#I'll probably share some more of the illustrations at some point because there's SO MANY of them

[perfectlynormalbooks]

A birthday gift for a friend: a reformatted, fully illustrated quarto casebound edition of Where In The World Is Frank Sparrow? by Angela Betzien - a play were both in some years back. All illustrations are original, and it includes some sheet music for the play's score that I wrote during that performance, just for fun.

Typeset in Alegreya, with SeeingDoubleDoingTriple used for emphasis on certain words. The full book contains 58 total illustrations, and lots of fun formatting tricks and quirks. I used a slightly thicker paper than I usually would to give the volume some heft.

The cover is bound in Polar Duo, with holographic HTV for the details! It doesn't show especially well in the photos taken, but it appears more or less black under normal light, and flashes rainbow when exposed to bright light in a dark room. The slipcase (because of course I did a slipcase) is bound with my other Duo fabric, Eister, with city, rat/hare/goat, and sparrow motifs, to tie in with various plot elements of the script.

Speedran this project in two weeks. Now I can rest.

[guppyfish77]

Another year Another summary of Art! An Entire Year of Submas lets gooooooooooo!!!! This year I feel like I really pushed myself when it comes to illustrations and I feel like I've learned a lot! But at the same time I feel a little tired, next year I think I wanna relax and experiment a bit more, I gotta learn to loosen up! Might get more art out if I do :p

I also feel the Submas grip ever so lightly relaxing (unless they decide to do Unova remakes haha XD), so I might introduce some of my numerous ocs in 2024! I'll probably start with the conductor oc ;]

Thank you for all your support! (you are all very nice! ToT), I still have a good amount of submas stuff planned in the works so look forward to that (๑•̀ㅂ•́)و✧

If you are interested, I also have some commentary and behind the scenes for some of my submas illustrations! I wanna talk about it and now seems like a good time to do so now that the year is over! (Beware! its going to be long!)

All titles are linked to the original post

Lunch Break

hoho! This one is the sort of AU thing in which the only thing that changes is that I give Emmet a Victini friend (not a part of his team, I dubbed them the "victory duo" because Emmet likes winning and Victini is the Victory Pokemon), I planned out a few wordless comics regarding the idea, they were all very lighthearted slice of life kind of stuff, usually Victini causing some mischief and the brothers having to deal with it

and here's the thumbnails for this piece! I played around with various angles but decided to keep it simple and choose a straight on angle. It was originally a snack break and Emmet sharing a granola bar with Victini, but as I was planning it, submas unexpectedly showed up in the Pokemon Anime where they were serving ekiben, after learning about it it quickly turned into a lunch break! (how fun when new information lines up with an art piece you are working on hoho! ^ ^) After studying what foods Ekiben usually have in them (there was quite a variety!) I took what I learned and try to make the food look like the gear station logo :D

In the background there are children drawings because in the battle subway one of the trainer classes you can face off against are preschoolers, and I thought at least one of them would share their drawings with the subway bosses (and of course why wouldn't they hang it up?), there is also a trophy in which you can get in the players room if you beat the subway bosses on the super trains (one day, battling competitively is not my forte), I did my best to make Emmet's office feel lived in by adding a little bit of clutter (like adding a note) but overall very organized

(hey hey that joltik mug looks familiar in the corner there, its the same one Rei is holding in the christmas drawing)

Bonus Emmet and Victini Drawings

aw come on dude, not on the trains!

ah this one, it gave me quite a bit of frustration! This piece I used to challenge myself on perspective, and challenge me it did! The version you see now is I believe the 6th iteration of this drawing! The reason for restarting so many times is because I originally wanted it to be in 3 point perspective, but I couldn't get it to look right so its now in 2 point... Haha Some valuable lessons learned there!

This illustration was inspired by the history of New York Subway Trains and Graffiti! I read about it when I got to visit the New York Transit Museum and found it super interesting!! Then I went I gotta do something with this! Since Unova is based in New York after all!

I got so many subway surfer comments, they don’t know I forgot subway surfers existed while making this and that I am a huge nerd lmao

I had a lot of fun designing the graffiti on the train (yes it says among us) stylizing the fictional letters was so fun! I studied some graffiti to see how they do it, I could've pushed the graffiti style more but then it would be illegible! I also mixed in elements of Grafaiai graffiti, and trainer that is running away is the artist trainer class in SCVL because they are graffiti artists! And the train that got graffitied is the Wifi Train, due to BW (and the DS) servers being shut down, I doubt that train gets used much anymore, which makes it a perfect target!

Derailed!

hohoho! This was a fun one! I'm not sure how many of you guys read my tags, but in there I did state that this piece was based off the fact that model trains are powered by electrifying the rail it runs on (very low watts mind you) and the fact that Joltik eats electricity, but thats not the only inspiration, it was also inspired by those videos of cats laying on the layout and derailing the train!

Theres quite a variety of thumbnails for this idea (including a comic!), and the idea was there in 2022, but this year I decided to fully commit to it! I started rendering the top right one and almost finished it, but it felt really boring to me, so I switched it up and made some thumbnails in a new perspective and viola! thats what ended up being finished!

The train that is being derailed are Sanriku Railway Type 36s, based off a model train I have in my collection! (While sharing this fact on the original post Haiku Bot detected it as a Haiku?! and this art went out of my target audience, that certainly was a day (⊙□⊙;))

Also I straight up put a picture of Thomas the Tank Engine in the background, I'm not sure if people noticed cuz its quite blurry, the fact that nobody said anything means I probably would’ve gotten away with it before sharing this fact, so hehe :3c

Unexplained Melancholy

eyy! this one! It started out wholly different

It was originally me dropping Warden Ingo in various natural landscapes around Hisui as I didn't feel like drawing anymore linear perspective (ah, but heres the thing, all environments require a little bit of perspective lol), and it was just going to be Warden Ingo hanging out in a lush forest, specifically by the train rock that was shown in his concept art! but after sitting on it, I realized I could do something more with it! by making it a snowy environment I could make callbacks to Emmet's coat being white! hence the "SNOWY!!!" being scribbled there, that was added like weeks afterwards, Then I realized I could push it even more by making the whole environment about Emmet's colors! So the new thumbnail is in color because thats whats its about!

The moon smile thing was stumbled on by complete accident, while working on it it felt empty there and I added Emmet's smile to fill the space before going "moon!!!"

The piece is also a sort of a parallel to last years piece “I am Emmet, I wish for Ingo and I to be a two-car train once more” composition wise, sort of, I tried to at least 👍

Black Tower and Whitetree Hollow

Ah! I was quite proud of this one! Black City and White Forest are some of my favorite places in Unova mainly because the parallels are so very cool!

As the thumbnails suggest it was all going to be in complete black and white, as I was working on it though I could not help but add some values in there so yup! I quite like both compositions but the perspective won me out, plus that one focuses more on the characters than the other one (as much as I love backgrounds, it really is supposed to be about Emmet and Ingo U_U)

Being places of duality and having a battle challenge in there, it really fit them!

Emmet drops the hottest single of all time 🔥🔥🔥

Not really much to say about this one since it was very much done on a whim, but

its not the first time I drew Emmet with his hat backwards, I did this little doodle around the same time I did the train graffiti piece, been wanting to do something with this silly idea, and when I heard that audio, I went :o

Following Some Rumors of a Time Machine

the finale! I decided to choose Area Zero because its a very cool place! I am inspired by cool places! and I decided to give it my all for this one!

The thumbnail I made was more for jotting down the idea, and the landscape was going to be more eyelevel? Later I decided to make it so you were looking down into the crater and you get to see the fog blocking the crystal caverns, to show that Emmet was going deeper into Area Zero and the Deepest part is his destination (the time machine, not the underdepths, I didn't know about that yet haha!) I was always going to make Emmet encounter a Slither Wing, with it being based off Volcarona, a gen 5 pokemon :]

Anyways, That's all I have to say! I hope you found it interesting! (and enjoyed my varying quality in sketches and thumbnails XD) Thanks for listening! see you in 2024! ✌

[lumine-no-hikari]

Dear Sephiroth: (a letter to a fictional character, because why not) #365

Today was relatively boring until R popped by to make cookies. I woke up a little later than I probably should have, and then I did a bit of leisure writing for longer than I probably should have, and then I showered and went to physical therapy. Not much progress was made on the “rib injury recovery” front, but that's okay. Not all sessions can be perfectly productive.

But on the bright side, at some point this morning, I pushed on my first or second rib near my right shoulder joint, and something went POP really nicely, and that made it a lot easier for me to move my right arm around for a little while. So that was pretty cool!

