#and excluding other characters from future games

[echoes-lighthouse]

Ooh oh!! Danganronpa ships please!!!

OH boy, okay, this is your reminder that I've never interacted with the Danganronpa fandom because I've only done the first game and it's hard to avoid spoilers for the others, so I have no idea what ships are popular or rare lmao -- thank you for the chance to ramble along!!

Okay, first off, I do like the mostly-canon ships from the game (Mondo and Taka, Aoi and Sakura). Of those two, I care much more about Aoi and Sakura because I love Sakura with all my heart, but Mondo and Taka are good as well! I didn't think I'd like either of those characters but then I liked how they related to each other and ended up liking both of them!

If I was going to read fanfiction about anyone from this cast, it would definitely be Chihiro, I think they're fascinating and I'd love to read people's fics about them. I really like the idea of Chihiro/Mondo, personally, but Chihiro/Hiro also has interesting vibes! Honestly, I just kind of ship Hiro with everyone. He has poly vibes to me.

I feel like I'm probably weird for this, but I really shipped Byakuya and Celestia. I just feel like Byakuya would be much more tolerable if he was polishing a goth girl's boots, and I feel like Celestia could put him solidly in his place.

I am solidly neutral on Byakuya/Toko, but significantly more interested in the Byakuya/Jack option in that situation. Once again, I want to see that man get shaken up and I think being a yandere's darling would probably look good on him.

Once again, I don't really know what ships are popular, but those are the ones that intrigued me!! I'd really love to read anything with Chihiro, Toko, and Celestia -- they all compel me enormously. I love Toko a ridiculous amount, I'd like to see her in the hands of someone who actually knows how to handle half of what she has going on, because canon sure doesn't!

[devourable]

your first time • yanderes x reader, part one

nsfw, minors and ageless dni ;; smut (duh), virgin top x bottom gn reader, various kinks that will be tagged per character.

ft. abraham (yandere church boy), sterling (yandere prodigy), gene (yandere hacker), tobias and sebastian (yandere best friends), and mykolas (yandere monster)

this part will just be the guys (excluding the delinquents)! i wanted to put most of my polyamorous groups as well as the girls and enbies in part two. decided last minute to change it a bit and make it sort of ambiguous as to if the reader is a virgin or not. regardless!

thanks again for 2k 🫶

the church boy — abraham atkins ;; dacryphilia, elements of sizeplay, mentions of religion

abraham thought his first time would be well into the future, after he’d gotten married at his church and whisked off to start his own family like his father before him. it was just a part of life to him, not something to really care about or look forward to; but it was supposed to happen that way. but abe… he just couldn’t resist you!

he knew he shouldve stopped you the moment you had found yourself on his lap, pinning him to his bed after what was supposed to be an sleepover had gone completely off course. and he should’ve stopped you when you got your tongue in his mouth, grinded on him, getting him hard for practically the first time in his life. he should’ve stopped things before they went too far — but he couldn’t stop you. or himself, after he started to clumsily hump you back, his hands finding and delicately groping your ass in an attempt to figure out how he could fit against you best. abe has such an innocent hunger about him, he so desperately wants more — more what, exactly? he doesn't really know. you definitely end up having to take lead because he wholeheartedly doesn't know what he's doing.

but once you coax him out of his nerves and a bit of trial and error (he absolutely wouldn't have fit in you dry; and even after you taught him how to work you open and got his dick wet enough, it was still a tight fit!), you finally, finally get him inside you. and abe, poor abe didn't even know what hit him. despite the tears tumbling down his face purely from how good you felt around him, despite the deep rooted guilt of committing such a sin with the one he loved clawing at his chest, he couldn’t help how brutally he ended up fucking you. he’d pour out all of his pent up desire into you in one night, fucking you through climax after climax till you were seeing stars too.

the prodigy — sterling cygnus ;; overstimulation, risky(ish) setting/exhibitionism

it must all be a game to you, his feelings and this weird dynamic in your relationship. even when the two of you actually start dating (…sorta), he still had it in his head that you were just trying to fuck with him. what other reason could there be to explain how he felt aside from it being your fault?

it was when the two of you were in his dorm that he actually decided to push your boundaries, see what you would let him do before your ‘facade’ finally cracked. but you didn’t stop him when he pinned you against your bed, or when he started kissing you, or when the kiss transformed into an unintentionally heated makeout session. it wasn’t until you had started to pull off your shirt and palm at him through his pants that he started to think that you might’ve actually wanted him.

sterling didn’t really know how it went so far, but he stopped caring when the absolute carnal need to just feel you took over his brain. you must’ve assumed that he didn’t know how to make you feel good because he’s inexperienced, right? no? well, he doesn’t believe you. and to ensure you do, you’re not getting out of that dorm until he’s made you cum on him again, and again, and again. you’d have to think he’s playing with you at some point with how often he switches between fucking you and fingering you — he insists on making you cum both ways as many times as you can handle. he’s rattling the walls and got you sobbing his name so loud that no doubt the entire dorm can hear you (the walls were never that thick to begin with anyway). he relishes in not only knowing he’s completely claimed you, but now all of your colleagues will know too. he doesn’t care how much of a mess he’s making with your insides or how much of him spills out of you, nor does he care if you’re exhausted and sore from the waist down. you’re not done until he’s done with you — and being the overachiever he is, who knows when that’ll be? he’d hate to leave you thinking he’s anything but your number one.

the hacker — gene eliades ;; a lil dubcon-y, filming w/o reader’s knowledge

gene had waited for you to make a move on him first, he really did. he even tried enticing you in his own way, always sitting with his legs open so you could see the very clear outline of his dick through his pants, sitting you on his lap when he was working and keeping a hand on your body at all times. he’d kiss you, tell you how crazy you drove him, anything to give you an idea of what he wanted. but you never took that extra step and it left him wondering if it was because you were toying with him or if you really were that dense. either way, he had had enough, and after one particular day where the need burning in the pit of his stomach just wouldn’t go away, he decided that he wouldn’t wait anymore.

when you tried to slip off of his leg to do something, his arm curled around your waist and pulled you square into his lap, making sure you felt every inch of his erection against your ass. you were so irresponsible, constantly getting him riled up and never doing anything about it. did you even like him at all? regardless of your answer he was already sliding his hands under your clothes, groping your chest with one and working your bottoms down with the other.

it was unceremonious, the way gene bent you over his desk and buried himself up to the hilt in you before you could even voice any potential protests. but the feeling of him hitting all the right spots in you made your mind go blank, unable to do anything but moan his name every time he pulled you back against him. god, he loved hearing the way you whimpered for him, feeling you stretch around him when he fucked you just a bit too hard, the way your hips fit so nicely in his hands.

it was a good thing you were too fucked out to notice the little light next to his webcam aimed down at you. you wouldn’t mind if you did, he assumed — there was nothing wrong with wanting to remember this moment later, was there?

the boys next door — tobias & sebastian ;; double penetration, threesome

the pair had fantasized about losing their virginity to you years before it actually happened. the amount of times they’d gotten each other off with your name falling from their lips was too many to count, but god knows it just wasn’t enough for the two. but they never acted on those feelings, not until they had planned out the day to ensure it would be perfect.

you did find it a bit suspicious that the first time you were all free for the weekend at the same time was on the night that toby’s parents went out for an unplanned vacation, but you easily overlooked it when the pair offered you a sleepover (for old time’s sake!), bribed with promises of your favorite snacks and whatever movies you wanted to watch. you were sandwiched between the two in your best friend’s room, oh so aware of the growing tension but unsure where it was leading to — but then toby suddenly asked to kiss you. and what you assumed would be a playful peck ended with you pinned to the bed with tobias holding your wrists while sebastian made himself comfortable between your legs.

they really like you, and they know you like them too — you wanna be their first, don’t you? be their special someone? that’s what toby’s asking between kisses while seb’s lifting your shirt and sliding a hand down the front of your pants. it wasn’t until you finally gave them the permission they’d waited so long for that the pair allowed themself to really get the night started.

toby was the first to break you in while seb held you in his lap. it was a shame the pair didn’t think to record the moment… the face you made when toby fucked into you was so cute! and the noise you made when seb slid under you to try and squeeze into you alongside toby would play in their minds over and over again. they might’ve pushed you a bit too hard, stretching you well beyond your limit without even letting you catch your breath. they just couldn’t resist! you were clamping down on them, sucking them both in like you didn’t wanna let them go. it felt so good to make you cum.

the two were still up long after you had passed out, ogling your ruined state with an undeniable urge to fuck you up even more. they saw it like a badge of honor, proof that you’d always be theirs. the two would let you rest for the time being, but don’t worry — they still had an entire weekend with you ahead, and they didn’t plan on letting you step foot outside that house till their time was up.

