#WEB Catch™

[mtandtgroup-blog]

Explore engineered netting solutions like WEB Catch™ for dropped object prevention. Ensure safety with debris protection for bridges, construction, and offshore installations.

[thegreatyin]

exactly!!!! as it goes!!!!!!!!!!

current fallen london fandom experience feels like im standing at the corner of a party holding a sippy cup going. i thought firmament has been pretty fun and intriguing so far

[angel-of-the-moons]

Pavitr x reader where his wife or gf does end up pregnant? Idk maybe one where they find out they are and how they'd react to it, or one where reader has been pregnant a while and they do some...activities.

Canon Events

Pavitr x Wife!Reader

TW/CW: Anxiety, Miguel's Canon Event™ PTSD, Pregnancy, Pregnancy anxiety, baby talk!

Pavitr is obviously aged up in this fic

A/N: I'm going to work through my asks a bit to help take my mind off the grief and stress, so I simply had to make this fluffy. I might make a second part to it where it gets spicy, once I feel better.

🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷

"Wuh-oh." Lyla said, swiping through the pop-up monitors surrounding her tiny yellow frame.

"What is it, Lyla?" Miguel asked, sipping his coffee. His deep chocolate eyes focused on the AI's persona as she squinted at the data.

"New canon event detected, Migs." She said, typing faster than any human could ever fathom.

"Where." He said, immediately setting his coffee down to furrow his brows at her.

Already he could feel his body tense at the news, after what happened with Miles and his canon event, not to mention Miguel's own...

He couldn't handle another mutiny, not when everything had finally been settled back into place, the web repaired and strengthened.

"Whose universe is it? Which one?"

"It's... Pavitr's." Lyla said, her eyebrows rising considerably behind her heart-shaped glasses.

He sighed deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. Great. What horrible situation did fate have in plan for that particular Spider-Man, now? His Aunty Maya dying? One of his friends? You?

He knew Pavitr understood the importance of canon events, but...

"How bad?"

"Actually it's..." Lyla let out a startled chuckle, tipping her head to grin at Miguel with her crooked teeth. "It's... well, okay, depending on your point of view it could be good or bad, but I think Pavitr might consider this a good one--"

"Lyla..." He sighed, tapping his foot.

"Alright, alright big guy, don't get your panties in a twist." She snorted, "Pulling it up now."

Miguel turned his thick frame to peer at the hologram as an image of you materialized behind him.

It looked like you were in some kind of doctor's office. Judging by the pictures on the wall, some sort of women's health center.

He squinted at the posters, every inch of the room, until his eyes finally focused on you, holding papers in your hand, shaking, the gold band on your ring finger catching the lights above and glinting a little too brightly for his eyes.

Miguel slowly began to circle your image as you read the papers. Your face looked cold and clammy, a bead of sweat trickled down your brow.

Cancer? No, no, Lyla said this was good news, for once.

So, what...

His brows shot up, the creases in his tanned skin deepening as he leaned in to peer over your shoulder at the paperwork.

He rapidly scanned each word. Your flu tests came back negative, no allergens to report, no life-threatening diseases...

But the blood results are what intrigued him.

Estrogen levels were elevated...

As were prolactin and progesterone levels.

Miguel had to step back and let his jaw go slack as he looked at you, holding the papers that, printed at the bottom...

Reported a strong, tiny little heartbeat.

You were pregnant. And judging by the levels of hormones in your system, you were halfway through your first trimester.

He watched as your eyes welled up, fat tears burning hot as they broke over the dam of your lashes, dripping down your cheeks. Your doctor handed you some tissues and rubbed your back, smiling sweetly as she calmed you down.

"I know, I know, honey. It's overwhelming... Just breathe." She coos.

You wipe at your eyes and take a few shaky breaths. "I just... I'm sorry, it's hard to control it all. Ugh, I've been wondering why I've been so moody lately, but my period was late!"

"Mhmm... hormones will do that to a mama." She says patiently. "What will you tell your husband?"

"I think--"

Miguel raised his hand to Lyla to stop the hologram. This was something deeply personal, and it didn't sit right in his gut about this, that he found out before Pavitr...

He pulled up his gizmo and pulled up Pavitr's frequency, his fingers moving a little too fast so he had to backtrack a couple of times.

Finally, the voice to the chipper, younger hero came through.

"Hi, boss! Uh... What's up?" He said awkwardly.

"Go home, Pavitr, I'm assigning someone else to your workload." He said, his tone a bit softer than usual.

"I--whuh--huh?" He could hear the bewilderment in the man's voice as he stammered for a reply.

"Just go home, Pavitr. That's an order."

"I... Eh. Uh. O-okay?"

Miguel sighed as he terminated the connection.

He hoped Pavitr was ready for this.

🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷🪷

"Heee-llo my beautiful wife!" Pavitr called out, dropping his duffel by the door, a bit of a pep in his step as he walked through your apartment to look for you.

Pavitr called your name once or twice, and his brows creased with worry when you didn't respond. Were you out? No... No. Your shoes were by the front door.

He spotted you, sitting at the island in your kitchen, a cup of hot chai in your delicate hands.

You giggled softly as he kissed your shoulder and cheek on excessive pecks and loud "mwah's" before dropping his chin onto your shoulder.

