteries adorning the edges of the frame become clearer. I got a sense at the end of the Fall 2023 cour that the show was moving on from its episodic nature into something more serial and plot-driven, and I was mostly right: While several episodes of the Winter cour still revolve around various mysteries of the week, they all start to converge before you even realize it. It’s the same flywheel-effect approach to plot development that Kaguya-sama did so well: While so many of the events seem like one-off curiosities in the moment, these almost-imperceptible movements eventually barrel forward into an unexpected but perfectly logical momentum. The show teases out several plot threads that may not seem relevant at first, and it trusts you to be patient enough to see them play out.

I’m not at all exaggerating when I say that, along with the next entry on this list, The Apothecary Diaries is one of the best anime of the past five years. I had a feeling that this could end up being the case as 2023 came to a close, but I’m sure of it now. Watch this show.

Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End

Last year’s best anime continues apace into 2024 as we get an honest-to-goodness story arc: Frieren, who has been around too long to bother taking any magical governing bodies seriously, needs a certified mage in her party order to continue on the journey north. She decides to take the necessary exam to be certified as a First-Class Mage, a rarefied status in this world, and has Fern tag along to do the same in order to double their chances. 

And it’s still incredible! Great action, brilliant animation, wonderful character moments, and a beautiful score. It is still the top-rated anime ever on MyAnimeList, and by a significant margin. I’m not sure I agree, necessarily, but I can say with all sincerity that this has been a perfect season of television and my Fridays now feel empty without it. 

That’s all I’ve got on this one. What else do you want from me? I’ve already written nearly 2000 words about this show alone since it premiered. You’re asking me for more? I’ll kill you.

Shangri-La Frontier

If the low placement on my 2023 list was any indication, I was pretty fed up with Shangri-La Frontier by the end of its first cour, and the first couple episodes of 2024 being little more than plot set-up had me teetering on the edge of dropping it entirely. But I’ll be damned if it didn’t reel me back in once shit actually started happening and the plot really began to move forward.

Well, for a bit, at least. The height of the series so far has been the Wethermon arc, in which Sunraku teams up with his fellow shit-gamers, Pencilgon and Katzo, as they vie to be the first to take down a notoriously difficult unique boss. As the fight plays out, we get to see the feeling-out process of a tough action-RPG boss, rife with attack pattern memorization, skill timing, and buff stacking as the margin for error grows ever thinner. As always, the animation is on point, the soundtrack rules, and the action sequences are exhilarating.

But my major gripe with the series remains: There’s hardly any actual story here, even after 25 episodes. There are broad gestures towards a larger plot (“the truth of this world,” as the NPCs call it), but they are too vague to even resemble anything enticing. Everything in between the major fights is just set dressing, and there’s a lot of in between. There’s decent stuff in there, to be fair; the adorable rabbit NPCs are always a delight, and I love the commitment to depicting our top-level gamers as smug, preening shitheels. These are long walks for short drinks of water, though, and much of the main cast isn’t likable enough to make the downtime tolerable, to the point where watching the many set-up episodes feels like more of a grind than the actual grinding in the show. Even in the best fight sequences I still had moments where I found myself yelling “STOP TALKING ALREADY” at the screen. Internal monologues are a constant in battle shonen, I know, but if there’s any demographic whose internal monologues I want to hear the least, it’s gamers.

I kept watching this show despite myself, and six months later I’m still not sure how much I actually enjoy it. I haven’t seen any of the lousy VRMMO anime that people favorably compare it to, so at least it isn’t Sword Art Online. Yay, I guess? Yet here I am, still plugging away at a show I can’t strongly recommend to a lot of people. Shangri-La Frontier has turned me into a Steam reviewer.

Undead Unluck

The stakes continue to rise exponentially in one of last year’s more underrated shonen hits (or it would’ve been a hit if Disney gave a fuck about marketing the anime on its own platforms). The Union neutralizes a threat, gains a new Roundtable member, and then shit hits the fan.

The scope of this series goes into absolutely buckwild directions, and all I will say is that “Kimi no Todoke predicting the future” was not a piece of worldbuilding I would have ever expected. But at the same time, it never loses focus on the human element, which only gets more poignant as it goes on. There’s a really beautiful message in the last arc about how people can live on through the memories of others, well past their bodies dying, which hits nice and hard considering this season aired at the same time as Frieren.

This is a show that I tended to watch sporadically (because I just plain forget to open Hulu just to watch one show every week), and I would say that it was the ideal way to watch it, except the pacing issues from the first cour only got worse during a monumentally consequential sequence in the middle of the second. There was an episode that had, I shit you not, 90 seconds of new content in the first seven minutes of runtime, and at the exact point in the series where you’re salivating for something, anything new. In a season where so much goes on in just 24 episodes, I’m baffled that they felt the need to pad the runtime so much.

That’s the worst of it, though, and the momentum fortunately builds up from there and barrels downhill until the end. The story becomes incredibly meta, which was a very ballsy move for a Shonen Jump series that was still relatively early into its run. The gamble pays off, though, and the debut season ends on several incredibly strong episodes, and now I want more. I’ll be hopping on the manga soon.

It also struck me towards the end of the season just how goddamn cute everyone looks. For all of the spraying blood and grim marching towards Armageddon, it says a lot that I still wanna pinch everyone’s fat little cheeks.

Returning shows:

The Dangers in My Heart, season 2

The first season was absent in my 2023 rankings but I decided to pick it up while the second was still airing, and I’m so glad I did: The Dangers in My Heart is an almost-too-precious middle school romance that is endlessly endearing and bluntly honest (if a little exploitative) about what middle schoolers are actually like, warts and all. Insecurities are amplified, they struggle to figure out their identities, and mental and physical development run on different schedules from one kid to the next. And amidst all this raging hormonal nonsense, we have ourselves a lovely little romance story.

Kyotaro has (mostly) kicked his chuuni tendencies and realized that he’s madly in love with the beautiful, cheery Anna. He’s as aware as anyone of what a mismatched couple they’d be, though, and continues to self-sabotage any progress in the name of maintaining her good social standing. To pile onto his loner’s perspective of middle school politics, Kyotaro also gets a front-row seat to Anna’s part-time work as a model-slash-actress and he wonders if an underdeveloped shrimp like him should be seen anywhere near someone so obviously more mature. At the same time, though, he’s a growing boy, and we see lovely moments of progress as Kyotaro takes initiative both for her sake and to achieve what he wants. To both ameliorate and complicate these situations, Anna reciprocates his feelings towards her, and we creep ever closer towards what we want to see, in increasingly awkward and precious fashion.

So much of this anime is just gorgeous. Even setting aside the visuals and music (which are on point at all times), there are really lovely themes in here about insecurity, teenage perceptions of maturity, and self acceptance. On top of all of that, though, this is just a delightful slice-of-life romance story. You can probably guess where we’ve ended up by the end of the second season, but it’s the getting there that makes it all worth it. The manga is still running (and I plan to pick it up), so there’s clearly plenty more of the story to tell, but if this is where the anime ends, it ended perfectly.

Holy shit, though, did the first season really air at the same time as Skip and Loafer and Insomniacs After School? Dentists must have made a mint that season because every single one of these shows is so unrelentingly sweet that my teeth start to itch. Not that I’m complaining.

Mashle: Magic and Muscles, season 2

I honestly think I might’ve been too hard on Mashle in my 2023 rankings. I gave up on it a few episodes in when it’d initially aired, but I eventually came back to finish out the season and ended up having a pretty good time. I’ll cop to having forgotten that latter part when I mapped out those rankings, but that enjoyment quickly came back to me when I picked up season 2... even if the season begins with a ton of table setting.

Plenty of battle shonen take time to find their voice, both in manga and anime, and Mashle really seemed to hit its stride fairly quickly into the second season. Mash Burnedead’s lack of magical quality is no longer a secret, and now magical society has to find a way to deal with it, so the series’ initial stakes are raised and Mash HAS to become a top-level sorcerer lest he lose his life. Also, the bad guys are back. Unfortunately, just as I started to genuinely appreciate the ensemble cast, most of Mash’s friends took a backseat to the larger plot (Lemon is nowhere to be seen almost all season) as the villains raise the stakes with increasingly JoJo-esque magic abilities. There’s still plenty to like, though, and some of the new characters help. Props for having an openly nonbinary character play a major role.

