#Yeah this strayed from my main point lol

[elin-moon]

Through The Tudors, I've developed an unexpected liking and appreciation for Thomas More that I did not have before.

It's even funnier when I tell you just how much my mother hated More. Like, she despised him 😅

[rewritingcanon]

at this point the marauders are all just blank slates for people to project onto rather than who they actually are or who they have the potential to be. like they could be so much more interesting than the marauder fandom will ever let them be

i would just like to SPECIFY and go into a bit of detail about what each thing actually means:

this may not seem so bad, but when i mean they will comment on anything, i mean anything. it doesnt have to be marauder-related. it doesn’t even need to be related to harry potter. i saw a tiktok on a gorilla eating a banana and someone deadass commented “thats cool and stan james potter 😝” and lord FORBID if you include anything with snape in it. want to make an edit of him? backlash. want to talk about how you like him because hes interestingly written? backlash. want to deconstruct his character due to how badly fanon twisted him and actually analyse him? “anyways stan james potter” may be the dominant response to that, just so you know.

“sirius would never say that about mary!” said the marauder fan, heartbroken. “canon sirius would hate himself in atyd!” i respond usually with “canon sirius is a white boy in the 70s, hes not the ‘slay feminist yass 😍’ king you think he is.” this elicits quite a plethora of negative reactions, and i understand why. misogyny is stinky, no one wants their favourite character to be acting like that. so this option doesn't mean "fans who like a characterisation of sirius black that isn't necessarily time period realistic," but rather "fans who deny canon evidence for a fanon conception and then hate on things that expand on the canon evidence provided to them." "they are wizards, which isn't realistic, but you choose the time period misogyny as a hill to die on?" the marauder fan replied to me (and im quite literally quoting on what a creator said to me, this isn't an exaggeration). meanwhile canon sirius black: *harrasses snape for dressing more femininely/more outside gender norms* yeah and you think that boy would be a feminist...

you may think to yourself: when did [insert ship] become a thing? why is this happening? who even is this person? most of the time, it's all in good fun, sometimes, however, ships are created that purely contradict the entire point of said character. snily was criticised for doing exactly this, and now look at where we are.

after reading these points, you may come to the conclusion: holy shit the problem is just marauders fans. in fact, you may take it one more and remember more shit that had occurred due to this sub fandom of the harry potter universe. ever been criticised for not characterising purely fanon (dorcas, marlene etc etc) characters properly? ever been attacked for calling out the hypocritical stanning of barty, evan, regulus and peter whilst piling all blame onto bellatrix or snape? yeah me too babes.

i know we've talked about tiktok a lot, but i raise one more thing: the inescapable hell that is dracotok. this usually consists of those young teenage girls thinking they are very hardcore for participating in death eater practices despite its mirroring of being violent oppressors on a discriminated group so they can impress none other than draco malfoy. this, or they're the badass 'girlboss' that can change him. completely and ironically misunderstanding the point of his character aside, every cringey POV/thirst trap you have EVER seen on tiktok is probably replicated and 10x worse on dracotok.

i swear i haven't heard the term "gryffindork" since 2016, but alas, there has been a comeback. i call hogwarts legacy fans 'baby' hp fans, because i seriously do believe that these people have not interacted with the fandom until now. that would be okay if they weren't regressing everyone to early 2000s discourse. are gryffindors not being invited to ravenclaw, hufflepuff and slytherin raves that deep? no. but those three houses wouldn't be having raves in the first place

we've all seen them, need i explain or go into detail? "b-but harry doesn't have any chemistry with ginny!!" so he does with DRACO of all people? "b-but lily and james are basic!" dont forget the roots from whence you came. its misogyny within the fandom disguised as allyship or whatever the hell this is. ship your ships, but leave the gals alone

this didn't get on my nerves until i suffered from years and years of randoms going into detail about why slytherin/hufflepuff was the best harry potter house and then getting genuine mad when idgaf. maybe you have experienced this tragedy too. there are grown people getting into genuine online beef with others because they made a joke about slytherin being evil or hufflepuff being useless. makes me think you are just evil and useless (just kidding, but please wake up and realise that slytherin & hufflepuff quite literally do not exist)

i sympathise for people who like snape, i do. i do not sympathise for those who attempt to justify or excuse his actions. this normally comes with a side dish of misogyny, because more often than not they will find a way to blame it on lily. other times, they will blame his trauma. i want to be clear: his trauma explains his actions, it doesn't excuse them. that is the whole point of him ruining his chances with lily (not even as a lover, but as a companion). you are doing your own injustice to his character by trying to make him innocent, please stop

it's understandable why the cursed child is so hated. it's meant to be seen, not read, in my opinion. there's a lot of things in it that i too wish didn't exist. but that doesn't make it "not canon" because it upsets you. and of ALL the things that these types of people would choose to complain about, these are the things they chose: albus potter's namesakes (we've been going on about this for years like can we stop now please), harry being a 'bad dad' (think about his own upbringing a tiny bit more and maybe your brain can make a little more sense of his actions), delphi being voldemort's child (probably the only thing that i agree with these people on), and albus' name again because they REALLY hate it (but then they will counter this by saying "james sirius" is a good name, when it's still mid asf). anyway, it doesn't matter how much you squeeze your eyes shut and writhe around about it, the cursed child is canon. soz lol

[all-we-know-is-falling]

I can’t believe I’ve NEVER posted this before. What the flip. Anyway. This is from Agustín’s point of view, since he’s the main character and I find it easiest to write in first person. This is pretty old now and I’m not sure exactly how much of it is true to their story now, but I can tell you for sure that every single bit of Agustín’s confused and timid feelings towards Mateo and the idea of being alone with him are very real. That’s kind of the whole point LOL.

Solo, Juntos

I find myself in Mateo’s living room, with him of course. It’s cozy at his place. There is just stuff everywhere so it always feels more comfortable than it feels at mine.

Maybe that’s because there’s never really a quiet moment where I get to be home alone, and Mateo’s parents often have days when they’re both out at work until late, like right now.

Mateo says that when his parents are out, he’ll sometimes take advantage and invite his friends over. Apparently, he’s got a secret ‘stash’ hidden somewhere in his room. I don’t doubt him. “Don’t worry, it’s never too crazy.” He assures me.

Instead of inviting his long-time friend group round, he chose to invite me, I think to myself. We’ve been friends for a while now, but it still makes me feel a little… honoured, if that’s the word. I’m not entirely sure what we are right now, though, and I’m not sure if friends is the right term.

Mateo offers me a glass of water, and I accept it gratefully. The humid heat outside had me sweating on the way here, and my throat is feeling dry.

Bright warm light lights up sections of the tiled floor as the sun is placed high in the sky. It’s the middle of the day which explains why some of my hair is practically plastered to my forehead.

I take a seat on Mateo’s plush couch. It’s the kind that makes you feel like you’re sinking into it, and the quirky looking cushions sport different textures and shapes and colours.

He comes through with two glasses of clear, cool water and sets them down on the coffee table in front of the couch, among the random clutter which covers the surface.

The interior of his house is really busy and there’s a lot to take in, but it isn’t messy. Everything matches up and works together in its own way. Perhaps his parents are secretly insane interior designers…

This is the first time we’ve truly been alone together. Like, absolutely alone, no one else in the building, or anywhere near us. I don’t know how he’s feeling right now, but for me, I feel like I’m floating. Like falling, the kind of butterflies you get on a steep fair ride. Maybe I’m nervous, but I’m not sure what for. I take sips of my water, soothing my throat.

Mateo’s voice interrupts my thoughts, “If you were a stray cat outside, where would you choose to sunbathe?”

My eyes flick up at him and I furrow my brow, confused. He always asks the most random questions.

“Why would you ask that?” I pause for a second. “I’d probably find a flat warm stone… or pavement.”

Mateo grins when I give an answer, then he makes one up too. “I would go to the beach.”

He completely ignored my question.

Whatever.

“I’ve never imagined you to be a cat person.” I tell him.

“Yeah, I like them. They have cute faces and they’re calm, and reserved. They’re kind of the opposite of me!” He explains, then adds, “Minus the cute face, of course.”

I let out a small chuckle and try not to smile too hard, it’s as if I physically can’t straighten out my mouth. It’s no secret that I find Mateo hilarious, he always catches me laughing to myself about something he said way too long ago for it to still be funny. It’s a little embarrassing, but I can’t help it.

His almost-green eyes sparkle as he watches me laugh, which brings back the butterflies from earlier. “Oh yeah?” I say. “Well I like dogs.”

I don’t know why I prefer dogs.

“And I never expected you to be a dog person.” Mateo smiles at me. I break eye contact, my face feels flushed.

“No but seriously, what’s with your weird questions?” I ask him again. Hopefully he will give me the response I want this time.

“Weird questions can tell you a lot about a person, based on how they answer them.” He tells me, his voice authentic. “Even just finding out whether someone will answer them at all can be telling. For example, you. You’re one of the only people who genuinely gives me a real answer, like just now.”

“Right…” I can kind of see where he’s coming from. “Is that a good or bad thing?” He pouts as if he’s thinking.

“Yeah, it’s definitely a good thing. Also your answers are always super cute.”

I’m sure my eyes must have widened at that last part. I hope not but knowing my luck there’ll have been something which completely gave away how I feel about Mateo Ramírez calling something I do ‘cute’.

He’s always so genuine and real in the way he speaks, which is great because then I get to hear him say things like that to me, and I’ll never not get flustered when he does, but that also means that he might not mean it in any significant way, if you know what I mean. He talks like that to everyone, so I can’t ever get my hopes up. Things between us are complicated and I don’t really want to think about it.

Anyway, we continue to chat together, showing each other stuff we find funny on our phones, and listening to music in the back for an hour or two.

It doesn’t take long before we’re both in hysterics at something ridiculous which had been brought up in one of our many conversations. Mateo practically keels over laughing and lands his head on my shoulder as he grabs me, one hand at my arm and one at my chest. He’s the type to laugh with his whole body and it’s so funny.

Once we had both stopped gasping for breath, we settled finally. We were sitting very close to each other now, though. I think my palms started sweating.

