#also manifesting August I guess

[harrytheehottie]

guys I just had a dream that on my European vacation I was over at a friends and I walk into her backyard and Harry is just standing there mingling.

[airenyah]

Reasons Why I Need a Sexy JoongDunk BL

If you know me, then you’ll know that it’s actually kind of funny that I’m asking for this. Me. A sex-repulsed leaning asexual who, for the most part, tends to stay away from (overly) sexy and/or horny series. And yet I really want a sexy JoongDunk series. A messy, Only Friends-type of series even, perhaps.

Make no mistake, though. I don’t actually want it for me, oh no. No, I want a sexy JoongDunk series for them, for their sake. Because I feel like they’d have a whole lot of fun with it.

And here’s why I think so:

Reason #1: Dum Dum

Definitely the most obvious reason, but the LOL Fanfest Dum Dum performance: the fact that the choreography was like That. And the fact that it was their idea to switch up who bites who for day 2:

Not to mention the fact that Dunk actually bit Joong for real:

I'm just saying, they wanted “hot and sexy”, they chose this:

Reason #2: “We’ve never done this before”

The way they kept bringing up how Hidden Agenda is more mature than Star in My Mind and how there were scenes that they’d never done before*, it seemed to have been a big deal for them.

*see here for some eng subs (this video is unfortunately heavily edited)

Reason #3: “Favorite episode of Hidden Agenda? Episode 8!!”​

The way Joong immediately said episode 8 was his favorite, smiling expectantly at Dunk...

...and then was very adamant when Dunk couldn’t decide between episodes 7 and 8:

Considering their comments of how “episode 8 is special” because they’ve “never done anything like this before”... Well, dare I bet it’s their favorite episode because of the ending specifically. Unless maybe they were particularly excited about the stalker story line. I don’t think they’d done that before either.

Reason #4: Ep8 watch party live on Instagram

The way they actually sat down and went live on Instagram in order to watch, react to, and comment on the entirety of episode 8.

And considering Dunk’s comment at the beginning of this live about how it’s “something we've never done before” I’m absolutely convinced they chose ep8 to react to specifically because of the ending lmao. Unless, of course, they were extremely hyped about the stalker plot. There were no creepy stalker plots in Star in My Mind, nor do I remember any significant stalking in Joong’s other works. Or maybe the two of them were referring to the scene where Zo bites Joke’s arm. I don’t remember any biting from Star in My Mind, so who knows, it might be that. What else was special in ep8? Oh right, Joke punched the stalker. That can’t have been the “we’ve never done this before” thing, though, considering Joong was literally in a Mafia series before. Also, he punched Pepper in Star in My Mind. My theory still stands.

Reason #5: “It was more intense than this”

In that instagram live they also dropped that a lot was cut from that scene and that it was supposed to be more intense than this. Uh, boys...? What kind of choreography did y’all on set come up with for this scene exactly??

(I can’t stop laughing at Dunk's face when he agrees with Joong saying that a lot was cut. He looks like he suddenly bit into a very sour lemon lmao)

In conclusion:

Clearly they had a lot of fun with the Dum Dum performance and it seems that they were very excited about getting to do something more mature with Hidden Agenda, and also getting the the chance to do something that they’ve “never done before” in ep8 specifically. So my point stands: I think they’d have a blast playing a sexy series together. I want it for them.

Bonus: Vampire BL

Bonus points if this sexy JoongDunk BL that I’m asking for is a vampire BL!! Here’​s why:

You can find a more extensive list of vampire mentions in my JoongDunk Vampire Mentions Masterpost here.

[solar-nightengale]

@lizardthelizard You wanted my thoughts, you're getting them 😏 Three and a half weeks later but you're still getting them ehehehe 😌😌😌 (Idk what to make of them so have fun with that word wall of mayhem)

August 2.18 | Zelena 3.16

[egophiliac]

YOU MANIFESTED THE TWEEL CARDS CONGRATS

YOU'RE WELCOME EVERYBODY!

seriously though I was probably like. 60-80% thinking we'd get at least one tweel for chapter 10. but I was NOT expecting it so soon! both of 'em! in August! a shame we're not getting a Coral Sea event after all...but I guess I can be resigned to that and ALSO excited for getting shiny sparkly glowing(!!!!) mertwins along with Azul fighting his inner demons and going right for the eyes! AHHHH I CAN'T WAIT

(also heeeey I recognize that rowboat... 👀)

[shitpostingkats]

Pinning Down Every Shinjuku Reapers Hanafuda Suit

In The World Ends With You, there are a total of twelve (named) reapers, each corresponding to a member of the chinese zodiac. They continue this design philosophy in NEO, with all of the Shinjuku reapers being based off a different suit of Hanafuda.

Let's start with the ones we know.

(post does contain spoilers)

Tsugumi - January, Crane

Conveniently, most of the reaper's birth months point to their suit, as well as their noise forms, for the ones that have them. Tsugumi is a new years baby, and Grus Cantus is from the hikari card. (Each suit is divided into four cards, with higher point cards being marked with an animal or object, and I'm gonna be honest, this is about all I know. This post is not a comprehensive guide for how to play hanafuda.)

Ayano - May, Iris

Skipping forward a few months, we have Ayano, born May 18th, and using the iris. Every suit, along with having a month associated with it, also has a plant, which is used on every card in the suit. Ayano is pretty much the only reaper who uses her suits flower, rather than an image from a hikari or tane card.

Shiba - June, Butterflies

Born June 21, his noise form is butterflies. Not much to say. I guess I could point out how he's the only of three reapers who wears a symbol of his suit inspiration on his non-noise-form person (necklace). The other two are:

Susukichi - October, Deer

The deer skull is on his tshirt, as well as being able to see a little of his tattoos, which we see later is also a stylized skull and antlers. Birthday matches; October 13th.

Hazuki - December, Phoenix

Ah, the mysterious Haz. The first of our reapers to have a birth month that does not match his hanafuda inspiration. (According to the official guidebook, his birthday is May 5th)While the Phoenix Cantus isn't his noise form, it is mentioned in the secret reports that he is the one responsible for shaping the soul pulvis into that form. Also, like our previous two reapers, he wears his motif on his civilian clothes, in the little phoenix symbols on his jacket. Him being a phoenix is also likely to make him a further foil to Joshua, as they both are the only mythological animals in their respective groups.

Now lets get into the less clear cut ones.

Minamimoto - July, Boar

I know what you're thinking! "Minamimoto isn't a Shinjuku reaper! Also, he isn't a boar, he's a catboy." Undoubtedly true. But he is used caught up in their scheme, purposefully absorbing the soul pulvis and afterwards Leo Cantus manifests with tusks and a snout. What even more interesting is it's very likely his original noise form was a boar as well. But a boar from the chinese zodiac. While he is a lion in the original game, a lion kinda clashes with the Shibuya hierarchy. And between Sho being process-of-elimination the pig, as well as setting up during week two in Pork City. Which could imply that Leo Cantus Armo is a regression to a more berserk and less enlightened state, literally sending Minamimoto back to his roots, before he radicalized and broke away from the Shibuya Reapers.

Kubo - August, Geese

Like Haz, Kubo doesn't have a noise form, but he does have strong narrative ties to the Soul Pulvis, which manifest as a flock of aggressive birds that fly in a V formation. Also, his birthday is August 14.

According to Nomura, Kubo was added late in the writing process. Initially, Nomura wanted to add two characters, but the writer gave him a concerned look, so he settled for just Kubo. Not only is this incredibly funny, we'll be looping back to this.

Hishima - September, Sake Cup

His surname, Sakazuki, is actually the name of the specific sake cup pictured in the September suit. It's the one you see in used in cermonial exchanging of sake, like weddings or yazuka deals. Considering his subplot with Shiba, themes like "brotherhood" and "marriage" are pretty fitting. Once again, the birth month matches: September 7th.

Shoka - November, Swallow

Asterisk. Once again, the cat themed characters of Shibuya have it complicated.

Shoka's birthday is March 30, which is the suit of the cherry blossom. This is further supported by her surname being Sakurane, which was originally made for the protagonist of NEO, to go with Neku's surname being Sakuraba. However the name was given to Shoka as they thought it fit her better. Internally, she is sort of a dual protagonist, being labelled in the data as ch002 and getting billing right after Rindo's actor in the credits.

But her online alias of Swallow points pretty directly to the November suit, and its tane card which features a Swallow. As mentioned earlier, Nomura initially wanted one more Shinjuku reaper character than we end up seeing in the game, so its possible Shoka got some design elements merged together from two different suits so as to not waste any creative material. Or she's just meant to be both and I'm overthinking it.

Kaie - Febuary, Plum Blossom, Warbling White-Eye

We've got ten out of twelve suits catagorized! This, unfortunately, means we are gonna have to start making some guesses.

Kaie's birth month is no help, being November, where Shoka is already using the Swallow symbolism. If we're continuing the tradition of using animal cards, Kaie is either the warbler or the cuckoo. I'm gonna be honest folks, I'm partial to the warbler just because of Kaie's eyebags.

Anyone else see it?

Also, "warbling" could be a a reference to Kaie's preference to not speak, because while he communicates mostly through text, he does have a few voicelines near the end of the game, which shows us his voice is quiet and with a little bit of a stutter. Also, it leaves the last suit open for:

Tsugumi's brother - April, Wisteria, Cuckoo

I bet you thought I forgot about him! Yes, our last suit is the April suit, represented by hanging wisteria and the cuckoo.

Cuckoo's are, for better or for worse, famous for their brood parasitism: a cuckoo will lay its eggs in another birds nest, and when it hatches, the young cuckoo chick will attempt to push all the other eggs out, so it can have the parents sole attention. Tsugumi and her brothers' relationship does not seem anything like that, but it is worth noting that they are only reapers who are related. I think the cuckoo's parasitism is more likely a reference to how her brother was a high-ranking Shinjuku reaper who nonetheless "betrayed" the hierarchy and tried to defy Haz's schemes.

Wisteria is a symbol of love, longevity, and endurance. His final act in death was to protect his sister, ensuring she would survive.