The music is a real highlight here; a surprising amount of hip-hop paints the backdrops during dialogue, and any show with an OP by Creepy Nuts will immediately grab my attention. "Bling-Bang-Bang-Born" actually turned into a bona fide hit single, much like Oshi no Ko's "Idol" and Jujutsu Kaisen's "SPECIALZ," and I'd say it's well earned (seriously, it fucks, please click the link above). The animation has also started to really pick up where it felt like it kept falling short in the first season as well, and I found myself looking forward to action sequences more as the season went on.

And hey, it might’ve taken 21 episodes to get there, but I finally laughed at a cream puff gag!

Urusei Yatsura (2022), season 2

I really don’t have much to say other than it’s more Urusei Yatsura, and that’s just swell. We continue the modern adaptation of the classic gag manga as the OG anime babe and her piece-of-shit “darling” get caught up in yet more bizarre hijinks. Despite the 48-episode run being touted as an “Urusei Yatsura all-stars” cherry-pick from Rumiko Takahashi’s 34-volume opus, not all of the segments hit on the same level, but the stories that last entire or even multiple episodes have been killer. Lum and Ataru, despite their myriad flaws, genuinely do care for one another, and this series is at its best when those feelings get to shine through. Takahashi remains a legend for her expert balancing of comedy and heart, and while this particular adaptation doesn’t have the built-in benefit of 300+ chapters of familiarity, those moments still feel earned.

It’s Urusei Yatsura. It’s a classic for a reason. Watch it.

Dropped:

Gushing Over Magical Girls (dropped after one episode)

For the TL;DR version, consult the image above.

All I’d heard about this show going in was that the manga it’s based on was good and that there would be boobs. I wish I’d known more than that before watching, though, because if I’d known that said boobs would belong to middle schoolers, I wouldn’t have bothered with even the one episode I did end up watching.

I was drawn in by the initial premise, too: The protagonist, the conspicuously-named Utena (who looks enough like Bernadetta from Fire Emblem that I was immediately endeared to her), is an enormous fan of the magical girls who keep her city safe, so when an adorable maho shoujo mascot approaches her with an offer, she immediately takes him up on it. As her sinister-looking (and unnecessarily revealing) costume suggests, though, Utena doesn’t get to live out her magical girl dreams; she actually got roped into—and blackmailed into keeping—a role as a villainess. The magical girl team she idolizes quickly finds her, and to stave off their assault, Utena is forced to summon a monster to bind them. As they continue to struggle and squeal, Utena goes further with it by ripping their clothes and spanking their bare bottoms red, because it turns out that she’s actually into this stuff, sexually. The title, it turns out, is a double entendre.

Credit where it’s due for a clever concept: On paper, this is really goddamn funny! My issue is with the execution: I don’t really care to see someone’s sexual awakening if it involves repeated violations of consent, and much less so if I have to see nudity of ostensible middle schoolers (Japanese middle schools are the equivalent of seventh through ninth grade, meaning these girls are 15 at most). After 100 Girlfriends, I thought I could handle whatever trashy bullshit any anime could throw my way, but the longer I chewed on Gushing’s premiere, the worse it sat with me. I have no intentions of playing morality police here, but I can’t bring myself to watch any more of this than I already have. 

Early teenage sexuality is a very difficult subject matter to handle delicately, especially in a comedy milieu, and I can levy plenty of criticisms on that matter towards series I otherwise enjoyed, like Call of the Night and the aforementioned Dangers in My Heart. And although there appear to be some coming-of-age elements here, Gushing doesn’t seem interested in handling it without being exploitative. Maybe it gets better, but I don’t plan to find out for myself. 

I just feel like it’s a shame that in a season with some actual halfway decent LGBT representation, the breakout yuri hit is about middle schoolers performing dubiously-consensual BDSM on each other. And maybe that speaks to something for some sapphic viewers, and I have no intention of speaking over them, but I do know that this isn’t for me. I would’ve gone fucking feral over this show when I was like 13, but I haven’t been a 13-year-old boy for a long, long time. 

I may not have a leg to stand on here as someone who watches Mushoku Tensei (and frankly, that one’s on strike two with me), but I have to put my foot down somewhere. For me, that “somewhere” is borderline pornography involving 13-15 year olds. I try to meet media where it is, even the squicky stuff, but I cannot put myself at the level Gushing Over Magical Girls sets for itself. 

Sasaki and Peeps (dropped after eight episodes)

This show is frustrating to even process postmortem. After a mildly intriguing hour-long premiere that introduced a whole lot of concurrent concepts, Sasaki and Peeps somehow managed to not only continue heaping new ideas onto the pile, but also fumble every single one of them in a way that wasn’t even entertaining to watch.

Sasaki, a lonely 40-something salaryman of modest means, decides that instead of living vicariously through adorable animal photos on social media, he should pull the trigger and get a pet of his own. He settles on a reasonably-priced and suitably adorable fat little Java sparrow, who as it turns out speaks human language and is actually named Piercarlo the Starsage (Sasaki settles on calling him Pii-chan, or Peeps in English). The bird was reincarnated from another world, where he is able to take Sasaki at will, and the man realizes he can use the other world’s relative dearth of technology to his advantage and sets up an interdimensional trade full time so he can make coin on his own watch and help Peeps try the delicious beef he heard is the best food in Sasaki’s world. To the latter end, he also invests in a restaurant. Peeps also helps teach him magic, which Sasaki is forced to use in a pinch in the real world. He is quickly found out and gets roped into a secret government bureau of psychics, because the agent who caught him using ice magic decides he’d be a perfect complement to her water powers (think Kanne and Lawine from Frieren, but stupider). Sasaki now has to balance these multiple lives, which hardly ever interact with one another, as the stakes rise in Peeps’ world in the form of palace intrigue and in Sasaki’s world in the form of a growing threat of evil psychics or something. Also, there’s magical girls, because why the fuck not at this point.

If you actually managed to process all that and went “wow, that’s a lot, I wonder how they can tie all that together,” it brings me no pleasure to report that Sasaki and Peeps completely fails at that task. This is a work of fiction with entirely too many ideas, to the point where it feels like it has no ideas. There’s a saying in football that a team with two quarterbacks is a team with no quarterback, and Sasaki and Peeps has, like, six on its depth chart. You ever hear a band that managed to cram multiple genres in the same song and you get whiplash every time it switches up? Those are bands with a lot of influences, but no identity or vision to call their own, and that is Sasaki and Peeps to me: It is the Twenty One Pilots of anime. A lot of shit got thrown at the wall, and none of it stuck: This show, conceptually, is shit-stained drywall with a pile of turds adorning the moulding. 

For a show about a 40-year-old man, it gave me serious pause that there was not a single named adult woman in any of the episodes I watched, and I grew even more frustrated waiting for one to show up. Sasaki’s partner, Hoshizaki, seems to be a driven, professional young woman, but it turns out she’s a 16 year old high school student, for some reason. The daughter of the viscount doing business with Sasaki is a young girl who likes to tag along with him, and Sasaki’s neighbor is a latchkey high school girl who may or may not have a yandere-ish fixation on him. The magical girl we meet is also definitely a kid. The female psychics they face off against don’t appear to be older than teenagers, though the one who appears to grow fond of him turns out to be several hundred years old, which especially gave me pause because we all know that unfortunate trope and the type of person who hides behind it. Before progressing any further, I found out that the light novel series upon which this show is based was written by someone with the pen name “Buncololi,” which told me the rest of what I needed to know.

That part made me increasingly uncomfortable, and I became less and less convinced that this show was capable of sticking the landing as it continued to pile on new, contrived ideas. This was a waste of an excellent voice cast, but more than that, a waste of time.

Tales of Wedding Rings (dropped after nine episodes)

I can’t believe how much goddamn isekai I ended up watching this season. That Tales of Wedding Rings wasn’t the worst one (see above) was a minor miracle, because boy howdy was this one a dud.

