#So I've started looking to my stuff with that same kind of view - I might not portray Brasil directly but it's still there bc I'm still BR

[celticbotanart]

seeing this ask on my dash and I'm reminded of your art and holy shit. have u ever done any more of those Brazilian inspired fantasy art?

Not as much as I should!! ahhhh I've been thinking about it actually, on drawing more BR monsters and such, cause we have a lot of cool ones in our roster!

On the other hand, I'm always throwing BR stuff here and there in my work, even if it's not so obvious!

My main OC Jupiter is meant to be Brazilian/Brazilian adjacent, her name is written and read almost the same way in PT-BR ("Júpiter")

There's also Persie, my other OC, who is also BR, she's black/BR-indigenous - I drew her before as a kid, wearing Karajá accessories

And my most recent OCs, from drizzle/LAND! They are like a "Japanese idol group" sort of thing but they have LOTS of BR easter eggs going on!

"drizzle land" is a direct reference/translation of "Terra da Garoa", the epithet of the city of São Paulo, where I was born; it was called like that because it used to rain/drizzle all the time here (hello global warming *laughs nervously*)

Their above album is called "Under the Silver Rain", a reference to a BR song called "Chuva de Prata" ("Silver Rain"), famous in the voice of singer Gal Costa. I have other names for drizzle/LAND's albums in their discography, and they are all references to Brazilian Music - "Sunflowers in the Color of Your Hair" (Um Girassol da Cor de Seu Cabelo, song by Clube da Esquina), "Dance of the Butterflies" ("Dança das Borboletas" by Zé Ramalho, especially his version with Sepultura lmao) and "A Forest Named Solitude" (ref to a famous BR nursery rhyme, Se Essa Rua Fosse Minha)

AME/haru (her stage name) is Brazilian-Japanese; her real full name is Íris Santana Fujioka, reflecting her BR background, Íris is kind of a rare name here, but like not super unheard of; and "Santana" is a pretty common last name here~

Her sketchbook has the sticker of a BR meme in it lmao it's the version of it drawn by BR artist WillTirando, bc I have that exact same sticker on one of my sketchbooks sdhjfgsjhdgfjhsdf

ANYWAY! Not exactly the answer you were looking for, but I hope the other refs/easter eggs were fun enough hehe

[inkskinned]

no, actually, where is the whimsy?

my ex had a best friend named larry who asked me once: what do you think comes after irony?

we were at the bar where larry worked. it was a quiet night, and he'd hopped over to sit with us on the patron side. i swirled the lemon around my limoncello martini.

earnest positivity, i said, while my ex said, art self-destructs.

i stared at my ex. he stared at me.

his argument was the cinemasins argument: look how bad media is becoming! look at the loopholes and the dumb shit!

it was roughly 2011. galaxy print was still in. at the time, i had a favorite shirt that was a wolf howling at the moon. it got ripped in half in the wash and i honestly still mourn it. i dressed like effie stonem, because everyone did. and irony was the name of the thing. men liked MLP "ironically." the internet liked the kind of crass, "anti-mainstream" vibes of things like fuck romance, touch my butt and buy me pizza. we put cats in sunglasses everywhere, which was because we only liked things in irony.

and media had the same vibe in it: anti-hero white men would be "hard to love" and then storm off the scene. nobody was just earnestly trying to save the world: they were jaded, angry, unoriginal. mad you even asked them to try to help.

my ex ends up not being wrong. cinemasins becomes super popular. a lot of people start viewing media with this lens that is the cruelest, most jaded depiction. it's wrong for your character to have unexplained powers, even if the entire movie is about how strange it is she has unexplained powers - that is still considered a "loophole." characters make thoughtless, panicked choices? loophole. characters are actually kind people, despite hardship? loophole. features a woman doing literally anything without assistance? loophole. movies become hyper-aware of scrutiny, and now irony rules the media.

which means you go to a movie, and the character has to turn to the screen and say "beats me!!" or one of the side characters has to have some kind of quip like "are you seriously telling me that you think this is normal?" because nothing can happen in earnest. like a sitcom laugh track, we now anticipate the fourth-wall break: the moment that the media acknowledges it is telling a story. the media has to apologize for itself, or else someone like my ex rolls their eyes.

but here's the thing: i wasn't wrong either.

the difference might be that i am (and always have been) so soft-hearted that any crack in the light of this world will spear me into the ground. and i was the poet in the relationship. (he thought that was the same thing as being naïve and stupid). i was making things daily. i knew how all of us artists are driven by some strange desire to evolve. he notably liked to critique art, not to create it.

so yes, i've made things that are bitter and angry and even ironic. i've made long, sharp poems with all capital letters, and i've made poems about how the silence stretches out like a song. someone wrote once that we will spend our whole lives just circling the place we grew up. i think it's more that we spend our whole lives trying to remake a home. i think it's that as we age, it becomes less exciting to build the castle on the beach - we become aware of erosion, of windforce. we realize what we really want is to come home to our dog, castle or not.

and while art in the foreground is mired in white male violence and irony, and aggression, and not taking anything seriously - i don't think that's true of all art. i think more and more artists are leaning in to the things we love. the world has changed so much. they have taken so many things from us. the only thing we have left is love. at the bottom of the moving box - all we get is the faint sense that we have to appreciate what little we've got. i can't enjoy this stuff ironically anymore: what room do i have for irony? if it makes me happy, that is an amazing thing. there are so few happy places left for me. i want to be happy because of how leaves shiver beside each other like nestling birds. i want to be happy because of the color pink, and how magenta doesn't exist. i have spent so much of this life suffering, i have earned my right to a gentle ending. if nothing matters, i get to assign meaning to the nothing. i get to create meaning. i am an artist first and foremost, which means creation is my thing.

where is the whimsy? wherever i fucking put it. because if this is my last fucking chance to do any good in this world - i want to do it earnestly. i want to write things that make you happy. that make people feel heard and seen. what comes after irony has to be positivity.

it was close to my 21st birthday. in 7 years, i would end up writing a book about this relationship, which is hopefully coming out somewhere around May 2024. i come back to this bar scene in my memories a lot. i keep thinking of how pale my ex was. the look that crossed his face. how i looked back at him. how for a moment, both of us couldn't recognize the other person. like the gulf between us was a suddenly wide and cavernous thing. like we were alien to each other. he never took my opinion seriously, and he always seemed surprised whenever his manic-pixie-dream-girl ever broke free of the plot. like in the whole time we were together, i wasn't human enough.

this knowledge: where he said nothing comes after, my only instinct was what comes after is love.

[softpine]

can i just word vomit for a min...

there was a point in late 2023 where i felt like i overstayed my welcome on simblr and i planned on just wrapping frozen pines up as quickly as possible and moving on. continuing to write when it's clear that the audience for it is dwindling felt so embarrassing that i almost didn't even want to put effort into it anymore, because i was afraid it just looked pathetic (obligatory disclaimer: no one made me feel this way, you're all so lovely, it's just the nature of seeing a community change over 7 years). writing already feels very personal to me and it's becoming increasingly harder for me to put my work out there (again, for reasons unrelated to simblr and entirely related to mental illness 🤙🏻). i know my story is so long that it deters new readers, and so sporadic that it makes old readers drop off with time. this has really been bothering me lately because i don't know what i can do to fix it. i don't think there IS anything i can do.

but. okay. don't make fun of me for saying this. dan and phil returning to youtube kinda changed my mindset? they may be pulling a fraction of the views they got in their peak, but they're happier than they've ever been and they're working on things they actually want to do, not things they think will be particularly popular. seeing that has made me realize that it is possible to keep finding joy in a community that has largely moved on without you. obviously my little blog is nowhere near the same scale, so this feels kind of silly, but i've been thinking about all the things i used to do on simblr that were never fun for me, i mainly did them because i knew they would get notes or because i felt like i had to do it. making cc, lookbooks, sim requests, reshade help (oh my god the reshade help), lot downloads, etc. they DID get notes, but i can't imagine spending my time doing any of that stuff ever again tbh.

on top of that, it makes me sad to scroll through my dash and realize that i don't recognize most of the people i see anymore. i still talk to some wonderful people here who i consider friends and that's invaluable to me (💖), but the broader community aspect is something i no longer feel a part of. and believe me, i know i'm at fault here because it's not like i'm going out of my way to talk to new people or participate in trends like i used to. i don't blame anyone except the passage of time!!

frozen pines, and simblr by extension, played such a gigantic part in my life when i needed it the most. and that's not to say that i don't still care about it, because i absolutely do, but it's a different kind of feeling. i've always promised that i would give frozen pines a satisfying conclusion rather than silently abandoning it someday, and though i do intend to keep that promise, i know it's possible that i might never get there. but i don't want to let my own insecurities get in the way of something i really enjoy doing. writing is an intrinsic piece of me that i'll never quit doing, but sharing my writing on tumblr is something that can't (and shouldn't) last forever. i know that. but i'm going to enjoy it to the fullest while we're all still here together 💞

to anyone who's still reading my silly story after all these years (especially those of you who still check in on my blog even though you're not on simblr anymore): thank you thank you thank you THANK YOUUU. you don't have to change a single thing about what you're doing. this is not me fishing for compliments or putting down an ultimatum, this is just me trying to make sense of my feelings.

but with all this being said, i've decided to quit simblr and start my own exclusive streaming service for $60 a year, i hope you'll all support me as i increase my production value 😌

(just kidding. ily. okay that's all)

[doughliciousfrosting]

What was it like for your Transfem Leo to come out to her family?