[prettycottonmouthlamia]

Space Ereshkigal: The Anatomy of a Quasar

Myself, August 8th, 2024: I MUST GIVE CREDIT WHERE ITS DUE THEY KIND OF COOKED WITH THE MECHANICAL DESIGN

Space Ereshkigal Beast-Class (Has 1.5x Class-Advantage against Extra Classes except Avenger; Has Class-Disadvantage against Avengers) Max HP: 14,530 Max ATK: 11,427 Attribute: Beast NP Charge ATK: 0.33%

QAABB Card Set Quick: 5 hits; Arts: 4 hits; Buster: 4 hits; Extra: 5 hits

Goddess Sugar A: Increase party's Attack by 10-20% for 3 turns. Increase party's NP damage by 10-20% for 3 turns. Increase party's NP gauge by 10-20%. Increase party's Instant-Kill resistance by 50-100% for 3 turns. 500% chance to inflict Poison with 500 damage to party for 3 turns. Cooldown: 8-6

Beast Driver B: Gain 10-20 critical stars. Increase own Star Absorption by 300-500% for 1 turn. Grants self on-Attack buff for 1 turn of: Increase own Critical damage by 50-100% for 1 turn before dealing damage when normal attacking. Charges own NP gauge by 30-50%. Cooldown: 9-7

Missing Starling EX: Grants self Invincibility for 2 attacks, 3 turns. Grants self a 2000-3000 HP Guts for 1 time, 3 turns. Recovers own HP by 2000-3000. Removes own Debuffs. Increases own Buff Removal Resistance by 50-100% for 1 time, 3 turns. Reduces own Skill Cooldown by 2. Cooldown: 9-7

Anti-Magecraft EX: Grants self Debuff Immunity 3 times. Spatial Storage A: Grants self on-Attack buff of: Charges own NP gauge by 5% when attacking. Goddess Essence E-: Increases own damage by 140. Increases own Debuff Resistance by 14%. Authority of the Beast E-: Increases own Critical Damage against Servants by 20%. Independent Manifestation E-: Increases own Critical Damage by 1.5%. Increases own Instant-Kill Resistance by 1.5%. Increases own Mental Debuff Resistance by 1.5%. II: Infinity Indicator: *looks forlornly into the camera, sighing* We'll get to this one.

Anti-Rider Attack Damage Append

Edin Shugra Collapsar AoE Arts, 5 hits Increase Master Affection Points by 0-20, based on Overcharge. If Master Affection Level is 4, grants self 100% increased Instant-Kill success chance for 1 turn. If Master Affection Level is 7, grants self Ignore Invincibility for 1 turn and Ignore Defense for 1 turn. If Master Affection Level is 10, grants 50 Critical stars. Deals damage to all enemies (450%-750%, based on NP Level). Deals 1 + 0.1*N extra damage to enemies, where N is Master Affection Level. Removes their Offensive Buffs. 60% chance to Instant Kill them.

You know what sucks about all of this. She's actually really fun to use. NGL. We got a whole essay to go. Also I did manual NP generation calcs for this one, so I better get some credit for that.

So the new Anniversary Servant huh. It's really something to say that Anniversary Servants more and more have been designed to really push the mold on what you could put in a Servant's kit, but Space Ereshkigal feels even more than that.

NP and Star Generation:

This might come as a surprise, but Space Ereshkigal's base NP generation is actually quite low. Her AQAE chain for example will only generate about 22% of her NP gauge, and that is usually the kiss of death for a Servant like this. Even as the 3rd card in an Arts chain, her Arts card will only generate 9%. That's quite low! But her passive gives her an additional 5% NP charge on hit for just...existing I guess? So that bumps up her single card generation to about passable, while benefiting her card chains in a bigger way. Considering you generally want to prioritize Space Ereshkigal's Brave Chains whenever possible, this is nice, I suppose.

Her star generation is a bit shakier, thanks to having single Quick card. A QBBE chain will generate about 15-16 crit stars on average, and a ABQE Mighty Chain will generate about 20-21 crit stars on average. She has good hit counts on her Quick and Extra, but only having one Quick card in her kit naturally really limits how many crit stars she can generate on her own.

Skills:

Goddess Sugar is just a good skill. Like all of Space Ereshkigal's skills are good, great even, but it really does need to be said that this is a very compact skill with a lot of good effects. It gives Space Ereshkigal an additional 44% damage on her NP, and the party-wide NP charge is appreciated. An important thing to note is that the Poison demerit applies to the entire party, so it will eat into one of the Debuff immunities that Space Ereshkigal comes with.

Beast Driver is another strong skill, but this time focused on single Brave Chain crit damage numbers instead of much else, with a 50% NP charge for good measure. Her face cards will have a 100%, 200%, and 300% increased Critical damage for that turn respectively, allowing Space Ereshkigal to pump out some crazy good crits. The 50% NP charge is arguably the most important part of this skill though, as it always tends to be.

Missing Starling is the type of skill that exists to bind a kit together. It's Invincibility, its healing, its Guts, its debuff cleanse, and perhaps most importantly, it's cooldown reduction. See, you might have noticed that Space Ereshkigal's kit isn't super synergistic, and there's a reason for that we'll get into later, but while all of her skills are good, they aren't amazing together. She's, nominally, meant to perform Brave Chains constantly, which makes sense considering that is something that Space Ishtar is also trying to do. But having her skills essentially be on a 4/5/5 rotation instead of a 6/7/7 rotation massively improves how consistent and good she is.

There's really only 3 passive skills that matter here. Her three instances of Debuff Immunity are quite niche, giving Space Ereshkigal a nice buffer against debuffs and makes her super resilient to debuffs in general, and the NP charge on hit mostly exists to make up for her really poor face-card numbers. The third passive...

The Master Affection Gauge, and You!

This is by far and away the most complicated part of her kit. You could even argue that it functionally acts as an additional 4th skill on her kit. The Master Affection Gauge is a Gauge that starts at Level 1 and caps out at Level 10, and each level requires 10 points to reach. There's a ton of conditions for how to fill it up, so I'm going to split it up into parts to make it easier to understand.

In additional, an important caveat. Space Ereshkigal will only have the Master Affection Gauge if you have a copy of her. Supports will not work! This is the part of the kit that actually makes me angry, because it means that a Support Space Ereshkigal is just fundamentally missing a part of her kit. She will have an Affection Gauge level of 0 and won't be able to gain affection points.

The Basic Modifiers

Space Ereshkigal will get 5 points for being Bond Level 5, 5 points for being in the starting 3 members, and 10 points for being on a Waterside battlefield. This is not at the start of the fight by the way. You can in fact get a free Affection Level out of having a Servant who sets the Waterside Battlefield buff onto themselves and get the +10 points. The battlefield doesn't even need to stay Waterside for this to be applied.

Reusable In-Battle Modifiers

Space Ereshkigal will get 3 points for selecting any of her face cards and proceeding into combat, and in addition, she will get an additional 6 points if she has a Brave Chain. This means, without using her NP card, she has 15 points just in selecting her face cards, with an additional 6 possible if you can pull 3 in a single turn, for 21 additional points.

Simply selecting her NP will not give her any additional points, but it will mean that you can potentially squeeze out an additional Brave using her NP card as leverage, giving you a possible 27 points in total. This is where the bulk of her affection points comes from typically, and this also means that there is a fair amount of RNG regarding how quickly you can ramp up her affection gauge. Pulling too many face cards in a hand can reduce your potential output by either having wasted cards or reducing the number of brave chains available to you.

Using one of Space Ereshkigal's skills will give 3 affection points, and using one of Space Ereshkigal's skills before using anyone else's will give an additional 2 points. This means there is an additional 15 points to be gleamed out of three turns by staggering her skill use, and this actually explains a lot about her kit. They're three skills that are designed to work well when not used together.

The Somewhat Harder to Fulfill Modifiers

Using Ereshkigal's NP in an overcharged state will also increase her affected gauge by +5 points for each Overcharge level over 100%. This is, importantly, applied before any other effect on her NP. At 500% OC she will generate 25 Affection Points, but this is generally quite hard to accomplish as it often means giving up her Brave Chains in order to chain together NPs. This does give Ereshkigal an interesting use case for "The One Who Desires Salvation" as a CE choice, since it will essentially add 3 or 4 Affection Levels by itself.

Space Ereshkigal will also get 5 points for being affected by a Mystic Code skill. This will apply to any targeted MC skill and any AoE MC skill, but not to stuff like Order Change and skills that affect an enemy. The skill doesn't even technically need to succeed to count, such as the case for the Atlas Academy Uniform's debuff cleanse. I put this here because this does mean that some Mystic Codes can only generate +5 or +10 Affection points than the full +15.

She will also get +10 Affection points if you use a Command Spell on her. Now that Command Spells regenerate three a day instead of one this is more viable to quickly turbo-charge Ereshkigal to a higher Affection Level, but this is generally more applicable to Challenge Quests than farming.

Noble Phantasm

The main point to that entire fucking essay up there is her NP. This NP does a lot, but most of its effects are dependent on her Affection Gauge levels, so to go over what is consistent. This is an AoE Arts NP that removes offensive buffs on hit and has a 60% chance to instakill enemies after damage. These are fine and would make the NP middling at best but there's a ton we need to go over.

First, the NP does 10% more damage with each Master Affection Gauge Level she has. Since Space Ereshkigal can start a fight with an Affection Gauge Level of 2 or 3 depending on the Battlefield, this means that she will do at base 20-30% more damage than you would expect. At a Level of 10, she will do double damage with her NP, which is quite strong. This can be considered similar to something like Charlemagne's NP, but a lot easier to perform on average.

If her Master Affection Level is 4, she will double the success rate of her instakill. This...could come up, theoretically? It will probably be relevant in a 90++ quest in all honestly. This gives her a guaranteed instant kill against enemies with 100% death rate, and a 96% chance to instakill enemies with an 80% death rate. If her Master Affection Level is 7, she will ignore Invincibility, Evasion, and Defense buffs for a turn, which is a potent combo, and at Level 10, she will just generate 50 crit stars.

It is actually not particularly difficult to get Space Ereshkigal to Level 10 within a matter of about four or five turns, and it's entirely possible with just good cards and knowledge of how to apply her kit to get her to Level 7 in three turns. She ramps up surprisingly quickly, and the rewards that you get for ramping her up are pretty great. Free damage, crit stars, defensive piercing, and even swingy insta-kills.

But as a result, she ends up a fun, dynamic Servant to use. Maximizing the most out of Space Ereshkigal means putting in practice and reacting to what you need out of that exact moment. Managing her face cards, her skills, your Mystic Code skills, your NP chains, and even your Command Seals is interesting! You do lose a bit of that once she fully ramps up, but the process of getting there is great. Fundamentally, she's actually a pretty cool mechanically designed Servant.

Append Skills

Space Ereshkigal is slightly frustrating in that there is a good argument for, exactly, every single one of her append skills. This being said, she doesn't need any of them to function, and as a 5-star, I would not recommend rolling for the additional copies you need in order to do so, but because you will naturally get the coins to unlock one append by reaching Bond Level 6, and enough to unlock another append at Bond Level 14, if you are willing to get that far, it is worth talking about them.

The Extra card performance buff is the least useful of the bunch, but because Space Ereshkigal uses Brave chains often enough, it can be worth unlocking for the extra benefits it gives. Mana Loading is a fine enough skill on Space Ereshkigal, but it is arguably not even needed since she has a number of NP charges already on her kit. Anti-Rider Attack Damage gives her a bit more reach when farming since it allows her to deal more damage to a different class than normal. Her base class effectiveness is only okay, so this can be used.

