#although max DOES have one specific interest

[popironrye]

The Lost Boys

Leisure Headcanons

💋 David 💋

Is a skilled fire arm shooter. (Loves the cowboy aesthetic)

Has his own gun hidden in the cave.

Doesn't get the chance too often, but will ride a horse when the chance arises.

Likes wood carving. Mostly non specific whittling into basic shapes or animals. It helps him relax.

Movie nut! When the boys go the Max's store to fool around, David makes sure to tuck a movie or two that catches his eye in his coat. Tends to watch them alone, all the questions from Paul would just grate on his nerves too much.

I imagine David would be like REALLY good at origami for no particular reason. He doesn't even try, just once the boys do it just because and he's just the best at it.

I don't know if vampires can emerge in water in the lost boys lore, but if they can David loves to swim. Chilling in water clears his mind.

💀 Dwayne 💀

Skater boi! Does a lot of sick tricks, but when you can levitate it's less impressive. XD

Doesn't care for guns, but likes archery. Hammers his own arrow heads. Dwayne and David like to pick a spot in the woods to shoot make shift targets.

A real book worm. Will spend a lot of time just silently reading for hours.

Takes up knitting from time to time. He prefers hand knitted blankets and throws rather then the store ones.

Likes to make jewelry. Made his own necklace.

Enjoys all types of puzzles. Cross word, jigsaw, and brain teasers.

Can sew and offers to sew up holes made in all the clothes the boys decide not to get new ones.

🌿 Paul 🌿

Can play the guitar.

Also likes to sing, and is pretty good at it. Wanted to start a band, but the other boys weren't up for it.

Has the biggest music collection and is always hogging the tabletop/cassette/cd player.

Amateur photography. Just likes to take photos randomly. Some are really artsy.

Got really into tie dye for a while. Although he might have just been high.

When he wants to relax, Paul really likes to stargaze. Laying outside the cave looking at the sky and hearing the waves of the ocean just makes him feel at peace.

When David isn't using the tv monitor, Paul enjoys quite a few video games. He also likes to take on the arcade and carnival games at the boardwalk.

🪶 Marko 🪶

Aside from pigeons, Marko will try to domesticate a number of animals to the cave, including stray dogs, cats, deer, badgers, squirrel, foxes, bats, and even a black bear once.

He in fact did NOT domesticate a black bear, but he did wrestle one.

He does his own patchwork on his jacket.

Like David, he likes to sculpt into wood, but he usually carves patterns and landscapes into more grand pieces.

He's also a skilled painter. Mostly he'll paint murals on sections of the cave David says is ok for him to paint on.

He collects sea shells on the beach.

He'll style the others hair. Especially David who he'll cut and dye in the way he likes best.

🔥Pack Activities🔥

Dart throwing. The bigger the target the better. David and Dwyane are very competitive at this one specifically.

Rollerblading. Put wheels on shoes, what more can you want?

Listening to music. The boys have very wide music tastes and sometimes they cross over and they all like the same stuff. They take turns around the player of their choice to just smoke, drink, and listen to the sounds of the music plays.

Card games. Specifically poker when they're all together. They make things more interesting when they make bets.

And of course motocycle cruising and board walk loitering.

Something that always strikes me with vampires in fiction and indeed with any immortal creature with the high and emotional intelligence of humans. IMMORTALITY IS FUCKING BORING!

I mean, think about it. Imagine you're given all the free time in the world with very little responsibility with no fear of getting sick or tired allowed to do pretty much whatever you want. What would you do? Cause I would go stir crazy. So I came up with these dumb little head canons on how I image the boys specifically would pass the time in their little vampire lives that doesn't revolve around murdering and feeding off of people.

Of course cruising on their bikes come to mind. And there's a couple in the movie we get to see like Dwayne's skateboarding and Marko's fondness for pigeons but I wanted to throw more possibilities out there. :3

[shiraoyagi]

i kinda wanna talk about how an shiraishi feels relatable to me as an aromantic person

disclaimer: i am not saying that an shiraishi is canonically aromantic. i am just discussing the relation of my experiences to hers, which also ties into why i headcanon her as such. if u hc an otherwise that is perfectly fine!!! u r super cool

so basically, i know this may surprise people, but an's relationship with kohane of all characters is what started to make me headcanon her as aromantic.

the way she treats kohane, specifically how she is super affectionate to her and how she talks about her constantly, is incredibly similar to how i used to treat one of my friends.

for a while, i thought i had a crush on them because that's what all my other friends told me it was, but in reality, it was a squish. i was super affectionate to him like an was to kohane and wouldn't shut up about it, which led to my other friends believing i had a crush on them.

not only does an's general behavior remind me of that, but an's behavior in her first mixed event reminds me of something else i went through too— accidentally leading someone on that you're friends with that has romantic interest in you.

the way kohane compliments an and blushes around her during the event while an seems oblivious and treats kohane's compliments like it was just a friend thing is very similar to things i've gone through... especially since i've had to go through this kind of stuff three times now

i also headcanon kohane and an to be in a queerplatonic relationship... which i think one of my favorite things is about how the whole concept of partners in vbs lore pushes the boundaries of traditional relationships.

in nene's 2nd mixed, the character that akito plays's supposed partner is a ladle. this means that partners can be inanimate objects.

in akito's 2nd mixed, ishihara's dog, max, is his partner. this means that partners can be animals and also emphasizes how partners can be platonic. this is further supported by the 2nd white day card article having the artist describe touya's dragon in his card as his partner (although its likely to be an akito reference)

akito and touya are described as best friends. if you see it as nothing further than that, then partners can also be best friends

taiga and ken were also partners, but ken is married to yuka (not saying you can't ship them though)

idk i feel like this is clpls way of saying "it can be whatever the fuck you want!!" and i respect that.

but anyways that's basically why i find an relatable in this regard... and i think we should acknowledge vbs's queerness in this kind of angle more often, too

thank you for reading!!!

[mastermatoyas]

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem - A Long-Overdue Review

Way back in 2015, I was a fresh-faced 21 year old just getting into the world of visual novels - specifically otome games. At the time, there was a lot of buzz about this one upcoming game with a really promising demo - Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem, slated for a 2016 release.

Nine years later, it's finally out (in early access)! Let's see if it was worth the wait.

What kind of game is this, anyway?

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem was, and is, unlike any other game I have ever seen before. Considering the absolute development hell it went through, I doubt we'll ever see a game quite like it again. The demo that I played back in the day included the first three weeks of the game, and it had me absolutely hooked.

Seven Kingdoms: The Princess Problem is a stat-raising visual novel. Basically, it's a game focused on storytelling through text and still images, with the core gameplay loop consisting of raising various skills in order to pass (or fail) challenges. The game is set on the mysterious Vail Isle, where seven nations have each sent seven young representatives to forge political alliances (through marriage or otherwise), advance their nation's interests, and - at least ostensibly - protect the fragile peace between them.

As the player, you create a character from one of six nations (the seventh nation, Skalt, is not an option), build their stats, and try to survive seven weeks on the island (and maybe find love along the way?). The game is notoriously difficult - if you go in blind, you'll almost certainly fuck up at least a few things massively. There are two difficulty settings, Challenge Mode and Story Mode. In Challenge Mode, you can fail badly enough to either get kicked off the island or die. Story Mode is a little kinder - certain skill checks have lower requirements (at least allegedly), and no matter what you do, you won't die or get sent home early. You can still fuck up in just about every other way possible in Story Mode, though.

The choices you make during character creation have a major impact on your success or failure. Aside from the stats you raise during character creation, and the background you choose, there are also a number of options you can choose to influence your character's personality. Although all stats have some relevance, some of them end up being a lot more important than others - which makes sense, since this is a social and political simulator. Being good at talking to people is going to get you a lot further than being good at self-defence.

The gameplay loop

This, to me, is what makes 7KPP unique. It's actually possible, in a single playthrough, to impress every character and get the best possible outcome for every nation. It's also incredibly difficult, and requires making the right choices at basically every turn. You have to say the right things to the right people while having the right stats, and be in the right place at the right time. You have to minmax your character from the moment you start creating them, and never stop min-maxing both your stats and your relationships.

And it is FUN AS HELL.

Obviously, you don't actually "have" to do any of this. You can play the game normally, and get some good outcomes and some bad outcomes. I'd recommend doing this on your first playthrough at least, to get a feel for the game before you get bogged down in spreadsheet guides.

The stat-raising gameplay is roughly similar to raising simulators like Princess Maker or Long Live the Queen, but it's also not quite the same. It's not like stat-raising visual novels are a new concept, but I've never found anything that does quite what this game does the way it does it.

Characters

This game contains... hang on, let me count. I think eleven romance routes plus one friendship route, three characters that you can befriend (but not romance) outside of their full route, three more love interests that haven't been implemented yet, a rival character, and a few other important characters.

The cast is massive, is my point. But pretty much every character has at least some level of depth. They all have their own goals and motivations, and you can either help or hinder them. There are actually more routes than there are love/friendship interests, because political marriages are an option in the game separate from romances. Depending on your choices, certain other characters may enter into political marriages.

There's a wide range of characters, and I'm not going to describe them all here. I am, however, going to give a special shout out to the female love interests in the game. There are three at the moment (with two more coming), which is a pretty good ratio for a game about political marriages set in a fantasy world where only one kingdom allows same-sex marriage to begin with. It also avoids one of the common pitfalls I've found in games with both male and female love interests, in that the female love interests are actually interesting. Your options are:

Meek shy maid. She's very sweet and I like her a lot, but I'll admit to not finding that character type super interesting as a love interest. Nevertheless, this type of love interest seems really common in Western indie visual novels with both male and female love intersts. I think it's because they're broadly non-threatening?

Cool, tough warrior lady with the heart of a golden retriever. This is Tumblr, the muscle woman website, so I probably don't need to sell you on this one.

Evil princess. This is great for me, because I love complicated relationships in fiction, and because I had become resigned to the Bioware style habit game devs have of making the mean women straight. That is not the case here! They actually let you have the toxic yuri of your dreams! You can kinda fix her, or you can make her worse. I think she can also make you worse. Not sure. Either way, I haven't played her route yet, but I am so looking forward to it.

For the first half of the game, you'll probably spend a lot of time getting to know the various characters. The plot picks up in the later half of the game, which means that you have a lot less time to spend with the various characters, especially romanceable characters other than the love interest you chose. To be honest, that made me a bit sad - I put a lot of effort into trying to befriend all of the love interests, and it would have been nice to spend more time with them. Although considering that it's really hard to befriend them without them also developing romantic feelings for you, it does make a lot of sense - they distance themselves from you after being rejected.

They do show up throughout the story as well, in the later weeks, but if I had a criticism of the character writing, it's that I would have liked the love interests you don't choose to have a bit more relevance. However, given the massive amount of branching in the game and the fact that they are still actually there and involved in a lot of major story moments, it's not a major criticism. Realistically, I don't think they could have done more with those characters than they actually did - I just grew fond of them, and wanted to see more of them.

Luckily, this game has a ridiculous amount of replay value, so I'm sure I'll see more of them on their own routes.

Story and writing

Honestly, I think this is the part of the game that's going to be the most hit or miss. I personally really enjoyed the story, but the premise involves a basic assumption about human nature that I think is going to chafe for a lot of people: namely, the assumption that diplomacy can work.

The world of 7KPP is on the brink of war. It is possible, although extremely difficult, to turn that situation around through sheer skill and diplomacy, and instead bring all of the nations into a golden age of peace and cooperation. I think it's very easy to say that this is unrealistic - that people never change just because someone said the right things at the right time. And to a certain extent, that might be true.