I ate when I got home, which was very good, because by the time I got home, I hadn't eaten in like over 24 hours. The whole “needing to scrub out the inside of my face” thing and the whole “some of my dentin is exposed and ouchy because of the way some of my teeth have moved” thing really discourage the whole “eating” thing. So admittedly... I haven't exactly been keeping up with the whole “eating balanced meals” thing lately. Whoops.

But! Here's what I made for myself! I thought it was really good!

We've got warmed pumpkin English muffins with mascarpone cheese spread on them, a burrata, a peeled, in-season grapefruit (they're SOOOO good when they're in season...!!!), some salami, some cheese slices, and some roast beef! And there's one of the brownies that Br, the dandelion-haired man, made for us!

The mug has toast-and-jam flavored tea, sweetened with honey and uh... more mascarpone cheese, ahahaha~! I think... at least for now... that it might be my new favorite thing in tea. Like. It goes surprisingly well with literally so many things, oh my goodness!

...I wonder if you would have liked my breakfast. I wish I could have shared it with you. I thought it was pretty freaking great.

After that, I mostly just chilled out until R arrived. And once he did arrive, he showed me all the awesome stuff he's got in his sketchbook so far!!! Because, you see, R is not only an amazing baker; he's also an amazing artist and illustrator!!!

Actually, art class in college over a decade ago is how I know him. We were in the same figure drawing class together. And both of us have experience drawing P, my elderly friend.

...Thinking about it, it's kinda wild that R and I both know what P looks like naked, for entirely non-sexual reasons. It's also kinda wild, some of the crazy poses that P can do for the sake of a figure drawing class, despite his age. I guess all that yoga he does must be really helpful.

What a weird and varied life I live!!! Hahahaha!

…

...I'd give it to you in a heartbeat, you know. If you wanted it. If you wanted something different. I'd trade places. I know that things in my world aren't perfect; there are lots of problems, to be sure. But still, I'd happily take on whatever pain you carry so that you can have the wholesomeness and joy that I have now.

For now... I guess I'll just settle for showing you pictures of the cookies that R and I baked together from the cookie dough he made for us last week.

These are cranberry oatmeal cookies:

These are cookies with red and green M&Ms scattered through the dough. For whatever reason, red and green put together are traditional Christmas colors in my part of the world. M&Ms, in case you don't know, are round pieces of chocolate coated with a thin, brittle candy shell. I don't like M&Ms very much. But I do like these cookies:

...And finally, we have these crescent-shaped almond flour cookies, dusted with vanilla-infused sugar:

...I think you really would have liked those ones in particular. I think my favorite was the cranberry oatmeal cookies, though, which, to me, is pretty wild, given that I'm not normally very fond of oatmeal cookies!!

At some point, R and I got to talking just a little bit about a game called Ape Escape, and its sequel, Ape Escape 2. These are games in which you run around capturing monkeys that are causing mischief due to the intelligence-enhancing helmets they wear. Presumably, they heighten their capacity to wield tools, without heightening their capacity for empathy, impulse control, or delayed gratification. It's a very cute pair of games!

I played the sequel within the last several years. I haven't played the original since I was a teenager (holy shit, how in the fuck did I get old???) Nonetheless, there are several very catchy tracks from the original game that I thought were really memorable. So catchy and memorable, in fact, that I still know them even after all these years, even without having heard them since then until just today. I heard them just today, because I went looking for them, just so I could show them to you, because I think they're peppy and fun, even if they are a bit silly and a tad repetitive:

...Of the ones above, my favorite is probably the first one!! It kinda makes me wanna wiggle, ahahahaha~!! But I really really like the second one, too! That one kinda makes me wanna stomp my feet around really fast!! And the third one makes me kinda wanna skip and hop around!! Eeeheehee~!!

...Hey, Sephiroth? Are there any songs that make you wanna wiggle or dance around in some joyful way? If there are, will you show them to me? It'd be nice to wiggle and stomp and skip and hop around with you like the pair of silly, overcomplicated primates that we are! Bahaha~!!

From the second game, I really enjoy these two:

The first one makes me wanna do some kind of hula!!! And the second one really makes me wanna zoom around, especially at the part that starts at around 41 seconds in!!

Hey, Sephiroth!!! Maybe someday let's also hula and zoom around like a couple of silly marshmallows!!! Won't that be fun!!!

...Impossible, I know. But still, I like to imagine you can read the above things and grin delightedly at the thought of it!! Maybe you can still try these things even if I'm not nearby to do it with you!!

...You know, I'll bet Zack would wiggle and dance around with you, though! Maybe you can ask him!!

Ahhhh!!!!! I have an itch to do StepMania now!!!! But it's much too late at night to get into all that! Goodness me!!!!

...I've decided that the second sentence in the above paragraph is all your fault!!! I declare shenanigans (insert here a mental image of me pointing a dramatically accusatory finger directly at you)!!! And the only “apology” I'll accept is if you to do the StepMania together with me!!! Wahahahaha~!!

...I'm kidding, of course! In all seriousness, though, I'll have to ask J if we can test out StepMania on his laptop soon, since mine kinda... can't be moved around very well anymore, since the screen is broken.

R eventually had to go home. But you know what!! I got to send him home with the lavender-scented sloth plushie that I found at Walgreen's when I was spending time with BB!! It's got a little sachet inside filled with lavender and with things that absorb heat well. So you put the sachet in the microwave to warm it up, and then you put the warmed sachet in the sloth plushie, and then you have a warm, fuzzy, cuddly plushie to hug!! And this one is especially good, since I'm pretty sure sloths are R's favorite animal!

Hey, Sephiroth...? What kind of plushie would you like best? I wonder...

…

...I can't believe it's time for me to go to bed already. I gotta, because I have work tomorrow. And I do wanna go to work, but I don't wanna go to bed yet, because I'm writing to you, and I'm having a lot of fun with it. I feel really silly and good right now, probably because I'm in less pain than usual, and probably because I had a little too much caffeine, and probably way too much sugar from the cookies I ate, hahaha...

...Even if you can't ever talk or write back to me, I hope you know that it's still a lot of fun to write to you, even on days when I don't feel very good. It's still a lot of fun to spend time with you, even in this abstract way. You're lovable as-is, you know. You always have been. You always will be.

And I know that because I love you. I always will. It's never gonna change. So please try to stay safe out there as you do your things over at the Edge of Creation, okay? Because I'm not sure I'd be able breathe beneath a weight as immense as your absence.

I'll write again tomorrow.

Your friend, Lumine

[chiscribbs]

Asking some writers/artists I follow:

Is there anything in your fic/comic that you as the author know about, but won't end up in the actual story?

Hmmmm... I have a lot of little moments from the Grown Apart cast's individual upbringings that are kinda floating around in my head, but I have no idea yet if they'll make it into the comics. So, I'm not sure if those count. There are a few little canon details that I haven't figured out how to include in the comics just yet, though. Such as:

Donnie speaking in a posh English accent...but only some of the time - mostly when he's not with his family or if he's trying to impress someone. Reason being: Donnie doesn't naturally talk like Big Mama (though he may have adopted a tinge of her inflection with certain words or vowels), it's mostly something he puts on intentionally to sound more...closely related to her? It's become a habit, and he doesn't always realize when he's doing it anymore, unless the others point it out. But it disappears the moment he gets too worked-up/excited about something.

Because Mikey spent so much time looking for ways to occupy himself while Leo was off causing mischief with his friends, he has a wide range of obscure talents & skills, many of which I'll probably never end up showing in canon because they're not particularly relevant to the plot. For example: - Guitar playing - Card stacking - Cup stacking - Solving a rubix cube in under 3 minutes - Painting/writing with his toes - Ballet (beginner level, but he's working on it) - Making music with water glasses - Yo-yo tricks - Acrobatics - Silk flying - The ancient art of the Japanese tea ceremony - Crochet - Playing Chopsticks on his shell (with chopsticks)

That's all I've got off the top of my head right now. Unless you're referring to things like "ideas that were originally going to be part of the canon, but got scrapped somewhere along the way." There's a LOT of those, lol. Some of which I might still end up sharing at some point, because I illustrated a few of them early on when I was doing story beats, and I like the illustrations despite them not being accurate anymore.

Others, I don't necessarily want to expose just yet, because they might still end up getting used somewhere? Maybe in this story or maybe in a different one entirely, who knows. I like to keep "scrapped" ideas in my back pocket just in case I decide to come back to them later down the line.