The Critical damage append and the Skill cooldown reduction appends feel basically made for Space Ereshkigal. While Space Ereshkigal does have good crit damage for a turn with her S2, it is lacking during the cooldown period and because she can constantly crit thanks to her NP, she enjoys the passive crit damage a lot. Against Servants, she will do 50% more crit damage without any assistance, which is quite powerful. The skill cooldown append is crazy on her, reducing her first skill cycle to 3/4/4, numbers that probably shouldn't be real. This, notably, gives her the ability to re-use all of her skills on Wave 3 with the cooldown reduction ability of the Atlas Academy Uniform.

Is this necessary? No, it is not really her best team composition overall. But is funny? Hell yeah.

Craft Essences

One of the biggest strengths to Space Ereshkigal in general is that she is a supremely flexible Servant. She can function with a wide variety of Craft Essences: NP damage, Crit damage, Arts performance, Overcharge, NP generation, Buster and Arts performance, etc etc. What CE you equip onto Ereshkigal, fundamentally, depends on what exactly you are trying to get her to do.

It is at this time worth bringing up her Bond CE, Epitaph of the Star Sword. This gives her an additional 30% NP damage, 30% Critical damage against Servants, and increases her Master Affection Level by 1. Usually Bond CEs are not worth using because of having lackluster effects in addition to very flacid stats, but this one is actually worth considering. All three of the effects are great, and she can potentially start off with Master Affection Level 4, which is crazy.

Team Composition

We haven't really discussed her existence as a looper yet, and that's been partially deliberate. Her damage numbers are pretty good in a neutral vacuum, but due to her class, she doesn't hit many relevant enemies for SE damage. When she does, her damage numbers are impressive even despite having the 1.5x SE modifier. With two Castorias, a Level 100 Black Grail, and a Master Affection Level of 7 (the highest possible without situational buffs on Wave 3) she will hit for 155,703 damage neutrally, which is generally impressive. The Atlas Mystic Code set up will allow Space Ereshkigal to hit a Master Affection Level of 8 as well as allowing her to double up on her S1 buffs, letting her hit for 204,017 damage neutrally.

Where a lot of good ideas unfortunately tend to fall short is her refund. She only generates about 47% of her NP gauge back with double Castoria, which while generally fine enough to allow her to do farming, can require specific supports such as Xu Fu or Oberon to help patch up where her NP refund can fall short. She can also work in multi-DPS farming comps, where her NP having the ability to reliably insta-kill enemies can be important. But it is worth noting in all of this that she does compete with Summer Ibuki in the farming role, and Summer Ibuki is often better, so.

In terms of her use in general content and in Challenge/Exhibition quests, again, Space Ereshkigal is so flexible that she works with pretty much anyone you pair her with. She likes better crit damage, she likes Overcharge, she likes Cooldown reduction, she will even take increased buster performance thanks to her two Buster cards. She's actually quite strong as a Challenge Quest servant, packing on the table a lot of individual qualities that are welcome. These also tend to have a higher concentration of enemies in the classes that she hits for SE as well, being another big benefit.

Conclusions

Space Ereshkigal is good. Great. Maybe broken even. One of the issues with the previous Anniversary Servant, Aesc the Savior, is that she has a kind of awkward kit. There's individually powerful pieces but it requires often quite a bit of work to push all of them together. This was also true of the previous collab 5-star, Aoko, whose kit would sometimes feel clunky to deal with.

Space Ereshkigal feels a lot smoother by comparison. While Space Ereshkigal does not necessarily end up demonstrably better than Aesc or Aoko by any means, her kit feels a lot more tuned in comparison, as they continue to experiment with more and more mechanically unique and interesting 5-stars. She's a good farmer, even a great one, and a great challenge quest servant.

In essence, while she is a Servant who requires time to actually learn to maximize, it's hard to use her wrong, to use Space Ereshkigal in a way where it will make her feel worse. I do think in some way that reduces the charm of using her in comparison, but she ends up being fun and good to use besides that so I'm okay with it.

Hate to give Servantverse crap a W but. Yeah.

[shy-urban-hobbit]

Am I writing birthday fluff because it's my own birthday? Maybe 😁

Lambert/Aiden

pre-slash/platonic

"Birthday tradition." Aiden answered with a shrug as he popped another piece into his mouth before offering to Lambert as they sat in the shade and out of the summer heat. It wasn't unusual to see Aiden with sweet things but his tastes usually ran to anything and everything fruit based, not plain, unadorned honey cake. Which is what had prompted Lambert to ask about it in the first place.

"My mother. We had jack shit when I was a kid, but I remember she'd always surprise me with a honey cake on my birthday." He smiled softly at the warm memory, "It became a bit of a tradition also that I'd pretend I had no idea what it was she was hiding behind her back and try and guess the most outlandish shit I could come up with. Had to find substitutes after I got taken to the Caravan but as soon as I was walking the path and free to come and go." He gestured to the remaining sliver sat between them.

"You've never mentioned before it's your birthday today."

Aiden laughed, spraying crumbs, "Well it's the first year you've actually been with me for it, so it's never been worth mentioning before now. What about yours, since we're on the subject?

Lambert felt the slight jealousy that had manifested at Aiden's story morph into something a little harder as he stared straight ahead at a rather unfortunate squirrel which now found itself on the receiving end of a Witcher's scowl.

"Ah. Forget I asked."

Lambert shrugged as he leaned back on his hands, "Eh. I'm not the first one who doesn't know and I'm not gonna be the last. Half the other boys at Kaer Morhen had no fucking idea about theirs either, same with the caravan I bet." He grabbed up the last piece of cake and swallowed it without tasting before continuing, "Some of 'em who were a bit more sentimental about it would pick a significant date and use that, but that wasn't for me." Why would it be when everything significant or monumental in his long life so far was a day he'd rather forget: the day he got dragged to Kaer Morhen, the day he lost Voltehre, the day he survived The Grasses....all days he still sometimes had nightmares about.

"Well. Be sure to let me know if that ever changes."

"Hmm."

Aiden yawned as Lambert shook him awake for his turn on watch. Usually they wouldn't bother with such things with their enhanced senses but considering they were experiencing an unusually high number of contracts right now they didn't want to tempt fate by being complacent.

"Anything?" He asked

Lambert shook his head, "All quiet apart from a nosey badger."

Aiden gave him a pat on the shoulder as he moved to take Lambert's place against the trunk of a huge oak tree.

"August 9th."

"What?"

"My birthday. Let's just say it's August 9th."

Aiden couldn't help his smirk, "Isn't that the date-"

"The date some arsehole Cat stole half of my contract three years ago and then refused to leave me the fuck alone? Yeah. Don't read too much into it."

"Whatever you say, Lambert. Whatever you say." Aiden replied, settling against the trunk and trying to figure out what sweet treat Lambert would like best for his upcoming birthday.

[tartrat]

Kapyy is going out tonight, he’s on his vigilante shit.

This is the most cursed thing I’ve made and that includes an abstract painting of an amethyst I made over Easter break. The sketch with the basic idea and more thoughts and headcanons below I guess.

Firstly don’t look at the mouth too much, the teeth were annoying me. I seem to do like a simplistic style for people and not going overly detailed on their features when i put effort in. For my A level final piece, a self portrait, i sort of made my eyes mouth and nose less deatailed but you can still tell that it’s a face and so it looks kinda good. Honestly this piece looks better than i thought it would, i sort of panic when making art but i can make stuff look good when i put effort in, see the other canvas paintings I’ve posted here.

I started this on the 3rd of August and finished on the 10th.

As seen with my last post i hated doing those rhinestones and tassels but they ended up looking kinda good. I did the hair the same way i did the hair in my previous posts. I used the same brushes as well, custom watercolour and glitter brushes and the procreate turpentine brush to blend. I have a lot of process pics of me working on the colouring that look cursed that i kinda want to do a photo dump on. I also used the chromatic abbreviation filter on procreate to create a subtle glow around him.

Also i decided to put a signature on it, something that i keep forgetting to do on other pieces I’ve made. (Well for school i put my name on the back of my canvases, by the end of the year i had like eight canvases and by sketchbooks)

I had what i like to call a glee-lapse where i started re-listening to a bunch of glee covers, specifically: Nasty/Rhythm Nation, The Boy Is Mine, Start Me Up/Livin’ On A Prayer, and Don’t Start Believing. Other songs i listened to include, Ldn By Lily Allen, Black Magic by Little Mix, Take Me to Church by Hozier, Bella’s Lullaby from Twilight, Touch-Tone Telephone by Lemon Demon, American Healthcare by Penelope Scott, Grace Kelly by Mika, Misery Business by Paramore, Coney Island, My Tears Ricochet, Better than Revenge, So Long London, But Daddy I Love Him, I look in Peoples Windows, Down Bad and the song this is based off of, Vigilante Shit all by Taylor Swift. I was at the Eras tour in Dublin in June which ended my A-levels exams. I also got the signed midnights blood moon vinyl for Christmas in 2022, then i put a st brigid’s cross i made on it and my mum thought it was a photo of Jesus when she saw it hanging on my wall.

The just dance wiki seems to have argued over who Kapyy’s performer is. Like he’s performed by someone, there is a kinda unnerving behind the scenes photo of him, like has he just escaped into our reality like Layl and Gabriela have. Where did that behind the scenes pic come from?

Headcanons I’ve been developing. So still going off the whole Kapyy and Talia are twins, they both have ADHD. This comes from me possibly having undiagnosed adhd that is manifesting as anxiety so yay. It’s also just came to me that since i said that their dad should be from Cyber funk that he should be the Blinding lights extreme coach. Basically Blinding lights extreme and Giddy on Up take place round about the same time so BLE meets GOU whilst he visits Wasterra, they fall in love, eventually get married and have twins, Kapyy is ultimately kidnapped at birth leaving Talia unaware that she has a twin until she unknowingly meets him shortly after the events of I Knew You Were trouble. The GOU and BLE coaches were popular performers of their time and teach performing arts classes art a university now, with Talia studying English literature and language, and Kapyy being an Art student who performs on the side (So basically I’m Blue extreme), as in he gets paid for performing but he masks he actual feelings, whilst Talia would actually show her emotions through her ability to control tvs.

Other headcanons include, when Kapyy isn’t doing too great the Levitating Extreme coach has to bring him home and make sure he’s ok. Kapyy and Talia are basically Dipper and Mabel from Gravity Falls sorta, Talia is dipper and Kapyy is Mabel, like how they ground each other. Both of them are also double jointed (obviously their performers most likely aren’t). That’s about it so far.

I also think that i alienated the two people on twitter who follow me for yo kai watch by just posting just dance fanart there, luckily there is the Yo kai watch Just Dance Game, when my worlds collide, so i want to do more yo kai watch fanart. I have an idea for a yo kai watch x just dance fanart, kapyy may or may not be involved ion that.

That’s about it, i feel fuzzy again like I’m excited and nervous to post.

As for where Kapyy got the bodysuit from, well…

Bonus doodle:

[ms-m-astrologer]

Transiting Venus enters Leo

Thursday, July 11 - Sunday, August 4, 2024

Hot girl summer up here, north of the equator - I guess south of it, the days are warmed by Venus’ rays?