He looked at your social media feed (actually it was some kind of forum that you quickly closed) and chirped, "Whatcha looking at?"

"Oh, just... stuff." You say evasively, squirming in your seat.

"Oh? What kinda stuff?"

"Oh, I..." You say, splaying your hands over an envelope. The logo on the sticker was from your usual doctor's office, and his brows pinched in concern.

"Sweetheart, what's up? You said you had a doctor's appointment today. Is everything okay?"

"W-Well, I... I mean..." You swallow thickly. "It's... I-I mean..."

"Are you okay???" He spun your stool around to hold your shoulders, his big dark eyes wide with concern for you as he scanned your face for any signs of... anything.

"I..." You cast a glance back at the envelope. The words felt like cotton in a dry mouth, choking and unable to utter.

Why were you so nervous about this? You talked about this together, brainstormed the "what-ifs" a million times during late nights, limbs tangled as sweat cooled on your bodies beneath the sheets.

You knew Pavitr would never be... angry about this. With you.

So why was there a nasty pit in the deepest part of your stomach right now?

Pavitr looked at the envelope, and slowly reached out for it, waiting for you to tell him to stop or if you were uncomfortable.

You wrung your fingers together and chewed the inside of your cheek anxiously as you watched him read your papers, mumbling about how everything looked okay.

But...

Then his eyes got to the last page. Your pregnancy test results.

He lifted the paper--almost comically--close to his face.

For agonizing milliseconds that felt like ages, the papers hid his face from view. All you could see was how he trembled, his fists clenching around the paper.

Finally, he lowered them, and those big, beautiful, dark eyes were glistening with tears and his lip was wobbling.

"I'm l--I'm--I'm gonna be a dad?" He blubbered near-incoherently.

"Y.... yes." You peep.

The papers were immediately forgotten as he buried his face into your chest and full-on started to ugly cry, babbling about how much he loved you and how happy he was.

Why on Earth were you ever afraid of how he'd react to the news?

You sniffled and hiccuped, his high emotional rollercoaster hitting you, too.

Immediately, he lifted his snot-covered, tear-stained face to look up at you, and his hands went to your cheeks, wiping your tears away.

"Hey, hey, hey! I love you! I love you so so so so so so so--"

"Pav..." You sniffed.

"Right, right." He muttered lifting his head to look down the hall. The room you two had turned into a room for your sewing projects was across the hall from your room. A little small, compared to yours, but...

"So if we can move stuff around, your machine can come out here, then we can put the crib in there..."

You blink dumbly at him.

"W... wait so you... You're serious? About.... about this?"

Pavitr turns to you with a grin, grabbing a paper napkin from the counter and completely cleaning his face, taking a fresh one and dabbing your tears away.

He kissed the tip of your nose, then your forehead, your cheeks, and finally, your lips.

Pavitr's hands moved low, pressing over your belly ever so gently. His eyes flicked up to yours once again.

"You and this... our little baby, are the most important things in my life." He swears. "I'm never going to back out on either of you."

He kisses you on the lips one more time, pulling away enough to touch your cheek, a grin on his charming, handsome face.

"So! Wanna look at baby stuff online? We can order takeout and chill!"

You didn't know why you were ever worried in the first place.

[benkaben]

I'm cleaning some furniture we have had outside for months (a relative was moving houses) and as I'm doing so, I'm turning them around because they're pretty, pretty dirty right?

So there's this one beside table that's completely filled with webs, and I don't mind, but as I'm cleaning them I keep hearing a particular krshh krshh krshh each time I remove them but I think, since I'm wearing headphones and I'm outside and it's quite literally FILLED with them this might probably be a normalish sound, right?

Well, as I'm done cleaning the webs a big, huge black spider with long thin pointy legs falls into the bottom of the table, and I really like spiders and I think, "well we're already outside let me try to get her out and mayhaps she can go to the garden or any place away from the furniture, please pretty thing, shoo shoo", so I flip the table around so she can fall, yeye.

And she does. And she starts running away so I'm like "let's leave it be... Wait, a pic first!" so I try and get some photos of her with my not-so-great camera, and while I'm doing so it hits me I might actually need to kill her because she's HUGE, and I have a cat, and maybe she even ends up crawling back into the furniture or the house, oh nnno, that'd be bad, uh— wait, the spider stopped moving.

So I blow in her direction to see if she reacts, if she doesn't, I could add it to my bug collection, yes.

I blow, she flips and reacts, and tries to run again, but I managed to catch this pretty big and clear red mark on her abdomen and oh FUCK IT'S A BLACK WIDOW IT'S A—

So yeah I now have a new spider in my collection but it might take a bit for the furniture to get cleaned, since we now have to wait until it gets fumigated first™. For reasons.

[threepandas]

I'm a bit too anxious to say it out of Anon (because brain scream sometimes) but I want to say that I love all of the yandere wips/ficlets you've shared that I've read so far. ... which is funny because I normally dislike toxic routes in many otome.

I ADORE these short stories. Most of the Readers I've seen you've make so far? Are not frilly silly characters who are the Dumb Naive types that the narration tends to offer for immersion. And the Yanderes? TERRIFYINGLY COMPETENT. Whether they're terrifying on main or instead are very very good at hiding in plain sight.