But also, it's a video game. If you do all the right things and you're really good at the game, you get rewarded with outcomes that are maybe a bit unrealistic. That's true for all kinds of games, not just this one. If you play normally, you'll probably get some realistically ordinary or even depressing outcomes. You have to earn your happy ending. Right now, at this point in history, it's very easy to see the worst of humanity. It's very easy to believe that things keep getting worse, that selfishness and greed will always win out. And it's true, they often do.

But I think it's important to remember that it doesn't have to be that way. Sometimes, miracles really do occur. Sometimes, people and society really do change. For all of the misery of the past few decades, we've also seen a lot of amazing people doing amazing things, individually and collectively. I think most people, fundamentally, want to live in a world that does not suck, and 7KPP is a game about reminding people of that fact.

Basically, I agree with the fundamental philosophy of the game, and I think the fact that you can fix everyone's problems if you play the game right is a feature and not a bug. But I can see how that philosophy is going to be a much tougher sell in 2024 than it was in 2015.

I will say that the writing can be a bit clumsy at times. There are a lot of typos in the later sections of the game (although those will probably be fixed), and the prose and dialogue can sometimes be a bit... unpolished, I suppose. I think that's mostly just a matter of experience, to be honest. This was the dev's first project, so I suspect that her future work will benefit greatly from the ten years she spent writing 7KPP. I'll hasten to add that the writing isn't, by any means, bad. If you're not especially picky about prose, you'll probably think I'm being overly harsh. Most indie visual novels don't meet the standard I'm imposing on 7KPP here, but I'm still going to impose that standard because I don't want anyone to buy the game as a result of my review and then end up being disappointed by this aspect of it.

Other

The game was made in Ren'py by a solo dev who isn't a programmer, so the code is apparently duct taped together under the hood. I didn't encounter any bugs, so that hasn't been a problem for me.

The game balance is kind of amazing - it's really impressive just how tight the skill checks are if you're going for the best possible result, without any New Game Plus bonuses. It's doable, but only just, and I can't imagine how much of a headache it must have been to make that happen.

I find the UI kind of ugly, if I'm being honest. It's not super navigable, and it's somewhat unfinished, with the calendar only going up to Week 3 (unless that's a bug). Apparently the UI is on the list of things that they're going to attempt to fix throughout early access, with the dev planning to hire on someone with more programming experience.

I like the art style. It's quite unique, which is going to put off a certain sub-section of the visual novel community, but oh well. There aren't a huge number of CGs, or flashy effects or anything like that, but I don't think this game really needs that to begin with.

Most (possibly all?) of the music is creative commons, so it's nothing special. I did feel like some of the music wasn't a great choice for the mood, although I generally liked the character leitmotifs. They very clearly did not have the budget for original music, and it's also pretty far down the list of priorities, so that's not a real complaint. If they'd had infinite resources, it would have been cool to see some original music. They did not have infinite resources, and it would be unrealistic to expect anything other than what we got.

Conclusion

Here's the link to the game on itch.

I would heartily recommend buying the game if you enjoy any of the following:

Visual novels in general

Political intrigue

Complex stat raisers

Interesting and likeable ensemble casts; or

Innovative video games, just in general. Seriously, I meant it when I said that there is nothing quite like this game out there. You really do need to experience it in order to understand that.

Despite the relatively minor criticisms I've had, I really believe in this game. I believe it's something special, and after the amount of time it spent in development hell, I really, really want it to succeed. I will wear my bias on my sleeve here - I want to see more devs take these kinds of risks. I want this dev's ten years of work to pay off.

It's not a perfect ten, but it's a ten to me, damn it.

Side notes

This game used to have a thriving fandom on Tumblr, but that well and truly died. There are some active threads on the itch.io community page for the game, but I want to know where to go to post memes. If anyone knows, please tell me.

I hope it isn't Twitter, though. Fuck that.

I somehow got into this game right after the Kickstarter ended, which I've been salty about for nine years. I literally just missed it. Absolute tragedy.

I'm aware that the creator is active on Tumblr, and since I'm tagging this post with the game's tag, there's a non-zero likelihood that she'll read it. So, Aly, if you've read this far: hi! I really liked your game! Hope you're doing well. It's honestly a bit awkward to review a game knowing that the dev might see it, since it's always going to include some element of unsolicited criticism, but there's no real way around that. This review was aimed at potential players, which meant that I had to be comprehensive and honest. I hope that makes sense.

[myworld-collapsing]

finally dropping this for zero, and his redesign ! there are, truthfully, some more characters to be listed but i have either forgotten them or am having an extremely hard time articulating my thoughts, so ill just offer these for now . .

sirius belongs to @junebluues ! ( i hope this helps with things : D ! ill release a interaction between him and sirius soon . . )

explanations from left to right & from up to down !

——————————————————————————————————

till - alien stage : yeagh, it’s generally the yearning and the feelings . though for different reasons and in different ways .

like june said and suggested, sirius makes zero feel like something . they make him want to be something . he in his own way, yearns to be seen and understood by sirius . ( maybe even loved . but that is a far, faraway dream he detaches himself from . )

he doesn’t really act on these feelings, though . ( in fact, it’d probably even seem hes avoiding them at times ) he doesn’t need sirius to show interest or even like him in return, he just needs them to be their truest self always, and be genuinely happy in those and their circumstances, for him .

——————————————————————————————————

sua - alien stage :

from their shared original lack of life and dehumanization, and how they are both eventually brightened by another .

——————————————————————————————————

sunny - omori :

more on a surface level . they both share the shyness and quietness, but also the lacks in self - esteem and worth, as well as zero also being frustrated easily . he’s good in about all fields, but truly doesn’t have any fondness towards any of his “ talents “ . instead, he resents them all . there’s a reason for this, but since it’s pretty simple, ill probably discuss it further later, but i wont put it on here .

——————————————————————————————————

sakura nanamine - toilet - bound hanako kun / tbhk :

also more on a surface level ! they’re both pretty aloof and don’t express their emotions very often .

——————————————————————————————————

nina - artiswitch :

they’re the most similar, in my opinion . both empty and hollow as people, with their shared lack of feelings of belonging to, well, anywhere . they also both have a person who starts them on a path of change . when zero finally starts to try to be something, to help himself, he also starts to try to help others . well, kinda . he’s just a bit more open to others, id say . . it’s not very easy to articulate my exact feelings about these 2 but please just trust me guys 😭

——————————————————————————————————

me :

i would be lying if i said i didn’t insert some of my own self into zero . . though it’s up to all of you to guess how much .

——————————————————————————————————

extra notes ! : ( TW : i dont know how to do these properly . . but there is a purging mention . )

he has clinical depression . he doesn’t take antidepressants . - ( but, he does have many other assortments of prescriptions by his guardian, keirii . he keeps all of these in a specific drawer particularly to keep his roommate ( who anyone is free to ask to be ! ) from reaching them and possibly overdosing . )

although i didn’t include it in his profile, one of his least favorite things is eating . he has a quite sensitive stomach, and often feels sick after eating . he purges because of this . - ( he was once confined to anakt’s clinic for a month because of more severe incident of this tendency . )

he had a lobotomy - like operation done on him when he was young, by keirii of course, ( she prefers non - emotional organisms ) and barely survived it . - ( he can of course still feel emotions from how he feels towards sirius ( ill actually expand on these later, but for now, zero can’t put an exact label on them . ), but they’ve been hardwired to just be not as strong . )

his guardian, keirii, generally specializes in the study of the max of the physical and mental endurances of individual organisms, and death processes when the limit is finally crossed . - ( she often conducts her studies and experiments on humans, wagyeins, and sometimes when she is permitted to, the corpses of segyein . they’re often of a wide range of diversity in each individual species . because of her high profile in the industry, and known rare race in birth, she often has rare types of test subjects present . )

zero was luckily, spared these treatments .

but, keirii did occasionally let him overview some of her ongoing projects, and files or recordings of these as well . because of this, zero does have a general understanding and ability in the field .

he might have had a forced transition . i have a feeling keirii would much prefer a son over a daughter . .

like dante, ( @rockwgooglyeyes ) in a way, zero doesn’t appear that often . he doesn’t do this on purpose though . - ( also to note, he actually doesn’t have anything against dante . he’s aware, that, although he’d like it, he doesn’t deserve and isn’t entitled to nothing and or anything from sirius . dante seems to make sirius truly happy, and zero is grateful to dante for that . )

he’s allergic to eggs, so he can’t really eat much either way . though im sure he gets specially tailored meals ( that he doesn’t eat 90 % of the time ) payed for by keirii .

there is an issue with his collar ( or him ) that makes it so, whenever he has one on, it never displays any emotion indicating color onto the light, remaining a nuetral gray that’s only present when collars aren’t being worn . he often gets his collars changed weekly or monthly for this, even though there’s no difference .

he straight up doesn’t have a name and was never given one . . he’s just labeled by the only number in his id 😭

——————————————————————————————————

anyways, if anyone would like to be friends or uhm partners with my sopping wet sad alley cat of a boy, don’t be afraid to ask ! here or in my asks or discord, either ways are fine : D !

i think there could possibly be an opening for a friend in his incident ? he did collapse right after in the bathroom, and im sure someone would have had to found him and brought him to the clinic .

another concept would be whoever helps him during his recovery . although they wouldn’t be there all the time, im sure they’d take daily visits to give him his classwork, and also to get him his lunch and medicine and make sure he consumes both without promptly throwing it all up, among other things . if no one steps up to it though, im sure a segyein would be able to do it .

ill probably be updating his profile soon, but,

im changing it back, his voice claim is chogakusei’s vocals in this cover,

and id also say this instrumental kind of matches his overall vibe !

[the-modern-typewriter]

Would you talk about your process of writing short stories, if you don't mind? Do you outline it before hand? do you make it up as you go? is it the same w the prompts you get vs stories like The Blue Key or The Art of Turning 30?

It's different for stories that are prompted on here and stories like The Blue Key, The Gallery of Broken Things or the Art of Turning 30 which I have come up with entirely independently and unprompted.

It's also sometimes different for stories that are prompted on here, and other stories I've written based on a prompt from a friend, such as Escapology, Half Sick of Shadows and My Love is Like a Red, Red Rose - but these are more similar because they are still varying degrees of prompt based.

The first question, when I have an idea/prompt, is how big do I want the story to be. Some ideas require novels, some are perfect for short stories. Figuring out which is which comes with practice.

Writing from a prompt

Stories that are triggered by a prompt come (to a point, some prompts are more specific/detailed than others) with a certain amount of inbuilt scaffolding or clues as to what the story must be about.

I talk about different sources of ideas, including writing from a prompt, in this post. The prompt bit gives a sense of my general process when writing tumblr stories with more specific prompts.

For a non specific prompt...

The next tumblr inbox prompt I think I'm going to write when I have a sufficient moment is:

ah, could you write something about a vampire x mortal who always reincarnates

It's a tumblr drabble, I'm thinking 2000 words max, so fairly simple without an elaborate planned plot. It's just for fun. I don't go into the story assuming I am going to continue it. I also don't assume someone on tumblr is going to read loads of backstory and set-up, so I just skip to the most interesting scene that comes to mind with as little set-up as possible.

So, I know I have a vampire character and a reincarnating mortal character. The 'x' implies that the story is going to have, to some level or another, a romance thread.

However, the prompt otherwise immediately raises a lot of questions; the decisions/answers I make to these questions shape the story. Examples of questions that pop to mind.