This transit, like summer’s lease, hath all too short a date - it really is (or can be) a fun time. We don’t quite take things so seriously, we’re a little more forgiving of others and ourselves. How it plays out through Venus’s areas:

Art - tending for the performing arts here, dance and drama as well as music. We can get very creative, maybe expressing ourselves a little more openly and honestly than usual. If we want to try something new, this encourages us.

Beauty - fun, spa-type treatments during which we are royally pampered. If Venus aspects your Ascendant or its ruler, this is an excellent time for a makeover.

Love - oh, Venus here loves, all right. We behold our loved one(s) and literally light up. We’re lavish with them; we can’t do enough to show the strength of our ardor. (Downside: we can’t always accept that other people get to exercise free will, too, ie, nobody has to love us back.)

Money - can be an utter tightwad and miser; also can joyously piss away every last penny for one moment’s pleasure. We’re inclined to spend on luxury items, and to make sure everyone is having a good time.

We’re starting and ending the transit with challenges from two of the transpersonal planets - all three, if I were to add Neptune (an inconjunct on August 4, maturing about seven hours before Venus enters Virgo). Remember what I wrote about other people having free will, too? I think that’s going to be a theme. Anyway, the following aspects are valid a day or so on either side.

Friday, July 12 - Venus/Leo opposite Pluto Rx/Aquarius, 1°07’. We’re rebuffed, rejected, &/or refused. Or, we’re trying like hell to rebuff/reject/refuse someone who won’t take “no” for an answer. Someone else (it’s an opposition) thinks we need to be taken down a peg, or we make that call about someone else. Issues about authenticity and honesty.

Friday, July 19 - Venus/Leo trine North Node/Aries, sextile South Node/Libra, 10°14’. This can be a teaching moment during which we discover that being direct and honest can be just as effective as being manipulative and passive-aggressive. We could charm our way into something, but we could also be a little bolder and more open. And speaking of charm….

Sunday, July 21 - Venus/Leo sextile Jupiter/Gemini, 12°30’. The two “benefics” flowing together can be very lucky. It’s a sextile, so we need to actively do something about/with the good fortune.

Tuesday, July 23 - Venus/Leo conjunct Vesta/Leo, 15°10’. Adds a bit of dedication and devotion to Venus. Might be to an artistic project as well as to a person. We can also work on loving ourselves!

Sunday, July 28 - Venus/Leo square Pallas/Scorpio, 20°57’. Hang-ups and blockages in sexuality and intimacy. Are we coming on too strong? Tension between a creative project and a relationship is another potential manifestation.

Tuesday, July 30 - Venus/Leo trine Chiron Rx/Aries, 23°31’. Great energy for apologizing, and really meaning it. And for forgiving others, too. Make-up sex. Deliberately doing something fun that heals by making us feel happy.

Thursday, August 1 - Venus/Leo trine Eris Rx/Aries, 25°29’. Women’s rights! This is another aspect that encourages us to be honest and authentic. It’s still disruptive, but in a fun way.

Friday, August 2 - Venus/Leo square Uranus/Taurus, 26°51’. About this aspect, astrologer Steven Forrest wrote, “Love and trust should enhance our freedom rather than diminishing it.” To which I add, for both partners equally! Not everyone is going to love us back the way we want them to - and if we keep “picking” people who don’t, we need to ask ourselves if we really want any relationships in the first place.

And since I mentioned it:

Sunday, August 4 - Venus/Leo inconjunct Neptune Rx/Pisces, 29°38’. Adjustments needing to be made - maybe taking off the rose-colored glasses and seeing reality? Disillusionment. A reminder (a nudge) from our spiritual sides.

[leareadsheresy]

Battle for the Abyss

This post contains spoilers for Battle for the Abyss, by Ben Counter, first published as a novel on (as nearly as I can tell) July 29th, 2008, although sources disagree -- some places I've found assert it was published on August 1st, 2008. Something I've found when trying to date specific works in this series, though, is that a lot of places will say "Published on [Month] 1st" when they actually mean "Published in [Month], we don't know which exact day," so as a general rule when I do this dating thing I assume any source that's specific about it being published on an exact date is accurate unless that date is given as the first of the month, in which case I assume that's filler information and only the month is reliable. I guess it makes sense for a book published two days before the end of the month would be attributed to the next month in some databases. Also I kind of don't care if I'm off by a couple of days about a publication date because I'm tumblr liveblogging a series of, at best, high-school-essay-quality book reports about a media tie-in novel series.

So this book is kind of infamous; I've seen it described as The Worst Horus Heresy novel with the possible exception of some of the Salamanders books that come later. Thing is, I don't hate it. To explain why, I will have to go into some of the events of the Horus Heresy that haven't been covered in these novels yet.

According to the pseudo-history of the Horus Heresy, following the Istvaan III Atrocity but before news of it had reached the larger galaxy, Horus issued orders to the Ultramarine Legion to muster at Calth, a planet in the Veridia System within the realm of Ultramar (the Ultramarines' empire-within-an-empire, conquered by their Primarch prior to his discovery by the Emperor of Mankind). An airless world with massive underground cities and an expansive orbital shipyard, Calth served as one of Ultramar's major military bases, and the order was for the Ultramarines to gather there with the Word Bearers Legion to prepare for a campaign against an ork force who were moving in the direction of Veridia. Unknown to the Ultramarines, the muster at Calth was a trap -- the Word Bearers, upon their arrival, immediately attacked the planet, using the slaughter of the gathered Ultramarines and Calth's human population to fuel a ritual that poisoned Veridia's sun, and ultimately this ritual fueled a massive warp-storm, the Ruinstorm, that both interrupted FTL travel between one half of the galaxy and the other and made it much easier for daemons to manifest in realspace in its vicinity, allowing the traitor forces to summon daemonic reinforcements to aid in their war against Imperial loyalists.

(If you've played Space Marine 2, this is what Chairon is talking about when he says he was born on Calth -- the game takes place ten thousand years after the Horus Heresy but many of the first generation of Primaris Space Marines, of which Chairon and Gadriel both are, were taken by Belisarius Cawl as children during the Heresy for experimentation and spent most of the intervening millennia being brought in and out of stasis as Cawl developed the Primaris aguments.)

Calth is important in the annals of the Heresy. Visions of Darkness, an art book (the second of four, compiling card art from the 2003 Horus Heresy collectible card game; the Visions series also served as the outline for the events of the Heresy as a whole), detailed the Word Bearer assault on Calth in 2005, a year before the publication of Horus Rising. (I would have covered the Visions series on this blog except I didn't realize three of the four were published before Horus Rising until after I'd done my entry on False Gods; the fourth was published between those two novels.) Calth is the subject of future novels and in 2015 got its own boxed game, Betrayal at Calth, which contained the first Horus Heresy plastic miniatures -- Mark IV armor, Cataphractii Terminators, two characters, and the first (truly awful; thank God we're rid of it) plastic Contemptor Dreadnought. Betrayal at Calth also had its own ruleset but hardly anybody ever played it; that boxed set was a way to justify pulling money for development of plastic Horus Heresy figures from the self-contained-boxed-games budget and everybody knows it.

What the pseudo-histories of the Horus Heresy don't say is that the attack on Calth was part of an intended two-pronged attack, meant to occur simultaneously with a sneak attack on Maccrage, the adopted homeworld of the Ultramarine Primarch Roboute Guilliman and the Ultramarines' primary recruiting world, while most of the Ultramarine forces were on Calth awaiting Word Bearer rendezvous. The other half of this attack would be carried out by a massive battleship of a new class, the Furious Abyss, commissioned by Kelbor-Hal, Fabricator-General of the Mechanicum of Mars (and secret Horus ally), with the intent to shatter Maccrage's second moon and then use the debris field to bypass Maccrage's orbital defenses to deliver a payload of life-eater virus to the planet directly in a repeat of the Istvaan III Atrocity. This attack, together with the betrayal at Calth, would have knocked the Ultramarines out of the war and prevented them from rallying and rebuilding later, and without the Ultramarines as a rebuilt force later in the war serving as a counter to the traitors, Horus would have been able to commit forces in greater numbers to the Garmon Sector, allowing him to land more forces on Terra much earlier. This likely would have won the traitors the war.

The reason why the pseud-histories of the Heresy doesn't say any of that is the attack by the Furious Abyss failed, because a small group of Astartes from the Ultramarines, Space Wolves, World Eaters, and Thousand Sons legions, none of whom even know that the Heresy was a thing yet, found evidence of the Furious Abyss's weapons test against an Ultramarines battleship and investigated, followed the Abyss's trail, and ultimately destroyed it before it could succeed in its attack on Maccrage, and this battle was so small -- the Furious Abyss itself versus a pursuit force of six much smaller ships -- that it was entirely swallowed up by the chaos of the Heresy's eruption and was ultimately forgotten by later historians.

The early Heresy is so replete with devastating loyalist losses that I kind of love the idea of an early loyalist win, entirely forgotten by later histories, made by a mixed group of members of legions who'd later be on both sides of the conflict, being one of the unknown lynchpins of Horus's ultimate defeat. The Horus Heresy game book series, the Black Books, do not to my knowledge even mention this battle, because their setting sections are written in-character by a post-Heresy historian, and the narrator would have had no way of knowing Calth was intended as part of a two-pronged attack. (Actually I'm not sure it's never mentioned; if I eventually get to the Black Books while doing this readthrough I'll keep an eye out for it.) I just... I love the idea of a small, forgotten event being so important. I think it's genuinely interesting, and this sort of attempt to expand the timeline with new events that make sense (of course the traitors would have had a plan to follow up their Calth attack with an attack on Maccrage to finish the Ultramarines off completely!) is exactly what these Horus Heresy novels ought to have been doing once it became apparent that they sold like gangbusters and were therefore going to be published for a very, very long time. This is, at least in theory, what I am here for. I'm sure not here for Primarch drama! I don't even like the Primarchs! (God, me reading this series is a mistake. Yeah, Lea, read a 64-book-series where you don't care about any of the ostensible main characters; that's a great use of your time.)

Unfortunately, Battle for the Abyss just isn't very good. Fortunately, at least some of the ways it's not very good are themselves of at least some interest.

So. Let's go with a summary.

We open with Kelbor-Hal, Fabricator General of Mars, watching as the Furious Abyss launches from Thule, which we're told has been a moon of Jupiter for six thousand years. Jupiter doesn't have a real moon called Thule but there is an asteroid called 279 Thule, so I think we're meant to assume that this is 279 Thule, having been dragged into orbit of Jupiter six thousand years previously. The ship is described as being impossibly big. Inside, a Word Bearer is giving a speech to a bunch of other Word Bearers about how religion is cool and it's their destiny to overthrow the emperor, and how they'll finally get their revenge on the Ultramarines. (Much like Calth, there is another important pre-established bit of Heresy lore where the Word Bearers insisted on worshipping the Emperor like a god even after he told them not to, because the Word Bearer Primarch, Lorgar, believes firmly that life is only worth living in service to a divine power. The Emperor then sent the Ultramarines to the Word Bearer homeworld to humble them by leveling their biggest temple-city, which Lorgar pretended worked but actually just drove him to hate the Emperor and seek out alternate gods to worship, which lead him to Chaos.) After the ship launches, Thule is rigged to explode so everyone who worked on the Furious Abyss dies, keeping the ship's design secret.