Satou is just a normal high school boy, blah blah blah, his childhood friend he’s in love with is actually a princess from another world and she has to go back to fulfill a political marriage, he follows her into the portal to pull a Benjamin Braddock. But then, gasp, the palace is under attack, so the princess (her native name is Krystal, but growing up in Japan she was known as Hime, which means… princess) instead decides to marry Satou, bestowing upon him her kingdom’s ring, which gives him powers that he uses to fight back the demons. It turns out that her ring enables him to use one elemental affinity out of five, so of course now Satou has to collect the rings held by the other four kingdoms in order to become the Ring King and save the world, and to do so he has to also marry each corresponding princess.

This is basically Tolkien’s Rings of Power but as a harem isekai with bonus nudity. What I saw of the season was basically a MacGuffin hunt that had waifus of various fantasy races attached. Fine character designs for each, to be fair, but it wasn’t enough to keep me interested.  It’s funny on paper that (to paraphrase Geoff Thew) our protagonist’s power level scales with the size of his harem, but Tales didn’t do enough to make me actually care what was happening. And I wanted to! There were elf titties and I didn’t care. That’s criminal.

What makes Tales especially difficult to watch is that this show is fuck ugly. The color palette is muddy and unappealing, everyone looks uncannily shiny, and there’s a smudgy Vaseline filter over everything. The action sequences are uninspiring, the animation is lousy, and every character looks terribly off-model unless they’re naked. Watch the OP I linked if you don't believe me; that's the best of it. The aural element isn’t much better; ecchi scenes are punctuated by a Cinemax-caliber smooth jazz score that I pray was chosen ironically, and most of the show’s humor consists of “an old guy is screeching.” And if you’re wasting Shigeru Chiba’s talents on that one lousy joke, you’ve fucked up catastrophically.

What completely pushed me out of wanting to see any more of this show, though, was how hard it doubled down on the worst elements of harem anime by having Protag-kun be a wishy-washy little ninny even though he’s openly declared his love for and is literally married to Hime/Krystal. And I wanted to care about her; the narrative made me want to care about her, and her jealousy of the other princesses is warranted, but alas, the harem demands bodies. To his credit, Satou recognizes her mixed emotions and makes extra time for her to make it clear that she’s forever number one in his heart, but every single time their shared romance and emotions actually push them towards consummating their (all caps for emphasis) MARRIAGE, the show goes Rent-a-Girlfriend on us and finds a cheap excuse to ruin the moment. No thanks, I’m out. Nothing else about this show is good enough to make me wade through that shit.

Honestly, the only thing that had me coming back after my Persona 3-induced hiatus was that I wanted to see the dragon girl, and that alone was almost worth it, but there really isn’t much of a draw otherwise. There were better isekai, better romances, better fantasy settings, and even better uncensored harem shenanigans this season. I might pick this back up as the second season approaches, but I’m not in any hurry.

[my-rose-tinted-glasses]

Rose Recaps 2023 - Thailand

Ok. Let me just get this out of the way. If there were awards for "started of great but forgot what it was about by the end" Thailand would win them all. No other country can touch them. So when I was going through my list of watched Thai Bls there weren't all that many to choose as favourites. but I'll try to be kind.

The one about family

Moonlight Chicken

First and foremost this show is stunning. This really cannot be overstated. I really enjoyed all the different relationships represented here and that the idea of family is what you want it to be. I love all of them, and Wen did absolutely nothing wrong.

Favourite Moment This conversation left me in tears.

The one hated by so many but not me

Dangerous Romance

This was me whenever there was a new episode.

I'm not gonna say people were wrong. Everybody has the right to their own opinions. But I never expected anything else.

This show gave me exactly what I expected of it. They made a romantic version of the trailer for christ sake. The ost video that came out the day before the premiere was a love fest with the softest song sang by Chimon. I agree that the first 2 episodes were different and for some, misleading about the direction of the show.

Not for me though. I got what I wanted. Chimon and Perth on my screen being boyfriends with some drama sprinkled in for good measure. And with the amazing bonus that was Marc and Pawin together again and the character of Auto that I just adored. I actually enjoyed all the characters in this one.

Favourite Moment

The one that is beautiful

I Feel You Linger In The Air

The amount of screenshots I took while watching this would fill a hard drive. It's just gorgeous. The way they played with the spaces was just such a treat.

This show was almost perfect. I had a couple of issues with it midway through and I felt that they dragged the goodbye a tiny bit much but overall I really liked it. These two are very special but overall there were a lot of characters to root for and enough of them to hate, which I appreciate.

But also WHERE IS THE SPECIAL??? I need to watch it!

Favourite Moment

The one that was I was ready to hate and then didn't

Be My Favourite

Confession time. I didn't like Krist. Watching SOTUS was something I endured but didn't enjoy for the most part. I know I'm not alone in this. But also. I didn't like Fluke. In anything. He was the only thing I didn't like in Not Me, and I skipped most scenes of his couple during Dark Blue Kiss. No particular reason tho. I just didn't enjoy watching him. So the bar was set pretty low on this one for me.

And then what happened? I loved Kawi. Like immediately. And surprise surprise, I liked Fluke. Immediately. It's like I was on an alternate universe and I couldn't believe my eyes.

With that said, it was not even close to a perfect show. It started off really strong, I enjoy the way the relationship grew, I loved that the characters were being honest with each other and being mostly kind to one another. Some moments felt really grounded. And then it kinda fell apart for me. But this is a positive post so I'm not going there.

Favourite Moment: The whole montage.

The one with the redemption of Mame

Wedding Plan

I already explained what I went through with this show here prompted by this episode of @the-conversation-pod. You should all go listen to this and all the other episodes because both @bengiyo and @shortpplfedup are brilliant and funny in convenient audio format.

Anyway, in the end I loved this show so much and took me a minute to come to terms that it was actually that good. The characters are actually multidimensional and the woman have depth. Groundbreaking stuff.

Favourite Moment

The one with all the cuteness

My School President

Not gonna lie, not a huge fan of singing in my bl. But this was great. From the beginning the fact that it made constantly remember my beloved Love Sick was an unexpected and delightfull bonus. I was living for Tinn's expressions, Tiw just being delightfully loyal and the epitome of sharing one brain cell group of friends. Not to forget the parental relationships that were some of the best of the year. I even liked the singing.

Favourite Moment

The extra one

Our Skyy 2 - A Tale of a Thousand Stars

This happened. It was perfect. That's it.

I watched more than 40 thai shows that came out this year, I'm not counting the ones that are still on, and these were my favourites. Mostly because some of them were the ones that I had the least to complain about.

That's it for my recaps. I still wanna gif some stuff today and it's late so I can't review this post again so if there are mistakes, don't tell me. It'll haunt me.

Have a good night💜

[uselesssomebody]

𝕜𝕚𝕟𝕜𝕥𝕠𝕓𝕖𝕣 𝕕𝕒𝕪 𝟚: eddie munson x domme!fem!reader

complete masterlist | kinktober 2023 masterlist

kink || ball-worship

taglist || @silversprings-mp3

fandom || stranger things

a/n || this is... rather filthy

➵ first time writing a domme reader hope it's good

➵ comment/message if you'd like to be added to the taglist

warnings || fluff/smut

➵ reader's good at math

it was such a stupid deal.

she wasn't even the type to offer favors as rewards for doing something, but good lord, if eddie munson wasn't stubborn.

she was good at math. like, great at math. like, top of the school. so, when her math teacher suggested she tutor eddie munson, bottom of the school, in the subject, as a way to boost her CV, she thought it would be simple enough. unfortunately for her, though, if there's one thing eddie did not like, it was studying.

he had only agreed to these sessions because his teacher threatened to full on fail him if he didn't. so, he expected to just sit there for an hour, sketch something for a dnd campaign, while some rando spoke at him.

unfortunately for him, though, she was passionate about the subject, and determined to help him, lest her academic reputation devolve. she'd tried literally everything to get him to study and do better in his math tests, but no progress was being made. she could practically see how his eyes glazed over as she explained the - to him - boring concepts.

she'd been kind, explained concepts abstractly, explained concepts using tangible objects, even tried to explain it through the lens of her limited knowledge of dungeons and dragons. then, she'd tried being authoritative and stern, frustrated with his nonchalance. nothing worked.

so, finally, she'd suggested another method. she fidgets uncomfortably with her fingers as she thinks about how to propose it.

