#also very stupid little physical comparison

[miss-menhera]

Taking the chance to let y'all know me and my gf are literally Vaggie And Charlie, I'm the shortie caretaker aggressive gf and she's my tall baby too sweet for this world gf. Same personalities, kind of opposite aestethics, (She's also a natural blondie which is worth mentioning) And she literally sent me this comic herself reminding me we always have moments like these. And I just needed to share and brag about it.

Also so you all know that i am emotionally invested in them so badly that you will almost hear me screech and whine as much as when Adam left us if something ever happens to them.

Budding romance

[pumpkin-cake]

begging for ANYTHING fix it related for the most recent season !!!

five x reader and they are married?? it would be nice if the reader had a more relaxed job in comparison to five in the CIA (the reader used to also work for the commission but wanted a calm life)

like maybe working in a daycare or flower shop?

i’m honestly begging for anything sweet please if you’ve got the time !

THIS HAS ME IN A CHOKEHOLD. YES, I WILL WRITE THIS FOR YOU <3 I ALSO HATE THE WAY THEY CHARACTERIZED FIVE IN THE NEW SEASON. This will be very domestic :3 And it's been a while since I've written Five, I hope he's not too out of character, let me know if you have any pointers :3

The door to your apartment creaks open and heavy footsteps enter, the jangling sounds of house keys hitting the ceramic bowl reaching your ears with a sigh following.

"Good evening, Jerome." You coo.

"I did not pick that name, quit calling me it." Five huffs as he shrugs off his suit jacket, entering the living room. He looked tired, but he was okay with that. He didn't want to settle for some repetitive job he'd be bored as hell at. Even if they gave him stupid aliases like Jerome.

"You could have at least asked. That's embarrassing, telling people your name is Jerome. What about...Ethan? Or even something that's close to Five. Like, Finn, or something." You answered with a chuckle, while Five crumpled on the couch next to you.

"There isn't any point. It's not like you need to go around calling me that name." He said, taking off his tie and laying it across the arm of the sofa. "Anyway, how was work?" He asked, taking off his brown Oxfords and laying them nearby but out of the main walkway. He reached over to the stack of papers on the coffee table and looked at the first page. "Jesus, this is the sloppiest handwriting I've ever seen."

"Ah yes, because children who still have shitty motor skills are going to be writing in perfect print. That's why they only have to write their names, not write full-fledged essays." You said sarcastically, plucking the piece of paper from his hands. You looked over the assignment your kindergarteners were given. The instructions were to count the different types of bugs on the paper. There were no more than 9 of each bug. 4 butterflies, 7 caterpillars, 1 beetle, 8 spiders.

"I was never that dumb." Five said a little snarkily, pointing to the answer spot that said there were only 5 caterpillars.

"Don't be such a prick." You huffed, getting out a blue pen. You didn't like to use red, too harsh. You circled each answer wrong, not making any corrections.

"How are you even meant to teach them this? It's basic counting." Five asked, sort of actually curious.

"We'll just go over it in class tomorrow. Everyone will count together."

"Then what's the point of the homework?"

You groaned. "We are not having this conversation anymore, old man." You pulled out a pack of stickers, putting one on each sheet of paper.

"You're just as old." He countered with a smirk, leaving you to roll your eyes and continue 'grading' the papers. He did shut up and drop the subject, letting his hand stray to your hand that wasn't busy grading papers. He wasn't ever one for physical affection in the past, but ever since getting to this place? He was more lenient. He was never hanging off of you, but his touches were gentler. Each contact of skin was a small way of saying 'I love you', because it was hard to say it out loud after years of isolation.

The biggest way of him saying he loved you was twisting the ring that nicely fit on your finger like he was doing right now. Like he was making sure you were aware of its presence and meaning.

You finished the papers in less than five minutes. You did not envy the fourth-grade teachers who had actual homework to grade. "Your dinner is in the fridge." You told him, taking his other hand and playing with the black band that adorned his ring finger.

"Not hungry." He said shortly, like he was offended you'd ever assume he wanted to do something aside from this. He wouldn't ever say that out loud, of course.

"It's sushi. Made by yours truly." You added, holding back a chuckle when he sucked in a deep breath, very torn between the options. It was weird, able to sit and think about something. He wasn't rushing home to eat and go to bed, he got to do domestic shit with you and fuck did he love it.

"..." Five stayed silent like a brooding teenager.

"I'll come with you." You reasoned, and he reluctantly sat up. You smiled and got up with him, the two of you traversing to the kitchen. He opened the door to the fridge and grabbed the small Tupperware of delicious looking sushi. You were not a fan of Commission cafeteria food, and you took pride in buying the best ingredients for you and your spouse. You were already grabbing him a pair of chopsticks, sitting with him at the kitchen island.

"...thanks." He said after eating a roll. He was stubborn, but he really did appreciate you taking the time to make more for him when he got home late. It was so nice to come home to a homemade meal. It reminded him of Grace.

"Of course, honey." You smiled, sitting in silence while he ate. He savored every moment. After being in the apocalypse for forty years, he really grew to appreciate the things he didn't have. He swore he would never take this life for granted.

He never questioned why, because the whole reason was sitting right next to him.

[deezneezz]

Leona & ADD

I got a few ppl (on twitter) wanting me to elaborate on Leona and ADD, so I figured I will share my thoughts here as well, please be nice it's just a personal hc. You don't have to agree at all!! Since it contains some personal experiences I ask of people to please be kind about it!

Anyway, Leona and ADD.

I think a lot of people usually agree on Floyd and Kalim having ADHD, but Leona actually shows a lot of lesser talked about traits of ADHD. Namely Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria (RSD), sensitivity to clothing/textures (he doesn't like restrictive clothes).

He also has the more commonly talked about traits of course, executive dysfunction being a big one. And his depression definitely exacerbates these traits, when i was undiagnosed and depressed i used to sleep my entire days away. I wasn't getting anything done anyway.

Not to mention not sleeping properly, so I was desperate to find moments to sleep during the day. I've slept on floors, on toilets, in an abandoned corner in uni instead of going to class. I was just *so* tired all the time I didn't want to sit in class, I wanted to sleep.

I was lucky I passed classes without studying, cause i would've never gotten through uni otherwise. I still took longer than necessary. The moment my support system (Ruggie, anyone?) graduated and left I had no one taking care of my basic needs, and I certainly didn't.

I had a dorm mate who cooked for me, made sure I had even an ounce of self-care, and also looked at my room and said "hmm, Deniz, maybe it's time to clean up a little" and then I very reluctantly admitted that it may have gotten a little out of hand.

She would just sit in my room sometimes chilling around while I cleaned cuz that was one of the few ways I cleaned at all (this is a real thing for ADHD, called body doubling. It works). Ruggie arriving at NRC and Leona suddenly performing tons better in school is no coincidence.

Coming back to RSD.. I mean I don't really have to explain it do I.. book 2, Lilia's scathing remarks, the shame of disappointing his dorm, etc. I know a lot of ppl call book 2 an 'overreaction' but like, this is genuinely what it feels like internally when RSD triggers

book 6 too, Jamil's over-protectiveness is clearly (to the audience) smth that's mostly Jamil's own habits and trauma doing. But to Leona it's a rejection/insult to his ability to take care of himself, his skill, etc. This was genuinely smth that set me off too.

"How dare you try to explain to me smth I already know, do you think I'm stupid?" "You're not like me." The unwillingness to admit that someone may be relatable in any way because making any comparison to yourself makes you vulnerable to what you haven't achieved for yourself.

"I would ace these classes too if I wasted my time and life studying as much as they did, but I actually love myself." <- guy who was jealous and did not know he was coping and didn't study cause of executive dysfunction and concentration issues.

Leona clearly knows a lot about the things he genuinely cares about, Ancient spell language, chess, magishift, so its kind of funny to see him so low effort in classes. Though honestly i know the game also says that "Leona already knows all this stuff" so.. who knows really...

Now I'm more chill but I used to legitimately go off the handle a little cuz RSD doesn't really care about whether the shit u feel is proportional to the offence it physically hurts in your chest and you just wanna burn down the world at that exact time and... IS THAT NOT LEONA...

TLDR: give Leona therapy and meds, lol.

[sugar-grigri]

Fans are Denji's source of unhappiness

First observation: Fumiko is worse than Barem

I don't like making meaningless comparisons, especially in a work like Chainsaw Man where when the characters aren't nuts, they remain at least morally gray. But this comparison makes sense in the sense that the construction of the chapter refers to it. As usual, let's analyze this by following the chapter's chronology.

This one takes place in a funfair, which is not an insignificant location, but we'll come back to that later. These few lines of dialogue already evoke a very simple idea: Denji isn't so stupid that he wouldn't know he was being manipulated. He knows full well that Fumiko was placed in Yoshida's care not to protect him, but to keep a close eye on him, to prevent him from turning and joining the church.

But she tries to disprove all this, evoking the ecstasy one might feel if one were Chainsaw Man. Being Chainsaw Man is also a source of unhappiness for Denji, who corrects her, and Fumiko adapts to his speech, looking for the first negative point that comes to mind. I think it was a real mistake for Fumiko to mention this point, but once again, she adapts to Denji's reaction. He's completely horrified at having been observed in the bathroom, so she shares his negative view of the situation.

She knows that Denji's main objective is sex-related, so she builds on that by downplaying what she's doing. This is fan behavior; fans are sexually obsessed with Denji in the hope that it will delight him. But Fumiko knows no bounds, either ignoring his consent or stalking him, which logically engages Denji's rejection reaction again.

Once again, he perceives the means of manipulation with the word "fan", and rejects it. So far, these experiences have only been negative and intrusive, and even when they have been positive, whether with Asa romantically or Power platonically, the demon of control, another female figure, has put an end to them.

But instead of stopping the manipulation, Fumiko goes on to confirm Denji's words even as they express pure disgust and rejection. For a character who knows absolutely no limits, she may also override stopping this conservation, but she continues with her family history. If public demon hunters know anything about Denji apart from his natural distrust and need for affection, whether sentimental or physical, it's his sensitivity.

I can't say that the story Fumiko tells is a complete lie, just as I can't say that she's telling the truth. She's a hunter, and anything she mentions could well have ended up in a report, especially given the national authorities' interest in the gun demon. But even if her story is true, the tragic aspect, not for her but for Denji, is even stronger.

Fumiko says she lost her parents because of the gun demon, that CSM didn't hear her cries for help. I'd like to remind you that chapter 79, the chapter in which she refers to Aki's death, is dedicated to the trauma of what it means to be Chainsaw Man.