the beast — mykolas ;; teratophilia (duh), size difference, outercourse/thighfucking

mykolas really, really didn’t want to hurt you. he was well aware of how big he was, especially compared to you — if you got hurt because he couldn’t control himself, he wouldn’t know what to do!

all of those thoughts were completely disregarded when he started rutting, though. the poor monster couldn’t think straight with his hormones running amok, and you being you — so soft, so small, so vulnerable, it was like you were designed to torture him through the season. you’d very quickly catch on to what was happening to your monstrous partner, considering you’d often be woken up by him grinding up against your back or stomach in a desperate bid to try and relieve the borderline painfully throbbing cock that was bothering him more and more these days. and though he’d never make his needs known vocally, you could just tell — that sad, pleading look he’d give you every time you looked at his pitiful form was just begging you to take care of him.

you knew for certain that you couldn’t just fuck him in his current state. his cock practically matched the length of your torso! and with how reckless his hormones were making him, the possibility of him ‘accidentally’ making you take more than you could handle was too high, even if you did try to take control. so to work around this problem, you opted to get a bit creative with your methods.

mykolas didn’t quite understand what was going on at first when you bent over in front of him, pants pulled down to your knees. but when you guided him between your legs and clamped your thighs around his length, you could tell the switch in his brain had flipped and he completely allowed instinct to take over. you had no clue just how good it’d feel when mykolas’s hard, wet cock rutted against you relentlessly until he was gripping your waist and pulling you against him, fucking your thighs like you were his living fleshlight. but fuck, the way he managed to slide against every sensitive spot he had access to despite his carnal state was nearly driving you insane. and mykolas delighted in the way you clawed at the ground and mewled for him, your voice so pretty when you stammered out his name. it didn’t take long for either of you to cum at that rate.

despite the mess mykolas made of your thighs and stomach, though, he wouldn’t let you get off him. he’d been pent up for so long, repressing his desire to mate with you, he couldn’t just stop there! so he went again, and again, humping you in any position he could think of, pinning you down, thoroughly wrecking you as best as he could. you were gonna be in for a rough mating season now that mykie knew how to relieve himself with you — but you didn’t mind, he assumed. you were the one that showed him how to feel better, after all.

[thealexchen]

thoughts on LIS: Double Exposure?

This is probably gonna be my hottest take in awhile, but: I deeply dislike the idea of an official LiS1 direct sequel game existing. Excluding all my thoughts on the gameplay, story, Max's character, etc. I don't think a game like Double Exposure is necessary.

This isn't a new take either; back in 2020 I made a Reddit post saying I was glad we never got a continuation of Max and Chloe's story, because in order to have a plot, you have to have conflict. And to have conflict means your characters are forced to change or struggle in some way, and I simply wasn't interested in seeing that again. I never even read the comics. As long as Max and Chloe's future existed only in the fanbase's collective imagination and not in an officially licensed game, Pricefield could be as happy as I wanted and I wouldn't have to witness DN or D9's version of canon.

A lot of fans, including myself, are also confused and upset as to where Chloe could be in Double Exposure. Even if Chloe winds up having a surprise role, it would likely be too logistically difficult to write Chloe into one version of the story and not the other. Either way, DE is strongly pointing to Chloe no longer being the deuteragonist. If D9 was going to make a direct sequel with Max and Chloe, I could at least be intrigued by how they might write their dynamic and how they'd use Max's power in new and interesting ways. But instead there's... none of that. Chloe's nowhere to be seen and Max can't time travel anymore.

On a narrative level, Max and Chloe are the heart of the original Life is Strange. They represent the game's central relationship, and their very first interaction (Max saving Chloe's life) kicks off the entire story. Throughout the story, their dynamic advances the plot and mutually motivates their character arcs. You can't have LiS1 without either Max or Chloe; the story simply wouldn't exist without them. Now in DE, they don't even seem to be in each other's lives anymore. It's true, this series is meant to reflect universal feelings and experiences, which could include breakups, but the romantic catharsis of Pricefield as canon soulmates who defied time and space itself to stay together forever is something you can only get from the beauty of fiction. To jab DE's story with a dose of reality and go, "Eh, they grew apart. Shit happens," totally undermines everything the Bae ending stood for.

On a technical level, Max's rewind was an objectively brilliant game mechanic. LiS1 arrived onto the scene after Telltale had paved the way for the resurgence of choice-based, episodic games, but LiS1 totally reinvented the wheel by giving the player the option to go back and weigh each option before continuing, essentially save-scumming in-game. But the right choice was never that easy to determine, and Rewind brilliantly complemented Max's character arc of overcoming her indecision and learning to live with her choices. Not to mention, you could also use Rewind to solve puzzles, instead of the endless fetch quests the later games had. No other LiS game since then has given the player that kind of agency and interactivity. LiS2 had telekinesis, but the player couldn't use it, only Daniel. D9 tried with Backtalk and Empathy, but Max's Rewind was truly the narrative and gameplay jackpot that they haven't been able to recreate since.

So if you take away one half of the central relationship that made the first game so memorable, and the supernatural power/game mechanic that made it so fun to play... why even bring Max back at all? It just feels like D9 threw away their golden opportunity to build upon the major selling points of the first game and are only relying on name recognition of the Life is Strange "brand" and Max Caulfield.

What upsets me most of all about a direct sequel existing is that it proves that Life is Strange, as a series, now stands more for profits than originality. Life is Strange will always be an IP meant to make money for Square, I know that, but back when LiS1 was just a brand new episodic game, it stood out for how different it dared to be. In a landscape saturated with shooters, sexualized female characters, and casual misogyny, LiS1 instead featured a teenage girl in a contemporary setting that took her seriously and made her the hero of her story. Before it was a franchise, LiS wasn't concerned with the bottom dollar; it was a piece of art that just wanted to tell a thoughtful, unique story.

Whether you love it or hate it, Life is Strange 2 was an insanely risky follow-up to Life is Strange that refused to rely on the convenience of a direct sequel because Dontnod stuck to their artistic vision. Meanwhile, all of Deck Nine's games have leaned on the first game's following to generate interest (BtS being a direct prequel, TC bringing back Steph, and Wavelengths expanding on Steph's connection to Chloe, Rachel, and Arcadia Bay). In other words, all of the subsequent LiS games by D9 have played it very, very safe. It's worked like a damn charm because there are still elements I love about each game, but the basic principle is nostalgia-baiting fans. It's just that now, Double Exposure isn't hiding that nostalgia bait at all anymore and prioritizing profits over telling a unique story. It's sad to see that LiS has strayed so far from its risky, daring, original, and unique artistic beginnings.

Before I end, I'll say that I can't be too cynical about it all, nor do I want to be. Because I can't deny how much joy this whole series has brought me, too. LiS was what got me into narrative adventure games and pushed the boundaries of what a video game could be. If nothing else, I am truly thrilled that Hannah Telle got the chance to play Max again. D9's always been great at maintaining relationships with their actors, and the casts of their games always have consistently great chemistry. Getting recognized by Erika Mori on my own blog is still unbelievable and speaks to the amazing community that LiS has built. As you can see, I'm still posting and reblogging stuff about Double Exposure. And while I don't see myself buying or playing this game for myself, I know it'll keep all of us talking for awhile, and I still live for a good discussion.

Thank you for asking! And thank you for reading.

[mayordeas-clone]

Vocaloid Familiarity Survey...DATA!!!

hello, i posted a survey to gauge the general familiarity of vocaloid characters that I (emphasis on I) consider basic or surface level (with a few wildcards thrown in which i will address in this summary) after grieving the lack of non-miku vocaloid fan merch. just how much do people know about vocaloid outside of miku? her friends? her friends' friends? and so on.

the survey was by no means perfect (this was my first attempt at this) but i received some great feedback from the survey takers to better improve the experience the next time i host one.

if you just want a basic summation of the results, here ya go--overall familiarity (that is, recognition of name/design/both summed up) organized into an iceberg tier list. including the individual percentages would have been So SO much so i crammed it into the alt text of the iceberg.