The readers are smart and/or clever. Strong of will and the ones who fight go down swinging. It's not made easy for any of those yanderes even when they are stronger, although the ones I've seen that "hunt" the Readers are very much playing with their 'food'. Some Readers realize the threat too late but they try to escape too. And then some others don't catch on yet to the danger but its not because they're dumb but because there's no feasible way for them to realize anything's amiss yet, whether they're Isekais MCs or native OCs.

(I especially love the Chosen set. omg the chosen set. And the Aizawa and Yamada ones too, like oh my god yes.)

Probably the most Terrifying yanderes you've written (that I've so far read) are the platonic/paternal ones. Whether they lull the Reader into their web or outright steal them away for Bad Ending Hell. Just... god. The Grandmaster Demon Mage, the Mad Scientist 'Daddy'... and now the Villainess Isekai's King and Queen.

pray for those readers. At least "Grandlearner" is safe in the knowledge that no Route they're stuck in will last. The Golden Ending would require the other Routes after all. If Villainess Isekai realizes the danger... oof. And "Eve"? Hopefully she'll gain enough muscle autonomy to escape "daddy" because imagine being resigned to hoping for a quick death given the Dark SciFi Otome Backstory Hell she's trapped in.

I'm gonna send this before I talk myself down from it but thank you for writing these.

I... I'm totally cool and definitely not crying. I want this printed on my wall?? Oh GOD I AM HAVING EMOTIONS 😭😭😭😭😭 this is amazing and thank you and I TOO have thoughts!

Cause like? Yandere? In my mind? Shouldn't be Real™. Like "more at 11" depressing, restraining order REAL. They should be the horror monster that LOVES you. The "I cracked along the fault lines and something UNHINGED bubbled up" that? Technically we all COULD be... if that part of our brains that stops us from metaphorically biting through our own fingers? Either turned OFF or never developed.

Enough unhinged 20 somethings! That's not a proper yandere! That's probably a mood swing! No... let them COOK. Let the crazy FESTER into a smile that doesn't reach the eyes and movements that are FAR too deliberate.

The fun of a yandere is that they are... INEVITABLE.

It's kinda like godzilla in a way. Or a forest fire. The odds aren't HIGH? But if you DO happen to be unlucky enough? All you can do is try to survive. As this Force Of Destruction rages around you.

But WORSE! Cause THIS one? Looooooves you!

May have POWER. A willingness to plan. To wait. To commit violence. And the power of the fanatic to drive them. Because, after all, they fight for True Love. For your FUTURE together. For the God of their delusions.

Aaaaah! There are so many types? I got really tired of them all going for the same template of a person? There are many ways to set off a bomb, after all! I am probably rambling and contradicting myself. I just have SO MANY THOOOOOUGHTS. Seriously, this is the nicest comment I've ever gotten? Just?

[feralkwe]

Driveby cursed prompt™: everything is the same, except Elidibus is 40% more lucid and Lahabrea plays matchmaker with him and Kit right around Totorak. You're welcome. ;D

This is SO fucking WEIRD. I was absolutely 9000% alone in Gridania by that dumb church of the Twelve last night thinking about THIS VERY CONCEPT.

See? ALONE.

Anyway, I try to keep prompt fills to about 500 words and this is a wee bit longer than that, so:

Everything which happened to Kit these days was weird. She had not expected life outside of Golmore to be anything she was used to—that had been much of the point of leaving—but she had not expected it to pitch her into one bizarre and inexplicable situation after another. She'd craved to see the world, to put her axe to use for those who might need it, and carve out who she wanted to be free from the confines of expectations place upon her by others. Now she stood in a room made of spun webs dripping with slime, her axe in hand, a power she did not understand often incapacitating her, and a mysterious man in black robes who knew more about it than she did introducing himself. Many things about her seemed to surprise him as much as he puzzled her. That she understood his words, that she had withstood the touch of Ifrit enough that she had felled him, and an odd amount about for whom she now worked. On top of that, in the space between smug words and cryptic tauntings he tilted his head. Not being able to see his eyes made it difficult to tell what look he turned upon her, but she had the distinct feeling she was being studied. "A purple-haired Viera." Lahabrea of the Ascians sighed, the sound falling somewhere between weary and amused. "Well, Bringer of Light," he said, "there may be a role for you yet." She tightened her choke up the haft of her weapon. "It might be putting an axe through you if you do not start answering questions." "You could try, but I promise you the result would be a disappointment." The eerie glow of the chamber where they stood cast harsh highlights against the reliefs of his mask, giving the effect that he was sneering. "If it is answers you seek, allow me first to pose this: while the Scions have you running from battle to battle have you thought to ask yourself to what end?" "To stop the primal threat." He did not need to know she had many questions to which she was promised answers and had yet to receive any. "To find a way to save the tempered." He puffed a breath through his concealed nose. "Indeed?" A low chuckle slightly shook his shoulders, the spiked pauldrons catching the sickening green light. "So focused you are on the sylphs, on Gridania. Have you thought to wonder what we Ascians might be doing elsewhere?" She frowned, her stance tensing. "No." So far she had managed to keep her focus trained before her, on the next immediate step to helping the next person. Those she could save when she had been helpless save so many others so far. "I thought not." He considered her, seeming to decide something. "Three days hence at dusk come to the Bramble Patch. Alone." She was young, not stupid. "That sounds like a trap." "Yes. I imagine it does to one such as you." His mouth drew in a smirk. "But a curiosity such as yours will only be sated by seeing for yourself." He lifted a hand, a swirl of deep purple magic casting the chamber into darkness as a portal opened behind him. "Or do not. Keep your mistrust a close companion and accept what you have been told. The choice is yours." He waved a hand above them into the webbing which criss-crossed the chamber ceiling, knocking loose one of the giant cave mites, kicking and squealing as it transformed into a massive, many-eyed creature. "Take your time deciding." Then he was gone.