*

I don’t know what to do. Everything in me is screaming at me to get up and run away, it’s too much. This is what I’ve wanted, though, isn’t it? Mateo has come too close, his face, his lips, only inches from my own. I’m not sure where to put my hands. Definitely nowhere near him, they’re sweaty and, anyways, I feel as if both of them are glued firmly to the sofa behind my back.

I try not to lean backwards even further, the closer Mateo gets. I don’t want it to look like I don’t want to do this, whatever this is. Do I want to do this? I’m unsure but I don’t have time to wonder, my thoughts are going ten to the dozen and I’m sure Mateo can probably hear my heartbeat racing. Yet my head feels as if it’s full of thick clouds, so I can’t actually decipher anything that I’m thinking. Even my breathing starts to pick up pace, I feel frozen in place, I feel like everything is going to go wrong and I’m going to mess this up somehow, and then-

My breath hitches when I feel Mateo’s mouth pressed softly against my own. Before I can fully react, he’s kissing me. Properly kissing me. He moves his lips and I do the same back, after my initial shock. Neither of us stops to say anything.

I can’t seem to relax, I’m aware of how tense I am, and Mateo seems to be as well. This must be why he pauses to ask me, “Is this alright?”

Now I feel bad because he looks nervous too. Or maybe he was always nervous but I was too caught up in my own head to notice. I don’t think that I can actually comprehend anything that’s going on right now, though.

“Yeah. Sorry.” I’ve never said something more awkwardly in my entire life. I can’t believe I really just responded like that.

I smile and try to relax a little. I also free my hands from behind my back, but this sends me sinking further into the sofa. Oof.

Now I feel like Mateo is above me. He’s looking down and smiling back at me. I simultaneously wish the sofa would swallow me whole, and that this moment would never end. He lets out a little laugh, presumably at me falling into the mass of cushions beneath me.

We don’t say anything else, but there seems to be a shared understanding that we both want this. I take in his gaze for a second before he leans down again to kiss me more. Mateo uses one arm to hold himself up, then I feel his free hand touch my face. The extra contact of his palm against my cheek and his fingers reaching my hair makes my head cloud up again with millions of new, undecipherable thoughts.

Instead, I decide to let it be; I want to live in the moment rather than in my head. I reach my hands to Mateo’s shoulders, broad and firm, then to near his neck. I pull him closer as he uses his supporting arm to lower himself. He hovers over me, the kiss only getting deeper, and runs his fingers through my dark, thick hair. The butterflies that have been living inside of me the whole time, since being invited into his house, evaporate; I’m in the moment now. Everything finally feels right.

[lynaferns]

seems like the OC topic is here! how many do you have? and what types of OC you like more? :D espero y tengas un muy lindo dia!

I had to count them... uuuuh, at least 45 OCs not counting my sonas and selfiserts (and DCA AUs), all distributed between 10-ish stories, 33 OCs or so are from the same story and spin off of said story (yeah, I made a whole story and then took the whole cast of characters and put 'em in a completely diferent story and universe). There are many that I haven't posted anywhere yet, some don't have a story yet just the concept and some I haven't even draw them yet lol.

(one day I'll have to make a master post or something of all the OC's)

Y'know what? I'm making a list of the stories I have

(It got long, is under the cut)

A Shadow Between Worlds: Girl born with a shadow entity as her protector has nightmares where she gets chased by a monster she can't see, when she wakes up she's covered in all the wounds the monster made her. One day she gets tired and shearch for an old book her mother kept in the attic, the book contains information about entitys from other worlds. She opens a portal to an utopian world who's population is interested in knowledge, at a point where their world became the Universe's library.

Our Little Wonderland ^^Spin off: Nosy reporter enters abandoned mansion after a few rumours of some teenagers talking about it beging haunted with moving dolls, rooms that changed placement and typical haunted mansion stuff. Finds out the mansion is not haunted but it's magical and dolls want to search for the little girl that lived there with her father but they can't leave the mansion. The reporter finds the girl but she refused to come back to her old home at first. The dolls are fantasy characters from a story setting and needs the girl to do her rol as one of the main characters of the tale so they can complete their purpouse but the girl is not very cooperative.

Syra and Fayne (no title yet): Half human demon escaped her fathers fortress and went to live on earth. Along the ways she meets a forest spirit that decides to acompany her and later on she makes friends with a fallen angel she meets. They both live together as besties.

Robot and Cat (no title yet): Stray cat enters an old abandoned home already claimed by nature and accidentally wakes an old futuristic robot. The robot takes care of the cat and the house and search for evidences of where its owners/creators are and what happened to them.

Spike Boy (angry furries with powers): angry hegdog kid is pissed off with a guy who killed his parents and wants to beat his ass, meets a bunny girl who's parents were also killed by the same guy and she also wants to beat his ass. Said guy is the lider of an organization whos trying to dominate the world to rule it in his own way and make it a safer place but comiting several atrocities in the way to his goal

Khrono Cat (furries and automatons): A baby born dead is taken to the water and time spirits by his parents. Is revived in the lake's water by the spirits and a fallen star. Later on the kids life the spirits call him back to the lake to give him an automaton as his guardian to full fil his destiny of stoping a world catastrophe.

Fase REM (provisional title): There is people who are transported to an Earth like dream dimension when they fall asleep, they have to survive trough the nigth escaping from dangers and monsters. They don't know why but when they enter the dream they are filled with a feeling like they must find a person. If they die in their dreams they die in real life. One day a girl is visited by an entity who comes from the dream dimention and since then she's been afected by this weird event (and tormented by the entity who never left). She has to discover how this entity was created, where did it came from and why all of this is happening.

Heavenly Kids (provisional title, needs revision): Heaven and Hell where at peace at each other but one day corrupted demons started attaking the human realm and Heaven send 3 guardians representatives of parts of the body (bones, flesh and nerves) to save the earth and find out what is going on in the demon realm.

Shadow Family (no title yet, just a concept): A family of shadowy creatures who lives in the forest and sometimes disguises as humans to go unnoticed between them. The parents has some unresolved matters from the past and the kids goes investigate about it (this is actually a dream that I had where it was a show I was watching and got upset when there where no more episodes, then I woke up and got more upset because the show didn't even exist so I drew the family)

Magic Apprentice (no title yet, just a concept): Girl who is abused by her family and neglected finds a secret door inside of her closet that goes to several other closets until she gets to her grandmas house, except that the house now is diferent, is magic, and the world around her too. Her grandma is a witch and made that secret door for her to escape to when she got to be old enough (except that the grandma got tired of seen her grandkid getting mistreated and didn't wait anymore for her to turn 18). The girl becomes her grandma's apprentice and explores the world full of magic. (This is also a dream I had, I think my head mixed Harry Potter with Narnia(haven't even watched this) and Studio Ghibli artstyle for some reason)

I have... to do a lot... a lot of redesigns... and change a few names.

....This got longer than I intended. Well you can see the repetitive concept of non-human worlds or semi-human realms lol, and magic, dreams, and I didn't mention it in the list but there are a couple of stories that involve tecno-magic.

I generally like fantasy-sci-fi and retro-futuristic themes, non-human characters trying to live a mundane life or human and non-human (or diferent especies and cultures) living together. It's actually really hard to tell what type of characters exactly I like. I'm picky too, that doesn't help. If it's a robot I'm almost surely gonna like it, and if the robot has a living being as a friend I'm gonna like it more.

Y gracias! espero que tu también. Me he tirado aquí como 4 horas pero he entrado a archivos viejos buscando a todos mis OCs y he revisitado un montón de ideas viejas, así que gracias por eso también :D

Edit: I don't know what hapened but the cut moved placement and the images are one on top of the other, vertically instead of horizontally, I hope I fixed it. It doesn't let me edit from the phone so I went back to the computer.

[o-chunks-appreciation]

I would like to hear your in-depth thoughts on O'Chunks, Count Bleck, and Super Paper Mario as a whole!

Woah this is just gonna be a big ramble on how much I love the game and why.

I’m gonna start with Super Paper Mario as a whole, I’m a really big fan and I have been since maybe around 2016 or so. I was vaguely aware of it as a kid but after watching a cosplay chess (its where you get a bunch of cosplayers to roleplay and they’re on a big chessboard and they act out in character to defeat each other until there’s a winner or sometimes even a subversion of plot) video that had a Dimentio cosplayer in it I decided to look into the game. By that point I was no stranger to jester characters, I used to rewatch the Marx fight from Kirby Super Star Ultra all of the time so I was immediately going through SPM play throughs, fanfic, fanart. It’s a game I seem to be thinking about all of the time for months and years on end without a break lol. It admittedly catches my attention more than the other Paper Mario games, I’m not sure why, perhaps because it’s so visually different in aesthetic and character design. I enjoy its silly moments and it’s dramatic lore, but I also have a very specific issue with some parts of the lore being vague in Carson’s stories specifically. He’s always ending his stories in a question or talking about how much of a mystery these stories are. Maybe it’s on purpose and maybe this is also wishful thinking on my end, but sometimes I theorize that maybe they were going to reuse some of SPM’s lore for another game. I uhhh can’t say much about the game play because I’ve been enjoying SPM through play throughs.

On to O’ Chunks!

I think he’s in last place in terms of fandom popularity in terms of the Castle Bleck cast. Honestly I sort of get it, he’s not conventionally attractive and most artists sort of struggle with drawing older, bald, and bearded characters. Especially back in 2007 when the game was released when the anime art style was very popular on Deviantart. You could turn everyone else in castle bleck into a cutesy attractive anime character since their designs are just vaguely human enough for you to make your own little interpretations but with O’ Chunks you can clearly see he has a very human design so you can’t really make a Gijinka of him like you could the others. I think there’s something cool yet funny about that though, like he’s some unchanging force throughout everyone’s interpretation of the cast. (But I think it would be really cool as well to see people stray from his main design and interpret his design in the same way people would the rest of castle bleck)

He’s played off as sort of a joke character and then you read up on Carson’s stories of him and then it’s all like Woahh this is the same dude we’re talking about?? Funny characters that are secretly tragic is a trope I really like.

I think it’s really silly how everyone plays into his “chunking” catchphrases like Count Bleck saying: "Very well, O'Chunks. I'll leave the hero-chunking to you. Do not fail Count Bleck." Or Dimentio saying: "Mmm... I do enjoy a good chunking...", it’s really fun that the other characters are willing to hype up O’ Chunk’s catchphrases.