(tiers are in order. the only tie was big al, sweet ann, and an excluded lola. i'll address her and leon in the summary) the rest of this post will be going over some of the results as well as reflecting on the survey itself, its shortcomings, and a possible sequel with improvements :)

FIRST OF ALL: EXCLUSIONS

i am so so so so sorry for not including your fave on the survey, even if they had a realistic level of popularity! i either straight up forgot or didn't think they were that relevant or arbitrarily decided "nah this might be too far, don't wanna scare anyone off" before deciding to include more obscure synths. yukari fans in particular were very vocal about her exclusion, and i totally get it!! i also get the confusion in the exclusion of seeu and maika (the main korean and spanish-speaking loids respectively).

out of the other synths i didn't include, i wish i included yukari, seeu, maika, mayu, iroha, yohioloid, the rest of the isotopes, and the rest of the vsingers. you'll notice i included the rest of starry court + the tokyo6 girls even though they expectedly did pretty poorly among general audiences. i almost scrapped saros, nyl, karin, and chifuyu, but was like "what the heck might as well complete the full set right". and then did not extend that grace to kafu and tianyi's friends!!! aughh!!

also, EARLY on in the survey, i included calne ca as a character to recognize, which some ppl didn't get since unlike other fanloids she didn't really have an associated "voice". while this survey was more about the fandom and character side rather than the music, i figured it was a fair point since i didn't extend similar grace to several other fanloids without significant voices like mikudayo/hachune miku/more. so in order to just remove it from the picking or without fucking up the sample size by adding more questions after the fact, i just removed her.

leon and lola stayed on the survey till closure, but when i was tallying up the results i decided it didn't really make sense to include them (at least the way that i did). i'll discuss this more when i talk about fan designs.

1 - what went down

so based on the results of the iceberg, i was about expecting these types of results with a few surprises here or there. it should come to no shock that ol' reliable hatsune miku scored a 100% recognition rating. 99.7% respondents recognized her name and design. curiously, a SINGLE respondent (.3%) only recognized her name.

the rest of the top tiers are nothing surprising. the rest of the "cryptonloids" near the top were expected (for those OOTL: cryptonloids refers to vocaloids made by crypton future media, miku's parent company, and therefore are the ones that appear alongside her in all officially sponsored events/merch/games/concerts/etc. so they're seen A Lot). meiko was a bit of an outlier and the only one among the six to score below 90%, which was sort of surprising? like, perhaps she just doesn't have as much vocal fans compared to kaito idk. gumi and teto, the non-cryptonloids, are also no surprise to see up high. gumi is very popular, especially back in the day where she was THE girl for your english vsynth song. teto has seen a massive resurgence through many sources, most of which stems from her synthv voicebank and songs made with it. mesmerizer and its copycats, daemon doll, on top of general nostalgia. teto was also huge back in the day considering triple baka. she's older than luka just short of a year, so she was included in some OLD songs (or at least their mvs) before luka even existed.

a rung below that is also fairly standard, minus my slight surprise for meiko scoring in a different tier from her friends. neru's standing comes to no surprise due to triple baka/classic music videos including her as well as a slight resurgence in relevance through people including her in mesmerizer. mikuo, a derivative of miku, did a bit better than i thought. as i expected, the art trend where people redesigned him gave him a bit of a leg up in recognition. also, the general concept of his character is just... very straightforward to grasp just by looking at him, so i wonder if that also played a role.

i expected yuki to do a little bit better, maybe even better than gakupo, who did worse than i thought. yuki's been going through a renaissance in recent years like through the work of inabakumori, yukopi, and yes whether we like it or not, the ensuing drama that surrounded hiiragi magnetite's "zako". but still, scoring above 70% is nothin' to sneeze at. i SWORE gakupo would do better tho, idk! i'm surprised even fukase surpassed him, even by less than 1%. i associate gakupo as being part of the main friend group. several ensemble songs (namely the hitoshizukup x yama variety) include him alongside gumi and the cryptonloids.

the 60-69% threshold is the middle ground, and for the most part it's a little mundane and expected. lily (and leon, who is not here but if he was would be between lily and una) did a bit better than i thought, though i think i can see it. before i knew about ia and mayu (i feel rlly dumb for not including her bc as i said i'm a yamashizuku enjoyer and mayu is usually included in 10-vocal ensembles augh!!!), i considered the main vocaloids after gumi and gakupo (numbers 9 and 10, since that's how i conceptualized it) to be lily and miki. i think several pieces of older fanart that feature popular vocaloids, ie the cryptonloids + gumi and gakupo, often threw in lily and miki as well. i wonder if lily's artwork being done by kei had something to do with this? i wasn't there at the time haha i just consumed vocaloid thru youtube reuploads and not so much with the community when i was a kid.

as we travel deeper down the iceberg, we drift far away from the vocaloid software and more into alternative vsynth softwares and their characters. while my variety in software included in the survey was fairly basic, it came to no surprise that among the general responders, synthv/cevio/utau characters were less recognized.

the bottom tier, in that case, makes perfect sense. saros, nyl, and chifuyu are particularly young voicebanks (nyl being the youngest on the list, released october 2024).

qi xuan was INTENTIONALLY a cheeky curveball saved for the very end and i'll admit it was extremely funny seeing people whose otherwise perfect streaks ended up slipping when she showed up at the end. qi xuan is the only ACE virtual singer i know, so might as well use her to rep the software, right? i figured she might have had some legs to stand on thanks to her recent appearances in kikuo's latest songs. sure enough, the majority of people who recognized her at all only knew her name and didn't recognize her design. in fact, she was the only synth where more people only knew her name rather than both name and design.

2 - regarding fan designs

something a little unorthodox about the survey was that i included fan designs for kevin, yi xi, and kinda vy2 ("roro" is semi-officially acknowledged, acknowledged enough to have his own spot on the fandom wiki, so i think he's a special case). my thought process was this: from my perspective, kevin and yi xi were probably the most popular or well-known faceless dreamtonics synths. but they don't really have a design to recognize. no one really uses the letters, not that i know of in original songs anyway. my logic in using ivylare's mr kevin synthv design and vimalion project's yi xi design was that they were probably the most recognized fan designs for dreamtonics loids. IN MY OPINION. the former's meme status + the latter's inclusion in butcher vanity meant that this would be the necessary push to give responders a reminder "hey in case this random fucking letter doesn't ring any bells, maybe this fan design will?"

BUUUT i acknowledge that is a bit of a leading question and doesn't actually consider OTHER popular fan designs these two (and all the other faceless loids for that matter). The Most popular fan design is actually pretty subjective tbh!! so i'm sorry if my inclusion of certain fan designs might have been confusing to any survey takers. however, i still included kevin and yi xi's results in the icebergs since the inclusion of the fan design, flawed as it was, was still a Character to recognize (which their original letters Certainly Were Not), which was the point of this whole survey.

The same could not be said for how i handled leon and lola. i'll admit, these two were a stretch even when i was making it. i cheated a bit and included them to gauge whether responders knew their vocaloid history rather than their vocaloid characters. so if anything i probably should have left them as a bonus question at the end idk. i didn't include fan designs for them because uh from my perspective, they don't really have a widely accepted super duper popular fan design? but i could be totally wrong on that, again this is a very subjective and tricky subject i was not ready to go into! so i just left them as is for the history question. considering this while i was tallying the results, i decided it didn't make sense for them to be included, so i cut them from the iceberg. if they were included, as previously mentioned, leon would be between lily and una, and lola would be tied with big al and sweet ann.

3 - the sqeakwel?!?

i do plan on making a follow-up based on the lovely feedback i got from the folks that took my survey (though this could be months from now, i'm a bit busy + google forms got very laggy with just like 45ish characters so augh). YES, i will be blowing up the scope way more to make sure no one feels left out. i might be a bit shaky on faceless loids (would miriam count? her box art is her VP's face but there's not exactly much else to go off of hhh), they might get their own section dedicated to various fan designs (but how do you account for all of them ?! or the most relevant ?!?!). there's also the goliath of a question that is How Do You Possibly Narrow Down The Roster of Utaus For Another Survey. utaus and similar tech like diffsinger can be made by anyone, so it just isn't realistic to include everyone. i thought about using vocadb + my own knowledge but idk? if anyone's got suggestions i'd love to hear it.

some other demographic questions were suggested by feedbackers will also be included. one that popped out to me was asking what years the survey taker was invested in (and possibly fell out of) the vocaloid community, which could provide some insight on which characters are recognized compared to others. like, who would someone who hasn't thought about vocaloid since 2012 recognize vs someone who got into it in 2020? this is an interesting question and i'd love to see what would come out of it.

some feedback suggested providing voice samples since some vocaloids have appeared in songs that people might not realize they've already heard (like avanna's appearance in several porter robinson songs. this could possibly solve the conundrum i had with kevin and yi xi). i am a liiiittle mixed on it idk? maybe this is just me but i feel like several factors like voice colors/multilingual voicebanks/the definite possibility someone might not recognize a voice from one source and connect it to another might make collecting data on this kind of messy and unreliable. like yi xi's vb is natively recorded in mandarin yet her most popular song is in english, idk i feel like there are a couple of factors to consider when showing vocal samples (i also do not have access to every voicebank so i can't make consistently neutral do-re-mi samples for them). i DID consider this by including song links (which i think some people also had in mind) but i didn't want the question to be Do You Recognize This Song. and again, i feel like there's a possibility there could be a mixup or the recognition doesn't come but idk i might just be deaf. lmk your thoughts!!

thank you for reading my yapping if you made it to the end, and a massive thank you to the people who participated in the survey!!!! if you have any questions about the data i would love to answer all of them (i am lowkey bad at navigating form data through google sheets which is why my data summary was a bit basic, but i can look closer for a specific thing you wanna know)

<3

[artsy-hobbitses]

So, I’m a big sucker for in-detail worldbuilding, and I have some questions regarding your Transformer-humans AU. Since the Quintesson invasion occurred in the 20’s-40’s(?) what’s some cultural “fun-facts” that results from that? Like how does car racing come about, since the Prohibition mafias/gangs that originated NASCAR probably didn’t exist or were wildly altered? Does chocolate chip cookies still exist? What about other popular medias from that time? Do spaghetti westerns still exist? Etc.

