#and having a ton of fun with designing our castle too

[northssketchbook]

-Shimmering Shadow-

(Pose ref: @adorkastock <3)

[see-arcane]

Our good friend Jonathan Harker is getting ready to leave for his business trip, Mina Murray is picking out a new journal, Lucy Westenra is charming a gaggle of smitten suitors, Abraham van Helsing is wrapping up his lectures, and Castle Dracula is prepping the guest room for a very long stay.

Which must mean that Dracula Season is here again!

 ‘Dracula Season’ being a catchall term for the voracious reading, memeing, writing, illustrating, analyzing, and general fun-having that’s ensued since Matt Kirkland’s project, Dracula Daily, caught on with us back in 2022. The Substack had already been running before then, but it sparked a conflagration as time went on and readers old and new to Bram Stoker’s Dracula—the actual novel, not Coppola’s fanfiction—devoured it in a way that scratched an itch none of us knew we had. Stoker wrote the book in epistolary fashion, clumping sections together as needed for the pacing without perfect adherence to chronological order. Matt went ahead and put all the events in order and proceeded to set up a lovely chain of emails that delivered entries on those correlating dates.

This style of organization and pacing turned out to not only make the virtual book club that much easier to engage with, but left space in-between to stew on the story and relate with the characters themselves. Every day of waiting in the book feels weightier when you have to pace and sweat and worry in tandem with poor Jonathan trapped in the castle or Lucy wasting away or Mina running out the clock before she loses the fight for her own humanity. And while we sat with the story or the lulls between Dracula Seasons, some of us found ourselves craving more of that ghastly gothic horror goodness to the point that we figured:

“Well. Why don’t I make something?”

And then we did! Tons of creative works have been churned out in the wake of Dracula Daily’s high. I figured that while we’ve still got a bit of time to wait for May 3rd, we should check out all this new stuff in the meantime. (Plus a handful of neat stuff that just clicks with the Dracula itch overall.)

So, in the interest of Dracula Season pregaming, let’s take a look at…

FICTION

Blood of My Blood – A recent addition to the Dracula Bad Ending AU pile, and definitely one of the most harrowing and addictive group-produced narratives I’ve ever come across, Blood of My Blood is the dramatically gothic currently-WIP work of @ibrithir-was-here and @animate-mush’s devious design. Give or take a heap of other fascinated folks (hello!) adding ideas to put more Horror into the Horrors that our cast has to face. The premise:

The Transylvanian climax went fatally sour and the Harkers were forced to shelter with Dracula himself, including their half-vampire son, Quincey. Cut to two decades later, and Quincey finds himself out in modern London, smitten with Lu, adopted daughter of Arthur and Jack, and diving into certain bloodstained old documents that detail the real history of how his parents came to live in the castle. Said revelations coming not a moment too soon, as a storm is coming for him straight from the Carpathians…

Dracula Daily Sketch Collection – An array of illustrations that captures every entry beat by beat, the Dracula Daily Sketch Collection by Georgia Cook, alias @georgiacooked was dished out over the course of the last Dracula Season. Some of the most fun character designs out there.

Fanfiction Spotlight: BlueCatWriter – With a whopping 99 works devoted to the novel Dracula (so far, the number may have gone up since I blinked), @bluecatwriter is one of the most prolific and talented fanfiction scribblers out there. Romances, nightmares, and overlaps between the two seem to crop up the most, give or take a crossover. Seems fitting that those blue paw prints have contributed to BoMB too.

The League of Extraordinary Gentlefolk – An ongoing comic in which all your favorite characters from the Classics section get together and tackle some perils ranging from the mundane to the monstrous. Started by the amazing @mayhemchicken and posted on @lxgentlefolkcomic, this series is a love letter to beloved Victorian era lit, with a spotlight on the two couples leading the League. Namely, the Harkers, ala Dracula, and the Nortons, ala Sherlock Holmes,’ “A Scandal in Bohemia.” Mina and Irene are the driving investigative and steering forces here, and still deeply in love with their likewise-infatuated husbands, just like in their canons! What a concept! Alan.

Without spoiling the full character list, just know there are going to be a ton of familiar faces roaming around before you finish reading the first arc. Said arc having conveniently wrapped up just a few days ago! Give the comic and its bonus silliness a look if you’re in the mood for a new comfort-adventure epic.

Re: Dracula – Probably the most well-known and incredible thing to come out of the initial Dracula Daily wave. This podcast is a full audio drama that follows the same format as the Substack, with episodes coming out in time with the entries themselves. And it has an unfairly cool soundtrack. They have a Tumblr with @re-dracula, a site and a Patreon to check out before the series kicks up again on May 3rd. (Also, keep an eye out for their next work, an audio drama in the same style with Carmilla.)

The Soldier and the Solicitor – Another treat from @ibrithir-was-here, this one involves a bit of time travel trouble. Quincey Harker has stumbled out of World War I and into the same dark forest where his father once fled for his life…then runs into the man himself, on that same night. Jonathan Harker, young and starved and lost, who has no choice but to trust this stranger while the Weird Sisters are at his heels…despite said stranger having no shadow. It’s a tasty emotional trek, already complete on Tumblr, but now it’s turning into a Webtoon. While Ibrithir is juggling a number of other stories, she’ll be redrawing spruced up versions of the comic and adding a few new scenes as things unfold.

Substack Stack – You know what’s better than one emailed-out public domain book club? A mountain of them. Just. So, so many of them. You’ll see that a lot of these are finished, but some are still ticking along. Either way, they’re all great picks if you’re craving some more old school lit to fill the void between undead emails.

Frankenstein Weekly – Frankenstein

Jekyll and Hyde Weekly – The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde

Voyage of the Nautilus – Twenty-Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

Letters from Watson – Sherlock Holmes

The Invisible Mail – The Invisible Man

Letters from Bunny – E.W. Hornung’s short stories of the eponymous Bunny and Raffles

Letters Regarding Jeeves - P. G. Wodehouse’s Bertie Wooster short stories, including the novel, Right Ho, Jeeves

…

……

………

…The Beetle Weekly – The Beetle (NOTE: Do Not Read This.)

The Vampyres – A novella I finally wrenched through the gears of self-publication as of March this year. Starring a petite but powerful paranormal cast, The Vampyres, centers on an unscrupulous undead fellow who finds that the revenants of the world are being mowed down by an entity known only as ‘Quinn Morse.’ Between trying to save his neck and figure out where the shadowy bastard came from, the Vampyre in question crosses paths with a new paramour and handy human shield in the form of a grieving Good Samaritan. He’s even polite enough to invite the Vampyre into his home while he’s in dire straits! Surely this will end well. All the info is available here and a little author site is over here.

What Manner of Man – This is the one made for everyone who started out hoping there’d be a real love story with our good friend Jonathan Harker and the Count when he was at his most charismatic. Where that sea of wonders dried up into a mire of horror, What Manner of Man by @stjohnstarling keeps things firmly on the romantic tracks. This Substack stars the letter-writing priest Father Victor E. Ardelian as he finds himself meeting with one enigmatic Lord Alistair Vane. It isn’t long before interest turns into intrigue and intrigue into undead intimacies.

The entire novel has been completed—along with multiple epilogues in the author’s Patreon, allowing readers to choose for themselves just how the uncanny romance plays out in the end—and the Substack now has a number of other gothic goodies piling up in the meantime.  

NONFICTION

Dracula Daily: A Unique Reading Experience: This one comes courtesy of @realwomenofgaming. It’s a short and sweet piece that amounts to a fun snapshot of the entire Dracula Daily ride. A cozy couple-minute read.

‘Dracula Daily’ is the One Substack You Need a Subscription To: Features my favorite Matt Kirkland interview. @mattkirkland, if you’re still floating around on here, thank you for dispatching our vampire newsletter again this year.

Dracula Daily is Tumblr’s hottest new book club: Alright, the ‘new’ part is worn out by now, but this one is still a delightful article to swing back around to. Two years on, this Polygon piece is a time capsule of those early months when people outside our bookworm bubble realized we were all happily receiving letters from our favorite classic gothic horror blorbos.  

“How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” – Princess Weekes, if you ever read this, thank you, thank you, thank you. I am sending oceans of love and millions of rewatches to your video essay. If you haven’t seen it yet, “How Mina Murray Became Dracula’s Girlfriend” is one of the most refreshing and well-made breakdowns of both the title subject and numerous other issues that have proliferated in the public view of Dracula’s cast and plot as adaptations endlessly warp or outright bastardize the actual novel. An incredibly cathartic watch.  

Literary play gone viral: delight, intertextuality, and challenges to normative interpretations through the digital serialization of Dracula: A mouthful of a title for an even more elaborate article about the Dracula Daily phenomenon. This one is a full-on study that analyzes just what happened within the big bloodsucker book club surge and how its ‘wandering reading practices’ enriched the experience for participants.

 “The Undying Undead: An analysis of the Dracula Daily community for a theory of online community formation and interaction” – We have a thesis on here! Look at that! @sirangelothebestest’s MA thesis used our vampiric book club as the bones for a massive brick of an academic piece that definitely deserves a look.

…And I think I’ll go ahead and cap things here.

This isn’t everything I got recommended, but if I had squashed all of it in here, I think folks’ eyes would start to fall out of their head. I hope you can find something cool to comb through here. Or, if there’s something great I overlooked, tack it onto the list! We’ve got just two weeks to go until we’re off with Mr. Harker. Let’s enjoy our respite before those castle doors close behind us.

[jadeazora]

I never understood why Gen5 was underrated back in the day, or fans who still say it's the worst. Like, you're telling me:

A completely new Pokedex with more Pokémon introduced than even Gen1? Sure, there's definitely some lackluster species, but with such a large quantity introduced, not everyone is gonna be a winner. (Gen1 also has the same issue with a lot of lackluster species, but gets a pass since they're the originals.) It forced the player to experiment rather than rely on old staples, which was a pretty cool risk.

Hidden Grottoes, which were a fun way to acquire Pokémon with Hidden Abilities. I remember getting a Sheer Force Bagon > Moxie Salamence from one. So much fun to use, iirc it had a beneficial nature for it too.

The best story and character writing from the mainline series at that point. (By Pokémon standards.) They even actually had the Gym Leaders and Champion actively help you, and that climax when they show up at N's Castle to help the player against Plasma was glorious.

A bunch of pretty decently well-written rivals. Hugh probably the least of them, but he's willing to throw hands with Plasma, so that's fun. But there's Cheren, who has his motives for becoming stronger questioned over the story. Bianca, who wants to prove herself to her overprotective father. And N, commonly is seen as one of Pokémon's best characters, having grown up and fed propaganda his whole life, having his whole viewpoint challenged once he meets the player, and growing and throwing off the control of his abusive father over the course of the games.

The literal most unhinged and vilest villain of the series, up to that point. (Up until they gave us some stiff competition with Volo.) Plus the implications that Ghetsis would have murdered his son (he saw N as nothing but a warped freak, and his Hydreigon was built to solo N's team).

Half of the region to explore as a postgame, or even in B2W2, the White Tree Hollow/Black Tower unlocking, a challenge that's capped off by the game giving you a free Shiny Gible or Dratini, and the PWT. It was WILD at the time to fight every Gym Leader almost and Champion, plus Giovanni.

Actually giving more of a reward for players who complete their Unova dex with a Shiny Haxorus (in B2W2.) That's so much cooler than just a diploma.

Difficulty modes. The implementation was bad and weird, yea, but fans have still been begging for difficulty modes for years.

This troll motherfucker:

The PokeStar Studios. A lot of the battles are fun little challenges. (There's even a Lv99, Ghost/Dark-type with Wonder Guard as an opponent.)

S-tier player designs, especially Hilda and Rosa. The latter is popular enough among fans to have received merch in a line focused on the series' most popular characters.

Memory Link, rewarding the player for playing the past game, allowing them to connect and catch N's Pokémon.

All that, and it's the worst? 🤨 Meanwhile, poor Gen6, particularly XY/Kalos, is sitting there and was completely shafted by GameFreak and left incomplete despite having a ton of untapped potential. 😣

(No offense meant to those who dislike the games. We're all free to our own opinions. For me tho, there's so many cool features that they outweigh my complaints.)

[cookinguptales]

okay so it's about a week until I leave the country for over a month. I am dutifully filling up my queue so y'all will stay entertained while I am gone, but I should probably state for the record that I may not be easy to get ahold of while I'm gone. if you really want me to see something, send me a tumblr chat/ask so it'll show up in a separate inbox from my notifications.

I'll probably post about some travel stuff here, if I'm not too tired, but I suspect the lion's share will end up on twitter and especially instagram. if you would like to see travel posts, I am @iletaitunefois on twitter and @cookinguptales on IG.

if you do not want to see travel posts, please block '#the travel bug'.