Am I writing in the POV of the human or the vampire?

Does the mortal remember that they reincarnate or do they start from scratch every time?

When the story starts, does the vampire know that the love of their life reincarnates, or is this the first time that they are seeing their love after thinking they were going to live the rest of their immortal life alone?

How did the mortal die the first time? Was it happy or traumatic?

If it's not the first time they are seeing each other post reincarnation, how did the previous lives go? This will colour the relationship dynamic.

Why is the mortal reincarnating?

Why are the two of them seeing each other in the present of the story? What does each character want out of the scene?

I love an antagonistic dynamic and conflict is brilliant for short stories, so I might go one step further and immediately decide that I want the vampire and the mortal to be opposed/in conflict in some way.

If conflict, what conflict should I pick?

After a certain amount of this, it's just pick whichever answer I am in the mood for on any given day and go.

Writing without a clear prompt

This is more difficult, but I also tend to love these stories more when I do get inspiration for them. There also isn't one process that works for all of these as it tends to change a bit with every story.

(Although I don't tend to outline short stories.)

More often than not, when these stories happen it is because a very clear idea or nugget pops into my head or a strong urge to write about something in particular, and I tend to write the whole thing in a matter of days or hours. They have a lot of iceberg time in my head where I'm sort of thinking about them, then there's a click.

As an example:

I wrote The Blue Key because I love fairytales, the mythos of Bluebeard and haunted houses. I knew I wanted to write something inspired by Bluebeard in this instance, so I knew that I needed a house, a couple, a key and a locked door that must not/should not be opened.

Because I love these stories, I had them on my mind so I wanted them to play into the story. What does it mean to have so many stories about curiosity and its consequence, about having a love that you are not allowed to look at? I re-read some of my favourites and I came across this quote about Bluebeard by Margaret Atwood. I read people talking about how they would be smarter than the wife, or how they just wouldn't look, as if it's always that easy.

What would happen if you didn't know which story you were in? What would happen if the Bluebeard character was also trapped in a story that he didn't want to play out, where there was love as well as horror? What happens if you are in a story where you have the fairytale rules where you must give your wife a key and you must not tell her what is behind the door.

What happens then?

The Blue Key was my answer to that general brain mulch.

[gottagetback2u]

𓂃 ࣪˖ ִֶָ𐀔 JOBS THAT WOULD FIT STRAY KIDS MEMBERS

these are all specific stores!!! most of these are american stores (i think?) so sorry if they are unfamiliar!! i may or may not have worked at these places before…

BATH AND BODY WORKS

-LEE KNOW!

-chan

-felix

-changbin

what do u mean when u tell me lee know has never stepped foot inside a bath and body works before?? HE IS MADE FOR IT OMG. the apron tied around his waist, his pretty visuals literally drawing customers in. people would actually take the scent testers from him. imagine asking for recommendations and him leading u around the store, calling out scents by name and their “floral, dark, clean” notes. his favorite scent is definitely a spring scent like book loft or a classic like crisp morning air. ALSO imagine his shy, working voice when asking people for their rewards number and then going to the back, rolling his eyes and immediately complaining. made for the job. he’s perfect.

chan and felix are also great fits! they would definitely be a lil too knowledgeable (thanks to sisters and genuine interest). imagine asking for recommendations for scents and felix whips out gingham gorgeous (aka one of the strongest, clean scent with floral). my wonderful body care men :’]

let’s be honest. changbin in an apron. that’s it.

BARNES & NOBLE

-hyunjin

-seungmin

u mean to tell me these nerds wouldn’t apply for barnes & noble at least four times? (honestly, it seems like they’re always hiring then never hire lmao)

hyunjin definitely likes the “quiet” vibe of the workplace. it’s definitely not always quiet, but being surrounded by books and drawing when he has no customers at the help desk is nice. he likes roaming around and looking at new journals, stationary, popular authors, etc. he doesn’t always read, but if the book seems popular enough he will get it to try it out! also, hyunjin dressed as a nerd with his eyebrow piercing and dyed hair. sHEEESSHH that’s the death of me.

ur probably wondering why seungmin isn’t the first name. he is literally the member that ppl said his room was “boring” bc of all the books and that he probably studies for fun. BUT, i don’t think he would necessarily like it as a job? he likes to keep his interests and hobbies to himself, so constantly recommending books or seeing others buy an author he absolutely hated might not be his favorite. although, some days he walks in and is GRATEFUL that he chose this over any other mall job. some days it’s his escape. bookworm 4L.

TARGET

-han

-jeongin

-changbin

han as a target worker is literally canon at this point. lets be honest, he would be a perfect fit. he would wear the same red zip up jacket ever shift, no matter is he’s doing shipment orders or register. mans just wants to be comfy and make money. but in all seriousness!! he likes the people he works with and enjoys how organized everything is. less to get confused and overwhelmed by.

u could find jeongin either at target or ur local grocery store. he just fits the grocery store worker vibe so well. don’t know how to explain.

changbin in a target is something i never thought about but it would work so well? imagine him at the customer service desk asking for ur card information for a refund. like how does it seem so normal???

BEST BUY

-CHANGBIN!!

-felix

first person i thought of for best buy. changbin. he just seems like such a lil dork when thinking about it?? ur telling me he wouldn’t giggle and act flustered when u thought the iphone 15 and 15 max were the same thing? he would. u know he would.

felix just works and we all know it. his mom definitely made him apply bc of his love for PCs and he kinda just got the job. loves doing tech things!! (but hates how rude some of the customers are :[)

TILLY’S

-chan

-jeongin

-han

for those who don’t know, tilly’s is kinda like an alternative skater/surfer clothing store! like beach clothes for skaters… if that makes sense…

from past experience of working here, chan just fits the manager role so well. diligent when working and so nice?? customers never feel overlooked when talking to him, all workers respect and like him, and he does amazing at his job! another thing that fits him so well is how tired he is :(( tillys puts their managers to workkk i am telling u.

jeongin would feel a lil outcasted when working here, cuz he never expected to work at a mall store??, but he likes it pretty much. he likes being on fitting room duty the most bc he could be on his phone most of the time. but he would DREAD if he was called to be on register bc he always forgets to take the security tags off.

han would fit right in. a lil… too good. he’s there for that employee discount and the limited nike clothes that get put out. would always want to be on register so time goes by faster. once again, he’s there for that check.

[wakeupthemembersofbylernation]

Just say you hate Eleven don’t beat around the bush with listing all the reasons Will deserves a prize. “deserves the boy he loves” right and where does Mikes feelings coming into that exactly? So far I’ve learned there two sets of fans the ones who fancy finn and want to see him kiss boys as some weird fantasy and the others who adore Will and feel he deserves what he wants without thinking of the other party.

Only in the ST fandom can someone take a reasonable sentence like, “After four seasons of trauma, Will deserves a happy ending” and utterly twist it to mean, “I hate El and want her to be alone and miserable grrr.” It’s also wild how you can glean “Will deserves a prize” from my words when that’s not at all what I said. I don’t see Mike as a “prize” for Will. That’d be ridiculous. I see them as equals- because that’s what they are: lifelong best friends who’ve been through so much, consistently put each other first, and have made multiple beautiful promises to each other.

“But you said, ‘Will has suffered so much and deserves a happy ending with the boy he loves.’ How is that not proving my point?�� Yes, I did say that, and I would say it again in a heartbeat. Will has suffered so much. Here’s a refresher on just some of his trauma. Given the context of everything, given the significance of Will’s sexuality to both his coming-of-age journey and the 80s, it would be genuinely cruel to not give him a happy ending. And it’s not Byler shippers on the Internet, but the show itself, that has consistently tied this happy ending to Mike. It’s been reinforced in every season, and the writers and filmmakers doubled-down on it in Season 4 through the van scene and through aggressively inserting Will into every Milkvan scene so that he’s always on your mind. S3 brought up their hypothetical question of the future through the rain fight, and it also had Will very specifically saying, “I’m not gonna fall in love.” This was not placed in the show so he could be proven right in S5 when Mike iNeViTaBlY rejects him. Be serious.

As I said in my post, this has nothing to do with thinking unreciprocated storylines don’t serve a purpose in media. Obviously they do! Stranger Things has given us a few: Dustin and Max, Steve and Robin, and Steve and Nancy (after they broke up). It is also given us another which I will talk about in a second, although this one comes with a twist. Dustin was crushing on the attractive new girl in school, as was Lucas. Max chose Lucas and fell for him. Dustin was sad about it, sure. The Snowball dance emphasized his general sadness as well as his unluckiness with girls at the time. Narratively, dancing with Nancy was the healing moment he needed to move on. It propelled his character to his Season 3 glow up, where he surprises his friends with news that he is dating Suzie. Dustin liked Max, but he wasn’t in love with Max, built upon a lifelong friendship. The situation is just structurally different.

Steve and Robin? Well, you know the story. Steve developed feelings for Robin (after Dustin pushed him in that direction, I might add) over the course of S3. But Robin was like, “Psyche! I’m a lesbian. Let’s be best friends,” and platonic Stobin was born. Notice there was no grief on Steve’s part. Steve was shocked, sure, but he wasn’t heartbroken. He bounced back in a heartbeat and fully accepted her sexuality. And then the season ends with their friendship shenanigans at the video store. Again, this was a crush. And it had a very interesting plot twist at the end of it. And it served a very specific purpose in Steve’s journey.

In terms of Steve and Nancy, there was more heartbreak involved, since they were actually dating. And in S4, it’s clear that Steve has never fully gotten over Nancy, or at least he thinks he hasn’t gotten over her. But narratively, this just serves a fundamentally different purpose than the situation between Mike and Will. Steve believes he needs romantic love to be happy, so his arc is accepting that he doesn’t. Also, as a presumed straight character (even though I love the bi Steve HCs), he doesn’t have the same kind of existential crisis that Will, a sad gay boy in the 80s, does.

The fourth unreciprocated storyline is an interesting one cause it’s not actually unreciprocated at all. It just seems that way. And of course, I’m talking about Robin and Vickie. Robin has feelings for Vickie, but when she sees Vickie with her boyfriend Dan, she assumes all hope is lost. But alas, all hope is not lost! Vickie is queer too and has feelings for Robin as well. You just have to take off your heteronormative glasses to recognize it. Sound similar to something else?

I bring this up because while Byler shares surface-level similarities to these other unrequited storylines, it visually parallels the situation with Robin and Vickie. So don’t be surprised when Mike, like Vickie, turns out not to be straight. And character wise, it’s deeper than all the other examples by miles. Dustin got over Max, Steve got over Robin, Steve is just looking for any girlfriend tbh, and S4 showed Robin getting over Vickie before the plot twist. Will and Mike are lifelong best friends, and a slow-burn rejection arc would not only make no sense, in-universe it would structurally derail Byler’s powerful connection and interrupt key plots already in motion during the apocalypse.

You forget that these aren’t real people. They are characters. In real life, sure, sometimes you don’t get what you want. Sometimes gay kids fall in love with their lifelong straight best friends, get gently rejected, and then life goes on eventually. In real life, saying, “But I have suffered, so you must love me back,” would be insane. And Will agrees. The homewrecker allegations need to stop. In the context of the show, Will doesn’t think that Mike loves him back. He doesn’t think love can be for boys like him. It rips him apart and tears him inside for sure, but all throughout S4 he’s the one trying to repair his bestie’s relationship while being madly in love with him. Will thinks he will be forever alone, and your argument is that he should be proven right?