For the demon from the future, Aki died in the worst possible way, not for him, but for Denji. It's clear that the little boy is forcing himself to continue this snowball fight he no longer wants to play.

At first, he tries to reason with Aki, forcing him to wake up, but when he himself is shot trying to spare one of his only loved ones, people won't let him lose. Chainsaw Man is a weapon of vengeance into which everyone projects their frustrations, the deaths of their loved ones. Denji was forced to be resurrected, to kill Aki not for himself, but for the community. Chainsaw Man never acts for himself. If Aki died in the worst way for Denji, it's because his fans, this community, forced him back to life to remove one of his sources of love.

Denji was traumatized by having to win.

Let's be clear: it wasn't Denji who ignored their calls for help, it was they who ignored his.

Isn't it tragic to criticize Chainsaw Man for not hearing Fumiko's cries for help, or the cries of all those people, when he was instead so compelled by them, like a machine that would be reset to kill a loved one ? Chainsaw Man, on the other hand, hears all the pain in the world. This doesn't mean that Denji is altruistic - he isn't. He's closer to amorality than compassion, but like a permanently dehumanized machine, he must serve others. It has no morals, so how can it live for itself ?

That's why what Fumiko says is so paradoxical: saving Denji means finally allowing him to live for himself, granting him the right not to hear all those voices.

She doesn't mean what she says when she says she's never thought of him as a god, but simply as a child in need of protection. She's only setting up a dissident discourse to that of the church, which idealizes him by banking on the part of identity that is Denji, while the church banks on Chainsaw Man. How can someone who is constantly sexually abusing Denji be competent to protect a boy?

This chapter is about setting limits for children. To have access to the merry-go-round, you have to be over 1m10 tall. These clear limits were never set for Denji, either when he was forced to kill Aki or even when he explores his sexuality.

Having killed his father, been martyred by the mafia and then manipulated by a demon, Denji is now at the heart of other vicious circles. He's condemned to being too young an adult, watching over Nayuta like a parent while children play behind him, not enjoying the funfair with friends, a girlfriend, being cloistered on that bench. The bench represents the stagnation in Denji's life, his questioning, placed on the bench of his own life, his name unknown to his fans, his nature instrumentalized, his age ignored.

Denji needs and must be considered with the age he is, a 17-year-old teenager. Yet even this characteristic, even the fact that he's still a child, is ignored by Fumiko, hence her insistence on the word "senpai".

The treatment of Fumiko is good, I find her to be the very embodiment of Denji's sexual trauma in the sense that she constantly manipulates him to play on his interests, and constantly ignores his own desires, his limits.

Fumiko manipulates, hence the emphasis on her outraged expression when Barem interrupts. If Barem's manipulation is more grotesque, it's not to manipulate Denji but to mock Fumiko's strategy. Although it's incredibly more insidious, the weapon has a clear idea of what she's up to.

And yet, in just a few sentences, it's right on target. It's much closer to Denji's reality than to Fumiko's human perspective. Weapons are seen as weapons, machines at the service of humans, whose immortality is a pain, as it leads them to the trauma of always winning.

Barem uses a cigarette, obviously reminiscent of those smoked by Aki, who had given in to Himeko's advances and needed an outlet for his stress. Aki's misfortune is to have spent his life on revenge, living to avenge the dead, not living for himself. The cigarette was his flaw, the proof of his humanity, the one he threw at Denji to spare him the pain of getting involved in the horrible business of hunting demons.

Whether or not it was there to manipulate Denji by reminding him of his older brother, whether or not it was there by chance, it conveyed the same message: proof of the humanity of a man who lived for others. A man who was executed once again for that same community.

This community, Denji's fan club, is the cause of his deepest misfortune. Chainsaw Man has never been so popular, yet Denji has never been alone. Because he's not allowed to have loved ones. Nayuta, too, is proof of this: she wants her brother for herself, and convinces him that he's loved by others by acting under the cover of Chainsaw Man.

That's why Denji's intervention to stop the attack in progress is much less certain. All these fans, this humanity waiting for Chainsaw Man, are the source of his misfortune. Of course the fan club will call Chainsaw Man. What's less obvious...

Will Denji listen to their cries for help?

[foursaints]

“I don’t care what [Barty] says, Dumbledore’s not stupid”: On Barty as Machiavel

i think we're all forgetting the moment where harry explicitly draws a parallel between barty & remus and i wrote the world’s longest post about it 

under a close reading, moody!barty operates in a manner that is SO distinct from canon!moody, and i think it’s made especially apparent in the way he interacts with students & the virtues he emphasizes in his lessons. even when disguised, barty has a machiavellian tendency that comes through consistently in several different moments. 

i think this quote is a weaker example, but “very tactful” is NOT something that would be used to describe canon!moody under any circumstances. c!moody’s lack of social tact is a known characteristic, and barty uses his tactless reputation to get away with his machinations (see: the dustbin excuse, breaking into snape’s office, even the ferret to an extent).

on the other hand, BARTY is clever and subtle and manipulative, and we see this coming through in how he handles neville. the biggest difference between him and c!moody is the way that barty!moody tends to openly value or praise Cleverness & Craftiness above more moody-ish virtues like bravery, loyalty, or Taking Care of His Students’ Safety… but i think the most interesting part of all this is the way that harry reacts to it.

the hp books notoriously do this clumsy thing where the morality is starkly Black/White (as ursula leguin rightfully criticized). but seemingly arbitrary categories like “gryffindor” or “slytherin” are also conflated with this strict Good/Evil dichotomy. which results in these random-ass traits like “brave 😎🦁” and “cunning 💀🐍” also taking on moral associations within the world of the text (jkr has also done this with physical traits & racial stereotypes, which is vile) 

but an overarching theme in hp is harry grappling with this dumbass in-world black/white morality & unlearning part of it (ex: snape, the epilogue w albus severus about slytherin). but i think it’s sooo interesting that one of the few characters (aside from snape & dumbledore) to demonstrate & valorize a machiavellian tendency AND be admired for it (by harry) is LITERALLY barty jr. 

like! barty’s tact is not a good thing in-canon! he uses his tact to get away with murder & torture & elaborate terrorist plots (he’s part of a group of death eaters described as having "managed to talk their way out of azkaban” p. 527) but i looove that the same trait which allows him to do all sorts of Dastardly Evil is cast as positive and remus-like in this moment. obviously i don’t think jkr was doing of this on purpose, but i love how these little things are unintentionally more compelling than whatever the hell she was trying to do with snape. and it goes deeper!!

this moment is especially telling of barty’s character, to me. subbing out the names, “I don’t care what [Barty] says… Dumbledore’s not stupid” is a CRAZY line. 

it’s lowkey THE barty!moody thesis in comparison to c!moody: nothing we’ve seen from c!moody would even remotely suggest that he’d EVER imply that dumbledore is stupid. (c!moody adopts the “it’s imperative that we blindly trust dd’s mysterious plans” attitude that most of the adults in harry’s life take, that hermione re-emphasizes here). but barty’s attitude is something that harry heavily fucks with in this moment!! 

that’s all i really have to say about The Implications or whatever. but i want to call more attention to moments in canon where barty’s tendencies shine through his disguise because (unlike most marauders characters) his personality is really fleshed-out. especially this aspect of it. my silly 

i. "mind works the right way, granger"

barty speaking about dumbledore like he’s stupid (💀) is enjoyable for several reasons up to & including how big-dicked it is of him, but most importantly i think it’s symptomatic of an overarching theme of his character. in GOF, barty has a tendency to take stock of the people around him, according to what appears to be a really concrete & consistent set of internal values: he values cleverness matched with a certain degree of ruthlessness. 

this bit with hermione is fun. there are about ~6-7 other instances where he praises cleverness, but that’s not really a unique or noteworthy thing to value? but the phrasing in this quote is my favorite. i know that it’s in reference to the skillset required of an auror, but the phrasing of “mind works the right way” can be applied to so much of barty’s character if you reach hard. i love that barty’s language almost casts the mind as something rote & mechanical which can function right or wrong. 

but anyway it only becomes interesting when placed in context of THIS earlier interaction: 

there are endless ways barty could have gone about guiding harry to use his firebolt here, so his specific phrasing holds a lot of weight to me. (keep in mind: he’s prompting harry to feel that he came up with the firebolt/accio idea, but this whole plan was concocted by barty himself much earlier. he’s on the “convince harry to do my broomstick dragon thing” step of his overarching scheme) 

in a sense, by “inspiring” harry to do what HE already independently decided was best, he’s sort of… giving away his own reasoning, a little? the italicized emphasis on enabling oneself to “get what you need” feels… unnecessary, in context? i love that THAT is where emphasis slips into his voice because it betrays his values. 

barty’s Revenge Scheme is insanely fucking convoluted, but at every stage i think that logic is there. in his villain monologue where he rehashes the deranged level of micro-managing he was doing to get harry to resurrect voldemort, at every individual step he was following his own advice. to barty, sometimes murder is just the Simplest Spell to Get What He Needs. 

according his own advice, barty sees the clearest path between two points, and generally has 0 ethical qualms about closing that distance by the Simplest means possible. he later confirms this by describing harry’s morality introducing complications as “contend[ing] with [his] stupidity” (676) 

ii. “good boy,” growled [barty]. “i can make good use of this…”

the scene where barty acquires the marauders map is CRAZYY.. for a moment, barty is so excited & taken aback that we see a few of his genuine reactions. i love that absolutely nothing manages to faze him EXCEPT genuine delighted shock over an interesting new tool he can implement in his schemes. (sidenote: he probably recognized the marauders’ nicknames, which is so funny)

that fact that we have a canonical barty crouch jr “good boy” makes me claw at the walls. anyway. i feel that i don’t need to explain how “i can make good use of this… this might be exactly what i’ve been looking for” supports characterization of barty as a scheming little machiavel because it’s pretty much explicitly stated right there. 

but this quote stands out for his genuine preoccupation with it. from the instant that barty sees the map, his eyes don’t leave it— his eye “whizzed over [it’s] surface” (491), he questions harry about how his name appeared when he searched snape’s office (”’Crouch,’ he said. ‘You’re— you’re sure, Potter?’” (491))— all while harry is sinking into a trick staircase & getting concerned that moody is ignoring him.

“penetrating glare” ← top barty rights! 

the image of him getting new information, questioning harry about it tactfully, and then spending A FULL MINUTE silently integrating it, is one of my favorite instances of him in the book… it’s like you can hear the gears in his head whirring. i like that we can see this type of assessment that he does extends to other people, when he turns it on harry and “size[s] him up”. 