You can read the rest on AO3. You menace.

[homestuck-for-the-first-time]

lvl 247

so hmph

i'm up to page 247, and wow this is very, specific kinds of weird. im impressed. lets take a look at everything so far.

the LORE

this little fella is cute. it's his birthday and look at him go! if i understood the plot correctly this sort of takes place in a weird alternate video-game esque 2000's. i'm guessing he's like 13? must protect at all costs.

the humour is also,,, interesting. i genuinely cannot pinpoint exactly what this all means. i cannot predict it. it's like im a dream -like state.

for instance. when the camera zooms out and reveals a vast empty city with nobody around i thought this became existential horror.

and some pages later, they all just fucking die?

what the fuck???

if someone asked me, after reading 247 pages of the comic, what was it about, i'd tell them oh god help me where am i. matpat would not survive this.

the creatures

there are two dorks so far. i love them. there's

he's so cute i wanna squish him to death

JOHN EGBERT and his hiperfixation on ODDLY-SPECIFIC FILMS is charming but i feel like i'm missing so much context. should i watch them to catch up with homestuck lore?

oh and her

she is concerning

she's so quirky. her love for OBSCURE LITERATURE and ELEVATED LEXICON, plus eveything else? is she on tumblr dot com?

i wonder what else is she up to, along the other pesterchums on the web.

coding sillies

ah yes. i love code™. no but really, i'm on my last year of compsci. i am old. but these cute little gags remind me of starting out to self learn data structures and general syntax.

pfft, do you even hashmap bro? wdym u don't have logarithmic time complexity?

that's what you get for not using b+ trees.

this whole comic was definitively made by a dorky nerd, and that's sick. i wonder what they're up to now...

closing thoughts

rose's mom is definitively queen from deltarune. also, i need some rest. this comic is definitively something. tune in for more

[darkx-the-dragon-kn1ght]

Chapter 34- Part 5

And there it is!! That's where the next encounter is (yeah, remember that this was all so I could catch another event Pokémon?)! Some of you might recognize where this is going, but for anyone who may not…well, observe.

I've got four of them now, I think Xera can spare one of them for the mysterious tower.

That's right, it's heckin' Spiritomb! Incredible!

This shouldn't be too challenging- use Glare™ to paralyze, Crunch for damage, and then…

There, that should be enough! Great Ball time!

I read that one of Spiritomb's possible inspirations is a spirit from Norwegian folktales that is forced to carry around a stone as a punishment. And, y’know- punishments, kinda relate to the idea of karma, and- yeah!

Now, that's all for encounters, so now it's time for theorizing and planning. The upside is that I do have some prior experience battling a Poison monotype team worthy of a Gym Leader via the Corey fight, and there is actually some overlap between Wasteland and Corrosive Field. So, while Wasteland is a very different Field, it's not super entirely different from that previous battle. Of course, the downside is that I still don't know anything about Aya’s team, so I can't completely rely on my previous knowledge from fighting Corey. Just stuff like Poison’s weaknesses and how having a Poison-type or two of my own, as well as a Steel-type, could be beneficial.

But Ame brought up some interesting points- namely the emphasis on Aya fighting using “the Wasteland itself”, which surely refers to the entry hazards. Toxic Spikes is the obvious choice, but Spikes and Stealth Rocks are also viable; Sticky Web can't really be learned by a lot of Poison-types (just Ariados), so I doubt that one will come up. There's also the matter of the handful of Abilities that get affected by being on Wasteland, many of which could be very useful for Aya’s side in some form or another.

So! What have I chosen to do with this information? Why, taking into consideration those Abilities and those who can learn at least one of those entry hazard moves to create an entire list of Pokémon who overlap those categories, of course! Those Pokémon came out to be:

Nidoqueen

Nidoking

Tentacruel

Muk

Weezing

Qwilfish

Swalot

Roserade

Skuntank

Scolipede

Garbodor

Skrelp

Toxapex

However, I also thought about other potential Pokémon Aya could use for one reason or another, and those Pokémon ended up being:

Vileplume: Has Effect Spore, could make good support in a Double Battle.

Drapion: Like Skuntank, it's one of the very few Pokémon up to Gen VII with this specific Poison/Dark-type combination, making it a strong counter to Psychic-types and giving it only one weakness in the form of Ground.

Amoongus: Same as Vileplume, and in fact Amoongus could be more likely because it is a very common, very good support Pokémon in recent official competitive play.

Salazzle: Honestly this one's partially for theming, seems like an appropriate Pokémon for Aya specifically to have, but it also has Corrosion which is good for Wasteland.