I'm also gonna offer up postcards again. I'm not going to make any promises because I don't know how easy it'll be for me to find time/post offices everywhere I go in Japan -- and also because I may be cursed; I think like only half of my Christmas cards actually made their way to their destinations last year.

But! If you do want a postcard, send me a private message and I'll add you to my list. If you have any special requests (locations, nature, cityscapes, cute characters, whatever) lmk and I can see if I can make that work, but again, no promises. I usually keep track of nearby post offices in Japan because they're good places for foreigners to withdraw money, but like. I'm also not gonna take a ton of time out of my trip to find a post office, y'know? Certain legs of the trip will probably be easier than others for that.

FINALLY, if you want to know more about the trip before you decide to follow my IG or ask for a postcard (or, if like me, you are simply nosy) here's a vague overview of the trip:

The first couple weeks of the trip, I'll actually be on the ocean. There's this thing that cruise lines do called "repositioning cruises" where they literally just sail across the ocean. This is so a cruise company can use a ship in a different location, generally. Like if they usually use a boat in the Caribbean, but during another time of the year want to use it in the Pacific, they still need to get it over there. And why not let people ride it during the journey?

The trip is really more pragmatic than it is designed for tourists, though, so they tend to be very cheap. They're long, there aren't a lot of stops, they tend to be during unpopular travel times... So long story short, we can take a two week cruise to Japan for like... half the cost of a plane ticket to Japan. And my mother and I can work from wherever and my father and my aunt are retired, so. We'll just. be in the Pacific Ocean for two weeks. lmao

(I've moved around my work schedule so I probably won't have to do much work in Japan, but I'll have to work on the boat. ;;)

There will be one stop at the beginning of the trip (Alaska) and one at the end (Hokkaido!!!!!) so that'll be fun! But for the most part, I will mostly be working and writing and vegging out on the boat. I'm downloading a lot of tv now because boats tend to have minimal internet. lmao

(And don't worry, we chose a boat that has vax and testing requirements! Which... will probably make it safer than SEPTA here in Philly...)

Once we're in Japan, though, we're really gonna be putting our JR passes to the test. Here's a not exhaustive list of places we're going and things we're doing, in no particular order. (I... tend not to let people know exactly where I am until I've left that place lmao.)

Tokyo (obviously)

Kyoto

Osaka

Nara (to see the shosoin)

Yamagata

Two different onsen towns

Yokohama

Takarazuka 😎 iykyk

Tokyo Disneyland/DisneySea

Wakayama

Kawagoe

Maybe Hakone depending on weather

various Halloween-themed meals in Tokyo and Halloween itself in Dotonbori

several very sacred mountains to learn about shugendo

castles!! and more shrines and temples than you can shake a stick at

Asahi tour (for dad haha)

sumo stable tour (also for dad)

Pokemon stuff (.... also for dad lmao)

seein some cute animals

a lot of interesting food!!!

tbh we're going to be exhausted, but there's a lot of train travel and easy days in there so we can rest then. (dad and I both love trains lmao) Dad actually hurt himself about a month ago, so I took out some of the stuff I was planning that involved more walking (like the old pilgrimage route in Wakayama, climbing Nokogiriyama, and the monkey park in Jigokudani) so that'll also prevent me from overdoing it too much.

part of me is like "wow this is too much you should scale back and save responsibly" but a lot of my trip is gonna be subsidized by my family in return for translating for them all and arranging everything, and we're gonna save money in lodging and such, so I'm just. gonna tell my brain to shut up and enjoy living before we die lmao.

(when you grew up really poor, it can be kind of hard to let go and allow yourself to enjoy nice things when you're older and more stable financially lmao. but I'm getting better at it!)

also, I'm gonna bring Glen! my little Tabikaeru frog! we'll go to Kusatsu Onsen together lmao.

[the-firebird69]

This is the kind of look we're looking for you can have the horizontal lines but we'd rather not because fabric really doesn't do that this isn't a kit and it's a wide body it's not for a Firebird but this is what we like and we like how this is molded and fits. We'll make it one or two modifications when is you have to fit it to the Firebird and it is a nuisance to try and do it so they'll probably eventually make a new one probably today they say and I would add some fairings to the bottom to make it look like the firebird itself which already has a supercar bottom fairing and he says to why not use the ones that are there there'd be too deeply insect but you can make the kids so you take those off and put them back on and it's something of a Hallmark of our son and daughter who likes to incorporate real pieces of the body then you have to widen it a little I'm so really need a new mold but the original design would be incorporated not necessarily the original price and the bumper has to go it has to look like this you don't want that saggy bumper out there or on the front ever it looks incredibly awful but it was a way to cover it up and we used it to put things on and roll them into the trunk yes and our son and daughter say huge bags of rice and giant bags of beans

Frank Castle hardcastle

And I'm in the above too

Duke nukem Blockbuster

About 30 lb bags so that way that big we could set them on the rear end really 40 lb bags and sit on there and 80 lb bags of concrete that was helpful right there that last one it makes it with the rice I've already probably said enough but here we go this is going to work and they're going to get to it and that's what the new Firebird will look like a super car cuz they really should they should not look like these s***** cars and Chrysler is going to come out with a line of them and they're going to look like s*** this is going to work these cars going to be hot and it keeps the original look of the car and the particular year that it started becoming a supercar and the induction system is perfect it's going to rule

Thor Freya

Also have had enough of their little game mentality but they look familiar and they're from a movie it's not West side story it's warriors and they kick their own ass pretty bad and they're going to start fights and get beat up and have fun and then they'll be gone

You're approving this design it's awesome and the company that does this is going to get with the other one they said so you know how to make it and they want to incorporate the Firebird rear panel and not the bumper

Olympus

it's a damn nuisance it's the ugliest buffer in history yeah a lot of people got away with stuff 80 lb bags of concrete stuff like that it's gross

Manufacturer of the aftermarket rear panel as you see here and we're going to produce a ton of them apparently I'm familiar with the car he's talking about it's a V6 it's the one with 235 horsepower when you put these fairings on it adds a little weight no because you're taking the old ones off and it takes weight off I always make them wrong and heavy and out of this plastic like a garbage can and when you put them on there harder and the carbon reinforced and nowadays are modern and strong and they come with a subframe too and bumper and our kids all together looks like the one you shown but we're going to modify it to look exactly like it and round it it's awesome this is an awesome kit and people will know who we are from the rear, and it starts off going 180 and you end up going $285 mph same motor one person in it same car no engine modifications if you modify the engine with a DOT exhaust and you get to take off the top end if you had a top into it as well you're talking about 385 to 400 miles per hour it is a very fast car and the rims and tires are fine and now you have to change those to fit and we like the zero profile ideas the kit was shown it's not that great and we're going to modify hours to mirror it and we have those panels and we're going to make the wheel wells work properly the heights will be proper and we will note how high and the front end will be right and fit with the side panels and side panels stick with the doors and the rear panels fit with the door and the new rear end will fits with the end panels everything will fit in combination and you can see the car above that's our kit

[umichenginabroad]

Feeling Thankful for My Friends (+ Paris)

Hádej co, I only have a month left abroad! On one hand, I feel like I just got to Prague and have barely done anything, but, on the other, I'm exhausted from traveling. I wouldn't say I'm exactly homesick because Ann Arbor and Michigan just cannot compare to Europe, but seeing it 70 degrees and sunny back home made me really miss my friends there.

My roommates and I spending a lot of time together this week definitely helped a lot though. One of them is big on cooking, baking, and sharing food with us in general, so we got to try some homemade chai, Indian cookies, some apple crisp, and butter chicken! She's so sweet; I love her, and it really makes me want to make dumplings or something with my whole apartment.

Parle-G cookies, butter chicken for lunch, and a celebratory apple crisp

In other events, our communication class took a trip to the Czech Parliament which is in the Malá Strana area across the river. It was super informative and much more interesting than I was expecting, especially because we were able to chat with one of the deputies. He's head of the committee which relates to European Union affairs, so we learned plenty about Czech relations with other countries and even got his perspective of the US.

The architecture was gorgeous too like look at all these chandeliers and gold accents...I'm honestly a sucker for cool interior design. Fun fact, the more angular chandeliers were designed with bottle glass during the Communist era to fit the vibe that even decorations are "close to the people"/put people on the same level.

Communist Era chandeliers, views of the Parliament floor, and Committee meeting room

As much as I love Prague (and I'd say it's pretty high up there on my list), Paris is hands down my favorite European city, if not all time city. My view is definitely biased because I'd wanted to go ever since I was little, and the one time I'd been before was warm and sunny. But still, j'aime Paris! Even better, I got to see so many friends studying abroad here which really helped with the fact that I was missing everyone back home. The friend I stayed with even planned a whole little itinerary for me <3, so much gratitude to her and my other friends that made time to meet up even though they had classes and exams.

yay friendsss

A quick run down of the highlights of my slightly niche touristy weekend:

Sainte Chapelle has the most gorgeous stained glass windows. Oh also so many attractions are free for students in the EU!

Musée d'Orsay is located in an old train station, plus tons of art and statues, and Van Gogh things

This Eiffel Tower street that gets you super close is a beautiful view but really you can't go wrong with any view of it

Dior Gallery has inspired me to get more into fashion

Sacré-Cœur is so touristy but is my fav view of Paris especially on a clear day

Arc-de-Triomphe for 360 views! Sunset was a bonus

Please eat many pastries too, I did not have enough

Official solo trip next week! kinda nervous kinda excited (I get to see a friend so not solo for first part but it counts wooo)

Catherine Jiang Computer Science Tech Career Accelerator in Prague

Czech Words

Hádej co - guess what

Malá Strana - the name of the area across the river where the Prague Castle and Parliament building are along with some yum restaurants

[archimains]

Kids playsets

Kids playsets how to#

Kids playsets free#

However, depending on the climate where you live, you may want to do a little research to determine the kind of material that would be best. Whether they are made from wood, metal, or plastic, most sets are designed to hold up to the elements. In general, swing sets can last from 10 to 15 years, especially if they are well-maintained and made of durable materials. You’ll want material that will stand the test of time and weather. Since it’s a major investment, make sure the swing set you choose is durable. You can usually swap out certain swings and attachments once your kids get bigger. Most swing sets have age recommendations that will help guide you when purchasing. Largest residential playset manufacturer in the US offering playsets to fit any size.

Kids playsets free#

Six feet of open space on all sides is recommended for plenty of room to play.īefore purchasing, consider the age of the children that will be playing on the swing set to determine if the set is safe and entertaining for them both now and as they age. Buy wooden swing sets and all cedar playhouses with free shipping. Swing sets should be placed in locations free of overhead obstacles like power lines, tree limbs, or roof overhangs. By staying within these limits, your set will last longer and your kiddos will be safe while they play. Along with overall weight capacity, you'll also want to take note of the number of children that can be on the set at a time. Most swing sets come with a weight limit and may need to be installed by a professional. They can be dangerous if they aren’t installed correctly, and it's important to follow all safety guidelines. Swing sets can be loads of fun, but also need to be safe. If you have multiple kids of varying ages and think they’ll use it with friends and family for a long time, the DIY Outing III Wooden Swing Set with Rock Wall and Slide ( view at Home Depot) is worth the cost and assembly time. While it’s an investment, your kids will enjoy it for many years to come. Try this Pottery Barn inspired DIY sandbox by ‘ Life in the Dub Lane’.A swing set is tons of fun for kids of all ages. Make this deluxe covered DIY sandbox with this complete tutorial from ‘ Small + Friendly‘! It’s covered so that cats can’t use it as a giant litter box! This kind of outdoor playset is perfect for littler ones, but the older kids will love to build their “cities” and “castles” too! This sandbox keeps kids safe from the sun while they have fun playing.

Kids playsets how to#

Learn how to build this DIY sandbox with a cover with these plans from ‘ HGTV’. So much better than a rusty old swing set! They have step by step photos and a complete materials list… This is a simple kids outdoor playset with a cool look. From ‘ Whitney’s Workshop’, this wooden swing is whimsical and fun, and any kid will love to use it everyday!Ĭheck out this project that is a modern a-frame wooden DIY swing set from ‘ HGTV Gardens‘. Speaking of choosing your swings, make this child’s airplane DIY swing to use in any of these projects. They even have tips on how to choose the best swing seats for your playset! Make this simple wooden DIY swing set with this tutorial from ‘ Create and Find’. Indoor Playset 457 sign in to see prices Indoor Playset 205 sign in to see prices Premium Products. A playhouse, sandbox and slide all in one!Īll kinds of kids outdoor playset awesomeness in this tutorial from ‘ Created By V’! Your kids will have plenty of outdoor backyard fun climbing, sliding and imagining here… Get everything in one package with this DIY playset from ‘ House of Handmade’. It’s a little more expensive, we priced it out at around $500 in our area, but it’s large, and will last! From ‘ Popular Mechanics’. This is a larger DIY wooden kids outdoor playset that has free plans and materials list. Want to hear your kids squeal like crazy when you surprise them with this handmade hideaway DIY playset from ‘ The Handmade Home‘? All the instructions! I want this! :)

[grimmywrites]

So, about Infinite Darkness...