Intro:

Oh my god I love this question. I LOVE ANY QUESTION ACTUALLY. Personally I've been debating on whether Leo would come out as transfem before or after Splinter's death. I've decided before for the simple reason that I really want Splinter to have a nice moment with her as her daughter yk? I guess I'd have to start off with how Leo realized she was transfem. I'm gonna be honest prior to this ask I hadn't given it much thought so I'll try my best to figure it out here right now!! If my initial headcanon for this changes I'll make an update post on it later.

Leo realizes she's transfem:

I'd imagine the turtles themselves don't really have a strong sense of gender, since not only are they turtles, they've also spent the first 15 years of their life in social isolation in the sewers. The only idea of gender they really percieve stems from Splinter, and from their perspective I imagine they kind of just interpret Splinter as a ninja and nothing else. So I think Leo initially tries her best to mimic Splinter and his behaviors. I think Leo's view on herself completely shifted when they met April, because she was an entirely new person. I think Leo at first didn't think much of it because April was human, but then when they met Casey she didn't feel the same kind of envy YKWIM?? Like Leo took one look at April and was like "idk what that is but I wanna be that." I feel like this internal dialogue came to a climax when she went to visit the tea girl from S1. I headcanon she still visits and they have cute lil tea parties lol. So the little girl says she wants to give Leo a makeover, and at first Leo is like "haha no." And the girl is INSISTENT she's like "if you don't let me I'm going to scream and get my dad over here" and Leo caves finally, she's like "OKAY OKAY 😰😰" so the girl dresses her up with what she can (obviously the little girls clothes wouldn't fit Leo who has a huge ass shell on her back LMAO) and she tries to do Leo's makeup. Leo looks in the mirror and thinks like wow.. something abt this just clicks for me. And it kind of makes Leo realize like, this is what she had been wanting since she realized there were genders outside of her rat dad LMAO.

Coming out:

April:

With this in mind, I think that Leo wouldn't exactly have a word for what she is? And frankly I don't think she'd immediately take action either. I think she'd go to April for help, and after telling April what she felt, April would be able to explain what Leo is experiencing. So I guess unintentionally, she came out to April first LMAO 😭 and after Leo realizes she might be trans she's kind of like ermrmmm what do I do abt it now.... So I imagine April gives Leo help on where to start! I think she'd recommend Leo come out to her family members one at a time (if that's what she wanted). So Leo thinks on it for a couple of days or weeks.. (Let's be honest, months). And after finally mustering the courage, she picks a sibling to talk to.

Donnie:

I don't know if this is surprising to some people or not, but I feel like Leo would come out to Donnie first. Mainly because Donnie wouldn't yell (Raph) and would be less likely to accidentally tell other people (sorry Mikey..) Since the 2012 turtles aren't as in touch with emotions as the ROTTMNT turtles, I think that it would definitely be very awkward, but Leo would try to approach it as scientifically as possible. Which serves a double purpose of not being confusing and also being a little more devoid of emotion. I think Leo would start like "you know how gender is a social construct and etc.." And then after blabbing over her words Donnie would be like "hold on are you trying to tell me you're trans?" And Leo would be like "erm.. Yas? Unless u think it's weird because then no.." I think Donnie would know what trans means bcuz Donnie studies human society and stuff. I don't think he'd know how to respond, but I think he'd def question Leo on it out of curiousity, not malice. So after a thorough interview so Donnie can collect data LMAO Donnie kicks leo out the lab is like "cool thanks sis," and that's the end of it.

Mikey:

I think Leo would go to Mikey next because I dont think Mikey would care much BAHAHA. I imagine it's just Leo pulling up next to Mikey (whos doing something like hanging out with I.C.K. or practicing skateboarding) and I imagine the convo goes somewhat like this:

Leo: "Mikey?"

Mikey: "Yeah bro?"

Leo: "uhh I'm not ur bro, I'm ur sister it'd be cool if u could call me that from now on"

Mikey: "cool sis."

Mikey and Leo: "...."

Mikey: "do I still call u Leo orrrr?-"

Leo: "Leo is fine! I have to go train now so uhh bye?"

Mikey: "k bye Leo!"

Mikey would be so unbothered I think LMAO

Raph:

I think Raph would be last, why? Because any sort of convo with Raph regarding emotions tends to be very heavy for Leo and Raph together lmao. I think Leo would STRESS OUT, after telling Mikey she 100% has to tell Raph soon before someone else says something. I think Leo would ask to speak to Raph while Raph's in his room. After knocking and being allowed inside, Leo would sit on raphs bed completely silent and withdrawn. Raph would realize the serious atmosphere and give Leo his full attention. After a little awkward silence, raph would get over it and I think the convo would go something like:

Raph: "Whats up leo? You kinda just made urself cozy in my room. "

Leo: "I..... need to talk to u abt something"

Raph: "well yeah I figured that much"

Leo: "right...."

- more silence -

Raph: "so?? -"

Leo: "Raph. Do you hate girls"

Raph: "WHAT???"

Leo: "WAIT NO THATS NOT HOW I MEANT TO ASK THAT"

Raph: "are u asking me if I'm gay???"

Leo: "NOOO NO NO I'M ASKING ABOUT ME"

Raph: ".... Are *YOU* gay???"

Leo: " WAIT NO.."

Raph: "cuz it's fine if u are this is just a rlly weird way to say it"

Leo: "NOO NO I LIKE GIRLS, THATS NOT WHAT I'M TRYING TO TELL YOU"

Raph: "SO SPIT IT OUT ALREADY!!"

Leo: *sighs*

Leo: "okay I like girls right?.. But I dont just LIKE girls, I also like um.. BEING a girl."

Raph: "huh???"

Leo: "LIKE. YOU KNOW??"

Raph: "wait so.. youre saying that youreeeee a girl?...." (Brain processing)

Leo: "yes...."

Raph: "....so are you gonna like wear dresses and tiaras now?"

Leo: "dude. Have u ever been around a girl?? U don't see April walking around in dresses and tiaras!"

Raph: "I was just asking jeez!!"

Leo: "well don't ask dumb questions!! And to answer ur dumb question no, I will not. I'm a ninja first, I don't think doing flips and Parkour around the city in a big poofy dress is very practical.."

Raph: "righttt.... so when are you gonna tell everyone else?"

Leo: *cringes* "emm I kind of already told everybody else besides splinter? ":)"

Raph: ".........."

Raph: "WHY AM I THE LAST PERSON TO KNOW!?"

-- end scene LOL --

Splinter:

I don't exactly have dialogue for this one, but I think it would definitely be the hardest one for Leo to do. I think Leo would feel like shes ruining splinters expectations of her or something yk?? So she starts off on this big ramble about how she'll always be splinters kid and she hopes this doesn't change anything. I think she'd come off as kind of hysterical so splinter would shut her down and straight up ask what's wrong. So Leo would blurt it out and splinter would 100% be accepting. I think splinter would tell Leo that back when he first named them, he assumed them all to be boys bcuz he didn't want another daughter at the time since he was still mourning Miwa and didn't want to feel like he was replacing her. Splinter would tell Leo he's honored to have her as a daughter now, and then ask if she wants another name that suits her. I personally think Leo would decline, I think she'd want to keep it because it's the one splinter gave her and she doesn't have a problem being called leonardo lolol

Conclusion:

Firstly, this was a long read so if ur still here thank u for listening to my word vomit!! Secondly, I'd like to give a disclaimer here.. **I AM NOT A WRITER** HELPMEAHSLAH I don't know if thats clear or not. I have a vague idea on how these events would go, but I can't always articulate them correctly. I hope this was somewhat comprehensible. And lastly, to the person who sent the message thank u for the asking!! This was very fun to answer and it made me give thought to something I hadn't before!

Edit: WAIT LAST THING I FORGOT TO ADD. I AM NOT TRANS!!!! So if the way I describe this experience for Leo doesn't seem right please let me know 😭😭

[grcetxt]

Fuck it we ball fanfic time. Gn reader x lars pinfield WOO

Okay WOO lmk if this is shit or ooc or anything, but im pretty happy with how this went :D its a little rushed, might redo it in the future idk. Also i made Y/N bit too much like me (northern) so watch out for that american readers SORRYYY. anwyays enjoy!

I am smart.

No don't laugh, I am, genuinely I am.

Maybe not in the way that others deem important, maybe not in the traditional sense, but I am bright.

Pinfield doesn't think so, the prick.

Every day I come into work, all smiling and welcoming, and what do I get in return? A roll of the eyes if I'm lucky.

Dickhead.

But I don't let him get to me, I love my job. My boss is chill, I love hanging out with Lucky, and the Spenglers seem nice! It's a good gig, really.

I'm the "PR guy" for Ghost Corps. Every time they fuck up and destroy a building or whatever I'm the one who covers it up. I'm a real smooth talker, 'gift of the gab' my mum used to call it.

The team needs me, I know that, they know that. Im crucial to the whole operation, the sole reason why that whiny mayor dude hasnt shut them down.

I'm the one who goes to press interviews, who goes on the radio or on TV. I'm the social media manager, I make videos, and post tweets, fuck I've even started a Ghostbusters youtube account! I deserve a raise honestly. #justiceforY/NthePRguy

I get on with everyone at work except for Pinfield, and I genuinely dont know why.

