#Reblogging the corrected version of this post instead lol

[babacontainsmultitudes]

@ratislatis :]

Welcome- again!

Hello and welcome to the Dungeons and Daddies winter gift exchange official blog! This gift exchange (also called a “secret santa” in some places) will be run by fans, for fans, and will be a place to spread some DnDads joy. This is our second time running the event!

If you don’t know how this works, basically: Soon, we will be releasing a Google Form where we will gather general preference information from everyone who wants to participate. We’ll be using this information to both assign you someone to create for, and assign someone to create for you! Who’s creating for who will be kept a secret until it’s all revealed during the final week of February(the 22nd-29th), where everyone will be gifted their works. Fun!

This event will be accepting all kinds of creations: fanfics, fanart, cosplay, crafts- you name it! Here’s our official rules, which include some regulations on what you can request content-wise. Returning people should make sure to reread them! They’ve changed since last year.

This event will be celebrating season 1 AND season 2 of Dungeons and Daddies, along with some of the miniseries when possible. All of this will be tagged accordingly so people won’t be spoiled, and in your preferences on the sign-up sheet you’ll be able to state what you are and aren’t interested in. Easy as pie!

Our current schedule is:

November 15th to December 15th: Sign-ups open!

December 15th to January 1st: Sign-ups close and assignments are sent out, including a link to the (once again optional) Discord server.

February 22nd to February 29th: Gifts are revealed!

Returning people may notice the creation period is a little shorter this time around- this was unavoidable since February is a short month, but after careful consideration we’ve concluded that the lack of holiday chaos will probably mean people have more free time, even without the extra days. If this ends up actually being an issue, we’ll extend a little into March! Winter starts then for people in Antarctica anyway.

When the time for gifts being revealed comes, we’ll be asking everyone to post their gift here on Tumblr with the tag “#dndads winter gift exchange 2024″. There will also be a collection on ao3 for any fic that ends up posted there!

(p.s… you may notice we skipped a year, even though the events have been consecutive. we’re basing our event year title on what year gifting week takes place in- and since it’ll be in 2024, there you go!)

And as always, here’s our little FAQ for some more common questions.

The ask box and our DMs are open and will remain open for the whole event. Feel free to send in any questions! Or you can email us at dndadsgiftexchange@gmail.com , which we check regularly. We’re so excited to get back at it!! See you all November 15th :]

[this-is-fox-speaking]

FANTOCCIO FACTS POST (from screenshots i found in my own interests server)

- His name is italian for puppet, but he pronounces it incorrectly and insists it’s the correct way to say his name if anyone else points it out and says he’s wrong.

- He’s not from Italy, obviously. Goes to show. But Ash imagines he knows a bit of italian. (“Not enough Italian to say his name right.” - Katie.)

- Fantoccio has a pet shark named Sharkspeare! Mentioned in the song at the line “‘Cause Sharkspeare’s looking mean!”

- Fantoccio has to make all his own props, set pieces, clothes, etc in the theatre.

- Would never smoke, and would hate being around it/people who’re doing it actively.

- Fantoccio was made by Ash as a fan OC for the game, and this (as far as I’m aware) is what got them hired onto the game, cause Katie loved their ideas so much.

- Fantoccio is not very good with kids.

- Fantoccio’s favorite food is churros. This came from the fact Ash once had a dream about him infodumping about them cause he loved them so much, so they made it canon.

- Don’t worry, he can indeed taste things normally. No traditional taste buds, but some, nonetheless. Same goes for touch!

- Fantoccio is canonically autistic, having many traits of himself heavily projected from Ash, themself.

- When asked what his meltdown triggers could be, Ash thought that some might be: too much touching, being without his hat, or one of his props breaking.

- Fantoccio likes wearing dresses! Wears them if he feels like it or if the role calls for it, during a play.

- Ash thinks he’d ADORE snow.

- Fantoccio would 100% love spicy italian from subway.

- Fantoccio plays violin!

- Fantoccio would chant “I’m sleeping” when struggling to fall asleep, like his own version of counting sheep.

- He would NEVER say the Earth is flat.

- He’d be the “How do you do that” of that one keysmash meme, if paired with Barnaby.

- Ash once said that Fantoccio is like Duck from Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared.

- When doing a personality type test (and actually answering truthfully instead of in character) for Fantoccio, he ended up with ENTJ-T, Commander. Fanto would answer untruthfully on some questions, like if he ever gets insecure (“PFFFT NO THE ANSWERS NO”).

- He can go uwu in the bbu lore, but he’ll hate it. (“THIS IS STUPID!!!”)

- Fantoccio would apparently be a “mac and cheese FIEND.”

- He’d hate pranks (specifically a hand zapper in this case), because they’re unexpected. (“NEVER DO THAT AGAIN”)

- This also means he’d never troll anyone, cause he feels above that.

- Fanto would HATE hearing people crack their knuckles, like Ash does.

- Fantoccio loves to carve wood. Specifically only by hand, that’s how much he loves it! He carved the two giant wooden hands used in his battle, but his favorite thing to carve is ducks.

- Fantoccio is very intent on ONLY eating the few foods he knows he likes.

- If he were an ice cream, he’d be coffee flavor! Which is ironic, because Ash has also said that it’d probably be terrible to give Fantoccio caffeine.

- Fantoccio would LOVE chicken nuggets.

- Hates pizza, though. Too greasy and messy.

- Would enjoy having an ipad “a little too much. He would be super confused at first but once he learns how to use it DO NOT TAKE IT AWAY”. (kinda like Peridot from Steven Universe)

- He would like spruce wood in Minecraft, but also acacia “just to look at.”

- Ash adores pirates, so so does Fantoccio!

- He has no nose, so no sneezes!

- Appreciates detail as much as Barnaby does.

- Fanto would love birds!

- Fanto is not capable of curse words. Sad.

- Fantoccio would COLLAPSE trying to lift someone without his powers.

- He stims by patting his face and spinning around. Fidgets with his hands in concepts for his standing idle animations, because he’s uncomfortable with standing and prefers floating.

- He’d favor Murder Mystery!

- His wood is alive and can grow like a real boy! (if you’ve seen my post being reblogged around, lol)

- He lives in the lost city of magic, which is abandoned and overrun my magical zombies who used to be magic users, now with a terrible curse. So he lives mainly in his theatre. He’s not trapped, anymore, like his old story!

- Fantoccio’s powers are based around telekinesis and teleportation. It’s how he moves his body around!

- He used to have a plush toy rabbit he carried around, when he was younger, seemingly. It’s unclear where that went, when he got older.

- Fantoccio’s been locked up in this city for 15 years, since he was 8. Completely isolated (save for those zombies, I suppose)! When Billie comes along, though, he’s so excited to have something new to play with!

- Fanto’s song is inspired by Weird Al. Like 90% of this game is, of course /lh. He was also inspired by the pied piper!

- He’d dislike the idea of seafood. (“He’d be like “Why would anyone want to eat a fish?!” And cover Sharkspeare’s nonexistent ears like “Don’t listen to them!””)

- The red feather in his hat is also used as a pen!

- Fantoccio is a being of pure magic, having an entire magic gem be his whole life source. This means he can use magic endlessly without getting tired (I believe)!

- Fantoccio is 23, he/him, and pansexual.

- His face is made using magic. It disappears when/if he’s magic-less.

- Fantoccio can absolutely feel pain.

- When it comes to nature, Ash said he’d kinda be like Rarity from MLP:FiM, but certain kinds of nature he’d still really love. He’d really dislike walking through the wild or camping in general, but loves things like snow or flower fields. Just depends!

- Fantoccio would main Bowser in Mario Kart.

-In terms of favorite Halloween treats, Fantoccio would like anything chewy and fruity (no chocolate)!

- Canonically wears eyeliner.

- Magic sparks from his fingertips when he’s very excited!

- If Fantoccio was an animal, Ash says he’d be a cat.

- No traditional gross human stuff inside him like others, just wood and sap. “Whatever trees do.”

- His original concept by Ash was him having a purple phantom head, being a ghost in a puppet’s body. This was changed by Katie, I believe.

(feel free to add on if I missed anything! i’ll edit this post if i randomly remember something)

[bomberqueen17]

aight poll results

Huh I haven't really done a poll before, I kind of thought there'd be somewhere you could like, see the results. But no. I just have to scroll back and find the post. And since I made it not rebloggable I can't reblog it either, LOL.

So anyway. It's not quite-quite closed but there's more votes in it than I thought there would be, and I'm going to discuss it behind this lil cut here.

[Image ID: a screenshot of poll results showing 14.5% for the sweet summer children era, 85.5% for the older sea-dogs, 55 votes cast, almost four hours left in the poll.]

After making this poll I went back to my Just Write Some Scenes approach and noodled around some more. My first attempt had been to come up with this whole elaborate Save The World plot, and then try to introduce the crew to each other right at the start of it, and after tripping over that and falling flat on my face, that's when I reconsidered and made the poll. Mostly I just. Need other people to remind me that I'm not alone in the wilderness here, LOL. And you know the quite-contrary "I need advice but mostly so I can identify that when someone tells me to do the thing I don't wanna, that means there's a thing I didn't want to do, which means there is a thing I DO want to do, and now I can narrow down what it is" impulse, yes?

But it's gratifying to find that I've voted with the majority here.