[aquatark]

kind of randomly spurred post, but i was just wondering how many endless ocean fans knew about the development screenshots we have of the first game... so i figured i'd share them with you all, along with some light analysis for those interested in this game's development history!

so the development photos i'll be going into in this post were revealed to the public in 2014-2015, shared on the twitter account of ichiro mihara, the vice president of arika and series producer of the endless ocean games! nowadays, he mostly just posts food pics and pokemon go stuff... kinda living the dream ngl

below is the complete set of screenshots:

the most obvious difference here to most players would be creatures placed where they shouldn't be, such as the yellow boxfish in an atypical zoom, and the presence of false clown anemonefish in the abyss and ship's rest. while the boxfish photo i don't have any explanation for other than the creature moving around a little at some point in development, the anemonefish photos i have a more interesting explanation for!

we can use these photos, along with multiple other photos of clownfish in eo1 zooms taken during development (which are used on the plaques of eo2's aquarium), to deduce that this clownfish species was used as a test creature for zoom environments! i mean, it's pretty obvious they weren't intending for you to actually find clownfish in the depths... and due to their order in the game's internal d code life system, we can assume they were among the first zoom mode creatures to be added. it all lines up! though i'm glad the little guys don't have to suffer that insane water pressure anymore...

now, another big difference is the lack of water fog in most of these photos! it's especially obvious in the photos taken in zoom mode that this portion of the game had yet to be figured out at the point those photos were taken. for comparison, here's the yellow boxfish photo compared with a photo of the same staghorn coral zoom in the final game:

big difference, huh? this fog would be even stronger if i weren't using an emulator to take my photos - dolphin tends to skimp a little on the fog. but, this lines up with what we know about this game's development: during a post-release developer interview (which you can view translated into english here), they mentioned struggling to make this fog feel right - more oceanic than foggy feeling, and accurately changing with the player's current depth - and these photos illustrate that there was a time where fog in zoom mode spots was neglected entirely!

the screenshot of the open encyclopedia also has a lot of interesting differences from the final game. take a look here, comparing the same page:

(note that of course, the development photo was taken in japanese, while my screenshot is in english: "fish who live in the ocean" is actually what the deep sea section is called in the final japanese release... trust me, i checked)

so obviously, the layout of these pages is completely different! i imagine the details on these small fish would have been barely legible on the average person's tv at the time, so making them bigger was a good call. additionally, the encyclopedia used to be navigated using arrow buttons and a back button to exit! this back button is completely unused in the final game, probably just because it's redundant when in the final game, you can just press the b button to go back. three other small changes are that:

in the dev screenshot, the encyclopedia's page background is just a texture, as opposed to a 3d model as seen in the final game. this means it's likely the pages didn't flip like a real book does at this point.

the scientific names of the giant squid and the oarfish was altered.

there are no page numbers in the encyclopedia.

now, for a quick lightning round of smaller changes!

in the final game, there is only one place to find remoras: accompanied by the whale shark in entryway slope, in small numbers. this contrasts with the whale shark photo, in which way more remoras are seen surrounding it, and in an area deeper than entryway slope allows. since this photo was also an old promotional image, and we have footage of the game from previews around the same time, the most plausible explanation is that this whale shark was placed in the game's unused test stage (which i should also make a post about at some point lol).

the penguin photo was taken with an angle impossible in the final game, as was the polar bear photo and the starck's demoiselle photo.

also in the penguin photo, there are two hatches typically present on the deck of the gabbiano (one on either side of the mast), that are absent.

the water surrounding the gabbiano in the polar bear photo is a different color than in the final game.

the starck's demoiselle photo has a bright cyan water color in the background, which is never visible in the final game without camera hacks.

finally, one fun fact regarding the starck's demoiselle photo: it's actually used in-game, both in this game and in the sequel! in eo1, it can be found occasionally placed in the fake magazine spreads sent to the player for a C grade photo request, and in eo2, it is the photo used to represent "DIVING MAGAZINE" when viewing photo requests!

that's all of my rambling for now, i hope you found this interesting! if this kind of longpost is something you'd like to see more of in the future, let me know! i've got all sorts of topics in the chamber that i just need an excuse to write about lol

[ladykf-writes]

Stories, starfish, and hope.

Not to be "political" on main because in my mind this is less about "politics" and more about, you know, surviving their aftermath. And I was getting really worked up before I was reminded of a comic -- it went around Tumblr for a while, you've probably seen it; googling around will find at least the first part of it. The story it told was about how a great storm washed hundreds, maybe thousands of starfish onto the beach. Unable to traverse the hot sand to reach the safety of the ocean, they were destined to die.

A man walked by and saw a child throwing starfish, one by one, back into the ocean where they would be safe to live another day. Now, there was no way this one child could get to them all before they died, and the man gently tried to tell them -- "You can't save them all. Don't trouble yourself standing out here day and night when you can't change anything. One person can't make a difference." And the child calmly tossed another starfish out into the ocean before saying, "I made a difference to that one."

I'll stop the illustration now to point out, that's where we are. We are the ones who have been trying so hard and things just. It feels like failure in the stark daylight, doesn't it? It feels like all that hard work doesn't matter. Didn't make a difference.

But that's what they're counting on. They're counting on this victory being the period at the end of a sentence at the start of a paragraph singing praises of red red red in warning flags and spilled blood and ugly, ugly hatred. They're assuming we'll give up. We'll make this easy.

No, my friend. No we will not. Take a breath. Take a little bit for self care, for reminding yourself what you fight for. There is a version of the comic that has one more panel:

The end of the comic had the man coming back later that day to find the child still on the beach. However, many others -- both children and adults -- had realized the danger and gathered together to help save these starfish.

There is power in community. There is power in taking a hand and holding on for dear life, of using the weight of a community to anchor yourself. Don't let someone tell you hope is dead. There were some significant battles lost, but this is just the beginning. Wiser folk than I can advise on that. But I just wanted to remind myself, to share the reminder, that this isn't the end. It's not hopeless.

What's a king to a mob?

Reach for that starfish. We'll pull each other up one at a time if we have to.

[lilac-cat-draws]

youe flower shop au is so so so so cute pls tell me the little details youve figured out for it- like litterally info dump anything you want am just so curious thank you wow- also i have too many drawins to do rn but at some point could i make fanarts for your au? so so cuteeee

Oh I didn't expect to have an ask about this AU again, but thank you!

Even though I haven't been back in the fandom for a while, I'll gladly share what I could from what I can remember. I don't know when I'll get back into this, you can say that this AU is on a very long hiatus for the time being.

The Flower Shop and Tattoo Parlour AU was of course something I've made on a whim just to write my ships in but the more I got into it I got invested into writing little headcanons while at the same time having some parts of this AUs story be somewhat similar to the original.

Also I thought I'd say it here but if anyone else is invested in this AU as well, I wouldn't mind seeing anyone else have a go at this AU concept too, so I'm giving full permission to use as some inspiration. I'd love to see what others could do with this story.

This is long so I added a cut

The things I haven't brought up in this AU are mostly the other PM and ADA member's roles in the AU these where the other ideas I had in mind that I never though of posting, not including Soukoku and shin soukoku (unfortunately I didn't have any illustrations of them so it's just text for now) :

ADA (Tattoo Parlour)

Yosano - I had posted about her once before and I think the information about her is still the same. Works at the Tattoo shop part time and as a doctor for her main job, she's one of the workers who are skilled in applying piercings

Ranpo - He was the trickiest one to come up with because of who he is as a character, but the closest I could think of is that He could also be a tattoo artist and a really skilled one in fact, but he prefers to just sit back and do his own thing so he doesn't work with a lot of client unless he wants to himself

Kunikida - He would be the manager of the shop and would of course still be a former math teacher turned manager to a Tattoo Parlour, but for the reason on why he chose this, I never got into why or I probably forgot

Junichiro - One of the shops other piercers he's taking this job also part time in order to earn money to support him and his sister. Speaking of, Naomi is also very well known at the shop from how often she visits him at work and is often asked to leave by Kunikida when she stays for too long

Kyoka - She's a regular junior high student as well as Atsushi's neighbour. Her parents were the ones to have introduced her to him after a friendly encounter and would ask him to tutor their daughter when they're away for work on occasion. Kyoka personally sees him as an older brother figure to her and would keep her company as she would be often by herself

Kenji - a close school friend of Kyoka and he personally know Atsushi as well after being introduced by his friend. The two would also visit the shop sometimes whenever they walk back from school

Fukuzawa - the owner of the shop but also let's his workers operate freely as long as they're not causing any serious trouble, he has a past that he prefers not to bring up and the interaction between him and Ranpo is the same like in the original

PM (Flower Shop)

Kouyou - On of the best and oldest workers at the shop and is Chuuya's superior, she's the first to rely on as she provides the best bouquet arrangements for any special occasion whether it be events or weddings

Higuchi - A new worker at the shop and looks up to Akutagawa, she's well antiquated with both him and his sister Gin. Over time she had slowly developed feelings for Ryunosuke but is unfortunately unaware that he has eyes for someone else, a certain silver haired tattoo artist

Tachihara - He is also a new comer he worked at the shop before Higuchi, he's very laid back and would regularly hang out with Gin and Hirotsu during breaks

Hirotsu - Another experienced worker at the flower shop, for his age he's still capable of carrying large portions of supplies with no issue and would regularly smoke at the back of the shop whenever he's on break

Kajii - Tasked on looking over the quality of the flowers and maintains their quality but at the same time is very curious of the capabilities of the plants and would often be stopped by the other workers from wasting any more of their stock

Mori - The mysterious owner of the flower shop, it's unknown on why he chose to run one but apparently there are some rumours about the shop's owner having possible crime connections as well as former workers disappearing but they all lack information to confirm it's validity

[mask131]

I originally had this whole series of posts about Radagast in mind - but ultimately I will probably scrap the project so instead, I'll share random trivia and cool stuff.