We then cut to some Ultramarines heading towards Vangelis Spaceport (I appreciate the name) on the Fist of Maccrage, but the Furious Abyss comes out of nowhere and attacks it as a weapons test. Judging his ship doomed, the captain of the Fist orders a distress signal sent before they all die.

Then we meet the protagonists. Some Ultramarines on Vangelis Station lead by Captain Cestus are waiting to be picked up by the Fist of Maccrage to be... stationed at Terra, I think? But it's late and they're worried. Cestus meets up with a Space Wolf named Brynngar, who leads a couple of packs of Blood Claws (that's a type of Space Wolf unit in 40k but, importantly, not in 30k; I'll get back to this at the end), in a bar, Brynngar is carousing and fighting and drinking special Space Wolf mead that can get even Space Marines drunk (another 40k thing). Cestus and Brynngar are old battle buddies who saved each others lives a couple of times. Suddenly alarms go off -- there's been an incoming astropathic message, and Cestus thinks it might be from their late ship, so he goes to check it, but it's a bunch of ominous nonsense that kills the astropaths who receive it and then feedback from the astropaths into the station's systems threatens to overload the reactor. Cestus and Brynngar rush off to the reactor room to do an emergency shutdown and in the core of the overloading reactor Cestus gets a psychic vision of Maccrage in flames.

There is some evidence the astropathic message of doom came from the Fist of Maccrage and Cestus decides to investigate, rallying all the other space marines on the station -- his own Ultramarines, the Space Wolves, some World Eaters lead by an captain named Skraal, and a single Thousand Son, Mhotep. They commandeer a warship called the Wrathful and its escorts, captained by the reasonably cool Admiral Kaminska, who's sort of pissed off she's been drafted into this potential fool's errand, and Mhotep brings along his personal ship as well. They encounter... you know, I don't remember, either they find a debris field or an energy signal or something, they find some evidence that the Fist of Maccrage has been destroyed and are able to follow an energy signature to the Furious Abyss, which they hail, it blows up one of their escorts when the escort gets too close and there's a space battle. Our protagonists kind of freak out when they realize that's a ship full of space marines that just attacked other space marines, which isn't supposed to happen, but mainly they're like "Oh, this is a fight? Cool, I know how fights work" and then they fight. One of the Wraithful's escorts is a fighter carrier but the Abyss use a psychic attack to drive all the fighter pilots insane when they get too close, Mhotep's ship gets blown up but he escapes in a "savior pod" (one of the things 30k/40k does is give slightly off-kilter names to SF staples, so escape pods are savior pods, the teleporter room is called the teleportarium, etc) and gets picked up by the Wrathful, etc. All but one of the escorts are destroyed (the survivor is the Fireblade), so the protagonist's fleet is down down from five ships to two, and Abyss escapes.

During the fight, they damage the Abyss so the protagonists know that if they just follow it, it'll have to get repairs somewhere, and they can attack it then. The Abyss heads towards a warp jump point which serves as a known entry point to a stable warp corridor (to my knowledge this is not how warp travel is described as working elsewhere in the setting; there are stable warp corridors, but there's nothing like Babylon 5 style jump points you have to use to enter them), and the protagonists follow but after entering the corridor the Word Bearers use a psychic bomb to collapse the corridor, so the Wrathful and the Fireblade enter the unstable warp. Both protagonist ships are attacked by daemons in the warp; the space marines aboard the Wrathful fight theirs off but the Fireblade takes significant damage, and the Wrathful moves to bring it into a repair bay, but surprise, the whole ship has been compromised by daemons who've fused the souls of the crew into the ship, and the Fireblade has become a sort of giant anglerfish monster thing that attacks the repair bay as it opens. Mhotep, the Thousand Son, senses that something is off and rushes to the repair bay where he uses warp sorcery to fight the Fireblade off, breaking the Edict of Nikea (when the Emperor declared that any Space Marines who were developing psychic powers had to immediately stop using and developing them, which the Thousand Sons are bitter about because they'd made their psychic talents their whole thing). Everyone else in the repair bay dies in this process and Mhotep lies about using a ruptured fuel line to fight off the Fireblade's incursion but Brynngar the Space Wolf doesn't believe him, because Space Wolves, being viking barbarians, hate witches. (Space Wolf rune priests are not witches, as any Space Wolf will tell you.)

The Wrathful continue following the Abyss until it leaves the warp and stops off at a repair station, and Cestus plans a three-pronged attack involving infiltrating groups of space marines to the station and sneaking into the Abyss to sabotage it. The three groups are Ultramarines lead by another named guy who convinces Cestus to stay behind and command the Wrathful, Skraal and his World Eaters, and Brynngar and his space wolves. The World Eaters ruin everything because unlike the other two groups, they can't resist killing innocent station workers along the way to infiltrating the ship ("A bit of killing will sharpen our senses"), and this results in an alarm going up. One touch I sort of like is that at no point later in the book do our protagonists realize this was what gave the attack away; at one point they speculate that the Word Bearers may have had daemons on the Wrathful passing info back to the Abyss and then it just doesn't come up again. The attack fails, most of the infiltrating Ultramarines are killed, the Space Wolves fall back, but the World Eaters and one Ultramarine get in... and are immediately killed because when like twenty space marines try to just rush into a ship filled with hundreds of space marines on high alert, things go badly. Only Skraal survives, fleeing into the depths of the Furious Abyss.

The Furious Abyss takes off, the Wrathful follows, back into the warp with both of them towards Maccrage. On the Furious Abyss, Skraal, sneaking around in air ducts and behind pillars and things, witnesses a ritual where the Word Bearers use the corpse of the dead Ultramarine lieutenant to appease a daemon named Wsoric, while on the Wrathful, Cestus and Brynngar try to get some info out of a captured Word Bearer that Brynngar and his 40k Blood Claws brought back from his failed assault. Asking nicely doesn't work, torture doesn't work, Cestus finally loops Mhotep in to do a psychic probe and Brynngar freaks out about it. They argue, Mhotep tells them to leave so he can do his interrogation without witnesses, demons attack the ship, Mhotep finishes his interrogation and then heads to the spot of the daemon incursion and uses more sorcery to defeat them, which saves a bunch of Ultramarines but drives Mhotep unconscious. Brynngar witnesses this and decides to kill the unconscious Mhotep for witchcraft before he can wake up and share what he got from the Word Bearer, Cestus refuses, they have an honor duel about it. Cestus barely wins and Brynngar abides by the terms of the duel but makes it clear their friendship is over. Mhotep wakes up and tells Cestus the plans for the attack on Maccrage that I went over many many paragraphs ago at the start of this blog post. Cestus confines Mhotep to an isolation cell because Brynngar made it clear the next time he sees Mhotep he'll kill him, honor duel or no. Also, Mhotep touches Cestus's head and gives him a vision of the future, and confesses that he'd foreseen farseen foreseen all of this years ago and knew his fate was to die on the Wrathful.

Both ships exit the warp at Maccrage and have another space fight. Secretly, Cestus made a plan with the human crew of the ship -- all the Space Marines would enter shuttles and when the Furious Abyss opens its torpedo tubes to fight, they'd launch the shuttles toward it and enter via the torpedo tubes while the Wrathful and the Furious Abyss slug it out. During that fight, the Wrathful's engines are wrecked and it begins plummeting towards Maccrage's moon. Most of the Space Marines make it into the ship. Their plan is to blow up the torpedos the Abyss was going to use to blow up Maccrage's moon, since they entered via torpedo tubes and are therefore right there on the torpedo deck, but the Word Bearers hit them with a psychic attack. All the Ultramarines but Cestus die and Brynngar goes crazy, hallucinates being a wolf and fighting a bunch of other wolves for pack dominance, and then wakes up realizing he's killed all the Space Wolves he arrived with. He flees into the depths of the ship, has another fight with a named Word Bearer he fought and nearly killed earlier (now half-interred in a dreadnought), but nearly loses and is saved by Skraal, who has spent the last several weeks sneaking around learning the interior of the ship. Cestus met up with Skraal off-camera while Brynngar was fighting the dreadnought and he shares his new plan: Attack the plasma reactor at the center of the ship and cause a cascading failure that will blow the whole thing up. Brynngar is like "How do you know the interior of the ship well enough to be confident that will work, Cestus? Is it Mhotep's witchery? I hate witches; I'll help you with your witch's plan, but after that you and I are quits" and Cestus is sad but agrees to those terms.

Back on the Wrathful, Admiral Kaminska does one of those scenes you get in space navy science fiction where she orders all the crew into the savior pods but her bridge crew all refuse to go, preferring to die with her, and she's mad about it but also appreciative... and then her second in command doubles over like she's being played by John Hurt in Alien, and the daemon Wsoric bursts out of her and then kills Kaminska and the rest of the bridge crew, also emanating a chill aura that kills everyone on the ship... except Mhotep, who leaves his cell and heads to the bridge. They fight, Wsoric taunts Mhotep about corrupting Brynngar and using his hatred of witchcraft to turn him against them, and tempts Mhotep with escape and hints at the Thousand Sons siding with Horus, Mhotep resists temptation and stuffs a grenade in Wsoric's chest during a moment of daemonic instability (daemons don't hold together well in realspace). Wsoric blows up and Mhotep lies down on the deck plating just in time for the Wrathful to impact the surface of Maccrage's moon and be destroyed. Mhotep dies triumphant.

Brynngar, Skraal, and Cestus get to the plasma reactor, pursued by Word Bearers, and once there, Skraal charges the Word Bearers to give Cestus and Brynngar some time. He makes it to the head Word Bearer guy and injures him before being killed. Cestus's plan is to sacrifice himself by jumping into the plasma reactor with a bunch of grenades but Brynngar says nope and does it instead, implicitly apologizing for being so hostile earlier. Brynngar jumps into the plasma reactor with a bomb strapped to his chest and dies triumphant. With the ship about to explode, the head Word Bearer runs off to escape, Cestus follows him, they have a duel, and Cestus is wounded but cuts off the Word Bearer's head. He then succumbs to wounds the Word Bearer inflicted on him during the duel and dies triumphant as the Furious Abyss explodes. The end.

It would be theoretically possible to write a good book based on the above outline. I don't think there is intrinsically anything wrong with the idea of a full-length, 416 page novel that is just one extended battle-chase-battle-chase-battle. Fury Road was great.