Ooooh this is one of the questions I want to turn around in my head like a rotisserie chicken while I think about 5++ paragraphs of bouncing off the walls BS but I'll try to throw in what I know as of currently! One also has to note that it's going to be hard to condense 'cultural facts' since TTB doesn't take place in the Americas nor is it even constrained by one specific landmass.

There's going to be some rambling, so everything under the cut!

There is a 20-year gap in human culture/subculture circa the 1920s where time effectively 'stopped' for a lot of people due to the invasion, so a lot of the 1920s aesthetic is preserved and celebrated as the 'golden age' before everything change, even more so than it is now. A lot of the (western) characters dress in what you'd probably consider Modern Gangs Of New York (waistcoat, flatcaps, suspenders, etc) sensibilities, despite tech advancements.

Going off the above, a lot of the architecture you'd see is neo-Art Deco in nature.

Cars are an interesting questionmark here, mainly because I've established earlier on that they are nowhere near as commonplace as they are in our actual, current world, and not even in the Global Car Central of the USA. This is mainly due to prioritisation of resources for rebuilding (Quintessons did not care for oil given their advanced tech, but they very much coveted minerals/rare earth elements/metals during their invasion so distinctively, the rich in TTB are steel barons, not oil barons), so even middle-range cars tend to be a bit of a luxury item and will turn heads. Most governments aren't going to allocate those resources for mass production of personal vehicles (excluding utility vehicles like jeeps and trucks). Your average Joe relies mostly on public transport, like trains, trams, LRTs and Workers' Buses established by companies for their employees in less developed areas.

Per the above, NASCAR in its original iteration doesn't exist. There IS car racing, but it's consider 'upper class', rather like horse racing, and is the hobby of those who can afford it. Think the 24 Hours of Le Mans. It's not really 'accessible' to the common folk and it's mainly focused on reviving the personal automotive industry as a recreational/luxury sector.

That said, two-wheeled vehicles are a different story. These are smaller, take up less resources, are easier to maintain, modify and more importantly, hide. By 2050, they're the most popular form of personal transport, and Gojek-like delivery services are common in cities (Groove is a Gojek-type rider).

As such, motorcycle races are much more popular than car races in TTB due to the accessibility factor and how often they were used during the Quintesson Wars, being easier to move around, maneuver and harder to target. Quintesson War rebels on the ground took to motorcycles like the Bedouins/Mongolian soldiers to horses, and would decorate them the same way pilots would decorate their warplanes.

Therefore, the common layfolk go fucking bonkers for MotoGP, and biker gangs are very common.

There is the Olympics which focuses on the countries coming together, but also something like a massive global 'War Games' that occurs once every decade from 1950 to 2050 on the anniversary of earth's victory in the Quintesson Wars which focuses on each country's readiness and collaboration with others to face future invasions. It's a pretty huge affair.

Going off the veneration of the Roaring 20s, Speakeasies are still a thing here, but to the layfolk, they aren't as associated with crime as they are with rebellion. They're still known for serving alcohol but due to their hidden nature, they were also where fragmented communities would seek shelter/gather to relay plans. Within the USA, against govt regulation, some still operate in the dark smuggling contraband to underserved communities and providing an underground network for Cold Constructs to flee to borders, for a price of course.

Company Towns are common, due to logistics during rebuilding efforts---it made sense to have workers all in one area, and also made it easier to segregate the different classes from one another.

Spaghetti Westerns PROBABLY still exist to some extent, but nowhere near the level of Space Westerns. Because aliens cropped up in the timeline way, WAY earlier and left behind tech in the wake of their invasion that sped up mankind's space programmes, daytime TV would be proliferated with shows like Firefly and Battlestar Galactica.

Television itself skipped several stages---there was no setup for mechanical televisions. What TTB knows as 'TVs' were reversed engineered from stolen Quintesson tech (screens, similar to LCDs today), and the first 'TV's were basically used to break into Quintesson comms and spy on them/broadcast plans from one rebel cell to another.

The discourse between 'alien-friendly' media like Star Trek and propaganda-style 'alien negative' ones like Starship Troopers is intense.

Godzilla is. Very popular here. With a divergent background that he was was one of many animals mutated by Quintesson experiments to create biomes that better suited them. Against the alien threat of Ghidorah, he represents earth's ability to persevere, evolve and become a terrifying entity against alien forces seeking to subjugate it.

Science-adjacent, but Penicillin was discovered on the advent of rebels figuring out that aliens aren't well-quipped to handle diseases and infections caused by bacteria native to earth, and started employing biological warfare against them in the early stages of the counterattack period, before they had mastered the use of tech warfare/mobilized enough resources to take on the Quintessons head-on.

Chocolate chip cookies wouldn't be a thing for a while due to the lack of chocolate specifically, which is an industry only redeveloped back to commercial levels years after the invasion ended (it wasn't a priority). Its creation was likely attributed to a lower middle class woman attempting to spread out what little chocolate she managed to get her hands on to feed several people in a way that didn't necessarily feel like it was being 'rationed', and it became a popular, economical way to enjoy this little luxury.

[bleue-flora]

Brilliant point moot. I hate how a lot men treated women on the dsmp, you had sapnap and jack making your mom jokes and constantly going on about being a man and saying 'man up' especially in the petwars, all of jacks misogyny in general, tommys misogyny being excused because he was a kid especially how he treated alyssa and niki. I saw someone other day complaining that more men should treat women like men more often as in its unfair that women are excluded from a lot of the shipping jokes and roasting jokes but I mean there's a reason why they avoid it now because it often falls into misogynistic territory. If a man insults another man for being bad at pvp and calls him a bitch, its fine but if he does that to a woman, due to the history of how women are treated it then it is sexist. Same goes for if a man jokingly flirted with a woman on an smp the same joke way men do gay rp with each other. Women do get excluded from a lot of jokes but it can't be fixed until men change this. Until then, many women ccs are going to feel uncomfortable being who they are. I know that's was one of the reasons why I transitioned, just so i could be respected.

-date: Nov 25, 2024-

[context]

Yeah… there is a lot of misogyny in the gaming community and the dsmp is no different. And while I would agree to some extent that being more inclusive does involve treating people like everyone else. (Like I think you can write a superhero and their personality doesn’t have to be so focused on being a woman. You can take Tony Stark’s character and make it a girl, like stop making all the girl characters so freaking dull, why can’t they be quippy too :/…)

However, I will also say, that being inclusive means treating people differently too. Because we are different both physically but also historically and societally. A male gamer doesn’t need to be good looking to be successful and yet, there is definitely a standard of beauty for woman. The expectations from society are different and that’s just how it is, a reality that I hope in the future can change but we aren’t there yet. And historically women have been excluded from video games, dnd, Lego, and STEM fields... etc. (when I was growing up they didn’t even have pink Lego) In media, even if we are included it’s like we are either girly or nerdy, girly or more sporty and masculine, as if a woman can’t be feminine and those other things. Ridiculous. All that to say, unfortunately there is a difference and so you can’t treat a woman like a boy and vice versa because of history, because of society, but also because we are literally different.

So, there are jokes and roasts that are not okay and comments made between men that are not okay to say to women. And part of this is the history involved. Making fun of a guy’s skill might be funny but it’s less funny for a girl as we’ve been historically made fun of for that and seen as inferior. But then again, there are probably boys who feel insecure about those comments too, perhaps because they’ve been made fun of in the past. That’s just how it is. Not all jokes are funny or okay in different settings or to different people. Clearly, Dream and his friends have fun making gay jokes and such, but there are plenty of guys that would not be okay with that. It’s not only a gender thing that make things appropriate or not. And I’d say, that if you are making jokes that could be seen as sexist if said to a woman then maybe you shouldn’t be saying those jokes. If you’re making penis jokes, sex jokes, roasts or your mommas jokes that’s aren’t appropriate in front of or with women, maybe you shouldn’t be saying them at all…

Humor doesn’t have to be exclusive. I think Techno is a good example of this, I don’t particularly remember him making any jokes that weren’t inclusive, or made me uncomfortable like some of the other dsmp members. And even if he called a girl a “nerd” in skybattle or something as she fell to her death, I don’t think people would see it as sexist because the way he says it, what is said, and the context is important.