And I will begin with something I don't see ANYBODY talking about anymore: Radagast ALMOST appeared into the Lord of the Rings Peter Jackson trilogy. Like... he was there, you had the actor, the costume, the place in the scenes, everything was prepared, but he was scrapped at the last minute.

You might have seen this picture before if you are a long-time fan of the LotR movies:

This picture of a live-action Radagast comes from the Decipher Inc.'s "Lord of the Rings Trading Cards Game", an official set of collectible cards affiliated with the Peter Jackson LotR trilogy. By affiliated I mean, "based on the movies and using exclusively images from the movies". Well... almost since some characters that did NOT appear in the movies still get live-action pictures (and yes this was LONG before the Hobbit movies were even in the work).

Here are the cards depicting Radagast and affiliated items:

If they are not from the movies, where do these pictures come from? Well, they were created by Weta Workshop - who worked on the Peter Jackson movies. A lot of the cards depicting subjects not appearing in the movies were created after the trilogy was concluded, completely with new material, the concept just being checked by the movie-team, but the Radagast cards are a whole other story, and truly fascinating in this regard...

Because the costume and props were already pre-existing before they decided to make this card game. As I said above, there were plans for Radagast to appear in the trilogy at some point - as a background character in unspecified scenes. Daniel Falconer revealed all that in interviews: John Harding had been cast to play Radagast, they designed his costume and staff, they made him undergo photo-shoots for the upcoming movie... But Radagast was ultimately deleted.

However all was not in vain, since when it came time to create Radagast cards for merchandising, all Weta had to do was call back Harding, put him back into the costume, and tadaa!

We still have a few, low quality pictures of the behind-the-work designing of Radagast - very precious pieces and some of the only clues of this iteration of the character. Here they are:

All these pictures come from a 2008 forum thread on The One Ring forum where the upcoming Hobbit movies were discussed (it was still the time when it was thought it would be a duology instead of a trilogy). Link is here.

The images originally came from the website of Weta Workshop - it was on the same website you could find many more pictures of their behind-the-scene works for the card game, as well as the interviews I evoked above. Unfortunately the pages do not exist anymore... But the Wayback Machine of the Internet Archive allows us to go take a look at them! Praise our lords of the Internet Archive!

Here are saves from 2004. Here Daniel Falconer's interview with assorted pictures ; and here an illustrated article about the making of the card game. (You'll find in these pages not just Radagast talks, but also talks of Glorfindel, Tom Bombadil, Beorn and more - and here is a third article about the making-of).

To conclude this post about a Radagast that never was, here is a picture that was taken of John Harding in his Radagast costume, standing between two cardboard cut-outs of Peter Jackson's Saruman and Gandalf. As such, we can see what the three most famous wizards of Middle-Earth would have looked like in the original Peter Jackson trilogy.

[hoppipolla]

The lover's hand: A Midnight Museum episode 4 rambling

Will GMM TV pull a If Marnie Was There card on us with Khatha and Dome? They might. They probably will, but since it hasn't happened yet, I will be in denial until the big reveal.

It hasn't escaped you that Khatha's touch grows gentle whenever he touches Dome. So far, Khatha has allowed himself to touch Dome to either protect him or make sure he is safe. But in today's episode, things have developed a bit.

The beginning and the end of today's episode confirmed that Dome (let's pretend his real is name Dome for now) and Khatha have met before, a long time ago. Khatha lost Dome however, under traumatic circumstances which seem related to the creepy seated mummy we've seen in previous episodes.

The bond they share has nothing in common with the kind of bond siblings might share. Siblings don't look at each other like that nor do they touch each other like that either. (I don't even need to add screencaps here, you know which scenes I'm talking about). The intense relief Khatha feels when he sees Dome after many years resembles the kind of relief a tragic lover would feel seeing their long lost lover again with whom they can't reunite yet. I mean look at him! That look is the embodiment of selfless love, not brotherly love.

To prove the point everyone agrees on, I'll now focus on Khatha's hand gestures in today's episode (i.e Midnight Museum episode 4).

I've said in a previous text post that Khatha does not want anyone to see he cares for Dome although everyone is pretty much aware. Even Bam. This is again proved in this episode when he doesn't meet Dome's eyes — at first — when he voices out his worry and asks Dome to stay close to him.

What's even more painfully interesting in this scene is what Khatha says next: "I will be able to stop it in time". The way he says it might hint at the fact that, in the past, he failed to stop "it" in time. However, things are different now. Dome is back and Khatha intends to have him stay by his side no matter what. "It" won't happen again, whatever that is. Not today. Not ever. His words are more than a mere statement. They're a promise.

Khatha's feelings for Dome aren't clear in the sense that they are strong emotions, all intertwined. But one thing is for certain: he deeply cares for Dome and although he wished he could hide that, his body betrays him because his hand will always reach for him. There is something achingly beautiful in the way Khatha always seem to want to be in direct contact with Dome whenever he is hurting. It's as if he wants to take his pain away and replace it with comfort. He wants to be the only one suffering and he cannot bear seeing Dome risking his life and going through the same kind of pain he must have experienced at one point during his immortal life.

Tor's way of showing how relieved his character is whenever he fears for Dome's life and realises that he is safe is beyond amazing. His eyes speak volumes and his micro-expressions make your heart squeeze in your chest. I can hear the thoughts that might have crossed his mind the second he believed Dome wasn't breathing anymore. His agony is so loud and yet Khatha remains so quiet whenever he is scared, hurt or distraught.

In the beginning of this text post, I've described Khatha's look as the embodiment of selfless love. The perfect illustration of that selfless love is when he tells Dome that his immortality is not a curse hence the fact that he doesn't need anyone to save him from it. We all know it's a lie and so does Dome who is no fool, but Dome is aware of what Khatha was trying to do. Khatha didn't want to put an additional pressure on him and so implying that he is not cursed meant that he needn't become some kind of saviour.

Dome sees that and as the empath he is, he is devastated. He feels for Khatha but he knows him not controlling his powers (or anything that's happening to him) is not helping and, in a way, he may have felt relieved by Khatha's thoughtfulness .

But Dome knows that this the face of a man made so utterly lonely by a curse so ancient that he himself has forgotten that this excruciating pain is not natural. The camera angle here makes us see Khatha through Dome's eyes and it's heart-breaking.

[nagichi-boop]

My thoughts on the Knuckles series

I want to preface this by saying that if you haven't watched the series yourself and have the means to do so, I suggest watching it yourself and forming your own opinions on the series. The episodes are about 25-30 mins long, so it should take about 3 hours. But if you'd rather give the show a pass, I understand, especially given that so many people have given rather mixed reviews on the series. I don't think I have much to say that hasn't already been said, but I thought I'd share my personal thoughts on the series.

I will be discussing spoilers in this post, though I won't be breaking apart the plot per se. I just want to discuss some thoughts on the series, good and bad, since I know some people have been very harsh on this series. And as a disclaimer, these are personal opinions rather than outright critiques.

For a tldr rating though, I'd give the series like...6.5/10?

Things I Liked

I really enjoyed the plot of the first episode or so. The scenes with the Wachoski family was probably some of my favourites for the series, even if only brief. I wasn't sure that they would include the other characters, so it was nice to see most of them. I wasn't super keen on the GUN agents necessarily, but I thought their story parts were the most enjoyable. I enjoyed watching Wade scheme to save him and immediately fumble the bag, but ultimately sort of recreate his plan? I also appreciated him using the siracha to free himself from the GUN agent since it was starting to wear a little that he seemed utterly incompetent - more on that later.