So taking all this information into account, both of these lists, I have determined the twelve most likeliest Pokémon that Aya could have on her team. And those Pokémon are:

Nidoqueen: Not only can it learn Stealth Rock and have Poison Point, but it would be really appropriate for Aya's theming. She's Cain's sister, Cain's ace is a Nidoking, so it would be fitting if Aya in turn used its counterpart. 

Vileplume: Already explained my logic above 

Tentacruel: Similar reasoning as Qwilfish

Muk: Theming is a big part of this one- it'd make sense for someone from the Wasteland to use a Pokémon made of sludge, as a reference to the purplish, jelly-like ground of Byxbysion.

Qwilfish: Can counter Ground-types, Poison Point, can do a lot with entry hazards, just seems good for support and spread damage/poisoning.

Skuntank: Same reasoning as Drapion 

Drapion: Already explained my logic above

Scolipede: Can counter Psychic-types, can have Poison Point, and again it just seems strangely fitting for Aya to have- maybe it's the coloring that makes me of Aya and the Wasteland, hard to describe.

Garbodor: Similar to Muk, but in this case it would be a reference to the debris scattered all over the Wasteland that never seems to go away no matter how hard people try to clean up the place.

Amoongus: Already explained my logic above

Toxapex: Similar reasoning as Qwilfish, but as an extra thing it also has Merciless, which benefits from Wasteland.

Salazzle: Already explained my logic above

Of course, this list is just speculation on my part, it could be right or it could be wrong. Heck, it's already gonna be partially disproven by default since Aya is only gonna have six Pokémon, and those could be any Poison-types, not just the ones on this list!

But no matter what team Aya has, one thing that seems pretty consistent is that I need at least a Psychic-type and a Ground-type, and we can go from there. Shimmer seems like the obvious choice for the former- her special damage output is a bit better than Kirin’s with the Twisted Spoon, her special bulk is better, and she has Telepathy. Crater works as my Ground-type and she also provides more type coverage as a Fire-type. But…I could kill two birds with one stone in the form of having another Ground-type who also doubles as a Poison-type: Selene! I have Moon Stones, I can evolve her into Nidoqueen easily! And she can learn Earth Power just like Crater- and Earth Power isn't weakened like Bulldoze or Earthquake, nor is it given a secondary Poison type like Mud Bomb.

Of course, having the utility and coverage provided by a Steel-type would also be beneficial. I'm gonna go with Wulfrum for this one; granted, I know I have Aspis the Shieldon now too, but I'm choosing Wulfrum still because a.) he's already at Lv. 39 and will be faster to train, and b.) his offensive capabilities are better than Aspis’ at this time. But, depending on how this attempt goes, I'd be willing to swap the two of need be. As for my last two slots, well- Glare would make very good support, and Riptide is a given as always.

So ultimately, here's what things are looking like:

A bit of training to get these two up to the level cap, and…

Perfect! So now the team's looking like this:

Firstly, I gave Selene an Aspear Berry. See, she can't get poisoned, and being paralyzed or burned by one of those specific Poison-type attacks wouldn't be that much of an issue for her. Her being frozen, though- that would be an issue, so the Aspear Berry should help there. As for Wulfrum, I gave him the Zoom Lens, since Rock Slide and Iron Tail aren't super accurate. 

As a bonus, I used a Carbos on Glare to make her just that much faster, which should just be good in general but also specifically help her as a support. After all, she now outspeeds everyone else on the team, so she can use Acid Spray to prepare for a special attack, or Screech to prepare for a physical attack, not to mention being able to paralyze opponents more easily.

Oh! But before going back to the Wasteland, I remembered Xera now has access to another floor of the Obsidia Department Store, so let's check that out real fast.

Vitamins- so this is where we can get more of those, no need to rely on finding them in garbage cans anymore.

Not that Xera has been that far outside the city so far- Pyrous Mountain is probably the furthest she's been, actually.

Wow, that does seem like a lot- I'm guessing the vitamins in the canon games don't increase EVs by the same margin.

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[twitwatwice]

How to find deleted Fanfiction

Hey everyone, sadly enough sometimes fanfiction gets deleted but dont worry a lot of the times you can find it back.

There is this website called Web archive (wayback machine) and if you have the original link of the fanfiction it might be saved there. This is also the case for Stormageddon101 fanfictions like Gold dust.

Here are a few examples like Gold Dust, Fool´s gold and Cough Syrup by Stormageddon101.

I think yall get the gist as to how it works.

Btw deleted smut is very hard to find back because often only the first page is saved and thats where u have to confirm ur 18 but the next page with the actual fanfic is often not saved sadly.

Sometimes there are chapters ´missing´ but you have to go to the most recent screengrab to find them.

Also I believe that people can request for their archive to be deleted so I advice yall to back it up on ur own device.

[canmom]

Animation Night 145: Brid Bard

...Bard Brid? Sorry, the line’s not very clear here. Say again...

Oh, Brad Bird?

