#all just lost and found fodder i guess

[nyansequitur]

contender for worst wish fulfilled of all time

[van-yangyin]

TW tw: mental breakdown, tw: illness, it's abour our dog (Lea and me), just in case

A month and a few days ago I guess you have seen how I've done practically nothing on this blog, just writing challenges and little else. That's because some time ago Yuka, the puppy of our family (me and @lea-heartscxiv among them) didn't eat any fodder, and started scratching the wall with her mouth. At first we didn't take it as something so serious, in fact we thought it was the fodder, because she did eat the homemade food. But the night of the 6th to the 7th July, during the night she became very immobile and only breathed (although the first thing shouted was that she was dead, which was something quite shocking, before seeing her breathing) so we decided to take her to the vet, first we went to one and she told us that Yuka was anemic, that she ate very little and that lacked red blood cells, she needed a blood transfusion and they referred us to another vet. We went to the other vet and they did the same tests as at the other vet because the information they sent to them was insufficient and poorly done. They did an analysis and an ultrasound, in the analysis they found insufficient red blood cells as in the other vet and in the ultrasound they found that she has a fairly large tumor in the stomach which is what causes anemia, as the tumor causes the vitamins in the food to reject the vitamins provided.

The first operation is very expensive, of the three options we were given from $1600 to $2600 the most expensive (more or less) and it is also the first of many, not counting chemotherapies. It's a hereditary disease, she's 10 years old and her father died when he was 13 years old because of the same thing, so surely it was something that had to happen to her. In the end, much to our regret, we have decided not to operate her, because of the financial issue and because we don't want her to spend the last years of her life with operations and all that entails both physically and psychologically. This week until next week we're administering pills and liquids that protect her stomach so that she can eat again, the problem is that it's decisive that she eats, otherwise we will have to go back to the vet and see what we can do. And just today she doesn't want to eat anything and has vomited the pill along with the food we have given her. We have already had another dog with tumor in the past, in fact she had threetumors and died at the age of 15 without any operation, in fact she died because got lost and her condition when she was found was very weak (I was still a toddler). Although we know that every dog is different, when it has to happen it will happen and in the meantime she will be surrounded by lots of love and lots of cuddles, be it one, two, three, four, five years or whatever.

Lately that's why I haven't had the energy to sit down and start organizing posts of Custom Content to share. I've only been able to draw, write and create half-made custom content that isn't even well done, because of this lack of emotional energy.

I hope you can understand my situation. It's not that I'm leaving everything half done, it's just that my mental energy is only focused on Yuka, just like it's with Lea. We're starting again to publishing but for Costum Content part I don't want to share anything at the moment, because I can't do things in mood I'm in and then later regret what I've shared because I hated the final result.

I'm already starting to process everything that is going on and waiting for this week to see how everything progresses and if Yuka will finally eat or not, and get the energy she's missing. It's so heartbreaking to see how she wouldn't stand still before and now she's not even able to walk down a step from the door to go into the house. All she can do is just lie in the yard. But unlike the other day, now every time we go to her, she gets up and wags her tail, which was very difficult for her the pasts days.

[skorchinq]

Bows Only: Third Time’s the Charm

[IDs in alt text]

Not only did we have a free Faruzan and a Ganyu banner in 3.6, but 3.7 brought the Ibis Piercer bow in the event and the third Yoimiya banner since this account began. Which of these banners will prove fruitful? Will we get Ganyu? Will Yoimiya finally come home after dodging us twice? Let’s find out...

First thing’s first, finally did the ascension quest! It brought us up to world level 7 and AR 52-- but nearly 53.

and of course, it didn’t take much longer to actually reach 53...

After this, I did something I haven’t done on this account in a long time... I actually played the Archon quest.

Excuse me sir... sir?

Got this crazy screenshot with two Paimons. Woah

Omgoose Hi Kujou Saraaaa hi hiiiii :3

I once again forgot my name was DavidBowie and choked

But anyways look at this incredible Ganyu piece I got!!

Our first max ascension character has got to be Amber, of course. And we’ve finally done it!

We even made some progress in the Abyss!

And after ages, I finally got the Inazuman craftable bow. It’ll be good for Yoimiya... one day...

We got the Liyue statues all the way up to Level 9! Which means we can finally complete chapter 8 of the adventurer’s handbook!

We’re pretty close to finishing chapter 9, too...

Oh I forgot about this until I found the screenshot making this post... this had me cackling. Someone joined my world, asked one question, and left...

idk guys, they may claim to be a simple wanderer who idolizes Kaeya_bulge26 on tiktok, but I kinda get the feeling that... do you think they might actually be Kaeya_bulge26 on tiktok??? I dunno...

Anyway I finished chapter 9

And got Tartag to max ascension!

And Kujou Sara to max friendship!

I then got a 5* on the standard banner! Can you guess who it was?

I hate everything

Back to the Archon Quest! Hi Teppei!!!

Bye Teppei I left to do the Brewing Developments Event

Ok we’re back! Hi Gorou!

Also this guy...

Don’t lie to me Nathan. I know what you are

Yes that’s right. Our time to fight side by side with Gorou has finally come. Not like he’s been here since the very beginning or anything

Venti’s max ascended!!

And I got a northlander billet fighting Boreas! since we already have all 3 bows that use it, we’ll use this to refine Amber’s weapon.

Teppei you goof

Gorou is max friendship as well!

It was then... that we finally got Ganyu!!

and a couple Fischl cons to boot!

And oh Archons we are at World Level 8.

Well, it should be no issue now that we have Ganyu. She’s strong, graceful, and most of all...

She’s great for collecting pigeon meat :)

Anyway. I got another gold on the standard banner, but unfortunately it ended up being nothing more than weapon fodder...

After that, we did the Interdarshan Championship event and got our free Faruzan!

I scrambled to get that event done in a single day... and in 3.7, the King of Invocations event was the same. tbh I was pretty burnt out w/ genshin for a while, I probably would have skipped the 3.7 event entirely if it weren’t for the fact that it gave a bow. I didn’t even bother to screenshot it cause it was late and I forgor. I did get it tho. It’ll be a nice Tighnari weapon when we get him.

And of course, given my pity was reset when I got Ganyu and I wasn’t playing much, it should come as no surprise that... yeah, I didn’t get Yoimiya on her banner. I did get her somewhere else, though!

You can’t escape me in TCG, at least.

Hey, we’ll get her next time. Fourth time’s the charm, right?

Now, 4.0′s coming up, and we’ve got both Yelan and Lyney to go for... I’m going to pull for Yelan first, but should we manage to get her I’ll pull for Lyney after! Since starting this account a year ago, we’ve lost every single 50/50 to Jean... but this patter will finally change on Fontaine. I believe it! I’m manifesting it!!! We WILL get Yelan!!! ...or at least lose the 50/50 to Tighnari instead!

Look, my standards are really low at this point. I just want bow characters man

Also fun fact! I’ve been trying to post this update for literal weeks, but I was experiencing some uhhh. technical difficulties

See, the post editor on web doesn’t let me add alt text. Everywhere on the internet says that there should be an icon with three dots you can click to add the alt text but there. is not. It doesn’t matter if I hover over or click the image, it doesn’t change, there is no icon to click on the image anywhere. But that was fine because it still worked just fine on mobile! So what I’d do for previous posts in this series is make the first draft of the post on web (because that’s where all the screenshots are), save, and then go back and edit the draft on mobile, adding alt text IDs then.

And here’s where the problem arises: recently, for no apparent reason, I can no longer edit or post drafts on Tumblr mobile. I can view my drafts. I can open them. I can change things. But no matter if I hit save changes or post now or anything else, Tumblr then experiences an error, it doesn’t post, and none of my changes are saved. It just goes back in my drafts the way it was before I edited it.

So, if I can’t edit drafts on mobile, I’ll have to do it on web. I quickly tested to make sure it worked, and it did! But I still. can’t add alt text in the tumblr post editor.

Until I had the idea to add alt text not through the post editor but through the Inspect element! Once again, I tested it out and it seemed to work. Adding alt text through the inspect element on web and then saving caused that alt text to show up when viewing the draft on another device! So, I finally was able to finish the post! Literally the day Fontaine drops!

I’m thinking of liveblogging my Yelan pulls. Which will be in like half an hour lol. So! Stay tuned for that!

[erdarielthewhumper]

1, 6 and 12 for the ask game!

- @whump-kia :D

12 I have already answered here, but let's see about the others... :D

1. What was your whump awakening(s)? - honestly I don't recall really having a specific "oh" moment in terms of realizing I liked whump, I kind of just already enjoyed it. I'm not sure I quite processed as a kid that it was something not everyone liked or something to be considered shameful either, tbh. But like, as long as I can remember, when I was a kid I had like barbies and legos (well, legos were shared with my brother) and LPS, and Schleich fairy and knight figures (the knights belonged to my brother, really, as did the dragon and the phoenix; the ones that were properly mine were fairies, some of them came with horses, plus then I had a princess, and a unicorn and a pegasus. But my brother let me play with his ones too, and honestly that just made splitting them into factions very easy, the knights were always the bad guys and enemies with the fairies. Also Schleich's newer fairy figures look really boring and for some reason all their mounts are like pastel blue unicorns and I don't like that, but I digress), and I'd play kind of a lot of relatively like, violent and dark scenarios with this. One of my barbies was second-hand and was missing a leg, and I always came up with such dramatic scenarios as to how she'd lost it, lol. To say nothing of that one lego spaceman figure (it was, looking at the design, part of one of the older space-themed lines, it matched old ones we had that had once belonged to my mom and her brother) that mom found in the garden that was partly melted, so that our theory is that someone had once tied it to a new year's firework rocket and shot it with that and it had fallen to our garden. Anyway, visibly damaged toys were good fodder for my darker stories I played with them :D Like looking back, I honestly was probably largely replicating tropes that came up in the stories mom read us, but like, some of the classic children's books she read us definitely had darker elements (as in, like, Brothers Lionheart. if you haven't read it... i mean honestly, just read it, it is actually a very good book, but also like. it legitimately ends with the titular brothers committing suicide. And it is a beloved and classic children's fantasy book), battles, spy stuff, that sort of thing, so like. I picked up that sort of thing, and I guess I liked the dramatic fantasy tales because it's definitely what I was replicating when I played with my toys, a lot of the time. And I certainly leaned a lot towards elements that i might now consider whumpy, when I did that.

