#Manila Who

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

As much as the 'haha Takemichi went to save his husband after saving his wife, bisexual much?' joke is funny, people who seriously thinks Tokyo Revengers should've stopped when Hinata was finally safe and sound missed an important component to the plot.

Yes, it all started with Hinata - but since when was it all about Hinata?

Takemichi, kind-hearted Takemichi, should've just stopped everything after saving her? He got into Toman for this reason, yes, to get closer to Mikey and stop him - and Kisaki - from killing her, but he also sincerely got closer to Mikey. And everyone else. And he's supposed to simply leave them be when 'mission: save Hinata' is complete? As if the number of people he wanted to save didn't get longer with each timeline? Those are his friends why would he throw them all away.

To protect Hinata he decided to stick close to Mikey since he failed to prevent Mikey and Kisaki meeting each other - and he got attached to Mikey during that, as well as all of Toman. Each steps to save Hinata was also a step to save Mikey from corruption and self-destruction. It was all linked from the start.

There was a shift after Bonten, okay, whatever, the only thing that truly changed was Hinata's importance in it. New enemy? That happens in each arc (right, sure, there wasn't Kisaki anymore). Mikey being more and more violent? Again, each arc featured a moment of Mikey showing signs of being mentally unwell - and now it was aggravated because it was two years earlier than what Takemichi got used to go back to. Etc, etc. Toman may be disbanded, but its (at least main) members still meet and interact and they all kept in touch - Mikey aside. That just a change of mood, a mix of the present/future timelines with a more serious setting and of the past timelines with how young they are, despite not being as young as before. And future timelines have never been a problem - there's a lot of love for Manila and Bonten. If Wakui had had time and energy, Kanto Manji, all 70 and so last chapters of TR could've worked with its fanbase. For some reasons it didn't, and I don't get why by myself

[sforzesco]

it’s by divine intervention only that I’m not constantly posting about the bullshit cycle of Filipino politics here because the fucking presidential family is turning my home province into a puppet state and the wife of the assassinated governor is gearing up for a dynasty run in office and people are going to vote for her because they feel bad that her husband got murdered instead of seeing authoritarian assimilation and a dynast take over for what it is. The next election is not an election if all the players ahead of time have begun to form a united coalition with the backing of a fascist family.

instead I simply crack Crassus open like a walnut and start yelling really loud into his rib cage.

[kavalyera]

HIIIII!!! could you PLEASE tell me more about your manila by night court? i see some posts but i would love a breakdown of the court :3 OH!! and if you could talk about key locations in your version of manila i would love you forever haha

Haiii omg thank you so much for asking about my horrible court <3

To start, Alejandra de Silva is the Ventrue Prince of originally just Marikiti City but eventually seized control of most of Manila in the mid 90’s. She’s been the prince since 1972 and her court has gone through multiple changes due to many (former) members getting either killed by their clan or have coups planned against them. Very lovely, I know.

Anyways! The court is composed of six—oh shit wait, the Malkavian primogen got killed…. um. Five primogen councilors!

Here they are!

Rudy Aquino: Regent of the Tanggan de Maynila (Lit: Fortress of Manila). Alejandra’s best friend and surprisingly for a Tremere, he isn’t conspiring against her. He’s also a hematology professor for UST, one of the oldest universities in the Philippines! The Chantry is located near it lol

Serena Liwanag: Lasombra primogen that was basically backed into a corner in the 70’s after most of the Sabbat fled outside of Manila when the Camarilla was beginning to turn to more violent measures to take hold of Manila. She was forcibly blood bound to Louisa first before Alejandra decided to take her. She’s the owner of a nightclub in Fort Bonifacio/BGC and she’s one of the first primogen the players meet. She hates Alejandra, Rudy, and Precious with all her heart and it’s easy to answer as to why.

Louisa Grace Mallari: Toreador primogen and owner of the Metropolitan Museum of Manila. She’s secretly allied with the Anarchs and has helped David (the Baron on a run from a bloodhunt placed on him) escape Manila temporarily. She’s helped house a few Toreador Anarchs. Her fatal flaw is being merciful and this totally will not fuck her in the end!

Samuel: Nosferatu that’s being manipulated by both Alejandra and Rudy. They use the tight slums of Manila to their advantage, and they know many things. While being manipulated, they know that Louisa houses Anarchs in secret but doesn’t know if they can betray her just to please Alejandra. They’re stuck in between betrayal of a distant cousin or loyalty to two people that have basically given them life again. Samuel owes their life to the prince and the regent, basically—after they saved their ass from SI back in the 1960’s.