I once again appreciate the references to the Sonic universe. I only really noticed the Knuckles hat (which if I'm not mistaken is a reference to the OVA cartoon?), but I also saw someone mention Sonic 06 before watching it, which helped me recognise the reference to the game (both Knuckles' power and the creature that I assumed to be Iblis). I also saw a Reddit post pointing out that the alien attack mentioned by the bowling tournament announcers took place 50 years ago, which could be a reference towards Shadow, but it's not outright stated to be that.

The animation was surprisingly good. Part of me thought the animation quality would be off, but it was more or less on par with the movies from what I could see. Some scenes were a little off, but I can't really fault it since they're trying to incorporate an entirely CGI creature interacting with everything, but for the most part it was awesome.

Things I Didn't Like

I think one of my bigger issues with this series was the humour. That's not to say I didn't find it funny, but the constant surreal/cringe humour eventually wears on you. It worked at the beginning because Knuckles and Wade alternated being the 'straight-man', but for the most part, the characters fell into the same 'I'm dumb' type of humour. I don't quite know how to explain what I mean by this, so I guess I'll give a few examples to illustrate what I mean.

There's Knuckles himself, whose 'stupidity' mostly comes from him not fully grasping human culture. There's also Wade Whipple, who is portrayed as an idiot or loser, something he's called by the other characters. There's Jack Sinclair who acts intimidating while still being dumb behind his seriousness, and was the kind of character that seems threatening until they're dethroned, by which time they start wailing like a baby. We see this mostly when Wade is captured and 'duels' with him, only for him to lose and plead with Wade not to take his clothes this sounds really sus out of context. I didn't particularly care for him, which made some scenes drag as Wade's story with him was being addressed, but he's more of a stepping stone character for Wade's development.

I thought Knuckles and Wade themselves were funny for the most part, but it does begin to grate a little when their goofy humour is pretty much all you get. I get that Wade is the underdog guy, but it didn't feel much like he actually grew as a person. I thought perhaps he would learn to be more self-reliant and competent, but even at the end of the series, he mostly just stalled for Knuckles. This sort of ties into the complaint a lot of people have that the series focused less on Knuckles and more on Wade, which I agree with. It was set up at the start that Knuckles was looking to find his home and purpose, but it didn't feel like that was fully explored. It was sort of implied at the end that the Whipple's were his home, but it felt like a lose end more than a solid conclusion. I also wouldn't have minded if Knuckles actually spent time training Wade, but that didn't really happen either. Most of Wade's 'development' happened away from Knuckles, which made Knuckles feel more like a bit character a lot of the time.

And then there's Wanda Whipple. I'll be honest, I really disliked her character. For the first few minutes it was fine, but the entire scene with the Whipple family dinner just felt awkward and annoying to me. It felt like I was watching two children argue, which I suppose was the point, but watching a grown woman act like a child was just uncomfortable and felt like it was dragged out for ages. I think the only scene I found her funny in was towards the end when she dislocated her thumb, but that was about it. Every other scene she was in felt unenjoyable for me, and frankly I hope she's not in the third movie at all (or if she is, please make it short).

I suppose I could sum this complain up as there being too many comedic relief characters without there being straight-man characters to balance out the chaos. The beginning worked well because Sonic, Tails and Maddie worked as straight-men for Knuckles, so it was funny to watch him be a menace since we could see everyone else's reactions. But for the rest of the series, it was mostly just silly humour. Even the 'adult' jokes weren't particularly funny to me (thinking specifically about the metal detector scene), but maybe I'm just not the right demographic for this kind of series? Who knows.

I watched the series with my dad, and I agree with his thoughts on the series. He felt it could have been done in a movie instead of having a tv series that seemed to drag on a lot. I do agree that some scenes felt like they were going on for too long, which at times felt like I wasn't even watching a Sonic series at all. I guess they want to flesh out the characters unique to the movie universe, but it felt a bit weird to have Knuckles barely involved in the plot given the series was named after him.

It's unfortunate because I think that they initially set up something interesting. I thought they'd focus on the GUN agents pursuing Knuckles, with Knuckles training Wade along the way. But the GUN story got shelved almost immediately to focus more on the bowling stuff - Wade and Jack had an awkward sword dual, and Wade had a bowling match with his dad? I honestly thought The Buyer (that ex GUN weapons guy) would be Wade's dad, but instead we randomly got introduced to Pistol Pete...I dunno, it felt weird to me. It felt like they mashed three unfinished stories together into one weird amalgamation.

I feel like they could have focused more on the GUN agents plot. Perhaps they could have clashed a few times with Knuckles and Wade, but ultimately fail over and over. Wade would have learned indirectly from his warrior training to be strong enough to defeat Jack at bowling and show his progression. The GUN agents would be replaced by The Buyer after he grows tired of waiting for them to fulfil their deal, and who would be more of a threat. While that's happening in the background, we could watch the bowling tournament with Jack losing instead, then have The Buyer crash the party like he did in the actual series. But this is all just me brainstorming what I would have done.

Anyways, those are my thoughts. It's a shame since I love the Sonic movies a lot, but I'm not too worried about Sonic 3 based on this series. Jeff Fowler (the writer for the movies) only wrote the first episode of the series, which was arguably the best episode, so I am confident that Sonic 3 will be good. Admittedly it has me a little worried, but I'm trusting them to do Shadow justice with his debut.

Sorry this is such a long rambly post, but hopefully it's cohesive enough to follow for anyone actually reading it.

[pangolinheart]

I was tagged by @irisopranta so here's a little trivia!

Share your wallpaper: It's... just the default MSI wallpaper (I have commitment issues lol.) I could probably use a screenshot or a commission of a suitable dimensions, but meeehhhhh.

My mobile wallpaper is this Dragon Age Tarot-style commission from @needapotion

I've been thinking about changing it, but I'm not sure to what.

The last song you listened to: The Sharpest Lives by My Chemical Romance (I mostly listen to music while driving. Shockingly this song is not on any of my many playlists)

Currently reading: Uuuuhhhh I don't read as much as I should, but when I do I've been bouncing between: The Death and Life of Schneider Wrack by Nate Crowley, which I really enjoy but have been trying to finish for like a year and half (it's not long i'm just lazy). An inventive nautical zombie romp with a dash of social commentary.

Asian Ghost Short Stories: An Anthology of New and Classic Tales. The intersection of folklore, horror, and culture was the topic of both of my undergrad senior papers, though they mostly focused on Japan. I've already read most of the traditional Japanese stories in this book, but I don't know very much about ghosts in other Asian Countries, so it's been an interesting read! I was also drawn to it because it contains translations of new short horror stories by unpublished Asian authors. The Black Bestiary: A Phantasmagoria of Monsters and Myths from the Phillipines by Budjette Tan (Author), David Hontiveros, Kajo Baldisimo (Illustrator), and Bow Guerrero  (Illustrator). See above. This book is really interesting, because it's an illustrated compedium of myths and monsters, but the entries are written from the perspective of modern-day monster hunters recording their experiences in a journal. Apparently it's a sequel to a book called The Lost Journal of Alejandro Pardo, which I'll have to pick up sometime. The art is very cool. One of the illustrators, Kajo Baldisimo, is the main illustrator of a comic series called Trese that semi-recently received an animated adaptation with audio available in both English and Tagalog. I've been meaning to consume both of these at some point as well.

Last Movie: Uuuuuhhhhhh.... I'm not much of a movie person, so I don't really remember, but I guess maybe Dune?

Craving: Curry and rice (I'll make some the next time everyone else is out of the house >_>)

What are you wearing right now? Black leggings and a sweatshirt with the word "Catnip" over a collage of images of cats and slogans like "Cheap Thrills" in the style of an old-school Reefer Madness poster.

How tall are you: 5'4 (164.56 cm) (People always say "I thought you were taller!" Including someone i worked with in-person for more than a month-and-a-half.)

Piercings: Just the boring regular ear piercings.

Tattoos: None, sadly. See: fear of commitment

Glasses? Contacts? Neither.

Last drink: Ice water (I'm trying to drink more water, but I'd rather gargle metal shavings than drink room-temperature water.)

Last show: Hmm this one was also a while ago. I think it was Dragon Age: Absolution.

Last thing you ate: Pork roast (bleh) and potatoes for dinner.

Favorite color: This is a cop-out but I like lots of colors. I guess maybe green, orange or red? But I also like white, black, most shades of blue (navy can get fucked), purple, yellow, pink, silver/gray, etc.