6. Favorite whump genre (sci-fi, fantasy, historical)? - I've always been partial to fantasy, tbh. I like scifi too, and sometimes semi-historical adventure stuff if I get into a fandom like that (like BBC Musketeers, although it's not even trying for historical accuracy), but at the end of the day, fantasy is really the one I love most. I blame my mom, tbh

Thanks for the ask! Sorry the answer got a bit long ':D

[hamtigers]

I’ve been here around 12yrs, and when the first attempt at an algorithm was tried, I was among the majority that immediately turned that shit off Tumblr is a blogging site masquerading as a social media site. Not an actual social media site. Control over your feed is essential to keeping what it actually is. It is one of the last bastions of “old internet” where the user actually feels in control of their experience, rather than being fodder to generate clicks and ad revenue through and algorithm.  We like that we curate our feeds, that we get to actually SEE what the people we CHOSE TO FOLLOW are posting without it getting shuffled or drowned out by an algorithm-driven feed!! It’s not hard to figure out how to fill your dash - just search for things you like, browse someone’s blog, and if you like what you see give them a follow. But y’know, with making it increasingly difficult to view peoples actual blogs instead of the neutered mobile-friendly version lately, a lot of the individual user personality is being lost. I hate that I can’t use the little corner tab to direct link to a post on the desktop version of someone’s blog anymore, I have to use the share button that takes you to the mobile version unless I wanna dig thru the blog itself to find the post manually. If you’re so worried about new users not knowing how to use the site bc they’ve been raised on computers doing the thinking for them, then give new users a built in tour that explains the functions. Don’t change the #1 thing that has kept old users like me around, even during the great exodus of the NSFW ban. (Nowhere was better, bc it was all algorithmic fueled bullshit making it impossible to see what I wanted)  Hell, fix the search function if you want creators to be able to be found!! Searching and using followed tags (an old feature that got nuked btw) was how people USED to build communities on this site! People would even make up the most inane bullshit tags to use as a community because they’d all follow it and thus get notified when a friend posted something! (My old skype group used to use “responsible adult problems” since we all met thru this site) I don’t mind the idea of threads in the reply function tho. That’s honestly fine. I hate when someone @s me in a reply but it doesn’t fit in the notification, so I have to take a wild guess at what post it was on, find it, and then scroll thru the replies to see what they were trying to tell me. Which is hell on a viral post. So yes, communication via replies is legitimately clunky as it is if you’re not the OP.

Being able to mute notifications on a post so that you aren’t drowned when it gets popular is also good. And should’ve been made a feature a long time ago tbh. But man, I hate that tumblr live was brought up as an example of the path moving forward. Fuck tumblr live - let me disable it permanently instead of having to go un-toggle and re-toggle the snooze once a week. The reason people have so much vitriol towards it (myself included) is because it’s the first time a new feature has been introduced that felt invasive and forced. Normally whenever something new got rolled out, unless it changed a core aspect of the website like the formatting of the dashboard, users had to the option to switch it off. But tumblr live for some reason has this ‘temporary’ disable that if this is really the route this place is taking, I’m expecting to eventually not even have that option anymore. Fuck an algorithm trying to show me what “25″ posts it thinks I need to see instead of my actual dashboard. When twitter started going more aggressive w/ their algorithm because they wanted their ‘best stuff’ to be viewed first, all it did was hide art and personal posts from friends of mine that weren’t popular, and shunt everything that was already viral to the top of my feed. And then they started putting peoples likes on my feed, completely removing the point of having the difference between likes and retweets. And then it started putting shit that wasn’t even interacted with in my feed, because apparently twitter thinks that I want to see stuff from people I don’t follow just because someone I follow follows them. If I wanted to see it, I’d be following them too! It drives me insane! Literally the only reason I haven’t quit twitter entirely with the fall of tweetdeck (the only way for me to view that dumpster fire in chrono reliably) is because I follow a lot of artists and friends on there that aren’t here on tumblr and I have 0 interest in any other ‘alternatives’.

Hiding duplicate reblogs isn’t the worst thing at surface level, except when you remember that a huge part of the culture here is “talking in the tags”. I personally find an appeal in seeing me and my mutuals all getting excited over the same post, but I can see where that would be redundant to others. So personally, I would want that to be a feature that could be enabled if you choose, not something forced on me. TL;DR if you really are so worried about the new user experience you better make goddamn sure that any changes can be PERMANENTLY opted out of by your existing users. Otherwise you’re going to drive away long-time users, especially those in fandom spaces, in favor of gambling on new ones.

Tumblr’s Core Product Strategy

Here at Tumblr, we’ve been working hard on reorganizing how we work in a bid to gain more users. A larger user base means a more sustainable company, and means we get to stick around and do this thing with you all a bit longer. What follows is the strategy we're using to accomplish the goal of user growth. The @labs group has published a bit already, but this is bigger. We’re publishing it publicly for the first time, in an effort to work more transparently with all of you in the Tumblr community. This strategy provides guidance amid limited resources, allowing our teams to focus on specific key areas to ensure Tumblr’s future.

The Diagnosis

In order for Tumblr to grow, we need to fix the core experience that makes Tumblr a useful place for users. The underlying problem is that Tumblr is not easy to use. Historically, we have expected users to curate their feeds and lean into curating their experience. But this expectation introduces friction to the user experience and only serves a small portion of our audience. 

Tumblr’s competitive advantage lies in its unique content and vibrant communities. As the forerunner of internet culture, Tumblr encompasses a wide range of interests, such as entertainment, art, gaming, fandom, fashion, and music. People come to Tumblr to immerse themselves in this culture, making it essential for us to ensure a seamless connection between people and content. 

To guarantee Tumblr’s continued success, we’ve got to prioritize fostering that seamless connection between people and content. This involves attracting and retaining new users and creators, nurturing their growth, and encouraging frequent engagement with the platform.

Our Guiding Principles

To enhance Tumblr’s usability, we must address these core guiding principles.

Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Retain and grow our creator base.

Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Improve the platform’s performance, stability, and quality.

Below is a deep dive into each of these principles.

Principle 1: Expand the ways new users can discover and sign up for Tumblr.

Tumblr has a “top of the funnel” issue in converting non-users into engaged logged-in users. We also have not invested in industry standard SEO practices to ensure a robust top of the funnel. The referral traffic that we do get from external sources is dispersed across different pages with inconsistent user experiences, which results in a missed opportunity to convert these users into regular Tumblr users. For example, users from search engines often land on pages within the blog network and blog view—where there isn’t much of a reason to sign up. 

We need to experiment with logged-out tumblr.com to ensure we are capturing the highest potential conversion rate for visitors into sign-ups and log-ins. We might want to explore showing the potential future user the full breadth of content that Tumblr has to offer on our logged-out pages. We want people to be able to easily understand the potential behind Tumblr without having to navigate multiple tabs and pages to figure it out. Our current logged-out explore page does very little to help users understand “what is Tumblr.” which is a missed opportunity to get people excited about joining the site.

Actions & Next Steps

Improving Tumblr’s search engine optimization (SEO) practices to be in line with industry standards.

Experiment with logged out tumblr.com to achieve the highest conversion rate for sign-ups and log-ins, explore ways for visitors to “get” Tumblr and entice them to sign up.

Principle 2: Provide high-quality content with every app launch.

We need to ensure the highest quality user experience by presenting fresh and relevant content tailored to the user’s diverse interests during each session. If the user has a bad content experience, the fault lies with the product.

The default position should always be that the user does not know how to navigate the application. Additionally, we need to ensure that when people search for content related to their interests, it is easily accessible without any confusing limitations or unexpected roadblocks in their journey.

Being a 15-year-old brand is tough because the brand carries the baggage of a person’s preconceived impressions of Tumblr. On average, a user only sees 25 posts per session, so the first 25 posts have to convey the value of Tumblr: it is a vibrant community with lots of untapped potential. We never want to leave the user believing that Tumblr is a place that is stale and not relevant. 

Actions & Next Steps

Deliver great content each time the app is opened.

Make it easier for users to understand where the vibrant communities on Tumblr are. 

Improve our algorithmic ranking capabilities across all feeds. 

Principle 3: Facilitate easier user participation in conversations.

Part of Tumblr’s charm lies in its capacity to showcase the evolution of conversations and the clever remarks found within reblog chains and replies. Engaging in these discussions should be enjoyable and effortless.

Unfortunately, the current way that conversations work on Tumblr across replies and reblogs is confusing for new users. The limitations around engaging with individual reblogs, replies only applying to the original post, and the inability to easily follow threaded conversations make it difficult for users to join the conversation.

Actions & Next Steps

Address the confusion within replies and reblogs.

Improve the conversational posting features around replies and reblogs. 

Allow engagements on individual replies and reblogs.

Make it easier for users to follow the various conversation paths within a reblog thread. 

Remove clutter in the conversation by collapsing reblog threads. 

Explore the feasibility of removing duplicate reblogs within a user’s Following feed. 

Principle 4: Retain and grow our creator base.

Creators are essential to the Tumblr community. However, we haven’t always had a consistent and coordinated effort around retaining, nurturing, and growing our creator base.  

Being a new creator on Tumblr can be intimidating, with a high likelihood of leaving or disappointment upon sharing creations without receiving engagement or feedback. We need to ensure that we have the expected creator tools and foster the rewarding feedback loops that keep creators around and enable them to thrive.

The lack of feedback stems from the outdated decision to only show content from followed blogs on the main dashboard feed (“Following”), perpetuating a cycle where popular blogs continue to gain more visibility at the expense of helping new creators. To address this, we need to prioritize supporting and nurturing the growth of new creators on the platform.

It is also imperative that creators, like everyone on Tumblr, feel safe and in control of their experience. Whether it be an ask from the community or engagement on a post, being successful on Tumblr should never feel like a punishing experience.

Actions & Next Steps

Get creators’ new content in front of people who are interested in it. 

Improve the feedback loop for creators, incentivizing them to continue posting.

Build mechanisms to protect creators from being spammed by notifications when they go viral.

Expand ways to co-create content, such as by adding the capability to embed Tumblr links in posts.

Principle 5: Create patterns that encourage users to keep returning to Tumblr.

Push notifications and emails are essential tools to increase user engagement, improve user retention, and facilitate content discovery. Our strategy of reaching out to you, the user, should be well-coordinated across product, commercial, and marketing teams.

Our messaging strategy needs to be personalized and adapt to a user’s shifting interests. Our messages should keep users in the know on the latest activity in their community, as well as keeping Tumblr top of mind as the place to go for witty takes and remixes of the latest shows and real-life events.  

Most importantly, our messages should be thoughtful and should never come across as spammy.  

Actions & Next Steps

Conduct an audit of our messaging strategy.

Address the issue of notifications getting too noisy; throttle, collapse or mute notifications where necessary.  

Identify opportunities for personalization within our email messages. 

Test what the right daily push notification limit is. 

Send emails when a user has push notifications switched off.

Principle 6: Performance, stability and quality.

The stability and performance of our mobile apps have declined. There is a large backlog of production issues, with more bugs created than resolved over the last 300 days. If this continues, roughly one new unresolved production issue will be created every two days. Apps and backend systems that work well and don't crash are the foundation of a great Tumblr experience. Improving performance, stability, and quality will help us achieve sustainable operations for Tumblr.

Improve performance and stability: deliver crash-free, responsive, and fast-loading apps on Android, iOS, and web.

Improve quality: deliver the highest quality Tumblr experience to our users. 

Move faster: provide APIs and services to unblock core product initiatives and launch new features coming out of Labs.