AND ALL OF THIS IS WITHOUT EVEN GETTING INTO WHAT HIS LESSONS WERE LIKE

this post is long enough as it is! but all that’s left to say is that barty will always be at his most interesting when you pay attention to canon… there’s another longpost that could be written about barty!moody’s differences in disposition. the jokes he cracks, his relative lightness, and the sheer number of times he was openly like “FUCK the law i do what i want” (while literally masquerading as a literal wizard cop) are so intriguing. but that’s for another time 

[lemurballing]

This is stupid:

buuuut it still works cause tangle is awesome :] i direct you to issue 37, where tangle does this:

at face value, heck yeah!! using her tail as a pulley system to tie up the boat?? so clever :) (and being able to wrap her tail around all that after the boat starts falling, before it loses much height - that’s very fast, accurate tail extension! what if she’d accidentally bonked her tail into any of those metal beams down there instead of going between them? she wouldn’t have made it in time if she did bonk!)

but you look closer… and it might not be that clever. in fact, it looks like a mistake.

(at the dark purple question mark, her tail’s path isn’t very clear. i went with ‘repeating the pattern’ around a part of the boat we couldn’t see in blue, which would then wrap around at the angle you see her tail stretch left, out from the question mark.)

it’s wrapped around the whole boat, so where’s the problem…?

the problem is: leverage (or whatever the word is for pulleys & ropes).

in the leftmost diagram, we see the dots - the anchor points of the rope - are at equal height. at a resting point, they will both hold the weight up with their own material integrity; that is, it will stay at the resting height unless the material breaks.

in the middle diagram, the ‘anchor point’ for the right rope has moved lower; the bar it holds the weight up towards is far lower, and the excess is wrapped over to tie to the ground. again, at resting position, it will remain there while the material holds.

in the right diagram, the rope arrangament is the same as the middle one, but now we’re applying pull force to bring the weight upwards. at this level, due to where the right rope is ‘anchored’ on the bar, no matter what force is applied, it cannot raise the weight any higher than that bar - only the rope on the left could pull it higher, or support its weight in a higher position.

applied to this situation:

the blue sections are parts where tangle’s tail can support the boat just by wrapping around and staying in place, pretty much; it’s a net woven around that just needs to not slip. the orange sections are where the only provable anchor point above the boat is tangle herself! (and i will note that the way she’s holding her tail here, her tail is almost certainly not the limb doing most of the pulling - for it to angle so much before and after her grip on it, it can’t be tensed. to better clarify - if you have long hair, and something pulls on your hair, it pulls your scalp. unless you grab your hair with a hand and pull it closer to your scalp, and then all the active tension is redirected through your arms.)

which means that for the boat to stay where it is - above the ‘blue level’ - tangle is actively pulling it higher! pulling the entire weight of the boat up.

so how hard is this - how heavy is the boat? in this panel, it looks like a relatively small boat; maybe a dinghy? dinghies can have those ribbed sides, and are generally round, and it could weigh somewhere between 100-200lbs, and be a little tough to carry…

nope! it is some type of motor boat (perhaps a skiff). you can see a propeller under the ‘cinch’, so it has a motor… and if you look at the rest of the page, it has at least 7 seats (presumably 8), so it has to be large enough to hold at least 7 people!

i’m not acquainted with boats so i had to do some digging - and most of the ones i found at first had consoles/raised walls/less seats than this one, which weren’t exactly a fair weight comparison. i also didn’t want to try to calculate precisely how long this boat is, since the angles are off and hard to calculate from this perspective.

so, instead i looked at a few different types of boat to get rough estimated of weights, and then i’d roughly downsize that based off estimates of how much smaller a boat for ~3ft people needs to be!

i went through a handful of similar motorboats (mostly 1-4 people, but with added physical features to add weight) and found weights between 1,000lb to 2,000lb depending on length (18-22+ feet). a yamaha 195S is 19’5” long, and 2,509lb - but a nitro z18 is 18’8” and 1,700lb. the only good visualizers i found were charts for what motor horsepower to use for what length and weight:

so it was super hard to get a good estimate of the weight here!! like super hard!! so i’m just doing a vague whatever conservative estimate and someone else can do proper math!!!

if you half the length to a presumed 10ft long - which i’m not sure is properly long enough for this boat, i’d guess somewhere between 12-15ft - and then quarter the 20ft weight to try to account for the square-cube law, you get a guesstimate of a boat weighing about 500lb. if you’re conservative with it, maybe 400lb?

which, to keep from tipping out away from the metal cradle, lowering to the level of tangle’s tail wrapped around underneath, & be held upright as tangle is doing, has to be fully supported - and as noted earlier, without real assistance from tangle’s tail’s strength, this is just her arms.

now, you could assume tangle simply wrapped that mystery segment of tail around the cradle bar she’s standing on, and this would allow much more of the boat’s weight to be supported by her tail’s structure… but it’d have to be an awkward angle for her tail to do that and it to not be visible next to her feet or in the empty space to the right, which would also put some more of the strain on her arms/body instead of her tail, so she’d stil be doing a lot!

and especially if you estimate the boat closer to 12-15ft, which is closer to 600-750lb, that gets crazier…

PLUS the fact that she had to hold that weight up for at LEAST as long to ask them to hurry & tie the boat up, AND as long as it took for the others to actually work something up/fix the cradle to hold the boat and relieve tangle of it.

conclusion: this is canon

[changbinsboobs]

haii can you do skz ideal types? like physique and personality. thank youu

Hi:) since i want to do those readings properly im gonna do them one by one and since i already have some for individual members i'll use this ask to start with chan:)

So, i originally started doing an Ideal Type reading but it got hijacked😅 so i guess im reading on his current energy. I'll try to still add something about his ideal type if i manage getting past the bitter energy but i think ill have to redo it some other time since i believe his opinion would be very influenced by his current feelings right now.

Take it with a grain of salt!!!

Chan's current energy / Ideal Typ

For his physical type i got pretty weird cards ngl, 3 of them are the tower, 5 of cups and 5 of wands, the 4th one's queen of pentacles. Tbh i didn't really get any hints about anything physical. He seems angry and bitter.

I think this reading is gonna be hijacked by something else he wants to talk about. I sense he has had a bitter experience thats still fresh in his mind, i think he got dumped tbh!

Like im seeing a situation with lots of bickering. Ogmg ok wait i have so much to say about it this situation has so many layers!

He feels like he lost something great and regrets his stupid actions.

At the same time tho he thinks its that persons fault and if they were better he wouldn't have acted in a way that would get him dumped.

But then again he feels like he's at fault and regrets it a lot.

But he's also so angry cuz they kept having fights, and she kept exhausting him and he kept not being enough. He feels horrible when he's not enough! He doesn't want to feel like that. He wants to live up to her expectations, to peoples expectations. But he just couldn't in this situation with that person.

It seems like he actually got himself a high quality girl - the he couldn't keep obviously. And he's in so much distress with all his conflicting feelings and thoughts. Im sry but im getting a bit angry at him here🙄 its that male stupidity with lack of accountability whatsoever! You cant expect to give the bare minimum, to be an excuse of a "man" and except to get all the perks real man and masculinity gets you! Deal with the consequences bro🙄 -> not necessarily meaning him, im just seeing the picture from his view, so idk how "horrible" he actually was, i was rather talking about the general population of useless men that just have the audacity to expect the best when they themselves aren't worthy of it and then get mad when they can't keep it.

Anyways back to chan - im also getting mommy's boy vibes here omg its getting worse😩😭 i feel like with this situation he's like "forget her bro, she's not worth it. Your mom used to cook and clean, and take care of 3 children and do everything by herself and she didn't whine and was always so giving. I want a woman like that! This girl wasn't lie my mother - she's not worth it, get over her and stop feeling guilty." Don't take that monologue word for word i was rather training to paint the feeling behind his thoughts.

So yeah we have that...tbh i didn't expect him to have a reaction like that like with the comparison to his mom. The rest i expected, but this? Damn🥲

Also this whole situation seems very dramatic, but what I've noticed in the male population overall is that they tend to blow things way put of proportion, and so knowing chan and his tendencies for a victim-complex, pick me, delulu and stuff - im pretty sure this situation might've been not dramatic at all. Just 2-3 little discussions (not full blown arguments and fights as he depicts it) or even just opposing opinions, where he just felt attacked in some way just by her disagreeing or something...and then after a few dates or weeks of dating she politely told him she doesn't want to see him anymore cuz they don't see compatiable and he broke down.

Again idk how things are for real cuz i haven read the other girls energy nor have i read just the energy itself, im just reading HIS energy and perception, but it feels really needy and excagerated so thats whats leading me to believe that it might not be nearly as bad.

So i managed to get some cards on his ideal types personality only and i got those: 3 of cups, 6 of pentacles, page of cups & king of wands.

His types a younger, more innocent and inexperienced girl he can take care of and teach and lead.

She likes a girl that's social but shy. Someone he can take with when meeting his friends and show of. But as i said - social enough for him to be able to do that - but but also shy so he stays sure that theres no risk of her "going wild" (goddamn bro u forreal?🫠)

Im actually getting something about physical appearance - slender, middle hight, like just a bit shorter than him, prefferably forreign with lighter skin and ginger or light brown or dark blonde hair. Im also seeing big head? Like yk this type of body with very slender narrow shoulders, long lanky arms and legs, but a bigger head where it also seems disproportionate to the body? Its so specific i almost think thats what his last girl looked like.

And he also wants a girl thats submissive and will see up to him and make him feel like a boss or a king or a ...daddy (🤢 im sry i just cant hold in the cringe)

In conclusion - i think this ideal type i got from the cards isn't his true ideal type but rather something that came out of spite. Like if i had to guess he's describing the girl he lost, but without her empowering qualities so that he doesn't get hurt.

Judging on the energy of this reading and previous ones ive done i think he has had a think for strong dominant women because he's fascinated with inner strength and power and always wanted to conquer a woman like that because in his head it meant he has that amount of power and strength the said woman had and even more - since he has managed to tame and conquer her. Now that he's tried tho he got met with the cold reality and got a slap in the face realizing he might not be fit for the task just yet and is just sour about it😃

As weird and unexpected this reading was i really enjoyed it cuz it was really shocking to me actually and even gave me a bit of a slap in the face, reminding me how he's just a man...and that he apparently does stupid things like any other guy too.