OK, so. Imagine there’s a really dad-like guy who directs movies. Someone for a lot of nostalgia for his childhood during which, Cold War not withstanding, he was impassioned by witnessing The Jungle Book (not unlike a certain Richard Williams) and encouraged by supportive parents to pursue animation. And it went well. Really well. Our boy Brad got an ‘unprecedented’ internship at Disney with Milt Kahl(!) off the back of his film The Tortoise and the Hare, had a chill time at high school, then went to CalArts on scholarship where he studied alongside John Lasseter (keep an eye on him. not just because he might sexually assault somebody but also because he’ll be in this story later), Tim Burton and Henry Selick.

In short, about the most direct and uncomplicated route into animation you can imagine.

Brad Bird joined Disney (their investment paying off) in 1978, working on films like The Fox and the Hound and The Black Cauldron, but soon clashed with the studio heads who he judged not to be upholding principles he believed Disney represented. (He would be vindicated in a way by Don Bluth throwing down the gauntlet a few years later and kicking off the ‘Disney Renaissance’.) One of his last contributions must have been to The Brave Little Toaster, where he worked alongside the future founders of Pixar.

There followed a few years in which he moved to the SF Bay Area (perhaps not so gentrified back then(?) but Bird definitely had money), pitching projects left and right. One of his big passions was to adapt the comic book The Spirit. Mostly he tried experiments that didn’t pan out, like making a CG film at Lucasfilm with Ed Catmull, later founder of Pixar. He worked on The Plague Dogs (AN 86) until he got fired again.

Nevertheless, his reel of hypothetical films did catch the eye of Steven Spielberg, who absorbed Bird into his company Amblin Entertainment in order to expand his short film The Family Dog, co-created with Tim Burton, into an episode of the anthology series Amazing Stories. (Family Dog would later spawn a disastrous spin-off series in 1993, but by this point Bird had moved on). I think it’s worth noting this one because it gives a sense of what sort of original ideas Bird is working with: a dysfunctional suburban family as seen through the eyes of their dog. ‘Dysfunctional suburban family’ would be the centre of... almost every single one of Bird’s works since.

Bird continued to work under Spielberg’s wing, still clashing with execs; he got straight-married in this time to film editor Elizabeth Canney. Things seemed to be going well enough, despite his frustrations - until his sister Susan was killed in a murder-suicide by her estranged husband. This understandably fucked with him pretty hard. After a few years of depression he recovered, enough to take an invitation to work on The Simpsons in 1989 after Matt Groening was impressed by the cinematography in Family Dog. (Seriously he’s connected to just about everyone in the animation industry!) He continued on the Simpsons throughout the early 90s, working part-time to ‘oversee the script-to-animation pipeline’ and introduce this same filmic sensibility, as well as contributing to other animated sitcoms like The Critic and King of the Hill.

Let’s fast forward to the end of the 90s. As we’ve discussed... many times on this webbed site, this is when the steam of the ‘Disney Renaissance’ was about to run out, and the new CG era was about to begin. Our boy Brad, meanwhile, is struggling trying to juggle being a Dad(TM) with spending all his time making animated films. Which leads to Brad writing... a story about a suburban family strained by one of them being a superhero, yeah.

But Brad wouldn’t get to make this film just yet. Instead, his successful pitch was something called Ray Gunn, a scifi story about a detect in an Art-Deco retrofuturistic world. This movie also did not get made... but it’s because Warner bought up the studio Turner that was making it, and shut down Ray Gunn. Instead, they offered Bird a different animated film with a nostalgic bent, adapting childrens’ book The Iron Man by Ted Hughes, which was in its turn written to help his children cope with the death of his wife Sylvia Plath (yeah that Sylvia Plath!). Bird liked the pacifist themes of the novel, but while the children’s book has the feeling of a parable, he gave it a concrete setting in the 50s, and centered the story on the paranoia of the Cold War, seen from the point of view of an innocent boy.

So with this first movie we see start to see the major preoccupations of Brad Bird come into play (though he did not write the screenplay in this case). The Iron Giant comes in the middle of a brief handful of traditionally animated films made by Warner to ride on the coattails of Disney; the others include Space Jam and Osmosis Jones. They were by and large not very successful; The Iron Giant was the one critical success but failed for blah blah marketing y’know reasons. Like most of Bird’s films, the core relationship is a father [figure]-son one, in this case beatnik artist Dean who lives in a junkyard and ends up becoming surrogate father to nine-year-old protagonist Hogarth.

The themes of the film are pretty on the nose: in an idyllic American small town (Bird explicitly referred to Norman Rockwell and sitcom character Ward Cleaver) masking severe paranoia falls a harmless alien robot. It’s viewed as a threat by everyone but the social outcast and the child. The military get called in, gung-ho to throw around their toys; by the time the townspeople figure out that they’ve been huge cunts, a missile is in the air. What saves everyone is the fact that our nine-year-old protagonist has gone to the effort of teaching the Giant good old American values, so it goes and intercepts the missile in a heroic sacrifice... undercut with a final hint that it can regenerate. In fact Bird originally planned an ending where full scale war breaks out between the US and USSR, but ultimately this was softened.

What sells it is charming character animation. The production seems to be the opposite of most animated film stories: meticulously planned, prevised and storyboarded, while making effective use of cel-shaded CG for vehicles and mecha scenes, putting it among the first works to experiment in that direction. In another anime-like touch, the animation of the film was divided up by scene rather than by character.