Conclusion

Our mission has always been to empower the world’s creators. We are wholly committed to ensuring Tumblr evolves in a way that supports our current users while improving areas that attract new creators, artists, and users. You deserve a digital home that works for you. You deserve the best tools and features to connect with your communities on a platform that prioritizes the easy discoverability of high-quality content. This is an invigorating time for Tumblr, and we couldn’t be more excited about our current strategy.

[aflyingcontradiction]

The Magnus Archives Relisten: Episode 190 - Scavengers

Laverne: Besides, you know that they sometimes go to a side tunnel for “private contemplation”. I think it’s sweet.

... is that what they call it these days?

Martin: Celia? Celia: Probably. The, um… place I was trapped in, they took my name. I never got it back. But I like Celia, so… yeah! Celia it is.

So Martin clearly knows Celia from before the apocalypse but I haven't even the slightest clue who she is supposed to be (having zero ability to recognise voices probably doesn't help with that). Somebody refresh my memory?

Jon: Well, that’s a fair point. I suppose, technically, ‘saviours’ would be the correct –

Jon is having way too much fun with the whole "cult" thing.

Georgie (angrily smashing tape recorders): I can do this all day!

You clearly cannot!

Georgie: There are seven with us now. It used to be more, a lot more. But… um, we got greedy, pulled too many out. We… attracted attention. And… well, now there are seven.

Have I mentioned how I love the way TMA evokes horror (or, in this case, tragedy) by circling around the actual events rather than actually describing them explicitly?

Jon: I promise… I promise that they’re not here for you. They’re here for me. And maybe a bit for Martin. They seem to like him.

Not getting Web!Martin was still a lost opportunity, tbh. There was SO MUCH SETUP.

Jon: I did wonder about the ‘Ennui’-brand coke bottles. Georgie: Yeah, it’s convenient, not subtle.

Okay, that one made me snigger.

Georgie: He’s, uh… he’s fine. I guess. He’s enjoying himself, at least. He wasn’t immune, not like me and Melanie. And he’s a predator, pampered piece of fluff that he is. Turns out, there’s a place full of cats. And their prey.

I know this is being played for tragedy here but Admiral-the-Avatar is just ... kinda funny. (Not if you're a mouse, I guess.) Also I suppose there's not really any other way Johnny could have gone with Admiral's fate in the apocalypse, given that he had already promised the cat would be fine!

Melanie: I’m actually one of the prophets chosen to walk the end times unscathed. (...) Martin: Oh, I’m the antichrist’s plus one.

The banter in this episode is deeply, deeply enjoyable.

Melanie: Well, we were, we were out, and we found this Spiral maze, uh, and who did we find inside but Laverne, my therapist.

Okay, that makes perfect sense - the therapist being the perfect fodder for the Spiral.

Melanie: Um, and she’s, and she’s far, far too good for me. And I, I only hope she doesn’t realise that while there’s an apocalypse on.

Yeah, I've been THERE (except replace apocalypse with more mundane crises. Obviously. Though those still feel pretty apocalyptic at times.)

Martin: Oh sorry! Didn’t mean to sit on the prophet’s throne.

What is it with Martin and CHAIRS? This is a whole THEME now!

Arun: I-I, I realise that you dislike that k-kind of thing, your humility is… humbling. - Melanie makes a squeak of distressed exasperation -

I just ... I love that noise. I can't quite describe it, but I love that noise.

Georgie: We generally err on the side of caution and sleep in.

Wise choice!

My impression of this episode

The tone of this episode is, obviously, a bit different from most - no statement, for one. A lot of banter but with an undertone of exhausted sadness. Not really what I came to TMA for, but definitely suitable for this point in the series, and I did really enjoy the moment of sort-of-but-not-quite-respite for the characters.

[thekingwhereitallends]

Can i just talk about the amount of respect kishimoto held for akatsuki members?

The first akatsuki member to die was yahiko. Yahiko founded akatsuki,to achieve global peace and gave up his life to save konan,and passes his dream onto nagato and konan.

Sasori was the legendary ninja who killed third kazekage,the strongest kazekage of all time. After very long battle,sasori decided to take a fatal hit just to die with his parents' puppets. He was capable of overwhelming sakura and chiyo if he wanted to.

Then we had kakuzu and hidan. Hidan killed asuma sarutobi,lover of kurenai and team 10's supervisor jonin teacher. Kakuzu was a known as a shinobi who survived a fight against god of shinobi. Hidan and Kakuzu had to be separated from each other bc as a duo, they were just too damn good. They were defeated after weeks of planning and considering different possiblities. Hidan was throwing hands with kakashi in a physical battle,i mean he's supposed to be the slowest akatsuki member,and eventually he was buried alive. Kakuzu was handling team asuma and kakashi quite well until naruto came with a jutsu he's just created. If kakuzu knew what kind of jutsu he was going to get hit by then he'd have dodged it. Kakuzu again proves to be quite durable guy as he survives the rasenshuriken and was killed by kakashi. Kakuzu is def no match for hashirama but he's still a force to be reckoned with.

My boy deidara was playing just as smart as sasuke. Sasuke,a reincarnation of demi-god and with power of curse mark which multiples his power by 20 times,was pushed to his absolute limits. Sasuke barely survived that fight.

Itachi,on his deathbed,was toying with sasuke. He was almost blind,and fodderized orochimaru,the strongest of sannin and stronger than five kage, massively stronger than the orochimaru who fought against hiruzen. When reanimated,he was able to break edo tenseo control,found rinnegan'a weaknesses on spot,seal nagato away,defeated kabuto who claimed to be second only to sage of six paths,and proved to be still superior to EMS Sasuke. He still remained a legend,praised by likes of hashirama,tobirama,hiruzen,and even madara who said itachi is a capable ninja(just like obito).

Pain actually showed to be one of if not strongest characters the time he showed up. We learnt that he killed hanzo the salamander,which scared the hell outta jiraiya. Pain goes on a rampage,kills jiraiya;the mc's godfather,kakashi;the mc's teacher,destroys the village,defeats sage naruto, seals six tails beast mode naruto and finally falls on his knees due to using extreme amounts of chakra he used.

Nagato was probably capable of surviving rinne- rebirth,but again when he was low on chakra,he was able to revive thousands of dead people. When he was reanimated,he was beating the hell outta naruto and bee,two of strongest characters at time with raikage level speed,and brought down thanks to itachi.

Kisame? Kisame captured bee,and was betrayed by samehada and defeated by 7th gate guy,the same guy who was destroying susanoos in war arc. He bit off his tongue,to prevent himself from leaking info,and gladly gave up his life and let water sharks eat him alive. The amount of loyalty here is unmatched.

My lady konan. She was practically fighting a powerhouse who has surpassed fourth hokage, and kills him for 10 minutes straight. Obito survives thanks to izanagi,but still lost an arm and a sharingan in doing so. Konan was strongest kunoichi in entire series imo.

Obito was fighting against minato at 14, controlling mist village in teen years,killing uchiha,starting fourth ninja world war,holding back and still remains superior to guy,kakashi,bee, and naruto. He became a god that could only be defeated by talk no jutsu,and even as a half-dead man,he was one of key factors in battle against kaguya. Guess who made kakashi powerful enough to give naruto and sasuke the chance to seal kaguya?Obito did.

Black zetsu was the mastermind in shadows, fooling everyone. Hid from sage of six paths and manipulated madara and obito. He was strong enough to paralyse juubi madara and six paths narusasu. Dude was a menace.

Orochimaru impacted the story as it was just getting started. He killed third hokage,tempted sasuke and pulls him toward darkness,remained a threat to both akatsuki and shinobi world,was defeated only in his worst day and still came back to life. He is still relevant in story and a parent to two of best boys:Mitsuki and Log.

We should have seen more of them,kishimoto could've done better with them,but he still successfully created most iconic anime villain group in history. Kishimoto is the G.O.A.T. and akatsuki is my all time favorite faction in fiction.

[awynter]

“I’ve been known to be enjoy the bard’s tales now and again.” She beamed, proud that her seemingly useless knowledge of English literature was finally paying off. As he spoke of Oberon and Titania, her cheeks flushed pink, and, not for the first time tonight, Anne was grateful that her mask covered most of her cheeks. "More claim? Is that all a woman is to you, sir? Something to be won?"

Her lip quirked into a smile. If she had not known whose countenance lie beneath the mask, Anne might not have been so lenient with her kindness. In her experience, men who viewed women as conquests were rarely ones she wanted to be around. Thankfully, Ben had proven his gentle nature upon their first meeting, and she was sure he meant no ill will with his words. If anything, she thought, he meant the exact opposite. "Let us be thankful that you chose to be Puck, then. I believe England has enough fog without a magical curse. And I, for one, have had enough petty quarrels with men for one lifetime."

Frances watched Ben with careful consideration. Most men would've waved her off, told her to get lost and find another pair to bother. Whatever man dared to say such a thing in the presence of Anne would've regretted his decision immediately, but the only expression on her face was one of admiration.

As protective of her girls as she was, Anne softened upon seeing Ben’s reaction. He was sweet and genuine and if she hadn’t already known his profession, it wouldn’t be hard to guess he enjoyed working with children. If she hadn't known what she did, she might think him a father.

"Yes! But it's not just a costume. I am a unicorn. And," Frances raised a hand to the side of her mouth, mimicking the way she'd seen grown-ups share secrets. "It had wings, but I let Miss Wynter use mine."

"Let?" Anne scoffed, incredulously as she perched her hands on her hips. "I seem to remember the conversation quite differently."

"Unicorns can live without wings." The young girl spoke with the practiced cadence of a teacher, no doubt echoing the way Miss Wynter spoke on a daily basis. "A fairy can't. Especially a fairy princess. How is she supposed to escape evildoers without wings?" With a look of exasperation, Frances turned to Ben once more, eyes pleading to agree with her. "Unless she has a fairy prince to save her."

Anne's face flared at Frances' comment. Surely, the girl did not allude to Ben being her fairy prince? The two hardly knew one another and Anne had learned long ago that physical attraction was hardly a sturdy foundation for any relationship. But before she could ponder the though too deeply, it was just the two of them again. Fairies, away.

"You hoped to see me?" Her eyes narrowed, trying to find a shred of insincerity in his words. They had only met once before and, as far as Anne remembered, she had not made the most glowing first impression. She rarely did, but it often worked out for the best. If men found themselves off-put by her behaviors, they were less likely to pursue her. And less pursuers meant less risk.

But she'd be lying if she said she hadn't been hoping to see him, too. To apologize, primarily. Or at least that's what she told herself to make it seem less frightening. Becoming attached to anyone was fodder for heartache, especially when that anyone had the softest eyes she'd ever seen on a man. Although she still wasn't entirely sure if he were in cahoots with George, Anne couldn't bear the thought of him hurting Ben. Even if they barely knew each other, Anne knew enough to know that this sweet man didn't deserve George's cruelty, especially when Anne was to blame.

“It was not you, Mister Tallmadge. I swear it.” Anne reiterated, hoping to ease his concerns. But such concerns seemed lighthearted as he took his own turns to tease her. She deserved it, she supposed. She’d taken enjoyment in hurling jibes at him upon their first meeting, so it only made sense for him to volley some back on more even ground. “And you are not nearly as dull as you think you are. In fact, I think your personality rather charming. But I didn't say that. Titania did.”