So my main consideration here is that while I cannot really reuse any of the scenes I wrote as fanfic, I can absolutely carry over every bit of the character dynamics. The canon events, I can't translate. The fanfic character work, yes. (What that means to you, dear readers, is that I thus can totally just publish the fanfic at some point LOL, so I'll... try to do that if I can ever manage to become sane about it.)

I don't know that I've fully explained, here-- I fully have a 125,000-word fanfic already complete for this fandom. Like, it is 125,000 words long, and goes from before Master and Commander to... I'm at about the middle of Ionian Mission. That's book nine. And it's all the gapfills and everything from Tom's POV. And I have a few more scenes I'm still writing, but what I have is quite a novel already.

If I took the characters from their Master & Commander Book 1 era and file the serial numbers off and try to instead give them this plot, then I have to cram in every bit of the getting-to-know-you shit, and also worldbuild the whole setting, and then also have them save the world. It's not that I can't do this, but I have this huge shortcut where I've already been working with these guys (and you know how fanfic works, I've subtly warped them from canon because these are side characters the canon author did not devote all that much time to. There are several times when Mowett did something in the first book and by the eleventh or twelfth, Stephen firmly remembers it as something Pullings did, and the narrative treats him as correct, and I genuinely think that O'Brian forgot, unless he was trying to make a point about Stephen's memory issues that he then didn't entirely follow through on. It happens more than once. Also there are a number of occasions when the narrative asserts that Mowett was present for books when he was not; he does not appear in book 3 for example, but is afterward treated as though he'd been there. "They've been together since their youth!" they haven't been in the same hemisphere in six years. Anyway.)

I've been working with these guys for the length of a novel already. So what I can do, and what I think I'm going to do, is that I'm going to just pretend that I've already rewritten a serial-numbers-filed-off version of the first volume, and dive in at circa the book 5 section of the fic, and insert this adventure at that point. Which gives me a certain rank for each character-- Pullings and Mowett would be lieutenants with some seniority, Babbington would be a newly-made lieutenant, Aubrey has moderate seniority, his relationship with Maturin is fairly mature and has weathered some storms and come out well, he's rescued Maturin from torture, Maturin is slightly washed-up with the intelligence people and is addicted to drugs but recovering-- and from the fanfic side (spoilers for the as-yet-unedited-and-unpublished fic!), I've established Pullings in his marriage, given him his checkered career (Indiamen and transports), he has two children, and also he and James and Mrs. Pullings have worked through a bunch of their shit and figured out that they should all have a threesome sometime. But, crucially, they have not had this threesome yet.

So it's like-- a ton of deep character work, that I can just plunk us into.

(I haven't figured out a new naming structure yet so I haven't find-replaced and I'm just writing with the old names, which is hilarious the more I diverge from canon.)

It's not that I don't want to tell that first story, of them all meeting up initially, but I think it would be easier to go back and write a prequel after having done the Big World-Saving Plot.

Anyway-- some serial-number-filing notes here:

Aubrey is going to be a woman because then if I write her exactly the same it comes across wildly differently and I am absolutely dying to see what effect it has. Translating Jack's particular confused helplessness around women makes this new Aubrey into an extremely awkward lesbian and I love it. (Still fat, crucially. Still six feet tall. She might not be blonde, though, depending what I do with racial dynamics in this 'verse. Doesn't matter, as calling a woman Goldilocks is less hilarious than a man.)

Maturin is still a dude. They still have absolutely zero sexual chemistry, but profound deep interpersonal love. (This is bookverse, guys. Sorry the gay movie version is great but that's just not where I'm going here.)

Instead of having a lower-class accent and antecedents, I'm translating Tom into being somehow visibly biracial, which can give the same impediment to his being taken seriously for promotion as in canon, but also lets me tie this into the other books I've started in the land-based part of this verse. His mother is descended from mainland mammoth-herders, and I haven't decided what visual characteristics that gives him but it's enough that he gets called racial slurs occasionally. As in canon, Aubrey doesn't particularly notice these things, and cares only that he is competent.

Babbington is a trans dude so I have to figure out how that works in the worldbuilding but this is an extremely useful thing to have and will illuminate all kinds of awesome things for me. As a bonus, it can just be background established fact in the first book I write, and can be a plot point in the prequel if I do come up with anything cool in the worldbuilding, but if not it can just be a like low-key background thing in the prequel too. Who knows! It gives me a ton of material either way. Has potential to establish vivid character dynamics in a minimum of words, I think.

I was trying to solarpunk-ize solid-shot cast-iron cannons and seem to have independently mentally invented electromagnetic rail guns, so I have to research that somewhat but I think I have some good worldbuilding foundations based off that. !!! Exciting. I especially love the idea that the ships can collect and store potential energy that they can use either for propelling the ship without wind, or for firing guns, and so manoevering with sails still carries enormous tactical value because if you can get in position to fire your shots without having expended your generated power, you'll have much more success in battle; conversely, if you realize you're in a poor tactical position, instead of throwing your guns over the side as in the napoleonic era so you can flee faster, you simply empty your power generation banks into your propulsion to get the fuck out of there. And it makes it more solarpunk post-collapse-friendly by having tactics that can prioritize things other than massive loss of life, which doesn't hold with the dynamics of precarious population levels in the other books in this 'verse. Life was cheap in Europe in the 1800s but that doesn't work here. I love the idea of the "battles" being almost entirely manoevering, and it being plain impossible to have just yardarm-to-yardarm prolonged hammering except by rare circumstance.

So anyway that's where I'm at. So far. Stay tuned i guess? Thanks for reading this far, anyone who does. <3

[slutdge]

i added the tag for clarity for my followers not to correct you, thanks for making it so i couldnt defend myself in the replies and also assuming i couldnt possibly be native as well though

I didnt do any of that? What? I kindly asked you to reblog the edited version of a post where i corrected myself for a minor mistake because I made that post when i was half asleep, and now you are trying to twist it and make me look bad by claiming im restricting you from replying when my replies have always been set to followers only, and i never said or did anything to indicate you werent native also. I kindly corrected you. But thanks I guess. Do better instead of living your life in bad faith misinterpretation. These are the replies this person is talking about btw i responded to them saying "starlight tours are still going on" ok sorry i meant the saskatoon freezing murders and i said "please reblog the corrected and edited version" but youd rather deny you misinterpreted my reply as an attack over just reblogging the corrected version lol

you dont need to "defend yourself" because this wasnt an attack and anyone could see that, i just asked you to reblog the corrected version so if you actually cared about people getting the right information you wouldve done that instead of sending me this message and accusing me of all this bs. get a grip.

[billygoat26]

ABOUT ME!!

NOTE: Anything I say that has to do with politics or shit like that is likely to not be entirely true, so if you see that I have said something that is incorrect, PLEASE TELL ME! (Preferably in a nice way? If it’s in a rude way chances are I’ll not accept it as easily.) That said, I try to keep my own political thoughts off of here and reserve that for my Twitter account /@BillyGOAT226.)

Helloooo everybody and welcome back to my Youtu-

Just kiddiiiiing!

As I’m sure you’ve gathered, I am a person who likes to joke around a lot. I also tend to type/write a lot, so instead of making you guys suffer with a whole essay about me, let’s break it all down!

Name/Nickname: BillyGOAT (Elsewhere you might see me as CallMeToes or StillToes. The nickname originated from auto correct, to put it shortly)

Other Accounts: @horrorrrrrrr @vox-does-shit @the-short-king-of-hell-himself

Birthday: February 26th

Fandoms I’m in: Undertale/Underverse, Gravity Falls, TOH (The Owl House), anything to do with Marvel is awesome, Spiderverse (does that count as Marvel anymore?) Honkai: Star Rail, Helluva boss, Hazbin Hotel, The Amazing Digital Circus, Eddsworld, South Park, Sherlock (BBC version), Wuthering Waves, MHA, Ramshackle, SMG4 stuff (mostly Puzzlevision/anything to do with Mr Puzzles)… (This list CAN and probably WILL grow as I either join more or think of more)

What do I do here: Art. Plain and simple. Though there may be some random things I post that have nothing to do with art, I’ll mostly be posting art stuff (Edit: Oh past me, how silly you were... Now I mostly reblog stuff and sometimes rant)

More about me: Jokester, I play the viola, singing is fun when I’m alone lol, I have two cats (Maui and Loki)

I'm currently working on an AU of my own for Undertale called Ambertale. Character designs are a WIP, and once I figure all that out then I’ll work on an official comic! Just… don’t expect it too soon, life is being life and free time is on vacation lately. (Edit: So the comic has just been sitting in my iPad for ages now and I don't wanna continue it right now- might continue it when school decides to not school or when it's summer break. For now, no comic.)

With that, have fun staring at all my random posts!

Tags:

#ambertale reblogs

#ambertale lore

#ambertale side comic

#ambertale asks

#ambertale holidays

#ambertale sans lore

(anything that has to do with amber sans [example: #ambertale sans, #amber!sans, etc.])

#amber sans guide

#Billygoat talks

#ambertale fanart

#antics of billygoat and killer

#incorrect quotes / #incorrect utmv quotes

#politics

(Eventually there will be a comic tag that will be #ambertale comic)

Ambertale Character Designs:

Ambertale Papyrus by rurunyaa

Ambertale Sans by me

Asher reference sheet in progress (I think- updated version anyways)

Ambertale: A Day in the Life of Sans:

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (coming soon)

[hxllo-nana]

Alright, just wanted to say and/or Ask a few or so, mostly disconnected things in this Ask (Ask #2).