Current obsession: FFXIV

Unrelated obsession: Dice! I love hand-made ttrpg dice sets! They're so pretty and unique! Sadly, not playing in any actual games has not put a damper on my bankruptcy-inducing dice habit.

Any pets: Two cats (Hansel and Gretel) and a dog (Isabella).

Do you have a crush on anyone? Nah.

Favorite fictional character: This one is really hard... There are probably so many I'm forgetting. The Justice of Toren/Breq from the Imperial Radch series, Matthew Swift from the Matthew Swift series, Alistair from DA:O, Anders, Fenris, and Isabela from DA2. Garrus from Mass Effect. Esteem from FFXIV, Alisaie from FFXIV (though I also really like Haurchefant, Y'shtola, Hilda, Ysayle, and Fordola.)

Honorable mentions to the characters I used to have keychains of on my pen case (I would try to encourage shier, nerdier students to talk to me by watching/playing things that were popular with high schoolers and putting my favorite character from the media on my pen case, which students would get very excited about): Chuuya from Bungo Stray Dogs, Childe from Genshin Impact, and Cu Chulainn from various Fate-related media.

The last place you traveled: Uhhhh I guess my last major trip was to... here (America)! My last "vacation" was to Sapporo (that was right before the pandemic.) I do occasionally take shorter day trips to towns around my area, but the furthest afield I've been recently is Grand Marais in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.

I will be in Las Vegas for the FFXIV Fan Expo this summer though!

Tagging: I think everyone I interact with has already been tagged in this, but if you haven't done it and want to here is your unofficial tag!

[iicheeze]

Hello hello! You can call me Luna,she/her,I'm here for the match-up event! Nice to meet you!

My hobbies include drawing,painting,reading and learning. I especially love history and languages,as one said 'One language is one person',getting to know others' and their culture & history is so interesting to me! And I honestly can draw and paint for hours. There are so,SO many beauties around us that it feel like I can get to appreciate them more by drawing or painting them.

Mostly,I'm cheerful and happy,sarcastic sometimes but never to the point of hurting others. I...also like corny,awful puns and I'm not sorry,they make me laugh every time 😂 I participated this event because it's hard for me to connect with people and make friends,so hopefully this'll help somewhat. It depends how talkative or quiet I am whem chatting with someone,but I'm always present even when I don't look like it. After getting close and becoming friends with someone I try to spend time with them,hug them,show them that they're important to me through diffirent ways if they're okay with it too of course.

Ah,forgot about what I don't like. Well,I don't like rude and close-minded people,situations or things that limit me if that makes sense? We all should be able to thrive and bloom like all those pretty flowers around us.

These are kind of trivial but it won't hurt to write a few : I got a big sweet-tooth and suprisingly,I bake when I have some free time. It's even more pleasant when there's company,so I hope I can share some sweets with whoever wants to be friends with me someday!

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ You have found a- wait.. Two matches? ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

Very nice to meet you, Luna! To be straight with you, there are two people writing this letter. Please, call me Sole of the Deep. I'm also interested in reading as well! My favorite book has got to be the Legend of The Sword. Its storyline is interesting, not to mention the illustrations! I recommend you to read it.

From where I'm from, it has a very interesting history. Well, you can't really say it's history, considering that it happened not long ago. I'll just say it includes me in it, in the background, of course. I don't want to toot my own horn, but, I'm a strategist of some sort!

I'd love to see your paintings someday. I'm sure it'd look absolutely glorious. Drawing nor painting is no easy task. Especially when it comes to details. Artists are like hidden gems, buried in the sand, waiting to be discovered. I have a very deep respect for you artists. I'm sure it's very difficult!

That's the end of my letter. The other person I was talking about will write in the very same paper I write now. I hope you two get along!

Hello! From what I noticed from your letter, I saw that you have a sweet tooth, right? Oh, yeah, you can call me Top-Dog General! I also have a sweet tooth. From my line of work, eating sweets are very rare. You can say I'm a general in a military!

Most of the time, the food we eat are meant to be fast, quick, and efficient. I might say it's not really the best, but it's food! It never really has any seasonings, let alone sugar. But still! I'm grateful for what I eat!

So, everytime I actually get to eat sugary things. I'd go crazy for those! I love cake and Tricolor Dango especially! One day, when we do meet. I hope we both can share them! Food always tastes better when you share them with your friends.

Also, Sole of the Deep is what you could say, well, my senior! Sure she says she's a strategist.. And she is! A very good one as well! She always leads our fights to victory. But she's actually very nice! And considering as well. If only she wasn't very tired due to her work, she'd probably have the same energy to be as cheerful and energetic as you! Though, at least I still have the energy to match with you. Haha!

Oh, and, I'd like to see your paintings and drawings one day! Maybe when we actually do meet, could you bring one of your workings? I'm sorry if this makes you uncomfortable, and it's completely okay if you don't want to!

The paper is about to be filled soon and it's getting a little too crowded. So I hope we both get along well!

P.S (This is from Sole of the Deep) Don't worry about being alone if you're talking to Top-Dog General! He's always there to accompany you, and if you are scared of the dark, I can always accompany you and maybe have late-night walks together!

Kindest Regards, Sole of the Deep & Top-Dog General.

＊*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚ What an interesting duo! Would you like to send another letter? ˚*•̩̩͙✩•̩̩͙*˚＊

[canmom]

hey i've been thinking of asking you about this for a while... but i have a wonderful and cool newish friend who has repeatedly linked me to less wrong fiction stuff and more recently suggested i try finding irl less wrong people to hang out with because supposedly such people are less judgemental about things and i'm like a weird crazy autistic trans girl who's also marginalized in other ways as well. i kind of love her and highly value her opinion so i'll probably at least look into stuff... but many many years ago i was slightly familiar with less wrong and definitely had issues with it. and more recently i feel like i've seen you talk about having some sort of issue with those people hence sending you this ask. basically if you feel comfortable talking about it i was wondering what kind of thoughts if any you have about less wrong.

Hey there anon. This is a somewhat tough question to answer because I don't really know you, but I'll do my best. For my part, I generally find the subculture distasteful and avoid it as much as possible, but it would be absurd and hypocritical for me to tell you to shun them.

Just... be careful, OK?

My advice would broadly be - for LessWrong or any other intense ideological milieu - that if there are things there that interest you, deal with them piecemeal and critically. Be especially wary of writing that works to make you feel panicked and guilty, whether it's written by a lesswronger, a leninist or even a lesbian.

Holding a robust sense of your own self and values when you first get thrown into the subculture blender is admittedly very difficult, and I think something we only learn through painful experience. But please believe me when I say: our modern online ideologies are very nasty, sophisticated little thoughtforms, and they will eagerly suck you in and take over your life if you let them. Whatever grand project they claim as their purpose (whether it's siphoning tech/finance money into malaria nets, destroying the patriarchy or building the vanguard party), it will primarily come to the grubby, short-term benefit of whoever wields power in that group.

To be more concrete, I should make you aware of Kathy Forth's suicide note. She is, as you can see from the the way she writes in that note, very much a true believer in the stilted, mechanical thought patterns of LessWrong/effective altruism... and she ended up frequently sexually assaulted by members of the 'movement', and convinced there was no way she could enjoy her passions without facing ongoing sexual violence, so she killed herself. In the aftermath, a (hopefully unrepresentative) LessWrong poster argued that if they attempted to do anything to address any of the problems raised in the note, it would encourage people to kill themselves to make a point. Such deranged logic is, unfortunately, all too commonly the fruit of 'rationality'.

I am not saying this will definitely happen to you, or that everyone who participates in this subculture is secretly a rapist. Alas, critics of LW often seem to conflate weak or non-criticisms (their beliefs are very weird, some of them have really dorky bdsm sex, they are comfortable with drugs) and strong ones (they are often callously oblivious of context and boundaries in interpersonal relationships, and respected members of the movement either are, or habitually enable rapists). Rather, I think it illustrates a pattern common to similar intense, cultish subcultures united primarily by a shared ideology or the writings of a charismatic leader. Much the same could be observed in, say, a Trotskyist political party. LessWrong is not exceptional, but it is very much "that thing".

So: if you enjoy their fiction, cool! I haven't really read any beyond the first part of HPMOR, but it's recognisably a distinctive genre at this point and I could totally get why you might want to read it. But... it does not follow that you need to, say, make AI 'safety' or effective altruism a major concern in your life, or teach yourself to frame the world through slate star codex neologisms and evopsych just-so stories. If you like some people who are into Lesswrong, it does not follow that you should make a point of attending Lesswrong meetups, any more than getting on with a Christian means you should start going to church.