Of course, I adore Will. He��s my favorite character, and I’m a proud member of the Willuminati. The shoe fits, and I will wear it. But I saw this Tweet today that I had to screenshot, and it applies directly to the subtext of your ask:

No one should find it strange or delusional or creepy that people ship Will with the boy he’s into. Calling it a “weird fantasy” in any context is inherently homophobic and weird behavior. You simply would not say that about any other ship in the show. Admit that you find queerness icky. Don’t hide behind faux concern for El.

Lastly, I must directly respond to your question,“Where do Mike’s feelings come into that exactly? Why do Bylers feel Will deserves what he wants without thinking of the other party?”

What are you even saying? Accusing Bylers of not thinking about Mike is the strangest accusation considering there are 50 essays per day posted on this app diving into the psychology of Mike. Mike’s feelings are powerful. Mike’s feelings are important. I could just as easily have written a post that said, “After everything Mike has been through, he deserves a happy ending with the boy he loves” because Mike clearly loves Will. It is overflowing out of him. If you analyze and “think of the other party” as you put it, it becomes crystal-clear where Mike’s feelings come into play and what his happy ending is. Hint: it’s not with the girl he can’t even write ILY to.

I could have written about Mike, but my post was about Will, who is canonically gay, deeply traumatized, and whose sexuality is not in doubt. Will deserves a happy ending. “But El is also traumatized, and she deserves a happy ending as well.” Agreed, but her happy ending and the overall trajectory of her character arc simply do not center Mike. El’s arc is rooted in her independence, and I could do a deep-dive analysis comparing and contrasting Will and El and explaining why romantic love is central to Will’s endgame but not to El’s. But I’m sure there are fifty of those already on this platform. I want Mike, Will, and El to all have happy endings.

Anyway, Byler endgame.

[funnywormz]

If the red dwarf boys were cringey streamers what type of content would they make

OOOH that's a tough one. once again not a topic im in a great position to comment on as i don't rlly watch streamers or keep up with specific internet personalities much........

im still gonna have a go at guessing though hehe

obv cat would be a beauty guru type. that's the most obvious idea for him lol. maybe mingled with other stuff like dancing and general fashion/clothing design videos? ik in canon he makes his own clothes sometimes, so i could imagine him posting videos about his clothing creation process from designing to actual sewing, although it would less be a tutorial and moreso just a way for him to show off lol. i can also imagine him making short little weekly vlog type videos where he talks abt things that he likes, esp food, or rants abt stuff he hates if he's in a bad mood. he'd also be infamous for getting into horrendous beef with ppl lol

lister....... i mean. my instincts say Gamer. he does play video games sometimes in the later seasons so yknow.......... i don't think he'd be dedicated enough to the idea of attracting a following to stream super often but he'd enjoy it occasionally. something tells me that he'd prefer retro games and weird little niche indie things but that he'd also have a softspot for sports themed games....... like a zero g version of the fifa games or smth lol

rimmer would post "video essays" that are actually just him infodumping unscripted for 3 hours straight into his grainy webcam with a shitty mic. he gets 5 views on each video. sometimes he might post a vaguely offensive political opinion that makes a couple of ppl mildly irritated at him and for the next 6 months he'll mysteriously talk abt how he was "cancelled" online even though it was like 3 ppl involved max lmao. but mostly it's just barely incomprehensible infodumping on his obscure interests i think

kryten would do asmr. not in a Weird way but he'd make like, cleaning and polishing and tidying up videos. those are activities he enjoys and i think it would make him happy to know that he would make others happy just by recording himself doing the stuff he likes. maybe sometimes occasionally he'd do a little q&a or the odd vlog here and there. he'd generally be seen as nice and wholesome but would maybe lose some viewers due to his instinctive tendency to do product placement every 5 seconds even without any sponsors

[39oa]

f1 rpf graphing & archive insights

intro & prior work

hello! if you're reading this, you may already be familiar with my previous post about graphing hockey rpf ships and visualizing some overarching archive insights (feel free to check it out if you aren't, or alternatively just stick around for this intro). i've been meaning to make an f1 version of that post for a while, especially since i've already done a decent amount of f1 rpf analysis in the past (i have a very rough post i wrote a year ago that can be read here, though fair warning that it really does not make any sense; while i've redone a few viz from it for this post i just figured i'd link it solely because there are other things i didn't bother to recalculate!)

f1 is quite different from many team sports because a large part of my process for hockey was discovering which ships exist in the first place—when there are thousands and thousands of players who have encountered one another at different phases of their careers, it's interesting to see how people are connected and it's what was personally interesting to me about making my hockey graphs. however, with f1's relative pursuit of "exclusivity," barriers to feeder success and a slower-to-change, restrictive grid of 20 drivers, it becomes generally expected that everyone has already interacted with one another in some fashion, or at least exists at most 2 degrees of separation from another driver. because of this, i was less interested in "what relationships between a large set of characters exist?" (as per my hockey post) and more so in "what do the relationships between a small set of characters look like?"

process

my methodology for collecting "ship fic" tries to answer the question: what does shippability really look like on ao3? (the following explanation is adapted from my hockey post:) a perceived limitation i have with character tagging numbers on ao3 is that they don’t exactly reflect holistic ship fic; that is, if lando is tagged as a character in a max/daniel fic, it gets attributed to his character tag but doesn’t actually say anything about how many Relationship Fics exist for him on a whole. my best solution for this was essentially uncovering most of a driver's relationships and summing their individual fic counts to create an approximate # of “relationship fics” for each player. so any kind of shippability graph going forward will use that metric.

i used ao3’s relationship tag search and filtered by canonical in the formula 1 rpf fandom and only pulled relationship* fics (“/” instead of “&”) with a min. of 5 works. ao3’s counts are… Not the most accurate, so my filtering may have fudged some things around or missed a few pairings on the cusp, which again is why all the visuals here are not meant to show everything in the most exact manner but function more so as a “general overview” of ficdom. although i did doublecheck the ship counts so the numbers themselves are accurate as of time of collection.

(*i excluded wag ships, reader ships, threesomes to make my life easier—although i know this affects numbers for certain drivers, team principal/trainer/engineer ships, and any otherwise non-driver ship. i left in a few ships with f2, fe, etc. drivers given that that one character was/is an f1 driver, but non-f1 drivers were obviously excluded from any viz about f1 driver details specifically. this filtering affected some big ships like felipe massa/rob smedley, ot3 combinations of twitch quartet and so on, which i recognize may lower the… accuracy? reliability??? of certain graphs, but i guess the real way to think of the "shippability metric" is as pertaining solely to ship fic with other drivers. although doing more analysis with engineers and principals later down the line could be cool)

also note that since i grouped and summed all fics for every single ship a driver has, and since one fic can be tagged as multiple ships, there will be inevitable overlap/inflation that also lessens the accuracy of the overall number. however, because there's no easy way to discern the presence and overlap of multiship fic for every single driver and every single ship they have, and attempting to do so for a stupid tumblr post would make this an even larger waste of time… just take everything here with a grain of salt!

data for archive overview viz was collected haphazardly over the past few days because i may have procrastinated finishing this post haha. but all ship data for section 2 was specifically collected april 22, 2023.

PART I. f1 rpf archive overview

before i get to ship graphing, here are a few overviews of f1 ficdom growth and where it measures relative to other sports fandoms, since i find the recent american marketability of f1 and its online fandom quite interesting.

first off, here's a graph that shows the cumulative growth of the top 8 sports rpf fandoms from 2011 until now (2023 is obviously incomplete since we're only in may). i've annotated it with some other details, but we can see that f1 experienced major growth after 2019, which is when the first episode of dts was released.

something that fascinated me when making this graph was the recent resurgence of men's football rpf in 2023; while the fandom has remained fairly consistent over the years, i had noticed that its yearly output was on the decline in my old post, and i was especially surprised to see it eclipse even f1 for 2023. turns out that a large driver behind these numbers is its c-fandom, and it reminded me that out of all the sports rpf fandoms, hockey rpf is fairly unpopular amongst chinese sports fans! i wanted to delve into this a little more and look at yearly output trends for the top sports fandoms since 2018, only this time filtered to exclusively english works (a poor approximation for "western" fandom, i know, but a majority of sports fandom on tumblr does create content in english).

another thing i've long been curious about with f1 specifically is—because of how accessible dts and f1 driver marketing are to fans online, does f1 rpf and shipping culture skew a bit more "public" than other fandoms? i'd initially graphed the ratio of public fic on ao3 for hockey because i also wanted to see whether it was on the rise (again, apologies for how many callbacks and references there are in this post to hockey rpf... it's just easy for me to contextualize two familiar sports ficdoms together *__*), but i was surprised to see that it's actually been steadily trending downward for many years now. f1 fic, on the other hand, has steadily been becoming more public since 2016.

another note is that c-ficdom follows different fic-posting etiquette on ao3, and thus chinese-heavy sports rpf fandoms (think table tennis and speed skating) will feature a majority public fic—here's another old graph. since f1 fandom has a relatively larger representation of chinese writers than hockey does, its public ratio falls a little bit if you filter to english-only works, but as of 2023 it remains significantly higher than hockey's!

anyway, onto the actual ship graphing.

my ship collection process yielded 164 ships with 57 drivers, 46 of which have been in f1. all 20 current active f1 drivers have at least one ship with min. 5 fics, though not all of them had a ship that connected them to the 2023 grid. specifically, nyck de vries' only ship at time of collection was with stoffel vandoorne at 56 works.

once again because f1 is so strongly connected, i initially struggled a lot with how i wanted to graph all the ships i'd aggregated—visualizing all of them was just a mess of a million different overlapping edges, not the sprawling tree that branched out more smoothly from players like in hockey. this made me wonder whether it even made sense to graph anything at all... and tbh the jury is still out on whether these are interesting, but regardless here's a visualization of how the current grid is connected (color-coded by team)! i graphed a circular layout and then a "grid-like" layout just for variety lol.

of course, i still wanted to explore how ships with ex-f1 drivers have branched out and show where they connect to drivers on the current grid, especially because not too long ago seb was very much the center of the ficdom ecosystem, and the (based purely on the numbers) segue to today's max/charles split didn't really come to fruition until the dts days. so here's a network of f1 ships with a minimum of 75 works on ao3:

before i go into ship breakdowns, i also have a quick overview of the most "shippable" drivers, aka the drivers with the highest sum of fic from all their respective ships. the second bar chart is color-coded by the count of their unique ships to encapsulate who is more prone to being multi-shipped.