I've tried getting him to feature in videos, or explain the science of stuff to me so I can actually seem like I know what I'm talking about- but he just brushes me off.

Gary tries to reassure me about this on a daily basis. "Its nothing to do with you Y/N" he smiled one day, putting a hand on my shoulder and guiding me away from the busy scientist. "He doesnt really talk to anyone, he gets really passionate about his work"

"I get that, but there's no need for him to be a dick to me, he's got me thinking all kinds of shit honestly!" I replied, exhasperated "I've never done nowt to him"

Suddenly, Pinfield raised his head from his work, scrunching his eyebrows together. "thats a double negative" he commented, looking at me as if I was stupid. Great, It's the most he's ever spoken to me and its a fucking insult- atleast I think it is.

"you what?" I ask, making my way over to him despite Garys protests. I fold my arms, looking as menacing as i can (which ive been told isn't very menacing at all)

"I said its a double negative, if you've never done nothing then you must've done something" before I can reply, he adds onto the end "which you haven't, by the way. I dont know why you think that. I treat you the same as anyone else"

I can't explain why his answer bothers me so much, but it does. Why does he view me in the same way he views the others? That's hardly fair. I'm always welcoming to him, I make time out of my day to include him in things. I hate to admit it, but I genuinely admire him aswell. His love for all things paranormal, the way he gets so excited and proud when he gets to explain the science of ghost-catching to someone. It's oddly endearing.

I tell him as much (excpet for the stuff about him being endearing, he doenst need his ego inflated any more than it already is)

He looks confused, I've never seen him look like that- its weird. Arrogant? sure. Annoyed? when is he not bffr. Happy? Once or twice. But confused? Weird. This is the guy with all the answers, the smart one.

He thinks for a moment, before seemingly making a desision. He stands up with a small huff of exhasperation, and walks off.

As he goes past me, he grabs my arm, more gently than I thought he was capable of. Okay, i guess im coming too. Fun, roadtrip time.

He takes me out of the lab and down the corridor, into a relatively well lit small room.

"Well this is-" before i can speak properly, he cuts me off. Told you he was a prick.

"I dont understand you Y/N" he blurts out, looking at me, as if I'm some sort of specimin hes studying in the lab.

"Well good." I joke. I dont like the serious tone he's taking. Dont like how aware I am of his gaze. HATE the fact I can feel my cheeks burning. Gross. Pinfield is a dick, we've established this. Why the fuck am I BLUSHING because he's LOOKING at me? Bit embarassing, pull it together Y/LN.

He doenst like this though. He shakes his head, pacing around.

"No Y/N you dont get it. I understand everyone, sort of anyways. I've observed them, I can predict their reactions to things. I know what they're all like- but you're... I just dont understand! You're so happy and nice all the time, but you also get angry at stupid stuff, but never really properly angry? I cant make sense of it, genuinely. You've not done anything wrong, you can't do anything wrong. Thats frustrating too. It's like you're this perfect, beautiful person, and I've been trying to see flaws but I cant-" He rambles, speaking like hes just letting out one stream of constant thoughts. He seems stressed, poor guy.

I interupt him, grabbing his arm. "Hey, c'mon Pinfi- I- Lars. C'mon Lars. I'm not worth the stress mate" I try and reassure him, but that just agitates him more.

"See! That's just it! I've been horrible to you, I admit it. But you've kept trying with me! When I hurt my hand you were the one who bandaged it and put it in a sling"

(i had found him almost blacked out from the pain on the lab floor, even the memory of it sent a shiver down my spine)

"you were the only one that looked for me after we all nearly died fighting Garraka"

("Pinfield? Pinfield!? Oh my god, there you are! Thank fuck you're alright!" Okay maybe this tiny non-crush had been going on longer than i thought... christ)

"I dont like the thought of you hurt..." i muttered, embarrased. this definitely wasnt how i was expecting this conversation to go, fuck my life I was crushing on a nerdy scientist who defintely didn't like me back.

He stopped his pacing and walked over to me until the gap between us was non existant. He slowly, hesitantly, lifted his hand until he cupped my cheek.

"I don't like the thought of you upset because of me" he muttered, his voice low.

My heart completely stopped, my breath caught in my throat, was this happening? how was this happening? i swear this guy was like my mortal enemy not even 5 minutes ago. so many revelations were bieng made today...

I decided to be bold, why not? fuck it, i've got nothing to loose at this point.

I leaned in so our noses just grazed eachother, looking at him, really genuinely looking at him. his soft blue eyes that seemed to peer into my soul. Not pierce through it, like some weird blue eyed fuckers i knew, but looked. gently, tenderly, as if he was looking at everything i ever had been, or would be. like i was something beautiful, something to be treaured.

It made me want to sob at the thought. god, how disgustingly sweet.

"make up for it then" i whispered, the tension so thick i could cut it with a knife.

I'd planned on being the one to make the forst move, but apparently, that was all that Lars needed.

He kissed me. His soft lips pressed against mine, sotfly, tenderly, tentatively.

I could feel the anxiety radiating off of him, so i quickly reciprocated. More eagerly than i owuldve liked- but oh well.

I could feel his hand resting on my waist, his thumb gently stroking my cheek. It all felt so tender, so raw, not at all how i thought it would be.

I felt like a teenager again, and couldnt resist letting out a small giggle, making Lars pull away. He looked confused again, making me laugh once again.

"What?" he aksed, a sort of amused smile on his face.

"Nothing- sorry. Nothing at all. Just thinking of how fuming mums gonna be when i tell her ive got a posho for a boyfriend"

"I am NOT posh!"

"you are a littleee"

"I AM NO- wait- boyfriend?"

"oh shit didnt mean to say that bi-"

he cut me off with another kiss, this one much more confident.

It felt like a million fireworks were going off in my head, oh I could definetly get used to this feeling. This war, sweet, happy feeling. My senses were flooded with everything Lars. His taste, his smell, his touch.

I felt like I was learning to live again.

[zayray030]

I think Ace deserves a re-do at going to an amusement park, since Playful Land got kind of ruined. He goes with the same group and it takes place at a point where they all know they like Ace (-Jack and Ortho). Anyway, here's my ideas for what happens:

Cater and Ace do the ferris wheel together. *Insert cute moment where Ace is looking out at the park and says 'it's awesome' or something like that, while Cater stares at Ace and says some form of agreement.*

Lilia and Ace do a haunted house, together. *Insert Ace acting like he's not at all scared, as he walks in and Lilia having to carry him out, bridal style.*

Trey and Ace obviously go to the food areas together. *Insert basic scene where Ace gets chocolate on his face and Trey wipes it off with his thumb and eats it, staring into Ace's eyes.*

Vil and Ace go to whatever show the theme park has or a storyline-based ride. *Insert them judging the entire thing and talking about how it could have been better, while holding hands.*

Floyd and Ace do all the games that the park has like the basketball ones, the duck ones, etc. *Insert Ace struggling to carry all the giant prizes that they win.*

Jade and Ace can do like on of those drop towers, where it slowly goes up and drops down in a second. *Insert Ace just squeezing Jade's hand tightly enough for it to break, while Jade just smiles and teases him. (I feel like Ace would love rollercoasters but is terrified of drop towers (I might just be projecting)).*

Kalim and Ace get the cutesy stuff, like the teacups or the carousel. *(I've been on a few with these carriages that fit like two people (I went alone because my best friend decided to buy more food, instead of joining me)). Anyway, they get to enjoy a calmer ride and just sit close to each other and stuff. (Fifty quid on Floyd somehow getting into the operating booth and making it go super fast, suddenly).*

Lastly, Leona and Ace get to go on a rollercoaster. *Insert Ace being slightly wobbly after they get off and using Leona to support himself.*

(Obviously, Jack and Ortho also get cute, fun moments because best friends privileges. (Why do they keep being put together? Like, they got Playful Land and they got Fairy Gala. I'm not upset about it at all, though).

Cater

"Hey cater-senpai!" Ace wrapped his hands around Cater's arms and started pulling him in the direction of the ferrid wheel. "Let's go on this ride!" He widened his eyes so that they looked like puppy dog eyes and internally let a giant whoop when Cater gave him an indulgent smile

"Why not! I can take so many pictures of the cute view!" Cater agreed and the of them linked arms and made their way to the ferris wheel.

After waiting in the line, and finally being able to ride the ferries wheel the both of them reached the peak of it.

"Ahh! Cater senpai!" Ace gasped at the view below him and how pretty the amusement Park was. "Isn't the view from here amazing!" He still hadn't turned back to his senpai, simply enjoying living in the moment

"Yeah, it is." Agreed Cater quietly, love in his eyes as he held his phone in front of him, still taking pictures of Ace, enraptured by how pretty the younger looked when he was excited.

Lilia

"I can handle this, lilia-senpai!" Pouted Ace, affronted by the suggestion that he couldn't handle some cheap haunted house.

"Awe, but I'm right!" Smirked Lilia, enjoying how pouty and flustered Ace was getting. "How about this." He said when he noticed Ace's annoyance growing "if you can make it throughout this entire house without being scared ill but you anything you want!"

"Deal!" Agreed Ace, running off to the house, not even waiting to hear the rest of Lilias deal.

Too bad, because he would have realised that if he had failed then Lilia gets to carry him bridal style for the rest of the house.