First of all, I am curious what happened to ur Carrd that u used to have in ur pinned post? Ofc, u don't u have to have it up or anything, I am just curious abut what happened to it.

2nd, I just wanted to say, I actually say a lot of stuff in reblogs to Answers you did to my Asks instead of putting them in more Asks (well, I am still doing Asks and stuff though. Just less so in this case). So if u want to check those out (u don't' have to ofc though!).

I also wanted to ask, what u might do with ur TikTok videos, since TikTok might get banned? I really enjoy looking at some of ur TikTok videos (esp. ur cool UT/DR ones); some of which are only on there. So I would hate for them to be completely lost/disappear? Maybe they can be on YT shorts instead? If TikTok does actually end up getting banned (this time).

2 (kind of more) Hazbin Hotel and Undertale things; which one (or maybe more?) of them I kind of brought up already, I think, but like, I like this point so I am bringing it up.

First, I love how both Chara and Charlie have similar-sounding/looking names, and both have those red circles (what else would u call them? Red marks? Red circle marks?? How u would u describe it/them, lol) on their faces and/or cheeks.

For some other points (which I may or may not have already talked about some and/or etc. already in some form): Both Alastor and Sans are both basically always smiling, but just because they aren't, doesn't mean they are happy. And for another Husk connection(s) to Sans, both have like casino and/or etc. connections considering Husk's connections to casinos and cards (though, Alastor is also quite good at cards too), and in Switch version of UT, I think, Sans is wearing the hat, at a casino or something, I think? Having trouble remembering for sure.

And a somewhat looser connection, but Sans has also helped Grillby w/ working at the bar and stuff (and Sans and Grillby are connected in general), and Husk has some connections to drinks and stuff. And/or both are at a bar a lot. Looser connection, but you know. Still think Sans and Alastor are too similar though, for all the points I brought up here and in other Asks and rb's. But Sans and Husk works well too.

2/3.

1. I decided carrd is only for those who ask for it. I’m a private user with multiple names and secret accounts i never tell unless you ask for it.

2. I already have…lololol

3. They will be moved to Youtube Shorts on my alt account. Hopefully they don’t ban it. There’s still a lot I would lose and miss since TikTok is basically my main platform other than Youtube.

4. I call Chara and Charlie’s blush the clown blush.

5. My man Sans can fit any role and I find that rad as hell. Also you’re correct about the casino thing. Why is he like this. Don’t call your connections losers, any connection is a good connection. We’re all mad in this household and we will combine and compare hyperfixations like our lives depend on it….because they do- *holds up a gun*

[rjalker]

[ID: A screenshot of a reply by rjalker from August 26 2024, reading, "Before making the exact same tired ableist joke as hundreds if not thousands of other people on this post, maybe stop thinking of accessability tools as the punchline for y our ableist joke because you think lying to disabled people is funny.". End ID.]

Please copy this image description into your original reblog, or just delete the image and keep the text part of the ID for my reply. Adding undescribed images to a post that's already had an ID added is extremely rude and inaccessible.

If you are genuinely asking because you actually want to know, the answer is: All of the people reblogging this post and leaving replies insisting that the image description added above the haikubot is incorrect, because the original image is of an octopus, rather than a fox.

When the image is of a fox, climbing through a tiny fence. The person who added the image description did not describe the wrong image or lie to anyone.

Everyone who is insisting that it's an octopus is lying to people who need that image description.

It's fine (if obnoxiously uncreative) if you're making the joke normally, but there are literally pages and pages worth of people reblogging versions of this post that specifically have the image description, so they can specifically claim that it is wrong, and that the original image really shows an octopus instead of a fox.

They are lying to disabled people who rely on image descriptions, and treating it like a joke. They see an accessibility feature and have decided to make fun of it and the people who use it by lying about what is really in the image.

If you or anyone else is unaware, image descriptions are for people who are blind, have low vision, or have other problems with processing what they're looking at, like brain damage.

You can think of them as the equivalent for subtitles, but instead of transcribing what people are saying, they transcribe what there is to see.

Using image descriptions to lie about what an image really contains, or in this case with the thousands of uncreative bigots all dying to make the exact same tired joke, claiming that a correct image description is actually wrong, is lying to disabled people.

It's just plain old ableist bigotry. People are having fun lying to blind and other disabled people because they think it's funny and cool and all the other thousands of people in the notes are doing it already.

I'm taking the time to write out this response under the generous assumption that you're asking because you actually want to know.

If you're going to be one of those assholes who say "it's not that deep lol go touch grass" then please don't even repond just block me. I'm not in the mood to deal with more ableism.

TLDR: People are claiming that the image description is wrong even though it's not, because they think it's fun to lie to blind and other disabled people who don't have any other way of telling what's actually in the image. It's pure bigotry.

Octopuses can fit through any gap larger than their beak.

[alirhi]

Loki ranting

Okay. I had this thought in my head of like just compiling links of all the Loki shit I've posted/reblogged so far so that when I get into a conversation about the show and how it fucking disgusted me, I can just be like "here. here's this masterlist post, go read all this shit. This is my entire argument, and not only mine, but a lot of stuff posted by people far more intelligent and level-headed and eloquent than I am, whom I happen to agree with." Because the alternative is constantly getting fired up all over again, and that is exhausting.

BUT! I'm stupid and don't know how tumblr works. Apparently I can't just be like "give me all the Loki-tagged shit I've got" I can only search all the Loki-tagged shit on all of tumblr. And I'm not scrolling back through all of my posts. I talk too fucking much for that shit 😂

So, I'll try to remember all of my grievances with how the MCU has treated Loki, and all of the excellent posts made by other, equally upset fans, and put it all together here under this nice, neat little cut for everyone else's sanity and scrolling convenience...

For people who actually read my shit fairly regularly - bless you, you crazy, patient people. I love you! - this is going to be a lot of repetition of shit you've already read. Probably at least twice. I'm passionate and I have a terrible memory lol. Sorry.

Anyway, first, for those who don't know me and haven't been following my explosions of rage for the past couple of months, some quick background: I do not read comic books, so Loki's Marvel comic canon means nothing to me. I know almost nothing about it. The reason I'm so in love with the character in the MCU is because I am an eclectic witch and the deity I've actively loved and worshiped the longest in my life (literally for as long as I can remember) is Loki. So when he was mentioned in The Mask, I squeed. When they named Matt Damon's character after him in Dogma, I cheered.

When Thor came out in 2011, I just about died from happiness. I was hungry for any representation of this underappreciated god, no matter what it was. I didn't even bitch about how underpowered he was, because at least he was there. But I'm getting slightly ahead of myself.

I can hear anyone reading this going "Why Loki? Isn't he, like, evil? Like basically the Norse version of The Devil?" Because I heard all this shit irl all the fucking time. And no. So let me give you a quick rundown of who Loki actually is.

Loki is a Trickster God. He's often referred to as the God of Mischief. He is not and never was evil, simply chaotic and hedonistic. Loki Laufeyjarson was the son of Laufey (that's mama; they changed her to a man for some reason in the movie) and Fárbauti. Right from the start, from his name, we get a sign of how Loki goes against traditional norms of the time, because in Norse culture, families were patrilineal, and surnames were "son/daughter of father" (which would have made him Loki Fárbautitason), not the mother. But Loki's surname is matrilineal. Feminist icon woo! lol

Though he's a Jotunn, Loki is counted among the Gods (Aesir) in Norse tradition. Depending on his mood, he is alternately helpful or disruptive to the other Gods. I'm not gonna sit and teach a whole text class on him lol but I'll use my favorite example of Misunderstood Loki - the conception of Sleipnir!

So, get this shit. This is also part of why I DO NOT follow Odin and never fucking will (a very small part, but still part of the reason). So, the other Norse Gods are petty motherfuckers, and they wanted some shit built but didn't want to pay the dude doing the building. So they were like "okay, if you can get it done in X amount of time, we'll pay you, but if you can't manage it NO MATTER WHAT, this whole thing is free." And they made sure he had NO help, nothing but him, his materials, and his Very Good Horsey. And this guy and his horse were fucking BAMFs. So it was looking like he was definitely gonna get it done in time, and Odin was like "nah, fuck that shit. I'm cheap." and so he sent Loki to distract the work horse. Loki transformed into a mare and lured the horse away, got fucked, got pregnant, gave birth to the 8-legged (for some reason) horse Sleipnir. Odin rides Loki's son into battle. Um. Kay.

So Loki helped Odin be a petty mf, and Odin got himself a new pet out of the deal.

Oh, also, because he's smart af and a shapeshifter and a master magician and genderfluid, Loki "fails" to fit the super fucking toxic and narrow Norse/Aesir view of "a real man". He prefers intelligence and manipulation to solve problems rather than violence, he's not afraid to behave like a clown if it gets shit done, and that grosses the Aesir out, so they constantly ridicule him for being "less than a man".

Loki is the God of the outcast and the misunderstood. The marginalized people from all walks of life. He is the God of the LGBT community. In modern terms, he's pansexual, polyamorous (married to Sigyn and they are deeply in love, but boy gets around and I've never seen any indication that Sigyn gives a shit) and genderfluid.

Okay. Focus, Ali. This is part of why I usually post multiple rants instead of one big long one XD The longer I ramble, the more I get sidetracked and forget the original point.