PART II. ship insights

first let's take a look at the most popular f1 ships on ao3, again filtered to driver-only ships.

here's another graph filtered to the current grid only, and then one that shows the 15 ships where one driver isn't and has never been an f1 driver:

for this section, i ended up combining my ship data with a big f1 driver dataset that gave me information on each driver's birth year, points, wins, seasons in f1, nationality... etc., so that's what i'll be using in the rest of the post. disclaimer that i did have to tweak a few things and the data doesn't reflect the most recent races, so please note there might be some slight discrepancies in my visualizations.

anyway—in my hockey post i did a lot of set analysis because i was interested in figuring out what made the players who were part of the ship network different from the general population. with f1, since almost Every Driver has at least one ship and it's a much more representative group, doing a lot of set distributions wasn't that interesting and so i stuck more to pure ship analysis. still, the set isn't completely representative, which i noted by checking the ratios of driver nationalities in my dataset and then in the large database of f1 drivers i merged with (though filtered to debut year >= 2000 to maintain i guess the same "dimensions").

while british and german drivers have been the most common nationalities in f1 since 2000, both in general and in my ship data, it seems that ficdom slightly overrepresents/overships them and then underrepresents brazilian drivers. i was also curious to see the distribution of ships by nationality combination (which is actually quite diverse), and though it once again wasn't surprising that uk/germany was the most common combination given that we've just established the commonality of their driver groups, i found it somewhat interesting to realize just how many ships fall under this umbrella.

i then once again wanted to see what the distribution of age differences looked across ships. the ships i graphed yielded a range of 25 years, with the oldest age difference being 25 years between piastri and webber. tbh, something that's interesting to me about f1 ships is not just how connected current drivers are but also how there is a very strong aspect of cyclicality, wherein long careers in combination with well-established celebrity culture and post-retirement pivots to punditry & mentorship position drivers perfectly to still be easily shipped with any variety of upcoming drivers, hence why we encounter a relatively significant variety of age differences.

of the ships with two f1 drivers, 38% were within 2 years of each other, while 44% had an age difference of 5 years or more.

more experimentally (basically i wanted to use these performance metrics for something!), i tried graphing driver metrics against "shippability" to see whether i could uncover any trends, normalizing to percentile to make it more visually comprehensible.

one thing that was interesting to me is that there is a strong correlation between a driver's points per entry and their number of ship fic; really, this isn't surprising at all because it's basically a reflection of whether they've driven for a big 3 team, and we know that the most popular drivers are from big 3 teams, but then i guess it does become a bit of a chicken and egg question... which is something i'm continuously fascinated by when discussing success and talent in sports fandom, especially in a sport like f1 where there is so little parity and thus "points" do not always quantifiably translate to "talent," making it difficult to gauge why and when a driver's skill becomes consciously appealing to an audience. i don't know but here's that scatterplot.

similarly, i also wanted to look at years active vs. fic to gauge which drivers have a High Number Of Ship Fic relative to how long they've actually been in f1, basically a rough rework of the "shippability above expected" metric i'd tried exploring in my old f1 post haha. because the set i merged with attributed 1 "year active" to a driver just like, filling in as reserve for a single race, and it also included drivers who maybe raced one season and then never raced again, but then i still wanted to include current rookies in their first season to show where their Potential lies... i settled on filtering to drivers who were or have been active for at least 5 seasons OR who debuted recently and thus have a bit of rookie leeway. there's a decent amount of correlation here, which is again... in f1, the underlying argument for remaining active for many years is that you have to be good enough to keep your seat, so it's expected that if drivers stay on the grid for a long time they will eventually accrue more fandom interest and thus ship fic. still, we can see some drivers who underperform a little relative to their establishedness—bot and per, interestingly also below the trend line in the points/entry graph–and then those who overperform a decent amount, like nor and lec.

this is somewhat interesting to me because i'd tried to make a similar scatterplot with my hockey set and found that there was... basically nooo correlation at all, but i also had to make do with draft year and not gp which i think might move the needle a little bit. regardless, it's just interesting to think about these things in the context of league/grid exclusivity and then other further nuances like the possibilities of making your niche in, for example, the nhl as a 4th line grinder or f1 as a de facto but reliable #2 driver for years down the stretch, and then how all of that impacts or shapes your fandom stock and shippability.

moving on, here's a look at the current top 20 f1 ships and how much of their fic is tagged as fluff or angst! out of all their fic, kimi/seb have the highest fluff ratio at 38.44%, while lewis/nico hold the throne for angst at 34.74%.

lewis/nico are also the most "holistically" tragic ship when you subtract their fluff and angst percentages (by a large margin as well), while jenson/seb are the fluffiest with a difference of 17.38%. really makes you think.

and finally this is a dumb iteration from my old f1 post but i thought this was kind of funny haha so: basically what if teammate point share h2h but the points are their shippability on ao3.

closing thoughts

that's really all i have! again, i don't know whether any of these graphs make sense or are interesting to anyone, but i had fun trying to adapt some of my hockey methodology to f1 and also revisiting the old f1 graphs i'd made last year and getting to recalculate/design them. i know there's a lot more i could have done in examining drivers' old teams since many ships are based on drivers being ex-teammates and not the current grid matchups, but it would have been too much of a headache to figure out so... this is the best i've got. thanks for reading :)

[violamonty]

putting this under a readmore because it ended up getting REALLY long-winded BUT. thoughts on tybalt vs. tank in terms of characterization. similarities, differences, yada yada yada. also some thoughts on the capp family as a whole.

(warning for discussion of internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity, but that's kind of par for the course when it comes to talking about tank in particular.)

tybalt and tank are really interesting because like. on the surface they seem really similar (like i mentioned before — gay eldest brothers of three who are deeply, deeply maladjusted from being used as a pawn in their families’ respective Problems). and i think that because of that, it’s easy to fall into the pitfall of just making them Essentially The Same Guy. (i don’t blame people for doing that! as i just said, they’re pretty similar guys.)

i know a lot of people (myself included) characterize tank as being a very repressed gay guy with a lot of internalized homophobia. that guilt compounds with his desire to make his dad happy by being, you know, A Tough Guy. buzz has already given up on ripp, and i honestly think he forgets buck exists sometimes. (the PSP game sure did.) tank is buzz’s last chance to have a “normal” son who follows in his footsteps by getting a wife and kids and idk, dying in a war or something? so there’s an immense amount of pressure for tank to be buzz 2.0 (AKA world’s straightest nuclear family having man).

except, obviously, tank isn’t built for that. he’s gay. he likes getting creative with his facepaint (or at least he did before buzz told him off for it). he wants to do ballet. he has five nice points, whereas buzz only has two.

tybalt, on the other hand, is not operating on NEARLY as many layers of internalized homophobia and toxic masculinity as tank is. what he IS operating on, however, is capp emotional repression. there’s a lot in game to suggest that most (if not all) of the capp marriages were arranged — goneril and regan aren’t in love with their respective spouses (nor are their respective spouses in love with them), and regan specifically never has been. the way the capp family is structured makes the concept of… courtship, i guess? into more of a transaction of status than anything emotional.

even if the concept of arranged marriages isn’t something that applies to tybalt specifically (and it may not be — kent is our only example of an adult male capp descendant, and he’s not married either), i feel like the concept of swallowing your true feelings for the sake of your family’s status is something that’s pretty pervasive among the capps. that’s part of what makes juliette’s relationship with romeo so scandalous. it’s not JUST because he’s a monty (although that is the primary reason) — it’s also expected that she marries someone who would bolster her own reputation, not just A Guy She’s In Love With.

anyways. tybalt is emotionally repressed, but that's less because he's gay and more because he's a capp. he isn't normal about the fact that he's gay, but that's just because he isn't normal about anything. he feels guilty about pursuing his own relationships because he feels like his whole life should be focused on his allegiance to the capp family (and, by extension, the capp-monty feud). he's invested so much time and energy into upholding his family's ideals (he maxed out his fucking body skill before even becoming an adult, for one. this guy's got problems) that it's become his whole identity.

why does tybalt care so much? memories between the three capp siblings are, as always, inconsistent, but i'm of the opinion that tybalt was the only one old enough to really Remember the fire that killed their parents. the capp siblings subsequently being taken in and raised by consort (who is arguably the most invested in the capp-monty feud) had a profoundly negative impact on tybalt's development, similarly to how the loss of lyla as a voice of reason had a profoundly negative impact on tank's. consort believed that the monty family was somehow responsible for the fire that killed cordelia and caliban, an idea he ended up passing on to his grandchildren.

juliette and hermia, being too young to fully remember the fire and therefore less blinded by a need for revenge, were able to see past that and see that it was kind of bullshit — the capp manor is an old house (so old that it doesn't even have showers), so the fire was almost certainly an accident. tybalt, on the other hand, is very reliant on authority figures to tell him what to believe (another trait he shares with tank), and all of a sudden consort is the only authority figure in his life. if cordelia (who was implied to be against the capp-monty feud by way of contessa's bio) had lived and remained a voice of reason in tybalt's life, he may have turned out differently... at least in terms of his opinion on the capp-monty feud. (i think that, unlike tank, he's kind of an angry dude no matter what. he has two nice points.)

back to tank. unlike tybalt, a lot of his guilt DOES stem specifically from the fact that he's gay — and, of course, that guilt ends up feeding into his anger and some sort of inferiority complex. he wants to be the perfect son so bad, but the fact that he's gay is (in both his eyes and his dad's) something that stands in the way of that. if he just Stops Being Gay, maybe everything else in his life will fall into place. (it won't, but he doesn't know that.) i think that in order to unlearn that internalized homophobia and self-hatred, he has to distance himself from buzz first. i'd like to think that he ends up doing that eventually, but i'm also not sure if it's realistic — he gets his camouflage facepaint tattooed sometime between the PC and DS versions, and that particular facepaint design is something buzz approved of. (i'm looping back to the "creativity with his facepaint" secret because it makes me sad.)

tank being shitty to ripp is an extension of his need for his father's approval (although that's less 'my interpretation' and more just. actually canon, i think). part of it is him mimicking what he's seen buzz do, but part of it is a subconscious jealousy that ripp is brave enough to rebel against their shitty dad. the ever-present toxic masculinity in tank's brain tells him that he has to be a brave person, but on at least some level he knows that ripp is braver than him — ripp, who paints his nails and wears smudged dollar-store eyeliner, is being a hell of a lot more courageous than tank, who is decked out in camouflage from head to toe because it makes his dad happy. and that's something that won't leave tank's mind, no matter how much he would never admit it.

anyways. tank and tybalt. if they ever met (which i think is unlikely — tybalt lives somewhere italy-adjacent and tank is in like. new mexico), i'm not sure if they would be friends. it really depends on what stage of their lives they were at (i think they'd hate each other as teenagers because they're so similar). i think there would be something else there, though. some sort of acknowledgement. a recognition of the self through the other.

[nibblyssacrifice]

ALSO!! I've seen some people theorising whether Grace's actions at the end of NPMD are out of her own volition or if she is the new "puppet" and I have to give a big thanks to @a-couple-of-bees for writing out the lyrics to the Lords in Black song, because it made me put some thoughts together. I am not saying these are 100% right, these are just my thoughts:

First of all, I don't think it got fully confirmed that the Zombie!Max they're trying to banish is doing this for the Lords in Black, so I'm only going to take that in consideration for like 50 per cent, but you'll see that later on in the post. I just wanted to clear that up before continuing.

When Steph offers up a bargain to the Lords in Black, they sing:

Whatever we want, we want, we want

Whatever we want we get

Whatever you want, you want, you want, forever in our debt

It is specifically that last part I want to talk about, although it is also interesting that they sing that they will get it. This might just be because they know that if the nerds aren't able to give it to them, someone else probably will, or that they already have Max in their control, but who knows.

But that last part implies that just because you gave something up, it does not mean that you have given everything. Perhaps the Lords in Black see this offer of your most cherished as a show of devotion to them. They know that you will do what they ask of you.

And while Steph and Pete obviously struggle with knowing that one of them has to die—and probably even more with the fact that not only was Steph going to shoot Pete, she actually did—Grace struts in without problem and gives away what she wanted to keep most—to stay a virgin.

She showed the Lords in Black without problem that she was willing to give them this, so she would probably be willing to give them even more human sacrifices. I don't think Grace is acting much like Max is, with him being dead and all, but rather that the Lords in Black just gently pushed her into this next step, into helping the world get rid of pervy dudes, and give the Lords on Black their new sacrifices. And who knows, maybe Max was already doing that for them, but he couldn't be fully controlled because he was dead, or maybe he wasn't, and the killings were just a happy accident for the LiB that they could now use to their advantage.