And, within the American full animation tradition, it’s probably one of the only films to address the Cold War at all. Of course there are others from other countries! When The Wind Blows is probably the most direct; anime is rarely directly about the Cold War (the Future War 198X controversy excepted) but it’s implicit in most works that deal with sci-fi and military themes such as Akira. And in modern times, now that it’s History and serious animated dramas are more accepted, you get films like Funan about the Cambodian genocide. In the USSR... it’s complicated.

But in America... while animation studios were recruited en masse to produce WWII propaganda, for the most part animated films from the 50s through to the 80s don’t really touch on the war. They adopt mythological past settings, or tell stories closer to home. Perhaps by the time of The Iron Giant, with the war over, and the specific setting now 50 years in the past, it was considered safe enough.

The characters of Bird’s film are very much archetypal. It’s kind of a fable about the Cold War, and in the final edit of the script, a reassuring one. The ‘illusion of life’ animation techniques are used to imbue each character with enough charm and specificity but they are largely defined by their roles. I’m not saying this to criticise; this is precisely the model of film that American animation specialises in and it uses it to very good effect. Ultimately though because it’s a fable, you can only take so much from it.

Despite the commercial failure of The Iron Giant, it did finally give Brad some clout as a director. A certain John Lasseter to a new studio that was making serious waves in animation... yeah, you know them, it’s Pixar. I wrote about early Pixar back on Animation Night 75, so go check that out if you like.

At Pixar, Bird ended up directing the studio’s sixth film, finally getting a chance to follow up on his pitch for The Incredibles which features... that’s right... a suburban family with a beleaguered father in a setting designed to nostalgically reference a mid-20th-century American aesthetic. Mmm.

By this time, Pixar movies had started to establish a formula. The characters would be some kind of high concept centering on characters like toys, bugs, monsters or fish that wouldn’t face the limits of rendering humans. Usually they would center on a duo of male characters who would start off at odds and but gradually build a bond over the course of the film. They’d be suitable for kids but have enough comedy to amuse adults. There would be a villain to overcome, and a wider sphere of quirky buddies to support the main duo. Women would be almost nonexistent. At this time, it seemed that Pixar could do absolutely no wrong; their films were basically always hits.

But even so, I remember when The Incredibles came out. It hit the nerd sphere like a bomb. I remember all the memes about Edna Mode (voiced Brad Bird) shouting ‘no capes!’; I also remember the articles that argued that the film was in fact Objectivist propaganda.

Looking back, it’s hard to entirely disagree with them! The thrust of The Incredibles is that an ungrateful public rejects the special superheroes, leading to an end to their romantic days of vanquishing evil and staging dramatic fights on top of trains; now they’re all caught up in the banality of the capitalism. Bob, aka ‘Mr Incredible’, works in a miserable cubicle as an insurance salesman; Helen aka ‘Elastigirl’ is an exhausted suburban housewife trying to rein in somewhat estranged superpowered teenagers. The pencil-necked bureaucrats of Society, you see, have denied them the chance to exercise their special abilities as they did in the romantic past.

But lo! There is a new supervillain after all; it is Syndrome, once a starry-eyed young superhero, who after a rejection by Mr Incredible, came up with a plan to create a high-tech scheme to sell gadgets that would make just about anyone be able to use superpowers - even if, the arc words declare, ‘if everyone is special, no-one is’, a sentiment that basically goes unexamined further. However, his plan to stage a superhero battle to sell these gadgets backfires resulting in an out of control robot. Luckily, the Incredible family have been united over the course of their adventures and can defeat the robot, society reevaluates the superhero issue, and the captains of industry heroes can assume their proper roles of being naturally better than everyone.

It is, looking back with adult eyes, a very strange narrative to be pushing; it’s possible to see the feelings that Bird must have put into it but damn lmao dude’s got some shit to examine. But as a film it’s technically pretty much impeccable, with memorable sequences that got memed about as much as any animated film from the 2000s. It opened ‘families amirite fellas’ as an avenue for Pixar to tell stories about, which they’d dig into much further later with films like Inside Out.

But I won’t spare too any more words on The Incredibles, since I’m not actually planning to show it tonight. No, the other film of Bird’s I’m planning on showing is...

Ratatouille! A film whose influence lasted so long that you’ll get an extended parody even in 2022′s Everything Everywhere All At Once. As far as Pixar high concepts go it’s pretty up there, centering on a food-loving rat Remy who befriends a chef and hatches a scheme where he will give instructions by tugging on his hair while hiding under a chef’s hat. This concept was not due to Bird but to Jan Pinkava, director of Geri’s Game, who had developed the film for years; Bird was pulled in to attempt to salvage what Pixar saw as a hopelessly mired production. Bird, with some reticence, took the established design work, but rewrote the script into something that better fit his tastes in filmmaking. Pinkava for his part refused to comment, but left Pixar not much later.

So the Brad Bird angle enters in the secondary plot, with Remy’s relationship with his dad who doesn’t understand his artistic passion for food. The story is probably what you’d expect given these elements! ‘Probably’ because... I actually haven’t seen this movie, it’s like the one major gap in my knowledge of ‘classic’ Pixar films.