So. Loki's awesome, and being a Trickster, is powerful as all fucking hell. There's not much he can't do.

And now we come to Thor (the movie, not the deity). Loki's there! 24-year-old Ali is spazzing! All is right with the world!

Oh lord, they've actually done him justice?! Amazing! He's complex and nuanced and emotional, just like the real Loki! I loved this movie. Loved. It. The climactic thing with trying to blow up Jotunheim never really made much sense to me until someone made an excellent point the other day about Loki being raised in a racist society that was racist against his own race, he just didn't know it yet, poor child. Baby Thor was never corrected when he pledged to commit mass genocide, so Baby Loki probably absorbed the lesson then that Jotunns=evil and killing them all will win his father's love. Anyway, 2011 Loki was a beautiful, heartbreaking portrayal of the God I've loved all my life and spent 24 years longing to see depicted on the big screen.

Then The Avengers happened. And I saw another Loki very close to Norse mythology - mainly, how he's treated. In the beginning of the movie, he's sick, exhausted, and in pain. He can hardly stand, he stumbles and needs help when he walks. He was very obviously tortured, and the sickly blue light of the scepter's control is in his eyes. That gets less and less pronounced as the movie goes on, showing Loki working his way free of it, but in the beginning, he's a mess. Because he was tortured and used by Thanos. Marvel directly confirmed this, and that he was under the scepter's/Mind Stone's control. Loki's actions are not his own in The Avengers. He's under both threat and Thanos' direct control. The movie actually shows The Other directly threatening him to keep him on task, because this is not Loki's plan. It is not what he wants. He's being used and villainized... Just like in real life. It hurt to see this done to him, but the accuracy was too beautiful to ignore.

Thor: The Dark World comes out. I've heard people complain that this movie is the weak link in the Thor trilogy. I disagree. I think that's Ragnarok, for a bunch of reasons, but we'll get there. (And for the record, I loved Ragnarok, too. It was a funny movie. Infinity War and the Disney+ series are the only portrayals of Loki in the MCU that I truly fucking hated.) Anyway, good, fun movie. Had its faults, as all movies do, but it still followed Loki's real-life arc in a way. How? By having Loki dragged back to Asgard in chains and imprisoned underground. Again, not super happy that this happened to my love, and having to see it on screen was painful, but at least in the MCU he's not chained to a rock with venom dripping on his face for eternity, so there's that. (poor Sigyn. how tired do her arms get, holding up that bowl? best wife ever, amirite?)

In TDW, we're shown Loki's love for Frigga, who favored him and taught him magic as a child. We see his bravado; his attempts to mask his true feelings, especially grief. We see him slowly coming back to himself after the events of The Avengers, and slowly mending his relationship with his brother. He accepts that Odin will likely never love him, but Thor just might, because they were close when they were young. "I didn't do it for him." No, no my sweet, you did it for your brother, and a little out of guilt for what happened to your mother.

At the end, Loki fakes his death and escapes, taking the throne, and I have mixed feelings about this. Not the writer's choices here; I love that completely! A natural progression in Loki's story. But my joy is tainted by how closely they're following the Eddas now. Because Loki's escape from his prison heralds the beginning of Ragnarok. And Loki will die in Ragnarok. I don't want to see that play out in front of my face. I won't be able to handle the grief (spoiler alert! IW broke me. I almost walked out of the theater. Loki's death was legitimately fucking traumatic for me. I don't even care how pathetic that is. That grief was real, it was intense, and I still shake and cry when I think about it.)

Marvel announces that Thor 3 will be called Ragnarok. The internet treats this as a shocking revelation. I roll my eyes and mumble "duh" to myself and move on XD

Then they say Ragnarok will be a buddy comedy. I throw up a little in my mouth and no longer want to live on this planet. If they're going to make something called Ragnarok, could they at least treat it with even a fraction of the respect they've shown these characters thusfar? Jfc. I mean, I'll see it anyway, because I'm a whore for Tom Hiddleston lol. But come on, people!

I hated that they made Hel the long-lost older sister and Fenrir her fucking pet/attack dog. Those are my favorites of Loki's children! Hel is such an incredible badass that the early Christians named their dimension of eternal torture after her! They were terrified of her, to the point of naming the place that terrified them most after her. That's awesome! And Fenrir's just the best. I love wolves. Those two details, and Odin's retcon of "we're not Gods! ...lol, except your sister. she's totally a Goddess. and def gonna kill literally everything, so... good luck! byyyeeeee" pissed me off royally.

The rest was great. I genuinely liked this movie. Still do. And they finally used The Immigrant Song! That was pretty cool. If they'd thrown in Bring the Hammer Down and Thunderstruck, I might've called this movie perfect. XD

I wasn't totally in love with their portrayal of Loki in Ragnarok. Yes, the falling for 30 minutes line was funny, as was "I have to get off this planet" and "YES! That's how it feels!" And "Get Help" was funny as hell. But also, like... There is no way Loki would have been the dumb one in that first encounter with Hela. Also, he can teleport and project copies of himself and shit, so... He would not have been that desperate to go straight back to Asgard and bring her right along with them. Loki's not stupid. But whatever. Movie's gotta movie.

What I did love was seeing the slow mending of his relationship with Thor continuing, and the badass fighting on the bridge. I also loved that, like Real Loki, Movie Loki helped when help was needed, was quick and clever, and while he was carrying out the main plan, he was also planning ahead and grabbing the Tesseract. Yes, that drew Thanos right to them, but that's a whole other thing. Loki never would have left that thing on Asgard to be destroyed or lost.

And now Infinity War. Hooooly fucking shit. You know what? No. I'm not going into this. He was killed, years of character growth were erased forever, my heart fucking shattered. The end.

Endgame. IW hurt me so bad I didn't see Endgame until this year. I actually watched Civil War first (for context: I had actively avoided all Cap movies until this year because I fucking hate Steve Rogers. I find him insufferable. Did not realize what I was denying myself until I watched CW and finally saw the charms of Bucky. When he appeared in IW, I was so lost. XD I was like "...who dis? Murder Jesus?" also I just... didn't care. I was numb by then from crying through most of the movie over Loki)

So, anyway. Endgame. Loki picks up the Tesseract in alternate 2012, escapes, fans go "yay! he didn't actually die!" I go "yes he fucking did. Five years of his life, gone. Five years of growth and change, erased. Loki is dead. This will not be the same."

I was more right than I could have predicted. Now we come to the point of this rant. Sorry it took so long, but you were warned lol.

The Loki series makes me so angry I actually get sick to my stomach. It was fucking TRASH. When I praised Marvel for following Norse mythology so faithfully earlier? Yeah. I DID NOT MEAN TREAT HIM THE WAY THE OTHER GODS DID. I did not mean paint him as a pitiful clown, a joke, a caricature of who he truly was, with his pain and suffering played for LAUGHS.

This is supposed to be 2012 Loki, newly freed from Thanos' control. The Loki we saw in the beginning of TDW - snarky, exhausted, nihilistic. The Loki who rolled his eyes and said "get on with it" expecting to be killed.

The bumbling clown flipping on a dime from posturing to calling himself weak is not 2012 Loki. That is not ANY Loki. That is Tom Hiddleston in a black wig doing what he's told by a shitty writer who had no fucking idea what he was doing and was salty about his (bad) original script (for something totally fucking unrelated) getting killed.

In Episode 1, Loki is mocked, imprisoned, stripped against his will, tormented, belittled, and given a flippant summary of all the trauma Actual MCU Loki suffered that this one skipped out on, with no context, no acknowledgement of the trauma he's already lived quite fucking recently, and with the narrative twisted to not only erase all the abuse he's suffered, but to make it all his fault. And this is supposed to make him want to help these people?

And worse, IT FUCKING WORKS. WHAT?! I CAN'T- FUCKING WHAT?! Remember when I said LOKI IS NOT FUCKING STUPID?! So why is he STUPID?

Episode 2, he's a child. Mentally, this Loki is a fucking child. Now we've erased all the growth and development of his entire adult life. He's dopey, impatient, impulsive, desperate for a pat on the back and actually shows it. Yes, abused and neglected children crave the positive attention we never received, and we often grow up to be a bit emotionally stunted. But not all of us, and not Loki. Not as we've seen him EVER in the rest of the MCU. Playful and a bit callous at times? Absolutely! But not a big dumb fucking puppy.

Episode 3, a ray of hope, despite Sylvie! (I hate Sylvie) Loki casually admits he's pan/bi; labels never come up, but he admits to being with both men and women! He sings! Not really relevant to whether I approve of his portrayal or not lol but Tom has a beautiful voice, Norwegian ("Asgardian" lol) is a gorgeous, entrancing language, and I could watch that one bit on loop for eternity and never get bored. And then, finally, we see a glimpse - a glimpse - of Loki's power! He stops a falling building and pushes it right back up! Are we finally getting to see what he can really do? Will the next episode bring us Loki in all his glory?

Nope. 4 and 5 we see him mocked and pushed around and utterly irrelevant. Again. We see tiny reflections of what he could maybe theoretically do in other random Loki variants, but the "main" (lawl. main. it was the Sylvie and Mobius show. Loki was never the main anything.) Loki? Nothing. He wears his heart on his sleeve for no reason, bonds with the man who imprisoned, taunted, and gaslit him, is killed, and continues to be a moron and a joke. Always the clown. Always the dumb one. The one with the bad ideas. The inferior Loki.