[nightcolorz]

in the books when Armand’s monstrosity and inherent violent nature is discussed or implied by other characters hes often compared to “the devil” or a demon, or an imp, smth like that. Which is part of why I think it’s so interesting how the current (amc iwtv) fandom takes that same concept and equates it with predatory wild animals, like tigers, sharks, stuff like that. On one hand the imagery of the devil is more vague (no one has any physical connection to the danger “the devil” poses), and it definitely gives an air of more mysterious power, but it also implies much more agency then an animal does. Devils are humanoid, they have complex thought, and tho they are inherently evil, they do evil in a way that is seen as calculated and malicious. Devils are scheming, clever, and they choose to hurt people bcus the inherent evil they have means that they enjoy doing it. Maybe the devil was born that way, or it was damned to be a devil, either way it has little choice in being an agent of evil. But it still chooses to participate in that role, it has the capability to choose, and to think through what it does, to understand why it chooses to do it

but for an animal, the imagery of comparing someone to a predator animal is very visceral, strikingly insulting. Predator animals r mindless killers 💀 they r built to hurt u, there is no rhyme or reason or way to train a wild animal, it’s going to kill u. But the main difference here is that an animal doesn’t kill out of malice or spite or a desire to hurt, a tiger kills to eat, a shark only hurts a human if it thinks the human will hurt it, or if it mistakes it for food. So in comparing Armand to an animal, it’s much more dehumanizing than comparing him to a demon, but maybe more correct? the implication is that when being compared to an animal, unlike a devil, Armand can not be reasoned with, and u r delusional to think he is capable of doing anything but killing u. Which is kind of mean 💀 but not untrue? The way Armand thinks and behaves is admittedly, very animalistic. He doesn’t reason with any sort of real empathy or human-like thought over why he should kill or hurt someone, he just kind of does it if he is afraid or cornered or hungry. Unlike a devil, Armand hurts out of a need. And it’s often misperceived need or misperceived threat that causes him to react with disproportionate violence, but to Armand, the way he sees it he is always acting out of need, even when the need is not in reality there. “I am going to loose this thing I need to live so I need to kill to prevent that”, etc. so I see the comparison, where when Louis is parading Armand around as his lover like a tiger on a leash, when he knows that Armand would kill him at a moments notice if he perceived him as a threat, or even if he needed to eat, that’s very “stupid human owns a tiger as a pet and acts like it won’t kill him” scenario. But!

there is smth I disagree with when it comes to the “armand is a big tiger” angle, in that armand is not a wild animal incapable of being tamed🙏 hes domesticated. I think armand is much more akin to a dog that was trained Wrong, like a reactive dog or a former fighting dog. A dog that had everything in it to be capable of being good and kind and gentle, but was trained into being smth violent, and has lost its capability of acting in anything but violence. He has the bones of smth that is trainable, he’s looking for a master to give him the orders, but despite this he still has been taught bite, kill, fight back, u will be hurt. So rlly, it’s more like, Louis has a reactive dog with a muscle on that is leaning into his touch and whining for his attention, a dog that once violently attacked him bcus the fear was triggered in its brain and the age old orders went off telling it to attack the threat

[alexxncl]

‼️NIGHTBRINGER LESSON 40 SPOILERS‼️

masterlist | all lessons | season 2 | season 3 | lesson 39 | lesson 41.1 | lesson 41.2

the end of an era (season 2)

normal and hard spoilers

oh baby :(

see every time i remember how sheltered diavolo is it makes me hate his father that much more. he grew up with everything in the world, but practically nobody to share it with.

diavolo had to have been smart enough to have caught onto the reason behind mephisto's attachment to him at an early age. he might be dense, but he's not stupid. even if he and mephisto did end up becoming really good friends, diavolo knew early on that their proximity was for business and royalty purposes only, and that friendship and a genuine relationship was second to their professional relationship

i feel like this is why he initially thought of the brothers as treasures in regard to status rather than as people, and the mindset shifted to seeing them as treasures in regards to the relationship he formed with them. he wanted genuine connection, but forming a professional connection before a genuine relationship was so deeply ingrained in him that he defaulted to it without even realizing it

...he can't be fucking serious

GET HIM OUT I BEG

he would've done this regardless of the option we picked during the angel's trial i hate it here...can't he take a class or smth instead of experimenting on us

i'm gonna kill him /j

i'm a whore in the game so i technically date everyone at once. but why does he NEVER say i love you back ????? not even in the first game ????????

like ok you're a time demon who shouldn't get attached to anyone and you choose to stay unattached bc you'll lose everyone anyways blah blah blah but at least indulge me a little bit 💔

SOBS UNCONTROLLABLY I LOVE THEM

i feel like they know this is their last goodbye yk? obviously barbatos does, but this feels very, very final on their part. maybe it's a different version the feeling they have when they go into mc's room, like they can feel mc being pulled away from them physically

what if the end of the lesson or the story in the hard part of the lesson is them portalling back to their timeline and the brothers getting a glimpse of their alternate selves? and then everything clicking into place after mc leaves?

the fact that simeon has as many doubts about his father's intentions as lucifer and his brothers did really solidifies my belief that he wanted to, in the worst case, fall with the brothers. and if he didn't fall, he'd at least have begged for answers as much as lucifer did before the war. he was demoted after the war for helping the brothers in canon, and i feel like he still beats himself up about it because of the side he chose. him and raphael both, but raphael is better at hiding it

(i have a whole post about simeon and michael before the war here)

i've said this about a million times but...

the brothers ever 🫶🏽

they're such shitheads but also extremely concerned i love their dynamic sm

SEE I TOLD YOU ‼️ HE MASKS HIS FEAR WITH ANGER (even though i'm pretty sure this was confirmed in canon in the og game and in nb s1)

him admitting that he was scared though? putting his pride aside and actually talking about his feelings for once? this is proof of how much he trusts mc, how much he loves and cares for them, even if he can't explain why the feelings he holds for them are so strong

it also shows that he's thankful to have someone who will care about and protect his brothers as much as he does, and some of the weight of the "oldest brother" mantle has been lifted. it allows him to be vulnerable and at least a little more carefree, which is why he's seen joking and laughing with his brothers so much more often in the later lessons in comparison to season 1 and early season 2

i feel like i'm SUPOOSED to reach bc why would he phrase it like that ??? i don't think he knows...but he's really intuitive

or maybe this was a way of the devs using him to unofficially-officially send us off and into our original timeline. idk. i'm reaching but they made me

THEY DID NOT

oh i'm really gonna cry...they took what we wrote in season 1 and showed it to the boys

i COMPLETELY forgot we even did this 😭 god i'm gonna cry i love this game sm

I KNEW NO TIME PASSED THANK GODDDDDD

i don't think i'd be able to handle it if the same amount of time passed across realms

i also think this is why they emphasized "time soup" so heavily, you can be put anywhere at any time as if nothing had changed

...i can't believe it's over

...for now at least

well time to read the HDD story and catch up on devilgram

[revalition]

OCTOBER 17 - PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT Flex powerful muscles. Enjoy healthy organs.

Coach Physical Instrument!! This guy has lots of great dialogue... but his design isn't that interesting to me. and I struggle with buff people haha. look at his weird... trapezoid head. I wanted to incorporate a way for him to emote a bit better but that will have to be a project for later. I love him very much anyway though

(also it is just barely past midnight, it definitely still counts as october 17 shhh)

as usual lots of quotes under the cut!

coach quotes:

this is a godly check lol. thanks for the commentary coach...

poor coach

this one is so funny

harry talking back to coach is always funny

this one is my favourite.

coach noooo. had to include the awful dialogue option he opens up too haha

he loves his prybar <3

coach knows... this is when interviewing klaasje, so decently early on

mmm... discus

coach's comment isn't even dependent on failing the ency check, he'll say it regardless. though you can only ask lena if you look like a dweeb if the ency check fails haha. sorry man, harry is absolutely a dweeb...

I mean, I think encyclo does...

phys int taking any opportunity to dig at kim's bad eyesight is ridiculous. there's several but I can only have so many screenshots...

his worst nightmare 😔

he's so stupid (this heals morale)

good to know coach has his priorities sorted out. you heard him -- it's intellectually stimulating to talk to buff men

fist bump!!

he's so, so disappointed if you leave titus hanging. (I am too)

I find it a bit funny that this doesn't do any morale damage. Harry loses morale over far less... maybe he just doesn't care if coach calls him lazy and bad.

this guy *cannot* sit still. stop it coach, harry needs this bath

he's so stupid

holds the idiots in my hands so gently... theyre all so stupid...

thank you physical instrument. this is also the only time he says your name - super important

he knows :(

much much love for the three skills who will store the blue spirits as a sellable item for you. (if coach doesn't fire, logic will store it, and if logic fails too then volition does it)

he gets *so* excited. I love it

him calling it 'The Wonder' noooo

coach is so funny. i love when harry's choices are so biased haha

why is he so stupid?

this one always kills me. there is *so little* insight into what these guys are doing in there! but savvy is pushing other skills outta the way for this <333 he's brave to push past coach haha. what's he at the front of? is savvy actually small or just in comparison to coach...? hehe

we're out of screenshot room but can't forget this classic:

PHYSICAL INSTRUMENT - Yes, this man is definitely one of the homos, I've seen them homos with my own eyes.

other fun facts! there are too many good coach quotes :(((

- he's the only one to call Inland Empire dreamer! - electrochemistry calls coach a sinewy idiot! - calls you Harry just once, but son 26 times, boy 3 times, champ 3 times, officer once... - physical instrument is confirmed compromised... - he never says 'Kim', only lieutenant - my spreadsheet has him at a moderate swear score of 6/10 because I didn't factor in how many time he says goddamn... oops

ok that's it for physical instrument!! tomorrow... it will be extremely hard to pick only 30 quotes :(((

[thegreatyin]

12 for your fallen london ocs

The Scoundrel says they would never dare to keep overdue library books. They're a bat of the people! A beloved and respected patron of the arts! They would never in a million years dare to do something as despicable as stealing from a library!!

Which is of course, to say. Well.

Let's just say they've hoarded more than a few very particular books in their time, and a certain bookish coworker of theirs hates them for a reason. They do finish all of them though... admittedly whilst adding them to their own collection without permission. But they do finish them!!

As for how many they have? Let's just guesstimate and say at least five and a half. The half is all that remains of a poetry book after they accidentally breathed correspondence on it and they're really embarrassed and still trying to cover their crime up to this day. It's been months. The library knows their sins. They're literally a book criminal.