I’m gonna try to be as succinct as I can (I failed) about all the problems I had with it, but my list is pretty long... Yes, this has spoilers. Let me state upfront: if you’re not a hardcore RE fan, you can skip the show. Below I’ll tell you why.

Story: What a mess. Honestly, they turned me off right at the beginning with all the military stuff. It’s the same reason people didn’t like Chris’ campaign in 6; didn’t they learn anything from that? So, the story wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever seen. Honestly, it had more plot holes than anything and so many points where I went: “I don’t care about this.” Again, it was a jumbled mess. Capcom, hire me and I’ll do better, I swear. Let’s just sum it up by saying it’s a rehash of things we’ve seen SEVERAL times in the series before. If you’re gonna do it AGAIN let’s make the story unique and interesting. Oh, there are shady people in the military that want to use bioweapons in war? Okay, we’ve known that since the first game. We’ve seen it time and time again. Look to re8′s ending for example: the BSAA are now starting to use engineered soldiers - THAT was a reveal that was far more interesting. The way it was addressed and overcome in this show was just... so lackluster. Ultimately, it just felt like this entire thing didn’t need to happen. It changed nothing, it impacted nothing, and I’m aware that it really couldn’t since it was after re4 and before re5. There was just no lasting point and all the ‘themes’ (if you can call them that) made absolutely no sense, but I guess I’ll get into that with the characters? Pacing: Absolutely god awful. One minute we’re in the White House fighting zombies then I blink and it’s over and I’m like: Oh, we’re done? Another we’re in a sub and then I blink. Oh, that’s over, too. Also, the creators must’ve taken a page from the last couple of seasons of Game of Thrones (which is an abysmal idea, don’t fucking do that) because with a few cuts here and there we went from Guam to China back to DC. Guess everybody learned how to teleport so they got exactly where we needed them to for the “climax”. Let’s talk about that climax: There was none. Let’s look at Degeneration and Damnation (no I won’t talk about Vendetta). Both had their weaknesses but Leon and the climaxes were BADASS. Leon doing parkour in Degeneration? Leon going against Lickers and the huge Tyrants in Damnation? Those were amazing scenes. He did a few cool things here and there but nothing that got more of a laugh out of me. My man is coming off re4 where he rampaged through a village, a castle, and an island of mutated creatures to save one girl. C’mon now. Characters: By now (if anybody is even reading this rant), you’ve noticed that I’ve talked a lot about Leon. But what about Claire? Yeah, they lied to us about them working together. She got sidelined again. A lot of people are upset about this -- and yeah, it sucks because I do love Claire. Leon has just happened to be my favorite since 1998 so I wasn’t as heartbroken. That doesn’t mean I’m not disappointed, I’m just not very surprised. Leon - My main problem with Leon is Nick, his voice actor. I’m so sorry for all those who like him, but he just isn’t good enough for me. Paul Mercier (re4, Degeneration, Darkside Chronicles) and Matt Mercer (Damnation, Re6, Vendetta) would have been more appropriate. Nick tries his best, but he’s just too soft sounding to be post-re4 Leon. This is a man who is quipping one-liners left and right a couple of years ago. Now he’s barely smiling and doesn’t feel confident at all, and I think a lot of that is because of his portrayal. There are times where the lines hit, but more often than not they fall flat. I never felt that way with Paul who is my favorite Leon or Matt who gave emotional performances every time. Also, his decision at the end? I can understand it, but explain to Claire! Claire - I like Stephanie as Claire, I have no problems with her. She makes her sound tough and ready to do what she thinks is right. Unfortunately, the story completely sidelines her and makes her role obsolete. Everything she uncovers (because that’s her role apparently, just there to Nancy Drew) is already told to us through flashbacks and other characters. Why even have her? Was it just to show us WHY her and Leon don’t talk often? A waste. Shen Mei - I don’t care. I felt nothing for her. They tried really hard, but they just failed to flesh these new characters out and when her time was up I once again went: Oh? That’s it, then. ‘Kay. I think I laughed a bit, sorry girl. Her whole plotline was to get that chip in Leon’s hand, nothing more. Jason -  I don’t care. A character I thought I felt sorry for with his ptsd but nope. Once his story unfolded - messily, I might add (I hate the REPEATED flashback shit. Tell me once and stop teasing me.) I just went... okay, what the hell is your plan? To spread fear? ‘Kay. It was dumb and made no sense. What, he wants everyone to feel terror so they know? It needed to be clarified. It’s like they couldn’t figure out more synonyms for fear and terror. So, what? It helps keep Leon from going public with the chip and that information? Because he knows it’ll just cause mass hysteria? And then you’ve got Claire’s side - she’s not an agent and she believes the people have a right to know. They’re both right, but there’s no goddamn communication between ANYONE in this show. I just felt exhausted by it, nothing else. Not to mention it’s useless angst because of the plot of Degeneration. Wilson - Our bad guy. Let’s just sum up really quickly in case people were confused by the plot: He was putting infected soldiers into war zones so that even after they died they’d kill anybody involved, then he’d bomb the area and clean up the evidence. These soldiers didn’t show any symptoms because they had inhibitors that kept the virus at bay until they died, so they had to take regular shots to stay human. He’s the one who gets the zombies into the white house so that he could blame it on China and get the US into a war with them. That way he could send in his soldiers and infect the populace. From there, he’s the only one with the cure so he could rake in LOTS of money selling it to the world. AKA: he wants to use the US military to infect everyone so he can make a profit. He gets infected by Jason and gets away... then meets up with someone who gives him an inhibitor. This someone is working for Tricell, the big bads of re5 who work under Wesker. So it leads right into the fifth game. That’s all he is, a tie in and yet another example of someone in power trying to profit off the viruses of the RE world. Honestly, nobody else is worth mentioning. Animation: They’re getting better at it. Leon and Claire looked especially pretty, but there’s still a stiffness here and an issue with everyone’s mouths while they talk. I want to praise how different SOME of the characters look - the president and his aides all look appropriately aged and grizzled and distinct. Same with Jason. Other characters (side characters mainly) kinda look generic. Shen Mei for example isn’t very distinct. I mean, her grandpa and brother (both one scene wonders) were more realistic looking than she was. Even Claire - they gave her a bigger nose and made her look more in line with her Revelations 2 model (thank god I love that model). Movement was pretty fluid, I wish we’d seen more fighting and cool action -- though not to the extent of Vendetta. Maybe that’s what they were trying to avoid, but it didn’t make it any fun to watch. Enemies: This is the last thing I’ll comment on. The zombies were fine - they always are. I heard a ton of reused sounds from remake2, as well, but I thought of it as an Easter Egg more than anything. They looked good, their gore was good, all set there. Problem was, they were basically the only bad guys. That’s a huge fucking disappointment. I know people recognize this series as ‘the one with the zombies’ but that’s not true. Every game (save 7) had MULTIPLE enemy types all created through bio engineering. In this show we see three types. THREE. Zombies. Zombie rats - a one-scene wonder that Leon dispatches fast and easy. I’ll admit, they looked cool but there was nothing else to them. “They’re a bioweapon” and then Leon fries them all with some electricity and we’re done. Jason’s mutated form. Okay, I have to admit, I really loved his design. He was cool, I liked that he could talk and emote. But, other than that? He didn’t DO anything cool. He mutated once and hopped around a lot. That’s it. I mean, a bioweapon that keeps his mental capacities? C’MON! We could’ve done so much more with him. Again, this goes back to why the climax was so bad -- he and Leon didn’t fight. One jumped, the other ran around to catch up and fired a few bullets and a rocket at him. Then he used an acid bath to finish the job. (Also, explain to me WHY he mutated into a tyrant-like creature while everyone else with that specific virus was another form of zombie? We see Jun (Shen’s brother) mutating almost crystal-like at one point but... what? You leave them off for a while and they turn into crystal zombies? Make it make sense.) I’m sure there’s more to say, but honestly, unless you’re a hardcore RE fan like me, I’d say you can skip it. It wasn’t a fun ride, there weren’t any stakes, it wasn’t emotional... it just... was. I will end on one good note that made me smile, though: I loved seeing the Ashley Easter Egg.

[echodrops]

This is just a salty personal rant, feel free to ignore. 

As a teacher, I feel like the thing I like least about tumblr is the anti-schooling attitude that crops up due to the platform’s younger user base.

Like, we get it, you hate doing homework. Trust me, your teachers hate grading it. If I could get away with never assigning any work, I sure as hell would so that I could enjoy my weekends instead of spending them slaving away over giving feedback to student essays. 

But the alternative to giving homework is typically not giving homework, which means the students’ grades will instead often be narrowed to just a few major assignments throughout the course of a semester or year, resulting in classes which are infinitely easier to fail and teachers who, as is mutually despised, “teach to the test” instead.

Having more homework in a course means the points you earn are diffused across a variety of assignments. This means that if you miss a few assignments, you can still pass, unlike in classes with only a few major pieces of work, where missing a single thing will crush your grade.

“So just give participation points for in-class work instead!” Yes, except according to tumblr, going to class shouldn’t be mandatory either, except what does it actually mean to base a grade on participation? What do we do with disadvantaged students whose attendance is impacted by familial or economic factors, like lack of reliable transportation, which are outside their control? Do we fail students with ADHD or anxiety for not participating regularly or contributing actively to group activities? How do you accurately measure something subjective like participation to tell if you’re improving the students’ knowledge intake or not?

Plus like... please, please, for a second put yourself in the shoes of your educator and think about the point of homework as a whole, the role it is supposed to play in a student’s education overall. Can anyone master a skill in an hour? Can you master a skill in a week? Can a high school English teacher teach students to flawlessly identify literary devices in a single class period? The curriculum requirements of most U.S. public high school classes are set by state education boards and are functionally outside the control of your individual teachers. They don’t get to choose what to teach you and they don’t get to choose how much you are supposed to learn every year. That’s decided by someone else. (Is this a inherent flaw of our education system as a whole? Yep. Can your high school teachers really do anything about it? In their dreams.)

What that means is that U.S. students are typically asked to master a very large number of skills in a very short amount of time in each class they take; in many cases, there is simply no way that the allotted number of hours a teacher sees their students in person (or... Zoom...) is enough for students to comprehensively master and apply all the skills they are expected to learn. 

Learning new things takes time and, more importantly, it takes practice. If you want to become a great artist, you put in hours upon hours of practice. If you want to become a great basketball player, you put in hours upon hours of practice. If you want to become a great writer, you... put in hours upon hours of practice.

Homework is practice. Your teacher teaches you a skill in class and then reinforces what is learned through practice later at home. That’s how learning works. Is putting in hours of practice on skills you don’t care about fun? Obviously, no. Is every skill that high school teaches you going to be important in the grand scheme of your life? Also obviously no. But is the process of taking the time to go back over the skills you learn in class important? Yeah. Is that process going to be central to how you acquire new knowledge and skills for the rest of your life? Unfortunately, yes, because humans are the greatest imitators, and we learn very rapidly through repetition and trial-and-erroring new things we encounter. 

Do schools assign too much homework? Inevitably, when there’s no functioning system for determining how much homework students are receiving from their other teachers on any given day. Is all homework perfectly designed and genuinely contributive to student learning? Absolutely not. Are there scientifically-proven best methods for creating assignments that can make them more enjoyable and effective for students, even though, in practice, tons of schools don’t apply them? You bet. But does that mean that your learning would magically improve if you never got another piece of homework in your life? Also absolutely not. 

I would like... pay money for tumblr to understand that the automatic answer to “Too much of this thing is terrible” is not “We should get rid of it entirely.” Or, better: “Perhaps I should not jump on a bandwagon regarding a subject I’ve never considered holistically.” But that line of thinking requires critical thinking skills that everyone who skipped their homework never learned. Okay, maybe that was too salty.

tl;dr: Instead of trying to overthrow the homework gods with a pitch fork like Gaston storming Beast’s castle, maybe you should advocate for better designed and more meaningful learning opportunities and/or assignments. Trust me, your teachers would cherish valid feedback.

tl;dr: Gettin’ real sick of tumblr’s habit of patting itself on the back for a hot take written by someone who doesn’t even know how to pre-heat the oven.