[kiirotoao]

“El’s not stupid” and Mike’s defensiveness: Byler underneath it all

So, phrase of the day that I can’t stop thinking about that’s driving me insane about Byler: “El’s not stupid.”

Or, I think more emphatically and accurately, “El’s not stupid!” With an exclamation point, because both times that it’s said in season 3, it’s said pretty strongly.

So first, we have Mike, of course. He says it in his fight with Will: “El’s not stupid! It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” And then, just a few episodes later, we have Nancy saying it, too: “And El’s not stupid! She knows her abilities better than any of us.” What a dichotomy, if you ask me, and what an enlightening one, at that. Because when we look at how the phrase “El’s not stupid” precedes two very specific and contrasting contexts, things start to become pretty interesting. Let’s look at Nancy first, because oh boy, I cannot wait to use it as ammo against Mike (affectionately).

Nancy declares that “El’s not stupid” in addition to the following conversation:

So let’s observe. We have Max, Mike, Nancy, Lucas, and Will having a conversation clearly about El and the flayed. This is about El’s abilities and the situation at hand. They’re trying to find what’s causing the flayed to appear and how to stop them from spreading. Mike is pretty vehemently against El going into the void out of fear that she’ll get hurt “for no reason,” ignoring the problem that they’re all facing right now. Pretty much everyone is against Mike in this argument, fighting for El using her powers because it’s for the greater good, and for the fact that - as the ladies reinforce - she can handle going into the void multiple times. When Nancy says “El’s not stupid,” she says it in the context of trust.

Nancy agrees with Max that El can do things on her own. That El can advocate for herself. That El is strong. She’s not mindless. She’s not misguided. She’s not overexerting herself (Although, overexertion is kinda arguable as she did lose her powers shortly after this in the last episode of the season, but still. In this immediate instance, she does in fact find Billy and still retain her powers).

To Nancy, El’s not stupid, she’s capable.

A high praise of character, if you ask me. It’s a praise directed to her as a person. Because Nancy doesn’t just say that she’s capable to use her “abilities,” she says that El is capable to be “her own person with her own free will.” This is about letting El uphold herself without any other influence. She defends El.

Now, let’s turn to the rain scene in all its heart-wrenching glory and see what Mike has to say about El not being stupid:

Besides the glaring difference of this being a one-on-one skirmish without four extra people around, this conversation is not about El. Or, it didn’t start off that way at all. Will was upset that Mike and Lucas brushed him off in exchange for a desperately hopeful phone call from the girls, and he felt like his foundation, the “Party,” was being ripped out from underneath him. And as the leader of the Party, Will puts responsibility on Mike. Will feels like he’s being treated poorly, and he’s making it clear to Mike. Will is upset at Mike. This conversation is about Mike. And so I think that it’s natural for Mike to defend himself when Will is roasting him at his wit’s end, but notice how he snaps back.

“El’s not stupid!” Mike says. So I’m thinking, right! Okay! Because she’s so much more than that! Because she’s such an incredible girlfriend and he loves hanging out with her! Because she’s kind and caring and sweet and- “It’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” HUH???

After not saying anything about Will, Mike’s sudden attack on him feels so abrasive and sudden! In contrast to how Nancy immediately defends El for “[knowing] her abilities” and being “her own person” and having “free will,” this conversation between Mike and Will contains none of that praise! Mike turns the conversation towards Will. Rather than focus on El, Mike focuses on Will. So when Mike says, “El’s not stupid,” he says it in the context of immediate self-defense.

And there are a number of valid reasons why I think Mike snaps like this, sure, you can argue it all. He loves El. He misreads Will’s anger as a personal defamation against El and gets indignant. He knows that Will doesn’t have a girlfriend and doesn’t know what it’s like. Whatever the case, Mike snaps back because, to him, she’s not a pointless pursuit. She’s not worthless. She’s not meaningless.

To Mike, El’s not stupid, she’s important.

But what does importance have to do with El? Nothing. When something is important to someone, it’s a value. A value that oneself holds in direct relation. This isn’t directed to El as a person, it’s directed to Mike. Mike wants to protect her, and through that, Mike wants to be tied to her. Unlike El in season 3, Mike cannot think of himself as an individual. Unlike El in season 3, Mike doesn’t want to uphold himself without any other influence. In the rain scene, he defends himself.

Now, okay, let’s play this through for Mike. Mike gets defensive when Will brings up El in the rain fight. Flash flash forward to when Mike is arguing over El and the flayed. This is the first time we hear Mike officially say that he loves El. Here’s his chance to speak less towards himself and more towards El. What does Mike say about El?

In sum, Mike thinks that El’s powers should be used with care, she’s not a machine, she shouldn’t risk her life, and he loves her because he “can’t lose her again.”

None of this focuses on El’s character but only her importance as a person.

So, yeah. Nothing. As far as Mike is concerned about El, we still get nothing. Once again, all of this cycles back to Mike and his need of her. He cannot and does not express what he loves about El. All we know is that he loves her… with no clear reason why other than his own worry.

So when we look back at the rain scene and that snap, “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” It just… doesn’t seem far-fetched to me to say that Mike is upset at Will because of something much deeper, and this line emerged from a place of frustration. Perhaps frustration that he can’t say why he loves El. Or perhaps why he can’t love her because of the boy right in front of him.

Just look at the way Mike reacts after he says that line:

He’s speechless by himself. He looks ashamed. And unlike Nancy and Max's clear delineation of El's merit and rights, Mike doesn't say a thing about her in the rain scene other than, simply, she’s “not stupid.” And then that’s it. He can’t go on about El, not when he needs to defend himself again. Not when he just messed it up with Will. So let’s see what he says:

In sum, Mike doesn’t want to be a jerk to Will, he associates growing up with getting girlfriends, and playing D&D and keeping things the way they were is childish.

Notice how all of this focuses on Will’s importance and his character.

In Mike’s eyes, he doesn’t want to come off as harsh. Mission failure, but he at least tries to placate what he knows he just said. Mike treats Will as someone important to him, and he doesn’t want to hurt him. And it doesn’t just end there. He then expresses the situation at hand, remotely mentioning Lucas and Dustin also having girlfriends and Will’s dissimilarity in that. And finally, he knows that Will still wants to play D&D and rebuts that they can’t play forever. Even though they are in disagreement, Mike directly addresses Will’s wants and seems to know his heart. And following such a sudden, assertive, and knowing line as, “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” without a single prompting word from Will in reply, it seems to me that Mike is very likely projecting his shared wants onto being Will’s fault. It’s just the easy way out to hide inner feelings.

Because truly, Mike doesn’t meander with Will. He doesn’t avoid the heart of the situation. Mike may not actively be praising Will’s character, I will admit, but he addresses Will’s wants and pursues Will constantly, knowing when he’s screwed things up with Will. It’s like Mike doesn’t even have to express who Will is to him, Mike just acts, and so it’s clear that there’s so much that Mike loves about Will. So again, with such a reflex jab as “it’s not my fault you don’t like girls!” to Will saying that El is a “stupid girl” (which, side note: I think Mike is misreading Will's anger using El as one against El, and Will never really meant to call El "stupid" at all. When Will said that El's "stupid," here, I think that he said it more like an enhancer rather than an actual defamation of her as a person), it all seems.. a little suspicious on Mike’s side. Why can’t he praise her character? Why does Will cause such a roadblock to him? Why is Will so different and so easy to pursue compared to El?

So yeah, in all cases, El’s not stupid. But in the rain scene, was it really in Mike’s mind to defend her or defend himself and the conflicting truth?

[ananke-xiii]

About Asa, Lily and Tasha (and Kelly).

There’s the experience of watching SPN by chronological order of the released episodes and the experience of watching it by specific writer and, as I once said, the latter is just a much better experience. I still stand by that. Incidentally, I think that this is one of the many reasons why the show went on for so long: since apparently writers rarely reached a consensus on the story and the characters’ internal coherence within a season, there’s a little bit for everyone’s tastes.

For instance, Steve Yockey’s episodes for s12 are a thing of Supernatural beauty. First of all I think Yockey was like “fuck the BMoL storyline AND I’m taking the boys out of that damn bunker” and I thank him for that. Secondly, he must have set his mind on weaving the (“bad”? “unconventional”? “simply flawed human”?) mother/(definitely absent)(surely dead) father central theme of the season with the “old” theme of human body/vessel/possession. And it’s sooooo great!

Asa Fox, Lily Sunder and Tasha Banes are the protagonists of his MoTW episodes and they’re such interesting characters! Two of them die at the very beginning of their respective episodes (the very parents of Alicia and Max, what a year for them, uh? Yockey you cruel, cruel man), while only one of them has her need fulfilled (well, more or less, although one might argue that the irony of Cas having his own son killed by God himself might be considered a sort of “karma’s a bitch” for him and a “win” for Lily).

Asa Fox is the absent father par excellence because well, he’s dead AND because we don’t know if he’s ever got to be a father or not. Jael says that Alicia and Max were too “frightened” to say that they came to say goodbye to their daddy and why would they be? Was it a secret? Lorraine didn’t know so I must assume yes. But… why? We don’t know. Lorraine is the “bad” mother who sabotaged her son’s gear and hid his gear and was generally unhappy about his son’s life choices. But Asa was also taunted by a possessive demon, Jael, who was probably in love with him (“Tell them what you took from me. Asa was mine”). Or maybe, as Lily Sunder would’ve put it, Jael was “obsessed” with him.

Now what I like about this episode is that Yockey was like: “I’ll remind you people that demons can actually be exorcised, you know? It might not always end well but hunters can and should at least fucking try”. By having Jael possess Jody (“this meatsuit you all seem to care so much about”), a beloved character, we’re reminded that possessed people are, you know, still people. Maybe dead people, though, but still, you should check, at least. And so the hunters try and succeed in exorcising the demon and all’s well that ends well (I mean, more or less, people still died but, you know, glass half full, man).

This dialogue between Sam and Mary is particularly delicious:

Mary: What are you doing?! She’s a demon. We kill demons. Sam: No, but she’s Jody.

Mary and demons… well, let’s say that I don’t exactly judge her when she forgets that demons are also possessing (possibly dead) people. But I like how her cold-bloodedness reveals the brothers’ hypocrisy (there’s something similar in this scene in s11 with Sam and Dean arguing about the vesselness (lol) of Cas).

Lily Sunder agrees with mother Mary: she kills angels. To be honest, I don’t judge her too, in her shoes I’d personally set the world on fire, but she does say “she is no threat whatsoever to humans” and she doesn’t want to hurt Sam and Dean, what with them being humans and all. Too bad that she does kill humans who are currently being possessed by angels. Oooopsie! Ishim didn’t teach her how to exorcise them, I guess (S4 was crazy for that, they established the idea that angels could be exorcised and then boom, forever forgotten).

I’m telling all this because it's Yockey’s writing that’s pointing it out. The episode starts off with Lily killing Benjamin and, a few scenes later, Cas tells this:

Cas: Benjamin is always very careful. Long ago, he found a powerfully devout vessel in Madrid, and her faith, it... she gave him everything – her trust and her body. Dean: Wait. So Benjamin's a woman. Cas: Benjamin is an angel. His vessel is a woman. But it – it's – it's more than that. She's not just his vessel. Sam: She's... She's his friend. Cas: Yeah. Benjamin would never put her in unnecessary danger.