"look... if you get a B+ on your next test, i'll do something for you. whatever you want." she says, expecting him to say... wash his dirty van, or sit in on one of his dnd sessions. his lips quirk into a devilish smile.

"yeah?" he asks, a brow raised. she sighs deeply, but nods. he hums, before chuckling, "deal."

to be quite honest, she didn't expect him to get the grade. so, on the day the tests were returned, she didn't even have to glance at her perfect score, immediately looking up to him instead.

the beaming smile on his face in disconcerting.

and that's how they'd ended up in the alley between the shed and the boiler room just fifty meters from the school.

she sighs, crossing her arms over her chest as she looks at him.

"alright, munson. if we're doing this, we're doing it my way." she asserts. his brows furrow, incredulous.

"huh? that's not fair-" he starts to protest, but stops himself from speaking further when she gets to her knees in front of him. suddenly, he doesn't feel so bad bending to her will.

she reaches up for his zipper, maybe a little too eager, but she'd not admit to it. his jeans come off easily, and he tries to curl his fingers through her hair, but she swats it away.

"no touching without permission." she hisses, and he holds his hands up in surrender.

"yes ma'am..." he murmurs, hoping the way the act of dominance made him grow harder isn't too noticeable. though, she is making eye contact with his clothed cock, so he wonders what he expected. a teasing smile plays on her lips as she looks up at him.

"you liked that?" she mocks, though it's in a honeyed tone, before gently fishing his cock out of his boxers, already fully hard and lightly dripping. it makes her laugh, his desperation, but god, it's pretty.

she kitten licks the underside of his cock, giggling at the moan he lets out - just a little high pitched. deciding to relent, she takes his cock between her warm lips, tongue flicking around his pulsing tip as she starts to push her head down on him. she moves slowly, trying to force his whole length down her throat, and once she does, he moans deeply as he feels the muscles constrict around his tip.

"f-fuck..." his eyes roll back, and the moan only increases in volume when she starts bobbing her head, spit getting her chin and his whole cock slick and messy. his moans grow louder, and, as soon as he starts getting too close, she pulls off, switching instead to stroking him slowly with her hand

"you get this chance, and you're gonna waste it by cumming in 2 minutes?" she mocks, using her other hand to gather the slick from her chin to fondle his balls with. he tries to respond, but the actions make his thigh muscles tense, and his breathing becomes shallow and whimper-y. she bites her lip, "you like that?" and he nods fervently.

slowly, sensually, she continues stroking him - just a little faster - as she brings her tongue to lave over his thick balls. he does whimper this time.

"fuck, fuck!" it comes out labored, and he has to cover his face with his hand, overtaken with pleasure. he'd rarely gotten his dick sucked, much less his balls. her mouth sucks each one into her mouth, before she retracts, pressing soft kisses to them with a smile.

she reverts to teasing him, alternating between letting her breath fan over his balls and shaft, and lightly licking them. he's getting more needy and impatient, whining out her name.

"you want more?" she asks, and he nods so hard he's worried his head's gonna fall off. she giggles, "then beg." he looks down for a moment, wondering if she's being serious. when he realizes she is, he bites down on his plump bottom lip.

"fuck, please..." he whimpers her name a few times, "please, need it so bad, you make me feel so good-" she hummed, satisfied, before stroking his cock faster, and bringing her mouth back to his balls, sucking them faster and flicking her tongue over them.

he's getting even louder now, and she's almost worried someone will come by. but then, she's looking up at that pretty, fucked out face, and he doesn't care, moving her mouth and hand faster.

his cock and balls pulsate, and she licks up from his balls to his tip, sucking him into her mouth as he came, feeling it spurt down her throat. after a second, she parts, swallowing his spend, and panting a little. he is too, face beet red, as his ringed hand finally leaves his face to look at her.

"that was... amazing." he sighs in content, and she smiles, before he helps her up to her feet. she wipes her mouth and chin with the back of her hand, before beginning to leave the secluded area. for a moment though, she turns back.

"get an A+ on the next one, and... we'll see." she teases, winking at a very flustered eddie.

[cleolinda]

Varney the Vampire: A Preface

I want you to think back to what it’s like to reread your old work from years ago—your old stories or poetry, your old school papers, or even your old tumblr posts. Sometimes you’re actually kind of pleased, sure, but I want you to really go back and locate yourself in the heady cringe of that feeling.

In related news, I'm going to pick back up with the Varney the Vampire recaps I started in late 2010 CE. I got about nine chapters in, and then something, who knows what, derailed my life, as things tend to. Like, I'm used to this, it happens with the regularity of a lunar cycle. But I like writing about vampires (clearly), and since I feel like Dracula has been tread pretty thoroughly in recent times, I figured I might go back to something different; we had some lively discussions about Varney back then.

But 2010 was a time before A Lot of Things happened. I was in my early 30s at that point, so I won't say, "Oh, I was so young," but I had a very different energy as a blogger 12-13 years ago. So I've decided to rewrite the recaps a little—some more than others, some not much at all. I just feel like I have a really different perspective on the first chapter in particular, in 2023.

As before, I'm using the full, unabridged text. It is hideously long, something like 230+ chapters, but go big or go home, I figure. The thing is, I was using the files hosted at the University of Virginia, and now you can only get those through the Wayback Machine, but they are still usable for now. I have various backups saved, but I do want you to be able to see that I am, as ever, Not Making It Up.

I'm also not going to quibble anymore as to whether James Malcolm Rymer or Thomas Peckett Prest wrote this behemoth. Per Wikipedia sources, scholars seem to agree that it was all or mostly Rymer. When it's mentioned that they figured this out based on his dialogue style, I went... yeah, that checks out. Because it sure is A Style, and I'll be honest, the repetitive filler dialogue in chapter 10 was such a speedbump for me that I just threw up my hands and said, "I don't know how to recap this. Something I can't remember now is going on in my life and I Cannot. I no longer Can."

Well, it's the 2020s and we're gonna. Like I can't tell you how much stress I do not have about this. I've had covid three times and also spinal surgery. Varney the Vampire can no longer hurt me.

To start, this ordeal has a preface—apparently written upon the occasion of collecting the serial into book form—wherein The Author expresses his gratitude for "unprecedented success of the romance of Varney the Vampyre." First off, Rymer uses "vampire" and "vampyre" interchangeably, because fuck me for caring about consistency, I guess. Second, as Wikipedia notes,

It first appeared in 1845–1847 as a series of weekly cheap pamphlets of the kind then known as "penny dreadfuls." The author was paid by the typeset line [YEAH, I NOTICED], so when the story was published in book form in 1847, it was of epic length: the original edition ran to 876 double-columned pages and 232 chapters. Altogether it totals nearly 667,000 words.

For comparison, all of Lord of the Rings plus The Hobbit is 576,459 words. I sure do blanch every time I see those numbers! It's fine. We're gonna be fine. Back to the preface:

The following romance is collected from seemingly the most authentic sources, and the Author must leave the question of credibility entirely to his readers, not even thinking that he is peculiarly called upon to express his own opinion upon the subject.

"Seemingly" is doing a lot of work here.

Nothing has been omitted [for real, nothing down to the tiniest fly-swat has been omitted] in the life of the unhappy Varney, which could tend to throw a light upon his most extraordinary career, and the fact of his death just as it is here related, made a great noise at the time through Europe, and is to be found in the public prints for the year 1713.

I've seen more than one Dracula multimedia art project where people recreated the letters and diaries and recordings in the book (have you heard my whole thing about how Dracula actually was a cutting-edge techno-thriller back in 1897?), but I've never heard of anyone creating ARG-style media for the Totally for Actual-Fact Real tale of Sir Francis Varney the Vampire, and I think it would be hilarious if someone did.