Furthermore, I don’t think the problem is men not including women in jokes because they are afraid they’ll be seen as sexist or would by nature be sexist, the problem is the lack of respect. It’s the talking over women, not including them in lore, not listening to them, being demeaning or pushing stereotypes onto them. That’s what needs to change. That in addition to the weird remarks about women was the problem. Tommy not caring or listening to Alyssa as she tried to call out how Tommy stole her diamonds, instead calling her the “ghost in his head”. Tommy joining Sapnap’s side just to kill a woman. Like over and over women are used as like a bit - “who is your favorite woman” - is seen as funny and yet if someone asked- “who’s your favorite man?” It’d just be dumb… the way being a woman or highlighting women even if not in a negative is still kinda sexist. It’s the highlight of the gender that makes it weird, not - “just killed Dream, feelin’ good” but “just killed a woman, feelin’ good.” If it was “just killed Puffy, feelin’ good” it’d be fine but that’s not what’s said. You don’t have to not do jokes because of someone being a woman but them being a woman should not be the joke.

Then there’s like the fact that it was noticeable to many people how Techno would always make space and be quiet when Niki talked, so she was heard. That shouldn’t be a big deal or noticeable and yet, it was because so many other server members would just talk over her. A lot of people didn’t notice or make a big deal that Niki burned down the L’mantree. Her very important lore was glossed over. Niki despite being a member of the Syndicate and the bad ass she is in her netherite armor and stuff is often reduced to the cute little baker who brings over cookies and is just so sweet. And Puffy despite her gear and importance in taking down the Egg is reduced to Tommy’s motherly figure and Dream’s ex-mom. Like are we forgetting these girls also fought in wars? And yet, their characters are reduced so far to such female stereotypes…

Anyways…. I could probably ramble about this for awhile so I’ll leave it there for now before I get fully derailed lol. And if this sounded agressive it was not intentional and not toward you, but just my frustration with this in general…

[mydearestbeloved]

Yo if you're free, you gotta try out infinity nikki!!! The game is absolutely gorgeous and cozy and every outfit looks insane. It feels like an elden ring dress up open world game and the vibe is what i imagine tp!reader's garden is, excluded the dangerous looking monsters ofc

To clarify before I dive into this discussion, especially for those who tend to overthink (like me):

Trial Player AU is a Reader-Insert.

I'm serious when I say feel free to imagine TP!Reader in any way you want. In the first place, I do NOT write Trial Player!Reader with any preferences (appearance-wise) in mind, NOR do I write her based on an Original Character (OC). Below are just my ideas of her if inspired by the cozy open-world dress-up game, Infinity Nikki.

Once more, any mentions of looks do NOT need to be taken as canon and are NOT canon. If you're still uncomfortable, then do not ruin your reading experience by continuing to read this post. You’ve been warned.

.

.

.

Actually...

Ta-da! I did try it and have been hooked on it ever since! 🤩

Like, seriously, what do you expect from me when the first two limited banners of the game are literally butterfly-inspired outfits? Count me in and never let go asdfghjkl. 🦋

Because I generally don’t have much time to farm for both banners, I unfortunately only had enough to pull on one. I chose [Flutter Storm] and had to forgo [Blooming Dreams] (and what I wanted the most in that outfit—its beautiful butterfly wing backpiece, [Wings of Wish]). Hopefully, the rerun will be soon. T_T

Anyway, about [Flutter Storm]...

Is this not TP!Reader ballroom-coded? The dress and accessories?? Hello???

It's so beautiful... ����

The skirt is close to how I imagined the butterfly wing motifs in parts of TP!Reader’s children’s uniforms (end of sleeves, coats, tailcoats, skirts, pants, vests, etc.). Color-wise, the blue reminded me of Gale. I didn’t have enough savings for the evolutions, but the red one, [Flutter Storm: Fire Song], reminded me of Red.

Don’t get me started on the Eurekas…

What do you mean there are TWO butterfly-flower-based Eurekas that we can farm FROM LAUNCH???

I don’t have a good enough picture that displays the full [Rainbell] Eureka set, except for the butterfly hands piece that I got lucky in getting the iridescent color for, shown in my [Flutter Storm] pics.

But what I want to talk about the most is this one:

Does anyone see it? What are the odds?

The [Afterglow] Eureka set. The feet piece is vine, flower, and butterflies; the hands piece has detailed butterflies; and the head piece?

It’s vines (or is it branches? Both will still do, honestly), flowers, butterflies, and a circular form like a portal that’s actually a ticking clock???

The golden color I got makes it even more TP!Reader-coded—I’m crying tears of happiness. 😭

I wanted this set in the iridescent color too. Why? Because its purple reminded me of Jinwoo. Sadly, I’m not lucky enough yet to obtain any more iridescent pieces. 🫠

Can anyone imagine if TP!Reader could specialize her spells, marked by her magic/aura changing colors, for specialized support depending on the one person or special group of people she is supporting in battle?

A blackish-purple magic whose spells boost the dead for Jinwoo (or maybe it stays golden for contrast), a goldenish/silverish-red light magic that amplifies Hae-In’s strikes to be a lot deadlier—like cutting through butter with a hot knife...🤔

Imma write this down for might-be-possible future uses. 🤭

Back to Infinity Nikki—all in all, I’m obsessed. Can’t wait for more areas to open and definitely more outfits. I just...have to spare some more time to play and collect them all. 🫠

Perhaps because the game is still quite new, the landscapes don’t feel complete yet—we have other incoming nations, after all. While I haven’t played Shining Nikki (didn’t have much of a chance to play it in the past, and now I’m too lazy to catch up), I have played Love Nikki before and have glimpses of the other nations that will probably be included in Infinity Nikki in the future. And so far? I can see your vision for the garden, dear Anon.

I’ll share with you some little tidbits of TP!Reader’s domain since you brought up the topic of the garden:

The Hanging Garden

I think I already mentioned this somewhere—the garden has layers. The apex is TP!Reader’s current abode, a floating castle-fortress if you will. Below that are the multiple layers TP!Reader ventured through while still stuck in the garden. The lands are vast, but if one manages to reach an edge (usually on the upper layers, as most are smaller than the lower ones), you’ll see pieces of smaller lands detached from their main layers, floating at varying distances and heights—not unlike outer leaves at the tips of a tree’s branches. In fact, while the lands at the edges break off time and time again, the main layers never shrink, as if they are always growing. Remember at the end of Solo Leveling's manhwa, when the shadow soldiers developed their own civilization in the World of Rest? Yeah, the butterflies have something similar. In fact, they developed multiple civilizations that are diverse, with their own aesthetics that resemble human civilizations and cultures across different times and places. Why is that? Well, to say the least—while the shadows learned the ways of being human as Jinwoo’s power grew stronger, the butterflies, on the other hand, learned from experience—by following TP!Reader around, traversing the world, and constantly watching its inhabitants at her behest or out of their own curiosity. Hence, the butterflies also developed different tastes, resulting in different regions that function like individual nations with their own leaders—who all ultimately answer to TP!Reader.

These are just some things about [The Hanging Garden] that I can share for now because I’m still not too sure if I can fit all my plans for the garden’s worldbuilding into the main story. At the rate it’s progressing, it’s going to be a long while.

Anyway, thank you for the recommendation and for sharing your thoughts, dear Reader. 💕

[darklove9314-blog]

⚠️Hunger Games Series Spoilers⚠️

Hunger Games chapter 3 discussion

One thing I notice straight off the bat in this chapter is how the Peacekeepers go about taking the tributes to the Justice Building. Katniss says that the tributes aren’t handcuffed, but they do march them into the building and she wonders if it might be because tributes have attempted to escape in the past though she’s never seen it happen.

One thing that happens in Sunrise on the Reaping is that Woodbine Chance after being reaped attempts to escape and one of the Peacekeepers ends up shooting him. So it might have been something that was implemented after that happened. (The same way there’s no electric fence during Sunrise on the Reaping but there is at the begging of the Hunger Games)

Also another thing I noticed is how much inspiration SJM takes from The Hunger Games at least the begging of it, because both Feyre and Katniss’s background stories are similar down to even the first animal they hunt. But there’s also quite a few differences to their background stories as well, like Feyre’s family being from a wealthy merchant family before they lost their fortune, while Katniss’s family excluding her mom had always been apart of the seams.