Esteban Basilio: recent addition thanks to the final death of the Malkavian primogen that my players definitely did not help in… accidentally. Anyways, Alejandra got grey hairs trying to solve this issue of the Anarchs getting rowdier and bolder after they realized David was still alive so Alejandra brought in Esteban. Much of the Gangrel in Manila follow him, therefore getting into the waters of the Camarilla too. Although not every Gangrel has followed him after him becoming a Primogen, he still remains a powerful and influential force within the clan inside Manila. On top of that, he disguises his disdain towards younger kindred through condescension—“Elders being elders”.

Angelo Macapagal: He’s a Banu Haqim masquerading as a Toreador and he’s the harpy of Manila. He does his job well but he annoys the jack shit out of everyone else from how promiscuous he is as if the court hasn’t fucked each other at least once or have grinded on a certain Ventrue’s heel but I digress. Despite all his controversies, he’s like the only one in the court that genuinely has guided the coterie through the Camarilla’s politics due to the fact he was in a coterie himself under Prince Alejandra and climbed up the social ladder slowly but surely.

Precious: My beautiful yet lethal Caitiff Sheriff. She was a journalist that got killed and then embraced during a raid of kine, and tried to get out of Manila only to be pulled in by a shit ton of other kindred. She was presented to the court, but Serena said: “I can take her in,” and there she is. Her real name isn’t actually Precious. It’s Elaine Delos Santos. She’s shrouded in mystery (to the coterie), but so far, she’s been loyal to the prince… or is she?

Some notable locations!

University of Santo Tomas is a real university here, and it’s where Rudy teaches during weekdays because unfortunately for him, being a regent does not pay the bills. On a plus side, he has several retainers and ghouls among the students—and maybe even some soon to be childer! This university is historically really old and it’s a frequent place the coterie visits because they get a three in one deal sometimes lmao. They get to feed off of students in restrooms, they get to meet Rudy on certain times, and sometimes they get to meet Samuel feasting on some rats in the basement!

Near UST is the Chantry because ngl, I don’t think Rudy would be the type to walk a long while to campus and then to the Chantry. Who’s gonna make this old man walk a highway to get to his job?

BGC as a whole is amazing, but Serena owns a club on the top of a building named Kalis. Serena’s childe (which I have yet to mention since I’m focused on the court as of now), is the Elysium keeper. Serena just owns the club lol

Alejandra’s former office was um. Burned down by the Anarchs as an assassination attempt. Unfortunately for them, she was attending to business elsewhere. Her building used to be the Ramon Magsaysay Tower, but now she’s back in Rockwell, Makati. Just like every other prince in a major city, she gets the tallest building because of course she does. How is she gonna look down upon these poor kine and kindred from her office?

Another notable place is the National Museum of Fine Arts! It’s of course, ran by Louisa and some younger Toreador fledglings mixed in with humans who don’t know their boss is a kindred. So far, it’s been open past closing hours for Toreador and Ventrue kindred across Manila to come in and gawk at art and be prissy bitches. The Toreador player has gotten in and met the prince here!

Also it’s home to one of my favorite paintings ever, Spoliarium by Juan Luna.

(As a fun fact, I pointed it out specifically while storytelling and playing as Alejandra talking to the coterie. She straight up just goes: “Ah, this painting. It inspired a revolution, did you know that? Rizal said it embodied the hardship of life back then.” And Louisa side eyes her behind her back.)

My favorite out of the bunch since I visit it every Christmas with family — Quiapo church! They used to execute kindred in the basement since Alejandra and Precious tend to use dominate on the church caretakers; but since their favorite priest’s death and Precious’ touchstone, they switched to the Manila Cathedral.

As a bonus for putting up with my shit:

have an alejandra and rudy doodle

[thistransient]

休息

[jils-things]

source: (x) (x)

i just found out that the whole connection issue thing on my end is a mass effect for every filipino who's using tumblr rn....

so yeah... might not be able to see what y'all are sending from time to time rip...

[hadleysmis]

2016 Manila performance: Rachelle Ann Go

Rachelle Ann Go as Fantine:

Another one! <33

Fans' reaction on the last day of performance:

Trailer:

Cast Interview:

I've become a Rachelle Ann Go fan now <3

[sasukeofcolor]

all the hate mikey is getting for being in the top 10 anime it boys 2023... HELL you are all going to HELL instantly

[ulyuxe]

all the pop culture references in exordia also made me think i'll probably enjoy tlt? who knows.

[fand0mswithbunny]

saw hamilton yesterday. better than i couldve ever imagined, if i could i would see it again esp with my shit memory. 100/10, if you can go see it its the most surreal experience ever.