[misc-headcanons]

Hello dear 🥰 your opening is far too tempting not to request more content of our favorite mochi from you 🥺 so if you're up to and there's still room, may I request HCs for Katakuri visiting an Amusement Park with his S/O? 🍩

I adored every piece you wrote for him so far and I'm a big fan of your work ❤ Thank you so much for being such an amazing content creator ✨ hope you have lots of fun writing for this new batch!

(EEEEEE anything for you Ellie <3)

The only canon amusement park in One Piece is Sabaody Park, and I can imagine Katakuri going there on some kind of work related to Big Mom’s empire (it’s got a lawless underground vibe and maybe he goes there for some rare ingredients that they couldn’t get through conquest? Maybe Big Mom’s craving the cotton candy there and she tells Kata to get a metric ton of it to bring back to Tottland? Who knows). Because nobody is likely to fuck with a Yonko’s best fighter who’s also 16 feet tall, he doesn’t mind bringing his s/o with him. He feels kinda bad for not being able to take them out on dates when he’s out on Sweet Commander business, so he mainly agrees to go to the island because he can try to do something romantic for his Sprinkle.

Even though he brings them there, he’s still very protective. He makes sure no other park attendees let their gaze linger on ____ for too long, and he makes sure that she’s properly strapped in for every single ride. It doesn’t matter if it’s something slow and low-key like some spinning teacups or a carousel--he HAS to ensure that his s/o is safe.

He was going to be fine with the likelihood that he wouldn’t be able to ride most attractions due to his size, but surprisingly he just barely meets the height limits for most of them (long story short, Whitebeard’s friends with the park owners and they started building rides to accommodate big-and-tall fellas who want to ride stuff with their huge family on vacation).

He feels strange riding them though, just because he isn’t used to indulging in something like that. He’s still a bit stoic and stiff on these rides, partially due to the fact that he’s faced much more scary and adrenaline-rushing stuff than a loop-de-loop or a sudden-drop ride. Throughout the day though, he becomes more and more relaxed and his s/o can tell he’s smiling more often underneath his scarf.

He was planning on going back to the ship for his Merienda, but his s/o begged him to try some of the food at the vendors in the park. After they snuck a few pieces of churros and funnel cake into his mouth while he kept his scarf on, he made a note to tell Mama about these interesting desserts that weren’t as common on Tottland. When he sees a stall for deep fried desserts, he’s confused as to how that could sound appealing...until he sees that they have deep-fried donuts on the menu. He gets the stall’s entire stock and has them make even more while he sets up a mochi shrine outside of the park to deliver to him and his s/o while they enjoy an extra special Merienda.

A few kids notice the shrine and assume it’s a bounce house attraction, but Kata’s Observation Haki clues him in to quickly putting on his scarf and coming outside before an unfortunate incident happens. When he sees the disappointed look on the kids’ faces though (and the puppy eyes from his s/o), he makes a large castle of mochi for the kids outside the park to play in. He tells the park owners that he wants more deep-fried donuts in exchange for the free attraction, though.

He doesn’t know what kind of souvenir to get, especially since the bubble-related ones will pop and be useless once they leave Sabaody. His s/o decides surprises him with a snowglobe with a figure replica of the park inside and glitter, and he handles it like it’s the damn One Piece with how much he treasures it. He also gets a bubble-shaped ornament/window decoration for Brulee to bring back, since she likes stuff like that as a souvenir.

He wins any and every prize at the park’s game booths, using his strength and Observation Haki to win against the rigged games. The kids from before ask for some help winning, since they’ve used up all their tickets and didn’t win a single thing--even when they managed to win, the employees only occasionally let them win just to hide suspicion that the games are rigged. Katakuri, not impressed by machinery that’s designed to take money from kids who don’t know any better and can’t realize they’re being tricked, robs those booths fucking blind with his skills and soon he has a mountain of stuffed animals and toys for every kid in the park to take home.

He holds his s/o’s hand (well...they hold his index finger) all throughout the day at the park. Even though he doesn’t think anyone is dangerous enough to take him on or hurt ____, he still gets extra protective whenever his Darling is in a crowd. Thankfully he’s very easy to spot.

[nonbinaryparent]

update time

I am still super stressed in general. Like I have no problem relaxing when I am not working. Can’t sleep cause I still think about work though. I don’t think I want to work on funding anymore. BIT LOUDER FOR MY FUTURE SELF FUCK FUNDING DEADLINES MAKE SOMEONE ELSE DO IT. Anyway I am still happy at the job, teaching is starting up just I havent had my ideal time to prepare, things are still going quite well. 0 time for research, I don’t miss it that much. Somehow still involved in much research. Out of work is great fun too.

Kiddo#1 had a future job day at school with dress up and had it all worked out. She will be a princess and live alone in her castle and we can come visit and play games with her. Sounds like a cool plan. She enjoys swimming and jiu jitsu and still tons of minecraft, stardew valley, various mario games, animal crossing. She draws a lot of games, either mazes or mario type levels. One very realistic copy of a toy pizza slice got 14 hearts around it. She keeps saying I am a boy and I keep saying there is more than just 2 options and reading books about it with her but I guess it is not sticking yet. A for effort.

Kiddo#2 is reading subtitles, mostly just the last word in the sentence. He went to one open day at school and the teacher was also like what what what he’s already reading everything and can do numbers in two languages. I think he will still enjoy most of it next year. He loves Russian because it has different symbols and is less interested in our native language cause all the letters are the same, can’t blame him there. He’s way more talkative but indeed wants to know how to do something perfectly before he does it, so also doesn’t make a sentence before knowing how to say it. He was able to go to the bathroom by himself perfectly even at night but for some reason we don’t know now can’t make it through the night again. We’re trying heating the house a bit more, it’s tough to tell what’s bothering him. He loves writing words without knowing their meaning, geography and contagious.... going places, that’s for sure. I can see him being a graphic font designer.

We visited friends who had a 6 month old baby, I felt like keeping them a bit ;) It was very cute but yeah let’s wait a bit and settle down. And sport! I guess if I delegate more strictly at work I can make other people write the funding? Would be good to try.

[fatesdeepdive]

Entry 8: Rinkah’s Burning Loins

My Castle

After fully dedicating ourselves to Hoshido, the game finally really begins. We’re given access to a customizable castle in the Astral Plane where our army waits between battles. We can talk to our units, giving them minor stat boosts or new weapons. Right off the bat, we have a farm and spring to give us resources, rooms for Corrin and Lilith, and a Hall of Records.

In Lilith’s spring, we can feed her to make her level up. Different foods affect her stats in different ways. Note that, although Lilith now has stats, she isn’t usable in battle. Other players can invade our Castle through spotpass, which I’ll discuss in a later entry, and Lilith is only usable in those battles.

Lilith

Lilith is a weird squirrel dragon thing that floats around clutching a random ball. She used to be our stable girl and is now our pet. I think she has a crush on Corrin. Her design is unique and cute, I like it. Gameplay wise, she can only use a modified Physic staff. I don’t dislike her personality, but she feels like a throwaway character added at the last minute. She raises a ton of questions that I doubt will ever be answered.

In the Hall of Records, we can see descriptions of all the units we’ll ever recruit, rewatch cutscenes, read unreadable poems, and play around with a relationship tester. The relationship tester is randomized, by the way, which kinda makes it pointless. That said, it told me that Corrin expects betrayal from Rinkah, while Rinkah’s loins are set afire by Corrin. This is now canon, I have decided.

In Corrin’s room, we can change their hairstyle and invite an ally over to chill. I chose Kaze. He complimented Corrin’s piano skills, which she apparently has, then stared at us, blushing, while thanking us for saving him from Garon.

So, let’s talk about the elephant in the room. In the Japanese version you get to rub units while in close up mode. Like Pokemon Amie except...with people. This was removed in the English version. A lot of Fire Emblem fans were pissed, crying about censorship because Nintendo of America had the gall to remove the minigame where you rub Camila’s tiddies while she moans. And I’m going to say a hot take right now: they made the right call. That stuff was weird and indulgent. It was the living embodiment of the fanservice focussed design that plagues modern Fire Emblem games. Good riddance.

Inviting allies to Corrin’s cool sex treehouse boosts our support levels. I suppose it's time I mentioned that. In Fire Emblem games, units form bonds from fighting next to each other, unlocking short conversations that flesh them out as characters. Units also fight together better when they have high supports. Now, here’s the fun thing about supports:

There are more than 600 supports in this game. Not support conversations, support lines, each of which is made up of three or four conversations. And, because God has cursed me for my hubris and my work is never finished, I’m going to read all of them.

Admittedly, I’m not going to unlock all of them. S-Rank conversations result in marriages and each unit only gets one. It’d take a few dozen playthroughs to get all of Corrin’s S-Rank conversations and I don’t hate myself that much, so I’m reading the transcripts from the wiki. I think I’m going to do four supports per Entry; that’ll leave me with a few extra by the time we reach the end, but I’ll just do a support grab bag entry or something.

Before we do supports, let’s finish up improving the castle. I built a weapon shop and a statue of Corrin that boosts her max speed. We are limited on the number of buildings we can build, but that isn’t a big deal yet because the only other option was to build a stave shop.

Support: Corrin/Rinkah

C: Corrin attempts to discuss battle tactics with Rinkah, but Rinkah blows her off and tells her to stop trying to be friends. Rinkah does acknowledge that Corrin’s authority and that Corrin saved her life, but tells the princess leave her alone.

B: Corrin pesters Rinkah until she explains why she’s so aloof. Rinkah explains that, the Flame Tribe keeps a great flame burning in the center of the village to honor the God of Fire. In the past, outsiders have extinguished the fire. One such instance was followed by a volcanic eruption that decimated the tribe. As a rule, the people of the Flame Tribe are wary of outsiders. Rinkah also explains that she’s working for Hoshido because her father commanded her to, much to her chagrin.

A: Rinkah explains that she would have preferred to die an honorable warrior’s death than be captured and resents Corrin for sparing her. Corrin says that she’s glad Rinkah is still alive, because it means Rinkah and her can be friends. Corrin also says that, despite the chaos of war, she believes in fate and its ability to bring people together. Corrin encourages Rinkah to use this opportunity to learn more about the outside world and bring that knowledge home with her. Rinkah begrudgingly agrees.

This is how the conversation will end on my playthrough, but if Corrin has a penis, you can get an S-Rank proposal conversation. I’ll be listing all of these off along with the normal conversations.

S: Rinkah comes to Corrin, blushing, and tells him that he has been a constant reminder of her shame and regret over being captured. But, over time, these feelings were replaced with love. Love that she hated, because Corrin is an outsider. Corrin says that he’s loved Rinkah since the day they met and only told her to be friendly to other people as an excuse to spend time with her. Rinkah states that, from now on, she will remember her capture as the happiest day of her life and the two get married.

Review: I really like this support line. It expands Rinkah’s backstory and culture, ties it into Corrin’s own isolation and belief in fate, and deals with the tumultuous meeting they had in Chapter 2. The confession comes out of nowhere, admittedly, but I do like Rinkah grappling with her mixed feelings of hate and love. Solid support.

Support: Corrin/Jakob

C: Corrin comes to Jakob to ask for a favor. Jakob interrupts her by humorously listing off the things he would do for Corrin. Things like slay dragons for her, which is actually kinda offensive now that I think about it. Corrin begs Jakob to allow her to be independent and Jakob refuses. Corrin explains that she’s his boss and he tells her that servitude is his reason for living. Jakob explains that, when he started working for Corrin, he was incompetent, and her kindness towards him made him indebted to her. The two compromise on the agreement that Jakob will teach Corrin how to make tea. After Corrin leaves, Jakob mumbles to himself that things might get apocalyptic.

B: Corrin repeatedly tries and fails to make a decent cup of tea. Both of them get some funny lines in, with Corrin telling Jakob that she can’t hear him because she’s ignoring him and Jakob saying that, saying that they’ll run out of leaves before Corrin makes decent tea. They meaning the nation in this case. Corrin eventually makes a passable cup, after Jakob secretly adds in sugar.

A: Jakob admits to Corrin that he messed with her tea and she laughs it off, admitting that she knew all along. She apologizes for being stubborn and accepts that she still needs Jakob’s help sometimes. Jakob says that he falls apart without Corrin. Corrin says that the two of them are alike in that way and Jakob literally faints from joy.

S: Jakob is acting more distant than normal. When Corrin asks him about this, he admits that he’s fallen for her and resigns from his duties as butler, because it is improper for him to have feelings for his mistress. Corrin begs him to say because she needs him and admits that she loves him too. The two of them get embarrassed and Corrin fires Jakob, giving him the new job of husband.

Review: This was a hilarious support that really made me appreciate Jakob’s snarky yet loyal personality. He is the perfect butler. The conflict of Corrin wanting to be independent and Jakob wanting to take care of her is a good dynamic that made me appreciate the relationship between these two characters. I do like them more as a platonic couple than a romantic one, but Jakob quitting his job because falling in love with Corrin is improper is a nice character moment.