For example, both Feyre and Katniss have issues with their parents (Feyre with her dad and Katniss with her mom) because they both let the family fall into a state where they were both impoverished and their families were left hungry so they both hold onto resentment from those times. Another detail is that their parents both became this way after the death of their spouse.

Both Katniss and Feyre learn how to hunt out of necessity to feed and take care of their families. And both of them try to teach their sisters how to hunt, however both their sisters are not able to do so. So I found all those details interesting.

Another thing that I appreciate is the social commentary on mental health and medication for mental health and how inaccessibility to medication can equal detrimental results. So I appreciate how Suzanne Collin’s can work in smaller discussions in her books without it being the overall discussion of them.

I also wonder if the urgency in Madge for Katniss to take the pin is because it belonged to her Aunt Maysilee who is also a victims of the capitol’s cruelty, but I also wonder if Madge knows who created the pin as well.

So another thing I noticed is how Gale even though he says it grimly tells Katniss, how much different can it be to kill humans than when she does it to animals. Katniss in her inner monologue says that if she could forget that they’re human then it probably wouldn’t be difficult at all. And I do wonder if this is the mentality that Gale keeps when he assists with Beetee and Coin with those bombs. I also wonder if it might be a social commentary on the military.

Also there is a brief mention about Johanna in this chapter and how she won her Hunger Games by tricking others into underestimating her abilities. I do really love Johanna as a character so im loving all these connections I’m seeing now that I’m done with the full series and I have the full scope of what is going on. Also I knew that District 12 was Appalachia but I had forgot the fact that the Capitol is actually Colorado, which I find interesting.

There is also a mention of how Katniss speculates that their must be more about the rebellion that started all of this then the Capitol is letting them know. And I do know this is a commentary on how people can rewrite history. I don’t remember much about the District 13 stuff or if we learn more about the rebellion from them, but I still wonder if there’s still things about the rebellion that we still don’t know and I wonder if that’s a book Suzanne might write in the future.

I had also forgotten that Katniss’s dad lived to sing and he has a fondness for Mockingjays. Which adds yet another layer to the Mockingjay pin.

Lastly, I do appreciate the last two pages in this chapter where Effie says a really tone deaf thing about the previous two tributes and how they were ill mannered, but Katniss recalls that the two tributes from last year were from the seams and barely had enough food to get by, and she’s angry at Effie’s response, because Effie doesn’t know what it’s like to be starving or how those two kids lived. It’s not something she has to think about, which a lot of people have the same mentality that Effie does. Espicially when it comes to how some people comment about families who have to get government assistance in order to eat, and how they feel like they can make commentary about how they eat because they are using their taxes in order to do so.

There’s just so much social commentary in this chapter that I enjoyed reading it,

[littlemissmentallyunstable]

my apology

you may have noticed my requests have been closed for a little while now and that was mainly because the amount of requests I was getting were a little overwhelming and I felt as if I had no time to write them. I’m a bit of a people-pleaser in a way that I felt I wasn’t delivering these requests quickly enough or well enough then I would upset someone and I didn’t want to do that

so recently I’ve been working towards the goal of completing my list and so far it has been going well, the ideas have been flowing and I’ve been writing a lot but because I know winter holidays are coming to a close and I will be back at school, I know there may not be a lot of time for me to write.

unfortunately I’ve had to make the decision to cut some fics that I’d originally planned to write. it is mostly part 2 requests of really old fics such as ‘crazy little thing called love’ or ‘paparazzi’ and there are a few others as well. personally I think I’m moving on with my writing and developing and don’t want to keep going back to those old fics. this excludes ‘the mysterious blonde’ and ‘the dancer and the angel’ which will soon both make returns…

I do see all of your asks, about those two fics in particular, I am not ignoring you at all but I can’t really give timeframes for anything because I don’t know when I’ll have time to write and then edit everything!!

there are a few other requests that I cannot complete sadly. one was asking for quite mature content in the terms of a TW!! su!c!de based scene which I am not comfortable with writing. if the person who requested that is reading this, I don’t want you to feel bad at all because I did have the intention of writing but I have more recently decided against it for personal reasons, this is NOT because I have been affected or triggered by the request, don’t worry!!

and the second I had to give up was a request that asked for an f1 fic. I literally have no knowledge on f1 and would probably end up offending someone if I vaguely attempted to write a fic that included that, so I am very sorry to let that one go.

I didn’t just want to delete the asks and never address why your requests never got answered so I thought I’d make a post to explain it all. I know this will disappoint some people and I’m so sorry 💖💖 hopefully if you request again in the future I will be able to fulfill what you would like!! I am open to most things, but of course there are a few exceptions.

if I haven’t mentioned a request here ^^ it probably means it is still going to be written!!

I’m also looking forward to exploring new characters such as characters from the naturals series or shatter me or powerless, this is not to say I won’t be writing for the inheritance games because of course I will, it’s just to put it out there that although I am striving to meet requests, it may not be immediate.

this post is NOT to make anyone feel bad for requesting. I am so so grateful for everyone who had put in a request and thought that they would want me to create something that they would enjoy. I also want to thank everyone for their patience and support with my work, it means the world to me. when I complete the request list I have now, I will re-open the request box but as of the moment it will remain closed!!

lots and lots and lots of love,

bella 🤍

[kaen-ace-of-diamonds]

Christmas Horror Kids Tournament

Because this isn't the Hunger Games, the kids are in competition but not in direct opposition to each other. Basically: there's some big monster/villain threatening their holiday, which of these main characters is not just surviving but is coming out on top the fastest?

Propaganda for each contender (and spoilers for all movies mentioned) under the cut:

Pietari: fears neither God nor death nor army of feral elves. good at keeping calm under pressure and making plans on the fly. carries a gun around the whole movie but never actually uses it, so not sure how well he could shoot. his actor was 11 when the movie came out but I think he's supposed to be a few years younger?

Luke: horrific demon child, zero moral limits so long as he gets what he wants, -5000/10 would not recommend babysitting. extremely good planner, but vulnerable to overlooking small details that ruin him. about 12: very smart but fairly immature for his age. has to be reminded not to kill his competition this time.

Thomas: literally just wanted to stay home and play trains with his grandpa, but now he's got to defend them both from a killer Santa. models himself after action movie heroes and is so good at Home Alone-ing his house that his director tried to sue for plagiarism. about 10-11 years old?

Anna: would be better with her friends to help her, but is pretty damn capable of making it in the zombie apocalypse on her own. not sure exactly how old she's supposed to be, since I'm not clear on how the New Zealand school system works, but she's an older teenager.

Billy: definitely has his wits closer about him than his dad does, that's for fucking sure. does get tricked into creating gremlins, but you know what, who would have expected them to have fucked with his clock? successfully takes on and kills an army of gremlins, albeit with help. probably the oldest competitor here since he's out of high school (?)

Max: definitely willing to go to bat for the Christmas spirit, and to put his own life on the line to protect his family, but is pretty severely lacking in strength or savvy. is good at dodging an army of killer toys, but might not do so well without a bunch of relatives around to also be targets. like Pietari, his actor was 12 but I think he's supposed to be a bit younger.

Trudy: ngl, might be a little weak in solo competition, since she's maybe 7-8 years old and so relies a lot on Santa the one-man army. but she's clever, has exactly zero fear of hardened criminals with machine guns, and is very good at turning Home Alone traps exactly as deadly as they should be.

Winnie: the most Final Girl (TM) out of all the competitors imho. learns very quickly how to improvise and use whatever's handy as a weapon, and while she's also best with a partner to distract an opponent, can handle herself very competently in a physical fight. about 17?

Samantha and Clara: actually, fuck Billy, does Clara even count as a kid at all, being an ancient demon in the form of a child? has telekinetic powers and is good at Breaking Speeches, but is bound by being sealed in the school and unable to kill her enemies herself. Samantha is a pretty normal middle schooler (?), but also has the guts to go face a cult of killers with an axe when she could have run away and saved herself, so don't count her out.

Kevin: is Home Alone a horror movie? no. could I possibly exclude the king, the champion, the future Jigsaw apprentice? also no. smart and absolutely cold-blooded when he needs to be, he's excellent at fending enemies off from a distance, but it's game over for him if he's actually caught.