Don't even get me started on that finale. I can't. This already took so much out of me. Fuck Marvel. Fuck this fucking show. I just... I'm done.

[bipirate]

Imho the issue with talking critically about MDZS or CQL is that for some, it has degenerated into a kind of supremacy contest between adaptations that MDZS fans feel the need to win. Like every time you make a post about MDZS, even with single digits reblogs, you get angry or unrelated long anons about how CQL sucks or pro-MDZS anons arguing at length with what another anon said or pointing your eRoRRS when they are being wrong themselves or just have a different interpretations of the events1

the rest + my response below

which doesn’t happen with, say, the donghua or LoF. And it’s not like there is that much MDZS criticism on Tumblr unless you go actively looking for it, but not only some self-proclaimed book fans have a “rooting out the heresy'' approach to it, like screencaping small accounts or going after fic authors, but often an attitude that anyone liking CQL is some kind of enemy in an opposite camp and them liking the series, even if they haven’t read the book, or liking something in both versions is a personal attack on the value of MDZS; CQL-only is legit used as an insult in some places. People can bash on CQL if they want, but imo directly bashing on CQL fans as stupid/an unwanted presence in the fandom/inferior is frankly not an acceptable way of acting (and conversely CQL fans that insult MXTX personally should really stop doing that too, but still, she’s a public figure when fellow fans in a fandom are not, and she’s not even on Tumblr).

And this attitude poisons the well of the discussion bc the people who engage the most with the topic are clearly not interested in sincerely comparing adaptations but in trying to push an agenda that version X has never had anything good in it instead of having a real exchange of ideas. It’s generally the same people who are the most bothered by any argument that they see as weak or wrong about the book who are perfectly fine with bad faith CQL criticism, and by bad faith, I'm not at all talking about having different interpretations about scenes or characters which are a good thing, but about people forgetting major plots point like WWX destroying the seal in CQL and still keeping using it in their arguments to bash on CQL even after being corrected, trashtalking "CQL additions" that are actually 100% based on something from the book (and ofc no one never found anything wrong with that scene in book context), or expounding about how scene B in CQL is OOC in regards to scene A in book when scene A was never adapted into CQL.

There is even particular unflattering interpretations about CQL that are held only by self-declared MDZS fans but never by CQL fans or those who like both, like that idea that when WWX hallucinates various voices, including the Yin sword's after being throw into the Burial Mounds, it means that his whole transformation into the YLLZ in CQL is him being controlled by the sword and not of his own will. There's like a need to get back at people they felt talked badly about their favorite author or to defend the superiority of their fav version against different tastes rather than some real interest in literary/movie criticism? Ofc all of this is based on my dash back when I had a CQL blog, so YMMV, etc. Sorry for the length too, and I’m not sure that you should actually publish that ask lol. And btw you can actually buy external DVD/CD readers for laptops using USB for like 15€ that works really well.

if i understand you correctly, i mostly agree with you? in my experience it's mostly mdzs novel fans who are more... aggressive in voicing their displeasure when someone criticises the novel. however, i don't think it's ONLY mdzs fans who think their favourite version is superior while the other is trash. i mean... go through my 'mdzs critical' tag and you'll see that i think mdzs is trash while cql is superior in every way. i think it's just the way people go about expressing that.

first of all, when i talk about why i dont like mdzs, 99% of the time it's me criticising its fetishisation of gay men and relationships and its romanticisation of abusive behaviour and rape. like... that is objectively bad content.

secondly, from what i've seen, people like me who love cql and dislike mdzs, are generally mature enough to accept and even engage in genuine criticism against cql as well. i love cql but i can admit that it's not always good and sometimes it's just blatantly confusing and you'll just have to accept that it doesn't make sense and move on. and while it treated the female characters better than in mdzs, it's still kind of sucks that the women either die or disappear from the plot.

and i don't think everyone who likes the mdzs novel is like that, obviously not everyone who likes the book goes around sending rude anons to people who only like cql, but i also feel like because there's such harmful content in mdzs, a lot of its fans are the kind of people who are either completely on board with it or at least willing to excuse it. and we live in a society where these kinds of people are usually the more aggressive kind on the internet.

and while im firmly on the side of 'mdzs is trash because of this harmful content', im more than willing to actually engage in a conversation about the adaptation about the plot or its themes or worldbuilding or whatever, especially if there are people who are more knowledgeable about wuxia/xianxia or even danmei novels. i think discussion and learning about different viewpoints, even ones you disagree with, is interesting and healthy and important and i just wish more people were willing to have polite conversations without immediately sending death threats to people about the media they like

[iraprince]

Your mental illness comics have really meant a lot to me since I saw one of your first ones about trauma. They flow really well and just the layout is very visually pleasing. Any advice for someone who wants to get into drawing comics as well?

first of all, thank u, it means a lot to me that you’ve been able to connect w my stuff.

as for the actual question — man, that’s broad, and it’s hard to think of a cohesive, useful answer. the first thing that comes to mind is something you’ve probably heard a lot abt any creative thing, which is: if u want to make comics, read comics. tons of em. and try to read them with study in mind, try to be picking them apart and asking yourself questions about how they work: how does the artist control the pacing/control how quickly or slowly you read certain lines? (the evocation of time and the control of pace is one of the most important, but most invisible parts of comics). how do they lead your eye around the page in the correct order and stop you from getting confused? why is this story being told as a comic instead of a short story, an animation, an illustration? what does a comic offer that other mediums don’t, and how do these artists use those unique things? what limitations has the medium of comics imposed on this story, and why don’t those limitations get in the way of what these artists are trying to do? when you’re asking these questions as you read, you might find your answer is a big giant “i have no fucking idea,” which is fine, bc you’re trying to dig all of that up so you can learn.

but if all that gets overwhelming the good news is you’ll absorb useful stuff about how comics work even if you’re not picking them apart like that, so read tons of them anyway just for fun even when you don’t feel like asking all those questions. i think it’s probably obvious that my work the past two years has been heavily influenced by kabi nagata (my lesbian experience with loneliness, my solo exchange diary) but i never read her stuff with that kind of study mindset the way i study other stuff; i think she just resonated w me and i absorbed a lot of it and it comes out in some of the quirks in how i draw faces and use visual metaphor, etc. so at the end of the day no matter how methodical or casual you are about it something will always rub off.

another piece of advice you’ve probably heard a ton, but i’m repeating it bc it’s true: just start, and try not to get too caught up in the concept of polish. some of the work i like the best (and that ppl have responded to the most, not that that should be ur primary metric on judging if a comic is “good” but like, it means a lot to me) have been really rough, scribbly things with crappy lettering and wobbly frames, and an idea that you managed to get out on paper even if it’s rough and unpolished and kind of crappy is still worth more than an idea you’ve been sitting on for two years in the back of your head bc you can’t find time to do a really nice clean polished version, or bc you’re scared to start bc u think you’re not good enough at drawing yet. you will learn MUCH more by doing, and these ideas do you more good drawn out on paper than sitting in your head, even if a few years from now you think you’ll look at them and find the execution cringe or whatever.

final note, which is specifically about creating mental health related work and sharing it online. not all vent art is cathartic. not all vent art is healing. it’s easy to feel like ANYTHING you do must be helpful, no matter how raw and sensitive and personal it is — because you’re “getting it out,” right? but it took me much, much too long to learn that for my own health and safety i had to filter what i created and posted, and with the way that mental health stuff tends to circulate bc it’s Relatable etc, it is really really easy to start feeling EXTREMELY weird about getting feedback on depictions of yourself in pain. to have depictions of your pain get “popular.” to have depictions of your pain go viral, as they have for me a few times. in the past i have not had enough boundaries, i felt like “people like when i rip my guts out and show it to them so that’s my value, that’s what people want to see, that’s Good Art — if i heal up this hole and i can’t show people my guts anymore i’ll be nothing.” i didn’t think that was what was going on in my head, but it was. i wish i had been more thoughtful abt what i shared of myself. now, even the work i post that seems very raw and very personal has been filtered. i have asked myself very honestly “are you okay with strangers seeing this? are you okay with strangers reblogging this and saying ‘this is so me?’ are you okay with people projecting on this? will this make you feel upset or violated?” about every single thing i make, before i post it, and there’s a lot of stuff i decide to keep to myself. if you intend to make mental health work, PLEASE ask yourself these questions along the way, instead of finding out after you post stuff and it unexpectedly gets a lot of notes that it’s hard for you to handle. you can’t control how people respond to your work, you can only control WHICH work you decide to post, and sometimes you don’t know how you’ll feel about sharing this stuff until you’ve done it. i really hope this doesn’t come off as discouraging bc i don’t MEAN to discourage ppl from making art abt mental health — i wouldn’t still be doing it if i didn’t find it healing and meaningful, the way that i do it now. but it can get weird FAST, in ways i feel like i don’t see a lot of discussion about, so when ppl ask me for advice bc they like my comics i wouldn’t feel right just saying “yeah it’s great!!! go have fun!!” without mentioning that my relationship to my art and to the public side of it can often be tumultuous. just always be attentive to yourself and put boundaries and healing, constructive interactions with art first. SORRY FOR TEXTWALL LOL

[kaiowut99]

5D's Episode 27... with an “Uncut” Dub?! (Re-Edited 4Kids Dub/Japanese OST - Revised)

“A World Without Light -- The Dark Synchro Frozen Fitzgerald!”/”A Web of Deceit (Part 1)″

Everybody listen!