I won't belabor the entire preface, but what I do want to touch on is Rymer's mention of "unprecedented success." Varney is actually standing on the shoulders of a vampire giant, and it's not the one we would think of. Nowadays, our big touchstone—the influence so great that most works either evoke it or take the trouble to say "Our vampires are different"—is Dracula, obviously. Which was published exactly 50 years after Varney, in 1897. But Varney's touchstone is Polidori's short story "The Vampyre" (1819). And for most of the 1800s, this was everyone's touchstone. Per Wikipedia (which I'm going to lean on for how concise it is, but I concur with this from my own research as well):

An adaptation appeared in 1820 with Cyprien Bérard's novel Lord Ruthwen ou les Vampires, falsely attributed to Charles Nodier, who himself then wrote his own dramatic version, Le Vampire, a play which had enormous success and sparked a "vampire craze" across Europe. This includes operatic adaptations by Heinrich Marschner (see Der Vampyr) and Peter Josef von Lindpaintner (see Der Vampyr), both published in the same year. Nikolai Gogol, Alexandre Dumas [note: I have the Ruthven play he wrote around here somewhere] and Aleksey Tolstoy all produced vampire tales, and themes in Polidori's tale would continue to influence Bram Stoker's Dracula and eventually the whole vampire genre. Dumas makes explicit reference to Lord Ruthven in The Count of Monte Cristo, going so far as to state that his character "The Comtesse G..." had been personally acquainted with Lord Ruthven. [...]

In England, James Planché's play The Vampire, or The Bride of the Isles was first performed in London in 1820 at the Lyceum Theatre based on Charles Nodier's Le Vampire, which in turn was based on Polidori. Such melodramas were satirised in Ruddigore, by Gilbert and Sullivan (1887); a character called Sir Ruthven must abduct a maiden, or he will die.

Back when no one gave a shit about copyright, Polidori's work was spun out into a cottage industry of knock-off stories and plays, an entire horror zeitgeist. Lord Ruthven was, for 78 years, who you copied, who you riffed on, who you parodied, what Count Dracula is to us now: the archetypal vampire. The Big Guy. And Varney is clearly cut from his cloth—the ostensible gentleman who worms his way into the lives of respectable, unwitting people. Unlike Dracula, there's no foreigner Othering, no "historical basis," no undercurrents of contagion and infection, no ambition to make the world his wine-press, none of that; Ruthven is a simpler figure, but the dominant one of this time no less. He is a stranger who shows up in the middle of London high society, icy and distant, his eyes “dead grey”—stern, yet somehow compelling when he cares to be. And when he cares to be, you're in trouble.

And this is the cultural consciousness when Francis Varney shows up.

[Chapter one will go up sometime this week, March 8-10 or so.]

[spicyvampire]

Hi, since GMM has many Thai BL series, just wondering, do you have favorites from them? If you do, do you have 10 you like most so far?

I do not have the best relationship with GeeMeeMee but over the years they have provided some tasty bls here and there, I'll try to give you a little top 10

1.Not Me (2021)

To me that's like the best GeeMeeMee show ever made, great activism story, all the storylines are compelling, it gets accidentally funny with the twins stuff and the fact that Yok the resident arsonist is tryna fuck that cop so bad, but with Yok's help Dan finished realizing that he was part of a system that was beyond fixing and it was better to get himself free of it than staying, honestly has one of the best storyline and character development ever written in a bl

2. 3 Will Be Free (2019)

A gay mafia son, a stripper and a gogo bar manager walk into a bar, shenanigans ensue. To this day, the only GeeMeeMee show to have given me an endgame throuple and frankly one of the only cannon throuples we have in bl

3. Moonlight Chicken (2023)

By god Wen fucked that old man in the chicken shop, but in all seriousness this bl probably has the best breakup storyline I've ever seen in any media ever, it's a truly masterpiece; also we saw the story of a deaf character who uses sign language and that's not something you see often in bl tbh, wish we had more Gaipa and Alan but you take what u can get

4. Cherry Magic Thailand (2023)

Honestly this one took me by surprise, I'm not a fan of remakes but they did a really good job adapting those japanese characters to a Thailand setting while keeping some of the japanese background there, and go a bit further and deeper than the original did with some of the characters

5. Wandee Goodday (2024)

This one was my obsession for the last few weeks, unfortunately I think the show lost some momentum around the middle of it, and it needed more balance on some stuff, like one of Dee's big trauma wasn't even resolved even if they showed it affecting him pretty severely at least twice, while we spend like almost the whole 2nd half of the show on Yak's, overall very silly and enjoyable and also nice asexuality representation which is not something you see often in bl

6. The Eclipse (2022)

I'm not really a high school boy bl type of person and I usually avoid them but they got me with this one, I think Akk's storyline ressemble Dan's a lot in the sense that he had to realize he was part of a system that is bad and is using him to maintain a bad status quo and then had to free himself from it even if that's all he's ever known, Ayan is of course of a great help with his flirtiness, shenanigans and overall fuck the rules attitude

7. Bad Buddy (2021)

Thai bl's Romeo and Juliet, what I loved the most about this one was the attention put on the dynamics of Pran and Pat and their respective families, and how even if they didn't succeed in changing their fighting parents minds, they stayed together and continued to love each other because at the end of the day, the love was between them and it had nothing to do with their parents

8. He's coming to me (2019)

I love me a ghost story like any other guy, so this was right up my lane, I gotta admit it's been like 4 years since I've seen this so I don't remember the storyline clearly, but it left a good impression on me, so much that years later I still think of it as good

9. Only Friends (2023)

Top 10 messiest friend group ever created, this could have been higher on the list if they didn't do Boston dirty in the very last goddamn episode of the show

10. Dark Blue Kiss (2019)

I honest to god remember nothing about the mains but this show has the best coffee shop au in the ql universe and it's from 2019, SunMork chemistry is just firing all over the place, definitely my favorite Gawin ost too

[lynzishell]

✨23 Faves of 2023✨

I've been tagged on a few different versions of this throughout the month. For mine, I've decided to take 23 moments from my story and share them in chorological order. 💖TYSM for tagging me @hannahssimblr, @jarakio, @rebouks, @theosconfessions, @bloomingkyras, @igotsnothing 💖 I'm sorry if I missed anyone... I'm usually better at keeping note of who tagged me but I dropped the ball on this one and had to search through my mentions lol!

Alright... let's dive in shall we?

✨First up: Looooook at baby Phoenix 🥹 hehe! This was the first time he visited Mt Komorebi and the first time he saw snow... sparking his love affair with both. If you listen carefully, you can hear Wolfgang yelling in the distance, "Yo Penis!" (I miss that nickname. Special thanks to Becca for never letting it die 😅)

✨Ahhh The Bluffs -- I think this is my favorite lot in game, and look how stunning it is at sunset! This is from Phoenix's 18th birthday... aka that fateful night when [redacted] was [redacted]

✨Just me being obsessed with San Myshuno... particularly the Spice District. This is from Phoenix and Dawn's movie night... back when they were still just friends/co-workers.

✨Eeee this moment still gives me all the feels! When these two finally crossed the line from friends to lovers.

✨This one doesn't need a caption... just look at them... and the vibrant colors... 😍

✨The moment they became official

✨Falling in looooooove

✨I don't know why, but this is actually my favorite pic of them

✨Greta returns...lol! It was actually unintentional how well these two match the environment, but it made taking screenies so fun!

✨My second favorite pic of these two... *sigh* just look at them

✨Enter my Asher obsession... I can't tell you how happy I was when I found this pose because this is exactly how I envisioned him entering the room... against the door frame all leaned over and relaxed... even the way his feet are crossed and his left arm just hangs... it's just sooo HIM.

✨I mean... ahhh! I love him! and Lex too lol... we don't see much of her in my story, but these two have been BFFs since middle school. She's super sweet and funny.

✨Atlas and Asher, my loves. There's so much in this scene for me... I had such a clear picture of it in my mind looong before I created it in sims, and I was pretty happy with how it came out. And the song I used was very purposeful (even if I never state why lol) This moment here was actually quite self-indulgent if I'm honest.