Battle for the Abyss doesn't manage it. The prose is workmanlike and the characterization is flat. Everyone is a stereotype and plot points keep relying on things working in noncanon ways, like the warp jump point thing. Not only is everyone a stereotype, everyone is a 40k stereotype, most notably the drunken Space Wolf. There is a whole subplot I didn't go into above where the narrative keeps cutting back to the Word Bearers as they speak exposition to each other and they're all plotting against each other for status, like a group of Decepticons comprised entirely of copies of Starscream. (And not the cool version of that from Transformers Animated.)

That said... I still think the characterization is better than in False Gods. Everyone is a flat stereotype but almost nobody is ever holding the idiot ball. (Exception: Whoever designed Vangelis Station so that bad astropathic feedback, something that people in 30k already consider extremely dangerous, can trivially jump to the power grid and overload the reactor. Like, come on, guys, the Emperor considers psychic stuff so dangerous he's busy forcefully reorganizing every human civilization in the galaxy to weaken it; don't plug it directly into the mains. More to the point, if your story outline requires a crisis where your space station is going to blow up so the heroes can save it, please have the crisis unfold in a way that doesn't leave me wondering why the space station was designed so as to be improbably, plot-conveniently vulnerable.) In False Gods everyone made infuriatingly stupid decisions and failed to see through laughably obvious manipulation constantly for the sake of clumsily driving the central tragedy through; here, people make reasonable decisions and are just sort of boring about it. There is a type of reader who considers the latter worse but I'm not him.

Furthermore... when this book was written, what 30k Space Wolves were like hadn't been established yet. Horus Rising has mention of Devastator Squads, which are a 40k generic space marine thing that aren't in 30k, so I can't be super mad about this book giving the Space Wolves a couple of Blood Claws squads, a 40k Space Wolf thing that aren't in 30k. Later writers would develop 30k setting elements in new directions, and I can criticize Ben Counter for failing to see he had an opportunity to do that here (maybe if he'd done something more interesting with Brynngar it'd have stuck and we'd have gotten an entirely different version of 30k Space Wolves than we did, because later writers might have followed his lead), but I can't criticize him for failing to guess what later writers would eventually do with them.

Ultimately it's bolter porn. It's just okay bolter porn; it's not even especially bad bolter porn, and it's about what is at least in theory an interesting forgotten early loyalist victory. Next to the violence False Gods did to the plot setup and characterization in Horus Rising, it looks okay.

I can't recommend reading it, though. There are better ways to spend your time.

[markantonys]

Another take it with a grain of salt update from WoT Up, but he's saying a March or April release for s3!

oh! i feel like his "an amazon insider told me a leak about this studio-related information" leaks are the most unreliable of all his genres of leak haha so for my own peace of mind i will continue 100% assuming september 2025 until and unless i hear official news otherwise, and will also make this post unrebloggable so no one can yell at me for spreading false hope if it turns out to be wrong jkdfg

but let's think about this hypothetically! i do remember at a relatively recent interview (might've been the FYC panel back in the spring) rafe said something about seasons coming out "18 months to 2 years apart" which DID kinda set off my "could s3 be coming earlier?" bells a little since if the plan was september again then why wouldn't he have just said "2 years apart"?

i was also wondering recently since i was reading up on past ROP production timelines and was surprised to learn that for s2, they started filming in october 2022, aka AFTER the current season had aired, and still got the season out a little less than 2 years later, end of august 2024. similarly, s2 is almost done airing and they haven't yet started filming s3*. this is quite a contrast to WOT starting filming s3 in spring 2023, 6 months BEFORE the currently-upcoming season would air and 2.5 years before a september 2025 airdate for the currently-filming season. so if you look at it that way, it could be entirely possible that they're trying to move WOT onto a spring schedule instead, either a permanent every-other-spring schedule to replace the current every-other-fall, or a permanent every-18-months instead of every-2-years.

(WOT s2 also started filming before s1 had aired, i believe, but s1's entire production schedule was so fucked and all-over-the-place because of covid and i think cast & crew have mentioned that even s2 filming got hampered by covid to a greater extent than we might think, so it's not the most useful for production schedule comparisons.)

(*on a similar note, the strikes must've had major ripple effects through the industry that are still manifesting now, so it's impossible to say whether ROP s3 not appearing that close to production yet is intentional or a result of the strikes. it would be equally fruitless to try guessing at what a spring airdate for WOT s3 might mean about the fate of s4. but i'm not going to worry that WOT s3 starting to air without s4 being underway yet Must Mean the show is cancelled, because we're seeing now with ROP s2 & s3 that that isn't at all the case! s2 is almost done airing, and not only is there no s3 filming start date in sight, i don't think they've even officially announced that s3 is happening! although the showrunners have unofficially said so. thus, i think we still have a pretty long time before we have any real cause to start getting nervous about WOT s4.)

oh, and my final musing is that i'd wondered before if fallout could perhaps be joining WOT and ROP in the category of prime's big-budget long-time-to-make scifi/fantasy shows. if so, then maybe they're wanting to get 3 shows rotating every 6 months with 1.5 years between each season of the same show, rather than 2 shows rotating every year with 2 years between each season. again, even if they did have a plan like this in mind (which, who knows), there's no telling how the strikes might have affected it, but it's an interesting possibility to ponder.

[nickmaghighlights]

Nick Mag Highlights - Nick Mag Presents: Danny Phantom (Fall 2005)

Well, well, well, fancy meeting you here. Welcome back to my blog and the words that inhabit it. Today, Halloween comes early this year when we read through another exciting issue of Nickelodeon Magazine Presents, this time all about Danny Phantom. Boo! Trick-or-Treat! Deck the halls!

And not only is this edition of Nick Mag Highlights spooky, it’s also… pretty chill. Y’know? Just takin’ it easy, reading a handful of comics and probably a crossword puzzle or something. As much as I love researching the kind of stuff Nickelodeon Magazine includes in its articles, sometimes it’s nice to sit back and take things at face value and just see what the state of Nickelodeon was like at any given time, and these short-and-sweet issues of Nick Mag Presents are the perfect venue for just that.

But why exactly am I tackling this purportedly Halloween-themed issue in August? Well, mainly it’s because that new Danny Phantom graphic novel just came out… two weeks ago (oops). And I really enjoyed it! So I’ve since been in a big Danny Phantom mood lately. I even ended up re-watching the whole first season and had a blast doing so. This show was a real obsession of mine as a kid, so maybe this blog post is also a way for me to give it its dues.

This issue can be found online here, read along… if you dare!

Another Nick Mag Presents, another humorously wordy introduction. If you’re unfamiliar, basically all these Presents-styled issues have a panel on the first page with a character essentially advertising the book to you and talking about all the comics and activities included inside. This one here features Danny and an understandably perturbed ghost, for example. 

Since these issues were usually sold in stores as opposed to through a mail subscription, I suppose this is the issue’s way of hooking you in and explaining to you why you should buy it. I think a kid would probably be more inclined to just flip through the book and arrive at the same conclusion, but I guess this approach doesn’t hurt anybody.

But anyway, let’s see here… aw, only two wholly new comics? The Fairly Oddparents-themed issue I took a look at previously had five original comics. That’s a bummer, but at least we’ve still got variety… SpongeBob, My Life as a Teenage Robot, and The Wild Thornberrys, oh my! Even Tak makes an appearance here, two years before the premiere of his actual Nickelodeon cartoon, meaning this was an attempt to interest readers in the then-recently released video game: Tak 3: The Great Juju Challenge. Not sure if that worked.

And if you’ll take a look at that yellow, spiky bubble with words on the right there, this September 2005 issue is meant to coincide with the then-upcoming two episode-long Danny Phantom special, “The Ultimate Enemy”, which featured Danny taking on a more powerful version of himself from the future. Seems like the included removable poster is even themed around that very episode! Let’s just hope that poster is still left intact, eh?

So first up, we’ve got a page to get you up to speed on the main cast if you’re new to the show. It’s even got some new factoids for the already familiar superfans! For example: Did you know Sam is into anime? I sure didn’t.

Oh, and if you’re wondering where series villain Vlad Masters is, don’t worry, they go over him later on in the book.

On the right you’ll find an easy if not slightly amusing word puzzle, which tasks you with solving questions where each answer contains the word boo. Simple enough for a kid while still being worth the time, methinks.

Although all the stock ghost art on the page gets me wondering, how come most of the ghosts in the show manifest as typical-looking cartoon ghosts while others manifest in a human form? I guess maybe it comes down to the strength of your spirit. Who’s to say?

You’ve met the characters, now it’s time to meet the voices behind them! I’ll always take a side of interviews with my Nickelodeon Magazine, and this is no exception. The questions are cute, and I had fun reading them. Not much to say.

So we’re finally here at the first comic of the issue, and… not really a fan of this one! Yeah, sorry to start this retrospective off on a sour note but this isn’t really doing it for me. The main villain of this one is Youngblood, who already isn’t exactly one of my favorite villains from the series. But here they’ve got him and all the other characters stuck in a pretty by-the-numbers plot where Danny and co. get stuck babysitting the brat while he tries to maim them, with them of course unable to fight back lest they face the wrath of his parents (who are humongous lizard monsters, for some reason). 

If you’re even a little familiar with cartoons you’ve probably already seen quite a few takes on this formula already. And even if you like Youngblood as a character they don’t have him doing his usual pirate shtick he’s remembered for, so I’m not sure what anyone is getting out of this, really. What's especially not helping is that this goes on for ten pages, further dragging out an already tired concept. 

So there you have it, I guess. Done-to-death story with accordingly done-to-death jokes, a lame villain, and about two pages of action. I will say though, Danny and Tucker’s babysitting poster on page 2 did get a smile out of me, at least.

You’ve met the characters, and you’ve also met the voices behind them, now it’s time to meet… the rest of the characters! The villain ones! These guys really made the show for me, cause the team behind the show really just seemed to understand the assignment and made all of them really unique and memorable.

So we can see they’ve been ranked in terms of how dangerous they all are, which is a fun idea. ‘Course you’ve got Vlad at the top of, but then there’s Technus just behind him? I can’t say I remember him being notably more dangerous than any of the other baddies, I’m fairly certain he gets swept up at the end of his specific episode just like all the rest. I’m pretty sure Valerie gave Danny a bigger run for his money, and she’s down at #3.

Woah now, I’m starting to scrutinize the power levels of cartoon characters. Cartoon characters from a show I haven’t even fully watched all the way through since I was a kid, no less. Better put a stop to that before it gets ugly.

Cool little cartoons on the left there, that one on the top right is properly devious and I’m all for it. All the art is quite lovely too.

The right is… well, it’s Mad Libs, there’s no other way around it. Y’know the Mad Libs website refers to itself as “the world’s greatest word game” but I seriously think they need to take that up with Scrabble, or hell, even Hangman. Yeah I was never a big fan of this kind of fill-in-the-blanks stuff, but I guess it’s a pretty inoffensive activity to include.

Check out Danny’s dad rocking that emo hair.