His acceptance of her apology, and more importantly her friendship, lightened a load off her chest. Anne had felt nothing but guilt for the rest of that day and remnants of such self-loathing lingered even now. She hated the way George had made her skittish and paranoid. Though, she supposed the blame wasn’t entirely on him. If she hadn’t picked up the letter opener that night, if she hadn’t swung it around wildly out of self defense, Anne Wynter wouldn’t exist. Annelise Chervil wouldn’t, either, but at least Annelise Shawcross would.

“The others?” Her eyes widened as she turned to the crowd. She immediately spotted Sarah, still lingering with Honoria Smythe-Smith and gossiping undoubtedly. But Anne had a feeling he wasn’t speaking of her past charges, not when she had spoken so highly of her younger ones. "It is a party, Mister Tallmadge. You can hardly expect young ladies to be corralled at a social event."

Unless, of course, you find me too dull to hold their focus for more than an introduction. Before she can think better of it, she swats at him playfully. The gesture was enough to surprise herself, a woman who had spent an eternity in servitude knew better than to act so childishly. And in front of a gentleman, too. Anne cleared her throat and tried to regain her composure.

“Well, you’ve met Frances. As the great bard once put it, though she may be little, she is fierce. And I believe she’s going to find Harriet as we speak.” She chuckled and crossed her arms over her chest. Her eyes watched the sea of attendees, waiting to spot the erratic movement of Frances among the tides. “Oh, there.” Without realizing it, Anne leaned closer to Ben, gesturing off into the distance as Frances finally squared in on her sister.

“Harriet is the one wearing the purple gown. She’s the playwright I was telling you about. A true rival for Shakespeare himself. And…” Her eyes scanned over the rows of faces until they landed on Elizabeth’s gentle countenance. “There, that one in the yellow over there. That’s Elizabeth, the eldest of my pupils. A sweet girl, really. I believe she was going for a sunflower look but Frances said that she looked more like a bumblebee than a flower. In true sisterly fashion.”

Her heart ached at the thought of her own sisters. The last time she had seen them, Anne had been barely sixteen. She still kept in contact with Charlotte, despite her exile, but it was not the same. They wrote to one another under false aliases and Anne burned each letter after reading, just so they couldn't be caught breaking the laws of Annelise's punishment.

Her introductions should’ve stopped at her students, but Anne noticed another familiar face approaching Sarah. Iris was recognizable from a mile away, with her alabaster skin and blonde hair so light it was nearly white. Her mother had chosen a silver gown for her to wear and, though the feathered mask on her face alluded to a swan costume, Anne couldn’t help but think Iris resembled more of a ghost than a bird.

“The pale girl in silver over there is Iris Smythe-Smith. I had the pleasure of performing with her at the last musicale. As well as her cousin, Honoria, who’s in the red. And the one in the pink and black satin is Lady Sarah, the eldest of the Pleinsworth girls.”

Anne watched the girls with pride, even the ones she barely knew well enough to consider friends. For a moment, she became so lost in her thoughts that she managed to forget her own warnings about the rules of the ball. While Ben had fumbled and revealed his own name, Anne had completely given up the ghost and revealed more than five.

“Those are my guesses, at least.” She tried to cover her mistake with a smile. “It would be unfair of me to divulge their names under such circumstances.”

Despite the woman's disapproval -- or was she merely teasing? -- there was a playful lilt to her voice that immediately put him at ease. And then somehow, she managed to guess his costume on the first try.

Delighted, he asked, "Are you an admirer of Shakespeare's plays, by chance? I don't wish to say it's rare to meet a well-read woman, but...well...it is rare. I've often feared I've lulled my female companions into a comatose state whenever I go off on my tangents."

The woman turned his attention to her own ensemble, and eyes lighting up, he exclaimed once she made her reveal, "Oh, yes, of course! Titania! If I'd gone as Oberon, I suspect I would've had more claim to remain by your side for the evening."

Almost instantly, Benjamin winced. The art of flirtation had long since eluded him, and now was by far no exception. Before he could apologize, however, a distraction came in the form of a small, rambunctious girl. She began talking about unicorns in eager verve, and Benjamin's heart leapt at the recollection of a very specific conversation he'd held in his not-so-distant memory.

"And is that your costume?" he asked her, amusement warming his eyes. "I personally think you've got the right idea. It would be much better to fly than to walk."

The girl scrunched her nose, giving him a skeptical once-over. Although he was all too happy to divulge his identity (again), the woman reminded her small companion of the night's objective, and the child seemed appeased.

She darted off -- or Frances, as she was quickly reprimanded -- and slowly, Benjamin's smile faded in recognition. "Frances?" he echoed, startled. "As in...Frances Pleinsworth?"

Giving the woman a far more intensive once-over, he blinked a few times before asking, "Miss Wynter? Is that you struggling underneath all that tulle and pearls?"

Despite his shock -- and yes, perhaps even a bit of hurt bemusement -- he couldn't deny the rush of relief he felt over seeing her again. "I was beginning to think you might've been a figment of my imagination," he said. "I know the ton isn't small, but it's also not incredibly large, either. I had assumed -- or rather, hoped -- I might see you or the girls long before now."

Anne remained silent for a long time. “About the other day… I’m sorry for leaving so abruptly. I realize it was rather rude of me so... I wanted to apologize.”

The cowed look in her eyes reflected nothing short of sincerity, and Benjamin's smile softened. "No harm done," he assured her. "I told you I was dull, remember? I suppose I just didn't realize how dull until you took off."

“I hope I didn’t offend you too terribly," she continued. "I would still like to be friends, if your offer remains on the table, that is.”

"It was never taken off," Benjamin promised. "Truth be told, I don't have many here I can consider friends, beyond the Bridgertons, but they're my employers...it's not the most professional thing to befriend the family paying my salary, but they're endeared to me unlike any other." He chuckled. "Well...perhaps you will prove otherwise? Now's your chance to woo my affections."

Clasping his hands behind his back, he nodded out toward the crowd. 'Where are your other girls? I wouldn't mind meeting them...unless, of course, you find me too dull to hold their focus for more than an introduction?" Benjamin grinned, flashing her a knowing glance. He intended to tease her for her departure as long as he could; which, admittedly, seemed like a fair comeuppance for all the times she'd teased him about her ankles.

[heximagines]

@starthelostboys said that Paul had a terrible sense of direction and that was all the fodder I needed for this.

Paul's head whipped around as he scanned the boardwalk for anything that looked familiar. "So if the balloon darts are here… and the ferris wheel is over there… then… hmm…" He stared, utterly dumbfounded, at the small record store that should have been the Chinese food restaurant they all liked. At this rate the food they ordered would definitely be cold by the time he made it home. So he may as well pick up a new record right? He slipped into the shop and weaved through the shelves waiting for something to catch his eye. And something did. Paul stared at you from the middle of the stacks, mouth hanging open. The neon sign just behind you left a red and purple haze over your features. Your soft lips pursed in thought as you sorted through a milkcrate worth of vinyl a guy was trying to sell you. Your clothes clung perfectly to your figure, accentuating everything Paul wanted to see. Dining! Ding! Ding! "Total babe," he said to no one in particular.

He lingered just within earshot of your conversation, pretending to browse through the vinyl. "Alright man, here's the deal. Give you 20 for the lot and," you hummed, "9 for this." He glanced over to see you holding up a copy of Bad Music for Bad People. Hot and good taste? Paul was sold. He waited until money exchanged hands before sliding up to the counter. He easily came between you and the guy who glared at him. "Hey there, gorgeous. I'm a bit lost. But I'm feeling much safer now that I found you." You snorted out loud at the ridiculous line and he grins widely at you. "What that wasn't good?" You tried to stifle your laughter with a hand and shook your head. "No, no it was terrible." He folded his arms over the edge of the counter and leaned in to catch your eye. "Do you know where the Chinese food spot is? Golden Dragon. I thought it was here but I guess not." You sat up on a small stool behind the counter, one leg outstretched and the other bent at the knee. His eyes gladly drank in the shape of your thighs and calves as you thought. After a moment you finally spoke, "Golden Dragon sucks. You should try Lucky Star. The owners moved here from the Bronx and no one knows how to do good Chinese food like New Yorkers." Paul snapped out of his daze with a scoff and shook his head. "Have you tried the moo shu pork? Nothing can compete." You pursed your lips once again before leaning forward, elbows on the counter and hands cradling your face. You looked so cute he was tempted to reach out and touch you. "Well I think there's only one way to settle this." 

Paul watched with a dumb smirk as you stuck a paper on the door to the shop that promised you'd be back in 15 before locking up. "Keep up, wouldn't want you to get lost again." You winked at him and slipped into the crowd of the boardwalk. He was hot on your heels, following along like a dog. But his short attention span had other ideas. A chorus of bells and whistles sounded from one of the booths and Paul whipped his head around to look. He watched as the game operator pulled down the largest teddy bear and passed it off to a cheering kid. When he turned back you were gone. "Shit." Paul whirled around and searched the crowd for you with a frown. Great now he was more lost than before. He scratched the back of his neck and turned back to the game that had distracted him. "Okay, okay. So there's the water guns." He searched for anything else familiar when suddenly he felt a warm softness between his fingers. He looked back to find you slipping your hand in his. "I told you to keep up. C'mon." You tugged him along though the crowd until it thinned out around the demure entrance of the Chinese store. It was practically a telephone booth with a door on either end. One way in and one way out. "So you think this is the best on the boardwalk?" Paul shook his head. "There's no way." You tapped your fingers lightly on the counter as you waited for one of the 2 people in the kitchen to come up and take your order. "As a good friend of mine always says, try before you deny." And well, Paul couldn't argue with that logic. 

The two of you sat at a bench that faced out towards the ocean, the sounds of the boardwalk fading into background noise as you talked and ate. "So then," you gesture wildly, noodles clinging for dear life at the end of your chopsticks, "the dude who started the whole riot in the first place is crawling on his hands and knees though the crowd trying to get away! Like between people's legs." Paul cackled, his hand over his stomach, as you shoveled the noodles into your mouth. "Did he get away?" he wheezed. "Hell no!" You covered your full mouth with your hand. "I grabbed him by the back of his stupid members only jacket and yanked him up off the ground. And then when everyone else realized what was happening, they all picked him up too. Next thing you know we're crowd surfing the guy right back into the fight he started." Paul fell against your side as he tried to compose himself, fits of laughter wracking his body. You easily fell back against him and laughed along. "Anyway, it was a wild show. Really good bands too. Sorry, I didn't mean for that to be like, a whole story." You waved at yourself, a bit embarrassed for going on too long. Paul took this as his opening, he snaked an arm around your waist to keep you against him. Good Chinese food, a quick make out session, and then the real meal? Sounded like a solid plan to him. "Hey, no worries. I like your stories." He looked down at you, grinning, but was suddenly struck by your eyes. He watched how the moon reflected off of them like the surface of the ocean. And how the corners crinkled cutely when you smiled. And the way they searched his own eyes. Paul found himself a bit nervous. He couldn't remember the last time someone made him nervous. "Paul," Your voice dragged him back to Earth. "Yeah?" "Are you going to keep staring at me or are you going to kiss me?" 