The Scientist on the other hand is a model library citizen. Like. He's the kind of guy librarians dream of. He visits pretty much every week, checks out a dozen books at a time, returns them all long before their due date, etc. He's a huge book nerd. He loves those things more than life itself. Admittedly he values his life at approximately 0.000000000001 cents maximum so pretty much everything has more life value by comparison-

Clears throat. Ahem. I mean.

Caeru has books. A lot of books. He loves books. If he's not committing murder or trying to throw himself off a cliff, he's usually tucked away in a corner reading some 1,000 page novel about the most boring subject you can think of. He is the archetypical nerd. He would get shoved in lockers if he could. He's such a loser and I love him dearly. He has million library books, all day, every day, and the only reason he doesn't have more is because he physically can't carry them all with his stupid skinny little nerd arms.

The Songbird is... actually just a normal guy. He goes to the library when he feels like it, and doesn't when he doesn't. He has no particular preference for or against it, it's just something he does sometimes. He doesn't tend to finish a lot of books on account of having "other things" (crimes) to "occupy his time" (more crimes) but like. All-around, he's just sorta vibing with it.

And also he has one (1) overdue library book that he stole from a little humble shop on the surface two years ago and to this day he lays awake at night fearing that the Library Police™ will come and wring him by the neck for his crimes. They won't, but he has anxiety about it anyway.

[gabessquishytum]

There is not enough Yandere/Jealous/Possessive Hob fics in comparison to Dream being the Jealous/Possessive one, so why not change that? (Also, Obviously!Dream because, again, why not?)

Maybe, after everything happens, Dream starts to regularly visit the New Inn and Hob's very happy with that, up until he realizes people are flirting with His Dream.

First, there's this really beautiful woman who, thankfully, Hob was able to resist his initial reaction of wanting to rip her eyes out for looking at His Dream and settled for throwing a possessive arm around His Dream's shoulders as he took a seat. After all, she is His Dream's older sister.

Then, one day, Lady Johanna Constantine is sitting across from His Dream and that won't do at all. Crowley, bless his demonic soul, does owe him some favors. It is only much later does he learn that she is a descendant of the late Lady Constantine and wasn't granted immortality too. At least she survived and, Crowly bless him, would no longer darken the inn's doorsteps.

Calliope is hard, because this is the mother of His Dream's Orpheus, the son His Dream mourned for in his arms (the first time Hob every got to really hold His Dream) and he'd promised His Dream he'd do all he could to ease that pain. Hob couldn't outright kill her or even have one of his associates do it for him. Thankfully, all it takes is a ticket back to Greece and she's gone. (He may have also paid a hefty amount to have a spellcaster bare her entry from the Dreaming and England altogether, but no one needs to know that.)

Hob thought he had it all under control, that he got used to all the lovely woman that surrounded His Dream as none of his darker urges reared their head when a young lass with colorful hair was all but sitting in His Dream's lap the next time they meet up. His Dream was all too happy with how he treated Delirium that night, sending him soft smiles that Hob coveted form himself and himself alone.

He was even polite to Rose Walker, despite wanting to rip her to pieces likes she'd torn apart the Dreaming (the Dreaming was His Dream and His Dream was the Dreaming; that meant, she'd hurt His Dream) when she'd been a Dream Vortex.

However, the night he arrived late to the New Inn and found His Dream sitting at the bar rather than at their table with some guy openly flirting with His Dream and His Dream (obviously to the man's flirting) talking with him, Hob snapped.

Thankfully, his bartender (who wasn't all that of a reformed convict as she pretended to be) knew him well enough and pleaded with His Dream to help her getting Hob's wine down from the top shelf in the backroom (and it made something flutter inside Hob that His Dream only assisted her because it was Hob's wine). When His Dream returned with the wine, Hob had taken the seat the other man stole from him with a fresh cut to his jaw and a bloodstain on his shirt which he readily reassures His Dream was from a minor trip on his way over. Nothing to worry His Dream over and hey, look, His Dream had his favorite wine, they might as well share it together up in his flat where His Dream could clean his injuries if he was so inclined.

So yeah, feral/yandere/possessive!Hob, we need more of those.

Bloodthirsty possessive weirdo Hob is for sure an underrated concept! And you know what? I think Dream would love him.

I mean, we're talking about the Dream who literally wears the skull/spine of an enemy he killed AS A HAT. He put his ex girlfriend in hell. He doesn't exactly have the most shiney moral compass.

And Dream isn't stupid. He knows that Hob has been reigning in his darker impulses and he's actually quite impressed that his friend is so chilled out these days. He knows about Hob’s mercenary past and he knows that it isn't easy to let go of those physical impulses. Even so... it would be nice to see Hob get a little possessive over him. After the whole Burgess fiasco, it would kind of nice to have someone going all defensive, big bad bodyguard-ish for him?

So when he sees that Hob just got in a freakin fistfight while his back was turned for five minutes. That's kind of hot? Dream feels all warm and fuzzy inside for the rest of the evening.

He keeps getting into conversation with random guys at the Inn just to goad Hob into a reaction. Sometimes Dream brings along his own Guy (one of his poor dreams forced to manifest in the waking world so Lord Morpheus can live out his fantasies ig 🙄). Hob gets himself into a tizzy every single time beating these guys up or threatening them or slipping something gross into their drinks. He's getting more and more unhinged every week.

The only problem is that one time Dream brings Destruction along to genuinely meet Hob but Hob is by now so conditioned to go ham on any man he sees talking to His Dream... he ends up in a scuffle with Literal Destruction. It goes about as well as you might expect, Destruction is very apologetic afterwards lol.

The one silver lining? Hob gets to sit on a barstool while Dream patches up his wounds and fusses over him. He even gets a kiss on the cheek!! Scaring off 50% of the inn's patrons with his antics? Entirely worth it.

[lya-dustin]

The food of love

Aka the Oysters

Osferth x fem!reader

Cw:food poisoning and vomit

Gif by @myfandomprompts

My first Osferth one shot yay

You were going to hell for this.

But you have to do this or risk getting married off to some man old enough to be your grandfather.

Besides, Osferth was the king’s natural son and gentle and kind as one would expect of a godly man.

Osferth was handsome, and he was roughly your age and well-read and of good moral standing.

All the other young men you’d scared off this year paled in comparison to him.

And sure he was a monk, but some monks can marry and God did order Adam and Eve to be fruitful, so really this was just fulfilling God’s will.

Yes, God’s will. You were only doing God’s will.

This you tell yourself as you drink wine you pilfered from your father’s stores to wash down the oyster you ate.

Nasty things, they hadn’t been so bad when you had them when visiting the coast, but your maid said they stimulated carnal desire and would aid you in your mission.

The two of you had also overhead him commenting on it when having a very awkward feast with your family.

Why couldn’t it be something else, like pastries, or fruits or anything that wasn’t seafood?

Would he even come?

Did you get the right room?

You get your answer when you hear him talk to his fellow warrior and particular friend and joke that he had better accommodations for being a man of the cloth.

Remember your maid’s advice, show some skin, tease him, touch him casually and be willing to do any sinful thing he wants.

Holy men always have the filthiest minds, your maid had winked before sending you on your way.

If you do as I say you’ll be a married woman by morning.

Your stomach is in knots from the lethal combination of nerves, oysters and wine.

Oh God, the fucking oysters.

No matter, you could maybe get this done before it repeats itself.

“My lady, I, I seem to have been given the wrong room.” He apologized averted his gaze as he saw with your shift barely covering your upper thigh and spread like a whore on his bed.

“Oh you’re in the right room, Father Osferth.” You try to muster some degree of charm as you feel yourself sweat.

Oh, God.

“Just Osferth, Lady Y/N.” he said still avoiding you, turning around so all you see is his back.

Well, this had failed.

He’s such a paragon of virtue he won’t take advantage of a maiden. A maiden who up until now had wondered what did he hide underneath the dumpy robes.

He was tall, your maid said that was often a good thing in the bedroom. You tried to ask why, but you felt stupid in not knowing such things, so you pretended to know what she meant.

“Well, then I am just Y/N.” you say almost as awkwardly as he had said it.

Somehow this relaxed him enough to look quickly over his shoulder and look relieved you had lowered your shift to its natural length: just over your ankles.

“Are you well, Y/N?” the way he asks and spoke your name makes your stomach flutter, or was that the oysters?

No.

“Yes, I am quite well.” You say trying to flirt. “Well, not really, you see, Osferth, I have been plagued by these feelings ---”

Stick to the script your maid wrote, stick the script if you wish to marry a man you can respect and desire. If God’s merciful, a man you can love.

“Oh, erhm. Lady, I ---” his cheeks pink up, its so adorable, you find yourself thinking its just your stupid little infatuation with the warrior monk that’s got you in knots.

“Not a lady tonight, just Y/N.” your voice comes out breathy enough to pass off as seductive.

Good.

Maybe you can get out of here without letting him know you are deeply unwell physically.

Oh god, that was not nerves.

God, please do not let it come until I leave.

New plan, you get out of here before your late snack ends up on his floor, or worse, him.

“Oh, God, are you trying to seduce me, Y/N?” he asks looking at you with genuine concern.

You do not know what possessed you to nod, but you do and even worse, he comes to your side likely noticing how green you must look.

Oh no.

Here it comes.

To your credit you manage not to get anything on him or the furnishings.

You did not even see him pull out the bucket from under the bed serving as his chamber pot.

Osferth is seemingly unbothered by the sight or the smell as he holds your hair back as you empty the contents of your stomach.

You haven’t been this violently ill since you were a child, God, this is humiliating.

“I am very sorry, Osferth.” You apologize as you try to clean yourself up and avoid looking at him in your shame.

Those damn oysters.

You are never touching anything that comes from the sea ever again.

“It is not your fault, the wine may have been too strong for you.” He dismissed as he inspected the food for poison and discreetly looked at your midsection to see if you are secretly harboring a bastard in your belly.

“Not the wine, the damn oysters.” You shook your head and wondered if it were to forward of you to help yourself to the water in the pitcher left for his use.

“Ah, yes, I noticed they smelled off at supper, I did my best to warn my companions.” As if reading your mind he takes the clay cup and fills it for you.

He also takes out the bucket and lies for you when the Irishman, Finian, asks about the noise and the bucket.

“Why were you trying to seduce me?” he asks the question she had assumed had been to obvious too ask.

“I need a husband, one of my one choosing preferably.” You answer honestly and gratefully drink the cold water. Given how unsuccessful your maid’s scheme was, perhaps honesty might help you in this.

Besides how can you seduce or romance a man when you have just vomited in his room.