Lilia let out a sinister chuckle. Oh this will be fun.

~~~~

Ace had been succeeding at not getting scared until he had found himself face to face with what he had assumed was a blot monster.

So after that, he had been forced to allow himself to be carried by Lilia.

And no! He did not enjoy it!.....even if his arms and hands felt really really nice!!

Trey

"Wahhh! There's so many different treats!" Gasped Ace, his eyes widening as he viewed the selection of treats. In front of him where different chocolates, pastries, candies and more, all ranging from different shapes and sizes to colours and textures.

"Pick out anything you want so long as you burst your teeth." Teased Trey.

Ace merely laughed at his senpai before finally selecting a chocolate covered cherry cupcake

"This tastes amazing!" Moaned Ace at the flavour. Unfortunately, due to his haste in wanting to eat it, some of the chocolate smeared onto his cheek.

Trey, brought his hand up and gently whined the chocolate away before bringing the fingers used to clean the chocolate away to his mouth and licking it off.

"It does taste great." He agreed, smirking at the first years blushing face.

Vil

"This is so stupid." Complained Ace as he eyed the tacky decoration from the ride.

"I must agree. Normally I wouldn't be caught dead in a place like this." Vil wrapped his arm around Ace's shoulder and brought them closer together.

"I mean, why did they have to make it so confusing yet so boring!" Ace continued as he and Vil were forced to stay on tbe slow ride.

"Vleatly to appease to those poor souls who don't know any better." Snarked Vil as he turned his nose at the drawings of the characters on the walls of the ride.

"Promise me that I won't ever have to do in this again!" Pouted Ace, looking up at his boyfriend with wide eyes.

"Never again, reassured Vil, cupping Ace's cheek with one hand and lowering his face down to kiss the redhead.

Atleast one exciting thing was going on during this ride

Floyd

"Are you sure you can do this Floyd-senpai?" Ace asked again much to the eels growing annoyance

"Yes crabby! Now let me focus!"

Ace mimed zipping his mouth as he observed his boyfriend getting ready to throw the ball at tbe targets in front of him.

Ace had originally wanted to get the large flamingo plush and Floyd had volunteered to get it. Even when Ace had explained how most of these booths were scams the eel was not to be deterred. Crabby wanted the plush, so crabby was going to get the plush.

Ace had been daydreaming so much he wasn't really focusing on what was going on. It was only until his boyfriend had thrown at him a large flamingo did he realise that Floyd had one

Ace gasped in shock before throwing his arms around the eel. "Thank you, thank you, thank you!!" Ace repeated over and over again, excited by the win

Floyd, fueled by how cute his boyfriend was then continued on winning many prizes for him, simply so he can repeat that reaction again and again.

Jade

"Aren't you also scared of heights?" Snapped Ace when he saw his boyfriends teasing smile.

"Absolutely! However, this is different! Back home in the ocean, I am used to the turbulence so this does nor affect me whatsoever! However, u thought you enjoyed rollercoasters?"

"There's a difference between rollercoasters and being thrust up into the air over and over again!" Snapped Ace before immediately grasping his boyfriends hand when he felt the ride start.

It was a painful few minutes, both for Ace as a whole and for Jade's ears.

Kalim

"They're so shiny together it actually makes my eyes hurt." Muttered Vil, as he watched Kalim and Ace at the teacups

"I know what you mean!" Agreed Cater as he swiped through the pictures he had collected of Ace and Kalim. "However, whenever they do that double stare thing it creeps me out." He confessed

"Don't blame you" Muttered Leona, as he watched with fobd eyes Ace and Kalim laughing at something in the teacups.

"Jade, why is your brother at the controls?" Asked Trey, worried and confused.

"I think you know why" Replied Jade politely ad they watched the teacups gaining speed.

They all winced when they started hearing Ace scream.

Well at least they enjoyed the pretty view when they did.

Leona

"You have way too much energy" complained Leona as he watched his boyfriend excited pull his arm towards the rollercoaster.

"I've been wanting yo go on this forever!" Defended Ace as the both of them took their seats.

"Uhuh." Leona nodded unconvinced

~~~~

"Where did all that excitement from before go?" Leona Teased his wobbly'legged boyfriend

"I didn't think the ride would go like that!" Whined Ace as he used Leona's arms as cruch to stabilise himself.

Leona smirked before wrapping his arms around Ace's waist and leaning down so he could whisper into his ear. "Normally your only like this when it give it to you good."

It was so worth the loud shriek and immediate scolding from the blushing redhead

Ortho and Jack

"What ride do you think we can guilt them into letting us go on?"

"If we try hard enough wr can probably end up going on all the rides." Calculated Jack, crossing his arms and attempting not to look too excited about the prospect on going on the amusement rides.

"Leave the tough giy act back at Savanaclaw!" Ace popped his manly bubble before throwing his arms over his fellow first years shoulders.

"Now let's take advantage of the low quantity of people here and a bunch of rich upperclassmen!"

"I even took my brothers card!" Ortho showed off, showing the card to the two.

"Perfect!" Ace Giggled and the two of them couldn't help but feel giddy and excited as well

[skyloftian-nutcase]

I have two things to share today!

First, I got a new book!

I am loving all the concept art. Also found out there's a manga in the back I've heard about, but had never actually read before.

Second, something Skyward Sword related I've been thinking about today that just so happend to tie into that.

(Yes, I'm still working my way through the game but I've seen pieces of the ending)

In a lot of LU stuff with Sky and Demise's curse, I see it interpreted that Demise was the one to cause the cycle of reincarnation for the three bearers of the triforce. I have a different interpretation on that though.

See, Demise only specifies his own reincarnation. "An incarnation of my hatred shall ever follow your kind. (Blood of the Goddess, Spirit of the Hero)" That suggests that Link and Zelda were already bound to reincarnation, and Demise simply added himself into that cycle.

Then I found the manga in Hyrule Historia, and that pretty much confirmed what I had been thinking. Demise's curse didn't cause the reincarnation cycle, it simply added himself into it.

Would love to hear your thoughts on that, if you have any!

Oooo Hyrule Historia, that’s fun! :D I’m glad you’re enjoying it :)

That’s an interesting take on it! Haha Demise just shoved himself into the cycle too, like “I WANNA PLAY TOO >:( ” 😂 I can see that honestly

I mean, if you really do wanna hear my thoughts, I guess I’ll share 😅 I don’t think my take on it is a very popular one though. 😅

First of all, I disregard all mangas as they’re not canon. Like I can enjoy aspects of them and whatnot, but I’ve never read one and don’t intend to.

Secondly, the entire idea of First’s existence bothers me lol, sorry. Skyward Sword heavily implies that Hylia fought her own war against Demise and didn’t need some man to help her, and I liked that. Like LET HER FIGHT HER OWN DANG BATTLES BLAST IT. STOP WITH THE CONSTANTLY NEEDING A HERO TO SAVE HER AND FALLING IN LOVE AND—anyway that’s just a pet peeve of mine. Also, his existence would imply that Sky’s just another hero in the cycle rather than the start of it, and I liked the idea that Skyward Sword was the start of the legend, not just another chapter - and the game even heavily implies that it’s the start. It has fun callbacks, like Zelda giving Link a sailcloth based on the tradition that Hylia gave her chosen hero that—and wouldn’t you look at that, she’s Hylia and Link travels into the past to fight Demise and is called Hylia’s chosen hero - he made his own legend!! I adore that!! First’s existence and story completely derails all that, so I’ll just stick to canon. ☺️ Many people like him and they’re more than welcome to enjoy him, I just disregard him haha

As for the reincarnation, I guess it varies based on what people think reincarnation is. The way I’ve always viewed it is that if someone reincarnated their soul hops from life to life. So it’s the same person living different lives. But LoZ contradicts this when Hero’s Shade appears in Twilight Princess - that’s two separate souls, but they’re both the Hero. So it isn’t exactly reincarnation, then. And Zelda only reincarnated once - when Hylia became Skyward Sword Zelda. The rest of them, at least according to Demise’s curse, are her descendants. So neither Link nor Zelda are the same person traveling across time and destiny - instead, Zelda is bound to her bloodline, while Link is chosen by the goddesses when a hero is needed because he has the courage to do it. The Spirit of the Hero, as I interpret it, is Skyward Sword Link, who is bound by the curse, who acts as a spiritual companion and aide to the current Hero, though neither of them is really able to communicate, who imparts connections to his destiny (why Link gravitates to Zelda, why he might feel strange connections to items or places, though the games never really show that’s the case), who protects them when they cannot protect themselves (why Twilight turns to a wolf instead of being lost in the twilight realm, why the Triforce randomly splits in Hyrule Warriors and protects Wars from dying against Volga when it’s never shown to be a weapon or shield before).

But that’s just my take on it, Nintendo leaves it very vague so we can all play with our own ideas! :)

[quasitsqueeries]

The Emperor wasn't 12 feet tall

I see this meme a lot in my Instagram feed and it really grinds my gears:

Not because it seems to be trying to shame a fictional antagonist for being "wrong" (although that really doesn't help), but because whoever made it seems to have missed that depictions of the Emperor as superhuman are meant to be Imperial Propaganda.

Now, I realise I'm going to be fighting an uphill battle here because there seem to be people working for Games Workshop and producing their media who also missed that memo, and for a while now the studio has started producing actual depictions of the Emperor, and some of those depections show him as 12 feet tall and immortal. This might be controversial but I think what this shows is that Games Workshop don't understand Games Workshop's source material.