Also I think everyone sort of just glossed over the fact O’ Chunks was begging to die because he didn’t want to go back to Count Bleck and tell him he got defeated for the second time and only changed his mind after Dimentio shows up and talks a bit and afterwards he’s all like: “yeah I wouldn’t kill myself unless the count told me to.”

In conclusion he’s a really cool and underrated character and I like him a lot!! (If you couldn’t already tell by the blog theme and name lol)

Finally on to Count Bleck!

Wahhhh I love his lore and story it’s sooo bittersweet I want to fall to my knees dramatically anytime I think of it. He definitely seems like the type of guy that thought he didn’t care about his crew and everything they’re all doing was purely business because he’s just so caught up in his whole depressive world ending shenanigans that by chapter 8 he’s sort of surprised that he likes his minions as much as they do.

He’s still very much a bad guy, wiping out whole worlds and also lying to his very loyal group about making a way cooler world afterwards, and also on top of that even manipulating some of his minions unfortunate circumstances to get them on his team. (I.E: O’ Chunks) but I will let it slide this time because he’s a cool character to me.

All the memory sections of the game are so cute until it hits chapter six and then it’s like….ouch my feelings. He was mourning her so bad he would’ve unknowingly killed her if he’d succeeded, damn. But he didn’t so they got their nice little happy ending, and they’re just so cute together yaayyy!! (I’m in love with the picture of them under the tree at the end of the credits and I totally start to tear up when I see it with the credits music)

He’s a really interesting character and I can’t find myself finding another Mario character that inflicts this same emotions his lore gave me.

[leosabi]

for the f/o ask game: 🌼🪻 🍀 :]

—gelatinous-globster

lmfao i'm so late to answer these (T_T) thank you for sending an ask though!!! @gelatinous-globster

🌼Is there an official confession scene between the two of them?

yes! the only posted version i have of it is very old and no longer totally accurate, but it's here if you want to read something written by a leo who was still a teenager ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ i think it's cringe but that's also just because i'm looking at my past self when i look at it. that's my current active ao3 account as well btw, i have some other leosabi oneshots up but lately i've been writing sonic stuff. also proud of the clone wars/bad batch stuff that's on there

for a summary, it takes place directly after aunt cass goes out. my self insert is out biking during the events of the episode and is knocked off his bike by a stray buddy guard. he breaks his arm. in swoops superhero wasabi--and this is when i find out, for the first time, about his secret identity. after getting my arm set i make a joke like "i could just kiss you right now" wrt him saving me and bringing me to the hospital. wasabi brushes it off as meds and tiredness and whatever.

next morning, i try to apologize for the joke, saying that it's weird and i should not have said it

and wasabi blurts out that he doesn't think it would be weird. if we kissed.

:)

🍀 Do You have any other scenes in mind? Angsty, Tender, Funny, Etc.

i have a lot of angst i've written that'll never be posted, because it's about personal trauma stuff lol. i think some of it i'd like to share and i'm just nervous about peoples' reactions. a lot of it is really vague and i don't mind people knowing i just don't want them to view me differently or be awkward when discussing the written work, y'know? but yeah. a lot of trauma angst

i have a fic i'm working on--perpetually, apparently, because i've had this in mind for YEARS--about momakase kidnapping my self insert a la fan friction

i also have an idea for a whole fan season of bh6 involving a villain inspired by hatsune miku, and my self insert would be there because i honestly can't imagine writing bh6 fic that i'm not in. it all just feels so real to me (^_^;;) but yeah that's another idea i've had for years and the main thing stopping me is that i never wrote a full fic about what leosabi is doing during bh6 season 2. but honestly i should just go for it

i would also love to write more hurt/comfort where wasabi is the hurt one and i'm the one comforting him. ocd, injuries from being a superhero, maybe even grief over tadashi. i feel like i really haven't explored that stuff as much as i want to other than in lengthy discord conversations from a few years back.

🪻Wild Card!!! Info dump about anything!!

i can't see this emoji on desktop, i have no idea what that is lmfao

ANYWAY i don't bring this up enough, but my self insert is a livestreamer. not like, the top guy on twitch or anything, but he is a livestreamer with a following large enough to pay half the bills and has friends from around the world he plays games with.

when i first conceptualized this they were a team of overwatch players, but i'm still so mad about overwatch 2 that now we play fortnite or mario kart or cozy games or something idk

wasabi very much avoids being in my streams, especially showing his face, because he's worried about his identity getting leaked. but sometimes you'll hear his voice off camera and the chat will go wild about "lemursabi"

this, however, results in a huge risk whenever i'm seen with wasabi in his superhero armor in public. the wrong person snaps a picture and i get identified as this particular streamer and then people try and doxx me to find out who chop chop is :p i have fic ideas for that, too, but it seems like...A Lot. i do love the ideas of tabloids being in love with us tho. obviously since it's tabloids we're talking about, it's, like, derogatory, but it's probably really funny to read things and point out everything they got blatantly wrong about you

[butterflydm]

wot reread: the gathering storm (chapters 17-25)

spoilers for the gathering storm

1. I continue not to care about the Semirhage interrogation. Anyway, physical force, bullying, and shaming ‘breaks’ Semirhage enough for questioning. Or at least Cadsuane believes that enough that she walks away at this point and leaves the actual questioning to other people. Sadly, no Merise-Narishma update.

2. lol, Perrin thinks about how he needs to overcome his single-mindedness. NOW. AFTER he has already abandoned everything, including his morals, to spend weeks chasing after Faile. Closing the barn door after the cow is already dead, essentially. Also, he doesn’t think about Masema a single time. He doesn’t spare a thought to the women he condemned to slavery either.

3. I do like Grady. He spent time with the damane during CoT/KoD, trying to talk to them about freedom. It didn’t work (he didn’t have any support) but I appreciate him trying.

4. The Aes Sedai in Salidar find out that Elaida’s Aes Sedai now have Traveling, and their tactical advantage is gone. Siuan hopes that Egwene will let them rescue her soon, because they need her.

5. *resigned sigh*. Oh, a PoV from little miss slaver. Points of interest:

still refuses to use Mat’s preferred name, even in her thoughts

constantly surrounded by slaves at every point in this chapter

spends much of the chapter mentally masturbating over how wonderful she is and how important she is to her slaves and the world

honestly, best of luck to the person who becomes Empress/Emperor Over The Sea in Seanchan proper. Rooting for you!

lol she made her Voice and personal slave/bodyguard since childhood her Truthspeaker. yeah, no conflict of interest there, lol.

is on the verge of agreeing to a slave raid on the White Tower when she gets the message that the Dragon Reborn wants to meet with her

The main difference, at least so far, between Jordan’s Tuon and Sanderson’s Tuon, is that Sanderon’s Tuon does at least seem mildly affectionate when thinking about Mat, like you might be towards a stray cat that you see every couple of months and leave food out for, maybe; and the other difference is that Sanderon’s Tuon isn’t particularly bratty, the way that CoT/KoD Tuon is (but Tuon wasn’t bratty in WH, so the difference here may be Sanderson showing that Tuon’s ~public face~ is on, so she can’t throw pottery and otherwise be childish, because she’s actually around people who matter now -- others of the Blood -- and not just around slaves and outsiders, where she cares less about looking like a child -- obsessing over how much she looked like a child was a big thing for Tuon in WH).

The thing with Tuon just in general, though is... I find her so deeply unpleasant to read about and, even worse, she makes characters that I previously liked a lot unpleasant too. Her being an invader and a slaver is an in-world reason why the other characters should dislike her, but the out-of-world reason why I dislike spending time with her is that I find her the opposite of enjoyable. She is incredibly unfun for me, and made Mat unfun too. Plenty of evil characters are fun and engaging to read but... Tuon is not one of those for me.

6. Tuon chapter followed by a Mat chapter. Will this be another chapter of resigned sighs? I do have a New Alternate Seanchan Theory: okay, my heart is definitely in the “Jordan radically changed his mind about how to handle the Seanchan between Winter’s Heart and Crossroads of Twilight because he’d thought up the outriggers” theory, but I have a new one based on Origins of the Wheel of Time!

Here’s the new theory -- the pod!Mat that was forced upon me in CoT/KoD has characterization that was based on the (edited out of the final draft) Fourth Friend Dannil Aybara, who would be “important around book 5″. This was originally going to be the second-to-last book of a six-book series and thus likely would have been when the Seanchan took a more central-ish role like they did in Winter’s Heart. Mat’s character changes so much in Crossroads of Twilight that it really does feel like Jordan just pasted another character on top of him, so I wonder if Dannil was originally going to be the “Prince of Ravens” (or potentially the “Prince of Hawks”, which would make more sense as a Seanchan symbol of royalty) and Jordan ended up merging him into Mat’s character (who was potentially originally going to get his battle knowledge from his Old Blood memories of Aemon & Manetheren rather than from the snakes & foxes). This would explain why Mat literally has Too Much Plot for a single character, leaving large Mat-shaped holes in various plotlines. Dannil was apparently a character who didn’t speak much and was generally very passive in the test manuscript for EotW (which was the whole reason that Harriet said he needed to be edited out), which really fits with how Mat behaves around Tuon in CoT & KoD. Anyway, that’s my new theory!

7. So, Ebou Dar sometimes turns men into raging sexists who despise women. The first “on page” character that Nynaeve noted in shock was actually a “man who hates women” (rather than just Jordan’s own “Men and Women are Two Separate Species Who Cannot Understand Each Other” thing) is noted as being from Ebou Dar (TFoH, I believe). Mat spends several books in Ebou Dar and turns into a raging sexist himself, and spends three pages here on what is essentially a misogynist screed about how all women are in a conspiracy against him (I have the paperback version, so it’s three pages). Ebou Dar is a place where it is culturally acceptable for men to be harassed and abused, so this is... maybe is actually something that seems like it could be a trauma response from having lived there and suffered through the culturally acceptable abuse, yes? That being said, still very unpleasant to read! So far, Mat continues to be as much of a miserable PoV as he was in CoT & KoD.