Support: Corrin/Kaze

C: A villager gives Kaze a bunch of radishes because he’s super hot. And I mean, he is. Kaze apparently doesn’t realize that he’s hot until Corrin explains it to him. Kaze mentions that he dislikes the attention because he isn’t a good person before running off.

B: Corrin asks Kaze to follow her around so she can figure out what’s bothering him. Kaze says no, so Corrin annoys him until he agrees to hang out with him. Then he runs away again.

A: Kaze admits to Corrin that it was his fault that Garon kidnapped her, because when he was a child, he noticed the Nohrian soldiers that killed Sumeragi were in the city but said nothing about it. I don’t know how that makes Corrin’s kidnapping his fault, you’d expect there to be soldiers guarding a king. And the fact that Kaze was there means that there were also Hoshido soldiers, which means there was no reason to be suspicious of the Nohrians. Also, Kaze was a teenager at the oldest, so he should probably get some leeway. Whatever. Kaze apologizes to Corrin and Corrin, in turn, apologizes for making him live with guilt for fifteen years. Corrin also points out that Kaze led her home, meaning that they’re even now. Kaze compares Corrin to Mikoto because of her kindness and pledges to serve Corrin as her loyal retainer.

S: Corrin and Kaze joke around about Corrin’s kidnapping. It’s cute. Corrin mentions that, now that she’s spent so much time offscreen with Kaze, she likes him even more. Kaze blurts out that he loves Corrin, despite being her bodyguard, and the two propose.

Review: I found this chain a bit lacking, to be honest. The first two conversations were filler and the origin for Kaze’s guilt complex is kinda dumb. Kaze’s relationship with Corrin defines him as a character. He is so guilt ridden over her kidnapping that he would betray his country and his family to protect her. Later parts of the game hinge on this relationship. But, three of their four conversations are dull. I do like Kaze’s guilt complex as a concept, and think becoming Corrin’s retainer alongside Jakob and/or Felicia and a way to repent, but it isn’t enough to save this support line.

Support: Kaze/Rinkah

C: Kaze gets a bunch of candy for being hot and shares it with Rinkah, who secretly loves candy.

B: Kaze continues to give Rinkah candy.

A: Kaze continues to give Rinkah candy.

S: Kaze reveals that he’s been giving Rinkah candy because he’s in love with her.

Review: This one was a big let down. The fact that Kaze and Rinkah are introduced together made me think it would be about their capture, but no. It’s just Kaze giving Rinkah candy for four conversations straight. And it’s cute fluff, but it’s nothing more than that. There is something interesting below the surface with Rinkah hiding her love of candy to protect her image, but it’s never really explored.

So, off to a mixed start with the support conversations.

Birthright Chapter 7: A Vow Upheld

Team Corrin heads to a Hoshidan fort where Sakura is tending to wounded soldiers. We are introduced to Sakura’s retainers, Subaki and Hana. Suddenly, the fort is attacked by Nohrian forces. Corrin and Azura point out the ridiculousness of them attacking immediately after they arrived. Sakura freaks out because the fort is being used as a hospital and has no military value. So apparently Nohr is now being evil just to be evil.

Subaki and Hana agree to help Corrin defend the fort and argue over who’s more important to Sakura, much to her annoyance. Subaki and Hana give me a good opportunity to discuss a few interesting things about classes in this game. First off, unlike in most Fire Emblem games, classes are NOT gender-specific, as demonstrated by Subaki being the first male Pegasus Knight in the series. Secondly, the classic Fire Emblem classes were divided between the two nations. Nohr got Mercenaries, Hoshido got Myrmidons. Nohr got Wyvern Riders, Hoshido got Pegasus Knights. Etc. I really like this, it gives the two countries different feels in combat both aesthetically and mechanically. Finally, a lot of Hoshidan classes were renamed to be more Eastern, shown by Hana being a Samurai instead of a Myrmidon, or by Sakura being a Shrine Maiden instead of a Cleric.

Subaki

Subaki is a Sky Knight, this game’s equivalent of a Pegasus Knight. He can fly over terrain and has good speed and resistance, but is decimated by arrows. His personal skill buffs his hit and avoid when he has full health. Design wise, I like how ridiculously smug he looks. Personality wise, he seems over-competitive yet fiercely loyal to Sakura.

Hana

Hana is a Samurai with high speed and skill. Her personal skill damaged nearby enemies when she scores a kill. Her design is fine, if a little bland. Personality wise, she seems over-competitive yet fiercely loyal to Sakura.

Starting with this chapter, we have a prep menu, where we can choose which units to use and rearrange them on the map. We can bring our whole team in with us, so it’s a little pointless, but it's nice. Worth noting that you can have units start in pair up via this menu, unlike in Awakening where you had to pair them up after the battle started.

At the start of the battle, the chapter’s boss, a Cavalier named Silas, shouts out to Corrin that he’s her childhood best friend. She does not remember him even slightly. Okie dokie.

This map is decent. It’s a bit short, but it features a lot of good bottlenecks. The Dragon Veins can be used to open heal tiles, which is a bit pointless because you have two healers. When Silas and Corrin fight, he reiterates that they used to be friends. Corrin says that she can’t remember her past. And that confuses me, because I was under the impression that she got amnesia when she was taken to Nohr, which would have been before she met Silas. Unless he’s lying.

After the battle, Corrin refuses to kill Silas. She interrogates him about why he was so hesitant to attack them and he explains that, when they were children, he helped Corrin sneak out of the walls to have a picnic. The guards tried to execute Silas for this, but Corrin stopped them, because apparently guards listen to small children. Because of this, Silas feels he owes a debt to Corrin.

Question. Why was this random child allowed to play with the super secret hostage princess? Whatever.

Corrin eventually recovers a vague memory of Silas and asks him to join the gang. She explains that Garon is crazy and evil and that’s enough to make him swap sides. Silas is now officially the most sane character in the game. I mean, he should have probably realized this stuff before being sent to destroy a hospital for shits and giggles, but still.

Also, Silas mentions that Corrin’s favorite food is surf and turf. Perhaps this symbolizes how Corrin is stuck between both kingdoms? Or maybe it’s a random throwaway line. You be the judge!

At the end of the chapter, Saizo and a new character named Orochi show up, wounded, and report that Takumi and Ryoma have gone missing. Uh oh.

Team Corrin decide to help search for the missing princes. Sakura decides to come along, despite Corrin and Kaze’s objections. Silas also decides to come along and Saizo points out that he totally could be a spy or traitor. He’s a dick, but he is infinitely smarter than Kaze.

[malindamay]

Ian POV: Hi uh, I’m Ian and I-I’m going to you a story about time that. I saved Disneyland and how me and Barley become the 26th characters so, uh, I’ll try my best I never tell anyone story’s except my movie story, of course. Uh, *clears throat* so here’s my NOBLE story. *chuckles* Mickey Mouse will you please be the narrator, please?😅

Mickey/ normal POV oh boy! Yes! So *clears* one day In a beautiful place, where all mystical creatures live in peace and harmony mostly, called, New Mushroomtin. The Lightfoot family was starting a new day. Ian, a 16-year-old elf, is shy and sometimes unconfident, but he wanna make his family proud especially his dad and his beloved brother, Barley. “Dear Brother we have a buffet awaits us!” Said Barley with enthusiasm-

Ian POV if you don’t know barley, he’s my older brother, and he’s very joyful and kind-hearted for me and the only thing that fears him the most is A, staying in hospital long time, B, he sees someone who has medical problems or has tubes, ventilator ETC, and C, seeing me hurt

Sorry, Mickey, gotta tell our Disney/fans about my brother if they don’t know who he is.😅

Mickey POV ok, so Ian replies with a chuckle, “*chuckle* its dinner Barley not a fancy buffet lol” Blazey pounces on Ian making Ian almost dropping the food “ *yelps* laughs * Blazey *ack!* okx3!🤣 😅 love you too.” Till Ian saw a letter tape on their door it’s from me(Mickey Mouse)

“ Hey Ian

this is Mickey Mouse and I was wondering if you and your brother can come to Disney world for the DVC Celebration plus you and your brother will be debating on the Disney team I know you’re shy,but you’ll be fine I’m sure my pals love ya, and even there’ll be fans who love your movie! Please accept this invitation.

Love, Mickey Mouse.❤️”

Ian reads it twice and his face turns from 😕 —>🙂😀 “Barley, will you love to go on a majestic quest with me?!😀”

Barley suddenly answer” *laughs* My dear brother, of course!” Ian nods he grabs his staff and he goes pack up their luggage’s! Laurel( their mom) looks at them a little nervous.” Are you sure you boys will be fine?” Ian nods “don’t worry I’ll call ya if something happens wrong,ok?” Laurel says “but-“ Ian cuts her off with a smile “I’m wizard well, 1st stage *chuckles* we”ll be fine, I’ll try to protect barley and he’ll protect me!”

Laurel had a tear in her eyes “ *sniffs* you two always have your father’s spirit. *sobs* 😢” Ian hugs his mom “before you go I have something for you,Ian. *grabs a flowey (lavender with gold,swirly glittered design in the edges) scarf(same style like elsa’s mom’s but different) it’s from your dad’s when he’s about almost your age.”

Ian clenched it suddenly a guset of wind swirls around him ounce as Ian closes his eyes. “Thx mom.”

Barley smiles at Ian till Blazey comes up to Ian and hugs him likes they’re gonna be leave her with their mom alone for few months, Ian says in his sweet tone “sorry girl wish we could take you with mom but, I think Mickey just wants me and Barley,ok? Who’s a good girl,come on who’s a good dragon?” Blazey barks at Ian as a “I am.” Ian gets up grabs their luggages “we’ll miss you mom,Blazey. We’ll be fine I’ll text call or FaceTime you when we want to.” Barley comes and puts his shoulder around ians’s softly “ it’s ok mom.🙂” Lauarel sheds a tear “*sniffs* you’ll always have your dad’s spirit.”

Ian goes and about to close the door “see ya in a few months,mom. *blows a kiss*”

In New Mushroomtin Airport:

Ian was a little nervous and excited to go,but he knew he always have his brother by his side and his spiritual dad beside them. Barley smiles at Ian “ready,Ian?🙂” Ian takes a deep breath and grabs his luggage’s as Barley grabs his, as Ian says” *sighs* yes!🙂”

After few days they had landed and as they saw the beauty of the Disneyland hotel Ian slowly twirls as he admires around “woah, this place is gorgeous!”😀” they’re about to unpack their luggage’s till they heard a knock on their hotel room(room 24) Ian opens the door and saw the big cheese himself,the one that started it all, Mickey Mouse! “Hi pals, hope you’re enjoying your room so far *ha ha* oh boy!” Ian shakes Mickey’s hand, *gasps* it’s a really honor to meet you Mickey can’t wait to make our 1st debut in DCA!😅” Barley comes up “hi, names Barley nice to meet you,bro*laughs* “ barley gives Mickey a bro hug. Mickey asks in his kind voice “is anything that my cast members can do for you, or-“ Ian says “no,but we’re a little hungry.” Mickey says in his cheerful tone” oh boy! I know just the place! I’ll wait till you 2 are done with your unpacking.” Ian nods and says “ I’ll knock after we’re done unpacking

Mickey closes the door as the 2 brotherly elves unpacking their luggage’s Ian took his staff out of his long suitcase. Barley asks “need help dear brother?😀” little help,please!”Ian replie. As Ian saw something in his satual shiny is a locket that has the Lightfoot gain including Blazey in the inside! replies, He puts it around his neck and looks at his reflection in the mirror Ian sheds a tear in his eyes. Barley looks at him and coax him “hey,you ok?” Ian couldn’t control his tears, so he let his tears out Barley gently puts down his stuff and hugs Ian to conforts his beloved brother. “I know you miss mom and Blazey, I miss them too,but hey, we get to make our 1st apperience in DCA,Disneyland! They’ll be tons of human fans will love us,and ETC, it’s ok.” Ian sobs softly as he hugs barley back. “ I love you and *sobs* I’m not letting anyone or anything hurt me or you. *sobs softly*😢😭“

Chapter 2

After they unpacked their luggage’s, Ian wears his shawl/scarf and grabs his staff, and knocks on the door, “ready pals?” Mickey asks. Ian grabs Barley’s hand, “*sighs* yes!🙂”

“ wow this place is majestic!” Ian said

Mickey replying “yes it’s a fun place where all ages to have fun and ETC.