✨Yep, still obsessed with these two lol! I just love this shot... the colors and the way they're holding each other. This is actually the desktop background on my laptop lmao

✨I had soooo much fun making this post!! Omg this song is so fkin good! I'll probably reblog this post on New Year's just for funzies 😊

✨Back to Phoenix and Dawn as they prepare to move in together... Had to get a shot of the fountain before saying goodbye to the Spice District

✨Ahaa and here we are.. beginning the journey up Mt Komorebi! I think this little bridge is my favorite spot along the way. It's really cool, and I got lots of great screenies from all angles. I really like this one.

✨Love how this shot came out! We all know this moment, yeah? Right before Dawn [redacted]

✨Yay! Celebrating the fact they made it to the summit... enjoy you two, you earned it!

✨Me carefully side-stepping the sad posts... love this moment of the two of them reconnecting... with the water and the city in the background... I just think it's nice.

✨Relaxing in their favorite summer spot... I love all the blues

✨I really like this shot from Kiyoshi and Kaori's wedding, with only their ceremony in the distance in focus, and the vibrant colors.

✨This seemed like a nice one to end on. I love the snow falling out the window, and the way Dawn is lit up by the candles. And I know there are mods to get rid of the z's when they sleep, but tbh, I kinda think they're adorable lol

Thank you to anyone who took the time to go on this little journey with me! If you made it to the end, please help yourself to a cookie 🍪 and know that I adore you!

My story will return on Jan 1st yay!! 🎉

I'm not going to tag anyone because a post like this doesn't need a tag! If you haven't done this yet, PLEASE do! Revisit your work from the year and share your favorites with us! Let's all go into 2024 feeling excited and inspired 💖

[starakex]

Wurmple Build Log

Guess who's back to drop another overly detailed post about a cosplay project. Another Pokémon one, unsurprisingly! My dumb ass made a Nargacuga fursuit head back in 2020 so I could learn how to work with upholstery foam. It looked... alright... but I know in my heart it was a horrible, horrible mess. Fast forward to 2023, I go to a 3-day convention, wear a bunch of different heavy wigs the whole time, get a rash on my forehead and think, fuck it, I am cringe and I am free, I'm gonna finally live the dream and make a Pokémon suit. It'll be great, and I won't have to wear a wig; I'll just have to worry about heat strokes instead. Fun! Of course, in true shitpost fashion, my perfect fursuit candidate has 10 legs and is shaped like a sausage.

Click on over to read the wondrous tale of building a Wurmple Partial Suit in like two weeks.

1. The Worm

Wurmple started as a dumb little sketch in the corner of my notebook. I have a lot of cosplays and plushes under my belt but the last fursuit (head) kinda looked like it would belong in a bootleg Freddy Fazbear establishment, so I brainstormed over a bunch of Pokémon I like that would work as a partial and are simple enough in design to avoid accidentally creating Uncle Uncanny 2.0. The goal was something that would be relatively comfortable and easy to bring to events 'cause I'm just not mentally prepared to drag a suitcase in public transport and wear a full body sweat carpet yet. I ended up doodling a few ideas like Haunter or Koffing, but then I pictured a Bug Catcher trainer with a bug head and I thought it was funny as hell, so the choice was made. I picked up my copy of Alpha Sapphire to get a good look at the model and immediately ran into a problem; the eyes on Wurmple are literally on the side of the head. They sit so flush you literally cannot see them if you look at them from the front. Not a great start. I figured I could probably hide a small hole for vision right above the mandibles where the red and cream colors separate. I wasn't super confident it would work, but dammit, I was already commited to being a stupid Bug Bug Catcher. Similarly, I looked at the side profile and figured I could open a hole behind the mandibles at mouth height to breathe out of. With an disproportionate amount of confidence for the bullshit I'm about to summon into the world, I began the project by patterning out the tail.

2. Bug Ass

I'll be honest, I started on the tail so I wouldn't have a reason to back out of it if the head ended up being a hot mess. I've patterned out and sewn a few plush before, so making a big ol' headless grub sounded like a reasonable goal. I usually make plush patterns by building out the shape with newspaper and tape, but Wurmple's tail got pretty big when scaled to fit a human, so I searched for alternatives. I ended up building the base shape to draw a pattern out of by taping two pillows together. I tied down small sections to shape the belly and slapped a layer of masking tape over half of it to trace my pattern. Once everything looked good, I cut the pattern pieces out and laid them flat. The pillows were returned to the couch safely once they recovered from the barbaric treatment.

I dug through my materials storage (a sad lonely plastic bin) for some Trash Fabric ™ leftovers from other Trash Projects ™ and tested the pattern out to see how it looked. I made the pattern for the spikes and legs at that point based on the test build and adjusted some seams on the tape pattern to refine some shapes, but overall the first pattern was a great success!

With the mockup done, I pulled out the minky fabric and got to sewing the tail together. I picked minky for the project 'cause it felt right for the cartoony 3d models to have that smooth short-pile look in real life (kinda like the official mascots, really). I was aware the margin for error when your fur pile is 3mm long is basically non-existent, but hey, at least I could work without a respirator on unlike fur! Sewing the body of the tail was pretty straightforward; I assembled the belly panels together, stitched the darts on the red parts to form the curve, and attached the backside of the zigzag spikes to it. I assembled the top and bottom halves together, tacked each zigzag down in place by hand, and filled the whole thing with polyester stuffing to see my beautiful bug sausage take shape.

Once I was sure it everything looked good. I stitched six little white legs and attached them onto the belly by hand using the belly seams as a guide.

Before moving on to the top spikes, I took a break from handsewing to build the tail base. It's a little nub made out of sandwiched upholstery foam with a belt running through a channel carved into the foam. It's topped off with a layer of high density EVA Foam glued at the base to keep the anchor point sturdy. Huge thanks to Neffertity for her tail tutorials as this was the main inspiration behind the method I used for the tail attachment. The foam nub goes about a quarter of the way through the tail, with the rest of it being filled up with the polyester stuffing that was added earlier.

Once the tail attachment point was secured, I started sewing all the spikes for the top half of the tail, stuffed them, and then stitched each of them to the tail by hand. Once they were all stitched on securely, I sewed the back closed with one last minky piece and Wurmple's tail was complete!

(Looking back, I could probably have machine stitched the legs and spikes on... But I was watching some really good Resident Evil Randomizer streams while handsewing these, so I didn't wanna get off the couch to work on the pattern again)

I'm so glad I started with the tail. It was basically a big plush, and I was so proud of the results when I was done that I was energized to start working on the head. Oh right, the stupid worm head with no vision.

3. The Head

Building up the shape of Wurmple's head was simple enough. I began by building a bucket head base out of upholstery foam by following Skyehigh's Studios old tutorial (new one linked here) and slapped some paper on it to figure out the size of the main elements; the mandibles and the eyes. I immediately regret following the tutorial steps for the eye holes, since I Forgot We Weren't Gonna Be Doing That, and mark where my cyclops eyehole is generally going to be instead.

Once I was satisfied with my patterns, I cut some more upholstery foam slabs, carved them with scissors until I got down to the general shape of the mandibles and horns, and glued them onto the base. I immediately got another stress injury carving everything down and realized I did not learn from my wig ventilating mistakes. I took a break to add a turkey carver to my online shopping bookmarks, which I immediately forgot about until I sat down to write this post. Since I was using minky for this project, I needed to make sure my base was as smooth as possible. The fabric is so thin it would pick up every wrinkle ever and look sad if I didn't. I dug into the bin for some Trash Felt ™ and glued it over the mandibles to smooth things out and added some mesh to the holes of the bucket head base to keep the curved shape of the head going without sacrificing those sweet ventilation holes. I also added my vision hole and marveled at my horrifying Mando helmet abomination. At that point in time I'm having some big doubts about the vision hole, but I trudge on because I'm not just gonna wear a bug ass to these conventions.