I do want to talk for a moment about how sad I am that Jordan took Mat from a man who seemed to genuinely enjoy the company of women, even if he was exasperated with individual women at times, to a man who viewed the idea of being friends with a woman as a strange and foreign concept, and then to a man who genuinely seems to dislike women and resent that he's attracted to them. And even though this speech was likely written by Sanderson, it still feels like the culmination of the build-up that JORDAN gave us in the previous books, where Mat was getting progressively more and more sexist with each book. And it's just... really sad.

I will... keep an eye on how things progress from here.

8. Mat wants to leave Altara. I ALSO wish he would leave Altara and never come back. Mat and Tuon’s sham of a relationship still makes my eyes roll real hard, so we’ve, uh, got that going for us.

9. I absolutely think less of Talmanes and everyone else in the Band for not caring that Tuon is a slaver, by the way. Reassuring Mat that his marriage won’t make him ~soft~ but not caring at all that Mat married someone who tortures people to relax is certainly A Choice. One of the things I’m going to keep an eye out for is if literally ANYONE points out to Mat “Hey, you married a SLAVER” instead of just going “lol Mat is married now” and treating Tuon being a slaver as if it were of neutral moral value (which was the thing that I hated so much about Mat’s behavior around her in Knife of Dreams, especially). And there's no way that they DON'T know that she's a slaver, given that she was picked up by a Seanchan 'rescue party' that included sul'dam and damane.

10. At least Olver seems to care about things other than women’s breasts in this book. He’s interested in the problem of sneaking into the Tower of Ghenjei now.

11. Mat is annoyed that Joline, Edesina, and Tesyln aren’t still grateful to him for saving their lives back in Ebou Dar. Dude, you’ve been a complete asshole to them for two straight books, including protecting and marrying the woman who attempted to (re)enslave them. They don’t owe you SHIT at this point. You’re lucky Joline’s Warders haven’t killed you.

12. It is... sad to me how emotionally disconnected I am from Mat at this point (after having gone through rereading CoT & KoD Mat). I just... don’t care about this version of him at all. Mat was SUCH a favorite character for me for BOOKS. And now I basically roll my eyes at his PoV chapters and feel similiarly towards him as I do Perrin. It’s a shame. On the plus side, he DID care about slavery very strongly back in Winter’s Heart, so I don’t think this apathy will affect my feelings about earlier versions of Mat. It’s just pod!Mat that I don’t care for.

...Mat does seem to have some pangs of conscience here over being such an asshole to the Aes Sedai but then he keeps, you know, doing it. So. *shrugs* We'll see where it goes.

13. Okay, Mat’s current plan is to head for Caemlyn, and then after that to go help Thom save Moiraine. But first, we have Hinderstap. I feel vaguely like this is not actually a side quest but wow it gives me such strong side quest vibes.

14. Perrin is finally actually doing Wolf stuff again (the wolf dream). He’s so out of practice that he barely even knows what he’s doing anymore. Hopper is aware that the Last Battle (the Last Hunt) is coming and wants Perrin to be prepared. He’s gonna need a LOT of prep. You have your work cut out for you, Hopper. In fact, Perrin is being so bull-headed and stubborn that Hopper just yeets him out of the dream in frustration. lol, good for you, Hopper.

15. “She had spent less than two months captive, but it had seemed like years.” Cheers to that, Faile. It felt like a fucking eternity. The plotline that refused to end. Faile thinking of Rand as “Rand” here feels fake, lol. She always liked to keep an emotional distance from him. But Faile really did ‘grow up’ over the course of the series (she was so rash way back in TDR/TSR era), while it felt like Perrin regressed. Hopper is treating him like an unruly pup for a reason!

16. lol, they’re a week out of Malden (10 days in a week in WoT) and Perrin finally thinks to wonder where Masema might have disappeared to. Anyway, Faile does not admit to killing him, instead just saying, “oh yeah probs wandered off idk”. 

17. I have to admit, I feel kinda sad that Faile believes that being ‘loyal but free of oaths' is “a contradiction that only Aiel can pull off”. Lots of people are loyal without oaths being involved, Faile. It’s called friendship.

18. Perrin finally comes to terms with knowing: a. the Last Battle is coming and it’s his responsibility to actually present and b. Faile WILL BE in danger and he has to actually accept that because the entire world is in danger. Anyway, this is Sanderson basically taking Perrin and hitting a reset to before he wandered off on his Shaido side quest, because before Perrin lost all his perspective, he actually DID understand how important the Last Battle and being there with Rand was (he was the one lecturing Mat about it in TSR). And then he went on a five-book side quest where he forgot all that.

19. Shaidar Haran frees Semirhage to give her “one last chance” to prove herself to the Dark One. Elza is waiting for her, telling her that there is Compulsion in her mind (which we know was placed by Verin) that needs to be removed, and Elza also has the Dominion Bands/black a’dam for Semirhage to use on Rand. So Cadsuane, who was in charge of both Semirhage’s interrogation and keeping the a’dam secure, failed on both counts. Elza is also one of the people that Min told Rand would “serve him in her own way”, so that’s two separate viewings of Min’s that have brought harm to Rand in this one scene, because he trusted Min and followed her advice -- keeping Cadsuane as her advisor on her advice, and trusting Elza in his presence on her advice.

Min’s Actively Harmful Viewings/Interpretations count:

her viewing that “Aes Sedai will hurt you” leads to Rand fleeing Caemlyn (away from Aes Sedai who had zero malicious intent towards him) and going to Cairhien (straight into the arms of the Aes Sedai who hurt him)

telling him that he needs to keep Cadsuane around leads to Semirhage being able to use the Bands of Dominion on him, as well as allowing her general bullying behavior

telling him that Elza will serve him leads to Elza being able to help Semirhage use the Bands of Dominion on him

she tells him that Logain has an ‘aura of glory’ and attempts to poison his view of Logain by saying that she worries it means Logain will try to usurp Rand as the Dragon Reborn (Rand dismisses this when she brings it up -- good for him! but it may have contributed to him treating Logain with more suspicion than he would have otherwise).

Min would have been SO much better if she was only in the role of Rand’s Seer Who (Accidentally) Leads Him Astray rather than double-dipping as his girlfriend imo.

20. Rand gets Ituralde and Bashere settled along the border of the Blight with their soldiers (which is advancing relatively quickly). Narishma is here with him, but it doesn’t sound like Merise came along. Rand thinks here “there were no games with Min” and I genuinely laughed out loud. She spent an entire half a book playing “friends who kiss” with him in order to manipulate him into a relationship (she admits this in her OWN THOUGHTS). It is... fascinating, I guess, that it seems like a lot of readers (maybe including Sanderson?) believe Rand’s guesses about Min as non-manipulative over Min actually admitting in her own narration that she deliberately manipulated Rand into a relationship.

23. Lews Therin tells Rand that ~Min is right~ about breaking the seals. It was YOUR IDEA, Lews Therin! You had this idea books ago!

24. lol, the contradiction of Min’s existence in Rand’s life continues. “he needed to be alone. Relying on anyone would risk being weak when he reached Shayol Ghul”. You are literally snuggling your girlfriend EVERY NIGHT. Does she not count as a person?

Would spending the night with Aviendha make you feel ‘not alone’ in a way that spending the night with Min doesn’t? This is one of the big thing that I mean when I say that Min feels more like a plot device than a character. Because Rand says he needs to ‘be alone’ to be strong and then models this behavior with EVERYONE that he cares about (he thinks about how he needs to avoid his father to avoid emotional weakness in this section) except for Min, who doesn’t count as someone who makes him feel ‘not alone’, like she’s a figment of his imagination rather than another character in the world.

Everything about this would make so much more sense if Rand and Min were "Prophecy Child and his Seer egging him on" instead lovers. If Rand were in a lonely bed every night, then him thinking about how important it is that he's alone would make... some modicum of sense. If Min were Rand's Seer but not his lover, then it would be heartbreaking that Rand and Aviendha are so close but staying apart because they both believe for their own personal reasons that they Need To Be Alone. But because Rand is snuggling his personal human plushie every night, it just comes across as vaguely ridiculous when he talks about how him being alone is what makes him hard enough to make it to Shayol Ghul. Like... that's a hard comedy crosscut -- imagine Rand saying out loud, all brooding, "I must be alone. Relying on anyone risks me being weak when I go to my death," and then we SMASH CUT to him cuddling his girlfriend in bed that night. That's laugh track territory!

25. I feel like we’re supposed to feel like Rand is being ~paranoid~ about Min’s closeness to Cadsuane (especially because he immediately chastises himself for it, reminding himself that Min ~doesn’t play games~ lol) but... he’s right. She actually HAS gone behind his back and told his secrets to Cadsuane -- she spilled about both his Aes Sedai-related trauma and also told Cadsuane about being bonded to Rand. His paranoia is absolutely on point here, though he talks himself out of it. She HAS shown more trust in Cadsuane than she has in Rand. This is the same sort of issue that I ran into in Winter’s Heart, where Jordan seemed like he was clearly trying to frame Rand’s worries about Nynaeve as keeping secrets from him as “saidin-induced paranoia”... but she WAS keeping secrets from him! His best friend got left behind in enemy territory! That’s a huge secret that she was actively keeping from him! Like, idk, if Rand’s paranoia keeps being absolutely spot-on correct, it’s kinda hard for me to feel that it’s as dangerous as it feels like the author(s) want me to believe that it is.

26. Before the conversation can continue, a disguised Semirhage collars Rand, having been hidden as an elderly servant. Genuinely so ridiculous that Aviendha doesn’t get involved in this Event at all. She should feel the acute stress in Rand’s mind! The idea that she just ignores it is just... silly, and an excuse to focus only on Min. But, yes, parts of this scene are somewhat affecting to me, but I have to admit Min being very Damsel here honestly makes me roll my eyes and Aviendha not showing up makes it harder to take the scene seriously. At least Min does attempt to attack Semirhage, I guess, before she inevitably spends the rest of the scene in ~beautiful agony~ (remember, you gotta look Hot For Your Man even when you are writhing in pain! /s).