Mickey: Yes, the wind blows a little bit cooler

And we're all happy

And the clouds are moving on with every pixie dusts

Our flowers just became gorgeous

Goofy:And my leaf's a little sadder and wiser

Mickey: That's why I rely on certain certainties

Yes, some things never change

Like the feel of your hand in ours

Some things stay the same

Like how we get along just fine

Like an old stone wall that will never fall

Some things are always true

Some things never change

*to Ian and Barley* Guys, did your dreams come true?

Minnie: The flowers are already blooming

Pluto, it feels like the debut is coming

*talks for pluto* tAre you telling me tonight he’s gonna get down on one knee?

Yep, but I'm really nervous at planning these things out

Like greeting them the 1st time!

*talks for pluto* Maybe you should leave all the exciting stuff to the characters

Yeah, some things never change

Like the joy that I feel for them

Some things stay the same

Like how dogs are easier

But if I commit and I go for it

I'll know what to say and do, right?

*talks for pluto* Some things never change

Pluto, the pressure is all on you

Ian: is this really true , could that be this day of our debut?

Dad, wish you could see us now? I'm not sure I want things to be perfect

These days are precious, can't let the magic fade

I can't stop this moment, but I can still go out and see this day!!

Other Disney characters: The wind blows a little bit cooler

Goofy: : And if you believe in yourself

The elf brothers: It's time to count our blessings beneath an heaven sky

Disney characters: We'll always live in the kingdom of plenty

That stands for the good of the many

Ian: And I promise you the flag of Disneyland will always fly BOOMBASTIA! *staff swishes*

Disney characters:Our flag will always fly

Our flag will always fly

Our flag will always fly

Some things never change

Turn around in the time that's flown

Some things stay the same

Though the future remains unknown

May our good luck rest, may our past be past

Time's moving fast, it's true

Some things never change

Barley: And I'm holding on tight to you

Ian: Holding on tight to you

Mickey:Holding on tight to you

Ian and barley: Holding on tight to you

Chapter 3

A trolly appears and a tourist comes would you both like a tour of the park?”

The elves replied “ yes of course. *laughs at each other*” Ian goes inside the horse trolley Barley sat beside his brother after he grabs few snacks from one of the shops in Main Street USA.

After 2 hours of touring around and. Behind the castle. “Thank you so much for giving us a tour!” Ian shakes the tourist and hugs him and Barley asks, “if you don’t mind can I take a selfie with you Ian and your trolley with your horse?” “Oh absolutely!” Ian poses with his staff and helds his shawl/scarf. “SELFIE!😀” Barley calls out with delight! “Thank you so much!” “Hey no problem, have a magical time on your 1st day!” Calls out the tourist as the 2 elves goes out and have fun. They’d arrive to the AMC in Disney Hollywood studio. “Ready Ian?” Ian takes a deep breath and he holds his staff in his right arm and the other holds his brother’s hand, and said “ Yes, Yes! I’m- we’re so proud of our hard work with our movie. *sigh* I’m ready to meet our fans!”

They enters the entrance and they stop at their meet and greet spot and Ian is ready.

Chapter 4

The crowds was in line and a little girl, a 2 year old dressed as Ian, got her own Ian’s staff. It was her and her family’s turn. She hides behind her mom’s leg. Ian kneels and holds out his hands “hey little girl, it’s ok I won’t use my staff on you to hurt you, it’s ok, awww. *hugs* it’s that your staff?” The mom says “ wanna show Ian your 19 inch Ian plush?”

Ian holds his doll and make it wave at her and covers its eyes “peekaboo.”

“Aww, hey, name’s Barley it’s ok. Wanna take photos? Huh?” The girl turns towards the photographer. Ian holds his doll in his left hand and his right, hugs the girl. “ok say bye.” Says the mom. Ian blows a kiss to the girl and make his doll waves bye to the girl and says in his little high pitch voice “bye, love you * makes his doll blows a kiss and make his doll hugs her* *normal pitch* bye love you, one more hug? aww. *hugs* bye.we Love you.”

Chapter 5

Suddenly blast of wind burst the door open! Malificeint appears, smoke appears from her. “Well well well.” The wind from her power makes Ian’s hair,flannel,scarf/shawl, Barley’s vest flows. “Who are you?” Ian asks as he holds his staff and points it towards the dark souceror . “I’m Malificent. The powerful villain in all the land!” Thunder boomed as she evil laughs. “ there’s something I want. Something that’s magical and more powerful. I need your magic.😈” Ian looks at her puzzled “what?” Barley looks little upset “ why,why do you want his magic?!😨😠 Ian nobley says “wait so-“ Malificient cuts him off “let you something to you all! I want his magic to becomepowerful and become the queen of DISNEYLAND!!” Ian emotion turns from 😠 —>😨 “wait. NO!! *grunts* VOLLTEr ThUNDE-“ Malificent used her power to push Ian! “*yelps in fear* NO you YOU MONSTER!!” “YOU’LL SEE YOU’LL ALL SEE!!!! *evil laughs out loud*😈” a huge gust of wind blows ounce hard across the room. Ian’s flannel opened from the wind! Ian looks at his hand and the staff “NO! *sobs*” Ian grabs his shawl/scarf and flieds through the park the trolley horse stops and yelps out the tourist tried to calm the horse down and saw Ian ran to the hotel room(room 24). Ian shuts the bedroom door and sinks to his knees and cries as he hugs his dad’s staff. “Dad! *sobs* please help me! *sobs*” suddenly the window opens and a swirl of wind created a spirit of his dad his voice echos. “Ian,my son. Why does she wants your magic?” “*sniffs* *breaking voice* I-I don’t know.” His dad puts his hand on his young son’s cheeck.

Ian holds his scarf close to him as he looks up at his spiritual dad. His dad holds his staff and gives it to Ian, but Ian slowly grabs the staff. Suddenly he saw darkness pulls into Disneyland. Ian looks out the window, he gasps in horror his iPhone rings. “I-Ian it’s me B-barley please he-“ Ian got scared his dad told him “listen you can do this you defeated the curse dragon last time.” Ian looks at the staff and looks noble! “ I’m going to give Malificent what she wants!😠” Wilden cries out “What?! No Ian I can’t let you be powerless I can’t let my son be powerless and weak!” Ian clenched his staff and runs off to Malificent!”

Chapter 6

Inside Disneyland castle all the Disney/Pixar characters inside Malificent is waiting for her power gift,Ian! Doors slam open with a blast of Ian’s staff from Ian. “Oh Ian *hugs* I thought you-“ Ian cuts Barley off. “I’m here to give you the gift. My MAGIC!” Barley gasps in horror so does all the other characters! Malificent approaches to Ian and she stabs him in the heart Ian yells in pain.

“IAN!!!😱 NO!!!”Malificent froze Barley in place. Ian lies there shouting out pain! “No *moans* please.” “Your magic will make me more powerful! *evil laugh*

Malificent: I'm not the villain in distress.

I'm not your girlfriend or the frightened sourccer .

I'm not a little bird who needs your help to fly.

Nope..... I'm the bad guy.

All these former villains that you see...

Each of them with shaking knees has knelt before me.

So I'm not your teammate or your partner in crime.

What am I, boys?!

-She's the bad guy..-

Oh, it's magic

To watch a planet

Shrivel up and die...

Oh, it's thrillin'

To be a villain.

I take over their homes and then I watch them suffer...

Mwhaha!

CUZ, I'M THE BAD GUY!!!!😈

Ian tries to stands up but the pain in his heart hurts so bad Malificent dissapears Barley unfroze as she dissapearss.

Chapter 7

Barley brought Ian to their hotel room and laid Ian on the couch, along with the other characters “Runpunzel use your heal power.” Flyn says. Runpunzel sings a special song as she wraps her hair around Ian’s torso.

✨💫flower gleam and glow,

Let your power shine.

Make the clock reverse,

Bring back as mine.

Heal will help the pain.

Change the faith desires.

Say what’s has be loved bring back ounce was mine.

When ounce was mine.💫✨

His heart was healed Ian breaths as Barley holding his hands while he sobs sofyly and saying prayers.

Chapter 8

Elsa and Anna rush yo check on Ian withe the other Disney characters

“Elsa! *moans*” barley coax Ian @shh Ian lie down.” “ I’m so sorry it’s not our fault.”

Ian: Barley, 🎶 you’re the soul who I understand. The love that show me of who I am! through the darkness to the light. You got my back and I believe you. If It weren’t for you. I’ll be the wheels and you’ll be the road.

Barley: Ian,what you’re trying to say? Can you please let me know.

Ian: cause you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon. I was so brave cause of you. Like a moonlight with the stars you’ll guiding me, yeah it’s true. You carried me with you!

Barley: Ian, 🎶from the day that Youall begun. But, I was there to protect you. But when I see you being hurt. I tried to help, you’re a fighter. And when my heart filled with worried. found a way to comfort me. You always found a bright side, and make me feel better.

Both: cause you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon. I was trying to protect you, like a moonlight with the stars, you’ll be guiding me, yeah it’s true, yeah carried me with you.

Ian: oh we’ll be always be together no matter what.

Barley: watching out the days turns into night

Ian: we know to brave the stormy weathers.

Both: well never give so without a fiiiihhhhhhttt!!

Ian: and if it weren’t for you from the battle

I’ll would’ve die without you.

Barley: I’ll see us through thick and thin

For love and lost till the end.

Both: yeah you carried me with you

From the quest of the gem to the battle of the dragon I was just to secard to see

Like a moonlight with the stars you’ll always protect me

Yeah it’s true

You carried me with you

Ian: oh you carried me with you.🎶

Chapter 9

Judy and nick rushes to Ian and barley with other characters in the hotel. “We heard the news! oh sweet cheese and crackers, are you ok,Ian? *holds Ian hands*” “*sighs* he’s fine,except he has no magic left Malificent had his power!” Barley told Judy. “I’m-we’re sorry we-“

“How do we stop this darkness?!” Ian asks. Barley puts their dad’s shawl/scarf around Ian’s shoulders. Barley ordered all the characters, except Ian, to go and try to stop Malificent with him, but Ian won’t let him. “What?! No” “Ian I can’t let you die!” “No I’m coming too! If dad was here, he would go a-and go to be noble to fight and never give up. I may not have dad actually being here, but if I swear to God, he’ll be with us spiritually,I love you!” Barley looks at him little sceard. Ian holds his shawl/scarf and shouts “Come on, stay together! STAY STRONG!!” Barley can’t believe that his brother is gonna sacrifice his love for his family and old/new friends!

Chapter 10

Malificent : 🎶Believe me I know

I've sunk pretty low

But whatever I've done you deserved

I'm the bad guy, that's fine

It's no fault of mine

And some justice at last will be served

Now it's time to step up

Or it's time to back down

And there's only one answer for me

And I'll stand up and fight

Cause I know that I'm right

And I'm ready, I'm ready, I'm ready

Ready as I'll ever be

Ian: Now it's time to rise up

Or it's time to stand down

And the answer is easy to see

And I swear by the staff

If you're in, get on board

Are you ready?

Judy: I'm ready

Mickey Minnie : We're ready

Crowd: We're ready

Ian: Ready as I'll ever be

Barley : Are you quite sure we can do this?

Ian: Together we will guarantee

Malificent : I'll make them hear me

Crowd: Now it's time to redeem

Or it's time to resolve

Ian : Prove they can trust me

Crowd: And the outcome will hardly come free

Ian: I'll save or land and family

Crowd: Now the line's in the sand

And our moment's at hand

Mérida : And I'm ready

Barley : I'm ready

Ian & Judy: I'm ready

Malificent : Ready as I'll ever be!🎶

Chapter 11

Ian got on a horse(which it almost reminds him Guenivere (their stead)

Barley looks confident but scared for his brother. “Ian, are you sure? I don’t want you to get hurt. “ Ian says “I may not have magic, but I still have little magic inside if me.” Ian fleds through Main Street USA to the Castle. As Ian gets off alone with the horse, the horse neighs meaning: be careful, ” it's ok I’ll be fine.