Took long enough to finish up and polish (partly because of work and activism life actually picking up a bit), but here’s a brand-new “dub-uncut” episode! With my first few takes in episodes 23-26 newly revised, I was looking forward to working on 27 and starting fresh again, lol. In case this is the first you’re hearing about my mini-project here, let’s get you up to speed:

So, the official Spanish YGO channel on YouTube flubbed a few uploads of the 5D’s dub such that they ended up uploading a few episodes of the English dub instead of the Latin American dub (21-29)–but with none of 4Kids’s background music! Which meant that I could swoop in and re-insert the original Japanese soundtrack (which I did by matching each track to how it was looped in the episode), but I wanted to do more by also tweaking the dub itself so that not only was it matching the original footage, but the dialogue was more in line with the original dialogue timing-wise (since I couldn’t salvage much of what they changed).  Hence, the “dubbed uncut” gimmick here.  To this end, I’ve also used dialogue from Duel Links where applicable, or even borrowed audio from other episodes with the vocals isolated to lend to that effect.

Check out the masterpost of episodes I’ve done here!

Check out this episode’s WIP videos! WIP #1     WIP #2     WIP #3   WIP #4   WIP #5

So, this one was fun to do particularly because overall, save for the, er... butchering that happened on explaining the Dark Synchro mechanic (4Kids wut) and the rewrite of Carly’s interaction with her Editor-in-Chief (and making Carly a “blogger” lol), the dialogue was already more or less in line with the Japanese version, which meant that I was more or less just removing a lot of the fluff as I added back the OST.  As I did in 22, 24, and 26, I added subs for the scenes where 4Kids rewrote things a bit too much for my taste (so, the scenes I mentioned above, but also the occasional line or a few), but of course these subs will be optional in the MKV I release on NAC for this.  I also added back some SFX and tried to remove the dub’s replacement SFX in most cases, though I had to swap out the SFX as Speed Warrior was tuning with Junk Synchron since 4Kids had a tendency to add some new one over the original SFX and made it too loud to work with the Yusei chant I put there.  And I translated the OP/ED credits in Last Train and CROSS GAME, revamping my singable lyrics a bit for Last Train while drafting new ones for CROSS GAME which I’ll post soon; you can see my Last Train translation in the second WIP video and CROSS GAME’s here. Full process breakdown below the cut.

Also, major thanks to yugidmx5 for providing A+ rips of the “The Day Begins/Tenpei” theme in the Carly/Angela scene, the “Vision of Tragedy” theme as Yusei and Ruka talk about the Satellite’s future, and the alternate “Dark Signers” tune which plays as we first see them and then again between the Dark Signer drones recruiting and Yusei chasing Dark-Signer!Dick down (before it transitions to the OST-released version once Yusei gets to the building under construction); I know that since these came out well, he’s working on better rips for some or most of the unreleased OST, so stay tuned there (I also drafted up a full version of the alternate DS theme, but had to get creative since they didn’t play all of it in this alternate style; will post soon).  And thanks to Tiny Spider Productions, who provided the “shock” SFX playing as Carly sees Yusei’s arm actually glowing in her car, some inspo here/there for dialogue fixes, and provided CurtisH from CastingCallClub’s recording he did voicing a line from Tanner translating the original line about the four Signers they know which 4Kids cut short.

I hope folks enjoy! Just breezing through 28 often for lines to use here, I can tell it’s going to be a headache because they did throw in a lot more jankiness in the dialogue... So, fun. 🙃 Once I handle finalizing my subs for GX 56 (and possibly 57 due to how long this took), I’ll start drafting it out; stay tuned~ 

(And if you're able to reblog for visibility, it’d be appreciated given Tumblr’s suckage with links 🙏🏽)

Breakdown, breakdown~

So, I used Duel Links audio for the twins to handle the Noteworthy/Showcased Cards bit (we’ll see if I still can in 28... And as the twins are voiced by Eileen Stevens in Duel Links but not yet in 5D’s [that happens in 65], bear with me lol), and I also translated the sign for this hardsub in Photoshop, masking in the Fitzgerald card and Rua and Ruka’s heads over it in Sony Vegas.  

Moving to the episode proper, a second was trimmed from the shot of the stadium in the TV Rally/co are using once it tunes in, and I couldn’t properly loop the “Yusei!” shouts to cover it, so I just filled in the audio with the crowd just cheering.  In the Carly/Angela scene, I removed Angela’s extra lines about her makeup and hair while Carly was getting ready, then tweaked Angela’s line on camera to remove her last name (which we never learn originally) and move her lines about “Fusei Yudo” winning to play sooner while removing Carly’s “one journalist to another” as she walks up to correct her (as this scene was rewritten, there are subs to show the original dialogue).  Looped chants of “Yusei!” to remove his internal “pointing out the obvious” monologue before the OP.

After the OP, I used the JP audio to keep the doctors moving Jack quiet (hopefully you don’t notice the chants changing lol), then as Yanagi runs over, I replaced his bit about Yusei having “a brand new enemy” in the media with “we should all get going” from 26.  The Godwin/Lazar scene stays the same since it was accurate, but I did have to put the end of Rex’s “that’s the only thing that matters” line on another track so Lazar’s gasp would play when it should (they added a second to his talking in the dub).  The Yusei/co scene in the tunnel stays mostly the same, just switched to the JP audio as the flashback to the Satellite vision happened, then as Yusei had a quick one before gasping, I recycled a gasp and a “hmm” from elsewhere to cover the commercial-inducing monologue they gave him in the dub.  For the press conference scene, I thought about removing the one “That’s right, Ted” reporter’s line since he’s quiet originally, but thought “whatever,” and then I spaced out Carly’s line as she reads her fortune to match her Japanese line’s pace and remove some of the fluff.  I switched to the JP audio after Carly asked about Yusei’s arm glowing to remove Rex’s comment over it, then stitched up a “Perhaps; still, I didn’t see that” mixing his line there with a “still” from 23.  Carly’s line as she’s excited about Goodwin dodging her question (originally just “I’ll keep moving forward too!” [she references her fortune a lot more]) was longer in the dub, so I cut out the “which means I’m onto something” for use later.  For Carly’s chat with her Editor-in-Chief, I included subs because of the rewrite, but I did shorten Carly’s line just before “bring some dirt and you might still have a job” which was lengthened by 4Kids.  Removed a lot of Carly’s fluff as she began to watch the Yusei duel footage via the JP audio, then stitched together “Goodwin tried to give me that bit but [the whole world will know what Goodwin’s trying to hide]”, the latter bit coming from Carly’s monologue as she’s running at the end of the ep, then switched to the JP audio to remove Carly’s fluff about living in her car.  Then, as we see the Dark Signers looming, because 4Kids removed the commercial break here, I kept only Demak and Kalin’s chuckling and Roman’s “lower the curtains” line over the desk shot, then looped some of his laughing from after the eyecatch to lead into it.

After the eyecatch, I made use of his “Goodwin assembled his Signers” bit, recycled a little chuckling, then cut Roman’s reference to Shakespeare to just the “tangled web” line (thanks to yugidmx5 also providing the SFX for this scene, I was able to move Roman’s laughing to play where it should after he releases his spiders).  Moving to Yanagi drawing the Crimson Dragon, I only kept his “saw it the once” line while using Japanese Rua and Ruka’s interested gasps to fill a fluff gap, then combined two bits of audio to get a [slightly] awkward “t[ail]” to fix 4Kids’s dumb error claiming he had the Head birthmark; accordingly, made Leo say “What about it?” instead of “What about the Head?”.  CurtisH’s line for Tanner comes in here, with a slight tweak or two to match the lip-flaps more, then JP audio as we see all the Signers so far to remove Leo’s dialogue.  Meanwhile, for Jack’s hospital scene, I translated the “No Visitors” sign Mikage walks past (along with fixing “Atlus” to “Atlas”).  The Dark Signer recruitment scene also gets some subs, then I used the JP audio from when we see Dark Signer!Dick walking to Yusei’s birthmark beginning to glow; yugidmx5 providing the SFX was a big help here, too.  Yusei runs out to chase Dick down, and then when he sees him inside the under-construction building, I took “Who are you” from later in the episode, but added a more question-ending “u?” to flesh the sound out a bit (since the line was “Who are you and what’s going on”).  I took “Fine, then” and “What are you planning to do to the Satellite” from 28 (which I’ll likely cut as it was added offscreen dialogue), and TSP provided a vocal-isolated cut of Dick’s line about his master (because 4Kids cut his shot short by a second or two and played it as the SFX for the zoomout as his Disk activated played).  