27. Semirhage talking about how satisfying wearing the Dominion Bands are, how it reminds her of the power using the a’dam gave her. Just baffling to me that we apparently aren’t supposed to view Tuon -- who finds torturing and breaking women to be a relaxing hobby -- with as much horror/disgust as we’re meant to view Semirhage. This tool of torture and subjugation that Semirhage gets off on using is the same kind of thing that Tuon enjoys so much. What Semirhage is doing to Rand here is what was done to Egwene in The Great Hunt and what Tuon and her people want to do to all women who can channel. We are given a visceral reminder here (and in Egwene’s flashbacks) of exactly how awful the world that Tuon wants to create is (she literally thinks in her own PoV section how she wants EVERY ‘marath’damane’ in the world to be in an a’dam -- though she also, of course, completely blocks out from her mind that this should include herself as well).

But in Mat’s PoV sections, we’re clearly not meant to recoil in sickened disgust that he’s willing to kiss a woman who would choose to do something like this to his friends and his sister. The line between the type of person that Semirhage is and the type of person that being a High Blood of the Seanchan Empire forges you into... it just does not seem that different to me. I feel like Tuon & the Seanchan Empire (as an institution) are the exact same kind of “Corrosive Evil but not of the Dark One” situation that happened with Aridhol/Shadar Logoth. There’s a reason that Fain felt so at home and comfortable in the atmosphere that the Seanchan created in Falme.

28. Anyway, Rand uses the True Power to break the bracelets and balefires Semirhage and Elza. It sounds like what he did was use his connection with Moridin to use MORIDIN’S connection to the Dark One in order to use the True Power (much like how Semirhage was able to use the Dominion Bands to use Rand’s saidin).

29. It’s genuinely not believable that the torrent of emotion that Rand was feeling in this scene didn’t bring Aviendha here. Rand doesn’t even note any kind of emotional response that Aviendha might be having to his emotions; it’s literally like they’re still in different countries.

30. Good news: neither Corele nor Merise were among the Sisters killed by Shaidar Haran and Elza when they went to free Semirhage! My ladies still live! Poor Daigan died, though.

31. Why wouldn’t Min ask Nynaeve to heal her bruises in this scene? This plus her “thank the Light I’m not Aes Sedai” moment that she had earlier in the book is giving me... weird vibes. (it’s kinda weird that Nynaeve doesn’t appear to have offered either)

32. Rand teaches Narishma balefire to use on the Forsaken, and Cadsuane jumps in to tell him that that she forbids its use. “I have decided that it is not [forbidden],” Rand says. I like pushed-past-his-limits Rand here, the narrative weight of it. He was forced beyond the morality line that he’d set up for himself (Don’t Kill Women, No Matter What) and now is essentially in moral freefall, but he’s still RAND and he still wants the same things (re: saving the world) that he wanted before and he still hates the same things that hated before too (he doesn’t like the Seanchan any better now). He's just been untethered from some of the limitations that he was previously holding himself to, which puts him on a dangerous balancing beam. THIS Rand actually could accidentally destroy the world while trying to save it, as the prophecies warn.

33. Cadsuane’s utter and complete failure at keeping the Bands secure snaps Rand far enough that he finally banishes her from his sight, despite Min’s viewing.

“Cadsuane,” he said softly. “Do you believe I could kill you? Right here, right now, without using a sword or the Power? Do you believe that if I willed it, the Pattern would bend around me and stop your heart? By... coincidence?”

Honestly, this moment literally had me fanning myself, both now and back when I first read it, lol. Rand has never been hotter. Something about a good person in complete moral freefall really does it for me. Some things we must just accept about ourselves, lol.

I think it’s partly... the embrace/weaponizing of the power inside him (not the Power, but his twisting luck as a ta’veren) that I like? It’s about finally unleashing the monstrous part of yourself and trying to use it for good. Dangerous! But hot! I think it’s also a bit about walking that balancing beam itself, knowing that they could fall off. But this vibe is also part of what draws me to characters like Anakin Skywalker or the various Atreides (Paul, Alia, etc) -- or why I like vampires & werewolves in that sort of fantasy setting.

34. Cadsuane has a somewhat vaguely hilarious moment of regret here -- now that she’s seen THIS version of Rand, she realizes how good she had it with the previous version of Rand. Previous Rand was willing to give her an infinite number of chances (because of Min asking him to) but this Rand is just done with her and out of patience.

35. There’s kind of a funny progression with “Egwene is Amrylin” basically every time someone (who knew her before) learns the information - “Um wtf she’s just an Accepted”; “Oh no she’s a pawn”; “Oh actually she seems to have things in hand”. And that makes... a lot of sense? Of course people who actually knew her are usually startled when they first find out, because their most recent previous knowledge is that she was in the ‘student’ category. People don’t instantly process information from zero to sixty. Egwene herself assumed when she was summoned by the Salidar Aes Sedai that she was being summoned as an Accepted being punished. I feel like a lot of characters end up getting flack for being startled by Egwene being Amyrlin (and not being a puppet Amrylin) but those assumptions make a lot of sense on first blush, given what they know about Egwene (student) and what they know about Aes Sedai (big on tradition). Anyway, Gawyn has pushed past Stage One and is into Stage Two of “Egwene is Amrylin”.

36. Gareth and Gawyn have a big clash of conflicting information when they talk (and most of Gareth’s information is much more recent and more accurate than Gawyn’s, though still clouded by his own perspective) -- Gawyn finds out that Elayne holds the Lion Throne, is told that Rand held Andor together (chooses not to believe it), is told Morgase exiled Gareth on pain of death (chooses to believe she must have had a reason). Gawyn has been sheltered from a LOT of information of current events during all this tbh. They both accuse the other one of not being in Caemlyn when they should be, lol. They ARE the pointing Spider-man meme.

37. Sheriam gets orders from one of the Forsaken that Egwene must be deposed as Amrylin, not having proven to be as pliable as hoped. She feels pretty bitter/regretful about her life choices -- she became a Darkfriend so that she could enact petty revenge on her rivals and work her way up the Tower ladder faster! Not to actually have to be in the Last Battle! Haha, sorry bb.

38. Egwene is now in a teeny-tiny cell in the dungeons, though she is still allowed visitors at times. She’s told that Elaida will face a trial for her abuse of Power against a Tower initiate but the consequences wouldn’t remove her from the Amyrlin Seat. Egwene braces herself to fight as best as she can from inside her cell (tbh, at this point, I actually DO kinda feel like she should tell her Aes Sedai followers that it’s time to rescue her so she can continue her work outside the walls? She’s planted a ton of seeds inside the Tower and now her options have been SEVERELY restricted; leaving the Tower would give her more choices in how to maneuver).

[mamadarama]

(fankid au anon) yess i love rachel and jun's videos poki is exactly how i would describe mika's cat. little gremlin creature

also keito with a guinea pig!! real,, the noble guinea pig✨

regarding kohaku's cat, yeah i get what you mean about purebred stray being unlikely, i didn't know how common it would be to see x breed as a stray or not ^^'' i was thinking a calico cat would be cute for him, and a bobtail would be fun too!! (my sister said hiiro would probably think the cat lost its tail in an Epic Battle, lmao)

i didnt even know you could have stick bugs as pets :0!! hiiro definitely loves stick/leaf bugs, or any other interesting mimicry like that i think. also i think he makes sure to teach his kid the value of bugs+other creatures that Aren't Cuddly, like "just because it's not catered to humans doesnt mean it doesnt deserve your respect" kinda thing.

also i feel somewhat silly i did so much research on turtles but forgot to look up horses,, ty for letting me know saigoudon is still around 👍

tetora says their cat is a tiger (in spirit) and their kid takes that to mean that their cat is Actually a Tiger. so does yuushino kid, who is still scared of this cat (even after watching it get stuck in a wet paper bag and smashing into a wall). hinata thinks this is the funniest thing in the world and continues to affectionately bully their cat (even as the children warn him about Tiger Attacks) ("idiot cat with no braincells" "you'll provoke him!! stop that!!" "stinky dum dum baby" "no!!")

shu having a hairless cat is so important to me,, if anyone said anything even vaguely insulting about his Precious Darling Angel he would immediately tear into them without mercy i think. he makes it the most Fancy Tailored Clothes (he makes them for mikas cat too its just that one keeps rolling around in the dirt or getting into Weird Situations that end in the outfit getting torn or ruined. rip)

daikichi i mostly said "descendant" because of a joke in a bkub comic about daikichi's ancestor, suekichi (daikichi=good luck, suekichi=good luck to come) was waiting to name that one till i found a suitable name to continue the joke with fjsjs. but yea youre probably right lol

also yea thats a fair point about koga,, (i may have been slightly influenced by metal gear solid. fandom loves to remind you the main character mentioned he has 50 wolf dogs in that game. admittedly he lives in alaska and these are sled dogs. but still) i think what you said makes sense, he adopts one or two and volunteers at the local animal shelter regularly

yeah theres a lot of bugs you can have as pets !!!! you just have to know how to care for them cuz unlike mammals their needs vary way more from species to species .

yeah ive straight up never seen a purebred stray before. not counting moggies with mutations that fall under a breed standard bc theyre still moggies and a cat cant fall under a breed unless theyre descended from a cat with a pedigree.

subaru would still name his next shiba suekichi as a tribute to daikichi. cuz daikichis dad was also named daikichi, i think hed want to keep the tradition going somewhat

ON GOD I FORGOT ABOUT SNAKES 50 DOGS HOW COULD I FUCKIGN FORGET THAT IM SO ASHAMED OF MYSELF. also werent they huskies not wolf dogs? anyways if koga moved to alaska that would be him 100%. except it would be more like 20 .

[a-tale-of-legends]

I'm literally about to face Turo, but I am kinda wiped lol. So I decided to just look at the area zero journals to see what I can find. Here's my understanding of it

1) Sada/Turo was involved with/ the inventory of the research and naming of the terastilization phenomenon.

↓

2)Professor Sada/Turo already moved into the lighthouse long before Arven was both (?, not completely sure on this, but going off the notes here), due to the prototype of the tera orb. Again, Arven was both before this. Assumedly.

↓

3) At some point, the tera project is back and Sada/Turo are able to move back to Area Zero. There's a smaller team, and the crystals unstable power is a cause for concern, but they press on.