Marco wandered into the main room where everyone was lounging around. Waiting. "Paul isn't back yet?" Everyone turned to look at him, confused. "Marco, we thought you were with Paul," Star answered. News to him. He stared vacantly back at his friends. "What? No, no Dwayne you were gonna go with him." Dwayne balked, "I wasn't even here when you all ordered the food." Marco puffed up and pointed at him. "That's bull-" "Everyone stop!" David sat up in his seat and scanned the room, making everyone look to him. "So no one went with Paul to go get the food." There was a long pause before Star stood up. "I'll go get a pizza. We'll find Paul after we eat." 

[horrificanalysis]

Dorohedoro

Q Hayashida (2010-2019)

Synopsis: The setting for Dorohedoro takes place sometime in a post-apocalyptic future, were life is divided across three ‘realms’. Our main protagonist Caiman, lives in the dreary human realm ‘Hole’. Life is miserable in hole, as people are constantly under attack from magic users crossing over from the sorcerer’s realm. These sorcerers see humans as nothing but cannon fodder for their magic experiments. Caiman is one of these magic experiment victims. Someone has transformed his head into that of a lizard, and he has lost all knowledge of his true identity. Together with his best friend Nikaidō, the owner of the local dumpling restaurant, they track down magic users in the hopes of solving the mystery of Caiman’s existence, and to enact their revenge. 

Review: This manga is more of a horror comedy or ‘splatter comedy’ than something traditionally scary, but it definitely doesn’t disappoint in the gore department. Hayashida somehow manages to make the fun and whimsical mixed in with the extreme violence seem tonally consistent. The actual plot was an enjoyable ride that kept me guessing. The fantastical and almost absurdist elements probably contributed to this, as you can never tell what is coming next. You will never underestimate a mushroom again. Another reason why this Manga is super popular is that every single character is enjoyable. Even within the villain group I truly loved every character. Also, you don’t come across many Manga’s that have complex female characters, and buff ladies as well! (although there is still some sexualised fan service). 

Art: Super interesting and unique art style with an aggressive and scratchy aesthetic. I would say it’s a lot less ‘clean’ looking than typical manga style and  more detailed too. I still enjoyed it though, and was actually disappointed that the Anime developed from the Manga wasn’t able to fully replicate the art style. 

Recommend: Yes, one of my favorites. It might be one to miss if you are gore sensitive or prefer fully serious horror. 

Spoilers Below----------------------------------------------------------------------

I really loved that there were no ‘true’ villains in the Manga, or really a clear divide in ‘morality’ between the two groups. The way the story would change the way you felt about the villain characters by slowly feeding you new revelations as the story moved along was super fun and interesting to me. I started thinking about how the main reason we view Caiman’s actions as justified was only because we were seeing things from his point of view. It kind of made you question what is actually right and wrong in the context of the story. 

I liked that the characters all had flaws and there was no true hero, yet the story was still felt sincere. It manages to avoid the cringe, 'the main hero is cool because he’s edgy’ tropes you can sometimes get with similarly themed stories. 

I guess maybe Chidaruma could be argued to be the true ‘villain’ of the story, but he was still an enjoyable character. 

I also liked how the romance plots were more background implications in the story. Any ‘romantic chemistry’ between characters was just enough to keep things interesting without overshadowing the main plot. It felt more natural to me because they didn’t follow too many typical romance tropes. 

The only thing that really lets this manga down for me is the obvious fan service scenes with the female characters. I was so happy to have found a manga that has even one good female protagonist that actually contributes to the action of the story and is badass in their own right, and this manga has more than one. Unfortunately, there were some sexualised nudity scenes that were just kind of add ons with no real plot relevance except, ‘look a naked girl with boobs’. Luckily, these scenes are not constantly barraging you throughout the story like other similar Manga’s I have read. 

If anyone else loves this manga, let me know what you think. I would love to know who your favourite character was and why. 

[piracytheorist]

a few things about Ethan I think Miranda was underestimating his power inside the mold AND with Donna and Lady D (and the other two) I wonder how much of the Cadou intergreated with the mold AND (even though i don't give a damn about their feelings on the matter) how much they're aware of what Miranda actually thought of them (she called them her false children)... and how would Rose transport Ethan's ring? or was it recreated from mold?

Oh, Miranda definitely underestimated Ethan. Both in the main game and the DLC. Ethan wasn't infected with a Cadou, and compared to pretty much everyone else, he was the most "symbiotic" with it, let's say. Like, in re7, if you choose to save Zoe, even after she gets the serum shot Eveline is still able to kill her from afar. Instead Ethan, at this point is all mold yet Eveline can barely hurt him through their connection. You could say that he had become an entire independent strand of mutamycete all by himself!

And yeah considering that, and that pretty much all of the Lords' powers came from the Cadou, which was a modified part of the Megamycete, and still received changes in their bodies, while Ethan had an almost perfect symbiosis when directly infected by Eveline. He's just Build DifferentTM. I'd say Miranda could have found the Lords' essences and used them with the Rose copies, but then why wouldn't she do the same with Ethan? Did his Built Different nature allow him to escape her, until he manifested in the deepest stratum and faced her directly? AAAAAHHHH I need answers!

About Ethan's ring... so apparently he died with it, because Rose isn't wearing it in the beginning of the DLC. I had thought he'd put it in a pocket inside his jacket which he covered Rose with in the end, but I was wrong. At the end in the mold she holds Ethan's left hand (the one that has the ring) in her right hand, and when she wakes up his ring is in it. That kinda reminds me of the end of Atlantis: The Lost Empire, tbh XD Ok look inside the mold it was not the real, physical ring, that one was destroyed when the bomb went off, along with Ethan's body. The ring that Ethan wore in the mold was just a representation of his form, so I'm guessing Rose recreated it, or it's all Ethan could give of himself outside the mold... and that's fanfiction fodder about how she'll grow strong enough to slowly bring back her dad in full :D without torturing and killing an entire village

[hissi-oil]

side & lab ray accounts....

_pecho_: another from, my UC ...trading...adventures..... a massive downtrade on my part, the last UC trade i did. i did a 3way trade where i traded a tier 8 pet for a tier 2, I just did not want to trade anymore, and I wanted this one nice person to get my tier 8 pet I knew they wanted, and they offered their trade pet on this little UC tyrannian techo.... _pecho_... i need to transfer you to girlify you, i feel... I think pecho is a cute name, and I did some sketches of ty techos and liked drawing them...! we'll see what happens, Pecho! JetiiSam: when i was a kid, and returned from the first mass lost of all my neopets accounts.... made a new one and, immediately found a yellow jetsam named JetiiSam in the pound....! been with me, for soooo long. i know I wanted to paint him ghost at one point..but afforded a strawberry paint brush first, HAHA. first pet I won a beauty contest trophy with after lots of attempts Kenuvo: created, on cybunny day!!! i think, yellow cybunny? quickly painted ghost.... for some reason I can't comprehend, was eventually turned into a kougra... was darigan for a while, I think from a lab ray zap?? Since her origin, I had it in my mind that she was a former prince, her longed to be a princess and would dress the part. very sickly, too... first pet that I put the effort into trading NC items for...! the darigan, clashed so much with her outfit though. i remember going on the boards and asking people for advice on a repaint, and someone suggested eventide. It does look nicer, but these days I'm in the process of pondering her next species + color change! I think whatever species it is, she's going to be grey or ghost...! my_myyyyyy: anooooooothhhhhhherrrrrrr from mmmmmmyyyy UC traaaaddding aadvventuuuuureeesssss........ I swear it was all I spent time into doing, for a while.. something, SOMEHOW, fun... about entering shuffles and managing to go up in tiers, or trade UC to RW/RN/4L then back to UC but several tiers up... ugh !! then i got exhausted and disappeared for 3 months until NCUCs happened LOL. anyways, my_myyyy is a little faerie xweetok, who sports a gourmet trophy! her name was funny to me, and I was intrigued by her trophy (she's only eaten like, 40 gourmet foods, so she earned that Very early on). i guess i can consider him, another 'nameless' pet, thinking and and considering what I'd like to do with her.

Tunatar: my starry kougra!! originally red, once glowing, ......I, honestly can't remember how I came up with this name, but I did create him myself, back in middle school! drew and roleplayed with this lil kougra a LOT. young, naive, a flirt..... born blind... starry, but with minimal markings.... Rovsy: the only, permanent resident of my lab ray account! mutant draik !! if i remember correctly, I created Rovsy myself, while trying to figure out a handful of different 'pleasant' names to start zapping (several of which started a lot of my UC trading chains!!) Rovsy ended up getting zapped mutant, becoming a mutant draik!!! Which, I always found very cute. I also found, the name Rovsy very cute... it became apparent that Rovsy was no longer trade fodder, oops! I'm still on the fence if I want Rovsy to be a boy or girl...!!

mix of work and medical woes has stolen away a week of my time.......... but slowly settling into the weekend and doing both ART and NEOPETS !!!!! traded a pet, and acquired one named "grr" grr.... grr..... what am I even going to turn you into, such an impulse trade because i often just type grrrr after stuff HAHA

ooh now i want to continue to ramble on NAME origins more too, while looking through my accounts..... main, aka the mishmosh the crossroads...: the messiest and most disorganized of my accounts..