With the base complete, I covered the whole thing in tape and drew over it like I did with the tail to create a pattern, made sure to forget to take pictures of said pattern so that this step is lost to time, and started sewing the head fabric so I could slap some skin on this bad boy, starting with the horns. At the same time, I stitched the darts on the mandibles, pinned that to the head for later, and assembled the red halves of the head together on the back seam to test the fit.

With the test fit successful, I pulled the red part off in order to machine stitch it to the front half of the head along the zigzag edge and slipped the whole thing over the head again. With everything in place, I painstakingly handstitched everything up, including the side of the mandibles and the horns.

Somewhere in the magical stretch of time between midnight and 5 in the morning, I somehow summoned the inner lining of the head out of french terry knit, a tape pattern and a dream. I also painted a little piece of buckram for the eye mesh to match the red fabric and glued that to the inside of the head. I included a little velcro pocket on the back of the neck in the lining to insert a powerbank for the fans (which I then proceeded to procrastinate on installing for a whole 4 months afterwards). Since I'm an idiot and took no pictures signed an NDA with the Midnight Craft Wizard, here's a picture of the fan installation in the mandibles with velcro so they can be removed to wash it. (Fan kit by Henry's Helmet Fans)

Once the head was completed, I finally went to sleep. And then I woke up at noon and remembered I forgot the eyes WHOOPS I cut four circles out of high density EVA Foam (Two of them smaller for the pupils), heat shaped a slight curve to them, and covered them with minky. I glued the pupils to the irises and then I glued those suckers to the head and NOW THE HEAD WAS ACTUALLY DONE WOOHOO

Turns out hiding the vision hole right over the mandibles was... Actually a decent idea, in the end. It blends pretty well into the face at a short distance. The mouth opening also isn't visible in most angles so I can actually breathe pretty well, and I can even wear a portable necklace fan and have it blow hair into the head without making poor Wurmple eat the fan.

I took it for a test run and realized the eye vision in the suit was actually pretty damn bad overall because the minky covered half of the original hole up, especially on the sides. I took a heat gun and some scissors to the head so I could peel it back around the vision hole, cut some material out to open it up more, and glued everything back down with a new piece of mesh. Now I have like 40 more degrees in my cone of vision, which puts me on par with some of the guys in Metal Gear Solid.

With those adjustments done, the head was finally complete!

4. Get Worm'd on

Turns out I like it a whole lot, whoops. It's definitively not perfect (what costume ever is?), but it looks leagues better than I expected it would, so it works out. Looking back, I don't think I'd really do anything else differently on the build. I still got to make the Bug Catcher outfit to go along with it, but with winter in full swing there's no rush to do so. Definitively looking forward to making a net, though!

If you're still reading, thank you for getting through my ramblings! I hope it was an interesting read, and maybe even provided some insights or inspirations for your own future projects.

❤️

[presumenothing]

hi! I really need some more zhou shen content, and am wondering if you can help me out. which are his best variety shows (that aren't singing comps, I think I've seen all those)? I loved youth periplous and keep running, and don't know what to watch next.

ok i'm gonna have to turn to crowdsourcing for this one because my attention span for watching shows esp general variety is basically Zero (0) so aside from a few exceptions the most i've seen is random clips of each. non-exhaustive list below shamelessly stolen off wikipedia, zhou shen tag friends please DO chip in with your sage advice

(also disclaimer that i have no idea about the eng sub availability and/or quality for any of these at all rip)

EDIT: comment party in the replies!! come drop in

music (regular):

声入人心/super vocal s1: the classic, probably everyone has seen this

我们的歌/our song: the new(?) classic. iconic showstopping etc

歌手·当打之年/singer 2020: need i say more

创造营/chuang 2021: dance dance revolution (polyglot edition)

天赐的声音/the treasured voice s3: still not over that 调查中 duet!! also shoutout to studio for solid rehearsal!shen vlog content

时光音乐会/time concert s2: A++ performances and vibes all around, including the game/dinner extras. also possibly still my favourite arrangement of 光亮

舞台2023/the next: lovely backstage bits of him working with contestants + nerding out over music with arai-sensei. plus that (literally) lit 人是＿ performance, we love to see it

music (guest):

蒙面唱将猜猜猜/masked singer: another classic

一起乐队吧/let's band: a rare 周浅 appears aww back when he would wince at people addressing him as laoshi

唱给世界听/sing tour: first appearance in a mentor role! though i don't think i've watched this one at all actually

这! 就是原创/chuang: remember when he actually broke a sweat over high Cs lmao. anyway tang hanxiao's skillz amirite

经典咏流传/everlasting classics s3: i need to listen to 情是何物 another 100000 times again actually?? also hiiii liao-laoshi

流淌的歌声/flowing melodies s2: the way everyone was just treating him like a walking jukebox on this one LOL 1000/10 valid

明日之子SUPER BAND: hey. hey lang lang you should bring this bean along to your appearances more often. please

乐队的夏天/the big band: that entire backstage footage of him and muma pls

上线吧! 华彩少年/bravo youngsters: ok i'll be honest i have no impression of what the actual show was about but the backstage clips were so fun

2060: mandatory mention simply because of that 浓情淡如你 performance aaaaaaaa

non-music (regular):

了不起的长城/the great wall

青春环游记/youth periplous s2: hilariously i'm pretty certain that everyone has watched more of this than i have

新手驾到/go newbies: the closest i will ever get to a driving license

令人心动的offer/an exciting offer s2-3: shenshen AND shuangbei (aka the he jiong + sa beining combo). what more could you ask for

开始推理吧/the truth: the only one of these i've watched in full (mostly). aka ZHOU KEKE my tiny beaaaaannnn 🥺🥺🥺

奔跑吧/keep running

non-music (guest):

出发吧，师傅!/shifu go go go: makes the list simply out of sheer hilarity

王牌对王牌/ace vs ace: that sa dingding duet!! aka instance no.??? of "let's elevate this non-music show to Concert Hall Levels"

天天向上/day day up: the one where he dubbed frozen live

向往的生活/back to field: hi maomao!

明星大侦探/who's the murderer NZND concert: aka Spooky Hours

奇妙之城/marvelous city: so nice to see him back home! also 10000/10 cave concert when

���念青春/searching for youth: A+ wardrobe choices no notes

种地吧: ditto (snuggly grey sweater!!)

你好生活 s4: aka the one where he nearly gave sa beining an aneurysm lmao

快乐大本营/happy camp and 你好星期六/hello saturday: hiiii he-laoshi!! also nezha!zs hahaha

[molsno]

yknow, this past week has been a really hard and terrifying one after finding out I'm being laid off and having no details beyond that. combine that with a few other things and I've been extremely stressed and scared.

I haven't really done this in a long time, but it's making me think about the past year. 2023 has undoubtedly been the worst year of my life. in january I was a pathetic shut-in living in my mom's house who was too scared to even think about existing in society, so being told I had to move across the country alone for work was my worst nightmare. I had literally never done anything like that before - I'd never even had a real full time job before that. I couldn't stop breaking down and crying to everyone who would listen.

as soon as I left the airport after arriving here though I started to feel different. I felt like maybe I could do this after all. and I did! being forced to do things on my own with nobody to bail me out if I failed made me really take responsibility for myself! I started to feel like an adult for the first time! sure, I made some bad financial decisions due to my lack of experience, but I was able to make everything work out and acquire some stability.

it's kind of strange too how I mostly started off feeling very isolated and alienated even from my friends. sure, I had two girlfriends, and I had a few friends that I was pretty close with, but I was still very much fueled by my anxiety and trauma with regards to friendships. but over time I started to make new friends - in person even! and yes, I'm still just as awkward as ever, but I've had some really great times with them. I've even started to repair the bridge between my longtime friends and be more honest and trusting with them. I even rounded out the year with another girlfriend, much to my own surprise.

don't get me wrong, the trauma I've sustained this year has blown everything else in my past out of the water. but I've grown so much and it's really astounding when I think about how different I am now compared to how I was at the beginning of this year.