↓

4) Arven was born and the professor's partner left soon after. Going back a bit, I'm going to assume when the professor said " a paradise where all three of us can live together" wasn't with Arven into the world just yet. Possibly while Sada/ Turo's partner ( which. I hc is still Sada-) was pregnant. The main reason I even say this is bc of a later journal entry we'll get into.

↓

5) From Arven's dialogue and the professor's journals, it seems that 1) the time machine was something that happened much later after Arven was born - years later of Arven was able to even remember Miraidon/ Koraidon. This implies that the time machine project was. A lot. Which is understandable it's a fucking time machine. 2) after the first raidon, there were other paradox pokemon that came flooding in. From the final entry, it seems that the professor was very low on workers, if any at all. This is important to note bc of how Sada/Turo literally left Area Zero to go to the lighthouse with the first raidon... while the time machine was still active. It could be assumed that the ai professor was alive at this point but honestly, I don't even know. But that brings me too-

↓

6) Full disclosure, I'm not even fully sure if this is exactly how these events turned out. There's a lot of ambiguity in what should be a straight forward order of events. I'm just trying to figure out what works for my brain tbh. So! Ai Professor. Just from what I previously stated before, the first ( assuming it was the first) paradox pokemon to come out of the time machine was our Raidon. The second Raidon was brought with the AI Professor and the of one. And bc Raidon was introduced to Arven at a young age where he can remember it, we can assume that the second one must have happened some time after the incident with the first raidon. Assuming. So all of that would mean that the AI professor was built sometime after the first raidon incident, at best, bc when Arven was born, Sada/Turo still had it relatively good sans their partner leaving. The time machine wasn't exactly active, let alone fully built. Again, I am assuming this. TLDR: AI Professor was built and at some point after that helped bring bully Raidon into the present day. God.

" wait but the professor wrote about their partner leaving them when Arven was born!" Yeah. I know. Trust me, I am grasping at strays here to make this feel more cohesive than it is. My best take is this: The professor is clearly spiraling and spiraling hard. They are losing staff, under pressure by what I'm assuming is their corporate backing, and just getting crushed by their own obsession and the desire to see this project work. It doesn't help that they are probably all by themselves at this point. So my guess is that the journal about their partner and Arven was the professor reflecting - not in a healthy way mind you. They are just. Spiraling into something more bitter, paranoid and desperate. That's my read anyway. Honestly maybe that's when they decide to make the ai professor b

↓

7) Again we don't know how long Raidon and Bully Raidon co existed. But it ends up with them having a territorial dispute, with the OG professor dying to protect Buddy Raidon. Actually we kinda do cause. Raidon crash landed on the beach near the beginning of the game. So that kinda implies that Sada/Turo's death was. Recent. Oh boy.

↓

8) everything with the indigo Disk and terapogos very much fucks with this timeline. I fully acknowledge that. I also acknowledge that I probably got some things wrong! Just know this is me mostly just. Trying to wrap my head around this stuff. It's so ironic how the pokemon game with arguably the most clear cut timeline of events, somehow still confuses me. Either I'm an idiot or pokemon needs to stop being so fucking vague. God.

Anyway. I hope you enjoy my dive in insanity ( trying to figure out the sada/Turo timeline).

[gltownsend]

Hello hello! This is the writeblr library's librarian with some questions. You can choose to do question one, question two, or both! (and there's no time limit btw <3) Have fun!

~will be reblogged onto the writeblr library~

What inspired your WIP? Was it another piece of media? Multiple pieces of media? A certain genre? Tropes? Parts of your life? A hyper-specific random thing

What environment gives you the best ideas for your WIP? Do you have a playlist? Do you go for a walk? Do you get ideas at 3am and have to write them down NOW otherwise they disappear? Do you write anywhere and anywhere? What gets you in the mood to write?

Hi!! (and thank you!)

1- wow I actually don’t remember! While it’s changed entirely all ship of Theseus-like, I’m pretty sure I actually came up with the original plot of this WIP when I was 11-13 years old (god. So I entered and will exit my teenage years with it). (I put it under the cut if anyone’s curious, haha. It’s very different.)

And 2- I actually really don’t get ideas unless I make room for them. I really have to sit down and write out everything that’s happened up until this point and then write out everything that COULD happen brainstorm and choose. I don’t really get inspiration naturally 🤷‍♂️ it’s all forced, lol. I WISH I was the type of person who got ideas from walking or music or stuff so they didn’t seem so forced sometimes, but I suppose consistency is good too.

Thank you for the ask!! Cool idea and yeah just��� thank you >:]

Since it was so long ago I have no clue where I came up with it, but I still remember the super basic idea; a young teenage boy from the normal world gets caught in a forest fire, dies? and wakes up in a high fantasy world (no I’d LITERALLY NEVER read or even heard of a portal fantasy, this was my original idea and I was gutted when I found out it was an already established thing) in a kingdom where royals and nebulously Important People have the power to control fire. He gets sort of taken-in-stray-cat-adopted by the similarly aged not-in-line (so not very important) prince who does have the power. Because he just appeared and has no abilities and no life here.

They’re trying to work out how to get him home when he suddenly starts (oh no!!) making sparks and stuff but he hides it because (Oh No!!) he’s in love with the prince (or something idk I was like 12.) Somehow some confrontation exposes fully fledged fire powers like only a master from this world should have and for some reason this makes the king super flip out. He and the prince flee. It ends there.

- My current plot, in contrast, has a (different) older teenage guy (closer to my age now) as the main character but it doesn’t really start with him. I don’t want to describe it too deeply but the main characters all attend a sort of community boarding school because they live in a society where education and knowledge and ability are really highly valued, more than really any material or object or anything?

(So basically not because they’re rich or important, it’s normal, and the boarding aspect is because everyone lives very communally in general, and higher education doesn’t really exist because of the level of societal development. So this is the only stage in life where they get any real independence from their parents, because as adults usually people return and live in family groups again so this is how they learn to be self sufficient away from parents, I suppose?)

Anyway there is a younger kid about 10 in the junior school who is having weird stuff happen to him and it’s sort of related to the ghosts, which are a normal aspect of the world which is where time is wearing kind of thin and you can see echoes of people from the past or future through, and something happens that makes main character, friend group, and child need to leave school to try to work out what’s happening.

There is a bunch of weird time stuff in the middle like things happening and unhappening, and time loops but short, and it’s got the same sort of beats because it’s overall a sort of coming-of-age romance between main character and his best friend, and it was originally an adventure romance between main character and new wow prince.

…there were a bunch of middle iterations between this with the characters from current iteration in the current world but with a similar plot to original story (basically some people have fire powers, some people have healing powers, main character is supposed to have healing powers but then he randomly has fire too, this makes people flip out, he runs away with love interest (roommate) and then I never knew what happened after that…) but this final iteration is the first one to have an ending.

In 2019 it briefly went through a real-world (not fantasy) post-apocalyptic phase in the aftermath of a plague where they had been on a school trip on one side of America (a distant and exotic place!) when everyone had died or become evil and now they were trying to get back home in a stolen van when none of them could drive because they were underage teens. So road trip across America to the other side after plague. Scrapped shortly before Covid, actually.

[revclver-jesus]

{{ ok. having watched what i think is all the new takaya scenes from near the beginning to the end... Here are my final thoughts!

It was worth the wait !! dfhkgskhgd

Takaya's great, the decision to have him develop a fixation on the main character is Iconic, he feels like a deeply weird and intense and erratic feral stray cat that has lived on the streets too long and gone completely haywire, and he's just the right balance of tragic and a little pitiful and menacing and heartless enough to not pity him TOO much. Like, you can choose to feel sympathy for the guy or just see him as a fun over the top antagonist, and that's an impressive line to walk tbh.

Jin is great, he's so much more emotional now, and to go with it they gave him such a sympathetic and almost melancholic end. The tone felt a lot more sad for him this time around, but his devotion to takaya comes across as really sweet as much as it is fanatical. And YES btw-- they did have Takaya do what he did in the movie and says Jin's name as he dies. So don't worry, all his third wheel simping did pay off and Takajin is still online skhgdfdskh

BUT........ I do have one major complaint. Though, tbf i kinda didn't really expect this to change, I just really hoped so. Chidori Chidori Chidori, she.... still doesn't interact with them! At all lmao! I know she spends 70% of the game bedridden, but she also doesn't utter a single word during the scenes where she's with them. It would have been so easy to have her make a single line of banter between the two to indicate some kind of dynamic or history. And when she's outright asked what she felt about the other two she blows the question off in just the right way where its impossible to read how she felt. I get Takaya not being close with her, he doesn't want to be openly close to anyone, but it is just very strange to me to have Jin say twice how much he cares about Chidori as "one of them" and being eager to get her back only for neither of them to say a word to each other. Such a shame, though maybe we'll get to see it in supplementary material/DLC who knows.

It also would have been great to see all three fight together, since they went through the trouble of adding that "takaya team up" battle, but I think the way they fight separately is symbolic so i'll let it pass lmao.

Also-- though this is def more of a long shot and less of a criticism, but in the manga the depiction of them as children really went a long way in showing them as lost and unlucky souls, ( like showing takaya go from sitting alone at the steps of tartarus to being a little boy still sitting alone in the dark ) so I was kinda hoping they'd depict them as children at some point! But that's ok honestly, they'd have to make more 3d models and all that lol

But no, yeah, overall? Really glad to see them again, and this felt like a major improvement in general! Lots more heart and nuance and more intimidation and power to them, I love to see it!

Oh and btw? their last names are indeed still in the credits lol. }}

[angelmichelangelo]

I don't think I can actually contain my excitement for the new Mutant Mayhem movie!!! What are you most looking forward to/anticipating and hoping for?

anon i’m right there with you pal, hahah.

more under the cut cos i went a little insane lol

and oh boy SO much. it’s funny because i am a no trailer kind of person. i don’t mind teasers but on a general note i tend to avoid trailers only because most of the time they’re very spoilery. but i broke my own rule mostly because i have no impulse control and was very very happy when it decided to not show me the entire plot of the movie in 2 minutes or less.

i really REALLY love that it’s not a krang/shredder movie. don’t get me wrong: love those guys, i think they’re great “main” villains but it gets a little tiresome of seeing them on the big screen most of the time.

it feels really reminiscent of spider man homecoming in the sense that, we didn’t need the entire movie to spell out peter’s origins. we already KNOW he’s been bitten by a spider, we already KNOW about ben and about responsibility and blah blah blah. and having homecoming be a little ways into his new life, having him takedown smaller, street level villains felt super refreshing and so much more down to earth and so much more like spider man, and that’s the feeling i get with this new tmnt movie.

we don’t need them going to space taking down aliens or making mortal enemies right away, we need them saving shitty parts of the city from purple dragons, making home for all the stray mutants. if feels so much more.. homely? in a way? it feels grounded and im really happy to finally see that in a tmnt movie.