They begin the duel, and here I just kept “What’s going on?” from the line I noted earlier, recycled some laughing from Dick to match the JP script, then shortened his line about their being offered up “by the light” to work with the new timing.  Dick begins his turn, but I recycled an “It’s my turn now” line from later for accuracy, then his setting-a-card line is cut short at his ending his turn as Yusei looks on.  Carly, driving nearby and seeing lights from the duel off in the distance, gets her reference to the Goodwin “sheen from Yusei’s Runner got in your eye” line that I cut replaced with the “I’m onto something” I noted before.  Yusei gets a recycled “It’s my move!” line from 24 to start his turn, tweaked to remove the drawing SFX that happens in it, then to remove a dub SFX I used a Duel Links line to fill out “I activate the Tuning [Spell Card]”.  “I summon Junk Synchron” comes from 24 (and “Level-2-or-below Monster from my Graveyard” comes from his Graceful Revival explanation in episode 3), then--thanks to Arian over on NAC reuploading some HQ dub episodes--a better-quality vocal rip of his “Level-3 Junk Synchron, tune with Level-2 Speed Warrior!” line from 87, along with a better-quality rip of his “From two come one” chant and “Form the road of light!” from Duel Links.  Yusei shouts “Battle!” from Duel Links, then I slowed down his line at “[Attack his Blizzard Li]zard” to end it there (and remove the “warm Satellite welcome” fluff).  As Blizzard Lizard’s effect activates, I combined an “I activate,” “Blizzard Lizard’s special ability,” and “now” for a better line than “Blizzard Lizard’s special ability is going on.” Yusei’s lines after being damaged and realizing he damaged Dick too are spaced out to match the JP script, then I borrowed Yusei’s line on setting two cards from episode 3.  Then, when Dick plays Ice Mirror, I stitched up an explanation (since the Card Interruption does it for him) combining Call of the Haunted’s explanation with a few other pieces of dialogue (thanks to TSP for the inspo).  I cut Dick’s “Now I’ll play” line there to remove the dub’s zooming-in SFX, and then made Dick’s line about his third Blizzard Lizard end right before the split-screen with all three of them to remove the dub’s split-screen SFX.  I thought about replacing Yusei’s “three’s a crowd” line with “What’s that all about” from later, but couldn’t figure out a way to fill the line in before that, so I left it, but didn’t let Dick acknowledge it by just recycling “With that done” to replace “Well, how about [I release]”, then after Yusei reacts to his Dark Tuner, I recycled some chuckling to match the JP script and trimmed his line about its “power to extinguish;” the Dark Synchro “explanation” gets some subs to actually explain it, then I looped Carly’s panting as she runs to cover the “Goodwin’s trying to hide” line I moved to earlier, and recycled/amplified Dick’s laughing at various points through the ep to remove Yusei’s episode-ending monologue.

In the preview, I just recycled Yusei’s “No way...” and “A Dark Synchro Summon?!” while borrowing Carly’s lines about the Dark Tuner from 28, then Yusei’s line about getting his answers to end it.  I had to speed up the OST version of the preview tune to match the pace here, then trimmed it and ended it with the JP audio for the quick fade-out.

/phew

[izzy-b-hands]

Rock/Queentober 2020, Oct. 7th: Candle

Randomly assigned lad for this day: Freddie

Thus far, this is the only one I ended up having to completely rewrite. I didn’t dislike the first or second version I had, but those plot ideas were far too ambitious for this challenge lol. I might yet finish and post the first and second versions of this prompt at a later date though!

Also, am I still pissy about the power outage that took out some of my work equipment a few days back, hence why I keep writing about power outages? ....yeah I am lol. 

Synopsis: Poly!Queen with a personal dash of my fave poly!Queen headcanon, that in some version of it John is bi and splits his time between the lads and Veronica and his kids. Set in the early days of Queen. Their shared flat once again has no power, but they’ll manage just fine.

And hopefully also manage not to set anything on fire. 

TW for all the dick jokes. Why did this turn into that...

I don’t have a good explanation, aside from me being very tired and silly as I write this prompt for the third time now. 

My love to all who read/like/reblog!

“Here you go,” Freddie said as Brian walked into the front door of their shared flat. “Everyone gets one, until the lights come back.” 

“Not again,” Brian sighed, taking the lit candle carefully from Freddie. “How long has it been out?” 

“You know how you left for your teaching job at about half past seven?” Freddie asked.

Brian nodded. 

“Five minutes after that, give or take a few,” Freddie said. “You lucky sod. Getting ready with something other than candlelight to light your bath, your wardrobe...” 

“Not nearly lighting the wardrobe on fire...” Roger added with a teasing grin.

“Hush,” Freddie said. “It was fine, only a bit of wax on a shirt. Nothing actually got lit up.” 

“Someone’s looking over us, obviously,” John said. “Because otherwise it’s pure luck we haven’t burnt anything, wandering around with these.” 

“I keep saying we need a candelabra,” Freddie sighed. “But it’s always, ‘no Freddie, what would we even do with it? When would we use it?’ Well, don’t you see those answers now!” 

“Do we have anything to set them in?” Brian asked, moving the candle as wax dripped down, nearly hitting his hand. 

“We have one candle holder,” Roger said, and plunked it from out of the end table drawer onto the coffee table. 

“That looks like a...” Brian cleared his throat. 

“Big fat dick?” Roger, Freddie, and John completed his thought in one voice. 

“I made it as a kid,” Roger said. “Mum insisted I take it with me wherever I go.” 

“I can’t possibly guess why,” Brian remarked dryly. 

“I was an inspired young artiste,” Roger sniffed.

“Inspired by something,” Freddie giggled, and set his candle on it, wincing as a bit of wax hit his hand before he could fully set it down. “Is there a set of clay milk jugs with nipples you made as well?” 

“Laugh it up,” Roger said, and stuck his tongue out at Freddie, then blushed. “Well...Mum did mention some that she couldn’t put out...oh...” 

“Aww,” John teased. “Picture of a young artist, hand down his pants-” 

“And with a strong memory of being breastfed, apparently,” Freddie interjected, as Roger blushed harder and dropped his head to the coffee table. “Oh, don’t be like that. It’s cute, you were only little.” 

“God I don’t want to know what else I made,” Roger muttered. “Why didn’t anyone stop me?” 

“I mean...it is a good dick,” Brian admitted as he carefully set down his things, moving the candle from hand to hand as he did. “Anatomically correct, for a little kid.” 

“That’s not a good thing!” Roger cried as he lifted his head from the table.

“I’m sure you probably saw a picture in a textbook or something,” Freddie said. “Or maybe...I mean, children are curious about those things, right? That’s what my mum says, or bemoans, rather.” 

Roger snickered. “Somewhere there’s a set of phallus obsessed drawings from Baby Fred?” 

“I could draw you that now, if you truly wanted,” Freddie replied with a wink. “But no, nothing like that. I think I just...asked a lot of questions.” 

“Every kid does,” John said. “All perfectly normal.” 

“And if you have kids that ask all about that?” Brian asked. “What’ll you tell them?” 

John blushed. “Christ, I don’t know. I’ll need some prep time. All the time before they can talk, to prepare for that.” 

Brian stepped into the kitchen to grab some small plates to use as extra candle holders, and called out to John. “What if their first word is dick?” 

“Oh, there’s a pickle,” Roger said. “Literally.” 

“How did we end up here?” John groaned with a laugh. 

“All thanks to me,” Roger grinned, and held up the candle holder. 

“I don’t know, I guess,” John said. “I...would maybe record their second word in the baby book instead?” 

“Got it,” Freddie said. “Make sure any kids you have learn the word dick first, then tits second. We can do that.” 

“Thank you,” John replied sarcastically, taking a plate from Brian as he handed them out and joined them on the floor of the sitting room. “You’ll all be wonderful uncles to any kids I have.” 

“Yes, we will,” Brian said. “Does it help if I’ll teach them maths?” 

“They can’t learn maths from you,” John scoffed. “They need to learn that from me.” 

“Think school usually handles maths,” Freddie added. “In my experience. Don’t think either of you have to worry about it too much.” 

“Supplemental maths learning,” Brian said. “And it’s the principle of the thing.” 

John nodded.

Freddie shook his head. “Supplemental maths...what fun Saturdays those will be.” 

“I’ll make up for it,” Roger said. “They spend the mornings teaching these poor kids maths, and then I’ll bring clay over and they can sculpt all the weirdly cock-like things they want!” 

“I was going to ask if this was the best use of our time,” John sighed. “But with the lights out...could be worse. And I’m invested now, for the sake of any future children.” 

“Ah, we’re all kidding,” Roger said. “Mostly, at least. You’ll have well-behaved kids anyways.” 

“We don’t know that,” John said. “Might be troublemakers like you. Sneaking sci-fi books into their anatomy classes...” 

Roger blushed. He’d been caught doing that exactly once, but they simply couldn’t let him live down how his lecturer had fully scolded him like a naughty child sneaking biscuits before dinner. 

“That’s good trouble,” Freddie said, to cover for Roger. “I think if I was the type for kids, I’d be happy with kids like that. There’s so much worse they could do, you know?” 

“Like nearly light their own hair on fire?” Brian asked, and moved around the table to jump behind Freddie and pull his hair away from one of the candles. 

It was Freddie’s turn to blush. “Yes, like that, I suppose. I didn’t notice...” 

“I know,” Brian said, and snagged the hair tie he kept on his own wrist for the rare occasions he wanted his curls pulled out of the way, and pulled Freddie’s hair gently into a low ponytail. “There. Now at least we can keep you from going up.” 

“Thank you,” Freddie said, a hand lingering over his hair as Brian moved back to his original seat on the other side of the coffee table. “What now?” 

“We could make dinner, if we could see better,” Roger sighed. “But that seems dangerous, and frankly, I’m not hungry enough to attempt it right now.” 

Nods all around. 

“Place bets on if we’ll run out of candles?” John asked. 