Since Ratatouillie, Bird departed animation and started directing live-action films, including an episode of Mission Impossible that breaks the formula (unless it’s got some kind of dad arc I don’t know about), and Tomorrowland which gets back on the 50s nostalgia train. I haven’t seen any of them so I can’t really comment too much except to say that it sounds like Tomorrowland doubles down harder on the vague Objectivism angle lmao.

But rather than an explicit philosophical conviction, which Brad Bird the self-described ‘centrist’ doesn’t particularly seem to have, it seems more that it’s just a channeling of not entirely examined frustrations about his difficult time getting established as a filmmaker. Bird, it seems, grew up basically being told he was a one of a kind animation genius, and entered the animation industry with a lot of romantic expectations which were frustrated by its reality. It’s easy to read his films as mostly being about how people didn’t understand clever Brad Bird.

Bird is a bit of an odd case in another way. Like basically all animators he rails against the ‘animation is for children’ stereotype of the medium that just doesn’t seem to break, yet his films are very much about archetypal characters with very clearly defined, abstracted arcs. Perhaps that’s just what he’s able to make. But he doesn’t seem to be interested in pushing the envelope anywhere particularly weird or discomforting. Beyond his ambition to bring live action cinematography in to animation, his ‘superpower’, once he got to exercise it, seems to be that he’s very good at planning. His scripts are tightly focused, his productions are on schedule, and he’s the guy you call in when old Jan isn’t finishing his movie on time.

Still, all these criticisms aside, he’s one of the major influences on the subsequent decades of CG films, and his films are consistently very solid. So if you’d like to join me - with apologies for the late start - we’ll be watching The Iron Giant and Ratatouille over at twitch.tv/canmom. Hope to see ya there, films start in about 15 minutes!

[crest-of-gautier]

briefly picked up pq again after not having played it in a month, i got through the cutscenes that happen when you start the second labryinth, but didn't progress past that! thoughts™ below

i basically spent my time in Many Cutscenes (all strolls available to me, the abilities 1/2/3, what do we call each other, navigational differences, and why a group date cafe) + also did the fuse xiezhai request as well as help with the trading showdown.

i think the only downside from this play session is seeing how... how badly they exacerbate teddie's "comedic" relief traits. this isn't a problem exclusive to pq (i've watched arena all the way through and am maybe halfway through ultimax, and teddie also suffers there). but MAN. it's so hard to remember that teddie has a good arc in golden sometimes 😭

bitching about teddie aside, i do appreciate him being there because teddie's origin story of being from the TV world and then leaving it to be with the investigation team acts as such a nice metric of comparison for whatever zen and rei is supposed to be. i've been over this a billion times but the way the game explicitly has made note of this in cutscenes is just so!! juicy to me!!! it does feel like a low hanging fruit for me to latch onto in terms of "clues regarding zen and rei's identity," but it's definitely the easiest to understand.

naoto prompting an attempt to investigate of the clock tower and the lore surrounding it's real-world counterpart was very interesting! i have faith in the writers for this cutscene to make sense later down the line with more context, but it does feel like a clue. i just. need some more time with the game (and possibly more details) to put things together.

i can't help but feel that rei expressing the want/hope to "go back" (in lieu of what teddie did with going to inaba) isn't going to end well... i mean, maybe it will! but to be able to "go back" (whatever that contains) is hardly guaranteed in the first place and i feel like hoping for something like this is bound for heartbreak (i would be interested in that given that rei's entire personality is based around food and zen LOL)

the velvet room scene too!! super juicy, i really enjoy all of the angles that theo, liz, and margaret all presented in regards to the distortion of the p3 + p4 casts from different times being gathered into this one place. given how the wild card power has been neutralized and changed it really makes me wonder about the power of the end-game entity... perhaps so powerful that zen and rei could be considered "shards" of that entity who forgot about that? very interesting for margaret to refer to the world as "finite," me thinks.

the game did give a brief glimpse to a silhouette sitting on a crystal(?) and was obscured by broken glass/spider web of sorts... i wonder whatever it could need from bringing TWO wildcards, i mean, yeah that's powerful but. i wanna know the motive!!! not that. divine entities and the like always have motivations in this series but. y'know. LOL.

anyway that's all for now! short progress today bc wahoo cutscenes and i got things to do but. really intriguing, i'm super interested in seeing how this gets followed up on. also i love yosuke whenever i see yosuke's animations in this game it makes me so happy!! he's so expressive and fun i love him a lot. and it'd be very interesting to play this game again on the p4 side to see minato speak but also see what has changed between versions, as well as catching any details i've missed.

[glitterdustcyclops]

What part of UX is a concept old enough for there to be qualified professionals?

i'm going to assume you're asking this in good faith, so here's a fun fact! the concept of UX, or user experience design, is basically as old as the internet itself is. the NNg, or the nielsen norman group, who essentially invented the concept, were founded in 1998. obviously it took a while to catch on (😉) but the principles that jakob nielsen & don norman discussed 25 years ago are still as relevant to web design today as they were back then, and that's 25 years of people training and learning those principles, evolving them as the technology of The Internet™ evolves

personally i got my certification in UX two years ago (!!!) so i'm still learning a lot, but i do in fact do this Professionally, As A Literal Job, so i'm going to claim at least some amount of expertise when it comes to the UX of tumblr and how it can be way the fuck better

[mtandtgroup-blog]

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