(we can save shredder or krang for a sequel lol)

I LOVE that it doesn’t seem to be focused on just one of the brothers. unfortunately over time tmnt seems to boil itself down to “this is the plot and then we have leo/raph conflict, then we have the peak, and then leo/raph conflict resolves and they finally work as a team and save the world”

and again, i do enjoy some brotherly angst from time to time but it really gets tiresome after a while, especially when you’re watching donnie and mikey get shafted into essentially background support cast lol.

brothers fight and argue and i don’t doubt that we’ll see that in the movie, maybe driving somewhat of a wedge between them before their big moment but as long as it isn’t the resounding conflict of the movie i’ll be happy. i want name calling and hair pulling but don’t make the entire movie just leo vs raph match. they’re each others best friends at the end of the day.

i’m hoping for a little more of mikey and donnie. again like i said in my last point, they’re always pretty under-utilised. mikey always falls into the comic relief cycle and donnie is just. there until someone needs him to pick a lock or defuse a bomb lol. notice in the trailer when mikey asked what they would do if they weren’t monsters (coming back to that in a moment) we never actually hear what it is mike and don want. whether it was just for the gag of donnie’s sarcastic response to leo’s answer or whether it was intentional, i have full faith in seth rogan ever since he put out the characters sheets about mikey wanting to be taken more seriously AND the fact that it was mikey looking longingly out of the sewer towards the city. he might make me cry in this movie. he might make me cry.

i want to be HURT. yes mikey is my very first blorbo so naturally i treat him like a personal punching bag. mike sees himself as a monster, no doubt the others do too, but throughout the lifespan of the tmnt franchise, mikey’s always the one that wants to be part of the “normal” world, making human friends, wanting to be accepted. yeah we got that in bayverse 2 but if we get a repeat of the scene where the police officers that were surrounding them with guns calls them monsters to their faces and mikey starts tearing up… i might not make it. look for me on the isle floor underneath the fold up cinema seats cos i’ll be there, weeping like a damn baby. i want this movie to be fun and im okay with it if it isn’t more angst heavy but the tmnt fandom are pretty used to the pain by now, it’s almost expected lmao.

things im hoping for: a casey hint. hand on heart i don’t think he’ll be here for this movie, and unless he’s referred to at the end then im hoping we get a Easter egg at least, a la yoshi at the end of the super mario bros movie. show me a hockey mask and i will go bananas.

woody dirkins. i will honestly do so many unlawful things for a woody cameo AT LEAST. woody is one of my favourite side characters…. i want Woody. i might protest this who is with me.

no multiverse shit. i don’t mind tongue in cheek references, i think that’s cute and it’s fine and hey. if we get a 2003 reference or joke i might just combust because it’ll be nice if SOMEBODY in the Nick studios remembered those guys. but i’m so happy with this being a standalone movie. no crossovers no sky splitting open no big blue beam going to destroy the city. i want this bubble of a world to exist on its own, mostly because the multiverse trope is everywhere at the moment, so it would just be really cool not to have it again lol

OH. ideas for a sequel despite not even having seen the first one ???? here is one:

the rat king. again, we don’t have to go full main mega villain yet but 2012 rat king was UNREAL and genuinely one of my favourite villains of all time. it wouldn’t have to be beat for beat the same as that particular episode but i quite enjoy it when they give Splinter stuff to do.

overall i think i’m gonna be pleased with this movie. i genuinely am not fussed about many things, if it’s gots the turtles, i’m gonna be happy, trust me.

i’m also looking forward to the soundtrack. we’ve only had one song so far but i just know it’s gonna be very fun, 90s hip hop, my kinda thing.

a lot of love seems to have been poured into this project and it doesn’t feel like a cash grab or toy selling front in any shape or form. the tmnt fandom has pretty much been bobbing about in waves of content for years, some good some bad, some left in the mud. we haven’t gotten a real movie since 2016, back when i was in college making essays on the franchise itself, and now here we are seven years later and i’m just as hyped as i knew i would have been if I’d known this movie was coming out back then.

i cant wait for this movie, to feel it’s love through the screen from the writers and the cast, and it’s just so exciting. be prepared because as soon as my little mushroom brain goes and watches that movie, i’m making it my entire personality for perhaps forever. i won’t even be sorry lol

thanks for the ask anon, sorry it got a little rambly there — have a good day :)

[morn1e]

posting again abt my personal dude hcs 4 my au from my previous blog bcuz i was rather happy w them&want them here. changed a few minor things+added a few more that i forgot 2 mention in the original. as said b4, these r just my own personal interpretations of p2 dude specifically, u can see him however u want.

- prepare 4 the real name of the century bcuz ermmm what the sigma. ok so dudes real name is tanner parkley dude jr. .yeah his surname is genuinely dude. nickname “the postaI dude” derives from highschool where he worked as a postaI worker during the summers(&was mocked 4)&since nobody liked him, they gave him the name. was mainly called TP or dude by few that were friends bcuz he really hated the names tanner or parkley. Since he is jr., his father was called tanner&dude was called parkley by family. Does Not like the name parkley whatsoever, absolutely prefers 2 b called just dude

- born on feb 29th bcuz he does not deserve 2 have a bday every year 🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕🖕in 2003 ,he is 39.

- does not have schizophrenia but is mentally unstable 2 some degree bcuz he does deal w very violent&intrusive thoughts on which he acts out on sometimes&has anger issues

- physically wise has struggled w chronic migraine since a young teen. his 20s were his worst years bcuz the migraines were @ their worst/most frequent+the fact he was a drug addict&did not take proper care of himself as he should have+the bitch constantly nagging did not help whatsoever. now that he is nearly 40&medicated they have greatly decreased but attacks still occur bcuz he still does not look after himself enough as he should

- was born in florida but the family moved around a lot(bcuz they could not b bothered 2 pay rent). eventually settled down in utah after marrying&lived there 4 a while, but moved 2 arizona 2 live in paradise after taking on the video game developer job

- am set on thinking he is the youngest child, hence why he is jr. it is bcuz his parents could not come up w anything better when naming him. i somewhat think dude was maybe even an accident. 3 sons in the family. kept minimal communication after moving out but after the dads funeral completely cut every1 off bcuz every1 was insufferable&hated every1. both brothers sort of turned out like dude(substance abusers&poor). mom is still around but he does not talk 2 her either bcuz she always was over religious&turned a blind eye 2 dads abuse&he just Does Not like her

- only family he is in contact w is uncle dave! only guy who was genuinely there 4 dude when growing up when it seemed like nobody cared. dudes father really despised him hanging out w dave bcuz he was sorta known as a scammer w his various scum scams. dude as a teen helped out dave w his various schemes&whatever so much so 2 the point it costed a permanent offense on his record where it hindered dude from barely being able 2 finish high school+absolutely NO hope of getting into college bcuz nobody wanted him there. i think this is also a factor why he has a hard time holding a job(main factor is that he is just. a piece of low value shit) //(yes, this is based off the postaI movie. i like this idea a lot&decided 2 take it 4 myself lol)

- met the bitch through her cousin bcuz he was dating her cousin 1st. thought bitch was hotter so chose her. got married in las vegas in 1 of those cheesy stupid wedding chapels

- dude genuinely did love the bitch @ 1 point but in the end they were incompatible&they were both pieces of shit 2 each other. w age they just drifted away completely where they just Could Not stand each other. i believe sole reason they stayed 2gether was bcuz of tax benefit&could not afford a divorce or smth

- champ came into his life randomly 1 day while he was still in utah&champ as a stray came up 2 his trailer randomly. he got fed&bcame dudes companion from then <:)

- in my au dude is mainly clean off crack bcuz when he moved into paradise got so pissed @ the crack dealer prices that out of sheer petty&principle said 2 himself he would Not smoke that shit b4 butchering most of the dealers. still has relapses but mostly manages. has turned 2 weed mostly

- has cried 2 nickelback @ least 3 times

- has a seasonal pollen allergy which acts up during spring bcuz i Do Not like him♡

- has a lower back tattoo(aka tramp stamp) from when he was younger. still thinks it is cool. i am a firm believer in this&will die on a hill 4 this hc. if dude having a back tattoo has no believers that means i am no longer on this earth

- contrary 2 his official outfit, i like 2 think dude wears a watch. 1 of those vintage timex watches. it is old as shit as dude got it as a gift 4 his 20th from uncle dave&has worn it ever since. most scratched fucked up watch u have ever seen but it still works just fine

- again, contrary 2 his official outfit, i have grown 2 the idea of dude wearing pointy toe shoes instead of boots. sole reason he wears them is bcuz he bought(or stole) them 4 his wedding&has worn them ever since; they were expensive as shit&might as well put them 2 use. those bad bitches have seen everything&still going strong

- despite taking showers once when the planets align @ a very specific angle&there being a full moon or whatever, grooms&maintains his goatee rather seriously. only thing he takes seriously tbh

- thinks too much pepper is genuinely considered spicy bcuz he is so white guy&cannot handle spice whatsoever

- fav desserts r smth like bread w butter&sugar or graham crackers w milk bcuz he grew up dirt poor&these were the only desserts the household could afford

- does not rly have a fav alcoholic drink bcuz will drink abt anything just so it gets him fucked up as fast as possible. but if dude had 2 choose would like whiskey+coke or vodka+tonic cocktails i think. beer is just fine too. does not like red wine bcuz of how it tastes+ triggers a migraine

- dude does not like chocolate but every year when there is a discount on it after valentines day, he gets a huge craving 4 it&gets a fuck ton of it&eats it all in 1 sitting so much so he gets genuinely very ill&hates chocolate 4 the rest of the year up until the upcoming valentines.