2023 was unbelievably difficult, but throughout it all, I've grown a lot, and I'm really happy about that. it wouldn't have been possible without all the people supporting me, of course, and I'm really grateful to everyone who's been a part of my life this year. I've been extremely scared and stressed about 2024. big changes are coming, and I'm almost certainly off to a terrible start. but unlike earlier this year, I feel like I'll be able to get through it. and if all goes well, I'll be much, MUCH better off this at time next year.

[songofsaraneth]

@onionjuggler submitted:

3 and 14!

From this books ask game!

3: What were your top five books of the year?

I'll be honest most of what i read this year was either rereads of treasured books (finishing up my RotE reread I did mostly in 2023), and then a lot of books i thought were just Fine. They were good enough to keep me entertained and then pretty instantly forget what happened in them specifically. So the ones that stand out from those that weren't just rereads are:

Exordia by Seth Dickinson: This book is a bit frustrating actually because it's SO CLOSE to being exactly what I want, and it drives me mad that it's not quite there. It also is a better read if you go in with the understanding that it's actually 5 novellas in a trenchcoat (publisher changed the plan, from what I understand). But it's the kind of frustrating that wouldn't leave my head for weeks after because what was there was so compelling. I will be reading book 2 the instant it drops.

Dungeon Meshi by Ryoko Kui: It was so cute and fun. I couldn't watch the anime when it started out so found the manga instead, which isn't a format i read much of otherwise. Great balance of silly, heartfelt, and using speculative bio to introduce a usually untouched element of realism to fantasy aka cooking/food.

The Paper Menagerie And Other Stories by Ken Liu: I mean I knew I was gonna like this anthology and just never got around to it to now for some reason. I like reading translated sci fi in anthlogies becuase you also get a window into what tropes are being used in other cultures/languages which is half the fun of it to me.

Monstress vol. 7 by Marjori Liu & Sana Takeda: honestly I love all of the Monstress graphic novels but this one had some fun stuff I apprreciated in particular. I also read 8 and it was good but not as suited to my tastes, and have 9 (this year's release) but left it in New Mexico so will read it once I'm back.

Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries: this book was just a fun fantasy romp but what I really appreciated about it was that the protagonist was ACTIVE rather than passive despite being a more stuffy/bookish sort of personality. She just went outside and dealt with things anyway. I'm pretty tired of stories where the protagonist is just being unwillingly dragged along by the narrative rather than directing their own fate so I always notice & appreciate when books break that particular mold.

14: What books do you want to finish before the year is over?

I started rereading the How To Train Your Dragon books because they're very short and I am so close to my book goal for the year (95/100...). I won't finish all of them but I will get through a couple more probably. And I've also gone through some of the Hugo nominated novellas as well since I do usually read those most years.

Actually you know what. Gonna go back and plug HTTYD books more emphatically, because if anyone reading this comment imprinted on Animorphs you should give these a try next. They're not the same level of trauma, and the first couple books are WAY sillier, then the greater story arc comes into play and I am so invested by book 5, and books 8-12 just get me so good emotionally. Never thought I'd be heartbroken over a character named Snotlout but here we are! Also, if you're an audiobook, David Tennant does the narration and you get to hear him sing a bunch of funny little songs. Though the print versions have the authors cute scribbly drawings that go along with the story so can't go wrong really.

[tryhardgwen]

hii welcome to tumblr!! i saw that retrospring is going to shut down o7 hope you can save everything, if not then i'll have to run and take all the ss i can 🏃‍♀️🏃‍♀️

have you received your first ask here?? just asking if there'll be a tag for your q&a, and if not and im the first ask you've received here, then...

im sorry (if you don't like it) but i really wanted to ask this: what do you think of gumaoner? i know you love guke but i also like this ship because of how much they bicker with e/o but still they're cuddly with each other... i just wanted to know your opinion about it~ (be honest, you won't hurt me i promise)

hi anon!! tyty for the welcome.. tbh ive had this tumblr acc for a While i just never really used it. but tbh i think i like it here its quiet. and yes you are actually my very first ask here, weehoo thank you so much and congrats!! i do have a tag for my q&a, it's going to be #gwen answers! (i think that's what you're asking anyway!)

as for the retrospring things, i'm going to be copy pasting them into my inbox here and copy pasting the answers, then backdating the posts (shoutout boxenstopp) to the date they were asked on retrospring! this way i can tag them properly and like keep everything.. yay!

as for gumaoner. ok see i used to like them a lot more (in fact i have a wip from 2023 ermm im going to finish it someday i swear) but then i kinda went.. idk i feel like their dynamic is much more like .. himbo/bros/brothers and just dudes being dudes? its hard for me to put it in a romantic context nowadays.. but my ears are open if anyone wants to convert me. they're still pretty cool and at the VERY least ill finish my wip of them before uhhh... 2027. that's a promise. albeit not a very great one.

[gothicbarbie]

BL'S I'm Watching (August 2023)

In order of my enjoyment!

1. Only Friends - Breath of fresh air! It's messy, it's sexy, it's entertaining... it's got a lot of pairings I love seeing together. I like that it's just a more mature BL. Yes, the high heat is great, but it's about these characters feeling comfortable with their sexuality. I want more!

2. My Personal Weatherman - Always enjoy JBL's and high heat ones are even better because imo they always feel more realistic. The plot of this is a bit strange but the chemistry is great and I want to see where it all goes.

3. Hidden Agenda - Joongdunk are just so adorable. Besides the fact that they are just the most attractive pairing to look at, they have clearly gotten even more comfortable around one another. I like that the plot is going in a different direction than I expected. It's not the most amazing BL I've ever seen but I'm enjoying it.

4. Love Class 2 - I was busy last week so I am behind on episodes but I did enjoy the start of the show. A tad confusing on first watch but it made sense in the rewatch. An interesting plot with 3 different pairings to root for, so it's a fun watch. There are a few elements I don't care for but it's not too bad.

5. Dangerous Romance - A bit of a sketchy start and I can't stand bullies, but I am happy that Chimon and Perth get a chance to shine and I wanted more of them. Let's see where it goes.

6. Minato's Laundry 2 - Still a great show. Lots of cute moments. I think season 1 was better and Minato is irritating me quite a bit with his insecurities and pulling away. It doesn't make a lot of sense to me personally but I still like the show and will finish it out.

7. Stay By My Side - Not Taiwan's best, and the main pairing is a bit awkward in their kissing imo but I still the show is very fun and they are cute.

8. Laws of Attraction - Interesting-ish plot. A few pairings to root for. There is def. some boring parts and issues I have with the show but I am still liking it.

9. Be Mine Superstar - I find the plot of this one pretty boring TBH but I freaking love JaFirst. It's not their best series and I find Ja's character pretty awkward. But it's watchable.

10. The Wedding Plan - This plot is weird. Don't get the fake marriage or why the main guy can't be honest. I think the chemistry is alright but not overwhelming. I am not fully invested but its a short series and I wanna see how it goes.

11. Jun and Jun - ehhhh idk about this one guys. I can't get into it. I wanted to, but office romances aren't for me, and I think this one is especially boring. I like the chemistry between the main two but I find a lot of their moments a bit uncomfortable and there is a lack of consent in a lot of areas. Not Korea's best.

12. Stay Still- Not even sure what I am watching but its so short so I'm just kinda skimming.

On Hold:

1. I Feel You Linger in the Air

2. Lost in Translation

Tried the pilots of these and they felt very slow so I had to put them on hold for now and may come back to them later or if I hear good things about them.

Recently Finished:

1. Stay With Me - For anyone with doubts, this is definitely a BL. Some sweet kisses (though not on the lips) and lots of flirting and innuendo. A terrible ending but it'll apparently get a season 2, so I'll hold out. I genuinely loved this series!

2. Sing My Crush - Not big on musical plots and I found the storyline here a bit boring and like I'd seen it before, but it was okay. The main couple was very cute. Didn't love it as much as everyone else, but it was still good and worth the watch

EXTRAS:

Advance Bravely - Not currently airing. It's also I think technically a bromance but there are def. suggestive moments and scenes and I find the chemistry really good an entertaining so I'm enjoying it.

Catch Me Baby - Not currently airing. Only watched 1 ep and had to skim it, I found it very weird. I'm only really watching for Net/James.