Here's a picture of the Emperor from the original Rogue Trader rulebook.

Even this is obviously meant to be a propaganda image, but here he looks like just a regular guy in armour, he's about the same size as the people around him. Not a superhuman, just a guy with an excess of hubris.

There's this literary construct called the unreliable narrator. When I studied literature we were given this short story to read called Bartleby the Scrivener. It's told from the point of view of an employer about a clerk who was apparently really difficult to manage. The subtext is that the narrator is trying to manipulate the reader to make themself look good.

For a long time, that's what Warhammer 40,000 did, the Imperium was made out to be an unreliable narrator. Stories about the Imperium's "glorious past" were told through the haze of ten thousand years of unending war, by an ecclesiastical class with a vested interest in keeping Imperial citizens committed to feeding the war machine. To the Imperium, the Great Crusade and the Horus Heresy serve the function of myths, more than history. I've gone on before about how important heroic figures like Siegfried and Perseus and Prometheus were to the Nazis. The Imperium, being a fictional state that draws on the aesthetics and ideology of Fascism, uses the figures of the Emperor and Primarchs the same way.

Basically what I'm saying is that when Imperial sources state that these people were twelve feet tall and immortal and could, um, turn a giant ork into a lightbulb on a whim, it's not because they had these powers, but because they've been ascribed these powers by their priesthood, who have total control over the flow of information in this setting.

And I get that this is hard, because most people don't get taught this stuff, and often people are probably looking for escapism from their fiction and why would the book I'm reading lie to me? But I think it really makes the setting more interesting if you look at it this way.

Also, I realise that since 2006 there have been books around that describe the Emperor, and they do show him as superhuman, and I think those depictions are based on the writers misunderstanding the material they're working from. I guess Tolkien wrote the existence of The Hobbit into Middle Earth as the Red Book of Westmarch so I can tell myself that the Horus Heresy novels are meant to be in-universe Imperial propaganda.

ADDENDUM: I need to add this because I've been reading about Perpetuals, which is apparently what the Emperor is since the Horus Heresy series was published. Apparently these individuals are human mutants that are both immortal and invincible. I remember Mechanicum heavily implying that the Emperor and St. George are the same person. Here's the problem with that. There are two themes that I think are really important in Warhammer 40,000. One is the Emperor's hubris, the idea was that he was playing god, genetically engineering monstrosities in the form of the primarchs. In the Greek tragic mould, it's this hubris that leads to his downfall. This kind of loses its sting if he's just trying to recreate what what he already is.

The other theme is the Imperium's superstition. This one is really the core of 40K. The Imperium has taken the corpse of a man who tried to rule the galaxy, told themselves he's not dead, plugged the corpse into a machine that "regenerates" him, and founded an intolerant, violent and expansionist religion around this husk. This theme changes significantly if the Emperor actually was as powerful as the Ecclesiarchy makes him out to be, and actually isn't dead, and has somehow been regenerating for the last 10,000 years. There's a question here about what would make an entity worthy of worship, or being called a god, and I probably shouldn't get into it but this is my blog so I'm going to. It seems like there's an assumption among some writers that if something can be rationally explained then it's not a god, because gods ipso facto don't exist. They've incorporated nonexistence into their definition of gods. This is where you get the idea that the Chaos gods aren't gods, because the setting explains their existince "rationally" with its internal logic (nevermind that there's nothing rational about the warp). If there were gods in a rational sense, then our model of the universe would have to change to accomodate them. I think the upshot of this is basically that if what the Horus Heresy novels claim about the Emperor is true, then the Ecclesiarchy are right and he is a god within the logic of the setting. That doesn't justify the genocide and expansionism, but maybe it does justify the worship, and that's something that I think takes away from the setting.

[maniculum]

Bestiaryposting Results: Glugreng

My apologies for posting a bit later than usual -- I was on the road most of the day for eclipse-viewing purposes, so it's already nighttime as I start this. (Update: and also Firefox crashed multiple time over the process of writing this post.) Anyway, we've got another vaguely-described bird, but one that I think has some interesting details.

If anyone isn't sure what this post is about, you can find an explanation at https://maniculum.tumblr.com/bestiaryposting. If you want to see the entry from which the artists are working, here is the link:

And in general you can see all of this stuff as it posts at the tag "maniculum bestiaryposting", assuming Tumblr's search function wants to show it to you.

Art below the cut:

@silverhart-makes-art (link to post here) continues to post very impressively-rendered beasts. Here, since the only physical detail we have about this bird is "white", they've decided to take inspiration from the fact that it is kept by royal households. Medieval nobility did keep birds, usually for falconry, so here we have a raptorial design. And look, it's caught a fish! Good work, bird.

@pomrania (link to post here) observes that cataract-curing excrement is probably pretty valuable and worth collecting, so here we see a bowl with a dollar sign placed under the bird's perch. Honestly my favorite part of this is the very intense, extremely-close-up eye contact depicted in the middle there. Something about the bird needing (or just choosing) to get really up in one's personal space in order to do the curative "looking in the face" thing is charming to me.

@kaerran (link to post here) also went in the direction of "what kind of bird would be hanging around royal households" and landed on peafowl. There are a couple really clever design decisions here: it intentionally has very visible eyes so it's extra clear whether it's looking at you, and the "burning off the sickness" thing is represented as the feathers from its train being shed. (And thank you for including alt text.)

@sweetlyfez (link to post here) went in an interesting artistic direction, I think: since the entry was very clear that the Glugreng is "white all over", she rendered it entirely in thick white paint -- I think the texture is quite cool. Also I love the crown-collar-thing; SweetlyFez notes that she's only seen that in heraldry, and I think that is the only place it really appears. (I've seen at least one piece of marginalia that had an animal wearing a crown as a collar, but I'm like 80% sure that's someone's heraldic device being put in the illustrations for whatever reason.)

@cheapsweets (link to post here) jumpscared me a bit with this one. More very intense eye contact, but this time directed at the viewer. They also made the connection royalty -> falconry, and drew a bird of prey. For more details on their thought process, please see the linked post. I like the very intense eye contact conceptually, but also I keep scrolling down so it stops Looking At Me.

@coolest-capybara (link to post here) has again drawn something that makes me smile -- the art style is of course amazing, and the straight-on view of the pelican just looks so charmingly goofy. They note that pelicans have "so much convenient space to store all your pesky illnesses," and now all I can think of is a medical version of that "Put Baby In Pelican Mouth" post. (And thank you for including alt text.)

@strixcattus (link to post here) was inspired by the bestiary's decision to state that the bird is "white all over" and "has no black parts" in the same sentence. Weirdly specific, right? So they decided to explore in their post why this repetition might be necessary -- regular readers of these posts may recall that Strixcattus writes modern-naturalist-style reinterpretations of these animals. I'm not going to tell you what they came up with. Go read the linked post. Do it.

In fact, you should read all the linked posts, and consider following any or all of the wonderful artists who choose to participate in this weird little exercise.

All right, Aberdeen Bestiary time. A couple people said in their entry that they think they know what this one is, and I am excited to learn what their guesses were.

Now, since this artist tends to draw raptors in a very standardized way -- this just looks like their eagle but all white -- it's probably not possible to recognize the bird in question from this illustration. However, of course, there's a much larger problem in the way of recognizing this species:

This entry is the caladrius, which does not exist. It's another one of those mythical critters that didn't really catch on in the modern era -- or a strange misunderstanding of a real animal, like the salamander was, but honestly those aren't so much distinct categories as far as I'm concerned.

On the other hand, if you have similar Internet Experiences to me, you might have recognized it just now -- as soon as I saw the Aberdeen Bestiary illustration, I had a moment of "hang on, is that..."

The above is from the 2015 article "Two Medieval Monks Invent Bestiaries" on The Toast. You can check it out here:

(The author is now Daniel M. Lavery, but the byline on the linked article still says "Daniel Mallory Ortberg", probably because The Toast has been defunct for several years so nobody is updating these things.)

Anyway, the "bedbird" is indeed the caladrius. I was able to find the image from the Two Monks article by looking through the gallery attached to the "caladrius" entry on bestiary.ca (which has 94 examples, so it's clearly reasonably widespread). The bedbird comes from British Library MS Sloane 3544. And... I'm going to leave it up to y'all whether you think this should end with the "i've connected the two dots" gif or that quotation about the mystery no one thought was a mystery. It's late, goodnight.