“You say that like these are the only ones we have left,” Brian giggled, then frowned. “Oh no.” 

Freddie nodded with a wince. “We’ve had a lot of outages lately...” 

“And after these are gone, what’s our plan?” Brian asked.

“I have about fifteen lighters, not all used up,” Roger grinned. 

“That helps,” Brian smiled. “But, a very serious question about them...” 

Roger nodded. 

“...How many look like cocks?” 

They all broke into laughter, and though the lights weren’t any more likely to come back on, the flat seemed lighter for it all the same. 

[blackwoolncrown]

i just saw someone reblog your post that was kind of outlining something you wanted to write about the reflection of what porn means about society and i would love to read that. you're absolutely correct that most analysis of porn and society come from swerfs and terfs and they're absolutely terrible if you look beyond surface-level anything. oh but also please never make me read the phrase "regular degular people fornicating" ever again lol

So…thank you for waiting. The first thing I’d like to say is…*clears throat*

TERFS/SWERFS absolutely suck and their awful rhetoric and invasive presence obstructs discussion of women’s right. TERFS are the footwomen of the patriarchy and absolutely brainwashed, useless voices. 

Now that that has been said…

Regular degular poeple fornicaiting. :D

Okay enough silliness, here’s my point. Usually critique of porn comes in two main flavors: “Porn is terrible and inherently sexist, a perverse product of patriarchy” and “All porn is good, actually and critiquing it is prudish and un-progressive”. And I would like to, as usual, submit that the actual truth is somewhere in the middle:

Porn is entirely neutral, and what porn looks like in a society has everything to do with the content of the people’s minds. The content of their minds is heavily influenced by that society’s social mores, habits, etc.

TL;DR - porn is a product of culture. if the porn is bad, that’s the culture’s fault.

The idea that porn is bad and wrong, all of it, is nothing but an extension of the sexual shame colonizers have been peddling along with their sham Christian moralism and oppression for centuries. Our culture fancies itself very open, free and liberated- hence porn and violence can be found in spades bc ~FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION~ but literally everywhere you look, people have complexes about sexuality that are deeply rooted in sexual shame. I want to note here that repression almost ALWAYS causes not an overall lessening of the repressed subject, but a diverted (perverted here is a relative word) and intensified expression of that subject elsewhere.

As a sex worker, when I came into the fetish world, I had the assumption that fetishes in general were like, a conscious type of self exploration done in the spirit of play. What I found was that ‘fetish’ is sometimes that but generally an unconscious mess of psychological expression that people think they don’t need to be critical of because it’s fantasy. To keep this short, most of the fetishes that could have a cathartic or expansive effect on a person’ are actually just sort of like, dead-ended expressions of the world we live in instead of being creative ways beyond it.

Ultimately these ‘fetishes’ and ‘fantasies’ are really anything but. They aren’t fanciful non realities at all- they’re actually sexualized versions of the oppressions we all know and suffer. And that’s horrible. 

The issue with porn, then, is that it reflects the minds and desires of the average person involved with its making and consumption. And in a world where (mostly but not all straight, mostly but not all ((but really really mostly here)) white) men disproportionately have voice, power and resources, then they are who porn is about and for.

‘Porn’ is terrible becuause a society with this kind of power imbalance is terrible.

THere’s an aspect of the mind/body where like…anything you like or are attracted to, there’s a part of you that can eroticize that feeling of attraction into something that may be experienced as more and more sexual the more it’s repressed/ignored. If you think of love as attraction, and attraction as neutral, then you can understand how, then, the very things our patriarchal society loves, celebrates and represents can end up eroticized into sexual fantasy and content. If power is good, then expressions of power feel good, somewhere in the mind/body. If violence is good, then expressions of violence feel good. If maintaining male dominance is good, then expressions of male dominance feel good. The simple fact is that if an individual is taught that expressing some quality *is good*, that thing is remembered as so because of the positive reinforcement. 

Somewhere in their mind, the conditions of that moral quality are associated with feelings of pleasure, positive stimulation, excitement, arousal (think neutrally here as ‘increased excitatory interest’), and feelings are felt by the body. In a certain way, then, the production/creation of porn based on patriarchal male desire and its offspring (fetishization of feminine subjugation, fetishization of racism, fetishization of gender roles, fetishization of sexual shame as a domination tool, fetishization of abuse etc), creates a feedback spiral that ends up ritualizing and reinforcing those things.So we lose a huge opportunity for healing and growth as a society when either of the following positions are taken:1) Porn is bad (sinful, dirty) and shouldn’t exist– this will only further repression and reinforce sexual shame.

2) Porn is good and also 100% fantasy/meaningless fun. Critiquing or questioning it is oppressive, prudish– this is what people with unresolved mental issues say to keep from having to examine what their porn consumption/fantasies are saying

The fact that pretty much all porn that exists  in main (and many side) streams is fetishization of exploitation, celebration of male dominance,  the degradation of the feminine or eroticized personal trauma is really really telling. But we can’t do anything about that in terms of helping people grow into a healthier way of experiencing/expressing sexuality if we go ‘Porn is bad so let’s get rid of it! Shame shame! Criminalize!’ 

Speaking for experience, people, specifically men, can actually be trained away from harmful porn and harmful positive associations (being turned on by violence is not, actually, ideal) and to something more relative. Of course they can- recovery is human, people change and relearn things. The complication here though is that the porn industry and the broad presence of mainstream and even indie porn exist within a capitalist market. Capitalist markets are by their very nature a) exploitative and b) manipulative, focused on controlling and exacerbating the consumers needs and desires. So the porn itself, its content and marketing, will overtly to explicitly imply to its viewers/buyers that they need it, that it is good the more you consume, that its extremity and ‘extra’ness is what makes it good, and that it is an addictive indulgence.

I have a lot more I could say about this but it would have to go all into fetish, content and psychology so I also want to say this: Understand that this is not a situation in which men actually benefit. In fact it gets them to perpetuate their own trauma, their own internal oppression. Encouraging them to mistreat their bodies, to have a dysfunctional view of sexuality, to degrade the feminine (something ALL people have) via the degradation of women– this by extension harms their minds deeply. Porn as it is is simply a recycling and eroticization, and extension of society at large. Thus it of course simultaneously revels in the exploitation of the feminine and turns men into tools of sexist, racist, homophobic, transphobic oppression, coding into them the positive reinforcement of social mores so that they support and perpetuate them.

Lastly: The idea that what one fetishizes/consumes doesn’t say anything about them is FALSE and its often a subconscious expression of the mind aimed at resolution. Whether its fanfic, art or videos it’s all porn and yes, ones fantasy mind is actually a manifestation of their mind in general. The world of fantasy is meaningful, actually.

[inthedayswhenlandswerefew]

okay this is a stupid request but i forgot to source the image in the post you just reblogged from me (kensingtonmarketstall, this is my main) and i went back and corrected it, so could you reblog the updated version of the post instead?? thank you so much lol

Hahahahaha, sure, no problem! 

[la-knight]

Hey it’s the twilight chessboard anon here. About the Tomas sanders thing. Indigenous people have asked for spirit animal to not be used but instead patron is as it is not culturally offensive or at least that’s what I heard. Although as I am not a member of the indigenous people I cannot speak for them. Much love. Hope you are doing well TCA

So I realized I accidentally reblogged the corrected version of the post that said Patronus and not spirit animal, and felt like a complete doofus, lol.

[inceltrolls]

shamelessfancies being a cracker again:

this is absolutely a callout and totally ok to reblog. 

tw: anti asian racism, american imperialism, appropriation, tone policing.

alright so i gathered here today to message shane about that fucking mess of a callout post. instead i got hostility, strangers fucking around in my inbox, and literal anon hate about it despite having said NOTHING publicly about it until now. here’s how shamelessfancies (WHITE) responded to me (JAPANESE) telling him hes out of his lane:

^ the post in question

here’s an album of screenshots of the nonsense (x)

here’s a pastebin version if that’s easier for you to read (x)

not pictured but available on request: him calling me a nationalist for calling him out on this.

the tldr here tho:

i told shamelessfancies that saying that harajuku fashion ‘cant be appropriated’ due to military occupation was out of his lane to say as a white person, and disgusting overall, because the military occupation in japan was a horrifying mess of white supremacy, as was most post-war relations between america and japan. given that i was raised as a japanese-american and have personally dealt with discrimination and hate based on my ethnicity for my entire life, this topic is a touchy one for me. tumblr in general, ESPECIALLY this community, has a really huge problem with appropriating japanese culture, and as he said, eggplantrolls is NOT japanese.

the kimono incident he’s referring to can be found right here:

wherein eggplantrolls, a NONJAPANESE PERSON, spoke over a japanese person about the correct portrayal of traditional clothing-- i’ve addressed this before (x)  that it is NOT THE PLACE of nonjapanese people to alter our traditions, and as they say here, it wasn’t even an ‘intentional’ joke. 

furthermore they are using a JAPANESE NAME (rei) despite not being japanese, which many japanese folks consider HIGHLY UNCOMFORTABLE and appropriative. i know i personally do, because it’s my name too, and i spent my entire life being MOCKED for it. but anime’s so trendy now right lol.

i feel this issue is enhanced by the fact that eggplantrolls does not list their race on their profile-- speaking about japanese issues, appropriating japanese cultural norms, and using a japanese name is misleading, IMO, and gives off the likely purposeful impression that they are japanese when they are not.