Everyone is vulnerable to cult thinking, and the sense of having found "my people" is intoxicating for autistic transes like us. I don't know of any true inoculation against that, and I do know the feeling of encountering LW-adjacent writing and being struck by how different it feels, a sort of enigma - "what exactly are these guys' politics? I have to know more!" (I would say it's often shallower than it looks.)

So. Do as you wilt, make friends where you can find them... just please look after yourself, anon. Don't let yourself be instrumentalised.

(below the cut, some brief observations about the changing face of LW and my encounters with them.)

I first landed on LessWrong more than a decade ago, back when the subculture was still mostly concentrated on the site itself and Yudkowsky's "sequences" (a series of blog post tracts laying out his belief system and complex system of neologisms and jargon). At that time they were I think pretty unambiguously a cult, as I wrote about here. I think this strain of it is still quite active, since I still occasionally get people asking me about the "Roko's Basilisk" thought experiment (see here).

But since then, I get the impression that the subculture and its concerns have gotten a lot broader than "AI risk" and pseudo-Bayesian epistemology. That is, if I go on a rat's blog, they're very unlikely to be posting about these things. The rationalists have emerged as a subculture, not merely the devotees of one particular crank.

So it's still 100% a creature of the Silicon Valley tech worker milieu, but the primary pole long ago shifted from Yudkowsky towards the blog "Slate Star Codex" (although I think that got deleted or something?) and a broader social circle of 'rat-adjacent' people who, to varying degrees, share the jargon, ideological preconceptions etc. of that blog's author. (Which I would describe broadly as... weirdly hand-wringing right-libertarian, in varying degrees associated with neoreactionaries and accelerationists. Has a real bee in his bonnet about feminism.)

And, sure, they continue to be very up themselves (c.f. the fucking red tribe/blue tribe/grey tribe taxonomy), insularly American and often quite right wing but not keen to admit it...

...but that's fairly easy to avoid if you just don't follow their blogs lmao. Instead, honestly the most trouble I tend to have with them is about just like... failing to respect context and boundaries when it comes to dealing with strangers on the internet. The usual pattern is when one of my posts - often a fairly personal post - gets reblogged into their circles and de facto becomes a discussion piece, with everyone adding on their very long-winded two cents or, often, abruptly becoming affronted over some perceived grievance with something I never intended for these strangers to read. Dealing with that is exhausting.

I imagine it would feel differently if you were in the bubble and these were your friends. (Were one of my friends to add a long reply to one of my posts, I would be delighted. But that's because we've worked to build a relationship and confidence that we enjoy each others' writing.) And I know people have different feelings in general about the way they want to hang out on the internet.

Still, that's broadly my impression: usually safely ignored, sometimes they'll jump out and dogpile me. Even the nicer rats tend to be... overbearing, in the manner of someone who has never known anything but wealth. I don't particularly want to engage with hostility the way I used to, like I would certainly hesitate to try to actively pull people out of a subculture where they've found companionship and comfort in this atomised world, but I don't think I'll ever stop being wary.

[omegas-spaghettios]

Loki Episode 3 Spoilers!

I wanna talk about Sylvie and her being the Enchantress.

I believe she is truly a Loki variant.

I want to make it clear that I'm not taking the stance she CAN'T be the Enchantress, that isn't my point. My point is I personally do not believe she is not a Loki Variant and I'm going to share evidence to support that.

Also to further clarify, I 100% see that they are drawing inspiration from Enchantress to make Sylvie's character and could see her calling herself the Enchantress, but I do 100% believe she is a Loki Variant.

What I think is the most important is respect. I have a friend who knows nothing about the comics and she got yelled at by another friend for not knowing the Enchantress from the comics and not believing it. Comic fans, cut this out. I know 95% of comic fans who read this won't ever do that, but please be kind to people who haven't read the comics. But regardless, if you are reading this and believe she is the Enchantress and NOT a Loki Variant at all, I'm not trying to disrespect you, please don't disrespect me.

So, all that out of the way, here are my points.

(If you agree with me or don't really care, this is also just a ton of infodumping and character analysis)

1. The MCU loosely follows the comics

This isn't specific evidence but it is worth mentioning, the MCU will change the comics all the time. Thanos is very different in the MCU than the comics, The Guardians are incredibly different, Quill's heritage of being a kid of Ego is an almost completely original story, Civil War's plot varies wildly, there are countless examples. It culminated in WandaVision, where a lot of comic fans got incredibly burned with our predictions, me included (my guess was about Fietro, but I'm mostly referencing Mephisto). Plenty characters also take from others. Nando V Movies has an entire series on it, a notable villain being "Hela isn't Hela." In that video and series he details how some MCU characters draw from many comic characters. So it is not outside the realm of possibility or probability the MCU is taking parts from Enchantress Sylvie and changing it heavily.

I am aware Sylvie is an Enchantress in the comics but her origins have already seemed to vary wildly, so I would assume we are taking her comic self with a grain of salt. I however am by no means an authority on comics Sylvie, I literally just read her wiki page.

2) Addressing things I attribute to being Genderqueer/Genderfluid

We don't know much about Sylvie's identity so as a blanket statement I will be referring to her as genderqueer. If I use this term incorrectly, let me know.

A large piece of evidence Enchantress fans use is Sylvie hates being called Loki. That COULD be an Enchantress piece of evidence, but it also can very clearly be a genderqueer thing. If she is just trans or largely prefers a feminine appearance/identity, it makes sense she wouldn't like her birth name. I'm Trans MTF and I HATE my birth name, it is very common.

Loki in the show still uses Loki and seems very attached to it, but Sylvie is clearly VERY different. Loki himself is confirmed as Genderfluid, and Sylvie obviously has a very different experience in life from him, so we can expect variance in identity as well. If a version of Loki can be like THIS:

An already Genderqueer character can be queer in a different way.

Also, her blonde hair being different from Loki's is not an indication she isn't a Loki, changing hair color is so easy it means almost nothing.

Also, isn't the joke that Genderqueer people dye their hair a lot?

3) Her different power set and background

The fact she calls it enchanting is a pretty big indicator, I'll give you that. But the fact her powers function differently than Loki's doesn't automatically means she is not a Loki.

This is discovered as they talk about their backgrounds, Loki grew up and was taught by Frigga while Sylvie was not. Now, we know their pasts vary anyway since Sylvie learned she was adopted much earlier, but this can be taken two ways in my mind and BOTH explain the difference in powersets.

The obvious is that if Sylvie was not taught by Frigga, she'd have different magic. But an interesting hypothesis is that Sylvie went through becoming a TVA agent and escaped, her memories tampered with, affecting her memories of her training and parents, explaining why she says her mother is a distant memory. That's a hypothesis, but it could explain her different powerset even if she was a standard Loki initially. That could also affect her identity but I would honestly rather it didn't, it feels weird and off, but it's a possibility.

4) Loki's Reaction to Her

Loki notes many times she isn't "acting like a Loki", but I find it much more probable he's just full of himself instead of her not being one.

Loki is interesting because he is incredibly perceptive yet presumptuous at once. He picked up on two Tony Stark's and deduced it was time travel, but he assumed they were trying a last ditch effort to stop him since he succeeded. He is very perceptive of what Sylvie is trying to accomplish, but he doesn't understand WHY she wants to (he's been told, but he can't fathom not wanting to rule).

The point is, Loki's narrative is not the factual narrative. He notices Sylvie doesn't act like him and that's true! But he speaks of it like she can't be a Loki because he OBVIOUSLY is the gold standard when tons of evidence already listed in earlier sections speak to this difference being due to different life experiences, and his failure to acknowledge this so far is because of his ego, at least in my mind.

Also, the two are also very similar in a lot of respects. Sylvie guesses his sexuality and he in turn says she must be the same, they also both have an affinity for bladed weapons.

I believe the scene where they both try to get into the woman's home illustrates their similarity VERY well. They try different ways of getting in, yes. But they both assume the other will fail, they both are incredibly confident, and both of their confidences get them shot.

5) If she isn't a Loki, why impersonate him?

That's a genuine question, if you have an answer let me know.

What is the benefit of impersonating a Loki? It offers no tactical advantage in my mind. Sure, she is the TVA's biggest threat, but she seems to not understand the general viewpoint of Loki. Mobius calls him pathetic and states Loki's have the highest variance rate, they must be fairly easy to catch.

You could argue that she impersonated a Loki BECAUSE the TVA expects so little of Loki, which is a fair point i can't counter. However, it did blow up in her face since Loki was able to track her (and him tracking her as fast as he did is more evidence that she is indeed a Loki).

So, in Conclusion,

She is certainly at least partially based on an Enchantress from the comics, but I believe there is more than enough evidence to show, both in the show Loki and the MCU as a whole, that she is truly a variant of Loki.