[just-sp-in-inginthevoid]

Senju in future timelines

[thewhizzyhead]

a high profile netflix actor (lauren tsai) exposing herself as a furry during the beginning of her arts career at a big ass convention is crazy and bold and she has earned my respect for it

[kavalyera]

“ Pera ? Hindi ako nauubusan — pero pasenysa sa inyong lahat ? Ubos na ubos na . ”

Prince of Manila in my Manila by Night chronicle — Alejandra Miriam Salvador de Silva

( “Money? I don’t run out of it — but patience for all of you? Barely any left.” )

[dantelionwishes]

hi! just wanted to say your thesis was featured in a class I was in today and it was super cool! the way you combined jung's archetypes with food (and one other thing im forgetting rn) was really smart and the results were so cool to look at and honestly kind of surreal in the middle of a bunch of research papers. the graphics you made for the paper were also really neat! that's all i just wanted to share that alkjdalksdj have a good one!

[countdown-til-sanders-take-over]

So hows it going 😀

TMAGP 7 is a WILD ride

[attila-werther]

oh NO I hit a geographical snare with bad governance. brutus, liberato, baby. where the fuck are you from. I cant believe I forgot about this.

[thistransient]

- So I went to the Taiwanese trial class with my friend. It was taught by a little old lady who was nice enough but gave me some mild flashbacks to those harrowing weeks with the Mandarin teacher of a similar age. Most of the session was her explaining the history of 台語 in Taiwan, with a side of trying to force the 8 tones and counting from 1 to 10 upon us via rote memorization. I felt a bit frustrated and not entirely thrilled, my friend was miffed that the school hadn’t explained the price they quoted was for the trial class only. We’ve decided to give it a pass and try a different school, although our scheduled trial there is on hold on account of the teacher falling ill. In the meantime my friend has begun to contemplate taking group Japanese class instead (as his partner and her kid are Japanese), which is much more widely available. I am tempted. Do I need to start half-assedly learning yet another language? Probably not. Do I want to divert my energy from Mandarin to whole-assedly learn Japanese? Also not really. Is there a high chance of following through nonetheless? At least I’m self-aware about it...

- Job applications here largely require a photo, and I need a haircut but I’m afraid to go back to the place I went in August for the big chop. The guy started cutting it while wet, then broke out the blow-dryer and kept snipping til he was satisfied, but because my hair is curly and I do not own styling product more complicated than a comb, it reverted immediately to a vague dandelion shape and took several months to actually resemble the reference photo I’d provided. The thought keeps crossing my mind to simply shave my head entirely. I had it buzzed to a 3 some ten years ago after a dye-job gone wrong and did not enjoy my appearance. Of course I look different now, and hair grows back, but the struggle between wanting the catharsis and radical change (not to mention less mess in the shower drain strainer) of a head-shave, and fearing the hassle of growing it all back out if I do truly detest it is raging inside of me.

- After coming back from Korea I may have spent one whole day languishing in bed and eating spoonfuls of peanut butter as a meal before slowly reconvening daily activities. I have been meeting some friends and going out, but I end up needing one day of hermit-like recovery for every outdoor social endeavour. I have yet to implement any kind of proper schedule (beyond “try to eat three meals and go outside at least once”), leading my friends to recommend I start by contemplating my greater, overarching goals for life. Every few years I come round to the notion of attempting a STEM degree (which would require redoing undergrad, but, as they say, “the time will pass anyways”). I think it would be really engaging to do a program taught in Chinese, and possibly motivate me to overcome my deficiencies in the math department, which is what always puts me off the whole scheme. Scientific terms are so much simpler in Mandarin because they’re extremely 顧名思義 (just as the name implies); English really shot itself in the foot with all the Greek and Latin. I don’t even need to check the dictionary to figure out 光合 means ‘photosynthesis’... Will I actually follow through with this, and live out my days happily studying trees and avoiding small talk with humans, or will I continue to trundle through life intermittently trying to teach English between bouts of autistic burnout? When I put it that way, the answer seems obvious, but this is without factoring in all the bugs that live in trees... Also wasn’t I trying to convince myself to go to grad school for what, translation? linguistics? library science? something? just a few months ago? Maybe overarching life goals are a red herring at present, and I should just get a job first and then see what kind of things I’m interested in when I have consistent disposable income to pursue them at length.

- I am, at the ripe old age of my mid-30s (I’m rounding up since my birthday is next month- again, so soon??) being forced to reconsider what it means to like someone. Perhaps on account of being socially inept and spending all of my formative years in Catholic school, I took for granted that it was that painful, infatuated pining one feels for attractive strangers or casual acquaintances who generally don’t reciprocate. In the past couple years I began to experience the strange phenomenon of having great affection for friends I’d gotten to know slowly and who became increasingly physically appealing as time wore on, but I wrote this off as Mystery Emotion X because it lacked that frantic obsession I was accustomed to. Now I suspect this may simply be a healthy manifestation of romantic attraction. I’ve often struggled with exactly what identity label the intersection of my gender, attraction pattern, and neurodivergency might land me under. I think the plot is thickening... but I will put off pursuing further clarity by going to the BDSM bar instead.