And now we’ve made it to the second and last new comic for the issue, and unfortunately it’s only a two-pager. But hey, if my thoughts on the previous ten-page comic said anything, it was that I prefer quality over quantity. And this one is… okay. It’s funny enough, does what all it needs to with the concept, and it definitely doesn’t overstay its welcome. I’m again surprised by the lack of action in both of these comics, considering Danny Phantom is an action show, after all, but it’s not like the show wasn’t a comedy either, so it’s not that weird.

I guess while we’re here I could nitpick it a bit. The lineart here courtesy of series creator Butch Hartman* is a bit wonky at times. There’s the aforementioned emo hair Danny’s dad is wearing, but my main gripe is that dog robot just doesn’t really fit in with the rest of the artstyle. It being the only new original character design for this comic as well doesn’t seem like a coincidence to me. I guess the team was fine with whatever Hartman drew because he made the show after all, so surely he knows what he’s doing, right?*

*Insert obligatory comment about how much of a loser Butch Hartman is here.

Just want to give a shoutout to this pretty creative puzzle here. It actually stumped me a little when I first read it! Those monster designs are pretty entertaining too. Solid activity overall.

Next up it’s an installment of Sam Shade, which was a short-lived recurring series in Nickelodeon Magazine. Apparently the series ran from 2002 to 2005, so this may be one of the last times a Sam Shade comic was ever printed in a Nick Magazine. 

These comics mainly consist of the titular Detective Sam Shade trying to solve some mystery, sleuthing around the area in a series of detailed, wordy scenes. Likewise, you as the reader are as well tasked with scouring the pages for clues to help deduce the culprit. Each panel here smoothly moves into the next, making for something like a Where’s Waldo puzzle but with an actual narrative. It’s a really good idea! A shame this series didn’t last longer.

Hey, is that Carl from Jimmy Neutron on the bottom right there?

Pretty nice My Life as a Teenage Robot comic here. Although that’s kind of unfortunate in a way, since that means I haven’t got much to talk about! It’s pretty much a 1-to-1 translation from animation to comic here. The artstyle and writing are both on point, it’s all just in a shorter, more paper-y format.

I wonder why the aliens’ speech bubble has flowers in it. Is that a theater reference, maybe?

The design of these fiery aliens are particularly awesome - simple but effective. I’m surprised they used such a cool design in a comic that was going to be seen by way less people as opposed to using it in the cartoon. Man, this show is so cool, even its supplementary media is stylish!

But anyway, do you want to know how this story ends? Read it yourself!

Ohh man, I distinctly remember this comic. I don’t remember what issue of Nickelodeon Magazine this one is sourced from, but whichever one it was, I had it. The story’s nothing to write home about really, It's another take on the age old tale of “Squidward yells at SpongeBob and Patrick for doing something annoying, so they inadvertently ruin his life”. Squidward must have a really good lawyer for him to be able to bounce back from all the crap SpongeBob and Pat get him into.

This version of the usual story has S. Bob and P. Rick making a cake in Squidward’s image. Mr. Krabs ends up mistaking it for the real Squidward, bringing it to the Krusty Krab, and having it run the cash register, obviously to disastrous results. It’s all pretty par for the course, and there’s some funny lines to be had.

Weirdly though, unless I’m blind, I can’t seem to find any credits for this one. Not in the comic itself or at the back of the book. I’m pretty sure the artist(s) behind this one did more SpongeBob SquarePants comics though, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the same writing team had a hand in them too. I distinctly remember one where all the characters turn into desserts. Or maybe it was an alternate universe where they’re all desserts? Something like that. Maybe I’ll find it and cover it on this blog someday!

And up next, it’s a Wild Thornberrys comic of all things (said with feigned surprise, having read the table of contents moments ago). And I’m just now realizing none of these comics have anything to do with ghosts, or horror, really. Quite the magazine you’ve got just in time for October, Nickelodeon!

But hey, it’s not right to judge a piece of art specifically by the context in which it is presented. Especially when it was originally published in a magazine that likely came out years earlier, probably not even around the month of October. Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that, even when it comes to filling the pages of a magazine.

This comic is especially cool, anyway, as you can no doubt tell from its distinct shakeup in style!

The story has Eliza receiving some gifts from her Japanese friend, Mayumi (who was probably in the show, presumably), one of those gifts being a homemade manga. And while I’m not exactly an expert on the Japanese arts, I certainly find this art convincing and really appreciate the attention to detail. I bet any kids that were fans of manga around this time must have felt pretty seen to have one of their hobbies referenced in a rather unlikely place, and with such attention to detail no less.

One thing I can also appreciate is that this story really isn’t something they could have pulled off in the show itself (unless they studio really wanted to have an anime-themed episode and go through the undertaking of doing an episode in an entirely different, foreign animation style all on their usual budget), so overall this is a really fun idea done quite flawlessly. My only gripe is we don’t get to see a manga-styled Nigel Thornberry, but what can you do?

Oh boy, the Tak comic, cool. Now, I know these games have their fans, but I can’t say I’m one of them. I did watch the show a bit though, but I’ve heard it has nothing to do with the games, so I guess that makes me rather unprepared to tackle this two-page comic on an intellectual, researched level. I will say though that I think the Sam Shade comic from earlier pulled off this style of free-flowing, no-panel storytelling to a much greater effect. The amount of Taks they threw around the page makes it feel really busy and cramped, and they had to essentially remove the second character Tak is traveling with from the story since I guess they were strapped for page space.

But yeah, the colors are nice at least, and Tak media is especially hard to come by nowadays, so I suppose if I were more into the property, I might be more into this.

Last comic of the day, and it’s Jimmy Neutron. At least this one kinda fits the theme, I mean, aliens are almost in the same horror-league as vampires, zombies, ghosts, and all that. This is a pretty quality one to end off the book with, and in regards to Jimmy Neutron, this is one of the better ways these characters have been translated to 2D. Although the incredibly warm colors and harsh shadows throw me for a loop. Pretty good overall!

Before we wrap things up, I would like to mention that advert for The Nicktoons Film Festival on the right. I totally forgot these used to be a thing! From 2004 to 2009 Nickelodeon hosted a film festival and let viewers vote for their favorite animated short, along with letting proper animation people who know what they’re talking about vote on their favorites, too. Lots of great up-and-coming cartoonists took part in these festivals. This one in 2005 actually featured a short by J. G. Quintel that eventually was used as a basis for his own Cartoon Network show, Regular Show! You can check the short out below:

Neat bit of history there, yeah?

Even though I’m still a bit disappointed this issue didn’t include more original content, I still think this ended up being a fairly entertaining walk down memory lane. And hey, I hope you had a good time too. I’m doubly disappointed, however, that the archive of this issue didn’t come with that tear-out poster! Now we’ll never see it in its full hi-def glory.

As always, thanks for stopping by and checking out another bit of Nick history with me. Have yourself a good one, and I’ll see you all next time!

[myvicesvengeance]

'C'Mon' ft. fun.

Okay this is going to be really fun to talk about.

The story of fun. and PATD goes way back to September 2009, and I've done a painful amount of research into this that I didn't think would exist.

The band fun. had just finished touring with Paramore in May 2009, and were about to release their new album, Aim & Ignite, in August. Funnily enough, Washington Post compared the album to A Fever You Can't Sweat Out.

Think of some of the arrangements as theatrical, much like those on Panic at the Disco's 2005 debut, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out," and you'll get the idea. - link to the article

Their first album was warmly recieved by critics, but it wasn't a smash international hit. That was yet to come for them.

In September 2009, Brendon would tweet out the following lyrics from the song 'Be Calm':

Brendon, you literally could not have related harder to the song where Nate wrote about anxiety and the lyric "After all, you lost your band, you left your mom." (the band Nate is referring to here is The Format, by the way).

Anyway...

Nate described the signing onto Fueled By Ramen as the worst kept secret, when the band annouced they had signed onto Fueled By Ramen and that they had been signed on for 9 months at that point (the post they annouced it in was in early August). This was at no suprise since they had been hanging around PATD a lot. I have a small theory that FBR read the Washington Post review of Aim & Ignite, and thought that fun. and PATD would be a good fit for a collab. Especially given that PATD was going back to more of their Fever roots for Vices & Virtues, and Brendon seemed to like the fun. album.

'C'Mon' was likely the first song fun. wrote under FBR, and the first time the band was properly getting to know PATD. They likely knew them due to the band being friendly with Paramore, but not properly.

"We went into the session not really knowing much about the Panic! guys," Ruess tells SPIN. "But we came out, not only with what I think is a really good song, but with a couple of really great friends that we have a huge amount of respect and admiration for." - SPIN

This is what Brendon had to say:

"We were actually just huge fans [of Fun.], and we had talked to some people in our management, and they mentioned the guys in Fun were fans of us as well, so we spent an afternoon with [guitarist] Jack [Antonoff] and [singer] Nate [Ruess], and it was awesome. It just clicked, and we all got along. It was kind of a perfect fit, and they were just so talented. We just kind of came in and arranged it with them. We have done a few shows now with it. I was a fan of The Format in high school. I’d be blasting "The First Single” on the way to school. Nate is such a talented dude. He’s got a voice, and the new stuff is phenomenal." - phoenixnewtimes (not a link to the blog, but a link to a copy and paste a fan did of the blog)

I swear to God, between Nate Ruess and Mike Viola, Brendon Urie is the King of Manifesting his own destiny.

So, 'C'Mon' was likely written and recorded around early to mid December 2009 when fun. was either in the process of getting signed or had just been signed, which makes sense with the timeline.

As a result, a beautiful friendship was born.

The song seemed to have been written by 13th December 2009 at least, and they must've been recording it around this time, because the band does imply they are in the same room.

This is giving "Mum, can I go hang out with my friends now please?" PATD visit NYC.

Cut to new year:

And then 'C'Mon' is released unto the world in 2011. It was a special exclusive release onto single vinyl, and I think the plan was to have a duet version, a solo version for PATD, and a solo version for fun. but it didn't end up happening. Those solo versions must exist somewhere though.

fun. would then also go onto open for PATD in the lead up for their second album, Some Nights, along with the band Funeral Party. I guess you can tell by the production and instrumental on 'C'Mon' that they were heading in that direction. Brendon and Nate are obviously big Freddie Mercury/Queen fans.

And then after the tour was over they still kept in contact and Brendon was still hyping them up for their second album:

There are actually two album covers as well, the two bands designed separate ones.

This was fun.'s design, probably the one you're all very familiar with.

And this is the PATD one:

The PATD one seems to be the most rare one you can get, so if you have it, keep a hold onto it or sell it for a couple hundred.

What is the song about?

A lot of Alice's Adventures In Wonderland imagery.