“I am honored you would think I would be worthy of you, Y/N.” he smiled sheepishly and your heart melts. “But I would have preferred you did not make yourself ill to get my attention.”

“It was my maid’s idea, she believed this was the only way.” You are quick to blame her for this, but you did share the blame as you were far too eager to say yes.

He chucked quietly, and you wonder if this was part of her plan.

Perhaps she knew you’d fail and he’d tale care of you because he was a good man.

You will ask her later, once you can manage leaving the room without being seen.

If you were caught, you would be seen as damaged goods and be tossed out into the woods.

Great.

“I do not have the means to have a wedding worthy of an ealdorman’s daughter let alone the means to have a family at the moment, I am afraid.”

Was he rejecting you?

This couldn’t get any worse.

All this and he says no because he does not have money?

God was punishing you and taking sick delight in doing so.

“But I may ask your father for a long betrothal and return with wealth to wed you.” He amended and you felt your heart soar. “If you still wish to have me.”

And your stomach churn again.

It is a miracle that you make it to your rooms uncaught and without retching.

“I told you, my sweetheart, I told you would return here betrothed to the monk.” Your maid said holding a cup of whatever will rid you of this malaise. “You are a very lucky woman, Y/N, I heard whores fight for a night in bed with him.”

Part ii

[meenawrites]

Lo'ak Modern AU

Guys... I cannot believe I wrote modern AUs for all the blorbos except Lo'ak omg. Criminal. Imma rectify that right now.

SO

Lo'ak definitely has some inferiority complex towards Neteyam especially but also Kiri to a certain extent, just in that both his older siblings are pretty successful in school in such and he feels like a bit of a screw-up in comparison.

He's the type where if he doesn't like something or want to do it, he just won't. Like it's incredibly difficult to make himself apply himself to something he has zero desire to do, and that shows in his schoolwork and general attitude.

He feels guilty towards Neteyam every time he gets lectured by Jake for something Lo'ak got them in trouble for in the first place, but loves that his brother looks out for him.

Lo'ak is smart, he just hates studying.

Spider is basically his best friend and the two combined are likely to get into WAY more trouble than either on their own. They kind of share one braincell together. And with Spider being the Anti-Bully of the school and Lo'ak being the way he is, they tend to get in trouble sometimes just for trying to defend someone (just going about it the wrong way).

Like I've mentioned before in my Spider Modern AU post, Spider definitely helps Lo'ak out with schoolwork. I think it would hurt his pride a lot if one of his older siblings were the ones to do it, but he feels like he and Spider are more equals so he doesn't mind getting school help from him. He insists on keeping it a secret though, but the two of them combined aren't super subtle, so Jake ends up finding out and just pretending in front of Lo'ak that he doesn't know while slipping Spider cash as payment basically for Spider tutoring his son (more on this in my Spider AU post).

I think Lo'ak would be on the basketball team. I don't know I feel like it just fits his vibe very well and he would be a star player. It's actually something he takes great pride in, and he's positively beaming every time his father shows up to one of his games and is cheering for him, just bursting with happiness.

Lo'ak's bedroom would be messy for sure. Like that organized chaos where he knows exactly where everything is but no one else can make heads or tails of anything. Probably has a basketball signed by his favorite player on display somewhere above the mess though. The type to have a bunch of posters scattered all over his walls – a combo of basketball and soccer posters, shounen anime posters, a few bands he's super into, and maybe a few pictures of him and Spider doing stupid shit.

Per @be-the-glenn-to-my-maggie 's post a while ago, Lo'ak definitely joins the cheer team to be closer to Tsireya. You'd think he'd be embarassed or something but he's so head over heels for her that he doesn't really care. It definitely helps that he's like surprisingly good at it, so people don't feel like they can actually poke fun at him for it.

Constantly gets into arguments with Aonung that Neteyam has to pull him away from. It's definitely escalated to physical though, but he's trying to tone it down at least for Tsireya. Helps a little that Aonung and Neteyam seem to be developing... something (Lo'ak be dense like that fr).

I think despite how extroverted Lo'ak is he wouldn't have a lot of very close friends outside of Spider and his siblings. Like maybe some people that are class friends or teammates, but he has a harder time letting someone actually get CLOSE close.

I don't know why I have this image of him really enjoying rock climbing/bouldering? Just feel like that would be a big hobby of his that Spider also shares.

Those are all my thoughts right now? But feel free to add on. I feel like I need to re-watch ATWOW to have more to say.

[wanderlust-in-my-soul]

My Weekly Roundup CW 28

I had a little hiatus on this format, but I am back again. I missed writing about my favorite and not so favorite shows. This week was a real roller coaster! I have watched so much good stuff, but also so much meh stuff.

And yes, this will contain spoilers!

1. Be My Favorite (Ep 8)

Those two are my safe place at the moment. Kawi has understood. He understood that if he wanted to change the future so that no one suffers, he finally had to be honest with himself. It was a process that the drunken subconscious had already completed, only his sober self still struggled a bit to understand that Pisaeng is the one he likes. But we can put that behind us now. He has confessed his feelings to Pisaeng and has now given Pisaeng the chance to court him and I can't wait for that! What I found very successful realized this week was to show how solid Pisaeng is as a person. Even though his life isn't going the way he wants it to (stupid friends and a crush who probably, at this point anyway, doesn't like him in a romantic way) he is still at peace with himself. Our old friend, the little miracle fixer with a few magic tricks up his sleeve, asks him if he should give him a hand and Pisaeng simply replies that he can handle it. I don't even like to imagine what would have happened if he had accepted the help. Pisaeng has nothing to reproach himself for and doesn't regret his previous decisions. Once again, this series simply enchanted me. We all wish from time to time to undo events of the past, but don't think about what impact our decisions and actions would have on the lives of others as well. And Kawi has only thought until the next smile from Paer. But that he as a person was not even ready to shape the future according to his own wishes, he did not understand, which is why he ended up becoming an alcoholic and everyone around him is unhappy. He has had a life in his mind's eye that he thought would make him happy, which it wouldn't because he never got a clue about what would make him truly happy. Until now. And I think it's good that he's allowing himself to be loved and to love.

2. Tokyo in April is... (Ep 5)

I don't know exactly how many times this episode brought tears to my eyes. This series feels so hopeful on one hand and so melancholy on the other. I felt all the emotions along with Ren this week. There was this longing to be close to Kazuma. How he buttoned his shirt and Ren literally melted in this physical closeness. And on the other hand, still the fear of not being good enough for him. When Kazuma offer him the shirt, Ren protests briefly if it's really okay to wear this new and expensive shirt. For Kazuma, it is not a question at all, as he has loved Ren for over ten years. There's nothing but love for Ren, and Ren is worth so much more than a silly shirt. I suffered along with Ren trying to contact Kazuma after he had to go to France, and broke when the connection between them was cut off altogether. And I felt pure joy when the two pairs of shoes were in the doorway and Kazuma sent him the text message with the food and asking when Ren was coming home. I'm very curious to see how they will continue the Sanada story and how extreme they will get.

3. Stay With Me (Ep 5-8)

Whew, this series is killing me. But I love it. You can see parallels to Addicted, and in fact I'm actively trying to avoid comparisons so I don't denigrate the series itself. But we get told so much more than we did in the first adaptation. And it doesn't bother me that Su Yu and Wu Bi aren't as actively bl as Gu Hai and Bai Lou Yin. Maybe it doesn't bother me because I don't know the novel and can't compare the series with it. Anyway, they found out this week that they are stepbrothers and they despise each other again. Well, anyway, that's what they like to tell themselves, but Wu Bi has already stated quite drunkenly that he just can't hate him and doesn't want to hurt him. And Su Yu can no longer pretend that he doesn't miss him either. That's when his own subconscious snapped him out of it, when he thought Wu Bi was sitting in his seat again and a smile crept into Su Yu's face. I think it's just delightful and the acting is really good. Story-wise they do a lot of things right too and the narration feels natural and fluid. I'm absolutely thrilled with the series and it doesn't bother me in the end if we don't get any hot bed scenes. Maybe there's a kiss in it, maybe not. As far as I know, the series is not aired in China, which means they didn't suffer from censorship. The chemistry between Su Yu and Wu Bi is definitely there and great. And honestly, a jealous Wu Bi was already cute and fun to watch. And with scenes like the bicycle rid I am totally satisfied.

4. Minato Shouji Coin Laundry Season 2 (Ep 2)

While I found the first episode very exhausting, I liked the second one much better. It's nice to see what's going on in Minato's head. He can't show it to the outside world how much he loves Shin and as soon as he's with him a bit longer or looks into his face, he runs the risk of giving in to his emotions. Which Shin would have rather less of a problem with. It's frustrating to watch, but with a little more understanding of where Minato is coming from and how much he's suppressed his own feelings over the years, coupled with some internal homophobia, you can understand why he's always trying to control himself and is afraid to let go and live the feelings that burn inside him. The nice thing is that Shin knows who Minato is and appreciates and classifies the little things he does for him. And should Minato eventually get to the point of telling Shin how much he loves him, we'll probably see Shin rapturously slip away into another realm. But yes, with the second episode, the joy of the series has finally returned.

5. La Pluie (Ep 12 - Final)

I'll be honest, the show lost me by the tenth episode. Definitely Patts and Saengtai as a couple. And I also have to confess that I fast-forwarded half of the episode this week. Well, actually, I watched in rapture as Longfom finally told Tien in cotton-candy sweetness that he liked him, and as Tien accepted his confession and landed in his arms overjoyed I couldn't suppress a short squeal. And then came that half-hour montage of Tai looking for Patts. Yes, he had to do some searching, but instead of street impressions and watching Tai ask people if they've seen this vet, I actually would have liked a little more cosiness from Patts and Tai. I could have lived with a short time jump, I don't know, three years into the future. The end came a bit too fast, after all the torture we had to endure. And I don't even want to talk about the ending itself. What kind of shit was that? Should there be a spin-off? Nah, thanks, but I don't need it. Tien was happy for five fucking minutes. Give this boy a break! For me the series ended here:

6. Hidden Agenda (Ep 2)

It's not going to be my highly anticipated series of the week, but I at least liked the second episode a little better than the first. Joke has made it to the debate club and can now help Zo realize his hidden agenda of landing Nita and also tackle his own hidden agenda of courting Zo at the same time. I mean yeah, we know how it's going to turn out. It shouldn't be too much of a surprise at the end, the basic idea of the series is too familiar for that, but still, you can enjoy the ride to the end anyway. The only thing that might be turned off during the ride would be the radio….