So Lily killed Benjamin, the angel AND the “powerfully devout from Madrid” who’s first described as a vessel, a body, then as a woman, then again as “more than that/not just a vessel” and ultimately as a friend (with a romantic undertone to the word). So we GOTTA ask: when is a human being just a body? And when a vessel? Are there “vessels” and “not just [some angel’s]vessel”? And Lily Sunder, who’s a professor of Apocalyptic Literature and has sold her soul for Enochian magic surely knows that angels can be exorcised regardless of Ishim’s lessons in Angel Studies. But no, she wants to kill them, like send-them-to-The-Empty-kill them and, in so doing, I think she’s aware she’s also killing other humans in the process.

(can angels even be killed when they're not in a vessel?)

Paradoxically, this episode shows a Cas that’s very much “careless” about his “vessel-not vessel" and who's in contrast with the care his former brothers-in-arms extend to their vessels/friends. While Benjamin “wouldn't put himself in harm's way if he could help it.” and Mirabel and Ishim were not “careless” with their vessels, Cas is “impressed” that they have “kept [their]vessels all this time”. And isn’t it telling that’s Cas that uses the word “vessel” while Ishim says “but you, Castiel... I liked the old you better”? He doesn't say "your old vessel", he precisely says the "old you". Of course, Ishim's implying that Cas has changed etc, but I like when characters speak about vessels and everybody just sort of means different things.

First of all, just like Asa Fox’s death was foreshadowing Cas’death, Yockey is, again, foreshadowing Cas’ demise by the end of the season: he will be careless and he will put himself in harm’s way and he will die because of it. I used the word “paradoxically” before because Cas’ vessel is both a vessel and kind of Cas’ human (?) body. His “carelessness” cost everything to Jimmy Novak and the angel made a promise to him, twice, and yet he seems to be absolutely disconnected from corporeal reality to the point that he would easily throw himself in harm’s way without thinking. Benjamin wouldn’t do that. Hell, not even Ishim-Who-Hates-Humans would ever do that to his vessel (also, let’s bear in mind that possessed people suffer A.LOT. but also maybe let’s do like the show does and never go there again or we’ll just get ugly sad).

Going back to Lily Sunder, a character defined by her being a scholar and a mother. We don’t know anything about May’s father, but we do know that he’s NOT an angel (this is like the plot-twist of the episode). Akobel is the stand-in father/protector who, guess what? Dies! (just like Cas will die to protect his/not biologically his baby who’s also The Nephilim Of All Time after possibly Jesus himself, that depends if we consider him a Nephilim or not).

Ishim is in love with Lily (or so he thinks) but, just like Jael, he’s actually “obsessed” with her. He’s also convinced that Lily has “thrown him away" for Akobel, Akobel, who’s an angel but, we’re reminded, also a vessel (“Dispose of his vessel” Ishim says).

So what do we learn from absent/dead father/hunter Asa and vengeful/killer mother/scholar Lily's stories? Well, first of all that having a supernatural being as your stan will result in certain death, if not yours, the death of one of your loved ones. Which is a funny juxtaposition to Ishim's words: "You know why we're meant to stay away from them humans? Hmm? It's not because we're a danger to them. They're a danger to us". Second of all, angels and demons get quite possessive (haha I keep making this joke about possession I should stop) but this is not the rule, Benjamin represents the exception and, to a lesser degree, Ishim and Mirabel too. Believe it or not, angels have a vested interest in keeping their vessels alive and well, Cas is the only one who doesn't understand that and just keeps putting himself in harm's way.

What about Tasha Banes? Well, she's the one who's dealt with the "possession by another human being" card and I don't know if I can say that's the worst but yeah, it's the worst.

Tasha is a hunter, a witch and the mother of Alicia and Max. She seems like the cool mom, à la Lorelai Gilmore but we as audience are left to decide whether Alicia's anxiety is justified ("Mom usually checks in with us, but she's sort of disappeared") or if Max's right ("She did not disappear. She's busy.").

She is killed by an unnamed borrower witch who had made a deal with a demon and lost her soul as a consequence (not the same as Lily Sunder, but here we are again with the whole soul-thing). The witch wanted Tasha to take the deal upon herself, Tasha rejects it so she kills her and transforms her in a sort of creepy doll. The witch "possesses" Tasha and makes her a doll, a not-real but resembling body that acts and speaks like one. Soulless, bodyless, this Tasha creature is basically a memory.

Stripped of her sould and her body, Tasha (and later Alicia since Creature Tasha dies together with the borrower witch) is a puppet controlled by her master that will die when her master will.

She basically represents, imo, what all these anonymous meatsuits/vessels/not so much vessels/bodies are in the narrative: they're empty and unimportant unless they're contained by a powerful being or if they are loved and cared about by the hunters hunting these "things". And even the love of these hunters is not enough to spare this horrendous fate to these people: Max, a witch and a hunter, will eventually make the deal and transform Alicia into a "doll".

And I'm sorry but I cannot but think that this is not a coincidence if I think that the "doll" of s12 narrative is yet another mother, Kelly Kline, the point where the themes of motherhood and that of body/vessel/possession converge. She is THE VESSEL of the season, useful because she must give birth to the Nephilim and then easily discarded by the narrative. "Dispose of her vessel", Ishim might say of her.

Steve Yockey really understood the assignment.

Twigs and twine and Kelly Kline.

[khaleesiofalicante]

Heroes

Okay so, heroes. Let's talk a bit about that.

I said that if Madeleine hadn't lost Joseph she wouldn't have become a bad person. Most likely, she would've chosen to save the world over herself. Probably her children, although I could be wrong. But not Joseph, right? If she was in David's position, if she had to choose between getting Joseph back and keeping the universe intact, what would she have chosen? I feel like it would be Joseph.

But what about Max? We know he would chose the universe over his kids. Not easily, of course not. But he would. What about David? Between saving the universe and losing David, would he have made the same choice? Because he did open the portal to change a canon event when he thought David would kill himself. It wasn't an 100% free choice, it kinda flew out of him, but he still did it no? So, between letting David die and letting the universe unravel, would he have done the hero thing and sacrifice his love?

Would Alec? Would he sacrifice Magnus, Max, Rafael? Or would he draw the line at one of them? Of course, all of the aforementioned would sacrifice themselves but would Alec let them? Would he let Magnus?

Or Rafael? He asked himself the same question, would he sacrifice his family? His Arjun, his Cami, his Anjali? Because I feel like when it comes to Cami or Anjali, he would react very similarly to Madeleine. But would he jeopardise the world?

And Magnus? I have a feeling he wouldn't for Alec, but what about Rafael? What about Max? He never let himself entertain the idea of losing Max right? It was always meant to be him and Max. Although I really can not see Magnus putting the universe in danger for any reason.

Lance? I'm pretty sure he would sacrifice himself and let Kincaid kill him if he knew what the alternative was but its not just himself. He would have to also allow Arthut to die correct? Would he? Or would he change the canon event for Arthur even if he knew the consequences it would have?

Last but not least, would Arthut let Kincaid kill Lance if he knew there was no way to prevent it. That Lance will die but at least if it's Kincaid that does it the world survives. Would he change the canon event?

What I'm trying to understand is this. In a scenario where they know and have let's say peaked a glimpse at Older Max's memories and know what will happen to them: Which ones would have absolutely refused to allow the world to become that. Which ones would have refused to jeopardise the universe. And what person would it take for them to change their minds? To give them second thoughts.

For example: David didn't care what the world would become if the prophecy was fulfilled. He didn't care about the universe. Not when his children were in danger. Would he have made the same choice if it was Max's life on the line and not Arthur's? If Max's death was a canon event, would he be so adamant to change it, consequences be damned?

I'm actually super curious about this, because the answers actually say a lot about these characters but if it's annoying or you don't want to answer or spoil, please feel free to ignore it.😊

This is extremely interesting. But...I can't answer it 😔 not because of spoilers - BUT

I am actually doing this new thing where i am trying to avoid answering/writing a lot of WHAT IFs. Because we don't get that kind of closure with 'real' books, do we? We just have to make do with what the author gives us and when we don't know stuff, we make up our own shit. We come up with theories and we write out own story (fanfiction) and we talk to our friends to discuss what happened. I want to do that. I want to encourage my readers to think on their own and fill the gaps and write their own answers instead of spoonfeeding them everything. I know I did that a lot in the past, but I've been thinking about this a lot lately so yeah. I think I think I'm going to give it a try. Sorry, my lovelies.

But for this specific situation, i don't know, it's incredibly hard to tell. Because (im disagreeing with you on one thing here) I don't think the choice they make reflects on their character. I know everyone in lbaf is like "omg i can't believe other max is trying to kill his own kids what happened to him!!" but like that's not a reflection of his character. When people are put in impossible situations (like literally the future of the world depends on it) and are asked to make a choice, I don't think we should judge them for it (personal opinion). So, as much as i know these characters well, I really don't know what any of these characters do. I don't even know what i would do. i think it very much depends on the moment itself. After all, we didn't expect Other Max to do what he did, did we? So, I could say "yeah Lance would totally sacrifice himself to save the world" but would he? What if he decides to be selfish for once in his life? We don't know. But whatever he (or anyone decides) in this situation, I don't think it means/says anything. There is a bit in one of the coming chapters (a fave scene) where David says that we mustn't judge people at their weakest moments. So, yeah. Sorry I gave a long ass answer and yet said nothing. But I would 1000% encourage you to think about what YOU think this characters might do x

[sang8262]

JP rambles: default outfit and character design edition

cause i asked about his character design and now I'M thinking about it, also im procrastinating so i have thoughts here goes

mostly about his default outfit, with a tiny bit about outfit 2 at the end. I already know this is going to be a needlessly long post lmao

TL;DR - JP is inspired by playing cards, bartitsu, and vampires/bats. he's a poker faced gentleman through n through

~~also minor spoiler warning for World Tour things, such as having JP as a Master and getting to max level skills/ bond with him~~

This is a safe space and I will be HONEST: I didn't like his default look a lot at first, but I've since warmed up to it!! I still use his outfit 2 (color 10) online tho. I speed ran World Tour for that, I have suffered, and I WILL enjoy it.

Anyway, it was once I realized he has thematic ties to playing cards that really made his default design make sense to me. First, some proof that he takes inspiration from playing cards to begin with.

Once you get Master Skill level in World Tour mode, everyone gets a little cutscene movie featuring their skills, archetypes/ titles, and ends with a quote commemorating your achievements as their student.

JP's starts off like this, with a bunch of playing cards with his name on them falling down the screen:

(also, btw, where we get more of that bat imagery, but i'll get back to that later)

This is what made it click for me and made it really obvious why his name is stylized the way it is, using the font it uses. His name reads the same way right side up as it is upside down, and looks very much like how the values are printed on these cards.

Then, the video includes several 'titles' for each character. Some of these get used in other promotional material too, but JP's are as follows:

King of No Country

High-Rolling Pretender

Gentlemanly Tyrant

In which, again, the poker/ gambling references show up with the phrase "high-rolling", or "king" of no country.

And final proof, is that each Master in World Tour can be given gifts that they will react to in unique ways, and also receive extra bond points for. Sometimes they're things the character likes, or really hates: it's just what gets an interesting reaction out of them.

JP (unfortunately) only has one such gift item he has special dialogue for: antique playing cards.

Although his reaction to them are... less than positive (he literally calls them 'trash'), he also points out how old cards can't be used to play actual games, as it is against the rules.