Feels like I am falling down a rabbit hole Falling for forever, wonderfully wandering alone

"Down, down, down. Would the fall never come to an end! 'I wonder how many miles I've fallen by this time?' she said aloud. 'I must be getting somewhere near the centre of the earth. Let me see: that would be four thousand miles down, I think--'" - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

What would my head be like If not for my shoulders Or without your smile

I'd like to believe in all the possibilities

"Alice had begun to think that very few things indeed were really impossible." - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

I am a man of many hats although I Never mastered anything

When I am ten feet tall I've never felt this tall since the fall

Nobody seems to know my name

Shall we sing, shall we sing, until the morning

May we stay lost on our way home

"I've had enough nonsense. I'm going home!" - Disney's Alice In Wonderland

"Well, when one's lost, I suppose it's good advice to stay where you are... until someone finds you. " - Disney's Alice In Wonderland

So, yeah, very Alice's Adventures in Wonderland inspired. And points for not using the typical quotes, like one typical quote out of the many references I could find linking to Alice's Adventures in Wonderland shows that the boys are actually fans of the book and movie in my opinion, rather than just the pop culture aesthetic of Wonderland.

Live Performances

So, I believe that 'C'Mon' is technically the only b-side that PATD has ever played live. Funeral Party and fun. were two of the bands that were opening for PATD on the Vices & Virtues tour at the time, and Nate would come out to sing his part with Andrew playing on the piano in the back.

(yes, I specifically chose this video for those who love to watch Brendon murder this poor keyboard, but there are many other performances of 'C'Mon' live between Brendon and Nate)

And yes, Nate and Brendon were very touchy with each other, once again, did you all think Dallon was the only one getting any action on this tour?

EDIT: Also, little fact about the band's relationship with fun., Nate and Jack were both thanked in the Vices & Virtues linear notes, along with Jack's sister, Rachel.

[iapetusneume]

For the fanfic end of year asks - 3 and 19!

(I am terribly late shhhhh)

3. favorite line/scene you wrote this year

I was proud of many things, but this is my favorite: from the third chapter of Shared Compliance:

The wounds sustained in the training cages by many of their brothers over the past several days were a bit more severe than they tended to be. Meros shrugged. “We’ve been too long without engaging in the field. They’re getting restless, and that manifests in different ways.”

“Keeps you busy, at least,” Kano said.

“The blessing and the curse of it,” Meros said. “An apothecary wishes they had no work to do.”

“You need to keep your skills sharp, too,” Kano said.

Meros took a towel and dried his hands, paying particular attention to the spaces between his fingers. “Until we get too complacent, I guess I will have to settle for overzealous brothers who haven’t found their art calling yet.”

Kano chuckled. “Speaking of which, how is that song coming along?”

Satisfied that his hands were dry enough, Meros reached for the hand balm he kept in his station, rubbing the balm into his knuckles and tips of his fingers. “I’m satisfied with the first half, but… I don’t know what’s missing. I’m tempted to table it and work on something else.”

“Maybe you need a different instrument?”

“I’ve considered it.”

"You should bring it to the attention of the forum," Kano said. "I'm not sure why you're so hesitant to do so."

The musical forum that Meros was a part of had temporarily merged with one aboard the Red Tear while the Hermia was in dry dock. He had been delighted for the 9th Company to be temporarily brought aboard the Primarch's flagship while the repairs were in process, because it meant he could see Kano on a regular basis.

But it also meant that the very best of the Blood Angels were aboard the ship, and ever-present from everywhere from the training cages to the art forums.

"Unlike you," Meros said, "I am not used to such august company on a regular basis."

"Perhaps," Kano said, "but there are plenty of other ships in the fleet who could have taken you in. This is an honor for the 9th Company, and you are a central part to their success."

A blush dusted Meros' pale features. "Kano," he said, "are you trying to inflate my ego?"

"I'm hoping to draw a map to your courage," he said with a small smile. "You do not shrink in the face of the enemies of the Imperium. You can ask your brothers their opinion on your art."

Meros put his hand balm back, continuing to rub it in as he spoke. "...I will take your suggestion under advisement."

"I feel like that's the best I can hope for, at the moment."

19. any new fics to start next year

So, I am trying extremely hard to finish most of my WIPs before going into any of my other plans. Basically, I have My Big Project (The Great Angel's Court, a series of fics set in the same AU, the current big WIP in that being Shared Compliance), two giftfics that became katamaris and I still haven't finished (Unyielding/Concede, Alar Aladi), and a project from first getting into fandom that is just faaar overdue (The Backup Plan). I am determined to finish Unyielding, Concede, Alar Aladi, and The Backup Plan this year. I would be absolutely shocked if I finished Shared Compliance this year. I want to make a lot of progress on it, too, but I don't forsee finishing it this year.

THAT SAID

I really really want to start a Great Angel's Court fic called Proof of Concept. Part of the point of The Great Angel's Court is to ask the question: what if the primarchs actually had the chance to talk more?

In this situation, it's shortly after the fallout of Primarch II being deleted from the other primarchs' memories. It will start with the Lion and Fulgrim, but it will also have Roboute and Perturabo, and Mortarion and Konrad.

I'm really interested in playing with the idea of what the sudden loss of memories look like, and trying to grapple with the hole that forms. To know that something has been cut away, but can't figure out what it was. They all deal with it differently. And... because they get some support, perhaps it doesn't become the dumpster fire it could be.

But I should really finish my other stuff first

[lokisgoodgirl]

So I'm editing the next chapter of The Old Gods and The New that I was drafting in August and... what is it with Thor and cunning plans?!

Also sneak peak of the next chapter I guess! (Heavy editting required!)

MANIFESTING HIS ASGARDIAN LEATHERS IN ONE GOLDEN SWIRL

Listen I'm all about our Thor's and their new eras of cunning plans 😂😂😂love that for him!!! This chapter is going to knock my slipper socks off I just know it, I can feel it!!!

[my-lunaberg]

Hello! I saw your post on asking ab ppl's opinions on the DSMP and had so many thoughts to share I actually went to my pc to write this, lol. Long ask incoming, sorry.

I started watching the DSMP in august of 2020, specifically right after the Techno vs. Dream duel. At this point in time, the Dream SMP tag had only like ten posts--not exaggerating, you would scroll and see the same few posts over and over again cause there was almost no fandom. I followed the series pretty much religiously all the way up to the prison break, where I then basically had to stop watching cause my life was falling apart (paying attention to streamers all day every day causes you to fail classes, who knew?)

So I guess I don't have a lot to say on the ending, other than it certainly was an ending. I think the crew did a good job with what they had, I liked the realization c!Tommy had towards c!Dream and what was once an innocent intention of server unity twisting into something else. I think using the nuke to blow everything up to start anew was a cop-out, but I also know (or at least feel like) the server itself was falling apart IRL and they had to bring it to a conclusion somehow. (Because of that, I knew the server wouldn't get a "season 2")

You mentioned how you liked it on a thematic level rather than emotional, and it really made me think about how my own interest manifested. I was certainly invested in these characters and their stories, but I only carried an emotional attachment to c!Tommy and c!Dream (and DreamXD, but only because I love deities in fiction).

I think, story-wise, the DSMP had many elements that hit hard, c!Tommy's abuse being one of them. During the prison arc, when c!Dream is being tortured constantly by c!Quackity, a large part of the fandom rooted for c!Q because c!Dream was an abuser and deserved the dehumanizing treatment. And boy do I have some opinions on that, lol. Because of the nature of the DSMP, I never thought of it as a teaching element, and your comment on that only being prevalent to children's media struck a chord--because, yeah, that makes sense. The target audience for the DSMP is a bit skewed, because it does take place in an all-ages video game, but the storyline and characters themselves would never get a G rating. I always considered the DSMP to be a bunch of people having fun exploring the different ways they can write a story/character, without any real end-game in mind. They did marvelous, too, in my opinion. I don't believe the DSMP was ever meant to be a literary marvel, or whatever the video-game equivalent is, so for a bunch of then-friends just throwing ideas at a wall and seeing what sticks with the fans, it did it's job.

People now, coming into the fandom for the first time, or looking in from the outside trying to analyze it, don't understand it, imo. It's not that the narrative can only be experienced at the time it was written, because no, you can watch and re-watch it thanks to VODS and recap channels. But so many people hear stories of it being a great time and a great story with great characters and then analyze it to put it on a pedestal only to see that its a piece of fiction with many flaws. Not understanding that the SMP wasn't created to be role-playing server, that never even crossed their minds. It was meant to be a place to have fun and explore a snapshot. That's not saying the cc's shouldn't have made the story in the first place, it's just highlighting how out of control the SMP got due to influencers' fame and fun writing. It was a product of its time because everyone was together, quarantined, exploring how far they could go in a virtual setting. Sorry, rambling a bit. I just think that a sensation like the DSMP can never be repeated on such a scale, and that feeling is why so many outsiders expect so much.

Hope this makes sense, haha. Sorry it's not juicy discourse, but thanks for listening anyway.

No its fine, thank you very much for telling me this!

I initially started watching I think right before the exile arc started but by the time I figured out how to best watch it and caught up with it, it had already been going for a few days, then I followed along with it for a while until I lost interest sometime after the big clingyduo v. Dream fight. Then in late 2022 I was at a local comic con and saw someone in a ghostbur cosplay and some people carrying around a big lmanberg flag and it just made me feel so nostalgic that I wanted to rewatch/finish it, and because I thought it would be fun I also made this sideblog to liveblog it. Im pretty sure dsmp was already over or at the very least getting close to the end by the time I did that, so it gave me a kind of distance that definitely affected my experience with the show.

Like, I think if I had kept up with it throughout (what i would consider to be) its decline and then had to witness that ending after all that, I would definitely feel more negatively about it, so I understand why it was upsetting for a lot of fans, but as it stands, I can mostly just remember it as an overall good piece of media that started stumbling towards the last quarter or so and then ended in a way thats fine, although not particularly satisfying on an emotional level. Like, Dream and Tommy's whole storyline was essentially about the cyclical nature of violence and I think ending the cycle is the best way to resolve that kind of story and in theory, having them make amends before they both die together sounds good to me, but idk, in practice I just didnt like it lol. I think its mainly because their attempts to make Dream seem more sympathetic were kinda too little-too late; Dream didnt have his own pov when most people did which automatically dehumanized him in the eyes of the audience, which was brilliant for the manipulative and unpredictable villian character that he was, but I feel like the CCs didnt really realize that that was the case and didnt feel the need to show stuff from his pov, when it was actually vital imo

You said that people coming into the fandom now come into it with these expectations and I think thats true, but I feel like people who have been following it since the rp properly started also tended to put it on a pedastal because of how genuinely impressively good it was in the beginning, and then when the finale was Like That, a lot of them were insanely disappointed. I also think thats where a lot of the discourse revolving around the ending sending a bad message comes from — a lot of people think of it as something very polished like an actual tv-show when thats simply not what it is or ever was. Its just people fucking around and having fun, and when people just fuck around, theyre not really thinking about "being responsible to their audience" or whatever. Take it from me as a writer lol, I have plans for ya-novels that touch on serious topics and with those I do try to be mindful of the fact that my audience is younger (although teenagers are obviously not children and already dont need to be taught via their media anymore imo), but when Im just writing a little short story I'll usually make it as fucked up as possible just because thats fun to me, yknow