Chapter 12

In Disneyland caatle area the sky covers with darkness, The wind blows across the land. Ian gasps in horror along with the Disney characters. Ian stood noble to try to control his tears. “Come on, Barley you Judy with me the others splits together.” The characters nods as they splits up. They go inside the castle until army of guards surrounded them Ian reaches out his staff,Barley grabs his sword and Judy grabs a spare sword and they start batting! “Boombastia! Guys I’ll go and and find Malificent!” They agree as the others continue battling withe guards. Ian goes and find Malificent with his staff till *whoosh* smoke appears and she appears in front of him! Ian grabs his staff, “you’ll never NEVER take away my magic😡!” Malificent and Ian starts their battle as she knocks him out the bouncony and top of the castle’s roof the wind was strong. Ian shivers from the wind. Malificent uses her magic. Ian uses his staff “Volltar Thundersir!” Till Malificent shoot her magic and Ian hit hers created a huge gusts of wind till *whoosh* Ian was shot a little thank god he’s still alive. Barley saw the action “Ian? NO!!!!!” And the final act of the magic Malificent and Ian magic hits Barley and knocks him down,dead. Ian cries out “BARLEY,NO,no, please, YOU MONSTER!!! VOLLTAR THUBDERSIR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” *BOOM!!” His staff explodes and kills Malificent, for good Chapter 13 sadly, Ian rushes toward his brother crying, “*voice break* Barley no please don’t leave me. I-I love you *sniffs*” Ian tries his very best to use his staff to try to heal Barley. Ian grabs his staff,still crying, and says”I-insta r-Repairo!(please work please😢😭)” suddenly swirls of wind swirls around Barley from his staff his vest,hair,shirt,Ian’s hair,flannel flows in the wind. Ian’s eyes squinted from the wind and bright swirls. Few moments later with a soft swish, Barley slowly opens his eyes. Ian cried out tears of joy! Then suddenly his staff swishes around Ian the TRANSFORMATION of a WIZARD! The cape,kimono flows in the wind as his staff rose Ian in the air and twirls him majestically . Few moments later Ian opens his eyes still full of tears of joy. “Wow,Ian you look majestic!” Barley amazed “thanks *sniffs* “Chapter 14. At the castle where they do spectacular front of the stage the crowd is waiting for a special ceremony debut. Loud speaker booms over the speaker.”laddies and gentlemen,boys and girls, please welcome,Tennesha and Alex!” The crowd cheered as they appeared to the stage “Welcome everyone we’re so delighted to have this majestic debut coming for this day before we meet our special surprise guests, we wanna bring our Disney / Pixar friends on stage!” The crowd cheered as the Disney/Pixar characters come on stage and greeted the audience. “Hello everybody!” Minnie says, “Hey pals oh boy how everybody’s doing today?!” Mickey asks the crowd shouted yes out loud! “So Mickey we are so excited to see our special characters on their debut,right everyone?!!” Tenneshia says as the crowd screams with excitement! Woody says “can’t wait to meet them *giggles*” “Ok everybody I want everybody to say Onward really loud,ok? Ready? “ the crowd stood up and shouted withe the characters “1 2 3, ONWARD!!!!” Suddenly Ian voice boomed over the speaker BOOMBASTIA!!!” Fireworks and with a flash of a firework with smoke shooting and appeared, Ian and Barley are on stage and the speaker played “Carried me with you in instrumental. “It’s Ian and Barley Lightfoot say hi Guys, come on Ian don’t be shy!” The crowd went wild with excitement till they settle down. @bluezey @itsme-starmunch

[the-firebird69]

A son stayed in a hotel in Japan the room size was this. He said he didn't mind it he had a couple trouble with a couple things the bed was too small and it didn't have a window this one does and it's nice you need to have a window and it had some amenities but really in here you could put a hot plate and a refrigerator and ATV air conditioning you can see that it does have those things in it. Window this is how we wanna build them and we'll use camper furniture so there's room and they're less expensive and they do have a ton of TV's and they have those type of VAV box for air conditioning and the windows here looks like they're fixed I would like operable windows and you just let them open in a little but this is ideal for a lot of people who travel you don't need a big room as a matter of fact the small room is more comfortable for people now big rooms sometimes they don't l.... now big rooms sometimes they don't like and our son was in big rooms in China and hated it and he'd rather have a small room. Makes you feel secure In some cities in some cases this would be an apartment and people don't like to think about it but if you have to live somewhere and don't have money it is a life saving measure. We wanna make these modular in other words there'd be several different apartment sizes in the same complex and you could get a two bedroom or a one bedroom and there would be probably a size limit but really we would make it different sizes and probably the top floor would be like two or three bedroom with a full kitchen and things like that but those will be modular too and with smaller furniture and you could move up as you increase in rank and it's a nice thing to do. But but these would go together in a day it will the foundation and site work in a week and with a pouring in a day all these would be installed and hotel and then you can close it all in in two weeks you have an apartment complex and he suggested we start building them so we designed a couple based on the furniture and things we got out of a whole bunch of new campers that are the same make and we said we have to modify the furniture but in the future we won't have to but we have to set up anyways so we set up a factory to modify the furniture and we need personnel this is part of the camper program and Hera and Zues ohh gothis is all my name that was mes this is all are part of the lead. Put their names on it and she said to contact her and have her help out with each step and we know what you mean the steps are when we started or when we're getting the factories put together or designing the factories and we're starting the other way around we're going to go ahead and do this now.

Frank Castle hard castle

Well they're arguing and making fun of people and it's not going to be great later but good there's a lot of little bugs flying around in these kind of few probably most of them so it shouldn't be that bad but they really need to get on the stuff there not so we're gonna try and help out there. These ideas are great I have seen this before yeah because he came up with it but other people came up with the idea. And you can expand apartments and expand hotels and that's kind of the idea and if they shrink in business and it's like that for awhile you move a bunch of it away instead of closing the facility. Is a wonderful idea and it's a wonderful time for it to happen so we're moving out and we're gonna get it done.

Thor Freya

This is one of the best ideas I've ever heard the Micro Hotel idea the Micro apartment in the modular it is intense it'll fit a ton of people we needed now and it is great to have larger ones it is wonderful. I'm wondering how you gonna feel the facility and say what do you mean feel it or develop power generation and yes and you could put solar on the roof and a lot of people like that it saves a lot of money and it does there's a lot of solar programs in which you do it and we should start the energy program and it will be for factories for cities for housing automobiles and it's important he says because we need to attach to it immediately emergency method of building a rapidly factors if we're going to run out of oil we do know when that will be approximately and we are going to start doing it now. And he thinks we lot for the input. And he says he's getting kinda beat up and he needs me to send troops in Chinese Vietnamese these guys need to get here is hardly any of them and it's true too they gotta see what's going on. We're gonna start doing that and I appreciate the help he says no I appreciate the help LOL

Zig Zag

He says he's swamped inundated can't think too straight sometimes but he's doing OK now but it's health there's too many of these bugs too many these people are jerks and doesn't have funding but we are going to work on that they said that they did not reimburse Washington but they actually did and it's not on his ledger is not true either people found it and so they're full of crap and just doesn't happen for awhile and he submitted it and they cut him a check and it was the first Continental Congress and they had pride about themselves back then.

Apollo and Goddess Wife

Olympus

good

Hera

[corpsentry]

behind the taylor swift gundam was in fact another, smaller gundam: a brief inquiry into the events of june 2020

so back in june this year june and i got together and we made this motherfucker of a story with this motherfucker of a thread to keep track of it all. but you already know that! and i’ve already got one foot and three elbows in my grave, so i’ll spare you the long-winded stuff. you wanna know how i wrote 93,035 words in 4 weeks? i’ll tell you how i wrote 93,035 words in 4 weeks-

-by linking you guys to copies of my planning documents because i feel like those words speak louder than any words i can offer in the present day. these are long documents. but they are also historical artifacts. very interesting. very weird. very, uh, full of cussing. so anyway, here’s

BIG DADDY: THE ORIGINAL PLANNING DOCUMENT

for those, like me, who have no motivation left in life to do anything and rely on summaries from others to acquire new knowledge, it all started with a single line.

prince of a fallen kingdom atsumu tries to kill hinata but falls in love with him instead

june, april something, 2020

with that in mind i tested the concept out with a few paragraphs of text, which you can find at the bottom of the Big Daddy document in the graveyard segment, accidentally sold my soul to the image of hinata with epaulettes, and then worked backwards, structuring an entire plot around two images:

a) hinata getting the shit beat out of him, with snark b) hinata and atsumu dancing in an empty ballroom under the stars

if you want a betrayal, you have to have something worth losing. if you want to fall in love with someone you don’t know, you have to meet them. if you have to meet them, there has to be a reason for that meeting, and so somewhere in between atsumu became a sword instructor and hinata the prince with daddy issues. june and i used this method of glancing anxiously over your shoulder to see what you’d missed to fill out the blanks in the story, after which i tacked up a bunch of post-its, typed out the plot, consulted june, typed out the plot again, and then broke the characters down into a bunch of questions, like ‘what do they want?’ and ‘what do they have?’ and ‘what are they afraid of?’

with the plot more or less ironed out, i decided it was time to start writing, and then i decided that i was actually too scared to start writing after all, so instead i set a couple of timers using classroomtimers.com (15-20 minutes long) and i sat down and i wrote about the world that hinata and atsumu inhabited.

each warm-up was 300-500 words long, and for the first few days, i’d write one before getting into writing the story proper. later these evolved into simply picking a scene from the story and launching straight into it, which became useful for opening those scenes later when i got to them organically.

then i got lazy! so i stopped. but these shitty little exercises were really useful for me because, unfettered by plot, convention, or any kind of tradition hovering over my shoulder, i was able to fuck around loosely enough to realize what i wanted this story to be. it was a very contrived kind of trial-and-error, an exploration of the characters, the story, but most importantly, the tone.

RESEARCH, PLANNING, AND VICTORIAN BOUGIE FASHION

this is a loose map of the castle and Important Locations within it, which i drew up at the start so i could keep track of where everything was and how i could get my characters from point A to point B. i wanted the story to have Some kind of internal logic, you know, even if that logic amounted to ‘a compass would function normally in this world whereas kageyama tobio would not’.

99% of my planning and organizing within those five weeks took place in this lovely dotted cat journal which my sister gave me for my birthday and i repurposed into a metaphorical Diary of Suffering while working on juno. i used it for everything from keeping track of narrative threads to clothing consistency checks, but the main purpose was this: each day at about 10 pm i’d crack open the cat book to a fresh page, stamp the date and the day of suffering at the top, and then write down a list of things i wanted to write, address, or fix today. then i’d sit at my laptop and write like a madman until about 7 in the morning. with breaks, of course, for sitting in the bathroom and staring at the wall and sitting in the kitchen and staring at the wall, but mostly i was writing. and complaining about writing. you were there, you probably remember that.

anyway, here are some pages from the cat book.

aside from the fact that my handwriting is complete shit, you can see that i made zero effort for any of this to be presentable. it was mainly a way for me to keep track of my thoughts because i have the attention span of an ikea wardrobe and tend to forget things as soon as i think of them. the lack of structure also mirrored the way that i went about writing juno. while i did proceed, for the most part, in chronological order, i had a lot of weird and useless revelations during lunch, which by this point was happening around 2 am, and in the 5 minutes before the exhaustion finally hit and carried me down to hell. i changed A Lot. again, to understand exactly how much the story evolved from day one onwards, please consult the big daddy document.

in the meantime, here’s something else.

once june sent over hinata and atsumu’s character designs i sat down like the fucking fool i am and spent 2 hours poring over a document about victorian and other fashion movements of the past so i could assign a noun, adjective, and verb to each element of their outfits. i don’t know why i did this. i certainly could have not, but i attempted to make sense of their ‘fits from a logistical perspective and that went into the cat book too. everything went into the cat book. the cat book is a relic of the past now, stuffed with artifacts such as the birth of oikawa tooru, and also his demise.

MEDIUM DADDY: EDITING, PROOFREADING, AND CREEPY MURDER CATS

i finished writing on june 26th, 2020, approximately a month after i’d first started planning, somewhere around may 27th or 28th. at that point i had about 90,000 words’ worth of story and no sanity left whatsoever, so i took a day-long break to stare at a wall and listen to taylor swift’s enchanted on loop.

and then i made a new document, which you can look at using the link above, and i laid out everything i had to do. i’d discovered a fuck ton of plot inconsistencies and general errors while writing and lying awake in bed at 9 a.m., sleepless in seattle, and now that i was free of the demon egging me towards the first finish line, it was time to Deal with them. i speed-scrolled through the draft, which was 200+ pages compressed into one google doc, because i like to tempt god’s wrath, and fixed up all the plot issues over the course of a few days. this was the fun part.

the actual, hard editing was the extremely un-fun part. i reread the entire thing, paragraph by paragraph, line by damn line, from start to finish, paying especially close attention to awkward phrasing, incomplete dialogue, and moments which had fallen flat in my haste to get on to the next one. this was really fucking terrible. i spent more time lying facedown on the floor than actually editing anything, but after a long time (about a week), that, too was done.