[reddtea]

I've revisited some of my old batman art seeing if I can improve both on style and design. I had this idea that Ivy should start off as a politician like Dent and I really liked the idea of her and Harvey being together, with eachother being a big part of the other's spiral into villainy. /// So here's the thought...Pam and Harvey are politicians who both want to see Gotham prosper though have different ideas of what that looks like, Pam thinks that by building more parks and public gardens they could start to pave a better future by making the city nicer for children as well as wanting to put out policies to control pollution. Harvey's approach to improving the city is by funding better education and social services to better empower the poor and put laws in place to protect workers. Both looking to tax the rich to fund these projects which get's the court of owl's attention. Both of them pay dearly for their views as Harvey gets kidnapped and tortured (half of his face is cut off) and he's given an options of either running away with Pam or doing exactly what they say if he doesn't want Pam hurt. Harvey tries to convince Pam to leave Gotham to drop it all and get away when they can. Pamela refuses after everything they've worked for and with Bruce backing them they're going to make Gotham a better place. Harvey tells her what really happened to him and why half his face is gone and why he thinks Gotham is a lost cause, hoping that it might be able to change her mind. Though the owls are watching and they take out Pamela for being too stubborn to leave and for knowing about them. When they take Pamela they murder her and dispose of her body in a swamp. Harvey knows Pam is missing though he's not sure if she dead or held hostage by the owls, all he knows is that it was likely his fault that she's gone. His paranoia of owls gets worse in her absence, without any way of communicating with them he has no way of knowing if he's doing right by them or if Pam can be saved if she's being kept as a bargaining chip. Harvey hates being made a pawn of the owls he wants to quit the political race but Bruce tells him he needs to keep at it, though he's not sure if he could trust Bruce or anyone for the possibility they might be an owl. So he choses to lock up a government building with a bunch of people trapped inside and set it on fire to eliminate any owls that might be there and to maybe see Pam again if she's already dead. When Pam is killed she is resurrected by swamp thing from there she's left confused, months (maybe little more than a year? idk) have passed since she was killed. She returns lost and confused and she goes to Bruce to figure out what happened since she was gone and Bruce turns her away at the door, so she's left to piece it all together herself.

She's heartbroken at the news that Harvey died in a fire and she makes it her goal to wipe out the people who hurt Harvey and killed her. She resents Bruce for being a bad friend and not looking out for Harvey when he needed him, believing that if he'd turn his back on her he must've done the same to Harvey while she was gone. /// I'm a big fan of the idea of villains starting off as normal to good people and then bad circumstances changing them. I don't like redeemable at all but resentful? vengeful? good stuff. I always felt like Harvey is kind of aimless after the transformation like the multipersonality bpd mr hyde takes over and that's it and Ivy just never had a legit evil motive other than "nature's great and men are trash" and her being paired with Quinn doesn't really do much for her character than making her "Harley's cute supportive not abusive lesbian girlfriend" Which no hate on gays but Ivy is really just an accessory to Harley's "men are trash I date girls now".

[deeply-unserious-fellow]

I've made. S o m a n y. Attempts at analyzing Vox's relationship with the fuckin Angel & Val bullshit. So many. But they always come out sounding like fucking word salad. So instead, I'm going to try making a bulleted list of all the different pieces of evidence I've gathered, and then simply not draw a conclusion because I don't fUCKING KNOW-

Vox does not like Angel

Vox seemed excited at the prospect of Angel quitting(despite knowing he physically can't?)

Like his eyes *literally* lit up he was so excited(the same way Velvette's did when she was yelling about wrist ruffles & Carmilla's did during Whatever It Takes)

Saying "Angel quit?" could've been him joking, but between his expression, tone of voice, and the context surrounding the line, I don't think that's the case?

That line is weird as fuck man...

There are two reasons Vox doesn't like Angel: Val constantly freaking the fuck out over minor Angel-related things & he's probably jelous of how much space Angel takes up in Val's brain

Vox does not seem to care for Angel's well being, probably viewing him as nothing more then a cash cow

I say "seem" and "probably" because it IS significantly more likely that Vox doesn't give a shit, but we haven't seen Angel & Vox interacting one on one yet, so there's still a chance I could be wrong and Vox does care in some capacity? Again significantly more likely he doesn't I'm just trying to cover all my bases here

Which speaking of- we don't know how Angel feels about Vox at all? Like aside from Vox's cameo in Poison(Angel's pseudo-dream sequence), we don't actually get Angel's perspective on Vox. Ever.

Like I'd assume Angel doesn't LIKE him just by virtue of his relationship with Val but there's no real way to tell?

Vox(seemingly) hasn't done anything to deal with Val's weird issues with Angel

He probably can't get rid of Angel entirely because of the loss in profits

But he also hasn't attempted to limit Angel's ability to leave the studio or anything, and he hasn't done anything to Val that might discourage his irrational behavior

He's actually pretty hands off when it comes to all of the other Vees' shit just like. In general. The only time we see him interfering is when Val is destroying Velvette's stuff

Vox doesn't seem to give a shit that Angel moved out of the studio

Like he isn't even happy about it just true neutrality-

He only STARTS caring when Val starts threatening to shoot up a building about it(read: when his image is now on the line)

The look Vox gives Angel in Poison just kind of proves he. Doesn't like Angel. And is kissing(but appearently not dating???) Valentino.

The fact that the blood drips, which are usually on the left side of his mouth, are coming off of the right instead during this scene FEELS important but that's another topic entirely so I won't go into it here

Also, as stated before, Poison is a pseudo-dream sequence, so this scene might be less about how Vox views Angel and more about how Angel views Vox

But if that's the case, I cannot for the life of me decipher what the fuck Angel feels about Vox from this one shot so it's pretty much useless for now 💀💀💀

Alright that's it. I tried my best to be impartial and just write down what we know about the characters while also pointing out any gaps in information we might have, but if you think I'm being too generous or too harsh with any of these bullets and feel the need to tell me, PLEASE be nice about it and also use tone indicators. I don't wanna sound like a whiney baby or whatever the fuck but I genuinely cannot handle feeling like a stranger is yelling at me rn and tone indicators help me a LOT in that department.

[hrodvitnon]

Just got out of my first viewing (spoilers so tag accordingly)

Yeah that was the most ridiculous shit ive ever seen and i had a blast lmfao.

--

To get the few negatives out of the way: Syclla and Tiamat got COOKED. That's crazy. Especially Tiamat. I had no idea she was in the movie and like choked on popcorn when they said her name. First onscreen appearance and she dies in like 3 seconds... sucks to be her. But honestly... this is probably one of those moments where Fan Content messes with the perception of a canon thing, at least for me. It hurts a lot more because of the emotional attachment from stuff like Ozymandias's story, Shamhat, and other adjacent stuff. If I had never seen those and watched her die I'd probably think "oh she had a cool design, but whatever". But yeah, my only serious complaint is her being shafted and I don't even really think I can call it objective because there was definitely an attachment there.

Ok besides that this might be my new personal favorite Monsterverse. Could be recency bias but I don't think so. Every human is at the very least entertaining. Everything Trapper did in this movie made me crack up, hearing Bernie say the words 'Discord chat' and 'Ghidorahstan64' (i stg this was a callout of some kind) onscreen gave me terminal whiplash, and although Jia and Andrew's story was sorta surface level, it was still endearing. I'd rather have a good human storyline, sure, but if we can't have that I'll settle for entertaining.

Here I thought Suko was gonna be an annoying marketing ploy to sell toys... I physically snorted in the theatre when Kong slammed him into that one ape. MVP of the film lmao. Mothra was... also there. Yeah, it really shows that she was a last minute addition. But DAMN she sent Godzilla ROLLING with a single attack. Speaking of, I don't think the Tia-Zilla form was as underutilized as I've heard people say it was. Especially that new Atomic Breath effect. Holy eargasm.

Oh man though, Shimo and Skar are fantastic. Skar hits the same beat as like a Celestial Dragon or Vladimir Harkonnen with way more grace than I would've expected from a big monkey. They go shockingly dark with his treatment of the ape-slaves and Shimo... especially with that female ape insinuation.

Holy shit poor Shimo, man. I honestly thought the Skar controlling her aspect would be kinda downplayed and just regular mind control, not genuine torture of some kind. I love that they let her have characterization by resisting him at every chance she gets, and that the pain control isn't always active (i'm assuming that's the insinuation of keeping her all chained and behind magma, it depowers and restrains her when Skar's not actively using her), further insinuating she gets merciful breaks from hellish enslavement only to be yanked back into it whenever Skar needs something turned into a popsicle. I think my favorite moment in the film is right after Suko shatters the crystal and the light blue luminescence fades to reveal her actual eyes for the first time. Eyes are used throughout the film to show subtle humanizing features, like Godzilla falling asleep in Rome, Kong's wide eyes when he sees his kin, and shock when Shimo realizes she's free. Having her eyes glowing the whole film makes her seem way more monstrous and inhuman, so when that suddenly goes away she starts getting framed as just an animal. Also her eyes are pretty. Also, I lied, that wasn't my favorite part of the film. My favorite part was Kong giving her chin scratches and that cute half-hug. This needs to be normalized. He needs to hug Godzilla next film. I will pay someone a king's ransom for this to happen. Final little detail, I like that Kong doesn't do his final roar from on her back but standing next to her, on the same level as all the other apes. He doesn't look to elevate himself over her or everyone else like Skar did, which is a great touch.

Also also also: Think it's time for a Doug solo film where he tries to steal all the Titans' food. Make it happen Legendary.

Much agreement here! I'd love for a solo Mothra MonsterVerse film to really capitalize on her lore and give her stuff to do (without dying at the end preferably); maybe establish some connection between the Chen family and Jia. Also, I need a little shot of Mothra going to visit Godzilla while he's sleeping in the Colosseum and just cuddle up to the big lug.

Andrews and Jia were a welcome breath of fresh air after GvK reversed Mark's characterization and Madison became... that. There was still some slight tension between Jia not feeling like she belongs and Andrews wanting to do right by her, even if it means possibly giving her up, only for Jia to go "you're my mom, you're my home, stop being dramatic". You love to see it.

Adding to the Doug solo film idea... Shimo adopts him because he's cute and she thinks his shenanigans are hilarious. Let us have fun wholesome times!