- knows how 2 cook meats like briskets&ribs&steaks&shit where they turn out rather really nice <:) knows how 2 cook overall but gets take out most of the time bcuz cannot b bothered 2 cook as the process is tedious as shit&bcuz idfk dude thinks he is too good 2 do the dishes or some shit

- genuinely knows how 2 program&just has quite a lot of computer knowledge in general<:) if he was not dead set on being a piece of shit who is too good 2 hold a job, dude could make a fine living off of developing websites 4 ppl on the web or fixing computers in general, like reinstalling OS&whatever. but alas. dumbass failure noob man

[scienceshir]

WARNING a long ass post ahead, but only because this beef got weird and crazy af (imo) lol

Lol this beef even made the educators who met/knew of J Cole while he attended St. John's university come out lol. This woman said she interviewed him for something in relation to the school and said he always had a good head on his shoulders and was not surprised that he made a smart move:

That being said, I hope he continues to be smart and stop fucking with Aubrey, forreal. The reasons for Cole to keep his distance from dude just keeps on adding up. Cuz why his house getting shot at. Why he dealing with drivebys (or possibly setting them up for public sympathy). Whether that shooting was real or not, its messy and dangerous. I really like Cole, so I am praying the union they had is done and Drake is not on the fall off. We don't wanna hear it. Not because Kendrick obviously doesn't like him. But like we notice, every time he comes around Cole, Cole has to deal with some damn stray/negativity. Mess follows that dude, and I don't like how he handled/reacted to Cole for apologizing. Its a good thing Cole made that last minute move to exit or he would be mocked by the entire world like Aubrey or something. The only thing they are taking seriously about Aubrey now is them predator/pedo allegations. The feds could be watching him/his crew, cause them allegations Kendrick threw were serious (as are the allegations that Aubrey threw to Kendrick), and Aubrey didn't really do himself justice when he responded at all. I personally hated that molestation approach he took, thats just me. Out of all the disses, that was the first time I truly felt disgusted by what I was listening to. I know its battle rap, but there had to be a better way than that. Anyway, One of the main reasons I hope Cole distances himself is because of how low key spiteful Aubrey acted towards Cole for dropping out. He acted like the trolls on the internet did. As I mentioned before, it was obvious Drake didn't take the apology decision well at first. But still, a month goes by, and on his Family matters diss, Aubrey did that shit again. And everyone noticed- some were even taken aback that he kept poking at it, so much so, the top comment under the official video is about how he threw another stray at cole:

I think this is why in "Not like us", Kendrick said Drake "Did cole foul, why you still pretending", after mentioning how Drake disrespected tupac. Kendrick was def reacting to the family matters diss because he mentioned Drake's slave comment. So I think by "foul" he meant that Aubrey of all people is the one that keeps throwing jabs at Cole, knowing Cole was doing what was truly best for himself/his life. He should have been understanding or like "whatever" by that point, but clearly he was not. Kendrick himself didn't even react that way to the apology and he was the one that got a whole diss record thrown on him from cole. If ANYONE should be hanging that over Cole's head after a month, its Kendrick. But Ken did not, Aubrey did, just like Cole's haters did. Thats interesting. And yeah, that makes aubrey seem entitled and like he really didn't care , he just wanted Cole to still be involved probably because that would have served him more. Yea, Aubrey is never beating the "user/shady/fake/not a good person" allegations. In my opinion, he showed Cole his hand with these multiple poor apology reactions. I really hope this entire situation finally made Cole re-evaluate and start being more careful with who he works with and lets get close to him. I don't think he been the best at that these past 2-3 years. I think he always just cared about the music and making music/making money. But this beef should have showed him, he really should start caring. This beef was like a domino affect. It got sad and ugly for almost everyone. Many things showed showed you can not trust these people or be too friendly with them. Aubrey's own crew has moles in them and is trying to help take him down. Cole got lucky because this got ugly for almost everyone, including their families. And we don't even know if Ken and aubrey were really telling the whole truths on each other or if they was just spewing the worst lies/rumors just to destroy each other (although obviously there is more "evidence" for the allegations against drake)

Kendrick still the winner in my eyes if I had to pick between him and Aubrey. Cole is still a winner to me for doing something that I could tell in many ways was best for him and in the long run he will probably appreciate his decision even more. He graduated from a good university with a 3.8 GPA and we see why

[rnf-central]

Super Mario Wonder Direct Thoughts

I woke up a little late and missed the live stream, lol. But I finally saw it, and oh my god I am so excited for this game. Honestly I was from the moment I first saw it. The art style is so cute and expressive, and the levels looked amazing. A very distinct new step for the 2D Mario games without straying too hard from what makes them so good to begin with. I didn't even need this Direct honestly, but it was a nice surprise. Though, to be honest, I kinda wish I didn't watch it. Not because it killed my hype. If anything it made me more excited, but I think is showed off a little too much. Stuff I'd like to of been surprised about. Like there's a whole section about the world themes that I think would've been better to just leave as something the players should find them self. Though I still do believe there's lots we haven't seen yet in that regard. But yeah this game looks so good. I found it gorgeous looking before, but I swear it gets more beautiful every time I see it. The levels too look varied and unique. It really seems they took the criticisms of the recent New Super Mario games to heart. This game is just exploding with personality, colors, and liveliness. But not to the point it's too much. It's all very nice. We saw some new characters as well, though who cares I'm just happy Daisy is here. I'm still in disbelief she's finally in a main series game. On top of Mario, Peach, Luigi, and Daisy we saw Toadette, Nabbit, Blue and Yellow Toad, and 4 different colors of Yoshi. Toadette is no longer the easy mode like she was in U Deluxe. That honor now goes to Yoshi and Nabbit. It's also been confirmed Yoshi will play just like how you'd expect. With him being able to flutter and eat everything in his path. And you can ride on him in multiplayer. Now when you jump off Yoshi for an extra boost, thus killing him, it'll be even more personal. You can even ride him as an elephant. My god...poor Yoshi. Speaking of Elephant it's been confirmed it's a power up for all characters. I saw a lot of speculation that each character would have a different animal power up for them, which I was hoping was true, but sadly no. And let me tell you, Elephant Peach and Daisy are just as horrifying as you'd imagine. But we got some new ones too. Drill and Bubble. Wow. Listen Mario, I know Kirby Squeak Squad is one of the more forgotten games in that series, but that doesn't mean you can go and steal it's Bubble power. I'm kidding of course. I mean it is similar in that you can tap and kill enemies with it. But they add the twist of being able to use the bubble as platforms. Which is neat. I bet there's a lot of creative usages for it. Drill seems...whatever. Pretty much the drill item from Galaxy 2, but as a costume. Speaking of creative ways to platform we also see Badges. Badges are like little extra powers that you can equip during a level. One badge per level. These badges seem fun from what we've seen. There's some that make pits less deadly, some that let you do super jumps or improve your wall jump ability, and some seem to give you powers that you can use for some fun platforming. Like the Vine Grapple one that allows you to create a Vine that can grab onto walls and other platforms and get brought to them near instantly. Think Spider-Man sorta. It really seems like this is the 2D game's version of Odyssey. I said that from the start, but now I'm just more convinced. They seem dead set on giving you so many ways to explore and playthrough the levels despite the game being linear and it's a nice touch. It'll definitely add some replay value. Even if I got all of the collectibles on a level I may go back to them just to experiment with different badges or powers. Anyway, shit it seems there's a text limit here. So uh...I'll have to make another post cause damn there is just too much to say.

[yumiiyummech]

Yeah no problem! Imma just blurb all the things I’ve learned here but if you have more questions, feel free to dm!

First is anatomy! At least in the style before the manga came out, I decided to try and learn the proportions of characters in the Omori style. IN PRACTICE, I trace over and sketch headspace characters for a little bit until I feel like I have it down. Ofc, do not post ur tracing practice and call it your own! But I think if ur planning to mimic the style in some way, understanding how characters look at different ages and poses is key because the style is so unique.

Next! Colors. If you’ve looked at the art long enough, you notice that Headspace characters have a purple tint in the line art, the skin is white, and the overall color palette is super saturated and bright. Omori characters in headspace, at least the main group, are wearing pajamas. For a believable (?) character, I suggest making the headspace oc in pajamas! Simplified, easy to draw outfit. If ur wondering, Wendy isn’t wearing pajamas because since all of them are in omori’s view, omori specifically remembers her in that outfit instead of pajama’s. To continue, Faraway characters are taller and obviously have more realistic color palettes. In my opinion, I tend to think that the colors are a tiny bit more muted. Not colorless, but if you viewed a color wheel, the colors stray a little bit from neon.

NEXT! The hardest in my opinion is lineart. My personal process is lining the overall painting with a thin, pencil type brush. The scratchy lines that appear in crevices or in the hair that u see in my art is a blotchy ink pen brush that is thinner than the pencil brush. For hair, a rule of thumb I use is use is draw the lines whenever there is a point, a corner, or an end. If the character has dark hair, the lines are all the way throughout the hair, not it specific spots like Wendy’s! Make sure you pay attention to how the hair that your character has flows so the lines make sense. It’s not really just a bunch of squiggles. U can observe this more in the official art. BUT, this is only my own process. I observe that the lineart in the official art is a bit thinner than my own but for personal preference, I draw with thicker lines.

for some final things I forgot to add, when I color, I use the same pencil brush and color in a layer under my lineart. I would explain my whol painting process but it doesn’t really affect the Omori style. :D

oh and I also suggest coloring the base colors first before doing the thin lines in the hair, shoes, shadows and etc. if u notice in official artworks, there are little peeks into the original color because it’s a sketchy lineart and it doesn’t fully cover the area. Kinda like coloring with a crayon lol. U can see blotches of the base colors.

remember, you don’t have to mimic the OG style! A lot of Omori artists and oc artists draw the cast and their ocs in their own artstyles and it adds a lot of charm to them that u don’t see from the game. You can explore the style, mix and match it with your own, and etc!

I hope this helps!

I’ve been trying to semi mimic the Omori artstyle for a little bit but I’m thinking of eventually branching out to drawing in my natural and normal artstyle with sketch bits! I really like the Omori artstyle so it’s not like I’ll get rid of it completely but u guys might get to see WENDY in a new style :D