102nd: my battledome dari eyrie.... i saw this pet briefly up for trade a couple months before the NCUC release, and I was so transfixed with him for some reason!? in combination with the UC dari eyrie art, it feels so Tiny in the frame. just, an interesting name to me I guess... i guess the fact it felt like, not a name. 102nd of what? I traded a year 1 pet for an UC royalboy acara, which i traded for a high battledome stat UC dari draik... i offered her on 102nd, whose owner initially said no, but then they followed up and said they changed their mind because they were charmed by fact I was so interested in this pet LOL. trade went through, on my birthday!? since then, i've gotten a handful of neomails from people who've either had their eyes on him or previously owned him in the past offering on him, goodness gracious 4kiru: Not the nicest looking name i suppose, nor how I would be compelled to choose a name these a days...... but I choose to read it as Akiru....! I apparently created and painted this pet myself, but completely failed to develop him more... but, an existing oc as a neopet .... sorry, aki!!! perhaps I'll shop around for more name ideas for you!?? asdfghjhh: "asd" my first battledome pet!!! my little pink eyrie!! years back, apparently 2011, I joined in on a pound surf board, and she kept showing up.... apparently she really charmed me and I was obsessed with her for a bit, and drew her a ton and she got a ton of giftart as well, was considered a psuedo-mascot of the pound boards for a little bit....! i trained up her stats, and a comic featuring her got into the neopian times. she was my first pet to ever get boochi'd, and I started to save up for a pink paint brush to repaint her before discovering pink eyrie morphing potions were only 300k at the time.... ! really unsure if her keyboard smash name would be something to charm me over these days, but she is so ingrained in my neo history ! i feel i never really fully developed a serious character for her beyond "wingless pink eyrie that likes snow" grr: You are brand new.... what will you be !? I suppose, this account does have more than one pet who, are kind of 'nameless', i feel compelled to make you a girl.... what species....! maybe the lab ray will help me in the meantime as i ponder ? Guevota: back during my UC trading adventures, i was on such a hunt for an UC plushie jetsam....!! i really, really....really. i'm not much of a fan of the converted jetsam art, but the basic pre-conversion base pose is So cute to me? and plushie jetsam is the only one of the UC jetsams at the time that preserved it (robot kinda did too, but didnt have the eyes) not a very popular pet though, so took a While, to even See any to offer on !!! so not a matter where I could be picky or choosy on name, but I like it! I usually call her Gue "gweh" "gweh - vo - ta"

mimo154: another from my, UC trading adventures ... ! I know i technically 'downtraded' for her according to the UC trading tiers, but I did not care.... i thought she was so cute, and really liked 'mimo', especially lowercase... something charming about 154, for some reason.... which is funny, because me of the past wouldnt be caught dead with a name with numbers... and it's funny now, that NCUCs are out. but thats okay.... mimo154 ! toxin: also from my uc trading adventures !! i already knew I wanted to create this tyrannian kougra, but was at such a loss for names... was both checking various untaken names, trying to make boards seeking "Pets born on leap year", & also just seeing names up for trade.. i had traded an UC for a 3L baby blumaroo, and toxin was offered on this blumaroo... i mulled it over for a bit, like ... ah...!! toxin.... so weird to have a, word?? as a neopet name?? would i retrade it? ah, it could work for the kougie, he'd be so intrigued and impressed by the defensive qualities of plants and thematic to his own barbed personality, hm... ended up, accepting ! it's fun, having him as my active, since my username starts with a t as well, or double lowercase t's.... Ysae: a lucky pound find back in, 20..10?? around the same time I acquired Janra! I had (still have!) an important oc that's name starts with Ys-, so I was very "oh!" seeing this name. Neopets wise, this pet was originally an... actually I don't know.. but, ended up as an alien aisha at one point? I have.. alien aisha clothes scattered across multiple accounts....! When I returned to neo recently, I realized the name would be good for my Ys- oc, in neopets form. I was on the fence between cybunny or acara.... decided, acara....

[innytoes]

For your Vampire Reggie/Werewolf Alex AU, please more oblivious Julie who doesn't realize she can see ghosts, if you're so inclined 👀

Okay so you totally have insider info and I am glad you are using it for good.

It's a Songwriting Day, which means it's just her and Luke in the studio. Alex and Willie were going for a hike ('walkies', Willie had joked like usual, and now that joke made sense) and Reggie was probably sleeping half the day away before heading to the animal shelter to help clean cages and walk dogs.

During one of their snack breaks, she paused and looked at Luke. "So you didn't have any idea Reggie was a vampire or Alex was a werewolf when you guys started the band?"

"Nope," Luke said, popping the p before going back to his granola bar. "I thought Reggie was just like, really into sunscreen and the gothy-punk look. He used to wear a lot of eyeliner." Oh. Oh that was one hundred per cent something they were going to talk about later. She wondered if Luke had photos... no, focus.

"And Alex?"

"Didn't realise until I went to his house and crawled through his window to discuss the drum beat for Late Last Night and found an enormous dog on his bed." Luke paused. "Okay that's not true, I didn't realise until the next week when I told Alex 'you never told me you had such an awesome dog' and he freaked out."

"I guess we really are both kind of oblivious," Julie said. "Reggie's been pretty sweet about it, but Alex and Willie have been dragging me every time they see me."

"Yeah, what's he like, anyway?" Luke asked. "Is he really as hot as everyone always says? I mean, Alex is clearly biased to hell, and I can't tell if Reggie is messing with me because he thinks I'm jealous."

“What?”

“Yeah, you know, they can see him ‘cause of the whole vampire and werewolf thing,” Luke said, like that made any sense. 

“And you... can’t?” Julie asked, hestitant. Like she didn’t actually want to know the answer. Because she was pretty sure she didn’t.

“Yeah, it’s pretty cool you can see ghosts,” Luke said. “And I mean, it’s pretty funny that I really am the only one who doesn’t have any special gifts. That’s going to be great red carpet interview fodder at the Grammies, you know?”

Julie wasn’t really listening to him anymore, though, instead thinking back to all the times her dad talked about her imaginary friends. That time she and her music camp friends got lost in the woods and she was able to get them back to the trail because of the ‘nice old man’ that none of the other kids claimed to see. 

The times she’d joked to Carlos about how many cosplayers were out, and how he’d stared at the one guy in a Captain America shirt and asked her what she had against nerds, completely ignoring the man in an honest to god tophat and cape walking by. 

This explained so much. This explained so much and now that she thought back, she’s not sure why she hadn’t thought of it before. She’s not sure why any of the ghosts she’d spoken with hadn’t brought it up. Maybe because her mom had taught her not to stare or be rude to people who dressed differently.  

“Julie?” Luke asked, a little unsure. She blinked, zoning back in. 

“Willie’s a ghost?” she whispered. 

“Oh.” Luke blinked, before his face broke out into the biggest grin. “Ooooooh.”

And then he grabbed his phone, opening up a video call to Alex and Reggie. Oh no.

“No!” she shouted, chasing Luke around the studio. “Luke, stop!”

“Guys you’ll never guess what Julie just learned!” Luke crowed, vaulting over the coffee table and onto the couch, holding the phone up high so he could get her into the shot as well. Oh god, the jokes were going to be even more insufferable now. She was never going to live this down. 

(Set in the Rulie Vampire AU universe as found here on ao3, of course.)

[ariverrunsviolet]

Hostage Situation (Bucky Barnes imagine)

Summary: A surprise attack has left you captured and under interrogation by an unknown enemy. Only one thing brings you comfort; a certain soldier is out there looking for you.

Gif @ gifbuckybarnes

Pairing: Bucky x Reader Timeline: Post The Falcon and The Winter Soldier Reader is a fellow Avenger that has teamed up with Sam and Bucky. Warnings: Violence, sexual assault, language Words:  2158

Songs I listed to while writing this: Opus by Hoity-Toity, Next Contestant by Nickelback, Protecting Me by Aly & AJ Let me know what you guys think! I have ideas for a part two *Please don't repost this anywhere! Especially without my permission!*

“You’re a stubborn one, ain’t ya?”

You managed to pool a mouthful of spit and blood and hocked it in the direction of your captor. Your breathing was heavier than normal after their relentless interrogation efforts. Time was lost to you; it could have been 12 hours or a whole week since you had been separated from the group and captured.

It had been a surprise attack; Torres’ intel didn’t account for the blitz that struck and took you away from Sam and Bucky.  It had all happened so fast—the smoke bombs, a harsh tase to your back, and you woke up here. In this hellhole.

The greasy interrogator lit a freshly drawn cigarette between his fingers and took a deep inhale, blowing the smoke out in your face. “How much longer do you think you can hold out love?”

You refused to look him in the eye as he took another puff. With a screech of his chair and a few steps forward, he yanked the back of your hair and made you face him. As you gasped in surprise, he plunged his mouth into yours and exhaled again. He planted himself firmly against your mouth and nose; you couldn’t release his breath at all. The smoke burned your nose, throat, and lungs as you choked on it.

He finally, finally, pulled away and you struggled to breathe as tears streamed out of your good eye—the other was swollen shut—and down your bruised face.

“I can hold out as long as you, darlin’. Trust me, I’m enjoyin’ myself.” He said, eyeing your uniform. He unsheathed a dagger from his belt and did a quick and clean slice up the center of the clothing, leaving you exposed in just your bra. With your hands chained to the seat behind you, there was nothing you could do to cover yourself.

You kept up your stone-faced resolve. It was an intimidation tactic, and you wouldn’t give him the pleasure of watching you squirm.

“Yeah…Yeah, I think I’ve found some more to enjoy.” The dozen lackeys spread throughout the big, empty room either snickered or stayed eerily quiet.

Before you could manage to spit at him in disgust a second time, you heard a clutter of noises down the hall. They were stifled through the thick walls, but consistent and growing closer.

For the first time in what felt like an eternity, a warmth of relief spread through your stomach and you managed a small smirk.

“The hell is going on out there?” One of his henchmen by the door grunted as he pulled out his gun.

“Don’t ask me you moron, go check on it!” The lead interrogator barked. The one by the door nodded to the man next to him and they entered a code into the keypad. With a hiss, the door slid open, and the two rounded the corner to search.

As the door slid back to a close, the leader of the group finally seemed to register the look on your face. “And what the fuck has you looking so giddy?”

“The last mistake you’ll ever make.” You rasped out, giving a full bloody smile, counting down in your head.

By the time you reached down to one, there was a slam against the door to the room, a large, rounded dent showing in the thick metal. The pounding continued, each time adding a newer, thicker bulge to the door. It only took a few more punches until the door flew into room, knocking down one of the men.

And there he was in the doorway, with his shining arm and clear blue eyes. There was just a moment as he locked his gaze with yours and you saw wave after wave of relief, rage, and an assessment of the room all come through his face in that brief second.

The lead interrogator started screaming for his men to attack, but they were already at a critical disadvantage. Bucky was on a warpath, and everyone else in the room was just fodder when it came to his end goal: you.

One of the men dangerously close to the avenging soldier stuck his assault weapon right in Bucky’s face. Gripping the front of the gun, the ringing of bullets stopped at his vibranium palm and jammed the front of the weapon. Yanking it out of the henchmen’s grip, Bucky swung out with it and clocked the aggravator clean across the face, knocking him out cold. These weren’t super soldiers they were dealing with; just sneaky men with big guns and smoke bombs trying to play in the big leagues.

And Bucky was tearing through them like tissue paper. You couldn’t help but feel growing satisfaction; the only thing that would’ve made it better was being free to do it all yourself.

As you watched him move through the room, calculating, quick, and aggressive, the average eye could assume The Winter Soldier was active again. He was snapping guns in half like they were twigs, flipping through the air, and throwing men into each other so hard that they crashed into the wall and laid dazed on the ground. All of this while deathly silent and his eyes glazed over in a look of duty and fury.

Except when he sparingly glanced back at you. Quick looks, making sure you were still there. In those quick, apologetic glances, you could see what he was saying. ‘I’ll be there in a second, hold on.’

He was taking care of the last of the lackies when you felt a hand grip your chin and cold metal shove into your temple. You could feel the slight shaking coming off the leader, as he whistled loudly to get Bucky’s attention.

After an effective punch to the solar plexus of the last of the henchmen, Bucky spun around and set his sights on the handgun rammed into your face. His muscles tensed and for a second, you saw terror flit through his blue orbs before rounding back to steely resolve and rising to meet the gaze of the man that held you captive.

“Drop your weapon.” A demand, with a wall of threatening anger standing tall behind his words.