SMALL DADDY: TITLES, SUMMARIES, AND GOOD FUCKING BYES

i spent a good eighty days thinking about the title, though hilariously enough we ended up with something that was a blend of our names. june + elmo = juno, which is, all things considered, pretty perfect, but the process of picking the title was Hell, and i Did Not Come Up With The Title until about 2 hours before posting. you can take a look at the haphazard clusterfuck of my title-selecting process in small daddy, which is linked above.

so the title was a last-minute choice. so was the summary. and the chapter divisions. and actually all the songs in the playlist for juno. the day we dropped juno onto planet earth like a newborn baby pitched out of the sky, i spent an hour hunched over my laptop, cutting my 213 page google doc into chapters based on nothing more than a Vibe. two days before that, i also attempted to voice-act the entirety of juno, an affair which ended at the 20,000 word mark with a sore throat and the kind of exhaustion one typically wants to sleep in a coffin for 23 years to get rid of. so in all honesty, i did very little editing, which is why there are definitely minor typos and/or mistakes hanging out somewhere on that chunky ao3 webpage. but whatever.

my attitude by july 5th (was it july 5th? or 4th? somewhere around there) was basically whatever. anything so i could get finish this damn thing, chuck it out of the window, and never see another google doc until the next century. i’ve been asked a few times how exactly i wrote at a rate of roughly 2000-3000 words per day for four weeks straight, and my answer has always been this: i died. what died, you ask? my soul. my spirit. my Will To Live. i’m a creature of fixations, and juno was my fixation for june. will i ever be able to do this again? would i recommend this experience to anyone? is god real? the answer to all of the above is probably no. juno was a fever dream, and so is my cat book. and so are all the lattes i had. and so was my 9 am to 4 pm sleep schedule.

but what we made is real. the research, oikawa tooru, the 4 am conversations in which i was like ‘how the fuck do i end this’ and june was like ‘jade proposal’ (the proposal was her idea. all rise for twitter user atsuhinas. she is the mastermind behind all of the Inch Resting moments in this story; i just flapped a korok leaf in her direction and made sure the air circulation was working properly) are real as fuck, and looking back, there’s a lot i’d change, but i’m lazy. and college is starting. and anyway, i did write 93,035 words in just under five weeks, four if you don’t count the week of Editing Hell, so i think that’s pretty cool.

thank you for reading this to the end, and for following us on our journey through the enigmatic taylor swift gundam fic which quite literally consumed my entire twitter account for the five weeks i spent working on it. retrospectively speaking i really was butt-obsessed so i am frankly incredibly impressed with everyone around me for putting up with a Husk of a Man for a month. thank you for doing that. thank you for indulging my vague tweeting, and our butterfly dns, and for reading 93 thousand words of gay fanfiction set in a high fantasy world with epaulettes and galettes. on behalf of june, once again, we are incredibly grateful for all your support.

if you have any questions about specific aspects of the writing process, or anything you’d like to know in general with reference to JUNO, feel free to drop me an ask through my tumblr inbox, or through my curiouscat over here. i’m aware i didn’t cover everything, but there’s frankly too much to put in a tumblr post without passing away somewhere around the 56% mark, so let me know what’s on your mind, and i’ll try to answer that to the best of my abilities. but anyway, before i go, here are some

TAKEAWAYS

one: don’t try to write 93,000 words in five weeks. seriously don’t fucking do it you will end up jittery and sleep-deprived and you will leave all your friends on read for a month. pace yourself. set realistic goals. you wrote 2k this week? that’s fantastic. you wrote 4k in a day? you absolute motherfucker. i hope you’re taking a long fucking break tomorrow. your story will not run away from you, but if you run too fast, you will get tired, and then you will pass away.

two: you don’t have to know everything about your story before you start writing. in fact if you have a single camera shot of two characters holding hands under a rose garden awning, i think that’s fucking wonderful. if you look at big daddy, you’ll realize that my initial plot draft, and all the ones following that, are not perfectly aligned with the final version of juno. i improvised over half of the scenes in this motherfucker, and to be completely honest, some of the improvised scenes were the best. fucking oikawa tooru was improvised out of nowhere. he only got written in way later, around chapter 8 or something, because i realized i needed a plot device and a source of information to keep the playing table from toppling over. i Sat Down one day and was like ‘okay, it’s time to write oikawa into the introduction. because he matters now. he didn’t matter last week but now he does, and soon he’s going to be the fulcrum of the entire story, because it’s like that with oikawa tooru’. it’s okay to change your mind halfway. it’s okay to go back and rewrite entire scenes or segments. it’s okay to highlight 4 pages of fresh, sentimental writing, and hit delete. writing is a fluid process, and you Will make discoveries as you progress through your story alongside your characters. be understanding of that iterative process. be kind to yourself.

three: You Are That Motherfucker. you, me, your dog, your dog’s friend, your dog’s enemy, all of us are that motherfucker. i never thought i’d be able to write anything longer than the great big map, which was a much simpler, linear story in which the other main character did not appear in the current timeline until like the eighth chapter. juno was different. juno was the motherfucker, and i was scared shitless of it, and to cope with that fear joked constantly while writing that it’d never see the light of day.

but it did. it was a rocky process, and i was awake for 48 hours after posting it because of the sheer adrenalin stuck in my skull, but i got through it. and i wouldn’t have been able to do it without june, who stepped in when i flopped over facedown on the floor and dragged me to my feet like the badass friend she is, and without everyone else in my life, who put up with me talking about The Thing that i couldn’t really talk about, but juno’s up there now. forever, or until the internet collapses and civilization goes extinct. and if the nineteen year old clown with the attention span of an ikea armchair and an a level certificate from hell wrote the 93,000 word long thing, so can you. i mean this completely unironically and with every ounce of genuine emotion i can summon from the cracked asshole of my heart.

writing is hard. writing is scary. writing is an investigation of the world around you and therefore, by extension, yourself, and that kind of honesty is freaky. it’s like going skinny-dipping next to the president’s mansion. who’s going to see you? what if they take a photo? what if you lose your spot at university?

but don’t think about that. our world is overrun with stories the way cereal bowls are full of cereal, but it’s those stories that keep us all sane in the disgusting day-to-day muck of reality, so think about your story. what’s haunting you today? what message do you want to leave printed in font size 666 comic sans across the southern hemisphere of the planet? what will you be tomorrow?

a writer. you’re going to be a motherfucking writer.

[spop-starsau]

Introduction to the Stars AU: A General Overview/FAQ Post

What is the Stars AU?

Basically, the Stars AU started out as a SPOP AU where Bow and Glimmer accidentally conceive a child shortly after the portal incident. A few months and countless conversations & roleplay sessions later, it’s become a full-fledged AU with separate timelines, a TON of OCs, and plans to write fanfic/commission fan art in the future.

Since we’ve come up with so much stuff for this AU, we decided to make a side blog for it!

@darkmasterofcupcakes and myself (@roses-renegade) are the AU’s co-creators.

Wait, this AU has separate timelines?

Yep! The original version of this AU had Glimmer and Bow conceiving their daughter Andromeda not too long after the portal incident. We have worked on this version of the AU for a while. Around the time that season 5 of SPOP came out, we made an alternate version of the Stars AU (or, an AU of the AU) that was more canon compliant- in this version, Andromeda is conceived shortly after the SPOP finale. We decided to keep both versions of the Stars AU (we usually refer to them as the “canon divergent” and “canon compliant” timelines). For the most part, both versions of the Stars AU have the same story/OCs, but the timelines are just a bit different (since we based the timing of a LOT of the events of the AU on how old Andromeda would be when they occurred).

To give you even MORE of a headache (haha), we also have come up with a “dark timeline” version of the Stars AU, BUT more on that later...

Okay, gotcha. What is the Stars AU about?

The most basic answer to this question is “the events of Bow and Glimmer’s life after the portal incident.”

This AU tackles (among other things) Glimmer and Bow’s season 4 storylines, the development of their romantic relationship, their journey to parenthood, their lives (and, really, everyone else’s lives) after the war, and, eventually, the lives of their children.

Why is it called the Stars AU?

Back when we were first brainstorming names for Andromeda, we came up with this idea that Bow and Glimmer would give all of their kids star-related names. My (@roses-renegade) reasoning for this was that it was sort of a symbolic thing. Glimmer and Bow’s children are going to be growing up in this new era of peace on Etheria. I wanted their names to kind of “reflect” this new era, and one of the most noticeable physical aspects of post-war Etheria is that the stars have returned now that Etheria is out of Despondos and a part of the larger universe once again.

So, yeah. Glimmer and Bow’s kids will get to grow up in this new peaceful world under the stars. Hence, “the Stars AU.”

Okay, so... tell me more about Andromeda, since she basically got this whole AU started.

Princess Andromeda “Andi” of Bright Moon is the daughter of Queen Glimmer of Bright Moon and Bow, Master Archer of the Rebellion (and later the King of Bright Moon). After the portal incident and the “death” of Queen Angella of Bright Moon, Bow and Glimmer ended up getting closer and eventually confessed their feelings to each other. After exploring their feelings and relationship, they ended up having sex one night. They then decided to "take things slow” while dating. Not too long after her coronation, Glimmer found out from Shadow Weaver that she was pregnant. She and Bow decided to keep the baby. A lot of our initial work on this AU was about how Glimmer’s pregnancy affected her season 4 storyline and character arc, as well as her relationship with the other SPOP characters. Around the end of her second trimester/beginning of her third trimester, Glimmer activated the Heart of Etheria (something that both Bow and Adora were against). This caused a massive rift between Glimmer and Bow. However, Bow still tried (and failed) to save Glimmer from being abducted by Horde Prime. Glimmer became a prisoner on the Velvet Glove, and eventually gave birth prematurely on the ship (partially from the immense amount of stress she was under, and partially because the baby may have been affected by Glimmer’s activation of the Heart of Etheria). Catra, who Glimmer had formed an uneasy alliance with while on the ship, ended up helping her deliver the baby. Catra then helped Glimmer (and Andromeda) escape, and the mother-daughter pair were rescued from space by Bow and taken aboard Mara’s ship. Glimmer and Bow soon made up, and Andromeda was put in an incubator (created by Entrapta) on the ship. After that, the majority of what occurred in the canon version of season 5 happened- the gang had some space adventures, eventually got back to Etheria, and Horde Prime was defeated. After Adora and Catra saved Etheria, Glimmer and Bow shifted their focus to making sure that their new little family was okay. Glimmer spent a few days recovering in the infirmary at Castle Bright Moon with Bow by her side. Andromeda, on the other hand, spent a month or so in the infirmary before eventually being “cleared” to go (much to Glimmer and Bow’s immense relief).

Dang, that’s a lot. And that’s only the beginning?

Yep! After developing this “main storyline” of the AU, we shifted our focus to Glimmer and Bow’s life after the SPOP finale. In our AU, a lot happens after SPOP’s “happily ever after”...

What are some of the things that happen afterwards?

Oh, you know... rebuilding Etheria... the BFS going on their little “return magic to the universe” road trips... Glimmer and Bow navigating parenthood... Angella coming back from the dead...

Angella’s back?!

YEP. We thought she (and Micah) deserved better, so... yeah. We brought her back. No regrets. (Glimmer is still queen, though.)

What are the main SPOP ships involved in this AU?

Glimmer/Bow

Catra/Adora

Sea Hawk/Mermista

Scorpia/Perfuma/Entrapta (poly trio)

Micah/Angella

George/Lance

How many OCs does this AU have so far?

Okay, get ready... *deep breath*:

4 Glimbow children

1 Catradora child

3 Seamista children

8 Scorpia/Perfuma/Entrapta children

1 Micangella child

1 Castaliet child

... a few OCs for some of the “next gen kids” to fall in love with... 

Tell me more about these “next gen kids”... 

All in good time. (I’m planning to write some sort of “masterpost” for all of the OCs eventually.)

Okay then. Tell me about this “dark timeline” you mentioned earlier... because that sounded ominous and now I can’t stop thinking about it in the back of my head...

Basically, Glimmer’s final two children were twins, and in the “dark timeline” she dies shortly after childbirth, after a very difficult and stressful pregnancy. The “dark timeline” version of the Stars AU follows the impact of Glimmer’s death on everybody. You know, fun stuff.

Note: Glimmer only dies in the “dark timeline.” She stays alive in the main timeline/version of this AU, which is what we’ll be posting about here 99% of the time anyway.

Wow. You really like to make the characters suffer, huh?

I mean, sometimes, yeah... not always, though! We promise!

Is there fanfiction of this AU that I can read?

Not yet! We’re working on that though...

What kind of things will you be posting on this blog?

Basically anything and everything about the Stars AU... character designs, headcanons, random lore about the Stars AU, fanfic/fan art (eventually), etc. We wanted a place to put everything pertaining to this AU! 

Can I submit questions/prompts/whatever about this AU and its characters?

Yes, always!! We would love to provide you with lore. :)

If I ever feel inclined to draw one of the Stars AU OCs, can I?

Yeah sure! Just make sure you tag us. :)

What’s the tag you’ll be using for this AU?

We will be tagging our posts with #SPOP Stars AU if you want to follow that tag. :)