[emotionallychargedtowel]

Chu chu chu*; or, intimate scene tips from the Kiseki cast

(Note: See reblogs for another pairing that used the same strategy and for super helpful info from @nibupei; also this post has been edited to replace the screenshots with slightly better versions)

I don't usually watch a lot of BL-related stuff on youtube, but I've still got a bad case of Kiseki brainrot and there's a bonkers amount of Kiseki-related material on there and a remarkably high proportion of it has English subs, so I've been perusing it. I saw something I found really interesting in one interview that I thought was worth sharing here, particularly since I'm sure there are others who, like me in most instances, don't typically look for BL info there. According to the title, the interview is related to a photobook, I assume one made for/about the series. You can find it here if you want to check it out for yourself. The part I talk about below starts around the 7:44 mark. A big thank you to the fan who subbed this for the rest of us, who as you can see from the watermark goes by abbyloveslove.

The thing that caught my attention was about Nat Chen's and Louis Chiang's process for intimate scenes. I'm always a total nerd about this kind of information, especially with regard to Taiwanese BL folks since people in the industry there have developed such a strong tradition of effective practices. The gist is this: prior to filming scenes involving kissing, you have to do blocking, check lighting, and so forth, so you have to get in position as if you were kissing your scene partner. But it's not actually necessary to kiss them and, in Louis's view at least, it would be counterproductive to do it at that point. So Louis and Nat came up with a substitute action. They'd do sort of mimed smooches, but with their own special a Taiwan-specific sound effect.

It's a bit hard to tell who's speaking here, what with the image quality. So I'll specify who's talking when. Speaking of which, these are just screenshots of a rather blurry video so apologies for any and all aesthetic shortcomings.

So, first Nat's speaking...

then Louis...

(he does a little shimmy here that's hard to capture in a still image)

and Nat again.

And then Louis sums it up.

After watching this I noticed that in one of the behind-the-scenes bits that are strung together into one long thing on Viki, you can actually hear someone going "chuchuchu." It's hard to tell who's speaking because of the angle and some staff wearing masks but I think it might actually be their director in that instance.

So there's your intimate scene nerd moment for today. Chu chu chu.

*Per @nibupei in the reblogs, this should actually be Romanized as "jiū." I recommend checking out their response in full. Just putting this here because some folks are still interacting with the original post who might find their notes illuminating.

[bomberqueen17]

sewing and dyeing

I have managed to achieve some sewing!

I finished the silk dress from the yardage I'd dyed around Christmas, even hemmed it and everything, I feel very accomplished. So that's done.

And the linen bias-cut slip dress I made around Christmas, which I never wore anywhere because it was white-- I've managed to dye it, and it came out much more interesting than I'd expected! So, pictures and discussion behind the cut.

[image description: A mirror shot of me, a fat blonde white woman, in a grungy basement, wearing a clingy white knit tank top with a drapey cowl neck]

Firstly, I made this tank top (I bound the armholes, it looks nicer that way)-- started with the Cashmerette Wexford top, then used this tutorial from Threads Magazine to hack a cowl neck onto it. Ages ago I'd had a cowl neck sleevless top that I loved, and wore holes in, and couldn't find one again. So I used a yard or so of very slinky knit, probably some kind of rayon blend from Dharma would be my guess.

I tried it on, and immediately threw it in the soda ash solution to dye it because I don't need a white top like this, it'll get shit dripped on the tit immediately so I might as well give it a busy dye job. I will make more of this top in other fabrics, but 1) make the cowl just a bit longer so it drapes farther, and 2) make the self facing deeper, I feel like this one is going to flip out all the damn time.

I also think I'll hem this shorter, but I haven't hemmed it at all so far so it remains to be seen.

Secondly, I have nearly finished this button-up camp-collar shirt from the Cashmerette Club, in a natural linen that I have so many yards of from an old project I never did.

[image description: me in the same grubby cluttered mirror view of my basement, wearing a gray shirt, slightly wrinkly, with unfinished sleeve edges and I'm holding it shut because there aren't buttons on it yet. There are two breast pockets and one is significantly higher than the other.] So the breast pockets are optional and uh I am definitely only going to put one or zero on the next one of these I make because I checked and rechecked and rechecked and this is literally the best I could do at making them even??? ugh also they don't sit right because there's a bust dart and one of them went on ok and somehow the other one is overlapping the bust dart slightly, which means it's Not On Straight. Just.... not optimal. I get why there are pockets but I also super get why they're optional. No thanks!

I hate the interfacing too, it was awful to work with and feels like paper. But once I've finished and washed this I hope it will settle down. (In the past I've used shitty salvaged interfacing for things I was making, and used spray adhesive and sewed the edges where possible, and it worked fine. This, I splashed out and got the stuff in the package that's ostensibly meant to fuse on with your iron and guess what doesn't fucking work? that. So it's been just a nightmare and I'm not buying the nice stuff again because it fucking sucks. I get that you don't want to not interface the collar of a shirt like this, and the button band would be awful un-interfaced, but christ, I'm using the flimsy salvaged shit I cut out of an old bedskirt next time.

The directions on this pattern are... well as long as you know what they mean it's great. But there's a video sewalong, and that helped a ton. This is a very complicated pattern and yet somehow none of it has been beyond me, even though i sewed one bust dart inside-out first thing, and immediately also sewed the yoke to the back inside-out, and then right away also assembled the collar inside-out because I was so distracted by how much the interfacing did not actually fucking do what it was supposed to (yes i followed the package directions, no it did not fucking fuse). I got a lot of seam-ripping done, is all. (It really is a cool pattern, and if you manage to get through the directions, which are extremely specific, you wind up with a fully-finished interior with almost all the seam allowances beautifully enclosed-- it's cool as fuck.)

I have fabric already set aside to make at least two more of these. IDK how much I'll wear them but I love them. (I *have* coveted a shirt-dress for years, with one Almost Okay from Torrid that I wore a lot but have recently realized looks awful on me actually, so I will be making it a dress too, no fear.)

But then! Also: Dyeing!

So I looked on Dharma Trading for their tutorials and was not disappointed. I don't want to do traditional tie-dye, but I want the effect I got at Christmas with the silk scarves that I space-dyed. I don't have to steam-set fiber-reactive dyes, so that's a plus.

I saw this tutorial on dharma for ombre dyeing and I'm super gonna try that next, but haven't yet.

Tie Dye Tutorial on Dharma Trading: this is the one I used as a starting point.

So I dissolved a cup of soda ash in a gallon of warm water, put that in a plastic bucket, and soaked my fabric for 5-15 minutes, and then I decided to do a kind of gravity-based thing with squirt bottles and a spray bottle. I hung a clothes hanger from the gas pipe in the ceiling, put a big plastic mortar tub underneath, put a smock on myself, mixed up my dyes (and urea and in some cases salt, as directed by dharma the all-knowing-- half-cup batch size for the squirt bottles, and quarter-cup sizes for the spray bottle), and got to work one garment at a time.

I put some pleats into the garments and held them with clothes pins. Then I sort of "drew" along the pleats, picking a color to be the tops, and a second color to squirt into the valleys. I filled in with the spray bottle to highlight the pleats more, since that would hit the outer parts of the folds but the interior would be shadowed and stay white; then I could go draw in those white areas with my shadow color.

Everything then would drip down toward the hem of the garment, though there wasn't really that much movement; if I wanted a drip to cascade, i had to draw it down there myself with the squeeze bottle.

[image description: two squeeze bottles with narrow nozzles, and a spray bottle of more rigid plastic with a pump-dispenser top, sitting on top of a piece of stained scrap fabric on an old washing machine with tubs of dye powder sitting in the background.]

I also did a shirt where I spread it out on a rack in a pan at an angle, and sprinkled a mixture of dye powder and salt on it. Then I went and used the squirt bottles too, but it was a fun technique and I'd use it again.

[image description: a garment lies in loose folds, speckled with dark blue-green spots, and at the top decorated in splotches of blue and green.]

I wrapped the garments in plastic, and put the smaller ones into plastic bags, and then hung them outside in the sun so that a) the dye would flow downward rather than backstaining the areas I'd meant to leave white, and b) the sun would warm them so the dye could cure, and c) the plastic would keep them wet because the dye only chemically sets while damp.

Let them cure for 24h, and then today I brought them in and rinsed them for about a thousand years, and then washed them and gave them a soak and rinse in dye-fixative, then dried them on the line.

Here is the linen bias-cut slipdress I made at Christmas time, dry and ironed.

[image description: a dress on a hanger, with my hand pulling out one side of the skirt: the straps and neckline are bright emerald green, and then the body is streaked vertially with varying shades of green, teal, and dark blue, with a little purple at the hemline. The colors are light and a little muted, and some white shows between them in a few places.]

The linen took the dye lightest, the cotton a little darker, and a small offcut of rayon I'd had sitting around took the dye darkest of all.

here's everything still damp on the line:

[image description: under a blue sky, a metal clothes-tree-style line on the left has several small items in shades of green and turquoise, and then a line crosses the screen from right to left through the middle, with several items hanging on it. In the background are two cotton dresses, one mostly teal and the other green at the top with a white and purple skirt, then the linen dress from above in the middle, and closest to the camera is a mostly-quite sheet of fabric with geometric lines in green, blue, and purple.]