“Not a chance, Barnes.” The man squeezed your face, making you hiss in response. Bucky’s fists tightened. “If you come any closer, her brain turns into confetti.”

“You do that, and nothing will stop me from breaking every one of your bones into splinters with my bare hands.” Even though you were currently held at gunpoint, Bucky’s threat made you go cold, and a shiver ran up your spine. You didn’t have to be close to the super soldier to know he sincerely meant every word coming out of his mouth.

“You won’t risk it. Not on her life.” His finger hovered over the trigger. “I know that arm comes off your body. Remove it.” Bucky didn’t move a muscle until the man jammed the gun hard into your face, making you wince and causing a quiet cry to escape your throat. “Now!”

Bucky’s resolve broke for an instant, his face panicked until he locked eyes with you. You tried to make it as apparent as you could with just your facial expressions; you had a last-ditch effort ready. Your pupils flicked down to the man’s hand holding your jaw, and you gave a slight and quick head tilt back and looked to Bucky’s face to see if he knew what you were plotting. He understood you like no one else, and with a hesitant, affirmative nod from him, you moved with haste.

Your teeth gnashed down into the man’s hand as you shoved your feet into the floor and launched your chair backwards into the goon behind you. Natasha had taught you this move way back when. The man yelped in surprise and started shooting wildly. You fell to the floor as you watched Bucky cover himself with his arm as a shield, the bullets showering off his vibranium buffer as he surged forward.

You couldn’t see what happened after Bucky had rushed past your line of sight, but the noises you heard told you that he was giving a thorough, yet justified, beating to the man that had haggled with your life.

Even though you were sure Bucky could go at it all day, it wasn’t long until you felt his arms around you, gently pulling your form and the chair upright. He twisted his metal fingers into your shackles, attempting to safely free you, all the while saying “It’s alright. I’m here, you’re safe.” You guessed he was reassuring himself as much as he was reassuring you.

You wanted to jokingly ask “What took you so long?” But you knew he was probably internally beating himself up, asking the same question. Instead, you settled on a quiet but sincere “my hero.”

Your bindings fell to the floor in a flurry of metal clangs and even after singlehandedly dismantling an entire room of kidnappers, Bucky was unprepared for the way your arms whipped up and around his neck, pulling him down to you. His arms instinctively enveloped you, and you knew, you were certain, that you could never feel safer than you did in that moment.

He breathed in all of you, and briefly closed his eyes, relaxing into your hold like warm putty. Both of you needed this more than the other realized.

You pulled away briefly, feeling tears run down your face in warm streaks again, this time in relief. His thumb gently padded them away, careful to avoid your bruised eye, and then rested on your lips. You had no idea how long your eyes were locked into each other until you heard a groaning behind Bucky.

Your stomach, currently swirling with relief and pulsing with adrenaline, felt a hot stab of anger strike through you as you made your way to the man angrily grunting on the floor; Bucky hovered protectively behind you as you moved.

The man’s left arm had been dislocated, and you saw some of his teeth sprinkled on the floor around his face. Your arms stiffened with growing fury as you remembered all of the hell he had gleefully put you through—all of the pain, and embarrassment. You started to reflexively pull your torn clothes around your torso until you felt the warmth of Bucky’s leather jacket cover you. It smelled of pine, and fire, and gunpowder, and just—him. It made you tingle from head to toe as your arms found their way into the sleeves—well, one of the sleeves. Your left harm hung out the gaping hole that was normally meant for Bucky’s vibranium extremity as you zipped up the front.

“We gotta get moving. There are probably more coming that’ll be here any second.” He looked back over his shoulder to the open doorway as he debriefed you, his hand lightly tugging at yours.

“Just give me a second.” You squeezed his hand in response and knelt to fully tower over the shell of a man that had once joyfully taken part in torturing you.

It looked like he was about to say something, probably snarky and condescending, but you beat him to the punch with a swift uppercut into his solar plexus, like Bucky taught you. All of the air left his lungs in a pained shout and he curled into a fetal position, wrapping his one good arm around himself and groaning.

You stood quickly and turned to Bucky, who nodded approvingly and looked impressed, but not surprised, at your aim and the power of your strike. “Okay, I’m good to go now…” your voice faded; the adrenaline flushed out of your system like water running from a faucet. The strong wall that you had put up to survive the interrogation began to dissolve, and it suddenly took everything you had to stay standing, or even keep your eyes open. Your knees gave way and Bucky’s arms were around you in an instant, breaking your fall.

“Hey, (Y/N).” He carefully tapped your cheek a few times trying to rouse you. “Hey, c’mon, stay with me. Please. (Y/N)!”

“Mmmm so sleepy…” you mumbled. “Quick nap, then I’ll be…” you trailed off unwillingly from the dizziness and heard him curse as he hastily called into his earpiece for Sam, demanding he fly his ass and shield down to our location, pronto. His arms swiftly and surely lifted you up into his chest.

‘Thank you for finding me…Bucky’ You would have sworn on your life, in that moment, that you had only thought those words. You had no strength remaining at this point, and darkness was closing in around you. But you must have either said it out loud, or you and Bucky truly had an impenetrable connection. Because he gave your form a light squeeze and the last thing you heard was him mumble assuredly.

“Always.”

[an-army-of-nightmares]

Porcelain Jekyll au

-

This is gonna be long so heres a tldr

TLDR: Jekyll gets taken to a sort of real nightmare party full of dolls, if he misbehaves they'll kill him and if he's a perfect gentleman he'll turn into a doll. There's a branch where he's rescued and two where he turns into a doll

--

•The au starts with Jekyll going to sleep, timeline honestly doesn't matter as long as Frankenstein, Jasper, and Jekyll are all around. Could start where tgs currently is? But Jasper doesn't accidentally wake Jekyll up in his panic

•"The Party of Dolls" is basically a supernatural nightmare? I haven't found a better explanation but basically it's a nightmare that's real and happening, while still "just" being a nightmare. It takes you to like a different dimension while you sleep basically? (The party of dolls isn't the only one but that's not relevant)

•The dolls invite specific people, they invite people who want to be perfect. People who dont want anyone to hate them or find a flaw. Jekyll fits this perfectly

•Jekyll is taken to the party. He tries to be polite despite being unnerved. There's another human at the party, he doesn't learn the man's name before the man gets ripped apart by the dolls for shouting

The dolls target specific people, but they can still take "fodder", people they know will immediately break the rules. So that their actual guests can learn what happens if they are impolite. The dolls also surround guest on all sides, and have them in the exact middle, so that the guest cannot just run out

•Jekyll is terrified, now knowing he'll die if he does something wrong, he tries his best to be perfect

•Unknown to Jekyll, if he's "perfect" he'll start turning into a doll. Ultimately it's a die or die situation

•Jekyll does start to notice the porcelain creeping up him, its be hard not to. He is very much (silently) panicking. But,, the more porcelain on him the more calm he becomes, the more he acts as if this is a simple party and nothing is wrong

•Eventually he reaches a point where he'd actively resist being taken away from the party, but still not fully covered by porcelain

A quick note, Hyde can't do anything about the situation. He wasn't invited and the dolls are suppressing him so much he can hardly even tell what's happening, or leave the mindscape. He's absolutely terrified about this because he can Feel something is wrong and everything is just becoming more and more suffocating

Now onto the branches! There are 2 and a half branches for this au!

Branch 1: Jekyll gets rescued

(Assuming this takes place at Chapter 11 Page 8)

•Jekyll is asleep on the couch, Jasper rushes in the room like his panic on the page except this time Jekyll does not wake up at Jasper's sudden entry. Jasper, noticing Jekyll is asleep, silently contemplates on if this problem is really worth waking Jekyll. Because on the one hand he's probably overreacting in his mind, but on the other Jekyll is really the only person he can panic to?

•He decides not to wake Jekyll, and wait until it's properly morning or noon?, now that the panic is a bit subdued he probably still has stuff to ask Jekyll

•He goes up to find Jekyll is still asleep, and Zosi frantically pawing at Jekyll's chest, occasionally nibbling him, and seemingly really wants to wake Jekyll up. Jasper tries to wake him up but it seems no matter how hard he tries Jekyll stays asleep

•Seeing how Lanyon probably isn't in the Society at the moment (and besides Jasper is pretty sure Robert dislikes him) and he's currently avoiding Rachel. Jasper cant ask Jekyll's friends if this is normal behavior. Why doesn't he ask the lodgers? Maybe a combination of they all seem busy and still being a bit intimidated by them? So he goes to his last best bet, Frankenstein. She's, kinda a doctor and has traveled quite a bit, so she may know whats up with Jekyll and why Zosi is panicking

Note: This whole decision happens in like a few seconds while Jasper is panicking

•Frankenstein does not ease Jasper's worries

•Ah, I guess there has to be some sort of tell, something that makes it clear someone is in one of these "supernatural nightmares" and that Jekyll is specifically in the party of dolls. Idk yet what that tell would be. But Frankenstein knows and thats all that matters

•They take Jekyll back to the attic, lock the entry, and make preparations for a rescue mission

•Frankenstein will be going in to try and distract the dolls while Jasper will be looking for Jekyll. Creature is there as plan B in case the dolls get hostile towards them (as Creature is fully capable of lifting them all up and running out of there. And the dolls are very likely to get hostile towards them)

•They get in, how? I have no clue. But they do. Probably a potion?

•Jasper quickly finds Jekyll and tries to convince him to leave. Much to Jasper's concern, Jekyll doesn't want to leave, and keeps brushing the danger off

Frankenstein and Jasper dont know much about the nightmare. Its likely all they know is that its filled with dolls and people who are "invited" are never seen again/found dead

•Frankenstein's distraction consists of pointing out flaws in how the dolls act. The dolls keep finding excuses, but eventually become agitated with her

•Japser notices the porcelain on Jekyll and loudly panics, attracting the already agitated dolls attention

•Creature picks them all up and runs towards the doors. Jekyll is greatly struggling against this rescue attempt, but once they get out of the building and onto the stretch of yard before the exit Jekyll calms down significantly

Jekyll did not actually calm down, but rather Hyde managed to weasel control after they left the building. Hyde absolutely does not want to be at this party, and Jekyll's struggling could've jeopardized the rescue

•They get back! Whatever porcelain was on Jekyll falls off him with ease. He's angry for maybe half a day or more. But when the doll's control completely leaves him, he's nothing but relieved

Sidenote: It seems reasonable that this whole experience would leave Jekyll with a fear of going to sleep. Perhaps give him something that can deter these types of nightmares? A desire for the comfort of another person, at least in the room, while he's asleep?