7. Low Frequency (Ep 2)

Well, the story itself is interesting. It would just be so nice if the actors didn't just stop acting when they don't have a speaking part. I mean Mon on the one hand looks like he's permanently stoned and like his brain is very empty from time to time. The dialogue just doesn't feel natural, it feels very contrived, which I don't blame the actors for, the director should actually see that and explain to them how to do it better. Well, maybe he thought it was just right…As I said, I like the story and I'll keep watching, but it's amazing how natural the series still feels at 1.5x speed. Well, Thames is a ghost now, whether he's dead or not, I really didn't get Mons' explanation. All I know is that the good guardian spirit gave Mon the important advice not to fall in love with Thames while Thames is standing next to him, and there's never another word said about it, but let's not kid ourselves, Mon is already over the hill with his feelings. We also learn that Thames has been the victim of a plot and that they tried to frame him for the drunk driving accident. No alcohol was detected in the blood, but there was a smell of alcohol at the scene of the accident. Reason enough to cancel him, sure. Why the management doesn't go to the press and say that no blood alcohol was detected, I don't know…But in the end it's not that important. Because this way we can see how Mon will help Thames. How exactly we will see maybe next week.

8. Step By Step (Ep 12 - Final)

The series started out strong. That is, I liked the first episodes and Jeng was and is a feast for the eyes. But my problems with the series started very early. I couldn't really relate to the characters. Pat was whiny and naive. I couldn't understand why Jeng fell in love with him. I don't mean that in a bad way, I just can't see Pat as a potential partner. He's not nearly as mature in my eyes as he should be and as Jeng wants him to be. And Jeng, to me, is a toxic partner. One often thinks of toxic as partners who are either violent whether physically or psychologically or who cheat or manipulate, but Jeng is toxic in a different way. He doesn't leave Pat's growth to himself, but tries to push him into roles he doesn't want to take (yet). But in the process, he also forgets about normal processes and hierarchies. All of this wouldn't have even bothered me all that much if the side story had just been spun on. I still think it's underwhelming that Jaab and Jane were just erased like that. Their story started out so strong and I was really looking forward to it and then Jane breaks up with his boyfriend and Jaab is mad at him? Yeah, that's when it stopped for for me. And after that they were hardly a topic and worst of all was the finale, where they were given a short side scene and you only saw Jaab. It's absolutely unclear what their relationship is. And please, no spin-off! This can't be anything good. In the end, I'm really disappointed in the series and don't miss it. No rewatch potential for me.

9. Dinosaur Love (Ep 4)

To describe this series I would say it is the perfect series for a Sunday evening. After a busy work week and maybe a hectic weekend, it can't get any worse than this series. And for the new week, you can tell yourself it can only get better from here on out. In this fourth episode, Rak has now moved into the dorm, got a roommate who is a real asset to the series with his captivatingly quick manner, Dino has made contact with Rak's father in a creepy way (from where did he et the number?), Dino sang really, really badly, we realized once again that friends should not be trusted in this universe, and Mek is just plain dumb. It was a feast again!

Honorable Mention

His Man Season 2 (Ep 8+9)

I love watching this one so much! There is so much drama going on, but it is not in any cometition with the other series I watch during the week. It is a datin show, so I can't rate it like the full scripted shows. But I love every second of this and I love talking about it with @leonpob! Thank you so much for reaching out! 🤍

Dropped This Week

Yes, there are some shows I am not willing to waist my time with... Not that many, but lately I understood that I can't watch everything!

Be Mine Superstar

After the second episode I just couldn't go on. I don't like the mains, especially Punn. He was just annoying and a big nope for me.

[rei-caldombra]

The time hath come! For a passionate post of one of my favorite series Demon Girl Next Door / Machikado Mazoku. (above image made by me)

Just wanna say right away that I adore this show and I am largely just bringing up positives. This is a gushing post that ended up being super long. And reminder that my writing isn’t meant to be all encompassing and describe the show in every detail. So if there’s something I mention about the show that intrigues you, you should check out the source material (and if I encouraged you to do that then I've succeeded!)! This will contain direct spoilers. I do not bring up every single aspect of the plot and characters, but I bring up many of them. Skip to the end if you just want to hear a short conclusion. 

DGND is incredibly dense despite how simple it seems on the surface. This show is so much more than just goofy wholesome fun. 

When it comes to stupid moe derpy characters, i think Shamiko is one of the best examples of this archetype. She has plenty of personality aside from that. Some stupid characters feel like they only exist to be stupid for gags. They genuinely don’t seem like they can function as a human being on their own, to the point of feeling like they could be offensive portrayals of mental retardation. 

But Shamiko is well rounded. She is not JUST a character who is dumb. Her lack of smarts and common sense does actually have some explanation too. You learn that the curse on Shamiko’s family has a physical effect as well. Shamiko spent most of her childhood in intensive care at a hospital, her physical issues exacerbated by the curse. And Shamiko was not just taking on her portion of the curse, her soul had chosen to take on Ryo’s portion of the curse as well. Before she awakened to her demon heritage, she wasn’t even able to walk through her school without collapsing. She was not able to get a proper education very well before the start of the series.  She had less opportunities than most to get normal experiences. She also had little capacity to be physically active, which gives more reason for her being pathetically weak than because the jokes of her being incapable demand it. This strength of writing just gets better as the series goes on because we see her develop into a character that is less incompetent and less physically weak. Rather than riding on these same failure jokes, we actually see Shamiko develop into a character who is capable. She manages to defeat a magical creature on her own, Sakura (the character who set up this whole town and is the most important non main character in the overall story) basically passes the torch of being the town’s caretaker on to her, she is the leader of the operation and successfully uses her abilities to remove Mikan’s curse and save Ugallu. She starts out the series as incompetent and capable of very little, being liked but looked down on by most of the cast. But she grows to be respected by everyone, to the point where Momo and Mikan eventually do consider themselves her “minions”. She truly grows from a dumb and unconfident little girl into a leader that very capable people like Momo and Mikan see as an equal. She grows mentally as well as physically. She gets access to more magical abilities, she gets less physically unwell, she gets more confident in herself. 

Ryo is shown to be very smart, which makes sense in comparison to Shamiko because she was healthy enough to be in school. And she is not just naturally smart, she actually has the drive to be smarter as she wants to support her sister. Which you can say is her wanting to support Shamiko in return for how Shamiko took on her portion of the curse. Ryo stands out more than just the “smart child” archetype she fits into. DGND is filled with details that elevate even the minor characters into more than just archetypes. 

Shamiko still has the motivation to win and get stronger, but she realizes intentionally hurting Momo or another magical girl isn’t the way she wants to go about it. And she doesn’t want Momo to hurt herself to get her the blood either. Especially when we learn from the accidental blood offering that the result of using blood to lift the curse permanently weakened Momo slightly. Which by reading into the subtext you realize means she lost mana, which according to the way they describe magical girls in this universe, is her entire existence. This is one specific example of how dark subject matter is present in the generally goofy and bubbly story.  

I love Shamiko and Momo’s dynamic, it's the crux of this series and the appeal. Their “rivalry” quickly develops into basically being just a roleplay bit between the two. It changes from Shamiko wanting to physically beat Momo to effectively emotionally overtaking her. She wants to be respected by Momo and make Momo into her vassal. It still has the original intention of making Momo submit to her, but in a more intimate and consensual way. It doesn’t feel like the idea of defeating Momo in battle was forgotten, it feels like Shamiko’s goals and motivations naturally change. 

You really buy into Shamiko and Momo’s friendship because we get so much time with them together. There are other characters who are important and get screen time, but Shaminomo is the focal point. 

DGND is legitimately the only ship I care about in all of anime. Their personalities mesh so perfectly. Simplest way to describe them is tsundere x kuudere. I really want to put emphasis on me, someone who has never cared for shipping, am very into this ship. I live for cute fanart of them together. They have so many cute and funny interactions. The way their personalities flip on the stereotypes of a demon and magical girl are very good. Shamiko is incredibly pure, always wanting to help people and find a peaceful solution. On the other hand Momo is fairly dark in the way she thinks, being more conniving and directly confrontational when a situation comes up. 

There’s so many situations where the series has very obvious romantic subtext. And I fully buy into it, it works so well. Its romantic af. I also think their dynamic is written very great because you don’t HAVE TO interpret their relationship as romantic. You can see it as just very close friends. Or you can see them as having a sisterly bond, having the report of both argumentative and caring similar to how I’ve heard people describe sisters. The idea of Momo’s (not blood relative) sister’s core literally being in Shamiko also lends some credence to this interpretation. 

Do I think they’re gonna be in a romantic relationship by the end of this? Probably not. But that doesn’t necessarily mean this is trashy gay baiting. I think it being up to interpretation is fine when it’s backed up by good writing. And here it absolutely is. And even though I made the point that you could see it as unromantic, I just can’t lol. Just to give one example- Shamiko learns about the vassal contract (aka demon marriage) that her Mom and Dad went through and then immediately goes to Momo and says she should be her vassal. That scene has very obvious romantic intention and you cannot deny it. And this moment is not just some one-off thing to get the yuri fans going again, the idea of Momo becoming Shamiko's vassal is very important going forward from there.

I love these two so much as a couple. They have hilarious back and forths, their personalities mesh very well, we see their growing understanding of each other, they can be adorably possessive at times, there's is just so much endearing and charming about their dynamic. I finally understood how people who are super into a ship feel. 

All of the characters are at least enjoyable in some way, but the heart of the show is the main duo. And the show never really tries to go against that. If you don’t ship Shamiko and Momo that's fine, but to me it never really presents anyone else as super shippable other than Mikan, and It's very clear that isn't something the show itself is pushing. 

To quickly go on about other core characters- Lilith is really great, she is really cute and has a lot of funny jokes. And later on she ends up spending less time being the butt of jokes and is genuinely very helpful. Ryo is cute and her relationship with her sister is super wholesome, Mikan is really great and gets a lot of personality and more to do S2 onwards, Shamiko’s mom has some funny moments and has an interesting role, Anri is funny and a good goofball friend, Lico is a funny addition who grew on me a lot, Shirosawa has some funny moments and works as a straight man to Lico’s shenanigans (as well as being the only male character in the show), Sion was my least favorite at first but she also gets a lot to do later and gets more characterization than just “occult + science girl”. 