The foreground fabric is the rayon, and I sandwiched it between two blocks of wood with rubber bands holding it in place, and just saturated the edges with dyes. I'm extremely into it, it came out beautifully. i have more rayon so I am going to make something from that to ombre-dye, for sure.

I have severely overdone my physical activity the last two days though; I lay awake for a couple of hours the other night with my sciatic nerve just burning, and I expect the same tonight. We'll see though, maybe I'lll be pleasantly surprised, or just lucky.

Oh yah I'm trialing Ritalin, but just like the other medications, it's such a low dose and it's not extended-release. I looked up how to take it and the directions assumed I'd been given two or three pills to get through a day. Not so! So I have about four medicated hours in a day, and keep experimenting with where to put them. I don't notice it wearing off the way I did with Adderall though, so there's that at least.

Maybe by the end of May I can try a full dose of something, and see if that helps. IDK, it seems like it might.

[aihoshiino]

Professor of Hoshino-Ailogy, might you have some tips on how to write the dear Miss genius idol herself? 🙇‍♀️ Been trying to dabble into writing stuff but her character's got me stuck. Been loving your OnK thoughts so I thought to try shooting an ask if that's ok!

Anon I know this is the joke but I am so genuinely moved at the idea of being considered a Professor Of Hoshino Aiology............ It really is all I was put on this earth to do. I immediately changed my discord name to this LMFAO

So! My recommendation would be to go back to OnK and specifically review episode 1 of the anime, as its take on Ai does a lot to flesh her out in comparison to the equivalent manga chapters. You should also check out Akane's little Pepe Silvia bit on episode 7, both so you can pick up on all that info and so you can point at the screen and go "Wow! She is Literally Me right now." (Anyone else? Just me? OK...)

And while everyone on earth has undoubtedly seen it already, take some time to chew on the Idol MV's imagery - the song as a whole and the MV specifically is basically just Ai's whole arc condensed and abstracted so it's good to look at how Ai is portrayed here and really think about why those choices were made.

After that, read Viewpoint B and 45510 side by side and do your best to put them in conversation with each other. What do these opposing views on Ai have to say about her and her motivations? That kind of thing. I also tentatively recommended reading the first chapter of Spica since it's some of our lengthiest unbroken Ai POV content, with the caveat that Spica doesn't always match up with how the main series talks about and portrays the same events so uh. Feel free to cherrypick what you take from it LOL

The Da Vinci interview and Artificial Girl are also both important in terms of getting a look at "Ai of B-Komachi" and seeing how she operates strictly in work mode. The Da Vinci interview also has some important notes about her history and relationships to certain other characters, so I think it's good to chew on in general!

From there, the most important manga chapters to review imo are 131, 136 and 137. 131 expands on Ai's history with her mom & has information about the abuse she put up with. As I've said before, her formative experiences with abuse and neglect and Ayumi's hands basically run through her entire soul like fault lines, so it's important to get a good understanding of that to start unfucking how it affects her behaviour. 

136 and 137 are also really important in understanding the emotional narrative of Ai's life, even if the literal events they portray obviously need to be taken with a grain of salt. We generally only see Ai of B-Komachi as a beguiling presence but 136 gives us a good look at just how fucking frustrating she would be to try and have a human relationship with and how this mask and Ai's general avoidance and discomfort with serious conversations contributes to her social isolation.

137 is, in my totally biased opinion, one of the best chapters in the entire series and so, so important for understanding Ai. It lays out in plain terms the most important foundational keystone of her entire character: that she was a normal, lonely girl struggling to connect and to find happiness and her desperation was taken advantage of so people could turn her into an object.

I think it's possible to get a good read on Ai just from the prologue arc, the rest of this material is important as reiteration and expansion on her core character. With all of it together, you should start picking up on patterns in her behaviour and drawing connections between her actions and the things that inform them.

If you're still having trouble figuring her out after that, here are some points I think are really important to keep in mind that often go overlooked when it comes to Ai:

Ai is neurodivergent and an abuse survivor

Ai is stated at least twice in the text of Oshi no Ko to have a developmental disorder and I think there's enough evidence in the text to say that she's intended to be read as autistic specifically.

On top of that, Ai's formative years were spent on a home environment where she could not rely on her primary guardians to consistently care for her and she was alternately neglected and violently physically abused, to the point of not feeling safe in her own house at night.

This is important to keep in mind because while Ai is pretty good at masking, her neurodivergence and her history with abuse means that she processes information - particularly social information - in a very different way to a neurotypical person.

Ai does not always lie - and her lies are different than you think

I've said this a million times before and I'll probably say it another million but a lot of the really out of pocket Ai takes you see in OnK fandom generally come from people who go to the extreme of dismissing everything that comes out of Ai's mouth as a lie and thus just completely missing out on a majority of her characterization.

Ai's "lie" is her performance - it's the illusion that "Ai of B-Komachi" is her true self with absolutely nothing else going on in her personal life. It's not a case of making shit up, but leaving things out - obfuscation and omission are the name of the game.

Picking up on when she's being honest Vs telling a lie is just something you end up getting a feel for as you get an understanding of her but generally, if Ai directly and plainly states something and it is not in conflict with things we know to be fact, then it's probably true enough.

This isn't a strict binary obviously and there are plenty of times where Ai says something that is obviously untrue but isn't her consciously lying - rather, like any human being, she has biases that affect her judgement, with her own stemming from her history of abuse and rejection and her poor self image.

The fact that Ai lies is less important than WHY she lies

This is sort of a reiteration of what I said above but where a lot of people get stuck on Ai's external behavior (that she lies) and fail to take dig into underlying motivations that actually cause her to behave that way. I know "this character has motivations" is probably like an insultingly baby mode reminder but I really do see so many people just completely abjectly failing to grasp this that I felt it needed saying lol

Deception is not Ai's end goal. Ai lies not because she wants to trick people but because she's been taught over and over her whole life that it's the only way she can be treated with basic fucking decency, and she has internalized this persistent cruelty as being her own fault. She performs Ai of B-Komachi because there is clearly something wrong with Hoshino Ai.

Even with that in mind, this isn't something Ai wants. As she says herself says in 45510, she wants people to know and accept her as she really is, flaws and impurity and all, and as she demonstrates in both Viewpoint B and chapter 1, she's incredibly quick to start opening up to people who seem to have the potential to accept her, or even just who treat her kindly. She is simply that lonely and that desperate to connect.

I hope this is all helpful, anon! I didn't necessarily want to just point by point how I write Ai just because I think that takes the fun out of things, but this is more or less the process I went through in forming my interpretation of her, and the rest is all things I've just intuited or drawn my own conclusions about from writing her - "oh, if Behaviour X, then Underlying Cause Y", that kind of thing. I hope this gives you a solid base to work on for writing her, tho - and please let me know when you're done so I can read it 👀

[ach-sss-no]

Hey, all,

I have long been tempted to do a readthrough/commentary of the Hobbit/LOTR because other people did it* and I am nothing but imitative. As it happens I have had the immense good fortune to find a copy of The Hobbit for 50 cents at the thrift store** so I am tentatively planning a readthrough, which (if it comes to pass) will be over on my dreamwidth, and will start in January because I have so many other things going on in the Thanksgiving+Christmas season.

so why post about it now, well, for two reasons:

I would kind of like to talk about the different adaptations of The Hobbit in vidya games, comics and such, so if you know of an obscure one I would love to hear about it. I want to start collecting material and figuring out how to present it. (and if it goes well I might eventually do the same for lotr so go ahead and send lotr stuff too if you're willing)

and I have a related dilemma

I have not watched the peter jackson hobbit movies. And those suckers are long, all together, so if I decide to watch them, it might take me until january to get around to finishing all of it.

Now, usually, I am a very open minded and wonderful person (uwu) who doesn't decide how to feel about something before trying it. I stayed open-minded about the Ralph Bakshi movie! And I liked parts of it! However, I don't think I would enjoy jacksonhobbit. I have seen a lot of pieces of it floating around the Internet and it looks like everything I didn't like about the LOTR movies but without most of the things that made up for it. With that in mind, I at first wasn't planning to watch those movies before doing a commentary of the book, because it would take up quite a few hours of my life and my review would be mostly whining**. I don't think my perspective on those movies is oh so unique or insightful enough that a critique from me would elevate past whining and these movies are well known enough that anyone reading my posts probably has their own opinions already and I don't need to tell them what the pj hobbit movies are.

But on the other hand, without seeing those movies, my review would be somewhat incomplete. And maybe some people like whining. I don't know. Nostalgia Critic still gets a lot of views, guys.

TL;DR i thought I would subject the question to the gladiatorial arena of the tumblr poll. I might not do exactly what the poll says in the end but it gives me something to consider.

*I refer specifically to tolkien-feels and frodo-with-glasses who have already done this better than I will. I'm sure many, many other people have also done it, but those are the two accounts I personally read.

**i also found the two towers and rotk, from the same set! but not fellowship. like this post to increase my luck that i will somehow also find fotr from this same set, for fifty cents at the same thrift shop, weeks after finding the rest of the books. it sounds unlikely, but it was unlikely to find any of the series at that thrift shop, and here they sit on my shelf

*** i saw a comment once on youtube that said something to the effect of 'the pj hobbit movies arent great but I've never seen anyone complain about their depiction of gollum' and I just... have a feeling I could be the one to prove that statement wrong. And the thing is, that statement doesn't need to be proved wrong.