Within the game's universe, it shows that he cares, or at least knows enough about cards to even have these notable responses to them. Considering it outside the game, the devs specifically decided to make his special World Tour gift a set of Antique Playing Cards, instead of any other item. They wanted to make this connection between him and cards for a reason.

So to me, I think this is a lot of evidence that shows a clear and intentional relationship between JP's character design and playing cards.

In retrospect, I honestly think he does look like the face cards quite a bit lmao. The white hair and beard + mustache, the cravat, the colors too (really strong orange/ red, paired with gold and that bit of marble on his cane), and the cane paralleling a scepter/ sword.

Speaking of, more about the cane: the devs had an interview answering fan questions, and at one point they explain the inspiration for JP. I'll link the video here with the timestamp for this question:

https://youtu.be/ORw3_BK7o70?t=146

But basically they say they wanted to have a character use a cane, and cites bartitsu/ Sherlock Holmes as well. So, even if they worked backwards from 'cane', all the way to 'gentlemanly tyrant who likes chess puzzles and launders money through fighting game tournaments', I think they made it work well with the playing cards aesthetic too!

Finally, I'll go back to the bat imagery that I think is pretty interesting.

Parts of his design subtly incorporate bats, such as his brooch on the default costume:

And more directly in his alt costume 2, seen on his buttons and coat pattern:

And I have to imagine the brooch on his default outfit is somewhat invoking of a bat (with wings and large ears) because of his WT skill Mastery video having a giant BAT in the middle of the screen. I also thought it might be in reference to the Shadaloo organization symbol, which is a skull with wings.

Then even further from the comics, Kalima-- his assistant while organizing the fighting tournament in Nayshall-- warns Luke that JP is like a "vampire who will suck this country dry". The vampire analogy just works so beautifully with how he works as a criminal, not to mention the other aesthetic associations with it.

All in all, I really REALLY love JP's personality and whole modus operandi as a character and villain so greatly in his design. I definitely also feel that his outfit 2 isn't nearly as symbolism laden as his default one, but I am a sucker for formal wear and suits, so I am just, in love. Plus the subtler nods to his bat/vampire-ness is there, if only very minimally.

Edit: noticing this as I literally posted this AH. But also on the playing cards from his WT skill video, it has two different faces, it has both the Jack (or possibly King...) and the Joker:

It continues to add to his duality/ hidden true nature/ deceiver type character so much, it's perfect. And of course, with his name, or pseudonyms starting with "J". So either Jack or Joker works perfectly. I mean literally, he isn't the king of any country... but he'll still bring it to ruin all the same.

Edit #2: omg i keep remembering things i meant to add thank you adhd very cool

BUT, in the original Japanese version of the Mastery skill video, his titles are SLIGHTLY DIFFERENT. As is the Korean translation, which is a more direct translation of the Japanese one than the English is.

'So "King of No Country" was originally also: "No-Life King of a Ruined Country"

And turns out, doing some good ol' googling, that 'no-life king' has some established meanings to it:

Basically, it's related to other media including vampires, undead, monsters, so I'm guessing 'no-life' is closer in meaning to 'immortal', having no natural lifespan rather.

So yeah, even more references to vampirism for ya

but aNYWAY,, Thanks for reading my silly observations!!

I think I got pretty much everything but if there's anything I didn't mention or something to add please please do, I love reading replies and the tags (this site's so much better for this kinda stuff lmao)

[prismatoxic]

alright im here to say: ramble abt the "awful boys" pls! You can share any fun facts abt them or just abt matt or even just share out of context facts abt the lore! (that'd be very funny) ✨

IF YOU'RE SURE... I CAN CERTAINLY DO THAT...

despite not being "mine", arguably felix actually is mine, just as much as matt is max's. we share them so much that they haven't really developed outside of that context, so a lot of things about them are entwined... though that said i do have a more solid grasp on matt since he is the one i made and largely craft the lore for. if there's anything i don't feel comfortable speculating on for felix i can always ask max what he thinks though

i don't really remember everything i've actually posted here, although i think i've largely been vague on tumblr with the exception of the lore dump under matt's new ref. i can reshare that and maybe felix's backstory as well, but first i'll just share some facts and lore tidbits

also this got So Long so here's a cut

felix met the original matthew once. at a company party, matthew had come along at his father's insistence, and really didn't want to be there. his father introduced him to felix--probably flippantly, they're closer in age than matthew is with most other people there but also the old CEO resented felix and wasn't exactly trying to include him in anything--but the conversation went nowhere. the next time felix saw him, matthew was dead and the godking had taken his place as "matt". (we have an au where the conversation did go somewhere and they actually started "dating", which is just even more awful for poor matthew than what he canonically goes through. felix shouldn't ever date other humans, he's a toxic cesspit)

there's an underworld of demons that has direct connections to the company, both in location and in business. it's part of why matt finds it so interesting. in the canon/"just me and max" version of the story, the demons working at the company are generally pretty good at being covert and are rarely noticed. once matt shows up, suddenly none of them go to the top floor, quickly hurrying out of the way if he's on other floors. felix notices, one of the several things that brings him to the conclusion of something being weird about matt before the truth is forced out.

(there's another version of the story where we've involved several friends, most of whom made demon ocs, though some made other entities. matt remains the only entity of his kind in that version of the story, but the divide between him and other supernatural beings is less severe.)

when felix does find out about matt's true nature, it's not in any particularly descriptive way, and the best guess he can make is "angel of death". the existence of potentially-religious figures concerns him somewhat, as he was raised in a religious household and if hell is real, then brother, he's gonna have a bad time. that said, this particular assumption is what leads to one of his most common petnames for matt: "angel", which matt seems to actually enjoy, usually

on the topic of petnames--they both use them and both usually do so sarcastically or mockingly. "angel" is usually used that way, too. it's later in their relationship when any of them become fond; "angel" is one used in such a way, but matt doesn't have any that are so specific. he defaults to mushy stuff like "love," "beloved," and "darling." it's easy to assume he's still being sarcastic.

but don't be fooled by talk of gentle fondness and love. a lot of their early relationship is marked by dubcon and eroguro, along with dozens of other filthy things, and those mostly continue indefinitely (maybe not dubcon, but certainly cnc). matt can't be killed via normal means and he can always bring felix back; with no consequences, they can do such horrible things, and felix's top kinks happen to include "snuff". how lucky he is! (i told you he's a toxic cesspit)

even so... they do love each other. maybe not at the start, no, but as things progress, absolutely. and neither thinks it's worth holding onto. for felix, matt certainly will never feel the same; for matt, it's simply foolish to feel such a way about a mortal. and yet... every time he brings felix back from death, he imbues him with some of his own stardust. felix doesn't know it's happening until his own powers start manifesting and he starts feeling matt's emotions. even then, matt brushes off his involvement in those things happening.

i actually wrote a little story about one of the defining moments of their relationship, a turning point for them both (but especially felix). i meant to post it here and never did. maybe i'll do that. anyway

matt has always inherited memories and desires from those he devoured, but upon leaving a vessel he's often lost big parts of that. even so, the person he is now feels like an amalgam of all those he's eaten, and he has... surprisingly huge identity issues. he's kind of shaken when he realizes he's started thinking of this vessel as himself, not just "the body". he's never lived a life so full in any of his vessels, never had cause to tether himself to one identity. it scares him. but... he doesn't want to leave. felix is still here.

on that note, he inherited a few kinks from matthew that he's not really ready for. matthew never got to act on them, but matt can, and he does--much to felix's delight. watching matt turn into a drooling whimpering mess is such a treat.

i'm exhausted so idk how many more things i can easily rattle off. but you're welcome to ask more stuff!

here, have the malix playlist:

and below i'll put these guys' backstories, just because

Matt

The Godking is a young cosmic entity from an unknowable place somewhere out in the universe. He used to enter relationships with older beings, but as a younger being he was rarely fully respected; as a result, he became obsessed with the idea of gaining the sort of power that would force the others to acknowledge him as a peer. Crafting a divine dagger with parts of his own being, he used it to kill his partners, devouring their essences to absorb their powers. 

His last cosmic partner was an arachnid-like being who saw him for what he was before he could murder them. While they were unable to take his dagger, they still nearly killed him in the ensuing fight, and in the wake of the battle he was banished from his home dimension for his crimes. In his banishment, he lost his original form, left to wander the cosmos as a formless cluster of stardust.

He eventually ended up on Earth, drawn by the presence of supernatural beings mingling with the humans, as well as the humans themselves. He found himself enamored with the concept of human religion—of gods and deities that were worshiped for their control over the world. This was where he adopted the moniker Godking, an apt description of his influence on the humans who idolized him. For millennia he drifted from project to project, forming cults in his own name or joining human settlements to play with some of the residents, stealing the bodies of singular members to become "prophets" delivering the word of their new God. Inevitably, he always got bored, killing his favored toys so they couldn't exist without him and abandoning those who worshiped him. 

Not too long ago, the CEO of a successful company used ancient texts from one of the Godking's religions to invoke his name, asking for his aid in making the company prosper beyond his wildest dreams. Amused by the request, the Godking gave his word, then used his hypnosis abilities to drive the CEO mad to get him out of the way. Needing a new vessel to "fulfill the agreement" (a conscious choice, as he isn't the sort to be bound by deals or laws), he devoured the soul of the CEO's son, Matthew, assuming ownership of his body and using it to take over the company. 

He's grown fond of the name Matt, and in truth has also grown fond of Matthew's body, though he does frequently alter it to suit his needs. It's been some time since he enjoyed a specific form so much. It helps, perhaps, that a specific high ranking member of the company—the only person to have broken through the illusion to discover the sinister truth underneath—seems to like this form too.

He needs to leave it eventually, of course, lest his essence get so tangled up in it that breaking away gets difficult. Surely that won't be hard. 

Felix

Felix was born to an incredibly average family out in the suburbs, not too far from the city where he works now. By all accounts, he was a very normal child; he was pleasant, if a bit withdrawn, and wore very normal clothes, had a very normal haircut, and kept his room very plain. His interests were few and nothing noteworthy, and his performance in school was decent. 

Of course, all of that was only what outsiders saw—his extended family, school peers who didn't share classes with him, and the many mental health professionals his parents sent him to all considered him to be a normal, plain child. Anyone who spent a little more time with him could tell there was something wrong. His immediate family, closest to him by virtue of living with him, actively considered him a threat.

Felix was prone to killing and dissecting small animals, blatantly lying to manipulate others, collecting blackmail material whenever an opportunity presented itself, and generally intimidating anyone who could be pushed around in such a way. While many of his traits could potentially be explained by sociopathy, Felix was never formally diagnosed with anything, charming anyone who may have been able to into thinking he was fine. Perhaps his parents waited too long to get him looked at. Or perhaps Felix was always a conniving sadist, something within him darker than any mental disorder could explain.

Having since moved out of the suburbs and largely distanced himself from his family, Felix lives in an apartment with two roommates and works at the company Matt took over. When the old CEO was still in charge, Felix used his skills to blackmail the man extensively, gaining a position perilously close to the C-suite with the intentions to move even higher when the chance manifested. He was blindsided, as were many others, when the old CEO was institutionalized and his son inherited his company. Yet as the other executives and employees easily took to Matt's presence, Felix was furious that his plans had been disrupted... and cautious of the ways in which something about Matt seemed off.

When attempts to learn more or get Matt under his thumb failed, Felix resorted to murder. He's resorted to murder a lot, over the years. He's never been caught, never been confronted, never been stopped—and never met someone who could shake off a bullet to the skull. 

Until now.