[devourable]

⚘ the boys next door

sfwish, mdni | tags ; poly!male yanderes x gn reader (no prns used but 'you'), manipulation, yan behavior, slight fetishization of virginity

originally this was just gonna be one character so thank mazzy for convincing me to make him a poly duo instead lmfao. ik i have things to finish but like,,, boys 🫶

not too proud of this one so ill probs revise it or make a part two at a l8r time when im feeling less rusty

the boys next door were the two that everyone knew of as a pair.

sebastian and tobias grew up together, learned together, played together, and shared absolutely everything practically since they were born. they were what people thought of when the words 'best friends' came to mind.

nothing could or would ever come between the two boys, everyone said.

so it was no shock that when you came in and quite literally got between them — by virtue of moving into the vacancies that separated their homes — their instant mutual attraction to you would do nothing but strengthen the bond between them.

it was odd. any additions to their relationship was unheard of, but...

the boys next door shared everything. you didn't think that'd exclude you, did you?

toby and sebastian were quick to befriend you when you entered their life. you were around their age, practically the only other child in the area at that; but unlike the children at school who they'd turn away from in favor of each other, they readily made you part of their dynamic.

they didn't quite understand the feelings you gave them at first, they were too young to. all they really knew is that they liked being around you, they liked talking about you, and they wanted you to themselves.

when you were young, everything became about you. their favorite games involved them being your loyal knights, or bodyguards, or any other role that involved protecting you from whatever threat their little minds could imagine up.

and when you grew tired of playing the damsel in distress? they were fine with it. whatever you wanted from them, you got. sebastian's gaming console was practically yours with how much he pushed you to play on it. toby would beg his parents to get him any toy he'd seen you show interest in; and he'd always eventually get them for you.

they didn't want you to ever be bored around them. you'd always have a good time on their watch, and they spoiled you relentlessly to the best of their abilities.

you were theirs, now! and you took care of what was yours, no matter what. that's what both of them were taught.

they grew up with you. learned with you. played with you, and of course, they shared you — even as the three of you grew up.

everyone around you saw how much they adored you, too. when asked, the two boys would proclaim how they'd both marry you in the future. it was so cute! no one saw an issue with how they always took up as much time and attention as they could from you. or how you never really seemed to be able to make friends with other kids at your school...

you had your best friends, so it didn't matter. they were all you needed.

the pair grew to love their constant close proximity to you. it ensured that they'd know what was going on in your life at all times as you grew and developed. when you weren't all hanging out together, it wouldn't be unusual for the pair to simply watch your home from their windows, glimpsing into your windows to watch you go about your life.

you were turning into a fine young adult. but you still needed their protection! they both easily surpassed you in size as you all grew up — sebastian in particular, who's height was staggering compared to both you and toby. he liked the edge it gave him, and how intimidating he could be when needed. tobias didn't have that advantage, but everyone liked him enough to respect you as his territory anyway. you were so small and sweet, what if someone saw you the way they did? they couldn't have that, they had no choice but to keep you to themselves.

it felt like you always had at least one of the two at your side at all times. so much so that it felt odd when you were without either of them. sebastian and toby being by your side was as natural as breathing and you grew to never really question their behavior.

they were just making sure you were okay when they insisted on keeping you company when you were home alone. when toby took your first kiss, it was because it only made sense — it should go to someone you trust and care about, right? and when you told the two that you were still a virgin well into adulthood (which they knew, of course), they insisted on being your first.

they knew you better than anyone, they'd know how to make you feel good. and who better to give your virginity to than your best friends?

getting to claim your body, inside and out, was one of the best moments of their lives. no one would ever get to have you the way they did.

no matter what you'd do, where you'd go, you'd always be effected by them in some way — and that's exactly how they wanted it. they'd always be your first best friends, your first boyfriends, your first everything. and you'd always be theirs.

the boys next door would always be entangled in your life. but you wouldn't have it any other way, would you?

they know you better than anyone, after all.

[loopadoop]

*Hello, little stars~*

How can I help you on this wonderful blog of mine? Just call me Loop, should be pretty easy to remember. You can use They/Them for my pronouns in case you need to think of me on your own time.

I figured I'd make my own little blog here so I don't get bored while the saviors are busy saving Vaugarde. Got to keep myself entertained somehow during the downtime here in Dormont, right~?

[OOC mumbo jumbo & all that jazz]

yeah, this is an rp blog for Loop, if that weren't clear enough. I'm keeping my main online guff anonymous mainly due to it not quite fitting with... this (in my opinion anyways). for ooc stuff, use he/him for lil' old me.

In case you need to know, I have played through all of In Stars & Time (including 2hats) and Start Again: A Prologue, so don't worry about spoiling me on any which thing from those games here.

this blog is intended to coincide with other isat rp blogs, but I'm open for interactions beyond that too while I'm here. I intend to keep the asks open for the foreseeable future - anonymous or otherwise - but that could be subject to change. Don't plan on changing the status all things considered, but still.

of course, the OG Character and (unless stated otherwise) any media I use (which, of course, excludes media from asks) are from Insertdisc5's In Stars & Time, and none of the interactions here are canon to the original game or its story... not that I think someone would think that way, but might as well cover the bases I can.

[General Rules]

No nsfw stuff. This ain't intended as an 18+ type deal as I'm sure most would assume, so let's try and keep it that way 'kay?

DNI if you're a MAP, Zoo, Bigot, Racist, or anyone any reasonable and respectable person would not want to interact with. Might as well state it for the record to get it out of the way.

OOC speak - i.e. talking to me in asks or smtn instead of Loop - is allowed, just remember this is an rp blog for a character first and foremost so don't get too carried away with it - I'll do my best not to in return. (I recommend putting that stuff like this), [and I'll respond like this.]

I trust the rest I could put here would be common sense. I will edit this when needed but... yeah, that's all I can think to put. If there's anything else I should put, feel free to let me know.

[chaossmith2]

MySims Agents HD/Switch Port wishlist should we see one in the near future:

- Ability to return to jet travel areas instead of permanently being locked out of them after leaving/completing the area (I.e ski resort, mansion, jungle temple). You can’t tell me it’s because of “continuity” since characters from those areas can be hired as agents at HQ, and then they’d be in two places at once. Makoto still remains at the Industrial District even after hiring her as an agent. Plus it’ll give you more to do when in the post game and all you’re doing is basically dispatch missions

- Ability to pick up and examine trophies—! It’s a small thing, but it’d be a nice detail to be able to turn them around, zoom in/out, etc. Maybe even rearrange them on your shelf?

- Rewards for completing bonus mini games in the arcade (just small things like paints, furniture, maybe a new trophy? Idk)

- Also, dispatch notifications while in the arcade. Maybe it’d be a good way to kill time while waiting on notifications? Again, since you literally can’t return to 3/7 (or in other words, basically 40% of the game you no longer have access to) areas in the game, there’s not much left to explore or do when completing dispatch missions

- Customizable Buddy? Lol. You could slightly customize your assistant’s accessories in the DS Version, so I think it’d be a neat addition

- Ability to add more than 15 pieces of furniture to a room. If there’s a concern for personality type balancing, then maybe the “cap” should just apply to how high the personality type can reach as opposed to the limit of furniture itself? As in, if you reach, let’s say, a “paranormal type” limit, you can still add furniture, it just won’t increase the “paranormal type” bonus anymore. Something like that anyways.

SPOILERS!

- An extra area maybe? The game is criminally short which is par for the course, but I think it’d be interesting if the Nightmare Realm was added in some way? It’d be nice if you actually got to enter with your chosen dispatch team, as it’s a little underwhelming that in the end you’re ultimately excluded from the mission to rescue Evelyn after spending all this time to get her back.

- Evelyn being somewhere in HQ or the overworld in general lol. Again, something mainly added for immersion, but after saving her it’d be nice to see her back walking around in the HQ, or maybe even her house? Instead the character is still noticeably absent from the game even after rescuing her.

[charmikarma]

hallo it's me. (crookedgrifter) I'm back and I want your davejade / davejadekat thoughts. gimme

my thoughts huh ... i sure am a rambler so you're gonna get a whole essay on this

i guess in thinking abt davejadekat it always starts with jade. which is well enough because davekat has been talked to death at this point, hasn't it? i don't think i could tell you anything new or interesting about that dynamic at this point.