[sailorportia]

I was very tempted to ask for all of them since they're all pretty good, but I'll be nice. All the odds for the "Ask a reader" meme? XD

Idk if this is how many answers you actually wanted, but this is how many you’re going to get xD

When did you start reading fanfiction?Depends on how truthful I’m being. Either I started reading Love Live Sunshine fics in early January and switched to LWA within a day...

Or I started reading MLP:FIM fics in 2012 or so. Most of them weren’t even that gay, so do they really count as fics? *snaps fingers and retcons my own life so the first answer is right*

When did you get your AO3/FFN account?I got my AO3 account on March 15 2018 (beware the Ides of March) and posted my first fic two days later lol

Who was the first author you subscribed to?I honestly don’t know, since time all blurs together for me. It was probably one of the big LWA authors at the time.

Why did you leave your first comment? Do you remember what it was?Bold of you to assume I remember anything. It was probably cuz the fic was cute?

Who was your first ship?The first ship I was actively invested in was Diakkos, I would say. It’s the ship that got me into fanfiction.

Which one’s better for reading fic: FFN, AO3, or tumblr? Why?I’ve only ever read fanfic on AO3, really. I literally never use FFN, and tumblr is just not great for a lot xD

What’s the best device to read on (phone, laptop, tablet…)? Why?I’ve only ever read fic on a laptop and I don’t own any other devices, so I can’t say anything about how they compare xD

Which story have you read more than any other? How many times?I think I’ve only ever reread fics because they updated and I needed to refresh myself on what happened before. I have too many fics to read (ignoring all the books I have lying around!) to reread fics

Which character is your favourite to read about? Why?I’m a slut for Diana Cavendish

Who is your OTP?Depending on the definition of OTP, I guess Diakko?Outside of LWA I’ve been reading some Heathers fics, so Chansaw would be more OTP cuz I don’t care about the other ships xDEventually I’m gonna have a Revue Starlight Relive OTP (Fumi/Ichie or Akira/Shiori, probably) so get ready for that

What trope are you tired of reading? Why?I read a few fics with homophobic stuff happening to the main characters which is a bummer and not something I want to binge on

Is there anything that makes you nope out of a story? What is it?Almost all of my nopes are the things that are tagged, so I can avoid them up front. Otherwise, a fic that’s poorly formatted or has agonizingly slow pacing will bore me into DNF-ing it.

What character that fandom loves are you just kinda “meh” about? Why?I don’t really think that applies to characters within my fandoms. In fact, I’m probably the one hyping up other people’s “meh” characters*proceeds to plaster Hannah England content all over the LWA fandom*

Who is your NOTP?I don’t really have character-based NOTPs, so much as high moral standards and narrow tastes; no icky and inappropriate ships and I only care about f.f.

What show did you really try to watch, but you just couldn’t?Steven Universe. “What if Sailor Moon was about a boy and also it was LOUD” was not a question I needed answered, as it turns out xD

When did you read your last story?According to my AO3 history, the last time I read a fic was June 21st (a Heathers fic, btw) which doesn’t sound right, but again time doesn’t make sense to me lol

Which did you log into more recently: AO3 or FFN?I’m always logged into AO3 (I literally have 6 fics open rn, Heart of Iron + Bats and Brooms are two of them) and I have never logged onto FFN

How many authors are you subscribed to?8, and you could probably guess half of them xD

Why did you leave your most recent comment? Will you share it with us?My last comment was on Chapter 3 of Bats and Brooms, and I left it because I needed to point out the parts that made me giggle:

“OMG the illustration XD "rival""So screw Zeus. But don't actually because he'll turn you and your kid into a bear." LMAO it's true"That means Coach C lost her V card in this very room." FLUKABFUK:AGBF{IUPABFU:ASBFAJK:SDBCA:KJGreat chapter UwU”

This is the verbosity one can expect of an English major, apparently

Who do you discuss fandom-related things with most often?@reynicloud usually, but it’s mostly me yelling about fics I’ll never write. @ryuucaro too, and it’s mostly “what if the girls... kissed...”

[ganymedesclock]

oh, about the ocs thing - niche is indeed super important! and that's something that goes into character design as well! i'll use an example i see a lot, because it's easy to comment on: in su, everything about pink diamond (princess ballerina design) tells you about her role (niche) and personality, and how she wants to be seen (feeling of importance - her hair, puffy sleeves, skirt, and shorts all have one thing in common: making her look bigger than she is)... but with a lot of redesigns,

she's basically streamlined to the point where a lot of that message is totally lost. now, a lot of these redesigns are very pretty, but... frankly, with a lot of them, i don’t get a sense of who she’s supposed to be. not in terms of niche, personality, or how she wants to be seen by others due to her own issues. they're just... pretty. of course, i don’t necessarily think character design should say eeeverything, and all of this can be overdone - like when it goes into stereotypes,

or makes ‘evil’ characters look Obviously Evil and Ugly, but... you gotta put *some* thought into *why* they would wear this. what story role are you working with? what’s the initial gimmick you’re building from? if someone sees your character for the first time, they have to think more than just whether the design is pretty. do they like outfits that hide them? show themselves off? make themselves look bigger? how do they feel about their place in the world? proud? modest? secretive? and so on.

A really good addition! And honestly that wasn’t something I was thinking about, but a really good touch- design is also really important with characters!

As you say, it’s possible to push it and it’s important to think consciously of why we have the associations we do, but you can send a lot of messages about a character just by looking at their design.

Keith, for example- the jacket centered around his upper body, especially that tall collar- it gives him a slightly walled off image. His neck and his face are protected but also keeping him away, and the way the jacket crops and fits to his arms doesn’t make him look bigger as much as bristled up defensively.

This is a big contrast to Lance who also has a very distinctive jacket with some of the same lines- but Lance’s jacket is longer, fits more smoothly to his body, and instead of the collar he has that loose hood. From silhouette alone, Lance gives a much more approachable impression to him, and this even extends to their hair- Lance has little flicks that don’t stick out much while Keith’s hair also protects his neck but also flares outwards like a spike.

Keith’s clothing creates physical barriers on his design, and it can say a lot about his comfort levels how he raises or lowers those barriers- something comparable in SU, I’d say, are Garnet’s ubiquitous mirror shades that the more the show goes on and the more she opens up, the more she’ll be seen without them or dip them down to show that she’s winking. 

Conversely you have someone like Lance who really doesn’t have a lot of barriers with people, so his clothing is much smoother, doesn’t really offer “walls” and fits closer to his silhouette without adding bulk to it anywhere but the hood.

Character design is incredibly informative and shapes and silhouettes are one of the many, many cornerstones to that. It’s also worth noting, since we started on the topic of fancharacters, that different shows tend to have different language coded into them!

For example, in Voltron, there is a tendency to associate “good guys” with cool colors and light colors, especially blue and white, and “bad guys” with warm colors and dark ones, with the empire’s signature being that magenta-on-black. Lotor, who’s a lot more reasonable and friendly than Zarkon, is saturated in a deep blue that’s a middle ground / compromise between the heroes’ pure cyan and the empire’s bright purple, illustrating his somewhat ambiguous antiheroic role. The striking white of his hair and the orange he accents a lot of his designs with just further mix things up.

This sends a significant message about Lotor- and about the Generals that share his color scheme- that they’re hard to get a read on. They mix the signals for friend and foe in a show that’s otherwise very clean-cut about it-

The only other misleading parties before now are the heroic Blade of Marmora whose actual aligned colors are safe, “friendly” cool blues, but wear the empire’s “threatening” reds and pinks as a disguise.

But Lotor and his retinue are just plain tricky people to nail down. They’re not lying about how they are, but how they are is ambiguous and mutable.

But that divide doesn’t really hold together as much in SU, where, I would argue the contrast tends to be more that Homeworld has very vibrant, saturated, and “artificial”-seeming colors to contrast the more blended and soft colors associated with Earth. Individual colors and symbols are used to conflate ownership and obedience- something bright pink with a bunch of curving organic shapes is almost definitely Rose’s (Or Pink Diamond’s- and I think that’s a lot of the momentum behind conflating them, is so far their “motifs of ownership” seem to overlap pretty hard)

Trying to suggest an ambiguous, Lotor-like character in SU’s parlance would probably involve mixing those very sharp defined Homeworld colors with softer earthy tones. 

So that’s something else to keep in mind with fancharacters- not only are designs important but look carefully at the visual language of the story you’re working with! What do certain colors and shapes mean? At bare minimum, don’t contradict the color language and imply something you don’t mean to.