Branch 2: Jekyll fully turns into a doll

•Well either Jekyll went to sleep at his own home or some place where no one would think to look for him, as if he was right in the society they'd certainly take notice that something is wrong

•Jekyll fully turns to porcelain. Once he's a full doll they give him new clothes (the sand/beige colored suit I tend to draw porcelain Jekyll in)

Previously, Jekyll had been wearing the suit he wears at any formal party, like the ball in An Army Of Nightmares

•Porcelain Jekyll gets back to the real world. This is not entirely out of the ordinary for the dolls to do. If a guest was reasonably young or famous they'll be returned once a doll, to make themselves more known or respectable before they "die" and go back to the party full time

•Zosi notices something is Wrong while Jekyll is asleep and tries to wake him up to no avail, Zosi can't bark for attention and he's scared of leaving Jekyll alone, the few times he does go out to find someone he's largely ignored or avoided, or they misinterpret what the zombie pup wants. When Jekyll does wake up, Zosi immediately notices that it's not Jekyll, at least not anymore. Zosi knows he's supposed to get rid of any evil creatures, but this was once Jekyll. So the pup runs away and avoids him instead

•ooo I dont want to describe this whole branch? This has already taken way longer for me to write then I want XD, just check out this reblog chain about it bsksndks

•

Branch 2 ½: Jekyll dies

•Jekyll fully turns into a doll, however instead of entering the real world his real body simply dies. He's found rotting in bed. "Jekyll" however, is still in the party. (Fun fact, this was the original plan for the au)

-----

Extra notes:

▪All the dolls in the party were once people, except for maybe one or two? A handful? But it has long since been lost who's who. And it never mattered

▪Lanyon would not have ever been invited to the party. He doesn't seem to want to be a gentleman, and he knows too much about etiquette to be fodder either

▪Jasper is a proper candidate to be invited, and in branch 2 "Jekyll" is giving him alot more lessons on how to be a proper gentleman, planning to invite Jasper to the party at some point

▪The party always has a host that they cycle though, the host talks to guests a bit more than everyone else

▪Porcelain Jekyll gets to keep his new clothes when returning to the real world

[cblgblog]

Sorry I’m advance but one of my other favorite accounts just reblogged a Tony scene and people are talking about Civil War and how it made them Stan Tony, and how when they watch that movie they hate team cap👀 Then someone was all about how he was sleep deprived and how much pressure he was under and couldn’t understand how people didn’t like Tony because. Someone literally said that when someone says they don’t like Tony in Civil War they say “did you watch the same movie as me.” I’m baffled. Oddly enough someone else said, “he just wants to help everyone.” Sorry for the rant but I think people forget about what the accords are and what it would mean for people. Side note, I hope you’re having a great day/night 😀

No sorry needed!

I feel you man, I do. Honestly, I’ve unfollowed people based on similar posts when I was in especially Done moods, so.

Look on the one hand, the movie would’ve been a narrative failure if everyone was in favor of one side or the other, right? The whole point of the damn thing—besides giving the Mouse overlords more money—was to spark discussion, debate. Which, yeah, we’ll call that the tame description for what actually happened. But just, the thing was meant to split the fanbase so in that regard…winning? Thanks, I guess?

Film is also very obviously subjective, different strokes for different folks, so yeah, ten people can watch a movie and none of them are gonna see the exact same film. Let’s try to remember that this is, in theory anyway, a good thing. I just read a professional film review yesterday where I had the same reaction. What film were you watching, dude? Incidentally his reviewing partner said the same thing.

So honestly, no, they weren’t watching the same film as you or I or anyone else, because everyone brings their own biases and experiences and knowledge and interests into a thing, and that’s always going to flavor how it’s viewed. Again, let’s try to remember that this is good. In theory. Heavy on the theory.

That out of the way? Let’s get into Tony specifically so his uber stans can find this and scream at me on anon as though I just shot RDJ with a nuke.

Oh yeah, he was stressed. Oh, he was sleep deprived. Yeah, I’ve heard that. And that it’s Pepper’s fault, if she hadn’t left the poor baby, if she was there to rein him in, he’d be fine dammit, leave the baby alone!

Here’s the thing. You know who gets a pass on their shit behavior when they’re upset or tired? Actual babies. Actual babies and toddlers, and children, up to a point. Because they actually cannot always help themselves. Their bodies and brains are different, they have not learned better.

When you’re a 50-year-old man who’s supposedly the world’s bestest superhero, who wants, wants to be in charge of protecting the whole world? You need a little more self-control than that. The sleep deprived excuse works if you snap at someone before you’ve had your coffee, not for this. Roseanne Barr didn’t get to blame Ambien for her racism, Tony doesn’t get to handwave CW away because oops, I was tired.

Really? You’re a superhero, dude. Most of your teammates are tired too, that’s part of the gig. If you crash and burn this badly without your afternoon nap, fucking hang up the armor and go back to your billionaire playboy lifestyle.

Speaking of that, sure, right. It’s Pepper’s fault because she left him. Put aside the argument on whether that was justified or not (cough, it was and she should’ve stayed away even though they are adorable together). It’s not Pepper’s job to keep Tony sane. It’s not any partner’s job to do that for anyone. If she wants out, she has a right to that, without Tony going off the rails and blaming it on her. Seriously, he says part of the reason he backed the Accords was to “split the difference” with Pepper.

Dude. You were an asshole and you lost your girl. You destroyed all your suits, turned an emotional and mental corner in IM 3…and then relapsed 4 minutes later I guess because Whedon. Either way, Tony admits himself that he does not want to stop. So instead of doing that, or finding another partner who can accept that, you back an unjust international law that pits you against your team, your supposed friends? Go to therapy, have a pint of ice cream, cry into your pillow, send her more of those strawberries you sent her in IM 2 that she’s allergic to. You don’t go trying to change international law in ways that could ultimately affect millions of people because your girl left you.

Honestly—and thank God they didn’t do this but—the only way the Pepper excuse works in excusing his behavior in any way is if she’d died. Or been severely injured like Happy in IM 3. Still wouldn’t be okay, but, like Quill messing up their chance to stop Thanos because Gamora died, it would’ve been more understandable. Understandable, not excusable, and the way the MCU treats their women as manpain fodder, we’re probably legit lucky we didn’t get this.

As for him wanting to help everyone. He does in fact want that, I think. The problem is that his need to feel like he’s doing that is stronger than his rational mind, or his want to actually help in a constructive way.

Tony is too smart. He’s dumb as hell in many instances, mostly involving people and relationships, but he’s also too smart, and he’s been told for too long that he’s smart, and he’s bought into it. Ultron. Suit of armor around the world, protects the world, no more alien threats. It’s a simple concept on paper that fails in execution. So there are people with dangerous powers. Okay, we’ll make a set of laws to keep them from being dangerous, problem solved. But again, it isn’t.

Tony is not used to problems he cannot solve. He’s a genius, right? He can fix anything. He should be able to fix anything. That’s how he feels. But not everything is zeros and ones and circuits, things that can be fixed mechanically like his armors can. The people he wants to protect are not built that way. But he needs to feel like he’s doing something, because he’s terrified of what happens to the world if he doesn’t. So he creates these simple solutions to complex problems. The suit of armor, the Accords. They sound good in theory, but the problems they’re trying to solve are bigger than they are. And Tony, way back in IM 1, he sat back for years, clueless that his weapons were being used for bad things. He says it to Cap in CW. When he found out what his weapons were being used for, he went in and stopped it. Whether or not he should’ve known that already is a separate issue here. The point here is that when he found out, too late or not, he went in and did something about it.

Tony needs to do something about it. Again, go back to Cap in AoU, Tony’s nightmare sequence. Steve asks Tony why he didn’t save them. Tony’s ultimate nightmare is that he sits back and does nothing, and his inaction causes everyone to die. Which is where you get Ultron. Something he came up with because of what he saw in space in Avengers 1, then doubled down on in AoU. It’s where you get the Accords. Oops, he caused someone to die, he killed Charles Spencer. Must do something about that right now so it doesn’t happen again, and he won’t have to feel this guilt. He should be collaborating with others to come up with solutions (no Bruce in AoU doesn’t count because Bruce was dumb there), or at the very least, taking more time to think through the repercussions of the things he puts out there. But he doesn’t, because he’s got his savior complex that tells him that he alone can and must fix this, and because he’s too dumb to realize how not-smart he is in certain areas.

“We need to be put in check. Whatever form that takes, I’m game.”

Isn’t that what he says in CW, or something very close to it? Whatever form that takes. That’s the issue, right there, whatever form that takes. Realistically, yes, there should be laws regarding people with powers, the same way there are special laws pertaining to people who carry guns, or people who are licensed to fly planes. You have a thing/can do a thing that not everyone else does, so there are regulations pertaining to that thing. Laws change with the times, they always have. Some new technology comes up, eventually there will be laws that regulate it. As there should be, honestly. The issue with the Accords, Steve’s issue with the Accords, was not the basic idea. He says as much. He says that it could work, but there would have to be safeguards. Safeguards that are not in the Accords that Tony wants him to sign.

It's not a matter of oh, fuck the law, there should be no law governing these people, they’re above it. The problem is that the law as it’s presented here is unjust. There’s what, a month between Lagos and Ross coming by to tell them about the Accords? A month is not enough time to properly analyze such a big issue, Especially when you’re reacting out of fear, which is what happened with Lagos. People died because of an Enhanced person, an Avenger, in this case. Lawmakers don’t want that to happen again, they especially don’t want the political shit storm that comes with it. Damn, we look like we were asleep at the switch here, not having anything to throw at this problem earlier. Quick, let’s throw together this thing so no one can say we’re not addressing the problem.

Patriot Act of 2001, anyone? 9/11 happened, the public were rightfully terrified, the US said oh man, these are unprecedented circumstances, we’ve never had this before. Don’t worry though, we’re on this, we’re protecting you. The reality being that that bill simply gave the government too much power, most of it being used against people who were not actually threats, and it’s debatable, to say the very least, whether or not that law helped more than it hurt.

No law is perfect. No law ever will be. It’s not possible. We still have to strive for perfection though, have to aim there so that the laws we get are as close to fair as possible. Tony’s a big deal. If not for his “whatever form that takes” attitude, he might’ve been able to use his influence to pressure lawmakers into coming up with a fairer bill. Hey, I’m me, the public loves me, I will endorse this bill publicly and work on getting the rest of the team to sign, but you need to change this and this and this first, or no deal. Instead, he took the easy way out, the quickest, easiest way for him to feel like he’s atoned for his sins without actually doing anything. Whatever form that takes.

Tony’s not wrong because he backs the creation of a law that addresses these things. He’s wrong because he says himself that he does not care what that law does, specifically, so long as it exists. He’s wrong because he violates said law upteen times during the movie, while preaching to team Cap about what assholes they are for not backing it. He’s wrong because he cares more about feeling as though he’s tackled a problem than he does about taking the time to make sure that the thing he’s proposing is actually a good idea. He’s wrong because of what he does with Bucky, though that’s honestly a separate issue, for the purposes of this discussion.

Anyway, that was longer than I ever wanted it to be. Damn. Next time you see a comment about CW being the reason people stan Tony, just remember there are other people out there who stopped stanning Tony because of that movie. Everyone’s entitled to see a piece of media however they see it, and although the Tony stans are often the loudest, there are plenty of like-minded people out there who share your take on events. Block who you need to, unfollow who you need to, blacklist what you need to, and don’t let them get you down.

Hang in there, and have an awesome day :)