ANYWAY. jade. i kind of get into this in my polar express fic which ik you've read, but she is SO lonely. what the fuck are you supposed to do for ~10 years alone on an island with just a dog?? a dog who could take you somewhere else, somewhere with people, but he won't. and maybe jade knows why because of her dreams on prospit, but also maybe not! either way i think she puts a lot of faith in her dreams. it's kind of the only hope she has for the future.

i think she also has some hope in dave, this really cool dude she has this awkward internet middle school crush on. and dave is super cool to her too! i think it's implied he furry roleplays with her even?? cutest shit ever. i think this is the thing that has made me always love davejade ... they are just. so sweet to each other. dave clearly cares SO much about her.

the other thing about jade is... she's kinda fucked over repeatedly by the narrative, isn't she? she's the last beta kid introduced, so she has a lot less time to develop. the closest she really gets to developing is being really pissed off at karkat after her dreamself dies (i'll talk about this in a sec). her arc basically ends at cascade. her character arc ends in the dead middle of the comic, in a flash animation that contains exactly 0 character development. hussie says so himself in the author's notes. (don't even get me started on the author's notes jesus christ.) everything that happens on the boat is pretty much irrelevant, because it gets retconned out. instead she spends 3 years completely fucking alone, and we like... barely unpack this in canon.

so her life story up until this point is basically: raised by grandpa till ~3-5ish > living on her own till 13 > meeting dave briefly in the game > DAVE FUCKING DIES IN FRONT OF HER, WITH HER OWN BULLETS > she meets john briefly > JOHN AND DAVESPRITE FUCKING DIE > she spends 3 years alone with no solace except "yeah they had to die but you'll see them again in the new session" from alt!calliope and i guess a bunch of sprites and consorts and chess dudes. she says it herself: as nice as it is to have these folks around, they're not able to relate to her. they're not fellow thirteen year old kids. she may not be technically alone, but she is essentially alone, and she just 1. died twice in one day and 2. witnessed the deaths of several of her friends.

more on being fucked over by the narrative - jade actually has a kind of interesting dynamic with karkat in the middle of a5a2! what happens with this dynamic later on? fucking nothing!!!! like seriously i am so interested in this whole. self-hatred parallel that gets drawn between them and then how jade puts her foot down and is like you are fucking nuts. no more yelling at yourself. and it goes nowhere!! this dynamic exists for like, maybe 1% of the comic. it's really fucking sad honestly. even at the very end of homestuck, she has to be sidelined for being too powerful, thereby excluding her from all the endgame convos. like we cannot win with her

ok anyway, here's where i get into the stuff i think is really interesting. at the end of homestuck, alt!calliope tells jade that she's suffered enough, and that it's time for her to live her life how she wants to. we don't see how this plays out in homestuck proper, BUT...... the epilogues. sighs heavily.

i may be an epilogues lover but even i have to admit that jade's portrayal is.... a mess. i don't think it's wildly out of character, exactly, but it definitely toes the line... and it's definitely extremely fucking uncomfortable. it does, however, give me some insight into how i think about jade now, because while the minutiae don't really feel in character, i do think the broad strokes of what they were going for make sense.

jade took alt!calliope's words and said, fuck it. i will take charge! i won't wait anymore! i am going to have what i want. and she does get a lot of that! she gets to hang out with her friends, hang out with her brother, meet a ton of people, have a bunch of sex (presumably when she's older), and so on. but see... doing a lot of things doesn't really fill the emptiness she feels. she has so much love to give and not enough outlet for it. she needs all the love in the world and has nobody to give it to her. and she still has this big fat ten-year-old crush on dave strider that never went anywhere. but the approach she takes to life now is just... so incompatible with what dave needs. same for karkat. they both need a LOT of patience to come out of their shells, and jade is living life in the fast lane. the more she pushes, the more withdrawn they become. it is a disaster.

i want to fix it so fucking bad.

jade needs a lot of character development for all this to work, but the dynamic is absolutely there. some of their convos in early meat are so fucking funny dude, they are such good friends. it is absolutely not for lack of caring on either dave or karkat's part that things don't work out in the epilogues. it's this disconnect between what jade thinks is helpful and what dave and karkat need. i really want jade to find the balance between living at breakneck speed and waiting ten years for something to happen. i want her to feel loved for once in her damn life. and i want dave and karkat to stop being such depressing shut-ins. please guys you could balance each other out if you would just figure out how to communicate

anyway. there's your essay. it's mostly about jade. hope that's ok. i love jade harley so much my ultimate goal is to see her happy and mark my words i will figure out how

[thegreatmelodrama]

The discourse around whether Katniss/Peeta is like Lucy Gray or Sejanus is always has this either/or rhetoric. It doesn’t have to be one or the other. When Snow looked at Katniss, he probably saw traits from both Lucy Gray and Sejanus at various moments. But more than anything, I think Katniss (and Peeta) is really a reminder of one of the worst periods of Snow’s life, excluding the war obviously. Because Snow’s time as a mentor and as a peacekeeper in District 12 can in many ways be characterized as Snow’s greatest embarrassment or shame. Coriolanus Snow, son of renowned and respected Crassus Snow and “future President of Panem”, exiled to the Districts for cheating in The Hunger Games—for being a “rebel.”

And then you have Katniss and Peeta reminding him both of the girl who made him feel weak and vulnerable and the boy who was a “moth to a flame.” And not just because of the parallels between these characters, but also because of the threats they pose to Snow’s power and control. And he’ll be damned if he lets this rebellious girl, the mockingjay who represents everything he hates, embarrass him in the same way.

And, of course, there are the more obvious parallels between these characters from the songs to the “rebellious” actions like the flowers for Rue mirroring the breadcrumbs for Marcus, etc. However, there are similarities and parallels found between other characters in relation to Lucy Gray and Sejanus as well. Because they are people who fundamentally oppose the system, who value freedom and autonomy and generally a code of morality that is the complete antithesis to that of the Capitol.

So for me, it isn’t an either/or type of situation. Snow looks at Katniss and Peeta and is reminded in general of the embarrassment and lack of control he experienced that year of the 10th Hunger Games and he is determined to do to them exactly what he did to Lucy Gray and Sejanus: wash his hands of them. It’s not to say he isn’t making these comparisons in particular because I think he absolutely is; it just doesn’t have to be Katniss being akin to Sejanus OR Katniss being akin to Lucy Gray.

[svpernovae]

taking a 5 min break from work just to yell MYDEI'S CHARACTER VIDEO BEING HIS TRIAL I AM UNWELL

there's so many details i want to tap on but especially on his body traits. I had been drafting a post about it but hell we'll do it here real quick cause finally there's actual confirmation now

mydei's body suffered from the the sea of souls in more ways that just immortality. he doesn't bleed normal (it crystalizes and hardens, falling off once the skin is healed), doesn't scar and he doesn't experience pain the same way others do as attacks don't stagger him beyond their brute force. and well, ultimately, when he cries his tears birth flowers.

lemme touch on this real quick

I know he's meant to be thematically Ares but he also has a lot of nods at Persephone. the pomegranates, the flowers, the decent upon the underworld only to return for a period to the surface and then return to the underworld once more. he's a mix of war and the underworld which goes along with what's said about the strife and death coming together as a package (even if thanatos and nikador aren't close at all)

speaking of nikador, i haven't yet fully completed the divergent universe to unlock their story but from the first few clips, their origin mirrors that of mydei. nikador is born from the sea of souls roaring at the skies, they're born from the overwhelming influx of souls due to the black tide. this at least means that even if the calamities came with the tide, they were born as a human response to it still. which also goes along with nikador's theme as the protector, the spear of humanity, born of their new anguish. it also explains why the titans themselves don't fully exclude the calamities but accept them as one of their own.

another lil detail that i want to point out from his trailer, the first sentence that appears also mirrors nikador's birth. as nikador is born from the fury of mankind (towards the black tide and the gods), mydei wields it to destroy the gods themselves too. he became the perfect spear that nikador failed to be because he's born human

"He wielded the fury of man to seize the authority of gods."

i'm also planning on doing a lil post about how each titan may have had a human life before and how they mirror each other from the night and day cycle but that's for later when i finished everything. ANYWAYS

nikador's heart. the golden blood is only present in titans and demi gods so this is nikador's for sure since the video is all about mydei's trial. and since it's been mentioned in the game, he had to rip it from nikador's chest to fully ascend to godhood

the trial itself showcases his fears exactly of everyone dying on him and him being the last one facing the end. which well, ends up being his reality when he fully surrenders to his role. it's as he finally plunges to battle that the golden blood starts mixing with his own and we get a lil nanook moment here

but honestly that's not even my favorite part about the trailer, it gotta be this one

I LOVE THIS SCENE SO MUCH cause truly this is their fate as the strife. they'll always be the last one standing, they'll be there to avenge the dead, alone. they don't even have one another, it's just a matter of passing the mantle and it's sooooooo

but even here mydei respects nikador. nikador gives him the core of strife and mydei rips him apart just as he promised. but it's also here that we get his final prophesy from nikador themselves

i know it was hinted before in 3.0 that he already knew of this, and he didn't share it back then exactly because of the "predator doesn't share his weakness with prey" mindset of kremnos. HOWEVER, framing this with him sharing it with phainon kinda tells me he did see that it was phainon who gave him death but mydei omits this from him and merely gives him the knowledge he'll need for the future (whether this is good or bad we don't know)

i'm not gonna talk about the flame reaver here that's for another time. but for now, what we know is that he gave this knowledge to phainon deliberately, and only phainon knows of his weakness.

as for his upcoming death, well, gnaeus says it better than anyone

give my boy a rest. i know he's cool and good but he does need his eternal sleep eventually. until then