DGND has a much larger and overarching story than most cute wholesome shows do. And it’s written very well. It seems like this would be a mostly episodic cute event of the week kind of story, but its got a heavy story and complete continuity. Story details are spread out well, dripped in between various normal moments in the show. There are constantly little hints being thrown around about the history and background elements. A lot of things that initially seem like just gags actually end up being relevant to a later scene or the overall story. There are a lot of visual details that end up being used later. The story resonates very strongly because the characters are deeply involved in it. A simple story for this simply could’ve been “an evil threat enters the peaceful town and Shamiko and crew need to stop it” with some random villain. Instead, everyone is relevant. Shamiko’s father is involved, Momo’s sister is involved, Shamiko being in the hospital is involved. The town and the characters in it really feel like they have history, and that history is very important to them and the story. And the story does have a lot of dark elements to it. I really like how this very positive and upbeat series has these serious and dark accents that help to balance it out. It makes it more engrossing. It's a very good mix of goofy with enough dark and dramatic elements to make you pause and think seriously about what is going on. The show manages to have plenty of simple episodic bits where it's just the characters being cute and having fun, but not too often or lacking little bits that remind you that there's a serious story and deeper issues. The story generally just continues being interesting and engaging, it never really dips. There are lots of mysteries that you really want to know the answers to. 

One moment I like from episode 12 is when Shamiko, Momo and Lilith are talking about Shamiko becoming her vassal.

This just seems like a joke in the moment since they are calling out how Momo is much more like a Demon and should fall to darkness by becoming Shamiko's vassal. Later on this is exactly what happens, despite Momo declining becoming her vassal. But even if you did immediately think this is foreshadowing, when it does come back up it's not exactly how or when you would expect it. So, it's interesting and surprising whether you assumed its foreshadowing or not. This is just one of many moments and a more direct one where something you expect to just be a joke ends up being an important detail later that gets revisited.

A truly unique aspect of the town is how demons and magical girls are set up to not interact with each other. That is in order to apparently keep the peace. Shamiko is able to transcend this because she has Sakura’s core. So she is the only one who can unite all the magical people in the town in order to figure things out and protect the town. I really like this detail. 

To compare DGND to another one of my favorite series, the town of DGND feels similar to Morioh of Jojo part 4. Over time we spend so much time getting to know different places and people in it that it grows into a place that you can believe exists. You see all the moving parts and areas that make it function. You can imagine where people go and what they do outside of what's directly on screen. This is what is required to make a fully realized setting, and as a result makes the story very engrossing. Reaching this should be the main goal of a series that has a static setting, and I feel both these shows excel at this.

There is so much well written slow growth in the series. Shamiko and Momo opening up to each other, Shamiko growing more capable, Lilith being able to interact more, the characters learning about the history of the town. It's very satisfying and feels natural. Its distributed very well. 

Where many stories rely on big lore dumps, DGND never has this problem because of how well details are parceled throughout the series. Momo starts out as a very taciturn character you don’t know much about. Momo never goes on some long rant about her entire sad backstory in one moment. That isn’t necessary because if you pay attention during the dialogue, you can get all of it in a more natural way. As it comes out organically through her conversations with Shamiko and other characters and when the story actually demands that information. She doesn’t need to directly say that she is depressed because you can figure that out from how she talks and acts in little moments. She doesn’t need to directly say why she is not an active magical girl anymore because you can figure out that bad things went down from little moments in her conversations. The writing is not lazy and does not treat the viewer like they are dumb. It gives you the opportunity to speculate and figure things out yourself, then later when it makes sense for the characters to be direct, they clarify things. 

Putting great writing aside for just a moment, DGND is SO CUTE AND WHOLESOME. So many moments of the characters just getting along and having fun together that are super endearing. This show is just so charming and makes you smile. 

DGND is also very funny. Shamiko and Momo’s report is hilarious, especially at the beginning when they’re more at odds. There’s lots of silly weird gags, like puns and random goofy things. All over you can see little visual gags, like text on an object or a goofy item. DGND has a openly goofy tone that it presents confidently. One recurring joke that's really funny is how all the normal people react tamely to all the magical stuff that goes on. There’s a good mix of different kinds of jokes. There are also lots of gags parodying magical girls. I mentioned how I like how it has the negative perspective of magical girls to balance the positive aspects. The show continues to be very balanced by having magical girl parody as well as unironically cool magical girl things (mainly the transformations). It does its silly moments in good ways. Its goofy but doesn’t do it too much and make it feel like its random just for the sake of it. The anime mixes goofiness and story perfectly. I love the tone of this series so much. 

There isn’t exactly a ton of serious life messages, but there’s nice stuff about societal expectations and getting along with people. When it comes to the magical society, it's very clearly anti segregation and anti-stereotyping based on race. 

This show has the philosophy of “finding joy in the little things” that you see a lot in Japanese media. Such as the very poor Shamiko family still remaining happy. I’ve always vibed with this perspective and like how it's portrayed here. 

DGND is not the best-looking show visually in the animation department, but it is great where it matters, and the weaker parts are often played as a strength. The art is generally very good but the animation is very limited. But especially in season 1 the limited visuals are played very well. Whether it's the magical transformations still looking very good or using limited animation to do funny gags (like the EEEHHH gif you probably saw even if you did not watch the show when it first came out where they just wiggle around the static image). Imo the limited animation really doesn’t hurt the viewing experience. And it gets better in S2. All the magical transformations are really good. I think the coloring in particular for the anime are very nice. 

And there’s one visual aspect of DGND that takes a lot of extra effort, which is the character designs. One visually distinct thing that elevates DGND above a lot of anime is the number of outfits the main characters have. It adds so much more personality. They feel so much more alive because it feels like they actually have a closet full of clothes. There is so much more effort put into the character design. So many series just have the characters in a singular outfit 99% of the time. Which is understandable because that's easier to draw and replicate. But it can make them feel more like a character that only exists for that singular thing. Characters only shown in combat outfits are hard to imagine in another scenario when they aren't on the battlefield. With school uniforms it's hard to imagine then without them. But with DGND the number of outfits we get for the characters make it easier to imagine them in a variety of situations. They feel like they have lives because they have all the outfits they would for people who have normal lives. Sometimes shows feel like time stops in between what we as the audience see, like the characters don’t have lives outside of what we see. But DGND in multiple ways avoids this issue due to its character designs and other details. This is an incredibly important point to me. I absolutely love this aspect of the show and wish more shows did this. I have a lot more respect for the art of the show because of this point. 

Another character design aspect that is done very well is Shamiko’s tail. Her tail is incredibly expressive and constantly moving and changing. It portrays a lot of her emotions and is a thing for us and also the characters in the show to react to. I love the characters, primarily Momo, reacting to Shamiko’s tail expressions. It really shows how Momo pays attention to Shamiko and makes the characters feel like they have more spacial awareness. Bring that up because I feel sometimes shows can make characters appear to only see or hear what the writing allows them to in a questionable way. Verbal example of this is when a character says half a sentence before getting cut off, and everyone acts like they heard nothing at all. The anime portrays the tail well, and further makes Shamiko a very expressive and an interesting character to watch. Which is very important for a main character. 

While there can be limited animation it still succeeds at making the characters be very expressive. There are lots of great faces.

I also like all of the openings and endings. One thing nice about them is that they don’t directly spoil anything like many openings tend to but do have little things that can make you go “oh i know what that creature is” or “I get that now!”. 

Now to the sound design, which is immaculate. The anime has the best sound effects of anything I’ve watched. There are so many great goofy sound effects that add to the character's reactions. My favorite has to be the train whistle toy used when Shamiko or Lilith is angry. The sound effects further add to how expressive the characters feel. The creators clearly had a ton of fun doing the sound design and it comes through. A fun goofy soundtrack for a fun and goofy show. 

The music is also very good as a whole. I usually don’t pay a ton of attention to background music but I’m obsessed with DGND so I do here. I think the BGM fits well with the setting. They sound very magical and fantastical while also sounding modern. It's very peppy and can get high energy with Shamiko’s strong reactions, while also being very low during the slower moments. And sad when it needs to. I’m not great at describing good music since I’m not a huge fan of music, so I’ll just say it's far above average in my opinion. My favorite track is probably Shamiko’s transformation theme. 

The voice acting (just talking about the Japanese voice actors, i haven’t seen a lot of the eng dub) is super good. Of course, Konomi Kohara is absolutely amazing as Shamiko. She is the master of cute anime girl noises and gives so much energy in her performance. She brings out Shamiko’s wide range of emotions and mannerisms extremely well. Momo’s voice acting is also extremely good, the soft but dull voice perfectly fits Momo’s character. All around the voice acting is excellent but the main two really have their personalities on full display from the voice acting. 

When it comes to anime vs manga, I do like the manga. But the voice acting, soundtrack and anime additions add so much for me. I have to recommend the anime over the manga. But if you are more sensitive to the anime girl noises type of thing and find it annoying, you will likely enjoy the manga more. 

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Each individual aspect of the show is strong. The characters and the world are very dense and endearing with great drama and emotion behind them. If you are into light romances, you will very much adore the sweet relationship between Shamiko and Momo. If you enjoy light fantasy then I feel DGND provides a unique world with interesting interpretation of magical girls and demons. If you just like comedies, DGND will keep you laughing constantly with its silly gags. If you enjoy a detailed story that builds over time, you should greatly enjoy the story here. If you just want girls doing cute and wholesome things there’s plenty of it. I really do recommend this series to anyone. 

I absolutely adore this series, it's very close to my heart. It’s in my top favorites and I consider it my comfort show. Fanart of DGND never fails to make me feel a little happier. I love this goofy world and its endearing characters. I love the complex and constantly developing story. I love the wholesomeness with dark flavors behind it. 

I had a ton of fun writing this one! It brought me a lot of joy getting back into the nitty gritty of this series. I wrote a ton for this and spent way more time on it than my other posts so far. Hopefully it wasn’t too much messier than the others in terms of formatting, separation etc. It’s so long and I didn’t want to spend a ton more time just doing minor edits lol. But I truly did put a lot into this one, it deserves it! I really tried to put down anything I thought of well and remove very little. I could go on even more if I let myself, but I do not want to force it and have this take a long time. I've written enough, I'm satisfied.

Also if you want to hear more gushing about this show and get that episode by episode, I highly recommend Anime Slushie’s YouTube videos on DGND. I like their discussions on the show. And re-listening to them helped me to get the writing juices flowing. If we get a season 3 you better believe I’ll be doing episode by episode posts where I go into detail on everything. 

I want to end this by wishing the absolute best to Izumo Ito, the author of DGND who has been combating health issues. Thank you for all your hard work on this amazing series! Thanks for reading! Please check out Demon Girl Next Door / Machikado Mazoku! And please give us season 3.